Tag: taxes

US “COVID Relief” Was Enough To Give Every Taxpayer $41,870 But We Got Peanuts Instead

President Biden just signed his sweeping $1.9 trillion spending package into law. Once this bill hits the books, total taxpayer expenditure on (ostensibly) COVID relief will hit $6 trillion—which, roughly estimated, comes out to $41,870 in spending per federal taxpayer.

Did you see anywhere near that much in benefit?

The sheer immensity of this spending is hard to grasp. For context, $6 trillion is more than one-fourth of what the US economy produces in an entire year, according to Fox Business. The COVID spending blowout is at least eight times bigger than the (inflation-adjusted) price tag of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal.”

Moreover, the COVID spending bills have all lost huge sums of money to unrelated carve-outs, politician pet projects, corporate bailouts, fraud, waste, and worse.

In the latest $1.9 trillion package, more than 90 percent of the spending is not directly related to containing COVID-19. Only 1 percent of the money, about $15 to $20 billion, is spent on vaccines. Meanwhile, hundreds of billions go to bailing out poorly managed state governments’ budget holes that predate the pandemic and $86 billion rescues failing pension plans. Meanwhile, billions more go to Obamacare expansion and subsidizing public schools long after the pandemic.

And that’s just scratching the surface.

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Cop Crushes Harmless Hippie to Death With Bulldozer for Growing Cannabis — Taxpayers Held Liable

As TFTP reported, Pennsylvania State Troopers garnered national attention following a deadly officer-involved incident whereby a man was killed by a bulldozer commandeered by one of their officers. Gregory Longenecker, 51, was run over by the bulldozer and killed as the PA State Trooper and the dozer operated by the PA Game Commission were supposedly attempting to flush him out. After police refused to hold their own accountable, Longnecker’s family is seeking justice in the form of a lawsuit.

After battling for justice for several years, it was announced this week that the state of Pennsylvania will pay $475,000 to the Longnecker estate — an insultingly small amount considering this man was crushed to death by cops in a bulldozer for growing a plant that is legal in many states.

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Congress Wants to Give the Establishment Media a Massive Handout

If there is one force in society worse than Big Tech, it’s Big Media – mainstream, establishment, and corporate media.

Yet a bill currently making its way through Congress would give a massive handout to the latter, ostensibly justified by criticism of the former.

The bill, introduced by Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI), is titled the “Journalism Competition and Preservation Act of 2019,” and it is a particularly troublesome piece of legislation, even by Democrat standards.

The title of a bill is quite deceptive. Far from promoting “competition,” the current version would instead cement the advantage of the establishment and corporate media at the expense of its competitors.

It would give Big Media companies a special exemption from antitrust law, allowing them to form a cartel that would, under normal circumstances, be illegal to create. But why should these establishment news companies be given a special exemption from antitrust law to negotiate on their own behalf something that applies only to their select few and not to all news companies and journalists? Of course, they should not.

Furthermore, there is nothing in the bill that would prevent the bigger media companies from excluding smaller companies from the cartel. If passed, there would be nothing to stop the formation of a cartel that includes CNN, NBC, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other big companies, while excluding smaller competitors in the independent media — not to mention local newspapers. Such a cartel would secure favorable rates for the former while leaving the latter in the dust.

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Bill Gates’ Global AIDS Fund Provided With $3.5 Billion in Coronavirus Stimulus Package

The coronavirus stimulus package that passed the Senate last week includes a provision to provide a $3.5 billion giveaway to Bill Gates’ Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

The $3.5 billion is tucked away onto page 613 of the American Rescue Plan.

While a paltry sum to a megabillionaire such as Gates, and paling in comparison to the bill’s other provisions, many of the billionaire critics would object to Gates being gifted with billions of dollars that he will nominally use for international projects.

Gates, one of the richest people in the world, has a net worth of over $137 billion dollars. There’s no reason to think he can’t simply fund his Global Fund project personally, with the Senate’s gift to the organization representing a small percentage of his personal wealth.

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Pentagon Announces $125 Million in Military Aid for Ukraine

On Monday, the Pentagon announced a $125 million military aid package for Ukraine. The $125 million package includes two armed Mark VI patrol boats, giving Ukraine a total of eight such vessels provided by the US.

The Pentagon said the package also includes “capabilities to enhance the lethality, command and control, and situational awareness of Ukraine’s forces.” This means additional counter-artillery radars, other tactical equipment, continued support for satellite systems, and some medical equipment.

This package is the first part of the $275 million approved by Congress for Ukraine in the 2021 fiscal year. As per the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, the additional $150 million is contingent on Ukraine reforming its military. The Pentagon said it will work with the State Department to certify “that Ukraine has made sufficient progress on key defense reforms this year.”

Since the 2014 US-backed coup in Ukraine that sparked the war in the eastern Donbas region, the US has provided Kyiv with $2 billion in military aid. Despite the controversy around President Trump and aid to Ukraine, he took a step the Obama administration was not willing to take and sent Javelin anti-tank missiles to Kyiv.

Last week, President Biden released a statement on the seventh anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and said the US would “never” accept Russian sovereignty over the peninsula. He said the US “will stand with Ukraine against Russia’s aggressive acts.”

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