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« on: December 29, 2013, 01:21:11 AM » |
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The Patriot Post Monday Digest 11-25-2013
From The Federalist Patriot
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THE FOUNDATION
“A universal peace, it is to be feared, is in the catalogue of events, which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts.” –James Madison
NATIONAL SECURITY
You Want it Bad, You’ll Get it Bad
On Saturday, the six nations negotiating with Iran reached an interim agreement that will, allegedly, “freeze or roll back Iran’s nuclear program,” according to The Washington Post. A careful reading of the agreement1 tells a very different story.
This six-month agreement costs Iran nothing that cannot be easily reversed while loosening the Western sanctions that took years to put in place. And the deal is based on the notion of negotiating a follow-on deal more contentious than anything yet attempted. In other words, Iran pretends to play nice for six months, during which time it receives sanctions relief and the freeing of some frozen assets, and next summer we’ll be back to late 2006, trying to cobble together support for sanctions all over again.
Iran is required to abstain from further centrifuge installation – but not to cease centrifuge enrichment. Iran’s stockpile of 3.5% enriched uranium is frozen at its current level – but not diminished. Iran’s stockpile of 20% enriched uranium is halved, with one half merely reduced back to 5% enriched. Iran will cease construction of the Arak heavy water reactor – but not dismantle it (the facility is more than 90% finished). Iran will allow intrusive daily inspections of its nuclear facilities – but not Parchin. And when the agreement expires and the two sides come to a stalemate over the follow-on deal, Iran walks away with tens of billions of dollars back in its economy and with its oil industry once again exporting on a large scale. Remember that China has massive energy requirements and several existing energy cooperation deals with Iran as well as veto power over any future agreements.
Secretary of State John Kerry, displaying the same mastery of international affairs that once led him to call Syria “an essential player in bringing peace and stability to the region,” claimed with a straight face that Israel (and presumably everyone else) is safer now than it was before clinching the agreement. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted, saying, “Today the world has become a much more dangerous place because the most dangerous regime in the world has taken a significant step toward attaining the most dangerous weapon in the world.” Our editorial standards board says we can’t print what Bibi’s private reaction likely was.
As we have said before, the Obama administration is so desperate to achieve a deal with Iran that it matters not what the details of that deal are. This deal greatly harms the sanctions regime that was put in place with enormous effort over a period of five years, while imposing only a six-month timeout on Iran. It leaves unresolved the issue of whether Iran can or cannot enrich uranium. And it does not dismantle a single facility or remove a single kilogram of uranium from Iran. Somewhere in the lower depths of hell, the late Ayatollah “Old Whiskers” Khomeini is probably smiling right now.
Looking for Value
There were big changes at The Patriot Post this year. In August, we combined Friday’s Digest with Monday’s Brief and Wednesday’s Chronicle – four analytical news reports followed by quotes from the best of the Web’s conservative opinion and assorted quotes from leftists in politics and the media. Our team puts together each Digest by sifting through countless news and opinion articles to boil the issues down to their essence and give you what you need to know, three days a week.
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GOVERNMENT & POLITICS
Preparing the Next Budget Showdown
Congress is working to hammer out details of the next budget agreement, and it’s likely that spending will increase. The 2011 sequester resulted from budget negotiations at that time, but both sides have been looking for ways to undo it ever since. Barack Obama’s favorite strategy is to make any kind of cuts – even those that merely reduce spending growth, not nominal spending – as painful as possible, particularly the defense cuts that were part of the sequester.
And those cuts were broad and unbalanced. Defense suffered cuts far exceeding its share of the budget, and Obama has targeted those cuts to deliberately weaken our military readiness4. (For the record, however, the Department of Defense has a significant amount of waste, fraud and constant cost overruns. F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, anyone?) Some House Republicans have already taken the bait and are trying to bust Obama’s spending caps, and Senate Republicans may follow suit when they take up the National Defense Authorization Act, which spends $54 million more than the caps.
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is no fan of the defense cuts, but advocates keeping them because, he rightly points out, Obama will only accept increased military spending in exchange for higher taxes and/or increased spending on his own pet projects. For example, whenever entitlement reform comes up, the White House begins with a ransom demand: $1 trillion in tax hikes. And once again, Republicans are finding it difficult to present a unified front.
Obama’s latest trial balloon for negotiations would eliminate the debt ceiling, which he called a “loaded gun.” He also said, “We’re probably better off with a system in which that threat is not there on a perpetual basis.” Actually, we’re undoubtedly better off with a government that institutes fair taxation and then spends within its means, but there’s no chance of that any time soon, either.
ECONOMY, REGS & TAXES
Keystone Cops Oppose Rail, Too
As we have reported on numerous occasions, the Keystone XL pipeline – meant to transport Canadian oil sands to the U.S. Gulf Coast for refinement – has been stalled by ecofascists who hold sway with the Obama administration. The White House has repeatedly stalled to grant the proper permits for the pipeline, appeasing those ecofascists but displeasing constituent unions who want the thousands of new jobs building and operating the pipeline would create.
We have also recounted how delaying the pipeline won’t accomplish anything but deprive the U.S. of the oil. The Canadians will find a market for their product, most likely in China. In fact, according to The New York Times5, “Suncor Energy, Canada’s top petroleum producer, announced on Thursday that it would expand its oil production in 2014 by 10 percent, another sign that the Obama administration’s delays are not holding back growth in the western Canadian oil sands fields.”
The other option for import to the U.S. is rail, which means opponents have a new target. Indeed, they’re pushing for heavy regulation of rail terminal projects in California, Washington state and elsewhere to block import of these oil sands. Of course, pipelines are safer and more efficient than rail, so perhaps it would make sense to relent on building the Keystone pipeline. But that would require leftists to think with their heads.
CULTURE, SCIENCE & FAITH
Village Academic Curriculum: Feds Try Different Anti-Voucher Tactic
While at first glance it seemed like Eric Holder’s Justice Department was giving Louisiana students a break by dropping the request for a permanent injunction against the state’s voucher program, they instead are trying to bog down the process by reviewing each and every application. This is the opinion of Louisiana Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal, who remarked6 on the change of tactics that “the Department of Justice’s new position is that it wants bureaucrats in Washington to decide where Louisiana children get an education.”
The federal government sued in August to stop Louisiana’s two-year-old voucher program, claiming it ran afoul of a 1975 anti-discrimination injunction against the state. This is despite the fact that 90% of the 8,000 beneficiaries chosen by lottery are low-income minority students who get the opportunity to move from a poor-performing school to a better one. |
