Hillary and Haiti - What's the Root Cause?

[qwlauren35]

Having had Hillary and Haiti thrown in my face, I've done some research and it definitely was a fiasco. Land was taken from farmers to build a textile factory that promised 60,000 jobs, and only delivered 6000. I looked at Hillary's platform and she again is proposing that manufacturing fueled by big business will restore our economy. It didn't work in Haiti - will it work here? I think she has a better chance with infrastructure, but no one likes to hear that it will be funded with taxpayer money. And should the government hire, or do we privatize?

Thoughts?

[tonyt53]

1. Why didn't it work in Haiti? Haiti is as corrupt and any country around the world.

Yeah, I go there an volunteer. Privatization is NEVER the answer for services typically supplied by the government. A company is for-profit. To make a profit with the same money as a government operated unit, like a water system, cuts have to be made and shortcuts are usually those cuts.

[bettyellen]

3. It's difficult to know what to do when a corrupt nations people

Urgently need help. I can't help but think that a lot of people would do nothing because there would be shit splatter. I don't like the completely isolation alias approach any better.

[asiliveandbreathe]

2. Thanks for the news bite..hadn't heard too much re Haiti...

so I went hunting in search for more...here is more from the NYT - last March 2016..

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/15/us/politics/hillary-clinton-haiti.html?_r=0

...snip.....

The Clintons had large roles in the earthquake recovery effort, Mrs. Clinton as secretary of state and Mr. Clinton as co-chairman of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission. Along with his predecessor in the White House, the elder George Bush, Mr. Clinton raised tens of millions of dollars through the Clinton Foundation to promote development, schools and farming in Haiti, while also helping draw hundreds of millions in private investments.

Officials at the Clinton Foundation said they were not surprised by some of the disappointment, given that even before the earthquake, Haiti was one of the world’s poorest countries. Now, the average family gets by on $1.25 a day.

[qwlauren35]

4. Some successes some failures.

I did not mean to suggest that the earthquake relief was not extensive. It was. But the efforts to make a difference in the Haitian economy failed.


I got this from the Washington Post

The Clinton family’s charitable work in Haiti has been a mix of success, disappointment and controversy. As our Washington Post colleagues reported, some Clinton-backed projects didn’t come through, such as a $2 million housing expo for thousands of new housing units. The Government Accountability Office found poor planning and unsustainable outcomes for taxpayer-funded projects through USAID, such as a $170 million power plant and port for the Caracol Industrial Park, which the Clinton Foundation promoted.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/06/13/did-the-clinton-foundation-raise-hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars-for-a-hospital-in-haiti-that-was-never-built/

I got this from the NYT

Among the litany of complaints being laid at their feet: Fewer than half the jobs promised at the industrial park, built after 366 farmers were evicted from their lands, have materialized. Many millions of dollars earmarked for relief efforts have yet to be spent. Mrs. Clinton’s brother Tony Rodham has turned up in business ventures on the island, setting off speculation about insider deals.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/15/us/politics/hillary-clinton-haiti.html?_r=0

And from WSJ

On the fifth anniversary of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti remains a poster child for waste, fraud and corruption in the handling of aid. Nowhere is the bureaucratic ineptitude and greed harder to accept than at the 607-acre Caracol Industrial Park, a project launched by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with U.S. taxpayer money, under the supervision of her husband Bill and his Clinton Foundation.

Between the State Department and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which hands out grants to very poor countries thanks to U.S. generosity, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on this park in an attempt to attract apparel manufacturers. But the park is falling far short of the promises made to provide investors with necessary infrastructure. If things continue this way, frustrated investors will look for greener pastures.

On paper Caracol makes sense. Thanks to special trade legislation passed by the U.S. Congress in Dec. 2006, Haitian-sewn apparel enters the U.S. duty free and the manufacturers can use fabric purchased from anywhere in the world. This gives Haiti a big advantage over apparel exporters to the U.S. who have to source the fabric in the U.S. even if they sew overseas. With lower wages than in many Asian markets and proximity to North America, Haitian-based producers have comparative advantages that might offset the country’s low productivity.


The State Department initially promised that the park would be able to support 65,000 direct jobs by 2020. The Clinton Foundation has made similar statements. That means constructing 40 10,000 square-meter buildings for garment assembly. It won’t happen at the current pace.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/mary-anastasia-ogrady-hillarys-half-baked-haiti-project-1421018329

[kwassa]

5. I suspect that the root cause is the endemic corruption of Haiti.

A society in which a tiny group of aristocrats exploit a massive and extremely poor population.

Many countries around the world have corrupt governmental structures where money is stolen from any outside sources.