Tag: taxes

Waste of the Day: Federal Government Loses Up to $521 Billion to Fraud Annually

Topline: The federal government loses between $233 billion and $521 billion to fraud every year, according to a new study from the Government Accountability Office.

Key facts: The fraud losses represent 3 to 7 percent of the $40 trillion the federal government obligated from 2018 to 2022, a ratio the GAO says is comparable to other large governments like the U.K.

The dollar figure includes only crimes that cause the government to lose money it already has — not tax fraud or other ways the government loses potential revenue.

It does include over $100 billion lost to unemployment insurance fraud and $200 billion in fraudulent business loans from the Small Business Administration during the pandemic.

The lowest estimate, $233 billion, is still larger than the 2022 budget of all but eight federal agencies.

Only $4.41 billion to $7.31 billion was reported as “confirmed fraud” each year with an official court ruling. The rest was settled out of court or, more likely, never recouped at all.

Some of the biggest risk factors for fraud are expanding government programs or adding new ones, allowing state governments to control payments, and relying on officials with limited training or experience, the GAO wrote.

The report does not necessarily predict how much will be lost to fraud in the future.

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UK Vows To Arm Ukraine For ‘As Long as It Takes’ – Commits $3.7BN Annually

The UK has committed to what might be called ‘forever aid’ in Ukraine’s defense, with British Foreign Secretary David Cameron newly promising $3.74 billion of annual military aid for Kiev for “as long as it takes”.

He unveiled the plan Thursday, and it marks the biggest commitment in foreign defense aid rollout for Britain thus far in the war (and perhaps in all of history), coming on the heels of the Biden administration also seeking to erect a 10-year plan to assist Ukraine which theoretically would lock in future US presidents as well.

“We will give 3 billion pounds every year for as long as is necessary. We’ve just really emptied all we can in terms of giving equipment,” Cameron told Reuters in an interview on a visit to the Ukrainian capital.

“Some of that [equipment] is actually arriving in Ukraine today, while I’m here,” he said. Alarmingly, he openly stated that the British government has no problem with Ukrainian forces using UK weapons to strike at targets inside Russian territory.

“Ukraine has that right. Just as Russia is striking inside Ukraine, you can quite understand why Ukraine feels the need to make sure it’s defending itself,” Cameron said.

“It’s absolutely crucial, not just in terms of the weapons it will bring, but also the boost to morale that it will bring to people here in Ukraine,” the UK top diplomat continued in the remarks given upon his second visit to the war-ravaged country as foreign secretary.

Cameron was at one point asked whether a potential future Trump administration could negatively impact the flow of aid to the Zelensky government.

He responded: “It’s not for us to decide who the Americans choose as their president. We will work with whoever that is.” NATO officials have reportedly been attempting to “Trump-proof” any future aid.

Last Sunday, Zelensky himself signaled as much in a nightly video address, saying that he’s working with Washington on a bilateral security agreement which would last ten years. “We are already working on a specific text,” Zelensky said in his nightly video address. “Our goal is to make this agreement the strongest of all.”

“We are discussing the specific foundations of our security and cooperation. We are also working on fixing specific levels of support for this year and the next 10 years.”

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Woke NPR CEO Katherine Maher Invited To Testify By House Committee For Alleged Biased Coverage

The House Energy and Commerce Committee issued an invitation on Tuesday to NPR CEO Katherine Maher, summoning her to address allegations of biased news coverage by the outlet.

The invitation came less than one month after NPR’s former senior editor, Uri Berliner, alleged that the outlet operates with a left-wing bias.

Resist The Mainstream reported last month that Berliner’s allegations have sent shockwaves through the news organization, sparking what insiders describe as “turmoil.”

ABC News reports that the committee will conduct a hearing, scheduled for May 8, to scrutinize NPR’s trajectory under Maher’s leadership, following her assumption of the role in March.

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‘Bitcoin Jesus’ Roger Ver Charged With $50 Million Tax Evasion

Authorities in Spain have arrested cryptocurrency entrepreneur Roger Ver, once known as “Bitcoin Jesus,” after the U.S. Department of Justice charged him with tax evasion.

Unsealed Monday, the indictment alleges that Ver evaded paying taxes to the tune of nearly $50 million, conducted mail fraud, and filed false tax returns.

The DOJ says in its indictment that Ver allegedly lied to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) about how much Bitcoin he and his companies really owned. 

According to the feds, Ver was expected to file tax returns that reported capital gains from the sale of his “worldwide assets.” These assets included Bitcoin.

But the indictment alleges that despite Ver and his companies owning 131,000 Bitcoins, the crypto entrepreneur provided or caused to be provided false or misleading information—including the Bitcoin he personally owned—to a law firm and appraiser  helping him expatriate his American nationality. 

When he sold the Bitcoin in 2017, he allegedly did not inform the IRS about the gains he had made, despite the fact that the Bitcoins were held by U.S. corporations he was in charge of—named MemoryDealers and Agilestar.

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Despite Media Cheerleading, $61 Billion Won’t Beat Russia

The United States continues to be the world’s banker for war. Last week, the U.S. invested $95 billion more in war. $61 billion of that is headed to Ukraine. While Congress waved Ukrainian flags, the American mainstream media abandoned its responsibility as investigative journalists and dutifully and enthusiastically acted as cheerleaders, celebrated the continuation of war and led the call for more.

What the mainstream media did not do is tell the American public that, while $61 billion is a lot of money, it is not enough to change the inevitable long-term outcome of the war. The current package of lethal aid will change the situation. It will prolong the war, and it will prolong Ukraine’s suffering. But it will not alter Ukraine’s inevitable defeat.

Few, if any, of the large American mainstream media bothered to investigate the aid package or report that, after money is allocated to keeping the Ukrainian government solvent, funding current military operations in the region and replenishing the U.S. stockpile of weapons, only about $14 billion is left for actually procuring new weapons for Ukraine.

Instead, mainstream media headlines proclaim a fresh beginning and celebrate the potential for the new package of lethal aid to push Ukraine to victory over Russia and prevent Russia from marching through Ukraine into Europe. But neither is true.

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Bill To Prolong Death and Destruction

I am speaking about a $95-billion foreign military aid package that included $61 billion for Ukraine. Speaker Mike Johnson’s turnaround from opponent to supporter of the war in Ukraine raised many eyebrows. His meeting with Trump in advance of this announcement added intrigue and speculations about the reasons for this sudden change of heart.

Most likely both men decided that it would help Trump and the GOP to win votes in November, and how many more Ukrainians would die in the process was of no particular concern to them.  Instead, Johnson used the same Lindsey Graham and Co’s language that financing this war was the best investment ever made since no Americans were dying, and the only new element was that the Speaker added a personal touch by adding his son into the equation.  “To put it bluntly, I would rather send bullets to Ukraine than American boys,” Johnson told reporters last week. “My son is going to begin in the Naval Academy this fall. This is a live-fire exercise for me as it is for so many American families. This is not a game; this is not a joke.”

Well, nowadays it is useless to ask whether such statements correspond to moral, ethical, or any other values that US and EU politicians (there are exceptions, of course, but, so far, their numbers are not enough to change the course) claim to adhere to but Ukrainian President Zelensky surpasses their cynicism by thanking Congress saying “The vital US aid bill passed today by the House will keep the war from expanding, save thousands and thousands of lives.” He is talking, of course, about saving American, not Ukrainian lives.

Such statements and actions from Washington or Brussels, and from Zelensky confirm what was known anyway. The West found a foreign leader ready to serve its interests of weakening Russia by sacrificing the Ukrainian people and their country in exchange for money and glory.  In the Western media, he is now George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Winston Churchill together in one face.   I doubt all of them or their heirs would be thrilled by being compared to someone who converted his own country into a foreign mercenary legion.

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OnlyFans star Farha Khalidi claims she was paid by Biden administration to spread ‘political propaganda’ to her thousands of social media followers

OnlyFans star Farha Khalidi said President Joe Biden‘s team paid her to spread ‘political propaganda’ on her platforms.

Specifically, the social media personality said that by the time she graduated college she was doing paid posts for everyone from Planned Parenthood to the Biden administration to dating apps.

‘I was doing full-on political propaganda,’ Khalidi told commentator Richard Hanania of working with a team commissioning an ad with her for Biden. 

Khalidi said that Biden’s team didn’t want her to disclose to her hundreds of thousands of followers that they were paying her for the content.

The White House wanted Khalidi to say she felt represented by then-Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson after Biden nominated her to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The content creator said she did not agree to that wording because she didn’t feel “reflected” as a ‘person of color.’

‘The funny thing is they’re like, “Do not disclose this is an ad”. Because, you know, they’re like, “technically it’s not a product so you don’t have to disclose it’s an ad”.

‘Because I think they just wanted some edgy girl of color to just tell people – when they nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson, they’re like, “Can you say as a person of color, you know, you feel reflected?”‘ Khalidi detailed in the podcast.

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West Virginia court rules that gender-affirming surgery should be paid for by tax payer, in landmark decision

Gender-affirming surgery must be paid for by state healthcare plans, a Richmond court has ruled.

The federal appeals court is the first in the country to say that transition should be covered for transgender people with government-sponsored insurance.

The decision arose out of a set of cases in North Carolina and West Virginia, in which transgender residents argued that their surgeries should be funded by either employee health plans or state-subsidized Medicaid.

State officials said that their policy of not covering transgender surgeries was based on financial concerns and not bias.

But the Richmond-based 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 8-6 in the case on Monday.

The courts decision does not mean that transition will automatically be covered for transgender people with government-sponsored insurance. The ruling could be appealed in the Supreme Court, which recently allowed Idaho to enforce a ban on gender-affirming care for minors. 

But the powerful Court has been somewhat unwilling to engage on the issue and has allowed multiple 4th Circuit rulings supporting transgender rights stand.

In West Virginia, transgender Medicaid users challenged the state’s policy, which has by law banned the funding of ‘transsexual surgeries’ since 2004. 

In North Carolina, state employees challenged their coverage which has not covered surgeries for gender dysphoria since 2018.

In January, Ohio become the 23rd state to ban transgender care for minors, amid a wave of laws passed by Republican-controlled legislatures in recent years.

‘The coverage exclusions discriminate on the basis of sex and gender identity, and are not substantially related to an important government interest,’ Judge Roger Gregory, first appointed by former President Bill Clinton and re-appointed by former President George W. Bush, wrote in the majority opinion.

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Nevada receives grant to establish state-run hate crime reporting hotline

A new grant from the Department of Justice will be used to set up a Nevada hate crime reporting hotline.

Earlier this month, Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford announced his office will receive $1,164,424 in funding.

Nevada is the only state this cycle that will receive the grant.

“In seeking justice for hate crimes, it is important to remember victims need resources and support to feel safe and valued in their communities,” Ford said. “This funding will aid in bridging the gap between hate crime victims and the services available to them.”

The funding will be used to establish policies and procedures for the hotline, implementing focused training for staff regarding the new hotline, hiring new staff members, and integrating the hotline into the Attorney General office’s preexisting Constituent Services framework.

The FBI defines a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.”

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$61 Billion Was Just The Beginning – Ukrainian President Zelenskyy Announces 10 Year Funding Agreement with U.S.: “GLORY TO UKRAINE”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, after speaking with Democrat House Leader Hakeem Jeffries, announced on Sunday the U.S. and Ukraine are “working on fixing specific levels of support for this year and for the next ten years.”

This will likely supersede President Trump’s authority on the matter if passed.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, Congress recently passed three bills to hand out $95 Billion in “foreign aid” to Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, and other non-U.S.-involved conflict zones around the world. Of the $95 Billion, over $60 Billion was allocated for Ukraine.

The handout to Ukraine was sold to the American people as a “loan.” However, as The Gateway Pundit reported, the package Johnson announced Wednesday includes terms that will allow the President to cancel 50% of Ukraine’s debt after November 15, 2024, and the remaining 50% after January 1, 2024. It’s no wonder Joe Biden came out “strongly” in support of the package, urging the House and Senate to pass it.

This means after President Trump wins the 2024 election, as expected, Joe Biden can cancel 50% of Ukraine’s debt before his term ends in January. However, if Biden and the Democrats pull off another stolen election, they can forgive 100% of Ukraine’s debt a little over one year later. This isn’t a loan. It’s a handout.

Additionally, as The Gateway Pundit reported, Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) revealed that only $44 to $47 billion–40%–of the $113 billion that the United States has handed out to Ukraine is lethal aid.” So what was the other 66 to $69 billion for?” Roy asked on Bannon’s War Room.

Two bills from the latest handout package, the Indo-Pacific Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2024 and the Ukraine Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2024, both passed the House with more support from Democrats than Republicans. This comes after Republicans under Mike Johnson’s leadership gave up a $1.2 trillion spending bill, also with more support from Democrats than Republicans, and reauthorization for warrantless searches of Americans under FISA Section 702.

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