New York City is being invaded. By diplomats.
It’s UN week.
There are 193 member states of the United Nations, and the chaos and confusion they bring to the streets of New York City is an unintentional metaphor for what’s going on inside their organization.
Does anyone have confidence in the UN anymore? Did we ever? Billions of dollars pour into this international organization and yet they rank near dead last in every category they lead.
Have you ever been to a UN refugee camp? They’re awful. People just sit there waiting to die. Among aid agencies, the UN is ranked near the worst in the world.
Fraud, corruption and mismanagement follow the UN wherever they go.
UN peacekeepers caused a cholera outbreak in Haiti in 2010.
Their employees have been accused of sexual exploitation in over 10 countries. On top of all that, UN personnel cannot be sued in national courts, arrested, or prosecuted for their actions.
President Trump has been a vocal critic of the UN. Today, he’s meeting with representatives of 120 other member states that have had enough. They’re pushing for long-overdue reform, but two nations are curiously missing. Both Russia and China are refusing to attend.
Why is that? Why wouldn’t 2 of the 5 permanent members of the UN security council be interested in reforming this dumpster fire we call the UN?
Follow the money. The United States cuts an $8 billion check to the UN every year. We supply nearly a quarter of the entire UN budget. And they say we aren’t exceptional.
Of course, China and Russia want the status quo. Look at what they get in return. The UN provides them a check on US power through their security council veto, it costs them little money in return, and they make us pay disproportionately for it!
The time for bankrolling corrupt, failing and all-powerful international organizations is over. The time for reform is now.
What is your protest strategy?
Broken glass littered the sidewalk.
The debris was evidence of what had occurred hours earlier --- chaos.
Shop and restaurant owners in University City outside St. Louis woke up early to sweep the glass from the broken windows of their businesses.
They were innocent victims of the violence that erupted after Jason Stockley was acquitted of murder on Friday. Stockley is a white former police officer who shot and killed Anthony Lamar Smith, a black man, in 2011 during a car chase.
It’s a colossal failure of our nation that more of our citizens don’t understand that this is not what we do here. Rioting, looting, destruction, chaos --- that’s the way they do things in totalitarian countries, socialist countries, under-developed countries. That chaos is what a lot of immigrants come here to get away from.
If you want to protest something that you had nothing to with and don’t understand all the details, go ahead. That’s your call. Just do it in a peaceful manner. Remember Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Martin Luther King Jr. --- their protest strategy was never violent. They knew riots would not work.
The moment you smash a window of a small business, messing up that owner’s effort and right to make a living, you forfeit your ability to be heard. You’re no longer a protester at that point. You’re a felon.
Medicare for all?
When the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.
And the bespectacled Bernie Sanders wants to lead the country into a massive pit.
The independent senator from Vermont --- who calls himself a “democratic socialist” has proposed a Medicare for all, single-payer health care system.
The plan would repeal Obamacare and replace it with a huge expansion of Medicare --- large enough to open the government-run program to all Americans.
This proposal is no longer just a dream of the far left --- it enjoys the support of 16 Democrat senators.
A list that includes Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kristen Gillibrand and Kamala Harris.
If this list sounds familiar --- it’s because these are names being tossed around as possible candidates for president in 2020.
It sounds great, but there’s a big problem with Bernie’s proposal --- it’s lacking in details.
Specifically, how to pay for it.
But Bernie already knows this:
You want to guarantee that all people have access to health care as you do in Canada. But I think what we understand is that unless we change the funding system and the control mechanism in this country to do that --- for example, if we expanded Medicaid [to] everybody. Give everybody a Medicaid card --- we would be spending such an astronomical sum of money that, you know, we would bankrupt the nation.
That was Bernie in 1987. He’s avoiding the details --- because he’s well aware of the costs.
They’re astronomical.
When the blind lead the blind --- both shall fall into the ditch.
Democrats follow Bernie at their own peril.
