Yes, indeed. Standards have fallen. The guy on the left, as a former lawyer at the Mountain States Legal Foundation, at least knew how the Interior Dept “burdened” the lumber and mining interests, before he was put in charge of the Department that regulated the activities of his paymasters.
Steve
I know, right?
The swamp was drained, cleaned and repurposed by getting rid of thousands of these employees who do (did) things like manage maternal health care programs in Sub-Saharan Africa; write, develop and/or manage contracts with NGOs that provide clean water throughout 3rd world countries; design vaccination campaigns in rural regions of South Asia, introduce drought-resistant crops and modern irrigation techniques in East Africa to improve food security and increase farmers’ incomes; organize logistics for field missions, such as transporting equipment and staff to remote health clinics in Latin America; mobilize logistics during natural disasters to ensure food, water, and medical supplies reach affected populations efficiently, etc., etc., etc.
We done good!
Pete
…and the money that was paid to the people who did those things, was, instead, handed to the “JCs” as more tax cuts…because, we are told, the “JCs” are more entitled to the money, because they already have most of it.
Consider, in spite of all the people fired from the government, all the programs cancelled, and the pile of tariff revenue rolling in, the deficit is soaring.
Steve
I lost count of the number of times I said “NO!” when the CFO of the last place I worked was trying to cram their 401k down my throat. The first time he brought it up, I explained I had an IRA, I had had it for years, that was my retirement fund. But he kept after me. I knew better than complain to my boss, because he wasn’t going to buck the CFO. So, there I was, on my own, thundering back to the CFO “what part of NO don’t you understand?” Then he opened an account in my name anyway. He didn’t have the nerve to start taking money out of my paycheck, but he must have gotten a kickback from the program manager for recruiting another account.
Steve
I had 3 posts flagged as off topic, but they were on the topic that was being discussed: the draining of the swamp or lack thereof. Mentioning the obvious, that Trump is corrupt and never had any intention to ‘drain the swamp’ seems on topic.
Declare martial law in DC. Just because
Yup, two of my swamp posts were purged, along with “himself” putting himself in charge of the Kennedy Center “honors”, and selecting the people to be honored….sort of the big scale version of him giving a “medal of freedom” to Rush for his decades of propagating hate and bigotry, on the last go around.
Does seem that the ethics, or lack thereof, of the government would have a macro impact on the country.
Steve
“himself” said, today, that he will ask Congress to extend his authority in DC. But if Congress does not do his bidding, he will declare a national emergency, and do it anyway.
Steve
I can’t help but wonder “who is the crank?”
My innocuous post “How many posts does it take to say “no”?”
“Was flagged by a community member as “off topic” and removed”.
Seriously? Your tiny little eyeballs were so hurt by a joke?
Oh.My.God.
My comment about Arendt’s batting avg. got flushed too.
Of course it does. Especially in the long term.
From a macro point of view, nobody ever explained sufficiently why the USA should borrow money to fund all these things instead of each of those places going out and borrowing the money to do them. It would seem logical the USA would borrow the money to fund health clinics in the USA, and that Latin America would borrow the money to fund health clinics in Latin America, no?
Because historically, we could borrow at better rates than Sub-Saharan Africa - for various reasons.
It is also in our best interest (e.g. cost effective) to have a prosperous and healthy Africa because when it isn’t, bad things tend to happen to us.
Hawkwin
Who will also remind readers that we get very few undocumented/illegal immigrants from prosperous countries.
The article was talking about parts of Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Should the USA be doing everything, everywhere around the world? Even if it results in a debt spiral that destroys the nation? And I’m not referring solely to the $50B-100B in aid stuff, it also includes the $1T or so on military stuff, and a whole bunch of other items buried in various budgets.
When was the last time you BORROWED money to use to help your neighbor? Usually if you are “wealthy” and have extra money, you would use it, or part of it, to help your neighbor. And, if you consider everyone across the world as “your neighbor”, well, you don’t really end up providing any substantive help anyway.
And this is not to mention that sometimes the “help” has terrible results. Overpopulation (poverty stricken places that have too many people IS the thing that causes refugees to seek passage to western countries). Desertification (get food for $1 from the USA, but costs $2 to farm locally, all farms disappear, etc).
I think you know the answer to your facetious question. 
Of course, this is not a binary situation where we either help solve every problem or solve none.
Probably the best way to fix overpopulation is by increasing the funding for birth control for high poverty regions - something that was cancelled in the latest cuts to USAID.
