One could get killed for posting this!
Another way to be killed (See 1 below.)
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Netanyahu pulls off a master stroke coup? What will it mean? (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Worth a click and a read! (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Dick
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1)Wealth is not theft
Americans understand that wealth is the fruit of talent, education, and hard work.
By Jeff Jacoby
There is nothing new under the sun, including politicians who seek to win votes by milking the gap between rich and poor.
Today it’s Barack Obama, demanding a “Buffett rule” and decrying the harm caused when “the gap between those at the very, very top and everybody else keeps growing wider and wider and wider and wider.” Not so long ago it was John Edwards, intent on riding his “Two Americas” stump speech (“One America does the work while another America reaps the reward”) all the way to the White House. Earlier still it was FDR, lambasting the wealthy who “did not want to pay a fair share” and boasting that he’d “increased still further the taxes paid by individuals in the highest brackets” because that was “the American thing to do.”
Those who peddle class resentment can always find ready takers; otherwise politicians wouldn’t keep selling the same rug. But the demand for it is never as great as the demagogues imagine. Most Americans don’t hate the rich, or even the very rich, and they don’t despise the economic system that makes great wealth possible. “That all men are created equal” goes to the core of our national creed; its undeniable moral force led Americans to fight a horrific Civil War over slavery in the 19th century, and to embrace the legal and social upheaval of the Civil Rights movement in the 20th.
But what Americans honor is equality in the eyes of the law, political equality — not equality of income or material circumstances. The two kinds of equality are inherently in conflict, as every effort to impose egalitarianism eventually proves. “There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal,” wrote Friedrich Hayek in 1948. The fact that some people make much more money than others has never convinced the American people that a fundamental overhaul of society is necessary or even desirable. For all the extravagant claims made last year about Occupy Wall Street’s significance, is anyone surprised that the movement has fizzled?
For months President Obama has been calling income inequality “the defining issue of our time,” but relatively few Americans agree. In a recent Gallup poll, only 2 percent of respondents identified the gap between rich and poor as their top economic concern. Even among the Democrats in Gallup’s survey, inequality didn’t show up as a major worry.
Armed with a bully pulpit and backed by a liberal media chorus, Obama may have good political reasons to keep hammering away at the wealth gap. No doubt he can mobilize some voters with his suspect claims about billionaires paying a 1 percent tax rate, or the charge that Republicans want “everybody left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.”
But most voters understand intuitively that in a free society, unequal productivity will generate unequal wealth. Incentives and rewards are powerful motivators of work and risk-taking; and the greater the potential rewards, the more an economy will achieve. A Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or Sam Walton is far more likely to flourish in a nation where people can become millionaires and billionaires — and to enrich all of us in the process of enriching themselves.
“In a democratic, capitalist society, gaps in income are inevitable,” write Peter Wehner and Robert Beschel Jr. in the current issue of National Affairs. “Yet it is worth noting that democratic capitalism has done far more to create wealth, advance human flourishing, and lift people out of destitution than any other economic and political system. . . A policy agenda that has as its top priority the elimination of income gaps. . . not only encourages resentment but also threatens the American economy — because a narrow focus on closing gaps tends to go along with reduced overall growth.”
There is no fixed limit to the wealth a society can produce, and today’s “1 percent” produce an amazing amount of it. But their wealth takes nothing away from the other 99 percent. We are all free to rise as high as talent, education, and hard work will take us. Wealth is not theft. Productivity is not zero-sum. If economic disparity is a problem, then the way to solve it is by raising those who are stuck near the bottom, not tearing down those who have climbed to the top.
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2)
Leader of Israel Centrist Party Kadima Agrees to Join Netanyahu’s Coalition
Ronen Zvulun/Reuters
Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday at the Israeli Parliament, which had decided to dissolve.
By JODI RUDOREN
JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the chairman of the opposition Kadima Party struck a deal early Tuesday morning to form a unity government, a surprise move that staves off early elections and creates a new coalition with a huge legislative majority.
Ammar Awad/Reuters
The newly-elected head of Israel's Kadima Party, Shaul Mofaz, at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City on March 28, 2012.
According to the three-page agreement that Mr. Netanyahu and the opposition leader, Shaul Mofaz, signed after midnight, Mr. Mofaz will become a deputy prime minister, standing in for Mr. Netanyahu when he is abroad and joining all closed sessions of the cabinet.
A former defense minister and military chief who has been critical of the government’s aggressive focus on the Iranian nuclear threat, Mr. Mofaz will be “in charge of the process with the Palestinians,” according to a Kadima spokesman, Yuval Harel, who said that “part of the deal is to turn on the process.”
The unity agreement came hours after the Israeli Parliament took the first steps toward dissolving itself ahead of elections scheduled for Sept. 4 rather than at the end of the government’s term in October 2013. With his coalition divided over how to replace a law expiring Aug. 1 that exempted many ultra-Orthodox Jews from military service, Mr. Netanyahu had said in a speech to the convention of his right-leaning Likud Party on Sunday night that he wanted early elections to avoid the instability of a campaign atmosphere stretching over more than a year.
But even as the political establishment here was kicking into high gear in recent days, leaders of the Likud and Kadima parties had been in secret negotiations that culminated at midnight Tuesday at the prime minister’s home in Jerusalem, where he and Mr. Mofaz signed a contract, according to Mr. Harel. The two men then went to the Parliament building around 2:30 a.m., where they met with lawmakers from their parties, who voted to approve the deal, officials said. A news conference was scheduled for noon in Jerusalem.
“It was at the initiation of both sides,” Mr. Harel said in an overnight telephone interview. “This is the best way to get influence.”
In a brief statement issued Tuesday morning, Mr. Netanyahu, who moved closer to the center as a result of the accord, said: “A broad national unity government is good for the security, for the economy, for the people of Israel.”
Reaction from other political factions was swift and harsh. “This is a pact of cowards and the most contemptible and preposterous zigzag in Israel’s political history,” said Shelly Yacimovich, chairwoman of the Labor Party and suddenly the leader of the dwindling opposition. She vowed to “show the public that there is a political and ideological alternative,” and said the deal gave Labor “a golden opportunity to lead the people eventually, if not now then in 2013, onto a new path.”
Yair Lapid, a popular television commentator who recently formed a new centrist party, Yesh Atid, derided the agreement as a sign of “the old, detestable, ugly politics” and predicted that “this repulsive political alliance will bury all of its participants under it.”
But for Mr. Mofaz, who ousted Tzipi Livni as head of Kadima in a party primary last month, and Mr. Netanyahu, who polls predicted would sail to victory in early elections, the benefits were clear. Besides gaining a ministership, Mr. Mofaz buys himself time to build up public support for his platform, keeping his party’s 28 seats in Parliament rather than face elections in which polls show his faction would drop to 15 or fewer.
And Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition swelled from 66 to 94 of Parliament’s 120 members, while broadening its ideological base.
The 13-clause agreement promises that the new coalition will pass a new law by July ensuring equal national service for all Israeli citizens, including those religious Jews who had avoided the draft to study Torah. It also calls for an overhaul of the electoral process itself by year’s end. Kadima lawmakers would also head several key parliamentary committees, including foreign affairs and defense, and economics.
The Iranian-born Mr. Mofaz, 63, had originally said he would not join Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition. “I intend to replace Netanyahu,” he told The New York Times in an interview after his resounding victory over Ms. Livni. “I will not join his government.”
In the interview, Mr. Mofaz criticized the prime minister’s foreign policy focus, saying that a greater threat to Israel than Iran was the continuing conflict with the Palestinians. He said that he would start with an interim Palestinian state on 60 percent of the West Bank and negotiate the rest, keeping Israeli settlement blocs in place in exchange for land elsewhere. Borders and security could be negotiated in a year, he said, and thousands of settlers in far-flung locations would agree to move or be forced to.
Arik Bender, a writer for the daily newspaper Maariv, called the developments “Shaul Mofaz’s night,” writing in an analysis piece that he “saved the ship of Kadima from sinking at the very last moment, assured himself a prominent position in the government, and secured coalition favors for his party.” He said the deal dealt a “painful blow” to Ms. Yacimovich, and a “mortal” one to Mr. Lapid.
Yossi Verter, a senior analyst for the left-leaning daily newspaper Haaretz, called the deal “an atomic bomb,” and said it was struck out of Mr. Netanyahu’s “great power” and Mr. Mofaz’s “severe weakness.” “No party can topple him,” Mr. Verter wrote of the prime minister. “The new Netanyahu government is made of one hundred tons of solid concrete.”
David Horovitz, a veteran journalist who runs the new Web site The Times of Israel, described the new coalition as a “masterstroke” for Mr. Netanyahu. “The prime minister, with Kadima at his side, is also now potentially capable of taking a more centrist position on dealings with the Palestinians and over settlements,” Mr. Horovitz wrote in an analysis posted Tuesday morning. “It’s by no means clear that he wants to do so. But he has room for maneuver now if he wishes to use it. And the Americans and the rest of the international community will be well aware of the fact.”
2a)
Netanyahu boosts Israel’s deterrence
Analysis: New unity government reinforces Israeli deterrence ahead of possible strike in Iran
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The unity deal worked out secretly by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Kadima Chairman Shaul Mofaz boosts our deterrence power on the Iranian front and Israel’s ability to press the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany not to compromise too much.
In the final analysis, we can assert that the formation of the new government – assuming it will function properly and survive the crises expected in the coming months – boosts Israel’s deterrent power and upgrades its leadership’s decision-making ability on the security and diplomatic front, topped by the Iran issue.
However, we must keep in mind that the Ulpana affair and mostly the issue of drafting the haredim into the IDF have not yet been resolved. Only once the government proves that it can contend with this issues, it will also enjoy greater credibility and deterrent power on the security front.
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3)Dick Morris, Newt Gingrich, Larry Kudlow, Lou Dobbs, John Bolton, and other renowned champions of freedom recently came together for a special video presentation . . .Generation Zero.
The goal was to reveal the truth behind our financial crisis. And after watching the gripping video, I believe they have succeeded!
Here is just a snapshot of what they have to say:
- “We divorced risk from accountability”
- “This was not an accident”
- "That's the stuff that happens in banana republics with a gun on the table. In America, we do it with a pen instead of a gun."
- "The unthinkable became thinkable.”
- "It's as if the American people now face a political and financial Frankenstein that has to be fed with their money to keep away from the door — lest they be devoured."
- “The consequences will be a lot more devastating than simply loss of financial clout."
- "The real catastrophe is going to come in about a year or a year and a half or two, when all of this money that the Fed has been printing comes out of hiding all at once and causes explosive inflation."
The producers of the presentation believe that America is entering a “Final Turning.”
The evidence they provide is alarming. The testimonies are shocking. And the footage released is eye-opening.
The message is simple . . . BE PREPARED.
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Aaron DeHoog
Financial Publisher
Newsmax and Moneynews
Financial Publisher
Newsmax and Moneynews
3a)
Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World
By Ian Bremmer
One beautiful fall evening in October 2011, I gave a speech on international politics to a group of Canadian business executives in Napa Valley, California. As part of the introduction, I included a few thoughts on the G20, the forum in which 19 countries plus the European Union bargain over solutions to pressing international problems. I made my case for why I believe the G20 is a dysfunctional institution that will create as many problems as it solves. The speech complete, I joined members of the audience for dinner on a beautiful terrace overlooking a vineyard. Our host, spotting an opportunity for lively conversation, seated me next to a distinguished looking gentleman I'd never met—former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin. This is the man who created the G20.
As Canada's finance minister (1993-2002), then prime minister (2003-2006), Martin warned that Western dominance of international financial institutions couldn't last and that the world needed a new bargaining table, one that welcomed leading emerging powers as full partners. Martin's argument fell on deaf ears in America, Europe, and Japan—until the 2008 financial crisis made his point for him.
Menus closed, Martin and I began a friendly debate. I argued that 20 negotiators never agree on anything of substance unless and until they feel threatened by the same problem at the same time and to more or less the same degree. In other words, twenty is just too many. Making matters more complicated, these twenty don't even agree on the value of multiparty democracy and free market capitalism. Martin countered that major emerging powers can't simply be excluded and that the G20 gives more countries than ever a stake in the success of the global economy and in meeting the world's greatest political and security challenges. As dessert arrived, we agreed to disagree.
Then Martin told me something I hadn't expected. He didn't put forward the G20 idea mainly to improve global governance. Instead, it was the product of his careful calculation of what was best for Canada. His country had long been a member of the G7, a privileged position. But years before the market meltdown of 2008, Paul Martin understood that the world's balance of power was changing more quickly than many realized and that the G7 was fast becoming irrelevant. He became convinced that Canada needed to exchange its first class seat on a sinking ship for a secure spot on a bigger boat. By leading the effort to build that boat, Martin believed that Canada could win valuable new friends. The G20, dysfunctional or not, is now a fixture of international politics.
As we dropped our napkins on the table and headed into the night, I replayed the conversation in my mind. I found myself thinking of an enormous poker table, one where each player minds his stack of chips, watches the 19 others, and waits for his best opportunity to play the hand he's been dealt. This is not a global order; it's a world of "every nation for itself." If the G7 no longer matters and the G20 doesn't work, then what is this world we now live in? I wrote the book to answer that question.
In short, it's a world without leadership. That's unfortunate, because at a time when so many problems transcend borders—from regional conflicts to climate change and threats to global market stability to cyber-attacks, terrorism, and the security of food and water—the need for international cooperation has never been greater. Cooperation demands leadership. Leaders have the leverage to coordinate multinational responses to transnational problems. They have the wealth and power to persuade other governments to take actions they wouldn't otherwise take. They pick up the checks that others can't afford and provide services no one else will pay for. Leaders set the agenda.
Where have the leaders gone? In the United States, a war-weary public is ever more wary of the country's mounting debt. In Europe, a more immediate debt crisis continues to undermine confidence in the future of the single currency—and of the European idea. In Japan, last year's earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown have only added to the long-term damage of two decades of political and economic malaise. Not so long ago, America, Western Europe and Japan were the world's powerhouses. Today, they're struggling to recover their dynamism.
But nor are rising powers like China, India, Brazil, Turkey, the Gulf Arabs and others ready to take up the slack. For emerging nations, emergence is a full-time job. The governments of these countries still face complex development challenges that demand too many resources and too much time, energy, attention, and money to accept major new risks and burdens abroad. China, in particular, must pass a series of enormous tests in coming years if it is to remain politically stable in something like its current form. Its leadership knows it must build a modern, middle-class country with a 21st century social safety net. It must reduce the country's reliance on exports by fueling greater domestic demand for Chinese-made products by transferring enormous amounts of wealth from state-owned companies to Chinese consumers. It must manage the environmental fallout of its enormous growth. It must absorb and redirect rising public demand for change to preserve the ruling party's monopoly hold on political power.
If not the West, the rest, or the institutions where they come together, who will lead? The answer is, no one. Neither the once-dominant G7 nor the unworkable G20. We have entered the G-Zero, a world in which, for the first time since the end of World War II, there is no single power or alliance of powers ready to take on global leadership.
The G-Zero story isn't about the decline of the West or the rise of China, because America and Europe have overcome adversity before and are well-equipped over the long run to do it again, and China faces a highly uncertain future. It's the story of a world in transition, one that's especially vulnerable to crises that appear suddenly and from unexpected directions. Nature still hates a vacuum, and the G-Zero won't last forever. But over the next decade and perhaps longer, the G-Zero will both incubate new sources of conflict, make almost all of them more difficult to manage, and push international politics toward multiple forms of turmoil. A world without leaders will undermine our ability to keep the peace, expand opportunity, reverse the impact of climate change, and feed growing populations. Its effects will have implications for our politics, business, information, communication, security, food, air and water. It will be felt in every region of the world—and even in cyberspace.
Winners and losers
Every era has its winners and losers, and the G-Zero will be no different. It is not merely strength but adaptability and resilience that are the attributes most likely to produce prosperity in a G-Zero world. Countries that have choices among political, security and commercial partners are much better able to navigate a world that generates shocks from unexpected directions. Because Brazil does big business with both China and the United States, its economy emerged with relatively little damage from the US financial market meltdown and the recession which followed. Mexico, on the other hand, which is far more dependent on the United States for its export revenue, tourism income, and remittances from workers living abroad took a much tougher hit. If you're going to rely too heavily for growth on the stability of a single economic partner, the United States is an excellent long-term option. But Brazil's diversified trade relations give its economy a resilience that Mexico can't yet match.
Turkey is a Middle East heavyweight, a NATO member and a bridge between Europe and Asia. South Africa has extensive trade relations with Europe and deepening political and economic ties with China, Russia, India and Brazil. Kazakhstan his historical ties with Russia, deepening commercial relations with both China and Germany. That's why Turkey, South Africa and Kazakhstan are "pivot states." Their flexibility is crucial for their stability and prosperity.
Like Mexico, Ukraine is what I call a "shadow state," a country that can't pivot. Much of Ukraine's population favors stronger political, economic and cultural relations with Europe, but the government of this former Soviet republic knows that for at least the next several years, it will have to protect the country's traditional ties with Russia. Why? Because Russia supplies most of Ukraine's energy and has proven more than once that it's willing to use its natural gas supplies as a weapon. In the dead of winter in 2009, Gazprom, Russia's natural gas monopoly, cut supplies to Ukraine in a dispute over pricing—and maybe to make a larger point. Moscow wants Kyiv to join a customs union that now includes Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus, a personal priority for Vladimir Putin, and has promised gas deliveries at affordable prices to sweeten the deal. Ukraine has to take that offer seriously, because higher gas prices would force elected officials to hit voters with onerous new energy taxes.
Ukraine would love to become a pivot state, preserving relations with Russia while building new ties with Europe. In fact, Kyiv would love to sign a free trade agreement with the European Union. But the Kremlin warns that it will throw up new trade barriers if Kyiv signs a deal with Europe, and the EU says it will end trade talks with Ukraine if Kyiv joins Russia's customs union. Ukraine can't win because it can't pivot. It doesn't have the muscle or the independence to improve its bargaining position with either side. The G-Zero era won't be kind to countries like Mexico or Ukraine that remain overly reliant on a single powerful patron for security and/or market opportunities.
Diversification of partnerships and the ability to adapt to fast-changing circumstances will be crucial for companies, as well. Multinationals will have new opportunities to shift operations to places where regulatory and tax burdens are few. Some will use access to advanced technology to align with state-owned rivals, which might allow them a way in to otherwise closed markets. Other companies will offer products and services that help foreign governments achieve their development goals, for example, by investing in China's interior or by providing services to Russian companies looking for new opportunities in the Arctic. Defense firms that can help countries or companies limit the damage inflicted by regional conflicts, organized crime, or increasingly sophisticated cyber-attacks will thrive in the more volatile and less predictable G-Zero world.
What comes next?
The G-Zero is not the new normal. It can't last, because it will create too many problems that demand cooperative solutions. We have to look beyond this era of transition and to consider what will come next. Who will provide leadership in the post G-Zero world?
Don't bet against the United States. Anyone who believes that America is in some kind of irreversible decline has chosen to ignore the entire history of the US and its people. The financial crisis—and China's ability to power its way through the slowdown—have persuaded some that China's state-manipulated form of capitalism is the wave of the future. But let's not forget that, for all its well-documented failings, the free market variety of capitalism has generated a broad prosperity through booms and busts for hundreds of years. State capitalism has no history of lifting developing countries into the developed world. In part, that's because the process of "creative destruction" is not state capitalism's friend. For an authoritarian state like China's, it's a source of unrest. America's system of higher education, the durability of its democracy, its culture of innovation and entrepreneurialism, its relatively strong demographics, and a dozen other factors work in the country's favor. That said, we're very unlikely to return to some form of single superpower world. Not every emerging power will fully emerge, but only a World War II-scale cataclysm could return the world to 1945.
The shape of the post-G-Zero global order will depend on the answer to two questions. First, will relations between America and China be defined mainly by competition and conflict or by complementary interests? Second, will these two countries dominate international politics or can a variety of other states play an independent and influential global role? I see five broad scenarios:
· A G2 world in which common interests lead US and Chinese leaders mainly to collaborate
· A workable G20 order in which the G-Zero has generated so much trouble that governments are forced to work together to ensure political and economic stability
· A "Cold War 2.0" scenario in which the new order is defined by US-Chinese conflict
· Regionalization of international politics, in which America remains the only global power but in which local heavyweights call most of the shots within their respective neighborhoods
· A disintegration scenario that I call "G-Subzero" in which fragmentation within powerful countries limits the ability of national governments to govern
Fortunately, that last scenario is highly unlikely. The world that follows the G-Zero will probably be some combination of a couple of these different models, but regionalization appears the likeliest result because it's the path we're already on. This is a system in which the United States remains the world's most powerful and influential nation, but in which regional heavyweights are likely to exert extraordinary influence within their respective neighborhoods—for better and for worse.
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So what can America's next president, Obama or Romney, and the country's next Congress do about all this? They can accept that the world is changed, that this is not 1960, and that, at least for the time being, the architects of American foreign policy must learn to do more with less. More importantly, they can build a foreign policy that allows US policymakers, America's military, American companies, and American investors to adapt to changing circumstances, partner where necessary, and innovate at every opportunity. They must also do something that Americans don't do often enough: Invest for the longer-term future. They must rebuild the nation's strength from within so that America can afford to be indispensable for the post-G-Zero world.
And I hope that US policymakers will find the courage to bolster the nation's security by sharply reducing its debt burden. No reform that fails to trim the fat from America's sacred cows can accomplish this goal. Deficits do matter, compromise is a virtue, and even a superpower must live within its means.
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Copyright 2012 John Mauldin. All Rights Reserved.
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