Streetwise Professor

Trump’s version of Operation Bagration has started bagging rats. Or, more exactly, sacking bureaucrats.

First to feel the blow are the staff at USAID. Musk’s DOGE landed there with two big feet and released a stream of information regarding the agency’s profligate, inappropriate, and frankly un-American spending. One that attracted a lot of attention is the amount of money USAID showered on media organizations, including–get this–the BBC, which admitted receiving 8 percent of its funding from USAID. Yes, USAID NOT UKAID. Apparently license fees coercively extracted from Brits are not enough to fund the Beeb, so it had to suckle at the American teat. Sorry, old chum, but weaning time is nigh.

Another beneficiary was Politico, AKA Tiger Beat for the political class. In a huff, Politico (in a “note to our readers“) said “this is not funding. It is a transaction.”

So is prostitution. (The analogy is exact).

Hard on the heels of these disclosures, newly installed Secretary of State Marco Rubio (a) defenestrated the head of USAID, (b) installed himself as head, and (c) (and this is the best part) fired 9000 USAID staffers, leaving a rump of 600, which is probably more than enough to do what USAID is supposed to do, whereas the 9000 were engaged in what it shouldn’t do.

I am sure the choice of USAID was no coincidence, comrades. First, it almost certainly represents the most egregious examples of spending abuse, and especially of the type that drive people mental (e.g., condoms for Gaza). Second, this is an indirect attack (a la Liddell-Hart or JFC Fuller) on the NGO-Think Tank-Deep State nexus, which is the center of gravity for the anti-Trump axis. What DOGE has revealed is that USAID is a massive money laundering operation with layers of cutouts that directs money to subversion efforts abroad and at home (e.g., through facilitation of illegal immigration). Its ostensible purpose of feeding starving waifs and fighting contagious diseases in benighted regions is merely a cover for its real purpose.

Next on the agenda? Apparently the Department of Education. And academia generally, as this Musk post signals:

Can you believe that universities with tens of billions in endowments were siphoning off 60% of research award money for “overhead”?

What a ripoff! https://t.co/RRTIMKTVYN

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 8, 2025

Man, can I relate. More than 30 years ago I secured a grant–$100K, a huge amount at the time. (NB: Private grantor, not the government). The University of Michigan sucked up every dime. Every single dime. I saw nothing. Lesson learned. I said fuck that. Never again. I’m not going to be a chump for university bureaucracy. But the US taxpayers have been for years.

These “indirect cost” allocations have subsidized the grotesque administrative bloat that I have witnessed during my years in academia. As recently as last week I have seen what this metastasizing academic administrative state does: make it more difficult to do beneficial things, not easier.

So chop away!

Other agencies are feeling the knife. EPA staffers are supposedly upset that 1000 are to be let go.

I’m upset too! Why only 1000?

DC is in an uproar. All of the legacy news outlets are running stories about the terror stalking the corridors of administrative power.

It’s kind of funny actually. They act as if it’s a bad thing, and that we beyond the Beltway feel their pain. LOL.

“We at OPM are just as frustrated, confused, and traumatized as the rest of America.”

Sorry to break it to you, but the rest of America isn't traumatized. Giddy is more like it. https://t.co/4HprQdmerH

— streetwiseprof (@streetwiseprof) February 8, 2025

Among the shrieks are “NOBODY ELECTED ELON MUSK!” and “THIS IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL.”

Well, nobody elected any of these bureaucrats. Musk and his DOGE minions are the designated agents of the man who was elected as chief executive.

Which gets to the nub of the issue of constitutionality. The real constitutional issue is how is it remotely possible that employees of the executive branch are independent of the chief executive, who by the Constitution exclusively wields executive authority. The whole idea of a bureaucracy independent of the chief executive is at best a constitutional deformity, and really a constitutional monstrosity.

One issue is the president’s authority to direct spending, or more precisely, to stop spending on, say, queer studies in the 3rd World. Here the Government Party is hoist on its own petard. Trump is going after expenditures not explicitly authorized by Congress. In essence, shirking its responsibility, Congress has shoveled money at agencies like USAID and said “knock yourselves out! Go to town! Have a spree!”, which the agencies obliged like a drunken sailor who found a wad of $100s lying on the sidewalk.

Yes, Congress appropriated money for the agencies. And yes, there will be a court challenge to Trump’s actions. But he has a strong case: you gave money to these agencies with no strings attached, that is, with discretion on how it is to be spent. Fine. I will exercise my discretion by not spending it. And certainly not on funding NGOs (whom nobody elected, BTW).

This is a fight he wants. It is a fight we should want. And it is a fight he can win, both in the courts and politically.

Another reason that Trump started with USAID is no doubt the fact that it is the creation of an executive order by JFK. So it is different than the Department of Education, or the Department of Energy, and the like. He’s saying, in effect, what the executive giveth, the executive can taketh away.

There is no doubt panic in the streets of London and Birmingham.

And there is definitely panic in the streets of DC. (I’ve read that housing prices have fallen by about 1/7th). Which, like napalm in the morning, I love . . . because it smells like victory.