Remember that earthquake in Haiti?

2 Comments

• 
  Elizabeth June 23, 2010 at 2:58 pm

  It’s almost like we had an earthquake relief effort and nobody came! Sad.

  Actually, what really concerns me here is the acknowledgment that the new commission will inevitably be bureaucratic and thus slow down the flow of the aid money even more. At the June 20 House Foreign Affairs hearing on improving U.S. foreign aid’s effectiveness a major topic of discussion was bureaucracy, unnecessary procedures, and how everyone would love to see processes at State and USAID streamlined so that people can actually do their jobs more effectively…but of course that’s everyone’s favorite complaint but nobody’s burden to bear.
• 
  Barak June 23, 2010 at 7:32 pm

  Here’s the analogy: when you get into a traffic jam, do you blame yourself for adding to the number of cars on the road? Few do. Same with foreign aid. Lots of people want to be involved with it, so we get tons of oversight committees in Congress and fragmentation of it across agencies in the Executive Branch. Each additional actor sees the mess, but fails to consider how his or her actions add to it (or doesn’t care).