IT'S ABOUT TIME – AT 11:33 A.M. ET:  We don't praise the Obama administration too often, but give credit where it's due.   Washington is trying to cut this nation's forced "contribution" to the UN budget.  The step is long overdue.  For too long we have paid an inordinate share to keep that corrupt organization going.  From the great George Russell at Fox: 

The U.S. is locked once again in a back-room struggle with developing nations over how much of the United Nations tab Washington will pick up over the next three years, especially the bill for peacekeeping activities.

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.

In broad terms, the bottom line will remain the same: the U.S. will continue to pay billions more than everyone else. Last year, the U.S. handed over $3 billion toward the U.N.’s so-called “regular” Secretariat budget and its peacekeeping forces, though the full amount of U.S. contributions to the U.N. system -- the Obama administration does not divulge them -- was much more.

Wonder why they don't divulge them.  Not exactly the transparency we were promised as part of the overall hope 'n' change package.

The last official tally of overall U.S. contributions, in 2010, was about $7.6 billion, and that was widely considered a low-ball figure.

The basis of U.S. giving is the U.N. assessments scale -- currently set so that the U.S. pays 22 percent of the so-called “regular” U.N. Secretariat annual budget (about $2.8 billion in 2015), and 28.36 percent of its peacekeeping budget, which has ballooned in the past few years to $8.47 billion in 2014-2015.

The bigger the overall bills, the bigger is the share in dollar terms the U.S. must pay because of its outsized dues percentages.

COMMENT:  There are some good things the UN does, but so much of the organization is a bad joke –  inflated bureaucracies, heavy corruption, and the vast influence of the 57 Muslim nations, few of which even resemble democracies.  

We also tire of supporting "third world" nations, many of which will probably be "third world" forever.  As the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan asked one "third world" leader, "If we can grow food, why can't you grow food?"  The answer will undoubtedly be in the mail.

December 27,  2015