Comment: Recommend follow up reading "Confessions of an Economic

Hitman." by Perkins.

It details examples of what you learned and a good link to send to people you know who still feel the way you used to about foreign aid.

http://www.economichitman.com/pages/bookpages/author.html

"JOHN PERKINS was recruited by the National Security Agency during his last year at Boston University's School of Business Administration, 1968. He spent the next three years in the Peace Corps in South America and then in 1971 joined the international consulting firm of Chas. T. Main, a Boston-based company of 2000 employees that kept a very low profile. As Chief Economist and Director of Economics and Regional Planning at MAIN, his primary job was to convince Less Developed Countries (LDCs) around the world to accept multibillion dollar loans for infrastructure projects and to see to it that MOST OF THIS MONEY ENDED UP at MAIN, Bechtel, Halliburton, Brown and Root, and other U.S. engineering/construction companies. The loans left the recipient countries WALLOWING IN DEBT and HIGHLY VULNERABLE to outside political and commercial interests.

Perkins resigned his position at MAIN in 1981. He founded and became CEO of Independent Power Systems, pioneering technologies that promoted the use of "waste" power plant heat in hydroponic greenhouses and other cogeneration applications. In 1990, he sold IPS and founded a nonprofit organization, Dream Change Coalition (www.dreamchange.org), which works closely with Amazonian and other indigenous people to help preserve their environments and cultures.

John began writing Confessions of an Economic Hit Man several times during the past two decades. He was persuaded to stop by lucrative business offers that were contingent on his silence. "Now," he says, "we have entered the new millennium. Nine-eleven happened. My daughter has grown up and left home. The time has come."

~When I would talk to someone about RP and his policies on welfare and foreign aid (which is basically foreign welfare) who said they a Democrat, I would extend the proverbial hand from our RP Revolution party and say most Dems are the kindest people I know, and their heart is in the right place. We are both anti war; and we both want the people to be free and to prosper, we just disagree on the best way to help them get there. I would remind them of the idea that if you give someone a fish, he eats for a day; show them how to fish, they eat for the rest of their lives.

Welcome and thanks for sharing your epiphany. It's a beautiful thing.