How Should We Organize Aid and Cooperation? (blogspot.com, December 13, 2008)
Summary: John Daly presents and comments on an article from Parade magazine pertaining to the distribution of U.S. foreign aid around the world and concludes that the only way to ensure that our aid money is focused on more humanitarian concerns is for the new administration to reorganize the foreign assistance department; making it an independent entity accessible to the President and a number of other pertinent governmental agencies.
Topic: Should the state department of the Obama administration double foreign aid or Africa?
Category: Expert Citizen
What Is It? Blog entry from blogspot.com
Title: How Should we Organize Aid and Cooperation?
Publication Information: stconsultant.blogspot.com, December 13, 2008
Author: John Daly
Location: http://stconsultant.blogspot.com/2008/12/who-gets-us-foreign-aid-how-should-we.html
Accessed: February 23, 2009
Support:
• Parade magazine
• Congressional Research Service via Think Progress
• Center for American Progress
• Daly’s friend “Frank”
The entire blog entry is based on an article from Parade magazine about the distribution of U.S. foreign aid around the globe and the reasons behind that distribution. Daly quotes Think Progress as having cited the Congressional Research Service about the amount of foreign assistance allotted to Iraq in a recent three-year span. The Center for American Progress is referenced in relation to how much money they say the United States has pledged for Iraq versus how much has actually been given between the years of 2003 and 2008. Frank, Daly’s friend, presents the opinion that the new administration should incorporate an international cooperation program within the foreign aid program.
Audience and Agenda: John Daly is a freelance consultant with a focus on technology and science for developing countries. He coordinates a number of community pages for the Development Gateway and is the Vice President of Americans for UNESCO. He has been published (or taken part in published works) multiple times and seems knowledgeable on the topic of foreign aid. He is a prolific blogger, but his audience is probably relatively small (he has four regular “followers”) and is most likely made up of his colleagues. His blog is not funded; he is simply a citizen commentator.
Usefulness: This blog entry is useful in that it presents a knowledgeable citizen’s point of view on the subject. It contains some interesting information on where exactly U.S. foreign aid money is going and what kinds of priorities the distribution reflects. It argues for making the foreign aid program an independent entity (which I’ve seen argued for in other documents as well) so that it can reflect issues concerning humanitarian efforts rather than those of military or economic concern. It presents a fairly idealistic idea of how the U.S. government should operate (with purely charitable intentions) and leaves out a lot of variables that would greatly complicate matters.
Works Cited:
John Daly’s homepage
Americans for UNESCO site
