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'Stingy' America Should Cut Off Corrupt UN
By Doug Patton
January 3, 2005

Are there no limits to the audacity of the corrupt, lying socialists who run the United Nations? After bungling or pilfering virtually every project the UN has ever managed, this useless organization should now be in a position of having to justify its existence before receiving another cent from the United States of America.

Instead, after watching these leeches administer the now-infamous oil-for-food program - through which billions of dollars earmarked for the destitute people of Iraq were instead used to line the pockets of thieving United Nations bigwigs - Americans now have to listen to the man in charge of UN humanitarian relief accuse us of being "stingy."

Referring to donations pledged by Western nations to ease the misery of the millions devastated by the Christmas weekend earthquake and tsunami, Jan Egeland, the U.N. emergency relief coordinator and head of the Norwegian Red Cross, said this to the media:

"...Christmastime should remind many Western countries how rich we have become, and if actually the foreign assistance of many countries now is 0.1 or 0.2% of their gross national income, I think that is stingy, really. I don't think that is very generous. And I have an additional point. Politicians do not understand their own populations, because all the populations, in the United States, in the European Union, in Norway which is number one in the world, we want to give more as...as voters, as taxpayers. People say we should give what we give now or more. Politicians [believe] that they are really burdening the taxpayers too much and the taxpayers want to give less. That's not true. They want to give more."

So, in addition to calling us "stingy," this whining, petty, ungrateful little bureaucrat is trying to tell us we don't pay enough in taxes. In fact, he is saying that we actually want to pay more! Apparently, he believes we would like to pay the confiscatory rates his fellow Scandinavians pay.

It is instructive to note that the formula Egeland uses is the "percentage of gross national product," not the actual dollar figure, and that only direct government contributions, not the private donations for which Americans are so famous, are taken into consideration.

The population of the United States of America is approximately five percent of the world's six billion people. Yet, whenever there is a catastrophe anywhere in the world, which nation always contributes more than any other - both from public and from private funds? And why is it that we are able to live so well and still give so much?

John Stossel of ABC News has written and reported extensively on this issue. After looking at all the factors contributing to a nation's prosperity, Stossel concluded that it is not the size of the nation, its natural resources (prosperous Japan has almost none) nor even whether or not its government is a democracy (as is still-destitute India), but rather the extent of its economic freedom. This is what the weasels at the UN have never understood about the United States. We are prosperous because we are free to exercise our entrepreneurial creativity like nowhere else on earth.

President Bush should send a memo to Jan Egeland, telling him that the economic pie is as big as the God-given creativity of humankind. And while you're at it, Mr. President, tell him that the United States will be withholding our contributions to the United Nations and sending them directly to Sri Lanka this year. Tell Egeland and his caviar-eating, champagne-swilling colleagues to go find a real job.

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Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a speechwriter, policy advisor and communications director for federal, state and local candidates, elected officials and public policy organizations. His weekly columns are published in newspapers across the country and on selected Internet websites. Readers can e-mail him at dpatton@neonramp.com.

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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.