Michael Rubin for the American Enterprise Institute: The billions of dollars the United States spends [in foreign aid] has fueled a Byzantine industry and few, inside or outside the aid community, believe that the system as currently designed functions well. Still, Americans believe in helping others, and few beyond perhaps the most libertarian candidates would suggest dispensing with foreign aid. Nevertheless, there are a number of issues which should be on the agenda of the next president and his team. Here are [two] questions that might guide them:
1. What is the purpose of foreign aid? The United States gives foreign assistance to almost every country in Asia, Africa and Central and South America. The United States spends taxpayer money not only in the world’s poorest countries, for example, Haiti, Congo or Timor-Leste, but also in oil-rich kingdoms like Saudi Arabia, hubs of technology and modernity like Singapore, and even rival powers like China …
However one categorizes assistance, however, there seems to be little rhyme or reason for what the United States government and its agencies choose to fund, nor is there any sense of how it fits into a coherent strategy. If U.S. policy goals center around counterterrorism, counter-proliferation, stopping aggression and perhaps democracy promotion, then how does sponsoring a gay film festival in Bulgaria advance key U.S. interests? …
2. Who should supervise aid? There is no one-stop shop for congressional oversight of foreign aid. Agricultural committees in the House and Senate supervise authorization of food aid, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Financial Services Committee supervise authorizations of contributions to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and various Senate Foreign Relations Committee and House Foreign Affairs Committee subcommittees oversee authorizations of economic and military assistance. Then the Foreign Operations Subcommittees have jurisdiction over appropriations. The whole process is so convoluted that there remains little coherence to the end product.
SILVER LINING FOR THE CLIMATE
Emily Atkin for ThinkProgress: Carbon emissions from the U.S. energy sector increased in 2014 for the second year in a row, despite a big boost in renewable energy capacity, the Energy Information Association reported on Monday.
The energy sector is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, so an increase in those emissions is certainly not ideal for the purposes of stopping human-caused climate change. What is positive, though, is that the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) increased in 2014 more than carbon emissions from the energy sector did, indicating that America is at least doing a little better at decoupling emissions from economic growth.
Specifically, the EIA reported that energy-related carbon emissions increased 0.7 percent in 2014, while the 2014 GDP grew at a rate of 2.4 percent. …
The decoupling of carbon emissions from economic growth is hugely important to the fight against global climate change, as it seems unlikely that developing countries would voluntarily clean up their power sectors if it guaranteed economic decline. The good news is that decoupling is finally starting to happen worldwide — In 2014, global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions flatlined while the world economy grew, according to the International Energy Agency.
FREE-RANGE KIDS
Naomi Schaefer Riley for the Institute for Family Studies: The “free-range kids” Rafi and Dvora Meitiv—whose parents were famously investigated for neglect after letting them walk home from a park alone in December — were picked up again by police.
Their parents, Danielle and Alexander, dropped them off at a park at 4 p.m. and told the 10-year-old and 6-year-old to be home by 6 p.m. Instead, a passerby reported the unattended twosome to the police, who took them into custody. The parents weren’t informed until hours later. Facebook, Twitter and the mommy blogs are up in arms over this turn of events. Were these children really in any danger walking a mile on the familiar streets of Silver Spring, Maryland? Of course not. So what can be done? …
The primary change that needs to happen is a cultural one. We have come a long way in restricting the freedom of children in the past century. As Jeffrey Dill documented on this site, the radius that children are allowed to travel outside of adult supervision has been dramatically reduced and, partially as a result of that, children spend much more of their leisure time inside rather than outside …
Certainly most of the parents I know recognize this problem, and most even think the impetus behind free-range parenting is a pretty good idea. So why don’t we — why don’t I? — send my kids to the park a mile away and have them walk home? I have a reasonably mature 8-year-old and 6-year-old. Truth be told, I walk them to the bus stop at the end of the block every morning. I’m a little iffy on whether I trust them to cross the busy street themselves.
I would feel more comfortable having them wander around the neighborhood the way I did growing up if there were other kids wandering around the neighborhood. If there were other kids wandering around, there would be other adults occasionally peeking their heads out looking after them.
Compiled by Joseph Lawler from reports published by the various think tanks.
