I would never doubt that this government has turned into little more than a large slush fund for its political allies, but the Washington Post's big expose of the practice left me a bit unconvinced. That huge sums of taxpayer dollars have flowed to charities and organizations that support the right wing's most reactionary agenda items is rather unsurprising: we elected a dude who supports the right wing's most reactionary agenda items. To expect his spending priorities to not favor appropriations in service of his ideology is a bit naive.
Of course, it just so happens that funding all the religious outreach groups has a nice feedback effect of ensuring support and enthusiasm from their associated churches when the election rolls back around, but that, I guess, is politics. Nothing here strikes me as unusual and, indeed, I'm sort of gladdened to see some garden variety corruption from an administration that tends to delight in ostentatious displays of cronyism and patronage. A return to run-of-the-mill misdeeds would be a welcome change after the last six years of highly sophisticated, often-effective attempts to create a one-party state.
