Tag: taxes

Blue states plan new tax hikes on wealthy residents in response to Trump’s federal tax legislation

Blue states around the U.S. are planning tax hikes on wealthy residents to bring in additional revenue through a variety of proposals, including one state’s so-called “Taylor Swift tax.”

The moves come after the enactment of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) by President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress, which permanently extended many of the 2017 tax cuts and included other new tax relief provisions as well as spending cuts to programs such as Medicaid.

Democrats argue these tax hike proposals are needed to help plug gaps in state budgets and offset any lost federal dollars for Medicaid and other programs.

The state of Rhode Island enacted a new tax this summer that will impose a special levy on vacation homes valued at $1 million or more, which has become known as the “Taylor Swift tax” due to the music star owning a home in an affluent part of Westerly, Rhode Island, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Rhode Island’s “Taylor Swift tax” imposes a tax of $2.50 for every $500 of assessed value above $1 million, which a Realtor.com analysis estimated would result in an additional $136,000 in property taxes on her luxury home in the Watch Hill neighborhood that’s valued at $17 million.

Montana wants to increase property taxes on non-primary residences, adopting a new reform that will reduce property tax rates for owner-occupied primary homes while hiking the rate to 1.9% for second homes or short-term rentals, with industrial properties also set to face higher levies.

Lawmakers want to provide not only a tax break to about 230,000 homeowners, but incentivize owners of vacation properties or second homes to sell those properties to inject more inventory into a tight real estate market, Realtor.com reported.

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Democrat South Carolina Clerk of Court INDICTED on TEN COUNTS of Corruption, Embezzlement, and Ethics Violations — Stole Over $119,000 from Taxpayers, Including Child Services Funds

South Carolina State Grand Jury has dropped the hammer on Sharon W. Staggers, the now–former Williamsburg County Clerk of Court, slapping her with TEN criminal counts ranging from official misconduct and embezzlement to ethics violations and outright fraud.

According to the indictment, Staggers, who held her elected office from 2019 to 2023, allegedly treated taxpayer funds like her personal piggy bank, siphoning more than $119,000 from the public coffers.

Prosecutors say she knowingly and willfully funneled federal Title IV-D funds (money meant for child support enforcement under the Social Security Act) and excess salary payments straight into her own pocket.

According to the indictment, Staggers:

  • Raided federal child support enforcement funds (Title IV-D funds) to pad her own bank account with tens of thousands of dollars in so-called “incentive payments.”
  • Cut herself illegal “excess salary” checks year after year, siphoning off public money well beyond her legitimate pay.
  • Solicited and pocketed thousands under the guise of “community projects,” while allowing her office staff to also receive fraudulent overpayments.
  • Engaged in a pattern of public corruption tied to money laundering violations, as noted in multiple counts of the indictment

The court documents paint a damning picture:

  • $4,000 stolen in late 2019 from federal child services funds.
  • $14,500 taken in 2020 from Title IV-D incentive payments.
  • $31,115.32 stolen in 2021 — again from child support enforcement funds.
  • $11,536 pocketed in 2021 as excess salary.
  • $29,993.60 in excess salary payments during 2022.
  • $17,304 stolen in just the first half of 2023.
  • $4,818.09 skimmed from child services funds between August and October 2023.
  • Plus $6,232.05 in shady “community project” payouts, with fraudulent bonuses handed to her own employees

ABC News 4 reported:

Former Williamsburg County Clerk of Court Sharon Staggers was issued a 10-count indictment after allegedly embezzling almost $120,000 in public funds meant to enhance child support services, according to state Attorney General Alan Wilson’s office.

The counts read as follows, with potential prison times:

  • Count 1 – Misconduct in office, common law – 0-10 years
  • Count 2 – Embezzlement of public funds, value less than $10,000 – 0-10 years and a fine
  • Counts 3-7 – Embezzlement of public funds, value $10,000 or more – 0-10 years and a fine
  • Count 8 – Embezzlement of public funds, value less than $10,000
  • Count 9 – Use of official position or office for financial gain ethics act violation, 0-1 year and/or a fine not more than $5,000
  • Count 10 – Receiving anything of value to influence action of public official, 0-10 years and/or a fine of $0-$10,000

The misconduct took place between Nov. 2019 and Oct. 2023, when Staggers served as Williamsburg County Clerk of Court, the indictments allege. Counts 2-5 involve Staggers reportedly embezzling Title IV-D funds of the federal Social Security Act to be paid to her as Title IV-D incentive payments. Title IV-D of the Social Security Act specifically establishes grants for child support and establishment of paternity funding.

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Something Is Rotten in the States of America

Something is Rotten in the States of America.

America’s war budget now exceeds $1 trillion a year – an almost unimaginable sum.

The Pentagon plans to spend $1.7 trillion “modernizing” a nuclear triad that should instead be downsized. A proposed “Golden Dome” missile defense system may cost $500 billion while making nuclear war more likely. And a “new” Cold War with China and Russia is already underway, with threat inflation as one of its defining features.

With military spending so high – and the military so valorized – Washington offers it as the solution to nearly everything: crime in D.C., eliminating drug cartels south of the border, containing China and Russia, “winning” in Somalia, preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons – the list is endless. Supporting and defending the Constitution, however, is rarely mentioned.

War has become America’s new normal. “Peace” is now a word that dare not speak its name. According to the Pentagon, the only peace worth pursuing is “peace through [military] strength.” A warrior ethos is marketed as if it were synonymous with democratic virtue.

I once called for a 10% reduction in Pentagon spending. That’s no longer enough. We need a 50% cut – we need a military dedicated to genuine national defense, not imperial dominance. Surely we can protect America for $500 billion a year rather than the $1 trillion we’re spending now.

Changing the narrative is crucial. Why do we need 750+ bases overseas? Why expand our nuclear arsenal when we already have 5,000 warheads? We don’t need these things – they are the hallmarks of wasteful militarism. They escalate tensions, endanger us, and drain the nation’s wealth.

And why do we have 17 or 18 intelligence agencies? Despite all that intelligence, we still lost in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Where is the accountability? Why are no generals relieved of command for such failures? In fact, they’re more likely to fail upwards.

“All governments lie,” as I.F. Stone warned. Combine that with the truth that war’s first casualty is truth itself, and you begin to see the rot in America today. Perpetual war fuels deception and government overreach. Almost anything can be justified when the cry is, “We’re at war!” – even when the reasons for going to war are false.

Consider the Gulf of Tonkin incident – revealed later as phony – and the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War. Consider Iraq’s mythical WMDs. Consider the lies revealed in the Afghan War Papers. Consider the weasel words of generals like David Petraeus, forever hedging “gains” as “fragile” and “reversible.” Consider the U.S. military’s record since World War II – generally ineffective because there’s been little accountability for failure. (And yes, civilian leaders share the blame.)

The military-industrial complex grows ever more powerful, sidelining the American people while democracy withers.

Something is rotten in the States of America.

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While Fire Victims Struggle to Rebuild, Gavin Newsom Sends Resources to Puerto Rico

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced Thursday that he is sending emergency resources and personnel to Puerto Rico, over 3,000 miles away, ahead of a tropical storm — even though tens of thousands of Californians are still displaced by fires.

Newsom has claimed, in his defense, that he did, in fact, pre-deploy resources to the fire-stricken areas of the state in January — but that is not entirely true. Although he deployed some resources ahead of the extreme wind event in Southern California, both state and local authorities failed to pre-deploy firefighting resources in the Pacific Palisades, including on state land where there had been a fire just a few days before.

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EU Covid grants in Poland spent on yachts, luxury cars and swinger club – Politico

Poland has suspended the distribution of EU funds intended for post-Covid pandemic recovery in the hospitality, tourism, and culture sectors, following controversy over alleged misuse of the money. Some of the funds were spent on boats and luxury furniture, as well as a grant registered to the address of a swingers’ club, Politico reported.

The scandal erupted after the Polish authorities published interactive online maps displaying grant recipients in a bid to showcase openness of the recovery program. The data, however, revealed that the funds bankrolled yachts, a pizzeria that added tanning beds, and, in one widely shared case, a business in southern Poland registered at the same address as a sex club.

Finance Minister Katarzyna Pelczynska-Nalecz said on Tuesday that no additional funds would be released until each of the roughly 2,400 grants, totaling around 1.2 billion zlotys (€282.3 million/$330 million), undergoes individual scrutiny.

The HoReCa scheme, part of Poland’s long-delayed EU Covid recovery plan, aimed to support small tourism and hospitality businesses hit by pandemic restrictions. Poland was eligible for nearly €60 billion from the EU’s Recovery Fund, but access was blocked under the previous government due to a rule-of-law dispute. The new government unlocked the funds after the 2023 election by addressing EU concerns.

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UK Government Used ‘Accountancy Trick’ To Hide 90% of Cost of Giving Away Strategic Islands: Report

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer stands accused of using an “accountancy trick” to mislead the public over the true cost of giving away British Islands hosting a strategic U.S. airbase in the Pacific Ocean.

The true cost of giving away a chain of strategic islands in the Pacific is £35 billion ($46bn), not £3.4 ($4.5bn) as the government attempted to claim, a report states. The Prime Minister has been accused of misleading Parliament over the figures.

The British Indian Ocean Territory was given away by the British government to Mauritius, a country with questionable links to the Islands  but which nevertheless successful in using the International Court of Justice and the United Nations to award itself a claim, earlier this year. This plan, pushed through by international law extremist Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in spite of widely-discussed concerns about the wisdom of handing over such a strategic asset to an African state increasingly drifting towards China’s orbit, and the exorbitant cost.

Under the terms of the deal, the UK handed over the land under the Diego Garcia airbase, a joint UK-U.S. facility which is crucial for military reach across the Middle East and Asia as well as intelligence interception, and will lease it back for 99 years. Starmer’s government defended this expense on the grounds that it was good value for money and not even nearly as expensive as claimed. While the government said the deal would cost £3.4 billion, the Conservative opposition claimed it was more like £30 billion.

Now it is claimed an “accountancy trick” to hide the cash figure of giving away British islands from the public has been revealed. The Daily Telegraph states documents gained from civil service actuaries show the Starmer government knew the true cost of the deal all along but this was reduced from £34.7 billion using inflation estimates and a “controversial accounting method sometimes used for long-term projects”, the Social Time Preference Rate.

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California City Approves $100,000 Fund to Help Migrants Pay Rent

The Santa Ana city council approved a new $100,000 fund of taxpayer dollars to pay the rent of illegal migrants who are “affected by immigration enforcement.”

Not only did the city approve the program, they also gave it an official title in Spanish, not English. The council passed what it is calling the “Santa Ana Ayuda Sin Frontera” program (“Help Without Borders”).

The program will allow migrants to apply for funds for overdue rent, utility bills, and other household expenses, according to a press release on the city website.

“Our community stands strongest when we support one another, especially in times of uncertainty,” Mayor Valerie Amezcua said in the release. “This assistance program reflects the Santa Ana City Council’s commitment to protecting the dignity and stability of each resident impacted by the recent, unjust immigration enforcement actions.”

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The USAID Of Broadcasting: PBS Parent Company Funnels Tax Dollars To Cushy Lobbying Firm

When DOGE dug into the financial tentacles of USAID, it found troubling examples of overspending and funding of unchecked, woke programs outside the agency’s mission. At the now defunded Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) a similar Gordian knot of spending patterns has diverted millions of dollars from broadcasting content to the public, enriched elite nonprofit leaders, and wedged public television (PBS) and public radio (NPR) into producing left-leaning content.

With the passing of the Big Beautiful Bill, Congress gave CPB no funding at all — a shock for CPB, which was expecting $1.07 billion for 2026 and 2027.

As The Federalist previously reported, CPB is a nonprofit created by Congress in 1967 to administer funding for public radio and television stations. It has many highly paid employees in Washington, D.C., and an elderly CEO, Patricia Harrison, 86, who received $524,000 in compensation in 2022, according to the CPB’s most recently available 990 tax exempt form.

CPB announced on Aug. 1 that it will both “wind-down” operations and advocate for Congress to restore funding. The defunding will be felt by the many nonprofits that received money from CPB or that exist because of public broadcasting. One of them is the Association of Public Television Stations (APTS).

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The Debt And Deficit Problem Isn’t What You Think

In recent months, much debate has been about rising debt and increasing deficit levels in the U.S. For example, here is a recent headline from CNBC…

The article’s author suggests that U.S. federal deficits are ballooning, with spending surging due to the combined impact of tax cuts, expansive stimulus, and entitlement expenditures. Of course, with institutions like Yale, Wharton, and the CBO warning that this trend has pushed interest costs to new heights, now exceeding defense outlays, concerns about domestic solvency are rising. Even prominent figures in the media, from Larry Summers to Ray Dalio, argue that drastic action is urgently needed, otherwise another “financial crisis” is imminent.

The problem with Larry Summers’, Ray Dalio’s, and many others’ warnings of impending financial doom is that they have been warning of that very problem for decades. Such was the point of our previous discussion:

“It doesn’t take much to understand that Ray Dalio, a hedge fund titan, is like every other human being and is prone to error. I will not dismiss Dalio entirely, as his track record of managing money at Bridgewater is nothing to be scoffed at. However, his track record is far less enviable regarding debt crisis predictions. Here is a brief timeline.”

  • March 2015 – Hedge Funder Dalio Thinks the Fed Can Repeat 1937 All Over Again
  • January 2016 – The 75-Year Debt Supercycle Is Coming To An End
  • September 2018 – Ray Dalio Says The Economy Looks Like 1937 And A Downturn Is Coming In About Two Years
  • January 2019 – Ray Dalio Sees Significant Risk Of A US Recession
  • October 2022 – Dalio Warns Of Perfect Storm For The Economy (That was also the stock market low.)
  • September 2023 – Dalio Says The US Is Going To Have A Debt Crisis

But you can even go further back than these when he wrote about some of his biggest mistakes about a decade ago:

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New Report Reveals Truth About Rep. Jasmine Crocket, She’s a ‘Diva’ Who Brutalizes Her Staff

Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a rising Democratic voice known for her attacks on Donald Trump, is facing allegations from former staffers that she mistreats employees, avoids work, and demands VIP treatment at taxpayer expense.

Key Facts:

  • Multiple former aides told the New York Post that Crockett rarely shows up to her D.C. office and berates staff.
  • Allegations include demanding luxury rental cars like Escalades, requiring staff to open doors for her, and refusing to use personal vehicles for official duties.
  • Sources say she focuses on media appearances rather than district issues.
  • Past incidents include skipping ahead of disabled passengers in an airport line and dismissing concerns from gay staffers over derogatory language.
  • Staff turnover is reportedly high due to what sources describe as a toxic work environment.

The Rest of The Story:

Crockett, elected to represent Texas in 2023, has gained national attention for her fiery committee speeches and frequent televised criticism of Trump, calling him “a piece of s***” and an “enemy to the United States.” While this has boosted her profile online, former staffers paint a different picture of her off-camera conduct.

One ex-aide told the Post she often “lays around her apartment” instead of working from the Capitol, showing little interest in staff or local matters. Another source described her as “more focused on, ‘Get me on The View,’” than on serving constituents.

Staff say Crockett operates from a luxury office building rather than her official office, instructs aides to rent high-end SUVs for short trips, and insists on door service. These demands, they say, divert attention and resources from policy work.

The Post report also detailed past controversies, such as Crockett cutting in front of wheelchair-bound passengers to board a flight and brushing off staff complaints over her use of the term “butch” toward GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. One aide recalled her telling critics, “You’re stupid if you think so.”

Multiple former employees say the office culture leaves Black female staffers feeling disempowered, with confrontations sometimes ending in tears. In one instance, Crockett reportedly told a staffer, “Do you really want to be here? And if not, you can leave!”

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