Facebook Comments and Bad Replies
I'll go into more detail about the FEE post below, but I posted a critical comment on the post which FEE included in its Facebook feed. For context, the gist is that Trump's recent action for suspending WHO funding had a notable precedent in the Carter Administration for a different allegedly corrupt UN entity. There was something odd about this story, and I was particularly interested in seeing the involvement of Congress in dealing with any suspension in aid. Long story short, I researched the target UN entity, finding a Wikipedia article that the House had voted to withdraw from the group for other political reasons (i.e., involving the Mideast) at the end of June 1975 (i.e., during the Ford Administration), with Secretary of State Kissinger issuing notice in November. It's true the formal withdrawal took place 2 years later during the Carter Administration, but the FEE account of events is materially misleading.So my Facebook comment included an extended quote from the Wikipedia article. And I get a reply from some troll which I'll paraphrase as: "Dude! Seriously? You're going to cite WIKIPEDIA in making your argument?" Now I know Wikipedia has a certain reputation, but I seriously doubt that what I was quoting had not been fact-checked. I don't mind other people constructively criticizing my comments or posts; it would be different if he said, "Hey, there are factual mistakes in what you quoted: x,y,z." But what he said came cross like, "A serious scholar would never use Wikipedia as a source." I was dealing with a FEE account completely at odds with what Wikipedia had specified about the circumstances (the PLO had been admitted to the ILO). Annoyed that I had to corroborate the Wikipedia account of events, I Googled and found evidence of the House vote and Kissinger's notice in various other posts. The troll was sensitive to my pointing out a spelling error in a response to his reply and suggested that he was simply asking an innocent question.
The FEE Blog Post in Question
Marchand, the author of this piece, has a definite agenda: UN agencies are fundamentally corrupt, inefficient, ineffective, and politically adverse to US interests, a bad deal for US taxpayers. I don't necessarily disagree with this perspective. But he seems to be rewriting history to fit it.Here's Marchand:
President Trump’s decision to withhold aid to an unaccountable global bureaucracy may stem from an unlikely source of inspiration: former President Jimmy Carter. The ILO was created in 1919, but by 1977, had transformed from a worker advocacy organization to a mouthpiece for backwards policies and oppressive regimes.
The Carter administration was irked by the brutal actions condoned by the ILO even as US taxpayers footed the bill for 25 percent of the agency’s financial dues (about $85 million in today’s dollars). The bureaucracy would regularly find egregious labor violations committed by repressive governments, but the ILO buried the reports when the offending countries complained. US officials quickly put a kibosh on those activities by withdrawing from the ILO.And here's the Wikipedia account, mentioned above:
On 12 June 1975, the ILO voted to grant the Palestinian Liberation Organization observer status at its meetings. Representatives of the United States and Israel walked out of the meeting. The U.S. House of Representatives subsequently decided to withhold funds. The United States gave notice of full withdrawal on 6 November 1975, stating that the organization had become politicized. The United States also suggested that representation from communist countries was not truly "tripartite"—including government, workers, and employers—because of the structure of these economies. The withdrawal became effective on 1 November 1977.
The United States returned to the organization in 1980 after extracting some concession from the organization. It was partly responsible for the ILO's shift away from a human rights approach and towards support for the Washington Consensus. Economist Guy Standing wrote "the ILO quietly ceased to be an international body attempting to redress structural inequality and became one promoting employment equity".Now here's the JTA account (6/30/75):
The House of Representatives has withdrawn the United States government from participation in the international Labor Organization because the ILO gave the Palestine Liberation Organization status in that United Nations affiliate as an observer. Supporting the position of the AFL-CIO, the House voted last Thursday to delete from appropriations to the State Department the funds to pay into the ILO. The cutoff is effective as of last June 12.
Rep. John Slack (D. W. Va.) and John Murtha (D. Pa.) led the fight to delete the funds. They were opposed by Reps, Elford Cederberg (R. Mich.) and Millicent Fenwick (R. NJ). Slack, who introduced the deletion legislation, pointed out that while observer status is non-voting and non-paying, it permits the PLO representation in ILO proceedings.
Slack pointed out that when the ILO admitted the PLO, the U.S. delegation, made up of representatives of government, labor and management walked out. The labor group said it would not return to that session. The U.S. funds 23 percent of the ILO budget.
The House vote was 21 – 8, less than a quorum. But since no member raised the point of the absence of a quorum or entered an objection, the ILO amendment was adopted.We see absolutely no evidence of the rationale that Marchand discusses: we, in fact, see the aid cutoff coincide with the date of PLO admission to the body. The ILO required 2 years notice to leave. Here's more:
On 6 November 1975, the US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, gave two years' notice of his country's intention to withdraw from the ILO, under Article 1, paragraph 5 of the Constitution, the USA's previous support of ILO having given way to an increasing concern in four fundamental matters.The same source points out in 1970, the US cut its aid in half, largely due to the appointment of a Soviet citizen to an official position, strongly opposed by US anti-communist labor leadership. I'm not going to go into the 4 points in Kissinger's letter (erosion of tripartite representation, human rights, due process, and politicization), but I will point out Kissinger had "regretted" the June House vote.)
Now where did Carter come in? Marchand actually links to a Gray Lady piece. Merchand wants you to believe that Jimmy Carter was the one who made the decision to leave, although as I've just shown this move was initiated by Congress during the Ford Administration. Actually, if you read the article closely, you will see Carter's advisers were urging him to defer the Kissinger-initiated exit schedule to buy some time for ILO to reform as requested, but in fact even if Carter delayed exit, the labor representative would boycott meetings. So we were going to exit anyway unless Carter decided otherwise, presumably in conjunction with a reluctant Congress, which would have to budget ILO funds.
Now my preferences for the Marchand piece would have been to raise the constitutionality of Trump's action of suspending WHO dues. For example, does WHO also have a contractual notice period? On what grounds did Trump have the right to engage in unilateral action? Did Congress empower him to do so with allocated funds? Didn't, in fact, we just go a similar thing when Trump put an illegal hold on Ukraine aid in his scheme to extort the government to open an investigation of his political foe, Joe Biden, over which he was impeached?
I would think that FEE, as a pro-liberty group, should not appear to support authoritarian, unconstitutional decisions. If you want to debate WHO membership and/or funding, it should go through due process, starting with the House, which holds the power of the purse.
