Here’s a real example from a pathetic New York Times story of the Trump administration being boo-hoo mean and taking away people’s good jobs:
Half the planet has already dunked on this nonsense, but the topic is nearly inexhaustible. Start with this, and then we’ll keep going:
The Times doesn’t name Cowan’s nonprofit, but she’s on LinkedIn, so it took ten seconds for everyone and his brother to find it. And the Citizens Network for Foreign Affairs (CNFA) is possibly as strong an example of absurd free money cronyism as anything you could ever hope to find.
You can read the CNFA’s most recent publicly available Form 990, their financial report to the Internal Revenue Service as a registered nonprofit, here. It describes their spending in 2024. They do food security projects in Africa, and you can read descriptions of those projects in the Form 990. Example, in the original all-caps:
YALWA PROJECT NIGER:PROJECT IN NIGER SUPPORTS USAID’S REGIONAL RESILIENCE IN THE SAHEL ENHANCED (RISE) II OBJECTIVES BY TRANSFORMING MARKET ECOSYSTEMS IN THE MARADI, TILLABRI, AND ZINDER REGIONS. YALWA WILL EXPAND AND IMPROVE MARKET LINKAGES; BUILD INDIVIDUAL AND INSTITUTIONAL CAPACITIES; ENCOURAGE VULNERABLE POPULATIONS TO BUY AND CONSUME SAFE AND NUTRITIOUS FOODS; AND ENGAGE PROCESSORS AND TRADERS TO PROFITABLY MEET THIS DEMAND.
They “encourage vulnerable populations to buy and consume safe and nutritious foods.” Those poor fools in Niger were probably thinking about eating fiberglass before an NGO showed up and told them they could actually just cook a chicken. And so on:
THE FIVE-YEAR FEED THE FUTURE RWANDA HINGA WUNGUKE ACTIVITY (2023-2028) AIMS TO INCREASE INCOMES AND IMPROVE NUTRITION IN RWANDA BY SUSTAINABLY INCREASING AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY AND STRENGTHENING THE DOMESTIC CONSUMPTION AND MARKET FOR HIGH-VALUE AND NUTRITIOUS AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS.
They did a bunch of that. They strengthened the domestic consumption of nutritious agricultural products in Rwanda. “Eat a carrot.” That’ll be $70 million.
Scroll down to “Statement of Revenue” to find the problem, and by that I mean the problem in America, the big one. The CNFA is an NGO, a non-governmental organization. Here’s their reported income:
- Government grants: $69,975,956
- “All other contributions, gifts, grants, and similar amounts not included above”: $112,583
They’re a non-governmental organization that lives on government, period. They’re an almost purely governmental non-governmental organization. The CNFA still exists, but it’ll be quite interesting to see its post-USAID financial statements in coming years.
Finally, look at salaries. Former CEO Sylvain Roy, who left to work as an independent consultant when USAID died last year, made a base salary of $607,666, with “other compensation” of $67,134. The chief operating officer, who took over as CEO when Roy left, made a base salary as COO of $467,017, with “other compensation” of $60,885. Then you can keep going down the list until you find the poor suffering victim identified by The New York Times, on a long list of very nice salaries.
“Encourage vulnerable populations to buy and consume safe and nutritious foods.” Government funding. Base salary of $607,666.
This is what we’ve been paying for, and this observation is exactly right (screenshot of the top of a long post, because embedding truncates it, but click on the link to read the whole thing):
Not real salaries, not real jobs. Government-funded distortions, outrageously expensive and functionally absurd. All of this needs to go away forever.
