Tag: taxes

IRS gave $64 million in stimulus checks to dead people

The Internal Revenue Service sent $64 million in erroneous payments to as part of the American Rescue Plan due to a computer error of which the agency was aware but did not fix, according to an inspector general report.

Nearly 45,000 payments totaling $64 million were sent to people for their deceased dependents, who died before Jan. 1, 2021, making them ineligible for Biden’s stimulus payments of up to $1,400.

“We alerted the IRS to this programming error in April 2021. IRS management agreed that these payments were issued erroneously. However, IRS management did not provide their corrective action to address future erroneous payments,” the treasury inspector general stated in a report released last week.

The IRS went on to issue more than 400 additional incorrect payments for those with a deceased dependent after being alerted to the issue, the watchdog said.

In total, more than $100 million was incorrectly issued due to computer programming errors up to September 2021, the inspector general stated.

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Chicago Mayor Lightfoot Has 71-Person Police Unit To Protect Her, Blames Trump For Being In Danger

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a Democrat who proposed cutting a huge $80 million from the Chicago Police Department budget in 2020, has a personal police unit consisting of a whopping 71 officers to protect her, and blamed some of her personal need for protection on former President Trump, telling the Chicago Sun-Times, “When the president of the United States uses the world’s largest megaphone and platform to target you personally, terrible things happen. And he not only blew a dog whistle, he pointed really evil and dangerous people right at my doorstep.”

The special unit, named Unit 544, now is comprised of 65 officers, five sergeants and a lieutenant, but that’s not all; “Lightfoot also has a separate personal bodyguard detail, which includes about 20 officers, the records show,” The Sun-Times noted.

On July 7, 2020, the police department issued a memo to officers who had served for at least five years; it stated:

The unit’s mission will be to provide physical security for City Hall, the mayor’s residence and the mayor’s detail command post. … Through the coordination of intelligence and resources, officers will respond to all threats related to the mayor’s physical properties to ensure its protection.

“Around the same time the unit was being formed in the summer of 2020, residents of Humboldt Park and Logan Square were complaining that the Shakespeare district, which covers their neighborhoods, was getting stretched thin because so many patrol officers there were being assigned to keep protesters from gathering outside Lightfoot’s house in Logan Square,” The Sun-Times added.

John Catanzara, president of Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police, commented, “While murders are soaring, while districts are barebones for manpower, all that matters is protecting her castle.”

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‘War is a Racket’: Biden Using Ukraine Crisis to Ram Through Record-Breaking Military Budget

Rebuffing progressive lawmakers’ calls for Pentagon spending cuts, President Joe Biden on Monday is set to unveil a budget blueprint for the next fiscal year that includes a record $813.3 billion in funds for the U.S. military apparatus, a $31 billion increase from the current level.

“We’re being robbed of resources to feed the endless hunger of the military-industrial complex.”

The president’s Fiscal Year 2023 budget request, which must be approved by Congress, is expected to contain $773 billion for the Pentagon alone as well as billions in funding for the Energy Department’s maintenance of the country’s nuclear arsenal.

The New York Times reported Monday that Biden’s funding request for the Pentagon—the only federal agency that has not passed an independent audit—will “include $4.1 billion to conduct research and develop defense capabilities, nearly $5 billion for a space-based missile warning system to detect global threats, and nearly $2 billion for a missile defense interceptor.”

According to Bloomberg, the White House is urging Congress to approve $145.9 billion for procurement, funding that will allow the military to purchase “61 F-35 jet fighters from Lockheed Martin Corp., fewer than previously planned, as well as… the B-21 bomber from Northrop Grumman Corp. and two Virginia-class submarines from General Dynamics Corp. and Huntington Ingalls Industries Corp.”

The president’s latest budget proposal will land on Capitol Hill amid Russia’s deadly invasion of Ukraine, which has thus far proven to be a major boon for the U.S. weapons industry as the Biden administration pours arms into the besieged country.

“The hawks in Washington want to jack up the military budget and use Ukraine as an excuse,” William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, argued in a recent interview on Democracy Now!, noting that Biden’s new military budget request amounts to $100 billion more than was spent at the height of the Cold War.

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White House Announces New Minimum Tax on Billionaires

President Joe Biden will announce a new minimum tax targeting billionaires as part of his 2023 fiscal year budget on Monday, according to the White House.

The Biden administration announced the proposal on Saturday in a fact sheet ahead of the budget release, stating that the president’s plan “rewards work, not wealth.”

“President Biden’s Billionaire Minimum Income Tax will make America’s tax code fairer and reduce the deficit by about $360 billion in just the next decade,” the fact sheet stated.

As part of his 2023 budget, Biden is asking Congress to pass legislation mandating the richest American families to pay a minimum of 20 percent on all of their income, including unrealized investment income.

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Biden To Ask for $813 Billion Military Budget for 2023

President Biden plans to ask for $813.3 billion for military spending for the 2023 fiscal year, anonymous US officials told Bloomberg.

Of that number, $773 billion would go to the Pentagon, and the rest will be for other government agencies’ military spending, including the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons program.

Biden’s request represents a $31 billion increase from the $782 billion for military spending that was included in the massive $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill he signed earlier this month. Also packed into the omnibus bill was an additional $6.5 billion for the Pentagon to pay for troops deployments in Eastern Europe and restock weapons being sent to Ukraine.

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there are growing calls in Congress from both Republicans and Democrats for more military spending. The Pentagon is in a position where it can get just about anything it requests.

Included in Biden’s request for the 2023 budget is $130.1 billion for research and development of advanced weapons, such as hypersonic missiles and artificial intelligence. The Pentagon views such spending as vital to its focus on countering Russia and China.

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Hunter Biden Bio Firm Partnered With Ukrainian Researchers ‘Isolating Deadly Pathogens’ Using Funds From Obama’s Defense Department.

An investment firm directed by President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden was a leading financial backer of a pandemic tracking and response firm that collaborated on identifying and isolating deadly pathogens in Ukrainian laboratories, receiving funds from the Obama administration’s Department of Defense in the process, The National Pulse can exclusively reveal.

Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners (RSTP) – a subsidiary of the Hunter Biden and Christopher Heinz-founded Rosemont Capital – counted both Biden and Heinz as managing directors. Heinz is the stepson of former U.S. Secretary of State and current Climate czar John Kerry.

Amongst the companies listed on archived versions of the RSTP’s portfolio is Metabiota – an ostensibly San Francisco-based company that purports to detect, track, and analyze emerging infectious diseases.

Financial reports reveal that RSTP led the company’s first round of funding in 2015, which amounted to $30 million. Former managing director and co-founder of RSTP Neil Callahan – a name that also appears many times on Hunter Biden’s hard drive – sits on Metabiota’s Board of Advisors alongside former Clinton official Rob Walker who discussed, in another unearthed Hunter Biden hard drive e-mail, reaching out to the Obama Department of Defense with regard to Metabiota.

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As possibility of 4th doses looms, White House says it has no money for them

Federal regulators and health officials are due to assess the need for fourth COVID-19 vaccine doses, which the Biden administration currently lacks the funds to purchase for everyone, the Washington Post reports. 

Second booster shots went from a questioned possibility to a more likely reality last week as drugmakers filed for the FDA’s green light for the additional dose. Pfizer and BioNTech submitted an application to the FDA seeking emergency authorization for a second booster shot of their COVID-19 vaccine for people 65 and older. Moderna followed suit days later, seeking emergency use authorization of a second booster shot of its COVID-19 vaccine for all adults.

“Right now, we don’t have enough money for fourth doses, if they’re called for,” Jeff Zients, White House COVID-19 response coordinator, said on a forthcoming episode of the podcast “In the Bubble with Andy Slavitt” that was recorded March 21 and shared with the Post. “We don’t have the funding, if we were to need a variant-specific vaccine in the future.”

If regulators determine fourth doses, or second boosters, are necessary, federal officials have enough doses to cover a fourth shot for Americans age 65 and older and the initial regimen for children under age 5, three officials speaking on the condition of anonymity told the Post. The officials said they can’t place advance orders for additional vaccines for those in other age groups unless lawmakers pass a stalled $15 billion funding package.

If the U.S. aims to have enough doses for a fourth shot for everyone, there are currently not enough doses purchased. “They will run out of supply,” Jen Kates, senior vice president and director of global health and HIV policy at Kaiser Family Foundation, told the Post. She estimates that about 750 million additional doses are needed to reach that goal.

The FDA is due to meet April 6 to discuss the country’s COVID-19 booster shot strategy, including the timing of boosters for the coming months and when the shots should be updated to target specific variants. The FDA has not scheduled a specific vote nor is it expected to discuss Pfizer or Moderna’s recent applications for fourth vaccine doses at the meeting. 

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