Tag: taxes

The Most American Thing That Has Ever Happened

We are once again witnessing history being made, folks. Today, in the Year of our Lord two thousand and twenty-two, we get the great privilege of bearing witness to the single most American thing that has ever happened.

The Biden administration has asked top Democrats to decouple the federal government’s Covid relief spending package from its much larger bill for funding of the US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, because one of those two things is too controversial and contentious to pass quickly.

Guess which one.

Politico reports:

Congressional Democratic leaders reached a bipartisan accord to send $39.8 billion to Ukraine to bolster its monthslong battle against a brutal Russian assault.

 

And that deal is now expected to move swiftly to President Joe Biden’s desk after Democrats agreed to drop another one of their top priorities — billions of dollars in pandemic aid that has stalled on the Hill. The Ukraine aid could come to the House floor for a vote as soon as Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the discussions who spoke candidly on condition of anonymity.

That nearly $40 billion worth of proxy war funding eclipses the paltry $10 billion in Covid relief funding that was being debated in congress, and is in fact well in excess of the already massive $33 billion sum requested by the White House.

“President Joe Biden and top Democrats have agreed to a GOP demand to disentangle a stalled COVID-19 response package from a separate supplemental request for military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine so the latter can move more quickly,” Roll Call reports. “At the same time, House and Senate Democrats have upped the price tag on the Ukraine package by $6.8 billion above Biden’s initial $33 billion request. Democrats proposed including an additional $3.4 billion for food aid and $3.4 billion more to replace U.S. military equipment sent to Ukraine, according to a source familiar with the offer.”

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Biden Is Sending Ukraine Billions of Dollars of Weaponry It Can’t Use Properly

After hounding the US and other NATO members for weeks about his need for heavy weapons to defend against Russia’s ongoing “special military operation”, Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, appears to have been granted his wish.

The US Congress, on April 28, passed legislation that breathed life into a World War II-era law that would allow the US to quickly supply weapons to Ukraine on loan.

By a vote of 417 to 10, the House of Representatives sent the revised 80-year-old law to the desk of President Joe Biden, where he is expected to sign it (the US Senate had earlier passed the legislation unanimously.)

“Passage of that act enabled Great Britain and Winston Churchill to keep fighting and to survive the fascist Nazi bombardment until the United States could enter the war,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland who has been at the forefront of anti-Russian legislation over the years. “President Zelensky has said that Ukraine needs weapons to sustain themselves, and President Biden has answered that call.”

The Congressional action comes on the heels of President Biden approving an additional $33 billion in military aid on top of the nearly $3 billion already provided to Ukraine since the start of the conflict with Russia. While much of the earlier weapons shipments focused on light weaponry such as anti-tank missiles and man-portable air defense systems, the new support package places an emphasis on heavy weaponry, such as howitzers and armored fighting vehicles, which Ukraine needs to replace equipment destroyed or damaged in battle.

Beware of what you wish for.

General Omar Bradley, a famous American military commander during World War II who knew more than a thing or two about killing Nazis, is attributed with saying “amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.” For every piece of heavy equipment that the Ukrainian military is about to receive as part of this massive infusion of military aid provided by the US there is attached the unspoken yet critical reality of the issue of maintenance and sustainability. Simply put, if it’s broke, you can’t use it. And military equipment breaks – frequently – especially when subjected to the strains and stress of unending modern combat.

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IRS Stole Money and Hid the Details for Years

The Internal Revenue Service demands transparency when its agents conduct audits. They open ledgers, snoop through bank accounts, and review receipts. But its appetite for disclosure disappears when the roles reverse.

The IRS stonewalled for more than six years when our public interest law firm, the Institute for Justice, sought access to the agency’s forfeiture database. Initially, the IRS wanted $750,000 in fees before it would accommodate the request—an unreasonable demand that would render the Freedom of Information Act useless for all but the wealthiest citizens.

Once in court, the IRS attempted a bait and switch. Rather than provide the actual data, it released a summary report that was 99 percent redacted. It then declared that it had gone above and beyond the legal requirements. The ruse worked at the district court level, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled against the agency in 2019. After a second trip to the district court, the IRS finally coughed up the full database in April 2022.

For anyone without a law degree or the resources to endure a long legal battle, the message from the IRS is clear: Do not try this at home. Accountability is good for the taxpayer, but not for the tax collector.

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Biden Already Willing to Increase His $813 Billion Military Budget Request

Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said Friday that the Biden administration is ready to increase the president’s massive $813 billion military budget request for 2023 to keep up with inflation.

Biden’s request is more than $30 billion than what Congress authorized for 2022, representing a 4% increase. But with inflation reaching 8.5% in March, Congress wants to spend more.

Hicks said the administration is willing to work with Congress to create a budget that matches current inflation numbers. “Where inflation will be in September, let alone this time next year, we don’t know, but we want to work with Congress on the ‘23 budget to make sure we have the purchasing power for this program,” she said.

Hicks said if inflation soars higher than expected, the administration could always ask Congress for supplemental funds on top of the military budget.

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Oregon forces all schools — elementary and up — to put ‘menstrual products’ in boys’ bathrooms with ‘instructions on how to use’ them

Every public school in Oregon — including elementary institutions — will soon be required to provide tampons and other feminine products in boys’ bathrooms with “instructions on how to use” them.

The controversial requirement is in accordance with the state’s new Menstrual Dignity Act, signed into law by Democratic Gov. Kate Brown last year, which mandates that menstrual products be made available in “every student bathroom.”

Following the bill’s passage, the Oregon Department of Education developed and distributed a “Medical Dignity for Students” toolkit to aid local districts and set forth a phased plan for districts to meet the law’s standards and requirements.

Effective immediately, each school is required to have menstrual product dispensers in at least two bathrooms. But by June 2023, dispensers are required in every student bathroom, KGW-TV reported. The department emphasized that schools must “consider all-gender access to the products.”

Sasha Grenier, a sexual health specialist with the department, said, “This new program will help students participate actively in classes and school activities by alleviating some of the economic strain and experiences of shame that are often barriers for menstruating people accessing their education.”

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‘Misinformation Fingerprints:’ The Pentagon Awarded ‘Fact-Checking’ Org NewsGuard a $750K Contract Last Year

In yet more evidence of the federal government/Deep State’s vested interest in advancing internet censorship (or, as they call it, tackling “misinformation”), the Department of Defense awarded NewsGuard Technologies a $750,000 contract in September of 2021 for the organization’s “misinformation fingerprints” project.

NewsGuard, which has been the subject of extensive Breitbart News reporting, is an establishment-backed project that aims to “rate” news outlets, policing the internet by telling users which news sources can be trusted and which ones cannot.

According to USASpending.gov, the contract was awarded for NewsGuard’s “misinformation fingerprints” project, which it describes as a “a catalogue of known hoaxes, falsehoods and misinformation narratives that are spreading online.”

It is unclear if hoaxes embraced by the establishment, such as the notion that material found on Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation,” are in NewsGuard’s “misinformation fingerprints” database.

NewsGuard’s own co-founder, Steve Brill, spread that false claim, as did advisory board member and notorious political partisan Michael Hayden.

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US Local Governments Helped Chinese Firms With $1.7 Billion in Subsidies: Watchdog

U.S. state and local governments have provided about $1.7 billion in subsidies to Chinese companies since 2010, a trend that must be reversed, said Robert Atkinson, president of Washington-based think tank Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

“The official U.S. policy is to try to slow down China because they’re playing unfairly, if you will. So here we are trying to slow down China but at the same time, state and local governments are providing subsidies to speed up China,” Atkinson said in a recent interview with NTD.

China is known for engaging in a number of unfair trade practices, such as dumping cheap products in foreign markets, providing excessive government subsidies to Chinese companies helping them to gain market share, and stealing intellectual property (IP) and technologies. The Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property estimated in 2017 that the U.S. economy suffers an annual loss of between $225 to $600 billion from China’s IP theft each year.

The subsidy amount is tabulated by Washington-based watchdog Good Jobs First, a nonprofit that promotes corporate and government accountability. It found that China-based companies received over $1.8 billion in subsidies from U.S. government bodies from 1991 to 2020. The majority of the aid, about $1.7 billion, started flowing out of the United States in 2010.

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Biden asking Congress for $33 billion in emergency aid for Ukraine against Russian invasion

President Biden will ask Congress on Thursday for $33 billion in new funding to support Ukraine as it fights off a renewed Russian assault, while simultaneously pushing a plan to make it easier to seize and sell the assets of Russian oligarchs.

A senior administration official said the funds will ensure Ukraine has the weapons it needs to fight its Russian attackers as well as replenish the U.S.’s own stockpile of weapons that have been rushed to Kyiv.

The amount, which is a combination of U.S. military, economic and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, is expected to last through September, which is the end of the government’s fiscal year.

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