Yael German is a sick woman. Besides Naftali Bennett, who earns my title for worst, most disgusting Knesset Member/Minister, Yael German is right behind him for her callousness. Lapid I pity because he’s more clueless than callous, even though arguably he does more damage due to the power of his position as Finance Minister.
One reader turned my attention to this article in The Marker, which outlines German’s new crazy amazing plan for the Government Health Mafia to make it better. My disdain for Yael German comes from the fact that she fought Moshe Feiglin hard on the cannabis legalization issue, and actually made it harder for sick people to get marijuana by giving the entire industry to Sarel, a government crony company in charge of supplying the Health Ministry and all its crony hospitals with all its supplies at monopoly prices.
Yael German, apparently, has the moral authority to make sick people suffer and not let them take what helps them. She is therefore unforgivable in my eyes, unfeeling, and evil for the pain she causes suffering sick people.
But anyway, the title of the article here is “Equalizing the Burden Begins at the Health Ministry”. Already you can tell this is about taxing the rich more to support public hospitals. And indeed that’s all it is. Here is the relevant half of a paragraph about German’s new “plan” that’s supposed to make the Misrad HaBriut a powerhouse of modern health blah blah etc.
גרמןהציגה שני מהלכים גדולים שעודם בחיתוליהם ואמורים להיות הזרזים לשוויון המיוחל: הראשון הוא שינוי שיטת החישוב של מס הבריאות, שיהפוך אותו לפרוגרסיבי יותר באמצעות העברת נטל מהעשירונים הנמוכים לגבוהים. השני הוא הקמת ועדה ציבורית לבחינת דרכים לחיזוק הרפואה הציבורית.
Basically, German is doing two things. One thing really, because the second thing is so stupid it’s only worth mentioning for comedy. First, she’s making the taxes that go to the Health Mafia more “progressive” AKA raising them on the rich people to support the Mafia. Second, she’s…jeez, it’s really hard to write this without rolling my eyes so I can’t even type…she’s “establishing a committee to investigate ways to strengthen the public health system.”
Translation: She’s paying a bunch of her friends and relatives or political allies and donors some tax money so they can sit on their fat asses and drink coffee all day somewhere in the Knesset’s meeting rooms and discuss how they can raise taxes even more to make the Health Mafia even stronger. This committee will probably cost millions of shekels because everyone on it will be paid obscene amounts to discuss raising taxes even more on you, while spending your money talking about it.
So that’s it. She’s going to raise taxes, and appoint a committee of her friends to discuss how to raise taxes still further. That’s her plan. Ingenious.
Last week there was a big meeting of the Likud Central Committee in Tel Aviv. They were there to set the primary day agreed upon by Danny Danon and Benjamin Netanyahu to be January 6. Danon is the Central Committee Chairman.
Moshe Feiglin, playing the game, got up at the meeting of 3,000 people and submitted a motion to limit the primaries to stand for 6 months assuming no new general elections are called within that time frame. Primaries would then happen again before the next general elections. That would prevent Netanyahu from simply grabbing the crown now and using it as a blank check for the next 2-3 years to do whatever he wants.
The media was shocked and awed, but Feiglin’s motion actually passed by a wide majority. However, Danon basically ignored the vote, probably because he has a backroom deal with Bibi to team up against Feiglin in exchange for some petty crony position or other. Below is a video, in Hebrew, of Feiglin’s motion passing and Danon making up an excuse why it didn’t really pass. In his words, “People voted for both sides,” so the vote was “void”.
Besides that mess, Feiglin came off a total superstar during the meeting. I was not there as I am not a central committee member, but from what I hear he totally owned the place. Here’s a piece from Ynet about what went down that night and how Feiglin had to calm his supporters down not to jeer Netanyahu when he came up to speak. (The part about Rav Kahane is just stupid fluff having nothing to do with anything, but the media always has to bring up Kahane when Feiglin wins a battle in Likud.)
Here’s the video. Even if you don’t understand Hebrew, it is clear who’s the rock star here and who’s the zhlub.
So, a few days ago some crony lawyer name Something HaLevi wrote a letter to some other crony that Feiglin’s motion is illegal for some technical reason or other. (If you want to know the garbagey details, he wrote that it says in the Likud Constitution that the Chairman will be Likud’s candidate for prime minister, and that means that once he’s chosen, he’s chosen for the next elections no matter how far out they are. This is, of course, bullshit, but blah blah blah, not important, it’s all political theater anyway.)
So now, Feiglin has come out with his response, pretty much slamming Netanyahu and Danon, in public, for being crony schmucks, which they are, and saying that his motion did pass, and to ignore it is illegal.
He basically took a big shot across their bow without taking any legal action (yet), and they are both – Danon and Netanyahu – running against him for Chairmanship of the party.
Knesset Member Danny Danon, Likud Central Committee Chairman
The Likud
Concerning: The vote on the motion to limit the validity of the Primaries
After checking the pictures that were published from the Central Committee meeting last Sunday in the matter of my motion, it is quite obvious that my motion got a clear majority. Central Committee Chairman MK Danon’s claim, which he made after losing the open ballot vote twice, that certain Central Committee members were voting twice, has no supporting evidence, and it harms and mocks the Committee members.
The scandalous behavior of Chairman Danon does not end here.
The elections committee decided on November 6 that, in keeping with the recommendation of the Attorney General Avi HaLevi Esq., the vote for moving up the primaries and all the related motions are so important that they should be done by secret ballot today between 10am and 10pm. How and why did this decision evaporate? Why is the vote not now taking place?
It seems, unfortunately, that nothing at all as changed. Decisions are made behind closed doors between the Chairman and his representatives and the Central Committee Chairman. The committee members are simply there to be part of a play. When not all goes according to plan and the committee members do not play the part planned out for them and actually state their preference, you do not respect their decision while using the same dirty tactics we knew in the past.
The opinion that you solicited from Avi HaLevi Esq. where he claims that no vote should take place on my motion, is not worth responding to. If we keep going down that road, we can nullify every Likud Party institution and let HaLevy run the whole show. It’s obvious how much you yourselves disrespect HaLevy’s opinion because you are not holding a secret ballot vote on the Prime Minister’s request move up the primaries, as HaLevy proved must be done, and he even made sure to cite it as a decision of the elections committee.
I hereby declare, clearly and publicly, that my motion to limit the validity of the upcoming primaries to 6 months was accepted by the Central Committee.
I will also add that if we are indeed on the eve of elections as the Prime Minister claims, this unacceptable behavior I previously mentioned, brings up justified anger. The party will be dragged into the courts, instead of just having transparent procedures. This behavior has political consequences that we all will pay for. I call on both of you, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Central Committee Chairman Danny Danon, respect the decision of the Central Committee and its members.
Sincerely,
Moshe Feiglin
Does that mean Feiglin is going to court? I don’t know. He is certainly threatening it. I spoke to him on Friday and he was not sure if it is worth it to do so even though he thinks he can win. We’re winning anyway.
I’m not good at making political decisions, so I have no idea one way or the other if Feiglin should fight here over this issue. But I trust that whatever he decides, God will help us come out on top.
Both Danon and Netanyahu are going down in the end. They are nothing but petty politicians. Moshe Feiglin is the only man running.
A very simple question: Why do Republicans care what Jonathan Gruber said about Obamacare if they have no intention of repealing the law? Even Rand Paul, the most “conservative” of Republicans, is “unsure if Obamacare should be repealed.” They will simply change it. Not in any way that matters though. They will replace Democrat cronies who make money off the law with Republican cronies who will make money off it.
If Rand Paul is unsure if Obamacare should be repealed, you better believe that Mitch McConnell, the Kreep from Kentucky, has NO intention of ever repealing Obamacare. Why not? Because Republicans are just as much into Big Government as Democrats are. They just like enriching their own allies via Big Government rather than Democrat allies.
So I guess Republicans agree with Gruber’s assessment of the stupidity of the American voter, because no matter who Americans vote for, Obamacare will stand. They should be nodding their heads and congratulating Gruber, not demonizing him. Gruber and Republicans agree. They would much rather have the law passed than not.
Today we’re going to pick apart some Newspeak. Here’s the relevant paragraph, from an article in Reuters about the leaders of the most powerful financial institutions all coming together and conspiring about how to rob the entire human race of all its savings and transfer them all to governments, all in one shot.
Government leaders are expected to agree in November that the world’s top banks must issue special bonds to increase the amount of capital which can be tapped in a crisis instead of calling on taxpayers to come to the rescue, industry and G20 officials said.
The bonds, known as “gone concern loss absorption capacity” or GLAC, are seen by regulators as essential to stopping the world’s 29 biggest lenders from being “too big to fail”.
Here’s the translation into English:
There’s this problem with banks that have gotten so big, thanks to government coddling and favors, that to let them fail would endanger the government itself. Therefore, up until now, every time they almost fail, which happens repeatedly because they are all fractional reserve banks that lend out demand deposits, the government bails them out by raising taxes and printing, and giving the money to the banks in what is called, colloquially, a bail out. In 2008 it was $700 billion in taxes (remember the TARP act?) and $16 trillion in printing, 22x the taxes spent on the banks.
The problem is, relying on taxpayers to back banks is politically unpopular, so instead of having to rely on the government to transfer tax money to banks through direct taxes and inflation, governments are enabling the banks to steal from depositors directly without using the government as its thieving middleman.
GLAC bonds will be backed by none other than demand deposits, in other words the money you deposit in your checking account. You can’t just invent capital out of nothing if you are not a central bank and do not have the ability to steal through inflation. So in the event of serious financial stress, these GLAC bonds will be on the balance sheets of banks listed as assets to pay off creditors.
Got that? Thanks to G20 governments, the biggest banks now have the ability to pay off their creditors with the money you deposit in your checking and savings accounts by calling that money a “GLAC Bond” and declaring it an asset.
Now taxpayers do not have to be robbed by government in order to pay off bankster debts. Now they can be robbed directly by the banks themselves through GLAC bonds. Remember Cyprus in 2013? When the Cypriot government took a percentage of everyone’s deposits to pay off its debt?
This kid is really something else. He’s learned much from his father and he’s got it all together. There are two things about this video that are amazing. First, it’s this kid. Just listen to his tone, his calm, his grit. He’s going to be a leader soon.
Second, listen closely to the interview of the bald Arab guy at the 2:12 mark.
Arab: When they [Jews] go up to Al Aqsa, it’s an attack.
Interviewer: Why?
Arab: Because Al Aqsa is holy to Muslims.
Interviewer: But the Jews say it’s holy to them, too!
Arab: Whoever considers a place holy to him does not run away from it and abandon it. We’ve been here all our lives, we’ve stayed here, and we plan to say here until the end.
Interviewer: They exiled us. The Romans exiled us 2,000 years ago from here.
Arab: No, Allah exiled you from here!
Whoever that Arab was, he’s really got it down. Totally right. 100% correct on all counts. Up until now I’ve been hesitant to go all the way up to the Dome of the Rock due to the halachic issues involved. But now I’m completely convinced. We have to go all the way in until the world understands it is ours.
Only then will we be able to rebuild the Temple. Not before. So if you daven to rebuild the Beit HaMikdash, there ain’t no way it’s being built until we all go up and in en masse, all the way, right up to the Kodesh HaKodashim. If you’re not willing to at least go up to the outer parts of Har Habayit, I dare say you are engaging in meaningless prayer, a תפילת שווא if there ever was one.
I wasn’t even specifically looking for this, but it came up while I was searching for news of the Supreme Court case on whether “Israel” should be written on passports for American babies born in Jerusalem. Then I found this article, which does not mention Moshe Feiglin by name in the body, but then I noticed a video on the bottom captioned “Far Right Israeli MP visits Jerusalem Al Aqsa Compound.” Obvious who that has to be.
The video is pretty schvach and annoying that they refer to it as the “Al Aqsa Compound”. But he’s in it, and he speaks, too. So that’s good. There’s some yippety Arab yenta at the end going on and on about how Feiglin “Raided the Al Aqsa Mosque” and “prevented her from praying there” somehow singlehandedly, unarmed, and without even approaching the stupid Mosque.
I have made clear before how the Arabs themselves are the ones blowing up Al Aqsa. We want nothing to do with it. We are interested in the Dome of the Rock, not the Mosque. The Arabs face their butts to the Dome of the Rock when they daven (see below), so clearly they aren’t interested in it either. So I really don’t know what we’re fighting about really. We don’t want what they want, they don’t want what we want.
Notice where their butts are facing.
So I suggest we all stop shooting each other over it. We’ll take the Dome, you take the Mosque, בסדר?
Who would have guessed that the Minister of Male Grooming Yair Lapid is a corrupt spendthrift little pisher.
According to an investigation by Ynet, he took a trip to the US in October 2013 that cost, somehow, 54,000 NIS. His sidekick, some politician named Micki Levi, the deputy Finance Minister, had a refrigerator installed in his car for 3,534 NIS. The list of profligacy is long.
The really funny part though is to see the various different government apparatuses try to steal from one another. How? License renewal for all the cars driven by gang members of the Finance Ministry cost 529,000 NIS last year. This of course goes right to the pockets of the gang members of the Transportation Ministry which charges monopoly prices on license renewal by outlawing all competition. The head of that gang is Yisrael Katz, who really looks and acts like Boss Tweed.
So Lapid isn’t “spending” half a million shekels on license renewal. He’s just transferring the money to another government office, that of transportation. Same with the million shekels he spent on gas. Half of it goes to Katz and his disgusting 100% Blu Tax on gasoline.
Lapid may be corrupt, but he’s a beginner compared to Katz.
Half a million shekels for holiday gifts including Pesach, Purim, and Rosh Hashana, because being a tax receiver isn’t enough. This is for 1,000 tax receivers who “work” for Lapid in the Finance Gang.
But that’s nothing compared to the Computerize the Government program, that has been going on since 2004 and was supposed to be finished in 2006. 82,000,000 NIS just this year, eight years behind schedule, who smells a computer-industrial complex here? BOONdoggle.
But we should all be proud to pay taxes, as I heard a Rabbi say recently in his Rosh Hashana sermon. The Rabbi is also a tax receiver, partly.
The Finance gang says it will cut all unnecessary spending. Sure. If I ever head the Bank of Israel, I will cut off the money at the source, so if they want to spend that much, they’ll have to tax you for it directly instead of have me print it for them and tax you through inflation.
Just saw the news. Turned on Ynet live and who other than Moshe Feiglin was being interviewed.
First of all, he’s going to Har Habayit tomorrow morning. He calls on the police to open Har Habayit to all Jews immediately in response to this murder attempt. Hopefully attempt. Rav Glick is still fighting for his life.
According to Moshe, who was standing nearby at the time (correction: he had left half an hour earlier, but his assistant Shai Malka, was there and saw the attempted murder), an Arab goes up to Glick, unmistakable with signature red hair and beard, and asks him in Arab-accented Hebrew, if he is Glick. Glick says yes, and the Arab shoots him several times at point blank range. Rav Glick stumbles around bleeding and falls on the floor near Malka. The Arab flees the scene on a motorcycle.
Refuah Shleimah to Yehuda Yehoshua ben Brenda. One of the very few Rabbis I have full respect for. God please have mercy and save him.
UPDATE 5AM – Rav Glick’s life is still in danger but his condition has stabilized and improved since entering the hospital. Surgery is complete. Wounds to the chest and stomach.
I shop with my own reusable bags. My wife’s grandfather, may he live long and prosper, gives us a bunch of crap every time we visit the US. Among the crap he gathers at retiree broker conventions is occasionally useful things like the bags the crap comes in. We shop with those bags because we are one of the few that are environmentally conscious. And we don’t like having plastic bags everywhere in our house.
But being environmentally conscious is not a good trait to have. I’m not bragging about it. It’s a form of OCD. It’s a compulsive thing we have, my wife and I. I don’t wish it on others. In fact, I’m a big fan of littering from a moral perspective. See Defending the Undefendable, page 205. Read it for free. Autodidactify.
That said, I have no problem at all with people who triple, quadruple, and quintuple bag, take bags right out of the dispenser just to play with for fun and throw in the garbage, etc. Why don’t I have a problem with this?
Let’s grant there there are environmental problems that may kill us all one day. Let’s say landfills will inherit the Earth. Why is it happening? Well, whenever the price for a good or service is pushed below the market rate by force, you end up with a shortage on the sell side and an excess on the buy side. If bananas are 10 shekels a kilo, then if the government comes in and says you’re only allowed to sell them for 5 shekels a kilo, there will be too many buyers (an excess) and not enough sellers (a shortage).
The key is, it’s the same exact thing with dumping garbage. If the price of dumping your garbage is zero, then you will have an excess of dumpers, an excess of landfills, too much trash. The price of dumping is set by government at zero by force of monopoly. No private company is allowed to come into the market to try and compete with the government for the service of dumping people’s trash.
And now, lo and behold, people are dumping, because the price is zero. And the government suddenly has a problem of how to get people to stop dumping so much. So instead of getting out of the dumping industry and letting the free market price the service so people will have to pay to get rid of their trash, or perhaps even be paid for organic trash, the government intervenes even more and messes with another price, that of plastic grocery bags.
And on our side, we try to make people “environmentally conscious,” to voluntarily control themselves when there’s someone messing with the price mechanism. If bananas were decreed to be 5 shekels a kilo instead of 10 and suddenly there’s a shortage, you can do one of two things. You can either ask people to voluntarily restrict their banana consumption, or you can push the price back up to equilibrium at 10.
Same with dumping. We can either waste our time educating people about landfills to alleviate the dumping excess, or we can push the price of dumping to equilibrium by freeing the market. Educating people to be environmentalists won’t ever work. It’s a lost cause, and it’s stupid. The answer is free market pricing.
It’s to have private companies figure out what to do with plastic bags. An entrepreneur buys a plot of land and starts a dumping business. His interest is to preserve the capital value of his land and make money, so he’d obviously prefer organic trash over toxic waste. Organic trash he pays for, because it makes his land more fertile so he can sell it to a farmer when it’s full. Toxic waste he doesn’t want, so he jacks the price way up for dumping it, and separates it from his organic pile to cordon off any problems. If anyone mixes toxic waste in with the organic, he charges a major premium. Or, alternatively, he separates it himself to make it easier on his customers, investing in that capital.
Another entrepreneur comes in and figures out a way to turn plastic bags back into oil like this guy, who sounds like he smokes too much pot.
So he starts collecting, or maybe even paying for, plastic bags. Why does he do this? Because private dumpers charge such a high price for dumping them since they ruin the capital value of dumping sites, and there is a need in the market to lower the price for dumping plastic bags.
In such a case, where dumping is not free but rather a service that you pay for just like any other, people will use much less plastic bags because the price for dumping them is so high. Prices are how humans divide resources on the planet. There is no other way to do it.
That’s why being “environmentally conscious” is nothing but a form of OCD. There is no benefit in trying to make people “environmentally conscious”. There is no point, and it should not be a goal. There is no way in hell or on Earth that we will get enough people to voluntarily care, for no economic reason, about a landfill somewhere that they don’t see, enough to be able to actually tackle the problem. People care about their wallets. Environmentalism cannot work for the same reason that socialism can’t work. Because there is no way to divvy up resources without private property and free market prices.
Every single environmental problem on Planet Earth is a result of government monopolies and price controls. Every single one. Water, air, dumping as well.
What will happen now that the government is forcing a minimum price on bags? The stores that cannot afford the capital equipment necessary for this mess, like bag counters and whatnot, will not be able to comply. Cashiers will be sitting there counting bags manually, causing longer lines. It will be a big mess.
There is no need for such a law. All you need to do is get the government out of the dumping business and let private entrepreneurs figure out how to get rid of trash in the most cost efficient way possible. All the government does is take it from you and stick it all in a landfill, organic, toxic, and everything in between all together. Why? Because they just take whatever land they want for free and just dump on it. Would a businessman who bought his land with his own money do such a thing? No, he would dump in the most efficient way possible to preserve his purchase and even make it more valuable.
The Jewish Libertarian 
