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Merged USAID: is it really a bunch of crazy leftists? / Trump Was Absolutely Right to Shut Down USAID

acbytesla said:
That too changes the dynamic. The Executive branch is set up to execute policies that the legislative branch authorizes. Wouldn't the proper process be referring improper use of funds to Congress and the judicial branch to resolve those issues?
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Why? If the Executive has full authority over the use of those funds, he can simply curtail their use. No need to refer the matter to another branch.

If Congress wants to get more involved, they certainly have the authority to enact more legislative oversight.
 
Donal said:
Sooo wouldn't all the time, effort, and resources be better spent pressuring the relevant committees in the co-equal legislature to do their job?
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Whose time, effort, and resources?

The Trump administration feels that its time, effort, and resources would be better spent on directly administering their own department than on getting Congress to hold hearings in order to look over the shoulder of the Trump administration's handling of their own department. If Congress feels otherwise, Congress has the power to do something. If voters feel otherwise, they do too.
Donal said:
What are they doing in the Treasury with our data?
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I honestly have no idea what you're referring to.
 
Ziggurat said:
The breakdown does not indicate how much went to hunger relief, because that's not how their breakdown is sorted.
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Because "hunger relief" is not a specific category. Can you tell us? Can you define "hunger relief"?

and again, it is a public agency. You can view the specific contracts and organizations listed in the spending breakdown.
 
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dann said:
You still seem to think that the Constitution, committees, co-equal legislature, Treasury etc. matters.
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Of course not. I just want the bootlickers to admit they just want daddy Hair Plugs and mommy Spray Tan to love them.
 
Donal said:
Because "hunger relief" is not a specific category.
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That depends entirely on how you categorize things. USAID has not categorized their spending this way, that is true.
Donal said:
Can you tell us? Can you define "hunger relief"?
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No, I cannot tell you how much they spend, and I don't think you can either. Which is sort of my point. Their spending is pretty opaque, despite resources like the website you pointed to. But it's not hard to define.

A pretty simple definition would be money spent to provide food to people at risk of hunger. That includes costs of buying, transporting, and distributing food. You might have your own alternative definition, but the definition isn't the problem here.

And don't forget, I asked the question in the context of someone else using hunger relief as a justification for USAID. But if they aren't doing much hunger relief, that's not much of a justification for their existence.
 
Olmstead said:
And it's Trump and Musk in charge of those net benefit programs. Even if the USAID did some good things, just imagine all the great things it will be able to do with those two in charge. They shut it down, and build it back up in their image. This can only result in an improvement that will benefit the American people.
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to me, it’s remarkable how little trump and musk have done with their vast fortunes to improve anything. collectively, they must have over a trillion dollars in personal wealth. yet, what have they done? made more for themselves. have they helped anyone, with anything, ever, that didn’t involve them getting more for themselves

like these guys have a ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ clue. and anyone saying different is in the same boat.
 
Olmstead said:
And it's Trump and Musk in charge of those net benefit programs. Even if the USAID did some good things, just imagine all the great things it will be able to do with those two in charge. They shut it down, and build it back up in their image. This can only result in an improvement that will benefit the American people.
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Are you making a funny? Two of the most corrupt and self centered human beings on the planet are to be trusted? Clearly, you haven't followed their careers.
 
Ziggurat said:
That depends entirely on how you categorize things. USAID has not categorized their spending this way, that is true.

No, I cannot tell you how much they spend, and I don't think you can either. Which is sort of my point. Their spending is pretty opaque, despite resources like the website you pointed to. But it's not hard to define.
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There are some news articles about it but they don't seem to be big on specific numbers.

Here's the thing though. Look at what Musk is saying about it:

www.nbcnews.com

What is USAID, the foreign assistance agency the Trump administration wants to shut down?

Established by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, the U.S. Agency for International Development provides billions in humanitarian assistance overseas.
www.nbcnews.com www.nbcnews.com

What are the accusations against USAID?​

Over the weekend and into Monday, Musk fired off a series of posts on X that accused the agency of corruption.

“Did you know that USAID, using YOUR tax dollars, funded bioweapon research, including COVID-19, that killed millions of people?” read one post, which cited a 2023 New York Post article about the origins of the pandemic.

Without citing evidence, Musk also called the agency “a radical-left political psy op” and a “crazy waste of money” and claimed “USAID has been paying media organizations to publish their propaganda.”
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Do you believe that USAID was actually funding "bioweapon research" or that COVID-19 was a "bioweapon" and not a naturally occurring virus?
 
dann said:
Come on! Are you all ignorant of what USAID is?
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Having worked in the Australian aid and development industry for several years, I can confidently say that the huge majority of people do not understand what international aid is, how much money is spent on it, and how that money is used to fund programmes. They tend to vastly overestimate the amount of money in the international aid budget, and fail to understand the complexity in the distribution of that aid on the ground in developing countries.

Ziggurat said:
No, I cannot tell you how much they spend, and I don't think you can either. Which is sort of my point. Their spending is pretty opaque, despite resources like the website you pointed to. But it's not hard to define.

A pretty simple definition would be money spent to provide food to people at risk of hunger. That includes costs of buying, transporting, and distributing food. You might have your own alternative definition, but the definition isn't the problem here.

And don't forget, I asked the question in the context of someone else using hunger relief as a justification for USAID. But if they aren't doing much hunger relief, that's not much of a justification for their existence.
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This is an example of seeking a single simple answer to a question that is multifaceted, complex, and difficult to follow even if you are in the industry. Furthermore it is a question the answer to which changes depending on what developing nation you're speaking about, how that nation manages its own development activities, and the extent to which the individual aid charities supported by USAID are able to exert control over how their activities are overseen by the hosting governments.

In short, you won't get a simple answer to your question because you're framing the question in a way that cannot be answered and therefore no such simple answer exists.
 
dann said:
Come on! Are you all ignorant of what USAID is?
It sure as hell ain't "a bunch of crazy leftists."
What gave you the idea that it is?
D

Post in thread 'Protests Erupt in Cuba'

Elon Musk may be on to something:
Elon Musk on X, Feb 2, 2025
USAID is a criminal organization.
Time for it to die.
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But I guess this is probably not what he's thinking of:
USAID (CubaSí.cu)
La Usaid en desgracia o la nueva narrativa de las viejas patrañas Granma.cu, Feb 3, 2025)
U.S. Agency finances campaign against Cuban doctors in Mexico (Granma.cu, Sep 22, 2022)
USAID and the deep pockets of the counterrevolution (Granma.cu, Nov 12, 2020)
USAID thieves in Latin America (Granma.cu, Feb 21, 2020)...
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If everything you know about USAID comes from Cuban propaganda about it, you might have a distorted idea of what it is. Just a thought.
 
dirtywick said:
to me, it’s remarkable how little trump and musk have done with their vast fortunes to improve anything. collectively, they must have over a trillion dollars in personal wealth. yet, what have they done? made more for themselves. have they helped anyone, with anything, ever, that didn’t involve them getting more for themselves
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Trump? No, he's a narcissistic grifter who never gave anything to anyone if he could get away with it.

But here are the 10 largest donations Musk gave in 2023:

The Foundation
Amount: $137.1 million (combining two separate donations)
Cause: Funding a new K-12 school and university in Austin, TX.

X Prize Foundation
Amount: $54 million
Cause: Supporting a prize for new technologies for carbon removal.

Fidelity Charitable
Amount: $25 million
Cause: Funding for undisclosed nonprofits. This entity is a sponsor of donor-advised funds, a charitable giving vehicle.

Hack Foundation
Amount: $4 million
Cause: Funding to improve coding education in U.S. high schools.

Los Fresnos Independent School District
Amount: $2.2 million

Cause: Supporting school education and programs at this south Texas school district.
GiveDirectly
Amount: $2.2 million
Cause: Providing financial support for families living in poverty. GiveDirectly grants cash to families in need.
Code.org

Amount: $2 million
Cause: Supporting computer science programs in schools.
Brownsville Independent School District
Amount: $1.75 million
Cause: Supporting school education and programs at this south Texas school district.

Medicins Sans Frontieres (aka Doctors Without Borders)
Amount: $1 million
Cause: Funding for humanitarian aid responses.

Harlingen Independent School District
Amount: $997,000
Cause: Supporting school education and programs at this south Texas school district.

$227 million in 2023 alone in direct donations.

He also provided free Starlink to Ukraine for a while,
Elon Musk says SpaceX will keep funding Starlink internet in Ukraine
Elon Musk on Saturday announced that his company would continue to pay for Starlink satellite internet in Ukraine, a day after suggesting he could not keep funding the project, which he said was losing around $20m a month.

“The hell with it,” the world’s richest man wrote on Twitter. “Even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free.”
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and supplied Cybertrucks to help with California wildfires.
Tesla sends Cybertrucks to L.A. to provide Starlink internet to impacted communities
Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced on X that the donated Cybertrucks will act as mobile base stations, providing essential services to affected areas.. The Altadena Mountain Rescue Team confirmed that the vehicles would remain at the sheriff’s station until power is restored. Tesla also plans to send additional Cybertrucks to other fire-stricken areas in Los Angeles and Malibu.

“Apologies to those expecting Cybertruck deliveries in California over the next few days,” Musk wrote on X. “We need to use those trucks as mobile base stations to provide power to Starlink Internet terminals in areas of LA without connectivity.”
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However I saw what you did there with "...that didn’t involve them getting more for themselves" - nice little weasel words you can use to argue that anything Musk does is only intended to enrich himself. If so then he went a strange way about it. After getting $180 million from PayPal, he invested almost the entire amount into two incredibly risky ventures - Tesla and SpaceX. It doesn't look like profit was his motive in either case.

SpaceX has saved the taxpayer a bundle in services to NASA, and launched constellations of satellites to provide better internet in rural areas.

Tesla's stated mission is to "accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy". Gas cars are a big producer of CO2 emissions which are causing global warming. Tesla is the only major car maker in the world that produces only pure EVs. The lifetime emissions of a Tesla are 60% less than the average gas car. Telsa is also making grid-scale storage to make better use of wind and solar, hastening the transion to low carbon energy. How much is all that worth? I can't be bothered doing the math right now (just take the amount of GHG avoided and calculate the cost of carbon capture that would otherwise be needed), but I bet it's billions.

Now consider that Musk only owns 13% of Tesla, which is currently valued at $1.3 trillion. That means all the other shareholders have a combined $1.15 trillion worth, 7.7 times more than Musk - and every one of them is benefiting when Tesla does better. "Who cares about those fat-cat investors!" you retort. Well that includes many of Tesla's own employees - over 120,000 world-wide - who are encouraged to buy shares in the company. Tesla also pays them above industry average wages.

But of course none of this matters to you. Anything less than giving away most of his wealth wouldn't be enough for you. To do that he would have to sell most of his shares - which is where his wealth comes from (Musk draws practically no income from his businesses) - losing control over his companies which would then be free to follow a less altruistic agenda. And that would hurt everyone.

We need to dramatically cut back on fossil fuels and be far more sustainable to prevent the World from going to hell. Musk is doing a lot more to achieve that than almost anyone else on the planet. But you want to cancel him because you don't like some of his political views (which are shared by half the population) and hate that he has the power to get stuff done. The real villians are people like you.
 
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Roger Ramjets said:
We need to dramatically cut back on fossil fuels and be far more sustainable to prevent the World from going to hell. Musk is doing a lot more to achieve that than almost anyone else on the planet.
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Well, there are 2 arguments against that...

First of all, as you stated before, Musk is a minority shareholder in Tesla. Yes, Tesla has been a significant factor in the adoption of Electric cars in the past, but he's not the only one involved in the company. It is possible that they still would be putting out similar numbers of electric vehicles even if Musk were not involved.

Secondly, even if you assume that Musk himself was personally responsible for a significant portion of electric vehicle adoption, that was in the past. The election of Stubby McBonespurs (who's response to climate change is "drill baby drill"), who was supported by Musk, threatens to undo a lot of the work that has gone into alternative energy and climate change action.
 
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