Tag: taxes

Billionaires Taking $1.01 Billion from Taxpayers to Finance a Football Stadium — Distracting You is Expensive

“Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer, and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult….”

― George Orwell, 1984

It’s no secret that the federal government has little restraint about using taxpayer dollars for non-essential initiatives and projects. One venture, in particular, continuously shouldered by taxpayers is the building, maintaining, and renovating of sports stadiums. These stadiums are often built with the help of federal subsidies as well as funding through state and local taxes. This issue is not new, as study of subsidized stadiums by the Department of Economics at the College of the Holy Cross noted that “construction costs alone for major league professional sports facilities have totaled in excess of $30 billion in nominal terms over the past two decades with over half of the cost being paid by the public.”

Of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with watching sports. However, it has become far more than just a game in this country. It is used to promote militarism, divide, and serve as bread and circus while the empire spreads across the globe. As the study mentions above, all of this comes with a hefty price tag too. Americans are quite literally financing their own distraction. 

As Reason magazine reported this week, if approved by the New York legislature, the New York Bills’ taxpayer-funded stadium would be the biggest public handout in NFL history.

State and local taxpayers will contribute about $850 million toward the estimated $1.4 billion stadium project. Most of the public funds are coming from the state but Erie County, where the Bills’ new stadium will be built down the street from their current home, will contribute $250 million of the total. That’s a huge contribution from a local government that in 2021 spent a little more than $1.5 billion on its entire budget. The Bills owners, which include multi-billionaire Terry Pegula, are chipping in just $300 million while the NFL will cover the remaining $200 million with a loan to the team, according to the Times.

“It’s a great day for western New York and I’m really proud to negotiate such a good deal for the state and our many, many fans,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said, according to the Associated Press.

While the sticker price for taxpayers is just $850 million on the surface, Neil deMause at Field of Schemes reminds us that the county — funded by taxpayers — will spend $75 million out of this year’s budget, and bond out the other $175 million and pay it back later. What’s more, the taxpayers are on the hook for another $6 million a year, for 30 years for a “Capital Improvement Fund” which will be used to upgrade the stadium for the next 30 years, plus an unknown additional amount of money from the county; and $6.67 million a year in state money for 15 years toward a “maintenance and repair fund.”

As deMause points out, “without counting that undetermined county expense on future upgrades, that’s worth about another $160 million in present value, bringing the total public subsidy to $1.01 billion — pretty much exactly what Hochul and Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz swore last week it was not.”

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LA Spends Billions to House a Fraction of Homeless Population

According to watchdog group Open the Books, the city of Los Angeles dedicated $1.2 billion in 2016 to try and fight homelessness through building affordable housing units. 

Since the program was approved, about 1,200 units have been completed – with some units costing taxpayers over $700,000 each, according to a city audit. One project currently underway is estimated to cost almost $837,000 per unit.

“The plan was to get the homeless people in Los Angeles into permanent housing to get them off the street and make no mistake, Los Angeles has a big problem when it comes to the homeless,” said Open The Books’ Adam Andrzejewski to The National Desk’s Jan Jeffcoat. “In 2016, that $1.2 billion ordinance passed. It was a bond proposal for permanent housing for the homeless. And today, there are more people that are unhoused than ever before in the city of Los Angeles.”

While the homelessness crisis continues, Andrzejewski said a “bureaucratic culture” sprung up in the city.

“In city government, there are about 750 employees dedicated to housing and community development, and the top employee in that department makes more than a White House cabinet official,” said Andrzejewski.

According to polling by The Los Angeles Times and the L.A. Business Council Institute, nearly 40% of voters in the city feel “signi​ficantly unsafe”due to homelessness in their neighborhoods.

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US Provides $300 Million More in Security Assistance to Ukraine, Including Military Equipment

The Pentagon announced on April 1 that it will provide up to $300 million more in security assistance to Ukraine in military equipment amid Russia’s invasion.

The funds will be provided under authority granted to the Pentagon by the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), which was created in 2015 in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

“This decision underscores the United States’ unwavering commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in support of its heroic efforts to repel Russia’s war of choice,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby announced.

According to the department, capabilities in the latest package include laser-guided rocket systems, tactical secure communications systems, unmanned aircraft, armored vehicles, machine guns, ammunition, medical supplies, and other equipment.

Kirby said the new package “represents the beginning of a contracting process to provide new capabilities” to Ukraine, rather than delivering equipment drawn from U.S. military stockpiles.

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Proposed City Program Guarantees Income for Transgender Residents

ASouthern California city is moving forward with plans for monthly payments as high as $900 to transgender and nonbinary residents to help them overcome discrimination.

The Palm Springs City Council on Thursday unanimously voted to allocate $200,000 from two local nonprofits for the initial legwork to provide the payments to members of the marginalized demographic living in the city. The city’s move comes as California is implementing a guaranteed income plan, and as Republican-led states have sought to restrict the rights of transgender people.

The money will go to Palm Springs-based Queer Works and DAP Health to work out details of the first-of-its-kind pilot guaranteed income program.

Jacob Rostovsky, Queer Works executive director, told Newsweek he expects the program to be similar to other guaranteed income pilot programs launched in other U.S. cities. He said other cities that have experimented with guaranteed income on average have given 150 people monthly payments of $600 to $900.

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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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