Tag: joe biden

So Much For Billionaires: Joe Biden’s IRS Is Now Coming For Waiters’ And Waitresses’ Tips

The Biden administration’s lip service about new IRS enforcement only being targeted toward the country’s wealthiest appears to be just that: lip service.

Instead, while we have been distracted with rhetoric about billionaires paying their fair share, the Biden Administration’s IRS is actually looking to stock its coffers with the tips of waiters and waitresses across the country. This newly planned targeting of middle-class Americans was proposed this week.

Earlier this week the IRS proposed a new procedure to “improve tip reporting compliance”, as they so brilliantly put it. Fox News reported:

As part of the program, which wouldn’t go into effect until after a multi-month public comment period, the IRS could withdraw liability protection related to “rules that define tips as part of an employee’s pay” from employers that don’t cooperate.

The program can’t go into effect until it makes it through a multi-month comment period, Fox News reported.

Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., the chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Tax, told Fox this week: “Washington has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. Now, the IRS is going after middle-income families and working moms and dads who are just trying to make ends meet and put food on the table.” 

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7 Biden Admin Officials Were in Office Unlawfully, Government Watchdog Finds

Seven different officials in President Joe Biden’s administration are in office illegally due to time limits, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

On Wednesday, the GAO found that seven presidential appointees serving in “acting” positions in their respective offices have run out of time on how long they can serve without a full Senate confirmation. GAO has issued five separate reports on the issue.

There are numerous positions within the executive branch that the president must appoint, and the U.S. Senate must confirm. These roles are referred to as PAS positions. Oftentimes, presidents will select individuals to temporarily fill these PAS positions while seeking Senate confirmations to fill out the roles on a more long-term basis.

The Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998 regulates when and how a president can choose “acting” officers to temporarily fill these PAS positions. The law generally stipulates that appointees may only serve in an acting position for about 210 days, starting from the date the vacancy occurs.

The law states that if the Senate rejects a first nomination to permanently fill a PAS position or if the president withdraws the nomination, an “acting” officer may fill the position for up to 210 more days.

The president may submit a second nominee to the Senate, and if the nomination is rejected, an acting officer may fill the position for another 210 days. Outside of these time limits, if no individual is confirmed, the PAS position must remain vacant, and only the head of the agency may perform the functions or duties of the position.

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Distract, Divide and Conquer: The Painful Truth About the State of Our Union

Step away from the blinders that partisan politics uses to distract, divide and conquer, and you will find that we are drowning in a cesspool of problems that individually and collectively threaten our lives, liberties, prosperity and happiness.

These are not problems the politicians want to talk about, let alone address, yet we cannot afford to ignore them much longer.

Foreign interests are buying up our farmland and holding our national debt. As of 2021, foreign persons and entities owned 40.8 million acres of U.S. agricultural land, 47% of which was forestland, 29% in cropland, and 22% in pastureland. Foreign land holdings have increased by an average of 2.2 million acres per year since 2015. Foreign countries also own $7.4 trillion worth of U.S. national debt, with Japan and China ranked as our two largest foreign holders of our debt.

Corporate and governmental censorship have created digital dictators. While the “Twitter files” revealed the lengths to which the FBI has gone to monitor and censor social media content, the government has been colluding with the tech sector for some time now in order to silence its critics and target “dangerous” speech in the name of fighting so-called disinformation. The threat of being labelled “disinformation” is being used to undermine anyone who asks questions, challenges the status quo, and engages in critical thinking.

Middle- and lower-income Americans are barely keeping up. Rising costs of housing, food, gas and other necessities are presenting nearly insurmountable hurdles towards financial independence for the majority of households who are scrambling to make ends meet. Meanwhile, mounting layoffs in the tens of thousands are adding to the fiscal pain.

The government is attempting to weaponize mental health care. Increasingly, in communities across the nation, police are being empowered to forcibly detain individuals they believe might be mentally ill, even if they pose no danger to others. While these programs are ostensibly aimed at getting the homeless off the streets, when combined with the government’s ongoing efforts to predict who might pose a threat to public safety based on mental health sensor data (tracked by wearable data and monitored by government agencies such as HARPA), the specter of mental health round-ups begins to sound less far-fetched.

The military’s global occupation is spreading our resources thin and endangering us at home. America’s war spending and commitment to policing the rest of the world are bankrupting the nation and spreading our troops dangerously thin. In 2022 alone, the U.S. approved more than $50 billion in aid for Ukraine, half of which went towards military spending, with more on the way. The U.S. also maintains some 750 military bases in 80 countries around the world.

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Saudi Arabia’s ‘middle finger to Biden’: Kingdom increases US citizen’s sentence by three YEARS to 19 after White House condemned punishment over Khashoggi tweets

The son of a US citizen jailed in Saudi Arabia has slammed the Biden administration’s attempts to free his father after his prison sentence was lengthened by an extra three years.  

Saad Almadi has seen his time behind bars extended from 16 years to 19 years after he was imprisoned for a series of tweets criticizing the Saudi government. 

The political prisoner’s son Ibrahim slammed the handling of his father’s case after the US State Department told him his father would spend even longer in prison.

He told The Post: ‘It’s not a slap in the face, it’s a middle finger.

‘When the US asked for an appeal, they said: “Here you go, 19 years!”

Ibrahim noted that his father has lost ‘more than 80 pounds’ behind bars, after an arrest which was triggered when he targeted the Saudi regime in a series of tweets. 

The social media posts that led to his arrest included condemnations over Saudi government’s inability to protect its borders from rockets fired by Houthi rebels in Yemen, a group allied with Iran. 

He also posted support for naming a street after murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post reporter whose death was allegedly orchestrated by the Saudi government. 

Almadi, a 72-year-old retired project manager who was living in Florida, was arrested in November 2021 while visiting family in Saudi Arabia after he published the tweets.

The White House has made several remarks hitting out at Almadi’s treatment, however President Biden has not directly commented on it and has been accused of taking a soft stance with the Saudi regime.

Ibrahim pointed to the recent release of WNBA star Brittney Griner as he criticized the Biden administration’s failed efforts to free his father. 

He particularly hit out at the State Department’s refusal to officially label his father as being ‘wrongfully detained’, a move that would increase pressure on the Saudi government to release him from prison.  

‘The only way for my father to get out is through ‘wrongful detention’, he said. ‘That’s how Brittney Griner got out …. that’s what works with dictators.’

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Nord Stream Sabotage Was CIA, US Navy Covert Op: Seymour Hersh Bombshell Prompts White House Response

Famed journalist and Pulitzer prize winner Seymour Hersh, who for decades was a star reporter writing for The New York Times and New Yorker, on Wednesday published a new bombshell as his first Substack post, prompting a quick White House response

After conducting his own investigation into who sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines via a series of underwater blasts on Sept. 26, Hersh has concluded the United States blew up the Russia-to-Germany natural gas pipeline as part of a covert operation under the guise of the BALTOPS 22 NATO exercise.

Hersh, relying on unnamed national security sources, describes months of discussions and back-and-forth involving the Biden White House, CIA, and Pentagon. The report says planning was in the works all the way back to December 2021, with a special task force formed under the aegis of US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

“The Navy proposed using a newly commissioned submarine to assault the pipeline directly. The Air Force discussed dropping bombs with delayed fuses that could be set off remotely. The CIA argued that whatever was done, it would have to be covert. Everyone involved understood the stakes,” the report, entitled How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline reads.

“The Biden Administration was doing everything possible to avoid leaks as the planning took place late in 2021 and into the first months of 2022,” it continues.

As momentum gained to proceed with a covert sabotage attack, “Over the next few weeks, members of the CIA’s working group began to craft a plan for a covert operation that would use deep-sea divers to trigger an explosion along the pipeline,” Hersh writes.

But there was significant push back within the intelligence community, but any reservations were overcome in the lead-up and aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. According to the investigative report: 

Throughout “all of this scheming,” the source said, “some working guys in the CIA and the State Department were saying, ‘Don’t do this. It’s stupid and will be a political nightmare if it comes out.’”

Nevertheless, in early 2022, the CIA working group reported back to Sullivan’s interagency group: “We have a way to blow up the pipelines.”

What came next was stunning. On February 7, less than three weeks before the seemingly inevitable Russian invasion of Ukraine, Biden met in his White House office with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who, after some wobbling, was now firmly on the American team. At the press briefing that followed, Biden defiantly said, “If Russia invades . . . there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

Twenty days earlier, Undersecretary Nuland had delivered essentially the same message at a State Department briefing, with little press coverage. “I want to be very clear to you today,” she said in response to a question. “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”

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Construction to Start Soon on Controversial U.S. Lithium Mine “critical to Joe Biden’s $2 trillion clean energy plan”

Construction will reportedly soon begin on a mine that’s expected to become the United States’ largest source of lithium. This mine is viewed as critical to Joe Biden’s $2 trillion clean energy plan by powering the nation’s increased production of electric vehicles.

On Monday, a US district judge denied the majority of legal challenges raised by environmentalists, ranchers, and indigenous tribes, upholding that the federal government’s decision to approve the Thacker Pass mine in 2020 was largely not made in error. However, chief judge Miranda Du did agree with one of the protesters’ claims, ordering the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to complete a fresh review to determine if Lithium Americas Corp has the right to deposit waste rock on 1,300 acres of public land that the mining project wants to use as a waste site.

Because this waste site may not contain valuable minerals, there’s a possibility that this land may not be validly claimed as a waste site under current US mining laws, Du wrote in the order. A mining law from 1872 requires that mining projects must validate all claims to public lands before gaining federal approval, and that means Lithium Americas must now provide evidence that valuable minerals have been found on the proposed Thacker Pass waste site to resume the project.

Although this review may set back the project’s major construction timeline by as much as six months, that doesn’t seem to be a big concern for Lithium Americas. Reuters reported that the company met with BLM today to begin the review. The company’s chief executive, Jon Evans, told Reuters that because lithium has previously been found throughout the project area, Lithium Americas considers Du’s order to conduct a review an “easy fix.”

Calling it a win for the mining project, Evans confirmed that preparations for the mine site would promptly begin, projecting that heavy construction would be underway by this summer.

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Fencing Reinstalled Around Capitol Building Ahead of State of the Union Address

For the third year in a row, the U.S. Capitol Police constructed a metal fence around the Capitol building ahead of President Biden’s State of the Union address.

The fence was initially installed in the aftermath of the January 6 Capitol protests and remained in place for months afterwards. It was eventually removed in July of 2021, though the barrier has been reinstalled on multiple occasions. This includes a rally in support of January 6 prisoners, a planned trucker protest and previous State of the Union addresses.

The latest construction was ordered by the U.S. Capitol Police Board, a group of congressional security officials who oversee the Capitol grounds, but whose meetings and reports are not made publicly available, CBS News reported.  “National Special Security Events require a robust security plan, so out of an abundance of caution, the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Capitol Police temporarily put up a fence around the U.S. Capitol Building,” said the U.S. Capitol Police in a statement.

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Most Important First Amendment Case You’ve Never Heard Of: Biden Regime Tries to Toss a Young Man in Jail for 10 Years for Anti-Hillary Memes

Douglass Mackey is alleged to be one of the many anonymous Twitter users who made the 2016 election so different, so memorable, and so important.

Like other anonymous internet memesmiths (anons), Mackey had no external reason that anyone should care what he said. He held no office. He had no byline at an elite publication. He had no vast pool of wealth that conferred legitimacy, deserved or undeserved, on what he had to say.

Mackey’s notability, like that of Bronze Age Pervert or Libs of TikTok, came exclusively from what he had to say, and that people found it funny and compelling. Over the summer and fall of 2016, Mackey allegedly went by the nom-de-tweet Ricky Vaughn (after Charlie Sheen’s character in Major League) and collected tens of thousands of followers who found him funny and compelling. Mackey was not single-handedly responsible for getting Donald Trump elected. But the work he allegedly did along with dozens of others is what made Trump’s victory possible. An MIT analysis estimated that Ricky Vaughn was a bigger influence on the 2016 election than NBC News.

But for the regime, the specter of anonymous individuals making the system tremble was too much. And so, for more than two years, the regime has been battling to send Mackey to prison.

You might not know much about Mackey’s case. It’s far less notorious than the January 6 prosecutions, or the murder trial of Kyle Rittenhouse. But in terms of how much the speech matters for American liberty, it is as important as either of those — perhaps more so. 

In January 2021, shortly after the January 6 incident inaugurated a national anti-MAGA crackdown, the Department of Justice charged Mackey with “conspiring … to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote.”

Mackey’s offense? Illegal memes.

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Walls Work? Biden Mocked As Capitol Police Reinstall Metal Fencing For His SOTU Speech

Capitol Police have reinstalled metal fencing around the U.S. Capitol this week ahead of President Biden’s upcoming State of the Union Address on Tuesday.

CBS News is reporting that the Capitol fencing, originally installed following the January 6 riot and frequently utilized for defense ever since, is being reinstalled in conjunction with the SOTU address.

They describe it as “controversial.”

“For the third year in a row, an eight-foot, black metal fence will surround the U.S. Capitol complex during an address to Congress by President Joe Biden,” they write.

“The fencing, which is plastered with signs reading ‘Area closed by order of the United States Capitol Police Board,’ has become an increasingly common and controversial security measure” since the Capitol riot.

The fencing is expected to remain in place until at least Wednesday.

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Biden Admin Hands Out Nonsensical ‘Black Resistance’ Flyers To BORDER PATROL Agents

Border Patrol agents reacted with anger after the Biden Administration distributed random flyers titled ‘Black resistance’ and held ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ events while the southern border remains wide open.

The Washington Free Beacon reports that the flyers were disseminated among the Customs and Border Protection Agency, featuring a word cloud of names and phrases including #BlackPower, #BlackLivesMatter, George Floyd, Maxine Waters, and Colin Kaepernick.

The poster also contains generic terms like ‘Jazz’ and ‘Hip Hop’.

The reason given for the flyers is ‘Black History Month’.

One border patrol agent told the Beacon “BLM hates us, so does Maxine Waters,” adding “Kaepernick hates us. They’re anti-police advocates against the nation’s largest police agency.”

‘Black Resistance’ events have also been observed by the CBP.

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