Wealthy Not Immune From Effects of Downturn

Imagine that.

American millionaires have seen their assets shrink by 30 percent during the economic crisis, a report said on Tuesday

They're also just as prone as everyone else to blame their circumstances on someone else.

"While they blame the government and Wall Street directly for the situation, many millionaires are not happy with their advisors' performance and few say they will increase the work they give to advisors," said Catherine McBreen, managing director of Spectrem Group.

Yet government at all levels see additional taxes on the wealthy as the solution to their revenue problems during the downturn.

Read Beyond the Headline

to get the real story.

The school grounds were being used by terrorists to fire mortar shells at troops stationed nearby, and the soldiers responded by firing mortars back, the army said. According to the IDF, the dead included members of the Hamas rocket cell, including senior operatives Imad Abu Askhar and Hassan Abu Askhar.

Defense officials told The Associated Press that booby-trapped bombs in the school had triggered secondary explosions that killed additional Palestinians there.

The response of the UN officials was utterly predictable.

The UN said hundreds of people from a Gaza City refugee camp had gone to seek shelter in the school from the IDF's offensive.

"There's nowhere safe in Gaza. Everyone here is terrorized and traumatized," said John Ging, an Irishman who is the top UN official in Gaza.

"I am appealing to political leaders here, in Israel, and in the region and the world to get their act together and stop this," Ging said, speaking at the Strip's largest hospital. "They are responsible for these deaths."

No, Hamas, who fired the mortars from the school grounds and stored the weapons inside the school, is.

UPDATE: See this as well:

In withdrawing from Gaza, Israel made painful concessions for peace by forcibly removing Jews from their homes. And yet even the Palestinian Authority, the most moderate among Palestinian political groups, would not consider easing their own people's plight in the wake of Israel's compromise. This is because the suffering of the refugees is essential to their broader political struggle.

How does the West respond to the obvious exploitation of Palestinian refugees? Soon after my meeting with Mr. Abbas's chief of staff, I met with the ambassador of one of the West's most enlightened countries. I asked: Why are the Palestinians not willing to help their own refugees? "I can understand them," he answered. "After all, they don't want the refugee problem to be taken off the agenda."

This reflexive "understanding" for the Palestinian leaders' abuse of their own people is the heart of the problem. For decades, the international community has actively assisted in building the terrorists' unique system of control -- over where Palestinians live and in what conditions, and over what they think -- by allowing terrorists to turn the refugee camps into the center of the Palestinian war machine. Instead of working to relieve the refugees' misery, the United Nations has dedicated an entire agency, UNRWA, to perpetuating it. For the rest of the world's refugees, the U.N. works tirelessly to improve their conditions, to relocate them, and to help them rebuild their lives as quickly as possible. With the Palestinians, the U.N. does exactly the opposite, granting refugee status to the great-grandchildren of people displaced in 1948, doing nothing to dismantle the camps, and acting as facilitators for the terrorists' goal of grinding an entire civilian population under their thumb. Nowhere on earth do terrorists get so much help from the Free World.

Thus do the well-meaning enable terrorists.

Wear It Like a Badge of Honor

Venezuela's Chavez expels Israeli ambassador over Gaza. As interesting as the story is the choice of picture - I don't think it's possible to find a more sympathetic photo of Chavez.

Some Things Just Don't Add Up

In the new O! stimulus package, the governors want $1 trillion.

Governors of five U.S. states urged the federal government to provide $1 trillion in aid to the country's 50 states to help pay for education, welfare and infrastructure as states struggle with steep budget deficits amid a deepening recession.

[...]

The latest package calls for $350 billion to create jobs by building or repairing roads, bridges and other public works; $250 billion to maintain education; and another $250 billion in "counter-cyclical" spending such as extending unemployment benefits and food stamps, which are typically a responsibility of the states.

The remainder would be used to fund middle-class tax cuts, stimulate the embattled housing market, and stem the tide of home foreclosures through a loan-modification program.

Now PEBO says that as much as $310 billion will be in the form of tax cuts.

Under Obama's proposal, about 40 percent of an economic package worth as much as $775 billion would be in the form of tax breaks for businesses and the middle class, one aide said.

Let's see $1 trillion + $310 billion = a whole lot more than $775 billion. So either this thing is going to be larger than anyone ever dreamed or a lot of people are going to feel shortchanged.

Democrat Culture of Corruption I

Nancy Pelosi should stay out of the prediction business. First, was her "pledge to make this the most honest, ethical, and open Congress in history." Recently, her prediction that the ethics probe of Charles Rangel would be completed before the Congress adjourned.

The 110th U.S. Congress has formally adjourned for the year without a conclusion to an ethics probe of House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel, FOXNews reports.

Rangel, D-N.Y., is being investigated by the House Ethics Committee in at least four areas, including his reported failure to properly report income taxes on a Caribbean villa in the Dominican Republic; use of four, rent-controlled apartments in Harlem; questions about an off-shore firm asking Rangel for special tax exemptions; and whether Rangel improperly used House stationary to solicit donations for a school of public affairs named after him at City College of New York.

In November, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she had "been assured" that the inquiry would be completed by Jan. 3.

Pelosi said she looked "forward to reviewing the report at that time," according to a statement issued in November.

Democrats won in 2006 in part by campaigning against a "Republican culture of corruption." More on the Democrats culture of corruption in the coming days.

Fatah Accompli

Mark Steyn:

neither faction is capable of running a sovereign state - if only because in both cases politics is a cover for their real interests: Fatah prioritizes kleptocracy, Hamas prioritizes Jew-killing. If you want to loot the public treasury, you sign up with the former; if you want to launch rockets at the Zionist Entity, you sign up with the latter. But, if you're interested in economic policy or governing ideology, there's nowhere to go. And in Gaza Hamas remains far more popular than Fatah. Israel can certainly precipitate the fall of Hamas, but it's less obvious that it can put the "Palestinian Authority" back together again, or whether that is necessarily in its own interests.

From the ashes rises...?

Hamas Massacres Palestinian Civlians

Nearly every story on the Israeli action in Gaza contains a report of the number of Palestinians killed and how many of them were civilians. But for some reason most omit accounts such as this:

Fatah officials in Ramallah told The Jerusalem Post that Hamas militiamen had been assaulting many Fatah activists since the beginning of the operation last Saturday. They said at least 75 activists were shot in the legs while others had their hands broken.

Meanwhile, sources close to Hamas revealed over the weekend that the movement had "executed" more than 35 Palestinians who were suspected of collaborating with Israel and were being held in various Hamas security installations.

Hamas has no regard for Israeli civilians and seemingly even less for Palestinians. via The Corner

Flush with their success in halting Iran's nuclear program, EU diplomats wade into the conflict in Gaza.

Israel says it is trying to stop rocket fire from Gaza, which is controlled by the Hamas movement.

The EU said Sunday the rocket attacks did not justify Israel's incursion.

"Even the undisputable right of the state to defend itself does not allow actions which largely affect civilians," the EU presidency said in a statement, calling for a cease-fire.

Thus do the well-meaning encourage the actions of terrorists. When a military force (and Hamas is primarily a military force) hides its fighters, materiel and equipment among civilians it ensures that any action against it will largely affect civilians. Hamas hides military assets among civilians and presents Israel with a choice - leave them alone or be subject to condemnation by the likes of EU diplomats.

UPDATE: Good grief. Leave it to Reuters to come up with the biased headline of the day: Gaza civilians suffer as Israel troops tighten grip.

How Very Gracious of Them

While many in the private sector are suffering from actual pay cuts (I personally know of people who've been forced to take cuts of nearly 50%) and job losses, public employees may be forced to accept smaller than expected raises.

A Memorandum of Understanding between the city and the Las Vegas City Employees’ Association, set to be approved at Wednesday’s council meeting, provides for a reduction in the annual cost-of-living, or COLA, raises for city workers by up to 1 percentage point for the next five years, effective in June.

Currently, 93 percent of city workers, those represented by a union, receive 3.5 percent COLA raises. Instead, they’ll be getting as little as 2.5 percent, assuming the agreement is ratified. That doesn’t include additional merit and “step” raises — automatic pay hikes built into the salary scales for certain positions — that will be maintained.

Well, maybe.

It also notes that approval of the agreement is conditioned on the city having made “reasonable efforts to negotiate or secure similar or more stringent terms” with the three other employee unions.

[...]

A report recently released by a forensic accountant retained by three of the four unions could complicate matters. The unions had hired Beth Kohn-Cole of Reno to get an independent estimation of the city’s finances before agreeing to reduced raises.

According to the two-page Dec. 26 report, there are “pockets of funds” the city has failed to take into account when claiming its need to cut employee pay hikes.

[...]

Though the Kohn-Cole report didn’t stop the Employees Association from reaching agreement with the city, another union director said he wasn’t yet prepared to sit down with the city.

Thus we have a difference between public and private sectors. People who put their lives on the line to protect us should be well-paid. But government employment should not provide immunity from the economic realities that face everyone else.

Good Question

Jonah Goldberg:

[H]ow come the people complaining about disproportionate responses never protest when Israel trades a couple hundred Palestianian prisoners for the dead bodies of one or two Israeli soldiers?

Some Good News

According to Kim Strassel of WSJ, Senate Democrats are going wobbly on card check.

It hasn't been much noticed, but the political ground is already shifting under Big Labor's card-check initiative. The unions poured unprecedented money and manpower into getting Democrats elected; their payoff was supposed to be a bill that would allow them to intimidate more workers into joining unions. The conventional wisdom was that Barack Obama and an unfettered Democratic majority would write that check, lickety-split.

Instead, union leaders now say they are being told card check won't happen soon. It seems the Obama team plans to devote its opening months to important issues, like the economy, and has no intention of jumping straight into the mother of all labor brawls. It also seems Majority Leader Harry Reid, even with his new numbers, might not have what it takes to overcome a filibuster. It's a case study in how quickly a political landscape can change, and how frequently the conventional wisdom is wrong.

In recent years union membership in the private sector has plummeted. Unions have succeeded in enacting laws that require employers to provide many of the benefits that used to attract workers to unions. In addition, there are many cases in which they have fatally reduced the competitiveness of the companies their members work for.

As their numbers have shrunk unions have concentrated on maximizing their political influence. Now they are attempting to leverage that influence to increase their membership. But the political cost may be too high even for those whom they helped elect.

Gotta Hand It to Steve Wynn

When the Wynn Las Vegas opened Steve Wynn taped a commercial in which he was shown sitting on top of the very highest point of the building. Although it could have been done with special effects, it was not - he actually climbed there for the filming.

Recently he began showing a commercial for his new Encore right next door. Again he is shown sitting at the top of the building and again he really was there.

Russia Cuts Off Gas to Ukraine

This could be nothing more than the "contract dispute" Reuters describes it as. But it could be another attempt by the Russians to strong-arm a former satellite. ("Kremlin officials say there is no reason why Moscow should subsidize Ukraine with cheap gas if its leaders want to join the NATO military alliance.")

Someone to Watch

US Senate candidate Michael Williams from Texas is someone Republicans around the country need to keep their eyes on both for his ideas and the use of new media.