Tag: taxes

Entitled Democrat lawmaker who’s been arrested three times while in office demands enormous six-figure salary increase that’ll take her pay to $250,000

A Texas Democrat who has been arrested three times while in office is seeking a six-figure salary raise. 

Harris County Treasurer Carla Wyatt has requested $250,000 ‘or more’ according to a formal salary grievance filed with the county and seen by the Houston Chronicle.

The increase, if approved, would be equivalent to a 79 percent raise on her current salary of just over $139,500.

It was filed as part of an annual process that lets elected members ask a committee for a raise, her request will be considered today. 

According to the grievance, seen by the outlet, Wyatt said she was asking for ‘an amount that fairly and appropriately reflects the statutory responsibilities, fiduciary obligations, scope of authority, workload, and level of accountability associated with the office of Harris County Treasurer.’

The request comes after her office was stripped of some of its financial oversight powers in an ongoing effort to abolish her position entirely, the outlet reported. 

Wyatt made the request while a drink driving case against her works its way though the legal system. 

Police in Galveston said that they approached a car flagged by a concerned onlooker during a patrol in May, only to find the female driver, Wyatt, ‘to be asleep.’

An officer woke Wyatt up and asked her where she was, to which she responded that she was ‘in Heaven.’

After repeated attempts to get the treasurer to say where she was and where she was going, she finally said she was in Houston, trying to get to Galveston for a conference the next morning.

At one point, Wyatt admitted to having one glass of wine that evening, before eventually changing her story to two glasses.

The arresting officers said they ‘smelled the odor of an alcoholic beverage emitting’ from Wyatt.

Wyatt also sat on the rear bumper of her car to remain upright, the officer said, according to police documents obtained by ABC13.

She eventually failed a field sobriety test and was arrested for driving while intoxicated.

Wyatt was immediately taken to the Galveston County jail but has since been released, according to jail records.

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Number of UK Welfare Recipients Hits Record High of 8.4 Million

The number of people receiving direct welfare benefit payments in Britain has soared to an all-time high, the government has disclosed.

According to data published this week by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), 8.4 million people were receiving Universal Credit welfare payments as of May, an increase of around 700,000 from the previous year and 100,000 more than in February.

The DWP said this meant it is now the highest number of people receiving welfare under the Universal Credit scheme since it was introduced in 2013. The number of people on the rolls has increased from 5.5 million since March 2022.

Meanwhile, the proportion of welfare claimants with “no work requirements” rose from 46 per cent last year to 51 per cent in May, or 4.3 million. This was compared to 1.6 million claimants who were required to search for work.

The remaining 3.1 million claimants were employed while receiving the benefits, or 37.7 per cent of the total, down from 41.9 per cent just a year before.

The statistics showed that over 15 per cent of Universal Credit claimants in May were migrants, inclduing 8.9 per cent who were granted access to British welfare as a result of the EU Settlement Scheme following Brexit, which in turn allows for British expats living in EU nations to access their welfare states.

The data release comes as Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party has unveiled plans to cut welfare spending by £51 billion ($69bn) per year, which would purportedly save every British family £1,700 ($2,305) annually.

Shadow Chancellor Robert Jenrick said that, if elected, a Reform government would ban all foreigners from receiving welfare benefits, including EU nationals granted access under the Brexit withdrawal agreement. According to Jenrick, simply removing non-British citizens from the scheme would save taxpayers £21 billion ($28.5bn) a year by 2029.

The Reform Party would also look to adopt a similar scheme to that implemented in the Netherlands, in which businesses will be incentivised to encourage their workers to return to the force by requiring firms with more than five employees to purchase a new form of insurance to pay for employees who go on disability.

Jenrick said that the Dutch system upon which it is modelled had cut disability claims by 40 per cent.

Furthermore, Reform would also require that those able to work who have been receiving Universal Credit for over a year must do 20 hours of community service per week or lose their benefits.

“Without these changes, the cost of the welfare system will keep spiralling. We will face a genuine national debt crisis. Those least able to bear it will pay the highest price,” Jenrick warned. “Only Reform will do what it takes to avert this.”

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Minnesota “Outstanding Refugee” Award Recipient Gets Busted for Defrauding Medicaid By OVER $1 MILLION with Help of Individuals Connected to Sex-Trafficking Ring

In news that should surprise absolutely no one, a refugee once celebrated by the State of Minnesota turned out to be less than upstanding.

KMSP reported on Monday that Salman Ahmed Elmi, who was honored as an “outstanding refugee” by the Minnesota Department of Human Services, has been busted for defrauding Medicaid by over $1 million.

By that’s not all. Police say that Elmi’s alleged co-conspirators at Reva Health in Golden Valley have connections to a recent sex trafficking case.

Here’s the background on the case from KMSP:

Elmi is accused of billing Medicaid for more than $1 million in services that were not provided or not eligible. Reva Health provided autism services and adult rehabilitative mental health services.

Elmi and the other co-conspirators are accused of falsifying documents to get Medicaid reimbursements. Prosecutors say other co-conspirators directed staff to pay kickbacks to people to use their information for claims.

The charges state two people involved in the fraud enterprise, former Anoka County prosecutor Andrea Sampson and Frank Devone Reeves, were also involved in a sex trafficking ring that was busted in Hennepin County last week.

Individuals charged in the case face a slew of charges, and on Monday, authorities said there could be many more victims who suffered as a result of that case.

KMSP notes that in addition to being named an “outstanding refugee,” the State of Minnesota also honored Elmi with an Entrepreneurship Award in 2021.

Elmi is the founder and part-owner of the Minneapolis-based startup Tavolo, which received funding from Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary. Tavolo is an AI marketing app for restaurants.

Elmi then used the honor of being a part-owner of the Minneapolis-based startup Tavolo to secure the loan to start Reva Health.

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Reform UK Unveils Plans to Cut Welfare by £50 Billion a Year, Including Ending Benefits to Foreigners

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party has vowed to implement the largest welfare reforms in a generation, which it says will save the British taxpayer an estimated £50 billion a year by ensuring that only UK citizens receive benefits and ending the culture of “something for nothing”.

In his first major policy pronouncement since joining the party in January, Shadow Chancellor Robert Jenrick said that a Reform government would always protect people in genuine need, such as pensioners, children, the vulnerable, and armed forces veterans; it would also seek to “restore fairness” by reserving benefits for Britons only and cutting off those who leech off the state and take “advantage of their fellow citizens”.

“In towns and cities up and down the country, working people tell stories of those in their communities who are pulling a fast one, taking everyone else for fools. The family who enjoy regular holidays, nights out, have new cars on the drive – but who out of choice haven’t seen a day’s work for years. Sometimes decades. This is fundamentally unfair,” Jenrick remarked.

The Reform economics spokesman said that the party’s plan would save the taxpayer £51 billion ($69bn) per year, or £1,700 ($2,305) for every family in the country, and would incentivise 241,000 British nationals to return to work.

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Minneapolis Public Schools Hosts Back-to-School Supply Giveaway for ‘American Indian Students ONLY,’ Professor Files Federal Civil Rights Complaint Over Illegal Discrimination

Minneapolis Public Schools is facing a federal civil rights complaint after its American Indian Education Department announced a back-to-school backpack and supplies giveaway strictly limited to American Indian students, in clear violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

The event, scheduled for August 24 and 25 and promoted on the department’s Facebook page under the heading “2026-27 School Year Distribution of Backpacks & School Supplies,” is explicitly restricted to “MPS American Indian Students ONLY.”

Participants must be enrolled in Minneapolis Public Schools and have a completed Federal 506 form or tribal affiliation identification form on file to receive the assistance.

University of Michigan Professor Emeritus Mark Perry, who has filed nearly a thousand civil rights complaints against educational institutions for similar race-based discrimination, has submitted the complaint to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

In the filing, Perry states that the event “illegally excludes certain students based on their race and ethnicity, including students who are Asian, Black, White, and Hispanic.”

Perry is seeking remedies that would require the district either to cancel the segregated giveaway or open it to all Minneapolis Public Schools students regardless of race, ethnicity, color, or national origin.

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Maryland Court Strikes Down Nation’s First State Tax On Digital Advertising

A state tax court in Maryland invalidated the nation’s first state tax on digital advertising and directed state officials to refund tax payments already collected from major tech companies.

The legal dispute had been closely watched by other states that are considering taxing online advertisements.

The Annapolis-based Maryland Tax Court ruled on Aug. 14 that the digital advertising gross revenues tax was unconstitutional after it was challenged in three separate lawsuits by Google, Apple, and Peacock TV. Refunds are expected to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The state imposes the levies based on the businesses’ global revenue. Lawmakers previously said the tax could raise $250 million per year. The money raised from the tax was earmarked for a state education program.

The 2021 tax statute specifically targets the revenue large companies earn from digital advertisements shown in Maryland. Companies that take in more than $100 million in annual global gross revenue were taxed at 2.5 percent.

A sliding scale applies to companies with larger revenues, maxing out at 10 percent for those earning more than $15 billion in global gross annual revenues.

The law’s backers argued that Maryland needed to overhaul its tax system to deal with major changes in how businesses advertise. Lawyers representing the affected companies said their clients were targeted unfairly.

The state court said the tax runs afoul of the federal Internet Tax Freedom Act, the First Amendment, and the due process and commerce clauses of the U.S. Constitution.

The court held that regulating interstate commerce was the business of Congress – not the Maryland General Assembly – and that it was inappropriate that the tax law was premised on global revenue rather than revenue that comes from in-state advertising.

The Internet Tax Freedom Act forbids taxation of electronic commerce if similar services are not taxed. The court held that there is no meaningful distinction between digital advertising and print or billboard ads, meaning the federal bar applies.

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The DSA’s Agenda Could Cost More Than $200 Trillion—and You’ll Be Picking Up the Tab

“Imagine taking a day off from work in a future without capitalism,” reads the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) website. 

“You have no debt. You don’t need health insurance. You don’t pay a mortgage or have a landlord, because comfortable housing is a human right. Your retirement is publicly funded. Food, education, energy, medicine, and transportation aren’t for-profit businesses; they are common goods and utilities,” it continues.

Sounds pretty good, right? Conveniently, the DSA fails to mention how much it would cost to create this socialist utopia. Unsurprisingly, it would be a lot of money.

This week, Adam Michel, director of Tax Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, added up nine of the largest proposals in the DSA platform. Based on his estimates, the proposals would require between $71 trillion and $212 trillion—which represents 18 percent and 53 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), respectively—in additional government spending.

In the U.S., government spending already makes up about 38 percent of GDP, which is relatively high by historical standards but low compared to the rest of the world. Under a high-end estimate of the DSA’s agenda, that 38 percent would rise to 92 percent of GDP, according to Michel. A lower-end estimate would raise spending to more than 57 percent of GDP, higher than most European countries.

No major advanced economy spends anything close to 92 percent of GDP. This level of expenditure would require the mass confiscation of private property, handing an unprecedented amount of power to politicians. These estimates are, as Michel tells Reason, “much closer to estimates of state control under Soviet-style communism than to today’s European welfare states.”

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Pay The Money Back: Ford cabinet ministers’ riding associations spent $356,000 on meetings, restaurants and events

Five riding associations represented by Ontario Progressive Conservative cabinet ministers spent more than $356,000 over two years on expenses categorized as “meetings hosted,” according to an analysis first reported by the Toronto Star.

The expenses were paid from political donations, which qualify donors for provincial tax credits. Elections Ontario records do not identify who was reimbursed for the meetings or, in many cases, who attended.

The biggest spender was Associate Solicitor General Michael Tibollo’s Vaughan—Woodbridge PC riding association, which reported $47,200 in meeting expenses in both 2024 and 2025, for a two-year total of $94,400. The money went to Venu Event Space for Tibollo’s annual “Chestnut Roast” fundraiser.

Energy Minister Stephen Lecce’s King—Vaughan association came next at $79,647 over two years. Its expenses included nearly $15,000 for Beretta Farms beef at a 2024 community barbecue, $1,850 at Mr. Congee Chinese Cuisine and $900 at Eagles Nest Golf Club.

Former tourism minister Stan Cho’s Willowdale association spent $68,646 over two years. In 2024 alone, it reported $54,000 in meeting expenses, including $4,333 in meals at the Niagara Marriott on the Falls, $3,409 at Japanese restaurant and oyster bar Nome Izakaya, $6,970 listed as “Rogers Blue Jays” and $9,708 at Sher-E-Punjab.

Labour Minister David Piccini’s Northumberland—Peterborough South association spent $57,325 over the two years. Expenses previously reported by the Star included sushi-rolling classes and restaurant meals in Toronto and Fort Lauderdale. In 2025, the association also spent $1,533 at BATL Grounds, an axe- and knife-throwing venue.

Solicitor General Michael Kerzner’s York Centre association rounded out the top five with $40,472 over two years. Its 2024 expenses included $17,374 in hospitality catering, plus $831 at Chicken’s Nest Kosher Restaurant and another $5,642 in catering from the restaurant.

The five associations spent $356,312 combined. By comparison, riding associations representing the other 32 cabinet and associate ministers spent a combined $325,720 over the same period. Premier Doug Ford’s Etobicoke North association reported just $2,548 in “meetings hosted” expenses.

The Ontario PC Party said riding association budgets can be used for fundraising, volunteer appreciation, stakeholder outreach and community events. The spending complied with Ontario election financing rules.

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What’s Going on in Gwangju, South Korea? Leftist Stronghold Honors Communist Composer Who Defected During War to North Korean Hellhole

Gwangju, South Korea has a long history of voting for left-leaning politicians and is the main hub for the far-left Democratic party of Korea.

For years, Gwangju has built an extensive public culture of commemoration around composer Jeong Yul-seong.

Jeong joined the Chinese Communist Party. He composed the March of the Eighth Route Army, which later became the official military anthem of China’s People’s Liberation Army.

Jeong Yul-seong also composed military music for North Korea and returned to North Korea during the Korean War with the Chinese People’s Volunteers — the Chinese forces fighting South Korea and the United Nations Command.

Despite that history, his legacy in Gwangju has been honored for decades.

His name was placed on a road.

A bust was erected in his honor.

A street exhibition and memorial facilities were created.

His birthplace was restored.

Gwangju pursued a Jeong Yul-seong historical park project costing approximately KRW 4.5 billion, roughly $3.3 million.

Music festivals and other cultural projects were organized around his legacy.

And Korean children were brought into this commemorative system through the Jeong Yul-seong Children’s Song Competition.

The attached footage shows just how far this went.

Korean children perform Jeong’s songs. Chinese-language performances appear on stage. An award is presented in the name of the Confucius Institute at Honam University. Chinese participants praise Jeong’s status in Chinese music history, while an event official speaks about protecting his reputation.

The Confucius Institute’s role went beyond appearing on an award.

The children’s competition was jointly organized with the Confucius Institute at Honam University. Winning Korean elementary-school students were given opportunities to travel to China, where they performed Jeong Yul-seong’s songs, including in Chinese.

Chinese state media also took notice of these activities.

China’s interest is entirely understandable. Jeong Yul-seong occupies an important place in China’s communist revolutionary and military history.

What is extraordinary is the degree to which public institutions in a U.S.-allied South Korea helped transform that same figure into a local cultural icon.

The Chinese government’s interest extended beyond cultural events.

After Jeong’s bust in Gwangju was damaged, the Chinese Consulate General in Gwangju requested its restoration. In 2025, the local district government decided to restore it, reportedly citing diplomatic relations with China among its considerations.

The symbolism is remarkable.

A South Korean local government had erected and maintained a memorial to a figure celebrated for his contribution to Communist China’s military tradition. When the memorial was damaged, representatives of the Chinese government asked that it be restored, and the Korean local government agreed.

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B.C. government has given $8.7M to group hosting ‘jockstrap’ dance parties

Have you ever heard of the HIM (Health Initiative for Men) Society?

Founded as a grassroots organization focused on gay men’s health, HIM entered into a formal contract with Vancouver Coastal Health in 2009 to deliver health-promotion services.

Today, it says it provides health-based programs and services for gay, bisexual and queer men and gender-diverse people. Over the past seven years, according to HIM’s CRA filings, the organization has received more than $8.7 million from provincial and federal government sources.

So, what exactly are taxpayers helping fund?

For one, HIM hosts something called the “HIMBO Jock Tea Dance,” where attendees are invited to show up in jockstraps and “lube up” their thighs for the event.

Culture Guard, a political advocacy organization that says it works to protect traditional family values and ways of life, first put HIM on my radar. Culture Guard sent a public accountability letter to Premier David Eby, asking why his government continues to provide substantial public funding to a registered charity involved in events like the “HIMBO Jock Tea Dance.” 

Let me show you some of what Culture Guard highlighted, using screenshots from HIM’s own website.

For example, there is their “QUEERLY DESIGNED & LOCALLY MADE” merchandise. HIM’s website describes it as the “horny lovechild” of HIM. And then there is their “Collab,” inviting adult-content creators to sit down together and build community.

HIM describes some of these activities through the lens of HIV prevention. On its own website, the organization says: “Connectedness is HIV prevention,” and “Dancing together is HIV prevention.” It has continued to receive substantial public funding through provincial health authorities, such as Vancouver Coastal Health, Interior Health, and Fraser Health, as well as from the federal government.

Like Culture Guard’s letter to Premier Eby, I too have reached out to clarify whether your tax dollars have actually gone to preventing disease or to funding sexually charged jockstrap dance parties and adult content communities for the gay and queer men in BC.

I have not yet heard back at this time.

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