Tag: taxes

Nevada receives grant to establish state-run hate crime reporting hotline

A new grant from the Department of Justice will be used to set up a Nevada hate crime reporting hotline.

Earlier this month, Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford announced his office will receive $1,164,424 in funding.

Nevada is the only state this cycle that will receive the grant.

“In seeking justice for hate crimes, it is important to remember victims need resources and support to feel safe and valued in their communities,” Ford said. “This funding will aid in bridging the gap between hate crime victims and the services available to them.”

The funding will be used to establish policies and procedures for the hotline, implementing focused training for staff regarding the new hotline, hiring new staff members, and integrating the hotline into the Attorney General office’s preexisting Constituent Services framework.

The FBI defines a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.”

Keep reading

$61 Billion Was Just The Beginning – Ukrainian President Zelenskyy Announces 10 Year Funding Agreement with U.S.: “GLORY TO UKRAINE”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, after speaking with Democrat House Leader Hakeem Jeffries, announced on Sunday the U.S. and Ukraine are “working on fixing specific levels of support for this year and for the next ten years.”

This will likely supersede President Trump’s authority on the matter if passed.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, Congress recently passed three bills to hand out $95 Billion in “foreign aid” to Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, and other non-U.S.-involved conflict zones around the world. Of the $95 Billion, over $60 Billion was allocated for Ukraine.

The handout to Ukraine was sold to the American people as a “loan.” However, as The Gateway Pundit reported, the package Johnson announced Wednesday includes terms that will allow the President to cancel 50% of Ukraine’s debt after November 15, 2024, and the remaining 50% after January 1, 2024. It’s no wonder Joe Biden came out “strongly” in support of the package, urging the House and Senate to pass it.

This means after President Trump wins the 2024 election, as expected, Joe Biden can cancel 50% of Ukraine’s debt before his term ends in January. However, if Biden and the Democrats pull off another stolen election, they can forgive 100% of Ukraine’s debt a little over one year later. This isn’t a loan. It’s a handout.

Additionally, as The Gateway Pundit reported, Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) revealed that only $44 to $47 billion–40%–of the $113 billion that the United States has handed out to Ukraine is lethal aid.” So what was the other 66 to $69 billion for?” Roy asked on Bannon’s War Room.

Two bills from the latest handout package, the Indo-Pacific Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2024 and the Ukraine Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2024, both passed the House with more support from Democrats than Republicans. This comes after Republicans under Mike Johnson’s leadership gave up a $1.2 trillion spending bill, also with more support from Democrats than Republicans, and reauthorization for warrantless searches of Americans under FISA Section 702.

Keep reading

Get Ready to Be Hammered by Property Taxes

There have been very few points of financial solace in the past few years apart from rising financial markets. Part of that has been an incredible increase in home valuations. This comes from inflation, yes, but also from shifts in supply and demand for home purchases. Demand is as it always was but realizing it is another matter.

The problem is on the supply side. In most places around the country, homes are not going on the market at the same and predictable pace they once were. This is for reasons of soaring costs of new mortgages. Many homeowners purchased back when interest rates were absurdly low and negative in real terms, perhaps 2 or 3 percent.

Selling now means paying huge capital gains taxes and then applying for a new mortgage at 7.5 percent. The implications of that seemingly small change are actually gigantic, and making it work without paying drastically more in monthly bills means moving to a cheaper area of the country or downsizing the quality and size of the home.

Rather than make that choice, many homeowners are stuck living right where they are even if they would prefer some other job or home elsewhere. They are frozen in place but, hey, at least these people have homes that they own, right?

Not only that but the valuation that you see on Zillow is going up and up. Yay!

Keep reading

America’s Shame: It’s Sunday And We’re At War With The World

I know “the right side of history” is a goofy leftist trope—as if “history” were an entity, an organism of some sort, a knowable whole—but you do have to wonder what a future generation will think about what America has been doing to the world. I’ll let readers decide when we started downhill, who—or what ideologies—was/were responsible, and so forth. Interestingly, some GOPers are adopting that trope—leftist readers take note!

Michael Tracey @mtracey

Speaker Mike Johnson reportedly dropped to his knees in prayer for guidance on how to handle the Ukraine matter. Always fascinating when the voice of God becomes interchangeable with the voice of the National Security State

Keep reading

Ukraine Gets Their Billions Despite CIA Director Reportedly Warning Zelenksy To Stop Stealing So Much Money

Democrats cheered and waved Ukrainian flags, chanting “Ukraine, Ukraine!” in some pavlovian response to Congress passing a bill that will send (another) $61 billion to Ukraine with no questions asked

Ukrainian president Zelenskyy was very pleased, personally thinking Speaker Johnson

I am grateful to the United States House of Representatives, both parties, and personally Speaker Mike Johnson for the decision that keeps history on the right track.

Democracy and freedom will always have global significance and will never fail as long as America helps to protect it.

The vital U.S. aid bill passed today by the House will keep the war from expanding, save thousands and thousands of lives, and help both of our nations to become stronger. Just peace and security can only be attained through strength.

We hope that bills will be supported in the Senate and sent to President Biden’s desk. Thank you, America!

‘War is Peace’, America!

Keep reading

We’ve Blown $1B In Ammo and Navy Secretary says, “Oh well”

We have an industrial base problem and an Administration that has this childish inclination to grab everything off the shelves, rip the boxes open, use some of the contents, throw the partially empty box away, and then lunge for another box on the shelf.

And like a child, they never pause to think where the boxes of stuff come from or ensure new boxes are placed on the vacant shelves.

It’s the mindset of the globalist utopian, just take, never give. They know how to consume, not create or produce. Classic projection – that’s what they accuse of everyone else.

We’re approaching 2 and ½ years of grabbing ordnance off the shelves and not really placing orders with signed contracts. The Biden officials will lecture industry endlessly about the woeful state of the industrial base and then not do two key things. Create more Government owned, Contractor operated plants and place signed orders.

Air Force Plant 44, the singular most important American missile factory, on the southern perimeter of Tucson International Airport, Arizona, where flights are landing daily with illegals and 9,000 illegals a day are streaming up from Nogales has plenty of room for expansion – but no signs of it. Contractors should not be expected to invest in capitalization and expansion when the buying patterns are psychotic which is why many leave the industry.

Keep reading

NIH Refuses To Release Details Of COVID-19 Vaccine Royalty Agreement

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) is refusing to release additional information about an agreement it reached over a COVID-19 vaccine that has earned it at least $400 million.

The NIH declined to provide any materials in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from The Epoch Times.

“The NIH withholds the entirety of the records as they are protected from release,” Gorka Garcia-Malene, an NIH officer, told The Epoch Times in a letter.

She cited an exemption outlined in the act that allows government agencies to partially or fully withhold information.

“In this case, exemption 3 incorporates 35 U.S.C. 209 (f), which reads in relevant part, ‘No Federal agency shall grant any license under a patent or patent application on a federally owned invention unless the person requesting the license has supplied the agency with a plan for development or marketing of the invention, except that any such plan shall be treated by the Federal agency as commercial and financial information obtained from a person and privileged and confidential and not subject to disclosure under section 552 of title 5,’” Ms. Garcia-Malene wrote.

“Exemption 4 protects from disclosure trade secrets and commercial or financial information that is privileged and confidential,” she added.

In February 2023, Moderna announced that it had paid $400 million to the NIH and would make additional payments in the future as part of a licensing agreement for spike proteins used in the company’s COVID-19 vaccine. The Epoch Times obtained a copy of the contract, which confirmed the payment but redacted details of the future payments.

The Epoch Times then lodged a new request, seeking more details about the future payments, which are said to be based on how many COVID-19 vaccines are sold.

Ms. Garcia-Malene was responding to the new request.

James Love, director of the nonprofit Knowledge Ecology International, said the information should be made public.

“The NIH put out several press statements about the royalty dispute with Moderna, and they should not now claim it is some secret confidential information. And when hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake, the public interest in transparency is large too,” Mr. Love told The Epoch Times in an email.

“There are a lot of NIH officials who resent transparency,” he added.

Keep reading

“The Food is No Good at All” – African Illegals at NYC City Council Complain About Free Food and Housing

African illegals at a New York City Council meeting complained about the free (taxpayer-funded) food and housing provided to them.

More than 1,300 illegal aliens from Africa swarmed New York City Hall on Tuesday after they were falsely promised work visas and green cards.

The illegals were lined up outside of New York City Hall as far as the eye could see.

Africans in Islamic garb swarmed the sidewalk.

Many of them are from Guinea and entered the US through the Mexican border.

Keep reading

House Speaker Unveils $95 Billion Foreign Aid Bills

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has revealed a series of foreign aid bills totaling $95 billion that come as he faces renewed challenges and frustrations from his conference.

The packages unveiled on April 17 include funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan and other Indo-Pacific partners.

The $95 billion price tag puts it nearly evenly in line with an earlier Senate-passed foreign aid and national security package that Mr. Johnson declined to take up in the House.

Of that $95 billion top-line figure, roughly two-thirds—$61 billion—will go to Ukraine.

A little more than $26 billion of the package will go to Israel, and $16.5 billion of that funding is dedicated to military funding, including replenishing the depleted reserves of Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system.

Nearly $10 billion in additional funding is slated for humanitarian relief for “vulnerable populations and communities” in the Gaza Strip.

Keep reading

NPR CEO calls First Amendment the ‘number one challenge’ in American journalism which makes it hard to crack down on ‘bad information’ and ‘influence peddlers

NPR’s new chief executive Katherine Maher called the First Amendment the ‘number one challenge’ in American journalism during a panel discussion.

Maher, 40, noted the First Amendment provides a ‘fairly robust protection of rights,’ making it ‘a little tricky to address some of the real challenges of where bad information comes from.’

These comments were made during an online panel discussion at the 360/Open Summit held by the Atlantic Council in 2021. 

The clip went viral after whistleblower editor Uri Berliner was suspended for speaking out about the outlet’s progressive bias the last week.

Berliner announced his resignation on Wednesday, stating, ‘I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems I cite in my Free Press essay.’

‘The number one challenge that we see here is, of course, the First Amendment in the United States,’ Maher said at the panel hosted by the Atlantic Council’s research lab, where she served as a nonresident senior fellow. 

According to the organization’s release, she discussed fighting censorship, addressing diversity and building trust based on her experience as the former CEO of Wikimedia, which owns Wikipedia. 

The clip has now gone viral on X, with Elon Musk reposting and saying, ‘This keeps getting crazier! The head of NPR hates the Constitution of the USA.’

Maher recently made national headlines after former NPR editor Berliner penned an open essay for The Free Press, where he slammed the outlet for being made up almost entirely of Democrats which he argued ‘lost America’s trust.’ 

Berliner claimed the publicly funded broadcaster became an activist organization obsessed with pushing progressive ideals.   

In response to the 25-year NPR veteran’s article, the network suspended him for five days for violating its policy of working or reporting for another outlet without permission, starting Friday. 

Keep reading