Tax dollars

[Diogenes]

SHOVEL-READY SNOW JOB


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When Barack Obama announced plans for his presidential library, expectations were high.

The land for the center, located in Jackson Park on Chicago’s South Side, is public land owned by the city, and its use was approved through a city ordinance in 2018.

Additionally, the city of Chicago committed around $174 million in public funds for infrastructure improvements—like roadwork and utilities—around the site to support the project. This involved taxpayer money to facilitate its development.

Here was a man who promised competence, elegance, and hope—a modern statesman whose post-presidency, like his administration, would be a well-orchestrated triumph.

Instead, the project has become a case study in bureaucratic dysfunction, spiraling costs, and the self-destructive excesses of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) mandates.

What was once a $500 million project has ballooned into an $830 million—and rising—financial quagmire, with final estimates creeping toward the $1 billion mark.

Years behind schedule, plagued by worksite racial incidents, lawsuits, and shocking quality concerns, Obama’s library embodies the tragic reality of DEI in action: an emphasis on quotas over competence, activism over efficiency, and virtue signaling over results.

The project’s guiding principle was diversity for its own sake.

The Obama Foundation promised that over 50% of the contracts would go to minority-owned firms, a pledge it has surpassed.

But the results tell a different story. Poorly executed construction, repeated safety violations, and rework upon rework have turned what should have been a straightforward civic undertaking into an unmitigated disaster.

Engineers have flagged multiple structural issues, including misaligned walls, incorrect steel placements, and compromised concrete pours—all of which required expensive corrections.

Beyond the construction failures, the worksite itself has devolved into a battlefield of racial tensions. In November 2022, a noose was found on-site, prompting a multi-day shutdown and mandatory racial sensitivity training.

That this occurred despite (or perhaps because of) the relentless focus on DEI hiring is an irony too rich to ignore. Even Obama’s own carefully curated, diversity-compliant workforce could not escape accusations of racism.

And yet, the DEI-driven dysfunction does not stop at mismanaged construction. Obama’s chosen contractors are now suing him for racial discrimination.

A minority-owned subcontractor, II in One Concrete, has alleged that it was unfairly blamed for delays and subjected to excessive scrutiny—scrutiny, it should be noted, that was entirely warranted given the severe construction flaws.

Obama, the DEI champion, now finds himself on the receiving end of the same identity politics he has spent his career promoting. The irony is almost Shakespearean.

Perhaps the most baffling decision of all is Obama’s refusal to turn over his library to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

Every modern president before him has placed his legacy in the hands of professional archivists, ensuring a degree of neutrality and historical rigor.

Obama, by contrast, insists on keeping his library under the control of his personal foundation.

The reason? Ostensibly, to create a digital-first, modern approach to presidential records. But the implications are clear: control. By retaining ownership, Obama ensures that his library will remain a monument to his personal narrative, unencumbered by inconvenient truths or historical objectivity.

What does this debacle reveal?

That DEI, far from being a noble pursuit, is an expensive, inefficient, and self-defeating enterprise. Instead of excellence, it delivers mediocrity. Instead of unity, it fosters division. And instead of progress, it creates obstacles.

The Obama Presidential Center, which was supposed to be a testament to hope and change, has instead become a cautionary tale of DEI’s corrosive impact on competence and accountability.

Obama’s legacy, once thought to be a shining beacon of progressive achievement, is now buried under cost overruns, racial grievances, and legal turmoil. And the worst part?

This was entirely predictable. When ideology trumps ability, failure is inevitable.

The Obama Presidential Center is not just a monument to the 44th president—it is a monument to the disastrous consequences of DEI gone mad.


@AMUSE

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[Diogenes]

Why Are U.S. Taxpayers Funding the AFL-CIO’s International Political Machine?

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The American taxpayer should not be subsidizing an international NGO that serves as the global arm of a partisan U.S. labor union.

Yet, through an intricate web of grants, bureaucratic allocations, and foreign assistance programs, millions of taxpayer dollars flow directly into the coffers of the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center, an entity functionally indistinguishable from the union itself.

This relationship is not only improper; it is a textbook example of a conflict of interest—one that permits an ideologically driven labor federation to extend its influence under the auspices of U.S. democracy promotion while working against the very interests of the American worker.

The Solidarity Center is not a neutral NGO pursuing disinterested humanitarian labor reform.

It is, in reality, an extension of the AFL-CIO, created and staffed by the very same individuals who dictate the federation’s domestic agenda.

The leadership structure reveals this plainly: the chair of the Solidarity Center’s board is none other than the AFL-CIO president.

The Center’s policies, hiring, and operations mirror those of the union itself.

This is not a loosely affiliated advocacy group that happens to share an ideological affinity with the AFL-CIO—it is a fully integrated arm of the same organization, masquerading as an independent NGO to secure government funding.

Consider the implications of this arrangement. If a politically aligned, privately run trade union can establish a non-governmental organization that then siphons taxpayer money under the guise of promoting “labor democracy,” the result is a system in which the federal government is effectively underwriting the union’s political ambitions abroad.

This dynamic is especially troubling given that the AFL-CIO, like all labor unions, exists to serve a narrow set of economic interests—those of its leadership, its dues-paying members, and its preferred political allies.

When the AFL-CIO lobbies for policies that increase unionization rates or protect entrenched labor privileges, it does so in direct opposition to large segments of the American workforce—especially independent contractors, small business owners, and workers in right-to-work states who have chosen not to unionize.

The Solidarity Center allows these domestic priorities to be exported under the banner of international development, reinforcing the power of organized labor with government assistance.

Moreover, the funding pipeline that sustains the Solidarity Center is largely opaque.

The Center’s operations rely almost entirely on U.S. government grants—more than 96% of its funding comes from agencies like USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and the U.S. Department of Labor.

This is not an organization sustained by voluntary contributions from like-minded donors; rather, it is a taxpayer-funded project that continues to receive tens of millions of dollars in federal grants despite its direct alignment with a partisan domestic institution.

There is no meaningful oversight mechanism that prevents these funds from being used to advance AFL-CIO interests rather than genuine labor reform abroad.

Even more troubling, there is little transparency about how funds are spent in the dozens of countries where the Solidarity Center operates.

Some might argue that supporting global labor rights is a legitimate function of U.S. foreign assistance, akin to promoting democracy or economic development. But this reasoning is deeply flawed.

First, labor policy is an inherently contested issue in both economic and political terms.

By channeling U.S. taxpayer dollars into an organization controlled by a single American labor union, the government is favoring one labor philosophy over others.

Free-market labor organizations, employer groups, and independent trade federations have no equivalent means of securing U.S. government funding.

Second, the AFL-CIO’s vision of labor rights is explicitly adversarial to free enterprise. It seeks to empower unions at the expense of business autonomy, often advocating for restrictive labor laws and economic policies that make American industries less competitive.

This approach is not universally embraced even within the United States—why, then, should it be forcibly exported abroad with taxpayer money?

The National Endowment for Democracy’s role in this scheme is particularly revealing.

The Solidarity Center is one of NED’s four core institutes, alongside the International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute (NDI), and the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE).

In theory, this structure was designed to balance competing ideological priorities: IRI and NDI handle democratic political development, while CIPE and the Solidarity Center address economic issues from pro-business and pro-labor perspectives, respectively.

However, in practice, CIPE does not function as an aggressive lobbying vehicle for business interests, whereas the Solidarity Center operates as an active political force that bolsters labor movements abroad in ways that often undermine free-market reforms.

The hypocrisy is glaring. The AFL-CIO, through the Solidarity Center, routinely backs left-wing labor movements abroad while simultaneously benefiting from government contracts at home.

The Center’s activities in Mexico, for example, have involved direct interventions in labor disputes, assisting the formation of new unions and pressuring businesses to accept unionized workforces.

This is an astonishing development: a U.S. taxpayer-funded organization engaging in labor agitation in foreign countries, often against the very companies that drive American economic prosperity.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the AFL-CIO pushes for higher corporate taxes, greater union protections, and government interventions that stifle business growth—creating a double bind in which American companies face union-backed pressure at home and taxpayer-funded labor activism abroad.

The consequences for American workers are perverse.

The AFL-CIO’s policies—whether enacted through domestic lobbying or international advocacy—rarely improve conditions for workers in any meaningful sense.

Union-led economies tend to suffer from stagnation, reduced business investment, and declining productivity.

As labor regulations tighten and collective bargaining agreements expand, businesses are forced to cut jobs, relocate operations, or automate production, ultimately reducing employment opportunities.

In the international arena, the Solidarity Center extends this effect by pressuring governments to implement AFL-CIO-style labor laws that often make industries less competitive, driving capital and jobs elsewhere.

In sum, the entire premise of U.S. taxpayer funding for the Solidarity Center is indefensible.

It is a union-controlled organization, financed by government grants, engaged in ideological advocacy that serves the interests of its AFL-CIO overlords rather than those of the American people.

The notion that a partisan domestic labor union should have its own taxpayer-funded foreign policy apparatus is absurd.

If labor movements abroad deserve support, they should be funded by voluntary contributions from unions, workers, and labor-friendly organizations—not by forcing American taxpayers to subsidize an institution that actively works against the interests of free enterprise and economic growth.

The Solidarity Center’s funding must be eliminated immediately.

Until then, every taxpayer dollar that flows into this labor union’s international operations represents not just a waste of public resources, but a fundamental betrayal of the principle that government should not be in the business of bankrolling ideological activism.

The American worker deserves better than to have his or her tax dollars used to prop up an international labor empire that serves the interests of AFL-CIO executives while delivering little, if anything, in return.


@AMUSE