Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Trump Defunds WHO and USPS: Will Motherhood and Apple Pie Be Next?

Yes, Trump is out to cut the roughly half a billion $ US contribution to the $6 billion budget of the World Hea viruslth Organization (WHO).  It seems that he now sees his path to reelection to be based on blaming China for the coronavirus and the WHO for supposedly supporting China in their supposedly nefarious conduct, alloeing hin to wallow in  fit of xenophobia as well as accusations against Joe Biden for being "soft on China."  Certainly China was slow to act against the virus, although not as slow as Trump and his team here in the US, and the WHO may well have been too soliciitous of China and its interests. But the WHo remains the central organization for  coordination the global response to thie situation.  This is simply stupid in terms of fighting the virus.

And then we have him going out of his way to demand that funds for the nearly bankrupt US Postal Service (USPS) be removed from the recent stimulus bill. GOPs in Congress have burdened them with having to fund future pensions at a level no other entity in the nation has to do, and, of course their business is in long term decline.  But apparently the USPS is the single most popular federal agencyy there is, with a 90% popularity rating, putting it ahead of even NASA and the National Park Service.  That the government should support it is written into the Constitution. But, hey, it delivers packages for Amazon, whose owner owns the Washington Post, which says bad things about him, not to mention if USPS can be shut  down, then all these Dem proposals to have people mail in their votes can be quashed, and as we have seen in Wisconsin, making it hard for people to submit ballots by mail is really popular.

Anyway, at this rate, I expect Trump's next move to be to defund entities supporting motherhood and apple pie.

Barkley Rosser

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Trump is out to cut the roughly half a billion $ US contribution...

[ That is actually $237 billion a year, and I believe we are significantly behind in payments. ]

Anonymous said...

Trump is out to cut the roughly half a billion $ US contribution...

[ No, I am wrong, the annual US assessment is $118 million or $236 million every 2 years and we are significantly behind in payments.

https://www.who.int/about/finances-accountability/funding/AC_Status_Report_2020.pdf?ua=1 ]

Anonymous said...

The US is assessed by WHO at $118 annually and we currently owe $40 million:

https://www.who.int/about/finances-accountability/funding/AC_Status_Report_2020.pdf?ua=1 ]

Anonymous said...

After motherhood and apple pie, promoting demonstrations against sensible actions by Governors will be next.

ken melvin said...

If possible, Trump wouldn't test; he'd prefer to give his own numbers. Trump doesn't do reality.