MARCH 1998 · VOLUME 19· NUMBER 3

The March 1998 Lawrence Summers Memorial Award* goes to Philip Crane, R-Illinois, who shepherded the Africa free trade bill through the House of Representatives in March.

"Of those countries in sub-Saharan Africa, to be sure, a lot of them are retards," Crane said in a February address to an International Fiscal Association gathering in Chicago. "I mean they've got a long way to go." Crane added, "Ben Franklin said a good example is the best sermon. So, if you're living in one of those retard countries and your neighbor over here suddenly goes to free enterprise and encourages people to work for a living and engages in the advancement of democratic institutions and they start to prosper, the people in your country are going to start rebelling." (Congress Daily, March 12, 1998)

*In a 1991 internal memorandum, then-World Bank economist and current Deputy Secretary of Treasury Lawrence Summers argued for the transfer of waste and dirty industries from industrialized to developing countries. "Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs (lesser developed countries)?" Summers wrote. "I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that. ... I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly under polluted; their air quality is vastly inefficiently low [sic] compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City." Summers later said the memo was meant to be ironic.