Tag: taxes

SWAT Team Raids Innocent Elderly Couple, Destroys Their Home Because Their Power Bill Was Too Low

Even in states with legal marijuana, law enforcement’s addiction to the drug war still lingers like a dark cloud over over the land of the ostensibly free. Even in California, who has paved the way in legalization of cannabis, police officers still violently, and with extreme prejudice, lay waste to the rights of innocent people who dare grow, use, or sell this most beneficial plant.

Because of their addiction to the war on drugs, cops in Riverside County have just cost the taxpayers of their town $136,000. The money was paid to Chen-Chen Hwang, 67, and her husband, Jiun-Tsong Wu, 75, to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging that their two homes were broken into by armed agents of the state and ransacked as officers looked for non-existent marijuana plants.

According to Alex Coolman, the attorney who filed the suit on behalf of the elderly couple, police were monitoring power bills of town residents and used the low amount of the couple’s bill as reason to believe they were growing marijuana.

“This was a very strange and frightening incident,” Hwang said in a release from Coolman’s office. “We did nothing to deserve this, and it made us feel unsafe in our own homes.”

The raid unfolded on August 5, 2021 and caused thousands in damage to the couple’s home.

Apparently police in Riverside County monitor power consumption and when they see low power usage, they automatically assume that people are stealing power to grow marijuana.

“The deputies believed the defendants were stealing power to grow marijuana because their power consumption was low, and they said as much,” Coolman told the Press-Enterprise.

But the couple was not growing marijuana and their power consumption was low because they used solar power and were “thrifty,” according to Coolman.

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Former Atlanta official gets 14 years in corruption case

A pastor, political operative and former high-ranking Atlanta city official was sentenced Thursday to 14 years in prison after a jury found her guilty of charges stemming from a long-running federal investigation into corruption at City Hall.

U.S. District Judge Steve Jones told Mitzi Bickers that the evidence showed that she was involved in “a deliberate, calculated plan to cheat” the taxpayers of Atlanta over a number of years. In addition to the prison time, he ordered Bickers to pay nearly $3 million in restitution to the city and to serve three years of supervised release once she’s out.

Bickers, 56, was the first person to go to trial in the investigation into corruption during the administration of former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed. She helped Reed win election and then worked as his director of human services for several years. Prosecutors said she used her influence to funnel roughly $17 million in business to city contractors Elvin “E.R.” Mitchell Jr. and Charles P. Richards Jr. in exchange for more than $2.9 million in bribes for herself and others.

A jury in March found Bickers guilty on charges including money laundering, wire fraud and conspiracy to commit bribery.

Prosecutors had asked Jones to sentence Bickers to serve 17 and a half years in prison. Her lawyers asked for a much lower sentence, pointing to the five years that Mitchell got and the two years Richards got.

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The Eulogy of Queen Elizabeth II that You Won’t See On Your TV

Turn on a TV, open a web browser, or scroll social media and you will not be able to avoid headlines and hashtags about Queen Elizabeth II passing away. After news broke that she was under “medical supervision,” media crews have stationed themselves out front of Buckingham Palace and its a veritable red carpet event as royals from all over Europe arrive to pay their respects and offer support.

On Thursday, newly elected British PM Liz Truss said the “whole country” was “deeply concerned” over the news of The Queen’s deteriorating health.

“My thoughts – and the thoughts of people across our United Kingdom – are with Her Majesty The Queen and her family at this time,” Truss stated.

Hours later, and surrounded by her royal family, Queen Elizabeth II took her last breath. Now, all the constant reporting has turned to memorializing her.

But is the queen really someone to be hailed as this expounder of all that is good? Should her face be plastered on screens worldwide and a 24/7 memorial be rolled out in her honor? Maybe so, but not for the reasons corporate media will tell you.

On top of mothering a child predator and helping to cover up his crimes, Queen Elizabeth — during her time as a monarch — fleeced the taxpayers of England for hundreds of millions just to pay for her castle. 

During this time, she hid her finances offshore — despite the fact that the Royal Family is tax exempt — and made countless billions off the backs of her subjects.

She also oversaw the horrific colonization of multiple territories in Africa and Asia in which people were savagely tortured, their land stolen, and their people slaughtered.

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Blinken In Surprise Visit To Kyiv Unveils $2BN More Aid Amid ‘Successful’ Counteroffensive

“In meetings with senior Ukrainian officials, Blinken said the Biden administration had notified Congress of its intent to provide $2 billion in long-term Foreign Military Financing to Ukraine and 18 of its neighbors, including NATO members and regional security partners,” the Associated Press writes.

The nearby countries “at risk” from Russian aggression were listed by the State Dept as follows: 

Pending expected congressional approval, about $1 billion of that will go to Ukraine and the rest will be divided among Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, the State Department said.

Earlier in the day, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced a freshly approved military assistance package to Ukraine of of $675 million. 

This brings US aid to Ukraine to $14+ billion, given that at the end of last month the Pentagon issued a statement saying security assistance to Ukraine since January 2021 has totaled $13.5 billion. At the end of August, the Pentagon reported that since January 2021, the United States has provided Ukraine with more than $13.5Bln in security assistance. Some reports are currently tallying the total at $15.2BN.

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UFO in Texas? Mysterious lights caught on camera in Round Rock

Did people in Central Texas see some UFOs in the sky?

That’s what many people are wondering after several videos captured some mysterious lights in the evening on September 1.

Video shared to FOX 7 Austin caught the lights in the Round Rock area of Brushy Creek.

Emily White, who spoke to FOX 7 Austin’s Rudy Koski, says, “It was mesmerizing, honestly. It was so silent because if it was one light, then I would have maybe thought, ‘Oh, a helicopter, a plane, something like that.’ But like there was so many of them together.”

When asked if she thought it was a close encounter, White said, “I’ll be honest, kind of. I don’t know if I believe in all that, but, I don’t know. Maybe, I hear a lot of it in like America that that kind of things happens. I think it’s just because of like it didn’t make any noise at all, which I just thought was really odd. But, yeah, definitely, definitely felt like it was like the alien invasion or something on the way.”

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Kansas Public School Pays $95K to Teacher Suspended For ‘Misgendering’ Trans Student

A Kansas public school system has agreed to pay a $95,000 settlement to a teacher who was suspended for “misgendering” a transgender student by using their birth name.

Fort Riley Middle School officials also forced the teacher, Pamela Ricard, to conceal the student’s social transition from their parents against her will.

Ricard had filed a lawsuit challenging the school district policy that forced her to use the student’s “preferred name” to address them in class while using their legal name when speaking to parents.

In the lawsuit, Ricard was represented by Alliance Defending Freedom and Kriegshauser Ney Law Group, who said in a statement that the policy “violated her conscience.”

“No school district should ever force teachers to willfully deceive parents or engage in any speech that violates their deeply held religious beliefs,” said ADF Senior Counsel Tyson Langhofer, director of the ADF Center for Academic Freedom. “We’re pleased to settle this case favorably on behalf of Pam, and we hope that it will encourage school districts across the country to support the constitutionally protected freedom of teachers to teach and communicate honestly with both children and parents.”

According to the statement, in May, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas allowed Ricard’s lawsuit to proceed. The court ruled that since she was likely to win the lawsuit on her her First Amendment free exercise of religion claim, a motion to halt enforcement of the parental communication portion of the district policy was granted.

“This case provides straightforward lessons for Kansas school boards: Schools shouldn’t lie to parents and teachers don’t forfeit their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse door,” said Joshua Ney, partner at Kriegshauser Ney Law Group, in a statement.

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IRS Publishes Confidential Information of 120,000 Taxpayers Online, Then Blames ‘Human Coding Error’

On Friday, officials from Treasury Department announced that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had accidentally published confidential information pertaining to approximately 120,000 taxpayers’ retirement accounts on its website.

“This letter provides notice that the Internal Revenue Service recently identified an inadvertent and now-corrected disclosure of a subset of Forms 990-T,” Acting Secretary Anna Canfield Roth wrote in a letter addressed to Homeland Security Chairman Thompson.

“Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA) requires this report to Congress “not later than seven days after the date on which there is reasonable basis to conclude that a major incident has occurred.” The IRS determined on Friday, August 26, that the inadvertent disclosure met this threshold,” the letter stated.

“Form 990-T is the business tax return used by tax-exempt entities, including tax-exempt organizations, government entities and retirement accounts, to report and pay income tax on income that is generated from certain investments or income unrelated to their exempt purpose,” the letter explained.

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