Tag: taxes

Chicago: Pro-Gun Control Mayor’s ‘Armed Security’ Detail Costing Taxpayers $30 Million A Year

A report from the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s senior VP and general counsel Lawrence Keane indicates pro-gun control Mayor Brandon Johnson’s “armed security” detail costs taxpayers about $30 million a year.

According to Keane, the detail “includes as many as 150 Chicago Police Department officers.”

Keane noted that Johnson avails himself of the security provided with firearms while simultaneously praising restrictions on citizens’ ability to own the rifle of their choice:

In Chicago, Mayor Johnson has backed some of Illinois’ most restrictive firearm policies. After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 2023 reversed a lower court’s preliminary injunction against Illinois’ ban on so-called “assault-style weapons,”… [which included the] state’s magazine restrictions, Mayor Johnson praised the ruling and called the law an “important step” that would keep “weapons of war” out of neighborhoods.

Keane observed, “The practical message to Chicago residents was clear. Government officials and their armed details can enjoy armed personal protection but the public should accept tighter limits on the tools of lawful self-defense.”

Numerous other pro-gun control Democrats have taken a similar “guns for me but not for thee” approach in leadership policy.

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The Assisted Suicide Of Lofty State And Local Taxes

We get the government we choose to elect, hence the government we deserve. Voting for ever-higher punitive taxes on the rich is arguably a form of civic suicide. Consider that a wealthy New Yorker can get a raise of almost 40% just by moving.

That’s right. If moving eliminates a 14.8% top state and local tax rate, our top-tier taxpayer gets a 36% raise, not a 14.8% raise, by leaving. It’s doubtful if any of our city and state leaders have done this math, but it’s shocking.

Mamdani wants to take the top rate up another 2%, if not by the state then by the city, which would mean that our rich neighbor can get a 42% raise.

Here’s how the math works.

A rich New Yorker pays a maximum state and city income tax of 14.8%, on top of a maximum federal tax of 37%. But there are hidden taxes. Uncapped Medicare and Medicaid taxes push the marginal federal tax to 39.4%. If the income is earned on investments, the Net Investment Income Tax (NIIT, another gift from Obamacare) adds another 3.8%, pushing the top federal tax above 43%.

So, top-tier New York taxpayers may soon pay a marginal tax of 43% to the IRS and 17% to the city and state of New York. The combined 60% marginal tax rates mean they have the privilege of keeping 40 cents of each new dollar they earn. A move to one of the nine states with no income tax allows our taxpayer to keep 57% of every additional dollar of income, instead of 40%. Do the math. That’s a 42% raise.

Forget the argument about “paying their fair share.” “Fair” is an entirely subjective term. Your fair share of someone else’s money might be seen as a ripoff by them, especially if the money is spent less wisely than we might spend our own money. If you are rich and believe you’ve earned your money, will you consider leaving a state for a permanent 40% raise? Of course.

This is hardly a phenomenon unique to New York. California’s headline top rate of 13.3% becomes 14% with the phase-out of deductions. A Silicon Valley billionaire can keep 43% of each new dollar of income. Moving to Dallas or Miami, or Anchorage for the adventuresome, boosts this to 57%, a raise of almost 33%. This doesn’t even count the “please leave now” impetus of a “one-time only” 5% wealth tax on billionaires. Never mind that the fine print on the wealth tax initiative turns a 5% tax into a 50% expropriation for billionaires like the founders of Google, because their 30% voting share at Google, not their 3% equity ownership, is used to determine the tax.

People have called the United States “50 laboratories of democracy.” A state or a city is welcome to impose whatever taxes, regulations, or laws are allowed by its own bylaws or the national Constitution. And citizens are welcome to choose whichever states have taxes, regulations, and laws that they feel best align with their values and beliefs.

Nor is it unique to our various states, with their diverse tax regimes. Taxes drove the Rolling Stones to their own “Exile on Main Street,” relocating to France of all places to escape England’s 90% top tax rate (where a tiny drop to 85% would provide a 50% pay raise). Even Switzerland has divergent tax rates, ranging from 22% in Zug to roughly 40% in Berne, Geneva, and Vaud. Where do the billionaires tend to live? Zug.

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Treasury Dept to reward fraud whistleblowers with up to 30% of fines

The Treasury Department launched a new program Monday to reward fraud whistleblowers with up to 30% of fines that are imposed on criminals.

“As promised, Treasury will reward whistleblowers who provide timely, actionable information on fraud, sanctions violations, and other significant illicit finance activity,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.

“President Trump has been clear that Americans have a right to know that their tax dollars are not being diverted to fund acts of global terror or to fund luxury cars for fraudsters. At Treasury, we follow the money, and we strongly encourage individuals to come forward with credible tips to help safeguard our financial system.”

The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network submitted a proposed rule to the Federal Register on Monday for the whistleblower payment program.

The program includes tipsters of Medicaid and Medicare fraud, according to The New York Post.

The launch comes after Bessent visited Minnesota in January, which is where Somali immigrants allegedly defrauded government welfare programs of at least $9 billion since 2018.

The reward payments will be directly from the fines, meaning that no taxpayer money will be used, according to confidential Treasury documents that the Post obtained.

“Individuals located in the United States or abroad who provide information may be eligible for awards if the information they provide leads to a successful enforcement action that results in monetary penalties exceeding $1,000,000,” one of the documents reads.

The Internal Revenue Service runs a similar program.

The program comes after Vice President JD Vance on Friday held the first meeting of a new anti-fraud task force that he is leading.

FinCEN also issued an advisory on Monday, warning financial institutions about fraud schemes targeting government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

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A Nursing Home Owner Got a Trump Pardon. The Families of His Patients Got Nothing.

Doris Coulson remained spirited even as her illness progressed — watching cooking shows on TV, working crossword puzzles and wheeling herself down the hallways of her nursing home to show off her granddaughter when she came to visit.

Coulson had been admitted to Hillview Post Acute and Rehabilitation Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, in January 2016, after Parkinson’s disease left her at risk of choking when she swallowed. That April, the facility’s operations were taken over by Skyline Healthcare, a New Jersey-based company that was buying up nursing homes across the country.

Medical records for the retired cardiac nurse, then 71, were marked “NPO” — nothing by mouth.

Then that September, a nursing assistant found Coulson unresponsive and hanging off the side of her bed, her skin ashy and her breathing shallow. She was taken to a hospital in a coma and died several days later. The chief cause of death was aspiration pneumonia, according to her death certificate.

“The doctors said they found scrambled eggs in her lungs,” said her daughter Melissa Coulson.

Coulson’s death and the circumstances surrounding it led her family to file a lawsuit against Skyline and its owner, the New Jersey businessman Joseph Schwartz, alleging that cost-cutting at Hillview left Coulson without the care she needed. It was one of several lawsuits tied to patient outcomes as Schwartz’s empire expanded and then unraveled, with much of the chain collapsing by 2018.

Schwartz didn’t contest the case, and a judge in 2020 awarded nearly $19 million in damages. Coulson’s family has never been able to collect. Schwartz had by that time relinquished all of his property in Arkansas, so there was nothing left in the state for the family’s lawyer to try to seize, nor was there enough information about assets he may hold in other states.

Coulson’s civil action was one of several efforts to hold Schwartz accountable for what happened at his nursing homes. In perhaps the most sweeping move, federal prosecutors in New Jersey charged Schwartz with orchestrating a $39 million payroll tax scheme connected to his nursing home empire.

He pleaded guilty last April to failure to pay the IRS taxes withheld from employees and failing to file a financial report for his employees’ benefit plan. A federal judge sentenced him to three years in prison.

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Too High To Thrive: Excessive Cannabis Taxes Are Undermining Legal Markets

In recent piece, The New York Times editorial board called for a federal tax on cannabis and urged states to raise their own taxes to “dollars per joint, not cents.” That argument assumes cannabis is lightly taxed today—but across the country, the opposite is true.

Taxes on legal cannabis are higher than almost every industry in the United States and have generated nearly $25 billion since adult-use sales commenced in 2014. Despite these rates, efforts to increase cannabis levies are continuing to gain steam.

In 2025 alone, Maryland, Minnesota, Maine, Ohio, Michigan and California attempted to raise or expand cannabis taxes. This year, Colorado and Oklahoma are looking to do the same. Many of those proposals emerged as lawmakers confronted budget shortfalls and the expiration of federal pandemic aid. Cannabis has increasingly been treated as an untapped source of revenue.

In several large markets, cannabis taxes are layered on top of one another. Excise taxes are combined with state sales taxes, wholesale taxes, local taxes and, in some cases, potency-based taxes. In states such as Illinois, Michigan and Washington, the effective burden can exceed 40 percent. This is in addition to the federal tax burden cannabis businesses carry under §280E, which limits their ability to deduct ordinary operating expenses.

These structures are straining the legal market. High tax burdens are contributing to business closures (particularly among smaller operators) and pushing many consumers to the illicit market.

According to publicly available data, several highly taxed states, including California, Colorado, Illinois, and Washington, have experienced year-over-year declines in adult-use sales and industry job losses in recent years. At the same time, the illicit markets across these states remain entrenched. In California, one of the nation’s oldest legal cannabis markets, estimates suggest that roughly 60 percent of sales still occur outside the regulated system.

Higher taxes do not eliminate consumer demand. They simply change where consumers buy their cannabis.

Licensed businesses pay for testing, packaging, compliance systems, labor and sometimes local licensing. Unregulated sellers do not. When the legal price rises too far above the illicit alternative, price-sensitive consumers shift accordingly. That weakens the regulated market that legalization was intended to build. When tax increases take effect, the impact shows up quickly in wholesale pricing pressure, retailer margin compression, and shifts in purchasing behavior.

The cannabis industry is still new, but data tell us that the type of tax matters as much as the rate.

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Vance Says Tim Walz Could be Prosecuted in Fraud Probe, Signals California Voter Fraud Will Also be Investigated

Vice President JD Vance discussed his plans with the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud in an interview with Benny Johnson on Friday, where he said that Tim Walz and other Democratic officials could “absolutely” be prosecuted for defrauding taxpayers. 

Chaired by Vice President JD Vance, with Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson as Vice Chairman, “the Task Force will coordinate measures to improve eligibility verification, implement pre-payment controls, detect high-risk fraud trends, and disrupt and dismantle fraud networks and the mechanisms through which fraud is committed,” according to the order.

Earlier in the interview, Vance stated that Somali Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN)  “definitely committed immigration fraud, against the United States of America” and that the task force is looking into what can be done about it, The Gateway Pundit reported. ‘We’re trying to look at what the remedies are. That’s the thing we’re trying to figure out is what are the legal remedies now that we know that she’s committed immigration fraud? How do you investigate her? How do you go after her?” he added, suggesting that she may also be involved in the mass welfare fraud in the Somali community.

When asked about failed Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz, Vance trolled Walz’s horrendous debate performance against him, then said, “We’re going to have to maybe kick him again a little bit.”

“We’re absolutely going to prosecute it,” he said if the investigation shows that Walz engaged in criminal activity.

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Chicago moves toward reparations with bus tours and town halls as $150M deficit looms

Chicago took its first step after establishing a reparations task force two years ago.

Now, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson plans to hold a public engagement forum called Repair Chicago to “gather lived experiences of harm of Black Chicagoans” in an effort to provide reparations for Black residents.

“Your experience is evidence, and we’ve placed it at the center of our work,” Johnson said. “By engaging directly with residents, we are grounding this work in the voices and lived realities of the people it is meant to serve.”

The first event took place Tuesday, and two more events are scheduled through April.

Johnson’s office announced the Repair Chicago effort would involve “bus tours, panel discussions, town halls and hearings,” helping the task force members gather input for the administration’s reparations study. 

“The community engagement process will gather input from Chicagoans across the city to better understand Black Chicagoans’ experiences across generations and how systemic racism has shaped their lives, opportunities and well-being,” Johnson said.

The move comes two years after Johnson named his chief equity officer, Carla Kupe, to lead the reparations task force with $500,000 in funding. 

In 2024, Johnson signed an executive order establishing a reparations task force of 40 members that addresses “historical harms committed against Black Chicagoans and their ancestors through the form of reparations.”

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Tim Walz Vows to ‘Never Leave the Side’ of Somali Minnesotans

Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) vowed that his administration would “never leave the side” of Somalians in Minnesota, adding that their “great-grandchildren” would still be there even when President Donald Trump is gone.

Walz made the comments during a “No Kings” protest on Saturday in Minneapolis, according to Mediaite. During his speech, Walz expressed that the Somali community in the state was “seen, heard, valued, and loved.”

“I will add a special, a special thank you, and a special acknowledgement that we will never leave the side of our Somali Minnesotans,” Walz told the crowd. “Here’s our pledge to you, our Somali Minnesotans: your great-grandchildren will still be here when that orange clown is in the dustbin of history.”

Walz’s comments come as there have been multiple reports that people in the Somali community in the state have committed fraud with schemes in which they have “bilked American taxpayers out of tens of billions of dollars,” Breitbart News’s John Nolte noted:

Walz has been under intense pressure as multiple Somali fraud scandals have blossomed throughout a state that has been run exclusively by Democrats for decades, with Walz at the top of the political caste system as governor for seven years.

According to court records and alternative media reports, Somali fraudsters have bilked American taxpayers out of tens of billions of dollars through various scams that include pretty much everything subsidized by federal taxpayers: food programs, healthcare centers, daycare centers, and those now infamous “learing” centers…

Citizen journalist Nick Shirley released a video in December in which he was seen visiting several daycare centers in the state that were reported to be receiving millions of dollars in federal aid. While visiting the various daycare centers, there appeared to be no signs of children.

President Trump has promised “to cut off funds to the Somali-related fraud and corruption” in states such as California and Illinois, as well as Minnesota. Trump has also claimed that Somali immigrants in the state have stolen “$19 billion at least.”

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Kindergarten Teachers Fired for Filming Themselves Celebrating Iran’s Assassination Threat Against Trump Brag That They Have Been Hired at Taxpayer-Funded Pittsburgh Charter School 

Two kindergarten teachers who were terminated from Propel Charter Schools in Pittsburgh after they recorded themselves in a classroom celebrating Iranian state media threats to assassinate President Donald Trump have reportedly been hired at the nearby Urban Pathways Charter School.

The teachers, Kate Patterson and Devin Hays, made national headlines earlier this month after they posted a video showing their excited reaction to a news report about Iran’s threats against Trump.

In the clip, the pair crossed their fingers with huge smiles on their faces while showing the headline: “IRAN ISSUES ASSASSINATION THREAT AGAINST TRUMP: RPT,” while sitting in what appeared to be their Propel classroom.

Propel Schools initially placed Patterson and Hays on paid administrative leave for an internal investigation.

The district later confirmed that both women were “no longer employed,” citing the inappropriate nature of the social media posts and the video made on school property.

“We want to be clear that Propel Schools rejects any suggestion of harm or violence toward anyone,” the school said in a statement obtained by WTAE Pittsburgh. “Such sentiments are incompatible with our values and with the responsibility entrusted to educators who serve children and families.”

The statement continued, “Our focus remains on the safety and well-being of our scholars and on upholding the professionalism and trust our community expects.”

Now, just weeks later, the same two teachers have landed new jobs at Urban Pathways Charter School, a taxpayer-funded charter serving students in Pittsburgh.

A video posted by one of the teachers shows the duo excitedly announcing their new jobs at the school, bragging in the caption, “all I do is win.”

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Fraud Ring Used Fake Doctors’ Orders in $61.5M Medicare Scheme

A Texas man was sentenced Wednesday to over 12 years in prison and two years of supervised release for organizing and leading a $61.5 million health care fraud and wire fraud conspiracy in which thousands of Medicare beneficiaries who were the victims of deceptive telemarketing were sent thousands of orthotic braces, foot baths, and genetic tests they did not need.

According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Robert “Bobby” Leon Smith III, 50, of Archer City, Texas, owned and operated seven durable medical equipment supply companies based in Florida, Texas, and Maryland through which he submitted millions of dollars in false claims to Medicare for orthotic braces and foot baths that beneficiaries did not need.

Smith also owned a marketing company based in Texas that he used to conduct deceptive telemarketing campaigns that targeted Medicare beneficiaries for medical services they did not need. Working with an offshore call center located in the Philippines, Smith and his co-conspirators peddled medically unnecessary orthotic braces, foot baths, and genetic tests to Medicare beneficiaries nationwide. In audio recordings presented at trial, Smith was heard pressuring beneficiaries to accept these products even after the beneficiaries protested that they did not need or want them.

Smith obtained doctors’ orders for these products by allegedly paying kickbacks and bribes to illegitimate telemedicine companies. He then sold these doctors’ orders to other medical suppliers that he knew used them to submit false and fraudulent claims to Medicare. 

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