Tag: taxes

Nebraska Lawmakers Approve 100% Tax Rate For CBD And Hemp Products To Help Offset Property Taxes

A Nebraska legislative committee has given preliminary approval to a bill that would tax hemp and CBD products in the state at a whopping 100 percent rate.

The cannabis product tax hike is part of legislation designed to bring in more money to state coffers to offset property tax bills, according to an outline of the plan from Sen. Lou Ann Linehan (R), the legislation’s sponsor, that was posted by a Nebraska Public Media reporter.

The legislature’s Revenue Committee advanced the underlying measure, LB 388, on a 7–0 vote on Thursday, according to a report in the Nebraska Examiner. The state’s full unicameral legislature could take up the bill as soon as Tuesday.

“We are going to tax hemp and CBD at 100%,” Linehan’s document says, adding that, along with other reforms—including removing sales tax exemptions on soda, candy, pet services, advertising revenue over $1 billion and lottery tickets—the change is estimated to bring in $182 million in new revenue for the state.

The changes are not currently reflected in the bill’s language as available online, nor has any relevant amendment been posted to the bill page. Linehan, who also chairs the panel that approved the measure this week, did not immediately respond to emailed questions from Marijuana Moment.

Adam Morfeld, a former Nebraska state senator who co-chairs the advocacy group Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana, reacted to the proposal with shock.

“The Legislature is going to tax hemp and CBD at 100 percent!??” he posted on social media.

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Saber Rattling Toward Tragedy: The High Stakes of US-China Tensions

The confirmation of US Army Special Forces’ deployment to strategic locations in Taiwan is a harbinger of the United States inching closer to a precipice, one that overlooks a potential conflict with China—a scenario fraught with peril not just for the involved states but for global peace.

This development, while emblematic of the US’s commitment to Taiwan’s defense, inadvertently amplifies the saber rattling that has come to define US-China relations. The stakes of this brinkmanship are alarmingly high, risking a catastrophic conflict that serves no nation’s true interest, save for the military-industrial complex that stands to profit at the cost of countless innocent lives.

A Dangerous Game

The decision to station US Green Berets in Kinmen and Penghu, areas perilously close to mainland China, is not merely a strategic military maneuver but a bold political statement. It represents a significant escalation in the US’s show of support for Taiwan, a move that, while intended to deter Chinese aggression, equally serves to provoke it. This saber rattling—a display of military might under the guise of deterrence—edges us closer to a conflict that, once ignited, could spiral out of control, drawing in multiple global powers into a confrontation nobody wants.

The True Beneficiaries of Conflict

Amid these tensions, it’s crucial to ask: Who truly benefits from such brinkmanship? The sad answer lies in the military-industrial complex, a conglomerate of defense contractors and associated industries whose fortunes swell with the drums of war. For them, the escalation of tensions is not a harbinger of tragedy but an opportunity for profit, achieved at the expense of human lives and global stability. This stark reality underscores the need to scrutinize the motives behind our foreign policy decisions and question the narrative that military escalation equates to deterrence.

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Blumenthal And Murphy Want Federal Funding To Subsidize Construction Costs For Hartford Gay & Lesbian Health Collective Known As A “Champion Of LGBTQIA+ Equity”

Congressman Matt Gaetz exposed Connecticut Senators Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy for wanting to give $156,000 in taxpayer dollars to subsidize a controversial health organization in Hartford.

The Hartford Gay & Lesbian Health Collective (HGLHC) describes itself as “a health center and champion of LGBTQIA+ equity” that “advocates for systemic solutions to the health care access barriers and health disparities experienced by sexual and gender minority groups.”

HGLHC aims to become the premier health and wellness center for the LGBTQIA+ community in Connecticut.

It currently provides medical services, dental services, support groups, and health education tailored primarily to LGBTQIA+ communities.

HGLHC has full and part-time staff, along with more than 100 volunteers who contribute thousands of hours annually to support the group’s efforts, which include organizing community and educational events.

For instance, HGLHC held an event called “Butt Stuff: Pleasure and Safety for Anal Play” last year.

The event targeted folks “having anal sex or any kind of anal play” in order to share health and safety information, as well as how to make “butt sex” an enjoyable experience. Attendees were entered into a drawing to win a free vibrator.

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2025 Department of Defense Budget Request Disarms America

The press release for the Department of Defense 2025 Budget Request told one story, a story replete with lofty, aspirational goals expressed in the usual abstract text of DOD budget requests.

Reading the text, one would think the Arsenal of Democracy 2.0 was in high gear.  On the other hand, the accompanying Comptroller submissions of the different Services (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Space Force) that are the official numbers from DOD told a very different story.  The Service submissions do have a similar, flowery textual chapeau laid over the numbers that perhaps this time were serving as a second layer of distraction from the numbers.

The Comptroller numbers don’t lie, the topline number of the entire Department of Defense was flat, $849.8 Billion, only $7.8B more than 2024.  $7.8B is a lot, but it is budget dust in DOD world.

This is less than 1% growth in the DOD budget and taking inflation into account, the number is a significant shrinkage of the DOD topline.  The Comptroller numbers revealed that almost every important warfighting line item, the numbers of ships, airplanes, and missiles, went down.

The disconnect of the descriptive text from the numbers took a few days to sink in with most of the experts.  Professor James Holmes said simply, the “New Defense Budget Makes No Sense”.

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‘Emergency’ Spending Is Out of Control

Emergencies are, by definition, unexpected and urgent situations requiring immediate action—except in Congress, where the term is increasingly used to justify spending decisions that should be part of the normal budget process.

Congress has authorized more than $12 trillion in emergency spending over the past three decades, according to a report released in January by the Cato Institute. About half of that total was spent in direct response to the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic, but much of the other half was used for purposes that strain the definition of emergency.

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Illinois Moves To Cut Thousands Of Non-Citizens From Taxpayer-Subsidized Health Care

Illinois officials are moving to stop providing taxpayer-subsidized health care to thousands of non-citizens, including many illegal immigrants, in a bid to rein in soaring costs.

The Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services said in a recent statement it will start annually verifying the eligibility for two programs—Health Benefits for Immigrant Adults (HBIA) and Health Benefits for Immigrant Seniors (HBIS)—after enrollment was paused due to budget concerns.

“This process will mirror the redetermination process used in the traditional Medicaid program to ensure those enrolled remain eligible,” the agency said.

The plans include closing cases for people who are enrolled who make over a certain amount or who otherwise are no longer eligible for the program in which they’re enrolled. Officials also plan on removing legal permanent residents who qualify for Medicaid, which is a federal program.

“The redetermination process ensures that those who are enrolled remain eligible for coverage,” Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services spokesperson Jamie Munks told WBEZ. “If an individual loses coverage through the redetermination process, it is because they no longer meet eligibility requirements, or they are required to respond or submit additional information to prove their continued eligibility, but they do not do so.”

The processes are estimated to reduce the number of enrollees in the state programs by about 6,000 people, state Sen. Don DeWitte, a Republican, told the Center Square after hearing from state health officials. Those removals would result in savings of $14 million.

HBIS, launched in 2020, provides taxpayer-funded health care for seniors who would receive Medicaid coverage but can’t get it due to their immigration status. HBIA, introduced in 2022, provides the same state benefits for people aged 42 to 64. Illegal immigrants are among the approximately 63,000 covered.

“Everyone, regardless of documentation status, deserves access to holistic healthcare coverage,” Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, said in one of his statements in support of the programs.

Many Republicans have opposed the programs, noting that some citizens still lack health care.

The costs of the programs have increasingly sparked concern among lawmakers of both parties.

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DARPA picks Northrop Grumman to develop ‘lunar raiload’ concept

Railroads could open the moon to serious and sustained economic development, as they did in the American West in the late 19th century.

That’s apparently the hope of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is supporting the development of a “lunar railroad” concept proposed by aerospace giant Northrop Grumman.

“The envisioned lunar railroad network could transport humans, supplies and resources for commercial ventures across the lunar surface, contributing to a space economy for the United States and international partners,” Northrop Grumman representatives wrote in a press statement on Tuesday (March 19).

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Legalizing Marijuana For Adults Does Not Drive Increases In Youth Use, New Federally Funded Study Finds

New federally funded research into the impacts of marijuana legalization on youth use found no association between legal adult-use cannabis sales and the prevalence of consumption among middle-school students.

To test whether legal sales led to an uptick in youth use, authors compared middle-school use rates in Nevada and New Mexico, looking at 2017 and 2019 data from two state-run surveys. At the time, adult-use marijuana sales were legal in Nevada, while New Mexico allowed only medical marijuana.

In both states, researchers found increases in the proportions of students that had ever consumed cannabis as well as those who had consumed within the past 30 days.

In Nevada, the share of middle-school students who said they’d ever consumed cannabis rose during the study period, from 9.7 percent in 2017 to 13.3 percent in 2019. Past 30 day (P30D) use also rose, from 6.3 percent to 8.9 percent.

New Mexico, where recreational marijuana remained illegal, saw lifetime use rise from 14.1 percent to 17.4 percent over the same period. Past 30 day use rose from 8.9 percent to 10.5 percent.

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President Joe Biden’s Magical Thinking On Taxes

I am often asked whether President Joe Biden is intentionally trying to dismantle the American economy with his imbecile energy, climate change, crime, border, inflation and debt policies. But I’ve always believed that these policies are driven by a badly mistaken ideology — not malice.

Then I watched Biden’s State of the Union speech when Biden thundered that “I’m going to make corporations pay their fair share,” The democrats in Congress leapt to their feet in applause.

When I read through the details of Biden’s new multi-trillion tax plan, it’s hard to come up with any plausible explanation other than that he’s trying to make American industry less competitive. Biden’s tax scheme would hobble U.S. businesses with nearly the highest corporate tax rate in the world — and higher than our primary competitors.

They’re the big winner here if God forbid these policies were adopted? Even China and Russia — one communist and one autocratic nation — would have LOWER tax rates on their businesses than we would on ours.

This will lead to an outmigration of capital from the U.S. to our rivals as sure as river water flows downstream.

One of my first meetings with Donald Trump was in early 2020 when I showed him a chart that indicated the U.S. had the highest tax rate of all our competitors. When Trump saw the chart, he instantly remarked: “This is like a head start program for all the countries we compete with.”

His goal was to empower American businesses with the lowest rate in the world. We didn’t get the rate down to 15%, but we did lower it to 21%.

This helped attract more than $1 trillion back into the United States from all corners of the globe — from Switzerland to Bermuda, to Euroland. It helped raise incomes for working class Americans despite being disparaged as a “tax cut for the rich.” As Trump once put it, because of the lower tax rates and other pro-growth reforms, for the first time in decades factories moved from Mexico to Maryland rather than the other way around.

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California Trans Study Finds Remarkable Increase In Suicides Post-Operation – Matches Sweden And U.S. Is Expanding Trans Operations To Illegals In America

Everyone paying attention to how parents are being slammed with the fearful and false narrative that if they do not affirm their gender-confused child choices that their child may commit suicide if the parents do not agree need to comprehend that narrative is a lie.  

A study using California government data found suicide rates double after surgery for transgender females who receive male-to-female gender change surgeries. 

A 2020 analysis of the entire Swedish population found there is “no advantage of surgery in relation to subsequent mood or anxiety disorder-related health care visits or prescriptions or hospitalizations following suicide attempts in that comparison.”

The California study, published in the Journal of Urology, studied 859 Californians who underwent a vaginoplasty (male-to-female gender surgery), and 357 who underwent phalloplasty (female-to-male surgery) for two years before and after their surgeries. 

“All persons undergoing feminizing (vaginoplasty) and masculinizing (metoidioplasty/ phalloplasty) genital gender affirming surgery were identified in California from 2012-2018 from the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development datasets using appropriate ICD-9/10 codes,” reads the California study abstract. 

Of those who underwent gender affirmation surgery, a similar proportion of vaginoplasty and phalloplasty recipients experienced at least one psychiatric encounter, coming in at 22.2% and 20.7% respectively. 

Suicide rates were higher among vaginoplasty than phalloplasty patients after their surgeries; vaginoplasty suicide rates more than doubled from 1.5% to 3.3%, whereas phalloplasty suicide rates remained stable at 0.8% before and after surgery.

“Although both the phalloplasty and vaginoplasty patients have similar overall rates of psychiatric encounters, suicide attempts are more common in the latter. In fact, our observed rate of suicide attempts in the phalloplasty group is actually similar to the general population, while the vaginoplasty group’s rate is more than double that of the general population,” reads the study. “Patients undergoing [gender affirmation surgery] with a history of prior psychiatric emergencies or feminizing transition are at higher risk and should be counseled appropriately.”

Medi-Cal, the state’s taxpayer-supported public health system, includes hormonal and surgical gender transitions for beneficiaries, which expanded on January 1 to include illegal immigrants. 

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