Tag: taxes

Texas Democrat Senate Candidate James Talarico Campaigns on Raising Taxes

Texas Senate hopeful James Talarico is now openly campaigning on raising Americans’ taxes.

Facing polls indicating his support has topped out and doubts from fellow Democrats who do not believe he has what it takes to excite minority communities, Talarico is now openly campaigning on raising taxes on Americans.

“I’ve told every wealthy person I’ve come across in this race: If you are ok with getting taxed more, if you’re ok with me limiting your influence in politics, you are welcome to join this movement that we are building,” he said, thanking billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban for being part of it.

Talarico’s campaign platform includes plans to create what he described as a “fairer” tax system.

“Make giant corporations and the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share of taxes. (That way, we can cut taxes for working families and small businesses,),” he claims – a promise that leftists often make but never deliver on for hardworking Americans. His campaign website claims that he is interested in making “billionaires pay their fair share in taxes,” including “by imposing a higher tax on their income and capital gains and ending the dubious ‘buy, borrow, die’ loopholes that billionaires use to grow untaxed wealth.”

He also wants to raise the corporate tax rate while standing up against what he described as “attacks against SNAP and WIC,” but are actually the efforts of the Trump administration to root out fraud, waste, and abuse in these programs.

So while Talarico’s rhetoric points to only taxing the wealthy, he actively opposed the “big, beautiful” bill, which kept tax cuts in place for middle-class Americans and included added benefits like no tax on tips or overtime. If this had not passed, tax brackets would have returned to pre-2018 levels.

Talarico claimed of the legislation, “In that big ugly bill, they gutted our health care, they defunded schools, and they did all that to cut taxes for their donors. So, when you’re doing the people’s business instead of your donors’ business, you fight for things like I’ve fought for at the state capitol.”

Recently, Talarico said he chose to run for the U.S. Senate instead of completing his ordination as part of his “seminary journey,” describing his campaign as another form of ministry.

“And when we’re out here and we’re giving hope to people who have been starved of hope, when we bring people together who normally wouldn’t be together, it does feel like we’re doing some kind of ministry,” Talarico said.

Notably, Talarico has a controversial history spiritually, referring to God as nonbinary without offering context or acknowledging that God uses masculine pronouns to reveal Himself. And when he delivered the invocation on the floor of the Texas House of Representatives, he closed the prayer not in the name of Jesus but in “all your many names” – not referencing Biblical names for God like Yahweh Nissi (The Lord is My Banner) or Yahweh Shalom (The Lord is peace) but pagan entities or names observed in religions such as Hinduism and Islam. 

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LA County Steals $5M Fire Relief For ICE-Raid Checks

In bombshell findings, Los Angeles County sliced a wildfire housing fund in half and steered the cash toward households claiming income loss from ICE raids, detentions, and deportations – without requiring anyone to disclose immigration status.

Taxpayers who watched entire neighborhoods burn in January 2025 now watch the same government treat federal immigration enforcement as another “emergency” worthy of six-figure rent wipeouts.

After the Eaton and Palisades fires, supervisors approved $10 million to help tenants and landlords dealing with fire-related rent losses. They then kept $5 million for fire claims and moved the other $5 million into a priority category covering “economic hardship because of federal actions targeting immigrant communities.” Another $9.788 million from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund was pointed at the same category unless fire victims still had unmet need.

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More Than Half of Immigrant-Led Households Receive Some Type of Welfare Benefit

According to a chart published by Personal Finance Wizards, 45.6% of Afghan immigrant households in the United States receive SNAP benefits. The chart, which shows the percentage of U.S. households receiving SNAP benefits by ethnicity, uses data from U.S. Census Table S0201.

Other groups with high participation rates include Somali households at 42.4%, Iraqi households at 34.8%, Dominican households at 34.4%, and Caribbean households at 28.2%.

Democrats are fond of claiming that illegal immigrants are not eligible for welfare and that illegal immigration, and immigration in general, represents a net gain for U.S. taxpayers. The term “welfare” is used specifically to narrow the scope.

The reality, however, is that legal and illegal immigrants receive hundreds of billions of dollars in federal and state assistance each year through a variety of programs, including Medicaid, food assistance programs, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), housing assistance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), SNAP, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), school meal programs, the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Additional Child Tax Credit, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Medicare, and Affordable Care Act premium tax credits.

Furthermore, when it comes specifically to welfare, Democrats ignore the fact that families headed by illegal immigrant parents can receive benefits if they have U.S.-citizen children. Because the parents often work off the books, they can claim to have no income, making their children eligible for welfare benefits.

A separate analysis of 2024 Survey of Income and Program Participation data, published in February 2026 by the Center for Immigration Studies, found that 52.7% of immigrant-headed households used one or more major welfare programs, compared with 37.3% of U.S.-born-headed households. The largest gaps were in Medicaid use, at 39% versus 27%, and food assistance, at 35% versus 22%.

Among households headed specifically by illegal immigrants, the report found an overall welfare participation rate of 60.7%. One data point often cited to support the false claim that immigrants use benefits at a lower rate than native-born citizens is that SSI and housing assistance use among this group is lower than among U.S.-born households. However, the lower rate of SSI use is only because illegal aliens are largely barred from receiving SSI, although some still receive it through various means. As for housing benefits, U.S.-citizen children of immigrants, including illegal immigrants, qualify for housing assistance, so their parents do not need to apply for it themselves.

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Taxpayers Lost $65 Billion On Obamacare Fraud Last Year

Taxpayers spent $65 billion on health insurance premiums for people who either didn’t exist or didn’t qualify for benefits in two federal programs in 2024, according to an Aug. 26 report from Paragon Health Institute.

Expanded Medicaid and Obamacare, the signature programs of the Affordable Care Act, improperly enrolled a combined 14.3 million people that year, researchers concluded.

Expanded Medicaid allows states to enroll people making up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, versus up to 100 percent for traditional Medicaid. That limit was about $35,600 for a family of three in 2024.

Obamacare was open to people earning up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level at that time, about $103,000 for a family of three.

Both programs are administered through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace, with coverage provided by commercial insurance companies.

As Lawrence Wilson details below, via The Epoch Times, researchers estimate that about 34 percent of all Marketplace enrollees in 2024 were either fraudulent, duplicates, or simply didn’t meet the benefit criteria.

And the number went up the next year, researchers said.

“Improper exchange enrollment increased by more than 26 percent from 2024 to 2025 – up to an estimated 6.5 million enrollees,” the report stated.

Enrollment Problems

Researchers studied federal data from surveys, program enrollment, and spending and concluded that more than 9 million Medicaid expansion enrollees in 2024 probably didn’t qualify for the benefit.

Those were likely people whose income was over the limit, did not meet citizenship, immigration, or residency requirements, or should have been enrolled in traditional Medicaid.

With Obamacare, the $0 premium policies made possible during the post-COVID years became a target for fraud, according to Paragon President Brian Blase.

Testifying before Congress in December, Blase said many people were enrolled in the program without their knowledge by unscrupulous insurance brokers, prompting the federal government to send a commission check to them – and premium payments to an insurance company.

These phantom enrollees are detected in part by their lack of activity once enrolled, Blase said.

Also, 28 states had more people enrolled in Obamacare than there were people in the state who met the income requirements.

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The Truth About Non-Disclosure Agreements In Non-Profits

MORE NON-PROFITS START DEMANDING VOLUNTEER NDAS

We were recently asked a question about NDAs for non-profit organizations by someone who had been asked to sign one. In light of that discussion, THE EASTON GAZETTE did some research on NDAs.

Non-disclosure agreements seem to be more prevalent than ever. Most of the time, we hear about non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) as they apply to high powered CEO’s leaving their positions or individuals involved in settlements of lawsuits. But now we are hearing about them in the context of local, small non-profit groups. What is an NDA?

A non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is a binding contract that obligates one or both parties to keep specified information confidential and to refrain from disclosing or misusing it. An NDA protects trade secrets, client lists, financial data, product designs, and other proprietary information. Parties sign NDAs before sharing sensitive material during deals, employment, or negotiations. Are NDAs Legally Enforceable?

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The practice of getting people to sign non-disclosure agreements applies in many different situations. For example, an employee either is hired for or leaves their job, and they may get slapped with signing an NDA by their employer. Some employees may sign an NDA upon retirement. That NDA must specify a particular time period for which that NDA is in effect. It also cannot use retirement benefits as leverage for signing an NDA. In other words, an employee cannot be coerced to sign with a threat of losing or reducing retirement benefits or health care.

are non-disclosure agreements enforceable?

Mostly, yes. However, there are clear stipulations to when NDAs are enforceable and when they are not.

NDAs are enforceable when they identify clearly defined confidential information. In other words, the NDA must specify a reasonable scope of information that is protected. It cannot just be a general statement that makes everything protected.

The parties, disclosing and receiving, involved in the NDA must also be clearly defined and both parties must receive something for signing, employment, access to information, or a business relationship. Neither party may be coerced to sign the agreement.

NDA’s cannot cover illegal activity.

When NDA’s fail it is generally because of an unreasonable duration for the NDA, a vague designation of what is and isn’t covered, an application to an existing employee without giving them anything new for signing, or an attempt to hide fraud, safety violations or illegal activity.

So, for example, if a corporation attempts to get an employee to sign an NDA so that employee will not disclose fraud of any kind, the NDA is invalid.

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Tax-deductible ‘charities’ served as pipelines to Democrat voter registration: report

Leftist nonprofits are using pass-through organizations to boost voter registration for demographics most likely to vote for Democrats, a new report alleges.

The report, titled “The ‘Charities’ influencing elections: 2024 and beyond,” written by the Capital Research Center (CRC), found that multiple left-leaning 501(c)(3)s, which are prohibited from engaging in any political campaign for or against a candidate and whose donations are tax deductible, acted as conduits for 501(c)(4)s, which are permitted to engage in direct partisan politics. 

Those tax-exempt organizations spent $638 million during the 2024 election cycle, according to the report, to register voters most likely to vote for Democrats.

Three 501(c)(3)s – America Votes Education Fund (AVEF), Guarantee Our Votes Project (GOVP) and Democracy Matters Foundation – effectively routed their entire annual expenditure to affiliated 501(c)(4) organizations while conducting almost no independent program activity. 

America Votes Education Fund: AVEF reported on its most recent IRS Form 990s that it gave $20,748,002 in grants to its 501(c)(4) affiliate America Votes while spending just $532 in office expenses and $274 in fundraising expenses in 2024, and paid no employees. 

Further, three 501(c)(3) board members are also the president, chief operating officer, and treasurer of the 501(c)(4). America Votes, whose donations are not tax-deductible, says that its mission is to “create a fairer, more representative democracy by increasing voter participation across the country. Our coalition carries out non-partisan, education-focused programs to engage voters, particularly newly eligible and infrequent voters.”

Guarantee Our Votes Project: GOVP spent just 0.2% of its $13,919,873 expenditures in 2024 on legal and office expenses; the remainder went to grants, including $13.85 million to America Works USA and $30,0000 to the New Hampshire Youth Movement project. The amounts represent a massive increase in spending from the previous year, when GOVP gave out just $166,016 in grants.

America Works USA’s website is just one page, describing its mission as finding “unique and creative ways to promote progressive policy, strengthen our democracy, and build powerful infrastructure in states.”

Democracy Matters Foundation: DMF provided 96% of its 2024 expenditures to grants, according to its 990s, giving $31.38 million to its affiliated 501(c)(4), Democracy Matters, which says it exists to “connect and build a community of pro-democracy donors.”

None of the nonprofits listed above responded to a Just the News inquiry prior to press time.

Scott Walter, president of CRC, who was recently interviewed on “Just the News, No Noise,” detailed two other organizations that follow the same pattern.

“If you want to win elections, what do you need to do? You have to register voters, and then you have to get them to vote,” he said. 

“Well, that’s what this machinery is focused on. And you have groups like the Voter Participation Center and the Voter Registration Project that claim they just are help – you know they’re helping people do their civic duty.

“But they micro-target their efforts to where they will turn out the most Democratic votes, and they claim that this is still charitable. But you know, you look at Voter Participation Center in an election year. They may spend two-thirds of their money that year on for-profit Democratic Party micro-targeting firms. Now, do you think: ‘Does that sound like nonpartisan charity work to you?'”

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Zohran Mamdani’s New ‘Free’ Childcare Program Plagued With Problems Just Two Weeks Before Launch

Zohran Mamdani’s new program to provide ‘free’ childcare to New York City residents is already running into all kinds of roadblocks from funding to physical resources.

Consider this a preview of how his city-owned grocery stores will operate.

Of course, the mayor has no choice but to try to make this work. He campaigned on this program, among others.

Also, it’s important to point out that this news about the problems with the childcare program is not being reported by conservative media, it’s the liberal New York Times.

From the NY Times story:

Funding Delays Threaten Rollout of Mamdani’s 2-K Program

Funding issues and late payments are threatening the rollout of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s free child care system for 2-year-olds, two weeks before the program is scheduled to begin, day care providers said.

Many early childhood centers have yet to receive funding to buy classroom furniture and basic supplies like pencils and paper, or to pay newly hired teachers and assistants. Without the money, several providers have warned parents that the centers will not open when school starts on Sept. 10.

Because of the delays, city officials had encouraged providers to apply for interest-free bridge loans from the city — not just for 2-K programs but also for 3-K and pre-K programs. But many of those who have applied for the loans say that money has not arrived either, forcing them to take out high-interest personal loans, borrow from relatives and drain their personal savings.

Who could have predicted such a thing?

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ICE to Deploy Boston Dynamics Robot Dogs for Its Enforcement Operations

Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) is preparing to deploy robotic dogs as part of its immigration enforcement operations.

The agency planning to spend as much as $2 million on Boston Dynamics’ four-legged Spot robots.

The Department of Homeland Security says ICE needs remotely operated robots capable of entering dangerous locations where sending officers could put them at unnecessary risk.

According to procurement documents, the robots will be used for “inspection, situational awareness, and hazard assessment” in confined, unstable and otherwise difficult-to-access environments.

ICE is expected to spend between $1 million and $2 million purchasing Spot robots and accompanying equipment.

With individual units costing roughly $75,000 before additional equipment, the contract could put dozens of robotic dogs into service.

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Will WAR Bankrupt the West?

War and sovereign debt are merging into a vicious spiral that will determine which nations survive the coming monetary crisis. Governments entered the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran, along with the escalating confrontation between the United States and China, already buried beneath debt accumulated through decades of fiscal incompetence. Now they are increasing military spending, subsidizing domestic industries, restructuring supply chains, and borrowing even more money to prepare for conflicts their own foreign policies helped create.

The United States, China, France, the United Kingdom, and Japan already carry gross government debt exceeding an entire year of economic output. Russia has drained much of its National Wealth Fund to finance the war in Ukraine while Western governments froze approximately $300 billion in Russian sovereign assets. Gulf states are being forced to expand defense spending amid the conflict with Iran, and Europe has committed itself to raising NATO-related expenditures toward 5% of GDP by 2035. Trump wants to increase annual US defense spending by $500 billion to reach $1.5 trillion, but Washington is already borrowing simply to pay interest on the debt it accumulated before this latest round of wars began.

These people speak about military spending as if the money materializes from thin air without consequences. Government does not possess wealth of its own. Every missile, drone, weapons package, foreign aid program, and military deployment must be financed through taxation, borrowing, or inflation. Taxation drains the productive economy, borrowing competes for private capital, and inflation silently confiscates purchasing power from everyone. Politicians choose debt because it conceals the cost until after the election, allowing them to play emperor today while leaving future generations with the bill.

The yield on the 10-year US Treasury has nearly tripled over five years to 4.3%, which means Washington is financing a vastly larger debt at far higher interest rates. This is elementary mathematics that the political class refuses to confront. A government may survive $10 trillion in debt when rates are near zero, but the same fiscal structure becomes impossible when the debt multiplies and borrowing costs normalize. Every additional dollar devoted to interest is a dollar that cannot maintain infrastructure, reduce taxes, or support genuine economic development. Government then borrows more to cover the interest, increasing the debt that created the problem in the first place.

The attempt to separate national economies from geopolitical rivals will impose another enormous cost. Europe abandoned cheap Russian energy and then wondered why its industries became uncompetitive. The West wants to reduce dependence on Chinese manufacturing and rare earths, but rebuilding those supply chains will require subsidies, tariffs, controls, and years of expensive investment. Iran’s position around the Strait of Hormuz demonstrates how quickly a regional conflict can threaten a route that previously carried roughly one-fifth of the world’s daily oil supply. Every attempt to create economic security through political coercion raises prices, reduces efficiency, and demands still more government borrowing.

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The Bunker State: The Government Will Survive, but Will the Constitution?

“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government, owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.“—Theodore Roosevelt

What began publicly as Donald Trump’s lavish, taxpayer-funded vision of a gilded White House ballroom is now being justified by the administration—in and out of court—as a matter of national security.

To President Trump, it seems, a ballroom by any other name is a bunker.

And what a bunker it is.

Court documents indicate the massive subterranean military complex being constructed five stories beneath the White House grounds will include bomb shelters, a hospital, “top secret military structures and equipment, military-grade venting, a single integrated air conditioning and heating system, sniper nests and a drone port on top.”

Stephen Miller, Trump’s White House Deputy Chief of Staff, has explicitly invoked “continuity-of-government interests“ in defending the ballroom/bunker project, arguing that the reinforced underground military installation is necessary to ensure uninterrupted presidential command during an attack or global crisis.

The White House, however, already has a bunker built for precisely this purpose.

According to former officials, a nuclear-hardened facility buried more than 60 feet underground was secretly completed during the Obama administration. It can reportedly shelter dozens of officials for weeks and provide the president and senior officials with a secure command center during an extreme national-security crisis.

Which raises an obvious question: if the White House already has a nuclear-hardened Continuity of Government bunker, why does it need another one?

What threat justifies a new five-story military complex beneath the People’s House—one large enough to include bomb shelters, a hospital, military infrastructure, sniper positions and drone facilities? And if this is really about national security, why has so much of the project been wrapped around a ballroom that the administration initially presented as something quite different?

It is telling that they are building it at breakneck speed.

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