Maggie's Farm

The Democrats are exultant over the preliminary CBO score (preliminary because even the Congressional Budget Office hasn’t had time to examine whether it jives with the previous Senate bill) issued this morning. The score (costing) is on the Democrats’ reconciliation adjustments to the Senate ObamaCare bill that it remains under $1-trillion in spending and that together with added revenues will further reduce the deficit.

There’s increasing amazement at this bald-faced assertion. The real score will be seen this weekend in the Democrats' trickery vote and the consequences they face next November.

The Republican leadership is still trying to decipher the fine print, but are quickly getting to the bottom line.  Senator McConnell issued a press release saying: “They get there with even higher taxes and deeper Medicare cuts than the first Senate bill. 

“Let’s start with Medicare cuts.

“The Senate bill that Speaker Pelosi said Democrats are so afraid to take a vote on cut Medicare by $465 billion.“This latest bill increases those cuts by about $60 billion more.

“How about taxes?

“The Senate bill that Democrats are so afraid to take a vote on raises taxes by $494 billion.

“This bill increases those tax hikes by at least $150 billion.

“So if you were worried about raising taxes in the middle of a recession, this bill raises taxes even more.

“If you were worried about cutting Medicare for seniors, this bill cuts it even more.

That’s real.  There’s more that’s real and unreal. The $500-billion taken from Medicare is real in its impact on seniors' health.  That doctors will have their fees further reduced is not real, many already operating at a loss on Medicare business and losses being shifted on to private insurance plans.  The tens of billions of spending in future years mandated upon the already near-bankrupt states for expanded Medicaid is real, though not counted by CBO.  The negative impacts on employment and the economy are real.

The Washington Post’s WonkRoom says:

One of the most stunning numerical changes is in the excise tax on Cadillac plans. While the bill changes the indexing from inflation plus 1 to inflation — strengthening the provision [ed: meaning another buy-off to unions] — it pushes back the entire effort to 2018 and significantly raises the thresholds. I suspect the bill makes up the difference with the payroll tax and the savings from the college loan provisions. More to come.

The Washington Post reports on throwing into the unrelated health care bill the entirely unrelated federal takeover (except for Democrat Senator Conrad’s state) of student loan lending:

The legislation would also spread some savings among other Democratic education priorities and reduce the deficit by $10 billion over 10 years.

On the Cadillac Tax, the New York Times reports:

Mr. Obama and White House officials reached a deal with organized labor groups to delay the implementation and limit the impact of that tax. As a result, the excise tax will raise only $32 billion over 10 years, according to the budget office.

Of course, that meant coming up with another $118 billion elsewhere to plug the hole. Not a problem: the final legislation imposes a 3.8 percent tax on “unearned income” such as dividends and interest, or on regular income above $200,000 a year for individuals and $250,000 for couples.

The National Taxpayers Union says:

On page 8 of the report (found here) the CBO lists a quick add up of the kinds of new taxes and penalties they believe the American people will be facing in the next decade should this legislation pass.  Turns out by 2019, this bill would be responsible for an additional 145 billion in taxes and penalties.  Of which, 17 billion will be penalties paid by the uninsured (read: people making under $250,000) and 52 billion will be penalties paid by employers.  Imagine trying to job hunt then!  Whats more, thats really only a 6 year estimate because the politicians who crafted the bill wanted to make sure no new taxes were put in place before they had to face re-election.  Which means a ten year score (2014-2024) of the taxes and penalties would be significantly higher.

Page 24 of today’s preliminary CBO score says that $129.7 billion will be taken from Medicare Advantage plans, versus the $118.1 billion the CBO said a week ago would be taken away.

Then there’s the timing shenanigan of loading revenues up front and costs at the backend of the first 10-years.

What else lurks in the hearts of the Democrats rammming down a non-roll call vote they are planning for this weekend? Will a stake be driven through it?

P.S.: Federal budgets expert Keith Hennessey adds much more info.

President Obama has jettisoned the US’ Grand Strategy that since World War II protected Western interests, according to Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace writing in the Washington Post.

The old strategy rested on a global network of formal military and political alliances, mostly though not exclusively with fellow democracies. The idea, Averell Harriman explained in 1947, was to create "a balance of power preponderantly in favor of the free countries." Under Bill Clinton, and the two Bushes, relations with Europe and Japan, and later India, were deepened and strengthened.

What has Obama replaced it with:

Israelis shouldn't feel that they have been singled out. In Britain, people are talking about the end of the "special relationship" with America and worrying that Obama has no great regard for the British, despite their ongoing sacrifices in Afghanistan. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy has openly criticized Obama for months (and is finally being rewarded with a private dinner, presumably to mend fences). In Eastern and Central Europe, there has been fear since the administration canceled long-planned missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic that the United States may no longer be a reliable guarantor of security.

Meanwhile:

Who has attracted attention in the Obama administration? The answer, so far, seems to be not America's allies but its competitors, and in some cases its adversaries. If there were a way to measure administration exertion in foreign policy, the meter would show the greatest concentration of energy, beyond the war in Afghanistan, has been devoted to four endeavors: the failed first-year attempt to improve relations with Iran; the ongoing attempt to improve relations with Russia; the stalled effort to improve cooperation with China; and the effort -- fruitless so far -- to prove to the Arab states that the United States is willing to pressure Israel to further the peace process. Add to these the efforts to improve relations with Syria, engage Burma and everything with Af-Pak, and not much has been left for the concerns of our allies.

Obama's Wiley Coyote foreign policy is taking the US and its allies over the cliff with him.

What the heck is the Hurva, and what is its current role in Israel-Palestinian and Israel-US tensions?  The Hurva (“ruin” or “wreck” in Hebrew) has become a target for the Palestinian campaign to denigrate Israel’s Jewish heritage, and the Obama administration is cooperating.

Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu is trying to avoid being smeared as was former Prime Minister Sharon as justification for Palestinian attacks upon Israel and Israelis, that the Obama administration is in its misguided incompetence encouraging.

Former Prime Minister Sharon was falsely accused of inciting the Second Intifada by the Palestinians by his visit to the Temple Mount in September 2000. However, on December 6, 2000, the semi-official Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam reported as follows:

Speaking at a symposium in Gaza, Palestinian Minister of Communications, Imad Al-Falouji, confirmed that the Palestinian Authority had begun preparations for the outbreak of the current Intifada from the moment the Camp David talks concluded, this in accordance with instructions given by Chairman Arafat himself.

Before Israel’s independence, the most important synagogue in Jerusalem was the Hurva.  The Hurva sat on the high ground in the Jewish Quarter.

Here’s an aerial photo from 1940. The Jewish quarter is at the bottom of the image. The two large domes are the Hurva Synagogue, at the lower right, and the Tiferes Yisrael Synagogue.  Both were destroyed by the Jordanians in 1948, after starving out the Jewish inhabitants of the Jewish Quarter.

In 1948, British officers led their Arab Legion to destroy the Hurva, and other synagogues in the Jewish Quarter. The Jordanian commander is reported saying: "For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter. Not a single building remains intact. This makes the Jews' return here impossible." In sum:

After the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem was captured, the destruction, desecration and systematic looting of Jewish sites began and continued. 57 ancient synagogues (the oldest dated to the 13th century), libraries and centers of religious study were ransacked and 12 were totally and deliberately destroyed. Those that remained standing were defaced, used for housing of both people and animals. The city's foremost Jewish shrine, the Western Wall, became a slum. Appeals were made to the United Nations and in the international community to declare the Old City to be an 'open city' and stop this destruction, but there was no response. This condition continued until Jordan lost control of Jerusalem in June 1967.

Christians also suffered under Jordanian rule.

In 1958, Jordanian legislation required all members of the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre to adopt Jordanian citizenship. In 1965, Christian institutions were forbidden to acquire any land or rights in or near Jerusalem. In 1966, Christian schools were compelled to close on Fridays instead of Sundays, customs privileges of Christian religious institutions were abolished.

Israel commemorated the Hurva site with an arch.

Eight years ago a reconstruction of the Hurva started, and is to be opened this Monday.

(Notice that the nearby Moslem minaret is undamaged under Israeli rule, as all Moslem and Christian sites are not damaged by Israel, in contrast to the fate of Jewish sites under Moslem rule.)

As an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal concludes: “What is clear is that the inauguration of the old-new Hurva—twice destroyed, and now twice rebuilt—represents a deep and irrepressible Israeli urge to heal and rebuild, not in order to obscure memory but to preserve it.”

But, the Palestinians, seeking another way to attack Israel’s Jewish history, claim that the new Hurva is part of a plot to take away their Al Aqsa Mosque built upon the Mount where the Jewish Holy Temple stood.

Saraya, the Islamic Jihad newspaper, says that Hurva is being built on an Islamic neighborhood, and says that the construction of the Third Temple will commence on March 16th. The Al Aqsa Heritage Foundation says that the Hurva dedication will take place on Sunday and Monday, also to be followed by the public start of the building of the Third Temple, as well as more Jews "storming" Al Aqsa for Passover at the end of the month.

The Palestinians are encouraged by the Obama administration’s reaction in February to Israel naming two of Judaism’s holiest sites as heritage sites, to be renovated.

The Obama administration sharply criticized Israel on Wednesday [February 24]  for designating the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel's Tomb, both in West Bank cities, to the list of Jewish heritage sites marked for renovation and preservation….

This reflected the Obama administration’s anxiety to show some progress after a year of alienating Israel and encouraging Palestinian intransigence by getting the Palestinians to agree to non-face-to-face talks with Israel.

Israel has good reason to be protective of its heritage sites, as demonstrated by the October 2000 Palestinian sacking and burning of Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus and the September 2000 destruction of archeological remnants of the Jewish Temple on the Mount. Other examples.

Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu has decided not to personally attend the ceremony for the reopened Hurva.  He says he’s “busy”.  Knowledgeables in Israel say that Netanyahu is afraid of being provocative in the wake of the Obama administration’s stink about adding Rachel’s Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs to the heritage sites for renovation and protection. The Obama administration added stink in a teapot during Vice President Biden’s visit to Israel last week, protesting Israel’s right to build within Jerusalem, although Jerusalem was excluded by a previous Israeli ban to please Obama and the unpleasable Palestinians on building in the West Bank.  The Obama administration adds fuel to the fire that Netanyahu is trying to avoid with the Palestinians by actually encouraging further intransigence by the Palestinians.

We know the Palestinians won’t be satisfied by anything less than the utter destruction of Israel.  The Obama administration is on the same course of destroying Israel’s ability to be Jewish.

As Caroline Glick said last June in receiving a prestigious honor: “Our enemies are right in choosing their targets. They are right because they know who we are. We are the children of Jerusalem, of Zion. Our physical and spiritual survival is dependent on our willingness to dedicate our lives in every generation to guarding both the physical and spiritual walls of this city. “

P.S.: Worth reading at the Washington Post. The unreality of Obama's Israel policy.  Also see Obamá's latest pretext for attacking Israel at Powerline.

UPDATE March 16: The New York Times reports on the Hurva dedication, sorta.  But forgets to mention that Hamas announced a "day of rage" for Tuesday and that Fatah echoes in competition for being worthy negotiation partners, according to Obama anyway.

The Washington Post’s editors took Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to task in February 2009 when she downplayed speaking out about human rights abuses during her trip to China. She'd said: "We have to continue to press them. But our pressing on those issues can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis."  The Chinese were delighted. The Washington Post editors pointed out that the US speaking out hasn’t interfered in the past when there are mutual goals, “But Ms. Clinton's statement will have an effect: It will demoralize thousands of democracy advocates in China, and it will cause many others around the world to wonder about the character of the new U.S. administration.”

Last December, Hillary Clinton clarified. In an address at Georgetown University:

Under the first element of the agenda, Clinton said the United States would be working to hold everyone accountable for human rights in their countries. In order to “reinforce our moral authority,” she said, the U.S. will lead by example by way of reporting figures for human trafficking that occur within its borders for the first time.

Clinton said that while holding other accountable could entail public denunciations of a country’s leaders, “other times our negotiations would take place behind closed doors,” such as with China and Russia.

The second element, “principled pragmatism,” also applies to China and Russia especially, she said. The administration can deplore the murders of Russian journalists and violation of minority rights in China, but “the assumption that we must either pursue democratic rights or [national strategy] is wrong.”

The third element involved partnering with and supporting groups like NGOs which share U.S. goals, and the fourth involved highlighting success stories and rejecting the notion that some situations cannot be remedied.

Tomorrow, Monday, Sec. Clinton has the opportunity to effect her third element.

The Wall Street Journal editorial highlights Friend and Faux on Human Rights:

Some of the world’s most courageous champions of human rights will convene today, Monday, March 8, in Geneva, seat of the United Nations’s Human Rights Council [where gross human rights violator Iran is up for possible election to the UN Human Rights Council].  But don’t expect the Council itself to welcome these distinguished visitors.

The Geneva Summit -- organized by groups such as U.N. Watch and Freedom House, and chaired by Poland’s Lech Walesa and the Czech Republic’s Vaclav Havel -- will bring together political dissidents from China, Iran and Burma, rights activists for the Tibetan and Uighur peoples, a survivor of the North Korean gulag, plus a former Sudanese slave named Simon Deng who plans to speak about “the gross human-rights abuses by radical jihadists and the Islamic government in Khartoum.…

In 1975, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote that it was time “that the American spokesman came to be feared in international forums for the truths he might tell.” In Geneva today, the real truth tellers will be meeting down the block from the Council’s chambers. It would be nice to see the U.S. ambassador show up.

The world’s oppressed await.