Israel Commentary

Ford Motor, Obama and TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program)

Newsmax Magazine September 2010

"The Hype does not match the reality"

FORD MOTOR CO.'S REFUSAL to take a government bailout in 2009 seemed like an act of pure business bravado. Today, it seems brilliant. Despite record losses and plummeting sales, (at that time), Ford spumed a financial lifeline in the form of controversial Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, funds in January 2009. Ford's rivals at General Motors and Chrysler, however, snapped up billions in bailout cash.

While Ford has weathered the recession and seen sales stabilize, GM and Chrylser have struggled to repay their debts and have been damaged by onerous federal meddling in their businesses that came attached to the TARP funds. Perhaps worst of all is the damage to their reputations as poorly managed corporate welfare recipients who have been unwilling to pay back the government that rescued them.

(Not to mention the very questionable diversion of near 1/3 of their assets to the United Auto Workers, reneging on corporate bond obligations to the general public and pension funds in which they had placed their life savings) jsk.

When General Motors claimed in April that it had re-paid $6.7 billion it took from the government, a top Republican lawmaker fired back, saying that the automaker simply shuffled federal bailout funds to pay back taxpayers. Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa scolded GM for failing to acknowledge that the government still owns nearly 61 percentof the Detroit automaker. He questioned whether taxpayers would ever be compensated fully: "The hype does not match the reality. Taxpayers have not been repaid in full - far from it. Much of it will never be repaid."

In fact, GM made the loan payment from a $16 billion escrow fund the government created as part of the company's bankruptcy last year. Also, the majority of the $52 billion in federal aid to GM was converted into a 61 percent government ownership stake. Grassley calls it "an elaborate TARP money shuffle amounting to "taking TARP money out of one account to pay back TARP loans in another account."

Chrysler has paid back $1.9 billion to settle a $4 billion TARP loan. In a statement, a Treasury spokesman said. This repayment, while less than face value, is significantly more than the Treasury expected to recover on this loan." The government owns 9 percent of Chrysler. By taking the money, GM and Chrysler also were saddled with another burden Ford avoided: government orders for drastic business decisions such as shuttering under-performing dealerships.

The governments's own auditor recently concluded that the hasty decision to close scores of dealerships actually exacerbated job loss, while failing to achieve the promised cost savings. GM shutdown more than 2,000 dealer Chrysler eliminated 789 dealers, or about a quarter of its network, with less than a month's notice.

Will Obama Use His UN Veto?

By Steven J. Rosen

COMMENTARY

September 2010

Just before dawn on May 31, 2010, a team of Israeli commandos boarded a Turkish ship to enforce a blockade against the terrorist organization Hamas in Gaza. As they came aboard, the Israelis were assaulted by a violent faction of Islamic militants. A melee followed in which several of the commandos were seriously injured and nine of the Turkish militants were killed. The clash was over before the sun came up.

It was still daylight when, 5,600 miles away, the Israeli delegation to the United Nations was summoned to appear before an emergency session of the Security Council to be chastised for the actions of the commandos. Convened just hours after the violence, the council spent the night of May 31, into the wee hours of the morning, absorbed in "a highly emotional emergency session...[to express] international anger over the Israeli attack," as the Washington Post described it.

The scene was a familiar one. In 1983, Ronald Reagan's ambassador to the UN, Jeane Kirkpatrick, described it thus: "What takes place in the Security Council more closely resembles a mugging than either a political debate or an effort at problem-solving....Israel is cast as villain...in [a] melodrama...that features...many attackers and a great deal of verbal violence....The goal is isolation and humiliation of the victim....The attackers, encountering no obstacles, grow bolder, while other nations become progressively more reluctant to associate themselves with the accused, out of fear that they themselves will become a target of bloc hostility."

The reenactment of this familiar drama on May 31 opened with a presentation by Oscar Fernandez-Taranco, the assistant secretary-general of the United Nations for political affairs. His job was to speak for the institution as a whole and to frame the issue objectively for the debate, on behalf of his boss, Ban Ki-moon. Fernandez-Taranco explained that the bloodshed had occurred because Israel had refused to end "its counterproductive and unacceptable blockade of Gaza," which was exacerbating "the unmet needs of Gaza's civilian population." For balance, Fernandez-Taranco took note of Israel's claim that the demonstrators on board the Mari Marmara had used knives and clubs against Israeli naval personnel.

Turkey's foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, followed in lockstep. This was, he said, "murder conducted by a state" with "no justification whatsoever" against a flotilla whose "sole aim had been to provide much-needed relief." The doctrine of self-defense "did not in any way justify the actions taken by the Israeli forces." It was an "unlawful ambush...an act of barbarism...aggression on the high seas."

One speaker after another repeated the themes of an unjustified blockade using excessive force with no legal basis. None made any distinction between a blockade of arms and one against civilian goods. Each called for an end to the blockade, without explaining how Israel is to protect itself from terrorist contraband.

Finally, the Israeli representative, Daniel Carmon, got his chance to respond. He was the only speaker to point out that a state of armed conflict exists between Israel and Hamas; that Gaza is dominated by terrorists who seized it in a violent coup; and that arms were being smuggled into the territory, including by sea. He pointed out that a maritime blockade, even in international waters, is a legitimate and recognized measure in an armed conflict. Any responsible government would act accordingly in similar circumstances to protect its civilians. Israel regretted the loss of innocent life, but could not compromise its security. The soldiers boarding one of the ships were violently attacked and threatened with kidnap and lynching. They acted in self-defense.

I have saved the American delegation's response for last, because it is the one we want to examine closely. This emergency session of the Security Council was a moment of truth for the Obama administration, the kind of agonizing decision that reveals character and intent and priorities. Had George W. Bush still been in the White House, the action of the U.S. delegation could have been predicted with some confidence.

In July 2002, the Bush administration announced a policy toward Security Council resolutions against Israel, known as the Negroponte Doctrine. The Negroponte Doctrine, which was explicitly posted on the website of the U.S. mission to the United Nations in 2003, says, We will not support any resolution that dodges the explicit threat to Middle East peace posed by Hamas and other such terrorist groups....Any Security Council resolution...must contain...an explicit condemnation of Hamas [and other] organizations responsible for acts of terrorism; and...call for dismantling the infrastructure, which supports these terror operations.

The Obama administration has not yet revealed whether the United States remains committed to these Negroponte principles. As a candidate running against Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama implied that he was. On January 22, 2008, on the eve of the Democratic presidential primaries, he wrote to Zalmay Khalilzad, who was then Bush's ambassador to the United Nations, in words that could have been written in response to the post-flotilla meeting:
I urge you to ensure that the Security Council issue no statement and pass no resolution on the Gaza situation that does not fully condemn the rocket assault Hamas has been conducting on civilians in southern Israel....All of us are concerned about the impact of closed border crossings on Palestinian families. However, we have to understand why Israel is forced to do this. Gaza is governed by Hamas...a terrorist organization sworn to Israel's destruction, and Israeli civilians are being bombarded....Israel has the right to respond while seeking to minimize any impact on civilians. The Security Council should...make clear that Israel has the right to defend itself against such actions. If it cannot bring itself to make these common sense points, I urge you to ensure that it does not speak at all. In other words, he was urging an American veto.

The 6 million Jews of Israel, who have only one vote in the UN, face a billion and half Moslems, who have 50 votes. It is the American veto in the UN Security Council that provides a potential line of defense for them. But the statement actually made by Obama's spokesman at that emergency session on the Gaza flotilla incident in May 2010 fell far short of the pointed language used in Obama's 2008 letter to Khalilzad.

Alejandro Wolff, the deputy permanent U.S. representative to the United Nations, did not threaten to veto. He did not put the focus on the threat of Hamas. He did not mention the danger of arms infiltration. And he was silent on the legitimacy of the Israeli blockade. He did say that nonconfrontational mechanisms were available for the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza and that direct delivery by sea was not appropriate. He said that Hamas's interference had complicated humanitarian efforts in Gaza and had undermined security and prosperity for all Palestinians. But Wolff balanced this by saying that Israel had to do more to allow humanitarian goods, including construction materials, into Gaza, while recognizing Israel's legitimate security concerns.

At the end of the 90-minute public session devoted to these statements, the council went into a private executive session for intense behind-the-scenes bargaining over the wording of a statement to be issued by the council's president. Turkey demanded that the Presidential Statement condemn "in the strongest terms" the "Israeli act of aggression" as a "clear violation of international law"; that it ask Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to "undertake an independent international investigation by the U.N.," including "punishment of all responsible authorities"; and that it call for the immediate lifting of the blockade on Gaza.

The adoption of such a Presidential Statement requires consensus. Votes are not recorded. Here was an opportunity to defend Israel without necessarily going the whole way to a formal veto. Obama could have ensured, in his own words of 2008, "that the Security Council issue no statement and pass no resolution on the Gaza situation that does not...make clear that Israel has the right to defend itself....[and] why Israel is forced to do this." He could have insisted, as he once urged Khalilzad to insist, that if the Security Council "cannot bring itself to make these common sense points...it [should] not speak at all."

But that is not what happened. Negotiations produced a Presidential Statement weaker than the one demanded by Turkey but still very unfriendly to Israel. The statement condemned only "those acts" that resulted in deaths and did not cite Israel by name -- an elision for which the administration deserves credit. But it contained none of the elements that Obama had said were indispensable and should be sine qua non for the U.S. to agree to a Security Council statement.

It made no reference to the threat that gave rise to the blockade; no mention of Hamas or its commitment to destroy a member-state of the United Nations; no acknowledgement that Israel's purpose is to prevent smuggling of arms; no affirmation of Israel's right of self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter; not a syllable about terrorism; and overall, not one word that could be said to reflect the Israeli point of view.

Then there was this sentence: "The Security Council takes note of the statement of the U.N. Secretary-General on the need to have a full investigation into the matter ...conforming to international standards." This was taken to mean an investigation conducted by an international commission appointed by the secretary-general. This just months after the Goldstone Report, a UN report on the situation in Gaza about which the Obama administration declared it had "serious concerns" because of the report's "unbalanced focus on Israel" and its "moral equivalence between Israel...and the terrorist group Hamas."

American diplomats did prevent the Council Statement from authorizing such a UN investigation outright. The U.S. said that Israel, a country with a fiercely independent judiciary and strong democratic institutions, should be allowed to conduct its own investigation with the participation of international observers.

The result of Obama's reluctance to state unequivocally that he is opposed to a UN investigation was summarized by a Politico headline: "Secretary-General Gaza investigation gathers steam, as U.S. stays neutral." As former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said in response, "President Obama has not moved decisively to quash the idea, and his inaction is understood in U.N. circles as implicitly consenting to Mr. Ban's illegitimate initiative."

Obama's stance at the May 31 emergency session on the Gaza flotilla incident was the second time in a week that this administration put its multilateralist objectives ahead of the defense of Israel. At a UN conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which ended three days before the flotilla crisis, the Obama delegation agreed to unanimous adoption of a final statement. It did so even though the administration let it be known that it had "serious reservations" about its section on the Middle East, which singled out Israel as a violator of nonproliferation efforts and made no mention of Iran.

U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones said after the vote, "The United States deplores the decision to single out Israel in the Middle East section...[as well as] the failure of the resolution to mention Iran." The U.S. let it pass anyway, so that the conference could be considered a success.

After the fact, the administration tried to undo the damage it had caused. "The United States will not permit a conference or actions that could jeopardize Israel's national security," Jones said. "We will not accept any approach that singles out Israel or sets unrealistic expectations." But just hours earlier, the U.S. had done just that.

The questions raised by the U.S. response to the flotilla ambush and the proliferation issue are pointed and pregnant. Are we in for a stream of Security Council Presidential Statements and resolutions that are silent on the terrorist threat, that delegitimize and condemn Israel, summon it before hostile tribunals, curtail its freedom of action to defend its citizens, indict its leaders, and maybe eventually put it under sanctions?

FOR NEARLY 40 YEARS, since Richard Nixon's first veto in Israel's defense on September 10, 1972, every American president has used the veto to block resolutions hostile to Israel. Richard Nixon vetoed two such draft Security Council resolutions, Gerald Ford four, Ronald Reagan 18 (!), George H.W. Bush four, Bill Clinton three, and George W. Bush nine. Even Jimmy Carter mustered the courage to veto one, on April 30, 1980, because it was inimical to the Camp David Accords he had brokered.

In all, seven American presidents have recorded 41 vetoes in Israel's defense at the UN Security Council. Lack of balance in the 41 draft resolutions vetoed was the reason stated or implied most frequently to explain the need for a veto. Resolutions deploring Israel's use of force or Israeli security measures have been vetoed for failing to acknowledge and equally criticize actions on the Arab side, especially terrorist acts, that gave rise to the Israeli measures for self-defense. Resolutions proposing international conferences and other diplomatic initiatives favored by the Arabs have been vetoed because they would conflict with U.S. peace initiatives and direct negotiations among the parties. Several draft resolutions were vetoed because they were deemed inconsistent with Resolutions 242 and 338 or with signed peace agreements. At least two draft resolutions were vetoed because they blamed the government of Israel for extreme acts that were committed by a few Israeli citizens who were being investigated and prosecuted by the Israeli authorities.

In about half of the 41 veto statements, the American representative acknowledged that the United States shared concerns about a given Israeli action but objected to the wording of the resolution or with the appropriateness of bringing the issue to the Security Council. The actual number of anti-Israel resolutions and Presidential Statements that have been prevented from coming to a vote at all due to the credible threat of an American veto was probably far larger than these 41 recorded votes.

Céline Nahory, an expert on the Security Council, says they "must add up to many hundreds...in closed-door informal consultations [where] the Council largely conducts its business."
But this "hidden veto" is only as effective as the perceived threat of an actual veto.

If it becomes clear that there is an Obama policy of Veto Reticence, other members may lose their fear of an American slapdown—and the hidden veto will be lost, too. Is Obama soft on the veto? There are many reports suggesting exactly that. On April 29, the Guardian reported that David Hale, a deputy to U.S. special envoy George Mitchell, told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that Obama "may consider allowing the U.N. Security Council to censure Israel on settlement activity...rather than use its veto."

Foreign Policy magazine's Josh Rogin reported on June 14 that National Security Adviser Jones said the White House planned to support a separate international investigation if one was initiated at the UN. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley responded noncommittally that day, "We'll listen to what the Secretary-General has in mind and make a judgment then."

Reuters concluded on June 8 that "under President Barack Obama, the United States no longer provides Israel with automatic support at the United Nations, where the Jewish state faces a constant barrage of criticism and condemnation."Obama may face more draft Security Council resolutions on Israel before long.

In November 2009, "chief negotiator" Saeb Erekat said that the Palestinian Authority was preparing to approach the UN Security Council for a resolution declaring a Palestinian state within the 1967 boundaries, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Abbas had presented it to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and to Russia, Erekat said, and had received positive responses. If the Security Council recognized a Palestinian state conforming to the boundaries that prevailed before the outbreak of the Six-Day War in 1967, Israeli communities across the "Green Line," including those in East Jerusalem, would be considered null and void.

Erekat said that the Arabs would approach the Security Council when the time was right. And it might be—soon. If the Israeli cabinet resumes construction in settlements when the self-imposed 10-month moratorium ends on September 26, the Palestinians may think it prudent to move on their provocation.
Other matters could also reach the UN Security Council in the next 12 to 24 months. Obama's decision to reject compromises over settlements that had been crafted by previous administrations and to confront Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the issue in May 2009 and March 2010 may have planted ideas in Arab minds. They may think that a wedge can be driven between the United States and Israel by putting the settlements and Jerusalem issues in a Security Council resolution that Obama might be loath to veto.

Nor does this exhaust the list. Hamas and Hezbollah could launch terrorist acts against Israel from behind civilian shields, and when, inevitably, the Israeli response causes civilian casualties on the Arab side, their allies can go to the Security Council to condemn Israel for "excessive" or "disproportionate" use of force.
It is reasonable to predict that Barack Obama will soon face the veto issue again at the Security Council.

If Obama intends to be the first president since 1970 not to cast a veto in Israel's defense, the consequences for the Middle East are going to be grave. If the United States will no longer stand in the way, why would Palestinians and Arabs feel they might have to make sacrifices in honest and direct negotiations with Israel when they have an automatic majority at the Security Council that can give them what they want for free?

Obama himself might pay a price. History tells the tale. On nine substantive votes on the Middle East taken in the Security Council between January 1979 and August 1980, the administration of Jimmy Carter abstained seven times, and, in March 1980, it voted for a resolution condemning Israeli settlement activity in Jerusalem. Democrats were aghast. New York Senator Daniel P. Moynihan, who had served as UN ambassador five years earlier, said, "As a direct result of [Carter Administration] policy, the Security Council was allowed to degenerate to the condition of the General Assembly."
Carter admitted that the March 1980 Security Council vote against Israeli housing in Jerusalem hurt him badly in the 1980 Democratic presidential primary in New York, where earlier polls prior to that vote had shown him leading. Senator Edward Kennedy beat the incumbent president, by 59 percent to 41. Carter told the New York Times, "it was the United Nations vote," a conclusion shared by his top strategists. An interesting augur for the future, perhaps.

Steven J. Rosen served for 23 years as a senior official of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. He is now the director of the Washington Project of the Middle East Forum.

The Middle East Forum

PM Netanyahu: Are you negotiating for another Gaza?

Why Gush Katif still matters

By Moshe Dann  
The Jewish Press, August 27, 2010

The expulsion of 10,000 Jews from their homes five years ago was not a localized event in the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria. It was a national implosion, a national disgrace. It caused enormous physical, psychological, social, cultural, military and strategic damage to the entire nation – and it still does. Like an ecological disaster, its foulness still seeps through our foundations, and continues to poison us.

Undermined by enforcing a political agenda, the entire political system, the media and judicial institutions refused to act responsibly. Basic civil and human rights of Jews were abandoned. Those responsible for welfare and proper compensation misled and lied; led by Sela, the Disengagement Authority, our country was in denial. Our own political and many spiritual leaders – those for whom we voted, in whom we trusted – failed to organize and prevent this catastrophe. Ministers who disagreed were fired; public debate was suppressed.

The Knesset was impotent and negligent; it did not insist on proper procedures, to which all citizens are entitled; and no one was held accountable. Our IDF, of which we are part, in which we believed, was brainwashed and turned into zombies; those who refused to participate were heavily punished – a misuse of the IDF which was illegal and immoral.

The media protected Arik Sharon and those who planned, organized and carried out their pernicious plans because they agreed with his agenda. The perpetrators were even honored and promoted. Military and strategic advisers who disagreed with Sharon remained silent in order to keep their positions.

We believed that those we elected, and the institutions of government, were fair and honest. We were wrong. The expulsion and destruction of 25 Jewish communities is a symbol of national betrayal. The same toxic thinking led to the removal of Jewish communities from Sinai in 1982, and the Oslo Accords, which brought PLO terrorists to power and caused the slaughter of thousands of Jews, and wounding of tens of thousands more. The product of corruption, deception, greed and arrogance, disengagement is an example of cruel indifference and the abuse of power. We are still stuck there.

DISENGAGEMENT LEFT a deep wound that will not heal, not only because lives and homes were destroyed, but because it was immoral, unjust and irrational. The knife of perfidy is still in our spiritual guts; it is an ongoing trauma of our neshama – not just the people who suffered physically and mentally, but a national deception. Disengagement, Hamas and Hizbullah remind us, symbolizes not pride and victory, but our shame and defeat. The tragedy of the policy of retreat – unilateral withdrawal – still advocated by Defense Minister Ehud Barak – is that it accomplished nothing.

Billions of dollars were wasted that could have been spent to improve roads, which would have saved hundreds of lives every year, improve our educational and health systems, build a fence along the Egyptian border to prevent smuggling and illegal immigration, provide public housing, and build an efficient rapid transit system. Imagine the billions that would have been saved and more billions earned every year by implementing such projects!

Obsessed by the task of destroying Jewish communities and brainwashing the public, prime minister Sharon’s government neglected Israel’s security, endangering us all. For example, it failed to respond to Iran’s nuclear threat – which in 2005 consisted of only one facility; it failed to prepare the IDF for the threat from Hizbullah – which led to Israel’s failures in 2006; it failed to protect Israelis near the Gaza Strip from bombardment, failed to stem the rise of Hamas in Gaza, and failed to stop the proliferation of smuggling tunnels, thereby setting the stage for the incursion into Gaza in 2008/9.

Those who planned and executed the disengagement, who supported it, especially those who volunteered to help, and those who remained silent, are responsible for this trauma. While talking incessantly about peace with Arabs, they ignore the need to make peace with their fellow Jews. Yet, there has been no investigation; no one has been blamed, punished, or even taken responsibility for this failure.

DISENGAGEMENT WAS a denial of Jewish sovereignty in Eretz Yisrael; it was part of an anti-Zionist, anti-Jewish and anti-democratic plan of unilateral withdrawal that began with the Oslo Accords (1993), was followed by the retreat from South Lebanon (2000), and continues with the arbitrary and discriminatory destruction of Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria.

Had those responsible learned something from these mistakes, it would make the sacrifices bearable. Instead, they pursue the same policies, as if nothing had happened.

Yet, we are not helpless. We can resist brainwashing and resignation by supporting Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria, the Golan Heights and eastern Jerusalem. We can insist that Eretz Yisrael (“Palestine” as it was called by the League of Nations and in the British Mandate) is the national homeland of the Jewish people; Jerusalem is our spiritual and national capital. We will not be broken. That is the meaning of Gush Katif today.

Commentary on the New York Times OpEd by Gadi Taub

Those Damn Settlers

By Jerome S. Kaufman

Once again the New York Times publishes an OpEd promoting a fool proof solution for the Israeli/Arab conflict. Gadi Taub, assistant professor of communications and public policy at Hebrew University in Jerusalem solves the problem by simply getting rid of those awful 130,000 orthodox settlers and their settlements in Judea Samaria (West Bank).

The Israel Foreign Ministry however, reminds us that these settlements are perfectly legal under international law: "The Fourth Geneva Convention was certainly not intended to prevent individuals from living on their ancestral lands or on property that had been illegally taken from them. Many present-day Israeli settlements have been established on sites that were home to Jewish communities in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) in previous generations, in an expression of the Jewish people's deep historic and religious connection with the land. Many of the most ancient and holy Jewish sites, including the Cave of the Patriarchs (the burial site of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) and Rachel's Tomb, are located in these areas. Jewish communities, such as in Hebron (where Jews lived until they were massacred in 1929), existed throughout the centuries. Other communities, such as the Gush Etzion bloc in Judea, were founded before 1948 under the internationally endorsed British Mandate."

Never mind removal of the settlements will result in the loss of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) along with Israel’s priceless defensive barrier, the Judean Mountains rising steeply from the Jordan valley. Never mind, an Arab Palestinian state with Barack Obama’s blessing, would be quickly created. According to this strategy Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah will become Israel's bosom buddies with peace reigning forever.

Forget the fact that every piece of territory given to the Arabs by the Israelis in their abject hope for “peace” has become just another launching pad for lethal terror. Have the Israeli academic Leftists chosen to forget the Lebanese Security Zone withdrawal with the abandonment of Israel's Lebanese Christian allies and the resultant complete take-over by Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border?

What about Ariel Sharon’s abandonment of Gaza and its brave Israeli settlers allowing it to become Hamastan, a permanent huge thorn in Israel’s underbelly and a launching pad for thousands of rockets further and further into southern Israel? Is there any doubt a viable Ariel Sharon would be turning over in shame over what he has created.

Does it take any foresight to understand that is exactly what will happen with the abandonment of the territory of Judea and Samaria? Will it take more than 48 hours for it to become another Fatahstan and, in the wink of an eye, another Hamastan?
Will Israel continue to force march itself on this road to self-destruction? In the meantime, Israel is rapidly shrinking its borders and natural defensive barriers to a point where even the glorious IDF will be unable to defend its citizens.

Taub pronounces, with great foreboding, that the religious settlers will, “spell the end of the Israel “we” have known.” He may be right there. Maybe the Israelis will finally get rid of his particular “we” - the legions of Left wing academics that have taken over the educational system of the country, defamed its glorious 3000 year history, warped the minds of the Israelis against their own religion, their special existence and their amazing competence.

In fact, the Israel “known” by the rest of Israelis is a smashing success. In just 60 plus years, Israel has become an economic, scientific and military powerhouse - the envy of all its neighbors, enemies and supposed friends round the world. It has grown from 600,000 destitute powerless souls to a nation of near 7 million incorporating about 1.5 million Arabs that live light years better than their brothers in the surrounding Arab nations and show no inclination to leave.

Also, completely ignored by Taub is the major contributions of the religious Zionists. They enthusiastically embrace the defense of their homeland and make up a large percentage of the most dangerous volunteer military units of the Israel Defense Forces. These are the true defenders of Israel rather than far Left academics distorting history, using discredited demographic statistics, demeaning religion and spewing hatred against an essential element of the Israeli population.

Taub has also descended to historical revisionism as a basic tool for his discourse. Yes, there were isolated ultra Orthodox Jews that opposed the Jewish State but it was rather establishment Jews that campaigned against Herzl and, some 50 years later, did the same against the great Ze’ev Jabotinsky, thwarting his every move to form a self-sufficient Jewish nation.

These establishment Jews lived in fear, immersed in their sad, desperate attempt to disappear into the woodwork, to assimilate as Russians, Brits, Slavs, Hungarians, Germans, Communists, Socialists, and now have switched to universalists, environmentalists, conservationists, academics - whatever designation that could becloud their Jewish identity. One would think that the lessons of Adolf Hitler would discourage later Jews from this sick self-deception. Not so.

Finally, if G-d forbid, the Israeli government chose to abandon these 130,000 exemplary citizens, where will they put them? How would the government support them? Would they be doomed to the same poverty and homelessness as the refugees from the Gaza withdrawal? It is beyond belief that any one who truly understands our history and the existential importance of this land and these settlements could make such recommendations.

WHO DARES NOT ALLOW JEWS TO BUILD IN THEIR FINALLY REGAINED BIBLICAL HOMELAND?

ZIONIST ORG. OF AMERICA TO P.M. NETANYAHU:
AFTER TEN MONTH FREEZE, END HARDSHIP TO JEWS AND ALLOW BUILDING AS YOU PROMISED

(Not to mention the promise of a far greater power than you or any of the other negotiators) jsk
 
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) is urging the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to accede to international and U.S. pressure, for a continuation of the 10-month freeze on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria which the Netanyahu government imposed in November 2009. The 10-month freeze, which is due to end on September 26, was adopted by the Israeli government after Prime Minister Netanyahu pleaded with the Knesset, the Cabinet and the Israeli people, including the Jews living in Judea and Samaria,  to accept it as an exceptional, temporary measure, after which construction would immediately resume.

The freeze has produced no pro-peace actions from the Palestinians. They haven’t arrested terrorists, outlawed terrorist groups and ended the incitement to hatred and murder against Jews that suffuses the PA-controlled media, mosques, schools and youth camps. The PA not only has not fulfilled its commitments, it glorifies terrorists and violence.

Only in the past week, Mahmoud Abbas praised Amin Al-Hindi one of the senior planners of 1972 Munich Olympics terrorist operation, Abbas, PA prime minister Salam Fayyad and other high PA officials attended al-Hindi’s military-style funeral, and the PA official newspaper described him as “one of the stars who sparkled ... at the sports stadium in Munich.”
 
Moreover, it is absurd extending the freeze in order to facilitate negotiations with a non-peaceful interlocutor – the PA – when the PA does not even control the people and territory in question. At present, Gaza, which comprises 40% of Palestinian Arabs, is under the rule of Hamas terrorists, with their genocidal program, enunciated in their Charter, of destroying Israel and murdering Jews. Cross-border raids and rocket assaults upon Israel from Gaza would continue, regardless of any agreement that might be signed. Thus, not only is there a lack of peace and security in Gaza, but there is not even a single Palestinian governing authority or entity with which to negotiate.
 
The construction freeze not only prevents Jewish communities from growing and flourishing within already defined boundaries, as they have every right to do. It also involves extraordinary hardship: telling Israeli families that they may not add a room to their house or a floor to an apartment, or build schools in their communities, means that people must pick up and leave their homes and that children have to move from their communities and families to seek employment and housing elsewhere.

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “The ZOA upholds the view that even if there were a sound moral or strategic reason for Israel to bar Jews, and only Jews, from building homes and enlarging their communities in Judea and Samaria, the biblical, legal and historic heartland of the Jewish people. The PA has done nothing since the construction freeze was instituted to justify any Israeli concession. The PA only made it an issue after the Obama Administration came to office and publicly demanded that Israel institute such a freeze. The truth, of course, is that the Arabs do not want a state alongside Israel – they want Israel’s destruction and therefore have refused every generous peace deal.
 
“Rarely do moral, legal and strategic arguments coincide so fully. Israel should not renew the construction freeze. The Obama Administration should not pressure Israel to extend the construction freeze which has been prejudicial of Jewish rights, unhelpful in creating the conditions for peace, harmed Israel strategically and encouraged the PA to make no concessions or reforms for peace by arresting terrorists and ending incitement. This freeze doesn’t bring peace – accepting Israel right to exist as a Jewish state, arresting terrorists and ending incitement does.

President Obama should be pressuring the Palestinian Arabs to fulfill these obligations which can bring peace, not pressure Israel to continue the construction freeze, which will only make the Palestinian Arabs more intransigent and therefore impede peace.”
 
 

Obama@70/30?

BY FRED BARNES, Executive Editor

The Weekly Standard August 30 - September 6, 2010

Recovery summer, opposition to Arizona’s immigration law, negative campaigning, and intervention in the Ground Zero mosque dispute—call them Obama’s Four Disasters. As policy, they’re questionable. As political exercises, they’re losers. As clues about Obama, they’re evidence he’s lost his political knack.

What was Obama thinking? These weren’t initiatives taken suddenly. They were carefully thought out and plotted, no doubt in expectation the president would gain politically and so would Democratic candidates. Whatever calculations the White House made, they were faulty.

Recovery summer. This was proclaimed in June, with fanfare, in a briefing by Vice President Biden and the issuance of a report titled “Summer of Recovery: Project Activity Increases in Summer 2010.” The report said “millions of Americans [are] on the job today thanks to the Recovery Act”—better known as the “stimulus package”—but its work is not done. “Summer 2010 is actually poised to be the most active Recovery Act season yet.”

Not quite. Obama, Biden, and company should have known better. It’s true there were indicators the economy would grow and hiring by private firms would increase. But anyone who traveled outside Washington would quickly discover that slow growth and minimal hiring were at least as likely to occur. And they have. The economy has hit the brakes, the stock market is stagnant, the jobs picture has -worsened, unemployment claims are up, and the notion of a summer of recovery has become an embarrassment.

If there were even a glimmer of doubt about a summertime boom, you wouldn’t want to put a chronic exaggerator like Biden out front. He tends to gush uncontrollably. The stimulus will cause “even more ripple effects” than ever this summer, he declared. And more jobs means a lot more lunch breaks at the local diner because there weren’t any lunch breaks, there weren’t the jobs that existed; and a lot more trips to the barbershop, to the movies, to the department store, helping those businesses they go to maintain their employment base and increase the employment base. Sounds nice. Too bad it hasn’t happened.

Opposition to the Arizona immigration law. This is what’s known as a 70-30 issue. Obama has taken the 30 percent position, which puts him athwart the vast majority of Americans. The White House said the decision to file suit against the Arizona law was made by Attorney General Eric Holder. But Holder works for Obama, who could have told him to back off.

There are several reasons this would have made sense. The law was not likely to have prompted a wave of profiling of Hispanics. It was (and is) popular in Arizona, and the more folks around the country heard about it, the more they liked it (and still do). 
It also would’ve bolstered Obama’s drive for immigration reform. The president favors the comprehensive approach, which includes amnesty for the 12 million illegal immigrants in the country!
Given the politics of the issue, the only way to get what Obama wants is by first stepping up enforcement of immigration laws. Instead he opted for nullifying a popular enforcement statute.

Negative campaigning. Obama’s great gift as a politician is the ability to rise above the normal pushing, shoving, and name-calling of politics and appear statesmanlike. He’s derided these days by Republicans for his rhetoric in 2008 about hope and change, ending polarization, and changing the way Washington does business. But it’s what elected him. Now he’s abandoned it. In his current stump speech, he does two things. He talks about “a lot of things I’m very proud of that we’ve done over the last two years,” including health care reform. And he attacks Republicans for “constant, nonstop opposition on everything.” Guess which one the media devours. His criticism of Republicans is not limited to political appearances. He’s begun attacking them in his Saturday radio address from the White House. This is both unappealing and unpresidential.

Obama has fallen in love with an analogy about Republicans driving a car—a metaphor for the economy—into a ditch and asking for the keys back now that Obama has pulled it out. It’s not particularly clever, but he dwells on it. “It has since become the Mr. Potato Head of campaign stump speech metaphors,” wrote Carol E. Lee of Politico. “The president keeps expanding on it.” That’s not a compliment.

The Ground Zero mosque. This is another 70-30 issue, and Obama is again in the minority. We know his decision to defend the plan of Muslims to build a mosque near Ground Zero wasn’t a spur of the moment thing. He put out a prepared text of his speech on this subject before it was delivered to a group of Muslims at a Ramadan event at the White House. He backtracked the next day.

Until then, he’d wisely stayed out of the controversy, his press secretary dismissing it as a “local issue.” There was nothing to be gained and a lot to lose by jumping in. Yet he couldn’t resist holding forth, just as he couldn’t when his pal Skip Gates was arrested. Obama is not one to hold his tongue, no matter what the subject. He once again took the position of the elites against that of most Americans.

The contrast between the political adroitness of Obama as a presidential candidate and Obama as president is striking. His campaign was nearly error-free. As president, he’s made a string of unforced errors. He’s lost his touch, and chances are it won’t come back.
.

FROM REPRESENTATIVE ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, 18TH DISTRICT, FLORIDA, RANKING MEMBER COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Is your representative doing this kind of work for Israel? If not, why continue to vote for him or her in the November election?

Dear Pro-Israel Friends:

I am writing to share with you some of my recent efforts to stop the threat posed to the U.S. and Israel by the Iranian and Syrian regime and the violent extremist groups they sponsor, like Hamas and Hezbollah; to combat anti-Semitic and anti-Israel efforts at the United Nations and elsewhere; and to support Israel's right to self-defense and to exist as a democratic, Jewish State.

As Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I will continue to fight to preserve and strengthen the U.S.-Israel alliance and to support Israel in our shared pursuit of security, peace, and freedom. Addressing the Iranian and Syrian Threats: The Iranian and Syrian regime has continued to demonstrate increasingly aggressive behavior and rhetoric against the United States, Israel, and the Jewish people.

In February, the International Atomic Energy Agency stated that Iran has amassed enough uranium for a breakout nuclear weapons capability. Meanwhile, Syria continues to follow in Iran's footsteps, reportedly providing long-range missiles and other assistance to Hezbollah, while continuing to cover-up evidence of its alleged secret nuclear program. To stop the Iranian and Syrian threats:

• I was the lead co-sponsor of the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act, which was signed into law on July 1, 2010. It strengthens and expands US sanctions on Iran,Targeting targeting Iran's greatest vulnerabilities: Its energy sector and its dependence on importing refined petroleum. It also authorizes sanctions on Iranian officials responsible for human rights abuses.

• I have also introduced the Security through Termination of Proliferation (STOP) Act (H.R. 485). It states that existing U.S, sanctions with respect to Iran. North Korea and Syria shall remain until the President certifies that each regime has individually dismantled its weapons of mass destruction programs.

• I have also introduced the Iran Threat Reduction Act (H.R. 1208), which aims to address the comprehensive threat posed by Iran and specifically states that US sanctions with respect to Iran shall remain until the President certifies that Iran has verifiably dismantled its weapons of mass destruction programs and cease its support for international terrorism.

• I have also introduced the Syria Accountability and Liberation Act (H.R. 1206) to strengthen sanctions on Syria, especially its energy sector - its Achilles' Heel.

The United Nations continues trying to prevent Israel from defending itself against those who seek its destruction. The UN also fails to recognize the destructive actions of Israel's enemies. I have introduced H.R. 557, the United Nations Transparency, Accountability, and Reform Act, which conditions funding to include a provision to stop anti-Israel sentiment at the UN.

President Obama has authorized hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). I have urged the President to cut off all aid until UNRWA is no longer politicized or infiltrated by Palestinian extremist groups and vets its staff and aid recipients through U.S. watch lists.

Thank you for your continued support. If you would like to receive e-mail updates on my legislative initiatives in Congress, please contact Sarah Gamino at sarah.gamino@mail.house.gov.

Sincerely,
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
Member of Congress

Denigrating the "Peace Process"

Palestinian Authority Not taking Yes for an Answer. The History of Mahmoud Abbas

By Efraim Karsh
Jerusalem Post, August 24, 2010

No sooner had Hillary Clinton announced the imminent resumption of direct Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations without preconditions, than the Palestinian leadership cold shouldered the US secretary of state.

An emergency meeting of the PLO executive committee (which controls the Palestinian Authority), chaired by PA President Mahmoud Abbas, agreed to return to the negotiating table but threatened to pull out of the talks if Israel didn't extend the freeze on all settlement activities. "Should the Israeli government issue new tenders on September 26, we will not be able to continue with talks," chief PA negotiator Saeb Erekat told reporters.

But the story doesn't end here. While the English-language announcement of the PLO's decision sets "the emergence of an independent, democratic and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel" as the outcome of the negotiations, the Arabic-language version makes no mention of the two-state solution. Instead it notes the Palestinian readiness to resume the final-status talks, adding a few new preconditions, notably the rejection of Israel's annexation of east Jerusalem.

And just there, no doubt, lies the heart of the problem. For while the PLO leadership, since the launch of the Oslo "peace" process in 1993, has been singing the praises of the two-state solution whenever addressing Israeli or Western audiences, it has consistently denigrated the idea to its own constituents - depicting the process as a transient arrangement required by the needs of the moment that would inexorably lead to the long-cherished goal of Israel's demise.

In this respect there has been no fundamental distinction between Yasser Arafat and Abbas (and, for that matter, between Hamas and the PLO). For all their admittedly sharp differences in personality and political style, the two are warp and woof of the same dogmatic PLO fabric: Neither of them accepts Israel's right to exist; both are committed to its eventual destruction.

IN ONE way, indeed, Abbas is more extreme than many of his peers. While they revert to standard talk of Israel's illegitimacy, he devoted years of his life to giving ideological firepower to the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish indictment.

In a doctoral dissertation written at a Soviet university, an expanded version of which was subsequently published in book form, Abbas endeavored to prove the existence of a close ideological and political association between Zionism and Nazism. Among other things, he argued that fewer than a million Jews had been killed in the Holocaust, and that the Zionist movement was a partner to their slaughter.

In the wake of the failed Camp David summit of July 2000 and the launch of Arafat's war of terror two months later, Abbas went to great lengths to explain why the "right of return" – the standard Arab euphemism for Israel's destruction through demographic subversion – was a nonnegotiable prerequisite for any settlement. Two years later, he described the Oslo process as "the biggest mistake Israel has ever made," enabling the PLO to get worldwide acceptance and respectability while clinging to its own aims.

Shortly after Arafat's death in November 2004, Abbas publicly swore to "follow in the path of the late leader Yasser Arafat and... work toward fulfilling his dream... We promise you that our hearts will not rest until the right of return for our people is achieved and the tragedy of the refugees is ended." Abbas made good his pledge. In a televised speech on May 15, 2005, he described the establishment of Israel as an unprecedented historic injustice and vowed never to accept it.

Two-and-a-half years later, at a US-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis, he rejected prime minister Ehud Olmert's proposal of a Palestinian state in 97 percent of the West Bank and the entire Gaza Strip, and categorically dismissed the request to recognize Israel as a Jewish state alongside the would-be Palestinian state, insisting instead on full implementation of the "right of return."

He was equally recalcitrant when the demand was raised (in April 2009) by newly-elected Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. "A Jewish state, what is that supposed to mean?" Abbas asked in a speech in Ramallah. "You can call yourselves as you like, but I don't accept it and I say so publicly."

When in June 2009 Netanyahu broke with longstanding Likud precept by publicly accepting a two state solution and agreeing to the establishment of a Palestinian state, provided the PA leadership responded in kind and recognized Israel's Jewish nature, Erekat warned that the prime minister "will have to wait 1,000 years before he finds one Palestinian who will go along with him."

Fatah, the PLO's largest constituent organization and Abbas's alma mater, went a step further. At its sixth general congress, convened in Bethlehem last August, the delegates reaffirmed their long-standing commitment to "armed struggle" as "a strategy, not a tactic... This struggle will not stop until the Zionist entity is eliminated and Palestine is liberated."

And so it goes. Precisely 10 years after Arafat was dragged kicking and screaming to the American-convened peace summit in Camp David, only to reject Ehud Barak's virtual cession of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the nascent Palestinian state and to launch an unprecedented war of terror, his erstwhile successor is being dragged to the negotiating table, which he would rather continue to shun after a year-and- a-half absence.

Not because of the unconstitutionality of any agreement he might sign (owing to the expiry of his presidency in January 2009), or his inability to deliver anything that is not to Hamas's liking, but because, like Arafat and the rest of the PLO leadership, as far as Israel's existence is concerned, Abbas would not take a yes for an answer.

The writer is professor of Middle East and Mediterranean studies at King's College London, editor of Middle East Quarterly and author, most recently, of Palestine Betrayed.

Published by The Middle East Forum

Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) on impending Arab-Israeli Peace Talks

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) believes that Israeli-Palestinian direct negotiations, due to commence on September 2, under the auspices of the Obama Administration, has virtually no chance of success without at a minimum there being a single Palestinian entity capable of speaking for Palestinian Arabs (presently, Fatah and Hamas control different Palestinian areas).

There must be an end to the failure to arrest terrorists and outlaw terrorist groups; an end to the honoring of killers of Jews by naming schools, streets and sports teams after them, an end to the promoting anti-Israel hatred and violence in the PA-controlled media, mosques, schools and youth camps, and an end to refusing to accept Israel as a Jewish state.
 
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein has issued the following statement: “The ZOA is deeply skeptical of these talks and we don’t believe they should be proceeding under current conditions as they have virtually no chance of success. “Consider: at present, Gaza, which comprises 40% of Palestinian Arabs, is under the rule of Hamas terrorists, with their genocidal program, enunciated in their Charter, of destroying Israel and murdering Jews. Thus, not only is there a lack of peace and security in Gaza, but there is not even a single Palestinian governing authority or entity with which to negotiate, even if the PA under Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad were angels.
 
“But, of course, they are very far from being angels. The PA is not fulfilling its Oslo-era signed commitments to arrest terrorists, outlaw terrorist groups, and end the incitement to anti-Semitic hatred and murder in the PA-controlled media, mosques, schools and youth camps that feed terror and bloodshed.
 
“Instead, in January of this year, when terrorists from Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a recognized terrorist group, murdered an Israeli, Rabbi Meir Chai, in a drive-by shooting, Abbas’ PA did not condemn the murder – but it did condemn the subsequent killing of the terrorists by Israel. Abbas himself sent condolences to the families of the three terrorists; PA prime minister Salam Fayyad even visited the terrorists' families. 
 
“The PA continues to broadcast obscene Islamist sermons like that from Nablus's Bourin Mosque on January 29, in which Jews were declared ‘the enemies of Allah and of His Messenger. Enemies of humanity in general’ and Muslims exhorted to murder them with the words ‘The Prophet says: “You shall fight the Jews and kill them.”’
 
“Last month, Abbas told Arab journalists in Jordan that, “If you [the Arab states] want war, and if all of you will fight Israel, we are in favor.” In July, he honored Muhammad Daoud Oudeh, (Abu Daoud), the mastermind of the 1972 Munich Olympics hostage-taking by Fatah terrorists of eleven Israeli athletes, calling him ‘a wonderful brother, companion, tough and stubborn, relentless fighter.’ Then, only weeks ago, a Palestine National Council member accused Israel and the U.S. of having poisoned Arafat.
 
“Again, in the last ten days, the PA obscenely and publicly celebrated the 1978 coastal road massacre carried out by Fatah terrorists led by Dalal Mughrabi, in which 37 Israelis, including a dozen children, were murdered. The PA has also named two youth summer camps in Muhrabi’s honor.
 
“What do all these examples of extremism, glorification of terror and advocacy of genocide have in common? – the Obama Administration ignores them all, praises Abbas and Fayyad as moderates, give them $1.3 billion in aid (double than that given by George W. Bush) and proceeds with a charade peace process. It ignores incitement, even when specifically informed of these events by the Israeli government.
  
“Furthermore, the ZOA believes it is likely that the Israeli government has agreed to the proposed talks only because of enormous pressure from the Obama Administration and the European governments. We also believe it has agreed to these talks because it fears that otherwise the world will blame Israel for the lack of peace.“Yet, agreeing to such talks could create a situation in which Israel will be unable to resist pressure to make concessions that could lead to more violence and insecurity.
 
“We agree with Washington Post columnist George F. Will when he says ‘Patronizing American lectures on the reality of risks and the desirableness of peace, which once were merely fatuous, are now obscene.’ Also, when he writes that ‘rhetoric about a “two-state solution” … is delusional.’ We also agree with Professor Yoram Peri, professor of Israel studies at the University of Maryland, when, speaking of Israel’s million strong Russian immigrant community, that they ‘don’t understand how a state that can be crossed in half an hour by car would be willing to even talk about relinquishing territories to its seemingly perpetual enemies.’ As George Will has noted, ‘These immigrants know that Russia’s strategic depth -- space -- defeated Napoleon and Hitler.’
 
“Likewise, we agree with Moshe Yaalon, Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister and former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief-of-Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Yaalon, who has said that “our withdrawals strengthened jihadist Islam … We have the second Islamic republic in the Middle East -- the first in Iran, the second in Gaza - "Hamastan."
 

Obama’s Unique Form of ‘Christianity’

No Baptism Or Renunciation of Islam Required
By Madeline Brooks 
August 21, 2010

New questions arise lately concerning whether President Obama is a Muslim or a Christian, as Mr. Obama gave his partial support to the mosque at Ground Zero. We’ve all heard by now that Obama became a Christian mostly to expedite his political career and that the Trinity United Church of Christ he joined, presided over by Reverend Jonathan Wright, was not exactly mainstream. 

We’ve heard about Wright’s damning of America and we know that the church was – and might still be - a hot bed of black nationalism. But what is not as well known is that no baptism is required, nor must Muslims renounce Islam to be accepted as full members in that church.

On a tip from a pastor, I called the Trinity United Church back in February 2010 to ask about the requirements of membership.  The church receptionist transferred my call to the Director of Membership, who told me that baptism is optional and that Muslims who believe in the prophet Mohammed can be full members. In fact, she reassured me cheerfully, they have plenty of Muslim members.

Never mind that this is theologically impossible, except when one makes one’s own rules. The doctrines of Christianity and Islam are incompatible. Christianity believes that Jesus Christ is one with the Creator, through the doctrine of the Trinity, and that Jesus died on the cross in order to redeem humanity from its sins. Islam calls the Trinity ‘idolatry’ because it sees the Trinity’s three parts as separate entities – three distinct gods – instead of one divine being. Islam also denies Christianity’s claim that Jesus Christ died on the cross, or that he is the unique savior of humanity.

Baptism is central to Christian practices, both as a way to mark the convert’s entrance into a new life and as a washing away of sinful practices from the person’s past. The core of the new life as a Christian is a renunciation of other religious beliefs. The World Council of Churches is an umbrella organization for Protestant churches that represents about 550 million Christians throughout more than 120 countries. It has declared the centrality of baptism for a Christian, and notes that no matter how much churches may differ in other ways, the vast majority of churches agree on the importance of baptism. 

Why would a Muslim want to join a church that proclaimed these Christian beliefs? It would be a betrayal of his own convictions.  Besides, the word “Trinity” is in the name of the Trinity United Church of Christ, which should discourage a Muslim who thinks the Christian trinity is blasphemous. What’s going on here?

The Trinity United Church of Christ is affiliated with the mainline United Church of Christ which branched out of Congregationalism, and going back even further, that denomination had its roots in Puritanism.  All these connections are very traditional. The affirmation of faith of the parent organization, as found in their constitution begins with, “The United Church of Christ acknowledges as its sole Head, Jesus Christ, Son of God and Savior.” 

However, when the black pride movement burgeoned in Chicago during the 1960s at the time when Malcolm X made that city the headquarters for the Nation of Islam, the Trinity United Church of Christ appears to have made doctrinal adjustments to accommodate its constituents. They were African Americans who wanted a veneer of Christianity, which many of them had been raised with, to cover their newly acquired black nationalism and Nation of Islam inspired faith. 

At the same time, the church needed new members because church attendance was falling off. So a new syncretic religion was born, Muslim Christianity.  Never mind that it makes a mish mash of theology – in order to suit the emotional and cultural needs of the parishioners. Obama may have been telling the truth when he called himself a Christian, even though he has not apparently spent much time in any church since leaving the tutelage of Rev. Wright. 

But for the rest of us, there is confusion, a confusion that is sure to grow as not only the President but possibly many others influenced by him, take the side of Islamic political entities while still calling themselves ‘Christian.’

A LICENSE REQUIRED FOR YOUR HOUSE VIA "CAP AND TRADE!"

If Congress strong arms this through they are placing yet another nail in America's coffin. Our government is totally out of control. Thinking about selling your house. Take a look at H.R. 2454. (Cap and Trade bill), that has passed the House of Representatives and being considered by the Senate. Home owners take note & tell your friends and relatives who are home owners!

Beginning one year after enactment of the Cap and Trade Act, you won't be able to sell your home unless you retrofit it to comply with the energy and water efficiency standards of this Act. H.R. 2454, the "Cap & Trade" bill will be the largest tax increase any of us has ever experienced. The Congressional Budget Office (supposedly non-partisan) estimates that in just a few years the average cost to every family of four will be $6,800 per year. No one is excluded. A year from now you won't be able to sell your house.

The caveat is, that if you have enough money to make required major upgrades to your home, then you can sell it. But, if not, then forget it. Even pre-fabricated homes ("mobile homes") are included. In effect, this bill prevents you from selling your home without the permission of the EPA administrator.

To get this permission, you will have to have the energy efficiency of your home measured. Cost $200 to start. Then the government will tell you what your new energy efficiency requirement is and you will be forced to make modifications to your home under the retrofit provisions of this Act to comply with the new energy and water efficiency requirements, which easily could cost over $50,000.

Then you will have to get your home measured again and get a license (called a "label" in the Act) that must be posted on your property to show what your efficiency rating is; sort of like the Energy Star efficiency rating label on your refrigerator or air conditioner. If you don't get a high enough rating, you can't sell.

And, the EPA administrator is authorized to raise the standards every year, even above the automatic energy efficiency increases built into the Act. The EPA administrator, appointed by President Obama, will run the Cap & Trade program  (AKA the "American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009") and is authorized to make any future changes to the regulations and standards he/she alone determines to be in the government's best interest. Requirements are set low initially so the bill will pass Congress; then the Administrator can set much tougher new standards every year.

The Act itself contains annual required increases in energy efficiency for private and commercial residences and buildings. However, the EPA administrator can set higher standards at any time.Sect. 202 Building Retrofit Program mandates a national retrofit program to increase the energy efficiency of all existing homes across America.

The label will be like a license for your car. You will be required to post the label in a conspicuous location in your home and will not be allowed to sell your home without having this label. And, just like your car license, you will probably be required to get a new label every so often - maybe every year.

The government estimates the cost of measuring the energy efficiency of your home should only cost about $200 each time. Remember what they said about the auto smog inspections when they first started: that in California it would only cost $15. That was when the program started. Now the cost is about $50 for the inspection and certificate; a 333% increase. Expect the same from the home labeling program.

CHECK OUT Just a few of the explanatory sites;

Cap and Trade: A License Required for your Home

http://www.nachi.org/forum/f14/cap-and-trade-license-required-your-home-44750/

HR2454 American Clean Energy & Security Act: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-2454

Cap & Trade A license required for your home: http://www.prisonplanet.com/cap-and-trade-a-license-required-for-your-home.html

Cap and trade is a license to cheat and steal: http://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/columns/oped_contributors/Cap-and-trade-is-a-license-to-cheat-and-steal-45371937.html

Thinking about selling you House? Look at HR 2454: http://www.federalobserver.com/2009/10/01/thinking-about-selling-your-house-a-look-at-h-r-2454-cap-and-trade-bill/

Pass this on to everyone on your e-mail list and pass it across America!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

We Need Gingrich as President in 2012

By Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

Whistleblower Magazine, August 2010

THERE IS ONLY ONE LEADER AVAILABLE WHO CAN UNITE the Republican Party, best Obama in debate, and carry a true conservative message forward: Newt Gingrich. We hope he will run. And, if he does, we predict that he will win.

There is a time to move toward the center and to embody a consensus that forms in our political life after vigorous debate. But this is not the time for that. Confronted with new problems: an intractable recession, an incompetent administration that can't clean up an oil spill, international appeasement of terrorists, and a budget deficit that threatens to swallow our nation, Americans want clear answers from the left and the right.

Obama has offered his. Now the Republicans must offer theirs. And we can have no better leader for such a task than Newt Gingrich. Who else? We doubt that Mike Huckabee will run. Mitt Romney will run, but he is fatally flawed by his embrace and sponsorship of a healthcare bill in Massachusetts that approximates the horror Obama has passed in Congress. Can the man who passed mandatory health coverage in Massachusetts be trusted to repeal it nationally?

Sarah Palin undoubtedly helped John McCain in 2008. She delivered to him something no other VP candidate in American history ever has: a lead. Until her nomination, McCain never led Obama. For three weeks after her selection, he was ahead.He blew his lead by backing the TARP legislation, but that was not Sarah's fault. Since then, Sarah has more than justified her resignation as Alaska governor by her forthright embrace of true conservative candidates and values and her work with the wonderful tea party movement. But Sarah comes with a lot of baggage largely the doing of the liberal, sexist media. It will be tough to beat Obama. It will be tougher still to do so while overcoming her negatives, however unjustified they may be.

And there is a brilliant cast of second-tier candidates including Pawlenty of Minnesota, Thune of South Dakota, Pence and Daniels of Indiana, Ryan of Wisconsin, Santorum of Pennsylvania, DeMint of South Carolina, Rubio of Florida, Harbour of Mississippi, Jindal of Louisiana, Perry of Texas, Bachmann of Minnesota. Did I leave any out?

It will be hard to find a candidate with the intellectual heft of Newt or with his ability to articulate bold, new ideas. Gingrich feels the difference between socialism and freedom down to his core. He can match Obama's words and overmatch his intellect. Newt's teleprompter is inside his own mind.

As we go through the battles of 2011 and 2012— fighting against tax increases and making the states and federal government come face to face with the need to slash spending. We need a spokesman and a leader like Newt Gingrich.

He did not run in 2008. But, back then, we did not understand the peril facing our nation. We did not realize that we were about to fall into the grasp of a dedicated leftist determined to foist socialist ideas on the United States.

Now we do fathom, at long last, the severity of the threat. And we need Newt Gingrich to run. Having faced Newt in the '90's, we'd love to fight by his side in 2012 to help to save our threatened nation.

WHO WAS ZE'EV JABOTINSKY

From:
70 years since the passing of an exceptional Zionist

(An extremely pertinent article that must be read in its entirety. Available here within Israel Commentary Links side panel. Click Ze'ev Jabotinsky)

By: Elliot Resnick
The Jewish Press, August 04, 2010

A portrait of Ze'ev Jabotinsky may still adorn Likud conventions in Israel, but the ideas of this great Zionist leader - who passed away 70 years ago this week - are essentially forgotten and/or ignored. Born in 1880 in Odessa, Russia, Jabotinsky - who founded Revisionist Zionism and the New Zionist Organization and headed the Haganah and later the Irgun - represents that rare brand of Zionist who is comfortable in his own skin and unabashedly demands what is rightfully his.

Unlike many Israelis nowadays, Jabotinsky never cared what Arabs - or anyone else, for that matter - thought of the Zionist project. "Zionism is a moral and just movement," he once wrote. "And if it is a just cause, justice must win, disregarding the agreement or disagreement of anyone. And if Joseph or Simeon or Ivan or Achmed would like to prevent the victory of the just cause because it is inconvenient for them, it is a duty to prevent them from successfully interfering."

Most Zionist leaders in the 1920s and '30s disagreed. Although not widely known today, mainstream Zionists refused for many years to declare the creation of a Jewish State to be Zionism's ultimate goal for fear of antagonizing the Arabs and the British. Great Britain, of course, issued the Balfour Declaration, which favored "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."

In the years after this declaration, however, Great Britain gradually adopted the Arab position opposing Jewish immigration to Palestine. Jabotinsky argued that pro-Arab British officials stationed in the Middle East prior to the Balfour Declaration were responsible for this slow policy shift and demanded their replacement. He also believed Zionists should appeal directly to British public opinion, which he believed favored the Zionist cause.

Jabotinsky, however, was outvoted. Mainstream Zionists preferred not to rock the boat. If they complained to British officials at all, they did so privately, quietly and with much diplomatic finesse. The result, of course, was that Great Britain patiently listened to the Zionists but then aligned itself with the Arabs who tended to express their opinions a bit more forcefully - often by rioting or killing Jews.

Jewish leaders like Zionist Organization President Chaim Weizmann apparently did not understand this natural human contempt for meekness. Jabotinsky, of course, was of a different psychological makeup. Jabotinsky had no inhibitions about demanding what was his. "Yes, we do want a state," he told Britain's Parliament in 1937, "every nation on earth, every normal nation beginning with the smallest and the humblest who do not claim any merit, any role in humanity's development, they all have states of their own. That is the normal condition of a people."

Jabotinsky's desire for a state was also influenced by his conviction that Jews had no future in Europe. He wrote in 1919, "Zionism is the answer to the massacre of the Jews. It is neither a moral consolation nor an intellectual exercise." Jabotinsky, however, increasingly found himself at odds with mainstream Zionist leaders in the 1920s and '30s. When Palestinian Arabs killed hundreds of Jews between 1936-1939, most Zionist leaders urged Jews to maintain havlaga (restraint), but Jabotinsky would not sanction "a situation in which everything is forbidden the Jew and everything permitted the Arab, a situation in which the Jew can be compared to a terrified mouse, while the Arab feels at home everywhere." He permitted the Irgun to retaliate against the Arabs.

Jabotinsky remained outside mainstream Zionism most of his life. His ideas grew progressively more popular as Great Britain's perfidy intensified in the 1930s, and his New Zionist Organization, given enough time, might have eventually overshadowed the Zionist Organization. World War II, however, overtook world Jewry in 1939, and a year later - on August 4, 1940 - Jabotinsky died while visiting a Betar camp in upstate New York.

Jabotinsky's ideas, of course, live on. They heavily influenced such leaders as Irgun commander Menachem Begin, Lechi head Israel Eldad and Kach founder Meir Kahane - and continue to inspire younger generations of Zionists. Throughout Israel's history, however, the Jewish state's leaders have represented Weizmann's brand of Zionism far more than they have Jabotinsky's. Indeed, when one reads Shmuel Katz's absorbing biography of Jabotinsky (The Lone Wolf) or Israel Eldad's fascinating memoirs (The First Tithe), one is struck by how similar leading Zionist personalities in the 1920s-40s resemble contemporary Israeli leaders.
 
Elliot Resnick is a staff reporter for The Jewish Press and holds a Masters Degree in Jewish History from Yeshiva University's Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies.

Vintage Charles Krauthammer at his Genius Best

From: American Exceptionalism in the Age of Obama

Given before the Fund for American Studies, April 2010

I've been asked to speak about American exceptionalism in the age of Obama. American exceptionalism is an old idea - a venerable idea. It goes back to Jefferson's "Empire of Liberty" to Lincoln, who spoke of Americans as the almost chosen people, and to Ronald Reagan, who used to return over and over to that great image of America as a shining city on a hill.

In terms of our understanding of our self, it's rooted in two things. We are utterly unique as a nation, being the only nation on earth founded not on race, bloodlines, even geography and history. We are a nation founded on an idea and that is new in human history. And in terms of how we conduct ourselves abroad, we are also unique in many ways in that we never sought hegemony. That was a result of the civilizational suicide of Europe in the First and Second World Wars, leaving a vacuum, which we had to fill to maintain liberty for ourselves and for the world. It was also a consequence of the fact that we're a commercial republic and we do not hunger for empire.

We are the only great power in history who, upon arriving on a foreign shore, first asks the question, "What's the exit strategy?" I can assure you that when the British arrived in India, they were not asking themselves "what's the exit strategy?" It was "what's the entry strategy," "what's the staying strategy," and "what's the governing strategy?" We don't like that. We always want to leave. Unfortunately, after the Second World War, because of the rise of the Soviet Union, we were not able to. And I think history will demonstrate (and it does to any objective observer) that how we conducted ourselves as the reluctant hegemony after the Second World War was remarkable.

I'll give you three examples. Three peoples who were split by the Cold War: East and West Germany, North and South Korea, and Taiwan and Mainland China. Look at how those nations evolved, one-half of those people with a common history, culture, language, etc., under our jurisdiction and the other half under the jurisdiction of our adversary

Compare the liberty, prosperity, the humanity of West Germany versus East Germany, Taiwan and Communist China, North and South Korea. I think it's a fairly good record. And it is the reason that in most of the world, they see our ascendancy, power and dominance as a good thing.

There's a reason why the countries of the Pacific Rim and the rest of Asia want us around-Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, India and other countries - because they would rather be under the influence of the United States, knowing our history, our idea of liberty and how we conducted ourselves generally speaking,unlike the alternative today, which is under the dominance of China. So, I think the world speaks by its actions, by it's welcoming of our influence, particularly in areas where there are regional hegemonies who aren't as nice, as humane, or benign as we are. It speaks to how exceptional we are.

Now, unfortunately, I'm not sure that our president shares that vision. I think it's rather remarkable that when he was asked about American exceptionalism he replied - this is not a direct Quote, but it's rather a good approximation - "Yes there's American exceptionalism, but I suspect the Brits also believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks, Greek exceptionalism."

In his early travels. President Obama went around the world saying things about his own country that I believe no American president has in the past, particularly abroad. He was quite critical of America. He was on what can only be called an apology tour. He apologized for an astonishing array of actions, starting with the 1953 Eisenhower policy of supporting the coup against the Mosaddegh regime in Tehran. He apologized over and over again for Guantanamo, for torture. He implied that the war in Iraq, in his view, wasn't only a mistake, but it was actually
immoral.

He apologized at one point for, I think the words were "dismissiveness" and "derisiveness" about U.S. relations toward Europe and then he apologized - I think quite egregiously - for what he implied as our disrespect or lack of respect for the Muslim world. The last one I found particularly offensive because in the last 20 years, this country has gone to war or engaged in military action to liberate a Muslim population from oppression: Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Kuwait in '91 and then Iraq. Each time liberating, each time acting in a place where probably no one else would have acted, each time the genocide would've continued. I would even add the Somalia operation was unsuccessful but also purely humanitarian in the name of saving lives in a Muslim population.

Look also at how the United States reacted after 9/11, the worst massacre on American soil in our history. The President of the United States - within days - went to the mosque in Washington and spoke to the American people and urged them, encouraged them and demanded of them understanding and tolerance of
the Muslim population, outreach of friendship and no sense of revenge or retaliation in any way.

In fact, I think it's remarkable that in the years after that, there were dozens killed in Muslim riots over cartoons in a Danish magazine and yet not a single anti Muslim riot in the United States - a testimony to the tolerance of the United States in understanding and to the influence of the government in enforcement. So, I'm not sure how disrespectful we have been. But that was the attitude in the words of the president of the United States, Barack Obama.

... To draw any kind of equivalent, even to imply an equivalence between our admittedly imperfect democracy and what's an outright nasty dictatorship in Kazakhstan is quite remarkable. I think the point of view this president has is that the kind of hegemony, power and dominance that we have had since the
Second World War (and particularly since the world became rather different after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and we became the dominant power) is a rather undeserved position and that we do not quite have the moral authority to act in a way that we had.

We are an imperfect republic. And the president's view, I think, goes beyond skepticism about American exceptionalism. He also has a view that nobody ought to be dominant. It's not just that we have earned it because of our sins and our mismanagement and our imperial impulses in the past, but there ought to be order in which there are no dominant powers. If you remember the speech he gave at the U.N. General Assembly last year, it was a sort of major speech he made on the world stage. He said, "No nation can or should try to dominate another." Note the "can." How naive! He said no nation can dominate another.

He's amazingly adolescent and Utopian with that statement alone. No nation "should" is a very subtle critique of how we have conducted ourselves for the last 20 years. We obviously have been a dominant nation in the world for the last 20 years. He went on to say, "No world order in which there is a balance of power can sustain itself." And then he went on and said that it makes no sense that the alignments among nations - which are rooted in the cleavages of the now obsolete Cold War - make sense

Well, those alignments were not arbitrary alignments. That was a division between the free world and communism. That was a division between true liberty and tyranny. That was a division between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and they made sense if you accept the notion that the way of life that we would represent and support and lead and try to spread is superior to what the other side had offered.

So, the president has a vision, I think, that the world in which differences in strength, power and dominance of nations is or ought to be abolished, and that's why he speaks over and over again about the world community, an international community acting as one. It's why he, in that same speech, tried to say America had turned the corner in its respect for the rest of the world.

He gave (among other examples) paying our UN dues and joining organizations such as the UN Human Rights Council (which as you all know is one of the most Orwellian, predacious bodies on the planet in which dictatorships gather in Geneva on your tab and on mine in excellent hotels and denounce the United States and democracy, in particular Israel, and exonerate themselves from any human rights abuses). So, it's a rather odd acclaim of how we had sort of improved our position in the world by joining organizations within the UN and the UN itself, which are at best either useless, at worst rather harmful.

But this president has a vision of the world in which the differences between the great powers and other countries are level and in which there really is no moral authority, no one superior nation to another. The problem with the vision that he presents is twofold: (a) I think he's wrong about American exceptionalism and the moral right that we have earned through our actions in the past, through the ideas we try to advance to be a dominant nation in the world, and (b) the naive vision of the world in which the international community somehow enforces its own norms.

Henry Kissinger once said, the only way to teach stability and peace is either through balance of power or through hegemony, and Obama seems to have a view that the way to achieve stability and peace in the world is for all to act as one and promote high ideals. If you listen to the speech he gave at the summit in Washington early on nuclear weapons, or you heard his speech at the General Assembly, that is the theme that somehow we have to unite together, act in our higher interest.

And it's not how the world works. International arenas exist in a state of nature in which the states act for interest and power and, unless they are restrained by the power of other nations, we will have chaos, war and instability. The world doesn't act, it doesn't protect itself or ensure stability from the signing of treaties, declarations or resolutions in the UN Security.

So, the vision I think is, first unrealistic in terms on how the world works. It is not ideal that we should have an absence of powers like us who are dominant and who can enforce the peace. And, secondly, it's a misreading of the nature of America - of how America conducts itself in the world. As I indicated earlier, there are reasons why people around the world prefer American influence to other influences.

Now the theme of the Obama policy seems to be that if we would only conduct ourselves with humility, everything would work out. I think it's an interesting concept that a man who finds humility in himself rather difficult at the defense of his country. I'll give you one sort of remarkable instance. Remember on the night he claimed the nomination for the presidency in the Democratic Party? He made a speech in which he said that that night would be remembered in history as the day on which the earth began to heal ....!

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The Israeli Lavi Fighter Plane - A Reparable Awful Decision

F-35 - Take it or leave it

By Moshe Arens
Former Israel Ambassador and Defense Minister

Op Ed in Haaretz July 27, 2010

Who would have believed it? Some years ago Israel was developing the world's most advanced fighter aircraft, the Lavi, while the Western world's aircraft manufacturers were beating their way to our door, eager to participate in the Lavi project, or trying to sell their competing plane to the Israel Air Force. And now Israel goes hat in hand pleading for a chance to be allowed to acquire the F-35 aircraft, at a price tag of $150 million each.

But it's not only the astronomical price. Israel is told that the F-35 must be taken as is - no changes or modifications to suit Israel's specific needs, and absolutely no Israeli systems included. Take it or leave it.

Just imagine Israel's position today had the Lavi project not been canceled. The IAF would be operating the world's most advanced fighter, upgraded over the years to incorporate operational experience and newer technology. Much of Israel's industry would have moved a great step ahead, Israel Aerospace Industries would have become a leading developer of fighter aircraft, and most importantly, a number of options would be open to the IAF in choosing its next fighter.

What were the outlandish claims trumpeted by the opponents of the Lavi? The project, they said, was too big for Israel. These narrow-minded skeptics had not believed that we could convince the U.S. Congress to fund most of the project, and certainly were incapable of foreseeing Israel's economic growth in the years to come.

Now they are staring at a $3 billion price tag for 20 F-35s. They said Israel should not be developing military platforms but only
accessory systems to be mounted on the platforms. Now Israel will not be allowed to mount Israeli systems on the F-35.

And where would we be today if we had believed that nonsense about not developing platforms? Out of the satellite-launching and unmanned-aerial-vehicle business. Where are they today, the people who at the time foolishly led the crusade against the Lavi? Surprisingly, 23 years later, some are still involved in decision making on national security. They were against the development of the Lavi, against the development of an Israeli reconnaissance satellite, and against the development of the Arrow ballistic missile interceptor. But unfazed, they continue on.

Do they admit they were mistaken? Admitting past mistakes is a rare human quality, but there are exceptions. Dan Halutz, a fighter pilot ace and former IAF commander and chief of staff, at the time like many senior IAF officers a supporter of the cancellation of the Lavi project, recognizes in his recent book that it was a mistake to cancel the project.

So what's the use of crying over spilled milk? Are there alternatives to swallowing our pride and shelling out $3 billion for 20 F-35s? (The original plan had been to acquire 75 aircraft, which would have brought the price above $11 billion, but that was too expensive. ) Before we make that commitment, a little intellectual effort should be invested in looking at other options.

Does Israel still have the technological capability to design a first-rate fighter aircraft? That needs to be examined in some depth. No doubt some of the capability that existed at the time of the Lavi project has been lost over the years, but as has been proved time and again, Israel has a world-class technological capability. Its success in unmanned aerial vehicles is only one of a number of examples.

If it turns out that the capability to design the IAF's next fighter
aircraft does exist in Israel, where could we go from there? Not to the U.S. Congress in search of funding, because we would have to remind them that 27 years ago they were fools to invest $1 billion in the development of the Lavi that Israel decided it did not want. We would have to look for partners who are prepared to invest resources in such a project, who have the necessary technological capability, and who are not involved in the F-35 project.

Are there such candidates? In theory, yes. France, with a great aeronautical industry, chose not to participate in the F-35 project. India, with a considerable aeronautical capability and a meteorically growing economy, might be another candidate. And there is Russia. Perhaps none of them would be interested, and perhaps all of them would be. It's worth a try.

Abolish State Income Taxes

From an article by Richard W. Rahn

The Washington Times July 19, 2010.

Did you know there are nine states that have no state income tax? The non-income-tax states are geographically and economically diverse, ranging from the state of Washington in the Pacific Northwest, to Texas and Florida in the South, and up to New Hampshire in the Northeast.

Why is it that some of the states with the biggest fiscal problems have the highest individual state income tax rates, such as New York and California, while some of the states with the least fiscal problems have no state income tax at all? High-tax advocates will argue that the high-tax states provide much more and better state services, but the empirical evidence does not support the assertion!

On average, schools, health and safety, roads, etc. are no better in states with income taxes than those without income taxes. More importantly, the evidence is very strong that people are moving from high-tax states to lower-tax-rate states — the migration from California to Texas and from New York to Florida being prime examples. (Next year, the combined federal, state and local income tax rate for a citizen of New York City will be well over 50 percent, as contrasted with approximately 38 percent for citizens of Texas and Florida.) If the citizens of California and New York really thought they were getting their money's worth for all of the extra state taxation, they would not be moving to low-tax states.

The obvious question then is: Where is all the extra money from these state income taxes going? It is going primarily to service debt, and to pay for inflated salaries and employee benefits. It is interesting that the high-tax-rate states also, on average, have much higher per capita debt levels than states without income taxes. (Alaska is an outlier because it has its oil reserve to borrow against and actually gives its citizens a "dividend" each year.)

The biggest additional burden the high-tax states have is unionized government worker contracts. My Cato colleague Chris Edwards notes: "Half of all state and local spending — $1.1 trillion out of $2.2 trillion in 2008 — goes toward employee wages and benefits." His study showed that, on average, total hourly compensation for state and local government workers was 45 percent higher than for equivalent private-sector workers. In addition, the government workers are rarely fired — even those with poor job performance. Importantly, the differential was much greater in states where more than half of the state employees were unionized, and these were all in states with state income taxes, with the exception of Washington. High rates of unionization of public employees and high rates of debt go hand in hand. Those states whose government workers are less than 40 percent unionized have median per capita state debt of $2,238, while those states where unionization rates are over 60 percent have a median per capita state debt of $6,380. High rates of unionization tend to lead to excess staffing, unaffordable benefits and pensions.

There have been a number of both empirical and theoretical studies showing the negative impacts of state income taxes and particularly those with high marginal rates on economic growth within the state. ...

Trying to Understand U.S. Financial Problems

Private Sector Blues

By John Chettle

Redacted from The Weekly Standard
August 9, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 44

In dealing with our current economic crisis, we might remember that a recession is not a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Although economists differ on just what constitutes a recession, there have been some 47 in the United States since 1790. There have been 11 since 1945, and they have averaged 10 months in length. In truth, since World War II, it has not been an overwhelming task to bring the American economy out of recession. The sheer dynamism of our economy, the strength of its entrepreneurial drive—what Keynes called its “animal spirits”—has been enough to revive it very quickly.

Indeed, despite President Obama’s complaints that he had been left “an economic crisis as deep and dire as any since the days of the Great Depression,” he and his advisers did not suggest initially that the future was going to be bleak. Christina Romer, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, famously predicted that the unemployment rate would shortly top out at 8 percent.

Compare that with what Ronald Reagan had to deal with to overcome the Carter “malaise” in 1980: inflation at 11 percent, mortgages at 15 percent, and, by the time he had broken the inflationary cycle, unemployment at 10.8 percent. Reagan got the country out of the mess because he cut taxes, cut regulation, set clear objectives, and let ordinary Americans make money.

Obama is failing to get the country out of a recession because he’s telling Americans what money they can make, what kind of jobs should be created, what extra regulations will be imposed on them (once he and his dysfunctional party have made up their collective minds), and how much more they’re going to be taxed once that has been decided by all the committees that have jurisdiction. In short, he has done the one thing he should have avoided like the plague—he has created uncertainty.

... Obama and the belligerent anti-business cartel running Congress have created an increasingly hostile environment for businesses to operate in. It is hard to keep track of all the sectors which have incurred Obama’s wrath or over which he has asserted control. He told the banking industry that he did not run for office to help out “a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street.”

He has threatened the health insurance industry, saying that the administration wouldn’t hesitate to block mergers or “to require the settlement concessions necessary to protect consumers.” He extracted concessions from the pharmaceutical industry and then double-crossed them. He used the BP oil spill as an opportunity to close down drilling operations by all companies at depths greater than 500 feet. He has revived all the uncertainties of the coal and utility industries with his promotion of cap and trade legislation.

... You will also realize that the model here is the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. (“I would put these four months,” said Obama after four months as president, “up against any prior administration since Franklin Roosevelt.”) FDR, according to the myth, gave the country the courage to face its problems, and Democratic leaders believe that Roosevelt succeeded because of his tough rhetoric against the rich.

The truth is almost exactly the opposite. Roosevelt’s economic policies were a failure. If it had not been for the war that came in 1939, Roosevelt would have retired as a discredited president, having failed for eight years to build the confidence that was essential to restoring the economy. ...