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

Feds Holds Another Handout Summit

New guide for corporations, foreigners to game U.S. taxpayers

The Obama administration has taken its corporate-welfare road show to Mexico, where American taxpayers funded a three-day conference over the last week, with an aim to simultaneously subsidize U.S. industry while helping Mexico tap into the U.S. Treasury to fund its national infrastructure plan to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.

 

Among the highlights of ConnectMEX – the U.S.-Mexico Transport and Telecom Conference – was the U.S. Trade & Development Agency’s unveiling at this Mexico City venue of a “Resource Guide for U.S. Industry on Priority Infrastructure Projects.”

 

Despite the title’s emphasis on the benefits that U.S. industry could glean from the endeavor, U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor editor Steve Peacock discovered last year that the agency’s corollary aim is to provide “an overview of the relevant financing options” the Mexican government may pursue.

 

USTDA – an independent White House agency – in its ConnectMEX promotional materials simply tout the guide as a roadmap containing “detailed descriptions of project opportunities” for the U.S. transportation and telecommunications sectors.

 

However, the resource guide not only cost U.S. taxpayers $100,000 to create, but serves as a vehicle for both U.S. businesses and the Mexican government to obtain contracts and grants paid for by the American people.

 

Among potential options for this modernization effort involving hundreds of billions of dollars is financing through governmental institutions such as the U.S. Export-Import Bank, or Ex-Im, and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, or OPIC.

 

USTDA in last year’s bid request for the resource guide explicitly directed the contractor to contact Ex-Im Bank, OPIC, and private/commercial institutions to obtain such information on behalf of Mexico, the host nation “Project Sponsor.” The document also specified that the contractor must evaluate this financing data to ensure “which options represent the best value” for Mexico.

 

“USTDA is sponsoring ConnectMEX to help establish stronger transportation and telecommunications connections between Mexico and the United States,” Director Leocadia I. Zak said during the event’s opening remarks. “We are proud to connect industry-leading U.S. experts to Mexico’s plans to enhance its infrastructure in order to improve the daily lives of its people.”

 

The agency last week bragged that it awarded a new grant to a Mexican industry group “to help modernize Mexico’s freight railcar fleet.”

 

The amount of that grant – which USTDA is giving to the Asociación Mexicana de Ferrocarriles, Mexico’s national railroad trade association, is unclear, as USTDA announced the grant without revealing its value.

 

One conference attendee claimed it was a $150 million, though that amount is highly unlikely in the context of past agency grants. An email and separate tweet sent to USTDA was acknowledged, but clarification on the amount was not given by deadline.

 

The railway grant will support the Mexican industry group’s efforts “to modernize its fleet of specialized freight railcars.

 

“The project will recommend specific investments in new systems, services, terminals and railcars to meet the projected growth of freight transportation in the country.”

 

USTDA said it also plans to release “a complete Resource Guide to highlight additional projects in Mexico’s energy, water and environment sectors.”

 

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 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, Ex-Im Bank and OPIC consequently are among the most egregious examples of “corporate welfare waste,” the Cato Institute concluded in a 2005 report. These and similar organizations “should be terminated,” contends the report’s author, Chris Edwards.

 

Totals for previous Ex-Im Bank and OPIC financing of Mexican infrastructure projects were not readily available for this report, but a search of prior USTDA initiatives reveal numerous efforts to arrange U.S. backing of such projects.

 

USTDA under Obama has financed a multitude of other transportation initiatives that simultaneously benefit the Mexican people and U.S. businesses, courtesy U.S. taxpayers.

 

Multiple DMs and feasibility studies for airport modernization and expansion initiatives, as well as for numerous environmental endeavors, have received USTDA funding since Obama first took office.

 

Some of these endeavors precede Obama and took place under the George W. Bush administration.

 

The agency under Bush was equally generous to the Mexican government, which likewise received grants to explore financing options for infrastructure as well as “green” projects.

 

Bush’s USTDA in 2006 paid for a DM whose aim was to help Mexico achieve closer parity with the “strength and competitiveness” of the U.S. and Canada¸ its North America Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, partners.

 

Despite the overall viability of this trading block, USTDA at the time lamented that Mexico “suffered from lost manufacturing jobs to Asia and is searching for methods to regain its competitiveness,” according to the DM for the Mexico Secretariat of Communications & Transportation Multimodal National Plan.

 

“One of Mexico’s solutions to increasing competitiveness is to capitalize on its geographical proximity to the U.S., offering more secure and efficient trade transportation networks with the U.S. and thus Canada,” the agency said in that endeavor.

 

USTDA similarly financed an analysis of Mexico’s planned modernization of Tijuana as a modern transportation center just south of the California border.

 

Those discoveries further affirm what Jerome R. Corsi, WND senior staff reporter, had suggested in his book “The Late, Great USA: The Coming Merger with Mexico and Canada.” about these tri-national transportation and political linkages.

 

Recently USTDA separately awarded a $50,000 grant to KED Group to assess Mexico’s needs in an “intelligent transportation” project in the State of Jalisco.

 

The agency last October awarded a $50,000 contract to the Seneca Group to conduct a DM on behalf of the Mexican Association of Railroads. That endeavor’s purpose was to help USTDA decide whether to help fund additional projects supporting “the development of Mexico’s freight rail system, which is a critical component of Mexico’s economy and trade.”

 

Potential projects were to include assessments of railroad infrastructure “to accommodate the transportation of various oil and gas products.”

 

It remains unclear whether that project is a predecessor activity to the USTDA grant announced this past week at ConnectMEX. Often the agency will conduct a DM before carrying out a more expensive and detailed feasibility study of the same project.

 

USTDA separately agreed to provide a $455,000 grant to the State of Puebla Secretariat of Transportation to conduct a feasibility study of a proposed “intelligent transportation system” project.

 

Puebla authorities reached out to the administration for help because the “demand for public transportation is expected to increase at an even higher rate than its population growth.”

 

U.S. officials agreed that the development of bus rapid-transit systems along six of the Puebla’s key corridors would “provide significant benefits to Puebla’s population in terms of improved convenience and safety, shorter travel times, and reduced environmental impacts.”

 

The Monitor's Peacock had reported on those projects as part of a broader review of Mexico-specific, U.S. funded initiatives. However, in contrast to the USTDA intelligent transportation system and railway endeavors – which must hire U.S. contractors — the U.S. Agency for International Development is prohibiting U.S. contractors from participating in a recent assistance scheme.

 

The ConnectMEX conference was carried out for USTDA by the Business Council for International Understanding, or BCIU, a New York non-profit whose stated objective is to “facilitate dialogue and action between business and government to promote international understanding.”

 

BCIU is led by Chairman Ahmet C. Bozer, a Turkish businessman and president of Coca-Cola International, as well as BCIU President Peter Tichansky, who also serves on a United Nations advisory board “to build a permanent UN memorial to the trans-Atlantic slave tragedy.”

 

A similar version of this article originally was published via WND.com on June 1. Under agreement with WND, rights have reverted back to its author, Steve Peacock.

Obama Finally Fixing Health Care … In Kenya

Though the federal government is struggling to make Obamacare functional for Americans, the administration is simultaneously helping to upgrade the health-care system in Kenya.

The ambitious plan to expand health-care and social-services access to millions of Kenyans is one of several recent U.S. endeavors to surface, indicating that yet another spike in assistance to Kenya is taking place.

As U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor reported, the U.S. Agency for International Development in June 2012 alerted contractors that its Kenyan aid portfolio was growing “exponentially.”

Now, the most recent endeavor is the enhancement of an existing “five-year mission supporting the centralized health-care system in Kenya.”

In addition to heaping the cost of the programs on U.S. taxpayers, part of the plan strips responsibilities from a U.S. contractor and transfers it to a Kenyan company, according to planning documents the Monitor discovered via routine database research.

Although the Kenya Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare, or AMPATH, consortium is largely funded by international donors, the U.S. will pay for segments of its modernization. Its goal is to “expand and improve AMPATH integrated health system.”

The AMPATHplus initiative on a technical level will consolidate the organization’s various software systems into a single business management system; however, USAID also will transfer financial and administrative control of AMPATHplus “from the current American contractor to a Kenyan contractor” as it deploys this enterprise resource planning, or ERP, software system.

Kenya’s Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, Moi University and partner Indiana University will retain operational control of the AMPATHplus project. But now it will do so through a management board representing those entities, the document says.

Among other targeted results, USAID is seeking contractor assistance to:

• Continue social services initiatives that AMPATHplus currently performs;
• Expand the Kenya Essential Package for Health primary care services from the current 500,000 to 750,000; and
• Develop community-based outreach workers to identify and follow up with pregnant women in a target population of 2 million people.

USAID separately launched the Kenya-based U.S. Trade and Investment Center, or TIC, a potentially $70 million initiative aiming to boost the economies of East African nations.

The agency acknowledged that the East African Community – Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda – has “one of the fastest growing economic communities in the world, growing faster than all other economic communities in the last decade.”

USAID nonetheless deems it necessary to intervene, as “the volume and variety of intra-regionally traded goods remains markedly less than those of other trading blocs” such as Europe and Asia, the TIC Statement of Work laments.

Additional obstacles to increased intra-regional trade include substandard “operational efficiency and infrastructure” of major ports in Mombasa, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Regional efforts to improve the shortcomings are underway, but USAID believes “progress has been slow.”

East African railways, likewise, are “highly inefficient and not yet competitively cost-effective with roads,” so U.S. taxpayers must help correct such impediments, according to the agency.

USAID in another Kenya-specific initiative will pour upwards of $55 million into a reading program over the next four years.

The agency last week alerted contractors about the Tusome Early Grade Reading Program, “a basic education initiative to improve the reading skills of the approximately 5.4 million individual Kenyan children who will begin primary school during the 2014-2017 school.”

Tusome, which means “Let’s Read” in Kiswahili, initially will be carried out by a contractor, but the program will “consider a transition to government ownership” in later years, according to a recently released bid request.

The Monitor recently reported that the U.S. Trade & Development Agency, an independent White House unit, awarded a $300,000 grant to help Kenyan and other East African power companies more effectively tap into the U.S. Treasury.

The USTDA grant purportedly will complement Obama’s Power Africa initiative – a multi-billion-dollar effort that is moving forward despite concerns that a new public-private bureaucracy is needed simply to overcome the pervasive corruption and incompetence of African governments and power utilities.

This article originally was published by WND (Nov. 8, 2013). Under agreement with the publisher, rights have reverted back to the author, Steve Peacock.

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.

Feds Hid Spending During Government Shutdown (WND)

My latest from WND. -- S.P.

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 WND 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.

Read more at WND.com...

U.S. to Teach Mexicans to Game American System (WND)

My latest from WND. -- S.P. 

It’s an expenditure of only $100,000 – mere pocket change in the vast labyrinth of federal spending – but the funds are for the creation of a manual to teach people how to get more money from the U.S. government.

And the recipients aren’t even citizens of the United States.

The U.S. Trade & Development Agency, an independent White House agency, is laying the foundation for the government of Mexico to infuse hundreds of billions of dollars into modernizing its roads, bridges and other critical infrastructure.

Read more at WND.com...

U.S. Picks Up Tab to Expand China's Economy (WND)

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

The Chinese business sector must be in trouble. Why else would President Obama be sending taxpayer dollars there to modernize China’s energy grid, hire private-sector consultants to help its Ministry of Environmental Protection and separately help to modify the nation’s corporate laws?

The U.S. Trade & Development Agency, or USTDA – technically designated as an “independent” White House agency – is funding these and other initiatives, all of which aid China while simultaneously benefiting U.S. contractors.

Read more at WND.com...

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...

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.

U.S. to Help Vietnam 'Peoples Committee' to Modernize Water InfoCom System (News Brief)

A Vietnamese water company has asked the Obama Administration for help in assessing its information and communications technology (ICT) modernization plan, and a White House agency has agreed to provide a $600,000 grant for that purpose. The U.S. Trade & Development Agency (USTDA) will fund the endeavor, which entails footing the bill for an ICT contractor to fly to Vietnam to provide "technical assistance" to the Saigon Water Corporation, or SAWACO. SAWACO is described as "a government-owned enterprise operating under the HCMC (Ho Chi Minh City) Peoples' Committee," according to a contracting notice that U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor located through routine database research.

Source document: Solicitation #2012-31025A

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

Patriot Update: ExxonMobil Gets Freebie as 'Obama Finances Energy, Port Project Trips to India'

Obama Finances Energy, Port Project Trips to India

By Steve Peacock; PatriotUpdate.com, Nov. 28, 2012

In the days and weeks after Hurricane Sandy wrecked ports, resorts, and power lines across the mid-Atlantic coast, the Obama administration launched multiple projects targeting the revitalization of such infrastructure. Not in seaside New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut, but in cities across India: Ahmedabad, Bangalore, and Mumbai…

Upon closer inspection, however, Patriot Update has discovered that taxpayers will foot the bill for industry trips to India—trips taken on behalf of a consortium whose members include multinationals such as ExxonMobil, GE, and IBM.

Continued...