How is it corrupt to root out and end government corruption the way the current administration is focusing on rooting out and ending it?
For many years, I longed for a time when USAID would get a deep and hard audit, based on what little I know about the agency as a cooperating partner and grantee. Multiply that level of corruption and mismanagement across all the government agencies, I am puzzled why so many activists are using the word fascist to describe an administration that is focused on reducing the power, scope, and cost of government. Fascists “bind together” government and business to increase the scope and power of control, not reduce it.
Thanks for your comment and I think we agree on the need to reduce corruption in government. However, It looks like they are reducing the scope of government in order to pass it along to businesses ... and I have to assume to themselves or their cronies. Their methods look like fascism to me. Granting an enormous level of power to Elon Musk, a business man with a lot of government contracts seems like an example of your "binding together" of business and government.
My experience with the USG is that it functions as a regulation/enforcement organization and as a vast procurement agency. USAID, for example, actually “did” very little apart from procuring goods and services. I don’t see much evidence of those procurement functions being moved elsewhere, to either public or private interests. For many years, there was a debate about reducing the scope of USAID and transferring the remainder of its authority to the state department. That has now been achieved, but with far fewer programs
I spent many years working with USAID, USDA/FAS, and State Department Bureaus that dealt with refugee and conflict issues in consultation with the different regional and national desk officers. Much of that infrastructure was disbanded and not replaced.
With funding removed, there really are no opportunities for private companies, contractors, or so-called non-governmental organizations (how can they be called non-governmental when most of their funding is from government) to”bind together” with the government to carry out programs. The money is simply being dis-obligated. I’ve talked to friends in a couple of different aid agencies who relied on government funding and they are experiencing harsh cutbacks, especially for any program that doesn’t specifically address very vulnerable people. The foofoo programs are history.
Sounds like you have a lot more experience than I do. However, “foo-foo” is subjective (and dismissive)… what’s “foo-foo” to an upper income person might be “critical” to a poverty level family.
Foofoo doesn’t pertain to projects for the very poor, but I’ve seen many projects that were hairbrained, destined to fail, and simply bad ideas from the start. I saw many projects that fell into the category of truck and dump without regard to whether they were effective or not.
For example, in one former Soviet republic listed as one of the most corrupt countries in the world by Transparency International, USAID provided several million dollars as cash grants to rural businesses that were loosely monitored by an American NGO. Money being fungible, most did not go for the intended purpose and there was no effective monitoring and evaluation system to determine whether anyone was better off because of the project. Now multiply those millions by millions more that created very little positive change.
I could write a book on the waste, corruption, mismanagement, and straight up stupidity of far too many USAID projects, but because the agency was seen as a sort of Jesus figure out curing disease and fighting death and hunger, and thus immune from serious accountability, and it’s difficult for people to understand that it was basically an international version of a local DMV that did little more than procure goods and services with very little lasting benefit.
This was interesting, I had to google kleptocracy never heard that word before, I was pleased to see Australia on the less corrupt side of the chart
That’s why I wrote this … I didn’t know what kleptocracy was either. There’s just so much I was perfectly comfortable not knowing. ;-)
How is it corrupt to root out and end government corruption the way the current administration is focusing on rooting out and ending it?
For many years, I longed for a time when USAID would get a deep and hard audit, based on what little I know about the agency as a cooperating partner and grantee. Multiply that level of corruption and mismanagement across all the government agencies, I am puzzled why so many activists are using the word fascist to describe an administration that is focused on reducing the power, scope, and cost of government. Fascists “bind together” government and business to increase the scope and power of control, not reduce it.
Thanks for your comment and I think we agree on the need to reduce corruption in government. However, It looks like they are reducing the scope of government in order to pass it along to businesses ... and I have to assume to themselves or their cronies. Their methods look like fascism to me. Granting an enormous level of power to Elon Musk, a business man with a lot of government contracts seems like an example of your "binding together" of business and government.
My experience with the USG is that it functions as a regulation/enforcement organization and as a vast procurement agency. USAID, for example, actually “did” very little apart from procuring goods and services. I don’t see much evidence of those procurement functions being moved elsewhere, to either public or private interests. For many years, there was a debate about reducing the scope of USAID and transferring the remainder of its authority to the state department. That has now been achieved, but with far fewer programs
I spent many years working with USAID, USDA/FAS, and State Department Bureaus that dealt with refugee and conflict issues in consultation with the different regional and national desk officers. Much of that infrastructure was disbanded and not replaced.
With funding removed, there really are no opportunities for private companies, contractors, or so-called non-governmental organizations (how can they be called non-governmental when most of their funding is from government) to”bind together” with the government to carry out programs. The money is simply being dis-obligated. I’ve talked to friends in a couple of different aid agencies who relied on government funding and they are experiencing harsh cutbacks, especially for any program that doesn’t specifically address very vulnerable people. The foofoo programs are history.
Sounds like you have a lot more experience than I do. However, “foo-foo” is subjective (and dismissive)… what’s “foo-foo” to an upper income person might be “critical” to a poverty level family.
Foofoo doesn’t pertain to projects for the very poor, but I’ve seen many projects that were hairbrained, destined to fail, and simply bad ideas from the start. I saw many projects that fell into the category of truck and dump without regard to whether they were effective or not.
For example, in one former Soviet republic listed as one of the most corrupt countries in the world by Transparency International, USAID provided several million dollars as cash grants to rural businesses that were loosely monitored by an American NGO. Money being fungible, most did not go for the intended purpose and there was no effective monitoring and evaluation system to determine whether anyone was better off because of the project. Now multiply those millions by millions more that created very little positive change.
I could write a book on the waste, corruption, mismanagement, and straight up stupidity of far too many USAID projects, but because the agency was seen as a sort of Jesus figure out curing disease and fighting death and hunger, and thus immune from serious accountability, and it’s difficult for people to understand that it was basically an international version of a local DMV that did little more than procure goods and services with very little lasting benefit.