• Pollo_Jack@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Conservative policy cut funding to keeping these away. Conservatives should be seen not heard when it comes to any policy.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      IIRC, they were being stopped at the choke point in Central America. Now that they’re past it, they’ll be almost impossible to contain even if funding were restored.

      Just one of many cases where the damage being done is permanent.

    • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
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      3 days ago

      Yeah, Elon said “Millions of dollars for breeding radioactive flies?!? What kind of dumb science stuff is this‽ Fraud, waste, and abuse!”

      • Folstar@lemmus.org
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        1 day ago

        As likely as that is, it’s important to note that was step 3 in the screwworm failure.

        1. Covid supply chain issues raised alarms that hey, that little lab we have in Panama protecting ~100M people and the livestock industries of several nations might need some emergency support, funding. The Trump Administration did not raise to the challenge. [note: the cause of the Darian Gap failure is “contested” because some people think it just, you know, happened or something, man]

        2. The Biden Administration’s initial position, as is the Democrat way, was to assume the status quo their predecessors strived to create was good enough. When it became obvious this was not the case they sprung into forming a committee to create a plan to monitor the situation and collaborate with foreign entities who were completely incapable of handling this issue, since institutional knowledge of a problem solved 40 years ago was gone. Apparently process documentation is a problem in all human endeavors. To their credit, when screwworms hit Mexico the administration did halt livestock border crossings and quadruple the Panama facility’s output.

        3. Trump takes over, does fuckall for half a year, then USDA announces they’ll build a $750M screwworm facility in Texas. Experts note this facility is about 3,000 km from the Darian Gap, but hey, can’t be sending American money to some shithole amirite? Luckily the facility will be online in late 2027 barring certain delays, so as long as the screwworm’s northern spread slows by orders of magnitude for no reason we’ll be covered.

      • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Fraud, waste, and abuse

        I got so very sick of seeing those assholes all repeating that line in the first part of 2025. It sounded like they all had an alien parasite that crawled into their heads.

        Especially that grinning idiot of a chipmunk, Kevin Hassett.

        What I find so annoying is that none of these asshats seemed to get put on the spot to have to define just what that even means. It’s like they just rode on the myth of the $600 hammer “government bad” stuff and it was/is all so very stupid…

        • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
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          2 days ago

          Anything that helps the poor: “fraud, waste, and abuse!”

          Anything that transfers wealth from taxpayers to the rich (especially Elon): “NBD, that’s just business”

          Apparently conflict of interest means nothing anymore. Or collusion, embezzlement, or emoluments…

          • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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            22 hours ago

            I sometimes have daydreams of getting to watch people struggling hard enough and have been adversely affected by bullshit artists like Elon and Kevin Hassett being given atomic wedgies and swirlies.

            But just before, they get to look right into the camera and repeat that mantra for everyone. Then the swirlies, etc., start…

            🤣