Hillary Clinton Goes Full Neocon at AIPAC, Demonizes Iran, Palestinians

I once heard Hillary Clinton give her AIPAC speech at a university.  It doesn’t change much, just as US policy toward the Mideast doesn’t change much.  She was still a senator then.  Much of the audience was Middle East experts, who could barely keep themselves from gagging.

Clinton used her speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee meeting, the gathering of some of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington, to lambaste Donald Trump for saying he’d try to be neutral in heading up negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.  Donald Trump should be lambasted. He is wrong on everything most of every day.  But, like a clock, he is right twice a day and this a point on which he is correct. The US cannot be an honest broker in the Mideast conflict if it is more Israeli than the Israelis, which it typically is.  Palestinian negotiators over the years complained that they’d get an Israeli proposal, then go to the US to tweak it, and get back the same proposal from Dennis Ross or some other American partisan of Israel who had been put in a position to shape negotiations on the American side.

Doubting Democracy?

When the Economist –- one of the most authoritative voices in the global media -- begins to doubt democracy, it is time to get serious about fixing things.

Last week’s cover story (March 1-7) was titled “What’s Gone Wrong With Democracy: And How to Revive It.” The magazine’s extensive deliberation that stretches over a six page essay was prompted by the rapid-fire events of the past several years –-popular eruptions from the original Orange Revolution in Ukraine to the Arab Spring that have cast autocrats out only to replace them with failed attempts at democracy and then a return to autocratic rule, often as not backed by men in uniforms. The continuing dysfunction and gridlock in Washington and other Western capitals is equally a cause for their worry.

The Verdict on Thatcherism Is Clear

Nothing says free market capitalism like Margaret Thatcher. The Iron Lady once proclaimed, "Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's money."

Thirty-five years after she swept to power as British prime minister, it is ironic that socialist Norway now has $830 billion in the bank and enjoys fully funded social programs that most of us can only dream of. Meanwhile the U.K. is enduring another round of wrenching austerity and owes over £1.3 trillion -- about US$2.2 trillion. That massive debt grows by about $3.8 billion each week, while every seven days Norway adds another billion dollars to their bank account.

What happened? Both countries were in dire economic straights in early 1970s. Both countries came into the financial windfall of North Sea oil around the same time, exploiting the same resource -- sometimes from the same drill rig. How could they have ended up in such vastly different places?

Neocons Push Obama to Go Beyond a Punitive Strike in Syria

The drums of war are beating, as various news reports state that President Barack Obama and his European allies are close to launching some sort of military attack against Syria. But one question is how big the bang will be. The White House has signaled that whatever comes will be strictly a punitive strike in retaliation for the Assad regime's presumed use of chemical weapons against civilians. It will not be an action aimed at toppling Bashar al-Assad or changing the overall strategic dynamic of the ongoing civil war in Syria. The supposed goal is to deter Assad from resorting to chemical weapons again. Foreign policy experts disagree—of course—on whether any assault of this nature would achieve that end, and such an action could have unintended consequences (say, a host of dead civilians) that might render it not a clear-cut success. But the band of neocons that led the United States into the Iraq War have quickly moved to seize on the administration's inclination to mount a punitive strike in order to draw the nation further into the conflict in Syria.

The Neo-Cons Are Conning Us

"Canadians understand and are very proud of the fact that Canada's economy has performed so much better than other developed countries during these challenging times," Prime Minister Stephen Harper told the House of Commons last May. He was responding to Liberal leader Justin Trudeau who had asked how he justified spending $100 million on "feel good" Economic Action Plan ads in a time of government cutbacks and restraint.

In fact, Canada's growth was surpassed by the U.S. in 2012. Other smaller developed nations, including Australia and the Scandinavian countries, have also done better.

Unemployment dangerously low

For most people, an unemployment rate of about 7%, while well below its recession peak of 8.7%, still reflects an unacceptable degree of slack in the labour market. This leads some to advocate further government action to stimulate the economy and create jobs, and others to more extreme calls to limit immigration.

A closer look shows that the unemployment rate already is unusually low, especially after a sub-par recovery from recession. Moreover, unemployment may be lower than the headlines suggest. This leaves employers facing widespread labour shortages and the economy vulnerable to upward pressure on wages and prices.
Start with the unemployment rate in Canada. For all of 2012, it averaged 7.2% using the conventional rate calculated by Statistics Canada. So far in 2013, it has been 7.1%. These are historically low levels by any standard. Quarterly unemployment never fell below 7% in the 1980s and 1990s, and only dipped below it during the resource boom before the 2008 recession. At a similar point in the recovery from the recessions in the early 1980s and 1990s, the unemployment rate was still near 10%. Considering the sub-par growth rate in the current recovery, this shows that unemployment already is at an exceptionally low level.

Now, instead of the conventional measure of unemployment, calculate Canada’s unemployment rate by applying U.S. concepts (basically, they are a little more hard-nosed about what constitutes job search and exclude 15-year-olds). By this measure, Canada’s unemployment rate last year would have been 6.3%, nearly a full percentage point lower than the headline rate.

Remember, the U.S. Federal Reserve Board has said it will start tightening monetary policy when unemployment reaches 6.5%. So Canada’s unemployment rate, using the same yardstick as the U.S., already is below the level that would induce the Fed to tighten.

Moreover, from a macroeconomic standpoint, the underlying rate of unemployment may be closer to 5% than 6%. Joblessness is concentrated in two groups with double-digit unemployment rates, teenagers and recent immigrants. Last year, youths aged 15 to 19 had an unemployment rate of 20.1%, while for recent immigrants (in the country for five years or less) it was 13.5%. I am not sure how much of a social problem unemployed teens represent, but clearly it is not something which needs the heavy artillery of ultra low interest rates. For recent immigrants, we will see if recent government reforms improve the integration of immigrants into our labour market, but the problem should be addressed with specific policies aimed at this group, not the economy-wide tools of monetary or fiscal policy.

Together, teens and recent immigrants account for a full percentage point of total unemployment. Using the U.S. concept of unemployment, and then subtracting the impact of teenagers and recent immigrants from unemployment, and suddenly you are looking at an unemployment rate of 5.2%, at which point alarm bells have to start sounding (there is a small amount of overlap in excluding 15-year-olds from both the U.S. definition and from teens, but this is inconsequential to the argument).

This has major implications for policy formulation. Instead of maintaining budget deficits and low interest rates to dampen unemployment, it would be better if specific policies targeted the problems of teens and immigrants, or even other groups with above-average unemployment rates like Aboriginals or the disabled.

That the macroeconomy is a lot closer to full capacity than many think is supported by the widespread complaints from the business community that labour is in short supply. Early this year, the Chamber of Commerce characterized worsening shortages as “desperate” and a threat to future growth. We are already seeing a sustained upward trend in real wages, with average hourly earnings up 3.0% in the past year, close to its peak rate of 3.2% at the height of the boom early in 2008. This is another reason why the Bank of Canada should be unwinding its ultra easy monetary policy and starting to raise interest rates, never mind the damage these policies are doing to the economy’s allocation of capital.

How can unemployment be dangerously low when we just saw another quarter of sluggish growth in GDP? Partly, the slack in GDP represents transitory factors. But mostly, this is the new normal in labour markets, as the population ages and people leave the labour force. The labour force participation rate has fallen steadily since 2008, its longest and most pronounced slide on record. The impact of aging is easily seen. While the participation rates of both primed aged adults and people over 55 years are rising, the overall participation rate is falling because people are moving rapidly into the latter group, who have a much lower rate of being active in the labour force.

A declining participation rate also has been the major factor lowering unemployment in the U.S. from 10% to below 8%, despite an even weaker recovery than in Canada. If, heaven forbid, growth ever began to pick-up, the pressure on labour markets could quickly lead to a jump in wages.

Instead of striving to buttress aggregate demand, which only aggravates labour shortages, more attention should be placed on boosting labour supply. This includes a better job of integrating people who are often marginalized in the labour force, like the very young and the very old, as well as immigrants and Aboriginals. Soon, Canada will need the contributions of all its peoples to sustain non-inflationary growth.

Original Article
Source: opinion.financialpost.com
Author: Philip Cross

Jim Flaherty’s most humane tax break under attack

Canada’s income tax system is becoming dangerously progressive, the Fraser Institute says.

The Vancouver-based think-tank issues its warning in a newly released report, saying that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty set a “risky precedent” by introducing tax credits for low- and modest-income Canadians. It singles out the Working Income Tax Benefit, introduced in 2007, as the minister’s most serious departure from the path of fiscal responsibility.

Explaining Tom Flanagan's spectacular fall: Professorial Mentality Syndrome

TORONTO - Prof. Tom Flanagan (ret.) may have been thrown over the side of the Good Ship Tory by Capt. Preston Manning and the Motor Vessel Wildrose by First Mate Danielle Smith, but he still inspires warm feelings of solidarity at the Fraser Institute.

Leastways, Flanagan remains on the list published by the loony-right Vancouver-based "think tank" of its favourite "senior and visiting fellows" -- fellows, indeed, who to a man, and woman, have never seen an opportunity for privatization of public assets they couldn't love.

Andrew Bacevich Attacks Iraq War Architect Paul Wolfowitz In Open Letter

A leading critic of American military expansionism has written a critical open letter to Paul Wolfowitz on the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War.

Andrew Bacevich, a West Point graduate and Vietnam war veteran, is a foreign policy academic who has long argued against American global hegemony. In the wake of the Cold War, Bacevich contends, Americans were emboldened to believe in the supremacy of their worldview. "History had rendered a verdict: The future belonged to America and to those who embraced the American way," Bacevich wrote in a 2011 Washington Post op-ed.

And the Most Outrageous Neocon Iraq War Anniversary Remark Is...

The past week has brought about a 10-years-after review of the Iraq war—particularly an examination of how the Bush-Cheney administration sold the war prior to the invasion launched on March 19, 2003. Pundits and politicians have relived those days—and somberly reconsidered the run-up to the war, the role of the media in enabling the swindle, and the consequences of that military action. MSNBC has aired a documentary based on the book I cowrote with Michael Isikoff, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War. Showtime featured a documentary on Dick Cheney that centered on the war. The Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University released a study noting that the war cost US taxpayers $2.2 trillion and consumed the lives of 4,488 members of the US armed services and at least 123,000 to 134,000 Iraqi civilians.

Statutes of Limitations Are Expiring on Some Bush Crimes

Americans have been facing a number of momentous deadlines, including the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and the “sequester” of $1 trillion from federal programs. But another critical deadline is fast approaching without attracting much notice. Statutes of limitations applicable to possible crimes committed by former President George W. Bush and his top aides, with respect to wiretapping of Americans without court approval and to fraud in launching and continuing the Iraq War, may expire in early 2014, less than a year from now.

The Ahistorical Way a Neoconservative Remembers the 1990s

The indefatigable Bill Kristol has written an article in The Weekly Standard that every American ought to read. There is no more clarifying example of how skewed the neoconservative perspective on military intervention is than the claim he makes about U.S. foreign policy in the 1990s. In his telling, politicians like Rand Paul want to harness war-weariness reminiscent of those post-Cold War days, when American voters no longer wanted to act as "the policemen of the world."

"That decade of not policing the world ended with 9/11," Kristol warns.

Minuscule Canadian Taxpayers Federation in running for 'Turfy Award'

When it comes time to hand out the annual Turfy Award -- named for AstroTurf, the green synthetic blades that look like grass and feel like grass but do not absorb carbon dioxide like grass -- I expect the Canadian Taxpayers Federation to be a contender.

Indeed, consider 'em nominated.

After all, seeing as I cooked up the Turfies just now, the CTF's chances are likely pretty good to win the award for the Canadian organization that best exemplifies the concept of Astroturfing -- a slang expression for political activities that, in the words of our wonderful collectively owned Wikipedia, "are designed to mask the sponsors of the message to give the appearance of coming from a disinterested, grassroots participant."

Flanagan’s ‘toxic’ comments left the PMO no choice

It took only a matter of hours for political strategist Tom Flanagan’s musings on Canada’s child pornography laws to set off a chain reaction of denunciation and dismissal, but fellow conservative commentators are hopeful it’s not the last they hear from the former Harper strategist.

It was a flippant response to an unrelated question about Mr. Flanagan’s philosophical views on the legality of child pornography that led to his demise as a leading public intellectual of Canadian conservatism. Within hours of his appearance at a seminar on the Indian Act at the University of Lethbridge on Feb. 27 which was posted on YouTube that evening and picked up the next morning by Huffington Post Canada and National Newswatch, he had been jettisoned by every major organization he’s become associated with since he emerged as a prominent force in Canadian politics more than two decades ago.

Wayne LaPierre: More Guns Needed For 'Hellish World' Filled With Hurricanes, Kidnappers, Drug Gangs

WASHINGTON -- Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the National Rifle Association, adopted on Wednesday a significantly more ominous and expansive line of reasoning than he has before in order to make the case that newer, more dangerous threats require Americans to buy more guns, join the NRA and organize opposition to gun control measures.

Dick Cheney: Obama Drone Program Is 'A Good Policy'

WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Dick Cheney says the Obama administration's policy of targeting terrorists abroad with unmanned drone strikes is "a good policy," even though he disagrees with most of President Barack Obama's views on national security.

In an interview that aired Tuesday on "CBS This Morning," Cheney dismissed the need for "checks and balances" against the drone program. He says Obama "is getting paid to make difficult, difficult decisions."

Neocon Tantrums

The hysterics of neoconservative senators has become a cacophony that's pretty similar to a room full of children. It's a series of tantrums that clearly shows they are losing, badly.

Senator Lindsey Graham says the Obama administration should "reconsider" the nomination of Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense.

Senator Ted Cruz, who already put out edited clips of Hagel in an effort to falsely smear him, now says he needs to see the text of certain paid speeches Hagel gave, even though Hagel has explained that he did not speak from prepared notes at those speeches. Senators Jeff Sessions and James Inhofe lamely float the idea of a filibuster, even though all indications are that they don't have the 60 votes for one.

Hell Isle

Check out what the loopy Ayn Randroids are up to now. In long-suffering Detroit, a libertarian real estate developer wants to buy a civic crown jewel, Belle Isle, the 982-acre park designed by Frederick Law Olmstead—think the Motor City’s Central Park—and turn it into an independent nation, selling citizenships at $300,000 per. Not, mind you, out of any mercenary motives, says would-be founder Rodney Lockwood—but just “to provide an economic and social laboratory for a society which effectively addresses some of the most important problems of American, and the western world.” (Sic.)

Preston Manning's well-funded ideological hobbyhorse takes aim at civic progressives

Is the so-called Manning Centre for Building Democracy preparing to target Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi and other progressive city councillors for a corporate-backed reprise of the far right's domination of federal and provincial politics in recent decades across Canada?

So it would seem.

Indeed, it would be fair to say the benevolent sounding Trojan Horse founded by Preston Manning, the former Reform Party leader and unflinching market ideologue, has its sights set on finding ways for the ideological right to take over municipal councils all across Canada. Calgary is just to be the first conquest in its ideological blitzkrieg.

Harper announces plan to strengthen venture capital investment

MONTREAL - Saying Canada's economic well-being depends on companies having the capital they need to create growth, Prime Minister Stephen Harper laid out the details Monday of a plan to bolster venture capital investment in the country.

The government's Venture Capital Action Plan, which was announced in the last federal budget, is making $400 million available to help increase private-sector investments in the next seven to 10 years.