News Poll: Trump, Clinton rule Empire State

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have double-digit leads in the race for their party’s nominations in New York.
Trump’s advantage is widespread in the Republican contest.  A new Fox News poll finds he leads among men, women, every age group, every income group, and among those with a college degree and those without.
Clinton’s the top choice among Democrats, as Bernie Sanders is only able to take the lead among younger voters and men.
First, the Republicans:  Trump dominates with 54 percent support among likely GOP primary voters.  John Kasich garners 22 percent and Ted Cruz is third with 15 percent.
CLICK TO READ THE POLL RESULTS
The poll, released Sunday, was conducted Monday through Thursday evenings.  Cruz had a convincing 13-point win over Trump in the Wisconsin Republican primary Tuesday.

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But the Empire State is a completely different world -- especially for Cruz who cracked wise about “New York values” in January.
“Very” conservative voters loved Cruz in the Badger State and gave him a primary season high of 65 percent support.  In the Empire State, 61 percent of them prefer Trump.  Just 19 percent of very conservatives go for Cruz.
There is a gender gap in Trump’s support -- although it only affects the magnitude of his lead.  He’s the favorite among 59 percent of men vs. 49 percent of women.
Republican voters without a college degree are 13 points more likely than college grads to pick Trump.
Women are the key to Kasich’s second-place showing, as they are almost twice as likely to back him as Cruz (26-14 percent).  The two receive roughly the same level of support among men.
"It's not just the statewide results that offer bad news for Cruz," says Republican pollster Daron Shaw, who conducts the Fox News Poll along with Democratic pollster Chris Anderson.  "Even outside of New York City and its suburbs, he's running way behind Trump and even a tad behind Kasich. That means Trump could sweep nearly all of the state's delegates."
There’s some room for movement before New York’s primary April 19, as nine percent of likely GOP primary voters are still undecided or say they plan to back a candidate other than one of the top three.
In addition, about one quarter say they might change their minds (23 percent).
Among Trump supporters, 83 percent feel certain they will vote for him, while 63 percent of Kasich backers say the same.  (There are too few Cruz supporters to break out.)
Kasich supporters are more likely to pick Cruz (44 percent) as their second choice candidate than Trump (26 percent).  And one quarter say “none of the above” (25 percent).
The Ohio governor is the second choice among Trump’s backers (40 percent) rather than Cruz (26 percent), while 28 percent refuse to name a second choice.
In the race for the Democratic nomination, Sanders is hoping to turn the momentum from his double-digit Wisconsin win into a home state victory in New York.
The trouble for Sanders is, Wisconsin is the kind of state he wins -- mostly white and independents could participate in the open primary.  New York is a more diverse state, and has a closed primary -- and that’s to Clinton’s advantage.  Plus, it’s been her home state more recently than Sanders.
The poll shows Clinton tops Sanders by 53-37 percent among NY likely Democratic primary voters.  Another nine percent are uncommitted.
Clinton’s clearly the pick among women (61-30 percent) and non-whites (56-37 percent).
Men give the edge to Sanders by just 47-43 percent.
“Sanders has a lot of work to do if he’s going to make this race a close one,” says Anderson.  “He’s currently losing among every demographic group with the exception of men and voters under age 45.  Many more middle-age New Yorkers are going to have to feel the Bern for Sanders to have a chance of catching Clinton.”
Young voters are Sanders’ biggest backers.  He’s up by 11 points among those under 45 (52-41 percent) -- and by 30 points among the under 35 crowd (63-33 percent).
The former NY senator holds a 27-point advantage among voters 45 and over (58-31 percent).
Among those living in a union household, Clinton’s up by 49-40 percent.
She also leads among Jewish voters (59-35 percent) as well as Catholics (53-34 percent).
Regionally, Clinton dominates Sanders in New York City (+19) and is even running slightly ahead beyond the city and its suburbs.
Both Clinton (85 percent) and Sanders supporters (79 percent) have a high degree of vote certainty.
Still, one in five Sanders backers says they could change their mind (20 percent).

Potential 2016 Matchups
In hypothetical matchups, both Sanders and Clinton trounce Trump among New York likely primary voters.
Trump trails Sanders by 19 points (54-35 percent) and Clinton by 16 (53-37 percent).
If it ends up being a Clinton-Trump ballot in the fall, over half of those backing Kasich say they would “seriously consider” voting for a third party candidate (45 percent) or not vote (9 percent).
Among those backing Sanders, just over one third says they would consider a third-party candidate (30 percent) or not vote (6 percent).
The Fox News Poll is conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R). The telephone poll (landline and cellphone) was conducted April 4-7, 2016, with live interviewers among a random sample of 1,403 New York voters selected from a statewide voter file (plus or minus 2.5 percentage points).  Results for the 801 likely Democratic primary voters have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points and for the 602 likely Republican primary voters it is plus or minus 4 points. 

Trump slams GOP nominating process as top aide accuses Cruz of 'gestapo tactics' to win delegates

Republican front-runner Donald Trump took a new round of shots at the GOP's nominating process Sunday, while his newly-hired convention manager Paul Manafort accused Trump's rival Ted Cruz of using "gestapo tactics" to earn delegate support at nominating conventions across the country. 
Speaking to thousands packed in a frigid airport hangar in western New York, Trump argued anew that the person who wins the most votes in the primary process should automatically be the GOP nominee.
"What they're trying to do is subvert the movement with crooked shenanigans," Trump said. The real estate mogul compared himself to Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, who is well behind Hillary Clinton in that party's delegate race despite a string of state wins.
"We should have won it a long time ago," Trump said. "But, you know, we keep losing where we're winning."
Trump was introduced at the rally by Buffalo real estate developer and 2010 New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino, who said that talk of a brokered Republican convention "suggests that they can take that right away from the American people to choose their leader."
Manafort, a veteran GOP strategist who worked on White House campaigns for President Gerald Ford in 1976 and Kansas Sen. Bob Dole in 1996, told NBC's "Meet The Press" that the Cruz campaign was using a "scorched earth" approach in which "they don't care about the party. If they don't get what they want, they blow it up."

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Manafort added that the Trump campaign is filing protests because the Cruz campaign is "not playing by the rules.”
“You go to his county conventions and you see the gestapo tactics," he said.

Trump has a 743-to-545 delegate lead over the Texas senator, with the end of the primary/caucus season fast approaching. Over the weekend, Cruz completed his sweep of Colorado's 34 delegates by locking up the remaining 13 at the party's state convention in Colorado Springs. He already had collected 21 delegates and visited the state to try to pad his numbers there.
Polls show Trump holding a sizable lead in the next big state contest, New York's April 19 primary, but Cruz is trying to chip away at Trump's home-state advantage in conservative pockets of the Empire State.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich is third with 143 delegates, behind Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who ended his campaign March 15 with 171 committed delegates.
Manafort insisted Sunday that he’s still connected enough to wrangle delegates.
"You would be surprised who's been calling me over the last week and where they're from," he said. "Do I know the 25-, 30-year-old delegates? No. Do I know the people who push buttons in a lot of these states? Yes."
However, Manafort made clear the Trump campaign won’t use strong-arm tactics.
“That’s not my style,” he told NBC. “That’s not Donald Trump’s style. That’s Ted Cruz’s style.”
Manafort also dismissed the notion that the Trump campaign has missed opportunities to get delegates through insider tactics and boasted that Cruz has and will continue to lose that way.
He said the Trump campaign has gotten all of the committee spots in Alabama and that it “wiped [Cruz] out" in a similar effort in Michigan.
“You’re going to see Ted Cruz get skunked in Nevada,” Manafort added.
Manafort made clear the race to get 1,237 delegates will likely extend until early June, which includes California’s GOP primary, with 172 delegates, and the New Jersey primary with 51 at stake.
“I’m confident there are several ways to get to 1,237,” he said.
Trump would need to win nearly 60 percent of all the remaining delegates to clinch the nomination before this summer's convention in Cleveland. So far, he's winning about 45 percent.
Manafort insisted being hired by the Trump campaign was not a shakeup, particularly amid Cruz’s come-from-behind win last week in Wisconsin.
He argued the campaign season is entering its end stages and that Trump must move from the free-wheeling, free-media style that made the first-time candidate the GOP presidential front-runner.
“Donald Trump has recognized that,” Manafort said, while arguing Trump still runs the campaign.

CIA director says agency will not use controversial interrogation techniques again

Who's The Boss?

CIA Director John Brennan has said that his spy agency will not use controversial interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, even if ordered to do so by a future president.
Brennan made the remarks in an interview with NBC News released Sunday. 
"I will not agree to carry out some of these tactics and techniques I've heard bandied about because this institution needs to endure," he said. Brennan later added that he would "not agree to having any CIA officer carrying out waterboarding again."
President Barack Obama banned waterboarding shortly after taking office in 2009. However, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has repeatedly promised that he would revive the practice if elected.
At a Republican debate in New Hampshire this past February, Trump said he would "bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding", an interrogation technique in which a detainee is made to feel that he is drowning.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Trump's greatest rival for the GOP nomination, said at that same debate that he would not make "widespread use" of the practice, but added that he did not believe the practice amounted to torture.
In December 2014, Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report claiming the interrogation methods used by the CIA in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks were "brutal and far worse" than the agency had represented to lawmakers.
The report alleged that the agency had tortured several suspected Al Qaeda detainees held in secret facilities in Europe and Asia. CIA officials claimed at the time that the interrogation methods produced valuable and actionable intelligence, including information that led U.S. forces to the whereabouts of Usama bin Laden in 2011.
That assessment was echoed by Brennan himself in his response to the report, which read in part, "The intelligence gained from the program was critical to our understanding of Al Qaeda and continues to inform our counterterrorism efforts to this day."
However, during his confirmation hearings to be CIA director in February 2013, Brennan said the intelligence committee's report "raises serious questions about the information that I was given" about the effectiveness of enhanced interrogation techniques.
Brennan later added, "I do not know what the truth is."

Mayor de Blasio's Cartoon

FBI probing NYC Mayor de Blasio's fundraising activities

NEW YORK –  US Attorney Preet Bharara now has Mayor de Blasio in his cross hairs — investigating his campaign fund-raising activities as part of a widening probe into NYPD corruption, sources said yesterday.
The feds are looking at how the mayor solicits campaign cash from members of the real-estate industry— and the fund-raising activities of his former campaign treasurer, Ross Offinger, the sources said.
A source who dealt with Offinger told The Post he “plays fast and loose” with campaign-finance regulations.
The Post revealed on Tuesday that de Blasio took campaign contributions from Jona Rechnitz, a real-estate investor suspected of giving high-ranking cops ­expensive gifts in exchange for favors.
Rechnitz and Jeremy Reichberg, who both served on the mayor’s inaugural committee in 2013, are at the center of the NYPD ­investigation.
Rechnitz donated $50,000 to de Blasio's nonprofit group, the Campaign for One New York, and Rechnitz and his wife shelled out the maximum $9,900 to the mayor’s 2013 campaign, records show.
In addition, Rechnitz was one of the biggest bundlers for de Blasio’s campaign, raking in more than $40,000 from contributors.
Hizzoner made his first visit to Borough Park after taking office in 2014 to Reichberg’s million-dollar-plus home for a Campaign for One New York fund-raiser.
De Blasio campaign operatives said they will give back the donations from Rechnitz and his wife but keep the more than $40,000 in bundled contributions.
“We are fully confident that the campaign has conducted itself legally and appropriately at all times,” campaign spokesman Dan Levitan said.

Sorority ditches Kentucky Derby party over "racial connotations"

Again, and again, and again.

 

 

There will not be a Kentucky Derby party at Dartmouth College this year because some students allege that one of the nation’s most prestigious horse races is racist.
And fair warning – before reading further you might want to make a batch of Mint Juleps. You’re going to need it.
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Back in 2015, a group of Black Lives Matter protestors targeted an exclusive Kentucky Derby party hosted by the ladies of Kappa Delta Epsilon – calling the event overtly racist and “recreating an Antebellum South atmosphere on the Ivy League campus.”
The protestors accused the party of being a “bastion of racism, exclusion and oppression.” They chanted, “What is Derby? It’s the face of genocide” and “What is Derby? It’s the face of police brutality.”
I searched The New York Times archives and could find no evidence of police brutality at the Derby – nor could I find any evidence of ethnic cleansings.
I can only imagine the angst and soul searching among the fragile Ivy League snowflakes as they contemplated the grave offense they had caused to the perpetually-offended, hashtag protesters.
To right the terrible injustice -- the sorority ladies met with members of the university’s Afro-American Society. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in what was most certainly a confab on “privilege.”
Shortly thereafter, Kappa Delta Epsilon decided to change the Kentucky Derby theme “because of its racial connotations.”
“[It is] related to pre-war southern culture,” KDE vice president Nikol Oydanich told The Dartmouth newspaper. “[The] Derby was a party that had the power to upset a lot of our classmates.”
And by “pre-war southern culture,” I reckon the young lady was referring to the Civil War.
There’s just one minor flaw in Kappa Delta Epsilon’s reasoning – the first running of the Kentucky Derby was held in 1875 – during Reconstruction.
That’s right, racing fans. The Kentucky Derby did not commence until 10 years after the war had ended. And for what it’s worth, Kentucky was officially neutral during the War Between the States.
Go ahead and take another swig of that Mint Julep.
KDE president Allison Chou told The Dartmouth that the protests leading to the change were helpful – an “opportunity to reflect on what it stands for and the inconsistencies between Derby and the sorority’s values.”
No ma’am. It’s a horse race – with a bunch of ladies wearing fancy hats.
It would be akin to accusing Colonel Sanders of being a racist because he fries chicken. Or refusing to wear clothing made from cotton because of its significance in “pre-war southern culture.”
So instead of a Derby party – the ladies are hosting an alcohol-free Woodstock party – because nothing screams tolerance and diversity like commemorating a bunch of tie-dyed, hippy-dippy liberals, doing Lord knows what in a field of debauchery.
It sounds to me like somebody’s been smoking the Colonel’s eleven herbs and spices.
What a bunch of finger-lickin’ morons.

New Jersey homeowner faces fine, jail for flying Donald Trump campaign flags

A New Jersey homeowner’s Donald Trump flags have run afoul of a town ordinance that could cost him a $2,000 fine or a 90-day sentence behind bars.
Joseph Hornick displays two “Trump Make America Great Again” campaign flags in front of his West Long Branch home and says he has a First Amendment right to express his support for the GOP presidential front-runner—despite what’s on the books.
“I’m not taking the flag down, and if I do 90 days in jail, I’ll do 90 days in jail,” Hornick said.

First Amendment Rights..........................Shall Not Be Denied In America. DONALD J. TRUMP - PRESIDENT 2017
Posted by Joseph Hornick on Sunday, April 3, 2016

The town prohibits the public display of political lawn signs more than 30 days before an election, according to NJ.com.
New Jersey doesn’t hold it’s primary until June 7.
He was ticketed March 25 after a resident who is a former Democratic councilman called police and questioned why his complaints about the flags to the municipal code enforcement officer had not resulted in a citation, NJ.com reported, citing a police report.

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Hornick contends he is not displaying a lawn sign—he’s flying a flag that’s akin to one a New York Giants fan might display.
"I'm not a football fan. I'm not a sports fan. One thing I have become is a Donald Trump fan," he told NJ.com.
But West Long Branch considers the Hornick's flags the same as political lawn signs.
Violators face fines of up to $2,000, 90 days in jail or both.
Hornick said when the cops showed up March 25 he thought they were to take a report on another incident of vandalism involving the flags.
He appears before a judge April 20.

Sanders wins Wyoming Democratic caucuses, Cruz takes Colorado delegates

You got to be Kidding?

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Saturday won the Wyoming Democratic caucuses to extend his winning streak, while GOP White House candidates compete for delegates in the Colorado state party convention.
Sanders had 56 percent of the vote, compared to 44 percent for primary frontrunner Hillary Clinton, with 96 percent of precincts reporting, according to the Associated Press, which called the race for Sanders.
Sanders has won seven of the last eight contests. Wyoming had only 14 delegates at stake, but another victory would help Sanders fuel that narrative about his campaign having momentum and potentially upsetting Clinton in her home state New York primary on April 19.
“It’s a beautiful state,” Sanders said at LaGuardia Community College, on the campaign trail in New York. “Thank you Wyoming.”
Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz on locked up 13 delegates at Colorado's state convention late Saturday, adding to the 21 that were pledged to him on Friday.
“Today was another resounding victory for conservatives, Republicans, and Americans who care about the future of our country. Utah, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and tonight’s incredible results in Colorado have proven this: Republicans are uniting behind our campaign because they want a leader with real solutions who will bring back jobs, freedom, and security,” Cruz' campaign said in a statement following the delegate decision.

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Cruz was the only GOP White House candidate to speak at the convention, though front-runner Donald Trump and Ohio Gov. John Kasich each sent surrogates.
“We’ll see morning in America again,” Cruz told the convention crowd in a speech full of conservative touchtone like “reigning in the EPA” and defeating “radical Islamic terrorists.”
Cruz on Friday won every assembly in the state's seven congressional districts, which began April 2 and culminated Friday.
According to an Associated Press count, Trump has 743 delegates, Cruz has 532 and Kasich has 143. It takes 1,237 to clinch the nomination, though there's a real chance no candidate will reach that mark by the national convention in Cleveland in July.
Of Cruz's Colorado delegates before Saturday, only 17 were formally pledged to him. But they were all included on the senator's slates and are largely state party officials who said they were barred from signing a formal pledge for Cruz but have promised to back him in balloting at the convention.
In Wyoming, Democrats in 23 counties caucused. The 14 delegates that were up for grabs are among the state’s 18 that will go to the Democratic National Convention, also in July.
“Once the inevitable frontrunner, Hillary Clinton has now lost her seventh straight contest," said Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus. "This embarrassing string of defeats to a 74-year old socialist from Vermont is another reminder of what a desperately flawed candidate she is, and how beatable she will be in November if she becomes the nominee."
Before Saturday, Clinton had 1,280 delegates compared to 1,030 for Sanders. And the count was 1,749-to-1,061 for Clinton when adding in super delegates. Either will need 2,383 delegates to win the nomination.
They both made stops Saturday in New York City, including Clinton at the famous Original Juniors restaurant in Brooklyn and Sanders at a diner in Long Island City and Bronx Community College.
At the college, Sanders essentially stuck to the major points of his campaign including calls for a more fair tax system. While he appeared to stop the recent attacks on Clinton, he did go after Trump.
“Donald Trump -- not that smart,” Sanders said. “That’s what demagogues like Donald Trump do. And don't give him too much credit. He didn't invent it. He's not that smart. They (are)  trying and divide us.”

UN Cartoon

Exclusive: The UN starts toward new control over the world's oceans

The United Nations has launched a far-reaching initiative that could give U.N.-sponsored authorities sway over the biological resources of the high seas—all the waters that lie outside national territories and economic zones.    
The potential shift in power involves multi-trillion-dollar issues, such as whether large areas—conceivably, as much as 30 percent-- of the world’s international waters should be designated as no-go areas to protect biological diversity; whether and how to require elaborate “environmental impact assessments” for future ocean development projects; and how to divide up the economic benefits from the future development of “marine genetic resources.”
Eden Charles, a diplomat from Trinidad and Tobago who is serving as the chairman for a U.N. preparatory committee that began the discussions this week underlined to Fox News that the talks are at a “very, very preliminary stage.”
Overall, the hoped-for treaty will cover “two-thirds of the oceans, almost half the planet,” says Lisa Speer, a senior official of the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which is in turn a lead member of a squadron of 33 environmentalist groups banded together as the High Seas Alliance to lobby for protectionist measures during the talks.
The rationale behind the discussions: easing the rising pressure on the world’s undersea biodiversity wrought by over-fishing, pollution, the drainage of nutrients and other substances from surrounding lands, disturbance of underwater seabeds, and fears of even greater threats from underwater industrial technology, including underwater exploration for hydrocarbons.
CLICK HERE FOR THE U.N. RESOLUTION MANDATING THE TREATY
In U.N. terms, the discussions are proceeding at something like flank speed—that is, a lot slower than a melting iceberg  bobbing in the north Atlantic. They began with the initial meeting on March 28 of the preparatory committee-- “prep-com” in U.N.-speak--of nations to discuss preliminary ideas until Friday, April 8. Another two-week prep-com session will take place in August, and two more next year.
These are expected to result by the end of 2017 in draft language for a planned oceans treaty that could then be chewed over for another year or two in broader international sessions.
The agreement that ensues from those discussions, however, is seen by some involved in its hoped-for creation as the salt-water equivalent of the Paris Agreement on climate change, which will be  formally signed at an April 22 ceremony in New York—a global, permanent and legally-binding deal for the management of Earth’s last frontier, which will spawn further layers of regulation in years to come.
“The climate negotiations showed the possibilities for us to come together,” Speer told Fox News.
Like the climate treaty, the intended oceans treaty envisages transfers of marine technology and investment to developing nations as part of the deal , along with some still far-from-specified portion of the wealth derived from marine biological discoveries, including genetic breakthroughs.
“One of the things we are looking at is how marine genetic resources will be conserved, sustainably used, and how the dividends will be shared,” says Speer.
One of the biggest backers of the preliminary talks is the Obama Administration. Even though the U.S. has never ratified the 1982 U.N. Law of the Sea Convention—the new talks are aimed at creating an “implementing agreement” under the Law of the Sea umbrella—the Administration is deeply involved in the negotiations, as are some of the world’s most powerful environmental organizations.
The U.S. also has a legal precedent for its involvement:  its ratification in 1996 of another “implementing agreement” under the Law of the Sea Convention that orchestrated the activities of a variety of regional fisheries management organizations across international waters, allowed for international enforcement, and a variety of other measures.
Ocean bio-preservation is also one of the 17 nebulous  Sustainable Development Goals endorsed by all the world’s governments, including the U.S. last September.
“The United States strongly supports conservation and sustainable use of the ocean and its resources, both within and beyond national jurisdiction,” a State Department official told Fox News.
That included “increased cooperation and coordination among states, international bodies, and relevant stakeholders to achieve better conservation and management of high seas resources,” not to mention “better management and planning for multiple uses and activities where they occur in areas beyond national jurisdiction.”
The Administration has already anted up domestically on some of the big-ticket possibilities under discussion, with, among other things, its huge expansion by executive order in September 2014 of the Remote Pacific Islands National Marine Monument in the central Pacific Ocean into a half-million-square-mile oceans preserve.
U.S. environmental groups are lobbying now for additional marine monument areas off the coast of New England, site of some of the U.S.’s most important Atlantic fisheries.
Such preserves—known as marine protected areas or MPAs, in Law of the Sea jargon—are a major focus of attention for the U.S.-based Pew Charitable Trusts, which has been lobbying governments around the world for years to create them.
So are environmental impact assessments, or EIAs, which are a focus for the High Seas Alliance as well—a bid to create not only environmental protection standards but also public review processes that will give non-governmental environmentalists a greater voice in what would pass muster as acceptable future ocean resources development.
Pew is the organization lobbying most loudly for a 30 percent set-aside of the high seas for preservation purposes—“although not completely no-take, no-use areas,” according to Elizabeth Wilson,  director of the non-profit organization’s international ocean policy program, who attended several days of the New York meeting.
Pew has also been funding pilot projects for satellite observation of protected zones as an efficient means of supporting law enforcement in the vast reaches of ocean that would be involved, as well as financing research that offers backing for the preserve concept.
As the first prepcom session neared its end, Wilson said the diplomatic talks “had gotten a lot further into the details than we expected it to do at this stage,”  and that “people were feeling pretty comfortable” with the concepts involved in the mammoth ocean discussions.
Comfort with concepts, and agreement on terms, however, are still two greatly different things.
Participants in the meeting were divided over such questions as whether a new accord would create a new international oceans authority to administer the exploitation of the world’s undersea biological resources, or whether ways could be found to expand existing authorities such as the regional fisheries management organizations and the International Seabed Authority, a U.N.-sponsored creation that is currently supposed to regulate undersea mining.
One of the “most animated” areas of discussion, prep-com chairman Charles told Fox News, was how the rewards of the world’s undersea bio-heritage could be shared. “We do not yet have a legal code for their exploitation,” he declared.
Some countries were arguing that all such resources be considered the “common heritage of mankind,” a code term for a socialist-leaning vision of shared international ownership.
Other countries were emphasizing traditional “freedom of the seas,” which apparently would leave more room for  private initiative.
In the case of MPAs, he said, “some member states say we first need to take stock to determine if the need for an MPA is there,” while others “say not in all circumstances.” There is also conceptual disagreement on whether such protections always need to be permanent, he said.
According to some scientific experts, there is also reason to question whether the undersea set-aside approach was really going to be all that effective in dealing with some of the world’s most pressing ocean problems, such as over-fishing.
Ray Hilborn, an internationally known fisheries expert at the University of Washington in Seattle, is one of the skeptics. Co-author of a recent study that is the groundbreaking effort to estimate the historical  extent of global fish stocks, he told Fox News that while over-fishing is a serious issue, “in the a big picture, we are not close to calamity at all.”
The study he co-authored shows that “about 20 percent of the globe’s fish stocks are over-fished,” he said, and stocks of many of the major species that are commercially exploited “are in better shape than smaller fish stocks, essentially because they are better managed.”
Many of the worst problems are in Pacific fisheries exploited by Asia, where the bigger issue is getting countries such as China and Korea to honor existing fisheries management organizations.
While  reforms of fisheries management are needed, the study says, “recovery can happen quickly, with the median fishery taking under 10 years to reach recovery targets.”
Closed-off ocean areas, Hilborn says, “are the crudest possible tool for fishing management. All it does is move boats somewhere else.”