This blog is mostly about Bill Gates the Micro Softy with a streak of intelligence.
I nominate Jeffrey D. Sachs and Paul “Bono” or “bonobo” Hewson as the two most unredeemingly outrageous idiots of 2005. These men have proposed raising billions of dollars for the U.N. to spend ending poverty, mostly in Africa.
Few people have trouble recognizing Al Sharpton or Michael Moore as idiots on the face of it, but ....
Few people have trouble recognizing Al Sharpton or Michael Moore as
idiots on the face of it, but you have know a little about aid to
developing countries and the oil for food scandal to appreciate Sachs
and Bono.
Money has been spent on African development by the hundreds of billions (of dollars) over the past 45 years and the money has made Africa poorer, more strife ridden and more dependent than before national independence. Foreign aid money has been severely damaging. Fortunately the formerly poverty ridden areas of Bangalore India and Quong Dong Province in China didn’t have any foreign aid projects to grind them into poverty.
The U.N. in a mere six years of administering a program called Oil for
Food in Iraq was able to fraudulently siphon off $3 billion to friends
of Saddam Hussein. Imagine the bureaucratic skills in fraud and
siphoning money that have developed over 45 years of foreign aid money
to Africa and a few other parts of the world.
I blame nobody in Africa or Iraq for the consequences of wasted money and failed aid programs. If you give someone gallons of wine to pour on your garden every week believing it will produce flourishing plants, I can’t blame the person directed to pour the wine on the garden for drinking most of it and selling the rest.
Only the people who believe in pouring more money into foreign aid, via the U.N. are idiots.
Now to the point. One naïve man who was wasting his money was Bill
Gates who was giving hundreds of millions of dollars to foreign aid
programs through his foundation. It might look like some of it was
worthwhile going to inoculation of children. But inoculation of
children in non-developing countries has been going on for 45 years and
no new communities have been added to the program in 43 years. All the
money is wasted. Why? Because there are three barriers to expanding
the number of children who can be inoculated: refrigeration, sanitation
and medical skill. These three elements are absent or insufficient in
the areas where children have been waiting for an inoculation program
for 45 years.
Proof Phillips? Proof?
Yes. Proof is in a recent Gates Foundation call for research proposals on just these specific issues. Bill Gates had the intelligence to wake up and see that all his health grants were wasted money and is now seeking ways to stop squandering foundation funds. If I were Bill Gates I would stop all the rest of his totally wasted grants, fire the sycophants that promote dollar wasting schemes and figure out how to be rational in providing new channels of health care as he is doing in inoculation.