Tag: taxes

The IRS Misplaced Millions of Taxpayer Records. Again.

Do you know where your tax records are? It’s a serious question in the case of millions of Americans whose records the IRS carelessly misplaced. That’s the big reveal in a recent inspector general’s report telling us that the federal mugging agency continues to be mindbogglingly incompetent at safeguarding the sensitive financial information it forcibly extracts from us all.

“The IRS was unable to locate any of the FY 2010 microfilm cartridges that should have been sent from the Fresno Tax Processing Center to the Kansas City Tax Processing Center,” the U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration revealed in an August 8 report on the tax agency’s data-handling practices. “As a result of the lack of adequate inventory controls, the IRS cannot account for thousands of microfilm cartridges containing millions of sensitive business and individual tax account records.”

That’s bad—remarkably bad given the bait the information in those records represents for criminals inclined “to commit tax refund fraud identity theft,” as the report goes on to warn. You could omit the “tax refund” part since the details we’re required to submit to the IRS could enable scammers to rob us blind in a host of ways that don’t matter to the government but are extremely serious to anybody on the receiving end.

As you might expect of a government agency, the incompetence doesn’t stop there.

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Biden admin to spend $1.2 billion to VACUUM sky of carbon dioxide

President Joe Biden’s administration is planning to spend $1.2 billion in order to vacuum carbon dioxide out of the air.  

The United States Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm announced Friday that her agency would be funding two projects to deploy technology known as “direct air capture.” 

Granholm, on Thursday, told reporters that these “projects are going to help us prove out the potential of these next-generation technologies so that we can add them to our climate crisis fighting arsenal.” 

She described the projects as “giant vacuums that can suck decades of old carbon pollution straight out of the sky.” 

The projects were approved in Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan for 2021. Total funds that were allocated to the four commercial-scale air capture plants amount to $3.5 billion.  

The plants will vacuum the carbon out of the air in order to provide “environmental benefits for diverse applications across multiple sectors of the economy.” 

In addition to removing the fossil fuels from the air, the plants are to be used as a way to develop “a robust clean hydrogen supply chain and workforce by prioritizing clean hydrogen demonstration projects in major shale gas regions” with “regional clean hydrogen hubs.” 

It will essentially be a process where hydrogen pulled from carbon dioxide will be used to fuel hydrogen energy plants.  

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Army vet Greg Gross, 65, wins $20M after Yuba City cop Joshua Jackson snapped his SPINE during traffic stop and paralyzed him

A 65 year-old Army vet has been awarded $20million after a cop snapped his spine during a traffic stop and left him paralyzed – with the appalling assault captured on camera. 

Greg Gross was left horrifically-disabled after the April 2020 ‘pain compliance’ restraint by Yuba City Police Officer Joshua Jackson, with video footage showing the bloodied brutality victim sobbing as he wailed: ‘I can’t feel my legs.’ 

The bed-bound former military man has been awarded the sum by a Sacramento jury after they were told he now requires 24 hour care from a team of nurses. 

Stomach-churning body camera footage captured the moment Gross was injured after being pulled over on suspicion of causing a slow-speed crash while drunk driving. 

Jackson made Gross sit on the ground, with his legs straight in front of him. He then repeatedly pushed the senior citizen’s torso forward, towards the ground, with a force that ultimately snapped Gross’s spinal column as fellow cops Scott Hansen and Nathan Livingston looked on.  

Officers did not believe the victim when he repeatedly said ‘I can’t feel my legs’ after his spine was crushed as he was pinned to the ground outside a hospital in Yuba City, California.

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Get Money (COVID remix)

Early 2021 was a prosperous time for Austin Richard Post, better known as the “Sunflower” singer Post Malone.

While many of his entertainment-industry colleagues struggled to pay rent under the pandemic-era lockdowns that decimated live music in the US, Post bought a 9,000-square-foot ski chalet in Park City, Utah, which had been listed for $11.5 million, in an all-cash transaction that February.

By May, he’d bought an industrial space in a Salt Lake City suburb that had been listed for $1.45 million. There, he opened a commercial forge to craft knives and swords, “as a hobby,” Post’s representative told the city’s planning commission. 

But later that year, a corporation controlled by Post successfully applied for a $10 million grant from a taxpayer-funded federal program intended to provide “emergency assistance” to help struggling arts groups recover from the pandemic. 

The program, the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant, was a lifeline for the live-entertainment business. Administered by the Small Business Administration, it doled out $14.5 billion to institutions like movie theaters, ballets, operas, talent agents, performing-arts venues, and museums. Unlike the Paycheck Protection Program, which many venues didn’t qualify for, the Shuttered Venue program was a grant, not a loan. Qualified applicants were eligible for up to $10 million with no obligation to repay it.

“SVOG was there to save us, and to carry us through,” said Meredith Lynsey Schade, who was managing an off-off-Broadway theater company when the pandemic hit.

But the Shuttered Venue program was also plagued by ineffective oversight and loopholes that allowed some of the biggest names in the music industry to get huge payouts, an Insider investigation found.

R&B artist Chris Brown got $10 million. Rapper Lil Wayne got $8.9 million. Nineties rockers The Smashing Pumpkins got $8.6 million. Nickelback — yes, Nickelback — received $2 million.

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America’s top 5 weapons contractors made $196B in 2022

American weapons makers continue to dominate the global arms industry, with four U.S.-based companies in the world’s top five military contractors, according to a new Defense News ranking of the top 100 defense firms.

In 2022, America’s top five weapons contractors made $196 billion in military-related revenue, according to Defense News. Lockheed Martin dominated all other defense-focused companies, with total military revenue of roughly $63 billion last year. RTX, formerly known as Raytheon Technologies, was a distant second, earning roughly $40 billion in revenue in 2022.

The same five American “prime” contractors have long dominated lists of the world’s biggest arms manufacturers. Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX, Boeing and General Dynamics have remained in the top seven of the Defense News ranking since it began in 2000.

Notably, several Chinese firms have expanded their military operations in recent years as tensions have risen between the U.S. and China. Four Chinese companies are now in the top 20, including one — the Aviation Industry Corporation of China — that became the world’s fourth largest military contractor last year. 

The top 5 for 2022 are as follows: Lockheed Martin, RTX, Northrop Grumman, Aviation Industry Corporation, and Boeing.

The U.S., for its part, had 10 companies in the top 20. Italy, the Netherlands, France and the United Kingdom each had at least one of the world’s 20 biggest military firms last year.

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Chinese-run biolab in California that was experimenting on deadly viruses was awarded over $500,000 in US TAXPAYER cash

A Chinese-backed biolab in California was awarded over half a million dollars in US taxpayer cash, records show.

The black market lab – which was raided earlier this year – was found to be making illegal Covid and pregnancy tests and storing disease-riddled mice and hundreds of samples of pathogens, blood, and other dubious chemicals.

Public records show that the company linked to the lab received nearly $150,000 from the US government under a Covid-era loan program, receiving two separate loans of $74,912 in April 2020 and February 2021.

Universal Meditech was also awarded a massive $360,000 tax credit in 2018 through California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s CalCompetes program – though UMI’s inability to meet program guidelines meant it never actually received those funds.

The company – which was based in Fresno, California, went bust in 2022 and was taken over by its main creditor, a company with Chinese owners who moved the operation into an unassuming warehouse in the sleepy town of Reedley.

UMI had been operating legally prior to its closure, with its Fresno facility properly licensed and permitted from the state to produce pregnancy, ovulation, and menopause diagnostic tests. 

While it had received the federal money as a legal company, a subsequent move by regulators to put

In December 2022, the Food and Drug Administration, which must issue pre-market approval for diagnostic tests, recalled approximately 56,000 of UMI’s Covid tests in California and Texas, citing the company’s lack of pre-market approval from the agency.

The recall did not mention the pregnancy tests.

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When Our Weapons Go Missing

Fears of loose weapons in Ukraine have become reality: Once American weapons arrive, Ukrainian criminals steal them. If U.S. arms transfer policies are not changed, Washington will inevitably accidentally arm groups that actively want to harm the United States.

In June, two separate Department of Defense inspector general reports revealed poor monitoring when U.S. weapons are transferred to Ukraine. Challenges in Ukraine’s war zone have made it nearly impossible to track the weapons.

The first report found that the personnel responsible for ensuring accountability were given no “training or guidance.” It concluded that the Pentagon does “not have accountability controls sufficient enough to provide reasonable assurance that its inventory of defense items transferred to [Ukraine] via the air hub in Jasionka was accurate or complete.”

The second report discovered that the Office of Defense Cooperation–Kyiv was unable to monitor how American military equipment was put to use. Indeed, monitors could not “visit areas where equipment provided to Ukraine was being used or stored.”

Such problems are not unique to Ukraine, but the Biden administration has been open to accepting the possibility of weapons dispersion when it comes to Ukraine’s war. Yet discounting these perils comes with four long-term security risks.

First, larger weapons systems have a high value on the black arms market. In Afghanistan, for example, the Taliban has been able to continue funding itself through its already existing smuggling networks by selling U.S. weapons left behind in the withdrawal. These weapons are now used in attacks in Pakistan, Kashmir, and the Gaza Strip.

Even before the war, Ukraine had one of the largest illegally trafficked arms markets in Europe, according to the 2021 Global Organized Crime Index. This has only intensified since the Russian invasion. For example, in August 2022 a criminal organization in Ukraine stole and intended to sell 60 rifles and 1,000 rounds of ammunition.

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Joe Biden to ask Congress to fund Taiwan arms via Ukraine budget

The White House will ask Congress to fund arms for Taiwan as part of a supplemental budget request for Ukraine, in an effort to speed up the supply of weapons to the country amid the rising threat from China. The Office of Management and Budget will include funding for Taiwan in the supplemental request as part of an effort to accelerate the provision of weapons, according to two people familiar with the plan. If passed by Congress, Taiwan would get arms through a US taxpayer-funded system known as “foreign military financing” for the first time. The White House is expected to submit the request this month. The request comes on the heels of a White House announcement that the US would supply Taiwan with $345mn in weapons from stockpiles for the first time, under a system known as “presidential drawdown authority” that has been used to send weapons to Ukraine. The decision to include Taiwan funding in the supplemental budget and use PDA to supply weapons underscores a rising urgency to help Taipei. Critics of the current Taiwan strategy have urged Washington to supply weapons more quickly as China increases military activity around the country. “This would be a monumental step that signals how far the US government is now willing to go to accelerate deterrence across the Taiwan Strait,” said Eric Sayers, managing director at Beacon Global Strategies, a Washington consultancy. “For decades we have chosen to only sell Taiwan military equipment but now . . . we are seeing both the tools of drawdown authority and foreign military financing be deployed, just as they have been so successful in Ukraine,” Sayers added.

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Americans Love NASA, But Private Firms Do the Real Work in Space

Despite the successes of private space companies, many Americans cling to a notion of NASA as representing the country beyond the atmosphere. In fact, though, NASA relies on capabilities developed and owned by others. The Space Launch System [SLS] is supposed to restore the agency’s role, but it’s antiquated and clunky when compared to private competitors. Public opinion has yet to catch up with an innovation boom that has moved beyond misty memories of NASA in its moon-landing heyday.

“Most Americans continue to believe that the U.S. space agency NASA has a critical role to play, even as private space companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are increasingly involved in space,” Pew Research reported earlier this month. “Overall, 65% of U.S. adults say it is essential that NASA continue to be involved in space exploration, the survey finds. A smaller share (32%) believe that private companies will ensure enough progress is made in space exploration, even without NASA’s involvement.”

The Biden administration is happy to play to such sentiments with its National Cislunar Science & Technology Strategy which heavily emphasizes “the NASA Artemis program, with its near-term mission to return humans to the Moon.” But the publication of that strategy last November was no accident, coinciding as it did with the successful test of the long-delayed Space Launch System and Orion crew capsule. Without the SLS, plans for NASA’s return to the moon are pipe dreams, since it has largely relied on others for reaching space since the 2011 retirement of the space shuttle program.

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Washington Launches Online Portal To Reimburse People Criminalized By Unconstitutional Marijuana/Drug Convictions

Washington State has officially launched an online portal that people can use to request reimbursement of their legal fees if they were prosecuted under drug criminalization laws that the state Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional in 2021.

The state Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) launched the Blake Refund Bureau website on Saturday to facilitate the relief in coordination with courts, county clerks, public defenders, prosecutors, advocates and other stakeholders.

“If you have a Blake-impacted criminal record, you must first have your Blake-related convictions vacated and refund eligibility determined by the court or courts where your convictions were issued,” AOC said. “Once your convictions have been vacated, you can apply for reimbursements on your paid Blake-related [legal financial obligations].”

The novel reimbursement fund is being created following the state Supreme Court’s landmark 2021 ruling in Washington v. Blake that found the state’s criminal code for drug possession crimes was unconstitutionally flawed because it didn’t take require proof that a person “knowingly” committed the offense—creating a situation where people could be criminalized for inadvertent possession.

The ruling effectively nullified the state’s drug possession criminalization law, though the governor has since signed a bill passed by the legislature that reinstates prohibition, with statutory language fixes to pass constitutional muster and lower penalties for possession compared to the previous law.

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