This article was originally published by James Bovard at The Ron Paul Institue for Peace and Prosperity.
The campaign to convict and remove President Donald Trump in the Senate hinges on delays in disbursing US aid to Ukraine. Ukraine was supposedly on the verge of great progress until Trump pulled the rug out from under the heroic salvation effort by US government bureaucrats. Unfortunately, Congress has devoted a hundred times more attention to the timing of aid to Ukraine than to its effectiveness. And most of the media coverage has ignored the biggest absurdity of the impeachment fight.
The temporary postponement of the Ukrainian aid was practically irrelevant considering that US assistance efforts have long fueled the poxes they promised to eradicate – especially kleptocracy, or government by thieves. A 2002 American Economic Review analysis concluded that “increases in [foreign] aid are associated with contemporaneous increases in corruption” and that “corruption is positively correlated with aid received from the United States.”
Then-President George W. Bush promised to reform foreign aid that year, declaring, “I think it makes no sense to give aid money to countries that are corrupt.” Regardless, the Bush administration continued delivering billions of dollars in handouts to many of the world’s most corrupt regimes.
Then-President Barack Obama, recognizing the failure of past US aid efforts, proclaimed at the United Nations in 2010 that the US government is “leading a global effort to combat corruption.” The following year, congressional Republicans sought to restrict foreign aid to fraud-ridden foreign regimes. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wailed that restricting handouts to nations that fail anti-corruption tests “has the potential to affect a staggering number of needy aid recipients.”
The Obama administration continued pouring tens of billions of US tax dollars into sinkholes such as Afghanistan, which even its president, Ashraf Ghani, admitted in 2016 was “one of the most corrupt countries on earth.” John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR), declared that “US policies and practices unintentionally aided and abetted corruption” in Afghanistan.
Since the end of the Soviet Union, the US has provided more than $6 billion in aid to Ukraine. At the House impeachment hearings, a key anti-Trump witness was acting US ambassador to the Ukraine, William B. Taylor Jr. The Washington Post hailed Taylor as someone who “spent much of the 1990s telling Ukrainian politicians that nothing was more critical to their long-term prosperity than rooting out corruption and bolstering the rule of law, in his role as the head of US development assistance for post-Soviet countries.” A New York Times editorial lauded Taylor and State Department deputy assistant secretary George Kent as witnesses who “came across not as angry Democrats or Deep State conspirators, but as men who have devoted their lives to serving their country.”
After their testimony spurred criticism, a Washington Post headline captured the capital city’s reaction: “The diplomatic corps has been wounded. The State Department needs to heal.” But not nearly as much as the foreigners supposedly rescued by US bureaucrats.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Oct. 31 that the International Monetary Fund, which has provided more than $20 billion in loans to Ukraine, “remains skeptical after a history of broken promises [from the Ukraine govt]. Kiev hasn’t successfully completed any of a series of IMF bailout packages over the past two decades, with systemic corruption at the heart of much of that failure.”
The IMF concluded that Ukraine continued to be vexed by “shortcomings in the legal framework, pervasive corruption, and large parts of the economy dominated by inefficient state-owned enterprises or by oligarchs.” That last item is damning for the US benevolent pretensions. If a former Soviet republic cannot even terminate its government-owned boondoggles, then why in hell was the US government bankrolling them?
Fair Use Excerpt. Read the entire article at The Daily Caller.
It Took 22 Years to Get to This Point
The health "experts" are "on alert" after the first case of bird flu has been found in a child....
This article was originally published by Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge. Update(1315ET): After months...
The outgoing Biden administration is looking to send another $24 billion to Ukraine to continue to...
Commenting Policy:
Some comments on this web site are automatically moderated through our Spam protection systems. Please be patient if your comment isn’t immediately available. We’re not trying to censor you, the system just wants to make sure you’re not a robot posting random spam.
This website thrives because of its community. While we support lively debates and understand that people get excited, frustrated or angry at times, we ask that the conversation remain civil. Racism, to include any religious affiliation, will not be tolerated on this site, including the disparagement of people in the comments section.
Impeachment, Ukraine and all we are fixated on:
https://i.imgur.com/JflFxFX.png
I will let the cat out of the bag: corruption is a feature of aid and development, not a bug.
All public pronouncements about fighting corruption or ending money laundering are a head fake. Anti corruption hotlines actually are used to gauge how much the public has clued into the pervasive corruption and then the authorities get ahead of it so the corruption and money laundering can carry on.
By far the best organisation at doing this is the U.N. They work like this: they come up with a scam. They work that scam until hurts. And when it gets uncovered they keep one step ahead of the feds by changing the acronyms for their agencies and launching new websites etc. And then they reboot with a new scam: rinse, repeat.
It is so brazen these days they actually use corrupt Ukrainians to run these operations.
U.S. government money undoubtedly corrupts! All of the corporate welfare received from the Pentagon to corporations through the Good Jobs First program, by corrupt corporations is proof! No need to leave America to see its corrupting influence!
The AMA would undoubtedly have had every member of the government and media declared legally insane and a danger to others and have these delusional, insane, mentally retarded, mentally incompetent psychopaths institutionalized for life, if they weren’t worried about losing funding!
The lunatics have convinced themselves that reality is not only irrelevant, but that reality does not pertain to themselves, and that they can just declare what reality is based on a whim, and rewrite history also.
It is really like watching a Mad Hatters Tea Party. Maybe they all have mercury poisonning, because they are undoubtedly all as mad as hatters!
It got to the point that i simply couldn’t take it anymore and disconnected my TV in 2016.
As far as Trump’s impeachment is concerned, I have absolutely no ambition to defend any individual who has commited treason against me by violating my first and fourth amendment rights through various tyrranical and treasonous acts. I guess that I am just not that crazy yet.
Executive Order 12333 started in 1981, under Reagan, in which he granted himself the right to surveil anyone for the purpose of procurement. This executive order is just one of the dozens of treasonous acts still in effect.
There is no way in the world that anyone should be defending psychopaths that have violated the 4th amendmemt rights, even to the point of endangering their lives.
The truth is that Trump, just as his predecessors is guilty of numerous high crimes and treason. Unfortunately, so is everyone in congress, so the liklihood of the monsters being charged with their crimes, in addition to the numerous wars on inmocent countries and people, which are also an act of treason because when innocent people and countries are attacked, it threatens national security, because they have the right to defend themselves under international law.
After the Iraqi government formally served Trump with an eviction notice, the military has announced that it intends to ignore the Iraqi government, increase troops, and build 3 new military bases, one just 8 miles away from the Iranian border.
Hey, psychos! Don’t say that you haven’t been forewarned by dozens of highly credible and informed people, amd don’t expect any sympathy from the American public or voters!
The stupidity of Trump and his defenders is really alarming and disgusting!
This impeachment makes no sense at all except as a distraction from Trump’s Treason to America and Christ. It is a Jew Coup, all the “leaders” are Jews & toadies … so why would Jews impeach Israel’s Stooge Trump except:
(1) Distract with the left hand as the right hand picks your pockets.
(2) As “democrats” they cannot come out & endorse Trump, but they can make him a martyr and drive voters to him with a doomed from the start impeachment, thus guaranteeing his reelection to a final term of Total Betrayal.
Meanwhile treasonous Trump:
(A) Trump to release ‘great’ Israel peace plan ahead of Netanyahu visit, warns that Palestinians ‘may react negatively’ https://www.rt.com/news/479027-trump-israe…tinians-peace-plan/
(B) The greatest betrayal of Christ Jesus since the KISS of Judas Iscariot.
Trump’s “SUPER SUPERIORITY” Executive Order for Jews. The order will effectively interpret Judaism as a nationality, not just a religion, to trigger a federal law penalizing colleges and universities, and soon expand to cover Worshiping CHRIST since Judaism has hated and attacked Christ for 2,000 years.
For the first time since Emperor Constantine recognized Christianity in the 300th Year of Our Lord, Christians are relegated to SECOND CLASS CITIZENSHIP. 1700 years and JUDAS ISCARIOT again betrays CHRIST.
The first step in legalizing State sponsored Christian Persecution.
Trump has set the legal precedent for the subjugation of Christianity.
Trump just set the legal foundation for the TRIBULATION so many fret about.
Crosses on Churches ALREADY “offend” Jews . … so do Nativities, Carols, Trees …. Where do you think the “War on CHRISTmas” originates? Jews refuse to acknowledge Jesus or the NEW Testament and Trump just handed them the weapon to attack.
Talk about “War on Christmas” … Like King Herod attempting to murder the Baby Jesus, King Trump has launched an attack on CHRISTianity by Officially Legalizing the elevation of Judaism ABOVE Christ, just 13 DAYS before CHRISTmas.
(C) Embassy move, Golan Heights “grant”, West Bank “grant”, Hidden military aid “gifts”
What kind of sick fucking loser doesn’t want to impeach and imprison all Pimp-e-dents that have signed executive order 12333 first signed 12/4/1981?
Spying for procurement! Look it up! Sicko Psycho perverted fucking scumbag retarded lunatics!
Go fuck yourselves in the sewer you slick sleazy fucking psychos!
Acting like Harlem pimps! America sucks! Just one giant fucking sewer! Dump Trump!