Whorled View

We should be getting a nice fat tax rebate this year thanks to the economy being in the toilet. I should be grateful but I can’t help but think that this tax rebate will have little effect on the economy while it balloons both inflation and the deficit. Most of everything we buy today is made overseas so all the rebate will really do is put more money into the pockets of our Asian neighbors. Very little of it will end up staying here in the US of A. What good is it if everyone buys a flatpanel TV where only 20% of that rebate stays in the country (as Walmart’s markup), which remainder Walmart employees will use to buy the foreign-made Nintendo Wii to use with said foreign-made TV.

“…only 20% of that rebate stays in the country (as Walmart’s markup), which remainder Walmart employees will use to buy the foreign-made Nintendo Wii to use with said foreign-made TV“

The other problem with the existing rebate (besides the dangerous impact on inflation and the deficit) is the removal from circulation by nervous consumers. With the bleak future constantly thrown in our faces people are likely to conserve as much as possible. To stimulate the economy you must put money in a system that keeps it in the country and keeps it in circulation. President Bush’s current stimulus package does very little if anything to this effect. My solution came from an idea I had while visiting www.madeintheusa.com. It has a quote in the side bar which says, “There are 293 million people living in the United States. If each one would shift $20 a month in spending from foreign made products to American made products, that would create 5 million new jobs.”

“There are 293 million people living in the United States. If each one would shift $20 a month in spending from foreign made products to American made products, that would create 5 million new jobs.”

Wow. Adjusting $20/month from one brand to another will create 5 million new jobs - and thats without any “new” spending. Imagine if the whole stimulus plan (roughly $1200/family) could be used for only domestically made products. The economic effect would be enormous. But how do you earmark that money for domestically manufactured products? $150 billion is a lot of money, so the corruption to acquire would be an acceptable risk for many (if not most) companies with foreign products. In short, it would necessitate yet another government entity (booo!) to monitor business and corporate supply claims: the Homeland Production Agency or “HPA”. But it’s time has come. Being a Republican who has some John Birch leanings I shudder to think of creating another government agency, but nevertheless it’s become an evil necessity. There must be an agency that has as it’s main goal the encouragement of production in our Homeland. Such an agency would work closely with the IRS to provide tax incentives for companies to incorporate US made parts and pieces. Because of tax incentives, corporate taxes must account for which supplies are imported or domestic, and the HPA must verify those claims. Each product then gets a HPA rating where 0% means it is wholly foreign made and 100% means it sells wholly domestically made. Lastly, the HPA would be responsible for making sure tax rebates go toward domestically made products as much as possible.

“Each product then gets a HPA rating where 0% means it is wholly foreign made and 100% means it sells wholly domestically made.”

This last item seems the trickiest (although it isn’t as I’ll show below). How does the HPA make sure that 100% of your tax rebate goes toward purchasing domestically produced products? Simple (although in practice it will be a task initially costing 100’s of millions): by making the HPA pay for the products directly, and through a system already in place that facilitates the power of internet database processing. It would involve using a modified version of Paypal as the payment system, and your Social Security number gives you access to an HPA-paypal account to where your tax rebate will be deposited. You may even add to this balance if you wish. Any website can implement the HPA-paypal system - as simply as adding any other payment module (as a very experienced e-commerce programmer, let me assure you that this is very easy to do).

“Any website can implement the HPA-paypal system - as simply as adding any other payment module (as a very experienced e-commerce programmer, let me assure you that this is very easy to do).”

For example, let’s say that your family’s rebate has arrived in you HPA account, so you log onto amazon.com (or any e-commerce website). Lets say that you want to buy a leafblower, a trampoline, a Wii, a doodad, and a Schwinn ten-speed. You select “HPA-Paypal” for my payment method and check out. HPA pays 100% for the leafblower and trampoline because they’re both made entirely in the US, but only for half of the Schwinn because of the foreign parts, and nothing for the Wii, made entirely outside the US. HPA won’t pay for the doodad either because the doodad manufacturer didn’t register their product with the HPA and so it isn’t in the HPA database. Note that amazon.com doesn’t need this information - it’s all taken care of at check-out by HPA when they pull the info from the HPA database. At checkout you enter a credit card to pay for the remainder of the balance that the HPA won’t pay (for foreign manufactured products). Piece of cake … for everyone concerned.

“You log onto amazon.com … select HPA-Paypal for my payment method … and enter a credit card to pay for the balance that the HPA won’t pay. Piece of cake.”

Ten years ago funding domestically made products like this would have been impossibly difficult. Today such a system can be put into place within months (at least on a limited basis initially), and become a necessary and powerful tool to be used down the road to address future economic issues. All the pieces are already in place. It could, in fact, provide the framework for a less intrusive, and consumption based tax method as we begin to deal the the problems inherent in today’s income tax methods. It is, in short, a no-brainer.

Today is “Al-Quds (Jerusalem) Day” (not to be confused with the Israeli “Jerusalem Day” held in May) an Iranian-invented occasion to call for the wiping off of Israel from the Middle East map. In celebration of the day Mahmoud Ahbmadinejad, of course, has already spewed his nonsense that Israel’s existence is illegal (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/909545.html). So I think Israel supporters should also have Jerusalem day to show our support for Israel. In particular I think it’s important for all Americans to finally accept why we owe such support to the Jews.

What if you were given irrefutable evidence that top American and British leaders knew that Jews were ignominiously being slaughtered by the millions in 1942, but kept it hush-hush until late 1945, after which time most of the 9 million European Jews were quietly being executed in concentration camps ? The “final solution” didn’t really happen until 1942, so that would cover by far most of the concentration camp deaths. What if those deaths all occurred because most Jews thought they were just being “relocated” so they didn’t put up much of a fight? What if it could have been significantly avoided if of the US and the UK made the most meager efforts to notify the Jewish people (air-dropping leaflets was a daily occurrence), but instead they covered it up?

Well … that’s exactly what happened. Yes, our leaders were quietly complicit in the murder of millions of Jews over the space of a few years. This has been publicly known for over 30 years now, but I never heard about it throughout my public school education. I’m sure it still isn’t taught, although I don’t know why it isn’t. The point is that Roosevelt and his whole cabinet knew it was happening and suppressed the distribution of that information.

You don’t believe me? As I said, it’s thoroughly well documented. Read these excerpts from a speech (http://www.theopavlidis.com/reprints/matsas/part1.htm) given a few years ago to the Jewish Community Center in DC by Dr. Michael Matsas, an expert on the subject (Read his book if you want the documented references):

American diplomats stationed in Istanbul and Cairo sent advice to Washington, as to how the Greek Jews could be saved. The documents with such advice were ignored and were filed in the National Archives, where I was the first one to discover them in 1975. I found over 500 pages of such documents, thanks to the “Freedom of Information Act.” The Allies with their silence helped the Germans in the slaughter of the Jews. The Allies with their silence eliminated even our instinct of survival, which in case of danger, orders you to hide, flee, or fight. They preferred to damage even their own military interests The Germans needed few soldiers to capture Jews who did not offer any resistance.Thanks to the abandonment of the Jews by our British and American allies, thousands of able Jewish men and women were led like lambs to the slaughter houses of the death camps. It is abundantly clear now that the United States knew about the mass killing of the Jews as early as July 1941. In October 1941 the American Military Attache in Berlin reported, “The normal procedure for the Nazis upon taking over a city in the East, was to establish local commandos, to separate the Jews, and to shoot them.” A logical conclusion, writes Richard Breitman, was that the deportees would also be killed if sent to the East.On August 1, 1942, a German businessman transmitted to the World Jewish Congress in Switzerland the information that Hitler had ordered the liquidation of all Jews throughout the territories occupied by Germany. The information was transmitted to England and the United States. John Pehle, the Executive Director of the War Refugee Board, made the following comments in a recent TV documentary: “The State Department was actively suppressing information about the Holocaust, while Undersecretary of State Breckinridge Long tried to cover it up. By suppressing information, the Government becomes an accomplice in what the Germans were doing, by hiding information from the American public. Officials of the Treasury Department who discovered the State Department’s deliberate obstruction of rescue efforts, revealed the “nasty scandal” in a report entitled, “Acquiescence of this Government in the Murder of the Jews of Europe.”A rabbi from Baltimore, Maryland, in a bitter sermon, suggested that, “If we had any Jewish dignity, we would picket the White House and demand that the President use his influence to stop the killing of the Jews.” Within an hour, the Board of his Congregation fired him, for his disrespect of President Roosevelt, who was beloved by the American Jews and who received 90% of their votes. In November 1942 Rabbi Stephen Wise publicly announced the murder of over two million Jews. In a meeting with the President, Roosevelt declared, “The Government of the United States is very well acquainted with most of the facts that you are now bringing to our attention.” Professor David Wyman said in his book, “The Abandonment of the Jews,” that “anti-Semitism was widespread and the State Department was actively blocking information about the genocide and deliberately obstructed rescue efforts. The press had little to say and this was in the inner pages. The President refused to focus on the issue. The United States and Great Britain were deeply committed to a policy of not rescuing the Jews, while, if the US accepted a policy of rescue, hundreds of thousands would have been saved and in the process it would have rescued the conscience of the nation.” Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau wrote, “We knew in Washington from August 1942 on that the Nazis were planning the extermination of all the Jews of Europe. Yet for nearly 18 months, the State Department did practically nothing. Officials procrastinated or suppressed information about atrocities.” Why did the Government of the United States demonstrate such hostility toward the European Jews? In the TV documentary “America and the Holocaust – Deceit and Indifference,” I believe there is the answer to this question. “Pervasive anti-Semitism dominated the US in 1940. Jews were unacceptable to many employers and they were unwelcome in resorts and country clubs.” Saving the Jews of Europe should have been a moral obligation for the US and not simply a humanitarian act. Five hundred fifty thousand American Jews served with distinction in the Armed Forces of the United States. Eleven thousand were killed, 40,000 were wounded, and almost all of them had relatives in Europe who were abandoned to the hands of the Germans. Those in power in the American government rejected thousands of applications for immigration to this enormous country. Among these applications was that of Anne Frank’s family in Amsterdam. While 6 million Jews were dying in Europe, the United States was becoming a nuclear superpower, thanks to Jewish scientists like Albert Einstein, Oppenheimer, Zillard, Teller, Rabbi, and Admiral Hyman Rickover (inventor of the nuclear submarine), while the relatives of these Jews were left to die in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Treblinka. The abandonment of the European Jews by President Franklin D. Roosevelt became obvious when he refused entry to this immense country to the 900 German Jews of the “St. Louis.” Six hundred of them eventually were killed by the Germans. Why is there so much Christian hate toward the Jews? I discussed this subject with a professor of theology at Cornell University who did not know that I am a Jew. He concluded, “Killing the Jews is not enough.” “What can be worse than killing them?” I asked with obvious surprise and shock. “Eternal damnation,” was his reply. I wonder what Jesus would say, if he knew in what kind of degradation fell his noble teachings like “Love your neighbor as you would yourself’ or “Don’t do to others what you don’t want them to do to you.” I conclude with a poem by Yitzhak Katznelson, which was written a few days before the Germans killed him, and it seems to be appropriate even today. Sure enough, the nations did not interfere, nor did they protest, Nor shake their heads, nor did they warn the murderers. Never a murmur. It was as if the leaders of the nations Were afraid that the killings might stop.

It stinks when history thumps you on the head. In the defense of those who heard second-hand (like most Church leaders) I’m sure that for most the stories and numbers were just to horrific to be believed as people learned about it through the American rumor mill, but that’s no excuse for the grievous level of apathy - though I think we see the same thing today with regard to the genocide in Darfur, Sierra Leone, and Tibet. Admittedly when this information first came my way my initial gut reaction was that this insidious covertness was never practiced by our leaders, followed by an assumption that there must have been a good reason that they kept quiet, but of course the very idea is ludicrous. Six million European Jews, that’s 2 out of every 3, were murdered and our elected leaders were silent partners for much of the slaughter.

So says Benjamin Netanyahu, former Prime Minister from Israel. This clip is about a week old, but it is incredibly good. It’s one of those little blurbs that gets lost in the shuffle that speaks loads of wisdom that is lost on even the most respected thinkers of our time.



PM Netanyahu makes some extremely good points - the first being the fragility of democracy.Then there’s the insidious attitude of apathy so prevalent among the left side with regard to the danger jihadists like Mahmoud present. They see him as a harmless funny little man, just as Hitler was perceived, and not so long ago. Mahmoud and Hitler share far too much in common. I shudder to consider what liberally bent teachers are telling our kids - that all leaders of all foreign nations are respectable diplomats with sovereign authority which should be appreciated and respected. Not where I come from. Respect is earned, no matter who you are, and Mahmoud is the least deserving of all.

Our nation’s forefathers would never have given a platform of legitimacy to a terrorist bent on world domination the the genocide of any people. The thought is ludicrous. There are public spaces for that, including the internet and news networks like Al Jazeera. A state sponsored university however is a platform of legitimacy - by the mere invitation the University legitimized Ahmadinejad’s genocidal and holocaust denying views. It matters little how degrading was the introduction that the leader of that forum gave to Mr. Mahmoud “I want a jihad”. Would such an audience be given to a known pedophile as if he was a respectable diplomat? There is no doubt that he is developing a nuclear weapons program. Even after it’s built, a nuclear energy plant would cost him far more than Oil-based energy. If he want to save his economy the economical thing to do is build refineries.

But Mahmoud wants fissionable material - easily garnered from nuclear waste. He has also made it clear that the bomb will drop will drop on Israel as soon as it’s developed. What I find amazing is the apathy among the liberal left - almost as if they’re saying “not my problem”, but Netanyahu is probably closer to understanding their apathy as being a lack of understanding or belief.

There’s been so much of this crossing of the protective line of democracy that we’re playing a veritable game of hopscotch with the devil, and it’s only a matter of time until we loose the game.