+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Op Ed's I totally agree with.
+++
Will they be wearing Brown Shirts?
+++
+++
The Chicago Teachers Union’s Student Voter Army
The union plans to organize high school students and march them to the polls in support of a tax increase.
By The Editorial Board
Chicago high school students may not be reading at grade level, but the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is making sure they know how to vote like union members.
In a letter on Monday, CTU Vice President Jackson Potter said the union would be aiming to “fill CTU HQ with Chicago’s newest voters” for a special “Student Power Forum.” High school students drafted by teachers and staff would be gathered to hear from “candidates/political organizers” and then join a “Parade to the Polls, where students will march to an early voting site . . . making their voices heard along the way.”
This inspiring display of democracy, Mr. Potter’s letter says, would be operated in partnership with Chicago Votes, La Casa Norte and Bring Chicago Home. The latter outfit is pushing to pass a real-estate tax increase referendum on March 19. Chicago news station WBEZ reported that the CTU said the letter’s reference to Bring Chicago Home’s participation was a “mistake.” Whoops.
The Bring Chicago Home referendum, which would raise the real-estate transfer tax to 2% on properties over $1 million and 3% for those over $1.5 million, is supported by Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. But that’s not the only reason the CTU likes it. The measure would supposedly raise funds to combat homelessness, but the union has identified it as a revenue source for subsidizing teacher and student housing as well.
In a leaked summary of the CTU’s demands for its next contract, reported by the Illinois Policy Institute, the union notes that CTU Members “have demanded that we have more resources, and what better resources could there be than ACTUAL housing!” Among the key proposals the CTU lists is “Financial assistance for CTU members to live & work in the city.”
“Our campaign begins now with Bring Chicago Home, on March 19 and continues in our contract campaign,” the union adds.
So the CTU has donated $400,000 to support Bring Chicago Home and the union will be marching student to the polls to vote on the referendum. That’s political coercion so explicit even Richard Daley and the old Democratic Party Chicago machine would blush.
++++
Is Biden paying off China and the University of Pennsylvania?
+++
+++
Biden’s Budget Neglects the Military
Sequestration and chronic underfunding have opened a yawning gap in American strength and readiness.
By Michael J. Boskin and Kiran Sridhar
President Biden has again proposed a vastly inadequate Defense Department budget. His proposal for 2025 is a mere 1% increase from this year’s agreed level. Adjusted for inflation, it’s about $140 billion below the 2010 budget that many analysts, including these pages, deemed insufficient in far less challenging times. While America’s military remains the strongest and most capable in the world, our advantage over potential adversaries has been shrinking rapidly. We must do better if we are to deter our enemies.
For decades, the nation expected the military to be able to fight and win two wars simultaneously. That expectation has been gradually reduced to winning one war while deterring “opportunistic aggression” elsewhere. The Biden administration has placed less emphasis on military capability and more on tools such as sanctions. Yet at a Hoover Institution conference we convened in early 2023, a bipartisan group of three dozen former top leaders from the Pentagon, Congress, think tanks and academia agreed that insufficient and inflexible budgeting ensures the military will struggle to meet even this diminished standard. As Colin Powell once put it, “Show me your budget and I’ll show you my strategy.”
The Navy can’t send ships it doesn’t have to keep sea lanes open. The Army can’t deploy troops it has been unable to recruit and train. The budget is the basis for modernizing technology, replacing old equipment and restoring the defense industrial base with capacity to supply needed stockpiles.
Following mandatory sequestration cuts and endless continuing resolutions, U.S. defense spending has never returned to that 2010 level. Even sizable supplemental aid for Ukraine and Israel wouldn’t get it close this year. The cumulative funding gap since 2010 totals about $2 trillion in today’s dollars (and Mr. Biden’s 10-year plan fails even to keep up with inflation). While only some of that money would have enhanced current readiness, the shortfall has still battered the military’s capabilities. With an average age of 28 years, only 70% of combat aircraft are mission-ready. The Navy is retiring a submarine every two years, while China, which already has the world’s largest navy, recently deployed advanced subs that can run silent.
What’s necessary to catch up? Sustained yearly increases of $100 billion or more—about 0.4% to 0.5% of gross domestic product. The Reagan-era buildup that helped win the Cold War peaked at 6% of GDP, about twice the current level, which is near a historically low point.
Among the most urgent priorities: a larger Navy with greater sea-lift capacity and advanced submarines; modern air- and missile-defense systems; a larger Army; expanded forward-basing capabilities, especially in the Pacific; modernized nuclear deterrence; upgraded fighters and bombers in a portfolio matched to mission needs; a rebuilt defense industrial base; and increased capabilities in cyber and space, where Russia threatens to disable our satellite communications.
Fiscal constraints from excessive deficit spending in recent decades, and a deteriorating outlook driven by Social Security and Medicare, mean the defense buildup will need more bang for the buck as well as more bucks. Some allies must step up their spending and integrate their forces better with ours, as Japan is doing. But there is no substitute for American military supremacy.
The public and lawmakers will justifiably demand accountability. The Pentagon is hardly a paragon of efficiency. Despite progress, the Defense Department recently failed its sixth straight audit. Three reforms, among many possibilities, would make the Pentagon much more efficient.
First, around $100 billion of the defense budget funds activities not closely related to national security—including environmental, educational and healthcare programs. Many of those programs should be shifted to different agencies, with some of the current funding reallocated to core military capabilities. Second, the military should buy more up-to-date and less expensive commercial technology. Third, we should trim congressional micromanagement, which hamstrings the Pentagon from operating more efficiently. In 1970 the National Defense Authorization Act was 10 pages long and passed in one day by voice vote; today, it is 100 times as long and filled with onerous requirements. Pentagon leaders should have more flexibility, with appropriate accountability.
Congress also should separate the investment account from the rest of the budget, the better to highlight new capital investment, depreciation and inventory depletion. Borrowing to acquire assets, as a family does with a mortgage or car loan, is far more sensible than borrowing to finance regular continuing expenses. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s huge military investment for World War II and Ronald Reagan’s buildup that convinced the Soviets they couldn’t win the Cold War are historic examples of wise debt financing.
We see reasons for optimism. Over the past three years, bipartisan majorities in a Congress with growing numbers of recent veterans added billions of dollars to Mr. Biden’s inadequate requests. The 2024 NDAA enables the Pentagon to employ some multiyear contracts for critical munitions and missiles. Polling suggests that while the public greatly overestimates the defense share of the budget, it wants more information and backs increased spending.
But episodic supplemental appropriations are no substitute for a consistently adequate budget. And as Reagan showed, only a determined president can persuade a war-weary public and wary Congress to support the sustained investment in national security that is the foundation of freedom, peace and prosperity. The next president will have a lot on his plate, but rebuilding the nation’s military must be job No. 1.
Mr. Boskin is a Hoover Institution senior fellow and economics professor at Stanford. He served as chairman of the president’s council of economic advisers, 1989-93. Mr. Sridhar is an investment affiliate at Shield Capital and a senior fellow at the McCrary Institute for Cybersecurity. They are co-editors, with John Rader, of “Defense Budgeting for a Safer World: The Experts Speak.”
++++
The word I am hearing through well placed sources is that unbiased American miltary higher ups are in awe of what the IDF and IAF have accomplished against unbelievable restrictions and unfair demands from the Bdien Administration.
+++
Israel Will Defeat Hamas in Rafah
We’ve incapacitated most of the terror group. Rafah is its last stronghold, and we must win there too.
By Ophir Falk
Mounting international pressure to end the war won’t weaken Israel’s resolve to accomplish its mission of destroying Hamas, freeing the hostages and guaranteeing that Gaza will never pose a threat to Israel again. Detractors dismiss total victory as implausible, but the facts on the ground indicate otherwise.
Israel has already dismantled 18 of Hamas’s 24 battalions, incapacitated more than 21,500 Hamas terrorists—about two-thirds of its force, including two of the top four leaders—and destroyed significant terror tunnels. By contrast, it took U.S. military forces nine months to take out 5,000 ISIS fighters in Mosul.
John Spencer, chairman of urban warfare studies at West Point, described Israel’s achievements as “unprecedented,” especially given the complex combat conditions above and below ground. Mr. Spencer says that Israel is setting the “gold standard” for avoiding civilian casualties.
Israel doesn’t need prompting to provide humanitarian aid or to act with caution. According to retired British Col. Richard Kemp, the average combatant-to-civilian death ratio in Gaza is about 1 to 1.5. This is astonishing since, according to the United Nations, the average combatant-to-civilian death ratio in urban warfare has been 1 to 9. Israel seeks to minimize civilian casualties, while Hamas seeks to maximize civilian casualties and use them as a propaganda tool. We cannot let Hamas’s strategy pay off.
Hamas has four terror brigades in Rafah. That city is Hamas’s last stronghold, and its defeat is a prerequisite for victory. Whoever pressures Israel to refrain from entering Rafah is preventing the destruction of Hamas and the freeing of Israel and Gazan civilians from Hamas’s stranglehold. Gen. David Petraeus, who led the 2007 American surge in Iraq, said last week that the “key now is to not stop until Hamas is fully destroyed.”
Asking Israel to stop the war now is akin to telling the Allies to stop halfway to Berlin in World War II. If Hamas isn’t eradicated, genocidal terrorists will continue to emerge. As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told new Israel Defense Forces cadets last week, “when we defeat the murderers of October 7, we are preventing the next 9/11.” Global leaders should take note.
High-intensity combat will wind down after Rafah, humanitarian aid will no longer be hijacked by Hamas, and safety for civilians can be realized. Total victory is within reach. Israel will finish the job. Anything less will endanger the rest of the civilized world.
Mr. Falk is an adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
++++
Schumer has the spine of a worm. He is a despicable version of a contemptable politician.
+++
Top Senate Democrat Topples Another Democratic Norm
An unwelcome case for foreign interference in elections.
By James Freeman
Is it just a coincidence or are the Washington politicians who spend the most time telling us how valiantly they are defending democracy and political norms also the ones who cannot be trusted to respect either? We now have the spectacle of a senior U.S. government official demanding that a friendly democracy replace its duly elected leadership.
Natalie Andrews reports for the Journal:
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “has lost his way” and called for new elections aimed at choosing a new government, a sign of growing U.S. pressure on Israel over the war in Gaza.
Fortunately the New York Democrat was not expressing a consensus view in the U.S. Congress. Ms. Andrews notes:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) took to the floor to blast Schumer’s speech.
“It is grotesque and hypocritical for Americans who hyperventilate about foreign interference in our own democracy to call for the removal of a democratically elected leader of Israel,” he said. “This is unprecedented. We should not treat fellow democracies this way at all.”
No, we should not.
Deliberations of the Unreasonable Nations Security Council
Speaking of deliberative bodies, a Jerusalem Post editorial notes an address by Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz to the United Nations Security Council. The U.N. has still not designated Hamas as a terrorist organization despite a U.N. report that finally acknowledged the rape, slaughter, torture and kidnapping perpetrated by Hamas. The Post writes of Mr. Katz:
Noting that many countries had declared Hamas a terrorist organization – including the US, Australia, Canada, Japan, Paraguay, New Zealand, the UK, and the European Union – he appealed to the Security Council: “Do not turn your head away from the facts: Hamas must be declared a terrorist organization and face the harshest sanctions.”
Insisting that the UN had been silent for too long regarding the actions of Hamas, Katz said that in the past five months, it had convened 41 times and “neither condemned nor denounced the brutal crimes of Hamas.”
This could be a new low for the U.N., but of course the organization has a long and undistinguished history. Forty years ago today, Richard Bernstein reported for the New York Times:
The vast majority of United Nations member nations last year voted against the United States five times more frequently than they voted with it, according to an American study of voting patterns distributed here today.
The study, which was compiled by the United States Mission, says the United States continues to be commonly outvoted in the United Nations, a pattern that has endured for nearly two decades of both Republican and Democratic administrations, said the United States chief delegate, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick.
In the General Assembly that ended last December, the overall degree of support shown by all countries was 25.5 percent, according to the report. Only the Western European countries as a group and Israel voted more than half the time on the same side as the United States, with the Israeli record showing a 93.3 percent concurrence with American positions, the highest of any country...
The report said that among the countries professing nonalignment, support for the Soviet Union’s positions was about 80 percent, compared with 20 percent for the United States.
Speaking of politicians who claim to be guardians of democracy, readers may recall the 2022 election high jinks in which Democrats would pretend that Trump allies represented the greatest threat to our republic—while simultaneously helping them win Republican primaries.
Seems like they’re at it again. Michael Bender reports for the New York Times:
A Democratic group is wading into the Republican Senate primary in Ohio with a new television spot aimed at promoting the conservative credentials of Bernie Moreno, a Cleveland-area businessman who has been endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump.
The spot criticizes Mr. Moreno as ultraconservative and too aligned with Mr. Trump. But by running the ad in the final week of the primary, those critiques are likely to be viewed as badges of honor by Republican primary voters, a tactic Democrats have employed in other races in recent years.
Mr. Bender adds that the group running the ad “is funded largely through the Senate Majority PAC, the principal super PAC supporting Democratic efforts to maintain control of the chamber.”
Democrats assess that the MAGA guys are easier to beat in general elections, but obviously the Democrats aren’t that worried about the consequences if this assessment turns out to be wrong. And if not even they believe their hysterical anti-MAGA warnings, maybe no one else should either.
++++.
Republicans do not know how to win because they prefer the comfort of losing.
+++
The GOP’s Senate Opportunity
The party will have a favorable map in 2024 for the last time in several voting cycles.
By Brad Todd
Republicans long ago earned the nickname “the stupid party,” and we’re threatening to prove it again. Democrats haven’t been this vulnerable in the U.S. Senate in a decade, yet GOP donors and our Washington geniuses seem to be focusing on a shrinking number of seats. It’s not too late to correct course. Long-term control of the Supreme Court might depend on it.
The 100-member Senate is divided into three classes of 33 or 34 members each, and every two years one class’s members face re-election. Only 12 Democratic senators come from states that a Republican has carried in any presidential election since the iPhone was introduced in 2007. Those are the Democrats whom Republicans should be most able to beat.
Seven of those 12 Democratic seats are up this year, along with one from Nevada, a state that was closely contested in 2016 and 2020. Only five will be in 2026 and 2028 combined, along with at least six Republican-held seats in competitive states.
You don’t have to be a math wizard to realize Republicans had better pad their margin now. A 51-seat majority isn’t enough.
The retirement of West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and the clear primary field for Tim Sheehy against Montana’s Jon Tester makes 51 an easy reach for Republicans. Nobody with any sense will bet on Mr. Tester, given that Mr. Biden is likely to lose the Treasure State by 20 points.
The next objective for Republicans should be to sweep the Great Lakes in what used to be called the Democrats’ blue wall—by taking out incumbents Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and winning the open seat now held by Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, all states that Donald Trump carried in 2016 by winning working-class white voters. These are all Democrats from another era, and all are charter members of the lucky-calendar club.
This class faced election in 2006, one of the best Democratic years since Watergate. All won in 2012 on the coattails of Barack Obama, who ran hard for blue-collar Midwestern voters by painting Mitt Romney as a soulless corporate vulture. Then they rode the wave of 2018, when left-wingers deranged by Donald Trump’s presidency showed up in droves and his fans stayed home.
This year’s election will be the first neutral or hostile electoral climate this crop of Senate Democrats has faced this century, and Republicans need to try to beat them all—and to go after opportunities in Nevada (against Jacky Rosen) and Arizona (where Democrat turned independent Kyrsten Sinema is vacating her seat). And they should support unusually strong candidates in the blue states of Maryland (former Gov. Larry Hogan) and Virginia (Hung Cao).
Mr. Trump will either win or come close in all these states. A well-run Senate campaign will get every vote that he gets, and it can squeeze out a few more from suburbanites who dislike Mr. Trump but don’t want Democrats in charge of everything.
Democrats know they’re vulnerable, and that’s why Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s Senate Majority PAC this week announced nearly a quarter-billion dollars in ad reservations for the fall, covering all of those states plus Montana. Republicans have so far booked fall airtime only in Montana and Ohio. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in December that those two states, plus Pennsylvania, were his focus.
A GOP sweep of the close states would give the party 57 seats. That’s unlikely, but you can’t know which seats will be winnable late if you don’t bet on all of them early. That truism is lost on Republican megadonors and on too many politicians, whose ambitions are tempered by the donations made. In the two decades since the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law made Super PACs the main advertisers in American elections, GOP donors have settled into a pattern of not engaging with big contributions until late in the election year—too late.
Big Republican donors have a conservative capitalist ethos: Pour money into proven performers and safe bets. They wait to see which candidates survive months of onslaught from Democrats before sending in air cover. Our low-dollar donors are driven by personalities, not party, since they hate “the official Republican Party” almost as much as they detest the Democratic Party.
Democratic donors are risk-taking and mission-driven. They tend not to belong to traditional religions, so donating to left-wing candidates is the equivalent of putting money on the collection plate. Lefty megadonors are either trial lawyers accustomed to front-loading investments, guilt-ridden heirs to legacy wealth or tech-industry zillionaires trained to risk money on prospective concepts.
While Democrats held 60 Senate seats as recently as 2009-10, it’s been a century since Republicans had more than 55, and we’ve had that many only four times. There’s no reason to think we can’t do better. The GOP should aim for as many seats as possible in 2024. If we don’t, we’ll wish we had when the pickings get slim in 2026 and 2028.
Mr. Todd is a co-founder of OnMessage Inc., a Republican consulting firm, and co-author with Salena Zito of “The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics.”
++++
No comments:
Post a Comment