Tea at Trianon: The Green Slush Fund

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, February 24, 2025

The Green Slush Fund

From Amuse on X:

The Biden administration’s funding of Power Forward Communities (PFC) represents an example of political patronage at its worst. More than just a case of inefficient spending, this $2 billion grant epitomizes an outright transfer of public wealth to Democratic operatives without the faintest concern for financial accountability. The notion that this was anything other than political cronyism defies both common sense and the available evidence.
To understand the gravity of this case, one must begin with the nature of PFC itself. Incorporated in August 2023 under the name Clean Communities Investment Partnership, Inc., PFC was a nonexistent entity until it was rapidly rebranded just in time to become eligible for the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. This was not a long-standing nonprofit with a history of serving communities. It had no financial track record, no independent funding, and no demonstrable expertise. Yet, in a stunningly short period, it was granted an astronomical sum of $2 billion. This alone is enough to raise serious questions about the legitimacy of the process.
PFC’s own IRS Form 1023 application betrays its true purpose. It did not propose a diverse funding strategy or a plan to cultivate private investment. Rather, it explicitly stated that if it did not receive government funding, it might simply dissolve. In other words, this is an organization designed solely to collect and distribute taxpayer funds. Unlike traditional charities that work to secure donations from a variety of sources, PFC was built from the ground up as a taxpayer-funded operation. Such an entity is not a nonprofit in any meaningful sense of the word—it is an extension of the federal government masquerading as a private organization. (Read more.)