Tag: taxes

Netflix And Chill: Farage’s DOGE Uncovers INSANE Government Funded Perks For Illegal Aliens

A British version of DOGE instituted in areas where Nigel Farage’s Reform won seats in the last round of elections has found that local government is spending hundreds of thousands in taxpayer money on unnecessary perks for illegal immigrants, including subscriptions to Netflix.

Not content with putting them up in luxury hotels and giving them loaded debit cards, at least ten local councils are providing illegal aliens with subscriptions to streaming services such as Netflix and Disney +, as well as spending close to £120,000 on fast food such as Dominoes Pizza and McDonalds.

The local governments have also handed out gift cards for electrical stores Currys and Argos, presumably so the illegals can get a TV to watch their Netflix, and even paid for outings, including trips to safari parks, the circus, and mini golf.

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NIH Director Bhattacharya warns U.S. taxpayers are funding science journals compromised by China

The National Institutes of Health isn’t just concerned about how much taxpayers are spending to read scientific and medical journals where the published research has already been funded by taxpayers. It wants to know more about publishers’ possible ties to hostile powers.

NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya announced a cap starting this fall on how much journals can charge “NIH-supported scientists to make their research findings publicly accessible” and told investigative journalist Paul Thacker the fees prop up Germany-based publisher Springer Nature, which has a “tremendous investment and interest in the Chinese scientific establishment.”

The 3,000-journal publishing behemoth declined to confirm to Fox News last month the Trump administration terminated one contract and didn’t renew three others, claiming there was “no material change” to its “global business.”

One of its journals is Nature Medicine, which published the “Proximal Origin” paper dismissing a COVID-19 lab leak from China after forcing the coauthors to completely rule out the plausibility of a leak as a condition of publishing it.

The paper was covertly shaped by Bhattacharya predecessor Francis Collins and then-National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, who funded the research that may have unleashed the pandemic with U.S. taxpayer dollars.

Then-interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin sought information from Nature Medicine this spring, suggesting it committed a quid pro quo with Collins and Fauci, who soon after gave coauthor Kristian Andersen federal grants, by leaving their names off “Proximal Origin.” 

Springer Nature also publishes Scientific American and Nature, which both endorsed Democrat Joe Biden for president in 2020. The former tried to quash the Chinese lab-leak theory as “xenophobia.”

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America Can’t Afford To Be The Arsenal Of The World Anymore

President Donald Trump was reportedly caught “flat-footed” when the Pentagon abruptly announced it was freezing shipments of critical weapons to Ukraine, including Patriot missile interceptors, precision-guided GMLRS, and artillery rounds.

The rationale for halting shipments of defensive weapons to Ukraine stems from a review that found that the U.S. only has about 25 percent of the Patriot interceptors needed for all Defense Department military plans.

Yet just days later, Trump reversed course. “They’re getting hit very hard now,” he said. “We’re going to send some more weapons — defensive weapons primarily.”

The rapid pivot back to arms transfers to Ukraine illustrates just how deeply embedded interventionist reflexes remain not just in Congress and the Pentagon, but even within Trump’s own orbit.

US Running Low

At the center of this internal tug-of-war is Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby, a leading voice for a more restrained, realist approach to America’s military posture, which is a position that has reportedly frustrated some hawkish members within the Trump administration.

Colby has warned that U.S. weapons stockpiles are running low, defense manufacturing is lagging behind adversaries, and that it is time for Europe to take primary responsibility for Ukraine, while America focuses on shoring up its limited resources by preparing for a far more dangerous geopolitical challenge: China.

A recent analysis by Foreign Affairs aligns with Colby’s assessment, stating that the United States “has low stockpiles of munitions, its ships and planes are older than China’s, and its industrial base lacks the capacity to regenerate these assets. In war games that simulate a conflict in the Taiwan Strait, Washington runs out of key munitions within weeks.”

The U.S. Air Force’s fleet is showing its age, with planes averaging 32 years old, and some exceeding 50 years. Developing new major weapons platforms like these can take more than eight years, however if the F-22 Raptor is any indication, the process could take more than 15 years.

The U.S. Navy is in an equally perilous situation. Though the average U.S. naval vessel is 19 years old, some vessels like cruisers are pushing almost 30 years old. To meet future demand, the Navy may require extending the lives of some non-nuclear surface ships to over 50 years old.

In stark contrast, 70 percent of China’s naval ships have been launched since 2010. China’s annual shipbuilding capacity is an astounding 26 million tons, which is 370 times greater than the United States’ capacity of 70,000 tons. The U.S. industrial capacity is so limited that it cannot even produce a single 100,000-ton Ford-class aircraft carrier annually.

Still, Washington clings to a WWII-era fantasy, believing that it can arm the world while neglecting its own arsenal.

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Taxpayers will no longer fund illegal aliens’ education

Taxpayers will no longer pay for the education of noncitizens in the U.S. illegally, the U.S. Department of Education said Thursday.

The department said “it will end taxpayer subsidization of illegal aliens in career, technical, and adult education programs.”

A news release said that this change takes place due to an interpretative rule issued Thursday in which “the Department rescinded a Dear Colleague letter from the Clinton Administration that enabled non-qualified illegal aliens to access federal public benefits in contravention of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA).”

Title IV of PRWORA “generally limits eligibility for ‘federal public benefits’ to U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and certain categories of ‘qualified aliens,’” the release said.

Federal public benefits include “any retirement, welfare, health, disability, public or assisted housing, postsecondary education, food assistance, unemployment benefits, or any similar benefits for which payments or assistance are provided to an individual, household, or family eligibility unit.”

In 1997, “the Clinton Administration issued a Dear Colleague Letter that erroneously exempted career, technical, and adult education programs from being subject to PRWORA,” the release said.

“In doing so, the Department’s interpretation mischaracterized the law by creating artificial distinctions between federal benefit programs based upon the method of assistance,” the release said. “Congress made no such distinction in PRWORA.”

The department’s release said that Thursday’s interpretive rule “also ensures that postsecondary education programs authorized under the Higher Education Act (HEA), such as Pell Grants and student loans, continue to be inaccessible to illegal immigrants.”

U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in the release: “Postsecondary education programs funded by the federal government should benefit American citizens, not illegal aliens.”

“Under President Trump’s leadership, hardworking American taxpayers will no longer foot the bill for illegal aliens to participate in our career, technical, or adult education programs or activities,” McMahon said.

“The Department will ensure that taxpayer funds are reserved for citizens and individuals who have entered our country through legal means who meet federal eligibility criteria,” McMahon said.

Director of Policy Studies Jessica M. Vaughan at the Center for Immigration Studies told The Center Square that “taxpayers should not have to subsidize vocational or other post-secondary education for illegal aliens, who aren’t allowed to work in this country.”

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Kathy Hochul’s only slowing down the suffering from her green-energy lunacy

Gov. Kathy Hochul finally admits the state’s “climate” goals are impossible to meet for now, but she offers no reason to trust she won’t continue to pursue them to appease green extremists, at huge cost to regular New Yorkers, if she wins re-election next year.

The climate law demands the state achieve 100% zero-emission electricity by 2040, but it’s still burning as much carbon as ever; its faltering (but hugely expensive) alternative-energy gains aren’t even enough to keep up with expected increases in demand.

The gov is making the smallest possible concession to reality, while dodging as much blame as she can: “We cannot accomplish what those objectives were back in before I became governor in a time frame that’s not going to hurt ratepayers,” she announced this month. “So, we’re slowing things down.”

Mind you, she’s burning ever-more of your dollars (via taxes and utility bills) on costly offshore wind projects, still blocking new pipelines, still preventing new-home natural-gas hookups and making non-electric vehicles more expensive.

She’s simply admitting that it’s not remotely enough, even though it keeps driving New York electricity costs through the roof. (Even roofs with solar panels on top!)

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Trump’s BBB busts the budget to benefit arms makers, AI warlords

Trump’s bill slashes spending on veterans to boost corporate welfare for the Big Five arms manufacturers and surging AI spying firms like Palantir.

Originally published at Antiwar.com.

The Senate is on the verge of passing the distinctly misnamed “big beautiful bill.” It is, in fact, one of the ugliest pieces of legislation to come out of Congress in living memory. The version that passed the House recently would cut $1.7 trillion, mostly in domestic spending, while providing the top 5% of taxpayers with roughly $1.5 trillion in tax breaks.

Over the next few years, the same bill will add another $150 billion to a Pentagon budget already soaring towards a record $1 trillion. In short, as of now, in the battle between welfare and warfare, the militarists are carrying the day.

Pentagon Pork and the People It Harms

The bill allocates tens of billions of dollars to pursue President Trump’s cherished but hopeless Golden Dome project, which Laura Grego of the Union of Concerned Scientists has described as “a fantasy.” She explained exactly why the Golden Dome, which would supposedly protect the United States against nuclear attack, is a pipe dream:

“Over the last 60 years, the United States has spent more than $350 billion on efforts to develop a defense against nuclear-armed ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles]. This effort has been plagued by false starts and failures, and none have yet been demonstrated to be effective against a real-world threat… Missile defenses are not a useful or long-term strategy for keeping the U.S. safe from nuclear weapons.”

The bill also includes billions more for shipbuilding, heavy new investments in artillery and ammunition, and funding for next-generation combat aircraft like the F-47.

Oh, and after all of those weapons programs get their staggering cut of that future Pentagon budget, somewhere way down at the bottom of that list is a line item for improving the quality of life for active-duty military personnel. But the share aimed at the well-being of soldiers, sailors, and airmen (and women) is less than 6% of the $150 billion that Congress is now poised to add to that department’s already humongous budget. And that’s true despite the way Pentagon budget hawks invariably claim that the enormous sums they routinely plan on shoveling into it — and the overflowing coffers of the contractors it funds — are “for the troops.”

Much of the funding in the bill will flow into the districts of key members of Congress (to their considerable political benefit). For example, the Golden Dome project will send billions of dollars to companies based in Huntsville, Alabama, which calls itself “Rocket City” because of the dense network of outfits there working on both offensive missiles and missile defense systems. And that, of course, is music to the ears of Representative Mike Rogers (R-AL), the current chair of the House Armed Services Committee, who just happens to come from Alabama.

The shipbuilding funds will help prop up arms makers like HII Corporation (formerly Huntington Ingalls), which runs a shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, the home state of Senate Armed Services Committee chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss).  The funds will also find their way to shipyards in Maine, Connecticut, and Virginia.

Those funds will benefit the co-chairs of the House Shipbuilding Caucus, Representative Joe Courtney (D-CT) and Representative Rob Wittman (R-VA). Connecticut hosts General Dynamics’ Electric Boat plant, which makes submarines that carry ballistic missiles, while Virginia is home to HII Corporation’s Newport News Shipbuilding facility, which makes both aircraft carriers and attack submarines.

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The Pentagon spent $4 trillion over 5 years. Contractors got 54% of it.

Advocates of ever-higher Pentagon spending frequently argue that we must throw more money at the department to “support the troops.” But recent budget proposals and a new research paper issued by the Quincy Institute and the Costs of War Project at Brown University suggest otherwise.

The paper, which I co-authored with Stephen Semler, found that 54% of the Pentagon’s $4.4 trillion in discretionary spending from 2020 to 2024 went to military contractors. The top five alone — Lockheed Martin ($313 billion), RTX (formerly Raytheon, $145 billion), Boeing ($115 billion), General Dynamics ($116 billion), and Northrop Grumman ($81 billion) – received $771 billion in Pentagon contracts over that five year period.

This huge infusion of funds to arms makers comes at the expense of benefits for active duty personnel and veterans of America’s post-9/11 wars. Despite pay increases in recent years, there are still hundreds of thousands of military families who rely on food stamps, live in subpar housing, or suffer from other financial hardships.

Meanwhile, there are plans to cut tens of thousands of personnel at the Veterans Administration, close Veterans health centers, and even to reduce staffing at veteran suicide hotlines. And many of the programs veterans and their families depend on — from food stamps to Medicaid and more — are slated for sharp cuts in the budget bill signed by President Trump earlier this month.

It would be one thing if all of the hundreds of billions of dollars lavished on weapons contractors were being well spent in service of a better defense. But they are not. Overpriced and underperforming weapons systems like the F-35 combat aircraft and the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) have shown themselves to be quite effective at consuming taxpayer dollars, even as the run huge cost overruns, suffer lengthy schedule delays, and, in the case of the F-35, are unavailable for use much of the time due to serious maintenance problems.

The problems with the Sentinel and the F-35 are likely to pale in comparison with the sums that may be wasted in pursuit of President Trump’s proposal for a leak-proof “Golden Dome” missile defense system, a costly pipe dream that many experts feel is both physically impossible and strategically unwise. In the more than four decades and hundreds of billions of dollars spent since Ronald Reagan’s pledge to build an impenetrable shield against incoming ICBMs, the Pentagon has yet to succeed in a test conducted under realistic conditions, and has even failed in a large number of the carefully scripted efforts.

And Golden Dome is more ambitious than Star Wars — it is supposed to intercept not just ICBMs, but hypersonic missiles, low-flying drones, and anything else that might be launched at the United States.

The good news is that if you are a weapons contractor, whether from the Big Five or the emerging military tech sector in Silicon Valley, Golden Dome will be a gold mine, regardless of whether it ever produces a useful defense system.

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LA Mayor Karen Bass to Give Cash and Food to Help Illegal Aliens Hide From ICE to “Protect People From the Federal Government”

A day after protesters threw rocks and a gunman fired on ICE agents during a raid on a marijuana farm in Ventura County, California where exploited illegal alien children were found to be working, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D-Cuba) announced the city will be arranging cash and food assistance to illegal aliens who are hiding from the federal government.

Bass expressed concern that illegal aliens are not able to work to pay the rent and feed their families because of the ongoing immigration enforcement actions in Southern California by the Trump administration.

Bass also said she was worried about two-income illegal immigration families who have lost one income because a member has been detained for deportation.

Mayor Bass: “…In terms of uh, the first part of the question that you asked, what are the resources? Well, in our community development programs, there’s resources there in our family resource centers. But we also are going to have uh, reinstitution of the Angelino card, something that Mayor Garcetti started during COVID that will actually provide cash assistance to people because, you know, you have people who don’t want to leave their homes uh, who are not going to work and uh, and they are in need of cash. You know, I, I have met with family members who they needed two incomes in order to make the rent. Well, one income was lost in a raid when someone was detained. And this woman with her children now is concerned that she might face being evicted and being homeless. And so, it’s that type of emergency assistance. And we’re fortunate that there’s a lot of philanthropic partners who have uh, contributed and many more uh, I hope that will um join in and contribute. We’re organizing uh food deliveries. I mean there’s all sorts of things that we are having to do now to protect people from the federal government…” (Corrected transcript excerpt via YouTube.)

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President Trump Says U.S. to Send More Weapons to Ukraine Just Days After Pentagon Warned of Depleted Stockpiles

In a whiplash reversal that has infuriated America-First conservatives, President Donald Trump now says the United States “has to” ship still more arms, missiles, and ammo to Ukraine — just days after the Pentagon froze deliveries because our own stockpiles are running dry.

Less than a week ago, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth halted Patriot interceptors, artillery shells, and precision missiles, citing “dangerously low” U.S. inventories.

The Trump Administration is withholding shipments promised by the Biden Regime after the Pentagon’s policy chief Elbridge Colby found the US’s stockpiles of munitions and air defense missiles are dangerously low.

Last September, the Biden Regime announced an eye-watering $8 billion in military aid for Ukraine during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Washington.

Since the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Congress has approved nearly $175 billion in aid and military assistance for Ukraine.

“Biden emptied out our whole country giving them weapons, and we have to make sure that we have enough for ourselves’, the president argued. ‘We’ve given so many weapons, but we are giving weapons, and we’re working with them and trying to help them,” Trump said.

Yet on Monday night, seated beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump declared that Ukraine is being hit “very hard” and must receive more “defensive weapons.”

“We’re going to send some more weapons. We have to. They have to be able to defend themselves. They’re getting hit very hard now,” Trump told reporters.

“Defensive weapons, primarily, but they’re getting hit very, very hard. So many people are dying in that mess,” he added.

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MTG Moves To Strike Half-Billion Of Military Aid To ‘Nuclear-Armed Israel’

Vying for the title of Most Brazen Bull in the china shop that is America’s relationship with the State of Israel, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene announced she will introduce an amendment to strike a half-billion dollars in additional military aid for the country — and she notably emphasized its status as a nuclear power. 

“I’m entering amendments to strike $500 million more for nuclear-armed Israel. And it’s important to say nuclear-armed Israel, because they do have nuclear weapons,” Greene said on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, an influential hub of the MAGA movement with an audience of listeners comprising not only everyday Americans but also West Wing officials.

The additional $500 million would flow to a program that lie “at the heart of Israel’s aerial defense operations,” reports Responsible Statecraft. Greene says enough is enough. “We already give them $3.4 billion every single year…they don’t need another $500 million in our defense budget. That’s for the American people’s defense,” Greene told Bannon. “That’s for the defense of the United States of America and our borders.”  

It’s highly significant that, in her references to Israel, Greene used “nuclear-armed” five times, noting that “it’s important to say ‘nuclear-armed’ because they do have nuclear weapons — this is not a helpless country.” While Greene’s nuclear references ostensibly underscored the country’s military strength, she may have had other intentions: 

  • Spotlighting the hypocrisy of “nuclear-armed Israel” pushing the United States to war over Iran’s nuclear program. While the US intelligence community has concluded isn’t aiming for a nuclear weapon, Greene did give credence to Israel’s claims to the contrary, saying last month’s US strikes “on [Israel’s] behalf… destroyed Iran’s nuclear problem.” 
  • Firing a shot across the bow of all Israel aid, by violating a long-standing US government policy of refusing to confirm that Israel has a nuclear arsenal. Those refusals to acknowledge Israel’s nuclear status are part of a decades-long conspiracy to keep billions of dollars in aid flowing to Israel in violation of US law.

 As Brian McGlinchey explained in a deep-dive on the topic at Stark Realities: 

While having amassed upwards of 200 nuclear warheads, Israel is not a member of the the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)…That makes U.S. aid to Israel illegal under the Symington Amendment of 1976, which bars economic and military assistance to countries that acquire nuclear reprocessing technology without submitting to international safeguards and inspections. The law was reinforced by the Glenn Amendment of 1977.

The proposed redistribution another $500 million of American wealth to Israel is contained in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the annual bill that funds the Department of Defense. “There are some parts of this NDAA that I cannot support, and that’s continued foreign aid and foreign funding, and it needs to come out,” said Greene. Bannon called this year’s iteration of the NDAA “disastrous,” as it calls for a trillion dollars in total purported “defense” spending.

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