The New York Times editorial board lets the world know again how much they hate President Bush. Don't be fooled by the use of the word "we" in the headline - "Are We Stingy, Yes." What they really mean to say is "Is Bush Evil? Yes."

Before I even get started, I want to know what the NY Times Corporation has done to provide relief to Southeast Asia - they should put their money where their mouth is. The company I work for has already announced $3mm in private aid and others have done the same. I can find no such press release from the Times, nor can I even find links on their website saying how one can donate. If it's there, it's certainly not as conspicuous as Amazon.com's huge red cross on their home page.

President Bush finally roused himself yesterday from his vacation in Crawford, Tex., to telephone his sympathy to the leaders of India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia, and to speak publicly about the devastation of Sunday's tsunamis in Asia. He also hurried to put as much distance as possible between himself and America's initial measly aid offer of $15 million, and he took issue with an earlier statement by the United Nations' emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, who had called the overall aid efforts by rich Western nations "stingy." "The person who made that statement was very misguided and ill informed," the president said.

Becuase the President doesn't update the Times editorial board directly about relief efforts, they pretend that the Presdient has been ignoring the problem. I say "pretend" because even their own paper reports today that "early reports indicate that even in a holiday week, the bureaucracy swung into gear fairly quickly."

We beg to differ. Mr. Egeland was right on target. We hope Secretary of State Colin Powell was privately embarrassed when, two days into a catastrophic disaster that hit 12 of the world's poorer countries and will cost billions of dollars to meliorate, he held a press conference to say that America, the world's richest nation, would contribute $15 million. That's less than half of what Republicans plan to spend on the Bush inaugural festivities.

That's "initial $15 million" as stated in the first paragraph and reported on contemporaneously. I can't believe the Times really believed at the time that this was all we would contribute.

I'm not sure what the Republicans are spending on the inaugural has anything to do with this. Most of the inaugural costs are provided by private donations (as they were in the first inaugural). Clinton's inaugurals also cost a pretty penny and I've seen some commentary stating that his sceond even cost more than Bush's first. If not for the Times' hatred, they would have said something like "what we Americans spend on presidential inaugurals".

The American aid figure for the current disaster is now $35 million, and we applaud Mr. Bush's turnaround. But $35 million remains a miserly drop in the bucket, and is in keeping with the pitiful amount of the United States budget that we allocate for nonmilitary foreign aid. According to a poll, most Americans believe the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on aid to poor countries; it actually spends well under a quarter of 1 percent.

Bush administration officials help create that perception gap. Fuming at the charge of stinginess, Mr. Powell pointed to disaster relief and said the United States "has given more aid in the last four years than any other nation or combination of nations in the world." But for development aid, America gave $16.2 billion in 2003; the European Union gave $37.1 billion. In 2002, those numbers were $13.2 billion for America, and $29.9 billion for Europe.

If you listened to man-on-the-street interviews before the election, an amazing number of Americans couldn't even name their current vice president, much less know offhand what percentage of the budget goes to foreign aid. Hell, I didn't know and I consider myself pretty well-informed. To blame this on the Bush administration is ridiculous.

I'm not sure why the Times goes out of their way to comapare our development aid budget to other regions' when Colin Powell is specifically talking about disaster relief aid which is different. As The Times reports today - "Andrew S. Natsios, the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, said on Wednesday that American funds for disaster relief alone were $2.4 billion last year, 40 percent of the worldwide contributions for this purpose. "We are by far the largest donor," he said. "No one even comes close to us."

Making things worse, we often pledge more money than we actually deliver. Victims of the earthquake in Bam, Iran, a year ago are still living in tents because aid, including ours, has not materialized in the amounts pledged. And back in 2002, Mr. Bush announced his Millennium Challenge account to give African countries development assistance of up to $5 billion a year, but the account has yet to disperse a single dollar.

First of all, when the Millennium Challenge Account was announced it was stated that aid would not be distributed until 2004. To the uninformed the Times is suggesting that the Bush administration has been dragging it's feet for three years - but that's what they want you to think. Also, the Millennium Challenge Account was not an initial funding but an increase in funding of up to 50% over exisiting programs. The reason it is taking so long is that it is based on the donee countries providing a specific plan for the aid instead of just sending a check to irresponsible third world governments.

Regarding aid efforts to Iran after the Bam earthquake, to blame the U.S. for the Iranians' present living conditions while ignoring the effect of Iran's government is like blaming us for the living conditions of the Palestinians and pre-war Iraqis despite knowing that autocratic regimes siphoned off billions of dollars of Western aid into personal accounts.

Mr. Bush said yesterday that the $35 million we've now pledged "is only the beginning" of the United States' recovery effort. Let's hope that is true, and that this time, our actions will match our promises.

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There is another "news analysis" piece today in the Times - It's About Aid, and an Image

Perhaps this article from last year can dispel the notion that we can bribe countries into liking us - Iran says U.S. aid won't help relations

What I find most interesting in this fight over what is considered generous versus stingy is the following:

Congress has approved roughly $13 billion for aid related to the hurricanes that hit the country in the late summer...even Mr. Bush's critics do not expect spending on that scale for the far greater disaster in South Asia.