Tag: taxes

Green Agenda Has Cost British Households £220 Billion Since 2006: Study

British consumers have paid nearly £220 billion more on their energy prices over the past two decades as a result of Westminster’s radical green agenda schemes, a report from a leading energy consultancy firm has found.

The UK public has been “seduced by narratives that renewables are cheap,” however, according to a study conducted by Watt-Logic’s Kathryn Porter presented by Lord Offord, the Shadow Energy Minister in the House of Lords, has found that the opposite is true, with the green agenda not only siphoning off taxpayer cash subsidies but also driving up energy costs for consumers.

“That renewables are not cheap should be clear, based both on the evidence that after 35 years of subsidies, we are yet to see any benefits through lower bills,” the report found.

According to Porter’s calculations, if the British government had not embarked upon its so-called green energy transition programme, British households would have saved £218 billion since 2006.

The report found that the direct cost of net zero policies in 2023-24 accounted for £17 billion in additional costs on consumer energy bills, and it predicted that this would continue to rise to more than £20 billion in 2029-30.

Porter acknowledged that gas prices were impacted by the Ukraine War and broader Western conflict with Russia, however, she noted that this would not explain why energy prices have steadily risen for the two decades prior to the 2021-23 gas crisis in Europe.

Keep reading

President Trump Threatens to Take $3 Billion of Grant Money from Harvard and Give It to Trade Schools Across the US

Another brilliant idea from President Trump.

On Memorial Day morning, President Donald Trump posted a warning on TRUTH Social that he may take $3 billion in grant money from Harvard and redistribute it to trade schools across the US.

Trump’s really backing the they/them crowd into a corner!

What a great move that would be! And he wouldn’t be funding the whiny young communists at Harvard.

President Trump then let the country know that Harvard is withholding foreign student lists from the administration so that the government can figure out how many of the radicalized lunatics, troublemakers, should not be let back into the country.

Keep reading

US Reinstates Funding to Propaganda Outlet NED

The brief freeze and rapid partial reinstatement of National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funding in early 2025 helped expose it as a US regime-change tool. Created to rebrand CIA covert operations as “democracy promotion,” the NED channels government funds to opposition groups, meddling in their internal affairs.

Regime change on the US agenda

In 2018, Kenneth Wollack bragged to the US Congress that the NED had given political training to 8,000 young Nicaraguans, many of whom were engaged in a failed attempt to overthrow Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. Wollack was praising the “democracy-promotion” work carried out by NED, of which he is now vice-chair. Carl Gershman, then president of the NED and giving evidence, was asked about Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, who had been re-elected with an increased majority two years prior. He responded: “Time for him to go.”

Seven years later, Trump took office and it looked as if the NED’s future was endangered. On February 12, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under Elon Musk froze disbursement of its congressionally approved funds. Its activities stopped and its website went blank. On February 24, Richard Grenell, special envoy to Venezuela, declared that “Donald Trump is someone who does not want to make regime changes.”

Washington’s global regime-change operations were immediately impacted and over 2,000 paid US collaborating organizations temporarily defunded. A Biden-appointed judge warned of “potentially catastrophic harm” to (not in her words) US efforts to overturn foreign governments. The howl from the corporate press was deafening. The Associated Press cried: “‘Beacon of freedom’ dims as US initiatives that promote democracy abroad wither.”

However, the pause lasted barely a month. On March 10, funding was largely reinstated. The NED, which “deeply appreciated” the State Department’s volte face, then made public its current program which, in Latin America and the Caribbean alone, includes over 260 projects costing more than $40 million.

Keep reading

BBC’s ‘independent’ Russian partner begged UK govt for funds, files show

Leaked documents show the supposedly self-reliant anti-Kremlin outlet Mediazona asked the UK gov’t for £300,000. With foreign funding drying up, the “independent” news site now faces financial crisis.

Mediazona, the self-styled “independent” Russian outlet which partners with the BBC to track the deaths of Russian troops, requested hundreds of thousands of pounds directly from the British government, according to a tranche of leaked official documents.

Having mainly targeted Russians since its founding in 2014 by members of the Western-backed troupe of provocateurs known as Pussy Riot, Mediazona has largely remained off the radar of news consumers in the West. But that changed with the outbreak of full-scale war in Ukraine. Since the first day of the conflict, Mediazona has collaborated with the BBC Russian Service on a project tracking the deaths of Russian servicemen through open source methods. Mediazona describes “the work [as] meticulous and time-consuming,” requiring “relentless efforts of journalists.”

Who or what was footing the bill was left unmentioned in the description of the initiative, which was clearly designed to foment dissent and opposition to the proxy war among Russian citizens. Now, leaked documents reviewed by The Grayzone indicate that between 2020 and 2023, Mediazona was in line for vast, secret grants for anti-Kremlin agitation from the British Foreign Office, under the official auspices of London’s opaque “Global Britain Fund.”

Keep reading

New York Governor Kathy Hochul Complains Republican Spending Bill Could Cut Services to ‘Members of the Undocumented Community’

New York’s Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul recently gave an interview to Telemundo in which she complained about the new Republican spending bill, claiming that it could adversely effect ‘members of the undocumented community.’ That’s Democrat speak for illegal aliens.

In voicing this concern, Hochul is ignoring the fact that millions of Americans voted for this. People watched for years under Biden as New York put illegal aliens up in luxury hotels and fed them three meals a day, spending untold billions of dollars on these people as American citizens suffered under the inflation of the Biden economy.

Perhaps New York wouldn’t find itself in this position if the state hadn’t spent a fortune month after month, catering to people who were in the country illegally.

Breitbart News has details:

Hochul: We’ll Lose Money Under GOP Bill, ‘Don’t Want to Go’ to Cutting Services for Migrants

During an interview with Telemundo 47 on Friday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) argued that the state is going to lose money under the Republican tax and spending bill and people will lose health care and responded to if she’ll have to cut services to some immigrants by saying, “I don’t want to go there.” And “This is something we have to look at very seriously for how we can not leave these people without essential care.”…

Host Alejandro Mendoza then asked, “Could we see something like we have seen in California where the governor had to cut services to some immigrants?”

Hochul responded, “I don’t want to go there. This is money that’s now been lost by the federal government — they used to help us pay for this. This is something we have to look at very seriously for how we can not leave these people without essential care.

Keep reading

Marco Rubio Reveals Just How Little USAID Funding Was Helping the Needy

Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered some shocking data points about American foreign aid spending before the Trump administration reformed the system.

During testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, the top diplomat revealed that the White House discovered a foreign aid regime that was distracted and inefficient.

Only 12 cents of every dollar spent by USAID reached recipients.

“That means that in order for us to get aid to somebody, we had to spend all this other money supporting this foreign aid industrial complex,” Rubio said, per a State Department transcript.

In other words, while a mere 12 cents went to recipients, the other 88 cents was pocketed by third parties.

“We’re going to find more efficient ways to deliver aid to people directly, and it’s going to be directed by our regional bureaus, and it’s going to sponsor programs that make a difference, and it’s going to be part of a holistic approach to our foreign policy,” he told lawmakers.

Keep reading

Liberals Suddenly Value Fiscal Responsibility After Budget Office Says More Births Will Increase Deficit

Liberals have a new argument for keeping federal money flowing to Planned Parenthood: defunding the organization would cost taxpayers more.

Democrats and abortion advocates are framing the defunding of one of the largest abortion providers in the country as a financial “cost” to taxpaying Americans. Citing estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), they are voicing concern that the GOP’s plan to block Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood through the GOP reconciliation bill would increase the national deficit by $300 million due to more babies being born.

“About three in four people say they oppose defunding Planned Parenthood health centers. But Republicans do not care — they need to appease their far-right, anti-choice fringe,” Democratic Washington Sen. Patty Murray said on May 14 about the CBO’s estimates. “Although the irony is, in this case, defunding Planned Parenthood would actually cost our country more money in the long term.”

Murray’s office did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

Planned Parenthood performed over 400,000 abortions in fiscal year 2023-24 and received more than $700 million in government reimbursements and grants, according to its latest annual report. In contrast, private contributions dropped 31% relative to the previous fiscal year, totaling $684.1 million.

The CBO declined to clarify how the deficit would increase due to the federal cuts in response to a DCNF inquiry.

However, the CBO stated in 2015 that a House bill to block federal funding to Planned Parenthood would increase spending by $130 million over the course of a decade. The reason, CBO explained, was that the bill would reduce “services that help women avert pregnancies” and that “additional births that would result from enacting such a bill would add to federal spending for Medicaid.”

Keep reading

LA City Council OKs $14B budget, allowing for $7K per homeless person each month

The Los Angeles City Council passed a $14 billion budget that reduced citywide layoffs by cutting police hiring and fire department spending.

The approved budget uses emergency funds, such as $29 million from the budget stabilization fund, to pay for ongoing regular services, which is typically only done in a recession. That suggests the city has a structural deficit created by spending more than revenue will allow.

Notably, the budget cuts $36.63 million from the Los Angeles Fire Department’s proposed budget and reduces new police hiring in half from 480 new recruits to 230. At the same time, it restores funding for Animal Services and creates a new Bureau of Homelessness Oversight under the Los Angeles Housing Department.

Councilwoman Traci Park, whose district stretches from the Los Angeles International Airport to the fire-demolished Pacific Palisades, questioned the city’s continued funding of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which has failed all recent audits and from which Los Angeles County recently voted to terminate its funding and relationship.

“Spending a million and a half dollars per door to build micro-units of housing to give away to homeless drug addicts when the vast majority of our own city employees could never afford a condo at that price … I don’t think we should agree to spend another penny on homelessness … until we cast a vote on whether we’re finally getting a divorce from LAHSA and what the future of homeless services delivery looks like in LA,” said Park at Thursday’s meeting.

Park also attacked the cuts to the proposed LAFD budget and the halving of the new LAPD officer expansion.

Keep reading

USDA ends ‘maximum pain bird flu gain-of-function experiments’ with Wuhan lab parent

The U.S. Department of Agriculture canceled its $1 million collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the parent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, to conduct gain-of-function experiments on bird flu viruses, Secretary Brooke Rollins told Rep. Ben Cline, R-Va.

Speaking at a House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee hearing, Rollins said “it is my understanding that those [experiments] have been discontinued just in the last few months” when Cline asked for their status, started in the Biden administration, and that if she’s wrong, “then 100%, yes,” USDA will stop them.

Cline said her predecessor Tom Vilsack “defended and distorted this risky research” when Vilsack testified, denying it was a “collaboration” even though the “project title” calls it that and claiming there was no “data sharing” even though public records show USDA visiting the China lab to “share results on site.” The Chinese researcher lists the Wuhan Institute of Virology as an affiliation, Cline said.

“It is outrageous that U.S. taxpayer dollars were ever used by the Biden USDA to fund joint experiments with the Chinese Communist Party, especially research that could be catastrophic if mishandled or weaponized,” Cline said in a statement.

The White Coat Waste Project, which exposed through public records requests the five-year project on what it called “maximum pain bird flu gain-of-function experiments” on birds as young as a day old, cheered Rollins’ declaration.

“Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to pay for the creation of pandemic-causing pathogens, and now, following a White Coat Waste campaign, they won’t have to,” President Anthony Bellotti said.

Keep reading

House version of Trump’s ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill’ creates federal tax on electric, hybrid vehicles

There’s a first-of-its-kind national vehicle registration tax tucked inside the final version of President Trump and the GOP’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” The legislation has created a new federal vehicle tax for energy-efficient vehicles that rises each year based on inflation.

The annual national registration fee would begin at $250 for electric vehicles and $150 for hybrid vehicles. An earlier version of the bill included a $20 fee for all other vehicles, but it was dropped from the final version that passed the House on Thursday. The only Republicans to vote against the bill were Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio. All House Democrats voted against it.

The Senate is now considering the legislation.

Under the House-passed bill, the administrator of the Federal Highway Administration would impose the fees each year. 

According to the text of the bill, a state motor vehicle department must “incorporate the collection of the fees” into the vehicle registration and renewal processes administered by each department “so long as such fees are imposed for each year in which the fees are required.”

Keep reading