Steve Peacock's U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor

Obama expands reading program – in Kenya! (WND)

Corruption determined to not be an obstacle to taxpayer money

Millions of children will be targeted to improve their reading skills over the next five years under a new Obama administration literacy program in nearly 30,000 public and private primary schools.

But the schools are not in the U.S., they’re in the Republic of Kenya.

The tentatively titled Kenya Early Grade Reading Project, or KEGRP, seeks to implement national curriculum standards, deploy more than 1,000 trainers to assist tens of thousands teachers and improve the ratio of textbooks to students. The Obama administration didn’t reveal the cost of the program.

Continue reading at WND.com...

ALSO SEE U.S. TRADE & AID MONITOR'S KENYA PAGE AND USAID PAGE.

Patriot Update: Obama Seeks to Raise Global Competitiveness—In Mexico

My latest from Patriot Update. - S.P.

In terms of global competitiveness, Mexico ranks 58th among 142 nations—and U.S. taxpayers are stepping in to help raise that ranking.

Increased credit access, especially for small and medium-sized businesses, is one of the targeted improvements the Obama Administration is hoping to accomplish through the Mexico Competitiveness Project II, or MCP II.

A $22 million contract that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) awarded to Abt Associates, Inc., will support Mexican-government efforts to help businesses as well as to institute system-wide reforms.

Continue reading at PatriotUpdate.com...

 

New Obama Program Targets Unemployed Youth—in Pakistan! (Patriot Update)

The Obama Administration’s Youth Workforce Development Program (YWDP) promises  to deal with the growing number of “idle, disaffected youth” nationwide—that is,  in the nation of Pakistan.

The initiative comes at a time when the U.S.  Department of Labor acknowledges that the unemployment rate for American  teenagers in March remained about the same as in February: 24.2 percent.

Read more at PatriotUpdate.com...

Also see Steve Peacock's author page at Patriot Update...

Former Federal Prosecutor Leverages Steve Peacock's U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor in Column

Many thanks to Andrew C. McCarthy of National Review Online for using U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor today as a supplemental resource in his article "Shhh, Don't Tell Anyone Hamas Won."

McCarthy, author of Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy, via the NRO piece linked to "Obama to Exclude U.S. Companies from $300 Million Palestinian Project" (Monitor, Aug. 17, 2012).

McCarthy, it should be noted, is not your average columnist. Indeed, check out his bio:

Andrew C. McCarthy was a top federal prosecutor involved in some of the most significant cases in recent history. Decorated with the Justice Department’s highest honors, he retired from government in 2003, after helping launch the 9/11 investigation. He is one of America’s most persuasive voices on national security issues and author of the bestsellers Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad and The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America. Currently, he is a contributing editor at National Review and a columnist for Pajamas Media.

I am honored that Mr. McCarthy has recognized the value of U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor, and  look forward to reading Spring Fever and his other works.

Sequestration-Related Cuts? Fed Spending Continues Unabated

The Obama administration recently issued warnings to contractors of potential sequestration-related spending cuts, but in the meantime federal spending continues unabated, domestically and globally.

Some of the apparently indispensable projects include a environmental public murals in Hebron and Jericho along with similarly themed summer camps and field trips for Palestinian children, alternative energy outings to Turkey, and assistance to mango growers and hotel operators in Pakistan.

The U.S. Agency for International Development said in a public notice that “due to the failure of Congress to reach a deal on balanced deficit reduction to avoid sequestration, the president on March 1, 2013, as required by law, issued a sequestration order canceling approximately $85 billion in budgetary resources across the federal government for the remainder of the federal fiscal year.”

USAID recently advised vendors that the agency “is taking every step to mitigate the effects of these cuts, but … it is likely that your company’s workforce, revenue, and planning processes may be affected.”

But that is not stopping USAID from reaching out to contractors to carry out its new $700 million global “ecological-governance” program.

The primary goal of the agency’s Restoring the Environment through Prosperity, Livelihoods and Conserving Ecosystems, or REPLACE, program is to strengthen the ability of governments and non-governmental organizations around the globe to provide climate-change mitigation and adaptation, seascape and landscape management, and other environmental and economic interventions.

Numerous other federal entities issued similar warnings via the FedBizOpps contractor database.

Despite the advisories, new projects continue to emerge while existing programs undergo expansion, from the seemingly inconsequential – such as a $79,000 U.S. Trade & Development Agency grant to send U.S. railway representatives on an exploratory mission to India – to initiatives on a multi-billion-dollar scale.

Most notable is the Department of Defense’s extended outsourcing of global counter-narcotics functions through its Counter Narco-Terrorism Program Office, or CNTPO, a potential $15 billion contract vehicle that has enriched – and will continue to enrich – Blackwater Lodge & Training Center Inc.; Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems; ARINC Engineering Services LLC; Raytheon Technical Service Company; and Northrop Grumman/TASC Inc.

The report "DoD Prepares Follow-Up to $15 Billion Global Counterdrug Contracts" continues to be one of the Monitor's most regulalry visited articles, generating consistent visits and Google search hits nearly twenty months later.

The following list of federal procurement actions represents an additional snapshot of recent contracts, requests for proposals and other solicitations, both large and small. This nation-by-nation compilation is by no means comprehensive but is designed to enlighten U.S. taxpayers about how the federal government is spending – or intends to spend – their money.

GAZA/WEST BANK

The creation of environmental-themed public murals, conducting student field-trips to “environmentally important sites” in Hebron and Jericho and holding environmental summer camps for Palestinian children are among programs that the Department of Agriculture’s U.S. Forest Service intends to fund. And the USFS is procuring the services of the Palestinian Association for Child Arts and Culture to carry out these tasks for youth in the city of Hebron. The agency did not disclose the estimated cost.

Helping the Palestinian Authority to “build more effective and competent public institutions that are accountable to the public and respond to citizens’ needs” will cost $20.5 million under a contract that USAID awarded to Development Alternatives Inc.

U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor founder Steve Peacock initially broke the story on the project’s unveiling last April for WND.com.

PAKISTAN

Current efforts to improve the competitiveness of small- and medium businesses in Pakistan have been extended another 20 months, now that USAID has raised Chemonics International’s contract ceiling to $93 million. The current contract for the Pakistan Firms Project was slated to end April 15, but with a $2.5 million increase, Chemonics will continue to provide technology upgrades, skill development and other assistance to hotels, mango growers, knitted-garment manufacturers and other Pakistani enterprises through December 31, 2014.

TURKEY

Alternative-energy industry representatives are getting free hotel rooms and airfare to Turkey to explore ways to capitalize on the nation’s energy boom. The U.S. Trade & Development Agency is offering a $537,000 grant to carry out the Smart Grid Upgrades to the Teias Electricity Transmission Network Feasibility Study. According to the agency, “Turkey is facing a rapidly rising demand in the midst of its bustling economic growth. The Turkish government is consequently making a concentrated effort to explore alternative sources of energy, such as wind, hydro and geothermal power as a way of meeting this shortfall.”

Consequently, the Obama administration has decided that U.S. taxpayers should shoulder the burden of that trip to Ankara.

UNITED STATES

Under its Adult Education and Immigrant Integration project, the U.S. Department of Education awarded a $1.3 million contract to World Education Inc. of Boston to design an initiative to “reduce linguistic, academic, and employment barriers for skilled and low-skilled immigrants and refugees, and to integrate them into the U.S. workforce and professions.”

A similar version of this article first appeared via WND.com on March 18, 2013. Under agreement with WND, rights have reverted back to the author, Steve Peacock.

Patriot Update: Obama Spending $500 Million on Foreign Readers

A $500 million reading-skills project has been unveiled by the Obama Administration. And young readers all around the globe—except United States citizens—will benefit from it.

Continued at PatriotUpdate.com...

USAID Pushing Kenyan 'Peace' Projects

The Obama administration is launching new peace initiatives in and around Kenya, but acknowledges that chronic cattle rustling and other cultural practices – such as killing rivals “to prove their manhood or impress young women” – serve as impediments to progress.

Obama, through the U.S. Agency for International Development, nonetheless intends to hire private contractors that would, hypothetically, offer services such as “reflective workshops” and “trauma education” to warring clans and tribes, according to an agency concept paper that U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor located through routine database research.

The purpose of such providing services is to encourage empathy between “victims” and “perpetrators” – terms that the document repeatedly encloses in quotation marks to emphasize USAID’s position that so-called “perpetrators” also have endured trauma.

Exchanging “trauma stories” between hostile groups is a critical step in the community healing process, USAID says, as this sharing helps to raise awareness that “victims” are often the “perpetrators,” particularly when they carry out acts of revenge. This approach is one of several that USAID is proposing.

The “PEACE III” concept paper offers detailed ideas aimed at promoting stability across East African border regions. USAID recently released the paper to solicit feedback from contractors on various “theories of change” that could be implemented as part of future Horn of Africa peace and reconciliation programs.

The Obama administration hopes to create “healing peace-building cycles” that ultimately will replace “cycles of violence,” particularly along multiple conflict-prone points on the Kenya-Uganda, Kenya-South Sudan, Kenya-Ethiopia, Kenya-Somalia, and Ethiopia-South Sudan borders.

USAID said in the document that attaining such stability “is a central U.S. foreign policy and development priority in the context of regional security and economic integration.”

The agency acknowledges that the task ahead will be difficult, as “certain cultural practices and norms” in the Horn of Africa “may encourage acts of violence.”

“For example, in the western border areas, spiritual leaders bless the warriors before and after cattle raids,” the concept paper says. “A warrior is believed to have defended the pride of his clan and proven his manhood when he murders a man from the enemy tribe/clan.

“Songs and dances prepared for such warriors stir other warriors and young men to engage in murder and cattle raids. Women rebuke the warriors who have not been successful in raids rousing them to raid again,” the paper points out.

Despite the cultural, political, and economic challenges to successfully implementing conflict management programs, USAID says it had identified a “multitude of determined, credible, and committed actors at the regional, national, and local levels” that in the long term could help bring more “stability, peace, and prosperity to this part of the world.”

“The region is also witnessing a shift in national government commitment to peaceful management of conflicts,” the agency added.

Community peace-building efforts have led to some security improvements, especially in areas such as the Kenya-Somalia border, USAID says. Community leaders – including women, religious, business, youth, and elders – have helped mediate disputes before they escalate, thereby changing cultural practices that often lead to inter-communal violence.

Weaker governments, however, sometimes view these informal systems as rivals. Rather than supporting those systems, such governments attempt to undermine or simply ignore them, dismissing such organizations and activities as irrelevant.

“In several locations, most notably Kenya, the government has even sought to institutionalize this governance partnership nationally, via local peace and development committees,” the document says. The PEACE III initiative consequently will “focus on catalyzing the emergence and development of local peace-building networks in volatile border areas.”

Despite proposed cuts in U.S. foreign assistance to most nations – including Kenya – the Obama administration nonetheless has sought to sustain other contractors that already carry out voluminous projects in that nation.

As the Monitor also has reported, USAID under Obama likewise launched a propaganda program aimed at swaying national and international opinion to support Kenya-related U.S. programs.  

Following that Monitor report – which exposed federal plans to target specific journalists – the Obama administration sanitized its FedBizOpps contracting database of all traces of that and other Kenya-centric procurement documents.

The Monitor, however, restored public access to the USAID/Kenya Strategic Communications Plan 2012-2013.

In a separate, recent solicitation, USAID is recruiting a Program Officer-Kenya for its Office of Transition Initiatives, where the private contractor would serve for the remainder of OTI’s scheduled stay in Kenya. The position in mid-2013 will transition to USAID-Kenya’s Education & Youth Office.

OTI had established a Nairobi-based presence as part of Obama’s “support of the February 28, 2008, peace accord between competing political parties in the wake of inter-ethnic violence following flawed national elections in December 2007,” the personal services contractor solicitation says.

One of the key responsibilities of the Program Officer-Kenya will be to “represent program interests with USAID Mission personnel, U.S. Embassy staff, Department of State, and Department of Defense personnel.” In addition to needing a top secret-level security clearance, potential candidates who are dual citizens “may be asked to renounce second-country citizenship.”

The position, which pays in the $84,697-$110,104 range, also involves providing guidance to and oversight of contractors carrying out the Support Which Implements Fast Transition, or SWIFT III, initiative.

SWIFT III is a $1.5 billion worldwide USAID program whose goal is to “support U.S. foreign policy objectives by helping local partners advance peace and democracy in priority countries in crisis.”

USAID additionally has launched an information-gathering initiative to identify local and regional consultants and organizations to provide future short- and long-term “technical services and capacity building assistance.” This would include services specific to agency cross-border peace projects to the USAID/East Africa mission in Nairobi.

The agency’s search for potential help via this Request for Information is not limited to Kenya, however; indeed, the RFI likewise seeks to compile a comprehensive list of consultants to potentially work with other USAID regional offices and partners in Somalia, Djibouti, South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic and Tanzania.

A similar version of this article appeared via WND.com on March 9. Under agreement with WND, rights have reverted back to its author, Steve Peacock.

WND: Obama Pushing Kenyan 'Peace' Projects

My latest from WND:

The Obama administration is launching new peace initiatives in and around Kenya, but acknowledges that chronic cattle rustling and other cultural practices – such as killing rivals “to prove their manhood or impress young women” – serve as impediments to progress.

Obama, through the U.S. Agency for International Development, nonetheless intends to hire private contractors that would, hypothetically, offer services such as “reflective workshops” and “trauma education” to warring clans and tribes, according to an agency concept paper that WND located through routine database research.

Continued at WND.com...

World Affairs Brief

Many thanks to Joel M. Skousen's World Affairs Brief for highlighting my recent PatriotUpdate.com article  "U.S. Cost of U.N. 'Rule of Law' Project: $500 million." As Skousen's brief is a subscription-based service, I am delighted that he saw fit to deem that piece worthy of mention to his readers, who no doubt want their money's worth.

For those who have not yet read that article, I had discovered, through routine database research, that the U.S. Agency for International Development will pay contractors up to a half-billion dollars to train other nation's to comply with United Nations-sanctioned "rule of law" guidelines (click through the link above for the full Patriot Update article).

There's nothing inherently wrong with encouraging governments to treat their citizens fairly and to be held accountable to their people; however,foisting this additional financial burden upon U.S. taxpayers -- compunded by the laughable notion that our government is some sort of Beacon on the Hill for the masses to follow -- is hypocritical if not downright laughable. Now that the sequestration process is unfolding, the White House and Congress should take a closer look at such projects when they start claiming that there's no place left for budget cuts.

Obama Hands Out Free Health Care to Pakistanis

The Obama administration is preparing to give free health care to Pakistanis even as Americans who cannot get health insurance because of pre-existing conditions soon will be rejected by domestic programs due to a lack of funds.

Pakistani nationals working at several U.S. embassies soon could get a boost in health care benefits as the U.S. State Department has begun shopping for top-tier services.

Their paychecks will not see so much as one Pakistani rupee deducted as they receive a broad variety of medical services, according to a solicitation U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor located via routine database research.

The document also made clear that the selected vendor “shall insure that health care under this contract does not exclude HIV/AIDS care, or preexisting conditions.”

The State Department will subsidize an estimated 1,222 family plans and 190 single-employee plans. The family plans cover children of Pakistani employees to age 18, or age 23 if a full-time student and unmarried.

Coverage could apply to a variety to individuals and their families for local employees of the:

• U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, its consulates in Karachi, Lahore, and Peshawar, and its “presence” in Quetta.
• Department of State.
• Defense Attaché Office .
• Drug Enforcement Administration.
• Legal Attaché Office.
• Foreign Agricultural Service.
• Foreign Broadcast Information Service.
• Office of Defense Representative in Pakistan.
• Public Affairs Section.
• Refugee Office.
• Library of Congress.
• Foreign Commercial Service.
• Kabul Support Unit.
• Department of Homeland Security.
• Voice of America.
• Narcotics Affairs Section/International Narcotics and Law Enforcement – Pakistan.
• Office of Overseas Building Operation.
• US Agency for International Development.
• Department of Treasury.
• Department of Energy.
• Office of the Inspector General (OIG).

Although it is standard practice for State to offer health-care benefits to locally employed staff worldwide, the Pakistani package is noticeably more generous than coverage offered in other nations, such as Venezuela.

Citing prevailing practices in and around the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, State will foot the bill for just 90 percent of the monthly premium for those workers. Similarly, the U.S. Embassy in Caracas also prevents providers from excluding HIV/AIDS care and preexisting conditions, unless excluded by the human resources department.

On the other hand, Venezuelan staff can elect to include coverage for the employees’ parents up to 80 years old, though they must full cover the premium. Furthermore, while children of Pakistani staff only are potentially eligible for coverage until they are 23, unmarried college-bound Venezuelan dependents can stay on the plan until they turn 25.

Additionally, Venezuelan family-plan members each may receive funeral-coverage costs of 6,000 Bolivars, about U. S. $1,000.

Meanwhile, Obama administration officials said, according to the Washington Post, that the state-based “high risk pools” set up under Obamacare will be closed to new applicants over the next few days because funding is running low.

And the Washington Times reported Obamacare will push 7 million Americans out of their job-based insurance coverage due to limited funding. The report said the incentives for businesses to provide health care are being minimized, so more employers are expected to choose to pay a penalty to the government and not provide health care.

At the same time, there are reports the lowest cost health plan for a family soon will cost $20,000, and the Obamacare mandate fine for Americans is hitting $695 soon.

A similar version of this article was published via WND on Feb. 19, 2013. Under agreement with WND, rights have reverted back to the author, Steve Peacock.