But the government, specifically the Army/DoD and by extension the National Guard, are supposed to be experts in logistics in impassable terrain.
What... do you think expertise means in a logistics sense? The ability to do something with investments and time, or the ability to do something without infrastructure?
Military engineers do difficult logistics in two main ways: creating one-width roads, and flying gas blivets out to help extend the range of helicopters. Both of these are relatively limited throughput, and certainly can't support large populations, hence why there is such a focus on capturing seaports and airports with higher throughput capacity.
Oh, the bridge is out? That never happens in war! They are supposed to be able to cross unbridged rivers rapidly under fire.
Ha, no, no. That's how you get things like the Battle of the Siverskyi Donets.
If you're doing a river crossing, you do it slowly (so that the vehicles don't drive a slighly off-angle and drive off the bridge, flipping everything over), and if you're under modern-era effective fires (which means artillery and precision munitions and rockets, not just a smattering of light-infantry weapons), the main reason to keep crossing is if you're trying to run away in a retreat.
In practice, most river crossings aren't even of major rivers. They're more likely to be fording operations, or only very narrow creeks, or just putting crossing plates on a pre-existing bridge. A commander in the modern era who tries to force a crossing of an unbridged river under fire would be removed as an incompetent.
There are certainly things the military can do, but you are getting some impressions more from holywood than history.
Make it a hurricane survivor charity for better symbolism?
A difference in what?
When states do deficit spending, they take on debt to meet the desired expenditures, they don't spend to match the debt assumed.
The distinction is that if you cut X money from the budget, it doesn't mean X more money is spent on other things. It means X less debt is assumed. That's fine and well if the debt is the difference you care about, but the argument in the current context isn't that there's a debt issue preventing more funds from being taken.
You avoided the question. Let's make the implications more explicit for the audience.
You made a position on how your taxes should not be used on taxes you do not agree with. Does that prohibition apply to other people's taxes on causes they support? Or are you demanding a prohibition even on things your paid taxes don't touch?
'My taxes shouldn't go to things I don't like' is the motte. 'Other peoples taxes shouldn't go to things I don't like' is the bailey. However, there is no moral outrage veto on the government spending other people's taxes on things they support their taxes being used for.
I write a very fucking large check to the federal government every spring. Not one cent of it should benefit Israel or Ukraine until there are no more problems to solve here.
Okay. But how about one cent of the check of someone else willing? Would that be okay?
Your magnitude of comparison would be the Afghan bug out.
You are assuming not only that the expectation is that it would fail, but that this expectations is excused by a particular reasoning. Neither end of that has to apply, especially if you get into internal political dynamics over competition for resources and future developments. Poison pill strategies and setting projects up to fail or flounder as a means to a separate end are banal workplace dynamics.
Setting up something you don't like to fail, and publicly so, is a classic way to delegitimize something you don't like. It places an onus and responsibility on the nominal lead advocates both for it to succeed and if/when it fails, whereas complaints that failure is the fault of insufficient support is a classically and generally dismissed claim of the loser of a bureacratic fight. Since executive meddling is an extremely normal and non-controversial practice at the executive level, the advocates trying to problematize execute handling are implicitly casting accusations at more than just the interested meddler, which in turn draws a bandwagon effect by others because if executive meddling is a censorable act, it means those other executives would be acknowledging grounds for their own censoring.
Why did you omit what he said right after this Dean?
“ . “We are expecting another hurricane hitting. FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season.”
Because the season is not the immediate needs, obviously.
A claim that FEMA does not have the funds to assist in the immediate disaster is an argument that FEMA does not have the funds for the immediate needs. FEMA can simultaneously have the money for the immediate needs, and not have money for a season, because the amount required for a season is by necessity more than the amount needed for a specific part of the season.
Very strange. I don’t think you’re arguing in good faith, you seem intent on misleading the reader.
That would be your level of incompetence, then, particularly since you have twice tried to ignore the direct statement that the government has the money for immediate needs in a discussion of whether the government has the money for immediate needs.
Not broke? What was our national debt again Dean?
Not beyond the ability to sustain, which is what it means for a government to be not broke.
You mean before Trump made people aware of something Leftists are deeply embarrassed about.
No, because there is nothing about the standard FEMA funding picture to be deeply embarrassed about. There is plenty to critique on communication, on coordination, or electioneering amidst a disaster, but the only people embarrassing themselves on the budget side are those who are demonstrating low awareness of government processes, and discrediting themselves and their critiques in the process.
Those reports don’t contain that information Dean. Cmon now. I attached the fact sheet and not a single mention of the word migrant even.
And thus you just demonstrated the point. There is not a single mention of the word 'migrant' in the Disaster Relief Fund records because the money for migrants was never a part of the Disaster Relief Funds.
Funds for migrant housing came from a different appropriations program, which is not used for the purpose of the Disaster Relief Fund. If you are curious, you can undergo the great ritual of googling to find which program.
Why are you being misleading again?
The path is always confusing for people intent on being lost.
So FEMA is supposed to provide money for disaster, but cannot,
And this would be a lie.
“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have." -Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, 2OCT24
but is somehow able to shelter and feed millions of illegal migrants? Interesting.
It is indeed interesting how a state that isn't broke can afford more than one thing budgeted for more than a year apart.
How many people know about this?
Fewer than there were before people who didn't know enough about their own government started to take a Donald Trumpism literally.
How did this strange twist of fate occur?
Because across 2024 Congress made various multiple appropriations multiple times, and in September 2024 Congress provided $20 billion to the Disaster Relief Fund to last 3 months.
Is all of this funding issues easily transparent to the common citizen?
It does require the arcane technology of 'clicking the link provided in the post you replied to', or trying to figure out how to google "FEMA Disaster Relief Fund" to find a top-result of the monthly reports, or the basic civic spirit to follow the publicly reported continuing resolution funding the government through the election season.
Difficulty, I know, but anyone who thinks themselves smarter than a third-worlder should be able to do it.
Unfortunately not, but I still think the idea that they did this to punish fans who liked the first movie is even more crazy. "We made a blockbuster hit, but the wrong people liked it, so let's make a terrible movie that says fuck you to all the people who made the first movie profitable" is a thought that only makes sense in a dark fetid place.
Killing off successful and profitable media because the wrong audience is enjoying it is far from historically unprecedented. The rural purge of the 1970s that killed off a dominant genre of broadcasting basically on the grounds that TV executives who didn't like rural TV wanted a different audience.
I never said disaster relief fund, I said FEMA. Why are you changing the conversation like that?
Because the conversation you replied to was about the FEMA Disaster Relief Fund, whether you wanted to change the topic or not.
Very strange Dean. We were talking about FEMA the whole time.
No, we were talking about FEMA's ability to provide money for disaster relief.
To quote what you were quoting was responding to,
"If the point of FEMA is to provide money, and they can't provide money in an actual disaster, then they have utterly failed."
FEMA's ability to provide money in a disaster is derived from the Disaster Relief Fund. Which is providing money in an actual disaster, and is not unable to do so for the immediate emergency.
Out of the Disaster Relief Fund? Nothing, unless you consider Appalachia third world.
Yes, I understand how this shell game works. The processes and procedures have been set up such that if I see a gross mismatch of funds and priorities and I get mad, I'm an ignorant rube that doesn't understand how government works. Pretty cool, huh?
Not really, no, and especially when you're accusing the mitigation of your claimed complaint with being the issue.
The premise of a shell game is that you don't know what is under each shell which are virtually indistinguishable, which allows the manipulator to conflate the shells and thus move the prize. The purpose of a funding code restriction is to be extremely clear what each pot of money is for, and to establish clear limits on what that money can be used for so it can't be moved between shells, and to make it a crime against the state to do so anyway.
This would be akin to painting the shells distinct colors (funding codes) and taping different pebbles to each shell (funding pot tracking) and having the shells routinely exposed each movement cycle (monthly reporting) to validate that the claimed item is still there (monthly audit), with the shell-game manager committing a felony if he shifts the pebbles around between shells..
Which is to say, not a shell game, but about as far from a shell game as you can have.
It seems that the funding and command structure of this government organ has already failed spectacularly. I don't know, I'm pretty stupid, so maybe I'm seeing things.
You are certainly projecting anger, and anger is the mind-killer.
Here's an idea generated from my simpleton brain: how about we amputate FEMA as government organ and create in its place an organization with a budget and command structure so that when funds are squandered there's someone to hold responsible. Maybe there's reasons beyond my understanding why this isn't possible.
Sure- the funds weren't squandered. As long as you start from the premise that they were, you will be confused.
They were used in precisely the way the budget and command structure of the organization were directed to do so. If you made a new organization with the same budget and told it to adhere to the same priorities and it do so truly and faithfully, it would reach the same conclusion. You are blaming the system for what you are saying you want a replacement system to do. If there is anyone in this metaphor to hold responsible, it is you, yourself, and you, for determining the budget and priorities for spending. It is not the executor of the budget and spending rules assigned to them.
Again, I return to the monthly budget and item lines, which you seem to have refused to examine. If you tell your new organization to spend X amount of money on things, and it spends X amount of money on those things, it is by definition not squandering the money but complying with its budget requirements placed on it. And if your organization does not have enough money on-hand to assume additional costs Y when you only allocated insufficient amount Z which is less than X and Y combined, it still has not squandered the money given.
Part of the issue here is that no one has a pre-event understanding of Y needed to determine a meaningful Z, because Y is impossible to forecast, and part is that you have no idea what X is because you have no idea what you have already told the organization to do with the initial Z provided.
You could get mad, but before you do that I'd recommend just reading the Disaster Relief Fund monthly spending reports, which are posted, well, monthly. These reports are not only required by law, but break down how the Disaster Relief Fund spending is actually done.
In Annex B, you can see how DRF funding is distributed per month per line item. Per the September report (produced AUG 31, but which would have fed the Congressional discussions that decided to allocate 20 billion for the three months of Oct-Nov-Dev in the short term spending bill), the forecasted expenditures of September 2024 alone was expected to be 9.9 billion... before there was a hurricane.
If you budget 20 bilion for 3 months, but the previous month was already expected to take nearly $10 billion even before there was a disaster, it's quite reasonable to believe there might be more needed within the 3 months window. That is the only shortage currently being faced by FEMA or raised by the government.
This isn't endlessly shoveling money, any more than refilling your gas tank is an endless shoveling of money. It is an artifact of both budgets are passed in general (if you budget for only 3 month averages, non-average expenditures are more likely to need near-term rectification), and the point that the FEMA budget is built to allow immediate response but not the full cost of post-disaster reconstruction.
Which if you are remotely concerned about fiscal prudence, you don't want FEMA to be able to do. You actually want Congress to determine what post-disaster relief should be paid for, as opposed to letting the FEMA-controlling administration spend billions of dollars on its own discretion and then come back claiming there's a lack at the next disaster. This consequence is the charge that was being leveled in the first place!
Because future costs aren't known, there is no reasonable answer to a question of how much money is needed for future disaster relief. It depends on the disaster, and how many disasters, which do not kindly submit pre-fiscal year damage expectations for Congress to pre-authorize against.
No, I wasn't thinking of a CAB, I was thinking a 'airborne corps' is likely to have a serious amount of helicopters in its organisational structure, as it's 2020s and not 1940s.
The Corps is composed multiple divisions, each at various installations. Each Division in turn has its own Brigades, including a Combat Aviation Brigade (CAB). You can recognize the helicopter units by the triangles shaped like |><| that represent the rotary blades.
Per the org chart, the division at Fort Bragg, NC, the same installation as the Corps HQ, is the 82nd Airborne Division. Underneath the 82nd Airborne Division is the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade, with its 4 Aviation Battalions. Of those battalions, 2 are attack/recon (Apache gunships), 1 is Assault (Blackhawks), and 1 is General Support (Chinook).
Helicopters based in the US can't be 'on a plane' to anywhere to the world on a phone call.
You would be mistaken, and unfamiliar with the C-5 Galaxy.
A C-5 Galaxy strategic lift aircraft can carry up to six UH-60s.
A Blackhawk aviation battalion, in turn, is usually 30 or fewer blackhawks, or 5 or fewer strategic lift flights.
A C-5 galaxy can alternatively carry up to 2 CH-47s, such as this flight of 10k miles to Australia.
Helicopters go over the sea by ship.
Only when it makes sense to, same with any other decision between shipping or airlift.
Countries send equipment by sea when cost matters more than speed, i.e. for a major deliberate deployment cycle for sustained operations. However, a global reaction force prioritizes speed over cost.
Since the point of a global reaction force is to be able to react, they tend to bring their own equipment they can be reasonably sure is reliably maintained, ready for use, and that their personnel are certified on, as opposed to assuming the crisis will occur in a region with extra equipment to fall in on.
FEMA is not pleading poverty.
“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have." -Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, 2OCT24
FEMA is providing money. You can look at their monthly spending reports of how they allocate it for free.
Hiding being bureaucratic procedures is the last refuge of the scoundrel. If this was viewed as actually important by the administration, the money would be found.
I'll accept your concession that the administration views this as actually important.
The claim that FEMA is out of money derives from the remarks of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had in a press conference on Wednesday, 2 October. Specifically-
“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have. We are expecting another hurricane hitting,” Mayorkas said.
Money is being found. Money was always being found. There was never a point where the money was not being found. Ergo, the issue was, is and always has been viewed as Actually Important by the Administraiton.
So where is the money shortage narrative deriving from?
Mayorkas was not specific about how much additional money the agency may need, but his remarks on Air Force One underscored concerns voiced by President Joe Biden and some lawmakers earlier this week that Congress may need to pass a supplemental spending bill this fall to help states with recovery efforts.
“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have. We are expecting another hurricane hitting,” Mayorkas said. “FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season.”
This is not a claim that FEMA does not have money. This is a claim that FEMA does not have sufficient funding on-hand for the hurricane season, with another hurricane in sight, when you factor in the recovery efforts of the one that just hit.
Which is completely normal, as FEMA isn't funded on the front-end to cover the full cost of future disasters. The normal model for FEMA funding by Congress is enough money to handle immediate response- the point that Mayorkas is explicitly saying they have funding for- and to then re-top it off before adding in what is needed for tail-end costs.
Can Congress add in more if there's a need?
Both chambers of Congress are scheduled, however, to be in their home states and districts until after the election, as lawmakers focus on campaigning.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., gave no hint he was considering changing that schedule during a speech Tuesday. He said that Congress just provided FEMA with the funds it needs to respond and that lawmakers would make sure those resources are appropriately allocated.
A bipartisan group of Senators from affected states wrote their leadership this week saying it’s clear Congress must act to meet constituents’ needs. They said that may even require Congress to come back in October, ahead of the election.
This funding for response deriving from-
Congress recently replenished a key source of FEMA’s response efforts, providing $20 billion for the agency’s disaster relief fund as part of a short-term government spending bill to fund the government through Dec. 20. The bill also gave FEMA flexibility to draw on the money more quickly as needed.
So to recap-
-The head of the head of FEMA says there is money for the immediate crisis
-The Democratic administration is saying there is money on hand for the immediate response
-The Republican House Speaker agrees there is no issue on response funding for the immediate response
-Congress appropriated $20 billion as FEMA needs but to last the entire year as part of a short-term spending bill
And in future prospects
-The head of the head of FEMA says there is another hurricane on the way and they may need more money by the end of the hurricane season
-The Democratic administration is signaling that they may ask for additional FEMA funding later this fall
-The Republican House Speaker is non-committal on stopping election campaign fundraising to support an earlier refill
-Congress critters of both parties are considering coming back in October to pass more funding
And in this context, the $300 million grant, allocated in an entirely different funding context and thus not in contest with the $20 billion fund top up last month, is raised as directionally correct of there being a lack of funds to provide immediate help.
Now, while I am sure that some people find 300,000,000 a really impressive number, and all the more if written out, this itself is against a 20,000,000,000 pot of money that is the pre-Hurricane amount for a roughly 3-month period. Do some basic division structure, and you reach a staggering..
300,000,000/20,000,000,000 = 3/200 = 0.015 = 1.5%
1.5% of the short-term budget, allocated an entire fiscal year before, is truly all the difference in the handling of the current crisis.
Annex B identifies FY costs by event, by month, and with a cumulative by the year. On page 9 of document (12 of PDF), you will see that Hurricane Sandy- all the way back in 2012- has a current FY24 obligation of... 334 million dollars.
To reiterate- the entire number raised as Jewish swindling creating a current response shortage is insufficient to cover the ongoing DRF obligations of a single hurricane from a decade ago.
And sure, Hurricane Sandy is larger than some of these old ones... but it's nowhere near the top of the list either.
Hurricane Maria, from 2017, has a fullyear-obligation of 11,450... million. Which is to say, 11.45 billion.
COVID-19 is charging the DRF 20.45 billion in FY24. A single line item for a year is more than the entire budget for a quarter of a year.
Of course, those are full-year totals, and we're talking a 3-month coverage of 20 billion.
If we take the 3-month totals of July and then the estimated August/September obligations as a frame of reference, we'd see that for JUL-SEP FY24, FEMA thought it would need... a bit over 15 billion for 3 months.
And Congress allocated 20 billion for 3 months, before a historic hurricane hit a region ill-prepared for it.
So to bring this around-
In September 2024, Congress passed a $20 billion disaster relief fund budget for 3 months.
It did so with a reasonable expectation that about $15 billion would have been needed for all already existing expenses.
This would leave about 5 billion for all new disasters.
In the end of September 2024, a new disaster hit.
It is a historic hurricane in an area much less adapted to dealing with them or mitigating loss. Damage costs are likely to be very high.
On 2 October, the Administration warned that another hurricane could also hit.
1-2 hurricanes are warned to possibly go through enough of the $5 billion buffer to warrant additional appropriations for the unforeseen costs.
No one at any level of government alleges there is actually a lack of funding for the immediate response of Sep-Oct.
Directionally correct response:
The government doesn't care about spending money on people in America.
We know this because of $20 billion allocated for a 3 month period to help victims of natural disasters in America.
$15 billion is already allocated to American victims of past incidents.
The government is actively spending the $5 billion for new American victims of a historic disaster.
And the government is warning that reconstruction aid for American victims and a potential further disaster may warrant more money for American victims.
And that's bad.
Truly we should judge them by what they do.
Judge a system by what it does.
Sure. And the system is doing what it has been doing for years if not decades without being scandalous: having enough money on hand to deal with immediate issues, and Congress then appropriating more after new disasters come about to cover the recovery.
Similarly, we could judge people by what they do... or do not do, in the case of checking available information the nature of a problem.
Yes, your argument would still be "correct", proving its worthlessness in face of the problem people have with the institution.
Oh, heavens no. Different people have different problems, and truth is only worthless to those uninterested in acting in good faith.
For example, some people's current problems are that they believe there is a lack of funds for FEMA to use for hurricane relief. This is an error, because that hasn't been what's happened over the last week in the first place. Understanding how government appropriations work in the first place- which includes that some agencies like FEMA are normally given more money over a year, and that a lack of money for a hurricane season is not the same as a lack of money for the immediate hurricane response- addresses a misunderstanding of believing there is a crisis of funding when there is none.
Other people's problems are that they believe there is a lack funding because it was redirected to other forms of spending. This is also an error, because not only is this not how budgets work, the agencies involved are legally obligated to spend on what Congress directs them to. The truth is relevant here because criticizing an Agency for not feloniously defrauding the American taxpayer would be a rather embarrassing mistake demonstrating a lack of credibility for any good-faith actor to continue with.
For people whose problems with the institution have to do with the performance, the nature of funding streams or other forms of government funding is largely irrelevant to problems. The truth, however, still has worth to helping focus on actual problems rather than fictional framings that, if engaged, would get in the way of actually addressing relevant questions of airspace management or civil-government interaction that could improve performance.
Other people's problems is that they hate any spending that goes to people they irrationally hate. They will have interests in falsely blaming others of culpability in any disaster regardless of how much that detracts from improving response because the only improvement they care about is the one that validates their bigotries. The truth is an obstacle to them, which is why it will retain value.
Maybe next year FEMA will give $300 billion to Jewish synagogues and Jewish NGOs, for literally no reason, instead of just the $300 million they get today- while Americans facing real disaster suffer enormously. You would be there to "well ackchually" in the face of criticism of that, wouldn't you?
No matter how ridiculous you make your hypotheticals, your lies would still be lies, no matter how many more you add to the original.
No, FEMA wasn't swindled out of $300 million by da joos. No, the non-Jewish and Jewish organizations did not receive $300 million for literally no reason. No, the spending on migrants is not causing FEMA to have a hurricane response budget shortfall. And no, the American budget spending on other things in addition to hurricane relief is not the cause of FEMA getting into airspace control / charity pushback / other issues.
You realize that your argument would still apply if we, for example, gave 99.9% of FEMA budget to migrants and basically nothing to actual disaster relief?
And the argument would still be correct. If you want to spend X amount of money for a purpose, you must appropriate X amount of money for the purpose. If you only appropriated a lesser amount of Y, then you must appropriate the difference to meet the target of X.
If an institution with the power of the purse chooses not to fund something, the money was never in the possession of the non-recipient in the first place. If the power of the purse funds something else, that money was not deceitfully deprived from the alternative recipient- it was never there for them to claim or use in the first place.
It is an extremely pedantic argument because you are obscuring that the basic problem is that these federal agencies should be serving the American people facing actual disasters but they are giving money to other people instead. This is so obvious that trying to handwave it with accounting pedantry is ridiculous.
I am pleased you are retreating from your latest jewish conspiracy theory to petulantly complain about pedantry after and while making embarrassingly basic mistakes on government budgetary practices.
What I'm asking is how much money do we need to shovel into this organization before it starts having enough left over after migrant expenses for hurricane response.
The amount of money it costs to cover hurricane costs is the amount of money it costs to cover hurricane costs. No more, and no less.
Again, your question assumes an invalid premise. There is no 'starts having left over after migrant expenses,' because migrant expenses don't come out of the hurricane response budget in the first place.
The money we're allocating now isn't enough for the hurricane budget after other expenses.
No, the money you allocated for the hurricane budget in the last appropriation months ago isn't enough for the hurricane budget after hurricane expenses.
Non-hurricane expenses had nothing to do with it, because non-hurricane expenses didn't come out of the hurricane funding code.
How much more money do we need to give before there's enough?
X-Y
The amount of money that is enough for all hurricane response expenses incurred the budget period (X), minus the insufficient amount previously budgeted for hurricane response (Y).
How much water needs to be poured into a bowl before the bowl starts having some water left over to be in the bowl?
Unless you intend to claim that FEMA was not appropriated money with which to manage federal emergencies, the question doesn't parse. Governmental budgets tend to work on a 'pot of money' model, in which your annual appropriation is the starting amount you have to work with. Other pots (funding codes) don't get filled to overflowing for you to get the remainder- your pot is separate from others pots (funding codes) from the start.
Competition for resources at an Agency or Ministry level generally happens within a funding code, not between funding codes. Every disaster draws from the 'manage federal emergencies' pot of money. No emergency draws from the 'facility maintenance and improvement' pot of money. When cross-pot funding gets involved, so do lawyers, because if you start allocating funds for uses they weren't appropriate for by the government, you're defrauding your own government and the audits tend not to be pleasant.
When a funding code's allocation is proving insufficient for the year, this is a normal point for legislatures to pass additional appropriations. This is generally still on the per-pot basis, and from what I've read is more or less what was already underway with FEMA.
Seems like the exact experience you would expect for someone in such a role?
'Strategic change' could be a code for shibboleths, but it is a good resume. The point about the fire officer in Kuwait might actually be relevant here- that's not 'fire' as in 'something is combusting,' but 'deconflicting airspace so shells and planes don't crash into eachother mid-air.'
That would be the precise sort of mentality to stress airspace deconfliction that's sparked some of the discussion here.
Jeroboam and you both seems unfamiliar with governmental budgetary practices. The order of money allocation does alleviate a falsely accused injustice because the order of money allocation renders the charge baseless.
FEMA cannot be swindled out of $300 million if FEMA never had $300 million that could be allocated for other purposes. If the money is only appropriated to FEMA for the purpose of migrant support, it'd be more accurate to say FEMA received $300 million more than it otherwise would have with the potential for ancillary benefits of dual-utilization investments that would be absent Congress had chosen another agency to help disperse the appropriated funds. Since American budgets work more along the lines of Purpose -> Funds -> Agency rather than Agency -> Funds -> Purpose, it is wrong to claim spending on one cause stole from another, even by the same agency, unless those are specifically the same funding line.
Since gaining $300 million you otherwise wouldn't have but for the action has considerably different moral and ethical implications than losing $300 million you could have used but for the action, this would if anything be the opposite of a swindle.
This is the distinction between an appropriation and an allocation.
To blame Russian trolls for every negative viral story is a conspiracy theory.
Cool, but who here that you're replying to is doing that?
You lead off with this,
Except that every time I’ve seen the claim made, it’s not really backed up by any evidence of trolling.
And if you're looking for examples of Russian efforts because you literally have never head any, sure these can be provided. Here is a 140 page academic review of Russian propaganda in the context of the start of the Ukraine war. Here is a 2014 (and thus pre-2016 craziness) on the Internet Research Agency, one of the original notable troll farms. Here is coverage of an IRA-linked accounts conducting an Ebola and cop-shooting hoax in Atlanta, GA. Here is a study of when IRA accounts were engaging in pre-COVID vaccine debates. Here is IRA posters involved in inflamatory British rhetoric. Here are times they helped organize protests by Americans on differing parts of the spectrum, including BLM.
Heck- and you'd probably agree with the thesis of this one- here is a Foreign Affairs article including a recount of the Doppelganger project which cloned entire news sites to introduce fake news in what people believed would be real webistes.
One of the benefits of the IRA when it was around was that it didn't constantly change all of its accounts regularly, allowing for pattern-matching. This has gotten rarer with evolutions in bot-technologies and such, but you can still find examples if you look.
But then you go to this
And to be clear my grounds for dismissal are pretty simple. First, this is the go-to story every single time a social media story contradicts or embarrasses the cathedral.
Which is assigning a motive to me I do not have, and a mischaracterization of many opinions I do have.
It never happens that Russian Trolls are pushing the narrative of Project 2025, or calling Trump a danger to democracy, or calling Republicans fascists. That is never considered trolling.
To which I and others would say... yes! If / when Russian troll accounts are linked to these such things, they can absolutely be called supported by Russian trolls! It's Russian trolls if they're involved in trying to arrange Black Lives Matter protests. If Russia trolls are linked to supporting a cause it is considered Russian trolling. There is no claim to the Russsian troll style that there is any allegiance to a specific cause.
But when the story is something embarrassing to the establishment, that’s the trolls. Kinda interesting how one set of stories is always pushed by, started by, faked by, or amplified by Russia, and the other side absolutely never is.
....but this is where I feel bad for you, because this is the opposite of positions already provided to you in this overall thread. The people claiming Russian trolls only support one side are not the people you are actually arguing against, shoving other peoples arguments into theirs is dishonest.
As such, I'm going to skip to this-
Secondly, we never seem to find out which Russian troll account starts or amplifies these stories.
And be frank: it doesn't matter to the argument you responded to if Russian stroll accounts start or amplify these stories.
There are cases of Russian trolls starting stories. There are cases of Russian trolls amplifying stories. Neither is meaningfully different when it comes to whether it is a bit of an effort to manufacture a narrative. Signal boosting and initiation are both ways to try and manipulate narratives.
The visible reason would appear to be 10 helicopters that were relocated to one of the multiple runways at Greenville airport?
In fact, the video shows another still being used by private charities. There doesn't seem to have been a 'stop' of aid flow through the Greenville airport. There isn't even a claim that this runway is needed to reach Tennessee.
There is an accusation that the FEMA helicopters are doing nothing based on... a glance towards a hanger that you can't see inside. Planning? Briefing? Crew rest? No way to know.
Yeah, whoever setup a light-weight tent on asphalt without weighting or tying it to the ground was an idiot.
That sort of thing could cause a helicopter to crash if a tent flew up like that, let alone who on the ground could get hurt if a vehicle or just a too-busy person knocked into the tent to hard. This is why airports regularly check for foreign objects and debris anywhere helicopters or aircraft engines would be near.
It's a good thing that helicopter was looking around. Can you imagine if that distribution center was supposed to receive a delivery of air-lifted aid?
Like, say, from a bunch of helicopters staged at a NC airport, possibly waiting for the results of an aerial recon to see where there was a good distribution center that could receive a helicopter lift?
Or- wait.
Was your accusation of incompetence aimed at the helicopter for the rotor wash that sent unsecured tents flying?
It's unclear. One of your links was a condemnation of what would appear to be the movement of and staging helicopters for distribution operations, and the other link was a condemnation of what appeared to be a helicopter doing an aerial recon of a distribution center.
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