@Harald_Korneliussen @Phil Maybe so! I broadly think financing covert (as to open, overt) “civil society” is a bad thing we shouldn’t do. I’m not going to arrogate any right to make or judge the tradeoffs faced by activists who consider accepting those funds. You can make a broad, general case for why they shouldn’t. You can imagine particular circumstances under which perhaps they shouldn’t. 1/
@Harald_Korneliussen @Phil What I will say, with great certainty, is so long as the US, via lawful processes, chooses to finance covert civil society support, it is the duty of the US government to maintain strict confidence about the details of that activity. It might be a bad call, by us as donor, by the recipient. 2/
@Harald_Korneliussen @Phil but if we decide to unmake that call, we should do so by quietly discontinuing the support. getting last year’s freedom fighters, this year’s woke activists executed for their collaborations with us is unwise as practical policy and morally reprehensible. /fin
Interesting on “coequal branches” and the US Constitution. by #RichardBishirjian riffing on #DavidSiemers. https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/10/myth-of-coequal-branches-david-j-siemers-richard-bishirjian.html
Brad Setser makes an important point about trying to replace the US by reanchoring trade relationships around China.
It’s easy to buy from China, but what you wanted from the US was someone you could sell to.
@Phil when USAID funds democracy activism in Cuba, do you think there might be a reason for the names of the activists to be classified?
maybe USAID shouldn’t fund activities to which host governments object. that’s a policy call. but so far Congress has supported that sort of work. until they don’t, some documents really do need to be classified and remain secure.
“we apologize as we are busy assisting other constituents”
(from the message when you hit voicemail at Senator Rick Scott’s office)
Suppose you think USAID is more about official cover for intelligence work than aid. I think that’s exaggerated, untrue, but OK.
Then it is *more* outrageous its classified docs shld be compromised. Agents in the field don’t determine US intelligence policy but it is they whom these leaks may kill.
for whatever it’s worth, i just called my (MAGA) Congresswoman’s office to demand Elon Musk’s arrest and imprisonment for the flagrant lawbreaking this weekend with respect to USAID.
@Phil bureaucracy is the form of institution by which nearly all human action is coordinated at scale. every military is a bureaucracy. does that upset you?
article 1 of the Constitution creates Congress, before the executive, whose role is to put into practice the laws that Congress creates. the people exercise their authority by electing a legislature, not by electing a king.
your glory will become mass atrocity quite soon, if it is not nipped in the bud.
@_dm what’s happening at Treasury and USAID, the recission of the OMB memo but cagey language about what the EOs might still freeze, suggests to me an extraordinary degree of willingness to test the enforceability of the law.
@Phil no, it is not. we don’t elect a dictator. we elect a person whose duty is to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”. USAID is constructed by Congress, by law. Classification rules are the law, and the President has not declassified the documents people with no clearance have now accessed.
what agencies outside the executive branch of the Federal government are able to enforce Federal law?
suppose the courts, even the current Supreme Court, were to agree unilateral dismantling of an agency and unlawful access to classified documents are Federal crimes, if Trump doesn’t enforce the law can no one?
“Screwing around with Treasury payments and tariff walls is not just outrageous—it is like mixing a nice bleach-and-Drano cocktail. You wouldn’t describe that as ‘breaking mixology norms’, unless you were doing a goof.” @profmusgrave https://musgrave.substack.com/p/shredding-norms-is-cool
i’m always talking about thick scary tails i’m worried about but say the base case, the modal outcome, is we muddle through largely as we have.
i’m not sure that’s right any more.
somewhere in an attic there is a portrait of a head of lettuce rotting most floridly.
“One must be careful not to reify the clichés: just because everyone says it’s real doesn’t make it real. Or rather, it does, and that’s the problem.” #JohnGanz https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/vibes-cartel
“i will abuse you until you consent to marry me” may not be the flex they think.
besides maybe a handful of billionaires on an inauguration stage, is there anyone more pathetic than Congressional Republicans, who are watching their guy burn down the country but do nothing because what? they might have to face a competitive primary?
oh the poor poor dears.
@paninid i mean, they might not want to be pwned by a plaything of the Godless CCP.
@paninid i don’t think Project 2025 had a bunch of late-blooming preadolescents downloading all the payments and personnel data it took the Chinese years to steal for themselves in order to hand it to an unelected third-party who was ineligible for a security clearance, who threatens to exercise an idiosyncratic unreviewable personal veto on payments, usurping the House of Representatives’ most basic prerogative.
@scott i’d just revise it to “block everything except deliberation and action on what is actually happening right now in and to the executive branch (even without Senate-confirmed leadership).