Drain The Swamp from the School House to the White House & the Classroom to the Boardroom

May 26, 2023 by Dr. Rich Swier 

• “The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful.” — Plato, The Republic. “
• To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” — Voltaire 
• “Big government is now the ‘opiate of the people.’” — Dr. Richard M. Swier, Ed.D., Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army (Ret.)

It is time that all patriots band together and drain the swamp that is creeping toward every city, county, state and our national capital. The swamp is in the school house and in the White House. The swamp exists in every classroom and boardroom in America.

There are many swamp creatures but the most dangerous and deadly are those who attack our faith, families and freedoms.  Swamp creatures use various weapons against freedom loving patriots from the Covid-19 lockdowns and mandates to the control of what we eat, use, drive and how we live in order to “save the plant” from global warming. But the most nefarious and most successful weapon is — EDUCATION!.........To Read More....

I stand with President Trump! As do 74 million Americans

These D.C. swamp insiders are all green with envy'

By Wayne Allyn Root January 11, 2021

The media, politicians and the D.C. swamp haven't got a clue what the people think and feel. As a matter of fact, they are always dead wrong about everything.

Let's start with my personal experiences on Wednesday morning. As the leading conservative radio host in Las Vegas, with the powerhouse afternoon-drive radio show on KBET 790, I called for a Trump car parade to celebrate President Donald Trump and show the media how we felt about the obviously stolen election.

Thousands of cars and an estimated 10,000 people showed up. Pound for pound (per capita), this might be the biggest turnout for President Trump in all of America – in a town never known for politics, let alone conservative politics, and in a state Democrats and the media claim Trump lost.

Last time President-elect Joe Biden showed up here, 20 people showed up for him. A Biden car parade later in the day attracted a few dozen cars.

At my parade, thousands of cars adorned with American flags and Trump flags dominated the world-famous Las Vegas Strip for three hours. As usual, this outpouring of love and support for Trump went unrecorded by the media. There was barely a mention on any local TV news program, no mention in the Vegas newspaper............

One last observation by yours truly: This is about jealously. It always was. Donald J. Trump is an outsider, a celebrity billionaire, which no one in D.C. has ever been. Trump is a man of the people. His detractors are all owned by the D.C. swamp. The American people mean nothing to them. And they mean nothing to the American people............To Read More.....

 

Tracing the Genesis of the Swamp

By Troy Smith  December 26, 2020

Much has been made of the Washington, D.C. "swamp" over the last four years.  The vast apparatus of power that is now consecrated in the federal government is certainly immense and a far cry from what the Founders envisioned.  It contains programs and agencies that work for both domestic and foreign goals.

The question of how the swamp came to be has no one particular answer.  Some can be laid at the feet of the 20th-century Progressives during the Roosevelt-Wilson era.  Other expansions of power originated with the New Deal.  Certainly, the last quarter-century has seen its fair share of new agencies, policies, and expansions of government.  However, one particular moment deserves its own focused attention if we are to truly understand the vast apparatus that is the swamp and the rationale for its creation from a national defense perspective: the National Security Act of 1947.

It was post-WW2.  The United States under President Truman had challenging questions to deal with: how do we move forward in a postwar world?  How do we deal with the Soviet threat?  What should the role of government and the military be in a rapidly technologically changing world?  To help deal with these troubles, the National Security Act of 1947 thrust into existence the National Security Council, the CIA, and with the first secretary of defense (among other positions, departments, etc.) as various agencies were morphed, merged, and created anew.  In thinking about national security, the CIA itself was divided into two camps — one led by Richard Helms, who wanted the agency to be a purely information-gathering service, and the other led by Frank Wisner, who wanted covert actions to be used to alter political events to our favor (Weiner, p. 11).  Eventually, it would become both.  The information-gathering, in theory, would help the U.S. no longer be blind to world events or reliant upon the British to gather intel, thus allowing the NSC to formulate strategic and tactical planning, and the remodeled Defense Department would be better equipped to implement those plans............To Read More.....

A Way for Trump to Drain the Swamp

October 5, 2019 By Ted Noel

When you enter the Everglades, you know you'll find alligators and pythons. You just don't know how many. And no matter where you are, you can see only a few that are close to you. There can be an alligator right under your boat that you never see, because it can stay submerged for half an hour. The snake may be back in its hole. The only way to get them all is to blanket thousands of square miles with millions of hunters.

D.C. is not at all different. As we are learning from the Ukraine leaks, someone with a security clearance and an ax to grind has been hiding in plain sight close to the president. He's not the only one. Unfortunately, with few true allies, Donald Trump is necessarily walking with blinders on. He needs all the help he can get. And his help is ready and waiting, just waiting to have the shackles removed.

Judicial Watch has just released the contents of former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein's emails, including this bombshell that will be ignored by CNN............ ..

As I said, many FOIA requests are deep-sixed by bureaucrats who either don't want to do their jobs or don't want wrongdoing exposed.  Their obstruction makes the requesters go to court to pry the information loose.  That takes time and money that should not be wasted.  So the E.O. first needs to establish an office within the White House that reviews every FOIA that was rejected but made public by a Court Order.  If that refusal to honor the FOIA was without merit, then the officer who did not honor it should be fired by presidential order............To Read More.....

• Rosenstein 'Fairly Confident' That 'Political Bias' Did Not Enter Into Mueller Investigation
• Did Rod Rosenstein Just Commit Perjury Today? Going by How the Obama DOJ Treated Michael Flynn–Yes.   
• Tom Fitton Destroys Rosenstein After Lying In The Senate Today
  
• Rosenstein: 'Would Not' Have Signed FISA Application If He Knew Then What He Knows Now
• Rod Rosenstein copies Hillary’s defensive technique in the Senate
• McCabe Kept Comey Memos Secret From Rosenstein Until They Were Leaked
• Rosenstein 'Fairly Confident' That 'Political Bias' Did Not Enter Into Mueller Investigation
• Did Rod Rosenstein Just Commit Perjury Today? Going by How the Obama DOJ Treated Michael Flynn–Yes.

Cartoon of the Day

Cartoon of the Day

Behind and beyond the Mueller Investigation

April 3, 2019 By Rick Hayes

Had Hillary Clinton did what she was supposed to do and win the 2016 presidential election, the American people would never have known about the "dossier," the FISA court, Christopher Steele, or Carter Page.

Hillary and Hillary alone had to win, but she didn't, and so a true conspiracy to overthrow a duly elected President of The United States commenced. By deciding to take part in the coup attempt, senior members in the FBI and DoJ risked going to prison for up to 20 years according to 18 U.S. Code § 2385 -- advocating the overthrow of government. But not even a deep hatred for Trump would have been enough incentive for them to consider such a thing.

The stakes had to be nosebleed high to present to the FISA court a stack of paper filled with unverified stories and salacious hit pieces that would have eliminated it as serious evidence by any legitimate district attorney. It was given the exotic name "dossier" but in reality, all it amounted to was 35 pages of obvious fiction accepted by the FISA court not once but four times based on FBI approvals.

So why was it so imperative that Hillary had to be the next president that the DNC threw fellow Democrat candidate Bernie Sanders under the bus? That the FBI would admit that she committed several crimes with her private server but chose not to indict her? And that a two-year-long careless investigation hoax and worldwide embarrassment was allowed to happen?

It wasn't about who Trump was -- it was all about what Trump promised. It was about the survivability of the swamp......To Read More...

Just try behaving like Acosta in a federal courtroom

November 17, 2018 By Ed Timperlake

You’ve no doubt already hear the big news from yesterday:

U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly, an appointee of President Donald Trump, announced his decision at a hearing Friday morning. The judge said Acosta’s credentials should be returned immediately and reactivated to allow him access to the White House complex for press briefings and other events.

A simple question for U.S District Court Judge Timothy Kelly:

What if the self-absorbed and very rude and physical nasty Jim Acosta pulled the exact same grandstanding stunt in his or any other Judge’s Court room, would Acosta not be immediately be found in Contempt of Court?..................Read more

Acosta Has No Constitutional Right to a White House Pass

November 17, 2018 By Daniel John Sobieski

If you wanted a constitutional crisis, folks, federal judge Thomas Kelly has given us one with the issuance of a temporary restraining order requiring the Trump White House to reinstate CNN’s petulant Jim Acosta’s press pass giving him access to the building in which President Trump resides and leads the Free World.

Revoking Acosta’s press pass did not threaten the First Amendment rights of either CNN or Acosta.

CNN is free to broadcast what it wants and report on anything it wants and Acosta is free to do the same. The funny thing about freedom of speech and freedom of the press is that while both freedoms are constitutionally guaranteed, the Constitution does not guarantee a right to a particular forum.

There is no more right for Jim Acosta to have White House credentials than there is to have White House press conferences at all:...........We now have a federal court suggesting courts have a right to tell the White House, part of a separate branch of government, how to run itself. How is this constitutional?..........Read more

Latest outrage from the D.C. swamp

Larry Klayman About | Email | Archive
 

It never ends! The so-called Washington, D.C., establishment swamp grows murkier and more deadly with every passing hour! Needless to say, it is on the verge of swallowing up the vision and creation of our Founding Fathers. The federal judiciary is a major occupant of this swamp!............

First, “hot off the press,” there is the ruling of the Honorable Timothy J. Kelly, incredibly granting a temporary restraining order in the lawsuit filed by CNN against the president and his staff for revoking the White House press pass of the “Communist/Clinton News Network’s” Jim Acosta for improperly touching a White House female intern. Incredibly, and most tellingly, CNN was supported by Fox News, which increasingly has been moving left thanks to its new chiefs, the Murdoch sons, both of whom are dyed-in-the-wool liberals. (See Adriana Cohen, “Bill O’Reilly: Fox Has Gone to the Dogs,” Boston Globe, Nov. 15.) More importantly is the sellout by this Trump-appointed Judge Kelly in ordering the president to give the vile Acosta back his press pass.

Not only is there clearly no First Amendment constitutional right to own a White House press pass – as CNN is free to send another, hopefully this time respectful reporter to cover the administration, among many other legal grounds for Kelly to have denied the CNN complaint – but this incredible ruling underscores what I have been preaching about the federal judiciary in particular for many years since I conceived of and founded Judicial Watch in 1994..............Read more

BOMBSHELL: Clinton Received MILLIONS from Russia In Exchange For…

By Andrew West February 8, 2018

Those still defending the actions of career criminal Hillary Clinton deserve a medal for their stubbornness in the face of their obvious visual and moral handicaps.

What the liberal media once claimed was a far too cruel nickname in “Crooked Hillary” now seem like a farce. It would as if someone were to describe the amicable, late children’s television icon Fred Rogers as “a tolerable fella” in that neither description comes close to scratching the surface on these two distinctly opposed public figures.

Now that Clinton has been forced into a retreat of sorts, having been irrevocably embarrassed by populist President Donald Trump during the 2016 general election, there is more muck being unearthed from beneath her feet than could be found in the Okefenokee Swamp..........When Donald Trump speaks of “draining the swamp”, Hillary Clinton is precisely the sort of vermin that he intends to incapacitate..........To Read More....

Environmentalists And Government Officials: Who Else Is Being Bought And Paid For?

By Hank Campbell — January 24, 2018 @ The American Council on Science and Health

Competitive Enterprise Institute discovered that radical environmental groups are paying the salaries and expenses of staffers in Washington Governor Jay Inslee’s office. As is well known, Governor Inslee and his political allies have engaged in a number of tactics to undermine both evidence-based science and the federal government, and not just in relation to their political disagreements.

Okay, politics is dirty but everyone can play that game, states can obviously sue if they don't like what the federal government is doing, even about science. If they don't believe emissions rules from EPA are strong enough, they can institute their own and incur whatever benefits or consequences that brings them in the free market. And we will know about it. Government is transparent, if you can cut your way through the jungle of bureaucracy.

Unless it isn't.

And in Washington state, it isn't. Washington was certainly not being transparent when not telling its taxpayers that the World Resources Institute hired the state as a contractor, that the state agreed to perform a “scope of work” for WRI, itemizing “activities and deliverables” and in turn it funded the position of Reed Schuler, Governor Inslee’s senior policy adviser for climate and sustainability.   Under its contract, "Washington State sends progress reports alongside its $33,210 quarterly invoices to the nonprofit.”

Schuler's duties? He “prepare[s] letters, executive orders, and other directives for the Governor’s signature.”

So the state is working for the non-profit and the non-profit is paying for a staffer who is creating legislation. The Governor does not seem to believe this creates any conflict at all, saying Schuler is “a Washington state employee with the same scope of work, review process and accountability as any other state employee. The only difference is the funding source.”

WRI activists agree with him and also claim that what they do is common.

Oh, it is? Maybe in Washington state but if it is common in my home I am going to be outraged. But it was no secret in Washington government. An email obtained by CEI read, “Reed’s position is being supported by the Hewlett Foundation and the World Resources Institute."

Imagine the outrage from progressive organizations like Natural Resources Defense Council or Union of Concerned Scientists if they discovered a Republican governor had staffers on the payroll of a pro-science group who was writing legislation - and that internal memos made it seem routine. There would be lawsuits flying everywhere.

Instead, the pro-science side gets a heaping dose of hypocrisy from activists. If a science or non-profit group has ever gotten a tiny grant from a corporation in their history, all of them in the future are labeled  "shills" and smeared across the Internet despite the science being absolutely solid regardless of who donates. Meanwhile, prominent environmental groups haven't been critical of WRI or Washington state at all.

What dark money funds WRI? The money trail leads to the Hewlett Foundation, and the Hewlett Foundation is run by Jonathan Pershing, who is a close friend of Schuler. They worked together in President Obama’s State Department. Obviously former Obama staffers are now found everywhere in politically allied states, like New York and California, too. Is this same sort of thing happening elsewhere and being hidden from voters?

CEI President Kent Lassman had a very good question in a recent email; who else is being bought off?

Science and health are intertwined with politics in 2018, so if anyone else has an agenda that isn't for the benefit of the American public we deserve to know.

Progressive Critics of Trump’s HHS Are Sliming Christians for Enforcing the Law

by David French January 22, 2018 3:30 PM @DavidAFrench

 

Efforts to undo the Obama administration’s unconstitutional subversion of Congress are welcome and long overdue. This morning, Politico made me laugh, opening an article about the Trump administration’s department of Health and Human Services with this incredibly misleading paragraph:

A small cadre of politically prominent evangelicals inside the Department of Health and Human Services have spent months quietly planning how to weaken federal protections for abortion and transgender care — a strategy that’s taking shape in a series of policy moves that took even their own staff by surprise.

The reality is that theTrump HHS has issued a notice of a proposed rule (essentially, a draft regulation for public review and comment) that will empower the agency to robustly enforce multiple statutes passed by Congress and signed by presidents from both parties statutes that the Obama administration had unlawfully and unilaterally revised or undermined.............

 

The Obama HHS, for example, both dragged its feet on enforcement and passed regulations that actually undermined the intent of the law as written by Congress. In fact, it issued a rule that quite literally changed a statute. Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of “race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability” in federally funded health programs, HHS health programs, and “Health Insurance Marketplaces.” In its regulations, however, Obama’s HHS unilaterally expanded the nondiscrimination categories to include “gender identity” and “termination of pregnancy.”................Read more

President Nobama

by Victor Davis Hanson January 16, 2018 @vdhanson

 

Trump is commonsensically undoing, piece by piece, the main components of Obama’s legacy. Donald Trump continues to baffle.

 

Never Trump Republicans still struggle to square the circle of quietly agreeing so far with most of his policies, as they loudly insist that his record is already nullified by its supposedly odious author. Or surely it soon will be discredited by the next Trumpian outrage. Or his successes belong to congressional and Cabinet members, while his failures are all his own. Rarely do they seriously reflect on what otherwise over the last year might have been the trajectory of a Clinton administration.

 

Contrary to popular supposition, the Left loathes Trump not just for what he has done. (It is often too consumed with fury to calibrate carefully the particulars of the Trump agenda.) Rather, it despises him mostly for what he superficially represents.

 

To many progressives and indeed elites of all persuasions, Trump is also the Prince of Anti-culture: mindlessly naïve American boosterism; conspicuous, 1950s-style unapologetic consumption; repetitive and limited vocabulary; fast-food culinary tastes; Queens accent; herky-jerky mannerisms; ostentatious dress; bulging appearance; poorly disguised facial expressions; embracing rather than sneering at middle-class appetites; a lack of subtlety, nuance, and ambiguity.............

 

Republicans have not seriously attempted to roll back the administrative state since Reagan. On key issues of climate change, entitlements, illegal immigration, government spending, and globalization, it was sometimes hard to distinguish a Bush initiative from a Clinton policy or a McCain bill from a Biden proposal. There was often a reluctant acceptance of the seemingly inevitable march to the European-style socialist administrative state............To Read More.......

 

Paul Calls For Investigation of Obama Officials: Collusion Against Trump Could Be 'Worse Than Watergate'

Leah Barkoukis Dec 22, 2017

Sen. Rand Paul on Thursday argued the real scandal about the 2016 presidential election may be that senior Obama administration officials tried to prevent President Trump from being elected.
"Time to investigate high ranking Obama government officials who might have colluded to prevent the election of @realDonaldTrump! This could be WORSE than Watergate!" he tweeted Thursday morning.............Paul did not go into details, nor did he write any follow-up tweets on the matter, but the message comes after two top FBI officials investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election were revealed to have sent anti-Trump text messages.........To Read More.....

Trump’s failing revolution

The President must appoint more good, loyal people – or swamp creatures will triumph

Scot Faulkner

 

President Trump made draining Washington’s Swamp the centerpiece of his Presidency. The swamp is winning.  Its RINOgators are on the verge of destroying the Trump Presidency. 

 

Trump’s Executive Branch is now running on empty. His appointment process is the slowest since Jimmy Carter in 1977. He recently defended his depleted ranks of loyalists, “we don’t need all of the people. You know, it’s called cost saving.” 

 

In fact, Trump not bringing in his loyalists means the Executive Branch is being run by Obama holdovers, and senior careerists, who run the government from acting positions. They owe their last eight years of promotions and bonuses to their loyally enforcing and implementing Obama’s policies.
 

The swamp is exploiting Trump’s misunderstanding of “people equal policy.” 

 

The few political managers Trump has placed are completely isolated and outmaneuvered. Worse, most of Trump’s appointments are people who owe their loyalty to everyone but Trump. The inner circles of the White House, and legions of political operatives in the Departments and Agencies, wish Jeb Bush were President. Their disloyalty to Trump is manifest in leaks and their ineffectual and slow paced efforts to change anything.

 

Insiders explain that Trump dislikes people with government experience and that he feels Reagan and his appointees could have done more to shrink government. If that is so, why is he fixated on bringing in Bush alumni who grew government? 

 

Trump declared that he would drain Washington’s swamp by not hiring lobbyists. During the transition, countless personnel clearance forms were used supposedly to prevent lobbyists insinuating themselves. This failed. USA Today reports that more than 100 former federal lobbyists are now working inside the Trump Administration.

 

Trump has been ill-served and misled from the very beginning. During the spring of 2016, key elements of the Reagan coalition, including Reagan Administration alumni and key think tanks, were ready, willing and able to help Trump be successful. They were ignored.

 

In June 2016, Trump realized he needed to prepare for being President. Instead of turning to those conservatives who were openly and passionately supporting him, Trump turned to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

 

Where Trump conservatives would have opened the door to legions of proven change agents, Christie opened the flood gates to Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush operatives. Where Trump loyalists would have worked for free, Christie spent millions on hiring the Boston Consulting Group to run the Transition. The Boston Consulting Group had never run a Presidential Transition, but the Managing Partner in charge of the contract was the daughter of longtime Bush loyalist.

 

The Trump Transition ended up preparing for the Romney/Bush Administration. Even Steve Bannon was duped into believing only the Washington Establishment was capable of helping Trump prepare for his Presidency. Highly capable conservatives, Reagan alumni and professionals who were for Trump since June 2015, were systematically shut out. Never-Trumpers, even ones who ran anti-Trump floor operations at the Republican National Convention, were welcomed.

 

The Romney/Bush Transition became the Romney/Bush Administration on January 20, 2017. At the same time, Reince Priebus and his minions from the Republican National Committee (RNC) took over core White House operations. This included the Office of Presidential Personnel that clears and recommends all political appointees.

 

Priebus rightly deserves credit for quelling Republican rebellion in the final months of the 2016 campaign. For this, Trump should have rewarded Preibus with the non-critical Ambassadorship of his choice. Instead, Priebus became Chief of Staff and proceeded to fill Trump’s inner circle with RNC operatives, few of whom even liked Trump.

 

The RNC operatives in charge of Presidential Personnel placed their friends on Trump’s political front line. They even conducted purges of the few Trump loyalists who had made it inside.   Ironically, Never-Trumpers got away with accusing Always-Trumpers of being disloyal.

 

While President Trump was signing Executive Orders and making inspiring speeches, the RINOgators of the Washington, DC swamp were commandeering key positions, making sure Trump’s vision would never become a lasting operational reality. They are doing everything possible to protect their swamp.

 

The most tragic result of Trump being misled is that he is spending his time on actions that will be swept away with the next Administration.

 

The Washington swamp is drawing Trump into this trap. Time magazine recently ran an alarmist cover story on Trump’s regulatory reductions. Even Trump’s inner circle believes the hype.

His communications director declared, “No President or Administration has deregulated or withdrawn as many anticipated regulatory actions as this one in this short amount of time.” In reality, saving $560 million is a pittance against the $2+ trillion regulatory burden faced by America business.

 

At best, stopping new regulations is like trimming kudzu. All these bad policies and regulations have only been driven underground. They remain in desk drawers and computer files ready to be unleashed. Unless the underlying policies, people, and laws are changed, all these sidelined regulations will spring forth the moment Trump leaves office.

 

The people who would actually pull-up the regulatory kudzu by its roots are not in place. Washington, DC’s “RINOgators” have settled in to protect their status quo and wait out Trump.

Real and lasting change will happen only if Trump appoints sufficient numbers of his actual loyalists as soon as possible. He must act quickly and decisively to remove Bush/Romney traitors and replace them with those fully committed to his revolution.

 

Perhaps the dual attacks by Bush 41 and 43 will open Trump’s eyes to the treachery around him.

 

Scot Faulkner advises corporations and governments on how to save billions of dollars by achieving dramatic and sustainable cost reductions while improving operational and service excellence. He served as the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives. He also served on the White House Staff, and as an Executive Branch Appointee.

Presidential Constraints

By George Friedman Aug 21, 2017

I’ve written before on the manner in which nations are constrained by their geography, their resources and the behavior of other countries. Embedded in this view is the idea that political leaders themselves are not free actors. They exist in a matrix of foreign and domestic pressures that force them to behave in certain ways to rise to a leadership post, and then force them to behave in other ways to keep their post. The nation and its place in the world last. Leaders come and go.

In the United States, what constrains a president is public opinion and the institutional and bureaucratic means for managing and maximizing power. As in all countries, the precise mechanism is idiosyncratic in nature and origin. The United States doesn’t work like Russia, nor do either work like Canada. The principle of constraints is always there, but the precise constraints differ. The presidency of Donald Trump is instructive.

Trump faces three constraints that have thus far made it difficult to govern. The first is a Congress that has not been inclined to pass any of his signature legislation. The second is a civil service that in all administrations tends to block the initiatives of presidents by a process of overcomplication. Finally, there is the organization of the office of the president, a substantial bureaucracy in its own right. The primary job of the president is to manage these three entities. Trump’s problem is that, for different reasons, he has not managed them effectively – at least in the first 200 days of his presidency............ To Read More......  Geopolitics | Geopolitical Futures.