Steve Peacock's U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor

Obama Spending $140M to Assess Pakistan Aid Program

Tab for taxpayers to pay for 'performance-monitoring support'

While the flow of billions of America taxpayer dollars to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan has slowed during President Obama’s second term, his administration nonetheless will put $140 million into a project to figure out how to help “increase stability, democracy, and prosperity for the men and women” of that nation.

Private contractors will reap the windfall of an aid-effectiveness assessment known as the Performance Management Support, or PERFORM, initiative, which simultaneously seeks to determine whether Obama has accomplished anything thus far in Pakistan.

The U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, is tasked with conducting the PERFORM endeavor, for which contractors will provide “performance-monitoring support” of existing assistance programs.

The step comports with existing USAID policy stemming from requirements in the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009 that the agency determine if government clients are effectively and efficiently carrying out their contractual obligations.

USAID/Pakistan currently maintains in-house staff to monitor the program effectiveness, particularly in high-threat and security restricted areas such as Karachi, Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

According to the project Statement of Work, for the agency employees to satisfy their contractor-oversight responsibilities, additional contractors are needed to obtain “performance monitoring data.” The aim of the five-year, $140 million PERFORM initiative, therefore, is to obtain that data.

USAID then will use the information to identify existing program problems and to devise project improvements and adaptations. It also will leverage the data “to inform new project designs.”

The agency separately is evaluating the effectiveness of “highly specialized management information system and geospatial information system,” or MIS/GIS, services that a contractor is providing to USAID/Pakistan.

The MIS/GIS initiative will help the agency to track more closely 90 active contracts – valued at more than $1.9 billion – that USAID/Pakistan currently manages.

Management Services International received a six-month, non-competitive contract extension to perform the work, raising the contract ceiling from $11.7 million to $23.7 million.

The administration’s FY 2015 budget request for Pakistan aid is $881.8 million – significantly less than the nearly $2.4 billion sought and congressionally appropriated in FY 2011.

Peace and Security operations comprise $399.2 million of the FY 2015 total, with the remainder slated for Economic Development ($276 million); Health ($80 million); Democracy, Human Rights and Government ($76.6 million); and Education and Social Services ($50 million).

Included in the category of Peace and Security operations is State Department training through its Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program, or ATA. As U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor's Steve Peacock recently discovered, the State Department purchased hundreds of pounds of plastic explosives and thousands of containers of liquid explosives, which it claimed it would use in the training of ATA partner nations such as Pakistan.

It is unclear, however, which assistance category applies to the administration’s production of a Pakistani-themed video depicting national icon Uncle Sam as a bloodthirsty cannibal.

Similarly, an Obama plan to change Pakistan’s culturally embedded mistreatment of women and girls might fall under several budget categories.

Other recently launched USAID/Pakistan endeavors include the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governance Project, a four-year $24 million program that seeks to improve the ability of that provincial government to provide public services to its citizens.

The Commercial Agriculture Project, which likewise is a four-year $24 million program, will help “improve the ability of Pakistan’s agriculture and livestock sectors to meet both international and domestic demand.”

USAID/Pakistan also recently revealed that it will spend about $17 million to perform an “environmental and social impact assessment” of the proposed Diamer Bhasha Dam Project.

The official justification for U.S. assistance to Pakistan focuses on the pursuit of “robust continued security and civilian assistance that contributes to a more secure, stable, tolerant, democratic, and prosperous Pakistan.”

The broader aim is to “make the region safer and also contribute to U.S. security.”

This article originally was published June 8 via WND.com. Under agreement with WND, rights have reverted back to its author, Steve Peacock.

U.S. Government: Americans are 'Killer Zombies' (WND)

My latest from WND. -- S.P.

A bloodthirsty zombie version of the Uncle Sam character bites the neck of a foreign man in a promotional video the Obama administration is using to catch the attention of Pakistani youth.

Voice of America, through a local cable company, currently distributes “Zindagi 360,” a program VOA uses to target young adults in Pakistan, but the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors is setting its sights higher.

BBG now is aiming for a Pakistan-wide broadcast of the show, which “focuses on topics that resonate with young people in Pakistan,” such as music and “life in America.”

The topics apparently include the stars-and-stripes-adorned killer-zombie adaptation of Uncle Sam, the traditional personification of the American government.

While the promo clearly is intended to be humorous, if not satirical, BGB is using it as a calling card in its search for a distributor capable of spreading its message.

Continued at WND.com...

Feds Hid Spending During Government Shutdown

The Obama administration during the partial government shutdown concealed a plan to funnel millions into yet another project in Afghanistan, where U.S. taxpayers are helping farmers grow wheat instead of illicit crops used in narcotics production.

Iranians and Pakistanis could particularly benefit from the endeavor, according to contracting documents U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor discovered via routine database research.

The U.S. Agency for International Development explicitly identified Iran and Pakistan as long-time recipients of food products exported from the targeted provinces of Helmand, Kandahar and Zabul, which likewise have helped satisfy Afghanistan’s nationwide food requirements.

The Monitor’s discovery of USAID’s purported oversight in public disclosure comes at a time when President Obama and his supporters have escalated their rhetoric about the shutdown’s impact on the nation’s financial and political stability.

Just as Obama was casting blame on Republicans for attempting to wreck the U.S. economy, USAID simultaneously failed to notify the American public, as required by government regulations, of its $125 million award to contracting behemoth Chemonics International.

Chemonics secured the award Oct. 7, at the end of Week One of the budgetary stalemate among both houses of Congress and the White House.

USAID did not publish the award notice until Oct. 17, the day Obama signed the bill to end the partial shutdown and raise the federal debt ceiling.

The agency, however, did not attempt to blame the delay on the shutdown nor could it realistically attempt to do so, as the FedBizOpps online contracting system was fully operational during that period.

Rather, the agency offered an uncertain excuse for its procrastination, claiming a “systems integration and/or transmission error resulted that the award notice was not posted.”

USAID admitted it should have publicly announced the award “on or before” Oct. 10

Chemonics will carry out the Regional Agricultural Development Program, or RADP-South initiative, “to improve food and economic security for rural Afghans in the targeted areas.”

“This sustainable agricultural development program will support the consolidation of licit economies to fuel economic growth, including providing alternatives to poppy cultivation,” according the project’s Statement of Work.

As this writer reported for WND, the U.S. Trade & Development Agency – an independent White House agency – offered to pay a consultant $300,000 to guide Kenyan and other East African power companies on how to tap into Obama’s multi-billion-dollar Power Africa scheme.

The administration slipped in the contract one day prior to the shutdown.

Five days later, Obama separately released plans to make available up to $50 million in giveaways to the energy industry and foreign aid recipients, the Monitor now has discovered.

USTDA intends to award indefinite quantity/indefinite delivery, or IDIQ, contracts worldwide “to respond quickly to U.S. business interests and foreign project sponsor needs in the energy sector.”

Despite its global reach, the Multiple-Award Energy Sector Planning Services IDIQ initiative admittedly will place “particular emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa,” USTDA said.

USTDA is the same entity, as this writer also reported for WND last month, that is spending $100,000 to create a manual to teach Mexican officials and U.S. corporate welfare recipients how to get more money from the U.S. government.

While USTDA arguably is a relatively small agency – its FY 2014 budget request is just under $63 million – it consistently undergoes criticism along with calls for closure. Former Republican Rep. Ron Paul and free-market think tanks such as the Cato Institute regularly denounce it as among the most duplicative and wasteful of all federal entities.

USTDA consequently represents one of the most egregious examples of “corporate welfare waste,” the Cato Institute concluded in a 2005 report. These and similar organizations “should be terminated,” contended the report’s author, Chris Edwards.

This article originally was published Oct. 24, 2013 via WND. Under agreement with the publisher, rights have reverted back to the copywrite holder, Steve Peacock.

New Obama Program Targets Unemployed Youth—in Pakistan! (Patriot Update)

The Obama Administration’s Youth Workforce Development Program (YWDP) promises  to deal with the growing number of “idle, disaffected youth” nationwide—that is,  in the nation of Pakistan.

The initiative comes at a time when the U.S.  Department of Labor acknowledges that the unemployment rate for American  teenagers in March remained about the same as in February: 24.2 percent.

Read more at PatriotUpdate.com...

Also see Steve Peacock's author page at Patriot Update...

Sequestration-Related Cuts? Fed Spending Continues Unabated

The Obama administration recently issued warnings to contractors of potential sequestration-related spending cuts, but in the meantime federal spending continues unabated, domestically and globally.

Some of the apparently indispensable projects include a environmental public murals in Hebron and Jericho along with similarly themed summer camps and field trips for Palestinian children, alternative energy outings to Turkey, and assistance to mango growers and hotel operators in Pakistan.

The U.S. Agency for International Development said in a public notice that “due to the failure of Congress to reach a deal on balanced deficit reduction to avoid sequestration, the president on March 1, 2013, as required by law, issued a sequestration order canceling approximately $85 billion in budgetary resources across the federal government for the remainder of the federal fiscal year.”

USAID recently advised vendors that the agency “is taking every step to mitigate the effects of these cuts, but … it is likely that your company’s workforce, revenue, and planning processes may be affected.”

But that is not stopping USAID from reaching out to contractors to carry out its new $700 million global “ecological-governance” program.

The primary goal of the agency’s Restoring the Environment through Prosperity, Livelihoods and Conserving Ecosystems, or REPLACE, program is to strengthen the ability of governments and non-governmental organizations around the globe to provide climate-change mitigation and adaptation, seascape and landscape management, and other environmental and economic interventions.

Numerous other federal entities issued similar warnings via the FedBizOpps contractor database.

Despite the advisories, new projects continue to emerge while existing programs undergo expansion, from the seemingly inconsequential – such as a $79,000 U.S. Trade & Development Agency grant to send U.S. railway representatives on an exploratory mission to India – to initiatives on a multi-billion-dollar scale.

Most notable is the Department of Defense’s extended outsourcing of global counter-narcotics functions through its Counter Narco-Terrorism Program Office, or CNTPO, a potential $15 billion contract vehicle that has enriched – and will continue to enrich – Blackwater Lodge & Training Center Inc.; Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems; ARINC Engineering Services LLC; Raytheon Technical Service Company; and Northrop Grumman/TASC Inc.

The report "DoD Prepares Follow-Up to $15 Billion Global Counterdrug Contracts" continues to be one of the Monitor's most regulalry visited articles, generating consistent visits and Google search hits nearly twenty months later.

The following list of federal procurement actions represents an additional snapshot of recent contracts, requests for proposals and other solicitations, both large and small. This nation-by-nation compilation is by no means comprehensive but is designed to enlighten U.S. taxpayers about how the federal government is spending – or intends to spend – their money.

GAZA/WEST BANK

The creation of environmental-themed public murals, conducting student field-trips to “environmentally important sites” in Hebron and Jericho and holding environmental summer camps for Palestinian children are among programs that the Department of Agriculture’s U.S. Forest Service intends to fund. And the USFS is procuring the services of the Palestinian Association for Child Arts and Culture to carry out these tasks for youth in the city of Hebron. The agency did not disclose the estimated cost.

Helping the Palestinian Authority to “build more effective and competent public institutions that are accountable to the public and respond to citizens’ needs” will cost $20.5 million under a contract that USAID awarded to Development Alternatives Inc.

U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor founder Steve Peacock initially broke the story on the project’s unveiling last April for WND.com.

PAKISTAN

Current efforts to improve the competitiveness of small- and medium businesses in Pakistan have been extended another 20 months, now that USAID has raised Chemonics International’s contract ceiling to $93 million. The current contract for the Pakistan Firms Project was slated to end April 15, but with a $2.5 million increase, Chemonics will continue to provide technology upgrades, skill development and other assistance to hotels, mango growers, knitted-garment manufacturers and other Pakistani enterprises through December 31, 2014.

TURKEY

Alternative-energy industry representatives are getting free hotel rooms and airfare to Turkey to explore ways to capitalize on the nation’s energy boom. The U.S. Trade & Development Agency is offering a $537,000 grant to carry out the Smart Grid Upgrades to the Teias Electricity Transmission Network Feasibility Study. According to the agency, “Turkey is facing a rapidly rising demand in the midst of its bustling economic growth. The Turkish government is consequently making a concentrated effort to explore alternative sources of energy, such as wind, hydro and geothermal power as a way of meeting this shortfall.”

Consequently, the Obama administration has decided that U.S. taxpayers should shoulder the burden of that trip to Ankara.

UNITED STATES

Under its Adult Education and Immigrant Integration project, the U.S. Department of Education awarded a $1.3 million contract to World Education Inc. of Boston to design an initiative to “reduce linguistic, academic, and employment barriers for skilled and low-skilled immigrants and refugees, and to integrate them into the U.S. workforce and professions.”

A similar version of this article first appeared via WND.com on March 18, 2013. Under agreement with WND, rights have reverted back to the author, Steve Peacock.

Obama Hands Out Free Health Care to Pakistanis

The Obama administration is preparing to give free health care to Pakistanis even as Americans who cannot get health insurance because of pre-existing conditions soon will be rejected by domestic programs due to a lack of funds.

Pakistani nationals working at several U.S. embassies soon could get a boost in health care benefits as the U.S. State Department has begun shopping for top-tier services.

Their paychecks will not see so much as one Pakistani rupee deducted as they receive a broad variety of medical services, according to a solicitation U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor located via routine database research.

The document also made clear that the selected vendor “shall insure that health care under this contract does not exclude HIV/AIDS care, or preexisting conditions.”

The State Department will subsidize an estimated 1,222 family plans and 190 single-employee plans. The family plans cover children of Pakistani employees to age 18, or age 23 if a full-time student and unmarried.

Coverage could apply to a variety to individuals and their families for local employees of the:

• U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, its consulates in Karachi, Lahore, and Peshawar, and its “presence” in Quetta.
• Department of State.
• Defense Attaché Office .
• Drug Enforcement Administration.
• Legal Attaché Office.
• Foreign Agricultural Service.
• Foreign Broadcast Information Service.
• Office of Defense Representative in Pakistan.
• Public Affairs Section.
• Refugee Office.
• Library of Congress.
• Foreign Commercial Service.
• Kabul Support Unit.
• Department of Homeland Security.
• Voice of America.
• Narcotics Affairs Section/International Narcotics and Law Enforcement – Pakistan.
• Office of Overseas Building Operation.
• US Agency for International Development.
• Department of Treasury.
• Department of Energy.
• Office of the Inspector General (OIG).

Although it is standard practice for State to offer health-care benefits to locally employed staff worldwide, the Pakistani package is noticeably more generous than coverage offered in other nations, such as Venezuela.

Citing prevailing practices in and around the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, State will foot the bill for just 90 percent of the monthly premium for those workers. Similarly, the U.S. Embassy in Caracas also prevents providers from excluding HIV/AIDS care and preexisting conditions, unless excluded by the human resources department.

On the other hand, Venezuelan staff can elect to include coverage for the employees’ parents up to 80 years old, though they must full cover the premium. Furthermore, while children of Pakistani staff only are potentially eligible for coverage until they are 23, unmarried college-bound Venezuelan dependents can stay on the plan until they turn 25.

Additionally, Venezuelan family-plan members each may receive funeral-coverage costs of 6,000 Bolivars, about U. S. $1,000.

Meanwhile, Obama administration officials said, according to the Washington Post, that the state-based “high risk pools” set up under Obamacare will be closed to new applicants over the next few days because funding is running low.

And the Washington Times reported Obamacare will push 7 million Americans out of their job-based insurance coverage due to limited funding. The report said the incentives for businesses to provide health care are being minimized, so more employers are expected to choose to pay a penalty to the government and not provide health care.

At the same time, there are reports the lowest cost health plan for a family soon will cost $20,000, and the Obamacare mandate fine for Americans is hitting $695 soon.

A similar version of this article was published via WND on Feb. 19, 2013. Under agreement with WND, rights have reverted back to the author, Steve Peacock.

Obama Takes Action On 'Unreliable' Power Grid – in Pakistan!

A nighttime view of the devastated barrier island towns of Bay Head and Mantoloking, N.J., whose lights normally glitter across the Barnegat Bay into Point Pleasant. With the exception of emergencey crews working in the distance (the crane in the bottom right corner sits at the site of the partially submerged Mantoloking Bridge) , that region as of this writing largely remains in darkness.

Project launched in wake of Hurricane Sandy

Less than a week after Hurricane Sandy plunged much of the mid-Atlantic region into darkness, the Obama administration unveiled a new initiative aimed at mitigating the impact of “unreliable grid power.”

Not across ravaged coastal New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, but in Pakistan’s Punjab province.

The direct beneficiary of the administration’s generosity is a publicly traded Pakistani cement and concrete producer, according to a planning document that U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor located via routine database research.

The Lahore-based Pioneer Cement Limited, or PCL, requested a grant from the U.S. Trade & Development Agency, or USTDA – an independent White House entity – to fund a feasibility study of its modernization plans.

USTDA agreed, thereby requiring U.S. taxpayers to foot the bill for eco-friendly industry representatives needing international flights and hotel accommodations. The agency is offering a $770,000 grant to make it happen, Solicitation Number 2012-31033A shows.

The completed study also may come with recommendations for further financial or technical assistance to PCL, which ultimately wants to build a biomass-fired power plant as well as a waste heat recovery unit “and energy efficiency upgrades to mitigate or reduce dependence on unreliable grid power,” the document says.

Biomass, “as a renewable energy source, is biological material from living, or recently living organisms,” as defined by the Surrey, England-based Biomass Energy Center. PCL, for instance, uses residues from agricultural waste such as rice husks and wheat straw.

USTDA acknowledges that the grant-recipient Pakistani company is thriving. Indeed, the targeted facility “is equipped with two cement production lines with a total production capacity of 6,200 tons” of clinker – the primary component of cement – per day.

The agency laments, however, that “PCL’s production costs are rising, particularly in terms of fuel and power. As a result, PCL is intent on maximizing production capacity utilization, maintaining quality, and reducing its cost of production.”

Implementation of the biomass-fired power plant will help PCL “to meet the cement plant’s internal demand, with any surplus energy being sold to the National Transmission & Despatch Company,” the solicitation says.

USTDA touts itself for helping “companies create U.S. jobs through the export of U.S. goods and services for priority development projects in emerging economies.”

The agency on its website claims that last year it “identified over $2.2 billion in U.S. exports that were directly attributable to USTDA-funded activities.”

But as the Monitor reported earlier this year, sometimes those companies include multi-billion-dollar corporations such as GE, which stands to gain from USTDA-financed energy projects in Kenya and Tanzania.

The agency often pays for feasibility studies and “definitional missions” as the first steps toward the modernization of other nations’ industries – including the oil industry in places such as Libya.

USTDA has since embarked upon a separate Libyan project.

Interestingly, on the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks – the very day of the al Qaida-staged attacks resulting in the deaths the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others – USTDA in a Special Notice recognized the “technical merit” of an unsolicited proposal to create Internet access points across Libya.

Benghazi and Tripoli were identified as two target cities to deploy the access points. No action – neither a contract award or project cancellation—has been announced in that particular matter.

Congress this week separately began hearings on the Benghazi attack.

This article originally was published via WND.com Nov. 14. Under agreement with the publisher, rights have reverted back to to the author, Steve Peacock.

ALSO SEE "Hurricane Sandy: Another Example of Why We Need to Invest More in America, Less Around the Globe" (COMMENTARY).

FOR MORE COVERAGE OF THE U.S TRADE & DEVELOPMENT AGENCY, VISIT THE MONITOR'S USTDA PAGE.

WND: Obama Takes Action on 'Unreliable' Power Grid – in Pakistan!

My latest from WND:

Less than a week after Hurricane Sandy plunged much of the mid-Atlantic region into darkness, the Obama administration unveiled a new initiative aimed at mitigating the impact of “unreliable grid power.”

Not across ravaged coastal New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, but in Pakistan’s Punjab province.

The direct beneficiary of the administration’s generosity is a publicly traded Pakistani cement and concrete producer, according to a planning document that WND located via routine database research.

Continued...

U.S. Could Infuse $300 Million Into Upcoming Elections -- Overseas

Nearly $300 million in contracts could be awarded to help the U.S. provide “technical leadership in the field of electoral and political processes” in foreign nations. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will use private contractors to provide “rapid-response, one-time only” assistance as well as “iterative,” or repeated, goods and services, according to an updated solicitation (#SOL-OAA-11-000037) that U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor located via a routine search of the FedBizOpps database.

USAID currently is carrying out such assistance projects under previously awarded contracts in Afghanistan, Sudan, Pakistan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The agency recently extended the contracts of three vendors—Creative Associates (award #DFD-I-00-05-00197-00), Democracy International (award #DFD-I-00-05-00198-00), and IFES (award #DFD-I-00-05-00225-00)—to continue operating in those nations. USAID estimates that that the approx. $40 million extension will bring total expenditures under that initiative to $185 million—far short of the previous $400 million ceiling that it set for such ventures.

The new solicitation once again will open up the process to competitive bidding over a five-year ordering period.

FOR ADDITIONAL COVERAGE OF THE U.S. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, PLEASE VISIT THE MONITOR'S USAID PAGE.

FOR ADDITIONAL REGIONAL COVERAGE, PLEASE VISIT THE MONITOR'S AFGHANISTAN PAGE, CONGO PAGE, AND PAKISTAN PAGE.

U.S. Cancels Planned Media Barrage in Pakistan

A planned project to air U.S.-sponsored broadcast TV news across Pakistan has been cancelled, U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor has discovered.  The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) had anticipated hiring a privately contracted broadcaster to work in tandem with the Voice of America (VOA) to produce a 30-50-minute show in the Urdu language that would have been aired five days a week; BBG, however, in an amendment to Solicitation #BBG50-Q-11-0033 explained the cancellation in one sentence:

This solicitation has been canceled due to a change in the agency requirements.

The BBG/VOA offered no further explanation.

The U.S. Agency for International (USAID) in 2008 had sought to embark upon a similar broadcasting endeavor in Pakistan, but it remains unclear whether the agency ever fully pursued that plan. As reported by the Monitor's predecessor site The Peacock Report (TPR), USAID envisioned "a multi-language delivery of U.S. government messages in urban as well as rural areas of Pakistan... in English, Urdu, Pashtu, Punjabi, and other regonal languages... in newspapers, magazines, and billboards as well as radio and television broadcasts..."

Though a recent search of the FedBizOpps database did not produce any evidence that USAID actually awarded contracts to carry out that ambitious initiative, neither did a search reveal a cancellation of that project.  (See "U.S. Information Blitz to Unfold in Pakistan"; TPR, June 5, 2008).