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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28008 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

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I'm sure everybody has their "issues" with the entire response, mine are that we seem to have unlimited money for Ukraine or Israel (or anybody else, actually!) but when it's our own citizenry, then everything is somehow jammed up.

Here's Kamala bragging about sending $150 Million to Lebanon to pay back for some of the destruction that Israel enacted upon them somehow also my tax dollars indeed

Somehow the Texas Air Guard can go help with flooding in Czechia

The other "issue" is that FEMA is fullfilling the "too many chiefs and not enough Indians" meme. It seems like they want to occupy the role or "organizer", and less so doer. The local guys in ENC siphoning diesel fuel into excavators and building improvised bridges are doers, and they are looking to their local church leaders and community members as organizers. They want/need resources (money, equipment, helicopters) from FEMA, but they actively do not want to be "organized".

Young kids naked and crying for their parents, ropes still wrapped around their arms from where their parents desperately tied them to trees above water.

I've been watching this really closely and haven't seen anybody claim this. Can you link to a source for this?

/images/17283174732845304.webp

This is my least favorite right-aligned argument. I'm not all that excited about funding Ukraine and Israel, but I'm also not all that excited about federal spending on hurricanes. States are big, they have economies the size of medium to large countries, this doesn't need to be a federal spending priority. If North Carolinians are getting screwed because of a lack of spending, they should take it up with their governor. The federal government should fill roles that are too large for states or require coordination solutions; a small coordination role for FEMA makes sense, but there is no reason that North Carolina can't pay for its own recovery budget.

I’d say this is a great case for government intervention. It’s particularly close to the core Constitutional mandate.

Plus, look how much of the relief is being coordinated through one state’s airport. I think forcing everyone to duplicate logistics would be less efficient.

but there is no reason that North Carolina can't pay for its own recovery budget.

While I definitely agree with your sentiments, unfortunately the math doesn't work out.

I'll spare a Wall of Numbers-And-Links, but the reality is that too effectively insure or budget against natural disasters, even for states not named Florida and California, would mean a massive redirection of their state budgets such that they wouldn't be able to finance everyday things like roads and hospitals. Not only would voters not want that, society doesn't want that. We want basic levels of education and infrastructure pretty high. You don't want large swaths of states (large the rural parts) to be grossly less developed than the rest of the state. Culture and politics aside, this eventually results in economic degeneracy.

So, the tacit deal for decades has been that the Federal government will use its money printer for any state(s) that get slapped by a hurricane, tornado, earthquake, even large blizzard. The state just needs to keep funding its own "basics."

The rub, however, is that the funding for those basics has, over time, sourced more and more from Federal dollars. Daddy is not only paying for your expensive car insurance, he bought you the car and he pays for gas. But how? But why?

Congress can control state level funding down to absurd levels of detail. In Saving Congress from Itself James Buckley (brother of William F. Buckley) describes the absurdity of Congress, at one point, specifically allocating funds for a particular sidewalk somewhere. While the top line numbers might look impressive - "Congress gives Alabama $3 billion for Space Industry" (I'm making that data point up) ... the detail might be that that $3bn is sliced into pieces of no more than $5mn that have super specific targets.

Of course, you say, the states and closely coordinating with Congress so that what needs funding is funded, right?

No. Not only no, but fuck no. There's no state-to-House-and-Senate budget powwow where all this gets hashed out. Governors may called their senators, lobbying firms do their thing. Big profile stuff may get helped out but, generally, a lot of this is just stitched together as the process evolves in real time. And, then, it produces a horrible dilemma for the states - if they don't actually SPEND what Congress allocated, there's a good chance they'll have to answer for it and, likely, NOT receive that money again.

But, wait, it gets worse.

Tied up in Federal dollars is compliance with a bunch of Federal standards around spending those dollars. While much of this is compliance and accounting related, some of it has to do with what contractors can receive those dollars. This is everything from ensuring the contractor has compliant auditing systems all the way to, you guessed it, diversity definitely-not-quotas for the disbursal of Federal funds.

Tying this all the way back to the quoted text I led with, North Carolina doesn't have the money to fund its own disaster relief at scale. The money they get from the Federal government isn't meaningfully North Carolina's in a real sense. Instead, it's a weird pass-thru self-spend by the Feds ... with a lot of the back office support being in DC. This is the end result of a process started for sure during LBJ's admin with precedent to FDR. Your State government (with the bizarre and horrible exception of California and the just bizarre exception of Alaska) has probably invited in the grasping tentacles of Washington DC years ago and now cannot afford to cut them.

You don't want large swaths of states (large the rural parts) to be grossly less developed than the rest of the state. Culture and politics aside, this eventually results in economic degeneracy.

Speak for yourself. Subsidizing inefficient sectors of the economy for political reasons is ALREADY economic degeneracy.

The left has been running the "blame your political opponents for bad weather" play for 20 years, but that doesn't make it any less stupid when the right does it.

20 years? People blamed the federal government for the 1906 San Fran quake.

People have been blaming their political opponents for bad weather since we've have political opponents and bad weather

I think MITE is referring to hurricane severity being (potentially) worsened by anthropogenic climate change.

I figured it was referring to Katrina.

mine are that we seem to have unlimited money for Ukraine or Israel (or anybody else, actually!) but when it's our own citizenry, then everything is somehow jammed up.

Can you elaborate, because I keep seeing people say things like this, and I don't get it? It just seems like a kneejerk disaste for foreign aid tied into the topic of the day*. The big Ukraine aid bill took like half a year to negotiate and almost failed. The Federal government spent ~$6 trillion in FY23. Somewhere around 1-2% of that was foreign aid and included support for the largest conventional war of the century.

*what's even more frustrating is that many of the same people who do this also object to spending money on disaster readiness

Somewhere around 1-2% of that was foreign aid

That's quite a lot. Like meme levels of spending. Stop spraying my tax dollars on other countries.

If you're trying to explain why Congress won't adequately fund Federal disaster relief it's not. Especially when you're trying to compare a supplemental that took half a year to negotiate with additional funds for a disaster that happened last week.

Stop spraying my tax dollars on other countries.

The socially optimal amount of American tax dollars given to other countries is non-zero :V

socially optimal

how do you define it in this context?

The socially optimal amount of American tax dollars given to other countries is non-zero :V

Yes, and if we are to have any impact on the massively increasing slope of federal debt, then everything must give a bit. The correct amount is not zero, but in a period of wild profligacy, everything must give a bit to return to sanity.

And this “it’s only 1%-2% responses infuriates me.

Yes if the only thing you do is cut foreign aide, then you won’t solve the problem. But if you cut foreign side and ten other similar size useless programs, then you’ve made a real difference.

And this “it’s only 1%-2% responses infuriates me.

This is why I mentioned that the same people who complain about foreign aid also don't want to spend money on disaster readiness and are just grinding an axe. What point is trying to be made? That we can't afford to fund FEMA because the Feds are giving all our money to foreigners? Objectively false (and I have uncharitable opinions about its roots). Is that we should spend less in general? If so, by all means say that, but it's pretty much the diametric opposite of "there's no money for our own citizens". It's saying we need to help people less. Maybe that's a more optimal outcome, but it's a very different point than what Stellula was bringing up.

But if you cut foreign side and ten other similar size useless programs, then you’ve made a real difference

Again, if you want to slash welfare, just say that. It's not like Congress was forced to choose between $100b to UA and $100b to FEMA.

I’m not saying they are forced to choose between these two items. But the idea that “it’s only 100b” leads to wasting American money on nonsense like Ukraine aid. 100b adds up. And it adds up fast.

I would prefer we spend less overall (including on welfare). But if I’m cutting I’m starting first with foreign aid and then moving from there.

And yes, we could in theory tax more. But why would I want the government to tax me more to give money to fucking Gaza or Ukraine? The concept is offensive.

So if we aren’t going tax more the. We need to spend less. We aren’t doing that.

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.

If you cut and reduce the deficit, then one time emergencies won’t hurt as much. That is, being fiscally responsible is better in bad times compared to being fiscally irresponsible.

The US is phenomenally wealthy - more so than peer developed nations. Despite this, it spend proportionally less, even after you factor out the large gap in military spending. This is a policy choice. We're not out of money. We're not brushing up against some hard upper limit of what a government can spend without wrecking the economy. We've chosen an arrangement where we get lower taxes and more consumer spending over higher taxes and more government services. This has consequences. Some of them are positive, but sometimes it's going to mean you underinvested in public services relative to the ideal case.

As I said in my other comment, it's not like Congress was forced to choose between $100b to UA and $100b to FEMA.

A difference in what?

Federal debt has exploded in recent years. That's not free.

It's also not the problem at hand. Hence why it's not making a difference to the problem at hand.

This report from a lineman mentions kids walking around naked looking for parents. Other reports of naked kids: https://x.com/MrsMcGeek/status/1843003502047707335.

Trying to find the video with the rope thing but it's hard to find the exact video when I have watched hundreds over the last week and X doesn't make it easy.

The thing about all these "kids without parents" stories, is I mean, they aren't on their face unbelievable. Tragedy happens. But they'd be a lot more believable if it wasn't random twitter accounts, or photos of screenshots of text messages from some guy.

I wasn't 100% on board with the whole "FEMA is blocking aid" stories coming out until Elon Musk personally attested that an engineer on his payroll in North Carolina was being blocked. That is a concrete event with names we can verify. Would Elon lie about that? Or misunderstand or exaggerate? Maybe. But it's a starting point of a concrete claim that can be verified.

I have seen more videos of local sheriffs, helicopter pilots who'd been running rescue missions, etc coming forward and saying FEMA is blocking aid. Are these real sheriffs? Are these real pilots who really rescued a wife and then was blocked by FEMA from going back for the husband? Don't fucking know, but it's slightly better than "photo of a screenshot of a random text message".

I doubt I'll ever know how much of this was real and how much was fake. Especially since I'm already seeing the "It's all Russian misinformation" meme getting rolled out, and the precursors to "actually what caused excess deaths are all the people spreading misinformation". So fuck me I guess. We'll be arguing about how many died and who's fault it was until this passed out of living memory.

The temporary flight restriction Musk was complaining about is a matter of record, and it's the same one involved in the other incidents. You can argue about which Federal agency is responsible (the FAA issued it of course, but who asked for it is another matter), but there's no doubt it existed.

I have seen one report on X/Twitter of supplies being confiscated that was literally translated from the Russian. Not sure if Russian trolls or other trolls pretending to be Russian trolls.

The helicopter pilot being told he'd be arrested if he kept working was told that by a local fire chief, not FEMA.

Trigger warning: this is an infuriating story and the followup makes it quite a bit worse. https://youtube.com/watch?v=s8ICG0iaHqw

Any single "kid without parents" story has not been credible, just like any single "I saw a truck full of dead bodies" story is not credible. Dozens of seemingly independent stories make it more credible. I'm not 100% convinced that there is a naked kid survivor still tied to a tree, or what the maximal claim might be. I am pretty sure it is confirmed that this event has created some orphans, potentially stranding kids without any adult supervision entirely for hours, days, who knows if there's still a kid out there all alone? We wouldn't know, because they'd be alone. With communications down for so long, and people spread out in remote communities, no one can say they have the full grasp of the tragedy yet.

I am pretty convinced at this point that the death toll is in the thousands, and give 50% odds that this final death toll will not be on the official news until after the election. There are just too many reports of people saying they personally saw dead bodies, spread out across a wide geographical region.

I’ll take that bet.

Based on my friends and family in the area, I figured the death toll would stay under 500, possibly 300. This is a first-world country and there aren’t that many unaccounted for.

$100 to a charity of your choice if the official figure clears 1000 by the end of the year?

I would strongly encourage you to define what 'official figure' means, before making that bet. An 'excess deaths' measurement like used after Maria will give drastically higher results than those marked as storm-related by a coroner.

@OracleOutlook, what say you? I get the impression we’re both talking about coroner-marked deaths, i.e. drownings, contaminated water, or injuries. Is there a site we can agree on?

Would you like to use https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/index.php?season=2024&basin=atl when the report becomes available?

Agreed.

  • 72 direct and 87 indirect for Sandy
  • 520 direct, 565 indirect, 307 indeterminate for Katrina
  • 66 direct, 90 other for Ian

Those appear to cover dehydration, hypothermia, car accidents, etc. but not “excess mortality.” So unless they’ve changed their methodology in the last few years, I’m good with it.

Sounds good. As far as bets go, it sounds like I win either way. Either I win the dubious honor of being able to read the tea leaves Twitter vibes, or I win fewer people dying in reality.

Make it a hurricane survivor charity for better symbolism?

mine are that we seem to have unlimited money for Ukraine or Israel (or anybody else, actually!) but when it's our own citizenry, then everything is somehow jammed up.

TBH if it were as simple as just cutting a check I think the Feds would be quite effective. But as discussed last week, it's not that simple; they actually have to go into a chaotic and desperate situation in very rough terrain and try to coordinate between thousands of local folks, out-of-state good samaritans, etc., and they have to do it with unionized and over-bureaucratized government workers who suffer very little personal blowback for failure.

I don't accept this.

If we can send emergency money to Lebanon, Ukraine, Israel and everybody else, then we should have no problem doing the same in The US. We're sending aircraft carriers to the region to assist Israel in their ridiculous war, redirect those aircraft carriers to Myrtle Beach, and make the pilots fly over ENC with thermal cameras pointed at the ground. Put a drone in the air and look for people. Send helicopters.

Even if this is pointless, it's symbolic.

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.

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.

Hey, get in line. I have sincere moral problems with many of the things the federal government spends my tax money on; stop that before giving some foreigners a discount on weapons.

If we can send emergency money to Lebanon, Ukraine, Israel and everybody else, then we should have no problem doing the same in The US.

Yeah, we should stop doing that too. Much of it is probably squandered or embezzled for the same reasons I would expect this to be. I don't want more of my money confiscated on the basis that maybe it'll help someone somewhere if we just shower them with more cash.

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?

If you want to donate your money to Ukraine go for it.

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.

Money is fungible. This allows an accounting trick where the government can say "we aren't reducing your taxes nor are we changing how much of the budget gets spent on each item, but we're taking the money for this program from other people and using your taxes for something else". Unless objecting to a particular expense actually leads to your taxes going down, using "other people's taxes" is indistinguishable from using yours.

Not one cent of it should benefit Israel or Ukraine until there are no more problems to solve here.

There's always a relevant xkcd....

Also, every bit of Ukrainian clay seized by Russia will undermine the post-WWII standard against wars of territorial expansion, which will almost certainly cause more problems here.

As for Israel, as long as the US, or nations in general, maintain border and immigration controls, the State of Israel must continue to exist as a haven for Jewish people persecuted in other countries. (If everyone had open borders, Israel might not be necessary because Jews unsafe in their homes could always go somewhere else, as occurred many times prior to the 20th century, and could have occurred in the counter-factual 1930s and 1940s absent the post-WWI implementation of modern passport and visa systems.)

As for Israel, as long as the US, or nations in general, maintain border and immigration controls, the State of Israel must continue to exist as a haven for Jewish people persecuted in other countries.

I look at this, and then I look at the Kurds. The exact same argument applies, except far more so because the Kurds are currently persecuted and the Jews aren't. You could also say this about the Uyghurs, or the Rohingyas, or any other nation that does not have a state. Am I missing some reason that the Jews are a priority here?

The trouble with ignoring the sentiment is that you always have to deal in the reality of limited resources. You simply cannot do everything and as such you need to set priorities that make some sort of sense. And really we don’t have the ability to police the world while also dealing with a major crisis. The same soldiers cannot both be preparing to deploy to the Middle East and mounting search and rescue in the Heléne hurricane zone. Of the two, I think any sensible leader would choose to at least delay until the S&R stuff is finished before packing them up to sail overseas.

As for the post WW2 consensus, I think it died the minute Russia invaded.

It died at least two decades prior, when the US waged war to claw an internationally recognized region away from Serbia.

I don't recall any Serbian territory being annexed by the US or any other country. A territory becoming its own country is a different matter, as otherwise India and most of the countries in Africa would have to be considered illegitimate.

If Russia funded Cascadia to secede from the US on the ground that they are oppressed by Californians, would that not violate the post WW2 consensus? And if not why not?

It would depend on whether, in that time-line, Californians had massacred Cascadians.

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It's specifically hostile annexation that's banned, where you take territory/people by force over their wishes. There's some degree of grandfather clause for existing state boundaries, but supporting rebels to get what the rebels want (as opposed to what you want) is generally OK (at least as far as the norms go; the state being rebelled against can retaliate).

The Donbass rebels were fine as far as the norms went; other states were free to back the Ukrainian government, and the Ukrainian government had some degree of cause of action against Russia (not that Russia cared), but Russia wasn't breaking the norms. Russia coming into Ukraine under its own auspices to chop off bits of it and annex them to Russia, that's breaking the norms.

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countries. (If everyone had open borders, Israel might not be necessary because Jews unsafe in their homes could always go somewhere else, as occurred many times prior to the 20th century, and could have occurred in the counter-factual 1930s and 1940s

There is a 0% chance of Jews subject to actual antisemitism not getting asylum in a nice western country without Israel. This has been true for Israel’s entire existence, it will be true if Israel collapsed tomorrow, it will be for all the evidence we have true for hundreds of years.

There is a 0% chance of Jews subject to actual antisemitism not getting asylum in a nice western country without Israel.

Has any ethnic group gotten blanket asylum in the West? There has been a slow shift away from permissive asylum policies (see the entire cats thing): nobody is letting in "the other" wholesale (Rwanda? South Sudan? Yazidis?) with maybe a few limited exceptions like Ukrainians fleeing Russian invasion or Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh. That's putting a heavy assumption that those Jews won't be treated as "the other" there (for which there are plenty of pre-WWII examples), and even then I don't think that supposedly-favored groups like white Zimbabweans (whose population there is down at least 80% since the country became independent in 1980) have ever been recognized as categorical refugees.

But that may follow from my general skepticism on putting faith in "moral arc of history" memes: literal blood-and-soil nationalism even gets praise from self-declared progressives, as long as who, whom? fits. It's funny to me that the West is expected to allow any-and-all immigration of largely-unverified refugees seeking asylum and giving jus soli citizenship and votes to their descendants, but the residents of the (withdrawing) British mandate for Palestine in 1948 and their descendants are eternally allowed to "resist the occupation" in means that would make even the American far right nauseous. But again: who, whom?.

But that may follow from my general skepticism on putting faith in "moral arc of history" memes: literal blood-and-soil nationalism even gets praise from self-declared progressives, as long as who, whom? fits. It's funny to me that the West is expected to allow any-and-all immigration of largely-unverified refugees seeking asylum and giving jus soli citizenship and votes to their descendants, but the residents of the (withdrawing) British mandate for Palestine in 1948 and their descendants are eternally allowed to "resist the occupation" in means that would make even the American far right nauseous. But again: who, whom?.

The basic model these people have of the world is that "the West", as colonisers/imperialists, have forfeited for all time the right to any ethnic criteria for who lives in their countries, while "Indigenous peoples" (basically everyone else) have always lived peacefully and harmoniously in the same spot and so have a fundamentally legitimate claim of ownership of their land.

Would you wager your life on that? Your children's lives?

Were I married to a Jew I would no more worry about the USA going 1930’s Germany on them than I currently do about an alien invasion.

There is a 0% chance of Jews subject to actual antisemitism not getting asylum in a nice western country without Israel. This has been true for Israel’s entire existence,

That's a convenient elision of the fact that the Jews trying to escape the Nazis were in large part turned away from those nice western countries. Even years after the end of WWII, hundreds of thousands of European jews were still sitting in Displaced Persons camps guarded by allied soldiers because no "nice western country" would take them, and were only able to leave after the establishment of Israel as a national homeland for jews (those "nice western countries" still weren't willing to take them).

And I wouldn't count on most of Europe being too safe for jews in the future. France is already markedly unsafe, and as Britain islamicizes over the next couple decades anti-jewish sentiment is likely to increase.

What a perverse cycle of history: the West turned away Jews, Holocaust, West feels guilty and sets up asylum laws Never Again etc, those asylum laws ultimately end the "guilty West," becomes anti-Semitic again, Jews get turned away.

And I wouldn't count on most of Europe being too safe for jews in the future.

Bring back the Slattery Report.

We did get a middling detective story out of it, at least.

There’s a convenient elision of the fact that it’s not the forties anymore. Israel has the right to exist, they don’t have the right to demand a blank cheque from the rest of the world.

If Israel fell tomorrow the Jews would move to Anglosphere countries and Central Europe. Well, the ones that didn’t get massacred in the process of it falling at least. There won’t be a second Holocaust.

It's easy to play armchair general, but I think @Celestial-body-NOS made a point that can't be ignored.

While you might feel certain that Western countries would take in Jewish refugees, you presumably don't have any skin in the game. Would you be willing to be the lives of your family on this?

As a fellow armchair general, let me say that while I think it's probable that Israeli refugees would be accepted, it is far from certain. Nothing is certain when it comes to hypothetical future world conflicts. And if we're indexing from known past events, we know that Jews haven't been welcome with open arms in the past.

they don’t have the right to demand a blank cheque from the rest of the world.

A blank check would entail allowing Israel to actually do what the rest of the arab world - including the palestinians - did and continue to do: pushing all of their enemy's co-ethnics out of all territory they can martially claim. What they're doing now is significantly more humane than what the Saudis did to the Yemenis (and lost), or what the anti-Assad rebels backed by the west did to the Yazidis, or what NATO-ally Turkey does to Kurds, etc., etc., etc. Much of the criticism of Israel is one giant isolated demand for rigor.

Israel has every right to kick the Palestinians out of Gaza to somewhere nonspecific. My objection is solely to having some sort of moral objection to pay for it.

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Elian Gonzalez has entered the chat. Progressive emphasis on immigration uber allies has long had a lot of exceptions for political utility.

The return of children transported across borders to their parent(s) in the country of habitual residence is, in general, uncontroversial and has nothing to do with immigration law or politics. The relevant treaty is one of the many confusingly-named Hague Conventions - please, dear international community, if you are going to have a treaty with a long and non-memorable name then sign it somewhere that isn't the Hague.

The Eilan Gonzalez case wasn't an immigration case - it was a family law case where the conservative side wanted to make an unprincipled exception and refuse to return a 5-year-old child to his only living parent because Cuba bad.

Incidentally, this type of bullshit on the part of the country the kid is taken to is sufficiently common that the Hague Convention isn't really working. The US returning a child to the parents in the country of habitual residence in the face of noisy local opposition is unusual globally.

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There's always a relevant xkcd....

I think a better analogy for that XKCD comic would be: We can't fund the Ukrainian space program until our space program doesn't have anything left to do. If Ukraine wants to have their own space program their citizens can choose to fund that, or if US citizens want to fund the Ukrainian space program they are free to donate their money to it.

Which...yes?

There are perfectly reasonable foreign policy objectives in funding Ukraine’s war effort.

That analogy might work better if Mexico were trying to re-negotiate the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at tank-point, or if Canada were aiming for a re-match of 1812.

However, as we do not currently face any remotely credible threat of armed invasion* at this time, our 'keeping the Stars-and-Stripes flying over El Paso and Detroit' program doesn't have anything left to do.

*No, people coming in looking to work for money is not the same thing as an invasion.

Is Ukraine a US state? Do they pay taxes? Can we conscript their sons to go die for the protection of our nation?

Russia invaded Ukraine. They don’t invade The United States, they didn’t threaten to invade The United States.

Is Ukraine a US state? Do they pay taxes? Can we conscript their sons to go die for the protection of our nation?

They don't pay taxes, but the view of the people running the US is that there's a substantial benefit for the US in defending the rules-based international system*, that in the long term is probably worth substantially more in dollar terms than the cost of funding Ukraine. Maybe they're wrong but it's still largely an economic calculation, not a decision based on abstract philosophical principles for their own sakes.

*Rules that the US sets and gets to break, before anyone comes with examples of the US being hypocrites on this front.

Russia invaded Ukraine. They don’t invade The United States, they didn’t threaten to invade The United States.

You sure about that?

Furthermore, if Russia were to have encountered no opposition in the forceful seizure of Ukraine, how long would it be before they went after the Baltics? Poland? Eventually we wouldn't be able to stand on the sidelines any more.

Furthermore, if Russia were to have encountered no opposition in the forceful seizure of Ukraine, how long would it be before they went after the Baltics? Poland?

Actually, they'd just stop there and not go any further. They had specific reasons for getting involved in the Ukraine that aren't there for Poland and the Baltics. I don't even think they're going to want to retain control over Ukraine in the end either - I think they're going to want to turn it into a thoroughly dysfunctional rump state that's utterly unable to credibly threaten Russia or prevent them from interfering in internal domestic affairs.

If you want an example of a military force that forcefully seized territory and was then emboldened to claim more, you're going to have much better results looking at the Middle East - who owns the Golan Heights again?

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You can't just claim everything to be a step onto a slippery slope without evidence and/or concrete arguments. There are plenty of instances in world politics of actors doing a particular thing with ease and not proceeding to attempt every other action that is somewhat similar to it: the US rolled over Iraq but did not proceed to invade Iran, the Russians waltzed within something like 30km of Georgia's capital and then just turned around and went home, ...

Funny enough paying the Danegeld can sometimes work. See Alfred.

As for Israel, as long as the US, or nations in general, maintain border and immigration controls, the State of Israel must continue to exist as a haven for Jewish people persecuted in other countries.

I broadly agree with the sentiment, but, you know, I don't think it's in the Constitution of the United States.

If we can send emergency money to Lebanon, Ukraine, Israel and everybody else, then we should have no problem doing the same in The US.

But it's not as simple as sending money - that's my whole point. Money alone won't haul a tree out of a roadway or repair a washed out bridge; you need road crews and equipment for that. Money will help you acquire those things, but unless you already know where to go to put them together and how to get them quickly to the places where they're needed, you're SOL. FEMA don't appear to be logistically-competent to put together that kind of a response, so they're left waving money around in the air with nothing to show for it.

We're sending aircraft carriers to the region to assist Israel in their ridiculous war, redirect those aircraft carriers to Myrtle Beach, and make the pilots fly over ENC with thermal cameras pointed at the ground.

It's at least two weeks from the eastern Mediterranean back to the U.S., and longer from the Persian Gulf or Red Sea - even if we ordered them back as soon as the hurricane hit, they'd still be at sea.

Put a drone in the air and look for people. Send helicopters.

This is a more valid complaint; I'm not sure what, if anything, holding up the 82nd Airborne and other rapid reaction forces on domestic bases from deploying. But that's a matter of will and organization (notably we have a President who is clearly suffering from advanced dementia, works like two hours per day, and spends the rest on the beach, while his VP is notably vacuous, scared of her own shadow, and busy campaigning. Not promising) not funding.

It’s because this isn’t a money problem, it’s a logistics problem. Israel and Ukraine are already managing their responses, so it’s easy to give them aid. With the hurricane you have to figure out what goes where, and how to get it there, which is a difficult problem.

Also, I believe the majority of the value of the aid given to Ukraine in particularly is not cash, but arms, ammo, and loans.

Also, I believe the majority of the value of the aid given to Ukraine in particularly is not cash, but arms, ammo, and loans.

From https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-107232:

Of the approximately $62.3 billion provided to the Department of Defense, it had obligated about $52.3 billion, such as for procuring missiles, ammunition, and combat vehicles for Ukraine and to replace U.S. stocks. In its own reporting, DOD combines this formal obligated amount with internal commitments to convey its financial commitments. Of the approximately $46.1 billion provided to the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development, the two agencies had obligated about $44.4 billion, such as to support the Ukrainian government's civilian budget, including salaries for first responders, health workers, and educators. Of the approximately $3.4 billion provided to the Department of Health and Human Services, it had obligated about $3.1 billion, such as in grants for supporting Ukrainian refugees settling in the U.S. Of the approximately $1.6 billion provided to eight U.S. agencies and offices covered in this review, they had obligated about $1.4 billion, such as for nuclear security and sanctions enforcement.

So, it appears at least a near majority (51.1 of 103.4 billions) are in fact cash disbursements.

ETA: Not intending to dispute the post above, just adding context that the balance is pretty close.

But the government, specifically the Army/DoD and by extension the National Guard, are supposed to be experts in logistics in impassable terrain. It's not like wars are always fought on open desert: sometimes they are, but there are plenty of battlegrounds in recent memory with far worse terrain than North Carolina. Oh, the bridge is out? That never happens in war! They are supposed to be able to cross unbridged rivers rapidly under fire. And do Search and Rescue and extraction operations day and night. If they can supply remote fire bases by helicopter, surely we could setup tents and feed hot MREs to people anywhere on the ground on mere hours notice. Or at least airdropping rations.

On the other hand, I'm clearly armchair quarterbacking. Those things are all harder than they sound, I'm sure. Maybe all the bridging engineers are already out fixing washed out roads, and helicopters are out on SAR or supply missions. But it doesn't seem like we should throw up our hands and claim that it's completely beyond us: at the very least we should be learning lessons for next time.

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.

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?

"Without infrastructure" is, in this case, more or less the definition of the task, so I don't follow your point.

The point is that military engineering is the former and not the later, and always has been.

It's not like wars are always fought on open desert

Even open desert has more logistical issues than you'd expect. Just ask Erwin Rommel or Archie Wavell. Or the crusaders at Hattin.

With the hurricane you have to figure out what goes where, and how to get it there, which is a difficult problem.

There are people in ENC at this moment who have figured this out. What they want now is for the government to get out of their fucking way. To the feds: I know it's going to hurt your pride but tuck your tail between your legs and ask the local churches how you can help and then do what they say.

To the feds: I know it's going to hurt your pride but tuck your tail between your legs and ask the local churches how you can help and then do what they say.

Amen. This is what democracy actually looks like; life-and-death power being exercised by common people for their own benefit and that of their neighbors

What specifically is making you think that FEMA is bungling the response? I see it repeatedly taken as fact in this thread, and that we should trust to random tiktok videos, but very little actual documentation of the situation.

I’m not claiming everything is perfect. I just think that rumors always swirl in the aftermath, and the insane political polarization in this case is making it worse. I expect clearer information to come out in the next few weeks.

I’ll grant that there’s a shortage of quality evidence about the state of the hurricane response, but the evidence we do have points to the government response being pretty bad.

What would you consider "actual documentation" other than people there right now saying that they're jamming it up?

I think the point is that the government is completely incompetent. So they can distribute money but they can't actually rescue people.

But they are also incompetent when they spend money overseas. For example, they sent an aircraft carrier to deal with the Houthis but then retreated in defeat after a couple months. Or, for another example, they spent a couple hundred million building a floating pier to deliver supplies to Gaza, but then it didn't work and they just abandoned it.

So, while I agree we should spend at least as much on our own disasters as those in Ukraine and the Middle East, more money won't necessarily solve the problem since FEMA seems to be incompetent.

Honestly, I think the same. We’ve lost the ability to do a lot of things that our great grandparents took for granted that would just work. I could go down the list of usual government functions and for the most part we did them better in 1924 than we do in 2024. And I think it’s a combination of easy living, culture and poor education that’s created an elite that simply cannot handle the realities of running a complex society in the real world.

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