Comment by lesuorac
9 days ago
> I would love to hear justifications for things like this and how they help US global influence.
Largely the justification is the programs don't do what Musk says they do.
You've got to understand the source of your information is from habitual liars. The Tesla's autopilot [1] marketing video still starts of with "The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself". That person in the driver's seat had to take control of the car numerous times include one time where the car drove off the road and struck a fence. These are not people whose word you can take at face value.
Anybody can throw together a list but it doesn't make it real.
You can look them up on the actual government website:
https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_72052024FA00001_7...
> ACTIVITY TO STRENGTHEN TRANS-LED ORGANIZATIONS TO DELIVER GENDER-AFFIRMING HEALTH CARE
This is 2M of my tax dollars that was/is being sent to Guatemala for gender affirming care. Which is sex change operations and hormones.
Ignoring the fact you left off the rest of the description (as pointed out by another commenter) which also means that like $2 could go towards that purpose and $1,999,998 to something else (also $2M hasn't been spent; just $350,000 per your own link ...).
The quote you have starts of with "Activity to strengthen" which is uh incredibly vague. Like if you provide say _leadership training_ that sounds like an activity that could strengthen an organization as well as create individuals that could organize to promote Democratic values in their home country and promote good will towards the US for helping them out (unlike say what goes on in Iran). So there's so far no evidence it's surgery or pills.
Even if it is strictly gender-affirming care that does not mean it's surgery and pills. Gender affirming care is more vague than that [1].
And then finally, even if somehow none of the funds are for "ADVOCATE FOR IMPROVED QUALITY AND ACCESS TO SERVICES, AND PROVIDE ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT OPPORTUNITIES." (the part you left off) and the funds for "ACTIVITY TO STRENGTHEN TRANS-LED ORGANIZATIONS TO DELIVER GENDER-AFFIRMING HEALTH CARE" are strictly for surgeries; there appears to be ~0.95% of the US identifying as transgender so spending 0.0000002% of the federal budget seems uh fair (or really 0.00000006% of the federal budget because it's over 3 years while the budget is annual).
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Ol' Musk isn't working at Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity, or any of his other companies right now. He has the time to ask people and figure out if it's actually sex-changes or something else (it's always something else btw).
[1]: https://opa.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/2025-02/gender-affir...
“Advocate for improved quality and access to services”
The “services” here is gender affirming care. What does it mean to “advocate”? Why are my tax dollars being used for this?
Yes it is vague, the vagueness just helps to strengthen the argument that this is probably a waste of taxpayer dollars.
> just $350,000
“ONLY 350k”
Dude 350k is a lot of money, and yeah, by canceling the contract we actually saved the American tax payers the remainder of the money. This is great news and we can use that money towards paying down the national debt or returning it to the hardworking American people.
I want none of my tax dollars to go towards any part of the description.
Your argument seems to be “it’s not very much money”. And you’re not understanding that we the American people do not want any of our tax money being wasted on this. This is why you lost the election, and in the long term you will continue to lose future elections if you don’t change the attitude towards this stuff.
Answer the question honestly, if a politician campaigned on promising to send taxpayer money for gender affirming care in foreign countries, do you think that they would get more or less votes on net because of it?
> so spending 0.0000002% of the federal budget
The only acceptable % of my tax dollars that should go to a foreign nation for trans care is 0%.
I pay a lot of taxes, and the signaling from the left is always that I need to “pay my fair share” and that taxes are so good because they are used to pay for roads and bridges and schools etc.
But when we actually start examining where the dollars are going we get into weird arguments about soft power and gender affirming care in foreign nations. And your arguments for paying our fair share don’t hold up at all anymore because these dollars are not even going to help Americans, this is basically charity for foreign countries. It’s easy to be charitable when you’re spending other people’s money. I bet you are not donating your own personal money to “advocate” for gender affirming care in Guatemala.
1 reply →
Why did you leave out the rest?
> ACTIVITY TO STRENGTHEN TRANS-LED ORGANIZATIONS TO DELIVER GENDER-AFFIRMING HEALTH CARE, ADVOCATE FOR IMPROVED QUALITY AND ACCESS TO SERVICES, AND PROVIDE ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT OPPORTUNITIES.
It's 2M for a lot of things. And let's be real, you didn't pay 2M in taxes, you don't really get to say this is "your" tax dollars. This is a lot of people's money, and they may want their money to go to these things. Why do you get the final say?
Are you this stupid naturally or do you take some sort of Alex Jones supplement to help with it?