Recently, giga-billionaire Elon Musk met on Capitol Hill with Republican senators who, on average, are millionaires, so top-level, the people that are going to figure out what to cut mostly from Americans with middle-class salaries and income and net worths. Mostly, it’s going to be an unelected bureaucrat named Elon Musk, who hasn’t won anything, and who has hundreds of billions of dollars, working in concert with millionaire Republicans. Fine, that’s where we are starting.
The average Social Security benefit is $1,700 per month, and when they came out of that meeting, Republicans and Fox News reported it, everything is on the table. Nothing is sacrosanct. Was the phraseology that they used, meaning we would consider, do we make cuts to Medicare? Do we make cuts to Medicaid? Do we make cuts to Social Security? Now, some were surprised by this, and I’ve been talking extensively about how there are a lot of people who voted for Trump who are about to get crushed and punished, and it’s going to happen more to those red-state Trump voters than anybody else.
It’s time to face a mathematical reality. If the incoming Trump administration really wants to cut the $2.5
trillion that they’ve said they want to cut, you either need to cut all discretionary spending, not going to happen, or you need to start cutting from Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. How do we know this? Because of second grade arithmetic, let me explain. And first, let me back up a little bit recently, giga billionaire Elon Musk met on Capitol Hill with Republican senators who, on average, are millionaires, so top level the people that are going to figure out what to cut mostly from Americans with middle class salaries and income and net worths. Mostly it’s going to be an unelected bureaucrat named Elon Musk, who hasn’t won anything, and who has hundreds of billions of dollars working in concert with millionaire Republicans. Fine, that’s where we are starting. The average Social Security benefit is $1,700
per month, and when they came out of that meeting, Republicans and Fox News reported it, everything is on the table. Nothing is sacrosanct. Was the phraseology that they used, meaning we would consider, do we make cuts to Medicare? Do we make cuts to Medicaid? Do we make cuts to Social Security? Now, some were surprised by this, and I’ve been talking extensively about how there are a lot of people who voted for Trump who are about to get crushed and punished, and it’s going to happen more to those red state Trump voters than than anybody else. I’ll explain why Trump is, again, said I’d like to get rid of Obamacare, all right. Well, a lot of blue states have health care exchanges so that everybody, regardless of ability to pay, can get health care if Obamacare goes away. If you live in California or Connecticut or Massachusetts or New York, they have state exchanges. It’s not really going to make a difference for you, those states have done the Medicaid expansion. They’re good. However, if you live in a red state that does not have its own health care exchange, has not done the Medicaid expansion, if Trump succeeds, and Maga Mike Johnson said, we’re going to try to get rid of Obamacare. If they succeed, it’s the red state voters that will quickly find themselves without health care and without the ability to afford care that they might need. Similarly, similarly when it comes to this social security safety net thing, it is going to overwhelmingly impact a lot of these rural, lower and lower middle class Trump voters in red states who said, Yeah, we like Trump. And now the math of it points to Social Security cuts. Now let’s get back to the math of it. The budget has three major components. It has mandatory spending, which is stuff we’re committed to spend Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. It has discretionary spending, a whole bunch of other programs, and then we have interest on debt. Those are the three components. The interest on the debt you have to pay. You can negotiate pauses, etc, but you’re not going to just cut it. You can’t just say we don’t owe anybody any money anymore, as Republicans often like to remind us, the discretionary part of the annual budget is 2.5 trillion. My math tells me that if you want to cut 2.5 trillion and the discretionary budget is 2.5 trillion, that means that unless you touch mandatory spending like Social Security, you must cut 100%
of discretionary spending, that’s not a serious proposal. And so where that leaves us mathematically is that if you’re surprised to be hearing Republicans now say we’re going to consider social security, nothing is sacrosanct. We’re thinking about it. If you’re surprised to be hearing that, it’s because you didn’t do simple second grade arithmetic, which is to say, can they get 2.5 trillion without touching Social Security only if they cut all of it? And they’re not going to cut all of it, because it’s a country and it has stuff it needs to spend money on. I guess it’s coming out of Social Security. Now, if you’re hearing this and getting immediately worried, I can give you a couple of optimistic words. Number one, hopefully Trump will fail, right? I mean, that’s one aspect. Hopefully it’s not actually going to succeed at happening, because Republicans are going to say, Wait a second, we will all lose re election if we actually start cutting Social Security. That’s number one. Number two, and this is a small saving grace. It.
May only affect people who aren’t yet receiving benefits. So what the way they may do it, if they do is that if you’re already retired and receiving benefits, your benefits don’t change, but if you’re currently paying into the system, you’re what you can expect to get is going to decline. It’s not really a saving grace, but at least you would have a little more time to plan for it. It’s a disaster. It’s a disaster, but this is what they voted for, and this is what they’re going to get so.⍐
Indian External Affairs Minister to begin US visit; future ties may still face challenges: analyst
《 ByLiu Xin Published: Dec 24, 2024 Global Times 》
Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar is set to begin a visit to the US on Tuesday, with plans to meet both the Biden administration officials and members of the Trump transition team. Some Chinese analysts said that the visit aim to maintain consistency in US-India relations and ensure the continuity of the US' "Indo-Pacific Strategy," but future ties between the two countries may still face challenges.
Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar Photo: AFP
Jaishankar will visit the US from December 24 to 29. He will be meeting counterparts to discuss key bilateral, regional and global issues. During the visit, Jaishankar will also chair a conference of the Consul Generals of India in the US, according to a release from India's Ministry of External Affairs on Monday.
The timing of this visit is linked to the impending transition in the US government, and India hopes to use this moment to maintain the consistency of US-India relations and ensure the continuity and stability of the US' "Indo-Pacific Strategy," Liu Zongyi, director of the Center for South Asia Studies at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, told the Global Times on Tuesday.
Jaishankar may urge the Biden administration to honor previous agreements, particularly regarding technology transfers, to avoid changes in the new administration, Liu said.
The Hindu cited sources as saying that the Biden administration is keen to schedule one last meeting of the national security advisor-level initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET) before demitting office.
According to The Wire, the iCET, launched in February 2023, focuses on technology transfer negotiations, including the GE-F414 jet engine deal.
The Hindu reported that Jaishankar and Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, who is already in Washington for Foreign Office Consultations (FOC), are expected to engage with members of the Trump transition team.
Recent incidents, including the indictment of Indian billionaire Gautam Adani by US authorities and the assassination attempt on a Sikh activist, have strained US-India relations, Liu said, noting that India does not want to see deterioration of bilateral ties and it is seeking to engage with the Trump team on critical issues such as tariffs and immigration.
While India has actively engaged in the US' "Indo-Pacific Strategy," which is seen by India as aligns with its own strategic ambitions and it seeks to prevent US withdrawal from the region under the new administration, however future US-India ties, and cooperation between the two countries may still face challenges due to historical factors and India's national characteristics, Liu said.⍐
Starbucks strike to expand to over 300 US stores on Christmas Eve, union says
《 By Gursimrankaur Mehar, Bipasha Dey and Savyata Mishra December 24, 2024》
Dec 24 (Reuters) - A strike at Starbuckswill expand to over 300 U.S. stores on Tuesday, with more than 5,000 workers expected to walk off the job before the five-day work stoppage ends later on Christmas Eve, the workers' union said.
Starbucks, which operates more than 10,000 company-operated stores across the United States, said 98% of its stores remained open, with around 170 stores closed on Tuesday.
The workers union claimed more than 290 stores were "fully shut down", and more than 300 stores were on strike as planned across 45 U.S. states.
The Christmas Eve strike on Tuesday is projected to be the largest ever at the coffee chain, Starbucks Workers United said. "These strikes are an initial show of strength, and we're just getting started," an Oregon barista said in a union statement.
The union, representing employees at 525 stores nationwide, has called strikes across 12 major cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Boston and Seattle, over issues of wages, staffing and schedules.
The strike began on Friday after talks between Starbucks and the union hit an impasse.
Item 1 of 5 Workers picket in front of a Starbucks in the Brooklyn borough in New York, U.S. December 23, 2024. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
Workers picket in front of a Starbucks in the Brooklyn borough in New York, U.S. December 23, 2024. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz, opens new tab
Starbucks declined to comment on the estimated impact to overall operations from the strike after having earlier said the expected impact was "very limited".
"They're (Starbucks) probably right with respect to no explicit topline impact," said Sean Dunlop, a Morninstar analyst.
Earlier this month, the workers' group rejected an offer of no immediate wage raises and a guarantee of a 1.5% pay increase in future years.The union has also said that Starbucks was yet to present its workers with "a serious economic proposal."
"We are ready to continue negotiations when the union comes back to the bargaining table," the company said.
Starbucks had previously claimed that the union delegates prematurely ended the bargaining session.⍐
Global hunger crisis deepens as major nations skimp on aid
《 By Jaimi Dowdell, Kaylee Kang, Benjamin Lesser and Raymon Troncoso December 24, 2024》
Orphans and children separated from their parents in Kadugli gather to eat boiled leaves at an IDP Camp within the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) controlled area in Boram County, Nuba Mountains, South Kordofan, Sudan June 22, 2024. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya/File Photo , opens new tab
Summary
Global hunger is rising, but total humanitarian aid from wealthy nations to UN is shrinking
UN projects at least 117 million will go without aid in 2025
Germany, a top U.N. humanitarian donor, is reducing aid funding
Relief agencies fear possible cuts from top donor US after Trump takes office
China and India, among the world’s top five economies, contribute less than 1% of U.N. humanitarian aid
Dec 24 (Reuters) - It’s a simple but brutal equation: The number of people going hungry or otherwise struggling around the world is rising, while the amount of money the world’s wealthiest nations are contributing toward helping them is dropping.
The result: The United Nations says that, at best, it will be able to raise enough money to help about 60% of the 307 million people it predicts will need humanitarian aid next year. That means at least 117 million people won’t get food or other assistance in 2025.
The U.N. also will end 2024 having raised about 46% of the $49.6 billion it sought for humanitarian aid across the globe, its own data shows. It’s the second year in a row the world body has raised less than half of what it sought. The shortfall has forced humanitarian agencies to make agonizing decisions, such as slashing rations for the hungry and cutting the number of people eligible for aid.
The consequences are being felt in places like Syria, where the World Food Program (WFP), the U.N.’s main food distributor, used to feed 6 million people. Eyeing its projections for aid donations earlier this year, the WFP cut the number it hoped to help there to about 1 million people, said Rania Dagash-Kamara, the organization’s assistant executive director for partnerships and resource mobilization.
Dagash-Kamara visited the WFP's Syria staff in March. “Their line was, ‘We are at this point taking from the hungry to feed the starving,’” she said in an interview.
U.N. officials see few reasons for optimism at a time of widespread conflict, political unrest and extreme weather, all factors that stoke famine. “We have been forced to scale back appeals to those in most dire need,” Tom Fletcher, U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, told Reuters.
Financial pressures and shifting domestic politics are reshaping some wealthy nations’ decisions about where and how much to give. One of the U.N.’s largest donors – Germany – already shaved $500 million in funding from 2023 to 2024 as part of general belt tightening. The country’s cabinet has recommended another $1 billion reduction in humanitarian aid for 2025. A new parliament will decide next year’s spending plan after the federal election in February.
Humanitarian organizations also are watching to see what U.S. President-elect Donald Trump proposes after he begins his second term in January.
Trump advisers have not said how he will approach humanitarian aid, but he sought to slash U.S. funding in his first term. And he has hired advisers who say there is room for cuts in foreign aid.
The U.S. plays the leading role in preventing and combating starvation across the world. It provided $64.5 billion in humanitarian aid over the last five years. That was at least 38% of the total such contributions recorded by the U.N.
SHARING THE WEALTH
The majority of humanitarian funding comes from just three wealthy donors: the U.S., Germany and the European Commission. They provided 58% of the $170 billion recorded by the U.N. in response to crises from 2020 to 2024.
Three other powers – China, Russia and India – collectively contributed less than 1% of U.N.-tracked humanitarian funding over the same period, according to a Reuters review of U.N. contributions data.
The inability to close the funding gap is one of the major reasons the global system for tackling hunger and preventing famine is under enormous strain. The lack of adequate funding – coupled with the logistical hurdles of assessing need and delivering food aid in conflict zones, where many of the worst hunger crises exist – is taxing efforts to get enough aid to the starving. Almost 282 million people in 59 countries and territories were facing high levels of acute food insecurity in 2023. Reuters is documenting the global hunger-relief crisis in a series of reports, including from hard-hit Sudan, Myanmar and Afghanistan.
The failure of major nations to pull their weight in funding for global initiatives has been a persistent Trump complaint. Project 2025, a set of policy proposals drawn up by Trump backers for his second term, calls on humanitarian agencies to work harder to collect more funding from other donors and says this should be a condition for additional U.S. aid.
On the campaign trail, Trump tried to distance himself from the controversial Project 2025 blueprint. But after winning the election, he chose one of its key architects, Russell Vought, to run the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, a powerful body that helps decide presidential priorities and how to pay for them. For secretary of state, the top U.S. diplomat, he tapped Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who has a record of supporting foreign aid.
A WFP worker stands next to a truck carrying aid from Port Sudan to Sudan, November 12, 2024. WFP/Abubakar Garelnabei, opens new tab
Project 2025 makes particular note of conflict – the very factor driving most of today’s worst hunger crises.
“Humanitarian aid is sustaining war economies, creating financial incentives for warring parties to continue fighting, discouraging governments from reforming, and propping up malign regimes,” the blueprint says. It calls for deep cuts in international disaster aid by ending programs in places controlled by “malign actors.”
Billionaire Elon Musk has been tapped by Trump to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a new body that will examine waste in government spending. Musk said this month on his social media platform, X, that DOGE would look at foreign aid.
The aid cuts Trump sought in his first term didn’t pass Congress, which controls such spending. Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and close Trump ally on many issues, will chair the Senate committee that oversees the budget. In 2019, he called “insane” and “short-sighted” a Trump proposal to cut the budget for foreign aid and diplomacy by 23%.
Graham, Vought, Rubio and Musk did not respond to questions for this report.
OLYMPICS AND SPACESHIPS
So many people have been hungry in so many places for so long that humanitarian agencies say fatigue has set in among donors. Donors receive appeal after appeal for help, yet have limits on what they can give. This has led to growing frustration with major countries they view as not doing their share to help.
Jan Egeland was U.N. humanitarian chief from 2003 to 2006 and now heads the Norwegian Refugee Council, a nongovernmental relief group. Egeland said it is “crazy” that a tiny country like Norway is among the top funders of humanitarian aid. With a 2023 gross national income (GNI) less than 2% the size of America’s, Norway ranked seventh among governments who gave to the U.N. that year, according to a Reuters review of U.N. aid data. It provided more than $1 billion.
Two of the five biggest economies – China and India – gave a tiny fraction as much.
China ranked 32nd among governments in 2023, contributing $11.5 million in humanitarian aid. It has the world’s second-largest GNI.
India ranked 35th that year, with $6.4 million in humanitarian aid. It has the fifth-largest GNI.
Egeland noted that China and India each invested far more in the type of initiatives that draw world attention. Beijing spent billions hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics, and India spent $75 million in 2023 to land a spaceship on the moon.
“How come there is not more interest in helping starving children in the rest of the world?” Egeland said. “These are not developing countries anymore. They are having Olympics ... They are having spaceships that many of the other donors never could dream of.”
Liu Pengyu, spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said China has always supported the WFP. He noted that it feeds 1.4 billion people within its own borders. “This in itself is a major contribution to world food security,” he said.
India’s ambassador to the U.N. and its Ministry of External Affairs did not respond to questions for this report.
To analyze giving patterns, Reuters used data from the U.N.’s Financial Tracking Service, which records humanitarian aid. The service primarily catalogs money for U.N. initiatives and relies on voluntary reporting. It doesn’t list aid funneled elsewhere, including an additional $255 million that Saudi Arabia reported giving this year through its own aid organization, the King Salman Humanitarian Aid & Relief Centre.
RESTRICTIONS AND DELAYS
When aid does come, it is sometimes late, and with strings attached, making it hard for humanitarian organizations to respond flexibly to crises.
Aid tends to arrive “when the animals are dead, people are on the move, and children are malnourished,” said Julia Steets, director of the Global Public Policy Institute, a think tank based in Berlin.
Steets has helped conduct several U.N.-sponsored evaluations of humanitarian responses. She led one after a drought-driven hunger crisis gripped Ethiopia from 2015 to 2018. The report concluded that while famine was avoided, funding came too late to prevent a huge spike in severe acute malnutrition in children. Research shows that malnutrition can have long-term effects on children, including stunted growth and reduced cognitive abilities.
Further frustrating relief efforts are conditions that powerful donors place on aid. Donors dictate details to humanitarian agencies, down to where food will go. They sometimes limit funding to specific U.N. entities or nongovernmental organizations. They often require that some money be spent on branding, such as displaying donors’ logos on tents, toilets and backpacks.
Aid workers say such earmarking has forced them to cut rations or aid altogether.
The U.S. has a long-standing practice of placing restrictions on nearly all of its contributions to the World Food Program, one of the largest providers of humanitarian food assistance. More than 99% of U.S. donations to the WFP carried restrictions in each of the last 10 years, according to WFP data reviewed by Reuters.
Asked about the aid conditions, a spokesperson for the U.S. Agency for International Development, which oversees American humanitarian spending, said the agency acts “in accordance with the obligations and standards required by Congress.”
Those standards aim to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of humanitarian aid, the spokesperson said, and aid conditions are meant to maintain “an appropriate measure of oversight to ensure the responsible use of U.S. taxpayer funds.”
Some current and former officials with donor organizations defend their restrictions. They point to theft and corruption that have plagued the global food aid system.
A doctor measures the upper arm of Habib, a three-year-old boy, suffering from severe acute malnutrition in
Yaka Dokan village, Herat, Afghanistan, October 23, 2024. REUTERS/Charlotte Greenfield, opens new tab
In Ethiopia, as Reuters has detailed, massive amounts of aid from the U.N. World Food Program were diverted , in part because of the organization’s lax administrative controls. An internal WFP report on Sudan identified a range of problems in the organization’s response to an extreme hunger crisis there, Reuters reported earlier this month, including an inability to react adequately and what the report described as “anti-fraud challenges.”
The U.N. has a “zero tolerance policy” toward “interferences” that disrupt aid and is working with donors to manage risks, said Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Solving the U.N.’s broader fundraising challenges will require a change in its business model, said Martin Griffiths, who stepped down as U.N. humanitarian relief chief in June. “Obviously, what we need to do is to have a different source of funding.”
In 2014, Antonio Guterres, now the U.N.'s secretary-general and then head of its refugee agency, suggested a major change that would charge U.N. member states fees to fund humanitarian initiatives. The U.N.’s budget and peacekeeping missions already are funded by a fee system. Such funding would offer humanitarian agencies more flexibility in responding to need.
The U.N. explored Guterres’ idea in 2015. But donor countries preferred the current system, which lets them decide case by case where to send contributions, according to a U.N. report on the proposal.
Laerke said the U.N. is working to diversify its donor base.
“We can’t just rely on the same club of donors, generous as they are and appreciative as we are of them,” Laerke said.⍐
