Footing the bill at the UN

If you've been wondering who pays for the anti-democratic, anti-American garbage that originates in the UN-- you do. There is a great page of budgeting statistics here, at Eye on the UN. The intro helps you understand the charts:

The United States has the maximum assessed contribution to the UN regular budget - 22%. In 2005 the assessed amount is $439,611,612. The minimum assessed contribution is 0.001%. The scale of assessments for each UN member for the required contributions to the regular budget is determined every 3 years on the basis of Gross National Product (GNP). Only nine countries (starting with the largest contributor: United States, Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Canada, Spain, China) contribute 75% of the entire regular budget. Cuba, which accounts for much of the behavior of the UN Human Rights Commission and its Sub-Commission, contributes .043% of the regular budget. Oil-rich Saudi Arabia contributes .713%. In addition to their contributions to the UN regular budget, member states contribute to the peacekeeping operations budget and the cost of international courts and tribunals. The level of these contributions is based on their assessed contributions to the regular budget plus variations which take account of permanent membership on the Security Council. UN members also make voluntary contributions to UN specialized agencies and subsidiary organizations. The administrative costs of such bodies, though, are met from the regular budget.

You can give the US moral credit for not trying to pull rank on the UN despite it's financial contributions, but I don't. It's one thing for the US to stand gracefully aside and keep its mouth shut about money if the UN is doing fairly innocuous policy and procedural things with which the US has some disagreement. I think it's immoral, however, for the US to keep footing the bill for the UN's decline into Nazi era anti-Semitism. There comes a time when pulling the financial plug is not the selfish thing to do, it's the right thing to do.