Comment by Dig1t
8 days ago
lol these are my tax dollars! I’m sorry, I have nothing against gay people, but I do not want my tax dollars going to sex change operations in Guatemala.
We have people in CA affected by fires, people in Carolina who still need help rebuilding after flooding, people in Hawaii that need to rebuild after their own fires.
Did you know that most of FEMAs budget was spent housing migrants who crossed the border illegally instead of helping Americans affected by hurricanes?
The current situation is one where bureaucrats and NGOs enrich themselves off the back of taxpayers and the problems that actually need solving in our own country go completely unsolved.
We voted to cut all of this garbage, if they can’t spend it wisely then just pay down the national debt, which is at crisis levels BTW, or give it back to the taxpayers.
> these are my tax dollars!
These are not "Your" tax dollars.
Some of them are other peoples tax dollars that do want this.
So do as my father had and claim that "your" taxes mean you "own" least 1 E4 and a couple of E-2/3's in the military--or whatever your preferred interest is and let the other American tax dollars pay for the things they want. Because You, personally, did not fund the entire US budget. It is not all "your" taxes.
> Some of them are other peoples tax dollars that do want this.
Well then those people can take their money and donate it directly to the causes they care about. They do not need to use my tax money for it.
Yes actually some of this money WAS mine. I paid into this system (actually I was forced to under threat of violence), and I do not want my money being spent on this. I would rather keep my own money or have it used on paying down the national debt.
All money spent by the government is ultimately taxation, if it doesn’t come directly from taxpayers it comes from us in the form of inflation. i.e. printing more money than there is value in the economy.
> I paid into this system (actually I was forced to under threat of violence), and I do not want my money being spent on this.
You were only "forced" to if you wanted to continue to enjoy the benefit of being a US citizen/working in the US. I love a good anti-tax American essay just as much as the next person, but I also love this country and will pay my due even when that due pays for the salaries of politicians and their staff that I don't agree with (I don't want my taxes to pay for them--but life as an adult can be hard); you really do not come off as someone that wants to be a part of that or this country, but on an libertarian island. You may be more interested in Seasteading[0]
If you don't like being a contributing member of the US (who by acts of bipartisanship in US congress decided where the money goes), you are free to renounce your citizenship (assuming you are a citizen) and leave the country; if you are already outside the country then you are almost there, simply hand in your passport and file the paper work at the nearest US embassy. And never pay US taxes again. Problem solved.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasteading
I also pay into the the system, and I want to spend my tax dollars on all the things you don't want to. Moreover, I want to defund all the services which benefit you personally. Where does that leave us as a society?
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I don't know if there's any evidence that your tax dollars went to sex change operations in Guatemala.
$350k (out of $2 million) was given to ASOCIACION LAMBDA. Yes, gender affirming care is mentioned in the description but that could mean almost anything. [1]
If you look at what they promote it's mostly about gender equality and protecting people from violence. Workshops, safe spaces, collecting statistics, some HIV testing stuff. [2][3][4][5]
I'm not saying it's impossible but I haven't seen any evidence and the people making the claims are known chronic liars.
And most of FEMA's budget was not spent on housing illegal migrants. Disaster relief funding is separate and much larger than Shelter and Services Program funding[6][7][8], as ordered by Congress in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023. [9]
[1] https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_72052024FA00001_7...
[2] https://www.asociacion-lambda.org/
[3] https://www.instagram.com/asoclambda/
[4] https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/featurestori...
[5] https://gt.usembassy.gov/2023-human-rights-report-guatemala/
[6] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/false-claims-f...
[7] https://apnews.com/article/fema-migrants-nyc-funding-luxury-...
[8] https://www.fema.gov/grants/preparedness/shelter-services-pr...
[9] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/2617...
Don’t waste your time researching facts for people like this. They will not even take the courtesy of responding, and cannot be bothered to consider an alternative angle to their ideology.
very correct and important advice (not being sarcastic)
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/usaid-guatemala-gender-aff...
This is just a long list of excuses.
How hard is it to understand we shouldn’t be spending money on foreigners when Americans go without? That seems like a basic rule that everyone agrees with.
And “most of FEMA’s money” is a cop out. 0% of FEMA’s money should be spent on anything other than Americans in need after a disaster.
It’s this kind of “oh, come on it’s not a big deal” that resulted in the trouncing the Democrats got. It’s talking down to Americans like they are stupid.
You can ctrl+f 'shelter' in the bill. It was not really FEMA's money, it was U.S. Customs and Border Protection money that was transferred to FEMA to disburse (probably for efficiency because FEMA already did similar work).
"I-don't-want-to-fund-sex-changes" is an emotional and possibly moral argument, it's made to get people angry at how their money is being spent.
Not wanting to spend money on foreigners at all is a completely different argument, that's generally not made probably because you get similar emotional arguments of feeding starving children. Or you get non-emotional arguments like projecting soft power and fighting disease epidemics before they reach us.
We're a nation of laws. The USAID and FEMA money is set in law by Congress. I disagree with how a lot of money is spent too. But that's why we vote and communicate to our representatives and have them change the law.
Bill Clinton's administration reduced the deficit and had a surplus. It reduced the federal workforce. It decreased spending and increased revenue. But it was done legally by working with both parties and unions and passing bills in Congress.
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> How hard is it to understand we shouldn’t be spending money on foreigners when Americans go without?
Cool, so you're cutting all corporate welfare, closing all US military bases in foreign countries, and ceasing sending bombs to Israel then, right? Or does it only count as spending money on foreigners when it's something you don't like?
This is a nice idea but the people doing the cutting are not looking to provide for the people. Part of what they’re cutting is Medicaid, for instance.
If they had communicated they wanted to balance the budget to provide for Americans that would be one thing, but they have communicated they will instead cut taxes for corporations with the money saved from Medicaid and foreign aid. Americans will have to go without more.
This would make sense if they introduced any policy to actually help Americans lol. They are trying to cut benefits to Americans and foreigners. The current administration has literally talked about conditioning aid to California for the wildfires. What an absolute joke.
Strange that elsewhere you're asking people to provide "adult arguments", but as soon as people actually provide solid arguments you immediately devolve into rants and emotions.
America doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is in American interests to have a stable, prosperous, happy rest of the world to engage with.
> How hard is it to understand we shouldn’t be spending money on foreigners when Americans go without?
How hard is to start with this argument? Elon Musk is certainly making more Americans "go without" than he is cutting off "overseas sex changes".
> I have nothing against gay people,
You don't get to dictate that to other people after going on a rant specifically about gay people. I mean you can, but nobody's gonna buy it. You need to realize that perception is reality, and the perception here is you are very narrow minded. More concerned with taking condoms away from gay people than you are with saving your own country from a 20 year old gang of fascists who stole your SSN on a USB stick and stood up a blank WordPress site to brag about it.
— $6.3 million for men who have sex with men in South Africa
See, you can't paraphrase to add (what you view as) negative connotation and then claim "I have nothing against gay people." The money did not go to South Africa with the earmark "so gay men can have sex with gay men." It went to something you don't see the value in. It went to something you think is unimportant. Like HIV medication, or STD prevention, or treatment, or gasp a $.50 condom that maybe prevented a diesease. The takeaway for you is this; your anti-LGBT bias clearly shows through. You are not as middle-of-the-road as you think you are. Sir, you are brainwashed. This is not about cost. This is about regulating others and preventing lifestyles you disagree with from having access to medical care. You think that by deincentivizing LGBTQ activities you can regulate LGBTQ culture. Good luck.
> We voted to cut all of this garbage
Yeah, well we both voted for a lot of this garbage that was created by a BYPARTISAN ACT OF CONGRESS. Your orange clown has no right acting like a king in a country that we all built together. Your vote shouldn't be able to erase all of mine. The government was built with checks and balances. Respect them.
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South Africa has the most people infected with HIV by far. [1] It's a bit crazy to me that it's not listed in their key issues as more than 1 in 10 adults (maybe even 1 in 5) in South Africa have HIV.
HIV-positive gay men are at a higher risk of transmission for obvious reasons [2] and I can think of a lot of good reasons for the US to want to fight infectious diseases in other countries.
I assume the $6.3 million is really $4.3 million here[3], of which $1.9 million was given to 'OUT LGBT WELL-BEING'[4] for 'ENGAGE MEN’S HEALTH: COMPREHENSIVE HEALTH SERVICES FOR MSM IN SOUTH AFRICA ACTIVITY'.
If you look at the health services they provide in [4] it's testing/screening for HIV, it's HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, etc. In 2021 they had two mobile health teams providing those services to gay men. [5][page 14]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV_adult_prevalence_rate
[2] https://hivinfo.nih.gov/understanding-hiv/fact-sheets/hiv-an...
[3] https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_72067423FA00008_7...
[4] https://web.archive.org/web/20240715043923/https://out.org.z...
[5] https://out.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/OUT_Annual_Rep...
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You're providing a public service of sorts by demonstrating in real-time how certain people are so easily triggered, distracted and manipulated by minutiae. $6.3 million is nothing—not even a rounding error. But, throw "gay" in there and now it's the point.
It's like the entire existence of a swath of the population has become about ensuring gay people get no consideration and no trans person ever plays a women's sport. That's it. And, if it takes replacing democracy with fascism, well dammit, it's worth it.
There is no woke mind virus. But there's certainly an anti-woke mind virus.
> We have people in CA affected by fires, people in Carolina who still need help rebuilding after flooding, people in Hawaii that need to rebuild after their own fires.
Trump wants to end all federal disaster relief.
And he literally dumped billions of gallons of water from their reservoirs[1] that they needed to fight future fires. To nobody’s benefit, mind you, and at a great expense.
[1](https://stocktonia.org/news/california-water/2025/02/01/trum...)
> lol these are my tax dollars!
No, those dollars have been extorted from you fair and square. You have no control over who gets the spoils.
True. But I can vote for someone who ensure my tax dollars are going where I want them to go.
fine. they should do it legally, not fascistically
Hard to take anyone seriously who rambles about anything other than corporate welfare and income inequality. Anything to distract from class. Now you're sitting there typing up diatribes about sex change operations in Guatemala.