Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at the United Nations General Assembly on October 1, 2015. (Photo: AP)
The U.S. abstained in Friday’s key U.N. Security Council vote, clearing the way for the world body to condemn Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. The act was one of the last to distinguish what has been a tense relationship between outgoing President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
However, with President-elect Donald J. Trump being sworn in to office in less than a month, U.S.-Israeli relations are likely to improve. Ahead of the vote earlier this week, the president-elect denounced the resolution.
“The resolution being considered at the United Nations Security Council regarding Israel should be vetoed,” President-elect Trump said in a statement. “As the United States has long maintained, peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians will only come through direct negotiations between the parties, and not through the imposition of terms by the United Nations. This puts Israel in a very poor negotiating position and is extremely unfair to all Israelis.”
Donald Trump, left, meets at Trump Tower with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on September 25, 2016.
Unlike President Obama, the incoming president has made clear he not only supports Prime Minister Netanyahu, whom Mr. Obama worked to defeat in the last parliamentary election, but also supports moving the capital of the Jewish state to Jerusalem.
As to the U.N., things will be different after Jan. 20th.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is seen speaking on a television on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., on Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016. U.S. stocks fluctuated in volatile trading in the aftermath of Trump’s surprise presidential election win, as speculation the Republican will pursue business-friendly policies offset some of the broader uncertainty surrounding his ascent. Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg
The Survey of Consumers, the closely-watched gauge of consumer sentiment from the University of Michigan, came in at 98.2 in December. That’s up from the month’s first reading of 98 and slightly above the median economic forecast, which was looking for the reading to remain flat at 98.
“While the surge in confidence following Trump’s surprise election ended by mid December, it nonetheless led to the highest level of the Sentiment Index since January 2004,” said Richard Curtin, the Surveys of Consumers. “Compared with the rapid gains made in late November and early December, the Sentiment Index was barely higher than at mid month and barely higher than the January 2015 peak — in both cases, just two-tenths of a point.”
However small, Mr. Curtin said the difference was enough to hit a twelve year high.
This month, the Survey of Consumers measured an all-time record number of consumers (18%) who spontaneously mentioned the expected favorable impact of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s policies on the economy. That is twice as high as the prior peak (9%) recorded in 1981 when former President Ronald Reagan took office.
“Needless to say, the overall gain in confidence was based on anticipated policy changes, with specific details as yet unknown,” Mr. Curtin added. “Such favorable expectations could help jump-start growth before the actual enactment of policy changes, and form higher performance standards that will be used to judge the Trump presidency.”
Final Consumer Sentiment Results for December 2016
Dec
Nov
Dec
M-M
Y-Y
2016
2016
2015
Change
Change
Index of Consumer Sentiment
98.2
93.8
92.6
+4.7%
+6.0%
Current Economic Conditions
111.9
107.3
108.1
+4.3%
+3.5%
Index of Consumer Expectations
89.5
85.2
82.7
+5.0%
+8.2%
Next data release: January 13, 2017 for Preliminary January data at 10am ET
The Commerce Department reports sales of new home sales rose 5.2% last month to an annualized rate of 592,000 units, beating the forecast for 575,000 units.
Chief Strategist & Communications Director for the Republican National Committee Sean Spicer arrives in the lobby of Republican president-elect Donald Trump’s Trump Tower in New York, New York, U.S. November 14, 2016. (Photo: Reuters)
President-elect Donald J. Trump named Republican National Committee spokesman Sean Spicer as his White House Press Secretary, the transition team confirmed on Thursday. The president-elect also appointed campaign aides Hope Hicks, Jason Miller and Dan Scavino to other posts on the White House communications team.
“Sean, Hope, Jason and Dan have been key members of my team during the campaign and transition. I am excited they will be leading the team that will communicate my agenda that will Make America Great Again,” President-elect Trump said in a statement.
Ms. Hicks was named the Assistant to the President and Director of Strategic Communications, while Jason Miller was named the Assistant to the President and Director of Communications. Dan Scavino, the Twitter guru, will fittingly serve as the Assistant to the President and Director of Social Media.
President-elect Trump takes office next month and the White House press secretary announcement follows news his former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway will serve as Counselor to the President. Conway, the first woman ever to run a successful presidential campaign, will “effectively message and execute the Administration’s legislative priorities and actions.”
Donald J. Trump, left, with campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, right. (Photo: Reuters)
President-elect Donald J. Trump announces Thursday that campaign manager Kellyanne Conway will serve as Counselor to the President. Conway, the first woman ever to run a successful presidential campaign, will “effectively message and execute the Administration’s legislative priorities and actions.”
“Kellyanne Conway has been a trusted advisor and strategist who played a crucial role in my victory. She is a tireless and tenacious advocate of my agenda and has amazing insights on how to effectively communicate our message,” President-elect Trump said in a statement. “I am pleased that she will be part of my senior team in the West Wing.”
Conway has been serving as a senior member of the President-elect’s transition team and took over as campaign manager of his successful run for the presidency after Paul Manafort, making her the third person to take the helm. Now, as Counselor to the President she will continue to be a close advisor to the president and will work with senior leadership to effectively message and execute the Administration’s legislative priorities and actions.
“I want to thank the President-elect for this amazing opportunity,” Ms. Conway said in a statement. “A Trump presidency will bring real change to Washington and to Americans across this great nation. I am humbled and honored to play a role in helping transform the movement he has led into a real agenda of action and results.”
A man walks past the Department of Veterans Affairs headquarters building in Washington, D.C., on May 23, 2014. (Photo: Larry Downing/Reuters)
With Christmas approaching, people are putting together their lists for Santa Claus. I’m not sure I’ll find any of these things under my tree, but here’s what I want.
Get rid of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
And the shoddy treatment of America’s former warriors continues. Here are some excerpts from a story in the Daily Caller.
…almost 600 veterans who received dental care may have been infected with HIV or hepatitis. …the VA is notifying 592 veterans who had dental procedures from a particular dental provider… If any veterans test positive for HIV or hepatitis, they can receive free treatment.
Gee, that’s a great deal. You may get a life-altering illness, but the bureaucracy that enabled the illness will give you additional treatments.
Oh, and you’ll be glad to know that the VA dentist who potentially exposed the veterans is continuing to draw a government paycheck.
Instead of being fired, that dentist has been reassigned to an administrative role, despite potentially exposing almost 600 veterans to HIV or hepatitis.
Like I said, nice work if you can get it.
The VA’s penchant for secrecy wasn’t limited to waiting lists. The bureaucracy also has tried to cover up poor performance at dozens of local medical facilities.
Stars and Stripeshas revealed the unseemly details.
A veterans group has blasted the Department of Veterans Affairs over leaked internal documents showing dozens of medical facilities performing at below-average levels. USA Today obtained the documents and published them Wednesday, revealing the secret system. The VA had previously refused to make the ratings public, claiming the system is for internal use only. It rates each of the VA’s medical centers on a scale of one to five, with one being the worst. …The worst performing centers are in Dallas and El Paso, Texas, and in Nashville, Memphis and Murfreesboro, Tenn. The documents also show that some medical centers have not improved despite scandals and scrutiny from Congress. The Phoenix VA still sits at a one-star rating despite a 2014 scandal revealing veterans died while waiting for care and that staff manipulated wait-time data there and at other VA hospitals across the country.
You’ll be happy to learn, however, that there were some consequences for the Phoenix division.
In response the malfeasance, neglect, and mistreatment of veterans, the leaders of the VA in Washington decided to punish the local bureaucracy by…well, take a wild guess.
The VA announced last October it plans to allocate $28 million to the Phoenix center in addition to its annual budget.
While these scandals are maddening, they are a distraction from the bigger problem. Simply stated, the core structure of the VA is misguided and the entire bureaucracy should be shut down.
Two of my colleagues, Michael Cannon and Chris Preble, explained the problem in a column for the New York Times.
Even when the department works exactly as intended, it helps inflict great harm on veterans, active-duty military personnel and civilians. Here’s how. Veterans’ health and disability benefits are some of the largest costs involved in any military conflict, but they are delayed costs, typically reaching their peak 40 or 50 years after the conflict ends. …when Congress debates whether to authorize and fund military action, it can act as if those costs don’t exist. But concealing those costs makes military conflicts appear less burdensome and therefore increases their likelihood. It’s as if Congress deliberately structured veterans’ benefits to make it easier to start wars. …The scandal isn’t at the Department of Veterans Affairs. The scandal is the Department of Veterans Affairs.
They proposed an idea which would lead to honest budgeting and make the Department of Veterans Affairs superfluous.
We propose a system of veterans’ benefits that would be funded by Congress in advance. It would allow veterans to purchase life, disability and health insurance from private insurers. Those policies would cover losses related to their term of service, and would pay benefits when they left active duty through the remainder of their lives. To cover the cost, military personnel would receive additional pay sufficient to purchase a statutorily defined package of benefits at actuarially fair rates. …Insurers and providers would be more responsive because veterans could fire them — something they cannot do to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Veterans’ insurance premiums would also reveal, and enable recruits and active-duty personnel to compare, the risks posed by various military jobs and career paths. Most important, under this system, when a military conflict increases the risk to life and limb, insurers would adjust veterans’ insurance premiums upward, and Congress would have to increase military pay immediately to enable military personnel to cover those added costs.
Jonah Goldberg of National Review takes a different approach, but reaches the same conclusion.
He starts by pointing out more bad behavior by the VA.
There is only one guaranteed way to get fired from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. Falsifying records won’t do it. Prescribing obsolete drugs won’t do it. Cutting all manner of corners on health and safety is, at worst, going to get you a reprimand. No, the only sure-fire way to get canned at the VA is to report any of these matters to authorities who might do something about it. …“Our concern is really about the pattern that we’re seeing, where whistleblowers who disclose wrongdoing are facing trumped-up punishment, but the employees who put veterans’ health at risk are going unpunished,” Special Counsel Carolyn Lerner recently told National Public Radio.
And he then says the only real solution is to eliminate the bureaucracy.
The real fix is to get rid of the VA entirely. The United States has an absolute obligation to do right by veterans. It does not have an absolute obligation to run a lousy, wasteful, unaccountable, corrupt, and inefficient bureaucracy out of Washington. …Imagine that the federal government simply gave all of the VA hospitals to the states they’re in. Instead of the VA budget, Congress just cut checks to states to spend on their veterans. You’d still have problems, of course. But what you would also have are local elected officials — city councilmen, state legislators, mayors, governors, etc. — whom voters could hold directly accountable. …this process would allow everyone to learn from both mistakes and successes in a way that a centralized bureaucracy cannot or will not. Personally, I’d rather see the money spent on veterans go straight to the veterans themselves, in the form of cash payments or vouchers to be used for health care in the private sector.
Amen.
National defense is a legitimate function of the federal government, so that means fairly compensating the people who give service to the country. Especially if they suffer wounds that require short-run or long-run care.
But as both my colleagues and Jonah Goldberg have explained, none of that means we need a cumbersome and blundering (and sometimes venal) bureaucracy.
Donald Trump shouldn’t be figuring out who to pick to head the VA, he should be putting together a plan to get rid of it.
To conclude, I found a nice chart that shows when various departments were created, which I have helpfully augmented by crossing out the ones that I’ve explained should be abolished. As you can see, there is still some low-hanging fruit to go after.
By the way, the White House website says the Small Business Administration has “the status of Cabinet-rank,” whatever that means. I guess it’s sort of like a participation trophy for the SBA.
In any event, I’ve also explained why that useless bureaucracy should be wiped out.
And I guess it’s good news that the Postal Service is no longer part of the cabinet, though that’s secondary to the more important issue of getting the government out of the business of delivering mail.
American workers at a manufacturing plant for long-lasting durable goods. (PHOTO: REUTERS)
The Commerce Department reported Thursday U.S. durable goods orders fell 4.6% in November from the prior month to a seasonally adjusted $228.17 billion, slightly less than the median estimate of 4.7%. The decline was largely fueled by aircraft orders tanking from a month earlier.
The highly volatile civilian aircraft order component plummeted 73.5% from the prior month. Overall, orders for transportation equipment tanked 13.2%, the largest drop in more than two years.
The rest of the manufacturing report was mixed. Excluding the transportation component and orders for U.S. durable goods increased 0.5%, slightly topping the estimate for 0.2%. When excluding defense, another volatile component, durable goods orders fell 6.6%.
Weekly jobless claims, or first-time claims for unemployment benefits reported by the Labor Department.
The Labor Department reported weekly jobless claims rose by 21,000 to 275,000 for the week ending December 17, far higher than the 256,000 estimate. The prior week was unchanged at 254,000.
The 4-week moving average–which is widely considered a better gauge, as it irons out volatility–was 263,750, an gain of 6,000 from the previous week’s unrevised average of 257,750.
No state was triggered “on” the Extended Benefits program during the week ending December 3 and a Labor Department analyst said there were no special factors impacting this week’s initial claims. While the report marks 94 consecutive weeks of initial claims below 300,000, the longest streak since 1970, longterm unemployment and low participation have simply shrunk the pool of eligible applicants.
The highest insured unemployment rates in the week ending December 3 were in Alaska (4.0), Puerto Rico (2.5), New Jersey (2.4), California (2.3), Pennsylvania (2.3), Connecticut (2.2), Montana (2.2), West Virginia (2.2), Illinois (1.9), Massachusetts (1.9), Minnesota (1.9), and Nevada (1.9).
The largest increases in initial claims for the week ending December 10 were in Illinois (+2,787), Florida (+566), Colorado (+485), Kansas (+477), and Indiana (+476), while the largest decreases were in New York (-13,110), Pennsylvania (-9,655), Texas (- 4,685), Wisconsin (-4,127), and Minnesota (-3,563).
File photo: Shipping cranes and containers at a U.S. port representing exports and imports factored in overall gross domestic product, or GDP. (Photo: REUTERS)
The Commerce Department reported Thursday the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) grew at a rate of 3.5 percent in the third quarter of 2016. The figure slightly outpaced the median forecast calling for 3.3% and was the strongest since the third quarter of 2014.
However, it followed the second quarter’s anemic 1.4% pace.
Businesses accumulated inventories at a $7.1 billion rate, down slightly from the $7.6 billion initially reported.
Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of all U.S. economic activity, gained 3% in the third quarter, up from the 2.8% pace reported last month. That was still a slowdown from the second quarter (4.3%).
Paramedics work at the site of an accident at a Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz square near the fashionable Kurfuerstendamm avenue in the west of Berlin, Germany, December 19, 2016. (Photo: REUTERS)
The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the apparent Islamic terrorist who plowed into a Christmas market in western Berlin killing 12 and injuring 50 others. After releasing a prior suspect for lack of evidence, officials say a temporary-stay permit for a Tunisian national was found inside the cab of the truck.
Now, a manhunt is underway for a Tunisian man who Islamic State (ISIS) referred to as a “solider” of the caliphate. A wanted notice, which names Anis Amri, a Tunisian national born in the town of Ghaza, says the man should be considered armed and dangerous.
The European arrest warrant from Germany obtained by The Associated Press, indicates he has at times used six different aliases and three different nationalities. It lists multiple aliases, most of which are variants of his name, and Egyptian and Lebanese citizenship as well. A senior German security official told the Associated Press the man had been considered a possible terror threat by authorities.
The interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia state, Ralf Jaeger, says “security agencies exchanged information about this person in the joint counter-terrorism center, the last time in November.”
According to reports in the German media, the suspect applied for asylum in April and may have been injured in a struggle with the truck’s original driver, who was killed. German authorities say they rejected the man’s asylum request in July.
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