When stubborn Israelis must fight radical Islamist terrorists committed to their destruction and when Israelis are forced to defend themselves against those who worship death over life and anti-Semitic hypocrites take Israel to task for resulting casualties then Israel's battle for survival becomes a chicken and egg contest. It becomes evident Israel has lost the propaganda war.
When hard nosed Megyn Kelly, tortures herself over pictures of Gazan children placed in a war zone and prevented from leaving, or are forced to remain in structures like hospitals and schools used as Hamas command centers and rocket launching sites then, you know, Israel has lost the propaganda war.
I can understand Obama and his lackey Sec. of Defense and State demanding Israel stop short of their objective while rockets continue to fall upon Israelis because America is ruled by a radical king bent on its own destruction.
Obama would rather lose a war than protect an ally, a democracy. He would rather appease Putin than challenge him. He would rather side with radical Islam than stand against them. He has done so consistently by high tailing it in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, Poland and Egypt Eventually, his goal is to shrink our military capability bringing it down to its knees as Putin expands his reach into Cuba and China challenges our declining navy in the Pacific.
The fact that Israel is being attacked by feckless Europeans linking arms with U.N. demands, is simply more evidence Israel has lost the propaganda war.
There is something radically wrong with a world that pays lip service to Israel's right to defend itself and then demands of that tiny nation, surrounded by 50 times its own population by those committed to its destruction and annihilation, that it cease its defense. because Gazan casualty rates are disproportionate to Israel's.
There is something radically wrong and immoral with a world that subtly returns to ant-Semitism so soon after the devastation of W W 2.
I can understand the call for a cease fire from a nation led by a radical president who is unwilling to protect its own borders from illegal invasion, and I can understand anti-Semitism coming from countries with a history of it, now being over run by Muslims who will eventually destroy them. What I do not understand,even though I really do, is why those in the world, who understand the threat, remain silent.
Eventually they will be at risk and eventually there will be no one left to come to their defense. That is the price cowards eventually pay when they refuse to face down bullies.
Silence can be deafening and currently it speaks loudly to the disposition of the world's population. and its sense of morality. (See 1 and 1a below.)
Another perspective from a friend. (See 1b below.)
Lets hear it from Glick! (See 1c below.)
Continuing to torture the numbers. We publish results that we worship and they are mostly meaningless. (See 2 below.)
Is everything turning tino cronyism? (See 2a below.)
A peaceful and unique nation like Israel and its people have to resort to violent means to survive. My heart breaks for them
8:35 am – One Israeli volunteer, who is helping farmers at Kibbutz Sufa, close to where the battle in southern Gaza between the IDF and Hamas terrorists is taking place told The Algemeiner that Israeli artillery had been very active through the night and morning.
8:30 am – The Hill writer Rebecca Shabad reports on Twitter: “White House spokesman Josh
Earnest just said on
@CNN that if it’s true Hamas took advantage of truce it’s ‘a rather barbaric violation.’”
8:28 am – Prayer groups in Israel say the abducted Israeli soldier’s Hebrew name is Hadar ben Chedva Leah.
8:25 am – Israel’s Ynet reports that the two IDF soldiers were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up near them. In the momentary confusion, the IDF officer was abducted.
8:06 am – The IDF Coordinator of Activities in the Territories Maj.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai meets with UN envoy Robert Serry to update him on the violation by Hamas of the ceasefire, which was under the aegis of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and US Secretary of State John Kerry.
Israel announces that Hamas has thus ended the humanitarian ceasefire and prevented the residents of Gaza from benefiting from it.
Mordechai says Israel will “take strong action in response to the aggression of Hamas and the other terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip.”
8:02 am – The IDF confirms the name of the officer who is suspected to have been abducted by terrorists earlier this morning as Second Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, 23 years old from Kfar Saba. Two other IDF soldiers were killed in the attack.
7:55 am - IDF: “If our suspicions about today’s events are accurate, Hamas took advantage of the latest ceasefire in order to kidnap an IDF soldier”.
7:54 am – The 72-hour humanitarian ceasefire announced yesterday was breached by Hamas in order to launch an attack on IDF forces in which a soldier was kidnapped. The incident took place in southern Gaza and Israeli forces are working extensively to recover the soldier. Heavy IDF bombardment has been reported in the Rafah area.
The IDF’s statement on the abduction is below:
The IDF implemented the government directive, and commenced a 72-hour ceasefire as of today, August 1, at 08:00 IDT.
At approximately 09:30 am, an attack was executed against IDF forces operating to decommission a tunnel.
Initial indication suggests that an IDF soldier has been abducted by terrorists during the incident.
The occurrences are ongoing. The IDF is currently conducting intelligence efforts and extensive searches and in order to locate missing soldier.
The soldier’s family has been notified.
PREAMBLE: 7:52 am - Early on Tuesday July 8th Israel launched Operation Protective Edge aimed at stopping “the constant terror activity that Hamas is aiming at Israeli civilians.” The major Gaza initiative comes in response to a significant increase in rocket attacks from the coastal enclave over the past weeks.
Late on Thursday July 17th the IDF launched an extensive ground offensive in Gaza.
Since the start of the initiative Israel has targeted over 4200 terror sites in Gaza and has seen over 2800 rockets fired from Gaza at Israeli cities including Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Gedera. More than 6 million Israelis are under threat of rocket attacks and many are spending the nights in bomb shelters. Over 1300 deaths have been reported in Gaza and 63 Israeli soldiers have been killed and well as three civilians.
Two weeks ago, while Israel accepted an Egyptian proposed ceasefire, Hamas rejected it and fired volleys of rockets into Israel.
| [Report of Netanyahu-Kerry converation after abduction does not include |
Kerry reply
Dr. Aaron Lerner :
The 15:45 report by Ronen Polak on Israel Radio Reshet Bet of the
conversation that just took place between PM Binyamin Netanyahu and
Secretary of State John Kerry did not include any indication as to what
Kerry said in response to what Netanyahu said after Hamas engaged in
kidnapping Second Lieutenant Hadar Goldin during the humanitarian ceasefire.
Polak further reported that the Security Cabinet will meet at 17:30 today.] |
1b) Hamas Ideals the Core Issue, Not Gaza
By Yisrael Ne'eman
In the overall Middle East context Gaza is not the central issue. Hamas is a serious terrorist threat but without the military potential to conquer Israel. A century from now when the history of the Islamic Awakening (or if we buy into the western media label "Arab Spring") is written Israel's battles with Hamas in Gaza will be recalled as an insignificant front in the global Islamist onslaught. Hamas will certainly be remembered for its well thought out antisemitic, anti-western, anti-secular Arab nationalist and Jihadi Covenant. All the Islamic movements follow in its footsteps. Hamas is in the theological and ideological vanguard of fanatical Islam even should its military power be quite limited. Hamas strength is in the hate filled consciousness it raises amongst millions of Muslims world-wide and not in its immediate military-political success.
Due to its commitment to Jihad Hamas failed to build a functioning mini-state in Gaza despite aid from Iran, Turkey and Qatar. With 500 - 1000 tunnels on the Rafiah border with Egypt importing military contraband and civilian goods into Gaza the supposed Israeli blockade over the last seven years was an abject failure in the political, economic and military spheres. Instead of aiding its population with construction materials (brought in legally overland or underground) Hamas built rockets to fire at Israel's cities and dug tunnels into the Negev in preparation for its next war with the Jewish State. Hamas, like the Fatah led Palestinian Authority before it, could have built a modern port and up to seven industrial zones to supply work and the hope of a peaceful future both with Israel and Egypt. No recognition of Israel was necessary. Instead Hamas, led by Ismail Haniya, Khalid Mashal, Mohammed Deif and others made a conscious decision in choosing Jihad. All those hudnas (Islamic cease-fires) by definition were instituted to rearm, retrain and restart the conflict. One must give Hamas credit for never veering from its declared goal of Israeli and Jewish destruction.
On the global Islamic battlefield Hamas holds one tiny sector against Israel. Although a military failure Hamas is an inspiration to Islamists everywhere embodying the example of an unyielding commitment to Jihad regardless of the cost. The real story of the last few years is not Hamas but the other Islamic uprisings. Hamas had its days of glory in 2007 when overthrowing the PA in Gaza.
The Middle East will continue to be transformed in face of the Jihadi onslaught. The big story of 2014 is the caliphate declared by ISIS or ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) sweeping though eastern Syria and western Iraq. According to the New York Times they are beginning to develop a state infrastructure including a tax system, municipal services and a judiciary (Sharia Law) alongside its Sunni Jihadi military. There are no real borders even if a preliminary map is said to have been issued by these al-Qaeda types. Assad's Syria barely exists and can be expected to mesh with Lebanon in the long run even if unofficially. Both are Iranian proxies as is Nuri al-Maliki's eastern Arab Shiite Iraq rump "state" along Tehran's western border.
Three years after Gaddafi's overthrow Libya is plagued by never ending tribal, regional and factional violence. There is no Libyan state but just a land mass. The only possible unifying factor is Islam, Sharia Law and its export through Jihad. None should be surprised should an Islamist surge sweep Libya. Egypt may be ruled by a secular military regime at the moment (despite supposed elections) after the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood led Morsi regime but Islamism on the Nile is far from defeated.
Iran had its revolution in 1979 and continues to play an activist role in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. Other non-Arab Muslim players include Afghanistan and Pakistan. As the Americans complete their pullout from the former, the Taliban is stepping up its attacks on government forces and can be expected to retake the country in the not too distant future. The border with Pakistan barely exists, Taliban forces operate on both sides and once the US is gone cross border raids into Pakistan will be easier and more successful. A full erasure of the mountainous demarcation is not far off. There is no guarantee that Pakistan will not fall to an extremist Islamist regime in the future.
The analysis given decades ago by the Jihadi extremists Sayyid Qutb and Abdullah Azzam was and continues to be correct. The Muslim world is no place for western imposed nation states. The fulfillment of the Islamic mission can only come about through a full unification of the entire Muslim world. If this cannot be done peacefully then it will happen by force. The Hamas Covenant makes this clear in Articles 1 – 8. Article 11 speaks of the global need for Jihad to recapture all Muslim lands (waqf) and defines Islam as the only acceptable nationalism as opposed to the secular variety. All attempts at peace making are condemned (Art. 13 and 32).
So back to Hamas itself. It does not matter if the organization will suffer a total defeat and even be replaced by Fatah in Gaza. Such an unreasonable outcome is not expected, Fatah is still reviled by Gazans while Hamas retains a fair amount of support. Whether in power or not, Hamas does not accept state boundaries either. Israel is considered illegitimate and is to be conquered for Islam while Egypt is expected to return to the Islamist fold (through elections or otherwise). Hamas is not only a political/military movement, it is an ideal not confined to a specific land mass.
In the face of a supposed "defeat" what choices are open to Hamas? The moderate option is to buy into the Egyptian – Fatah/PA cease-fire proposal expounded by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. To do so infers surrender to the ascendency of Palestinian Arab nationalism over Islam and could lead to plans for a forced demilitarization of the Gaza Strip. This does not appear acceptable even if Hamas has its back to the wall. A moderate Islamist option is an alignment with Turkey's Islamist PM Recep Erdogan but then a continual Jihad is out of the question – the Turks are a NATO member alongside Europe and the US. Turning to Iran has been done before and may have temporary advantages but Sunni fundamentalist Hamas cannot betray its principles through a long term alliance with Shiite Iran.
The most radical option is some form of loyalty to ISIL. In the immediate future Hamas could realign itself with its most religiously fanatical right wing opposition. Theoretically ISIL claims Gaza and the entire Land of Israel (or Palestine) as its own even if its most recent "maps" do not indicate as such. Any true Islamic Caliphate must expand to include all regions ever captured by Islam. Would Hamas give up its independence for such an alliance? ISIL is busy setting up their own state in the midst of conflict with Shiite Iraq to the east and what remains of Assad's Syria to the west. ISIL cannot be of much help at the outset, but Hamas will enjoy an ideological boost. Secondly, one would expect the Islamic Jihad, al-Nusra, al-Qaeda and ISIL opposition groups in Gaza to rally around the black and green flags together. Should ISIL consolidate power within a year or so, Hamas could rebound faster than expected. Moving from an extreme to a more fanatical position undermines the Fatah dominated PA and President Abbas, the Egyptian military secularists led by Gen. a-Sisi (sworn enemies of Hamas), the moderate Jordanian regime and joint American/European policy objectives. Outmaneuvered are the "practical" Islamist Turkish and Qatari regimes.
Finally Israel may be left with no policy options besides some form of "conquest" of the Gaza Strip, its accompanying re-occupation of Gaza for at least a year, steadily increasing casualties, international criticism and condemnation. After all, wide ranging discussions of Gaza Strip demilitarization are much positive sounding verbiage. Question – Who is to physically go into Gaza combing every structure (including UN facilities), bunker and sewer line? Is this job being left to the US/NATO, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority, the UN or any combination of the above mentioned? Will Israel be involved or need to take action on its own? Somehow volunteers for a forced Hamas demilitarization will be hard to find.
Hamas remains the ideologically pure hero never having compromised its ideals. If pressured into accepting the Fatah/PA-Egyptian position demanding a cease-fire and some form of demilitarization Hamas will in all honesty explain the act as a
hudna and certainly resist any attempts at being disarmed. Hamas ideals are deeply embedded in much of the Muslim world. As such one way or another Hamas will certainly live to fight another day, whether in Gaza or elsewhere.
1c)
Israel's endgame in Gaza
By Caroline B. Glick
The fighting is still raging in Gaza. Each day IDF forces destroy more and more tunnels and other terrorist infrastructure. Each day, we discover new facets of Hamas's depravity. The three soldiers from the Maglan commando unit who were killed on Tuesday in Gaza, were buried in the rubble of a UN clinic. They entered the building to seal a terror tunnel whose entry shaft was located inside the clinic.
A Hamas terrorist was inside the tunnel waiting for them. He detonated the building. Works out that Hamas had booby trapped the structure, hiding twelve barrels with eighty kgs. of explosives each, in a wall.
In a press briefing following the bombing, Gaza Division Commander Brig. Gen. Micky Edelstein reported that to date Hamas has used more than a thousand IEDs. Its bombs have destroyed thousands of buildings in the Gaza Strip.
OC Southern Command Maj. Gen. Sami Turgeman told reporters that with the amount of concrete Hamas used in its tunnels it could have built 100 kindergartens, two hospitals, twenty schools and twenty clinics.
Clearly Hamas's priorities do not include economic or social development projects for the residents of the area. Dual use materials will always be used first for terrorist purposes. Concern for the welfare of Gaza's citizenry is at best a distant second.
Indeed, the terror group's practice of using clinics, kindergartens, schools, hospitals and mosques as weapons storage areas, missile launching sites and command centers makes clear that the welfare of Gaza residents doesn't even rank in Hamas's list of organizational goals. As a consequence, the concept of providing "humanitarian aid" to Gaza with Hamas in power is laughable. Every smidgen of aid it receives will go to Hamas's war machine.
And this brings us to the heart of the matter.
Even in the midst of the fighting it is apparent that we are moving toward the endgame.
The question is what is the desired end-state? How will we know if we have won? Certainly following America's lead is not an option. Indeed, the Obama administration is the greatest constraint Israel faces today on its road to victory.
From the actions and words of senior Obama administration officials, it is easy to ascertain where President Barack Obama wants this conflict to end.
First, he wants Hamas to remain armed and in control of Gaza. This point was made clear by Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn who heads the US Defense Intelligence Agency. In Congressional testimony Flynn told US lawmakers, "If Hamas were destroyed and gone, we would probably end up with something much worse."
This of course is absurd. Hamas wants to kill every Jew in the world. As a practical matter then, it is impossible for any successor regime to be worse. But from Israel's perspective, more important than discovering that the head of the DIA is an idiot, is Flynn's revelation that the US wishes to save Hamas from Israel.
The administration's other positions have all been aligned with this strategic goal of maintaining Hamas in power. Both the US draft cease fire agreement that Israel rejected, and the White House readout of President Barack Obama's telephone conversation with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday night made clear that the US wants Hamas to be able to prosper.
Secretary of State John Kerry's ceasefire proposal was explicit on this issue.
A permanent cease fire deal, it read must include, "arrangements to secure the opening of the crossings, allow the entry of goods and people and…transfer funds to Gaza for the payment of salaries for public employees…"
The last component of the administration's desired end-state of the war is to use it as a means to force Israel to concede land to the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria, or at least use Israel's refusal to do so as a means for blaming Israel for continued Palestinian aggression.
Obama made this clear in his conversation with Netanyahu. As the White House's summary of the conversation reported, "The President stressed the US view that, ultimately, any lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must ensure the disarmament of terrorist groups and the demilitarization of Gaza."
In other words, the Palestinians will keep shooting until Israel coughs up Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, and Obama is okay with that.
To summarize then, the Obama administration wishes to end the war with Hamas armed and in charge of Gaza; enjoying open borders to the world, and rolling in the dough of international donor dollars and euros, and so in a position to replenish its arsenals and rebuild its tunnels.
The US seeks as well to use this end-state as a means of reinstating its pressure on Israel to surrender land in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to the Palestinians.
Israel's end-state is of course entirely different. Indeed, if the US gets what it wants, then Israel will have lost the war.
The question is, given that this is the US's position, what can Israel do to win?
As the scandalous FAA flight ban last week made clear the administration has effectively limitless means to harm Israel. The ban served to instill massive uncertainty into Israel's export and tourism based economy. As Israeli leaders noted, it was the greatest gift to terrorists the US had ever given. Moreover, it was unwarranted and prejudicial.
Whereas the FAA claimed that it acted out of an abundance of caution after a Hamas missile landed a mile from Ben Gurion Airport, the fact is that such caution exists nowhere else. There is no FAA flight ban on Pakistan, where a civilian aircraft was shot down last month, or in Ukraine. There is no FAA flight ban in Afghanistan or Yemen.
Clearly a double standard was used against Israel.
And predictably, when US Senator Ted Cruz stood up to the administration and demanded an explanation of the FAA's action and its use of a double standard against Israel, the State Department accused him of lack of concern for US air carriers and passengers.
It was a testament to Cruz's moral courage that he was willing to risk being wrongly accused of reckless indifference to the safety of US airline passengers in order to decry the administration's prejudicial treatment of Israel.
And while Sen. Cruz played a central role in revoking the flight ban after 36 hours, the act itself showed how easy it is for the US to hurt Israel without openly attacking it. Indeed, other punitive actions have already been undertaken.
While the administration acts in accordance with Congressional will and resupplies the IDF and increases the US investment in Iron Dome, it has also stopped providing visa services to Israelis interested in travelling to the US. According to I24 News, the US embassy in Tel Aviv is not issuing travel visas to the US except in emergency circumstances, due to staff reductions during the war.
In light of the constraints Israel faces from the administration, certain operational goals that might otherwise have been achievable must be ruled out. Other actions that might have been reasonable, make no sense, under the circumstances.
The government has determined that the ground operation will go on until the tunnels are destroyed. Whether the operation takes days or weeks or longer, Netanyahu has made it clear that Israel will continue to operate on the ground — even in the framework of a ceasefire — to destroy Hamas's tunnels.
If we assume that Netanyahu and his ministers will continue to withstand US pressure and continue the operation until it has been completed, the question becomes what happens then?
To neutralize Hamas as a military threat in the future, Israel only needs to secure one goal: In any ceasefire arrangement, Gaza's borders must remain sealed.
Egypt must continue to prevent smuggling from Sinai to Gaza.
Israel must maintain its naval blockade.
Gaza must remain cut off from the international banking system.
Hamas is fighting to open these borders. And if it makes any gains in this area, Hamas will win. Assuming Israel destroys all or most of Hamas's offensive capabilities before the fighting ends, the only way to keep Hamas from fighting again is to prevent it from resupplying.
To achieve its goal of keeping Gaza's borders shut, Israel needs to do two things. First, it needs to complete its operations on the ground as quickly as possible. The faster the IDF removes our ground forces from Gaza the more difficult it will be for Obama to demand that Israel end its maritime blockade of the Gaza coast.
Second, Israel must avoid any ceasefire agreement that involves any international supervision or presence in Gaza. The best option for Israel would be a cease fire in the form of a letter from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to Netanyahu and to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas setting out broad conditions of a cease fire arrangement.
Any cease fire that involves US guarantees or supervision or international guarantees or supervision will be an invitation for renewed pressure on Israel and Egypt to open the borders of Gaza and allow Hamas to rebuild its machinery of murder.
The same is the case for international peacekeepers. Any agreement that involves the deployment of foreign forces to Gaza for any purpose is an agreement that imports human shields to Gaza. As has been Hezbollah's practice with UN forces in South Lebanon for the past four decades, foreign forces will not interfere with any Hamas operations, but through their very presence in on the ground, they will impede the IDF's capacity to fight Hamas in the event that such operations become necessary.
Netanyahu has stated that Israela seeks the demilitarization of Gaza. There are only two ways to achieve that goal — through the reinstitution of Israeli military control over Gaza, and through attrition.
In light of the Obama administration's support for Hamas's war goals and actions it has already undertaken to undermine Israel's war effort, it is fairly clear that it would be unwise for Israel to re-conquer Gaza at this time. The price Obama would extract for such a move would in all likelihood outweigh the benefits Israel would gain from physically decimating Hamas directly.
The other option — demilitarization through attrition — is consequently Israel's strongest option for a victorious endgame today. And attrition can only be secured if Gaza's borders remain sealed.
War is an ugly thing. War with terrorist murderers who lack even a shred of human decency is a very ugly thing.
There are no guarantees that Israel will not have to fight again. And if Obama gets even some of what he is demanding, Israel will have to fight again, and soon.
Under these circumstances, Israel's best bet is to destroy the tunnels quickly and secure cease fire terms that keep Gaza isolated to reduce to a minimum Hamas's ability to fight again.
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2)
Editor's note: We're continuing our series from New York Timesbestselling author Bill Bonner. All week, we've featured essays "debunking" the economic benchmarks you see reported in the
mainstream media. As Bill explained, the number crunchers "torture" those figures until they show exactly what the government wants them to show. Today, Bill takes on the biggest "flimflam" number of all...
| The Real Story Behind the Latest GDP Number |
| By Bill Bonner, editor, The Bill Bonner Letter |
|
|
Are we getting richer or poorer? Are we better or worse off?
"Hey, gimme a break," says the GDP, "I just work here."
Economists can't really measure quality. So their gross domestic product (GDP) number doesn't tell us if a new house adds to the world's wealth or subtracts from it. They can only measure
quantity. And speed.
An article in the Wall Street Journal explained how strong family attachments were impeding Italy's economic growth. Half the young children in Italy are raised by their grandparents –
their "nonni" – while their parents work. No need for day care.
How does this affect an economy? Well, because granddad is willing to watch after little Silvio or Maria for free, the transaction doesn't register in the GDP. No exchange of money, no "growth."
2a) The Three Faces of Cronyism
There has been a lot said in recent years by Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and other conservatives about crony capitalism – or if you prefer, crony socialism, crony government, corporatism – or just plain cronyism. Whatever you call it, this conversation is increasingly vital as government grows and continues to pervert markets by picking winners and losers as a way to obtain wealth for powerful lawmakers and their fund-raisers and friends.
This rampant cronyism is one of the most insidious outgrowths of a government gone wild, and has become a swirling vortex of self sustaining and systemic corruption. Thus, the focus on cronyism is necessary -- but missing from the conversation seems to be a distinction among the three very different genres of cronyism. And there are at least three very different varieties.
I submit there is too much focus on what I’ll call the first type, that of tax breaks and other incentives for big industrial plants, or professional stadia expansion projects and the like. Government should not be involved in these issues, but at least there is a potentially redeeming cost/benefit outcome for the taxpayers. This is not to advocate for these schemes, but logic dictates that at least cities and/or states are bargaining on behalf of their citizens against other jurisdictions. If a deal is a good one, there are more winners than just the directly involved companies. These are critical distinctions. More on this shortly.
The other two forms of cronyism have no redemptive value whatsoever, and are purely diabolical corruptions of power and influence. As such, this is where the focus of wrath should be. The first of these fiendish varieties would be the GE Jeff Immelt model, where a company cozies up to government in order to get regulations and laws passed that punish their competitors.
We’ve also seen this recently with Costco and Walmart professing support for the minimum wage knowing that their smaller competitors would be squeezed by this. There are thousands of examples like these, not only at the Federal level, but also in states. In these cases, the government is picking winners and losers within their own jurisdictions.
Under this category I should probably include the booming “compliance industry,” where certain professions ask to be regulated by government as a way to construct barriers to new competitors in their markets. This often spawns the continuing education racket, not to mention the third party human resource industry, which has been boosted by ObamaCare forcing businesses to hirecompliance specialists.
There are no winners in these models except for the companies and the lawmakers they have donated to. Shoppers and employees have fewer options – and naturally the direct competitors are the biggest losers of all. It is pure malignancy.
And yet – as ugly as it is, the version above is probably not as cancerous as theSolyndra model, where the crime is worse than just perverting a market. This is where a faux market is first fabricated out of utopian thin air, and vast sums of wealth are simply transferred to cronies as a way for them to painlessly enter these non-existent markets. This template generally fails by design because there is no real market -- and yet the initial owners, who are almost invariably big donors for the election winners, seem to always manage to walk away with millions they drew in salaries and consulting fees prior to bankruptcy. In this way, it’s nothing more than a money laundering scam. CEO Brian Harrison almost admitted as much. Again, almost everybody loses except the handful of donors, candidates and phony entrepreneurs involved directly.
Which brings us back to the first type: tax breaks and other incentives for major companies to locate or re-locate new plants and/or corporate headquarters. In the past number of years, very conservative South Carolina has aggressively used incentives to lure BMW to Greenville and Boeing’s Dreamliner plant to Charleston. Obviously, BMW and Boeing were winners in these situations. How about the politicians that pushed the incentives through? I would suspect they won also.
But so did all of Greenville. Two decades in, the plant has been even better for the area than anticipated. And Charleston, too. So did all of South Carolina. Citizens who had nothing to do with the crony recipes that landed these facilities still benefitted mightily, through jobs, property values, supporting small business opportunities and other spinoff activites. The governments that gave the incentives win through a long-term stream of increased tax revenues due to the local economic growth. Maybe it was a bit stinky to get pushed through -- and again this is not a blanket endorsement of these situations – but often they do end up as win/win/win outcomes. The Solyndra model or the GE model never end up this way.
As such, the tax incentive packages, while they smack of cronyism to a degree, are far less of a blight on the economy than the other two iterations of cronyism. And I can guarantee you that many hard-core Tea Party conservatives in the Palmetto State are extremely happy that BMW and Boeing came to South Carolina. I don’t think they are being hypocritical either.
Conservatives should certainly keep the pressure up on exposing and stamping out cronyism wherever they can. But let’s not get distracted. Our Founders charged us with establishing and maintaining a more perfect union, not a utopia. Stamping out the worst of the crony deals would be a lot more perfect situation than we have now.
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3) Four Senate Primaries to Watch in August
August in an election year can be a pivotal time in politics.
Members of Congress return to their states for the month, gauging public reaction to a job done (or not done) and campaigning for another term. Candidates use the time to ramp up their campaigns ahead of Labor Day, after which voters historically start tuning in more closely.
It’s a month when constituent responses can be most pronounced and most effective in shaping the theme or themes of the November election.
And it’s a time when campaigns can be made or broken. Todd Akin’s infamous “legitimate rape” comment that doomed his 2012 U.S. Senate candidacy -- and a GOP pickup opportunity -- came in mid-August, after all.
But not all campaigns are in general election mode yet. While the vast majority of this cycle’s primaries have concluded, three contests this month will determine the fate of Senate incumbents facing party challenges in Kansas, Hawaii, and Tennessee. And in the 2014 battleground state of Alaska, voters will choose a GOP candidate to take on Mark Begich, one of the most vulnerable incumbents this year.
The outcomes of the first three races appear more predictable than others have been this year. At this stage, all three senators facing primary challenges look safe. Nevertheless, their contests will test several familiar themes: competing GOP forces, the success of progressive Democrats, and the liability of having spent decades in Washington. And even the seemingly safest lawmakers know anything can happen, if Eric Cantor’s defeat in June taught them anything.
Here are four key Senate primaries to watch this month:
Kansas, Aug. 5
In seeking a fourth term, Pat Roberts has witnessed how drastically Washington connections have shifted from an asset to a liability. The Republican lawmaker has faced criticism for keeping his main residency in Northern Virginia and staying with donors and supporters when he visits his home state. The New York Times detailed his efforts to re-establish himself in Kansas without even having an address there.
Roberts’ challenger is a Tea Party-aligned radiologist named Milton Wolf, whose claim to fame is that he is a distant cousin of President Obama. Wolf has painted Roberts as the ultimate Washington insider who lost touch with his constituents during a multi-decade tenure in the nation’s capital. Wolf, on the other hand, has been plagued by problems of his own making after posting unsettling X-ray images of dead and wounded people to his Facebook page.
A recent poll shows Roberts 20 points ahead, but Wolf has been making gains. He has run ads in the state targeting his opponent’s residency, and has pestered the incumbent for refusing to debate. The two candidates had an awkward run-in on the street this week.
While Kansas is reliably red and Roberts’ appears poised for re-election, the incumbent has spent as $3.4 million this cycle, compared to his challenger’s $650,000. He has been logging time back in Kansas recently, and is airing ads there. Wolf’s candidacy is not as strong as other challengers in other races and in other cycles. But it nonetheless has spotlighted the importance of home state ties over Washington ones in Republicans primaries these days.
Tennessee, Aug. 7
Two-term incumbent Lamar Alexander is also expected to win his primary next week. His race could be emblematic of ways Tea Party challenges have largely failed to gain traction this year and how strong, hometown connections help lawmakers survive.
Alexander has a history of legislating and brokering deals in the Senate, and had earned goodwill in the state as governor. In his first successful bid for governor more than three decades ago, he literally walked around the state, logging 1,000 miles on foot. He is seen as one of the more moderate members of his conference -- as is his state colleague, Republican Sen. Bob Corker, who easily won re-election in 2012.
Alexander’s top challenger, Joe Carr, has struggled to gain any momentum and conservative outside groups have largely written off this race. That may be because Alexander has waged a smart re-election bid. He hasn’t changed his voting patterns -- he backed comprehensive immigration reform last year, for example -- but he announced his bid early on and raised nearly $7 million this cycle to protect himself and warn away challengers.
Last week Carr tried to garner some last minute support ahead of the primary. Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham, who played a role in Cantor’s defeat, headlined a rally over the weekend, where supporters targeted Alexander’s support of immigration reform.
Hawaii, Aug. 9
Much of the attention this cycle has been focused on Republican primaries and the GOP’s intra-party battles and soul searching. But Democrats have one of their own this cycle, in reliably blue Hawaii. And it is centered on a dying wish from one of the state’s most highly regarded public figures.
Gov. Neil Abercrombie appointed Democrat Brian Schatz to a Senate seat in 2012 after the death of longtime Sen. Daniel Inouye. The pick was controversial from the beginning. Before he died, Inouye expressed wishes that Rep. Colleen Hanabusa succeed him. Instead, Abercrombie picked his lieutenant governor, who at 41 has time to build up seniority in the chamber.
Hanabusa is now challenging Schatz to fill the remainder of Inouye’s term. Schatz is considered more progressive than Hanabusa, and is supported by liberal and environmental groups. But the primary hinges more on generational and cultural divides than on political or ideological ones.
The race is also remarkable because it is one of the few in which the incumbent welcomed President Obama with open arms. Obama, who endorsed Schatz in March, hasn’t weighed in on many primaries this cycle, but his birthplace state holds special significance. Schatz was also an early supporter of Obama in 2008, while Hanabusa backed Hillary Clinton.
Polling has been scattered. The latest survey, taken in May, shows Schatz up by five points.
Alaska, Aug. 19
Four years ago, the Alaska Republican primary was one of the most interesting and unique races of the season. Tea Party-backed Joe Miller defeated Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski on primary night. But Murkowski later waged a write-in campaign and won the general election. In a year in which anti-incumbency reigned, Alaska chose its senior senator over the insurgent.
Now, with Democrat Mark Begich seeking re-election, Republicans seem to be bucking the Tea Party in favor of a more establishment-oriented candidate capable of defeating a well-known incumbent with long family ties to the state.
Natural Resources Commissioner and former Bush administration official Dan Sullivan is favored in the race over Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell, a longtime Alaska politician. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has not endorsed anyone in this contest but has acknowledged that Sullivan appears to be leading. Joe Miller is running again, but hasn’t gained much traction.
Sullivan has raised $3.8 million this cycle, easily outdistancing Treadwell’s $1.1 million. And while Begich is considered one of the most endangered incumbents this cycle, he has raised $7.9 million so far and has been running well-received bio ads in the state while his opponents focus on battling one another.
Unlike primaries in Hawaii, Tennessee, and Kansas this month, the race here won’t be all but settled in August. The Alaska general election will be one of the most watched this cycle, and could help determine the balance of power in the Senate.
Caitlin Huey-Burns is a congressional reporter for RealClearPolitics.
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