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

Disturbing Truth Behind Obama's Travel Madness (WND)

My latest from WND. -- S.P.

Supporters of Barack Obama tout his dedication to the responsibilities of the presidency by noting that he had taken 96 days of vacation at the point in his term that President George W. Bush had taken a reported 335.

But they admit that 51 of Bush’s trips were to his Texas ranch, while records show that Obama’s destinations have ranged from exotic European and African locales to pricey digs to Hawaii, where he’s sometimes traveled separately from his family, effectively doubling transportation costs for taxpayers.

The records released are partial, meaning no firm travel-expense total can be assembled. But individual cases are revealing.

Continued at WND.com...

ALSO SEE: CNN Rips Off U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor Story on Biden's Plush Parisian Jaunt

 more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/11/the-disturbing-truth-behind-obamas-travel-junkets/#SMBd76Lp60bvCSCW.99

Obama Can't Stop Spending — In Kenya!

The Obama administration is seeking additional U.S. taxpayer funds to provide more health services to Kenyans through a massive assistance program that has already grown so “rapidly and exponentially” the U.S. government now needs help from outside contractors to oversee it.

A Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm known for its work with the United Nations Development Program, the European Union and the World Bank has been hired by the administration to monitor, analyze and improve the foreign-assistance program, known as the Evaluation Services and Program Support endeavor.

The U.S. Agency for International Development has awarded a contract potentially worth $23 million to International Business & Technical Consultants, Inc., or IBTCI, which will provide such services when called upon.

The new arrangement allows USAID/Kenya’s Office of Population and Health Programs, or OPH, and USAID/East Africa’s Regional Health and HIV/AIDS Office, or RHH, to issue separate work orders to the consulting firm on an indefinite quantity, indefinite delivery basis.

The initiative emphasizes “Kenya is a priority country for The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and receives significant funding to address HIV/AIDS and related problems. Similarly, resources available from the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) assure continued funding for malaria programs.”

Despite this consistent flow of funding, Kenya wants more.

USAID says key target groups among the Kenyan population have reached plateaus or have seen declines in measurements of Kenyans’ health.

Kenya consequently intends to “seek additional funding to balance the current program to increase coverage for family planning, maternal, neonatal, and child health, nutrition/food security, and safe water and hygiene.”

USAID/East Africa similarly will enlist the consulting firm’s assistance in contributing to “the re-design of new, evidence-based follow-on projects and programs” in Burundi, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Rwanda, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

This agency unit likewise is working “in close collaboration” with U.S. government counterparts at the Centers for Disease Control and the departments of Defense and State “to accelerate the scale-up of proven high-impact and low-cost public health programming.”

Although USAID admittedly cannot adequately manage the voluminous initiatives it has launched in Kenya, cost-wise overall aid dropped from a high of $830 million in 2009 to $460 million in 2013.

Despite the administration’s emphasis on Kenyan health programs, there is another component to the initiative: the implementation of Kenya’s new constitution, which requires greater decentralization of the national government and expansion of the county governmental system.

While the overarching goal “is to focus on the establishment of a sustainable national health system for all Kenyans,” it also must maintain “strong linkages” to other governmental and societal sectors “that impact health but have conventionally been perceived as outside of the control of the health sector.”

U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor has reported over the past year on various components of Obama’s Kenyan assistance scheme.

Those exclusive Monitor reports (some which originally appeared via WND.com and were reprinted here by the author) led USAID to eliminate public access to a critical planning document governing a U.S. propaganda initiative known as the USAID/Kenya Strategic Communications Plan 2012-2013.

Publicly available documents revealing the Obama administration’s unwieldy portfolio of Kenyan projects – which includes a formal plan to manipulate Kenyan and global media – were removed from a federal contracting database, the Monitor discovered.

The agency likewise revamped one of its solicitations for industry proposals, modifying the project to make it an East African rather than a Kenyan-only endeavor.

However, the Monitor discovered the government merely repackaged and re-released it, expanding the potential geographic reach of the initiative while limiting it to health-related projects.

USAID also plans to spend up to $50 million to strengthen Kenya’s county governments, as the Monitor previously reported.

Though the effort could help redistribute political power across the African republic, whose national government is viewed as one of the most notoriously corrupt in the world, the administration acknowledged the process may inadvertently create 47 equally corrupt county systems.

The Monitor reported Obama also is embarking upon a nationwide reading project that aims to improve the skills of children in tens of thousands of Kenyan schools.

The administration furthermore launched new peace initiatives in and around Kenya, despite acknowledging that chronic cattle rustling and other cultural practices – such as killing rivals “to prove their manhood or impress young women” – might impede progress.

USAID separately will pump hundreds of millions into contractor coffers to help improve business for farmers in and around Kenya.

This article originally was published via WND.com, and has been reprinted by the author under agreement with WND.

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Corruption a Hurdle for Obama 'Power Africa' Plan

Bureaucracy proposed to overcome Kenyan obstacles

President Obama’s multi-billion-dollar “Power Africa” initiative aims to double citizen access to electricity and other power sources across Sub-Saharan Africa. But it plays down the creation of a new public-private bureaucracy needed to overcome the pervasive corruption and incompetence of African governments and power utilities.

A significant portion of the Kenya-based endeavor is designed simply to administer the program. Segments include efforts to sway public and congressional opinion in favor of the initiative, according to a new planning document U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor  located through routine database research.

The U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, will hire a contractor or contractors primarily to persuade African officials to change regulatory governance of power distribution, explains the draft Statement of Work, or SOW. A corresponding agency goal is to encourage, with contractor assistance, the escalation of private-sector investment in the region.

This regulatory and institutional strengthening and “early stage project support” will comprise 20 percent of USAID contractor efforts.

The USAID chief of party, or COP, and deputy COP, “who will be the overall managers of the contracts,” will reserve 10 percent of program funding for those government managerial functions, the document says.

The project’s overarching goal “is to remove the power constraint to economic growth and spur trade and investment, while mitigating long-term greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions trajectories,” the draft SOW says. “Power Africa will serve as a catalyst that will spark a transformation in Africa’s energy and power sectors.

“The immediate outcome will be increased supply of and access to reliable, affordable, and sustainable power for millions of Africans and the enhanced responsible and transparent management of energy resources.”

Put in simpler terms, despite Obama’s ambitious and confident proclamations about the endeavor during his recent Africa trip, the document simultaneously affirms his vision and acknowledges the great difficulties the U.S. faces in executing such reforms.

Among other factors, the weak regulatory, policy and legal environments – made worse by continent-wide “corrupt and non-transparent bidding and contractual procedures” – serve as constraints to the sort of international investment Obama wants to bring about, the SOW says.

Political instability, a lengthy history of state-owned utilities and the “fear of change and competition” likewise deter private sector project-development and investment.

Consequently, the Obama administration expects U.S. taxpayers over the next five years to commit $7 billion toward stabilizing and correcting the investment roadblocks.

Whereas USAID will provide $285 million in technical assistance to remedy what it admits are typically corrupt and often incompetent governmental bodies and utility providers, the administration will direct the remainder of the funds through other U.S. agencies.

Among the entities are the Export-Import Bank of the United States, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the U.S. Trade & Development Agency – entities that the Cato Institute says should be “terminated” because they largely serve as monumental vehicles of “corporate welfare waste.”

Reminiscent of a prior scheme to sway journalists into providing favorable coverage of its Kenyan aid program – a document for which the agency abruptly blocked public access following this writer's coverage of the matter – the USAID prime contractor also must provide communications and outreach support that will be “directed at the American public, U.S. Congress” and elsewhere, the draft SOW says.

The previous communications plan spelled out in greater detail how the Obama administration sought to target specific journalists and media groups from whom it sought favors.

USAID designed the earlier “strategic plan” specifically for Kenyan aid programs, which had grown so large that the agency solicited more contractors to support projects already under way through other vendors.

The agency kept the program quiet for a year before repackaging it with decreased emphasis, according to publicly available documents, on the propaganda angle, as the Monitor recently reported.

According to the Power Africa draft SOW, the selected vendor must devote 20 percent of its efforts under the prime contract towards “institutional support” for the program coordinator’s office.

Communications and outreach activities represent just one component of institutional support, which also entails tracking and coordinating activities among “Power Africa implementers and stakeholders” such as other U.S. agencies, host country governments and non-governmental organizations, the document says.

Although USAID’s East Africa Regional Mission in Nairobi, Kenya, is home to the coordinator’s office, Power Africa also has plans for Ethiopia, Ghana, Liberia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda.

This article originally was published via WND.com (July 23, 2012). Under agreement with the editor, rights have reverted back to the author, Steve Peacock.

Obama's 2-Day Stay in Tanzania Cost $650,000 Just for Hotels

 

Obama tries out high-tech play device in Tanzania while energy executives and the Tanzanian president look on.

The tail end of President Obama's Africa Trip -- which stopped in Tanzania, the third and final stop on this tour -- contributed $650,000 toward the reportedly $60-$100 million journey. And that was just for the hotel rooms, U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor has discovered.

 

According to a Justification and Approval for Other Than Full & Open Competition, or JOFOC, document that the Monitor located via routine database research, the U.S. Department of State requested "an estimated number of 179 single rooms intermittently from June 14 thru July 10, 2013.

The president and First Lady Michelle Obama stayed in Tanzania July 1-2. State justified booking all of those rooms for several weeks, however, based on its assessment that:

Hotels are predicting 100% occupancy due to bookings from the USG [U.S. government] and other high level VIP delegations from other countries. In order to fulfill our requirement, the USG is renting nearly the entire hotel and is utilizing a variety of room types, which were negotiated at a one-price-fits-all rate which benefits the USG.

Requirements for rooms from the USG and other countries, coupled with the limited supply of suitable, available hotels in Dar Es Salaam, created a peak demand for rooms. Prices for rooms at the Hyatt for this visit are within the rates charged for similar rooms during this season and are similar to the prices received from other hotels. As such, the rates are the established market rates for this class of hotel.

State awarded the no-bid contract to Hyatt Dar Es Salaam because "Security concerns prohibit sufficient advanced notification of VIP travel to allow for sufficient time to conduct full and open competition," the document says.

State released the JOFOC document on July 26. It awarded the contract, however, June 19.

RELATED COVERAGE

Corruption a hurdle for Obama 'Power Africa' plan (WND; July 29, 2013)

Corruption a Hurdle for Obama 'Power Africa' Plan (WND)

One of my two latest articles via WND. -- S.P.

President Obama’s multi-billion-dollar “Power Africa” initiative aims to double citizen access to electricity and other power sources across Sub-Saharan Africa. But it plays down the creation of a new public-private bureaucracy needed to overcome the pervasive corruption and incompetence of African governments and power utilities.

A significant portion of the Kenya-based endeavor is designed simply to administer the program. Segments include efforts to sway public and congressional opinion in favor of the initiative, according to a new planning document WND located through routine database research.

Continue reading at WND.com...

U.S. Seeks New Means of Predicting Internet Growth Overseas, from Albania to Zimbabwe

The U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) is looking for a contractor capable of developing a new analytical model to predict Internet usage and growth in thirty-two foreign nations, from "A" (Albania) to "Z" (Zimbabwe).

The agency, which runs U.S. government-funded international broadcasting systems such as Voice of America and Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, said in a Statement of Work (Solicitation #BBG50-R-11-0020) that existing models for predicting growth are inadequate. The SOW said those models solely focus on specific technology sectors rather than the Internet in its entirety:

The ultimate goal is to estimate, using empirical data, the expansion of the number of unique individuals using the Internet on a weekly basis in these markets over the next five years. While various organizations have produced such estimates and prejections for sub-segments of the Internet market, such as mobile Internet use or fixed line broadband, BBG requires estimates of the growth of the entire Internet market, regardless of platform, including use via public access facilities.

Although the BBG attempted to justifiy why it wants a new predictive model, it did not specify why it needs -- nor what it intends to do -- with such a new mode of analysis. The agency said it would apply the model to Internet usage in the following nations: Afghanistan, Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Cameroon, China, Egypt, Georgia, Ghana, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, Vietnam,  Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

The BBG said the selected contractor should be able to complete the work within an eight-week period. It did not offer an estimated cost of the project.