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Sent to me by my same investment friend. The power to tax equals the power to destroy.(See 1 below.)
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Newt can talk it he just has trouble walking it.(See 2 below.)
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But Sheriff Joe Arpaio can do both and if we ran prisons like he does we might just get less recidivism. In any event, we have chosen to run 'politically correct prisons' and now we pay the societal consequences. (See 3 below.)
According to Caroline Glick, Israel also has the ground cut out from under it by their own brand of 'bleeding hearts.' Save me from the 'do gooders.'(See 3a below.)
Now this is critical for the survival of our Republic! (See 3b below.)
Obviously it is more important for a grade school child to learn about condoms than know out nation's history. (See 3c below.)
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Chris Weber describes how our government continues shooting Uncle Sam in the foot. By now it is a miracle he can still stand - wobbly but still standing!(See 4 and 4a below.)
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We disregard cyber attacks at our peril but then Obama is willing to share our nation's rocket secrets to Russia so why bother about China. (See 5 below.)
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If Obama runs on his record and what he wants to accomplish his goose is probably cooked so while he continues campaigning everything is suspended. (See 6 below.)
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Dick
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1)GO Hmmm… A walk around the fringes of finance
“ The proportions and the nations change, but the question remains
the same...How did a US government “govern” a nation
of 92 million people with an annual budget of $US 0.7 billion
and a total (funded and unfunded) debt of $US 2.7 billion one
hundred years ago? The answer is very simple. For the most
part, they didn’t. And because they didn’t, they didn’t indulge
in economic make believe. They had no income tax to “fund”
them and no central bank to print more money - if necessary.
Today, the US government “governs” 310 million people with
an annual budget of nearly $4,000 billion and a total (funded
and unfunded) debt approaching $US 100,000 billion. It takes
about 5,400 times as many dollars and about 37,000 times
more debt to “govern” about 3.35 times as many people as it
did a century ago. Why? The answer is equally simple. Today,
the US government “governs” everything. It is all pervasive. It
has taken over the economy from its people.”
– Bill Buckler
“Having Pelosi and Obama in charge
of spending is like putting Arnold
Schwarzenegger and Dominique Strauss-
Kahn in charge of hiring the maids.”
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2)A Nation Like No Other:
Why American Exceptionalism Matters
by Newt Gingrich
Our nation is at a cultural crossroads. At no time in our history has America been faced with two sets of values and visions that are so drastically different from each other.
President Obama and other liberal elites believe that more government is the solution to every problem. They see America as a nation that is behind other countries in moving toward a European statist model and a secular society. And they feel deeply uneasy with the United States' leading role in the world.
These elites speak clinically of America's "decline" despite the fact that no nation's decline has ever been less inevitable. They reject the idea that America is exceptional, as one liberal columnist wrote in the Washington Post, as a symptom of insecurity and "the surest sign of looming national decline." Apparently the profound gratitude most of us feel for the unique privilege of being an American is not a national strength, but instead a signal of psychological weakness.
Fortunately, few Americans share this vision for our country.
An overwhelming majority recognizes that we are A Nation Like No Other. A December 2010 Gallup poll asked, “Because of the United States’ history and its Constitution, do you think the U.S. has a unique character that makes it the greatest country in the world, or don’t you think so?” Eighty percent of Americans responded “yes.” It is this belief in the American Creed that both accounts for and ensures our freedom and prosperity.
In my new book, A Nation Like No Other, I write about the ideals and principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence that came to define American civilization. This is the first country in the history of the world founded on the idea that the individual is sovereign—that we are the source of political legitimacy and that we loan power to the government.
The Founders' belief in limited government, self-rule, and natural rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" determined not only the character of our constitution, but our cultural ethos as well.
Even if many Americans are today unaware of the origins of these principles, they form the creed that we have lived by throughout our history, and to which we owe our freedom.
The Five Habits of Liberty
The Founders knew that the establishment of a limited representative government was necessary for the defense of individuals' natural rights, but also that government institutions alone would not be enough. They were adamant that the success of the American republic would depend on the virtue of the American people. Self-rule is a great responsibility.
I write in A Nation Like No Other of the "Five Habits of Liberty" that have defined the character of the American people as responsible citizens and have ensured that America has remained exceptional. They are:
Faith and Family: Why Both Are Under Attack.
The affirmation in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is not a mere introduction to a long list of grievances with the British King. It was then, and remains today, a universal expression at the very heart of American Exceptionalism.
Each one of us is endowed with these rights by our Creator, not from any government. And if our rights are granted to us by God, no person or human government can take them away; this is what makes them "unalienable."
Much of American history can be seen as a struggle to better honor these God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and to advance equality. The revolutionary American model of religious pluralism, the abolition of slavery, the women's suffrage and civil rights movements, and the defeat of communism all furthered these ideals. And no institutions have been more important than faith and family in advancing them.
Work: In America, It's Called "Opportunity"
The Founders saw the ethic of personal responsibility for themselves and their families as one of the primary virtues required under republican government, and thought it shameful to be seen as even slightly dependent on public money.
From early on in its history, America has been a commercial society that rewards hard work and protects private property, the linchpin of a free society. Through the industrial revolution, territorial expansion, and immigration from all over the world, millions of people have had the chance to work in a country that offered opportunity and social mobility. In fact, the American free-enterprise system and the economic growth it has created over the past two centuries has been the most effective anti-poverty program in history.
A citizenry dedicated to hard work and personal responsibility have made America the freest and most prosperous nation on earth. Today, however, that dedication is challenged by a new and incompatible ideology—one which holds that government can take care of us and our families better than we can do so ourselves. The Left believes Americans need government to manage their healthcare, their financial decisions, and even their food choices, despite the fact that government has never done any of these things well. As the Founders foresaw, this assault on the traditional American work ethic is a threat to prosperity that we must reverse with a reassertion of the principles and policies that reward work.
Civil Society: The United Citizens of America
When Alexis de Tocqueville went on his tour of the United States in the 1830s, he noted the striking proliferation of private associations and their crucial importance to civic life. Americans, he found, were exceptionally active in their communities and tended to solve problems together without government involvement.
Tocqueville's observation continues to hold true centuries after he returned to France. Americans today are by far the most philanthropic people in the world. Individual Americans in 2010 gave more than twice as much to charity as citizens of next nearest country.
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3)SHERIFF JOE IS AT IT AGAIN!
You all remember Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona, who painted the jail cells pink and made the inmates wear pink prison garb. Well............
Oh, there's MUCH more to know about Sheriff Joe!
Maricopa County was spending approx. $18 million dollars a year on stray animals, like cats and dogs. Sheriff Joe offered to take the department over, and the
County Supervisors said okay.
The animal shelters are now all staffed and operated by prisoners. They feed and
care for the strays. Every animal in his care is taken out and walked twice daily. He now has prisoners who are experts in animal nutrition and behavior. They give great classes for anyone who'd like to adopt an animal. He has literally taken stray dogs off the street, given them to the care of prisoners, and had them place in dog shows.
The best part? His budget for the entire department is now under $3 million. Teresa and I adopted a Weimaraner from a Maricopa County shelter two years ago. He was neutered, and current on all shots, in great health, and even had a microchip inserted the day we got him. Cost us $78.
The prisoners get the benefit of about $0.28 an hour for working, but most would
work for free, just to be out of their cells for the day. Most of his budget is for utilities, building maintenance, etc. He pays the prisoners out of the fees collected for adopted animals..
I have long wondered when the rest of the country would take a look at the way he runs the jail system, and copy some of his ideas. He has a huge farm, donated to the county years ago, where inmates can work, and they grow most of their own fresh vegetables and food, doing all the work and harvesting by hand.
He has a pretty good sized hog farm, which provides meat, and fertilizer. It fertilizes the Christmas tree nursery, where prisoners work, and you can buy a
living Christmas tree for $6 - $8 for the Holidays, and plant it later... We have six trees in our yard from the Prison.
Yup, he was reelected last year with 83% of the vote. Now he's in trouble with the ACLU again. He painted all his buses and vehicles with a mural, that has
a special hotline phone number painted on it, where you can call and report suspected illegal aliens. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement wasn't doing enough in his eyes, so he had 40 deputies trained specifically for enforcing immigration laws, started up his hotline, and bought 4 new buses just for hauling folks back to
the border. He's kind of a 'Git-R Dun' kind of Sheriff.
TO THOSE OF YOU NOT FAMILIAR WITH JOE ARPAIO
HE IS THE MARICOPA ARIZONA COUNTY SHERIFF
AND HE KEEPS GETTING ELECTED OVER AND OVER THIS IS ONE OF THE REASONS WHY:
Sheriff Joe Arpaio (In Arizona) who created the ' Tent City Jail':
He has jail meals down to 40 cents a serving and charges the inmates for them.
He stopped smoking and porno magazines in the jails. Took away their weights Cut off all but 'G' movies.
He started chain gangs so the inmates could do free work on county and city
projects.
Then He Started Chain Gangs For Women So He Wouldn't Get Sued For Discrimination.
He took away cable TV Until he found out there was A Federal Court Order that Required Cable TV For Jails So He Hooked Up The Cable TV Again Only Let In The Disney Channel And The Weather Channel.
When asked why the weather channel He Replied, So They Will Know How
Hot It's Gonna Be While They Are Working ON My Chain Gangs.
He Cut Off Coffee Since It Has Zero Nutritional Value.
When the inmates complained, he told them, 'This Isn't The Ritz/Carlton......If You Don't Like It, Don't Come Back.'
More On The Arizona Sheriff:
With Temperatures Being Even Hotter Than Usual In Phoenix (116 Degrees Just Set A New Record), the Associated Press Reports: About 2,000 Inmates Living In A Barbed-Wire-Surrounded Tent Encampment At The Maricopa County Jail Have Been Given Permission To Strip Down To Their Government-Issued Pink Boxer Shorts.
On Wednesday, hundreds of men wearing boxers were either curled up on their
bunk beds or chatted in the tents, which reached 138 Degrees Inside The Week Before.
Many Were Also Swathed In Wet, Pink Towels As Sweat Collected On Their Chests And Dripped Down To Their PINK SOCKS.
'It Feels Like We Are In A Furnace,' Said James Zanzot, An Inmate Who Has Lived In The TENTS for 1 year. 'It's Inhumane.'
Joe Arpaio, the tough-guy sheriff who created the tent city and long ago started making his prisoners wear pink, and eat bologna sandwiches, is not one bit sympathetic. He said Wednesday that he told all of the inmates: 'It's 120 Degrees In Iraq And Our Soldiers Are Living In Tents Too, And They Have To Wear Full Battle Gear, But They Didn't Commit Any Crimes, So Shut Your Mouths!'
Maybe if all prisons were like this one there would be a lot less crime and/or repeat offenders. Criminals should be punished for their crimes - not live in luxury until it's time for their parole, only to go out and commit another crime so they can get back in to live on taxpayers money and enjoy things taxpayers can't afford to have for themselves.
3a)Confronting our subversive institutions
By Caroline Glick
Shimon Schiffer and Nahum Barnea are both senior political commentators for Yediot Aharonot, Israel's largest circulation newspaper. They are both also leftist extremists. In their articles in last Friday's weekend edition of Yediot they demonstrated how their politics dictate their reporting - to the detriment of their readers and to Israeli democracy. They also demonstrated the disastrous consequences of the Left's takeover of predominant institutions in democratic societies.
Schiffer's column centered on the subversive behavior of President Shimon Peres and ran under the headline, "Subversive for Peace."
Schiffer published top secret documents chronicling Peres's long history of abusing his office to subvert Israel's lawful governments and obstruct their policies.
Schiffer's article opened with an account of Peres's current moves to undermine Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's foreign policy. According to Obama administration officials, during his recent meeting with US President Barack Obama, which preceded Netanyahu's stormy visit last month, Peres and Obama agreed that a future deal between Israel and the Palestinians must be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps involving Israeli withdrawals from areas that have been under its sovereignty since 1949. While he acknowledged that Netanyahu completely opposes these parameters and would openly oppose them if Obama adopted them publically, Peres embraced them.
His message to the US leader was clear: Work with me and we'll get Israeli withdrawals.
Work with the elected leader of Israel and you'll get nowhere.
Schiffer then showed that Peres's behavior is nothing new. Using classified documents from 1987 and 1988 when Peres served as foreign minister under then prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, Schiffer reported that during that time, Peres conspired with then Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to defeat Likud in the 1988 elections. Peres also tried to convince the Reagan administration to disassociate with Shamir and deal only with him. His efforts were honorably rebuffed by then secretary of state George Schultz who reportedly told Peres that he could not ignore the elected leader of Israel.
Schiffer reported that Peres successfully collaborated with Mubarak to undermine Shamir's policy goal of retaining Israel's control over Taba in the post-Camp David implementation talks.
Finally, Schiffer reported that in the summer of 1987, unbeknownst to Shamir, Peres dispatched Avraham Tamir, then Foreign Ministry director general, to Mozambique to meet secretly with PLO leader Yasser Arafat. At the time Israelis were prohibited by law from maintaining any contact whatsoever with PLO members. So not only was Tamir's meeting an act of gross insubordination and subversion. It was a crime.
Peres's arguably treasonous behavior was not the only scandal Schiffer exposed in his article. From the perspective of Israeli democracy - equally scandalous was Schiffer's admitted collusion with Peres's subversive operations.
Specifically, in his discussion of Tamir's illegal meeting with Arafat, Schiffer admitted that Tamir "told me at the time," about the meeting.
What this means is that one of Israel's most powerful reporters knew 24 years ago that the director general of the Foreign Ministry was sent by the foreign minister to conduct an illegal meeting with Israel's sworn enemy behind the back of the prime minister. And he opted not to report the story.
Schiffer decided that Peres's moves to empower Israel's sworn enemies against the expressed wishes of the prime minister and of the general public were more important than the public's right to know what he was doing. And so he hid the information from the public. For 24 years.
Imagine how different subsequent events might have turned out if Schiffer had fulfilled his professional duty and informed the public in 1987 that Peres was engaged in illegal activities whose expressed aim was the overthrow of the elected leader of the country and the empowerment of Israel's worst enemy.
IN COMPARISON to Schiffer's double whammy, Barnea's article on Friday was nothing special. But it was a representative sample of Israel's most esteemed political commentator's consistent moves to distort current events in a manner that adheres to his radical politics.
Barnea opened his essay with a sympathetic depiction of a delegation of five anti-Israel US Congressmen organized by the anti-Israel lobby J Street. Barnea then attacked Netanyahu and his ministers for refusing to meet with the delegation.
From reading his column, you'd never guess that the members of the delegation were among Israel's most outspoken opponents on Capitol Hill. And from reading Barnea, you wouldn't know that J Street is an anti-Israel lobby, which among other things, urged Obama not to veto a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel for allowing Jews to build on their property in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria; lobbied Congress not to pass a resolution condemning Palestinian anti-Jewish incitement following the massacre of the Fogel family; and lobbied Congress not to pass sanctions against Iran.
What you would learn from reading Barnea's article is that Israelis shouldn't take heart from the overwhelming support we receive from Congress because the thirty-odd standing ovations Netanyahu received were nothing more than political theater.
The underlying message of Barnea's piece was clear. Israel's supporters in Congress are not really supporters, they're just afraid of angering the all-powerful AIPAC. And obviously, if we have no real friends, then anyone telling us to stand strong is a liar and an enemy and what we really need to do is learn to love J Street and its anti-Israel Congressmen who share Barnea's agenda.
It doesn't matter to Schiffer and Barnea that the majority of the public opposes their views. It doesn't matter that the government's policies more or less loyally represent the positions of the public that democratically elected it. As Schiffer demonstrated by failing for 24 years to report Peres's behavior and as Barnea showed by failing to inform the public about the nature of J Street and its anti-Israel Congressional delegation, radical leftist writers exploit their power to dictate the contours of the public discourse to advance their political agenda. And it doesn't bother them at all that advancing their personal politics involves actively undermining the very mission of a free press - to enable the free flow of information to the public.
THE BEHAVIOR of the likes of Peres, Schiffer and Barnea is not unique to the Israeli Left. It characterizes the behavior of much of the American Jewish Left as well. There, as here, radical activists and ideologues have taken over mainstream institutions and transformed them into mouthpieces for their extremist policies.
Take the local Jewish Community Relations Councils in the US for example.
The JCRCs are supposed to be local umbrella organizations that conduct community events and other activities aimed at advancing the interests, concerns and values of the members of their local Jewish communities. But like the Israeli media, many of the local chapters of the JCRC have been taken over by radical leftists who do not share and indeed seek to undermine the interests, concerns and values of their local Jewish communities.
Last week, Andrea Levin, the executive director and president of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle Eastern Reporting in America (CAMERA), published an article in Boston's Jewish Advocate exposing how Boston's JCRC's leadership unlawfully and secretly brought J Street into the umbrella organization and then, when it was caught, used unethical means to gain approval after the fact for their actions.
As a comprehensive survey of American Jewish views on Israel carried out last month by CAMERA demonstrated conclusively, the vast majority of American Jews oppose all of J Street's positions on Israel and the Middle East.
But just as Israelis are denied their right to an open and objective public discourse due to the radical Left's predominance in the media, so American Jews are denied their right to disown J Street due to the radical leftist American Jews' takeover of key US Jewish umbrella groups and institutions.
Another depressing instance of this pattern just occurred at the Union of Reform Judaism with the nomination -- and election -- of Rabbi Richard Jacobs to serve as its president. Whereas outgoing president Eric Yoffie referred to J Street's anti- Israel positions on Operation Cast Lead as "morally deficient, profoundly out of touch with Jewish sentiment and also appallingly naïve," Jacobs serves on J Street's Rabbinic Cabinet. He also serves on the New Israel Fund's board.
When a group of Reform activists called Jews Against Divisive Leadership (JADL) published ads in Jewish papers signed by a hundred Reform rabbis, their actions met with condemnation by URJ's leadership and even with calls to blacklist the signatories.
The younger generation of radical American Jewish activists on college campuses is following the same course.
Following Yale's decision last week to close its institute for the study of anti- Semitism, recent Yale alumni Matthew Knee wrote a post at the Legal Insurrection blog claiming that Yale's Students for Israel group is dominated by anti- Israel activists.
So too, at Berkeley, Hillel has been penetrated by anti-Israel organizations, which like J Street pretend to be pro- Israel when in fact they promote anti- Israel activities including economic warfare against Israel. The situation at Berkeley is so bad that members of the Hillel-affiliated Kesher Enoshi were key activists in the campaign to divest Berkeley's holdings from Israeli companies.
As the URJ's threat to blacklist JADL members indicates, there is only one effective response to the radicalization of mainstream institutions: the creation of new, actually representative institutions that will compete with and eventually replace those that have been subverted.
In Israel this means creating alternative media organs through the Internet and other outlets to end the radical Left's monopoly on information dissemination and engage in a discourse that reflects reality, engages the majority and upholds the rule of law.
In the US it means establishing new umbrella groups that represent the majority and deny membership to marginal groups that represent next to no one.
In Israel, independent Internet journalist Yoav Yitzhak just announced an initiative to form a new journalists union that will represent reporters and writers who have no voice in the leftist dominated Press Council. Initiatives like Latma, the satirical media criticism website I founded two years ago, have rapidly become major voices in the national discourse. Like people everywhere, when given the opportunity, Israelis seek out information sources that inform rather than indoctrinate and empower rather than demoralize them.
In the US, last October frustrated activists in the Indianapolis Jewish community disenfranchised by the far left agenda of the local JCRC founded JAACI, the Jewish American Affairs Committee of Indiana to serve as a new umbrella organization for the community.
Dedicated mainly to giving voice to the Jewish community's deep concern and support for Israel, JAACI's formation fomented an exodus of local Jewish groups and synagogues from the JCRC. When given an option to participate in a more representative organization, the local Jews grabbed it.
The ability of institutional leaders - whether Jewish professionals or journalists - to ignore their responsibility to serve those they claim to represent is not due primarily to their formidable resources. It is due to our willingness to put up with their behavior. If we want to have institutions that represent and serve us, we have to take the initiative and build them ourselves.
3bTeachers union funds controversial 'gender identity' curriculum
By Becky Yeh
A pro-family leader in California says it's alarming that the teachers union in his state is paying for a sexual indoctrination course for elementary students.
All students at Redwood Heights Elementary School in Oakland were instructed by Gender Spectrum, a Bay Area-based organization that hosts training events and consultations aimed at questioning the role of gender in society. Students were encouraged to question whether there were such things as "boy colors" or "toys just for girls." A Gender Spectrum instructor read to the students a book titled My Princess Boy -- a story about a boy who liked to wear dresses.
Jim Schubert of The Core Report explains that the organization encourages radical methods of experimentation, including placing gender-neutral restrooms in schools.
"Here's another one," he offers. "'Mix up gender language when reading stories to your kids.' What is that about? Help kids understand that the only thing that is normal in our world is a variation?"
The program at Redwood Heights Elementary was funded through a grant from the California Teachers Association. Schubert says it is alarming that officials would impose this kind of indoctrination on students in elementary school.
"This issue of this organization coming into this school [and] being part of this curriculum is off-the-charts unacceptable," he says. "But when you have an education czar [Kevin Jennings] who was appointed by our current leadership in Washington [and] who has written [the introduction to the book Queering Elementary Education] and all this stuff, this man clearly was not a good fit for the security of our education system."
Jennings, founder of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), was appointed by President Barack Obama in May 2009 as assistant deputy secretary for the Department of Education's Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools. He announced last month he will be leaving that post in July.
Redwood Heights Elementary is the first school in Oakland to teach children on gender identity.
3c)Students Stumble Again on the Basics of History
National Test Shows Little Progress in Grasping Democracy, U.S. Role in World.
By STEPHANIE BANCHERO
WSJ's Stephanie Banchero has details of a National Assessment of Educational Progress study showing students at the fourth, eighth and twelfth grade levels struggle with basic history questions.
Fewer than a quarter of American 12th-graders knew China was North Korea's ally during the Korean War, and only 35% of fourth-graders knew the purpose of the Declaration of Independence, according to national history-test scores released Tuesday.
The results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress revealed that U.S. schoolchildren have made little progress since 2006 in their understanding of key historical themes, including the basic principles of democracy and America's role in the world.
Only 20% of U.S. fourth-graders and 17% of eighth-graders who took the 2010 history exam were "proficient" or "advanced," unchanged since the test was last administered in 2006. Proficient means students have a solid understanding of the material.
The news was even more dire in high school, where 12% of 12th-graders were proficient, unchanged since 2006. More than half of all seniors posted scores at the lowest achievement level, "below basic." While the nation's fourth- and eighth-graders have seen a slight uptick in scores since the exam was first administered in 1994, 12th-graders haven't.
One bright spot in the data was the performance of African-American and Hispanic students in fourth and eighth grades. The average score of Hispanic fourth-graders jumped to 198 last year, versus 175 in 1994, which helped shrink the gap with their white counterparts. In eighth grade, black students improved to 250 points in 2010 from 238 in 1994. At the fourth-grade level, the gap between Hispanic and white students was 39 points in 1994 and 26 points in 2010. In eighth grade, the black-white gap narrowed to 23 points in 2010 from 28 in 1994.
The overall lackluster performance is certain to revive the debate about whether history and other subjects, such as science and art, are being pushed out of the curriculum because of the focus on math and reading demanded under the No Child Left Behind federal education law. The federal law mandates that students be tested in math and reading.
Sue Blanchette, president-elect of the National Council for Social Studies, a national association of K-12 and college social-studies teachers, called the results disheartening and said history education has been marginalized in the last decade.
"Everyone is going to participate in civic life by paying taxes, protesting against paying taxes, voting, and we must teach our children how to think critically about these issues," she said. "Clearly, we are not doing that."
Ms. Blanchette said her group wants the history test administered every two years, like the national math and reading exams, instead of every four years. "What gets measured, gets taught," she said.
The U.S. Department of Education administered the history exam to a representative sample of public and private schools, testing 7,000 fourth-graders, 11,800 eighth-graders and 12,400 high-school seniors. The test is scored on a 0-500 point scale, and those scores are broken into "below basic," "basic," "proficient" and "advanced."
In fourth grade, students who scored at or above basic are likely to know how to interpret a map about the Colonial economy. Fourth-grade students who scored proficient are likely to know that canals increased trade among states, and students scoring advanced probably would be able to explain how factories changed American work.
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4)4)How the U.S. Gov't Is Choking Off Access to Traditional Safe Havens
By Chris Weber, editor, The Weber Global Opportunities Report
Everywhere I go in the financial world in Europe, I hear the same thing: The U.S. is shooting itself in the face.
The problem is the regulations the U.S. now insists every nation impose on U.S. companies or people seeking to do business or lower their taxes.
For instance, there are two Swiss cantons that are using low corporate taxes to lure companies to place their headquarters there. The more famous one is Zug, but the up-and-coming one is Obwalden (which just passed a flat tax rate of 6% of a company's profits).
Companies from all over the world are using this to lower their taxes. But when even the bluest-chip U.S. company – publicly traded on the NYSE – sought to do so recently, it was turned away. Almost no one wants to deal with U.S. companies or people anymore. They've decided it is more problem than it is worth, due to the intense regulatory atmosphere from the U.S.
It used to be that anyone, from whatever nation, could come to the Obwaldner Kantonalbank (OKB) and open an account, even if they had just $100. (Those who know the gold and silver ETFs offered by the Zuricher Kantonalbank (ZKB) know these banks are backed by the cantonal governments and are thus very safe. These are the banks that are regarded as public utilities.)
But starting around four years ago, with the UBS debacle and the U.S. financial crisis, this all changed. The long arm of the U.S. government and the numerous new regulations have made OKB decide it will not take on American clients.
And please don't think I'm talking about tax-evaders here. Americans who used to be able to open accounts with tiny amounts of money at a safe bank like this and treat it just as they would their local banks, fully declaring all their money – these people are no longer welcome. It was with sadness that they told me this. But it is just too much trouble dealing with all the American red tape.
The effect of this is to deny small U.S. investors a way to protect themselves from unsafe banks and devalued U.S. currency. Now, pretty much anyone except Americans can do this.
It goes the other way, too. Non-U.S. companies used to dream of listing themselves on the NYSE: That was the "big-time." But it is no accident that the overall number of listings on the "Big Board" reached its peak in 1997 and has been falling ever since.
Again, the problem is excessive regulation. The companies can list themselves on Hong Kong, Singapore, or London exchanges with much less cost and headache. The list of companies who have turned down a chance to list themselves on U.S. exchanges is long.
It goes further than this. There are many nations on earth that have no inheritance taxes, or maybe just small ones. But if a non-U.S. person buys stocks in the U.S. (in excess of about $60,000), their estate has to pay U.S. estate taxes if they die. So no wonder people are not excited to buy U.S. stocks.
If the object of the government is to encourage investment, entrepreneurship, and create jobs, this is exactly the wrong way to go about it.
And I'm not blaming just one political party. Things are the same now as under the last American president. It's as if the nation has decided it no longer wants to encourage its companies or foreigners to invest in the U.S. Most likely, they don't think of it in those terms; they likely still think that since the U.S. is such a great country, then of course anyone would want to invest there.
But the truth is that by doing these things, non-U.S. people are less likely to invest, and thus the U.S. is seen to be simply hurting itself.
More than just hurting itself, it is building up ill will all around the world. It is getting so that people will be avoiding the U.S. entirely, going around it to invest and even trade. I know this sounds like an extreme reaction. But if things go the way they've been going for the last four or five years, this will be the result.
The American government can put on all these restrictions and keep out foreign investors and companies who want to list on the NYSE. It can deny the right of even the smallest investor to diversify into another banking system with a stronger currency.
But will this make for a stronger U.S.? Are we entering a new world where everyone prospers except for Americans? If so, it is particularly sad, since America will be turning its back on the very ideas which made it so great.
You see, one hundred years ago, there was outright famine in Obwalden. Full of farmers who often had 10 children, the available farmland was just not enough for the people. Starvation got so bad, the Swiss government offered anyone free passage to America if they would promise never to come back. Many of them settled in the Imperial Valley of California, about as far from the Alps and green meadows as you can get.
The U.S. was haven for the poor people of Obwalden, who were starving and saved by moving to America. These people are very appreciative of what America offered to their great-great-grandparents: America literally saved their lives.
And that is why they don't understand why America is now "destroying itself," as one of them told me. They are very, very sad to see it happen. In fact, they seem much sadder and more concerned about what has happened to the U.S. than most Americans
4a)A Welfare State or a Start-Up Nation?
After one generation, a one percentage point difference in growth rate becomes a 25% difference in per capita income.
By ALLAN H. MELTZER
Who you vote for in the next election will largely be determined by how you answer the following question: Should we encourage more productive use of resources or more social welfare? Higher taxes to support a larger welfare state means a larger share of national resources pay for a Medicare system that everyone recognizes as expensive and inefficient. More spending reduction, especially for Medicare and Medicaid, allows a more productive use of resources for growth.
Rep. Paul Ryan's proposed budget—which would cut $6.2 trillion in spending from President Obama's budget over the next 10 years—is a great step in that direction. Mr. Obama has chosen to campaign for re-election as the defender of the welfare state and a woefully inefficient health-care system.
Neglecting the benefits of using resources more productively misses one of the main economic lessons of the past half century. Transfers, grants and redistribution did little to raise living standards in Asia, Latin America and Africa. Capitalist development and open economies lifted vastly more people out of poverty in a decade than welfare state policies had achieved in 50 years. Japan in the 1950s began to force its producers to compete in world markets. That forced its firms to use resources more productively. Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and eventually China and India followed the Japanese growth model. Chile was an early successful convert; now we have Brazil and parts of Africa.
The lesson applies here in the U.S as well. The welfare of the citizens—poor, middle-class and wealthy—is best improved by using resources more productively. Of course, increased productivity isn't an instant cure for what ails us; there is no instant cure. Administration and Federal Reserve policies have tried mightily, and wastefully, to get quick gains—with few results to show. Despite near-zero interest rates and almost a trillion dollars in "stimulus" spending, unemployment remains stuck at 9% and a true recovery is elusive.
The Obama administration argues that the economy would have been much worse without its actions. But progress would have been far greater by now if the administration had simply copied the successful Kennedy and Reagan policies and permanently cut marginal income tax rates while eliminating burdensome regulations. Instead, the administration is promising higher taxes while regulation has increased and become even more arbitrary. Investment and productivity wilt under heightened uncertainty about future returns.
Mr. Obama and his followers claim they want a solution that is "fair." Why is it fair to distribute more welfare to today's voters at the expense of their children and grandchildren who will pay for this less productive use of resources? This is the same "fair" approach that Europeans chose decades ago, and which led to chronic low growth and high unemployment.
After 1990, France, Germany and Italy gave up the goal of bringing their per capita incomes to equality with the U.S. Germany spread its welfare state to the east. Italy and France pushed redistribution and fairness. From 1990 to the start of the crisis in 2006, the U.S. economy grew on average 1% a year faster than France, Germany or Italy, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. After one generation, a one percentage point difference in growth rate becomes a 25% difference in per-capita income. Low growth significantly lowers real wages and living standards for everyone, which in turn lessens tax receipts and resources for redistribution.
As in the U.S., wealth accumulation in post-Thatcher Britain and pre-crisis Ireland also showed that gains in living standards from productivity growth more than compensate for limiting redistribution. The reaction in France is that Ireland should not have the lower tax rates that fostered investment and productivity growth. Is that fairness or envy?
It isn't fair to tax future generations just because they can't vote. We have a choice between a brighter future for our descendants and more social spending now. The missing words "more productive use of resources" are critical for a rational choice. To realize the promise that the U.S economy has always offered, we must choose less social spending, less intrusive regulation, and more efficient use of resources in both the public and private sectors.
Mr. Meltzer is a professor of public policy at the Tepper School, Carnegie Mellon University and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
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5)China's Cyberassault on America
If we discovered Chinese explosives laid throughout our national electrical system, we'd consider it an act of war. China's digital bombs pose as grave a threat.
By RICHARD CLARKE
In justifying U.S. involvement in Libya, the Obama administration cited the "responsibility to protect" citizens of other countries when their governments engage in widespread violence against them. But in the realm of cyberspace, the administration is ignoring its primary responsibility to protect its own citizens when they are targeted for harm by a foreign government.
Senior U.S. officials know well that the government of China is systematically attacking the computer networks of the U.S. government and American corporations. Beijing is successfully stealing research and development, software source code, manufacturing know-how and government plans. In a global competition among knowledge-based economies, Chinese cyberoperations are eroding America's advantage.
The Chinese government indignantly denies these charges, claiming that the attackers are nongovernmental Chinese hackers, or other governments pretending to be China, or that the attacks are fictions generated by anti-Chinese elements in the United States. Experts in the U.S. and allied governments find these denials hard to believe.
Three years ago, the head of the British Security Service wrote to hundreds of corporate chief executive officers in the U.K. to advise them that their companies had in all probability been hacked by the government of China. Neither the FBI nor the Department of Homeland Security has issued such a notice to U.S. executives, but most corporate leaders already know it.
Some, like Google, have the courage to admit that they have been the victims of Chinese hacking. We now know that the "Aurora" attack (so named by the U.S. government because the English word appears in the attack software) against Google in 2009 also hit dozens of other information technology companies—allegedly including Adobe, Juniper and Cisco—seeking their source code. Aurora wasn't an isolated event. This month Google renewed its charge against China, noting that the Gmail accounts of senior U.S. officials had been compromised from a server in China. The targeting of specific U.S. officials is not something that a mere hacker gang could do.
The Aurora attacks were followed by systematic penetrations of one industry after another. In the so-called Night Dragon series, attackers apparently in China went after major oil and gas companies, not only in the U.S. but throughout the world. The German government claims that the personal computer of Chancellor Angela Merkel was hacked by the Chinese government. Australia has also claimed that its prime minister was targeted by Chinese hackers.
Recently the computer-security company RSA (a division of EMC) was penetrated by an intrusion which appears to have stolen the secret sauce behind the company's SecureID. That system is widely used to protect critical computer networks. And this month, the largest U.S. defense contractor, Lockheed, was subject to cyberespionage, apparently by someone using the stolen RSA data. Cyber criminals don't hack defense contractors—they go after banks and credit cards. Despite Beijing's public denials, this attack and many others have all the hallmarks of Chinese government operations.
In 2009, this newspaper reported that the control systems for the U.S. electric power grid had been hacked and secret openings created so that the attacker could get back in with ease. Far from denying the story, President Obama publicly stated that "cyber intruders have probed our electrical grid."
There is no money to steal on the electrical grid, nor is there any intelligence value that would justify cyber espionage: The only point to penetrating the grid's controls is to counter American military superiority by threatening to damage the underpinning of the U.S. economy. Chinese military strategists have written about how in this way a nation like China could gain an equal footing with the militarily superior United States.
What would we do if we discovered that Chinese explosives had been laid throughout our national electrical system? The public would demand a government response. If, however, the explosive is a digital bomb that could do even more damage, our response is apparently muted—especially from our government.
Congress hasn't passed a single piece of significant cybersecurity legislation. When the Chinese deny senior U.S. officials' claims (made in private) that Beijing is stealing terabytes of data in the U.S., Congress should not leave the American people in doubt. It should demand answers to basic questions:
What does the administration know about the role of the Chinese government in cyberattacks on public and private computer networks in the United States?
If there is widespread Chinese hacking of sensitive U.S. networks and critical infrastructure, what has the administration said about it to the Chinese government? Specifically, did President Obama raise concerns about these attacks with Chinese President Hu Jintao at the White House this spring?
Since defensive measures such as antivirus software and firewalls appear unable to stop the Chinese penetrations, does the administration have any plan to address these cyberattacks?
In private, U.S. officials admit that the government has no strategy to stop the Chinese cyberassault. Rather than defending American companies, the Pentagon seems focused on "active defense," by which it means offense. That cyberoffense might be employed if China were ever to launch a massive cyberwar on the U.S. But in the daily guerrilla cyberwar with China, our government is engaged in defending only its own networks. It is failing in its responsibility to protect the rest of America from Chinese cyberattack.
Mr. Clarke was a national security official in the White House for three presidents. He is chairman of Good Harbor Consulting, a security risk management consultancy for governments and corporations.
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6)The Obama Hiatus
The Administration takes a two-year holiday from its own agenda
President Obama's re-election machine is already running full bore, but has his entire Administration also decamped for the campaign trail? We ask because the towering ambitions of Mr. Obama's first two years have suddenly gone into abeyance in his third, apparently to be deferred until years five through eight. The White House is more or less conceding that it doesn't have a chance of winning a second term unless his major policies go on hiatus.
This holiday from committing liberal history began in December with the White House-GOP deal that extended the Bush tax rates through the 2012 election and added a payroll tax cut on employees to 4.2% from 6.2%. These proposals came from the same Democrats who only months earlier had increased payroll taxes to finance their health-care bill and routinely claim that tax rates don't matter to the private economy. But then, 9.1% joblessness and 1.8% growth have a way of concentrating the political mind.
Opinion Journal Columnist John Fund on the GOP presidential debate.
.Next came the much-ballyhooed White House scrub for "excessive" regulation, even as hundreds of new rules mandated by the legislation of the first two years continue to be written and to slow business investment. But at least the rule review persuaded the Environmental Protection Agency to stop treating dairy farm milk spills as if they were Gulf oil leaks. That should help next year in Wisconsin.
Picking up the vacation pace, this week the EPA delayed by two months the carbon regulations that it wants to impose, even as it resists bipartisan attempts on Capitol Hill to kill them altogether. Next up may be a delay in pending regulations meant to harm coal-fired power, before opponents gather enough votes to kill them. The EPA has already yanked an entire rule that would have forced thousands of businesses to install new industrial boilers.
Maybe the White House should short-circuit all this by dispatching EPA administrator Lisa Jackson to an undisclosed location through November 2012.
Also this week, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission voted—five to zero—to delay by six months the derivatives swap rules that were due this month under the Dodd-Frank financial re-regulation. The alphabet soup of financial regulators will eventually add tens of thousands of pages to the Federal Register, but for now they are conceding that the derivatives market isn't the calamity they claimed it was in the rush to pass the bill.
Pulitzer Prize-winner Joseph Rago tracks the White House effort to prevent the impact of its policies.
.Then there's health care. Over the last year, the Health and Human Services Department has granted at least 1,372 temporary waivers to ObamaCare mandates, most notably for price controls on private insurance companies. Many have gone to Democratic allies like unions, but many more went to ordinary businesses and even states. HHS has already given a pass to Nevada, New Hampshire and Maine, and another dozen or so have applied or are expected to ask for exemptions.
This is less political favoritism than a panicked, ad hoc bid to minimize pre-election insurance disruptions that can be attributed to a law that is still widely reviled. If the law isn't enforced, maybe voters will forget it passed. In its New Hampshire reprieve, HHS admitted that ObamaCare would "destabilize the individual market," though it neglected to mention that this is what ObamaCare is meant to do. Just not yet.
By the way, this waiver process isn't in the law's statutory language. HHS has simply created it via regulation. In other words, the health bureaucracy knew the rules they were writing would be destructive and have created a political safety valve. They have even found a way to override ObamaCare's cuts to the Medicare Advantage program that were counted as "savings" to make the health bill look less spendthrift. Medicare Advantage offers insurance choices to one in four seniors and is popular in, well, Florida, so seniors also get a two-year reprieve.
Why aren't liberals deploring this betrayal of their programs? Perhaps because even they can't ignore reality forever. Mr. Obama's epic fiscal binge, waves of new industrial policy and the political allocation of credit haven't created the boom they promised. If business can now be persuaded that the government assault is over and start to invest again so the economy improves enough for Mr. Obama to win a second term, then a two-year delay in fulfilling their dreams is well worth it.
Liberals figure that as long as Mr. Obama can be re-elected next year on another hope-and-change platform, it will be too late to hope to change anything and he can then return to his legacy project of building a tax and entitlement state on the European model. The economy may benefit from Mr. Obama's temporary amnesty, but the real lesson of this hiatus from liberalism is that it should be shut down permanently.
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