Chuck Schumer is Senate Minority Leader.

"Most of the press coverage has tacitly assumed that American assistance is vital to fighting corruption in Ukraine."

Then I must have missed most of the press coverage. First of all, most of the reporting I've seen has been about Trump's attempts to convince Ukraine to dig up dirt on Trump's political opponents. The purpose of the aid package is a minor part of the story, but when it has been discussed the reporting I've seen has indicated that the purpose of the aid package that Trump held up was to help the Ukrainian military, not to fight corruption. So I can't help wondering: where does James Bovard gets his news?

Very true!!! This author set up a straw man argument in the second paragraph, then proceeds to knock it down. I expect better than this on this site.

Then you've missed the point of this article. It's neither about the purpose of that aid. It's about the aid as such leading to corruption. Do you really think Ukrainians will have any troubles with selling those weapons out to some Middle Eastern or African caudillos? Or maybe you think that a single penny from the sums obtained as a result of that sellout will end up in the hands of their average citizens, and not in those of local mobsters and oligarchs?

It's the impeachment mentioning such as at the start. I know I came into this thinking this was an attempt to belittle the inquiry. It took a bit to realize the article really wasn't going there. But that makes the mention of the impeachment, particularly in the subtext below the title worthless. This is an issue that Congress and the government as a whole have with foreign aid, not with the impeachment people specifically. Focusing on that is either trying to shoehorn this issue into the impeachment matter or using mention of impeachment as a way to get viewers, clickbait essentually.

It detracts from the main topic and is bringing folks who go on to jump to defend or attack the article based on their stance of the impeachment.

Kenneth isn't thinking about whether we should or should not be sending aid. Just on what Trump did which the article isn't defending (in truth it more assumes that Trump did a corrupt thing and more explains how he ended up doing so-that anyone would under the situation)

In fact look at most of the posts here. A few agree with the article. Most basically ignore it and go strait to talking about Trump. A lot feel that the article is saying "well it's ok for Trump to do it because everyone else does.. it's natural." when the article itself is a cry to stop supporting Foreign aid BECAUSE it results in such actions.

You won't get much good debate over foreign aid here simply because the word "impeachment" is such a triggering word to everyone.

If you're asking whether I'll be fine with both parties' current and former officials being tried for blatant corruption in regards to all this "foreign aid", which is, basically, one big swindle - the answer is "yes". I will be more than fine about that. Quite happy, actually, since it will both stop the stealing from American taxpayers and undermining foreign economies. Problem is, the whole impeachment clownery isn't about that.

Ukrainian military officials have been trafficking in weapons since the fall of the Soviet Union. This is knowable by anyone paying attention - even cursory attention - to the arms business. Additionally, I know a man who was involved in the decommissioning of Ukrainian nuclear arms, inherited after the end of the Soviet Union; he was repeatedly offered all manner of heavy armaments, as though he, too, wished to join in the business.

The main conduit of these arms, though, is from the Ukrainian military to the Neo-Nazi battalions.

I shall even come as far as to say that they sell them even to the Donbass militia. But, given how often Ukranians, and especially their neo-nazis are sent flying by their own land mines, no surprise hear. Freudian death wish rocks.

I find that hard to believe because the Donbass is where Ukrainian heavy weapons were built. When the Russian Ukrainians finally wouldn't accept that their votes didn't count, the Ukraine lost its arms industry. donthomson1@hotmail.com

Which was another reason for Putin to back the separatists, as I believe Russia still gets a significant amount of its arms from that industry.

Well, no contradiction between what you and me say. You may be capable of producing a wide variety of weapons and still buy some produced by others due to them having some specific quality you need or to simply have more in stock. As an example, American and Russian MICs can produce every type of weapon you can imagine wich are possible under the current knowledge of physical principles. And yet cops and enforcement agencies in both countries buy Austrian Glocks. While German H&K MP5s are an iconic, signature weapon of American SWAT units.

Bovard reads the leftwing lunatic press ~ and they imagine any American involvement anywhere is for the purpose of digging up dirt on other Americans ~ because, after all, that's what they do.

I believe I am reading this right: That providing foreign aid is always going to lead to corruption. That what Trump did with Ukraine is basically drinking the same sauce others have in the past and anyone else will do in the future. That then suggests that the solution is to close the tap and end using foreign aid because, whatever the initial motive, it's too corrupting an influence.

In that... honestly that's the best argument I've heard against foreign aid. Typically I hear arguments from economic standpoints, which seemed silly when many of the targetted examples are in the millions-pennies by US standards.

But putting it from a control standpoint: that leadership, present or future, will either use foreign aid as a cover for corrupt means or take an active use of foreign aid as a wedge against a foreign country.

I can hear a counterargument that "we are a superpower. We should be helping others." And the response I hear in my head is "given our inability to truly help others without such corruption and how we abuse the status, maybe we really do need to let that title go." It means giving it up to Russia or China, but we aren't doing a good job holding them back, even if we should be doing so.

Ignoring the world really isn't an option. But our priority should probably be to focus on home as we can and better ourselves rather than ruining yourselves while ruining everyone who brushes with us.

So yeah. I can see the idea behind pulling back from these foreign aid elements.

The "just don't tell the House impeachment hearings." did seem rather clickbaity. It suggests this is an argument against the impeachment hearings as if their mistaken believe in supporting foreign aid is a mark against the hearings themselves. The article itself doesn't seem to go that route. "just don't tell congress" would've done far better. But that's a nitpick combined with all of this impeachment discussion leaving me rather kneejerky.

Not only Ukraine is the most corrupt country in Europe, it's also the poorest on the continent. It became such after all American aid and after all, much, much bigger IMF loans. Which makes one kind of suggest that the known level of corruption there is only a tip of the iceberg.

But, getting back home, I just love those "closed impeachment hearings". Paraphrasing the famous quotation, why so closed? Afraid that, being it open, any half-literate first-year law college student (not to mention Rudy and the DoJ) would tear the so-called "evidence" asunder?

It became such after all American aid and after all, much, much bigger IMF loans

I feel like you're glossing over some other major events that have happened in the South and East of the country which have contributed to the sluggish economic development and hampered the corruption fight...

Do you know the size of Ukraine's economy? They could have lost a half of their regions outright and still remain prosperous with those sums of money they received from the IMF, America and elsewhere... hadn't those sums been embezzled by every official with an access to them.

The open hearings will come, Alex. They're closed because those are the rules Republicans abided by with the Benghazi hearings. However it's going to take a lot more than Rudy and the DoJ to combat testimony from Trump-appointed ambassadors who've been plucked from retirement to help with Ukraine and say that there was a quid pro quo.

Until they purportedly come, everything is wishful thinking and flea-market gossips of "a guy who knows a guy" level. And if they are supposed to be based on the specific gossips of the ambassadors who didn't even heard the conversation, and whose words directly contradict the content of the said conversation which is released for weeks already, they will never come, and, as chemists tend to put it, the dry residue shall remain the same: Democrats having shown their absolute electoral weakness a year before the election. And still trying to nominate the weakest of their weak candidates at all costs - but that's another story, though every bit as farcical.

'Gossips'?! The word you're looking for is 'testimony'. Meanwhile the White House and DoJ continue to withhold any and all documentation pertaining to the President's corruption. The polls and public opinion are shifting to favour the democrats and there's not much more damning for a President than an ongoing inquest in to their abuse of the office. It's why Republicans held five (I think?) inquests in to Benghazi.

Kiev founded the Russian state.... which is actually quite ancient.... but going beyond that, this country is remarkable for having retained much of the essence of the Early Middle Ages Byzantine Empire....

It's easy to dismiss Ukrainian methods of governance and control as being simply corruption, but back in the day those were the best ways to operate a government.

Oh, BTW, Albania has held the title as "poorest state in Europe" off and on many times. A reference would help resolve that burning question.

Mesopotamia founded the entire modern civilization as we know it. Now its territory is essentially a failed state. The Papal Sates owned more territories in Italy than any other state there. Now it's confined within the Vaticano district in Rome.

So no need to insult the Eastern Roman Empire with such a comparison. Whatever their "methods" were, Constantinople was Europe's richest city for centuries, and it reconquered most of united Rome's territories during Justinian. And the "methods" all over Europe for ages were such that ducal titles were officially bought and sold as late as in the 17th century. Hence, remote past doesn't justify what happens now. Even if Albanians surpassed Ukrainians this year in their degree of desperation (would like to know your source, though), it in no way cancels the fact of Ukraine's standards of living drastic downfall since 2014.

So what's the point here, foreign aid to corrupt governments is standard American policy, so Presidential corruption in distributing that aid is no big deal.

"The surest way to reduce foreign corruption is to end foreign aid."

This is a point that can and has been argued. I remember having just that debate in relation to aid to Africia in the '80s.

However, the House is investigating Presidential coruption in the distribution of that aid and that would seem to be a different matter.

The House is NOT investigating anybody's corruption, particularly not their own. They are after "Im Peaches" ~ that is, the cancellation of the results of the 2016 election.

For the most part that will involve the dissolution of the union and the destruction of the existing ruling class..... and some other stuff, but that's what they're bent on doing.

I think they must be stopped by any and all means!

If you think Trump cares about corruption in Ukraine, I have a Trump U course to sell you.

Trump tried to extort a foreign leader to help him win an election, this is beyond dispute to anyone who isn't ignoring the facts. He wanted the president of Ukraine to make a public announcement that he was investigating Hunter Biden. Whether the investigation would turn up anything was irrelevant, Trump knew an appearance of Biden corruption could work wonders for him.

Oh yes... The purported presence of the "evidence" of the said "extortion" is precisely why the House hearings are closed. And, of course, Trump's most vital necessity was kicking the weakest of his opponents out of the race, so that Democrats could pick someone with better chances, instead of the continuation of the DNC's idiotic course aimed at nominating that one at all costs, which persists even now.

The Ukrainians were investigating the Biden crowd/and a specific Oligarch BEFORE Trump ever thought of running for President.

Obama supposedly joined in a European initiative to pull Ukraine over to the West ~ in fact, he sent a team of lawyers there to help them do something (the essence of which escapes everybody's mind). That's why Manafort ended up getting prosecuted by Mueller, and why Greg Craig did too ~ you usually wouldn't see those two lawyers in the same court room EVER and there they were pushing and pulling Ukraine.

I think Ukraine won that one. But the Oligarch is the one paying the bills for Hunter Biden, and presumably for any stipends directed to Joe (which we have to assume are still going on).

I think the Ukrainians have an even bigger problem going forward in that the ambassadors we've been sending there have not been representing American interests and are, themselves, instruments for the advancement of some or maybe just one of the factions on the OUTSIDE these days in Ukraine.

Just like the corrupt aid we have been giving to dictatorships since WW II ended. The difference is the president in previous decades did not use the aid as a bribe to foreign leaders to conduct nefarious investigations on US citizens. I can only imagine the columns TAC would write if Obama called the Saudi Crown Prince in 2010 and told him that military aid is contingent on information about their business dealings with the Bush family because Jeb might run in 2012.

Then where's the evidence of that "bribe" having even happened? As of yet we have only a clownery called "closed hearings" and the idea that Trump would be interested in getting rid of the weakest of his possible opponents which defies the mere principles of logic.

Hmm, your belief that aid was used as a bribe .... you mean like for Joe Biden? With foreign currency in such short supply in Ukraine are you suggesting they demanded it in terms of dollar bills in bundles?

They've been doing that for thousands of years in that part of the world. It's not a surprise.

Ukraine is a mess primarily because of Russian interference, not American aid. How many articles are going to be written by "conservative" sources rationalising Trump's love of Putin ?

Hogwash. Tell us how "Russian interference" has forced the Ukrainian junta to be as corrupt, brutal and incompetent as it has been since it became a full-fledged US puppet?

This has been old news since at least Vietnam.

Corruption is incidental to the political control that foreign aid provides to the US. In other words, it's a feature and not a bug. The exception to this rule is Israel, where US foreign aid is turned around to exert influence on American politicians. Again, a feature and not a bug.

Don't hold your breath waiting for this situation to change.

Quite a bit of foreign aid is also carefully disguised corporate welfare. Once the local big shots' pockets have been lined, the rest of the money is often spent on goods and services from American companies. Never mind that local sources might be cheaper and actually develop the local economy. And really never mind whether or not what's being bought is actually doing the locals any good.

There's a counter-point to this; American aid in Germany and Japan did not produce corrupt cultures.

bureaucrats are want to continue the aid

Letting the children take care of the editing, again?

The purpose of foreign aid is not to end corruption. It is to show the corrupt that we can outbid anyone else they are contemplating turning to.

Charitable (non-government) aid typically nurtures corruption, too
Arm's-length dealing is the cure and the preventive, and it's the only one.
I know - sounds cruel, doesn't it?
I usually do - just ask my children

Except for the fact Ukraine is one of those places former Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Imperial officials and upper class people fled to during the long decline of Rome (East and West), we might blame Ukrainian cultural corruption on the Soviets.

Rather, Ukraine is pretty typical of what life was like in government in Rome back in the good old days. A big difference is that after the destruction of the USSR, somebody began expecting the Ukrainians and Russians both to begin running Western style elections (only popular in most of the West for the last century or so)

Well, they didn't. In fact, they ran typical rinky-dink banana republic type elections.... and since elections themselves don't count for so much in that part of the world anyway, nobody there really cared.

More recently there's been some progress, or maybe not.

Ukraine did something remarkable though. In response to our election of Donald Trump they elected a new type of reformer (in a landslide) and he asked for and got a new Parliament in a following election.

Along the way they DUMPED the DEMOCRATS.....

Only God can imagine what the Ukrainians might do if we were to vote in an old Stalinist War Horse like Bernie Sanders.... but it wouldn't be pretty. But, they'd be obsequious and fawning to the hilt.

It's such a counter-intuitive proposition - that throwing money at corruption is going to end corruption. In governance we've substituted credentials for common sense, I didn't take a single class in college that taught me what I learned from parents that never finished high school but had the education of the depression and ww2.

What would be very useful would be an examination of what exactly constitutes "corruption", especially in the context of places like Ukraine. In general, one would think corruption means that "services" or "favors" can be bought, and so are available mostly for those willing and able to pay. If this is the definition, then it seems to be quite prevalent in the USA, where, as everyone knows, politicians are bought by lobbyists and billionaires. What's the difference? Perhaps an enterprising TAC writer can bring some serious analysis to bear on this question.

This is an old game. The IMF pumps in billions and internal and external oligarchs (scalawags and carpet-baggers) steal it all, leaving the population with big debts and nothing to show for it. Good recent example, besides Ukraine, is Argentina.

In the case of Ukraine one of the carpet-baggers was Joe Biden. But with the MSM propaganda machine totally opposed to Trump, that may well be buried. A curious World, asking to investigate grotesque corruption is a crime but the corruption is not.

The very last sentence says it all. Even if foreign aid did not lead to corruption, it should still be prohibited for the sole reason that the Constitution does not authorize it. People who want to help the poor in (insert nation here) are free to do so -- on their own dime and on their own time. No more virtue signaling at taxpayer expense.

#EndForeignAid

This fact used to be common knowledge. Evelyn Waugh's 1938 novel 'Scoop' was all about this fact. 'The Mouse that Roared' in the mid-50s dealt with it sharply. Mainstream commentators as seen on TV used to talk about it. When did it become an unorthodox secret conspiracy?