First of all you don’t have to swear.I was referencing my opinions to the fact and it is a DAM FACT, that foreign aid to corrupt countries somehow get swindled and wind up in the hands of those corrupt in power who don’t deserve it, and the expense of those that do need it. The money you talk about is meant to go to feeding the people but it the money doesn’t always get spent the right way. Perhaps 80% goes to feeding the people and 20% gets stolen from the corrupt elitists, but without ACCOUNTABILITY, it gives me the right to Wonder what happens to the money when it is donated.
http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2010/01/19/foreign-trade-not-foreign-aid/
January 19, 2010 02:27 PM EST by John Stossel
FOREIGN TRADE, NOT FOREIGN AID
A week after the tragic earthquake in Haiti, Bret Stephens writes in today’s Wall Street Journal that many are already saying that humanitarian relief is not sufficient. They want more foreign aid:
“Haiti needs a new version of the Marshall Plan—now,” writes Andres Oppenheimer in the Miami Herald, by way of complaining that the hundreds of millions currently being pledged are miserly. Economist Jeffrey Sachs proposes to spend between $10 and $15 billion dollars on a five-year development program. “The obvious way for Washington to cover this new funding,” he writes, “is by introducing special taxes on Wall Street bonuses.” In a New York Times op-ed, former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush profess to want to help Haiti “become its best.”
This is insane. The West’s attempts to help poor countries via foreign aid have been a miserable failure. Our dollars prop up bad governments that crush free markets and keep their people poor. Trillions of dollars in aid to African countries has left Africa poorer and less free.
We also have a depressing record of foreign aid to Haiti. The last thing the country needs is more of it:
… [J]ust about every conceivable aid scheme beyond immediate humanitarian relief will lead to more poverty, more corruption and less institutional capacity. It will benefit the well-connected at the expense of the truly needy, divert resources from where they are needed most, and crowd out local enterprise. And it will foster the very culture of dependence the country so desperately needs to break.A 2006 study by the National Academy of Public Administration, aptly titled “Why Foreign Aid to Haiti Failed,” showed that the more foreign donors spent on Haiti, the more the funds were misused by the Haitian government. In 2005, Kenyan economist James Shikwati told Der Spiegel that “the countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape.”
Shikwati begs the Western world: “For God’s sake, please just stop.” But that’s not likely. The do-gooders in government refuse to see that their “generosity” with your money only causes more problems. Instead of more foreign aid, the solution should be more foreign trade.
Lack of trade is one reason why Haiti is poor. American policies make that problem worse by imposing sugar tariffs and raising American prices with farm subsidies. The disaster in Haiti was caused only partly by the earthquake. Poverty does even more damage.
Our trade restrictions and misguided foreign aid make third-world poverty worse.
http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:0Zn3z5PvNyYJ:www.pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/55328+donating+to+haiti+making+the+elitist+richer%3F&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca
Health care in Haiti, non-existent; public education in Haiti, non-existent; infrastructure in Haiti, non-existent; foreign aid getting to the people in Haiti, non-existent.
How many hundred million dollars were allocated to Gonaives since Hurricane Jeanne in 2004? The last time I drove through Gonaives I couldn’t tell if more than a few hundred dollars had been spent.
http://neighbors.denverpost.com/viewtopic.php?p=1251170
The government of Haiti, and the people of Haiti have had all their responsibilities taken by NGOs. They no longer know how to provide for themselves. The corrupt Haitian government and elite are plugged into the aid machine, who siphon off all kinds of international money. More corruption, more money for the bad guys, and the poor are left with nothing. All these decades of aid and billions of dollars, and what to the poor of Haiti have to show for it?
ACCOUNTABILITY is in my opinion a fundamental part of the donation process because without it, we will never know where the money goes.
p.s> Seems America is more interested in giving priority to Military troop planes to land rather than Aid planes. Why? So the American Military can make sure that the starving people get the aid they deserve. Good for them, but it also proves that if they don’t put troops on the ground then the mafia and elitist will steal all the water and food etc aid, and sell it on the street for high prices…and to prevent civil unrest which comes about when aid is available and there are too many for too little aid.
