It was near the end of the 2026 U.S. Presidential campaign. On the last weekend before the general election, Saturday Night Live satirized news media's penchant for the Democrat National Party (or perhaps The Right's claims of such). There was a faux David Muir who acknowledged it with his breathless "the world is ending!" anchorman voice. A faux Minnesota governor Tim Waltz made multiple appearances. He professed his love of fried foods and dislike for anything spicier than a tomato.
This doesn't happen very often
The real Kamala Harris had a cameo, but before that, at the opening, SNL made me laugh.
If you pan out, they look remarkably like the real thing.
In case you've forgotten, or are still trying to forget, Joe Biden had an unsettling tendency to smell women's and young ladies hair. While visiting YouTube, I realized that this should have been well-known long before Biden's tenure as President of the United States.
I found a very brief clip of former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He is being vigilant, shooing Joe Biden away, preventing the VP's attempt to sniff the hair of Sessions' very young granddaughter.
Government opacity
Sessions was appointed to lead the Department of Justice during the Trump 1.0 administration. He held the position of Attorney General for less than two years. I'm still impressed with one of his lesser-known accomplishments, in support of victim and taxpayer justice.
During the Obama administration, funds from settlements, fines, and penalties paid by corporate wrongdoers for malfeasance were partially or entirely diverted to non-profits or other causes selected by lawmakers rather than to the U.S. Treasury.
Volkswagen AG was fined $2 billion for cheating on emissions tests in 2015. Instead of those funds going to the Department of Transportation and perhaps to the only national consumer automobile advocacy group, AAA, the Department of Justice required Volkswagen to build a network of electric vehicle charging stations, i.e. forcing investment in zero-emissions technology and promoting zero-emissions cars. American auto makers complained that it was an unfair government-backed windfall. not a penalty. Government enforcement became an income redistribution mechanism without having to go through Congress.
Most of the money went to the U.S. Treasury then into the government’s general fund, where it can be spent on any budgeted item, including employee salaries. The funds are “spent as Congress authorizes.”
Seven states got $5.3 billion split among them. In New York State, the funds were not used to reduce loan balances for affected borrowers nor directed to areas directly affected by the financial crisis. Instead, Cuomo used the money to repair the Tappan Zee Bridge and renovate the Port of Albany. He also allocated $50 million of it to build equestrian facilities for the New York State Fair. Other states deposited their shares of the funds into public employee pension plans.
In 2013, J.P. Morgan was ordered to pay $400 million in settlements and fines. Instead of paying restitution to victims of banking abuse, e.g. homeowners, the DoJ offered credit to J.P. Morgan for donations to nonprofits, including $7.5 million to the American Bankruptcy Institute’s endowment for financial education.
Double credit
Even worse was that the Obama-era DoJ considered these donations to be worth “double credit” against penalty obligations While direct forms of victim relief were still counted dollar-for-dollar, a $500,000 donation by BofA to La Raza took at least $1 million off the company’s bill. The Obama DoJ maintained a list of government-approved nonprofit beneficiaries, all liberal activist groups, such as La Raza, The National Urban League, The National Community Reinvestment Coalition, and NeighborWorks America. NeighborWorks is a successor to Acorn.
The Obama DoJ forced corporate defendants to allocate a chunk of their financial penalties to these groups. Banks were made to fund left-wing activists though these groups were neither victims nor parties to lawsuits. Government enforcement became an income redistribution mechanism without having to go through Congress.
It would be much fairer to the American people to stop Congressmen and the DoJ from funding their favorite causes and NGOs with fines and penalties, and instead, use the money for direct restitution to individuals who had been defrauded, whenever possible. That is exactly what Jeff Sessions did.
On 7 June 2017, early in the Trump 1.0 administration, Sessions directed the DoJ and all 94 US Attorney's Offices as follows:
“When the federal government settles a case against a corporate wrongdoer, any settlement funds should go first to the victims and then to the American people—not to the political friends of whoever is in power,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions. “Unfortunately, in recent years the DoJ has sometimes required defendants to make these payments to third parties as a condition of settlement. We are ending this practice and ensuring that settlement funds are only used to compensate victims and redress harm....”
Under the last Administration, the DoJ repeatedly required settling parties to pay community organizations that were not involved in the litigation nor harmed by the defendant’s conduct."
Surprisingly, this was not praised by progressive Democrats; instead, there were concerns expressed that in the case of environmental damages penalties, only third party non-profits could do the necessary clean-ups! Via The New York Times, Settlements for Company Sins Can No Longer Aid Other Projects, Sessions Says
Frank Holleman, a senior lawyer for the Southern Environmental Law Center, said that if settlement money for environmental violations goes to the Treasury Department, it may be spent on something else, and prevent restoration of or protection of an affected community or ecosystem.
“You can’t just dump money in the river and it gets clean,” he said. “You have to contribute to a nonprofit that does the work to make it that way. It‘s not just being thrown away or given to these entities — it’s payments for a particular service.”
What about the EPA?!
