Tag: taxes

Anthony Fauci loses $15-million taxpayer-funded security detail

Jon Michael Raasch at the Daily Mail just reported that the U.S. Marshals Service “quietly dropped” a two-year, fifteen-million-dollar deal to protect Anthony Fauci, all covered by the U.S. taxpayers of course.

My initial thought? It’s about darn time, and I want to be reimbursed NOW. (I myself had no idea that on top of his outrageous “highest-ever” federal pension, he was receiving private security on my dime.) Per Raasch:

Dr. Fauci, who has an estimated $11 million net worth, was constantly surrounded by U.S. Marshals at the time whether he was at home or going to TV studios to film interviews.

On second thought? I’m actually okay with providing Fauci taxpayer-funded security, but only if it’s at Gitmo, or the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana; if Fauci is getting security there, it means we’re seeing some justice for what he’s done

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Waste of the Day: Ineligible New Yorkers on Medicaid Cost $20 Billion

An estimated 3 million New Yorkers on Medicaid or the state-run Essential Plan don’t have incomes low enough to be using the programs, according to a new report from the nonprofit Empire Center for Public Policy.

Key facts: New York is projected to spend $113 billion on the two programs in 2025, but one-third of enrollees should not be eligible.

Data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that only 5.5 million New Yorkers had incomes low enough to qualify for coverage last year. But there were 8.5 million people using the state’s health insurance.

That’s especially surprising given that the Essential Plan — established under the Affordable Care Act in 2015 — allows families living at 250% above the poverty level to enroll. No other plan in the U.S. is that generous, according to the Empire Center.

The average nondisabled adult costs the programs $6,600 to cover. At that rate, the Empire Center estimates taxpayers spend $20 billion each year to cover the 3 million people who should not qualify. The expense is split between the state and federal government.

Roughly 44% of New Yorkers use either Medicaid or the Essential Plan, including 60% of those in New York City. No other state has more than 37% enrollment in similar plans, the Empire Center found.

In the last 10 years, 3.7 million new people signed up for the two plans. But the number of uninsured people in New York only dropped by 1.2 million, “a sign that most new sign-ups were people who otherwise would have been insured elsewhere,” the Empire Center said.

New York spends 28% of its budget on health insurance each year.

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Rand Paul’s Festivus Report Exposes Fauci’s NIH Wasting Taxpayer’s Money on Barbaric Cat Experiments with Electroshock and Brain Mutilation

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has unleashed another scathing edition of his annual Festivus Report, a tradition that lays bare the federal government’s misuse of taxpayer dollars.

This year, Paul’s report shines a glaring spotlight on a deeply unsettling aspect of government spending—barbaric experiments on cats, funded by none other than Anthony Fauci’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Department of Defense (DOD).

You can read the full list of projects here.

According to the report, $1.5 million of taxpayer money has been funneled into barbaric experiments at the University of Pittsburgh.

“If you learned that your money is being used to electro-shock young kittens, torturing them for hours on end, and to the point that they vomit, would you believe it?” according to the report.

It continued, “Since 2019, $1,513,299 worth of taxpayer money has been going to these medieval-type experiments. This is not some distant, dystopian future; it’s happening right now at the University of Pittsburgh, courtesy of a grant from the NIH.”

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US to Withhold Aid to Sierra Leone over Abortion

US foreign aid agency called the Millennium Challenge Corporation is threatening to withhold aid from Sierra Leone if the nation fails to legalize abortion. There is no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to politics or business. Now, $480 million in aid is on the line, all in the name of abortion. What gives the US moral grounds to tell other nations how to live?

The US organization believes that the African nation must pass the Safe Motherhood Act to permit abortions up to 14 weeks for any reason. Parliament passed the Safe Abortion Act in 2015, permitting abortions during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. President Julius Maada Bio seems willing to expand these laws despite pushback. The Inter Religious Council of Sierra Leone (IRCSL) composed of Christians and Muslims have been opposing extending abortion laws.

“It is deeply disturbing, but not terribly surprising, that we are hearing reports that the Biden administration is threatening to withhold foreign assistance to Sierra Leone unless legislators there pass the deceptively named ‘Safe Motherhood Act’ legislation that would legalize abortion in Sierra Leone, a country that currently protects unborn life,” Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., said in a statement first shared with The Daily Signal. Sierra Leone could certainly use the funding, and this ploy is bending the will of desperate people.

So ahead of Trump, the Biden Administration is demanding that a predominately Muslim (78.5%) country abandon its religious beliefs and cave to their demands. The issue is not abortion but that the US is threatening to withhold aid from a vulnerable nation if it does not comply. We see this happen with countless issues throughout African nations as developed nations believe they can use money to shift their societies as they see fit.

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Rand Paul ‘Festivus’ grievances: US millions for Ukraine TikTokers

Every December 23, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) releases a “Festivus Report” based on the spoof holiday featured in the 1990s television show “Seinfeld.” On this made-up holiday, people would engage in an annual “airing of grievances,” and when it comes to wasteful government spending, each year Paul always has a very long list of beefs.

But this year, in finding over $1 trillion in wasteful, stupid spending, like $12 million for a pickleball complex, $15 million in new furniture for empty federal offices, $873,000 for film making in Jordan, and over $400,000 to study lonely rats, there appears to be some substantial spending related to Washington’s ongoing role in the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

Th 2024 ‘Festivus Report’ reveals that, “despite American taxpayers providing nearly $174 billion in aid and military assistance to Kyiv since the beginning of Russia’s war in Ukraine, someone over at State thought it was a brilliant idea to drop an additional $4.8 Million for ‘KYIV, Ukraine public affairs – Influencer Staff.’”

That’s right. Apparently the U.S. government was bankrolling Ukrainian TikTokers and Instagram personalities. To the tune of $4.8 million.

From Paul’s report:

“Apparently, what we really need in a war zone are more Instagram stories and TikTok dances. The dangers here are more than just cringeworthy content; this kind of spending opens the door to disinformation, propaganda, and international PR disasters. And don’t even get me started on the potential to escalate tensions with other nations.”

Sen. Paul proceeds to mock the funding’s aim: “after all, nothing says ‘peacekeeping’ like a viral video.”

More “Festivus” airing of the grievances: “But the absurdity doesn’t end there. The State Department also splurged $15,220 on an ‘influencers event’ and another $22,231 on a ‘USAID Social Media Influencers Campaign.”

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You Can’t Make This Up: U.S. Navy Shoots Down Its Own F/A-18 Super Hornet Fighter Jet in Apparent ‘Friendly Fire’ Incident in Red Sea

A U.S. Navy guided-missile cruiser mistakenly shot down an American F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident.

The two-seat F/A-18F Super Hornet, assigned to the “Red Rippers” of Strike Fighter Squadron 11 from Naval Air Station Oceana, Virginia, had just launched from the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman.

The USS Gettysburg, part of the same carrier strike group, erroneously identified the aircraft as a hostile target and engaged it, leading to its destruction.

“The guided missile cruiser USS Gettysburg, which is part of the USS Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group, mistakenly fired on and hit the F/A-18,” Central Command said in a statement.

The Navy’s Central Command confirmed that both pilots ejected safely, with one sustaining minor injuries.

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Understanding The ‘Raising The Debt Limit’ Scam

Last week President Trump tweeted, “I requested that Mitch M & Paul R tie the Debt Ceiling legislation into the popular V.A. Bill for easy approval. They didn’t…Could have been so easy-now a mess!”

Trump seemed awfully cavalier about raising the debt limit, didn’t he? Isn’t raising the debt limit a really big deal? Isn’t it capitulation by all conservative-minded Americans? Isn’t raising the debt limit tacit approval for the US Government to even further exceed its Constitutional boundaries? Well, maybe. But more importantly, the ‘raising the debt limit’ debate is just another scam on the American people, perpetrated by those we elected to represent us in DC, another reason they all must be replaced. 

The periodic raising of the so-called “debt limit” is simply the natural order of things anytime a national government chooses to carry out its financial responsibilities under a private banking system rather than a truly sovereign, national monetary system. The banking system in our case is that of the Federal Reserve.
Although it could if it chose, the US Government does not create and issue dollars…AKA, money. Instead private Fed member banks do, the largest of which are on Wall Street. Importantly, however, those banks only issue dollars when someone promises to pay them back, with interest. And because the banks do not issue the dollars to pay the interest, the only way for a society as a whole to pay back what has already been borrowed is to keep borrowing more and more, and pay off older loans with new, larger loans. The entire American economy ($68 trillion in debt), including the US Government ($20 trillion in debt) is testimony to that fact. There is no mathematical solution for this system. It cannot be paid off from within. And while the system runs, the bankers get richer and richer, the population gets poorer and poorer, and the Government goes more and more in debt. It is a covert, wealth transfer mechanism-the biggest scam in the history of mankind. And as long as the Federal Reserve System stays in operation, it will remain mathematically impossible for America to become a nation other than one that is increasingly encumbered in debt.

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Sex educator clowns and BDSM classical music: How New York City arts group wasted $800K of taxpayer’s money

Taxpayer-funded woke art events, including erotic poetry readings, ‘sex educator clowns’, a BDSM-classical music mashup, and performances in aid of prison abolition, have got a New York government watchdog hot and bothered.

Nonprofit ‘good governance’ group One City Rising (OCR) has sparked a fight with the New York City Council by writing a letter demanding a review of $787,000 taxpayer funds given to an organization putting on the controversial art acts.

The spat is a microcosm of a culture war raging in the US – one side fearing they are under attack from prudish busybodies policing free expression, the other claiming government institutions are feeding ‘woke’ propaganda.

Last year the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs gave $130,000, one of its biggest cultural development grants, to the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), a group founded in 1973 to promote the arts in the Big Apple.

LMCC also received $657,600 in New York state government funds in 2023, records show.

One City Rising said there are ‘significant questions about appropriateness, oversight, and fiscal responsibility’ of the cash handouts, which they say are being used ‘for purposes that taxpayers might find objectionable’, in a December 18 letter to NYC Commissioner Laurie Cumbo.

The letter highlighted taxpayer-funded events, including a BDSM-themed ‘concert series celebrating queer identity through classical music and the aesthetics of the Leather subculture’ and a show by a self-described professional clown teaching sex education.

It also pointed to a series of ‘socially-conscious musical works’ by Black and Pink, a group ‘dedicated to abolishing the criminal punishment system and liberating LGBTQIA2S+ people,’ as well as ‘raising money for bail funds across the country.’

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Trump Reportedly Plans To Continue Aid To Ukraine But Will Raise NATO Spending To 5%

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to continue sending military aid to Ukraine, despite Trump earlier on the campaign trail mocking Zelensky for being the “greatest salesman on earth” for his getting tens of billions of US taxpayers’ money with ease.

A new Financial Times report has cited European officials who say Trump’s team told them he plans to continue military aid to Kiev after his inauguration. He’s reportedly trying to calm fears of an immediate US withdrawal of support, and this is connected to an expected Trump policy for NATO member states to increase defense spending to 5% of their GDP.

“Donald Trump’s team has told European officials that the incoming US president will demand Nato member states increase defense spending to 5% of GDP, but plans to continue supplying military aid to Ukraine,” FT writes.

NATO’s existing target of 2% of GPD for defense spending certainly has not been met by all members… not even close. The 2% is being met by only 23 of the alliance’s 32 members, and so a significantly higher bar set of more than double that is certainly going to rile Europe.

European NATO leaders have long been trying to figure out how to ‘Trump proof’ future defense aid for Ukraine, as has the Biden administration.

But there’s at least one severe critic – Hungary’s Viktor Orban. He estimated in a radio interview on Friday that the US and the EU have pumped over $300 billion in financial aid and military assistance into Kiev’s coffers since the war’s start.

“During the negotiation with the Americans, I received the figure that Europe and America together have spent €310 billion so far. Those are huge numbers!” the Hungarian prime minister declared.

He went to describe that such a massive amount “could have done wonders” for European people themselves, instead of sinking the funds into an unwinnable war, while avoiding the necessity of negotiations with Moscow.

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Cocaine quails, magic and ice skating drag queens: Sen. Paul uncovers bizarre gov’t spending

While the federal government wastes hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars on unnoticed projects, Sen. Rand Paul’s Festivus report highlights some of the most shocking expenditures, from funding ice skating for drag queens to foreign nations’ borders. 

Sen. Rand Paul is preparing to release his annual Festivus Report next Monday, which will highlight wasteful government spending that has gone unnoticed. This year’s report promises to “air grievances” about both parties pet projects, with Sen. Paul calling out outrageous spending on both sides of the aisle.

“Government is incompetent and we should keep government out of everything they do unless nobody else will do it,” said Paul in a recent interview. “We’re going to be celebrating Festivus on December 23. It’s the day in which we air our grievances. I will air my grievances towards big spenders of both parties.”

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