Give now for the next disaster

Reuters' Felix Salmon makes the case in full that I scratched at a couple of days ago in his Friday blog post "Don't give money to Haiti." He leans on The Smoking Gun's investigation into Wylclef Jean's charity, Yele ("Internal Revenue Service records show the group has a lackluster history of accounting for its finances, and that the organization has paid the performer and his business partner at least $410,000 for rent, production services, and Jean's appearance at a benefit concert") and the mind-boggling fact that the Red Cross still hasn't spent half a billion dollars in donations that were earmarked for tsunami relief to argue against earmarked donations.

"Not to put too fine a point on it," Salmon writes, "but that’s money which could be spent in Haiti, if it weren’t for the fact that it was earmarked."

His suggested solution is one that has begun to look more and more reasonable to me: give give give to Medicins Sans Frontieres. The group has erected makeshift hospitals and treated thousands in the immediate aftermath, but the need is going to continue. There have been too many people partially crushed this week for there not to be a massive round of amputations. Wound care and veritable battlefield surgery are of more urgent import even than emergency shelter or, especially, the rent on Wyclef's recording studio.