Know Your Customer

Know Your Customer Endangered Liberties Commentary By J. Bradley Jansen February 9, 2001 President Bush should end the global anti-privacy, high tax campaign of the Clinton Administration. He should act immediately to protect privacy, trade, economic growth and sovereignty by quickly and unequivocally announcing a reversal of the Clinton Administration’s pursuit of Know Your Customer through the OECD’s Financial Action Task Force. The Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development is an organization of unelected bureaucrats who are not directly accountable to the people of the countries that they purport to represent. The OECD, with the support of the Clinton Administration, launched a campaign against what it called “harmful tax competition.” The OECD considers low taxes to be “harmful.” Any country having lower taxes and more efficient government spending is considered a threat to the high tax welfare states. Unfortunately, Treasury bureaucrats are claiming that the US position hasn’t changed with the election of a president who campaigned for lower taxes. President Bush needs to clarify the new Treasury position before more damage is done. Know Your Customer proponents see the internet and new technological developments which have added so much productivity to the economy as threats. Having failed to stop the use of drugs by effectively deputizing bank tellers as law enforcement agents, Know Your Customer proponents are trying to bully other countries into being tax collectors and law enforcement agents for us and are trying to regulate the Internet and our emails to pursue their agenda of higher taxes and less privacy. Concerned citizens need to make sure their Congressmen and Senators oppose the global Know Your Customer bill. We also need to remind President Bush that we elected him to cut our taxes—not pursue an agenda that considers low taxes “harmful.”