Of course all of these matters involve a Right Wing Conspiracy and were created out of thin air because Obama has no connection with those he hired to run our government and they, of course, are not accountable either.
Between being out and out racism and all GW's fault, fasten your seat belts because we have another three years of torment ahead.
Ah, but then maybe one day it will dawn on our dunce of a president, government is the problem and the bigger the government the bigger the problem.(See 1,1a, 1b and 1c below.)
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Meanwhile if you can't meet your debt obligations lick 'em! (See 2 below.)
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Obama needs to get Abbas back to the table. Maybe he can give the Palestinians more money and Israeli territory! (See 3 below.)
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The U.S. State Department pushed Israel to release Islamic terrorists. They have now returned to their old profession . What bozo thought otherwise? (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1) Hollywood and the New Racism
By J.R. Dunn
If you believe press reports, Twelve Years a Slave is undeniably one of the greatest -- perhaps the greatest -- film of 2013. Not due to any skill in filmmaking, which remains to be seen, or audience response -- the film was only released last weekend. But solely because Slave (directed by Steve McQueen, not the dead one with the motorcycle, I'm pretty sure), is this year's PC film, one made for the single purpose of preaching a very contemporary and meticulously constructed racial message.
In this it joins a number of other recent pictures such as The Help and The Butler, and even, in a twisted way, Django. These films are all examples of a generally unrecognized subgenre of the propaganda film. They are racial films designed to raise an admonishing finger toward the white audience regarding its "legacy" as slaveholders while bolstering the blacks in their conviction of victimhood.
This type of film started with the "Roots" miniseries in 1977 and continued with The Color Purple (1985), Glory (989), and Amistad (1997). As can be seen from that list, such films generally appeared once or twice a decade. Now we have three in a little over a year's time. (Not counting Django, which is a demented reversal of the basic formula.)
These films are generally of the "historical" genre, set in either the slavery period or the segregation era that followed. The storylines are cursory, and manipulated for political impact throughout. Characterization is on a cartoon level, with whites either evil racists or weak, vacillating types who simply go along. Blacks are uniformly noble and long-suffering. Abolitionists, where they appear, as in Amistad, are creepy religious types with their own agenda. Racial relations are the sole topic of interest, overcoming even the events of the Civil War, and leaving the impression that race, and race alone, is the crucial hinge of American history, one that swings only one way. The United States is a façade, its promise of freedom a lie, its idealism an exercise in hypocrisy. The only emotional responses allowed in this universe are outrage from blacks and guilt from whites. In a very real sense, they are the reverse image of D.W. Griffith's racist epic Birth of a Nation, which depicted blacks as vicious animals and the Klan as knights restoring an unsettled world. (It also acted as an inspiration to Woodrow Wilson in his policy toward blacks.)
Why are these films made? To maintain the current racial status quo in all its hypocrisy, misery, and dishonesty. Such films are produced for the sole purpose of shaming whites and encouraging blacks to wallow in self-pity -- and this is exactly what we find in the responses to the first promotional campaign for Twelve Years a Slave:
1a)
I Ache for a President Who Loves America
By Christopher Chantrill
If there's one thing that bugs me about the Obama years it is the palpable fact that Obama doesn't love America. The last two weeks has intensified that feeling.
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2 )Post Office $5.6 Billion Default Raises Urgency of Reforms
By Jennifer G. Hickey
With Congress and the media focused on the government shutdown and how to avoid default on the national debt, little attention was directed toward the U.S. Postal Service which earlier this month defaulted on a required $5.6 billion payment for the healthcare of its future retirees.
The third default on the down-payment in just over a year underscores the necessity of much-needed reforms for the beleaguered Postal Service.
Rep. Darrell Issa of California told Newsmax that without "the freedom to realign its infrastructure and operations in line with the changing way Americans use mail, the agency will remain insolvent."
"Prolonged insolvency of USPS will result in a massive taxpayer bailout and ongoing subsidy, or a sudden disruption in mail service, or both," the California Republican said.
Just days before the default, USPS Board of Governors Chairman Mickey Barnett announced an increase in the price of stamps beginning in 2014, which he said was the result of USPS' "precarious financial condition" and the "uncertain path toward enactment of postal reform legislation."
It is not a new message from the USPS leadership. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe has been vocal about the need for Congress to implement legislative reforms, including elimination of the annual prefunding payments, and its need for greater autonomy to manage its healthcare system.
Appearing before the Senate, Donahoe said the Postal Service was "in the midst of a financial disaster" due to the burden of an "outdated and inflexible business model."
Absent any flexibility to govern its own affairs, the Postal Service – which expects to end fiscal year 2013 with a loss of about $6 billion – has warned lawmakers it anticipates a government bailout of $50 billion will be needed in 2017.
Action on postal reforms looks unlikely this year, and "even the small reforms being proposed by Congress will only buy them a year or two," says James Gattuso of the Heritage Foundation.
Gattuso tells Newsmax that attributing USPS's losses to the recession or faulty accounting are merely ignoring the real problem, which is that the market for traditional mail is diminishing.
In an October research report, Gattuso notes that first-class mail volume has already plummeted 30 percent since 2007, and it may drop another 40 percent over the next seven years.
In addition to a decline in standard mail as a result of increased email communications, more Americans are paying bills online.
A Household Diary Study found that bill payments by mail have declined almost 16 percent in the past two years, while a 2012 study by the consulting firm Fiserv reports that 75 percent of Americans pay at least one monthly bill electronically.
The USPS has "to bite the bullet and make serious changes that include closing post offices that do not cover their costs or even make a profit. They also need to be open to considering partnerships with local businesses, such as CVS, so people would still have access to postal services, but not necessarily at a dedicated post office building," says Robert D. Atkinson of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
Atkinson suggests the USPS should immediately move to a five-day or three-day delivery schedule and to identify underutilized post offices and postal sorting facilities for closure.
In a June report examining whether the postal service could survive in a digital age, Atkinson pointed to the fact that more than 21 percent of FedEx deliveries are dropped off by a USPS postal carrier. This burden sharing is known as "last mile" delivery, in which a private sector company, such as FedEx, will manage the sorting and transportation of packages, but the final mile delivery is done by USPS.
Rather than proposing full privatization of the USPS, Atkinson suggests opening service up to competition and for the USPS to focus on its core competencies, such as package delivery.
"They deserve credit for making some budget cuts and for being upfront about their fiscal condition. One of the problems is that they have been hamstrung by a lack of congressional approval for reforms," Atkinson tells Newsmax.
In the House, Issa introduced legislation similar to a measure he sponsored in the previous Congress that would begin to phase out Saturday delivery of mail, while maintaining Saturday delivery of packages, which is one of the few areas of growth.
The bill would allow the Postal Service to forgo past due payments owed to prefund retiree healthcare benefits, would eliminate the ability of national and state political committees to use the non-profit mail rate, and permit the USPS to sell advertising space on vehicles and facilities. The bill also would allow state and local services, such as the sale of fishing licenses, at postal facilities.
Legislative action in this session is unlikely considering the other issues Congress has on its agenda, but Issa spokesman Ali Ahmad says "with the notable exception of labor unions, all key stakeholders are in contact and working on a solution to save the Postal Service and prevent a massive taxpayer-funded bailout."
"The unions carry a lot of political weight because they are one of the largest unions and they are out there making a lot of noise, whereas the taxpayers are largely unaware of the situation or the need for reform," says Gattuso, who adds that labor opposition is "somewhat ironic as no one is talking about forced layoffs or drastic renegotiations of union contracts."
"The status quo is not sustainable. While some argue that the USPS's losses are due to faulty accounting or a temporary downturn in the economy, that claim is wishful thinking. The market for traditional mail has been shrinking rapidly," Gattuso tells Newsmax.
Unions have criticized the reform efforts, contending that the bills do not do enough to ease the burden of prefunding retirees' health benefits.
Neither Gattuso, nor Atkinson, see the USPS becoming extinct anytime soon. However, they say that, like newspapers and the publishing industry, a failure to adapt to an irrefutable trend toward digital and online communications will only exacerbate USPS's poor financial condition.
A Senate bill, co-sponsored by Delaware Democrat Tom Carper and Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn, has moved closer toward the House measure, but even USPS' Donahoe has argued that committee's draft bill doesn't go far enough in granting the Postal Service greater control over its healthcare costs.
The Postal Service has proposed launching its own postal-specific healthcare plan – either within the broader Federal Employees Health Benefit Program or by negotiating directly with insurers.
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We know why he doesn't love America. It's because he identifies with his Kenyan father's hatred of Western colonialism. If that weren't enough, Obama follows the cultural cues of liberal America, from his lefty mother to his lefty teenage mentors to his lefty college instructors to his lefty radical sponsors in Chicago. Liberals think they are too good for America. Ditto Obama.
Liberals are above things like patriotism, which they demonize as nationalism. Meanwhile liberals want to turn the clock back to tribalism with the reactionary politics they call "identity politics."
Liberals sneer at religion, while practicing the most debased and bloody religions ever invented -- socialism and communism.
And liberals demonize individualism, the notion of the responsible self that undergirds our Western culture. Instead they worship creativity, and reckon that a creative artist is a cut above the ordinary run of humanity.
When you reckon yourself a cut above the rest of humanity it's nothing to upend the regular order of congressional appropriations with periodic shutdown crises and visit bureaucratic conceits like ObamaCare upon a suffering nation. You might try that too if you were a cut above.
But I don't think myself a cut above America. I just love America.
I'll always remember the first day I began to love America. It was on my first morning in America when I woke up after flying from London to Denver for Christmas in 1965. I watched the sun rise into the crystal clear sky east of mile high Denver and I fell in love.
Who was the last Democratic president that really loved America? Harry Truman? I'd say it was probably Lyndon Johnson.
We know that President Carter thought himself -- thinks himself -- a cut above the country that elected him and had the nerve to unelect him. And Bill Clinton? Who knows what the old rascal really thinks? But we know Hillary; she's a standard issue elite liberal come to lord it over us.
The recent Republican presidents, whatever their faults, loved America. We love Ronald Reagan because his every speech from "The Speech" to the farewell address shone with a love for America. Imagine the love in George W. Bush, scourged on the cross of ritual liberal anathema for eight long years.
It's a real advantage in a president to love America. It means that he doesn't think beyond the idea of serving America. He doesn't think, like Bill Clinton in his final year, about his "legacy." He doesn't truck with the poisonous idea of "fundamental transformation."
Speaking about fundamental transformation, what has the left ever produced in the realm of political ideas, from Marx to Marcuse, except crude apologies for elite domination?
What could possess anyone to imagine, given the settled science about the limits of government administration, that the political systematization of health care could surpass the self-organizing capabilities of people voluntarily offering and consuming and improving health care services? You are right: only the blindest and most corrupted of political and economic science deniers could ever proceed to coerce their fellow Americans into such compulsion.
But I have a hope. It is a hope that the leading Republican contenders for the presidency in 2016 are flat out
America lovers. And why wouldn't they be? Take Ted Cruz. Son of an immigrant that fled Castro's Cuba at age 18 and whose land yet toils under the lash of the Castro brothers and their fundamental transformation of Cuba, Ted Cruz is an unapologetic 100 percent American. Says he:
"Every day, I jump out of bed with a smile on my face, because it is a joy to have the opportunity to stand with the American people and work to help restore people's faith and optimism in our nation," he concludes. "It's an incredible honor to play a small role in expanding the American dream."
On this view, you can see, America could never need fundamental transformation, because politics is expressed as the act of standing with the American people, restoring their existing faith in the American Dream, and then letting them get on with it.
A president who loves America would unite us rather than divide us. A president who loves America would negotiate rather than hold the nation's credit hostage. A president who loves America would do something about entitlements. A president who loves America would make a bonfire of the pile of subsidies and the injustices that divide rich from poor, black from white, employers from employees, men from women in Obama's America.
A president who loves America. Is it really so much to ask?
Christopher Chantrill (mailto:chrischantrill@gmail.com) is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. See his usgovernmentspending.com and also usgovernmentdebt.us. At americanmanifesto.org he is blogging and writing An American Manifesto: Life After Liberalism. Get his Road to the Middle Class.
1b)
Obamacare's middle-class sticker shock
By Henry Payne
Last week I got news that my health insurance costs are going up. A lot. In 2014 my monthly premium for a family of four will increase 15 percent to $575, my deductible will double to $3,000 and I will lose my drug coverage, adding another $100 a month to my expenses. My story is typical for employees of Gannett, the Detroit News’ parent company, and other businesses across the country.
Henry Payne’s column runs every Tuesday online. Payne is a Detroit News editorial writer and editorial cartoonist. He also is editor of The Detroit News Politics forum. Email him at: hpayne@detroitnews.com.
1c) Is Obamacare in a Death Spiral?
Another week has passed, which apparently means that it’s time for another terrifying article from Sharon LaFraniere, Ian Austen and Robert Pear on the federal health-care exchanges.
Federal contractors have identified most of the main problems crippling President Obama’s online health insurance marketplace, but the administration has been slow to issue orders for fixing those flaws, and some contractors worry that the system may be weeks away from operating smoothly, people close to the project say.
Administration officials approached the contractors last week to see if they could perform the necessary repairs and reboot the system by Nov. 1. However, that goal struck many contractors as unrealistic, at least for major components of the system. Some specialists working on the project said the online system required such extensive repairs that it might not operate smoothly until after the Dec. 15 deadline for people to sign up for coverage starting in January, although that view is not universally shared.
Time to panic? No. But it’s time to prepare to panic. It sounds like the earliest anyone is projecting fixes is sometime in the middle of November. That’s the time when it absolutely has to work -- and if it doesn’t, we should panic. Maybe not “Get in the shelter, Homer!” panic, but I’d definitely think about rebalancing the 401(k) and maybe voting in some politicians who will treat this with the gravity it deserves, rather than giving Rose Garden speeches saying that everything’s basically A-OK if you don’t look at the parts that don’t work! Because make no mistake: If this piece doesn’t work, then most of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act doesn’t work.
Am I exaggerating? I know it sounds apocalyptic, but really, I’m not. As Yuval Levin has pointed out, what we’re experiencing now is the worst-case scenario for the insurance markets: It is not impossible to buy insurance, but merely very difficult. If it were impossible, then we could all just agree to move to Plan B. And if it were as easy as everyone expected, well, we’d see if the whole thing worked. But what we have now is a situation where only the extremely persistent can successfully complete an application. And who is likely to be extremely persistent?
- Very sick people.
- People between 55 and 65, the age band at which insurance is quite expensive. (I was surprised to find out that turning 40 doesn’t increase your premiums that much; the big boosts are in the 50s and 60s.)
- Very poor people, who will be shunted to Medicaid (if their state has expanded it) or will probably go without insurance.
Insurance that is only sold to these groups is going to be very, very expensive. Not the first year -- President Barack Obama was in the Rose Garden just this morning, touting the fantastic cost savings available to the old and sick people whom Obamacare was already helping. But if those are the only people who sign up, insurers will lose a bunch of money on these policies. And then next year, they’ll ask for a lot more money.
What happens next -- as we’ve seen in states such as New York that have guaranteed issue, no ability to price to the customer’s health, and a generous mandated-benefits package -- is that when the price increases hit, some of those who did buy insurance the first year reluctantly decide to drop it. Usually, those are the healthiest people. Which means that the average cost of treatment for the people remaining in the pool rises, because the average person in that pool is now sicker. So premiums go up again . . . until it’s so expensive to buy insurance that almost no one does.
For folks who make less than 400 percent of the federal poverty line, that won’t matter much; the price of a "silver" plan (which covers about 70 percent of expected expenditures) is capped as a percentage of their income. For those who make more than 400 percent of the poverty line (a little over $40,000 for a single person), however, that will be a big problem. And, of course, the federal government will also have a big problem if the cost of subsidized policies starts marching rapidly northward.
About 5 percent of the U.S. population bought individual insurance on the private market pre-Obamacare, and about half of the law’s coverage expansion was slated to come from people buying policies in the individual exchanges. Moreover, the states' high-risk pools, which covered a bunch of very sick people, are coming to an end, dumping those people into the normal private market. And some employers, whose policies did not meet the minimums set by the health-care act, are expected to dump their employees into the private market rather than buy more expensive insurance. If this segment of the market breaks, it’s a Big Deal.
The line taken by the president’s speech this morning, and by the White House more generally, is that while these problems are unfortunate, they’re just not that big a deal. “It’s important to remember the website alone is not the Affordable Care Act,” Jay Carney said last week.
This seems to be the administration’s line every time anything goes wrong with this system. In July, we learned that the employer mandate was being delayed, but don’t worry, because that’s not really essential. Now we learn that the much-touted exchanges aren’t really essential, either -- in his speech this morning, Obama helpfully pointed out that you could also sign up by phone. One begins to wonder if Obamacare consists of any actual thing, such that one could ever definitively say that it had happened or not happened . . . that it was working or not working. Perhaps Obamacare is just a dream that lives on in the hearts of the men and women who designed it. As long as they draw breath, Obamacare did happen, and it is working.
Perhaps. But that is not the impression that I was given when those daring dreamers were working to pass it. Back then, Obamacare’s architects frequently spoke of the “three-legged stool”: guaranteed issue, community rating and the individual mandate. Guaranteed issue meant that no one could be turned away. Community rating meant that insurers couldn’t effectively deny insurance to sick people by quoting them policies that cost a squintillion dollars. And the individual mandate prevented the pricing death spiral (known to economists as an “adverse selection problem”). Take away any one of the legs, and the stool would tip over.
But there was also a fourth leg, always acknowledged but not always numbered: the subsidies. Without them, the mandate wouldn’t work, either politically or practically, because you can’t order someone to buy insurance that costs 50 percent of their take-home pay. And the wonks, and the journalists covering them, tacitly understood that there was a fifth leg: the exchanges. You can’t order people to get insurance if they don’t know where to buy it, or if the only quote they got from the one company they called cost more than they could afford.
The exchanges were also broadly understood to be needed to get young, healthy people into the system. Somewhat naturally, almost every story you’ve seen about a new enrollee -- including those told by the president this morning -- has focused on someone who couldn’t buy insurance before, or who had very expensive insurance. But it’s not surprising that those people are fighting through the system to get coverage; they would pull themselves to the top of Mount Rushmore using only their teeth if that’s what it took to get a cheap insurance policy. What we need to know is what is happening among the people who didn’t need Obamacare to help them buy insurance, because insurers would be perfectly happy to sell them a policy without it. Those are the folks whose premiums will cover treatment for the rest.
As Yuval Levin says, “The healthy young man who sees an ad for his state exchange during a baseball game and loads up the site to get coverage -- the dream consumer so essential to the design of the exchange system -- will not keep trying 25 times over a week if the site is not working. The person with high health costs and no insurance will.” One might add that he’s probably not going to call into the call center, wait three weeks to get his PDF application mailed to him, review it and send it in, wait another week or two for notification about his subsidy eligibility, and then (finally!) call back yet again to check out his policy options. Some will, of course. But at every tedious step, you will lose people.
In other words, whatever the administration says, the exchange is Obamacare -- at least, the Obamacare I was told about during the debate over health-care reform. The one that didn’t destroy the individual insurance market, or cause costs to spiral out of control.
Judging from President Obama’s speech, the administration has decided to triple down on the“burn the boats” strategy pioneered by Hernan Cortes in his conquest of Mexico: Make a total commitment in the hopes that this will somehow enable you to overcome impossible odds. There was no sign of a Plan B (other than call centers), no hint that they might consider a full or partial delay if they couldn’t get the systems working on time. Presumably they think (correctly) that the longer this goes on, the harder it will be to implement a delay, because so many people will have lost their existing insurance and/or bought new policies through the exchanges. But as I pointed out last week, while the “burn the boats” strategy sometimes ends with an improbable victory, the problem is that the other way it ends is in . . . well, a death spiral.
2 )Post Office $5.6 Billion Default Raises Urgency of Reforms
By Jennifer G. Hickey
With Congress and the media focused on the government shutdown and how to avoid default on the national debt, little attention was directed toward the U.S. Postal Service which earlier this month defaulted on a required $5.6 billion payment for the healthcare of its future retirees.
The third default on the down-payment in just over a year underscores the necessity of much-needed reforms for the beleaguered Postal Service.
Rep. Darrell Issa of California told Newsmax that without "the freedom to realign its infrastructure and operations in line with the changing way Americans use mail, the agency will remain insolvent."
"Prolonged insolvency of USPS will result in a massive taxpayer bailout and ongoing subsidy, or a sudden disruption in mail service, or both," the California Republican said.
Just days before the default, USPS Board of Governors Chairman Mickey Barnett announced an increase in the price of stamps beginning in 2014, which he said was the result of USPS' "precarious financial condition" and the "uncertain path toward enactment of postal reform legislation."
It is not a new message from the USPS leadership. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe has been vocal about the need for Congress to implement legislative reforms, including elimination of the annual prefunding payments, and its need for greater autonomy to manage its healthcare system.
Appearing before the Senate, Donahoe said the Postal Service was "in the midst of a financial disaster" due to the burden of an "outdated and inflexible business model."
Absent any flexibility to govern its own affairs, the Postal Service – which expects to end fiscal year 2013 with a loss of about $6 billion – has warned lawmakers it anticipates a government bailout of $50 billion will be needed in 2017.
Action on postal reforms looks unlikely this year, and "even the small reforms being proposed by Congress will only buy them a year or two," says James Gattuso of the Heritage Foundation.
Gattuso tells Newsmax that attributing USPS's losses to the recession or faulty accounting are merely ignoring the real problem, which is that the market for traditional mail is diminishing.
In an October research report, Gattuso notes that first-class mail volume has already plummeted 30 percent since 2007, and it may drop another 40 percent over the next seven years.
In addition to a decline in standard mail as a result of increased email communications, more Americans are paying bills online.
A Household Diary Study found that bill payments by mail have declined almost 16 percent in the past two years, while a 2012 study by the consulting firm Fiserv reports that 75 percent of Americans pay at least one monthly bill electronically.
The USPS has "to bite the bullet and make serious changes that include closing post offices that do not cover their costs or even make a profit. They also need to be open to considering partnerships with local businesses, such as CVS, so people would still have access to postal services, but not necessarily at a dedicated post office building," says Robert D. Atkinson of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
Atkinson suggests the USPS should immediately move to a five-day or three-day delivery schedule and to identify underutilized post offices and postal sorting facilities for closure.
In a June report examining whether the postal service could survive in a digital age, Atkinson pointed to the fact that more than 21 percent of FedEx deliveries are dropped off by a USPS postal carrier. This burden sharing is known as "last mile" delivery, in which a private sector company, such as FedEx, will manage the sorting and transportation of packages, but the final mile delivery is done by USPS.
Rather than proposing full privatization of the USPS, Atkinson suggests opening service up to competition and for the USPS to focus on its core competencies, such as package delivery.
"They deserve credit for making some budget cuts and for being upfront about their fiscal condition. One of the problems is that they have been hamstrung by a lack of congressional approval for reforms," Atkinson tells Newsmax.
In the House, Issa introduced legislation similar to a measure he sponsored in the previous Congress that would begin to phase out Saturday delivery of mail, while maintaining Saturday delivery of packages, which is one of the few areas of growth.
The bill would allow the Postal Service to forgo past due payments owed to prefund retiree healthcare benefits, would eliminate the ability of national and state political committees to use the non-profit mail rate, and permit the USPS to sell advertising space on vehicles and facilities. The bill also would allow state and local services, such as the sale of fishing licenses, at postal facilities.
Legislative action in this session is unlikely considering the other issues Congress has on its agenda, but Issa spokesman Ali Ahmad says "with the notable exception of labor unions, all key stakeholders are in contact and working on a solution to save the Postal Service and prevent a massive taxpayer-funded bailout."
"The unions carry a lot of political weight because they are one of the largest unions and they are out there making a lot of noise, whereas the taxpayers are largely unaware of the situation or the need for reform," says Gattuso, who adds that labor opposition is "somewhat ironic as no one is talking about forced layoffs or drastic renegotiations of union contracts."
"The status quo is not sustainable. While some argue that the USPS's losses are due to faulty accounting or a temporary downturn in the economy, that claim is wishful thinking. The market for traditional mail has been shrinking rapidly," Gattuso tells Newsmax.
Unions have criticized the reform efforts, contending that the bills do not do enough to ease the burden of prefunding retirees' health benefits.
Neither Gattuso, nor Atkinson, see the USPS becoming extinct anytime soon. However, they say that, like newspapers and the publishing industry, a failure to adapt to an irrefutable trend toward digital and online communications will only exacerbate USPS's poor financial condition.
A Senate bill, co-sponsored by Delaware Democrat Tom Carper and Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn, has moved closer toward the House measure, but even USPS' Donahoe has argued that committee's draft bill doesn't go far enough in granting the Postal Service greater control over its healthcare costs.
The Postal Service has proposed launching its own postal-specific healthcare plan – either within the broader Federal Employees Health Benefit Program or by negotiating directly with insurers.
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3) Abbas set to slam door on talks with Israel, resuscitates “revolving door” for terrorists
Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas has decided to derail talks with Israel directly after the release of the second batch of jailed Palestinians next week. US Secretary of State John Kerry will try to head off the crisis in the talks he brokered earlier this year, by cajoling Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu when they meet in Rome Wednesday, Oct. 23, to make Abbas an offer he can’t refuse, of sovereign Israel land.
Kerry is thinking of a large chunk of Dead Sea coastal area and water, equal to about a third of the territory owned by Israel in this region whichhe had planned on saving this Israeli concession for the final peace accord. He is now thinking of hauling it forward as bait to dissuade Abbas from walking out of the peace
But the Palestinian leader’s game plan entails more than this walkout, a step he has taken many times before. He is also unraveling the longstanding security cooperation with Israel for containing Palestinian terrorism.
But the Palestinian leader’s game plan entails more than this walkout, a step he has taken many times before. He is also unraveling the longstanding security cooperation with Israel for containing Palestinian terrorism.
This was the unspoken background to Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon’s first - typically taciturn -remarks Tuesday, Oct. 22 about the latest bout of Palestinian terrorist attacks.
“We take a grave view [of this wave of incidents]. It may be due to the atmosphere of incitement generated by the Palestinian Authority, recent religious events, any other causes - or even a kind of contagion,” said Ya’alon, adding: “There is no sign of what we may call a popular uprising, or what the Palestinians would call a ‘third intifada.’ We take every incident very seriously and stand ready for any escalation.”
Military sources translate two of the minister’s most opaque terms:
1. Third Palestinian intifada: Technically, he was correct in denying signs of its advent, but only because he held out on the whole picture. Yasser Arafat launched his second intifada 13 years ago after careful preparation. He first dismantled the security cooperation existing between the Palestinian Authority, Israel and the American military advisers helping to make it work.
In 2013, Mahmoud Abbas is following in Arafat’s footsteps of 2000.
In recent weeks, military sources report that the Palestinians in Ramallah are only going through the motions of working with Israel to combat terrorism. In the past, Israeli security and military authorities would inform Palestinian security services about suspected terrorists. They would then be questioned and the information passed back to their Israeli opposite numbers.
Now, on direct orders from the PA Chairman Abbas, suspects are detained only briefly before being released without being questioned.
Abbas has thus adopted Arafat’s “revolving door” method.
Senior military circles operating in the field of counterterrorism say that detaining terrorist suspects without interrogating them makes nonsense of the process. Letting them walk without questioning them about their organizational affiliations and secret cells, and referring the information to the IDF, makes the entire concept of security cooperation meaningless.
Palestinian security officers now understand that their job is to cooperate with the terrorists – not Israel.
2. Palestinian Authority incitement and religious events. Ya’alon was talking about Mahmoud Abbas’s latest propaganda campaign stunt, which raises the specter of an Israeli conspiracy to seize control of Temple Mount and destroy Al Aqsa Mosque.
This theme can always be counted on to strike an inflammatory chord in the Palestinian Muslim masses and fire the more radical up for attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets. Arafat understood this very well when he labeled his four-year suicide bombing campaign against Israel the “Al Aqsa intifada.”
The defense minister fully appreciates the fragile situation created by the recent Palestinian "lone wolf"attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians.
He spoke in Hebron Tuesday, shortly after an IDF-Shin Bet unit shot dead Mohammed Assi, 28, the Jihad Islami operative who masterminded the Nov. 21, 2012 bombing of a bus in Tel Aviv. He was shot while resisting arrest from his hideout in a cave in the village of Bil’in, north of the 443 highway to Jerusalem.
The bus bombing, which left 27 people injured, took place shortly after Israel’s Defensive Cloud operation in the Gaza Strip ended in a ceasefire.
The bus bombing, which left 27 people injured, took place shortly after Israel’s Defensive Cloud operation in the Gaza Strip ended in a ceasefire.
Mohammed Assi was brought to book the day before the Netanyahu-Kerry meeting in Rome. It was a reminder to Palestinians, including their leaders, that Israel’s Defense Forces eventually bring terrorists, whether killers or their masters, to book.
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| Released terrorists return to terror |
| Leaving prison, returning to terror Second wave of prisoner releases set for next week; security establishment worried – those released in previous deals stand at head of Palestinian terror groups By Alex Fishman Two months after first wave of prisoner releases – on October 27 – the State of Israel is expected to release a second wave of Palestinian prisoners. As part of the preconditions for the resumption of peace negotiations, Israel is slated to release 104 prisoners who have been imprisoned since prior to the Oslo Accords, most of whom were sentenced to life and considered major terror participants, with blood on their hands. On August 13, 2013, 26 prisoners were already released. With this second phase, 32 additional prisoners will be given their freedom. The government has yet to okay the deal, but it is expected to pass. This time as well, prisoners considered major terror participants will be released to Gaza. This is regardless of the fact that Israel has had bitter experience with the release of prisoners in general, especially those headed for Gaza. One of the heroes of the Gaza terror movement is Ayman Sharouna, who was sentenced to 38 years for involvement in deadly terror attacks in Beersheba. He was released in the Shalit deal, and arrested again in 2012 for breaking release conditions. Following a 261 day hunger strike, Israel gave in and released Shraonah yet again in March, this time to the West Bank for the next 10 years. He has since become a central figure in a special unit established by Hamas’ military wing to coordinate terror attacks in the West Bank. The unit, made up of released Palestinian prisoners, is responsible for some of the deadliest attacks carried out in the region. While Gaza is home to those who coordinate and carry out the attacks, the brains and funding come from Turkey. Heading up terror activity for Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza is another released prisoner – Saleh Al Arouri. Among the founders of the military wing of the Hamas, Arouri did several stints in Israeli jails, before being released in 2010. Upon his release, he was obligated to leave the area for three years, so he moved with Hamas’ command (which had left Damascus) to Turkey. Today, he operates out of Turkey, with the backing of the Turkish government. It was within this backdrop of terror operatives in Gaza, the West Bank and Turkey built upon a population of released prosoners – that Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh called this week – on the one-year anniversary of the Shalit deal – for a third intifada in the West Bank. In the past month, Saleh Al Arouri and those under him in Gaza and the West Bank, made a concerted effort to incite the area, with the intention of derailing the restarted peace talks, to weaken Palestinan Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and to hurt Israel. The center of rioting has been the Al-Aqsa Mosque, where most of the past month’s ‘spontaneous’ demonstrations have taken place. Hamas presents itself under the guise of an innocent Islamic organization, made up of mostly Jerusalem residents, which serves as a patron of the intifada. In cooperation with the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, the group – which considers it its responsibility to protect Islamic interests at the Temple Mount – called for “days of rage.” The result was more days of violence at the mount. According to security sources, in addition to the attempt of inciting the Palestinian street, there has been a significant increase in shooting incidents and throwing of Molotov cocktails at Israelis in the West Bank. This included five terror attacks which left three Israelis dead over the past month. And while security sources do not cite one specific individual as being behind the increase, the statistics are clear – there has been an increase in general violence and terror activity. Released prisoners have had their hands in this. At the moment, as Israel is about to release dozens of former major players in terror activity, it should consider that a portion, even if they are not young, will return to the armed Palestinian fight, predominantly those who will go to Gaza. These prisoners will be returning to a more explosive situation than earlier in the year --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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