WHERE DID ALL THE MONEY GO?
AUGUST 14, 2011. From time to time, I get emails asking me what independent researchers can do to expose important scandals that reflect the way politics are really done in this country.
Well, I have a suggestion.
Let’s take the year 1950 as a starting point. The challenge would be to document the flow of local, state, and federal aid monies directed at inner cities living in grinding poverty—from 1950 to the present.
And answer the following questions.
How much money, in toto, are we talking about? Excluding welfare $$ given to individuals.
What was done with all that money?
What was built?
Why did the aid money obviously fail to bring about the stated objective?
How much money was diverted into projects for which it wasn’t designated? How much was stolen, and by whom?
Who should have noticed, and why didn’t they speak up?
To the degree that aid monies were supposed to fund local entrepreneurs and their start-up businesses, how did that work out?
Take a close look at several institutions traditionally active in inner cities—churches, community organizations, hospitals, and gangs—and assess how they influenced the aid monies.
Find out whether any of the aid money was targeted for community food farms, and if so, what happened to those urban farms.
And what was the use and outcome of all aid designed to improve education?
Just as a comprehensive history of US foreign aid to nations (governments) around the world would be most informative, we need the same kind of history vis-a-vis inner cities in America.
It’s not enough for pundits to say we must have more federal money for inner cities. We should know what actually happened to all the money that already went there.
To say something is fishy here is a vast understatement.
Since under our present system the endless invention of money has limits, and since severe government spending cutbacks appear to be on the horizon, it would be helpful to know how past monies were used, misused, and stolen.
Once this can of worms is opened, I’m sure the revelations will come spilling out. (And again, we’re not even talking about welfare or unemployment benefits extended to residents of inner cities.)
If you owned a business, and you noticed that allocations to one branch of that business had produced, over time, glaring negative results, wouldn’t you investigate? And suppose, in your investigation, you discover that the funds you sent to the failing branch had been systemically diverted, so that you have, in your midst, what amounts to a money laundering operation? Or a dozen different laundries? Would that be a little unsettling?
Jon Rappoport