Category: Government

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The Musketeers with Bloodhound

Brian Howey in a Feb. 10th column in the Kokomo Tribune states in his opening paragraph that the federal government is bloated, wasteful, and inefficient. Then in the closing paragraph he states that President Trump, via Elon Musk, is causing “….a constitutional crisis in the making. These are emerging dictatorial powers replacing the lawful order that has served Americans well for nearly 250 years”. Really!

America (the USA) is in deep debt to the tune of about $35 trillion dollars. The current financial course is not sustainable and has not been for years. At some point, the wall will be hit and catastrophe will follow unless drastic change occurs.

Howey writes about all the wonderful things USAID is and has been doing in the world. He does not write about all the corruption, perverted programs and organizations that USAID has been funding in the USA and around the world. Musk and the Musketeers have exposed corruption, fraud, and outright stealing of taxpayer money in billions of dollars.

Howey quotes the Washington Post… now there is sure a credible source of news. We know better. He says the Post reported Musk’s DOGE staffers accessed sensitive internal data systems, including those of the U.S. Treasury. DAAAAAA! And exactly how does one review what has been historically done without viewing records? President Trump runs the Executive Branch of which the Treasury Department is a part. He has authorized the Musk DOGE probes.

What scares the crap out of those who want to hide nefarious acts is that “Follow the Money” has taken on new meaning when the bloodhound is an algorithm-powered web crawling bot designed to drill through internal government firewalls and map out redundancy, waste, and longstanding hidden internal influence networks established over decades. This is called transparency; something many do not want.

I, for one, am all in for Elon Musk and his Musketeers. They need to keep going through every government agency that disburses taxpayer money. They need to report to the taxpayers exactly how they have been cheated and robbed…. and how the USA has gotten into $35 trillion dollars in debt.

Maybe full transparency will change the course of the USA. Maybe we will realize we cannot be the ATM for the world and that other countries must take care of themselves. Maybe we can stop the funding of domestic graft and nonsense. Maybe we can finally honestly make “America First”.

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TPS Ending

Temporary Protective Status, also known as TPS, is ending the United States at least for some. It will be for more if we can get the liberal courts out of the way. That will be a challenge for US Attorney General Pam Bondi.

TPS was supposed to be just that — temporary with no path to US citizenship. It was to provide a way for the United States to host people from other countries for a time when conditions in home countries were threatening. The problem is that, particularly during the Biden administration, TPS turned into PPS, permanent protective status. Renewals of extensions came to be automatic with no end.

Under the current President Trump administration, TPS has returned to what it was intended for in the first place. Many of those who are in the United States under TPS are on their way back to their home countries. The Trump administration, for example, is ending TPS for 350,000 from Venezuela which is about half of the total Venezuelans numbering about 600,000. The remainder face ending TPS with return to Venezuela later this year.

Reportedly, about 1 million people from 17 countries currently reside in the United States under TPS. These include people from El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, and Sudan. Trump tried to end TPS for these people in his first term but was thwarted by immigration advocacy groups through court action. Times are different now. More returns home are on the horizon.

All of this is just a part of moving out of the United States of America people who are either in the country illegally or have temporary status. It is a move to establish residence only for American citizens or people who have arrived via lawful pathways. It is for people who have followed the long path to citizenship, are temporary foreign students, or have some other legal authority under immigration law.

President Trump promised removal of illegal aliens in addition to ending TPS. There are millions to be sent back to home countries. The herculean effort has begun.

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The Crash

As one who held a private pilot license some years ago, I have to comment on the crash involving an Army helicopter and the American Airlines passenger plane. The more information that comes out, the more it is clear the Army helicopter pilot and crew are totally to blame for the 67 souls killed that night.

The helicopter was flying above the allowed height of 200 feet and the pilot was wearing night vision goggles that significantly reduces the field of vision. I don’t know if all of the helicopter crew were wearing such goggles.

The passenger plane was on final approach for a landing at Washington National airport. Its runway was originally to be runway 33, but the air traffic controllers asked the pilot to use runway 1 instead. This meant an adjustment left and then right had to be made by the airliner. Flaps and landing gear were down. The plane was going slow for the landing. No doubt the airline crew was concentrating on the coming landing ahead of them really just seconds away. The plane was on a perfect path to land when it was slammed in its side by the helicopter. The result was explosion and crash into the Potomac River. All aboard both the airliner and helicopter were dead.

We know now that one air traffic controller was doing the job of two. The controller had responsibility for both the helicopter and the airliner. A second controller was allowed to leave the tower early which created the dual job requirement. But the controller did alert the helicopter pilot at least twice about the airliner. The helicopter pilot made no change in course with a catastrophic consequence. We learned, too, that the tower was significantly under staffed with 19 present when full staff is 30. This with an airport that has a number of take offs and/or landings numbering about 800 per day; and with shorter than optimal runway lengths.

On top of that, we learned that military helicopters are all over the place in the same air space at the same time as airliners. Any baboon would be able to tell this was a recipe for disaster. It came. No such mix is safe regardless of weather conditions which reportedly were clear on crash evening.

Lessons: the volume of landings/takeoffs allowed at Washington National should always reflect the number of air traffic controllers on duty. The force was 2/3 rds of what it should have been that night. This should have meant a maximum of 533 take offs/landings that day, not 800. Who knows if this would have made the difference, but spacing of events would have been different.

Allegedly, the Army was and always does practice along the Potomac River for a “continuity of government” exercise. This is practice for an emergency event in Washington DC when critical government officials must be transported out of the area. Understandable, but this cannot be combined with normal airline traffic flow in the same area; period. This reason must have priority over normal airline traffic. The answer; stop airline use of Washington National airport for nearly all passenger flights.

There is a huge airport about 26 miles west of downtown Washington D.C.. It is Washington Dulles International airport. Dulles occupies 13,000 acres or just over 20 square miles of land. It is the fourth largest airport in the USA in terms of land area. The result: it is safe. It does not have cramped space, short runways, and all sorts of military helicopter activity. Already, there are multiple ways to get from Dulles to downtown Washington DC; but more options could be developed.

The worst happened. It seems many have warned of this possibility. No one listened.

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DOGE and the Big Dog

Elon Musk and his small cadre of geniuses are causing tidal waves and they have just gotten started. The incredible stink that has come out of USAID is almost beyond comprehension. The waste of US taxpayer dollars is more than huge; it is monumentous.

Is there any wonder why major new media were so far anti-Trump when in a short period of time the news organization Reuters got $9.1 million, Associated Press some $19.5 million, New York Times three grants totaling nearly $50 million, BBC $2.6 million and finally, Politico $8 million. It goes on and on.

There were too many to count grants to organizations promoting LGBTQ and transgender programs and activities around the world. Then all sorts of crazy projects and organizations both domestically and worldwide.

President Trump has shut down USAID nearly completely. What is left will be absorbed into the State Department, but even that will be a small skeleton of what it once was.

Honestly, I do not see the case for any tax dollars going out of the United States of America to others until and only until we have taken care of our homeless folks, our veterans, those hurt by hurricanes and fires, and any who are without shelter and food. We must be America First. All that and taking care of the mountainous national debt the USA has. Only then should be thinking about sending funds out of our country to others.

The list of the handouts of taxpayer money is endless. USAID was acting like the largest philanthropic foundation on the planet with taxpayer money. That and it had favorites on the left and woke side of the political spectrum.

USAID is largely now gone. DOGE will move on to the Defense Department, Medicare fraud, and other departments. What eventually results will the saving of billions of taxpayer dollars.

The big dog has come off of the porch!

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DEI Out!

Let me see, the Kokomo Tribune editorial of February 1st advocates the filling of Indiana State agency jobs based upon color, religion, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. (the hallmarks of DEI) rather than on selecting the best person for the job based upon merit qualifications; that is, job requirements

As I recall, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. advocated for a color blind (and by implication, DEI blindness) society based upon merit and achievement. Reverend King said, “I have a dream my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”.

Every job has qualifications for the performance of certain work. The qualifications have nothing to do with DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion). They are objective requirements that must be completed for optimal job performance. They do not depend upon one’s color, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity. Applicants must be evaluated based upon the ability to complete the job requirements. Period. The person best fitted to completing job requirements should be the one obtaining the job.

This is vitally important for jobs funded by Indiana taxpayers; state agency jobs. It is the responsibility of state government to see so. There can be no DEI consideration, no political favoring, no nepotism, or anything else except measuring an applicant’s perceived ability to do a job against the requirements for a job.

Seems pretty straight forward to me and in the best interest of taxpayers. In short, the KT editorial position is way off base.

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Hanson and Illegal Aliens

[Article by Victor Davis Hanson, Classicist and Historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University for the Daily Signal]

I want to talk about illegal immigration. You know, this is the point in our history that we’ve never been before. We have not a porous border, but no border at all. We’ve had somewhere between 10 to 12 million illegal entrants since the Biden administration began.

There is no real corpus of immigration law. It’s been destroyed. We’re at a historical period in our country, where 55 million people, never such a large number of people born ourside the United States, that are residing here. In terms of percentages, almost 16% of the population was not born in the United States.

That’s an enormous task of assimilation, integration, and civic education, and we just haven’t been doing any of that. So, what are we going to do? Well, this first thing is : We need to stop “catch and release”. We need to make entrants, legal entrants, go back to their country if they’re applying for refugee status. You cannot come here, and then say you’re a refugee. You must ascertain that and prove that at the consulate overseas.

We’ve got to finish the walls. It’s a 2,000-mile border, and we’ve never quite been able to continue. We’ve got a wall of fence or somehow obstruct the entire 2,000-mile border. That will save manpower. It will save time and cost, and it will have an enormous deterrent effect.

The next couple of things are a little bit tricker. I think that whatever your status is, if you are sending money back to a foreign country from the United States that is singled out as a source of illegal immigration — Mexico, Latin America, for example — then the United States government should put a 10% to 20% tax on all the remittances. That would earn us up to maybe somewhere around $20 billion (per year). And that would also deter Mexico, to take one example, that depends on remittances as its largest source of foreign exchange — greater than tourism, greater than its oil revenues. And yet, so often the American taxpayer — state, local, and federal — through generous subsidies, free up the cash so that the illegal resident can send it back for social necessities that the Mexican government itself is responsible for, so we’re subsidizing everybody but ourselves.

I think it’s very important that we start looking at the countries that are the source of illegal immigration in terms of security. A Sudan, a Syria, terrorist countries that support, countries that support terrorism like Venezuela, the Middle East, especially Iran, Russia, as well.

Why would we let them send people here that we have no background checks, have not adjudicated their status? So, we should have a travel ban, an immediate deportation, and immediate consequences for the mother country that knowingly sends these people here. And that, too, would be a deterrent.

We’ve got to also look at anchor babies.

The 14th Amendment didn’t really ever say, as sometimes is alleged, that if you’re born in the United States, then you’re an automatic citizen. It says if you’re born in the United States, and not subject to the laws of another country. All the people coming, in some sense, are subject to the laws of another country. So, we have to redefine that, either through legislation or renewed attempt in the courts.

Europe, the Left always looks for guidance — 17 European countries don’t even allow it. And the other 13 or 14 have restrictions that qualify it. So, we’re the only country in the world that gives unqualified citizenship to people who happen to be born here and then anchor the entire family.

Why not also put a 10-20 year ban on people who have been detained here illegally and stop them from applying for a green card or legal readmissions for 20 years? That would be a powerful deterrent.

In other words, we would announce sometime in February and say, “We want all of you to know, all 12 million who came here during the Biden administration, to take the first iteration of cohort, you have 30 days to go back. If you do not go back to your country, and you are detained, arrested here in the United States, you will be deported, but you will not be given any chance to get a green card for 10 to 20 years,” depending on how the courts or legislation adjudicates it.

And finally, I think it’s time to look at how we deport people. The first 500,000 who have committed a crime, it will be no problem. There’s unanimous consent. They should be deported immediately. They’re wreaking havoc on the American population.

The next iteration, the 1.5 to 1.7 million people who have already gone through the system, they’ve been adjudicated, they fail to show up for the court hearings. Or they left detention when they were facing deportation. Those would be the next group that would face deportation.

The third group of people, as I said earlier, from terrorist countries or terrorist-supporting countries; no one is going to sympathize with their residents here.

The fourth group is a little tricker, but I think we could pretty easily find hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of able-bodied residents who are on public assistance and who have not been here five years. If you haven’t bee here five years, you came during the Biden open-borders era. You were on welfare of some sort, and you’re able to work. You should go back home.

That would leave a large group of people who have been here five years. They’ve never committed a crime. They’re not on public assistance. And they want to get a green card, not citizenship, a green card.

I think if we had won public opinion and support by deporting the most egregious offenders, say 10-12 million, then I think in a bipartisan fashion, we could work out a system for the law-abiding, the productive, and the long-residing American residents and allow them to pay a fine to recapture legality and stay in the United States.

It’s going to be a tough road to restore border security, because the prior administration didn’t believe in it. But I think now that the White House, the Senate, and the House are in Republican hands, it’s absolutely possible. It can be done rather quickly.

Thank you very much. I’m Victor Hanson for the Daily Signal.

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Exit Day

Exit day is coming soon for all uninvited “guests” to the United States, also known as illegal aliens. As of now, the estimate is illegal aliens number something between 15 and 20 million persons; it could be more. Tom Homan will be the newly appointed Director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency under President Donald J. Trump. His work is cut out for him.

The southern and northern borders of the United States are to be closed to illegal crossing the day Trump is sworn in as the 47th President of the United States of America. Trump has promised existing immigration laws will be followed. Illegal aliens will be deported back to their country of origin. The United States cannot afford the hugely negative economic and social impact of the millions. Only legal immigration will be permitted.

In Indiana, our state Attorney General, Todd Rokita, deserves credit for steps he has taken involving illegal aliens. Rokita identified Indiana’s “Sanctuary Cities” and has held them to account with threatened legal action. In case you did not know what cities chose to be “Sanctuary” cities, they were Gary/Hammond, South Bend (Notre Dame), West Lafayette (Purdue), and Bloomington (Indiana University). Who would have guessed? Those would be good places for ICE to look.

There are others, though, that would be illegal alien hot spots. Those include Logansport, Delphi, and Frankfort. Logansport, for example, has said the population of that city has increased by about 30% in the past three years. The result has been a strain on schools, the hospital, housing, and various social services. And Logansport is not known for being an economic growth city. What it does have, though, are two meat processing plants: Tyson and Indiana Packers. In years past, there were already claims at Indiana Packers that illegal aliens were employed there causing wages to be kept down.

No doubt, there are other state hot spots for illegal aliens. Likely, Indianapolis is yet another good bet. As far as I know, there has not been any reporting of an estimate of illegal aliens transported to Indiana by the federal government under Biden’s policies.

We do know, too, that at one point our military Camp Atterbury housed more than 7,000 Afghan refugees; most of whom have left Indiana for guess where: California. There is another population of refugees in Indiana most of us know little or nothing about. Indiana is home to the largest Burmese refugee population in the United States with the majority, about 30,000, living in Indianapolis. Refugees are, by law and under International Treaty, residents in the US legally. However, refugees are not U.S. citizens, do get government financial assistance when arriving, and are a continuing drain on social services.

So, all policies involving immigration and/or refugees must be carefully analyzed and revised. This can only happen if we have US Senators and Congressional Representatives willing to do so. The United States cannot continue to be the destination of all around the world who want to come in. There are enough problems with our own homeless citizens, veterans, and destitute others that deserve U.S. resources over non-US citizens.

Lastly, maybe all foreign aid should end until we get our own country back on the right track. We are financially broke now and must face the fact.

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Indiana Losers

This one is not going to be long. I am totally outraged at what just came out of the US Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision against President Trump. Its decision allowed Judge Juan Merchan and Alvin Bragg to pin the label of a “convicted felon” on President Trump. Trump is making the best of it in saying his case will be appealed to the New York Supreme Court, and, if needed, eventually to the US Supreme Court again.

The US Supreme Court should have taken the courageous step of throwing out the entire “Hush Money” case against Trump, but it did not. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett made the difference. Had they voted with the other conservative Justices, the vote would have been 6-3 in favor of Trump. The three liberal/Democrat Justices are lost causes on anything having to do with justice. They are woke.

The US Supreme Court was being asked to halt sentencing at least until higher courts hear his appeals claiming his conviction violates a legal doctrine, newly established by the US Supreme Court’s recent immunity ruling in favor of Trump.

So, the difference boils down to Justice Amy Coney Barrett and a weak Chief Justice John Roberts who blows in the wind. The one who should ashamed of herself is Barrett. But, I guess this should be of no surprise given she came from an academic background at Notre Dame in one of Indiana’s former Sanctuary cities, South Bend.

Come to think about it. Indiana has produced at least four total losers politically in the somewhat recent past. They are Pete Buttigieg (also from South Bend/Notre Dame country), VP Dan Quayle (Huntington), VP Mike Pence, and now Justice Amy Coney Barrett. There must be something in the water to produce these defects.

Trump is publicly upbeat, it seems. He believes he will win his case in the end. I hope and pray he is correct. As far as I am concerned, Bragg and Merchan et.al. should all be in jail. They have put our country at risk for their own petty political gain. And, maybe, Barrett should step down from the Supreme Court.

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Who’s on First

The letter in the Kokomo Tribune on January 6th by residents concerning the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC) and the Kokomo electric vehicle battery plants, StarPlus, points out several issues. The primary one may be the functioning of the IEDC in Indiana. This “Corporation” is a child of the Indiana General Assembly. The President of the Corporation is Indiana’s governor, now Governor Mike Braun. All of the board members are appointed by the governor alone.

This “quasi-private government” entity has a lot of power and can operate quietly with millions of dollars. That is, make decisions that seriously affect communities without full and open knowledge of all citizens therein well ahead of time. The Stellantis-Samsung StarPlus electric vehicle battery plants and the Jaewon plant in Kokomo are prime examples.

Now, late in the process, citizens are asking questions. There are questions about the available water supply, surface and underground, and what a draw of about 2.5 million gallons per day per battery plant might mean. The water needs of the Jaewon plant are not presently clear. There are claims the most recently released water shed study by the State of Indiana showing plenty of water is available is flawed.

There are questions about how waste water will be transported and handled and what chemicals such waste water will contain. A report is water used for cooling will be recycled. Water for industrial processes will be containerized and sent off site for treatment and not to the local waste water treatment plant. Water used for human waste will go to the local waste water treatment plant. Storm water off of buildings and parking lots will go to holding ponds, but there is a question as to whether the ponds will be lined to prevent leakage to ground water. Given the above, one must wonder why over 2 million gallons per day of utility provided water will be consumed.

We have already seen the expenditure of millions on the extension of a gas line to serve the battery plants which reportedly is to be paid for by the gas consumers. We have to wonder about what electricity needed and where it is to come from.

There is another company, Jaewon, that is building a plant next to the StarPlus plant. Jaewon is to handle certain chemical waste products from StarPlus. How much water will this operation require and what is to become of whatever products and/or wastes it will generate? Answers are not clear to the public. And now, there are questions about construction quality practices going on in the building of this plant. Reports are that shoddy workmanship has resulted in project shutdown at times by Kokomo Fire Department officials only to be overridden by some State agency. Reports are that complaints will be submitted to OSHA.

Unrelated to the battery plants, there was a proposal for a lithium electric battery plant nearby to store electricity for feeding back to the power grid in high demand times. It was denied so far due to serious safety concerns centered around possible lithium fires.

Cost numbers of all of these projects are in the billions with more to come. What is the cost per job generated? We already know at least a few hundred of the jobs at the battery plants will be held by Koreans, not US citizens. How many US citizens will actually be continually employed when all is done?

There is a residential and commercial development proposed just south of the battery plants and the Jaewon plant. Now, questions about the elevation of ground levels compared to the 100 year flood level were raised by the City Engineer. The development has been put on hold. There is land requested for rezoning to intensive industrial zoning for Jaewon immediately adjacent north to the land with elevation questions. How about the Jaewon land? Is it, too, of insufficient elevation above the 100 year flood height? What restrictions may be the result?

Finally, there is yet another $7 billion in loans either offered or already taken down related to the battery plants. It appears billions and billions of dollars are being risked in the development of all projects related to the EV battery plants. This is at a time when President Trump may well terminate the mandates of the Biden administration regarding electric vehicles.

Our new governor and the Indiana General Assembly need to take a careful look at the IEDC and what it has done here and elsewhere in Indiana.

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Election Won

The election is over, but the fight continues…. and will. Yes, Donald Trump trounced Kamala Harris for the Presidency. The Democrats are in melt-down with many now plotting to sabotage the Trump administration whenever possible.

Republicans won the US Senate and US House majorities as well, but we learn now that Democrats and RINOs are maneuvering to block the Trump agenda when they can. The swamp rot did not and will not accept the will of the people.

In the Electoral College, 270 votes are needed for the majority and win. Trump earned 312 votes and Harris earned 226 votes at last count. The message is crystal clear. Even the popular vote was overwhelming won by Trump by the millions.

Now recently, there was an announcement by Democrat governors of states they will not support the deportation of illegal aliens as Trump has promised. They will not allow local or state law enforcement to help identify nor take into custody illegal aliens in direct contradiction to federal law enforcement about immigration. The answer: move as many illegal aliens as possible to those states and shut off any federal funds to them. Then we shall see what happens.

Even in the city of New York there has been change. The Mayor of New York, Eric Adams, has already announced there will be an end to rent vouchers for illegal aliens in his city. This was announced after the election results were clear.

Trump will have enforcement power in the form of who will get funding for what. The immigration laws of the United States of America are clear. Crossing the border of the US illegally is a crime. Those that cross are criminals by definition under the law. And, frankly, I suspect governors who subvert immigration law by direct actions are aiding and abetting criminals.

In Congress, we have learned Republican Majority leader Mitch McConnell is up to his tricks. He has called for a secret election to be held on Wednesday, Nov. 13th, to select the next leader of the Senate. Two of the three candidates he has selected are anti-Trump Republicans. I have to wonder how McConnell can procedurally do anything until the new Senate has been seated with several new Senators coming. McConnell and Trump do not get along. McConnell is a swamp creature that needs to go along with many, many others.

The swamp is and will be fighting back. It will not go peacefully into the sunset. President Biden has announced the transition to the new administration will be a peaceful one, but we have to wonder. The pressure will rise as inauguration day approaches. And, honestly, I have to wonder if Joe Biden really wanted Trump to win the election in the first place given how he was dumped by Democrats.

Democrat crying towels are out and the whaling by the liberal media is sorrowful. No sympathy from here. The fight is on for the saving of the United States of America.