TRS Staff

Mark this down as one of the best speeches of 2017, which truly has become a good year for speeches in general: McCain’s Senate floor speech, Trump’s Poland speech…

…and now, Haley’s UN speech.

There’s a core reason why this wrankles Americans such a great deal.  First and foremost, the Israelis get to determine where their capital is.  After a bloody war of independence in 1947, two surprise attacks in 1967 and 1973 respectively, the Lebanon conflict in 1982, and a second intafada?  Israel has won by the sword what Arab diplomacy has failed to extend.

Secondly, it is the unilateral decision of the United States where it chooses to place its embassy.  No nation has the right to demand otherwise.  Protest?  Perhaps… but the United States has never and will never be dictated to by the world community where and how it shall extend its diplomatic corps — from Tripoli to the modern day.

Perhaps lastly, the amount of international aid extended to both the world community as well as the United Nations itself — a body that sees fit to put rogue regimes on human rights panels but fails to extend even the slightest latitude towards Israel — is a subsidization of the post-Second World War order that the United States carries almost exclusively in a gift to world peace so extraordinary as to be unprecedented.

For that?  The United States is treated with contempt by the so-called “world community” — a community it subsidizes, protects, and harbors against international threats such as terrorism, piracy, and violent actors abroad.

Ambassador Haley’s tone was stark and direct.  Under no circumstances will the United States be dictated to, much less surrender one iota of sovereignty.  Moreover, the tangible angst that many Americans feel about subsidizing a body that works in direct opposition to the Jeffersonian “empire of liberty” strikes many back home as dichotic to the principles of the United Nations writ large.  If we are not working for the principles of spreading liberty to the edges of the world, then why is the American taxpayer being forced to finance something working in opposition to everything we believe as Americans?

The answer is somewhat simple.  The United Nations at its core function is supposed to facilitate conversation — not facilitate action.  Condemning the movement of embassies is obtuse in the extreme, a move meant to exemplify either the powerlessness of the United Nations or the obtuseness of the member states.

Yet if the disrespect shown to the United States in this regard is to be the response to American subsidization — both of the United Nations and the members states directly?  Perhaps America needs to independently re-evaluate whether our international investments are worth the exchange?

If Haley brought anything to light, it was that American investment in the world order is sorely underappreciated by the UN.

The Republican Party of Virginia is wasting no time hammering Governor McAuliffe and Governor-elect Northam for the incredulous $40 fees for “Lexus Lanes” along I-66 in Day Two of the now universally despised Terry Tolls.

RPV’s chairman John Whitbeck blasts the governor for the oddly timed opening of the new HOT lanes:

A less cynical person might think it’s a coincidence that these tolls took effect in Northern Virginia after voters had gone to the polls. Having worked around Terry McAuliffe and his team for four years now – and with $40 tolls now a reality – I don’t think I’ve been cynical enough. Governor McAuliffe owes Republicans an apology for his rhetoric in 2015, and Governor-elect Northam needs to immediately tell Northern Virginia how he intends to clean up McAuliffe’s mess.

Of course, when House and Senate Republicans blasted McAuliffe back in 2015 over the potential for $17.00 “Lexus Lane” fees… well, you can listen to his biting response here:

Rep. Barbara Comstock is castigating Virginia Department of Transportation Secretary Aubrey Lane for the wild disparity between what was claimed by McAuliffe and Northam as to the true fees on the “Lexus Lanes” versus what Republicans claimed would be the actual cost… versus what commuters are actively being forced to pay in order to avoid the I-66 parking lot.

Meanwhile, Jim Bacon over at Bacon’s Rebellion sheds nary a tear for those complaining about the sky high rates along I-66, instructing them to “join a friggin’ carpool” and other helpful advice:

I have to say, a $34 toll for a 10-mile trip is extravagantly high. I would never pay it. Here’s a tip to the whiners: Don’t have to pay it either! Just drive on I-66 like you always have! There are no fewer lanes than there were before. Was traffic on I-66 this morning any worse than it was last week? No? Then get over it!

As long as you’re not the person paying them, high toll fares are good news. When the state covers its cost of setting up the HOT lane infrastructure, it will devote surplus revenue to multimodal improvements — buses, Metrorail, bicycle, pedestrian facilities — that take commuters off I-66 and make the highway a little less congested for everyone else.

Of course, there are two rejoinders to this.  First and foremost, vehicular commuters aren’t exactly paying their own way — they are subsidizing the cost of mass transit, as Bacon helpfully admonishes the reader.  Which perhaps, might be a tad bit galling to the commuter paying $40.00 for a one-way ride into Washington (or to those parked on the plebeian lanes to the right).

That drives the second point — this isn’t a “free market” solution to roads at all.  Rather, it is the Obamacare of roads, where commuters are overtaxed to provide for the gaps in a failing and mismanaged transportation system.

The spin from Democrats that somehow commuters are paying full freight is ridiculous on its face.  These commuters are not only paying their own way, but they are subsidizing a host of mass transit — bike lanes, pedestrian facilities, buses, light rail, VRE — all of which in a truly free market, the consumer would pay their own freight without loading the true cost on the backs of highway commuters.

…which isn’t happening at all.

Commuters are merely being punished for being commuters in dirty automobiles, while “green” solutions are being subsidized — hardly a free market, but it sure sounds like some old fashioned avuncular state nudging — all of which comes just three weeks after the Democrats carried the gubernatorial race.

Odd, that.