RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/10390571/france-hollande-taxes-socialist-farrage.html
Down and out: the French flee a nation in despair
The failing economy and harsh taxes of François Hollande’s beleaguered nation are sending thousands packing – to Britain’s friendlier shores

A poll on the front page of last Tuesday’s Le Monde, that bible of the French Left-leaning Establishment (think a simultaneously boring and hectoring Guardian), translated into stark figures the winter of François Hollande’s discontent.

More than 70 per cent of the French feel taxes are “excessive”, and 80 per cent believe the president’s economic policy is “misguided” and “inefficient”. This goes far beyond the tax exiles such as Gérard Depardieu, members of the Peugeot family or Chanel’s owners. Worse, after decades of living in one of the most redistributive systems in western Europe, 54 per cent of the French believe that taxes – of which there have been 84 new ones in the past two years, rising from 42 per cent of GDP in 2009 to 46.3 per cent this year – now widen social inequalities instead of reducing them.

This is a noteworthy departure, in a country where the much-vaunted value of “equality” has historically been tinged with envy and resentment of the more fortunate. Less than two years ago, the most toxic accusation levied at Nicolas Sarkozy was of being “le président des riches”, favouring his yacht-sailing CEO buddies with tax breaks and sweet deals. By contrast, Hollande, the bling-free candidate, was elected on a platform of increasing state spending by promising to create 60,000 teachers’ jobs, as well as 150,000 subsidised entry-level public-service jobs for the long-time unemployed and the young – without providing for significant savings elsewhere.

By 2014, France’s public expenditure will overtake Denmark’s to become the world’s highest: 57 per cent of GDP. In effect, just to keep in the same place, like a hamster on a wheel, and ensure that the European Central Bank in Frankfurt isn’t too unhappy with us, Hollande now needs cash. Technocrats, MPs and ministers have been instructed to find every euro they can rake in – in deferred benefits, cancelled tax credits, extra levies. As they ignore the notion of making some serious cuts (mooted at regular intervals by the IMF, the OECD and even France’s own Cour des Comptes), the result can be messy.

On the one hand, the lacklustre economy and finance minister Pierre Moscovici recently admitted that he “understood” the French’s “exasperation” with their heavy tax burden. This earned him a sharp rap on the fingers from the president and his beleaguered PM, Jean-Marc Ayrault. On the other, new taxes keep being announced, in chaotic fashion, nearly every week. “Announced” doesn’t mean “implemented”: the Hollande crowd have developed a unique Wile E Coyote-style of leaks, technical glitches, last-minute tweaks and horse-market bargaining whereby almost nobody knows, at any given time, who will be targeted by the taxman, and how. Unsurprisingly, this is liked by no one except us reptiles of the press, eager to report on the longest series of own goals in the history of government communications.

Take last year’s famous 75 per cent supertax, on individuals earning over one million euros a month. This has still not been implemented. First, it got struck down by France’s Constitutional Council on a technicality. Leaks suggested the rate would fall to 66 per cent. They were confirmed, then denied. Hollande eventually vowed that the tax would be paid by the targeted individuals’ employers, for daring to offer such “obscenely” high salaries. This has just been approved by the National Assembly, and must still pass the Senate. So far, it is only supposed to apply to 2013 and 2014 income, but no one knows if the bill will be prolonged, killed or transformed.

What we do know is that this non-existent (so far) tax has been the clincher that sent hundreds, possibly thousands of French citizens abroad: not just “the rich”, whom Hollande, during his victorious campaign, said he personally “disliked”, and who now are pushing up house prices in South Kensington and fighting bitterly over the Lycée Charles de Gaulle’s 1,200 new places; but also the ambitious young, who feel that their own country will turn on them the minute they achieve any measure of personal success.

The IRS’ Witch-Hunt Unveiled — on The Glazov Gang
by Frontpagemag.com
Karen Kenny of the IRS-targeted San Fernando Valley Patriots tells a disturbing tale.
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/obama-the-agitator-on-the-glazov-gang/

http://israel21c.org/people/yossi-vardi-the-forrest-gump-of-israeli-high-tech/ “Entrepreneurship is a state of mind,” says Yossi Vardi, a key maverick in Israel’s high-tech industry. “It’s something cultural; something spiritual.” According to Vardi — who has been investing in everything from software to water technology for the past four decades — it is Jewish culture and spirit that explain why Israel is such […]

Yesterday I asked ” Huh? What Happened?” about the shutdown. I got the following very concise and perspicacious note from an e-pal who just happens to be the author of an excellent book on the Supreme Court and the Constitution.

“What is the real cost of the shutdown: it made a fool of the Republicans who deserted those who stood up against continued slide to U.S. bankruptcy, strengthened Obama’s resolve that he can get anything he wants, and leaves America without much hope for the next three years. Jerry”
I could not have said it better.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/bill-de-blasio-attends-columbus-day-parade-attacks-columbus/print/

WILL HE CHANGE THE NAME OF COLUMBUS AVENUE IN MANHATTAN TO SANDINISTA AVENUE?…. AND COLUMBUS CIRCLE TO RED SQUARE ? RSK

“If Bill de Blasio doesn’t like my work, maybe he should try moving to North Korea.”

And by attack, I mean Bill de Blasio deflects the question in the usual dishonest way he has while making it clear that he’s in the Anti-Columbus camp. And that’s about what you expect from a guy whose favorite color is red.

“The historical figure of Columbus is complicated to say the least,” Mr. de Blasio, the front-running candidate for mayor, said today at a press conference right before he marched in Manhattan’s Columbus Day parade.

Mr. de Blasio was responding a question asking whether he thought Mr. Columbus, famous for discovering the Americas while sailing for Spain and later attacking the native populations, was worthy of national recognition.

Complicated, like controversial, is how liberals call something bad when they don’t have the guts to come right out and say it.

Mr. de Blasio argued the holiday in its current form was simply a celebration of Italian pride, not the explorer.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303680404579143343379804228.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

“Eventually Mrs. Sebelius will have to make a real accounting of this government failure to someone other than the TV comic Jon Stewart, and perhaps she can also explain why the people who can’t build a working website also deserve the power to reorganize one-sixth of the U.S. economy. For now, the Administration that styles itself as the most transparent in history won’t reveal the truth—perhaps because it is afraid of what the public will find.”

The Affordable Care Act’s botched rollout has stunned its media cheering section, and it even seems to have surprised the law’s architects. The problems run much deeper than even critics expected, and whatever federal officials, White House aides and outside contractors are doing to fix them isn’t working. But who knows? Omerta is the word of the day as the Obama Administration withholds information from the public.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is even refusing to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in a hearing this coming Thursday. HHS claims she has scheduling conflicts, but we hope she isn’t in the White House catacomb under interrogation by Valerie Jarrett about her department’s incompetence.

The department is also refusing to make available lower-level officials who might detail the source or sources of this debacle. Ducking an investigation with spin is one thing. Responding with a wall of silence to the invitation of a duly elected congressional body probing the use of more than half a billion taxpayer dollars is another. This Obama crowd is something else.

What bunker is Henry Chao hiding in, for instance? He’s the HHS official in charge of technology for the Affordable Care Act, and in March he said at an insurance lobby conference that his team had given up trying to create “a world-class user experience.” With the clock running, Mr. Chao added that his main goal was merely to “just make sure it’s not a third-world experience.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/361678/print

According to Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, it’s his colleagues, more than anyone, who should be blamed for the failure of the defund-Obamacare campaign — and he expects conservatives to remember come primary season.

“Unfortunately, rather than supporting House Republicans, a significant number of Senate Republicans actively, aggressively, and vocally led the effort to defeat House Republicans, to defeat the effort to defund Obamacare,” Cruz says, in an interview with National Review. “Once Senate Republicans did that, it crippled the chances of this effort, and it caused the lousy deal.”

When pressed to cite specific Republican senators who may face primary trouble, Cruz refuses — “I’m not interested in a battle of personalities.” But he strongly urges conservatives to hold those lawmakers “accountable.”

“As with every decision elected officials make, the consequences of those decisions are up to the American people,” Cruz says. “But I will say this: From Day One in office, I’ve urged the American people to hold every elected official accountable, and far too many elected officials are not listening to the American people. . . . when you’ve got 10 to 20 Senate Republicans going on television, day after day after day, saying, ‘we cannot win, this is a fool’s errand, we will lose, nothing will happen, we will surrender,’ and blaming Republicans every step of the way, it eliminates the ability to get a positive outcome.

“Now, I have publicly said it is likely that I will stay out of all incumbent primaries,” he continues. “But every elected official has to make the case to the grassroots in his or her state on why he or she is effectively fighting for them.” When asked whether using the word “likely” means he’s leaving room to back a challenger, Cruz repeats the line, saying it’s “likely” he’ll stay out.

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4269/a_bad_fit_islam_and_democracy_at_home_and_abroad

“Democracy presupposes a pre-political order, a set of preconditions, without which democratic elections will not work to produce what we understand as a democratic society.Islam is different. Islam does not recognise a distinction between the religious and the secular. Islamic law, sharia, is a code that regulates all areas of social and personal life and is founded in divine command, not on secular authority.”

Can Egypt, or indeed can any Muslim state ever embrace democracy as we understand and practise it in the West? For many years now, a defining feature of Western foreign policy has been the promotion of democracy as a solution to political conflict throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

This is understandable as Western democratic states have shown remarkable peace and stability over the past 60 years. If Egypt and other Muslim societies were to become Western style democracies, the reasoning goes, they too would become stable societies. So the West supports the “Arab Spring” and democratic elections throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

The problem with this reasoning is that elections are not the basis of democracy. It is a common belief that elections define democracy. But in fact democratic elections are only the by-product, so to speak, of complex historical social values and institutions that are a prior necessity for elections to work. In other words, democracy presupposes a pre-political order, a set of preconditions, without which democratic elections will not work.

Islamic societies do not appear to have these preconditions. The most important difference in terms of political governance between Islam and the West is the historic recognition in Western culture of a distinction between the religious and the secular. As the New Testament has it, Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.

This important distinction has resulted in the gradual development in the West of our secular law and institutions. The Christian West has always (sometimes with more than a little difficulty) acknowledged the legitimacy of a separate non-religious authority. Western secular governments can, and do, legislate to permit behaviour of which the Christian churches disapprove.

This secularisation of society has happened throughout Western history, particularly with the Reformation, and has today resulted in the universal authority of the democratic secular state. This means that all legislation in the West today is a matter of state, with the church (usually) a legal subject of the state and religion essentially a private matter.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/10/were_talking_while_theyre_acting.html Churchill’s dictum, “Jaw-jaw is better than war-war,” is a concept without application in much of the world.  Western-style negotiations seek common ground and compromise, while others seek only to “jaw” while the work of war goes on.  The West vests the process itself with value, providing our adversaries with instant leverage when they value only their […]

HOME Antarctic Ice Sets New All Time Record For Growth In October: ‘What makes the new record so astonishing is that it was set in October, on the 1st. Climatologically, the maximum extent is reached on 22nd September, so it is most unusual for the ice still to be growing 10 days later’ Antarctica Set […]