Tag: taxes

Congressional Republicans Urge Biden to Provide More Military Funding to Taiwan

The authors of the new letter to Biden reasoned that arming and equipping Taiwan “to make it a stronger and more capable partner” would be an improvement for the “national and economic security” of the United States.

Republican members of the US Congress’ foreign relations and defense committees have penned a letter to US President Joe Biden asking him to ramp up military aid to Taiwan, according to a US media outlet familiar with the contents of the missive.

The letter was reportedly authored by Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Jim Risch and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Mike McCaul, as well as Senator Roger Wicker and Rep. Mike Rogers, Republican leaders of the Senate and House armed service committees, respectively.

“Using every authority, we must arm and equip Taiwan to make it a stronger and more capable partner — which will only help the United States’ national and economic security,” the politicians declared in their letter.

They also argued that the United States “must be willing to accept the tension that comes with supporting Taiwan.”

As the media outlet points out, in December the US Congress did authorize foreign military aid financing for Taiwan – $2 billion per year – but that money comes in the form of “US-backed loans,” and the letter’s authors claim that “without FMF grants, loans are not enough to address the scale of this challenge.”

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Stacey Abrams Charity Has a $500,000 Problem In Its Latest Tax Filing

Over half a million dollars is missing from the New Georgia Project, a discrepancy which experts say is grounds for state and federal investigations into the Stacey Abrams-founded group and the woman Abrams tapped to run it.

The New Georgia Project filed its 2021 Form 990 financial disclosure in January, two months after the form was due to the IRS, and three months after the charity’s board chairman fired CEO Nse Ufot, Abrams’s hand-picked leader for the group. In the disclosure, the New Georgia Project reports a $533,846 consulting payment and a $67,500 grant to the Black Male Initiative, an obscure charity run in part by Ufot’s brother, Edima, a former New Georgia Project employee.

But the Black Male Initiative says it never received any such consulting payment. The group provided the Washington Free Beacon with its IRS financial disclosures, which show it collected $0 in consulting income and just $255,000 in contributions from all sources in 2021.

The ethical questions raised by the missing money are the latest stumbling block for the embattled charity. The Free Beacon reported in November that the New Georgia Project was in turmoil as former senior staff accused the group’s leadership of engaging in rampant financial misconduct. And Georgia’s state ethics commission alleges that the group illegally worked to elect Abrams during her failed 2018 gubernatorial bid.

“This is something that the Internal Revenue Service should be interested in,” Alan Dye, a nonprofit attorney, told the Free Beacon, “particularly with the added element of the former officer possibly pocketing the money.”

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Biden Admin to Drop Half a Million on Artificial Intelligence That Detects Microaggressions on Social Media

The Biden administration is set to dole out more than $550,000 in grants to develop an artificial intelligence model that can automatically detect and suppress microaggressions on social media, government spending records show.

The award, funded through President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, was granted to researchers at the University of Washington in March to develop technologies that could be used to protect online users from discriminatory language. The researchers have already received $132,000 and expect total government funding to reach $550,436 over the next five years.

The researchers are developing machine-learning models that can analyze social media posts to detect implicit bias and microaggressions, commonly defined as slights that cause offense to members of marginalized groups. It’s a broad category, but past research conducted by the lead researcher on the University of Washington project suggests something as tame as praising meritocracy could be considered a microaggression.

The Biden administration’s funding of the research comes as the White House faces growing accusations that it seeks to suppress free speech online. Biden last month suggested there should be an investigation into Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter after the billionaire declared the social media app would pursue a “free speech” agenda. Internal Twitter communications Musk released this month also revealed a prolonged relationship between the FBI and Twitter employees, with the agency playing a regular role in the platform’s content moderation.

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton likened the Biden administration’s funding of the artificial intelligence research to the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to “censor speech unapproved by the state.” For the Biden administration, Fitton said, the research is a “project to make it easier for their leftist allies to censor speech.”

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Yes, Sales Tax is Also THEFT

A group of House Republicans is supporting legislation that would replace federal income, payroll, estate, and gift taxes with a 30 percent national sales tax. The bill also eliminates the Internal Revenue Service, giving states the responsibility to collect the sales tax and send the revenue to DC.

This deputizing of states to act as federal tax collectors violates the principles of federalism, especially since the plan forces states that have chosen not to make their residents pay sales taxes create a mechanism for collecting sales tax.

A 30 percent sales tax on all goods with no exceptions and no deductions will increase taxes imposed on millions of Americans. The sales tax legislation provides a way Americans can receive a monthly “prebate” payment to help offset the cost of the sales tax. Still, many taxpayers would be paying more under the new national sales tax system.

If the sales tax becomes law, Congress may never have to increase the rate above 30 percent. This is because it can rely on the Federal Reserve to increase the sales taxes via inflation. Consequently, this inflation tax will increase the pain inflicted by the sales tax on the American people.

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What Conflict of Interest? California AG’s Wife Appointed to Run House Committee that Oversees His Budget

California Democrats who run the state have decided laws no longer matter nor do ethics.  The AG is fine with his wife leading the committee in the state house that oversees his budget. 

KCRA in California reported on the material conflict of interest:

California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s wife, Assemblymember Mia Bonta, has been tapped to lead a budget committee that oversees and helps determine his agency’s spending, a decision that some political experts say is ethically questionable.

Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Lakewood, recently appointed Mia Bonta, as the chairwoman of the Assembly Budget Subcommittee 5, which focuses on how taxpayer dollars are used on the state’s various public safety agencies, including the California Department of Justice. Both Bontas are Democrats.

“It should raise eyebrows,” said Bob Stern, former general counsel for the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission. “What’s going on with them? It seems to me they have a tin ear about ethics.”

“I believe Ms. Bonta will continue to be independent and unbiased in her legislative judgment, as she has been since starting her service in the Assembly,” Speaker Rendon said in a statement, defending his decision. “The Legislature has a robust and transparent budget process, designed with checks and balances to ensure the best possible budget is passed. Our final Assembly budget proposal must be identical to the Senate, and will be approved or vetoed by the governor. Additionally, we can’t set salaries or benefits for state constitutional officers, so no elected official can ever personally or financially benefit from our budget process,” he said.

Democrats and their Deep State don’t believe in conflicts of interest or the law when it comes to their own actions.  This happens over and over again. 

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So Much For Billionaires: Joe Biden’s IRS Is Now Coming For Waiters’ And Waitresses’ Tips

The Biden administration’s lip service about new IRS enforcement only being targeted toward the country’s wealthiest appears to be just that: lip service.

Instead, while we have been distracted with rhetoric about billionaires paying their fair share, the Biden Administration’s IRS is actually looking to stock its coffers with the tips of waiters and waitresses across the country. This newly planned targeting of middle-class Americans was proposed this week.

Earlier this week the IRS proposed a new procedure to “improve tip reporting compliance”, as they so brilliantly put it. Fox News reported:

As part of the program, which wouldn’t go into effect until after a multi-month public comment period, the IRS could withdraw liability protection related to “rules that define tips as part of an employee’s pay” from employers that don’t cooperate.

The program can’t go into effect until it makes it through a multi-month comment period, Fox News reported.

Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., the chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Tax, told Fox this week: “Washington has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. Now, the IRS is going after middle-income families and working moms and dads who are just trying to make ends meet and put food on the table.” 

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By Shooting Down Balloon, the Expensive, Useless F-22 Fighter Finally Won a Dogfight

When it officially entered military service in 2005, the U.S. Air Force hailed the F-22 Raptor as an “exponential leap in warfighting capabilities.”

American taxpayers ultimately paid $67 billion to buy 187 of the planes, which had been in development since 1986 “to project air dominance, rapidly and at great distances” with technical capabilities that “cannot be matched by any known or projected fighter aircraft.”

On Saturday, the F-22 scored its first-ever victory against an airborne adversary when it shot down…a balloon.

There may not be a better metaphor for the costly grandiosity of the American military than the use of a multi-million-dollar fighter jet to dispatch an unarmed, unmaneuverable opponent. But the fact that the F-22 had never won a dogfight before its decisive victory over what may or may not have been a Chinese spy balloon is a nice illustration of why the United States has the world’s most expensive military by a massive margin.

In short, it’s because the Pentagon buys lots of expensive toys that have no use.

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Amid Spy Balloon Controversy, Biden Admin Approves $2.1 Billion Aid Package to Defend Ukrainian Skies

As national attention was captured by a Chinese surveillance balloon flying over the United States, the Biden administration has approved another $2.1 billion military aid package to strengthen Ukraine’s air defense arsenal.

The package includes $425 million in arms and equipment drawn from existing U.S. stockpiles, as well as $1.75 billion in Ukraine Assistance Security Initiative (UASI) funds, which Ukraine can use to purchase new weapons—particularly those related to air defense—from manufactures contracted with the U.S. Department of Defense.

In Friday’s announcement, the Pentagon said the package includes “critical air defense capabilities to help Ukraine defend its people.”

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Planned New FBI HQ Is Twice the Size of the Pentagon

The federal government is proceeding with plans to build a new FBI headquarters complex twice the size of the Pentagon building. 

Riveted into the colossal new project are woke regulations to ensure that the FBI center will comply with diversity, equity, LGBTQ+, and climate change political goals. 

The plan, unveiled last September, has received little attention. For years the FBI has sought to vacate its present headquarters, a brutalist concrete bunker on stilts and occupying two city blocks between the White House and the Capitol. 

Plans for the new FBI headquarters specify that it will be built on one of three sites in suburban Virginia and Maryland. Those sites are large parcels of 58, 61, and 80 acres. 

That means, at minimum, the new FBI headquarters complex would be twice the size of the Pentagon building. Covering about 29 acres plus a five-acre courtyard, the Pentagon, until recently, was the largest office building on earth.   

The Kremlin in Moscow —a walled fortress containing the administrative offices of the Russian central government, the official presidential residence, massive auditoriums, an arsenal, a museum, four palaces, three cathedrals and several churches—is just over 66 acres in area. 

The General Services Administration, which administers federal properties, has selected the three sites. The 58-acre property in Springfield, Virginia, GSA says, is “federally owned land under the jurisdiction, custody, and control of GSA.” 

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