In Front of Our Noses: Wasteful Government
Destroying aid because they destroyed USAID.
“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”-George Orwell.
For previous entries, click here.
Via The Atlantic: The Trump Administration Is About to Incinerate 500 Tons of Emergency Food.
Five months into its unprecedented dismantling of foreign-aid programs, the Trump administration has given the order to incinerate food instead of sending it to people abroad who need it. Nearly 500 metric tons of emergency food—enough to feed about 1.5 million children for a week—are set to expire tomorrow, according to current and former government employees with direct knowledge of the rations.
[…]
Over the coming weeks, the food will be destroyed at a cost of $130,000 to American taxpayers (on top of the $800,000 used to purchase the biscuits), according to current and former federal aid workers I spoke with.
[…]
several of the aid workers I spoke with reiterated that they have never before seen the U.S. government simply give up on food that could have been put to good use.
It’s good to know that everything is fine and that DOGE’s effort saved the US money and led to positive outcomes!
It is quite a two-fer to waste almost a million dollars and deny food to 1.5 million children for a week!
The incompetence is staggering.
I’m still waiting for an explanation about how DOGE rooted out waste and fraud, thousands of federal employees were fired, departments have been reduced or eliminated, tax cuts will pay for themselves, billions are coming in from tariffs, almost a trillion is being cut from Medicaid and SNAP, and the effing deficit keeps going up.
This get’s to one of the biggest frustrations about the DOGE approach–the idea of immediately stopping programs versus sunsetting them.
As @steve222 wrote this past weekend, treating this like an emergency stoppage is bad governance:
This wasn’t an emergency either. Given that all this was already sourced, announcing this would be the last shipment and actually distributing it would have been the more fiscally and morally responsible option.
Yes, you would have been paying for a program you’re eliminating a little longer. But crashing the program out has its own economic and moral costs. So you’ll be paying either way and any financial “savings” is offset by the loss of productivity by turning all of this into a fire drill and the loss of life from the loss of resources.
If cruelty or just plain spite is the point, this is reflective of that, and it could – will? – be repeated in other contexts going forward.
Wouldn’t the productivity be a sunk cost at this point?
Isn’t there a form of conspicuous consumption that involves destroying or burning valuable possessions, to show off how much more wealth one has?
The unilateral power to declare everything an emergency, to define anything as a national security issue, to assert that everything falls under presidential prerogative, is terrifying. We don’t have to stretch our imaginations far to imagine how else it might be abused.
@Kingdaddy: Especially if SCOTUS is going to let all lawsuits challenging these orders to slowly wend their way through the courts without allowing temporary stays to be put in place to forestall the damage before legal questions can be settled.
@Steven L. Taylor: And keep using the shadow docket to make it impossible to understand exactly what the precedent is.
SOOOOOO much winning, everyone! I continue to be amazed that anyone believes anything coming out of the White House, despite the fact that, statistically speaking, they ought to be right at least twice a day, when the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
Luddite’s thoughts on comments, in order:
@Daryl:
Incompetence? No, this is deliberate, designed to inflict pain and suffering. Despite my efforts to subscribe to “incompetence over malign intent” here I’m going with malignancy.
@Kathy:
Explanation? Wesa gets ours, you poor plebes get the screwing you deserve.
@Winecoff1946:
Of course this will continue. You’re supposed to be ignoring the emperor’s snazzy outfit.
@Kurtz:
Present Admin motto, “ETTD.” Lather, rinse, repeat.
@Kathy:
Yes, indeed. Carnegie built libraries. Trump channels Pol Pot (my earlier comment on TM was mean spirited, and I apologize to her ghost).
@Kingdaddy:
While I (not jokingly) comment that this is a great time to be an old man, I wouldn’t be surprised to die in custody on my way to reeducation.
@Steven L. Taylor:
And people seem surprised that the SCOTUS and their actions (and lack thereof) are in fact, a design feature demonstrating value for money spent.
Rant over.
If one doesn’t care about people, then buying the food in the first place is considered waste, so one’s policies follow from that.