Monthly Archives: February 2025

Where Did The Money Go?

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On Monday, PJ Media posted an article about all of the money flowing into Ukraine from American taxpayers. It seems that nearly $100 billion is missing. This might be worth looking into.

The article reports:

Despite the alleged critical nature of this aid, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claims that Ukraine has only seen about $76 billion in tangible aid even though the Biden administration authorized around $175 billion to support his war-torn nation. 

Zelenskyy’s recent remarks regarding U.S. aid raise eyebrows and call into question where the massive sums of money supposedly allocated to Ukraine have actually gone. This discrepancy should make anyone sit up and take notice.

“When I hear—both in the past and even now—from the U.S. that America has provided Ukraine with hundreds of billions, as the president of a nation at war, I can tell you – we’ve received more than $75 billion,” Zelenskyy said. “We’re talking about tangible things because this aid didn’t come as cash but rather as weapons, which amounted to about $70 billion.”

It gets worse.

“But when it’s said that Ukraine received $200 billion to support the army during the war – that’s not true. I don’t know where all that money went,” Zelenskyy said. “Perhaps it’s true on paper with hundreds of different programmes – I won’t argue, and we’re immensely grateful for everything. But in reality, we received about $76 billion. It’s significant aid, but it’s not $200 billion.”

The article notes:

Zelenskyy mused that perhaps some of the missing funds have been funneled into humanitarian programs he barely knows about. “Perhaps the U.S. President’s administration will audit these programmes and find additional billions.”

I’m not particularly confident in this. An analysis from the American Enterprise Institute last year found that nearly 70% of U.S. aid intended for Ukraine actually funneled back into domestic spending, not to the front lines in Ukraine. Ask yourself why this would happen that way. Was it so the Biden administration could redirect money to wherever it wanted without congressional oversight? 

It does feel eerily reminiscent of the Obama administration’s slush fund scandal, where his DOJ allowed corporate settlements to direct funds to left-wing non-profits and organizations, effectively sidestepping congressional oversight. The Trump administration put an end to this practice to enhance accountability in the use of taxpayer dollars, only for Biden to reinstate it on his first day in office. 

Let’s do an audit on all of the money sent to Ukraine. The results might be very interesting.

Common vs Non Sense

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Author:  R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D. 

President Trump has made it clear that the policies that he intends to implement, and has already initiated, make basic common sense to most clear-thinking Americans.  This is in direct contrast to the Biden administration, whose leftist policies made no sense to most people, yet were implemented to achieve some radical leftist agenda.  This is the primary reason that Trump received overwhelming support in this past election.

Glaring examples include: the idea that there are multiple genders instead of just male and female; the idea that it is best to select people for jobs based on race, gender, etc. instead of their ability to do the jobs effectively; and the idea of rewarding people who cross our borders illegally with free meals, housing in swank hotels and healthcare.  I suppose the Democrat Party believed that Americans would continue to fall for this nonsense.

One of the issues that President Trump, who is the most courageous president since Ronald Reagan, has addressed is the so-called “anchor baby” situation.  The advocates of this nonsensical policy where the baby of any person here illegally is automatically a citizen, cite the 14th Amendment as justification for this practice.  And they further claim that the family of the anchor baby are consequently all eligible to remain in our country.  They call this birth right citizenship.  Applying the common-sense test clearly shows the absurdity of this policy.  It would be like claiming that someone who broke in your home has a right to stay there because they need a place to stay.  The anchor baby policy is so absurd that a pregnant woman from any other country can travel to America as a tourist, have her baby here, and have that child automatically become a citizen.

The 14th Amendment, which was drafted in 1866 and ratified in 1868, was passed specifically to qualify newly freed slaves as citizens without having to go through the naturalization process of taking qualifying tests, etc.  When interpreting the meaning of any constitutional amendment, it is critical to understand the purpose of the amendment when originally proposed and approved.  There is no evidence that the 14th Amendment was meant to reward illegal criminals who violate our immigration laws with citizenship for their children.  Absolutely none.  The Democrats want this policy to stay in place because they hope that it will increase their voter base.

This ongoing problem has existed for years, and finally we have an elected official who has the courage to try to correct it.  Clearly, this battle will be determined by the Supreme Court, where we hope common sense will prevail.   Failing that, there is always the option of drafting a constitutional amendment that will correct the problem.  Rewarding criminal conduct is never a good idea, especially when it pertains to granting the privilege of citizenship, the value of which must be maintained.

Stopping The Flow Of Money To A Tyrannical Government

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On Sunday, Breitbart posted an article about a decision made by President Trump about American dollars flowing to South Africa.

The article reports:

President Donald Trump announced Sunday that he is suspending all U.S. aid to South Africa after the latter passed a law on land expropriation, which many fear could lead to Zimbabwe-style seizures of land owned by white citizens.

The president made the surprise announcement on Truth Social, his own social media platform, on Sunday evening:

There have been reports of white South African farmers being murdered for their land with no consequences for the murderers. America cannot support this.

The article notes:

The issue of expropriation has been simmering for decades in South Africa, given the unequal distribution of land, most of which is owned by the white minority as a result of colonialism and apartheid. But until now, South Africa has been reluctant to follow the example of Zimbabwe, which seized land from white farmers in 2000 and plunged the country into starvation, as few black farmers were successful and many farms were stolen by the ruling party.
South Africa, like the United States, already allows the government to seize land under an authority similar to eminent domain, though the preference is for a “willing buyer, willing seller” transaction at fair market prices.

However, radical black nationalist and communist politicians continue to demand that the government seize the property of white farmers. Though few black South Africans want to farm, the issue remains an emotive one.

The article concludes:

Many white South Africans also believe that the high level of rural crime, including the murders of white farmers, is politically motivated. Trump spoke out against the phenomenon in 2018, and highlighted the expropriation issue.

In addition, South Africa also acts contrary to U.S. interests and alliances on the world stage, notably by cozying up to rival powers such as China and Russia, and also by backing Palestinian terror against Israel in international forums.

We need to end a lot of foreign aid–people can hate us for free!

The Impending End Of A Really Bad Idea

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On Sunday, John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line Blog about wind energy. The Trump administration is taking a good, hard look at the practicality and efficiency of wind energy.

The article reports:

One of the most felicitous aspects of the new Trump administration is its determination to drive a stake through the heart of the zombie wind industry. Because it is an absurdly inefficient and unreliable way to generate electricity, wind power was doomed from the start. But the Trump administration is seeing it off.

Robert Bryce, one of our top energy experts, has a long Substack post that is full of good news. You will have to follow the link to get it all, but here are some highlights:

A few days ago, Jason Grumet, the head of the American Clean Power Association (annual revenue: $62.3 million), told Heatmap News that “probably more than half” of all new wind projects under development in the US could be killed due to President Trump’s executive order requiring a “comprehensive assessment” of federal permitting. Heatmap explained that Trump’s policies pose “a potential existential threat to the industry’s future. Just don’t expect everyone to say it out loud.”

…[T]he offshore and onshore wind sectors are in full-blown panic mode. Trump’s executive orders, particularly the one requiring the federal government to assess the wind industry’s impact on wildlife — have had an immediate and chilling effect on wind projects onshore and offshore.

The article concludes:

I am not sure why solar energy is doing better than wind. It has the same defects that wind does: solar is ridiculously expensive, inherently unreliable since it can’t produce electricity at night, when it is cloudy, or when solar panels are covered with snow, and it is massively destructive of the environment.

So let’s drive the solar scam out of existence next. Or, rather, make it stand on its own two feet: no subsidies and no mandates. Let solar compete on even terms with nuclear, natural gas, coal and hydro power, and see who wins. Solar will die out, and the environment will only be better for it.

We have better, more efficient, and cheaper ways to produce energy. Let’s further develop them.

Making Room For People Who Tell The Truth

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On February 3rd, The New York Post posted an article about changes being made in the Pentagon office space designated for news organizations.

The article reports:

The Trump administration has ordered four left-leaning news organizations including the New York Times and NBC News to vacate their dedicated office space at the Pentagon, making room for new media outlets such as The Post and the right-leaning Breitbart News and One America News.

The decision was announced late Friday in a Department of Defense memo issued by spokesman John Ullyot, who wrote that the Times, NBC News, NPR and Politico must relinquish their Pentagon office space by Feb. 14.

According to Ullyot, the move is part of a new annual media rotation program designed to allow access by “a new outlet from the same medium that has not had the unique opportunity to report as a resident member of the Pentagon press corps.”

As part of this reshuffle, The Post will replace the Times as a print outlet, OAN will take NBC News’ spot as a cable network, Breitbart News will assume NPR’s role as a radio outlet and HuffPost, owned by BuzzFeed, will take Politico’s space.

The reaction is predictable:

She urged the Pentagon to expand media office space to ensure equal access for all news organizations.

Other affected outlets voiced similar concerns.

Politico’s senior managing editor Anita Kumar called the decision “troubling,” while an NBC News spokesman expressed disappointment over losing a broadcasting booth that had been in use for decades.

Where were the complaints when the organizations now given space didn’t have space?

The article concludes:

The reshuffling of Pentagon media access marks another chapter in the Trump administration’s strained relationship with the press.

With accusations of press favoritism and concerns over media transparency mounting, the decision is likely to fuel further debate over the role of independent journalism in government reporting.

If the reporting of the news organizations that lost their space had been accurate, they would still have their space.

Bringing Back The Monroe Doctrine

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History.com describes the Monroe Doctrine as folllows:

The Monroe Doctrine, first outlined in a speech to Congress in 1823, had President James Monroe warning European powers to not attempt further colonization, military intervention or other interference in the Western Hemisphere, stating that the United States would view any such interference as a potentially hostile act. Over the centuries, the Monroe Doctrine policy has become a cornerstone of U.S. diplomatic and military policies.

In recent years, that policy has been somewhat ignored. That changed on January 20th of this year.

On Sunday, Legal Insurrection reported:

Panama has decided not to renew its memorandum of understanding with China on the Belt and Road Initiative, marking a significant shift in its foreign policy. The move follows increased U.S. pressure, as Washington works to curb Beijing’s growing influence in Latin America.

This decision came as Senator Marco Rubio visited Panama to discuss key issues like the Panama Canal’s operations and migration through the Darien Gap, a critical transit point for migrants heading to the U.S.

This is definitely a move in the right direction. I would like to say that the article is incorrect in describing Marco Rubio as a Senator–he has been confirmed as Secretary of State.

Something To Consider

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On February 3rd, The Federalist posted the following headline:

If Presidents Can’t Control Executive Agencies, Elections Are Fake

That seems to be where we were until 2024. We had the situation described by Carroll Quigley in 1966:

“The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can “throw the rascals out” at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.”
― Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time

That seems to have abruptly changed in the past two weeks.

The Federalist reports:

Amid the hundreds of substantive executive actions President Donald Trump has taken in his first two weeks back in the White House, perhaps none matter more than his efforts at bureaucracy-busting. That notably includes what Julie Kelly calls a “Friday night massacre” days ago of the Department of Justice’s January 6 prosecutorial staff, which erased 30-40 temporary positions Biden’s DOJ had attempted to make permanent.

Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, “arguably, he has done more in two weeks than Trump’s entire Department of Justice did during his first term,” Kelly said in a Saturday video. So has acting D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, both while the Senate confirmation of U.S. attorney general nominee Pam Bondi remains pending.

The article concludes

If the executive cannot control his own personnel, agencies, and funding lawfully given to him by a duly elected Congress, elections mean nothing. If the executive is not actually an executor, then the entire bureaucracy is an autocratic, self-licking ice cream cone. It runs the country, not any elected official. And Congress is complicit, because it allows the distribution of opium funds to Afghanistan and queer “safe spaces” in Kenya without ever having to take a public vote on any of this garbage, so long as these taxpayer-provided slush funds slather their retirements and relatives with “nonprofit” and “contractor” lard.

Whatever you want to call unelected bureaucrats and “nonprofit” grifters distributing funds obtained from American citizens against our consent as expressed in elections and line-item votes, it is not a republic, nor a democracy. If Trump can’t fire his own employees and redistribute public funds the executive branch has been given by law, he’s not really the president, and elections are fake.

All this means Trump isn’t “weaponizing” or “politicizing” these agencies. He’s fighting their inherent weaponization. Firing and investigating people who abuse public power, and ending the theft of American labor to fund evil international patronage schemes — that isn’t retribution, it’s justice.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. We live in amazing times. The voters may actually be getting their country back.

Follow The Money

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Some of us were appalled by the message given at the National Cathedral Prayer Service. It was not Biblical and was not appropriate. (article here) Well, as usual, it turns out that there was more to the story than meets the eye.

On Friday, The New York Post reported the following:

Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde’s sermon to President Trump during an inaugural prayer service, coupled with her church’s advocacy for humanitarian immigration programs, reveals a striking hypocrisy — one that could be seen as self-serving and even a conflict of interest.

That’s because the federal contracting arm of the church, Episcopal Migration Ministry (EMM), is paid to bring in people on resettlement programs that Trump has temporarily paused and targeted for re-evaluation.

EMM budget figures for 2024 are not available yet, but in 2023 it earned $53 million from various taxpayer-funded government programs to resettle 3,600 individuals.

…Unlike everyday immigrants, these new arrivals receive government assistance and, most importantly, are immediately eligible for all forms of welfare, such as Medicaid and cash assistance, on the same basis as a US citizen.

Further, they can immediately sponsor friends and relatives under a recent Biden expansion of the refugee resettlement program.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement was projecting 656,500 new arrivals in 2025, who would fall under its care. Clearly this is a program wildly out of control.

In an wild understatement, a 2012 Government Accountability Office report quotes an official noting that “funding is based on the number of refugees they serve, so affiliates have an incentive to maintain or increase the number of refugees they resettle each year rather than allowing the number to decrease.”

The article concludes:

Of course, it is not fair to question the Episcopalians alone on this.

Their resettlement contractor is the second smallest of the 10 contractors in the industry. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) dwarfs EMM.

Forbes reported that USCCB affiliate Catholic Charities USA, which has its hand in all aspects of immigration and seems to get money from every government agency except NASA, received $1.4 billion in taxpayer dollars in 2021. That’s 68 times more than EMM got that year.

It was never intended that the sponsoring organizations, formerly known as “Voluntary Agencies,” would be purely federal contractors, with all the behavior, untoward incentives, money, and influence-peddling that this brings, not to mention questions of church-state relations which are never raised in this context.

Any re-tooling of our humanitarian immigration programs must put the bulk of responsibility back on the “sponsoring” entity and limit new arrivals’ access to welfare.

As for encouraging the church to practice true sacrificial charity, Bishop Budde may have put it best when she said in an interview with Rachel Maddow, “the first and primary role that we have is [to lead] by example.”

I would have no problem with the church sponsoring immigrants if the church took care of them after they got here rather than making the taxpayer pay for the church’s generosity. This is a racket. These facts make the Bishop’s remarks seem even more hypocritical than they seemed to be at the time they were given.

Protecting The Pocketbook Of The American Taxpayer

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On Saturday, Zero Hedge posted an article about Elon Musk’s efforts to cut government spending. David A. Lebryk, the acting Secretary of the Treasury has retired after refusing Elon Musk access to Treasury Department records.

The article reports:

David A. Lebryk, a decades-long Treasury official who President Trump named as acting secretary upon taking office last week, announced his retirement in a Friday email to colleagues. According to the report, Lebryk had a dispute with Musk surrogates over access to the US government’s payment system used to disburse trillions of dollars every year.

[Imagine Musk and team uncover decades of improper payments and shady dealings?]

The Musk surrogates are affiliated with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and have been asking since the election for access to the system, according to the report. The requests were reiterated after Trump’s inauguration.

After Trump pick Scott Bessent was confirmed as Treasury Secretary on Monday, Lebryk ceased to be acting agency head.

The payment system in question is run by a handful of career officials within the Bureau of the Fiscal Service – which controls the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to households, businesses, and other entities nationwide – and includes Social Security, Medicare, federal salaries, payments to government contractors, tax refunds, grant recipients, and more.

…Unfortunately for the career bureaucrats, Trump signed an executive order instructing all agencies to ensure DOGE has “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems,” which appear to include the Treasury payment systems.

Musk has previously slammed rising national debt as an existential threat to the country, while DOGE has already made progress in rooting out bullshit programs established by Democrat administrations.

On Saturday, The New York Times reported:

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave representatives of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency full access to the federal payment system late on Friday, according to three people familiar with the change, handing Elon Musk and the team he is leading a powerful tool to monitor and potentially limit government spending.

The new authority follows a standoff this week with a top Treasury official who had resisted allowing Mr. Musk’s lieutenants into the department’s payment system, which sends out money on behalf of the entire federal government. The official, a career civil servant named David Lebryk, was put on leave and then suddenly retired on Friday after the dispute, according to people familiar with his exit.

This is what America voted for.

This Was Definitely Part Of The Problem

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We have had two serious plane crashes in the past several days. In recent years, we have seen very few plane crashes. What changed?

On Friday, PJ Media posted an article that cites something that might be part of the problem.

The article reports:

On Thursday, while addressing Thursday’s plane crash near Washington, D.C., President Donald Trump blasted both the Obama and Biden administrations for prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives within the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Transportation.

“I put safety first. Obama, Biden, and the Democrats put policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody’s ever seen,” Trump told reporters in the White House briefing room.

Democrats and the mainstream media were outraged.

“It’s one thing for internet pundits to spew up conspiracy theories,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said. “It’s another for the president of the United States of America to throw out idle speculation even as victims are still being recovered and families are still being notified. It turns your stomach.”

But Trump was not wrong.

…Last year, 11 Republican attorneys general voiced their concerns in a letter to FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker, questioning the agency’s commitment to safety in light of its emphasis on diversity over expertise. They expressed disappointment that the FAA appeared to prioritize “virtue-signaling” over securing the nation’s airways.

The article includes a quote from an editorial that appeared in The Washington Times on February 1, 2024:

There hasn’t been a fatal airline crash in the United States since 2009, but it’s only a matter of time before the streak ends. The FAA recorded two serious, near-miss runway incursions at Reagan National and Baltimore-Washington International last year [2023].

Vigilance is waning because the nation’s air traffic control towers are woefully understaffed. The people responsible for keeping planes from smashing into one another are tired after working long, mandatory overtime shifts to make up for the lack of controllers.

Contributing to the shortage, the FAA temporarily put the brakes on hiring in 2012 so it could replace race-blind hiring rules with a “Biographical Assessment” stratagem designed to hire more minorities.

This quiz served as further screening of applicants who had already graduated from a 200-hour training program and achieved high scores on AT-SAT, a grueling, eight-hour cognitive test that measures each of the specific skills needed to do the job properly.

[…]

More than 3,000 top-performing, motivated applicants lost out because they weren’t members of this ethnic club. After Congress forced the FAA to drop the quiz in 2018, many former applicants reapplied and have since become controllers. Their careers were set back several years for no good reason.

You can’t solve a problem if you are unwilling to identify it. Hopefully, the Trump administration can restaff our control towers quickly and make the skies safe again.

Getting To The Bottom Of The Scam

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On Friday, Breitbart reported that CBS has agreed to turn over to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) the unedited transcript of the “60 Minutes” interview of Kamala Harris.

The article reports:

Trump sued CBS for $10 million over the “60 Minutes” interview, claiming it was deceptively edited to make Harris look good. Published reports said that CBS’ parent company, Paramount, has been talking to Trump’s lawyers about a settlement.

The network said Friday that it was compelled by Brendan Carr, Trump’s appointee as FCC chairman, to turn over the transcripts and camera feeds of the interview for a parallel investigation by the commission. “60 Minutes” has resisted releasing transcripts for this and all of its interviews, to avoid second-guessing of its editing process.

The case, particularly a potential settlement, is being closely watched by advocates for press freedom and by journalists within CBS, whose lawyers called Trump’s lawsuit “completely without merit” and promised to vigorously fight it after it was filed.

…In his lawsuit, filed in Texas on Nov. 1, Trump charged it was deceptive editing designed to benefit Harris and constituted “partisan and unlawful acts of voter interference.”

Trump, who turned down a request to be interviewed by “60 Minutes” during the campaign, has continued his fight despite winning the election less than a week after the lawsuit was filed.

The article concludes:

The network has not commented on talks about a potential settlement, reported by the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. Paramount executives are seeking Trump administration approval of a sale of the company to another entertainment firm, Skydance.

ABC News in December settled a defamation lawsuit by Trump over statements made by anchor George Stephanopoulos, agreeing to pay $15 million toward Trump’s presidential library rather than engage in a public fight. Meta has reportedly paid $25 million to settle Trump’s lawsuit against the company over its decision to suspend his social media accounts following the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Not that I have become overly cynical, but my feeling is that if the Biden administration still controlled the Justice Department, that transcript would mysteriously go missing, and that would be the end of the story. However, there is a new sheriff in town. Also, if we were still under the Biden administration, anything in that transcript that was damaging to Republicans would immediately be leaked to the press.

I’ve Heard Better Logic From Kindergartners

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On Friday, I posted an article about some of the things the new austerity programs will be eliminating. I quoted an article posted in The U.K. Daily Mail on Wednesday. One of the spending cuts cited in The U.K. Daily Mail article was $50 million dollars worth of condoms for Gaza. Hamas filled those condoms with helium and used them to send incendiary devices into Israel. This was not a good use of our tax dollars; however, some of Congress is defending the spending.

On Friday, Front Page Magazine reported the following:

Sen. Chris Murphy (D – Tehran) doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo that the famine hoax has fallen apart and Hamas tossed it aside after the Biden – Witkoff deal allows it to claim victory.

But after the Trump administration froze the gravy train of aid, including $50 million in condoms for Gaza, Sen. Murphy tweeted that “It’s a lie. Made up. There was no U.S. funding for condoms in Gaza. What he stopped is programs to keep malnourished babies alive in Gaza. Aid groups say infants will start to die next week.”

Everyone knows the perpetually malnourished infants in Gaza can’t live without condoms. That then get turned into bombs.

…In fact the government’s own website shows $45 million being sent to the UNFPA to “SUPPORT SEXUAL AND REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH (SRH) CARE CLOSE TO THE DISPLACED POPULATIONS” under the State Department’s BUREAU OF POPULATION, REFUGEES AND MIGRATION. The UNFPA is the United Nations Population Fund which acts as the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency.

None of this has anything to do with ‘malnourished babies’.

Not only are we actually arming an enemy of one of our allies, we are wasting money on something the recipients really don’t care about. One of the things that Muslim men do is marry more than one woman to have multiple children by multiple wives. They plan on conquering the world by sheer numbers if nothing else. Sending them condoms is just dumb.