NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Evidence Is Piling Up That Higher Minimum Wages Kill Jobs President Obama says there is ‘no solid evidence.’ Yes there is—lots of it. By David Neumark

Posted By on December 16th, 2015

The movement to raise the federal minimum wage has become ever more ambitious. In 2013 proponents deemed $9 an hour acceptable; today the demand is for $15.

Economists point to a crucial question: Will a higher minimum wage reduce the number of jobs for the country’s least skilled workers? President Obama says “there is no solid evidence that a higher minimum wage costs jobs.” On the contrary, a full and fair reading of the evidence shows the opposite. Raising the minimum wage will cost jobs, particularly those held by the least-skilled.

Economists have written scores of papers on the topic dating back 100 years, and the vast majority of these studies point to job losses for the least-skilled. They are based on fundamental economic reasoning—that when you raise the price of something, in this case labor, less of it will be demanded, or in this case hired.

Among the many studies supporting this conclusion is one completed earlier this year by Texas A&M’s Jonathan Meer and MIT’s Jeremy West, which reaffirmed that “the minimum wage reduces job growth over a period of several years” and that “industries that tend to have a higher concentration of low-wage jobs show more deleterious effects on job growth from higher minimum wages.”

The broader research confirms this. An extensive survey of decades of minimum-wage research, published by William Wascher of the Federal Reserve Board and me in a 2008 book titled “Minimum Wages,” generally found a 1% or 2% reduction for teenage or very low-skill employment for each 10% minimum-wage increase.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

The IRS Targets Political Donors A new rule encourages nonprofits to turn over Social Security numbers.

Posted By on December 16th, 2015

The IRS regulatory assault on political nonprofits continues, albeit out of the media glare. In September the Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department proposed a rule to give 501(c)(3) charities the “option” of filing detailed reports on every donor who contributes more than $250. These reports would include names, addresses and Social Security numbers. Oh, oh.

While the IRS says the rule is “voluntary,” in government that’s often a prelude to compulsory. The legitimate fear in the nonprofit world, on the right and left, is that this is a first step toward making such donor lists mandatory, and then applying the requirement to every nonprofit—including the conservative social-welfare organizations that the IRS helped to shut down in the 2012 presidential election.

Under current law, nonprofits must report only donors who give more than $5,000 a year, and then only names and addresses. Donors who give less than $5,000 to (c)(3) charities, and who want to claim a tax deduction, must obtain a “receipt” from the charity—to furnish to the IRS if they are audited or examined. This process has been in place for years, and even Treasury and the IRS acknowledge in their new rule that it “works effectively, with the minimal burden on donors and donees.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

North Korea Gives Christian Pastor Life in Prison Lim Hyeon-soo had been in detention since February, was charged with ‘state subversive plots and activities’ By Jonathan Cheng….See note please

Posted By on December 16th, 2015

Little Kim goes unchallenged in human rights abuses…after the dismal policies of Clinton and Dubya Bush which supposedly “reset” relations with the thugs of North Korea…..rsk
SEOUL—North Korea’s Supreme Court sentenced Korean-Canadian pastor Lim Hyeon-soo, who had been in detention since February, to life in prison with hard labor.

Mr. Lim, the pastor of Light Korean Presbyterian Church in Mississauga, Ontario, is the latest in a string of Christian missionaries who have been detained and sentenced to hard labor in North Korea, which worships its founder, Kim Il Sung, as a deity and views the spread of organized religion as a threat to the ruling family’s grip on power.

Mr. Lim was accused of committing “state subversive plots and activities,” according to North Korea’s official mouthpiece, the Korea Central News Agency.

The agency said Mr. Lim had “committed anti-DPRK religious activities” and acted with U.S. and South Korean authorities “to lure and abduct DPRK citizens,” using the acronym for North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

U.N. Experts Say Iran Missile Firing Violated Sanctions Report says Iran is focusing on improving accuracy By Farnaz Fassihi and Laurence Norman

Posted By on December 16th, 2015

Iran violated a United Nations Security Council resolution by testing a new ballistic missile in October, a panel of experts found in a confidential report, increasing pressure on the Obama administration as it moves to implement a separate international nuclear deal with Tehran.

U.S. officials asked the Security Council on Tuesday to address the Oct. 10 test and a second launch on Nov. 21 of a ballistic missile capable of delivering atomic weapons. The council, however, adjourned without taking action.

The developments are part of a complicated welter of sanctions on Iran from the U.N. and individual countries over its ballistic missile and nuclear programs. The U.S. and five world powers struck a deal with Iran to lift economic sanctions on Tehran in exchange for limits on its nuclear program, which Iran has always maintained is peaceful.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Tashfeen Malik’s Jihadist Social-Media Posts Were Deliberately Ignored by the Feds By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on December 16th, 2015

San Bernardino mass-murderer Tashfeen Malik wrote social-media posts that endorsed jihad and expressed disdain for America. Yet, that did not cause U.S. immigration agents to question her admission into our country, much less deny it. In fact, our government consciously avoided learning about Malik’s Islamist rants.

Commentators stunned by this dereliction are attributing it to “secret” guidance issued by the Department of Homeland Security. In truth, there is nothing secret about it. The instruction to refrain from scrutinizing social-media commentary, a precious source of intelligence, is a straightforward application of what passes for the official Obama administration “anti”-terrorism strategy, known as “Countering Violent Extremism.”

Malik, a native Pakistani, who immigrated to the United States in July after living for a time in Saudi Arabia, joined her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, in slaying 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., earlier this month. The jihad’s Bonnie and Clyde were finally killed in a gun battle with police.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

German Chancellor to Obama: Don’t ask for more help fighting ISIS : Jim Kouri

Posted By on December 16th, 2015

On Monday, President Barack Obama opened a rare meeting of his National Security Council at the Pentagon, in an effort to put “lipstick on the pig” which is his strategy for fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) abroad and its sympathizers at home. During his press briefing he gave few details about his meeting at the Pentagon, and didn’t even mention that Germany’s leader, Chancellor Angela Merkel, on Sunday turned down a request from the United States to provide even more military involvement in the fight against ISIS.

“I believe Germany is fulfilling its part and we don’t need to talk about new issues related to this question at the moment,” Merkel told the German news media about her response to Obama’s request on Saturday.

The German newspaper Der Spiegel reported that U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter sent a letter to Chancellor Merkel asking for an additional military commitment from Germany, just one week after parliament approved a plan to join the anti-terrorism campaign in Syria.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Obama’s Middle East Delusions by Efraim Karsh

Posted By on December 16th, 2015

As the only person to have won the Nobel Peace Prize on the basis of sheer hope rather than actual achievement, Barack Hussein Obama could be expected to do everything within his power to vindicate this unprecedented show of trust. Instead he has presided over a clueless foreign policy that has not only exacerbated ongoing regional conflicts but made the world a far more dangerous place. Nowhere has this phenomenon been more starkly demonstrated than in the Middle East where the Nobel laureate has abetted Tehran’s drive for regional hegemony and brought the regime within a stone’s throw of nuclear weapons; driven Iraq and Libya to the verge of disintegration; expedited the surge of Islamist terrorism; exacerbated the Syrian civil war and its attendant refugee problem; made the intractable Palestinian-Israeli conflict almost irresolvable; and plunged Washington’s regional influence and prestige to unprecedented depths,[1] paving the road in grand style to Russia’s resurgence.
Duped by the Mullahs

Consider Tehran’s quest for nuclear weapons, perhaps the foremost threat to Middle Eastern stability, if not to world peace, in the foreseeable future. In a sharp break from the Bush administration’s attempts to coerce the mullahs to desist from this relentless drive, which culminated in five U.N. Security Council resolutions imposing a string of escalating economic sanctions,[2] Obama opted for the road of “engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect”[3] with the presumptuous aim of mending the 30-year-long U.S.-Iranian breach and reintegrating the Islamist regime in Tehran into the international system.

BOOKS Comments turned off

When Silence is Not an Option — on The Glazov Gang

Posted By on December 16th, 2015

The Islamic State continues to perpetrate its barbaric terror right before our eyes, referencing Islamic texts and teachings as it commits its evil acts. The Obama administration and the U.S. media, meanwhile, continue their leftist mantra after each Islamic terror attack: “This is not Islam.”

In response to this mass denial in our government and culture, we are running The Glazov Gang’s feature interview with Dr. Ari Babaknia, an Iranian-born doctor who wrote and published a 4-volume book in Farsi “The Holocaust” (which in English is “Humanity, NOT”).

He discusses “Humanity, NOT,” which takes an in-depth look, in words and images, at the captured emotions of the victims, perpetrators, bystanders, and survivors of the Holocaust, told in their own words.

Dr. Babaknia focuses on the evil of genocide, the indifference of man in the face of evil, and when silence is not an option. The point is emphasized in the discussion that these are phenomena directly interlinked with our civilization’s silence and impotence today in the face of Islamic Jihad:

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Homeland Security Priorities to Watch in 2016 by Chuck Brooks, Federal Times

Posted By on December 15th, 2015

Key homeland security priorities to watch in 2016

Charles (Chuck) Brooks serves as the vice president for government relations & marketing for Sutherland Government Solutions. He served at the Department of Homeland Security as the first director of legislative affairs for the Science & Technology Directorate.

2015 was a year that brought homeland security back into the limelight, with increased terror threats both domestic and globally, and alarmingly sophisticated cyberattacks against government, its workforce and citizens. Readiness levels are again paralleling the post 9/11 environment.

So where shall the Department of Homeland Security focus its efforts in 2016?

Counterterrorism

A top priority of DHS, along with law enforcement, the Department of Defense, and the intelligence community, will be to preempt and monitor potential terrorists. The change in risk environments necessitates greater DHS collaboration with these agencies, and will include more outreach to the private sector stakeholders who owns most of the nation’s vital infrastructure.

Secretary Jeh Johnson already announced that DHS will unveil a new situational awareness terror alert system that will reflect the current security environment when “not having a specific credible piece of intelligence specifying a plot isn’t the end of the story.” All areas of transportation, including maritime, rails, and aviation will received increased monitoring.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Haaretz buries the lede by Ruthie Blum

Posted By on December 15th, 2015

Defending his decision to address the HaaretzQ-New Israel Fund conference in New York on ‎Monday, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin called the left-wing newspaper, which he said he has ‎been reading for the last 70 years, a “beacon of freedom.” ‎

He got that wrong. Israel is the “beacon of freedom” that enables such a publication to grace its ‎pages with content that, when not crossing the line into treason, is merely shameful in its blatant ‎delegitimization of the Jewish state.‎

That its conference was engaged in doing the same came as no surprise. Nor was the fact that ‎organizers removed the Israeli flag from the podium area at the behest of Palestinian Authority ‎chief “peace” negotiator Saeb Erekat.‎