Tag: taxes

California bill would let illegal aliens convicted of violent crimes receive legal services

Legislation filed in California would extend legal services subsidized by taxpayer dollars to more illegal aliens, including those convicted of violent crimes.

The bill filed by California Democratic Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer would expand current law to provide additional “immigration-related legal services” through grants received by nonprofit groups. The present version of the bill would strike language in the current law such that individuals who have been found guilty of violent offenses can receive assistance.

“Existing law prohibits use of the grant funds to provide legal services to an individual who has been convicted of, or who is currently appealing a conviction for, a violent or serious felony,” the summary of the legislation reads. “This bill would remove that prohibition.”

The current law, which allows grant funding for “immigration remedies and naturalization” for those presently or formerly residing in California, would be expanded to assist those “having an intent to reside in and having a nexus to the state” and would increase “the scope of services to include, among other things, legal representation and related services for removal defense.”

Controversy over the bill, which was introduced last month, comes as immigration emerges as a central issue ahead of the fall elections. Various crimes committed by illegal aliens, such as the abduction and murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley by an illegal alien from Venezuela, have also drawn renewed criticism of border policy under the Biden administration.

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Biden’s National Science Foundation Spent Millions in Emergency COVID Funds Last Year. The Spending Had Nothing To Do With COVID.

Since January 2023, President Joe Biden’s National Science Foundation (NSF) has spent millions of dollars on grants funded by the American Rescue Plan, Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID stimulus package. The grants have nothing to do with COVID, but they do fund studies on climate change.

The American Rescue Plan, which Biden said would bring “direct relief to families bearing the brunt of the COVID-19 crisis,” sent $600 million to the NSF. The agency pledged to use the funding to “support groups of individuals and institutions most strongly affected by the pandemic.” Three years after Biden signed the legislation, that money is still going out the door—through research grants that aren’t COVID-related.

One July 2023 grant, for example, funded a $246,000 Amherst College study meant to “deepen our understanding of how floodplains have responded to … climatic changes.” A more than $7 million grant awarded one month earlier to the University of Texas at Austin will help develop “a learning environment that is welcoming to marginalized and minoritized researchers.” The NSF sent another $181,000 to California Polytechnic State University in December to investigate “the structural organization, and changes therein, of a school of fish.”

In total, the agency has awarded more than $23 million in American Rescue Plan grants since January 2023 that are unrelated to COVID, federal spending disclosures show.

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Rep. Massie warns about fed plan to electronically track all U.S. cattle to stymie beef production

Hidden deep within the new omnibus bill is a secret provision to allow the federal government to electronically track all cattle in the United States.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) warned about the hidden provision on X, stating that lobbyists will receive $15 million in taxpayer funds to unleash the electronic tracking grid on the nation’s meat-producing cows and bison.

As stated directly from the omnibus, the agreement “directs the Department to continue to provide the tags and related infrastructure needed to comply with the Federal Animal Disease Traceability rule (9 CFR 86), including no less than $15,000,000 for electronic identification (EID) tags and related infrastructure needed for stakeholders to comply with the proposed rule, ‘Use of Electronic Identification Eartags as Official Identification in Cattle and Bison’ (88 FR 3320), should that rule be finalized.”

None of this, warned Rep. Massie is legal. And yet, the near-total apathy of the American people these days means these kinds of things are easily passable without so much as a peep from the wider constituency.

“No law authorizes this!” Rep. Massie wrote on X.

“It will be used by the GREEN agenda to limit beef production, and by the corporate meat oligopoly to DOMINATE small ranchers.”

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California activist group teaches teens to push for ‘racial justice’ with taxpayer funds: Report

A California activist group, Californians for Justice (CFJ), was paid “nearly $2 million to facilitate equity and leadership development training for students and teachers” between 2019 to 2023, per a Free Press report. 

The Long Beach Unified School District used taxpayer funds to pay CFJ, The Free Press revealed. 

CFJ pushes to teach youth about “racial justice” and is active in San Jose, Oakland, Fresno and Long Beach, according to the organization’s website. 

Long Beach Unified School District spokesperson told Fox News Digital that it believed in educating students to value “justice, equity, and inclusion.” 

“Californians for Justice (CFJ) assists Long Beach Unified in developing programs at five comprehensive high schools, focusing on creating opportunities for students of color to have a voice in decision-making and experiences at the schools,” the spokesperson said in a statement. 

The spokesperson continued, “As a district, we collaborate with all communities, striving to educate students as stewards of justice, equity, and inclusion, celebrating our collective differences. Long Beach Unified values CFJ’s expertise in equity training and professional development for students, fostering an inclusive learning environment. Our practice of providing stipends, referred to as internships, up to $1,400 per student and family ensures equitable participation in CFJ programs, embracing diverse perspectives in education. We address concerns promptly, ensuring educational materials are unbiased.” 

The statement also claimed that the school district “prioritizes a safe, inclusive environment for staff, actively addressing instances of discrimination or exclusion.” 

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There Is A War On Free Speech, And They Won’t Ever Be Satisfied Until It Is Completely Eradicated

The freedom to say whatever we want is one of the most fundamental rights in a free society.  If we are not free to speak up, it is is just a matter of time before all of our other rights are taken away as well.  So it should deeply alarm all of us that free speech is under attack like never before.  Much of the population has become convinced that “hate speech” is a special class of speech that does not deserve protection.  Of course in practice “hate speech” ends up being whatever forms of expression that the leftist elite hate.  That is why “hate speech” laws are always written so vaguely.  That way they can be used to go after whoever the leftist elite feel like going after at the time.

It is not always easy to have a society where people are allowed to say whatever they want.  People say things all the time that deeply, deeply offend me.  And there are some that have said things about me that are tremendously hateful and untrue.

But if we are going to have a free society, people have got to be free to say whatever they want.  So we should never support freedom of speech being taken away from anyone, because once we start going down that slippery slope it is just a matter of time before they come after our freedom to say what we want.

That is why what is happening in the state of Washington is so alarming.  A new law would allow private individuals to collect up to $2,000 every time they report someone to the new “hate crimes and bias incidents hotline”…

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Dept. of Justice pays out nearly $1 million to public university to track spread of ‘Mis-, Dis- and Mal-Information’

As the presidential election approaches, the Biden administration is expanding its controversial initiative to control information and censor Americans by funding a new project that tracks the spread of “mis-, dis-, and mal-information (MDM)” by internet users.

A public university in South Carolina is getting nearly $1 million from the government to map the spread of MDM in real time and create an online dashboard with an MDM tracker.

The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) National Institute of Justice (NIJ) is doling out the funds to researchers at Clemson University to meet its reported mission of “improving knowledge and understanding of crime and justice issues through science.” The NIJ claims it provides objective and independent knowledge and tools to inform the decision-making of the criminal and juvenile justice communities to reduce crime and advance justice.

The government is giving Clemson researchers a bunch of taxpayer dollars to identify information and opinions it does not like by conducting the “first real-time mapping of the spread of MDM campaigns around contentious public events,” according to the grant announcement.

The venture has been named “Networks and Pathways of Violent Extremism: Effectiveness of Mis/Disinformation Campaigns” and researchers assure their work will not be biased even though a leftist administration is funding the work, and most academics are themselves on the left politically.

The research is essential, the Biden administration asserts, to avert “violent extremism.” This is the explanation offered in the DOJ’s grant document: “Nationally publicized political events often become focal points of MDM, which are exploited by various individuals and groups to launch disinformation campaigns and trigger spontaneous or crowd-sourced diffusion of disinformation and violent extremism.”

Clemson researchers will use the public funds to develop specialized algorithms to identify the creation of MDM campaigns and capture event-level characteristics of real-life events that trigger MDM, the grant announcement explains.

The academics will also help determine what characteristics of high-profile events are more likely to trigger online MDM campaigns and what are the common characteristics of organizations and other actors engaged in MDM campaigns.

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House Republicans defend use of earmarks as Congress passes spending bills with $13 billion of pork

House Republican lawmakers who advocate for reducing federal spending to bring down the budget deficit are defending the use of earmarks as Congress passes a spending package that include $13 billion of them.

“When Democrats are in control, if we don’t have the opportunity for our elected representatives to weigh in on these types of issues, then we’re sending our tax dollars to Washington, D.C. and bureaucrats are deciding where it goes,” said Rep. Erin Houchin, R-Ind., during an interview with Just the News.

Rep. Burgess Owens, R-Utah, said he’s thankful for the earmarks process, which is now formally titled, “Community Project Funding,” noting that his “district was not being serviced at all” when earmarks were banned prior to 2021.

There were about 6,000 earmarks taking up 605 pages in the minibus spending package that passed. The package contains 6 appropriations bills.

“Keep in mind as representatives we are the closest to the people,” Owens said on Thursday on Capitol Hill. “If there’s a body that knows what the people really care for and need it is the House and what we did, we took ourselves off the plate.”

Not all Republicans in Congress are on board with earmarks, known derogatorily as “pork.” 

Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., told Just the News that the previous ban on earmarks should be resurrected. “It’s another step in the wrong direction. It does nothing to cut our spending, it does nothing to secure our border, and worse than that, you mentioned, you’ve got nearly 7,000 earmarks for about $13 billion.”

“And earmarks represent the worst in Washington because they are pet projects back in somebody’s district used to buy votes,” Good continued. “It’s something that was eliminated about 15 years ago, it got brought back by the Dems when they got control. But Republicans have kept it much to my dismay, I oppose earmarks and we ought not to be doing that.”

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., described the earmarks in the minibus spending package as wasteful. A second spending package is under consideration and has to be passed before a March 22 shutdown deadline.

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Smedley Butler Explains The Latest Excuse For American Intervention In Ukraine

Senior Fellow Alex Pollock drew my attention to an important quotation by Smedley Butler: 

1935 speech and later a book by Major General Smedley D. Butler (USMC), includes  “… A racket is best described, I believe, something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make large fortunes…

If we put them to work making poison gas and more and more fiendish mechanical and explosive instruments of destructions, they will have no time for the constructive job of building a greater prosperity for all peoples. By putting them to this useful job, we can all make more money out of peace than we can out of war – even the munition makers.

So … I say, TO HELL WITH WAR.”

It is notable that very little has changed over the past century in terms of how regimes rationalize war. It was during the First World War that the term “merchants of death” first gained widespread use, and it was also during that war that the American regime also spoke often in terms of munitions spending as a benefit of war. It was all part of a war-propaganda machine dreamed up with Woodrow Wilson’s cadre. 

Unfortunately, the propaganda still works with many. It was just two weeks ago, in fact, that the Biden Administration began explicitly trying to sell US military aid to Ukraine as a scheme to “create jobs” in the United States. The administration’s statement on the war spending is virtually identical to something out of a US propaganda mill in 1950 or 1918. We would only need to change a few of the names and places. According to Biden’s handlers: 

“While this bill dispatches military hardware to Ukraine,” Biden mentioned on Tuesday, “it actually finances manufacturing within the United States in states like Arizona, where Patriot missiles are manufactured; Alabama, the home of Javelin missiles; and also Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Texas, which are hubs for the production of artillery shells.”

There are a multitude of problems with this statement.

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Federal Judge Rules Biden Can’t Divert Funds That Were Allocated for Construction of Border Wall

A federal judge has just ruled that the Biden administration cannot divert funds that were specifically allocated for the construction of a border wall under Trump.

Biden wanted to use this money for other things, naturally.

This doesn’t mean that Biden has to finish the wall and of course, he won’t. But it also means that he can’t touch the funds.

The Washington Times reports:

Judge orders Biden to stop diverting border wall money

A federal judge on Friday shot down the Biden administration’s plans to divert money from border wall construction to other projects like environmental remediation, ruling that it appears to violate the law.

Judge Drew B. Tipton said Congress gets to decide how money is spent and when it wrote its spending bills for fiscal years 2020 and 2021 it allocated nearly $1.4 billion each year for wall-building. The president trampled on that when he decided to spend wall-building money on “remediation projects.”

The government said it should have leeway to spend the money, and argued the remediation projects were ancillary to the wall and should be allowed.

Judge Tipton, though, said the way Congress wrote the law it was quite specific in saying the money should go to barriers along the border.

“The central question in this case, then, is this: Has the Government obligated FY 2020 and FY 2021 funds for the ‘construction of [a] barrier system’? The answer is largely no,” the judge concluded.

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BIDEN IS BANKROLLING ISRAEL’S WAR AMID GROWING FINANCIAL HARDSHIP AT HOME

IN LATE OCTOBER, President Joe Biden issued two supplemental funding requests. The first, primarily to support Israel’s war on Gaza and Ukraine’s war against Russia, became the $95 billion National Security Act, which the Senate passed in February. This week, Biden urged House leadership to pass the bill as soon as possible.

Never has the president appeared more committed to advancing one of his priorities. Biden delivered a rare Oval Office address specifically to market the plan — something he hasn’t done for any other proposal — and designated the funding as “emergency requirements.” In the weeks and months that followed, he ensured that it remained at the top of Congress’s agenda, even if that meant delays to other legislative business. His hard work paid off: The current bill gives Biden pretty much exactly what he asked for.

The second proposal is half the size of the first and funds domestic programs such as grants to child care providers and disaster relief. This request wasn’t designated as emergency spending.

While Biden personally and repeatedly urged Congress to approve his foreign policy plan, there is not a single instance of him even mentioning his domestic proposal in a statement since offering it on October 25. It hasn’t made an appearance on his personal or presidential X accounts either. Indeed, the way the proposal is written suggests that Biden never intended it to be taken seriously. The foreign policy request is a 69-page, fully drafted legislative proposal that’s formally addressed to the House speaker; the domestic request is a two-page summary table.

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