Drudge Retort: The Other Side of the News
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Fun fact:

Whether it's $42M or $641M, it's still less than 1% of SNAP annual spending.

Toady's announcement : $42M
Total since March: $641M
2025 SNAP spending: $101.7B With a B.

Another fun fact, that puts these numbers into context:

A half a percent of fraud is far lower than the average across all government funded programs. Possibly an order of magnitude lower, if you happen to know how much an order of magnitude is.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that the federal government loses an estimated $233 billion to $521 billion annually to fraud, based on data from fiscal years 2018 through 2022. This range represents approximately 3% to 7% of average federal obligations during that period. budget.house.gov

So, really what J.D. Vance has discovered here, is SNAP is one of the least defrauded Federal programs there is. In addition to the low rate of fraud, the dollar amount itself is no more than 0.3% of the total estimated fraud -- representing just $641M of the low end estimate $223B total annual fraud.

Imagine thinking these numbers are something to crow about!

Quite the opposite, these numbers show Republicans are stupidly trying to get blood from a stone. They're looking at a very low fraud rate program with a very small annual spend. What with SNAP being 1.4% to 1.5% of total government spending.

And I wouldn't be surprised if these eager beavar Republicans have spent tens of millions just to uncover these meager amounts of fraud.

Opinion: As it turns out, America lost the Cold War
www.msn.com

... It is starting to feel like all the history we learned was wrong.

We were taught we won the Cold War. But today, the President of the United States openly serves the interests of Russia. We have become, in fact, in crucial economic and security matters, a satellite of Moscow. The U.S. chief executive has publicly and repeatedly declared his loyalty to Russia's head of state. For more than a decade he has openly and covertly been advancing Russian foreign policy, often at the expense of the national security of the United States, the laws of the United States, and the interests of the United States and our allies.
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It is such a shocking turn of events, so inconceivable to anyone who lived through the Cold War or its aftermath, that many Americans have been in denial about it for years. But the evidence is not only incontrovertible, but in recent days, the U.S. president has made the situation more explicit.

Trump's recent announcement that he had entered into an agreement with Russia to purchase diesel was a shock even to those who had long been in denial. Not only was Trump setting aside congressionally mandated U.S. sanctions policy, but he was offering a financial lifeline of billions of dollars to a cash-strapped Kremlin that could and almost certainly would use the extra liquidity to help fund its brutal, criminal aggression against Ukraine.

Never mind that the amount of fuel involved would make no impact on U.S. supplies, or that Trump could have gotten a better price purchasing the fuel elsewhere.

Never mind that the deal failed on its merits, economically and politically, as a form of relief for U.S. truckers and farmers squeezed by high prices.

What was worse and undeniable was that the U.S. was now helping to underwrite Russian attacks that were daily killing Ukrainian civilians and destroying Ukraine's infrastructure.

Furthermore, we were offering to help Russia at precisely the moment when the futility of its four-year escalation of a conflict that began in 2014 was becoming clear. Russia was no longer gaining ground. Russia was paying a huge price militarily, with over 1.5 million dead and wounded troops. Russia's economy could no longer afford the war. Ukraine had momentum. ...

Perhaps even more nauseatingly (if such a thing is imaginable), the world knows that Russia is actively supporting Iran. Credible reports suggest that Russia has been supplying vital intelligence to the Iranians and helping to resupply their missile stockpiles.

Which means that Donald Trump is directly sending U.S. taxpayer dollars to a country that will indirectly and yet inevitably serve to support potential attacks on our own military.

Trump is living up to his reputation as America's greatest enemy by actually using U.S. dollars to pay not only for attacks on our allies and, by extension, on the Western Alliance, but also by making it possible for Iran to target and kill more Americans.

Our president is at war with us. ...



#12 | POSTED BY EBERLY AT 2026-10-21 10:07 AM | REPLY

You are correct, it is a very complicated issue and constitutional issue. Under the U.S. Constitution, a federal wealth tax would likely be considered a direct tax. Unlike indirect taxes (such as duties, imposts, and excises) which must be geographically uniform, direct taxes must be apportioned among the states based on population, meaning each state's total tax contribution must match its share of the U.S. population. The federal income tax is a direct tax, but the 16th Amendment specifically carves out income taxes from indirect tax handcuff. You also have the "realization" issue in that generally there needs to be a realization event for a tax to arise - some accretion to wealth.

One popular alternative is to turn off the "buy, borrow, die" spigot. One planning technique used by the super wealthy is to borrow against appreciated assets and use those proceeds to generate gains at a rate higher than any interest paid. Borrowing is not a realization event - meaning if I own real estate with a fair market value of $10mil and a tax basis of $0 and I sold that property, I would have $10mil of taxable gain realized, if instead I borrow $5mil at an 8% rate against that property that isn't a realization event. So the wealthy lever up assets and then when they die the beneficiaries will get a step up in basis in the asset. So, that $10mil property with zero basis is now a $10mil property with $10mil in basis. If the beneficiaries turn around sell for $10mil, there is no gain. You can then use the proceeds to pay down any remaining debt. The idea would be to make the borrowing against the property a realization event for the super wealthy so that in the example above, when an owner borrows the $5mil, it will be taxable. That route is a lot easier than a wealth tax.

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