Musk's USAID Cuts - Where The Rubber Doesn't Meet the Road

Three days after the Myanmar quake, there are no U.S. teams on the ground in Myanmar, a stark illustration of how Trump has upended America’s role in disaster response.

Hours after a 7.7-magnitude earthquake devastated Myanmar on Friday, sending dangerous tremors across Southeast Asia, the American officials charged with responding to the disaster received their termination letters from Washington.

Most of the personnel who would have made up a U.S. response team, including security and sanitation experts, were already on indefinite leave. Many of the U.S. programs that would have provided lifesaving materials, including fuel for ambulances and medical kits, were shuttered weeks ago. U.S. planes and helicopters in nearby Thailand, which have been used before for disaster relief, never made it off the ground.

America’s response to the catastrophic earthquake has been crippled by the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development, according to eight current and former USAID employees who worked on Myanmar, as well as former State Department officials and leaders of international aid agencies. Three days after the disaster, American teams have yet to be deployed to the quake zone — a marked contrast with other similar catastrophes, when U.S. personnel were on the ground within hours.

The Trump administration has promised $2 million in aid, saying, “The United States stands with the people of Myanmar as they work to recover from the devastation.” But distributing this relief will be more difficult than ever, USAID officials said, because the U.S. has severed valuable ties with local organizations and fired staff who could have restored relationships. The U.S. commitment so far has also been dwarfed by the $13.7 million pledged by China, which borders Myanmar and is one of the few remaining allies of its military junta.

The situation unfolding in Myanmar, which has been battered by years of civil war and was the biggest recipient of U.S. aid in Southeast Asia last year, is the clearest demonstration to date of how Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service has upended the global aid system — allowing Beijing and other rival powers to take the lead in providing relief.

“This is what the world looks like when the U.S. is not a leadership role,” said Chris Milligan, who served as USAID’s top civilian official until he retired in 2021 and was USAID’s top official in Myanmar under President Barack Obama. “Other countries have mobilized, and we have not, and that’s because we have shut down parts of the U.S. government that have the capability to respond.” — USAID cuts cripple American response to Myanmar earthquake

Trump as a threat to democracy... — philosch

President Donald Trump on Sunday declined to rule out seeking a third presidential term — an unconstitutional act explicitly barred under the 22nd Amendment — saying that “there are methods which you could do it.”

In a phone interview with NBC News’s Kristen Welker, Trump suggested that multiple plans have begun to circulate for him to run for a third term. He pointed to unspecified polling as an indicator of his popularity and claimed he had the “highest poll numbers of any Republican for the last 100 years.”

“A lot of people want me to do it,” Trump said. — WP

I suppose Trump is free to lie, it's not illegal; it becomes a problem when lots of people (always) trust his word more than "mainstream media" or whatever. — jorndoe

Take this statement as you right it: That means 1500 people beat cops. That's just absurd. — philosch

I think Jan 6 was an unfortunate riot that got out of hand but was no worse than any of the other 500 or so riots the previous summer. — philosch

Certainly not an insurrection as no one was even charged with that crime. — philosch

Trump is on record of asking his followers to protest peacefully which was their right

When Biden got elected I was pretty down as I could easily see he was weak and mentally incompetent. But I didn't panic. — philosch

Trump as a threat to democracy because you don't like his policies are just ridiculous hyperbolic statements that are not based in fact — philosch

Funny that you state the 60 lawsuits brought by Trump agents did not demonstrate that Joe Biden's administration was a threat to democracy but the 50 lawsuits brought by Trump opponents demonstrate he is a threat to democracy. — philosch

Now let me ask you, what do you think of people destroying Tesla's and fire bombing dealerships? — philosch

How to characterize this aspect of those people? — jorndoe

In Marxist theory, 'false consciousness' refers to a distorted understanding of social reality, especially by members of the working class, that prevents them from recognizing their true interests. It’s a way of describing how ideology—the dominant ideas of a society—can mask the real conditions of exploitation under capitalism.

The term itself was popularized not by Marx himself but by later Marxists such as Engels and thinkers from the Frankfurt School. It describes how people may come to accept the values and interests of the ruling class (bourgeoisie) as if they were their own.

For example, a worker who believes that capitalism is fair because “anyone can make it if they work hard enough” may be said to be under the spell of false consciousness.

One example would be male transgender athletes not allowed in women sports. — philosch

Again, I normally try to ignore Politics — Gnomon

What Sokrates means by "higher order" is what I mean by "level of detail". — Quk

What you have said above is ridiculous propagandizing and not worth any further discussion. — philosch

How detailed must an answer be in order to be an explanation rather than a description? — Quk

once again a very reasonable and interesting post, — philosch

The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have begun cancelling billions of dollars in funding for research related to COVID-19.

COVID-19 research funds “were issued for a limited purpose: to ameliorate the effects of the pandemic”, according to an internal NIH document that Nature has obtained and that provides the agency’s staff members with updated guidance on how to terminate these grants. “Now that the pandemic is over, the grant funds are no longer necessary,” the document states. It is not clear how many of these grants will be ended.

‘Boggles the mind’: US defence department slashes research on emerging threats

The crackdown comes as the NIH, under US President Donald Trump, has halted nearly 400 grants in the past month. An earlier version of the documents, obtained by Nature on 5 March, directed staff to identify and potentially cancel projects on transgender populations; gender identity; diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the scientific workforce; and environmental justice.

The NIH, which is the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research, has awarded grants to nearly 600 ongoing projects that include ‘COVID’ in the title, worth nearly US$850 million. Together, these projects make up nearly 2% of the NIH’s $47-billion budget. And the CDC plans to cancel $11.4 billion in funds for pandemic response, NBC News reports.

Trump administration officials have called American colleges and universities “the enemy” and unleashed myriad attacks on them that would undercut their funding and trample their independence. These include cuts in biomedical research funding; eliminating research agencies; threatened reductions to student Pell grants, travel bans, and slow processing of visas of international students; attacks on free speech on campus; a proposed massive increase in taxes on endowments; and on and on.

Personally, I think a "hard magic" can work quite well, so long as the author just keeps it vague. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, we can explain it. The explanation is this: The banana turns blue when someone reads that sentence. That explains it. So it's not magic. — Quk

What else could "magic" be anyway? — Quk

Trevor Milton, the founder of electric vehicle start-up Nikola who was sentenced to prison last year, was pardoned by Donald Trump late on Thursday, the White House confirmed on Friday.

The pardon of Milton, who was sentenced to four years in prison for exaggerating the potential of his technology, could wipe out hundreds of millions of dollars in restitution that prosecutors were seeking for defrauded investors.

Milton and his wife donated more than $1.8m to a Trump re-election campaign fund less than a month before the November election, according to the Federal Election Commission. — TheGuardian

Make American Good Again

Is this what it means to “make America great again”?

Does a great nation spurn loyal allies and genuflect before tyrants? Does it seek to swell its size and wealth while cutting lifelines to those sick and starving abroad? Would a great nation embrace oligarchs, both domestic and foreign, while belittling and mistreating the most vulnerable? Would it hunt down homeless migrants and ship them without due process to foreign hellholes? Would it exalt kissing up while kicking down? Would it toss friends to wolves?

America’s true greatness always has stood on its goodness. Yes, we have sinned, often grotesquely — with centuries of slavery, Indian genocide, land theft and foreign invasions. The Vietnam and Iraq wars stain our national conscience, as do Jim Crow, segregation and Japanese internment. But when we have sinned, we also have repented, even if grudgingly and late.

When instead we have done good, we have shown our true greatness. By rebuilding Europe with the Marshall Plan; by enabling a dignified and healthy old age with Social Security and Medicare; by lifting barriers to the polls with the Voting Rights Act; by opening our doors to those of all colors and creeds who seek only to build a better life for their children. And, yes, by showing empathy toward the suffering and shunned.

Being good in all these ways has not made us chumps. We can be at once both generous and self-interested. Our soft power abroad draws on our most generous and noble acts and traditions. Our moral capital has won us tangible capital in both trade and military alliances. Holding true to our democratic traditions has drawn to our side the world’s wealthiest and most powerful democracies.

Why on earth would we scorn the friendship of Canada, the EU, Japan and South Korea for the meager recompense of Russia’s battered economy and beleaguered military? Why would we betray Ukraine, which has stood bravely against aggression?

Nor does being good mean being weak. Our military might empowers us to defend our ideals while supporting others who adhere to those same ideals. But being mighty is not an end in itself. Nor is being vast or rich. If we seize Greenland, Gaza or the Panama Canal, or bring our friends to their knees with massive tariffs, we may make ourselves richer in material terms even as we forsake our highest ideals.

Those ideals, the true roots of our strength, have made America good. And only by being good again can we be truly great. — George Fisher, The Hill

conceptualising something is not to arrive at a static mental image or predefined set of attributes, but a dynamic process that involves engaging with rules, practices, and contexts in a flexible way. — Banno

Information content can be measured physically - that is where Landauer comes in - but that is only because there are agreed conventions of what constitutes meaningful information in the first place.
— Wayfarer
:lol:

What's meaning, if not what what is done with the information? Meaning here is just another term for use.

And use is physical. It involves actual processes that produce measurable physical effects in the world. — Banno

What we have is two differing descriptions of the same physicality. — Banno

That's just not factually correct. The formatted disk containing data has a lower entropy than a disk containing no information. — Banno

See Landauer's principle, a consequence of the second law of thermodynamics. But obviously, there are far more ways to arrange the letters randomly than there are ways to arrange them into a sentence of English, so that English sentence has a far lower entropy. — Banno

It certainly covers YouTube shorts. — Benkei

if they can balance the budget... — NOS4A2

mandatory programs account for 60% of total outlays. When net interest payments and defense spending are included, the amount of nondefense discretionary spending is only about 15% of total outlays). In 2024, this category totaled about $1 trillion. ....

...it is important to realize that improved government efficiency will not be sufficient to put the federal budget on sound footing. In fact, the plan House Republicans are putting forth would add $2.8 trillion or more to public debt over the next 10 years according to the Committee for a Responsible Budget. The assessment of the Cato Institute, which favors limited government, is that the House budget “pairs wishful thinking with modest fiscal restraints.”

One of the main impediments to deficit reduction is that an extension of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act would reduce federal revenues by an estimated $4.5 trillion over 10 years. And this tally will balloon to nearly $8 trillion if tax cuts that Trump proposed during the presidential campaign for Social Security, tips, overtime work and other items are included.

It doesn’t matter if the funds had been approved by Congress — NOS4A2

The so-called checks and balances are working just fine, if you can’t tell by the various injunctions and rulings, and any “subverting constitutional norms and safeguards” will be ironed out in court, the way it always has been. — NOS4A2

He (Goldberg) was mistakenly invited and stayed, silently, eavesdropping, long past the time he realized he was not supposed to be there. — NOS4A2

I know nothing personal about the Atlantic editor, beyond what I have seen of him and read. — tim wood

A substance is something that exists and has a set of properties or abilities. — MoK

I'm curious, what is the difference between physics and a physical ontology? — JuanZu

Why do you hate these people? — NOS4A2

But what is it that makes a theory fundamental, as opposed to merely phenomenological? — SophistiCat

What does constitutional oversight mean? — philosch