Tag: taxes

DHS Issues Funding Warning To States That Don’t Purge Voter Rolls

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin on Friday said that states that do not purge their voter rolls of potentially ineligible voters and noncitizens could lose funding.

It came as he said the DHS has identified more than 250,000 noncitizens who were illegally on voter registration rolls in four states: California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Nevada.

“We know Iran hacked state voter files and attempted to compromise our systems where military members used to vote,” he said, adding that DHS “security enhancements” will be mandatory.

“If these states want a grant, and they want to be reimbursed to run federal elections, they’re going to have to implement security measures.”

Voting systems have to be secured, and voter registration lists need to be “scrubbed,” Mullin said.

“We need to make sure that individuals that are legally able to vote are voting,” he said.

When a staff member discovered the relationship with the prospective defendant, Johnston fired the employee, according to Hanaway.

“President Trump is correct when he said that election security is national security … this is just exposing what took place and to make sure it never happens again.

“And there’s some really easy steps that can be taken to secure our elections, and it shouldn’t be a partisan issue.”

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REPORT: Champagne Socialist Ilhan Omar Spent Thousands in Campaign Cash on Luxury Hotels in Recent Months

Far left Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar is facing new scrutiny after it was revealed that her campaign spent thousands of dollars on luxury hotels from April to June of this year.

Isn’t it odd that Omar is often in the news for scandals related to her finances?

Also, have you noticed that like her far left pals AOC and Bernie Sanders, she rails against the ‘rich’ while enjoying the finer things in life? It’s just so typical for the left.

FOX News reports:

Squad Dem in the hot seat after spending spree at luxury hotels: ‘Champagne socialist’

A far-left “Squad” Democrat is facing scrutiny after spending thousands of dollars in donor cash at lavish hotels nearly 2,000 miles away from her home district, a Fox News Digital review of FEC records found.

“Squad” Rep. Ilhan Omar’s, D-Minn., campaign dropped over $6K on high-end hotels and private transportation between April and June, including payments to a Ritz-Carlton resort in Palm Springs, a hotel with sweeping views from the Hollywood Sign to downtown Los Angeles, and a luxury stay in the heart of Times Square, the congresswoman’s latest financial filings show.

The payments, covering April 1 through June 30, included $2,131.90 to W New York in Times Square, $1,613.23 to The Godfrey Hotel Hollywood, $1,143 to Blacklane Transportation, $926.80 to Ace Hotel & Swim Club Palm Springs and $682.41 to the Ritz-Carlton Rancho Mirage, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings.

Overall, the campaign reported more than $28,000 in travel expenses and more than $23,000 in food, beverage and catering expenses during the three-month filing period.

The Ritz-Carlton Rancho Mirage bills itself as a luxury Palm Springs resort overlooking the Coachella Valley and San Jacinto Mountains, with an exclusive Club Lounge, dedicated concierge service, spa, salon, fitness center, main pool, adults-only Vista Pool and whirlpool.

Does this make Omar part of the ‘oligarchy’ that Bernie is always railing about?

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Bulgaria Refuses to Fund Zelensky’s Endless War

Bulgaria has now become the latest country to step away from Europe’s proxy war with Russia. Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev announced that his country is withdrawing from the Western-backed “Coalition of the Willing,” making it clear that Bulgaria will no longer participate in initiatives centered on providing continued military and financial assistance to Ukraine. Instead, Radev declared, “The solution to this conflict is not in prolonging it by military means, but in a strong diplomatic mission that will finally put an end to the escalation.”

I have said from the beginning that this war could never be won on the battlefield. Politicians sold the public the fantasy that Russia would collapse under sanctions, that Putin would be overthrown, or that Ukraine would somehow achieve total military victory if only another weapons package were approved. Four years later, none of those predictions materialized. Instead, Europe has spent hundreds of billions financing a war that has devastated Ukraine while simultaneously damaging its own economy.

What Bulgaria understands is something Brussels still refuses to admit. Every euro sent to Ukraine is borrowed money. Europe is already drowning in sovereign debt while governments are increasing military spending to levels not seen since the Cold War. They continue talking about rebuilding armies, expanding missile production, and preparing for conflict with Russia while their own economies stagnate. At some point voters begin asking why there is always money for war but never enough to lower taxes, repair infrastructure, or reduce the soaring cost of living.

This is exactly what our computer has been warning would happen. Wars are never lost simply because one army wins a battle. They collapse because the coalition financing the war begins to disintegrate. Every alliance eventually reaches a breaking point when the economic burden becomes greater than the political benefit. Bulgaria is unlikely to be the last country to reconsider its position.

The establishment immediately labels anyone seeking negotiations as “pro-Russian.” That has become the standard response whenever someone questions the wisdom of endless war. Radev rejected that characterization by arguing that diplomacy, not continued military escalation, offers the only realistic path to ending the conflict. His position reflects a growing reality across Europe that endless military aid has failed to produce the decisive victory repeatedly promised to taxpayers.

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US Embassy Offers Large Cash Sums For Groups In Lebanon To Promote America’s Image

The US Embassy in Lebanon announced that the State Department is offering grants of up to $250,000 to groups that help promote American propaganda. 

“The US Embassy in Beirut is opening a new Notice of Funding Opportunity for 2026,” a statement published this week explained. “We’re looking for partners to implement programs that strengthen ties between the US and Lebanon, with a focus on highlighting US-led peace and stabilization efforts, and advancing digital literacy to help people identify and push back on false, adversarial narratives.“

The State Department website says the program is expected to award $500,000 to at least two groups to promote US propaganda in Lebanon.

It adds that the program’s goal is to “strengthen local public understanding of US-led peace and stabilization efforts, and its role as a partner committed to security, economic opportunity, and responsible regional leadership.”

Washington is attempting to broker a peace agreement between Tel Aviv and Beirut. However, Israel is at war with Hezbollah, a non-state military that operates outside of the control of the Lebanese government. 

While Beirut and Tel Aviv inked a deal last month, Hezbollah rejected the agreement because it allowed the IDF to occupy Lebanon until the militia is dismantled. 

According to some of the latest from The Associated Press:

After two days of U.S.-mediated talks in Rome, Lebanon and Israel took steps toward implementing “pilot zones” in southern Lebanon where Israeli forces would withdraw and turn over control to the Lebanese army, the U.S. State Department said Wednesday.

The latest Israel-Hezbollah war began when the Lebanese militant group fired rockets into Israel days after Israel and the U.S. launched their war on Iran on Feb. 28. Israel invaded Lebanon and has since occupied a large swathe of the country’s south. Hezbollah has been vehemently opposed to the direct Lebanon-Israel talks.

The attempt to negotiate a peace agreement between Tel Aviv and Beirut is making it more difficult for President Donald Trump to end the war against Iran.

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National Public Radio Suggests Banning Trans Surgery for Minors Sets a ‘Dangerous Precedent’

National Public Radio (NPR) recently did a story about how the Trump administration is cracking down on the use of Medicaid and Medicare for so-called ‘gender affirming care’ especially with regards to children.

This is another 80/20 issue that the vast majority of the public supports, it might even be 90/10. Most people do not believe that children should be involved in any of this. We don’t allow children to get tattoos, why would we allow them to get irreversible (and unnecessary) surgery that will affect them for the rest of their lives?

Despite public outcry, Democrats and the left in general, have made it clear that they simply will not let go of this issue.

The language in the NPR story shows that.

NewsBusters reports:

Touted as an exclusive story on National Public Radio from health reporter Selena Simmons-Duffin, “Trump’s HHS abandons threat to withhold Medicare and Medicaid funding over trans care” dutifully repeated the “gender-affirming care for youth” misnomer in the lead while providing only trans-supportive sources.

The Trump administration is abandoning its most aggressive attempt to end gender-affirming care for youth nationally, according to an official document obtained by NPR.

The document shows that the Department of Health and Human Services will not be finalizing a proposed rule that would have blocked all Medicaid and Medicare funding for hospitals that provide pediatric gender-affirming care…

The broadcast version that aired on NPR’s All Things Considered Monday added a “dangerous” adjective to the mix.

Simmons-Duffin: ….The American Medical Association and the Children’s Hospital Association both urged the government to withdraw it. They said it violated several laws and set a dangerous precedent….

This is exactly why for years now, conservatives have been calling for the defunding of NPR.

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Los Angeles Spent $60 Million on Nithya Raman Plan to Get Homeless People Off the Street – It Has Housed THREE UNITS

Nithya Raman, the Democratic Socialist (communist) running for mayor of Los Angeles, is also a member of the LA City Council, who chairs their special council on homelessness.

Last year, the city enacted a plan that was championed by Raman, which was intended to get homeless people off the streets and into apartments.

Despite carrying out the plan, which cost $60 million, only three units have been housed as a result.

Los Angeles residents can look forward to more of this kind of success in the future, no matter who wins the current race for mayor, Raman or incumbent Karen Bass.

The New York Post reports:

LA blew $60M on homeless ‘fix’ — it housed just three units

Just three out of a promised 2,000 apartments have been used to relocate the homeless in Nithya Raman’s failed $60 million project to get people off the streets.

Councilmember Raman, the chair of the Los Angeles City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee, introduced the Time Limited Subsidy program back in September as a cheaper alternative to Mayor Karen Bass’ Inside Safe Program — meant to get homeless people into an established residence.

Raman’s plan was to lease and move homeless people into 2,000 apartments and subsidize their rent, rather than pay for them to stay in motels or shelters.

However, nearly a year after that plan was launched — with $62.6 million in taxpayer funds behind it — only three apartments are occupied.

The City Council first approved investing in the subsidy model last September as part of its strategy for complying with a court settlement with the Los Angeles Alliance for Human Rights.

Four months later, on January 28, the council approved resources for a redesigned program targeting 2,000 households…

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Bill giving $10,000 bonuses to NYC paraprofessionals heads to mayor’s desk

A bill to provide $10,000 bonuses to New York City’s full-time paraprofessionals is headed to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s desk after it was approved by City Council members Thursday. 

Similar legislation introduced last year was backed by the United Federation of Teachers in an effort to address the city’s paraprofessional shortage. After the bill failed to move out of committee, it was reintroduced in February by multiple council members. 

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If Mamdani signs the bill, full-time paraprofessionals will receive four payments of $2,500 throughout the 2026-27 school year. The bill allows the council to reauthorize stipends each year as long as New York City Public Schools has a paraprofessional shortage or until the city changes the practice of pattern bargaining — a local policy that lets the salary increases negotiated for one municipal union’s contract set the pattern for all the others.

The United Federation of Teachers and council members said pattern bargaining has contributed to low paraprofessional pay.

“Once the initial bargaining pattern is established, it becomes an enormous challenge to get the city to grant significantly better terms to another union,” the United Federation of Teachers said on its website.

New paraprofessionals earn roughly $32,000 in the city. Over the past 20 years, starting salaries have increased nearly $12,000 for paraprofessionals but top $86,000 for the highest-paid principals.

“We are going to pass this bill and we are going to put it on the desk of the mayor of New York City saying that the paraprofessionals have been unjustly treated and we are in a crisis,” said UFT President Michael Mulgrew at a union gathering at New York City Hall on Thursday. “And the paraprofessionals are dealing with that crisis each and every day with their work, going above and beyond, and now it’s time for our city to act and do the right thing.”

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$100 Billion & Climbing: Iran War Price Tag Believed Far Higher Than WH Estimates

While the Pentagon publicly clings to a $30 billion price tag for its war against Iran, internal Defense Department assessments (unsurprisingly) paint a far more staggering picture: the true cost is rapidly closing in on the $80 billion to $100 billion range, according to NBC News.

The Pentagon’s Office of Management and Budget told Congress on June 30 that US military operations against Iran so far is $30 billion: “We’ve spent about $30 billion,” OMB Director Russel Vought told the House Appropriations Committee. 

NBC’s new assessment bluntly states the following, however: “The cost of the war with Iran could be more than triple the most recent estimate of roughly $30 billion, according to three U.S. officials and three people familiar with the internal cost estimates.”

The lower figure was reportedly initially floated based a classic Washington accounting trick which only evaluates the cost of expended missiles and munitions while conveniently ignoring the charred remnants of American hardware and damaged bases littering the Gulf states after Iranian retaliatory attacks, the report explains.

The estimate featured in the NBC report accounts for actually rebuilding those installations previously attacked by Iran. Judging by how things are going this week – after five consecutive days of renewed fighting – the final bill from damage will only keep pushing up from here.

It has been well documented that while American troops at Gulf bases across the Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf were by and large pulled back from near ‘front lines’ – large US military assets like refueling tankers were in some cases left behind, resulting in scenes like the following:

“Five U.S. Air Force refueling planes were struck and damaged on the ground at Prince Sultan air base in Saudi Arabia, according to two U.S. officials,” The Wall Street Journal reported in mid-March. Each one costs hundreds of millions.

“The tankers were hit during an Iranian missile strike on the Saudi base in recent days, the officials said,” WSJ detailed at the time. “U.S. Central Command declined to comment. The tankers were damaged but not fully destroyed and are being repaired, one of the officials said. No one was killed in the strikes.”

And in Bahrain, home of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, damage to military facilities is already estimated at $1 billion. Heavily fortified installations in Kuwait have also taken a severe beating, with both these tiny Arab Gulf states being favored targets of IRGC projectiles of late.

In the meantime, with a $1.5 trillion budget battle looming this autumn, the Pentagon is currently urging Congress to approve $68 billion supplemental funding package just to keep the lights on, but as the Iran war drags on with few clear objectives outlining an endgame, defense officials are hitting a wall of bipartisan skepticism among lawmakers.

One D.C. watchdog group, Public Citizen, has stated this week: “The American people are fed up with spending more on bombs and less on basic needs. And they are furious with a pointless, deadly, illegal, unconstitutional and protracted war that is costing lives and driving up gas prices.”

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Stop the Presses! Congress Denies Netanyahu Something He Asked For!

“I want to stop American aid,” Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on June 30. “It’s like welfare; I don’t want it.”

Usually, Netanyahu gets anything he demands from Uncle Sugar. But on July 15, the US House of Representatives voted, 314-104 against even partially granting his wish.

Every Republican except Thomas Massie of Kentucky, and more than half of Democrats, voted down an amendment that would have removed $3.3 billion in “Foreign Military Financing” aid from the National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs Appropriations Act.

What’s up with that?

Was Netanyahu perhaps a wee bit disingenuous in his public request, passing word through back channels that he didn’t really mean it?

Is US Congress more “pro-Israeli” than Netanyahu himself, or perhaps just so addicted to spending that they can’t bear to cut anything at all, even if the recipient doesn’t want it?

Some combination of the above?

This may be the first time I’ve ever found myself in agreement with Benjamin Netanyahu on anything.

Well, partial agreement, anyway.

US aid to Israel isn’t “like welfare.”

It IS welfare.

What does the US regime in return for its billions of dollars per year? Two things:

  1. A way of re-routing tax money to crony “defense contractors” with Israel as the cut-out to obscure the  domestic end of the corporate welfare pipeline; and
  2. Dragged into a Middle Eastern garrison ethno-state’s every conflict with other regional powers — powers which substantially differ from Israel mainly in ethnicity, prevailing religion, and actually having some oil to make the entanglement worthwhile.

Don’t give me the “liberal democracy” stuff. The Israeli regime censors the press, bans political parties it doesn’t like, confines millions of Arabs to apartheid-style “homelands” as rightsless, non-voting serfs under Israeli rule, and just passed a law declaring that theological studies in one, and only one, religion are “fundamental” to its existence and thus deserving of exemption from the compulsory military hitch mere “secular” Jews serve. Politically, the main difference between Israel and Iran is that in Iran, Jews are guaranteed at least one seat in parliament.

Some “pro-Israel” — and “pro-US-aid-to-Israel” — people I talk with love to inform me that Israel has a longer average lifespan, a lower infant mortality rate, and a lower homicide rate (excluding the  Palestinians ruled by, and murdered by, Israeli troops) than the US.

That doesn’t strike me as the “gotcha” they seem to think. Could those billions in aid possibly have anything to do with the statistical differences? Every dollar in US aid is a dollar more the Israeli regime gets to spend on healthcare and police salaries instead of on weapons to power its expansionist foreign policy.

This time, Congress should have given Netanyahu what he said he wanted.

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Rhode Island Chooses Tax Hike Death Spiral

hode Island just enacted a tax increase that will chase the highest-earning households out of the state and ensure revenue shortfalls as long as it remains in place.

These millionaire taxes are an increasingly popular idea that benefits low-tax states while punishing everyone who remains stuck in high-tax ones.

Gov. Dan McKee on Friday signed a state budget that raises the tax rate on annual income above $1 million to 8.99 percent, up from the current 5.99 percent. That is a 50 percent tax hike on the state’s most successful people.

McKee, a Democrat, is up for reelection this year and is in a tough primary battle against wealthy opponent Helena Foulkes. That explains his support for a monster tax increase he opposed last year.

I am by no means convinced that all these governors and state legislators really believe that these tax hikes will raise additional money. Some dimwitted true believers certainly do imagine that people are so enamored of their current places of residence that they will accept anything as the price of remaining there. New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, Los Angeles political boss Karen Bass, and Seattle chief executive Katie Wilson are apparently among these.

At a news conference early this month, Wilson “laughed off warnings of a millionaire exodus even as a new survey shows many business leaders are considering leaving the state,” the New York Post reported. “I still think that claims of a large exodus of rich people due to our statewide millionaire tax that the legislature passed this year are overblown,” Wilson told FOX 13 Seattle with a laugh.

Just a few days later, the Downtown Seattle Association issued a report stating the “JumpStart” business taxes Seattle passed in 2020 have resulted in the loss of 30,000 jobs, a near-quintupling of the downtown office vacancy rate to 32 percent, and a 21 percent decline in the value of office properties. As a result, “the taxable value of its office buildings has fallen 48% — even as Bellevue [Washington], which has no comparable tax, added jobs and saw commercial values rise 7%,” Geekwire reported.

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