Tag: taxes

Biden and Harris Raided Medicare to Fund Green New Deal: Premiums Are Now Set to Spike

When Democrats rammed through the Inflation Reduction Act during the days they controlled all of Washington, D.C., it ignited a chain reaction that led to higher Medicare costs for America’s senior citizens.

“Nearly two years after its passage, the IRA has diverted nearly $260 billion from the projected Medicare ‘savings’  to pay for special interest handouts like large tax credits for costly electric vehicles, enormous subsidies paid to big health insurer-PBM corporations, and funding health care programs for illegal immigrants,” Ron Fitzwater, Chief Executive Officer of the Missouri Pharmacy Association, wrote in an Op-Ed in the Missouri Times.

“The Biden-Harris administration is not protecting Medicare; they’re stealing from it,” he wrote.

According to Politico, the chain reaction began when the act shifted the burden of paying for prescription medicine from seniors to insurance companies.

Then came what could have been predicted: Insurance companies hiked their premiums for 2025.

Fitwater, in his Op-Ed, said increases were coming in at 179 percent.

But since that was going to hit right before the election, there was one more step – a federal bailout that has the taxpayer-funded federal treasury taking the hit for what the IRA caused.

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The U.S. Disease Epidemic and MAHA

Despite the huge amount of appropriated funds and the strenuous efforts of many individuals working in healthcare, Americans have increasingly suffered from a range of acute and chronic conditions over recent decades. As an influential member of the Trump administration, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will have the opportunity to begin a reversal of this trend. He is developing plans to revamp the Federal agencies that regulate the medical and pharmaceutical industries.

Mr. Kennedy has presented incontrovertible data about the state of our health. He says the first step towards change is reforming policies and restoring compromised government oversight.   

It will take a concerted effort to convert a system that has allowed an array of degrading health conditions and an avalanche of human suffering. The statistics compiled by reliable scientific sources reveal details of this staggering crisis.

~ Six out of ten adults in America are living with a chronic illness. Seventy-four percent of American adults are overweight or obese. Rates of kidney disease and autoimmune conditions are going up. Cancer rates among young people are rising.

~ One-third of American teens are taking a prescription drug and nearly 30% are pre-diabetic. More than 18% of adolescents have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. In 2020, 77% of young adults didn’t qualify for the military based on their health scores, forcing the military to lower its standards.

~ Health problems of young Americans begin at an early age even as they receive vaccines to protect them from illness. The CDC currently recommends at least 70 doses of 18 different vaccines from infancy until age eighteen, yet children have never had more acute and chronic ailments. These vaccination protocols urgently need re-evaluation.

The increasing use of prescription drugs by all Americans presents a dire warning. However, due to the unprecedented influence of lobbyists, elected representatives have allowed the pharmaceutical industry rampant freedom to sell questionable products.

Washington has not solved the problem of the revolving doors between Big Pharma and government regulators. This is the primary reason federal agencies are paralyzed by corporate interests and remain negligent in their protective roles. 

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The UN, Green Fund, and NATO – Unqualified Audits = Fraud

According to the World Meteorology Organization, the world began in 1885 when temperatures first were recorded.   And based on those recordings, which have been radically altered since that time, this is representative of a disaster caused by mankind.  The global mean temperature rose by 1.5’ Celsius.  The goal is for global temperatures to only rise by 1.5’ Celsius… 

In addition, UN climate experts have claimed that global greenhouse gas emissions have ‘smashed all records’.  Records began in 1958.  Starting in the 1950s, scientists began drilling deep into the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland to extract tubes of ice called ice cores.  The data is compared to the last ice age wherein there were few to zero – trees, plant life, etc… This is their methodology which has all the scientific analysis of comparing cow farts to climate.   Elevated levels of CO2 from climate change may enable plants to benefit from the carbon fertilization effect and use less water to grow.

With a President Trump we are hopefully back to reality in regards to Climate Change, NATO and the UN.  Fire up the coal and eliminate the wildlife weapon – windmills.  Melt down the steel components and make appliances.

The left is weeping, threatening that a US agreement to give Russia a win would mean Comrade Rutte will expel the US out of NATO!  NATO spends $1.3 trillion on defense of which the US picks up $860 billion or 66%.  Their last audit was in 2021 and included 33 recommendations, including:  “Five NATO Reporting Entities (ACO, IS, NAHEMO, NAPMA and NCPS) were required to resubmit their financial statements to correct material errors in order to obtain unqualified audit opinion on financial statements.  Sum had to restate their financials multiple times.”

The bottom line audit of NATO declared the Financial Statements and Compliance were ‘unqualified’.  This is considered an Adverse Opinion. Out of 44 reporting entities, 2 were given a ‘qualified’ audit score which is consistent with the last 3 years. Total Assets amounted to roughly $3.2 billion.  Liabilities were predominantly “Deferred Revenue’ of $2.4 billion. Deferred revenue, also known as unearned revenue or deferred income, is money a company receives in advance for products or services that have not yet been delivered.  The accounting entry would debit Cash & Receivables and credit the liability – yet the financial statements reveal only $1.686 billion.  This is what auditors refer to as unqualified, ie fraud.

For the past three years, their spending was exactly equal to revenue.   In the accounting world that is RED FLAG!   Not possible.   Their ‘Other Expenses’ is thus likely a plug to falsely create this bizarre budget.

There have been no financial statements for 2022, 2023 or quarterlies for 2024.   Houston!  This is worse than the US government.  We need to get out of DODGE!  NATO is Ukraine in drag.

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How to Cut $2 Trillion From the Federal Budget Without Really Trying

Donald Trump ally and probable future cabinet member Elon Musk went out on a limb during the Madison Square Garden rally, claiming he could cut $2 trillion from the budget.

“How much do you think we can rip out of this wasted, $6.5 trillion Harris-Biden budget?” Howard Lutnick, a Wall Street CEO and Trump’s transition team co-chair, asked Musk.

Musk said in response that he thinks “at least $2 trillion” could be cut. It’s a nice round number, but how realistic is it?

If we’re asking if the fat is there to achieve $2 trillion in cuts, the answer is obviously “yes.” If you’re asking if it can realistically be done, the answer is a resounding “no.”

Most of the thousands and thousands of federal programs and departments have a constituency in Congress. Each of those line items in the budget represents human beings: sick people, poor people, old people, babies, and tens of millions of other human beings that would die without federal assistance. That’s the reality for anyone who wants to cut the budget. 

That doesn’t mean we can’t cut $2 trillion from the budget. It means we have to get our priorities straight and think rationally about where to cut that $2 trillion. That’s because the very first place Congress wants to cut is programs that benefit the old, the sick, and the weak.

Musk might have pulled that $2 trillion number off the top of his head, but leave it to the brilliant Veronique de Rugy, writing in Reason.com, to put flesh on the bare bones number of $2 trillion.

The best way to cut $2 trillion out of the budget is to ax everything the federal government does that it shouldn’t be doing in the first place. It’s time we rediscovered the exercise of thinking critically about government and the role it should or shouldn’t play in our lives. Questions like, “Is that the role of government?” or “Should the federal government pay for that?” haven’t been seriously considered in years. The muscle of fighting for first principles has atrophied among Republicans as it’s no longer in style to call for small government.

The fact that we’ve “forgotten” how to think critically about government spending only shows that our road to ruin has been paved with fools’ gold. It will take a generation to change the mindset that the federal government needs to do everything and make all of our lives easy.

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World Bank Missing $41 Billion in Climate Funds

A new report by Oxfam, “Climate Finance Unchecked,” has determined that the World Bank has $41 billion in unaccounted funds that were destined to fight climate change.

This figure represents 40% of all disbursed climate funds by the World Bank. Oxfam’s audit revealed that between 2017 and 2023, between $24 billion and $41 billion simply went unaccounted for and there is absolutely no record of where the money went. No one knows how the money was used as there is no paper trail revealing where the money went.

“The Bank is quick to brag about its climate finance billions —but these numbers are based on what it plans to spend, not on what it actually spends once a project gets rolling,” said Kate Donald, Head of Oxfam International’s Washington D.C. Office. “This is like asking your doctor to assess your diet only by looking at your grocery list, without ever checking what actually ends up in your fridge.”

The World Bank is a leader in climate finance, controlling 52% of the total flow from all multilateral banks combined. World Bank President Ajay Banga announced in December that the bank achieved 35% of its financing three years ahead of schedule. He then set a new target of 45% by 2025. The bank later said in September that it achieved 44% of climate financing to the tune of $42.6 billion. “We’re putting our ambition in overdrive,” Banga said.

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Tax Cuts Without Spending Cuts Won’t Reduce the Taxpayers’ Burden

As this election cycle has demonstrated yet again, Democrats are not shy about calling for tax increases. In every election cycle they call for more taxes, whether through corporate taxes or through taxes on unrealized capital gains.

Donald Trump, meanwhile, has pledged to cut some taxes. I say “some” because Trump has also pledged to raise taxes on imports.

Nonetheless, Trump ran on the idea that he would reduce the tax burden on Americans if elected.

Unfortunately, Trump has no plans to cut government spending, and this means there is little chance that ordinary taxpayers are going to experience any real tax relief.

This is because tax cuts without spending cuts don’t actually lessen the cost of government. A tax cut without a spending cut simply moves around the tax burden, and often replaces explicit taxation with the stealth tax of price inflation.

Unless accompanied by spending cuts, a tax cut simply increases deficit spending, and taxpayers will pay for deficits one way or another. Typically deficits are paid for using one or more of the following: future taxes, present interest payments, and monetary inflation. Unfortunately for the taxpayers, when it comes to paying off deficit spending, “the future” is already here. In the 2024 fiscal year, the taxpayers had to pay nearly $900 billion in interest on the debt. That huge tax bill exists because federal politicians in the past spent more than they had in revenues.

Forcing the taxpayers to pay off old debts isn’t exactly popular, however. So, federal technocrats have found a way to push down interest rates on government debt. This reduces the amount of interest owed and nominally reduces the cost of government debt.

But this also ends up costing the taxpayers bigtime because the way that technocrats suppress the cost of interest is by having the central bank buy up more federal debt. (By buying government debt, the central bank artificially drives up demand, so the Treasury doesn’t have to pay as much in interest to attract buyers.) And where does the central bank get the money to buy up government debt? It prints the money. That then leads to both monetary inflation and (eventually) price inflation.

So, tax cuts that increase deficits only end up placing new and different burdens on the taxpayers. They’re not a real tax cut at all.

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NYC Ends Controversial Taxpayers-Funded Prepaid Debit Card Program for Illegal Immigrants

Mayor Eric Adams has announced the end of a controversial taxpayer-funded initiative distributing pre-paid debit cards to illegal immigrants.

The program, which was initially launched as a pilot earlier this year with a $53 million budget aimed to assist around 3,000 illegal immigrants and was set to expand its reach to over 7,300 individuals within the next half-year, will not see its contract renewed after January 2025.

The debit card initiative was designed to enable illegal immigrant families, temporarily housed in upscale hotels like the Roosevelt Hotel, to buy their “groceries and baby supplies” instead of receiving predetermined food services.

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Trump Has Sweeping Plans For His 2nd Administration: Here’s What He Has Proposed

Projected President-elect Donald Trump has made a number of sweeping proposals for a second term in office, outlining a wide-ranging agenda that targets federal regulations, taxes, immigration, and social issues.

As of Wednesday morning, The Associated Press projected that Trump is the winner of the election after securing enough electoral votes over his opponent Vice President Kamala Harris.

Early Wednesday, the former president and president-elect claimed victory in the 2024 presidential contest, telling supporters that voters had given him an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.” Early projections show that Trump may win not only the Electoral College but also the popular vote, something he’s never done in his previous two campaigns.

Immigration

Since 2015, Trump has made curbing illegal immigration a cornerstone of his campaigns. As president, he built or reconstructed about 400 miles of border barrier along the U.S.–Mexico border and implemented a number of rules curbing illegal migration into the country.

During the campaign, Trump often said that he would initiate the largest “mass deportation” effort in U.S. history if elected. Recently, he also warned Mexico that he would impose a 25 percent tariff targeting the country if it fails to curb illegal immigration and that he would raise that tariff if Mexico doesn’t comply.

Also, he’s suggested more enhanced screenings for immigrants, ending birthright citizenship—which may require a constitutional amendment—and reimposing certain policies enacted during his first term such as the “remain in Mexico” protocol.

Tom Homan, a former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who is expected to join the new administration, told media outlets last year that the scale of deportations depends on what resources are available.

During a “60 Minutes” interview in October, Homan was asked about whether families would be separated. Homan responded, “Families can be deported together.”

Vice President-elect JD Vance said in his debate with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Oct. 1 that deporting criminals would be a second Trump administration’s initial focus.

“You’ve got to reimplement Donald Trump’s border policies, build the wall, reimplement deportations,” Vance said, adding that the United States has 20 to 25 million illegal immigrants in the country.

“What do we do with them? I think the first thing that we do is we start with the criminal migrants.”

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The Menace of the State

The election is upon us. We wonder whether we have to have war, tariffs, and deficit spending, regardless of whom we support. What are we to do? Faced with the intractable problems of misgovernment, we need to look deeper. Following the great Murray Rothbard, we should ask, do we need a State at all? Rothbard’s answer was a clear “No.” And not only do we not need a State; the State is a menace.

Following Franz Oppenheimer and Albert Jay Nock, Rothbard identified the State as a predatory organism. It is the “organization of the political means.” The State produces nothing by itself but takes what other people have produced. Froom this we can deduce a vital fact. Society must have existed before the State. Otherwise, there would be nothing for the State to take.

But you may wonder, how is this possible? Whatever its defects, don’t we need a State to ensure that we have law and order? If we have property rights, don’t we need a legal order defining these rights? The answer is that we do need law and order, and we do need a legal system. But people can establish law and order without the State.

We know this because in any society that consists of a small group of people, certain conventions will naturally tend to arise. People will agree that they shouldn’t kill or assault each other. Otherwise, they couldn’t survive. They will also agree that they need private property, and a simple rule will naturally suggest itself: The first user of unowned land becomes the owner.

What happens, though, if there are disputes over who the first user was or about the boundaries of the land that has been acquired by the first user? The disputants will seek an impartial arbitrator, whose decisions will be respected. After a while, certain natural leaders will emerge from among these judges. But they won’t constitute a State, because they lack the power to extract resources through taxation.

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UK government’s tax plans will destroy family farming; farmers to gather in London to protest

A rally is being held in London to protest against the UK government’s agricultural policies.  Organised by the National Farmers’ Union (“NFU”), which represents more than 46,000 farming and growing businesses, the rally is taking place on 19 November.

In a vlog published on Friday, NFU President Tom Bradshaw outlined the plans and urged NFU members to send in their videos to demonstrate the impact that the Budget announcement will have on their business.

Bradshaw began, “Members, farmers, I know that today many of you are feeling angry and betrayed. And we absolutely share that frustration. We understand what the impact of the removal of APR [agricultural property relief], or this family farm tax, which has been implemented could have on you, your farm and your family. We want you, our members, to be involved in the next steps.”

Farmers have also been posting videos on social media, see HERE and HERE.

Agricultural Property Relief (“APR”) is a relief from inheritance tax on the transfer of agricultural property.  In her budget,  Rachel Reeves announced significant changes to the UK Inheritance Tax regime. Business Property Relief (“BPR”) and APR claims will be capped at £1m per taxpayer with inheritance tax of 20% applying on the full value of farms and rural estates above £1m.  The tax is effective from April 2026.

The cuts to APR potentially jeopardise thousands of family farms by increasing the Inheritance Tax burden. APR provides critical relief on the transfer of agricultural property, allowing farming families to pass their established food-producing business down to future generations.

This change could force family farms to sell off land to pay inheritance tax, potentially breaking up family businesses and destabilising food security. Why should non-farmers care? “Preventing farms from being sold or broken up is a public interest issue, too. Food security in the UK is declining in several sectors, making the country more dependent on imports,” The Guardian reported.

The Country Land and Business Association will be making urgent representations to the Treasury on how this will affect 70,000 farms.

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