johnny karate
... and your little dog too.
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“Isn’t a traditional approach” is certainly one way to describe spreading conspiracy theories and breaking the law.
Merged USAID: is it really a bunch of crazy leftists? / Trump Was Absolutely Right to Shut Down USAID
- Thread starter Puppycow
- Start date
“Isn’t a traditional approach” is certainly one way to describe spreading conspiracy theories and breaking the law.
The Great Zaganza
Maledictorian
- Joined
- Aug 14, 2016
- Messages
- 29,868
When Republicans do it, it's a non-traditional approach. If anyone else does it, it's a crime or treason.
johnny karate
... and your little dog too.
- Joined
- Jan 12, 2007
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It’s not a transatlantic thing, it’s just one person being dishonest.
Donal
Philosopher
- Joined
- Sep 8, 2006
- Messages
- 8,913
That happens because the individual states aren't properly staffing their own agencies tasked with administering Medicaid and Medicare. You know all the "voter fraud" nonsense? Ya, that is actually happening with Medicaid and Medicare.
angrysoba
Philosophile
Now, now, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few laws. And if laws are broken some judge can rule to that effect. And if they do, they can be impeached. Then nobody has to worry about laws being broken by the executive branch ever again.
esquel
Collector of Meteorites
First you need eggs to make your omelet.
Norman Alexander
Penultimate Amazing
They will need to come from communist Canada, though. Plus 25% tariff, of course.
angrysoba
Philosophile
Don’t worry. They can find the money by shutting down a couple of departments to buy a couple of eggs.
Emily's Cat
Rarely prone to hissy-fits
Agreed. Republicans are doing a dumb thing. Other people before them also did dumb things. I'd like both parties to stop doing dumb things.
You might convince Democrats to stop being dumb, but Republicans have made stupidity and ignorance a virtue, so good luck with that one.
Emily's Cat
Rarely prone to hissy-fits
Why would we house them for an entire year? Let's say $7K for two months per person instead. And that's being generous, and assuming that housing a couple costs twice as much as housing a single person, which is a silly assumption.
We can use the exact same hotels that the government has been putting them in for the past year or so. And since those already exist, and we've already been paying for their use, it shouldn't increase costs at all.
Alternatively, you can use existing facilities that were designed to house legitimate refugees, and tackle the problem in batches. Perhaps we would need to provide some already-existing military-grade structures that get used for deployments.
The point is, you're acting like we need a major construction project to build facilities from scratch to house 1 million people all at the same time... which is a really poor assumption.
Oooh... something for National Guard or ICE or another existing agency to do! Maybe we can use this to cross-train some of the people that are being cut from other government jobs that are deemed wasteful. Again, you're assuming that nothing exists for this at all and it all has to be created from scratch.
How much do you think a full plan costs, on a per-person basis?
Why are you assuming that people who have already been determined to be here illegally need judges and legal representation?
Do you also assume that when a 16 year old is found to be in a bar, they need a lawyer and a judge before the bar can make them leave?
That's the entire job of ICE. They already get paid for this. Why are you assuming that there'd be additional costs for people to do the jobs they already have?
Again, how expensive do you think a plane ride is? Do you imagine we're transporting them one by one in a gulfstream?
ETA: For your reading enjoyment.
Okay, we've rounded up a batch of 100 illegal entrants. 50 of them are from Guatemala, 30 are from Iran, and 20 are from China. Here are four busses - send two busses with the the Guatemalan folks to that abandoned motel in south AZ, send the Iranians to that abandoned motel in GA, and the Chinese ones to that abandoned motel in SF.
Okay, the AZ hotel now has 100 people in it - that's enough to fill a commercial plan, and gee, it only took us three weeks. Let's load them all up with a happy meal and a couple of pepsis and fly them to Guatemala.
Oh look, a new busload of Guatemalans is on it's way - let's do a cleaning service and get the abandoned motel read for them until we fly the next batch home. Also, order pizza, burritos, and maybe some pad thai so they have a choice of food for dinner.
Rinse and Repeat
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Emily's Cat
Rarely prone to hissy-fits
There are a whole lot of people in this thread who, despite having been provided a description of what the term means in US political parlance, insist that it must actually mean something completely different in US political parlance because reasons. And apparently, google is super-duper-extra challenging.
Earmark (politics) - Wikipedia
Can you quote one of these people?There are a whole lot of people in this thread who, despite having been provided a description of what the term means in US political parlance, insist that it must actually mean something completely different in US political parlance because reasons. And apparently, google is super-duper-extra challenging.
Earmark (politics) - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Chris_Halkides
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Dec 8, 2009
- Messages
- 12,573
CBS News reported, "Almost $500 million in food aid is at risk of spoilage as it sits in ports, ships and warehouses after funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, was paused by the Trump administration, according to a Feb. 10 report from a government watchdog...Separately, President Trump on Tuesday fired the USAID inspector general one day after he released the report detailing the potential food spoilage. Paul Martin, the ousted inspector general, was given no reason for his dismissal in a two-sentence email from Trent Morse, deputy director of the White House's Office of Presidential Personnel." Further comments would be superfluous.
NBC reported, "Placing USAID under the State Department could change how it functions because in the past, the agency has been able to assist countries that the U.S. does not have diplomatic relations with, such as Iran." From the cheap seats, this sounds like a backdoor way to build relationships.
The Guardian reported, "While the US gives more official government aid than any other country, its contribution as a percentage of national income is at the bottom of the list for wealthy countries in 2020, according to figures from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development." I decided to include this quote to indicate that the US spending in this regard is not excessive in the comparative sense.
A quote I provided inadvertently set off a discussion of earmarks, but the issue is more complex than I first realized. For starters, I am not even sure that it was strictly correct to say that the appropriations to USAID were earmarked. The Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote, "Specific and directed spending requirements in the State and Foreign Operations acts are informally called “earmarks” among development policymakers. However, the Congressional Research Service states that “any congressionally directed spending, tax benefit, or tariff benefit be considered an earmark if it would benefit a specific entity or state, locality, or congressional district other than through a statutory or administrative formula or competitive award process.” Therefore, while there have been a few “earmarks” in these appropriations acts, most of the requirements are truly “directives.” There are two types of “directives”—“hard” and “soft.”" I sure of the percentage of the whole budget that is being directed.
Based on this article, my offhand opinion is that more flexibility would help USAID better to do its job. If a rational person were heading a reform effort, this would be part of the conversation. But instead a 90-day pause was effected. Food rots, perhaps medicines are going bad, and other undesirable consequences are likely to occur, some of which have already been mentioned in this thread.
NBC reported, "Placing USAID under the State Department could change how it functions because in the past, the agency has been able to assist countries that the U.S. does not have diplomatic relations with, such as Iran." From the cheap seats, this sounds like a backdoor way to build relationships.
The Guardian reported, "While the US gives more official government aid than any other country, its contribution as a percentage of national income is at the bottom of the list for wealthy countries in 2020, according to figures from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development." I decided to include this quote to indicate that the US spending in this regard is not excessive in the comparative sense.
A quote I provided inadvertently set off a discussion of earmarks, but the issue is more complex than I first realized. For starters, I am not even sure that it was strictly correct to say that the appropriations to USAID were earmarked. The Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote, "Specific and directed spending requirements in the State and Foreign Operations acts are informally called “earmarks” among development policymakers. However, the Congressional Research Service states that “any congressionally directed spending, tax benefit, or tariff benefit be considered an earmark if it would benefit a specific entity or state, locality, or congressional district other than through a statutory or administrative formula or competitive award process.” Therefore, while there have been a few “earmarks” in these appropriations acts, most of the requirements are truly “directives.” There are two types of “directives”—“hard” and “soft.”" I sure of the percentage of the whole budget that is being directed.
Based on this article, my offhand opinion is that more flexibility would help USAID better to do its job. If a rational person were heading a reform effort, this would be part of the conversation. But instead a 90-day pause was effected. Food rots, perhaps medicines are going bad, and other undesirable consequences are likely to occur, some of which have already been mentioned in this thread.
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Safe-Keeper
My avatar is not a Drumpf hat
Stupidity and ignorance doesn't even have meaning anymore, nor do facts, consistency, or lies. They just mindlessly believe and repeat whatever Big Brother tells them to at any given moment, even if it's self-contradictory or obviously untrue. Lying probably doesn't even feel like lying to them, just loyally defending Dear Leader from evil and unfairness and 'being a good German'. Narratives don't need to make sense, they just need to be mindlessly spammed everywhere Drumpf is criticized. Musk might as well have programmed a million bots to defend him (I mean, I'm sure he has, but they could've just relieved the Dump supporters of duty altogether).
I remember when Bush supporters would vehemently deny that he would do something as terrible as torturing prisoners, for then to, once we presented evidence to them that he was in fact torturing people, do a 180 turn on the spot and suddenly become staunch defenders of torture, seemingly from one minute to the next. I saw it happen several times and it was just as unsettling every time. Now it seems to permeate their entire thinking. Or... Non-thinking.
US aid is not outstanding when considered either by GDP or per capita.
Foreign aid given per capita
Net official development assistance (ODA), divided by population. This data is expressed in US dollars and adjusted for inflation.
ourworldindata.org
List of development aid sovereign state donors - Wikipedia
So lots of earmarking for taxes to be reduced for the very wealthy.
Norman Alexander
Penultimate Amazing
Some people would use the word "lemmings", but in actual fact, lemmings do not march blindly off cliffs.
But given the lies that fuel the Trumpers it is a most fitting comparison to an infamous nature "documentary" made by an entertainment company.
On the "$50 million for condoms to Gaza", which later became $100 million, More or Less looked into it.
It's harder to track down since all the figures were taken down from the US AID website, but it looks like a combination of misunderstandings. $50 million was sent to Gaza, but to fund field hospitals which were saving lives. Money was used to provide condoms, but not to Gaza, or at least not that one, some did go to Gaza in Africa.
And, as they point out in response to Musk's comments apparently doubting that money should be sent outside the USA for any purpose, stopping pandemics, among other things, is a good use of funds even from a simply US-centric view point, because it saves much more expensive things from happening in future.
www.bbc.co.uk
It's harder to track down since all the figures were taken down from the US AID website, but it looks like a combination of misunderstandings. $50 million was sent to Gaza, but to fund field hospitals which were saving lives. Money was used to provide condoms, but not to Gaza, or at least not that one, some did go to Gaza in Africa.
And, as they point out in response to Musk's comments apparently doubting that money should be sent outside the USA for any purpose, stopping pandemics, among other things, is a good use of funds even from a simply US-centric view point, because it saves much more expensive things from happening in future.
BBC Radio 4 - More or Less: Behind the Stats, Has the US sent $50 million worth of condoms to Gaza?
Are Hamas bombing Israel with condoms sent by the US?