At the Trough

Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden showed the way in Ukraine.

Today I attended a private and confidential meeting with a U.S. Congressmen who happened to be visiting Texas to address a group of business leaders. The main subject we discussed was the U.S. government’s out-of-control deficit spending. Like a runaway bullet train, the U.S. national debt is now increasing by 1 trillion every 100 days. If you want to understand the proliferation of dysfunctional insanity since 2000, look no further than this chart:

A huge amount of this money is being dumped in the TROUGH—that is, given to an array of special interests, lobbies, and other assorted cronies of the terrible people who infest Washington.

While she was Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton became fast friends with the Ukrainian oligarch, Victor Pinchuk, who in turn became the Clinton Foundation’s largest donor.

In 2014, Hunter Biden followed in Hillary’s footsteps when he joined the board of the Burisma gas company in Ukraine, ultimately receiving millions of dollars for his services as a “corporate compliance advisor.”

Since then, U.S. politicians have taken a keen interest in the country. Indeed, Washington’s solicitude for Ukraine strikes me as unrivaled in U.S. history, with several politicians making the most ardent declarations of love, admiration, and unwavering support for the Eastern European country.

Nancy Pelosi and Lindsey Graham have both made pilgrimages to Kiev to pay their respects to this purported bulwark of Western Civilization against Russian barbarism.

T’was not always so. Before the Clintons and Bidens became so fond of Ukraine, Washington tended to view the country’s establishment with a wary eye.

On December 20, 2002, the US Treasury Department designated Ukraine as a primary money laundering concern under 31 U.S.C. 5318A, as added by section 311(a) of the USA PATRIOT Act.

Treasury later rescinded this designation, but ever since then, various international organizations and media outlets have reported on Ukraine’s pervasive corruption. A 2018 study by the Council of Europe’s Economic Crime and Cooperation Division found Ukraine the most corrupt country in Europe after Russia.

The people who suffer the most from this corruption, bribery, banditry and theft are the Ukrainian people, whose median household income is around $2,470.046 USD.

In 2022, the US government started sending tens of billions of U.S. taxpayer money to Ukraine as eagerly and expeditiously as possible. Since then, I have wondered where all the money (and weapons that can be sold for money) is winding up.

At the meeting today with the Congressman, I asked him if he has seen any accounting of all the money being sent to Ukraine.

“No,” he replied. “None. I have repeatedly sought an accounting statement of how the money is being spent, but I cannot obtain one. I’ve never seen a single line item.”

The Congressman expressed equal astonishment at the unbridled zeal of so many Senators and members of the House for sending money to Ukraine.

“They just can’t wait to send more money,” he said.