The lamestream media told you:
President Obama has pledged $100 million in aid to tragedy-stricken Haiti.
The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:
Does a president have legitimate delegated power to give away $100 million in taxpayer money, even in the face of an unmitigated natural and human disaster? Reporters should tell us, but they didn't ask. They just took the president's pronouncement and heralded it, without any actual reporting, continuing their migration from watchdog to lapdog.
Who actually gets the money? Did Mr. Obama even think about that before spending our hard-earned cash? Reporters should tell us, but they didn't even think to ask. Is it going to actual people in the hopelessly corrupt Haitian government, a government more corrupt than even our own? It's certainly not going to be rained down on the impoverished Haitians themselves from helicopters, is it?
Is the money in fact going to U.S. firms, as foreign aid often does? Are U.S. companies, on hearing the announcement, sending their best lobbyists to the right places to line up for the "federal funds" (the public's hard-earned tax-collected money), so they can deliver produce, canned soup, water bottles and plumbing contractors? Reporters don't even know that's how it works, so they don't even think to ask.
Will we even get followup stories to tell us if our one hundred million frickin dollars have been spent, and where, and for what?
Don't hold your breath.
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Freelance writer Alan Korwin is a founder and past president of the Arizona Book Publishing Association. With his wife Cheryl he operates Bloomfield Press, the largest producer and distributor of gun-law books in the country. Here writing as "The Uninvited Ombudsman," Alan covers the day's stories as they ought to read. Read more.
