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Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2025 16:33:54 -0800
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Subject: Re: The weak kneed "doge" website
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On Wed, 26 Feb 2025 09:54:09 -0800, BTR1701 wrote:

> On Feb 25, 2025 at 10:00:29 PM PST, "Pluted Pup"<plutedpup@outlook.com>
> wrote:
>
> >
> > https://doge.gov/ or Department Of Government Efficiency
> >
> > is quite a useless website that doesn't really
> > qualify as a public government website, as it
> > is just links to X-twitter, which is a
> > members-only "website", very unlike what would be
> > what would be more properly called a government
> > website, not a closed access web-forum, like Facebook
> > or Gab.
> >
> > Where is the actual intention to cut down waste?
> >
> > Let us pretend that USAID, for example, gave 90 million
> > dollars to support homeless shelters for trans teens in
> > El Salvador and you feel that that is an example of
> > government waste. But how could you actually tell whether it is
> > waste or not just because the premise seems wacky? Like with
> > TV and movies, premise is easy, it's what you actually do
> > and not what you said you intend to do that counts.
>
> Well, if the money was appropriated for homeless shelters for trans teens in
> El Salvador and you spend it on homeless shelters for trans teens in El
> Salvador, then that's prima facie waste since American taxpayers have no
> business funding homeless shelters for trans teens in El Salvador.

Even if it's for national security? What if it's a
honey trap to arrest middle-east terrorists?

To reiterate:

No matter what it's for, if the grant money is being given to scam artists it is always a waste, and much
worse than a mere waste.

It would be informative to publicize the details kept hidden:

https://x.com/doge/status/1894483498506789102

> US taxpayer dollars were going to be spent on the following items, all which have been cancelled:
>
> -$69mm for the Eurasia Foundation to do "digital transformation activity" in Europe

Huh, what is this, "invest" in Bitcoin?

> -$32mm to Internews for programs including "media enabling democracy, inclusion, and accountability in Moldova" and the promotion of >  "sustainable media outlets"

Does mean there is an opposition press in Moldova that the
grant takers were to be charged with shutting down, or is
to prevent an opposition press from forming?

> -$7mm for the American Bar Association to promote the "resilience" of the "Eurasian legal sector and civic society"
> -$520mm for a consultant to do ESG investments in Africa and "mobilize private sector resources and expertise"

What's "ESG", why use an abbrev., (perhaps because tXitter is a poor means
of communication?), what is the consultant and what company is it for, is
the consultant Larry Fink and is it his private sector resource BlackRock,
which already has 10 trillion dollars of political patronage?

> -$25mm to "promote biodiversity conservation and promote licit livelihoods" by developing "socially responsible" behaviors in Colombia

Very respectable sociologists often say that drug problems can only
be solved by legalizing it and promoting responsible use, needed
to de-stigmatize drug addicts. Is this the purpose of the grant,
to agitate for the Just Say Yes campaign?

> -$40mm to "improve the social and economic inclusion of sedentary migrants"

What's that for, Zoom licenses? Political activism to demand
that it be a prison sentence to criticize the immigration lobby?

> -$42mm for Johns Hopkins to research and drive "social and behavior change" in Uganda

According to our national news media the only relevant thing
in Uganda is Gays. So what exactly is the gay political
activism that Johns Hopkins hospital was to be charged with?

> -$45mm to "address[] the needs, opportunities, and challenges identified by activists and other civic actors engaged in nonviolent collective > action"

What activists, civil actors and groups, and is there a requirement
that positive press from leading News media is needed for activists
to be considered legitimate?

> -$52mm for the World Economic Forum

without even a nominal purpose? So far as I know, the WEF
is the same as any other of the Free Trade / Immigration lobbies,
so there's no ideological differences between that and, say,
the Cato Institute or the Council Of Foreign Relations,
Atlantic Council, etc. It is a political lobby, and giving it
grant money is making a political contribution.