Protection Racket
A few weeks into the new Trump era, America has traded its soft power for a conspiracy theory about hard-ons. Surprise, surprise, “there’s no basis for the White House mythology that USAID 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.” Yes, the condom conspiracy theory is a stupid and obvious lie. But stupid and obvious lies have been pretty effective when it comes to distracting people from the real damage being done. Here’s an analysis that’s closer to the truth from Nick Kristof in the NYT (Gift Article): The World’s Richest Men Take On the World’s Poorest Children. “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.”
+ Of course, it’s hardly just “Trump’s move.” Musk associates sought to use critical Treasury payment system to shut down USAID spending.
+ “To be clear, very little if any of this is legal. The president cannot legally refuse to spend money that Congress has directed the government to spend … But as lawbreaking goes, it may be a canny example. Foreign aid has never been popular, and while some of that is perhaps due to misunderstandings of what ‘foreign aid’ means, most Americans just generally don’t like helping people in other countries … But amid a spree of groundless and deranged insinuations from Musk that the agency is little more than a pit of corruption, it’s important to remember the extremely important work the agency does (or did).” Dylan Matthews in Vox: The worst thing Trump has done so far. Neither of these articles argues that USAID is perfect or that there are not areas where money could be saved. But that’s not what cutting it is about. And that’s not what the whole DOGE movement is about. The blatant lie behind Elon Musk’s power grab.
+ How the USAID collapse helps Putin.
+ “USAID oversees projects such as food aid, disaster relief and health programs in over 100 countries with a staff of more than 10,000 and a budget of around $40 billion. Billions of those dollars flowed back into the American economy.” WaPo (Gift Article): Gutting USAID threatens billions of dollars for U.S. farms, businesses.
+ Of course, USAID is only one area where Musk is running his Coup d’ IT. And he has been given free rein for his reign. The White House Press Secretary explained how conflicts of interest will be handled. “If Elon Musk comes across a conflict of interest with the contracts and the funding that DOGE is overseeing, Elon will excuse himself from those contracts.” Excuse me, but that sounds like a pile of Doge Doo.
