Defraud the UN and Still Get Paid:
Kamil Idris, Secretary-General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), apparently falsified his age and experience to advance his career. As a consequence, he will leave his UN post a year early, but he will still receive one more year of his $300K+ salary and a full pension, according to this report (see also here).
that $.000001 that you contributed to Kamil Idris, boy what a drain.
So he tried saying he was 10 years younger . . . so what?
It is astounding that even in the current run-up to the next election, no candidate discusses, questions, or even seems to be aware of the $billions we foolishly shovel into this hate filled organization year after year after year.
Kofi Annan's oft-repeated demand was for a "World Tax" - aimed squarely at the U.S. - amounting to .7% of our GDP. And that's just for starters. Annan's successor, Ban Ki Moon, has now dropped the "World Tax" label, and replaced it with the more warm and fuzzy name, "Millenium Development Goals." But it's the same thing: a ~$300 billion annual tax on American workers, to be paid into the opaque and unaccountable UN every year.
And now they're partying hearty in Bali, scheming over the best way to make American taxpayers open their wallets wide. The current extortion seems to be centered around the globaloney warming issue.
Sooner or later, we're gonna have to have this discussion on a national level.
That attitude is why the U.N. is a corrupt, decadent, worthless talk shop who couldn't save a cat from a tree unless the cat was near a 5-star hotel with catered meals.
That's already happened at the UN, but the blood hasn't flowed in sufficient pints yet.
Just an observation that probably the same umbrage shown in this thread to the UN could be shown toward many US corporations.
You'll have a valid point when I can sell my stock in the UN.
Oh the decadent UN, the same UN which has a dilapidated HQ filled with Asbestos, and with no purposeful sense of irony, is also a fire hazard.
And defrauding the American people out of billions? Did someone really post that?
I'll save my outrage for real scandals:
Please people, some of you guys sound like the Jesse Helms/Black Helicopters/World Police Paranoid Clique from the early 90's.
Sure, the UN is not perfect, and it does at time, act as a forum to air complaints against the US - hence, I can get why some of you guys see it as "Anti-American".
But the funding we provide, does result in some sort return on our investment. Certainly more so than any of our spending in Iraq. We have influence over the UN. And it's not like it has ever stopped us from doing what we want to do anyway. See Iraq War over UN objections. Or our people on this blog upset, b/c the World Community, and thus reflected in the UN, was against our invasion of Iraq?
But the criticisms on this blog about the UN, pretty much hold true, for any institution of it's size. I don't see what makes the UN so despicable.
And as for Wolfowitz's comment "What a piker. His mistress wasn't on the payroll too?" I think you were referring to Rudy Guiliani
Yah,
Oh the decadent UN, the same UN which has a dilapidated HQ filled with Asbestos, and with no purposeful sense of irony, is also a fire hazard.
And defrauding the American people out of billions? Did someone really post that?
I'll save my outrage for real scandals:
Please people, some of you guys sound like the Jesse Helms/Black Helicopters/World Police Paranoid Clique from the early 90's.
Sure, the UN is not perfect, and it does at time, act as a forum to air complaints against the US - hence, I can get why some of you guys see it as "Anti-American".
But the funding we provide, does result in some sort return on our investment. Certainly more so than any of our spending in Iraq. We have influence over the UN. And it's not like it has ever stopped us from doing what we want to do anyway. See Iraq War over UN objections. Or our people on this blog upset, b/c the World Community, and thus reflected in the UN, was against our invasion of Iraq?
But the criticisms on this blog about the UN, pretty much hold true, for any institution of it's size. I don't see what makes the UN so despicable.
And as for Wolfowitz's comment "What a piker. His mistress wasn't on the payroll too?" I think you were referring to Rudy Guiliani
“So he tried saying he was 10 years younger . . . so what?”
He didn’t falsify his age merely out of vanity, but to gain a position that required 10 years of professional experience. That’s more than a “so what” transgression of the rules. His fraud also raises the question: what else has he done?
A lot of people look to the UN as something that will take us down the path towards a one-world government and other utopias. I think this explains the forgiveness so many people express for the UN. It’s time we put the UN on a contributory basis. If you like the UN and what it does then support it with your own money, not mine.
“Please people, some of you guys sound like the Jesse Helms/Black Helicopters/World Police Paranoid Clique from the early 90's.”
It has nothing to do with conspiracies. I just think the UN is an ineffectual organization. It doesn’t keep the peace. It has also perpetrated one of the great hoaxes of our time: African AIDS. When one drills down to find out how they come up with the AIDS prevalence statistics, you find the whole thing rests on very dubious methods. This acts to the detriment of the Africans who have a much bigger problem with malaria than AIDS. This hoax diverts funding away from where it’s really needed. There are real consequences to having a corrupt organization run programs.
Don't forget the Oil-4-Food bribery scandal, too. Nearly $20 billion paid out in funds never accounted for. IOW: bribes. And the UN still absolutely refuses to allow any kind of independent accounting of how they spend our money. [Just try to get the names & salaries of the UN's 100,000+ theftocrats. Good luck with that.]
Whenever an organization outside the control of the U.S. gov't feels entitled to our tax money, and also thinks that they have the right to take those monies witout any accounting, then in short order it becomes outright theft.
We would do much better off by booting the UN, stopping all payments, and pay those countries that support the U.S. As it is, we're paying countries that absolutely hate the U.S. That's pretty much the definition of insanity. It's time to stop rewarding our enemies, and support only those countries that support the U.S.A. After all, there are only a handful of those.
Of course! How stupid of me! Would that be before, or after, the announcement of a billion-dollar write-off and a 75% drop in the value of my investment? Am I entitled to an "exit package" for having played and lost?
[BTW - this is a U.N. thread, not a stock thread. But you already knew that, right?]
I'm so sorry. I thought the title said "Defraud the US and Still Get Paid."
As a side note, I never understood why I had to respect a bunch of bums who did nothing to help their own countries, Kofi Annan and Boutros Boutros-Ghali, tell us how we are supposed to act. Perhaps Kofi should go back and fix Ghana and BBG should clean up Egypt before telling us what to do.
Actually, your counterargument is invalid as it completely misses the substance of my comparison.
You do not have the option of paying taxes to the US government. Those taxes support corrupt UN officials, just as they support, via subsidies and government contracts, corrupt US corporations and their officers.
That is the case regardless of whether you hold, buy or sell stock in the corporations in question. So the voluntary nature of owning stock in a corrupt US corporation is quite irrelevant to my point. Namely, that your tax dollars are being used to support demonstrably corrupt US corporations that give huge CEO payoffs, many times that of the UN official in question.
Experience, knowledge of human nature and insitutional failures tell us that theft, waste of resources and other forms of personal aggrandizement at the expense of the public interest/stakeholders are problems that we will always have to struggle with, from the UN, to our own federal, state and local governments, business enterprises and even voluntary community organizations and families - part of the constant struggle to make sure organizational assets are not treated as commons by those with access and opportunity (as Yandle has noted).