Tag: taxes

Biden Commits Another $400 Million Of Your Taxpayer Dollars To Ukraine

The Biden administration has announced another $400 million in military aid to Ukraine, making the total financial assistance more than $63 billion.

This aid package is the 15th presidential drawdown since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February. 

The latest package includes four more Lockheed Martin-created High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, ammunition for them, three tactical vehicles, a thousand rounds of 155 mm artillery ammunition, demolition munitions, counter-battery systems, and spare parts.

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Fueling the Warfare State. America’s $1.4 Trillion “National Security” Budget Makes Us Ever Less Safe

This March, when the Biden administration presented a staggering $813 billion proposal for “national defense,” it was hard to imagine a budget that could go significantly higher or be more generous to the denizens of the military-industrial complex. After all, that request represented far more than peak spending in the Korean or Vietnam War years, and well over $100 billion more than at the height of the Cold War. 

It was, in fact, an astonishing figure by any measure — more than two-and-a-half times what China spends; more, in fact, than (and hold your hats for this one!) the national security budgets of the next nine countries, including China and Russia, combined. And yet the weapons industry and hawks in Congress are now demanding that even more be spent.

In recent National Defense Authorization Act proposals, which always set a marker for what Congress is willing to fork over to the Pentagon, the Senate and House Armed Services Committees both voted to increase the 2023 budget yet again — by $45 billion in the case of the Senate and $37 billion for the House. The final figure won’t be determined until later this year, but Congress is likely to add tens of billions of dollars more than even the Biden administration wanted to what will most likely be a record for the Pentagon’s already bloated budget.

This lust for yet more weapons spending is especially misguided at a time when a never-ending pandemic, growing heat waves and other depredations of climate change, and racial and economic injustice are devastating the lives of millions of Americans.  Make no mistake about it: the greatest risks to our safety and our future are non-military in nature, with the exception, of course, of the threat of nuclear war, which could increase if the current budget goes through as planned.

But as TomDispatch readers know, the Pentagon is just one element in an ever more costly American national security state.  Adding other military, intelligence, and internal-security expenditures to the Pentagon’s budget brings the total upcoming “national security” budget to a mind-boggling $1.4 trillion. And note that, in June 2021, the last time my colleague Mandy Smithberger and I added up such costs to the taxpayer, that figure was almost $1.3 trillion, so the trend is obvious.

To understand how these vast sums are spent year after year, let’s take a quick tour of America’s national security budget, top to bottom.

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A Biden Tax Hike Kicked In That Affects Everything From Soap To Lightbulbs

An excise tax hike on household items that was buried in President Joe Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure package last year went into effect on July 1, according to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

A roughly $13 billion tax increase on 42 chemicals, metallic elements and critical minerals was included in Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Common household items like rubber, soap, concrete, plastics, lightbulbs and electronics will be impacted. 

Superfund chemical excise taxes were previously in place between 1987 and 1995, according to the IRS. The infrastructure package, which the White House called “a once-in-a-generation investment,” triggered the re-implementation of the taxes.

Funds from the reinstated excise tax will be partially directed to the Superfund Trust Fund, which is administered through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and responsible for “cleaning up some of the nation’s most contaminated land and responding to environmental emergencies, oil spills and natural disasters.”

The tax impacts Americans who import, produce or manufacture qualified chemicals, Bloomberg Law reported. Importers, producers and manufacturers will pay between $0.48 and $9.47 per ton in tax on chemicals, the outlet reported.

Republicans have been critical of the Biden administration for imposing the taxes amid soaring inflation and supply chain crises. Inflation reached 8.6% in May from a year prior, which is the fastest increase in 40 years.

NPR Reminds Us Why It Needs to be Defunded With Its Latest Tweets

Before I begin this article, I want to give you a fun little fact about the National Public Radio (NPR) gets its funding.

According to The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which helps fund, they recently received a $50 million increase in funding support from the federal government, totaling out at $525 million, thanks to the House and Senate passing the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2022.

Got it? Good.

The assassination of Shinzo Abe was shocking news, not just to the people of Japan, but to the entire world. He was the longest-serving Prime Minister in Japanese history and a great ally in the fight against the communist regimes of North Korea and China. World leaders began issuing statements remembering the man fondly and expressing their sadness that such a man was slain.

However, there were two entities that made statements that disgusted many. One was from President Joe Biden who decided to turn Abe’s death into a chance at pushing anti-gun narratives.

The other was from NPR, which first posted a tweet calling Abe a “divisive arch-conservative” but soon deleted it.

But NPR didn’t delete it because they felt shame over their hyper-partisan tweet about a slain man. They just needed to reword it so that Abe came off even worse by using buzzwords that they typically associate with white supremacists, “ultranationalist.” Now he’s not just a political figure that opposed the left in his country, but now he’s a crazed xenophobe.

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Former NIH Chief Is Now Highest Paid Member Of Most Expensive White House Staff Ever

When Francis Collins departed as Director of the National Institutes for Health (NIH) in December 2021, his legacy included multiple-millions of dollars in secret royalty payments to himself, prominent colleagues like Dr. Anthony Fauci, and hundreds of other scientists, officials, and researchers working under him.

Today, Collins is the highest paid adviser to the president with the most expensive White House staff ever, according to data compiled by the Chicago-based non-profit government watchdog, Open The Books (OTB).

Collins is paid $300,000 annually as the Acting Science Adviser to President Joe Biden. The new salary represents a 47 percent increase over the $203,500 annual compensation Collins made as NIH Director for 12 years. All salary figures were obtained by OTB under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

Earlier this year, The Epoch Times first reported that OTB uncovered more than 1,600 NIH officials, scientists, and researchers who received an estimated $350 million in secret royalty payments from sources outside the government that the agency refuses to identify.

The payments were made between 2010 and 2020, including all but a couple of years of Collins’ tenure.

“We also find that during this period, leadership at NIH was involved in receiving third-party payments. For instance, Francis Collins, the immediate past director of NIH, received 14 payments. Dr. Anthony Fauci received 23 payments, and his deputy, Clifford Lane, received eight payments,” OTB President Adam Andrzejewski told The Epoch Times.

Collins’ successor as NIH Director, Dr. Lawrence Tabak, admitted to Congress in May that the secret royalty payments have “the appearance of a conflict of interest,” but he claimed the agency has sufficient internal safeguards to prevent abuse.

Federal personnel law and regulations bar government employees from having either actual conflicts of interest or the appearance of conflicts in their decision-making as public servants.

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AOC Hit With Fines and Warrants for Dodging Taxes

Democratic New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 14th C.D., often talks the talk about taxing the rich but she seems unwilling to walk the walk personally.

According to a 2019 financial disclosure report Ocasio-Cortez filed with the House of Representatives, she declared herself founder of Brook Avenue Press. Her Bronx, N.Y., company, designed to publish books about NYC children, fell behind in paying NYS corporation tax.

The state’s Taxation and Finance Department dissolved her company, issuing a Proclamation of Dissolution on October 26, 2016. Involuntary dissolution is invoked by tax authorities on corporations that fail to pay taxes for two consecutive years. NYS tax authorities explain that involuntarily dissolved companies are still required to file returns and pay taxes owed until they comply with state tax law.

Brook Avenue Press was slapped with a $1,618 tax warrant by the state tax department on July 6, 2017. That was approximately two months after the former bartender announced her candidacy to oppose then-incumbent Joe Crowley, according to the New York Post report. The 14th congressional district represents constituents in parts of two city boroughs: Queens and The Bronx.

The unpaid tax obligation of the New York congresswoman has swollen to $2,471.68 from interest and fees applied by the state. An email request to the representative requesting comment was not immediately returned.

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This State Lost HALF Its Pandemic “Stimulus” Benefits to Fraud and Scammers

The federal government’s multi-trillion-dollar “stimulus” efforts during the pandemic may go down as the biggest legislative failure in modern American history. Congress spent an astounding $42,000 per federal taxpayer (do you know anyone who received anywhere near that much in benefits?) and only successfully “stimulated” inflation. What’s more, evidence continues to mount that the biggest beneficiaries of this binge were criminals and fraudsters.

A new analysis from the American Enterprise Institute’s Matt Weingarten reports that the state of Illinois lost half of the money it sent out in expanded pandemic unemployment benefits to scammers.

Illinois’s inspector general reports that the level of fraud it experienced was “unprecedented” and amounted to more than $1.8 billion lost.

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Trouble brews: Audit finds ex-mayor Bill de Blasio cooked books to hide $224M between 2015-2021

Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration has been accused by the city’s comptroller of using gimmicky accounting tricks to “hide” nearly $250 million in costs for a heavily subsidized ferry system that had reportedly been used primarily by the wealthy.

“We rely on the city to be honest in how much things cost so that we can make clear, shared decisions about where the money is going. When hide-the-ball is played with any amount — certainly with a quarter of a billion dollars — you can’t have confidence that your city is providing the truth,” comptroller Brad Lander said at a press conference Wednesday.

His remarks came after his release of a devastating 50-page audit that outlined issue after issue after issue with the city’s ferry service.

The audit found that the Economic Development Corporation, the agency that runs the ferry network, “did not disclose over $224 million in expenditures as ferry-related in its audited financial statements.”

For instance, the EDC “understated the City’s subsidy for the ferry operations by $2.08, $2.10, $3.98 and $4.29 for Fiscal Years 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021, respectively.”

In 2020, the city spent $14.57 per every ride, yet reported only spending $10.59. Meanwhile, the mostly wealthy “residents, commuters, tourists, and leisure riders” who used the ferry service paid only $2.75 per ticket.

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FAA to give airports $1 billion for terminals and upgrades

The Biden administration is giving nearly $1 billion to 85 airports to expand and upgrade terminals and other facilities, using money approved in last year’s huge infrastructure bill.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the projects will help meet future demand for travel and make flying safer and more efficient.

“I don’t think anybody could look at airports across America today and say that the existing system and existing levels of funding have been adequate,” Buttigieg told reporters.

The grants announced Thursday are the first installment of $5 billion for airport projects that were included in an infrastructure bill that Congress approved and President Joe Biden signed last November.

The largest of the Federal Aviation Administration grants include $60 million to improve the terminal and replace the bag-handling system at Denver International Airport, $50 million apiece for Boston’s Logan Airport and Orlando International Airport in Florida, $49.6 million for Dulles Airport outside Washington, D.C., to build a new concourse and $20 million for Pittsburgh International Airport to build a new terminal next to the old one.

The main airports in Detroit and Philadelphia will get more than $20 million each to renovate their restrooms.

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