Tag: taxes

UK Announces Tax Hikes on Savings and Property Income as Welfare Spending Rises

The left-wing Labour Party government will raise fresh taxes on savings and property income as spending on welfare and foreign subsidies will continue to grow, recently installed Chancellor John Healey told the House of Commons on Wednesday.

Unveiling his autumn budget, Chancellor Healey said that he would be increasing tax rates on income made from savings and property by two per cent starting in April to 24 per cent, 44 per cent, and 49 per cent depending on income level.

“I am increasing the rates of tax on income from property and savings by a further two percentage points from April 2027, with no change to tax on income from dividends and tax on income from employment,” he said. The Chancellor also said that he would be increasing tax on bank profits over £100 million ($133m) from three to six per cent.

Yet, Healey did not take the opportunity to slash welfare spending, which is now predicted to reach £431.3 billion ($574bn) per year by 2031, The Telegraph reported.

This comes as estimates forecast that direct welfare payments to migrants will hit £21 billion ($28.5bn) a year by 2029, and Reform UK has predicted the cumulative lifetime cost of the so-called Boriswave migrants who arrived between 2020 and 2024 will be £622.5 billion ($828bn) for British taxpayers.

In addition to ploughing more money into Britain’s ballooning welfare state — and thus into the pockets of many recently arrived foreigners — Chancellor Healey also announced a further £10 billion ($13.3bn) in British support for Ukraine in economic and military aid

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Massachusetts Senate Brags About Blocking ICE and Providing Financial Aid to Illegal Aliens

The state Senate of Massachusetts is openly boasting about how it ensured financial aid and in-state tuition for illegal aliens, along with anti-ICE legislation and programs to import more foreign healthcare workers.

Naturally, the state Senate’s Facebook account did not refer to any individuals as illegal aliens, but it did emphasize that it was including immigrants of any status in its special privileges for Massachusetts community college students. This means that the state Senate, which Democrats control, is explicitly affirming that it violates federal laws not only by protecting illegal aliens from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but also by granting them taxpayer-funded privileges that are supposed to be exclusive to in-state citizen residents.

The Facebook post on Wednesday said, “In Massachusetts, we know that our immigrant community makes us stronger.  On National Immigrants Day, we celebrate their contributions, ingenuity, and bravery. We also reaffirm our commitment to equity and ensuring our state is a safe and welcoming place to live for everyone.  #NationalImmigrantsDay #OpportunityForAll.”

If you look at the screenshot below that Libs of TikTok put on X, you can see that the Massachusetts state Senate claimed ICE is not allowed to go to so-called sensitive places, which would include churches and schools. Of course, Massachusetts Democrats do not have the power to ban ICE. In fact, federal law explicitly criminalizes interference with federal immigration officers’ operations (see 18 U.S. Code § 118 and 8 U.S. Code § 1324). So, technically speaking, the state Senate’s majority has just confirmed that its members are all complicit in illegal activities.

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Their Town Has No High School, but Vermont Won’t Fund Their Catholic Choice

The Bishop family lives in a Vermont school district without a high school. Their daughter still needs an education, so they chose Mount St. Joseph Academy, a Catholic high school. Now they’re challenging the government’s refusal to help pay her tuition through a program designed for families whose districts lack a school.

The family filed a federal lawsuit on October 27 challenging its exclusion from Vermont’s Town Tuition and Dual Enrollment programs. Their attorneys also contend that their daughter qualified for a grandfather provision, but the district refused to honor it. Those allegations put a practical question before the court: What educational help can a family actually use?

From Alliance Defending Freedom:

The Bishop family, represented by ADF attorneys, lives in the Barstow Unified Union School District, which doesn’t have a high school, so they chose to send their daughter to a Catholic school, Mount St. Joseph Academy. Government officials, however, denied the family’s request for Town Tuition funding because Act 73 eliminates all religious schools from the Town Tuition Program. Plus, the Barstow Unified School District refused to grandfather the Bishops’ daughter into the tuition program even though she met the requirements of the law.

Additionally, Vermont’s Dual Enrollment Program allows high school students to take college courses at no cost to them, which the Bishops’ daughter wanted to participate in. Eligibility for the program, however, is contingent on Town Tuition—a student must either be enrolled in a public school or receive Town Tuition funding at a private school to be eligible. Since the government denied giving their daughter Town Tuition funding because she attends an ineligible school, she is also excluded from participating in the Dual Enrollment Program.

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As the AI Bubble Threatens to Burst, We Must Prepare to Fight a Big Tech Bailout

AI data centers are unpopular for good reason: they drive up utility costs for communities, crowd out everything from schools to family farms, and they’re bad for our health. But these data centers are also a financial crisis in slow motion.

The AI ecosystem is built on mountains of debt taken on not only by tech firms like Meta (which borrowed a record-breaking $25 billion in late 2025 to fund the building of data centers), but also by the companies that lease data center space to the Big Tech firms. Many of these firms have spent far more than they have come close to earning in profits: One estimate puts tech industry spending to build data centers at $1.9 trillion, but less than half of that money has been made in revenue.

The financial markets are taking notice.

There’s been significant turmoil in the tech sector over the past month — and at one critical company in particular: CoreWeave.

CoreWeave used to be a Bitcoin mining firm called Atlantic Crypto, but it started to pivot to AI in 2019. CoreWeave leases space to Big Tech firms at data centers they build and maintain. CoreWeave has paid for most of its data centers by borrowing: it currently owes more than $51 billion to investors, including two of the most infamous financial firms: Magnetar and Blackstone, as documented by journalist Elizabeth Lopatto at The Verge.

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Democrat House Leader Hakeem Jeffries Nods Yes When Asked If Democrats Would Bring Back Illegal Aliens Deported to Africa

Democrat House Leader Hakeem Jeffries nodded repeatedly and signaled that a Democrat-controlled Congress would reverse the Trump administration’s third-country deportations when asked about it at a Florida campaign event with congressional candidate Eliott Rodriguez.

The exchange took place earlier this month at a press conference at CAO Bakery & Cafe in Pinecrest, where Jeffries campaigned for Rodriguez in Florida’s 27th Congressional District.

A reporter asked whether “a new Congress under your new leadership will bring back people who have been deported to third countries like Africa” and referenced families seeking the return of relatives.

Jeffries responded by thanking the reporter, stating that “we need dramatic change in terms of the extreme immigration enforcement policies that have been inhumanely unleashed on the American people and hardworking immigrant families,” and emphasizing that House Democrats have “continue[d] to make clear that Donald Trump’s violent mass deportation machine does not get a dime.”

He added that “there’s a lot of repair work that is going to have to be done to correct the injustices that have been inflicted on the American people and on law-abiding immigrant families and we’ll prepare to do that work.”

Jeffries also said that immigration enforcement “should be fair, it should be just, it should be humane” and consistent with the country’s identity as “a nation of hard-working immigrants.”

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Federal research awards send $13.5 million to 163 scholars at foreign institutions

Canada’s three federal research councils have listed 163 scholarships and fellowships worth $13.5 million to recipients with addresses outside Canada in their disclosures for April to September 2026. The councils are the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). Of the 163, 107 recipients are listed in the United States and 29 in Britain, with others in France, Australia and Switzerland. Oxford appears 15 times; Princeton, Stanford and Berkeley five times each.

All 163 are Canada Graduate Research Scholarships at the doctoral level (CGRS-D) or Canada Postdoctoral Research Awards (CPRA), part of the Canada Research Training Awards Suite that Budget 2024 funded with “$825 million over five years to the granting councils.” SSHRC and CIHR list the doctoral award at $120,000 and the postdoctoral award at $140,000, the full value of $40,000 a year for 36 months and $70,000 a year for 24 months. NSERC’s entries list $20,000 and $35,000, and eight entries of $5, which the dataset does not explain, so the $13.5 million total mixes full and partial amounts.

The rules allow it. NSERC’s doctoral page says, “You may propose to hold your CGRS D at any eligible Canadian or degree-granting institution outside of Canada,” and that “Up to 20% of all doctoral awards will be available to be held outside of Canada.” The postdoctoral page sets the share at “Up to 30%.” Holders abroad must be citizens, permanent residents or protected persons with a prior Canadian degree. Neither program page contains any requirement that the scholar return to Canada, and the data does not show what share of all awards is held abroad.

The councils are run by presidents appointed by the government. NSERC’s Alejandro Adem was reappointed for five years from October 1, 2024; CIHR’s Paul Hébert was appointed for five years from January 2, 2025; at SSHRC, Ted Hewitt’s term ended on February 28, 2026, and council chair Normand Labrie “will assume the powers of the president” while the government searches for a successor. The records name no official. Web searches found no political donations or party roles for any of the three; the Elections Canada database itself could not be queried.

Taxpayer-funded doctoral and postdoctoral awards are being held at Oxford, Princeton and other foreign institutions, and the program pages set no requirement to come home.

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Why is a WEF-linked vaccine coalition matching Ottawa’s $1.8 million in vaccine awards?

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the federal health research agency, has listed six grants dated July 1, 2026 and running to June 30, 2029, five of $300,000 and one of $298,675, under the label Operating Grant: Leadership Award for Vaccine Research. Four are labelled CEPI-CIHR: Robert Kozak of Toronto, Angela Rasmussen of Saskatoon, Anna Blakney of Vancouver and Matthew Miller of Hamilton. Two are labelled NRC-CIHR: Hagar Labouta of Toronto and Jean-Simon Diallo of Ottawa.

CIHR’s funding page for the “Leadership Award for Excellence in Vaccine Research for Infectious Diseases of Epidemic Potential” says $1.8 million was available for up to six awards: $1.2 million for four grants in the CIHR-CEPI pool and $600,000 for two in the CIHR-NRC pool. The page, marked anticipatory, says CEPI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, “will at least match CIHR’s level of support in cash contribution” on the four CEPI-pool awards, while the National Research Council (NRC) matches in kind; the grant records show only CIHR’s share. McMaster University’s July 30, 2026 announcement of Miller’s award says recipients “receive $600,000 in research funding over a three-year period.”

Rebel News reported in January 2024 that the World Economic Forum “helped found” CEPI in 2017, after Ezra Levant and Avi Yemini found its chief executive, Richard Hatchett, “not keen to talk to independent journalists” in Davos. A CIHR release of April 26, 2023 says that “Since 2017, Canada has provided a total of $114 million to CEPI,” and that an earlier CIHR-CEPI round announced that year committed $2.7 million to five researchers.

Rasmussen is a research scientist at VIDO, the University of Saskatchewan’s Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization. In a May 2021 university interview she said, “Everybody get vaccinated as soon as you can.” In an October 2021 Canadaland interview she called “the hypothesis that this had its origins in RaTG13 and the Mojiang mine” “absolutely, demonstrably untrue.” The sources do not say how the six were chosen.

CIHR’s president is Dr. Paul Hébert, appointed for five years from January 2, 2025, in an announcement by then health minister Mark Holland on November 14, 2024. The records name no signing official. Web searches found no donations, party roles or controversy for Hébert; the Elections Canada database itself could not be queried.

Canada had given CEPI $114 million by 2023. Now CEPI is adding at least matching cash to four of Ottawa’s own vaccine awards.

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Oakland Weighs $108,000 Pay Increases For Councilmembers Despite Budget And Homelessness Crises

Despite struggling with homelessness, crime, illegal dumping and a persistent budget deficit, Oakland could soon hand its city councilmembers pay and benefits increases worth as much as $108,000 annually under a ballot measure supported by Mayor Barbara Lee, according to the NY Post.

Measure EE would eliminate existing limits on council raises and allow the city’s Public Ethics Commission to determine compensation based on salaries in other California jurisdictions, without a specified cap.

The Post writes that Oakland’s eight councilmembers currently receive approximately $148,500 annually in salary and benefits. According to an Oakland Report analysis, that figure could rise to roughly $256,500 per member. The city auditor estimates the changes could increase total annual council compensation costs by as much as $867,000.

Supporters argue the measure would improve accountability and make public office more accessible to residents without substantial personal wealth. However, Oakland Report found that campaign materials have largely avoided mentioning the potential pay increases.

The proposal arrives amid significant financial difficulties. After voters rejected a tax measure expected to generate $34 million annually, officials warned of possible hiring freezes and the elimination of approximately 190 homeless shelter beds.

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The Grotesque Tangle Of Sedition

“We are also starting to consult federal workers on how to do some blocking inside the govt agencies during emergency situations — but please do not put that on the form.” —Eric Manton, of the DRG

They put it on the form, though, cuz somebody screwed up. Oopsie. . . .

Get this: the reason that a color revolution is underway at all in America is not really political anymore — if it ever even was. It’s because a whole lot of people have committed crimes against this country. And with each wave of attempted sedition, they have compounded their crimes with more seditious acts, arrant hoaxes, lawfare, election fraud, censorship, and wholesale looting of taxpayer dollars to keep themselves out of prison.

That’s what USAID was all about, and why it was taken down early in Trump 2.0. It was a nexus of racketeering and the home-base of the Deep State’s foot soldiers, bureaucrats who actually managed the money streams to NGOs that ran everything from election rigging operations to vast social services fraud in blue states, in concert with a Democratic Party that had nothing but rackets to keep it going.

That’s how the USAID’s defunct Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (DRG) has morphed into the new Democracy Renewal Group (DRG). This new DRG operates under another project called Branch-4 — as in a fourth branch of government, the permanent bureaucracy — and Branch-4 operates under an NGO called the Action Center on Race and the Economy Institute (ACRE Institute), a 501(c)(3) public charity based in Chicago (EIN 82-1199695). Note, the ACRE Institute’s primary funders include the Ford Foundations and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. You see how byzantine this is, echoing exactly the hyper-complex administrative workings of government bureaucracy itself?

And so, that’s why, for instance, one Eric Manton, a former USAID employee now working with DRG said, “. . . we are also starting to consult federal workers on how to do some blocking inside the govt agencies during emergency situations.” Blocking? What they mean by that is federal employees lodged in the official agencies should “help run out the clock. . . develop selective hearing. . . forgetfulness. . . or blame your workload” for whatever it takes to block enforcement of any executive action proposed by the Trump administration.

Those tactics are explicitly proposed by another org, the Federal Workers Alliance for Democracy (FWAD formerly known as Federal Workers Against DOGE), which is affiliated with DRG primarily as a partner in the Renew American Democracy (RAD) strategy and through the broader Branch-4 ecosystem. Confused yet? You should be. The flak-storm of acronyms is beloved by Lefty-leftists for exactly that purpose.

RAD is run by Daniella Reiff, a 20-year veteran of USAID color revolution programs in Europe and Africa. Her co-coordinator at RAD is one Paul Zeitz, an osteopath and rabbi who worked previously for USAID in Africa and for the State Department as Director of the Data Revolution for Sustainable Development, whatever that was. FWAD is led by one Beverly Schreiber

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Why did Carney’s two days in New York need a five-day, $95,343 hotel contract?

Global Affairs Canada awarded a $95,343.45 contract to the Loews Regency, on Park Avenue in Manhattan, for Prime Minister Mark Carney’s two-day visit to New York in May, according to the federal government’s proactive disclosure of contracts. The contract, dated May 25, 2026, is listed as “Hospitality” with the comment “Accomodation Services for PM travel.” It runs five days, May 25 to 29, was awarded without competition, and lists one bid.

The Canadian Press reported on Sunday, May 24, that the prime minister would travel “to New York City on Wednesday and Thursday,” May 27 and 28, to “court more investment.” The Logic reported that on Thursday, May 28, Carney met JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon and other chief executives who were members of the Business Roundtable, and told the Economic Club of New York that “Canada strong will help make America great again.”

The Loews Regency, at 540 Park Avenue and 61st Street, has 379 rooms including 58 suites. The record, a contract value at award rather than a final invoice, does not say how many rooms were booked or who stayed, and it began two days before the reported visit. A separate sole-sourced contract, $29,565 to Jacquemin Transportation Services, for “Transportation Services” from May 26 to 28, falls inside the same window, but the record does not name the city.

The same American firm was contracted a month earlier for Governor General Mary Simon: Global Affairs lists $24,223 to Jacquemin for “Governor General to New York Transportation April 16-22, 2026” and $36,809 to Jolly Hotels USA Inc., operating as NH Collection Hotels, for “GG Visit to New York Accomodation Services” from April 15 to 22, both without competition.

Rideau Hall says Simon gave a keynote at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues on April 20. The three contracts that name New York total $156,375; if the May transport contract is the New York leg, the four come to $185,940, not counting flights, security or meals.

Rebel News reported on October 14 that the same database lists $1,382,640.67 in sole-sourced contracts for Carney’s June trip to Europe. The records name only a contracting officer and are marked as not from a minister’s office; the department reports to Anita Anand, Minister of Foreign Affairs.

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