The Foreign Service Journal, January 2009

J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 7 focus on the not-inconsiderable range of shared regional interests, not least vis-à-vis Iraq. Meanwhile, poisonous rhetoric has ruptured that essential el- ement of diplomacy, mutual trust, that will require years of groundwork to be restored. The path will be long and difficult, but as an old American ex- pression has it, we need to get off the dime and start talking again. Bruce Laingen Ambassador, retired Bethesda, Md. More Peace Corps Volunteers The value of the Peace Corps has been underscored in the October and November editions of the FSJ , but for too long that value has been limited by insufficient resources. The current number of volunteers is half of what it was four decades ago, and more than 20 countries have pending re- quests for Peace Corps programs. President-elect Obama has promised to double the size of the Peace Corps, as did President Bush, but without funding this cannot be achieved. In 2008, the National Peace Corps Association launched a grassroots cam- paign calledMorePeaceCorps to advo- cate for strengthening the Peace Corps, including doubling its size by 2011. A combination of concerned and promi- nent Americans including President Jimmy Carter, Senator Chris Dodd, D- Conn., Wisconsin Governor James Doyle and several former ambassadors, myself included, have joined the Na- tional Advisory Council of More- PeaceCorps to advance the cause. You can learn more about this effort at www.morepeacecorps.org. Thomas N. Hull Ambassador, retired Grantham, N.H. The Peace Corps and the FS The ultimate experience is to serve as a Foreign Service officer in the country where you were a Peace Corps Volunteer. Depending on how much time has passed between the two ex- periences, you gain a view through a telescope or a magnifying glass focused on your special country. If there are many years in between, your telescope reveals how history changes people’s lives. If it’s been a short time, you may have a close-up comparison of in-the- field versus halls-of-power viewpoints. But maybe we just feel that through- the-looking-glass amazement at find- ing ourselves in such different situa- tions in the very same place! I was sent to Brazil in 1968 as a community organizer in Nazare das Farinhas (population 20,000) in the northeastern state of Bahia. In 2005, I became the principal officer at the only U.S. consulate in northeast Brazil, Recife. From day one, I ran into for- mer Peace Corps Volunteers and staff working in Brazil, now with USAID, nongovernmental organizations or universities, as well as retirees who had returned to live there. (The Peace Corps left Brazil in the 1970s.) Peace Corps alumni take an active role in helping Brazil address the inequalities and poverty that continue to trouble the giant of Latin America. They make me proud. Having been a volunteer in Brazil made me very comfortable with all segments of society and more knowl- edgeable about the country’s political divisions. That experience had given me friends who lived exceptional lives and inspiredme. I stayed in touch with several of them for more than 30 years. I applied what I learned in the Peace Corps to my efforts as consul to enable Americans to work with Brazil- ians for peace, prosperity and justice. What struck me most was how, in the backlands of Brazil’s poorest region, people would ask me if I knew “the American” who had lived there some 30 years ago. Here we see the value of the Peace Corps: Volunteers are remembered with admiration as true representatives of the United States in places where diplomats rarely go. Diana Page FSO Washington, D.C. Senior Pay The list of performance-pay recipi- ents (announced in 08 State 110778) has swollen to over 270 members of the Senior Foreign Service. These bonuses total an estimated $3 million. Here are observations from one of the smallest tadpoles in State’s pond. These people are the highest-paid employees in the Foreign Service. They receive senior-level salaries to do senior-level jobs. State’s pay scale is not secret; people understand government salary limitations when they sign up. Yet seniors receive an additional 20.89 percent, once called locality pay, no matter where they work worldwide. This serious money is denied to the majority of FS employees overseas who work side by side with seniors, who suffer the same hardships and who go home to smaller houses. The unfairness of this policy is so egregious that AFSA has vigorously battled it for years. Perhaps to calm ruffled feath- ers, State eliminated the term “locality pay” and the extra cash was folded into seniors’ base pay. As if hiding it makes it more palatable. Seniors point out that they don’t re- ceive step increases. What they don’t point out is that they instead compen- sate themselves with pay-for-perfor- mance increases that far exceed any step increase. The bar is set low enough that a child could step over it: their performance must merely be “satisfactory.” By the time someone becomes a senior, shouldn’t the expec- tation be that their performance will be far better than that? But I digress. Let’s not confuse pay- for-performance increases with per- formance pay bonuses. L E T T E R S