Monthly Archives: February 2025

US Foreign Aid—Where Has It Gone?

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The Wall Street Journal‘s lede lays out the general idea:

The US was the world’s largest funder of foreign aid for decades—propping up education, health services and human rights in developing countries and supporting the militaries of strategic allies.

And the next paragraph led with this:

Programs often associated with foreign aid, such as humanitarian assistance, made up a large slice of the total.

There are a lot of useful data in the article, but it’s incomplete.

Two questions the WSJ didn’t address: of all that foreign aid for “developing countries,” how much went directly to the nominally intended recipients in the target nation’s people? Of the foreign aid that went to the target nation’s government, how much of that flowed on through to the nominally intended recipients in the nation’s people?

It’s interesting, too, to see that of all the OECD nations, the US is last, in percent of GDP terms, in handing out foreign aid. It would be good to see the answers to those two questions for the other member nations.

On Birthright Citizenship

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William Galston, in his Wall Street Journal op-ed insists that President Donald Trump’s (R) Executive Order regarding birthright citizenship—which says that children born to illegal aliens or birth-tourism mothers are not ipso facto entitled to American citizenship—is unconstitutional. Galston correctly hangs his argument on the 14th Amendment’s first clause phrase subject to the jurisdiction thereof (of the United States). He’s also correct in that some case law could serve as impediments to enforcing Trump’s EO and that some Supreme Court precedential rulings that touch on birthright citizenship also could so serve.

Here’s the importance of that phrase, albeit it’s an importance that Galston and others objecting to the EO completely miss. Illegal aliens have held themselves outside our legal jurisdiction from the very beginning—their illegal entry into our nation in violation of the laws, the jurisdiction, of our nation—and they continue to hold themselves outside our jurisdiction by their continued status as illegal aliens.

A similar case applies to those birth-tourism mothers. They have no intention whatsoever of remaining—legally—and so submitting themselves to our nation’s jurisdiction. They have every intention of remaining citizens, subject to the jurisdiction, of their home nation.

Because these two groups refuse our nation’s jurisdiction, birthright citizenship can never, legitimately, apply to their children for all the accident (deliberate or not) of the geography of their birth.

Here is an instance where the over-sanctification of precedent could be corrected in the specific instance: overturn the wrongly decided case law and correct those past Supreme Court precedents. Recognize via Court ruling the plain, obvious, and rational meaning of the 14th Amendment’s phrase. That’s a requirement the Supreme Court has emplaced a number of times.

Not So Much

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The Trump administration’s Department of Justice has instructed the Manhattan District prosecutors to drop their case against New York City’s Progressive-Democratic Mayor Eric Adams. Whether that instruction is good or bad is for another discussion. The decision to do so itself, though, has sent seismic waves—The Wall Street Journal‘s term—through that Manhattan district.

That approach [the dismissal of the Adams case], former officials say, is a seismic departure from the way the Justice Department traditionally handles cases, and it risks turning the institution that typically celebrates its independence from political influence into an operation where law enforcement is open to negotiation.

And

The US attorney’s office in Manhattan hasn’t publicly responded to a Justice Department memo ordering the dismissal, which sent shock waves through an institution dubbed by many as the “Sovereign District” for its independence from the Justice Department in Washington. Danielle Sassoon…whom Trump elevated to be the Manhattan US attorney, is left with few options: … To obey the order would be an unprecedented blow to the Manhattan office’s prized independence from Washington.

That’s one spin.

Another interpretation, the legitimate one IMNSHO, is that the Attorney General, newly installed Pam Bondi, is reigning in a Federal prosecutorial district and bringing it back under control the DoJ, where it belongs, along with all the other prosecutorial districts. There is no reason, and there never has been reason, to leave Manhattan as an independent operation. It’s an arm of the DoJ and nothing else.

A Governor’s Disingenuousness

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Maryland’s Progressive-Democrat Governor Wes Moore showed all of that in his Monday letter in The Wall Street Journal‘s Letters section.

For the third year in a row, we won’t raise the sales or property tax.

Didn’t raise sales or property taxes? For three whole years? Whoopty-do. While that’s an unusual achievement for a Progressive-Democrat, keeping taxes unraised, if not lowered, should be the norm, not a braggable unusual act.

[I]t’s true that under our new plan, those who have done exceptionally well financially will pay a quarter point more….

Once again, a Progressive-Democrat refuses to say what the fair share is for the rich, other than by empirical action: more, always more.

“Little Consensus on Message or Direction”

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That excerpt from the subheadline says it all regarding the Progressive-Democratic Party’s assessment of its current status and its plans for its—and our nation’s—future.

One of their solutions—far from the only one, which illustrates the problem—is this:

The fact that some of Trump’s cabinet nominees received Democratic votes angered many in the party.
In an interview, [Senate Minority Leader Chuck, D, NY] Schumer said the governors wanted senators to vote “no” on all nominees.

Right. And it’s not just about Trump’s nominees; it’s don’t work with Republicans at all on governing, even as they spent the last dozen years inveighing Republicans to work with them on governing. No, be knee-jerk No on anything not their own. That’s this faction’s Everything in the Party, nothing outside the Party, nothing against the Party mantra.

Then there’s this solution, from another Party faction, led by Schumer:

On Monday he issued a letter detailing new plans, including a portal for whistleblowers to report concerns, support for states’ lawsuits against the administration and amping up messaging to voters.

The portal already has been inundated with “whistleblower” reports detailing Joe Biden’s, Kamala Harris’, and Schumer’s own misbehaviors. The latter especially contained details of Schumer standing on the Supreme Court building steps explicitly threatening two Supreme Court Justices.

This solution also proudly seeks to continue the Progressive-Democrats’ lawfare assaults, now in overt defense of the rot and corruption in its several agencies and departments.

And that messaging bit—that’s Party’s contempt for us Americans. It’s not that their policies are bad—no. no, those are perfection personified—it’s that we’re simply too stupid to understand perfection when it’s placed right in front of us.

Party politicians, from top to bottom, still will not (not cannot) recognize, much less accept, that it’s not their messaging or “direction” that’s at issue. That position, in fact, exemplifies those politicians’ contempt for us average Americans: we’re just too stupid, as far as they’re concerned, to understand what they’re telling us.

Never mind that we are, in fact, not stupid; we understand exactly what they’re telling us, and we don’t like their policies at all. We rejected them in toto last November. We also rejected their attitude toward us. Those policies are well and succinctly summarized by Gerald Baker in his op-ed regarding Party actually objecting to DOGE’s efforts to root inefficiencies:

…the many strange battle lines the Democratic Party has chosen to defend these past few years: illegal migrants over citizens, teachers unions over parents and children, criminals over victims, men-turned-women over girls. Good luck with that, Democrats. …
Choosing to die on the hill of the right of permanent government officials to spend money without hindrance from the president’s delegates is an especially odd decision.

There’s yet another solution:

Some Democrats have begun talking about withholding votes on a spending deal as leverage, even if it shuts down the government….

These Party wonders want to just sulk and throw temper tantrums. Unfortunately for them, and fortunately for our nation, the quorum required to do business is a simple majority in each house of Congress (and on each committee in each house), and Republicans are that majority. It only requires a measure of unity within the Republican Party to allow business to go forward, more easily to boot without those Party children under foot.

On top of all of that—or beneath all of that—there’s the inherently racist nature of Party, exemplified by Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D, TX):

…the only people that are crying are the mediocre white boys that have been beaten out by people that historically have had to work so, so much harder.

Until they recognize and accept any of that, and take concrete, publicly measurable steps—with equally concrete results—to rid themselves of their racism, their future in our politics will continue to be limited. And that’s good for our nation.