Tag: taxes

IRS Stole Money and Hid the Details for Years

The Internal Revenue Service demands transparency when its agents conduct audits. They open ledgers, snoop through bank accounts, and review receipts. But its appetite for disclosure disappears when the roles reverse.

The IRS stonewalled for more than six years when our public interest law firm, the Institute for Justice, sought access to the agency’s forfeiture database. Initially, the IRS wanted $750,000 in fees before it would accommodate the request—an unreasonable demand that would render the Freedom of Information Act useless for all but the wealthiest citizens.

Once in court, the IRS attempted a bait and switch. Rather than provide the actual data, it released a summary report that was 99 percent redacted. It then declared that it had gone above and beyond the legal requirements. The ruse worked at the district court level, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled against the agency in 2019. After a second trip to the district court, the IRS finally coughed up the full database in April 2022.

For anyone without a law degree or the resources to endure a long legal battle, the message from the IRS is clear: Do not try this at home. Accountability is good for the taxpayer, but not for the tax collector.

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Biden Already Willing to Increase His $813 Billion Military Budget Request

Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said Friday that the Biden administration is ready to increase the president’s massive $813 billion military budget request for 2023 to keep up with inflation.

Biden’s request is more than $30 billion than what Congress authorized for 2022, representing a 4% increase. But with inflation reaching 8.5% in March, Congress wants to spend more.

Hicks said the administration is willing to work with Congress to create a budget that matches current inflation numbers. “Where inflation will be in September, let alone this time next year, we don’t know, but we want to work with Congress on the ‘23 budget to make sure we have the purchasing power for this program,” she said.

Hicks said if inflation soars higher than expected, the administration could always ask Congress for supplemental funds on top of the military budget.

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Oregon forces all schools — elementary and up — to put ‘menstrual products’ in boys’ bathrooms with ‘instructions on how to use’ them

Every public school in Oregon — including elementary institutions — will soon be required to provide tampons and other feminine products in boys’ bathrooms with “instructions on how to use” them.

The controversial requirement is in accordance with the state’s new Menstrual Dignity Act, signed into law by Democratic Gov. Kate Brown last year, which mandates that menstrual products be made available in “every student bathroom.”

Following the bill’s passage, the Oregon Department of Education developed and distributed a “Medical Dignity for Students” toolkit to aid local districts and set forth a phased plan for districts to meet the law’s standards and requirements.

Effective immediately, each school is required to have menstrual product dispensers in at least two bathrooms. But by June 2023, dispensers are required in every student bathroom, KGW-TV reported. The department emphasized that schools must “consider all-gender access to the products.”

Sasha Grenier, a sexual health specialist with the department, said, “This new program will help students participate actively in classes and school activities by alleviating some of the economic strain and experiences of shame that are often barriers for menstruating people accessing their education.”

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‘Misinformation Fingerprints:’ The Pentagon Awarded ‘Fact-Checking’ Org NewsGuard a $750K Contract Last Year

In yet more evidence of the federal government/Deep State’s vested interest in advancing internet censorship (or, as they call it, tackling “misinformation”), the Department of Defense awarded NewsGuard Technologies a $750,000 contract in September of 2021 for the organization’s “misinformation fingerprints” project.

NewsGuard, which has been the subject of extensive Breitbart News reporting, is an establishment-backed project that aims to “rate” news outlets, policing the internet by telling users which news sources can be trusted and which ones cannot.

According to USASpending.gov, the contract was awarded for NewsGuard’s “misinformation fingerprints” project, which it describes as a “a catalogue of known hoaxes, falsehoods and misinformation narratives that are spreading online.”

It is unclear if hoaxes embraced by the establishment, such as the notion that material found on Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation,” are in NewsGuard’s “misinformation fingerprints” database.

NewsGuard’s own co-founder, Steve Brill, spread that false claim, as did advisory board member and notorious political partisan Michael Hayden.

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US Local Governments Helped Chinese Firms With $1.7 Billion in Subsidies: Watchdog

U.S. state and local governments have provided about $1.7 billion in subsidies to Chinese companies since 2010, a trend that must be reversed, said Robert Atkinson, president of Washington-based think tank Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

“The official U.S. policy is to try to slow down China because they’re playing unfairly, if you will. So here we are trying to slow down China but at the same time, state and local governments are providing subsidies to speed up China,” Atkinson said in a recent interview with NTD.

China is known for engaging in a number of unfair trade practices, such as dumping cheap products in foreign markets, providing excessive government subsidies to Chinese companies helping them to gain market share, and stealing intellectual property (IP) and technologies. The Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property estimated in 2017 that the U.S. economy suffers an annual loss of between $225 to $600 billion from China’s IP theft each year.

The subsidy amount is tabulated by Washington-based watchdog Good Jobs First, a nonprofit that promotes corporate and government accountability. It found that China-based companies received over $1.8 billion in subsidies from U.S. government bodies from 1991 to 2020. The majority of the aid, about $1.7 billion, started flowing out of the United States in 2010.

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Biden asking Congress for $33 billion in emergency aid for Ukraine against Russian invasion

President Biden will ask Congress on Thursday for $33 billion in new funding to support Ukraine as it fights off a renewed Russian assault, while simultaneously pushing a plan to make it easier to seize and sell the assets of Russian oligarchs.

A senior administration official said the funds will ensure Ukraine has the weapons it needs to fight its Russian attackers as well as replenish the U.S.’s own stockpile of weapons that have been rushed to Kyiv.

The amount, which is a combination of U.S. military, economic and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, is expected to last through September, which is the end of the government’s fiscal year.

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Biden spends over $150 million to hire cops

President Joe Biden’s Justice Department plans on providing $156.5 million in grants to hire police officers as part of a $320 million package, despite the fact many members of his own party have called to defund the police.

The recruitment grant will go to the COPS Hiring Program, described by the DOJ as “a competitive award program intended to reduce crime and advance public safety through community policing by providing direct funding for the hiring of career law enforcement officers.”

Law enforcement agencies across the United States are encouraged to apply.

The Biden administration expects the funding to help with the “implementation of projects that focus on prioritized crime issues impacting communities [and the] implementation of changes to personnel and agency management in support of community policing,” among other things. 

The remainder of the funding will go toward school safety programs and combating illegal drug distribution.

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Democrat tax scofflaw tells billionaires: ‘Pay your taxes’

A Wisconsin Democrat who ostentatiously told billionaires this week to “Pay your taxes” turns out to be a tax scofflaw, according to a report from the Washington Free Beacon.

The report identified the Democratic Senate candidate who lectured the ultrawealthy on social media this week and who has “a history of tax delinquency” as Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes.

He reportedly is a frontrunner in the primary for the Democratic Senate nomination, the report said.

But he “failed to pay his property taxes or file tax returns while running for office in 2018,” the report said. And then he “defended himself at the time by claiming that ‘most people’ don’t fully pay their taxes.”

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