Will America Turn Against Israel?

 

This question has two very distinct answers. Let us get the simple answer out of the way first. There are a great number of Americans who would never turn against Israel. Many, possibly a majority, of these people are Evangelical Christians. There are also a number of other Christians and traditional American patriots who also support Israel and whose support is virtually unshakeable. There is also a core of Jews, the majority being very religious but includes a sizeable number of Jews who are more Zionist than religious, who will support Israel through thick and thin. There are a small group of very religious Jews who are opposed to Israel for reasons of religious interpretation who would probably support Israel if there were to be a war against the Jewish state if only because of the numbers of Jews who would be endangered. What is surprising is that there exists a number of irreligious Jews who, other than any family members if even them, have no attachment to Israel and should Israel be on the wrong side of their political beliefs, then Israel would be cast aside as irrelevant and possibly seen as evil for opposing their politics. Finally, there some assimilated Jews who are in the far activist left who are fully supportive of the Palestinian Arab narrative and see Israel as the central evil in the modern world. These particular Jews politically are completely consistent with the beliefs of their non-Jewish extreme left travelers. These extreme leftists are mostly found within the Democrat Party as well as the Green Party, American Communist Party and some even in the Libertarian Party. Those extreme leftists who are not members of the Democrat Party would cross party lines to support an extreme leftist candidate from the Democrat Party. This is true for any electoral position from Dog Catcher to President of the United States and every position in-between. This would most definitely include city and county positions through state and include both houses of Congress.

 

Looking at the last Democrat Party fight over gaining the Party’s choice as Presidential candidate to run against Donald Trump, we saw an interesting fight which became very close and was only decided for Hillary Clinton, the centrist candidate, over Bernie Sanders, the extreme leftist candidate, where Bernie was supported very strongly by the youth from High School seniors and college youth as well as recent graduates under the age of thirty-five or as high as forty-five. These are the recent products of the education system which has become more of a regime of instructing the young on what to think and away from the teaching of how to think. Their math and science teaching has been simplified and even gone to an extreme where every answer will be considered correct as long as you can explain how you reached that answer to the mathematic problem. One of the methods taught now for solving algebraic problems is to guess and continue testing numbers until you find one that works, and that is it. So if the problem is basic as what does X equal if 1+2=X? If you claim that the answer is 4 and when asked why you explain that 1 and + equals 2 and with 2 you get 4, then you would get credit because you explained the way you reached the answer of 4 by assigning + to mean add another 1. The science is not the worst of the education currently being provided in the public schools. They offer no requirement for a civics course or any course which describes the government, how it was described in the Constitution. There is no requirement of American or World History. If you do take a history course it largely will cover the accomplishments of people who were minorities. Here is a simple example from over a decade ago. When my youngest child was attending a newly built school, the students were asked to present names of minority people and one child presented the name of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, the first Jew appointed to the Supreme Court. The child had that entry rejected because Jews are not a minority. They named the school after Roberto Clemente who played for the Pittsburgh Pirates, but the school was not even in Pennsylvania. Personally, I find Roberto Clemente as a fine choice as he was an exemplary man both on and off the field of play who was taken from us far too young.

 

These educational systems new directive of producing little drone humans whose political viewpoints are aligned with the system directive of supporting everything being centered around groups. They no longer give homework and many classes do not have textbooks but instead they work off handouts which the children are required to return to the teacher such that they are never taken home. All projects are assigned for groups to produce the assignment and each group will have two hard working students, two or three who might give a modicum of effort and two or three who will produce absolutely nothing and the entire group gets a group grade and there are no individual grades. This method allows every child to pass when only twenty percent of the students probably learned anything, and they are the students whose parents provide efforts to teach some of the old-school concepts and ways of solving math problems. The new teaching methods also include political opinions injected as part of the lessons even in the sciences. They use word problems which present a single political slant. Socialism is the base system for the best forms of governments. Everything is presented with a leftist slant and this programming indoctrination of the children, particularly the major colleges which are steeped in the alt-left.

 

Back to Israel as one of the favorite targets of the alt-left just as it has historically been a target of the alt-right. The left itself is tepid towards Israel at best and the far left is completely sold on the Palestinian propaganda because Israel won their last few wars and thus became the mean superpower in the Middle East. The fact is that the Arab World is thousands of times the size of Israel (check the map below). This map shows the Arab World including the twenty-one of twenty-two Arab States with Comoros off the map to the South while Israel is in Blue and has Iran and Turkey outlined in Red who are aligned with the Arabs against Israel. The main reason that Israel is able to survive is that currently the Arab world is torn into numerous camps and is unable to unite. The main focal points of the splits are Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the several terrorist groups especially Hezballah who even has a base in South Americas in the Tri-Border Region. Currently, Iran aligned against Saudi Arabia is one of the main rift lines in the Middle East which has resulted in some interesting possibilities one of which has been the Arab World moving away from the Palestinians finally viewing them as a lost cause and hopelessly incompetent politically as well as being basically a dysfunctional society with no future even were they to replace Israel as they have become too violent and completely tainted and even loathsome. Even Qatar is attempting to distance themselves from the Palestinians who made a tactical error distancing themselves from President Trump, but their dissing President Trump enamored them with the Leftists who find President Trump to be an impostor or impostor who they refuse to accept as their President.

 

Arab World Showing Twenty-One of Twenty-Two States
with Comoros Off the Map South, Israel in Blue
and with Iran and Turkey outlined in Red

President Trump supports Israel which makes the leftists believe that their position of opposition to Israel as the correct position. Israel has taken the same types of lands in an even smaller piece without oil reserves and has taken their nation, the size (almost) of New Jersey, from a agricultural nation of Kibbutzim, small socialist communities, into a Capitalist engine which is amongst the leaders in technical innovations, medical discoveries, physics research, pharmaceutical inventions and remained one of the leaders in agricultural discoveries such as drip irrigation and many other accomplishments which are helping feed Africa. The fact that Israel has gone from a socialist society towards a more free-enterprise capitalist economy means that they are heading in what the leftists, especially the far left, believe is the wrong direction. It is also the same direction that President Trump is trying to aim the United States which is another reason he just has to be cast as evil. Israel and President Trump work to make their worlds a better place by providing a growing economy where most of the people can find work, if they desire to work, and not having the government support a large sector of the society. The left believes that many people who contribute in a different means to society, like street musicians and dancers, deserve to be supported by the government since what they choose to do does not provide sufficient income. President Trump would rather provide for these people to find work and perform their street acts as their hobby, not as their main contribution. Israel is also moving in that direction.

 

The left hates Israel largely because they are mean and use their military power to protect themselves. This is a large negative because they see the Palestinians as the underprivileged and people of color, despite they are not actually any different than the rest of the Arab people and the vast majority of the Palestinian Arabs are one or two generations away from their original nation of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and beyond. The Arab nations consist of the entirety of the Middle East and North Africa and have an area and population thousands of times greater than Israel but Israel is considered the bully by the leftists. Why, because the Arab World has invested gazillions of dollars in propaganda and run support in the major colleges and universities casting this as a struggle where Israel used their military might to conquer Palestine in 1948 and further in 1967 wars. Both wars were started by the Arabs with the intent of destroying Israel and murdering every single Jew they would find after they won. Both wars had between five and seven nations against Israel and it was after a third loss in 1973 that the change came and all of a sudden it was no longer a half dozen Arab nations fighting Israel but Israel oppressing the Palestinian Arabs. The problem is there has never been a nation named Palestine so Israel did not conquer it. The Arabs mostly left their homes because their religious leader asked them to leave their homes, as they would be able to take the riches of the Jews once the Arab armies destroyed the cowardly Jews back in 1948 when the Arabs attacked Israel on the first day of its existence. Israel had been promised by the League of Nations after World War I to have the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, all of it, plain and simple. Israel was not a result of the Holocaust as it predates that obscenity of mechanized slaughter and genocide of a people by almost twenty years. The United Nations is also presumably bound to support those borders but since it has become the United Totalitarians Club, thus they too hate Israel. The difficult part is that there are a majority of American Jews who will support the leftist President who will take America and support those who desire to destroy Israel. The other problem they will find out about far too late is that this leader will also be the one who will decide that the United States needs to be rid of those particular people who share this trait, this problem, they are Jewish. These leftists will at some point decide that the Jews are a problem which requires a solution, a final solution. The rising anti-Semitism has been plain to witness if one bothered to watch for it, and it has been growing on the left, the place the Jews said it could never arise. They were wrong and those who hate Israel will eventually turn on their own Jews. And as far as the United States turning against Israel, unfortunately that will come sooner than anybody in either country realizes.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Bottom Line Problem With the Carbon Tax

There are a number of things that are simply wrong about the carbon tax. Yesterday we had an article titled Hot Enough For You Yet? giving some overview of general reasons the carbon tax is bad for America. Today we will get into some particular examples where the carbon tax is just plain wrong.

The first example will demonstrate how the carbon tax discriminates against small local companies. For our example, we have two companies that make, what else, widgets. The first company, let’s call it Wally’s Old Style Widgets in central Alabama, makes approximately 25,000 widgets per year using one-hundred year old equipment that make a heavier and longer lasting widget. The other company, we’ll call it Super Modern Widget and Other Gadget Conglomerate of Oregon, makes 100,000 widgets per month along with numerous other products with two-year-old state of the art equipment. Before the carbon tax, both company’s widgets sold for about the same price in central Alabama and though Wally’s Old Style Widgets were a slight bit higher in price, the companies in central Alabama also had older machines that were already set-up to use Wally’s Widgets. So, for them everything was simply fine.

Along comes the carbon tax. Right off the bat, in an honest attempt to comply with the new carbon credit regulations, Wally invested some hundred thousand dollars in scrubbers and other pollution and carbon reducing equipment. This had to be reflected with an increase in the price of his widgets. On top of this, while his competitor across the country in Oregon did not need to modify his equipment one iota and still managed to get paid for his excess carbon credits while Wally had to buy carbon credits or replace every piece of his equipment. Since the latter would have bankrupted his company, he did the best he could with a bad situation. As time passed the price on Wally’s Widgets kept slowly increasing as the government charged more and more over time for carbon credits. Very soon, Wally’s Widgets now cost twice that of his competitor, Super Modern Widget et al even after shipping costs. One by one, all of Wally’s customers had to stop buying the locally made Widgets, as they became cost prohibitive and buy the lighter and more fragile Widgets from Oregon. End of story is the small local business was run out of business simply because he served a local need and was not big enough to not be allowed to fail.

Our next example, we will have two companies who both make millions of widget fasteners. Both companies have modern equipment. The only difference is one company makes their widget fasteners from stainless steel and the other from a rubber and epoxy mixture. The advantage of the stainless steel is longer lifespan and a tighter fit while the rubber and epoxy fastener makes less noise and needs less lubrication though not lasting as long or making as firm a connection. For many uses of widget fasteners, the difference is not significant. But in high stress applications the stainless steel fasteners outlast the rubber and epoxy by almost a two to one difference thus even though the stainless steel cost 25% more, they are the better more cost efficient fastener.

Along comes the carbon tax. Needless to point out that the rubber and epoxy mix fasteners do not require smelting and are made from simple high-pressure injection molding and a 12-hour curing time. The stainless steel require smelting the steel, mixing in the custom combinations for each type of steel, then pouring the molds and curing. The steel requires, by comparison, a carbon intensive procedure and thus is hit harder by carbon credits. Eventually, either the price of items requiring the stainless steel fasteners are going to get far more expensive, or everyone will need to settle for an inferior product where due to cost the stainless steel product has been priced out of consideration.

The last examples are two identical companies who do yard care. This example requires we look at the situation without carbon tax and with the carbon tax. First without the tax. The first three years these two lawn care companies compete, they each increase their business by 12% per year. After three years, one of the companies decides to double their advertising dollars and as a result, they now grow at 20% per year while the other drops to only 9% profit. The company advertising gets the increase of their investment and the other company takes a hit for not keeping up.

Now add in carbon tax. Once again, the two companies both go with 12% gains for three years. The government computes their allotted carbon ration to reflect exactly that 12% annual increase. Now when the one company increases their advertising dollars and realized a 20% yearly increase the government penalizes them for going over their carbon allotment. Meanwhile, the company that only increased at 9% will receive money for their unused carbon credits. The basic result is some of the monies made with the increase in advertising from the more aggressive company will be taken by the government and given to his competitor who was less aggressive. To me, that is just plain wrong.

Beyond the Cusp

Hot Enough For You Yet?

We sure have had some hot weather of late. That just might be because it is summer once again. Sort of funny how that works. According to a Paul Krugman article, this year’s record setting temperatures everywhere he looks is proof that we were remiss in not passing President Obama’s Cap and Trade Bill. My favorite part of his, and many other proponents of a Carbon Tax, argument that any plan would be intelligently applied slowly over sufficient period of time so as not to over burden the economy. Well, it would only be a burden to those evil carbon based companies that deal in oil and coal. In reality, this simple statement of limited affect is extremely misleading.

When they tell us that only the energy companies who are dependent upon carbon-based fuels will be measurably affected, they are hiding the truth. This little fact they try to avoid at all costs is that there exist many companies that depend on carbon-based fuels or their derivatives to an extensive extent. Examples are pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, petroleum based fabrics such as nylons, plastics, cleaning products, solvents and adhesives, roofing tars and shingles, asphalt roads, lubricants, paints and dyes, and on, and on, and on. Another major hidden cost that will affect every single product you buy will be the massive increase in delivery costs whether the transport uses train, truck, boat, or air delivery systems. To put it succinctly, a carbon tax will have an effect very similar to a VAT (Value Added Tax) as it will place an additional charge for the raw materials, manufacture, transportation, and even simply running the store itself where you purchase the items. Absolutely nothing will escape a carbon tax.

Next time somebody tells you that a carbon tax won’t be a big deal, ask them to name one item that will not cost more under their carbon tax, or the new name, putting a price on carbon. No matter how flashy and intricate the dance, the song is the same; you will pay dearly once the carbon tax is in place. The best way to reduce carbon “pollution” is to have people as customers buy intelligently from companies who are really making an effort to produce a green, eco-friendly product. Let we the people place an informed and purposeful demand that all industries do their part. This way we will reward the best with our support and our monies when we buy from companies that have proven to take all the steps they could to be Earth-friendly. Giving money to the government will not do half as much as what the people can get accomplished through intelligent consumerism.

Beyond the Cusp