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Surely you know the old joke: “What do you call a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the sea?” (Answer: “a good start!”). There’s a reason why lawyers are so broadly despised. Law is humanity’s instrument for creating order out of the terror and chaos of nature, where anything goes. The result of law theoretically, is a civil society, where only the good, true, and right things can go.

These days, lawyers are hard at work to replace civilized order with the terror and chaos of nature — which is to say, the seeking of raw power: this is what I can do to you! That primal despotism is the motivating engine of the Democratic Party in its terminal phase, a feral, power-seeking monster. It was why, in case you hadn’t noticed, the essential drive of Woke politics was the sadistic pleasure it took in exacting its endless punishments — cancellation, personal ruin, censorship — not correcting alleged injustices against marginalized minorities. And that tells you, by the way, exactly why the J-6 defendants were treated so harshly by the likes of Judge James Boasberg, Tanya Chutkan, and their colleagues of the DC federal district.

The enabling device for that monstrous power seeking of the Democratic Party was the colossal racketeering operation they implanted in every corner of the federal government, an insidious process that accelerated during the Obama years, eluded discipline during Trump One — with the many distracting ruses such as RussiaGate — and surged into final overdrive during the perfidious term of “Joe Biden,” America’s first false-front president.

The racketeering operation was perfectly illustrated in the DOGE’s recent deconstruction of USAID. That agency worked as a gigantic money laundering matrix to pay Democratic Party activists for the sole purpose of maintaining and expanding the party’s power — its ability to push American citizens around, control our lives, tell us how to live, how to think, and, ultimately, in the Covid-19 scam, telling us to take our shots, get lost, and die. Pitifully, a lot of those vaxx victims were the Democratic Party’s own rank and file, which shows you how psychotically suicidal the Democratic Party became.

By and large, it was conservatives who avoided the vaxxes because they were able psychologically to entertain the evidence that Covid was a nefarious set-up and that, month-by-month, the vaxxes were proving to be both ineffective and harmful. Democrats, in their Woke fugue state, could not do that. Even today, they insist that their vaxx injuries are “long Covid” and would be worse if not for the additional boosters they took. Poor dumb bunnies.

Mr. Trump was played masterfully in the initial 2020 Covid roll-out by the likes of Dr. Fauci, Deborah Birx, and the faithless Veep Mike Pence who directed the Coronavirus Task Force (and whoever was behind it). The president could not bring himself to oppose or cast doubt on their diktats and to this day he must remain embarrassed about how that all worked out. But he also probably learned to not be fooled again.

And so, after the fishy 2020 election, and during the disastrous “Biden” years, Mr. Trump had time to lay careful and comprehensive plans for ending the massive racketeering and for restructuring the federal apparatus into a leaner, more efficient, and more lawful enterprise for managing the civil society known as the USA. Which brings us to the present.

Mr. Trump’s lawfully appointed agent, Elon Musk, and his legally chartered investigative advisory unit, called DOGE, has begun making recommendations for severe cuts in agencies and employees, which have been executed by the lawfully confirmed heads of agencies, and the chief executive himself. Thus, the rapid, systematic disassembly of the Democratic Party’s grift machine and the end of its immense revenue stream. No more USAID and its thousands of NGO money laundromats. No more Department of Education and its Grant-O-Matic depredations in the universities. No more work-from home (but not really) nonsense. No more DEI reverse racism in hiring. No more flooding the swing state voting precincts with illegal aliens. No more stupid proxy war in Urkaine. No more gender pretending chaos. You see how it goes now.

Also, thus, the Democratic Party’s last resort: the federal judiciary, 235 new judges jammed into office in the twilight weeks of “Joe Biden” (as Senate Minority Leader Schumer bragged on Sunday’s TV talk circuit), plus the ones such as Boasberg, Chutkan, et al., already on the bench, primed to thwart Mr., Trump’s efforts to govern at every turn. They are the Dem’s only remaining lever of power. And they can only be activated by lawyers filing suits against Mr. Trump — hundreds having been filed in the past eight weeks. And these, as you learned in the Friday post here, are directed by attorney lawfare field marshal Norm Eisen, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, using the many well-paid lawfare lawyers at his disposal.

In politics, momentous things often happen on weekends. This past Saturday, Mr. Trump released a White House memorandum directing the Attorney General and the Director of Homeland Security “to seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation against the United States or in matters before executive departments and agencies of the United States.”

More specifically, the president’s memo asserts:

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 prohibits attorneys from engaging in certain unethical conduct in Federal courts. Attorneys must not present legal filings “for improper purpose[s],” including “to harass, cause unnecessary delay, or needlessly increase the cost of litigation.” FRCP 11(b)(1). Attorneys must ensure that legal arguments are “warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument for extending, modifying, or reversing existing law or for establishing new law.”

This is the first time that legal discipline has been leveled directly at the lawfare lawyers themselves. (Election-rigging maestro Marc Elias is mentioned by name in the memo.) It means that after eight years of this noxious gamesmanship, they are going to have to start answering for their actions, they will have to lawyer-up on their own account, and they are going discover (the old saying goes) how the process is the punishment.

Next, if it is not already underway at the DOJ, Mr. Trump must direct AG Bondi to explore the parties financing this lawfare — this “frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation” — and you should suppose that it has been emanating from the checkbooks of George Soros, Reid Hoffman, and other wealthy seditionists, who, likewise, will have to some serious ‘splainin’ why they should not go prison. One thing for sure: the money for all this is going to dry up.

Reprinted with permission from JamesHowardKunstler.com.

The post The Last Resort appeared first on LewRockwell.

Negotiations have many downsides, such as disputes over compliance, personality conflicts, arousal of anger and contempt, involvement of the egos of the negotiators, and negotiations have not served Russia well. Already Ukraine has violated the partial ceasefire agreement Putin made with Trump:

“A gas pipeline supplying the European Union is on fire in Russia due to an Ukraine Drone strike. A massive pillar of flames is visible near the Kursk(Russia) – Sumy (Ukraine) border. Meanwhile, Russia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry cries foul: “Kyiv has already violated the ceasefire. How will Trump deal with these mad terrorists?”

It was just earlier this week that President Trump and President Putin agreed to a ceasefire against “energy infrastructure.”   “Putin agreed and immediately conveyed the appropriate order to Russian Forces. So effective was President Putin’s Order that Russian Forces which had already launched Drones toward Ukraine to attack such targets, used Russia’s own air defenses to shoot down their own drones rather than cause a problem under President Putin’s order!” See this.

Nadezhda Romanenko reports on the immediate violation of the ceasefire agreement:

“This latest incident is not occurring in a vacuum. It is part of a long and well-documented pattern of deception and provocation, especially in the face of good-faith overtures by Russia.”

“As if anyone expected something different,” she adds.  Well, Putin and Lavrov did.  Negotiation with the West doesn’t seem to be a Kremlin skill.  Possibly, Zelensky’s agreement to a ceasefire did not apply to a partial ceasefire, and Ukraine struck the Russian energy infrastructure prior to Trump speaking again with Zelensky. See this.

The British prime minister has threatened Russia with “devastating consequences” if Putin violates the ceasefire agreement.  He is considering sending British jets to provide air cover for Ukrainian soldiers.  A British admiral said that one British submarine with Trident missiles could incinerate 40 Russian cities and it should make Putin afraid.  In other words, Washington’s “British ally” and also much of NATO Europe intend to frustrate a peace agreement with air support for Ukraine and perhaps nuclear cover from Britain and France for Ukraine.  A question before us is whether a Trump-Putin peace agreement means the death of NATO.

Meanwhile, Putin’s unwillingness to use force to win the conflict brings daily new embarrassments to Russia. On March 20 a massive drone attack was launched from Ukraine on Russia’s air base in Engels, central Russia. 

By delaying a victory in the conflict, Putin has revealed to the West all of the Russian weapon systems, thus enabling the West to make compensating adjustments to its weapon systems. Thus, Putin has pissed away the Russian advantage in weapon systems. By not getting the war over with, Putin has also allowed the West to learn all of the vulnerabilities in the Russian air defense system.  It does seem that Putin is as unfamiliar with how to fight a war as he is with how to negotiate.  Indeed, why is Putin negotiating at all?

Apparently negotiations are a trap that Putin cannot resist. Will the ceasefire be another eight year deception for Putin like the Minsk Agreement?  

Before the ink is dry on the ceasefire limited to energy infrastructure, missiles or drones fired by someone from Ukrainian territory struck an oil depot in Russia’s Krasnodar Region the day after the agreement and blew up a gas metering station in Sudzha last Friday.

What did Russia do?  Did Putin announce that the other side had violated the agreement within 24 hours, and finally, after three years of dilly-dallying use the force required to end the conflict?  No. A military victory would eliminate negotiations, which seem to have the highest value for Putin despite negotiations having a perfect record of being a disaster for Russia.  Determined to keep negotiations going, the Russian government “reserves the right to retaliate” perhaps, sometime, maybe.

It seems that Putin will delay a victory in order to continue talks. Putin appears determined that the proxy war with Washington must end in a negotiated settlement, not in a Russian military victory.

Putin says one of his conditions is Washington’s recognition that the areas Russia has reincorporated within herself are Russian.  Russian news sources indicate that Putin has offered not to take the Black Sea port of Odessa and the Russian city of  Kharkov in exchange for this recognition.  Otherwise, Russia has the option of reclaiming these two cities as well. See this.

I have not seen Trump’s response to the attack on Sudzha, a violation of the ceasefire agreement. Perhaps after all the hype, Trump doesn’t want to admit that the agreement only lasted 24 hours before it was violated.  If Trump  sees it this way, he is not alone. Apparently, Putin doesn’t consider the violation to be a violation and is continuing with the violated agreement. It seems the two leaders are not going to regard Zelensky’s violation  as a violation.  Thus, Trump-Putin negotiations continue and hope remains. See this.

To reiterate, the best and quickest way to end the conflict is for Trump to abandon Washington’s proxy war against Russia, cease supplying weapons, money, and targeting information, cancel the sanctions,  and leave the resolution of the conflict with Putin and Zelensky.  Putin will require a Ukrainian election in order to  have an elected government with which to deal.  The resolution of the conflict will reflect the realities of the situation and prove that Russia has no intention of taking all of Ukraine and threatening Europe.

Russia would be merciful to Ukraine as Ukraine is historically part of Russia broken away by Washington after the internal political collapse of the Soviet government.  Ukraine as an independent country has existed for only 30 years.  The parts reincorporated into Russia are  former territories of Russia herself that were incorporated into the Ukraine province of the USSR by the Soviet leadership in Moscow.

Remember:  If Washington and NATO had complied with the Minsk Agreement, there would have been no conflict in Ukraine and the territories that are now part of Russia, excepting Crimea, would still be part of Ukraine.  The West forced the conflict on Russia and now blames Russia for the conflict.  As the French president and German chancellor said publicly, we deceived Putin with the agreement while the Americans built a Ukrainian army.  The conflict is Washington’s fault, and it can be easily ended by Washington’s withdrawal from the conflict.  Trump has no stake in the conflict.  The question is:  Does he acquire an unwanted stake by leading the negotiations?  What happens if Trump’s ego gets involved?

The post Is Negotiation the Best Way To End the Proxy War With Russia? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Well, the bloom is off the Trumpenstein rose. It was a giddy start to his second term, where it seemed like perhaps he was finally going to fulfill some of his many promises. With people like RFK, Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard, and Kash Patel in his cabinet, and the initial DOGE disclosures, it was hard not to feel at least some bit of optimism.

But the warm and fuzzy rush of hope has subsided. We still hear snatches here and there about some new DOGE disclosure, some outrageous waste of taxpayer money. And the other side, the hopelessly deranged “Woke” Left, predictably claims that all of the DOGE reports are fake, and have been “debunked.” By somebody. Anybody. There can’t possibly be waste, fraud and abuse in our sacred government agencies! Who could even imagine such a thing? But the disclosures seem to be on pause. When are they auditing the Pentagon? The CIA? The FBI? The IRS? The HHS? The Federal Reserve? And with the all the outrageous USAID revelations, what prosecutions are planned? Who will be held responsible? Will there, as always, be no one in power who is held accountable for great crimes against the people?

The epitome of what I call the Trumpenstein Project came during, and after, Trump’s recent speech before Congress, which for unknown reasons wasn’t called the State of the Union address. As usual, Trump said many good things, and many dumb things. He came out strongly for freedom of speech and against censorship, which is something few presidents have done. But then a few days later, he took to his Truth Social platform, and threatened to prosecute and deport college students who engage in “illegal” protests, whatever that is. Well, actually we know exactly what he meant. He meant no protesting against Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians. That is the Holocaust The Dare Not Speak its Name. Free speech except when it comes to Zionism, kind of an extension of the worldwide holocaust “denial” laws. Perhaps naysayers will be sent to FEMA camps, in lieu of Siberia.

We’ve just seen the release of some 80,000 (or 63,000- pick your source) files related to the JFK assassination, with the promise of more to come. I’ve searched through some of it, and there are a few very interesting things. Like the fifteen page memo from JFK’s close aide Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., warning of the CIA becoming a power unto itself, and also documenting Kennedy’s gave concerns about the Agency. Then there was the item that discloses James Jesus (yes, that was really his middle name) Angleton recruited twenty year old Marine Lee Harvey Oswald into the CIA. Angleton monitored the future patsy for years, and had a huge file on him sitting on his desk the week before the assassination. There are countless references to Israel in these files, including the strong Israeli connections Angleton had. And we learn that the CIA was asking that all references to Israel be redacted. So there’s that.

Another real curiosity is a file verifying the urban legend that JFK, Jr. sent a threatening note to then Senator Joe Biden in 1994, calling him a “traitor.” There is no further context. Why would young Kennedy use such an explosive term? Whatever it means, it should draw our interest. The files tell the story of CIA official Gary Underhill, whom the wild and crazy “conspiracy theorists” had claimed was blabbering about the Agency killing JFK, and then was, of course, murdered himself. What else would we expect to happen? Well, now there’s an official memo discussing this. So please apologize to Penn Jones and all the other “wackos” like me. As Candace Owens said upon the release of the files, we were right. There are files that show how Castro, Khrushchev, and pretty much the rest of the world were laughing at the absurd Warren Commission fairy tale. Only our state controlled media believed it.

Tulsi Gabbard has done at least one good thing in her new role; she apparently was responsible for limiting, really pretty much eliminating, all the redactions which researchers have come to know and love, when sifting through these mostly meaningless documents. Trump, being Trumpenstein, was asked “so who killed JFK,” and gave a long, rambling response worthy of every American politician revered by the court historians. But he never answered the question. I know Tulsi believes there was a conspiracy, because I asked her myself at a campaign event five years or so ago. But Trump deserves some credit for finally releasing at least many of the documents (yes, an unknown number remain classified), and for doing so without redactions. There is now no question that Oswald worked in some capacity for the CIA, and you can add James Jesus Angleton to the list of known conspirators. JFK’s insane grandson Jack Schlossberg, by the way, is upset that the files were even released.

While obsessed souls like me were scouring these files like well heeled scholars and professors should be, Trumpenstein threw us one of his famous curve balls. More like a grenade. The Giant Orange Man suddenly decided to bomb Yemen. Poor little Yemen, target of so much presidential ire, going back to when the beloved Barack Obama slaughtered an entire wedding party, to defend our freedom. Ron Paul- who has been advising Elon Musk and his DOGE project- was among Trump’s severe critics, charging that he’d been responsible for the deaths of dozens of civilians, including women and children. The target of this nonsensical attack were the dreaded Houthis, a heretofore unheard of extremely dangerous terrorist group, which had supposedly been acting like pirates, stopping our ships, etc. Perhaps they had a Keira Knightley on board, to keep all the male savages in line, like they do in Hollywood.

This brought back reminders of when Trump 1.0 abruptly assassinated the heretofore unheard of World’s Most Dangerous Terrorist, Qasem Soleimani, in early 2020. Right before the World’s Greatest Psyop emerged upon the scene. I remember how we all breathed a huge sigh of relief at the time, just before we started donning masks, social distancing, and mindlessly obeying a series of ridiculous “mandates.” Finally, we were free from the World’s Most Dangerous Terrorist. And now, Trump 2.0 has done it again. Saved us from the World’s Most Invisible Terrorists. The dreaded Houthis, just like Soleimani, hale from the shores of Iran. “State sponsor of terrorism,” whatever that means. Are we ever going to finally attack Iran, by the way? I mean, come on, how many times can you suggest it, declare how necessary it is, threaten it? We can’t keep letting them get away with “sponsoring terrorism,” can we? I want to feel safe!

So it looks like we’ve taken a bit of a break from the DOGE disclosures. I haven’t heard another word about that unbelievable windfall Elon Musk suggested- $5,000 for every taxpayer. That’s what I’m talking about! Haven’t they finished auditing USAID yet? Didn’t some judge order the USAID workers to be rehired, if they’d even been fired? That’s even more unconstitutional than DOGE firing them in the first place. If they were fired. It’s hard to tell what is really happening, or has happened, anywhere in America 2.0. Lots of tweets, ultimately signifying nothing. When does that rumored audit of the Pentagon begin? Didn’t Trump agree with that? If so, why did Trump just approve yet another increase to the defense budget? I mean, if they audit that place, they’re going to find a lot more than $500 toilet seats. I guess they needed the extra billions to bomb Yemen, and destroy the World’s Most Invisible Terrorists.

Meanwhile, the Left doesn’t seem too concerned with the latest bombing in Yemen. After all, when their hero Barack Obama killed that wedding party, not a peep of protest was heard from the Hollywood hills. Maybe some nonwhite members of Congress mentioned it. I’m not sure. I had just started blogging sporadically over on Word Press, and was finishing up Hidden History. I can’t recall if I even mentioned that in the book. Obama did a lot of really bad things. Speaking of the Obamas, Michelle just launched a new podcast, with her brother. They had a disappointingly low number of listeners. Maybe they had more than my own humble podcast, “I Protest” (I obviously am smitten with that name), but you can bet it was nowhere near as interesting. Michelle’s brother looked very, very feminine. I mean super feminine. Almost transgender feminine. And with his sister looking so masculine, well….

But back to Trumpenstein. I guess I’m going to have to file my taxes yet again. The IRS hasn’t been audited, let alone abolished, as Trump has threatened to do. And he hasn’t stopped subjecting Social Security income- which were withheld taxes to begin with- to taxation, so I suppose I’ll be paying a lot again this year. All those blue collar workers depending on overtime probably wonder about his promise regarding the abolition of taxes on that. And servers; waiting for Trump to stop the tax on tips. Trump has even thrown out the option of stopping all income taxes. And then, I think last week, he suggested that those who make less than $150,000 should pay no taxes at all. Cool. That would benefit close to 99 percent of the U.S. population. I’m sure his fellow Republicans loved that one. But where was Bernie Sanders, and the rest of the Democrats, to congratulate him on such a great idea?

Trumpenstein has taken his propensity for grandiose, contradictory promises to a whole new level in his second administration. What happened to the mass deportations? They aren’t even being discussed now. They aren’t being protested. Probably because the numbers suggest that he has actually been deporting fewer illegals than Joe Biden. How exactly can you deport fewer illegal immigrants than Joe Biden? That can’t be easy. It would take a lot of effort. I mean, really just having ICE actually do its job would ensure more deportations, wouldn’t it? Now, we’re told that the number entering the country illegally is way down. Okay, cool. But what about the 20 million, 30 million, or 50 million who are already here illegally? I know- he’s going after the dangerous, violent criminals first. Like those 300 or whatever members of some heretofore unheard of gang that were recently deported to El Salvador.

Now, what makes this deportation of a relative handful of illegals even less inspiring is the fact that the United States, under hardline anti-immigrant “racist” Donald Trump, is paying El Salvador some $6 million to jail them. What? I’m certainly no Ivy Leaguer, but that doesn’t seem like a good deal to me. And I thought Trump was the best dealmaker in the world. Somehow, this brought back memories of Mexico paying for that wall that never came to be. El Salvador apparently has quite a shiny new “mega prison,” where it will house “terrorists,” and presumably even more illegal immigrants from America. I wonder if the cost will go up for each new paltry roundup. Somehow, this doesn’t seem in line with DOGE’s attempts to cut waste, fraud, and abuse in government. I think it’s pretty wasteful to pay another country to take back migrants who came here illegally.

Meanwhile, Jimmy Dore, who has been more than fair to Trump (he’s basically in my category as a Trump Agnostic), ran a story about how Elon Musk and Trump really are targeting our Social Security. Musk is planning to cut 12 percent of the staff at Social Security, as well as close down some locations. They want to transition away from all phone contact, so that will mean oldsters who have no capacity to figure out a typically user unfriendly interface online, will have no option but to go in person to one of a dwindling number of Social Security offices, for any questions, or perhaps to “verify” that they are who they are. You know, what with all those 300 year old Social Security recipients and everything. This all seems really devious. One can almost picture Elon in his Baphomet costume, laughing maniacally. I’m waiting to hear what they’ve done to stop all the dead people from getting Social Security payments.

It can’t be that hard. I mean, they’re dead. In some cases, dead for like 200 years. So just figure out who’s at the address where the checks have been mailed, or who is on the bank account where they’ve been sent by direct deposit. Musk should hire me. But he is pretty distracted now, what with all the mad “Woke” vandals fire bombing Tesla vehicles. It must hurt to see how delighted the state controlled media, and indeed, the entire Left, is over this. They’re joking about widespread destruction of property. But then again, they overtly supported the tearing down of statues, the arson, looting, and murder of the Black Lives Matter protests. Maybe the Tesla fire bombings are “mostly peaceful.” Today’s Left won’t condemn any violence done by those who support their lunacy. Whatever happened to nonviolent disobedience? Because all Teslas have security cameras, the vandals were caught on film. A college professor keyed a Tesla.

So unless Trumpenstein throws us another unexpected juicy pitch across the center of the plate, it looks like he’s back to his usual bag of tricks. But this time, he has really been Captain Chaos. Wild, sometimes revolutionary, proposals almost every day. Hall of Fame level flip flopping. With his flurry of early executive orders, it’s hard to determine if any of them, except for the January 6 pardons, actually had any impact. He signed one establishing English as the official language, for instance. How will that be implemented? I still run into employees who “no hablo ingles.” A judge has already overturned his banning of anchor babies. What has really happened with DOGE is anyone’s guess. I’ve heard of judges ordering government workers to be rehired. When will Trump’s precious Supreme Court weigh in? I wouldn’t want to pin my hopes on Amy Coney Barrett. Is Daylight Savings Time still here?

World War III still hasn’t started. Somebody tell Alex Jones. Speaking of that, Infowars reporter Jamie Smith was shot and killed in Austin, Texas recently. I haven’t heard any updates about this, but it certainly should be presumed that his murder had some connection with his line of work. By an odd coincidence, the only photo I’ve seen circulated of Smith, posing with Alex Jones, features a bookcase behind them, where you can see two of my own works, Hidden History and Crimes and Cover-Ups in American Politics: 1776-1963, far right on the third shelf. Is it morbid, or inappropriate, to mention that? I would never have noticed, but my good friend and fantastic researcher Peter Secosh caught it and pointed it out to me. The Infowars book store sold hundreds of copies of Hidden History, but never bought any of my other books.

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Like many Americans, my heart swelled with pride as I watched the astronauts land safely in the Gulf of America. The SpaceX rescue of the stranded astronauts ended wonderfully, but it also highlighted an important lesson: why a relatively small company was able to succeed where a governmental bureaucracy (NASA) and its go-to military-industrial-complex contractor (Boeing) could not. That lesson becomes clear when viewed through the Catholic social teaching of subsidiarity.

Only after the intrepid space travelers were safe and heading home did the irony of the moment strike me. The combined might of NASA and Boeing—one of the country’s largest and oldest defense contractors—was powerless to bring the astronauts back from space. Instead, it was up to the upstart SpaceX to rescue them and return them to their families.

This space escapade should be a case study studied in business school titled: “How Large Organizations Lose Their Way and Betray Their Customers.”

The symbolism of SpaceX rescuing astronauts when governmental agencies and massive defense contractors were seemingly unwilling or unable to act underscores the relevance of the Catholic principle of subsidiarity.

What is subsidiarity? The principle of subsidiarity holds that decision-making should be kept at the most local and competent level possible rather than being centralized in large, bureaucratic institutions. It is a philosophical cornerstone of two of my favorite books: Small Is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher and Small Is Still Beautiful by Joseph Pearce. These influential books critique large-scale corporate and industrial approaches, advocating for human-centered economies, sustainability, and policies that emphasize human thriving over other considerations.

A comparison of SpaceX to behemoth entities like NASA and Boeing exposes factors that help explain this ironic David-and-Goliath story.

The Players: NASA, Boeing, and SpaceX

NASA is a government agency with about 18,000 employees. It is burdened by bureaucracy and heavily influenced by politics. Really, politics in space? Yes, indeed. Elon Musk stated that political interference prevented an earlier rescue of the stranded astronauts.

Under the Biden administration, NASA aggressively promoted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies to incorporate into its mission and workforce. In January 2025, NASA began dismantling its DEI programs following executive orders from President Trump. These federal directives were intended to eliminate policies fostering division and inefficiency within government operations. However, these reforms were too late for the marooned astronauts who had already been launched into space and had to be rescued by SpaceX.

Boeing was founded in 1916 and has grown into a massive, bureaucratic, and highly-regulated defense contractor and aerospace manufacturer. With approximately 155,000 employees, it operates within a top-down structure, making it heavily centralized. Once an industry leader in innovation, Boeing has stagnated due to excessive corporate bureaucracy, leading to serious safety failures like the 737 MAX crisis and ongoing supply-chain issues. The company’s reliance on outsourcing and cost cutting has undermined quality and worker autonomy. Recently, Boeing came under fire for embracing controversial DEI policies that critics say compromised quality control, contributing to numerous airline mishaps and aerospace failures.

In contrast, SpaceX, founded in 2002, operates with a leaner workforce of about 13,000 employees. SpaceX maintains a start-up culture that embraces localized problem-solving and innovation—closer to Schumacher’s vision of decentralized, human-scale enterprise. SpaceX hires employees based on merit rather than DEI policies, and it emphasizes private innovation and rapid decision-making.

Engineers at SpaceX have more autonomy, aligning with Schumacher’s principle that work should be creative, fulfilling, and localized. SpaceX’s groundbreaking process of returning its rockets for reuse rather than wastefully jettisoning the rockets like NASA does gives it high marks in the environmental sustainability column. SpaceX’s mission-driven approach fosters purpose and innovation—far more than Boeing’s corporate, bureaucratic stagnation does. SpaceX’s approach is more decentralized compared to Boeing’s, better aligning with subsidiarity by keeping decision-making at lower levels.

NASA and Boeing exemplify large-scale bureaucratic industrialism, which Schumacher critiques as inefficient and detached from human needs. Both NASA and Boeing get low scores on the subsidiarity scale with SpaceX getting higher marks for subsidiarity.

The footage of SpaceX’s Dragon vessel splashing down in the Gulf of America, along with stunning images of rockets returning to Earth and being caught mid-air by giant “chopstick” arms for precise landing and sustainable reuse, powerfully showcases the superiority of SpaceX’s more subsidiarity-friendly business model over NASA and Boeing’s centralized, bureaucratic approach.

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At a male-only lunch high up in the Alps the subject of AI came up. We were five friends, and four of them were in favor. “But it will kill good writing,” said yours truly. The rest agreed. Info will trump grace, was the conclusion. Some time ago a friend had AI imitate my column and she played it back to me. I listened carefully. It was a good imitation of probably the worst writing I have ever done, clumsy, obvious, and phony. I recounted the story to my friends at lunch. “So what else is new about your bad writing?” said one of my oldest friends.

Joking aside, no one reads any longer. When was the last time someone asked you what book you are reading. “What are you watching?” is what people ask nowadays. The devil screen is the enemy, and political correctness comes in a close second. Modern novels and books in general are about a lived experience, and we all know how boring a lived experience can be. Especially when it’s written by a neurotic female American, a drug-addicted, in-the-closet British chap, or a one-legged black South American lesbian. No wonder so many so-called intelligent people now watch cartoons nonstop.

Yep, books have gone with the wind, and please excuse the corn, but at my advanced age I find too many people very light on the stuff between the ears. Here’s Papa Hemingway on writing: “Prose is architecture, not interior decoration. When writing, a writer should create living people, not characters.” If only the nauseating narcissism of today’s writers would follow such advice, I might buy a novel or two, something I haven’t done in decades.

“A fellow scribe said that it was as necessary for a writer to have mastered the Maugham short story as it was for an artist to have mastered the art of drawing.”

Papa got the Nobel in 1954, and he damn well deserved it because he did more to change the style of English prose than any other writer in the 20th century. Papa wrestled over a sentence, even a word, for hours on end. His travails were put in writing to his editor Maxwell Perkins. Let’s face it: Getting it just right is very hard work, as one goes over yesterday’s sentences and spends a whole morning making corrections. What today’s bums have done is they’ve made writing easy by what they call stream of consciousness. It is a con, writing down everything that comes to mind and forgetting all about rhythm, euphony, and grace. All good writers write by instinct, but style counts a lot. As a young boy I remember well the narrow streets of Athens lined with whitewashed houses underneath the Acropolis, the smell of jasmine and the tap-tap of donkeys’ hooves on the cobbled paving, the trickle of the fountains, and the occasional cry of beggars. One needs to observe before one writes, and also to explore. These present-day untalented ones just let it spew out, as if their anger and despair make them interesting.

The hackneyed phrases one used to describe first loves were normal, and the reason Holden Caulfield remains immortal is because the writer keeps him young and innocent. The trick to good writing is, of course, to omit needless words. Good style is direct, conversational, unfussy, and definitely unpretentious. I’ve always considered Somerset Maugham the best of all Brit writers, and he should have been awarded a Nobel Prize that has gone to far, far lesser writers.

Willie Maugham’s short stories are better than anyone else’s, and that includes Guy de Maupassant and Irwin Shaw. The deceptive simplicity of his method of writing concealed a well-honed technique, and those who attempted to copy it failed and failed miserably. A fellow scribe said that it was as necessary for a writer to have mastered the Maugham short story as it was for an artist to have mastered the art of drawing. Unlike these shortcut phonies of today, Willie Maugham plotted his stories with deadly precision, twisted the tail of stories, and had unexpected denouements. His understated style, coupled with careful withholding of information, kept the reader in a state of pleasurable suspense.

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“This town is now as nervous as it’s ever been.”  That’s Congressman Chip Roy’s assessment of the mood in Washington, D.C., since President Trump’s return to the White House.  It’s one of several dozen refreshingly blunt descriptions of American politics in Ned Ryun’s new documentary based on his book, American Leviathan.  The documentary is available to anyone with an Internet connection, and it is nothing short of a declaration of war on the administrative state.

I highlighted Ryun’s book when it came out last September for several reasons.  First, it is a remarkably clear description of the ideas, people, and events that led us to this unique moment in history — when the inevitable clash between the authoritarian bureaucracy and the constitutional Republic has come to a head.  There was nothing “natural” about this process.  The vast and unaccountable administrative state did not arise from the U.S. Constitution; it is a repudiation of the Constitution.  The unelected bureaucracy does not reflect the wishes of the American people; it is the polar opposite of representative government.  No matter how many propagandists defend Big Government as “our Democracy,” the ever-growing Leviathan is thoroughly authoritarian in disposition.  It jealously guards its expanding powers and despises American citizens who insist that legitimate government comes only from the consent of the people.  It is such an unnatural beast that it must spy on Americans, censor their speech, and intimidate them into submission merely to maintain control.  The administrative state is “government by coercion” and the antithesis of limited government and individual liberty.

Second, Ryun is a rather unique political operative in that he “walks the walk” every bit as much as he “talks the talk.”  He is an effective warrior when it comes to getting Republicans elected, but he is also a tireless critic of the Deep State.  Those qualities are often mutually exclusive in high-stakes American politics where a person’s clout is usually directly proportional to his willingness to sell out personal principles.  Washington’s political machine — the Frankensteinian monstrosity composed of equal parts malevolent bureaucracy, corporate blackmail, academic blacklisting, news media gatekeeping, Intelligence Community skulduggery, and rank influence peddling — tends to scoop up “true believers” and recondition them into compliant cogs of the permanent government’s hive-mind, collectivist “Borg.”  Ryun is a rare political player who refuses to be “assimilated” or transformed into another D.C. “drone.”

Lastly, I wanted readers to mentally prepare for what would happen after President Trump won in November.  There were fifty days between the publication of Ryun’s American Leviathan and Trump’s victory, and while those crucial days required all of our efforts to make sure that he would, in fact, be re-elected, I knew that we would have no time to waste once he succeeded.  That’s where Ryun’s efforts really stand out.  His book is meant (1) to wake up those who have been sleeping during the century-long transformation of the American Republic into a tyrannical bureaucracy, (2) to re-energize those who have been fighting the good fight for most of their lives, and (3) to lay out the blueprint for restoring the Republic and destroying the Deep State.  I wanted readers to spend time before the election thinking about what would come next because winning was only “Step One” of a much larger operation.

Something that should be clear six months after American Leviathan came out in print is that President Trump and his closest advisors have long been preparing for this war against the administrative state.  They weren’t just running a political campaign the last few years; they’ve been planning their return to Washington, D.C., in meticulous detail.  From the moment the news media cartel was forced to announce Trump’s victory, those plans became active operations.  Critical personnel choices were announced.  Executive orders were finalized.  Litigation strategies were put into motion.  It is no coincidence that many of Ryun’s recommendations for “slaying Leviathan” are now official White House policy.  The Trump administration embraces American Leviathan’s proposition that the only way to save the Republic is to disembowel the unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy.

While Ryun’s book is an excellent resource for American minds desperate to break free from a century of bureaucratic hypnosis and Deep State conditioning, his documentary provides a kind of real time snapshot of the Trump administration’s ongoing “Leviathan hunt” today.  Among many interesting contributors to the film, Congressman Roy and Senators Jim Banks, Rick Scott, and Marsha Blackburn offer insightful perspectives regarding Trump’s impact on Establishment Washington, and Jeff Clark, Mike Davis, Steve Cortes, Bradley Watson, and Rachel Bovard provide excellent analysis of the many conflicts playing out publicly today.  Every speaker is strikingly candid about where all this is heading — a showdown between two incompatible systems of government from which only one may survive.

Senator Banks says plainly that the Deep State’s animus toward President Trump originates with the “three most dangerous words” he uttered during the 2016 campaign: “Drain the Swamp.”  As soon as then-candidate Trump identified the administrative state as not only an affront to the U.S. Constitution but also a threat to the American Republic, he became public enemy number one for the bureaucratic “blob.”  The Russia collusion hoax, the Mueller Inquisition, the farcical impeachments, the endless lawfare, and the ridiculous investigatory witch-hunts all arose because Donald Trump directly attacked institutions that have governed almost absolutely for over a century while avoiding serious public scrutiny.

In front of huge crowds, Trump called out agencies and bureaucrats by name and promised to rein in their out-of-control harassment of the American people.  The administrative state, having long exercised the constitutionally delegated powers of the Executive Branch while thumbing its nose at the elected president, correctly worried that Trump would reclaim legitimate Executive authorities that it had illegitimately usurped decades ago.  For a hundred years, America’s permanent ruling class has operated a state within a state in which the president is treated mostly as a figurehead and recognized as “chief executive” in name only.  In this absurd “Bizarro World” where low-level bureaucrats are quasi-kings and the three branches of government retain meager residual powers, the Constitution is a document that just gets in the Deep State’s way.

In Ryun’s documentary, Congressman Roy pulls no punches against the administrative state while laying well-deserved blame at the feet of lawmakers.  In lauding Elon Musk’s work to expose and eliminate government waste, fraud, and abuse, Roy says the American people have to hold Congress accountable.  “Because you’ve been searching for the enemy, and the enemy is right in front of you.  It is us.  It is Congress.  We’re the ones that continue to fund the very things” that enable the Deep State.  “We’re begging you to save us because we’re that bad.”  That’s a rather direct plea from a sitting congressman for the American people to rise up and demand an end to America’s unconstitutional bureaucracy.  In calling for the “slashing and burning” of Leviathan, Roy argues that DOGE shouldn’t stand for the Department of Government Efficiency but rather the Department of Government Elimination.  That’s a theme throughout Ryun’s documentary.

Read the Whole Article

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Switzerland. ‘Fight to the last cartridge, then use your bayonets!’  Gen. Henri Gulsan

So warned the retired US general Ben Hodges in an interview with the newspaper SonntagsBlick.  Hodges was the former US military commander in Europe.

Before frightened Swiss start moving their gold and cows to mountain shelters, they should recall that Hodges was one of the crack US generals who led the US army to win brilliant victories in Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

Excuse me if I sound a bit cynical.  I was a volunteer in the US regular army during the Vietnam era.  I know the politicians handcuffed our generals at every turn.  But wars are about political goals, not killing as many people as possible.

Gen. Hodges implied that the Russians could steamroll flimsy Swiss defenses.  As a long-time resident of Switzerland, veteran war correspondent, and one of the first – if not the first – non-Swiss to be shown Switzerland’s top secret mountain forts, I advise all would-be invaders to steer clear of the small but fierce Helvetic Republic.

During the Renaissance, the thinker Niccolo Machiavelli said of the Swiss, ‘most heavily armed and most free.’  The Vatican’s Swiss Guards are a dramatic reminder of what was called ‘the Furia Helvetica’ when Swiss pikemen terrorized Europe’s battlefields.  Today, Swiss citizen soldiers keep their weapons at home and are renowned as sharpshooters.  I have been in the field with the Swiss Army and can attest to their military skills and professionalism.  Swiss mountain forts cover most entry points to the country.

I have long suspected that the secretive Swiss have a small number of nuclear weapons hidden in their Alpine redoubt.  Swiss engineers make advanced chemicals, tanks and aircraft.  Tactical nuclear weapons are just one more advanced degree.

Gen. Hodges warnings about Soviet Russian offensive strategy appear exaggerated but are still to be taken seriously.  I was made aware of the Soviet plan in 1990 to launch a huge envelopment campaign against NATO. 

The plan called for two or three Soviet mechanized armies to attack west from Czechoslovakia and burst into almost unarmed Austria. Red Guards tank armies would then race into southern Germany south of Munich and then drive north towards the main NATO resupply port at Antwerp.  In short, outflanking the bulk of NATO forces facing east and trapping most US ground forces in Europe.

This was, of course, a variation on the famous Schlieffen Plan of World War I in which the Germans tried a vast flanking movement around Paris.  It failed because Russian offensives drew off German divisions and led to their defeat on the Marne.

Swiss fortifications were built 1938-1960 to thwart a Soviet attack from Lichtenstein. The Sargans region on Switzerland’s eastern border is one of three major fortress zones in that country along with Gothard and St Maurice.  Interestingly, in the 1950’s, the Swiss and French began upgunning their forts to resist a possible attack by the Soviet Union.  This included some of the original Maginot Line forts of the 1930’s.

Today’s Russia shows no signs of planning to attack Europe in spite of western-generated war hysteria.  Moscow can barely deal with the weak Ukrainian forces.  Russia does not need more land.  But all the war propaganda in the west might just trigger an east-west conflict.

During WWII, Russia fielded over 200 divisions on the western front alone. Today, Moscow is lucky to deploy 24 and keeps warning it may have to resort to tactical nuclear weapons.  But it’s now springtime for western arms makers as the great Red Scare engulfs Europe.  I just bought stock of some German arms makers. The tough Swiss will be ready for whatever happens.

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Thanks JJ.

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At Hillsdale’s Constitution Day Celebration, Mike Benz explores the history and evolution of the intelligence state in the United States, detailing its origins, the establishment of covert operations, and the implications of political warfare.

Mike discusses key documents and events that shaped the intelligence community, including the CIA’s role in foreign elections and the transition from hard power to soft power in American foreign policy. The conversation also highlights the ongoing influence of the intelligence state in contemporary politics and its relationship with populism.

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“The Special Relationship” is a term that is often used to describe the political, social, diplomatic, cultural, economic, legal, environmental, religious, military and historic relations between the United Kingdom and the United States or its political leaders.

A cornerstone of “the Special Relationship” is the collecting and sharing of intelligence, which originated during the Second World War with the sharing of code-breaking knowledge and led to the 1943 BRUSA Agreement, which was signed at Bletchley Park. After the war, the common goal of monitoring and countering the threat of communism prompted the UK-USA Security Agreement of 1948. This agreement brought together the SIGINT organizations of the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand and is still in place today (Five Eyes). The head of the Central Intelligence Agency station in London attends each weekly meeting of the British Joint Intelligence Committee.

“The Special Relationship” (book list

O.S.S. and “the Special Relationship” (book list)

The OSS and the Fathers of the CIA (book list)

From Empire to International Commonwealth: A Biography of Lionel Curtis, by Deborah Lavin

This is the first biography of Lionel Curtis, a highly influential figure in international affairs throughout the first half of the twentieth century. He was instrumental in extending self-government to the ‘new South Africa’ in 1910, India in 1916, and Eire after 1921. He worked to associate the Commonwealth with America in 1918 and towards a united Europe in 1948. He was founder of the Round Table, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and the Oxford Society.

From the Back Cover
Lionel Curtis C.H. once counted among the great and good, working behind the scenes of international politics and honoured as the ‘pioneer of a great idea’ – international federation as the natural successor to empire. He advocated federation as the way to create a new South Africa after the Boer War; he called for self-government in India in 1912; in 1921 he was instrumental in attempting to pacify the Irish Troubles by treating Eire as if it were a self-governing Commonwealth Dominion. He went on to preach the conversion of the Empire-Commonwealth into a multinational federation, which, in association with the United States, would serve as a model for a united Europe, and even for world government. He founded the Round Table think-tank, the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House, and the Oxford Society. He lobbied indefatigably for his vision of the Commonwealth as a new world order, to be more effective than the League of Nations in making wars obsolete. In the process, he exasperated nationalists and imperialists alike as a prophet of apparently lost causes. He deserves to be remembered not only for what he achieved but for what he was: the bore who never lost a friend; the optimist who stuck to his belief when all was lost; the third-class scholar who became a Fellow of All Souls; the visionary riding his hobby-horse into the drawing rooms of high political society and yet invited affectionately to return. The remarkable character of the man and the influence he exerted on the history of the Empire and Commonwealth are explored in this authoritative biography.

About the Author
Deborah Lavin is Principal of Trevelyan College, and President of the Howlands Trust, University of Durham.

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They sit on hundreds of billions of dollars in endowments while whining and wailing like scalded babies when DOGE cuts their lavish subsidies by a few million.  The more cutting the better for these dysfunctional incubators of socialism.

Humorous side note:  I once held a privately-funded endowed chair.  Since the chair holders were generally paid more than the average professor, a socialist philosophy professor (the only allowable type) complained about this unconscionable inequality in a letter to the editor in the school newspaper, condemning me especially for being “by far the best endowed” of all the chair holders.  I was told at the time that I then became the talk of the female employees at the university.

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Il manoscritto fornisce un grimaldello al lettore, una chiave di lettura semplificata, del mondo finanziario e non che sembra essere andato "fuori controllo" negli ultimi quattro anni in particolare. Questa è una storia di cartelli, a livello sovrastatale e sovranazionale, la cui pianificazione centrale ha raggiunto un punto in cui deve essere riformata radicalmente e questa riforma radicale non può avvenire senza una dose di dolore economico che potrebbe mettere a repentaglio la loro autorità. Da qui la risposta al Grande Default attraverso il Grande Reset. Questa è la storia di un coyote, che quando non riesce a sfamarsi all'esterno ricorre all'autofagocitazione. Lo stesso è accaduto ai membri del G7, dove i sei membri restanti hanno iniziato a fagocitare il settimo: gli Stati Uniti.

____________________________________________________________________________________

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/come-bruciare-220-miliardi)

Nel pieno della pandemia COVID, con la BCE impegnata a mantenere bassi gli spread sovrani e le regole fiscali dell'UE sospese, l'Italia ha lanciato quello che sarebbe diventato uno degli esperimenti fiscali più costosi della storia. Il Primo Ministro Conte annunciò che il governo italiano avrebbe sovvenzionato il 110% del costo delle ristrutturazioni abitative. Il “SuperBonus”, come sarebbe stato chiamato, avrebbe migliorato l'efficienza energetica e stimolato un'economia che era cresciuta a malapena negli ultimi due decenni. I consumatori non avrebbero dovuto affrontare né vincoli economici, né di liquidità: “Nel settore edile verrà introdotto un Superbonus con cui tutti potranno ristrutturare la propria abitazione e renderla più green. Non spenderete un centesimo per queste ristrutturazioni. (Giuseppe Conte, 13 maggio 2020)”.

Lo stato avrebbe pagato ai proprietari di case il 110% del costo di ristrutturazione delle loro proprietà attraverso un meccanismo finanziario innovativo: anziché sovvenzioni dirette in denaro, il governo italiano avrebbe emesso crediti d'imposta trasferibili. Un proprietario di casa averbbe potuto scaricare questi crediti direttamente sulle proprie tasse, farli scaricare agli appaltatori sulle fatture, o venderli alle banche. Questi crediti sono diventati una sorta di valuta fiscale, uno strumento finanziario parallelo che funzionava come debito fuori bilancio (Capone e Stagnaro, 2024). L'impostazione ha creato intenzionalmente l'illusione di un proverbiale pasto gratis: ha nascosto il costo per il governo italiano, poiché ai fini della contabilità europea i crediti si sarebbero presentati solo come entrate fiscali perse piuttosto che come nuova spesa.

Il SuperBonus ha creato le condizioni per quella che il ministro dell'Economia di Draghi, Daniele Franco, ha definito “una delle più grandi frodi nella storia della Repubblica” (Capone e Stagnaro, 2024). Gli appaltatori spesso gonfiavano i costi di ristrutturazione; ad esempio, un progetto da €50.000 poteva essere dichiarato come €100.000. La banca acquistava il credito d'imposta da €110.000 a un valore quasi nominale, consentendo all'appaltatore di intascare la differenza, a volte condividendola con il proprietario della casa. A volte, invece, non veniva eseguito alcun lavoro, nel qual caso le fatture per lavori inesistenti su edifici fasulli erano uno strumento perfetto per la criminalità organizzata. I crediti fraudolenti potevano quindi essere rivenduti più volte in un mercato non regolamentato di sconti fiscali sostenuti dallo stato. Nel 2023 le autorità hanno stimato che tali attività fraudolente erano costate ai contribuenti €15 miliardi.

Nel 2024 era chiaro che il pasto era tutt'altro che gratis. I costruttori andavano in giro offrendosi di pagare le persone per ristrutturare le loro case. Un piano inizialmente preventivato in €35 miliardi avrebbe finito per costare ai contribuenti italiani €220 miliardi (€160 miliardi di Superbonus + €60 miliardi per il credito di restauro delle facciate al 90% e altri crediti del 65%), circa il 12% del PIL.[1] I costi annuali sono aumentati vertiginosamente dall'1% del PIL nel 2021, al 3% nel 2022 e al 4% nel 2023. Solo 495.717 abitazioni sarebbero state ristrutturate, il che significa che il costo medio del programma era di circa €320.000 per casa.[2] Ciò è accaduto in un Paese già gravato da un debito pari al 140% del PIL, che affronta enormi passività pensionistiche non finanziate pari a oltre il 400% del PIL e il cui debito è classificato Baa3 da Moody's, un gradino sopra lo status di “spazzatura”. Il costo è irrisorio rispetto ai €71 miliardi di sovvenzioni che l'Italia ha ricevuto dal piano di ripresa e resilienza dell'Unione europea. Nonostante la scarsa copertura sulla stampa internazionale, il Superbonus è stato uno degli errori fiscali più costosi della storia.

Due documenti della Banca d'Italia e uno dell'FMI hanno analizzato l'impatto del programma. Mentre gli investimenti reali in abitazioni pro capite sono aumentati del 67% rispetto a un Paese comparabile “sintetico”, Accetturo, Olivieri e Renzi (2024) hanno concluso che “i benefici per l'economia nel suo complesso in termini di valore aggiunto sono stati inferiori ai costi dei sussidi”. I costi di costruzione sono aumentati drasticamente: l'indice dei costi di costruzione è cresciuto di circa il 20% dopo la pandemia e ha fatto registrare un altro aumento del 13% dopo settembre 2021, con il Superbonus direttamente responsabile di circa 7 punti percentuali di tale aumento, secondo Corsello ed Ercolani (2024). Il prezzo dell'installazione di impalcature, un primo passo essenziale per la ristrutturazione, è aumentato del 400% entro la fine del 2021.

La valutazione dell'FMI è ancora più critica. Lo stimolo alla crescita è stato “limitato rispetto alle dimensioni delle risorse fiscali spese”, ha concluso, citando “perdite nelle importazioni, consistenti sconti sulle fatture, maggiori rincari sui prezzi nell'edilizia, spiazzamento di altri investimenti e uso improprio di fondi pubblici”. Nel frattempo l'occupazione nell'edilizia era entrata in un ciclo di espansione e contrazione, poiché le aziende si erano espanse per catturare i sussidi, per poi trovarsi di fronte a un baratro quando il programma ha iniziato a concludersi.

Anche i benefici ambientali del programma hanno avuto un costo astronomico: qualsiasi calcolo risulterà in ben oltre €1.000 per tonnellata di anidride carbonica (rispetto a un prezzo sul mercato delle emissioni di circa €80 per tonnellata). Mentre il Superbonus è stato presentato come un'importante operazione di efficienza energetica e riduzione delle emissioni di gas serra, è stato il più grande singolo caso di greenwashing dei nostri tempi.

Com'è potuto accadere?

Il SuperBonus è nato in un momento di trasformazione nel pensiero politico-economico su entrambe le sponde dell'Atlantico.

Riccardo Fraccaro, avvocato, politico del Movimento Cinque Stelle, seguace della Modern Monetary Theory e architetto del SuperBonus, vedeva il programma come un modo per spingere un'espansione fiscale nel rispetto delle norme UE. Progettando il Superbonus come un sistema di crediti d'imposta trasferibili, Fraccaro e i suoi consulenti hanno creato uno strumento finanziario parallelo che non venisse registrato immediatamente come debito pubblico (Capone e Carlo Stagnaro, 2025).[3]

Il SuperBonus incarnava lo spirito di quel momento: il debito come motore della crescita. Sarebbe stato finanziato in parte (circa €13,95 miliardi) tramite l'emissione obbligazionaria europea da €750 miliardi nell'ambito di NextGenerationEU. Come la Bidenomics negli Stati Uniti, prometteva di raggiungere simultaneamente più obiettivi trasformativi: stimolo economico, equità sociale e protezione ambientale. E come molti programmi post-pandemia, rifletteva la convinzione che le linee di politica passate fossero state troppo timide e che i vincoli di bilancio tradizionali potessero essere tranquillamente ignorati nel perseguimento di obiettivi sociali più ampi.

Una volta avviato, il SuperBonus si è rivelato politicamente impossibile da fermare. I benefici si sono concentrati tra varie fasce di elettori: proprietari di case che hanno ottenuto ristrutturazioni, il movimento ambientalista e appaltatori che hanno visto un'attività in forte espansione. I costi, sebbene enormi, sono stati distribuiti tra tutti i contribuenti e rinviati al futuro attraverso il meccanismo del credito d'imposta. Nessun governo, di sinistra, tecnocratico o di destra, è stato in grado di resistere alla sua logica. Il Parlamento ha costantemente respinto i tentativi di limitarne la portata, anche dopo che le stime di frode hanno raggiunto i €16 miliardi. In veste di Primo ministro, Mario Draghi, nonostante abbia pubblicamente criticato il programma per aver triplicato i costi di costruzione, non è riuscito a fermarlo: la sua azione iniziale è stata quella di semplificarne l'accesso. Quando il suo governo ha tentato di frenare gli abusi, il Movimento Cinque Stelle ha reagito con rabbia e sono stati contrastati anche i modesti controlli sui trasferimenti di credito. Nel 2023 il governo di Giorgia Meloni ha dovuto affrontare le stesse opposizioni: i gruppi industriali hanno protestato, i partner della coalizione si sono tirati indietro. Il ministro dell'Economia Giancarlo Giorgetti ha avvertito i colleghi: “Temo che non abbiate capito la gravità della situazione”.

Tuttavia, non è solo la politica italiana che avrebbe dovuto porre fine a tutto questo. Oltre al parlamento, ci sono due potenziali meccanismi per evitare tale avventurismo fiscale in un Paese già gravato da uno dei più alti carichi di debito in Europa. Primo, le regole fiscali e la Commissione europea; secondo, il mercato, i cosiddetti bond vigilantes. Entrambi hanno fallito.

Le regole fiscali erano state sospese a causa del Covid, ma questo non esonerava la Commissione europea, che è responsabile di tali regole, dalla sua responsabilità nella questione. Il Recovery and Resilience Facility (il fondo di ripresa dal Covid finanziato dall'UE) è stato progettato con una rigorosa condizionalità, assicurandosi che i fondi fossero erogati solo dopo che gli stati membri avessero raggiunto traguardi sulle riforme e rispettato le raccomandazioni del “semestre europeo”. Alla Commissione europea è stato ordinato di rivedere i piani di ripresa nazionali, verificare la conformità con gli obiettivi strutturali e trattenere i pagamenti se le condizioni non fossero state soddisfatte. Nel caso del Superbonus italiano, questo meccanismo ha fallito.

La Commissione ha approvato l'inclusione del Superbonus nel PNRR italiano dopo la sua progettazione, con piena consapevolezza del fatto che questo programma includeva un sussidio del 110%. Quando il programma è poi cresciuto ben oltre l'ambito approvato dall'UE, trasformandosi in un'enorme passività fiscale senza supervisione, la Commissione ha permesso ai fondi di continuare a fluire. Anche quando le proiezioni del deficit italiano sono andate fuori controllo, non è riuscita a riconoscere, o ha deliberatamente ignorato, che il SuperBonus era diventato un veicolo incontrollato per sprechi e frodi.

Poi ci sono i bond vigilantes. Ma, come John Cochrane, Klaus Masuch e io sosteniamo nel nostro prossimo libro, “Crisis Cycle”: grazie alla garanzia implicita della BCE i legislatori italiani non sono vincolati dai mercati. Potrebbero ragionevolmente aspettarsi (e Capone e Stagnaro, 2024, sostengono che l'abbiano fatto) che:

• La BCE impedirebbe qualsiasi picco significativo nei costi di prestito attraverso i suoi programmi di acquisto di obbligazioni;

• Il costo fiscale potrebbe essere attenuato distribuendolo negli anni attraverso crediti d'imposta;

• Se emergesse una pressione sul mercato, la BCE interverrebbe acquistando titoli di stato italiani.

Questo calcolo si è rivelato corretto. Quando il deficit italiano è schizzato alle stelle nel 2023 a causa del SuperBonus, passando da un previsto 5,5% all'8% del PIL, non c'è stato panico sul mercato. Gli spread obbligazionari italiani sono rimasti contenuti, grazie al Transmission Protection Instrument (TPI) della BCE, il quale ha rassicurato gli investitori senza che la BCE dovesse nemmeno intervenire. Rimuovendo il vincolo della disciplina di mercato, la BCE ha permesso al SuperBonus di persistere molto più a lungo di quanto sarebbe altrimenti accaduto.

Non tutti i programmi futuri saranno così eclatanti come il SuperBonus, che è molto probabilmente una delle linee di politica fiscali più stupide della memoria recente. Come ha affermato la Ragioneria generale italiana nella sua retrospettiva del 2024: “Il SuperBonus era significativamente diverso dai precedenti benefici i cui effetti erano noti. Per la prima volta è stata consentita la copertura completa dei costi, aumentando l'attrattiva della misura ed eliminando sostanzialmente il conflitto di interessi tra fornitori e acquirenti”.

Ma il SuperBonus illustra un problema più profondo che l'Europa si trova ad affrontare: i meccanismi tradizionali per la disciplina fiscale sono crollati. Le forze di mercato (gli acquirenti di obbligazioni) sono stati neutralizzati dall'intervento della BCE. Le regole fiscali della Commissione europea, già indebolite da ripetute violazioni da parte di grandi Paesi come Francia e Germania, vengono sostituite da nuove regole che, poiché si basano sulla contrattazione bilaterale, forniscono pochi vincoli reali. E i sistemi politici nazionali, liberati dalla pressione del mercato, trattano sempre più la spesa finanziata dal debito come un pasto gratis.

Questa erosione della disciplina non è limitata all'Italia. Il deficit della Francia è arrivato al 6,1% del PIL. La Spagna ha invertito la sua riforma pensionistica post-crisi proprio quando l'Italia stava approvando il SuperBonus, con conseguenze negative molto più grandi per la sostenibilità fiscale. In un mondo in cui la BCE interverrà sempre per prevenire la pressione nel mercato obbligazionario e Bruxelles non può far rispettare in modo credibile le regole fiscali sui grandi stati, una politica fiscale sostenibile diventa quasi impossibile.

Gli stessi meccanismi progettati per proteggere l'euro potrebbero ora indebolirlo. Quando la BCE interviene per impedire la pressione del mercato sui titoli di stato, rimuove una forza disciplinare cruciale sulle linee di politica fiscali nazionali, creando incentivi perversi per i politici ad espandere la spesa senza riguardo per la sostenibilità a lungo termine. Un'unione monetaria senza unione fiscale può funzionare solo se gli stati membri mantengono linee di politica di spesa sostenibili. Ma l'Europa ora si ritrova intrappolata in una trappola che lei stessa ha creato: i suoi strumenti di lotta alla crisi stanno erodendo costantemente la disciplina necessaria per la sopravvivenza dell'euro. Finché l'Europa non troverà un modo per ripristinare vincoli significativi sulle linee di politica di spesa nazionali preservando al contempo la stabilità finanziaria, ogni espansione “temporanea” dei rischi di spesa diventerà permanente, ogni intervento “una tantum” della BCE rischia di diventare di routine e le tensioni sottostanti nell'unione monetaria continueranno a crescere.

[*] traduzione di Francesco Simoncelli: https://www.francescosimoncelli.com/

Supporta Francesco Simoncelli's Freedonia lasciando una “mancia” in satoshi di bitcoin scannerizzando il QR seguente.

Riferimenti

• Accetturo, Antonio, Elisabetta Olivieri, e Fabrizio Renzi. Incentivi per le ristrutturazioni abitative: evidenze da un ampio programma fiscale. N. 860. Banca d'Italia, Area Ricerca Economica e Relazioni Internazionali, 2024.

• Capone, Luciano e Carlo Stagnaro. “Superbonus: Come Fallisce una Nazione”, Rubbettino Editore (novembre 2024).

• Capone, Luciano e Carlo Stagnaro. Le cattive idee hanno cattive conseguenze: il SuperBonus italiano e l'influenza della MMT. Mimeo, febbraio 2025.

• Cochrane, John, Luis Garicano e Klaus Masuch. “Crisis Cycle: Challenges, Evolution, and Future of the Euro” Princeton University Press, di prossima pubblicazione (giugno 2025).

• Corsello, Francesco, e Valerio Ercolani. Il ruolo del Superbonus nella crescita dei costi delle costruzioni in Italia. N. 903. Banca d'Italia, Area Ricerca Economica e Relazioni Internazionali, 2024.

• Eurostat (2023a). Manuale sul deficit e debito pubblico – Implementazione dell'ESA 2010. Edizione 2022. Lussemburgo: Ufficio delle pubblicazioni dell'Unione europea.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Note

[1] In parte, la sorpresa nei confronti delle aspettative è che il Ministero delle Finanze non aveva modellato la risposta comportamentale dei consumatori. A differenza del Ministero, Luciano Capone, giornalista de Il Foglio (e autore di un libro che racconta la storia del programma), ha capito gli incentivi perversi fin dall'inizio, avvertendo a maggio 2020: “I clienti non andranno in giro a chiedere ai costruttori uno sconto ma, al contrario, un aumento del prezzo”. Gli incentivi contano.

[2] Il SuperBonus in senso stretto era di €160 miliardi (gli altri €60 miliardi sono il credito di restauro delle facciate e altri crediti, come spiegato nel testo). Se immaginiamo 500.000 abitazioni, la ristrutturazione media riceveva un sussidio di €320.000.

[3] Ecco la spiegazione di Capone e Stagnaro (2025) riguardo la questione contabile: “I crediti d’imposta non pagabili sono trattati come entrate fiscali negative e non come spese, saranno registrati quando saranno utilizzati per ridurre gli oneri fiscali, impattando sui conti per l’importo esatto utilizzato ogni anno” (Eurostat, 2023: 88). Tuttavia, se il credito d’imposta è trasferibile (come lo era il SuperBonus), se il credito d’imposta può essere trasferito a terzi, tale credito d’imposta deve quindi essere considerato un credito d’imposta pagabile e deve essere registrato nei conti nazionali come un’attività del contribuente e una passività del governo (Eurostat, 2023: 86)”.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Writes Joseph T Salerno:

Roderick Long posted this quote from Ayn Rand fon his FB page under the title “Rand vs Trump and Musk”.  According to Rand and, presumably, Long rapid deregulation and decontrol a la Trump and Musk is “disastrous, arbitrary, dictatorial action”.

The post Roderick Long appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Ginny Garner.

JFK FILES: CIA REJECTED LONE GUN THEORY

A newly released memo from the JFK files — known as the Donald Heath memo — confirms the CIA itself rejected the lone gunman explanation in the weeks following JFK’s assassination.

The document reveals senior agency officials… https://t.co/OpfuRe4Ek6 pic.twitter.com/hYZTaB3Kyp

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) March 21, 2025

The post JFK Files: CIA Didn’t Believe the Lone Gunman Theory appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny Kramer. 

The post Tim Dillon – Ridge Wallet and Blue Chew ads appeared first on LewRockwell.

Donald Trump published the following on “Truth Social” about the heroic Congressman Tom Massie, in response to Massie’s voting against Trump’s budget proposal: “Thank you to the House Freedom Caucus for just delivering a big blow to the Radical Left Democrats and their desire to raise Taxes and SHUT OUR COUNTRY DOWN! They hate America and all it stands for. That’s why they allowed MILLIONS of Criminals to invade our Nation. Sometimes it takes great courage to do the right thing. Congressman Thomas Massie, of beautiful Kentucky, is an automatic “NO” vote on just about everything, despite the fact that he has always voted for Continuing Resolutions in the past. HE SHOULD BE PRIMARIED, and I will lead the charge against him. He’s just another GRANDSTANDER, who’s too much trouble, and not worth the fight. He reminds me of Liz Chaney before her historic, record breaking fall (loss!). The people of Kentucky won’t stand for it, just watch. DO I HAVE ANY TAKERS??? Anyway, thank you again to the House Freedom Caucus for your very important vote. We need to buy some time in order to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, GREATER THAN EVER BEFORE. Unite and Win!!! (italics removed)

Was Trump justified in what he said? Of course not! Trump continually campaigned on the promise to cut spending, but the budget proposal he supports was much higher than that of President Obama, as the great David Stockman has pointed out: “But for crying out loud, Donald, Congressman Massie has actually read every line of this 110 page abomination and knows that it provides spending authority of $1.658 trillion, which is 47% more than Big Spender Obama’s last budget. It will virtually cancel every dime DOGE has allegedly saved.”

Massie wasn’t disturbed by Trump’s threat, posting on Twitter that “Doesn’t work on me. Three times I’ve had a challenger who tried to be more MAGA than me. Doesn’t work. None busted 25% because my constituents prefer transparency and principles over blind allegiance.”

Massie is sound on Covid: “I have a bill to end the COVID jab mandate for legal immigrants, but Trump just suspended the mandate.” “Hallelujah!” he added. The representative also slammed former President Joe Biden in a separate post for initially approving the requirement. “But the reality is this: President Biden invented this cruel and unscientific mandate without congressional approval, so President Trump could end it today with his pen,” he wrote.” “I will sign an order to stop our warriors from being subjected to radical political theories and social experiments while on duty,” Trump said. “It’s going to end immediately. Our armed forces will be able to focus on its sole mission: defeating America’s enemies.”

Trump says he wants to end America’s involvement in the Ukraine war, but we are still shipping arms to Ukraine, and Trump has rescinded his withdrawal of American intelligence to guide Ukraine in its missile strikes. After Zelensky accepted Trump’s demands, he has indicated that if Putin does not agree to a cease fire, there will be dire consequences for Russia.  All Trump cares about is that Zelensky kowtows to him. Massie, on the other hand, favors an immediate withdrawal of all arms shipments and financial aid to Ukraine. “Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) were the only lawmakers who voted against four bills on Wednesday that either reprimanded Russia and Belarus or supported Ukraine more than ten weeks into Moscow’s war. Greene and Massie were the only two lawmakers to vote “no” on three of the four bills. The fourth piece of legislation received resistance from 56 Republicans. All four bills passed through the House with bipartisan support. The GOP duo was the only opposition to the Russia and Belarus Financial Sanctions Act, which asserts that foreign entities and individuals under the jurisdiction of U.S. institutions are required to comply with sanctions the Biden administration has slapped on Moscow and Minsk. Reached for comment about his votes against the legislation, Massie told The Hill that the bills he objected to would put Americans at risk and lengthen the Russia-Ukraine conflict, among other claims. “Congress has voted for ten bills now that will put US citizens at risk, prolong the conflict in Ukraine, waste tax-payer money, increase domestic food and energy prices, and draw us further into this conflict. I have voted against all of them,” he wrote in a statement.”

As everybody knows, the heart of Trump’s economic policy is support for tariffs. Tariffs are ruinous for American consumers and an assault on a basic principle of the free market. As our great Mises Institute President Tom DiLorenzo has written, “There’s a saying in economics that a tax on imports is also a tax on exports. This is because if America’s foreign trading partners are impoverished by protectionist tariffs, they will then have fewer dollars with which to purchase American goods in international trade, especially agricultural products. This will obviously harm American exporters and their employees and communities. This is also patently unfair. There is nothing more anti-populist than protectionist tariff taxes. President Trump has repeatedly stated with great excitement that with his impending huge tariff tax increases “we,” meaning the federal government, are “going to take in A LOT of money.” Well now. Since when has it been the priority of the Trump administration to drain the pockets of American consumers and businesses with tariff taxes so that the federal bureaucracy can become even more enlarged and bloated than it already is? Isn’t that a flat contradiction of all of President Trump’s campaign promises, not to mention the professed goal of the DOGE?”

Massie is opposed to tariffs. As Steve Hanke, one of the foremost authorities on free trade, has noted, Masse said that “[Tariffs] create a whole industry of lobbyists who come to Congress looking for exemptions from these tariffs… It becomes a nightmare.” Hanke added that Massie is one of the few on Capitol Hill who understands how the CORRUPT tariff system works.

Massie also wants a complete shutoff of US aid to Israel. The left-wing magazine The Nation has noted the anomaly that Massie often votes against his fellow “conservatives” on aid to Israel: “But on matters of war and peace, he often sides with progressives, positioning himself as a libertarian-leaning Republican who opposes US military interventionism and military aid packages for foreign countries, including Israel. That stance has drawn sharp criticism from neoconservatives in general, who worry about the return of the sort of old-school Republican isolationism that reflexively opposed military interventions and foreign aid packages, and in particular from AIPAC, which has objected to his many votes against aid to Israel, as well as his rejection of resolutions backing Netanyahu’s government. Leading up to the Kentucky GOP primary on May 21, the AIPAC-affiliated United Democracy Project spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on attack ads against the incumbent. One such ad announced, “Israel, the Holy Land, [is] under attack by Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and Congressman Tom Massie. Massie responded by calling out the attack ads, arguing that the “AIPAC superPAC just bought $300,000 of ads against me because I am often the lone Republican for freedom of speech, against foreign aid, and opposed to wars in the Middle East.” And Republican primary voters rallied to his defense, giving the incumbent three-quarters of the vote in the contest against his two rivals, including a former contender for the state’s Republican gubernatorial nomination. Massie said the results were a message for AIPAC, declaring on election day, “AIPAC, your smear campaign on this American has backfired.” He also said the result was a signal to his party’s leadership in Washington. “I don’t vote for wars, and I don’t vote for foreign aid,” Massie said. “That puts me apart from most of my colleagues in Washington, D.C., but hopefully my colleagues will see that you can get 75 percent of the vote back home if you just represent those things in the Republican Party.”

Let’s do everything we can to support Thomas Massie’s fight for the free market and a non-interventionist foreign policy! As the great Dr. Ron Paul has said, “He happens to believe that you’re supposed to follow your oath of office; it’s no more complicated than that.”

The post The Great Tom Massie appeared first on LewRockwell.

It didn’t take long for Donald Trump to show his true colors.

Trump won a landslide election last November primarily on the promise to STOP America’s “stupid” wars. It is now obvious to everyone that, while Trump might be able to negotiate a deal to stop the war in Ukraine—a war that Russia has already won—he is decidedly intent on accelerating and expanding U.S. wars in the Middle East.

But as soon as I tell the truth about the morbid duplicity of Trump’s mind and the moral derangement of Trump’s heart, evangelicals ferociously respond with examples of the “good” things he is doing, as if any of that erases the evil he is inflicting on both America and the world.

Evangelicals are eaten up with the disease of Prophetic Dispensationalism and see Trump as a harbinger of their eschatology. Prophetic Dispensationalism is a moral and spiritual cancer that befalls the brain and hardens the heart. And it is an epidemic among evangelicals.

I well remember when I was a young pastor. I heard several prominent fundamentalist/evangelical pastors use James 5:20 to justify any act of wickedness they might commit in the same way that they use Genesis 12:3 to justify every act of wickedness that Zionist Israel does commit.

James 5:20 says, “Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins.” (KJV)

Their interpretation of this verse was that if a Christian was a “soulwinner” and won people to Christ, God would “hide” the “multitude” of the soulwinner’s “sins.” In other words, as long as a Christian was a soulwinner, none of his sins mattered—no matter how vile and wicked they might be.

That’s the same mindset of today’s Trump toadies. As long as Trump is doing something right, he cannot be condemned for anything he does wrong.

But Donald Trump has chosen a course that could lead America into World War Three and turn our constitutional republic into an authoritarian dictatorship where the fundamental mark of a free society—the freedom of speech—is eviscerated.

Regarding the latter point, Judge Andrew Napolitano and Professor John Mearsheimer (West Point, U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, PhD Cornell University, professor, University of Chicago) had this exchange:

Professor John Mearsheimer: The truth is, Judge, that the single greatest threat to freedom of speech in the United States, at this point in time, is Israel and its supporters here in the United States. It’s truly amazing the extent to which Israel’s supporters are going to enormous lengths to shut down free speech, not only on university campuses but all across the country.

Judge Napolitano: Unbelievable. I forgot to play this clip a few minutes ago. This is the boss of Marco Rubio, the boss of Attorney General Bondi, the boss of Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem talking about the freedom of speech.

President Donald Trump video clip: And I have stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America. It’s back.

Mearsheimer: I’m actually surprised at the extent to which Trump and his administration are suppressing free speech. I mean, I knew it wouldn’t be perfect once he took office, but I’m amazed.

This case that you’re referring to involving this gentleman at Columbia University is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s just all sorts of activities taking place on the part of the government to shut down free speech, especially with regard to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

We have a huge problem here. And the idea that Donald Trump is facilitating free speech and taking off all obstacles to free speech is laughable.

Indeed.

Regarding the former point, George Galloway and Col. Douglas Macgregor had this exchange:

Col. Macgregor: I think Netanyahu is practicing American foreign policy through ventriloquy. He’s simply moving Trump’s mouth, and Trump is saying what he wants him to say.

And that is unfortunately, tragically, the perception in the United States: that Trump is not a free actor. That he is simply a puppet. And the puppet master is Netanyahu.

George Galloway: It is quite extraordinary to the extent that there is video, I’ve seen it, you will have too, of Trump actually pulling his [Netanyahu’s] chair out, having him sit down and then pushing his chair in like you would do to your good wife. This is the president of the United States practically waiting at table on a visiting politician, moreover, one for whom there’s an extant international arrest warrant.

Col. Macgregor: Well, remember that President Netanyahu does not simply represent six plus million Israeli Jews. He represents Jewish international power and capital. And so, he is treated differently for that reason, if none else.

It would be a mistake to say, “Why is President Trump allowing himself to be manipulated or exploited by this man who represents so few people?” That’s a mistake. This is a larger concentration of capital and power that he represents. And Trump knows that, and he’s dependent upon it. He was dependent upon it to get elected. So, now he’s doing what they elected him to do.

Again, it didn’t take long.

Whatever the Trump/Musk Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cutbacks might be, we already know that Trump has ZERO intention of reducing overall government spending. He just rammed a stopgap spending bill through Congress that keeps federal spending at Joe Biden levels. Conservatives don’t want to remember that Trump added over $8 trillion to the national debt during his first term in office—the same amount as Biden. But consider that Trump’s spending didn’t include federal expenditures for underwriting the Covid tyranny.

Whatever money Trump wants to save by terminating Ukraine’s cash cow, he intends to throw into an expanded U.S. war in the Middle East.

Israel has (illegally) stopped its ceasefire with Gaza and resumed the genocide (using the bombs and missiles, etc., that Trump shipped to Israel after becoming president) while, at the same time, Trump launched massive bombing raids on Yemen, killing mostly innocent women and children.

Max Blumenthal told Judge Nap that Trump owns the Gazan slaughter, that he (Trump) admitted to unleashing “this slaughterhouse in Gaza . . . on the civilian population.”

Trump is Joe Biden’s eidolon.

On Trump’s war in Yemen, Dr. Ron Paul writes:

Over the weekend President Trump ordered a massive military operation against the small country of Yemen. Was Yemen in the process of attacking the United States? No. Did the President in that case go to Congress and seek a declaration of war against the country? No. The fact is, Yemen hadn’t even threatened the United States before the bombs started falling.

Last year, candidate Trump strongly criticized the Biden Administration’s obsession with foreign interventionism to the detriment of our problems at home. In an interview at the Libertarian National Convention, he criticized Biden’s warmongering to podcaster Tim Pool, saying, “You can solve problems over a telephone. Instead they start dropping bombs. Recently, they’re dropping bombs all over Yemen. You don’t have to do that.”

Yet once in office, Trump turned to military force as his first option. Since the Israel/Hamas ceasefire plan negotiated by President Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, Yemen has left Red Sea shipping alone. However, after Israel implemented a total blockade of humanitarian relief to citizens of Gaza last week, Houthi leaders threatened to again begin blocking Israel’s Red Sea shipping activities.

That was enough for President Trump to drop bombs and launch missiles for hours, killing several dozen Yemeni civilians – including women and children – in the process.

After the attack, Trump not only threatened much more force to be used against Yemen, but he also threatened Iran. His National Security Advisor Mike Waltz added that the US may start bombing Iranian ships in the area, a move that would certainly lead to a major Middle East war.

Like recent Presidents Bush and Obama, candidate Trump promised peace after four years of Joe Biden’s warmongering and World War III brinkmanship. There is little doubt that with our war-weary population this proved the margin of his victory. Unfortunately, as with Bush and Obama, now that he is President, he appears to be heading down a different path.

Or actually the same path.

Trump is quickly proving that his campaign rhetoric about being a “peace president” was a bald-faced lie. Trump is merely the latest in a long line of puppet presidents. As Col. Macgregor said, “[Trump] is simply a puppet. And the puppet master is Netanyahu.”

Even Scott Ritter, who is strongly predisposed to supporting Trump, had fiery words for Trump after he began bombing Yemen. Here are excerpted comments during his interview with Judge Napolitano:

Trump is an idiot.

It isn’t going to work, Mr. President.

And what’s going to happen is one of two things. One, you’re going to look foolish, because you’re going to have to back down when your secretary of defense says, “We can’t escalate any further without putting 700,000 boots on the ground. That’s a major invasion that will cause the entire region to blow up. Oil prices will spin out of control, and your economy will crash and you’re finished, Mr. President. You’re done. Everything you’re trying to do. The American people will not tolerate $120 oil, because they can’t economically. All the changes you’re making are predicated upon a foundation of economic stability, which will not be here if you throw oil security/energy security out the window by going to war with Iran. Stop it.”

Or, he will actually go to war, thinking that somehow American bombs ordered by Donald Trump take on some sort of angelic property and blow up with greater violence and more terror than any other bomb ever made. And then the Iranians will shut down the Strait of Hormuz, blow up American installations, destroy Israel and invite an American nuclear retaliation. And boom, the man who thought he was going to get the Nobel Peace Prize will go down in history as the greatest warmonger in modern history.

The Zionist Deep State that put Joe Biden in office in 2020 to assist Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza put Donald Trump in office in 2024 to assist Israel’s war against Yemen. And you can take this to the bank: Attacking Yemen is just the first phase in the Zionist plan to attack Iran. Donald Trump was put in office to wage the U.S./Israeli war against Iran.

Perhaps RumorMillNews.com has the best summary of what we’re talking about today:

Has Trump gone insane, or is it just his rabid Zionism getting the best of him?

Maybe the question is moot, since Zionism is a disease that leads to insanity.

At the same time that Trump is supposed to be negotiating with Putin for peace in Ukraine, I see headlines such as this, today, from George Eaton’s news update:

“Trump says every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon as being fired from Iran.”

“JUST IN – Trump threatens Iran for any further Houthi attack.”

“U.S. WARNED IRAQ OF IRAN STRIKE UNDER TRUMP.”

“Iranian media is reporting that at least 4 Iranian missile ships have crossed the Strait of Hormuz, with protection from the IRGC navy.”

“Trump orders sending 35 warships and 1,750 US Marines to the Middle East.”

“Iran’s armed forces remain on high alert, prepared for “full-scale defense and a severe counterattack” against enemy interests in the Middle East, Iran’s Nournews said.”

And finally, from White House spokeswoman Caroline Labate: “The Israeli attacks were coordinated with us, the gates of hell are about to open, and President Trump is unafraid to defend our ally and friend, Israel!”

So is she referring to the Israeli bombing of displaced Palestinians living in tents on the streets of Gaza that were set ablaze last night? I can see no other point of reference, and this is certainly a new one on us.

Is Trump’s blind ego riding so high that he is unaware of what Iran can do?

Zionism is a disease similar to Trump Derangement Syndrome. Trump has it bad, and I hope that because of his illness, it doesn’t end badly for all of us. [Emphasis added]

And while I’m trying to keep up with all of these rapidly unfolding developments in a struggling attempt to keep readers fully informed, I must include statements made by the quintessential Jewish Zionist, Professor Alan Dershowitz. These statements are at once foreboding and realistic for the State of Israel.

I’m not going to be as optimistic as the last four speakers. We have survived in the past. That doesn’t mean we are going to survive in the future.

The United States will survive. That is for sure, no matter who is in charge. We have a system of checks and balances; it’s working. The United States will survive. Israel’s survival is not guaranteed.

These statements come from the mouth of one of the world’s leading antichrist Zionists, Alan Dershowitz: “Israel’s survival is not guaranteed.” Indeed, it’s not, contrary to the erroneous belief of America’s Christian Zionists. But it is truly incredible to hear this from the mouth of one such as Dershowitz.

To see just a smidgen of factual information confirming what Dershowitz said, watch this short 1-minute video.

If you watch Dershowitz’s address, you will hear him castigate the eminent Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein. Accordingly, I will let Professor Finkelstein respond for himself:

Netanyahu is an accurate representative of Israeli society. It’s not as if he is an excrescence, that’s the fancy word for like an artificial outgrowth. He’s not an excrescence. The fact that he is the longest-sitting prime minister of Israel, there’s a very good reason for it, because he is an obnoxious, self-righteous Jewish supremacist. And that is a reflection of 95% of Israeli society: obnoxious, Jewish supremacists, self-righteous society. Netanyahu is less an orchestrator than he is a reflection of Israeli society.

Unlike the people of America who voted for Trump due to his promise to end America’s “stupid” wars, evangelicals voted for Trump due to his rabid support for the warmongering State of Israel. In other words, Trump was elected by two groups of voters that were polar opposites, each group voting for the same man for reasons completely counter to the reasons of the opposite group.

Wouldn’t it be ironic for the Christian Zionists who voted for Trump due to his rabid support for Israel to wind up becoming the instruments of the destruction of the Zionist state, which even Alan Dershowitz admits is very feasible?

As the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD was required by God for the Early Church to understand Christ’s New Covenant, so, too, the destruction of the Zionist state (as speculated by Scott Ritter above) might be required by God for the Western Church to understand Christ’s New Covenant, because the truth of Christ’s New Covenant has been lost to America’s evangelicals since 1948.

It would appear to be more than poetic justice if God were to use Donald John Trump as He used Titus Flavius Vespasianus.

Regardless, very quickly after being inaugurated, President Donald Trump has shown his true colors.

Reprinted with permission from Chuck Baldwin Live.

The post Trump Shows His True Colors appeared first on LewRockwell.

My 10th grade English class had devoted a semester to the works of William Shakespeare, and that seemed appropriate given his place in our language and our culture.

During those months, I’d read about a dozen or so of his plays and had been required to memorize one of the most famous soliloquies in Macbeth. Even today, decades later, I discovered that I could still recite it by heart, a fact that greatly surprised me.

By common agreement, Shakespeare ranks as the towering, even formative figure of our globally-dominant English language, probably holding a position roughly comparable to that of Cervantes for Spanish and perhaps Goethe and Schiller for German. Many of the widespread phrases found in today’s English trace back to his plays, and in glancing at Shakespeare’s 12,000 word Wikipedia article, I noticed that the introduction described him as history’s foremost playwright, a claim that seemed very reasonable to me.

Although I’d never studied his works after high school, over the years I’d seen a number of the film versions of his famous dramas, as well as some of the Royal Shakespeare Company performances on PBS, and generally thought those were excellent. But although my knowledge of Shakespeare was meager, I never doubted his literary greatness.

During all those years I remained only dimly aware of the details of Shakespeare’s life, which were actually rather scanty. I did know that he’d been born and died in the English town of Stratford-upon-Avon, which I’d once visited during the year I studied at Cambridge University.

I’d also vaguely known that Shakespeare had written a large number of sonnets, and a year or two after my day trip to his birthplace, there was a long article in the New York Times that a new one had been found. Shakespeare’s stature was so great that the discovery of a single new poem warranted a 5,000 word article in our national newspaper of record.

I’m not sure when I’d first heard that there was any sort of dispute regarding Shakespeare’s personal history or his authorship of that great body of work, but I think it might have been many years later during the 1990s. Some right-wing writer for National Review had gotten himself into hot water for his antisemitic and racist remarks and was fired from that magazine. A few years later my newspapers mentioned that the same fellow had just published a book claiming that Shakespeare’s plays had actually been secretly written by someone else, a British aristocrat whose name meant nothing to me.

That story didn’t much surprise me. Individuals on the political fringe who had odd and peculiar ideas on one topic might be expected to be eccentric in others as well. Perhaps getting fired from his political publication might have tipped him over the edge, leading him to promote such a bizarre and conspiratorial literary theory about so prominent a historical figure. The handful of reviews in my newspapers and conservative magazines treated his silly book with the total disdain that it clearly warranted.

I think about a decade later I’d seen something in my newspapers about that same Shakespeare controversy, which had boiled up again in some other research, but the Times didn’t seem to take it too seriously, so neither did I.

A few years later, Hollywood released a 2011 film called Anonymous making that same case about Shakespeare’s true identity, but I never saw it and didn’t pay much attention. The notion that the greatest figure in English literature had secretly been someone else struck me as typical Hollywood fare, pretty unlikely but probably less so than the plots and secret identities found in the popular Batman and Spiderman movies.

By then I’d grown very suspicious of many elements of the American political history that I’d been taught, and a couple of years after that film was released, I published “Our American Pravda,” outlining some of my tremendous loss of faith in the information provided in our media and textbooks, then later launched a long series of a similar name.

But both at that time and for the dozen years that followed, I’d never connected my growing distrust of so much of what I’d learned in my introductory history courses with what my introductory English courses had taught me during those same schooldays. Therefore, the notion that Shakespeare hadn’t really been the author of Shakespeare’s plays seemed totally preposterous to me, so much so that I’d even half-forgotten that anyone had ever seriously made that claim.

However, last year a young right-wing activist and podcaster dropped me a note about various things and he also suggested that I consider expanding my series of “conspiratorial” investigations to include the true authorship of the Shakespeare plays. He mentioned that the late Joseph Sobran had been a friend of his own family, explaining how that once very influential conservative journalist had been purged from National Review in the early 1990s and then published a book arguing that the famous plays had actually been written by the Earl of Oxford, while various other scholars had taken similar positions. That had been the 1990s controversy I’d largely forgotten.

I told him that I’d vaguely heard of that theory over the years, probably even reading one or two of the dismissive reviews of that Sobran book when it appeared, but had never taken the idea seriously. Indeed, during my various investigations of the last decade or so, I’d concluded that something like 90-95% of all the “conspiracy theories” I’d examined had turned out to be false or at least unsubstantiated and I expected that this one about Shakespeare was very likely to fall into that same category. But almost all of my recent work had focused upon politics and history and I thought that a short digression into literary matters might be a welcome break. So I clicked a few buttons on Amazon and ordered the Sobran book as well as another more recent one he’d recommended to me on the same topic, then forgot all about it.

As an outsider to the literary community, I found it extremely implausible that for centuries the true identity of the greatest figure of the English language had remained concealed from all the many hundreds of millions who spoke that tongue, or the multitudes who watched his famous plays performed, or studied his works at universities. How likely was it that until a couple of decades ago, none of our greatest writers, critics, and literary scholars, numbering in the many dozens or more, had ever suspected that all the Shakespeare plays had actually been written by someone else?

But one reason I was much more willing to consider investigating this matter was that since the 1990s my opinion of Sobran had considerably improved. At the time he’d published his book, I’d barely been aware of him, but after his bitter Neocon enemies had stampeded America into our disastrous Iraq War following the 9/11 Attacks, he and all those others who had previously warned of their growing political influence and subsequently suffered at their hands had greatly risen in my estimation.

Furthermore, my content-archiving project of the early 2000s had included all the issues of National Review, and I’d discovered Sobran’s enormously important role in that conservative flagship publication, cut short when the Neocons had forced Editor William F. Buckley Jr. to purge him.

In sharp contrast to my own background, Sobran himself had originally begun his career in English literature before switching to conservative journalism in the 1970s and a year or two ago I’d briefly described his unfortunate fate:

Although the name of Joseph Sobran may be somewhat unfamiliar to younger conservatives, during the 1970s and 1980s he possibly ranked second only to founder William F. Buckley, Jr. in his influence in mainstream conservative circles, as partly suggested by the nearly 400 articles he published for NR during that period. By the late 1980s, he had grown increasingly concerned that growing Neocon influence would embroil America in future foreign wars, and his occasional sharp statements in that regard were branded “anti-Semitic” by his Neocon opponents, who eventually prevailed upon Buckley to purge him. The latter provided the particulars in a major section of his 1992 book-length essay In Search of Anti-Semitism.

Oddly enough, Sobran seems to have only very rarely discussed Jews, favorably or otherwise, across his decades of writing, but even just that handful of less than flattering mentions was apparently sufficient to draw their sustained destructive attacks on his career, and he eventually died in poverty in 2010 at the age of 64. Sobran had always been known for his literary wit, and his unfortunate ideological predicament eventually led him to coin the aphorism “An anti-Semite used to mean a man who hated Jews. Now it means a man who is hated by Jews.”

Sobran had been a nationally-syndicated columnist and a regular commenter on the CBS Radio network, so his personal fall was a considerable one. Given that he’d written his Shakespeare book just a few years after his final ouster from National Review, he still had retained some of his previous standing, helping to explain why this work had been reviewed in several publications albeit unfavorably, rather than simply ignored.

When the Shakespeare books I’d ordered eventually arrived, I set them aside and only much later finally got around to reading them. As I did so, I was quite surprised at what I discovered.

Published in 1997, Sobran’s Alias Shakespeare was quite short, with the main text only running a little more than 200 pages, and although I began it with extreme skepticism, the 15-odd pages in the Introduction quickly dispelled much of that.

The author started by emphasizing that nearly all the mainstream Shakespeare scholars have always dismissed as ridiculous any doubts about the authorship of the plays, and he himself had taken that same position, including during his years of graduate school, when he had focused on Shakespeare studies.

Moreover, once he eventually became suspicious of this conventional view and began investigating the topic, he “entered a bizarre world of colorful people, totally unlike the academic world.” Their various theories of authorship included Francis Bacon, a wide variety of different British noblemen, and even Queen Elizabeth I, and these numerous activists often bitterly quarreled with each other. Yet Sobran argued that it was important to remember that “so many important discoveries have been made by dubious scholars, intellectual misfits, and outright cranks.” Meanwhile mainstream scholars had almost entirely ignored the Shakespeare authorship issue, claiming it didn’t exist.

Sobran’s attitude seemed a very reasonable one on that controversial literary subject, and he maintained that same judicial tone throughout the book, often emphasizing his uncertainty on many of the issues that he was raising.

Although I’d assumed that only cranks and fringe eccentrics had ever questioned Shakespeare’s authorship, I was very surprised to discover that over the last century or two the list of such “heretics” included many of our most illustrious English-language literary figures and intellectuals, including Walt Whitman, Henry James, Mark Twain, John Galsworthy, Sigmund Freud, Vladimir Nabokov, and David McCullough. Some of our most notable actors and dramatists, especially those known for their Shakespearean roles were also skeptics: Orson Welles, Sir John Gielgud, Michael York, Kenneth Branagh, and Charlie Chaplin. A few years after the publication of Sobran’s book, Sir Derek Jacobi, a renowned Shakespearean actor, provided the Forewords to other books taking that same position. Supreme Court Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O’Connor, and Antonin Scalia were also numbered among the Shakespeare skeptics.

Obviously, all these eminent literary, dramatic, and intellectual figures might easily be mistaken, but as an ignorant outsider who had barely been aware that any serious dispute even existed, I read the rest of Sobran’s book with far more of an open mind than when I’d turned the first page.

The telling point that Sobran made in his first chapter was that aside from the huge corpus of the literary works commonly attributed to him, our solid knowledge of Shakespeare’s life and activities is so scanty as to almost be non-existent, mostly consisting of a tiny handful of short business records and documents showing that he had once testified in a minor lawsuit. This was hardly what we would expect of such a towering literary figure.

Although his movements and places of residence were largely unknown, we did know that he ended his days back home at Stratford, living there for at least five years and perhaps a dozen. From that period came his last will and testament, which constituted the only written artifact we have from his entire life, running just 1,300 words. That document is very puzzling, giving no indication that he had ever owned a single book or any literary manuscript. There were no signs of any intellectual interests or literary patrons, and the style was so plodding and semi-literate compared to some other testaments of that era that it seemed difficult to believe that it could have been written or dictated by one of the greatest stylists of the English language.

As Sobran pointed out, that will included three of Shakespeare’s six surviving signatures, all of which were quite irregular, hardly what we would expect from someone who wrote so frequently. Indeed, a document expert cited by a leading Shakespeare scholar claimed that all of Shakespeare’s signatures were probably made by different hands. Since we have no solid evidence that Shakespeare ever attended grammar school, this suggested the astonishing possibility that Shakespeare may have been unable to write his own name. Indeed, both of Shakespeare’s parents, his wife Anne Hathaway, and his daughter Judith were apparently illiterate, signing their names with a mark.

Unlike so many of his contemporaries, whether literary figures or otherwise, not a single letter written by Shakespeare has ever been found despite enormous research efforts, nor a single book that he had ever owned.

Although Shakespeare would have certainly ranked as one of Britain’s leading literary lights, he never offered any public tribute nor statement at the death of Elizabeth I in 1603 nor at the accession of her successor James I, and when he himself died in 1616, no one in London seemed to have taken any notice of his passing.

As Sobran emphasized, although Shakespeare lived and worked for 51 years in Britain, much of that time in the London metropolis, he seemed almost to have existed as a ghost, apparently invisible to nearly all his contemporaries. Numerous thick Shakespeare biographies have been published by various scholars, but aside from the inferences they drew from the enormous body of literary work attributed to him, their contents were almost entirely based upon speculation, given the near total absence of any known facts.

A central problem raised by all those who doubted that the plays were actually written by the actor from Stratford was that the plots and descriptions heavily relied upon far-reaching knowledge of classical history and foreign countries, Italy in particular, while their supposed author certainly had no higher education.

One very surprising fact that I’d never previously known was that all the published plays and other literary works had sometimes been released anonymously, sometimes under the name “Shake-Speare” including the dash often used for pseudonyms in that era, or sometimes under the name “Shakespeare.” Meanwhile, the man from Stratford and his entire family, including both parents and children, almost always spelled their names “Shakspere.”

Elizabethan spelling was often irregular, but it seemed rather odd that the man we today believe was the famous playwright apparently never used the name under which his plays were published or that we today call him. This sharp distinction has conveniently allowed the books and articles of these Shakespeare dissenters to easily distinguish in their text between the “Shakespeare” who was the author of the plays and the “Shakspere” who was the obscure inhabitant of Stratford.

Consider an amusing rough analogy. Samuel Clemens was one of America’s greatest writers, with all of his works published under the pen-name of Mark Twain. But suppose those facts had not been widely known at the time, and a generation or two later, after all those aware of Twain’s true identity had passed from the scene, literary experts had located an obscure Southern businessman named “Mark Tween,” and convinced themselves that he had actually been the famous author.

In effect, Sobran and his allies were arguing that for the last several centuries the literary establishment of the English-speaking world has been suffering from one of the most egregious cases of mistaken identity in all of human history, with most of its tenured faculty members perhaps being too embarrassed to ever even consider that possibility.

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