If their time and energy are limited, the highest impact actions would be reducing the mortgage/rent or increasing income. And it's questionable whether foreign aid is a "streaming subscription" or a "gym membership" expenditure. Assuming you regularly go to the gym maybe keeping it will help you get a better job.
"Even Mexico's elections were very recently manipulated by USAID" - according to one politician.
The article only named 2 groups that received USAID funding:
Mexicans against Corruption and Impunity
Article 19 (a free speech group)
Now I don't know if these groups do what their names advertise. But Mexico is a sovereign state. If its government thinks it's against the national interest for Mexican non-profits to receive foreign money, they are free to pass laws to do so. And far more likely to work than telling a foreign government to "please stop sending money".
It's very common for politicians to point to federal staffing levels as some sort of measure of waste and bloat, but those numbers have been increasingly deceptive since the era of Reagan. Essentially, government has grown in its budget and scope but staffing numbers have not matched that increase because many agencies have instead staffed projects and roles with contractors instead.
This is worst in all accounts: there is no accurate count of how many contractors work for the federal govt (vs. federal employees), they generally are more expensive to hire than staffers and they get trained up on the public's dime and then walk out the door to other projects meaning the agency doesn't benefit from their upskilling like they would if they were internal employees.
With 18F, USDS and digital services within agencies, the government had been trying to reverse its dependency on external contractors to ship code. DOGE eliminated many of those people – you could argue one of its goals was to make government more dependent on vendors and contractors. There is now a new Tech Force initiative, but it seems like it's mainly a way for companies like Palantir to embed junior staff within agencies to find new places to sell software.
Actually climate is determined by cumulative CO2 emitted. The US and Europe have emitted far more than China ever has.
As of today, solar and batteries are the cheapest source of electricity. All the "poor countries in Asia and Africa", except the ones that have oil and gas, will leapfrog straight to renewables. It just makes good sense, unless your politicians are paid off by the fossil fuel lobby.
Pretend China is 20 countries. Each country now has lower emissions than the US. Anyone can play that stupid game. Give up the games, think about solutions. China is working hard. Are we?
> Nuclear theoretically should be much, much cheaper than it is if it were not for the regulatory costs thrust upon it
Solar and wind theoretically would also be much, much cheaper if not for the regulatory costs. [1]
Everything is regulated and all regulations have costs. I'm not morally opposed to nuclear energy. Is there a comprehensive study on which specific safety regulations are unnecessary and the LCOE if they were removed?
You can do a thought experiment. A nuclear plant and a coal generator are very similar. They heat water to turn turbines to generate electricity. So best case scenario a nuclear plant costs the same as a coal plant, and has negligible operating costs in comparison.
A coal plant costs $5B/GW to build, vs the > $20B/GW a nuclear plant costs.
It doesnt really imply that though does it. It just means the climate is changing. IMO this is why there was a big pushback against it for a long time, the term used to describe it does not infer anything wrong.
All amazing ideas (I mean that seriously) but unfortunately not within the IRS's power to make happen.
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