Plus, Tucker Carlson finally reveals his vaccination status
Behind one of the doors here, at an unmarked Brink’s Global warehouse near John F. Kennedy International Airport, is roughly $30 million in gold bars. A group of investment advisers from suburban Pennsylvania parked the gold here last May, shortly after buying it from a seller in Europe. And they chose this spot — an ordinary-looking warehouse in Springfield Gardens, a majority-Black, lower-middle-class part of town — for a very specific reason: a provision in the Trump tax cuts that offers breaks to investors who launch ventures in poorer neighborhoods. “We are actually driving economic activity in economically challenged areas,” Bob Enck, the CEO and founder of the business, boasted in a promotional video. He’s dubbed his scheme the US Opportunity Gold Fund. The gambit relies on “opportunity zones,” a controversial federal program that lavishes a steep capital gains cut on rich companies and individuals in exchange for investing in a struggling community. Thanks to the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, investors who sell financial assets such as stock can defer and reduce their capital gains taxes — which can run as high as 40% — if they use the proceeds to build a business or housing in a federally approved low-income neighborhood. If the venture lasts more than 10 years, the profits from the new business become entirely tax-free. The program entails very few requirements to prove that new projects will benefit existing communities. As a result, opportunity zones have fueled the construction of luxury housing, self-storage units and even a superyacht marina, and helped the Trump tax breaks earn their reputation as a bonanza for the ultrarich. But even in that light, experts told HuffPost the US Gold Opportunity Fund is one of the boldest applications of the program they have ever encountered. |
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Law enforcement officers are still searching for a suspect after multiple people were wounded, some of them shot, on a New York City subway train during the Tuesday morning rush hour. Several photographs posted to social media showed a bloody scene, with people lying on the subway platform and tending to wounds at the 36th Street station in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Green-colored smoke appeared to billow from a train car that pulled into the station in video posted online. |
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After months of amplifying vaccine skepticism while refusing to disclose his own immunization status, Fox News host Tucker Carlson told attendees at a recent megachurch event that he’s not had a single COVID-19 shot. “I skipped the first three; I’m not getting that one either,” Carlson said of additional booster shots while speaking at San Diego’s Awaken Church earlier this month, according to audio obtained by the Daily Beast and first reported by Voice of San Diego. Carlson, a prominent anti-vaccine voice at Fox News and self-professed liar, has repeatedly dodged calls to disclose his vaccination status, saying such inquiries are as invasive as asking if someone has HIV or questioning what sexual positions they use. |
New York Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin, whose seven months in that role has been overshadowed by probes into a previous campaign, was arrested Tuesday in a federal corruption investigation. The U.S. Attorney’s office said Benjamin was arrested on charges of bribery, honest services wire fraud and falsification of records. Benjamin, formerly a state senator from Harlem, had joined the administration of Gov. Kathy Hochul in September, chosen by her to fill her former job a couple of weeks after she stepped into the governorship following the resignation of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo over sexual harassment allegations. |
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