Hunter S. Thompson invented a style of reporting and gave it a nonsense name: gonzo.

Gonzo journalism broke every rule in the book. Thompson rode with the Hells Angels for a year. He ate the 1972 campaign trail whole and washed it down with whatever was in the trunk. He put himself in the middle of every story, fear, loathing, and all.

But say this for the man: everyone always knew where he stood. His bias was printed right on the label. No editor tamed him, no party owned him, and no government would have dared fund him.

Thompson was many things, but always independent and honest.

Unfortunately, we’re dealing with the bizarro world governmental alternative of Gonzo.

GONGO. It's an old acronym from the diplomatic world. It stands for Government-Organized Non-Governmental Organization.

Yes, a non-governmental group... organized by the government. That’s an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard of one.

The Soviets ran them. Beijing perfected them. Putin funded a youth movement called Nashi that "spontaneously" adored him. These groups posed as if they were a part of a free civil society. In truth, they were sock puppets. The state's hand was up the back of every one of them.

Western officials laughed at this. They said, “Real democracies have real watchdogs!”

Not anymore. The GONGO machine is now running full tilt in Brussels and DC with better branding.

Gonzo may have told you it's biased up front, but GONGO hides the only bias that matters: who signs the checks. And once you see how the money moves, you'll understand why so many "independent" voices all bark on command... but never bite the hand that feeds them.

I call the mechanism the Lapdog Loop.

Five Clicks of the Loop

Each step looks innocent on its own. But combined… It’s another story.

Step 1: The government subsidizes a "watchdog" group. Nature, health, safety... pick your noble cause.

Step 2: That group produces the reports and data the government uses to write policy.

Step 3: The group then sues the government, demanding stricter rules. It usually wins. Why wouldn't it? The court is looking at the group's own data.

Step 4: Stricter rules mean new programs, new agencies, and new grants. Guess who gets the grants?

Step 5: Return to step one, but now with a bigger budget.

Every player inside the Loop wins. The group gets funded. The bureaucrats get headcount. The politicians get cover: "The court made us do it."

Only the taxpayer loses, because he funds both sides of every lawsuit and pays for the verdict, too.

This sounds like Mises's ratchet of interventionism, doesn’t it? The Lapdog Loop is the ratchet with a law degree.

The Dutch Laboratory

In 2019, a tiny outfit called Mobilization for the Environment won a case before the Dutch Council of State. The court struck down the country's entire nitrogen permit system. Overnight, thousands of farms and building projects became illegal. The massive Dutch bank, ABN AMRO, put some €14 billion of projects in jeopardy.

The group's founder, a retired chemist named Johan Vollenbroek, didn't stop there. His organization won the addresses of 3,500 farms operating without permits. Then it filed lawsuits in batches of 50 farms at a time, pressing provinces to shut them down.

In 2022, another of his cases killed the exemption that allowed home building to continue. The builders' trade group said the country would be locked down. It nearly was. The Netherlands, which needs about a million new homes, froze.

And here's the part that makes it a Loop, not just litigation. When the government sat down to negotiate its nitrogen policy, who was at the table? The same subsidized nature organizations that had sued it there. Greenpeace's Dutch director said it plainly: "We are not at the table to compromise."

Sue. Win. Negotiate. Advise. Collect. Repeat.

The farmers whose families worked that land for generations? They got buyout offers and police vans. Many are looking at Romania, Germany, or Texas.

Brussels Says the Quiet Part Out Loud

If you think the Dutch case is one zealous chemist, let's go upstream, to the money.

The EU runs a green funding scheme called the LIFE program. Its budget is €5.4 billion through 2027. Green groups can draw up to €700,000 a year from it.

In early 2025, members of the European Parliament started reading the fine print of those grant contracts. Remarkably, they found funded groups had work plans that included swaying members of Parliament to vote for the Commission's own Green Deal files.

Think about that. The executive branch was paying "independent" groups to lobby the legislature on its behalf.

In April 2025, the Commission itself admitted that some grant agreements contained "specific advocacy actions and undue lobbying activities."

It’s amazing that Brussels even graded its own homework, let alone admitted such a thing.

The EU's Court of Auditors then found the bloc had sent €7 billion to just 90 NGOs in 3 years. And over the past decade, 30 organizations collected more than 40% of all directly managed NGO funds. That's a Rolodex dressed up as freedom of association.

The American Franchise

Think this is a European disease? Uncle Sam runs his own branch called "sue and settle."

A green group sues the EPA for failing to meet a statutory deadline. The agency doesn't fight. Why would it? The lawsuit demands what the agency wanted to write anyway.

So the EPA settles. A consent decree (a court order both sides draft together) sets the new rules and timeline. No vote in Congress. No real public comment. Policy is made in a settlement conference rather than out in the open.

Of course, the taxpayer pays the plaintiffs' attorney fees.

A U.S. Chamber of Commerce study found that from 2009 to 2012, the EPA declined to defend itself in more than 60 such suits. Those deals produced over 100 new regulations. So you paid the agency's lawyers. Then you paid the activists' lawyers. And then ultimately you paid to comply with the rules they wrote together.

Former FDA Administrator Scott Pruitt banned the practice in 2017, declaring "the days of regulation through litigation are over." Then Joke Biden’s administration revoked the ban in 2022. Click. The Loop turned right back on.

And then there's USAID. When that firehose was shut off in 2025, thousands of "independent" outfits worldwide folded within months. A watchdog that dies when the government stops feeding it was more of a pet than a watchdog.

To Be Fair to the Dogs

Now, a word in defense of the people inside the Loop. Most aren't villains.

The scientist in the nature group believes in her data. The bureaucrat believes in his program. The judge follows the law as written. Even Vollenbroek, by all accounts, is a true believer, not a grifter.

The Loop is durable because it’s not corrupt, but incentivized. Remember, leaders reward the coalition that keeps them in power. Subsidized NGOs are the cheapest coalition members ever invented. They deliver pressure, cover, and "science." And they never have to win an election.

A free society needs strong watchdog groups. But a watchdog on the state's payroll can't guard you from the state. Independence starts with financial independence.

Wrap Up

So what breaks the Loop?

Full disclosure of every public dollar flowing to advocacy groups. No structural subsidies for organizations that lobby for policy. A bright line between funding a soup kitchen and funding a lawsuit machine.

Thompson's crowd had a saying: buy the ticket, take the ride. The GONGOs bought no ticket. They've been riding on your dime for decades.