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Back when I was a lobbyist for business groups, a pet peeve was the assumption, prevalent at dinner parties, that I must be working for Goliath against heroically underfunded Davids like environmentalists and other 'public interest' groups. The notion that the network of leftists in rather expensive downtown office spaces was somehow a shoestring enterprise was always misguided and annoying. It was never just the largesse of ultra-wealthy liberals that sustains some very powerful groups but the complex maze of federal funding sources that empowers leftist movements and provides sinecures for defeated Democratic politicians as well as former and future staffers, makes some players wealthy—and insulates so much policy power from the impact of public choice and elections.
For example, on a small scale, I sometimes had to join efforts to combat the litigation kabuki in which the EPA or some other agency expands its powers by losing in court:
1. An agency provides grants and contracts tailored for a favored activist group to empower and staff with former agency executives.
2. Activist group demands the agency do something.
3. The agency says (correctly) that Congress did not authorize that.
4. Activist group sues in federal court.
5. The agency surrenders in court, Gosh, your honor, they were right all long so if you would be kind enough to sign this order telling us we do need to regulate with these new powers so that we can settle this case.
6. The agency then pays the legal fees of the activist group, which funds its own in-house lawyers to rinse and repeat.
But that form of subsidy is nothing compared to the magnitudes larger complex of grants, consulting, and giveaways from almost every federal department. But even that broad departmental partisan grift support is less brazen and penny-ante compared to the grift-fest that is USAID.
I always thought that defunding the left could never happen because (a) it would take a herculean research effort to track and identify the grift and separate it from legitimate uses, and (b) the Democrats would never be sufficiently removed from power to permit such an effort. I was looking for an algorithm to untie the Gordian knot when the real solution was for Trump to hand Elon a sword to just cut it, after which, when we noticed good stuff going unfunded, we could restore that and only that.
If their financial insulation is removed, meaning leftist groups have to rely on transparent, voluntary contributions, and the Deep State cannot help divert public funds or even maintain its own grift, elections would matter once again and our government would look, act and sound a heck of a lot more like it was working for the American people. Hack away at that knot, Elon.
Discussion (45)
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If it isn't obvious to everyone, I am certain that Elon is using AI to untangle and de-obfuscate the maze of grants and funding being laundered to favored entities. It started when Elon used AI to decipher Biden's last attempt to fund various leftist skulduggery. It appears that AI is good for something, and if only to track down concealed government spending, that is a major point in it's favor.
And it isn't seasoned politicians, smart staffers, and experienced lobbyists who are wielding this sword. It is young programmers who can direct AI on what to scrutinize.
Of course the left is encouraging it's base to, in the words of Hakeem Jeffries, "fight it in the streets."
WIRED Doxxed DOGE Engineers; Now They Are Being Hunted
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God bless this effort. The other task is whether the instances of grift identified were specifically authorized by Congress. If so, are we doing some form of an executive impoundment to halt the outflow? What is the authority or do we need Congress to redress? If some stream is entirely discretionary, does it have to be spent but on better things? I suspect that various NGOs and grant hustlers are conferring with some very high-priced lawyers about how to get a federal judge to open their particular spigot. Nobody walks away from 8 figures without a fight. Congress needs to join the battle at some point soon.
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@OldBathos Senators Lee and Ernst were in the X-discussion last night with Elon and Vivek.
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Back in the 90s, WIRED was cool. Are they getting USAID money, do you think? Maybe a check or two from George Soros?
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We knew it was the tight relationship between elements in the State Department and the CIA that fostered the work that was done in Ukraine over the last three decades since the fall of the USSR. That led to President Trump's first impeachment where the interested parties began to be identified along with the financial sources but most of the detail was hidden by using the security classification of information which then made it a crime to reveal this to those without a security clearance and a need to know. Now there is no information that can be kept from Trump and those he designates.
Many Trump acolytes were working in the trenches identifying the corruptors while he was fighting all the charges brought trying to make sure he would not be able to run again for POTUS. No wonder the Democrats, actually all of the federal bureaucracy and politicians from both parties, were excluded from the transition for so long and are crazy now.
These two weeks also have confirmed the reasoning behind Trump supporters being relentless in not accepting other candidates in the Republican primaries. We would not being seeing this if we had failed.
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