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

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.

U.S. to Help Vietnam 'Peoples Committee' to Modernize Water InfoCom System (News Brief)

A Vietnamese water company has asked the Obama Administration for help in assessing its information and communications technology (ICT) modernization plan, and a White House agency has agreed to provide a $600,000 grant for that purpose. The U.S. Trade & Development Agency (USTDA) will fund the endeavor, which entails footing the bill for an ICT contractor to fly to Vietnam to provide "technical assistance" to the Saigon Water Corporation, or SAWACO. SAWACO is described as "a government-owned enterprise operating under the HCMC (Ho Chi Minh City) Peoples' Committee," according to a contracting notice that U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor located through routine database research.

Source document: Solicitation #2012-31025A

FOR MORE COVERAGE OF THE U.S TRADE & DEVELOPMENT AGENCY, VISIT THE MONITOR'S USTDA PAGE.

Patriot Update: ExxonMobil Gets Freebie as 'Obama Finances Energy, Port Project Trips to India'

Obama Finances Energy, Port Project Trips to India

By Steve Peacock; PatriotUpdate.com, Nov. 28, 2012

In the days and weeks after Hurricane Sandy wrecked ports, resorts, and power lines across the mid-Atlantic coast, the Obama administration launched multiple projects targeting the revitalization of such infrastructure. Not in seaside New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut, but in cities across India: Ahmedabad, Bangalore, and Mumbai…

Upon closer inspection, however, Patriot Update has discovered that taxpayers will foot the bill for industry trips to India—trips taken on behalf of a consortium whose members include multinationals such as ExxonMobil, GE, and IBM.

Continued...

Obama Takes Action On 'Unreliable' Power Grid – in Pakistan!

A nighttime view of the devastated barrier island towns of Bay Head and Mantoloking, N.J., whose lights normally glitter across the Barnegat Bay into Point Pleasant. With the exception of emergencey crews working in the distance (the crane in the bottom right corner sits at the site of the partially submerged Mantoloking Bridge) , that region as of this writing largely remains in darkness.

Project launched in wake of Hurricane Sandy

Less than a week after Hurricane Sandy plunged much of the mid-Atlantic region into darkness, the Obama administration unveiled a new initiative aimed at mitigating the impact of “unreliable grid power.”

Not across ravaged coastal New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, but in Pakistan’s Punjab province.

The direct beneficiary of the administration’s generosity is a publicly traded Pakistani cement and concrete producer, according to a planning document that U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor located via routine database research.

The Lahore-based Pioneer Cement Limited, or PCL, requested a grant from the U.S. Trade & Development Agency, or USTDA – an independent White House entity – to fund a feasibility study of its modernization plans.

USTDA agreed, thereby requiring U.S. taxpayers to foot the bill for eco-friendly industry representatives needing international flights and hotel accommodations. The agency is offering a $770,000 grant to make it happen, Solicitation Number 2012-31033A shows.

The completed study also may come with recommendations for further financial or technical assistance to PCL, which ultimately wants to build a biomass-fired power plant as well as a waste heat recovery unit “and energy efficiency upgrades to mitigate or reduce dependence on unreliable grid power,” the document says.

Biomass, “as a renewable energy source, is biological material from living, or recently living organisms,” as defined by the Surrey, England-based Biomass Energy Center. PCL, for instance, uses residues from agricultural waste such as rice husks and wheat straw.

USTDA acknowledges that the grant-recipient Pakistani company is thriving. Indeed, the targeted facility “is equipped with two cement production lines with a total production capacity of 6,200 tons” of clinker – the primary component of cement – per day.

The agency laments, however, that “PCL’s production costs are rising, particularly in terms of fuel and power. As a result, PCL is intent on maximizing production capacity utilization, maintaining quality, and reducing its cost of production.”

Implementation of the biomass-fired power plant will help PCL “to meet the cement plant’s internal demand, with any surplus energy being sold to the National Transmission & Despatch Company,” the solicitation says.

USTDA touts itself for helping “companies create U.S. jobs through the export of U.S. goods and services for priority development projects in emerging economies.”

The agency on its website claims that last year it “identified over $2.2 billion in U.S. exports that were directly attributable to USTDA-funded activities.”

But as the Monitor reported earlier this year, sometimes those companies include multi-billion-dollar corporations such as GE, which stands to gain from USTDA-financed energy projects in Kenya and Tanzania.

The agency often pays for feasibility studies and “definitional missions” as the first steps toward the modernization of other nations’ industries – including the oil industry in places such as Libya.

USTDA has since embarked upon a separate Libyan project.

Interestingly, on the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks – the very day of the al Qaida-staged attacks resulting in the deaths the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others – USTDA in a Special Notice recognized the “technical merit” of an unsolicited proposal to create Internet access points across Libya.

Benghazi and Tripoli were identified as two target cities to deploy the access points. No action – neither a contract award or project cancellation—has been announced in that particular matter.

Congress this week separately began hearings on the Benghazi attack.

This article originally was published via WND.com Nov. 14. Under agreement with the publisher, rights have reverted back to to the author, Steve Peacock.

ALSO SEE "Hurricane Sandy: Another Example of Why We Need to Invest More in America, Less Around the Globe" (COMMENTARY).

FOR MORE COVERAGE OF THE U.S TRADE & DEVELOPMENT AGENCY, VISIT THE MONITOR'S USTDA PAGE.

WND: Obama Takes Action on 'Unreliable' Power Grid – in Pakistan!

My latest from WND:

Less than a week after Hurricane Sandy plunged much of the mid-Atlantic region into darkness, the Obama administration unveiled a new initiative aimed at mitigating the impact of “unreliable grid power.”

Not across ravaged coastal New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, but in Pakistan’s Punjab province.

The direct beneficiary of the administration’s generosity is a publicly traded Pakistani cement and concrete producer, according to a planning document that WND located via routine database research.

Continued...

Hurricane Sandy: Another Example of Why We Need to Invest More in America, Less Around the Globe (COMMENTARY)

I have an idea how we as a nation can better cope with the financial burden that nature has imposed upon us in this post-hurricane environment of devastation on the East Coast: Assess and then cancel various programs that U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the U.S. Trade & Development Agency currently are carrying out or are planning to implement across the globe.

For the sake of full disclosure, I say this not only as a concerned taxpayer who continues to advocate streamlining (not the elimination) of foreign aid, but as a human being who lives one mile from the beach on the battered New Jersey coast -- someone who is doing significantly better than many of his Shore neighbors, but who is temporarily displaced nonetheless.

Before I continue, also keep in mind that this is less political -- insofar as partisan politics -- than it appears. Yes, the Obama Administration currently is executing the following initiatives. But as I've said before, it's a power thing, not an Obama thing. Such endeavors took place under Clinton and Bush, and in various forms will continue under future presidents.

Here we go:

Cancel the planned development of Ph.D. and masters degree programs for which USAID intends to fund in a Ugandan university. Use that money in schools across New Jersey, New York, or Connecticut. 

Cancel the nearly $1 billion in construction projects that USAID has planned for the Palestinians.  Use it to rebuild homes, businesses, and infrastucture destroyed during the hurricane. OUR hurricane.

Those business start-up projects in The Philippines? Cancel them. Most of the businesses in my area are closed, hopefully just temporarily. many, presumbaly, will go under. Tell the Filipinos they have to wait. 

The groundwater cleanup projects in for which USTDA paid the cost of U.S. industry reps to fly to China to boost that sector? Stop such subsidies, damnit. I'm guessing the groundwater between Seaside Heights and Point Pleasant (among other locations) could use some ameliorating. 

The list is seemningly endless. There are bigger and even more controversial projects, I am sure, the billions is no so-called "drug war" contracts among one of the more insane categories.

Oh, okay, just one more example (out of many). I know it amounts to peanuts, but the $322,000 that Department of State just spent on a 10-animal dog kennel in Iraq could have been used to rebuild damaged animal -- and human -- shelters here on the East Coast instead. Just sayin.' -- Steve Peacock

Monitor Founder Steve Peacock to Address Ocean County (NJ) Citizens for Freedom Group

This coming Thursday (Aug. 23) I will appear as one of the guest speakers at the monthly open meeting of Ocean County Citizens for Freedom, a grassroots Tea Party group here on the New Jersey Shore. I will discuss my foreign aid-related research that I have published as an investigative reporter, particularly my recent findings here at U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor as well as at WND, The Revered Review, and Patriot Update. Among issues to be explored will be the refusal of Congress members to relinquish tainted campaign contributions from the political action committee of HSBC, the disgraced bank busted by the U.S. Senate for laundering money from Mexican drug lords and terrorist affiliates.

Time permitting, I also will share an uplifting experience I had as a concerned citizen investigating the Ocean County Freeholders -- an investigation that led both to frustrations as well as well as successes, notably in the area of opening up job opportunities at the Ocean County Security Department for non-politically connected citizens.

New Jersey 2nd Amendment Society (NJ2AS)  President Frank Jack Fiamingo will precede me on stage that night.

The event will be held at Jimmy C's, a restaurant and club located at 17 Washington Street, Toms River, NJ. The first speaker will have the floor beginning 7 pm, so get there early. The event is open to the public. If coming, consider letting the organizers know via MeetUp. -- Steve Peacock

USTDA Paying for El Salvador Shipping-Vessel Safety Project

The subsidization of a shipping-vessel safety project in El Salvador is the latest overseas endeavor for which American taxpayers are footing the bill, U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor has discovered. 

The U.S. Trade and Development Agency (USTDA), an independent White House entity, is paying for an endeavor planned by the Comisión Ejecutiva Portuaria Autónoma de El Salvador, or  CEPA, the administrative body of that nation's port, railway, and airport infrastructure.

USTDA initially will take care of the cost of hiring  a U.S. contractor to provide "technical assistance" specifically for the Port of La Unión Vessel Traffic Program. The initial grant to CEPA is $217,000.  The agency did not disclose future potential costs.

A formal Request for Proposals is available upon request via USTDA’s online system.Bids are due June 29.

Source document: Solicitation #2012-51012A.

FOR MORE COVERAGE OF THE U.S TRADE & DEVELOPMENT AGENCY, VISIT THE MONITOR'S USTDA PAGE.

ALSO SEE THE MONITOR'S EL SALVADOR PAGE.

 

Firm Run by ex-USAID Official, Exxon Engineer Gets US-Funded Libyan Industry Contract

 A company jointly led by a former Exxon researcher and a one-time U.S. government official recently secured a contract to assess potential U.S. investments into Libyan industry, specifically the power-generation sector.

The U.S. Trade & Development Agency (USTDA), an independent White House entity, selected Energy Markets Group (EMG) to carry out a “definitional mission,” or DM, to Libya. EMG will travel to Libya, evaluate that industry segment, and craft a report for USTDA either recommending or rejecting possible “investments” of additional funds to boost Libyan modernization efforts.

EMG’s president is Ahmad Ghamarian, formerly an Exxon Research and Engineering Company staffer. Ghamarian prior to that had been a project engineer for a Tehran-based company that designs “power-generation projects for the Iranian onshore/offshore oil industry,” according to his corporate bio.

EMG founding member James B. Sullivan formerly was an associate assistant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) during the Clinton Administration. “As such he helped develop strategy and design foreign policy for U.S. assistance programs abroad,” his bio says. “Previously, Dr. Sullivan was the Director of the USAID Office of Energy (1986-1997) (and Deputy Director 1984 -1986).”

As previously reported, the endeavor is one of four industry specific DMs that USTDA is planning for Libya.

The agency’s stated purpose behind the sector evaluations is to increase “strategic opportunities for the utilization of U.S. goods, services, and technologies as the country rebuilds its economy…”

USTDA is paying $80,000 to EMG for the Libyan DM. Although it awarded the contract May 3, the agency did not upload the award to the FedBizOpps database until today.

Source document: Contract award #TDA-CO201220065.

FOR MORE COVERAGE OF THE U.S TRADE & DEVELOPMENT AGENCY, VISIT THE MONITOR'S USTDA PAGE.

FOR ADDITIONAL REPORTING ON THE U.S. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, SEE THE MONITOR'S USAID PAGE.

ALSO SEE THE MONITOR'S LIBYA PAGE.

FOR FURTHER REGIONAL COVERAGE, VISIT OUR MIDDLE EAST PAGE AND AFRICA PAGE.

U.S. Seeks to Improve Municipal Emergency Communications -- in Turkey

Significant steps have been taken since 9/11 to increase the interoperability of communications systems among emergency service providers; the U.S. government, however, is stepping up efforts to coordinate such efforts in one particular city: the Turkish city of Istanbul.

The incompatibility of systems used by dozens of emergency and municipal service providers across Istanbul is negatively affecting that city's disaster preparedness. Conequently, the U.S. Trade & Development Agency (USTDA) is assisting the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, known as the IBB, in its consolidation of 41 operations centers.

According to a USTDA solicitation notice that U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor located via routine database research:

At present, each municipal service (police, fire, transportation, electricity, gas, water/wastewater) runs its own Operations Center, and these employ a variety of often incompatible and non-interoperable hardware and software platforms. The lack of interoperability among these Operations Centers severely impairs the municipal authority's ability to effectively respond to emergency and disaster situations.

Accordingly, IBB is planning to design, construct and operate a Consolidated Technology Center that would incorporate common platforms, systems and data sources for its Operations Centers to use, allowing for more coordinated approaches to service delivery.

USTDA initially will provide a $700,000 grant to IBB to hire a contractor to provide "technical assistance." The contractor must be a U.S. company, which can then subcontract up to 20% of the project to Turkish vendors.

A more detailed Request for Proposals is available from USTDA upon request. Proposals are due June 1.

Source document: Solicitation #2012-21009A.

FOR MORE COVERAGE OF THE U.S TRADE & DEVELOPMENT AGENCY, VISIT THE MONITOR'S USTDA PAGE.