Good Riddance

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USAID was my client during the Vietnam war. I programmed support for keypunching, sorting and printing in the Vietnamese language. The two systems that used that facility were the Land to the Tiller program and the Hamlet Evaluation System.

The first had us print land titles for the peasants who worked the land, and government bonds to pay the landlords from whom they had been expropriated. The second allowed the American officials to rate the relative safety of every village in the country, so they could measure their progress. The latter was clearly a case of garbage-in garbage-out. Nobody wanted to report bad news. They fudged.

Something similar to Land to the Tiller had worked for the British in Malaysia. However, with a war going on the landlords had mostly fled to the city or abroad, and the farmers left on the ground were probably preoccupied with survival. It was a matter of good intentions via a complex system designed and developed by people who were unfamiliar with the situation on the ground. Deadly Deceits, My 25 Years with the CIA describes the kind of misunderstandings that were rife during the war. I don’t know, but I’m ready to believe the worst. Misunderstandings doesn’t seem to fully capture it. USAID had its corruption even back then.

I have written here, here and here about USAID’s banging the drum for the gay rights agenda here in Ukraine. Thank goodness Ukrainians are sensible enough to ignore it. Bedroom politics should have nothing to do with foreign affairs.

USAID in implicated in the disappearance of billions of dollars of United States aid to Ukraine. It appears that at least half of it went to American grifters. Let’s have a little sunshine!

Trump is also looking at eliminating the Department of Education. I have had a lot of exposure to education, as a parent, school trustee, education school student and classroom teacher. It has all been tainted, and so far as I could see the Department of Education always stood on the side of indoctrination rather than instruction. The record speaks for itself. By every measure imaginable, the United States is spending far more per student than when Jimmy Carter created the Department of Education in the 1970s, and student performance is far worse. Not just worse overall, but worse even for those minorities they claim to be helping.

To include links to the many posts I have made about education would overwhelm you. Simply follow this link to my archive . Click on the magnifying glass icon to the right, and where it says “search on people and posts,” enter the keyword “Maryland.” It will bring up stories about my grown children and my teaching experience in Montgomery County Public Schools, as well as my experiences as a student at the University of Maryland College of Education.

I’ll close in saying “Go, Elon!” These stables have needed sweeping for a long time. I never thought the day would come when I saw it done.

Here in Lake WeBeGone the good-looking woman is working to enroll Marianna in a Waldorf kindergarten. They seem eager – enrollment has fallen on account of the war. Along the way we discover that the Waldorf elementary school is only a twenty-minute walk from us. Amazing that we never learned as much in ten years here. That may be fortuitous. The Sunflower School where Zoriana attends first grade is down to six paying students. In other words, it appears non-viable. It seems that every month they ask us for a special contribution to keep it alive. The grades levels they teach have changed every year depending on who was enrolled. We have needed a Plan B, and it seems to have fallen into our laps.

Graham