Yes on the action points. Doubly yes on reigning in non-profits and universities. NGOs are simply a means of the government doing shit that they government is not allowed to do. Take them down. At a minimum, DOGE should look into their funding and make sure it ends.
Yes, a thousand times yes. NGO’s meddle in government policies to get their way. They have encouraged the illegal immigration invasion; they colluded with Dem EPA, for example, to “force” the EPA to deal with climate issues. Start with the Sierra Club.
Wow. Excellent synopsis and amazing and thoughtful recommendations. You are almost working as hard as our new President!! Great stuff. Optimism is back.
So long as we're writing Executive Orders and overwriting previous President's EOs, could we overturn the Jimmy Carter order banning nuclear fuel reprocessing? He only issued it because he was afraid of a "plutonium economy" and the potential for nuclear terrorism. France reprocesses safely and performs the service for Japanese reactors. It's the only way to close the nuclear fuel cycle and make fission truly economic. And it would end the glut of spent rods building up at working reactors.
We are about to enter an age of peril, but also of opportunity. The post-WWII order is breaking down. Its once-vital institutions are now all corrupt and derelict, and many of its alliances no longer make sense. I'm going to miss the early part of it, because the period from the end of the war to about 1970 brought us a lot of advances, but the rot has been setting in for a long time. Now most of it is about to get swept away. As I say, there is great peril in the world: China, the breakdown of western Europe, and leftist-controlled AI being a few. However, we also have a chance to achieve the biggest advances in Western civilization since the ends of WWII and the Cold War. It's up to us.
Excellent piece. Fighting back against the media, non-profits, and colleges and universities is paramount. Hopefully, more and more people will start to realize that the people dominating these areas are not ‘the cool kids,’ despite their efforts to falsely portray themselves that way. They are nothing of the kind.
Do not allow them to intimidate you with their version of ‘peer pressure,’ so often consisting of their bogus charges of “racist/bigot/Nazi/homophobe/xenophobe/transphobe/‘extreme right-wing MAGA Republican’/fascist/sexist/puppy killer.” If I missed something, I apologize.
It's time to eliminate "nonprofits" altogether. NGOs are not reformable. A low top tax rate - say, 10% - would get rid of most objections to that. To achieve that, broaden the tax base by making the federal tax 10% flat, no deductions, no nothing. Just 10%. Everyone plays by the same rules. Also, ban the federal government handing out free money ("grants") to anyone, for anything. Where exactly in the constitution is that permitted? With that dead, also unneeded are many thousands of federal bureaucrats who will have to instead find gainful employment away from the federal teat. Well, there's much more, but this would be a good start :-)
"Historical odds are for that to happen again, but it will be much easier to enact major reforms without that. Registering voters – look what Scott Presler did in Pennsylvania – is a major step. So is demanding and working for election reforms that make cheating much harder. "
Saving Pennsylvania's Senate seat was a help but, as Omega4America point out, even though the electoral tides were running strongly against them, the Democrats still managed to steal 4 Senate seats and a dozen marginal House seats. Funny how Democrats almost always win close races.
Democrats cheat and their success on each election cycle emboldens them to cheat more. I am a huge supporters of the work done by Omega4America to identify the voters at illegal residences that are loaded into voter rolls by Democrat NGOs. Unfortunately, the grifters who run GOP election campaigns could care less so long as the money rolls in for them.
Unless and until the Trumpsters wake up and fight using the information that Omega4America has available, they will lose the Senate and House in 2026, and the Trump agenda will grind to a screeching halt.
The key is to ban mail-in voting, which most countries do. That is really the only election reform that is needed. Otherwise, in Democrat run jurisdictions, mail-in votes will be sent to tens of thousands of people living at non-residential addresses, such as businesses, post offices and empty lots. Those ballots are returned to the post office as undeliverable and are harvested by Democrat operatives to complete and mail in. Without signature verification and address validation those ballots get counted. Lara's Trump's army of lawyers were blissfully unaware of the fraud happening in front of them.
Mike Lindell poisoned the well by making election fraud claims that couldn't be backed up. Omefa4America can give the GOP lists of tens of thousands of registered voters who live at non-residential addresses. They vote, but only by mail; never in person. To make the case for banning mail-in voting, the Trump administration should work with Omega4America and call out this industrial scale fraud to justify banning mail-in- voting.
You may ask why Trump won but Kari Lake didn't. Trump beat the margin of fraud, which is around 3%. Ticket-splitters vote for one party for president and the other party for down-ticket races. About 3% of voters do this, thinking it "keeps the bastards honest". Their votes against Lake pushed her inside the margin of fraud.
Glenn, I have a bit of friendly editing advice. You said:
> And it’s not just space and SpaceX. America was headed for the sort of crony-capitalist bureaucratic-governance stagnation that afflicts Europe. That’s bad for citizens, whose incomes lag, and it’s bad for nations, whose economies lag. And it’s bad for space settlement, because frontiers aren’t generally opened by stagnant societies. There’s a reason why SpaceX happened in America instead of, say, France.
> Trump 45 did some good at slowing this trend, but didn’t attack the problem head on.
This makes perfect sense as text, but between the two paragraphs you had two large graphics showing how America's productivity has outstripped Europe's. Having absorbed the import of those graphics, to read "Trump 45 did some good at slowing this trend" was a bit of a jar!
As to the non-profits, you should follow https://x.com/datarepublican. She has started using her (impressive) numerical analysis skills to pick apart their public filings, and found astonishing levels of incestuous financing.
I had folks at a public university as a subcontractor supporting some work for the Feds. They absolutely did not understand Federal contracting, or maybe contracting in general. I had 3 separate tasks open with them at the same time for different elements of work, with different university staff authorized on each task. Their invoices typically billed all of the staff to the earliest expiring task, till it ran out, then the next, etc. Luckily we got them cleaned up before my Fed customer was given these creative invoices.
As technology advances, it becomes increasingly expensive. This means that its state-of-the-art utilization is increasingly available only to the wealthiest. It is argued that this is only momentary and that economies of scale ultimately make technologies available to all. But this is not true. Space travel will be available only to those with immense capital resources or who have access to the public purse. Going to Mars, for example, is not or should not be to "beat" the others (the Chinese at the moment) but, in fact, that's what it is. America needs to take care of problems in America. We have no problems on the moon or Mars.
You are correct that “We have no problems on the moon or Mars”. For now.
However, some military strategists believe that the moon will have strategic importance as the new space race gains momentum. We need to ensure we are not caught flat-footed on that frontier.
National pride is driving the new space race to some extent, but there is (unfortunately) a military component in the equation.
I’m not advocating an all-out push for space exploration. As you imply, we have real terrestrial problems and limited resources, and we cannot ignore our local problems.
Time will tell whether other promises of space exploration pan out here on earth, such as novel manufacturing or vast mineral wealth. If they do, I hope we partake in it.
AGREE! Go. I like the adjective of "Pattonesque". It sums it up nicely. For people that are too young, look up General Patton and understand not only how he led, but how he delegated.
I believe Trump is administering the Chicago School ‘shock therapy’. It worked in Bolivia, Chile, and occupied Germany, and it appears to be working in Argentina. It failed in Russia.
The lesson to be learned from this record is rather clear: Shock therapy works only if the government can, and does, resist the forces that seek to derail it. Right now, America’s success hinges on our ability to tamp down those who clearly want to upend this experiment. Trump and his team must show a type of strength not seen in our government in our lifetimes.
As Professor Reynolds so aptly points out, they cannot do it alone. We must support them.
The news and prospects are so good that I’m giddy and a little frightened. But Glenn’s blueprint is solid. The only other task I’d add is the absolute importance of a constitutionalist judiciary. The conservative judgeship blitz of the first administration needs to be repeated, and we need to nail down the Supreme Court for another generation. Is it perhaps time for Clarence Thomas to retire, while we can insure a younger clone as replacement? Perhaps Alito too. And wouldn’t it be a shame if the wise Latina de eloped some timely health issues?
Yes on the action points. Doubly yes on reigning in non-profits and universities. NGOs are simply a means of the government doing shit that they government is not allowed to do. Take them down. At a minimum, DOGE should look into their funding and make sure it ends.
Yes, a thousand times yes. NGO’s meddle in government policies to get their way. They have encouraged the illegal immigration invasion; they colluded with Dem EPA, for example, to “force” the EPA to deal with climate issues. Start with the Sierra Club.
Wow. Excellent synopsis and amazing and thoughtful recommendations. You are almost working as hard as our new President!! Great stuff. Optimism is back.
So long as we're writing Executive Orders and overwriting previous President's EOs, could we overturn the Jimmy Carter order banning nuclear fuel reprocessing? He only issued it because he was afraid of a "plutonium economy" and the potential for nuclear terrorism. France reprocesses safely and performs the service for Japanese reactors. It's the only way to close the nuclear fuel cycle and make fission truly economic. And it would end the glut of spent rods building up at working reactors.
We are about to enter an age of peril, but also of opportunity. The post-WWII order is breaking down. Its once-vital institutions are now all corrupt and derelict, and many of its alliances no longer make sense. I'm going to miss the early part of it, because the period from the end of the war to about 1970 brought us a lot of advances, but the rot has been setting in for a long time. Now most of it is about to get swept away. As I say, there is great peril in the world: China, the breakdown of western Europe, and leftist-controlled AI being a few. However, we also have a chance to achieve the biggest advances in Western civilization since the ends of WWII and the Cold War. It's up to us.
Excellent piece. Fighting back against the media, non-profits, and colleges and universities is paramount. Hopefully, more and more people will start to realize that the people dominating these areas are not ‘the cool kids,’ despite their efforts to falsely portray themselves that way. They are nothing of the kind.
Do not allow them to intimidate you with their version of ‘peer pressure,’ so often consisting of their bogus charges of “racist/bigot/Nazi/homophobe/xenophobe/transphobe/‘extreme right-wing MAGA Republican’/fascist/sexist/puppy killer.” If I missed something, I apologize.
Instead, tell them off as impolitely as you can.
It's time to eliminate "nonprofits" altogether. NGOs are not reformable. A low top tax rate - say, 10% - would get rid of most objections to that. To achieve that, broaden the tax base by making the federal tax 10% flat, no deductions, no nothing. Just 10%. Everyone plays by the same rules. Also, ban the federal government handing out free money ("grants") to anyone, for anything. Where exactly in the constitution is that permitted? With that dead, also unneeded are many thousands of federal bureaucrats who will have to instead find gainful employment away from the federal teat. Well, there's much more, but this would be a good start :-)
You write:
"Historical odds are for that to happen again, but it will be much easier to enact major reforms without that. Registering voters – look what Scott Presler did in Pennsylvania – is a major step. So is demanding and working for election reforms that make cheating much harder. "
Saving Pennsylvania's Senate seat was a help but, as Omega4America point out, even though the electoral tides were running strongly against them, the Democrats still managed to steal 4 Senate seats and a dozen marginal House seats. Funny how Democrats almost always win close races.
Democrats cheat and their success on each election cycle emboldens them to cheat more. I am a huge supporters of the work done by Omega4America to identify the voters at illegal residences that are loaded into voter rolls by Democrat NGOs. Unfortunately, the grifters who run GOP election campaigns could care less so long as the money rolls in for them.
Unless and until the Trumpsters wake up and fight using the information that Omega4America has available, they will lose the Senate and House in 2026, and the Trump agenda will grind to a screeching halt.
The key is to ban mail-in voting, which most countries do. That is really the only election reform that is needed. Otherwise, in Democrat run jurisdictions, mail-in votes will be sent to tens of thousands of people living at non-residential addresses, such as businesses, post offices and empty lots. Those ballots are returned to the post office as undeliverable and are harvested by Democrat operatives to complete and mail in. Without signature verification and address validation those ballots get counted. Lara's Trump's army of lawyers were blissfully unaware of the fraud happening in front of them.
Mike Lindell poisoned the well by making election fraud claims that couldn't be backed up. Omefa4America can give the GOP lists of tens of thousands of registered voters who live at non-residential addresses. They vote, but only by mail; never in person. To make the case for banning mail-in voting, the Trump administration should work with Omega4America and call out this industrial scale fraud to justify banning mail-in- voting.
You may ask why Trump won but Kari Lake didn't. Trump beat the margin of fraud, which is around 3%. Ticket-splitters vote for one party for president and the other party for down-ticket races. About 3% of voters do this, thinking it "keeps the bastards honest". Their votes against Lake pushed her inside the margin of fraud.
Glenn, I have a bit of friendly editing advice. You said:
> And it’s not just space and SpaceX. America was headed for the sort of crony-capitalist bureaucratic-governance stagnation that afflicts Europe. That’s bad for citizens, whose incomes lag, and it’s bad for nations, whose economies lag. And it’s bad for space settlement, because frontiers aren’t generally opened by stagnant societies. There’s a reason why SpaceX happened in America instead of, say, France.
> Trump 45 did some good at slowing this trend, but didn’t attack the problem head on.
This makes perfect sense as text, but between the two paragraphs you had two large graphics showing how America's productivity has outstripped Europe's. Having absorbed the import of those graphics, to read "Trump 45 did some good at slowing this trend" was a bit of a jar!
As to the non-profits, you should follow https://x.com/datarepublican. She has started using her (impressive) numerical analysis skills to pick apart their public filings, and found astonishing levels of incestuous financing.
I had folks at a public university as a subcontractor supporting some work for the Feds. They absolutely did not understand Federal contracting, or maybe contracting in general. I had 3 separate tasks open with them at the same time for different elements of work, with different university staff authorized on each task. Their invoices typically billed all of the staff to the earliest expiring task, till it ran out, then the next, etc. Luckily we got them cleaned up before my Fed customer was given these creative invoices.
As technology advances, it becomes increasingly expensive. This means that its state-of-the-art utilization is increasingly available only to the wealthiest. It is argued that this is only momentary and that economies of scale ultimately make technologies available to all. But this is not true. Space travel will be available only to those with immense capital resources or who have access to the public purse. Going to Mars, for example, is not or should not be to "beat" the others (the Chinese at the moment) but, in fact, that's what it is. America needs to take care of problems in America. We have no problems on the moon or Mars.
Actually, as technology advances it gets cheaper. And the "take care of problems on Earth first" is a mirage. Going there helps problems here.
JLifton,
You are correct that “We have no problems on the moon or Mars”. For now.
However, some military strategists believe that the moon will have strategic importance as the new space race gains momentum. We need to ensure we are not caught flat-footed on that frontier.
National pride is driving the new space race to some extent, but there is (unfortunately) a military component in the equation.
I’m not advocating an all-out push for space exploration. As you imply, we have real terrestrial problems and limited resources, and we cannot ignore our local problems.
Time will tell whether other promises of space exploration pan out here on earth, such as novel manufacturing or vast mineral wealth. If they do, I hope we partake in it.
Glenn, have you applied to DOGE? If not, why not? Do it!
I think the best use of my talents is where I am now.
AGREE! Go. I like the adjective of "Pattonesque". It sums it up nicely. For people that are too young, look up General Patton and understand not only how he led, but how he delegated.
Just a correction. It was Scott Pressler who did that wonderful job registering in PA.
Yeah, I had a brain fart, but noticed and fixed it. Thanks.
You're welcome!
I believe Trump is administering the Chicago School ‘shock therapy’. It worked in Bolivia, Chile, and occupied Germany, and it appears to be working in Argentina. It failed in Russia.
The lesson to be learned from this record is rather clear: Shock therapy works only if the government can, and does, resist the forces that seek to derail it. Right now, America’s success hinges on our ability to tamp down those who clearly want to upend this experiment. Trump and his team must show a type of strength not seen in our government in our lifetimes.
As Professor Reynolds so aptly points out, they cannot do it alone. We must support them.
The news and prospects are so good that I’m giddy and a little frightened. But Glenn’s blueprint is solid. The only other task I’d add is the absolute importance of a constitutionalist judiciary. The conservative judgeship blitz of the first administration needs to be repeated, and we need to nail down the Supreme Court for another generation. Is it perhaps time for Clarence Thomas to retire, while we can insure a younger clone as replacement? Perhaps Alito too. And wouldn’t it be a shame if the wise Latina de eloped some timely health issues?