I’ve written two columns about the late Calvin Coolidge this month (here and here) in honor of the 100th anniversary of him being sworn in as President. Engaging with the thirtieth President again these few days, I’ve been particularly impressed by his thrift. Public thrift, that is: every year Coolidge was in office the federal budget shrank, so that when he left the White House in 1929 it was lower by almost a third than when he’d taken office—a very unusual thing with American Presidents.

Contrast that with today, when the federal government is hosing money around as if it could just print as much as it wants to—which of course it can.

Is it money well spent? I wish I could think so. Washington Post, Thursday last week, headline: Biden asks for $20.6 billion for Ukraine as counteroffensive sputters.[ by Jeff Stein and Marianna Sotomayor, August 10, 2023]

Will that money be well spent in what, when hostilities started, I referred to as “the war between the world’s two most corrupt white nations”?

In reference to that I should say that Ukraine is looking a tad better corruption-wise than it was a year and a half ago. I just checked the latest rankings on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. On the 2022 figures, Ukraine ranks 116 out of 180, in between The Philippines and Zambia. Russia meanwhile is still stuck down at 137, between Paraguay and Kyrgyzstan. (The U.S.A., people always want to know? We ranked 24, between the Seychelles and Bhutan.)

That’s not the most bizarre thing I’ve read this week on federal spending, though—not by a long way. Here is the easy winner.

By way of preface, let me remind you about SIGAR. That stands for Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, an agency of the federal government created in 2008 by George W. Bush to oversee our reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan.

So … after we cut and ran from Afghanistan two years ago, SIGAR was disbanded, right? Saving the feds a lot of unnecessary expenditure, right?

Wrong! SIGAR is still with us; its website is still up and running; and it’s still issuing reports.

The report tells us that since our undignified exit from Afghanistan in 2021 the federal government, through Congress of course, has appropriated over $2.35 billion in funds for Afghanistan reconstruction and humanitarian efforts.

The Biden administration has in fact been, according to the Daily Caller, the single largest donor of taxpayer money to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan since the U.S. evacuated forces.

nd these lavish public spending policies have of course an immigration dimension. That is true even down at the state level, although immigration is supposed to be a federal responsibility. Here’s a headline from the Boston Herald: Massachusetts spending $45M a month on programs for migrants, displaced families, Healey says, by Chris Van Buskirk, August 8, 2023.

Governor Healey is of course begging the feds for financial assistance, so chances are this will come out of our federal taxes eventually, one way or another.

What happened to the principle that foreigners coming into the U.S.A. for settlement have to prove they are self-supporting? Oh for goodness’ sake, Derb, don’t be so old-fashioned. That kind of thinking went out with buttoned boots.

And the Massachusetts number is peanuts compared to what New York City is begging for. Just the city, mind; not much awareness has yet seeped up to the state government in Albany.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams told us on Wednesday that the cost of housing and caring for illegal aliens in the city will be twelve billion dollars over the next three years.

  • protist@mander.xyz
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    1 year ago

    Someone who arrives here seeking asylum isn’t here illegally under US law. The overwhelming majority of people who cross the US border without documentation turn themselves in at the earliest opportunity to request asylum. What would increasing the ICE and CBP budgets even do? There needs to be more funding for the courts to hear these cases quickly and for humane living conditions for these people with the burden shared among all states. Also the laws need to be changed to make it easier to obtain work visas so they can work above board

    • Lovstuhagen@exploding-heads.comOPM
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      1 year ago

      But the joke is claiming asylum.

      Cubans and Venezuelans of specific backgrounds have good claims for asylum, but the average person arriving actually does not. They are what could be termed economic refugees. The fact that there is any process at all for Mexicans, El Salvadorans, Guatemalans, etc., to obtain asylum is silly…

      There’s a better case that there are Germans and British people who need asylum for their rights to free speech being infringed upon by local tyrannical police.

      There needs to be more funding for the courts to hear these cases quickly and for humane living conditions for these people with the burden shared among all states.

      I appreciate you offering up this sort of suggestion - it is well intended, and it is the sort of thing that I would support fully since I think it is the the path of least resistance for making progress on this issue.

      I do not want to come off as too overbearing - as I may have in the first half of the post - but I do feel strongly about this.

      Thanks for a serious and good suggestion.

      Also the laws need to be changed to make it easier to obtain work visas so they can work above board

      Fully agreed here as well.

      I think that we should actively be working to get Mexicans and central Americans to the US on good visas, and that visas should be awarded primarily to young people without criminal histories and who have graduated highschool which would incentivize prosocial behavior in those countries.

      We do have some debt to central Americans since we have played insane games in those countries with the CIA for decades.