Thursday, September 29, 2016
Peres
1. By concentrating on his role in the Oslo debacle, it is easy to forget the fact that for most of his career, Shimon Peres was a great man. While he was hardly a founding father of the country, as the media are proclaiming in mindless unison, being too young in 1948, Peres played a critical role in Israeli arms procurement, in the creation of the Dimona reactor, in relations with France, even in erection of early settlements in the West Bank. He was Ben Gurion's sidekick in the rightish breakaway Rafi Party, which split from MAPAI.
Because it lasted so long, the majority of his career days were as a skilled diplomat and leader of the Labor Right, and as Ben Gurion's Robin. Had he retired 25 years ago, that would have been his legacy.
But he did not. He spent his last 25 years committing Oslo, endangering the very existence of Israel with his delusions. Hectoring the country that if there was no peace it was because Israelis did not want it enough, insisting to the end that almost all Israelis support the "Two-State Solution," whereas in reality almost none do. Proclaiming that Palestinians seek peace, whereas they seek genocidal jihad.
The obscene reaction to his death among Arabs serves better than anything else to prove how deluded he was.
Arafat wearing military fatigues while collecting his Nobel Peace Prize;
2. Everyone is over-analyzing the debate. Counting numbers of factual errors, about which most people do not care. The real test of who won will be any changes seen in the poll numbers next week.
Am I the only one who picked up on Hillary's comment? Where she mocks Trump for allegedly saying that women do not deserve the same pay as men unless they do the same work as men?
The fact that she considers that idea absurd states volumes. She is so wedded to affirmative apartheid quotas and dumbed down standards that she wants women who do NOT do the same work as men to get the same pay as men.
By the way, did she also say that maybe Trump is not really as rich as he thinks he is?
3. Protectionism does not "create jobs." At most it causes a shift in employment of existing employees from one sector (exports, non-tradables) to another (import substitutes), from more efficient jobs to less efficient jobs. It harms export sectors.
Politicians cannot "create jobs" except using macro tools and structural reform of the labor market. Otherwise, at most they shift employed people from sector to sector.
4. So the Minister of Finance Kahlon wants to bring housing prices down by taxing the ownership of 3 or more apartments by one person.
By his logic, we can get even better results if we simply have a housing ownership tax on ALL apartments and then use the proceeds to help people to afford housing!
(find the fallacy!)