Widget Image
Follow PPD Social Media
follow
1,000 Followers
follow
0 Followers
follow
People's Pundit Locals Community
Wednesday, March 5, 2025
SECTIONS
logo
mobile-logo
HomeStandard Blog Whole Post (Page 829)
World

likud-campaign-headquarters

Celebrations at the Likud headquarters in Tel Aviv, March 17, 2015. (photo credit:MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared victory in Tuesday’s Israeli elections after the first exit polls showed Likud ahead or tied with the Zionist Union. Netanyahu took to Twitter and Facebook after the Likud’s better-than-expected performance.

“Against all odds, a great victory for the Likud, for the nationalist camp led by the Likud, and for the people of Israel,” the prime minister said on Facebook.

Netanyahu’s Likud performed significantly better than expected after pre-election polls had shown the prime minister’s party trailing the Zionist Union, which is headed up by Tzipi Livni and Isaac Herzog, by an average of four mandates.

Speaking by phone with Bayit Yehudi leader Naftali Bennett, Shas chief Arye Deri, and Moshe Gafni of United Torah Judaism, the nation’s longest-serving prime minister has already begun the political legwork of cobbling together a coalition, a task that was all but certain ahead of the election no matter the party with the most mandates.

Bennett congratulated Netanyahu for his “victory,” and the two have already come to a mutual agreement to begin negotiations for the formation of a nationalistic coalition government that would work to “better the security and well-being of the Israeli people.”

However, it is the conversation with Kulanu leader Moshe Kahlon that holds the greatest political intrigue for outsiders, onlookers and analysts. Kahlon, a former Likud party member and communications minister, was outwardly campaigning for finance ministry, though declined Netanyahu’s recent pre-election offer. He told both leaders moments after the exit polls came out that he would decide which faction his party would align themselves with depending on the official ballot results.

As of now, the exit polls suggest his party will have between 9 and 10 mandates to offer one or both coalitions.

Meanwhile, the Zionist Union rejected the idea that the results of the exit polls show that Netanyahu will form the next coalition.

“The Likud continues to err. The right-wing bloc has gotten smaller,” said a Zionist statement. “Everything is open until the final results are in and we will know which parties passed the electoral threshold and what kind of government we can form. All of the spin and the commentary is too early. We have formed a negotiating team with the goal of putting together a coalition led by Herzog.”

Regardless, both Netanyahu and Herzog will attempt to convince Israeli President Reuvin Rivlin, himself a Likud party member, they can bring together a strong coalition without a unity government. Rivlin has already signaled that he prefers a unity government to Netanyahu’s way, which would alone be a nationalist coalition. But it is unclear whether he will push too hard for it if the results are even stronger-than-expected for Likud.

Aides to Rivlin say he won’t “force” a unity government on Netanyahu, but rather will “encourage” both men to form one.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared victory

World

Mideast_Israel_Elections_Netanyahu

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu casts his vote during Israel’s parliamentary elections in Jerusalem, Tuesday, Mar. 17, 2015.

The first exit polls from the hotly contested Israeli election show Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud party closed the gap on Isaac Herzog and the Zionist Union. Netanyahu and Likud lead Herzog and the Zionist Union with 28 seats to 27 in one exit poll, while the two are tied at 27 in two others. All were released at 10:00 p.m. local time (4:00 p.m. ET).

Channel 2’s poll had the Likud with 28 mandates, Zionist Union with 27 mandates, the Joint Arab List with 13 mandates, Yesh Atid with 12 mandates, Kulanu with 9 mandates, Bayit Yehudi with 8 mandates, Shas with 7 mandates, United Torah Judaism with 6 mandates, Meretz with 5 mandates, Yisrael Beytenu with 5 mandates and Yahad failing to pass the electoral threshold.

Channel 10’s polls had the Zionist Union with 27 mandates, the Likud with 27 mandates, the Joint Arab List with 13 mandates, Yesh Atid with 11 mandates, Kulanu with10 mandates, Bayit Yehudi with 8 mandates, Shas with 7 mandates, United Torah Judaism with 7 mandates, Meretz with 5 mandates, Yisrael Beytenu with 5 mandates and Yahad failing to pass the electoral threshold.

Channel 1’s polls had the Zionist Union with 27 mandates, the Likud with 27 mandates, the Joint Arab List with 13 mandates, Yesh Atid with 12 mandates, Kulanu with 10 mandates, Bayit Yehudi with 9 mandates, Shas with 7 mandates, United Torah Judaism with 6 mandates, Meretz with 5 mandates, Yisrael Beytenu with 5 mandates and Yahad failing to pass the electoral threshold.

The final polls showed the Likud party trailing the Leftist Zionist Union party led by Tzipi Livni and Isaac Herzog, who predicted an “upheaval” on Tuesday. However, if the exit polls hold true, previous polls either missed Netanyahu’s last-minute momentum or underestimated the Likud GOTV machine. It isn’t at all unlikely considering Israeli law does not allow for media to release polling four days before the election, nor exit polls to be published prior to the closure of the polls, and events were ripe for photo-finish.

In truth, news outlets such as the Jerusalem Post, FOX News, and right here at PPD, were more focused on the leftists’ GOTV operations in large part due to the role President Barack Obama played. As was first reported by PPD back in late January, White House political operatives were actively supporting the ouster of the prime minister.

PPD learned on Monday that a bipartisan Senate committee has been established to investigate the Obama administration’s use of several taxpayer-funded State Department grants to support OneVoice, a U.S.-based left-wing activist group started by five Democrats. OneVoice received two taxpayer-funded grants from the U.S. State Department in the past year totaling at least $200,000. The group joined forces with the group V15 – who has a reputed mission of “anyone but Bibi” – to defeat Netanyahu together. V15 is run by well-known Obama political operative, Jeremy Bird, who served as Obama’s 2012 field director.

But Prime Minister Netanyahu — albeit late — recognized he was in the fight of his political life and shifted focus, message and rhetoric. In recent days, Netanyahu has been on a get-out-the-vote campaign blitz and also increased his nationalist rhetoric, warning a Leftist dovish government would spell disaster for the security of his country. He had called the election two years ahead of schedule, but at the time the possibility of a Likud loss was far from the minds of Israelis and analysts alike.

The cycle has seen a level of international interference never before seen in Israeli elections.

During a Tel Aviv rally Sunday, Netanyahu slammed outside influence through funding “from abroad” and attributed his drop in the polls to a “worldwide” effort to unseat him. Speaking to some 20,000 on Monday, he vowed there would be “no withdrawals” from the West Bank and “no concessions” to those who don’t have Israel’s vital interests in mind and heart.

“The choice is symbolic: the Likud led by me, that will continue to stand firmly for (Israel’s) vital interests, compared with a left-wing government … ready to accept any dictate,” Netanyahu said in his speech at Har Homa.

Also on Monday, Netanyahu vowed there would be no Palestinian state as long as he remained prime minister, an effort to shore up support among conservative security voters. The effort appears to have paid off, even if Likud ends up a handful of seats behind Herzog, Livni, and the rest of the left-wing Zionist Union.

Still, as PPD previously examined, Netanyahu is still end up in the best position to put together a governing coalition, even if the exit polls don’t hold. Neither Likud nor the Zionist Union will garner anywhere near the 61-seat majority of the 120-seat Parliament required to outright form a government, thus the real question becomes whether it will be Netanyahu or Herzog who will persuade enough third-party support to form a coalition that puts them at the 61-vote threshold.

That candidate will earn the approval of Israeli President Reuvin Rivlin, himself a Likud party member. As of now, PPD’s data and political analysis find virtually no path to the premiership for Herzog and the Zionist Union. In fact, neither does a confident Netanyahu.

Meanwhile, in what was perhaps a reaction to internal polling showing a tighter-than-expected race, the two reversed themselves on a plan to rotate the premiership between Mr. Herzog of the Labor Party and Ms. Livni of the smaller Hatnua faction, stating now that Herzog alone would serve as the leader.

The rotation agreement had been seen by some voters as a sign of weakness, and Netanyahu slammed the idea focusing on the less popular Ms. Livni, who is seen as a Palestinian apologist to many centrist voters.

The first exit polls from the hotly

Politics

hillary_clinton_john_boehner_getty

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, left, and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, right. (Photo: Getty)

WASHINGTON — House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters Tuesday that former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton must turn over her computer server to an independent third-party investigator.

The speaker’s comments come just one day after D.C. began to whisper he would announce this week a new investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email practices, including her own admission that her team deleted more than 31,000 emails because she determined them to be personal.

Boehner said that Clinton must surrender all of her emails to an independent party who can decide what was in fact personal and what was government-related, though contended there are no changes in the House investigations.

According to the document released by the Clinton camp this week, the following is how Clinton’s personal attorneys deemed which emails would be preserved:

  • First, a search was done of all emails Clinton received from a .gov or state.gov account during the period she was secretary of state — from 2009 to 2013.
  • Then, with the remaining emails, a search was done for names of 100 State Department and other U.S. government officials who Clinton may have had correspondence with during her tenure.
  • Next, the emails were organized and reviewed by sender and recipient to “account for non-obvious or non-recognizable email addresses or misspellings or other idiosyncrasies.”
  • Lastly, of the emails still left over, a “number of terms” were searched, including “Benghazi” and “Libya.”

A select committee is investigating the deadly Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in the Libyan city, which resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, State Department employee Sean Smith, and security contractors Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. Mrs. Clinton’s role the night of the attack remains very much in question, as does her honesty to the victims’ families in the days after.

Recently uncovered emails obtained by Judicial Watch and first covered by PPD reveal Clinton’s top aides always knew the Benghazi mission compound was under attack from a terrorist group, and Clinton herself lied to the victims’ families.  The documents, which were obtained as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the State Department, make no reference to a spontaneous demonstration or Internet video.

The House Select Committee on Benghazi has extended the deadline for Clinton to turn over any emails related to the terror attack.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., the committee’s chairman, had given Clinton until this past Friday to respond to a subpoena of documents held in her private e-mail server. However, committee spokesman Jamal Ware said late Monday that the deadline had been extended by two weeks to March 27.

Further, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, the chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said his panel will focus on the open records law and the ultimate fate of Clinton’s emails.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters

Politics

aaron-schock

Feb. 6, 2015: Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Ill., answers questions from the media as he returns to Peoria, Ill. (AP)

Illinois Republican Rep. Aaron Schock is resigning, after facing questions for weeks concerning his lavash lifestyle use of taxpayer dollars for expenses.

In a written statement, the congressman said Tuesday he was announcing his resignation, effective March 31, “with a heavy heart.”

“Serving the people of the 18th District is the highest and greatest honor I have had in my life. I thank them for their faith in electing me and letting me represent their interests in Washington. … But the constant questions over the last six weeks have proven a great distraction that has made it too difficult for me to serve the people of the 18th District with the high standards that they deserve and which I have set for myself,” he said.

Schock has faced a litany of accusations regarding the use of taxpayer dollars for personal expenses and claiming questionable reimbursements, including billing the federal government for nearly 170,000 travel miles on a Chevrolet Tahoe he sold with an odometer that read 80,000. He started facing scrutiny after it came to light that he had decorated his office in the theme of the PBS program “Downton Abbey.”

On Monday, the Associated Press confirmed that the Office of Congressional Ethics also had reached out to Schock’s associates as it apparently began an investigation. The office is an outside panel that reviews ethics complaints against House members and makes recommendations to the House Ethics Committee.

Multiple sources have confirmed that Schock did not notify party leaders before making his announcement to POLITICO on Tuesday.

“With this decision, Rep. Schock has put the best interests of his constituents and the House first,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a statement. “I appreciate Aaron’s years of service, and I wish him well in the future.”

Illinois Republican Rep. Aaron Schock is resigning,

Policy

boehner suing obama

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, left, and President Barack Obama, right.

I feel a bit schizophrenic when people ask me my opinion of Republicans on Capitol Hill.

When I’m in a good mood (or being naively optimistic, some might argue), I applaud them for blocking Obama’s spending agenda. The fights over sequestration, debt limits, and government shutdowns have made a real difference. The burden of government spending has dropped significantly since 2009.

Obama-Spending-GDP

Federal Spending from start of Obama administration to the present. (Source: Dan Mitchell)

But when I’m in a bad mood (or being too demanding, some might say), I get very agitated that Republicans seem unable to achieve easy victories, such as doing nothing and letting the corrupt Export-Import Bank disappear. And it makes me think they’re a bunch of big-government hacks.

Obama-Spending-Binge

Federal Spending from 2000 to the present. (Source: Dan Mitchell)

The bottom line is that GOPers are both good and bad. Here’s what I wrote back in 2011 and it still applies today.

It’s almost like they have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. They usually have some underlying principles, and they would like to do the right thing and make America a better place. Yet they also want to get reelected and accumulate power, and this lures them into casting votes that they know are bad for the country. Sometimes the devil has the most influence. During the Bush years, for instance, most Republicans on Capitol Hill went along with Bush’s bad proposals… Yet every so often the angel gets control. All Republicans, including the ones who were in office and doing the wrong thing during the Bush years, …vote for…budget[s]…which would limit the growth of federal spending and fundamentally reform Medicare and Medicaid.

So are the angels or devils winning?

That’s a judgement call, but here’s a slide I’ve shared in some of my speeches. It shows three issues that will get decided in 2015 and asks whether Congress will make the right choices.

The jury is still out on all three of these tests, but there are many reasons to worry.

I’ve already written about GOP flirtation with the gas tax, which is very disturbing since a decision not to raise the tax automatically reduces federal transportation spending, so it should be a win-win situation (assuming, of course, that Republicans believe in federalism and a smaller central government).

Now let’s look at the other two items on my list.

Republicans achieved a big victory with the sequester in 2013, but then gave Obama a big win by cancelling the sequester for 2014 and 2015.

Well, now they have to decide what to do for the 2016 fiscal year, which starts October 1. And there’s already pressure from the White House, as you can see from this news report, to replace real spending restraint with gimmicks and back-door tax hikes.

White House Budget Director Shaun Donovan said Thursday he sees a “hopeful possibility” that Congress and the White House will agree later this year to update the Ryan-Murray budget agreement of 2013 which increased the discretionary spending ceilings set in the Budget Control Act. …Donovan declined to say if any preliminary talks have begun to renew Ryan-Murray, but declared that President Barack Obama will insist the sequestration process be “reversed.” “We will not accept a budget that locks in sequestration,” Donovan said. …The White House budget calls for FY 2016 discretionary spending that is about $75 billion above the spending ceiling set by the 2011 law after the sequester was triggered.

You may be asking yourself why Republicans would consider – even for a nanosecond – giving Obama all that new spending?

Well, the problem is that some GOPers are big defense hawks and they complain, accurately, that Defense is less than one-fourth of the budget yet is has to absorb one-half of the sequester.

But considering that the United States and its allies still account for theoverwhelming share of global defense outlays, I nonetheless think sequestration is a far better outcome than giving Obama carte blanche to squander and extra $75 billion.

But it remains to be seen what will happen.

Now let’s contemplate the third test for the GOP.

Will the Senate commit to entitlement reform? The answer is…not really, but maybe.

Here’s what The Hill has reported.

Senate Republicans will not include detailed plans to overhaul entitlement programs when they unveil their first budget in nearly a decade this week, according to GOP sources. The decision would break from Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) House budgets from recent years, which Democrats used to pound Republican candidates in the 2012 and 2014 elections. …The GOP budget would balance in 10 years, according to GOP lawmakers familiar with the document, but it will only propose savings to be achieved in Medicare and Medicaid, without spelling out specific reforms as Ryan and House Republicans did in recent budgets.

In other words, the bad news is that Senate GOPers are not going to embrace the specific Medicare and Medicaid reforms that have been included in House-passed Republican budgets.

But the good (or hopeful, to be more accurate) news is that the Senate budget will call for a somewhat similar level of spending restraint. So that means the possibility of good entitlement reform will still exist.

By the way, the reason this is so important is that we may have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to actually enact desperately needed fiscal reforms in 2017. This is why it’s so critical that GOPers not get wobbly and regress into being Bush-type big-government conservatives.

I explain further in this interview I had with the Institute of Economic Affairs on my most recent trip to London.

Incidentally, I’m not exaggerating in the interview when I warn that the United States may turn into Greece if we don’t seize the opportunity to make reforms and slow the growth of government. If you don’t believe me, check out these sobering estimates of long-run fiscal chaos from  the IMF, BIS, and OECD.

P.S. I’m sometimes asked whether the GOP leadership is part of the problem or part of the solution. That’s not my area of expertise, but I will say that Boehner and McConnell basically represent the consensus of their respective members, so it’s unrealistic to expect them to vote or behave like Justin Amash and Rand Paul. Sure, I wish they would be more aggressive on certain issues, such askilling the Export-Import Bank orending subsidized terrorism insurance.

And I wish they weren’t so timid about confrontations with Obama since there’s a strong argument to be made that they wound up as winners from the 2013 shutdown battle. That being said, what really matters if what they would do in 2017 if there was a President who wanted real reform. And on that score, I have confidence that Boehner and McConnell would do the right thing, twisting arms and knocking heads if necessary to get their colleagues to save America from becoming Greece.

[mybooktable book=”global-tax-revolution-the-rise-of-tax-competition-and-the-battle-to-defend-it” display=”summary”]

The fights over sequestration, debt limits, and

Politics

gowdy-clinton-emails

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., the chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, said he doesn’t trust Hillary Clinton and lawyers to delete private emails.

The House Select Committee on Benghazi has extended the deadline for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to turn over any emails related to the terror attack.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., the committee’s chairman, had given Clinton until this past Friday to respond to a subpoena of documents held in her private e-mail server. However, committee spokesman Jamal Ware said that the deadline had been extended by two weeks to March 27.

“Chairman ‎Gowdy granted a reasonable extension because for him this is not about politics, it is about getting all relevant documents for the Committee,” Ware said in a statement late Monday. “He still believes the best option for Secretary Clinton is to turn over her server to a neutral arbiter to independently determine what should be in the public domain. The Committee has no interest in her personal emails.”

Chairman Gowdy said Sunday that the House will issue a subpoena for the server itself if need be, because her aides did not have the right to “decide what’s personal and what’s public.”

“But who gets to decide what’s personal and what’s public?” Gowdy noted “And if it’s a mixed-use e-mail and lots of e-mails we get in life are both personal and some work, I just can’t trust her lawyers to make the determination that the public is getting everything they’re entitled to.”

Clinton has come under heavy fire since a revelation earlier this month showed she conducted all her State Department business on a private e-mail address run on a so-called “home-brew” server registered to her New York home. Her aids then decided to determine what was and was not private versus public, and deleted those they themselves deemed private.

A Clinton spokesman attempted to clarify the process late Sunday, stating that members of her staff read “every e-mail” from that account before turning over more than 30,000 messages to the State Department to comply with federal record-keeping rules.

However, nearly 32,000 emails (over half) were deemed private, and were subsequently deleted.

The State Department has said that it has already turned over all official correspondence related to the Benghazi attack to the committee, which consists thus far of approximately 300 messages.

Yet, Mrs. Clinton’s role the night of the attack remains very much in question, as does her honesty to the victims’ families in the days after. The Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in the Libyan city resulted in the deaths of four people, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, State Department employee Sean Smith, and security contractors Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.

Recently uncovered emails obtained by Judicial Watch and first covered by PPD reveal Clinton’s top aides always knew the Benghazi mission compound was under attack from a terrorist group, and Clinton herself lied to the victims’ families.  The documents, which were obtained as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the State Department, make no reference to a spontaneous demonstration or Internet video.

More than suspiciously, not a single email to or from Secretary Clinton was released in the timeline thread from the FOIA request.

READ ALSO — New Benghazi Emails Prove Hillary Clinton Lied To Victims’ Families, Likely Congress

The House Select Committee on Benghazi has

Economy

(Photo: REUTERS)

U.S. housing starts plummeted 17 percent in the month of February to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 897,000 units, the lowest level since January 2014. The Commerce Department scapegoated a harsh weather after releasing a report that is the latest indication that the economy, more specifically the teetering housing market is headed in the wrong direction.

January’s starts were revised up to a 1.08 million-unit pace from the previously reported 1.07 million-unit rate, while future construction rose by just 3 percent last month.

Permits have now fallen below the 1 million-unit pace they’ve kept since July, yet economists continue to cite bad weather as the cause of the economic woes.

“A weak first quarter is now a virtual guarantee as yet another cold winter is dampening activity,” said Dan Greenhaus, chief strategist at BTIG in New York.

The Commerce Department report on new residential construction is also the latest piece of data to cast doubts on an expected mid-June interest rate hike from the Federal Reserve. Last week, economists cut their first-quarter GDP growth estimates to as low as a 1.2 percent annualized pace in the wake of a weak February retail sales report. The economy grew at a 2.2 percent rate in the fourth quarter.

Fed officials, who start a two-day policy meeting on Tuesday, are widely expected to drop the phrase “patient” from their statement on the timing and trajectory of on interest rates. U.S. Treasury debt prices continued to gain on the housing starts report, while the dollar shed losses against the euro and the yen.

Economists had forecast groundbreaking at a 1.05 million-unit pace in February, but they have now fallen below that threshold for the first time since August. Housing starts are down 3.3 percent year-over-year.

“We saw broad-based weakness across the country with the biggest declines in the Northeast and Midwest, suggesting that harsh winter weather in these regions slowed new residential construction significantly,” said Derek Lindsey, an analyst at BNP Paribas in New York. “Despite the disappointing print in starts, building permits rose and remain on an upward trend, suggesting this soft patch in construction is likely to be temporary.”

Declines were regional and across the board, as groundbreaking plummeted 56.5 percent in the Northeast to the lowest level since January 2009. Starts in the Midwest dropped 37 percent to a year low. In the West, where the weather hasn’t even been as harsh, groundbreaking activity still fell 18.2 percent. While it was the case that starts in the South only fell by 2.5 percent, it is also the region where most of the home building takes place.

Further, much of the gain in households came from rentals, which will obviously not increase American homeownership. Last month, despite the increased risk injected into the housing market from the federal government, groundbreaking on single-family homes groundbreaking, which is the largest part of the market, bottomed out by 14.9 percent to its lowest level since last June.

Groundbreaking for the multi-family homes segment tumbled by 20.8 percent, while single-family permits fell 6.2 percent last month to a nine-month low. However, multi-family permits increased by 18.3 percent.

U.S. housing starts plummeted 17 percent in

Policy

oakland-chinatown-minimum-wage

Oakland’s new minimum wage law has confused immigrant businesses in Chinatown, several of which have shut down because they can’t pay the new rate of $12.25 per hour. (Photo: Tim Hussin/SFChronicle)

It is fascinating to see brilliant people belatedly discover the obvious — and to see an even larger number of brilliant people never discover the obvious.

A recent story in a San Francisco newspaper says that some restaurants and grocery stores in Oakland’s Chinatown have closed after the city’s minimum wage was raised. Other small businesses there are not sure they are going to survive, since many depend on a thin profit margin and a high volume of sales.

At an angry meeting between local small business owners and city officials, the local organization that had campaigned for the higher minimum wage was absent. They were probably some place congratulating themselves on having passed a humane “living wage” law. The group most affected was also absent — inexperienced and unskilled young people, who need a job to get some experience, even more than they need the money.

It is not a breakthrough on the frontiers of knowledge that minimum wage laws reduce employment opportunities for the young and the unskilled of any age. It has been happening around the world, for generation after generation, and in the most diverse countries.

It is not just the young who are affected when minimum wage rates are set according to the fashionable notions of third parties, with little or no regard for whether everyone is productive enough to be worth paying the minimum wage they set.

You can check this out for yourself. Go to your local public library and pick up a copy of the distinguished British magazine “The Economist.”

Whether it is the current issue or a back issue doesn’t matter. Spain, Greece and South Africa will be easy to locate in the table near the back, which lists data for various countries. Just look down the unemployment column for countries with unemployment rates around 25 percent. Spain, Greece and South Africa are always there, whether or not there is a recession. Why? Because they have very generous minimum wage laws.

While you are there, you can look up the unemployment rate for Switzerland, which has no minimum wage law at all. Over the years, I have never seen the unemployment rate in Switzerland reach as high as 4 percent. Back in 2003, “The Economist” magazine reported: “Switzerland’s unemployment neared a five-year high of 3.9% in February.”

In the United States, back in what liberals think of as the bad old days before there was a federal minimum wage law, the annual unemployment rate during Calvin Coolidge’s last four years as president ranged from a high of 4.2 percent to a low of 1.8 percent.

Low-income minorities are often hardest hit by the unemployment that follows in the wake of minimum wage laws. The last year when the black unemployment rate was lower than the white unemployment rate was 1930, the last year before there was a federal minimum wage law.

The following year, the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 was passed, requiring minimum wages in the construction industry. This was in response to complaints that construction companies with non-union black construction workers were able to underbid construction companies with unionized white workers (whose unions would not admit blacks).

Looking back over my own life, I realize now how lucky I was when I left home in 1948, at the age of 17, to become self-supporting. The unemployment rate for 16- and 17-year-old blacks at that time was under 10 percent. Inflation had made the minimum wage law, passed ten years earlier, irrelevant.

But it was only a matter of time before liberal compassion led to repeated increases in the minimum wage, to keep up with inflation. The annual unemployment rate for black teenagers has never been less than 20 percent in the past 50 years, and has ranged as high as over 50 percent.

You can check these numbers in a table of official government statistics on page 42 of Professor Walter Williams’ book “Race and Economics.”

Incidentally, the black-white gap in unemployment rates for 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds was virtually non-existent back in 1948. But the black teenage unemployment rate has been more than double that for white teenagers for every year since 1971.

This is just one of many policies that allow liberals to go around feeling good about themselves, while leaving havoc in their wake.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com.

Thomas Sowell opines on the recent revelations

Opinion

churchill-netanyahu

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill addresses a joint session of Congress on December 26, 1941, left, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to a joint session of Congress on March 3, 2015, right.

When Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress on March 3rd, it was the third time he had done so. The only other person to address a joint session of Congress three times was the legendary British prime minister Winston Churchill.

The parallels between the two leaders do not end there. Both warned the world of mortal dangers that others ignored, in hopes that those dangers would go away. In the years leading up to World War II, Churchill tried to warn the British, and the democratic nations in general, of what a monstrous threat Hitler was.

Despite Churchill’s legendary status today, he was not merely ignored but ridiculed at the time, when he was repeatedly warning in vain. Knowing that his warnings provoked only mocking laughter in some quarters, even among some members of his own party, he said on March 14, 1938 in the House of Commons, “Laugh but listen.”

Just two years later, with Hitler’s planes bombing London, night after night, the laughter was gone. Many at the time thought that Britain itself would soon be gone as well, like other European nations that succumbed to the Nazi blitzkrieg in weeks (like France) or days (like Holland).

How did things get to such a desperate situation, with Britain alone continuing the fight, and struggling to survive, against the massive Nazi war machine that now controlled much of the material resources on the continent of Europe?

Things got that desperate by following policies strikingly similar to the policies being followed by the Western democracies today, including some of the very same notions and catchwords being used today.

Just recently, a State Department official in the Obama administration said that Americans have remained safe in a nuclear age, not because of our own nuclear arsenal but because “we created an intricate and essential system of treaties, laws and agreements.”

If “treaties, laws and agreements” produced peace, there would never have been a Second World War. The years leading up to that monumental catastrophe were filled with international treaties and arms control agreements.

The Treaty of Versailles, which ended the First World War, imposed strong restrictions on Germany’s military forces — on paper. The Washington Naval Agreements of 1922 imposed restrictions on all the major naval powers of the world — on paper. The Kellogg-Briand pact of 1928 created an international renunciation of war — on paper.

The Munich agreement of 1938 produced a paper with Hitler’s signature on it that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain waved to the cheering crowds when he returned to England, and said that it meant “Peace for our time.” Less than a year later, World War II began.

Winston Churchill never bought any of this. He understood that military deterrence was what preserved peace. With England playing a leadership role in Europe, “England’s hour of weakness is Europe’s hour of danger,” he said in the House of Commons in 1931.

Today, with the Obama administration “leading from behind” — in practice, not leading at all — we see in Ukraine and the Middle East what that produces.

As for disarmament, Churchill said in 1932, “Alone among the nations we have disarmed while others have rearmed.”

Today, the United States has that dubious and reckless distinction. Our pacifists, like those in England during the 1930s, argue that we should disarm to “induce parallel” behavior by others. In England between the two World Wars, the rhetoric was that they should disarm “as an example to others.”

Whether others would follow that example was just as dubious then as it is today. While Russia and China increased the share of their national output that went to military spending in 2014, the United States reduced its share. Churchill deplored the “inexhaustible gullibility” of disarmament advocates in 1932. That gullibility is still not exhausted in 2015.

“Not one of the lessons of the past has been learned, not one of them has been applied, and the situation is incomparably more dangerous,” Churchill said in 1934. And every one of those words is more urgently true today, in a nuclear age.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com.

When Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed

World

Mideast_Israel_Elections_Netanyahu

March 15, 2015: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waves during his election rally in Tel Aviv, two days ahead of legislative elections. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Monday there would be no Palestinian state as long as he remained prime minister, an effort to shore up support among conservative security voters.

“I think that anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state today and evacuate lands, is giving attack grounds to the radical Islam against the state of Israel,” he said in a video interview published on the NRG website. “Anyone who ignores this is sticking his head in the sand. The left does this time and time again. We are realistic and understand.”

Asked if he meant that a Palestinian state would not be established if he were to continue as Israel’s prime minister, Prime Minister Netanyahu replied, “Correct (also translated to ‘indeed’).”

The latest polls showed his Likud party slightly trailing the Leftist Zionist Union party led by Tzipi Livni and Isaac Herzog, who predicted an “upheaval” on Tuesday. Israeli law forbids media outlets from publishing further polling results prior to the election and, when averaged, Herzog’s leftist Zionist Union party is projected to win 25 seats juxtaposed to 21 for Netanyahu’s Likud party.

During a last-minute campaign stop in east Jerusalem Monday, Netanyahu visited Har Homa, a Jewish development viewed as an illegal settlement by the Palestinians and the international community. The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, as their capital. Netanyahu, a longtime proponent of Jerusalem settlements, said withdrawing from occupied areas to make way for a Palestinian state would only ensure that territory will be taken over by Islamic extremists.

He had authorized construction in the area during his first term in order to block Palestinians from expanding Bethlehem, and to prevent a “Hamastan” for militants from sprouting in the hills nearby. Just two years after Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, the Islamic militant group Hamas took over and escalated attacks on Israel, including from the recently discovered network of “terror tunnels” built with concrete supplied by the international community and Israel.

“We will preserve Jerusalem’s unity in all its parts. We will continue to build and fortify Jerusalem so that its division won’t be possible and it will stay united forever,” Netanyahu said. “Likud’s victory is the only thing that can ensure the continuation of a national leadership and will prevent the establishment of a left-wing government.”

In recent days, Netanyahu has been on a get-out-the-vote campaign blitz and has increased his nationalist rhetoric, warning a Leftist dovish government would spell disaster for the security of his country. Netanyahu called the election two years ahead of schedule, but at the time the possibility of a Likud loss was far from the minds of Israelis and analysts alike. The cycle has seen a level of international interference never before seen in Israeli elections.

In an advertisement for Netanyahu, actor Jon Voight implored Israelis to re-elect the prime minister, warning that those like Herzog who believe that deal-making is the solution to Israel’s problems are as wrong as Neville Chamberlain.

Voight said that President Obama, who has been actively working to unseat Prime Minister Netanyahu, “does not love Israel,” but rather seeks “to control Israel.”

“I love Israel. I want to see Israel survive and not be overtaken by the madmen of this world,” Voight said. “President Obama does not love Israel. His whole agenda is to control Israel, and this way, he can be friends with all of Israel’s enemies.”

READ ALSO — Jon Voight Urges Israelis To Support Netanyahu: ‘Obama Does Not Love Israel’

Voight was referring to revelations first reported by PPD back in late January that charged the White House with actively supporting the ouster of the prime minister.

PPD learned on Monday that a bipartisan Senate committee has been established to investigate the Obama administration’s use of several taxpayer-funded State Department grants to support OneVoice, a U.S.-based left-wing activist group started by five Democrats. OneVoice received two taxpayer-funded grants from the U.S. State Department in the past year totaling $200,000 and, as PPD previously reported, joined forces with the group V15 – who has a reputed mission of “anyone but Bibi” – to defeat Netanyahu. V15 is run by well-known Obama political operative, Jeremy Bird, who served as Obama’s 2012 field director.

During a Tel Aviv rally Sunday, Netanyahu slammed outside influence through funding “from abroad” and attributed his drop in the polls to a “worldwide” effort to unseat him. Speaking to some 20,000 on Monday, he vowed there would be “no withdrawals” from the West Bank and “no concessions” to those who don’t have Israel’s vital interests in mind and heart.

“The choice is symbolic: the Likud led by me, that will continue to stand firmly for (Israel’s) vital interests, compared with a left-wing government … ready to accept any dictate,” Netanyahu said in his speech at Har Homa Monday.

Indeed, for the first time since the start of the campaign, a majority of Israelis do not believe Netanyahu will form the next government, though he still leads Herzog in terms of expectations. On March 9, Likud’s data showed that 62.3 percent thought Netanyahu would form the coalition and 19.9 percent thought that Herzog and Livni would form the government. But on Monday, the number of those who believe Netanyahu would form the government fell to 49.6 percent, while 30.4 percent thought Herzog would form the coalition.

The internal polls, which were shared with PPD, are taken by McLaughlin and associates, a U.S.-based Republican strategist. They show Mr. Netanyahu has some more room to grow among the 25,000 settlement residents, data no doubt used to justify the last-minute visit.

“There is a real threat here that a left-wing government will join the international community and follow its orders,” Mr. Netanyahu in the interview with NRG, a website tied to the newspaper Makor Rishon, which largely serves settlers. “There is going to be an international initiative to take us back to the 1967 lines and divide Jerusalem. These are real things. This is going to come and we need to form a solid, strong national government headed by Likud in order to ward off these initiatives.”

Still, as PPD previously examined, Netanyahu could still end up in the best position to put together a governing coalition, despite Herzog’s small yet consistent lead. Neither Likud nor the Zionist Union will garner anywhere near the 61-seat majority of the 120-seat Parliament required to outright form a government, thus the real question becomes whether it will be Netanyahu or Herzog who will persuade enough third-party support to form a coalition that puts them at the 61-vote threshold.

That candidate will earn the approval of Israeli President Reuvin Rivlin, himself a Likud party member.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas injected himself into the Israeli election recently, publicly stating that a decision to cut security ties with Israel won’t be made until after the election. Herzog and Livni have promised to work out a two-state solution with the Palestinians and the international community. Livni even met with the Fatah leader in London without authorization from Netanyahu recently. It is fair to say the issue of Israeli settlements will be back on the table in order to work out a deal on security cooperation if Herzog becomes prime minister.

READ ALSO — Final Israeli Election Polls, Potential Outcomes, And What It Means For Israel

Visiting his party headquarters, an upbeat Herzog talked about a “crucial” vote for the country and warned against splitting the anti-Netanyahu vote among the various centrist parties, including the rising charismatic leader Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid Party.

“Whoever wants Lapid, whoever wants Yesh Atid, in the government has to vote for us. They have no other choice,” he said. “Whoever wants an upheaval has to vote for us.”

In no small measure due to the help of President Obama’s political operatives, the Israeli election has turned on economic issues rather than the typically dominant security issues. Social welfare and other economic arguments have taken the place of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and whether Palestinians will make good on their threat to cut off security ties with Israel. The latest polls for Israel Army Radio found that more than half of Israelis surveyed plan to vote based on pocketbook issues, with fewer than 1 in 3 putting security at the top of their concerns.

Nine of 10 respondents said the cost of living would influence their choice, but ironically, Israelis still said that despite which party they will vote for, they prefer Mr. Netanyahu remain prime minister.

Meanwhile, on Monday the Zionist Union reversed themselves on a plan to rotate the premiership between Mr. Herzog of the Labor Party and Ms. Livni of the smaller Hatnua faction, stating now that Herzog alone would serve as the leader.

The rotation agreement had been seen by some voters as a sign of weakness, and Netanyahu slammed the idea focusing on the less popular Ms. Livni, who is seen as a Palestinian apologist to many centrist voters.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Monday

People's Pundit Daily
You have %%pigeonMeterAvailable%% free %%pigeonCopyPage%% remaining this month. Get unlimited access and support reader-funded, independent data journalism.

Start a 14-day free trial now. Pay later!

Start Trial

Subscribe