Messy Times estimates closing more of Leviathan will save additional 569.8 million lives by 2030
See? I can make up numbers just as readily as can The Lancet, with exactly the same degree of validity.
BBC “journalism” has been its own self-parody for so long, I barely notice anymore. Occasionally, though, a piece is so pointlessly ideological, it’s like improvising a jazz conversation and impossible to resist.
Their little bijou on the closure of the terror-supporting, Leftwing madness at USAID is the source of today’s semi-rant.
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has officially closed its doors after President Donald Trump gradually dismantled the agency over its allegedly wasteful spending.
Quick detour - there is nothing “allegedly wasteful” about $50 million going to teach Sri Lankan journalists about gender-neutral reporting standards. Or cash being funneled through a range of NGOs, ending up as printed anti-Israel banners for marches in American cities.
More than 80% of all the agency's programmes were cancelled as of March, and on Tuesday the remainder were formally absorbed by the state department.
The shuttering of USAID - which administered aid for the US government, the world's largest such provider - has been newly criticised by former Presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush.
And just what has being “the world’s largest provider” of aid gotten the US except massive debt, a slew of highly-paid “development professionals” and the enduring hatred of hundreds of millions of people around the world? Maybe it’s time to let someone else be the world’s broken piggybank.
These aid cuts could cause more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, according to a warning published by researchers in the Lancet medical journal.
The authors of the Lancet report called the numbers "staggering", and projected that a third of those at risk of premature deaths were children.
Those silly numbers sure are staggering, but the Lancet folks should be delighted that my staggering numbers are 42.8 times more staggering than theirs! And my numbers save lives! How about that?
A state department official said the study used "incorrect assumptions" and insisted that the US would continue to administer aid in a "more efficient" way, the AFP news agency reported.
Founded in 1961, USAID previously employed some 10,000 people, two-thirds of whom worked overseas, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The controversial cuts began early in Trump's second term, when billionaire and former presidential adviser Elon Musk was tasked with shrinking the federal workforce.
The move was widely condemned by humanitarian organisations around the world.
Let me translate: Career do-gooders who get paid fat salaries to travel the world business class for Poverty Tourist Porn are bummed out that the absurd gravy train they have been on for decades is over. They sure are sad about that.
Among the programmes that were curbed were efforts to provide prosthetic limbs to soldiers injured in Ukraine, to clear landmines in various countries, and to contain the spread of Ebola in Africa.
Also among the programmes were other airy-fairy, unattainable, non-measurable, feel-good performance art gestures. What are American taxpayers paying for any of those three things, however worthy they may be?
On Wednesday morning, the agency's website continued to display a message saying that all USAID direct-hire personnel globally had been placed on administrative leave from 23 February.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio previously said that the remaining 1,000 programmes after the cuts would be administered under his department.
"This era of government-sanctioned inefficiency has officially come to an end," he added on Tuesday.
"Under the Trump Administration, we will finally have a foreign funding mission in America that prioritizes our national interests," he wrote in a post on Substack.
God bless my former senator Marco Rubio for being a stand up guy and a great American.
Trump has repeatedly said he wants overseas spending to be closely aligned with his "America First" approach.
Bush and Obama delivered their messages of condemnation in a video conference they hosted with U2 singer Bono for thousands of members the USAID community.
Bush, a fellow member of Trump's Republican Party, focused on the impact of cuts to an AIDS and HIV programme that was started by his administration and subsequently credited with saving 25 million lives.
Jesus, I can only imagine if I as CEO of a publicly-listed company said something so absurdly unsupportable. “Not only do people like our products, but since 1996, we have been subsequently credited with saving 40 million lives.” The auditors would march around the annual meeting of whatever club accountants go to, parading my head on a stake. I would love to see the document some USAID liberal arts major wrote out of thin air with no supporting data which vomited out that 25 million lives claim. It is nonsensical gibberish which gets bandied about in DC all day long with (almost) nobody demanding to see these clowns show their work.
"You've showed the great strength of America through your work - and that is your good heart,'' Bush told USAID workers in a recorded statement, according to US media. "Is it in our national interests that 25 million people who would have died now live? I think it is, and so do you."
Meanwhile Obama, a member of the opposition Democratic Party, affirmed the work that USAID employees had already done.
"Gutting USAID is a travesty, and it's a tragedy. Because it's some of the most important work happening anywhere in the world," Obama was quoted as saying.
Long-time humanitarian advocate Bono spoke about the millions of people who he said could die because of the cuts.
"They called you crooks, when you were the best of us," he told attendees of the video conference.
Bono can step up and spend his entire fortune replacing the funding of some of those programmes, if he thinks it’s such a moral imperative. How much could he get by selling 25% of the royalty rights to U2’s catalogue? You’ll notice do-gooders are always keen to spend someone else’s money on their pet projects. Obama could sell his mansion on the ocean - guess he’s not that concerned about “global warming” and the oceans rising, after all - and give all that cash to prop up these programmes. Ditto for Bush. Amazingly, they don’t do that. They want average Joe Six Pack to pay for all this largesse, while America collapses further into debt peonage.
USAID was seen as integral to the global aid system. After Trump's cuts were announced, other countries followed suit with their own reductions - including the UK, France and Germany.
Last month, the United Nations said it was dealing with "the deepest funding cuts ever to hit the international humanitarian sector".
I am sure the UN bureaucrats are, like, totally bummed that Daddy America’s credit card has finally been clipped up and they cannot keep wasting billions on their fun lifestyles. I don’t know how many of you have ever dealt with the sleaze weasels who populate “the international humanitarian sector,” but trust me when I tell you, the world is better for their entitled parasitism being put to an end.
This crap is never ending. Some random woman I’ve never heard of,
claims that “multiples of thousands have already died since USAID funds were slashed.” Well, strictly speaking, 150,000 people die every day globally on average, so she is right.
But that is not what Silly Naomi means - she means they died because USAID funding was cut, which is beyond ridiculous.
Ah, let the Lefties and globalist cry into their empty rice bowls. We won and now the adults are back in charge - to some degree - and we intend to fix this insane mess of profligate waste of hard-working taxpayer resources.
Welcome to what adulting looks like.
Anyway, based on the same quality of data and research done for this BBC article, the genius team at Messy Times estimates that by following my budgetary plan, 569.8 million lives will be marginally saved by 2030.
You’re welcome. I anticipate being called to the Nobel podium any day now.
She can cry all she wants. While it’s nice to be able to help anyone outside the US is NOT OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO HELP. We don’t need to give a penny to any group out there. While I’m not against some. I am whole heartedly against what was happening.
Boner? I thought he died.