US ‘Democratic’ Allies Are Becoming Increasingly Authoritarian
By Ted Galen Carpenter, Antiwar.com, February 17, 2025.
Excerpts:
A recent example of U.S. meddling in the internal affairs of another democratic country appears to have taken place in the Republic of Georgia. According to Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili, USAID spent $41.7 million to support its preferred candidates in the country’s recent parliamentary elections. Adjusted for the size of Georgia’s population, such an expenditure in the United States would amount to $3.78 billion.
And:
That outcome apparently was intolerable to Romania’s political establishment and its supporters in the EU and the United States. They viewed Georgescu as especially unacceptable, since he openly criticized NATOand opposed continuing to aid Ukraine. The country’s election commission nullified the voting results and rescheduled the first round balloting for May 4, 2025. Commissioners charged that, wait for it… Russia had illegally tampered with the election. Moscow’s horrid offense was its alleged support of a TikTok campaign that seemed to benefit Georgescu. Tangible evidence regarding Russian involvement was noticeably absent. Despite the lack of evidence, U.S. and EU officials denounced Russia and praised the Romanian government for trashing the election.
Eugene Doyle, a reporter for New Zealand’s Solidarity.com, noted the menacing significance of this episode. “To save democracy, the US and the European elites appear to have found it necessary to destroy democracy. For the first time ever an election was overturned in an EU/NATO country. Ever.” Doyle also cites evidence that Russia was not even the likely culprit. The TikTok effort apparently originated with a botched PNL scheme to siphon off votes to Georgescu from other mainstream competitors.
When COVID Authoritarianism Met Border Authoritarianism
by Fiona Harrigan, Reason, March 2025.
Excerpts:
In late 2021, Charlotte Bellis, an unmarried journalist from New Zealand, found herself pregnant while working in Qatar, a country where that status carries the risk of jail time or deportation. A doctor advised her to get married or get out of the country. But New Zealand, which at that point still was taking drastic measures to limit the spread of COVID-19, allowed its citizens to come home only if they secured lottery-allocated spots in a government-run quarantine program. Bellis applied but was unsuccessful. Desperate, she turned to the Taliban.
The Islamic fundamentalist group said yes. Bellis made her way to Afghanistan, where she had worked and where her boyfriend was based. “When the Taliban offers you—a pregnant, unmarried woman—safe haven, you know your situation is messed up,” she wrote in The New Zealand Herald in January 2022.
And:
Travel restrictions, which all of the 194 World Health Organization (WHO) member states deployed against COVID-19, may seem like a sensible pandemic response. It is easy to forget that the WHO had long viewed such measures as ineffective and counterproductive. Beyond doing little to stop contagion, travel restrictions can stop critical personnel and equipment from crossing borders. They also can foster secrecy. After South African scientists discovered the new, fast-spreading omicron COVID-19 variant in November 2021, many countries responded by imposing travel bans on South Africa and its neighbors. A government might conclude that transparency is not worth the economic damage of canceled flights and vacations.
Immigrants Used Less Welfare than Native-Born Americans in 2022
by Alex Nowrasteh and Jerome Famularo, Cato at Liberty, February 18, 2025.
Excerpts:
Congress is currently debating whether to spend about $175 billion on deportations to avoid future payments like the $650 million that Congress spent on shelter and other services for migrants last year. Poorly spending $650 million last year doesn’t justify spending 269 times as much to avoid similarly relatively small costs when Congress could just decide not to spend the money on migrant shelter and services in the first place.
The better policy would instead end noncitizen access to welfare and entitlement benefits, which could save over $109 billion in the first year.
And:
We find that all immigrants consumed 21 percent less welfare and entitlement benefits than native-born Americans on a per capita basis in 2022, based on data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). Immigrants were 14.3 percent of the US population and consumed just 11.9 percent of all means-tested welfare and entitlement benefits that year.
The biggest myth in the debate over immigrant welfare use is that noncitizens — which includes illegal immigrants and those lawfully present on various temporary visas and green cards — disproportionately consume welfare. That is not the case. Noncitizen immigrants consumed 54 percent less welfare than native-born Americans. Noncitizens were 7.3 percent of the population and consumed just 3.5 percent of all welfare and entitlement benefits. In total, noncitizens consumed $109.4 billion in benefits in 2022.
However, naturalized immigrants consumed 17 percent more welfare than native-born Americans because they are an older population—they consumed 7 times as much Social Security and 4.3 times as much Medicare as noncitizens on a per capita basis. Naturalized immigrants were 7 percent of the population and consumed 8.4 percent of welfare benefits.
Social Security’s Insolvency Is Driven by Benefits for the Living, Not Fraud by the Dead
by Eric Boehm, Reason, February 19, 2025.
Excerpts:
Elon Musk claims that his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has uncovered “the biggest fraud in history” within the Social Security Administration: Payments to millions of Americans who have likely been dead for a long time.
That claim seems to be based on a faulty understanding of Social Security data on Musk’s part. More to the point: Social Security’s fiscal problems aren’t the result of fraudulent payments to people who are already dead. It is not benefits for the dead, but rather payments to the living that are driving the program toward insolvency.
And:
The crucial question, however, is whether Social Security’s lack of “death information” about those people means they are still receiving benefits.
The vast majority are not. According to the inspector general’s report, 98 percent of them (18.4 million) “are not currently receiving” Social Security payments. That’s because those 18.4 million people “have not had earnings reported to SSA in the past 50 years,” the inspector general notes. “The fact that these individuals were age 100 or older, had no earnings in the past 50 years, and received no SSA payments indicates they are deceased.”
Another way to know that those payments aren’t being made is to simply look at the annual cost of Social Security. Jared Walczak, vice president of state projects at the Tax Foundation, crunched some of those figures in a post on X. In short, if Social Security was paying benefits to all those obviously deceased people, the program would be spending about $1 trillion more every year than it already is.
Murrow ‘risked his career to confront demagogic Joe McCarthy’? Hardly
by W. Joseph Campbell, Media Myth Alert, July 1, 2017.
Excerpts:
The notion that Murrow’s career hung in the balance in taking on the bullying senator from Wisconsin was promoted in Good Night, and Good Luck, an overwrought cinematic account of the Murrow-McCarthy confrontation. But in reality, the risks to Murrow were scant by time he took on McCarthy in 1954.
And:
That’s because, as I write, Murrow “was very late in confronting McCarthy” and “did so only after other journalists had challenged the senator and his tactics for months, even years.”
These journalists included the syndicated columnist Drew Pearson, who called out McCarthy’s exaggerations almost as soon as the senator began hurling accusations of communists infiltration of the State Department. That was in February 1950 — years before Murrow’s program on McCarthy.
READER COMMENTS
Bob
Feb 23 2025 at 1:35pm
Sad to see Carpenter parroting talking points from the Russian-controlled criminals running the Georgian government.
David Henderson
Feb 23 2025 at 2:12pm
More important than whether he’s saying things that undesirable people are saying is whether he’s saying things that are correct.
Is he?
steve
Feb 23 2025 at 1:44pm
It’s sort of amusing that the people who claim that the CDC and WHO were so wrong about covid then cite them as an authority when convenient. First, you need to remember that the WHO recommendations were made for a theoretical pandemic, one we had not seen before. When we actually met up with one some recommendations were changed based upon the virus and conditions as actually observed.
Second, and what’s really important, rather than criticize New Zealand for not adhering to WHO guidelines (guidelines, now laws) one should look at the success rate achieved by New Zealnd. They had one of the lowest covid death rates in the world. As of July 2022, well after the date applying to this woman, they had one (1) total covid death. I think the reasonable conclusion is that while in general there are a number of reasons that travel restrictions are a bad idea, chief among them that they largely dont work, in the case of New Zealand it appeared to work well.
Compare that with what the US did. It applied travel restrictions initially, but only against Chinese and other foreign nationals. US citizens were allowed to keep traveling. Dumb travel restrictions are worse than regular ones.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/
Steve
Andrew_FL
Feb 23 2025 at 2:13pm
If 18.4 million bogus entries in the SSA represent 98% of a total that aren’t receiving benefits that implies 375 thousand are. That seems like something worth caring about whether it fixes Social Security or not!
David Henderson
Feb 23 2025 at 2:43pm
I agree.
Alan Goldhammer
Feb 24 2025 at 10:29am
David read Justin Fox’s Bloomberg column that I linked to in a separate post. He covers all this is great detail.
Craig
Feb 23 2025 at 3:13pm
Its almost as if Big Government has license to waste large sums of money that to any given individual would be large but which are, to the government, a small percentage of the overall budget. This line of argumentation pervades many different types of spending too. Death by trillions of cuts, we’re not allowed to care about any of them.
steve
Feb 23 2025 at 8:57pm
Looking over the various reports the way I would interpret this is of the 18 million plus over the age of 99 who dont have a recorded death date they are sure that 98% arent being paid, so you end up with about 400,000 as noted above. However, the SSA tracks payments by age and they are sending out payments to 90,000 people over the age of 99. The census bureau thinks we have about 101,000 people over the age of 99.
https://www.newsnationnow.com/business/your-money/people-over-100-social-security/#:~:text=Nearly%2052%20million%20Americans%20received,Trump%20and%20Musk%20warned%20about.
Steve
Craig
Feb 24 2025 at 10:49am
Intereeting as usual, Steve.
“dont have a recorded death date”
Know how many life insurance companies have paid out a claim withouy a recorded death date? Zero, never happened.
Ad usual, the government shows its not the vigilant guardian of public resources and ultimately its not their money so they don’t care.
steve
Feb 24 2025 at 11:17am
I would think you decide what to do on a cost benefit basis. In general, if you have run a business you know that insisting upon a zero error rate provides for a poor cost/benefit ratio. In this case the SSA says that it would cost more than they would save to investigate and find death dates for people who died long before the computer era. Their secondary confirmation ie the census bureau numbers confirming they are paying out to the correct number of people suggest that is likely. They explain that in their response to the IG. The IG response was that still left them open to some potential fraud. What is not clear to me is why you cant just assign a death date even if not correct. I suspect it has something to do with COBOL being the OS and its antiquated and glitchy.
Steve
Craig
Feb 24 2025 at 11:35am
If somebody passes on and nobody tells Social Security I can see how institutional inertia would continue to pay. Makes sense, at least for anlimoted amount of time but there are easy cross checks that should give rise to inquiry notice here. Hmmm, Granny didn’t file taxes, Granny stopped making Medicare claims…..now for sure I can foresee how somebody might stick Granny in the freezer, file taxes on her behalf and just let the checks keep rolling in and withdraw since a child might have that right on the account. In that case the govt is now getting affirmatively defrauded, that’s different. This is frankly just negligence that ordimary businesses really don’t make nearly as often. (Exageratijg with my life insuranxe example)
steve
Feb 24 2025 at 2:55pm
What we have been talking about are people that died long ago before the computer era. At present there are a number of checks to catch when people die. Deaths are reported by funeral homes and hospitals. They can be reported by families. Finally, the SSA scans the death certificate lists held by the states. They miss very, very few, maybe the 200-300 cases a year when someone hides their dead spouse in a freezer or buries them out in the sticks somewhere. Those eventually get caught and they get a big news story.
You could set up the system so that it would catch those few hundred people but it would be very expensive. That’s why you need a cost/benefit analysis.
Steve
Craig
Feb 23 2025 at 3:04pm
“We find that all immigrants consumed 21 percent less welfare and entitlement benefits than native-born Americans on a per capita basis in 2022”
Of course the figure should be closer to 100% less. The vast majority of immigrants should be able bodied, young, healthy and ready to produce from the get go, so by definition the odds of this class of people receiving welfare of any sort should be very, very low of course and if they wind up on welfare the fact that they become a public charge should really result in their removal. So frankly the fact that immigrants receive ONLY 21% less means they don’t know what they are doing. The native born population is what it is, its going to include kids with cancer, people with other severe disabilities, very old people or other people who are for one reason or another not capable of pulling their weight.
Jon Murphy
Feb 24 2025 at 7:06am
Naturally, then, you support removing the restrictions that prevent or hinder immigrants from working?
Craig
Feb 24 2025 at 9:49am
The largest exception would be asylum seekers who, if genuine, coukd be admitted for humanitarian purposes irrespecrive of ability to work. The problem with that program is there’s an annual statutory ceiling and far more people apply without any real hope of being admitted but its a procedural ploy to forestall deportation. I think 95% of apps from Guatemala get denied.
There’s an adage along the lines of ‘I’ll let you write the law, but I’ll define the procedure’ and I’ll ‘win’ every time.
As a % of overqll class of immigrants asylum is still relatively small.
TMC
Feb 23 2025 at 4:25pm
Immigrants Used Less Welfare than Native-Born Americans in 2022: The innumarcy is amazing in this one.
“Congress is currently debating whether to spend about $175 billion on deportations to avoid future payments like the $650 million that Congress spent on shelter and other services for migrants last year.” The link to the costs refer to securing the border, funding military, energy independence, and ‘restoring fiscal sanity’ whatever that is. Cost is 85B and is supposed to save 85B for a net cost of $0. I doubt all of that, but there is no $175B for deportations. Saving listed is $650M, though a little later the costs are $109B. California is spending $9.5B a year just for illegal immigrants’ healthcare, for reference.
While conflating illegal and legal immigrant costs muddy the numbers (no one is deporting legal immigrants), no matter how you add it up, seems deporting the illegal ones is sound fiscal policy.
Ahmed Fares
Feb 23 2025 at 7:44pm
Nope. There are no 150-year-olds on Social Security. It’s COBOL!
Andrew_FL
Feb 24 2025 at 12:28pm
This isn’t true. There is no cluster of exactly 150 year olds.
TMC
Feb 24 2025 at 12:55pm
It’s not COBOL. As your quote says the date is May 20, 1875, making a person today 149 yrs old. The larger list he presented had many in the 130s, 140s and 150s. Definitely not the default value. Very likely just sloppy recordkeeping. As commented above, there’s 375k who are getting SS that should not. My guess is that disability need some cleanup as well. Those claims always skyrocket during recession. A SSA whistleblower also said that they were directed to issue SS numbers and disability to illegal immigrants. Should look into that too.
john hare
Feb 24 2025 at 3:48pm
I know of a case where a man was shot escaping from jail* and his widow (in her 20s) drew SS benefits. Legitimate??
*43 felony counts, almost certainly never coming out.
steve
Feb 24 2025 at 3:58pm
TMC- No, that 375,000 number is not people who are getting paid. It was the number that the SSA said they were not sure about. However, they do track payments made by age. The pay about 90,000 people over the age of 99. The US has a total of about 101,000 people over the age of 99. There are almost always secondary/tertiary ways to check numbers and this one is pretty good.
Just as a side note, if what we are concerned about is money going to the holders of SS numbers of very old people then you would think they would report that number. They didnt. They reported that over 18 million people did not have a recorded death. OK, how many of those over the age of 99, the group being talked about, are receiving money? It’s not possible that 375,000 of them are getting money when the SSA is only paying 90,000 people over the age of 99.
Steve
Alan Goldhammer
Feb 24 2025 at 10:27am
Justin Fox has an excellent article on the Social Security issue over at Bloomberg (might be behind a paywall, but if you have a sub do read it). The big fraud is probably taking place with the Social Security disability program where people who are not really disabled are collecting money.
Fox also notes that some people using lapsed SSNs are paying into the system and will NEVER receive benefits which is essentially free money for the program. Who would be against that?
steve
Feb 24 2025 at 4:00pm
You would think all of the lawyer ads offering to help you get on disability would be a clue.
Steve
Craig
Feb 24 2025 at 10:41pm
Of course if they aren’t using their social security number, then they are working, the employer is withholding, but since the employee isn’t using a number attributable to them, they are likely to withhold and say they are married, filing jointly with 19 kids or something so yeah, they’ll pay social security but they likely won’t pay federal income tax.
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