RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/mississippi-musk-finds-400-million-in-state-government-waste/

“When the sun goes down, the tide goes out, the people gather ’round and they all begin to shout, ‘Hey, hey, in the dusk, it’s a lift to beat the left with ol’ Mississippi Musk!’” Okay, okay, so it’s not as catchy as the actual song, but one thing that is catching is the Trumpian quest to cut the fat from government spending and make more efficient, and saner, use of the taxpayers’ money. In Mississippi, state auditor Shad White, also known as “Mississippi Musk,” has been hard at work against state government bloat, and what he has found is enlightening.

Ol’ Shad, as I imagine the folks down there in Clarkdale an’ Natchez call him, has found that Mississippi has wasted a staggering amount of money, and he would be the first one to tell you that it is extremely unlikely that Elvis’ home state is alone in this. Fox News reported Monday that White is releasing “a compilation of audits conducted by his office that tabulated a collective $400 million in waste over the course of his tenure.”

That compilation is as sure to be as big a hit as “Heartbreak Hotel,” at least among patriots who are tired of seeing the fruits of their labors devoured among the corrupt, incompetent, and undeserving. (By the way, that wasn’t just an Oxford comma there, folks; that was an Oxford, Mississippi comma.)

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2025-4-15-trying-to-figure-out-how-much-of-the-government-grants-goes-to-left-wing-causes-and-propaganda

Back on February 14, I had a post titled “How Much Of This Has Been Paid For By The U.S. Taxpayer?” The post asked that question about a sample of issues held dear by the Left: migrant caravans, services in the U.S. to illegal aliens, DEI and climate alarm.

Over the intervening weeks it has become clear that the general answer is “a lot of it,” but the details will be slow to emerge. For example, you can go to the website of DOGE and get an endless list of hundreds of contracts and grants that have been reduced or canceled. But they all seem to have legitimate headlines or titles, even if they were wasteful. How much of this money was getting diverted to an NGO, and from there to another NGO and then another until it ended up funding migrant caravans or pro-Palestinian propaganda or some other such cause. There is very little indication.

Certainly, you can count on the biggest left-wing grant recipients to be less than honest in defending their fiefdoms. Consider, for example, Harvard University. It’s been big news the past couple of days that Harvard has refused to knuckle under to President Trump’s demands that it rein in anti-semitism, in order to retain its many hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars of annual federal funding. Harvard President Alan Garber defended the university’s position in an email addressed to the “Harvard Community” that is publicly available here. Here’s how it starts out:

For three-quarters of a century, the federal government has awarded grants and contracts to Harvard and other universities to help pay for work that, along with investments by the universities themselves, has led to groundbreaking innovations across a wide range of medical, engineering, and scientific fields. These innovations have made countless people in our country and throughout the world healthier and safer. . . . These partnerships are among the most productive and beneficial in American history. New frontiers beckon us with the prospect of life-changing advances—from treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and diabetes, to breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, quantum science and engineering, and numerous other areas of possibility. For the government to retreat from these partnerships now risks not only the health and well-being of millions of individuals but also the economic security and vitality of our nation.

It all looks like mis-direction to me. How much of Harvard’s federal funding goes to the widely-supported subjects that Garber lists — Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, diabetes, AI, quantum science and engineering? Clearly a small minority.