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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TideGlider who wrote (843292)	3/18/2015 12:33:22 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576418

I read it. It does seem like logical spending. How is it logical to keep the cap on domestic programs and lift it for defense spending?

To: TideGlider who wrote (843292)	3/18/2015 12:38:12 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1576418

GOP plays budget games to increase defense spending 03/18/15 10:26 AM—Updated 03/18/15 10:27 AM By Steve Benen For much of the Bush/Cheney era, with the nation fighting two wars in the Middle East, Republican policymakers found it necessary to play some budget tricks. GOP officials in the White House and in Congress had no intention of actually paying for the conflicts, or even including the costs in the budget, so they deemed most war spending an “emergency.” In the Obama era, policymakers made a conscious decision to be more responsible. Yesterday, House Republicans announced they want to re-embrace the Bush-era gimmicks. David Rogers reported: The great Achilles’ heel in the House Republican budget Tuesday can be found in a blue-and-white chart, tucked away on Page 40 and mapping out a 10-year path for the annual appropriations bills that keep the government operating. On the surface, it appears to keep faith with the spirit of the discretionary spending caps under the 2011 Budget Control Act, a major priority for many fiscal conservatives. But to get the votes of party defense hawks, the budget makes a sweeping end run around the caps by declaring an additional $94 billion as emergency spending for the war against terrorism. Four years ago, as part of the Republicans’ debt-ceiling crisis, Congress approved budget caps limiting defense spending. Plenty of GOP lawmakers now regret the policy, known as “the sequester,” and want to spend far more on the Pentagon, even while cutting discretionary spending on literally everything else. And so Republicans are playing a little game, called the “Overseas Contingency Operations” fund. That’s a clumsy way of describing billions of dollars in military spending that, as far as GOP lawmakers are concerned, doesn’t really count. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explained, the House Republican budget plan “adds about $39 billion in 2016 beyond what the Pentagon says it needs for overseas military operations, with the implication that the Pentagon will channel those excess dollars into the regular defense budget…. The plan also adds money for defense above the sequestration levels for the years after 2016. Over the decade, it provides nearly $400 billion in additional defense funding even as it slashes funding for non-defense discretionary programs to record lows.” The funny part is, congressional Republicans, quite recently, denounced the very trick they’re now using. Indeed, just last year, the GOP-led House Budget Committee called the gimmick “a backdoor loophole that undermines the integrity of the budget process.” A year later, that same GOP-led House Budget Committee has embraced the trick it opposes. Why? Because it was the only way Republicans could think of to make their own numbers add up. Complicating matters, the budgetary smoke and mirrors doesn’t make the party’s problems go away. Some Republicans, for example, want even more military spending and are outraged the budget doesn’t eliminate the caps altogether. Others, including some GOP senators, disapprove of the tricks themselves. *Politico* added in a separate report: Senate Republicans on Tuesday panned a House GOP strategy to dramatically boost defense funding by using a contingency fund for war spending – setting up a major clash between the two chambers as the new GOP-controlled Capitol tries to agree on a budget this year. […] “It is a gimmick,” Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo, a member of the Budget Committee, said Tuesday. “To use it in that way, I oppose it.” Watch this space.

To: TideGlider who wrote (843292)	3/18/2015 1:35:40 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1576418

The future still doesn't look rosy for Benjamin Netanyahu FROM Stephen M. Cohen, with contributions from Gershon Shafir Editor’s note: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has scored a victory for his Likud party in the country’s election. He will now seek to form and lead the next government. We asked two scholars for their initial reaction to the election and its potential implications. Short-term gains and long-term shifts Gershon Shafir, Professor of Sociology, University of California San Diego There is no doubt that Prime Minister Netanyahu has pulled an electoral rabbit out of the ballot box at the last possible minute. He did so by cannibalizing the votes of the other parties of the right-wing, or nationalist, bloc. And herein lays his problem. He will be able to form a new government, his fourth. This is a significant short-term accomplishment. But long-term trends threaten him and his bloc. Since 1977, Israel has been electing right-wing governments, with two exceptions: that of Labor leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak who were also generals in a country preoccupied with security. But now, for the first time, a civilian leader from the left, Yitzhak Herzog, presented a credible alternative. Since the 2011 social protest movement, many Israelis have put their stagnant standard of living and the country’s growing economic polarization — among the highest in the world and comparable to the U.S. — at the forefront of their concerns. Another social justice candidate, Moshe Kahalon, also did surprisingly well. Netanyahu, by contrast, is focused on Iran, ISIS, Hamas, and other real and imaginary security threats. He remains vulnerable to the social protest camp. The left bloc has several additional accomplishments to be proud of. The United Arab Party will be the third largest party in the 20th Knesset and will wield a measure of influence Palestinian Arab citizens never have had before in Israel. It is equally significant that this new Arab party chose to emphasize the wishes of its mostly Arab voters for integration and equality with Jews and not for a separatist-nationalist agenda. It is also the case that the momentum of several right-wing projects has been thwarted. Avigdor Lieberman and Naftali Bennett who seemed poised to expand outside the Russian immigrant and national-orthodox camps respectively and shape new and more aggressive and religious-light Israeli identities, saw their parties rapidly shrink in these elections. Finally, a truly troubling alliance of the ultra-orthodox with the most explicitly racist elements of Israeli society didn’t make it into the Knesset. In the longer run, the recovery of the Labor Party (aka the Zionist Union) and the turning back of right-wing ideological projects, will lead to a different Knesset. Election may lead to more divided American Jews Steven M Cohen, Research Professor of Jewish Social Policy at Hebrew Union College, Jewish Institute of Religion The continuation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in office may well deepen divisions within American Jewry over Israel in the coming months and years. Over the last two years, Mr. Netanyahu enjoyed the partnership of centrist political allies and personalities (most prominently, the former Justice Minister Tzipi Livni), the aura of seeming to genuinely seek a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the appearance of a good working relationship with the U.S. president and his secretary of state. Going into the next term of office — should he manage to create a coalition featuring his right-wing allies and the ultra-Orthodox — Mr. Netanyahu will have none of these at his disposal. He alienated (well, fired) his centrist former allies, announced on the day before the election that he would prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state, and partnered with the Republican Congressional leadership in opposition to President Obama. With Obama likely to push for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, American Jews — especially liberals — will find themselves torn between their president and an Israeli prime minister whose supporters, positions, and actions elicit little enthusiasm in Democratic Washington or European capitals. In the U.S., pro-Israel advocates, liberal Zionists, and Palestinian sympathizers will all feel more compelled and more justified to push their agendas forward, sometimes wielding much sharper elbows than in the past — accusing each other of violating Jewish values and endangering the security of Israel and the Jewish People. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. theweek.com