Tag: taxes

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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White House Announces New Minimum Tax on Billionaires

President Joe Biden will announce a new minimum tax targeting billionaires as part of his 2023 fiscal year budget on Monday, according to the White House.

The Biden administration announced the proposal on Saturday in a fact sheet ahead of the budget release, stating that the president’s plan “rewards work, not wealth.”

“President Biden’s Billionaire Minimum Income Tax will make America’s tax code fairer and reduce the deficit by about $360 billion in just the next decade,” the fact sheet stated.

As part of his 2023 budget, Biden is asking Congress to pass legislation mandating the richest American families to pay a minimum of 20 percent on all of their income, including unrealized investment income.

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