My Hand-Delivered Letter to POTUS George W. Bush During 2008 PEV Crisis

I am reposting this letter for reasons that will soon become clear…stay tuned.

LETTER TO POTUS BUSH_Jan17_2008 (1)

From my memoirs which is work in progress:

Some of the progressives involved in the heavy lobbying we mounted in Washington in early January 2008 included my late friend Hon. Joe Nyagah and several Kenyan Americans, including Dr. Siyad Abdullahi, Grace Ajode Gibril and others.

The highlight of my efforts as I have previously written about was a letter that I wrote to then-President George W Bush which was hand-delivered to him by his Vice President Dick Cheney who received the letter from Senator Lieberman who in turn received it from a friend of mine and the Senator’s doctor.

My doctor friend encouraged me to write the letter with the assurance he would make sure it was hand-delivered to the president and it was as above.

My friend later told me the president read the letter and soon thereafter, the U.S. shifted its position, bringing on Dr. Kofi Anan and the rest is history. It took the effort and sacrifices of many to accomplish what we did, and I thank God we succeeded.

Again, more about this to come, stay tuned.

 

Is President Ruto Facing His First Mega Scandal?

 

Ruto Right on Environment, Wrong in How He’s Going About It

1. 

 

President Ruto’s Chance to Shine Fading Fast

Missing but will be in the online version:

Though time is running out, Ruto must act now and at least haul to court known thieves and recover billions stolen by these characters roaming the streets freely and enjoying their loot while the public from whom they have stolen suffers.

The president must start from the mother of all corruption and the elephant in the room and that is, the hundreds of billions the country has borrowed and must repay but there is no known public good that money was put into use.

The time to account for that stolen money which we are all saddled with repayment when we got not a cent in benefit is now.

Second, Ruto had the opportunity to reduce the serious problem of bloated government, but a good case can be made that he has made the problem worse. For example, Ruto increased the number of Cabinet Administrative Secretaries (CASs) from 29 to 50. Not only are these appointments unconstitutional as the court recently declared, but the positions are also mostly filled by losers of elections at the expense of a suffering public who will not benefit from these CAS only there to draw fat salaries for nothing.

According to data from the Salaries Remuneration Commission (SRC), the taxpayers will pay these CASs Sh468 million annually in salaries. The CASs will also be paid an additional Sh45 million in benefits while the government is increasing taxes to burden even more on those who can least afford them.

This is clearly a misplaced priority and a lost opportunity the president can fix by rescinding the CAS appointments. And that will only be a dent in the bloated government—but a meaningful dent as that money can be used to help alleviate the cost of living by providing food subsidies for those most in need.

Third, there is unnecessary spending and waste in government that the president has thus far failed to bring under control. To his credit, however, the president did recently have the Chief of Staff issue a memo halting reimbursement for expenses incurred by government officials and staff for the notoriously mostly useless “benchmarking” and other nonessential travel.

This is a step in the right direction, but the question is will this memo be followed? The government being the government, it wouldn’t surprise anyone that the memo will be ignored or those determined will find their way around it.

In sum, the time for Ruto to shine is now if he wants to be reelected in 2027.

 

The Irony of President Ruto Hosting the Biggest of All Dynasties