Israel's 'Culture': Romney Praises Welfare Dependency, Socialism, and Having the U.S. Fite Israel's Wars.
Mitt Romney has praised Israel's culture and assigned that culture all credit for the differences in the (presumed splendid) economic achievements of Israel as against the miserable conditions of Palestine. How very odd.
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I guess Romney never heard about a vast inpouring of U.S. taxpayer aid over decades, amounting, cumulatively, to a mere $126 BILLION (which I have adjusted from the $114 BILLION, $500 per Israeli per year reported in 2008). Mind you, the typical Israeli family has four children and two adults, for a family of six, times $500 = $3,000 of U.S. taxpayer money per year per Israeli family.
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A slitely lower figure, $115 BILLION, was provided by the Congressional Research Office as of March 12, 2012. That report states that U.S. taxpayer aid to Israel this and ensuing years will be $3.1 BILLION per year.
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In 2003 dollars (the latest approximation I found online), the total aid to Israel is $140 BILLION.
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But a mere $3.1 BILLION per year couldn't possibly have anything to do with Israel's prosperity, of course. After all, the Palestinian Authority got almost 1/6th that in 2010, but almost no money in the preceding 60 years. The Congressional Research Service said in a March 4, 2005 report:

The United States has provided aid directly to the Palestinian Authority (PA) three times; $36 million in FY1994, $20 million in FY2003, and $20 million in FY2005.

U.S. economic aid to the Palestinians has averaged about $85 million per year since 1993; there has been no military aid.

Jewish Voice for Peace figures U.S. aid to Israel as even higher.

More U.S. aid goes to Israel than any other country, even though Israel[']s per capita income is as high as many European countries. In fiscal year 2003 Israel received a foreign military financing grant of $3.1 billion and a $600 million grant for economic security in addition to $11 billion in commercial loan guarantees. This total aid package of nearly $15 billion makes Israel by far the largest single recipient of U.S. aid.

Apologists for the outlandish levels of U.S. aid to Israel pretend that military aid does not have anything to do with Israel's wondrous economic achievements. Oh? Money is fungible. The typical illustration of fungibility is that you get some money and put it into your left pocket, then have to pay for something, and pull money from your right pocket. It doesn't really matter whether you pay for it from your left pocket or right pocket, does it? You might as well put all of your money into one pocket or the other, and pull from that same pocket. Thus is it that it doesn't matter whether aid to Israel is military-only or civilian-only, or a mix of both. "Military" money can be used for civilian purposes, and "civilian" money can be used for military purposes. If you need X-number of dollars for all your governmental needs, it really just doesn't matter from what SOURCE you get that money.
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Hm. A full $85M for Palestine each year, as against a mere $3.1 BILLION — or is it $15 billion? — for Israel per year. It really is hard to understand why Israel would be so much richer and more advanced than Palestine, isn't it? A cumulative difference in U.S. aid of a mere $120 BILLION on the Israeli side could not possibly explain in any measure whatsoever the difference in prosperity between Israel and the Palestinians. Of course not. Unless, of course, you know that Israel has, today, only 7.5 million people, its highest population by far in its entire history, which is much  less than New York City, and Israelis pay NO U.S. taxes. So they CLEAR $3.1 BILLION in U.S. aid each year, which is equivalent to $413 per Israeli, or about $2,500 per Israeli family now, at the highest point of Israel's population. Israel received the same $3 billion when its population was only 5M, and the U.S. dollar was woth more than it is now. Thus the cumulative outlay is important to keep in mind: somewhere between $114B and $120B, for a population that may have averaged, over the 60 years of U.S. aid, at most 4 million, less than half the population of NYC — and New Yorkers always paid U.S. taxes, whereas Israelis NEVER paid U.S. taxes. They have always taken, but never given.
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How can we put Israel's receipt of massive U.S. taxpayer moneys in terms that the typical American voter might understand? Oh, I know: the whole country of Israel is on WELFARE, intergenerational  welfare.
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Aside from U.S. taxpayer largesse, Israel also receives a vast inpouring of foreign aid from private Jewish sources in the United States and, in lesser measure, from elsewhere in the Jewish Diaspora. How much money have donors such as the United Jewish Appeal and Hadassah provided to Israel? It's hard to find recent or cumulative figures, but here is what The Middle East Quarterly reported in September 1995.

Diaspora Jewish aid. American Jews and other nongovernment sources provided $17 billion to Israel in the forty-five years between its founding and 1993. Jews in the diaspora also send aid to Israeli institutions, such as the Jewish Agency, universities, hospitals, and other nonprofit organizations. According to Bank of Israel and Jewish Agency statistics, diaspora Jewry donated $1.4 billion to Israeli nonprofit organizations in 1994, of which American Jews contributed some two-thirds. Diaspora Jews also provide loans to the Israeli government, mostly in the form of Israel Bonds.

So Israel receives $3.1 BILLION per year from U.S. taxpayers and $1.4 BILLION per year from the Jewish Diaspora, 2/3 of it from American Jews. But Mitt Romney credits Israel's CULTURE with Israel's prosperity. Astounding.
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And what, exactly, is Israel's culture that has produced such laudable success? Let's start with the quintessential Israeli institution, the kibbutz, "a community settlement, usually agricultural, organized under collectivist principles." (Dictionary.com) If that's not clear, let's go a step further into Dictionary.com to see what it means by "collectivism": "the political principle of centralized social and economic control, especially of all means of production." If that's still not clear, let me clarify it with a single, clear term that Romney's 'conservative' base might understand: SOCIALISM. Israel is a SOCIALIST society.
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This hasn't escaped everybody's notice. An article at Forbes.com entitled, "Whiplash-Mitt Romney Lavishes Praise On Israel's Socialist, Government Controlled Healthcare System", contains this passage.

Either he’s for the Massachusetts health care program he signed into law that would become the model for the Affordable Care Act ["Obamacare"] or he’s against it. Either he supports and praises the Israeli socialist healthcare system wherein the government controls, mandates, and regulates the nation’s healthcare delivery or he’s against socialized medicine as the very symbol of the devil’s work in the world.

That article contains this interesting phrase: "Speaking today to a small group of Israeli contributors to his campaign". What? Israelis are allowed to contribute to U.S. presidential campaigns? I thought foreigners were FORBIDDEN to contribute to U.S. political campaigns.
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The entire country of Israel is on WELFARE, from U.S. TAXPAYERS. It is intergenerational welfare that has been going on since 1948. But Mitt Romney is perfectly happy with that entire country's being on welfare from U.S. taxpayers, and wouldn't dream of saving us some money by cutting off Israel's welfare queens — which is to say, every single woman (and man) in Israel.
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As for Israel's socialist leanings, Wikipedia states:

The [Labor] party is an observer member of both Socialist International and the Party of European Socialists. ... Until 1977, all Israeli Prime Ministers were affiliated with the Labor movement.

That Wikipedia article discusses the reasons for Labor's recent difficulties:

Analy[z]ing the downfall of the once dominant political party in Israel, Efraim Inbar of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies points to several factors. ... When cosmopolitan and individualist values made inroads into the party, it distanced itself from the collectivist ethos that has been dominant and is still widespread in Israel.

While the Labor Party is not presently dominant, socialism is very much a feature of Israeli society. And Mitt Romney loves it — in Israel.
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Romney also loves Israel making the United States fite its wars, and wants the U.S. to fite Iran for Israel too. He is all in favor of Israel fiting Iran to the last American.
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The Romney International Gaffe Tour continued in Poland this morning, when an aide lost his temper:

Gorka, Romney's traveling press secretary, told reporters, "Kiss my ass, this is a holy site for the Polish people. Show some respect." He told Politico's Jonathan Martin to "shove it."

Really!? It's inappropriate to ask questions of the candidate at a "holy site for the Polish people", but is entirely appropriate to say "Kiss my ass" and "shove it", at that very same "holy site"?!? The Romney organization is filled with morons. Thank goodness.

Hm. "Mormon" and "moron" are separated by one letter.
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If Republicans actually go ahead and nominate this bizarre, non-Christian, blatantly hypocritical cultist who contradicts himself at every turn, it will deserve the electoral catastrophe the people must deal them in November.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM

 
Deflating Self-Important Rightwingers
A recent speech by President Obama — attacked by the ungrateful fools in the Romney campaign — made a point I have myself made here more than once, that entrepreneurs do NOT "do it all themselves", but in reality could do almost NOTHING without all the contributions of society and the "little people" who created every single thing that the creators of businesses need to make a business work. Obama spoke, July 13th, of roads and bridges without which businesspeople could not even get to the office. He might also have mentioned little things like electricity and telecommunications, education for the workforce, a stable government, and a large, unified market for the goods and services offered by any business. I present below one expression I offered of this construct, from this blog's entry of October 18, 2009. I think I've said it a little better in another post, but can't remember a keyword to search for, to find any better expression of the same idea. This will have to do.

The rich benefit from the work of the poor and middle class. Everything they own was made by people who don't "earn" a lot of money. The rich would be living under leantos made of brush, and sh*tting behind a bush and wiping their ass with leaves if it weren't for "the little people" who built their house and bathroom, made their toilet and toilet paper, installed the plumbing, drove the toilet paper to the store, and on and on — all the myriad little contributions made by "little people" at every step of the way. The rich couldn't make a phone call if there were no telephone instrument, nor cell tower, nor electricity-generating plant, all of them built by "little people". They wouldn't have a car to drive, nor a road to drive it on without the "little people". "I did it all"? No, you stupid rich bastard. You did NOTHING, absolutely nothing, save with the help of literally countless "little people" who built every last thing you used to make "your" money. And it is only OUR name on that money that gives it any value whatsoever. Without our name, without the economy we sustain with our work and spending, "your" "money" wouldn't be more than decorative bits of paper or electronic zeros in a make-believe bank account.
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At end, it's all make-believe. We believe that the "money" we have in paper or electronic numbers will buy things, and as long as other people believe the same thing, everything works. But as soon as people STOP believing that the money is good, it stops having value. And then a wheelbarrowful of paper money won't buy you a single stalk of celery, and all the zeros in the world won't keep the electricity or water flowing. For that, you need the "little people", and if they decide you shouldn't have it, you won't get it. Let's see you then "do it all": grow your own food, generate your own electricity by pedaling a human-powered generator. And you still won't be able to make a fone call or flush your toilet. More to the point, you'll starve long before you can grow your own food — if anyone will even let you have seed with which to do that.
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So the Big People indisputably NEED the Little People. The reverse is not at all true. We don't need billionaires or millionaires. A lot of bosses don't know half what the people on the manufacturing line or in the cube farm know about crucial parts of any enterprise. If every millionaire in the country were to die Monday nite from some mysterious Millionaire's Flu, 99.5% of all the businesses in the Nation would find new leadership before the week was out. * * *
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... these bastards have all the money in the world and don't want to take care of the people who made it possible, without whom they would have NOTHING. They couldn't survive for 60 days without the food that other people grew; they couldn't survive for 5 days without the water that other people provide. But they are content to have the people on whom their very lives depend, DIE if they can't afford health insurance.

This statement of the importance of the "little people" to society is a perfect pair to the concept of "standing on the shoulders of giants". We wouldn't have things like an electric grid or telefone or artificial liting without genius inventors. But without non-genius working people to build the power plants and produce the coal or oil to fire them, and build the electric transmission lines and string the telefone lines, first, then erect the cellfone towers, none of these self-important entrepreneurs could have done a damned thing. They couldn't even work those long hours they are so proud of if there were no lites in their offices or home offices.
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For ANYONE to brag that he is a "self-made man" is the height of arrogance. NO, you are NOT. You are the creature of schools you didn't build, books you didn't write, print, or distribute, and economic, political, scientific, and technological complexes you did not create. All you did was make a tiny, tiny — indeed, infinitesimal — contribution to things that OTHER people invented, manufactured, and built, from your house to your toilet to your bed, fone, computer, and on and on and on.
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"Did it all"? You didn't do so much as 1/100th of 1%. If you cannot acknowledge that almost everything you have ever accomplished in life would not be possible without MILLIONS of other people, then just shut the f* up.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 4:45 AM

 
End the Olympics!
NBC News reported today that London has spent seven years and $14 BILLION in preparing for the Olympics, a worthless event that should be abolished. Surely the people of Britain have a lot better uses for $14 billion. Like other parts of the world, Britain's economy, and populace, have been adversely affected by the international Great Recession. No country, certainly no country Britain's size, can afford to throw away $14 billion.
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Rationalizations that tourism will make up the outlay are probably mistaken, and even if some large portion of the 'investment' should be made up by one season's tourism, what of the future? Will London be able to find good and profitable uses for the various sport venues it has created? Or will they become a drag on the books of whoever owns them?
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Olympic overspending has caused financial hardships in a number of host cities and entire countries. Only one host city has ever, in the entire history of the modern Olympics, made a profit, Los Angeles. I hear no talk of London making a profit from the past seven years' vast expenditures of time, money, and effort that could much better have been devoted to doing useful work, such as fixing infrastructure, training the unemployed, educating the uneducated, and a thousand other dedications. Every dollar/pound devoted to the Olympics was diverted from something more worthy.
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Perhaps London and the United Kingdom have deep enuf pockets not to suffer badly from the huge outlay for a frigging sporting event, but how does any responsible Government throw away $14 billion on sports nonsense? Was any of this spending taken away from sports for schoolchildren and fitness programs for adults?
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Worse, there are billions and billions more of public and private moneys thrown away on Olympic competitors, in the final team and in preliminary preparation and competitions, and millions of person-hours wasted on worthless efforts and pointless parasitism, by people who contribute NOTHING to society. The praise given these worthless parasites inspires yet more people to turn away from useful efforts in real jobs to the pursuit of hollow fame for becoming, themselves, worthless parasites upon society.
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The supposed value to international comity and people-to-people goodwill that is used to justify the various unjustifiable wastes the Games entail is mostly nonsense. The accomplishments are NOT individual. The athletes do NOT arrive as individuals nor compete as individuals. No, they arrive in NATIONAL teams and promote NATIONALISM, not internationalism.
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It's time for the world to abolish the Olympics and stop glorifying useless parasites who waste years and years of their life on infantile, egoistic idiocy.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:17 PM

 
Is Obama Trying to Lose?
The Obama organization has run a miserably inadequate campaign that seems designed to turn the White House and both Houses of Congress over to the Republicans this November. Can they possibly be that inept? Or do they actually intend the Republicans to take over, then fall flat on their collective face when they can't do a damned thing to reverse the Great Recession because of all the international components beyond the control of any one country?
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The Democrats may relish becoming The Party of No — indeed, The Party of HELL No! — and blocking every single thing the Republicans try to do. Turnabout is fair play, and the Republicans have paid essentially no price for their refusal to tend to the people's business in a cooperative, bipartisan way. So why shouldn't Democrats look forward to blasting every measure of every type the Republicans try to get thru Congress, as long as Democrats can maintain at least a filibuster strength of 41 solid votes in the Senate?
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But if Democrats realize that that is a loser's game, that will do the Nation more irreparable harm — and make no mistake, the behavior of the Republicans since 2009 but esp. since 2011 has caused the Nation harm that promises to be irreversible and permanent — they must make a sharp (Left) turn, and focus the rage of the Nation at what the rich have done to the poor and middle class, and use ballots to undo the Plutocratic Revolution that is destroying our society.
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The behavior of the Republican Party and its Tea Party loons has produced a fracturing of the body politic into two camps so close to outrite military or paramilitary hostilities — bullets — that we are already in a rhetorical civil war, in which each major party (but esp. the Republicans and their idiot Tea Partiers) vilifies the other as the veritable Devil, and "compromise", which is literally a 10-letter word, has become a 4-letter word. I am not overstating the case that we risk actual violent revolution if the Radical Right manages to block the aspirations of the poor and middle class to advance themselves. The bulk of the electorate must be made to see that they have LOST GROUND in the 25 years of the Plutocratic Revolution begun by the Reaganite Tax Reform Act of 1986 (hereinafter sometimes "TRA86", which you can say as "Trady-6"), and that we must REVERSE that Act to undo the mischief it has produced, most specifically the mass debt slavery that has developed since interest on consumer debt was made non-deductible for income-tax purposes.
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We must RESTORE the deductibility of consumer interest, and require credit-card issuers, auto-loan companies, and other consumer debtholders to provide an annual statement of consumer interest paid, well in advance of the April filing date for income taxes. Not only would this alert people to the need to itemize such interest payments, but it would also alarm a great many people about all the money they have WASTED on consumer debt service. That in itself would induce many people to pull back from conspicuous consumption on stupid things.
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Rather than restore the deductibility of consumer interest, however, the current talk in Congress is of eliminating deductibility of mortgage interest! That would WORSEN — perhaps INFINITELY worsen — our personal-debt crisis, and produce even more foreclosures. How is it that Congress seems to be drawing the lesson that the solution to the debt crisis is to make it worse?
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The national economy depends on consumer spending, and making interest on consumer debt tax deductible AGAIN — this is not a revolutionary, brand-new idea; consumer interest WAS deductible before TRA86 — will mean that the Federal Government will forfeit some tax payments, but this measure will free up money for new purchases that is now locked down in the vaults of consumer lenders. Take it out of the vault of the banks and credit-card companies. Put it back in the pockets of consumers, and they will use much of it to spur the economy. Not all of it will be spent again, however, since many people will have been chastened by the interest statements they receive each year into changing their spending habits and living more within their means.
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"Obama's Policies". The Romney mantra is that President Obama's economic policies have failed. The President has let that lie stand unchallenged. Why has he not said:

My policies didn't fail. They were blocked, and continue to be blocked, by The Party of No, which has DELIBERATELY worked to PREVENT the economy from recovering, for the express purpose of making tens of millions of Americans miserable so they will vote against Democrats on the premise that the Democrats have failed to fix the economy. Republicans are certain that voters are too damned STUPID to realize that Republicans have willfully blocked all measures to fix the economy, for the express PURPOSE of prolonging the Recession.
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What you see at work in the economy today is not MY policies but REPUBLICAN economic policies, which are to pretend that the best way to deal with a recession, no matter how deep and destructive, is to do nothing. They will tell you, tho not in so many words, that the free market is MAGIC! It will self-correct. All those jobs the rich have exported will be replaced (tho not, likely, returned) by other, BETTER jobs, in new industries or new products developed by those college grads we are crushing under a mountain of debt. Sure they will. And Santa will deliver winning lottery tickets to every stocking in the Nation.
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Republicans will as well tell you that the best way to increase prosperity is to lower taxes on the rich and super-rich, "the job creators". This "trickle-down" theory has been in force for much of the past 25 years. It has worked real well, hasn't it? Decreasing tax rates increases tax revenues — they would have you believe. No, it really doesn't. The counterintuitive assertion that lower rates bring more revenue has been proved, by actual experience over the last 25 years, to be as crazy and wrong as it sounds. That whole "trickle-down" scam has been denounced as "voodoo economics" — again, the "magic" of the marketplace. There's another term for this myth of economic magic, "supply-side economics". But Ronald Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, said in so many words that "supply-side" IS "trickle-down", and doesn't work. The current crop of advocates of the mythical-magical economics of give-the-rich-everything-and-they-will-take-care-of-you dare not give their 'theory' a name. You don't hear Republicans speak of "trickle-down", "supply side", or "voodoo economics". But Democrats must confront this whole issue of economic madness that has twisted the United States entirely out of shape since the top income-tax rate was lowered from 70% to 28% under Ronald Reagan. Before 1981, the rich really did pay 70%; and under Eisenhower, 90%. And they were still rich! That wasn't good enuf for some of them, however, because other people lived comfortably, and we were able to fund all Governmental programs to make life good for ordinary people. That, Government must not do. Because the rich aren't happy if everybody does well. They are so psychologically deviant that they can be happy in their economic splendor only if other people are miserable. No, they prefer today's huge gap between the rich and the rest of us, which is on the order of the worst Latin American oligarchies of yore, or present-day kleptocracies in Africa.
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Why, if trickle-down, voodoo economics has been so thoroughly disproved by economic history, do Republicans continue to push it? Because they think voters are profoundly STUPID. Are  you stupid? Will you buy that load of crap again this year? Or will you finally wake up to the fact that the rich and super-rich who keep pitching that garbage do NOT have your best interests at heart, but their OWN. YOU count for nothing to them. Truth counts for nothing to them. The Nation's economy, political cohesiveness, and social equity mean nothing to them. Only THEY mean anything to them. And Mitt Romney is the very face of, the very poster boy for, this endless trickle-down scam.
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Don't let Romney get away with not releasing his tax returns for the past 12 years, as his father, George Romney, did when he ran for President. GEORGE Romney was a decent and honorable man. His son? Not so much. It's not enuf for Mitt Romney that taxes on the super-rich (Romney has a personal fortune of some $250 MILLION) are now less than half what they were when his father ran for President in 1968. No, Mitt has to put some of his money in offshore bank accounts to shelter it from U.S. taxes. And that tax evader dares to brazen it out, pretending that his tax shelters are nobody's business, and the voters have better things to worry about. Do we? Do we really have better things to worry about than that a candidate for President of the United States hides money in offshore tax havens? Doesn't that raise serious issues of character and loyalty? Why would you elect a tax evader, when you have to pay tax on every dollar you earn — and MORE tax to make up for the money tax evaders shelter?
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Look at 'Richie Rich" when he insists that two years' tax returns are enuf and he won't release more. There is FEAR in his eyes. He is a WEASEL who has PLENTY to hide. Don't trust any candidate for President who won't release his tax returns for public scrutiny. Don't trust him at all.

That is the kind of attack the Obama campaign must make if it is serious about winning this election, and waking the electorate to the terrible things being done to them by the rich and their servants in the Republican Party and its ragtag covey of loons, the Tea Party. Sadly, the bulk of the Tea Party's followers are not rich themselves, but merely mental-defective racists used mercilessly by the rich — rode hard and put away wet.
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I have been sorely neglecting this blog of late, to focus instead on my "Newark USA" fotoblog, which gives me more personal satisfaction. But I don't see other people addressing things I feel strongly about in politics, so must contribute more to the public discourse here. Alas, few people see this. I hope that if you who do read it agree with points it makes that other people aren't making, you will send this blogpost to them (by means of the envelope icon, below) to bring to their attention ideas they should consider.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 10:20 PM