Tag: taxes

Georgia Taxpayers Lose $160,000 for Every Job Created by Film Tax Credits

For nearly two decades, Georgia has lured big-time Hollywood movie studios with the promise of lucrative tax breaks for filming in the state.

And here’s a predictable plot twist: Handing out welfare to wildly successful movies—like Avengers: Endgame, which earned more than $2 billion at the box office but nevertheless also qualified for tax credits because it was filmed in Georgia—hasn’t been a good deal for taxpayers.

A new audit of Georgia’s Film Tax Credit program found that the state “loses money” on the program. A lot of money, actually: about $160,000 for every job the program creates. Georgia is now spending about $1.3 billion annually on the program, but it generates a return on investment of just 19 cents per dollar, the auditors conclude.

“This program should be halted immediately,” J.C. Bradbury, an economics professor at Georgia’s Kennesaw State University and a longtime critic of government subsidy schemes, posted on X (formerly Twitter). In a 2020 paper, Bradbury estimated that the state’s film tax credit program cost about $110,000 per full-time job created and that every Georgia household was on the hook for about $230 in additional taxes every year because of the program’s existence.

In addition to highlighting the tax credit program’s costs, the new audit also suggests that the film industry has inflated the supposed benefits of the program. Georgia’s film tax credit is responsible for creating about 34,000 jobs annually in the state, according to the new audit, but that’s well short of the 59,700 annual job-creation figure that a recent industry-funded study claimed, reported Variety.

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Here Is What Each Of The Navy’s Ship-Launched Missiles Actually Costs

Many of America’s warships set sail absolutely packed with missiles. A single Ticonderoga class guided-missile cruiser has 122 Mark 41 vertical launch system (VLS) cells, each of which can handle one of a wide array of individual missiles, or four Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles (ESSMs). Even America’s carriers are bristling with missile-based point defenses. While the capabilities the Navy’s array of ship-launched missiles provides are fairly well known, at least conceptually, the staggering cost of each of these weapons is not. Now, just as we did with air-launched weapons and decoy flares, we aim to change that. 

The War Zone has collected the latest unit costs of these weapons to give readers a sense of just how much it is spending to arm its fleet. It should be stressed that these are the prices for just the individual weapons and the figures do not factor in any future spending on support services, modifications, upgrades, or past spending on the weapons’ development. 

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A DEFENSE-LINKED CONTRACTOR TOOK OVER A SUCCESSFUL CDC ANTI-OVERDOSE INITIATIVE. IT IMPLODED IN A DAY.

A GROUNDBREAKING Centers for Disease Control and Prevention initiative to support harm-reduction groups across the country fell apart this month after the program came under the control of a federal contractor that has done no public health work for the government.

The National Harm Reduction Technical Assistance Center, or TA Center, was founded in 2019 as a coalition of harm-reduction groups partnered with the CDC to offer training, funding, and guidance to those working to reduce overdose deaths. Its success rested on the deep experience and the trust community members had for the three main partner organizations, which included the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors, or NASTAD; the National Harm Reduction Coalition, or NHRC; the University of Washington’s Supporting Harm Reduction Programs; and a handful of other groups.

This month, the TA Center ceased functioning as it had for more than three years: Instead of a partnership, the project would be administered as a federal contract. And the CDC gave the sole-source contract to the Florida-based firm H2 PCI, a relatively new federal contractor with close links to the defense industry and the murky world of military special operations.

H2 PCI entered negotiations with the primary partners in the center to make them subcontractors but did not send proposed subcontracts to the groups until early November. Rushed by deadlines, those talks broke down in late November, according to Laura Guzman, executive director of NHRC.

As the H2 PCI contract went into effect on December 1, the primary partner organizations that had made the TA Center a success parted ways with the project, Guzman told The Intercept.

“From the beginning, it was clear that they had zero experience in the public health field and absolutely zero experience in harm reduction,” Guzman said. “It would be really challenging to work with a contractor who has zero understanding of our world.”

Advocates fear the takeover could wash away the years of painstaking work of building up the TA Center and sever its vital connection to on-the-ground harm reduction providers, making it harder for them to serve the people who rely on them for clean needles, naloxone, and other services, according to Maya Doe-Simkins, a veteran harm reductionist who has worked closely with the program.

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Colorado Cops Falsely Arrested Him for a DUI. Now He’s Getting a $400,000 Settlement.

Harris Elias was driving home one night in January 2020 when he was pulled over by a Loveland, Colorado, police officer and falsely accused of driving drunk. Even after a breathalyzer test proved that he was sober, Elias was forced to take a blood test—which again proved his sobriety. 

After the arrest, Elias filed a lawsuit against the officer who arrested him. This week, the city of Loveland agreed to pay $400,000 to settle the case.

At around 10:30 p.m. on January 4, 2020, Elias was driving home from his girlfriend’s house when he was pulled over by Loveland police officer William Gates, who was part of a DUI-specific task force. Gates claimed that Elias failed to signal a lane change—a claim Elias disputes.

“Officer Gates regularly claims (falsely) that the drivers he arrests for DUI did not signal a lane change,” claimed Elias’ suit, which was filed in January 2022. “Gates does so because this is one of the most difficult allegations to disprove, given that Loveland PD does not employ dash cams (only bodycams) and so never capture the arrested individual’s actual driving.”

The lawsuit claims that Gates attempted to confuse Elias by asking him several questions extremely quickly, including “nearly simultaneously” asking Elias for his license and registration and how much he had drank that night. 

According to the complaint, Elias found the encounter unnerving, and after fulfilling his legal obligation to provide license and insurance, he informed Gates that he was using his right to remain silent and would not answer further questions. Gates replied, in an apparent attempt to create evidence that Elias was drunk, “Well, I smell the overwhelming odor of alcohol coming from your vehicle.” 

After Elias again refused to answer further questions, Gates returned to his patrol vehicle and called for additional officers. When two more police officers arrived, they eventually decided to arrest Elias and take him to the Loveland Police Station for a breathalyzer test.

Even though Elias’ breathalyzer test showed a 0.000 percent blood alcohol content level, Gates insisted that Elias must have been intoxicated and ordered him to take a blood test. According to the lawsuit, Elias requested an attorney at this point, but “Gates told him no, that he needed to agree to comply with a blood test now or he was going to mark him as a refusal and his license would be revoked.”

Elias eventually agreed to take the test. Nearly three months later, the results again came back negative, and the case against him was dismissed entirely. But this wasn’t the end of Elias’ troubles. Elias was a Federal Aviation Administration–licensed pilot, meaning that a false DUI arrest threatened his livelihood.

The FAA “has some of the most strict mandatory reporting requirements known to any agency. The penalty for failure to report can lead to an emergency revocation of all certificates (i.e., complete revocation of his pilot’s license),” the lawsuit reads, noting that this kicked off an incredibly stressful and complex process to report and explain his arrest. Even though the case was dropped, “Elias will have to report this wrongful arrest on every medical renewal with the FAA for the rest of his life.”

But some justice was served this week when the city of Loveland agreed to pay Elias a $400,000 settlement to end the lawsuit.

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Zelensky’s Glory and Its Price

Zelensky’s fame and glory in the West are indisputable, and his rise to celebrity status is remarkable. The transition from a comedian who played the piano on stage with his pants down to a politician who was compared by the media to Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan, and many other famous politicians will earn him a noted place in history.  The big questions are what would this particular place be and at what price for achieving it.

Let us start with the price. As the war in Ukraine drags on every day it brings new numbers of dead and wounded, additional devastation of cities, and villages plus an increasing risk of nuclear WW3.

Presently, the number of Ukrainian victims is estimated at hundreds of thousands, but for some in Washington, this is acceptable. Cynical politicians like Senate Republican Senator Mitch McConnell and many others from both parties openly declare that supporting a proxy war in Ukraine is a very good and cheap investment. Washington’s declared goal is to weaken Russia, and this is achieved by Ukrainian soldiers perishing while Americans are not. At the same time, U.S., Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is threatening members of Congress that he will send “your uncles, cousins, and sons to fight Russia if aid to Ukraine is not approved.”

The Washington Post columnist Lee Hockstader explains that “U.S. aid for Ukraine is a bargain”, although he has to admit that nearly half of Americans now say the United States is spending too much on Ukraine.

To prove his point, Hockstader quotes Brown University researchers who studied the cost of America’s post-9/11 conflicts and found that 20 years of fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria drained a whopping $8 trillion from U.S. coffers. He adds that President Biden noted that the Afghan war alone cost taxpayers more than $300 million per day for two decades. That’s about triple what the U.S. has spent daily for Ukraine, so our support here seems like an even better deal.

What Biden and Hockstader conveniently forget to mention is the other math in Brown’s report which the number of victims of the U.S. wars in these countries. Here they are:  Over 940,000 people have died in the post-9/11 wars due to direct war violence. An estimated 3.6-3.8 million people have died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones, bringing the total death toll to at least 4.5-4.7 million and counting. Over 432,000 civilians have been killed as a result of the fighting with 38 million refugees and displaced persons. At least four times as many active duty personnel and war veterans of post-9/11 conflicts have died of suicide than in combat. The wars have been accompanied by violations of human rights and civil liberties, in the U.S. and abroad.

Who cares?  Biden, Blinken, Hockstader, McConnell, etc. certainly don’t. They and many others in the U.S. and EU don’t care that the whole country of Ukraine was engaged by the collective West in a proxy war against Russia with whom for centuries it was bound by close religious, historical, economic, cultural, and family ties. I placed religion first to underscore that those who declare their adherence to Judeo-Christian values have provoked the war between the two Christian nations, not to promote democracy, but rather to use Ukrainians as cannon fodder to preserve the geopolitical advantage of the U.S. by weakening Russia.

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The NDAA’s ‘Warrantless Backdoor Surveillance’ of Americans Gets Approved by the Senate

In a last-minute rush to sanction spending before the end of the year, the Senate enacted a $886 billion defense spending proposal Wednesday, sponsored by President Joe Biden, that includes financing for Ukraine, yearly pay hikes for personnel, and most controversially, a reauthorization of the the National Defense Authorization Act

The NDAA funds Pentagon objectives such as training and equipment. The Act was approved by a bipartisan majority of 87-13 in the Senate. For the last 61 years in a row, Congress has advanced the must-pass defense budget measure.

“At a time of huge trouble for global security, doing the defense authorization bill is more important than ever,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor Wednesday. “Passing the NDAA enables us to hold the line against Russia, stand firm against the Chinese Communist Party and ensure America’s defense remain state of the art at all times.”

The package now moves to the House, where some conservative Republicans have vowed to derail it after legislators removed disputed elements that would have changed the Pentagon’s abortion policy and provide certain so-called “transgender” medical procedures.

The NDAA approved by the Senate is a compromise version of the budget package passed by the House earlier this year. The House version includes elements aimed at the Pentagon’s transgender health care regulations, as well as an amendment to repeal a Pentagon policy that reimburses out-of-state travel for service members who have abortions.

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How Did The US Government Become So Big?

How big is the federal government?

Two measures are the number of civilian employees (nearly two million) and the number of agencies (now exceeding 440).

These numbers barely hint at their massive meddling into business activities and the personal lives of Americans.

While government was relatively small and less intrusive during its first hundred years, the Constitution held defects. In part, they resulted from the unavoidable compromises of consensus. The founders knew this, and some had anticipated civil war decades before the first shots were fired. Many other problems emerged during the great expansion of the nineteenth century due to the industrial revolution, the growth of America’s land area, and several political factors, mostly unanticipated. As population grew from about five million in 1800 to more than seventy-six million in 1900, government gained accordingly.

It was during the early twentieth century that the government acquired many extraconstitutional powers to intervene in our lives. This was accompanied by a great expansion of its jurisdiction and cost: new agencies, more government workers, more taxes. To give you a hint of this growth, here is an excerpt from the Congressional testimony of Doctor Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute in 2005:

We come, then, to the nub of the matter. Search the Constitution as you will, you will find no authority for Congress to appropriate and spend federal funds on education, agriculture, disaster relief, retirement programs, housing, healthcare, day care, the arts, public broadcasting—the list is endless. That is what I meant at the outset when I said that most of what the federal government is doing today is unconstitutional because it is done without constitutional authority. Reducing that point to its essence, the Constitution says, in effect, that everything that is not authorized—to the government, by the people, through the Constitution—is forbidden. Progressives turned that on its head: Everything that is not forbidden is authorized.

Almost fourteen years have elapsed since Doctor Pilon’s testimony. Today, the federal government is far larger and more intrusive, having enlisted the support of Big Tech, Big Pharma, academia, the legacy media, and others. But still, how did the government grow so large?

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IRS Expansion Led To 53% Increase In Prosecutions

Additional staffing and a post-pandemic focus on tax fraud have led to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and its U.S. Sentencing Commission (USSC) prosecuting 53 percent more tax offenders in the past two years, according to a December report from Scholaroo. According to its research, in a state-by-state breakdown, those attempting fraud against the IRS in the states of Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wyoming had the greatest chance of getting caught.  

But according to Scholaroo’s research, to be in the IRS crosshairs, you must make some serious money. “The IRS suggests that approximately 75 percent of tax fraud is committed mainly by individuals in the middle-income range,” the Scholaroo data team shared in a written statement to The Epoch Times. “However, the highest incidence of evasion is observed among the wealthiest 5 percent, with an income of at least $200,000. In this elite group, taxpayers hide more than 20 percent of their income from the tax authorities.”

Scholaroo has made its mark as an online college scholarship cloud platform and has recently gotten involved in the data research business. The report comes as some taxpayers have been concerned about the purpose of the Biden administration’s plan to add 30,000 IRS employees over the next two years as part of an $80 billion funding mandate from the Inflation Reduction Act passed in the summer of 2022. 

Initially, the concern was that the additional IRS employees would target independent contractors and small-business owners. But Robert Nassau, a law professor and director of the Low Income Taxpayer Clinic at Syracuse University, told The Epoch Times that making less-than-honest claims on tax forms will still get you in trouble no matter your income level. 

“Those independent contractors who get audited must have a stamp on their head that says audit me. It’s complete BS. The wealthier people who are going to get audited are engaged in more sophisticated planning,” he said. “Occasionally, I have seen business expense audits, and I’ll tell you some of those people frankly are idiots. They haven’t embraced the saying ‘the pigs get fat and the hog gets slaughtered.’ Obviously, you’re going to get audited if you show $41,000 in income and $75,000 in write-offs four years in a row.”

Scholaroo’s U.S. Tax Evasion report, examined tax evasion behavior among Americans and found that the average loss in these crimes in fiscal year 2022 was $301,009. 

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AS U.S.-FUNDED WARS RAGE IN ISRAEL AND UKRAINE, PENTAGON WATCHDOG WARNS OF MILITARY FAILURES

AS CALLS GROW in Congress to condition aid to Israel and halt funding to Ukraine altogether, the Department of Defense’s Office of Inspector General issued a report that details widespread failures in the Pentagon’s operations. 

In a semiannual report to Congress, the watchdog found a breakdown in the process to provide care for sexual assault survivors, damaged artillery earmarked for Ukraine, and continued failures to monitor the Defense Department’s single most expensive program, the scandal-ridden F-35 fighter jet. Taken together, the inspector general’s findings paint a picture of a sprawling military-industrial complex that, while providing billions in aid to foreign militaries, has failed to solve long-standing issues that result in extreme levels of taxpayer waste. 

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Taxpayer-Subsidized Seminars Train Cops To Violate the Constitution

If a driver looks away while passing a police car, cops learn from a checklist promoted at an October 2021 conference in Atlantic City, that is suspicious. But if a driver stares at the police car, that is also suspicious. Hats work both ways too: Wearing one “low to cover [your] face” is suspicious, but so is removing a hat when you are stopped by the police. Other telltale signs of criminal activity, according to Street Cop Training’s list of “reasonable suspicion factors,” include texting, smoking, lip licking, yawning, stretching, talking to a passenger while keeping your eyes on the road, signaling a turn early or late, maintaining “awkward closeness” or “awkward distance” during a stop, standing parallel or perpendicular to the car, saying you are heading to work or heading home, questioning the reason for the stop, and refusing permission for a search.

That Street Cop Training checklist, which offers handy excuses for officers keen to conduct searches for drugs or seizable cash, figures prominently in a recent report from Kevin Walsh, New Jersey’s acting comptroller. The report criticizes the New Jersey company for encouraging officers to make or extend stops without reasonable suspicion and for promoting a “warrior” mentality that fosters the excessive use of force. “We found so many examples of so many instructors promoting views and tactics that were wildly inappropriate, offensive, discriminatory, harassing, and, in some cases, likely illegal,” Walsh said when he released the report this week. “The fact that the training undermined nearly a decade of police reforms—and New Jersey dollars paid for it—is outrageous.”

Street Cop Training was founded in 2012 by Dennis Benigno, who was a Woodbridge, New Jersey, police officer until 2015. Each year the company, which Benigno describes as “one of the largest, if not the largest, police training providers in the United States,” trains about 25,000 officers from agencies across the country. The six-day Atlantic City seminar that Walsh describes in his report attracted nearly 1,000 officers, including 240 from New Jersey. Their employers covered the expenses, which included a $499 fee for each officer, travel and lodging, and paid time off.

What did taxpayers get for their money? Potentially, Walsh argues, greater exposure to more expenses down the road, including millions of dollars spent to litigate and settle civil rights lawsuits. “This kind of training comes at too high a price for New Jersey residents,” Walsh’s report says. “The costs of attendance for training like this is small in comparison to the potential liability for lawsuits involving excessive force, unlawful searches and seizures, and harassment and discrimination.”

While “some of the observations and reasoning” described in Street Cop’s checklist “find support in case law,” Walsh says, “others appear to be arbitrary and contradictory.” Officers who follow Benigno’s advice therefore may end up violating the Fourth Amendment by making or prolonging stops based on factors that fall short of reasonable suspicion. If so, any resulting searches also would be unconstitutional, making any evidence they discover inadmissible.

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