Tag: taxes

In an Unprecedented Move, Ohio Is Funding the Construction of Private Religious Schools

The state of Ohio is giving taxpayer money to private, religious schools to help them build new buildings and expand their campuses, which is nearly unprecedented in modern U.S. history.

While many states have recently enacted sweeping school voucher programs that give parents taxpayer money to spend on private school tuition for their kids, Ohio has cut out the middleman. Under a bill passed by its Legislature this summer, the state is now providing millions of dollars in grants directly to religious schools, most of them Catholic, to renovate buildings, build classrooms, improve playgrounds and more.

The goal in providing the grants, according to the measure’s chief architect, Matt Huffman, is to increase the capacity of private schools in part so that they can sooner absorb more voucher students.

“The capacity issue is the next big issue on the horizon” for voucher efforts, Huffman, the Ohio Senate president and a Republican, told the Columbus Dispatch.

Huffman did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment.

Following Hurricane Katrina and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, some federal taxpayer dollars went toward repairing and improving private K-12 schools in multiple states. Churches that operate schools often receive government funding for the social services that they offer; some orthodox Jewish schools in New York have relied on significant financial support from the city, The New York Times has found.

But national experts on education funding emphasized that what Ohio is doing is categorically different.

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Biden-Harris initiative could be giving well over $1 billion in federal benefits to Haitian migrants

A Biden administration migrant welfare program could be handing out in excess of $1 billion in benefits to those crossing the Southern Border.

The CHNV program has allowed hundreds of thousands of nationals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to enter the US. 

It allows 30,000 migrants to apply for asylum each month and be flown to the US on the taxpayer dollar, as long as they have a sponsor who passes a background check. 

The undocumented migrants are given a two-year grace period to obtain status and in the meantime can live and work lawfully in the country on ‘humanitarian parole.’

According to figures from Border Protection, over 520,000 migrants from the four countries were paroled into the US between January 2023 and June of this year. 

This was broken down into 109,000 Cubans, 205,000 Haitians, 90,000 Nicaraguans, and 115,000 Venezuelans. 

Haitians and Cubans that are involved with the program are immediately eligible for taxpayer-funded federal benefits like Medicaid, food stamps and welfare. 

Analysis by DailyMail.com indicates that the Medicaid cost, which costs around $9,175 per enrollee, would cost $1.8 billion if every Haitian who entered the country received it. 

SNAP benefits, more commonly known as food stamps, would cost the country $451 million, with general welfare benefits climbing to $1.2 billion. 

The three figures take the overall spend on benefits only to over an eyewatering $3.4 billion. 

Even if only a quarter of the Haitians are getting all the benefits they are entitled to receive, that figure would stand at $850 million.

Average costs were obtained from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Department of Health & Human Services, and a Medicaid Commission.

Court documents show that the vetting process isn’t stringent, with an approval rating of 98.3 percent for Haitian applicants from January to June of last year. 

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Carrots & Sticks: Colorado Expands Electric Vehicle Incentives

As electric vehicle demand plummets across the nation, Colorado officials are extending another carrot. From the Colorado Sun:

“Colorado is boosting its popular cash-for-clunkers EV buying support by nearly 60% with a $9 million fund for 2024-25, after retiring more old, dirtier cars than expected off the road during the first year. 

The state exhausted $5.7 million for the first year of the fund, which helps income-qualified buyers with an extra $6,000 rebate at the cash register if they turn in an older car when buying a new EV. Turning in an old car and buying a used EV can bring an exchange rebate of up to $4,000. 

Stacked with other federal, state and utility EV rebates, the extra state boost can cut the cost of some EVs by far more than half.”

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Florida Based ‘International Fact Checking Network’ – a Prominent Censorship Group – Is FUNDED BY STATE DEPARTMENT and Operates in US to Silence Independent Media and American Voices

Investigative reporter “Bad Kitty Unleashed” on X released a BOMBSHELL REPORT on the US State Department funding the international censorship group International Fact Checking Network (IFCN).

IFCN, despite being funded by the State Department, operates in the US.

Bad Kitty Unleashed reported:

This is a massive scandal! The State Department, who legally can’t operate in the US, has been funding US fact checking since 2015! Yes, it’s earliest days!

The news orgs that operate under the IFCN flag, such as the Washington Post, do the leg work. Which then results in posts on Facebook etc being labeled and the algorithms throttling the post.

This official International Fact Checking Network is also partnered with Google. Poynter’s IFCN was funded by the CIA linked, State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy and Omidyar grants.

Recall Google initiated the first ever US censorship program and expanded it globally by using the First Draft Consortium. First Draft also worked hand in hand with the IFCN. Poynters Politifact was in the First Draft network.

Here’s more on the recently discovered US government-funded censorship programs.

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GAIN OF FUNCTION research on viruses from bats, birds and monkeys funded with U.S. taxpayer money and nefariously created in Chinese Communist Party labs

As an American, one should expect that taxpayer money goes directly to helping this country and its citizens prosper, including top-notch public education; fully functional roads, tunnels and bridges; and a strong military in all aspects, among other services. Without feeling like a conspiracy theorist, nobody should have to question whether our taxpayer money might be used to outright harm Americans, and what’s worse, in ways that we would all, on the surface, believe are helping us.

That’s where the White Coat Waste Project comes into play, with a recent investigation that exposed how the USDA collaborates with the Chinese Communist Party and their Academy of Sciences to fund and create gain-of-function viruses to make viruses that normally only infect animals now infect humans. Sounds insane, right?

18 Members of Congress now demanding answers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture regarding millions of dollars spent creating new deadly viruses

Who are the creators of these new viruses intending to kill? What other purpose could there possibly be for scientists to be creating “novel” viruses that leap from animals to humans and create pandemics? It’s obviously to create more biological weapons of mass destruction, going against the Geneva Convention and every ethical and moral obligation that modern medicine could violate.

The letter from Congressional members to USDA boss Tom Vilsack reads, “We are disturbed by recent reports about the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-linked Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) on bird flu research. This research, funded by American taxpayers, could potentially generate dangerous new lab-created virus strains that threaten our national security and public health.”

It’s a fact that Covid-19 gain of function virus was made in the Wuhan lab using U.S. taxpayer funds that Anthony “Insidious” Fauci directed to them by the millions. That man should be in prison for life without parole for mass murder, but instead, new research is being funded to make MORE deadly viruses that can leap from bats, birds and monkeys to humans so we can all experience more plandemics soon.

The White Coat Waste Project used the Freedom of Information Act to uncover USDA documents revealing this latest Bird Flu collusion between the U.S. and Communist China. Previously, under oath, the Secretary of Agriculture swore that the U.S. was NOT colluding with the CCP to make Bird Flu have gain of function ability, saying “It’s really not a collaboration per se… To my knowledge there is not [data] sharing…all of this is basically walled off, so everything we’re doing stays with us, it doesn’t necessarily go to the UK or to China.”

Never forget, the original story of the origins of Covid-19 was that some Chinamen were eating some bat soup that was infected or contaminated, and they somehow got infected themselves. You can’t make this stuff up (well, they did). Now, the U.S. is funneling millions to CCP labs to make new pandemic-style viruses they can “accidentally” release or claim terrorists stole from their labs and released. Either way, it wouldn’t happen, nor have happened, if these scientists weren’t being handed millions in grant money to work on it all. Period.

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Are Teachers Really Underpaid?

Teachers are underpaid, right? It’s a near-universally repeated maxim. Kamala Harris thinks so. So does Betsy DeVos. However, the reality is a bit more complicated. 

For the 2023–24 school year, the average public school teacher salary was just under $70,000—well over the average for bachelor’s degree graduates ages 25 to 34 (though many teachers have master’s degrees). 

West Virginia paid teachers the least, at around $52,000 per year, while California paid them the most, with an average salary of over $95,000. According to the National Education Association, teacher salaries top out at over $100,000 in 16.6 percent of districts. However, salaries have generally stagnated. From 2002 to 2020, inflation-adjusted teacher salaries declined by 0.6 percent while as per-pupil spending increased. 

The reality is that teacher salaries vary widely between states and districts, especially when looking at pay adjusted for the cost of living, making it difficult to make generalizations. Adding to the murkiness, pay doesn’t seem to motivate teachers as much as many people think. 

According to a December 2023 report from the National Center for Education Statistics, when public school teachers were asked why they decided to leave the profession, only 9.2 percent said it was because they needed higher pay.

A study from earlier this year also concluded that, among teachers who choose to leave their jobs, most don’t earn more in their new position. “The median employed leaver makes less than before they left teaching and their earnings do not recover nearly a decade after exit,” reads the study by University of Chicago and University of California, Irvine researchers. “These broad trends…suggest that factors other than earnings may have contributed to exit decisions for the average leaver.”

“In other words, the economic argument around the teacher pay gap has some holes,” wrote education reporter Chad Aldeman last week in an analysis of this and other studies looking at teacher compensation. “Ironically, the political and media attention focused on teacher wage gaps may also be contributing to a sense that teachers are paid less than they actually are. People tend to underestimate how much teachers actually earn, and that could discourage would-be educators from considering the profession in the first place.”

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“A Salary For Being Trans” : Trans Activists In Spain Prompt Outrage After Meeting With Politicians To Forward A “Transgender Pension”

A prominent trans activist organization in Spain has put forward a proposal for legislation that would guarantee transgender people pensions upon reaching 65. The pensions would be issued regardless of whether the transgender applicant had ever paid into the pension throughout their life.

The proposal was put forward by Federation Platform for Trans Rights, who presented it last week to the parliamentary groups of the Congress of Deputies. The group, known colloquially as Plataforma Trans, was founded in 2015 “with the aim of uniting specifically trans collectives and entities and to fight for a new trans law that recognizes gender self-determination and depathologises trans identities.” During the meeting, all parties sent representatives except the right-wing Popular Party and Vox Party.

Calling it the “Trans Memory Law,” the policy would grant people who identify as transgender a lifetime pension, along with priority access to public housing and housing assistance programs.

This was the second meeting involving the Federation Platform for Trans Rights and top Spanish politicians, indicating the group may soon see their plans realized.

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Despised mayor of Illinois town throws $85k party despite plunging her budget into debt

A despised Illinois mayor threw an $85,000 party for her town, despite plunging her budget into debt and being cut off from the state for out-of-control spending. 

Dolton Mayor Tiffany Henyard, 41, threw the event for the suburban Chicago town, spending $50,000 in taxpayers’ money to cover 60 minutes of performances and more than $35,000 on activities, equipment and staff. 

‘I was flabbergasted. I was pissed off. That’s my money. That’s the people’s money,’ resident Jennifer Robertz told WGN 9. 

Henyard – who was recently cut off by the Illinois State Comptroller after refusing to hand over finance records – spent $30,000 on R&B artist Keke Wyatt and $20,000 on rapper J. Holiday to each perform for 30 minutes at the The Taste of Thornton Township event.

The self-proclaimed ‘super mayor’ was seen enjoying the performances with a bright smile on her face, though images from the event show it was sparsely attended. 

Henyard spent an additional nearly $36,000 on a sound system, staff, equipment, comedians, and bounce houses – which cost $6,600 alone, according to WGN 9. 

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Most Americans Want to Stop Arming Israel. Politicians Don’t Care.

When Kamala Harris sat down with CNN’s Dana Bash last month, Bash asked a question: “Would you withhold some U.S. weapons shipments to Israel? That’s what a lot of people on the progressive left want you to do.” 

Harris sidestepped the question, talked about a ceasefire, and ultimately said that she would not change course from the Biden administration’s policy of arming Israel as its war on Gaza enters its 11th month. 

But polls of the American voting population show that she’s ignoring more than just the “progressive left”: A majority of voters support ending arms transfers to Israel, and support for an arms embargo is growing.

“The reality is that the public is far more in favor of stopping arms sales to Israel than opposed,” Yousef Munayyer, head of the Palestine/Israel Program at Arab Center Washington D.C., told The Intercept. He pointed to a June poll from CBS that showed 61 percent of all Americans said the U.S. should not send weapons to Israel, including 77 percent of Democrats and nearly 40 percent of Republicans. 

Poll results have been consistent for months. 

Since the start of the war in Gaza, a majority of Americans have expressed support for some form of restrictions on the U.S. sending weapons to Israel in repeated public surveys. Americans are even more overwhelmingly in favor of a ceasefire.

Among the most consistent string of polls on the issue of weapons transfers to Israel has come from CBS News, which partnered with YouGov to carry out its survey. About two weeks after the October 7 attacks by Hamas, as Israel’s bombardment had already killed more than 2,000 civilians in Gaza, a CBS poll of more than 1,800 Americans found that 52 percent of American adults said the U.S. should not send weapons to Israel. The totals included large majorities among both Democrats and independents, and 43 percent of Republicans. 

In April, CBS News/YouGov asked the same question in a new poll and found that an even larger number of Americans (60 percent), including 68 percent of Democrats, said they felt the U.S. should not send arms to Israel. The poll was conducted days after an Israeli strike killed seven aid workers in a clearly marked World Central Kitchen convoy. 

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Kamala Harris Pledges To Soak the Rich—But Her Policies Have Showered Them In Cash

As the presidential race enters its final weeks, Vice President Kamala Harris is positioning herself as the champion of middle-class America, vowing to finally make the wealthy pay their fair share. Yet a closer look at her record over the past four years reveals a stark contrast between her rhetoric and reality. Far from soaking the rich, Harris’ policies have funneled resources to the wealthy and corporations while burdening middle-class taxpayers.

Corporate subsidies have exploded under the Biden-Harris administration. In 2021, the 10-year budget allocation for corporate subsidies was $1.2 trillion. Three years later, it has now surpassed $2 trillion.

The 2022 CHIPS and Science Act included $54 billion in corporate subsidies—Intel alone received almost $20 billion in grants and loans through the CHIPS Act. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) uncapped a slew of energy subsidies, massively expanding energy production and investment tax credits, and according to the Brookings Institution, will cost an estimated $780 billion, just in corporate welfare, by 2031.

The beneficiaries of this largesse are extremely concentrated. Three-quarters of the benefits of the IRA are shared by just 15 large corporations, seven of which are foreign. Wind turbine manufacturers like General Electric, Vestas, and Siemens/Gamesa—who collectively produce 79 percent of all turbines—are among the biggest winners. These companies also have a presence on the board of the wind energy lobby, the American Clean Power Association.

But it isn’t just the corporate welfare. The IRA’s consumer subsidies also disproportionately benefit the wealthy. Roughly half of the tax subsidies for electric vehicles are largely captured by big corporations (Tesla, Ford Motor Co., General Motors), while almost four-fifths of taxpayers claiming these credits earn over $100,000 a year. 

This administration has consistently pushed policies that favor higher-income Americans over lower- and middle-income Americans. The extended pause on student loan payments, which lasted until late 2022, primarily aided graduates who are lawyers and physicians—who make an average salary of $176,000 and $264,000, respectively—while being paid for by taxpayers, many of whom chose not to go to college.

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