This Is The Plan

On Thursday, Townhall posted an article detailing President Trump’s plan to drain the Washington, D.C. swamp.

Here is a brief summary:

In arguably one of the most critical first announcements Trump has made as president-elect, he vowed to immediately reissue the 2020 executive order to restore the president’s authority to remove “rogue bureaucrats aggressively.”

Second, Trump said he would fire all of the corrupt individuals in the country’s national security and intelligence organization so that bureaucrats would no longer be able to target and persecute conservatives and Christians.

…Third, the incoming 47th president said he would reform FISA courts, and fourth, to expose the abuses of power done so by the left.

Trump then announced he would form a Truth and Reconciliation committee to “declassify and publish all documents on Deep State spying, censorship, and corruption.”

Trump also said he would crack down on government workers who collude with the left-wing media to create false narratives.

…Sixth, he plans to make every Inspector General’s Office independent from the departments they oversee to ensure they do not become a part of the Deep State.

Seventh, Trump will create an independent auditing system that will monitor intelligence agencies to make sure they are not spying on Americans or secretly running disinformation campaigns against them.

The president-elect also vowed to relocate parts of the federal bureaucracy to states other than Washington, D.C., or the District of Columbia.

…Ninth, he will ban federal bureaucrats from working at companies they regulate, such as big Pharma and big tech.

And tenth, Trump promised to establish a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on Congress members.

This sounds like fun. However, I don’t agree with Congressional term limits unless you also term-limit Congressional staffs and high-level federal employees.

More Spying On American Citizens

Periodically I highlight an article I don’t fully understand. This is one of those times. On Saturday, The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about the changes made to  HR 6611, the 2023 FISA reauthorization bill. The changes don’t protect innocent Americans from being spied upon–they make things worse. The article includes a link to the bill.

The article reports:

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) Chairman Mike Turner is celebrating the passage of HR 6611, the 2023 FISA reauthorization bill.

Chairman Turner would have granted a clean FISA renewal, he’s that kind of Republican; however, several Republicans demanded changes to the FISA-702 authorities that capture the data of American citizens without a warrant.  Thus, the HPSCI modified the authorities within HR 6611, but they made it worse.

(Via CDT) (Center for Democracy & Technology) – Tucked away near the end of the bill the House Intelligence Committee reported on December 7 (H.R. 6611, the “HPSCI bill”) is a provision that would dramatically expand surveillance under the controversial Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA 702”), which sunsets on December 31 unless reauthorized. Section 504 of the bill, innocuously captioned “Definition of Electronic Communications Service Provider,” would expand the types of entities that can be compelled to disclose internet communications whether in storage or in transit.

FISA 702 permits the U.S. government to compel communication service providers to disclose for foreign intelligence purposes the communications of persons reasonably believed to be non-U.S. persons abroad. No warrant is required; a belief that the communications relate to U.S. foreign affairs or national security is sufficient.  Under current FISA 702, only entities that provide communication services like email, calls, and text messaging can be compelled to disclose these communications. 

As FISA Court amicus and longtime practitioner Marc Zwilligener and his colleague Steve Lane have already noted, the HPSCI bill would upend the current system, enabling the government to compel anyone with mere access to the equipment on which such communications are stored or transmitted to disclose those communications.  That could include personnel at coffee shops that offer WiFi to their customers, a town library that offers public computer internet services, hotels, shared workspaces, landlords and even AirBNB hosts that offer WiFi to the people who stay there, cloud storage services that host but do not access data, and large data centers that rent out computer server space to their clients.

At this point, the only way to stop the formation of a full-scale Stasi in America is to vote all Democrats out of office and drain the swamp. President Trump is the only person who even remotely has a chance of draining the swamp–that’s why the deep state is coming against him so hard.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. Our privacy as Americans is at stake.

How To Drain The Swamp

On Monday, The Conservative Playbook posted an article detailing an actual plan to drain the swamp that is Washington, D.C.  Please follow the link to read the entire article. It contains some really good ideas.

The article reports:

Donald Trump promised us that he’d drain the Swamp. As a real estate developer, you’d think that he understood how that should be done. The State Department is known as “Foggy Bottom” because it is in what was originally a fetid swamp. Land had to be reclaimed by filling to “drain” that swamp. Disney World near Orlando is built on swamp land, as any golfer will discover after a rainstorm. Much of that land became usable after swamps were filled in. And the beat goes on.

The bureaucratic mire in DC is full of predatory beasts, noxious insects, and other unseen hazards. Directives from the White House are apt to be ignored, since there is no one translating those directives into marching orders for the lower floors of government owned buildings. This leaves the denizens of departments to their own devices, none of which are the slightest bit concerned with anything beyond the office water cooler.

Thus, if the concerns of the cubicle align with the editorial page of the Washington Compost, then all is well, and the office sports pool becomes the most urgent part of the day.

If the Secretary of Department X decides to go full MAGA, little or nothing will actually happen, since most of his underlings frankly don’t give a damn. They are protected by Civil Service rules, and can’t be fired short of the next millennium. In other words, it’s hopeless.

…If you can’t get rid of all the feral animals inside a bureaucracy, what can you do? Ask Donald Trump how he dealt with swamp land on his golf courses or building sites! You don’t drain the swamp. You get rid of it! That’s right, you fill it in so it’s not a swamp anymore. And just in case this picture isn’t clear enough, watch the TV series “Swamp People.” The water in the swamp goes up and down, but even when it’s down, it’s still a swamp. With the next rain, it’s full again. And it doesn’t matter how many alligators you pull out of the swamp. There are hundreds new for each one harvested.

The only way to drain a swamp is to fill it in. Let that sink in.

The article cites ways to fill in the swamp and regain the country the Founding Fathers envisioned. Please follow the link to the article and read the details.