Tag: Good News

Keeping Up

Trumpism

I am a man of advanced years and much-reduced mental- and physical capacity thereby, so I’m having trouble dealing with all the MAGA / Trumpist / Musk-y goodness these days.  Quite apart from Saturday’s posts, there’s this:

Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Sec. Scott Turner has announced the end of Federal Housing Administration (FHA)-insured mortgages for any “non-permanent residents,” effectively eliminating illegal aliens’ access to the taxpayer-funded program.

…and this:

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is slashing 10,000 full-time employees as part of its effort to trim fat and reorient the department around Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Health Again” (MAHA) agenda.

“We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,” said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “This Department will do more — a lot more — at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”

…not to mention this:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that as many as 300 foreign students have had their visas revoked due to President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Rubio confirmed the number of revoked visas when speaking at a press conference in Guyana.

“Maybe more, it might be more than 300 at this point,” Rubio said. “We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa.”

Okay, let’s not let my enfeebled state and stamina be a hindrance to all this most excellent and long-overdue Chainsaw Activity.

Wasted Money

Bureaucracy, Foreign Affairs, Good Stuff, Trumpism

I see that the Department of Labor, not to be outdone by other federal departments in Extreme Chainsaw Activity, has done The Right Thing:

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has canceled nearly $600 million in grants to foreign countries in another round of major funding cuts.

John Clark, a DOL official appointed by President Donald Trump, directed the department’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) to axe all 69 of its active grant programs on Wednesday due to a “lack of alignment with agency priorities and national interest.”

Quite what the Department of Labor was doing in giving money to furriners in the first place… well, we all know the answer to that one.  [humming the tune to “The Internationale”]

And seeing as the U.S. is no longer part of the international socialist collective — or at least we’re heading in that direction, at long last — there’s no reason for us to fund the wellbeing of foreign workers anyway.

One particular item did catch my attention, though:

“$3 million for ‘safe and inclusive work environments’ in Lesotho”

I’ve been to Lesotho several times, know the place quite well in fact, and for three million bucks you could probably buy the country’s entire industrial infrastructure, pay the workers a fat cash bonus and still have some money left over to  gamble  invest in a couple of their casinos.

Of “$3 million to ‘enhance social security access and worker protections for internal migrant workers’ in Bangladesh”, we will not speak.  (It’s a Muslim country;  let the fucking Arabs pay for it.)

Similar arguments can be made for all the other useless items.  Read the article for the full flavor of the wastage, and if you have specific knowledge of the circumstances of any of them, feel free to comment.

In the meantime:

And About Damn Time, Too

Good Stuff, Illegal immigrants, Trumpism

Getting our act together:

President Donald Trump’s administration is eliminating taxpayer-funded housing program benefits going to illegal aliens.

This week, Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem announced the “American Housing Programs for American Citizens” memorandum which will prevent taxpayer money from being used to aid illegal aliens.

“American tax dollars should be used for the benefit of American citizens, especially when it comes to an issue as pressing as our nation’s housing crisis,” Turner said in a statement:

This new agreement will leverage resources, including technology and personnel, to ensure the American people are the only priority when it comes to public housing. We will continue to work closely with DHS to maximize our resources and put American citizens first.

Yup.

  • For illegal aliens:  tent cities and return tickets;
  • U.S. citizens in truly parlous circumstances:  subsidized housing.

Taxpayer money for our own, not for strangers.

Learn It Or Don’t Bother

Immigration, Trumpism

Oh boo-hoo-hoo.  In his latest oh-so-Hitler initiative, POTUS Trump has caused massive heartache to immigrants:

In keeping with his March 1 order making English the official language of the United States, the president has directed the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to cancel a contract with a translation service provider, according to Government Executive magazine.

The translation service was offered to migrants calling the department for information about their status under E-Verify and other government programs.

The administration is also now directing agency call center employees to terminate any call from a caller who can’t make his needs known in English.

Yup:  as in most countries, if you don’t speak the country’s official language, you’re screwed.

Here’s the real deal.  The article linked above talks about audio translation services.  What is not discussed is the paper (and processing) cost of providing documentation to would-be immigrants — in multiple languages.

It’s complete bollocks.  Nothing screams inefficiency like having to do everything twice — or more times — which in essence is what’s being ended here.

As I’ve said countless times before, if you’re going to move to a foreign country, learn to speak its fucking home language before embarking on the journey.  Nothing is more irritating than having to deal with people from another country who insist that you speak their language in dealing with them.  It’s nothing less than a divisive and arrogant attitude, coming from people who have no right to be so in their adopted country.

As an immigrant, you’re here on sufferance, not entitlement.  And the sooner the huddled masses learn that lesson, the easier it will be for them in the long term.  Fit in or fuck off.

By Any Other Name

Good Stuff, Trumpism

So your community was trashed by a storm, and you’re about to get all sorts of relief from the .dotfedgov.

However, because you’re a bunch of woke raacists and sexxists, your announcement concerning said relief contains the following little nugget:

“Within the Small Business Support Program, the City will prioritize assistance for Minority and Women Owned Businesses (MWBE) within the scoring criteria outlined within the policies and procedures.”

In the bad old days (say, the Obama/Biden Years), this would have got nods of approval from the issuing power.

But we no longer live in those dark times, so:

Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner has decisively rejected Asheville, North Carolina’s outrageous $225 million disaster relief request.

HUD Secretary Turner condemned the city’s initial draft action plan for prioritizing assistance based on race and gender identity rather than need. “This draft action plan that the city of Asheville presented at first has elements of DEI, and that is not acceptable to HUD.
“It’s not acceptable to the President, according to his executive order to get rid of all DEI. We’re working with the city of Asheville.”

Yeah… and?

“They have been very responsive to make sure that their upcoming draft action plan is in compliance with HUD and how we give funds out according to HUD’s principles.”

HUD’s new (and proper) principles, and not the old DEI-spattered ones, that is.

MOAR like this, please.

Weather Vain

Lies and Untruths, Science!, Trumpism

Here’s a consequence of being entrusted to collect critical data, then using that data to peddle a false narrative:

The US government’s weather agency has been dismantled by the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) after it was accused of peddling “misinformation”.

Hundreds of weather forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were fired last week as part of Donald Trump’s plans to slash the federal workforce.

In total, at least 800 civil servants are thought to have lost their jobs, including meteorologists, radar specialists and crews of hurricane hunters, who fly aircraft into storms to help forecasters, according to CBS.

Of course, out come the apocalyptic doomsayers:

The job cuts have triggered protests at the agency’s headquarters in Maryland, with some scientists and lawmakers warning that removing staff involved in predicting natural disasters will “endanger American lives going forward”.

No, they won’t — at least, no more than they ever did before.  There are several other avenues of getting such warnings — from private enterprise — and not from some Gummint malignancy.

But here’s the critical part, from someone who’s been doing the hard work of tracking this nonsense for a decade and a half:

Prof Roger Pielke, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who focuses on the politicization of science, said that the agency is “reaping the whirlwind” for “cutting corners on science”.

“By not upholding the highest standards of scientific integrity, we’ve opened the door to politicians meddling,” he said.

According to experts, studies and former NOAA officials, the chart proves little about the effects of climate change, and instead shows that disasters are becoming more expensive because Americans choose to build in hazard-prone areas.

“The problem is you can’t use economic data to say anything about climate change,” said Prof Pielke.

Quite right.  Collecting data to forewarn of disaster, then using that data incorrectly and unethically to further a boutique (and flawed) worldview — that would be Global Warming Climate Cooling Change©, of course — deserves censure of the second-highest order.  (“First-order” censure would be imprisonment and so on.)

So of course this little clique of taxpayer-funded climate alarmists deserves to be shut up and disbanded.

MOAR DOGE like this, please.