The Front Page Cover
2016 The truth will set you free
Featuring:
Ending the Palestinian Exception
by Caroline Glick
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nObama's Coal Power Play
Caught between the increase of competition from natural gas on one side and Barack nObama's stifling regulations and liar-Hillary Clinton admitting that her energy plan would effectively put the coal industry out of business on the other, it would appear that the American coal industry is not long for this world. As a result of the coal industry's steady demise, concern over funding coal workers' pensions has become a very real issue. For every current coal worker, there are now 10 retirees whose pension plans are in jeopardy.
As The Wall Street Journal reports, "Benefits are underfunded by $5.6 billion, or about $600,000 per worker, and the pension plan is projected to go broke by 2025. A retiree who worked 30 years would then receive a maximum of $12,870 per year from the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) versus $24,250." Now the unions representing the coal workers want taxpayers to underwrite these pensions. Essentially, the unions are seeking a government bailout for an industry the government had a major hand in destroying. And liar-Hillary Clinton would gladly oblige.
Leftists like liar-Hillary Clinton who see the government as "savior" eagerly leap to supply solutions to problems which all too often resulted from their own prior "solutions." Creating more not less dependence on the government is the goal of socialists. Democrats have lost support in what was once staunchly Democrat coal country, and this is an opportunity to win back support. Similar to the auto industry bailouts, a coal pension bailout could go a long way in bringing disillusioned Democrats back into the fold. Of course, legislation of this type would "add significant new costs, and eliminate savings sought by the administration," a top official at the Department of Interior warned in 2010. But if killing coal can be leveraged into a Democrat power play to save coal workers' pensions, then it's a win, even as coal workers and taxpayers lose.
~The Patriot Post
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'Equal Pay': Another Area for Government
Meddling
Michael Swartz: As the presidential campaign has dragged on, it's become more clear that liar-Hillary Clinton is simply offering to extend the utter failure of Barack nObama's administration. Whether coincidental or not, days after liar-Hillary opened her debate with Donald Trump by pledging to "guarantee, finally, equal pay for women's work," the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced it would begin collecting data from businesses on that very subject in March 2018. Never mind the facts about the supposed pay gap when there's regulation to be had.
In its announcement, the EEOC fired a warning shot across the bow of those businesses required to file, noting, "The new data will improve investigations of possible pay discrimination, which remains a contributing factor to persistent wage gaps." EEOC Chair Jenny Yang echoed this, adding, "Collecting pay data is a significant step forward in addressing discriminatory pay practices." This new policy will affect the thousands of businesses that have 100 or more employees as well as federal contractors and subcontractors that employ 50 or more.
These regulations are the offspring of a perennially failed congressional bill called the Paycheck Fairness Act, and as onetime Department of Labor chief economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth argued, they would put "an enormous compliance burden on businesses," forcing them to categorize and report on 14 different gender, race and ethnicity groups in 12 pay bands and 10 occupational categories. "When the nObama administration decides to collect countless thousands of new data points, it has a purpose in mind," adds Furchtgott-Roth. "Not much imagination is required to see that the plan here is to give Washington new powers to police the workforce." Substitute "liar-Clinton" for "nObama" and the result would be the same: Beltway bureaucrats browbeating business once again.
Moreover, these broad wage reporting categories could take a lot of arrangements that are convenient to working mothers off the table, contends Carrie Lukas of the Independent Women's Forum. She points out that working moms "sometimes intentionally negotiate a lower salary with the understanding that they would have the ability to work from home, won't have to travel, or could adjust work schedules to match their children's school calendar." But with this negotiated and agreed-to lower salary simply seen as an entry on a government form, the EEOC could justify the case to swoop in after a "random" check and force the company to conform to its demands.
According to one source, however, "There are a lot of reasons for the gap, including the types of work women and men typically do. Women dominate fields like teaching and clerical work, which tend to pay less than male-dominated fields. Women are also the majority of low-wage and minimum-wage workers." Oddly enough, that nugget is from liar-Hillary Clinton's website. But that obvious truth has been buried for political gain, resulting in the phony "women make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes" narrative.
Meanwhile, the prospect of even more red tape and the implied threat of Uncle Sam's heavy hand of compliance weighing down the bottom line comes at a time when the overall economy is practically stuck in neutral, with annual growth so far this year hovering around a measly 1%. And the Congressional Budget Office cautions that slow economic growth — just 2% annually — will be the norm for the next decade, blaming the anemic increase in the labor force and its productivity. But the CBO also gives the game away: "In addition to demographic factors, that [labor force] projection reflects CBO's judgment that some people will decide to work somewhat less because of federal tax and spending policies that are set in current law." And that doesn't count the new regulations the Left continues to dream up. In the case of the "wage gap" regulations, for example, companies may think long and hard about hiring that 100th person or taking that federal contract if they are in the 50-to-99 category.
It used to be that a small business was free to grow and prosper indefinitely, but now these startups have to worry about compliance with burdensome measures like nObamaCare and the Family and Medical Leave Act once they reach the plateau of just 50 employees. This could prevent a marketable business from being more than a local retailer, hold back a factory from adding another shift to increase production, or discourage an energy company from investing in equipment for exploration as they're unable to justify the overhead on the needed labor. America needs production from entrepreneurs to add the economic value that will truly boost our GDP and growth, but the only growth industry these days seems to be Big Government. The lesson: when business is good for government, it's pretty bad for the rest of us. ~The Patriot Post
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Wow: nObama Gets Rid of Israel
by Caleb Howe
{redstate.com} ~ Former Israeli Prime Minister and President Shimon Peres was laid to rest today in Jerusalem. President nObama was there in attendance, along with many other world leaders... After the ceremony, the White House put out a press release. And then this happened. How absurd is this? They wiped Israel off the face of their press release? Mount Herzl is in West Jerusalem and, as Bill Kristol noted, has been the national cemetery for Israel for over 60 years. It's Israel. It is the capital of Israel. nObama and the rest of his anti-Israel cabal refuse to say so, and have long refused, on the thin premise that it "presupposes" the outcome of peace talks. As the Free Beacon reports, this is an especially offensive policy in light of the circumstance of this visit...
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Lawmaker: liar-Clinton Lied to
Become Secretary of State
by shawn
{totalconservative.com} ~ Last week, the Associated Press revealed liar-Hillary Clinton’s State Department office to be a welcoming home for anyone who donated generously to the liar-Clinton Foundation... and now Senate Republican John Cornyn is accusing the former Secretary of misleading the Senate on her way to a nearly unanimous confirmation vote in 2009. At the time, Cornyn expressed grave reservations about a potential conflict of interest. He temporarily blocked her nomination due to those concerns, only giving in after receiving some assurances from liar-Clinton. “When I put a hold on Mrs. liar-Clinton’s nomination as secretary of state, she reassured me that they would take appropriate steps,” he said in an interview with The Hill. “As seems to be usual for the liar-Clintons, they crossed the line and all the concerns that she reassured me would not occur did in fact occur.”...
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nObama-appointed judge lets
Internet giveaway proceed
by Bob Unruh
{wnd.com} ~ A federal judge in Texas who was appointed by Barack nObama, George C. Hanks Jr., on Friday refused to delay the president’s planned giveaway of U.S. oversight of a key piece of the Internet... setting up the transfer when a critical contract expires heading into the weekend. The states of Arizona, Nevada, Oklahoma and Texas had sued to block the U.S. from giving up oversight of the non-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which maintains databases for Internet domain names, the Internet’s phone book. “Remember the projected Y2K bug disaster? The world’s computers would supposedly go haywire as the clock ticked to January 1, 2000, thus destroying the world and ensuing widespread panic. Didn’t happen. Fast forward to today, however, and another doomsday scenario is afoot albeit with much less fanfare,” said the blog... http://www.http://www.wnd.com/2016/09/obama-appointed-judge-lets-internet-giveaway-proceed//2016/09/obama-appointed-judge-lets-internet-giveaway-proceed/
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“Your Children Will Live In An Incinerated
World”-Defense Secretary Ashton Carter
by Dave Hodges
{thecommonsenseshow.com} ~ Defense Secretary Ashton recently said “Your children will live in an incinerated world” referring to this administrations willingness to use nuclear weapons against the Russians. That is not all he said as his war-mongering comments are detailed on the following short video. This should be a RED ALERT for every American. http://www.thecommonsenseshow.com/2016/09/30/your-children-will-live-in-an-incinerated-world-defense-secretary-ashton/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=your-children-will-live-in-an-incinerated-world-defense-secretary-ashton
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Europe's New Media Darlings: Terrorists
by Giulio Meotti
by Giulio Meotti
Leoluca Orlando (left), awarded honorary citizenship
to Marwan Barghouti (right), the Palestinian terrorist
{gatestoneinstitute.org} ~ What would have happened if the city council of Jerusalem had conferred the honorary citizenship on Italy's Mafia leader, Totò Riina, calling him a "political prisoner"?... What would have happened if the city council of Tel Aviv had named a street after Giovanni Brusca, the Mafia butcher who kidnapped and tortured the 11-year-old son of another mafioso who had betrayed him, and then dissolved the boy's body in acid? The Italian government would have vehemently protested. With Palestinian terrorists, however, there is another standard, as if in the eyes of many of Italy's city councils, terror against Israeli Jews is actually justified. In the pro-Palestinian credentials of the mayor of Naples, Luigi de Magistris, the only item missing was giving honorary citizenship to a Palestinian terrorist. Bilal Kayed is anything but a "man of peace." He is a dangerous Palestinian terrorist who spent 14 years in Israeli prisons for two shooting attacks, and for planning and attempting the unsuccessful kidnapping of a soldier. Kayed is now a new honorary citizen of Naples....
Alabama Chief Justice Removed from Bench f
or Advising Lower Courts to Uphold
Alabama Marriage Laws
by Nancy Flory
{stream.org} ~ Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore’s defense of traditional marriage has cost him his seat on the bench... Moore was suspended today without pay through the end of his term following a hearing by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary (COJ) today on six ethics violations charges. The judiciary court ruled that Moore defied law already clearly settled by the Supreme Court’s June 2015 Obergefell vs. Hodges same-sex marriage decision when he told Alabama’s probate judges six months later that they were still bound by a 2015 state court order to deny marriage licenses to gays and lesbians...This court ruling is totally wrong. I'm with you Moore.
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Evidence-Based Fiscal Discipline:
The Case for PART 2.0
by David B. Muhlhausen, Ph.D.
{heritage.org} ~ America’s debt is out of control, and Congress and recent Presidents have done little to decrease spending. The use of rigorous evidence in evaluating program effectiveness is a crucial area where the next President can help to improve accountability and fiscal discipline in the federal budget process... A genuine evidence-based agenda focused on fiscal discipline will help the next President re-assert control over runaway spending. The next Administration should re-establish a modified and improved Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) along with a fiscally disciplined evidence-based spring review by the Office of Management and Budget. Programs that fail to produce results should receive less funding or be terminated altogether, while programs that generate results should continue to receive funding. Unless rigorous evaluation results are strongly linked to budget decisions, any proclamations about the benefits of evidence-based policymaking are meaningless...
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Do Certificate-of-Need Laws Limit Spending?
by Matthew D. Mitchell
{mercatus.org} ~ In 35 states and the District of Columbia, certificate-of-need (CON) laws require healthcare providers planning to offer or expand certain services to first prove to a state regulator that their community “needs” the particular services in question... These laws are controversial. Many experts question their effectiveness and worry that they undermine competition to the detriment of patients. Still, proponents of these laws believe that they rein in healthcare spending. A new study from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University provides a comprehensive review of the theoretical and empirical research on the relationship between CON laws and spending. After analyzing the theoretical arguments and reviewing 19 academic studies spanning 40 years, a clear lesson emerges: CON laws restrict competition in health care, driving up the cost of obtaining medical services... https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/mercatus-mitchell-con-healthcare-spending-v1a.pdf
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ISIS win-win propaganda
by Michael Rubin
{aei.org} ~ As US forces, the Syrian Kurds, the Iraqi army and Popular Mobilization Forces, and Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga close in on the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) in both Iraq and Syria... much is being made about the apocalyptic ideology and symbolism of the looming battle, especially if the showdown is around Dabiq, where many Islamists have predicted there will be a battle against infidels which will herald the collapse of Western civilization. A showdown on ground so symbolic to Islamists might actually play in favor of those opposed to the vision espoused by radical Islamists. After all, a crushing defeat of the Islamic State on the plains of northern Syria might go a long way to neutralizing the mythology that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has created. The late Al Qaeda founder Usama Bin Laden famously observed, “Everyone loves the strong horse” and noted how weak the United States appeared after its 1993 withdrawal from Somalia. If Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi suffers an ignominious defeat, then the idea of a new Islamic caliphate triumphing over the West and ushering in global Islamic rule would be shown empty and misguided. Or would it?...
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Dobbs – UN Tweet Attacks Trump, Left
Going Nuts Trying To Stop Him
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ Lou Dobbs has a few things to say about the leftwing media and the leftist organizations that “are out in force trying to take down Donald Trump.”... He comments on the recent effort, a tweet by the United Nations to motivate “eight million Americans abroad to ‘end Trump.’ That tweet was scrubbed some twenty minutes later with the agency saying ‘it’s investigating the cause,’ which means by the way the agency didn’t have the guts to admit who in the agency sent it out.” Dobbs continues, “But that’s not the only leftwing organization taking aim at Trump, of course. One of the usual sources, the New York Times today actually declared the state of Ohio to no longer be a bellwether battleground state, claiming it’s fading on the electoral map after deeming it all important just back in July. But Trump wasn’t leading then and he is now.” “No candidate has ever won the White House without Ohio since 1960 and Trump is leading in the state according to the Real Clear Politics average and has for some time.” Dobbs points out that Trump has now made the point that the leftwing media will pay a price for aligning themselves with liar-Clinton in the campaign... http://rickwells.us/dobbs-un-tweet-attacks-trump-nuts/
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Ending the Palestinian Exception
by Caroline Glick
{truthrevolt.org} ~ A head of Monday night’s first presidential debate, Rudolph Giuliani – former New York mayor and Republican nominee Donald Trump’s current adviser – spoke at the Israeli American Council’s annual conference. Four days of intense debate preparation with Trump preceded the talk. Giuliani insisted the time has come for the US to “reject the whole notion of a two-state solution in Israel.”It can only be hoped that regardless of who prevails in November, Giuliani’s statement will become the official position of the next US administration.
In his speech before the UN General Assembly last week PLO and Fatah chief and unelected Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said many things to drive home the basic point that he is not interested in peace with Israel. He is interested in destroying Israel. But one particular demand stands out.
It stands out not because it is new. It isn’t new.
Abbas says it all the time and his advisers say it all the time. They say it to Palestinian and international audiences alike, and it always is met with support or at least sympathy.
Abbas demanded that Israel stop arresting Palestinian terrorists and release all Palestinian terrorists from its prisons. That is, he demanded that Israel allow thousands of convicted terrorists to walk free and refrain from doing anything to interfere with terrorists engaged planning and carrying out the murder of its citizens.
The overwhelming majority of Palestinians support this demand. And so does the US government.
During US Secretary of State John hanoi-Kerry’s failed peace process in 2013-14, President Barack Onbama and hanoi-Kerry embraced Abbas’s demand that Israel release 104 terrorist murderers from its prisons as a precondition for agreeing to negotiate with the Jewish state.
Bowing to US pressure, Israel released 78 terrorists from its jails in three tranches. Ahead of the fourth scheduled release, Abbas and his advisers bragged that they would cut off talks with Israel as soon as the last group of terrorist murderers were released.
That is, they admitted that the negotiations, such as they were, were nothing more than a means to achieve the goal of freeing murderers.
Rather than condemn Abbas and his colleagues for their cynical bad faith and repulsive immorality, the nObama administration chastised Israel for refusing to play along. When Israel responded to their statements by refusing to release the last group of 26 convicted terrorists, the administration accused Israel of breaching the terms of the negotiations.
nObama, hanoi-Kerry and their advisers held Israel responsible for the talks’ failure.
It’s important to consider what Abbas’s demand for free-range terrorists says about him. It is important to ponder what the fact that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians are partners in this demand says about them as a society.
And it is worth pondering as well the strategic rationality and moral stature of a US government that supports this position.
As far as Abbas and the Palestinians are concerned, their refusal to view mass murderers as criminals tells us a great deal about who they are and what they want.
The Palestinian national movement they have come to embody was never about a deep-seated desire for national liberation. It was never about building “Palestine.”
From the time it was created by Amin el-Husseini in 1920, Palestinian identity has been about the negation of the Jewish national liberation movement – Zionism. And since Israel achieved independence in 1948, the Palestinians have defined themselves by their collective dedication to annihilating the Jewish state – hence their support for terrorists who kill Jews.
Husseini’s heir Yasser Arafat shared his view that terrorism was a both strategic goal in and of itself and a means to achieve the ultimate end of the Palestinian movement – that is, the violent eradication of Israel.
As the heir to both men, Abbas, like his sometimes partners and sometimes rivals in Hamas, has never been interested in building anything. And indeed, he hasn’t.
Consider what is loosely referred to as the “Palestinian economy.”
In an article published this week by the Hebrew-language online journal Mida, economist Uri Redler showed that the Palestinian economy isn’t actually an economy. It is an extortion racket.
Using World Bank data, Redler showed that the Palestinian economy is an optical illusion. In its 22 years of existence, the PA has almost entirely destroyed the private sector in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Seventy-five percent of its tax income comes from indirect taxes that Israel collects for it on imports. Forty percent of its budget comes from donors. Only 18% of it income comes from direct taxation. And most of that comes from deduction at source of PA employees.
Since Operation Protective Edge in 2014, only 15% of foreign aid toward the reconstruction of Gaza has been used for reconstruction projects. The rest of the money has been used as discretionary funds by Hamas. Seventy percent of the funds have come from American and EU taxpayers. This means that the US and the EU have been directly funding Hamas terrorists.
It is not surprising that the aid has been diverted.
And it is not surprising that the US and the EU have continued to provide money they know is being diverted by Hamas.
Hamas, like Fatah, has no interest in developing a Palestinian economy. Economic development doesn’t bring in the money. Terrorism does. Palestinians with economic freedom won’t be dependent on the likes of Abbas and his Hamas counterparts for their livelihoods. So they block all independent paths to prosperity.
Rather than build roads, the PA and Hamas pay people to kill Jews. The more Jews you kill, the more money you receive.
They can maintain this policy because the US and Europe pay them to do so. The more terrorism they commit, the more headlines the Palestinians receive. And the more headlines they receive, the more money they are paid by the UN and Western governments – to advance the cause of the “two state solution.”
This then brings us to the US and Europe, and their unstinting support for Palestinian demands for the release of terrorists. What are they thinking? Earlier this month Prof. Eugene Kontorovich of Northwestern University Law School and the Kohelet Forum published a paper on the international community’s general interpretation of paragraph 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Protocol from 1949. The relevant clause states that an “Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
As Kontorovich noted, this clause the forms the basis of the international community’s constant refrain that Israeli communities built beyond the 1949 armistice lines in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria are illegal.
In other words, it forms the basis of the West’s case against Israel and, by extraction, for the Palestinians’.
Just last week during his speech before the UN General Assembly, nObama attacked Israel for its continued settlement activity.
Kontorovich investigated the same international community’s view of communities built by citizens of a dozen other states in lands occupied by their governments in armed conflicts.
He noted that the activities of Moroccans in the Western Sahara, of Turks in Northern Cyprus, of Indonesians in East Timor and of other nationals in multiple other territories are legally indistinguishable from Israel’s activities in the areas it took control over from Jordan in the 1967 Arab-Israel war.
In none of these other cases, however, has the US, EU, UN or any other international or national authority ever invoked the Fourth Geneva Convention or otherwise claimed that those activities are a breach of international law. In other words, the legal basis for the criminalization and political condemnation of Israel in relation to the Palestinians is entirely specious and discriminatory.
In other words, US support for the so-called two state solution, like the international community’s support for it, is really just a means of discriminating against Israel. It does not advance the cause of peace or justice, for Israelis or for Palestinians. It merely empowers terrorist gangsters to kill Israelis and extort both the Palestinians and the international community.
So again, Giuliani is absolutely right.
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