Tag: taxes

DOJ Reveals How Much Jack Smith’s Special Counsel Probe Is Costing Taxpayers

Special counsel Jack Smith’s wide-ranging investigation into former President Donald Trump has cost taxpayers over $9 million since he was appointed last year, according to a newly released government report on Friday.

His team has incurred some $5.4 million in rent, personnel, and other costs, while another $3.8 million in “component expenses” was also incurred by other Justice Department (DOJ) agencies over four months, according to figures (pdf) released by the DOJ on Friday. Last year, Attorney General Merrick Garland tapped Smith, a former Hague prosecutor, to oversee multiple probes targeting the former president, while Mr. Trump has characterized Smith as a partisan actor who is working on behalf of the Democrats to undermine him.

“Although not legally required, DOJ components that support the [Smith special counsel office] were asked to track non-reimbursed expenditures attributable to this investigation, which includes hours worked by agents and investigative support analysts, as well as the cost of protective details for the Special Counsel when warranted,” the DOJ report said. “The expenditures for this period totaled $3,818,818.”

About $2 million was used for federal employee salaries, another $1 million was paid for investigative support, and some $80,000 was used to help employees relocate while they worked for Smith. The report runs through March 31 of this year.

In comparison, special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the controversial FBI Crossfire Hurricane probe cost about $1 million in the same time period, while special counsel Robert Hur’s probe has cost some $600,000, according to reports. Meanwhile, former special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, which ultimately did not reveal that Mr. Trump colluded with the Russian government, cost a whopping $32 million upon its conclusion.

Months after Mr. Smith was appointed, Mr. Hur was named by Mr. Garland to head the investigation into the handling of classified documents found at President Joe Biden’s home and private office. A report issued by the DOJ showed that he spent most of his expenses on employee pay.

Overall, Mr. Durham’s team spent about $9.4 million over several years, according to a filing, starting in late 2020 after then-Attorney General Bill Barr named him to head the investigation into the origins of the Trump–Russia probe and collusion narrative. His work ended in May after releasing a significant, 300-page report that faulted the FBI’s leadership for approving the investigation into Mr. Trump—although no charges were filed against any current employees at the FBI or DOJ and no one was fired.

That investigation netted one guilty plea from a former FBI lawyer who admitted to falsifying an email about a surveillance warrant for a former Trump aide. Mr. Durham’s prosecutions against a Democratic campaign lawyer, Michael Sussmann, and Igor Danchenko, who was used as a source for a controversial and widely discredited dossier, ended up in acquittals, respectively.

Keep reading

Taxpayers Pony Up for Transit Systems They’ll Never Use

The last time I considered using public transit was in San Francisco last month, where I dreaded the thought of climbing up the long incline from Chinatown to Nob Hill. I decided to make the calorie-burning trek on foot after realizing I needed to pre-purchase my ticket on the touristy cable car. I can’t recall the last time I actually took transit. When is the last time you hopped on a bus or light-rail line to get to work or anywhere at all?

If your answer also is “years ago,” then we’re in good company. The Southern California Association of Governments found the “median” resident of SCAG’s six counties (Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, and Imperial) made zero transit trips in a year. The “average” resident made 35 annual transit trips, which isn’t impressive given I made six trips in my truck and motorcycle yesterday.

SCAG finds only 2 percent of the region’s population uses transit “very frequently” and that’s concentrated among the poorest residents. That’s not to say transit isn’t important. It makes sense in urban centers, for certain commutes (think Metrolink) and, again, as a last resort for people who can’t afford cars. Those SCAG numbers come from 2018—before the pandemic, which caused ridership to plummet. It’s only recovered moderately.

Yet before Monday’s budget deal, transit supporters were predicting doom if Gov. Gavin Newsom didn’t agree to bail out these systems. He resisted for months, but finally agreed to a $5.1-billion package that provides additional operating subsidies and construction dollars. That spares transit systems from facing difficult choices regarding which lines to keep operating, which projects to fund and which departments to trim. Perish the thought.

“Like many public transportation systems around the country, some of California’s transit agencies are reeling from pandemic-induced declines in ridership and the risk that federal COVID aid will dry up,” wrote Farhad Manjoo in a New York Times op-ed backing a California bailout. “Transit agencies are preparing to adjust their budgets and services to new travel patterns, but implementing those plans will take time – and in the short term they are pretty strapped.”

Keep reading

Senators want to boost Pentagon UFO office funding, transparency

Senators want to give the Pentagon’s unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP, office a major funding boost to scan the skies and near space for threats from China and beyond – part of the fallout from the Chinese spy balloon that U.S. jets shot down after it drifted across the U.S. continent.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., announced a funding boost for the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, tasked with researching and analyzing UAPs, in the Senate Armed Services Committee’s version of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act. House lawmakers have not made their funding request for the office public. The final spending bills will be debated later this summer.

“With aggression from adversaries on the rise and with incidents like the Chinese spy balloon, it’s critical to our national security that we have strong air domain awareness over our homeland and around U.S. forces operating overseas,” Gillibrand said in a statement. The Senate bill covers more than just the office’s basic operating expenses, as the 2022 defense budget did last year. It also includes measures to reveal more of what they are finding,which will “reduce the stigma around this issue of high public interest,” she added.

The funding push comes after the Chinese spy balloon served as a reminder that U.S. adversaries are increasingly operating in Earth’s upper atmosphere — and as the public’s fascination with unidentified phenomena grow. In a 2021 Gallup poll, more than 40% of respondents blamed alien spacecraft forat least some of the unidentified incidents in recent years.

Keep reading

Midtown Gets Paywall: Feds Approve NYC Congestion Toll

The US Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration approved the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s congestion tax scheme to charge drivers entering New York City’s midtown Manhattan. The tax is the first of its kind in the nation, expected to fleece hardworking Americans between $9 and $23 per day to drive through the district, reported Bloomberg.

“Congestion pricing will reduce traffic in our crowded downtown, improve air quality and provide critical resources to the MTA,” said Gov. Kathy Hochul. 

Hochul said, “I am proud of the thorough environmental assessment process we conducted, including responding to thousands of comments from community members from across the region.”

She added: “With the green light from the federal government, we look forward to moving ahead with the implementation of this program.”

The MTA operates NYC’s subways, buses, and rail lines. It’ll be responsible for implementing the tax scheme as soon as April 2024. Bloomberg said motorists driving south of 60th Street would be able to use an E-ZPass.

The new tax aims to fleece motorists and raise $1 billion of new annual revenue for the MTA. NYC officials want to reduce the number of daily vehicles entering the district by up to 20%.

Keep reading

US to send $500 million in weapons, military aid to Ukraine, officials say

The Pentagon will announce it is sending up to $500 million in military aid to Ukraine, including more than 50 heavily armored vehicles and an infusion of missiles for air defense systems, U.S. officials said Monday, as Ukrainian and Western leaders try to sort out the impact of the brief weekend insurrection in Russia.

The aid is aimed at bolstering Ukraine’s counteroffensive, which has been moving slowly in its early stages. It wasn’t clear Monday if Ukrainian forces will be able to take advantage of the disarray in the Russian ranks, in the aftermath of the short-lived rebellion by Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Wagner mercenary group that he has controlled.

An announcement on the aid package is expected Tuesday. This would be the 41st time since the Russian invasion into Ukraine in February 2022 that the U.S. has provided military weapons and equipment through presidential drawdown authority. The program allows the Pentagon to quickly take items from its own stocks and deliver them to Ukraine.

Keep reading

Price Tag of NASA’s Martian Rock Retrieval Mission Is Skyrocketing

As NASA’s chief of science programs, Thomas Zurbuchen oversaw missions like the James Webb telescope launch and the landing of the Mars Perseverance rover. When he stepped down from that post in 2022, he told The New York Times that the key to innovation was to take smart risks and not to panic when some of them don’t pay out. It appears NASA itself is struggling to apply that wisdom. 

Last week, according to reporting from Ars Technica, leaders at the space agency were told that the development cost for the Mars Sample Retrieval (MSR) program had doubled. Originally, the cost to collect rock samples from Mars was estimated at $4.4 billion; now, that number is north of $8 billion. And that’s just for development. The estimate does not include launch costs, construction, or operating costs. The final tab could be north of $10 billion. 

The plan is to send an unmanned sample retrieval lander to Mars in 2028. That vehicle would return to Earth with the rock and soil samples that the Perseverance rover has collected since it landed on Mars in 2021. However, there are concerns over whether Perseverance will still be operational in 2028, so NASA is creating backup plans that include sample recovery helicopters. If all of these steps go according to plan, the samples will return to Earth by 2033 at the earliest. 

Understanding the geological makeup of other planets is a noble scientific endeavor, but not when taxpayers are footing the colossal bill. This is not the first time (or even the second) that NASA has run a delayed project over budget. Their flagship Artemis program has ballooned in price and will now cost over $93 billion by the end of 2025. And it’s likely an astronaut won’t return to the moon by then. 

The news that this project had doubled really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Back in April, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Commerce, Justice, and Science Subcommittee that the MSR program would need an additional $250 million to stay on track in fiscal year 2023. 

Even the science community has suggested that this price tag is simply not worth it. Planetary scientist Paul Byrne told Ars Technica that MSR risks becoming “the planetary community’s James Webb Telescope,” meaning that this project would eat up much of the budget allotted for planetary science, stifling other worthwhile projects in its wake.

Keep reading

Biden Admin Says Its COVID Spending for Schools Will Boost Test Scores. Districts Used the Funds for Staff Bonuses.

Decades-low eighth-grade reading and math scores are no reason to be discouraged, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said Wednesday, because the Biden administration’s “historic” COVID-era school spending is poised to turn the tide. In many districts, a large portion of those funds have already been spent on lucrative staff bonuses.

A National Assessment of Educational Progress report published Wednesday found that math and reading scores among U.S. 13-year-olds are at their lowest levels in decades. Cardona responded to those findings by praising “positive results” in student achievement, arguing that the “historic investments and resources” provided by President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan would “reverse the damage.” In school districts across the country, however, a large portion of those funds did not go to more tutoring or new school materials. Instead, they funded bonuses for teachers and administrators.

In North Carolina, for example, the Wake County Public School System from March 2020 to April 2023 spent 78.5 percent of its total pandemic relief funding on salaries and employee benefits, according to the district. Chicago Public Schools—a district where union teachers repeatedly refused to return to the classroom during COVID—similarly spent 77 percent of its pandemic money on staff bonuses, salaries, and benefits. In Tennessee, meanwhile, the state’s comptroller found that a district funneled nearly $28,000 to one administrator alone. And in Nebraska, Lincoln Public Schools attempted to use COVID relief dollars to issue across-the-board teacher bonuses, but the state’s Department of Education said no.

The use of so-called emergency COVID funds to pay for five-figure staff bonuses reflects the stark divide between Republicans and Democrats on education policy. Democrats generally balk at school choice, shooting down taxpayer funding for charter schools in favor of additional public school spending. For Republicans, that spending is already at an all-time high with little to show for it and showcases the need to pursue alternative options rather than funneling more money to powerful teachers’ unions working to pay out their members.

“It turns out the hundreds of billions in taxpayer money that was ‘direly needed to safely reopen schools and improve infrastructure’ was a lie,” Nicki Neily, founder and president of parental rights group Parents Defending Education, said in response to districts’ using federal COVID funds to pay for staff bonuses. “The same teachers’ unions that kept schools closed are now misusing the taxpayers’ money to smooth things over with their growingly dissatisfied members through bonuses and raises. What a slap in the face to families.”

The Department of Education did not return a request for comment.

Keep reading

Illinois Gives $300,000 to BLM Group That Appears to Be Inactive

Despite being crime ridden, over-taxed and hemorrhaging citizens (and their tax dollars) in favor of red states, Illinois apparently has enough money to provide $300,000 to a BLM group that appears to be mostly inactive.

A recent Wirepoints analysis of Internal Revenue Service migration data shows the exodus from the state.

This comes at a time that Chicago’s public pension system is in dire straits.

According to a report from Equable Institute, Chicago’s core public pensions, which include municipal, laborers, police, fire and the Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund, hold more debt than 44 states with a combined pension debt of nearly $48 billion.

Yet lawmakers thought this was a good time to include a $300,000 grant to Black Lives Matter Lake County, a group that critics suggest appears to be mostly inactive,  and is headed by a leader that is alleged to have had  run-ins with police.

Keep reading

House Democrats want taxpayers to cover costs of abortion travel, lodging, ‘escorts’

House Democrats want taxpayers to pick up the tab for a host of abortion-related services, including travel, hotels, childcare, “escorts” and “doula care,” as part of a bill timed to the one-year anniversary of Dobbs v. Jackson.

The Abortion Justice Act, sponsored by Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts Democrat, would circumvent the Hyde Amendment’s ban on federal funds for abortion by earmarking $350 million annually for grants to “increase abortion access or support individuals who need abortion access.”

That includes covering “both the direct costs of the care and associated costs of travel, lodging, and childcare,” as well as “patient navigators,” “linguistically appropriate and culturally competent legal assistance,” “the full spectrum of doula care,” and “escorts to support abortion seekers as they access care.”

Keep reading