I'm sorry for this pain, but I too am so glad it can no longer lie to Americans and others.
I began reading a book few years ago, might have been something about an "economic hitman" in the title. Was so depressing how my tax dollars were deeply subverting/poisoning other countries, I couldn't finish reading it.
As much short term turmoil as these exposures cause, I'm SO hopeful that the corruption won't recover during my life time.
Switter, you are a good, honest man and that will never change. Please continue to enlighten us with the work you did. Maybe this will help bring about change.
I had a few charities as clients for my software engineering consultancy. We charged them below market rates for very in demand skills and they still never paid on time.
One "dreamer" felt he was kind to inform me he was off to a former Soviet bloc nation to save the world without paying late invoices.
Then I had front row seats as one imploded due to sheer incompetence. I still can't figure out how they managed to screw that one up. After that one I decided to be done dealing with well meaning Vegans.
I worked for a well respected one, but there were plenty of leaches, conmen, consultants (the guys who borrow your watch to tell you what time it is), and schemers around the Beltway. Everyone wanted a teat on the Big Sow.
A colleague and I were driving to our hotel in Port-au-Prince late one evening and saw an American kid walking along the street. We stopped and offered him a ride. He said he was there on his own dime and figured out the biggest problem was disposal of human waste, so he was working on a scheme to import portapotties he would place around town that could be used for a small fee. He was looking for investors, but we explained we were over leveraged and couldn’t tolerate the risk, but suggested he should discuss him plan with the USAID mission director.
We were amused by the conversation, but sometimes I feel a twinge of regret when I think about he might have had a great idea that really caught fire and he became the Bill Gates of outhouses.
I am sorry for this betrayal, Switter. Please keep focusing on all the good you personally did. We can only change the world one person at a time, and only if they want to be changed. I myself was a Fulbright Scholar at one time, under the aegis of USIA in Milan, Italy. I was surprised to learn, once there, that my mission was not exactly what I hoped it would be, but I stayed and I worked my heart out and I believe I DID make a difference, whether it was their aim or not. We only do what we can do.
Switter, I'm sorry for the heartbreak and also grateful for what you understand about the agency that I (and most others) would be less likely to understand. I have another acquaintance who worked for USAID who seems to believe a very different dream. It's so hard to know where to draw the line between truth and fiction these days.
Sorry to hear that you felt betrayed. I’m glad we’re pulling the mask off of these “soft influence” agencies. The humanitarian mask was effective in duping us for a long time. They lied.
Americans are good and generous people who want to help countries in trouble. Unfortunately, one of our major vehicles we chose to do that is corrupted. If we step back, assess how we got to this point, and figure out how to go forward in a more transparent, accountable manner, I would be happy to sing its praises.
I don't even know how to respond, Switter. Despite my best efforts to stay informed about the world, I know very little about foreign aid. One can't know it all, right? What I do know is that I believe in you and your experiences. You wanted to make a difference and you have a career to that effort. If you say the agency needs a massive reform, then I support that. Thank you for making me think about something to which I haven't paid enough attention.
Thank you for your kind words. I do hope things can change and we can continue to provide aid in a completely transparent, responsive and respectful way.
Thank you for educating us on this reality, Switter. So much smoke, mirrors, and bullshit in the world. I always want to believe people are doing what's right. But sometimes they're not. That's everywhere.
paid to argue the /anger/depress/basically silence truth tellers - or even those that present real questions ...are a very real thing. It's like harassment for honest people speaking up or out.
Even though I'm sure u already know way way more than I, remember you don't have to prove to every random stranger online. Everyone is not who they seem. And not everyone even wants to know truth.
Regarding the dispute about how much went to the media organizations. My question,or simmering suspecion, is why would AI be involved finding this stuff- unless the money trails were intentionally highly complicated and misleading.
Blah blah Im obviously not best communicator.. I don't want an answer, but I don't want u harmed any more.
I appreciate original article,u have such actual insight but remember u don't have to reply to everyone.
You're a good man, who succeeded doing awesome work. I'm proud of u, and I'm sure people in your life that matter are also.
You are very kind and I miss the chance to chat on my Thursday night runs to the Ministry of Bulk Products!
I find that some people are invested in the belief that somehow by paying taxes, not voluntarily to be sure, that somehow they have outsourced virtue and they believe that virtue was vested in a wonderful bureaucracy that goes about solving the world’s problems.
Although it’s a scam(one can never outsource personal goodness and virtue), it gives comfort without causing any discomfort. The scam thrives in darkness and where there is no accountability, no improvement, and no actual performance measurements.
When the scam is exposed, a whole domino row of beliefs fall and the most common reaction is that the exposed reality is awful and untrue. It’s a hard thing to face up to.
There will be a lot of readjustments to people’s beliefs in the coming months. People will either double on their old perceptions or they will go through a painful soul searching of their beliefs versus the reality of the world.
So many illusions have been shattered by truth — from public health measures to foreign aid and everything in between.
Choosing not to see the truth, doubling down on believing lies, or not being curious enough to question the orthodoxy/“experts” and investigate further does great harm. Such investigations and subsequent revelations are excruciating to be sure. But once we know the truth, we also know the right path to take.
Yes, you CAN "outsource personal goodness and virtue" to some extent. I live hundreds of miles from Western North Carolina and could not drive down to do anything. I could look on the web and see videos of a helicopter pilot prevented from rescuing a wife and delivering desperately needed supplies. I saw what real Carolinians said about FEMA. I saw videos of warehouses of bottled water and other supplies. I saw real time delivery of real help from private businesses and from Churches. One church organization repeatedly mentioned for actual help was Samaritan's Purse. I contributed the little that I could to my church's drive for them.
I wish I had given more. And that tells me--we are going to get better at this.
You didn’t outsource your virtue. You sought out, found, and helped provide resources for other members on your self-chosen team. You were in the driver’s seat.
And good on you. I’ve been reading about Lowe’s, NASCAR, the Amish, private helicopter owners and hundreds of other groups and individuals who are not outsourcing virtue. They are rolling up their sleeves and doing what needs to be done.
I had the great privilege of volunteering to help rebuild Paradise, California after the devastating wild fire. It is a privilege to help give someone a reason to smile again.
Oh, Switter, you have seen so much. Not only of suffering but of systems. I have never heard of a system that lived up to its best ideals. Watchdogs and reforms must work full time at all times, and predators will find a way into our systems to gratify themselves, no matter what. Thank you for sharing what you saw. If you need radio silence for blocks of time these turbulent days, no one will begrudge it. You deserve walks in the trees in the majestic snow. But thank you for sharing what you can.
Our government has funded so much evil—from USAID, to regime change, to assassination, to depopulation programs, to wars, to wealth grabs, to COVID—and that means everyone has been complicit as taxpayers who provided this money. We all have been betrayed, though few have been gutted as much as you.
Tragically, the nonprofits, many beginning with good intentions, became hideously corrupt with all that money and influence sloshing around. I am so sad that you—one of the most well-intentioned people on the planet—were caught up in this web of deceit and evil. The innocents suffer the most.
We’re just beginning to learn the truth. I hope all the fascistic government, corporate, nonprofit partnerships will be revealed by DOGE’s Sunshine disinfectant and shut down. Forever! The snake must not be allowed to shed its skin only to reappear as something shinier and even more insidious.
I had a feeling your heart would be heavy even though I did not know how directly you were involved in this scheme without knowing the true nature of what was happening in your orbit. But certainly your goodness and your example positively affected everyone you met and many whom you did not.
We all love you for your kindness, honesty, humor, resilience, and dedication to improving the human condition. Keep fighting for humanity and keep telling your stories.
Heart-breaking indeed. And we're probably going to find a lot of other bureaucratic entities in the U.S. government that have left us all wondering if anything we contributed to or work for were actually more that just a facade for a ponzie scheme. And you put your whole body, soul, and family into your work for others in the world, often at your own risk to life.
Yes, when governments fund programs, most often the responsible entity manages and administers the requirements by competitively procuring the relevant goods or services from organisations with proven capabilities in providing the goods and services.
To do otherwise would be prohibitively expensive and require years to implement.
USAID didn't teach any child how to read, they did the more effective thing - teaching local teachers how to teach. If they procured those training teachers via a second party, instead of employing and managing those people directly, that would be normal, that's how governments all around the world get things done.
USAID doesn't make vaccines, they buy them.
USAID didn't put people into Ukraine, they purchased goods abd services for civilians in a war zone, because that's what those civilians needed.
A local toilet paper company here use some of their profits to build toilets and provide sewage systems in developing countries. The owners don't personally dig the pits or lay the pipes, but they still legitimately claim to have built Y number of toilets.
Was your work pointless? I very much doubt that. Were you personally betrayed? I don't know what you thought you signed up for.
Were intended beneficiaries betrayed? Did they not receive promised goods and services? If not, that's the betrayal, to my mind.
Ware funds allocated to programs that Americans weren't aware of until now? Apparently so. But the information was always available. It wasn't secret.
Aid and development, including for natural disasters, or for countries moving towards being a democracy, it's a wide and wobbly scope.
Kennedy implemented the program. That's a lot of decades ago. Suddenly everyone agrees that it's a useless waste of money, and that it shouldn't be replaced with something better.
Yep. I'm puzzled.
When services I was involved in were delivered so badly that horrible and avoidable deaths occurred in the most vulnerable cohort, for me it was soul destroying. The betrayal, however, was of the dead, and their families, the powerless.
Caz, I’m growing weary of the discussion. I’m explaining to several supporters of USAID why I feel AID’s mission creep and their incompetence actually did result in tragic and unexpected results, as well as massive losses of aid. I once had to oversee the burning of several thousand tonnes of commodities because the agency wasn’t able to change a shipping waybill for a cargo container of food aid sent to a wrong port, or invoke authority for us to sell the rapidly deteriorating commodities stored in hot, humid warehouses as livestock feed to recoup some small fraction of value. People went hungry. Taxpayer money was wasted.
I’ve seen US grown rice, probably the most expensive rice in the world, specified as the commodity to be used in a West African country for monetization to fund development projects using the local currency from the monetization proceeds, where the American rice sold at a fraction of its value because the local market was supplied by Thai and Vietnamese producers who produce probably the least expensive rice on the world market. Did some good take place? Perhaps, but at a greatly inflated price. Why was the American rice chosen? Because of lobbyists from the food aid constituency that includes California rice growers, big food processors, US shippers, because the commodities must be shipped by US flagged shippers, also among the most expensive in the world.
As far as information being freely available about programme performance, funding mechanisms, and NGO expertise, that is rarely the case. Also, much of the agency’s budget was simply not available for public scrutiny, because of security classifications. We are learning now how much of USAID’s $70 billion annual budget was allocated to certain 3 letter agencies, and had no oversight or accountability for how it was spent.
Bilateral aid, country to country aid, that was provided to fund the teacher training you referred to was some of the most abused and least accounted for. Multilateral aid, through, say, UN agencies had similar accountability problems as well as much higher implementation costs because, for example, World Food Programme works the same way as USAID. They are also a procurement agency who contracts with NGO subrecipients that do the actual work of managing the food aid. More than once, the organization I worked for was asked for proposals to take over management of USAID-funded World Food Programme projects, which we were able to do at much lower costs and losses.
I could continue with examples of other programmatic areas, but it’s a continuation of the same story of massive inefficiencies, fraud, incompetence, and corruption. I have no qualms that the agency is being investigated, grants are being scrutinized, most, but not all, work is suspended until the messes can be sorted out so more competent and transparent processes can be put into place.
Finally, I always believed foreign aid should be short to resolve specific objectives. There are very few examples of where that has happened. Haiti, for example, has been the recipient of billions of dollars in aid, well before the devastating earthquake, and nothing really changed there.
There was an attempt at a different approach to aid back in the late 1990s through the Millennium Challenge Fund, where a country was eligible for funding if certain governance, policy, and other criteria was met. Some countries rose to the challenge, but the countries most in need of assistance weren’t eligible.
There are no silver bullets, but corruption and incompetence made an ineffective process worse. One can’t hope one’s way to success. With the information coming out about USAID in the past week that is so antithetical to humanitarian ideals, I believe I have no choice but to feel betrayed. I was the willing canon fodder out there trying to make the unworkable work.
I stumbled across your Substack from a recommendation.
I don’t know your work, but I can tell you a couple of years ago I became VERY disillusioned by ALL NGOs. It’s ALL a scam. ALL OF IT!! EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM!! There is no such thing as a non- profit. They don’t pay taxes, they may not make a profit but you better damn well know THEY ARE ENRICHING THEMSELVES. It’s all a grift. The sooner you understand that the better mentally you will feel. They play on good, kind, and generous people because they know we’re suckers. I’m not being mean. I’m being directly honest.
I have worked for many charities to raise money - always for a worthy cause or so I thought. I was SO VERY WRONG. One of the charities invited me and my husband to a VERY swanky 4 day ‘retreat’ to be with ‘like minded people’. I was so very naive. Against my husband’s better judgement, we went. What a mistake, but it opened my eyes to so many things.
The entire 4 days I felt like the other shoe was about to drop. On the last night, it did. We were asked for a 2-year commitment for money. I was told - look at the 990s. Those are tax returns for ‘non-profits’. HOLY SHIT, I could not believe what I was seeing. The CEO was pulling in $250,000 a year + expenses, a car, travel, etc. the event we were at cost $750,000 the previous year!! And just to REALLY depress myself, while I was looking into the 990s, I looked up the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. If you ever really want to make yourself sick to your stomach, look it up. My husband told me my face turned white when I saw their 990.
When I asked the CEO of the organization that invited me to the retreat “how do you define success” she could not answer me. This NGO was about child sex trafficking and the like minded people were all Christian charities. I felt surrounded and very pressured to give money. Mind you, I helped raise $20,000 for them and thought the retreat was a sort of ‘thank you’. It was the furthest thing from the truth.
I never gave a dime to them. I never contacted them again.
All this to say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Let’s be honest - with the billions of dollars spent over so many years - WHY DOESN’T AFRICA HAVE CLEAN WATER, FOOD, PAVED ROADS OR GOOD INFRASTRUCTURE? WHY? Because they don’t want them to. If we did that then how could you continue a charity if you complete your mission? And the HIV/AIDS stuff, well Bill & Melinda spread it to Africa to do experiments and then to raise money for the poor Africans with HIV. It’s all bullshit.
USAID will never be reconstituted. It should never have been stood up the way it was. Money never reached the people it was supposed to help. Once you understand the game you know we can never allow that to happen again. It’s all virtue signaling. Remember the UNITED WAY? 35 years ago EVERY SINGLE INSURANCE COMPANY had literally every single employee give a donation. They didn’t outright threaten us, but tremendous pressure was put on us. And the company matched the donation. Aetna, CNA, Chubb, Travelers, etc did this. And then years later it was reported that only 10% of all donations went to any recipient; 90% went to administration!! It was all and still is a grift.
After the retreat I stopped giving to charities. I wanted to help others and gave directly to people in need, but you know what? They NEVER TRULY APPRECIATED IT. I was very sad for a while. And then I thought - charity begins at home. I stopped worrying about others and worry about myself and my family because no one else cares about them.
WHEN will we learn that there are evil people running nicely named organizations that only enrich themselves? MY WISH is to see dozens of congressmen step down and resign in disgrace, but I doubt it will happen.
Perhaps you could contact DOGE with your inside knowledge. You literally know where the bodies are buried and who helped bury them. Those people must be held accountable so they cannot repeat their crimes.
I'm sorry for this pain, but I too am so glad it can no longer lie to Americans and others.
I began reading a book few years ago, might have been something about an "economic hitman" in the title. Was so depressing how my tax dollars were deeply subverting/poisoning other countries, I couldn't finish reading it.
As much short term turmoil as these exposures cause, I'm SO hopeful that the corruption won't recover during my life time.
your work did benefit people
You made a difference in people's lives
See you soon.
Thank you, friend
I am so very sorry
Switter, you are a good, honest man and that will never change. Please continue to enlighten us with the work you did. Maybe this will help bring about change.
Thank you for speaking.
I had a few charities as clients for my software engineering consultancy. We charged them below market rates for very in demand skills and they still never paid on time.
One "dreamer" felt he was kind to inform me he was off to a former Soviet bloc nation to save the world without paying late invoices.
Then I had front row seats as one imploded due to sheer incompetence. I still can't figure out how they managed to screw that one up. After that one I decided to be done dealing with well meaning Vegans.
I worked for a well respected one, but there were plenty of leaches, conmen, consultants (the guys who borrow your watch to tell you what time it is), and schemers around the Beltway. Everyone wanted a teat on the Big Sow.
A colleague and I were driving to our hotel in Port-au-Prince late one evening and saw an American kid walking along the street. We stopped and offered him a ride. He said he was there on his own dime and figured out the biggest problem was disposal of human waste, so he was working on a scheme to import portapotties he would place around town that could be used for a small fee. He was looking for investors, but we explained we were over leveraged and couldn’t tolerate the risk, but suggested he should discuss him plan with the USAID mission director.
We were amused by the conversation, but sometimes I feel a twinge of regret when I think about he might have had a great idea that really caught fire and he became the Bill Gates of outhouses.
I am sorry for this betrayal, Switter. Please keep focusing on all the good you personally did. We can only change the world one person at a time, and only if they want to be changed. I myself was a Fulbright Scholar at one time, under the aegis of USIA in Milan, Italy. I was surprised to learn, once there, that my mission was not exactly what I hoped it would be, but I stayed and I worked my heart out and I believe I DID make a difference, whether it was their aim or not. We only do what we can do.
Before we can fix it, we must acknowledge and understand what went wrong. I’m hopeful we will do so.
A Fulbright scholar! I’m impressed and proud of you.
Switter, I'm sorry for the heartbreak and also grateful for what you understand about the agency that I (and most others) would be less likely to understand. I have another acquaintance who worked for USAID who seems to believe a very different dream. It's so hard to know where to draw the line between truth and fiction these days.
Sorry to hear that you felt betrayed. I’m glad we’re pulling the mask off of these “soft influence” agencies. The humanitarian mask was effective in duping us for a long time. They lied.
Americans are good and generous people who want to help countries in trouble. Unfortunately, one of our major vehicles we chose to do that is corrupted. If we step back, assess how we got to this point, and figure out how to go forward in a more transparent, accountable manner, I would be happy to sing its praises.
💯 that applies to so much
Agreed.
I don't even know how to respond, Switter. Despite my best efforts to stay informed about the world, I know very little about foreign aid. One can't know it all, right? What I do know is that I believe in you and your experiences. You wanted to make a difference and you have a career to that effort. If you say the agency needs a massive reform, then I support that. Thank you for making me think about something to which I haven't paid enough attention.
You did what you said you would do....and that made a difference. Things will get better now that the lies have been uncovered.
It’s so good to hear from you!
Thank you for your kind words. I do hope things can change and we can continue to provide aid in a completely transparent, responsive and respectful way.
Thank you for educating us on this reality, Switter. So much smoke, mirrors, and bullshit in the world. I always want to believe people are doing what's right. But sometimes they're not. That's everywhere.
But everywhere, there is also goodness and decency.
I hear bots, and also people
paid to argue the /anger/depress/basically silence truth tellers - or even those that present real questions ...are a very real thing. It's like harassment for honest people speaking up or out.
Even though I'm sure u already know way way more than I, remember you don't have to prove to every random stranger online. Everyone is not who they seem. And not everyone even wants to know truth.
Regarding the dispute about how much went to the media organizations. My question,or simmering suspecion, is why would AI be involved finding this stuff- unless the money trails were intentionally highly complicated and misleading.
Blah blah Im obviously not best communicator.. I don't want an answer, but I don't want u harmed any more.
I appreciate original article,u have such actual insight but remember u don't have to reply to everyone.
You're a good man, who succeeded doing awesome work. I'm proud of u, and I'm sure people in your life that matter are also.
You are very kind and I miss the chance to chat on my Thursday night runs to the Ministry of Bulk Products!
I find that some people are invested in the belief that somehow by paying taxes, not voluntarily to be sure, that somehow they have outsourced virtue and they believe that virtue was vested in a wonderful bureaucracy that goes about solving the world’s problems.
Although it’s a scam(one can never outsource personal goodness and virtue), it gives comfort without causing any discomfort. The scam thrives in darkness and where there is no accountability, no improvement, and no actual performance measurements.
When the scam is exposed, a whole domino row of beliefs fall and the most common reaction is that the exposed reality is awful and untrue. It’s a hard thing to face up to.
There will be a lot of readjustments to people’s beliefs in the coming months. People will either double on their old perceptions or they will go through a painful soul searching of their beliefs versus the reality of the world.
I wish all of them well in their journeys.
So many illusions have been shattered by truth — from public health measures to foreign aid and everything in between.
Choosing not to see the truth, doubling down on believing lies, or not being curious enough to question the orthodoxy/“experts” and investigate further does great harm. Such investigations and subsequent revelations are excruciating to be sure. But once we know the truth, we also know the right path to take.
One can’t fix anything unless one can see and understand the problem.
Yes, you CAN "outsource personal goodness and virtue" to some extent. I live hundreds of miles from Western North Carolina and could not drive down to do anything. I could look on the web and see videos of a helicopter pilot prevented from rescuing a wife and delivering desperately needed supplies. I saw what real Carolinians said about FEMA. I saw videos of warehouses of bottled water and other supplies. I saw real time delivery of real help from private businesses and from Churches. One church organization repeatedly mentioned for actual help was Samaritan's Purse. I contributed the little that I could to my church's drive for them.
I wish I had given more. And that tells me--we are going to get better at this.
You didn’t outsource your virtue. You sought out, found, and helped provide resources for other members on your self-chosen team. You were in the driver’s seat.
And good on you. I’ve been reading about Lowe’s, NASCAR, the Amish, private helicopter owners and hundreds of other groups and individuals who are not outsourcing virtue. They are rolling up their sleeves and doing what needs to be done.
I had the great privilege of volunteering to help rebuild Paradise, California after the devastating wild fire. It is a privilege to help give someone a reason to smile again.
Agreed,
also I start up soon at my old store. So I'll see you around 😊
Yay. Welcome home.
Oh, Switter, you have seen so much. Not only of suffering but of systems. I have never heard of a system that lived up to its best ideals. Watchdogs and reforms must work full time at all times, and predators will find a way into our systems to gratify themselves, no matter what. Thank you for sharing what you saw. If you need radio silence for blocks of time these turbulent days, no one will begrudge it. You deserve walks in the trees in the majestic snow. But thank you for sharing what you can.
I’m sorry, Switter. It truly sucks.
Our government has funded so much evil—from USAID, to regime change, to assassination, to depopulation programs, to wars, to wealth grabs, to COVID—and that means everyone has been complicit as taxpayers who provided this money. We all have been betrayed, though few have been gutted as much as you.
Tragically, the nonprofits, many beginning with good intentions, became hideously corrupt with all that money and influence sloshing around. I am so sad that you—one of the most well-intentioned people on the planet—were caught up in this web of deceit and evil. The innocents suffer the most.
We’re just beginning to learn the truth. I hope all the fascistic government, corporate, nonprofit partnerships will be revealed by DOGE’s Sunshine disinfectant and shut down. Forever! The snake must not be allowed to shed its skin only to reappear as something shinier and even more insidious.
I had a feeling your heart would be heavy even though I did not know how directly you were involved in this scheme without knowing the true nature of what was happening in your orbit. But certainly your goodness and your example positively affected everyone you met and many whom you did not.
We all love you for your kindness, honesty, humor, resilience, and dedication to improving the human condition. Keep fighting for humanity and keep telling your stories.
Heart-breaking indeed. And we're probably going to find a lot of other bureaucratic entities in the U.S. government that have left us all wondering if anything we contributed to or work for were actually more that just a facade for a ponzie scheme. And you put your whole body, soul, and family into your work for others in the world, often at your own risk to life.
I'm puzzled.
Yes, when governments fund programs, most often the responsible entity manages and administers the requirements by competitively procuring the relevant goods or services from organisations with proven capabilities in providing the goods and services.
To do otherwise would be prohibitively expensive and require years to implement.
USAID didn't teach any child how to read, they did the more effective thing - teaching local teachers how to teach. If they procured those training teachers via a second party, instead of employing and managing those people directly, that would be normal, that's how governments all around the world get things done.
USAID doesn't make vaccines, they buy them.
USAID didn't put people into Ukraine, they purchased goods abd services for civilians in a war zone, because that's what those civilians needed.
A local toilet paper company here use some of their profits to build toilets and provide sewage systems in developing countries. The owners don't personally dig the pits or lay the pipes, but they still legitimately claim to have built Y number of toilets.
Was your work pointless? I very much doubt that. Were you personally betrayed? I don't know what you thought you signed up for.
Were intended beneficiaries betrayed? Did they not receive promised goods and services? If not, that's the betrayal, to my mind.
Ware funds allocated to programs that Americans weren't aware of until now? Apparently so. But the information was always available. It wasn't secret.
Aid and development, including for natural disasters, or for countries moving towards being a democracy, it's a wide and wobbly scope.
Kennedy implemented the program. That's a lot of decades ago. Suddenly everyone agrees that it's a useless waste of money, and that it shouldn't be replaced with something better.
Yep. I'm puzzled.
When services I was involved in were delivered so badly that horrible and avoidable deaths occurred in the most vulnerable cohort, for me it was soul destroying. The betrayal, however, was of the dead, and their families, the powerless.
Caz, I’m growing weary of the discussion. I’m explaining to several supporters of USAID why I feel AID’s mission creep and their incompetence actually did result in tragic and unexpected results, as well as massive losses of aid. I once had to oversee the burning of several thousand tonnes of commodities because the agency wasn’t able to change a shipping waybill for a cargo container of food aid sent to a wrong port, or invoke authority for us to sell the rapidly deteriorating commodities stored in hot, humid warehouses as livestock feed to recoup some small fraction of value. People went hungry. Taxpayer money was wasted.
I’ve seen US grown rice, probably the most expensive rice in the world, specified as the commodity to be used in a West African country for monetization to fund development projects using the local currency from the monetization proceeds, where the American rice sold at a fraction of its value because the local market was supplied by Thai and Vietnamese producers who produce probably the least expensive rice on the world market. Did some good take place? Perhaps, but at a greatly inflated price. Why was the American rice chosen? Because of lobbyists from the food aid constituency that includes California rice growers, big food processors, US shippers, because the commodities must be shipped by US flagged shippers, also among the most expensive in the world.
As far as information being freely available about programme performance, funding mechanisms, and NGO expertise, that is rarely the case. Also, much of the agency’s budget was simply not available for public scrutiny, because of security classifications. We are learning now how much of USAID’s $70 billion annual budget was allocated to certain 3 letter agencies, and had no oversight or accountability for how it was spent.
Bilateral aid, country to country aid, that was provided to fund the teacher training you referred to was some of the most abused and least accounted for. Multilateral aid, through, say, UN agencies had similar accountability problems as well as much higher implementation costs because, for example, World Food Programme works the same way as USAID. They are also a procurement agency who contracts with NGO subrecipients that do the actual work of managing the food aid. More than once, the organization I worked for was asked for proposals to take over management of USAID-funded World Food Programme projects, which we were able to do at much lower costs and losses.
I could continue with examples of other programmatic areas, but it’s a continuation of the same story of massive inefficiencies, fraud, incompetence, and corruption. I have no qualms that the agency is being investigated, grants are being scrutinized, most, but not all, work is suspended until the messes can be sorted out so more competent and transparent processes can be put into place.
Finally, I always believed foreign aid should be short to resolve specific objectives. There are very few examples of where that has happened. Haiti, for example, has been the recipient of billions of dollars in aid, well before the devastating earthquake, and nothing really changed there.
There was an attempt at a different approach to aid back in the late 1990s through the Millennium Challenge Fund, where a country was eligible for funding if certain governance, policy, and other criteria was met. Some countries rose to the challenge, but the countries most in need of assistance weren’t eligible.
There are no silver bullets, but corruption and incompetence made an ineffective process worse. One can’t hope one’s way to success. With the information coming out about USAID in the past week that is so antithetical to humanitarian ideals, I believe I have no choice but to feel betrayed. I was the willing canon fodder out there trying to make the unworkable work.
Hi,
I stumbled across your Substack from a recommendation.
I don’t know your work, but I can tell you a couple of years ago I became VERY disillusioned by ALL NGOs. It’s ALL a scam. ALL OF IT!! EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM!! There is no such thing as a non- profit. They don’t pay taxes, they may not make a profit but you better damn well know THEY ARE ENRICHING THEMSELVES. It’s all a grift. The sooner you understand that the better mentally you will feel. They play on good, kind, and generous people because they know we’re suckers. I’m not being mean. I’m being directly honest.
I have worked for many charities to raise money - always for a worthy cause or so I thought. I was SO VERY WRONG. One of the charities invited me and my husband to a VERY swanky 4 day ‘retreat’ to be with ‘like minded people’. I was so very naive. Against my husband’s better judgement, we went. What a mistake, but it opened my eyes to so many things.
The entire 4 days I felt like the other shoe was about to drop. On the last night, it did. We were asked for a 2-year commitment for money. I was told - look at the 990s. Those are tax returns for ‘non-profits’. HOLY SHIT, I could not believe what I was seeing. The CEO was pulling in $250,000 a year + expenses, a car, travel, etc. the event we were at cost $750,000 the previous year!! And just to REALLY depress myself, while I was looking into the 990s, I looked up the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. If you ever really want to make yourself sick to your stomach, look it up. My husband told me my face turned white when I saw their 990.
When I asked the CEO of the organization that invited me to the retreat “how do you define success” she could not answer me. This NGO was about child sex trafficking and the like minded people were all Christian charities. I felt surrounded and very pressured to give money. Mind you, I helped raise $20,000 for them and thought the retreat was a sort of ‘thank you’. It was the furthest thing from the truth.
I never gave a dime to them. I never contacted them again.
All this to say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Let’s be honest - with the billions of dollars spent over so many years - WHY DOESN’T AFRICA HAVE CLEAN WATER, FOOD, PAVED ROADS OR GOOD INFRASTRUCTURE? WHY? Because they don’t want them to. If we did that then how could you continue a charity if you complete your mission? And the HIV/AIDS stuff, well Bill & Melinda spread it to Africa to do experiments and then to raise money for the poor Africans with HIV. It’s all bullshit.
USAID will never be reconstituted. It should never have been stood up the way it was. Money never reached the people it was supposed to help. Once you understand the game you know we can never allow that to happen again. It’s all virtue signaling. Remember the UNITED WAY? 35 years ago EVERY SINGLE INSURANCE COMPANY had literally every single employee give a donation. They didn’t outright threaten us, but tremendous pressure was put on us. And the company matched the donation. Aetna, CNA, Chubb, Travelers, etc did this. And then years later it was reported that only 10% of all donations went to any recipient; 90% went to administration!! It was all and still is a grift.
After the retreat I stopped giving to charities. I wanted to help others and gave directly to people in need, but you know what? They NEVER TRULY APPRECIATED IT. I was very sad for a while. And then I thought - charity begins at home. I stopped worrying about others and worry about myself and my family because no one else cares about them.
WHEN will we learn that there are evil people running nicely named organizations that only enrich themselves? MY WISH is to see dozens of congressmen step down and resign in disgrace, but I doubt it will happen.
Inefficiencies, fraud, incompetence, and corruption.
Yes!
That's global and widely recognized where aid dollars are concerned. Unfortunately, it's not special to US aid.
Inefficiencies, fraud, incompetence, and corruption aren't unique to aid or government.
I think Aid is rightly held to a higher moral standard than, say, Musk or Trump.
Aid will go on. No one has gotten it completely right, not governments, private philanthropy, or NGOs.
I don't expect a fix in my lifetime. But that's true of pretty much everything now.
Perhaps you could contact DOGE with your inside knowledge. You literally know where the bodies are buried and who helped bury them. Those people must be held accountable so they cannot repeat their crimes.