Tag: taxes

What’s Going on in Gwangju, South Korea? Leftist Stronghold Honors Communist Composer Who Defected During War to North Korean Hellhole

Gwangju, South Korea has a long history of voting for left-leaning politicians and is the main hub for the far-left Democratic party of Korea.

For years, Gwangju has built an extensive public culture of commemoration around composer Jeong Yul-seong.

Jeong joined the Chinese Communist Party. He composed the March of the Eighth Route Army, which later became the official military anthem of China’s People’s Liberation Army.

Jeong Yul-seong also composed military music for North Korea and returned to North Korea during the Korean War with the Chinese People’s Volunteers — the Chinese forces fighting South Korea and the United Nations Command.

Despite that history, his legacy in Gwangju has been honored for decades.

His name was placed on a road.

A bust was erected in his honor.

A street exhibition and memorial facilities were created.

His birthplace was restored.

Gwangju pursued a Jeong Yul-seong historical park project costing approximately KRW 4.5 billion, roughly $3.3 million.

Music festivals and other cultural projects were organized around his legacy.

And Korean children were brought into this commemorative system through the Jeong Yul-seong Children’s Song Competition.

The attached footage shows just how far this went.

Korean children perform Jeong’s songs. Chinese-language performances appear on stage. An award is presented in the name of the Confucius Institute at Honam University. Chinese participants praise Jeong’s status in Chinese music history, while an event official speaks about protecting his reputation.

The Confucius Institute’s role went beyond appearing on an award.

The children’s competition was jointly organized with the Confucius Institute at Honam University. Winning Korean elementary-school students were given opportunities to travel to China, where they performed Jeong Yul-seong’s songs, including in Chinese.

Chinese state media also took notice of these activities.

China’s interest is entirely understandable. Jeong Yul-seong occupies an important place in China’s communist revolutionary and military history.

What is extraordinary is the degree to which public institutions in a U.S.-allied South Korea helped transform that same figure into a local cultural icon.

The Chinese government’s interest extended beyond cultural events.

After Jeong’s bust in Gwangju was damaged, the Chinese Consulate General in Gwangju requested its restoration. In 2025, the local district government decided to restore it, reportedly citing diplomatic relations with China among its considerations.

The symbolism is remarkable.

A South Korean local government had erected and maintained a memorial to a figure celebrated for his contribution to Communist China’s military tradition. When the memorial was damaged, representatives of the Chinese government asked that it be restored, and the Korean local government agreed.

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B.C. government has given $8.7M to group hosting ‘jockstrap’ dance parties

Have you ever heard of the HIM (Health Initiative for Men) Society?

Founded as a grassroots organization focused on gay men’s health, HIM entered into a formal contract with Vancouver Coastal Health in 2009 to deliver health-promotion services.

Today, it says it provides health-based programs and services for gay, bisexual and queer men and gender-diverse people. Over the past seven years, according to HIM’s CRA filings, the organization has received more than $8.7 million from provincial and federal government sources.

So, what exactly are taxpayers helping fund?

For one, HIM hosts something called the “HIMBO Jock Tea Dance,” where attendees are invited to show up in jockstraps and “lube up” their thighs for the event.

Culture Guard, a political advocacy organization that says it works to protect traditional family values and ways of life, first put HIM on my radar. Culture Guard sent a public accountability letter to Premier David Eby, asking why his government continues to provide substantial public funding to a registered charity involved in events like the “HIMBO Jock Tea Dance.” 

Let me show you some of what Culture Guard highlighted, using screenshots from HIM’s own website.

For example, there is their “QUEERLY DESIGNED & LOCALLY MADE” merchandise. HIM’s website describes it as the “horny lovechild” of HIM. And then there is their “Collab,” inviting adult-content creators to sit down together and build community.

HIM describes some of these activities through the lens of HIV prevention. On its own website, the organization says: “Connectedness is HIV prevention,” and “Dancing together is HIV prevention.” It has continued to receive substantial public funding through provincial health authorities, such as Vancouver Coastal Health, Interior Health, and Fraser Health, as well as from the federal government.

Like Culture Guard’s letter to Premier Eby, I too have reached out to clarify whether your tax dollars have actually gone to preventing disease or to funding sexually charged jockstrap dance parties and adult content communities for the gay and queer men in BC.

I have not yet heard back at this time.

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Socialism Simplified: A System Where Government Uses Your Money To Solve Everyone Else’s Problems

They are coming for your money, and they have a ton of momentum right now. Democratic Socialists are winning election after election by promising free stuff, but of course free stuff is never actually free. Somewhere along the way, someone has to pay for it. If you find yourself protectively reaching for your wallet as you read this, I don’t blame you one bit. Socialism is a system where the government uses your money to solve everyone else’s problems. Unfortunately, it is also a system that is becoming increasingly popular among our young adults.

In a previous article, I noted that a poll that was taken in 2025 found that a whopping 62 percent of U.S. adults under the age of 30 now have a positive view of socialism.

That should chill you to the core.

Meanwhile, Americans view capitalism less favorably than they once did…

  • Fewer than half of Americans say capitalism is working even “somewhat” well — down from 60% about a decade ago, according to a June Wall Street Journal-NORC poll.
  • 61% of Americans said they were bothered “a lot” by the feeling that the wealthy don’t pay their fair share in taxes, per a Pew Research Center poll in January. That included 41% of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents.
  • The same poll showed another 60% overall — and 42% of Republican-inclined voters — said the same about some corporations paying their fair share.
  • And views of big business went from 19 points positive in 2012 (58%-39%) to 25 points negative last year (37%-62%), according to the Gallup data.

This is crazy.

So why is this happening?

Well, the truth is that a large portion of the population is very frustrated with the economy.

The rising cost of living has been absolutely eviscerating the middle class, and many young adults consider homeownership to be completely out of reach because home prices are so absurdly high.

When someone comes along and starts promising all sorts of free stuff in this very harsh economic environment, it can be very seductive.

But if the Democratic Socialists of America were actually able to implement their entire agenda on the federal level, it would more than triple federal spending…

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) propose new spending that could more than triple federal outlays. They propose the government pay for health care, housing, higher education, and electricity. Jobs are government-guaranteed, retirement benefits are expanded, paid family leave is universal, fossil fuels are eliminated, and reparations are paid.

The DSA platform claims that the bill for all this will be sent to “the richest individuals and corporations.” Tally up that bill, and it ballparks between $71 trillion and $212 trillion in new spending over the next decade. Confiscating every dollar of high-end wealth and corporate profits would cover only a fraction of those costs. The DSA agenda necessitates high taxes on middle-class Americans.

If you took every penny from every billionaire in America, that would only account for 8.4 trillion dollars.

So where is the rest of the money going to come from?

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Ukrainian Prosecutor Joe Biden FIRED for Investigating Hunter’s Burisma Just Exposed $350 BILLION in U.S. Taxpayer Dollars Meant for Ukraine Going Straight to Globalist Networks

Former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, the official Joe Biden publicly threatened and forced out of office in 2016, claims in his book Biden’s Corruption and War: The True Story of the 1 Billion Dollar Prosecutor that hundreds of billions of American taxpayer dollars connected to Ukraine were recycled through political interests and “globalist networks.”

According to a Blaze Media column citing Shokin’s first-person account, massive sums of U.S. aid intended for Ukraine were recycled through political and globalist networks.

He alleges $350 billion in American taxpayer money was diverted into these opaque channels amid the chaos of war. Arms deals were tainted by corruption.

Wartime disorder allegedly facilitated trafficking of Ukrainian women and children. The book paints the conflict itself as a vehicle for enrichment and influence far beyond the battlefield.

Shokin was the prosecutor general investigating Mykola Zlochevsky and Burisma Holdings, the same corrupt energy company that put Hunter Biden on its board and paid him an eye-watering salary for “expertise” he didn’t have.

Shokin says his office was moving against the company, seizing assets, and getting uncomfortably close to the Biden family connections. That’s when the pressure campaign from Washington intensified.

Joe Biden later famously boasted about it on video: he told Ukrainian officials they weren’t getting the billion dollars unless the prosecutor was gone. “Well, son of a bitch, he got fired.”

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Figures. Southern Poverty Law Center Executive Was Sleeping with Prominent Racist and Paid His Bills

Sleeping with the Enemy.
SPLC executive hated racists so much that she started sleeping with one and paid his bills.

Who knew that being a top racist could get you such sweet perks?

You can’t make this up.

As reported earlier, former Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) CFO Heidi Beirich was arrested in California and hit with fraud charges on Wednesday.

Beirich oversaw the payments to the informants inside the KKK and other white supremacist groups receiving money from the SPLC.

Here is Heidi speaking out against the dangerous hate groups in America, from the AP archives.

Heidi was so upset about the dangerous racists that she started sleeping with one racist and paid his rent.

According to Grok: F-9 was affiliated with the neo-Nazi National Alliance and worked as an SPLC informant for more than 20 years. At the SPLC’s direction, F-9 infiltrated the group. While receiving secret payments, F-9 also fundraised for the National Alliance and helped it carry out its activities.

Beirich paid F-9 more than $1.2 million in donor funds (most funneled through a shell account called “Tech Writers”). The broader informant program is alleged to have involved over $4 million total across multiple sources.

The indictment states Beirich (identified earlier as “Employee-2,” the person who became Director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project) oversaw payments to F-9. It further alleges she and F-9 were in a romantic relationship, shared a house and two bank accounts, and that roughly $140,000 of the donor money deposited into those joint accounts (about 66% of all deposits there between 2015 and 2021) was used for their personal living expenses.

The SPLC led donors to believe their donations would be used to “dismantle” racist groups… Or, maybe not.

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Trump State Department Axes Biden-Era Initiative That Sought to Spread DEI Around the World

Trump administration reforms have ended efforts to turn the State Department into a DEI sales force.

Biden-era guidelines that ordered diplomats to push a diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility policies agenda on foreign governments have been scrapped, according to Fox News.

“Under the Trump Administration, America’s diplomats are tasked with advocating for our national interests on the world stage — not demonstrating adherence to woke political dogmas,” State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said.

“The State Department is implementing sweeping reforms to the Foreign Service to prioritize merit, refocus training on tangible diplomatic skills, and prepare our nation’s diplomats to deliver America’s answer to our most pressing challenges,” he said.

Biden administration rules spoke of having State Department leaders “raise social inclusion, racial/gender equity, disability, and LGBTQI+ issues with high-level host country interlocutors, especially in countries where these issues are problematic.”

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Canadian families now spend more on taxes than food, housing and clothing combined: Fraser Institute

The average Canadian family is now handing over nearly 42% of its income in taxes, more than it spends on food, housing and clothing combined, according to a new Fraser Institute study.

The think tank’s 2026 edition of its Canadian Consumer Tax Index, released Thursday, estimates the average Canadian family earned $121,111 in 2025 and paid $50,721 in total taxes, equivalent to 41.9% of its income.

By comparison, food, shelter and clothing combined consumed 36% of the average family’s income.

The study includes more than just income taxes in its calculation. It measures the total tax burden imposed on Canadian families, including income, payroll, sales, property, fuel, carbon, alcohol and other taxes paid directly or indirectly.

The Fraser Institute says the tax burden has grown substantially faster than the cost of basic necessities over the past six decades.

Since 1961, the average family’s total tax bill has increased 2,928%, compared with a 2,349% increase in shelter costs, a 952% increase in food costs and a 526% increase in clothing costs.

Taxes have also increased more than three times as quickly as the Consumer Price Index, which rose 946% over the same period.

The contrast with 1961 is particularly stark.

That year, the average Canadian family earned $5,000 and paid $1,675, or 33.5% of its income, in taxes. Basic necessities consumed 56.5% of family income.

Today, those proportions have effectively reversed, with taxes consuming a substantially larger share of family budgets while necessities take a smaller share.

The report comes as Canadian households continue to struggle with affordability, housing costs and debt.

The Fraser Institute’s findings also follow new federal insolvency figures showing 150,505 Canadians and businesses filed for insolvency during the 12 months ending in June 2026, putting filings near levels last experienced around the aftermath of the global financial crisis.

The study was authored by Fraser Institute analysts Grady Munro and Jake Fuss.

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PBS broadcaster loses access to 50TB of data comprising 70 years of TV history after contracted cloud storage vendor goes defunct — public TV channel sues Iron Mountain data center, which hosts archival materials, to ensure preservation

Nine PBS is afraid that it will lose over 70 years of archival materials and programming after its contracted cloud storage vendor has apparently gone out of business. According to Current, the channel used Open Source Storage, or OSS, for storing over 50TB of data — but it suddenly lost access to its data earlier this year. Nine PBS has been working with OSS and its predecessor since 2019 and intended to renew its contract on March 6 of this year. The company never responded and abruptly cut off the station’s data access even though it still had 30 days to retrieve its data after the contract ended.

The station dug a little bit deeper when it discovered that the OSS website no longer existed and was listed as delinquent under the Colorado Secretary of State. It also discovered that OSS utilized Iron Mountain’s services, so it sent a demand letter to the latter to preserve its data and to “pay any reasonable costs associated with its demand.” At the time, Iron Mountain did not confirm or deny that it possessed Nine PBS’ data.

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New York Governor Kathy Hochul BRAGS About Spending Millions of Tax Dollars on Legal Bills for Illegal Immigrant Children

The New York Post just did a story about how New York’s Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul is spending upwards of $7 million in taxpayer dollars on the legal bills of illegal immigrant youths in the state.

When the Post promoted the story on Twitter/X, Hochul jumped in and bragged about it.

Why is it that every single Democrat is so determined to let the public know that they care more about people in the country illegally than they do about American citizens?

This is the story from the New York Post:

Hochul shells out over $7M to cover legal bills for 1,400 migrant children in NY

Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the Empire State will be shelling out over $7 million to cover the legal bills for more than 1,000 unaccompanied migrant children across New York.

The $7.25 million in funding will cover an estimated 1,400 migrant kids facing removal proceedings, including about 250 in detention, the governor said at a press conference in Manhattan alongside Mayor Zohran Mamdani and state Attorney General Letitia James.

The announcement came after the Trump administration let its contract with a network of about 100 providers working with migrant kids nationwide lapse in July.

“It’s cruel. It’s illegal. And for nearly two decades our federal government required by law that these children be protected when they cross the border,” Hochul railed.

The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, passed during President George W. Bush’s tenure, required the US government to provide legal representation for kids in deportation proceedings.

Children caught crossing into the US alone are generally entrusted to the federal government and placed in the care of an adult sponsor, typically a parent, relative or family friend by the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

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REPORT: After Billions Upon Billions in Spending, California’s High Speed Rail Program May Run Out of Money by the End of 2027

The high-speed rail program that California has been working on for years and which has already cost billions of dollars, may run out of money as early as the end of 2027, according to new reports.

Has there ever been a greater example of the inefficiency of government to build things?

They have been at this for years and hardly any tracks have even been laid. At what point to they just give it up already?

The New York Post reports:

Gavin Newsom’s bullet train barreling toward financial cliff as cash could run dry in 2027

California’s bullet train could have a new end point: Brokeville, USA.

The state’s beleaguered high-speed rail line is once again careening toward a financial cliff, as a new report — delivered last month to Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislators — says the project could run out of cash by the end of next year.

The Office of the Inspector General warned that the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s funds could dry up as soon as December 2027 unless it secures financing — and the authority would need to borrow as much as $9.5 billion over five years just to keep construction on schedule.

Inspector General Benjamin Belnap’s report noted that high-speed rail officials have “obscured basic facts about the project, hindering lawmakers’ ability to provide effective oversight of the project.”

State Sen. Tony Strickland (R-Huntington Beach), who previously called the bullet train “the most wasteful government project in probably world history,” said on Tuesday that the warning of empty coffers by the end of 2027 was “no surprise.”

“During the informational hearing this spring, both the nonpartisan [Legislative Analyst’s Office] and the Inspector General were unable to identify a reliable funding source for high-speed rail,” Strickland told The Post.

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