Tip of the Swampberg
Plus, Big Bird in Baghdad, Biden at Burisma and other boneheaded boondoggles...
“It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money.”
―P.J. O'Rourke, Parliament of Whores (1991)
Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Buenos Aires, Argentina...
An External Revenue Agency... Mar-a-Gaza in the Levant... banning blokes from female sports...
... and now a ceaseless torrent of grift, deceit and chicanery hemorrhaging from the open wound that is/was the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)...
What’s next?
Anyone who tells you they’re au courant with the shifting geopolitical sands is either telling pork pies... or has a severe vitamin D deficiency. Even for someone who suffers the mainstream news as something of an occupational hazard (on your behalf, dear reader), keeping pace with the passing parade is truly a Herculean task.
And so, in case you had better things to do and missed the latter story: Earlier this week, federal “workers” at USAID found themselves locked out of their cushy public building and placed on administrative leave. Their hobby horses were tagged, blindfolded... and bound for the glue factory.
Indeed, it appeared as though Captain DOGE himself, Elon Musk, had gone “Full Milei” on the sprawling hydra, which employs something in the vicinity of ~10,000 individuals to help spread American taxpayer dollars across 130 countries around the world.
Side Note: When is someone going to superimpose Musk’s face on this timeless meme? (That’s your cue, Internet. Now do your thing!)
The Swampberg
The agency, which burned through an impressive $40+ billion of taxpayer money in 2023 alone, is/was viewed by the managerial class as a cornerstone of the empire’s “soft power.” Now, if that sounds soft-headed to you, consider the gravity of the following programs, destined to be sorely unmissed...
$2 million for sex changes in Guatemala... $4.5 million to combat “disinformation” in Kazakhstan... $6 million to fund tourism in Egypt... $20 million on a new Sesame Street show in Iraq... and on, and on...
And that was just the tip of the swampberg. From Elon Musk’s X: “DOGE is on the warpath.”
By mid-week, as government and non-government organizations alike were furiously acid scrubbing their DEI-laced websites of anything USAID-related, hardworking American taxpayers on both sides of the political aisle were beginning to ask themselves an obvious question: Who else is on the take?
Then came the second shoe to drop... news outlets themselves, including those most vehemently claiming “just the facts, ma’am” objectivity, were being funded by USAID, either directly, through grants, or indirectly, through millions of dollars of federally subsidized subscriptions.
The Associated Press... Reuters... The New York Times... Politico... and even the (*clutches pearls*) unimpeachable BBC... were all named among the beneficiaries.
What followed sounded suspiciously like the denials of guilty men...
Politico patiently “fact-checked” the claim, explaining that, although it did receive more than $40k in direct funding from USAID, the bulk of its $8.2 million in payments came from federally subsidized subscriptions for government employees. Either way, the funding is being cut.
The BBC, meanwhile, defended its take by explaining that, although BBC Media Action, an “international organization that supports and trains local journalists and outlets around the world,” received funds from USAID, totaling a non-trivial 8% of the charity’s entire income in 2023-24, the charity is “completely separate from BBC News,” and “does not produce news itself.”
That is to say, BBC Media Action does not produce the news itself... it merely produces the journalists and outlets around the world that produce the news.
To which jilted voters responded: Auntie doth protest too much, wethinks!
Meanwhile, Trump’s Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, is playing what remains of the media like a fiddle. As she told a room full of gaping maws this week…
“We are going line by line when it comes to the federal government’s books, and this president and his team are making decisions across the board, asking ‘Do these receipts serve the interests of the American people. Is this a good use of the American taxpayer’s money?’ If not, that funding will no longer be sent abroad and American taxpayers will see significant savings because of that effort.”
Big Bird in Baghdad
Of course, tragi-comical line items like Big Bird in Baghdad pale in comparison with the real Big Bad Bucks being siphoned off to war torn hellscapes like the Ukraine, where USAID partnered with national gas company Burisma, from which crackhead-turned-artiste, Hunter Biden, mainlined $11 million as a “board member.”
In 2023 alone, USAID funneled over $16 billion into the giant, Ukrainian-shaped laundromat, almost double the next eight recipient countries... combined.
And yet, Volodymyr Zelenskyy himself said the quiet part out loud recently when he admitted that, of the ~$177 billion total US funding for the war on the Eurasian Steppe, ~$100 billion never even made it to Kyiv. In fact, it never got past the ravenous defense contractor corridor in DC, McClean, Bethesda, Falls Church, Arlington...
Are we beginning to see how this works, yet?
Dollars earmarked for hungry children... end up on the sagging plates of the schmoozing, overfed consultant class.
Funds allocated for “fact-checking” and “journalisming”... are loaded into the arsenal of a goose-stepping platoon of anti-factsers and the Censorship Industrial Complex.
Hundreds of billions promised to end wars... go instead to prolonging them, forever and ever, Amen.
As more corruption is exposed, as more flesh flies from the flabby, otoro underbelly of the beast, beware those squealing the loudest. If they think the chainsaw is painful... just wait ‘till the bonesaw comes out.
!Afuera!
Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...
Cheers,
Joel Bowman
Special Notes Disclaimer: It is perhaps worth mentioning, dear reader, that Notes From the End of the World gets by without any funding – direct, indirect or otherwise – from any government agency, including USAID.
That is to say, we are an independent shop, responsible for our own actions and ideas… which include an unreserved, unapologetic, unreconstructed belief in free markets, free minds and free people.
For this reason, we are especially grateful to our dear Notes Members, whose generous support keeps these essays en route to your inbox thrice weekly… as well as to readers in all 50 US states and across more than 135 countries around the world.
So if you value what we do… and truly believe in an independent, decentralized press… please consider supporting our work by joining our growing community of free thinkers, critical readers and independent minds. Thanks in advance ~ JB
Another priceless O'Rourke quote to lead off a pithy assessment of the massive cesspool, (to call it an iceberg or swamp is too kind), being unearthed by the new administration.
Speaking of fraud, here in Minnesota our Governor Walz (failed VP candidate) administration departments have tallied up approximately $610 million in fraud with no accountability/oversight and no national coverage at all. Imagine what he could have done in the DC swamps.