By Jim Meyers and Kathleen Walte
Low-tax crusader and Republican strategist Grover Norquist tells Newsmax that the spending cuts required by sequestration will in fact be implemented — and that’s a “good thing” because it will save billions of dollars over the next decade.
He also warns that President Barack Obama is willing to use executive orders to “smack down” any business that stands in the way of his left-wing ideology.
And he declares that a bill to raise the minimum wage is “very bad legislation” that will cost jobs.
Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform, whose Taxpayer Protection Pledge asks candidates to commit themselves in writing to oppose all tax increases.
In his State of the Union address, Obama proposed new spending and more tax revenues, claiming he can spend without adding a dime to the deficit.
In an exclusive interview with Newsmax TV, Norquist comments: “I don’t think he’ll be allowed to add to the deficit because the Republican House of Representatives will not vote for the massive spending proposals he’s put forward.
“I also doubt that the Democrat-controlled Senate will actually pass all of his wish lists because 20 of those Democrats have to run for re-election in 2014, and I don’t think their voters will appreciate it if they continue the tax-and-spend policies of the last four years.”
Senate Democrats have unveiled a $110 billion plan to delay sequestration that includes tax increases. Asked if Republicans are right not to accept that plan, Norquist responds: “Yes.”
“Sequestration will take effect,” Norquist says. “Interestingly, it was Obama’s idea. He put it forward, thinking it would pressure the Republicans to raise taxes. It failed to do that and now Obama has to live with a law that he supported, he wrote, he signed.
“It is a good thing. It saves about $100 billion a year for 10 years into the future. Are there ways to alter it by keeping the same dollars in savings but give different departments more flexibility? That’s an option. Republicans are open to that.
“But the dollar amount of savings cannot change and we certainly are not going to replace savings to taxpayers with tax increases ripping off taxpayers,” Norquist says.
“Republicans wanted something that hit defense a little less hard and shifted the reduction elsewhere. Democrats don’t want to do that. So there’s no place for a compromise. Raising taxes instead of cutting spending is not a compromise — that’s called losing,” he told Newsmax.
“The president wants to impose a national cap-and-trade energy tax and says he’s not afraid to use executive orders to push his agenda.”
Norquist observes: “He will try to do things through executive order because he’s not going to be able to raise taxes or spend additional money or change laws in a dramatically stupid way as long as the Republicans have the House of Representatives and as long as the Democrats are scared about getting re-elected in the Senate. There are some things he can do by executive order, but raising taxes is not part of that.
“Republicans will keep fighting for sequestration, for reducing spending, for investigating some of what appear to be corrupt deals that the Democrats have had with grants and with executive orders and regulations.
“Regulations have come from the Department of Labor even though the people making the [National Labor Relations Board] decisions were illegally — unconstitutionally, the courts have ruled — appointed during a nonperiod of recess.
“So Republicans have a lot of tools — taxpayers have a lot of tools —to fight the president’s efforts to do things by executive order. But he could do damage to fracking, he could slow down the pipeline to bring oil into the country through Nebraska, he could do a lot of things to slow and hurt job creation, and of course he has demonstrated for four years if it gets in the way of left-wing ideology, he’ll smack down any job, any business that he wants to.”
As for tax reform, “no pro-growth tax reform could pass the Senate; no pro-growth tax reform would be signed by the president,” Norquist says.
“But it’s a good idea for the Republicans in the House to design tax reform and come up with some alternatives, because it says here’s what we would do if there was a Republican Senate and a Republican president.”
Norquist has called Obamacare a half-trillion-dollar tax increase on the American people.
“There are over 20 taxes in Obamacare, and at least eight of them directly hit middle-class Americans,” he says. “They all hit middle-class Americans indirectly by hitting doctors and insurance companies and hospitals.
“So this is a very bad bill with a lot of damaging taxes and regulations. But we may have to wait until people see the damage before you can fix it.
“The three networks, even though the 3,000-page Obamacare legislation passed two years ago, haven’t covered what’s in there. Have you learned on network television about the 21 tax increases? The establishment press, which has been cheerleading for Obama, has not done its job informing the American people.”
The president wants to raise the minimum wage by 24 percent, saying it will help 15 million low-wage workers. But the Republican House seems reluctant to pass a minimum wage bill. Norquist believes they are acting wisely.
“We know from history that when the minimum wage was first put in, hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs. It was particularly devastating to African-Americans.
“The minimum wage has a very sad history in terms of stopping people from getting their first jobs, stopping people who are untrained from getting trained at work. So the minimum wage is a very bad piece of legislation. It’s hurt people in the past and until we come to grips with the damaging history of it, why would anybody think of doing again something that’s already failed?”
Norquist also tells Newsmax that the immigration plan put forth by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has “some very good ideas. The outline he’s got is a fine starting place. We need to have border security. We need to have a path to legal status for people so that people in this country for years and their children don’t hide when the police come by, that they are secure in the jobs and their positions.
“But we need to defeat the labor unions, which are the guys who sculpted the present nonworking immigration laws we have. The center-right needs to get together and come up with a good immigration law recognizing that the labor unions are going to fight anything reasonable and we need a united conservative movement to beat the unions.”
Karl Rove’s American Crossroads has launched an effort to weed out GOP primary candidates it deems unacceptable, a move criticized by members of the tea party.
Norquist offers his take on the Republican in-fighting: “We need to look back at some of those races where people think the tea party nominated the wrong guy and realize that Harry Reid spent millions of dollars to interfere in the Republican primary to choose the candidate who couldn’t beat him and to stop the candidates who would have beat him. That wasn’t a tea party problem. That was the Democrats playing the Republican primary.
“[Todd] Akin in Missouri was not supported by the tea party groups. He was supported by the Democrat candidate, the incumbent, who ran ads pretending to attack him but really praising him for a solid conservative voting record.
“Karl Rove and others have correctly pointed out: How did we end up with idiot candidates? Well, you end up with idiot candidates when the Democrats choose your candidates for you.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4)Iran points finger at Israel for IRGC general’s death, vows revenge
The depth of Iran’s loss by the death of senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards general Hassan Shateri aka Hossam Khosh-Nevis was signified by the rank of mourners at his funeral in Iran Thursday, Feb. 15. Among them were Iran’s Defense Minister Ahmed Wahidi, Foreign Minister, Ali Akbar Salehi and Al Qods Brigades commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
Gen. Shateri was in fact the live wire of the tremendous military effort Iran is investing in Syria for keeping President Bashar Assad in power, DEBKAfile’s Iran and Persian Gulf sources say. He acted additionally as the vital Iranian link in the military partnership between Assad and the Lebanese Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Iran is reported by Gulf intelligence sources to have initially drawn a veil of secrecy over the time and place of his death for fear exposure would force a military confrontation with Israel. They reveal that Gen. Shateri was in fact killed two weeks ago Saturday, Jan. 30, in the course of the alleged Israeli air strike against a Syrian military complex and arms convoy destined for Hizballah in Lebanon.
Those sources claim that that the Iranian general and two aides who were driving in the same car were the real targets of that air strike.
After the event, Damascus reported two people killed and five injured, without identifying them or releasing their photos as would normally have been routine.
Targeted assassinations by foreign hands claimed by no one are not unusual Syria. In February 2008, Hizballah’s security chief Imad Mughniyeh, who carried out many of the same functions for Tehran as Gen. Shateri, was assassinated in Damascus. Eight months ago, in July 2012, a mysterious explosion wiped out half of Assad’s inner circle, targeting the men running the war against the Syrian uprising.
Tehran was taken aback this time by the precise foreknowledge of Shateri’s movements and the accuracy of the attack, which presumed deep intelligence penetration in Tehran and Beirut as well as Damascus. Now, the Iranians appear to have decided not to take this setback lying down after all. Israel is in their sights for payback – either directly or through their allies, Syria or Hizballah, which both suffered loss from the general’s death.
The IRGC general was in the process of rapidly establishing a small guerrilla army of 5,000 Revolutionary Guardsmen and 5,000 Hizballlah operatives for strengthening the defensive ring around Assad’s governing institutions in Damascus and its outskirts, secure the main Syria-Lebanon road routes and keep them open to free military movement between the two countries.
For Tehran, an open highway between Syria and Lebanon is an overriding strategic goal in view of its determination to get Hizballah’s stock of sophisticated weapons out of Syrian stores and across to Lebanon whatever it takes - despite Israel’s reported action to frustrate the transfer.
In Tehran, the influential IRGC preacher, Hojjat-ol-Eslam Mehdi Ta’eb, declared Wednesday in a sermon that Syria’s importance to the Islamic Republic is greater even than the oil region of Khuzestan in southern Iran.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5)Fertility Decline in the Muslim World: A Veritable Sea-Change, Still
Curiously Unnoticed
Nicholas Eberstadt and Apoorva Shah*
THE AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE WORKING PAPER SERIES ON DEVELOPMENT POLICY
NUMBER 7, DECEMBER 2011
Abstract: There remains a widely perceived notion that ―Muslim‖ societies
are especially resistant to embarking upon the path of demographic and
familial change that has transformed population profiles in Europe, North
America, and other ―more developed‖ areas. In reality, however, fertility
levels are falling dramatically for countries and sub-national populations
throughout the Ummah— and traditional marriage patterns and living
arrangements are undergoing tremendous change. This paper will highlight
some of these changes, examine some of their correlates and possible
determinants, and speculate about some of their implications.
* Dr. Eberstadt holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the
American Enterprise Institute, where Mr. Shah also serves as Research
Fellow. They would like to offer thanks to Ms. Kelly Matush of AEI for her
assistance in the research for this paper, and also to Ms. Heesu Kim, Mr.
Mark Seraydarian, and Ms. Daksha Shakya. The opinions expressed here are
their own and not those of the American Enterprise Institute. The authors
can be contacted at eberstadt@aei.org and apoorvashah85@gmail.com.
...
Although upwards of one fifth of the world’s population today is thus
estimated to be Muslim, a much smaller share of the population of the ―more
developed regions‖ adheres to Islam: perhaps just over 3% of that grouping
(that is to say, around 40 million out of its total of 1.2 billion people).
Thus the proportion of the world’s Muslims living in the less developed
regions is not only overwhelming, but disproportionate: well over one fourth
of the population of the less developed regions—something close to
26%-27%--would be Muslim to go by these numbers.
...
Figures 4 and 5 afford a closer look at the scope and scale of fertility
declines in Muslim-majority countries and territories over the past
generation. [See FIGURES 4 and 5] With respect to absolute changes in TFRs,
the population-weighted average for the grouping as a whole amounted to a
drop of 2.6 births per woman between 1975/80 and 2005/10—a markedly larger
absolute decline than for either the world as a whole (-1.3) or the less
developed regions as a whole (-2.2) during those same years. Fully eighteen
of these Muslim-majority places saw TFRs fall by 3 or more over those thirty
years—with nine of them by 4 births per woman or more! In Oman, TFRs
plummeted by an astonishing 5.6 births per woman during those 30 years: an
average pace of nearly 1.9 births per woman every decade.
...As for relative or proportional fertility declines: here again the record
is striking. The population- weighted average for the Muslim-majority areas
as a whole was -41% over these three decades: by any historical benchmark,
an exceptionally rapid tempo of sustained fertility decline. In aggregate,
the proportional decline in fertility for Muslim-majority areas was again
greater than for the world as a whole over that same period (-33%) or for
the less developed regions as whole (-34%). Fully 22 Muslim-majority
countries and territories were estimated to have undergone fertility
declines of 50% or more during those three decades—ten of them by 60% or
more. For both Iran and the Maldives, the declines in total fertility rates
over those thirty years were estimated to exceed 70%.
Given the differences in timing for the onset of sustained fertility
declines in different settings around the world, it is possible that Figures
4 and 5 might present a biased picture. It is possible to imagine, for
example, that dramatic fertility declines might have taken place in other
regions at earlier dates, with fertility declines tapering off during these
years when the declines in the Muslim- majority areas were so manifestly
dynamic: if that were the case, Figures 4 and 5 would end up exaggerating
the robustness of these Islamic fertility declines in comparison to other
parts of the world. Yet while this is a theoretical possibility, empirical
results do not corroborate such a contingency.
...
Table 1
The 10 biggest declines in total fertility rates (births per woman) in the
postwar era:
most rapid 20-year Total Fertility Rate decline in absolute terms
Major area, region, country or area/Time Period/Absolute Decline
Oman 1985-1990 to
-5.33
Maldives 1985-1990 to
-4.91
Kuwait 1970-1975 to
-4.70
Iran (Islamic Republic of) 1980-1985 to
-4.57
Singapore 1955-1960 to
-4.50
Algeria 1975-1980 to
-4.29
Mongolia 1970-1975 to
-4.20
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya 1980-1985 to
-4.18
Viet Nam 1970-1975 to
-3.92
Mauritius 1960-1965 to
-3.89
Source: Source: Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social
Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, World
Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision, available at
http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/unpp/panel_population.htm, accessed November
16, 2011.
...
As may be seen in Table 1, six of the ten largest absolute declines in
fertility for a two-decade period yet recorded in the postwar era (and by
extension, we may suppose, ever to take place under orderly conditions in
human history) have occurred in Muslim-majority countries. The four very
largest of these absolute declines, furthermore, all happened in
Muslim-majority countries—each of these entailing a decline of over 4.5
births per woman in just 20 years. (The world record-breaker here, Oman, is
estimated to have seen its TFR fall by over 5.3 births per woman over just
the last two decades: a drop of over 2.6 births per woman per decade.)
Notably, four of the ten greatest fertility declines ever recorded in a
twenty year period took place in the Arab world (Algeria, Libya, Kuwait and
Oman); adding in Iran, we see that five of these ―top ten‖ unfolded in the
greater Middle East. No other region of the world—not highly dynamic
Southeast Asia, or even rapidly modernizing East Asia—comes close to this
showing.
Given the extraordinary—indeed, as we have just seen, often historically
unprecedented—fertility declines that a number of Muslim-majority
populations have sustained over the past generation, it is now the case that
a substantial share of the Ummah is accounted for by countries and
territories with childbearing patterns comparable to those contemporary
affluent Western non-Muslim populations. The low fertility levels for the
Muslim-majority societies in question, it should be noted, have generally
been achieved on substantially lower levels of income, education,
urbanization, modern contraception utilization, and the like than those that
characterize the more developed regions with which their fertility levels
currently correspond today.
...
All in all, according to these UNPD figures, 21 Muslim-majority populations
would seem to have fertility levels these days that would be unexceptional
for states in the USA (with the possible exception of Albania, whose
fertility level might arguably look too low to be truly ―American‖.) As of
2009, these 21 countries and territories encompassed a total estimated
population of almost 750 million persons: which is to say, very nearly half
of the total population of the Ummah. These numbers, remember, exclude
hundreds of millions of Muslims in countries where Islam is not the
predominant religion. Taking this into account, it could be that a majority
of the world’s Muslims already live in countries where their fertility
levels would look entirely unexceptional in an American mirror.
To be sure—just as fertility varies among the 50 United States of America,
so it differs by region in many predominantly Muslim societies. But such
geographic differences further emphasize the extent to which fertility
levels for a great portion of the Ummah has come to correspond with levels
taken for granted nowadays in more-developed, non-Islamic Western societies.
Let us take the example of Turkey. For the period 2000-03, according to
Turkey’s most recent DHS, the country’s overall TFR was 2.23. That average,
however, was strongly influenced by the distinctively high fertility levels
of eastern Turkey (a largely Kurdish region), where a TFR of 3.65 was
recorded. [SEE FIGURE 7] In much of Turkey, TFRs of 1.9 or less prevailed.
Istanbul’s TFR, for instance, was less than 1.9—which is to say, it would
have been equivalent to the corresponding level for France in those same
years. Placed in an American perspective, eastern Turkey’s fertility levels
are off the scale—but for Turkey as a whole, fertility levels are comparable
to Hawaii, and even for comparatively fecund south Turkey, fertility levels
are just about the same as in Nebraska. ...
Consider next the case of Iran. As we have seen, over the past generation
Iran has registered one of the most rapid and pronounced fertility declines
ever recorded in human history. By the year 2000, according to Iran’s DHS of
that same year, the TFR for the country as a whole had dropped to 2.0, below
the notional replacement level of 2.1. But there were also great regional
variations within Iran, with some areas (such as the largely Baluchi
province of Sistan and Baluchestan in the east and the largely Kurdish West
Azarbaijan province in the west) well above replacement, and much of the
rest of the country far below replacement. [SEE FIGURE 9] Note in particular
that Tehran and Isfahan reported fertility levels lower than any state in
the USA. [SEE FIGURE 10] With a TFR of 1.4, indeed, Tehran’s fertility level
in 2000 would have been below the average for the EU-27 for the year 2002
(TFR 1.45), well below year 2000 fertility in such places as Portugal (1.54)
and Sweden (1.54), and only slightly higher than for such famously
low-fertility European countries as Italy (1.26) and Germany (1.38)8.
Admittedly, our use of the USA as a comparator for fertility levels in
Muslim-majority areas perforce excludes the tremendous swath of the
present-day Ummah where fertility levels are (at least for now) higher than
in present-day America. The point of our selection, however, is to emphasize
just how very much of the Ummah can be included in such a comparison
nowadays. This is a very new development: thirty years earlier, barely any
Muslim-majority country or territory would have registered fertility levels
low enough to permit approximate comparison to corresponding fertility
levels in any US state. As of 1977, period TFRs for Utah, always America’s
most fertile state, were just under 3.6, while according to UNPD estimates
the very lowest TFRs in the late 1970s for any Muslim-majority populations
would have been for Kazakhstan (3.1) and Azerbaijan (3.6). 9 Thus in just 30
years, the total population of Muslim-majority areas whose fertility levels
could be reflected in a contemporaneous American mirror has thus risen from
under 20 million to nearly three quarters of a billion. By any benchmark,
this qualifies as a remarkable change.
Furthermore, indications suggest that the change has progressed still
further since the 2005 period. Whereas the UNPD offers only 5-year-span
estimates and projections for fertility levels, USCB provides annual
figures. According to these numbers, the total fertility rate for Saudi
Arabia in 2011 would be 2.31—a lower level than recorded recently for such
US states South Dakota and Idaho. At projected TFRs of 2.96 and 2.97,
respectively, Libya’s and Egypt’s fertility levels for 2011 would be roughly
on par with fertility for America’s large domestic Hispanic population with
a TFR of 2.91 as of 2008). Even places like Pakistan (USCB projected TFR for
2011: 3.17) and the West Bank of Palestine (3.05) would, in this assessment,
appear to be rapidly approaching the day where their fertility levels could
be comparable to levels displayed by geographic regions or broad national
ethnic groups within the United States today. Put another way: unbeknownst
to informed circles in the international community, and very often even in
the countries in question, fertility levels for Muslim-majority populations
around the world are coming to look more and more ―American‖.
...
Some Implications of Today’s Rapid Fertility Declines in the Islamic World
We have made the empirical case in this chapter that a sea-change in
fertility levels, and by extension, in attendant patterns of family
formation, is now underway in the Islamic world—even if this sea-change
remains curiously un-recognized and un-discussed even in the societies it is
so rapidly transforming. Why this should be the case is an important
question, but one that will not detain us here. Instead, we shall conclude
by touching a few of the more obvious implications of these big demographic
changes for the years ahead.
1) Downward Revision of Population Projections: In its 2000 revisions of
World Population Prospects, UNPD ―medium variant‖ projections envisioned a
population for Yemen of 102 million people; in its 2010 revisions, the 2050
―medium variant‖ projection for Yemen is 62 million. (USCB projections for
Yemen for 2050 as of this writing are even lower: under 48 million.)
Unanticipated but extremely rapid fertility declines would likewise militate
for downward revisions in the trajectory of future demographic growth in
other Muslim-majority areas.
2) Coming Declines in Working-Age (15-64) Population: If the current
prospect for Muslim-majority countries and territories entails coping with
the challenges of finding employment for continuing and even increasing
increments of working age manpower, in the foreseeable future an increasing
number of Muslim-majority countries may face the prospect of coping with
manpower declines. If current USCB projections prove accurate, Lebanon’s
15-64 cohort would peak in the year 2023—twelve years from this writing—and
would shrink more or less indefinitely thereafter. On the trajectories
traced out by current USCG projections, another 13 Muslim-majority countries
would also see their conventionally defined working-age populations peak,
and begin to decline, before the year 2050.13 Over thepast generation, we
should remember, demographic authorities for the most part underestimated
the pace and scale of fertility decline in Muslim regions—sometimes very
seriously. If underestimation is still the characteristic error in fertility
projections for these populations, this would mean that manpower declines
would commence earlier than envisioned for the countries in question—and
that additional countries and territories might experience workforce decline
before 2050.
3) A Wave of “Youthquakesâ€: With rapidly declining fertility rates, the
arithmetic of population composition makes for inescapable ―youthquakes‖:
temporary, but sometimes very substantial, increases in the fraction of
young people (say, aged 15-24 or 20-29) as a proportion of total population.
Depending on the social, economic and political context, such ―youthquakes‖
can facilitate rapid economic development—or can instead exacerbate social
and political strains. Tunisia passed through such a youthquake some time
ago, and
The other countries would be Algeria, Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Iran,
Kazakhstan, Maldives, Morocco, Qatar, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, the
United Arab Emirates, and Uzbekistan.
Iran is experiencing the tail end of one today; Yemen and Palestine, among
other Muslim- majority societies, have yet to deal with theirs. [SEE FIGURE
20]
4) Rapid Population Aging on Relatively Low Income Levels: The lower a
country or territory’s fertility, the more powerful the demographic pressure
for population aging over the subsequent generation. With extremely rapid
fertility decline—and the descent into sub-replacement fertility—a number of
Muslim-majority populations are already set on course for very rapid
population aging. As Figure 21 indicates, over a dozen Muslim-majority
populations, under current USCB projections, would have higher fractions of
their national populations over the age of 65 by the year 2040 than the USA
today. [SEE FIGURE 21] Today these same places enjoy only a fraction of US
per capita income levels; even with optimistic assumptions about economic
growth, it is hard to envision how they might attain contemporary OECD
income levels—much less contemporary OECD educational profiles or knowledge-
generation capabilities—by the time they reach contemporary OECD aging
profiles. How these societies will meet the needs of their graying populations on relatively
low income levels may prove to be one of the more surprising more, and unanticipated, challenges
of the fertility revolution now underway in the Ummah.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
No comments:
Post a Comment