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PaperclipPerfector  29d ago (text post)   35301 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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Someone's wrong on the Radio: Internal contradictions in the narratives on USAID

I was listening to NPR today. The main story seemed to be that Elon Musk's DOGE is seeking to shut down (or severely pare down) USAID, the US Agency for International Development. This would probably not be very interesting to me, except that the NPR narrative made two seemingly conflicting statements within a ten-minute time frame.

  1. "Later, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was now the acting administrator of USAID — which has long been an independent body — and that a "review" is underway aimed at the agency's "potential reorganization."

  2. "You know, over the weekend, there were reports of two security officials at USAID who were put on administrative leave for refusing DOGE access to certain systems. Democrats have accused DOGE of inappropriately accessing, you know, classified materials, which the lawmakers are saying they're going to investigate.".

(This is being stated much more unequivocally by other outlets: "The Trump administration has placed two top security chiefs at the U.S. Agency for International Development on leave after they refused to turn over classified material in restricted areas to ...".)

So on the one hand, USAID is described as an independent nonpolitical agency and should not be subsumed into Rubio's State Department. On the other hand, they have troves of classified materials that should not be accessed by staff of another agency. ... Why would an independent body for economic development have classified material? I recognize that I am confused...

So I looked at the Foreign Aid Act of 1961, as amended up to 2024. It looks like amendments are added several times per year, so this is not necessarily up to date, but such is the version of the law which is easy to read, "with amendments." It is 276 pages, so I didn't read more than the first five. Searching for "indep" turns of several uses of the term "independent," but they are for functions of USAID like "support for independent media" and "independent states of the former Soviet Union" (with four hits for "independent audit[or]). So the department isn't "independent" under the law, at least not in those terms.

Surprise surprise, on page 2 or 3 USAID is defined as "Under the policy guidance of the Secretary of State, the agency primarily responsible for administering this part should have the responsibility for coordinating all United States development-related activities," and is headed by an "Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development." There is no mention of whether this is a cabinet-level position. So Rubio taking over as the director of the agency and delegating actual responsibility to someone else appears totally legal, quotes from guests on NPR to the contrary notwithstanding.

Also, USAID is tasked with funding the International Atomic Energy Agency, for "civilian nuclear reactor safety" in former Soviet states, for limiting aid to countries engaged in nuclear weapons development, and for "nonproliferation and export control assistance." So that seems to explain why classified information may be found in its headquarters.

The claims of Elon Musk and NPR actually align on the topic of aid for LGBT causes, with NPR guests stating that the loss of USAID will be a disaster for gender nonbinary people. The MAGA narrative is also supported by the Act when compared to archives of the agency's website: there are only 12 mentions of "gender" in the law, and they are exclusively for "gender-responsive interventions" for HIV/AIDS, for "gender parity in basic education", "performance goals, on a gender disaggregated basis" and for statistics about who has received how much aid, again "disaggregated" by gender. In contrast, USAID's website used to contain pages with text like "USAID proudly joins this government-wide effort with its own commitment to advance the human rights of LGBTQI+ people around the world, including members of its own workforce, and supports efforts to protect them from violence, stigma, discrimination, and criminalization.". There is a Trans angle, with text like "In Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, and Nigeria, transgender-led CSOs delivered health services (including transgender-specific health and HIV services), emergency housing, and economic empowerment programs. In Burma and South Africa, the first transgender health center was organized, drawing upon best practice from Thailand." (ibid)

Then there is the pandemic angle, of which I am skeptical, but Musk did retweet that USAID provided $38M in funding to Ben Hu for "bat coronavirus emergence" research from 2014 to September, 2019, from a document which appears to have been obtained under FOIA by the White Coat Waste Project. Ben Hu was a PI with EcoHealth alliance and was previously alleged to be one of the first three Covid patients according to "sources within the government," although an intelligence community report mandated by Congress later denied that any Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists were known to have been among early Covid patients.

If the FOIA document about funding is true, that funding appears to have been outside of its mandate and potentially a misuse of public funds: the only mentions of "pandemic," "epidemic," or "virus" in the Foreign Aid Act concern HIV/AIDS.

I'm left with the impression that Musk and MAGA are being more truthful than NPR, and maybe the Agency does deserve to go into receivership.

Another example of contradictory narratives on USAID that I've seen people pointing out is between it being a "relatively small agency mostly known for saving starving kids and such"… and it having "played a significant role" in overthrowing foreign governments.

Edit: it looks like this is another example of how USAID was instrumental in "regime change."

Not entirely relevant to your post, but the thing that strikes me the most about the hubbub surrounding USAID is the fact that I'd never even heard of it before (or if I had, it was in a passing enough fashion that it never registered). I consider myself reasonably well-educated, and was at least once considered smart and well-read. I spend an inordinate amount of time reading about politics and culture war issues online, and yet here is this entity that evidently has a massive impact on American interests both at home and abroad, and I'd never given it a single thought prior to this week.

It just makes me wonder how many such power centers like this might be out there.

You must just not hang out with ex-spooks and diplomats. This and NED is all they talk about.

I think it was in the Reagan era that someone figured that the US needed to move money about for national security and foreign policy goals and that doing it through QUANGOs and NGOs was a lot more efficient and plausibly deniable than whatever they did before then.

In a sense if you've never heard of it and the name sounds boring (and is misleading to what it actually does) that means the people involved are doing their jobs.

Are you familiar with the National Endowment for Democracy?

Weirdly, I just saw it mentioned on Reddit, 15 seconds before I opened this tab. Guess I'll go research that now, too.

While the discussion here is focusing on the grand-dynamic of USAID's disruption, I'd just throw out that the organizational change is liable to be almost as important longer-term. At the very least, if the Trump administration keeps and formalizes USAID as a part within the State Department, this has a decent chance of being a grudgingly kept reorganization that a future Democratic administration is less likely to reverse.

Put very briefly- in organizational terms, orgs. like USAID are competitors with foreign policy establishments, loose canons who take resources away and can undermine deliberate efforts by virtue of not answering to the nominal heads of foreign policy.

In most countries, foreign aid is understood and viewed as a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. You offer aid as an incentive for countries to do what you want them to do, you withhold it as a response to things you don't want them to do. It is a lever for advancing national interests. Note that this is reflected in some of the Trump-bad arguments, that USAID is good because it advances American interests.

But USAID's reputation in some ways is the inverse of the premise: an organization that sees its purpose being to spend money for [good things], in and of itself, without the 'selfish' elements of state interest. It is supposed to be 'apolitical,' offering aid regardless and building bridges, figuratively (and maybe a little literally). The goodwill of the American people, made manifest, etc. etc. etc.

What that means, however, is that if the State Department or Ambassador in a country wants to reign in support, and the USAID teams want to go forward... well, the State Department isn't the boss of USAID, and so the bureaucratic turf fights mean they might work together, but that it's personal rather than institutional. In turn, local actors know that- those who can are able to leverage USAID for funding even if the Ambassador disapproves, even though the Ambassador is supposed to be the lead US representative.

Worse, from an institutional perspective, is that the funds that go to USAID are funds that are not going to the State Department, which is already a not-particularly-resourced wing of the US government. And to make that worse, many lay-persons think that they are aligned... and so that spending on one (the USAID feel-good side) benefits the 'other part,' even though they aren't one in the same. Resources are a zero-sum goal, and resources for USAID for foreign policy purposes aren't, well, going to the foreign policy institution.

As a result, the significance of Rubio being 'acting director' is that USAID, if not dissolved outright, will almost certainly be folded into the State Department. And that means that the local state department leads- which is to say the Ambassadors and Embassies- will be able to trump the USAID bureaucrats in any turf battles, bringing them into line or replacing recalatrant administrators who were used to a far different culture.

You do not have to think well of Trump to appreciate that change. And when the post-Trump changeovers happen, even if those new Ambassadors are dyed-in-wool Democrats and political allies... well, they aren't going to want to lose their Embassy resources and control, just in the name of anything-but-Trump.

So, just on a organizational self-interest angle, the USAID reorganization is liable to stick. A lot of the protests we're seeing now from the grant side or the Trump-bad side are contextual objections of those who stand to lose money, or those who would oppose any change by Trump. But when those patronage networks are dissolved, I'd be surprised to see them recreated out of any sort of nostalgia.

But USAID's reputation in some ways is the inverse of the premise: an organization that sees its purpose being to spend money for [good things], in and of itself, without the 'selfish' elements of state interest. It is supposed to be 'apolitical,' offering aid regardless and building bridges, figuratively (and maybe a little literally). The goodwill of the American people, made manifest, etc. etc. etc.

This reputation has been destroyed by DOGE. They could claim that ZunZuneo was a one-time blunder and they were all about the goodwill of the American people otherwise: food, medicine and infrastructure, no strings attached. Except that suddenly Ukrainian journalists and Iranian activists start doomposting about their lack of funding. Who's going to let USAID back into their country after that?

I assume that covert influence operations are structured

90% food, medicine and infrastructure

10% subversion

and that looking inside the 90% food, medicine and infrastructure, it is actually 60% food, medicine and infrastructure 30% corruption and pay-offs.

Who's going to let USAID back into their country after that?

The locals who benefit from the 30% corruption and pay-offs would be keen to let USAID back in, and either don't care about the 10% subversion, or consider it acceptable if it means that they get their cut.

The same people who let it in before. That USAID members and advocates fancied it in a certain way never meant that other actors shared in that view. Iranian activists weren't exactly being supported from inside Iran, and the Ukrainians who are getting support aren't exactly at odds with the Ukrainian government.

I was thinking about unaligned third-world countries, the ones that have internationally recognized sham elections. The US used to be able to come and say, "here's our aid, but you will let USAID distribute it directly because your institutions are corrupt", which was true. But now some African president will be able to counter this with "we won't let USAID into our country because it's a known supporter of subversive activities, as reported by your own newspapers".

Do you think that westerners bearing ‘gender based violence reduction initiatives’ and ‘pro-democracy grants’ were generally beloved by tinpot dictators?

'Used to'? 'But now'?

You're acting as if they claims didn't already exist. Conspiracies inflating USAID are more common in those countries, not less. There was nothing preventing the powers from making those claims or objections before, not least because they have made such claims before. This doesn't introduce a new dynamic.

Moreover, the reason most countries let in USAID regardless is stronger if USAID is rolled into the State Department, not weaker: picking a fight over it is picking a fight with the American embassy in your country. When USAID and the American Embassy are divided, it's a lower political cost (if at all) to block them- hence why there are more countries with US Embassies than USAID. When USAID and the Embassy are one in the same, blocking USAID now a constant issue with the Ambassador... who, of course, can block other aid / assets / diplomatic favors / etc. until you want in.

And sure, there are some countries that write that off... but these are countries where USAID was not active regardless.

Whereas for any country that wants to maintain American economic inputs in addition to all other sources (i.e. trying to maximize money gained), an argument of 'we won't accept your money because it comes with your influence efforts' is not particularly compelling if your country accepts significant amount of money from China which similarly comes with influence efforts. Unless, again, you are the sort of country where USAID is already not active regardless.

I don't suppose you also recently read the CSIS article on USIA merging with the state department? Which, oddly enough, I found from following a Brookings link that purported to link to an entirely different topic.

Not recently, no, though I am familiar with the line of argument. I will admit I don't find it particularly compelling- the argument is basically 'we do more and better apart than together,' when most strategies are about aligning synergistic efforts that reinforce eachother. It also relies on the assumption that Development + Diplomacy gets more money than Development-unified-Diplomacy, which I don't find particularly compelling... and which the recent action rather disproves, since USAID is currently getting the axe for a lack of institutional/political protection that it would have had with the State Department.

So on the one hand, USAID is described as an independent nonpolitical agency and should not be subsumed into Rubio's State Department.

Note that the entire concept of an "independent" agency does not make sense under Constitutional theory or a theory of actual democracy. If it's "independent" ... who then holds it accountable to the public (democratic) interest? How does this foot with the "full executive power" clause that puts executive power under the President's chain-of-command.

It's simple really, you don't live in a constitutional republic but in a managerial state where a conglomeration of organizations with various levels of ties to the State interlock in a bureaucracy that produces "government" and is usually called "democracy".

The President is but a cog in this complex machine. And so are elections. The EU works this way as well, and so does most of the West. The banking system is setup this way (FATCA, FED, etc), foreign policy is setup this way, pretty much everything is setup this way, even the army to some degree. As this conglomeration of NGOs, QUANGOs, private enterprises and government departments with various degrees of control over each other but a great deal of insulation from political control (this is usually called "independence").

When people talk about the "deep state", this is who they mean.

Exactly so.

but please point me at a paragraph in the Big Book of Constitutional Democracy (or wherever the “theory of actual democracy” described; and no, US Constitution is not that) where it is laid out that President should not just have his finger in every pie (department, bureau and office),

"The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. "

Congress's power: "All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills." "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time."

So Congress raises the money, puts it in the treasury, and gives the executive branch authorization to spend it. It never says the executive has to spend it. And "executive power" means the ability to hire and fire, to give orders, to fire people if they don't follow those orders, to suspend payments if a department is squandering the money, to audit the books etc. That is what the executive in any organization does.

It sounds like you think the President is vestigal organ that shouldn't exist. In your view, Congress establishes civil service rules that controls personnel and management of an agency, Congress controls the budget, the President has no power whatsoever. And indeed, that's how the government actually has been running the past 70 years, but that's not how the Constitution was designed. In reality, I think the Constitution was intentionally or unintentionally flexible about which branch of government is Supreme. But Congress and the bureaucracy lost the mandate of heaven, and Trump and Elon are attempting to acquire it.

DOGE has less accountability than USAID.

DOGE is Obama's U.S. digital service renamed, it is authorized to help make all government departments more efficient, and it reports directly to the Chief of Staff who reports to the President. Additionally, the DOGE team members embedded in agencies report to that agency head. Read here: https://x.com/RenzTom/status/1887038876000079945

The outcry from the purple blob over USAID is insane. By sheer luck Elon hit a bullseye. I really hope that there will be a lot of declassified info leaking about who is getting the money.

A lot of the people panicing aren't concerned about bribes and corruption being unconvered. There are plenty of people panicing over that but they are fewer than the number of people freaking out online and those who actually risk having crimes uncovered are probably less vocal. The big fuss is about the recession that is about to hit upper middle class people who only are employable in the public sector. They react in horror seeing George town pol sci graduates being tossed out and told to "learn to code". The Chief diversity officer, or the person with a cushy high status USAID job that allows them to fly business class to Tanzania twice a year doesn't want to learn about all the new exciting opportunities in nursing. This can be compared to the freakout over lots of PMCs being tossed out of twitter. Those people aren't supposed to be treated like factory workers who get laid off.

With 4 years of Trump we could really see a 10-20% reduction in public sector cushy PMC jobs. That is a sizeable downshift in employment equivalent to a proper recession. I would be freaking out as well if I thought it was realistic that there would be a 20% reduction in employment in my field over the course of the next four years.

I don't know what makes you think these jobs are cushy. The benefits are good and it's hard to get fired, but the pay is low and there's a certain rigidity compared to the private sector. As I recently mentioned in a prior post, I worked for the state when I first got out of law school, and it wasn't for me. The pay is decent enough that you're not going to starve, and if you save your pennies you can put your kids through college, but if you want to see Europe, it better be on your television set. You can look at the schedule provided with your orientation materials and know how much you'll be making every year for the rest of your career, which may give a certain peace of mind but also resigns you to knowing that there is absolutely zero chance you'll ever make more than that. Want to make 100k? You'd better be a doctor or have some other highly specialized degree where you could easily make double what the state's paying you on the outside without them looking twice at your resume, or have a title like "Senior Administrator" or "Director" and I'm talking like running an entire state agency. You can of course work your way up the ranks through promotion, but unless you get that every few years you're taking a pay cut, since you start out at the bottom of the scale again. When I left and went to the private sector my pay increased by 50% despite having no experience in the field I was going into.

But the real bitch of it is the lack of flexibility. As a normal salaried employee, no one pays too much attention to where I am as long as I get my work done. With the government, I had to sign in at the beginning and end of each day, and when I left for lunch. If I was more than 15 minutes late, I'd get vacation time docked. When I first started, I didn't have enough leave accrued to take two days off and my request for unpaid leave had to be approved by the HR people in Harrisburg. Every aspect of your work is micromanaged. They monitor internet usage. If you don't have any work to do they actually make you pretend to look busy, which is true of everybody when they first start and don't have a high caseload. The pointless drudgery weighs on you more when the government is involved; if a client insists I do something pointless now at least I can take pleasure in the fact that they're willing to pay by the hour for it and I can use the work to pad my billables and get a nice bonus. When I had to do it for the government it was because it was part of some internal policy memo that no one has actually looked at in 20 years but has become customary to the point that not doing it is a fireable offense.

This may seem like the exact kind of inefficiency that Musk et al. are trying to prevent, but it's a balancing act. If a private company wants to make a business decision that the constant logging calls and diary entries and filling out timesheets is a waste of time that prevents employees from being productive, it's one thing. But if it's not done then the DOGE people come right back at you with the opposite argument of asking you to justify what you do all day and them saying "how does it take all day to do that", and politicians wondering how taxpayer money is being spent, and the people claiming disability wondering why their claim was denied, and Elon Musk wondering why the other claim was approved, so it's better to just have a bunch of comprehensive reporting requirements so that when people ask questions you actually have answers.

Like I said, it's annoying, and it wasn't for me, but some people like the stability and predictability of government employment. By threatening that stability what they're doing is removing all the advantage of government employment. If you want government workers to be like private sector workers, now you'd better plan on paying them like private sector workers, since you can no longer convince them that they have their jobs for life unless they seriously fuck up. If this goes as far as Trump seems like he wants to take it, you may pare down the Federal workforce, but there are still critical jobs to be done, and the only people willing to do them will be the kind of people who are willing to work for a fraction of the going rate and don't care if they get fired in four years.

Did you work for the federal government or state?

I have friends in DC. Yes I make more money compared to them but my hours are significantly worse. In many ways their lifestyle is better. If you are married and you both work these relatively cushy DC jobs you’ll be doing just fine.

Sort of both. Social Security is a Federal program, and most employees (e.g., if you work at the Social Security office) are Federal employees, but disability determinations were done by the state Department of Labor, so I was employed by the state, but was administering a Federal program. I'm in Pennsylvania, which pays its employees more than other states, and if I had been doing financial determinations on the SSA side my salary and benefits would have been similar. I didn't mean to imply that you couldn't do reasonably well working for the government, just that these jobs aren't cushy by any stretch of the imagination. Like anything else in life, there are tradeoffs, and when Republicans talk about eliminating the advantages of Federal employment without addressing any of the disadvantages I think they're making an unfounded assumption that this is going to make things more efficient.

Uh, are there really that many of these people whose skills are simply not transferable? It seems like most of them should be able to work for a school system or something. The bulk of UMC types are accountants, lawyers, etc who are eminently employable in the private sector.

As we say in my country: If you step on a cat's tail, she squeals. Meaning that criticism (or in this case action) is considered on point, if the reaction is vigorous. But I suspect that is less Musk managing to find the singular cat, and more like Trump giving the Doge, keys of a cat caffee.

Or to use your metaphor, Texas sharpshooter fallacy: there are plenty of things worthy of shooting, but USAID is what they happened to hit. Thus USAID became the centre.

I've seen rumors, unconfirmed reports, not sure what to call them... but I've seen it said that since USAID was frozen about 30 or 40 anti-regime activist and media groups in Iran might have to shut down.

You might think good! It's a waste of money, and clearly hasn't helped one iota in the decades it's been run.

A neocon or a neolib pro war global interventionalist will cry "Now that USAID is cut off, it's exposing our allies overseas." And this goes doubly for naming and shaming all the groups that have been suckling at the teat of graft and corruption by declassifying USAID records. They're going to argue that airing their dirty laundry will literally get people killed.

And who knows, it actually might.

I just don't care anymore.

Just another chapter in, "OK, if what you're telling me is that giving these guys a dollar today means I owe them a dollar every day for the rest of my life, then I am against all new expenditures".

There is nothing so permanent as a temporary tax or government program.

Libertarians have lots of little quips like that. I'm not going to say they are always correct, but they generally seem to have a point.

It's almost like they think the saying goes "Give a man a fish and FUCK YOU GIVE ME ALL YOUR MONEY!!!"

The hell of it is I wouldn't even be that opposed to a legitimate US aid organization that is run competently and efficiently. I would support at least the amount of funding that USAID gets of I were persuaded that it was doing tangible good of an equivalent value. What sickens me is money taken under such noble pretenses and used to fund wickedness, graft, corruption, and even ops against the republic itself. This government has rightfully lost the trust of a large part of the population, and should reap the wages of sin.

To me the most fascinating thing about US AID being terminated as an independent organization, is the sheer and complete panic among leftist. "Independent" media I used to respect has apparently been spun into a full blown panic over it. They appear to be operating under the delusion that the "AID" is USAID is actual help, of which a tiny minority might be, and not a deep state slush fund for unaccountable NGO, corruption and graft.

Like Bill Krystol, neocon never Trumper, came out swinging. Then it was quickly discovered the foundation he draws an income from is funded by USAID. Which, to me, immediately made something clear. You are constantly subjected to a series of talking heads who are wrong about everything if you pay attention to the mainstream media. And they are always introduced as working at some important sounding institute, like that lends them credibility. How many of those assholes are just psyop puppets funded entirely by USAID to influence public opinion on policy at home?

That aside, I'm noticing the talking points getting distilled, and they are every bit as nonsensical as you can imagine, some more than others.

"It's a coup!" I mean where to even begin on this. Was it a coup when Clinton fired all the federal attorneys? Was it a coup when Reagan fired the air traffic controllers? Was it a coup when Gerald Ford fired a bunch of security state apparatchiks, including Kissinger? No, it's the duly elected Executive executing their lawful authority to implement their agenda. It's preposterous that a branch of the executive should believe it's some sort of independent entity completely outside the executive's authority. Come back when the military has dissolved congress and arrested the supreme court.

"It's a smash and grab!" To which I just heard the cohost go "There is no grab." There is this heavy implication that Elon Musk is somehow pocketing the money. Nobody ever comes out and states it directly. But the weasel words are there. "Musk has conflict of interest!" "He's looting the nation!" "The worlds richest man is just getting richer!" A baseless bullshit smear, which is why they just darkly hint at it.

"Nobody voted for this!" I mean this is the most insane one, and if they somehow big-lie it into sticking, it will erase all the faith in humanity I gained over the last few months. All I fucking see from people who voted for and supported Trump is euphoric glee that he's doing exactly what he said he would do. After being lied to and lead along by controlled opposition our entire lifetimes, and maybe the entire lifetimes of our parents too, a guy is actually making good on all the promises he, and the Republican party broadly, has made for decades.

There is some serious galaxy brained mushy reasoning going on here, like Trump never promised to shut down (or roll into the State Department) USAID specifically, therefore nobody voted for it. But he ran on draining the swamp, stopping foreign aid as long as there are still unmet challenges at home, shrinking the federal government, stopping waste and corruption. It's like if a guy ran on starting a war with Cuba, and then when Havana get's bombed, normies start shouting "Nobody voted to bomb Havana!" I mean, alright, but they voted for the guy who's #1 issue was starting a war with the country Havana is in. Pretty reasonable to think that was on the table and a high likelihood. Nobody ever votes on day to day tactical decisions of a strategic campaign promise.

All I fucking see from people who voted for and supported Trump is euphoric glee that he's doing exactly what he said he would do. After being lied to and lead along by controlled opposition our entire lifetimes, and maybe the entire lifetimes of our parents too, a guy is actually making good on all the promises he, and the Republican party broadly, has made for decades

Personally I think this speaks to the larger conceit among liberals when it comes to their Message: Liberals are automatically right, and everyone who does not heed the wisdom of our words is just too stupid to understand what we are saying so we need to say it louder.

At no point in all this political discussion have I seen liberals consider that maybe their words have been heard and understood and have been found wanting. That the foundational reality the liberals aim at creating is not one that people want to live in, and that the path to get to that reality is even more broken than the end result. A nanny state run by Sorkins fantasy West Wing archetypes is great to a liberal, but when I watch that show I see careerist egoists unable to resist sticking their grubby fingers in everything they don't even have the interest to understand.

Personally I think this speaks to the larger conceit among liberals when it comes to their Message: Liberals are automatically right, and everyone who does not heed the wisdom of our words is just too stupid to understand what we are saying so we need to say it louder.

I recently did a long post on my Tumblr about this, making an analogy to a classroom:

Consider a school teacher. Suppose she’s teaching, say, math. Or American history. Or whatever. And the kids keep failing tests, because they keep giving similar wrong answers. Like, say, when asked to do 2x2, they give “22.” Or put down as the year of Columbus’s first voyage as “1942.” Or whatever. There are a few possibilities as to the issue.

First, maybe the teacher isn’t teaching it well. Perhaps she needs to change how she’s presenting the information; find a method that communicates it to the children in a way and at a level they can comprehend. Maybe she’s using too many big words, and the kid’s aren’t smart enough to grasp what she’s saying. Or she’s giving it too quickly, and hasn’t repeated it enough, particularly for those kids in the back of the classroom who might not have heard it the first few times.

Second, maybe the lessons are fine, but the kids are paying more attention to something else. After all, even if you try to “make learning fun,” class is still going to be a bit more boring than the alternatives, and the kids would likely rather watch TikTok videos on their smartphones instead. Maybe the kids in the back of the class have their phones carefully placed and hidden to do just that. And maybe that’s where they’re getting their wrong answers. Perhaps some YouTuber has started a troll campaign to convince young people that 2x2=22. Or maybe a popular rap song that drops bars about how “Columbus sailed the ocean blue/in nineteen hundred and forty-two,” and it’s an earworm getting stuck in the kids’ heads.

The problem then is to figure out how to keep the kids off their phones in class; and if the problem is watching these videos out of class, then get the PTA on board and contact their parents to try to get enough of them to control their children’s time online better.

Third, if it’s not how the teacher is teaching, or bad information environment, then the only thing left is the children themselves. Maybe a whole lot of them have undiagnosed dyscalculia. Maybe they’re answering “1942” instead of “1492” because dyslexia is causing them to swap the digits. Maybe a bunch of them belong in a Special Needs classroom.

Or maybe they’re a bunch of troublemaking little shits who’ve coordinated this to mess with their teacher. They’re trying to drive her to her wits’ end, or maybe even sabotaging their own grades to mess with class outcome metrics to make her look bad and sabotage her continued employment. In which case the answer is to discipline them — particularly the masterminds instigating and coordinating it — until they stop.

What you don’t do, in any case, is change the curriculum. You don’t start accepting “2x2=22” as a “correct” answer no matter how many students put it down on their math quiz.

I've seen a lot of Youtube video on this, too. That they didn't do enough to point out how Trump is an evil, racist fascist campaigning on pure hate and desire to hurt people, and how the Democratic party stands for joy, hope, and everything that is good in the world. The metaphorical teacher just isn't giving the lesson properly for the dummies in the back of the class. Or they're being drowned out by lies and disinformation pouring from far-right pipelines like x.com, and we need more censorship and fact-checking.

At no point in all this political discussion have I seen liberals consider that maybe their words have been heard and understood and have been found wanting.

I have seen people, on Tumblr, Reddit, and Youtube, who do indeed consider that. They do hold that a lot of voters did understand what the Democratic party was selling, and rejected it in favor of Trump. That their words have been found wanting… which is why Trump voters aren't stupid, but evil. Because if you knowingly, with full understanding, choose the "indisputably fascist" Trump and his party of pure hate over Harris's "flawless campaign of joy and unity" with all the objectively correct policies, knowingly choose lies over truth, knowingly choose fascism over democracy, then you're a Nazi. It's not that everyone on the other side is "just too stupid" — it's that they're either stupid or evil. The former just need to hear the message louder and more often, until they finally get it. The latter need to get what they deserve, just like Corey Comperatore.

If the voters don't like what the Democratic party is selling… then the voters are wrong, and it's the voters who are the problem needing fixed.

People did vote for this, but they shouldn't have been allowed to. This is democracy out of control, something that the constitution was carefully crafted to prevent. Musk is running around shutting down agencies with no accountability to the bureaucracy or the courts. I don't know whether anyone except Trump can actually stop him.

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If Congress, which is the body which actually passes laws, wants to stop him, Congress can. Except, to raise the idea is to immediately understand how ridiculous it is, because Congress hasn't exercised real policymaking judgment in more than a vestigial way for half a century. It's all been seconded (in a dubiously-legal manner, not made any more impressive by everyone refusing to take responsibility for calling it out) to the executive, who now is demonstrating the truth of the proverb "what the hand giveth, so it may take away."

Neither of those are elected bodies. If the demos can't overrule bureaucrats or judges, you don't live in a democracy. I would be more sympathetic to the rule of law argument if those said institutions hadn't been trampling over them with their own regulations and rulings - again, with no democratic input whatsoever.

But if bureaucrats or judges can't overrule the demos, you have the 'two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner' issue.

I asserted a couple of weeks ago that it is not really possible for society to exist without abstract & concrete conflicts between people. In many issues, someone is going to have to lose. Democracy makes sure that the losers are the minority rather than the majority, which is preferable.

To put it another way, it is strictly better that the two wolves vote to eat the single sheep than for the sheep to order both wolves put to death.

I think the perspective of many on this forum is that the bureaus are themselves staffed with wolves, so this is of no help, in their eyes.

In the end, there is no substitute for good judgment, and no technology (social or otherwise) that can make up for bad decision-making.

Accountability to the bureaucracy? Why should there be accountability to a bureaucracy!

That's not a Yes, Minister gag, is it?

Because they are the experts. In addition to @Capital_Room's posts, there's Scott's "On Priesthoods" that goes into this.

Let's take forestry. The amount of logging or controlled burns you can do in a year is regulated by the states' forestry departments. How do they determine this? They do the science thing: compile and analyze the historical data on forest recovery, seek the opinion of external experts in local and international academia and come up with a number: you can log at most X% of forests per year, you have to burn the protected forests every Y years, pest extermination requires Z dollars per year.

If a governor is lobbied by the loggers' union to increase the logging to X+M%, by the real estate developers and insurance companies to reduce the burns to once every 2*Y years, if he promises to cut down the spending on pest extermination by 50% and then tries to force the forestry service to do all this, then his actions are deleterious!

His job is to harmonize the constraints imposed by various experts, not to choose one set over the other for political reasons.

I thought controlled burns were an example of the "experts" in state bureaucracies being terrible at their jobs and consistently screwing things up. Or at least that's somewhat true for California.

That presumes much. First it presumes that these people even have expertise. Next it presumes that the incentive structure within the organization will lead to the right results. Third, it assumes that there are not other sources of expertise that may even be greater.

I suspect these four words are as close to Shiri's scissors as we can get in the real world.

Not sure why you think there aren't checks and balances. The Republicans just control the majority of the House, Senate, and Supreme Court in addition to the Presidency. Balances don't impact consensus policies. There's some court cases about things the Trump administration has done so far and maybe that will have some impact. But it's misleading to claim Trump is doing anything without the approval of Congress. Congress can't pass legislation quickly, sure, but also they would rather stay out of sight and let Trump take the fall for anything that goes wrong.

Musk is running around shutting down agencies with no accountability to the bureaucracy or the courts.

Musk is acting on behalf of the executive branch as a government employee, and DOGE is an executive branch agency. If the executive branch doesn't have oversight and control - up to and including the ability to shut down - its own agencies (again, USAID was created by an executive order!) then we don't have a representative constitutional government with checks and balances.

I don't see why this isn't a perfectly reasonable outcome under the constitutional framework (except insofar as the entire way the presidential election works is not the way it was meant to). The people did not directly vote for this, they voted for a representative (Trump) who said "yeah I'll get that done for you". Said representative is perfectly entitled to shut down these agencies, as he is the chief executive and they are a part of the executive branch of government. All of that seems to me to be perfectly in line with the Constitution. Whether it's wise or not is open to debate, of course, but I don't think one can accurately describe this as democracy having exceeded constitutional limits.

People did vote for this, but they shouldn't have been allowed to. This is democracy out of control, something that the constitution was carefully crafted to prevent. Musk is running around shutting down agencies with no accountability to the bureaucracy or the courts.

A point that @Capital_Room has made over and over and many more times.

People did vote for this, but they shouldn't have been allowed to.

I mean, the alternative is watering the tree of liberty.

In which case, the accelerationist inside me agrees.

No, the alternative is a representative constitutional republic with checks and balances, which has worked for the US and other advanced countries. Direct democracy means that 51% of the people have unlimited power, which invariably leads to disaster. The average person is not smart enough to be making these kinds of decisions.

This just seems like missing the forest for the trees. You are upset that unelected super powerful bureaucracy that functionally had no checks imposed upon them are being destroyed while worrying about a tyranny of the majority?

Yes tyranny of the majority is a problem. But so is giving a bunch of unchecked power to a bunch of unelected bureaucrats for decades.

Your preferences are being checked and balanced at this very moment. 51% of the people having unlimited power is certainly preferable to 10% or much less of the people having unlimited power, which appears to have been the situation prior to the last election.

The average person is not smart enough to be making these kinds of decisions.

I mean, the government is made up of average people (at best). All this does is pander to the myth that all the midwits who've found their way into federal employment are somehow our betters. And how does USAID even fit into a model of "Representative Constitutional Republic with checks and balances"? Reportedly they defied all request for information, or any external oversight at all. None of them were elected. If anything appointing a senate approved cabinet appointment like Marco Rubio as their direct administrator is restoring representative constitutional republic checks and balances.

yep agreed on this criticism. I'm dont fully understand why all this money is routed via Rockefeller Philanthropy, but doesn't seem like an open-and-shut case as DataRepublican posted (https://x.com/DataRepublican/status/1886161143108149298)

Fine, it's not even that hard.

https://www.usaspending.gov/recipient/048e5c98-b0fa-a961-a9af-d62ab817259c-C/all?section=transactions-over-time

You can see for yourself just how much money USAID, as well as the Department of State have given Rockefeller Philanthropic Advisors.

And the image associated with the accusation is right here Is your claim that it's entirely a fiction? That it showing how money flows from RPA, which has taken upwards of 50m from USAID as documented on the government's own website, and then through Hopewell Fund, and ultimately ending up at Defending Democracy?

Don't like the screenshot? The accusation with a link to the full dataset. It's right here.

https://datarepublican.com/expose/?eins=831567380

And if you don't believe that, you can pull up Hopewell's 2023 Tax Return. Schedule I, Part 2, and there it is, $2m to Defending Democracy. It's a lot of donations, but they are sorted alphabetically.

https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/473681860/202423179349304767/full

"Show you work" he says.... pffffft.

Listen, none of this was a fiction. It's just collated data from public tax returns. It's not even that hard to check yourself. Goto the IRS website or propublica. Actually the IRS was giving me problems with 404's and search results that hang, so you know...

None from USAID, per your link, and all of it went to refugee resettlement activities, which Kristol isn't involved in.

I think you are looking at "Trailing 12 Months". Try "All Fiscal Years" to get a better picture. FY2022 was a banger of a year too, with 20m coming in from USAID. Also, money is fungible.

Right, that's my point. This doesn't show the money to Kristol came from USAID.

Money is fungible

Hey, did you know money is fungible?

I mean there isn't even the fiction that these are monies in briefcases of envelopes. There isn't even a blockchain to distinguish where specific money paid then got paid back out to. They're just numbers on a computer somewhere. There is not even a concept of "The specific money USAID paid us for 'immigration' did not in a round about way goto Defending Democracy".

I've graded a fair number of papers and showing money going from USAID to RPA to Hopewell to DDT is worth more than 0 points on the "show your work" part. Money is fungible. Washing public money in a web of NGOs who lend to other NGOs who lend to other NGOs doesn't make the money non-public or nonUSAID money nor would it be unsupported to claim the end recipient benefits and has an interest in the initial award.

"You can't actually demonstrate how Kristol is getting the money from USAID because it is all put in one big pot and laundered" is not exactly making the argument for USAID or Bill Kristol.

Why does USAID need to fund grants by sending them through the Rockefeller Philanthropic Advisors? If an organization is deliberately obfuscating its funding flows, the burden of proof is on that organization to prove that it is all on the up-and-up. Legally, when USAID gives money to the Rockefeller Foundation, it is legally the Rockefeller Philanthropic Advisors money. Maybe USAID tells them to use that money only for a certain specific groups that does not include Bill Kristol. Maybe not. Maybe there are all kinds of hidden favors and log rolling and kickbacks in how Rockefeller Advisors disperses their funds. The public cannot audit the Rockefeller Foundation, so all we have is the official legal flows, which is that USAID gives money to the Rockefeller Advisors and Rockefeller Advisors gives some money to Bill Kristol. If you want to conclude otherwise the burden-of-proof is on Rockefeller Philanthropic Advisors to completely open up its books.

i doubt there has been a legal misuse of funds. i suspect whatever words are used to control funding are broad enough that they let the wordcels do anything with the funding.

Right now I'm feeling kinda smug because Musk's takeover of various federal agencies looks a lot like I imagined it to be: https://www.themotte.org/post/1233/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/266617?context=8#context

I didn't actually expect him to take over IT servers with his merry men, but I'm glad to be right for once.

I don't understand the claimed contradiction.

So Rubio taking over as the director of the agency and delegating actual responsibility to someone else appears totally legal, quotes from guests on NPR to the contrary notwithstanding.

I do not see any claims that Rubio being director is illegal. Sen Andy Kim claims "This is an entity that was created through federal statute, codified through federal statute, and something that cannot be changed, cannot be removed except through actions of Congress.", and I agree that significantly changing or removing it might be illegal, but not Rubio taking over.

Why would an independent body for economic development have classified material?

A lot of very unimportant things are 'classified'. A very small percent of 'classified material' are things that'd be genuinely bad if they got out. I don't think this is significant. The DOGE people accessing classified USAID information thing is probably similarly insignificant.

How do you know that only a small percent of classified material would be genuinely bad if it got out? Very little is on the scale of "Our list of double agents working in " and overclassification is a problem, but intelligence agencies put together many disparate pieces of information and things are generally classified for a reason. Even if you hate the government and think DOGE is doing God's work against the deep state, you're going to regret throwing everything open unless you're KulakRevolting for the Russians.

It's something I've heard from people who work with classified information. I'm not advocating for all that to be declassified, because it's hard for a very large bureaucracy to make precise per-document decisions about what should and shouldn't be secret, so it makes sense to classify more rather than less. But it does mean that "USAID has classified documents" isn't something you can really draw inferences from like OP did without a lot more information.

Indeed, the forms to request a parking spot and the cafeteria menu are classified. They go crazy classifying everything frivolously.

No, they aren't. It's true there's a tendency to preemptively overclassify things for CYA reasons, which there are many regulations and training classes to prevent, but bureaucracy is bureaucracy. But if you've actually seen a classified cafeteria menu or parking pass request (I doubt you have) it was someone being lazy and retarded and it would have been corrected by the first person wirh any common sense who saw it.

Where are you getting that? Ive never seen a classified cafeteria menu. Part of your classification training specifically warns about overclassificstion. It got hammered into us quite a bit that it's just as bad as underclassification. Aside from the administrative issues it causes, people have actually been killed because information was classified above the level that the people who needed it could get at.

Edit: and although there's a process for declassification, it's long and complicated by design, because classified information is supposed to be handled with care. This is probably also part of the reason people are freaking a out about Musk and USAID classified info--there are normally extremely severe penalties to anyone who hands classified information to someone who doensn't both 1) have the right clearance and 2) a need to know. The idea that this process is being circumvented so easily when normally in situations of much greater consequence the rules normally hold fast is troubling.

The idea that this process is being circumvented so easily when normally in situations of much greater consequence the rules normally hold fast is troubling.

Actually, normally the rules don't matter at all and high-ranking individuals can just shit all over the regulations around classification. You can even set up a private email server to escape FOIA laws that has no government protection, then send SAP info over that server without facing any kind of disciplinary action at all - in fact, the FBI will actually attempt to help get you out of trouble to make sure there isn't even any reputational damage. You can get caught sending pictures of your dick to strange minors on the internet, then have classified information found in emails on the laptop you do your child-sexting with - and you'll only get prosecuted for the weird sex stuff, not retaining classified info on an unclassified system. You can store all kinds of classified information insecurely in your home, free for your children to look at, and once again face no prosecution at all.

This process has been circumvented on an industrial scale for decades, and absolutely nothing was done about it. What exactly is troubling about Trump's team potentially breaking the law in a way that the enforcement apparatus has consistently said is no big deal?

Except the president is the source of the classification scheme and he said “give these docs to DOGE.” Sure the bureaucracy’s impulse is to say “but we need to follow XYZ procedures because these docs are “sensitive.”’ However that actually isn’t required legally and moreover serves the purpose of the bureaucracy by making thing’s bureaucratic and slow.

Normally? This is at best a Chinese robber fallacy and at worst a series of cherry picked, misrepresented, and false claims. That is absolutely not the way it "normally" works for federal government employees (not that I don't understand what you're referencing).

cherry picked, misrepresented, and false claims

Cherry picked? These were the most prominent and recent cases involving violations of classification regulations in the news. Misrepresented? In what way? I actually left out a bunch of information that makes this stuff even worse. And as for my claims being false... which ones? You can't just drop a bunch of terms like that without explaining exactly what you're referring to. Are you claiming that I just hallucinated the entire Clinton email "matter"? Was the Weiner's Weiner scandal just a bad dream?

That is absolutely not the way it "normally" works for federal government employees (not that I don't understand what you're referencing).

Of course it is - if you're one of the Big Guys you can violate the law with impunity (not so much if you're one of the little people). If the legal system was actually working under consistently applied legal principles, which I am repeatedly assured it is, these precedents would obviously apply to everyone equally. The fact that they very obviously do not apply to everyone equally is the core point of my post - that the system is corrupt and does not do what it is claiming to do, with corruption-aligned individuals given a free pass to break the law. The lack of punishment for these obvious crimes is in actuality a damning indictment of the US justice system, up there with the corrupt prosecutions of Trump.

On the other hand, they have troves of classified materials that should not be accessed by staff of another agency. ... Why would an independent body for economic development have classified material? I recognize that I am confused...

You know, I accept just about all the rest of the post. But this is silly. A US agency needing to distribute food in the Ivory Coast needs to understand the actual (unvarnished truth of) the situation on the ground there, at the very least so they don't hire a boat to go dock in a harbor right before the rebels grab it or try to truck it through some area where the government has (in fact, but not avowedly) lost control.

That kind of up-to-date intelligence is rightly classified. Probably the most rightly-classified as compared to the median bullshit that gets the stamp.

Anyway, this is not the thing to be confused about.

You know, I accept just about all the rest of the post. But this is silly. A US agency needing to distribute food in the Ivory Coast needs to understand the actual (unvarnished truth of) the situation on the ground there, at the very least so they don't hire a boat to go dock in a harbor right before the rebels grab it or try to truck it through some area where the government has (in fact, but not avowedly) lost control.

I see no reason why this requires keeping secrets from the American public. If the unvarnished truth is inaccessible to the public, how can they meaningfully exercise democratic control over these expenditures?

Ok, well if, to you, democratic control means the military and spy agencies can’t have classified sources, methods and documents, then you’ve lost the plot. Should they just up and publish the as-yet unknown capabilities of our weapons systems? Should they have published the details of operation overlord to the Germans?

I’m all for oversight, which is why there’s a select committee in Congress, chosen by Congress, that looks at this stuff. If you want to strengthen that system on the margins, I’d join you. But an unqualified statement is unserious.

Ok, well if, to you, democratic control means the military and spy agencies can’t have classified sources, methods and documents, then you’ve lost the plot.

We are not discussing the military and spy agencies. We are discussing the department of funding Trans Opera in Ecuador. I defy you to argue why USAID needs to keep secrets from the American public.

You're being purposefully dense. The classified documents were originated by the military and spy agencies and then utilized by USAID to help them assess & plan operations in unstable parts of the world.

There is an obvious reason why such materials were classified at inception and an obvious reason why USAID would benefit from using them.

Only in the most fever-dreamed imagination could this be fairly construed as "USAID keeping secrets from the American public" as opposed to "USAID making us of existing government secrets".

I've made clear I'm not even a fan of USAID and I'd vote to abolish it or fold it into State or whatever else. But this is an idiotic line of reasoning.

Aid agencies probably do need some classified political intelligence.

This feels like a fully general argument against government secrecy.

Then your feelings need calibration, because it is actually an argument against government secrecy regarding the distribution of foreign aid. I am actually not that fond of the other sorts of Government secrets either, but I can recognize that with regards to war and espionage, unilateral disarmament would be unwise. But this is not war or espionage. This is the expenditure of taxpayer's money, purportedly for straightforward humanitarian purposes.

There is no actual need for the people in charge of distributing food to the Ivory Coast to be provided with super-secret-squirrel information about "the actual situation on the ground", given that they are supposed to be directed by the State Department under the leadership of the President. If secret information indicates that they should do things in a specific way, they can be directed to do things in that specific way with no explanation as to why.

There is no actual need for the people in charge of distributing food to the Ivory Coast to be provided with super-secret-squirrel information about "the actual situation on the ground", given that they are supposed to be directed by the State Department under the leadership of the President. If secret information indicates that they should do things in a specific way, they can be directed to do things in that specific way with no explanation as to why.

This is just kicking the can down the road.

At some point, a civil servant learns about the secret information and directs USAID to distribute aid things in a particular way or avoid particular things. That person is (a fortiori, since he is directing them!) in charge of distributing food to the Ivory Coast.

At most, you're saying that the administrative or personnel boundary between USAID and State should have put more analysis and decision making on State and less on USAID such that the guy in charge of distributing food that also has secret information happens to be on the State side and not on the USAID side. That's fine, but that really doesn't change much except shuffle roles around an organizational divide.

Anyway, this is not the thing to be confused about.

It is, though, if you then question why USAID is upset about the SoS/DoGE having access to these supposedly insignificant and/or perfectly normal classified materials. Whether they are up to no good or just reacting politically to the change in admin, it looks like bad faith on their part and completely legitimate for the Trump admin to audit the fuck out of them.

I’d imagine they just need DOGE personnel to be gee anted the right clearances.

I’m all for auditing them and I’m sure they’ve done a ton wrong. But this one particular thing is totally explicable.

Why should doge have access to any classified information? Does Musk have a security clearance? Did congress vote to create doge and decide what its powers will be?

Classification authority resides in the Executive. For better or worse, the President doesn't need Congress to classify anything and doesn't need Congress to disclose classified materials to anyone.

Yes Musk has a security clearance. As do his lackeys.

More importantly, the president is the final authority on classification, not counting a few nuclear secrets. If Trump declares a document is unclassified or a particular person is granted a special dispensation to view it, then it is so.

The security clearance process is almost (with a few nuclear exceptions) entirely defined by executive order, not by Congress. I've heard suggestions that Congress codify it, but it hasn't actually done so.

Congress could not do their jobs if their job depended on it.

AP News also describes USAID as "an independent agency":

What is USAID?

[...]

Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act and Kennedy set up USAID as an independent agency in 1961.

[...]

Given that are now at least two Reliable Sources calling it "independent", you can expect wikipedia article to also do so. That primary sources, in this case Foreign Aid Act of 1961, do not will not change anything.

It's independent in the sense that it's not part of the Executive Branch. Similar to how FDIC is always described as an independent agency because it isn't part of the Treasury Department (or any other department), or how the US Forest Service is described as part of the Department of Agriculture. Being under "guidance" of the SoS isn't the same as being part of the State Department. Rubio is acting administrator, but there's usually a separate administrator who doesn't take orders from the State Department, just advice.

It is part of the Executive Branch, it just isn't part of the State Department. The Administrator of USAID was a senate-confirmed political appointee in the same way as other senior Executive Branch officers.

It's independent in the sense that it's not part of the Executive Branch.

And yet hilariously was established by an executive order. Which I think means that the executive branch can delete it by simply issuing another Executive Order, although POTUS would presumably have to replace it with another agency (three guys in a basement?) to comply with the law.

One thing that is going to be interesting from the fallout of gestures all this will be the lawsuits over the powers of the executive. If I had to guess SCOTUS will ultimately support very broad powers for POTUS. Not sure how that would look different in the cases of agencies such as USAID that are independent, though.

You're missing some important context.

It is a long running conspiracy theoery open secret that the Democrats and the CIA have been (are?) in the tank with Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, the Taliban Et Al. actively working against US/Western interests in the name of "decolonization" and that the primary role of USAID was to "launder" food, fuel, arms, and other forms of material support allocated to these groups while also as serving as a slush fund for various woke causes and NGOs. Ever wonder who was funding all thos migrant caravans? The reason the current administrator presumably doesn't want to turn over the books to Rubio is that is that they don't want the opposition (Ie the MAGA crowd) to know where the proverbial bodies are buried or who to subpoena.

It is a long running conspiracy theoery open secret that the Democrats and the CIA have been (are?) in the tank with Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, the Taliban Et Al. actively working against US/Western interests in the name of "decolonization" and that the primary role of USAID was to "launder" food, fuel, arms, and other forms of material support allocated to these groups while also as serving as a slush fund for various woke causes and NGOs.

See, calling it a "conspiracy theory" would be borderline, but when you literally and explicitly take off the mask and call it an "open secret," you've definitely entered "inflammatory claim that should be proactively supported with evidence." To a lesser degree, same thing goes for the claims about USAID, though we are less worried about inflammatory claims about a US government agency that may or may not be true than your literal assertion that all Democrats are pro-terrorist traitors, which is definitely not true and also something you're saying about people here you are talking to. You can't just say things like that - and if you insist on claiming that yes, it's really true, then bring receipts, and if your claim is as broad as the claim you made, your receipts can't just be "Ilhan Omar" or the latest unhinged screed by a Democrat on Twitter or whoever else you want to point to.

You can absolutely criticize the Democrats, and the CIA, and you can make arguments about how you think both have damaged the interests of the US and the West. But you cannot just say "the Democrats are in the tank with terrorists and working against the US" with no justification beyond what you presume to be a shared consensus.

It gives me no joy to tell people to stop flaming their hated outgroup and then being accused of being "in the tank" for that outgroup myself, but you know better, and frankly, everyone who does this knows better, they just think it shouldn't apply to them when they talk about their outgroup because their outgroup really is that bad.

Is it really that inflammatory? It's not like i claimed that the Democrats are "barely sentient" only that they have aligned themselves with some very bad people against interests of the wider nation.

I am honestly kind of surprised that you find this claim controversial. "Why are we shipping pallets of cash to people who wish us dead, and occasionally act on that wish?" has been a boilerplate Republican talking point since the early 2010s and the reply, when the question has been acknowledged at all, has always been something about "decolonization" and spreading "American values" with the implicit understanding that "American Values" are not things like baseball and apple pie, but rather progressive values.

To that end, I want to emphasize that I do not think that Democrats are stupid. But if we assume that Democrats are not stupid, that begs the question of "what are they actually up to?". What is your theory for why the Biden administration so invested in ensuring that niether the Egyptians nor the Isrealis would be able to see what sort of aid we (the US) were supplying to Gaza? Ive already offered mine.

As for Ilhan Omar, this is someone that the Democratic National Convention has chosen to to be associated with. Hers is a constituency that the DNC has chosen to court. I find the whole "it's just some kids on campus" argument significantly less compelling when the notional "kids" are sitting members of congress. Again, i don't think the Democrats are dumb, so what what they actually up to?

Ps: don't try to claim that the linked comment was never reported, I reported it when it showed up in my inbox.

No, you are not surprised that it's controversial that Democrats hate America and side with terrorists. You are not confused about why you were modded.

If someone dropped inflammatory Democratic rhetoric (eg "Republicans are fascists who want to commit genocide and repeal civil rights for everyone but straight white men") you would not be surprised or find it controversial when I mod them.

Just so we are both on the same page...

You consider a comment dismissing the voting public as "barely sentient" to be uncontriversial and in-keeping with the spirit of theMotte, including the rule about writing like everyone is reading.

But if I cheekily allude to the publicly acknowledged policies of the outgoing administration, or the plain language meanings of statements made by people like Ilhan Omar, Maxine Waters, and Joy Reid, you will moderate me for being inflammatory and uncharitable?

We are not on the same page.

Read the rules, reread them, and then contact the mod team if you have further questions. If you wish to have this particular moderation decision reviewed by other members of the mod team, you may likewise contact the mod team, and someone besides myself will do so.

I've read the rules, I've reread the rules, and I'm pointing out what (to me at least) looks like a disparity in how allegedly inflammatory claims are being treated.

Source on any of this? Saying the CIA is funding ISIS to sabotage America in the name of decolonization, done through USAID and migrant caravans for the nefarious goal of the subversion of MAGA sounds like a QAnon schizopost that got put through a blender one too many times.

Edit: As always, Hanania says it better than I could.

Erm, I am missing something or the point here being "maybe it's true we're being robbed to the tune of trillions of dollars but I am not willing to discuss this until people that claim that present the evidence in a form that is most fitting to my biases"? If so, this sounds extremely childish and unserious approach.

There's also several issues here, which are related but not the same: 1. Is USAID a CIA-directed (or -influenced) front which is being misrepresented to the public as something it isn't? 2. Is USAID directing aid to causes that the American public would prefer not to finance if it knew? 3. Are those causes and recipients mostly leftist partisan organizations and benefit partisan leftist goals? 4. Are those organizations endorsing the ideology that sees US as evil and helps causes that hurt the US public? 5. Is the CIA selecting such organizations with explicit intent of hurting the US, or just tolerating them for other reasons or maybe thinking they gain "soft power" this way or some other reason?

I would be very surprised if there was a middle eastern armed group notable enough to get an English name which didn’t receive funding from the US government somehow. ‘CIA money flowed to IS’ is a page five story. Funding armed nuts that turn out not to be our friends is the sort of thing they do all the time.

CIA money flowed to IS

Sure I can believe this one link in the chain well enough, it's all the other links surrounding it that make it sound like a conspiratorial word-salad. CIA money made it to ISIS... but for "decolonization"? And this is linked to migrant caravans?

Also the claim of "actively working against American interests". Like, yes, obviously the CIA funds all sorts of bad people (e.g. bin Laden) if it thinks that this will serve American goals (e.g. hurting the Soviet Union), and sometimes this blows up in its face (e.g. the World Trade Center), but that's not the same thing as deliberately working against the USA.

I think the CIa serves the CIA’s interest which generally but not always aligns with the US’ interests.

I beg your pardon, this is not a QAnon "hollywood is harvesting adrenochrome from kids at Jonas Brother's concerts" level of schitzo-posting, this is a reasonably normie-pilled "Epstien didn't kill himself", "covid was developed in a Chinese lab" and "the Biden administration built a peir in Gaza because they didn't want the Isrealis or the Egyptians inspecting the crates" level of schitzo-posting.

Biden administration built a [pier] in Gaza because they didn't want the [Israelis] or the Egyptians inspecting the crates

I'd assumed it was that they were under a lot of pier pressure.

I think it's more fair to say that the Democrats are a big tent coalition (like every serious party in a two-party system) of which some member groups have the sympathies you described.

Motte, meet Bailey.

The more qualifiers one adds, the easier it is to defend, and the less significant. At some point it’s just six degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Do you have anything I can read that can explain what USAID has been accused of and what the evidence is? I never heard of it before now, and I'm very doubtful that googling is going to being up anything useful.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brian-mast-house-foreign-affairs-chairman-face-the-nation-transcript-02-02-2025/

Rep. Mast brings up what USAID is accused of doing over that interview. I'll isolate the main claims.

Half a million dollars to expand atheism in Nepal, $50,000 to do, let's see, a transgender opera in Colombia. $47,000 to do an LGBTQ trans comic book in Peru. $20,000 a pop to do drag shows in Ecuador.

and

Samantha Powers, she had a worthy goal, although it was a stupid goal, she said she was hoping to get the amount of foreign aid, U.S. aid dollars that go to actual aid, up to 30 cents on the dollar, from 10 cents on the dollar.

and

but there's probably more dollars that go towards state dinners around the DC beltway than what actually goes into rice and beans abroad.

and

And let's talk about the real facts on the ground. The Trump administration comes in, or representatives like myself that do oversight, the agencies will literally not tell us what they are writing grants for, literally. Or they will lie about it, or they will tell the new political appointees under the Trump administration, I'm just not going to tell you that. Those are real things that have happened.

As for evidence, I don't know what you expect; it's just people telling us what they see from looking at the organisation. For what it's worth I don't see anyone seriously disputing the claims of the Trump Administration and Republican Party that a lot of the money is mismanaged or sent to causes that don't figure in the mental image the average american has when they think "humanitarian aid", they mostly gesture at the portion that does go to real humanitarian efforts and complain that it's not necessary to cut the aid that is actually used for the intended purpose.

I would be very surprised if that was not because they're convinced that a review without a complete freeze would be ineffectual in stopping the grift.

Wow. Terrible efficiency. All that money, and we didn’t even topple one government?

Not one? Sorry bro, in this house we believe the Arabs didn't Spring themselves.

I really wish to ask when the vetting process failed such that the vetters were these ideologues to begin with. Is it just that everyone with capability and independent thought left the US civil service because it is a bloated swamp that neither rewards financially or emotionally unless one has the specific temperament? Like I've dealt with other civil services before, and petty power politics and paper pushing bureaucratics protecting their iron rice bowls are common, but never have I encountered a bureaucrat whose mission is to destroy the nation they say they serve. Every functionary will claim that they are True American Patriots, but only the barest gust of wind is necessary to uncover the reality that they wish to create a New America that is in their preferred image instead of preserving an old or existing version of America. At least the corrupt bureaucrats here in Southeast Asia don't pretend to have the interests of the state at heart when they suggestively indicate which midget bar has the most discrete hostesses.

They’re promoting American state ideology abroad. Not at all unusual for empires.

Of course, Blue sees "the rest of the country" the way European colonists do- everything outside their city is foreign land to them. Hence, what they do is trivially derivable from a colonizing power that just so happens to share a government with the colonize-ees; their language ("right side of history", "latinx", land acknowledgements) is perfectly consistent with this outlook, as are their political strategies.

To colonize a government- to save it from itself and those savages- you hollow it out by creating paragovernmental organizations and accomplish the goals that way. Red more famously does this with paramilitary organizations (Blackwater).

I have some thoughts on that probably deserve a top-level post.

Why would an independent body for economic development have classified material?

USAid has been advancing US political interests along with the CIA operations branch overseas for decades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_International_Development#Political_operations_abroad

William Blum has said that in the 1960s and early 1970s USAID has maintained "a close working relationship with the CIA, and Agency officers often operated abroad under USAID cover."[195] The 1960s-era Office of Public Safety, a now-disbanded division of USAID, has been mentioned as an example of this, having served as a front for training foreign police in counterinsurgency methods (including torture techniques).

https://kyivindependent.com/how-us-foreign-aid-transformed-ukraine-through-the-years/

The USAID’s technical assistance program which provides expert advice, support, and resources to help countries implement reforms and achieve development goals, played a big role in transforming Ukraine after the EuroMaidan Revolution that ended the rule of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.

In other nations:

From 2003, NED-family Ingos got into the act of securing regime change at the next parliamentary elections, turning against Akayev who had initially allowed them access to the country during the heyday of IMF and Usaid conditional lending. Even more than in Ukraine, American dominance of the local NGO sector is complete in Kyrgyzstan. P Escobar describes the monopolisation of local civil society thus: "Practically everything that passes for civil society in Kyrgyzstan is financed by US foundations, or by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). At least 170 non-governmental organizations charged with development or promotion of democracy have been created or sponsored by the Americans."

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/colour_revolutions_3196jsp/

There are several biased sources but also some pro neoliberal sources.

They have been also advancing leftist causes abroad, whether that benefits US is pretty dubiuos.

They’ve been attempting to advance US interests abroad. American state ideology(the Duluth model) is part and parcel of that.

I would wager it does, as countries that subscribe to that particular brand of leftism almost inevitably wind up exclusively looking to the US (well, specifically, US leftists) for guidance and support, shunning previous associates and remaining internal opposition unless those also subscribe to the same ideology. It somewhat harms the US right wing specifically, because those countries get a stake in US internal politics and start wielding whatever little influence they have in favour of the US Left on the internal US stage (see: European politicians campaigning for Kamala). Ultimately, it doesn't seem so obvious whether from the US Right's point of view, "the US gains a loyal lapdog, but the lapdog wants the Democrats in power" is a net positive or negative.

Since in the current interpretation of the labels, the "Right" is generally nationalist while the "Left" is globalist, it's not clear whether a hypothetical value-flipped version of USAID, that groomed the likes of Orbán and the AfD rather than assorted LGBT activists, would produce similar utility for the US right wing. If the ideology says $your_country first, any benefits the US will gain from a right-wing ally they cultivated will ultimately be transactional - you can't expect the sort of loyalty to the point of self-sacrifice that a globalist vassal offers up.

I suspect, but obviously can't be certain, that Trump's Right might be willing to settle for modest changes to the actual arrangements. I think if the perceived return on (aid) investment were greater, it would still make sense, and here "return" probably means better international sentiment. So I'd expect more trumpeting of what aid is given: "Did you know the US has funded a substantial reduction in AIDS mortality in Africa?" and probably cutting ties with NGOs and governments that take American money and loudly criticize the country.

See also the recent "negotiations" involving Canada and Mexico tariffs with minimal actual changes, although maybe that will change in a few months.

P Escobar describes the monopolisation of local civil society thus

Not sure I would trust the King of Cocaine on this, but then again I imagine he has significant experience in dealing with various arms of the US federal government

I'm left with the impression that Musk and MAGA are being more truthful than NPR, and maybe the Agency does deserve to go into receivership.

I suspect that "The Agency" is an...apt term to describe USAID.

People are thinking a lot about

  1. The message shutting down US foreign aid sends to US citizens, and
  2. The message shutting down US foreign aid sends to foreign governments who want to receive US aid funding,

Missed in this is the question of 3): What message is being sent to foreign governments by shutting down a branch of the US intelligence apparatus*?

*Yes, I think this is an overstatement, but think about it from the perspective of a foreign government: once USAID serves as cover for a hostile covert op aimed at overthrowing a government, you have to assume the entire agency is serving as a CIA arm. And this is without getting into even the "soft power" or perhaps "propaganda" aspects of what USAID does.

If the CIA was competent enough it'd set up its own network of shell companies or charities to just continue the work of infiltrating nations and cultivating domestic assets. Funneling everything through USAID or some other US centric organization just seems like a forced sharing of the feeding trough with other pigs that exist just to be the first up for slaughter when the butchering season begins. Actually once I say it that way it makes sense that the CIA would have a vast number of friendly organizations embedded in the bureaucracy that would be first on the chopping block. Being the biggest baddest hog in the swamp is a survival strategy, but so is being one step faster than the clueless pigs feasting next ro you.

I am sure that in addition to USAID the CIA has other tentacles. But cutting off USAID would definitely cut a tentacle or two, or even three.

Philanthropy and aid is genuinely the space for spooks and criminals like Sam Bankman-Fried come out and play. That and activists who actually try to march into institutions like the CIA.

set up its own network of shell companies or charities to just continue the work of infiltrating nations and cultivating domestic assets

I think it does. The thing about USAID is that it's a very convenient tool for going sneaky stuff because it's in a lot of the right places, and as I understand it it is pretty much overtly the tool we use to exercise soft power along the lines of "funding pro-democracy organizations overseas." I don't think the intelligence community will be blind and deaf without it, or anything.

When the US funds regime change abroad, it doesn't go into a budget line item as such. "$100,000 for anti-Orban parties in Hungary." It's just called something else. In this case unimpeachable-sounding charity at USAID is the cover for vast amounts of patronage and graft. It's an extremely partisan organization, it's inherently secretive, it's an arm of the CIA, and it's anti-democratic. A lot of bodies are buried at USAID and the thing is probably unsalvageable. Incredible whitepill to know that Trump is gutting the whole thing.

"$3 million for Pakistani development funds" (actually this is going to fund Cuban Government Overthrow Twitter)

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