While unemployment insurance payments are running out for millions of Americans who lost jobs due to no fault of their own, the Afghan ambassador to the UN is living in a $4.2 million Manhattan condo on our dime.
While Americans are standing in line for the local food pantry, we're paying for this guy's mahogany kitchen cabinets.
It's outrageous, and it shows the warped priorities in Washington, D.C. Are our politicians really so out of touch that they don't realize how angry this kind of thing makes us? In case you folks inside the Beltway haven't noticed, we're falling apart out here. The last thing we need to be funding is this guy's access to "private Pilates and massage rooms." But hey, if we're going to be blowing taxpayer money on massages, I know several million people who could use a neck rub.
We are spending about $2 billion a week on the Afghanistan War, all without consideration of the bad effects on the economy and its effect on the federal budget, but when it comes time to extend unemployment insurance payments for people who lost their jobs, we get quotes like this:
"Things just got worse for the millions of Americans who have been unemployed for up to 99 weeks. At the stroke of midnight Tuesday, a short-term extension of jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed expired. ...[Illinois Republican Senator Mark] Kirk took a stance most Republicans take: "If it's paid for by cutting other items in the budget, I will be a yes vote. If it's added to further debts of the United States, no."
So we can't go into debt to keep people from going hungry in the U.S., but we can go into debt to make sure Ambassador Zahir Tanin can live in a 3-bedroom Trump Tower corner suite with "'iconic views' of New York City through floor-to-ceiling windows with remote control curtains." Got it.
Sixty-eight percent of Americans are worried that the costs of the Afghanistan War will make it harder for the U.S. to address problems we face here at home. They're right, especially with the current crop of legislators in Congress. When you throw huge piles of money at the failed war in Afghanistan, you create debt and deficits that politicians like Kirk use as a cudgel to cut public structures here at home. So thanks to the war, we get ridiculous, broken priorities that have room for spending that stocks Ambassador Tanin's office suites with "expensive Scotch Whiskey and French wines," but no room to help people who lost their job when the economy tanked.
But let's assume for a second that we had all these resources to waste (which we absolutely do not). Just who are we getting for our money?
"Employees neither trust nor respect the ambassador, and claim he is an 'opportunist' unqualified and unwilling to properly carry out the duties of a representative of 25 million suffering Afghans who face daily bombings, kidnappings, and a decrepit infrastructure."
Ambassador Tanin is a poster child for the broken U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. We are spending huge amounts of money propping up corrupt warlords and petty criminals in the Kabul government. In return we're getting decreased security. That's why roughly 60 percent of us want our troops brought home.
We need to fix our priorities so we can spend our resources on getting people back to work instead of wasting them on Sex-in-the-City lifestyles for corrupt Afghan officials.
If you're fed up with wasting our resources on the failed Afghanistan War, join Rethink Afghanistan on Facebook and Twitter.
Follow Robert Greenwald on Twitter: www.twitter.com/robertgreenwald
Quote is from a book regarding civilization in general, but it sure fits this particular situation to a T, I'd say.
Am I misunderstanding all of this? "We the People" are being held like hostages until ransom is agreed upon? Is this kidnapping? Is this treason? We the People cannot count on the money that is deducted from personal payroll year after year, for payment of unemployment insurance to have been properly invested so that it provides support when we live in communities where the unemployment rate is 12% ? Whose fiduciary responsibility was it? Why are we arguing about who will pay in the future when insurance is invested and protected in funds that already exist? The administration of those funds is where the real questions lie? Not on the deficit, or on the backs of, "We the People." And after being held hostage, we the people will want justice from the hostage takers? This deserves all the expressions of outrage that I see.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/12/01/gop.senate.demands/index.html?npt=NP1
War is a job creator. Dispite how bad it is or how much people don't like it. War creates jobs and it drives inovation. It is an ugly truth, but a truth non the less.
Transportation, comminication, computers, even the space programs are a direct result of Military contracts. Its more than overpriced jets, if you had any common scense you would see that.
Unemployement on the other hand is money that it taken away from other areas and could be used to help other things. It is taking money from one pocket and putting it in the other. It creates nothing. If it was a good economic booster then the economy would be doing better if more people were unemployed. We both no that is not the case.
I am not against unemployement, I think it is a good thing to help people when they are down and out, but what should the limit be? 200, 300, 400 weeks? How long is long enough?
What I do know is that wars require goods. Goods like vehicles, ammo, food, intel gear, clothing, even things like safty glasses. Most of the goods that the US government uses for their troops are made in the USA and all of the personel who keep the troops safe work in and for the USA.
Shameful....maybe a few of our homeless should crash in that apartment.
Afghanistan Buys $4.2 M. Trump Condo (with 'Peacefulness and Views')
By Max Abelson
September 11, 2009 | 12:48 p.m
The Permanent Mission of Afghanistan to the United Nations has a lovely new apartment. According to two deeds filed Friday, the group spent $4,235,000 on a 2,840-square-foot apartment at Trump World Tower, plus a $5.4 million commercial space at 633 Third Avenue.
Back then we were led to believe it was their money.
http://www.observer.com/2009/real-estate/afghanistan-mission-un-buys-42-m-trump-condo-peacefulness-and-views
Considering all the 'goodies' the UN gives the US - like approvals to go running wars anywhere, the US should be funding the UN completely. If it wasn't for the UN, the USA would be just like any other other nasty tryrannical aggressor.
This is disgusting...people out of work...out of unemployment..Children going hungry at school because they don't want to extend the national lunch programs!!....But they will house an Afghan Official in Trump Towers....WOW ........wake up people those republicans are screwing you and your kids!!
Either there are a lot of stup1d people in the states or they are wearing blinders.
As someone above stated, the rest of the world is watching us implode. Our rich leaders have created a crap sandwich that we will ALL have to take a bite of. I hear it tastes like chicken.
Keep your head up!
The Afghanistan war is only part of it; the wastage pervades every cell of our American society, and it would seem that we must find a way to stop it. By electing more Republicans last month, however, we chose to perpetuate and increase the wasting. What in the world is wrong with us?