Mick Wright.net

Last week there was a significant weather event, and people needed help.

It happened in Asia — a big tsunami wiped out thousands of people and displaced many others.

There was also another, lesser event, in parts of the United States, and it affected me directly.

Alison and I were driving from Memphis to Nashville on Wednesday afternoon to spend Christmas with her family. Around the time we left home, the sky fell out and covered the roads with sheets of sleet and ice. Our three-hour trip turned into 8 or 9… until it was abruptly halted around Bucksnort. Traveling at the blazing speed of 35 mph, our car decided to spin out of control, slide us backwards and just in front of the car beside us, and into a muddy, icy ditch, where we were stuck.

Thankfully, some folks driving through from Ft. Smith, AR, stopped to pick us up, in the middle of an ice storm, in the pitch black of night, not knowing who we were. They ended up driving us all the way into Nashville. For the hour or two it took us to drive those 40 miles, their vehicle was so packed that the mom had to sit uncomfortably on a cooler, with her adult daughter smashed up against her left side. Once in Nashville, they took us right to Alison’s dad, who was waiting for us at a gas station, and they asked for nothing in return.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, they’re stingy people. Let me explain…

Later on in the week, we went back to see if we could get our car out of the ditch, to no avail. So we just got our belongings and decided to return later and either pull it out with my father-in-law’s little truck, or call for a tow. So on Sunday we got to the car again, and the truck was able to pry it out of the hole, but we couldn’t get the car all the way up the incline.

For that job, we needed the 101st Airborne.

No, really. When a soldier with the 101st Airborne saw us, he stopped his huge 4-wheel-drive truck and gave us a hand. Eventually, he pulled me onto the shoulder, where I was able to drive our car away on my own. Without his help, it would have been much more difficult or expensive, or both, to fix the situation. The soldier asked us for nothing in return. We barely got his name.

And one more thing — he’s stingy.

Why do I say that? Only to illustrate how ridiculous and insulting were the comments of U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland yesterday.

I work for a non-profit organization. We need donations in order to do our work for the community. We are thankful for all our donors, big and small, whether they give their time, money, or anything else. We simply can’t keep our doors open without the kindness of private citizens — giving out of their own sense of love, because of their individual values, in whatever way they are blessed enough or talented enough or generous enough to give.

If we called our donors stingy, we would no longer be around. If we called our biggest donor stingy, we would be cut off for good and unable to keep doing our good work.

Let’s say our biggest donor was Office Depot (to my knowledge, it isn’t); what would happen if we said all the company’s customers wanted to pay higher prices, and so it is stingy of them to only donate 0.1 (or whatever) percent of their gross income to our organization? Wouldn’t we do better by asking Office Depot to launch a charity event where their customers could give money or donated items (new, used, both) for an auction benefitting our organization (and, in turn, the community we serve)? Instead, do we just complain that Office Depot doesn’t charge its customers enough?

And, on top of that, how could we have the gall to bite the hand that feeds us, the biggest hand that feeds us, if the top people in our organization were still in the middle of an investigation into a scam where they skimmed money from the charity, leaving the would-be beneficiaries with nothing (not to mention a dictator with millions to pour into WMD research?)

I think you see where I’m going with this. Here, then, is a brief roundup of this awful story. Thanks to this idiot, the story has nothing to do with suffering people in Asia. Instead, the story is about a quarrel between the world’s most corrupt institution and the world’s biggest benefactor.

Star Tribune

Powell said the United States “has given more aid in the last four years than any other nation or combination of nations in the world.”

The U.S. Agency for International Development spent $2.4 billion in the last year for emergency disaster relief.

Egeland responded to Powell’s criticism by saying that he had been misunderstood and that he had not been referring to aid for the quake and tsunami victims but to the overall trend in recent years by Western countries in aiding the poor. He said pledges for the current crisis had been “most generous.”I have been misinterpreted when I yesterday said that my belief that rich countries in general can be more generous,” Egeland added. “This has nothing to do with any particular country or the response to this emergency.”

Reuters 1:

Asked on Monday about the response of rich nations to crises like the tsunami, U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland said: “It is beyond me why are we so stingy, really.”

But he rowed back from the statements on Tuesday, telling reporters: “I’ve been misinterpreted when I yesterday said that I believed that rich countries in general can be more generous.”

“It has nothing to do with any particular country or the response to this emergency. We are in early days and the response has so far been overwhelmingly positive,” he said.

“The United States is not stingy,” Powell told CNN’s “American Morning” program.

Reuters 2:

Asked about the response of rich nations to such crises, he said: “It is beyond me why are we so stingy, really.”

“If actually the foreign assistance of many countries now is 0.1 or 0.2 percent of their gross national income, I think that is stingy really. I don’t think that is very generous,” he said.

“We are busting our butts to help and comments like that don’t reflect what we are doing,” said a State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The United Nations urged rich nations a quarter of a century ago to give away 0.7 percent of their gross domestic product every year in the form of development aid.

To date, however, just a handful of European nations, most of them in Scandinavia, actually meet that goal.

The United States, the world’s largest economy, earmarks 0.13 percent a year of its GDP to development aid. But that figure excludes aid to Iraq and Afghanistan as well as food aid, where the United States is the world’s largest donor.

Egeland said on Tuesday his remarks had been misinterpreted and praised the rapid international response to the crisis, singling out the United States and Europe for their generosity.

Countries have contributed or pledged nearly $100 million in the first few days after the disaster “and it is going up,” Egeland told CNN’s “Larry King Live” show. “It’s a massive, massive relief effort.”

But “it is sad that there has been a global decline in money available for foreign assistance and humanitarian assistance — and that happens in a growing world economy,” he added. “It’s my job to be impatient, I’ve seen too many starving children.”

The United States provided an initial $15 million mostly channeled through the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, plus logistic support for aid efforts. On Tuesday, the U.S. Agency for International Development added $20 million for the earthquake relief, a White House spokesman said.

Cliff May:

AMERICA STINGY? It’s a lie. Americans are the most generous people on earth. But Americans prefer to give privately – through charities, NGOs, religious groups, corporate and private philanthropies and foundations.

We’d rather not pay higher taxes and trust some government official or UN bureaucrat to spend our donations properly. We especially should not want to trust UN bureaucrats – knowing what we now know about such programs as Oil for Food.

Hudson Institute:

At the upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg later this month, the U.S. will again be pilloried for being stingy on foreign aid. U.S. government aid as a percentage of GNP does indeed rank last. Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Sweden are lauded for being on top.

But the figures, counting only public sector contributions, are deceptive. Americans help others abroad — just as they do domestically — primarily through private donations, foundations, corporate and university giving, religious offerings, and direct help to needy family members. Scandinavians and other Europeans give abroad primarily as they do at home — through government.

So, at the guilt-fest in Jo’burg, the U.S. delegation should tell the real story of American generosity abroad. While there are no complete figures for international private giving, conservative estimates from surveys and voluntary reporting are impressive: Americans privately give at least $34 billion overseas — more than three times U.S. official foreign aid of $10 billion.

Fishkite.com (May, 2004):

Is America really that stingy?

If Germany, the wealthiest European nation and the fifth wealthiest nation overall, gave 0.2 percent of its GDP in foreign aid, that would be $4.32 billion. In comparison, if the United States gives 0.1 percent of its GDP (actually $9.9 billion), that is $5.58 billion or 129 percent more dollars than Germany gives.

Even stopping there, the United States is the most generous country on Earth, but there are other elements to consider. According to USAID, the United States gives a total of $56.2 billion in aid (not just $9.9 billion), when you factor in other U.S. government assistance, private assistance, foundations, corporate giving, private volunteering, university donations and church funds.

If you add just our private donations, which make up 60% of America’s total foreign aid, to the amount the United States gives in development and other government assistance, the total is $52 billion or 1200 percent more dollars than Germany’s government contributes. Any way you compare the data, except for one, it is clear that Americans give substantially more aid to developing nations than any other country in the world. Of course, that exception is the one Bono and Suskind offer.

And now it’s the one Egeland offers.

Again, America is showing it’s true character, despite the ravings of this U.N. lunatic. Our government has more than doubled its pledge since this weekend, yes, but the private sphere is at work, as well.

Right now, a Christian radio station I listen to frequently is holding its bi-annual pledge drive, but it has in-turn pledged 10% of all listener year-ends gifts to Food for the Hungry, which is helping victims of the tsunami.

Can you believe that? Only 10%. What a bunch of cheapskates.

For breakfast this morning, NPR’s Daniel Schorr returns to his years-old vomit, citing the looting of Iraq as an example of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s failure to adequately plan for the war. Schorr chides Rumsfeld’s April 2003 comment, “Stuff happens.” Here’s Schorr, at 5:06 in the clip:

They clearly were, in many ways, unprepared for what they found. There was also the question of this widespread looting, which might not have happened if there had been 100,000 more American troops there to guard what was — the museums — and what was happening there. No, I think that they acted as though they were going to go through a war — when the Secretary was asked about the looting he replied with one of his famous [unintelligible] “well, stuff happens.” And there is something about this [unintelligible] not being aware or caring or being sufficiently sensitive to the fact that you don’t just go in and go pull down the statue of Saddam Hussein [and] that’s the end of it.

Unfortunately for Schorr, and many listeners, he seems to have forgotten that the looting story was a load of crap.

By June of last year, even the Washington Post had determined that, “All Along, Most Iraqi Relics Were ‘Safe and Sound.’“

Here’s The Guardian’s take:

So, there’s the picture: 100,000-plus priceless items looted either under the very noses of the Yanks, or by the Yanks themselves. And the only problem with it is that it’s nonsense. It isn’t true. It’s made up.

Not all of it, of course. There was some looting and damage to a small number of galleries and storerooms, and that is grievous enough. But over the past seven weeks it has gradually become clear that most of the objects that had been on display in the museum galleries were removed before the war. Some of the most valuable went into bank vaults, where they were discovered two weeks ago. Eight thousand more have been found in 179 boxes hidden “in a secret vault”. And several of the larger items seem to have been spirited away long before the Americans arrived in Baghdad.

That’s not to say that there was NO looting whatsoever in Iraq. It’s just not an example of a huge, systemic failure or something that can fairly be blamed on Rumsfeld.

Of course, every artifact lost is a tragedy. As the lead investigator writes, “it is simply impossible to quantify the loss of the world’s first known Samarian mask of a female deity.”

You can say that again. Good thing it was recovered.

When the story first broke in the Spring of 2003, Rumsfeld’s response was accurate, and even poetic:

[Rumsfeld] asserted the looting was not as bad as some television and newspaper reports have indicated and said there was no major crisis in Baghdad, the capital city, which lacks a central governing authority. The looting, he suggested, was “part of the price” for what the United States and Britain have called the liberation of Iraq.

“Freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things,” Rumsfeld said. “They’re also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that’s what’s going to happen here.”

Looting, he added, was not uncommon for countries that experience significant social upheaval. “Stuff happens,” Rumsfeld said.

It’s now 20 months later, and NPR still can’t let it go. I wonder why. Well, no, actually I don’t.