Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. USAID
2. FBI
3. Murphy
4. Penny
5. Buyout
6. Midair
7. Auction
8. Delaware
1. USAID. The first big target for DOGE was USAID, with its budget somewhere between $45 – 50 billion. The entity is almost exclusively a democrat shop, with 95+% of its operatives democrats. Per Mike Benz USAID works in parallel with the CIA, mostly doing things that are too dirty for the CIA to do. Back when they concentrated on subverting governments of other nations, most of us weren’t too concerned. The problem occurred when USAID decided they should and could take their animal act to a domestic audience. What did they end up doing?
- USAID is essentially a dirty tricks shop, working hand in hand with the CIA to subvert governments internationally. They are also a democrat shop with 97%+ of all employees being democrats. Apparently, the international scene got a bit too boring for them, as they took their road show stateside, subverting the government of the US itself. While this is the first dirty tricks shop uncovered, it will most certainly not be the last. The National Endowment for Democracy may be another.
- Mike Benz identified USAID as a CIA cutout, waving this particular bloody flag for a number of years. Essentially, Benz gave Musk, DOGE and Trump a map where the bodies were buried. And they followed that map. Two important bits about USAID. First is that they are congressionally funded, and while they are in the current cross hairs, nothing says they will ultimately be permanently defunded. There are more than a few insiders that believe they will be funded in full in the upcoming omnibus, changing nothing in the end. Second, while a US Senator, newly ensconced Secretary of State Rubio repeatedly demanded to know what USAID was doing with their money. They repeatedly refused to answer questions, ignoring him, claiming their independence from congressional oversight. He is now in charge of them and seems to remember their arrogance, as he is only retaining 294 of 14,000 employees as critical. As of this writing a judge has blocked their immediate release from federal employment.
- They ended up donating money to media, foreign and domestic, with tens of millions to Politico, NY Times, Wash Post, BBC and any number of foreign media hubs. When the media says something, is it USAID or something else? They were also at the center of the coordinated, orchestrated Government Industrial Censorship Complex, with the latest funding revelation being almost half a billion dollars given to an NGO named Internews. Internews claims to have worked with nearly 4,300 news outlets, producing nearly 4,800 hours of broadcasts reaching 778 viewers globally (their numbers). They also “trained” over 9,000 journalists in 2023 alone. Any wonder the corporate media worldwide sounds like an echo chamber? Given the tens of millions of dollars from USAID flowing into the NYT, Politico and other media via subscriptions and grants, how independent is the media really?
- USAID was also constituted to overturn governments, Brazil being the most recent where it participated in defeating a populist (Bolsonaro) in favor of a statist (Lula). Being bored with their primary mission, they took their road show domestic, and participated in both the fraudulent 2020 election and helped orchestrate the first and possibly both Trump impeachments.
- It turns out that USAID was also funding the campaigns of the 75 or so Soros prosecutors elected over the last decade. They did this via donating money to the East-West management Institute which partnered with the Soros Open Society Foundation to the tune of $270 million over the last 15 years.
- In their defense, USAID claims to be a charity, with any attempt to monitor or control their spending damaging to the poor, sick and indigent worldwide. Nice claim, that. The few dollars they donate to international charitable efforts is miniscule to the havoc they wreak with all their other spending in support of destructive liberal (redundant term) causes. Indeed, as their funding is being slashed, not a single national leader has spoken up in support of them or their spending. All the NGOs and other international strap hangers are very loud. Final comment about this spending is that democrats managed to figure out long ago how to use USAID money to fund themselves. Any USAID money in grants to NGOs goes through democrat hands who skim a substantial portion of that money off, lining their own pockets. USAID is a major funding of the left, their NGOs, and all the orchestrated protests here and internationally.
- Elon Musk observed that one of the lessons he learned in his Paypal days was the people screaming the loudest tended to be the most corrupt. Keep that in mind as this plays itself out.
2. FBI. One of the things in process is firing all FBI employees who participated in the Jan 6 investigations and persecutions from public employment. Turns out that over 5,000 were involved, a substantially larger number than anyone suspected. Given that there are some 38,000 total employees, removing them all may open a lot of positions should they be refilled rather than cut. This also tells us the huge priority that Do(In)J gave the hunt of Republicans over all other possible priorities. For some reason, the 5,000 don’t want their names released, claiming fear of retribution and have managed to get some protection at least for a little while.
3. Murphy. NJ Governor Murphy gave a public interview last week claiming to have a person whose immigration status was unclear staying in his home, in a room over his garage. He then went on to dare DHS to do something about it. Immigration Czar Tom Homan took the bait, promised to investigate and arrest Murphy if he were illegally harboring someone on his own property. This prompted Murphy to immediately start crawfishing, backing away from publicly running his mouth during the interview. Note that as governor, Murphy is the Chief Law Enforcement official in the state, so if he is laughing about breaking the law and daring the feds to do something about it, he probably ought to not be surprises when the feds to take him up on his offer.
4. Penny. In another bit of good news, Daniel Penny was hired by Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen – Horowitz as a deal partner last week. He will be taught the venture capital business from the ground up. Penny was targeted with a racially motivated homicide charge by NY Prosecutor Alvin Bragg. Charges were dropped and the jury returned a not guilty verdict on the charge that did go to them following some shenanigans by Bragg’s office and the judge. The political left does this sort of thing all the time, taking care of its people. Nice to see Our Side starting to step up. Congratulations. I hope everyone is successful in this.
5. Buyout. The buyout offer for federal employees expired Friday, with a reported 40,000 taking the deal. The numbers are unclear and may be twice that, though about a third of what the Trump administration were hoping for. Worse, the lawyers managed to get a temporary restraining order from a judge delaying the completion of the offer. Everyone should have expected lawfare during this, and I am certain that the Trump team was not surprised. The only response open to the left is judge shopping, lawfare and delaying everything Trump wants to do in the courts. While the delay will end up being successful, defending the layoffs won’t be. If the union pushes this too hard, they find themselves decertified by Executive Order. JFK issued an EO that allowed civil service to organize. That EO can be rescinded just as easily as any of the hundreds of Biden, Trump and O’Bama EOs reversed over the last 8 years.
6. Midair. The midair between an Army HH-60 Black Hawk and an American Eagle regional commuter jet near Reagan National Airport in DC two weeks ago has moved into the placing of the blame stage of the discussion. 67 died, 64 on the commuter jet. The commuter was out of Wichita. The Black Hawk was out of Fort Belvoir. The investigation is proceeding apace to determine what happened. As far as I can tell, everyone involved had a piece of this one. The controllers were asking the helo if they had traffic on final in sight. They never specified which traffic. The helo said traffic in sight but never specified which traffic. There are conflicting reports of the helo being at the wrong altitude or out of its corridor. The airspace around Reagan is hellishly complex, much worse at night, and people have been complaining about procedures for a long time. The helo crew may or may not have been on a flight check as one of the crew was reportedly a flight examiner. In my old flying days, the reaction would be that they busted the check (we were pretty harsh on one another in the business). The helo may or may not have been on night vision goggles. Low altitude, night, on goggles in a dense traffic area is beyond sporty. Tower put the regional jet on another, shorter runway on its way in. And after you get all the operational stuff out of the way, you run smack into the DEI discussion with recent FAA hires and how much impact DEI emphasis had on the competence of the controllers in the tower and the ARTCC. We do know that the tower was down at least one body at the time of the accident. We do know there was a similar near miss the previous day. How this all fits together is anybody’s guess. My guess is that the accident report is going to be ugly for a lot of people. Hopefully, we learn something useful that will make the system a bit safer, which is the ultimate goal.
7. Auction. While I hate the stated reason, I love the idea. The idea is to start auctioning unused government assets as a way to raise money and cut spending. The stated reason in the linked Wahington Times piece is to somehow pay for the Trump tax cuts, which is entirely bogus, as tax cuts always, without exception pay for themselves in increased economic activity. That being said, the estimate is that the feds could raise $1 – 10 trillion simply by selling off federal assets. Note that no estimates are available yet for cost of simply maintaining the assets. Normally, these would include things like buildings, land, mineral rights, all federally held and none of which are parks or wilderness areas. One example would be unused portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Past auctions have raised $100 billion. Congress has used proceeds from spectrum sales at least four times in the past to offset tax cuts. Would seem to be a nice way to pay off substantial chunks of the national debt itself.
8. Delaware. Be careful what you wish for comes back to haunt Delaware which allowed a state judge to steal nearly $60 billion in compensation from Elon Musk last year. The judge, close to the Biden crime family piled on during a lawfare lawsuit by a small investor in Tesla to opine that Musk had an inordinate control over his Board of Directors and the compensation package which was earned for spectacular performance was not earned or justified. In response, Musk moved Tesla out of Delaware. Other tech companies took note and have started moving their headquarters out of Delaware, with Meta and Dropbox being the most recent. In the past, companies incorporated in Delaware because it was a business-friendly environment. If some idiot state court judge do this to Musk who has earned every single penny, what can they do to anyone (everyone) else? Companies moving out got the attention of the governor who is calling for a fix to the problem. The judge is so far unimpressed. Too bad for her.
More later –
- AG