Perhaps the greatest – and worst – example of President Obama’s UN-ing of America was his Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s December 2010 illegal Network Neutrality Internet power grab.

The Administration going to these unlawful lengths to commandeer control of the ‘Net makes it a little more difficult to persuade international autocrats and dictators to leave alone their portions of the World Wide Web.

Or ours.

Which brings us to the United Nations.

Behold the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) – a wing of the UN. They will be in December convening to renegotiate the 24-year-old treaty that deals with international oversight of the Internet.

And it doesn’t look good (shocking, I know.)

A growing number of countries are pushing greater governmental control and management of the Web’s availability, financial model and infrastructure…

China and Russia support the effort, but so do non-Western U.S. allies such as Brazil, South Africa and India.

Fabulous.

Lest we forget: Time and time and time again all over the world, when people’s Internet access is blocked, it is governments – China, Syria, Iran, North Korea, members of the United Nations – doing the blocking.

These are governments that will now be voting to give themselves greater international Internet authority, including – especially – over us. Behold the (standard-issue) UN Anti-America card.

They believe the current (Internet) model is “dominated” by the U.S., and want to “take that control and power away.”

Here at home, this is a strange bedfellow issue.  The pro-Net Neutrality likes of Google, Facebook and Netflix will be standing alongside the pro-freedom forces in opposition to this global power grab.  Why?

(FCC Republican Commissioner Robert) McDowell said the treaty could open the door to allowing revenue-hungry national governments to charge Internet giants such as Google, Facebook and Amazon for their data traffic on a “per click” basis. The more website visitors those companies get, the more they pay.

The whiplash-inducing hypocrisy of the pro-Net Neutrality folks is striking, but there is a sort of consistency here. In both instances, they are in favor of they themselves not paying any more to do business, which is perfectly understandable. If only they didn’t muddy the waters by lobbying government(s) to impose extra costs on others – like the incredibly expensive Net Neutrality on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) – to avoid paying their “fair share.”

The argument against increasing UN Internet control is nearly identical to the anti-Net Neutrality argument: If it ain’t broke, don’t let government(s) try to “fix” it.

In 1988, when the treaty was signed, fewer than 100,000 people used the Internet, Mr. McDowell said. Shortly after it was privatized in 1995, that number jumped to 16 million users. As of this year, it is up to 2 billion users, with another 500,000 joining every day.

“This phenomenal growth was the direct result of governments keeping their hands off the Internet sphere and relying instead on a private-sector, multi-stakeholder Internet governance model to keep it thriving,” he said.

Mr. McDowell attributed the massive growth of the Internet to freedom.

“So the whole point is, the more it migrated away from government control, the more it blossomed,” he said.

It obviously ain’t broke – so what’s to fix?

As the late, great Soviet Union sufferer and transcender Alexandr Solzhenitsyn rightly pointed out:

It is not a United Nations Organization but a United Governments Organization where all governments stand equal; those which are freely elected, those imposed forcibly, and those which have seized power with weapons.

So why should America’s free speech, free market Xanadu Internet be subjected to United Governments control — governments that time and again have shut down their own domestic Internets?

It, of course, should not be, which is why this UN vote must come up short.

We have about a year. Let us make it so.

The concept of one man one vote is essential to the freedoms of the American Republic. Allowing people to vote more than once, or allowing people to vote who by law don’t have that right, partially disenfranchises those Americans who are legally voting. The weight of the legal votes is watered-down by the inclusion of illegal votes. I would argue that protecting the concept of one man one vote should be a top priority of our government.

Progressive politicians and organizations of the progressive persuasion argue that making people prove their eligibility to vote, will suppress voter turnout, especially in the minority community.  But the only minority who will be disenfranchised will be people who have no legal right to vote.

Like most progressive organizations, the NAACP will do just about anything to ban states from requiring ID to vote (or register), so their latest tactic is to get the UN to call the requirement for voter identification, (hold on you may be surprised by this) racist!

The organisation will this week present evidence to the UN high commissioner on human rights of what it contends is a conscious attempt to “block the vote” on the part of state legislatures across the US. Next March the NAACP will send a delegation of legal experts to Geneva to enlist the support of the UN human rights council.

Wait a second. The UN Commission on Human Rights?? No worries for the state legislatures, they will blame it on Israel like they always do.

The NAACP contends that the America in the throes of a consciously conceived and orchestrated move to strip black and other ethnic minority groups of the right to vote. William Barber, a member of the association’s national board, said it was the “most vicious, co-ordinated and sinister attack to narrow participation in our democracy since the early 20th century”.

Forgetting for a moment that the United Nations has no jurisdiction over State Governments, and the only reason for the NAACP to go to the UN is to embarrass the US in the eyes of the world, I must admit that the NAACP is correct in a way. Americans who believe in the Constitution and feel the right to vote is sacred,  are trying to narrow participation to those who are legally qualified.

In its report, Defending Democracy: Confronting Modern Barriers to Voting Rights in America, the NAACP explores the voter suppression measures taking place particularly in southern and western states.

Fourteen states have passed a total of 25 measures that will unfairly restrict the right to vote, among black and Hispanic voters in particular.

The new measures are focused – not coincidentally, the association insists – in states with the fastest growing black populations (Florida, Georgia, Texas and North Carolina) and Latino populations (South Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee). The NAACP sees this as a cynical backlash to a surge in ethnic minority voting evident in 2008.

If it is a backlash it one that respects the Constitution and a justified reaction to the voter fraud of 2008. Remember how ACORN registered non eligible voters (including cartoon characters) in more than 14 states?

Or the people who got caught registering and voting more than once. There were even voting districts where more than 100% of the population voted.

That is the reason behind the new state laws, not restriction of voting.

In this age of technology, it is incredible that the leading democracy (yes I know we are a  Republic) in the word can be subjected to reducing the influence of legitimate voters by allowing voter fraud to to exist unchallenged.

What is wrong with presenting photo ID at the polling stations to make sure that the person voting is legally eligible? Arguing racism is fraudulent. The real rationale behind fighting voter ID laws is the progressives want to water down the voting power of the people with whom they disagree. There is no other reason. As the US is a center-right country the only way these people can win is by playing dirty and that’s just what the NAACP is doing. Sadly as they throw around the word racism where it doesn’t belong, real race issues that exist in this country are ignored.

My friend Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has more

CO2 is released not just by oceans when they warm (absorbed when they cool) or decaying plants, or people exhaling, but combusting “fossil fuels” like the coal, gas, and, in some places, oil used to create electricity. CO2 emissions generally correlate with economic prosperity–more on that, momentarily.

But there is even less to this absurdity than meets the eye. Here’s how the ClimateWire story opens:

UNITED NATIONS — Generating enough electricity to supply the 1.5 billion people on this planet who live without it does not necessarily have to add much carbon dioxide to the global mix, U.N. experts argued in their annual Human Development Index.

The report, released yesterday, takes on the nettlesome subject of how the world can help bring these billions, most of them impoverished and living in Africa, into the light. It argues that “providing basic energy services” could happen with a CO2 increase of only 0.8 percent.

The fear that adding this level of energy supply to world accounts would mean much higher carbon output is unfounded, said William Orme, of the U.N. Development Programme, during a press briefing here on the report.

“That’s false,” he said. “You can actually do all that without creating a 1 percent rise in carbon emissions.”

Think about that. According to a UN report — coincidentally timed in the run-up to talks next month on replacing the energy-rationing Kyoto Protocol — you can create electricity for just under a quarter of the world’s population without, per the UN, even a 1% increase in man’s marginal contribution to CO2! That’s called UN Math.

The first thing that jumps out to those of us trying to find a way to make this statement be true is this interpretation: “Basic energy services” is in the eye of the beholder, a beholder who has his, viewing the dramatically lesser basic needs of others. He who seeks what others have surely has a different perspective. So far, the Kyoto disaster has affirmed this.

And then there’s this interpretation, which actually is necessary in any reading of this claim. Once the lights go on, at some level, then no growth for you! You’ve got what we think you need, now shut up.

As stated, CO2 equates with economic activity, with the statistical hiccup of certain wealthy countries depending heavily on nuclear power for much of their prosperity, like France and, until very recently, Japan and Germany.

So here again we see the newly fashionable effort to redefine prosperity, writing out economic GDP in favor of a mishmash of statist ideals leaving despotic hellholes as supposedly happy little nirvanas compared to those of us who thought reducing drudgery, disease and premature death from brutish, nasty living was somehow a good thing.

As AEI’s Steve Hayward notes, one “typical example of popular wisdom is the Happy Planet Index, which ranks the ostensible ‘happiness’ of the United States at 150th out of 178 countries, chiefly on account of America’s carbon footprint.” Mmm.

Ignore for the moment the internal confusion of this ClimateWire paragraph (surely a typo, which seems to be the principal way they get things right), and catch the argument. “Still, the U.N. report says high living standards ‘need to be carbon-fueled and follow the examples of the richest countries.’ A high degree of fossil fuel consumption was not seen as improving a nation’s life expectancy or education level, for example.”

So guess what the UN has in store for them, while also working to rope us into agreeing to Kyoto-style rationing? The UN report suggests “off-grid renewable options.” Ah, yes, the old reliable — er, wait, unreliable, “intermittent” — wind and solar power. Remember, we didn’t say often or how long the lights would be on, did we?

Just behold those happy poor…er, representatives of noble cultures. So wise, educated in ways we wealthy people will never comprehend (such are the wages of carbon sin). They’ve got a light bulb now, and they can turn them on during the day when the sun shines to power it!

So, yes, UN, you can “provide electricity” to 1.5 billion people without even slightly increasing CO2 emissions.

That is, if you don’t mind turning down, and sometimes out, the lights of many others.

And possibly squirrels running on wheels in their cages. Lots of them. And pedal-power. Hey, you need to get in shape anyway.

I mean, there are many ways this could be true. Yet, under any reading, why would we place this responsibility in the hands of, or even anywhere near, a group of people who believe in energy scarcity, not abundance?

We’ve already got such a crew in charge, here, and look at the swell direction things are headed.

Corzine’s Obama Clause in MF Global Offering Stuns Wall Street

MF Global Holdings Ltd. (MF) took the cult of the Wall Street chief executive officer to a new level with its sale of bonds that pay a higher rate if Chairman and CEO Jon Corzine quits to take a job from the U.S. president.

Come on down and open your present, Democrats. But be warned, Obama-clause seems to be delivering coal for your stockings.

Meanwhile, MF Global CEO Jon Corzine reportedly had a handshake deal Sunday evening for Interactive Brokers  to buy the company.

But as the potential acquirer sifted through MF’s books, officials became concerned about the amount of customer funds held on deposit by MF Global. The difference was roughly $900 million at one point, although the amount remained fluid and never was resolved, according to WSJ sources.

Federal regulators have now started investigating the situation. According to the New York Times, authorities believe that the amount of unaccounted money could be close to $700 million. The report said that investigators are concerned that rather than just sloppy accounting, MF Global in its rush to remain afloat diverted some customer funds to support its own trades.

Flashback. Obama: Corzine is ‘our Wall Street guy‘

I wonder what Obama would have done were his hands not tied by existing law?

NEW YORK — UNESCO voted Monday to admit Palestine into the organization as its newest member, and the United States promptly responded by cutting off funding for the agency.

Acting under a legal requirement to cut U.S. funds to any U.N. agency that recognizes a Palestinian state, the State Department on Monday announced that the United States has stopped funding the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization because of the vote. Department spokesman Victoria Nuland told reporters that the Obama administration would not make a planned $60 million payment to the agency due this month.

Mayor Bloomberg (!) makes a point that needs to be sung from every mountain top:

It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis. It was, plain and simple, Congress who forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp.

Right on, Mike. Right on.

DOOM: My melancholy baby

A couple days ago, we noted that the shelf-life of the latest ‘fix’ for the Eurozone crisis was about two weeks. Turns out we were overly optimistic by a week and a half. The Greeks have announced they will put the ‘fix’ to a voter referendum, creating such a tidal wave of uncertainty the deal is effectively dead.

Rap Sheet: #OccupyDallas protester arrested for sexually assaulting a teen at the protest.

Attention members of the #SuperCommittee: Colorado voters yesterday rejected statewide tax increases by a big margin.

Nothing to see here: FBI arrests 8 in Florida for absentee-ballot fraud.

Obama has been declared tobacco-free by his physician. Now, if only we could all settle on a Republican to make the White House Obama-free after the net election. One has to wonder, what would Steve Jobs say?

The account of Jobs’ relationship with Obama, which comes toward the end of Isaacson’s book, takes up little more than four of its 571 pages. But it sheds light on both men – not always flattering – and on the relationship between U.S. business and the U.S. government; again, not always flattering.

Although this is seedy and unlawful at any time, it also goes in the “bad timing” file, especially for the Obama Administration and the UN.

Just as a brand new book further exposes the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (whose scams I dissected here, and in more disturbing detail here), and on the heels of the weekend surprise of a 2005 memo showing President Obama’s cooling/warming/population zealot of a “science czar” John Holdren is the kind of guy Mitt Romney turns to for developing his “environmental”’ policies, we’ve exposed the Obama administration and IPCC have cooperated to subvert U.S. transparency laws, operating domestically out of Holdren’s White House office.

With this morning’s Freedom of Information Act request, the explaining they have to do must begin by providing the taxpayer certain records regarding — including but not limited to — user names and passwords for a backchannel ‘cloud’ established to hide IPCC deliberations from FOIA, thereby also seeking to undermine the Presidential Records Act (PRA) of 1978.

The IPCC, you will recall, is Al Gore’s co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize and the host over the years of numerous scandals involving fudged and twisted climate data, research plagiarized from student theses, popular magazine articles, and green-group press releases, and, of course, the infamous Climategate emails which showed coordinated efforts to “hide the decline” in temperature data. This is not just one more scandal, however. This is much bigger.

Until the Request is posted at CEI.org, consider the following:

* CEI’s FOIA request details how the UN informed participants that it was motivated by embarrassing releases of earlier discussions (“ClimateGate” key among them) and, to circumvent the problem that national government transparency laws posed, the group itself.

* CEI reminds OSTP that this practice was described as “creat[ing] non-governmental accounts for official business” and “using the nongovernmental accounts specifically to avoid creating a record of the communications” in a recent analogous situation involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff. CEI expects similar congressional and media outrage at this similar practice to evade the applicable record-keeping laws.

* This effort has apparently been conducted with participation — thereby direct assistance and enabling — by the Obama White House which, shortly after taking office, appointed Holdren’s office to the lead role on IPCC work from the Department of Commerce. The plan to secretly create a FOIA-free zone was then implemented.

* This represents politically assisting the IPCC to enable UN, EU, and US bureaucrats and political appointees to avoid official email channels for specific official work of high public interest, performed on official time and using government computers, away from the prying eyes of increasingly skeptical taxpayers.

* CEI also reminds OSTP of a similar, ongoing effort by the administration to claim that records on U.S. government computers belong to the UN IPCC, refusing to produce them under FOIA. This practice was affirmed in a report by the Department of Commerce’s Office of Inspector General earlier this year.

As talks resume next month to forge legislation to act as a successor to the failed Kyoto Protocol, CEI looks forward to OSTP ceasing this unlawful activity and providing prompt access to the requested records so the taxpayer can know what they, and the IPCC, are up to.

So this morning, we requested all relevant records under FOIA, including all records sitting on that server, as they all were provided to US government employees for official purposes. This was filed with OSTP run by controversial “science czar” and, we now know, former Mitt Romney “climate” adviser John Holdren. The taxpayer deserves to know about this coordinated effort between Holdren’s OSTP and the UN.

Possibly one Republican candidate will call in the next debate for ending US funding of the IPCC, now shown to be actively working (with the Obama White House) to subvert US law. Enough is enough is enough. Possibly Governor Romney could defend Holdren and the IPCC.

In the meantime, we look for Rep. Henry Waxman to reprise the level of outrage he displayed over Abramoff to prove it was also not political and come down hard on the practice he so aggressively condemned and pursued, demanding preservation of records, threatening subpoenas, the whole works. With our request, that’s essentially what we’ve done, and we’d appreciate the company. You too, NPR.

Of course, it may not be of interest to the media, because it only uncovers unlawful dealings to hide an effort impacting our entire economy, the premise for that “fundamental transformation” of America, with the sleazy lobbying operation being the UN. We’ll wait on OSTP’s response and hope for the best from the Hill and Republican candidates.

These two headlines from today’s Global Warming Policy Foundation update ought to finally shake some sense into any of the many US companies pushing for our involvement in the Kyoto debacle. That’s a demand invented by Enron (greenies, I was in the room, don’t bother), and I particularly recall DuPont’s rep whining like a child to the US representative about their being denied the right to cash in, at a State Department briefing at one global confab I attended in 2002.

This is particularly true on the heels of the experience of Coca Cola and Unocal with the 1789 Alien Tort Claims Act, under which they were sued to pay for the actions of a government in whose country they operated.

Specifically, news reports indicate that:

“Armed troops acting on behalf of a British carbon trading company backed by the World Bank burned houses to the ground and killed children to evict Ugandans from their homes in the name of seizing land to protect against ‘global warming,’ a shocking illustration of how the climate change con is a barbarian form of neo-colonialism.

The evictions were ordered by New Forests Company, an outfit that seizes land in Africa to grow trees then sells the ‘carbon credits’ on to transnational corporations. The company is backed by the World Bank and HSBC. Its Board of Directors includes HSBC Managing Director Sajjad Sabur, as well as other former Goldman Sachs investment bankers…

Villagers told of how armed ‘security forces’ stormed their village and torched houses, burning an eight-year-child to death as they threatened to murder anyone who resisted while beating others.

‘We were in church,’ recalled Jean-Marie Tushabe, 26, a father of two. ‘I heard bullets being shot into the air.’

‘Cars were coming with police,’ Mr. Tushabe said, sitting among the ruins of his old home. ‘They headed straight to the houses. They took our plates, cups, mattresses, bed, pillows. Then we saw them getting a matchbox out of their pockets.’

‘But in this case, the government and the company said the settlers were illegal and evicted for a good cause: to protect the environment and help fight global warming,’ reports the New York Times.”

To beat some too-typical greens to their punch, no, this is not what happens when one introduces “market mechanisms” into environmental schemes.

The only armed goons I’ve read about under our Clean Air Act, with its cap-and-trade scheme (designed quite differently, to keep the price of coal-fired energy affordable, not make it “necessarily skyrocket”) came from EPA.

This is what happens with the UN running things.

And of course, as the UN’s own lead economist on these issues, Ottmar Edenhofer has acknowledged, “One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy.  This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore”; no, instead, “one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy.”

For a detailed treatment of how one line in the Judiciary Act of 1789 would be abused to imperil our industries while chilling international investment — when the real problem is the UN and its scheming little UN schemes — see my paper expanding on a discussion originally written for the Federalist Society, both of which are available here.

Keep these things in mind as you hear the usual green hysteria and demands in the run-up to November’s annual Kyoto negotiating session, this year’s “last chance to save humanity (or at least schemers’ schemes) in Durban, South Africa.

Then at Rio’s World Environment Summit in June, during our presidential campaign, which State Department officials privately insist Barack Obama will not attend, even as other heads of government do.

Mmm. This is “Rio-plus 20”, celebrating the 1992 confab where the ‘global governance’ gang ultimately behind the present massacre first roped us into the Kyoto process. As I recall, the president at the time also said he wouldn’t go. And that fella didn’t even promise to reverse the oceans’ rise (which the oceans have decided to do for themselves, incidentally, unless a mere inauguration and some crushing rules in the pipeline were enough to do the trick).

Don’t just say no to statist, global governance-types and rent-seeking companies trying to tie us down into these regimes promising to transfer them power and wealth, and secure markets for phony commodities and uneconomic goods where none would exist, and otherwise pick your pocket at the further cost of eroding our liberties. Say no, and let everyone know why.

The withdrawal of Somalia’s al-Qaida-linked rebels from their bases in Mogadishu and severe food shortages in southern Somalia may be linked to the same problem familiar to politicians the world over: tax collections.

The abandonment of Mogadishu by al-Shabab puts Somalia’s U.N.-backed government in its strongest position in years in a country where anarchy has reigned for two decades.

Somali drought victims who lived in territory controlled by al-Shabab say there was little incentive to plant surplus crops because the militants demanded so much of the harvest as a form of tax payment. Families had nothing to fall back on after drought withered this year’s crops, so they were forced to flee to the government-controlled capital.

Meyrahow Hashi, a mother of seven who fled her farm in the Lower Shabelle region, said al-Shabab demanded half of a farm’s output.

“Al-Shabab enforced the condition that you give 50 percent or your farm will be taken over,” she said. “Tax men were always coming and threatening us. Then droughts turned the farm fields into ghost lands.”

Somalis who once supported—out of fear or conviction—al-Shabab say high taxes, harsh punishments that often involved amputations and denial of food aid to famine victims have drained much support for the insurgency.

“How can you farm if the profits will be theirs?” asked Ali Gocoso, a former farmer also living in a hunger refugee camp. “Our labor was only profiting al-Shabab. We got nothing, except a few sacks they left to us.”

Read the whole thing here. This is a timely lesson on the impact of marginal tax rates.When the taxman is taking ever greater shares of each additional dollar, there is little incentive to earn that additional dollar.