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gumby 52 minutes ago [-]
Maybe they didn’t save any money but they did manage to exfiltrate huge amounts of info on citizens and residents that had been provided under the understanding that it would be held in confidence and that was siloed to event cross-correlation and privacy violations.
So at least they accomplished that even if they failed to accomplish the cover story.
But closing USAID did result in lots of deaths around the world as life saving aid was just cutoff with no warning. Was done with no regard to consequences or Congressional approval.
hallole 1 hours ago [-]
So, the U.S. would've had to supply foreign aid for eternity, then? Instead of appreciating the vast sums given by the U.S. and her taxpayers, there's only vitriol for the stream of aid money having been cut off.
litoE 2 minutes ago [-]
I'm not rich, but I give a lot of money every year to charity, to try to help those who need help. The United States is the richest country in the world. It was also giving to charity to help those who badly needed help. It was a small amount compared to its budget, and we called it USAID. To protect the money from being scammed by those running the countries we were helping, the US itself administered those programs as much as possible. We know how much Trump donates to charity: bupkis (read about the Donald J. Trump Foundation) and I have a pretty good inkling that Musk donates even less.
jbs789 2 minutes ago [-]
America’s reputation in the world is not great, and deteriorating. Pulling back for these well-perceived/helpful initiatives while building up (and deploying) military force is not helping. It’s really not a well considered strategy, and the decision makers in Washington could really benefit from a more worldly perspective, imo.
zzrrt 23 minutes ago [-]
There's the soft power argument that it was actually in US's self-interest to help. And for what it's worth, a lot of the vitriol is from taxpayers who supported that aid.
dzhiurgis 20 minutes ago [-]
Cool. But sometimes it's ok to invest into some hard power.
friendlyasparag 59 minutes ago [-]
What a sad response to the obvious immediate harm done by poorly thought out policy. I thought hackernews was better than this.
arjie 27 minutes ago [-]
The steelman argument is that it was the sudden process that people object to. But the steelman against that is that slow processes are used adversarially to prevent action from being taken.
In the end, the only people who seem to get outcomes are the ones who rush things. Everyone talked about getting out of Afghanistan and only President Biden did it. The objections were predictably ones against haste. But we’d been in there for a decade past the time we wanted to get out.
In this event, considering that most of this aid has not been replaced since by other participants one can only conclude that it would have taken at least this long in a slow rollout. Even an emergency of unbelievable proportions did not incentivize other nations to act. It’s unlikely they would have acted when faced with what looks like yet another austerity project that is going to be inevitably rolled back.
In such a universe, if USAID was going, it was only going to go fast. If it wasn’t going to go fast, it was staying.
And it’s generally true that people subscribe to the famous Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics. Once we started providing AIDS treatment we were responsible, in their eyes, forever.
Given that, I think future charitable efforts should be evaluated in terms of such 50 year costs or so on. To save all the lives that US funding on PEPFAR saved we had to forgo an amount that would domestically have given us CA HSR. I think if you ask most Californians they’d rather have CA HSR than any charity program directed outside so in some respect we are just treating these people as our sin eaters.
dc396 46 minutes ago [-]
This is a troll, right?
nxrabl 2 hours ago [-]
What’s notable about this article is not its literal conclusion, which is obvious to any casual observer, it’s the publisher - I haven’t been following it lately, but for decades National Review was the preeminent Limbaugh-school right-wing magazine in America, so for its editors to be taking this position so clearly feels significant. These days the Trump Right has rags like The Epoch Times, so maybe they don’t need Buckley’s soapbox anymore?
litoE 1 hours ago [-]
National Review has been a critic of Trump since before he was elected for his first term in 2016.
pstuart 36 minutes ago [-]
It was never about saving money. It was about sabotaging programs they were ideologically opposed to, stealing data, and possibly messing with internal investigations into Musks "unsavory" business practices.
There already is a "DOGE", it's called the GAO.
And lastly, if anybody is actually concerned about government efficiency, they should be prepared to have it audit favored programs as well. Let's not forget that the Pentagon has never truly been audited.
It's weird that serial liars have such a rabid fanbase. Keep it up!
hallole 1 hours ago [-]
Although it seems to have been a flop in practice, I do appreciate the spirit of making good use of tax dollars. I only wish the program was more carefully guided, since the motive behind it did seem genuine.
So at least they accomplished that even if they failed to accomplish the cover story.
In the end, the only people who seem to get outcomes are the ones who rush things. Everyone talked about getting out of Afghanistan and only President Biden did it. The objections were predictably ones against haste. But we’d been in there for a decade past the time we wanted to get out.
In this event, considering that most of this aid has not been replaced since by other participants one can only conclude that it would have taken at least this long in a slow rollout. Even an emergency of unbelievable proportions did not incentivize other nations to act. It’s unlikely they would have acted when faced with what looks like yet another austerity project that is going to be inevitably rolled back.
In such a universe, if USAID was going, it was only going to go fast. If it wasn’t going to go fast, it was staying.
And it’s generally true that people subscribe to the famous Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics. Once we started providing AIDS treatment we were responsible, in their eyes, forever.
Given that, I think future charitable efforts should be evaluated in terms of such 50 year costs or so on. To save all the lives that US funding on PEPFAR saved we had to forgo an amount that would domestically have given us CA HSR. I think if you ask most Californians they’d rather have CA HSR than any charity program directed outside so in some respect we are just treating these people as our sin eaters.
There already is a "DOGE", it's called the GAO.
And lastly, if anybody is actually concerned about government efficiency, they should be prepared to have it audit favored programs as well. Let's not forget that the Pentagon has never truly been audited.
One of countless cases of "trust me bro!": https://www.cnbc.com/2011/10/26/The-$40-Billion-Iraqi-Money-...