Israel Matzav

What Obama bought for $6,347,415,000

You know how it is without government budgets. You spend a billion and then another billion and pretty soon it starts to add up to real money. So what did the Obama administration buy for $6,347,415,000? According to Claudia Rosett, it's what the government of the United States spent on the United Nations in 2009.

That’s the amount of money America gave to the United Nations in fiscal 2009, according to President Barack Obama’s White House budget office. What did it help pay for?

Why, lots of things. Among them, the General Assembly that elected Libya’s envoy as its 2009-2010 president, and molded the “reformed” Human Rights Council that brought us the now famous — make that infamous — Goldstone report on Gaza, hosted Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the Durban Review conference in Geneva, and gave seats to Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Cameroon and Libya (before suspending Libya but now entertaining the candidacy of Syria).

Those American dollars helped maintain and service the grand General Assembly Hall which in September 2009 provided a global stage for Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, Iran’s Ahmadinejad, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and their despotic brethren — and was pressed into service more recently as a theatrical venue for the celebrity-studded U.S. premiere of an Israel-trashing commercial movie. They helped provide tax-exempt “post-adjusted” take-home lucre topping U.S. congressional take-home pay for hundreds of UN senior officials who worked on such projects as jetting around the globe preparing for the December, 2009 climate bacchanal in Copenhagen. And they helped bankroll the activities of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, who has been bragging up a UN financial “disclosure program” in which senior UN officials are not required to disclose anything, and who made a trip to Washington in the spring of 2009, during which he referred to America — by far the UN’s biggest donor – as “deadbeat.”

But Lazy Susan Rice misplaced $2.8 billion when she added up how much the US gave the UN for a Congressional hearing. Heh.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: Claudia Rosett, Susan Rice, United Nations budget

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:53 AM