Thursday, December 30, 2004

Americans Stingy or Generous. Discuss.

Some idiot at the NYT thinks we are stingy.

President Bush finally roused himself yesterday from his vacation in Crawford, Tex., to telephone his sympathy to the leaders of India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia, and to speak publicly about the devastation of Sunday’s tsunamis in Asia. He also hurried to put as much distance as possible between himself and America’s initial measly aid offer of $15 million, and he took issue with an earlier statement by the United Nations’ emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, who had called the overall aid efforts by rich Western nations “stingy.” “The person who made that statement was very misguided and ill informed,” the president said.

We beg to differ. Mr. Egeland was right on target. We hope Secretary of State Colin Powell was privately embarrassed when, two days into a catastrophic disaster that hit 12 of the world’s poorer countries and will cost billions of dollars to meliorate, he held a press conference to say that America, the world’s richest nation, would contribute $15 million. That’s less than half of what Republicans plan to spend on the Bush inaugural festivities.

The American aid figure for the current disaster is now $35 million, and we applaud Mr. Bush’s turnaround. But $35 million remains a miserly drop in the bucket, and is in keeping with the pitiful amount of the United States budget that we allocate for nonmilitary foreign aid. According to a poll, most Americans believe the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on aid to poor countries; it actually spends well under a quarter of 1 percent.

By the way, that’s President Bush, not Mister. And your information is not quite correct. That $35M pledged is just the beginning of aid our government will provide for years to come. For have no doubt that the United States will be involved in the rebuilding efforts in those poor and needy nations long after this initial rush to assist. It’s what we do.

Meanwhile, the WaPo reports that Americans are giving generously, mainly via the internet.

Faced with searing images of suffering and grief in South Asia, Americans are finding an instantaneous way to reach out to tsunami victims: on their home computers.

[...]

At Amazon.com alone, more than 53,000 people had donated more than $3 million by yesterday evening after the company made an urgent appeal on its home page. Catholic Relief Services was so overwhelmed with Web traffic that its site crashed. Online donations to the Red Cross outstripped traditional phone banks by more than 2 to 1.

Hmmm. Methinks that Americans are generous, except when it comes to tax dollars our government has already taken from our wallets. I think that most of us believe that the money we give directly to charities and organizations whose mission is exactly this kind of aid is put to better use than any money our government will provide. More practical is for our government to offer other resources than cash. But what do I know?

[via otb]

Posted by at 02:52 PM
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