February 10, 2025

Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.

Say You Want a Revolution?

By Bill Wilson

On June 4, 1989, an election was held in Poland, at the time a solid member of the Soviet bloc, a dedicated communist government that had the full support of their masters in the Soviet Kremlin.  The results were supposed to be totally predictable.  Only a third of the seats in the lower house of Parliament were at stake.  And while the new Senate of 100 members was open for election for the first time, the Senate had little power and was viewed as a “safety valve” for the rulers.  To say the powers that be thought the outcome was rigged is an understatement of historic proportions.

The outcome was a massive rejection of the government and the communist system.  Solidarity, the pro-freedom labor union, won 99 of the 100 Senate seats.  They won all of the contested lower house seats.  Within days the apparatus of the state started to melt.

And less than two years later, on March 26, 1991, the revolution took a form that announced to the world that Poland was free and that nothing would be as it had been.  On that date, the former offices of the Communist Party were turned over to the Warsaw Stock Exchange.  The building where oppression and Marxist nonsense was dispensed for decades became the home of free-wheeling business and capitalist investment.

I was reminded of this epic transfer when I read that the U.S. Customs and Border Control had taken over the lease of the former USAID offices.  Nothing could more illustrative of the “revolution” taking place in American than that.

USAID has been nothing more than an arm of the globalist elite. Run by Obama-Biden acolytes, the agency had shown utter contempt for the American people and the founding principles of the nation.  Even a cursory review of the waste and abuse conducted by this agency leaves no room for doubt; this was an anti-American, slap in the face to the American people.

And now it is gone.  And in the space where it once handed out gobs of cash to international actors with no regard for the interests of the United States, now will be housed an agency dedicated to protecting the border and sovereignty of the nation.  From hard-left international Ponzi Scheme using the tax dollars from hard working Americans to a bastion of common-sense defenders of our national integrity. 

I call that a revolution.

And it is just the beginning.  Secretary of State Marco Rubio — also serving as acting director of USAID — has pledged to conduct the same type of siring review of other overseas “grants.”  The President has ordered a review of all grants to non-governmental organizations and withdrawn the United States from two U.N. agencies.  More is sure to follow.

In a letter to Thomas Jefferson from John Adams in 1815, the issue is made plain and clear as to the real nature of revolution.  Adams wrote: “As to the history of the Revolution, my ideas may be peculiar and perhaps singular.  What do we mean by the Revolution?  The War?  That was no part of the revolution, it was an effect and consequence of it.  The Revolution was in the Minds of the People, and this was effected from 1760 to 1775.”

Adams was referring to what Lenin would later call the revolutionary consciousness — the opening of one’s eyes and seeing conditions in a different light.  Once that process begins, it is virtually impossible to stop.  It may be diverted for a time, but the inevitable conclusion will be reached.

The inevitable conclusion was reached in Poland in 1991.  And it was reached in the United States on February 6, 2025. 

How and why was it reached?  Endless wars that cost us thousands of lives and a mountain of money to achieve exactly nothing.  The transfer of millions of good paying manufacturing jobs — and the quality of life in small towns and cities throughout the nation that was based on those jobs — to places where the financial class could make more money.  The destruction of the moral code and the open assault on the children of the nation from an “education establishment” that long ago gave up on teaching.  Constant demands for more from a government that felt and acted as if it had no limits and had no intention of being accountable to anyone.

The cancel culture that attacked and destroyed anyone or any entity that did not toe the line of a new orthodoxy, a rancid mix of identity politics and raw, brute force.  A censorship regime that used the People’s taxes to drown us in propaganda.  All of this and more led directly to a revolutionary consciousness that manifest itself in November 2024.  And that is what has led us to where we are today.

It is only the beginning.  The Federal Government is just the outward-facing cog in the machine that wants nothing less than the destruction of nations and an end to the fallacy of representative government.  The culture, higher education, the protected “foundations” that spend billions to corrupt every aspect of our lives.  All of this and more are soon on the chopping block. 

So, while the faded and frayed elites cry and bemoan the state of affairs, while leftists in Congress file endless lawsuits that will not stop a process they themselves helped usher into being, while the entire establishment is like a fish in the bottom of the boat flopping around furiously to no avail, take a minute to savor the moment.  This was a long time coming but the revolution is here and it is not going away.

Bill Wilson is the former president of Americans for Limited Government.

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2025/02/say-you-want-a-revolution/

Treasury Secretary Bessent Blocked From Treasury Payment Systems. What’s Next? The Commander-In-Chief Can’t Direct The Military?

By Robert Romano

U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge Paul Engelmayer on Feb. 8 issued a temporary restraining order blocking President Donald Trump, Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent or any other political appointee from accessing the Department of Treasury’s payment systems pending hearing of a complaint filed by New York, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.

According to the ruling, President Trump, Secretary Bessent and the other defendants are barred from accessing the Treasury payment systems, which is now restricted to civil servants: “restrained from granting access to any Treasury Department payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department … other than to civil servants with a need for access to perform their job duties within the Bureau of Fiscal Services…” and “from granting access to all political appointees, special government employees, and government employees detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department, to any Treasury Department payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department…”

Further, the Judge said the defendants, that is the President who holds the executive power under Article II of the Constitution, must destroy any records of any systems already accessed “ordered to direct any person prohibited above from having access to such information, records and systems but who has had access to such information, records, and systems since January 20, 2025, to immediately destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems, if any…”

So, under the injunction, only civil servants can utilize the Treasury’s payment systems, but not the Secretary Treasury or any of his assistants or deputies if they were political appointees or are special government employees.

This, despite the fact that the Secretary of Treasury’s explicit duties under federal law — the Treasury was one of the first departments created by Congress in 1789 during the George Washington administration with Alexander Hamilton appointed as its first secretary — include receiving and keeping public money, taking and giving receipts of monies paid out and deposited in the Treasury and so forth under 31 U.S. Code Sec. 3301: “The Secretary of the Treasury shall… receive and keep public money… take receipts for money paid out by the Secretary… give receipts for money deposited in the Treasury… endorse warrants for receipts for money deposited in the Treasury… submit the accounts of the Secretary to the Comptroller General every 3 months, or more often if required by the Comptroller General; and … submit to inspection at any time by the Comptroller General of money in the possession of the Secretary.”

How can the Secretary of Treasury — who serves at the pleasure of the President — “take receipts for money paid out” if he cannot access the Treasury’s payment systems or delegate the authority to do so?

Moreover, the Secretary, and whomever he delegates the authority to, is responsible for disbursing monies under 31 U.S.C. Sec. 3121: “only officers and employees of the Department of the Treasury designated by the Secretary of the Treasury as disbursing officials may disburse public money available for expenditure by an executive agency…” and critically, “For economy and efficiency, the Secretary may delegate the authority to disburse public money to officers and employees of other executive agencies.”

But according to the judge’s injunction, now only “civil servants with a need for access to perform their job duties” can do so. We went from “officers and employees of the Department of the Treasury designated by the Secretary of the Treasury”, which include both political appointees and civil servants alike, to just civil servants.

Moreover, the Secretary of Treasury, via the disbursing officials he designates, is required to access the Treasury payment systems under 31 U.S.C. Sec. 3325: “A disbursing official in the executive branch of the United States Government shall… disburse money only as provided by a voucher certified by… the head of the executive agency concerned; or … an officer or employee of the executive agency having written authorization from the head of the agency to certify vouchers; … [and] examine a voucher if necessary to decide if it is… in proper form; … certified and approved; and … computed correctly on the facts certified…”

It is literally the job of the Secretary of Treasury, again, who serves at the pleasure of the President, and the disbursing officials to ensure that the money going out of the Treasury are going to whom they say they are going to — and are legal!

Which is exactly what President Trump ordered be done

The judge’s ruling comes as Elon Musk, who is acting as an advisor to President Trump, reported that of $100 billion a year is going out the door to individuals without any Social Security or tax identification numbers. Is that the “proper form”? Is it even “certified”? Surely, somebody “approved” those payments but are rubber stamps the norm?

But according to the judge, neither the President nor the Treasury Secretary and his designees can do a thing about it.

What’s next? A federal judge ruling that President Trump as commander in chief can no longer direct the military — say, to the southern border — via the Secretary of Defense?

These appear to be flagrant power grabs by the judiciary, which is now purporting to assume the executive functions of the government that belong solely to the President under Article II of the Constitution. Judge Engelmayer, nor any other judge, may perform the duties of the Secretary of Treasury — or any other department — including who the Secretary may delegate duties to under the President’s executive power. What a joke.

Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2025/02/treasury-secretary-blocked-from-treasury-payment-systems-whats-next-the-commander-in-chief-cant-direct-the-military/