Bandar Assassinated? Zingales' Book Worth Reading!

Just one more article supporting my general thesis that Obama loses and Romney wins.  You don't have to love Romney to vote against Obama.  You simply have to look at Obama's record, his own commentary, the way he handles himself, his attacks on virtually every positive element of our society, the number of people he has thrown under the bus, the pitiful economic record, unemployment, people on food stamps and the sour mood of reluctant consumers.

With that in mind, who needs polls! (See 1 and 1a below.)

---This from a dear and long time friend and more recent fellow memo reader. "

My Bucket List 2013 HERE IS ALL I WANT Obama: Gone! Put "GOD" back in America !!! Borders: Closed! Congress: Obey its own laws NOW Language: English only Culture: Constitution, and the Bill of Rights! Drug Free: Mandatory Drug Screening before Welfare!

We the people are coming!

NO freebies to Non-Citizens! and when their term in the House or Senate is up so is their paycheck.....no lifetime paycheck for any of them, even President or Vice President --- Hussein had WMD but not the kind the press, media and GW haters wanted to focus on so they proceeded to beat him over the head. Meanwhile,  GW's own Secretary of State (Colin Powell)  did not help matters  when he went to the U.N., delivered a speech that allowed  the 'aginners' to paint the administration into a  'he did not have nuclear WMD' corner. See 2 below.) --- Palestinian economics is not cutting the mustard nor has it ever beause they were never held accountable.   (See 3 and 3a below.) --- My friend, Paul Rubin, has it about right.  (See 4 below.) I have just begun to read a book my number three daughter was kind enough to gift me. It is entitled "A Capitalism For The People"  and was written by Luigi Zingales, an Italian immigrant who fled his native country because of the corruption and political influence the elite exercise over Italian business. In the introduction, the author lays out the reasons  why American Capitalism is exceptional and different and why, until crony capitalism has begun to take over, American's were free to improve their lot because of hard work not because of luck, government favoritism etc. Though I have just begun the book it is obvious Obama's view of  capitalism is in direct conflict with Zingales's view because Obama believes competition  and freedom from government is not what produces the most for the most.  As i read more I will try and report on Zingales' more  sanguine thoughts. It is a very timely read considering how big business and big government are in bed to perpetuate each other and why this threatens the kind of capitalism associated with America's most productive years. What Zingales suggests is European capitalism was based on who you knew not on talent and American capitalism is morphing into the European, type because of the power of government and the recognition by big business to prosper it must identify and align itself with government. American capitalists no longer think in terms of what is best for the nation but what is best for themselves and their more narrow personal interests and that is why cronyism is a threat and why both Teapartyers and The March on Crowd have something in common - distrust of the elitists. ---- Every Indication the Saudi Prince, who was just selected to head their Security Agency, is dead.  You will be hearing more at a later time.  ---  Dick -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1)Add it up: The prediction models look dismal for Obama. Can he still win?

By Jeff Greenfield

I got into writing and thinking about politics because I was told there would be no math.

Boy, was I misled. It’s not just the torrent of polls that we have to deal with, but the numbers that supposedly forecast Presidential elections with uncanny accuracy. Depending on whom you turn to, the key lies in second quarter real GDP growth, the optimism or pessimism of the electorate, individual or family real income growth or a dizzying mix of these and other measurements.

They’re usually economic, although one prognosticator—Allan Lichtman, history professor at American University—uses broader measurements, asking whether the incumbent or challenger is charismatic or whether the incumbent party has presided over a major change in social policy. (This is considered a positive, although I don’t know if we’ve ever had a case like the Affordable Care Act, which—unlike every other major social change—passed without bipartisan backing and remains broadly unpopular.) 

I’m a skeptic about the predictive power of these numbers for many reasons. For one thing, the “sample size,” which totals about twenty or so Presidential elections since most of these measurements were first made, is too small. For another, they work—unless they don’t. In 1968, strong economic figures were trumped by a divisive war and by social unrest. In 2000, every economic forecasting model predicted that Al Gore would win a comfortable or landslide plurality. They were “right” in the sense that he got half a million more votes than Bush; they were “wrong” in the fundamental outcome they offered.

So it’s with that skepticism in mind that I offer, not a prediction, but a flat pre-election assessment: If President Barack Obama is to win, he is going to have to overcome a set of numbers that no incumbent President, or incumbent party, has ever managed to surmount.

The jobless rate has been stuck at just above 8 per cent for months; you have to go back to 1936 to find a President re-elected with a higher unemployment rate. And in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s case, it was a far better number than he had inherited. Plus, growth was booming.

Today, real growth is at 1.5 per cent. In the economic forecasting models, this portends what even the liberal arts majors have been predicting: a very close election.

The core question for many voters—“Are you generally satisfied with the country’s direction, or has the U.S. gone off on the wrong track”—gets a 32.7-60.7 negative answer, according to the RealClearPolitics average. Generally, an incumbent party needs to have at least a 35% positive response to this question to win the election, says the Gallup Organization.

The consumer confidence level is now about 60 per cent. No incumbent party has ever kept the White House with a number anything like that. (It was slightly higher, at 65 per cent, in 1980 when Carter lost in a landslide.) 

Now, try this as a thought exercise. Forget who is running, what the latest gaffe of the day is, who is outraged and what latest insult to what group has been perpetrated by the candidate or his staff. Ignore whom you’re rooting for, and just look at those numbers with the ice-cold heart of a bean counter.

What you would conclude, I think, is that there is no way an incumbent President could get re-elected given these current numbers.

In this sense, the 2012 election is going to test just how predictive many of these “fundamental” models are, and whether the assertion of some forecasters—that the outcome can be known irrespective of candidates and campaigns—is valid.

Why? Because, to put it bluntly: The Republicans have nominated a bad candidate.

Some (very) brief history and a hypothesis. Six years ago, Mitt Romney and his team realized that he could never win the Republican nomination as the pragmatic, moderate-conservative with moderate-to-liberal views on everything from abortion to gun control to the environment to health care. (The mandate was a conservative position back then, but put that aside.) When Team Romney saw Sen. George Allen, the likely 2008 social conservative hero, lose his re-election bid in 2006, they found an opening, and decided to reach, or lunge, for that slot.

And so, throughout the 2008 campaign and throughout this one, Romney has been running as if to claim that his four years in higher office was a case of mistaken identity. I think it has forced him to campaign in mortal fear of every word he utters, to pander to local pride and political constituencies in a manner that seems a parody of the clumsy politician. 

At root, Romney is a candidate in the grip of performance anxiety. And whether on the tennis court or in more intimate settings performance anxiety is a near-guarantee of poor performance.

It’s often said that a re-election campaign is always about the incumbent; like many political observations, that’s partly, but not wholly, true. Even when the electorate is disposed to replace the President, it has to be satisfied that the challenger is up to the job. Mitt Romney has yet to meet that test.

The Obama campaign, however, can take very limited comfort from Romney’s discomfit. If the “fundamental” numbers continue to be as grim as they now are, the desire to change course will deepen. And the more that longing intensifies, the lower the bar Mitt Romney will have to clear.

1a)The Jewish problem for Barack Obama

By Wesley Pruden

The Democrats have a Jewish problem, and his name is Barack Obama. Reluctantly, many Jews, loyal Democrats by birth and tradition, have concluded that he's not The One they thought he was.

With even greater reluctance, the White House has concluded that their Jewish problem is real, growing, and they better do something about it.

Mitt Romney's dramatic declaration Sunday in Jerusalem that preventing Iran from building a nuclear weapon is America's "highest national security priority" and military force should not be excluded, and that he regards Jerusalem as the true capital of Israel, puts in stark relief the difference between what the two candidates think about America's only real ally in the Middle East.

Mr. Romney is willing, even eager, to give heartfelt, emphatic, unadulterated, full-throated support for the Jewish state in its hour of greatest peril since the founding. Mr. Obama can't do that because he doesn't "feel the love." He sprang from a culture of radicalism where Israel was regarded as illegitimate, if not evil. He gives the clear impression that he doesn't like Jews very much.

Mr. Obama repeats only empty, bland assurances that everything is OK, that the friends of Israel shouldn't worry because the messiah from Chicago is on the watch. U.S.-Israeli ties, he told a rally the other day in Palm Beach, are stronger than ever. That's bunk, as Sen. John McCain bluntly told a television interviewer: "Everybody knows that relations with Israel have never been worse." 

Bland assurances are no longer enough to satisfy betrayed true believers; the monolithic Jewish support for Democrats, any Democrat, is fraying around the edges. Merely telling skeptical and suspicious Jewish voters not to believe their own eyes and ears is no longer effective. No one expects Mitt Romney to win a majority of Jewish voters on Nov. 6, or anything close to it. He doesn't have to. If he can peel away three or four percentage points in certain swing states, particularly Florida and Ohio, that would change the game.

John McCain spent a lot of time, attention and money to attempt this four years ago. George W. Bush made such an attempt in 2004. Neither worked. But 2012 is a different ball game.

Jewish voters, like others of various passions and persuasions, have had four years to confront buyer's remorse. Four years of Barack Obama have taught even slow learners to pay attention.

The proof is that a group of the slow learners, Jewish liberals still in love with Mr. Obama even if he isn't in love with them, are putting together a campaign to answer the Republican Jewish Coalition's successful work to get the friends of Israel to wake up and sniff the odor of harsh reality. This is not, a Democratic operative told Politico, the Capitol Hill daily, a case of Obama being "swift boated." Nobody is telling stories about the president. His Jewish critics are merely laying out what everybody who has been half-awake during the past four years already knows.

Aaron David Miller, who has worked for several Democratic presidents over a quarter of a century, warns Democrats of "turbulence ahead" in a commentary in Foreign Policy magazine that has shaken up Jewish assumptions. "I've watched a few presidents come and go on this issue," he writes, "and Obama really is different. Unlike [Bill] Clinton and George W. Bush, Obama isn't in love with the idea of Israel. He has a harder time making allowances for Israeli behavior he doesn't like. . . the president doesn't emote on many policy issues, with the possible exception of health care. But on Israel, he just doesn't buy the 'tiny state living on the knife's edge with the dark past' argument."

Alas, the knife's edge is exactly where Israel lives, like it or not, and Israel must act accordingly. Mitt Romney, like his constituents - some Jewish, most not, and many of them evangelical Christians - understands that. Mr. Romney, like that constituency, is not embarrassed to "emote" about it. Barack Obama can't "emote" because to him Israel is not a natural friend and ally, bound to America by considerations of blood, faith and circumstance, but a nuisance. Why can't Israel just go away?

This is hard for Jews, who have been voting Democratic since their grandfathers rallied to FDR and the New Deal, to accept as the new reality. It has been easier to pretend there's no problem. But now there is a problem, and it's too big to hide with convenient pretense.

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2)UK Experts To Assist In Destruction of Saddam Hussein's Remaining Stores of Chemical Weapons

Yes, you read that correctly. Not even a hint of acknowledgement in this AP report that the question of Saddam Hussein's chemical warfare stocks is something of a contentious point in US and world politics.

So, these chemical weapons will be destroyed, without anyone much bothering to note that they exist.

Britain will help the Iraqi government dispose of what's left of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons, still stored in two bunkers in north of Baghdad, the British embassy in Baghdad announced Monday.

...

Saddam stored the chemical weapons near population centers so that he could access them quickly, despite the danger to his civilian population.

It's possible that these weapons were stored under UN seal, as some of Iraq's uranium was; that is to say, it's possible these stores were already acknowledged and hence already "counted." Bear in mind I'm just speculating about that possibility. The article doesn't point anything like that out.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3)Palestinian Financial Crisis Looms

By Shoshana Bryen

The Palestinians face an economic crisis more severe than the World Bank had anticipated; the Bank fears that the territories may become "ungovernable." This is not actually new, but since the Bank in its panic is considering bypassing restrictions on money to Hamas, it is worth looking at the roots of the "crisis."

The Palestinian Authority's 2012 budget -- produced by PM Salam Fayyad, the West's "go-to man" for economic decision-making -- was a fantasy. It called for $3.5 billion in spending, including $1.1 billion in aid, and showed a deficit of between $750 million and $1.1 billion. The latter has proven to be closer to the truth. The Palestinian economy was expected to generate about $1.3 billion, and the PA planned to spend three times that. (By comparison, Vermont, the smallest generator among U.S. states, produced about $26 billion last year.) U.S. aid ($513 million, not including security assistance) was expected to cover about 20% of actual PA spending, with the Europeans kicking in another 20%.

With planning like that, who could be surprised by a $200-million cash shortage?

The World Bank blames the world economy and Israel. It does not find fault with Palestinian corruption, an outsized security force, an oversized bureaucracy, an overreliance on other people's money, or the failure to find things to do that produce income. It declines to consider whether the ongoing Palestinian war against Israel has had an impact on the Palestinian economy.

There used to be income. In 1992, 115,600 Palestinian workers entered Israel every day; in 1996, it was 63,000. Why? Because beginning in January 1995 and through the year, a series of Palestinian terror attacks -- mainly suicide bombers on buses, but including a particularly gruesome nail bomb that exploded in the center of Tel Aviv -- killed more than 100 Israelis. Israel responded by permitting fewer Palestinians to enter.

Increased security in Israel allowed the number of Palestinians to rise again, and unemployment decreased from 18.2% in September 1995 to 11% by September 2000. In mid-2000, 136,000 were working inside Israel -- 40% of all employed Palestinians. Another 5,000 worked in the joint Israeli/Arab run Erez Industrial Zone in the Gaza Strip. Thousands more worked in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in Israeli-owned businesses.

Yasser Arafat launched the so-called "second intifada" in late September of that year¹. Begun at the peak of Palestinian economic integration with Israel, the terrorist war ultimately killed more than 1,000 Israelis and wounded more than 5,600 (comparable U.S. figures would be 40,000 and 224,000 -- factors of 40). Israel's defense included reducing the number of Palestiniansworking in Israel, and by March 2001, the number had been reduced to 55,000. The Erez Industrial Zone was a particular target of Palestinian terror attacks; after 11 Israelis were killed there, the complex was closed.

Israel re-established security control of the West Bank, and the "intifada" ended in 2004. In 2005, Israel removed its presence from the Gaza Strip. There was no Gaza embargo, no impediment to independent Palestinian economic activity at the time. In fact, the Palestinian new agency Ma'an waxed ecstatic about economic opportunities for the Palestinians in Gaza, particularly with the acquisition of the greenhouses and agricultural equipment the Israelis were leaving behind in a $14-million deal brokered by then-World Bank President James Wolfenson.

Palestinian looters attacked the greenhouses almost immediately, and by early 2006, the greenhouses and the $100 million in annual exports to Europe they had produced were destroyed.

Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007 after a brief and brutal war with Fatah. With Hamas's declared intention to wage war against Israel, rocket attacks that had begun in 2001 escalated dramatically. After more than 9,000 increasingly long-range and accurate rockets and missiles, Israel launched Operation Cast Lead in 2008/09 and the Israel/Egypt blockade of Gaza ensued².

It should be noted that the Hamas budget is separate from that of Fatah on the West Bank. In 2012, it showed with planned revenues of $60 million and a planned deficit of $480 million. Hamas "revenues" are derived largely from smuggling -- those revenues will fall dramatically if Egypt opens the Gaza/Sinai border -- and it relies on money from Iran to fund the rocket war against Israel.

"Civil servant" salaries in Gaza are paid from Ramallah using Western money not permitted to go directly to Hamas. Fatah also pays "salaries" to Palestinian terrorists in Israeli jails and pensions to retired terrorists. Both Hamas and Fatah paid an "honorarium" to the terrorists released in the Gilad Shalit deal.

There is a pattern here.

The Palestinians are at war with Israel, and wars have consequences. One is that normal economic activity is impossible within the Palestinian territories and between the territories and Israel. Deliberately. And with the knowledge a) that essential services will be handled by one or more NGOs or charities, with the active assistance of the government of Israel, and b) that Israel will be blamed for the mess.

The World Bank and other donors fall precisely into the trap, treating Palestinian poverty as if it has no relationship to Palestinian government policy -- Hamas or Fatah. If the Palestinians were nearly as worried about poverty (rather than cash flow) as the World Bank, their leadership would figure out how to produce something people in the real world value and for which they would pay.

Or at least stop destroying avenues of economic progress with Israel.

---

[1] Contrary to the media, the "intifada" did not being with PM Sharon's traditional visit to the Temple Mount. It began the day before that, with the killing of an Israeli policeman by his Palestinian "partner."

[2] Israel, it should be noted, absorbed the "intifada," the rocket attacks, and the 2006 rocket war from Hezb'allah in the north and spent increasingly large sums of public money on civil defense and missile defense. The Israeli economy bears a heavy burden in defense expenditures even with U.S. assistance (that is largely mandated to be spent in the U.S. and thus does not aid the Israeli economy).


3a)Subject: WASH. POST, NY TIMES FURIOUS AT ROMNEY FOR DEMOLISHING THEIR FALSE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN NARRATIVE
By Leo Rennert


With headlines blazing and printer’s ink aplenty, the Washington Post and the New York Times turned downright apoplectic about Mitt Romney’s comment in Jerusalem that differences in “culture” are the key to Israel greatly outpacing the Palestinian territories in economic performance.

“Romney angers Palestinians with remarks on economy,” reads a six-page headline in the Post.  “With Jerusalem Comment, Romney Raises Sparks,” blares a six-column headline in the Times.

The headlines are a tip-off that these two papers deem Romney’s remark an unpardonable affront to their own narratives of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

For years, they have blamed Israel for prolonging the conflict with the Palestinians and here comes Romney with one well-chosen word demolishing their basic thesis – that Israel is at fault for not making greater concessions, for refusing to divide Jerusalem, for expanding settlements. Take your pick.  But avert your eyes from any Palestinian transgressions.

Romney turns this Post-Times premise upside down and squarely puts the onus on the Palestinians – that they have demonstrated “cultural” propensities that foul their own nest.

Such as being governed by a kleptocracy under the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and a theocratic terrorist regime in Gaza.  Such as failing to empower women and such as trampling over basic human rights in suppressing Hamas adherents in the West Bank and Fatah members in Gaza.

None of this, of course, graces the pages of the Post and the Times, which instead seek to parry Romney’s remark about “cultural” impediments on the Palestinian side by blaming Israel for limiting trade with roadblocks and checkpoints in the West Bank and a blockade of Hamas-governed Gaza.

But that’s confusing cause and effect.  Neither the Post nor the Times acknowledges that such Israeli restrictions are the effect of another key component of Palestinian “culture” – i.e. a propensity to resort to violence and terrorism against Israel.  When PA President Mahmoud Abbas glorifies terrorist killers by naming public places and facilities after them, he promotes and justifies terrorism.  And it’s not just an idle threat.  Somehow, the Post and the Times seem to have forgotten the first intifada and the second intifada – the latter killed more than a thousand Israelis and injured several thousands more.

And to this day, Palestinian rockets fired from Gaza continue to bombard civilian targets in southern Israel and terrorize 1 million Israelis within their range.

All of this falls under Romney’s rubric of Palestinian “culture” – yet goes unacknowledged by the Post and the Times.  There would be no blockade of Gaza nor dwindling numbers of roadblocks in the West Bank if the Palestinians genuinely foreswore violence.  But that’s highly unlikely because resort to violence against innocent civilians is also sadly ingrained in their “culture” – a reality that the Post and the Times stoutly continue to ignore.

4)'A Climate That Helps Us Grow'

However the president's words about business are interpreted, his administration's policies have been hostile.

By PAUL H. RUBIN

President Obama's riff on small business—"If you've got a business, you didn't build that, somebody else made that happen"—has become a major controversy. The Romney campaign has made this quote the subject of several speeches and ads, and there have been rallies all over the country of business people with signs saying that "I did build this business."

Mr. Obama is now claiming that his words, delivered at a campaign stop in Roanoke, Va., on July 13, were taken out of context. "Of course Americans build their own businesses," he said in a campaign ad last week. What he meant was simply that government sets the stage for business creation. In his speech, and again in his campaign ad, the example Mr. Obama pointed to was "roads and bridges."

The context of the speech indicates the president really did mean that "you didn't build that." But let's give him the benefit of the doubt; let's assume he merely meant that business is impossible without government institutions that create the infrastructure for the economy to operate. As Mr. Obama's deputy campaign chief Stephanie Cutter said, in clarifying his original remarks on July 24, "We build our businesses through hard work and initiative, with the public and private sectors working together to create a climate that helps us grow. President Obama knows that."

Enlarge Image

Bloomberg

A flower shop called Flowers By Julia in Princeton, Ill.

But business is certainly not getting "a climate that helps us grow" from the current administration. That administration has instead created a hostile climate through its regulatory policies.

The news media report almost daily about new regulatory burdens. More generally, according to an analysis in March by the Heritage Foundation, "Red Tape Rising," the Obama administration in its first three years adopted 106 major regulations (those with costs over $100 million), compared with 28 such regulations in the George W. Bush administration. Heritage notes that there are 144 more such major regulations in the pipeline.

Consider a major example of government investment—roads and bridges. A transportation system needs roads, but it also needs gasoline. This administration's policies—its refusal to allow a private company to build the Keystone XL pipeline, its reduction in permits for offshore drilling and increased EPA regulation of pollutants—retard the production of gasoline. If transportation is an important input from government to creating a favorable climate for business, shouldn't we be encouraging, not discouraging, gasoline production?

Other inputs needed by business are capital and labor. The Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, signed by Mr. Obama and enforced by his appointees, makes raising capital and investing more difficult. Since many regulations needed to implement this law have not even been written, business cannot know how to adapt to them. This increases uncertainty and so reduces incentives for investment.

The increased minimum wage, passed and signed in the early days of the administration, discourages hiring of entry-level workers. ObamaCare has increased uncertainty regarding future labor costs and so hindered business in hiring and expanding. The pro-union decisions by Obama appointees at the National Labor Relations Board do not create a climate to help the economy grow.

There are many other burdens placed on business. Example: The Americans With Disabilities Act is being interpreted by the Justice Department to require all hotel-based swimming pools to provide increased access to disabled persons. This will come at a high cost per pool. Many hotels and motels are small, family-run enterprises. This requirement will either lead to an increase in prices or to a decision not to have pools at all.

Either policy will induce patrons to shift to larger chain motels. Interestingly, the application of this rule has been delayed for existing pools until Jan. 31, 2013, after the election. Families vacationing this summer will not notice the new requirement.

If we accept the plain meaning of Mr. Obama's speech, it indicates that he does not believe in the importance of entrepreneurs in creating businesses. But if we accept the reinterpretation of his speech in light of his administration's deeds, it indicates a belief that a hostile regulatory climate poses no danger to economic growth. Either interpretation means that this administration is not good for business.

Mr. Rubin is professor of economics at Emory University and president-elect of the Southern Economic Association.

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