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Marjorie Taylor Greene demands America stops fighting HIV/AIDS “all over the world” [1]

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Date: 2024-06-29  

It is hard to imagine that a person as despicable as Marjorie Taylor Greene could do something that would lower your opinion of her. And yet she has. In Congress this week, she demanded that the US stop funding the global campaign against HIV/AIDS.

She started innocuously by sharing what seem to be good news.

“In Tanzania, USAID helped access 7.8 million in private sector financing for private clinics. This investment resulted in 35% increase in HIV testing and over 10,000 patients tested, and 100% of positive patients linked to care in Nigeria. USAID engaged in private pharmacies to provide HIV treatment.”

Anyone unfamiliar with the malignant Marjorie would probably rate this as a promising start to a positive speech. It’s good to hear a US Representative congratulating a US agency for soliciting money to fight a disease that still kills 630,000 souls globally every year.

The good news is that efforts by USAID (United States Agency for International Development) have started to make a dent in this catastrophic epidemic.

But Greene is not a compassionate conservative (if there is such a thing). Most AIDS victims are not white Americans. Therefore, in Greene’s calculus, they are not covered by her ‘Christian,’ ‘pro-life’ agenda. It is yet another one of her innumerable “let them eat cake“ moments.

She soon revealed her feelings about keeping people alive. In her simplistic calculation, tackling disease is a zero-sum game. If you prevent one person dying from HIV/AIDS in Africa, that condemns one American to die from fentanyl.

“Meanwhile, the fentanyl drug crisis continues to rage across America, but we continue to fund USAID with billions of dollars to address AIDS and other diseases all over the world. We should be caring about Americans, and we should be funding the treatment for Americans here at home from a weapon of mass destruction that is murdering Americans every single day. The American tax people are funding this, and the American tax people want their problems solved.”

My first thought as one of these “American tax people” is WTF is wrong with this woman’s vocabulary? More importantly, her numeracy is also challenged.

The US spends $5.4 billion each year on Global HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment. That is a significant number, but it pales in comparison to what we spend in the War on Drugs.

That futile endeavor, which has already wasted over $1 trillion since 1970, now costs American tax people $44 billion a year. And that does not include the cost of incarcerating people for drug crimes.

Globally, 630,000 people die from HIV/AIDS every year. In the US 110,000 die from drug overdoses.

Simple math shows that the US spends 46 times as much per drug overdose death in the US as it does on each HIV/AIDS death globally (again, that number does not include the cost of locking up people for drug crimes.)

A fiscal conservative (again, if such a thing exists) would want to know why we are throwing so many dollars on the bonfire in our futile “attack the supply” strategy to prevent drug use. Did we learn nothing from Prohibition? (Rhetorical). The mephitic Marjorie certainly didn’t.

In addition, we should also note that America’s funding of a global push to eliminate HIV/AIDS was the initiative of George W. Bush. He established the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in 2003. In a black swan moment a conservative claiming to be compassionate actual did something compassionate. Do not bet on the like happening again.

Here is another number I guarantee Greene does not know. The US spends $5.0+ billion a year to fund Congress. This means the American taxpayers spend over $9.3 million annually per Congressperson. For that cash outlay we get people like this miserable human spouting inhumane nonsense.

I want my money back.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/29/2249769/-Marjorie-Taylor-Greene-demands-America-stops-fighting-HIV-AIDS-all-over-the-world?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web

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