Just before the G8 meeting in Hokkaido, Japan earlier this month, Edward Luttwak and Marian Tupy of the CATO Institute published an article in The Los Angeles Times, called, The Aid Africa Can’t Afford. It reminded me of my recent post about my decision to rescind my ONE Campaign declaration.

Essentially, their article confirms many of my feelings about international welfare programs, but they also suggest that many African countries would be better off if their governments were simply allowed to crumble. The corruption in these governments stems from an oligarchy of elite families using as much as 40% of foreign assistance to buy weapons. Since, as they put it, “interstate conflicts are mercifully rare, those weapons are often used to crush domestic opposition – as has been happening in Zimbabwe.” So, the reasoning goes, we should stop paying for these governments to kill their own people and let these corrupt governments collapse. It’s a tough nut to swallow upon first consideration, but set sentimentality aside for a moment.

With the vast majority of these countries’ citizens living in poverty, and the only ones with any means being the corrupt elites who developed nations are supporting, is it at all likely that the people of these African states will ever be able to develop political structures that truly reflect an attempt to meet their unique needs? How will they overcome? The Zimbabwe example couldn’t be more pertinent. They held an election, and when the ruling party didn’t win outright, they started beating up the opposition.

If other nations, including the United States, stopped meddling in the affairs of these Third World African countries, it seems likely that the only people who would suffer anew would be the corrupt oligarchy currently prolonging the suffering of millions of people across the continent. That, I can live with.

Over at Pressing The Flesh, another politics blog, I ran across this recent YouTube video of the late Tim Russert interviewing John McCain on Meet The Press. He traps McCain by making him eat some of his own words about Congress’s responsibility in wartime situations.

Here’s a despicable example of the efficacy of public health systems. Brooklyn’s Kings County Hospital (a public hospital run by the city) left a woman waiting for treatment for nearly 24 hours before she keeled over on the floor and died. Multiple guards came and looked at her as she writhed on the floor, and they did nothing. The incident was all caught on camera. What’s worse, the hospital staff falsified logs of the patient’s activities, reporting that she got up and got herself a drink of water when the security camera in the waiting room proved she was lying on the floor in distress at the time.

As if that wasn’t enough, the hospital only released the tape because they were compelled to by law in the course of exchanging evidence in a civil suit that has been brought against them by the New York Civil Liberties Union. They have now agreed to try to reduce the waiting time at these public hospitals to 10 - 13 hours over the next several months. You read that right; 10 - 13 hours is their new goal for treating patients. Talk about chinning off the curb.