Sovereignty: Even if he’s not re-elected, the president hopes to leave behind a treaty giving a U.N. body veto power over the use of our territorial waters and to which we’d be required to give half of our offshore oil revenue.

The Law Of The Sea Treaty (LOST) has been lurking in the shadows for decades. Like the Kyoto Protocol that pretended to be an effort to save the earth from the poisoned fruit of the Industrial Revolution, LOST pretends to be an effort to protect the world’s oceans from environmental damage and remove it as a cause of potential conflicts between nations.

Like its Kyoto cousin, LOST is an attempt at the global redistribution of power and wealth, the embodiment of the progressive dream of the end of the nation state as we know it and the end of political freedom by giving veto over all of mankind’s activities to a global body — in this case something called the International Seabed Authority, located in Kingston, Jamaica.

The ISA would have the power to regulate 70% of the earth’s surface, placing seabed mining, fishing rights, deep-sea oil exploration and even the activities of the U.S. Navy under control of a global bureaucracy. It even provides for a global tax that would be paid directly to the ISA by companies seeking to develop the resources in and under the world’s oceans.

As Heritage Foundation senior fellow Peter Brookes notes, the U.S. government now can collect royalty revenues from oil and gas companies that wish to drill on our extended continental shelf — the undersea areas beyond 200 miles of our coast. But if we ratify LOST, we’d have to fork over as much as 7% of that revenue to the ISA for redistribution to poorer, landlocked countries.

Read More at investors.com

Class war is not just inevitable but justifiable writes Rick Bookstaber, who serves on the Obama administraiton’s Financial Stability Oversight Council.

I wonder if he thinks those Occupy Wall Street protesters breaking out the glass of banks is “justifiable.”

Rick Bookstaber, who currently serves on the Financial Stability Oversight Council, the federal body established under the Dodd-Frank Act to “ensure the stability of our nation’s financial system,” took issue with conservative commentator Tucker Carlson’s accusations that liberals were engaging in “class warfare” by seeking to blame the nation’s fiscal problems on a small number of wealthy individuals.

“There is little that matches the artfulness of the rich in waving off criticism of the widening income gap as ‘class warfare,’” Bookstaber wrote. “And there is little that matches the gullibility of the rest in following along.”

“I am not picking sides in this war,” he added, “but I believe such a war is justifiable, and indeed ultimately inevitable.”

Read More at sayanythingblog.com. Rob Port.

Chief Executive’s eighth annual survey of best states to do business shows Another Triumph for Texas
In Chief Executive’s eighth annual survey of CEO opinion of Best and Worst States in which to do business, Texas easily clinched the No. 1 rank, the eighth successive time it has done so. California earns the dubious honor of being ranked dead last for the eighth consecutive year.

This year, 650 business leaders responded to our annual survey, up from 550 in 2011. CEOs were asked to grade states in which they do business among a variety of areas, including tax and regulation, quality of workforce and living environment. The Lone Star State was given high marks foremost for its business-friendly tax and regulatory environment. But its workforce quality, second only to Utah’s, is also highly regarded.

Florida moved up from number three last year to number two.

It is perhaps no coincidence that Texas and Florida have the highest net migration of people to their states from 2001 to 2009. (By contrast, New York and California lost over 1.6 million and 1.5 million in net migration out of the states, respectively, over the same period.)

Read More at globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com. By Mike Shedlock.

Highlights of House GOP legislation cutting spending by more than $300 billion over the coming decade.

Food Stamps — Cuts $35.8 billion by eliminating benefit increases in President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus and tightening eligibility requirements. Cuts spending by 4 percent over coming decade.

Health Care — Cuts the president’s overhaul law in several ways, saving $66 billion. Cuts include requiring those receiving health insurance subsidies to repay excess subsidies when their income increases, eliminating grants to states to set up health insurance exchanges and repealing a fund for prevention efforts like cancer screenings and immunizations.

Financial Regulation — Repeals several elements of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law to save $30 billion, including $22.5 billion saved by repealing federal liquidation authority of “too big to fail” banks and other financial institutions, financed by assessments on other large institutions. Also eliminates funding for a new consumer protection bureau and a new mortgage assistance program aimed at helping people modify their home loans.

Federal Employee Pensions — Cuts deficits by $83 billion over 10 years, requiring federal workers to contribute more toward their pensions in increments phased in over five years. Workers hired after 1983 would contribute an additional 5 percent for a total contribution of 5.8 percent. Workers in the pre-1983 system — who are ineligible for Social Security — would also pay an additional 5 percent for a total contribution of 12 percent.

Read More at OfficialWire. AP.