Politics - BGR

Why ‘Let’s Go, Brandon’ is the right’s favorite Joe Biden insult

Andy Meek — Thu, 23 Jun 2022 18:29:00 +0000

Spend enough time scrolling through Twitter, and you'll eventually come across it. A simple, three-word exhortation -- Let's go, Brandon! -- that started spreading like wildfire across social media in October of 2021.

This phrase quickly became a combination anti-Joe Biden "Let's go, Brandon" meme as well as a conservative rallying cry of sorts. It's also driven Biden supporters completely crazy. You'll generally find the phrase shared in posts written by critics of President Biden, but it's also gone on to become a hashtag, a meme, it's included in account names and handles -- and it even adorns merchandise. A Let's go, Brandon song also went viral on TikTok.

We'll break down the backstory below. It's best, however, to think about this catchphrase within the context of some larger political forces at work. Biden's approval rating, for example, just hit one of the lowest levels of his presidency. Inflation is soaring, high gas prices are frustrating cash-strapped consumers, and some Democrats have started whispering about whether Biden ought to be the candidate the party runs in 2024.

Here's a segment from none other than CNN, in fact, decrying a so-called "geriatric oligarchy" in control of the US government.

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President Biden just proposed a new stimulus idea that Obama once panned as a ‘gimmick’

Andy Meek — Thu, 23 Jun 2022 00:21:00 +0000

During the 2008 presidential campaign, then-candidate Barack Obama dismissed the effectiveness of so-called gas tax holidays as little more than a "gimmick." To be more specific, he said they weren't effective at achieving the stated intent of providing consumers relief from high gas prices. Nevertheless, this is the policy that President Biden on Wednesday has called on Congress to support. And it comes, of course, in the face of soaring prices at the pump as well as record-high inflation.

"The price of gas is up dramatically around the world, and by almost $2 per gallon in America, since (Russian President Vladimir) Putin began amassing troops on the border of Ukraine," notes a White House news release.

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FBI busts online black market selling millions of stolen Social Security numbers

Andy Meek — Sat, 11 Jun 2022 22:14:00 +0000

US law enforcement officials have shut down a series of websites making $19 million in revenue by selling stolen data. The black market data the websites trafficked in included crucial personal information like stolen Social Security numbers and birthdates. So it's definitely a big win that this operation was dismantled.

The US Justice Department announced the shutdown of the "SSNDOB Marketplace" websites on June 7. Among other things, the announcement included this shocking detail: The websites were selling around 24 million stolen Social Security numbers. For context, that number exceeds the population of the state of Florida.

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New stimulus payments are coming on June 1 if you live in this state

Andy Meek — Thu, 26 May 2022 20:01:00 +0000

For a lucky few, new relief checks are going out again in a matter of days. The lucky few, being residents of the state of Maine -- and the individual checks totaling $850 ($1,700, for households).

The money is going out as soon as June 1, thanks to Gov. Janet Mills signing a $1.2 billion budget into law that funds the payments. It comes as such relief checks have become much more targeted this year, as similar federal payments going out to millions of Americans pretty much stopped completely at the end of 2021.

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6 stimulus money programs you might qualify for in 2022

Andy Meek — Fri, 20 May 2022 19:28:00 +0000

At the beginning of this year, it certainly looked like stimulus checks were going to be a thing of the past. A US Senator (Joe Manchin) had just signaled his opposition to continuing President Biden's child tax credit checks, and that was that. Since then, however, states have taken up the mantle themselves, with one after another sending out localized stimulus checks and tax rebates.

Many of those rebates are coming soon. And you can read more about those and other stimulus-related initiatives happening in six different states below.

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States offering stimulus checks and tax rebates

The aforementioned tax rebates are coming to a broad swath of the US, covering millions of citizens everywhere from the northeast to the West Coast. Also, much of the money flowing from state coffers is meant as targeted relief to mitigate the impact of inflation, which is causing spikes in everything from groceries to gas prices.

Maine: Thanks to a recently signed $1.2 billion state budget, Maine residents are in line for a relief check as soon as June. Individuals can get $850 checks, while the average household would get $1,700. Those eligible must have a federal adjusted gross income of less than: $100,000 if filing single or if married and filing separately; $150,000 if filing as head of household; or $200,000 for couples filing jointly.
Indiana: The state of Indiana is giving back a chunk of the state’s latest budget surplus to residents, in the form of a tax rebate worth up to $125 (or $250 for joint filers). Residents will get it upon filing their 2021 tax returns.
Illinois: Payments of up to $400 are coming this year for Illinois residents. The payments of $50 or $100 will depend on how many dependents are in a household. Families can claim $100 for up to three. Within the state, the city of Chicago is also sending out prepaid gas and transportation cards to help residents cover the rising cost of those expenses.

Money coming in more states

Image source: ptnphotof/Adobe

Other states around the country are implementing their own versions of the same thing. A snapshot of additional tax rebates and the like that are going out soon includes the following in these states:

Delaware: Residents in Delaware are also getting a tax rebate soon. The rebates of $300 for individuals or $600 for joint filers are meant to help cover the rising cost of things like gas and groceries as a result of inflation. Read more about Delaware's initiative right here.
Colorado: 3.1 million “full-time” state residents are getting a tax rebate, of either $400 for individuals or $800 for joint filers. They’ll be based on state tax returns that must be filed by May 31, 2022. And the money will go out in either August or September.
California: Gov. Gavin Newsom last week proposed an $18.1 billion budget package with targeted inflation relief. Including $400 checks meant to help people cover the soaring cost of gas, $2.7 billion for emergency rental assistance, and $1.4 billion to help Californians pay past-due utility bills.

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$2,500 stimulus payments available to help some Americans pay rent

Andy Meek — Wed, 18 May 2022 23:01:00 +0000

The stimulus checks keep flowing -- sort of. In the absence of any more such handouts from the federal government, states and cities have taken a piecemeal, ad hoc approach to try and keep all this going on a local level. It's why, for example, Californians might be getting money to offset high gas prices soon. And why Biden himself wants to pivot from stimulus checks to a different kind of stimulus (student loan debt relief). Meanwhile, Hawaii has a stimulus-style program of its own, to help people with soaring rent payments.

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Help with rent payments

Image source: bartsadowski/Adobe

Hawaii's Rental & Utility Relief Program provides support for, as the name implies, both utility as well as rent payments.

Thus far, the program has sent out in excess of $155 million in aid. And as far as how to qualify? According to the program's stipulations, eligibility is determined if:

The household can show financial hardship since March 2020 and at least one member is at risk of losing their housing, and
The household is at 80 percent annual median income or lower. For a household of four, that's $104,500 a year or less.
OR: A household can qualify if at least one member has been unemployed for 90 days at the time of application.

Click the button near the top of this page to apply for the rent payments aid. In terms of how much money is potentially available, the site goes on to note that recipients could get as much as $2,500 a month for outstanding utility bills or rent payments.

Also available: Up to $2,000 a month for ongoing rent payments, and $500 a month for ongoing utility bills.

Stimulus check update

One important note to add: Hawaiians shouldn't apply for this aid to get help with their mortgage bill. This is strictly for utility and rent payments.

Meantime, if you want to get a closer look at some of the other stimulus check-related news headlines from recent days, you can check out some of our recent pieces below. Alternatively, bookmark this page right here to say up to date when we publish a new story.

Relief from student loans

As we alluded to above, it's also not just renters struggling with rent payments who could be in store for some help soon.

According to sources with knowledge of President Biden's thinking who spoke to Bloomberg, Biden is leaning toward using executive action to forgive at least $10,000 in student loan debt per borrower. Anonymous sources have cautioned that the president’s thinking here is still fluid. But there is chatter that there would be some sort of means-testing in whatever final form of a plan emerges.

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Biden officials put new disinformation board on pause, stung by conservative backlash

Andy Meek — Wed, 18 May 2022 17:50:32 +0000

Conservatives excoriated it as a totalitarian-style Ministry of Truth. Its director's bizarre TikTok video, in which she sang about disinformation in the style of a Mary Poppins ditty, was played over and over again on Fox News and by other conservative media. And now, mere weeks after the Biden administration's Dept. of Homeland Security launched the controversial Disinformation Governance Board? The department appears to have put it on pause -- possibly ahead of a move to scuttle it altogether.

The news comes via a fresh report from The Washington Post, which also added that the board's controversial director Nina Jankowicz drafted a resignation letter after learning this news. She's still around, for now, though it's also still possible that Homeland Security might decide to kill the board outright soon.

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Homeland Security "pausing" disinfo board

All in all, this is probably for the best. You don't have to be a hardcore conservative to have a problem with the federal government getting into the business of declaring this or that to be disinformation. After all, there's no law against you being wrong or misinformed about something.

Even well-intentioned people can inadvertently spread erroneous information. And that includes people supposedly in charge of deciding what counts as truth or not.

President Biden, shown delivering the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on March 1, 2022. Image source: Saul Loeb - Pool via CNP/MEGA

Jankowicz herself, for example, quickly came under fire for tweeting in the past about the Hunter Biden laptop story seeming to be redolent of Russian disinformation. A March 2022 story from The New York Times, however, found that the laptop was actually real.

From that NYT story: "Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation."

It's not a crime to be wrong

Now, we can certainly give Jankowicz the benefit of the doubt here. Especially since she tweeted a few weeks ago in an attempt to clarify her views on that story. In essence, she says that she was merely live-tweeting a presidential debate. But that just, once again, proves why the federal government has no business setting up a board to chase down stuff like this. It's not a crime to get your facts wrong.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, meanwhile, sarcastically referenced the Homeland Security disinfo board in a tweet in recent days. He did so by way of calling out the administration's handling of inflation.

https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/1525309091970699265

Oh, and speaking of Twitter? Here's another example of Jankowicz being quite adept at raising people's eyebrows. She suggested during a Zoom chat just a few days ago that verified users on Twitter should be able to edit other users' tweets. That is, if they decide those tweets are misleading, of course.

Nina Jankowicz stung by mean tweets

Another thing that jumped out at me in the Post's reporting of Homeland Security's pullback on the disinformation board, meanwhile? It's the way the reporting tied the decision to the outcry from conservatives that the launch generated.

After she sent this tweet at the end of April announcing her new work with the board, for example:

https://twitter.com/wiczipedia/status/1519274470049042432

...the Post goes on to note that by the end of that day? There were more than 53,000 posts on Twitter mentioning the disinfo board. And many of them identified Jankowicz by name.

“Nina Jankowicz has been subjected to unjustified and vile personal attacks and physical threats,” a DHS spokesperson told the Post in a statement. “In congressional hearings and in media interviews, the Secretary has repeatedly defended her as eminently qualified and underscored the importance of the Department’s disinformation work, and he will continue to do so.”

It is interesting, to say the least, that the acceptability around hard-fought battles in the information space seems to flow in generally one direction.

A flood of right-wing media coverage, and lots of mean tweets, get morphed into "unjustified and vile" attacks. But when it's a congresswoman telling supporters to harass Trump staffers ("They're not welcome anymore, anywhere"); or the mayor of one of the biggest cities in the country telling people that the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade draft decision deserves a "call to arms"; or Obama's former attorney general repurposing Michelle Obama's well-known quote to say, instead, "When they go low, we kick them"; all of that is fine, apparently.

You're just not allowed to send mean tweets if you're a Republican criticizing a policy you don't agree with. At that point, you've crossed the line into "unjustified and vile" behavior. The federal agency in charge of the almost-defunct disinformation board says so.

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$3,600 tax credits are now available to even more people – see if you’re eligible

Andy Meek — Mon, 16 May 2022 19:36:00 +0000

The IRS, as we all know, stopped sending out monthly child tax credit checks back in December. But that doesn't mean the tax agency has stopped sending out stimulus money completely. Or that no more child tax credit benefits can be claimed.

On the contrary, the IRS in recent days published a new announcement along these lines aimed at Puerto Rico.

President Biden, remember, signed the American Rescue Plan Act into law back in March 2021. At that point, more stimulus money started flowing from the federal government. Continues the IRS announcement: "And one of the Act’s provisions permanently expanded Child Tax Credit eligibility to residents of Puerto Rico with one or more qualifying children."

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IRS announcement

The exterior of the IRS headquarters building is shown. Image source: Pamela Au/Adobe

Previously, the announcement adds, "tax law limited Puerto Rico resident eligibility to those who paid Social Security or self-employment taxes during the year and had three or more qualifying children."

Last year's stimulus law made the child tax credit fully refundable for 2021. In doing so, it also temporarily removed the requirement that limited the credit amount to the Social Security and self-employment taxes paid during the year.

Last year, the IRS says nearly 152,000 Form 1040 tax returns were filed by residents of Puerto Rico. As of April 18 this year, the last day of the filing season? Taxpayers in Puerto Rico had filed even more Form 1040 returns (nearly 240,000).

"While that’s a good sign that more people have filed this year, we believe that there are many more eligible individuals who haven’t filed and claimed the credit, either because they don’t normally file a tax return, have never needed to file a federal tax return, or haven’t heard about this change," the IRS adds. "We also know that some island residents have had issues filing their tax form and/or claiming the credit."

More stimulus money

Some key things to know about the IRS' effort to make sure Puerto Ricans get the stimulus money they're owed:

The tax agency is in the process of launching a phased effort that will run over the three-year filing statutory window for Puerto Rican residents to claim the 2021 Child Tax Credit.
Also in development? A "partner-sponsored online portal" that will allow Puerto Rico residents to file a streamlined Form 1040 for the 2021 tax year. More information on that is coming soon.

Puerto Rico residents should also know that child tax credit information is available anytime via the Internet. The IRS has a page spelling out all the details, at IRS.gov, in English and Spanish. At the top of the page at that link, you should see different language options. Click Spanish to instantly change the format of the page.

Meanwhile, individuals can likewise use the IRS service “Where’s My Refund?” which is also available in Spanish to track their refund.

Read more: For a deeper dive into all this, check out our page right here with all of our latest stories about stimulus money, checks, and more.

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10 states where you can get stimulus checks and extra tax rebates now

Andy Meek — Tue, 10 May 2022 21:04:00 +0000

It's one of the politician's oldest tricks in the book. But it still works, because it's so effective. One of the best ways to accrue goodwill from voters? Throw money at them, in the form of everything from stimulus checks to tax rebate payments.

Congress is too gridlocked at the moment to move forward with more stimulus checks at the federal level. Republicans also have no incentive to give President Biden something that looks like a "win," given the state of play ahead of this fall's midterm elections. And so, we turn to the state level.

There, it's a completely different story. State governments across the country have for months now been proposing everything from gas rebate checks to checks that return a portion of budget surpluses to residents. And we've got all the details below.

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Tax rebate payments, stimulus checks, and more

Last year, American taxpayers got more than half a dozen stimulus checks from the federal government. They included six child tax credit payments, along with a third stimulus check in response to the Covid pandemic.

As you'll see below, the drive to issue such payments has now by necessity shifted to the state level. The giveaways are an attempt to tackle everything from record-high inflation to soaring gas prices.

Close-up of a customer's hand pumping fuel into a car's gas tank. Image source: ckellyphoto/Adobe

The list of states

We'll now briefly run through some of what's been proposed (or is definitely coming) around the US:

Colorado: 3.1 million "full-time" state residents are getting a tax rebate, of either $400 for individuals or $800 for joint filers. They'll be based on state tax returns that must be filed by May 31, 2022. And the money will go out in either August or September.

Indiana: Under this state's law that automatically sends excess state reserve funds back to taxpayers when a certain threshold is reached, one-time payments of $125 are going out to taxpayers between now and July.

Maine: Around 850,000 residents are getting $850 checks, money for which comes from a state budget surplus. The payments will be based on state tax returns, which are due by May 31, and the payments could come as soon as next month.

New Mexico: Residents here are getting tax rebates in July. $250 if they make less than $75,000 a year, and a $500 rebate if they make no more than $150,000 a year.

Illinois: Payments of up to $400 are coming this year for Illinois residents. The payments of $50 or $100 will depend on how many dependents are in a household. Families can claim $100 for up to three.

Tax rebates and payments coming to other states & cities

Idaho: Idaho lawmakers appropriated $350 million for tax rebates earlier this year. The payments went out to residents in March. And residents can check the status of their payment right here.

Chicago: The city council here has approved sending out gas rebate checks. Eligible residents will get $150 prepaid gas cards.

Kentucky: Earlier this year, the state Senate passed legislation sending tax rebates out to residents. If the same language is approved by the House, residents would get a tax rebate of up to $500 (for individuals) and $1,000 for households.

Minnesota: Gov. Tim Walz has proposed tax rebate payments of $1,000 per couple. That money would come out of a state budget surplus.

Hawaii: A state Senate bill has proposed a tax rebate payment of $300 to anyone making no more than $100,000 a year, and $100 for anyone with incomes over that amount.

New York: New York's legislature in recent weeks passed a bill offering residents a six-month gas tax, and another offering a homeowner tax rebate. In New York City, the average benefit of the latter is expected to be $425. Outside of NYC, the expected benefit is almost $970.

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Stimulus checks made inflation worse, Federal Reserve data shows

Andy Meek — Mon, 09 May 2022 19:51:00 +0000

Stimulus checks offered a powerful economic lifeline to millions of Americans over the last couple of years. Especially in 2021, the second full year of the Covid pandemic, over the course of which the federal government sent out more than half a dozen stimulus checks. Tens of millions of families got a share of those funds, with data showing that it spared many of those families from falling into poverty. Today, however, inflation in the US is now at a multi-decade high. And that presents a vexing economic problem for the Biden administration.

What's more? New data from a regional bank of the Federal Reserve strongly suggests that the stimulus checks and inflation are linked. Specifically, by one playing a role in causing the other.

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The negative impact of stimulus checks

Inflation is a big enough problem that President Biden gave public remarks about it on Tuesday. That's no surprise, given that a CNN poll from last week found that eight in 10 US adults are really worried about the problem. Among the poll's findings, a majority of respondents said they felt the federal government isn't doing enough to fight inflation. Even worse? A majority also said they think President Biden's policies have had a negative impact on the economy.

Researchers from the Federal Reserve Bank at San Francisco, meanwhile, have published an analysis linking stimulus checks and inflation. It argues, among other things, that the former may have added some 3 percentage points to US inflation.

"Since the first half of 2021," the bank's research explains, "US inflation has increasingly outpaced inflation in other developed countries. Estimates suggest that fiscal support measures designed to counteract the severity of the pandemic’s economic effect may have contributed to this divergence by raising inflation (by) about 3 percentage points by the end of 2021."

You can read the full report right here. It goes on to note that US inflation has risen at a much more rapid clip than in comparable nations. "The interplay between when (stimulus checks were) delivered and how households responded to successive COVID waves created complicated dynamics in the economy. Building these dynamics into a simple model suggests that they may have contributed to about 3 percentage points of the rise in US inflation through the end of 2021."

Biden's inflation speech

President Biden delivers remarks in Washington, DC, on April 6, 2022. Image source: Shawn Thew - Pool via CNP/MEGA

In the meantime, voter attitudes toward inflation pose a very real danger for Democrats in this fall's midterm elections. That explains, in part, the president deciding to talk about the problem publicly.

Along these lines, a new survey from Country Financial’s Security Index, which polled US adults in March, delivered more insightful findings along these lines. More than half of respondents said rising costs stemming from inflation will have a "big negative impact" on their purchase decisions. Specifically, on things like buying a new home.

A whopping nine in 10 respondents said they're "very concerned" about inflation.

This problem is one reason why West Virginia Democrat Senator Joe Manchin declined to get behind the president's goal of rolling out more child tax credit checks in 2022. Democrats and Republicans, remember, have a 50-50 margin in the Senate. And, generally, speaking, Biden's party needs every single vote in order to pass big legislation. When Manchin demurred, blaming inflation, that put the final nail in the coffin on more federal checks.

Biden has acknowledged that inflation is a nettlesome policy issue. He told reporters this week: “I think our policies have helped, not hurt. Think about what they say. The vast majority of economists think that (inflation) is going to be a real tough problem to solve." Meanwhile, more states around the country are sending out their own stimulus checks to help residents deal with rising costs.

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