Tag: taxes

Democrat Jon Ossoff Staffer Embraced Reparations in Gates Foundation Grant Study He Coauthored

Georgia Democrat Sen. Jon Ossoff’s data and analytics director received a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to study how to shame white Americans into embracing reparations.

A summary of the grant reads as follows:

Racially restrictive housing covenants – used by white homeowners to prevent migration of people of color into their neighborhoods – contributed to contemporary patterns of residential segregation, social stratification, and inequality. Yet, policy proposals to correct these historical wrongs have not gained broad support. Political scientist Bryant Moy will investigate whether awareness of racially restrictive housing covenants bolsters support for reparations. He will conduct a nationally representative survey experiment for his study.

Bryant Moy, who has been hired to Ossoff’s campaign ahead of the 2026 midterm election, also serves as an associate professor at New York University.

Additionally, he is a principal investigator at the Urban Politics Lab, where his biography states in part:

He studies urban and local politics, with a focus on racial inequality, local governance, and public opinion. His research uses large-scale datasets, survey and field experiments, and modern methods of causal inference to understand how local institutions produce—or undermine—equity and democratic responsiveness in multiracial communities.

Moy explains on his personal website that he wants to fix white Americans’ lack of support for reparations.

“Public support for reparations among white Americans remains divided…  This study examines whether informational and visual interventions that present the structural roots of racial inequality can increase support for reparative policies,” an explanation on his website of one of his studies outlines.

The study, titled “Can Knowledge of Racially Restrictive Covenants Increase Support for Redress?”  is listed as “under review.”

In August, a Fox News report unearthed a 2019 interview in which Ossoff himself said he supports reparations, saying “there is a debt unpaid.”

In the exchange, Ossoff agreed with paying reparations: “There is a debt unpaid. I think it is a very, very difficult question: how to pay it,” he said.

“But see, that should be the question — not if it should be paid,” the host responded.

“Exactly,” Ossoff replied.

The Fox News report added that far-left progressive groups like Movement for Back Lives (M4BL) and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have made reparations a part of their platforms.

In the 2019 interview, Ossoff also said, “Forty acres and a mule was never paid out,” but has declined to sponsor Democrat Sen. Cory Booker’s legislation to establish a commission to study and develop reparation proposals.

That bill, introduced most recently on January 9, 2025, has 20 cosponsors, all of whom are Democrats with the exception of Independent Bernie Sanders, who caucuses with the Democrats. The list includes Sens. Mazie Hirono (HI), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Adam Schiff (CA), Chris Van Hollen (MD), Elizabeth Warren (MA), and Sheldon Whitehouse (RI).

Ossoff faces Republican Rep. Mike Collins in November. Polls have shown Ossoff with a steady, but somewhat declining lead. Outgoing Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has formally endorsed Collins.

“Jon Ossoff’s far-left agenda doesn’t represent Georgia values, and the future of our state and country demands a different direction,” Kemp said in a statement.

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Georgia’s “Historic” Youngest Mayor Ousted After Just 10 Months Following Alleged Taxpayer-Funded Spending Spree and Sexually Suggestive Messages With 18-Year-Old Student

Ten months. That is how long it took for Georgia’s youngest elected mayor, a media-anointed “historic” figure who once called himself “the Obama of my family,” to be thrown out of office.

Jayden Williams, 23, was removed Saturday by the Stockbridge City Council after a roughly 10-hour investigative hearing into allegations that he treated the city purchasing card like a personal wallet and traded sexually suggestive messages and explicit images with an 18-year-old male high school student.

The city confirmed the result on Sunday.

“The City of Stockbridge confirms that the City Council has taken formal action concerning the Office of Mayor following proceedings conducted pursuant to applicable City processes,” officials said. “As a result of that action, the Mayor has been removed from office.”

Mayor Pro Tem Elton Alexander is now acting mayor while the city prepares a special election. Williams can appeal to Henry County Superior Court. No criminal charges have been filed.

City workers flagged unusual charges and alerted management and the city attorney. An independent law-firm investigation followed. Local outlets including Atlanta News First and Fox News have reported the alleged personal burn on the municipal purchasing card at more than $4,000, restaurants, clothing, a haircut, a movie, plus about $2,600 in fuel and personal use of a city vehicle.

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Ukraine Allegedly Spends $190 Million Daily on War

They are just making up numbers at this point. Ukraine’s parliamentary Budget Committee chair Roksolana Pidlasa now says that one day of war costs Ukraine $190 million, up from $140 million per day in 2024. They present these figures as if somebody can open a spreadsheet in Kyiv and calculate what this catastrophe costs down to the dollar. The $190 million is essentially a budgetary accounting figure. It does not remotely represent the TRUE cost of this war.

Even Pidlasa admits the number excludes weapons supplied in kind by Ukraine’s foreign partners. That alone should tell you how meaningless it is to call $190 million the “cost” of one day of war. Over the first eight months of 2026, Ukraine reportedly spent nearly $42 billion on national security and defense while raising only about $39 billion from its own revenues and domestic government bonds. The state can no longer finance even the portion of this war that it previously funded itself. Yet the weapons arriving from Europe and elsewhere can sit outside that headline calculation.

Do the elementary arithmetic and $190 million every day becomes roughly $69.4 billion annually. But even THAT is not the cost of the war. The IMF says Ukraine’s fiscal deficit excluding budget support grants is running around 21% of GDP in 2026 and is financeable only because of enormous external donor support. The European Union agreed to a €90 billion Ukraine Support Loan for 2026-2027, with €45 billion scheduled for 2026 alone, including €28.3 billion for defense procurement and €16.7 billion for budget support. The IMF now calculates Ukraine’s financing gap at $140.3 billion over 2026-2029. We are no longer discussing a nation capable of independently financing the government and the war simultaneously. We are discussing a state being financially sustained from abroad.

Then there is the destruction nobody can accurately price while the bombs are still falling. The World Bank, European Commission, United Nations, and Ukrainian government estimated in February that reconstruction and recovery would require nearly $588 BILLION over the coming decade. That was based on damage measured only through December 31, 2025. Direct physical damage had already surpassed $195 billion. Transport reconstruction needs exceeded $96 billion, energy approached $91 billion, housing nearly $90 billion, commerce and industry exceeded $63 billion, and agriculture surpassed $55 billion. Fourteen percent of Ukraine’s housing stock had already been damaged or destroyed, affecting more than three million households.

And those numbers were obsolete the moment they were published because THE WAR NEVER STOPPED. You cannot continuously destroy a nation’s productive capacity and pretend that yesterday’s reconstruction estimate represents tomorrow’s bill.

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Vance: 870K suspected COVID-loan fraudsters barred from future federal assistance

Vice President JD Vance announced Monday that the federal government will suspend roughly 870,000 individuals suspected of defrauding pandemic-era small business programs, permanently barring them from receiving future government-backed loans.

Speaking at an FBI field office in Kansas City, Missouri, Vance described the administrative crackdown as a blunt message of accountability, stating that borrowers who stole from taxpayers would no longer be eligible to borrow money or participate in programs administered by the Small Business Administration (SBA).

The sweeping suspensions stem from a multi-agency operation that flagged an estimated $39 billion in suspected fraudulent activity across 45 states and U.S. territories.

The announcement was made alongside key administration officials, including Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel and SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler. It accompanied a broader Justice Department campaign targeting fraud in emergency aid initiatives like the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) scheme.

Officials revealed that recent enforcement drives have resulted in criminal charges against nearly 80 individuals for schemes involving fake businesses, falsified payrolls, and identity theft, alongside dozens of guilty pleas and sentences connected to hundreds of millions in intended losses.

Authorities emphasized that barring these individuals from federal assistance — including disaster loans and SBA contracting programs — is a crucial first step toward curbing systemic abuse.

The enforcement surge highlights ongoing efforts to claw back billions of dollars distributed during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic under highly relaxed safeguard protocols.

Oversight watchdogs, including the SBA’s Inspector General, have previously estimated that total fraudulent disbursements across pandemic emergency relief channels exceed $200 billion.

Justice Department officials attributed the continued wave of prosecutions years after the programs closed to expanded staffing, increased federal resources and improved cross-agency data sharing, assuring the public that federal investigators will continue pursuing fraudulent networks both domestically and abroad.

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Waste Of The Day: Alleged Data Center Fraud

The Securities and Exchange Commission paid $10.7 million to store its electronic data at a Maryland facility that was allegedly certified by a company that does not exist.

AiNET Corp. and its former CEO Deepak Jain recently agreed to pay $1.8 million to settle allegations that they violated the False Claims Act by knowingly defrauding the government. The settlement does not contain an admission of guilt.

Key facts: When the SEC began looking for a new data center in 2012, it required applicants to have a Tier III certification. That means the data center is fully operational even when undergoing maintenance.

Jain submitted paperwork to the SEC showing that AiNET had been certified by the company Uptime Council. No such company exists.

The Department of Justice later alleged that Jain wrote the certification letters himself, and that nobody had ever inspected AiNET’s data center. Jain allegedly purchased a web domain for Uptime Council to make it appear like a legitimate business.

The name also closely resembled the Uptime Institute, a legitimate company that certifies data center infrastructure.

When SEC employees toured the facility before signing the contract, an AiNET employee allegedly prevented them from viewing infrastructure that would have shown the center did not meet the claimed standards.

The SEC later experienced issues involving security, cooling and power and spent additional money and resources addressing them.

When the SEC requested a new certification in 2017, Jain allegedly drafted another Uptime Council letter stating that the center had been reinspected. Prosecutors claimed no inspection occurred.

The SEC stopped using the facility in 2018. Prosecutors allege that Jain was still advertising the data center’s false certification to private customers as of 2024.

Jain’s attorneys previously maintained that AiNET fulfilled the contract and that no SEC data was lost or compromised.

Summary: An independent certification is not much of a safeguard when the contractor allegedly creates the certifier himself.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.

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Fatal Alliance: The Reality of the US-Israel Axis

To examine the unyielding multi-billionaire dollar shield that the United States provides Israel is to confront the coarse mechanics of modern empire.

Washington has, for decades, maintained a posture of absolute defense, supplying advanced weaponry, providing diplomatic immunity, and rationalizing actions that human rights organizations and international courts characterize as war crimes, apartheid and genocide.

The mainstream narrative has relentlessly framed the U.S.-Israel alliance through the comforting lens of shared democratic values and mutual defense. This rendering, however, crumbles under the weight of reality.  Nothing has dissuaded Washington from its entente with and acquiescence to Israel – not the regime’s racist policies; not even genocide.

Every U.S. administration has backed its brutal regimes, because they have buttressed American power and interests in the Middle East. This fatal alignment evokes the question: what exactly is Israel’s role, and whose interests are being served?

Israel has long functioned as an imperial agent for Western powers seeking  regional dominance. Initially, the British Empire was crucial in helping its Zionist proxies secure a foothold in Palestine during and after World War I. In the mid-20th century, the United States seized the geopolitical mantle from Britain, taking control of the resource-rich region and becoming Israel’s primary benefactor.

Since the 1950s, Washington has viewed the Middle East – a vital nexus of global energy routes, trade corridors and geopolitical leverage – through the lens of dominance and resource control.

Lacking permanent colonial possessions in the heart of the Islamic world, Washington engineered an alternative: a heavily subsidized, fortified and technologically advanced military outpost. For the Pentagon and State Department, Israel has functioned as an unsinkable aircraft carrier; a military stronghold to project force, suppress independent anti-colonial movements, and to act as a counterweight to Iranian regional influence.

The Washington-Tel Aviv partnership is reinforced by the military-industrial economy of the United States that thrives on perpetual conflict to drive demand.

Defense spending fuels the domestic economy. The billions in military aid funneled to Israel are, in practice, massive subsidies paid directly to U.S defense conglomerates like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman. U.S.-Israeli wars have contributed substantially to the financial survival of these industries.

Occupied Gaza and the West Bank have long served as testing laboratories for advanced weaponry, surveillance technology and crowd-control systems.

Surveillance and weapons systems that have been battle-tested on captive civilian populations are subsequently marketed globally as “combat proven.”

This multi-billion-dollar defense network closely connects the interests of the U.S. military sector with the continuation of Israel’s military operations.  It also ensures fierce bipartisan resistance in Washington to any meaningful arms embargo or policy shifts, since almost every congressional district in the country is tied in some way to the defense industry.

American politicians aggressively safeguard Israeli “exceptionalism” and fiercely buffer it from accountability.  Robust networks of well-financed lobbying groups, political action committees and institutional gatekeepers ensure that unwavering support for Israel is a requisite for political survival in Washington.

When elected officials dissent from established foreign policy positions or condemn the slaughter of civilians, they become the targets of well-funded, organized efforts to end their political careers.  As a result, domestic priorities are sidelined as Congress aligns itself with a powerful military lobby rather than the American public; a growing majority of whom oppose unconditional foreign military aid.

At its core, the relationship between Israel and the United States is rooted in a shared historical consciousness and legacy.  Both countries developed as settler-colonial states built upon the systemic erasure, confinement and dispossession of native populations.

Allegations of apartheid, genocidal violence, and systemic racism leveled against Israel deeply resonate within the American political landscape, mirroring its own foundational legacy.

U.S. policymakers connect Israel’s regional supremacy directly to the preservation of Western influence and global dominance. Racism is not a mistake in the alliance; it is a core function.  It ensures that non-Western, non-white casualties are viewed as dispensable; essentially acceptable “collateral damage” in the pursuit of geopolitical objectives.

America’s alignment with Israel is a product of strategic utility, not moral blindness.  Washington’s defense of Tel Aviv’s brutal policies exposes the vacuity of Western rhetoric around human rights, international law and democracy. When imperial power, corporate profit and geopolitical dominance are threatened, universal human rights are treated as entirely disposable.

The “indispensable ally” narrative is foundering, as is the U.S. imperium.  Israel’s U.S.-subsidized genocide and devastating wars on Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Iran have sparked intense global outrage and blowback, signaling the beginning of the end of American global dominance.

History will record that when major powers rely on the blunt instrument of war to “manage” a complex world – rather than to live in it as one among equals – they ultimately subvert the stability they claim to protect.

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$5.5-million taxpayer-funded Manitoba daycare sits empty, flooded, and stripped by thieves

A $5.5-million daycare built with provincial funding has never cared for a single child and is now flooded, vandalized and stripped of valuable equipment.

The 74-space facility in East St. Paul was completed in 2024 for the Peguis First Nation Real Estate Trust. It was one of 22 daycares commissioned under Manitoba’s former Progressive Conservative government.

The province paid $3.3 million toward the project before cutting off funding in November 2024 amid uncertainty over who owns the land.

A CBC News investigation found broken windows, shattered glass, a damaged security system and extensive water damage. Two commercial refrigerators and a dishwasher have disappeared, copper wiring has been stripped, and rooftop air-conditioning units have been partially dismantled.

After the building went months without electricity, its sump pump stopped operating and approximately half a metre of water accumulated in the basement.

Patrick Ryan, volunteer board chair of Created 4 Me Early Learning Centre, estimated the damage now exceeds $1 million. The organization, which has 800 children on its waiting list, hired staff for the facility but later had to let them go.

The dispute began after the Peguis trust sold 75 percent of the company controlling the property to a numbered company owned by Andrew Marquess, a former trust adviser. The province says the ownership change may violate its operating agreement.

Education and Early Childhood Learning Minister Tracy Schmidt said the government still has not received documentation confirming ownership and cannot provide a timeline for opening the daycare.

A former deputy minister also warned that the project may not have followed normal provincial or municipal procurement practices.

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New Records Show Obama Admin Purchased Aborted Babies’ Heads for $515 Each

Judicial Watch announced today that it received 198 pages of records and communications from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) involving “humanized mice” research with human fetal heads, organs and tissue, including communications and contracts with human fetal tissue provider Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR). Most of the records are communications and related attachments between Perrin Larton, a procurement manager for ABR, and research veterinary medical officer Dr. Kristina Howard of the FDA.

Judicial Watch received the records through a March 2019 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, of which the FDA is a part (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department Health and Human Services (No. 1:19-cv-00876)). The lawsuit asks for all contracts and related documentation on disbursement of funds, procedural documents and communications between FDA and ABR for the provision of human fetal tissue to be used in humanized mice research. After successfully opposing the FDA’s redaction of certain information from its records, a federal court ordered HHS to release additional information about its purchases of organs harvested from aborted human fetuses – including “line item prices,” or the price per organ the government paid to ABR. The court also found “there is reason to question” whether the transactions violate federal law barring the sale of fetal organs. Documents previously uncovered in this lawsuit show that the federal government demanded the purchased fetal organs be “fresh and never frozen.”)

The records include an FDA generated contract with ABR, based on a “requisition” it issued on July 27, 2012, for $12,000 worth of “tissue procurement for humanized mice,” indicates the requisition was for a “non-competitive award.” Although the initial award was for $12,000, the total estimated amount of funds allocated for the requisition was $60,000. Under “Justification for Other than Full and Open Competition,” the FDA writes:

Scientists within the FDA and in the larger field of humanized mouse research have searched extensively over the past several years and ABR is the only company in the U.S. capable of supplying tissues suitable for HM research. No other company or organization is capable of fulfilling the need.***

Costs are estimated [for the fetal parts] at $230 per tissue x two tissues per shipment = $460 plus $95 shipping = $555 per shipment. A total of 21 shipments = $11,655.00.

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How Romania Came To Host A Post-9/11 CIA Black Site & Got US Cash Bonanza

Ammar al-Baluchi remembers the cold most of all. Held nearly naked in a cell lit around the clock by fluorescent bulbs, he referred to his detention “as if I was living in a refrigerator”.

The nephew of self-declared 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Baluchi was one of six to a dozen men believed to be held and tortured in a secret CIA prison in Bucharest between 2003 and 2005. The treatment of detainees at the facility, formally known as “Detention Site Black”, is described in detail in Guantanamo court filings.

Solitary confinement under lights that never switched off, sleep deprivation that at times meant being forced to stand shackled for days, repeated dousing with icy water, and forced shaving and physical handling that interrogators euphemistically logged as “attention grasps” and “facial holds” were common practice.

A photo released by Baluchi’s lawyers to the press in 2024 shows him stripped naked and photographed. It is believed to be the first published image – of tens of thousands – of a “war on terror” detainee in a CIA black site.

“We know they were tortured horrifically,” Ben Keith, a British barrister representing Baluchi outside the US, told Middle East Eye. “It’s not always possible to say which bit of torture took place because they were tortured for days and weeks, but you don’t detain somebody in a black site with the purpose of just talking to them.”

A quarter-century after the 9/11 attacks, which triggered the so-called “war on terror” and devastating US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that directly killed at least 940,000 people, a US military judge has finally set a trial date for Baluchi: 5 June 2028.

Lieutenant Colonel Michael Schrama ruled this month that the case against Mohammed, Baluchi, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi will begin on that date.

Schrama is the fifth military judge to preside over a case that has been trapped for more than a decade in disputes over evidence, national security secrecy and, above all, whether confessions obtained under torture before the men ever reached Guantanamo can be used at trial.

That question runs directly through a basement in Bucharest, where the accused are believed to have been detained and tortured.

In April 2025, a Guantanamo military judge ruled that statements Baluchi gave the FBI in 2007 were involuntary and inadmissible, tainted by what the court called torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment inflicted on him in CIA custody, including in Romania.

The judge found that Guantanamo’s “modestly changed confinement circumstances” had not been enough to remove the “lingering taint” of what happened before he arrived there.

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Trump says he’s lifting a 10% tariff on Irish whiskey because ‘everybody’s been bugging me’ about it

President Donald Trump says he plans to remove a 10% tariff on Irish whiskey.

DOONBEG, Ireland (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Sunday at the close of a golf tournament in Ireland that he plans to remove a 10% tariff on Irish whiskey.

Trump said during the trophy ceremony for the Irish Open that he had been asked about the issue by everyone, including Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin and even some of the golfers. Irish Open winner Shane Lowry was among them, Trump said.

“Everybody’s been bugging me” to do it, the Republican president said. “And I said, ‘On behalf of the United States of America, I am going to take the tariffs off’” of Irish whiskey.

Irish whiskey currently faces the standard tariff imposed by Trump on most imports from the European Union, which was reduced from 15% to 10% in July.

Trump announced in April that he was lifting certain tariffs on U.K. whiskey, which includes Scotch and spirits made in Northern Ireland, creating an imbalance with Ireland.

Trump’s surprise announcement was met with loud whistling and cheers from the crowd of spectators. Details on how soon the tariff would be lifted were not immediately available.

Chris Swonger, president & CEO of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, called Trump’s announcement “another positive step toward reducing barriers to spirits trade” and said everyone would benefit from it during the coming holidays.

“As U.S. hospitality businesses enter the critical holiday season, this action will provide a welcome boost for retailers, restaurants, consumers and the American economy,” Swonger said.

In May, the Irish Whiskey Association called for the tariffs to be removed, arguing that such a step would help many U.S. companies with Irish products in their portfolios and avoid uncertainty for consumers.

Trump said on April 30 that he gave the United Kingdom a tariff break on whiskey after King Charles III and Queen Camilla visited the White House. “The King and Queen got me to do something that nobody else was able to do, without hardly even asking!” Trump posted on social media.

The Scotch Whisky Association said July 24 that the zero-tariff policy had come into effect.

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