Tag: taxes

Biden White House to Give Another $2.5 Billion to Ukraine – After a $1.25 Billion Donation on Friday!

Joe Biden’s handlers announced another $2.5 billion will be gifted to Ukraine.

Today’s multi-billion dollar donation included an additional $1.25 billion drawdown package for the Ukrainian military and a $1.22 billion Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) package.

Biden’s handlers are hoping to escalated the Russia-Ukrainian conflict before the senile Democrat leaves office.

Who’s up for World War III?

The Biden team announced the latest donation early Monday morning on the White House website.

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NYC Desk-Jockey Cop Used Questionable Overtime to Get Paid Same Amount as Joe Biden Last Year

The highest-paid employee of the New York City Police Department is facing an internal affairs probe after making over $400,000 last year then trying to file for retirement.

Lt. Quathisha Epps, who worked as an administrator, is under investigation over allegations that she fudged her overtime hours and endorsed her own time slips, per an exclusive report from the New York Post.

The staffer supposedly worked 1,627 hours of overtime beyond her usual shifts, putting her average at 74 hours per week. However, unnamed sources told the Post there were “complaints over her coming into work late, leaving early, or not showing up at all.”

Epps raked in $204,000 in overtime on top of her nearly $165,000 base salary, placing her salary near $400,000 and making her the highest-paid employee across the entire NYPD.

The police force has 36,000 officers and 19,000 civilian staffers, per official statistics.

And she made more than all of them.

She therefore made more than NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey, in whose office she worked. Her boss made a comparatively dismal $292,000.

Epps was suspended after she filed for retirement at 51 years old, a move that will affect her pension and lose her about $12,000 per year since she is leaving just short of 20 years into her time on the force.

But she will still pull in $16,000 per month.

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Meet the new generation of tax resisters refusing to pay for war

In light of the coronavirus pandemic, the IRS has taken the unusual step of extending the tax season to July 15 — a move that gives people more time to consider using the old, but often overlooked tactic of war tax resistance from the safety of their homes.

For most people tax season is a hassle — involving organizing paperwork, gathering receipts, slogging through indecipherable forms — but it’s hardly an ethical or moral quandary. However, war tax resisters see taxes through a moral lens. For them it is a time ripe with opportunities for civil disobedience, charitable giving, and sophisticated accounting in the pursuit of peace — and now public health — by refusing to pay some or all of their income tax (and even their employment taxes in some cases).

The tactic is most associated with historic peace churches, including Quakers and Mennonites, and Vietnam-era anti-war activists. As a result, the demographic associated with the tactic tends to be older, but in an age of never-ending wars, climate change and an escalating pandemic, it is now being explored by millenials and younger people.

The War Resisters League, or WRL, a secular pacifist organization founded in 1923, estimates that in fiscal year 2021, some 47 percent of the federal budget will be allocated to military spending. The budget (nearly $3.5 trillion dollars in 2021) is funded by income taxes, hence war tax resisters primary focus on refusing to pay income taxes.

There are a variety of ways to avoid income taxes, some of which are legal and others which are not. Resisters may choose to live under the taxable level ($12,400 for an individual in 2020), which is legal, while others choose to file their taxes and refuse to pay any amount owed, which is illegal. Some even choose to send the money that they would have paid in taxes to a charity or non-profit, which could be an attractive option for those wanting to redirect their money to support those risking their lives to respond to the coronavirus. A host of options between those two poles are outlined by WRL and the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, or NWTRCC, a coalition of groups and individuals founded in 1982 to support war tax resistance.

“It encourages you to question how you’re relating to other people and society,” said Rev. Jerry Maynard, a 26-year-old Independent Catholic Priest, founding pastor of The People’s Church, and NWTRCC board member, who has been practicing war tax resistance since 2013. “It makes you aware that you aren’t just a fleeting reality in this giant, expansive world, but you’re really a cog in the machine. [At the same time] you’re conscious, so you can decide whether you want to turn this way or that way or if you don’t want to turn at all.”

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Kathy Hochul signs law that fines energy companies $75 billion for ‘climate change’

New Yorkers, beware the law of unintended consequences.

From an item at the New York Post comes the news that Kathy Hochul has just signed a new bill, “modeled after a federal law that holds polluters responsible for abandoned toxic-waste sites,” which establishes the New York Climate Superfund. This endowment will be funded by energy companies that deal in gas, oil, and coal, and the money will finance “resiliency projects,” like initiatives to shore up the coast and mitigate flooding—because obviously as every progressive and mainstream media consumer “knows,” energy that comes from “fossil fuels” cause “climate change.”

As of now, a number of companies operating in New York have been hit with $75 billion in fines, which are to be paid into the fund over the span of a decade. Per the NY Post:

The oil giant Saudi Aramco of Saudi Arabia could be slapped with the largest annual assessment of any company — $640 million a year — for emitting 31,269 million tons of greenhouse gases from 2000 to 2020.

Aramco — formally known as the Saudi Arabian Oil Co. — is owned by the Saudi Royal family.

The state-owned Mexican oil firm Petróleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, emitted 9,512 tons of CO2 and could face an $193 million assessment for generating 9,512 million tons of greenhouse gases.

Russia’s Lukoil could be assessed with a $100 million yearly fee for spewing 4,912 millions of CO2.

The 38 companies identified as carbon polluters include American petro giants such as Exxon and Chevron as well as Shell and BP in the UK, Total Energies IES in France, Petrobras in Brazil, BHP in Australia, Glencore in Switzerland, Equinor in Norway and ENI in Italy.

Another greedy, communistic money grab. What the left doesn’t get as they cheer on the theft is that once it’s normalized for the “ultra rich” it’s then normalized for the “rich”… and then it’s normalized for the upper middle class… then the lower middle class, and so on—it’s a war on wealth, using Saul Alinsky’s infamous line about “rub[bing] raw the sores of discontent” as a vehicle.

Did you know that when the federal income tax started it only applied to less than 1% of Americans? Now look where we are.

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Biden Pledges More Arms To Ukraine After Christmas Strikes

President Joe Biden on Christmas Day said he has directed the Pentagon to continue its “surge of weapons deliveries to Ukraine,” following a wave of Russian air attacks on Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure early Christmas morning.

“The purpose of this outrageous attack was to cut off the Ukrainian people’s access to heat and electricity during winter and to jeopardize the safety of its grid,” Biden said in a statement.

“Let me be clear: the Ukrainian people deserve to live in peace and safety, and the United States and the international community must continue to stand with Ukraine until it triumphs over Russia’s aggression.”

The president said that the United States will “continue to work tirelessly” to back Ukraine against Russian forces in the ongoing war.

Ukraine’s air force said that the early morning attack by Russia using 78 air and ground missiles and 106 Shahed drones damaged critical equipment in Ukraine’s power grid, causing outages on Christmas Day.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy decried the deliberate attack on Christmas day as “inhumane.”

Ukraine shot down “more than 50 missiles and a significant number of drones” and was still hit as there are power outages in a number of regions as engineers are trying to restore power, Zelenskyy said.

“Russian evil will not break Ukraine and will not spoil Christmas,” Zelenskyy said.

The strikes wounded at least six people in the northeastern city of Kharkiv and killed one in the region of Dnipropetrovsk, the governors there said.

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CNN’s Abby Phillip Gets Schooled by Rep. Lawler as He Shuts Down Her Claim That Deporting Illegals Is ‘Too Expensive’

CNN host Abby Phillip seemed more concerned with the cost of deporting illegal immigrants than the devastating financial and social toll their unchecked influx is already imposing on American taxpayers.

During an exchange with Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), Phillip’s attempt to question the feasibility of deportation efforts was met with a brutal dose of reality.

Phillip smugly suggested that deporting illegal immigrants might be too expensive, quipping that Homan “doesn’t seem to have a sense of the scope—what it’s going to take, what it’s going to cost.”

But Lawler, armed with cold, hard facts, quickly set the record straight, exposing the absurdity of Phillip’s argument.

Lawler brought up the tragic human cost of sanctuary policies, recounting a horrifying incident where a criminal alien—previously deported by the Trump administration but allowed back into the country by the Biden regime—committed an unthinkable act of violence by burning a woman alive on a subway.

He slammed sanctuary states and cities like New York for enabling such heinous crimes by refusing to cooperate with federal immigration law.

And it’s not just public safety that’s at stake—it’s the livelihoods of hardworking Americans. Lawler pointed out the hypocrisy of New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who burdens her state’s citizens with a $2,500 congestion pricing fee while simultaneously funneling taxpayer dollars into free services for illegal immigrants.

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Black Money, Black Flags: How USAID Paved the Way for Syria’s Militant Takeover

As the designated terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) establishes its proto-government in Idlib, notoriously corrupt NGOs are stepping in to fill the gaps in public services, with some even defecting to work alongside the group.

The United States, which spent two decades and $5.4 trillion overthrowing governments hostile to al-Qaeda, now finds itself in a paradoxical position. Modern al-Qaeda has carved out its own quasi-state in Syria, yet remains on the U.S. list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. To characterize this as a foreign policy misstep would be reductive; the U.S. has actively facilitated HTS’s conquest of parts of Syria while maintaining its official terrorist designation.

For the past five years, HTS, an al-Qaeda offshoot, has sought to rehabilitate its image. Its leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani—a former high-ranking member of both ISIS and al-Qaeda—has led a calculated charm offensive, attempting to rebrand the group from one focused on violence and minority persecution to a more palatable local governance entity.

Since establishing HTS and a proto-government called the Syrian Salvation Government, or SSG, the group’s leader, al-Jolani has expended a good deal of energy talking about topics intended to normalize the idea of a-Qaeda’s statehood; things like ‘institutions,’ and ‘structures.’ This, coupled with al-Jolani’s sudden embrace of Syria’s diverse tapestry of minority groups, has made up the main pillars of the terror group’s rebrand. Al-Jolani himself credits the establishment of quasi-state structures for the group’s sudden success in taking over Syria.

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Tennessee Officials Will Pay $735,000 To Settle Lawsuit Over Seizure Of Legal Hemp Products

The state of Tennessee and the city of Spring Hill will jointly pay two businesses $735,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging state and local law enforcement wrongfully seized 231 pounds of legal hemp products earlier this year, according to a statement from an attorney representing the businesses.

The settlement follows the Spring Hill police department’s seizure of legal hemp products from Old School Vapor and SAK Wholesale in Columbia, Tennessee last May.

Days later, the businesses filed a federal suit seeking the return of products they said were valued at $1.35 million. The lawsuit named Spring Hill Police Chief Don Brit and 11 other officers and employees of the local district attorney’s office, including District Attorney Brent Cooper, whom—the lawsuit claims—articulated the position that legal hemp was “the same damn thing” as marijuana.

Hemp is distinguished from marijuana under federal and state law based on the concentration of a compound known as delta-9 THC. Hemp products with a concentration of less than .3 percent delta-9 THC are legal to sell, buy and consume in Tennessee—and federally. Cannabis with concentrations greater than .3 percent is classified as marijuana and is illegal in Tennessee.

The appearance of hemp flowers and marijuana are virtually indistinguishable, requiring laboratory testing to differentiate legal from illegal substances.

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Anthony Fauci loses $15-million taxpayer-funded security detail

Jon Michael Raasch at the Daily Mail just reported that the U.S. Marshals Service “quietly dropped” a two-year, fifteen-million-dollar deal to protect Anthony Fauci, all covered by the U.S. taxpayers of course.

My initial thought? It’s about darn time, and I want to be reimbursed NOW. (I myself had no idea that on top of his outrageous “highest-ever” federal pension, he was receiving private security on my dime.) Per Raasch:

Dr. Fauci, who has an estimated $11 million net worth, was constantly surrounded by U.S. Marshals at the time whether he was at home or going to TV studios to film interviews.

On second thought? I’m actually okay with providing Fauci taxpayer-funded security, but only if it’s at Gitmo, or the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana; if Fauci is getting security there, it means we’re seeing some justice for what he’s done

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Waste of the Day: Ineligible New Yorkers on Medicaid Cost $20 Billion

An estimated 3 million New Yorkers on Medicaid or the state-run Essential Plan don’t have incomes low enough to be using the programs, according to a new report from the nonprofit Empire Center for Public Policy.

Key facts: New York is projected to spend $113 billion on the two programs in 2025, but one-third of enrollees should not be eligible.

Data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that only 5.5 million New Yorkers had incomes low enough to qualify for coverage last year. But there were 8.5 million people using the state’s health insurance.

That’s especially surprising given that the Essential Plan — established under the Affordable Care Act in 2015 — allows families living at 250% above the poverty level to enroll. No other plan in the U.S. is that generous, according to the Empire Center.

The average nondisabled adult costs the programs $6,600 to cover. At that rate, the Empire Center estimates taxpayers spend $20 billion each year to cover the 3 million people who should not qualify. The expense is split between the state and federal government.

Roughly 44% of New Yorkers use either Medicaid or the Essential Plan, including 60% of those in New York City. No other state has more than 37% enrollment in similar plans, the Empire Center found.

In the last 10 years, 3.7 million new people signed up for the two plans. But the number of uninsured people in New York only dropped by 1.2 million, “a sign that most new sign-ups were people who otherwise would have been insured elsewhere,” the Empire Center said.

New York spends 28% of its budget on health insurance each year.

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