How Much Of This Has Been Paid For By The U.S. Taxpayer?

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  • Elon Musk and the DOGE crew are now a few weeks into their work, and the examples of brazen waste, fraud, and misuse of taxpayer funds are exploding forth like a gusher.

  • At the first agency targeted, USAID, an early revelation was that much of the left-wing press has been quietly underwritten by the taxpayers in the form of hundreds of phony premium-priced subscriptions to such outlets as The New York Times, Associated Press, Politico, and Reuters.

  • On February 5, the White House put out a document titled “At USAID, Waste and Abuse Runs Deep,” listing a dozen or so categories of abusive payments, including “Millions to EcoHealth Alliance — which was involved in research at the Wuhan lab . . . Hundreds of thousands of meals that went to al Qaeda-affiliated fighters in Syria . . . Hundreds of millions of dollars to fund . . . the unprecedented poppy cultivation and heroin production in Afghanistan, benefiting the Taliban. . . .”

  • These are just examples. What other pet causes and activities of the Left have been getting paid for by USAID, and more broadly, by other various federal agencies?

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Facebook, Google, et al., And DEI: Let's Not Forget Their Insufferable Sanctimony

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  • A few days ago, Google announced that it had abandoned its targets for “diversity, equity and inclusion” for its workforce. Here is the February 5 New York Times article covering the announcement. According to the Times, Google attributed the change of policy to its need “as a federal contractor . . . to comply with President Trump’s executive orders opposing diversity, equity and inclusion policies.”

  • Google’s announcement came about a month after Facebook parent Meta had (formally) made the same change of policy. (See CNBC’s January 10 piece here covering the Meta announcement.). Google and Facebook are now two leaders in what has become a full-on parade of corporate giants making the same sudden 180 degree reversal of what had previously been broadcast as fundamental corporate policy. Among others in this group are Amazon, Goldman Sachs, McDonald’s, and even Disney.

  • Was the commitment to DEI of Corporate America, and particularly of the tech giants, really this shallow, that they would all reverse course completely and suddenly and in unison and without a peep of objection?

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Kindergarten Konstitutional Law Comes To The Southern District Of New York

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Kindergarten Konstitutional Law Comes To The Southern District Of New York

  • In yesterday’s post, reviewing a Washington Post op-ed by Ruth Marcus that called efforts by the duly-elected President to direct the bureaucracy to implement his policies a “power grab” and an “onslaught against the government itself,” I described the piece as reflecting “kindergarten-level constitutional analysis.”

  • After all, my 6 year old first-grader grandson is fully capable of reading the first sentence of Article II of the Constitution (“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America”) and figuring out that this guy is given the sole and full power to direct the executive branch of the federal government. Nothing about the elected President exercising such powers is or can be a “power grab.”

  • If you are somehow unable to grasp that simple proposition, you therefore must be at sub-first grade level of comprehension, and thus kindergarten level, at the highest.

  • Well, today Kindergarten Konstitutional Law came to the Southern District of New York.

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Democracy: What You Think It Means Versus What The Establishment Thinks

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  • “Democracy.” What does that term mean? The single biggest theme of the recent campaign of Democrats and of Kamala Harris was that we had to vote for them to save “Our Democracy.”

  • If I get to summarize the meaning of “Democracy” in 25 words or less, here is my effort: “The people periodically get the opportunity to vote the current authorities out, and replace them with new authorities who will implement new policies.” (That’s 23 words.)

  • Here in the U.S. we admittedly do not have a pure Democracy, but instead a constitutional Republic, with various limitations on government powers and also power sharing among the government’s branches. However, the element of Democracy — that is, the ability of the people to demand a change of direction by exercising their power at the ballot box — is a very big part of the system, at least in theory.

  • And yet, during my post World War II lifetime, despite the theoretical promise of Democracy, the ability of the people to get some change in direction of the government through exercise of the franchise has been extremely limited. Maybe the majority approved of what they were getting, but most often when there seemed to be a vote for change, little changed. The biggest change agent by far in this period was Ronald Reagan; but to be honest the Washington establishment fought him mostly to a draw. Nixon and the two Bushes largely continued the status quo. Trump in his first term was far less effective at “draining the swamp” than I would have hoped.

  • But now we have Trump in his second term suddenly showing us what Democracy can mean in our system.

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What's Coming For Academia

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  • It’s only two weeks into the new Trump administration, and we’re seeing an incredible sea change start in the federal government.

  • In his first campaign, Trump promised to “drain the swamp,” and then when he took office he barely got started on the project during a full four year term. Maybe he was too distracted by constant investigations, lawfare, “Russia! Russia! Russia!” and the like. But this time it’s much different.

  • The big news of the past day or two is the beginning of purges at DOJ, the FBI, and USAID. Those thoroughly corrupt institutions are very good places to start in these early weeks. But they are barely the tip of the iceberg of corrupt institutions ripe for upending.

  • One place that is about to get hit by the whirlwind is academia.

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Next Up: Humphrey's Executor

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  • Back in November, I attended the annual convention of the Federalist Society in Washington. If you should want to understand the constitutional law issues confronting this country after a century of corruption of our institutions by the progressive movement, I would highly recommend that you start attending these annual events as well.

  • Last November’s convention took place on the 14th to 16th of the month — in other words, just over a week after Donald Trump had been elected to serve another term as President.

  • One of the panels that I attended on November 15th had the title “What Is the Future of Administrative Law?” I’ve provided a link there where you can actually watch the panel if you have the time and inclination. There was a great group of presenters that included the likes of Paul Clement (pre-eminent Supreme Court advocate), Judge Naomi Rao (of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals), and perhaps most notably, Professor Philip Hamburger of Columbia Law School (author of the book “Is Administrative Law Unlawful?” — probably the most important constitutional law book of this century so far).

  • During the audience question part of the program, someone asked, what do you see as the next big issues that will be decided by the Supreme Court? One of the panelists (I think it was Hamburger) answered, “ I think Humphrey’s Executor will be reconsidered.”

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