Tag: taxes

US Will Not Adhere to Global Carbon Tax on Shipping: Trump

The United States will vote “no” to a global carbon tax proposed by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) on Oct. 17, President Donald Trump said on Truth Social.

“I am outraged that the International Maritime Organization is voting in London this week to pass a global Carbon Tax,” he said in the post on Oct. 16, urging others to reject the proposal.

“The United States will NOT stand for this Global Green New Scam Tax on Shipping, and will not adhere to it in any way, shape, or form.

“We will not tolerate increased prices on American Consumers OR the creation of a Green New Scam Bureaucracy to spend YOUR money on their Green dreams.”

The net-zero framework proposal that was put before the U.N. agency specializing in regulating marine transport would require ships to comply with a global fuel standard for large oceangoing vessels, 5,000 tons or larger, to force the shipping industry’s greenhouse gas emissions down to net zero by 2050.

The president’s opposition to the tax proposal follows a statement his administration made on Aug. 12.

Keep reading

New Carbon Capture Legislation, Same Old Grift

A bi-partisan Congressional duo is pushing for a massive federal land grab through new carbon capture and storage (CCS) legislation in the U.S. House.

Utah Republican Blake Moore joins forces with California Democrat Jim Costa to sell out private property owners nationwide with the BECCS Advancement Commission Act of 2025.

BECCS stands for “Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage,” and the legislation builds on Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act, adding additional funding for CCS to the billions included in that massive financial debacle.

H.R. 5597 also proposes adding another layer of bureaucracy to our already bloated federal government. If passed, it will establish a BECCS Advancement Commission in the Department of Agriculture, a nine- or 10-member board comprised of career politicians, lobbyists, and subsidy recipients. (So much for DOGE.)

Assorted Accolades

To date, no other Congressmen have added their names as cosponsors. But the bill has earned plenty of accolades from those who stand to reap billions in federal largess. Some of them include:

  1. Arbor Energy, a carbon capture tech company founded in 2022, cozy with Microsoft, and which has already received $7 million in federal funding.
  2. Elimini, an even more recent startup launched in late 2024 and specializing in BECCS technology, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the United Kingdom’s renewable energy giant Drax Group. In other words, it’s a conduit for American tax dollars to a foreign-owned company.
  3. The Carbon Business Council (CBC) is a non-profit association whose members hail from CCS circles. It is involved in Elon Musk’s XPRIZE which, at $100 million, is touted as the “largest incentive prize in history,” and aims to fund development of carbon dioxide removal technology. CBC’s executive director, Ben Rubin, is a frequent speaker at United Nations climate conferences and at the World Economic Forum.

“BECCS is a novel technology uniquely positioned to promote wildfire mitigation, bolster economic development in rural America, and deliver much-needed baseload power as energy demand for data centers and artificial intelligence continues to grow,” stumped Moore as he introduced the bill. “This legislation will help us harness new technology to reduce wildfire risks, create good-paying jobs and keep rural economies like ours growing,” Costa predictably parroted.

Keep reading

Trump Admin Withholds $41 Million From California Over English-Language Trucking Rules

The Trump administration is withholding $40.6 million in transportation funding from California after an investigation found the state failed to comply with the federal English language proficiency requirement for truck drivers, officials announced on Oct. 15.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration will keep $40.7 million in federal grant funding for California from the Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program (MCSAP). The funding is awarded to states to conduct roadside inspections, traffic enforcement, safety audits of trucking companies, and public education campaigns.

“The Golden State thinks it’s OK to ignore [the U.S. Department of Transportation’s] English language requirements for truckers,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy posted on X. “You can play all the games you want, but not at the expense of American lives.”

Duffy announced this summer that he would enforce the Trump administration’s new English language requirements for truck drivers, threatening to withhold the grant funds for states that did not meet the standards.

California, Washington, and New Mexico were given until Sept. 26 to comply with new federal rules requiring truck drivers to be proficient in the English language. States that failed to comply were told they risked losing up to 100 percent of their MCSAP grants.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s spokeswoman Diana Crofts-Pelayo denied the federal government’s accusations.

Keep reading

Dems Make A Mockery Of The Word ‘Temporary’ By Pushing For Extension Of Biden Covid Credits

As Milton Friedman warned us more than 40 years ago, “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” Imagine what the late, great free market economist would think of the tyranny of the left’s latest political gambit — shutting down the federal government to extend the massive expansion of Obamacare subsidies sold as pandemic relief. 

The political hill that Democrats are daily dying on as the shutdown molders into a third week is the preservation of the debt-busting Biden Covid credits, costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars more and once again making a mockery of temporary.

‘Supersizing Taxpayer Payments’

In March 2021, then-President Joe Biden signed the so-called America Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), the nearly $2 trillion money suck identifying as a “stimulus” package ostensibly to save America from the pandemic. Among many bigger big government initiatives, the boondoggle vastly expanded subsidies in the failed socialist experiment known as Obamacare. The expansion was extended in the ill-named Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, “supersizing taxpayer payments to insurers,” writes the Foundation for Government Accountability’s Trevor Carlsen and Brian Blase in a pointed policy paper urging Congress to call the time of death on the insanely expensive Biden Covid credits. 

How expensive? Taxpayers will be on the hook for an estimated $450 billion if Republicans give in to the Democrats’ hostage demands: reopening the government in exchange for extending the Covid credits beyond its expiration date of Dec. 31. 

“The expansion occurred under the argument that we needed to do this because we were in the midst of a pandemic,” Carlsen, Senior Research Fellow at the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) and former policy adviser in the U.S. Department of Labor, said in an interview with The Federalist. By the time ARPA passed, many of the state lockdowns were coming down and so-called non-essential businesses were up and running again. By 2022, when majority Democrats voted to extend the Biden Covid credits, the health emergency was well over. 

‘We’ve Got to Get Back to Normal’

Carlsen said the higher healthcare subsidies that were sold as necessary during the pandemic are hard to justify years removed from the “health emergency.”  

“The American people rightfully are saying that, at a certain point, we’ve got to get back to normal,” the policy expert said. 

That point is long past due. Particularly, as Americans learn more about just how generous the expanded Obamacare benefits have been. As the policy paper notes, the Democrats’ subsidy enhancements that have been hanging on for four-plus years made two fundamental changes to “the nature of the ObamaCare subsidies.” 

Households with incomes above 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL), were included, “subsidizing even affluent households’ health insurance,” note Carlsen and Blase, the Foundation for Government Accountability’s Visiting Fellow and former Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy at the White House National Economic Council. 

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid, 7 percent of households enrolled in the heavily subsidized health insurance exchanges in 2024 and 2025 reported income greater than 400 percent of the federal poverty level. That number was 8 percent in 2022 and 2023. That’s annual earnings of $62,600 or more, according to the Department of Health and Human Services poverty guidelines.  

The Covid credits also expanded subsidies across all income categories. 

“The extra subsidies were meant to prevent health insurance coverage rates from declining during the pandemic. But the public health emergency ended nearly two and a half years ago.”

Taxpayers are on the hook for more than two-thirds of the plan’s premium for average enrollees with earnings between 200 and 250 percent of the poverty level, the policy paper states. 

Keep reading

Grand Jury reportedly meeting this week in Hope Florida investigation

Florida’s Hope Florida program, once celebrated by the governor and First Lady as a compassionate outreach effort, is now under a grand jury’s microscope. Prosecutors in the capital are reportedly meeting this week to decide whether criminal charges are warranted in a growing scandal that’s shaken the state’s political establishment.

The proceedings are happening behind closed doors inside Leon County’s 2nd Judicial Circuit courthouse, where prosecutors are taking evidence in the Hope Florida investigation.

At issue: whether anyone broke the law after $10 million from a state Medicaid settlement moved through the Hope Florida Foundation to other nonprofits, and then to a political committee once controlled by now–Attorney General James Uthmeier. That committee later helped defeat a proposed constitutional amendment to legalize recreational marijuana.

State Attorney Jack Campbell, who is overseeing the process, declined to provide details.

“No, there’s no comment on that at all. Everything that the grand jury does is, in fact, confidential,” Campbell said when asked about the case last week.

Legal experts say the secrecy is standard procedure. Mario Gallucci of the Gallucci Law Firm is a former New York assistant district attorney and was a principal attorney in its major felony unit. He said these proceedings can take weeks to complete.

Keep reading

State of Oregon to Spend More on Program That Offers Free Healthcare to Illegal Aliens Than Entire Budget of State Police

Democrats keep insisting that they are not keeping the government shut down over healthcare for illegal aliens, but the evidence contradicts them.

Everyone knows they want that.

Just look at what is happening in the Democrat-led state of Oregon. The state is about to spend more on healthcare for illegal aliens than they spend on their state police, and not by a small amount. We’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars.

Breitbart News reports:

Report: Dem-Led Oregon on Track to Spend $500 Million More for Healthcare Program that Includes Illegals than for State Police

The Democrat-led state of Oregon is on track to spend $500 million more on a program that includes free health care for illegal migrants than on its state police budget, according to reports.

According to state reports, the Healthier Oregon Program (HOP) has a budget currently set at $1.3 billion. The program, which launched in 2022, has seen a rise of 1,100 percent in costs since it launched. Meanwhile, the Oregon State Police have a budget of just over $717 million.

The Oregon Health Authority website says, “Starting July 1, 2023, immigration/citizenship status no longer affects whether someone qualifies for OHP [Full Oregon Health Plan].”

Assistant Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin blasted the state for its obscenely lopsided budgeting.

“Absurd. Oregon will spend $500 million+ MORE on free health care for immigrants regardless of legal status than on state police in its current budget period,” McLaughlin wrote in a post on X on Tuesday.

This is one of the reasons why Democrats are losing the optics battle in the shutdown. They can claim until they’re blue in the face that they’re not trying to fund healthcare for illegals, but everyone knows it’s something that they want and believe in.

Keep reading

INSANITY: Los Angeles County Declares “State of Emergency” Over ICE Raids — Mobilizes Taxpayer-Funded “Relief Efforts”

Los Angeles County officials have once again made their priorities crystal clear, and it’s not the safety or well-being of American citizens.

On Tuesday, the far-left Board of Supervisors declared a “state of emergency” in a 4–1 vote in response to the Trump administration’s coordinated ICE raids targeting criminal illegal aliens across Southern California.

Instead of cooperating with federal law enforcement, Los Angeles leaders are mobilizing taxpayer-funded “relief efforts,” funneling state funds into legal aid, and possibly paving the way for a temporary moratorium on evictions, all justified by claims that federal enforcement “created a climate of fear” and “widespread disruption.”

Keep reading

Big Government, No Growth – The Implosion Of Statism

Rising government spending and public debt create economic stagnation and declining living standards. Many citizens believe that the state will give them prosperity and equality. However, the state only makes paper promises by issuing debt, creating a constantly depreciated currency. Taxpayers are constantly expropriated, while the recipients of subsidies become a dependent subclass. Who wins? Bureaucrats.

Deficit spending is not a tool for growth. It erodes prosperity, creates persistent secular stagnation, real wage growth decline, and poor productivity growth.

High public spending and government debt falsely inflate GDP through government outlays while, in most cases, masking a private-sector recession underneath. GDP is easily manipulated by increasing government spending and changing the calculation of GDP deflators.

The state issues debt, a form of currency, and establishes a system that continuously suffocates the productive sector. In effect, GDP and CPI serve as measures of economic strength that obscure the imbalances created by the state; GDP overstates real growth by incorporating government spending financed by debt, while CPI, like the GDP deflator, underestimates the currency’s loss of purchasing power.

Major economies face a hidden real recession for households and small businesses using “robust” headline figures bloated by ever-rising government debt. Every new dollar of debt now generates less than sixty cents of nominal GDP in the U.S. However, when we look at countries like Japan, France, the UK or Germany, the multiplier effect of new government debt is either nonexistent or negative. The consequences are evident: true productive economic expansion is hurt by rising taxes, regulatory burdens, and inflation, which reduce incentives for private investment and innovation.

Statism creates enormous disincentives for productive investment and promotes malinvestment and the constant transfer of wealth from the productive sectors to the government. Governments finance their ever-expanding budgets in privileged conditions, creating a crowding out of the private sector that suffers the consequences of persistent inflation and raising taxes.

Keep reading

The Matrix Abides

Of the 251 hostages seized in the Oct 7, 2023, Hamas raid on Southern Israel, 20 came out alive today, all men. The shockingly low number of survivors altogether should tell you something about the moral disposition of Hamas. World opinion has not processed this in the heat of this moment, with the Gaza War ostensibly resolved, for now. . . or so we’ll see. Soon, the captives’ stories will be told.

Of course, world opinion is not what it used to be even a few years ago. These days, it oscillates around the poles of sane / insane. The Lefty-Woke wine-ladies of the Boston suburbs and their nose-ring Ivy League daughters must have the blues today over the implicit surrender of their heroes, Hamas. The keffiyeh is headed out as a fashion accessory. Who will be their next pet oppressed minority? (The Eskimos? The New York Times will put out a whole cooking section on blubber.) Note to the men (so-called) in their orbits: the gals will be loading up on Paxil and Klonopin, on top of all that Chardonnay. Consider hiding the cars keys.

Meanwhile, over at Conflict Central, the action shifts to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, today for a “peace summit” among the various party’s involved in a war settlement, many of them Arab nations of the region, plus key Euroland players. Somebody will have to police the joint, probably some combo of Gulf State soldiers and American troops. The UK, France, and Germany will have to content themselves with pretending to participate, as they have their hands full just now pretending to ignite a war with Russia. Turkey could be in the mix, too, though the odor of pre-1918 Ottoman subjugation lingers on in that corner of the world. Don’t expect a whole lot to be sorted out quickly.

Donald Trump will take a few brief victory laps and, by Tuesday, all that nasty business might be behind him, at least for a while. . . maybe.

Mr. Trump has a whole lot of fish to fry back here.

He is fixing to disassemble the entire armature of Democratic Party sedition by wrecking the armature of NGOs that feed it — and you should not be surprised to learn that billions of the dollars sloshing through that colossal money-laundry originate in US government tax receipts.

For instance, the diligent “X” account known as “DataRepublican (small r)” reports that the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) with gross receipts of $363,001,576 received $362,047,237 from taxpayers, mainly through the State Department (including pre-Trump 2.0 USAID). The org, initially founded by Reagan Republicans, is now controlled by Democrats and their Neocon cronies bent on “nation-building” and color revolutions. Wherever there is turmoil in the world — Ukraine, Sudan, Pakistan, Myanmar — the NED has a piece of the action.

Stanford University, with an endowment of $23,780, 883,880, received $1,518,836,616 in taxpayer funds (those are billions), used to sponsor its Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), which spun off the Election Integrity Project (EIP) and the Virality Project. The former was dedicated, under “Joe Biden,” to assist Christophe Wray’s FBI and Homeland Security’s Global Engagement Center, in censoring social media on matters such as the Hunter Biden Laptop .

The Election Integrity Project ran a parallel op under “Joe Biden” tracing 2020 election “disinformation” — i.e., anybody who reported ballot fraud — and the EIP worked to censor such content across platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube with help from Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Global Engagement Center (GEC). The Virality Project likewise dedicated itself to Covid-19 speech suppression. A lot of this money was funneled through subsidiary NGOs such as the National Science Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Omydyar network (the eBay fortune).

You see what I mean by armature? (And that was a mere schematic sketch of a small part of it.)

This is a vast edifice of funny-money. The Democratic Party had captured all of it, and has been using it largely to maintain its power, which is to say, to keep the colossal money-laundry operating, because the salaries of all the people employed in these supposedly beneficent endeavors support a huge managerial cohort of officers who circulate in and out of government and comprise much of what’s called the “Swamp,” the “blob” or the “Deep State.”

Keep reading

Migrants Taking £10 Billion Per Year in Direct Welfare Benefits in Britain: Report

The British taxpayer is funding over £10 billion in direct welfare subsidies to migrants, who now account for one in six pounds sterling spent on universal credit, a report has found.

According to internal government data seen by London’s Daily Telegraph, £10.1 billion of the annual £61.2 billion spent on the universal credit scheme for those out of work, on low incomes, or those struggling with living costs was paid to foreigners living in Britain last year.

The figures, released under Freedom of Information Act requests, mean that one sixth of all direct welfare spending was given to foreigners or 16.5 per cent of the Universal Credit budget.

According to the broadsheet, this represented a significant increase over previous years, with £6.3 billion being spent on foreigners in 2022 and £7.9 billion in 2023.

The actual cost of the mass migration agenda is not even fully demonstrated by the figures; however, given that the data set does not include migrants who have been awarded citizenship, or indeed second-generation migrants.

The Universal Credit scheme also represents only one avenue through which foreigners can benefit from state subsidies, with the money spent on education and healthcare for migrants being counted separately.

Keep reading