U.N.'s Larger Role in UNCLOS is Bad for American Interests
Quicktabs: Citation
How about taxing authority? This will be the first time that an international organization has explicitly been given the ability to raise revenues." Now John Moore will quibble, I suspect based on past experience with him, that this is not really a tax. These are fees; these are tithings of some kind, permitting obligations.'" Whatever its name; we would begiving to a U.N. organization the ability to raise its own revenues. And this is going to have precedential implications, especially at a moment when the U.N. is angling to try to find other ways to raise revenues, starting with airline taxes that are already being imposed by some in order to pay for unobjectionable things like AIDS and tuberculosis and other medical treatments through U.N. facilities." That is something conservatives should be concerned about, especially since it ensures that the U.N. will be even less accountable than it is today when it relies on us for a quarter of its funding.
The charge has been made that this is a modest treaty, and we have not had any problem with people trying to use it to interfere with the use of our military and its mobility around the world, because it has not happened yet. This minor staff, this innocuous multilateral organization, is so inconsequential as to be of no concern in any of these respects. I must say again, that may be true today. In fact, it is not entirely surprising that it is true today since I believe that everyone who wishes to use this treaty against us has understood that they need to get us into the treaty before they start doing that, or else we will not get into the treaty. Now, does that sound conspiratorial? Well, again, I think if you are a conservative, the old adage "just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you" applies. We need to be suspicious, especially when dealing with the U.N. or agencies like the U.N., to say nothing of an organization that was crafted by a majority that was determined to create supra- national organizations to run two-thirds of the world; that is to say, the two-thirds of the planet that is covered by international waters.