How Obama Devastated the Congo
Speaking in 2009 on the passage of the eponymous Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, Chris Dodd accidentally confessed that, "No one will know until this is actually in place how it works."
Legislation now in place, the Congolese know exactly how it works and must wonder why Barack Obama, himself a son of Africa, is out to destroy their lives. As David Aronson writing in the New York Times explains,
The “Loi Obama” or Obama Law — as the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform act of 2010 has become known in the region — includes an obscure provision that requires public companies to indicate what measures they are taking to ensure that minerals in their supply chain don’t benefit warlords in conflict-ravaged Congo. The provision came about in no small part because of the work of high-profile advocacy groups like the Enough Project and Global Witness, which have been working for an end to what they call “conflict minerals.”
As you might imagine, the best way for a company to avoid the so-called conflict minerals is to sidestep Congo altogether and to acquire the minerals elsewhere. And that, Aronson writes, is exactly what's happened.
The smelting companies that used to buy from eastern Congo have stopped. No one wants to be tarred with financing African warlords — especially the glamorous high-tech firms like Apple and Intel that are often the ultimate buyers of these minerals. It’s easier to sidestep Congo than to sort out the complexities of Congolese politics — especially when minerals are readily available from other, safer countries.The West's exit from Congo's raw materials market has wreaked catastrophe on the very people that the Dodd-Frank bill purported to save.
With no buyers, Congo's mining industry has collapsed upon the very people the Dodd-Frank bill purported to save, devastating the region's entire economy.
In South Kivu Province, I heard from scores of artisanal miners and small-scale purchasers, who used to make a few dollars a day digging ore out of mountainsides with hand tools. Paltry as it may seem, this income was a lifeline for people in a region that was devastated by 32 years of misrule under the kleptocracy of Mobutu Sese Seko (when the country was known as Zaire) and that is now just beginning to emerge from over a decade of brutal war and internal strife.
The pastor at one church told me that women were giving birth at home because they couldn’t afford the $20 or so for the maternity clinic. Children are dropping out of school because parents can’t pay the fees. Remote mining towns are virtually cut off from the outside world because the planes that once provisioned them no longer land. Most worrying, a crop disease periodically decimates the region’s staple, cassava. Villagers who relied on their mining income to buy food when harvests failed are beginning to go hungry.
Tragically, the bill had no effect whatsoever curbing the power or influence of African warlords in the region. By the time the legislation was implemented, most of the militias that the law aimed to choke off had been incorporated into the Congolese Army, not just making themselves immune to American punitive measures, but also becoming direct beneficiaries of United States foreign aid.
Most tragic of all perhaps, is the fact that the Dodd-Frank-Obama trio has taken a bad situation, made it incalculably worse, and won't be held accountable for destroying the livelihoods of thousands.
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Comments :
Aug '10
Re: How Obama Devastated the Congo
This Washington group is pictured in the dictionary under "Unintended Consequences", right next to the pictures of starving children from so many of their other "programs".
I assume no one read this bill as they steamrolled it through. We need a tea party offshoot called the Dick and Jane party. Just for the remedial reading lessons that the American people and their representatives need so badly. Or strip their staffs away and make them do all their own reading !
Mar '11
Re: How Obama Devastated the Congo
Translating Mr. Dodd's comments into English:
"We actually don't have any freakin' idea what we're doing, but it's just gotta end well because we mean well. Right? RIGHT?"
Wrong, Mr. Dodd. That's why we don't trust your kind.
And while the Congo is one example, I'm looking a bit closer to home for the fruits of such utter, inexcusable, irresponsible, morally bankrupt incompetence.
Jun '10
Re: How Obama Devastated the Congo
Since the goal was probably to throw some Hollywood donors a bone, make them feel good, maybe there are no negative consequences based on that main goal. Have Hollywood donors who were upset about "blood diamonds" a few years ago stopped giving to Democrat campaigns? That's when they know it was a bad policy.
Re: How Obama Devastated the Congo
Crow's Nest:
And while the Congo is one example, I'm looking a bit closer to home for the fruits of such utter, inexcusable, irresponsible, morally bankrupt incompetence. · Aug 8 at 10:05am
But at least we have the ballot box to hold them accountable for their incompetence. It's absolutely inexcusable that they can mess with the livelihoods of foreign nationals with a flick of the pen, and then wash their hands of the ensuing devastation if they don't like the result.
May '10
Re: How Obama Devastated the Congo
Self-satisfied do-goodism strikes again.
Aug '10
Re: How Obama Devastated the Congo
The law of unintended consequences is not to be denied. Will politicians ever learn that economies are complex systems that will behave in unexpected ways when the smart guys with the clipboards try to centrally manage them?
This same story plays out every time a major piece of legislation passed.
“What’s the single most important thing to learn from an economics course today? What I tried to leave my students with is the view that the invisible hand is more powerful than the [un]hidden hand. Things will happen in well-organized efforts without direction, controls, plans. That’s the consensus among economists. That's the Hayek legacy."
- Larry Summers, back before he turned into an administration hack
May '10
Re: How Obama Devastated the Congo
It can not be vetoed.
It can not be repealed.
It can not be amended.
It can not be overturned.
It is the law of unintended consequences. The biggest argument for the smallest government.
May '11
Re: How Obama Devastated the Congo
It is hard to call this sort of outcome unintended when it is so blatantly obvious from the start. Government do-gooders don't care about actual results, they only care about how it makes them feel when they say they are going to do something.
Nov '10
Re: How Obama Devastated the Congo
So King Leopold cut the hands off the Congolese, and King Obama cuts their feet out from under them. Is there a sadder place in all the world?
Jul '11
Re: How Obama Devastated the Congo
I really, desperately want to feel sad about this but all I can muster is smug satisfaction about being confronted with one more concrete, life-shattering reason Democrats shouldn't be allowed to write laws. How much misery will the 'left' create this century? What was their total last century, 65 or 70 million dead? I lost count.
Sep '10
Re: How Obama Devastated the Congo
Best post of the year, truly.
I can in no way encapsulate the lunacy of the left any better than this event.
But....they meant well.
Dec '10
Re: How Obama Devastated the Congo
Diane Ellis, Ed.
Crow's Nest:
And while the Congo is one example, I'm looking a bit closer to home for the fruits of such utter, inexcusable, irresponsible, morally bankrupt incompetence. · Aug 8 at 10:05am
But at least we have the ballot box to hold them accountable for their incompetence. It's absolutely inexcusable that they can mess with the livelihoods of foreign nationals with a flick of the pen, and then wash their hands of the ensuing devastation if they don't like the result. · Aug 8 at 10:26am
Who in the USA votes on the issue of good governance in Congo?
At the time that the Left was consumed with proving that the US invasion of Iraq had somehow killed a million Iraqis, almost none of them could spare a thought for a death toll in Congo that had already exceeded four million and was steadily rising -- despite the presence of a UN "peacekeeping" force.
Heck, where was the outrage when we learned that UN forces in Congo were bartering food for sex with local teenage girls?
There SHOULD be outrage and electoral consequences, but there won't be. The subject is too remote.
Dec '10
Re: How Obama Devastated the Congo
By the way, has anyone ever heard a Democrat express remorse for abandoning South Vietnam after the US withdrawal and so destabilizing the region that two million Cambodians were slaughtered? Even the Vietnamese Communists were so appalled at Pol Pot's blood-guzzling that they invaded Cambodia to end it: that's how offensive to human decency it was. But the Democrats in the USA were too pleased with themselves for having struck a blow against Yankee imperialism to notice or care about the pyramids of human skulls in Pnomh Penh.
Re: How Obama Devastated the Congo
Stuart Creque
Diane Ellis, Ed.
Crow's Nest:
And while the Congo is one example, I'm looking a bit closer to home for the fruits of such utter, inexcusable, irresponsible, morally bankrupt incompetence. · Aug 8 at 10:05am
But at least we have the ballot box to hold them accountable for their incompetence. It's absolutely inexcusable that they can mess with the livelihoods of foreign nationals with a flick of the pen, and then wash their hands of the ensuing devastation if they don't like the result. · Aug 8 at 10:26am
Who in the USA votes on the issue of good governance in Congo?
No, no. I mean that we can hold them accountable for things we dislike that affect us directly. We don't like people who incorporate higher tax rates? We can vote them out. We don't like politicians who enact miles of red tape that make it hard for us to open businesses? We can vote them out. But the Congolese whose lives and livelihoods have been destroyed by these incompetents? They have no recourse whatsoever. And that's a shame.
Dec '10
Re: How Obama Devastated the Congo
Diane Ellis, Ed.
But the Congolese whose lives and livelihoods have been destroyed by these incompetents? They have no recourse whatsoever. And that's a shame.
Ah, I see. Yes, I fully agree. It's as if our foreign policy in such places was carried out by seagulls -- we fly in, drop our load of "wisdom" and "concern" on the heads of the local populace, and fly away, congratulating ourselves for being such good global citizens and never bothering to look back at the destruction our policies have caused.
Somehow this reminds me of the following film exchange:
Chekov: You lie! On Ceti Alpha Five there was life! A fair chance...
Khan: THIS IS CETI ALPHA FIVE! Ceti Alpha Six exploded six months after we were left here. The shock shifted the orbit of this planet and everything was laid waste. 'Admiral' Kirk never bothered to check on our progress.