PORTLAND, Maine — A bipartisan campaign famously headed by rock singer Bono and focused on preserving U.S. foreign aid to impoverished countries began courting the three leading candidates to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe on Tuesday night in Portland.
Mike Salamon, East Coast Field Organizer for the ONE campaign, said during a state campaign launch at the Maine Historical Society office on Congress Street that he has met with representatives for the campaigns of independent former Gov. Angus King and Cape Elizabeth Democrat Cynthia Dill, and that he is still attempting to schedule a meeting with Republican Charlie Summers.
Dill and several members of her campaign were among those in attendance at the event Tuesday, while a representative of the King campaign attended as well.
“We want to make sure whoever is elected as Maine’s next U.S. senator supports ONE’s idea that combating poverty and disease around the world is not only smart policy, but good politics,” Salamon said.
Salamon said the ONE campaign has about 8,100 members already in the state of Maine, and said the group hopes to make its presence felt during the senate campaign, which has attracted nationwide attention in a year when the balance of political power in the chamber is at stake. Salamon distributed free black T-shirts bearing the circular ONE logo, and encouraged supporters to wear them to political rallies around the state to illustrate popular support for the organization’s mission.
He also urged attendees to take part in a ONE postcard-sending campaign to help spread the word, but said the group is not seeking financial donations.
“We’re not a fundraising organization,” Salamon said. “You’ll never see an email from us asking for a donation.”
That’s because the 10-year-old ONE campaign is backed by wealthy benefactors and charitable organizations, most significantly the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, he said.
Bono, the humanitarian singer of the Irish band U2, is most widely associated with the ONE campaign and still plays an active role on its board of directors, Salamon said.
“He’s on the board of directors and he’s our co-founder, so he’s very important to us,” Salamon said. “He got us going, but what keeps us going strong are our 3 million members worldwide.”
The group’s goal is to “change the way this issue [of foreign aid] is viewed,” he said, shifting from being characterized as a “charity” to being thought of as “sound policy” that benefits the United States as much as the countries receiving the aid.
Putting currently underdeveloped countries on stronger financial footing promises to create new trade partners for U.S. exporters and reduces the incentives for foreign villagers or farmers to seek stability through well-funded terrorist organizations, Salamon said.
“We can’t let people fall into desperation,” he said. “That’s what breeds violence and extremism. It’s not just fanatical idealism.”
Salamon also said that while some in the U.S. House and Senate view foreign aid as “an easy place to make cuts and save money,” support for foreign aid is not a strictly partisan issue. He noted that Republican President George W. Bush was a strong supporter of AIDS and malaria reduction programs, and that current Democratic President Barack Obama has backed the ONE campaign’s mission as well.
National co-chairs of the 2012 ONE Vote campaign include former Democratic U.S. Sen. Tom Daschle as well as former Republican governor of Arkansas and current Fox News talk show host Mike Huckabee.
“On our national advisory committee we’ve got MSNBC political analyst Lawrence O’Donnell and former Republican Congressman J.C. Watts,” Salamon said. “Those guys don’t agree on anything, but they both get behind this.”
Dill and members of her campaign in attendance took home signature ONE campaign T-shirts.
“What really resonates with me is approaching foreign policy in a way that’s focused on reducing poverty and infectious disease, rather than primarily our military presence,” Dill told the Bangor Daily News. “Dealing with poverty and disease will help reduce the future need for military interventions.”
Maintaining a healthy amount of foreign aid is good for US national security interests, agreed. However, Bono has partnered with the Gates Foundation and the World Bank and part of this equation gives unprecedented power to Monsanto to control the food supply and pharmaceutical practices that are controversial. There are elements caught up in this guise that are not the best approach to solving these problems. I think that the current approach that is being sold is more of a corporate profits security benefit and using US government spending to line their pockets. We should be putting money into more local initiatives and not big corporatized aid organizations.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/06/bono-faces-angry-protests_n_872048.html Bono is a tax evader in his own country – don’t let him guilt you into paying more for foreign aid through your taxes
support foreign aid?
are you serious?
we can hardly afford to support our own damn country!
we’ve had wildfires in the midwest with thousands of homes destroyed, a crazy drought that hasn’t been this bad in a decade, a terrible food harvest, real unemployment around 18%, and we are constantly cutting our own social programs?
and they support sending our money elsewhere?
You realize that foreign aid is less than 1% of our budget, correct? And that by percent we give far, far less than most developed countries?
why does it matter how much? we need the money at home.
for example: this state has been struggling to close a 22 million dhhs shortfall, we could close that with a fraction of a percent of the aid we send overseas.
let the countries fend for themselves.
Why do people have to fend for themselves just because they happen to be born in Somalia and not Searsport? The problems the average Mainer faces are small potatoes compared to being born into abject poverty.
um. yes.
We have to fend for ourselves, we work for what we have.
well, most of us at least.
life isn’t fair, nor is wealth free.
you have to work for yourself, fend for yourself if you want anything in this world.
Do you have statistics to support this?
Foreign aid is only a fraction of the money that the US gives to foreign countries.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-foreign-aid/2011/04/25/AF00z05E_story.html has some info.
You are right, in that we give out a ton of military aid, which I am all for ending, but I’m pretty sure that Bono isn’t campaigning for us to send more F-16’s to Saudi Arabia.
Also, look at foreign aid’s success stories in that article. South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore are now rich countries with strong ties to the United States. I really couldn’t care less about the military geopolitics involved, but people who do care are pretty happy that those three rich East Asian countries are in the American geopolitical orbit and not the Chinese one.
Most of the foreign aid given to South korea, Singapore and Taiwan were in the form of military aid and military support and without that military support(protection) they would be fully under Chinese control as would Japan, Indonesia and probably every other country in the western Pacicic.
While an admirable cause, perhaps Pro Bono should consider tithing as a means of helping the poor in lieu of his “One world One people” socialist scheme.
Or paying the taxes he owes
Foreign aid has bankrupted this country. Foreign aid comes from income taxes that we provide to the federal government. Bono is a tax evader who refuses to pay the government of Ireland – so he needs to quit guilting Americans who work hard to get by and keep the lights on.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/06/bono-faces-angry-protests_n_872048.html
Foreign aid as this article describes has little to do with our bankruptcy. The budget buster is our military and the military aid that we send to our “friends and allies”.
The budget buster is social spending which is unconstitutional. Not that our military budget does not excede what it should be, but at least defense is demanded by the Constitution.
As for Foreign aid, the only thing we get from it is hatred from the recipients and blame for the ills of the world,.
With the influx of illegal aliens here in the US and Obama turining a blind eye to the problem we are ourselves turning into a third world country and need to keep all foreign aid money here.
Foreign aid ought to be limited to 5 years in duration. Some countries, countries with viable economies, have been receiving foreign aid from the US since WW2. That is ridiculous! Some countries even maintain lobby groups in the US. Incredibly this is legal! Some countries, after decades of aid and a military guarantee of sovereignty, won’t even stop their bad behavior when the US asks them. So much for gratitude. Heck, Maine cannot get federal school funds without strings attached why should these countries? It is time for this to stop! Sure, when something happens like Haiti’s situation we should offer to provide aid for a few years to help them get back on their feet. But 60+ years of aid (Philippines, Israel) and foreign lobby groups such as AIPAC, these group should be illegal and aid should be terminated. The vast majority of countries receiving US aid have been on the dole for decades. Enough already.
I would like to see Bono use his considerable celebrity to shine a light on where our money goes, too. Corruption, waste, corruption. We are very good to the rest of world with our foreign aid, despite what some will tell you…how much of it is wasted downstream?
Go away BONO!! Not many people like you. Why don’t you use your millions instead? These crack pots need to get a new hobby. the legal voters in this country should be the ones to vote on foreign aide. The gov’t shouldn’t have the right just to give our tax dollars away and leave us stranded like this.
I like how a guy from another country is telling our country how to spend our money.
I agree that foreign aid is good policy for a number of reasons. I also believe we need to take care of our own people before we start looking out for the rest of the world. A friend once offered the opinion that the United States is the most co-dependent nation in the world, because instead of working to resolve our domestic issues, we put our attention and efforts into fixing the rest of the world. Helping the rest of the world is fine, but we need to make sure that we keep things in balance and don’t neglect our own.
Logic would be to help Mainers in need first, then to help other Americans. Then help others in other parts of the world. Bono should sing a different tune.