12-20-25 The Weekend Hour 2: A warning about non-government organizations. Here are the details on NGO’s.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
To night. Michael Brown joins me here, the former FEMA
director of talk show host Michael Brown. Brownie, No, Brownie,
You're doing a heck of a job. The Weekend with
Michael Brown broadcasting Life in Denver, Colorado. It's the Weekend
with Michael Brown. Glad to have you joining the program today,
and a Merry Christmas to everybody too. Easiest rule of
engagement to follow. If you want to tell me anything

(00:21):
or ask me anything, the text line number is always open.
Three three one zero three three three one zero three,
keyword Mike or Michael. Do me a favor, Go follow
me on X at Michael Brown USA. I casually mentioned
in that last segment talking about the fraud going on
in Minnesota that a non government organization and NNGO was

(00:45):
involved in part of that fraud. The Federal Reserve recently
disclosed a figure that probably I should give you a
heart attack at least stopping in your tracks and ask
where did it come from? You know, the five ws
who want where, when and why. As of the second

(01:06):
quarter of this year, NGOs in this country held fourteen
point twelve trillion dollars in assets. Yeah, let me give
you that number again. NGOs, non government organizations that we'll
see in the meanly get a lot of their money

(01:27):
from taxpayers. Held fourteen point twelve trillion dollars in assets. Now,
that balance sheet at fourteen point twelve twillion dollars is
larger than the combined gross domestic product to Japan, Germany,
and India by about five percent. That is a fact

(01:50):
drawn from You can go on to the Federal Reserve website.
You can look into their own financial accounts. Now you
can dispute how the assets are distributed. You could dispute
or argue about how actively they get deployed, but the
magnitude itself is no longer debatable. A sector of formally

(02:14):
private tax exempt institutions now commands wealth on a scale
that is normally associated with Great Western powers. Japan, Germany,
India are smaller combined in their GDP than the fourteen

(02:34):
point twelve dollars held in US non government organizations. Now,
at first, just you know, when you just first think
about it, it may seem unremarkable or maybe even reassuring,
because I think many people think, oh, non government organizations,
that's kind of associated with a lot of people with

(02:57):
things like oh, the homelessness problem, the drug problem, soup kitchens,
or they're involved in disaster relief, or they're going out
on medical missions around the world, or they're involved in
conservation projects. In this country, I think too many Americans
have given to these causes in good faith, and the

(03:22):
legal framework that gives these nonprofits tax exemption emerged from
precisely that moral bearing. The state steps back, We whether
it's state, local, or federal, refrain from taxing donations and endowments,

(03:43):
and civil society supposedly steps forward to meet human needs
that the free markets or the private sector or the
governments can't address, or when they do address it, they're
not very good at it. And so for much of
the twentieth century, and now I think moving into well

(04:04):
into now the twenty first century, I think that bargain
for a while may have worked. But the moral intuition
that justified the nonprofit model does not automatically justify the
present form and the extent of these NGOs. You know
as well as I do, that when incentives change, the

(04:29):
institutions change, and we also know this scale matters. All
we have to do is look at our own federal government.
We know that now it's not just the federal government,
all levels of government. I've given you this challenge before,
and I will challenge you again. As you go through
your daily life, you think about whether you're driving a car,

(04:53):
shopping at a grocery store, or you know, my favorite
one of all is the next time you fill up
with gas, because everything's self service. Now on this say,
is it still organ in New Jersey? I forget whether
Oregon in Jersey is still it's required that you can't
have self serve? I don't remember. If somebody knows, text me,
let me know. When you're filling your car up with gas,

(05:16):
don't just look at the price. Don't just look at
you know, as the digital numbers spanning, you realize, oh
my gosh, this is gonna cost me a hundred bucks.
I want you to step back, and I want you
to look at the placards on the side of the
gas pumps and read all of the rules that you're
supposed to follow when you're filling your vehicle with fuel.

(05:38):
That's a government regulation. Or you go into a restaurant,
and again I'm not opposed to all regulations, but you
go into a restaurant, I want you to find somewhere.
If you can see into the kitchen or in a
hallway or somewhere, you'll see all the licenses, you'll see
all the rules, you'll see all the things. Or go
into your own company. I can walk downstairs too, or

(05:59):
actually I can walk up to the fourth floor of
this building, and in our kitchen area there is a
gigantic bulletin board that has all of the announcements about
workers comp and everything else. Everywhere you turn, government has
intruded into our lives. That's why I point out that

(06:19):
at some point, when the incentives change, the institutions change,
and also when the scale becomes so large that matters too.
A legal structure that was designed for just modest charities
does not remain benign when it governs entities that collectively

(06:40):
rival the productive output of advanced economies like India, Germany
and Japan. At that point, we're not talking about charity
in the ordinary sense that I think most Americans think
about charity. We're talking about power, absolute power. Let me

(07:01):
give you a simple comparison. A corporation, just a company
publicly traded with fourteen trillion dollars in assets, would be
among the most heavily regulated company in the world. Its
disclosures to the SEC, to banking regulators, to everybody would

(07:26):
be highly scrutinized. The activities of that corporation that has
fourteen trillion dollars in assets would be obviously taxed, Its
political engagement would be constrained, and the c suite, the
leadership of that company would be subject to continuous oversight.
A sovereign state commanding similar resources would be constrained. If

(07:53):
you had a small country Japan that's smaller than these NGOs,
they would be constrained by elections, by treaties, by laws
if they're parliament or in this case with the United States,
that our Congress might pass now. And in GOO, despite

(08:15):
controlling comparable wealth, they now operate in a space that
is neither market. It's not a free market, and it's
not a state. It's not a government. They're private, but
they're subsidized. They're powerful, but they're unelected. They're political, but

(08:36):
they claim to be nonpartisan. That's ambiguity, and one time
ambiguity seemed like a virtue. I think today that ambiguity
is a loophole. The problem is not that we have
non government organizations. It's that the tax code treats them

(08:57):
as if they were still what they once were. You
see the exemption from income taxes, capital gains taxes, and
in many cases even property taxes. All of that was
justified at one time on the assumption that these organizations
were very thinly capitalized. They were primarily driven by their mission.

(09:19):
And so you know CEOs of the chief executive officer
or the executive director, the chief operating officer, the chief
technology officer, the chief information officer, they were all getting salaries,
but they were reasonable salaries, salaries that were maybe competitive

(09:41):
in the marketplace, but they weren't absurd. We talked about
on the local program. I talked about a company that
a couple of years ago had very little in assets.
Today they've got hundreds of millions of dollars in assets
and the CEO it makes million dollars a year. How

(10:02):
did that happen? It's the Weekend with Michael Brown. I'll
explain next how that happens and why it needs to change.
I'll be right back. Merry Christmas everybody, So Weeked with
Michael Brown. Thanks for tuning in. So we're talking about

(10:23):
NGOs and how you know, I've long complained, but I've
never really dug into the details about just you know,
there's a point where you recognize, Okay, I keep bitching,
complaining about NGO's, let's dig into them further. So I did,
and then now I'm really ticked off, and Merry Christmas,
I'm really ticked off. The Tax Foundation has been warning

(10:47):
for years about how this nonprofit sector has quietly grown
into just a parallel economy. By the Tax Foundation's own accounting,
even going back several years, NGOs represented about fifteen percent
of America's gross domestic product, and for years they've controlled

(11:10):
trillions and assets, and that trend has only accelerated. Its hospitals, universities,
credit unions, advocacy groups, you know groups again. You know,
whether it's for drugs, homelessness, you know, illegal aliens, whatever,
NGOs for everything you can possibly imagine. And they now
generate business like income at scale. But even though they

(11:34):
generate huge amounts of income, they face none of the
physical obligations that are imposed on their for profit counterparts.
So the result is not charity. I think it's distortion.
An example, two hospitals across the street from one another.
One is organized as a nonprofit the other as a

(11:57):
for profit hospital. Both charge market rates, both employee professional management,
both invest in real estate and technology, but one pays
corporate taxes the other does not. The tax burden borne
by the for profit hospital doesn't disappear, it gets shifted

(12:18):
either onto the patients or onto taxpayers. In effect, the
nonprofits tax exemption becomes a subsidy financed by everybody. Now,
if you're a defender of this system, you're going to
respond that maybe I'm sending a straw man here. But
I would say that defenders of the system typically respond

(12:39):
by arguing that the nonprofits reinvest their surpluses in their mission. Well,
sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. Endowments grow faster
than the services expand the other thing that happens is
that the compensation of the C suite reaches levels that

(13:00):
are indistinguishable from the private sector. For example, university endowments
that exceed fifty billion dollars, they increase their tuition relentlessly
while accumulating wealth that compounds tax free foundations that satisfy

(13:20):
minimal payout requirements while preserving capital imperpetuity in the legal
form signals altruism, but the economic behavior signals something closer
to just pure raw asset management. And then the problem
deepens when you turn from economics to politics. NGOs are

(13:41):
not supposed to engage in partisan activity. I can't help
but laugh when I say that they're not supposed to
be partisan organizations, but in practice many do, often through
elaborate networks of affiliated entities, and so they move the
money between their five oh one C three entities and
their five one see four organizations. And I don't think

(14:04):
that anybody has exploited that structure more effectively and more
efficiently than George and Alec Soros. Through their Open Society foundations.
They have perfected the use of tax exempt capital to
finance lawsuits, advocacy, and political pressure campaigns across jurisdiction and

(14:26):
across probably every kind of topic you can imagine. The
result is a system in which political activism gets subsidized
by the tax code. The donors receive deductions, the organizations
avoid taxes. Litigation, lobbying, narrative shaping. Those are all financed

(14:49):
with dollars that would have otherwise flowed to the treasury
because they don't pay taxes. There's a delta between what
a private organization. What they're you know, net income would
be versus what the net income is of an ng
O over here, because they're not paying taxes. So in that delta,
that difference, they can use to file lawsuits, to lobby,

(15:13):
to go out and use the cabal to shape and narrative.
And this isn't an abstract idea either. Both during Trump
one point oh and Trump two point zero, do you
know that more than ninety percent of the lawsuits brought
against the Trump administration were either filed directly by an NGO,
or the lawsuits were financed by an NGO, or they

(15:36):
were coordinated by the NGOs. They were operating behind just
nominal plaintiffs. Let me explain what that means. They might
come to me. Let's say that I'm an I'm I'm
enraged with Trump arrangement syndrome, or I'm an illegal alien,
or I've got some cause that I believe in. Well,
the NGO would put me up as the plaintiff and

(15:58):
then they would fund the law firm. I don't do anything.
I just put my name in a lawsuit. Oh, I'd
have to appear for a deposition, I'd have to answer interrogatories.
But I wouldn't have to worry about a thing in
terms of the legal expenses. And all of these cases, well,
let's see, they challenged immigration enforcement, they challenged energy policy,

(16:19):
they challenged election law, and they challenged they even challenged
national security decisions. And they all got funded with tax
exempt capital, tax exempt money. The plaintiffs paid nothing into
the system that they were suing or contesting. Yet what
did they do. They deployed vast resources against agencies that

(16:42):
are funded by you and me, by the taxpayers. Now,
you can agree or disagree with the substance of any
particular lawsuit. The structural question is the main question. Should
the tax code sub dies permanent legal opposition to democratically

(17:05):
enacted policy. My answer is no, it should not. The
traditional answer, though, has been that civil society must remain
independent of the government of the state. Well, that answer
presupposes that NGOs are meaningfully separate from the political process.
Do you think they are When you think about an NGO,

(17:26):
do you think they're separate from the political process. I
think they're an inherent part of the political process. I'll
explain why next. Don't go Away to Night. Michael Brown
joins me here. The former FEMA director of talk show
host Michael Brown. Brownie, No, Brownie, You're doing a heck

(17:48):
of a job. The Weekend with Michael Brown. Merry Christmas
and welcome back to the Weekly with Michael Brown. Glad
to have you with me. Text line, of course has
always opened three three one zero three keyword Michael Michael
goes follow me on x at Michael Brown Usay. So
back to NNGOS. As I said after Trump one point
Trump Trump two point zero, almost all of the lawfair

(18:12):
against him was done by mngos. Those organizations filed and
funded waves of lawsuits. They coordinated investigations, they submitted This
is interesting to me anyway, as a lawyer. They submitted
countless bar complaints against Republican lawyers, Republican officials and advisors

(18:36):
who had law degrees or who were admitted to the bar,
had a bar license. Why would they do that, because
those complaints were more than just punitive, they actually functioned
as a killing mechanism. Because you're going to be loath
to take on a case for the administration or for

(18:57):
anyone representing the administration, or for someone defending the administration,
because you don't want to go fight a bar complaint,
your likelihood is at stake, this is warfare. And then
those same organizations, those same NGOs, continue to bring in

(19:18):
finance these cases into Trump's second term reveally not a
temporary reaction, but has become an institutional strategy. The NGOs
are so now are now so deeply integrated into our
policy networks, and they're usually staffed by former government officials.

(19:40):
They coordinate with all these partisan actors, and they focus
less on service delivery than on an ideological outcome. The
distinction between nonprofit advocacy and political organization has become so
intertwined to the point because it really is truly irrelevant.

(20:03):
And the scale of assets involved fourteen point two trillion dollars.
Think about it this way, that's not passive capital. That
fourteen point twelve trillion dollars generates a whole hell of
a lot of income, and it provides influence and of

(20:24):
course leverage. It can shape labor markets, It can shape
and influence media ecosystems, the cabal, It can influence academic priorities.
It can even influence that regulatory agenda that I beg
you to think about as you go through. I know
it's Christmas time, but sometime during your Christmas holiday, there'll

(20:48):
be somewhere where I'm going to plant this earworm brainworm
in you, and you'll think, oh, yeah, Michael Brown told
me to think about government regulation. There is a great
example of a government regulation I haven't thought about in
your everyday life. When that power operates outside the normal
mechanisms of our accountability, like elections or recalls, the result

(21:13):
is not That is not pluralism. It's a symmetry. Now.
I know that people will argue or object that the
figure of the fourteen point twelve trillion dollars it aggregates
very different institutions. Of course it does, but it shows

(21:34):
you the scale. Yes, churches or a food bank, labor unions, hospitals, universities, foundations,
they're all included in that figure. But aggregation is precisely
my point. The legal regime does not meaningfully distinguish among them,
a local charity that's barely getting by trying to feed

(21:55):
some homeless people, or a multinational foundation funding political advocacy.
Both benefit from the same basic tax privileges. The former, Yes,
the small local food bank is small, it's dependent. The
latter is wealthy, it's entrenched. Treating them identically is not fairness.

(22:19):
I think it's negligence. And of course, let me add
a footnote. While I rage against the machine, and while
I rage against this injustice, and while I rage against
this horrific system that we have, I'm also realistic enough

(22:40):
to know that do we think that Republicans have the
cajones to do anything about it? About it? Well? Maybe,
but let's let's temper it a little bit. Some recent
policy developments that the reality is finally being acknowledged. This year,

(23:03):
Congress enacted higher excise taxes. For example, in large university
endowments and some private foundations, investment income that once escape
taxation entirely now faces some graduated rates up to a
whopping eight percent. In some cases. Excessive executive compensation in

(23:26):
these nonprofits is now subject to excise taxes. Now, I
know it's modest relative to the scale of the problem,
but at least I see some shift in principle. Tax
exemption is no longer assumed to be sacred, and it

(23:48):
should not be. More and more in goo's function, as
we often refer to the deep state or the administrative state,
how about another shadow state, the NGO state. Exercising power
without any sort of electoral legitimacy. I know that's provocative,

(24:12):
but the underlying concern is a serious concern, because when
policy outcomes get shaped by organizations that are insulated from voters,
that get funded by untaxed wealth, that get shielded by
complex legal structures, accountability starts to dissipate, this disappear, and
then decisions start to migrate from our elected representatives and

(24:37):
get moved into courtrooms. It gets moved from voters to foundations. Now,
none of what I've just said requires denying that genuine
charity exists. It does, and a lot of Americans give
their own personal time, they struggle, and they give what

(24:58):
little money they have to organization that truly relieve suffering,
that strengthen communities. My argument is not against charities. It's
against a regulatory framework that allows immense concentrations of wealth
to operate indefendent, indefinitely and independently, without taxation, no transparency,

(25:21):
no meaningful constraint. By simply adopting a legal construct, Oh
I'm a five O one C three. Oh I'm a
five O one C four. And then I'm going to
blend those two together and nobody's ever going to question me.
A more rational system would begin by distinguishing some way

(25:43):
among functions. Organizations primarily engaged in direct charitable services like
that little local food bank, it really should receive favorable treatment.
Entities that operate businesses, or manage large investment portfolios, or
engaged in ongoing, sustained political advocacy, they should not get

(26:06):
that favorable treatment. Income from commercial activity should be taxed
at the same rate, regardless of what their corporate form is.
And if you have an endowment above a certain threshold,
you want to face a mandatory payout or at least
some sort of asset based taxes on that endowment. And
political activity, any political activity, the slightest little political activity

(26:32):
that auto trigger an automatic loss of exemption. Not some
sort of little penalty, but an automatic loss of exemption,
and then you would have to fight in court and
go and argue to get your exemption back. In other words,
put some bonus on these organizations. It's not going to
destroy nonprofits. It's not going to destroy charities. I think

(26:56):
it would clarify it. They would have to align tax
treatment with their behavior, rather than just with some dumbass
mission statement that really doesn't or actually hides what they're
really doing behind that mission statement. It would restore the
original logic of a nonprofit status by reserving nonprofit status

(27:18):
for organizations that actually operate as charities and not those
that are perpetually financially and political operating as financial or
political machines. Go back to that fourteen point two fourteen
point twelve trillion dollar figure. It matters because it ought
to force a reckoning any sector. Again, remember, fourteen point

(27:44):
twelve trillion dollars is larger than the combined GDPs of Germany, Japan,
and India. A sector that is that large is no
longer just ancillary to our economy or to our politics.
It is now a central influential factor. And central and

(28:08):
those kinds of influences require rules that are commensurate with
their power. And if we're going to pretend otherwise, that's
going to confuse your you know, your grandmother's sentiment about
giving to the local food bank. With governance of institutions
that are influencing our government outside our vote, we don't face,

(28:34):
for example, a choice between compassion or accountability. It's a
choice between a legal fiction and a changed reality. Because
I don't think that nngos were ever meant to become
this gigantic, untaxed empire. If they have become one, and
I argue that they have, the fault lies not in

(28:57):
the charity itself necessarily, you know where it lies in
our refusals to update the structures that we used to
govern charities. Put that in your pipe and smoke it
and think about that, particularly in this season when you're
asked to give. Everybody in their dog is asking you
to give. Maybe you'll start looking at it. I'll be

(29:21):
right back. Merry Christmas and welcome back to the Weekly
with Michael Brown. Glad to have you with me. TEXTA line,
of course has always opened three three one zero three
keyword micro Michael go follow me on x at Michael
Brown usay. And I was a kid growing up, there

(29:42):
was and I think it was Friday. I think it
was on Friday nights. Remember the Rockford Files. James Garner,
he played this private investigator. He was kind of a goofball.
I think, if I recall correctly, he lived on a
boat somewhere on the Pace coast, maybe along the Pacific
Coast Highway. I don't remember. Here we are fifty years later, Well,

(30:08):
Friday nights are again for files, but it's the Rockford Files.
We have the Epstein Files. Yes, they got released yesterday
last night on a Friday, Friday news done Now, Usually
the government saves Friday nights for the kinds of things
that it doesn't want the news to cover. Well, the

(30:29):
Friday before Christmas is generally a pretty darn good place
to hide. But in the age of this instantaneous news cycle,
in a world where there's is Santa Claus alive, I
don't know, they're not going to get their holiday wish.
Because this week's episode of The Epstein Files involves several intersecting,

(30:49):
ongoing plot lines that has a common theme. The Democrats
are constantly trying to swing and smack the pinata that
they tried to make Donald Trump him too. Instead, they
always seem to pin the tale on Bill Clinton, and
they really did in this one New York Times in

(31:10):
their story. We'll get that in a minute. This this
document dump that occurred during a time when official Washington
and most you know, members of the cabal are drinking
and trying to forget the week that was. They're you know,
they're already on their Christmas vacation, they'll be back. You know,

(31:31):
I'll be back on air on January five. If I
remember of Congress, I'll be back on air probably on
January twenty five, because you know, Christmas is just such
a difficult time for members of Congress and they just
need they need that extra time because they've worked so
dang hard. Well, here's Bill Clinton, the big dog himself,

(31:53):
front and center of the week's most salacious photos. In
one photo that I saw online, he in a swimming
pool with Epstein fixer Gislaine Maxwell and a woman who
was either unfortunate who have been born with a black
box for a head, or whose identity the government had
redacted him doesn't let us see. In another there's another

(32:17):
black box head woman sitting on Bill Clinton's lap less salaciously.
Clinton piles around on a private jet with Michael Jackson
and Diana Ross. And then there are photos of Mick Jagger, Yeah,
the Stones, Mick Jagger having dinner with Gislaine Maxwell and
Bill Clinton, and of course former Prince Andrew of the

(32:41):
United Kingdom. He sprawled across the laps I mean literally
sprawled across the laps of several black boxed headed women.
And then Epstein himself features prominently, of course, in one
photo on the phone while examining a cake shaked like
a woman's breast, and another wearing a hat in the
style of Fidel Castro. And then there's the photo of

(33:01):
Clinton lounging in the hot tub with yet another redacted woman.
As always, Clinton World denies everything and turned it back
on Trump World. A Clinton spokesman said, quote, this is
about shielding themselves from what comes next, from what they'll
try to and hide forever so they can release as
many grainy, twenty plus year old photos as they want.

(33:24):
But this isn't about Bill Clinton, never has, never will be.
Even Susie Wiles said Donald Trump was wrong about Bill
Clinton close quote Now, I don't know, as I kind
of dug you. Actually, when I went on to the
DOJ website, I got put into a queue. I was
number sixty two, and my wait time was about a
minute and a half. And then I spent about a

(33:44):
minute and a half on the website because it was
like there's nothing here. You know, you search for Trump,
you find stuff that you've already seen heard about. Nothing new. Now,
the Epstein Files Transparency Act does allow the Department of
Justice to withhold certain information to protect the identities of
the victims. And I'm all in favor of that, but

(34:06):
one hundred completely redactive pages can of Beggar's belief in
a missing Watergate type minute sort of way. California congress
and Roll Connor wrote, who co wrote the Act with
Thomas Massey from Kentucky. The Republican says that the DOJ's
release doesn't comply with the congressional legislation at all. He said,

(34:28):
and I quote, our law requires them to explain redactions.
There's not a single explanation. So he and Massey, of course,
are going to continue to demand the full release of
the files. And AOC gets in on the Act. She
posted on x Now the cover up is out in
the open. This is far from over. Everybody involves is
going to have to answer for this. Pam Bondi, Cash Betel,

(34:49):
whole administration protecting a bunch of rapists and pedophiles because
they have money, power and connection. Bondie should resign tonight.
You get a spoiler resort, spoiler report. Pam Bondi did not.
She didn't resign last night, and she hasn't so far.
This morning. I don't know what the Democrats were expecting
in those reductive pages. They seem to have some sort

(35:11):
of secret knowledge that there's gonna be all this detailed
descriptions and photos of Donald Trump having sex. I don't know,
with kids, animals, you know, you know, aliens from Mars
or something, or maybe all three at once in the
manage a trois, I don't know. It would be the
equivalent of Alexis in the driveway with a bow on
it for Christmas for them, you know the commercial we

(35:31):
see all the time, or you know all the talk
commercials with bows on them. But instead there's gonna get
some new socks, a sweater from you know, Grandma, and
a twenty five year old photo of Bill Clinton swimming
with the lady. President Trump disappoint them, as he always does,
But we don't know for sure. What's in the blacked

(35:51):
out page. Is the President the greatest sex criminal in
the history of mankind? Did Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson
do the Harlem shuffle with a drag queen at Jeffrey
Epstein's birthday party? Did Bill Clinton snog a big haired woman? Well?
Tune in next Friday Night. We will have another dump.
I won't be here. You'll be on your own. You'll
have to go search yourself because I don't care. I'll

(36:14):
be right back.