Mike Benz

Well, this is one of the most important days potentially in modern American history if the amendment to defund the National Endowment for Democracy can pass.

I say one of because the House has indeed twice in US history voted to defund the National Endowment for Democracy.

Once in 1984 and once in 1993, both times the House overwhelmingly voted to defund it.

And then secret back channel deals were made through the Senate to kill the amendment so it didn't appear in the final bill.

But this will at least set us up for that fight with the Senate if this does indeed go through.

And the reason this is so important is because the National Endowment for Democracy is the most prolific, aggressive, corrupt spear tip of democracy.

what you might call the deep state, the blob, permanent Washington, BlackRock, the CIA, whatever face you want to put on it, I guarantee you it is a face, one of many in the funhouse mirrors of what Ned wears.

For folks who have not followed this issue as closely, the National Endowment for Democracy was set up

in 1983, in large part by the CIA itself.

CIA Director Bill Casey at the time and the Reagan administration were stressed out that the CIA's powers had been cut back in the late 1970s after the Church Committee hearings.

And they felt like the CIA couldn't do, wasn't authorized to do the kind of dirty black ops that it used to have the power to do before the late 1970s.

And so

Given that there was a Democrat control over the House of Representatives at the time, they didn't feel that they could legislatively undo it.

And so they used a cheeky little maneuver to create a new agency funded by the executive branch.

agency, whatever you want to call it.

It's technically an NGO, but it's fully funded by the US government.

It reports to the US government.

And it has a variety of very interesting secret agreements with the US government.

Its founders bragged that it was set up to fund the organizations that the CIA can no longer directly fund or that it would be too scandalous if the CIA gave them the money.

And so Ned basically confessed to being the CIA's bag man