Lots to gab about today so let’s get to it.
Remember that porn Website that was trading free access to porn for pictures of dead Iraqis? Well the Webmaster of that particular Website is now been arrested on obscenity charges. Click Here Of course the military has nothing to do with this. I mean if this became a national story it wouldn’t hurt the war effort at all. Of course the Pentagon was never convinced that pictures were real. So this only has to do with that nasty pornography. Sure it does.
My recent post about how to end was had as one of its points that poverty needed to be addressed. My new friend Dave, who often posts to tell me how wrong I am, stated that no country does more to fight poverty than the USA, I had my doubts. I lacked anything backing me up however. Lo and behold today I found this fine article. Click Here Please read the article.
I find it odd we pledged .7% of our GDP and we’re currently giving about .16%. For those of you bad with numbers I’ll elaborate. .7% is equal to 7 cents for every 10 dollars you have. That’s not a lot really. .16% is equal to 16 cents on every 100 dollars you have. That’s really not a lot.
Just to make it worse we’re only contributing about 23% of the amount we pledged to give. That’s just sad. We can consistently come up with 50 billion for Iraq, but caring for the people who need it is a real struggle apparently.
The Smoking Gun has a fine piece about these cops who visited a massage parlor and received sexual gratification, not once, not twice but three times before they made the bust. Click Here See usually cops make a bust as soon as sex is offered. They don’t get the “handy handy”, as its called in the affidavit, before the bust. Much less get it 3 times. That’s just insane.
That’s all for now.
Remember that porn Website that was trading free access to porn for pictures of dead Iraqis? Well the Webmaster of that particular Website is now been arrested on obscenity charges. Click Here Of course the military has nothing to do with this. I mean if this became a national story it wouldn’t hurt the war effort at all. Of course the Pentagon was never convinced that pictures were real. So this only has to do with that nasty pornography. Sure it does.
My recent post about how to end was had as one of its points that poverty needed to be addressed. My new friend Dave, who often posts to tell me how wrong I am, stated that no country does more to fight poverty than the USA, I had my doubts. I lacked anything backing me up however. Lo and behold today I found this fine article. Click Here Please read the article.
I find it odd we pledged .7% of our GDP and we’re currently giving about .16%. For those of you bad with numbers I’ll elaborate. .7% is equal to 7 cents for every 10 dollars you have. That’s not a lot really. .16% is equal to 16 cents on every 100 dollars you have. That’s really not a lot.
Just to make it worse we’re only contributing about 23% of the amount we pledged to give. That’s just sad. We can consistently come up with 50 billion for Iraq, but caring for the people who need it is a real struggle apparently.
The Smoking Gun has a fine piece about these cops who visited a massage parlor and received sexual gratification, not once, not twice but three times before they made the bust. Click Here See usually cops make a bust as soon as sex is offered. They don’t get the “handy handy”, as its called in the affidavit, before the bust. Much less get it 3 times. That’s just insane.
That’s all for now.
posted by Eric at 9:44 PM
1 Comments:
First, my intentions are not to be offensive in any post I leave here; far from it indeed. If the view from here is different than from where you are looking, maybe you're just looking out of a different window than I am. Sometimes my view may be better, sometimes not. On days that it is not, I will eat my hat on anything that I'm wrong about, and I'll be better for it. Today, my view is pretty good and unobstructed.
To quote you: "My new friend Dave, who often posts to tell me how wrong I am, stated that no country does more to fight poverty than the USA, I had my doubts. I lacked anything backing me up however. Lo and behold today I found this fine article. Click Here Please read the article.
I find it odd we pledged .7% of our GDP and we’re currently giving about .16%. For those of you bad with numbers I’ll elaborate. .7% is equal to 7 cents for every 10 dollars you have. That’s not a lot really. .16% is equal to 16 cents on every 100 dollars you have. That’s really not a lot."
Well, I read the article and find it comes up short as a measuing stick of what country gives more money to fight poverty in foreign lands. It primarily dwells only on the "0.16% statistic" which is meaningless in determining who makes a bigger dent in poverty with ODA money.
Simply put, if giving money will help reduce poverty, then the country that donates the most money to the cause is the one that does the most to fight poverty.
To illustrate this, let's take a look at Norway. Norway gives 0.83% based on GNP - They are #1 in "giving" by per cent given based on GNP for 2004. Last year they gave $2.200billion. The U.S. gave $18.999billion. I'm sorry, but the 18.999 billion dollars that the U.S. gave will go A LOT further to fight poverty than Norway's 2.2 billion dollars.
That means that the U.S. contribution made a bigger difference in the fight than Norway, who has a "bigger per cent of GNP" than anyone else.
Of the 22 countries who agreed to give 0.7% based on GNP, only five are doing it. These are Norway, Luxembourg, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands. Adding all the aid they give together equals just $11.405billion....still lower than what the U.S. gave last year.
Here's a good percentage figure: Of ALL 22 COUNTRIES, the United States contribution is a whopping 24.18% of all the money in the pot! That's more than TWICE any other country.
So there we have it. The U.S. government does more. Bless those other countries all the same for doing what they do, I take nothing away from their effort. Can the U.S. do more? Can the other nations do more? I don't know.
I wonder though, what would happen if a U.S. presidential candidate made it a core campaign promise to increase ODA aid by a factor of 4.4 times so we can reach our promised goal of 0.7%...would that be a good platform to run on?
If it matters...In 2004, the combined total ODA aid contribution of all 22 countries was $78.569billion. If the U.S. were to give the full 0.7%, it would equate to $83.121billion...That is $23.55billion more than the 21 other countries COMBINED in 2004.
Also, if it matters...since 1999, the United States' ODA net contribution has MORE THAN DOUBLED from $9.145billion to $18.999billion.
And lastly, if it matters, since you found it odd that the U.S. pledged 0.7% but doesn't deliver...of the 22 richest countries on the planet who made the "0.7% promise" back in 1970, here are the other 16 that don't give 0.7% based on GNP: Portugal, France, Belgium, Ireland, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Finland, Germany, Canada, Spain, Australia, Austria, Greece, New Zeland, Japan and Italy.
Sources:
oecd.org web site
globalissues.org web site
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