Tag: taxes

Portland enforces homeless camping ban after SCOTUS ruling, county continues giving out tents

After Portland, Oregon, announced it would implement a ban on homeless street camping and impose fines or jail time for those who refuse shelter, Multnomah County says will continue distributing tents and tarps to homeless individuals despite the city’s efforts. The news comes just as the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that cities can remove homeless encampments from public property.  

On Monday, the city announced that it would start enforcing the new ban which applies to any homeless person offered reasonable shelter who refuses. Violators could be fined $100 or jailed. The ban also prioritizes targeting camps that pose significant health and safety risks in the community.  

Despite the city’s ban, the county will keep handing out tents and tarps, aiding those living on the streets, according to Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson, per KATU News.   

“We’re not stopping handing out tents and tarps. We’re just not going to be purchasing any more,” said Pederson. “We do have supplies on hand that are sufficient for the needs we have right now.”  

On Wednesday, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler criticized the county’s actions, explaining, “It doesn’t make any sense that with 6,000 homeless people on our streets that we would hand out more than 6,000 tents and nearly five times that many tarps.”  

The city and county are currently in the middle of negotiating a three-year homeless response plan. Pederson emphasized she wouldn’t be pressured to stop distributing tents and tarps to reach a new deal.   

“If anyone was going to be using this to have an ultimatum about what our policy was going to be, that’s not something I was going to stand for,” she said.  

Responding to questions from KATU about the city and county’s relationship, with the county distributing tents and the city enforcing the ban, Pederson remarked, “I think it’s a sign of where we are right now, where we don’t have enough capacity within our existing system for shelter.”  

Mayor Wheeler responded to the same line of questioning, stating, “I think it says you have two separate governments.”  

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Bipartisan Vote Blocks CISA Budget Cut Despite Speech Censorship Concerns

104 Republicans and 198 Democrats voted to uphold a proposed budget increase for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in the defense appropriations bill. Representative Andrew Clyde from Georgia proposed an amendment to freeze CISA’s funding at its 2024 level, which would reduce the budget by just over 2% to $2,379,485,00. During a forceful speech on the House floor, Clyde criticized the agency for misusing its resources to suppress dissenting opinions.

The vote came just following the Supreme Court siding with the Biden administration’s partnership with tech giants to encourage the suppression of social media content, overturning the injunction by alleging that the case lacked standing.

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Why Has Joe Biden’s $42 Billion Broadband Program Not Connected One Single Household?

One of President Joe Biden’s pledges upon entering office in 2021 was to expand Americans’ access to high-speed broadband internet. But despite apportioning tens of billions of dollars to the task, not one person has been connected to the internet as a result of the initiative.

Contained within the 2021 infrastructure bill, the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program authorized more than $42 billion in grants, to “connect everyone in America to reliable, affordable high-speed internet by the end of the decade.”

“In 2021, the Biden Administration got $42.45 billion from Congress to deploy high-speed Internet to millions of Americans,” Brendan Carr, the senior Republican commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter) this month. “Years later, it has not connected even 1 person with those funds. In fact, it now says that no construction projects will even start until 2025 at earliest.”

BEAD is administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), an agency of the Department of Commerce. NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson told lawmakers in May, “with BEAD, this is really a 2025, 2026, shovels in the ground project.”

Carr blames the delay on “the addition of a substantive wish list of progressive ideas” to the approval process. In an April 2023 letter to Davidson, 11 Republican U.S. senators warned that “NTIA’s bureaucratic red tape and far-left mandates undermine Congress’ intent and would discourage participation from broadband providers while increasing the overall cost of building out broadband networks.”

Among several examples, the senators noted that NTIA’s BEAD proposal “requires subgrantees to prioritize certain segments of the workforce, such as ‘individuals with past criminal records’ and ‘justice-impacted […] participants.'” The infrastructure law that authorized the program merely required contractors to be “in compliance with Federal labor and employment laws.”

The previous year, in a letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Republican senators warned that the NTIA’s proposed BEAD rollout “creates a complex, nine-step, ‘iterative’ structure and review process that is likely to mire State broadband offices in excessive bureaucracy and delay connecting unserved and underserved Americans as quickly as possible.”

In practice, this is exactly what’s happening: Multiple representatives from the telecommunications industry told MinnPost this week that they had no interest in applying for a piece of Minnesota’s $652 million in BEAD grants. Brent Christensen, president and CEO of Minnesota Telecom Alliance, which represents 70 Minnesota telecom companies, said, “None of them would bid for the federal grants because of the regulations that would come with it—especially the requirement to provide low-cost services to low-income households in exchange for grants that would allow internet providers to build out their networks.”

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Shock as Vending Machines With Orwellian Name Supplied With Various Disturbing Products Aimed at Drug Users

A new device in Ontario, Canada offers people easy access to some disturbing supplies like HIV self-test kits, meth pipes, naloxone, crack kits, and condoms.

The real shocker is that all of the items are free; users just need to tap on the screen after creating an account, which is meant to better track supplies and limit abuse.

The bizarre vending machines have sparked backlash online, with some viewing it as a sign that “Canada is broken.”

CTV News reported that the jaw-dropping device is located at the office of SOAR Community Services.

It was dubbed “our Healthbox” by manager of healthy communities at the Brant County Health Unit (BCHU) DeAnna Renn.

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Pentagon doesn’t know if it funds dangerous biological research in China, new audit reveals

Despite years of warnings that China operates an illicit biological weapons program, the U.S. military remains unable to determine whether it sends American tax dollars to Beijing for research that could make pathogens more dangerous or deadly, the Pentagon’s chief watchdog declared in a stunning new warning to policymakers.

“The DoD did not track funding at the level of detail necessary to determine whether the DoD provided funding to Chinese research laboratories or other foreign countries for research related to enhancement of pathogens of pandemic potential,” the Pentagon inspector general concluded in a report released this month.

You can read that report here.

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DODIG-2024-PathogenChinaResearchSECURED.pdf

The findings show the Pentagon has done little to improve transparency on a critical security issue in the two years since the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, first raised concerns that defense officials could not account for how biological research funds sent to China were being used. You can read that GAO report here.

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The latest inspector general report also adds to momentum in Congress to formally ban the Pentagon from funding “gain-of-function” research in foreign countries, a goal that has increased in priority now that some members of the U.S. intelligence community like the FBI believe the COVID-19 pandemic began with a virus leak  inside a Wuhan lab doing research funded by U.S. tax dollars. Gain-of-research refers to the serial passaging of microorganisms to increase their transmissibility and virulence among other things.

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa., has been leading the effort to force the Department of Defense to account for money it sends to China and to formally ban spending on research that makes viruses and bacteria more contagious or lethal. She got a provision added to the National Defense Authorization Act last year that required the inspector general review.

“The Department of Defense should defend the nation, not support research with the potential to do us harm,” Ernst said recently. “While bureaucrats are blindly giving away taxpayer funds, China doesn’t even have to steal our research.

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Trans-identified male felon awarded $350,000 by NYC after suing for being housed with male inmates on Rikers Island

Ali Miles, a biological male felon who identifies as a Muslim woman, has been awarded $350,000 in a settlement after suing New York City over officials’ decision to hold Miles in pre-trial detention on Rikers Island with male inmates. Miles spent one month in the facility before being transferred back to Arizona, where Miles was found guilty on numerous charges.

Miles, formerly known as Dylan Miles, alleged in the lawsuit that the inmate had informed the court that Miles was transgender, and that the refusal to house Miles with female inmates amounted to “gender identity discrimination.” As part of the settlement, the city maintained that Miles’ allegations were untrue, and did not accept any blame.

According to Reduxx, Miles was held on Rikers Island from June to July 2022 after being arrested in New York on an Arizona warrant. After being found guilty of two counts of aggravated harassment per domestic violence, a Class 5 felony, as well as disorderly conduct, harassment, threatening or intimidating, and false reporting to law enforcement, Miles was sentenced to 312 days in jail and three years of supervised probation. 

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Police are Using Drones More and Spending More For Them

Police in Minnesota are buying and flying more drones than ever before, according to an annual report recently released by the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA). Minnesotan law enforcement flew their drones without a warrant 4,326 times in 2023, racking up a state-wide expense of over $1 million. This marks a large, 41 percent increase from 2022, when departments across the state used drones 3,076 times and spent $646,531.24 on using them. The data show that more was spent on drones last year than in the previous two years combined. Minneapolis Police Department, the state’s largest police department, implemented a new drone program at the end of 2022 and reported that its 63 warrantless flights in 2023 cost nearly $100,000.

Since 2020, the state of Minnesota has been obligated to put out a yearly report documenting every time and reason law enforcement agencies in the state — local, county, or state-wide — used unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), more commonly known as drones, without a warrant. This is partly because Minnesota law requires a warrant for law enforcement to use drones except for specific situations listed in the statute. The State Court Administrator is also required to provide a public report of the number of warrants issued for the use of UAVs, and the data gathered by them. These regular reports give us a glimpse into how police are actually using these devices and how often. As more and more police departments around the country use drones or experiment with drones as first responders, it offers an example of how transparency around drone adoption can be done.

You can read our blog about the 2021 Minnesota report here.

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Now experts are asking whether milk is racist as part of a tax-payer funded research project into connections between milk and colonialism

A taxpayer-funded project is set to research connections between milk and colonialism, it was revealed yesterday.

Academics at an Oxford museum will research the ‘political nature’ of milk and its ‘colonial legacies’.

One of the experts involved has previously argued that milk is a ‘Northern European obsession’ that has been imposed on other parts of the world.

Dr Johanna Zetterstrom-Sharp said the assumption that milk was a key part of the human diet ‘may be understood as a white supremacist one’, as many populations outside Europe and North America have high levels of lactose intolerance in adulthood.

The new project, ‘Milking it: colonialism, heritage & everyday engagement with dairy’, has won funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

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Defense Department Lost Track of Millions Sent to Chinese Labs For Gain of Function Research, Bombshell Gov’t Report Finds

The Pentagon sent millions of dollars of taxpayer funding to numerous Chinese research labs and then lost track of how it was being used, according to a government report.

“Due to limitations in the DoD’s tracking systems, the full extent of DoD funds provided to Chinese research laboratories for research related to enhancement of pathogens of pandemic potential is unknown,” the DoD’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) wrote in its 26-page report released Tuesday.

The audit conducted in compliance with the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) looked into where the funds were sent, including whether money was sent to the Chinese Communist Party, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and other CCP-controlled research labs.

DoD OIG investigators also looked into whether the funds could be used to spark a new pandemic through gain of function research or other methods that “could have reasonably resulted in the enhancement of any coronavirus, influenza, Nipah, Ebola, or other pathogen of pandemic potential or chimeric versions of such a virus or pathogen in the People’s Republic of China or any other foreign country.”

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High-Speed Rail in USA: An Expensive Tax Burden and Inefficient Solution for America’s Travel Infrastructure

For some reason, high-speed rail is a hot-button issue for liberals and a frequent point of criticism from Chinese communist propaganda and Europeans when they attack the U.S.

“How can you call yourself a developed country when you don’t have high-speed rail?” they ask. The reality is that high-speed rail would be more expensive and less efficient than our current travel infrastructure.

High-speed rail works in Europe and China because of government subsidies, higher taxes, and because people typically travel shorter distances and have fewer travel options.

The U.S. has more cars per capita, more highways, more airports, and more railroads than China or the EU. Additionally, Americans prefer to drive on trips up to 500 miles so they can have their car when they arrive and take the whole family for one price. For longer trips, Americans prefer flying because even high-speed rail is slower.

The US is extremely developed and has a culture of independence. Car ownership is more prevalent in the US than anywhere else, with 860 cars per thousand people, compared to 627 in Germany, 544 in Sweden, and 223 in China.

Not only does America have more cars per capita, but we also have more highways. The US National Highway System comprises 164,000 miles of highways, equipped with rest stops, gas stations, McDonald’s, hotels, and other amenities.

In contrast, China has 105,073 miles of highways, meaning the US has 56% more, despite China’s population being more than three times that of the US. And, good luck finding bathrooms and rest stops on China’s highways.

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