The Shrine

<div style='font: ; text-align: left; '>You know, the thing that sucks ass about the war is that after we blow IRAQ to hell, we are gonna go back and rebuild the entire freakin country, when right here in the states we have homeless people and others starving/dying many a day...Let's help our own people and CUT foreign AID!!!</div>

<div style='font: ; text-align: left; '>My apoligies to ARAB people, but the war should have been avioded....I don't want innocent people to die...BUT it has come time for the bombing to start, I guess we are in Little Bush's hands now. GOD Bless us all.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt Arial; text-align: left; '>Besides, I live in the neighborhood where most of the people are on welfare, and you know what they are doing? Sitting on their frontsteps not doing a GOD DAMN THING, to start looking for a job. Yes they are americans, but if these people are just going to leech us dry, might as well throw it to foriegn aid. The budget isn't balanced anyway, why not throw more money out there than we can afford to at a problem we helped create? Oh well.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>Excerpt from an article by Brian J. Atwood which was in <i>Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy, Winter 1997</i>:<blockquote>Poll after poll shows that Americans believe foreign aid expenditures are running up the federal deficit. They believe it is time for America to curtail its contribution and for other countries to do their share.

It turns out, however, that the same Americans who tell pollsters the United States spends too much on foreign aid also think foreign aid accounts for nearly 20 percent of the federal budget. When asked, they say that spending levels should be closer to 5 percent. They are shocked to learn that U.S. economic and humanitarian aid - which includes U.S. contributions to such mulitlateral organizations as the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and regeional developmental banks - <b><i>amounts to far less than 1 percent of the federal budget</b></i>.

Indeed, cutting foreign aid out entirely - or doubling it - would barely make a discernable difference in the U.S. deficit.

Many Americans still think the United States is the most generous donor in the world. They might be embarassed to learn that the United States ranks foruth in the world in the overall amount of resources it devotes to foreign assistance. Japan, Germany, and France all outspend us annually, although our economy is six times larger than France's, more than four times larger than Germany's, and one-and-a-half times that of Japan's. In per-capita terms, U.S. foreign-assistance programs rank dead last among programs of all the industrialized nations, behind countries like Ireland and Portugal.</blockquote>Emphasis mine. At the time that Atwood wrote this, he was the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

There's also this misconception that most of our foreign aid is humanitarian aid. It's not. Now, I believe the number one area we give aid to is debt releif. Number two is military aid - which is a round-a-bout way of subsidizing our own defense industry, since often the countries have to buy from us. Number three is infastructure, and number four is humanitarian aid.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt Dominion; text-align: left; '>*applauds* I was almost under the false impression that we spent too much aid too-- nice to hear that's not true at all</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Arial; text-align: left; '>Rich boy: "I can't believe all of these people sitting around doing nothing and milking the system! ...Daddy? Can I have 300 dollars to buy some new clothes?"</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Arial; text-align: left; '>Ya know, for the amount of money we spend on the millitary every year, we could feed everyone on earth.... maybe foreign aid (which makes up less than 1% of the total Gov. budget) shouldn't be our biggest concern.</div>

<div style='font: ; text-align: left; '>1percent is not negligable.....that should be distributed equally to every member of the Otherworlds Shrine, so WE could decide what to do with it! mwhaa-haa-hahahaaa! *evil-grin*</div>