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You can’t just walk into a third world country and expect the candidate pool to be a bunch of noble laureates (we barely have such a candidate pool in the West)

You can’t just walk into a third world country and expect the candidate pool to be a bunch of noble laureates (we barely have such a candidate pool in the West). Logistically, I would try organize via the government too for maximum effect. Nonetheless, your investigation is important. We need way more testimonials to get to the bottom of these things. Are programs like USAID a grift, or are the people cancelling it the grifters, or is the answer the dreaded middle? This is the only way we’re going to re-find the spirit of this country (because it is absolutely absent at the moment). Americans have always been proud of programs that carry the legacy of the Marshall Plan. I don’t want to get rid of a program just because it failed, anything can fail. We need to know if the people getting rid of these things even believe in goodwill and charity. They may not, in which case debating the finances and accounting is the obvious distraction. This is less about if we have the money in the room, and more so about did we put people with the right fucking hearts in the room. An uncharitable person will fight goodwill even if it’s free.

somenameforme 2y ago
I somehow don't get the impression that his opponent, an older lady and the widow of a former president, was exactly into gangs, drugs, and the like. And similarly, I find it difficult to imagine that we couldn't vet the USAID candidate, a musician, to find his ties to such. Wiki apparently states he was well known for "cursing on stage, cross-dressing as well as using homophobic slurs." What a great guy to spend US taxpayer funds to promote. But the reality is that it's not about finding a good person, but about finding a person who will fulfill US interests. By the way the same thing was true, to a smaller degree, of the Marshall Plan. 5% of all its funding went straight to CIA front organizations [1] helping to ensure Europe developed in the "right" way. The same thing continues today where USAID was doing all it could to try to undermine Hungary. It's like all this rhetoric about democracy being about the will of the people suddenly becomes meaningless when the will of the people is not equivalent to the will of the US. And I don't think this is conducive to a stable world order, to say the least. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan#Funding_for_CIA_fronts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan#Funding_for_CIA_...

somenameforme 2y ago

I somehow don't get the impression that his opponent, an older lady and the widow of a former president, was exactly into gangs, drugs, and the like. And similarly, I find it difficult to imagine that we couldn't vet the USAID candidate, a musician, to find his ties to such. Wiki apparently states he was well known for "cursing on stage, cross-dressing as well as using homophobic slurs." What a great guy to spend US taxpayer funds to promote. But the reality is that it's not about finding a good person, but about finding a person who will fulfill US interests. By the way the same thing was true, to a smaller degree, of the Marshall Plan. 5% of all its funding went straight to CIA front organizations [1] helping to ensure Europe developed in the "right" way. The same thing continues today where USAID was doing all it could to try to undermine Hungary. It's like all this rhetoric about democracy being about the will of the people suddenly becomes meaningless when the will of the people is not equivalent to the will of the US. And I don't think this is conducive to a stable world order, to say the least. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan#Funding_for_CIA_fronts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan#Funding_for_CIA_...