Logic!
Tag: taxes
‘Squad’ Dems spend thousands on airfare while demanding others go ‘green’
Democratic members of the House who pushed “Green New Deal” reforms to overhaul the energy sector spent roughly $13,000 in tax dollars combined on airfare, according to the latest House disbursement records reviewed by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Jamaal Bowman of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Cori Bush of Missouri expensed the “airfare commercial transport” charges between October 2021 and March 2022, according to the records. The new disbursements are intended to be for the months of January and March 2022, and one ethics expert familiar with the situation said lawmakers often report transactions late.
These same members, who are often referred to as the “Squad,” have emphasized that “climate change” is an “existential” or “emergency” crisis.
The “Squad” members notably co-sponsored a bill introduced by Ocasio-Cortez in 2021 calling for the creation of a “Green New Deal.” The bill, which was roundly opposed by Republicans and many Democrats, allocated $8.1 billion to a “climate corps,” among other proposals.
Carbon dioxide emissions from flying are said to increase pollution, according to a study by the left-wing think tank Brookings Institution. Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal resolution in 2019 sought to overhaul “transportation systems in the United States to eliminate pollution and 19 greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector as much as is technologically feasible.”
“The hypocrisy of the Green New Deal crowd is endless,” Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told TheDCNF. “They seem to view themselves as part of an elite that is exempt from the energy poverty policies they pursue.”
Ex high-ranking Seattle cop who displayed Nazi insignia to get $1.5M from city
A suburban Seattle city will pay more than $1.5 million to settle a dispute with a former assistant police chief who was disciplined for posting a Nazi rank insignia on his office door and joking about the Holocaust.
Former Kent Assistant Police Chief Derek Kammerzell, who had been with the department for nearly three decades, was initially given two weeks of unpaid leave after the 2020 incident. Outraged residents and members of the Jewish community prompted Mayor Dana Ralph to put Kammerzell on paid administrative leave and demand his resignation.
The city’s attempt to essentially discipline Kammerzell a second time led to a dispute between his lawyers and the city that appeared headed for litigation. But interim city Chief Administrative Officer Arthur “Pat” Fiztpatrick, who is also the city attorney, said Friday the city had resolved the matter through negotiation, The Seattle Times reported.
Ralph, in calling for Kammerzell’s resignation in January, acknowledged that the decision to revisit the discipline issue would likely “come at a high cost.” The city said Friday it would pay him $1,520,000 to resign.
J6 Committee Spent Half of Budget on Salaries. Staffers Earning Almost $16K/month
The House committee that is investigating the mostly peaceful protest at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 appears to be a get-rich scam for the staffers.
The Select Committee, which is trying to criminalize opposition to the Biden administration and the Democratic Party, paid more than $500,000 in salaries in April, with some staffers earning more than $15,000 a month — almost $200,000 annually.
And more than half the committee’s $3.8 million budget has gone to salaries.
April’s report shows 51 staff members who pulled down $528,769, an average of $10,368 per month per employee. Annual salary at that rate would be $124,416.
Timothy Heaphy, a federal prosecutor who exposed the corruption inside Charlottesville, Virginia’s, police department that led to violence at 2017’s Unite the Right Rally, earns $15,666.67 per month, or $188,000 annually.
Two stop staffers earn $15,666, while another earns $15,416.
Another two earn $14,491, two earn $14,166, and so on.
Year to date, the staffers have earned $1.99 million and change. That’s 52 percent of the committee’s $3.8 million budget.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Says People Charged With Violent Crimes Are Guilty Because Prosecutors Say So
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has repeatedly blamed bail reforms and local judges for exacerbating gun violence by releasing defendants back onto the streets, but on Monday she took her rhetoric a step further, saying that people charged with violent crime should be kept in jail because only guilty people get charged with violent crimes.
The comments, first reported by the Chicago Tribune, were part of a longer harangue against the Cook County courts and bail reform efforts.
“We shouldn’t be locking up nonviolent individuals just because they can’t afford to pay bail. But, given the exacting standards that the state’s attorney has for charging a case, which is proof beyond a reasonable doubt, when those charges are brought, these people are guilty,” Lightfoot said. “Of course they’re entitled to a presumption of innocence. Of course they’re entitled to their day in court. But residents in our community are also entitled to safety from dangerous people, so we need to keep pressing the criminal courts to lock up violent dangerous people and not put them out on bail or electronic monitoring back into the very same communities where brave souls are mustering the courage to come forward and say, ‘this is the person who is responsible.'”
The comments outraged civil liberties advocates and public defenders in Chicago, and rightly so. They should offend anyone familiar with the American criminal justice system and why it places such an emphasis on the presumption of innocence: to force the government to prove its case and shield defendants from prejudice and demagoguery. Lightfoot’s statements are particularly absurd, given the enormous amount of taxpayer money Chicago has spent settling wrongful conviction lawsuits.
House Democrat Floats 1,000% Tax on AR-15-Style Rifles
A key House Democrat is floating a 1,000% tax on AR-15s and similar rifles as part of his party’s latest bid to push gun control in the wake of recent mass shootings.
Rep. Donald Beyer of Virginia, who sits on the House Ways and Means Committee, told Business Insider that increasing the cost of the rifles ten-fold could be a deterrent to mass shootings. The tax could raise the price of the rifles to anywhere from $5,000 to as much as $20,000.
“What it’s intended to do is provide another creative pathway to actually make some sensible gun control happen,” Beyer said. “We think that a 1,000% fee on assault weapons is just the kind of restrictive measure that creates enough fiscal impact to qualify for reconciliation.”
A final draft of Beyer’s bill is not yet complete, and it is still unclear when the tax would take effect and what the added revenue would fund, although one possibility is a restitution program for family members of victims killed in shootings. Beyer said that law enforcement agencies and the U.S. military wouldn’t be subject to the tax. The lawmaker added that he believes his bill can clear the House, where Democrats hold a clear majority, and bypass the filibuster in the Senate, where Vice President Kamala Harris could cast the deciding vote.
Who are the real villains?
Suckers!
Biden Plans To Cancel $10,000 In Student Debt Per Borrower Ahead Of Midterms
As soon as this weekend, President Biden could announce a plan to cancel $10k in student debt per borrower, according to WaPo, citing three people with knowledge of the matter.
Biden could make the announcement at the University of Delaware’s commencement ceremony on Saturday. The plan would apply to Americans who earned less than $150k in the previous year or less than 300k for married couples filing jointly.
On April 6, the White House announced it would extend the pause of federal student loan repayments through August 31. It wasn’t clear if the administration would extend the moratorium beyond this.
The decision to wipe out $10k of student debt per borrow who meets requirements comes as President Biden’s approval ratings collapse.
Notice how the number of stories in the news of “student debt loan forgiveness” is soaring ahead of the midterms, but Biden’s polling numbers remain cratered.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan think tank, said canceling $10k of student debt per borrower would cost a whopping $230bln.
WaPo said, “most of the nation’s 41 million student borrowers stand to benefit.” Though, who exactly benefits?
Goldman Sachs’ Jan Hatzius found canceling the debt would mainly benefit middle- and upper-income households, contrary to the administration’s claims it would help the working poor.
NIH To Spend $2 Million in Taxpayer Funds on ‘Unnecessary’ Puppy Experiments
The National Institutes of Health division led by Dr. Anthony Fauci is slated to spend nearly $2 million to force feed puppies with experimental allergy drugs, according to a government watchdog group.
NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is helmed by Fauci, allocated $1,836,453 in taxpayer dollars for a contractor to test an experimental hay fever drug on mice, rats, and dogs, including puppies, according to the funding documents, which were obtained by the White Coat Waste Project and provided to the Washington Free Beacon. The most severe symptoms of hay fever, also known as seasonal allergies, are a runny nose and sneezing.
The documents, which were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request and are highly redacted, show that the division requested at least five separate experiments on dogs that are likely to include force-feeding them experimental drugs for several months. While the contractor conducting the tests, Inimmune Corp., said guinea pigs could be used in place of dogs for some testing, purchasing “six-month old puppies” that would be exposed to allergens and then used for testing was also proposed.
NIH’s animal experiments have become a flashpoint in Congress after it emerged earlier this year that the government spent $2.5 million injecting beagle puppies with cocaine, sparking a bipartisan investigation, which was first reported by the Free Beacon. The NIH also funds labs in Russia, even as it invades Ukraine, including one lab that conducted “horrific and barbaric experiments on 18 cats.” The disclosure of the latest funding tranche is likely to build momentum for legislation called the Preventing Animal Abuse and Waste Act that would bar NIAID from conducting these types of dog experiments.
“Fauci’s white coats at NIAID have forced taxpayers to pay millions to de-bark and poison puppies, infest beagles with ticks and flies, and, now, needlessly torture puppies to test a new drug to treat a runny nose,” Devin Murphy, White Coat Waste Project’s public policy and communications manager, told the Free Beacon. “Even NIAID’s own contractor acknowledges that the dog testing demanded by Fauci’s agency is unnecessary because alternative animal models are available.”
Hellbound and Down 
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