Tag: taxes

Intel might be too big to fail — Washington policymakers are already discussing potential solutions if the chipmaker cannot recover

American lawmakers have quietly been discussing options on how they could help Intel get back on its feet should its financial situation deteriorate. According to a Semafor report, sources say this possible rescue package will be above and beyond the scope of the CHIPS Act, which would award the company at least $8.5 billion before the end of 2024.

It should be noted, though, that these are just precautionary discussions of backup plans in case the company folds. After all, the company had reported a strong outlook on its third quarterly earnings call for 2024.

These discussions show how much Washington, D.C. values Intel, primarily as the U.S. competes with China for global dominance in advanced technologies. Although both AMD and Nvidia, semiconductor giants in their rights, are also American companies, Intel is the only one that both designs and manufactures chips. “Intel is the only American company that designs and manufactures leading-edge chips and is playing a critical role in enabling a globally competitive semiconductor ecosystem in the U.S.,” said an Intel spokesperson to Semafor.

If Intel were to fail, the U.S. would have to rely on TSMC and Samsung to make its most advanced chips. Even though both of these companies already have fabs in the U.S., they only provide a fraction of their total output. Furthermore, although both companies have headquarters based in allied countries, South Korea and Taiwan are at risk because of their proximity to China.

Another reason why the Capitol and the White House wouldn’t want to see Intel fail is because it’s one of America’s top exporters, with its export revenue in 2023 exceeding $40 billion. Aside from that, the company is also working with the Pentagon’s Secure Enclave program to build leading-edge chips for the military, making it crucial for the country’s economy and security. It’s also a major employer — even though it’s in the process of laying off over 16,000 people, it still has over 120,000 employees on its payroll.

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Report finds cash-strapped NASA still spending MILLIONS on grants to DEI and “environmental justice” initiatives

Despite being severely underfunded, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) still spent millions of taxpayer dollars on grants to initiatives that focus on “environmental justice” and diversity, equity and inclusion.

Records indicate that much of NASA’s $10 million grant spending went to universities to help them study environmental justice in urban areas as well as other places with high concentrations of racial minorities.

For instance, the agency approved $150,000 in funding to Columbia University so it could pair “earth observations and socioeconomic data” and enable students to do environmental justice work in New York City.

Another grant, this time worth $250,000, was paid out to Los Angeles as part of NASA’s Predictive Environmental Analytics and Community Engagement for Equity and Environmental Justice (PEACE) program.

To remedy its observation that “people of color often face higher exposure to air pollutants,” NASA’s PEACE program paid the city to provide pollution data to its residents in “a way that works across communities and cultural differences and specifically analyzes, engages and responds to needs for environmental justice.”

NASA has provided over $5 million for “environmental justice” grants since 2022, according to federal records.

“The environmental justice movement focuses on ensuring communities receive equitable protection from natural and human-induced environmental hazards,” NASA’s webpage on equity and environmental justice reads. “It embodies the principle that all communities should be heard and represented in decision making.”

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The US Is Funding 70% of Israel’s Wars

A new report by the Israeli outlet Calcalist reviewed Israeli military spending on wars since October 7, finding that Washington is funding 70% of Tel Aviv’s military costs. In a little over a year, the US has provided Israel with more than $20 billion in military aid. 

“The scope of American aid since the beginning of the war is about 85 billion shekels… According to official estimates by the Bank of Israel, the total cost of the war is…approximately NIS 118 billion.” It continues, “Therefore, according to a simple calculation, The Americans financed about 70% of the war effort.”

According to the Cost of War Project, the US has given Israel $22.57 billion in military aid since the Hamas attack. Calcalist concludes without US support, Tel Aviv’s war would simply be unaffordable. 

“There is no doubt that without the American aid the government deficit for the years 2024-2025 (which is one of the highest in the country’s history), would have increased by about 4.3 % GDP, which would have made it unfinanceable,” it says. “Therefore, it is doubtful whether this war would have been conducted as it is – neither in intensity nor in scope – without the American assistance.”

The US has sent Israel tens of thousands of bombs, artillery rounds, and tank shells. Those weapons have been used to commit countless war crimes against the Palestinian people of Gaza. 

The official death toll in the besieged enclave now exceeds 43,000. However, a group of American healthcare workers who have spent time volunteering in Gaza estimate the actual death count to be over 118,000. 

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Pentagon Paid Nearly 8,000 Percent Markup on Boeing’s Bathroom Soap Dispenser

The bathroom on the C-17 Globemaster III cargo plane is nothing special. The soap dispensers are exactly the same kind of pump that customers might find on a civilian airliner or in a restaurant bathroom. But the U.S. government paid 7,943 percent more for the soap machine than what it should have, costing taxpayers $149,072, a new report by the Office of the Inspector General at the Department of Defense found.

The report was the result of a two-year audit of U.S. Air Force purchases from the Boeing Company. Out of a selected sample of 46 spare parts for the C-17, the Pentagon’s internal watchdog found that the Air Force overpaid for 12 of them, costing taxpayers an additional $992,856 on top of the parts’ $4.3 million value.

The C-17 is the workhorse of U.S. military airlifts. Capable of carrying heavier loads over longer distances than any other aircraft in the American arsenal, the transport jet has become a symbol of U.S. resupply efforts for Israel and Ukraine. The U.S. Air Force maintains a fleet of 223 of them.

Overcharging is a massive problem for the U.S. military budget. In 2015, the Pentagon found that it was severely overpaying for Patriot missiles, and negotiated a new contract that saved $550 million. In 2019, the inspector general found that the military was paying $4,300 for a half-inch metal drive pin that should have cost $46.

The similarly extreme markup on soap dispensers is what led to the audit of C-17 parts in the first place. The Office of the Inspector General says that it opened its investigation in June 2022 after a whistleblower told its anonymous tip line that Boeing was severely overcharging for airplane bathroom fixtures.

The inspector general found that the Air Force did not “validate the accuracy of the data used for contract negotiation, conduct contract surveillance to identify price increases during contract execution, or review invoices to determine fair and reasonable prices before payment.”

Boeing cooperated with the investigation on the condition that specific price data would not be released to Congress or the public, arguing that this data is a trade secret. Therefore, the inspector general report only includes the total extra cost of the soap dispensers, not the number that the Air Force purchased or how much Boeing charged for each one.

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Jury: Workers Fired For Refusing COVID-19 Vaccine To Get More Than $1 Million Each

Rail transit officials in California’s Bay Area have been ordered to pay more than $7 million to transit workers who were fired because they refused to get a COVID-19 vaccine years ago.

On Oct. 23, a federal jury in the U.S District Court for the Northern District of California sided with six former San Francisco Bay Area Regional Transit (BART) workers who had refused to get the vaccine for religious purposes.

BART was ordered to pay the group more than $7.8 million, with each individual receiving between $1.2 million and $1.5 million, the Pacific Justice Institute, which represented the transit workers in the trial, said in a statement on Oct. 24. The institute, a law firm representing the six former employees since 2022, said the eight-person jury deliberated for two days this week before returning the verdict that awarded the employees the compensation.

About a week ago, the federal jury also determined that BART had failed to prove that it suffered an undue hardship by denying accommodations to the ex-employees in the case.

On Oct. 23, the jury further found that the six employees met the burden of showing that there was a conflict between their religious beliefs and the BART vaccine mandate, which was implemented in 2021.

According to the law firm, the jury also agreed with the figures that the plaintiffs had provided for lost wages that they had suffered after losing their jobs. The jury then added $1 million each to those figures, the firm said, describing the verdict as a “legal earthquake.”

“The rail employees chose to lose their livelihood rather than deny their faith. That in itself shows the sincerity and depth of their convictions,“ Kevin Snider, the Pacific Justice Institute’s chief counsel, who served as lead trial attorney, said. ”After nearly three years of struggle, these essential workers feel they were heard and understood by the jury and are overjoyed and relieved by the verdict.”

The law firm stated: “During the trial, jurors heard compelling testimony from dedicated employees. One of the plaintiffs had worked for more than 30 years for BART, with a stretch of 10 years perfect attendance, before being unceremoniously dismissed. Another had been out on workers comp for months, with no scheduled return date, when she was fired.”

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Biden-Harris spent $1 billion to spread COVID vaccine misinformation

A new Congressional report shows the Biden-Harris administration spent almost $1 billion manipulating public opinion on COVID vaccines, at times relying on wrong or speculative information.

A House Energy and Commerce report released Wednesday night details how the National Institutes of Health seeded “erroneous or unproven information” into COVID-era messaging and advertisements.

In other words, when state officials, such as Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, and Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer were jubilantly shuttering schools and businesses, the White House was knowingly manipulating the public on vaccines’ promised efficacy against COVID. 

“While the Biden-Harris administration’s public health guidance led to prolonged closures of schools and businesses, the NIH was spending nearly a billion dollars of taxpayer money trying to manipulate Americans with advertisements—sometimes containing erroneous or unproven information,” the report said. 

“By overpromising what the COVID-19 vaccines could do—in direct contradiction of the FDA’s authorizations—and over emphasizing the virus’s risk to children and young adults, the Biden-Harris administration caused Americans to lose trust in the public health system,” Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-WA, said.

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The Largest Study Ever On UBI Was Just Conducted, And…

In the 2020 election, an interesting candidate made his way onto the scene for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination: Andrew Yang. Yang made a splash in particular for his promise to give everyone $1,000.

Andrew Yang’s campaign strategy took a similar approach to Trump’s 2016 campaign in hyper-focusing on a single issue. For Trump, the single issue was immigration. For Yang, that issue was universal basic income (UBI).

Yang’s version of UBI was alluring in its simplicity. Every person in the country would receive a nice, round $1,000 per month. It didn’t matter if you were rich or poor, old or young. A vote for Yang was a vote for cash.

Many from his own party denounced the idea of giving rich people $1,000 per month. But Yang held strong to the payment being universal. By making sure every person gets $1,000, you avoid some incentive issues and the bureaucracy that accompanies typical welfare programs.

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Trump Suggests He Could Abolish Federal Income Tax Entirely

Donald Trump has sensationally suggested that he could abolish federal income tax for Americans entirely if he wins the presidency.

Trump made the comments during a visit to a barber shop in the Bronx after he was asked if there was “a way to eliminate federal taxes.”

Suggesting that America could return to the policies of the late 1800s, when income tax funds were replaced by new trade tariffs, Trump said America could go back to a time “when we were a smart country” and “relatively the richest it ever was.”

“It had all tariffs — it didn’t have an income tax,” said Trump.

“Now we have income taxes, and we have people that are dying. They’re paying tax, and they don’t have the money to pay the tax,” he added.

The presidential candidate said that during the 1890’s, America was becoming so rich, “We had to set up committees, blue ribbon committees (on) how to spend our wealth – we had no idea how to spend it there was so much money.”

“Then we went to the income tax system and the rest is sort of history,” said Trump.

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Biden and Harris Propose ‘Free’ Condoms Covered by Insurance Companies

A new proposal from the Biden administration would require health insurance companies to fully cover the costs of over-the-counter birth control, including condoms. The proposal represents “the largest expansion of contraception coverage in more than a decade,” said Vice President and 2024 presidential candidate Kamala Harris in a statement.

“This new action would help ensure that millions of women with private health insurance can access the no-cost contraception they need,” President Joe Biden said.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) already requires private health insurance plans to cover prescription birth control without direct cost-sharing in the form of things like co-pays. The administration’s new proposal—a test case for expanding coverage for all sorts of over-the-counter preventative services—would expand the ACA’s requirement to nonprescription contraceptives as well.

This is a bad plan, economically and politically.

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Frequent Flyer Tax

The core reason that the establishment is suddenly interested in climate change comes down to one main factor – money. More specifically, the establishment is hunting down YOUR money through taxation. A second motivator is limiting our freedom of movement by demonizing fossil fuels and limiting our ability to travel. The European Union is now seeking to punish those who fly more than once per year with a frequent flyer tax.

The EU has already implemented an aviation tax, but the new proposal is designed to punish the pesky “rich,” but per usual, everyone will suffer. “A frequent flying levy would be a fair aviation measure, reducing excessive flights for wealthy passengers, while raising revenues – including to expand and provide affordable railways and public transport,” the Stay Grounded network told Euro News.

The new levy would target everyone flying from the European Economic Area (EEA) and the UK. The standard aviation tax would apply for the first two flights taken per year, but an additional 50 euro surcharge would be applied to medium-haul flights while long-haul, first-class, and business flights would cost an additional 100 euros. Then they are adding an additional 100 euro fee after the fifth flight on top of the initial surcharge. People will be expected to pay an additional 200 euros for their seventh flight and 400 euros for the ninth.

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