DOGE
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This actually did strike me as compelling and made me ask myself why I supported one and not the other so to speak. Where I find the specific difference here is in two key ways:
1) I don’t see a direct equivalence between supporting more permissive immigration policies that might have some negative externalities and a budget cutting policy that might have negative externalities because the most vulnerable populations affected are in opposite directions here. Because of the state of the world, people are coming to America for a chance to escape extreme poverty. That same state of the world causing that is what’s causing the conditions we are deploying some of that foreign aid for. So in both cases, I favor erring on the side of the most in need.
2) I don’t support keeping criminals in the country. You can check the tape if you want, but beyond believing they are still owed due process, I support keeping out criminals. I don’t think we need to spend as much money or harm as many other non-violent folks in the process as Donald Trump seems to think we do, but I’m on board with deporting convicted criminal migrants. So I’m not seeking to let Americans be harmed, and don’t feel the overall statistics show that more Americans are harmed as a result of violent crime due to migrants than overall harm from a restrictive immigration policy. But I’ll need to look more into the details of the important aid because my bias toward serving the disadvantaged might be clouding my objectivity on that.
I 100% empathize with the struggle of Americans trying to feed their kids, but I think there are billions upon billions of dollars on the table to cut that won’t trade the lives of children in Africa. They could spend all 4 years at the Department of Defense and save enough money to fund USAID while working on domestic solutions.
If you are concerned about kids in Africa then you can donate your money to UNICEF. But American tax dollars should go to bettering the lives of Americans first. Foreign aid is the easiest thing to go because it's obvious it isn't helping Americans. FWIW, I'm also for taking out the waste at the DOD. Which I'm sure will come in time.
sturg33
I
Imagine being an American who is struggling feeding their kids, and then see that our tax money was spent giving rich Hollywood actors to go promote a war oversees... then imagine being that person and seeing a bunch of leftists cry about this being stopped
[tw]1887239006800519255[/tw]
[tw]1887239006800519255[/tw]
Tapate50
Well-known member
Yup
The real outrage is that we don’t have career system people investigating!
chop2chip
Well-known member
How many “dying kids” could have been saved with that $33m?
Tapate50
Well-known member
That’s an unbelievable exchange. How that was allowed is beyond me
sturg33
I
"Im not a fan of this... but... still voting (D)
As I said - the people mad about what’s being done now are either in the take or mad their side didn’t do it first.
Disgraceful
Tapate50
Well-known member
57Brave
Well-known member
By Nicholas Kristof
Opinion Columnist
The world’s richest man is boasting about destroying the United States Agency for International Development, which saves the lives of the world’s poorest children, saying he shoved it “into the wood chipper.”
By my calculations, Elon Musk probably has a net worth greater than that of the poorest billion people on Earth. Just since Donald Trump’s election, Musk’s personal net worth has grown by far more than the entire annual budget of U.S.A.I.D., which in any case accounts for less than 1 percent of the federal budget. It’s callous for gleeful billionaires like Musk and President Trump to cut children off from medicine, but, as President John F. Kennedy pointed out when he proposed the creation of the agency in 1961, it’s also myopic.
Cutting aid, Kennedy noted, “would be disastrous and, in the long run, more expensive.” He added: “Our own security would be endangered and our prosperity imperiled.”
Perhaps that’s why Russia has praised Trump’s move.
In contrast with Kennedy, the Trump administration braids together cruelty, ignorance and shortsightedness, and that combination seems particularly evident in its assault on American humanitarian assistance.
One person has already died of bird flu in the United States, and there is growing concern of a pandemic — yet Trump’s suspension of foreign aid has interrupted bird flu surveillance in 49 countries, according to the Global Health Council, a U.S.-based nonprofit.
Remember the American panic over the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014? (Trump was particularly hysterical back then.) In the end, an Ebola pandemic was averted — in part because of U.S.A.I.D.’s work in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
As it happens, another Ebola outbreak has just been reported in Uganda, with 234 contacts identified so far. U.S.A.I.D. would normally help suppress it — but now Trump and Musk have put it out of commission.
Another hemorrhagic fever, called Marburg virus, broke out in Tanzania last month. Aid workers are rushing to contain the virus, but again Trump has made the United States AWOL, leaving the world a little more vulnerable.
A disclosure: In 2012, U.S.A.I.D. made some games for India and Africa based on a book my wife and I wrote, “Half the Sky.” U.S.A.I.D. did not pay us anything for this, and the games did a good job promoting deworming, girls’ education and safe pregnancy.
I’ve seen U.S.A.I.D. operate all over the world, and it’s a mixed picture. It is fair to complain that U.S.A.I.D. is endlessly bureaucratic and that too much of the aid goes to so-called Beltway bandit American contractors rather than to needy people abroad.
Yet there’s no basis for the White House mythology that U.S.A.I.D. is an enclave of woke waste, reflected in Trump’s claim that it spent about “$100 million on condoms to Hamas” (he doubled his previous claim of $50 million).
Hmm. Male condoms cost the U.S. government 3.3 cents each, so that would be three billion condoms. By my calculation, for Hamas to use up that many condoms in a year, each fighter would have to have sex 325 times a day, every day.
That might wipe out Hamas as a fighting force more effectively than Israeli bombardment.
In any case, the actual amount of U.S. assistance spent on condoms for Gaza in recent years appears to have been not $100 million but $0.
Trump’s policies are as reckless as his rhetoric. I’d welcome some restructuring of U.S.A.I.D. But this isn’t restructuring but demolition — a blow to our values and interests alike.
Musk lambasted U.S.A.I.D. as “a criminal organization.” In fact, many of its employees have risked their lives in the best tradition of public service. The U.S.A.I.D. Memorial Wall honors 99 people killed while working for the agency in places such as Sudan, Haiti, Afghanistan and Ethiopia.
I’ve seen genuine improvements in U.S.A.I.D. over the years. Its public-private partnership to tackle lead poisoning, announced last year, was a model of American leadership. And so from my travels, this is what U.S.A.I.D. has come to mean to me:
I’ve seen women and girls with obstetric fistula, a horrific childbirth injury, get a $600 surgery that gives them back their lives — and this is something that U.S.A.I.D. supports.
I’ve seen men humiliated by elephantiasis and grotesquely enlarged scrotums, occasionally requiring a wheelbarrow to support their organs as they walk. And U.S.A.I.D. has fought this disease and made it less common.
I’ve seen children dying of malaria (and I’ve had malaria), and I’ve seen U.S.A.I.D. help achieve major strides against the disease over the last two decades.
I’ve seen southern Africa ravaged by AIDS. And then President George W. Bush’s landmark program against AIDS, called PEPFAR and implemented in part through U.S.A.I.D., transformed the landscape. I saw coffin makers in Lesotho and Malawi grumble that their business was collapsing because far fewer people were dying. PEPFAR has saved 26 million lives so far. (In the coming months, I’ll see if I can calculate how many lives are lost to Trump’s cuts in aid.)
I’ve seen the suffering of communities where people in middle age routinely go blind from trachoma, river blindness or cataracts — and the transformation when U.S.A.I.D. helps prevent such blindness.
Trump scoffed that U.S.A.I.D. was “run by radical lunatics.” Is it radical lunacy to try to save children’s lives? To promote literacy for girls? To fight blindness?
If this is woke, what about the evangelical Christians in International Justice Mission, which, with U.S.A.I.D. support, has done outstanding work battling sex trafficking of children in Cambodia and the Philippines? Does Trump believe that rescuing children from rape is a radical lunatic cause?
Trump’s moves are of uncertain legality, not least because U.S.A.I.D. was established by Congress, but the outcomes are indisputable. Around the world children are already missing health care and food because of the assault on the agency that Kennedy founded to uphold our values and protect our interests.
To billionaires in the White House, it may seem like a game. But to anyone with a heart, it’s about children’s lives and our own security, and what’s unfolding is sickening
////////////////////////////
please go on about your Christian values, I'm all ears
Opinion Columnist
The world’s richest man is boasting about destroying the United States Agency for International Development, which saves the lives of the world’s poorest children, saying he shoved it “into the wood chipper.”
By my calculations, Elon Musk probably has a net worth greater than that of the poorest billion people on Earth. Just since Donald Trump’s election, Musk’s personal net worth has grown by far more than the entire annual budget of U.S.A.I.D., which in any case accounts for less than 1 percent of the federal budget. It’s callous for gleeful billionaires like Musk and President Trump to cut children off from medicine, but, as President John F. Kennedy pointed out when he proposed the creation of the agency in 1961, it’s also myopic.
Cutting aid, Kennedy noted, “would be disastrous and, in the long run, more expensive.” He added: “Our own security would be endangered and our prosperity imperiled.”
Perhaps that’s why Russia has praised Trump’s move.
In contrast with Kennedy, the Trump administration braids together cruelty, ignorance and shortsightedness, and that combination seems particularly evident in its assault on American humanitarian assistance.
One person has already died of bird flu in the United States, and there is growing concern of a pandemic — yet Trump’s suspension of foreign aid has interrupted bird flu surveillance in 49 countries, according to the Global Health Council, a U.S.-based nonprofit.
Remember the American panic over the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014? (Trump was particularly hysterical back then.) In the end, an Ebola pandemic was averted — in part because of U.S.A.I.D.’s work in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
As it happens, another Ebola outbreak has just been reported in Uganda, with 234 contacts identified so far. U.S.A.I.D. would normally help suppress it — but now Trump and Musk have put it out of commission.
Another hemorrhagic fever, called Marburg virus, broke out in Tanzania last month. Aid workers are rushing to contain the virus, but again Trump has made the United States AWOL, leaving the world a little more vulnerable.
A disclosure: In 2012, U.S.A.I.D. made some games for India and Africa based on a book my wife and I wrote, “Half the Sky.” U.S.A.I.D. did not pay us anything for this, and the games did a good job promoting deworming, girls’ education and safe pregnancy.
I’ve seen U.S.A.I.D. operate all over the world, and it’s a mixed picture. It is fair to complain that U.S.A.I.D. is endlessly bureaucratic and that too much of the aid goes to so-called Beltway bandit American contractors rather than to needy people abroad.
Yet there’s no basis for the White House mythology that U.S.A.I.D. is an enclave of woke waste, reflected in Trump’s claim that it spent about “$100 million on condoms to Hamas” (he doubled his previous claim of $50 million).
Hmm. Male condoms cost the U.S. government 3.3 cents each, so that would be three billion condoms. By my calculation, for Hamas to use up that many condoms in a year, each fighter would have to have sex 325 times a day, every day.
That might wipe out Hamas as a fighting force more effectively than Israeli bombardment.
In any case, the actual amount of U.S. assistance spent on condoms for Gaza in recent years appears to have been not $100 million but $0.
Trump’s policies are as reckless as his rhetoric. I’d welcome some restructuring of U.S.A.I.D. But this isn’t restructuring but demolition — a blow to our values and interests alike.
Musk lambasted U.S.A.I.D. as “a criminal organization.” In fact, many of its employees have risked their lives in the best tradition of public service. The U.S.A.I.D. Memorial Wall honors 99 people killed while working for the agency in places such as Sudan, Haiti, Afghanistan and Ethiopia.
I’ve seen genuine improvements in U.S.A.I.D. over the years. Its public-private partnership to tackle lead poisoning, announced last year, was a model of American leadership. And so from my travels, this is what U.S.A.I.D. has come to mean to me:
I’ve seen women and girls with obstetric fistula, a horrific childbirth injury, get a $600 surgery that gives them back their lives — and this is something that U.S.A.I.D. supports.
I’ve seen men humiliated by elephantiasis and grotesquely enlarged scrotums, occasionally requiring a wheelbarrow to support their organs as they walk. And U.S.A.I.D. has fought this disease and made it less common.
I’ve seen children dying of malaria (and I’ve had malaria), and I’ve seen U.S.A.I.D. help achieve major strides against the disease over the last two decades.
I’ve seen southern Africa ravaged by AIDS. And then President George W. Bush’s landmark program against AIDS, called PEPFAR and implemented in part through U.S.A.I.D., transformed the landscape. I saw coffin makers in Lesotho and Malawi grumble that their business was collapsing because far fewer people were dying. PEPFAR has saved 26 million lives so far. (In the coming months, I’ll see if I can calculate how many lives are lost to Trump’s cuts in aid.)
I’ve seen the suffering of communities where people in middle age routinely go blind from trachoma, river blindness or cataracts — and the transformation when U.S.A.I.D. helps prevent such blindness.
Trump scoffed that U.S.A.I.D. was “run by radical lunatics.” Is it radical lunacy to try to save children’s lives? To promote literacy for girls? To fight blindness?
If this is woke, what about the evangelical Christians in International Justice Mission, which, with U.S.A.I.D. support, has done outstanding work battling sex trafficking of children in Cambodia and the Philippines? Does Trump believe that rescuing children from rape is a radical lunatic cause?
Trump’s moves are of uncertain legality, not least because U.S.A.I.D. was established by Congress, but the outcomes are indisputable. Around the world children are already missing health care and food because of the assault on the agency that Kennedy founded to uphold our values and protect our interests.
To billionaires in the White House, it may seem like a game. But to anyone with a heart, it’s about children’s lives and our own security, and what’s unfolding is sickening
////////////////////////////
please go on about your Christian values, I'm all ears
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