A secretive Russian satellite launched nearly a decade ago has experienced a “breakup” in outer space, according to a tweet published by the US Space Force’s 18th Space Defense Squadron. 

The Space Force said the Kosmos 2499 spacecraft disintegrated on Jan. 4 and unleashed a hazardous cloud of debris orbiting the planet. 

#18SDS has confirmed the breakup of COSMOS 2499 (#39765, 2014-028E) – occurred Jan 4, 2023 at appx 0357 UTC. Tracking 85 associated pieces at est 1169 km altitude – analysis ongoing. #spacedebris #space @SpaceTrackOrg @US_SpaceCom @ussfspoc

— 18th Space Defense Squadron (@18thSDS) February 7, 2023

The military branch that conducts operations in outer space did not explain why Kosmos 2499 broke apart. However, one person on social media asked a good question.

Did they blow it up or failed to vent the tank and popped? At 1169km that junk is going to be there for a looooong time.

— Arcadiy Ivanov (@arcivanov) February 7, 2023

Business Insider and Space.com cited RussianSpaceWeb.com’s Anatoly Zak, who said Russia launched a rocket in late 2013, supposedly carrying three military communications satellites into orbit. But it wasn’t until space trackers found a fourth and very mysterious spacecraft (Kosmos 2499) that was also released into orbit. 

Zak said the head of Roscosmos in 2014 assured world leaders that Kosmos 2499 wasn’t a “killer satellite.” Roscosmos never revealed the satellite’s mission. 

As for space debris, Brian Weeden, an expert in space junk at the Secure World Foundation, told Ars Technica this is likely not a catastrophic event. 

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

News of Russian banks connecting to Iran’s financial messaging system strengthens the resistance against US-imposed sanctions on both countries and accelerates global de-dollarization.  

The agreement between the Central Banks of Russia and Iran formally signed on 29 January connecting their interbank transfer systems is a game-changer in more ways than one.

Technically, from now on 52 Iranian banks already using SEPAM, Iran’s interbank telecom system, are connecting with 106 banks using SPFS, Russia’s equivalent to the western banking messaging system SWIFT.

Less than a week before the deal, State Duma Chairman Vyachslav Volodin was in Tehran overseeing the last-minute details, part of a meeting of the Russia-Iran Inter-Parliamentary Commission on Cooperation: he was adamant both nations should quickly increase trade in their own currencies.

Ruble-rial trade

Confirming that the share of ruble and rial in mutual settlements already exceeds 60 percent, Volodin ratified the success of “joint use of the Mir and Shetab national payment systems.” Not only does this bypass western sanctions, but it is able to “solve issues related to mutually beneficial cooperation, and increasing trade.”

It is quite possible that the ruble will eventually become the main currency in bilateral trade, according to Iran’s ambassador in Moscow, Kazem Jalali: “Now more than 40 percent of trade between our countries is in rubles.”

Jalali also confirmed, crucially, that Tehran is in favor of the ruble as the main currency in all regional integration mechanisms. He was referring particularly to the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), with which Iran is clinching a free trade deal.

The SEPAM-SPFS agreement starts with a pilot program supervised by Iran’s Shahr Bank and Russia’s VTB Bank. Other lenders will step in once the pilot program gets rid of any possible bugs.

The key advantage is that SEPAM and SPFS are immune to the US and western sanctions ruthlessly imposed on Tehran and Moscow. Once the full deal is up and running, all Iranian and Russian banks can be interconnected.

It is no wonder the Global South is paying very close attention. This is likely to become a landmark case in bypassing Belgium-based SWIFT – which is essentially controlled by Washington, and on a minor scale, the EU. The success of SEPAM-SPFS will certainly encourage other bilateral or even multilateral deals between states.

It’s all about the INSTC

The Central Banks of Iran and Russia are also working to establish a stable coin for foreign trade, replacing the US dollar, the ruble, and the rial. This would be a digital currency backed by gold, to be used mostly in the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) of Astrakhan, in the Caspian Sea, already very busy moving plenty of Iranian cargo.

Astrakhan happens to be the key Russian hub of the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), a vast network of ship, rail, and road routes which will drastically increase trade from Russia – but also parts of Europe – across Iran to West Asia and South Asia, and vice-versa.

And that reflects the full geoconomic dimension of the SEPAM-SPFS deal. The Russian Central Bank moved early to set up SPFS in 2014, when Washington began threatening Moscow with expulsion from SWIFT. Merging it with the Iranian SEPAM opens up a whole new horizon, especially given Iran’s ratification as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and now a leading candidate to join the extended BRICS+ club.

Already three months before the SEPAM-SPFS agreement, the Russian Trade Representative in Iran, Rustam Zhiganshin, was hinting that the decision “to create an analog of the SWIFT system” was a done deal.

Tehran had been preparing the infrastructure to join Russia’s Mir payment system since last summer. But after Moscow was hit with extremely harsh western sanctions and Russian banks were cut off from SWIFT, Tehran and Moscow decided, strategically, to focus on creating their own non-SWIFT for cross-border payments.

All that relates to the immensely strategic geoeconomic role of the INSTC, which is a much cheaper and faster trade corridor than the old Suez Canal route.

Russia is Iran’s largest foreign investor

Moreover, Russia has become Iran’s largest foreign investor, according to Iranian Deputy Finance Minister Ali Fekri: this includes “$2.7 billion worth of investment to two petroleum projects in Iran’s western province of Ilam in the past 15 months.” That’s about 45 percent of the total foreign investment in Iran over the October 2021 – January 2023 period.

Of course the whole process is in its initial stages – as Russia-Iran bilateral trade amounts to only US$3 billion annually. But a boom is inevitable, due to the accumulated effect of SEPAM-SPFS, INSTC, and EAEU interactions, and especially further moves to develop Iran’s energy capacity, logistics, and transport networks, via the INSTC.

Russian projects in Iran are multi-faceted: energy, railways, auto manufacturing, and agriculture. In parallel, Iran supplies Russia with food and automotive products.

Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, is fond of reminding anyone that Russia and Iran “play complementary roles in global energy and cargo transit.” The Iran-EAEU free agreement (FTA) is nearly finalized – including zero tariffs for over 7,500 commodities.

In 2022, the EAEU traded more than $800 billion worth of goods. Iran’s full access to the EAEU will be inestimable in terms of providing a market gateway to large swathes of Eurasia – and bypassing US sanctions as a sweet perk. A realistic projection is that Tehran can expect $15 billion annual trade with the five members of the EAEU in five years, as soon as Iran becomes the sixth member.

The legacy of Samarkand

Everything we are tracking now is in many ways a direct consequence of the SCO summit in Samarkand last September, when Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, in person, placed their bet on strengthening the multipolar world as Iran signed a memorandum to join the SCO.

Putin’s private talks with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Samarkand were all about deep strategy.

The INSTC is absolutely crucial in this overall equation. Both Russia and Iran are investing at least $25 billion to boost its capabilities.

Ships sailing the Don and Volga Rivers have always traded energy and agricultural commodities. Now Iran’s Maritime News Agency has confirmed that Russia will grant their ships the right of passage along the inland waterways on the Don and Volga.

Meanwhile, Iran is already established as the third largest importer of Russian grain. From now on, trade on turbines, polymers, medical supplies, and automotive parts will be on a roll.

Tehran and Moscow have signed a contract to build a large cargo vessel for Iran to be used at the Caspian port of Solyanka. And RZD logistics, a subsidiary of Russian railway RZD, operates container cargo trains regularly from Moscow to Iran. The Russian Journal for Economics predicts that just the freight traffic on INTSC could reach 25 million tons by 2030 – no less than a 20-fold increase compared to 2022.

Inside Iran, new terminals are nearly ready for cargo to be rolled off ships to railroads crisscrossing the country from the Caspian to the Persian Gulf. Sergey Katrin, head of Russia’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry, is confident that once the FTA with the EAEU is on, bilateral trade can soon reach $40 billion a year.

Tehran’s plans are extremely ambitious, inserted in an “Eastern Axis” framework that privileges regional states Russia, China, India, and Central Asia.

Geostrategically and geoeconomically, that implies a seamless interconnection of INSTC, EAEU, SCO, and BRICS+. And all of this is coordinated by the one Quad that really matters: Russia, China, India, and Iran.

Of course there will be problems. The intractable Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict might be able to derail the INSTC: but note that Russia-Iran connections via the Caspian can easily bypass Baku if the need arises.

BRICS+ will cement the dollar’s descent

Apart from Russia and Iran, Russia and China have also been trying to interface their banking messaging systems for years now. The Chinese CBIBPS (Cross-Border Inter-Bank Payments System) is considered top class. The problem is that Washington has directly threatened to expel Chinese banks from SWIFT if they interconnect with Russian banks.

The success of SEPAM-SPFS may allow Beijing to go for broke – especially now, after the extremely harsh semiconductor war and the appalling balloon farce. In terms of sovereignty, it is clear that China will not accept US restrictions on how to move its own funds.

In parallel, the BRICS in 2023 will delve deeper into developing their mutual financial payments system and their own reserve currency. There are no less than 13 confirmed candidates eager to join BRICS+ – including Asian middle powers like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia.

All eyes will be on whether – and how – the $30 trillion-plus indebted US will threaten to expel BRICS+ from SWIFT.

It’s enlightening to remember that Russia’s debt to GDP ratio stands at only 17 percent. China’s is 77 percent. The current BRICS without Russia are at 78 percent. BRICS+ including Russia may average only 55 percent. Strong productivity ahead will come from a BRICS+ supported by a gold and/or commodities-backed currency and a different payment system that bypasses the US dollar. Strong productivity definitely will not come from the collective west whose economies are entering recessionary times.

Amid so many intertwined developments, and so many challenges, one thing is certain. The SEPAM-SPFS deal between Russia and Iran may be just the first sign of the tectonic plates movement in global banking and payment systems.

Welcome to one, two, one thousand payment messaging systems. And welcome to their unification in a global network. Of course that will take time. But this high-speed financial train has already left the station.

Is golf still booming?

Let’s provide some context. Before the pandemic, many private golf courses were in a slump. Then Covid came along in early 2020, and by that spring, as the draconian government lockdowns expired, people raced to the courses. Private courses saw a boom as new members soared. But nearly three years later, perhaps the boom is fading. 

Before we speculate why, the key phrase on Google, “cancel golf membership,” has catapulted above pre-Covid highs. 

Some private courses tell us in the Mid-Atlantic region that contract renewal periods for members who joined in the early days of Covid are coming due. Some folks aren’t renewing their membership as long waitlists wither down or, in some cases, slots open up. This could be a sign that the great golf boom of the pandemic is waning. 

Why did some members who joined exclusive golf courses that paid an initiation fee of more than $20,000 with monthly dues of around $1,000 opt out of renewing their contracts? 

Well, we’re not entirely sure. It could be wealthy households are cutting back on expenses as the inflation storm, and recession risks spark vast uncertainty about the economy. 

For our long-time readers, remember during the GFC when private courses were battered as members walked off courses due to the precarious state of the economy. 

A Reuters headline from 14 years ago. 

The spike in the search term “cancel golf membership,” as well as the Fed-induced slowdown in the economy, is an ominous sign rich people are beginning to pull back on spending. After all, the working poor is already maxed out. 

Authored by Janice Hisle via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

After reading a whistleblower’s “sickening” revelations about a pediatric gender clinic, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said his office was launching an immediate investigation of its practices.

“This is a sickening account of forced sterilization and child abuse,” Hawley said in a tweet on Feb. 9, attaching the lengthy whistleblower account of a former employee of The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital,

In an article posted by The Free Press, ex-case manager Jamie Reed calls for a nationwide halt to the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for transgender-identifying minors—practices that American lawmakers have attempted to ban in a number of states.

The Epoch Times attempted to reach a spokesperson at the St. Louis hospital, but a receptionist said that the media line was “busy”; the call then disconnected.

The hospital calls itself “the guardians of childhood.”

But Reed’s article, entitled “I Thought I Was Saving Trans Kids. Now I’m Blowing the Whistle,” asserts that children are being harmed at the gender clinic.

Reed’s article includes screenshots of emails in which she repeatedly expressed concerns over parents and children lacking full awareness of the possible consequences of these medical interventions. Reed was scorned for raising alarms.

‘Stop Questioning’

She describes doctors telling her and a colleague that they had to “stop questioning the ‘medicine and the science’ as well as their authority.”

Reed said she left her job at the clinic in late 2022 because she couldn’t stomach the “morally and medically appalling” effects on children.

During Reed’s four-year stint at the clinic, about 1,000 distressed youths came there seeking help; most of them were prescribed hormones “that can have life-altering consequences–including sterility,” Reed wrote.

She thinks a nationwide halt to transgender procedures for minors is necessary “given the secrecy and lack of rigorous standards that characterize youth gender transition across the country.”

Reed said she wanted to go on with her life after she changed jobs. But she but felt compelled to disclose the truth about her experiences after reading an October 2022 article from Reuters News Service.

Dr. Rachel Levine, a transgender person who ranks highly at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “said that clinics are proceeding carefully and that no American children are receiving drugs or hormones for gender dysphoria who shouldn’t,” according to Reuters.

Reed’s response to the article: “I felt stunned and sickened. It wasn’t true. And I know that from deep first-hand experience.”

She said she began documenting everything she could about her experience at the Transgender Center. Then, a couple of weeks ago, she shared her account with Missouri’s attorney general. “He is a Republican. I am a progressive. But the safety of children should not be a matter for our culture wars,” she wrote.

The Epoch Times is seeking comment from Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey. The Free Press article included a link to a letter that Reed wrote to Bailey.

In the letter, Reed states that she witnessed treatments continuing on children despite adverse effects.

Reed concluded her Free Press article by stating that some people refer to transgender procedures being done on minors as “experimental.” She said that’s a misnomer because experiments should be ethical and well-thought-out—unlike these treatments for children.

Authored by Brian Westenhaus via OilPrice.com,

• Researchers are studying a new energy storage technique using decommissioned mines. 

• The technique called Underground Gravity Energy Storage aims to turn abandoned mines into long-term energy storage solutions.

• The deeper and broader the mineshaft, the more power can be extracted from the plant, and the larger the mine, the higher the plant’s energy storage capacity.

The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) has offered a new technique called Underground Gravity Energy Storage that turns decommissioned mines into long-term energy storage solutions.

Renewable energy sources are central to the energy transition toward a more sustainable future. However, as sources like sunshine and wind are inherently variable and inconsistent, finding ways to store energy in an accessible and efficient way is crucial. While there are many effective solutions for daily energy storage, the most common being batteries, a cost-effective long-term solution is still lacking.

In a new IIASA-led study, an international team of researchers developed a novel way to store energy by transporting sand into abandoned underground mines. The new technique called Underground Gravity Energy Storage (UGES) proposes an effective long-term energy storage solution while also making use of now-defunct mining sites, which likely number in the millions globally. The study paper ‘Underground Gravity Energy Storage: A Solution for Long-Term Energy Storage.’ has been published in the journal Energies.

Underground Gravity Energy Storage system: A schematic of different system sections. Image Credit: © Hunt et al. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. More information and images at the study paper link.

UGES generates electricity when the price is high by lowering sand into an underground mine and converting the potential energy of the sand into electricity via regenerative braking and then lifting the sand from the mine to an upper reservoir using electric motors to store energy when electricity is cheap. The main components of UGES are the shaft, motor/generator, upper and lower storage sites, and mining equipment. The deeper and broader the mineshaft, the more power can be extracted from the plant, and the larger the mine, the higher the plant’s energy storage capacity.

Julian Hunt, a researcher in the IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program and the lead author of the study explained, “When a mine closes, it lays off thousands of workers. This devastates communities that rely only on the mine for their economic output. UGES would create a few vacancies as the mine would provide energy storage services after it stops operations. Mines already have the basic infrastructure and are connected to the power grid, which significantly reduces the cost and facilitates the implementation of UGES plants.”

Other energy storage methods, like batteries, lose energy via self-discharge over long periods. The energy storage medium of UGES is sand, meaning that there is no energy lost to self-discharge, enabling ultra-long time energy storage ranging from weeks to several years.

The investment costs of UGES are about 1 to 10 USD/kWh and power capacity costs of 2,000 USD/kW. The technology is estimated to have a global potential of 7 to 70 TWh, with most of this potential concentrated in China, India, Russia, and the USA.

Behnam Zakeri, study coauthor and a researcher in the IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program offered the conclusion, “To decarbonize the economy, we need to rethink the energy system based on innovative solutions using existing resources. Turning abandoned mines into energy storage is one example of many solutions that exist around us, and we only need to change the way we deploy them.”

***

This might be the furthest reach for the gravity method of storing electricity. Pumping water back above the generators has some merit as well. One might note that the mechanical losses are mentioned in the study paper for this idea, but hard to locate for the water method.

So far engineering hasn’t really started in on innovations to gain efficiency. That is a area in this field in dire need of attention.

The production costs are not covered in the press release. For those curious the study paper (Not behind a paywall at posting date.) offers much more information.

Both this type of idea and the hydro idea have yet to see a concerted effort in application. The tech isn’t at a high level and the “interesting” perspective isn’t terribly interesting.

This is simple, doable and fairly practical. One wonders why it isn’t being done. Oh, its not really needed, except where politics have cut the power supply. Good luck getting those places motivated to store some power at low cost. This is way cheaper than buying batteries even though the operation losses are noteworthy. Then getting personnel might be quite a problem as well.

It good to know it can be done. Maybe it will when politics pay more attention to practical needs than special interests’ hysterics and cash contributions.

By Andrew Cass of Becker’s Hosptial Review

With the end of pandemic-era relief programs, the rural health safety net is under renewed pressure, according to a Feb. 7 report from healthcare advisory firm Chartis Group. 

Six things to know: 

1. Forty-three percent of rural hospitals have negative operating margins. More than half (51 percent) of rural hospitals in non-Medicaid expansion states have negative operating margins, compared with 39 percent in expansion states. 

2. There have been 143 rural hospital closures in the past 13 years, and Chartis research shows another 453 are vulnerable for closure. 

3. Rural hospital closures fell from 19 in 2020 to two in 2021, but crept up to seven in 2022.  

4. Between 2011 and 2019, 198 hospitals ceased to provide obstetrics. That number has since increased to 217 as of the time of the report’s release. 

5. Between 2014 and 2019, 311 hospitals stopped providing chemotherapy. That number has since increased to 353. 

6. Conversion requirements and other considerations make it unlikely the new rural emergency hospital designation that went into effect Jan. 1 will deliver widespread relief to the rural safety net. Of the 389 hospitals most likely to consider conversion, a Chartis data model identified 77 that are ideal candidates.

The US Department of State has been funding a “disinformation” tracking group through its Global Engagement Center (GEC), which reportedly works at demonetizing sites it accuses of disseminating “disinformation,” – which are overwhelmingly conservative news outlets, the Washington Examiner reports.

The Global Disinformation Index, a British organization with two affiliated U.S. nonprofit groups, is feeding blacklists to ad companies with the intent of defunding and shutting down websites peddling alleged “disinformation,” the Washington Examiner reported. This same “disinformation” group has received $330,000 from two State Department-backed entities linked to the highest levels of government, raising concerns from First Amendment lawyers and members of Congress.

GDI through its website maintains a “dynamic exclusion list” of the worst offenders of disinformation online, which it then distributes to ad tech companies – such as Microsoft’s Xandr – in order to try and “defund and downrank these worst offenders,” and deprive said sites of ad revenue.

According to The American Conserviative executive director Emily Doak, “They might consider TAC a ‘high-risk’ publication because we have consistently taken on the bipartisan establishment’s sacred cows, whether it’s the war in Iraq, nation-building in Afghanistan, or the harm done by free trade and open borders — and we’ve been proven right time and time again,” adding “They know they can’t say we’re wrong, only that we’re biased and ‘high-risk,’ so we will wear that designation as a badge of honor.”

In 2018, the GEC began funding Disinfo Cloud, a State Department spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. The GEC awarded roughly $300,000 to an investment group called Park Advisers, which fights “disinformation, terrorism, violent extremism, hate speech” to manage Disinfo Cloud, the spokesperson said.

Park Advisers implemented Disinfo Cloud “to provide the U.S. government and its partners with a database of the tools and technologies available to help push back against foreign propaganda and disinformation,” according to its website, which links to Disinfo Cloud’s former landing page that has since been pulled off the internet. -Washington Examiner

One State Department-funded group which supports GDI is the nonprofit National Endowment for Democracy, which receives nearly 100% of its funding from congressional appropriations ($300 million in 2021), which critics have argued is essentially giving money to a government grantmaking body despite its status as a private entity.

In 2020, $230,000 went from the NED to the AN foundation, a GDI group that also goes by the Disinformation Index Foundation. The grant was to “deepen understanding of the challenges to information integrity in the digital space” in Asia, Africa and other foreign countries, and to “assess disinformation risks of local online media ecosystems.”

The Global Engagement Center notably appeared in the Twitter Files reported by @mtaibbi https://t.co/M3LM3PkkrX

— Gabe Kaminsky (@gekaminsky) February 10, 2023

Meanwhile in September 2021, the GEC hosted the US-Paris Tech Challenge – an event which sought to “advance the development of promising and innovative technologies against disinformation and propaganda” in Europe and the UK. The event was a “collaboration with U.S. Embassy Paris, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)” and several other organizations.

Civil rights experts are appalled.

“Any outfit like that engaged in censorship shouldn’t have any contact with the government because they’re tainted by association with a group that is doing something fundamentally against American values,” said Jeffrey Clark, former acting head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division in a statement to the Examiner. “The government or any private entity shouldn’t be involved with this entity that’s engaged in conduct that is either legally questionable or at least morally questionable.”

In addition to Park Advisers and Disinfo Cloud, partners for the Paris challenge included the Atlantic Council, a major think tank, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and others, according to the State Department.

— Gabe Kaminsky (@gekaminsky) February 10, 2023

Meanwhile, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) said: “Last year, under tremendous bipartisan pressure, I refused to reauthorize the Global Engagement Center because such a step seemed premature,” adding “The most recent allegations, if verified, confirm the need for a strict accounting of all U.S. taxpayer funds going to the GEC.”

Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) says that the Biden administration is “knee deep” in left-leaning efforts to “crack down” on speech – telling the Examiner: “House Republicans will be hauling these bad actors before Congress, and I absolutely support legislation to ban federal funding of anti-free speech groups.“

Authored by Lorenz Duchamps via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The GoFundMe fundraising website removed multiple campaigns that were set up to support and raise money for a 73-year-old Arizona rancher who was arrested in late January and charged with first-degree murder after allegedly shooting and killing an illegal alien who reportedly trespassed on his property.

A spokesperson for the platform told NTD in an emailed statement that the company’s terms of service “explicitly prohibit campaigns that raise money to cover the legal defense of anyone formally charged with an alleged violent crime.”

“Consistent with this long-standing policy, any fundraising campaigns for the legal defense of someone charged with murder are removed from our platform,” the spokesperson said, noting that people who donated to the fundraising campaigns for George Alan Kelly’s legal expenses “have been fully refunded.”

On Jan. 30, authorities proceeded with the arrest of Kelly after finding the body of 48-year-old Gabriel Cuen-Butimea, an illegal immigrant who lived in Nogales, Mexico, and allegedly crossed onto Kelly’s land. Cuen-Butimea was identified from a Mexican voter registration card he carried.

According to reports, Cuen-Butimea had entered the United States illegally on multiple occasions and was deported repeatedly.

Full details about the shooting have not been made available yet, and it is unknown whether the rancher and the deceased knew each other.

Kelly is being held at the Santa Cruz County Jail in Nogales, Arizona, and his bail was set at $1 million by Justice Emilio Velasquez. Kelly requested the judge to lower his bail in order to go back home and take care of his wife, but this motion was denied by the judge, who told Kelly that his lawyer had to file a request, which has yet to be done.

“She’s there by herself … nobody to take care of her, the livestock, or the ranch,” he said, according to Nogales International. “And I’m not going anywhere. I can’t come up with a million dollars.”

Read more here…

The Biden administration’s lip service about new IRS enforcement only being targeted toward the country’s wealthiest appears to be just that: lip service.

Instead, while we have been distracted with rhetoric about billionaires paying their fair share, the Biden Administration’s IRS is actually looking to stock its coffers with the tips of waiters and waitresses across the country. This newly planned targeting of middle-class Americans was proposed this week.

Earlier this week the IRS proposed a new procedure to “improve tip reporting compliance”, as they so brilliantly put it. Fox News reported:

As part of the program, which wouldn’t go into effect until after a multi-month public comment period, the IRS could withdraw liability protection related to “rules that define tips as part of an employee’s pay” from employers that don’t cooperate.

The program can’t go into effect until it makes it through a multi-month comment period, Fox News reported. 

Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., the chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Tax, told Fox this week: “Washington has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. Now, the IRS is going after middle-income families and working moms and dads who are just trying to make ends meet and put food on the table.” 

“My colleagues and I have warned for months that the IRS would start targeting hardworking Americans in the Biden administration’s quest for more taxpayer dollars. Now, we’re starting to see some of these concerns come to fruition,” he continued.

Rep. Adrian Smith, R-Neb., another senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee, agreed. 

Smith said: “Bank surveillance efforts, 1099-Ks, 87,000 new IRS agents to target taxpayers, and now a new program to go after service industry workers’ tips are all a direct result of the Biden administration’s desire to tax working families and small businesses as much as possible.”

Smith continued: “Make no mistake: the administration’s many attempts at raising revenue are because they are unwilling to come to the table to address the debt crisis, which would require curbing their spending addiction.” 

“The days of one-party rule are over, and House Republicans will use our majority to ensure hardworking families are not subject to higher taxes and more government mandates, especially not as they struggle under soaring inflation. Accountability is here – the Biden administration has some explaining to do.”

Rep. Michelle Steel, R-Calif, commented: “When the IRS comes after you, it’s not voluntary. Families across the country are struggling with record inflation and fighting to make ends meet. The last thing waitresses and waiters need is to be targeted by their own government.”

Steel continued: “The House’s first order of business this year was to pass my bill to defund President Biden’s army of 87,000 IRS agents that were ready to increase audits on middle- and lower-income American families. This new rule doesn’t add up with President Biden’s claim that he will never come after anyone earning less than $400,000 a year. I strongly oppose this proposed rule and I urge President Biden to reverse course immediately.”

Mike Palicz, federal affairs manager at Americans for Tax Reform said the IRS’ goal is “to go and grab as much revenue as possible and from whoever they can.”