Angry New Yorker

Semi-Daily Rants from New York City's Angry Man

"As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man, upon easier terms than I was formerly." - Dr. Samuel Johnson, Boswell, Life of Johnson, Sept. 1783

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Friday, December 31, 2004
 
We'd hope to let the year pass quietly into the deep, but, true to form, The New York Times pulls us back in.

Are We Stingy? No. Are the New York Times' Editorial Page Editors Liberals? Yes.

The New York Times ends the year with an idiotic editorial (Are we Stingy? Yes. , available here) that pulls off the liberal equivalent of a triple-play by tweaking Bush, striking up the band for a chorus of "The U.S. is the worst", and tossing it over to third to praise both Europe and the U.N.

First, the NY Times is populated by leftists with a superiority complex - granted, not all, but there are more people there who can't logically reason their way out of a paper bag than there are those who can rationally see and digest both sides of an issue. That's a fact.

Second, this insane rush to dump money at the tsunami catastrophe is both foolish and counter-productive. The end result will be, again, waste and fraud on a massive scale fueled by the understandable and righteous wishes of well-intentioned people around the world.

The proper way to gin up the necessary resources is to FIRST get a rough handle on the disaster; THEN, determine how much would be immediately needed; and FINALLY, get countries to pledge to pony up over time the funds as money is spent on the immediate relief and on longer term reconstructive aid. The one way most definitely NOT to go about financing the operation is the way the New York Times supports: namely, get countries to engage in one-upmanship of "I pledged more money than you to prove I'm not stingy."

Unfortunately, however, in addition to its heavy contingent of leftists, the Times must be heavily strewn with people from single-child families. As folks from families with plenty of kids we learned early on that engaging in "oh, yeah! are too!" battles never accomplished anything. Sadly, it's a lesson the Times has yet to master.

UPDATE: According to Andew S. Natsios (bio here), U.S. Agency for Int'l Development Administrator, www.usaid.gov, who sounds like a very reasonable and rationale person (e.g. "don't send in your used clothing, ... cans of food"; press conference available via C-SPAN, here), stated that according to actual figures, (see press conference link, supra, at time 14:44 of 1:02:21), regarding levels of contributions OECD figures reveal the U.S. contributed US $2.4 billion last year, s 40% of ALL contributions by ALL countries, making the U.S. the largest single aid contributor by far. Stick that in your pipe New York Times and U.N.

UPDATE II: (the following via Instapundit.com)

STINGINESS UPDATE: Over $7.5 million raised by Amazon.com so far.

UPDATE: It's over $8.5 million now.

MORE: U.S. government aid is now up to $350 million.

ARE AMERICANS STINGY? Daniel Drezner and Bruce Bartlett look at the numbers.

Day by Day has its own take, too:

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UPDATE III The amazing Belmont Club notes the U.N. is better at taking credit than at actually accomplishing anything of substance, and loves to deny "legitimacy" to any actions not under the U.N. baby-blue flag of failure. Read it all here.

Also, Michael J. Totten gives the mindless Clare Short a full broadside for her comments (here), such as, "[i]t is the only body that has the moral authority [to carry on this relief effort]." D'oh!! Say what?! Read Totten's dead-on salvo,
First Stingy, Now Unilateral - here.

posted by anonymous at 3:30 PM

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