Tag: taxes

Kathy Hochul signs law that fines energy companies $75 billion for ‘climate change’

New Yorkers, beware the law of unintended consequences.

From an item at the New York Post comes the news that Kathy Hochul has just signed a new bill, “modeled after a federal law that holds polluters responsible for abandoned toxic-waste sites,” which establishes the New York Climate Superfund. This endowment will be funded by energy companies that deal in gas, oil, and coal, and the money will finance “resiliency projects,” like initiatives to shore up the coast and mitigate flooding—because obviously as every progressive and mainstream media consumer “knows,” energy that comes from “fossil fuels” cause “climate change.”

As of now, a number of companies operating in New York have been hit with $75 billion in fines, which are to be paid into the fund over the span of a decade. Per the NY Post:

The oil giant Saudi Aramco of Saudi Arabia could be slapped with the largest annual assessment of any company — $640 million a year — for emitting 31,269 million tons of greenhouse gases from 2000 to 2020.

Aramco — formally known as the Saudi Arabian Oil Co. — is owned by the Saudi Royal family.

The state-owned Mexican oil firm Petróleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, emitted 9,512 tons of CO2 and could face an $193 million assessment for generating 9,512 million tons of greenhouse gases.

Russia’s Lukoil could be assessed with a $100 million yearly fee for spewing 4,912 millions of CO2.

The 38 companies identified as carbon polluters include American petro giants such as Exxon and Chevron as well as Shell and BP in the UK, Total Energies IES in France, Petrobras in Brazil, BHP in Australia, Glencore in Switzerland, Equinor in Norway and ENI in Italy.

Another greedy, communistic money grab. What the left doesn’t get as they cheer on the theft is that once it’s normalized for the “ultra rich” it’s then normalized for the “rich”… and then it’s normalized for the upper middle class… then the lower middle class, and so on—it’s a war on wealth, using Saul Alinsky’s infamous line about “rub[bing] raw the sores of discontent” as a vehicle.

Did you know that when the federal income tax started it only applied to less than 1% of Americans? Now look where we are.

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Biden Pledges More Arms To Ukraine After Christmas Strikes

President Joe Biden on Christmas Day said he has directed the Pentagon to continue its “surge of weapons deliveries to Ukraine,” following a wave of Russian air attacks on Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure early Christmas morning.

“The purpose of this outrageous attack was to cut off the Ukrainian people’s access to heat and electricity during winter and to jeopardize the safety of its grid,” Biden said in a statement.

“Let me be clear: the Ukrainian people deserve to live in peace and safety, and the United States and the international community must continue to stand with Ukraine until it triumphs over Russia’s aggression.”

The president said that the United States will “continue to work tirelessly” to back Ukraine against Russian forces in the ongoing war.

Ukraine’s air force said that the early morning attack by Russia using 78 air and ground missiles and 106 Shahed drones damaged critical equipment in Ukraine’s power grid, causing outages on Christmas Day.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy decried the deliberate attack on Christmas day as “inhumane.”

Ukraine shot down “more than 50 missiles and a significant number of drones” and was still hit as there are power outages in a number of regions as engineers are trying to restore power, Zelenskyy said.

“Russian evil will not break Ukraine and will not spoil Christmas,” Zelenskyy said.

The strikes wounded at least six people in the northeastern city of Kharkiv and killed one in the region of Dnipropetrovsk, the governors there said.

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CNN’s Abby Phillip Gets Schooled by Rep. Lawler as He Shuts Down Her Claim That Deporting Illegals Is ‘Too Expensive’

CNN host Abby Phillip seemed more concerned with the cost of deporting illegal immigrants than the devastating financial and social toll their unchecked influx is already imposing on American taxpayers.

During an exchange with Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), Phillip’s attempt to question the feasibility of deportation efforts was met with a brutal dose of reality.

Phillip smugly suggested that deporting illegal immigrants might be too expensive, quipping that Homan “doesn’t seem to have a sense of the scope—what it’s going to take, what it’s going to cost.”

But Lawler, armed with cold, hard facts, quickly set the record straight, exposing the absurdity of Phillip’s argument.

Lawler brought up the tragic human cost of sanctuary policies, recounting a horrifying incident where a criminal alien—previously deported by the Trump administration but allowed back into the country by the Biden regime—committed an unthinkable act of violence by burning a woman alive on a subway.

He slammed sanctuary states and cities like New York for enabling such heinous crimes by refusing to cooperate with federal immigration law.

And it’s not just public safety that’s at stake—it’s the livelihoods of hardworking Americans. Lawler pointed out the hypocrisy of New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who burdens her state’s citizens with a $2,500 congestion pricing fee while simultaneously funneling taxpayer dollars into free services for illegal immigrants.

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Black Money, Black Flags: How USAID Paved the Way for Syria’s Militant Takeover

As the designated terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) establishes its proto-government in Idlib, notoriously corrupt NGOs are stepping in to fill the gaps in public services, with some even defecting to work alongside the group.

The United States, which spent two decades and $5.4 trillion overthrowing governments hostile to al-Qaeda, now finds itself in a paradoxical position. Modern al-Qaeda has carved out its own quasi-state in Syria, yet remains on the U.S. list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. To characterize this as a foreign policy misstep would be reductive; the U.S. has actively facilitated HTS’s conquest of parts of Syria while maintaining its official terrorist designation.

For the past five years, HTS, an al-Qaeda offshoot, has sought to rehabilitate its image. Its leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani—a former high-ranking member of both ISIS and al-Qaeda—has led a calculated charm offensive, attempting to rebrand the group from one focused on violence and minority persecution to a more palatable local governance entity.

Since establishing HTS and a proto-government called the Syrian Salvation Government, or SSG, the group’s leader, al-Jolani has expended a good deal of energy talking about topics intended to normalize the idea of a-Qaeda’s statehood; things like ‘institutions,’ and ‘structures.’ This, coupled with al-Jolani’s sudden embrace of Syria’s diverse tapestry of minority groups, has made up the main pillars of the terror group’s rebrand. Al-Jolani himself credits the establishment of quasi-state structures for the group’s sudden success in taking over Syria.

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Tennessee Officials Will Pay $735,000 To Settle Lawsuit Over Seizure Of Legal Hemp Products

The state of Tennessee and the city of Spring Hill will jointly pay two businesses $735,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging state and local law enforcement wrongfully seized 231 pounds of legal hemp products earlier this year, according to a statement from an attorney representing the businesses.

The settlement follows the Spring Hill police department’s seizure of legal hemp products from Old School Vapor and SAK Wholesale in Columbia, Tennessee last May.

Days later, the businesses filed a federal suit seeking the return of products they said were valued at $1.35 million. The lawsuit named Spring Hill Police Chief Don Brit and 11 other officers and employees of the local district attorney’s office, including District Attorney Brent Cooper, whom—the lawsuit claims—articulated the position that legal hemp was “the same damn thing” as marijuana.

Hemp is distinguished from marijuana under federal and state law based on the concentration of a compound known as delta-9 THC. Hemp products with a concentration of less than .3 percent delta-9 THC are legal to sell, buy and consume in Tennessee—and federally. Cannabis with concentrations greater than .3 percent is classified as marijuana and is illegal in Tennessee.

The appearance of hemp flowers and marijuana are virtually indistinguishable, requiring laboratory testing to differentiate legal from illegal substances.

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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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