George Will Trashes the Law-of-the-Sea Treaty

International agreements are not necessarily bad. There’s probably some sort of treaty about air traffic control rules as planes cross national borders, and even I can’t think of a reason to get worried about such a pact.

But that would be the exception that proves the rule. International treaties usually are bad because they are vehicles for governments to engage in cartel-like behavior. The Paris-based OECD’s so-called Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters, for instance, is designed to become an International Tax Organization – controlled by high-tax nations that want to stifle tax competition.

Another example is the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), which George Will eviscerates in his Washington Post column.

There they go again. Like those who say climate change is an emergency too obvious and urgent to allow for debate, some proponents of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a.k.a. the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), say arguments against it are nonexistent. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says any such arguments “no longer exist and truly cannot even be taken with a straight face.” …Clinton’s insufferable tone is not a reason for the necessary 34 senatorsto reject ratification. It is, however, a reason for enjoying their doing so. …For centuries there has been a law of the sea. There might be marginal benefits from LOST’s clarifications and procedures for resolving disputes arising from that law — although China and the nations involved in contentious disputes about the South China Sea have all ratified LOST, not that it seems to matter. But those hypothetical benefits are less important than LOST’s actual derogation of U.S. sovereignty by empowering a U.N. bureaucracy — the International Seabed Authority (ISA), based in Jamaica — to give or withhold permission for mining, and to transfer perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S. wealth to whatever nation it deems deserving — “on the basis of equitable sharing criteria, taking into account the interests and needs of developing states, particularly the least developed and the land-locked among them.” Royalties paid by nations with the talent and will for extracting wealth from the seabed will go to nations that have neither, on the principle that what is extracted from 56 percent of the earth’s surface is, the United Nations insists, “the common heritage of mankind.” And never mind U.S. law, which says that wealth gained from the continental shelf — from which the ISA would seek royalty payments — is supposed to be held by the U.S. government for the benefit of the American people. …Donald Rumsfeld…opposes LOST because it “remains a sweeping power grab that could prove to be the largest mechanism for the worldwide redistribution of wealth in human history.” It “would regulate American citizens and businesses without being accountable politically to the American people.” Which makes it shameful that the Chamber of Commerce is campaigning for LOST through an organization with the Orwellian name the American Sovereignty Campaign. If the Navy supports LOST because the civilian leadership does, fine. But if the Navy thinks it cannot operate well without LOST, we need better admirals, not better treaties. Here is an alternative proposal for enhancing the lawfulness of the seas: Keep the money LOST would transfer to ISA, and use it to enlarge the Navy.

That’s a long excerpt, but that’s because the whole piece is worth reading.

I particularly enjoy his dig at the Chamber of Commerce, which endorsed the TARP bailout and the faux stimulus and is building upon that record of failure by supporting a treaty that would undermine American companies. I know I’m being unfair since they’re sometimes on the right side, but the term “useful idiots” comes to mind.

But that’s a digression. Global governance is a very bad idea. It is pro-statism and anti-democratic. And in the case of LOST, it’s an excuse to redistribute money from America to the rest of the world.

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We’re Sending Tax Dollars to a Paris-Based International Bureaucracy So It Can Work with “Occupy” Nutjobs to Push for Higher Taxes

I’m not a big fan of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. This Paris-based international bureaucracy doesn’t get as much attention as the United Nations or International Monetary Fund, but it’s probably does more damage to freedom and prosperity if measured on a per-dollar-spent basis.

For instance:

• The OECD, in an effort to promote redistributionism, has concocted absurdly misleading statistics claiming that there is more poverty in the US than in Greece, Hungary, Portugal, or Turkey.
• The OECD is pushing a “Multilateral Convention” that is designed to become something akin to a World Tax Organization, with the power to persecute nations with free-market tax policy.
• The OECD has endorsed Obama’s class-warfare agenda, publishing documents endorsing “higher marginal tax rates” so that the so-called rich “contribute their fair share.”

But now I’ve come across something that is bizarrely reprehensible. The bureaucrats in Paris are allying themselves with the cranks, buffoons, and totalitarians from the so-called Occupy movement.

In the bureaucracy’s quarterly magazine, the OECD Observer, one of the Occupy clowns was given a platform to promote more statism. The poorly written article is mostly filled with empty clichés and “change” and “challenges,” but it does specifically embrace the OECD’s anti-tax competition project as a tool to promote higher taxes and more redistributionism.

In OECD member countries, a grassroots movement has manifested itself in the overnight occupation of public space and the exercise of direct democracy… The first lesson to draw from Occupy is that civil society has the scope to be a dynamic force for change. …In London these efforts produced statements on corporations, economics, the environment and local government within weeks. …We all know that we face profound challenges in the way we organise our economies, our societies and our government. …There’s a reason why “We are the 99%” has become such a rallying cry. There are external threats to democratic governance too, and some of these may need to be tackled anew on an international scale. Tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions bring governments into a harmful race to the bottom that is against their population’s interests. They are a major driver of inequality, which we know correlates to poor health and social outcomes. The OECD has played an important role in drawing policymakers’ attention to these issues, but those efforts now need to be stepped up.

If you want the specific arguments about why tax competition and tax havens are desirable, I urge you to peruse the work of Allister Heath and Pierre Bessard.

The main purpose of this post, though, is to ask why American taxpayers are sending about $100 million each year to Paris to subsidize the OECD’s left-wing agenda? This video has more details.

Here are a few additional blurbs about OECD activities that are being financed with your tax dollars.

• The OECD has an anti-tax competition project designed to prop up Europe’s bankrupt welfare states.
• The OECD pulled off a hat trick of bad policy in a 2010 document, promoting a value-added tax, Obama’s global warming agenda, and failed Keynesian stimulus.
• The OECD endorsed Obamacare policies, as I explain in this video.
• The OECD even advocates higher taxes when nations are in the middle of economic crisis.
• The OECD also is pushing for higher taxes in Latin America, based on the odd notion that those nations should copy Europe’s failed welfare states.

The analogy isn’t perfect, but funding the OECD is the international version of subsidizing ACORN. A way for the left to use our money to push their agenda.

Which is why I’ve argued that the GOP – if it is serious about its claim of fiscal responsibility – should immediately end handouts for the Paris-based bureaucrats.

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