USAID is an independent federal agency that distributes about $50 billion annually internationally representing less than three-quarters of one percent of the Federal Budget. Yet when new president Donald Trump’s government efficiency group under Eldon Musk questioned its use of taxpayer funds, Democrat politicians and activists took to the barricades loudly protesting its incursions into the Agency like it was hallowed territory. What is their beef?
Likewise, why of all the gin joints in Washington did Musk begin his early efforts to drain the swamp in this minor Agency?
Sherlock Holmes solved a famous mystery by observing the ‘dog that did not bark’. Similarly, reports, news agencies, and cable news had little or nothing to say about the departing Director Samantha Power who served the Agency for all four years of the departing Democratic Administration. She quietly slipped off into the night reminiscent of the departure of General Douglas MacArthur who noted that “old soldiers…. just fade away”.
No, Samantha Power is not an ‘old soldier’, and as an attractive woman of only fifty-five, she is certainly not a ‘dog’. Power began working with Barack Obama in 2005 as his major policy advisor when he was an unknown, young U.S. Senator. Her initial focus was on human rights and genocide, later expanded into protecting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals, which she supported internationally through USAID grants. She served as his Foreign Policy Advisor when Obama was made President in 2009 and later in his Administration served as Ambassador to the United Nations.
Power’s husband, who she met when they both worked on the Obama campaign in 2008, is famous Harvard Professor Cass Sunstein, who served as Obama’s Regulation Czar. Sunstein is perhaps most famous for his Nudge Theory, a way to influence people’s decisions without using coercion or changing economic incentives. However, when he tried to merge this theory with his Regulation Czar duties in the Obama White House, he failed to recognize that the Federal government does not “nudge”; instead, it structurally and instinctively coerces with taxes, fines, mandates, bans, or criminalization and incarceration.
In 2017 Sunstein was appointed to the Department of Homeland Security by President Biden to use his expertise on government regulations to aid Home Secretary Mayorkas to open the U.S. border and to undo President Trump’s immigration policies.
Power and Sunstein are the most powerful Democratic couple in Washington, after Barack and Michelle. They played a leading role in developing the ideology to support Obama’s prior election promise, “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”
Bureaucracies and bureaucrats jealously protect themselves to preserve their power. They will go to the most radical extremes to protect an independent agency with billions of dollars to spend not prescribed by Congress. Their hair will become more inflamed when one of their ideological icons becomes threatened with exposure or losing control of its unregulated funds.
Until the Musk reports are made public, one can only speculate what complex paths $50 billion per year at USAID might take, however, the following items are worth noting:
First, while the Agency refuses all outside oversight, the USAID director apparently has almost unlimited authority to make the grants. For the past four years, it has been Samantha Power that has that power. Any attack on USAID is to attack her.
After Biden withdrew U.S. troops from Afghanistan, under the Taliban, the country was one of the largest recipients of USAID money receiving over $700 million in 2023. Also during Power’s reign as Director, Hamas, supervising USAID Palestinian humanitarian aid, received over $500 million.
Second, USAID’s major subcontractor, Chemonics International Inc., is an employee-owned private company operating worldwide whose financial information is not made public nor are its transactions with foreign governments or foreign agents. In 2020 Chemonics was one of the companies for allegedly paying bribes, or protection money, to the Taliban in a lawsuit brought by families of American victims.
Wikipedia’s write-up on the company stated, “In 2024, a report by Center for Advanced Defense Studies said that Chemonics purchased products made in Xinjiang, potentially using forced Uyghur labor, including from sanctioned entity Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps”. Chemonics may not be the squeakiest clean player around, but that makes it to be an ideal partner when achieving or maintaining political power is the objective.
Third, with no outside oversight of USAID funds, a significant amount of money could find a circular path back into any hands deemed politically advantageous to those dispensing the funds – a sort of Democratic slush fund like that created by the Clintons with their $2 billion Global Initiative.
Lastly, USAID’s lack of transparency makes it seem immune from such impediments to private sector malpractice like the Foreign Corrupt Practice Act (FCPA) or any of the several federal criminal statutes making it illegal to knowingly provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization – maybe like the Taliban!
The next time Chuck Schummer, Maxine Waters, or other crazed political loudmouths of either party run around Washington with their Hair on Fire, look behind their hysterics to find out what malfeasance they are hiding or who they are protecting. In this case, it marks the end of Obama’s Progressive ‘transformation of America’.
TW3
John Whitmore Jenkins
February 13, 2024
by