Tag: taxes

Communist Mamdani’s Latest Redistribution Scheme: Tax On All New York Homes Over $1 Million Bought With Cash

Two days ago crestfallen commie mayor Zohran Mamdani abandoned his desperate plan to aggressively hike property taxes (even more) on New Yorkers following unprecedented pushback (but not before earning the former capitalist mecca a credit rating downgrade warning from most rating agencies). However, since communists who are not redistributing wealth (eventually under the barrel of a gun) are useless communists, it only took Mamdani administration 48 hours before pitching his latest idea how to take: according to Bloomberg, New York lawmakers are planning a new tax on New York City homes purchased in cash for at least $1 million.  The lawmakers are also considering expanding the tax to all-cash purchases over $1 million in New York, including those in the suburbs and upstate.

The New York City levy alone is expected to raise $160 million to help fill the city’s budget hole. The proposed tax would be levied at 1% of the purchase price and would be paid by the buyer, according to the people. 

A spokesperson for Governor Kathy Hochul said she “announced a general agreement with the State Legislature on many of the major elements of the FY 2027 Budget. The final budget bills will provide additional details.”

All-cash transactions have risen in New York as soaring mortgage costs have deterred financing, and instead buyers opt to be hit with capital gains taxes and liquidated other securities to fund real estate purchases. They are also an attractive option for sellers in New York City’s ultra-competitive real estate market as it’s faster than dealing with the lengthy mortgage approval process, and less likely to fall through.

Such purchases made up more than 60% of the nearly 18,000 transactions in New York City in the first six months of 2025, according to data compiled by the Center for New York City Neighborhoods. The report found that in Manhattan, nine out of 10 purchases over $3 million were done in all-cash transactions between January and June of 2025.

New York Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said the tax would be included in the final budget as “part of the plan to help close the city’s deficit.” State Senator James Skoufis, who sits on the chamber’s finance committee, also said in an interview the new levy was discussed.

Mamdani unveiled his $124.7 billion budget plan for the fiscal year that starts on July 1 that includes more assistance from Albany. He is also counting on funds from a proposed tax on second homes worth more than $5 million that state and city lawmakers are still figuring out how to implement. Hochul said the state will send $4 billion in new aid to the city to help close the budget hole.

“New Yorkers are already the most heavily taxed residents in the country, and the city’s budget issues will not be solved by more taxes,” said James Whelan, president of the Real Estate Board of New York. He said that the new proposal would further burden home buyers and sellers in the city and threaten existing revenue. 

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Vance demands all 50 states crack down on Medicaid fraud

Vice President JD Vance has warned that the government may withhold federal Medicaid funds from states that fail to crack down on Medicaid fraud. This comes as the Trump administration launches a crackdown on suspected fraud in state programs and defers $1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursements from California.

The initiative came as people across the U.S. have expressed concern about increasing health costs and barriers to access, some of which come from the federal government’s own acts.

“We’re announcing that the federal government is deferring $1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursements from the state of California. And the simple reason is because the state of California has not taken fraud very seriously. We want California to get serious about this fraud,” said Vance at news conference.

The vice president was joined by Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz and other officials, who all outlined new requirements for Medicaid programs in all 50 states, including showing aggressive prosecution of fraud or risk losing government funding for their anti-fraud units.

Dr. Oz referenced data from the White House Fraud Task Force on rapid growth in California’s hospice and home health sectors and described a “stunning level of suspected Medicaid and hospice fraud” uncovered in California, such as a 1,500% increase in hospice claims.

“In February, we had the largest anti-fraud announcement from CMS. Today’s effort is larger. It’s much larger, and there’s a reason for that. Half of the fraud, we believe, in the federal government, could be coming out of health care services,” said Oz.

Vance also singled out Hawaii and New York as potential targets for Medicaid fraud as they have not taken the fraud issue seriously.

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The great affordability hoax

Many politicians are so superficial that they’re inclined to latch on to a popular buzzword — in droves — to sustain their power over the masses.  “Affordability” is now filling that need.  Ignorance of economic reality is sustaining this process.

There are two significant concepts that pull the rug out from under this pathetic hoax: consumer sovereignty and the principle of substitution.  Consumer sovereignty simply means that free people get to choose how they spend their money.  Necessities such as food and shelter tend to dominate these choices, but Americans, being the beneficiaries of the prosperity that comes with freedom, have room for other items in their budgets.  The principle of substitution means that a consumer gets to choose from a multiplicity of similarly priced options — that they will ultimately spend their money on.

All of this freedom, for the political world, is the problem.  People still get to live their own lives.  How anti-progressive can this be?

Harping on “affordability” is intended to lead to adopting the long worn out means for suppressing market forces known as “price controls.”  The folly of this form of demagoguery was showcased in Studs Terkel’s The Good War.  First, he provides a statement from John Kenneth Galbraith, breathlessly extolling the virtues of government-imposed price controls during the days of rationing caused by a profound national emergency.  After all, the American people still managed to survive during such trying times.

Immediately after Galbraith’s presentation, Terkel posted a statement from the humble owner of a neighborhood grocery store.  In it, he first tells of what happened to a can of pork and beans: Yes, the price of the can didn’t change.  But in the can was less pork and fewer beans, and a lot more water.  Also, since his store was closed on Sunday, black marketeers took it over to sell otherwise rationed meat.  And the line of eager customers stretched around the block.  Talk about consumer sovereignty.

To further deceive the public about affordability, the “news” media make no distinction between true inflation due to government carelessly increasing the money supply and price increases caused by shortages resulting from various causes.  The bottleneck at the Strait of Hormuz has nothing to do with public debt and deficit spending.  And yes, the bump up in petroleum has increased the cost of all forms of transportation, including produce and many other commodities being delivered to retail stores.

Now back to my original point: Leftists are confined to a pre-determined position.  This can easily be described as conformity.  Rather than be confined by the “arbitrary” dictates of reality, leftists close ranks and join in with mutual agreement.  They have become carbon copies of one another.  Their policy positions are pretty much pre-packaged — so they all seem to agree with one another on everything.  The package includes opposition to white supremacy, corporate greed, and global warming, while strenuously extolling the benefits of “affordability.”

Instead of offering commonsense solutions to obvious problems, they keep pushing free stuff and victimhood.  And guess what: It’s not working.  Beyond the devoted automatons, sentient beings are abandoning the deranged demagoguery of what used to be a sort of credible major party: the Democrats.

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Project ‘PROVIDENT’: NIAID Launched $70 Million Pandemic Program Targeting Hantaviruses Before Outbreak

A massive National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) pandemic-preparedness program focused in part on hantaviruses was already actively underway—and had just achieved unprecedented structural and vaccine-platform mapping of Andes hantavirus—before the highly publicized 2026 international Andes hantavirus outbreak ordeal emerged.

The federally funded initiative, called PROVIDENT (“Prepositioning Optimized Strategies for Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics against Diverse Emerging Infectious Threats”), officially began in September 2024 and remains active through June 2029, according to NIH RePORTER documents.

The project is run by Dr. Kartik Chandran, a professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine’s Department of Microbiology & Immunology.

Importantly, the project is not a small short-term grant.

Albert Einstein College of Medicine announced in September 2024 that the consortium received a:

“five-year, $14 million per year grant”

That places the total projected funding for the program at roughly $70 million over its active lifespan.

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“Completely Insane”: Federal Govt Withholds $1.3BN In Medicaid Reimbursements To California, Citing Fraud

The Trump administration will withhold $1.3 billion in Medicaid payments to California due to potentially fraudulent billing patterns, Vice President JD Vance announced on May 13.

The action comes among a host of others taken recently to crack down on fraudulent activity in Medicare and Medicaid.

“We want to protect these programs for the kids and the families who need them. We want to ensure that the American taxpayer isn’t getting fleeced,” Vance told reporters.

Analysis of Medicaid billing patterns in California aroused suspicion, according to Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

“We’ve discovered $630 million in billing from folks who are egregiously the top 5 percent of outliers in billing. These numbers are so big you can’t imagine anyone billing for these [amounts],” Oz told reporters.

California itself is an outlier among states, Oz said.

“In California, the growth of spending on personal care services is twice the rate of the average of the rest of the country,” Oz said.

“We estimate there’s $500 million that could be a risk of being taken from federal taxpayers.”

Fewer than 20 of 800 Medicare providers recently removed from the program due to suspicious billing activity have called to complain, Oz said, offering that as evidence that they likely were not legitimate providers.

VP Vance responded with a double take after hearing that wild stat from Dr. Oz:

“You’re saying that we kicked off 800 fraudulent healthcare providers off of the Medicare system and not a single one of them called the government and said, ‘hey, you made a mistake?'”

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Vancouver spends $182K on ‘gender safety’ bureaucracy for FIFA World Cup

The City of Vancouver is preparing to spend more than $182,000 on so-called “gender safety” and “vulnerable resident initiatives” tied to the 2026 FIFA World Cup, according to a newly posted contracting notice.

Under a Notice of Intent to Contract posted to the procurement site MERX, the city says it plans to award multiple vendors funding for “additional community organizations event time capacity” connected to the city’s “Host City Human Rights Action Plan.”

The contract runs from May 26 to July 19, 2026, with a listed value of $182,184.

According to the notice, the money is specifically earmarked to “implement gender safety, accessibility and vulnerable resident initiatives” during the World Cup festivities.

The timing is raising eyebrows, especially in a city that has spent years aggressively promoting gender ideology policies while downplaying public concerns about women’s spaces, public disorder, and safety issues tied to addiction and homelessness.

Now, with the eyes of the world arriving for the FIFA tournament, city hall suddenly appears eager to showcase its commitment to “gender safety” — and is paying outside organizations to help manage the optics.

The procurement notice does not clearly define what “gender safety” initiatives will involve, which organizations are expected to receive funding, or how success will be measured.

Nor does it explain why existing city staff and public safety infrastructure are insufficient to handle these responsibilities during a six-week international sporting event.

The spending falls under Vancouver’s broader Human Rights Action Plan tied to its role as a FIFA host city, a framework that has increasingly blended public event management with activist-driven social programming.

Why does a soccer tournament now require taxpayer-funded “gender safety” consultants and advocacy programming, particularly at a time when Vancouver residents continue to grapple with rising living costs, public safety concerns, drug crises, and strained city services.

The original procurement notice can be viewed on MERX procurement listing.

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Watching Porn on California’s Death Row

Under Governor Gavin Newsom, California has sought to transform its massive prison system into a Nordic-style rehabilitation program. Newsom has placed a moratorium on all executions, transferred condemned prisoners to facilities across the state, dismantled San Quentin State Prison’s death row, and turned the notorious prison into a therapeutic center, with art, classrooms, a café, and podcast studios.

As part of this transformation, the Newsom administration approved a $189 million contract to provide new digital tablets—generic, flat-screen devices in a plastic shell—to every inmate in the state prison system, at “no cost” to offenders. The administration heralded the effort to replace inmates’ old tablets—which were piloted in 2018 and given to nearly all prisoners by 2023—as a step toward “digital equity” for “justice impacted” individuals, who could, in theory, use the devices to contact their families, consume “educational” content, and “learn new technology.”

In reality, taxpayer-funded tablets have also been used for more lurid endeavors. In this exclusive City Journal investigation, we contacted dozens of death-row inmates, who told us that prisoners in the state system use such devices to watch pornography and have explicit sexual conversations. Some prisoners, according to a former high-ranking California corrections official, use their tablets to groom minors. Though the state has claimed to regulate explicit content, the inmates told us that users can easily evade detection.

When reached for comment, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said the tablets were “tightly controlled education tools” that provided inmates with “access to the Bible, education, and reentry resources that actually reduce crime.”

But inmates told us a different story. For some, the devices have become personal sex machines. In the words of one inmate, California’s death row is populated with desperately “horny” criminals who see the tablets as a way to satisfy their basest fantasies and desires—all thanks to the California taxpayer.

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US war in Iran has cost $36.9 billion so far: Pentagon

The US’ war in Iran has cost US$29 billion (S$36.9 billion) so far, a senior Pentagon official said on May 12, an increase of US$4 billion from an estimate provided in late April.

With just six months before the mid-term elections, in which US President Donald Trump’s Republicans may face an uphill battle to keep their House majority, Democrats are riding high in public opinion polls as they attempt to link the war to cost-of-living issues.

On April 29, the Pentagon said the war at that point had cost US$25 billion.

Mr Jules Hurst, who is performing the duties of the comptroller, told lawmakers on May 12 that the new cost included updated repair and replacement of equipment and operational costs.

“The joint staff team and the comptroller team are constantly looking at that estimate,” he said.

He was speaking alongside Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine.

It is unclear how the Pentagon arrived at the US$29 billion figure. A source told Reuters in March that the Trump administration estimated that the first six days of the war had cost at least US$11.3 billion. REUTERS

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Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ missile defense system estimated to cost $1.2 trillion over 20 years: CBO

President Donald Trump’s proposed missile defense system dubbed the “Golden Dome” is estimated to cost $1.2 trillion over two decades, according to a new analysis by the Congressional Budget Office. 

The nonpartisan office described the analysis as one that provides “one illustrative approach rather than an estimate of a specific administration proposal,” according to the Associated Press. 

Trump had ordered the system in an executive order during his first week of his second presidency, In a series of posts on X, the Department of War described it as a “layered, integrated shield” that will defend the U.S. against ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles, advanced cruise missiles and next-generation aerial attacks.

“From a NORAD and NORTHCOM perspective, the requirement is clear. To defend North America and win tomorrow’s fight, we must maintain our war-fighting advantages and operate beyond stove-piped systems operating at human speed. Golden Dome is forging the integrated, automated battle management network needed to see every threat, make decisions in milliseconds, and keep America safe,” said Maj. Gen. Mark Piper, deputy director of operations at NORAD.

The CBO report notes that its estimate lacks many details from the Department of War about what and how many systems would be deployed. This makes it impossible to estimate the long-term cost of the Golden Dome system, the report explains. 

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Tulsi Gabbard Launches Investigation on 120 US-Funded Biolabs – Dozens Located in Ukraine

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has launched an investigation of more than 120 biological laboratories overseas that have received U.S. tax dollars for decades.

Gabbard told the New York Post on Monday that her team is going to “identify where these labs are, what pathogens they contain and what ‘research’ is being conducted to end dangerous gain-of-function research that threatens the health and wellbeing of the American people and the world.”

“The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the catastrophic global impact research on dangerous pathogens in biolabs can have,” Gabbard said. “Yet despite these obvious dangers, politicians, so-called health professionals, like Dr. Fauci, and entities within the Biden administration’s national security team lied to the American people about the existence of these US-funded and supported biolabs and threatened those who attempted to expose the truth.”

In May of 2024, the National Institute of Health Principal Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak admitted to Congress that tax dollars funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, making viruses 10,000 times more infectious.

According to officials within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the laboratories under review are spread across more than 30 countries.

Many reportedly received support through a Pentagon program which was originally established after the Cold War to secure or dismantle weapons-related materials and prevent the spread of biological and chemical threats.

The report said that more than 40 of the facilities being reviewed are located in Ukraine. Intelligence officials cited concerns that laboratories in active conflict zones could face risks of compromise or disruption due to the war in the country.

Arguments have been made that lax oversight of research funding often flowing through federal agencies to grantees and subawardees creates a quagmire that prevents Americans from knowing whether potentially dangerous experiments are being conducted on their dime without their consent.

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