02:20 A great patriot. (Ann Corcoran of Refugee Resettlement Watch.)
08:32 The nonprofit wolf pack. (Monetizing illegal immigration.)
15:11 The Higher Ed catastrophe. (Defund the colleges!)
22:35 Goldman sacks Columbia. (I don’t really want to know.)
29:29 N.Y. City’s education trick. (Fewer students, higher costs.)
30:41 What to do with 200,000 illegals? (Make them lifeguards!)
32:04 Ukraine oligarchs vs. Ukraine. (But is it real?)
33:12 Two portrait stories. (No soup.)
35:28 Signoff. (With Nat.)
[Music clip: The Andrews Sisters, "Money Is the Root of All Evil"]
01 — Intro. And Radio Derb is on the air! Welcome, listeners; and I hope I didn't give too much alarm to regular listeners by setting aside Franz Joseph Haydn for just one week. I do that occasionally. It's my podcast, I can do as I please.
The clip you just heard was the Andrews Sisters: LaVerne, Maxine, and Patty, recorded in early 1946 to remind us that money is the root of all evil.
Is it, actually? No, of course not. The root of all evil is human nature with its many weaknesses and anfractuosities. Our ancestors were doing evil things long before money was even invented.
I just wanted to do a little theme setting. While money is not the root of all evil, it is usually the case that when evil things are being done and laws wantonly broken, somewhere behind the scenes big fat wads of cash are being handed out to assist the doing and the breaking. The hand that is doing the handing-out is almost invariably a government hand, so the cash comes from Joe and Janet Taxpayer.
And that — let's call it the Derb Principle — that is my opening theme this week.
For my first example of Derb's Principle: immigration.
02 — A great patriot. When the United States has been restored as a proper nation with demographic stability, well-managed borders, and a proper concern for the continuity of our national culture, a monument should be erected in tribute to all those who helped make it happen.
I doubt my name will be among those engraved on that monument. I do what I can here in my weekly podcasts and monthly diaries, but I'm too much of a dilettante, too easily distracted by unrelated matters: astronomical events, childhood recollections, linguistics, math trivia, Hungarian novels, Chinese poems, Italian opera, guns, doom, … Eh, it's a list with no end.
VDARE.com's Peter and Lydia Brimelow will have their names inscribed there on that monument, though, along with our senior contributors. And somewhere, high up on the plinth with their names, will be the name of Ann Corcoran.
In 2007 Ann was alarmed by the large-scale settlement of foreign Muslims in her home state. She founded a website called Refugee Resettlement Watch. For twelve years thereafter she posted regularly about the refugee resettlement rackets, and about the whole bogus "asylum" business in general.
That of course got the attention of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Wokipedia, and other guardians of multicultural orthodoxy; and that led Ann's hosting service, WordPress, to drop her for the usual mealy-mouthed fake reasons.
Ann continued blogging for another three years as best she could, posting 37 times here at VDARE.com, August 2021 to February 2022. Then she quit.
The whole of Refugee Resettlement Watch, from July 2007 to February 2022, survives in a form that we archived as refugeeresettlementwatch (all one word) dot org. The entire archive is in 1,942 web pages; so if you're planning on browsing it, set aside plenty of time.
I'm glad to report that as I am recording this, Ann is in good health. She is currently preparing her house and farm for a Memorial Day gathering of her family, children and grandchildren. Blessings to all of them from VDARE!
Why did she quit blogging in 2022? Sheer exhaustion, and an ample supply of other things she wanted to get done.
What we do here — standing up for the historic American nation and sane immigration policies — often seems like thankless work with nothing to show for it all.
At the VDARE conference four weeks ago I pointed out to Peter that
So in February 2022 Ann sighed and said: "Well, I have done all I can, honorably and diligently. Now let others take up the cause."
And of course others will. We will, here at VDARE.com, for as long as we can fend off Letitia Lawfare and her legions of like-minded bureaucrats and judges.
And behind us there are others. As I've been noting recently, in my April Diary and last week's podcast, there is a swelling cohort of young, normal, healthy, patriotic, and … young citizens all over the Western world waking up to the destructive horrors of unrestrained multiculturalism.
They are the ones who will be erecting that monument and inscribing the honored names on it — the names of the Brimelows, of Jared Taylor, of Ann Corcoran, and many others.
Yes, listeners [JFK impersonation]: The tawrch has been pahssed to a noo generation of Americans …
03 — The nonprofit wolf pack. OK, Derb; but what does that have to do with the Andrews Sisters? With money being the root of all evil?
Just this: It was from Ann Corcoran's work that we learned — well, that I learned — about the refugee-resettlement business model.
See: there's a lot of money to be made in refugee resettlement. Some of it comes from voluntary donations, but a great deal is supplied by government sources.
The main distributors of that money are what Ann called the VOLAGS — voluntary agencies. There are nine VOLAGS, all with uplifting — in five cases, explicitly religious — names. I'll read the names off to you from Ann's list:
Were there ever nine organizations listed together with names so fragrant with charity, love, and spiritual uplift? In fact, as Ann noted in one of her posts here at VDARE.com dated September 2021, quote from Ann:
They really aren't "faith-based" religious charities … but handsomely funded federal contractors hiding under a veneer of Jewish and Christian humanitarian zeal.
End quote.
All this came to mind early this week when I was watching Jesse Watters' show. Apparently it's no longer just Ann Corcoran's VOLAGS, although Jesse mentions one of them. There's a whole wolf pack of nonprofits passing money — your money and my money — from Uncle Sam to bogus refugees, asylum seekers, and plain vanilla illegal aliens. The head wolves in the pack are doing very well for themselves.
Here's Jesse to tell you himself. His source is a report published on May 12th by The Free Press, report title: Nonprofits Are Making Billions off the Border Crisis. Over to Jesse.
[Clip, Jesse Watters speaking.] When there's a problem in the country politicians have two answers: blame the other party, or throw money at it.
Biden detonated a bomb at the border on his first day in office, blamed Trump, and now wants more of your money to fix it.
Biden has more resources than any president in history. He can fix the border with Executive Orders. So where's … You want more money? Today we're finding out where the border bucks are going.
The Free Press investigation into the nonprofits who are paid by the government to take care of migrant kids. Billions of dollars go to these nonprofits. And the CEO's? — filthy rich.
Chip Fulghum runs the nonprofit Endeavors; Chip makes six hundred Gs. Before that he worked at the DHS — the same agency that now throws him contracts. The Free Press reports that his group had one point three billions in contracts with the government in 2022.
Endeavor spent a half a mil of that money on Music Therapy for migrant kids. Music Therapy. They also offer Pet Therapy and Plant Therapy. We don't really know what that means, but five hundred grand is a lot of money for pets, plants, and music — which, last time I checked, were free.
Endeavor got back to us. They say their CEO's pay is in line with other nonprofits and that compensation includes benefits, travel, and other business expenses. They also do work for vets and homeless.
Southwest Key Programs is another nonprofit flush with your cash, run by Doctor Anselmo Villarreal … I like that. Makes over a mil.
The NGO has problems. A worker was charged with sexual abuse and they were investigated for misuse of funds. They still got eight hundred million dollars in contracts from Biden. Eight hundred million.
Then there's Krish O'Mara Vignarajah. She made over five hundred Gs as the CEO of Global Refuge — how'd she get that job? Well, she worked for Michelle Obama … also John Kerry and Hillary. Crooked taught her well: Krish went from a government salary to making half a mil a year. Now she calls Trump a dictator on MS.
[Inner clip, Ms Vignarajah speaking.] The agenda that they've laid out, most recently in the Times article, reads like it's straight out of a dictator's playbook. The Trump campaign knows that there's no popular support for the kind of authoritarian crackdown they've … kind of laid out.[End inner clip.]
[Jesse Watters again.] Now, there's got to be somewhere better to send all this money to.]
Actually, Jesse, "all this money" doesn't have to be sent anywhere. It could be left in the pockets and bank accounts of the people who earned it: we, the American taxpayers.
04 — The Higher Ed catastrophe. Of course it is not just the fake "refugee" and bogus "asylum" rackets that are sucking up billions of dollars of your money and mine. There's also the higher education scam.
Pretty much all the news that comes out of our colleges and universities nowadays is unsightly. A good proportion of it is disgusting. Back in January, following the resignation of Harvard President Claudine Gay, I quoted Amy Wax, speaking about the administration at her own school, the University of Pennsylvania. Re-quote, slightly edited:
I cannot tell you what a clown car … Penn is, all right? It is run by a bunch of midwit gynocrats. These people are as intellectually mediocre and undistinguished as you could possibly imagine.
End quote.
I followed that up with a proposal I'd made at least once before, quote from myself:
Can these institutions be saved? I doubt it. If I were to attain total power in these United States, I would issue a notice to all personnel at Ivy League universities to evacuate their premises within 48 hours. That done, I would send in the U.S. Air Force to bomb those premises to rubble. That done, I would call in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to plough the rubble under and sow the ground with salt.
End quote.
A little over the top, you say? Phooey. Sometimes you just have to sweep everything up and start over.
And Amy's wonderful phrase "midwit gynocrat" is a bulls-eye. Claudine Gay should have it stamped on her luggage for instant identification.
It's hard not to think, in fact, and with of course no disrespect intended towards Professor Wax, that opening up higher education to so many young women — an actual majority at most colleges now — was a huge civilizational error. It has probably been a major factor in our dwindling fertility rate. It has unmistakably given us most of the shrieking lunacy of these recent college demonstrations.
For more on that I refer you to another lady who is just as smart, perceptive, and sane as Prof. Wax. That would be Heather Mac Donald, writing at City Journal, May 9th. Title of her article: "Hysterics for Hamas." Subtitle: "Why have young women been so prominent in the recent campus chaos?"
Ms. Mac Donald treats the subject with careful delicacy, as I would if I were she. It did leave me thinking, though, that she, Amy Wax, and Ann Coulter should perhaps get together and co-operate as the nucleus of a movement to repeal the 19th Amendment.
And yes: In accordance with Derb's Principle, the midwit gynocracy in charge of our institutions of higher education is indeed financed by government cash — which is to say, your cash and mine.
To be perfectly fair, there are other sources of funding. There are foreign students, for example, who pay their fees in cash — their parents' cash, mostly. Columbia University, much in the news recently, has 36,649 students enrolled, of whom 20,321 are foreigners on student visas. That is fifty-five percent. Of those foreign students, almost half come from China.
Higher education is a precious national resource. Our own citizens should have first call on it. No institution of higher education registered as such with state or federal government should have a student body more than five percent non-citizen. Wait: five percent? How about two percent?
Foreign students aside, our universities are bulging with cash brought to them in truckloads from Uncle Sam's bottomless money chests. The boodle is dressed up lightly in the form of student loans, all guaranteed by the government — and recently, under the Biden administration, often forgiven by the government when not repaid.
Students who need a loan should go to their bank and get one. The bank will of course need to be satisfied that the applicant's proposed course of study will lead to employment sufficiently remunerative to repay the loan. If that makes it impossible for non-rich young Americans to get degrees in anti-American studies, so much the better for our country.
It is these great floods of taxpayer money flowing into the colleges that enables them to carry their huge administrative staffs, headed by those midwit gynocrats Amy Wax has described to us. It is you, Tom and Teresa Taxpayer, who are giving the University of Michigan thirty million dollars to increase its DEI staff from 142 last year to 241 this year.
Even if not the root of all evil, money on that scale can be a mighty assist to nation-destroying folly.
05 — Goldman sacks Columbia. The last few weeks I've been getting a regular trickle of emails asking me, not always politely, why I don't take a firmer position on the current war in the Levant. I'm sympathetic to Israel, aren't I? they ask (sometimes sneering, sometimes begging); why don't I speak out loud and clear?
Answer: because I don't believe geopolitics is a spectator sport. Who do I favor, the Rangers or the Hurricanes? Neither. I couldn't care less.
All right, I'm not that indifferent to the Israel-Gaza punch-up. Yes, my sympathies are with Israel. As a conservative, I prefer civilization to barbarism. Israel is a civilized Western-style nation; most of the countries around it, certainly including Gaza, are corrupt ramshackle despotisms.
That's just a sympathy, though. I wouldn't go to fight for Israel. If my son — ex-U.S. Army and so presumably on some reserve list — were to be called into combat on Israel's behalf, I would arrange for him to relocate to Canada or some other noncombatant nation.
I feel just the same sympathy on behalf of Taiwan. If Israel or Taiwan were to fall to their enemies, I'd regard that as a blow against civilization. I doubt I'd lose my appetite, though.
These are distant countries whose tribal squabbles are no real concern of mine. Russia-Ukraine, the same. I'm America First.
I'd begun to think this laid-back approach was peculiar to me. Then this morning I read U.K. blogger Ed West's column at his Substack account. Quote from Ed:
I have nothing to add to the conflict in Gaza, beyond utterly bland platitudes about how horrible all the human suffering is. If I was an interested party on either side, I would have strong views on our historic claim and be dismissive of foreigners who had a tendency for team-picking, often based on irrelevant domestic partisan concerns. Most of all, though, I see no hope of an end to the wider conflict in the Holy Land, because neither side is willing or able to offer a territorial compromise that will satisfy the other.
But I am interested in how the conflict reverberates in my own corner of the globe, how it interacts with the more benign tensions in the English-speaking world, and in particular how western views and ideologies shape our view of that war.
End quote.
So, hey, perhaps it's a British thing!
Whether it is or not, I agree with Ed in finding the war's effects on our own social conflicts much more interesting and important than who's up and who's down in Rafah, or whatever the hell the darn place is called.
And sure enough, in accord with Derb's Principle, the war-related ructions here in the States are being mightily inflated by money.
It's not government money this time, for which relief much thanks. A big slab of the money seems in fact to be coming from my wife's old employer, Goldman Sachs.
Quote from the New York Post, May 5th. Quote:
The anti-Israel protesters who stormed Columbia University's Hamilton Hall were urged by a radical activist group to rekindle the bloody Black Lives Matter riots of the summer of 2020, a new report says.
Furiously pumping the bellows is New York City nonprofit The People's Forum (TPF), an anti-Israel organization with known ties to the Chinese Communist Party and backed by American businessman Neville Roy Singham, a self-described socialist known for financially supporting left-wing causes through Goldman Sachs' charity arm.
At a Monday night meeting in Manhattan hosted by TPF — hours before the infamous building takeover — around 100 mask-wearing activists were worked into a lather by the organization's executive director, Manolo De Los Santos, who called for a [inner quote] "final blow to destroy Israel" [end inner quote] in a viral video earlier this year.
End quote.
Boy, this is getting confusing! Isn't Goldman Sachs a Jewish outfit, a key player in the worldwide Jewish plot to totally control Western society? So what are they doing financing a group of anti-Israel radicals? Nah, please don't email in with explanations. I'd rather hear about the Rangers and the Hurricanes.
06 — Miscellany. And now, our closing miscellany of brief items.
Imprimis: Government financing is in fact almost magical in its weirdness. It's not like watching a skillful conjurer so much as like watching one of those comedians pretending to be a conjurer, screwing up all the tricks to make his audience laugh.
Here's an example of what I mean. This is from the New York Post, May 15th. Quote:
New York City's public school system has received billions of dollars in additional funding since 2020 — despite enrollment cratering by nearly 100,000 students during that time, an analysis released Wednesday reveals.
End quote.
Billions more dollars; 100,000 fewer students. That's government financial management for you … and not just in New York.
Item: Speaking of New York: the city has been overwhelmed by a great tsunami of illegal aliens — two hundred thousand in the last two years. What to do with them all?
The city could of course call in ICE to arrest and deport them, as federal law requires. That, however, would bring the city's illegality-loving voters out into the streets and storming City Hall, so … no.
The city's Mayor Eric Adams has a solution: Hire them as lifeguards! He proposed this at his weekly news conference on Tuesday, assuring the assembled media folk that illegal aliens are excellent swimmers.
Given that the city has only eight public beaches and even fewer public swimming pools, the number of lifeguard jobs going begging may not soak up all 200,000 of the illegals … But there I go with my typically white-people obsession with numbers …
Item: That other war that's going on, the one I've been describing for two years as the war between the world's two most corrupt white nations, may offer a further illustration of Derb's Principle.
Some news sources claim that millions of dollars that were intended for the construction of fortifications in Ukraine were appropriated by fake companies set up as fronts for local oligarchs.
This may be Russian disinformation — yes, there actually is such a thing, even though Hillary Clinton says there is. I haven't been able to find confirming reports from sources I trust, so I'll leave it open. If any listener knows anything about this, by all means email it in to me.
Item: Portraits are in the news, portraits old and new.
The old one is Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, painted five hundred and some years ago and now in the Louvre in Paris. Art historians have never been sure about the background to the portrait — the background landscape. What place is it, or inspired it?
Now a geologist named Ann Pizzorusso, who is also an art scholar, says she has located the location. It's the town of Lecco near the shore of Lake Como in, of course, Italy.
The other portrait story concerns King Charles the Third of the U.K. A new portrait of Charles was unveiled on Tuesday at Buckingham Palace in London.
It's caused somewhat of a fuss. The portrait shows Charles in his military uniform; but everything except his face and hands and a butterfly near his shoulder is almost invisible behind a wash of reds and pinks.
Things could be worse. Most news stories from the art world nowadays concern some painting in some gallery somewhere getting splattered with soup by climate-change loonies. That actually happened to the Mona Lisa a few weeks ago, fortunately without permanent effect — the picture is kept behind bullet-proof glass.
The Charles portrait has come in for a lot of mockery. You have to say in the artist's favor, though, that if anyone were to splatter the portrait with soup, it would hardly show. If the soup was tomato soup, it wouldn't show at all.
07 — Signoff. That's all I have, ladies and gents. I think that before signing off I should offer an apology for my attempt at a JFK impersonation. Sorry!
Thank you as always for your time and attention, for your emails and donations. And here's the Derb rule on emails, just as a reminder: All non-abusive emails are read and pondered and, where suitable, plagiarized.
Being, as I am, a devotee of mid-20th-century lounge singers, I can't believe I've produced 943 podcasts without ever once calling on Nat King Cole to sign off the show. That miscellany item about portraits gives me the opportunity.
There will be more from Radio Derb next week.
[Music clip: Nat King Cole, "Mona Lisa."]
