Substance From A US Vice President

This is moralistic garbage, which is unfortunately the rhetorical currency of the globalists because they have nothing else to say.

For three years, President Trump and I have made two simple arguments: first, the war wouldn't have started if President Trump was in office;… https://t.co/xH33s6X5yf

— JD Vance (@JDVance) February 20, 2025

When I think about vice presidents, I automatically think about Kamala Harris, Mike Pence, and Joe Biden. Dick Cheney at the time was an exception, but his reputation is steadily declining. Then we're back to Al Gore, Dan Quayle, Bush père, Walter Mondale, and Spiro Agnew. Contrast all these with J D Vance's remarks in the post above about the situation on the ground in Ukraine:

. . . neither Europe, nor the Biden administration, nor the Ukrainians had any pathway to victory. This was true three years ago, it was true two years ago, it was true last year, and it is true today.

. . . President Trump is dealing with reality, which means dealing with facts. And here are some facts:

. . . Number two, Russians have a massive numerical advantage in manpower and weapons in Ukraine, and that advantage will persist regardless of further Western aid packages. Again, the aid is *currently* flowing.

. . . Number five, the conflict has placed--and continues to place--stress on tools of American statecraft, from military stockpiles to sanctions (and so much else). We believe the continued conflict is bad for Russia, bad for Ukraine, and bad for Europe. But most importantly, it is bad for the United States.

Given the above facts, we must pursue peace, and we must pursue it now. President Trump ran on this, he won on this, and he is right about this. It is lazy, ahistorical nonsense to attack as "appeasement" every acknowledgment that America's interest must account for the realities of the conflict.

There's an intriguing context here as well. One of his points in his remarks above is that the Western Europeans "pursue domestic policies (on migration and censorship) that offend the sensibilities of most Americans". This is simply an extension of his Munich address last week:

Vice President JD Vance set off a firestorm in Munich when he chastised European leaders for their hostility toward free speech, their democratic deficit and their poorly conceived immigration policies.

Vance’s shocking words — and the prospects of American disengagement — were so traumatic, they prompted French President Emmanuel Macron to cobble together an emergency summit of European leaders, where the participants promptly agreed on nothing.

. . . After three months in the shadow of the omnipresent President Trump, the Munich conference was Vance’s first opportunity in the spotlight on his own. And he was not about to let it pass with some anodyne word salad. He took the opportunity to make it into a major address on the hot-button political and cultural issues of free speech and immigration.

Here's an op-ed at USA Today:

Watching Harris speak to a crowd or give an interview made me feel humiliation for our country. I'd think, this is our best? This is who we brought to the world stage to represent us?

After listening to Vice President JD Vance defend free speech and blast censorship last week in Europe, I don't feel like that anymore. Vance has brought clarity, inspiration and leadership to the vice presidency, and he took it on the road to show Europeans who America is now and why we hold Western values so dear.

Vance is the kind of vice president Americans deserve.

. . . Have you ever been in a toxic, dysfunctional relationship then met someone healthy and new and thought, "Wow, I didn't realize how bad things were until now?" That is how millions of Americans feel now that Vance is representing the United States here and abroad.

. . . Americans deserve a vice president who is a powerful envoy − an ambassador of our ideas.

On one hand, Vance is something completely new, or almost -- Theodore Roosevelt as vice president under McKinley might be comparable, and McKinley is at least arguably comparable to Trump:

William McKinley (January 29, 1843 – September 14, 1901) was the 25th president of the United States, serving from 1897 until his assassination in 1901. A member of the Republican Party, he led a realignment that made Republicans largely dominant in the industrial states and nationwide for decades. He successfully led the U.S. in the Spanish–American War, overseeing a period of American expansionism, with the annexations of Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, and Hawaii. McKinley also rejected inflationary plans such as free silver in favor of keeping the nation on the gold standard, and raised protective tariffs.

But while Roosevelt rose as a reforming politician and active media figure in the years before he became vice president -- and even during the 1900 campaign, when he enthusiastically supported McKinley as his running mate -- according to Wikipedia, he lost interesst in the vice presidency.

The office was a powerless sinecure and did not suit Roosevelt's aggressive temperament. Roosevelt's six months as vice president were uneventful and boring for a man of action. He had no power; he presided over the Senate for a mere four days before it adjourned.

Vance, on the other hand, appears to be playing the office for all it's worth. I'm not sure if we've ever seen anything like this.

Kickbacks?

Trump and Musk have been doing a lot of teasing about the hundreds of billions that are going to the wrong places. but so far. they haven't come out with many specifics. One of his latest targets has been Ukraine:

President Zelenskyy said last week that he doesn’t know where half of the money is that we gave him. We gave them, I believe, US$350 billion, but let’s say it’s something less than that. But it's a lot. . . Where is all the money that’s been given?

I've never seen an accounting of it.

Sundance comments at Conservative Treehouse,

President Trump seems increasingly close to exposing the truth about the Ukraine war and how U.S. politicians are motivated in their influence positions by the financial benefits of the conflict.

Sundance himself has been naming names. Observing the European security meeting in Munich last week, he said,

The U.S. congressional delegation (CODEL) to the Munich Security Conference consists of key Republicans (DeceptiCons) and corrupt Democrats who fund the Ukraine money laundry. A process that includes kick-backs of the proceeds to the bank accounts of the Republicans and Democrats present.

. . . All of these congressional delegation members receive kickbacks as part of their indulgence package, many sit on the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

Senators include: Chris Murphy, Roger Wicker, Sheldon Whitehouse, Lindsey Graham, John Cornyn, Jeanne Shaheen, Chris Coons, Thom Tillis, Chris Van Hollen, Joni Ernst, Elissa Slotkin, Adam Schiff, and one more I cannot quite make out, possibly Peter Welch.

Every one of these senators are working against the Trump administration, openly or under cover. Every one!

Roger Wicker was Pete Hegseth’s legislative confirmation guide and the republican Senator who went bananas yesterday when Secretary Hegseth said Ukraine would not gain NATO membership. You will easily remember Joni Ernst immediate opposition to Hegseth also.

Sundance refers to remarks by Trump at a February 12 press conference:

President Trump notes the corruption being outlined is of such a massive number, “billions and billions”, that there is no way these payments do not include kickbacks, likely to politicians. Trump then turns to AG Bondi and remarks that this is something the AG will likely have to look at. “There’s a lot of things to look at Pam.”

. . . “Nobody cares” within the system, President Trump remarks. Saying if that attitude permeates long enough the government “loses control” of the payment process. This appears to be the general finding within the DOGE review of various agencies. The “waste, fraud and abuse,” is a feature of the current process, not a flaw. It appears to be purposeful and happening by design of the runaway government created in the aftermath of Obama and Biden.

President Trump notes the judicial challenges to the DOGE review essentially, give the corrupt officials “time to cover their tracks.”

So far, the legacy media has insisted that these claims are without merit. For instance, Forbes wrote,

Musk claimed while taking questions from reporters at the White House on Tuesday that federal employees, including those at USAID, “managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars” while working for the federal government, accusing them of profiting off of taxpayer money. He did not name names, but said “quite a few people,” whom he called “fraudsters,” were receiving “kickbacks.” Musk offered no evidence of who is getting rich or by how much, and he did not elaborate on specific instances of any criminal activity, including fraud.

. . . There’s no evidence to suggest USAID has engaged in money laundering. On Saturday afternoon, Musk reposted a claim on X that suggested USAID was a “form of money laundering tax payers money into far-left organizations,” adding: “Absolutely,” though neither poster offered sources or factual information. Although Republicans have criticized the organization for alleged wasteful spending, there’s no evidence that USAID was engaging in criminal behavior to support left-wing organizations.

Here's why I think there's something behind the tease -- look at the senators who've been falling into line to confirm every one of Trump's cabinet level nominees. Take, for instance.Joni Ernst:

Ernst, as an advocate for women serving in combat roles and for cracking down on sexual assault in the military, was initially viewed as a Republican senator who would be extremely skeptical of Hegseth’s nomination, given his past statements on women in combat.

“I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn’t made us more effective. Hasn’t made us more lethal. Has made fighting more complicated,” Hegseth told podcast host Shawn Ryan in early November.

. . . Senate observers thought Ernst, herself a rape survivor, might have a hard time voting for Hegseth after it was revealed that a woman accused him of sexual assault at a Republican women’s convention in Monterrey, Calif., in 2017.

But notice that Ernst appears on Sundance's list of senators he suspects of getting kickbacks from Ukraine at the link above. She may have wanted to assert her independence from the Orange Man, or she might have wanted to get something more in return for a yes vote, but suddenly she was with the program. And Murkowski and Collins were on board as well -- the only exception has been Mitch McConnell, which is not to say he's sinless -- far from it, I'm sure. But he's a sick man, and Trump can get along without him.

This is not the Trump of 2017. He has something on every Republican, and every one of them has been told this.

How Not To Think About History

The problem with Glenn Reynolds and the other contributors to the Instapundit blog is that they're intellectual welterweights at best. Reynolds is a transhumanist who used to talk a lot about Ray Kurzweil and the Singularity, not so muich lately, probably because like the melting of the polar ice, it was supposed to happen but hasn't. He's also a libertarian, which is a different way of saying he's an Ayn Rand cultist. I've never been able to find out if he has a contract to have his head frozen when he dies.

The other day I ran across a link on that site to an odd essay purporting to explain what's happening, “Trump marks the overdue end of the Long Twentieth Century”, which is actually just a link to yet another essay, the sort of thing they love at Instapundit.

The 125 years between the French Revolution in 1789 and the outbreak of WWI in 1914 was later described as the “Long Nineteenth Century”. The phrase recognized that to speak of “the nineteenth century” was to describe far more than a specific hundred-year span on the calendar; it was to capture the whole spirit of an age: a rapturous epoch of expansion, empire, and Enlightenment, characterized by a triumphalist faith in human reason and progress. That lingering historical spirit, distinct from any before or after, was extinguished in the trenches of the Great War.

So wait a moment. World War I happened because the 19th century went on too long? (I used to get in a lot of trouble in college and grad school for asking questions like this in class.) Eventually I found some contrarian professors who explained that it was a serious error to hypostatize centuries, to treat an abstract entity as if it has real qualities. For example, the 18th century was the Age of Reason. Thus Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) was a rationalist, which he definitely was not.

Or David Hume (1711-1776), who said, “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions”. The essay continues,

R.R. Reno opens his 2019 book Return of the Strong Gods by quoting a young man who laments that “I am twenty-seven years old and hope to live to see the end of the twentieth century”. His paradoxical statement captures how the twentieth century has also extended well past its official sell-by date in the year 2000.

So Trump happened because the 20th century went on too long, but that was only because the 19th century started early but ran late.

The spirit of the Long Twentieth could not be more different from that which preceded it. In the wake of the horrors inflicted by WWII, the leadership classes of America and Europe understandably made “never again” the core of their ideational universe. They collectively resolved that fascism, war, and genocide must never again be allowed to threaten humanity.

But wasn't it a major theme of much literature in or about the inter-war period the disillusionment with the noble cause of the "war to end wars"? What about Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and its epigraph from Gertrude Stein, "You are all a lost generation", or Whittaker Chambers in Witness describing the formative effect his travels in post-Versailles Germany had on him? In fact, there is a whole post-World War II literary school that simply echoes the 1920s cynicism, Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead and Joseph Heller's Catch-22.

In fact, Paul Fussell in The Great War and Modern Memory discusses in detail the effect of the widespread destruction on literary disillusionment, but one of the key literary works he cites as an example is Heller's 1961 Catch-22, set in World War II with an overall Marxist-Leninist subtext. Indeed, the essayist who traces 20th-century thought to "never again" idealism completely neglects Viet Nam-era disillusionment with establishment foreign policy.

On one hand, the historical view that the Zeitgeist must eventually glance at the calendar and update itself, especially if it's getting late, is an absurdity. On the other hand, if the explanation for Trump isn't that the 20th century went on too long, what's a better explanation?

I still have to fall back on the populist writer Ferdinand Lundberg and The Rich and the Super-Rich. His explanation for the state of American society from the post-Civil War period onward is that it had been dominated by an oligarchical class made up largely of the extended families and descendents of the industrial robber barons. They were in a position to control media, dominate intellectual life by endowing foundations, universities, and private schools, control religious institutions like The Episcopal Church, and place themselves or their hirelings at policy government levels in both parties.

There was a strong consensus among this class on the social agenda. It was dominated by the late 19th century paradigm of Fabian socialism, whereby the upper class, driven by fear of the Marxist proletarian revolution, would temporize and co-opt working class demands with gradual but meaningless reforms whose intent was to provide an illusion of progress while keeping the upper class in place. A secondary goal after the civil rights movement was to temporize with the threat of a helter-skelter race war by a program of token concessions to minorities.

It seems to me that the explanation for Trump is the loss of this consensus among the upper class. One factor is the receding fear of a world proletarian revolution due to the collapse of the Marxist-Leninist model by the 1990s. Another is that the expense of both the Cold War style military strategies and Fabian social programs has become unsustainable. The token concessions to minorities have also proven ineffective, while they reduce the morale and productivity of the working class overall.

This reassessment is by no means unanimous, in part because a substantial part of the upper class recognizes that whatever happens to the population at large, they can still pay off whomever needs to be paid off, and within their gated communities and exclusive condos, life will go on. What seems to have occurred, though, is that a new wealthy class has come up with fewer ties to the established foundations, universities, and other institutions. It's new money that comes from another generation of technical innovation that makes the older consensus less relevant.

But the older consensus dates from the 19th century, not the post-World War II period. It seems to me that Trump happened because he was able to form a working majority among the wealthy that would entertain a new paradigm that as yet isn't fully formed.

Captain Steeeve Takes A Video Down

I notice that a popular airline pilot who has a YouTube channel with 309,000 subscribers, Captain Steeeve, was forced to take down a video that covered the September 29 Reagan National collision:

We recently took down a major video that we had put up on the channel, and many of you have noticed that, and I wanted to address that topic. I'm an active pilot for a major aiirline in this country, and I have to be sensitive to those concerns in my life as well, and all of us are aware of the recent events in aviation, they are headline news still to this day, and I just want to let you know at this channel, we're monitoring those events.

But that one video in particular I was asked to take down, and I gladly took it down. Now, over the years I taught a course in the Navy on leadership, and one of the lessons I taught in that course was, never forget about the"whos" behind the "whats". Now, what does that mean? That means that there are people and relationships and things associated with the "whats", the tasks, the things in our lives. A video on a YouTube channel is just that. It's a thing. It's something that you can post, it's something that you can take down, it's something that you can look at, it's something that you can view, but at the end of the day, it's nothing more than a thing.

There are alwaqys "whos" associated with the "whats" or the things in our lives, and the "whos" are much more important, so shortly after that video was posted, many of you watched it, I was approached and asked to take the video down out of concern for the "whos", and you know what, it was easy for me to say yes to that, because I will always, will always care about the "whos" more than the "whats", and so now you know.

He's said in almost as many words that some powerful people, some "whos", saw his video, a "what", didn't like it, and were in a position to threaten his job if he didn't take it down. Since he liked his job, and the video was just a "what", he took the video down. It sounds to me as though the "whos" talked to another "who" at his airline, and the airline "who" gave the ultimatum. As they say,

From the pilot’s perspective, the chief pilot at a big airline is like the school’s principal.

If you can go your whole career without the chief knowing your name, you’re probably doing something right.

Pilots usually only get face time with the chief if something goes wrong and they’re in big trouble!

It sounds very much to me as if the chief pilot spoke with Captain Steve. I saw the video at the time, and oddly enough, someone copied it, and it's still out there. A Facebook user has another copy. As they say, the internet is forever. Here it is:

The key item that seems to have the "whos" all riled up is at 2:10:

This is not the final word on it, but what I think happened was, it was at night, there's several airplanes lined up, there is that Blue Streak 5342, which is the CRJ that they ran into, right behind them just a few miles is American 3130. Everybody has their lights on as they're coming in, I believe the helicopter looked at the American 3130 and said, "I've got the traffic in sight", and they never saw the CRJ, the airplane that was right next to them. That's my conjecture on what happens.

If you think about it, this is pretty mild stuff to start with -- all he's saying is the helo crew made a pretty understandable miatake, and he isn't singling anyone out or directly blaming anyone. Beyond that, he's on perfectly solid legal ground, he's made it clear this isn't the final word, this is his conjecture. But even beyond that, nobody in the helo has standing to sue for defamation, because they're all dead:

Under common law and according to the definition of this defamation, deceased individuals cannot be defamed. Defamation is defined as an act or statement that damages one’s reputation. The dead do not have reputations to damage. The memory of a deceased person can be damaged, but this is not addressed under the tort of defamation.

But there's another puzzle here. I linked to Juan Browne's February 3 video update on the collision in this post. That video is still up, but it's far more directly critical of the helicopter crew. As I quoted in that post, Browne said,

So just within some 16 or so seconds of the collision, once again, PAT25 confirms that he still has the CRJ in sight. requesting visual separation. They're just saying this automatically, "request visual separation have him in sight", as if it's a normalization of deviance, it's like this is the way they've been doing it all the time, and he's convinced that he's got tthe correct aircraft in sight, when in fact he does not.

What he's saying isn't much different from what Captain Steve said, the helo didn't actually see the CRJ, but he characterizes it as "normalization of deviance", much harsher than anything Captain Steve said. But apparently Juan Browne's chief pilot hasn't been on his case, even two weeks after that video. Why not?

• Maybe the Lobach family couldn't discover which airline Browne flies for. Unlikely.
• Maybe Browne's chief pilot has Browne's back, unlike Captain Steve's. Credible, but I'm not sure.
• Maybe Browne answered you can't defame the dead, and threatened to countersue the Lobachs for tortious interference. Well, maybe. That's what I'd do, but that's just me.
• Maybe Browne's chief pilot told him he can keep the video up, but don't post about the collision again. Probably this is most likely.

On one hand, the reality for the Lobachs is that the collision and Rebecca's role in it is so much in the news that trying to stifle commentary is going to be like King Cnut trying to sweep back the tide. They couldn't even get copies of Captain Steve's video taken down, even if they got him to delete the original. Beyond that, other videos like the one I linked in yestrerday's post, are even harsher than Juan Browne or Captain Steve -- that one yesterday says it's doubtful the NTSB can be trusted to make an unbiased report.

This is probably a correct assessment, given the Lobach family is apparently able to find out who certain YouTubers work for, talk to their employers, get the employers to listen, and threaten their jobs. They are probably as aware as anyone that they can't threaten everyone. For instance, I'm retired, and even if they threatened to go after my pension or my bank, I'd simply have my attorney explain to their attorney about tortious interference.

But that's me. A lot of oher people will just get the mesaage to keep quiet, and that's what the Lobachs want. Nevertheless, I do get the feeling the Lobachs took Captain Steeve as a good first target pour encourager les autres -- he seems like a nebbish to me.

"I Have Control"

Here's the usual disclaimer: all I know about aviation comes from watching Air Disasters and Juan Browne's YouTube channel, which means I know zilch. I'm not a pilot, I've never had flying lessons, and I've never had a check ride. Nevertheless, a couple of things keep bothering me about Chairman Homendy's briefing Friday.

From Air Disasters, I at least know that several landmark crash investigations have centered on crew resource management, including the responsibility of the pilot monitoring (as opposed to the pilot flying) to speak up forcefully, and in extreme cases take control, if the pilot flying is doing something really dumb. So this is a potential issue when looking at the January 29 collision.

There's a closely related issue that this was a check ride, which Chairman Homendy made clear in Friday's briefing. In this case, the pilot monitoring was Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, who was also the instructor pilot. This page outlines the respective duties of the p[ilot flying and the pilot monitoring:

the pilot flying is responsible for flying the aircraft. The pilot monitoring, or PM, consequently takes over all other tasks that do not relate to flying the aeroplane. . . . the PM constantly monitors all instruments for their proper functionality and accuracy. Most importantly, he or she oversees the plane’s flightpath and altitude [my emphasis], and if there is any deviation from the target values.

A flight instructor doing a check ride would be even more focused on the instruments. I went looking for any information I could find on how a flight instructor conducting a check ride would react to the pilot being evaluated remaining well above the 200 foot maximum altitude for over four minutes. The best I could find was this forum, where actual flight instructors gave opinions, for instance:

There are only a few reasons why an instructor would have to take the controls on an IFR [instrument flight rules] training flight, and being off your altitude isn't usually one of them. I can usually accomplish the same result by saying one word - "altitude". Depending on the stage of training, and whether we are actually on an IFR flight plan, or in actual IMC [instrument meteorological conditions], or not, I might prompt the student at 100 feet, or it might be more. But I don't think I've ever felt the need to take the controls for an altitude issue.

But the helicopter here was under visual flight rules in an extremely dense airspace, and it was consistently above the maximum altitude by 100 feet or more. The actual outcome indicates that the pilot was showing extremely poor judgment, was not correcting altitude when it was twice pointed out, and the result was a disaster. Juan Browne hasn't chimed in yet over Friday's briefing -- I suspect he wants to avoid controversey -- but I did find one skeptical aviation YouTuber:

He invited commenters to give their opinions on who was responsible, and there were several replies that I thought were informed and insightful:

The NTSB mentioned that the Instructor Pilot (IP) and the Pilot Flying (PF) had an altitude disagreement of 100' before entering the severely restricted area with a 200' ceiling. Was it therefore safe to proceed for a training flight into such a busy area? Simple answer, No. They should have turned away from DCA airspace if they had such a fundamental instrument disagreement when they were expected to operate at or below only 200'.

. . . Layman question: why, when there was an acknowledged 100 ft difference in altimeter reading between the instructor/examiner and the exam taker/pilot, did the instructor not abort the mission and fail the exam at that moment?

. . . I see it in the engineering field and most other field but extremely so in the military. Look at the pictures of the female captain pilot being evaluated and ask yourself how she climbed the ranks so fast? Then listen to the voice of the evaluator, you can assume that he is older. The female's career was dependant on passing the re-evaluation . . . the male pilot instructor was influenced by the wrong joy stick . . .

My own question before I looked at this YouTube and the comments was why the instructor pilot didn't say, "I have control", the way they say it should be done on Air Disasters, take control, and bring the helicopter down to 200 feet. But the layman question above is even better: if there was that much of an instrument disparity, it was time to abort the mission.

It also sounds to me as though Cpt Lobach was already, by any objective standard, failing the check ride well before circumstances inarguably stepped in to fail her, whatever the instructor pilot might have said. The version of the cockpit flight recording given by Chairman Homendy is probobly heavily redacted, and we don't have any replay of the actual voices as we did with the tower and the CRJ.

Tone of voice could have added a lot -- what was the actual disagreement when CWO Eaves said they were at 400 feet and Cpt Lobach said no, it was only 300? It might not have been an instrument discrepancy at all, Cpt Lobach may just have been irritated that CWO Eaves was criticizing her in any way.

My own view is pretty much that Cpt Lobach was politically connected, she was a White House aide, and she expected her career to go well. CWO Eaves, an enlisted man, was in an uncomfortable situation, and it would not have gone well for his career if he failed a favored officer on a check ride. In fact, my surmise is that Cpt Lobach was not well regarded by her peers or her subordinates, and the job of giving her the expected pass on her check ride wasn't exactly a plum assignment.

By far his best option, if he didn't want to fail her as he should have, would have been to abort the mission due to the instrument discrepancy and leave the job of passing her to someone else. He may have seen reasons why he couldn't do this, and his only alternative was to let her keep flying and hope for the best. I suspect the YouTuber in the link above is correct in his assessment that the NTSB will never discuss anything like this in its final report.

Captain Wonderful Failed Her Check Ride

I've been deeply skeptical of the NTSB's investigation of the January 29 collision of a helicopter and a jet landing at Reagan National Airport on January 29, especially after Todd Inman's remarks at the February 1 press conference implying disagreements among the investigators over releasing data on the helicopter's altitude. This has been a sensitive question since the investigation began, and it clearly continues to be, since the NTSB held an update press conference yesterday afternoon, the traditional Friday bad-news dump.

Here's a transcript of Chairman Homendy's remarks at the press conference. There isn't a whole lot that's new, and what is, is buried within the old. ABC News gives the approved version of the briefing:

There's no indication the U.S. Army Black Hawk crew could tell there was an impending collision before its devastating crash with an American Airlines plane in Washington, D.C., National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Jennifer Homendy said Friday as the agency continues to investigate the cause of the accident.

The helicopter crew may have had bad information on the altitude from their altimeter, as the pilots had differing altitudes in the seconds [actually four minutes] before the crash, the NTSB said.

Wait a moment. The transcript of the control tower voice recording that was made available on February 1 has the instructor pilot responding twice to the tower after its inquiries, "aircraft in sight, request visual separation". It's certainly possible that the instructor pilot didn't see the jet, or mistook another set of lights for the accident jet, but if he didn't see anything at all, he was telling a falsehood, and if he saw the wronkg jet, his judgment is in question. Chairman Homendy doesn't address either issue.

The highly respected aviation YouTuber Juan Browne, as I've noted, seems to think the repeated "aircraft in sight, request visual separation" were just pro forma responses to the tower to get them off his back so he could continue on his flight path -- in other words, a falsehood.

Chairman Homendy makes the point that the maximum altitude for the helicopter when passing over the Memorial Bridge should have been 200 feet. However, at 8:45:30, the instructor pilot told Cpt Lobach that they were at 300 feet altitude at that location. But at 8:44:27, the instructor pilot had already noted to Cpt Lobach that the helicopter was at 300 feet and needed to descend to 200. For some reason, this descent never took place, even though the instructor pilot clearly expressed the need for it.

In fact, Chairman Homendy says at 8:43:48, the pilot flying told the instructor pilot that they were at 300 feet, while the instructor pilot said they were at 400. The chairman points out that there was no discussion of the discrepancy, says they do not know why there was a discrepancy, and they're exploring this. However, this gives a two-minute span between the Key Bridge and the Memorial Bridge where at least the instructor pilot understood they were at 300 feet, should have been at 200, but there was no discussion about this. If anything, if Cpt Lobach thought they were at 400 feet, she should have seen even more urgency to descend.

At the February 1 press conference, it was established that the jet's altimeter said it was at 325 feet when the collision took place. Yesterday, Chiarman Homendy updated the radar altitude for the jet at 313 feet, and the helicopter at 278 feet. (Some sources indicate that radar altitude is less accurate over water.)

This would be a very strong indication that Cpt Lobach had understood the helicoper was too high for at least four minutes before the collision at 8:47:59, irrespective of the exact altitude of either aircraft or any discrepancy in the helo's altimeters. The fact that the collision occurred indicates that the helo's altimiters were close enough, and the pilots were fully aware this was too high, whatever the exact numbers may have been. This would also be irrespective of whether the helo crew had parts of the ATC transmissions blocked when they were keying the mic. The ABC report nevertheless continues,

"We are looking at the possibility of there may be bad data," Homendy said.

The transmission from the tower that instructed the helicopter to go behind the plane may not have been heard by the crew because the pilot may have keyed her radio at the same second and stepped on the transmission from ATC, the NTSB added.

. . . The Black Hawk was conducting an annual training flight and night vision goggle check ride for one of the pilots [namely, Cpt Lobach] at the time of the crash, Homendy said. This is a practical exam that a pilot must pass to be qualified to perform specific duties, she said.

Here's my question. This was a check ride that Cpt Lobach had to pass. During the ride, more than four minutes before the collision, the instructor pilot doing the check noted that the pilot flying was too high, and indeed, although she had four minutes to get down to 200 feet altitude, she never did this. At the same time, the instructor pilot inexplicably told the ATC twice that he had the jet in sight and was maintaining visual separation, which he clearly was not.

Was Cpt Lobach already failing her check ride even before she ran into the jet? If she wasn't, was the instructor pilot complicit in conducting a silly charade that was going to pass her no matter what?

This, of course, doesn't appear to be anything like a full transcript of the helo's CVR from the whole flight. My surmise, during the two-week period before the NTSB would release even a redacted portion of the CVR, was that its contents would prove deeply embarrassing to the Army and the memory of Cpt Lobach. For now, I think I was right, and I would bet there's still more to come.

Are We Getting The Truth From Catholic Charities?

Up to now, I've been following what seems to be the received total of something over $100 million as the annual amount the Catholic Church gets in US government grants. For instance, Vice President Vance used this number in a speech reported by America magazine:

And I think that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops needs to actually look in the mirror a little bit and recognize that when they receive over $100 million to help resettle illegal immigrants, are they worried about humanitarian concerns? Or are they actually worried about their bottom line?

I mentioned the same amount in this post, but so far I haven't been able to find the source, and the vice president doesn't list it, either. The problem I'm beginning to have is that the actual amounts in grants from all US government sources to the Catholic Church are starting to look much, much larger. I linked to a story from Just the News in yesterday's post that said in part:

. . . For example, the endowment associated with Catholic Charities for the Diocese of Fort Worth in Texas experienced a more than 34 fold increase in funding from government grants from FY 2021 to FY 2023. In FY 2021, at the beginning of the Biden administration, the group had only received $11.7 million in grant money. By FY 2023, that amount had ballooned to $401.7 million. A majority of that funding was earmarked for a “Refugee and Entrant Assistance” program, according to the financial records.

. . . For example, Catholic Charities of Louisville, Kentucky also experienced a similar growth in funding over the same period. In FY 2021, the group took in roughly $10 million in federal grants, but by FY 2023, that number had exploded to about $122 million.

. . . Catholic Charities San Antonio, which received more than $27 million in total from FEMA, was accused by a Democratic congressman of misusing funds it received for the program by purchasing airplane tickets for migrants in its care.

Clearly if the Diocese of Fort Worth alone got $401.7 million in FY 2023 and Catholic Charities of Louisville, KY got $122 million, the number going to the US Church as a whole is far larger than $100 million, and whatever sources are citing this number are disingenuous. So I went looking farther and found this article in City Journal from February 4:

The Catholic Church has long positioned itself as an advocate for poor immigrants and provided them with services in the United States. But for decades, including during the great migration waves of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, much of the church’s work was charitable in nature, funded by contributions from parishioners. Over the past 50 years or so, however, Catholic Church-affiliated organizations, especially Catholic Charities, have become government contractors with a stake in a growing welfare state. Even before the last four years of explosive immigration, Catholic Charities nationwide derived more than six of every ten dollars of revenues from government contracts. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Catholic Charities have been among the biggest beneficiaries.

. . . The Biden administration used radical changes in immigration policies, especially through its so-called parole program, to justify a vast expansion of federal spending on migrant services. . . . Large chunks of this money made its way to nonprofits as discretionary grants from the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, which rose from $33 million in 2021 to $400 million in 2022 and then $616 million in 2023, according to Open the Books.

. . . This federal money, often heavily supplemented by local government contracts, has led to a startling growth in groups like Catholic Charities across the country in just four years. The ProPublica database of the financial filings of nonprofits lists 234 Catholic Charities entities around the U.S. The top 25 had revenues of slightly more than $2 billion in 2023, the last year filings are available for all groups. That’s an almost 50 percent increase, a gain of about $660 million, in four years. Some of these groups have been utterly transformed. Catholic Charities Fort Worth has become one of the nation’s largest local Catholic groups, with revenues of $289 million in 2023, compared with just $32 million in 2020. And like so many religious social services groups today, the charity exists almost entirely on government funds. Catholic Charities Fort Worth’s 2023 federal 990 form, which nonprofits must file, lists $270 million in total government grants.

But even these stories show discrepancies. Just the News gives the total for Catholic Charities of Fort Worth for 2023 at $401.7 million, while City Journal puts it at $203 million, although both wildly exceed the number Vice President Vance and I had been using of "over $100 million" for the US Church as a whole. Last September, posting on the problems in Springfield, OH, I linked to an article that attributed the problem to church-spnsored organizations, certainly including Catholic Charities:

An example is the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, a Catholic voluntary organization which issued a press release in response to citizen backlash against their role in the migrant crisis in which they acknowledged that “SVdP volunteers and interpreter[sic]/navigators assist these neighbors [migrants] with tools for independent living. SVdP conduct(s) legal pro-bono immigration clinics. Whenever possible, SVdP navigators help Haitians seek waivers of… application fees.”

But the "navigators" are doing more than helping immigrants fill out forms:

An example is the Nehemiah Foundation, a non-profit organization that coordinates faith-based activities among churches and parishioners as an official partner of the City of Springfield. The Nehemiah Foundation also maintains collaborative relationships with the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, the Haitian Community Help & Support Center, and the Springfield City School District.

. . . Nehemiah’s volunteers have a level of ideological and religious conviction which means they are happy to educate Haitians for free. Admirable although this is, this is a level of concern for non-citizens which they do not extend to Americans. While teaching Haitians English, they also promote BLM-inspired Juneteenth activities and introduce them to DEI “anti-racist” ideological propaganda.

But the issue goes beyond propaganda. In Springfield, the NGOs appear to be involved in things like buying cars for the immigrants, but exactly who buys them with whose money is difficult to trace.

Within a labyrinth of organizations, obfuscation is the norm. Ohio Department of Development. Ohio Housing Finance Agency. Springfield Metropolitan Housing Authority. Minority Business Services. Neighborhood Impact Division… The names go on and on. Entities feed into other entities to create a twisted maze.

Meanwhile, local citizens are left to bear the costs, including a massive spike in car accidents. Last year an unlicensed Haitian careened into a school bus, killing 11-year-old Aiden Clark and injuring 23 other children. Local bartender Jill explained she’s afraid to let her 17-year-old son drive: “It’s an American rite of passage, and I can barely afford it. I’m worried he’ll be killed by a Haitian every time he hits the road. Our premiums have skyrocketed.” All over Springfield, this is a common refrain. “All because you don’t want to learn how to drive, we have to die,” another local told me.

Neither the public at large nor Catholic laity (nor, I suspect, the rank-and-file Catholic priesthood) has been willing to take at face value protestations of innocence from either Rome or the USCCB on questions like sex abuse without serious investigation and major policy changes. But Pope Francis himself has been reluctant to address even the sex abuse problems of the past quarter century:

[H]e is, of course, the ultimate church "insider," the man at the top of a very clear and rigid hierarchy, the one person who has the most power — indeed, nearly limitless power — to prevent abuse, expose wrongdoers, release records, rebuild trust and help victims heal.

But he refuses to do so. Instead he repeatedly just pontificates (excuse the pun) about the crisis, often in eloquent, even heart-wrenching ways, without following through with concrete, effective reforms.

If we can't get credible numbers and clear statements of policy from Catholic Charities and other Church organizations that are getting government grants, the Church faces a new problem, because Musk and Trump will be a new and independent source of numbers that will do a great deal of damage to the bishops' credibility.