Taxi? Riley On Crime and Poverty. Flatow. Lightfoot Proved Light Weight As Most Untried Black Mayors and Other Politicans Have. Competence Evolves Over Time.

It Doesn’t Make Sense to Blame Crime on Poverty 

By Jason L. Riley

Mayor Eric Adams was back in Albany this month asking his state overlords to rethink bail-reform measures passed in 2019 that protect crime suspects from pretrial detention. The number of shoplifting complaints in New York City rose by 45% in 2022 to more than 63,000, according to New York City Police Department data. The mayor sees an obvious connection that too many of his fellow liberal Democrats willfully ignore.

In his testimony, Mr. Adams argued that soft-on-crime policies hit poor communities the hardest, not only in terms of public safety but also economically. “When you do a real analysis in our pursuit of making sure people who commit crimes are receiving the justice they deserve, we can’t forget the people who are the victims of crimes,” he said. 

The mayor also pushed back at the common argument made by social-justice advocates that arresting and prosecuting lawbreakers is tantamount to “criminalizing” poverty. “People who state that we’re criminalizing the poor,” he said, are wrong. Moreover, crime is costing the city jobs and businesses. New Yorkers are “unemployed because we’re losing those businesses in our city. We can’t allow repeated offenders to make a mockery of the criminal justice system.”

The belief that poverty is the root cause of crime may be popular, but it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. For starters, most poor people aren’t criminals. In a previous era, when Americans were significantly poorer than they are today, crime rates were significantly lower. Crime during the Great Depression was lower than during the 1960s, a decade of tremendous economic growth and prosperity. In 1960 the black male homicide rate was 45 per 100,000. By 1990 it had climbed by more than 200% to 140 per 100,000, even though black average incomes by then were much higher, and the black poverty rate much lower, than 30 years earlier.

In a recently published book about criminal-justice reform, “Criminal (In)justice,” Rafael Mangual notes that this disconnect between crime and poverty continues today. Mr. Mangual writes that between 1990 and 2018, murders in New York City declined by 87%, a period during which the city’s poverty rate increased slightly. Black residents today “experience poverty at a lower rate (19.2 percent) than their Hispanic (23.9 percent) and Asian (24.1 percent) counterparts, who account for much smaller shares of the city’s gun violence.”

Last month the local Fox station in New York did a story on how local bodegas are trying to combat the rise in customers looking for five-finger discounts. It featured footage of laundry detergent and other items that had to be kept behind the counter or chained to shelves in the aisles to deter thieves. The piece perfectly illustrated the concerns of Mr. Adams, a former police officer who understands that crime victims shouldn’t be an afterthought.

New businesses are less likely to open in unsafe neighborhoods where the police can’t be counted on to protect private property. Existing businesses are more likely to flee the community and take employment opportunities with them when they leave. Worse, those establishments that remain must take more costly measures to stay open—costs that invariably are passed on to paying customers.

Liberals have long alleged that merchants in ghetto neighborhoods are exploiting their low-income shoppers by charging higher prices. Those prices, however, reflect the cost of doing business in high-crime neighborhoods. Decriminalizing theft significantly increases the cost of opening and operating a business, especially a mom-and-pop shop relying on small profit margins to begin with. Lenders are more reluctant to extend credit. Insurance premiums are higher. Security is more expensive. What the left derides as exploitation is more accurately described as a rational economic response to misguided public policies.

In his testimony, Mr. Adams called public safety “the prerequisite to our prosperity” and stressed that the problem isn’t previously law-abiding New Yorkers turning to crime but career criminals running rampant with no fear of being prosecuted. “This is critical because a disproportionate share of the serious crime in New York City is being driven by a limited number of extreme recidivists,” he said. “Approximately 2,000 people who commit crime after crime while out on the street on bail.”

Mr. Adams is fighting the good fight, but he’s outnumbered by progressive Democrats who are more concerned with racial parity in punishment than with safe streets. Cities such as New York and Philadelphia and Chicago have essentially manufactured a crime wave, and no one knows when it will crest.

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The US does nothing about another American murdered by Palestinians

147 Americans have been killed by Palestinian terrorists since 1968, but not one of the killers has stood before a U.S. court.

Stephen M. Flatow

(February 28, 2023 / JNS)

Elan Ganeles of Connecticut was murdered by Palestinian Arab terrorists this week, thus becoming the 147th American citizen to be killed by Palestinians since 1968.

Yet not a single Palestinian Arab terrorist has ever been brought to the United States to stand trial for any of those crimes. Think about that: 147 dead Americans and not one prosecution.

The problem is not that we can’t find the suspects. The whereabouts of some of them are already known to the authorities. In fact, the Israeli government has publicly identified some of them as members of the Palestinian security forces.

One of the killers, Ahlam Tamimi, is living openly in Jordan and until recently was the host of her own radio show. Tamimi was one of the terrorists who carried out the August 2001 Sbarro Pizzeria bombing in Jerusalem, in which 15 people were killed—including 15-year-old Malki Roth and Mrs. Shoshana Greenbaum, both American citizens. In addition, 122 people were injured, among them four Americans.

The problem is not the extradition process. The U.S. has an extradition treaty with Jordan, signed in 1995. So, Tamimi could be handed over right now

 

As for other suspects, the Palestinian Authority has one of the largest per capita security forces in the world, armed and trained by the U.S. If the P.A. wanted to find those suspects, it certainly has the manpower and resources to do so.

Although the U.S. does not have a formal extradition treaty with the P.A., the P.A. could still hand over the suspects if it wanted to. Many countries send fugitive criminals to the U.S. for prosecution outside of regular extradition channels because those channels are often time-consuming and expensive.

So, if the whereabouts of the killers are known or can be easily determined, and if there is no logistical obstacle to surrendering them, what’s the problem?

The problem is politics. The Biden administration does not want to prosecute Palestinian terrorists because doing so would interfere with its goal of maintaining friendly relations with the P.A. in order to bring about the creation of a Palestinian state.

The U.S. knows that the P.A. will resist any request to hand over killers of Americans, since the Palestinians regard the killers as heroes. For the U.S. to pursue justice, it would have to be willing to confront the P.A., which would involve political and financial pressure on the Palestinian leadership. That would interfere with the Biden administration’s warm relationship with the P.A.

The result is that justice for Elan Ganeles and all the other American victims of Palestinian terrorism will be sacrificed in order to avoid angering the Palestinians.

However, there are concrete steps the Biden administration could take right now if it were serious about pursuing justice in these cases:

The FBI could join the investigation. The Biden administration sent the FBI to investigate the accidental death of the Arab-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, so why isn’t it sending the FBI to join the manhunt for those who carried out the deliberate murder of Elan Ganeles and other American victims of Palestinian terror?

The Justice Department could offer a reward for information leading to the capture of the killers of Elan Ganeles. It offers rewards in the cases of other terrorists who have harmed Americans around the world, but only in three cases of American victims of Palestinian terror. Three—out of the hundreds of Palestinian attacks in which Americans were killed or wounded.

The U.S. could apply financial pressure to the P.A. The Biden administration is sending $600 million in aid to the Palestinian Arabs this year. That will be used to pay the PA’s bills, thus freeing up funds for the P.A. to pay salaries to terrorists, including the killers of Elan Ganeles. The U.S. could reduce its aid package in proportion to the amount that Elan’s killers will receive.

The Biden administration’s failure to take such steps suggests that it is not seriously interested in justice for the American victims of Palestinian Arab terrorism.

Stephen M. Flatow, is an attorney and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is author of A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror.

And:

Judge the Jewish rioters, but don’t rationalize Arab murderers

Jews who rioted in Huwara following a terror attack have been rightly condemned. But why do the world and the Biden administration still tolerate Palestinian terrorism?

By JONATHAN S. TOBIN

(February 28, 2023 / JNS) In terms of the amount of coverage it has received in the media, the most important event in the Middle East in the last week was a riot carried out by Jews that took place in the town of Huwara following a terrorist attack committed by Palestinian Arabs that took the lives of two young Jewish men.

That this is so is, in a sense, understandable. Terror attacks against Jews are commonplace events. In the last five weeks alone, 13 Jews were slain by Palestinian terrorists. But while the notion that the Jewish “settlers” living in Judea and Samaria are engaged in a constant campaign of violence against their Arab neighbors remains a consistent theme of critics of Israel, examples of Jews attempting to exact some sort of revenge for terrorism are actually rare. Certainly, events on the scale of the riot in Huwara are almost unknown.

For Jews to behave in this fashion is not normative. That’s true even for “settlers” who are often falsely portrayed by both their left-wing Israeli political antagonists and foreign opponents of the Jewish state as wild-eyed religious fanatics boiling over with hate for Arabs. Incidents of “settler violence” amount to a fraction of the number of attacks of all sorts on Jews in Judea and Samaria. Even so, such actions are the work of a tiny fraction of the several hundred thousand Jews living across the “Green Line.”

Huwara, near the city of Nablus, sits athwart Route 60, a major north-south arterial road that traverses the region. It’s a spot where Jewish travelers are frequently subjected to stone-throwing and other violent assaults. And it was the site of a terrorist shooting attack on Feb. 26 in which two Jewish brothers—Hillel and Yagel Yaniv, ages 21 and 19—were murdered by Palestinian terrorists. Following the attack, Jews who lived in the territories responded with rage, rampaging through the town, setting fire to vehicles and buildings, and engaging in violent clashes with local Arabs. Though the Palestinians claimed that one person was killed by the rioters, according to the Israel Defense Forces, that death occurred as a result of Palestinian attacks on the army.

Frustration and anger about terrorist murders, coming as they did after so many other recent attacks on Jews by Palestinians, may be understandable. Still, indiscriminate violence against everyone living in that town is not. Nor is it likely to deter future attacks on Jews by an Arab population that is simmering in hatred for Jews and Israel that continues to be fueled by incitement published in the Palestinian Authority media, as well as by what is taught in their schools.

As such, it was both illegal and deeply wrong, and merited the harsh condemnation it received from a broad cross-section of Israeli society, including top leaders like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog.

The riot led the news about Israel, overshadowing mentions of the murder of the Yaniv brothers or the subsequent murder a day later of an American-born Israeli, 27-year-old Elan Ganeles, who was shot on a highway between Jericho and the Dead Sea. In that same way, the statement in support of the riot by one member of Netanyahu’s coalition, Otzma Yehudit Knesset member Zivka Fogel, who is the chairman of the Knesset National Security Committee, was treated as more important than the condemnations.

According to Fogel, “yesterday, a terrorist came from Huwara. A closed, burnt Huwara—that’s what I want to see. That’s the only way to achieve deterrence. After a murder like yesterday’s, we need burning villages when the IDF doesn’t act.”

Coming from a victim of terror, such a crude expression of anger might be fathomable after a spate of killings of Jews that were largely supported by the Palestinian population, some of whom regularly take to the streets to celebrate murders of Jews. Nevertheless, it was irresponsible for a member of the Knesset to endorse revenge as a response to terrorism, let alone this sort of blatantly illegal action.

The Israeli left is already engaged in an all-out effort to delegitimize and topple the government led by Netanyahu because of the coalition’s drive to reform the court system. Along with the Biden administration and liberal American Jewish groups, the left would clearly like to place responsibility for the Huwara riot on the prime minister and his allies.

Like the rioters, Fogel deserves a drubbing for speaking in a fashion that, while appealing to Israelis who are fed up with terrorist violence, gives ammunition to his country’s enemies. However, this incident also demonstrates not so much what’s wrong with Netanyahu’s government as it does the Palestinian political culture that perpetuates anti-Jewish terrorism and makes peace impossible.

Fogel and his party are influential voices in the government. The Religious Zionist alliance that provided the margin of victory for Netanyahu gained seats in the last election. Their demands for tougher action against terrorism resonated with voters sick and tired of the previous government’s failure to act decisively, whether because of the paralysis demanded by its left-wing members or the fear of American displeasure on the part of its leaders.

But their rise—like Netanyahu’s frequent electoral victories in the last three decades—is a function of Palestinian actions more than it is representative of any intrinsic sympathy for the Israeli right. If the once-dominant parties of the Zionist left are now shadows of themselves, it’s because they were discredited by a mistaken belief that Israeli territorial surrenders and other concessions would buy peace with the Palestinians.

On the contrary, the post-Oslo Accords era has made clear that the Palestinians have no more interest today in ending their century-old war on Zionism now than they had in the past, when they rejected repeated Israeli attempts to forge a compromise based on the now-discredited “land for peace” formula that would have created an independent Palestinian state.

Yet as much as the left is determined to establish a moral equivalence between the Palestinians and the Netanyahu government and its supporters in the territories, this is a false narrative.

Even at the worst of times, support for violence against Arabs is limited to a tiny segment of Israeli opinion. It is not merely condemned by a broad sector of the public and the Knesset; those who engage in it are subject to prosecution. Belief in the “purity of arms” and a policy of restraint that seeks to avoid civilian casualties even when fighting terrorism is baked deep into the political DNA of Israel and its culture.

On the other side, terrorism against Jews and Israelis is not only widely supported by Palestinian Arabs but embraced by their political parties. This includes the supposedly moderate Fatah Party that runs the Palestinian Authority, as well as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, whose public support is rooted in their record of violence rather than state-building or bettering the lives of their constituents. Financial support for those who kill and wound Jews is official P.A. policy; terrorist murderers and their families benefit from their crimes.

Just as bad, the support that the P.A. retains in the international community and the willingness of the Biden administration to resume aid to it—regardless of its legal obligations to cut it off because of the 2017 Taylor Force Act that ties assistance to the Palestinians to their ending this “pay to slay” policy—demonstrates the world’s indifference to anti-Jewish terror. The United States has never demanded that the Palestinian factions pay reparations to the families of those Israelis or even Americans like Ganeles, that they murder.

That doesn’t justify lawless actions by Jews. But it does help ensure that this conflict will continue until a sea change in Palestinian thought and politics occurs. Until that happens, Jews should condemn extralegal violence and/or acts of revenge that will do nothing but aid the cause of their enemies. But as long as terrorism is cheered by Palestinians, don’t blame the Israeli right for the continuation of the conflict or the Israeli people for feeling frustrated by the free pass the murderers get from those who dare to lecture terror victims about morality.

 And:

One down many more to go

America has changed radically since the '60's.

If you go to a fast food type restaurant you are  likely to be served by a female with all kind of piercings and if she were to go outside in an storm she would be electrocuted.

If you get stopped by a black police officer keep your hands on the steering wheel and don't mouth off.  If you get stopped by a white police officer also hope you are from the south and speak "suthren."

If you watch TV you are probably wondering are there any Caucasians left when watching ads.

If you need to go to a hospital hope you are a linguist.

If you hail a taxi hope you speak Swahili or are from Harlem.

If you need help on the phone you will probably be answered by an Indian who speaks perfect English but whose dialect is pitched high and not understandable unless you love opera..

If you need to go to the rest room you may select the sex.

If you are 3 or older you may select your own sex and change it without telling your parents.

If you are in grade school you may sleep because you will have little to learn that matters.

If you are an American, by the time you are 18, you will have learned to hate your birth country, capitalism and will be on your way to love the Chinese culture and eat with chop sticks.

If you join the military you are likely to be in a fox hole with a fellow soldier helping feed an infant formula if one is available.

If you loved your electric car you are probably now stuck on the highway for having driven beyond 400 miles.

By now I assume you have noticed the changes are varied and radical.

If you loved eggs for breakfast you are probably raising chickens in you backyard garden because eggs are probably $10/dozen and all food prices have escalated 30 or more %.

Finally, if you were a Democrat during  this entire time you have only yourself to blame for all of these progressive changes.

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Yes, the first of many to come

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Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has lost her bid for re-election, becoming the first mayor in 40 years to fail to win a second term. The race will now head to an April 4th runoff election between former superintendent of Chicago Public Schools Paul Vallas and Cook County commissioner Brandon Johnson.

Lightfoot addressed her supporters on Tuesday evening after calling Vallas and Johnson to concede.

“We were fierce competitors in these last few months,” Lightfoot said during Tuesday’s concession speech. “But I will be rooting and praying for our next mayor to deliver for the people of this city for years to come.”

Lightfoot’s defeat comes as crime rates soar in Chicago. In 2021, homicides in the Windy City rose to their highest numbers in 25 years, outpacing other other major cities like New York City and Los Angeles. 

Watch Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot concede below:

• SERIOUSLY? Lightfoot Claims She Lost Election Because She’s a ‘Black Woman,’ Forgets She Won in 2019
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• Moss is excellent.  Do not know the other speaker:
• +++

• Skidaway Island Republican Club

  Please note this True Perspectives has a start time that is later than usual. Doors open/cocktails at 5:30pm; program begins at 6pm.

  Click Here to Register

  CLICK HERE to view photos from our 2023 Reagan Dinner. Interested in purchasing a photo? Email Katiescholtenphoto@gmail.com to inquire +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ It is clearly evident news was withheld so Biden could win and Trump has every justifiable reasons to be ticked, disgusted, angry but he also needs to be a stateman. +++ Wray Confirms What Biden Won't: Odds Are COVID Came From a Lab By Katie Pavlich ++++++++++++++++++++ WHEN AN EDITORIAL LIKE THIS COMES OUT OF BOSTON, YOU KNOW THERE IS A BIG PROBLEM! Excellent Boston Herald Editorial Opinion by Peter Lucas  Joe Biden could have been a good president. All he had to do was leave things alone. Instead, he blundered into the office and wrecked the country. He is like the guy on a Boeing 747 high over the Atlantic Ocean who breaks into the cockpit and says, "I can fly this thing" "You don't have to, Joe," the pilot says, "It's on autopilot. It flies itself. You know, computers." Undeterred, Joe presses buttons and flips switches. The plane goes into a nosedive. Which is where we are today. You don't put a guy like this in control. He is President Doom. Everything he touches goes bad. And nothing is his fault. He took an energy-independent country and turned it into a nation begging Saudi Arabia and Venezuela for oil. Gasoline prices hit the roof and inflation soared. But it is not his fault. He forgot how he preened on Day One of his presidency, launching his war on domestic produced energy in favor of his Green Dream of a fossil fuel free world. Biden, John Kerry, his climate change czar, and the progressives would have you believe that the world will come to an end unless their anti-fossil fuel agenda adopted.  Yes, the world may come to an end. But the chances are the end will come sooner from the unleashing of nuclear weapons then it will come from the use of fossil fuels. But you do not hear politicians like Biden or Kerry talk much about doing away with nuclear weapons. On the contrary. Biden is reopening nuclear negotiations with Iran which will eventually lead to the Iranians having a nuclear bomb. This is the country where its religious fanatics have promised to use its first nuclear weapon on Israel and the second on the United States. If I were to bet, I would wager on the world ending in a nuclear bang before closing out in a fossil fuel whimper. Meanwhile, the rest of the world keeps pumping away, and the American people suffer. But it is not Biden's fault. It is Vladimir Putin and his war in Ukraine who is to blame, not Joe Biden.  Joe Biden took a working and strict border policy left to him by Donald Trump and turned it into a humanitarian disaster. Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from countries around the world are pouring into the United States and nobody is stopping them. And many of them are dying along the way. Bidens's decision to do away with border enforcement has also greatly facilitated the smuggling tons of drugs into the county, including deadly fentanyl from China that is killing many unsuspecting Americans. But that is not his fault either. It was Trump's racist border policy that caused all the problems. Besides, he assigned Kamala Harris to get to the root of the problem. Biden also authored the ill-conceived and humiliating pullout from Afghanistan, causing the unnecessary death of 13 Americans at the chaotic Kabul airport, leaving hundreds of Americans, abandoning thousands of Afghan allies, and throwing the country into the chaotic hands of the Taliban. Naturally, he blamed Trump, which nobody bought. The next thing you know Joe Biden will be blaming Putin for the Supreme Court's decision to send the abortion issue back to the states. Putin somehow must have gotten Trump to appoint three conservatives to the court in order to roil the country. According to Biden, the "one thing" that has destabilized the country under his leadership has not been soaring gasoline prices, inflation, the open border, the shameful retreat in Afghanistan, the war in Ukraine, the frightening rising crime rate or the pandemic, but "the outrageous behavior" of the Supreme Court on the abortion issue.  The court did not destabilize the country. Joe Biden did. This man does not belong in the cockpit. Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist. +++++++++++  This is what I call "miss" and match politics and allows a lot to be slipped under the table for the sole purpose of making it out of view so it will be hidden and "missed."  +++ Are we that Stupid? The biggest factor of why Seniors are losing more and more benefits. They are getting blamed for part of our country’s increasing deficit. It's easy to dismiss individual programs that benefit non-citizens until they're all put together and this picture emerges. Someone did a lot of research to put together all this data. Often these programs are buried within other programs making it difficult to find each of them. The following 11 reasons should be forwarded over and over again until they are read so many times that the readers gets sick of reading them. Included are the URL's for verification of all the following facts. 1. $11 Billion to $22 Billion is spent on welfare to illegal immigrants each year by state  governments. Verify At: http://www.fairus.org/site/Pag eServer?pagename=iic_immigrati onissuecenters7fd8 < http://www.fairus.org/site/ Page Server?pagename=iic_immigrati onissuecenters7fd8 > 2. $22 Billion dollars a year is spent on food  Assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC,  and free school lunches for illegal immigrants. Verify At: < http://www.cis.org/articles/ 20 04/fiscalexec.HTML The High Cost of Cheap Labor | Center for Immigration Studies www.cis.org About the Author Steven A. Camaros is Director of Research at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C. He holds a master's degree in political science . 3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal immigrants. Verify At: http://www.cis.org/articles/20 04/fiscalexec.HTML The High Cost of Cheap Labor | Center for Immigration Studies www.cis.org About the Author Steven A. Camarota is Director of Research at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C. He holds a master's degree in political science . <http://www. cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalex ec.HTML > 4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on Primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English! Verify At: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRA NscriptS/0604/01/ldt...0.HTML < http://transcripts.cnn.com/T RA NscriptS/0604/01/ldt...0.HTML  > 5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for Education for the American-born  Children of illegal immigrants, known as Anchor babies. Verify At: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRA NscriptS/0604/01/ldt.01.HTML < http://transcripts.cnn.com/T RA NscriptS/0604/01/ldt.01.HTML 6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal immigrants. Verify At: http //transcripts.cnn.com/%20 TRANscriptS/0604/01/ldt.01.HTM L< TRANscriptS/0604/01/ldt.01.HTM L" href=" http://transcripts.cnn. com/%20 TRANscriptS/0604/01/ldt.01.HTM L " target="_blank" rel="nofollow"http://transcrip ts.cnn.com/%20TRANscriptS/0604 /01/ldt.01.HTML> 7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison Inmates are illegal immigrants. Verify At: https://owa.slugger.com/owa/Ur lBlockedError.aspx < https://owa.slugger.com/owa/ Ur lBlockedError.aspx > 8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on Illegal immigrants for Welfare & Social Services by the American taxpayers. Verify At: http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCI PTS/0610/29/ldt.01.HTML ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ OOPS! Reminds me of what happened to Carter when the Atlanta Jews pulled away among other Jewish supporters.  It caused him to turn on Israel, in my humble opinion.  +++ Magazine Owned By Major Biden Donor Urges Primary Challenge Against POTUS Laurene Powell Jobs has a history of using news sites she funds to push her political views By Chuck Ross A prominent liberal magazine owned by Biden donor Laurene Powell Jobs is urging a primary challenge against the president. Writing for The Atlantic, political writer Mark Leibovich argues for a "compelling, formidable, and younger" Democrat to primary President Joe Biden, and potentially force the octogenarian to quit his campaign. "Maybe Biden would take the hint, step away on his own, and let Democrats get on with picking their next class of national leaders," writes Leibovich, citing polls that show 60 percent of Democrats don’t want Biden to run for reelection. Leibovich's article highlights growing discontent among Democrats about Biden's chances in 2024, given his advanced age and penchant for gaffes. Powell Jobs, who contributed $716,200 to the Biden campaign and Biden Victory Fund in 2020, has a history of using news sites she funds to push her political views. The Atlantic, which the Apple heiress purchased in 2017, issued only its fourth presidential endorsement in its 166-year history in 2020, urging voters to choose Biden over former president Donald Trump because of the latter’s "threat to our collective existence." Powell Jobs was one of the biggest donors to ACRONYM, a political action committee that operated the Courier Newsroom, a network of hyperpartisan websites disguised to look like legitimate local news outlets. While Democratic voters say they want someone other than Biden, Washington Democrats are far more hesitant to criticize him. Rep. Dean Phillips (D., Minn.), one of the few who has called for a primary challenge, says his colleagues are too scared to say in public what they acknowledge in private about Biden’s age. "They simply won’t fucking say a word," Phillips told Leibovich. Biden has yet to announce his intention to run for reelection. While he is expected to run, First Lady Jill Biden gave a less-than-convincing blessing of the idea in a recent interview, saying "we support whatever he wants to do. If he’s in, we’re there. If he wants to do something else, we’re there too." Besides his advanced age, Biden has also been hobbled by a souring economy and investigations into his family business dealings and his handling of classified documents. The Justice Department is investigating classified records found at Biden’s think tank office in Washington, D.C., and his residence in Wilmington, Del. Federal prosecutors are also investigating first son Hunter Biden over his taxes and foreign business activity. In his article, Leibovich dismisses the possibility that members of Biden’s administration—including Vice President Kamala Harris and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg—could challenge the commander in chief. Such an act would be seen as "irreparably disloyal," Leibovich asserts. Instead, Leibovich proposes a "noncomprehensive" list of potential Biden challengers, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D., Mich.), Gov. Gavin Newsom (D., Calif.), and failed presidential candidates Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.). ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Israel’s Supreme Court Debate: Let’s Start with the Facts By: Jerome M. Marcus, 03/01/2023 …...Clearly learned in American political thought and history, Fromer, who chairs Tel Aviv University’s Center for the Study of the United States, invokes Alexis de Tocqueville and the Federalist Papers on the virtues of judicial review and judicial independence. The claim is that the reforms will make the Israeli Supreme Court march to the dictates of a tyrannical majority. The argument is wrong but revealing. It’s wrong because it ignores a great deal about both the proposal on the table, as well as the crucial differences between Israel’s system and the United States. But Fromer’s article accidentally reveals a great deal about whose interests are really at stake. CONTINUE +++++++++++++++++++++

  
  
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