Social credit in America - Politics invades personal finance

Affirmative action, RIP.

For half a century, affirmative action has been the federal government’s principal instrument for carrying out desegregation, the longest and costliest moral crusade in American history. After the 1970s it was adapted to liberation movements, from feminism to gay rights. Supreme Court justices anguished over the way its call for special consideration of minorities might clash with the letter of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which barred racial discrimination. Over the past decade affirmative action became the hammer of the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) movement, which grew so unpopular that it has now brought affirmative action (and much else) down with it.

Trump’s decision to repeal it is the most significant policy change of this century—more significant than the Affordable Care Act of 2010 or anything done about Covid.

A curious element of Trump’s third executive order is its invocation of the president’s “solemn duty” to enforce “longstanding Federal civil-rights laws,” mentioning the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This is not a concession. It’s a threat… Trump is doing more than reforming the public sector. He is signaling to the private sector that certain kinds of programs are liable to prosecution, even asking each federal agency to name up to nine large private-sector organizations that might be engaged in discrimination.

Now, there is no work for affirmative-action lawyers, diversity consultants, and inclusion trainers to do. Whole job categories are being zeroed out.

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Trans terrorists kill border patrol officer, possibly several others

Edit: there are more stories covering these folks and man they are weird and crazy.

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Normalcy returns

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https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-elon-musk-doge-treasury-5e26cc80fcb766981cea56afd57ae759

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More color on that and Elon’s comments

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Eh, I’ll wait to see some proof of his comments.

Interesting confrontation between the deep state and the newly elected president

The main website for USAID went offline this weekend and thousands of staffers may have lost access to their email accounts amid rumors that the Trump administration intends to eliminate the agency.

The website went dark after staffers associated with the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency gained access to the domain and then blocked USAID employees, a person familiar with the matter told FedScoop. The source said around 2,000 email accounts associated with USAID workers have since been deactivated.

USAID did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

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Yeah USAID is basically foreign aid and that’s supposed to be frozen while being reviewed. Sounds like it’ll get moved under the State Dept for oversight, which seems ok I guess. Plus several of the top bureaucrats didn’t want to reveal their spending to DOGE so, like the treasury, there was a showdown there and the bureaucrats are out.

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Trump 2.0. Don’t know how HuffPost snuck in

In their stead, The New York Post , One America News Network, Breitbart News, and HuffPost will move into the vacated office space. The memo makes clear that the outlets getting the boot “will remain as full members of the Pentagon Press Corps.

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How do you prove a negative, eh? :))) I mean, if he says they didn’t “not pay”, how can he prove that?

Would it be trivially accomplished by simply publishing a list of when/what specific amounts were paid to each specific terrorist organizations he referred to? That shouldn’t be hard since that’s the same payments you’re aiming to stop in the future.

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Even Google knows which way the winds are blowing. Cans their DEI programs / hiring.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/google-kills-diversity-hiring-targets-04433d7c

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How would that prove that they denied any payments? It would seem to be more trivially easy to show ONE terrorist organization payment or one known fraudulent organization payment that they refused to pay.

This is how the swamp is drained, albeit ever so slowly. I don’t know how much he can drain in four years, but I think it’s an impressive start.

As far as USAID, I can’t guarantee the terrorist quotient of these, but here are some of the funded programs …

  • $7.9 million to teach Sri Lankan journalists how to avoid “binary-gendered language”
  • $20 million for a new Sesame Street show in Iraq
  • $4.5+ million to “combat disinformation” in Kazakhstan
  • $1.5 million for “art for inclusion of people with disabilities”
  • $2 million for sex changes and “LGBT activism” in Guatemala
  • $6 million to “transform digital spaces to reflect feminist democratic principles”
  • $2.1 million to help the BBC “value the diversity of Libyan society”
  • $10 million worth of USAID-funded meals, which went to an al Qaeda-linked terrorist group
  • $25 million for Deloitte to promote “green transportation” in the country of Georgia
  • $6 million for tourism in Egypt
  • $2.5 million to promote “inclusion” in Vietnam
  • $16.8 million for a SEPARATE “inclusion” group in Vietnam
  • ~$5 million to EcoHealth Alliance, one of the key NGOs funding bat virus research at the Wuhan lab
  • $20 million for a group related to a key player in the Russiagate impeachment hoax
  • $1.1 million to an Armenian “LGBT group”
  • $1.2 million to help the African Methodist Episcopal Church Service and Development Agency in Washington, D.C., 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
  • $2 million to promote “LGBT equality through entrepreneurship” in Latin America
  • $500K to solve sectarian violence in Israel (just ten days before the Hamas October 7 attack)
  • $2.3 million for “artisanal and small scale gold mining” in the Amazon
  • $3.9 million for “LGBT causes” in the western Balkans
  • $5.5 million for LGBT activism in Uganda
  • $6 million for advancing LGBT issues in “priority countries around the world”
  • $6.3 million for men who have sex with men in South Africa
  • $8.3 million for “USAID Education: Equity and Inclusion”
  • USAID’s “climate strategy” outlined a $150 billion “whole-of-agency” approach to building an “equitable world with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.”
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Whoa! They’re coming out of the woodwork and I missed one two three that are almost as telling as the alphabet ones …

Politico - Of the suspected millions that Politico got for carrying the BCF laptop hoax, here is half a million from USAID. I can’t imagine why they totally agreed with the Russia hoax laptop that turned out to be the very truthful laptop, but not until the election was over. Sheesh!

Let’s not forget the always fair and balanced AP. I can figure out how to connect the A to the Democrat party, but not the P. :slight_smile:

And finally, the other so very fair and balanced player in bringing us news without political bent. :frowning:

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That’s money well spent right here. It’s much better for us if those kids grow up on our propaganda than on theirs.

I suspect that the promotion of DEI values is a cheap, yet powerful political tool to contrast us against our biggest adversaries who despise these values. It’s the modern day equivalent to the Cold War era’s god-fearing capitalists vs godless commies us-vs-them thing. I bet Vlad and Xi creamed their pants just from reading the news every day since the inauguration, because this administration is about to leave a huge political void all over the globe, and they’re going to fill that void with their agenda.

I don’t disagree that DEI went a little too far in some cases (such as hiring quotas vs, perhaps, interview quotas, also in sports) but it had a noble intent at its core.

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I mean, most of USAID is for regime change and destabilizing governments we don’t like, but I guess they give out some food and medical stuff to try to make it look good. Whether or not stopping the former is a good thing or not depends on your view of the success of US adventurism abroad (mixed to be sure).

Here are half a dozen operations we know about

It’s really the kinder gentler face of the CIA, and with a bigger budget to boot.

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I think most people would be content with showing the previously made payments to terrorist organizations assuming these would not be repeated by the new administration.

Especially from such a reputable expansive source /sarcasm, it’d be difficult to prove much terrorist activity. That said, - if confirmed - while not outright evidence of funding terrorists, some of these funding look pretty wasteful to me. Surely we can do better like helping build infrastructure, etc. than funding woke agenda abroad. I doubt China’s Road and Belt is pushing LGBTQ reform in foreign countries… So I don’t mind them looking at spending USAID a bit more wisely in terms of ROI but that’s different from the claims of funding terrorist organizations.

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Uh, there is no Sesame Street Show in Iraq. So, please re-explain the benefit to the taxpayers of that 20 MILLION dollars…

I’ll trust Sherlock Holmes suspicions over yours, :grin:, but, if we sent a bunch of gay guys to Gaza to promote DEI, I could possibly see the benefit. That’s not what happened.

I’ll trust your experience in that area, but suspect neither are happy with the current tariff situation, nor the unleashing of the U.S. energy resources onto the market.

As in “good intentions”? Yeah, they’re great pavers to somewhere. :rofl:

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Maybe, but my response was to someone who wanted to wait for proof that USAID didn’t refuse to auto-pay everything, even to terrorist orgs, or to terrorist adjacent orgs.

Yes, let’s use the tried and true Russian/Ukrainian/Nazi/ChiComm/Demo tactic of attacking the source, instead of the facts. What is it, exactly, to which you’re objecting?

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What unleashing do you speak of?