UN Building Project: An expensive Boondoggle

Fire of Liberty

According to this piece in The New York Sun, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama is proposing legislation which would limit the amount of money that we give the UN to refurbish and build a new swing space. The bill also demands that the World body should submit to a more thorough accounting of such a massive amount of money. I'd have to say that it's about time that someone held the people in Turtle Bay accountable for their actions. With the most recent Oil-for-Food scandal, the UN definitely has no business with billions of US dollars and no one held accountable for wasteful expenditures. Just look at what The New York Sun has written about the whole situation:

As the authorization bill was being debated on the Senate floor yesterday afternoon, the Alabama senator introduced his amendment in a speech that quoted extensively from an article that appeared February 4 in the Sun. In that article, several real-estate developers, including Donald Trump, were quoted as saying the proposed $1.2 billion price tag for the U.N. renovations was exorbitant.

Cautioning his Senate colleagues that the United Nations is "notoriously wasteful," Mr. Sessions said he had spoken with Mr. Trump yesterday morning to learn more about the cost of construction and renovation in Manhattan, with which Mr. Trump has extensive experience, and about the developer's involvement in the U.N. renovation saga.

At the request of a European diplomat to whom the proposed cost of the Capital Master Plan - the U.N. term for the renovation project - seemed excessively high, Mr. Trump apparently met with Mr. Annan to discuss the refurbishment. According to Mr. Sessions, Mr. Trump said that the price tag for the renovation was outrageously high and that the only way it could have reached $1.2 billion was through "incompetence or theft." In his meeting with Mr. Annan, according to Mr. Sessions, Mr. Trump offered to manage the renovation, promising to complete the project for $500 million - less than half of what is currently budgeted. Mr. Sessions said the United Nations never responded to Mr. Trump's offer.

When "the Donald" says he can do the job at half the price, you've got to wonder what in the World are Kofi and his legion of bureaucrats putting in their offices. You'd think that they'd try to fight hunger, AIDS, and help the people in Darfur rather than make such a fuss over carpet samples, color wheels and hardwood flooring. I guess when you not held responsible for your actions by a higher body or voters this what happens. Thank God for Senator Sessions and Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman. I'll be glad when John Bolton gets his turn to straighten this madhouse out.