Wednesday Morning Rant

In the wake of USAID's effective dissolution, the left has been hurling numerous arguments at the wall about why USAID is important, without ever discussing the real reason USAID is important. USAID is important because it's a slush fund for various transnational leftist causes and operations. Money goes in to USAID, where it is loaded onto helicopters and then dropped directly into the gaping maws of countless left-wing organizations and governments.

"YOU'RE TAKING AWAY OUR DIRTY MONEY WE USE TO SUBVERT ALL THAT IS GOOD AND RIGHT" is not a good argument, and people won't respond to it with anything other than demands for more of the same medicine. So instead, the propaganda and NGO complex keeps trying to find other reasons why USAID is important. They need it to play in Peoria. The spin is on full display. The recent example I've seen comes from Bill Gates.

Gates is lobbying hard to keep USAID because, per his assertion, "private philanthropy" cannot fill in the gaps left by USAID. They cannot step in to perform USAID's vital work.

Bill Gates has reportedly warned President Donald Trump's administration that his philanthropic endeavors are no replacement for the U.S. government's funding of global health care efforts.

The Microsoft cofounder turned billionaire philanthropist is petitioning the Trump administration to continue funding worldwide health programs, Reuters reported, citing two anonymous sources. Gates has met with legislators and the National Security Council about his concerns.

Public health experts fear the White House's USAID scrapping could have devastating global consequences, such as a rise in global malaria cases and deaths and the spread of HIV and tuberculosis (TB).

"Without immediate action, hard-won progress in the fight against TB is at risk," Dr. Tereza Kasaeva, director of the WHO's Global Programme on TB and Lung Health, said in a statement earlier this month.

So disaster. Poor people dying of TB because we dissolved USAID. How about some more detail not provided by the article in Fortune? Per the WHO itself in its statement about USAID:

... the United States government has provided approximately US$ 200--250 million annually in bilateral funding for the TB response at country level. This funding was approximately one quarter of the total amount of international donor funding for TB.

The 2025 funding cuts will have a devastating impact on TB programmes, particularly in LMICs that rely heavily on international aid, given the United States has been the largest bilateral donor. These cuts put 18 of the highest burden countries at risk, as they depended on 89% of the expected United States funding for TB care.

The Fortune article about this doesn't mention those fairly low totals. It talks about the totals across the board - that USAID was costing about $45 billion per year, that the Gates Foundation spends about $9 billion per year, etc. - but not about TB. Not about the one thing they chose to focus on in the article. Well, we can put two and two together and find that it doesn't equal 45 billion.

TB is half a percent of USAID's outlays, and would represent less than 3% of the Gates Foundation's outlays, if it chose to focus on it. According to Newsweek, USAID was spending about $7 billion - or less that a quarter of its budget - on "health." Even assuming that "health" means what it says and is money well spent, that's less than the Gates Foundation's annual expenditure.

So it isn't about TB and it isn't about global health. If it were, outfits like the Gates Foundation and the WHO wouldn't be lobbying to maintain USAID. If it were about what they say it is about, they would be asking for money. "Hey, we really think that maintaining US involvement in global public health efforts is important. What can we do to convince to you continue funding our efforts via other mechanisms?" If it's a good idea, money well spent and the efforts are appealing to the American people, the US can find a couple of billion dollars. If it's a bad idea or money poorly spent or things not wanted by the American people , then it has no reason to. Yet this is what these organizations worldwide public and private have not asked. They have demanded that USAID be maintained, not requested money to plug gaps left by USAID's demise. That, or the reporting is disingenuous and false, and these outfits are asking for money as such but it's being spun as a demand for the continuation of USAID. Either way, that is what people used to call a "tell."

Whatever these people are after, it isn't eradicating tuberculosis and it isn't "public health." Public health is just marketing spin, a false premise to try to make it appeal to Americans who are fed up with corruption and fraud. These articles throw out big numbers without context, and never discuss specifics. That would defeat the purpose of building a false premise.

"Public health" doesn't need USAID. It may need US money, but it doesn't need USAID. There is a real, viable debate that we could be having about this. What is the US role in global public health? How much if any contribution is justified? How should it be managed and controlled and audited if we determine that it is justified? That debate is not happening, because that debate doesn't matter to anyone involved. With USAID's surviving operations - whatever they may be - being absorbed directly by State, so-called "public health" might actually survive.

The real goal of maintaining the USAID slush fund, however, will not. The real goal is not public health or disaster relief or anything else they claim. Those are the lies they tell in an attempt to con average Americans into supporting their nefarious scams.

posted by Joe Mannix at 11:00 AM

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