Back in 1992 when I was a young reporter at the Atlanta newspapers, the USAID asked me to participate in a trip to Eastern Europe. It was just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and I was chosen to visit Latvia with other American journalists to speak with the press about reporting in a free society.
It was fascinating to visit a country with a healthcare system in ruins due to supply shortages under communism and to chat with reporters who had no idea how to research or ask questions as they were fed propaganda from the previous Soviet-aligned government.
Fast forward 25 years later, and I now had my own communications and public relations firm in Atlanta, working with clients on topics ranging from education to economic development to healthcare.
While attending a national education conference in Boston during Barack Obama’s last year as President, I attended an education seminar for a client with a panel hosted by federal education officials.
I was shocked when the US Department of Education officials started pitching reporters that the most important topics now on the horizon were how to report on the needs of transitioning teachers, LGBTQ staff and how to identify them with what pronouns.
Pronouns? It was the Obama education officials who were planting the seeds of the transgender and LGBTQ movement in the minds of students with this topic. The media, of course, was eating it up as many stories then ensued.
This was the first alarm bell to me how our federal tax dollars were now being moved from promoting freedom to radicalism.
The next year I happened to be in the Caribbean for a meeting for potential client work and met with the spokeswoman for the Prime Minister of that island nation. She was quite frank with me outlining how their country and others throughout the Caribbean were suddenly finding themselves inundated with foreign influencers funded with American money.
These were bringing an unwanted topic to their nation now legalized by the United States Supreme Court — homosexual marriage. So much money was poured into this nation that it was then used to lobby the local parliament and a bitter fight ensued to get a gay marriage amendment on the ballot.
The Obama Administration was trying to vastly change the social order of entire nations (including in Africa) using American tax dollars, and the local people resented it.
Just as Elon Musk and Doge are discovering, the Left has used USAID and probably other pots of slush funds in places such as the U.S. State Department since Obama took office to transform not only America but the world with unwanted social upheaval.
As the Obama Administration did in 2014 in overthrowing Ukraine, the American taxpayer has funded so much more than we ever have known until President Trump hired the world’s richest man to not only shine a light but a beacon on this theft of American money.
Families are struggling to pay groceries. Charge card bills are at a record high. Defaults on automobile loans are skyrocketing. The vast majority of people can’t afford a new home or to sell their house and get a different home. Taking the family to eat out dinner is unaffordable.
Yet federal employees under Obama and Joe Biden spent money like it was raining from the sky. Because they don’t care. It’s not their money – it’s other people’s money. And when you spend money that’s not your own, the sky’s the limit.
Electric car charging stations in the jungles of Vietnam – no problem. Supporting terrorists abroad including in Gaza – no problem. LGBTQ propaganda across the globe – of course!
I can’t wait until they get to the IRS, the State Department and the U.S. Department of Education.
This is why the Founding Fathers said in the Constitution that virtually all power belongs to the states except for some basic items like national defense and interstate commerce.
DOGE shows it’s about time to do just that. Let’s go back to the 10th Amendment, abolish the IRS, the federal income tax and if New York and California want to send their money abroad to fund solar panels on Mount Everest – let them.
We have eggs to buy.
Meyers is the President and CEO of Oak Grove Communications, an Atlanta-based communications and public relations firm. She was a former spokeswoman for Newt Gingrich’s healthcare think tank and has worked in the Georgia Legislature and with Nobel laureate Milton Friedman’s legacy education foundation.
