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Claudia Rosett has an article on the UN. When corruption and schemes to enrich UN employees are rife, it is hard to understand why we give them money.
…The U.N. already collects billions in both dues and voluntary contributions from the governments of the developed world–first and foremost from the U.S., which typically foots the bill for roughly one-quarter of most major U.N. activities. The actual U.N. budget is a slippery number. The book-keeping is opaque, often tardy or incomplete and spread across many parts of the U.N. archipelago, with no single U.N. office fully accountable for the entire system. In 2006 then-Secretary General Kofi Annan said the U.N. system-wide budget was about $20 billion; by now, with ever-expanding U.N. operations, funding appeals and hazily defined “partnerships,” it is certainly larger. But for U.N. spenders this torrent of other people’s money is not enough.
Since its founding in 1945, as essentially a diplomatic talking shop headquartered in the U.S., the U.N. has ballooned into a sort of post-colonial global empire, involving scores of thousands of staff, peacekeepers, agencies and proliferating agendas worldwide. With that has come a voracious hunger for money, in which U.N. planners keep casting an acquisitive eye at global commerce, looking for ways to tap in and open the spigots straight into the U.N.’s coffers. …
…These campaigns have yet to pan out into the full bonanzas the U.N. hopes for. But for the U.N., there is little cost to trying again and again, gaining traction here and there. All it usually takes is the ability of ambitious U.N. bureaucrats to put together a conference. The planning group for the conference becomes a secretariat. That secretariat becomes the seed of the next U.N. mandate, department or initiative, with the next suite of tax proposals on the table. …
Toby Harnden discusses Andrew Young’s book about John Edwards.
…The story matters because Edwards, a fabulously wealthy lawyer who made his fortune bringing lawsuits against major corporations, could easily have become president. He was John Kerry’s running mate in 2004 and in 2008 came very close to winning Iowa, beating Hillary Clinton into third place.
…The title of Young’s book is The Politician. That’s appropriate because it’s become a term of abuse and derision. During a Capitol Hill hearing on Wednesday when Tim Geithner, the Treasury Secretary, was being given a good kicking by all, an Ohio congressman thundered: “I want to assure you… that you are absolutely a politician.”
…Against this backdrop, the Edwards scandal merely feeds the sense of cynicism about the American political class that has been gathering pace for years.
Edwards talked about his love for his wife while he was entertaining his mistress in the marital bed. He championed the poor while expressing contempt for them. Obama made promises about televising health care negotiations and then did everything behind closed doors.
Well, Americans ask, what do you expect? They’re politicians.
WSJ has reviewed the new book on John Edwards written by his flunky Andrew Young. A Corner Post by Jonah Goldberg picked up the only paragraph you need to see.
Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe has another article that will turn your stomach. While almost 1 in 5 Americans is unemployed or underemployed, 1 in 5 government workers are drawing six-figure salaries. We aren’t sure of the actual unemployment numbers because no one in the government is making enough money to take on the task of reporting accurate statistics.
LAST MONTH, the US economy shed another 85,000 jobs. It marked a miserable end to a calamitous year in which an estimated 4.2 million American jobs were liquidated, and unemployment rose to 10 percent. In addition, more than 920,000 “discouraged workers’’ left the labor force entirely, having given up on finding work and therefore not included in official unemployment data.
Meanwhile, millions of Americans who do have jobs have been compelled to work part-time or at reduced wages; many others have not seen a raise in years. But not everyone is having a rotten recession.
Since December 2007, when the current downturn began, the ranks of federal employees earning $100,000 and up has skyrocketed. According to a recent analysis by USA Today, federal workers making six-figure salaries – not including overtime and bonuses – “jumped from 14 percent to 19 percent of civil servants during the recession’s first 18 months.’’ The surge has been especially pronounced among the highest-paid employees. At the Defense Department, for example, the number of civilian workers making $150,000 or more quintupled from 1,868 to 10,100. At the recession’s start, the Transportation Department was paying only one person a salary of $170,000. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees were drawing paychecks that size. …
In the National Review, Kevin Richardson reviews some ways that unions, politicians, and the minimum wage hurt blacks.
…Asked about the recently defeated plan to convert the gigantic fortress that looms over his neighborhood into a shopping mall, C says he hasn’t heard about it. If the plan had gone through, Manhattan-based developer Related Companies would have received about $50 million in tax subsidies for a project that would have created as many as a thousand retail jobs and, during its construction, employed a thousand or more highly paid union hardhats. But the city council killed the project. The Bronx delegation demanded that Related enforce upon its leaseholders a requirement that all of the jobs in the mall pay at least $10 an hour, plus benefits, much more than the prevailing wage in the Forever21-and-food-court racket, to say nothing of the $7.25 minimum wage. So a $300 million project, and a couple of thousand new jobs in a neighborhood that needs them, never happened. Bronx borough president Ruben Diaz Jr. infamously declared: “The notion that any job is better than no job no longer applies.” The New York Post pithily pointed out that when it comes to real jobs, Diaz has never had one — not in the private sector, anyway — and neither has any other member of the Bronx’s city-council delegation: All are lifelong politicians, many of them having held elected offices or political appointments since their early 20s. Diaz himself has been an officeholder since he was 23 years old. It’s good work, if you can get it. …
…Democrats will defend everything from partial-birth abortion to distributing gay porn in the classroom, but some subjects are too hot for them to touch: The effect of their minimum-wage enthusiasm on black unemployment is one, and racial discrimination by their organized-labor constituents is another. You’d think that the Democrats would put jobs for blacks at the top of their list — after all, black voters pull the “D” lever about 90 percent of the time. But political calculations are perverse things: Black voters are a cheap date for Democrats, who know that they can sell out the interests of their most loyal constituency with impunity. One of Barack Obama’s first actions in office was to gut a hugely popular school-choice program in Washington, D.C., that benefited black students almost exclusively, and he did so at the behest of the one of the most destructive unions in the country, one that has done more to undermine the future of black Americans than any other and whose members have inflicted more damage on black Americans than Bull Connor and George Wallace ever dreamed of. But the teachers’ unions represent one in ten delegates to the Democratic National Convention, so they have job security — something many, if not most, of the young black men in their classes will never have.
George Will comments on the Supreme Court decision reinstating first amendment rights to corporations. Corporations may use money to express political opinions, but corporate contributions to campaigns is still prohibited.
…How regulated did political speech become during the decades when the court was derelict in its duty to actively defend the Constitution? The Federal Election Commission, which administers the law that rations the quantity and regulates the content and timing of political speech, identifies 33 types of political speech and 71 kinds of “speakers.” The underlying statute and FEC regulations cover more than 800 pages, and FEC explanations of its decisions have filled more than 1,200 pages. The First Amendment requires 10 words for a sufficient stipulation: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.”
Extending the logic of a 1976 decision, the court has now held that the dissemination of political speech requires money, so restricting money restricts speech. Bringing law into conformity with this 1976 precedent, the court has struck down only federal and state laws that forbid independent expenditures (those not made directly to, or coordinated with, candidates’ campaigns) by corporations and labor unions. Under the censorship regime the court has overturned, corporations were even forbidden to send political communications to all of their employees.
The New York Times calls the court’s decision, which enables political advocacy by (other) corporations, a “blow to democracy.” The Times, a corporate entity, can engage in political advocacy because Congress has granted “media corporations” an exemption from limits.
The Washington Post, also exempt, says the court’s decision, which overturned a previous ruling upholding restrictions on spending for political speech, shows insufficient “respect for precedent.” Does The Post think the court incorrectly overturned precedents that upheld racial segregation and warrantless wiretaps? Are the only sacrosanct precedents those that abridge (others’) right to speak? …
In the NY Times, Judy Battista writes about Kurt Warner’s retirement.
…The humble beginning to Warner’s career — he did not start his first N.F.L. game until he was 28 — gave way to one in which, with surgical precision, he resurrected two also-ran franchises, carrying both to the Super Bowl while also becoming known as one of the league’s most charitable players. Warner, his wife, Brenda, and their seven children routinely select a family at a restaurant and anonymously pay their dinner tab, as a way to teach the children charity.
In 1998, the St. Louis Rams gave Warner the break he needed. Having signed him the previous December, they allocated him to N.F.L. Europe, where he led the league in several statistical categories. By 1999, the Rams had made him the backup to Trent Green. When Green tore a knee ligament during the preseason, the unknown quarterback was thrust into the starting job, and the Greatest Show on Turf was born. He was the league and Super Bowl most valuable player that season. He was the league’s M.V.P. again two years later, when the Rams lost the Super Bowl in the final seconds to a burgeoning dynasty from New England.
“We all learned great lessons from Kurt’s humility, dignity and grace,” the Rams’ owner, Chip Rosenbloom, said in a statement. “We will forever be thankful for the success he brought us and the unparalleled generosity he has shown the St. Louis community and beyond.” …