PA Troops Are Cleaning Up DC

Let’s hear it for the Fighting 129th… South Dakota’s 129th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment is still deployed indefinitely in Washington—though its counterparts from Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Ohio and West Virginia are returning home by Nov. 30.

The mission of the pride of Rapid City is apparently critical to President Trump’s “Safe and Beautiful” initiative as the South Dakotans write releases, take pictures and shoot videos of Guardsmen picking up litter, raking leaves and putting down mulch.

South Dakota’s governor Larry Rhoden in August promised a 30-day Guard deployment in DC.

“With the National Guard’s help, President Trump has restored law and order to our nation’s capital—and our guardsmen will help keep it that way,” Rhoden said. “We will not sit on the sidelines while crime threatens the safety of our families.”

Reduced to promoting the basic yard work performed by the National Guard, the 129th sends a strong message to the nation that the streets of Washington are as safe as they ever were.

Civic duties are not the mission of the National Guard. It’s a waste of resources.

My hunch is that Rhoden dispatched the Guard to butter up Trump ahead of the GOP primary for governor slated for June.

A Trump endorsement could cement his shot at another term. Dispatching the 129th to DC may pay dividends for Rhoden.

Three cheers for transparency. Public Policy Holding Company believes its London and intended NASDAQ stock listing boosts its attractiveness to potential employees and future acquisition targets by providing a high degree of transparency.

Its S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission bears that out.

In the “risk factors” section of the document, PPHC discloses that it identified “a material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting” while preparing the yearend financial statements for 2024.

It "determined that that certain cash flow items had been incorrectly classified within our consolidated statements of cash flows for the year ended December 31, 2023, specifically the classification of cash flow activities relating to cash payments for post-combination expenses in business combinations.”

Additionally, it identified that loss per share had not been calculated correctly under the provisions of GAAP.

The "material weakness was due to a lack of appropriate technical review and the absence of formalized accounting policies specific to such transactions and the loss per share computation.”

In response to this material weakness, PPHC is in the process of remediating internal controls over financial reporting.

That effort includes “having created new positions within the finance department to which we have appointed, and are in the process of appointing, additional experienced GAAP and internal control reporting specialists; we have engaged third-party advisors to support our internal control testing and remediation efforts; we have begun a third-party risk assessment over our internal control environment; and are reviewing and prioritizing individual control deficiencies for remediation.”

PPHC is in the process of documenting and executing remediation action items. However, it says there can be no assurance such remediation will be successful or that the company will not fail to identify new material weaknesses or other deficiencies in our internal controls in the future.

Potential buyers of PPHC's stock have been warned. “As a result of such historical or potential future deficiencies or material weaknesses, investors may lose confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports, the market price of our common stock could be adversely affected and we could become subject to litigation or investigations, which could require additional financial and management resources."

Transparency will pay off for PPHC.

DOGE was a FLOP… The US government spent $376B more in fiscal 2025 through August than the $6.6T that it spent in the comparable 2024 period. That’s a six percent hike, according to a report in Quartz.

When Elon Musk first took the helm of the Department of Government Efficiency, he promised to trim $2T from government spending. He then downgraded that to $1T and then chopped it to $150B.

The numbers show that Elon was blowing smoke right from the beginning. But he did have a nice photo-op with that chainsaw.