Tag: taxes

Biden Regime to Change Definition of ‘Lawful Presence’ to Give Illegals Welfare

The Biden Regime has announced its plans to change the legal definition of “lawful presence” for the purpose of extending taxpayer-funded welfare programs like Medicaid and Obamacare to illegal aliens.

Under new plans unveiled by Joe Biden, illegal aliens enrolled in DACA, the massive amnesty program that was illegally enacted by executive order, circumventing Congress, during the Obama Administration, will become eligible to enroll in taxpayer-funded Medicaid and Obamacare programs. Biden says that his administration will implement the new definition of “lawful presence” by the end of this month.

In a pre-recorded video statement announcing his plans, Biden lectured actual American citizens while also referring to illegal aliens as “Americans” themselves, saying that “health care should be a right, not a privilege, and my administration’s worked hard to expand health care. And today, more Americans have health insurance than ever.”

“Today’s announcement is about giving DACA recipients the same opportunity,” Biden said at another point in the video, and added that he’s consulting with illegal aliens in his quest to redistribute American money into their pockets, saying that he’s working “alongside dreamers” to give them “the opportunities and support they deserve.”

Biden even used COVID to justify giving illegal aliens the hard-earned money of American citizens, claiming that “many” illegals “were essential workers on the front lines of the pandemic.”

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Florida to investigate whether taxpayer dollars were used to purchase crack pipes for drug addicts – AG sues Biden admin for ignoring public records requests

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody announced a lawsuit on Thursday against the Biden administration after it ignored Freedom of Information Act requests seeking proof that taxpayer dollars were not used to purchase crack pipes for safe smoking kits provided to drug addicts.

A $30 million federal grant program, announced by President Biden in February 2022, was used to reimburse local governments that provided addicts with safe smoking kits. The program was touted as a harm reduction effort that advanced safer drug use and racial equity.

Some of the smoking kits found in Baltimore, Boston, New York, Richmond, and Washington, D.C., reportedly contained crack pipes and other drug-related paraphernalia; however, the Biden administration has maintained that crack pipes were not provided to drug addicts in taxpayer-funded kits.

A press release this week by Moody stated that Florida plans to investigate the controversy after Biden’s Department of Justice and Department of Health and Human Services ignored a February 2022 FOIA request.

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IRS to Prioritize Enforcement Including Criminal Investigation for Certain Assets

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said it would increase enforcement in the area of digital asset transactions and listed transactions.

The federal agency identified certain transactions to have high-risk issues in noncompliance and vowed to ramp up enforcement in those transactions.

“The IRS tracks many known, high-risk issues in noncompliance, such as digital asset transactions, listed transactions and certain international issues. These issues arise in multiple taxpayer segments, and data analysis shows a higher potential for noncompliance,” the tax agency wrote in its newly-released funding plan (pdf).

“We will prioritize resources to increase enforcement activities, including criminal investigation as appropriate,” the agency added.

According to the plan, the IRS will develop the information platform to support digital asset reporting and analytics tools to increase digital asset compliance in the fiscal year 2024, which is between April 1, 2023, and March 31, 2024.

Digital assets include convertible virtual currency, cryptocurrency, stablecoins, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and other digital representations of value, according to the IRS website.

The IRS treats digital assets as property and requires taxpayers to report taxable gains or losses from digital asset transactions.

As it’s difficult to identify the owners of digital assets, U.S. judges allow the IRS to use “John Doe summons” to seek the identities of taxpayers of interest.

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NYPD officers brag about milking overtime, call detainees names in accidental recording

Jonathan Wohl’s arrest last September was about as routine as they come.

The 35-year-old construction worker was staging a one-man protest against his union, recording himself on his phone as he stood in the lobby of the Midtown offices of Laborers Local 79. When security asked him to leave, he refused and the building called the cops.

In a strange twist of technological fate, Wohl’s phone, which was at that point in the possession of the police, kept on recording.

For nearly eight hours, as Wohl paced around a holding cell in the Midtown South precinct, his phone picked up conversations among dozens of cops who did not appear to know they were being recorded.

The tape, which was reviewed by Gothamist, offers a rare window into the daily work of a police officer behind closed doors – and the ways that a number of recent criminal justice reforms have changed the way officers process arrests and collect overtime.

In contrast to comments from top NYPD officials, who have spent years lobbying against bail reform, rank-and-file officers offered another perspective, suggesting the additional paperwork required by the new law had been a boon to their paychecks.

“Bail reform sucks. But it’s also one of the best things that’s ever happened, too,” Wohl’s arresting officer, Shaun Enright, said to a coworker in the recording. “God is great, bro.”

The NYPD declined to make Enright available for comment on this story and declined to comment as an agency. The Police Benevolent Association, the union representing rank-and-file police officers, did not respond to a request for comment.

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‘Self-serving’ North Dakota GOP boosts own meal allowance after axing free school lunch bill

Republicans in North Dakota are facing criticism this week after they voted to boost their own budgets for meal reimbursements, even as they blocked an expansion of a free lunch program for low-income school students.

The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead reports that the Republican-dominated North Dakota Senate voted to ratify the boost to meal reimbursements for lawmakers and state workers just 10 days after the same institution narrowly blocked a bill that would have expanded the state’s free lunch program.

According to the Forum, the legislation had previously passed through North Dakota’s House of Representatives and would have “dedicated $6 million over the next two school years to cover lunch costs for K-12 students with family incomes below double the federal poverty level,” meaning that “children from families of four making less than $60,000 a year would have qualified.”

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Biden’s IRS Overhaul Aims for Tenfold Increase in Audits

The IRS released its plan on Thursday for spending the $80 billion in new funding provided by the Democratic Inflation Reduction Act, emphasizing that it won’t be used to drive up audits on the middle class.

The 150-page Internal Revenue Service plan was released with the blessing of new Commissioner Danny Werfel. The report seeks to respond to Republican accusations that the agency will become supercharged and use its power to target non-rich families. It also highlighted the agency’s plans to streamline customer service and help people properly file their taxes and avoid the auditing process.

The IRS plans to bolster its workforce quickly. The agency indicated that it intends to hire more than 7,000 new employees by the end of next year working in just enforcement alone, in addition to about 6,500 new workers in taxpayer services. The Treasury Department has previously projected that such a large infusion of capital could lead to 87,000 new IRS employees over the next decade, although the new plan doesn’t project out that far.

Republicans argue that 87,000 more IRS workers is far too high a number, although Democrats have countered the GOP by noting that the tens of thousands of new employees will not all be auditors and will include thousands of workers in other roles. A large number of current IRS workers are also expected to retire in the coming years, partially offsetting the number of those being hired.

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DRONES AND MOTOS

THE LOOK ON Miriam’s face was abject fear. Her pink, white, and green veil had mostly slipped from her head, and her dark eyes grew wide as she stared down at her lavender smartphone. In a flash, she pulled it to her ear. “Allo!” she said, her pitch rising as her other hand nervously cradled her chin.

In the courtyard of her family’s tree-lined compound in a well-to-do neighborhood in Niger’s capital, members of Miriam’s ethnic group had been describing jihadist attacks on their historic community in a rural region to the north. Now, the six or seven men wearing tagelmusts — a combination of turban and scarf worn by Tuareg men to provide protection from sun and dust — were also glued to their phones as chimes announced incoming texts and calls. Voices on the phones sounded panicked. There were gunshots, and a familiar roar rumbled through the desert scrubland 100 miles away. At any moment, relatives warned, they expected an attack by the “motorcycle guys.”

Over the last decade, Niger and its neighbors in the West African Sahel have been plagued by terrorist groups that have taken the notion of the outlaw motorcycle gang to its most lethal apogee. Under the black banners of jihadist militancy, men on “motos” — two to a bike, their faces obscured by sunglasses and turbans, armed with Kalashnikovs — have terrorized villages across the borderlands where Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger meet. These militants, some affiliated with Al Qaeda or the Islamic State group, impose zakat, an Islamic tax; steal animals; and terrorize, assault, and kill civilians.

Jihadist motorcyclists, Miriam reminded me, had thundered into the village of Bakorat on March 21, 2021. As described afterward by one of the survivors, the motos “swept into the village like a sandstorm, killing every man they saw. They shot one of my uncles in front of me. His 20-year-old son ran to save him, but he perished as well. We found them, slumped over each other.” Attacking in overwhelming numbers and with military precision, the jihadists executed men and boys while looting and burning homes. “They attacked the well like it was a military objective, opening fire on the dozens of men there. As they killed, I heard the attackers saying, ‘This is your time … for working with the state,’” another survivor told Human Rights Watch. “I collapsed, seeing the carnage … my father, my brothers, my cousins, my friends lying there, dead and dying.” Human Rights Watch said more than 170 people were massacred near Bakorat and Intazayene villages and nearby nomad camps that day. Miriam and her relatives put the number at 245.

As we sat in the courtyard, it all seemed to be happening again.

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Biden Administration Announces Additional Security Assistance for Ukraine

Today, the Department of Defense (DoD) announces critical new security assistance for Ukraine. This includes the authorization of a Presidential Drawdown of security assistance with more ammunition for U.S.-provided HIMARS, air defense interceptors, and artillery rounds that Ukraine is using to defend itself, as well as anti-armor systems, small arms, heavy equipment transport vehicles, and maintenance support essential to strengthening Ukraine’s defenders on the battlefield valued at up to $500 million. 

In addition, we are announcing a significant package of air defense capabilities, as well as artillery and tank ammunition, mortar systems, rockets, and anti-armor systems using $2.1 billion in Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) funds.

The Presidential Drawdown is the thirty-fifth such drawdown of equipment from DoD inventories for Ukraine that the Biden Administration has authorized since August 2021. 

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Family Granted $26 Million After Body Cam Showed Cop Execute Innocent Unarmed Child

On a Saturday night in a North Texas town in 2017, 15-year-old Jordan Edwards was murdered by a Balch Springs police officer. Jordan was a passenger in a car that had merely driven away from a party. Immediately after police killed him, the chief parrotted his officer’s false claim of fearing for his life as the vehicle drove “aggressively toward him.”

After watching the body-camera footage, however, the chief realized he’d spread a lie. So, he did the right thing and told the public the truth — the car was not a threat and was driving away.

Police Chief Jonathan Haber admitted that the car full of innocent teenagers was driving away from the officer when he raised his AR-15 and shot Jordan Edwards in the head.

“It did not meet our core values,” Haber said of the officer’s actions.

Based on the extensive reporting the Free Thought Project has done on officers shooting into vehicles, we predicted the original story would probably not be backed up by the body-camera footage, and we were correct.

The shooting was so egregious that Oliver was found guilty of murder in 2018 and was sentenced to 15 years in state prison.

Now, six years after Balch Springs Police officer Roy Oliver raised his AR-15 and dumped multiple rounds into a car full of innocent children — executing one of them — Jordan’s family has the rest of their closure. The family’s federal civil rights trial began last week and concluded on Monday with a $26.1 million settlement: $8.5 million to Edwards’ father, Odell, for damages; $2.1 million in estate for damages such as mental anguish and funeral expenses; and $11 million in punitive damages.

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The cost to rename 9 Confederacy-honoring Army bases has doubled

The cost of renaming the nine Army bases that honored the Confederacy has nearly doubled, an Army official told lawmakers Thursday.

The Army expects to pay $39 million, said Lt. Gen. Kevin Vereen, Army deputy chief of staff for installations. In 2022, the congressionally-mandated Naming Commission estimated it would cost $21 million to rename the nine Army installations.

The Defense Department initially gave the Army $1 million to change the names, but “that’s not anywhere close to what we need,” Vereen told members of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies.

The renaming involves replacing names not only at the installation gates, but on facilities, streets, numerous smaller signs, and technology, he said.

Service officials have until the end of the year to remove the names, symbols, displays, monuments, and paraphernalia that honor or commemorate the Confederacy or any person who served voluntarily with the Confederacy.

Garrisons won’t have to foot the bill, Vereen said, nor will they have to pay the costs upfront and then request reimbursement.

“The Army is trying to solve the funding piece, and we’re trying to solve it internally,” he said. “We’ll take the funds from the department.”

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