The IRS Lied
Your government lied to you; who has seen this movie before? Despite assurances to the contrary to justify their $80 Billion influx in cash in order to hire some 87,000 new agents, the Internal Revenue Service has been caught red handed using the vast majority of the funds to target Americans earning under $200,000 per year.
In August 2022, IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig told senators who were skeptical of the new spending “These resources are absolutely not about increasing audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans. As we’ve been planning, our investment of these enforcement resources is designed around the Department of the Treasury’s directive that audit rates will not rise relative to recent years for households making under $400,000.” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also vehemently denied the intentions of the IRS in no uncertain terms: “Contrary to the misinformation from opponents of this legislation, small business or households earning $400,000 per year or less will not see an increase in the chances that they are audited.”
Despite these promises by those tasked with managing the American economy, and breathless propagandizing on behalf of the state by corporate media outlets, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that, once again, we have been sold a bill of goods. “President Biden’s plan to hire a new army of tax collectors is falling flat, and the agents already at work are targeting the middle class. As of last summer, 63% of new audits targeted taxpayers with income of less than $200,000,” says the Journal. “Only a small overall share reached the very highest earners, while 80% of audits covered filers earning less than $1 million.”
It turns out the IRS has been unable to hire many new agents. Despite the goal of immediately hiring 3,700 new employees, the agency had only hired 34 in a year. According to a watchdog report, the IRS has lost 8% of its workforce between 2019-2023. Instead, the agency has decided to justify its bloated budget by preying upon working class Americans; a tale as old as time.
The claim by supporters of increased IRS funding that only the extraordinary wealthy would be targeted for audit may have resonated with some naïve voters, but it was always absurd on its face. Tesla/SpaceX founder, and X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk, an opponent of increased IRS funding, said at the time that his taxes are audited every year “by default,” a sentiment echoed by many of the nation’s most successful entrepreneurs. Syracuse University reports that in 2022, Americans in the lowest income bracket were audited at a clip of 12.7 per 1,000, as opposed to a rate of just 2.3 per 1,000 for all other filers. Millionaires, albeit a far smaller sample size, were the only demographic audited at a higher rate than America’s poor, a whopping 23.8 per 1,000.
Janet Yellen, Charles Rettig, and the Biden administration’s lies about IRS funding have predictably gone the way of the Bush 43 administration’s infamous “Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction” and the Obama administration’s “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” We were told that The Patriot Act would never be used to spy on American citizens, until, of course, it was. American voters would be wise to learn that if a potential government program or spending increase sounds predatory, and looks predatory, it is probably predatory despite claims to the contrary by government officials and their enablers in the media. British theorist Stafford Beer coined the term “the purpose of a system is what it does” (POSIWID.) If the state consistently fails to deliver on its promises, consider the possibility that it is rarely honest about its intentions.
https://catalyst.independent.org/2024/04/16/irs-lied/?omhide=true&trk=rm
**************************************************************The Latest Plan to Exacerbate California’s Housing Crisis
Against the backdrop of a national shortage of affordable housing, due in large part to government policies, California lawmakers want to restrict corporate investment in single-family rental properties. This would make the Golden State’s housing affordability crisis worse. Since California is often a bellwether for both federal and other states’ policies, renters should hope the flawed idea dies before it spreads.
One California proposal, Assembly Bill 2584, recently introduced by San Jose Democrat Alex Lee, would establish a quota system, banning “institutional investors that own more than 1,000 single-family homes from purchasing additional properties and converting them into rentals.” A second proposal, Senate Bill 1212, introduced by Berkeley Democrat Nancy Skinner, would prevent hedge funds and “other corporate investment entities” from buying single-family homes in California, starting next year.
Both lawmakers claim that deep-pocketed institutional investors, such as private-equity firms, hedge funds and real-estate investment trusts, buy so many single-family homes that first-time and low-income home buyers are priced out of the market. This claim shows how little these California lawmakers understand about the role most institutional investors play in the housing market.
The anticorporate housing crusaders overestimate the influence of institutional investors. According to the nonpartisan California Research Bureau, large institutional landlords own less than 2% of all single-family homes in the Golden State: 60,500 units statewide. Nationally, institutional investors owned only 5% of America’s 14 million single-family rentals in 2022, or approximately 700,000 units, according to MetLife Investment Management. Corporate investors don’t control a large enough share of the housing in any market either to dictate rental prices or to squeeze out desperate home buyers.
Despite their relatively small scale, however, corporate landlords are valuable niche participants in housing markets because they often purchase neglected properties and make them livable again. As Urban Institute researchers have noted, institutional investors can buy distressed homes in bulk, upgrade them and rent them out. Their lower investment costs and specialized expertise allow corporate landlords to make necessary repairs efficiently and economically—realizing economies of scale—expanding the supply of urgently needed move-in-ready rental homes.
The restrictions championed by Mr. Lee and Ms. Skinner would exclude these investors, exacerbating the shortage of affordable, single-family rental houses. Redfin reports that investors spend more than $100 billion nationally each year to buy and rehabilitate single-family homes. The solution to the housing shortage is more investment, not less.
California lawmakers have passed more than 100 laws to spur the construction of additional housing since 2017, yet they have failed to produce the promised construction boom that would drive down home prices. Many of the new laws have done the opposite, undermining the professed goals of affordable-housing champions.
Through their decisions and actions, institutional investors have been telling lawmakers that the way to ameliorate the affordable-housing crisis is to eliminate burdensome restrictions on home building and rehabilitation of existing properties, and to strengthen private-property rights.
Progressive California politicians say they want to restrict corporate investment in single-family rental markets because they think doing so would help everyday renters and home buyers. Instead, their proposals would force financial capital out, reduce the future stock of rental housing and increase rental prices. That isn’t an idea California should export.
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Anti-Hunting Laws Have Deadly Consequences
On March 23rd, California brothers, and avid Columbian blacktail deer hunters Taylen and Wyatt Brooks, 21, and 18, respectively, were shed hunting (bucks shed their antlers, typically in February) near Georgetown when they were attacked by a 90 pound male mountain lion. Since no game animals were in season at the time, both brothers were unarmed. The cat charged Wyatt first, knocking him to the ground and biting his face, at that point Taylen began to fight the lion in order to free his brother. Despite saving Wyatt from certain death, Taylen was bitten in the throat and killed by the predator.
“We would like to express our sincere thanks for the outpouring of support and prayers from family, friends and the community,” the Brooks/Welsh Family said in a press release obtained by outdoors/conservation based outlet MeatEater. “We are all devastated by the tragic loss of Taylen yet thankful Wyatt is still with us and are well-aware the outcome could have been even worse.” You can read a detailed report of the events from MeatEater here.
Mountain lion hunting was banned via ballot initiative of the California Wildlife Protection Act in 1990, and while the tragic death of Taylen Brooks was the first deadly lion attack in the state since 2004, there have been numerous attacks by lions including a 2022 instance of a lion breaking into a family’s home and attacking their dog, and a mother’s heroic 2021 fight with a lion in order to save her 5 year old son. Over 100 lions are legally killed annually in the state due to reports of attacks on pets and/or livestock depredation.
New Jersey was recently forced to re-open their black bear hunting season after skyrocketing numbers of bear encounters. Governor Phil Murphy signed an executive order banning bear hunting on state land in 2018, eventually rescinding the order in 2022. “I feel awful,” said the governor, “but I can’t violate what are obvious facts that are potentially undermining public safety, particularly among kids. I just can’t in good conscience go on in this direction.” Four bear attacks have occurred in the state since 2013, one fatal, including a young woman mauled in 2021 while checking her mail, along with hundreds of encounters by bears with pets and property.
Other elected officials seem determined to learn this lesson for themselves. Colorado Governor Jared Polis’s administration, spearheaded by the governor’s husband, vegan anti-hunting activist Marlon Reis, is currently waging a war on the state’s hunting community. If the administration is successful via ballot initiative, it will ban the hunting of mountain lions and bobcats. “The onslaught has now escalated with the Proposed Initiative 91, which aims to strip away the very foundation of Science-Based Wildlife Management. By doing so, it seeks to deprive Colorado’s Wildlife Managers and the sporting community of their rights to manage, pursue, and harvest these well-regulated species” says Coloradans for Responsible Wildlife Management. There have been numerous recent encounters with mountain lions in the Centennial State, including an attack on a man’s front porch in 2022. Colorado has, by far, the largest elk herd in the nation, along with healthy populations of mule deer, white-tailed deer, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, mountain goat, moose, and black bear, all of which would be negatively affected by the banning of big cat hunting.
The North American Model of Wildlife Conservation has been extraordinarily successful compared to conservation efforts anywhere else on Earth, but the work of men like Aldo Leopold and President Theodore Roosevelt is now under attack by adversarial politicians and their strategy of employing direct democracy via uninformed urban voters. Not only do hunting bans undermine the heritage of outdoorsmanship fundamental to the history of the nation, they also put people in danger. Whether it is a symptom of the fact that most Americans now live in major cities and are blissfully unaware of where their sustenance comes from, or the decades of anthropomorphism by Hollywood, anti-hunting legislation must be fought tooth and nail in order to preserve our customs and protect the vulnerable.
https://catalyst.independent.org/2024/04/23/anti-hunting-laws/?omhide=true
********************************************************Sidney Powell Handed Win After Judges Dismiss Disciplinary Effort by Texas State Bar
Sidney Powell, a lawyer who filed lawsuits after the 2020 election, got a win in Texas after an appeals court ruled that the Texas bar did not prove that she engaged in misconduct or fraud.
A panel of judges on the Fifth District of Texas Court of Appeals in Dallas ruled Wednesday that the state bar’s arguments lacked merit and evidence. They found that state bar prosecutors “employed a ’scattershot' approach to the case” that had alleged Ms. Powell did not have a reasonable basis to file lawsuits that challenged the 2020 election’s outcome in battleground states.
“The Bar employed a ‘scattershot’ approach to the case, which left this court and the trial court ‘with the task of sorting through the argument to determine what issue ha[d] actually been raised,'” Justice Dennise Garcia wrote in the court’s ruling. “Having done so, the absence of competent summary judgment compels our conclusion that the Bar failed to meet its summary judgment burden.”
A separate court had sided with Ms. Powell in the case last year, finding “numerous defects” in the evidence presented by the State Bar of Texas Commission for Lawyer Discipline. The court also found that the bar couldn’t provide evidence that she filed frivolous lawsuits.
“Under these circumstances and on this record, we conclude the trial court did not err in granting Powell’s no-evidence motion for summary judgment,” the appeals court wrote.
The State Bar of Texas Commission for Lawyer Discipline has not yet issued a statement on the matter. A representative for the Texas State Bar told Reuters that the commission would meet to determine its next steps but declined to comment further.
“The Dallas Court of Appeals has affirmed the Texas state court’s dismissal of the Texas Bar’s case against Powell. After three years of litigation, the Court of Appeals held the Bar had no evidence Powell violated any disciplinary rule in filing four federal lawsuits in the aftermath of the 2020 election,” she said in a statement this week after the court’s decision.
In court papers filed with the appeals court, Ms. Powell disputed the bar’s allegations that she provided altered evidence in her legal filings. She said the documents were provided by other attorneys involved in the case.
The court appeared to agree with her arguments. “Regardless of whether the challenged conduct must be knowing, intentional, or otherwise, a question we need not resolve here, it is axiomatic that dishonesty involves some conscious perversion of truth,” the judge wrote Wednesday.
Following the 2020 contest, Ms. Powell was among the most prominent attorneys to file lawsuits, alleging there was enough fraud in battleground states that swung it in favor of President Joe Biden. A federal judge in Detroit sanctioned Ms. Powell and other lawyers in 2021 over the lawsuits.
The 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals largely upheld those sanctions, and the U.S. Supreme Court recently declined to hear Ms. Powell’s appeal.
Ms. Powell in October 2023 pleaded guilty in Georgia and took a plea deal with Fulton County prosecutors after she was charged with illegally attempting to overturn the 2020 election results. President Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive 2024 presidential nominee, has also been charged in the case.
He and more than a dozen other co-defendants in the case have pleaded not guilty. President Trump has said the Fulton County case is an attempt to interfere with the 2024 election, describing the charges as baseless.
Under the terms of her plea deal, Ms. Powell had to write an apology. “I apologize for my actions in connection with the events in Coffee County,” she wrote in the letter, made public in December.
Fani Willis, the embattled Democrat district attorney of Fulton County who presented the charges to a grand jury, said that the apology letters needed to include “real contrition” but that they did not need to be long.
Jenna Ellis, another lawyer who was charged and took a plea deal in Fulton County, also wrote an apology letter. However, she read hers aloud in court while pleading guilty.
In response to Ms. Powell’s apology letter, President Trump wrote on social media last year that Ms. Powell never worked for him in an official capacity.
“Sidney Powell was one of millions and millions of people who thought, and in ever increasing numbers still think, correctly, that the 2020 Presidential Election was rigged & stolen,” he wrote on Truth Social. He added that Ms. Powell “was not my attorney and never was.” If she was, “she would have been conflicted,” the former president wrote at the time.
“Ms. Powell did a valiant job of representing a very unfairly treated and governmentally abused General Mike Flynn, but to no avail. His prosecution, despite the facts, was ruthless. He was an innocent man, much like many other innocent people who are being persecuted by this now Fascist government of ours, and I was honored to give him a Full Pardon,” he added.
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Diverse Faith Groups Rally in Support of Bearded Atlantic City Fire Department Staffer
For more than 20 years, Alex Smith has worked for the Atlantic City, New Jersey, Fire Department, dedicating his life to serving his hometown.
In his current position as air mask technician, he fits masks and refills air tanks for firefighters engaged in fire suppression—an important role to ensure their safety while fires are raging.
For more than 20 years, Smith has also served as an ordained minister. He leads Community Harvesters Church, a vibrant local ministry dedicated to showing the love of Christ to the community. He and his church host a food pantry and tend a community garden to offer food and fresh produce for the elderly and financially struggling families.
The church also maintains a beautiful “tiny house” on church property for those in need of shelter.
His compassion also carries over to his fellow employees in the fire department. Smith serves as a chaplain in a program he started to provide a listening ear and spiritual support to those who regularly risk their lives to save others.
Smith’s religious beliefs and conscience require him to wear a beard to set a godly example for his congregation and follow the examples of the prophets and Jesus in Scripture.
Fire department policy, however, prohibits beards of any length.
Because Smith is an air mask technician and does not fight fires himself, he asked the city for a religious accommodation regarding his beard. After the city denied his request, he sued.
In 2023, a district court in New Jersey ruled for the city, concluding that accommodating Smith would be an “undue hardship” for the fire department because Smith could—hypothetically—be needed to fight a fire in the future. The district court ignored evidence that Smith had successfully passed a mask-fit test with his beard multiple times and that the masks used by the fire department are positive pressure masks, meaning that even if there were a slight leak, the firefighter still would not inhale any air contaminants.
But what constitutes an “undue hardship”?
The Supreme Court’s unanimous landmark ruling last year in Groff v. DeJoy determined “undue hardship” means a “substantial increased cost” to an operation or business, far more than the old de minimis standard courts often relied on.
Here, the city cannot show any increased costs because Smith’s beard would have no impact on his co-workers or his ability to safely do his job filling air tanks.
Other fire departments and the military have found ways to safely provide religious or medical accommodations to otherwise clean-shaven requirements. So, why does the city still deny Smith’s request for a religious accommodation, refusing to even engage him in discussions about how he could faithfully live out his beliefs on the job?
Smith has appealed the district court decision to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
He’s not alone in his conviction that he should not have to choose between his faith and his job. Recently, individuals and organizations representing a broad array of minority faiths filed six friend of the court briefs at the 3rd Circuit in Smith’s support, presenting the views of three Jewish organizations, the American Hindu Coalition, and two Sikh groups, as well as Muslim and Christian law professors and advocacy groups.
These briefs not only pointed out how the district court misapplied the law; they also highlighted a trend in other military, police, and fire department contexts toward safely accommodating religious beards, rather than excluding Sikhs, Muslims, and others from entire career paths.
Also voicing their support for Smith were four firefighters and paramedics—Jewish and Muslim—who in 2007 won a permanent injunction prohibiting Washington, D.C., from enforcing a requirement that they be clean-shaven. Now recently retired or nearing retirement, each worked for the District of Columbia’s fire department for more 30 years.
Some of these D.C. first responders regularly donned protective face masks and entered hazardous situations—something that Smith’s role does not even require. Their brief recounted their experience that first responders need not compromise their religious convictions to serve in the fire department.
Even though Smith doesn’t need to wear a mask to perform his job, Atlantic City still requires that he shave every day to keep his job. All the city’s concerns are hypothetical, but the harm to Smith from the city’s refusal to respect his faith is very real.
Given the robust protections of federal law and the Free Exercise Clause, as well as the experience of other fire departments safely offering religious accommodations to bearded employees, Smith should be allowed to continue to serve his community as an air mask technician while enjoying the religious freedom the law guarantees.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See
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