Wednesday, February 12, 2025

There's a lot going on...

 

If you haven't already read it, click over to Coffee & Covid and read today's essay.  It's a bit mind-blowing in its implications.  I won't try to excerpt it here - just go read it there.  It's worth your time.

Peter


They're stealing a billion dollars every year of OUR money to fund the Uniparty

 

For years people knowledgeable about the situation in Washington D.C. have spoken of the "Uniparty" - politicians who work together regardless of Democratic or Republican Party affiliation to pursue common interests and common aims.  It appears that members of the Uniparty have enriched themselves by feeding at the public trough for a very long time - unacknowledged, of course, and unimpaired by any sense of ethics or morals.

Now, however, the investigations by D.O.G.E. into the financial mess President Trump has inherited are bearing fruit - and, in the process, exposing the Uniparty's common organs.  Datarepublican reports:


The seven NGOs in the chart below, in my view, represent the Uniparty. Each of these organizations receives substantial financial support from USAID or the Department of State.  [Click the image for a larger, readable view.]

Around 2019, the phrase “democracy in danger” began to dominate public discourse, amplified by the media. This was odd—after all, the U.S. is a democracy (or more precisely, a constitutional republic). But as I traced the influence of these NGOs, a pattern emerged: they are controlled by establishment politicians, they play a major role in shaping political narratives worldwide, and their core mission is always framed as “protecting democracy.”

Originally, these NGOs were created to support U.S. democratic efforts abroad—many of them emerging during the Cold War to combat the spread of communism. But with the fall of the Soviet Union, their original purpose faded. Instead of dissolving, they redefined their mission. Now, they have positioned themselves as the guardians of democracy itself.

This shift explains why Trump’s re-election was framed as a "threat to democracy." To these NGOs, “democracy” means themselves. Their survival depends on maintaining that role, and any challenge to their authority is perceived as a direct attack on democracy itself.

. . .

Most of these NGOs were born during the Reagan years. While not all USAID and State Department funding flows through them, they control the purse strings for much of America’s global financial influence.

DEI initiatives created a system of unaccountability and dependency, which ended up injecting more money into them and further entrenches their power.

They see any challenge to their authority as a threat to democracy itself. But their greatest enemy is still the same one they've had since the Cold War—Russia. They've never lost the "Cold War" boomer mindset.

In their minds, they’re the superheroes keeping America from crumbling. And that entitles them to their travel perks, cushy post-election gigs, and all the other benefits that come with running an unacknowledged empire.


There's much more at the link.

The taxpayer funds allocated to each NGO for (presumably) one recent fiscal year (not specified) come to a total amount of no less than $1,027,930,770.  That's one billion, twenty-seven million, nine hundred and thirty thousand, seven hundred and seventy dollars.

Who's it going to?  Click over to Datarepublican's post and read the list of those running those seven NGO's.  You'll see an awful lot of familiar politicians' names, from both sides of the aisle.  Mitt Romney?  Check.  Elise Stefanik?  Check.  Steny Hoyer?  Check.  Donna Brazile?  Check.  They're all looking out for themselves and each other, and they have a billion dollars of taxpayers' money every year to do it with.

Folks, far too many of our politicians are robbing us blind, whether Republican or Democrat.  We need to identify all those responsible, and kick them out of office as quickly as possible.  If we don't, we deserve to lose everything they'll continue to steal from us.




Peter


The law of unintended consequences - political edition

 

The Telegraph in London has an interesting perspective on how President Trump is using the Democratic Party's own weapons against it (article may be paywalled).


Democrats created all the tools Trump is using to attack official Washington. Oops. They hoped to centralise power in the presidency and break through the old limitations of the 1787 Constitution. They largely succeeded after decades of effort.

What the authors of this transformation never expected was a president who would use the great powers they handed him to dismantle their own cherished projects. Yet that is exactly what Trump is doing.

This political ju-jitsu puts Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and their friends in a very awkward position. They grab the bullhorn to scream “no one elected Musk”. They’re right, of course. But then no one elected the bureaucrats they are defending, and they are far more insulated from control by elected officials.

. . .

The irony is unmistakable. Trump is using the powers of a strong White House to attack the administrative architecture built so laboriously by Democrats. Their progressive agenda is captured by the phrase “Living Constitution,” and was first articulated by Prof Woodrow Wilson (before he became president) and Herbert Croly. It began, in practice, in 1937, when the Supreme Court buckled to Franklin Roosevelt’s pressure and ruled that his new agencies and their regulatory actions were constitutional. Until then, the Court had ruled the other way.

After that, the largest steps were taken by Lyndon Johnson, whose Great Society programme created Washington’s complex array of bureaucracies. Barack Obama put the capstone in place with his healthcare legislation, a Democratic goal since Harry Truman.

These cumulative efforts shifted power away from the states and, within Washington, from Congress to the president and a proliferating array of Executive Branch agencies. The president could then govern by executive orders and regulatory actions by those agencies. Although Congress still passed laws, its principal role was reduced to overseeing those agencies (poorly) and approving engorged, consolidated budgets.

Only recently has this trajectory begun to change. That change is the core of the fight in Washington now. A more conservative Supreme Court has begun setting more stringent limits on bureaucratic discretion, both by eliminating deference to agency decisions and by requiring Congressional authorisation for major rules. Trump is acting along parallel lines. Together, these actions by the Supreme Court and a populist president are attempting to alter the long arc of a government that is increasingly centralised, intrusive, and bureaucratic.

The irony is that Trump and his team can take these giant steps, often unilaterally, only because they have grasped the tools created by Democrats and progressive advocates. Trump is using those tools in ways their architects never anticipated. “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition,” as Monty Python said. Now, the Grand Inquisitor has arrived, wielding the very weapons Democrats gave him.


There's more at the link.

"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition" . . . and I never thought to see that phrase used to describe an American President!






Peter


Tuesday, February 11, 2025

Bad news for our insurance premiums

 

In mid-January I noted that California had implemented insurance "reforms" that would allow insurers to recoup losses in one part of the state (e.g. the Pacific Palisades fire) from all the insured in that state, by raising everyone's premiums, no matter where they live.

It now appears that something similar is happening across America, even if we live thousands of miles away from the disaster area.


Regulators in many states are allowing insurance companies to raise rates to cover the cost of events that insurers have had to pay elsewhere, as well as increasing the money for things like the rising cost of reinsurance, which insurance firms purchase to limit their risks of major catastrophic events.

“In a world where we have persistently large shocks, you’re getting big cross-subsidies across the country,” said Ishita Sen, a professor at Harvard Business School who was part of a team that conducted a 2022 study on the effects of costly disasters on homeowners insurance rates nationwide. “The past suggests that after big wildfires, other states have ended up paying for it.”

The Insurance Information Institute, an insurance industry trade group, disputes the study’s findings. It says that increases in rates come because insurers are judging the greater risks and costs across most of the country, not because homeowners’ premiums in one area are being used to pay for disasters in other regions.

. . .

Schneyer said some shifting of costs and risks is inevitable for large, national insurers, which benefit from customers facing different perils in different geographies. Asked about what he would say to someone in the Midwest paying more for hurricane risks along the Gulf and East Coasts, and fire risks in the West, he said that “they should hope if they need a new home because their home is destroyed by a tornado, or need a new roof that is damaged by large hail, their insurer would pay for that.”

“That’s risk-sharing. That’s how risk works in the insurance industry,” he added.


There's more at the link.

In the past, our insurance "markets" were apparently centered around the risks each area faced.  States with a hurricane problem, or a tornado problem, or a wildfire problem, were typically grouped with other states facing the same dangers.  The cost of a major natural disaster of that type were estimated and/or averaged, and that led to insurance rates matching the risks and costs involved.  Now, however, it appears that all risks everywhere in the country are going to be costed and averaged in that way, so that my insurance premium in Texas is going to have to contribute something to the cost of rebuilding the Pacific Palisades suburb in Los Angeles, or pay for hurricane damage in Florida, or whatever.

In one sense, this is logical, because insurance companies operate on a national basis and need to cover themselves against national risks.  However, it flies directly in the face of traditional insurance practices, which had states setting limits on how much premiums may be increased in the light of the risks that their in-state policyholders face.  Can that state-by-state legislative/regulatory system continue if insurance companies are going to demand that customers in a low-risk state nevertheless pay premiums as if they were in a higher-risk area, to cover those who actually do live in such areas?

I don't pretend to know the answer to this.  All I know is, I'm paying a lot more for property insurance than I used to, and I don't like it.  It may become unaffordable, or add so much to mortgage costs that some properties become impossible to sell - because nobody can afford to pay both the mortgage and the insurance premiums each month.

Oy.

Peter


Is Ukraine selling US weapons to cartels and on the black market???

 

Tucker Carlson thinks so.  Here he discusses the possibility with retired LtCol Daniel Davis.  The video is keyed to start and end at the appropriate segment of their conversation, which is about five minutes in length.




That's a terrifying thought.  What if a drug cartel, or a well-funded terrorist movement, bought a few MANPADS (man-portable ground-to-air missiles) and used them to bring down an airliner or two?  They could shut down the entire commercial air market in a country, or even more than one country.  The damage that would do to the world economy is catastrophic, to say the least.

I'm looking for more evidence to substantiate Mr. Carlson's claim that Ukraine is selling weapons on the black market.  I'm not talking about rumor or innuendo - I mean hard evidence, like matching up serial numbers of weapons against shipments.  If any reader has more information about that, please let us know in Comments.

Peter


Monday, February 10, 2025

The Trump revolution and the Deep State's fightback - light versus darkness

 

Over the weekend, an article by Eko titled simply "Override" went viral across social media - and deservedly so.  It's one of the best analyses and expositions of what President Trump's administration has done in the three weeks that it's been in office.  Here's a brief excerpt from a long, complex article.


In Treasury's basement, fluorescent lights hummed above four young coders. Their screens cast blue light across government-issue desks, illuminating energy drink cans and agency badges. As their algorithms crawled through decades of payment data, one number kept growing: $17 billion in redundant programs. And counting.

"We're in," Akash Bobba messaged the team. "All of it."

Edward Coristine's code had already mapped three subsystems. Luke Farritor's algorithms were tracing payment flows across agencies. Ethan Shaotran's analysis revealed patterns that career officials didn't even know existed. By dawn, they would understand more about Treasury's operations than people who had worked there for decades.

This wasn't a hack. This wasn't a breach. This was authorized disruption.

While career bureaucrats prepared orientation packets and welcome memos, DOGE's team was already deep inside the payment systems. No committees. No approvals. No red tape. Just four coders with unprecedented access and algorithms ready to run.

"The beautiful thing about payment systems," noted a transition official watching their screens, "is that they don't lie. You can spin policy all day long, but money leaves a trail."

That trail led to staggering discoveries. Programs marked as independent revealed coordinated funding streams. Grants labeled as humanitarian aid showed curious detours through complex networks. Black budgets once shrouded in secrecy began to unravel under algorithmic scrutiny.

By 6 AM, Treasury's career officials began arriving for work. They found systems they thought impenetrable already mapped. Networks they believed hidden already exposed. Power structures built over decades revealed in hours.

Their traditional defenses—slow-walking decisions, leaking damaging stories, stonewalling requests—proved useless against an opponent moving faster than their systems could react. By the time they drafted their first memo objecting to this breach, three more systems had already been mapped.

"Pull this thread," a senior official warned, watching patterns emerge across DOGE's screens, "and the whole sweater unravels."

He wasn't wrong. But he misunderstood something crucial: That was exactly the point.

This wasn't just another transition. This wasn't just another reform effort. This was the start of something unprecedented: a revolution powered by preparation, presidential will, and technological precision.

The storm had arrived. And Treasury was just the beginning.


There's much more at the link, and it's all essential reading, IMHO.  I can't recommend it too highly.

Eko has just published a follow-up article, "The Machine Fights Back:  Inside Treasury's War Against Its Own Reformers".  Here's another short excerpt.


Here's what Treasury didn't want exposed:

Over $100 billion flowing annually to accounts without Social Security numbers. No temporary ID numbers. No verification. Nothing.

When Musk asked Treasury officials how much was "unequivocal and obvious fraud," the answer revealed decades of corruption: HALF

Let that sink in.

$50 billion per YEAR.

A billion dollars every SINGLE week disappearing into accounts that shouldn't exist.

The kind of fraud that would shut down any bank in America.

The kind that would land any business owner in federal prison.

But Treasury had perfected its system:

1. Process payments
2. Ignore controls
3. Keep the machine running

Yesterday, something shifted. A judge's order appeared, ex parte—meaning only one side could speak. No warning. No defense allowed. Just a wall erected between Treasury officials and their own department's data.

. . .

Think about what that means: The Secretary of the Treasury—effectively the CFO of the United States government—legally barred from seeing how money moves through his own department. The people's appointee blocked from viewing the people's accounts. Young coders mapping the missing controls ordered to stop looking.

The MACHINE (that’s what I’ll be calling the DS from now on) has judges. Has lawyers. Has media. Has entire states moving in coordination.

. . .

This isn't about spreadsheets anymore. This isn't about waste or controls or management. This is about who controls the machine.

Because when you find something like empty fields in Treasury's payment system, you're not just finding missing data. You're finding purpose. When basic controls sit blank while billions vanish weekly, that's not incompetence. That's design.

The machine is fighting back.


Again, more at the link, and also very important reading, IMHO.

This is essentially the conflict we're going to see across the Executive Branch going forward.  The bureaucrats who administer the US government have done so on their own terms, using mechanisms they've created to make their jobs easier, without informing the public (or, in many cases, their political masters).  Fraud and waste have been built into those mechanisms, because it's easier - less work for bureaucrats - to simply process payments rather than check on them line by line and expenditure by expenditure.  That ease has, in turn, fostered monumental corruption, because politicians (by tolerating such lax bureaucratic systems, and indeed encouraging them) have opened gateways through which they, and their favored causes and groups and individuals, can skim the cream off government (i.e. taxpayer) income and divert it to their favored projects (not least of which has all too often been themselves).

The way to undo such bureaucratic systems and shenanigans is to expose them:  to let the American people see what has been done in their name, and put it right through administrative and judicial means.  Those who created such systems, and profited from them, seek the opposite:  to keep them all hidden, to prevent them being exposed, so they can carry on grafting from the American people and enriching themselves and their favored causes and people.



The courts are going to have to do a lot of the work.  The judge who barred the Treasury Secretary from doing his job is clearly partisan and biased, by any rational, objective standard.  No judge has the right, in terms of the Constitution, to bar elected and/or duly appointed officials from simply doing their job (which by its very nature includes exposing and dealing with inefficiency, corruption and dishonesty).  That's basic to our system of government - but in this case, the judge has ignored that.  One hopes President Trump will ignore such unconstitutional court orders, or at least take them higher in the judicial system as quickly as possible.

Being a retired pastor and chaplain, I find a strong spiritual element in all this.  In the Bible, the first chapter of the First Letter of St. John contains these words:


This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.  If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.  But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.


If that applies to Christian believers and their relationship with God, how much more should it apply to politicians and bureaucrats and their relationship with the electorate?  The latter have done everything possible to avoid "walking in the light".  President Trump and the D.O.G.E. team are doing everything possible to drag them, kicking and screaming, into the light.  Only when they've succeeded in doing so will there be "fellowship" between Americans, mutual trust that neither side is trying to hoodwink or steal from the other.

Makes you think, doesn't it?

Peter


Memes that made me laugh 248

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.











Sunday, February 9, 2025

Sunday morning music

 

A somewhat unusual musical joke this morning, courtesy of In The Middle Of The Right, who posted this video.  It's set to the Bee Gees' hit "Stayin' Alive" from the movie "Saturday Night Fever".




And, for those who don't remember the disco era, here's the original tune.




Mercifully, the disco era didn't last long.

Peter


Friday, February 7, 2025

A reminder: foul language and rudeness are not tolerated here

 

In recent weeks, I've noticed an upsurge in comments that are vituperative, ill-tempered, downright profane attacks on other commenters, as well as very nasty things being said about certain politicians and political parties.

Folks, those comments are not going to be published here.  End of story.

I've said many times that I try to keep this blog family-friendly.  That means at least a basic level of politeness is required from those who wish to interact with other readers here.  It's not difficult, and I don't think it's unreasonable.  Simply "do unto others as you would have them do unto you".  If you don't want to be referred to or talked about in foul, intemperate terms, please don't do it to others - and if you do want to be referred to or talked about in that way, I suggest you seek immediate psychiatric or psychological help rather than waste your time commenting here.

If that offends you, I'm sorry, but that's the way it is.  If you disagree, you're free to start your own blog and say whatever you please.

Peter


$200 million for animal transgender research???

 

This absolutely boggles my mind.  If it's true that Dr. Fauci sponsored and/or approved this research, then I suspect his evil may be beyond redemption.  Watch this five-minute video, and prepared to be left speechless.




How many thousands - perhaps tens, or even hundreds, of thousands - of innocent animals were mutilated, drugged, tortured like this for no good medical reason at all?

I'm beginning to think I'd like to see one last government grant approved.  This one would be to take every person in government who thought up, approved, paid for, or conducted such research to be arrested, confined in laboratory animal cages, and used for medical research - without benefit of anesthetic - until they die in the same misery they've inflicted on so many animals, and so many people.

Words fail me.



Peter