Monday, October 10, 2005

[Natural Disasters]

$50 Million?

Can this be right? Bush has offered Pakistan $50 million for relief efforts in Pakistan? By my calculations, that's what we spend in two hours in Iraq (aren't we spending $4b a week?). Worse, Bush apparently thinks this is praiseworthy:
Eager to show it has learned from the slow responses to the Asia-Pacific tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, the White House announced Sunday evening that it would provide an "initial contribution" of $50 million for relief efforts in Pakistan. It also said it would dispatch helicopters and reconnaissance aircraft that are in the area hunting members of Al Qaeda.
Here's a theory--Bush doesn't actually know the difference between a million and a billion. Might explain a lot.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jeff, I may be wrong but I think the cost of the Iraq war is a little over 1 billion a week. About 70-80 billion a year. That said, $50 million does seem more than a bit miserly with 2.5 million homelss.

Dwight

Jeff Alworth said...

Yeah, I think you're right--which means $50 million is eight hours of the Iraq expense. It doesn't make the aid appear any more generous, does it?

Anonymous said...

well, you stated earlier that their houses were made of "sand"...it can't cost that much to replace sand houses.

Jeff Alworth said...

Sandy concrete, actually. But it does cost a lot--you have to factor in the graft of every construction project, which can be substantial. Sort of like the way the Bushies do business in Iraq and New Orleans--you pay a huge amount, but everybody skims a little bit and then you have a half-assed, but very expensive, reconstruction.