The Native Iowan

Saturday morning here. We’ve been getting rain, the ground is wet. Really need to do some mowing.

The skies are slate, dense, opaque. No radiant warmth getting through to the earth, noting it’s a muggy 24c/ 74f out. Its going to rain, again, soon…

I’m thinking of the waste, graft, corruption, misuse and abuse we are hearing about. Below is a list of items “discovered” thus far by the DOGE cowboys. But I need to walk down memory lane a bit, first:

Discussion Part-One…

I became an “Aid-Worker” in 1981. I swore-in as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) 3 months after Ronald Raygun was swore-in for his first term. I was a “gift” to the Solomon Islands, from the USofA. I was sent to a school to “teach” whatever they needed taught. My presence was free of charge to the Solomon Gov. I came with access to Aid-$$$. PCVs were expected to have a “project” or two.

My gig was a traveling circus type “Alternative Technology” workshop where I coordinated with other government departments and traveled to remote villages holding courses in areas like sanitation and water, outboard motor repair and maintenance, small business assistance, and more.

My PCV status gave me easy access to “development funding”. Organisations like IHAP (International Human Assistance Program) and FSP (Friends of the South Pacific), and others had funding for “projects”. I’d fill in the forms, jump through some hoops and get something like USD$2,000 to buy the fuel and consumables for a “tour”.

A “Tour” typically would include a government owned canoe and OBM with a driver. I’d buy the fuel and consumables. Get someone from the Ministry of Health to come along. Maybe someone from Agriculture. I worked for the Ministry of Education, so everyone was paid to be involved.

We’d take off and do a couple weeks traveling to predetermined villages. We’d hold a workshop where we might install a water-seal toilet, build a ferro-cement tank, offer some training on OBMs. We would target a village with a school. The new infrastructure assisted the development and expansion of the village school. Everyone won. It was a good program.

Full time I lived and taught at a remote boarding school. I used the school breaks and holidays for my extracurricular fun n games.

The Aid$$ was always “tied-aid”, meaning it was for a specific purpose. In this case “education”. I did this work throughout the 1980s, holding maybe 50 small (2-3day) workshops and maybe 10-15 large (2week) workshops.

I had to apply for the funding with a written proposal. Once the funds were approved they would be released to my Ministry. The $$ was disbursed to me on what in the old days was called Licensed Purchase Orders (LPO). I didn’t get the money, I got quotes for the stuff I needed then got the LPO to “buy” the gear. I’d take an “Impress” in cash for incidentals. All funds had to be “retired” at the end of the program.

My next discussion is about the “Food-Chain” of the money I had access to, that I spent …

Discussion Part-Two…

The organisations I sought funding from had offices in Honiara, and regional offices in Suva or Moresby. With, of course, higher up offices in DC. Most of the funding ultimately came from USAID, through the other orgs like IHAP.

I was a lowly PCV, I made around USD 2-3grand per annum. I got my housing, travel, and medical paid for. Peace Corps had staff in country offering good support. It all cost. The food-chain my presence represented was much, much bigger, greater, more expensive than just me.

The Bosses on the ground locally were pretty well paid. The higher-ups in regional offices made more. The folks in DC made much more. Some were/ are downright Fat Cats. I was just a PCV.

The USD2000$$ I spent on a tour probably cost 10x to facilitate. Or more. The Food-Chain of the Aid$$ I touched was long, deep, and costly.

I have worked closely with USAID. My programs were good, notable, so bigwigs often came to play. I was once nominated for The Rolex Award by a well meaning FatCat. I never liked these folks… They’d travel first class, wear lots of gold, stay in nice hotels, eat in the fancy restaurants, and spend more in a week than I touched in a year.

So when I see something like this… “$5 million for effort to treat eating disorders by “affirming” LGBTQIA+ patients’ sexual orientation and gender claims” … I am confident that very little actually got spent treating eating disorders. It all got consumed by the Food-Chain, top to bottom, that has a voracious eating disorder.

The waste, graft, corruption of what is suppose to be “Aid”… nothing new here…

My week in pictures…

• $78,000 to Palestinian activist group whose chairman was photographed attending an anniversary event celebrating the founding of the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Palestine terrorist group
• $1 Million for foreign DEI programs, including ‘indigenous language technology’ in Guatemala, per non-public funding docs reviewed by WFB
• Nearly $1 million to Hamas-linked charity that hosted terrorist leader’s son, per report from the Middle East Forum’s Focus on Western Islamism
• $3.4 million for Malaysian drug-fueled gay sex app
• $5 million for effort to treat eating disorders by “affirming” LGBTQIA+ patients’ sexual orientation and gender claims
• $1.5 million to address address racial, ethnic and income-based differences in vasectomy knowledge.
• $38.7 million annually for DEI work in addition to the roughly $30 million it spends on its Office of Minority Health
• Over $1 million on video game to help LGBTQ youth stop “binge drinking”
• Up to $3 million to defund the police advocacy group to pursue “climate justice” for convicts
• Nearly $500 million for Biden admin’s “environmental justice” advisors
• $50 million to a coalition that includes an “immigrant justice” group that pushes voter registration for traditionally Democrat-leaning demographics
• FEMA doled out $12 million in May 2023 to push “equity” and prioritize communities with high concentrations of racial and sexual minorities. Then, after Hurricanes Helene and Milton, fmr. DHS Sec. Mayorkas claimed that FEMA did not have the funds to make it through hurricane season
• The Biden administration’s 2022-2026 FEMA strategic plan listed “equity” as one of its top goals, with the agency also emphasizing “racial justice” trainings and funding DEI studies
• June study from Arizona State University found the Pentagon had turned into a “vast DEI bureaucracy” under the Biden administration, requesting a $114.7 million budget for DEI projects in FY 2024
• DoD Education Activity (DoDEA) approved a $2 million consulting contract for “equity”-focused management consulting firm BCT Partners to create an “action plan” for Pentagon-run schools
• $500,000 for research on “indigenous knowledge” – “a pseudoscience that posits native Indians possess unique insights into the workings of the universe”
• Over $100 million between 2021 and 2024 on education programs related to “restorative justice, social-emotional learning and DEI”
• Instituted an “equity action plan” in 2023 to “advanc[e] equity for historically marginalized and underserved communities”
• Funded performances of play “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes,” in which God is bisexual and communists are good, in North Macedonia
• Disbursed $15,000 to “queer” Muslim writers in India
• Shelled out tens of thousands to create army of 2,500 LGBTQI+ allies
• $1.6 million for the “Nancy Pelosi Fellowship Program” to diversify America’s diplomats
• Sponsored a set of $10,000 grants to “uplift transgender” youth in Peru via a ballroom dancing program
• Funded 31 programs across 23 countries to engage in “hip-hop diplomacy,” to promote “democratic values, boost climate activism and promote diversity”
• Provided $70,000 grant to produce a DEI musical in Ireland
• $500,000 to “expand atheism” in Nepal
• $25,000 to transgender opera in Colombia
• $2.5 million to electric vehicles in Vietnam
• Gave $32,000 in funding for a Peruvian “LGBT comic book”
• Provided $1.5 million grant to “advance diversity equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities, by promoting economic empowerment of and opportunity for LGBTQI+ people in Serbia”
• $2 million for sex changes and “LGBT activism” in Guatemala
• $6 million to fund tourism in Egypt
• Spent $20 million on “Ahlan Simsim” – a new Sesame Street show in Iraq
• Over $4.5 million to “combat disinformation” in Kazakhstan
• Up to $10 million worth of USAID-funded meals went to al Qaeda-linked terrorist group the Nusra Front
• $500,000 to group that “empowers women” in attempt to solve sectarian violence in Israel just ten days before Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks
• Awarded nearly $25 million to Deloitte to promote green transportation in Georgia (the country)
• $4.67 million to EcoHealth Alliance – one of the key NGOs funding bat virus research at Wuhan Institute of Virology — in late 2021. Later refused to answer key questions about the funding.
• $20 million for the Strengthening Transparency and Accountability through Investigative Reporting program which used the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) as its implementing partner. The OCCRP was cited four times in the whistleblower letter that led to the Russiagate impeachment.
• USAID’s 2022-2030 climate strategy outlined a $150 billion “whole-of-Agency approach” to building an “equitable world with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions”
• $7.9 million to a project that would teach Sri Lankan journalists to avoid “binary-gendered language”
• $1.1 million to an Armenian LGBT group.
• $1.2 million to the African Methodist Episcopal Church Service and Development Agency in Washington, DC to build “a state-of-the-art 440 seat auditorium”
• $1.3 million to Arab and Jewish photographers
• $1.5 million to promote LGBT advocacy in Jamaica.
• $1.5 million to “rebuild” the Cuban media ecosystem.
• $1.5 million for “art for inclusion of people with disabilities”
• $2 million to promote “LGBT equality through entrepreneurship…in developing Latin American countries.”
• $2.1 million so the BBC can strengthen the media ecosystem in Libya, “designed to value the diversity of of Libyan society”
• $2.3 million for “artisanal and small scale gold mining” in the Amazon.
• $2.5 million to promote “inclusion” in Vietnam.
• $3.9 million to LGBT causes in the Western Balkans
• $5.5 million to LGBT in Uganda.
• $6 million to advance LGBT in “priority countries around the world.”
• $6 million to “Transform Digital Spaces to Reflect Feminist Democratic Principles”
• $6.3 million to men who have sex with men in South Africa.
• $8.3 million for “USAID Education: Equity and Inclusion”
• Another $16.8 million to a separate group in Vietnam for “inclusion.”
• $15 million for “oral contraceptives and condoms” in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, per non-public congressional funding notice reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon (WFB)