Conservatives' attitude: insensitive to victims, insulting to Americans.

For the second day in a row I randomly switch to MSNBC's Scarborough Country. By some coincidence both times I heard Joe Scarborough boasting about how much aid the U.S. is giving to tsunami survivors and how everyone is unfair to call them stingy. The “everyone” includes the usual suspects - the UN, NGOs, bureaucrats, elitist media and liberals. The latest center of Joe's attention was today's New York Times editorial titled "Are we stingy? Yes"
It was extremely amusing to hear him go on and on about how NYT doesn’t understand that there is no magical pile of money available somewhere, but it is all taxpayers’ money, paid by people's taxes, from their pocket. He continued his "compassionate" monologue by assuring that we don't mind giving that money, but others need to understand that more we give more it is going to hurt taxpayers. "It is your money", he said looking into the camera. That is when the amusement turned quickly into disgust. It seemed that "taxpayers" or "your" were the key words, emphasized repeatedly. As if Joe was suggesting that it is not the government that is stingy, it is the people who would definitely disapprove of providing this help using their money. Not only this attitude is disrespectful to both the victims and the American people, it is absolutely unsubstantiated. Mr. Scarborough is neglecting to clarify that this unbelievably generous amount of $35m translates into misley $0.12 per capita, when for a country like Australia (which pledges only $27m) that number is $1.45 per capita. The suggestion that 12 cents is all that Americans would give to help the victims of one of the biggest cataclysms in history is not only laughable, but outright insulting. It is impossible to imagine that when asked for help anyone in this country would reach into their pocket and recover slightly more than a dime. A buck, two, five or ten sounds much closer to the truth. I wonder if one asks Mr. Scarborough directly about the amount he personally is willing to give, what would he reply. I think we can safely assume the number to be in hundreds or in thousands. At only a dollar per capita the amount of aid would be around $300m or $100m if we only count a third of the population (excluding children, low and fixed income citizens). The amount goes up to $1 Billion if we consider $10 per capita.
I can't help but wonder why conservatives like Joe Scarbourugh would be so confident that linking the disaster aid to foreign countries to the pocketbooks of the people can justify the disappointing performance of the US as a donor. And it is unquestionably disappointing based on abundance of facts. I have no choice but think that Joe either did not actually read the editorial or he is deliberately misleading (shocking!) his viewers. The article contains cold facts, which would make it hard for him to claim that America is the all time highest donor or that it provides 40% of all the aid.

Mr. Powell pointed to disaster relief and said the United States "has given more aid in the last four years than any other nation or combination of nations in the world." But for development aid, America gave $16.2 billion in 2003; the European Union gave $37.1 billion. In 2002, those numbers were $13.2 billion for America, and $29.9 billion for Europe.
Making things worse, we often pledge more money than we actually deliver. Victims of the earthquake in Bam, Iran, a year ago are still living in tents because aid, including ours, has not materialized in the amounts pledged. And back in 2002, Mr. Bush announced his Millennium Challenge account to give African countries development assistance of up to $5 billion a year, but the account has yet to disperse a single dollar.

I suppose these facts were not worse mentioning as they would obstruct his elaborate and methodical attempt to frame this debate as another "left elitist conspiracy" to make the administration look bad. Ironically the editorial itself already addresses the question of limits to our willingness to give and makes Joe's "this is your money" argument irrelevant.

According to a poll, most Americans believe the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on aid to poor countries; it actually spends well under a quarter of 1 percent.

The taxpayers clearly think we spend lot more on aid and seem to be fine with that. This is just a small part of the statistical data that MSNBC's staff could have easily found if they bothered or cared to check. It is very easy to impress the viewers with big numbers and make them feel proud, if one hides the simple math from them and neglects to point out what an insignificant percentage of the budget the amount represents, especially in comparison to other countries. By the way, Joe must've missed the news about Britain trippling its aid to £50m, boosted by unprecedented £20m donation by the public in a single day.
No, Mr. Scarborough, it is not the people, but the government that seem to be unwilling to be big-hearted. The citizens of this nation are truly compassionate in a way that has nothing to do with hallow political slogans. They would be appalled to know how little of their money is really being sent to those poor victims that have just been through hell. Unfortunately, thanks to you many of them may never know that.

And PS: Talking about a pile of money, there is at least $40m being raised for inauguration. Wouldn’t it be really big of the president to send that money to the victims? It does after all sound more vital than just a big party...