Tag: taxes

GOP Guv Spent Millions in Tax Dollars on Governor’s Mansion Upgrades

After Republican Tate Reeves was elected governor of Mississippi in 2019, he sold his home and moved his family, naturally, into the governor’s mansion.

But that new home, a national historic landmark, was far from perfect for Reeves. And over the last three and a half years, while not having to pay personal property taxes on his new state-owned mansion, Reeves plowed more than $2.4 million in taxpayer dollars into renovations and upkeep for his temporary home, according to public records obtained by The Daily Beast.

During Reeves’ brief stay, the governor’s mansion has also seen what appears to be an additional $900,000 in renovations, restoration, and refurbishments. Those investments, however, came courtesy of anonymous donors, and appear in federal tax records filed by the Governors Mansion Foundation—a nonprofit whose board features Reeves’ campaign treasurer and a top campaign donor who runs a controversial installment loan business.

That would mean that, in the years since he stopped paying property taxes on his old home, Reeves has put a total of $3.3 million into updating the mansion. His former home, which Reeves sold in July 2020, was last listed for $629,000, according to several real estate websites. In the time since Reeves was first elected lieutenant governor—2012—Mississippi property taxes have increased by about 7.2 percent, according to state data.

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Scientists hide details of questionable taxpayer-funded pro-vaccine study

In May of this year, your journal pubished 2023 a study purportedly monitoring for serious neurological adverse events connected to Covid-19 vaccine. The study was entitled: “Observational Study of Patients Hospitalized With Neurologic Events After SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination, December 2020–June 2021.” 

The study, funded by CDC, was conducted by researchers at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. Although it is well established that side effects from vaccines and other medicine can arise years after the medicine is taken, the study scientists say they limited their examination to a six-week time period after a Covid-19 vaccine. They report looking at 138 people who had gotten vaccinated and then ended up hospitalized with any conditions on a list of neurologic conditions such as stroke, encephalopathy, seizure, and intracranial hemorrhage (bleeding). 

What got my attention was the odd conclusion. The study said that all 138 patients had “risk factors” or “established causes” for their illnesses, such as high blood pressure for stroke victims, and, therefore, this somehow, supposedly proves the vaccines are safe.

“All cases in this study were determined to have at least 1 risk factor and/or known etiology accounting for their neurologic syndromes. Our comprehensive clinical review of these cases supports the safety of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines,” reads the study discussion.

Surely these preeminent researchers understand the basic science that shows people with risk factors are more likely to suffer adverse events from medication. It is obvious that the fact that the patients had risk factors prior to vaccination doesn’t exonerate the vaccines at all; in fact, it potentially implicates the vaccines as yet another medicine that can add risks to people who already have illnesses— as do most Americans. Additionally, this conclusion raises eyebrows because it is well-established in literature that the vaccines are associated with a host of neurological events.*

I contacted the primary study author, Dr. Kiran Thakur, to see if it was I who was missing something. I asked: “The study seems to imply that because people who suffered certain neurological events shortly after Covid vaccination had risk factors, it exonerates the vaccines from blame. But did the authors consider that people with existing risk factors could be at greater risk for vaccine adverse events?” Instead of answering the question, Dr. Thakur replied: “Can you clarify the purpose of your questions (to be published, personal inquiry or otherwise).” When I told him it might be published, he went dark. When I persisted in asking if he would please respond, he finally answered: “Declining, thank you.” 

Why isn’t a legitimate scientist happy to answer a simple question about his work? What’s the big secret? 

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Police Tore Up His Protest Sign. Now They Owe Him $50,000

Last year, Delaware police prevented 54-year-old Jonathan Guessford from holding a sign warning drivers about a speed trap and wrongfully cited him for “improper hand signal” after he flipped off the officers who seized and tore up his sign. Police have now agreed to pay Guessford $50,000 as part of a settlement reached in a lawsuit alleging that police violated his civil rights.

Following several run-ins with the police, Guessford decided to “stage protests whenever he saw police officers stopping unsuspected vehicles using a radar gun,” according to legal documents. On March 11, 2022, his protest consisted of standing by the side of the road, holding a homemade sign reading, “Radar Ahead!” Guessford was soon confronted by several Delaware State Police officers, who took his sign and tore it up.

As Guessford drove away after the encounter, he flipped off the officers, leading them to eventually cite him for “improper hand signal” under a statute governing hand signals for nonmotorized vehicles like bicycles. However, body camera footage showed that officers knew that the citation was incongruous and would likely be dropped.

“Yeah, you can’t do that. That’ll get dropped,” Officer Christopher Popp said during a phone call to another officer, who replied, referring to a third officer, “I told him that’s going to get thrown out….Eventually, [Guessford is] going to do something really stupid, and then we are going to be able to really lock him up.”

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New poll finds California voters resoundingly oppose cash reparations for slavery

California voters oppose the idea of the state offering cash payments to the descendants of enslaved African Americans by a 2-to-1 margin, according to the results of a new poll that foreshadows the political difficulty ahead next year when state lawmakers begin to consider reparations for slavery.

The UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll, co-sponsored by The Times, found that 59% of voters oppose cash payments compared with 28% who support the idea. The lack of support for cash reparations was resounding, with more than 4 in 10 voters “strongly” opposed.

“It has a steep uphill climb, at least from the public’s point of view,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the IGS poll.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers created California’s Reparations Task Force in 2020 with the goal of establishing a path to reparations that could serve as a model for the nation. After two years of deliberations, the task force sent a final report and recommendations this summer to the state Capitol, where Newsom and the Democratic-led Legislature will ultimately decide how the state should atone for slavery.

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The Inside Story of How the Navy Spent Billions on the “Little Crappy Ship”

It took investigators months to unravel the mystery of the engine’s breakdown. But this much was clear at the outset: The Freedom’s collapse was another unmistakable sign that the Navy had spent billions of dollars and more than a decade on warships with rampant and crippling flaws.

The ongoing problems with the LCS have been well documented for years, in news articles, government reports and congressional hearings. Each ship ultimately cost more than twice the original estimate. Worse, they were hobbled by an array of mechanical failures and were never able to carry out the missions envisaged by their champions.

ProPublica set out to trace how ships with such obvious shortcomings received support from Navy leadership for nearly two decades. We reviewed thousands of pages of public records and tracked down naval and shipbuilding insiders involved at every stage of construction.

Our examination revealed new details on why the LCS never delivered on its promises. Top Navy leaders repeatedly dismissed or ignored warnings about the ships’ flaws. One Navy secretary and his allies in Congress fought to build more of the ships even as they broke down at sea and their weapons systems failed. Staunch advocates in the Navy circumvented checks meant to ensure that ships that cost billions can do what they are supposed to do.

Contractors who stood to profit spent millions lobbying Congress, whose members, in turn, fought to build more ships in their home districts than the Navy wanted. Scores of frustrated sailors recall spending more time fixing the ships than sailing them.

Our findings echo the conclusions of a half-century of internal and external critiques of America’s process for building new weapons systems. The saga of the LCS is a vivid illustration of how Congress, the Pentagon and defense contractors can work in concert — and often against the good of the taxpayers and America’s security — to spawn what President Dwight D. Eisenhower described in his farewell address as the “military industrial complex.”

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IRS Announces New Plan To Hire More Agents for High-Dollar Cases

U.S. taxpayers with more than $1 million incomes and owing more than $250,000 in taxes will be stringently scrutinized under a new collection initiative announced Friday by the Internal Revenue Service.

The IRS will contact about 1,600 taxpayers in this category who owe hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes, according to an agency statement.

“By the end of the month, the IRS will open examinations of 75 of the largest partnerships in the U.S. that … each have more than $10 billion in assets,” an agency spokesperson stated.

The new initiative is funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, which allocated billions to the IRS, according to a CBS News report.

A portion of the funds appropriated for IRS use will be used for identifying millionaire tax evaders. The IRS plans to deploy “dozens of revenue officers” in fiscal year 2024 to focus on high-value collection cases.

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 allocated $80 billion to the IRS. More than half of that amount is designated for hiring more enforcement agents.

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Biden Aims To Give Federal Workers Largest Pay Increase in 40 Years

Federal employees are set to receive the largest pay increase in four decades, courtesy of President Joe Biden.

In a letter sent to Congress last week, Biden called for a 5.2 percent overall pay increase for federal workers—the same increase that he’d included in his budget plan that was sent to Congress earlier this year. Biden said the huge pay increase was necessary so the federal government could “attract, recruit, and retain a skilled workforce with fair compensation in order to keep our government running, deliver services, and meet our nation’s challenges today and tomorrow.”

Technically, the pay increase will be divided into two separate categories. Federal workers would receive a 4.7 percent across-the-board pay raise, combined with a 0.5 percent bump in so-called locality pay. Because the amount of a federal employee’s locality pay varies from place to place based on the cost of living, the actual pay increases might not be the same for all workers.

It would be the biggest increase since federal workers received a 9.1 percent pay raise in 1980 during the waning days of the Carter administration, according to Government Executive, a trade publication for federal employees. As Government Executive notes, some members of Congress have been pushing for an even larger increase in federal employee compensation: A group of Democrats introduced a bill earlier this year to boost federal workers’ wages by 8.7 percent.

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Prohibitionist Group Narcs On Wells Fargo And Maryland Officials Over Accounting Of Marijuana Tax Revenue

An anti-marijuana advocacy group is taking aim at a banking arrangement between Wells Fargo and the state of Maryland that allows officials to receive and process tax revenue generated by state-legal cannabis businesses, calling the scheme “an active effort to protect the banks who are breaking federal law” and making an attempt to alert federal officials about it.

The state, for its part, has said it “complies with applicable laws and regulations.”

Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), which opposes marijuana legalization, made the allegations in a press release late last month following media reports of the banking arrangement, including in Marijuana Moment.

The also group sent an open letter to Maryland officials and Wells Fargo, while CCing several federal officials, requesting that “Wells Fargo cease working with Maryland state officials to circumvent federal laws and regulations.”

“The workaround by the Maryland government reported on in the media is a clear attempt to protect banks from thoughtfully crafted federal regulations,” the prohibitionist group’s letter says.

Among those copied on the letter are Erek L. Barron, the U.S. attorney for Maryland, whose office would oversee any potential federal prosecutions in the state, as well as Attorney General Merrick Garland and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

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Sen. Blumenthal: US Getting Its ‘Money’s Worth’ in Ukraine Because Americans Aren’t Dying

Fresh from a trip to Kyiv, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) is arguing that the US is getting its “money’s worth” in Ukraine because Russia is taking losses and no Americans are dying, showing a lack of concern for Ukrainian lives.

“Even Americans who have no particular interest in freedom and independence in democracies worldwide, should be satisfied that we’re getting our money’s worth on our Ukraine investment,” Blumenthal wrote in the Connecticut Post.

“For less than 3 percent of our nation’s military budget, we’ve enabled Ukraine to degrade Russia’s military strength by half … All without a single American service woman or man injured or lost,” he added.

The argument has become a common talking point among hawks in Washington who want the US to keep fueling the proxy war against Russia. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) recently called the conflict “the best national defense spending I think we’ve ever done.”

“We’re losing no lives in Ukraine, and the Ukrainians are fighting heroically against Russia,” Romney said. “We’re diminishing and devastating the Russian military for a very small amount of money … a weakened Russia is a good thing.”

The hawkish senators’ comments came amid Ukraine’s faltering counteroffensive. Despite the lack of success on the battlefield, the Biden administration and most members of Congress want to keep funding the war, which they acknowledge would not continue without US support.

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Digital Asset Sales To Come Under Increased IRS-Treasury Scrutiny

The U.S. Treasury and the IRS have proposed new reporting requirements for digital asset brokers like cryptocurrencies and NFTs in an attempt to “crack down on tax cheats” and help citizens assess tax dues arising from such asset transactions.

Regulations “would require brokers of digital assets to report certain sales and exchanges,” the U.S. Treasury said in an Aug. 25 press release. The proposed regulations “is part of a broader effort at Treasury to close the tax gap, address the tax evasion risks posed by digital assets, and help ensure that everyone plays by the same set of rules.”

Brokers would be required to report on the sale and exchange of digital assets in 2026 for activities that took place during the prior year.

In an Aug. 25 press release detailing the new proposed regulations, IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said that a critical part of the rules is that it “fits in with the larger IRS compliance focus on wealthy taxpayers.”

“We need to make sure digital assets are not used to hide taxable income, and the proposed regulations are designed to provide a clearer line of sight into activities by high-income people as well as others using them,” he said.

“We want to make sure everyone pays what they owe under the tax laws, and our research and experience demonstrate that third-party reporting improves compliance.”

A Barclays analysis released last year estimated that the IRS could be missing out on more than $50 billion annually due to crypto traders not paying their taxes.

The new rules will also help taxpayers in filing their returns, the Treasury stated.

Under current laws, citizens owe tax on gains made on the sale or exchange of digital assets and can deduct losses on such activity. However, “for many taxpayers it is difficult and costly to calculate their gains.”

The proposal would require that digital asset brokers “provide a new Form 1099-DA to help taxpayers determine if they owe taxes, and would help taxpayers avoid having to make complicated calculations or pay digital asset tax preparation services in order to file their tax returns.”

“These regulations align tax reporting on digital assets with tax reporting on other assets, and, as a result, avoid preferential treatment between different types of assets,” the treasury stated.

The agency cited figures from the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) which estimated that the new rules could raise almost $28 billion in revenues for the government over a decade.

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