A Delaware Libertarian service: introducing you to obscure parts of your government

This is the first in an irregular series of posts on truly interesting parts of the Federal government that you've probably never heard of.

In April 1997, CNN reported this story:

U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin signed a pact with the Vietnamese government on Monday that requires the communist country to repay the $146 million wartime debt of its defeated foe, South Vietnam. But he said it would take time for the former enemies to forge closer economic ties.

Most of the overdue loans date to the late 1960s, when Washington was channeling hundreds of millions of dollars into South Vietnam to try to prop up its besieged government. The repayment will take place over 21 years.

The agreement follows months of negotiations on the amount of overdue debt incurred by the former South Vietnamese government that Hanoi was to absorb.

In 1993, Vietnam agreed in principle to accept the debt from the South Vietnam regime as part of a larger agreement that helped clear the way for renewed international borrowing by Hanoi. That borrowing previously had been blocked by Washington.

The United States is the last of the creditor nations to reach a debt accord with Vietnam.

What the story did not address was what the US intended to do with the money. I realize that across the span of the Federal budget that $146 million amortized over 21 years is not even chump change, but still....

What our government did with the money is create a new government program called the Vietnam Education Foundation, which--according to its web site--does the following:

The Vietnam Education Foundation (VEF) is an independent federal agency created by the U.S. Congress and funded annually by the U.S. Government. Its mission is to strengthen the U.S.-Vietnam bilateral relationship through educational exchanges in science and technology.

Actually, there's not much exchange involved. VEF uses $5-7 million per year to underwrite the tuition and expenses of Vietnamese graduate students (primarily PhD students) to come to the top level of American universities to pursue careers in science and technology. We don't actually send any students to universities in Vietnam because, well, who'd really want to go?

So let's get this straight: we poured millions of dollars into the ill-fated Republic of Vietnam, which the current rulers in Ho Chi Minh City have agreed to pay back. We then take the money to provide academic free rides for Vietnamese grad students at upscale US universities--all in the name of improving US-Vietnam relations, of course.

I suppose on one level I should be happy that taxpayer dollars are not currently funding the VEF (even though, if you think about it really carefully, they are).

But where I get stuck is wondering why we don't take money that is intended to repay debts owed to the US and--oh, I don't know--actually assign that money to debt reduction?

That's right. We can't do that because if we did Vietnam wouldn't pay us back what we're owed.

I'm sure somebody somewhere (like Secretary of State Condi Rice, who sits atop the VEF Board of Directors) will be able to explain it to me.

Comment Rescue (?) and child-related gun violence in Delaware

In my post about the idiotic over-reaction to a New Jersey 10-year-old posing with his new squirrel rifle , Dana Garrett left me this response: One waits, apparently in vain, for you to post the annual rates of children who either shoot themselves or someone else with a gun. But then you Libertarians are notoriously ambivalent to and silent about data and facts and would rather talk abstract principles and fear monger (like the government will confiscate your guns). It doesn't require any degree of subtlety to see why you are data and fact adverse. The facts indicate we have a crisis with gun violence and accidents in the USA, and Libertarians offer nothing credible to address it. Lives, even the lives of children, get sacrificed to the fetishism of liberty. That's intellectual cowardice. OK, Dana, let's talk facts. According to the Children's Defense Fund , which is itself only querying the CDCP data base, fewer than 10 children/teens were killed per year in Delaw

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?

New Warfare: I started my posts with a discussion.....

.....on Unrestricted warfare . The US Air force Institute for National Security Studies have developed a reasonable systems approach to deter non-state violent actors who they label as NSVA's. It is an exceptionally important report if we want to deter violent extremism and other potential violent actors that could threaten this nation and its security. It is THE report our political officials should be listening to to shape policy so that we do not become excessive in using force against those who do not agree with policy and dispute it with reason and normal non-violent civil disobedience. This report, should be carefully read by everyone really concerned with protecting civil liberties while deterring violent terrorism and I recommend if you are a professional you send your recommendations via e-mail at the link above so that either 1.) additional safeguards to civil liberties are included, or 2.) additional viable strategies can be used. Finally, one can only hope that politici

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