An online posting from a former student set me off a bit...she was thinking how all the recent excisions at a Federal Level recently were a good way to just save some money. I countered that it was only going to make Russian dictator Putin happy. She didn't understand why... So...
"In addressing how the complete dissolution of USAID can be something to make the dictator Vladimir Putin happy, we have to cut through the reams of misinformation that is coming from the current white house. I checked backward from your reposted source - a football coach, I believe (I’m afraid I find most combative athletics only practice for our youth to become cannon-fodder ready, so I don’t really pay attention to them, as you may already know), and from that coach to the 27 year old press secretary -- whose prior experience has been an intern under the first installation of Donald and apparently as the cheerleader to introduce him at rallies, judging how she handles her conferences. She seems perky, properly scrubbed, and blond enough to provide the expected depth of information one would expect from her, and her recompense of $180K/year (an estimate) certainly can provide enough pin money to supplement her husband’s real estate investments, since he is eligible for social security in just another seven years, if it should exist by that time.
"I scanned the sheet generated for Ms. Leavitt to read outside the white house, and from which Mr. Steele created his online content, and found it a rather twisted collection of misdirections and flat-out lies. And since she has yet to provide the promised basis for the statements when asked, I can only put her recitation in the same category of Donald’s promise of providing an alternative to the ACA (Affordable Care Act) in “two weeks” – over four years ago.
"I can tell you that the USAID program provides assistance around the world to areas in crisis, facing devastating illnesses, in a manner that gives the US at least some face-to-face presence where we’re not always expected to be – the agency has been providing HIV-AIDS support where the disease threatens to mutate into less-treatable forms, and has been boot-on-the-ground in Uganda when the latest Ebola strain emerged. If we weren’t there, the diseases could likely explode, and like the consequences of CoVid-19, we would be left flat-footed and unprepared should the infection make it to the US.
"Speaking of which, the CDC’s China-based monitoring crew was slashed by Donald during his first occupation of the white house, by 2/3. This didn’t help much with gathering info on the coronavirus strain when it started to appear on the west coast. Ultimately, it killed my physician in Battle Creek and nearly 300 in my new county of residence. Misinformation from the white house then didn’t help matters very much. But I digress.
"When, and not if (as Donald is using his self-created chaos to achieve his personal destructive needs), the USAID is decimated, more people will perish, and someone - dare I say Vladimir Putin? Yes, I dare - would be thrilled to insert himself to show how he and not the “big bad United States” can help out the third world.
"In the meanwhile, the CDC and FDA are also being muffled - to the point where my weekly updates on influenza and drug recalls has been eliminated. So your pharmacists will now have to wait for weeks, perhaps months, for the same information from the drug companies, or the demographics from the WHO (World Health Organization) from whom Donald has also separated us. You may recall my classroom discussions how the “good old days” of unregulated drugs brought us “Terpin Hydrate with Heroin” and the Sulfanilamide deaths in the 1930s before the FDA was provided with some teeth.
"And who will benefit from “all this saved money” with the obliteration of drug regulation, food inspections, nursing home monitoring, and water safety programs? The billionaires. They’ll get the tax cuts. We’ll get the luxury of giving our children a future of drinking sludge and breathing soot.
"I’m sorry to be a bit of a downer here - I’d much rather be discussing this monstrously cool dip recipe using red lentils and tahini, but I am truly concerned that this is all just the tip of a teetering iceberg. I have family and friends in the LGBTQ community, and I have friends who have become generous and welcoming foster and adoptive parents -- children who may face ICE raids.
"And through it all, I keep hearing the words of a crusading rabbi from Nazareth, who said, “In as much as you did it to one of the least of these, my brethren, you did it to me.” (His buddy Matt wrote a letter about it someplace.)" So when I hear statements supporting dismissal of the "least of these," I am hard pressed to categorize them as 'christian.'"
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