It's an Art and AARO week

This is a busy, busy week for AARO-related activities and last weekend was devoted to art.

A bit of the room at the meetup

Monday, we had the now regular, monthly evening "meetup" meeting at Joe Allen at Les Halles, here in Paris (a good place for such meetings). This month, instead of just a social, no agenda, get-together for a drink, we decided to have our Overseas Americans Week recap. Last year, that was a meeting at the Mona Bismarck address, really for members and those in the know, only. This year, we decided to use the open, anyone-can-come, no-meeting-fee format. Only four of us had gone to DC as a delegation this year, so we didn't need a lot of time to recap. Tim and I, the newbies, gave our impressions of going to the Hill. Tim remembered how friendly everyone was in the different offices, how they have to sit through presentations such as ours all day and still be friendly. I gave a brief summary of what is in HR12, the Voter Empowerment Act, for us overseas Americans. In short, go to Title IX. There is now a sister bill in the Senate. In spite of its 200 pages, we hope it gets passed. Some of the points raised in my meeting with the Philadelphia Board of Elections are dealt with, such as the requirement to accept our overseas ballot requests before 45 days before the election and to accept a request for all elections in the year to be honored. This is something they adamantly didn't like in Philadelphia; they told me they really wanted us to send our requests in no sooner than 7 weeks before an election and for each election. It also deals with the states' obligations to send out the ballots 45 days before the election and to report on success or failure to do so, and to be able to use express delivery to send out ballots as the election gets closer and for voters to return ballots by express delivery -- thus taking away the postal services monopoly. Lucy spoke to the aide in Representative Lewis's office who was most involved with this legislation when we were in DC and she was very impressed by the aide. John gave a summary of the residence-based taxation proposal that we support. Lucy encouraged all of us to become delegates in our own fashion by writing and phoning our representative's offices and establishing good connections with their aides and visiting them when in Washington. It was a well-attended meeting, but not a packed house. A group of us stayed on for dinner, so I didn't get home until very late.
Tuesday was our monthly board meeting.
This evening is the second tax meeting, called tax seminar 202. This meeting is going to be packed. I printed out 70 attendee stickers! John will be heading this meeting and, from what I understand, will be covering FATCA as well as tax issues.

This is my exercise on perspective
using primary (red) + binary (green)

 Over the weekend, I attended another "color workshop" at La Charpente. It didn't seem as well organized as the first one. I was rather lost in the instructions and had to start over a few of the exercises, and I was not the only one who was so confused. But I think I do understand how to work with colors better and create harmony rather than clashes.

Aude did a more complete job, orange and blue

It's tiring to do all those strips, mixing the colors, from saturated to grayed, to adding white, or later, black. My back is still killing me.
I haven't done any work on the negatives this week, but I have shared the black and white photos from the late 60s with the interested parties. Ken (Living the Life in Saint-Aignan) came out with a delightful nostalgia piece, using the photos. And via the web, I found the son of friends from those days and phoned his office and left a message asking his parents to get in touch and they did that yesterday. I'm kind of looking forward to renewing contact with them after so many years. They were really good friends and I'm not quite sure how we just dropped from each other's radar.
Now, off to that AARO tax meeting... and painting, tomorrow.

Bum shoulder

Still snowing as I finish up this post

Here we are, mid-March, and it's snowing again. Before the snow, we had freezing rain, so it's very slippery out. I think I'll not go to the library today. I have to return the video projector to the AARO office and I think that can wait until tomorrow, too. Tomorrow, I want to spend some time with Gwen and Sacha. So, I hope the weather cooperates. 

What really astounds me is that OAW was a full month ago! Before that week started, I had a couple of very nice, even snowy, days in Swarthmore. J and E live very near the college campus in a beautiful, comfortable house with their two Basenji dogs, who entertained me thoroughly. We went to see "Silver Linings Playbook" and it was strange to recognize the local places. Well, I didn't recognize them, except that I knew it had been filmed nearby, but J & E certainly recognized the high school, the diner, etc. That was followed by a light supper with K & J. K is another discovered Girls High mate! I can't say enough how wonderful it has been, these past few years, to discover these wonderful women I never knew before. What is great about having never known them in the past, or having no memory of ever knowing them, is that I have no pre-conceived ideas of what kind of people they are -- none of that "we weren't in the same crowd" attitude. The ones I do remember are also wonderful; I'm very pleased to meet so many more.  Speaking of light supper, that was a fantastic homemade minestrone, a complete meal, hot and filling, followed by a thick, homemade pumpkin pie. Whoever complains about how badly Americans eat (French friends do that), they just don't get fed in homes! They certainly don't get fed by J!

Leaving them for Washington, in spite of the snow, I managed to catch my train to D.C. It was so cold, some fo the train's doors were frozen shut and some refused to close once they opened, so we were a few minutes late getting in. Connecting to the D.C. metro, though, is easy and I called T & B, who met me at the Hyatt, which is just at the exit of the Bethesda station. Good thing, too, because it was very, very cold and I didn't have to wait outside. We had a good lunch, there. Of course, we ended up with doggy bags because the servings were too big. On Sunday, we went to a local art show and then they dropped me off at the house my OAW mates and I had rented via airbnb. Ben, the host, was there waiting for me and showed me around. It's right across the street from a supermarket, but we didn't need to get any food. M, one of my housemates, arrived with a ton of food from Costco that she'd bought in anticipation of our kickoff get-together that evening at G's appartment. We had too much food, way too much. We left some of the leftovers with G and brought the rest home with us. Even after we had a mid-week get-together at our place, we still had leftovers, which I hope our hosts managed to finish off. J and I each had our own rooms and M had the sofabed and we did not get in each other's way getting up, using the bathrooms, etc. We had a nice dining table to do our evening prep work and just chat around. It was a short, direct walk to the metro station (Potomac Ave.) and only two stops to Capitol South. We were definitely the closest to our daily destination. I would certainly try to get this house again for the next OAW!

The jigsaw puzzle

All things come to an end and I left DC on Friday to go to Boston to see E & M. E is a true Girls High friend, one that I've never lost touch with, one I love and we can just pick up our conversation. At last I got to relax. It was relaxing at J & E's, but I was jet-lagged. It was relaxing at T & B's, but I was excited and a bit anxious about the week to come. At E & M's, the week was over; jetlag was over; I could relax. Besides, it was going to snow, so we didn't go out. We talked, and talked, and talked and started a jigsaw puzzle, and listened to "Car Talk" and "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me". I have now programmed my nice internet radio to NPR podcasts, and to a several stations in the US and the UK, too. 

E & M digging out to take me to the airport!

Since just before Christmas, my shoulder has been hurting. I started out taking something for the pain and inflammation, but there was no change in the pain, so I didn't keep it up. In addition to the shoulder, the biceps hurts constantly, as if I were By the end of January, my right arm could hardly move, but our trip to England, followed by my trip to the States was coming up, so I went to see an osteopath here n Nogent and he worked more than an hour on my locked joints and got my arm to move. He sent me home with a recommendation to put ice on my shoulder and warned me it might hurt a bit more for a few days. We went off to England and my shoulder hurt more and then settled to its regular pain. In the couple of days home, before leaving for the States, I decided not to go back to the osteopath so soon, because I really couldn't bear having it hurt more again when I needed to wear a backpack and pull a suitcase. I had a very good massage at the airport in Boston on my way home; I could feel the knots undoing. And on arriving home, I went straight to the osteopath, who did his thing and remarked that it was easier to manipulate the joints. It was not more painful in the following days and I managed to lift my arm and use it. The next week was even a bit better. I still needed to make an appointment with the doctor because this is not the first time I've had this and I need to have the underlying cause of it taken care of. With the school vacation, though, I can't get through to her. This past week, I've regressed to where I was two months ago and I realize how time flies. I guess, too, that I'm trying to compensate for awkwardness and straining my back in the process. Tomorrow -- return to the osteopath.

Sorry to complain. But that's why I haven't felt like writing much.  I have managed to get back to scanning the negatives and I came across more than 200 black and white negatives of Paul's that go back to before we met. I scanned those yesterday and am trying to figure out some order to them. I'll put a few up on Picasa to share with D.L., P & J, and K. B. -- some pictures of the Pierwige from 1967-69! Only a few more days to go with the negatives and I'll be all caught up on what I have. But still can't find the ones that got me started on this -- from the trip out West in '93. I found the first part of the trip -- Jon and Tobi's new house, Claire holding the baby, Eric, Louis' birthday party at Terry and Roger's, some beautiful black and white shots of Roger's furniture...and scattered photos from the West.

A Visit to the Philadelphia Election Board

You may remember that I had some issues, as they say, with voting back in the fall (http://ellenlebelle.blogspot.com/2012/11/lots-and-lots-of-little-things.html). Since I was privileged to be going to Overseas Americans Week for AARO, I managed to start my trip in Philadelphia and had an appointment with the supervisor and legal counsel of the Philadelphia Board of Elections on Friday, Feb. 8.
The legal counsel remembered me; he's the one who had given all the answers in the former supervisor's replies to my emails.
I did not want this to be a meeting of a litany of complaints on my part; I wanted to hear what the election board had to say that might improve things all around. They were not able to tell me what percentage of registered voters were overseas voters, but they said it was a very low number, probably not even 1%. On the Overseas Vote Foundation's site, and I believe on the other online sites, when you fill out the form for your registration/ballot request, you are asked if it is for all the elections in the year or just one. I always check the box for all the elections. Also, I follow the recommendation of making my request every year, even if no federal election is scheduled, because you never know when there might be a special election (Massachusetts voters will be electing a new senator in June this year). You are supposed to be able to do it this way -- every year, for every federal election according to the UMOVA rules (And Pennsylvania has enacted UMOVA). Well, the election board doesn't like that. They prefer to receive the registration/ballot requests before each election (primary and again for the general election) no earlier than 7 to 8 weeks before the election. Anyway, that might explain why I got the primary ballot in time but had to phone in the fall to get the general election ballot.
The next problem we addressed was the addressing of the ballot I finally got. Here, I have to take OVF to task, and I bet the other sites are similar. When you are asked for your home (foreign address), it prints up on the form in US format, with the postal code after the city name. Perhaps their programmers could reprogram it so that you put in your country name first and the form would then conform to the format for entering information would correspond correctly and would print correctly. This is what many commercial business sites now do. A quick solution we came up with at the meeting was to attach self-addressed labels (with its adhesive backing intact, of course) for the board to use on its envelope when sending out the ballots. They assured me that stapling these to the form would not invalidate the form. This would put the burden of getting the address correct on the voter, who should know how to write his address.
We also talked about the fact that the Pennsylvania website for tacking your registration and/or ballot status reported incorrectly that I was not registered. It also reproted that Anne was not registered , and she didn't bother to send in the Federal Absentee Ballot based on that misinformation. It turns out that we overseas voters are not the only ones unhappy with that site. Every county in Pennsyvania has complaints about it and it doesn't matter if it's a Republican or Democrat-run county. Not only that, but it seems that many states have faulty tracking. Since tracking is mandatory for the states, they should work on improving it!
These issues also came up in discussions on the Hill during OAW, so I'm very glad I had this input. I want to thank the people I met with in Philadelphia for the meeting.

OAW (Overseas Americans Week)

It was an exciting week, especially for a newbie, like me. Our week started on Sunday evening with a get-together to make sure all the meetings were covered, that there were no conflicting appointments, and that, when possible, someone from each organization (AARO, ACA, and FAWCO) was in on each meeting. It was also the first occasion for some of us to put faces on the people we'd been emailing. To start, Julie, who was our scheduler for this week, did a wonderful job and continued to do so throughout the week as the calendar of appointments needed tweaking.
My main job, as a newbie, was to attend as many meetings as I could and to quietly take notes. I did pipe up occasionally, but it is better in a meeting with one staffer and 3 or 4 of us for only one of us to be presenting our issues. I am still not finished with my notes for the last day, but I did want to write my impressions this morning.
First, we have many topics of interest. This year, we agreed to try to limit ourselves to presenting only taxation, banking and voting issues. FATCA, which is now an acronym well-known to Americans living overseas, is the link between taxation and banking, thus bundling taxation, banking and FATCA into a single major sore point. (If you don't know, FATCA, stands for Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act and just click on the link if you really want the details.)
ACA has written a proposal for residence-based-taxation and AARO and FAWCO support this proposal, so that was the main issue at most meetings. Everyone in Washington is talking about tax reform and the president mentioned it, himself, in the State of the Union speech on Tuesday. It's on everyone's mind, but reform will not even begin to be discussed until after the whole business of "the sequester" is over. What residence-based-taxation means is that we Americans who live and work outside the United States would be taxed in the same way as non-resident aliens. Income earned on assets in the US and income earned in the US would be subject to a withholding tax, between 15% and 30%, depending on tax treaties with countries. So, the US would get that tax revenue and the resident abroad would be able to take tax credits in his or her home country. It would be so simple. There are points to deal with how to define a resident overseas (not  military or State Department employee who has US-sourced income, nor residents of determined tax havens, nor short-term stints abroad (study programs, sabbaticals, etc.). Accounts in the home country would not be subject to FATCA regulations and there would be no more problems of non-reciprocity of retirement accounts. Accounts in countries where one may have left accounts whilst moving around would still be considered foreign accounts. And there were questions about the treatment of accounts in home countries of US-resident aliens, but it seems that, as now, for residents in the US, alien or citizen, all accounts elsewhere would be foreign. (Victoria Ferauge has just written a piece on the FATCA meeting at OECD this week in Paris. There may be hope.)
FATCA is half of the banking problem. Foreign banks will have to comply with I.R.S. regulations to report on the accounts of US tax-persons (citizens, green-card holders). If there is an inter-governmental agreement, the reporting will be done through the governments and if not, the banks will report directly to the I.R.S. This opens up a Pandora's box of problems: reporting complications for the US-tax persons, reporting costs for the banks, information security concerns.... The easy solution for banks is to simply get rid of US-tax persons' accounts, especially investment accounts. The result is that we are being shut out of accounts and business partnerships and jobs that involve signatory authority. It affects personal lives and business. It affects business development for US companies trying to export abroad. If residence-based-taxation were to become the norm, as it is in every other country (except Eritrea, North Korea, and the Philippines), FATCA would no longer apply to our local accounts because we would no longer be US-tax persons.
The other half of the banking problem is in the Patriot Act, which requires banks and brokerages to "know your customer". They seem to interpret to mean the customer must live in the US. Therefore they are shutting out their customers who now live abroad and they haven't allowed such customers to open accounts for years. Some are closing US-held retirement accounts arbitrarily, subjecting the customer to early-withdrawal penalties and taxes. There is a letter from the State Department and another from the treasury saying that this is a misinterpretation and we can have accounts in the US, but the banks are still making the commercial decision against us. So, if you can't have an account in your home country and you can't maintain an account in the US, you are in a real bind. Of course, the FATCA regulations may yet apply to US banks if there is reciprocity between countries.
The proposal was very well-received in both chambers by both parties and by the heads of the key committees. It's a good start.
What else?

Carolyn Maloney and Representative Honda have co-sponsored HR597, a bill to establish a commission how Federal laws and policies affect Unites States citizens living in foreign countries. We are encouraging all to write their representatives to support this bill, especially if the representative is on one of these committees: House Education and the Workforce; House Energy and Commerce; House Financial Services; House House Administration; House Oversight and Government Reform; House Judiciary; House Ways and Means. In our meetings at the Senate side, we asked the staffers to consider advising their Senators to introduce a sister bill. Again, in both houses, on both sides of the aisle, this bill was well-received.
AARO presented Ms. Maloney the plaque for the award we gave her last summer. At the time, we gave her a certificate, in Paris. We then had a good, long, discussion with her, talking about the pleasant reception her bill seems to be getting, the need for more sponsors, the work of the Americans Abroad Caucus, and our objectives for OAW. I don't have a picture of that; I was hoping to have received the others' photos. 
We also reported that overseas voting was improving. Unfortunately, many voters did not receive their ballots in time, again, and we expressed concern that this kind of problem could get worse if the postal service does away with Saturday pick-up, sorting, and delivery as scheduled. The Election Assistance Commission may not survive cutbacks and there is no indication of what might take its place or how its work could be taken over by other entities.
There was a meeting at the State Department to discuss citizenship issues. There are what they call efficiency bills, slight modifications to existing legislation, to allow single US-citizen mothers to be able to transmit citizenship more easily, but no change is in the works for single fathers. The whole issue of how unwed parents transmit will not be overturned as it would negate the citizenship of all those who had acquired citizenship under it.
We each had 6, 7, 8 meetings a day for four days. There were some left-over meetings to go to on Friday that I was unable to attend for a grand total of 82 meetings. I was very glad to be part of it and hope to be able to go next time, not as a newbie, but as someone ready to present our interests. It would be nice, some day, to be able to say there are no issues. Wishful thinking.