Tag: taxes

Refugees In Holland Can Obtain Social Housing Within 14 Weeks; Locals Wait Up To 12 Years

The Netherlands is the second most densely populated country in Europe, and with surging mass immigration, has been experiencing a raging housing crisis for years.

However, despite this crisis, refugees can gain access to social housing in a mere 14 weeks, while the average Dutch citizen must wait up until 12 years. Now, efforts are being made to right this injustice for Dutch citizens with a new bill, but Council of State, the country’s highest legal advisory body, is criticizing any attempt to block housing access to refugees. The authority claims refugees should receive equal treatment, as required by the Dutch constitution.

Of course, the fact that there is no equal treatment currently, and that refugees are gaining access to social housing years before Dutch on waiting lists, does not appear to factor into the Council of State’s concerns, according to Dutch news outlet NOS.nl.

The minister behind the proposal, Mona Keijzer of the BBB party, says she is not backing down. Keijzer’s plan aims to create more affordable housing by ensuring that refugees, or “status holders,” no longer receive priority for housing solely because of their status

The Council of State argues that the proposal leads to unequal treatment, which is “contrary to the Constitution.” The Council has advised the cabinet not to submit the bill to the House of Representatives.

However, Minister Keijzer is not swayed by the advice.

“That’s kind of how the discussion is conducted in the Netherlands. And that’s a shame,” she said. Regarding the “unconstitutional” judgment, she stated, “The Constitution is not mathematics, it also states that I must take care of public housing for Dutch people.”

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New Audit Reveals Shady Way Biden Increased Medicaid Spending

Those who reject the narrative that the budget reconciliation bill Congress enacted earlier this year “cuts” Medicaid have many places to look. After reports confirming federal spending on dead individuals and individuals in multiple forms of “free” health coverage simultaneously, federal auditors just revealed yet another example of Washington waste.

A recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) study quantified how the Biden administration allowed states to increase spending on Medicaid waivers. These policies, which the Trump administration should overturn, not only have the potential to cost taxpayers billions, but they have also expanded the welfare state yet again to cover far more than health care procedures.

Definition of Budget Neutrality 

The GAO study examined spending for Medicaid waivers, authorized by Section 1115 of the Social Security Act. Spending via these waivers, designed to promote state flexibility and innovation within the program, comprised about one-third of all federal spending on Medicaid, or $194 billion in 2023.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has long held that, for states to receive federal approval for their waiver applications, their Medicaid waivers must not increase costs to the federal government — that is, they must be budget neutral. But, as with the old axiom about beauty, budget neutrality lies in the eye of the beholder.

While the first Trump administration in 2018 issued guidance defining budget neutrality in ways that would protect taxpayers, the Biden administration undid that guidance in several key respects. The GAO report quantified the potential effects of those changes on federal spending — and, in one case, very clearly recommended that CMS undo one Biden-era policy.

Biden Increased Spending Benchmarks

The Trump administration’s guidance required states to calculate base year spending through actual spending data, rather than trending forward historical data. In other words, if a state had managed to lower its Medicaid spending in recent years, it couldn’t cherry-pick some time in the past and trend that year’s spending forward, to start its waiver with a higher base level of spending.

GAO said this change, when applied to waivers submitted by Tennessee and New York, lowered those waivers’ total spending limits by a total of $232.6 billion, with the federal share of that reduction amounting to $122.5 billion. (Time will tell whether the two states actually hit or exceed the spending limits for their respective waivers, so the total savings could be lower.)

But the revised guidance issued by the Biden administration said it would establish base years by using a blend of actual and historical spending — a change that weakened the fiscal discipline imposed by the Trump guidance. With respect to waivers submitted by three other states — Arizona, Massachusetts, and Washington state — GAO said this change increased the limit on Medicaid spending by $28.4 billion, with $16.6 billion of that potential cost hitting the federal government.

And whereas the Trump administration guidance said the growth rate for future years’ waiver spending (most waivers run in five-year increments) would be linked to the state’s actual spending growth during the last waiver period or the growth rate included in the president’s budget, whichever is lower, the Biden administration linked all states’ spending growth assumptions to the growth rate in the president’s budget. For the Arizona, Massachusetts, and Washington state waivers, GAO said this change raised the limit on Medicaid spending by $8.5 billion, with $4.3 billion of that potential cost hitting the federal government.

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Farmers, Ranchers In 49 States To Get IRS Tax Relief Due To Drought

American farmers and ranchers who have sold or exchanged livestock due to drought conditions are eligible for tax relief, the IRS said in a Sept. 22 statement.

Generally, livestock sold due to drought must be replaced within four years. Under the latest extension, farmers and ranchers who had sold livestock due to drought, with replacement periods scheduled to expire by the end of 2025, will now have until the end of the 2026 tax year to make replacements.

Tax gains made from such sales or exchanges can be deferred, the agency said.

The relief applies to “capital gains realized by eligible farmers and ranchers from sales or exchanges of livestock held for draft, dairy, or breeding purposes. Sales of other livestock—such as those raised for slaughter or held for sporting purposes—and sales of poultry do not qualify,” the agency said.

The tax relief applies to “49 states, the District of Columbia, and other regions that reported exceptional, extreme, or severe drought during the 12-month period ending on Aug. 31, 2025,” it said.

To get the tax relief, applicants must prove that the sale or exchange of livestock was prompted by drought, with their areas covered under the federal drought designation, according to the IRS.

The tax relief comes at a time when the Western United States is experiencing “widespread drought conditions,” according to a Sept. 3 post by the National Integrated Drought Information System.

This year, 65.5 percent of the Western United States has been in drought, and 14 percent has reeled under “Extreme or Exceptional” drought, it said.

“Current drought coverage and intensity pales in comparison to peak drought conditions in the early 2020s—59.5 percent of the West was in Extreme or Exceptional Drought (D3-D4) in July 2021,” the post said.

“This record-setting Western U.S. drought in the early 2020s, plus the southwestern megadrought dating back to 2000, has left Western U.S. water supplies in a perilous position.”

For instance, 100 percent of the Colorado River Basin is in drought, reservoir levels in Utah are showing a “drastic decline,” and the state of Washington issued a drought declaration for the third straight year in June, it said.

“As most water in the West originates from runoff due to melting winter snow, the upcoming water year will be crucial for water supplies—and normal won’t suffice,” said the post.

“Many key headwaters need above-average precipitation, in some cases over multiple years, to bring water supplies back to sustainable levels.”

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$2.2 billion solar plant in California turned off after years of wasted money: ‘Never lived up to its promises’

Seen from the sky, the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility in California’s Mojave Desert resembles a futuristic dream.

Viewed from the bottom line, however, Ivanpah is anything but.

The solar power plant, which features three 459-foot towers and thousands of computer-controlled mirrors known as heliostats, cost some $2.2 billion to build.

Construction began in 2010 and was completed in 2014. Now it’s set to close in 2026 after failing to efficiently generate solar energy.

In 2011, the US Department of Energy under President Barack Obama issued $1.6 billion in three federal loan guarantees for the project and the secretary of energy, Ernest Moniz, hailed it as “an example of how America is becoming a world leader in solar energy.”

But ultimately, it’s been more emblematic of profligate government spending and unwise bets on poorly conceived, quickly outdated technologies.

“Ivanpah stands as a testament to the waste and inefficiency of government subsidized energy schemes,”Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, an American energy advocacy group, told Fox News via statement this past February. It “never lived up to its promises, producing less electricity than expected, while relying on natural gas to stay operational.”

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SSA Made $114 Million in Improper Payments to Spouses and Children of Beneficiaries, Audit Finds

The Social Security Administration (SSA) made about $114 million in improper payments to children and spouses of beneficiaries, the agency’s watchdog, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), said in a Sept. 18 audit report.

The Social Security Act limits the amount of benefits paid to children and spouses of retired, disabled, and deceased individuals. The maximum amount that can be paid to children or spouses of a beneficiary combined is referred to as the “family maximum,” the report stated.

If the total monthly benefits paid exceed the family maximum limit, SSA is obliged to reduce such payments to bring them in line with the threshold, according to the report.

In the audit, the OIG analyzed 23,603 Social Security records of benefit payments, estimating that the SSA correctly adjusted benefits for 15,211 of these records in accordance with the family maximum provisions.

However, “SSA improperly paid approximately $114 million to spouses and children on 8,392 wage earners’ records (36 percent),” the report stated.

This includes both underpayments and overpayments. For instance, the OIG checked 225 samples from the 23,603 records and identified SSA to have made $1 million in underpayments and $189,940 in overpayments.

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‘Sounding bodies:’ NEH spends $12,600 on professor’s ‘musical erotics’ book

The National Endowment for the Humanities underwrote a digital access book about sexuality in Victorian literature by a Siena College Professor.

The State University of New York received $6,600 to create an open access edition of Professor Shannon Draucker’s book, titled “Sounding Bodies: Acoustical Science and Musical Erotics in Victorian Literature.” The NEH’s Open Book Program “supports the conversion of recently published books funded by NEH into eBooks that are freely available online.” 

This is on the top of the $6,000 Draucker herself previously received for the book.

The book compares listening to music to orgasms, according to an NEH description.

“Can the concert hall be as erotic as the bedroom? Many Victorian writers believed so,” the description states.

The book reports how 19th-century “acoustical scientists” “described music as a set of physical vibrations that tickled the ear, excited the nerves, and precipitated muscular convulsions.”

“In turn, writers—from canonical figures such as George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, to New Women novelists like Sarah Grand and Bertha Thomas, to anonymous authors of underground pornography—depicted bodily sensations and experiences in unusually explicit ways,” the book states.

The Fix reached out to Draucker and asked via email if she believed she may have a harder time receiving grants from the NEH under the Trump Administration. She did not respond to emails and phone calls in the past month and a half.

The Fix also emailed Rebecca Colesworthy, the recipient of the open access grant, and asked what the money goes to and if she had any concerns about the funds being taken back by the Trump administration. She did not respond to an email on Sept. 19.

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Waste Of The Day: Veterans’ Hospital Equipment Is Missing

Topline: The Veterans Health Administration has lost an estimated 5% of its reusable medical equipment worth at least $211 million — including exam tables, computers and microscopes — and “will continue to do so if processes are not improved,” according to a new audit from the Veterans Affairs inspector general.

Key facts: VA hospitals own over 2 million pieces of nonexpendable equipment that is meant to be used for two years or more, valued at $12 billion. Federal auditors recently visited hospitals to see if the VA was properly tracking the equipment and found that thousands of items had disappeared.

The auditors estimated that a third of the equipment — 537,000 items — is in a different location than inventory records claim, and an additional 75,500 items are missing entirely.

It’s possible there is even more missing equipment, because the VA is only required to keep track of inventory worth more than $5,000.

Some of the nonexpendable equipment is tracked using electronic tags, but some of the tags have dead batteries or only show what building the item is in and not what room.

The VA also uses an “inventory by exception” system in which items that have their location recorded during routine maintenance do not need to be included in annual inventory reports for up to 24 months, even though most items are required to be logged every 12 months. Auditors wrote that “a lot can go wrong, including losing equipment,” because of the inventory-by-exception system.

There are also staffing issues contributing to the missing equipment. Some VA employees working on inventory could not search for items because they did not have the keys to all the rooms in the hospital. Some hospitals have staffing levels below 40%, which employees said made it harder to fill out inventory reports on time.

Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com. 

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NPR’s Latest Article on the Charlie Kirk Assassination Is Why It Got Defunded

You only have to read a few paragraphs into this article about the Charlie Kirk assassination in National Public Radio to see why this lefty outlet got defunded. It’s as if none of these clowns watched the press conference by Utah County Attorney Jeff Gray this week, where he said that the suspected assassin, Tyler Robinson, was a leftist. He targeted Kirk due to his beliefs. This ‘we don’t know the motive’ represents another legacy media fail, one where mockery and dismissal are warranted. The best part of NPR’s line is that we need to know more about Robinson’s position on—get this—labor and immigration issues before we can make a political determination (via NPR) [emphasis mine]:

In their charging document, authorities cite text messages that Robinson allegedly exchanged with “his lover/roommate,” a person they describe as “a biological male who was transitioning genders.” The document also includes another text in which Robinson allegedly explains that he killed Kirk because he had “had enough of his hatred.” 

The presumed motive has added fire to a rash of speculation by high-reach conservatives, who have suggested that this motive equated to a political ideology. The same day Kirk was killed, President Trump claimed the shooter was a “radical leftist.” Others have suggested that the suspect may have been “groomed” by a “trans terror cell” and that he was perhaps working with larger groups, including “antifa.” So far, these claims have not been supported by publicly released evidence. 

In fact, little is still known about Robinson’s politics. According to the charging document, his mother told investigators that he had become more “pro-gay and trans-rights oriented” within the last year. It also includes a text message, allegedly written by Robinson, that said “since trump got into office [my dad] has been pretty diehard maga.” But Robinson is not registered with a political party in Utah. There is no evidence of his positions on other issues of importance to the left, such as immigration or labor. 

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Feds Charge Somalis with Massive $8.4 Million Medicaid Fraud

The U.S. attorney in Minnesota announced charges against eight Somali migrants connected to $8.4 million in Medicaid billing fraud hidden inside a state-funded housing program.

U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson announced Thursday that an investigation found that the eight suspects provided Medicaid with long lists of “clients” who they claimed to have worked with to enroll into Minnesota’s Housing Stabilization Service and billed Medicaid for this work. But, investigators say that no such work was ever performed and the clients were fictional.

The HSS fraud only adds to the growing number of fraudulent and mismanaged state programs, including the hundreds of autism clinics that wasted tens of millions in state tax dollars, and the $250 million fraud in a coronavirus relief program that was supposed to pay for food for children.

“Most of these individuals did not receive the stable housing they so desperately needed,” Thompson said during a Thursday press conference said. “The money was just simply stolen.”

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‘Largest NEH Grant in History’ Awarded to Jewish Org to Counter ‘Pathology of Antisemitism,’ Teach Talmud

The Trump administration, through the National Endowment for the Humanities, is giving the largest grant in the agency’s history — over $10 million — to the Jewish-American neoconservative Tikvah Fund to counter “the pathology of anti-Semitism” and teach the Talmud.

The Tikvah Fund is an Israel First group dedicated to advancing “Jewish excellence” that is run by CEO Eric Cohen and famed neoconservative Elliott Abrams.

The group made headlines last month for contributing “nearly 400,000 shekels (around $110,000)” to translate Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s book into Hebrew and not reporting it as a political donation, Haaretz reported last month.

“Even though the memoir was used in the Likud campaign and some of the revenues presumably went to Netanyahu as the author, the 400,000 shekels was not reported as a political donation,” Haaretz noted.

From Haaretz, “U.S. Nonprofit Gave Over $100,000 to Publish Netanyahu’s Autobiography. It Wasn’t Reported as a Donation”:

The Tikvah Fund was founded in the 1990s. The roughly $15 million to $20 million it spends on annual operations are partly funded by donations and from returns on assets bequeathed by American Jewish businessman Zalman Bernstein.

The Tikvah Fund is among the funders of the Kohelet Policy Forum, a conservative Israeli think tank that provided the blueprint for the effort to weaken the judiciary, as declared by Justice Minister Yariv Levin on January 4, 2023.

Kohelet founder Moshe Koppel sits on Tikvah’s board. The fund has bankrolled conservative projects for years, some of them involving close associates of Netanyahu. These include the Mida website, founded by Netanyahu confidant Ran Baratz, and the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, which is chaired by the former head of the National Security Council, Meir Ben-Shabbat. [Emphasis added]

Haaretz noted that Tikvah also hosts an annual conference in Tel Aviv.

“In its 60-year history, NEH had rarely given more than a few hundred thousand dollars to any single project,” the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports. “On Monday, the NEH announced an even larger, $10.4 million grant for a nationwide ‘Jewish Civilization Project’ aimed at combating antisemitism.”

“Among the prominent alumni of Tikvah’s programs is Jacob Reses, chief of staff to Vice President J.D. Vance,” JTA added.

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