Tag: taxes

Trump Will Slap French Wines With 100% Tariff Over France’s Digital Services Tax – Macron Is Defiant, But Wine Producers Are VERY Afraid

Tech versus Wine is the geopolitical arm-wrestle.

US President Donald J. Trump is in France for the G7 Summit and to meet French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, as you can read in 

Among the many issues that will be discussed, there is one economic war that is on the outing: Trump is demanding that France drop its tax on American tech firms or face a 100% tariff on its wine.

FOX Business reported:

“The U.S. will ‘have no choice’ but to apply the tariffs if French President Emmanuel Macron does not end its 3% levy on large digital services companies. ‘I asked him not to charge American companies, and if they do, I have no choice but to charge a 100% tariff on all champagnes and all wines coming out of France’, Trump told the New York Post in an interview. ‘All [Macron] has to do is get rid of the sales tax, and he wouldn’t have that kind of pressure’.

[…] ’The president has been unequivocally clear on digital services taxes and other forms of extortion against American tech firms’, a senior White House official told FOX Business on Monday, when reached for comment. ‘The administration is committed to using the many legal authorities at our disposal to defend American workers and businesses’.”

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Report: Obama Center Contractors Owed Millions and Safety Net to Spare Taxpayers Not Funded

Taxpayers could be left with a big tab if the Obama Presidential Center experiences financial trouble because its foundation has not yet established a promised $470 million safety net to guard against a public bailout.

That according a Fox News Digital investigation of the center’s finances as Chicago awaits its grand opening on Friday, June 19.

The outlet’s investigation, published Saturday, found that “multiple contractors and subcontractors claiming losses ranging from hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions on the project, with some alleging they remain locked in payment disputes and face financial ruin…”

In an agreement with the city of Chicago, the foundation promised to create the endowment, essentially a reserve of cash, as part of its 99-year sweetheart deal to to control the publicly owned 19.3-acre section of Jackson Park for a one-time payment of just $10.

The foundation had deposited just $1 million into the reserve fund in 2021, but the balance has largely not changed according to public filings, the outlet reported.

The shortfall is not the first chapter in matters not going as expected for the ambitious project, which also included handsome salaries for former Obama presidential aids.

As Breitbart News reported last November:

The Obama library was originally estimated to cost $300 million, before the budget was revised upward to $500 million in 2017, and then further up to $700 million in 2021. Now, in a financial disclosure form, it appears it will cost much closer to $850 million to construct the mammoth grey monolith building in the South Side of Chicago in Jackson Park.

Executives at the Obama Foundation “are among the best paid of all cultural centers in the nation, with CEO Valerie Jarrett paid $740,000 last year.” Robin Cohen, the executive vice president of the foundation, earned over $600,000 and Tina Chen, the group’s chief legal and people officer, earned $425,000.

Called a “center,” rather than a presidential library, as  Obama’s presidential records will be held by the National Archives in Maryland.

No final cost has been publicly released for the Chicago project. It reportedly has been entirely funded by private donations from individuals, corporations and other foundations.

“One of their core promises was they were supposed to create an endowment as basically an insurance policy so the taxpayers wouldn’t get stuck with the bill,” Illinois GOP Chair Robert Grogan told Fox News Digital.

He continued, “They promised hundreds of millions of dollars for it. It’s still sitting at the $1 million mark [where it stood] when they opened it up. So I don’t believe that they’ve kept that promise.”

Grogan said reports that contractors and subcontractors remain locked in payment disputes make the underfunded safety net more problematic.

The outlet’s investigation identified multiple construction firms that were claiming losses “from hundreds of thousands of dollars to tens of millions.”

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Gonorrhea Rates Are Soaring In NYC: Mamdani Rushes Free Chocolate Condoms To Citizens Of Big Apple!

So what’s the priority of New York City’s Mamdani administration these days?

FrontPage Magazine reported:

Gonorrhea rates in New York City have more than doubled in a decade and syphilis is ‘surging’ statewide. Mamdani’s Department of Health has responded to this crisis by rushing a free supply of lubricant and chocolate flavored condoms.

Beam me up, Scotty.

FPM quoted NYC Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Helen Arteaga as stating,

“Providing high-quality sexual and reproductive healthcare services is a priority for the Mamdani Administration. Making safer sex products more accessible to the most affected and vulnerable communities is a critical public health need.”

Well, it’s good to have priorities. But are chocolate-flavored condoms safer than regular old garden-variety ones? I’m guessing not, but I couldn’t tell you from experience.

FPM again:

Councilwoman Pierina Sanchez, a Mamdani ally, explained that the free chocolate flavored condoms were necessary because “inequities persist among women, low-income households, and Black and Latino New Yorkers.

Women, low-income households, and black and Latino New Yorkers are adversely and disproportionately affected by a relative dearth of chocolate-flavored condoms? Is New York a den of iniquity inequity?

Unfortunately for virtue-signaling do-gooders, the free chocolaty condoms are coming from Karex, a Malaysian company that is apparently the largest manufacturer of condoms on Earth.

Why is this unfortunate?

According to The Telegraph, some Karex workers said they are put up in cramped and undignified conditions, with as many as a dozen housed in damp and unhygienic dormitories.

Workers at one site are allegedly granted just half of a steel bunkbed, with no mattress — and only have access to a filthy, broken toilet. And for these “amenities,” about 12 dollars a month is deducted from their wages. The Telegraph reported that one Karex employee said “sometimes poisonous snakes come in” to the dorms.

Not sure if that’s a blessing or a curse.

“Forget the crime! Forget the fact that the city is broke! Chocolate condoms for everybody!” does not seem like a winning slogan for Mamdani … but what do I know?

Ask not what you can do for the city, ask what Mayor Mamdani can do to — I mean for — you!”

I’m sure someone in the Mamdani administration will tout the mayor’s actions thusly: “These delectable prophylactics will be generously distributed, free of cost, to all genders with a penis … and to all those that love them! Mayor Mamdani is hard at work to make your lives better!”

Considering the shape the city is in, this may be the biggest cover up in the history of the Big Apple.

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CDC Awards Pfizer $1.24 Billion For COVID Vaccines For Kids And Adults

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) recent decision to award Pfizer $1.24 billion for COVID-19 vaccines has renewed debate over the government’s continued investment in mRNA technology.

The contracts, awarded on June 1, include about $735.7 million for pediatric COVID-19 vaccines and nearly $505.3 million for adult doses for fiscal year 2026-2027.

Critics say the funding reflects a continued commitment to vaccines associated with high rates of serious injuries and deaths, and a lack of adequate safety testing and monitoring.

Public health experts argue the investment is necessary to protect vulnerable populations and prepare for future outbreaks.

The latest contracts come as mRNA technology expands beyond COVID-19.

A recent review in Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics found that mRNA-based therapeutics were identified in more than 550 registered clinical trials. The authors reported that more than 90% of the projects involved mRNA vaccines and that most products remain in early-stage testing before broader adoption.

‘Unnecessary and often harmful injections’

The procurement of monetary resources signals that federal officials intend to continue investing heavily in mRNA technology despite declining public demand and ongoing controversy over vaccine safety monitoring, critics say.

Jeffrey Tucker, president and founder of the Brownstone Institute, told The Defender there was “no scientific justification” or “market demand” for the latest mRNA vaccine funding.

“This raises a serious question concerning how these captured agencies really work,” Tucker said. “We are talking about vast amounts of tax dollars flowing to support unnecessary and often harmful injections.”

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Illinois Just Adopted a Half-Baked Scheme to Tax Social Media

Government officials may not fully understand what social media is, but they damned well plan to do something about the ills it may or may not inflict on our society. They’ll happily start with extracting some money from the companies behind social media, though it may take a few tries, given politicians’ complete lack of understanding of the thing they want to tax. Illinois is a good example, where legislators just passed an attempt at a social media levy that runs afoul of its authors’ ignorance.

“A nearly $56 billion state spending plan is headed to Gov. JB Pritzker’s desk after the Democratic-controlled Illinois legislature approved it in the early-morning hours of another overtime spring session,” the Chicago Tribune‘s Dan Petrella noted last week. “The biggest source of new revenue is a new per-user tax on large social media companies.”

The governor’s signature is essentially guaranteed, since the budget proposal and social media tax originated in his office. Pritzker hopes to raise $200 million per year from the scheme. But the plan faces challenges, not least of which is that a similar tax passed by Chicago is tied up in court. Another and potentially more serious problem, as pointed out by Dan Levin of Straight Arrow News, is that “one of the elements that remains the most unclear is what exactly is being taxed? The language in the bill does not answer that question directly and is, frankly, confusing.”

As passed, the budget plan imposes a tax on social media companies based on “the average number of monthly users of the platform located in the State of Illinois.” Platforms with 100,000 to 500,000 “Illinois users” will have to pay $0.10 per user each month; platforms with 500,000 to 1 million “shall pay $40,000, plus $0.25 per month” per user; and platforms with over 1 million users will pay $165,000, plus $0.50 per user, each month on the number of users over 1 million. A provision adjusts the tax for inflation starting in 2028. Companies that fail or refuse to pay will be punished with a fee of “an amount equal to 100% of the unpaid fee and any penalties each month until the fee is paid.”

That’s an awful lot of numbers backed by dire threats. But it still doesn’t clarify how to tally up the bill.

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As Ukraine Runs Out Of Men, To Keep War Going, Zelenskiy To Create Mercenary Army – What Could Go Wrong?

As the number of fighting-age men dwindles in Ukraine, as the Christian ethnocide plays out, Ukraine is launching a major recruitment drive that will allow private companies to source, screen, and deliver foreign fighters to its armed forces, with the goal of filling 30 to 50 percent of its assault and infantry positions with non-Ukrainians. This will allow globalist forces to keep the war going at any cost.

There has also been talk of enabling mass migration of third world men into the area.

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian men have deserted this year, and many of those have fled the country. Daily videos of violent bounty hunters clashing with civilians are appearing online as the war loses the support of more and more of the Ukrainian people.

Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov announced the target on Thursday, describing the initiative as a way to bolster combat units and preserve Ukrainian lives. Commander-in-Chief Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi echoed the statement, calling the plan “the first stage of a large-scale transformation” of the military.

Under the new system, private recruiting firms will handle the search, vetting, selection, and logistics for foreign volunteers. Companies will be compensated for each recruit who successfully signs a contract and joins a unit. Foreign fighters will serve under the same terms, pay, and conditions as Ukrainian personnel, without a separate foreign legion structure.“

We are opening the market for recruiting foreigners to strengthen combat units and save the lives of Ukrainian military personnel,” Fedorov said.

The recruitment effort forms the centerpiece of a broader military service overhaul announced by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the same day following a meeting with Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko, Fedorov, and Finance Minister Serhii Marchenko, writes SOFX.

As part of the reforms, minimum pay for rear-area personnel will rise to 30,000 hryvnias (approximately $670) per month — double the previous floor. Frontline infantry will receive 300,000 hryvnias (roughly $6,700) for a month of service, which Fedorov described as the highest infantry compensation rate globally. With combat bonuses, total monthly pay for assault troops can exceed $10,000 (about 460,000 hryvnias).

New contracts will last 10 to 14 months for infantry and assault roles, and 24 months for specialized units such as drone operators, artillery crews, and electronic-warfare personnel. Each contract will be followed by a demobilization window exempting soldiers from further mobilization.

Fedorov indicated that the army plans to begin discharging its longest-serving and most combat-experienced troops before the end of 2026, balancing the arrival of foreign recruits with the release of exhausted Ukrainian personnel.

Ukraine’s military has faced significant manpower challenges. Many long-serving troops are battle-weary with no fixed end to their service, while recent mobilization efforts have struggled to attract motivated infantry. A 2025 attempt to recruit 18-to-24-year-olds with competitive pay and short contracts saw limited uptake for ground combat roles, succeeding mainly in high-demand technical specialties like drone units.

Foreign volunteers already play a substantial role in frontline infantry duties, particularly fighters from Latin America. Colombians form one of the largest foreign contingents, with many deployed after minimal training. The Atlantic Council has estimated that 300 to 550 Colombians have been killed in Ukraine — the highest toll among foreign nationalities — with most losses attributed to FPV and kamikaze drones targeting infantry positions.

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America the Unfree—Home of the Policed, Surveilled and Occupied

“I love the inflation.”—Donald Trump (June 2026)

“I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody.”—Donald Trump (May 2026)

America has become an occupied nation.

Not by one invading army, but by many occupying powers: the police state, the surveillance state, the war state, the corporate state, the foreign influence machine, and a ruling class that treats the American people as little more than collateral damage in its pursuit of power, profit and control.

We have been policed, surveilled, taxed, indebted, manipulated, censored, tracked, searched, silenced and sold out.

Foreign powers are buying up our farmland, buying favor with the Trump family, weaseling their way into the White House, dictating national policy, and now—with the backing of the Trump administration and bipartisan support in Congress—one of America’s closest partners-in-crime may soon gain even greater access to U.S. intelligence and surveillance capabilities.

This is what we have come to.

The swamp under President Trump has taken on a decidedly foreign flavor: any nation with enough money, leverage or strategic value to enrich the Trump family can now get its hands on a piece of the American pie—all the while, the American people continue to struggle to survive Trump’s self-enrichment schemes, broken promises, endless wars, militarized streets and vanity projects.

We’re being sold to the highest bidders, and still nothing is being done to protect us.

Ordinary Americans are told there is not enough money to honor the government’s promises to them. Social Security’s retirement trust fund is now projected to run short in late 2032, at which point retirees could face an automatic 22 percent cut in scheduled benefits if Congress fails to act. Medicare’s hospital insurance fund is projected to run short the following year. Seniors, the disabled, working families and the poor are told to brace for sacrifice.

But there is always money for war.

There is always money for surveillance.

There is always money for police-state crackdowns, border militarization, private contractors, foreign aid, weapons systems, tax breaks for the wealthy, slush funds for political allies, and spectacles of imperial excess.

While Americans worry about groceries, rent, medical bills, job security, retirement and whether their children will inherit anything resembling freedom, the White House is being turned into a playground for power and celebrity. Trump’s June 14 birthday celebration is reportedly set to include a UFC fight on the White House lawn, with weigh-ins at the Lincoln Memorial, transforming public symbols of sacrifice, liberty and national memory into props for one man’s vanity show.

This, too, is occupation.

Not merely the occupation of land, but the occupation of the public imagination. The occupation of the people’s institutions. The occupation of the Constitution itself.

The contrast could not be more obscene.

On June 8, 1789, James Madison rose in the House of Representatives to introduce amendments to the Constitution that would become the Bill of Rights. Madison and the founding generation fought to bind the government down. They understood that written limits on government power were not optional. They were essential.

Today’s rulers are fighting to free the government from those restraints.

They want fewer limits on surveillance, police power, presidential immunity, war-making, foreign entanglements, secrecy, corruption, and the ability of the rich and powerful to buy their way into the machinery of government.

That is how far we have fallen.

From a Bill of Rights, we have descended into a bill of sale.

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Lawmakers Consider Hiking Fees for Filling Prescriptions

Legislation that would potentially increase New York’s pharmacy costs by hundreds of millions of dollars annually is moving toward final passage in Albany’s end-of-session rush.

The bill would require the companies that process prescription drug claims on behalf of most health plans – known as pharmacy benefit managers or PBMs – to pay pharmacies minimum prices for drugs, including a dispensing fee of $10.18 for each prescription filled.

That represents a roughly 400 percent increase over current dispensing fees, which average about $2, which would add about $570 million per year to drug costs for health plans, employers and consumers, according to an estimate from the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, which represents PBMs.

Sponsored by Assemblyman John McDonald of Albany County, a former pharmacy owner, and Sen. James Skoufis of Orange County, the so-called Patient Access to Pharmacy Act passed the Senate last week by a vote of 58-2.

In the Assembly, the bill moved through the Ways and Means and Rules committees on Thursday, setting it up for a possible vote by the full house before lawmakers adjourn for the summer, which is scheduled to happen Friday.

The Senate previously approved the legislation at the end of last year’s session, but it was never taken up by the Assembly.

The bill mirrors a regulatory proposal put forward by the Department of Financial Services in the fall of 2023 – but which the department dropped in the face of widespread opposition from insurers, employers and labor unions.

In response to that opposition, the bill’s sponsors amended the bill to exempt the “collectively bargained” health plans covering union members. It also does not apply to Medicare or the “self-insured” health plans offered by most large employers, which are exempt from state regulation by federal law.

As a result, the bill primarily targets the health plans purchased from insurance companies by small and medium-sized employers – where it will add to premium costs that are already among the highest in the U.S.

Critics have also argued that the mandate would apply to the state-run Essential Plan and Child Health Plus, although Skoufis said that had not been the intent.

The bill would not affect the state’s Medicaid health plan for the low-income and disabled, because it already pays a dispensing fee of $10.18 – which is the basis for the fee in the McDonald-Skoufis legislation.

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Gabbard releases intelligence showing federal government has funded 120 biolabs in 30 countries

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced Friday that she is releasing never-before-seen documents concerning the U.S. government funding 120 biolabs in 30 countries, including Ukraine.

“In support of President Trump‘s Executive Order to end federal funding of dangerous gain of function research around the world, and increase transparency and accountability, ODNI [Office of the Director of National Intelligence] will continue working with partners across the administration to identify where these labs are, what pathogens they contain, and what ‘research’ is being conducted,” Gabbard said in X.

In Friday’s announcement, Gabbard said that the Intelligence Community had previously warned that a biolab funded by the U.S. existed in Ukraine and likely contained dangerous pathogens. As the war with Russia continues, the labs are vulnerable to Russian attack, seizure or damage.

Many of the 120 labs engaged in research involving highly contagious pathogens and gain-of-function research with little oversight, according to the ODNI release.

“Despite the obvious potential for catastrophic global impact research on dangerous pathogens in biolabs can have, politicians, so-called health professionals like Dr. [Anthony] Fauci, and entities within the Biden administration’s national security team lied to the American people about the existence of U.S.-funded and supported biolabs, and threatened those who attempted to expose the truth,” Gabbard said in a statement.

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Jamaican National in North Carolina Indicted for Brazen Sham Marriage Immigration Fraud — Used Fake Union to Fast-Track U.S. Citizenship Then Scam VA Disability Benefits by Claiming Phantom Husband as Dependent

A 26-year-old Jamaican national living in Charlotte has been federally indicted for a calculated, multi-year scheme involving sham marriage immigration fraud, lying under oath to obtain U.S. citizenship, and then using that fraudulently acquired status to improperly claim VA disability benefits by listing her never-cohabitating “husband” as a dependent.

Britney Sherene Curry entered the United States on a six-month B-2 tourist visa on August 27, 2015 and promptly overstayed it by more than a decade. Rather than face deportation, she allegedly paid a third party to arrange a fraudulent marriage to a U.S. citizen.

According to the Department of Justice, Curry and her “husband” met for the first time on their wedding day and never lived together before or after the marriage.

After the sham marriage, Curry became a lawful permanent resident. That status allowed her to enlist in the U.S. Army, which in turn let her apply for naturalization almost immediately, bypassing the normal three-year waiting period for spouses of citizens.

She allegedly lied under penalty of perjury on immigration documents about the legitimacy of her marriage. Once naturalized, she even petitioned for her mother to receive lawful permanent resident status.

Less than two years after enlisting, Curry received a medical discharge from the Army. She then filed for VA disability compensation and listed her sham husband as a dependent to boost her monthly benefits, despite never having lived with him and not having seen him since before she joined the military.

According to the DOJ, “Under federal statutes, Curry is subject to a sentence of up to 20 years in prison on the wire fraud and mail fraud charges, up to 10 years in prison on some of the immigration charges, and faces the possibility of being denaturalized. The maximum statutory sentence is prescribed by Congress and is provided here for informational purposes, as the sentencing of the defendant will be determined by the court based on the advisory sentencing guidelines and other statutory factors.”

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