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In a surprising development today, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) has withdrawn its proposed rule change previously submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to allow “Natural Asset Companies” to be traded in the U.S. market. Idaho Dispatch explained in this article that Natural Asset Companies (NACs) were defined by the NYSE to be, “Corporations that hold the rights to the ecological performance of a defined area and have the authority to manage the areas for conservation, restoration, or sustainable management.” Also mentioned in the previous Dispatch article was the strong opposition to NACs by Marlo Oaks, the...

Just because the government raises taxes, doesn’t necessarily mean it will raise more revenues. The Biden administration is discovering that the hard way. In August 2022, President Joe Biden signed the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act into law, which included a new tax on companies’ financial statement income, new IRS funding to increase audits, an excise tax on stock buybacks, and more taxes on natural gas, oil, and coal. To top it off, certain Trump administration business tax cuts simultaneously have been phasing out. On paper, that adds up to more than $60 billion in tax hikes in 2023. Yet, as...

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) responded to a report that revealed he improperly claimed multiple tax credits by saying that “It’s a pretty common practice.” Brown, who is running for reelection in a red state, claimed two owner-occupancy tax credits — which potentially violates Buckeye State rules for such incentives, NBC News reported on Tuesday. Additionally, he and his wife have habitually paid their property taxes late. When asked about the report on Wednesday by Spectrum News’s Taylor Popielarz, the Buckeye State Democrat claimed, “It’s a pretty common practice, but once we learned about it, we fixed it.” Responding to paying...

Investigation into Verra carbon standard finds most are ‘phantom credits’ and may worsen global heating The forest carbon offsets approved by the world’s leading certifier and used by Disney, Shell, Gucci and other big corporations are largely worthless and could make global heating worse, according to a new investigation. The research into Verra, the world’s leading carbon standard for the rapidly growing $2bn (£1.6bn) voluntary offsets market, has found that, based on analysis of a significant percentage of the projects, more than 90% of their rainforest offset credits – among the most commonly used by companies – are likely to...

What’s at the root of the supply chain breakdown? That’s a critical question but the answer is almost irrelevant. The supply chain is a complex dynamic system of immense scale. It is of a complexity comparable to the climate as a system. This means that exact cause and effect cannot be computed because the processing power needed exceeds the combined processing power of every computer in the world. Most people have some notion of how supply chains work, but few understand how extensive, complex and vulnerable they are. If you go to the store to buy a loaf of bread,...

President Biden is insisting that raising taxes for his multi-trillion-dollar proposals would be good for the economy as it begins to rebound from lockdowns, arguing that his $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill passed a month ago was causing the economic rebound seen today — while also urging Americans to continue their “patriotic responsibility” to wear masks outside in the waning days of the COVID crisis.

Twice failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton thanked President Joe Biden for the progress the U.S. made in terms of coronavirus relief — from vaccines to stimulus checks — in his first 100 days in office, despite the fact that his administration continued to move down the path previously forged by former President Trump and his administration.

Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren has quietly posted a nearly 2,000-page report documenting social media posts by her Republican colleagues who voted against certifying results of the presidential election on January 6. The information compiled isn't secret, but the report is another sign of the deep distrust that has settled into the US Capitol in the weeks since the insurrection. The report chronicles the social media activity of members on public forums immediately before the November election and right after the January 6 riot. The report has been online for a week. CNN reported earlier Thursday that federal investigators are examining...

Pfizer Inc. and partner BioNTech announced their mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination. The news comes days after Joe Biden was announced as the projected winner over Trump in the 2020 election, which sparked a political debate over who to credit for the vaccine breakthrough.Anthony Scaramucci, Donald Trump’s former Director of Communications, tweeted recognition to president-elect Joe Biden for developing a COVID-19 vaccination.https://twitter.com/Scaramucci/status/1325791189774323713 Scaramucci’s position as Trump’s Director of Communication was very brief as he was let go after 11 days. Scaramucci has been an outspoken critic of Donald Trump since.Pfizer did not join Operation Warp Speed, a partnership initiated by the Trump administration, to facilitate and...

As a former federal prosecutor, I am clear-eyed about crime. Unlike some reformers, I don’t think our justice system is fundamentally broken, unjust, or corrupt. I have nothing but respect for law-enforcement officials, who put themselves in danger every single day in order to protect the public. I know from experience that dangerous criminals exist — individuals who are incapable of or uninterested in rehabilitation and change. We should throw the book at those people. But my time as a prosecutor also tells me that not every criminal is dangerous or incapable of living a productive life. My faith as...

Bold tax reform got a big boost on Wednesday. Leaders in the House, the Senate, and the White House have all agreed on a tax outline, meaning a true update to our broken tax system could be imminent. First, the GOP tax plan framework would lower taxes for individual Americans. It would double the standard deduction for individuals and thereby expand the zero-percent bracket, and it would create three income tax brackets (down from seven): 12, 25, and 35 percent, respectively. Most simply, this will allow all Americans to keep more of their hard-earned money in their pockets. Importantly, the...

Rejecting “carbon” talk. As for those knowingly using the term for propaganda purposes, they should have a huge carbon footprint placed firmly on their carbon-based posteriors The side that defines the vocabulary of a debate, wins the debate. So we could ask: as we fight the global-warming scam, why are we using the language of the scammers? It’s harder to combat “carbon” taxes, “carbon” credits and callow “carbon” appeals if we accept that at issue is “carbon.” Calling CO2 “carbon” is like calling H2O “hydrogen.” Carbon is about as useful to a plant aspiring to photosynthesize as a tank of...

The federal watchdog tasked with keeping tabs on the Internal Revenue Service says the agency needs to do a better job of administering tax credits for low-income people. The reason? Billions of dollars each year are ending up in the wrong hands. A new report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, reveals that nearly a quarter of the $63 billion worth of Earned Income Tax Credits distributed in 2012 were improper payments. That’s about $14.5 billion in erroneous payments that were either given to the wrong people or distributed to the right people in the wrong amount. TIGTA...

The vast majority of students at American public colleges do not graduate on time, according to a new report from Complete College America, a nonprofit group based in Indianapolis. “Students and parents know that time is money,” said the report, called “Four-Year Myth.” “The reality is that our system of higher education costs too much, takes too long and graduates too few.” At most public universities, only 19 percent of full-time students earn a bachelor’s degree in four years, the report found. Even at state flagship universities — selective, research-intensive institutions — only 36 percent of full-time students complete their...

Taxpayers accustomed to filing a simplified 1040EZ will not be able to do so if they received health insurance tax credits this year. Some highlights: -- You may have heard that the IRS cannot use liens and levies to collect the law's penalty on people who remain uninsured. But there is no limitation on collection efforts in cases where consumers got too big a tax credit. If your refund isn't large enough to cover the repayment, you will have to write the IRS a check. "They are not messing around," Brandes said. For families, the cap is double the amount...

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has no system in place to prevent fraud when individuals apply for tax credits under Obamacare, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). The IG said in an audit released Tuesday that the IRS has no plan to manage, monitor, or mitigate fraud risk when processing premium tax credits available under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). “The ACA Program has not yet completed a fraud mitigation strategy,” the audit found. “It is important for the IRS to thoroughly consider fraud threats and risks that could impact new ACA systems.”

Above: Illegal aliens made out like banditos thanks to Harry Reid and Senate Democrats. Disabled vets? Not so much.- They actually did it. They are on the record. Senate Democrats, led by their filibuster-slaying dictator Harry Reid, actually put the interests of illegal aliens above those of our disabled military veterans.Let that sink in for a moment. Now the details: The two-year budget deal brokered by Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, would cut military pensions by $6 billion over ten years. Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, joined by several others in his party, tried...

A Tax Credit in Name Only (TCNO)- By: Larry Walker, II -A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how during this year’s continuing education courses it suddenly dawned on me that the base amounts used in calculating the taxability of social security benefits are exactly the same in tax year 2012 as they were in 1985. Well here’s another example of elder abuse. Congress has failed to inflation adjust the limitations on the Credit for the Elderly or the Disabled since it was last upgraded back in 1984. I am frankly surprised that this credit is still around, since...

BALTIMORE—A Maryland man faces trial in a $9.1 million fraud case that is shedding light on problems in a renewable energy credits program run by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Federal prosecutors accuse Rodney Hailey of Perry Hall of selling renewable fuel credits even though his company, Clean Green Fuel LLC, did not produce any renewable fuel. Instead, prosecutors say he pocketed the money and bought Ferraris and other luxury cars, as well as tractor-trailers, homes, jewelry and computers.

The U.N. is funneling millions of dollars worth of tradable carbon credits to corrupt nations worldwide, including Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Uzbekistan in an attempt to encourage clean energy projects in the developing world. The U.N. Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is defined in Article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol. Western European countries fund energy projects in the developing world in order to obtain Certified Emission Reduction credits (CERs), tradable credits that enable Europeans to count foreign emission reductions towards their own domestic emission reduction targets. “The CDM started from a page and a half in the Kyoto Protocol,” said...