Category: Update

Government by executive order is as far from democratic as you can get — and quite unconstitutional. So at first blush, this does not look like a good sign:

“The orders, which Trump critics say greatly exceed his constitutional authority,” explains NBC News, “range from tariffs on Mexico, China and Canada, to pauses on foreign aid and crackdowns on illegal immigration to bans on transgender people serving in the military and the use of federal funds for gender-affirming medical care for minors.”

But there is another way to look at it, as Paul Jacob argued on Wednesday: “If the net effect of Trump’s barrage of executive orders and DOGE edicts is to reduce government burdens, is it really the kind of tyranny we must freak out about?”

The general effect of governance since the world wars and the Great Depression has been an increase in federal burdens on individual citizens, businesses, communities, and the states themselves. Lost in the workings of an increasingly imperialistic nation-state, the original idea of a federal republic got lost. The growth of “Deep State” institutions — a permanent administrative state combined with corporate contractors (“the military-industrial complex” of Ike’s warning) engaging in secrecy and lies — has changed the complexion of the existing constitution, no more astounding than in the way it uses taxpayer money to influence taxpayer opinion for political effect.

This excresence became painfully obvious this last week when the Department of Government Efficiency uncovered the quasi-secret subsidies of the USAID programs to mainstream American news-and-opinion media, Politico being just the tip of the iceberg.

Trump’s (and Elon’s) activities, to the extent that they diminish government power or reduce the amount of wealth redistributed from some groups of people to others, is better defined as the opposite of tyrannical.

But of course, to the extent the executive orders increase state power, and without congressional sanction, then that is very much going in the wrong direction.

Still, the upshot must be this: we do not live in a constitutionally ordered free society; precipitous action that returns us to such an order are not so much tyrannical as liberating.

To judge the general tenor of these orders, properly, consulting a good compendium, such as NBC’s, has to be a good start.

But the idea that Trump and Elon are not doing what they are elected to do, but that they are, as Senator Elizabeth Warren puts it, “seizing power from the American people,” does not seem a good interpretation of recent political trends.

And the idea that the American people have been in charge but are not now is preposterous.

Senator Chuck Schumer’s charge is even more bizarre. “Before our very eyes, an unelected, shadow government is conducting a hostile takeover of the federal government.” DOGE may be hostile, but it is out in the open — not shadowy at all — and not so much taking over federal government as shutting down parts of it.

“What’s funny about this claim,” counters Bridget Phetasy, “is that an unelected shadow government just ran this country for four years while they hid the fact that the elected president was barely functioning . . . and shamed Americans for pointing it out.”

President Donald Trump’s Second Inaugural Address will surely be regarded as a historically consequential speech. One consequence comes from the Speaker of the House: “It is my distinct honor and great privilege to invite President Donald Trump to address a Joint Session of Congress on Tuesday, March 4, 2025, to share his America First vision for our future.”

Does this signal an earnest willingness for Congress to work with the new president, or is it merely a formal nicety, the usual blather?

The Epoch Times offered an extended explanation:

The event, though not classified as a State of the Union, follows a tradition since President Ronald Reagan where newly inaugurated presidents deliver speeches that are marked by comparable formality and ceremony. Such speeches are an opportunity for presidents to outline their vision for the nation at the start of their term, and to rally bipartisan support for their agenda.

Reagan’s 1981 address set the tone for this modern custom, focusing on economic recovery and national renewal during a time of economic stagnation and inflation. The priorities Reagan outlined in his speech included the promise of tax cuts, deregulation, as well as measures to curb inflation while encouraging job growth.

Paul Jacob commented on the speech on Tuesday of last week.

Life in prison — two life sentences! Plus 40 years. That’s a long time incarcerated . . . for anyone. Especially for one so young as Ross Ulbricht, who, after all, did not kill anybody, or defraud anybody, or steal from anybody.

The operatives of the federal government, on the other hand, wanted to send a message.

Last year, Donald Trump sent a message to members of the Libertarian Party: support me and I’ll free Ross Ulbricht.

Paul Jacob, in these pages, has written about both Mr. Ulbricht and Mr. Trump. Now Mr. Trump is hours away from returning to office, the only public office he’s ever had. Will he exercise his pardon power in favor of Ulbricht?

A week ago, Bitcoin Magazine wondered about the possibility of a pardon. “Although most Bitcoiners admit that Ulbricht was probably aware of his legal violations while profiting from Silk Road transactions, many believe that his asset forfeiture and 11-year-and-counting prison stay have become a sufficient penalty.”

The next day, Nick Gillespie of Reason brought up the possibility: “Reminder: Donald Trump Promised To Free Ross Ulbricht on ‘Day One.’”

Protos figures the odds: “Polymarket, the world’s largest prediction market, hosts bets on a list of people Trump could pardon in his first 100 days in office. Unfortunately, no major prediction market lists binary options odds on a ‘day one’ pardon or commutation.”

An article today, in the Prescott eNews, quotes actor Keanu Reaves in Ulbricht’s favor: “The Silk Road and trial of Ross Ulbricht involve many important and complex issues that impact the life of Mr. Ulbricht and us all.” It may be a politically vague statement, but it is nevertheless true.

For his part, Ross Ulbricht insists upon his good intentions, not ill or evil ones: “I was trying to help us move forward.”

Donald Trump is scheduled to be sworn into office as the 47th President of the United States on Monday the 20th of January. We will see what Mr. Trump truly seeks to move forward, soon after.

“Though many factors contributed to the devastation (such as fire hydrants without water, too few controlled burns, and insurance price controls),” explains Jack Nicastro at Reason, “it was also exacerbated by land-use policies that pushed homes and residents away from the city center and closer to the wildland-urban interface (WUI). The U.S. Fire Administration defines the WUI as ‘the zone of transition between unoccupied land and human development . . . where structures . . . intermingle with undeveloped wildland or vegetative fuels.’”

President Trump has talked about California’s environmentalist hegemony, preventing the routing of huge amounts of water in the north of the state to the desertified south. Trump, and many people online, blame protection of a specific small fish, the delta smelt. Some or all of Trump’s claims have been “fact-checked” by news media outlets, such as CNN.

Meanwhile, to those keeping their eyes peeled to major media coverage, global warming started out as the chief cause of the fires. This seems shaky at best, however, and has been repeatedly been debunked, such as by the Heartland Institute. California has a long, long history of forest fires, and the Santa Anas blow fires into conflagrations, and have been doing so for ages.

Since wildfires are a continual problem for California, governments can hardly be exonerated on account of being “surprised.” And if governments exist to provide the most basic of services — as many argue — surely fire protection would be high on the priority list.

But it wasn’t on Los Angeles’s mayor’s list, apparently. She scuttled off to Ghana to celebrate the continent’s first woman president. But her glorying in a feminist moment was marred by pestering questions about fire protection, and why so much money had been [allegedly] cut from fire-fighting budgets.

And then there has been the talk of arson. January is not the usual time of year for out-of-control fires, so one naturally wonders what ignited the holocaust. And there has been more than one arrest for arson.

Unlike in the fires that raged farther north, in 2020 (after the George Floyd riots), there does not seem to be a blanket denial in the media of arson, and even celebrities are spreading rumors about widespread firebug activity.

“Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is terminating major DEI programs, effective immediately — including for hiring, training and picking suppliers,” reports Axios.

“Meta said it was changing course because the ‘legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing,’ per a memo by Janelle Gale, vice president of human resources.”

And yes, changing is indeed what the legal landscape is: “Meta is not alone,” explains Techcrunch: “Microsoft and Zoom have also rolled back their DEI efforts. Lawsuits have emerged against programs that were targeted toward the Black and Latino communities.”

Behind all this is a landmark Supreme Court decision of June 29, 2023, Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard. That decision seemed to put the kibosh on what we used to call “reverse discrimination” at least in college acceptance policies regarding students of various races. The whole apparatus of student enrollment and fixation on race had been acceptable in the past to make up, for a time, for past discriminatory behavior based on animus against whites. But Justice Roberts saw no “going back to normal” in Harvard’s admissions policies: “Harvard concedes that its race-based ad- missions program has no end point. . . . And it acknowledges that the way it thinks about the use of race in its admissions process ‘is the same now as it was’ nearly 50 years ago. . . . In short, there is no reason to believe that respondents will — even acting in good faith — comply with the Equal Protection Clause any time soon.” So the court ruled against Harvard.

Much more recently, however, is the big news relating to sex and/or gender aspect of the DEI agenda: “A federal judge in Kentucky blocked the Biden administration’s attempt to redefine sex in Title IX as ‘gender identity,’ striking down the change nationwide,” according to Fox News’s Ryan Gaydos. “The U.S. District Court Eastern District of Kentucky Northern Division made the ruling in Cardona v. Tennessee on Thursday.”

This cover’s the inclusive aspect of DEI, where men [biological human males] were to be required to be allowed in women’s restrooms and locker rooms if they said they were (or somehow dressed up o “identified as” women. “The court’s order is resounding victory for the protection of girls’ privacy in locker rooms and showers, and for the freedom to speak biologically-accurate pronouns,” tweeted Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti. “The court’s ruling is yet another repudiation of the Biden administration’s relentless push to impose a radical gender ideology through unconstitutional and illegal rulemaking.”

And with the re-election of President Donald Trump, the Democrats’ favored “minorities” and “marginalized” policy has hit upon hard times. So the major corporations are blowing with the wind.

Even MacDonald’s is moving against DEI.

Brett Weinstein fears that the “MAHA” movement (“Make America Healthy Again”) is undergoing a rift, a “fissure.” The case against the covidian regime, and especially against the mRNA “vaccine,” is now being apparently undermined by the case against the poisonous food industry . . . you know, the industry regulated (and subsidized) by the USDA and the FDA.

He suspects that while there is no good reason for any antagonism, certain personalities and strategies of emphasis have set the anti-Agra activists against the anti-Big Pharma activists.

Weinstein’s solution is one he thinks all elements of the MAGA/MAFA movement should be able to get behind, including libertarians. The point is not to go on a ban binge, but, instead, apply current rules along with the principles of the Nuremberg trials, especially that of “informed consent.”

Which means there must be no pressure to force people to eat or take anything.

He also argues that, “in light of complex systems,” all this stuff that MAHA folks oppose is experimental (additives; genetically modified foods; vaccines; gene therapies) thus the Nuremberg strictures against forced medication must apply.

James Earl Carter, Jr., 39th president of the United States, died last weekend at a hundred years of age (October 1, 1924 – December 29, 2024). Though he served one term in office from 1977 to 1981, he is best known for his charitable work after leaving Washington. Though his post-presidential projects were wide-ranging, he is popularly remembered for building houses for the poor.

The memorials have of course been ubiquitous. Here is a handful of notices:

• Jimmy Carter, 39th US president and noted humanitarian, has died — Susan Page
• Jimmy Carter, Peacemaking President Amid Crises — Peter Baker and Roy Reed
• Jimmy Carter, ‘The Great Deregulator,’ 1924–2024 — Nick Gillespie
• RIP Jimmy Carter, the ‘Passionless’ President — Gene Healy
• Jimmy Carter’s Gift to Hollywood Was No Gift to Georgia Taxpayers — Joe Lancaster
• Jimmy Carter Supported Federal Pot Decriminalization for Half a Century. It Still Has Not Happened. — Jacob Sullum
• Sic Transit Gloria Jimmy — Timothy Virkkala
• Jimmy Carter Was the Most Successful Conservative President of the Last Five Decades — Paul Matzko

Senator Rand Paul (R.-Ky.) has published his annual “Festivus Report” on federal government spending, and it doesn’t look good. The federal debt is on a multi-trillion-dollar spree, yet politicians keep throwing money around:

• Ghost Towns on the Government’s Dime: The federal government spent $10 billion on maintaining, leasing, and furnishing almost entirely empty buildings
• A Pandemic Plunder: A Florida man stole $8 million in COVID-19 Relief funds to buy an island and more
• Your Tax Dollars at Play: The Department of the Interior (DOI) spent $12 Million on a Las Vegas Pickleball Complex
• Taxpayers Fund a Disinformation Index: The Department of State (DOS) wasted $330,000 to fund censorship of non- liberal and conservative media
• Hold on to Your Steering Wheels: The Department of Energy (DOE) spent $15.5 billion to push Americans toward electric vehicles they don’t want
• The Influencer Effect Hits Foreign Policy: The Department of State (DOS) squandered $4,840,082 on influencers
• When Bailouts Go Bust: The United States Department of the Treasury (USDT) granted a failed trucking company a $700 million pandemic-era loan
• Flocking Together! DEI Takes Flight: The National Science Foundation (NSF) spent $288,563 to ensure bird watching groups have safe spaces aka “Affinity Groups”
• Interest-ingly Wasteful: Americans are paying $892 billion in fiscal year 2024 on the interest on Uncle Sam’s Credit Card
• Because Who Needs a Secure U.S. Border, Anyway? The Department of State (DOS) spent $2.1 million for Paraguayan Border Security

These are just a few highlights. Read the full report for more juicy boondoggles and drunken-sailor prodigality.

“This year, I am highlighting a whopping $1,008,313,329,626.12,” explains the senator. “That’s over $1 trillion in government waste, including things like ice-skating drag queens, a $12 Million Las Vegas pickleball complex, $4,840,082 on Ukrainian influencers, and more! No matter how much money the government has wasted, politicians keep demanding even more.”

The United States federal government has been charged with protecting us from foreign enemies. But have those butcher’s-and-baker’s dozen of intel agencies and the Pentagon and Homeland Security really done the job?

WASHINGTON (AP) — A top White House official on Wednesday said at least eight U.S. telecom firms and dozens of nations have been impacted by a Chinese hacking campaign.

Deputy national security adviser Anne Neuberger offered new details about the breadth of the sprawling Chinese hacking campaign that gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and phone conversations of an unknown number of Americans.

Neuberger divulged the scope of the hack a day after the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued guidance intended to help root out the hackers and prevent similar cyberespionage in the future. White House officials cautioned that the number of telecommunication firms and countries impacted could still grow.

The U.S. believes that the hackers were able to gain access to communications of senior U.S. government officials and prominent political figures through the hack, Neuberger said. 

Aamer Madhani, “White House says at least 8 US telecom firms, dozens of nations impacted by China hacking campaign,” Associated Press, December 4, 2024.

The report has not been all that widely discussed, oddly enough. How extensive were the cyber-incursions? “The number of countries impacted by the hack is currently believed to be in the ‘low, couple dozen,’ according to a senior administration official.”

For more information on Chinese communist aggression, see StoptheChinazis.org.

The Federal Aviation Administration has responded to the drone (UFO/UAP) wave over New Jersey and New York by imposing a ban on citizen deployment of consumer drone technology.

“The FAA temporarily banned drone flights in 22 areas of New Jersey where critical infrastructure is located,” reports News Nation. “FAA officials said the flight restrictions were requested by federal security agencies and are effective through Jan. 17.”

While the “nothing to see here folks” caveats are all in place, with the usual reassurances that there has been “nothing so far to suggest that any drones have posed a national security or public safety threat,” it backs up its new, allegedly temporary, drone restrictions with alarming threats of force, warning “that ‘deadly force’ could be used against the drones if they pose an ‘imminent security threat,’ and that the government is using ‘drone busters’ to take down unauthorized flyers.”

News Nation’s Thursday report ends on the standard ambiguous note: “Speculation has raged online, with some expressing concerns that the drones could be part of a nefarious plot by foreign agents or clandestine operations by the U.S. government.

Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said it’s unlikely the drones are engaged in intelligence gathering, given how loud and bright they are. He reiterated this week that the drones being reported are not being operated by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Kellie Miller, “FAA bans drones in parts of New Jersey,” News Nation (December 19, 2024).

But of course this denial does not say anything about a corporate contractor running the mysterious drone swarms. In a just-updated report also from News Nation, we learn that “Lue [Luis] Elizondo, who led Pentagon investigations into unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs), aka UFOs, told NewsNation the public messaging surrounding the unexplained drones has been a ‘catastrophe.’” 

This is a point Paul Jacob made in his December 12th commentary.

In yet another News Nation report, “U.S. Rep. Chris Smith says he is ‘disturbed’ more isn’t being done by federal officials to bring down even one of the mysterious drones flying over that state in order to get answers.

Smith, a Republican serving New Jersey’s Fourth District, told NewsNation he has been disappointed by the lack of transparency and effort put forth by the Biden administration to quell concerns about who is behind the drone flap. 

“Why can’t they bring one of these down?” he asked. “Is our airspace so susceptible and so easily violated that we can’t go and say, ‘OK, here they are, let’s get at least one and find out . . . what’s the origin?”

Smith said many New Jersey residents have been “alarmed” by the flying objects, and all they want is answers and support to handle the air infestation. 

Safia Samee Ali, “NJ rep. says it’s alarming Feds can’t bring down one drone,” News Nation (Updated December 21, 2024).

Two obvious thoughts occur to anyone with a suspicious mind, however: Why would we think the Government would tell us if they had shot one down? and Why would the Government shoot down one of its own in-dev military-industrial-complex devices?

Even more suspicious minds would no doubt go much further, wondering if the Drone Mystery is really just a new form of the near-century-old UFO Mystery — or even the Great Airship Mystery of 1896-97! Surely most suspicions do not go quite that far, though.