No ONE

No ONE

I received a solicitation in email asking me to link to a video on YouTube about the ONE Campaign. You may have seen the ads, another slick campaign using celebrities to tell us how to vote or think or react.

They don’t exactly tell you what they’re about, except that they want to fight global AIDS and extreme poverty. Hey, who wouldn’t be for that, right? Drill down a bit into their explanations of who and what they are and you’ll find that the aim of the group is to spend more tax dollars. Of course.

ONE believes that allocating an additional ONE percent of the U.S. budget toward providing basic needs like health, education, clean water and food would transform the futures and hopes of an entire generation in the world’s poorest countries. ONE also calls for debt cancellation, trade reform and anti–corruption measures in a comprehensive package to help Africa and the poorest nations beat AIDS and extreme poverty.

ONE is $25 billion. That’s on top of the billions upon billions the federal government already allocates toward foreign aid, global poverty relief, health efforts, and the rest, mainly through the US Agency for International Development. It’s on top of the billions that Americans give every year out of their own pockets, whether as individuals or through corporate donations.

Whose money are they spending?

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5 comments
  • What do I care which celebrities are on board? Toby Keith is a musician. Tom Brady is ballplayer. that doesn’t give them special abilities in solving global poverty. That the same old celebrity worship baloney, whether it’s conservative celebrities or liberal ones.

    And whether you say you’re conservative or not, you’ve fallen for the old liberal mantra that only Nanny government can fix the world. Sorry, not buying it. But then I’ve already explained that once in my post.

    That’s not cowardice; that’s telling people to stop passing the responsibility to the government and get your hands dirty and do it yourself.

  • I find it hard to believe that an economic development project would bother with trying to create a religious organization.

    It doesn’t matter whether you find it hard to believe. It’s true. Try Googling “United Religions Initiative.”

    If our government had no intention of supporting the program because of disagreements over certain provisions, then why did they make the commitment—for political reasons???

    Because the commitment was made by the Clinton administration… Are we also hypocritical because our government used to support pro-abortion policies at the UN, but doesn’t now?

    In fact, we use dubious carrot and stick lobbying (and that’s putting it generously) to get third world economies to support development programs that cater specifically to American social and corporate interests that run counter to Catholic social principles.

    Unlike the UN agencies, such as CEDAW, that use the threat of withholding development funds to coerce pro-life governments to change the law make abortion legal. That never happens.

    The next book you should buy is: “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” by John Perkins.  Perkins documents some of the activities he took part in while working for the US National Security Agency.  It will open your eyes.

    No thanks. My whacko conspiracy theory bookshelf is full up right now.

  • Your rhetorical skills dazzle me. That’s not a persuasive argument, it’s an unprovable assertion about me and my character. You don’t know me so you don’t know what I know.

  • Pardon me if I don’t take URI’s word for it. If you want to see how a Catholic understands URI take a look at this article by Austin Ruse from the October 2001 issue of Catholic World Report. Ruse is president of the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute, a Vatican-recognized NGO that has been lobbying on behalf of Catholic principles at the UN for decades. He has a less sanguine view of it.

    The UN is a corrupt body run by dictators and thugs. If you’re worried about people plundering the Third World for personal gain, you’re looking at the wrong crowd. Try Googling “Kofi Annain” and “Oil for Food”.

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