Kari Lake Campaign Declares Sen. Sinema Has ‘No Path to Victory’ as Schumer-Sinema Border Bill Unveiled

The U.S. Senate campaign for Kari Lake told The Arizona Sun Times that Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) “has no path to victory” just before the former Democrat unveiled her Senate bill to address the border crisis with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).

Sinema, who has still not declared whether she will seek reelection this November, unveiled a $118 billion border bill alongside Senators Schumer, James Lankford (R-OK), and Chris Murphy (D-CT).

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Pennsylvania Spends $600,000 to Fix Up Recovery Houses

As Pennsylvania invests more taxpayer money into drug addiction treatment, about $600,000 has gone to recovery homes for building upgrades to put them in compliance with state and federal rules.

The commonwealth’s licensed recovery homes – overseen by the Department of Community and Economic Development and the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs – give people recovering from addiction a place to live, as well as access to resources like medication-assisted treatment. 

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Lawmakers Sell Brewers Ballpark Funding as Only Costing Milwaukee

The plan to use more than $600 million in taxpayer money to pay for work in American Family field and keep the Brewers in Milwaukee until 2050 is not done, but the pitch for the funding package is set.

State Rep. Rob Brooks, R-Saukville, told lawmakers Thursday at the first public hearing in the stadium funding package that only Milwaukee and Milwaukee County will be paying for the stadium.

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Congress Preaches Spending Cuts While Allowing Its Own Budget to Explode by 38 Percent Since 2014

While many lawmakers have preached for years the need for federal spending cuts, the amount of taxpayer money that Congress spends on its own operations has swelled 38% since FY2014 from $4.3 billion to $6.9 billion this year, according to a Just the News review of Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports on annual federal budgets. 

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Beacon Center’s 2022 Pork Report Identifies Three Biggest Wastes of Taxpayer Money in East Tennessee

In its annual Pork Report published earlier this week, the Beacon Center of Tennessee highlighted three areas of waste, fraud, and abuse of Tennessee taxpayer money in East Tennessee. The report specifically identified the issues of the city of Knoxville’s lawsuit against Netflix and Hulu, synthetic turf athletic fields in Johnson City, and pickleball courts in Bristol.

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Beacon Center’s 2022 Pork Report Addresses Vehicle Registration Fee Increase, Homeless Pods, and Planned Parenthood Funding in Middle Tennessee

In its annual Pork Report, the Beacon Center of Tennessee highlighted three areas of waste, fraud, and abuse of Tennessee taxpayer money in Middle Tennessee. The report specifically identified the issues of unused homeless pods in Nashville, raised vehicle registration fees in place of emissions testing, and the funding of a grant for Planned Parenthood.

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Commentary: An American Tradition Is Chronic Anti-Poverty Waste via the Federal-to-Local Distribution Pipeline

For six years, beginning in 2014, the accounting firm for the Southeast Alabama Community Action Partnership warned administrators that the organization was doing a poor job of managing the millions of dollars in taxpayer money it received annually for its poverty-reduction work, including home energy assistance and foster grandparenting.  

In 2018, a longtime employee filed a federal complaint alleging that the group spent public money profligately on extravagant travel and for other unauthorized purposes, and that it retaliated against employees who questioned its financial practices. 

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Americans for Prosperity Calls Out Oracle for Reported Layoffs While Receiving Taxpayer Money

Following a report that tech company Oracle has begun laying off workers from its Nashville location, the libertarian conservative political advocacy group Americans for Prosperity is calling on state and local leaders to scrutinize the company especially after it received “nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in taxpayer money.”

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Some Michigan Schools Keep Mum on COVID Relief Spending

Theoretically, taxpayers should be able to see how Michigan schools are spending $5.7 billion of taxpayer money to recover from COVID-19-related learning loss.

But an investigation by The Center Square through more than 80 records requests to schools statewide shows how difficult it can be to obtain itemized COVID spending records. Many schools never responded to an initial Freedom of Information Act request.

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Policy Group Questions Incentive Packages for Ohio’s Intel Plant

When President Biden signed the CHIPS Act into law Tuesday, it most likely meant a third round of government incentives for Intel and it’s planned $20 billion semiconductor plant in central Ohio, leaving some concerned with the amount of taxpayer money being funneled to the company.

The signing opened $52 billion to companies producing semiconductor chips and another $10 billion to create regional technology hubs across the country. That’s on top of at least $2 billion in initial state incentives for Intel, and an unknown second round of state money.

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Ducey Appeals Ruling Against Arizona’s Limiting COVID Relief to Open Schools

Gov. Doug Ducey is appealing a federal judge’s decision blocking his decision to withhold federal COVID-19 relief to unopened schools. 

While Arizona had lifted all mask mandates in April 2021, some schools still maintained a mask requirement.

To incentivize the removal of classroom mask policies, Ducey restricted a $163 million aid package to maskless, opened schools. The aid amounts to $1,080 per student. The state funding came from the $2 billion in federal stimulus money from the American Recovery Plan Act.

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Minnesota Governments and Associations Spent $10 Million Lobbying in 2020

Local governments are spending more taxpayer money on lobbying year-over-year, according to a report released Thursday by State Auditor Julie Blaha.

“Over the past five years, local government expenditures have increased by 11 percent on staff and contract lobbyists,” Blaha said in a statement. “When adjusted for inflation, the increase is approximately 4 percent.”

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A New Report Details How Nonprofits Are Funneling Millions To Democratic Governors To Further Their Global Warming Agenda

by Michael Bastach   California Governor Jerry Brown’s upcoming global warming activist summit is part of an effort to funnels millions of dollars from nonprofits to state politicians to advance a liberal climate agenda, according to a new report. Brown’s so-called “Global Climate Action Summit” begins on Wednesday, and is sure to garner media attention. Its list of speakers includes former Vice President Al Gore, actor Alec Baldwin and former Secretary of State John Kerry. Indeed, the whole point of the summit is to give politicians and activists a platform on global warming ahead of the November elections. However, Competitive Enterprise senior fellow Chris Horner wants people to remember one thing about the summit: “this is what activist government for hire looks like, and how it is brought about.” “Open record productions reveal that this summit is part of a major climate industry that funnels donor money through nonprofit organizations to staff up politicians’ offices,” Horner wrote in a new report published Tuesday. And what an industry it is, Horner’s report reveals. Democratic state governors hope to mobilize $50 million by 2020 from nonprofits towards promoting liberal climate policies, including meeting the goals of the Paris climate accord. This is…

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