US quietly maneuvers to cut UN dues
There is cautious hope among diplomats that the U.S. can chip away at least marginally at the U.N.’s “scale of assessments”– a dues system loaded in favor of many poor and not-so-poor countries that pay less than their fair share, and saddle the small number of rich countries — especially the U.S. — with the difference.
h/t peterj
No problem. I am sure Justin Trudeau will be happy to have Canada pick up their share. It would be the usual political posturing — Canada attempting to establish moral superiority over the US. Just like upping the ante on all those refugees we want to take in, except that the refugees aren’t cooperating.
If only that headline read “US quietly maneuvers to cut UN ties”.
if only we would remove ourselves from that corrupt organization. Merry Christmas.
I bet The Boy Wonder will volunteer a Canadian increase to the UN. “Those poor UNocrats must be able to afford to have dinner parties, after all”.
I second that motion.
Going Viral: Here’s the Reason George W. Bush Didn’t Leave D.C. Until the day After Christmas
http://commoncts.blogspot.com/2015/12/going-viral-heres-reason-george-w-bush.html
Do you guys even comprehend the significance of this story?
I believe it to be the very first policy of Obama’s godawfully long administration that we have ever agreed with!
The US GDP is about 28% of the entire planet. Plus, we get a security council veto over anything meaningful. What about the “rich” paying their “fair share” ? ? ?
I’m not claiming this is a good investment. It’s all wasted money. But it is a stretch to call it unfair.
I agree. Junior will be more than happy making up the difference. I don’t think we will ever have a PM with the ba!!s to get us out of this corrupt organization.
I’m not seeing the “fair” part of wasting money, especially “you have more, therefore you must piss away more of it.”
What REALLY scares me is that I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see Obama take over from that shyster Ban Ki-moon, the current Secretary-General of the U.N. Ban Ki-moon’s current term, ends on 31 December 2016. It’s hard to believe there is anyone on the planet more disconnected from reality than Ki-moon, but Obama is that person.
The UN is like a Bull Fight where the US (and Israel) is the Bull. The cheering fans pay to see the animal get tormented, continuously stabbed and eventually killed.
It should be moved from Manhattan to Darfur or Syria and or completely de-funded by all civilized nations.
The comments on the site are interesting.
The UN is bureaucracy perfected.
Money from other peoples pockets, with zero accountability to the payer.
Such a “peace keeping” budget, yet the UN keeps no peace, shortens no conflict and rights no wrongs.
Set up to protect sovereign nations against invasion and attack by others, the UN has done this when?
Under the protection of the UN piracy,slavery and extortion are all on the rise.
The US should charge the UN rent for their building, that exactly matches the UN demands for money.
The UN is the guide for all aspiring kleptocrats, almost the world federation of fools and bandits, except they pay no fees.
When do the taxpayer get to vote in a referendum on our membership in this corrupt cluster…?
The UN is actually Kabuki theater.
Its a stage where posturing and plays are acted out. The eunuchs ‘in charge’ choreograph the farce and sell it to their target audience who believe that what’s happening on stage “matters”.
Of course, it doesn’t – but the target audience doesn’t acknowledge the laughable farce, in part because the audience wants to be fooled.
It’s the con-artist’s favorite ally – cheap pride and vanity.
It is much the same dynamic where mystics and religious figures, from the Babylonian astrologists to Modern Climatologists, try to corral forces (events, outcomes, weather, celestial bodies) beyond their ken – and beyond their control – into a Narrative to usurp power and/or profit from fools. They pretend to have power over these events and the credulous buy it, hook, line, and sinker.
As for their weak-minded “victims”, they devour the sops to their vanity (and the salves to their wounded pride), pretending they have a say in important matters beyond their control, rather than to realize they have no power over these events…the beauty of the farce to the deceiver lies with the fact that the deceived WANTS to be lied to – and hence superimpose their “will” onto the con artist as a proxy – in this case, the UN.
Again: to some in the United States, this fraud – these con artists and the power over the weak-minded (billions of them) – has its appeal and its uses, so its worth the investment.
Hollywood is in a similar “business” (only marginally different in how it sells and markets its lies).
Well, to some it’s “business” anyway.
But to others in the US, this is not business at all, but a distasteful (and wasteful) scam.
The opposition argument within the US is that this Kabuki is not worth it; it’s disingenuous, duplicitous, unnecessary and ultimately counterproductive because the fraud is corrupting and costly – the waste is plain for all to see; logistics for thousands of window-dressing foreign troops, disruptive pretenders who insist on being lavished and pandered to, and a domestic American populace who becomes enraged and bled dry by the foreign demands which include outrageously favorable FTAs, open borders, access to American markets and technology, etc.
Hence Trump.
Trump’s popularity taps into this frustration with foreigners and their demands on Americans that include those of the UN, NATO, NAFTA, etc which comprise the individual countries from Canada, to Mexico, to China, to Japan, to North and South Korea, etc. It should be noted that Trump has never liked the UN’s purpose (parasitic as it is) ideologically or after crunching numbers, and has complained more than once about the UN squatting in some of the most valuable real-estate in his own backyard (while demanding “taxes” and “dues” from Americans like Trump no less).
Bottom line for Canada: if Trump wins, you’ll see changes at the border, and within, beginning with the rollback of NAFTA and the FTAs with a resultant repatriation and shift in liquidity – essentially, a repudiation of the “New World Order” that started with Bush I when he hijacked Reagan’s legacy, the death of which is being expedited, due to Obama.
Plan your asset management accordingly. I find it amazing how many HF managers I talk to have smugly and only belatedly considered the implications and stratagem just because they don’t like Trump; they’re being petulant, and their emotions have already cost them money.
As for the UN, its protests at being marginalized are unimportant really, but I can imagine Trump being somewhat triumphalist, rubbing their noses in the dirt before giving them a fig-leaf – at a price (though I think it wiser to let them twist, but I understand the contrarian argument).
Ultimately, Americans can be thankful for Obama’s unwitting favor at accelerating the current system into the terminal stage – he moved too fast and too clumsily and the frog is trying to leap out of the pot.
If I were Canadian (or Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mexican, etc), I’d be furious at Obama for ruining a good thing, though I doubt most understand the current world enough to appreciate how much damage Obama has done to their long-term prospects. Ultimately, though, business that is unbalanced is not good for anyone.
Only con artists and thieves think otherwise.
Either way, the math won’t let it last – theoretically, maybe it could have but Obama has certainly changed the world – and now, either the trade relationships will be altered by Trump in an orderly fashion or they’ll be altered in a catastrophic fashion.