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December 19, 2006

The Annanklatura (updated)

Thomas Lifson
Claudia Rosett has another journalistic coup  to her name, with her exposé of Kofi Annan's shameless exploitation of what amount to housing subsidies intended for low to moderate income New Yorkers, even while employed as Secretary-General and provided a luxurious Sutton Place residence gratis. Instead of providing a low rent Roosevelt Island apartment (subsidized to the tune of $20,000 a year compared to market rate housing) to a needy New York Taxpaying family, the apartment has been used by the family of Annan's brother.

Ironies abound. Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters wrote: 
For a man who just finished lecturing Americans on his retirement from the position of UN Secretary-General on the need to help the poor and downtrodden, this seems incongruous at the least. [....]
 
It's a remarkable story of hypocrisy and greed from the man who set himself up over the last week as the global scold for rich nations. Instead of modeling the behavior he demanded of us, he abused the programs we set up to assist the working-class families of New York just so he and his family could maintain a second residence at a discount rate, even while none of them paid no rent for their own primary residences. What a fraud.
Keep in mind that these people pay no US taxes, and yet are claiming benefits paid for by US Taxpayers. UN and diplomatic personnel are entirely exempt from taxation.

Not to defend Annan's greed and hypocrisy, which speak for themselves, but this sort of thinking was very common in the old communist states. The favored group was called the nomenklatura. The creation of a special class which is exempt from the need for real money. Good things (especially good apartments) come to those with connections.

It isn't limited to the communist states, either. Leftists, in particular, seem to have a passion for providing goods and services at non-market rates for favored constituents.

Annan took the goodies because he could. It probably never entered his mind that it would be wrong for someone of his status to enjoy any possible benefit available anywhere. He is in a class by himself, the annanklatura.

Yet another example of the way the left displaces the market with bureaucratic administration, in the allocation of goods and services. With such intervention always comes corruption.

Update: Ethel C. Fenig adds:

Claudia Rossett's article also mentions this interesting tidbit about Annan's wife. 
But the issue is pertinent because Kofi Annan, whose wife comes from one of Sweden's wealthier families, (italics added, ECF)has spent years lecturing Americans on how the well-heeled have obligations to those less fortunate. Those low- to moderate-income New York families for whom such accommodation was built face a four-year waiting list.

Hmm, I wonder how his Swedish wife's family managed to accumulate that wealth as that country also smugly boasts its equality and lectures the US frequently on wealth redistribution. 

Hmm, I wonder how his Swedish wife's family managed to accumulate that wealth as that country also smugly boasts its equality and lectures the US frequently on wealth redistribution.

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