In a shocking report last month by The New Yorker, the elimination of USAID by the now-defunct Department of Government Efficiency (or DOGE, the Elon Musk meme name for the department that feels like it was founded seven lifetimes ago already) has already contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in what the author Atul Gawande described as “public man-made death.” While USAID worked globally to address completely avoidable plagues of malnutrition, effectively dropping the rates of malnutrition-related deaths in some sub-Saharan African countries from over 20 percent to under 1 percent with simple interventions, our own country is also facing completely avoidable crises of malnutrition, hunger, and lack of access to healthcare and necessary resources. If the destruction of USAID taught us anything, it’s how important our social safety net really is to millions of people, both here in America and across the world.
Last month also saw a public meltdown by Erie County Executive Brenton Davis following his loss to Christina Vogel, in which he decided to veto several changes to the proposed county budget, some approved unanimously by members of County Council. Vetoes included monies for the Human Relations Commission, the Booker T. Washington Center, the Martin Luther King Jr. Center, and the Urban Erie Community Development Center. He also reduced the funds for public safety grants and underfunded the Pleasant Ridge Manor senior care facility. Davis’ impact on our county resources will thankfully be short-lived, but it lays bare the most basic underlying principle of MAGAnomics: the cruelty is the point. All the hand-wringing over culture war nonsense makes sense when you recognize it for what it is: a distraction from their main policy objective, which is to simply hurt people who are not rich.
A little background on Brenton Davis if you have been living under a rock in Erie for the past four years: Christina Vogel beat Brenton Davis, a one-term incumbent Erie County Executive, by nearly 20,000 votes, an astonishing margin in Erie for a political newcomer. Davis, who spent energy in the primary to help Vogel beat Perry Wood (thinking she would be the weaker candidate to face in the general), acted as though he had this election in the bag. That makes Vogel’s victory so much more satisfying for Erie County voters and so much more humiliating for Brenton Davis. Vogel is an intelligent, hardworking woman and I do not want to take away from her achievements and the campaign she ran against him, but Brenton Davis lost this election all by himself. He likely would have lost to anyone. And that gives us all a little bit of hope…