Tag: taxes

Judge Lets Former Democrat City Councilwoman Andrea Cardenas Walk Free Despite Guilty Plea for Stealing Over $200K in COVID Relief and Unemployment Funds

A San Diego judge has allowed former Chula Vista City Councilwoman Andrea Cardenas to avoid jail time despite her guilty plea for defrauding the government of over $200,000 in COVID relief and unemployment funds.

Andrea Cardenas, who had been a rising star in the Democrat Party, and her brother, Jesus Cardenas, a former chief of staff to San Diego City Councilman Stephen Whitburn, are at the center of a corruption scandal.

The charges revolve around their alleged fraudulent acquisition of a $176,227 Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan for their venture, Grassroots Resources, a local government and political consulting firm.

According to court documents, Jesus Cardenas misrepresented the nature and scale of their political consulting firm, falsely claiming it employed 34 people.

This lie allowed the Cardenas siblings to siphon off critical funds meant to keep struggling businesses afloat during the pandemic. Instead, these funds were used to line their pockets.

Andrea Cardenas played a crucial role in this deceit. She reportedly altered information provided to lenders, substituting Grassroots Resources’ details with those of a marijuana dispensary, Harbor Collective.

Her involvement didn’t stop there. La Prensa reported that she declared a significant income from Grassroots Resources while simultaneously denying the existence of any employees when the firm pursued a consulting contract with a local public water agency.

Keep reading

U.S. to Spend Record $454M Securing ‘Mostly Jewish Institutions’

The US will spend a record $454 million this year to secure religious organizations, with the majority of the funds going to Jewish institutions and a minority being given to other religious groups, the Times of Israel reports.

From The Times of Israel, “US to spend record $454 million securing religious institutions as antisemitism spikes”:

The US federal government will spend nearly $150 million more this year than it did in 2023 to secure religious organizations, a jump aimed at addressing a rise in antisemitism since October 7.

The Department of Homeland Security announced last week that it had allocated $454.5 million this fiscal year toward the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which funds security enhancements at houses of worship and religious organizations. It is the largest sum ever allocated toward the program, and a significant increase from last year’s figure of $305 million.

“The funds announced today will provide communities across the country with vital resources necessary to strengthen their security and guard against terrorism and other threats,” Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, who is Jewish, said in a statement. “The impact of these grants will be measured in lives saved and tragedies averted.”

Jewish organizations have historically championed the program, which began in 2005 with an allocation of $25 million and has since grown exponentially. Most of the funding has historically gone to Jewish institutions such as synagogues, day schools, and other religious organizations — a trend that continued this year, according to the Orthodox Union.

The funds are available to all denominations facing credible threats, and in recent years Muslim and Black Christian institutions have applied for funds, often with the guidance of Jewish groups more experienced in the application process.

In related news, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has already spent over $100 million this election cycle.

Keep reading

HHS Funds AI Tool to ‘Inoculate’ Social Media Users Against HPV Vax ‘Misinformation’

University of Pennsylvania researchers — using U.S. taxpayer dollars — are developing an artificial intelligence (AI) tool designed to “inoculate” social media users against “misinformation” about the HPV vaccine posted on social media, grant documents obtained by Children’s Health Defense (CHD) via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request revealed.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is funding the $4 million “Inoculate for HPV Vaccine” randomized controlled trial running from April 2022 through March 2027. The National Cancer Institute, part of HHS, is facilitating the funding. Funding for year three was released in April.

The study is headed up by Melanie L. Kornides, associate professor of nursing at the University of Pennsylvania, whose research focuses on increasing vaccine uptake, and also on “strategies to combat misinformation.”

Kornides is joined by a team of digital health communication experts, software and program designers, social media analysts and machine learning systems experts who will help her run the “inoculation” experiment on 2,500 parents of children ages 8-12.

The team is collecting user data from YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram where people talk about HPV and using natural language processing to train an AI tool to identify “HPV misinformation,” or posts that are critical of vaccination — whether or not the information in the post is true or false.

They will then develop and test their “inoculation tool,” exposing subjects in three study arms to different types of messaging meant to make them immune to such misinformation.

A control group will get no particular messaging and two test groups will be exposed either to messaging designed to inoculate viewers against content critical of of HPV vaccines and content critical of anti-vaccine arguments.

The subjects will get “booster” doses of messaging at three and six months after their first inoculation.

If successful, the researchers wrote, this novel approach to combating health “misinformation” can be used in “wide-scale social media campaigns” addressing pandemics, childhood vaccination and other health issues.

Keep reading

‘Deeply Complicit’: US Has Sent Israel Over 50,000 Tons of Weaponry in 11 Months

The Israeli government announced Monday that it has received over 50,000 tons of military equipment—including armored vehicles and munitions—from the United States during its assault on the Gaza Strip, where most of the population is now displaced and at growing risk of starvation.

The IMEU Policy Project, an affiliate of the Institute for Middle East Understanding, noted that according to the Israeli government’s figures, the Biden administration has on average sent the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) “a weapons shipment every 12 hours, for nearly 11 months”—arms “that are used to kill Palestinian civilians.”

The Israeli Defense Ministry said in a statement that the U.S. “equipment procured and transported includes armored vehicles, munitions, ammunition, personal protection gear, and medical equipment, which are crucial for sustaining the IDF’s operational capabilities during the ongoing war.”

Josh Ruebner, policy director at the IMEU Policy Project, wrote that the new shipment numbers underscore that “the U.S. is deeply complicit in Israel’s genocide.”

“Weapons to Israel violate U.S. laws and policies that are supposed to prevent atrocities,” Ruebner added.

Keep reading

California Democrats Vote to Force Taxpayers to Subsidize $150,000 Down Payment on Homes for Illegals – But the CA Department of Finance Confirms the Program Has No Money!

California Democrat state senators on Tuesday overwhelmingly voted to pass a bill that would give illegal aliens $150,000 interest-free home mortgage loans.

Illegal aliens will get zero down payment, interest-free home mortgage loans under this new bill.

California’s Democrat governor Gavin Newsom hasn’t said whether he will sign the bill.

Democrat assemblymember Joaquin Arambula (Fresno) recently introduced Assembly Bill 1840 to extend a first-time homebuyer loan program to illegal aliens.

If the bill becomes law, illegal aliens will be eligible for a new program that offers a loan worth 20% of the purchase price of the residential property. There are no monthly payments and no interest accrues on the loan. Rather, the loan is paid back when the borrower refinances or sells the property. The borrower will have to pay back the original loan plus a 20% increase in the value of the property.

California’s Democrat lawmakers in the State Senate approved AB 1840 23-11.

The bill will head to the California assembly for final approval after lawmakers in the senate made changes.

Keep reading

Democrats Aren’t Really Protecting Social Security

The discussion over the future of Social Security has once again drifted to the sidelines this political season. This shouldn’t surprise anyone because it has pulled a vanishing act every election year over the past decade.

While you have likely heard that the program pays more than 70 million people, not many address the fact that another 30 million Americans are about to start collecting Social Security over the coming decade. Although monthly Social Security payments may not be important to every one of these people, roughly 40 percent will depend on their Social Security check as their primary source of income. Basically, the program is a lifeline to millions of Americans. 

For most of us, these people are also known as mom and dad; ma and pa; and soon enough, the person in the mirror. Despite the importance of the program, any question about the reliability of its payments drifts from election to election as it maintains its inevitable course toward insolvency. 

Against this backdrop, voters need to consider that the longer we do nothing, the worse the problem gets. Or put another way, the greatest threat to Social Security is the passage of time and the politics of the status quo.

To illustrate this point, then-Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) co-sponsored the Social Security Expansion Act of 2019. That proposal was based on the 2018 Trustees Report, which used data from the year ending 2017. So, the last time that the current Democrat nominee for president looked at the problem, it was nearly half the size that it is today.

Moreover, Harris’ proposal didn’t deal with the entirety of the problem as it was. It came up 20 percent short of what the problem was even back then.

As another example, presidential candidate Joe Biden back in 2020 argued that the wealthy should pay their fair share. He defined wealthy as those earning more than $400,000 in annual income. In 2024, the definition hasn’t changed despite inflation levels the country hasn’t seen in decades. In a growing economy, the definition of rich should rise faster than inflation. In Biden’s mind, the measure fell by nearly 20 percent in real terms purely as a matter of the clock going tick-tock.

Folks, the clock continues to tick. On August 14, Kamala Harris released a statement: “For 89 years, Social Security has made the difference between poverty or peace of mind for millions of seniors, people with disabilities, and other beneficiaries. As President, I will protect and expand these bedrock programs.”

In the five minutes that it took her team to post that empty rhetoric, the program generated another $5 million in empty promises. 

Keep reading

The Politics of Envy

Socialists and other leftwingers support taxation of the income and wealth of the well off. They say that they want to promote “equality” and “social justice,” but in fact they are motivated by envy. They want what others have. They can’t stand the thought of other people’s having more money than they do.

Here is what Rob Larson, an economics professor at Tacoma Community College, says about certain very expensive apartments: “Besides the return of in-city mansions for the affluent and their cars, New York and London have also seen the growth of ‘poor doors.’ These are entrances to new luxury buildings, erected with a city requirement to include some affordable housing units for regular working people, in addition to ‘market rate’ units that sell for seven figures and up. The Guardian describes a luxury London development where the main door opens to luxury marble tiling and plush doors, and a sign on the wall alerts residents to the fact that the concierge is available. Round the back, the entrance to the affordable homes is a cream corridor, decorated only with grey mailboxes and a poster warning tenants that they are on CCTV and will be prosecuted if they cause any damage.

To me, this is an amazing passage. In Larson’s example, some “regular working people” are housed in some of the most luxurious apartments in the world. But Larson still objects because these people don’t get to use the fancier entrances made for the superrich who pay market rates. As you read Larson, you can feel his seething hatred for the rich: he would like to pull them down, just because they are able to afford things others cannot. He offers no evidence that the working people in the apartments are dissatisfied. If I had to guess, I would imagine them to be happy to be getting the windfall that results from the government’s interference with the free market on their behalf; but whether I am right does not in the present context matter. The point is simply to expose Larson’s emotion for what it is. As an analogy, consider someone who resents first-class air travel, not because he finds coach class uncomfortable, but just because others travel under better conditions than he does. And the case that envy and hatred are involved in Larson’s example is stronger than for the air travel case. Except for the entrance, the working people are getting the luxury good—but this is not enough for Larson.

A much more prominent economist than Larson illustrates the same attitude. Thomas Piketty’s central idea is that inequality is the supreme social sin and must be radically curtailed. He doesn’t deny that capitalism results in economic growth and an enhanced standard of living, but the income and wealth of the rich have grown far faster than those of the poor. You might ask why this matters, even granting his dubious statistics: Don’t people care about how well they are doing, much more than they resent the rich, if in fact they resent them at all?

Keep reading

Oregon Voters to Consider Approving Nation’s First Universal Basic Income

Oregonians will vote in November on a controversial ballot measure that would give every resident, regardless of age or income, $1,600 each year—as long as they live at least 200 days in the state.

A family of four would receive $6,400 annually, with no strings attached. The money would be non-taxable and would not affect other benefits.

If voters approve Measure 118, the Universal Basic Income (UBI) program would be funded by a tax on the gross receipts of corporations that generate more than $25 million in annual sales.

Oregon would be the first state to roll out such a comprehensive UBI.

As of June 2024, no U.S. states have a UBI program, though several states and cities have run pilot programs.

However, the “Oregon People’s Rebate” proposal is meeting with stiff bipartisan resistance from elected officials and pushback from the business community.

Keep reading

Government announces more COVID-19 tests can be ordered through mail for no cost

On the heels of a summer wave of COVID-19 cases, Americans will be able to get free virus test kits mailed to their homes, starting in late September.

U.S. households will be able to order up to four COVID-19 nasal swab tests when the federal program reopens, according to the website, COVIDtests.gov. The U.S. Health and Human Services agency that oversees the testing has not announced an exact date for ordering to begin.

The tests will detect current virus strains and can be ordered ahead of the holiday season when family and friends gather for celebrations, an HHS spokesperson said in an emailed statement. Over-the-counter COVID-19 at-home tests typically cost around $11, as of last year.

The announcement also comes as the government is once again urging people to get an updated COVID-19 booster, ahead of the fall and winter respiratory virus season. 

Keep reading

Democrats Push Cheap Housing for Illegal Migrants

Democratic politicians nationwide are trying to put many illegal migrants into apartments and homes that would otherwise go to young Americans.

In California, Democrats in the state Assembly have passed legislation that would create homebuyer tax breaks for illegal migrants who walked through weak border controls.

“When undocumented individuals are excluded from such [house-buying] programs, they miss out on a crucial method of securing financial security and personal stability for themselves and their families,” according to the sponsor, Rep. Joaquin Arambula, a Democrat with a large and poor Latino constituency in Fresno Valley.

The giveaway will drive up Americans’ housing costs — and make life tougher for the 85 percent of American-born California families who earn less than roughly $80,000 per year and spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing, according to a pro-migrant advocacy group.

In Canada, the government’s mass migration policy is preventing many young Canadians from buying homes, reducing the birth rate, exploding Canada’s homeless population, and shifting vast wealth to older investors. Many young people will lose the retirement wealth that their parents earned from house ownership, Canada’s pro-migration Prime Minister Justin Trudeau admitted in July.

Keep reading