Do read Brett Schaefer’s excellent column on the homepage about how American taxpayers are getting soaked — and then some — on the UN’s “facelift.” Among other eye-openers: Turns out the brand new, unnecessary building they said was going to cost $370 million looks like it’ll come in at more like $2.5 billion – about the cost of Yankee Stadium times two, and making you think the UN must have hired the same accountants that the Democrats used to crunch the numbers on Obamacare.
One modest suggestion to get the project back on budget: why don’t they strip out all security costs, including fences and the like? In 2004, at around the time the UN was tying up traffic on the East Side with another round of renovations, including security fencing, the UN’s International Court of Justice (pretentiously called “the World Court”) ruled that Israel’s security fence — a passive defense measure that reduced Palestinian suicide attacks by over 90 percent — was a violation of international law. Surely the UN can live within the restrictions it purports to impose on everyone else, right?