Pick a Fight With A Chickun and Duck ? Re Israel's Capital!

President Obama Can't Even Give Away His Big Government Product

If Bill Clinton threw six feet of dirt on the love of bureaucracy when he declared “the era of big government is over” in his 1996 State of the Union speech, President Obama is a grave-robber, a Dr. Frankenstein determined to jolt some life back into the corpse. In a way he has succeeded: Federal spending has jumped from 20 percent to 24 percent of GDP on his watch. And yet concurrent with that, there has been a mass revulsion toward the lumbering monster Dr. Obama is telling us we should regard as our benevolent friend.

Even more remarkable is that we fear additional government even though Obama has not yet succeeded in charging Americans more for all of this supposed bounty, having largely gone along with Republican wishes to keep income taxes at the same level. Somehow, the polls suggest, even a people showered with freebies aren’t feeling grateful.

Think about that. You don’t begrudge Apple when they charge you for their latest work of niftiness. You know they earn a profit, and that doesn’t bother you either. You think you’re better off with their product than with the cash you parted with. You leave the store whistling a happy tune.

Not so with government, much to Obama’s chagrin. Not only do the voters not like the idea of buying what he’s selling, Obama can’t even give away his product. He is like a mother who offers her children ice cream first, spinach later — and the kids are rejecting the ice cream.

Let’s do the president a favor and interpret his instantly notorious “You didn’t build that” speech the way he would like us to: “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help,” hesaid in Roanoke, Va., on July 13. “There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.  Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.  Somebody invested in roads and bridges.  If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen.  The Internet didn’t get invented on its own.  Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”

Let us assume all this is true (it isn’t: for instance, it was not “government research” alone that gave us what we now know as the Internet), and that all of it had to be true (that public schools are the only way to encounter a “great teacher” is a curious implication coming from a man who attended private schools and sends his children to one, while roads need not be funded by broad taxes on everyone but could easily be paid for by user fees such as gasoline taxes and tolls.)

If government is as wonderful as Obama says it is, why doesn’t he ask us to pay what it costs? Why doesn’t he raise the price – taxes – to a point where the deficit is zero?

Instead, Obama keeps insisting that only a few people should be asked to pay “a little bit more,” by restoring Clinton-era income taxes on high earners. The president frames this argument in terms of fairness, though, not pretending that it would make much of a dent in the deficit, which would continue to be gargantuan in any case.

The top 20 percent of earners already pay two-thirds of federal income taxes, hence they pay disproportionately for the things Obama implies they do not pay for at all (the top 20 percent aren’t driving two-thirds of the cars on the roads and bridges, nor are their children taking two-thirds of the seats in the public schools). Taxation has gotten much more progressive since 1979, when this group paid only 55 percent of all federal income taxes.

The great myth of the Democratic party is that the voters simply need to be vigorously reminded that government does great things for them, and when at last the citizenry is properly educated it will happily agree to pay for everything it is getting. Sure, at first only the rich will pay more, but as society gets remade along Western European lines eventually everyone will realize that we’re all in this together —  and grow up and pay for the privilege of membership in such a cozy, warm family.

Federal tax revenues from all sources amounted to $2.3 trillion in fiscal 2011, yet we are getting $3.6 trillion in those government programs Obama loves so dearly. If Obama’s Roanoke speech ended by saying, “and by the way, I’m offering you all of this at the low, low price of a tax increase on you of over 50 percent,” would he have any supporters at all?

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Extreme Liberals and P/C Progressives are always looking for a fight with and seeking to destroy those whose views are different it seems. 

Early on, Obama jumped on a policeman for over-reacting then settled the stupidity of his own compulsive re-action by popping some beers. 


Then Obama attacked Americans as bible thumping gun toting lovers.


Then Obama dissed Israel and told Americans who are successful they are misguided and could not have succeeded without government roads, which, of course, were paid for  with their taxes dollars  skimmed from their earnings.  And now the Liberals have attacked Cathy Chickuns.


Meanwhile Syrians are getting killed, Iran keeps developing a nuclear bomb and Russia and China continue to  demonstrate contempt for America and World opinion .


Glad to see Liberals/Progressives have their priorities straight and in order. (See 1 below.)
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Talk about Chickun - Obama's Press Secretary cannot even answer a simple question so he 'ducks!' (See 2 below.)
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From my astute friend and fellow member reader: "Sandy Weill is a "deal guy." He does deals.  He buys stuff, then he sells stuff.  He is now selling.  He knows nothing about running a bank and never did."
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Listen up Obama! (See 3 and 3a below.) 
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Bolton keeps on telling it like it is and that makes him a thorn in the side of those who are always trying to paint Obama in a more  favorable light when it comes to his relationship and policies toward Israel. (See 4 below.)
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Is Netanyahu getting ready to pay for a possible war knowing a weakened America with Obama as president is not dependable for too much help?  (See 4 below.)
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TEPID just as I predicted and it will get worse! (See 5 below.)
Dick
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1)Chicken a la Emanuel

Editorial of The New York Sun 

The question we find ourselves ruminating on this morning is whether an Orthodox Jewish restaurant would be permitted to open in Chicago. The question is spurred by the headline on the Drudge Report “Rahm Rejects CHICK-FIL-A: ‘Not Chicago Values . . .’” It links to a dispatch in the Sun-Times saying that Mayor Emanuel and a local alderman are “determined to block Chick-fil-A from expanding in Chicago” because of the religious views of its owners, who are Christians who oppose same-sex marriage.

This erupted after Dan Cathy, the president of Chick-fil-A, which built a restaurant empire based on the quality of its service and the deliciousness of its chicken sandwiches, gave an interview to a newspaper called the Biblical Recorder, which has been issued by the North Carolina Baptists since 1833. The Recorder asked him about opposition to his company’s support of what the Recorder called “the traditional family.” Mr. Cathy replied “Guilty as charged.”

Mr. Cathy didn’t stop there. Quoth he: “We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.” He added, “We operate as a family business ... our restaurants are typically led by families — some are single. We want to do anything we possibly can to strengthen families. We are very much committed to that.”

It is not our purpose here to treat Mr. Cathy’s views. Nor is it not our purpose here to remark on same sex marriage, one way or the other. It is our purpose to remark that it’s hard to think of a difference between the views expressed in the quotations above by Mr. Cathy and those one might hear from the Council of Torah Sages or the Archdiocese of Chicago. Or every president of America who has spoken on the subject until President Obama changed his position and declared himself, personally if not officially, for same sex marriage.

Yet here comes the mayor of Chicago declaring, according to the Sun Times, “Chick-fil-A’s values are not Chicago values. They’re not respectful of our residents, our neighbors and our family members. And if you’re gonna be part of the Chicago community, you should reflect Chicago values.” The Sun Times quoted him as adding that what the chief executive officer of Chick-fil-A “has said as it relates to gay marriage and gay couples is not what I believe, but more importantly, it’s not what the people of Chicago believe.”

Well, we’ll see. It’s not that the city of Chicago has been so all-fired tolerant itself. And never mind the carnage of violence and murder on its streets. The mayor is quoted by the Sun Times as noting that the city “just passed legislation as it relates to civil union” and that “my goal and my hope … is that we now move on recognizing gay marriage.” In other words, those of us who are not from Chicago can deduce, the Windy City hasn’t yet enacted gay marriage any more than has, say, Atlanta, Georgia, headquarters of Chick-fil-A.

It happens that we wouldn’t object to Mayor Emanuel expressing his differences with the Council of Torah Sages or the Archdiocese of Chicago or any other religious or secular institution that holds views identical, or similar, to those of the proprietor of Chick-fil-A. We have no objection to Mayor Emanuel trying to lead in the formation of a public opinion that he sees as more tolerant of same sex couples. But somewhere the liberal camp has veered far beyond liberality in respect of this issue — from protecting victims of bullying to becoming the bullies themselves.

Mayor Emanuel is not alone in using his bully pulpit in a bullying way. Mayor Menino of Boston is also trying to block Chick-fil-A from opening a store in Beantown. Presumably other cities will pile on in the weeks ahead. All the more reason to mark the moment. What Their Honors are talking about is imposing on ordinary citizens a religious test in order to open a business in their cities. It is a bizarre development in a country in which mayors, and all other officials in America, are themselves protected from such tests by a constitution that declares that noreligious test shall ever be required as a qualifiction to any office of public trust. What an irony that today the question has become whether religious tests of the kind that may never be required of public officials will be imposed by public officials on private persons and their businesses.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2)White House press secretary Jay Carney is asked by a reporter what is the capital of Israel.

Reporter: What city does this Administration consider to be the capital of Israel? Jerusalem or Tel Aviv?


Jay Carney, White House press secretary: Um... I haven't had that question in a while. Our position has not changed. Can we, uh...


Reporter: What is the capital [of Israel]?


Jay Carney: You know our position.


Reporter: I don't.


Lester Kinsolving, World Net Daily: No, no. She doesn't know, that's why she asked.


Carney: She does know.


Reporter: I don't.


Kinsolving: She does not know. She just said that she does not know. I don't know.


Carney: We have long, lets not call on...


Kinsolving: Tel Aviv or Jerusalem?


Carney: You know the answer to that. 


Kinsolving: I don't know the answer. We don't know the answer. Could you just give us an answer? What do you recognize? What does the administration recognize?


Carney: Our position has not changed.


Kinsolving: What position?


Carney then moved on to another question.

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3)Israel’s Settlers Are Here to Stay

By DANI DAYAN, NYT

WHATEVER word you use to describe Israel’s 1967 acquisition of Judea and Samaria — commonly referred to as the West Bank in these pages — will not change the historical facts. Arabs called for Israel’s annihilation in 1967, and Israel legitimately seized the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria in self-defense. Israel’s moral claim to these territories, and the right of Israelis to call them home today, is therefore unassailable. Giving up this land in the name of a hallowed two-state solution would mean rewarding those who’ve historically sought to destroy Israel, a manifestly immoral outcome.

Of course, just because a policy is morally justified doesn’t mean it’s wise. However, our four-decade-long settlement endeavor is both. The insertion of an independent Palestinian state between Israel and Jordan would be a recipe for disaster.

The influx of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees from Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and elsewhere would convert the new state into a hotbed of extremism. And any peace agreement would collapse the moment Hamas inevitably took power by ballot or by gun. Israel would then be forced to recapture the area, only to find a much larger Arab population living there.

Moreover, the Palestinians have repeatedly refused to implement a negotiated two-state solution. The American government and its European allies should abandon this failed formula once and for all and accept that the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria are not going anywhere.

On the contrary, we aim to expand the existing Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, and create new ones. This is not — as it is often portrayed — a theological adventure but is rather a combination of inalienable rights and realpolitik.

Even now, and despite the severe constraints imposed by international pressure, more than 350,000 Israelis live in Judea and Samaria. With an annual growth rate of 5 percent, we can expect to reach 400,000 by 2014 — and that excludes the almost 200,000 Israelis living in Jerusalem’s newer neighborhoods. Taking Jerusalem into account, about 1 in every 10 Israeli Jews resides beyond the 1967 border. Approximately 160,000 Jews live in communities outside the settlement blocs that proponents of the two-state solution believe could be easily incorporated into Israel. But uprooting them would be exponentially more difficult than the evacuation of the Gaza Strip’s 8,000 settlers in 2005.

The attempts by members of the Israeli left to induce Israelis to abandon their homes in Judea and Samaria by offering them monetary compensation are pathetic. This checkbook policy has failed in the past, as it will in the future. In the areas targeted for evacuation most of us are ideologically motivated and do not live here for economic reasons. Property prices in the area are steep and settlers who want to relocate could sell their property on the free market. But they do not.

Our presence in all of Judea and Samaria — not just in the so-called settlement blocs — is an irreversible fact. Trying to stop settlement expansion is futile, and neglecting this fact in diplomatic talks will not change the reality on the ground; it only makes the negotiations more likely to fail.

Given the irreversibility of the huge Israeli civilian presence in Judea and Samaria and continuing Palestinian rejectionism, Western governments must reassess their approach to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They should acknowledge that no final-status solution is imminent. And consequently, instead of lamenting that the status quo is not sustainable, the international community should work together with the parties to improve it where possible and make it more viable.

Today, security — the ultimate precondition for everything — prevails. Neither Jews nor Palestinians are threatened by en masse eviction; the economies are thriving; a new Palestinian city, Rawabi, is being built north of Ramallah; Jewish communities are growing; checkpoints are being removed; and tourists of all nationalities are again visiting Bethlehem and Shiloh.

While the status quo is not anyone’s ideal, it is immeasurably better than any other feasible alternative. And there is room for improvement. Checkpoints are a necessity only if terror exists; otherwise, there should be full freedom of movement. And the fact that the great-grandchildren of the original Palestinian refugees still live in squalid camps after 64 years is a disgrace that should be corrected by improving their living conditions.

Yossi Beilin, a left-wing former Israeli minister, wrote a telling article a few months ago. 

A veteran American diplomat touring the area had told Mr. Beilin he’d left frightened because he found everyone — Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan and Saudi Arabia — content with the current situation. 

Mr. Beilin finds this widespread satisfaction disturbing, too.

I think it is wonderful news. If the international community relinquished its vain attempts to attain the unattainable two-state solution, and replaced them with intense efforts to improve and maintain the current reality on the ground, it would be even better. The settlements of Judea and Samaria are not the problem — they are part of the solution.

Dani Dayan is the chairman of the Yesha Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria.

3a)Adieu, two-state solution

Arab Spring punctures balloon

Amir Taheri

The Arab Spring has punctured many received deas about Middle Eastern politics — including the “two-state solution” to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The “two-state” formula was always based on two questionable assumptions:

 1) that Palestinians regarded themselves as a nation in a world of nation-states and wished to create a state of their own; 

2) that creating a Palestinian state was something that Israel acting alone could magically make happen.

The Arab Spring has seriously shaken the first assumption by revitalizing two ideologies that had lurked under the surface during decades of despotism. Both ideologies were born in the 19th century, partly as a result of contact with rising European empires.

AP

Not interested: Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh wants a pan-Islamic caliphate, not a Palestinian state.

The first is pan-Islamism, with the ultimate goal of restoring the caliphate. The second is modernization — which, in practice, means westernization, albeit with a local cultural veneer (a recipe also adopted by such diverse cultures as India and Japan).

As the post-Arab Spring landscape takes shape, the clash between those two ideologies will dominate the politics of the Middle East in the coming decades.

The pan-Islamist movement has never been interested in the creation of a Palestinian state. In fact, in 1947-48 pan-Islamists worked hard to prevent that outcome.

The Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Hussaini, leader of the first Palestinian guerrilla groups, and Ahmad Shukeiri, the founder of Hamas (an acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement) repeatedly asserted that their goal was not the creation of a Palestinian state, but the liberation of Muslim territory occupied by the “infidel.”

In other words, they didn’t want a Palestinian state; they wanted the destruction of the Jewish state.

Some secular Palestinians adopted the concept of a Palestinian state but only as tactical ploy en route to the strategic goal of wiping Israel off the map.

Last week, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh spelled out the pan-Islamist position at a prayer meeting in the north of Gaza on the eve of the fasting month of Ramadan. He announced he would lead a delegation to Cairo to invite Egypt’s new president, Muhammad Mursi, to give a boost to “the struggle to revive the caliphate.”

“The Arab nationalist order ensured failure to return to the Islamic caliphate,” he said. “It also ensured the Muslim ummah remained at the bottom of nations [in the world] and perpetuated American hegemony and the continuation of the Zionist occupation.”

Haniyeh added: “The Arab Spring has opened the path to the restoration of the Caliphate after the liberation of Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

Meanwhile, the Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian pan-Islamist outfit, has launched a campaign against what it dubs “the two-state conspiracy.”

 According to Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Shalah, Washington plans to revive the debate as a “diversion “at a time that Muslim masses seek to liberate “all of Islam’s lost lands.”

Despite the enthusiasm shown by Hanieyh and Shalah, as a political strategy the revival of the caliphate remains a murky concept.

Many questions remain unanswered. Who could be the next caliph? The Ottoman dynasty that held the caliphate for four centuries withered away without a male heir to the last caliph, Abdul-Majid II. Claims by a range of personalities, including Sharif Hussein (the great grandfather of the present king of Jordan), the Aga Khan and the Egyptian King Farouq never took off.

Efforts by Iran’s “Supreme Guide,” Ali Khamenei, to cast himself as a Shiite version of the caliph are seldom taken seriously even by Iranian officials.

If finding an acceptable candidate for caliph is difficult, identifying the “lost lands of Islam” that need to be liberated is even more so. Yes, Israel’s tiny chunk of territory, about 20 percent of historic Palestine, is always included. But so are much of northern India and virtually the whole of the Balkan Peninsula.

Some groups include Spain and Portugal plus the western half of France, and southern Italy up to Rome. Others want to “liberate” Russia, which was under Muslim Tatar rule for two centuries.

Southern Thailand, northwestern Burma, the Chinese East Turkestan (Xinjiang) several islands in the Philippines archipelago also need to be “liberated.” In Africa, large chunks of Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania and Mozambique remain to be restored to Islam.

In short, pan-Islamists have a plateful. They have no time to waste on the mirage of a cat’s-paw of a putative Palestinian state.

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4)Bolton: Obama ‘Most Hostile’ President Toward Israel Ever

By Greg McDonald

Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton is calling Barack Obama “the most hostile president” toward Israel since the Jewish state was created, saying his policies have “actually set the peace process back” in the Middle East.

Responding to a tweet Tuesday from Vice President Joe Biden that Obama “has done more for Israel’s security than any president since Harry Truman,” Bolton declared, “That’s just ridiculous.”

“This is the most hostile president since the state of Israel was created,” Bolton told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren Tuesday night. “He’s demonstrated that hostility right from the beginning of his administration.”

Bolton — now a Fox News contributor who supports Republican Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign — accused the president of putting “the responsibility for all the turmoil in the region on Israel.”

“By relieving the Palestinians of any real obligation to negotiate, he’s actually set the peace process back,” Bolton charged, referring to early speeches in which the president suggested Israel should be confined to the boundaries established following the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict known as the Six-Day War.“This has been very, very restrictive on Israel, and it has cost the United States, and Israel, and its Arab friends in the region,” he added.

Bolton also said Obama’s “treatment of Iran’s nuclear weapons program has been profoundly mishandled” to the point of endangering not only Israel’s security, but the rest of the world as well.

Bolton made the comments as Romney headed off on his first trip abroad as a presidential candidate. Stops are planned for Israel, Poland, and the Olympic Games in London before he returns home to the campaign trail.

Bolton described it as “significant” that Obama has yet to visit Israel as president and chose Egypt as his first trip abroad after taking office.

“The fact that the president went to Egypt to give a major speech to the Muslim world but couldn’t find time to slip into Israel for a visit — you can’t miss the symbolism of that,” Bolton said. “I think, though, it is the broader mistreatment of Israel, of denigrating its role as an important ally, not understanding the contribution it has made to security in the Middle East, that’s the real problem.”

Bolton suggested the point of Romney’s specific visit to Israel is to make it clear that “his administration will treat its friends like friends and its adversaries like adversaries.”

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4)New Israeli taxes are steps towards a $25-30bn war budget


The Israeli government convenes Monday, July 30, to approve an austerity-cum-taxation package entailing a 5-percent, across-the-board cutback in government ministry budgets to raise NIS 1 billion, or $250 million, in revenue; a tax hike will yield another NIS 3 billion, or $750 million. Both steps will generate an estimated total income of about one billion dollars.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz explained Wednesday, July 25, that these measures are vital to save Israel from economic decline like Germany, whose credit rating turned negative this week, or disaster like Greece and Spain which teeter on the brink of bankruptcy. Even America’s economic troubles are cited as worth avoiding.

Beer and cigarettes went up that night as a foretaste of the new measures.

Government leaders warned that the new steps were just the first round of further cutbacks and tax hikes in store for 2013. They are estimated to realize a further revenue injection of NIS 20 billion ($5 billion). 

The first package was produced this week at an emergency economic marathon led by the prime minister, Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer and other heads of the economy. The public was informed that the most urgent item on its agenda was ways and means of keeping Israel’s annual deficit within the 3-3.4 percent limit despite rising calls on the national purse. In every statement, ministerial spokesmen stressed that more tough measures were in store after the current round.

But for now, the education, social welfare and defense budgets remained untouched.

Some critics of Netanyahu government critics blame its policy of overspending in response to a wave of social protesters; others resent the one percent hike on VAT on purchases as hitting low-income groups.

At the same time, sources in Jerusalem report that Netanyahu and Steinitz have rightly turned genuine economic difficulty into a lever for getting the country on track for a war economy, without saying this in so many words.

They have therefore avoided discussing the consequences of the new measures – aside from a cap on the national deficit – or their duration. Israel’s leaders appreciate that the country is perilously close to war but they can’t tell for how long it will last or how it will end.  A short war might boost economic development while a long conflict costing billions would require more belt-tightening.

Gone are the old days when an embattled Israel was able to ask and receive from Washington easy-term loans to cover its war costs, military hardware gratis to replenish depleted weapons and ammo stores and/or international loan guarantees. Today, Jerusalem knows that given the present state of the US economy and the possibility of Israel having to act unilaterally against Iran, it will have to come up with its own war funding.

This week’s marathon most certainly went past economic steps to ponder cost-accounting relative to the number of countries potentially at war with Israel as critical to size of the defense budget. Cost estimates swing wildly between an operation against Iran, facing Iran, Syria and Hizballah together for a long or short conflict, or a possible contest with Egypt to purge Sinai of terrorists.

Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak gave part of the game away about the dual purpose of the new measures in the comments they made Wednesday and Thursday, July 25-26.

Both used an interesting tactic:  First, they focused on the dry facts and figures of government spending, is deficit, revenue etc. but they then made speeches about the new security dangers facing Israel and the high cost of repelling them.

Netanyahu said that recent regional regime changes mean that Israel has to spend more on defense to maintain its balance of strength and face the challenges of a nuclear Iran, missile threats, cyber warfare and a colossal influx of weaponry to the region “which are in certain hands today and may be in others tomorrow.”

There is no knowing how Bashar Assad means to use Syria’s large stocks of chemical and biological stores, which way the Syrian situation is destined to develop, or against whom Israel may be called upon to fight.

He cited the cost (NIS1.4 billion) of building the security fence along Egypt’s Sinai border for the first time after three decades of treating this frontier as a border of peace.

How much would it cost to send troops into Syria to seize control of Syria’s unconventional war stocks and prevent their use against Israel? A large Israeli force would be needed for this preemptive raid. But what then? Do the soldiers’ stay on guard indefinitely, remove the stock from Syria or destroy it regardless of collateral damage? Those options would carry a price tag in the range of $1-2 billion.
The prime minister left the nuclear issue to the defense minister.

Barak took the opportunity of a graduation ceremony at the Israeli National Security College Wednesday, July 25, to say: Israel might have to make "tough and crucial decisions" about its security and future. "I am well aware of the difficulties involved in thwarting Iran's attempts to acquire a nuclear weapon. However, it is clear to me that without a doubt, dealing with the threat itself will be far more complicated, far more dangerous and far more costly in resources and human life than thwarting it"

This was a broad hint at Israel’s sense that it has no choice but to attack Iran’s nuclear program because the cost of inaction would be far greater.

Barak also commented that the lesson Israel has drawn from the Syrian calamity is that when it comes to a security crunch, Israel can only rely on itself.

While all the official statements focused on saving the Israel economy from drowning in the maelstrom of the global crisis, military and Jerusalem sources noted nothing was said about the sources of replenishing the drain on the national coffers of fighting a war.

A clue may be found in the offer made by the finance minister of big tax breaks for three big multinational companies operating in Israel – Intel, Teva and CheckPoint - in return for their consent to plow their local profits back into Israel.

The accumulated amount mentioned is NIS 100 billion ($25 billion) for which they would only be charged 3 percent tax.

Steintiz would not have discussed this deal in public had it not been approved in principle.

Analysts conclude if this sum can be made available to the Israeli economy in a war crisis, the national deficit could be kept at a manageable level and foreign capital discouraged from fleeing the country. It therefore looks as though the Netanyahu government is digging the Israeli economy in to weather a war and setting up a strategic financial reserve in the range of $25-30 billion, and perhaps more, for the worst-case scenario.

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5)U.S. Economy Slowed to a Tepid 1.5% Rate of Growth

By SHAILA DEWAN

The United States economy grew by a tepid 1.5 percent annual rate in the second quarter, losing the momentum it had appeared to be gaining earlier this year, the government reported Friday.

Growth was curbed as consumers limited new spending and as business investment slowed in the face of a global slowdown and a stronger dollar. Several bright spots in the first quarter, including auto production, computer sales, housing and large purchases like appliances and televisions, dimmed or faded away altogether in the second quarter.

The sluggishness of the recovery makes the United States more vulnerable to trouble in Europe and increases the likelihood of more stimulus from the Federal Reserve, which has lowered its forecasts in recent weeks.

It also illustrates the election-season challenge to President Obama, who must sell his economic record to voters as the recovery slows.

The lackluster showing of the gross domestic product immediately gave Mr. Obama’s opponents the opportunity to question the federal government’s response to the financial crisis, though the vast majority of economists agree that the stimulus and the bank bailouts saved jobs. The G.D.P. report, released Friday by the Commerce Department, also spurred calls from liberals for the government to do more.

In part, the weakening was to be expected after an unseasonably warm spurt during the winter, and in part it followed the pattern of the last couple of years — one of hopes raised, then dashed. While the economy has not entered a downward spiral in which weakness feeds on itself, wrote Jim O’Sullivan, the chief United States economist for High Frequency Economics, an analysis firm, “There does not appear to be much basis for expecting a significant pickup any time soon.”

In the first quarter, the economy grew by a 2 percent annual rate, according to the revised figures. The previous estimate was 1.9 percent.

A slowdown in household spending was the primary damper on growth, as consumers increased their savings rate, a sign of increased uncertainty about the future. State and local governments also cut spending. Exports continued to accelerate in the second quarter despite more recent signs of diminishing demand.

The pace of the recovery may show that economic rebounds following financial busts simply take their own excruciating time.

“You can’t blame all of it on Europe — we have our own problems yet,” said Joshua Shapiro, the chief United States economist at MFR Inc., a financial consulting firm. “When you have a credit bubble or asset bubble that’s popped, the recovery process from that is just really long and really painful.”

Inflation, a measure watched closely by the Federal Reserve as it determines whether to take further action, slowed as well, with consumer prices growing only 0.7 percent compared with 2.5 percent in the first quarter.

The Commerce Department also released updated estimates of economic activity for 2009, 2010 and 2011. Those figures showed that the recession was less deep than it seemed in the most recent reports — though more pronounced than in initial readings — and, as a consequence, that the pace of recovery also appears somewhat slower.

The new estimates show that economic activity fell by 3.1 percent in 2009 and then rose by 2.4 percent in 2010. Last summer, the government reported that activity fell by 3.5 percent in 2009 before rising 3 percent in 2010. The estimated pace of growth in 2011, 1.8 percent, remained basically unchanged. It was previously reported as 1.7 percent.

 The revisions, part of an annual process, reflect the imprecise nature of the agency’s work. Its initial estimates are derived from a mix of comprehensive data, samples and educated guesswork, and refined over time. In this case, officials said they had significantly underestimated spending by state and local governments in 2009, and overestimated corporate profits and purchases in 2010.

 The agency now estimates average annual growth of 0.3 percent over the three-year period, rather than 0.4 percent.

 But the new numbers may modify public perception of two key economic trends. It appears that corporations rebounded more slowly from the recession than previously believed. And the more complete data used in the new estimates show state and local governments increased spending in 2009 before cutting back in the next two years. Officials said they did not have enough information to explain the previously unreported increase, except to say the money was not spent on personnel or on infrastructure projects, the two categories that might have benefited most directly from the federal government’s stimulus programs.

Binyamin Appelbaum contributed reporting

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