In politics and government, a spoils system (also known as a patronage system) is a practice in which a political party, after winning an election, gives government jobs to its supporters, friends (cronyism), and relatives (nepotism) as a reward for working toward victory, and as an incentive to keep working for the party. It contrasts with a merit system, where offices are awarded or promoted based on some measure of merit independent of political activity.
Spoils in America
Even though it’s not popular to point it out, the US has operated on a spoils system (the Swamp) for a very long time. USAID became one of several vehicles used by primarily Democrats to manage the Pay to Play system in the United States. Their reaction, “Musk is stealing our money,” is putting the hammer directly on the nail. It was on display when Kamala Harris’ campaign had to pay millions to celebrities to endorse her. Harris, an unlikable former prostitute, had a massive financial war chest and outspent President Trump 4 or 5 to 1 — maybe more than that when you consider “soft money.”
Campaign money laundering wasn’t a secret within the permanent Washington Administrative State (Swamp). The no-show jobs became a joke as hundreds of thousands of federal workers were told they didn’t have to come to work. Washington, D.C., had become a ghost town. Many tens of billions of dollars were paid for office space that was functionally perpetually empty. Patronage and votes can be secured in many ways. It doesn’t have to be the rampant laundering that USAID undertook or the FTX (Sam Bankman) method of using Crypto to launder aid to Ukraine back to the Swamp.
To conduct his counterrevolution in America, President Trump is attempting to dismantle as much of the spoils system as possible.
If you doubt we have a spoils system in America, ask yourself why political campaigns to secure a job that pays $150K a year costs tens of millions.
Meme h/t Frank
The Federal Judiciary – an honest brokerage or supporting the spoils system?
The Spoils System in Turkey
We’ve seen lawfare in America as the Swamp attempted to take President Trump out of play. You can damn the Swamp for its ineffective operatives and lack of ruthlessness if you’d like, but Sultan Erdogan seems to be making his play stick. (Foreign Affairs) Just days before Turkey’s main opposition party was set to select its next presidential candidate, the leading contender, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, was arrested and jailed, effectively removing him from the race. In this brazen act of political suppression, the Turkish government has taken a momentous step toward full-fledged autocracy.
The scheme to take Imamoglu out of play was calculated thoroughly. On Tuesday, Imamoglu’s alma mater, Istanbul University, revoked his diploma—by law, Turkish presidential candidates must possess university degrees—citing alleged violations of Higher Education Board regulations. The next day, Imamoglu was arrested on charges of corruption and terrorism. These court rulings derail his presidential ambitions and oust him from his position as mayor of Turkey’s largest city and economic powerhouse. In a dramatic escalation of political tensions, the Istanbul Prosecutor General’s Office has now announced the seizure of the construction company co-owned by Imamoglu. The move effectively bankrupts Imamoglu and destroys him financially.
Lawfare is the mailed fist of the spoils system. If you’re in the way, they set you up and take you out. It’s been the FBI’s bread and butter for decades. The art of the smear – because who wouldn’t believe the FBI? Ok, let’s get back to Turkey.
Since becoming Prime Minister in 2003, Erdogan and his Islamic Welfare Party have set Turkey on a course back toward the glory days of the Ottoman Empire. Kemal Ataturk created a new secular Turkey following the First World War. He westernized the nation, adopted the Latin alphabet, and pushed Turkey to integrate with Europe, ultimately leading Turkey to join NATO after World War II.
Erdogan wants to undo all that. He has championed and led what amounts to an Islamic revolution within Turkey. He talks regularly about freeing Jerusalem from the “Crusaders”. He provides a haven to Hamas. He has worked hard to expand Turkey’s influence in other nations in the Middle East, once ruled by the Ottomans. Even now, his troops are effectively annexing a large chunk of Syria. If he had his way, he would go far beyond that.
Speaking in December, Erdogan said: “Every incident that has occurred in our region, especially in Syria, recently reminds us of this fact: Turkey is bigger than Turkey. As a nation, we cannot limit our horizon to 782,000 square kilometers.”
He says, “Just as a person cannot escape his destiny, Turkey and the Turkish nation cannot escape or hide from their destiny. As a nation, we have to see the mission that history has assigned to us and act accordingly. We see this. We do not turn a deaf ear to the calls.”
Why do the Turks listen to a ponce like Erdogan, who is always punching above his weight? He is smart enough to have established a spoils system reflective of the way the Imams in Iran set theirs up (with a mandate from God), spreading the grease among the military and the people who can enforce his sultan status. It’s easier to do in Turkey than in the US, where there are millions of firearms and billions of rounds of ammunition in private hands. It’s not only the government that has firearms in the US. As Joe Biden pointed out, yes, he does have F-15s, but does he have enough of them, and are the pilots reliably corrupt?
Sometimes, as in the Turkish and Iranian scenarios (with a mandate from God), you can enforce your dictatorship, and sometimes, as with the American scenario, the spoils system isn’t good enough.
The Homeless Situation
Grants Pass, Oregon, is the center point of a Supreme Court case that tackled the rights of the homeless versus taxpayers’ rights to expel them from public parks and properties. The debate tore apart the town and prompted residents to vote out the city council members in charge as the controversy raged.
Is it “cruel and unusual punishment” to ban the homeless from pitching tents and sleeping– and frequently using drugs and sex trafficking– in public areas?
Hydrogen – The Future of Clean Fuel?
(thanks to Stringshot for a series of articles) Most hydrogen currently produced in the U.S. is made through steam-methane reforming. In this process, methane reacts with high-temperature steam to produce carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen. One way to produce hydrogen without emissions is through low—and high-temperature electrolysis, which splits water into pure hydrogen and oxygen. High-temperature electrolyzers use heat and electricity to split water and are more efficient. Traditional and advanced nuclear reactors are well-suited to provide this constant heat and electricity needed to produce clean hydrogen, which could open new markets for nuclear power plants.
DOE estimates that a 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant could produce up to 150,000 tons of hydrogen annually. This could be sold regionally as a commodity for fertilizers, oil refining, steel production, material handling equipment, fuel cell vehicles, or even carbon-neutral synthetic fuels.
In my opinion, the investment in H2 as a viable energy source to replace natural gas, petroleum, and nuclear energy would have to exceed one trillion dollars over a relatively short period—years, not decades. Do investors have the appetite to do this in place of exploiting natural gas (plentiful, available, and inexpensive) in the near term? I don’t see it happening. A hydrogen plant is being constructed about 40 miles from the White Wolf Mine, where I live, and I’m following its progress. It will power a data center that is also under construction. I don’t oppose H2 development, but I doubt I will live long enough to see its widespread implementation meaningfully.
H2 is popular at the moment because carbon (CO2) is considered to be a greenhouse gas. I dispute this assertion. CO2 feeds plants and greens the earth. When you look at a tree, the tree is formed by atmospheric carbon, not by nutrients drawn up through root systems. CO2 makes trees and plants; their waste is oxygen (O2), which we breathe. The carbon cycle can get out of control (see the planet Venus). Much of the excess carbon on Earth is handled by tectonic subduction, which has managed the problem since Earth began. We can argue whether volcanism on Earth (spewing VAST amounts of carbon into the atmosphere) led to ice ages and global cooling or whether volcanism ended ice ages through global warming. The science is incomplete. Nobody knows what caused the most recent ice age to begin or end. The Younger Dryas period between roughly 12,900 and 11,600 years ago disrupted the prevailing warming trend in the Northern Hemisphere at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch (which lasted from 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago). There are as many opinions as there are scientists. Given that mankind didn’t play a part in this, it’s foolish to attribute global warming, cooling, or re-warming to human hands.
Bullet Points:
** More rules from the Philippines.
** (NY Post)“The screaming headline was prophetic: “Trump’s Policies Shake Academic World and May Reshape U.S. Culture.”
My first reaction was, “YES, that’s the whole point!” The president aims to shake up the arrogant, radical university system and save taxpayers money simultaneously. Somebody finally gets it, I thought. Alas, that headline appeared in The New York Times, and writer Alan Blinder didn’t get it. His article was drowning in doom and gloom.
“If the President realizes his ambitions, many American universities — public and private, in conservative and liberal states — could be hollowed out, imperiling the backbone of the nation’s research endeavors,” he wrote. Unfortunately for Blinder and others with a pornographic-like addiction to seeing Trump through the darkest possible lens, their version of Armageddon is a big step closer. Within hours of the article’s publication, Columbia University agreed to all of Trump’s demands to protect the civil rights of Jewish students and others who don’t subscribe to the school’s hard-left indoctrination against America and Israel.
By also agreeing to ban face masks during demonstrations, give 36 campus police officers the power to arrest students, and appoint a senior official to oversee two faculty departments that are hotbeds of antisemitism, Columbia presumably gets to keep the $400 million in grants and contracts Trump threatened to cancel.
** Big Food.
** (link) Fresh off winning a landmark lawsuit, Missouri is moving quickly to seize Chinese-owned farmland and other assets to collect its landmark $24 billion civil judgment against Beijing for harm caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Attorney General Andrew Bailey told Just the News. “Missouri will start to identify and begin going to court to have court orders issued to seize those assets to make good on that judgment,” Bailey said on the “John Solomon Reports“ podcast this week.
Los Angeles – The City of Angels? (hardly)
L.A.’s financial problems exploded into a full-blown crisis on Wednesday, with the city’s top budget official announcing that next year’s shortfall is now just shy of $1 billion, making layoffs “nearly inevitable.”
City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo said Mayor Karen Bass’ proposed budget, which will be released on April 21, will close that gap, but it will require difficult “cost-cutting decisions.” He warned that the severity of revenue declines and rising costs have created a budget gap that makes layoffs “nearly inevitable.”
In his presentation to the council Wednesday, Szabo attributed the city’s financial woes, in part, to increased spending on legal payouts, which have ballooned over the last few years. Tax revenues have been coming in much weaker than expected and are expected to soften further in the upcoming budget year, which starts July 1.
Pay raises for city employees scheduled to go into effect in the coming budget year are expected to consume an additional $250 million. On top of that, Szabo said, the city needs to put hundreds of millions into its reserve fund, which has been drained in recent months to balance this year’s budget.
Los Angeles needs a DOGE team to take a meat axe to non-essential spending. Then again, what your faithful blogger feels is pork would not be what the woke consider to be pork. I heard that they’ve cleaned out a lot of the homeless encampments downtown, and that’s a good first step. The problem they’re experiencing is that because of woke policies, businesses have left or are in the process of leaving. They’re turning themselves into San Francisco. When businesses leave LA, it also means that they leave California. Homes are still ruinously expensive, but that will change as the place becomes an actual replica of a Blade Runner set. The middle class is leaving California in large numbers, looking for a refuge elsewhere. I tell them that Texas is looking very good these days.
Identify the Aircraft
1
36 built – While intended initially for the export market, the United States Army Air Corps took up the entire production run.
Interesting Note: Early in 1940, the Norwegian government ordered three dozen of these aircraft, which had not been delivered before the Germans invaded Norway. Completed between October 1940 and January 1941, the aircraft were delivered to a training center in Canada named “Little Norway” at Toronto Island Airport, Ontario, for the Norwegian government-in-exile.
2
600 built
3
192 built – Early in WW2, the aircraft was involved in the Norwegian campaign and sank the German cruiser Königsberg, the first big warship sunk in war by air attack and by dive-bombers.
End
Identify the Aircraft:
1. Douglas A-33
2. Fairey Fulmar
3. Blackburn Skua
Well, that was remarkably fast, Surly — even for you.
(1) Northrop A-17 / 8A-5N
(2) Fairey Fulmar
(3) Blackburn Skua.
– Kle.
My wife and I spent the a couple of night in Grants Pass back in 2002 when we were being tourists for a few days.
Back then it was a pleasant, safe town though a bit pricy.
Locally the Council of our state capital moved all the homeless people out of parks and into shelters before the recent cyclone (hurricane). They are now refusing to let them move back. The usual suspects are saying that the Council is being unfair.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court sided with Grants Pass, ruling that the city’s ordinances did not violate the Eighth Amendment, meaning cities can ban public camping and sleeping, even if there aren’t enough shelter beds.
If you build it (allow it), they will come…then it’s a mess because all the misplaced compassionate types roll out the red carpet, stating “We must do something about this!”
The answer is simple: Don’t allow it. The proverbial “war on homelessness” is useless…but typical when people get too far out over their skis.
Hydrogen, if my memory holds, is a rather tricky element to transport; even stainless steel tubing undergoes “hydrogen embrittlement” or hydrogen-induced cracking. The plan to produce hydrogen-fueled energy certainly sounds feasible (certainly less “dangerous” than energy provided by hydrogen fusion) and will provide many jobs in metals research (and the insurance industry).
During daylight a hydrogen flame is almost invisible to the human eye. In the early days worked at a facility where people walking around the hydrogen production unit during daylight, held a straw broom in front of their direction of movement.
I worked at a refinery for about six weeks, and they used Hydrogen to Hydrogenate vegetable oils. It came out of the compressor at 1000PSI, and several hundred degrees. Then at the point of use, it went through a heat exchanger, and came out at 1200PSI, and 1000*F.
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TERRIBLE stuff to be around, because as soon as it hit the air, it ignited. I wondered what all the TV cameras were for, and the Lead Tech told me they were IR cameras to detect burning Hydrogen because you can’t see it burn.
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They used a lot of Ammonia, too, and you can’t see Anhydrous Ammonia leaking out. But yowzir, can you SMELL it. That’s why they also had windsocks everywhere, so you could tell which way was upwind to get out of an all too common Ammonia leak.
Wife used to go to meetings at the local municipal water plant. Besides all the face masks hanging everywhere, there were also maps of the facility and the DZ. As in ‘Death Zone.’ As in ‘All life within this boundary will be snuffed out nearly immediately if we suffer a chlorine leak. And we’re not telling you how far out the actual death zone will be because that’s incumbent on wind and other weather factors.’
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Curiously, nobody she knew that worked at said plant lived within 20 minutes of said plant. Hmm… curious…
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She was glad when the meetings were moved away from the death zone.
After I left nursing I took a job at Pacific Airgas as a liquid O2 bulk driver and the plant also had hydrogen available. On the week my O2 tanker was in for recert every 6 months I would deliver other gases, Nitrogen, CO2, Argon, Helium and Hydrogen, the problem with hydrogen was the size of it’s molecule, it would leak out of the thick stainless steel tanks because the steel and piping was porous to hydrogen. You could have a full tank on Friday afternoon when you left for the weekend and have less than half a tank on Monday morning. The bulk tank from which we pulled from was quite thick and coated inside, but you couldn’t make a tanker thick enough because of it’s weight for the road. You had to drain the tanker on Friday and refill on Monday morning… Hydrogen is less dense than air and will float up, so at least flames went up not around you. You have to handle it quite differently than the other gases.
The spoils system metastasized into a self-serving disease that funneled money into the party that offered the most. Integrity was thrown away, and regardless of the injury to those that produced, the destruction of the U.S. increased. With some, there are generations of bureaucrats. They offer nothing, are a waste of tax money, and need to be removed. May their removal be swift, and permanent.
it appears one doj lawyer took herself off the patronage rolls. appointed by biden, resigned on 20 january25, dead at 43. another true believer died of tds. what a shame, tito bring me a tissue.
This woman is reported to have knowledge of Biden’s auto signing of EOs.
To be found dead at 43 in your own home and they rule out foul play when your associated and worked for the Biden administration and was specifically responsible for prosecuting crimes associated with child exploitation and abuse should tell you everything you need to know.
HRC has friends in ‘Da Bidness”…that one – again – is suspicious.
X2
Really enjoy your blog, but I do wish you’d stop using Facebook links. Views give them money via advertisers and they Are the enemy of conservatism and personal privacy.
People are free to view the links or not. I don’t see them as an inherent enemy to anyone. People/entities also profit from youtube or searching using Google, Duck-Duck-Go, Bing, etc. The only entity that doesn’t profit is Virtual Mirage. It costs me to keep the blog working in out of pocket expenses and unreimbursed time.
Thanks, LL, for recommending to the Caliprunians that they relocate to Texas. We already have way more than enough. Can you change that recommendation to New Yawk City?
best idea all day; they moved into Orygun and totally ruined that beautiful state for the rest of us
Uh, Hold my beer”…”Colorado is hanging so far over the cliff they can see the abyss below…yet continue unabated.” Watching ‘To Catch a Smuggler”…very interesting. Gal from the DR supposedly has a fiance’ in Colorado and is returning. They find MJ (aka here, Nature’s Bounty RecMed) in her makeup kit. She – all indignant says “but it’s legal in Colorado!”…where she was heading. Come to find out her “fiance'” owns a “dispensary” in Denver. They arrested her then put her back on a plane.
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No surprise why The Commie Bernie and DemoSoc Sandy Cortez (Senator my a–)…the youngin’ and old hippie crowd just adore subversives who rail “against the man”…even if “the man’s” tune is to fix the place, then they switch hit. For these types it’s only about being a subversive, doesn’t matter the position.
X2
The Californication includes budget problems (created by transplants, IMO). The cynical conspiracy dirt people side of me thinks it is deliberate; an effort to finally kick TABOR aside.
TABOR is less than half this year from last year…incrementally taking more of our money by fiat.
That is why I am moving soon back out, it is a close to failure communist utopia…
Comment elsewhere that gave me a chuckle – supposed the upcoming Canadian elections make Trump the new Prime Minister.
BTW:
in re “Could Hydrogen Open New Markets for Nuclear?” from the Office of Nuclear Energy of the U.S. Department of Energy
when did our DOE begin using “tonnes” (2240 pounds), the metric ton as a measurement?
when do we begin using the Euro?
when do the unelected in Belgium replace our Congress?
“If you doubt we have a spoils system in America, ask yourself why political campaigns to secure a job that pays $150K a year costs tens of millions”.
I fear you are correct. $40 million was spent, mainly by “action committees” on one pissant Colorado Congressional seat (CO-8) that I was gerrymander into. I think both candidates are decent people. That said, they were obligated to vote the party line. The Democrat who lost voted over 90% party line.
USAID. What. A. Total. Scam. And I’m being polite.
Note how leftists on both sides of the Atlantic are parroting this absurd, risible, facile talking point — Viz. 47 & Elon are THIEVES. Yeah they are, they’re stealing the taxpayer funded Dem war chest and, hopefully, returning it to the people.
Hydrogen embrittlement is a thing that many are ‘ignoring’ in the race to replace petroleum. NOT smart… Yes, LA’s self licking ice cream cone of spending is about to bite them in the ass, FINALLY!
“If the President realizes his ambitions, many American universities — public and private, in conservative and liberal states — could be hollowed out, imperiling the backbone of the nation’s research endeavors,”
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Good…about time these arrogant SOB’s felt some comeuppance where it hurts the most, their pocketbooks. One correction: It’s not “the Presidents” ambitions, it’s We The People’s…he is our duly elected agent, and working danged near flawlessly to fulfill OUR ambitions away from the garbage the idiot in charge started that destroyed nearly everything American.
As others have said, the side effects of hydrogen embrittlement and hydrogen’s slipperiness through even dense materials are a major problem.
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Then there’s the other factor, one which Musk identified correctly as a major problem with hydrogen. It takes a lot, a real lot, huge amount in volume and mass due to density issues, to equal the equivalent in kerosene (RP-1 – rocket fuel) or gasoline. CH4, methane (natural gas). At standard pressure. You can compress hydrogen gas, but that exasperates the whole first two issues while increasing the issues related to pressure handling throughout the whole system. Methane is much better at both standard pressure and in increased pressure as used for storage, and has none of the pesky side-effects of hydrogen (including being able to see the flame better.)
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The same can be said for LP gas (C3H8). All the benefits of methane in a denser molecule.
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And natural gas and LP are already available in huge amounts without expensive infrastructure to crack it from other gasses or liquids.
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And And natural gas and LP are already used in many power applications from forklifts to generators to cars and busses and railroad engines (the Florida East Coast Railroad has a fleet of nat-gas/electric locomotives in sets of engine-tanker-engine format.) Already. The infrastructure is known and available in many large cities, and can be expanded relatively easily in comparison to hydrogen ‘manufacturing,’ storage and distribution.
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Hydrogen is an expensive side-note in fuels.
ALL the TransFort busses here run on LP or CNG. They make very good motor fuels.
When heading North out of town on 287, stay in the left lane…all the TransFort buses stop in front of every dispensary.
I think of hydrogen (fuel) as a boutique energy source that has its ‘woke’ factor. Maybe one day it will be a good fit when technology provides the vehicle to deliver and use safely, but today, we’re better off with CH4/C3H8.
“I tell them that Texas is looking very good these days.”
Yes, Texas is a good place. Florida is another.
I recall when Oregon was full of “Don’t Californicate Oregon” bumper stickers. Haven’t seen those in a long time.
As long as the present and plentiful sources – coal, oil, nat gas – are cheap (except politically), there won’t be “new” energy sources. Nuke is the best alternative. Spinning magnets inside wires – or vice-versa – will be with us a long time; the argument is how to spin them. Some variation of steam still works well; we argue over the fire.
My wife saw on Facebook that the number one state that people are moving from into MS is California . That’s just great.