Tag: taxes

Stockpiling Begins: Neros Awarded $100 Million Pentagon Contract For Kamikaze Drones

US defense company Neros Technologies, which focuses on Category 1 one-way attack drones, was awarded a $100 million contract under the Department of War’s Drone Dominance Program for 14,000 drones and explosive payloads.

The award, under the Drone Dominance Program’s Gauntlet II, prioritizes Archer AI, the Category 1 FPV attack drone. Its automated kill chain lets the FPV fly to an operator-selected target, a huge advantage in battle zones where electronic warfare jammers, such as those targeting radio frequencies and GPS signals, dominate.

Neros CEO Soren Monroe-Anderson stated:

“We’ve developed our Archer FPV system to be highly modular and easily adapted to end user needs. Pairing real warfighter feedback with our deep engineering talent is the reason Neros is the only manufacturer to have placed in the top three across two fundamentally different mission sets, deep strike and close quarters battle, with the same drone platform.

Ultimately, Drone Dominance is a test of two things: can competitors build high-performance drones? And can they produce them in massive quantities with short notice? We’re the only manufacturer to receive multiple bonus awards for Gauntlet I based on our delivery speed. We’re ready to fulfill this next batch of 14,000 drones, and more whenever the Department of War signals need for them.”

The announcement comes after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth revealed that Autonomous Warfare Command, dubbed “AutoWarCom,” will become operational in the fall of next year and will accelerate the DoW’s purchases across all drone categories. 

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Taxpayer-Funded Cat Pipeline Exposes Animal Dealer That Supplied Animals for COVID and Virus Experiments at Cornell and Colorado State

A little-known lab animal dealer has been quietly feeding cats into taxpayer-funded virus experiments at major universities, according to records obtained by the watchdog White Coat Waste Project.

White Coat Waste’s latest investigation identifies Clinvet as a Class B dealer and research facility with ties to Marshall BioResources, one of the country’s largest commercial breeders of dogs and cats for laboratories.

Shipping and donation records show Clinvet has supplied cats that ended up in COVID and feline immunodeficiency virus studies paid for by the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

At Cornell University, Clinvet donated cats for experiments in which researchers infected healthy animals with COVID, isolated them, and monitored them as they became sick.

Some cats used as controls were killed without ever being infected.

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RTX’s Raytheon Awarded $24.4B Missile Contract as Trump Finally Admits Stockpiles “A Little Bit Lower”

The Pentagon on Thursday announced a massive new defense contract at a moment many Congressional members are concerned over America’s dwindling arsenal of both defensive and offensive missiles and weapons systems.

Raytheon, an RTX unit, has been awarded a $24.4 billion contract for the accelerated production of SM-6 missiles, amid the scramble to replace them in the wake of Trump’s Operation Epic Fury bombing campaign of Iran.

A Pentagon statement described the missiles as “critical anti-air and anti-surface warfare munition” and previewed that “this five-year agreement, with two additional option years, will drive faster production.”

The announcement further described that the deal “provides the defense industry with the long-term predictability needed to expand workforce capacity and secure critical supply chains.”

Additionally, “The Navy said the multiyear contract is meant to provide a steady and reliable supply of the Standard Missile-6 interceptors, which can carry out both offensive strikes and missile defense missions.”

President Trump has stretching back over weeks and months consistently denied that the Pentagon is suffering a weapons shortage due to the Iran war. Instead, he has blamed any shortfall or stockpile concerns on his predecessor Biden and his Ukraine war policies.

But certainly the Pentagon is acting like there’s a problem, given it is quickly handing out these large contracts in order to establish “faster production” and greater “long-term predictability”. This after a mid-July report from the Pentagon’s inspector general did point to a serious and growing problem.

Trump had slammed the report as “mostly fake news” at the time; however, just this week he finally did acknowledge that some munitions “are a little bit lower” in the wake of the seven-month long Iran conflict. Trump’s new remark this week is as follows:

“Some forms of ammunition are a little bit lower than other forms,” the president said in an interview with TIME magazine published Thursday, adding: “We’re stocking up at levels we’ve never done before.“

Some critics among MAGA have underscored that the munitions crisis reveals an abandonment of ‘America First’ policy, also given the immense amounts of interceptors expected on Israel and Gulf allies of late.

Ultimately the only winners in all of this are Israel and the major defense contractors, who will continue to see huge returns with the help of the US taxpayer.

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Trump Says Inflation Will Pay Off The $40 Trillion Debt “Very Rapidly”

President Trump thinks ‘certain levels’ of inflation could take care of the $40 trillion national debt. 

“You know, inflation. Certain levels of inflation will also pay off that debt very rapidly. Very rapidly,” he told TIME in an interview published Thursday, after the outlet pointed out has grown by about $11 trillion over his five years in office. In response, Trump first blamed Joe Biden, then the Fed, then hinted at a plan he wouldn’t share.

“I know I’m the best in the world,” Trump said. “The best – I don’t want to tell you what those means are, but you can pay off the debt through other means. But the one thing that you can do is pay it off through growth, and we’ve never had growth like this.”

Later he circled back, saying “the growth is going to pay off the debt” and that the Fed’s hikes were “hurting our country more than inflation is hurting our country.”

He didn’t say what level of inflation he had in mind, or whether he wants the Fed to tolerate more of it. Earlier in the same interview, though, he blamed Biden for “the biggest inflation in history” and said he “inherited the greatest inflation in history,” adding that “the only thing I have to get down now is the gas.”

Headline CPI rose 3.4% in the 12 months through August, with core at 2.4%, according to the BLS. On Sept. 16 the Fed raised rates for the first time since July 2023 – a unanimous quarter-point hike to 3.75%-4% that included Trump’s own pick for chair, Kevin Warsh – and penciled in another before year-end. Trump told TIME he “probably would have voted against the board” if he were Warsh, and has called for rates of 1% “or less.”

On Thursday, the day TIME published the interview, the 10-year Treasury yield touched 5.34%, its highest since 2002. It closed at 5.24%.

He’s Floated This Before

None of this is new for the self-described “king of debt.” In May 2016 he told CNBC the US could buy back its own bonds at a discount if rates went up. That was widely read as a default threat, so a few days later he went on CNN to walk it back. “You never have to default because you print the money, I hate to tell you, OK?” he said.

A month before that, he told the Washington Post he could wipe out what was then a $19 trillion debt “over a period of eight years” – a debt that has since more than doubled.

Buybacks are back, too. After the debt crossed $40 trillion and long-dated yields kept climbing, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tripled the cap on the first expanded buyback to $6 billion. As we noted at the time, yields surged anyway, since $6 billion barely registers against more than $2 trillion in gross issuance a year.

Bessent, for his part, prefers to talk about growth. In June 2025 he told CBS’s Margaret Brennan that “everything has been alarmist” on inflation and that the US would never default. And the day after Treasury reported the $40 trillion milestone, he went on CNBC to say there was “nothing magic” about the number and “we can grow our way out of that.”

The Part He Left Out

Last year we ran a piece arguing Bessent was effectively putting the national debt on an adjustable-rate mortgage by leaning on floating-rate financing, which also projected the debt would top $40 trillion by the end of fiscal 2026 – it got there in mid-August, about six weeks ahead of schedule.

Back in April 2025, Bloomberg’s Simon White made the case that higher inflation and a weaker dollar – where US policy seemed to be headed – were consistent with a falling debt burden. But he warned that unlike Britain’s post-WWII “beautiful deleveraging,” erratic policymaking could wreck trust in the dollar system, spark capital flight and end up adding to the debt.

Nick Giambruno spelled out the mechanics in July: financial repression, where the government keeps interest rates below inflation and the difference quietly moves wealth from savers to the Treasury. With 9% inflation and 4% rates, he noted, that’s a 5% transfer every year, and it compounds.

It has worked before. A 2011 BIS paper estimated negative real rates wiped out debt worth 2-3% of GDP a year in the US and UK between the late 1940s and the 1970s. But that was under Bretton Woods, with interest-rate caps, captive domestic buyers and capital controls – and the paper found financial repression works best “when accompanied by a steady dose of inflation.”

The catch is that it only works if the Treasury can borrow below the inflation rate. Right now it can’t: the 10-year yields nearly two points more than headline CPI, interest on the debt already runs over $1 trillion a year, and everything that matures gets rolled at today’s rates.

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President Trump Announces Surprise Nearly $100 Medicare Payments for More Than 20 Million Seniors — Money Coming Within Days from Democrat “Slush Fund” That Sat Unused for Years

President Donald Trump dropped a late-night bombshell Friday for America’s seniors, announcing that his administration will immediately begin sending “checks” of nearly $100 to more than 20 million Medicare beneficiaries to help cover their Part B premiums.

The payments are expected to begin arriving within days.

Trump also separated this payment from another round of refunds already in motion. As The Gateway Pundit reported last month, the administration is sending $500 “Working Families Obamacare Refund” checks to nearly one million Americans in 30 states who were overcharged on Affordable Care Act plans, overcharges the Biden team studied and then kept. Those checks were also scheduled to start going out in October.

Trump closed the post by reminding voters of the larger promise still on the table: the $5,000 “Trump Dividend” for U.S. citizens if Republicans hold Congress in the November midterms.

According to a White House fact sheet released the same night, the one-time payments are $90 per person and will go to more than 20 million Part B enrollees. Most eligible seniors will see a direct deposit in early October. Those without direct deposit will get a paper check mailed to the address on file with Medicare, also in early October.

The money is coming out of the Medicare Improvement Fund, created in 2008 and stocked with $2 billion by Congress for fee-for-service improvements. No administration had ever used it.

The White House says Trump is the first president to tap the fund to put cash directly back in seniors’ pockets instead of leaving it for special interests.

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Abdul El-Sayed Billed County Taxpayers $9,000 a Month in ‘Consulting’ Fees While Running for Senate

Michigan’s left-wing Democratic Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed billed county taxpayers $ 9,000 per month in consulting fees while running for Senate, according to public records obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The Wayne County Department of Health, Human and Veterans Services approved a contract to hire El-Sayed for “consulting services” on April 23, 2025, six days after El-Sayed announced he was running for Senate.

El-Sayed had previously served as director of the county health services department for two years, a post he resigned from on April 3, 2025.

The contract, which extended through the end of the calendar year, stipulated that El-Sayed would be paid at a monthly rate of $9,000 for 30 hours of work—which amounts to around $ 300 per hour. Wayne County is run by county executive Warren Evans, a Democrat.

Under the agreement, El-Sayed was approved to receive up to $72,000 for eight months of consulting work, in which he would “provide strategic support to the County in efforts to ensure smooth and effective leadership transition and aligning operational priorities with the County’s broader vision for public health and human services.”

The payments were routed through “AME Higher LLC,” an entity created by El-Sayed as a pass-through for his consulting and speaking fees, according to the contract.

The news comes as El-Sayed has faced questions over his use of a tax loophole to avoid payroll and income taxes on payments he received through AME Higher LLC. “While Abdul was improving services and making government more efficient for Michigan taxpayers, Mike Rogers was spinning through the revolving door, cashing checks from the same industries he used to regulate in Congress. Mike Rogers repeatedly voted to increase his own salary in Congress before retiring to his Florida mansion as a multimillionaire,” El-Sayed spokeswoman Roxie Richner told the Free Beacon.

El-Sayed’s latest financial disclosure, which covers all of 2025 and the first seven months of 2026, shows that he paid himself a “salary” of $64,000 and took an additional $103,000 as a “member draw” from AME Higher. This is a common strategy used to avoid payroll taxes, because “member draws” from S corporations are not taxed as regular income, accountants told the Free Beacon.

The Wayne County contract wasn’t El-Sayed’s only consulting gig during his senatorial campaign. He has also collected over $82,000 in consulting fees from One Health Partners, a Chicago-area nonprofit health care company that former employees called a “scam.” It focuses on buying medical practices and “exploiting Medicare” to increase revenue, the Free Beacon reported. The company is run by one of El-Sayed’s largest campaign donors, Ali Karim, who was sanctioned by Wisconsin regulators for defrauding an investor and has been accused of fraudulent business practices in multiple lawsuits.

El-Sayed served as director of the Wayne County health department for two years beginning in March 2023. He has touted his work for the Department of Health, Human and Veterans Services on the campaign trail, claiming he “led the rebuild from the studs” of the county’s troubled juvenile prison.

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San Francisco’s Frat Houses for Pedophiles

It’s Tuesday morning at Little Learners Daycare in downtown San Francisco. Teacher Wendy herds bright-eyed toddlers, amped up after playtime in the courtyard, back inside. They’re laughing and swatting at each other playfully, oblivious to the pack of pedophiles lurking nearby.

Four hundred feet away, dozens of registered sex offenders live at 111 Taylor Street. Wendy knew that the Tenderloin, where she operates her Mandarin-immersion daycare, was dangerous. It’s a hotbed for illegal drug activity and homelessness. But she didn’t realize that sex offenders live so close to her daycare—or that taxpayers fund their housing.

According to this City Journal investigation, more than 25 percent of sex offenders in San Francisco with addresses in the Megan’s Law database live in taxpayer-subsidized buildings. Many live near a park, school, or daycare, or reside in a neighborhood with a high concentration of children. They do all of this despite statewide efforts to ban concentrating pedophiles so close to children. Instead of listening to California voters, San Francisco has become a taxpayer-funded dumping ground for sex criminals.

The Taylor Street Center is one of San Francisco’s most heavily populated sex-offender residences. Located in the Tenderloin, Taylor Street houses at least 31 registered sex offenders. The taxpayer-funded California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the federal Bureau of Prisons contract the private GEO Group to run the facility.

The reentry complex can house 240 people. It hosts specialized programs for residents like “cultural diversity education,” “gender-responsive groups,” and a “weekly meditation group.” The facility sits just 400 feet from a daycare center, 1,000 feet from a fourth-to-eighth-grade school, and five blocks away from a preschool.

Any sex offender housed in the Tenderloin is bound to encounter children. Along with having a high concentration of immigrant and low-income households, the neighborhood also has the highest concentration of kids in the entire city.

You can’t just walk into the Taylor Street complex. The facility has at least one guard and multiple security doors. But residents seem to be able to come and go with relative ease.

We spoke with one man, Paul, as he walked to an appointment in the neighborhood. Paul told us that he served time for a sex-related offense, had to register as a sex offender, and now lives at the Taylor Street house. In his opinion, there’s overblown “hysteria” around sex offenders’ proximity to children.

“For me, seeing a minor is like walking in the Tenderloin late at night,” he said. “Like, ‘stay away from that person.’”

Some of Paul’s neighbors seem less scrupulous. Multiple residents at 111 Taylor Street are “in violation” of their sex-offender-registration requirements, according to the state’s public database. At least one has been accused of sexually deviant behavior during his time at the Taylor house: Kevin Adams, a 37-year-old convicted in 2014 of transmitting more than 600 images of child pornography, including some that were sadistic or masochistic in nature.

Adams was released from prison on supervised release after his conviction. While on supervised release, he conducted multiple lewd internet searches, like “Asian Teens; Teen Cum Shot; and Teen Pussy.” He also searched online for pornographic content of gymnastic videos with young girls. Despite his conduct, Adams was relocated to Taylor Street, where he continued to exhibit “increased sexual deviance related to minors”—including viewing material on social media that depicted minors in various postures, from stretching to kneeling without pants.

As of 2026, Adams was a threat to the community and had a “clear sexual preoccupation with minors,” his probation officer determined. A court revoked his release in September after he admitted to possessing pornography. Adams’s listed address on the sex-offender registry is still 111 Taylor Street.

One of Adams’s neighbors at the Taylor Street center is Michael Eugene Kincade. One night in 2008, after his family had gone to sleep, Kincade went downstairs and molested a 13-year-old girl sleeping on his couch. She cried and told him to stop. He didn’t, according to court documents. Kincade has a history of alleged sexual misconduct; in 2000, he allegedly fondled an 18-year-old in her sleep before grabbing her, forcing her face into a cushion, choking her, and raping her. He did not respond to a comment request.

Neighbors have no idea that the apartment complex on the corner of Taylor Street is crawling with sex offenders. “I would assume the city pushes them over here because it’s a lower income living area [with] subsidized housing,” Steven, a San Francisco resident for 23 years, told us. “People can come over here, get free housing, use drugs, and get food stamps, and not have any repercussions in life.”

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Los Angeles County Introduces 10.25% Sales Tax

Los Angeles County introduced a 10.25 percent sales tax on Thursday, four months after voters approved Measure ER.

The Essential Services Restoration Act (Measure ER) overwhelmingly passed in L.A. County earlier this year, raising the sales tax by a half-cent to support health care and other essential services – from 9.75 percent to 10.25 percent.

“For every $100 in taxable purchases, Measure ER adds 50 cents in tax, bringing the total to $110.25,” noted NBC News. “The increase is temporary. Measure ER allows the tax to remain in effect for five years until Oct. 1, 2031 as it is projected to generate about $1 billion annually.”

Supporters of the measure say that it will support roughly 700,000 L.A. County residents dealing with the loss of health insurance as federal funding for Medi-Cal is reduced:

Proponents say Measure ER will provide health care support for those who are losing Medi-Cal so they don’t show up to the local emergency rooms sicker with more serious illnesses.

The federal funding cut will also impact public hospitals and clinics, but if Measure ER passed, it would make up for the lost funds and save some of the public health care facilities and programs.

Critics of the measure, however, charge that it imposes an “unreasonable and unfairly harsh” sales tax in a county with an already high tax. L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger also said that residents are “stretched thin” with one of the highest metropolitan sales taxes in the nation.

“This proposed half-cent increase would push us even higher, making our county less affordable for families and less appealing for consumers to shop and businesses to operate,” Barger said.

“Moving forward, my responsibility is to ensure the revenues generated are managed with accountability and measurable results,” she also said. “Taxpayers deserve to know how these funds are being spent, whether promised outcomes are being achieved. I will be a strong advocate for rigorous oversight and fiscal responsibility every step of the way.”

The Libertarian Party of L.A. County also filed a lawsuit against the tax.

According to LA Mag, spending from the “tax revenue collected by the measure will be tracked through annual audits by the Auditor-Controller, public reporting and a nine-member Citizens’ Oversight Committee that includes the Director of the Department of Public Health and other members appointed by the Board of Supervisors.”

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Nigerian Man Accused of Running Fake Government Agency with Federal Budget

An enterprising Nigerian named Adeniyi Adeyemi is facing charges in the capital of Abuja for creating and running a fake government agency for over a year, complete with about $1 million in funding from the Nigerian federal government.

According to prosecutors, Adeyemi created an agency called the Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council (PFIPC) in 2024 and installed himself as director-general. He kept the phony agency going until he was arrested in October 2025.

Adeyemi was somehow able to secure office space for his fake agency inside the Federal Secretariat office complex in Abuja, along with a million dollars of funding. He got his hands on some presidential stationery and used it to request cooperation from other government agencies – and evidently some of his requests were taken seriously, although prosecutors have not yet indicted any other government officials for colluding with him.

Police investigators said they have traced a total of 34 bank accounts to Adeyemi, including nine of them that were opened in the name of various government agencies. According to prosecutors, Adeyemi even recruited staffers to work for his fake agency.

The ersatz Director-General of the Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council (PFIPC) also forged a realistic-looking letter of appointment from President Bola Tinubu, purportedly signed by presidential chief of staff Femi Gbajabiamila.

Gbajabiamila was the official who filed a petition to arrest Adeyemi, who faces eight counts of conspiracy, forgery, and impersonation alongside two accomplices known as “Femi” and “Anu,” who remain at large.

The Premium Times of Nigeria reported that Adeyemi appeared before the Federal High Court in Abuja for his arraignment on Wednesday “after several failed attempts to bring him before the court.”

Those previous attempts were unsuccessful “for various reasons,” including based on requests by his lawyers, his absence from court and the judge’s official engagement elsewhere. A judge swore out a bench warrant for Adeyemi’s arrest after he failed to appear for a July arraignment, and he was arrested within 12 hours, but it still took a surprisingly long time to get him into court.

Adeyemi said through his lawyers that he skipped out on his July arraignment because he “feared for his life” and had written an open letter to President Tinubu asking for protection. The Premium Times observed that he did not look particularly fearful when he finally made it to the courtroom on Wednesday, strolling cheerfully into chambers wearing a baseball cap and a white traditional robe known as a kaftan.

Adeyemi pleaded not guilty to all eight of the charges against him and was remanded to custody in the Kuje Correctional Center by the judge. He has claimed in media interviews that his PFIPC was a legitimate agency and he was working to bring foreign investment into Nigeria.

The case has become a hot topic among Nigerians, who have long complained about corruption and incompetence in their government, but are still shocked that a random con artist could create and operate a phony high-level government agency for months without being detected.

Some critics of the Tinubu government have postulated that Adeyami could only keep his scam running for so long if he was paying off legitimate government officials to evade oversight.

Adeyemi himself has claimed he paid Gbababiamila, the presidential chief of staff, a fee of 400 million Nigerian nairas (about $300,000) to help him forge his fake presidential appointment document. Adeyemi has asked Tinubu to establish an independent anti-corruption panel to investigate his case.

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INSANE: School Superintendent in Fairfax County, Virginia is Paid More Than the President of the United States

Certain people who work for the public school system in Fairfax County, Virginia are making an absolute fortune.

They have a dedicated ‘Chief Equity Officer’ who makes almost $300,000 per year, but the lion’s share goes to the school superintendent who makes a whopping $469K a year, more than the President of the United States.

The salary for the US President is a lowly $400,000 per year. President Trump continues to donate his salary to White House and renovation projects.  You can thank Trump for making DC beautiful again!

On top of all these huge salaries, the Fairfax County district is experiencing declining enrollment.

What are we even doing here?

The Daily Signal reports:

When Local Bureaucracy Pays Better Than the Oval Office: Fairfax County’s Salary Problem

Fairfax County Public Schools Chief Equity Officer Nardos King makes $288,064 this year—more than every single member of the president’s Cabinet—Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, all of them—each of whom earns $253,100 to run a federal department.

King’s job is to oversee equity initiatives for one county’s school system. Virginia’s largest public school district holds “equity” at the center of its strategic plan, and King is just one of ten district “chiefs” whose salaries clear that bar. A public records request revealed that 13 Fairfax County Public School employees earn more than the U.S. Secretary of Education.

By comparison, Virginia’s Secretary of Education, Jeffery Smith, makes $229,136. In other words, it is more lucrative to be an assistant superintendent overseeing a small region of one Virginia county than to run the Virginia Department of Education.

At the top of the heap, Michelle Reid, Fairfax schools’ superintendent, is paid $469,936 a year—nearly $70,000 more than the President of the United States makes to run the executive branch, command the armed forces, and set foreign policy for 340 million people. Reid, by contrast, runs a declining school district with about 180,000 students.

Reid is the visible peak of a payroll structure that taxpayers have been quietly bankrolling for years—one that a batch of FOIA-obtained salary records shows has ballooned well past anything resembling fiscal restraint.

Who knew you can get rich working an administrative job in local education?

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