Tag: taxes

US gives Haiti millions more tax dollars after armed gangs take over, billions in aid disappears

Armed gangs have overrun most of the capital of Port-au-Prince and political instability has plateaued, but the American taxpayer dollars keep flowing with no oversight though billions in assistance have vanished since an earthquake struck Haiti nearly a decade and a half ago.

This week Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the U.S. is sending another $33 million in humanitarian assistance to the Caribbean nation to provide in-kind food assistance, nutrition support, essential health services, improved access to clean water, and prevention and response to gender-based violence, among other critical humanitarian activities.

“Since February 29, organized criminal groups have escalated violence, exacerbating the humanitarian situation for Haitians,” says the government press release announcing the recent allocation. “Displaced people are struggling to access food, health care, water, hygiene facilities, and psychological support, further compounding their already dire needs.”

The document reveals that the U.S. remains the single largest donor of humanitarian assistance to Haiti, providing tens of millions of dollars in assistance in the last year alone. “The United States will continue to stand with Haitians during this challenging time, working to save lives and alleviate suffering caused by the humanitarian crisis,” the government writes.

Since the 2010 earthquake Uncle Sam alone has provided Haiti with over $5.6 billion to help the nation bounce back but 14 years later the situation is more dire for the island’s 12 million residents and no one really knows what happened to the money.

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After a Century, the Federal Tea Board Is Finally Dead

“I see no reason,” the late Sen. Harry Reid (D–Nev.) once declared on the Senate floor, “why those in this country who enjoy drinking tea need someone else to tell them what tastes good.”

Yet for nearly 100 years that is exactly what the government did, thanks to one of the strangest agencies ever to be a part of the federal bureaucracy.

In addition to the usual beverage regulations aimed at ensuring proper storage and safe handling, imported tea was required for decades to pass a literal taste test before it could be sold in the United States. The task fell to a group of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) appointees, who would gather annually in a converted Navy warehouse in Brooklyn to smell, slosh, sip, and spit the various oolongs, greens, and Earl Greys that tea merchants sought to sell to Americans.

This was the federal Board of Tea Experts.

The board’s members would taste dozens of teas over the course of several days. The process was more an art than a science. According to a 1989 Washington Post profile, there was no uniform method for tasting. Some board members worked in silence while others slurped their tea or gargled it loudly. Some preferred to taste the tea hot; others let it cool first. The warehouse where they gathered was outfitted with pictures of old-timey sailing ships, a kitchen sink, several kettles for boiling water, boxes upon boxes of tea, and large windows. The board’s then-leader Robert H. Dick told the Post thatto properly inspect the tea, “I have to have a north light.”

When Reid voiced his objection to the tea board in 1995, the agency had already survived two decades’ worth of efforts to shut it down. Congress finally ended the board’s oversight of tea imports a year later, but the federal Board of Tea Experts technically still existed for another 27 years. It was officially terminated on September 19, 2023.

The bizarre history and surprising longevity of the federal tea-tasting board is something of a mixed bag for anyone who wants to see more federal programs iced for good.

On one hand: The board was eventually shut down.

On the other: If it takes nearly 50 years to get rid of something as useless and insignificant as the Board of Tea Experts, what hope can there possibly be to do away with larger governmental entities backed by more powerful special interests? Hardly an election season goes by without some (usually Republican) presidential hopefuls promising to abolish this department or that agency—the Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency are perennial favorites. Are those efforts doomed before they begin? Will those promises always be empty?

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The Government Doesn’t Want You To See the Unused Space Force Logos

As Sunshine Week 2024 draws to a close, the Air Force has marked the occasion by hiding the draft designs of logos and uniforms for the Space Force.

Reason filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Air Force in January 2020 for drafts or alternate designs for the logo of the nascent Space Force, one of the Trump administration’s more expensive and whimsical farces.

A quick four years later, the Air Force released 122 pages of communications between the public servants who designed the uniforms, logo, and seal for Star Fleet—excuse me, Space Force.

Unfortunately for everyone who was looking forward to seeing Project Runway: Department of Defense Edition, the Air Force redacted all images of the draft versions, citing Exemption (b)(5) of the FOIA.

Exemption (b)(5) is also known as the “deliberative process” exemption. It protects discussions between bureaucrats about policy decisions, under the reasoning that bureaucrats wouldn’t be as frank if everything they said got dragged into the public eye (by annoying reporters like myself). 

Congress amended the FOIA in 2016 to state that agencies should operate with a “presumption of openness” and only withhold documents when there is a “foreseeable harm,” not out of fear of embarrassment. Despite that, federal agencies still regularly abuse exemptions, especially (b)(5). In this case, the Air Force seems to be claiming that its staff would be afraid to design uniforms if their mock-ups were public. Sorry, but fashion’s a tough business.

All is not lost, though. Some tidbits slipped by the censors.

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GAO: ‘Unclear’ If Pentagon Tracking Reports Of Misused Aid In Ukraine

While the Pentagon has assured Congress that no U.S. military equipment sent to Ukraine has been diverted, stolen, or otherwise misappropriated, a new report from the Government Accountability Office could not determine if the Department of Defense was tracking allegations of misuse two years into the conflict.

“If you never look, you will never find it,” a source familiar with how the report was compiled said of the worst-case possibility that aid was being misappropriated.

The report comes as President Biden struggles to keep the supply lines open to Ukraine. Although a majority of Congress supports sending further aid to help hold back the Russian onslaught, and the Senate passed a bipartisan aid package late last month, House Republicans have yet to approve the latest round of now-stalled military assistance.

The United States remains the leading supplier of munitions and other aid to Ukraine, providing more than $42 billion in assistance since Russia’s invasion. Much of it has come through the Presidential Drawdown Authority, which allows the president to transfer equipment from American stores directly to allies. The annual amount was limited by law to $100 million a year until Congress lifted the cap to $14.5 billion.

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Democrat says green pin ditched by GOP had hidden message

House Republican leaders spent a reported $40,000 in January to replace the official pin given to all members to show they had been sworn into the 118th Congress — a midterm expense driven by a confluence of factors, including that members on both sides of the aisle didn’t like the color.

Behind the decision to throw out the pin issued to 435 lawmakers: politics. Republicans believed that the outgoing Democratic majority of the 117th Congress picked the bright green color in honor of the Green New Deal, a progressive policy conservatives revile.

“I heard some guys and gals grumbling that it’s an environmental tribute or something like that — which, hey, I like the color green, I have a lot of John Deere equipment in that color,” said Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.), a rice farmer who serves on the committees on Agriculture and Natural Resources.

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Pres. Biden’s budget proposal seeks to spend $3 billion for teacher DEI training programs

President Joe Biden’s budget proposal seeks to set aside billions of dollars to push progressive gender, sexuality and race ideology at home and around the globe.

Released this week, the $7.3 trillion budget also proposes spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to train school teachers in diversity, equity, and inclusion dogma.

The White House touted the spending in its announcement of Biden’s budget, which includes $3 billion to “advance gender equity and equality worldwide.”

That $3 billion figure is several hundred million dollars higher than the 2023 budget request.

Funding for domestic projects of the same kind are robust as well though, including for public education to “improve the diversity of the teacher pipeline.”

In fact, Biden’s budget prioritizes training a new generation of teachers who embrace progressive ideology on race, gender, and sexuality.

For example, the budget includes $30 million to increase the number of teachers who go through the Hawkins Centers of Excellence, a federal effort that sets up programs to trains teachers in inclusivity on race, gender and sexuality.

Those training programs must be set up at minority-focused colleges such as historically black colleges and universities or colleges focused on serving Native Americans or Hispanics.

Once established, the taxpayer-funded program must “examine the sources of inequity and inadequacy in resources and opportunity and implement pedagogical practices in teacher preparation programs that are inclusive with regard to race, ethnicity, culture, language, and disability status and that prepare teachers to create inclusive, supportive, equitable, unbiased, and identity-safe learning environments for their students.”

In another similar funding item, the budget sets aside $95 million for the Teacher Quality Partnership Program, another federal effort that administers grants for training teachers.

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Utah corrections department discriminated against transgender woman, DOJ says

The Utah Department of Corrections violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) when it failed to provide a transgender woman with her hormone therapy, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

The state corrections department discriminated against the woman, who is not named in court documents, by denying her equal access to health care services, imposing “unnecessary barriers” to treatment for gender dysphoria and failing to grant her requests for reasonable accommodations, including allowing her to purchase female clothing and makeup at the commissary, a federal investigation found.

Utah’s corrections department also “unnecessarily delayed” the woman’s treatment for her gender dysphoria, a condition with which she had “for many years” before entering the department’s custody in 2021, according to the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) findings.

The woman’s psychological distress worsened while she was incarcerated in a men’s prison, federal investigators said, and a health care provider contracted by the state corrections department formally diagnosed her with gender dysphoria — a state of severe distress that stems from a mismatch between a person’s gender identity and sex assigned at birth.

Unlike other requests for medical care, which are typically directed to the state corrections department’s medical staff, a request for treatment for gender dysphoria is sent to the department’s gender dysphoria committee, which federal investigators described as the “gatekeeper” of care.

The committee during the woman’s incarceration included members who demonstrated “overt bias” against transgender individuals seeking care and expressed reluctance to prescribe treatment for gender dysphoria, including hormone therapy, the Justice Department said.

“Complainant’s access to medically necessary care for her disability was unnecessarily delayed due to [the Utah Corrections Department’s] biased and prolonged approval process,” DOJ Disability Rights Chief Rebecca Bond wrote Tuesday in a letter to Brian Redd, executive director of Utah’s corrections department.

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California bill would let illegal aliens convicted of violent crimes receive legal services

Legislation filed in California would extend legal services subsidized by taxpayer dollars to more illegal aliens, including those convicted of violent crimes.

The bill filed by California Democratic Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer would expand current law to provide additional “immigration-related legal services” through grants received by nonprofit groups. The present version of the bill would strike language in the current law such that individuals who have been found guilty of violent offenses can receive assistance.

“Existing law prohibits use of the grant funds to provide legal services to an individual who has been convicted of, or who is currently appealing a conviction for, a violent or serious felony,” the summary of the legislation reads. “This bill would remove that prohibition.”

The current law, which allows grant funding for “immigration remedies and naturalization” for those presently or formerly residing in California, would be expanded to assist those “having an intent to reside in and having a nexus to the state” and would increase “the scope of services to include, among other things, legal representation and related services for removal defense.”

Controversy over the bill, which was introduced last month, comes as immigration emerges as a central issue ahead of the fall elections. Various crimes committed by illegal aliens, such as the abduction and murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley by an illegal alien from Venezuela, have also drawn renewed criticism of border policy under the Biden administration.

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Biden’s National Science Foundation Spent Millions in Emergency COVID Funds Last Year. The Spending Had Nothing To Do With COVID.

Since January 2023, President Joe Biden’s National Science Foundation (NSF) has spent millions of dollars on grants funded by the American Rescue Plan, Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID stimulus package. The grants have nothing to do with COVID, but they do fund studies on climate change.

The American Rescue Plan, which Biden said would bring “direct relief to families bearing the brunt of the COVID-19 crisis,” sent $600 million to the NSF. The agency pledged to use the funding to “support groups of individuals and institutions most strongly affected by the pandemic.” Three years after Biden signed the legislation, that money is still going out the door—through research grants that aren’t COVID-related.

One July 2023 grant, for example, funded a $246,000 Amherst College study meant to “deepen our understanding of how floodplains have responded to … climatic changes.” A more than $7 million grant awarded one month earlier to the University of Texas at Austin will help develop “a learning environment that is welcoming to marginalized and minoritized researchers.” The NSF sent another $181,000 to California Polytechnic State University in December to investigate “the structural organization, and changes therein, of a school of fish.”

In total, the agency has awarded more than $23 million in American Rescue Plan grants since January 2023 that are unrelated to COVID, federal spending disclosures show.

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Rep. Massie warns about fed plan to electronically track all U.S. cattle to stymie beef production

Hidden deep within the new omnibus bill is a secret provision to allow the federal government to electronically track all cattle in the United States.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) warned about the hidden provision on X, stating that lobbyists will receive $15 million in taxpayer funds to unleash the electronic tracking grid on the nation’s meat-producing cows and bison.

As stated directly from the omnibus, the agreement “directs the Department to continue to provide the tags and related infrastructure needed to comply with the Federal Animal Disease Traceability rule (9 CFR 86), including no less than $15,000,000 for electronic identification (EID) tags and related infrastructure needed for stakeholders to comply with the proposed rule, ‘Use of Electronic Identification Eartags as Official Identification in Cattle and Bison’ (88 FR 3320), should that rule be finalized.”

None of this, warned Rep. Massie is legal. And yet, the near-total apathy of the American people these days means these kinds of things are easily passable without so much as a peep from the wider constituency.

“No law authorizes this!” Rep. Massie wrote on X.

“It will be used by the GREEN agenda to limit beef production, and by the corporate meat oligopoly to DOMINATE small ranchers.”

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