The Engine That Feeds The Golden Triangle Of Corruption

     Loans made by one government to another do not answer to any of the proper conditions of credit. The money lent belongs to the people of the lending nation, not to the officials who grant the loan; and it becomes a charge upon the people of the borrowing nation, not upon the officials who negotiate the loan and spend the money. There is no collateral, and no means of collection by civil action. If the debt is not paid, war or the threat of war is the only recourse. Meantime private production is wrecked; the economy of the lending nation has to meet the capital loss; while the economy of the borrowing nation is loaded with the dead weight of government projects (buildings, armies, etc.) for which the money is spent. It is an infallible formula for disaster.

     [Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine ]

     Many have questioned the practice of “foreign aid” at a time when the United States cannot even balance its own books. They have a point, though it pales in comparison to the shattering indictment of the practice cited above. But as if we needed an additional reason to halt the scam immediately and forever more, we have these observations:

     Foreign aid often serves as a philanthropic-sounding euphemism that masks self-dealing. American elites give other Americans’ money to foreign elites often under the guise of providing it to the people of the recipient nation. In return, American elites — or, in most cases, their immediate family members — profit from business deals in recipient nations with state-sponsored, state-created, or state-favored enterprises. This scenario occurred with Hunter Biden. And given the domestic outrage over Russia attempting to influence U.S. politics, the Biden influence over Kiev surely rankled many Ukrainians.

     Indeed.

     The money that flows through the golden triangle of corruption must have a source, of course. In many a case, the source is American foreign aid. It’s isn’t just foreign autocrats who enrich themselves at that trough, as the Biden psychodrama-in-progress should make quite clear.

     It’s been observed many times and in many places how the application of American dollars in other countries has failed to achieve anything resembling the results routinely observed in America. Even with American experts to oversee construction, roads paid for by American foreign aid often come completely apart with a single change of seasons. Hospitals intended to serve the commoners of the land are staffed by political cronies and relatives of the powerful who draw fat salaries though frequently drunk on the job. Some such “doctors” never treat a single patient. The “medicines” they stock are often just distilled water in convincing vials and bottles. As for schools built with foreign aid...no, please, my stomach hasn’t settled enough for that.

     But local potentates get very, very wealthy. And to ensure that the flow of aid dollars is not interrupted, some of the swag is rerouted to influential American politicians like former vice president Joseph Biden – but discreetly, through a relative like Biden’s son Hunter, so there’s no direct connection an enterprising investigator might find.

     And it’s your money, and mine.

     Inasmuch as foreign aid, whether bestowed as loans of outright grants, is nowhere authorized by the Constitution, why is it that so few persons have even bothered to question the practice? And why is it that when a voice is raised in protest, such as Senator Rand Paul has done, he’s dismissed as a crackpot or worse? Are we still under the spell of Lend-Lease?

     Actually, it’s worse. Every dollar any American ever earns depends for its value on the scarcity of dollars versus the abundance of goods and services. Thus, the very idea that the federal government routinely prints more dollars to pay for its profligacies, thus watering down the value of the dollars we strain to earn and struggle to save, should be a cause for white-hot outrage. But to add to that infamy that billions of those dollars are “lent” or given outright to other countries where they enrich autocrats and their hangers-on should have us peasants checking our guns. That American politicians, their relatives, and their business partners are profiting from the sewer of foreign aid should be the final straw that gets the lampposts of the District of Columbia redecorated with politicians’ and bureaucrats’ corpses.

     So why hasn’t it happened? Anyone? Bueller?