Tag: taxes

Supreme Court Shuts Down Activist Judge, Lets Trump Cut $250 Million In DEI Training For Teachers

The Supreme Court on Friday overruled an activist judge in Boston, allowing the Trump administration to slash $250 million for more than 100 teacher training grants for DEI and other woke programs.

In a 5-4 decision nine days after the request, the Supremes sided with the Trump administration’s emergency request to stay the court order by judge Myong J. Joun of the federal District of Massachusetts – who had ordered the Trump administration to “immediately restore” the “pre-existing status quo prior to the termination.”

According to the ruling – which is likely to narrow the ability of district courts to halt agency actions involving grant function, Joun lacked authority to order the Trump admin to restore the funding.

In his ruling, Myong sided with California and eight other blue states that argued that the cuts were likely driven by efforts by the Trump administration to gut DEI programs (duh).

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Trying to Block Arms to Israel, Bernie Sanders Denounces AIPAC’s Massive Election Spending

As Israel continued its monthlong blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza and pounded the enclave with American bombs, in Washington the Senate on Thursday voted down two resolutions from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to block the sale of tens of thousands of 2,000-pound bombs and other offensive weapons to Israel.

The resolutions marked the second time since November that Sanders forced a vote on arms sales. Once again, they exposed a deep divide among Democrats and blanket Republican support for Israel.

The Senate voted 15-82 on the first resolution, concerning 2,000-pound bombs, with all Republicans present voting against it, along with most Democrats. Sanders was joined by 14 Democrats.

The second resolution, focusing on other weapons, fared even worse. It was defeated 15-83.

The Trump administration officially opposed the resolutions, along with the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Sanders, in a passionate floor speech, denounced AIPAC for its massive spending on last year’s elections.

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The 3 Myths Supporting NIH Funding

The Trump administration’s proposal to cut National Institutes of Health (NIH) indirect funds has been widely attacked, with heated claims it will annihilate biomedical scientific research in the United States. Leading with a picture of a 12-year-old child with muscular dystrophy, Shetal Shah, a neonatology professor, argued in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that the cuts would “hobble” vital medical research, and a Time magazine interviewee went as far as to call it the “apocalypse” of U.S. science writ large. While the funding cut has been blocked by federal judges for now, the future fiscal status of the NIH, and the university researchers that depend on it, remains uncertain.

Pundits discussing the cuts nearly universally agree that federally funded science is a crucial component of lifesaving medical therapies, innovative technology, and the ongoing status of the U.S. as a scientific superpower. These assertions are repeated ad nauseam despite history telling a different story. Promulgating three core myths, advocates for maintaining the status quo of public funding have been active in the media, but none of their key assertions withstand considering the historical record.

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Lawn Gone Liberty: The Update

It’s finally spring.

Better mow your lawn.

If you don’t, your town government may fine you thousands of dollars a day. 

Worse, if you can’t pay the fine, they may confiscate your home.

Six years ago, in Dunedin, Florida, Jim Ficken let his grass grow. 

His mom had died, and he’d left town to take care of her estate. He asked a friend to cut his grass, but that friend died, too!

In the two months Ficken was away, his grass grew taller than 10 inches.

City bureaucrats started fining him.

But they didn’t tell Ficken that. When he finally got back, there was no notice of the $500-a-day fine. Only when he ran into a “code enforcement officer” did he learn he’d be getting “a big bill.”

When the bill came, it was for $24,454.

Ficken quickly mowed his lawn. Then the city tacked on another $5,000 for “non-compliance.”

Ficken didn’t have that much money, so city officials told him they would take his home.

Fortunately, Ficken discovered the libertarian law firm, the Institute for Justice, which fights government abuse.

IJ lawyer Ari Bargil took on Ficken’s case, arguing that the $30,000 fine violates the Constitution’s limits on “excessive bail, fines, and cruel punishments.”

But a judge ruled that the fine was “not excessive.” 

Of course, judges are just lawyers with robes. Often they are lawyer/bureaucrats who’ve become very comfortable with big government.

I call a $30K penalty for not cutting your lawn absurdly excessive, 

IJ attorney Bargil told local news stations, “If $30,000 for tall grass in Florida is not excessive, it is hard to imagine what is.”

Dunedin’s politicians often impose heavy fines for minor transgressions.

One resident told us, “They fined me $32,000 for a hole the size of a quarter in my stucco … For a lawn mower in my yard … They fine people they can pick on … and they keep picking on them.” 

It happens elsewhere, too.

Charlotte, North Carolina, fined a church for “excessive pruning.”

Danbury, Connecticut, charged a resident $200,000 for leaving his yard messy.

Bargil notes, “It’s pretty apparent that code enforcement is a major cash cow.”

In just five-and-a-half years, Dunedin collected $3.6 million in fines. 

But by then, I and others had noticed. We were reporting on Dunedin’s heavy fines. 

So did the politicians sheepishly acknowledge that they had milked citizens with excessive fines and give the money back?

Of course not. They hired a PR firm. That cost taxpayers another $25,000 a month.

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Europe Wails And Gnashes Its Teeth Over Trump Tariffs

Europe knows it has been ripping off American citizens for years, racking up massive trade deficits. Europe also knows it has been freeloading on the American national security umbrella for decades.

Yet, this morning, Europe chooses to bad mouth the United States and the Trump administration for the President’s insistence that the dishonest relationship between the continents end, with the announcement of a global tariff regime by Washington.

Globalists leaders in Europe, fat and happy from decades of grifting off America, are not happy this morning.

Their reactions are below:

Spain’s PM Sanchez declared Europe was already being attacked from the East by Russia, now faces trade attacks from the West. The U.S. return to 19th-century protectionism is not an intelligent move.

German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said, “Donald Trump will buckle under pressure from Germany and Europe in an escalating trade war.”

German Chancellor Scholz declared, “Even if we did nothing in response, the tariffs will cause problems for the U.S. economy. It would be a serious economic error.”

The Austrian Economic Minister declared, “To force Trump to the negotiating table, we need to impose tariffs that hit Republican states and his friends including tech firms.”

French PM Bayrou said on Trump tariffs, “This marks a catastrophe for the world economy.”

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Useless Government Program to Be Eliminated, Just As It Was to Be in 2017

Early in March, Elon Musk received a friendly warning from an unlikely quarter: David Stockman, Ronald Reagan’s first Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and the prototypical government efficiency czar who engaged in a widely publicized effort to cut government waste back in the early 1980s. Stockman wrote on X: “Hey, Elon! Been there. Done that. The Swamp is far more devious and resilient than you think. Everything you are cutting will be reborn in another guise. I know! But keep at it anyway—America is sinking into a black hole of public debt and the hour is late.” Indeed. And recent news about a wasteful government program that fell victim to Musk’s DOGE is an indication that Stockman was right: the Swamp is resilient, resourceful, and resolute. 

The good news came in a Monday report in ArtNet News, the art world’s media organ. It reported sadly that “DOGE Has Decimated the Institute of Museum and Library Services: All employees have been placed on administrative leave and the future of millions in grants seems dim.” Celebrate good times!

The left, of course, will deplore this as the triumph of the yahoos and rednecks over those who can appreciate the finer things in life. But all that really happened was that the Trump administration cut the funding of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Why, exactly, should the federal government have an Institute of Museum and Library Services in the first place? It shouldn’t, and this program is a quintessential example of federal overreach and waste.

The world of art is perfectly capable of taking care of itself without federal oversight and funding; after all, it did just that for many centuries even before there was a United States. The program is also an obvious failure: latter-day America hasn’t exactly distinguished itself as a center of artistic achievement, courtesy of the largesse of American taxpayers.

And that money has been doled out in massive amounts, as ArtNet News revealed as it hailed the defiance of Institute of Museum and Library Services employees when the DOGE people arrived: “All 55 or so employees of the agency, which awarded some $266.7 million to recipients all over the country in 2024, showed up to work that day” — was that something that was unusual for them? — “staging an act of defiance against the people who were known to padlock other agencies on arrival. Trump had signed an Executive Order, Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy, directing severe cuts to IMLS, which provides resources to museums and libraries in all 50 states and territories, calling for it to be ‘eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law’ within seven days, so an abrupt closure would have been no surprise.”

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Senate passes resolution to oppose Trump’s tariffs on Canada—4 GOP vote with Dems

The Senate on Wednesday held a vote to overturn President Donald Trump’s plan to impose harsh tariffs on Canada. The resolution, which doesn’t hold the force of law, passed the Senate with a 51 to 48 vote. Four Republicans joined their Democrat colleagues in voting against the tariffs. 

Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell opposed the tariffs. The vote came after Trump made his “Liberation Day” announcements from the White House’s Rose Garden, during which he announced reciprocal tariffs on nations around the globe.

Trump had levied tariffs against Canada in a move that created rancor between the United States and her northern neighbor. Canada is in the midst of a snap election where Prime Minister Mark Carney, who recently replaced Justin Trudeau as leader of the Liberal Party and as prime minister, will face off against Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre. The trade war with the United States is a key part of the conversation in that election.

In imposing those tariffs, Trump cited border security both for human and drug smuggling. Senate Majority Leader John Thune opposed those Republicans who opposed the tariffs, telling them that their vote would be nothing more than an embarrassment to Trump. The resolution was sponsored by Virginia Senator Tim Kaine. 

“I urge my colleagues to oppose this resolution and ensure that President Trump has the tools that he needs to combat the flow of fentanyl from all directions,” Thune told them.

Canada is one of America’s largest trading partners. Carney has said that Canada will impose counter measure on the US in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs. “We’re in a situation where there’s going ot be an impact on the US economy, which will build with time,” Carney said.

“In our judgement it will be a negative on the US economy. That will have an impact on us, but the series of measures will directly affect millions of Canadians.” He went on to say that they would “fight these tariffs with countermeasures. We are going to protect our workers and we are going to build the strongest economy in the G7. In a crisis, it’s important to come together and it’s essential to act with purpose and with force.”

“Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Rand Paul, also of Kentucky, will hopefully get on the Republican bandwagon, for a change, and fight the Democrats wild and flagrant push to not penalize Canada for the sale, into our Country, of large amounts of Fentanyl, by Tariffing the value of this horrible and deadly drug in order to make it more costly to distribute and buy,” Trump said ahead of the vote.

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Big Balls To The Rescue: DOGE Saves A Terabyte Of Data Destroyed By Exiting USIP Employees

I’ve never heard anything good about the United States Institute for Peace.

It’s been in bed with neocons, coupmeisters, and the Soros color revolution crowd for years. The quasi-government agency that runs like a private NGO is always sneaky and non-transparent.

So it didn’t surprise me a bit to learn that USIP showed unusual resistance to anyone poking into their spending from DOGE.

They even called the cops on DOGE, only to get arrested and hauled off themselves…

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Trump Unleashes 10% Baseline Tariff on All U.S. Trading Partners Starting April 5 — Hits ‘Worst Offenders’ with Even Tougher Measures April 9 — Here is the List of Countries and Their Corresponding Tariffs

President Donald Trump announced today the implementation of a 10% baseline tariff on all imports, effective April 5, 2025. This decisive action aims to correct decades of unfair trade practices that have disadvantaged American workers and industries.

Speaking from the White House Rose Garden, President Trump proclaimed April 2 as “Liberation Day,” marking a new era of economic independence. He emphasized that this measure is essential to protect American jobs and revitalize domestic manufacturing.

“For too long, other nations have taken advantage of our open markets while imposing barriers to our products. Those days are over,” the President asserted.

Trump added via Fox News:

“American steel workers, auto workers, farmers and skilled craftsmen,” Trump said from the White House Rose Garden Wednesday afternoon. “We have a lot of them here with us today. They really suffered, gravely. They watched in anguish as foreign leaders have stolen our jobs, foreign cheaters have ransacked our factories, and foreign scavengers have torn apart our once beautiful American dream. We had an American dream that you don’t hear so much about. You did four years ago, and you are now. But you don’t too often.”

“Now it’s our turn to prosper, and in so doing, use trillions and trillions of dollars to reduce our taxes and pay down our national debt,” he said. “And it will all happen very quickly. With today’s action, we are finally going to be able to make America great again, greater than ever before or. Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country and you see it happening already. We will supercharge our domestic industrial base.”

“For nations that treat us badly, we will calculate the combined rate of all their tariffs, nonmonetary barriers and other forms of cheating. And because we are being very kind, we will charge them approximately half of what they are and have been charging us. So the tariffs will be not a full reciprocal. I could have done that. Yes. But it would have been tough for a lot of countries,” he said.

“For decades, the United States slashed trade barriers on other countries, while those nations placed massive tariffs on our products and created outrageous non-monetary barriers to decimate our industries,” Trump said. “And in many cases, the non-monetary barriers were worse than the monetary ones. They manipulated their currencies, subsidized their exports, stole our intellectual property, imposed exorbitant taxes to disadvantage our products, adopted unfair rules and technical standards, and created filthy pollution havens.”

“From 1789 to 1913, we were a tariff-backed nation. And the United States was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been,” he said. “So wealthy, in fact, that in the 1880s they established a commission to decide what they were going to do with the vast sums of money they were collecting. We were collecting so much money so fast, we didn’t know what to do with it. Isn’t that a nice problem to have?”

“And my answer is very simple. If they complain, if you want your tariff rate to be zero, then you build your product right here in America. Because there is no tariff. If you build your plant, your product in America. And we’ve seen companies coming in like we’ve never seen before,” he said.

The White House released a detailed chart showing how badly many countries have been ripping off American workers, charging high tariffs on U.S. goods while benefiting from America’s generosity in return.

The White House fact sheet released today clarified that Canada is exempt from the reciprocal tariff announcement.

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Seattle Economic Crisis: Proof That Democrat Wealth Taxes Lead To Disaster

To look at the Pacific Northwest today one would never know that 25 years ago the region was an economic powerhouse at the forefront of technology and business innovation.  At the time Portland and Seattle were known for constant rain as well as raining cash, and the “millionaire density” of the Seattle area was at historic highs.  The tech boom and international trade with Asia had created a Silicon Valley of the northern coast.  

Companies like Nike, Starbucks, Microsoft and Amazon established corporate offices and generated tens of thousands of jobs, and many of those jobs were considered high income.  People can debate the overall effects of the population surge to the region; there are many who would argue that Washington and Oregon were better off when they were considered backwoods fishing and lumber states.  That said, it’s undeniable that for a time the Northwest was one of the most desirable and lucrative places to live in the US.  

That’s all gone now.  The wealthy are leaving Seattle like it’s a leper colony and all that’s left are millions of broke activists, poverty stricken residents and illegal immigrants.  Some blame the constant riots or the steady stream of welfare recipients. Others say that the draconian covid mandates caused people to jump ship.  However, a primary factor in businesses (and money) leaving the city was the institution of a progressive “Payroll Expense Tax”.  

The PET is a quarterly tax approved by the Seattle City Council in 2020 in the middle of the Covid hysteria.  It increases taxes on businesses depending on how many employees they hire and how much their employees get paid.  In other words, it punishes companies that hire more people and pay them a good salary.  The conditions of the PET are very similar to what Democrats say they want for their “Wealth Tax” – An extra tax on top earners and large companies beyond the income tax.  

Democrats were high on their own supply in the early 2020s and in their fervor to destroy conservatives they instituted every suicidal policy imaginable, from defunding police to near-zero prosecution for property theft under $1000.  It’s not surprising that wealth taxes were established at the same time to “stick it to the capitalists”.  What they seem to have forgotten, though, is that communist tactics don’t work if people and businesses are able to walk away, and that’s exactly what has happened in Seattle.

Larger businesses are packing up and leaving the Northwest as quickly as they arrived.  Amazon, Meta, Google and Expedia are the most prominent examples of companies exiting the Seattle labor market and hiring elsewhere to avoid the Payroll Tax, but there are numerous others. 

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