Tag: taxes

So the FBI Did Another Big Raid You Might Have Missed…

Did you hear the one about the FBI investigation in the Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners that caught one of them with his hand in the cookie jar of his own nonprofit?

It’s no joke, but it’s one of those stories of Democrat corruption that somehow [cough, cough] got lost in the shuffle. Let’s bring a little sunshine to it, shall we?

Three years ago, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott appointed longtime social worker and behavioral-health entrepreneur Mujahid Muhammad to the city’s Board of School Commissioners. His primary organization, KEYS — Keep Encouraging Youth to Succeed — since 2009 purportedly was involved it counseling, youth recreation, senior services, workforce training, and “culinary therapy”—using grocery deliveries and cooking lessons with families needing mental-health support.

KEYS took a kind of unconventional approach I’d usually think was noteworthy for all the right reasons.

Purportedly.

Project Baltimore reported last week that it “has been digging into KEYS Empowers financials and found that in federal filings, KEYS reports paying out over $400,000 in salaries to zero employees.”

Then there’s this from the Baltimore Banner: “A nonprofit called KEYS Empowers Inc. that lists the same address as its headquarters and Muhammad as the executive director reported receiving more than $4.7 million in government funds for the 2023 and 2024 tax years, tax filings show. That money made up the entirety of KEYS Empowers revenue for those years.”

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Trump Administration Arrests Nearly 500 Criminal Fugitives Hiding in Taxpayer-Funded Housing Across America — Murder, Rape, Child Sex Crimes, Drug Trafficking — 10 Firearms Seized!

The Trump administration is cleaning house… literally!

Nearly 500 criminal fugitives living in taxpayer-subsidized housing have been arrested in a sweeping nationwide law enforcement operation targeting dangerous offenders who were allegedly using government-assisted housing as a refuge from justice.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), under Secretary Scott Turner, announced that 491 fugitives were arrested during “Operation Clean House,” a coordinated federal crackdown involving the HUD Office of Inspector General, the U.S. Marshals Service, and state and local law enforcement agencies.

The multi-month operation unfolded throughout 2026 across 12 cities, including New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Memphis, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Minneapolis, and New Orleans.

According to HUD’s official October 8 announcement, authorities targeted fugitives residing in federally assisted housing, including individuals wanted on outstanding felony warrants for some of the most serious crimes imaginable.

The offenses associated with those arrested included:

  • Rape and second-degree murder
  • Sex offenses against children
  • Drug trafficking
  • Illegal weapons offenses
  • Aggravated assault
  • Fraud
  • Possession or manufacture of an incendiary device

Authorities also seized 10 firearms during the operation.

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Chronically Absent Mary Peltola Drew Highest Salary in Alaska Legislature, Billed Taxpayers Hawaii Vacation

Democrat Mary Peltola was Alaska’s highest-paid state house representative yet missed 18.6 percent of votes in her five terms in office in the legislature, yet she found the time to bill taxpayers for a corporate retreat in Hawaii. In 2008, Peltola’s final year in office, she drew a taxpayer-funded salary of $77,884 while missing nearly one-fifth of votes.

Her time in office was marked by leading Alaska’s “tolerance commission” to implement woke DEI policies and also advocating for reintroducing a state income tax to “protect the rich,” according to one news outlet. The “tolerance commission” recommended banning state employees from asking the immigration status of people seeking taxpayer-funded services, providing health care for sex offenders, and diversity training for state employees and law enforcement.

Peltola established a pattern of running for office and missing large stretches of votes before cashing out and lobbying her former colleagues in her home state and in Washington.

The Hawaii conference was reported by the Anchorage Daily News. In 2006, the outlet revealed, “lawmakers billed the state for more than just plane tickets. Some get per diems, meals, and hotel rooms,” which included $1,525.06 to Peltola.

In 2011, she was elected to the Bethel City Council in western Alaska. Peltola missed more than a third of the city’s official meetings during her time in office. She subsequently became a lobbyist for the city, where she raked in at least $144,999.66 from 2015 to 2017, records from the Alaska Office of Public Commission showed.

Peltola was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2022 and again missed stretches of votes while not seeing any legislation signed into law. Her tenure was marked by one of the highest staff turnover rates in Congress.

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The $64 Million Harrisburg Question

A few weeks before Gov. Josh Shapiro arrived in Harrisburg to make a splashy announcement of $64 million toward a revitalization plan for the capital city, local officials faced a far less photogenic task: finding $2.3 million to return to the state. The city had failed to finish a playground project at Reservoir Park before its grant deadline expired, despite multiple extensions. Indeed, in Pennsylvania’s capital, even free money apparently requires more administrative competence than we can reliably supply.

That’s why the mood in Harrisburg is flickering somewhere between cautiously optimistic and carefully pessimistic after Shapiro’s September 28 announcement of $64 million in public and private investment — including $22.7 million of state money —under the banner“Harrisburg Works for All of Us.” Given the city’s current moribund state, that slogan almost feels ironic — it barely works. It’s too bad the plan’s long-term success relies heavily on the two parties least equipped to deliver it: a corrupt, incompetent mayor in Wanda Williams and a do-nothing City Hall often at war with her.

First, the good news. On paper, there is plenty to like: a new downtown hotel, improvements to the criminally underutilized Susquehanna Riverfront, and funding to develop a master plan to revitalize City Island. There’s also vague talk of improving public safety technology and parking woes. But for nearly every nice bullet point in Shapiro’s Harrisburg agenda, there’s a caveat or an incomplete grade.

What no one will say is that this plan is a compensation package for the partial withdrawal of the state government. This is a company town, and that company is the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It’s by far the biggest landlord here, and it pays no property taxes. Harrisburg became a ghost town during Covid, and six years later, it still hasn’t fully returned to its pre-2020 self. Why? Despite a return-to-office mandate, many Commonwealth employees have stayed fully remote or work hybrid, and the old five-day lunch crowd is a thing of the past. Shapiro’s Space Optimization & Utilization Project (SOUP), released in 2025, reflects this new reality; it shrank the government’s office footprint in Harrisburg and beyond to cut costs. In the end, there was no reason to keep up the facade of big office spaces with fewer people.

The savings make sense on the state’s balance sheet. But what’s good for Pennsylvania taxpayers is bad for Harrisburg on the ground, and the scarcity of state workers has helped fuel the doom-loop effect. Walk downtown on a Monday or Tuesday morning, and you’ll find nearly as many homeless people shuffling through the streets near the green-domed Capitol building as state workers. Over the last three years, restaurants, pharmacies, and other needed retail have closed, and a stretch of Second Street resembles a post-apocalyptic wasteland, with trash in the streets and people sleeping in doorways of abandoned buildings. When pasta joint Pastorante closed in mid-2025, the owner cited declining business, neighborhood bar fights, the odor of marijuana everywhere, and a shop window shattered by gunfire. They moved to nearby Steelton, which isn’t exactly fleeing to a crime-free paradise.

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New York made $7.6 million in improper Medicaid payments to incarcerated people, audit reveals

A federal audit found that New York made about $7.6 million in Medicaid managed care payments on behalf of people who were incarcerated in state prisons.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General uncovered the payments and revealed that the money went to 1,375 Medicaid enrollees who were incarcerated between January 2021 and December 2024.

The new report specified that the money was paid to managed care organizations, not directly to incarcerated people. The federal share was $6.1 million.

The Inspector General is recommending New York return that money to the federal government.

The audit found that New York did not always remove people from Medicaid managed care after they entered prison.

“We determined that the State agency did not always disenroll individuals from Medicaid managed care after receiving notification that an enrollee was incarcerated,” read the report.

In one example, an individual remained enrolled in managed care for 23 months while incarcerated and monthly payments were made on the person’s behalf.

Auditors said New York has systems designed to identify Medicaid recipients who entered prison, but those systems did not consistently match incarceration and Medicaid records.

The state told investigators that system limitations and overrides during the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to some of the payments.

Auditors also revealed that discrepancies in personal information, such as names and dates of birth, could prevent the state from matching records and making an incarcerated person ineligible for payments in the system. 

The Inspector General noted that its review focused on managed care payments and did not determine whether the individuals received inpatient medical treatment.

New York officials told auditors that the state’s Office of Medicaid Inspector General was reviewing the payments and would eventually recover any outstanding overpayments. 

The audit concluded that New York needed to improve its process for identifying incarcerated Medicaid recipients and halting managed care payments that should no longer continue.

The state told investigators that it planned to improve its process for cross-referencing New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) and Medicaid records.

“The State agency clarified that it would continue its systematic data-matching process to match DOCCS records with Medicaid enrollment data, but it is exploring development of an enhanced report to identify mismatches using lower-probability matching criteria and identifying individuals with minor demographic discrepancies through manual review,” read the report.

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Government spending $300k per year on unused limos for former PMs

Taxpayers spent $298,359 keeping the chauffeured cars on standby last year. They were used for just $10,921 worth of trips.

The government has been spending around $300,000 per year to provide Crown limousines to former prime ministers and their spouses – even though the service goes mostly unused. 

Former prime ministers and governors-general are entitled to lifetime 24/7 access to chauffeur-driven cars from the Crown fleet for any travel “related to his or her role as a former prime minister”. The perk is managed by the government’s VIP Transport Service, part of the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA).

The government spent a total of $340,646 providing this service in 2025, according to the DIA annual report. That’s despite the 15 eligible former prime ministers, governors-general and their spouses barely using the service. The entire cohort claimed just $10,921 towards land transport, which includes the use of chauffeur-driven cars charged out at an hourly rate.

Jenny Shipley was the largest individual claimant in 2025 with $3,877, followed by Helen Clark with $2,567. By contrast, many former prime ministers do not use the service at all. John Key has claimed just $56 in the last two years, while Jacinda Ardern has not claimed anything since she has been out of the country during that time.

The difference between the relatively small amount of actual use and the high total cost of the service is categorised entirely as an “availability fee”. In 2025 this fee was $298,359, up from $265,919 in 2024. DIA documents state that the availability fee is “designed to ensure that a fit-for-purpose on-call service is available to entitled customers”.

Briget Ridden, DIA’s general manager of ministerial services, said the annual fee “covers all other costs associated with providing the service. This includes fixed costs such as depreciation, capital charges, allocated overheads, and vehicle costs. It also covers other costs incurred to make the 24/7 chauffeur drive service available to users such as administration, transport coordination, an online booking portal, staffing, property and overheads.”

Technically, DIA considers the service to be “user-funded” because there is no direct Crown appropriation to run the vehicle fleet. However, former prime ministers don’t pay anything out of their own pocket. The cost of using the service and the cost of running the service are both ultimately paid by the taxpayer.

On top of access to chauffeur-driven cars, former prime ministers are also entitled to free transport on any plane, train, ferry, bus or taxi for travel “related to his or her role as a former prime minister”. They also have the option of using other luxury taxis and driver services that have similarly high charge-out rates but don’t require the taxpayer to fund the back-end services. 

Outside of the chauffeur-driven cars, airfares are the most significant travel perks claimed by former prime ministers, at a combined cost of $32,147 in 2025. Again, Jenny Shipley was the largest claimant with $9,296. 

Other benefits available to former prime ministers include lifelong use of a government-owned car with all fuel and maintenance costs covered, and an annual annuity of up to $64,000 per year ($12,800 for each year they served as prime minister). 

In December 2025, the government announced a $5.7m purchase of 10 BMW i7 xDrive60 luxury sedans, which retail for about $300,000 each, as well as 19 smaller, more economical vehicles.

Crown fleet vehicles are also available to all current ministers, the leader of the opposition, senior judges and diplomatic guests. These other users are funded through different departments and agencies.

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“Full-On Truman Show”: Former State Dept. Official Exposes USAID’s Censorship Machine In Brazil

Former State Department official Mike Benz laid out USAID’s sweeping involvement in Brazil’s political and institutional landscape, detailing a network of American funding that reached media organizations, universities, activist groups and organizations involved with the country’s election system.

Benz, who serves as executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, broke down the extent of USAID’s footprint during an appearance on “The Benny Show” with host Benny Johnson.

“What’s happening in Brazil was a full-on Truman show. You had the media funded by USAID. You had the universities funded by USAID. You had the staffers of the Supreme Court and the TSE (Superior Electoral Court), the election court, USAID. You had all the constitutional law advocates funded by USAID. You had the LGBT activists funded by USAID,” Benz explained.

“It’s full spectrum. If you were to walk down a city block in Sao Paulo or, I don’t know, Brasilia, you would have a 360 vision of institutions funded and puppeteered by USAID without ever knowing it,” the former State Department official added. “In fact, USAID, knowing what they were doing, and I need to be careful about what I can and can’t say here, let’s just say, would anyone be surprised, for example, if USAID was going around and telling its grantees in Brazil to remove the USAID logo so that it doesn’t get out that grantee’s connection to USAID?”

Benz said USAID’s influence could continue even after its funding disappeared because institutional and legal changes remained in place.

“They knew what they were doing. They knew how sensitive it was. Would you be surprised, for example, if USAID, which basically set up the censorship state in Brazil, and this is actually something, let me quickly pivot to say, it is true that this is the first Brazilian election since the 2020 municipal elections in Brazil that does not have USAID money slushing around Lula and his allies, but is still an election that is in many ways under the thumb of the ghost of USAID,” he said. “There is something I call kind of the clockmaker’s dilemma, which is USAID, even when you remove it, the institutional and legal changes that a country goes through can live on even if you cut USAID funding down to zero.”

Benz then zeroed in on two of Brazil’s most powerful institutions, the Supreme Federal Court (STF) and Superior Electoral Court (TSE): “For example, in Brazil, you have this apparatus through the STF and TSE, the Supreme Court and the basically election court that determines all things around elections, and basically after Bolsonaro won in 2018, the TSE court with Alexandre de Moraes, the famous Voldemort judge, they declared disinformation a threat to free and fair elections, not just disinformation during an election season, but disinformation any time, misinformation, disinformation any time about anything because it could pollute people’s, I don’t know, sense of what’s true or false in the information ecosystem, and so it could have an impact on an election three years away if this false information is allowed to circulate online.”

Benz also went into detail about USAID’s connections to Brazil’s election and judicial establishment.

“That was set up by USAID, USAID flooded the zone, USAID had contact at every level with the TSE court, with the Alexandre de Moraes court,” he said. “I testified to the Brazilian Senate Relations Committee and put pictures from USAID’s website of Alexandre de Moraes being trained by CEPS (Competitive Economy Program), the USAID grantee, by NED (National Endowment for Democracy), the USAID grantee has gotten $3 billion from USAID and was created by the Central Intelligence Agency.”

Benz’s remarks come just days after Brazil’s conservatives delivered a powerful showing at the ballot box. Flávio Bolsonaro finished first in the opening round of the presidential election, taking 47.03% of the vote to left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s 45.16%, setting up an October 25 runoff.

Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party emerged as the largest party in both houses of Congress, winning 121 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and expanding its Senate delegation from 15 to 28 seats.

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Coast Guard places $248 million order for first MQ-9B drones

The Coast Guard is purchasing MQ-9B drones for the first time, ordering four of the high-flying unmanned aerial vehicles for just under $250 million.

The aircraft will support the service to oversee offshore waters, conduct search and rescue operations, and help counter drug trafficking operations, among other things, the Coast Guard said in a news release today. They are not expected to carry weapons, a service spokesperson told Breaking Defense.

“The MQ-9B long-range unmanned aircraft systems will expand our reach and strengthen our ability to protect the nation,” Anthony Antognoli, the assistant commandant and program executive officer for robotics and autonomous systems for the Coast Guard, said in a statement. “This investment will give Coast Guard crews a longer-range view of our maritime domain, helping them detect threats earlier, make better-informed decisions and act faster across our missions.”

The Coast Guard first revealed its plans to purchase the drones last year, thanks to funding the service received from President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” that passed in July 2025, Military Times previously reported. 

The Coast Guard said today that funding for the MQ-9B acquisition stemmed from the FY25 reconciliation package that included nearly $25 billion for the service, along with FY26 appropriations. The MQ-9B purchase totaled $247.8 million for the four aircraft, along with ground control stations and other supporting equipment, the Coast Guard said. 

The Coast Guard has previously teamed up with the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and flown CBP’s MQ-9A drones for operations out of Texas, according to a Coast Guard factsheet. The Coast Guard noted in today’s release that the aircraft supported CBP to seize 60,700 pounds of illegal drugs and the apprehension of roughly 20 “smugglers” in FY26. 

The MQ-9B SeaGuardian is designed to conduct maritime intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance operations for more than 30 hours at a time with a mission radius of roughly 1,200 nautical miles, according to General Atomics, which builds the aircraft.

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U.S. Military Lost or Damaged 81 Aircraft Worth Up to $3.3 Billion in Iran War, Report Says

At least 81 U.S. military aircraft have been lost or damaged since the war with Iran began, with losses totaling as much as $3.3 billion, according to a Congressional Research Service report released Oct. 5. The tally was compiled from statements by the Pentagon, U.S. Central Command, the Pentagon Inspector General and news reports, and the report’s authors noted the number of aircraft “may remain subject to revision due to multiple factors” [1].

The losses include some of America’s most advanced warplanes, including one damaged F-35A Lightning II stealth fighter and 12 F-15E Strike Eagle fighters that have been destroyed or damaged, according to the report [2].

The White House and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. The report, updated Oct. 5, drew on military statements, news reports and findings from the Defense Department’s inspector general [3].

Fixed-Wing Losses Include F-15Es, F-35A, A-10s and E-3 Sentry

Twelve F-15E Strike Eagles were destroyed or damaged. Three were shot down in friendly fire over Kuwait on March 2, and another was shot down over Iran the following month [4].

One F-35A Lightning II stealth fighter was damaged when it came under fire from Iran on March 19.

The disclosures come as the financial cost of the war, which began Feb. 28 with coordinated U.S.-Israeli strikes, rises.

Drone Losses Led by 45 MQ-9 Reapers, Fleet Below Requirement

At least 45 MQ-9 Reaper drones were lost, with each estimated to be worth between $30 million and $50 million, according to the report.

The Reaper, used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, close air support and combat search and rescue, accounted for more than half of the losses [5]. The scale of the Reaper losses tracks with earlier independent reporting: Iran destroyed approximately $1 billion worth of U.S. Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drones during the conflict, according to a Bloomberg report published May 21, representing roughly 20 percent of the Pentagon’s pre-war inventory of unmanned aerial vehicles [6].

The drone losses have forced the Air Force to look at alternatives. The service more than doubled the value of its contract with DZYNE Technologies, now part of Ondas, for long-endurance surveillance drones that could complement the MQ-9 Reaper and help fill intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance mission gaps following the reported heavy losses in the U.S.-Iran conflict [7]. The seizure of a U.S. Navy Dive-LD uncrewed underwater vehicle by Iran near the Strait of Hormuz in September also handed Tehran a rare opportunity to study and potentially reverse-engineer a sophisticated undersea surveillance asset, a setback for the Pentagon and drone maker Anduril [8][9].

CENTCOM Estimates War Cost at $43.6 Billion

U.S. Central Command estimated last month that the total cost of the war in Iran had grown to $43.6 billion — a $5 billion increase from August. Weapons costs also jumped by more than $6 billion in just over a month, from $21.7 billion listed in the latest Congressional Budget Office report to $28.1 billion in the latest figures, according to the report.

The Congressional Research Service report attributed the aircraft loss figures to its analysis of available data.

The White House and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to requests for comment, officials said. The Congressional Research Service published a similar report in May that put the number of lost or damaged aircraft lower, reflecting the accumulating toll of a conflict that has now run more than seven months since U.S. and Israeli forces commenced military strikes on Feb. 28.

Report Details Aircraft Losses as War Costs Rise

The Congressional Research Service report lists 81 U.S. military aircraft lost or damaged in the Iran war, valued at up to $3.3 billion.

CENTCOM’s $43.6 billion war cost estimate and the weapons cost increase were provided in the report. No immediate comment was issued by the White House or the Pentagon, according to the report. The report’s authors said the tally was compiled from statements by the Pentagon, U.S. Central Command, the Pentagon Inspector General and news reports, and that the “number of aircraft may remain subject to revision due to multiple factors” [1].

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Donald J. Trump: The DSA President

The administration is running a television advertisement in which President Trump says, “Together we will defeat communism, socialism, and Marxism in America.” Government-financed propaganda promoting an unpopular head of state is something one might associate with a communist country. The irony doesn’t end there. The ad’s target is the Democratic Party and its leftward shift, as evidenced by its “democratic socialism” problem. Yet it is Trump himself who has unlocked the door the left has long sought to open: the normalization of government ownership of private companies.

While the government has occasionally taken stakes in private companies, it has generally done so—rightly or wrongly—as a temporary measure to address a perceived emergency. However, never in U.S. history has the executive branch taken ownership stakes in private companies simply because the president wanted his own federal investment portfolio. And this administration has done so without clear legal authority.

As of this writing, the administration has announced deals giving the federal government equity stakes in 34 private companies and counting. Thus, after Trump has spent much of his second term acquiring the means of production, his pitch ahead of the November elections is that he will stop Democrats from … acquiring the means of production?

To be sure, there are anti-market Democrats who have long desired to make government ownership of companies a permanent federal policy tool. Indeed, how they have responded to the administration’s equity deals offers clues about how they may deploy this tool when Republican dominance in Washington ends.

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