Tag: taxes

As Epstein’s Clients Walk Free, an Innocent Man Rots in a Cage for Promoting Liberty

The glaring reality of the American justice system is not that it is broken, but that it functions exactly as intended to protect the elite while crushing the peaceful and creative. To see this in action, you need look no further than the fact that years after the most prolific child trafficking ring in history was exposed, not a single one of Jeffrey Epstein’s high-profile American clients has seen the inside of a jail cell.

Just look at the absolute theater surrounding the Epstein files. This administration actually campaigned on a platform of transparency, promising to finally expose this elite predator ring to the world. First, we were told the unredacted files were “on the desk,” ready for total declassification. Then, the narrative abruptly shifted. The administration claimed the files didn’t even exist, later dismissing the justifiable public outcry as nothing more than a “Democrat hoax.” When they finally did dump a batch of documents under immense pressure, it was a masterclass in state-sponsored cover-ups: tens of thousands of pages with the names of the biggest political and financial power players heavily redacted, or mysteriously scrubbed from the DOJ’s website overnight.

But the true sleight of hand happened next. Just as the heat on the Epstein cover-up was reaching a boiling point, the war drums began beating for Iran. It is no coincidence that the state escalated a catastrophic overseas conflict precisely when they needed a massive distraction from the predators operating within their own ranks. As I pointed out recently, Google trends data exposes this manipulation perfectly: the exact moment the media-manufactured interest in Iran skyrocketed, the public’s focus on the Epstein files flatlined. The political class effectively engineered a bloodbath to change the news cycle, and now, the trafficking network that serviced the world’s most powerful people has conveniently vanished from the headlines. We live in a world where government actors can orchestrate this kind of mass slaughter—like the horrifying reality of the state murdering over a hundred school girls in Iran—and absolutely no one faces justice. The politicians and enforcers responsible for these atrocities will never spend a fraction of a second behind bars, nor will they ever offer an apology for the blood on their hands.

Meanwhile, Ian Freeman, a man whose only so-called crime was facilitating voluntary cryptocurrency exchanges, sits rotting in a federal cage. The juxtaposition is sickening, but it perfectly illustrates the priorities of a ruling class that views individual liberty as a far greater threat than systemic predation and mass slaughter of children.

When a peaceful man in New Hampshire helps people bypass the fiat banking cartel using Bitcoin, the full force of the empire is brought down upon his head. Freeman’s conviction is a masterclass in prosecutorial overreach and judicial acrobatics. As we noted in a previous breakdown of this political imprisonment, he was effectively railroaded for supposedly conspiring to launder money with an undercover federal agent. Under well-established federal law, it is legally impossible to form a criminal conspiracy with a government agent, yet the First Circuit Court of Appeals enthusiastically upheld his eight-year sentence anyway when they officially denied his appeal. They threw an innocent man in a cage over regulatory infractions and the testimony of an IRS agent who admitted under oath that Freeman might actually owe nothing in taxes.

The financial destruction the state has leveled against him is just as absurd as the cage they put him in. In addition to his eight-year sentence, a federal judge ordered Freeman to pay over $3.5 million in restitution to victims of internet romance scams—scams carried out by third parties Freeman didn’t know and never colluded with. The government is literally criminalizing the act of not acting as a financial spy for the state, punishing Freeman for running a business that respected customer privacy by disabling surveillance features on his Bitcoin kiosks.

Fortunately, those who actually understand the concept of liberty haven’t forgotten him. Free Staters have been pursuing a concerted effort to demand a pardon for Freeman, pointing out the blatant hypocrisy of a system that selectively doles out clemency while burying whistleblowers and agorists. The push continues through platforms like FreeIanNow.org and the daily advocacy of his co-host, Mark Edge, on Free Talk Live.

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Migrant Households Are Claiming £1 Billion a MONTH in UK Welfare Benefits.

Foreign nationals are claiming close to £1 billion (~$1.3 billion) in welfare payments from the British government each month, according to the latest Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) figures. The data, released in response to Freedom of Information requests from Conservative (Tory) Member of Parliament (MP) Neil O’Brien, shows that households containing at least one foreign national received £941 million in Universal Credit payments this month.

Universal Credit, which supports low-income working-age families, is available to migrants who hold Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR)—roughly equivalent to permanent residency in the U.S.—or refugee status. Over the last four years, the total value of claims from households with a migrant has more than doubled, climbing from £461 million in March 2019 to almost £1 billion now. The figure rose by nearly 30 per cent in the past 12 months alone.

Neil O’Brien criticized the trend, saying: “The growth of benefit spending and the rate of migration are both much too fast, and the Government is doing far too little to change either trend. Migrants know that if they can make it to the UK, they will be allowed to stay. As long as that is true, we’ll see more and more coming. Our soft-touch welfare state makes this worse.”

Reform Party leader Nigel Farage has called for the complete abolition of Indefinite Leave to Remain as a way to reduce the financial strain of large-scale migration. Reform wants to restrict welfare benefits to British citizens only and replace Indefinite Leave to Remain with a five-year work visa system modelled on the American approach to long-term legal immigration.

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SURPRISE! Zohran Mamdani’s New ‘Free’ Childcare Program is Going to Cost $60,000 Per Child

Are you sitting down? This is shocking news.

It turns out that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new ‘free’ childcare program isn’t free at all. In fact, it’s going to cost $60,000 – Per child. Of course, it’ll be free for the people who get the service, but not for the taxpayers who are funding it.

This is the shell game that is always played by leftists. Nothing is free and they know it. Someone always pays.

Oh and by the way, this is just the rollout of the program. You know it will cost more down the road.

The New York Post reports:

Mamdani rolls out $2.3M day care pilot for NYC workers with hefty $60K cost per kid

The cost of “free” child care is soaring.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the opening of a new daycare center for municipal workers Monday that will cost more than double the average price of child care — to a tune of nearly $60,000 per kid.

The pilot program will start this fall on the first floor of David N. Dinkins Municipal Building in Lower Manhattan after a multi-million-dollar renovation of a room for just 40 children, ages six weeks to 3 years old.

The childcare center co-ops an initiative of Mamdani’s predecessor, Mayor Eric Adams, that was announced in October.

Mamdani said the Adams administration didn’t allocate operating funds for the center, which Hizzoner said would have a $2.3 million price tag and will be included in the city’s upcoming executive budget.

That works out to $57,500 per child to attend the day care from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

On average, day care costs in the city for infants come in at $26,000 and $23,400 for toddlers, according to the city comptroller’s office.

City Hall didn’t respond to questions about the soaring cost to the city compared to private center-based programs.

That’s strange. Why do you suppose Mamdani’s city hall didn’t respond to questions?

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Chicago: Pro-Gun Control Mayor’s ‘Armed Security’ Detail Costing Taxpayers $30 Million A Year

A report from the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s senior VP and general counsel Lawrence Keane indicates pro-gun control Mayor Brandon Johnson’s “armed security” detail costs taxpayers about $30 million a year.

According to Keane, the detail “includes as many as 150 Chicago Police Department officers.”

Keane noted that Johnson avails himself of the security provided with firearms while simultaneously praising restrictions on citizens’ ability to own the rifle of their choice:

In Chicago, Mayor Johnson has backed some of Illinois’ most restrictive firearm policies. After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 2023 reversed a lower court’s preliminary injunction against Illinois’ ban on so-called “assault-style weapons,”… [which included the] state’s magazine restrictions, Mayor Johnson praised the ruling and called the law an “important step” that would keep “weapons of war” out of neighborhoods.

Keane observed, “The practical message to Chicago residents was clear. Government officials and their armed details can enjoy armed personal protection but the public should accept tighter limits on the tools of lawful self-defense.”

Numerous other pro-gun control Democrats have taken a similar “guns for me but not for thee” approach in leadership policy.

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The Assisted Suicide Of Lofty State And Local Taxes

We get the government we choose to elect, hence the government we deserve. Voting for ever-higher punitive taxes on the rich is arguably a form of civic suicide. Consider that a wealthy New Yorker can get a raise of almost 40% just by moving.

That’s right. If moving eliminates a 14.8% top state and local tax rate, our top-tier taxpayer gets a 36% raise, not a 14.8% raise, by leaving. It’s doubtful if any of our city and state leaders have done this math, but it’s shocking.

Mamdani wants to take the top rate up another 2%, if not by the state then by the city, which would mean that our rich neighbor can get a 42% raise.

Here’s how the math works.

A rich New Yorker pays a maximum state and city income tax of 14.8%, on top of a maximum federal tax of 37%. But there are hidden taxes. Uncapped Medicare and Medicaid taxes push the marginal federal tax to 39.4%. If the income is earned on investments, the Net Investment Income Tax (NIIT, another gift from Obamacare) adds another 3.8%, pushing the top federal tax above 43%.

So, top-tier New York taxpayers may soon pay a marginal tax of 43% to the IRS and 17% to the city and state of New York. The combined 60% marginal tax rates mean they have the privilege of keeping 40 cents of each new dollar they earn. A move to one of the nine states with no income tax allows our taxpayer to keep 57% of every additional dollar of income, instead of 40%. Do the math. That’s a 42% raise.

Forget the argument about “paying their fair share.” “Fair” is an entirely subjective term. Your fair share of someone else’s money might be seen as a ripoff by them, especially if the money is spent less wisely than we might spend our own money. If you are rich and believe you’ve earned your money, will you consider leaving a state for a permanent 40% raise? Of course.

This is hardly a phenomenon unique to New York. California’s headline top rate of 13.3% becomes 14% with the phase-out of deductions. A Silicon Valley billionaire can keep 43% of each new dollar of income. Moving to Dallas or Miami, or Anchorage for the adventuresome, boosts this to 57%, a raise of almost 33%. This doesn’t even count the “please leave now” impetus of a “one-time only” 5% wealth tax on billionaires. Never mind that the fine print on the wealth tax initiative turns a 5% tax into a 50% expropriation for billionaires like the founders of Google, because their 30% voting share at Google, not their 3% equity ownership, is used to determine the tax.

People have called the United States “50 laboratories of democracy.” A state or a city is welcome to impose whatever taxes, regulations, or laws are allowed by its own bylaws or the national Constitution. And citizens are welcome to choose whichever states have taxes, regulations, and laws that they feel best align with their values and beliefs.

Nor is it unique to our various states, with their diverse tax regimes. Taxes drove the Rolling Stones to their own “Exile on Main Street,” relocating to France of all places to escape England’s 90% top tax rate (where a tiny drop to 85% would provide a 50% pay raise). Even Switzerland has divergent tax rates, ranging from 22% in Zug to roughly 40% in Berne, Geneva, and Vaud. Where do the billionaires tend to live? Zug.

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Treasury Dept to reward fraud whistleblowers with up to 30% of fines

The Treasury Department launched a new program Monday to reward fraud whistleblowers with up to 30% of fines that are imposed on criminals.

“As promised, Treasury will reward whistleblowers who provide timely, actionable information on fraud, sanctions violations, and other significant illicit finance activity,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.

“President Trump has been clear that Americans have a right to know that their tax dollars are not being diverted to fund acts of global terror or to fund luxury cars for fraudsters. At Treasury, we follow the money, and we strongly encourage individuals to come forward with credible tips to help safeguard our financial system.”

The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network submitted a proposed rule to the Federal Register on Monday for the whistleblower payment program.

The program includes tipsters of Medicaid and Medicare fraud, according to The New York Post.

The launch comes after Bessent visited Minnesota in January, which is where Somali immigrants allegedly defrauded government welfare programs of at least $9 billion since 2018.

The reward payments will be directly from the fines, meaning that no taxpayer money will be used, according to confidential Treasury documents that the Post obtained.

“Individuals located in the United States or abroad who provide information may be eligible for awards if the information they provide leads to a successful enforcement action that results in monetary penalties exceeding $1,000,000,” one of the documents reads.

The Internal Revenue Service runs a similar program.

The program comes after Vice President JD Vance on Friday held the first meeting of a new anti-fraud task force that he is leading.

FinCEN also issued an advisory on Monday, warning financial institutions about fraud schemes targeting government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

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A Nursing Home Owner Got a Trump Pardon. The Families of His Patients Got Nothing.

Doris Coulson remained spirited even as her illness progressed — watching cooking shows on TV, working crossword puzzles and wheeling herself down the hallways of her nursing home to show off her granddaughter when she came to visit.

Coulson had been admitted to Hillview Post Acute and Rehabilitation Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, in January 2016, after Parkinson’s disease left her at risk of choking when she swallowed. That April, the facility’s operations were taken over by Skyline Healthcare, a New Jersey-based company that was buying up nursing homes across the country.

Medical records for the retired cardiac nurse, then 71, were marked “NPO” — nothing by mouth.

Then that September, a nursing assistant found Coulson unresponsive and hanging off the side of her bed, her skin ashy and her breathing shallow. She was taken to a hospital in a coma and died several days later. The chief cause of death was aspiration pneumonia, according to her death certificate.

“The doctors said they found scrambled eggs in her lungs,” said her daughter Melissa Coulson.

Coulson’s death and the circumstances surrounding it led her family to file a lawsuit against Skyline and its owner, the New Jersey businessman Joseph Schwartz, alleging that cost-cutting at Hillview left Coulson without the care she needed. It was one of several lawsuits tied to patient outcomes as Schwartz’s empire expanded and then unraveled, with much of the chain collapsing by 2018.

Schwartz didn’t contest the case, and a judge in 2020 awarded nearly $19 million in damages. Coulson’s family has never been able to collect. Schwartz had by that time relinquished all of his property in Arkansas, so there was nothing left in the state for the family’s lawyer to try to seize, nor was there enough information about assets he may hold in other states.

Coulson’s civil action was one of several efforts to hold Schwartz accountable for what happened at his nursing homes. In perhaps the most sweeping move, federal prosecutors in New Jersey charged Schwartz with orchestrating a $39 million payroll tax scheme connected to his nursing home empire.

He pleaded guilty last April to failure to pay the IRS taxes withheld from employees and failing to file a financial report for his employees’ benefit plan. A federal judge sentenced him to three years in prison.

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Too High To Thrive: Excessive Cannabis Taxes Are Undermining Legal Markets

In recent piece, The New York Times editorial board called for a federal tax on cannabis and urged states to raise their own taxes to “dollars per joint, not cents.” That argument assumes cannabis is lightly taxed today—but across the country, the opposite is true.

Taxes on legal cannabis are higher than almost every industry in the United States and have generated nearly $25 billion since adult-use sales commenced in 2014. Despite these rates, efforts to increase cannabis levies are continuing to gain steam.

In 2025 alone, Maryland, Minnesota, Maine, Ohio, Michigan and California attempted to raise or expand cannabis taxes. This year, Colorado and Oklahoma are looking to do the same. Many of those proposals emerged as lawmakers confronted budget shortfalls and the expiration of federal pandemic aid. Cannabis has increasingly been treated as an untapped source of revenue.

In several large markets, cannabis taxes are layered on top of one another. Excise taxes are combined with state sales taxes, wholesale taxes, local taxes and, in some cases, potency-based taxes. In states such as Illinois, Michigan and Washington, the effective burden can exceed 40 percent. This is in addition to the federal tax burden cannabis businesses carry under §280E, which limits their ability to deduct ordinary operating expenses.

These structures are straining the legal market. High tax burdens are contributing to business closures (particularly among smaller operators) and pushing many consumers to the illicit market.

According to publicly available data, several highly taxed states, including California, Colorado, Illinois, and Washington, have experienced year-over-year declines in adult-use sales and industry job losses in recent years. At the same time, the illicit markets across these states remain entrenched. In California, one of the nation’s oldest legal cannabis markets, estimates suggest that roughly 60 percent of sales still occur outside the regulated system.

Higher taxes do not eliminate consumer demand. They simply change where consumers buy their cannabis.

Licensed businesses pay for testing, packaging, compliance systems, labor and sometimes local licensing. Unregulated sellers do not. When the legal price rises too far above the illicit alternative, price-sensitive consumers shift accordingly. That weakens the regulated market that legalization was intended to build. When tax increases take effect, the impact shows up quickly in wholesale pricing pressure, retailer margin compression, and shifts in purchasing behavior.

The cannabis industry is still new, but data tell us that the type of tax matters as much as the rate.

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Vance Says Tim Walz Could be Prosecuted in Fraud Probe, Signals California Voter Fraud Will Also be Investigated

Vice President JD Vance discussed his plans with the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud in an interview with Benny Johnson on Friday, where he said that Tim Walz and other Democratic officials could “absolutely” be prosecuted for defrauding taxpayers. 

Chaired by Vice President JD Vance, with Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson as Vice Chairman, “the Task Force will coordinate measures to improve eligibility verification, implement pre-payment controls, detect high-risk fraud trends, and disrupt and dismantle fraud networks and the mechanisms through which fraud is committed,” according to the order.

Earlier in the interview, Vance stated that Somali Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN)  “definitely committed immigration fraud, against the United States of America” and that the task force is looking into what can be done about it, The Gateway Pundit reported. ‘We’re trying to look at what the remedies are. That’s the thing we’re trying to figure out is what are the legal remedies now that we know that she’s committed immigration fraud? How do you investigate her? How do you go after her?” he added, suggesting that she may also be involved in the mass welfare fraud in the Somali community.

When asked about failed Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz, Vance trolled Walz’s horrendous debate performance against him, then said, “We’re going to have to maybe kick him again a little bit.”

“We’re absolutely going to prosecute it,” he said if the investigation shows that Walz engaged in criminal activity.

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Chicago moves toward reparations with bus tours and town halls as $150M deficit looms

Chicago took its first step after establishing a reparations task force two years ago.

Now, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson plans to hold a public engagement forum called Repair Chicago to “gather lived experiences of harm of Black Chicagoans” in an effort to provide reparations for Black residents.

“Your experience is evidence, and we’ve placed it at the center of our work,” Johnson said. “By engaging directly with residents, we are grounding this work in the voices and lived realities of the people it is meant to serve.”

The first event took place Tuesday, and two more events are scheduled through April.

Johnson’s office announced the Repair Chicago effort would involve “bus tours, panel discussions, town halls and hearings,” helping the task force members gather input for the administration’s reparations study. 

“The community engagement process will gather input from Chicagoans across the city to better understand Black Chicagoans’ experiences across generations and how systemic racism has shaped their lives, opportunities and well-being,” Johnson said.

The move comes two years after Johnson named his chief equity officer, Carla Kupe, to lead the reparations task force with $500,000 in funding. 

In 2024, Johnson signed an executive order establishing a reparations task force of 40 members that addresses “historical harms committed against Black Chicagoans and their ancestors through the form of reparations.”

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