World Vision responds to blogger questions

Editor's Note 10:45 am 2/18/2011: Thanks to all the commentators, you really wrote a new post for us today. We have emailed World Vision follow up questions, especially taking them up on their offer to provide examples below. They said they will respond by middle of next week as they get their national offices to respond. In an email to the communications  department at World Vision, we collected and forwarded a few of the questions posed by aid bloggers in their posts (now up to 50, and counting) about the controversy over the 100,000 misprinted NFL T-shirts World Vision distributes as gifts-in-kind aid every year. On Wednesday evening we received World Vision's response, which we are publishing here in full:

1. Can WV show that they rigorously assess the needs of the communities they work in for gifts-in-kind (GIK)?

World Vision’s assessments of the need for supplies and of the impact a supply donation may have on the local economy are done by individual national offices as part of a strategic programmatic response.  As a result, when we set our strategy for GIK procurement each year, we ask each national office send us requests for resources they need and to do so after assessing the need for supplies and their ability to procure supplies locally.

The rigor of those assessments varies based on the national office providing the information.  Each World Vision office is an independent entity, with its own board and charter.  World Vision has deliberately worked within its international partnership to increasingly empower national offices regarding the assessment, design and implementation of its programs.

If it’s helpful, I can try to get you copies of some example assessments from some national offices so that you can get a sense of what those assessments look like.

2. Why does WV use a much larger share of GIK than other similarly sized nonprofits?

Depending on how you calculate the “size” of a non-profit (annual revenue, number of countries of operation, staff size, etc), World Vision doesn’t use a much larger share of GIK than other non-profits.

In fact, there are really no other organizations with a comparable size to World Vision, U.S. with the same operational mandate.

3. How did WV calculate the ‘fair market value’ for these shirts?

World Vision hasn’t valued this year’s donation of NFL-related clothing because we have not received the products yet. Unfortunately, the numbers listed in the blog post and a press release shouldn’t have been released – they were rough estimates that weren’t related to each other and don’t reflect how World Vision will value the clothing.

In general, World Vision calculates “fair market value” for any of its donated supplies based on standards set by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB).  As a side note, the FASB recently established a new definition for valuing supply donations and as a result, there is a great deal more clarity in the way that all non-profits value supply donations.  While not all NGOs have yet implemented the new FASB standards, World Vision has.

This process is based on current standards required to value all forms of GIK donations.  While there may be a discussion about what the value of a particular item should be, the objective standards we follow are essential to guide our valuation approach.  It may worth discussing whether the current standards need to be improved; but for now, those are the standards with which we need to comply.

4. Has WV tried to evaluate the results of this program? Can WV point to any evidence that the 15-year distribution of Super Bowl T-shirts has "facilitate[d] good, sustainable development"?

The short answer is “no” because the Super Bowl clothing isn’t a program. It’s a donation. We evaluate the results of our programs.  Some programs are successful. Others less so.  But their success is based on the quality of the program’s assessment, design and implementation, not solely on the use of one tool or another.

Many of the programs where we use GIK have been enormously successful in facilitating good, sustainable development.  Our evidence for that would be individual program evaluations from a variety of national offices, but we can provide some examples if those are helpful.

In Summary: For World Vision, GIK is a resource in a robust tool kit.  We endeavor to use it in situations where it’s appropriate and in ways that are skilled, but like any tool, it’s not inherently helpful or hurtful.  A hammer can do a great deal of damage if you use it poorly, but it can also be a necessary piece of equipment when you’re trying to build something.

Our perspective on this greater debate is that the resource (GIK) can be used in ways that are very helpful.  It can also be used in ways that are destructive.  The answer isn’t to toss the tool.  The answer is to make the tool work better and to become more skilled at when and how to use it. World Vision continually seeks ways to make our work more effective in all areas, including how GIK is integrated into a full development strategy and the constructive elements of this ongoing conversation are a part of that continual effort to improve.

State Department accountable through glossy photos

by Chris Coyne, F.A. Harper Professor of Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University

Investors in the Kwality Kites Corporation gather to listen to the CEO’s ‘year in review’ presentation.

“In 2010,” begins the CEO, “we coordinated plans to deliver kites while supporting sustainable operations”

An investor raises her hand: “Can you tell us what you mean by ‘coordinated plans’ and ‘sustainable operations’ and what they have to do with the bottom line?”

“Of course” the CEO replies. “Here is a glossy picture of a smiling child flying one of our kites.”

“That is indeed a high quality photograph with a fine sheen” the investor responds, “but I am wondering how this relates to my investment.”

“In 2010,” the CEO continues, “we improved our understanding of our dynamic business environment, established and staffed various units, assisted in a professionalization program, and assessed our efforts.”

Another investor interjects, “What is the cost of these achievements? What is the value added? What was the outcome of these assessments?”

“These assessments” the CEO replies “are now being used to inform and guide our future efforts to address various issues.”

The investors protest almost in unison: “can you provide us with ANY specifics? We are all concerned about the profitability of the company.”

“Can you really measure the value of a child smiling?” replies the CEO.

--

I admit this is an absurd parody. That is, unless you’re the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization (S/CRS), charged with implementing aid and other operations of the U.S. State Department in war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan. S/CRS recently released its “Conflict Prevention and Stabilization Operations: 2010 Year in Review” report.

The report provides no clear benchmarks for assessment let alone a basic discussion of the annual budget or expenditures. There is no discussion of why activities were chosen, how much was spent, or even the slightest effort to discuss the value added.

The report does provide a few actual numbers. We are told that the S/CRS oversees $442 million associated with “1207 programs” intended to respond to “destabilizing events,” In 2010, $90 million was approved for these projects. The ‘assessment’ concludes that “existing projects will take several years to complete” and that “previously funded programs continue to have an impact.” We learn that the Civilian Response Corps was deployed to 28 posts in 2010.

With no actual effort to assess the reported ‘highlights,’ we must rely on the pictures provided to distract the reader from the lack of content. This includes a half page picture of a young boy flying a kite in Afghanistan and numerous employee profiles including pictures with locals. Also included is a before and after picture of a dirt road which has since been paved. Still no discussion of cost or value added.

There is a major difference between my parody and the work of the S/CRS. If my story were true, the investors would lose their money. But ineffective efforts of the S/CRS will cost resources and human lives. If the S/CRS is unable to provide rudimentary reporting and transparency, how confident can we be that they can stabilize and reconstruct entire societies?  Answering this question is too important to be distracted by smiling children…even if they are flying kites.

The “guy named Bob” theory of Development

Development discussions often seek “answers” to “how to develop?” But to whom do we tell the answers? We assume the existence of someone who can take our answers and turn them into actual Development. Let’s call this person “Bob,” as in the following diagram:

But who is Bob? Of course, many autocrats would happily volunteer to be “Bob,” and many development experts show some sympathy for such a “benevolent” autocrat. Indeed the whole Bob theory of development seems to imply coercion of everyone else at several points along the way, as illustrated below. So Bobism is a great ideology to justify autocracy. But is the deprivation of freedom “worth it”? Who gets to decide? And even if autocrats like Bob were OK, Bob faces many other problems going from experts to the development outcome, as further illustrated below. So, frankly, the “guy named Bob” theory of Development is not really very satisfying.

In Zambia, Pittsburgh won the Super Bowl: Why is World Vision perpetuating discredited T-shirt aid?

Editor's Note 4: 10:45am 2/15: @saundra_s reports there are now 36 bloggers that have posted on this (excluding WV itself or its staffers), of which 35 are against. One more against here from faith perspective. Now have a Twitter hashtag #100kshirts.

Editor's Note 3: 8:45am 2/15: heard from @WorldVisionUSA finally! got this direct message on Twitter: "Thanks for following WV! For even more opportunities to get involved, check us out on Facebook."

Editor's Note 2 3:30pm: still silence from the @WorldVisionUSA palace as more bloggers post and more protesters gather outside in Aid Twitter Square.

Editor's Note 10:16am: Sorry World Vision, Aid Watch committed a major factual error due to the incompetence of one of our alleged experts. This supposed NFL and zoological expert with the initials W.E. initially got the team wrong in the picture, it is the losing 2007 team Chicago Bears.

As it has for 15 years, World Vision took credit last week for accepting the donation of 100,000 unwanted Super Bowl T-shirts from NFL merchandisers to ship to poor people across the world.

The T-shirts are the result of NFL merchandisers printing championship shirts for both teams in the Super Bowl so they’re prepared to immediately sell to fans of the winning team, whichever one that turns out to be. The merchandisers get a tax deduction for donating the losing team’s shirts (saying that the losers actually won) to World Vision, and World Vision (according to their website) ships the shirts abroad, this year to Armenia, Romania, Zambia and Nicaragua.

(Saundra S has a great post explaining the financial incentives that keep this arrangement in place. Among other things, World Vision uses the shirts to fictionally lower its overhead cost ratios, great for bragging about its efficiency.)

To quickly reiterate some of the arguments against SWEDOW (Stuff We DOn’t Want) aid:

1. It’s not needed. Seriously, neither the developing world as a whole nor the specific recipient countries named by World Vision suffer an undersupply of T-shirts.
2. It’s not cost effective. The cost of collecting, sorting, shipping and distributing bulky, low-value items like a bunch of T-shirts does not justify the (very questionable) benefit. And don’t forget to include the opportunity cost, the lost chance to allocate those same, considerable resources to provide something better, like clean water or medicine. (A World Vision PR rep told the New York times in 2007: “Where these items go, the people don’t have electricity or running water.")
3. It can perpetuate local community’s dependence on free handouts and stifle home-grown economic initiatives, not to mention putting out of business local shirt sellers.

In comparison to the storm of protest that greeted aid neophyte Jason Sadler (aka the 1 Million Shirts Guy, aka Mr. Haterade) when he launched his idea to send a million T-shirts to Africa last year, the unexemplary behavior by aid behemoth and standard-setter World Vision has provoked far fewer critical posts.

Self-preservation-minded aid bloggers who work with World Vision might be  rationally self-censoring, and we've also heard reports that some bloggers received email requests not to blog about this topic.  This episode may reveal the current limits of the burgeoning power of by-the-people aid criticism.

Then again, this week has been an auspicious one for people-power protesting policies that should have been chucked in the bin of history long ago.  As the controversy spreads, World Vision can't avoid debating these policies with their supporters and critics. Will next January see World Vision bragging about its 16th year of sending loser shirts to poor people, or will people-power finally halt this disgrace?

Abraham Lincoln in Egypt

Today the doubts begin on whether there will be a happy democratic outcome in Egypt. There are no guarantees. Today is Abraham Lincoln's birthday. His most famous words also addressed doubts about democracy. Could American democracy survive a civil war? Could it make a transition from half slave and half free to emancipation?

our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us ... that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

The Americans of Lincoln's generation proved the doubters wrong.

Now it is up to the Egyptians to be dedicated to the unfinished work, to be dedicated to the great task remaining before them, that their nation shall have a new birth of freedom.

Liberated Egyptians: you're welcome!

Clive Crook's blog notes the following story from Politico:

the Obama administration finally notched a foreign policy victory with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's decision to resign and turn over power to top military officials...

"Great news for the administration/president," said one senior Democratic official who asked not to be named. "People will remember, despite some fumbles yesterday, that the President played an excellent hand, walked the right line and that his statement last night was potentially decisive in bringing this issue to a close. The situation remains complicated and delicate going forward, but this is a huge affirmation of the President's leadership on the international stage."

Clive hilariously suggests each of us substitute our own name for "the President" to have more fun with the absurdity of this statement: "Aid Watch played an excellent hand, and its blog Thursday night was potentially decisive in bringing this issue to a close."

What's more, we could use the classic aid evaluation technique of before and after analysis to demonstrate the huge effect of Aid Watch blogs on events in Egypt. The following is only a sample:

Jan 31: our blog Double Standards Brigade Goes to Egypt signals that a major American player is on the protesters' side. Mubarak then announces he will not run for re-election.

February 9: our blog Ignorance Dooms Autocracy announces that some development economists think autocracy is bad for long run development. Protests explode further.

Friday, February 11: The critical moment: our blog posted at 3:30am Egyptian time ridicules Mubarak's speech from Thursday night. Mubarak then resigns.

Egypt is Free!

That is what the people in the streets are chanting as the seismic news of Hosni Mubarak's resignation spreads.

I have goosebumps. Regardless of what the future holds, this is a historic moment. This is a moment to celebrate the remarkable achievement of ordinary multitudes of Egyptians who wanted their inalienable rights, that all individuals are born free and equal.

To close with the words of the Arab poet Abul-Qasim al-Shabi (1909-1934) (previously quoted on this blog).

If, one day, a people desires to live, then fate will answer their call.

And their night will then begin to fade, and their chains break and fall.

ADDED PARA 12:40PM: "No democracy please, you're Muslim": could all those self-appointed pundits on the American media worrying about whether Muslims can handle democracy kindly be quiet for a while, and just celebrate this day?

For great slideshows of pictures from today, see NYT and WSJ

The art of saying nothing: Mubarak speech mashup

UPDATE 12 noon, February 11: so wordy emptiness wasn't such a good move. Now if we could just overthrow the aid bureaucrats who produce documents as bad as the Mubarak speech. In the Isaac Asimov sci-fi classic Foundation, an envoy from the Empire arrives for 5 days of talks to promise a small planet Imperial protection against attack. Scientists at the Foundation then use symbolic logic to analyze the Imperial envoy's transcript, and reach this conclusion -- real guarantees of protection: zero; content of 5 days of talk: zero.

Veterans of aid bureaucracy are used to long wordy documents full of buzzword-heavy promises, which actually say nothing. So perhaps we aid veterans are qualified to analyze another group skilled at promises while saying nothing: autocrats trying to defuse protests against their rule.

I took a transcript of Mubarak's speech on Thursday night and mashed it up and compressed it. The results are certainly unfair to Hosni Mubarak, as first the transcription was done by computer, and second I was no doubt biased assembling the words below (they are in order, but leaving out other words in between to compress the transcript).

But hey who better to treat unfairly than a clueless bureaucratic oppressor?! all of the words below are  from the transcript:

committed strongly to implement without hesitation all of that without hesitation. This commitment stems from a severe commitment, a strong commitment. commitment to this And express a similar pledge And commitment to carry on -- to protect the Constitution, the interests of The people, Will be guaranteed with Transparency and freedom. to Implement the demands of people Within the constitution's Legitimacy and in a way that Will achieve stability and also at the same time put Forward a framework agreed Through a responsible dialogue Amongst all the forces of Society and with all -- with Most degree of frankness and Transparency.  put it forward to implement it.And these plans would be implemented within reason. in fact, started a very constructive national dialogue that includes Egypt's youth, which have led, for a call for Change and all the political Forces. This dialogue has resulted in The principled agreement in Opinions and stances which has Put  in the path, on the right Path And should carry on this Dialogue so that to get it from The framework into a real plan, A clear road plan, and within a Precise and fixed timetable. This national dialogue has made over the formation of a Constitutional commission to look into the required Constitutional amendments and ad Hoc legislative amendments. It has also agreed for the Formation of a commission which Will follow up a sincere Follow-up. The formation Have both commissions should be made from who have experience And trust Composed of leaders and experts. Yesterday the first Report regarding the Constitutional priority, Constitutional amendments, as Proposed by the commission composed of the Judiciary and the legal experts To study legal and Constitutional amendments as Required. And in response to the outcome Of the commission's report This is stressing at the same Time that other amendments will be implemented according to Necessity and as needed. These amendments to facilitate ...in accordance To the right circumstances and The prevalence of stability so That we can do that. we should Continue our national dialogue That have already started.

Mubarak attempts to placate Democratic Revolution with a Committee

What a heartbreaking disappointment with the Mubarak speech... The language is remarkably paternalistic. And he repeatedly uses jargon like "framework" and "transition". He promised to implement some recommendations of some Committee.

This guy has obviously spent way too much time in Aid Donor Consultative Group Meetings. This speech disqualifies him as someone able to lead Egypt, but he would be a perfect fit for UN Undersecretary for Sustainable Social Empowerment Agenda Mainstreaming Transition Framework.

The jokes are out of pain....sincere condolences to the courageous activists for democracy in Egypt, may you realize your dream of freedom.

Breaking news: US government to replace head of Egypt Province?

Many news outlets reporting that Mubarak is about to resign. Too soon to tell whether this is definite, who the replacement will be, and what it means for the pro-democracy movement in Egypt. I do know already I would have wished that the news was not broken to the world by the director of the CIA:

C.I.A. Director Leon E. Panetta said that there was a “strong likelihood” that Mr. Mubarak would step down by the end of the day.

Could Aid Watch respectfully suggest that US government officials, at this incredibly sensitive moment, follow the advice of two different Aid Watch posts reflecting the consensus of wise people everywhere: (1) First one: shut up. (2) Second one: shut up.

Today's additional recommendation: first follow steps (1) and (2).

Twitter Klout of Development Folk

We were pleased at Aid Watch to discover Klout, an online Twitter “influence” scorecard. Could this help us settle some scores left over from the Twitter War we just had? We plan to use this as a rigorous new metric with which we will evaluate our efficacy in aid criticism and progress towards achieving our Meme Development Goals (MDGs), which were arbitrarily and haphazardly made up designed at the 2011 Laura-Freschi-and-Vivek-Nemana-Sitting-In-the-DRI-Office Summit (2011 LFVNSIDRIO Summit). Klout employs such measures as followers, list memberships and retweets to present a comprehensive global metric of Twitter and social media effectiveness. Table 1 lists the Klout scores of various thought leaders in development:

Twitter Handle	Klout Score
justinbieber	100
nickkristof	85
ONECampaign	71
viewfromthecave	68
bill_easterly	65
dambisamoyo	61
m_clem	61
paul_hewson	60
earthinstitute	58
jeffdsachs	54
aidwatch	53
endofpoverty	49
mcarthur	48
vnemana	10

We regret the low positioning of Aid Watch, with a Klout score of 53. This fact is partially – but not entirely – offset by Bill Easterly’s higher placement of 65. (Please don’t tell him that @viewfromthecave is way higher).

Nevertheless, Aid Watch will implement a 4-point comprehensive plan of reform to achieve 3 indicators on the way to the MDGs: 1) enhance our social media influence 2) improve our Klout metric and 3) elevate progress towards the MDGs:

• Intensive Social Mediafication: We will increase investment in our twitter account in order to promote intensive tweeting in an effort to “shock” the Klout metric into growth
• Retweet incentivizing: Drawing upon pledged support from imaginary donors, Aid Watch will offer a free multicolor wristband to anyone who retweets our tweets
• Aggressive List Creation: We will establish an independent commission to create and monitor Twitter lists in which Aid Watch may claim membership
• Randomized experiments on tweets: Tweets will be subjects to RCTs in which the popularity-potential of tweets is rigorously assessed

On a side note, Vivek Nemana’s disappointingly low Klout score of 10 has elicited reactions including “angst,” “shame,” and “humiliation.” We recommend an intensive “shock therapy” regiment of savvy Tweets and follower-count obsession in order for Vivek to escape the Klout trap.

Can US politicians please shut up and do nothing on Egypt?

Clive Crook in the Financial Times on Monday:

The US need to come to terms with its impotence at times such as this, and so does everybody else....

In Egypt and throughout the Middle East, the west is seen (not without reason) as a cultural and political oppressor....The US would most likely discredit whatever pro-democracy factions it moved to support. Again, give timidity its due.

The Obama administration {wants} to steer Egypt to stability, prosperity, democracy, peace with Israel...Wishing does not make it so, and the people who think it does should grow up.

Dear UK Government, why won't you let me retire as Official Sachs Critic?

UPDATE 3: FEB 8 4:50PM: Twitter War reveals that Millennium Village Blog accused Clemens and Demombynes of hard hearts towards suffering (search the blog for "suffering"). UPDATE 2: FEB 8 4:30PM: concluding coverage by @PSIHealthyLives @viewfromthecave of the Great Twitter War prompted by this post between @aidwatch and @earthinstitute, with collateral attacks on @m_clem, ending in a non-acceptance of debate by head of @earthinstitute.

UPDATE Feb 8 11:30am: sent comment with link to this post to DFID Independent Commission for Aid Impact. Spokesperson promptly responded, rejected my comment for consideration on technical grounds, but did warmly invite me to complete the anonymous online mass Survey Monkey. It probably doesn't mean much, unless the Independent Commission already learned the brilliant strategy of bureaucratizing the critics? I do feel a wee bit sorry for one of your Commisioners, the great John Githongo, who presumably did not risk his life so he could be reading anonymous results from Survey Monkey.

Nobody is more tired of the interminable Sachs-Easterly debate than one guy named Easterly...alas, I seem to be stuck in a kind of Critic Trap, in which the ideas criticized keep reappearing unchanged, requiring equally unchanged criticisms, keeping me in chronic peril of taking myself way too seriously.

So it was with great weariness I heard the news that the British aid agency DFID (otherwise probably the best bilateral aid agency) is close to financing a brand new Millennium Village in northern Ghana, near Bolgatanga. I had hoped for something better from the new UK government, which had seemed like an improvement over the Blair and Brown ("We know the answers, just double aid") team .

As it happened, I passed by the proposed MVP site last summer. The proposed villages are right on the main road in one of the most NGO-intensive places anywhere (see the sign below, in which NGOs apparently own the region).

The usual critique that selection bias of the Millennium Villages makes evaluation  impossible may be somewhat relevant given the political realities that (1) the current government chose the villages for the MVP, (2) the incumbents have frequently promised to do more for the North, (3) the MVP came along and may be a high visibility way to keep that promise, and (4) ergo, the government will likely do everything possible to make the project succeed, showing nothing about scalability for thousands of villages elsewhere. In short, this new MV may be about as informative as my feeding my own children is informative on whether child nutrition programs work.

And how good is the track record of the MVP taking evaluation seriously? Michael Clemens and Gabriel Demombynes posted the following on the World Bank Africa blog last Friday:

In a June 2010 report called Harvests of Development, the Project claimed that the impacts of the project included expanded cell phone ownership.  For example, the MVP claimed that increases in cell phone ownership at the Ghana site were caused by the project, in this extract from page 91 of the MVP report:

This claim has little basis, because cell phone ownership has been expanding at about the same rate all around the MVP site in areas untouched by the project. ....

But on Tuesday, months after multiple discussions we’ve had with MVP leaders on our research, a post on the MVP’s blog restated the claim that the increase in mobile phone ownership at the intervention sites was caused by the Project...

{The Clemens and Demombynes paper does the same cell phone analysis with the same results in the MV of Sauri, Kenya.}

They were responding to a blog post on the MVP web site on February 2, 2011 as follows:

Sauri looks back on five years of success

Infrastructure: ... The proportion of households owning a mobile phone has increased four-fold....

In short, independent observers made an irrefutable argument that a claim was invalid, the MVP heard the argument, seemed to accept it, and then repeated the previous claim unchanged.

Or in other words, if nobody is listening to any evaluations anyway, if I am bored and I am boring everyone else, why should I want to be Official Sachs Critic any longer?

Messrs. Clemens and Demombynes, you may want to check out a new job opening...

The US has put its boot on the scale

by Natasha Iskander, Assistant Professor of Public Policy, NYU. 10:42 pm Saturday February 5. Professor Iskander is Egyptian-American and works on development in the Middle East and North Africa. The millions of protestors have been clear: “The people want the fall of the regime! Mubarak leave!”  The responses of the US to unambiguous calls from the Egyptian people for the right to determine their own future have not only been deeply condescending, but also represent a dangerous collusion with the regime.

Omar Suleiman, spy-chief turned VP, has pledged to steward an “orderly transition,” but has refused to begin dismantling a political system that has for thirty years bolstered kleptocracy and oppression.  He has postponed meeting with a group of prominent intellectuals, businessmen, and analysts who have reached out to negotiate a transition.

Instead, he has told the protestors to go home; even more disdainfully, he has told the parents of protestors to tell their children to go home.  In other words, the massive protests that are a revolution unfolding should not be taken seriously; they are merely instances of adolescent acting-out.  Obama, perhaps unwittingly, has fed that spin: “To the people of Egypt, particularly the young people of Egypt, I want to be clear: We hear your voices” he said on February 1.   We hear your voices, but we will not listen.  Instead, the US government will continue to back a dictatorship and the security apparatus that has made it possible. “Transition takes some time… There are certain things that have to be done in order to prepare,” said Clinton today, presenting her recommendations as so eminently reasonable, so adult and measured in contrast to the protestors’ demands for Mubarak to resign immediately, now spun as rash and destabilizing.

Meanwhile, Suleiman refused today to repeal the Emergency Law that has been in force in Egypt since 1981 and which gives the authorities legal right to hold anyone without cause, to detain those arrested indefinitely, and to prevent public assembly (protests!).  “At a time like this?” responded Suleiman when Abdel-Nour, the secretary general of the meek opposition Wafd Party, suggested its repeal.  Yes, time is precisely what is at stake. There are seven months between now and the elections that Suleiman still maintains will be held in September, and that is plenty of time to detain, torture, and disappear anyone who has defended this revolution.  It is more than enough time to recast the millions who flooded the streets of all of Egypt’s major cities to demand an end to dictatorship and the right to elect their leaders as enemies of the people who need to be eliminated.

If the US continues to feign naivite and argue that transition is indeed happening, it will -- under the guise of adult reasonableness -- have gifted the regime with the time to brutalize citizens who have peacefully and respectfully voiced their demands to be treated as adults with the right to determine their own futures in a country that has consistently and strategically infantilized them.

Constructive diplomatic advice to Hillary on Egypt: shut up

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today on Egypt:

I think it is important to support the transition process announced by the Egyptian government, actually headed by now vice-president Omar Suleiman.

There are many possible effects of such a statement, all of them bad. If the Suleiman transition process WAS something Egyptian-led and good, Clinton has now discredited him as a stooge of the US Department of State. If the Suleiman process was NOT so good, then US credibility in favor of autonomous democratic freedom sinks even lower (if that's still even possible).

Taking into account that Clinton also whiffed on previous statements on democracy in Egypt, what if she and every other US government official just go completely silent, please?

Development in 3 Sentences

I liked this formulation from the blog The Coming Prosperity, posted today as a link on Twitter:

If solutions are known, need $$. If solutions are knowable, need evaluations. If solutions are evolving, need entrepreneurs.

Consumer Warnings: This comes at the end of a long diatribe against You-Know-Who (associated with $$). I'm not sure the author is a reliable guide to other people's work, since Yours Truly is incorrectly associated with "evaluations." But I still like the 3 sentences above.

Save the date for New Directions in Development

If you're planning to be in New York City on Friday March 4th, why not drop by our annual conference?

Please join us for our all-day 2011 Annual Conference

NEW DIRECTIONS IN DEVELOPMENT

Friday, March 4th NYU Campus

Information Technology and Development Yaw Nyarko, NYU Department of Economics

From Skepticism to Development William Easterly, NYU Department of Economics

Does Poverty Lead to Violence? Chris Blattman, Yale Department of Political Science/ Visiting Scholar at NYU Wagner

Culture Matters Raquel Fernández, NYU Department of Economics

Law and Development Kevin Davis, NYU School of Law

This event is free and open to the public Detailed agenda and location to follow

RSVP here

Where the money goes, Egypt edition

UPDATE 12:24 PM: US Aid here refers to Official Development Assistance, not military aid. See US military vs economic assistance  and US aid by sector in Egypt here.

This chart comes to us from the people at AidData, a data portal that provides detailed information down to the individual project level for aid funds spent by traditional and non-traditional donors.

The categories used are from research by Simone Dietrich, who explained: "Public sector captures US aid flows to Egypt that directly involve the Egyptian government in the implementation, ranging between budget support and technical assistance. Bypass aid, on the other hand, captures aid that flows 'around' the Egyptian government and is implemented by multilateral organizations, NGOs, or private contractors. "

So, has US aid been better at supporting the Egyptian government, or the Egyptian people?

Please help us praise Millennium Villages...

UPDATE 4: 3rd nomination for positive. Day 3 of silence from MVP UPDATE 3: another nomination for positive evaluation (Michael Clemens paper), another energetic disavowal by the author (see comments below).  

UPDATE 2: oops, author of only nomination so far says it's not so positive-- see comments

UPDATE: received first nomination of positive review

On Twitter, @bill_easterly noted yesterday's Aid Watch post :

On Millennium Villages: this is not my own predictable response, this is independent guest post

Which immediately got the reply on Twitter:

intentional irony? your guest posts are as "independent" as any MV self-assessment

Aid Watch will let its guest posters defend their own independence, but in the meantime let's find another guest poster that will pass our critic's most stringent independence test. In short...

...could somebody please send us a strongly positive evaluation of the the Millennium Villages.

Our critic rightly notes that self-assessment is not what anybody is looking for, so  the only restriction is that the evaluators of course must not be part of the MV program themselves, i.e. must be independent.

This is not satire. Aid Watch would be very happy to hear from those evaluators of the MVs who have the strongest possible positive portrayal of the results of the MV intervention. We will post summaries of these evaluations without comment on Aid Watch.

UPDATE: received first nomination of a positive review of MVs: an article in Vanity Fair.