USAID

Marriages in China plummeted by a fifth last year, the biggest drop on record, despite manifold efforts by authorities to encourage young couples to wed and have children to boost the country's declining population.

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Since the 1990s, Democratic economic policy had largely been shaped by a technocratic approach, derided by its critics as “neoliberalism,” that included respect for markets, enthusiasm for trade liberalization and expanded social welfare protections, and an aversion to industrial policy. By contrast, the Biden team expressed much more ambition: to spend more, to do more to reshape particular industries, and to rely less on market mechanisms to deal with problems such as climate change. Thus, the administration set out to bring back vigorous government involvement across the economy, including in such areas as public investment, antitrust enforcement, and worker protections; revive large-scale industrial policy; and support enormous injections of direct economic stimulus, even if it entailed unprecedented deficits. The administration eventually came to dub this approach “Bidenomics.” This is from an informative article in Foreign Affairs, here:

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/post-neoliberal-delusion

USAID

On her four-country tour through Africa in 2018 -- her first major solo international trip as first lady -- Melania Trump offered praise for what she described as "successful" USAID programs as she observed them up close.

The $50 million fund, known as W-GDP, was developed to be distributed by USAID with an ambitious goal of empowering 50 million women in developing countries by 2025.

The initiative was led by the president's daughter and then senior adviser, Ivanka Trump.

Apparently Rubio once had kind words for the agency.

These superficial endorsements have been floated as important discrepincies in USAID's recent critical evaluation.

But isn't that what fraud is: a discrepency between stated and planned aims? And isn't secrecy a part of that? “The documents my staff reviewed, on their face, failed to comply with standard classifications protocols. Only after demanding to speak to your USAID Office of Security, my staff uncovered that this data was, in fact, unclassified,” Senator Ernst wrote in a Tuesday letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The foolish projects that USAID has supported may not be charactistic of the agency. But don't they prompt a look? And don't they raise questions as to the judgment of the people in the program?

What is it about overseeing the program that is so upsetting?