Tag: taxes

An Offensive Shield — for Impunity, and Genocide: The Iron Dome and U.S. Complicity in Slaughter of Gazans

The House of Representatives has approved giving Israel an additional $1.3 billion in “emergency defense assistance” for its Iron Dome missile defense program, another installment of countless billions sent from the United States to intensify a one-sided war against the Palestinian people.

The Iron Dome system intercepts short range rockets (launched from 2.5 to 43 miles) through the joint work of the IDF, Israeli contractors, and U.S. weapons manufacturers like Raytheon. Radar batteries detect incoming missiles, calculate direction and threat level, and, if necessary, target the menacing projectile and speed interceptors to destroy it.

The Iron Dome destroys incoming rockets at high altitude, but, since its emplacement in 2011, the system has also functioned to enable Israel to conduct ethnic cleansing and perpetuate genocide with impunity in Gaza and the West Bank.

It has underwritten an astonishingly deadly campaign of collective punishment, with lengthy, targeted air, drone, and guided missile strikes in densely populated areas. These deadly attacks are carried out against a people who have no army, no shield, and no means of response.

When we fund one-sided protection without justice, we destroy the possibility of peace for them, and for ourselves.

The Iron Dome, then, is not just a “defense” system. It is the preeminent strategic enabler of Israel’s asymmetric genocidal war against Palestinians. First the shield, then the sword.

It must be said clearly: Opposing genocide and illegal occupation is not antisemitic. It is the defense of humanity. The Israeli government’s ongoing colonization of Palestinian land, its collective punishment of a captive population, and its refusal to recognize a sovereign Palestinian people all constitute violations of international law.

To oppose this violence is not to oppose Jewish people. It is to stand against the machinery of oppression, just as we should for any people subjected to such inhumanity.

By eliminating the possibility of reprisal, the Iron Dome has insulated Israel from accountability, enabling it to continue inhumane policies of dispossession and aggression without consequence. This strategic impunity dulls domestic dissent and emboldens a government that continues to seize land and to erase Palestinian life.

War crime inquiries, censures, sanctions, none of it matters while the Netanyahu government pursues with single-minded intensity a “Greater Israel,” using the most advanced military technologies against people who cannot fight back.

That the whole of the United States is not consumed with outrage at the mass murder, the diabolical, Torquemadan cruelties of the IDF, the self-appointed agents of death who gleefully kill children, laugh while shooting starving people desperately scrapping for a morsel of food to survive, and bomb hospitals, mosques, churches, markets, cafes, even tents, — is a wrenching testimony to the psychic numbing that occurs with distance from the grim reality of war and the power of the dehumanizing narrative to which many Americans have succumbed. The capacity to emotionally respond to the agonizing suffering of Palestinians has been muted by distance and by relentless propaganda in the West.

I remember years ago, during the Vietnam War, daily news accounts of the carnage in Southeast Asia eventually dissolved into an undifferentiated mass of information, causing readers to turn the page or switch the channel. Information overload can normalize atrocity as it dulls cognition. Then, when battle scenes of U.S. soldiers being killed or injured were carried by US television networks, the powerful emotional impact drove home the true cost, propelled public opposition to the war and forced President Lyndon Johnson from office.

Spectators of events in Israel can become morally anesthetized as high technology is employed in mass murder, when journalists are targeted and killed, when civilian casualties roll up like an odometer at high speed. Except for random videos posted online, the only testimony is that of the IDF, which denies, denies, denies, cries “anti-Semitism” at exposure, and then, after a pause for a drink of limonana, efficiently continues the killing.

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Democrats’ All-Electric USPS Fleet Sees Each Truck Come With A $6.8 Million Price-Tag

According to a recently published New York Post report, the Biden administration played a major role in the push to massively electrify the United States Postal Service mail truck fleet. From a USPS press release in 2022:

The United States Postal Service today announced that it expects to acquire at least 66,000 battery electric delivery vehicles as part of its 106,000 vehicle acquisition plan for deliveries between now and 2028. The vehicles purchased as part of this anticipated plan will begin to replace the Postal Service’s aging delivery fleet of over 220,000 vehicles.

The Postal Service anticipates at least 60,000 Next Generation Delivery Vehicles (NGDV), of which at least 75% (45,000) will be battery electric.

But, like Buttigieg’s E.V. charging stations, which cost about a billion dollars each, or Kamala Harris’s $42 billion rural internet “flop” that connected a whopping zero rural Americans to the web, or her one-billion-dollar solar panel plan for Puerto Rico which resulted in “only a few” installations), Biden’s “green” USPS plan has been an absolute cluster.

From the Post item:

A Biden administration plan to create a ‘green’ fleet of postal vehicles has churned out a mere 250 electric mail trucks in just over two years — after shelling out taxpayer funds meant to build thousands…

The nearly $10 billion project — which called for more than 35,000 battery-powered US Postal Service (USPS) vehicles to be completed by September 2028 — was funded in part by $3 billion in funding from former President Joe Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

(I suspect the Post item has a typo, because as you see above, the number from the USPS is 45,000, not 35,000.)

So far, the disbursed IRA funds are around $1.7 billion, which means that if Congress is able to claw back the $1.3 billion still allocated for the project, each of these 250 trucks have cost U.S. taxpayers a minimum of $6.8 million a piece—the whole plan was a $10 billion “investment,” so who knows how much else was spent from other sources. Now, “investments” are supposed to give the investors a return on their money, haven’t these financial whizzes heard?

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NIH Director Details Crackdown on Fees Monopoly Publishers Charge

In an exclusive interview with The DisInformation Chronicle, National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya explains his latest policy to control monopoly science publishers now raking in hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers, while sometimes playing partisan politics and pushing fake narratives. The NIH announced yesterday that they will soon cap the “article processing fees” that publishers can charge NIH-funded researchers to make their studies public and available to American taxpayers.

NIH funds much of the planet’s biomedical science, but this research has remained locked up by pricey science journals that charge Americans expensive fees to read the results of the very studies they funded. The publishers of Science Magazine, for example, demand $30 to read a single study.

However, this changed recently when Dr. Bhattacharya demanded that journals make NIH-funded studies public as soon as they publish them. However, taxpayers are still on the hook, paying the “open access fee” that journals charge scientists.

In the case of the esteemed Nature Magazine, this means a $12,600 fee. Of course, scientists don’t have thousands of dollars lying around for publishing fees, so NIH-funded researchers simply charge that cost back to the American taxpayer as part of their NIH grants. In effect, taxpayers get charged twice: first when they fund an NIH grant for a university professor, and second when they pay that professor’s publishing fee to a science journal.

And this money quickly adds up.

The six largest science publishers charge researchers $1.8 billion in publishing fees every year, with American taxpayers soaking up a large portion of that money. NIH’s latest policy will control these costs in the future, ensuring more NIH money goes to scientists and their research.

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Did Trump Expose the DC Sham on Waste and Fraud?

On January 24, President Trump fired 17 inspector generals working for a wide array of federal agencies. Trump’s action jolted Washington because most of those officials could supposedly only be removed for cause — specific misconduct or other abuses. Trump also scorned the federal law requiring giving Congress 30-days notice before terminating such officials. 

Some of the inspector generals that Trump axed had done good work exposing government abuses while others had defaulted to the lap dog mode. A White House official justified the firings: “These rogue, partisan bureaucrats who have weaponized the justice system against their political enemies are no longer fit or deserve to serve in their appointed positions.” The official said the firings will “make room for qualified individuals who will uphold the rule of law and protect Democracy.” 

Maybe the White House wanted inspector generals who could bring bigger brooms to sweep evidence under rugs? The controversy that erupted over Trump’s firings largely ignored the long history of inspector generals either being wrongfully terminated or being worse than useless. 

Politicians create facades to make citizens believe that government automatically guards against waste, fraud, and abuse. The purpose of inspector generals is to create the illusion of honest government — to make people think that oversight is going on. While inspector generals are routinely portrayed as paragons of integrity, many are appointed by the chief of the federal agency they oversee. Their jobs and budgets depend directly on the political appointees they are supposed to investigate, and they grovel accordingly.

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Five Reasons Why No Amount of Additional NATO Support to Ukraine Can Stop Russian Steamroller

The US and its European NATO allies are working on new arrangements to keep the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine going for as long as possible. Here’s why the outcome will be the same no matter how much additional support is delivered.

  1. Ukraine Has Already Lost

Long term, “there is no material-technical nor political strategy” to avoid Ukraine’s defeat, Quincy Institute fellow Almut Rochowanski told Responsible Statecraft this week, stressing that the West simply doesn’t have the capacity to arm Kiev sufficiently to stop it from losing more territory, troops, arms and infrastructure.

  1. Russia’s Advance Has Become Unstoppable

Case in point? The ongoing summer offensive, which even the Russophobic NYT admits has scored “its biggest monthly gains in territory since the beginning of the year” in June – attributable to advantages in troops, airpower and the “methodical” destruction of Ukraine’s army.

  1. Any New Resources Delivered Will Be Wasted

Currently, new deliveries include promises of additional Patriot batteries, sourced from European (not US) stocks, and 49 used Australian M1 Abrams tanks.

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The Empty Outrage Over Medicaid Cuts

Democrats bemoaning the loss of Medicaid coverage are glossing over a critical fact: States could fund the program themselves if they wanted to. The truth is, Medicaid is not nearly as popular as the taxes needed to keep it afloat.

There is a lot to complain about Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill (BBB), signed into law last week. For example, it will add trillions to the deficit while allocating billions to be used for deporting hard-working immigrants and even American citizens. Yet Democrats are denouncing it not for its lack of fiscal responsibility, but rather for one of its only positive provisions: its reforms to Medicaid.

Original versions of the bill included various reforms to Medicaid, like work requirements for some able-bodied adults and provisions limiting funds for undocumented immigrants and gender transition procedures. To this, Democrats responded with instant outrage: “Medicaid is a lifeline for millions of kids, seniors, veterans, and people with disabilities in our states and nationwide. Republicans’ proposed cuts would be disastrous.”

The final version of the bill eliminated some of the more thorny cost-saving provisions while keeping the work requirements in place. Yet Democrats are still dissatisfied with the bill, with California Gov. Newsom claiming that “the President and his MAGA enablers are ripping care from cancer patients, meals from children, and money from working families.”

You can tell this is nothing more than political posturing because there are no cuts to Medicaid to begin with. The OBBB only reduces the rate of growth of Medicaid spending, but the overall cost of the program to taxpayers will continue to increase. Cutting means getting rid of something, not reducing the rate at which you add stuff.

Maybe we should not be too hard on the semantics. After all, Americans have very little experience with Medicaid cuts. Throughout its 60-year history, the only time Medicaid spending was truly cut was in 2006, by a mere 0.25%. This should come as no surprise since Medicaid promotes excessive spending by design.

Medicaid is structured in such a way that for every $1 that states spend on Medicaid, the Federal government matches it by up to $9. This design allows state politicians to grant their constituents $10 in political goodies (Medicaid) while only incurring $1 of political cost (higher taxes). Where does the rest of that money come from? Federal taxes and debt.

Now that Washington is cutting back its match rate, this windfall of benefits without costs to states will slow down. States must choose between filling the funding gap themselves (by raising taxes) or reducing coverage. State officials (many of whom will be facing reelection in the next few years) would rather do neither and keep this party going.

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Gavin Newsom Personally Secured Nonprofit Cash For Anti-Law Enforcement Activists

California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom asked nonprofits to donate at least $610,000 to groups that call for defunding or abolishing law enforcement since 2023 before distancing himself from such stances.

Immigrant Defenders Law Center (IDLC) and Immigrant Legal Defense (ILD) received $500,000 in 2023 and $110,000 in 2025, respectively, at Newsom’s request, according to state records first reported by The Washington Free Beacon. IDLC has advocated for defunding the police and worked to free illegal immigrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), while ILD “prioritizes abolishing immigration detention and reimagining the U.S. immigration system entirely,” the group’s website says.

Newsom said in a March interview that proposals to defund police after the Black Lives Matter movement gained steam in 2020 were “lunacy.” He also declared in a July 14 interview that he is “happy to advocate for eliminating sanctuary policy,” referring to laws in Democratic-leaning areas that prohibit police from helping ICE catch illegal immigrants. The governor’s recent push toward more moderate rhetoric on major issues has fueled speculation that he plans to run for president in 2028.

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Debunking the 100,000 Medicaid Deaths Myth

“More Americans will die—at least 100,000 more over the course of the next decade,” wrote Yale law professor Natasha Sarin in a June 9 Washington Post column about the Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“That isn’t hyperbolic,” Sarin added. “It is fact.”

The average reader might be inclined to believe Sarin, who holds a Harvard Ph.D. in economics as well as a Harvard law degree, and served in the Treasury Department during the Biden administration. But contrary to her characterization, her claim is both hyperbole and not “fact.”

Sarin’s assertion reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of “statistical lives saved.” In particular, she and several other prominent journalists misinterpreted a recent working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

As a professional debunker of bad research, I can say with some authority that the authors of that study, Dartmouth economist Angela Wyse and University of Chicago economist Bruce D. Meyer, wrote an excellent paper—a rarity among academic studies these days. But the University of Chicago’s press office trumpeted the paper’s findings, declaring, “Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act saved about 27,400 lives between 2010-22,” which is highly misleading. 

That take was echoed in coverage of the study by major news outlets. “The expansion of Medicaid has saved more than 27,000 lives since 2010, according to the most definitive study yet on the program’s health effects,” reported Sarah Kliff and Margot Sanger-Katz in The New York Times. Their May 16 article was headlined “As Congress Debates Cutting Medicaid, a Major Study Shows It Saves Lives.” 

The story was also picked up by Time (“Medicaid Expansions Saved Tens of Thousands of Lives, Study Finds”), NPR (“New Studies Show What’s at Stake if Medicaid Is Scaled Back”), NBC News (“Proposed Medicaid Cuts Could Lead to Thousands of Deaths, Study Finds”), and several other news outlets. These journalists either didn’t read the study, didn’t understand it, or willfully misrepresented its findings for partisan reasons. 

In the past, conservative opponents of Medicaid have been equally guilty of misconstruing academic research to support their policy views. That is what happened with the most famous study on the subject, The Oregon Experiment—Effects of Medicaid on Clinical Outcomes, which The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) published in 2013. The NBER and NEJM papers offer a similar account of Medicaid’s impact on health, but both have been misinterpreted.

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Pete Buttigieg Spent $80 Billion on DEI, Zero Progress on Air Traffic Control Systems

Department of Transportation records and airline industry sources show that under former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, the agency funneled more than $80 billion into diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives while delaying critical air traffic control system modernization, as reported by The New York Post.

Federal data reviewed from 2021 to 2024 indicates that nearly 400 DEI-related grants were awarded by the Department of Transportation during Buttigieg’s tenure, a substantial increase from the 60 similar grants awarded under the previous administration.

The funding, drawn heavily from the Biden administration’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure law, accounted for over half of the DOT’s annual budget across several fiscal years.

Airline officials told The Post that Buttigieg demonstrated “little to no interest” in advancing air traffic control modernization efforts.

One executive recounted a meeting in which Buttigieg reportedly remarked that system upgrades would just help airlines “fly more planes,” questioning how that served his interests.

The failure to prioritize modernization left the FAA reliant on systems dating back to the Carter administration, contributing to staffing shortages and travel disruptions. “He was definitely pushing an agenda,” an industry official stated.

In April 2024, a coalition of aviation trade associations sent an urgent letter to DOT leadership, warning that at the FAA’s current hiring pace, it could take nearly 90 years to fully staff critical air traffic control centers in the New York region.

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USDA ends Biden-era disaster relief program standards for farmers based on race, sex: legal watchdog

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has ended the Biden-era disaster relief program standards for farmers based on race and sex, which was praised by a legal watchdog that had been fighting the policies in court.

The USDA “has independently determined that it will no longer employ the race- and sex-based ‘socially disadvantaged’ designation to provide increased benefits based on race and sex in the programs at issue in this regulation,” the department said in its formal notice earlier this month.

The Southeastern Legal Foundation said  the USDA’s notice was in direct response to the watchdog’s victory in court in the case Strickland v. USDA. SLF’s lawsuit stopped eight disaster relief programs from the Biden administration that gave funds to farmers on the basis of race and sex, excluding white male farmers.

The USDA said that “the Strickland decision catalyzed the changes USDA is making in this rule to comport with the Constitution.”

SLF President Kim Hermann said in a statement: “This is a big win for SLF, but most importantly it is a huge win for America’s farmers. We are very thankful for the USDA’s revisions to these programs, and we are incredibly proud that we were able to play a part in protecting America’s farmers from race- and sex-based discrimination.

“Farming is one of the most important and difficult occupations in the world, where their hard work directly impacts everyone. They have to be able to do their jobs without having to worry about DEI nonsense, and we hope to see any forms of discrimination in federal programs come to a complete halt.”

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