I read today that the White House has announced that it intends to increase its disaster aid to Myanmar from its original offer of $250,000 to three million. This is for a catastrophe which has killed over 60,000 people. Don't spend it all in one place, people. $250,000? I know people who owe more than that in student loans. And is three million much of an improvement given the scale of the disaster? Then again, this stinginess isn't very surprising in the wake of the US government's miserly $2.1 million contribution to relief efforts in Bangladesh after the cyclone there last November. After so many billions of dollars wasted on destruction, this is the best we can come up with to aid people who had next to nothing to begin with? What a way to win the hearts and minds of people in the rest of the world!