George Carlin on class…
Tag: taxes
Pentagon Officials Say US Ready to Fight War with China While Supporting Ukraine and Israel
Defense Department officials said US military assets in East Asia are sufficient to confront China as the Pentagon supplies the Israeli and Ukrainian armies with weapons. One official described 2023 as a “banner year” for Washington increasing its military presence in the region surrounding China.
On Tuesday, the Pentagon held a press conference to discuss 180 “unsafe…unprofessional… corrosive and risky” encounters between Chinese and American aircraft over the past two years. However, reporters asked the officials, Commander of Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) Admiral John C. Aquilino and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Dr. Ely Ratner, about the Pentagon’s ability to deter China as it arms Israel and Ukraine.
Aquilino said that INDOPACOM has not seen any reduction in military assets available in the region, and the US was ready to win a war with China. “What I’ll tell you is I haven’t had one piece of equipment or force structure depart. The US is a global power, and that means we can deliver effects and execute our deterrence responsibilities across the globe, but I don’t think any other nation can do that at this time, but the US can,” he explained. “INDOPACOM prepares every day to ensure we execute both of the missions the Secretary gave me. Number one, to prevent conflict in the Indo-Pacific; and number two, if mission one fails, be prepared to fight and win.”
NYPD COPS SUED FOR MISCONDUCT COST CITY MILLIONS IN SETTLEMENTS — THEN GET PROMOTIONS
NEW YORK CITY is on track to fork over more than $100 million this year in payouts for lawsuits alleging police misconduct against members of the New York City Police Department. Twenty of the officers stand out over the last decade for being named in the most suits or being named in suits with the highest payouts. Of the 20, the department has promoted at least 16 of the officers, some more than once.
“They’re kind of failing upwards when they’re not only staying in the department but they’re also being promoted,” said Jennvine Wong, staff attorney with the Cop Accountability Project at the Legal Aid Society, a public defense organization in New York City. Last month, Legal Aid released an analysis of data on settlements in cases alleging police misconduct.
Earmarks Are Back: House Republicans “Opened The Bar” For The Spendaholics
Democrats take every opportunity to spend your tax dollars. The GOP was supposed to know better…
Unfortunately, the first thing the GOP did after they took control of the U.S. House – before the new Congress was even sworn in – they held a secret vote on earmarks. Last December, 158 GOP members of Congress voted to include earmarks in the year-end omnibus spending bill.
House Republicans “opened the bar” for the spendaholics.
Those 158 secret-voting members caused $16,012,272,565 of your tax dollars to be spent on 7,509 earmarks.
Not only did those 158 members adopt earmarks, the Republicans spent more of your tax dollars than their Democratic earmarking colleagues.
In the fiscal year 2024 spending bills being debated this fall, the top 63 earmarkers in the U.S. House are Republicans. Eight of the top ten earmarkers in the U.S. Senate are Republicans.
The U.S. House has a bartender at the spendaholics earmark bar – Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas). She chairs the Appropriations Committee that approves every one of those earmarks. When she was elected to Congress in 1997, the federal debt was $5.4 trillion.
California Adds New Excise Tax on Gun and Ammo Sales
Retail sales of guns and ammunition will soon be subject to a new state excise tax in California. Under Assembly Bill 28, which Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law on September 26, 2023, an 11% tax will apply to gross receipts from retail sales of ammunition, firearms, and firearm precursor parts starting July 1, 2024. Revenue generated by the tax will be deposited in a new Gun Violence Prevention and School Safety Fund.
California’s new gun tax is similar to the federal firearms and ammunition excise tax (FAET), which was first implemented in 1919 and is administered by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB). The FAET is 10% of the manufacturer’s price for pistols and revolvers, and 11% of the manufacturer’s price of other portable weapons, shells, and cartridges. It applies to firearms and ammunition for domestic use barring certain exemptions, for example, businesses producing fewer than 50 guns per year are exempt from the FAET.
The COVID Bailout of State and Local Governments Was Unnecessary
Two years after Congress authorized a hugely expensive bailout of state and local governments as part of a COVID-era emergency spending bill, most of the money still hadn’t been spent.
Perhaps the bailout wasn’t even needed in the first place?
In a new report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that states (including Washington, D.C.) had spent just 45 percent of the funding they had received through the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds program, a $350 billion line item within the $2 trillion American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which passed in March 2021. Local governments had reported spending just 38 percent of their funds received through the same program.
Those figures are based on mandatory reports filed quarterly with the Treasury and reflect spending through the end of March 2023, two years after the bailout was approved by Congress.
“The new GAO study confirms that the ARPA spending was not needed,” Chris Edwards, chair of fiscal studies at the Cato Institute, tells Reason. “By the fall of 2020, it was clear that the states were in good fiscal shape and not facing Armageddon as many policymakers were claiming. They did not need federal handouts.”
New Interactive Federal Map Shows How States Rely On Marijuana Tax Revenue To Fund Public Services
A new map published by the U.S. Census Bureau details the proportion of state revenue made up by marijuana tax money, and in some cases, the figures are eye-popping.
In Oregon, for example, roughly $1 in every $20 the state made during some recent time periods came from legal cannabis transactions. According to the federal data, marijuana taxes comprised 4.67 percent of Oregon’s total revenue in the first quarter of fiscal year 2023, 4.7 percent in the first quarter of 2022 and 5.21 percent in the third quarter of 2021.
While Oregon by far relied heaviest on marijuana tax dollars, other states—including Michigan, Illinois, Alaska and Colorado—consistently saw marijuana revenue make up at least 1 percent of state income over the past two years.
Lobbyists Call For Increased Digital ID Funding
Washington-based Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) has called for more money to be set aside for digital public infrastructure (DPI) including one of its elements, digital ID – and this means not only the funds earmarked for the technology portion of it.
Currently, DPI projects can count on $400 million by the end of the decade – that is the figure “stakeholders” have already committed to “the cause.”
Essentially, DIAL is advocating for money to be steadily spent on promotion of its mission via seemingly “trustworthy” messengers such as civil societies, academics, etc. Apparently, this would also allow their participation in governance, as well as the design and deployment of various DPIs.
Among those sitting on DIAL’s board are the director of USAI, an organization known for its involvement in setting up the digital ID in Ukraine, as well as the president and CEO of the UN Foundation, and a Gates Foundation senior adviser.
In what reports say is an expert comment, originally published in late September, DIAL wants this financing to be “sustainable,” and claims that not just businesses and economies, but also individuals, would reap the benefits.
Other than places like Ukraine, DIAL is “probing” and basing its comments drawn from a report compiled in Sierra Leone in Africa, and others, while those “interviewed” are 25 groups and entities.
Among them are government representatives of said countries, but also the Gates Foundation, UN’s UNDP agency, the World Bank, and the Africa Digital Rights Hub.
DIAL wants to see money spent on coordination between ministries, while “communities need to be engaged early on, particularly those that are more likely to be excluded,” say reports.
Biden Considering Huge $100 Billion Ukraine Spending Package: Telegraph
President Biden is considering asking Congress for a massive $100 billion spending package for the Ukraine war, The Telegraph reported on Saturday.
The idea of the huge spending package would be to fund the proxy war through the 2024 election without having to worry about the growing opposition to the policy in Congress, as the majority of the House and the Senate currently still support arming Ukraine.
“The ‘big package’ idea is firmly supported by many throughout the administration,” a source familiar with discussions on the matter told The Telegraph. “
Supporters of Ukraine want this to be a one-and-done big bill, and then not have to deal with it until after the next election.”
Defense News recently reported that multiple senators have also proposed passing a massive Ukraine aid package to get through a whole year. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) put the price tag at $70 billion.
An unnamed Biden administration official told The Telegraph that the White House is “not making any decisions about whether to do one big package or about how much it would be” until after a new House speaker is elected to replace Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), which is expected to happen on Wednesday.
U.S. Weapons from Afghanistan Ended up with Palestinian Groups Operating in the Gaza Strip
A claim in a news report that American weapons seized in Afghanistan have ended up in the hands of Palestinian groups operating in the Gaza Strip has taken on renewed significance after Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist group, launched an attack on Israel on Saturday.
According to a Newsweek report published in June, an Israeli commander said some of the US. small arms seized in Afghanistan have already been observed in the hands of Palestinian groups operating in the Gaza Strip.
The report began recirculating on social media, amid accusations that the Biden administration funded Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel by releasing $6 billion in frozen funds to Iran, the main backer of Hamas.
Hellbound and Down 
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