Read it.

Thank you, Joe Biden.

Roger Kimball.

Human beings are animals that often operate by proxy. Here’s a familiar example from the world of — well, I was going to say “the law,” but what I have in mind is not the law but its perversion, so let’s say “the legal bureaucracy.” Everyone has heard the phrase “the process is the punishment.” It covers a multitude of sins. In its core signification, the phrase describes an increasingly common situation in which the machinery of the law is deployed to harass, enervate, stymie and otherwise hobble someone the regime does not like but whom, for the time being anyway, it chooses not to incarcerate. Sometimes it is easier to bankrupt and demoralize an opponent into submission.

Relevant here is a conversation I had more than a decade ago with a couple of worldly friends who can fairly be described as experts in the operation of the law. A prominent businessman had just been indicted and one of my friends observed that the indictment meant that he was sure to be cashiered, and soon. But what about being presumed innocent until proven guilty? I asked. My friends did not actually laugh, but they did smile as they explained that in our system the actual dispensation was “innocent until indicted.” Once indicted you are a marked man, as your banker will explain.

The political landscape is littered with victims of our extralegal legal process, as such names as Mike Flynn, Peter Navarro, John Eastman and of course Donald Trump will remind you. Their fates help to explain why you hear more and more people talking about our “two-tier” justice system, which is just periphrasis for “injustice,” and our “Stalinist” courts and judges, which is just an illuminating historical parallel to what is actually happening.

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The serialization of Paul Weston’s book about the COVID-19 scam (most recent chapter here) has made me ruminate on the official mendacity that has been the main feature of whole deadly process. We were lied to about how dangerous the disease was. We were lied to about its origin. We were lied to about the PCR testing regimen that putatively detected infection with the disease. We were lied to about the effectiveness of the measures used to mitigate and contain it.

And above all we were lied to about the safety and effectiveness of the alleged “vaccine”, the experimental mRNA treatment intended to mitigate the effects of infection with the Wuhan Coronavirus.

Most of the liars who told the official lies could fall back on some sort of plausible deniability, no matter how flimsy, to allow themselves to evade responsibility. “Mistakes were made,” “We didn’t know that at the time,” “It was judged to be the best course of action, based on the available data,” etc.

But that wasn’t the case with the promise that the “vaccine” was safe. There is no plausible deniability for those who confidently asserted the safety of the experimental mRNA treatment.

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They might actually have to do their jobs. Ain’t nobody got time for dat.

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Instead of admitting to facilitating an assassination attempt on Donald Trump last Saturday, either through ‘malice or massive incompetence,’ the US Secret Service is ‘appalled’ that people are criticizing their decision to place short, incompetent women on Trump’s security detail.

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The Department of Health & Human Services:

“Health” means killing unborn children.

“Human Services” hiding the mutilation of children from their parents.

No wonder our population is decreasing.

UPDATE: ‘Usurpation of Parental Rights’: District’s ‘Gender Inclusion’ Training Costs Taxpayers $1.5K

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Buy those votes! Buy those votes!

UPDATE: Federal Appeals Court Blocks Entirety Of Biden’s Student Debt Relief Plan

Read it.

Maybe if they were to take their shoes off….

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“I’m about to come out with a major initiative on limiting the court. … I’ve been working with constitutional scholars for the last three months,” Biden said, according to the Washington Post. Sources familiar with the deliberations confirmed to CNN the president is “seriously considering” endorsing significant changes to the Supreme Court in the coming weeks, including proposals to establish term limits for the justices, an enforceable ethics code, and a constitutional act that would overturn the recent immunity ruling.

In an effort to save his stumbling reelection campaign, Biden—who entered the presidency as a center-left moderate—has cozied up to progressive Democrats, who largely have remained faithful to his campaign.

Last week, Biden unveiled a plan to cap landlords’ ability to increase rent prices, as continued inflation has made the cost of housing one of the biggest hurdles for Americans. The move has been celebrated by progressives such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.).

Biden must be the new Mussolini, since the position of new Hitler is already taken.

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The assailant, identified by D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) as Walter James, fought with Capitol Police officers on July 5 after trespassing at the Capitol Building, according to court documents. He was released without bond the next day.

On July 10, James approached Golfeyz near George Washington University’s hospital and abruptly started punching him in the face, knocked him to the ground, and continued attacking him, the victim told the Washington Free Beacon. Golfeyz told police that James said during his attack, “You are not the real Jewish [sic] and you guys are murderer [sic], you guys kill people in Gaza and in America.”

Golfeyz, whose parents fled Iran in 1979 to avoid religious persecution, said he would stop wearing his kippah in public places, believing it made him a target. Police are investigating the attack as a hate crime.

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“And I say to you: Make unto you friends of the mammon of iniquity; that when you shall fail, they may receive you into everlasting dwellings.”

Read it.

I’m sure it’s somehow Trump’s fault.

Washington Examiner.

“Squad” Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) recently cut more checks from her campaign to her husband and longtime security guard — payments that came after the Justice Department opened an investigation into her major spending on private security.

Bush dished out $15,000 between April and June to Cortney Merritts for a “wage expense,” adding on to the more than $137,000 she has paid her husband since 2022, according to Federal Election Commission filings. The new payments come months after Bush noted she is “fully cooperating” with a DOJ investigation into the private security disbursements, which are north of $750,000 combined, documents show.

The new filings show that Bush separately spent $16,720 on security services, paying two men named Joseph Walter and Joel Beard.

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Three Beaver County police snipers were reportedly stationed inside the building used by the shooter in Saturday’s assassination attempt on Donald Trump, a local law enforcement officer with ‘direct knowledge’ of the incident tells CBS News‘ Anna Schecter, and as first reported by the Beaver Countian.

A sniper, stationed on the second floor providing overwatch, saw the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, outside the building and looking up at the roof. He then walked away, returned, whipped out his phone, when one of the snipers took the first of two pictures of him.

Crooks then took out a rangefinder – at which point the sniper radioed to a command post. Crooks then disappeared again and came back a third time with a backpack. The snipers called in once again with information that he had a backpack and that he (Crooks) was walking toward the back of the building.

You can’t make this shit up.

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Inflexible Secret Service protocols, overworked special agents, and a decision against deploying more counter snipers to President Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania all contributed to creating the opening for a gunman to wound Trump, kill a bystander, and seriously injure two others, according to several sources in the Secret Service community.

StrategyPage.

In the United States the army is having major problems maintaining its strength. Since the 1970s the army has depended on volunteers, not conscripts. The army was always able to get all the volunteers although it occasionally had to tinker with recruiting standards to make its numbers. In the last four years the usual methods have not been working. In 2021 the army had its authorized 485,900 personnel, a number that was expected to remain the same for the foreseeable future. Then problems with recruiting began and got worse and actual strength declined. By 2023 there were only 473,000 soldiers and the recruiting problems continued.

This time the usual explanations did not apply. This was discovered by asking a sample of military age men eligible to volunteer or be conscripted about their attitudes towards the military. Potential volunteers had been influenced by a reduction in motivation among military age men. This is defined as healthy men aged 18-35. There was a similar decline in their opinion of military service and this could be measured.

I certainly wouldn’t want to join today’s American military.

Read it.

Dr. Robert Redfield, the former director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Thursday that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) pushed a false “safe and effective” COVID vaccine narrative by underreporting adverse events. The mRNA shots “never should have been mandated,” Redfield told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Thursday.

God forbid we should let people decide for themselves based on accurate evidence.

Steve Graham.

Sixty years ago, Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK and John Connally from an elevated position. He used a mail-order military surplus rifle, and he still got impact with two out of three shots. Clearly, the Secret Service has learned absolutely nothing since then. They let a man climb onto a white roof in broad daylight, carrying a rifle, and shoot a former president a couple of Frisbee throws away.

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The Democrat platform is to make life in America solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

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The Biden administration is planning to allow migrants to circumvent in-person check-ins with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and allow them to use an app instead, the New York Post reported on Friday.

Democrats, being by nature scofflaws, like to encourage scofflaw behavior in others.

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Democratic Rep. Cori Bush (Mo.) steered nearly $1 million in taxpayer money to a youth nonprofit led by Farrakhan Shegog, an anti-Semitic activist who said that those living in Israel are not “real Jews” and that the nation is ruled by “the ones who crucified Jesus.”

Bush boasted on July 7 about her role in funding a new headquarters for Young Voices With Action, a St. Louis group that encourages young people to become involved in leadership in the city. She included a photo of herself at the groundbreaking alongside Shegog, the group’s founder and president, and posted a follow-up featuring another picture of the two with their arms around each other.

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The Biden administration is facing a congressional probe over its actions functionally prohibiting oil and gas production across roughly 41 million acres of federal property—nearly equivalent to the size of the combined land and water area of Florida—the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

Republicans on the House Small Business Committee, led by chairman Roger Williams (R., Texas), penned a letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on Thursday morning, informing her that they are investigating her agency’s environmental policies targeting fossil fuel drilling. The lawmakers’ probe is largely responding to the administration’s recent actions curbing drilling in Alaska, but they argued those policies are emblematic of President Biden’s broader climate agenda.

“As with nearly every other action the Biden Administration has taken related to fossil fuels and mining, these actions will cost American consumers and businesses money without achieving any real environmental benefit,” they wrote in the letter, which was first reviewed by the Free Beacon. “Cars still need oil, batteries still need mineral resources, and power plants still need natural gas and coal.”

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I am not making this up.

Biden says ‘Vice President Trump’ when discussing Harris (CNN)

Trump mocks Joe Biden over Kamala Harris blunder (UK Telegraph)

Biden won’t drop out of election against Trump unless polls say ‘there’s no way you can win’ (CNBC)

I’m ready to give up my citizenship now, Maybe I can buy a passport from the Cayman Islands or someplace like that. (Nomad Capitalist)

NavyMatters.

In WWII, a dozen or more shipyards built Fletcher class destroyers. The yards were given a set of blueprints and contracted to build the ships according to the plans. It didn’t matter which yard built any given destroyer, they were all the same. This worked because the Navy designed the ship and generated the blueprints. Once that was accomplished, any yard could build the ship. It was just a matter of following the plans.

In contrast, because the Navy no longer designs ships, generates blueprints, or even requires complete designs and blueprints prior to the start of construction, only the contracted yard can build a given ship. The LCS is the standout example of this badly flawed approach. Lacking any guidance or blueprints, both Lockheed and Austal generated their own LCS designs, spec’ed their own equipment and combat systems, and no one else could build them. Thus, we wound up with two LCS classes that had almost nothing in common; the epitome of inefficiency.

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Shortly after Laura Daniel-Davis failed Senate confirmation for the second time last year, the White House appointed her to serve as the second in command at the Department of the Interior—a promotion. Now, she has been given yet another senior role crafting energy policy potentially impacting millions of Americans.

Last month, the White House created a new task force to oversee the government’s controversial review of four federally managed dams located within the Columbia River system in southern Washington State. The task force’s work could ultimately lead to the dams, which provide power to millions of residents and allow large quantities of agricultural products to be transported, being torn down over environmental concerns.

Buried in the announcement was the revelation that Daniel-Davis, the Interior Department’s acting deputy secretary, will co-chair the task force alongside Deputy Secretary of Energy David Turk and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration assistant administrator for fisheries Janet Coit.

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The study done by the university’s Center for American Institutions argued that there is an emphasis on training new soldiers about social issues like “unconscious bias” and “intersectionality” in a way the center says runs contrary to typical American ideals. The study examined DEI plans in different sectors of the military, including DEI office staffing and education at academies like West Point.

“The massive DEI bureaucracy, its training and its pseudo-scientific assessments are at best distractions that absorb valuable time and resources,” the executive summary states. “At worst they communicate the opposite of the military ethos: e.g. that individual demographic differences come before team and mission.”

Wall Street Journal.

Questionable diagnoses of HIV and other maladies triggered extra Medicare Advantage payments; ‘It’s anatomically impossible’.

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As reported by Fox News, the average hotel room for an illegal costs $156 per night, with some costing over $300 per night. As such, the city government has already spent at least $1.98 billion on housing for illegals, with 80% of that amount going to hotels or inns that have been converted into shelters, rather than to shelters operated by the city. Overall, the city has spent at least $4.88 billion on the mass migration crisis.

Some of the contracts agreed upon between the city and various hotels include a deal for $5.13 million per month with the Row NYC hotel, located in Midtown Manhattan. In South Jamaica, Queens, the Crowne Plaza JFK is being given $2 million per month to continue renting out its 335 rooms to illegals.

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Medicare is a health insurance program for seniors and specific disabled individuals. It has provided coverage for millions since it originated in 1965. However, the benefits it offers are far outweighed by its inefficiency and inadequacy, which cost trillions.

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A district judge has granted Texas and Montana’s request for a preliminary injunction against the federal government’s attempt “to impose a sweeping new social policy” that allows for Title IX coverage for gender identity.

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House Republicans filed a lawsuit on July 1 against Attorney General Merrick Garland, seeking to force the Department of Justice (DOJ) to release the audiotapes of special counsel Robert Hur’s interview with President Joe Biden in his classified documents probe.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, also asks the court to require the DOJ to hand over the audio of Mr. Hur’s interview with President Biden’s ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, who wrote two memoirs for him.

The legal action came after the House Republicans last month voted to hold Mr. Garland in contempt for failing to comply with a subpoena for tapes of Mr. Hur’s interview with the president. The White House has asserted executive privilege.

For those who haven’t been obsessing about all things Biden (and I can hardly blame you), Hur is the special prosecutor who decided not to indict Biden for his official-records retention (for which offense Trump is being prosecuted) because he would be too sympathetic a figure as a senile old man to get convicted.

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It’s never too late.

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The behavior of senior officials at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the powerful federal agency formerly run by Dr. Anthony Fauci, is intolerable.

And the performance of the Department of Health and Human Services in response to legitimate congressional inquiries has been abysmal.

The latest evidence comes to us courtesy of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The committee recently released an interim staff report on its lengthy investigation into the NIAID-approved gain-of-function research into the MPXV, a virus that causes the deadly disease commonly known as monkeypox.

Gain-of-function research is laboratory research deliberately designed to enhance the virulence and the transmissibility of a pathogen. According to the House committee’s report, the National Institutes of Health and NIAID misled lawmakers for more than 17 months before handing over proof that they approved gain-of-function experiments to be performed on the monkeypox virus.

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The Supreme Court on Monday ruled in a 6-3 vote that former presidents, including Trump, enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct involving official acts during tenure in office, but he’s not immune from unofficial acts.

…

As constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley notes, now “the issue is whether what constitutes official acts,” adding that the ruling will “further delay the lower court proceedings, but Trump will have to argue that his actions fall within these navigational beacons.”

UPDATE: ‘Trump Will Imprison His Political Opponents!’ Says Guy Imprisoning His Political Opponents (Babylon Bee)

Wall Street Journal.

In one of the most consequential decisions in decades for America’s most prominent city, Hochul soon said she was indefinitely pausing congestion pricing—less than a month before it was set to take effect on Sunday, June 30.

The abrupt reversal, which some attribute to Hochul’s reluctance to impose a new fee in an election year, leaves metro New York grappling with a historic missed opportunity and fiscal mess. There is no relief in sight for the city’s traffic congestion, which is the worst in the world, according to data published last week.

The epic collapse in New York shows how a fear of dramatic change can give the status quo stubborn power over those trying to solve some of America’s most intractable challenges. That leaves policymakers nibbling at the edges of deeply rooted problems, even after investing huge sums of money and political capital.

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The number of people with criminal convictions caught entering the United States illegally per month so far this fiscal year has risen to a record high, data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) show.

Washington Free Beacon.

The Biden administration is flying previously deported Cameroonians whose asylum claims were determined to be invalid back into the United States, according to interviews with Immigration and Customs Enforcement staff and internal agency memos reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

The program, which has not been announced to the public, appears to be a response to a February 2022 Human Rights Watch report about dozens of Cameroonians deported between 2019 and 2021 and then allegedly mistreated by their government. An estimated 80 to 90 Cameroonians were deported during that period of time.

But now some are arriving back in the United States under a program with little precedent, both current and former ICE officials say. All of the individuals deported under the previous administration were found not to have valid asylum claims in the United States.

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If they were secure, nobody could cheat. Democrats won’t stand for that.

Read it.

It’s hard to believe considering the list of his policy failures, spectacular misinformation, and revisionist history is almost quite literally endless.

Yet in a recent media interview, Fauci stated that a nationwide policy that he supported actually didn’t work. Kinda.

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t takes a lot of gumption to go on television and repeatedly lie to more than 300 million Americans. I honestly don’t know how Joe Biden does it.

I do. He’s a Democrat. Democrats lie. It’s what they do.

Read it.

border has faced an onslaught of frivolous and time-consuming investigations, the agency’s top lawyer alleges in a new federal lawsuit.

James Read, chief counsel to Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, filed suit Monday against the Council of Inspectors General for Integrity and Efficiency, as well as its Integrity Committee, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Read sued in his personal capacity.

A similar lawsuit brought last year by Cuffari and his senior staff against the Council of Inspectors General for Integrity and Efficiency, or CIGIE, was dismissed by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

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The U.S.-built military pier in the Gaza Strip has been removed due to weather concerns and it is unclear whether it will be reinstalled, several anonymous U.S. officials told the Associated Press on Friday.

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One recent decision, in the case of Department of State v. Muñoz was a relief to me, U.S. consular officers, and even the Biden administration. The court ruled that a U.S. citizen “has no legal interest in the visa application of a third party, even a relative,” and, therefore, has no constitutional right to bring a noncitizen spouse to the United States. Like all foreign nationals, alien spouses must qualify for a visa under U.S. law to come here.

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On Monday, two federal court judges issued nationwide injunctions stopping the Biden administration from illegally canceling hundreds of billions of dollars in student debt. This scheme, the Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, Plan, is the latest lawless loan redistribution attempt to fail in court.

 

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The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of a Capitol riot defendant, a decision that could affect hundreds of other cases, and raises the question of whether federal prosecutors went too far in enforcing a statute about “corruptly” obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding.

The high court’s ruling could affect the prosecutions of about 330 Americans who are charged under the 2002 federal statute with crimes connected to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. The law carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison upon conviction. In some case, the obstruction charge is the only felony they face.

Of those charged, about 170 Jan. 6 defendants were convicted on the anti-obstruction charge, The Associated Press reported. Some of those convicted had their sentencing delayed pending the Supreme Court’s ruling in this case.

Further, the high court’s ruling could affect part of special counsel Jack Smith’s case against former President Donald Trump, which includes this charge.

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The Biden administration will expand deportation relief and work permits to an estimated 309,000 Haitians in the country already, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said on Friday.

The administration will expand access to the Temporary Protected Status program to Haitians through February 2026 due to violence and security issues in Haiti that limit access to safety, healthcare, food and water, the department said.

About 264,000 Haitians in the U.S. were already covered by the program, according to the U.S. government.

America, Welfare Supplier to the World….

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The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of commercial fisherman who challenged the U.S. government’s imposition of charges for onboard federal inspections. The case deals a massive blow to the power of federal agencies.

UPDATE: SCOTUS Overturns ‘Chevron Deference’ In Massive Blow To ‘Administrative State’

This is as significant as the overthrow of Roe v. Wade.

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The Supreme Court sided with a small Oregon city’s crackdown on homeless people sleeping in public in its ruling Friday in the case of City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who dissented along with Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote, “Sleep is a biological necessity, not a crime. For some people, sleeping outside is their only option.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, wrote, “The Constitution’s Eighth Amendment serves many important functions, but it does not authorize federal judges to wrest those rights and responsibilities from the American people and in their place dictate this Nation’s homelessness policy.”

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Gee, I wonder why?

The AntiPlanner.

“Rural schools in California already struggle with declining enrollment, staffing shortages and wildfires,” says Carolyn Jones, writing for Calmatters, a left-leaning policy web site. “Now they’re facing the possible loss of money they’ve relied on for more than a century.” What Jones doesn’t say is that the counties have been scamming federal taxpayers for that money for decades and they’d naturally rather continue the scam than have to raise the money locally.

Federal lands aren’t taxable by state or local governments. When Congress began setting aside national forests, it decided to make it up to local governments by giving them 25 percent of any revenues the forests earned. In some places, the counties got 50 percent. Congress specified that national forest payments to counties had to be spent on roads and schools.

When Congress passed this law, it never imagined that national forest revenues would someday be well in excess of a billion dollars a year. By the 1970s, many counties, particularly those in Washington, Oregon, northern California, Idaho, and a few other places were getting far more money in 25-percent funds than they would have gotten if they had been able to collect property taxes.