Why Save Lives When Musk Can Make A Profit?

The death of USAID

“If we are going to spend money abroad, let’s do so with an investment-driven model focused on strategic project finance initiatives,” asserted a blog post co-authored by tech investor Joe Lonsdale and Ben Black, Founder of Fortinbras Enterprises and nominee for the CEO position at the International Development Finance Corp (DFC), pending Senate approval.

DFC has a portfolio worth more than $50 billion. It helps US and overseas private-sector investors make a profit from international projects. They characterize it as an agency investing in resources vital to US strategic interests. They do not mention its role in boosting private sector profits.

How this ties in with Trump’s other policy of putting tariffs on strategic resources that already come from (say) Mexico and Canada is not addressed.

But they are convinced that “much of our current foreign aid budget is waste and should be cut.”

Waste, presumably, is anything that does not generate a profit.

World views are colliding.

The profit view collides with the perception that government exists to advance the well-being of the citizens; this is the view held by America’s founders, who were in favor of free education, free roads, and government postal service.

Now, these kinds of services are being clawed back by a private sector determined to make everything into a money transaction…the kind of process that rich people who already have money can dominate and use to become even wealthier.

USAID is the latest casualty for these beasts of prey. They have brought it down and are now dismembering the carcass.

Trump’s boys intend to move $60-billion from the USAID account into the DFC account. They say they can do so without congressional approval.

They anticipate that the funding could go to strategic investments in (say) Greenland, which Trump would like the US to buy. Never mind that the population in Greenland is opposed to it, not to mention Denmark, protector of the arctic island.

Never mind the people, says the DFC duo, remember the over-riding role of finance: “Backed by DFC financing, American mining, shipping, and resource-dependent businesses could step in, bringing capital and expertise. The result would be a mutually beneficial partnership that strengthens Greenland’s ties to the U.S. while expanding our strategic resource base.”

Nope, no mention of the people in there anywhere.

Trump also wants to take over Canada and Panama. Probably a good deal for American businessmen.

USAID provides foreign aid assistance to the poorest countries and people in the world. It is the world’s largest single supplier of humanitarian aid. Trump’s boys, secretary of state Marco Rubio and Elon Musk, want to shut it down. Musk has called it a “criminal organization” and “radical-left political psy op”. He says that it is “time for it to die”.

He provided no evidence. Just as he provided no evidence for his claim the 150-year-olds are using Social Security or that $50-million was spent on condoms in Gaza (turns out it was for a Gaza in Mozambique…anyone could make that mistake, right?) Musk is making policy based on worm-tracks in his brain.

He has, to reiterate, provided no evidence whatsoever that there is ANY waste or fraud going on in the federal government. Except in areas where money is given to businesses and Republican politicians. But Musk is not investigating those areas.

If he had evidence, he would bring it forward. He therefore knows he has nothing; his entire act is a fraud.

Based on this duplicity, millions of people across the world will now die of hunger and disease.

There is no evidence that Musk has any regret about millions of deaths. He has not opened a charity or funded a good cause in his entire life. He calls his son “X”. I don’t know how that advances the argument I am making but it seems to fit in, in a cold kind of way.

USAID provides $8.2-b each year for humanitarian assistance around the world. It reaches the lives of millions of people in places like Sudan, Uganda, Haiti, Lesotho, and Zimbabwe. Here is a list of countries that USAID helps.

John F. Kennedy established the U.S. Agency for International Development during the Cold War. He wanted a more efficient way to counter Soviet influence abroad through foreign assistance…a projection of American “soft power” that would brush aside the barrels of guns and touch the hearts of people. That kind of aid can be very powerful; the Marshall Plan after WW2 was ‘soft power’, rebuilding Europe on a voluntary basis. As a soft power it helps save lives, strengthen civil society, assist the needy and promote and preserve democracy, while presenting a gentler version of the US.

USAID is a $42 billion soft-power glove, compared with the Pentagon's nearly $900 billion hard-power fist.

USAID has outlived the Soviet Union. Good works last.

Now, its 10,000 employees are at a standstill. That includes 6,000 working in 60 countries around the globe.

On his first day in office Trump implemented a 90-day freeze on foreign assistance. A few days later his appointee Peter Marocco drafted a tougher than expected interpretation of that order, a move that shut down thousands of programs around the world and forced furloughs and layoffs.

Trump also pulled the US out of the U.N. Human Rights Council and the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA.

But USAID is among the hardest-hit agencies suffering from Trump’s illegal freezes on funding.

The effect on extremely poor people has been devastating.

In war-torn regions it provides soup kitchens crucial to the survival of cut-off civilian populations. In Khartoum, Sudan, two-thirds of Sudan’s soup kitchens closed in the first week after the aid suspension. USAID provides poor children and children with disabilities with clean water, nutrition, vaccines against common childhood killers, protection from sex trafficking and other lifesaving interventions.

Its cuts to children’s programs alone will cause anguish around the world:

· $860.1 million for Maternal and Child Health

· $665.7 million in the Economic Support Fund which includes basic education and clean water & sanitation which protects children from infectious disease

· $664.4 million in Development Assistance

· $496.6 million for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)

· $361.7 million for fighting Malaria

· $220.3 million for Global Health Security

· $119.7 million for Nutrition

· $115.7 million for International Disaster Assistance

· $90.5 million for fighting Tuberculosis

· $36.0 million for fighting Neglected Tropical Diseases

· $31.5 million for Vulnerable Children

In Sub-Saharan Africa HIV patients arriving at clinics set up with America aid sixty years ago are finding locked doors. A shelter in Mexico for migrants has been left without a doctor. In South America the “Safe Mobility Offices” where migrants can apply to enter the U.S. legally, have shuttered. In Afghanistan — where there's an ongoing humanitarian crisis — the aid agency's education projects have been suspended, including what are known as "secret schools." These schools are meant to educate hundreds of Afghan girls after the Taliban banned them from all learning beyond sixth grade. In Bangladesh USAID funded everything from vaccines to food security. USAID deployed $1-billion in food assistance funding to the global community.

The US produces more food than it consumes, and US farmers provide commodities that reach people in need around the world. When Trump put a freeze on its activities, he effectively cancelled $1.8-billion in contracts to farmers. Now some $489-million worth of US food aid is rotting in ports around the world, unable to be moved.

Without USAID 130,390 women each day will be denied access to contraception; over the 90-day funding pause that will total 11.7 million women. That could result in as many as 4.2 million unintended pregnancies and more than 8,340 maternal deaths.

“Can you imagine if you are a woman seeking help, and the clinic is shut?” said Elisha Dunn-Georgiou, president and CEO of the Global Health Council. “You can’t get treatment, you can’t get care, because America has decided on a whim that you’re not worthy.

Want to look at waste in government, Elon? Look in a mirror.

Americans think that foreign aid makes up more than 30% of the federal budget. In fact, it is 0.6%.

Musk’s freeze has cause unprecedented chaos in the lines of people needing food, medicine and clothing.

Foreign aid makes the world a more stable and secure place for all, including Americans. It boosts goodwill for America, promotes international trade, and reduces the need for a US military presence.

If a foreign country wanted to cripple one single US program that would hurt America the most, it would kill USAID.

Just like Musk and Trump are doing.

But it’s good that they will have that money to buy necessities…like armored electric vehicles.

The US State Department says it intends to purchase armored Tesla vehicles. The procurement document was edited last night, and now says the federal contract is for $400 million worth of "armored electric vehicles," but the word "Tesla" was removed. Smooth.

Wonder who will win the contract.

This is how Musk got his money – through government contracts and government help. He got a subsidy for EVs worth $7,500 per car. Ten years ago that support for his cars and his SpaceX venture netted him $5-billion. He lives on government money.

The electric automaker earned $10.7 billion from selling credits created by government climate programs — a total that accounted for a third of Tesla’s profits over the last decade, according to an analysis of securities filings.

Climate compliance credits that Telsa sells to other car companies make up less than 3 percent of Tesla’s revenue since 2014, but represent more than 32 percent of the company’s profits in the past decade. That’s because Tesla doesn’t have to spend additional money to cash in on compliance credits, which are linked to the sale of EVs it’s already built and sold.

Shares in the firms have been leveraged well beyond rational expectation, and I would hazard an estimate that the total reported ‘wealth’ is overblown by a factor of ten.

For the USAID case, if government money does not flow to him, Musk is now cutting it off. No food or healthcare for the global starving. We must have more EVs.

And whatever else the profit-makers want to create from their DFC fund for the excessively wealthy.

Because that is what the poor people around the world will really admire: American businessmen getting richer at their expense; driving their Tesla limos down the streets of Khartoum past the crowds of begging children.

America had a program it could be proud of.

Republicans blew it up because it would not return a profit to the privileged.

I wonder how much more it will cost in military enlargement to keep those resentful people and nations underfoot?

America after all is being led by a president who is so tone-deaf that he wants to sweep the people of Gaza off their land so his son-in-law can sell condos on their beaches.

He in turn is being abetted by a man whose riches come from the pockets of taxpayers.

Neither ‘earned’ their position - it was all smoke, mirrors, graft and grift.

I have to believe that justice will catch up to them some day.

Of course, it may be a day too late for those children in Sudan.

Let’s be clear: it is not America’s responsibility to feed those children. America stepped up because a kind and thoughtful president, Kennedy, realized it would fit the American character.

And it did. For 60 years Americans have been helping out around the world, and for those six decades the goodwill has been building up.

Trump is going to torpedo that in a month. And he won’t even care that he is doing it - if he even recognizes that he is doing it.

He was not held accountable for the deaths he caused during Covid; why should we expect that he will be held accountable for the deaths he is causing by starvation, illness and poverty.

Perhaps the greatest punishment for him is that he has to live with his own brain day-after-day, without moral reflection or the possibility of joy from a sunrise.

It’s the curse he has to bear.

We have a time-limited curse of having to bear Trump. Keep your eyes on the sunrise.