Joe Biden's federal international dole-out grants are, we hope, going to crash and burn after January 2025.
Hallelujah.
Remember Ronald Reagan to the rescue?
Back then, I was directing federal grants for a bloated, multi-county Community Action Agency. I was laid off when the first Reagan federal budget cuts came in.
After all, the feds were paying my salary through their lovely grants, too. The left hand didn’t know -- or in my case was surprised by -- what the right hand was doing.
Jimmy Carter, good Democrat, had exited, leaving behind a lousy economy, inflation, and a bloated government.
President Reagan changed that; God bless him.
Best thing that ever happened to me. I went to selling advertising for a local radio station in Kentucky. It was a fun job, although I was working advertising sales on the phone, and with a then-66% hearing loss.
How did I do it? Oh well, miracles happen, and you do what you have to do. I was successful with sales, if broke for awhile — go figure.
My funny, independent boss was a radio visionary from Chicago and his -- also funny -- wife babysat for me, so that made up for her loss of a daycare work stint (also federally funded and hence cut back) and gave her some house money. So, two fed jobs lost, two independent jobs gained.
It’s way worse now of course: the American people have been gimmicked far beyond belief by Biden’s grant world. I know, because I had a career in federal grants and raised millions for a series of national non-profit “initiatives” (that buzzword was born in the ‘70’s and has served as verbal grant spending cover for decades).
The outgoing (we hope) federal grant games are very expensively operated, indeed.
See here just partial figures from fiscal year 2022 (the most recent available!), for grants in the U.S. alone, restricted to state and local governments in the United States:
The analysis in this chapter focuses on Federal spending that is provided to State and local governments, U.S. territories, and tribal governments to help fund programs administered by those entities. This type of Federal spending is known as Federal financial assistance, primarily administered as grants. In 2022, the Federal Government spent roughly $1.2 trillion, approximately 5 percent of GDP, on aid to State, local, tribal, and territorial governments. The Budget estimates $1.1 trillion in outlays for aid to State, local, tribal, and territorial governments in both 2023 and 2024. Total Federal grant spending to State and local governments is estimated to be 4 percent of GDP in 2024. (my emphasis)
Moreover, as to the recent reports on just a portion of federal grantmaking, internationally: The US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) alone granted international recipients $1.84 billion in fiscal 2022. (The latest publically available figures.)
Even more concerning than the monolithic and currently unaccountable share of national financial resources going out through grants and contracts is the extreme politization, under Biden, of funded activities, here and around the world -- as increasingly dominated by the aims of the progressive left.
I offer below six curated illustrations of egregious grant opportunities/announcements under the Biden administration (more to come, as they heave ‘their’ grant bucks not just out the door but out of every White House crevice and hidey-hole):
1: USDA
U.S. Department of Agriculture
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Higher Education Multicultural Scholars Program
One might want to ask: what does the US Dept of Agriculture have to do with a ‘Higher Education Multicultural Scholars Program’?
USDA’s Request for Proposal above is, in political reality, chiefly motivated by the desire for further outreach to and enrichment of our immigrant population, legal or otherwise.
It also reflects the Biden administration’s obsessive focus on what they consider the ‘multi-cultural’ unity we are headed for with globalism -- a unity entirely belied by recent events and conditions both here and more so, in Europe.
Another point also arises: before Biden, federal departmental grant announcements stayed mostly in their own departmental lanes of responsiility, now the fields of ‘unique’ activity are not limited to anything — other than the political agendas of the federal government. If the Department of Agriculture wants to do the work of the Department of Education, so be it. Uniparty becomes Unidepartment.
2: DOS
U.S. Department of State
Bureau of Democracy Human Rights and Labor
DRL Combatting Discrimination Against Women in Mauritania
Synopsis 1
Our tax dollars are being offered here to “Combat Discrimination Against Women in Mauritania.” Who knew? To that point, why does the Department of State have its own ‘Bureau’ to oversee ‘Democracy’ in ‘human rights and labor’ in a country that has its own government and presumably its own oversight of domestic issues?
3: DOS
Department of State
U.S. Mission to Japan
FY2024 U.S. Consulate General Osaka-Kobe: Games for Social Change Program
Synopsis 2
“Games for Social Change.”
We can guess that this is meant to further current federal domestic emphases on the ‘social changes’ brought about in the past few years. That is, we export a reimagining, in ‘Games,’ for such ‘changes’ as transgenderism, DEI, gender modification, climate change denialism, etc. In Japan?
4: DOS
Department of State
U.S. Mission to Japan
Workshop Series Supporting Future Female Political Candidate
Synopsis 1
This would be, one can guess, one fledgling ‘grant’ effort (among many) on the part of the outgoing federal administration, in its persistence to turn the tide globally towards its own political preferences: in this case, ‘women in politics.’ Whether a sincere concern, or the virtue-signaling of Biden’s Left, can the U.S. afford such idiotic political meddling in a federal department originated for diplomacy? Also, in Japan?
5: DOE
U.S. Department of Energy
Golden Field Office
Request for Information: Supercritical Carbon Dioxide-Based Turbomachinery for Concentrating Solar-Thermal Power Plants
Synopsis 2
The above was not a grant announcement- rather a ‘request for information,’ paving the way for further grants in infrastructure energy provision, as related to the much-disputed carbon-to-solar push on the part of the federal government, our leading ‘climate change’ lobbyist. (Note: the ‘Golden Field Office’ is California.)
6: HHS
Department of Health and Human Services
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
State Opioid Response (SOR)/Tribal Opioid Response (TOR) Technical Assistance
We can see where this is going: one of Biden’s monstrous Band-Aids -- administered through grant awards of dubious merit or effect. It is presumably in response to a crisis that Department of Homeland Security has exacerbated by aiding and abetting the flow of a tsunami of illegal drugs from our ‘borders.’
This beauty also serves as a ‘DEI’ nod to ‘Native Americans’ (‘Tribal’ now) -- as they are, by report, sorely affected by opioids. Yet many thousands, in every state, are increasingly ‘affected’ by opioids -- to the point of death. For those very ill and/or dying, tribal or otherwise, Technical Assistance’ is not on the bucket list.
The federal grants process as it stands in 2024 is most likely beyond redemption.
Charles Dickens’ ‘Office of Circumlocution’ said it all:
Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving — HOW NOT TO DO IT. Through this delicate perception, through the tact with which it invariably seized it, and through the genius with which it always acted on it, the Circumlocution Office had risen to overtop all the public departments; and the public condition had risen to be — what it was.
Under Biden Inc., our ‘public condition’ has also risen to be — 'what it is.’
We hope that’s about to change.
Victoria White Berger earned her dual B.A. in English and History from Duke University and her M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Missouri at St. Louis. Her Master of Philosophy thesis, “Cause and Reason in Intentional Action” is widely read internationally. Her writing can be found at American Thinker, The American Spectator, Louisiana’s Dead Pelican, and on her Substack account: https://victoriawhiteberger.substack.com/.
Image: Gresham College, via Flickr // public domain
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