Even after 50 years of performing, the Rolling Stones are still not done. They are heading out on another new tour. The Capitol Steps believe this longevity is impressive but that it also requires some Stones classics to be slightly rewritten. Our guest is Steps Co-Founder Elaina Newport.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Daniel Foster of National Review Online cheer Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal for rebuking Mitt Romney and saying the GOP needs to reach out to 100 percent of the people and explain why conservatism is best for them. However, they also agree with Romney that Obama divided America and rewarded his core constituencies. Greg and Dan unload on the bakers union for refusing pay cuts and forcing the end of their own jobs at Hostess. And Dan suggests abolishing the Senate Budget Committee since Democrats have no intention of passing a budget anytime soon.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul says tax hikes will stifle growth but tax and entitlement reforms and major spending cuts could go a long way to putting our fiscal house back in order.
Sen. Paul says both parties need to give up some “sacred cows” to make progress on reform. In the short term, however, he fears the Republicans will give in on raising taxes on wealthy Americans and small businesses to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff.
“The disconcerting thing is you’re now hearing Republicans who are saying, and even conservatives saying, ‘Well, if taxes are going to go up two trillion at the end of the year if we do nothing, anything less than two trillion is really a tax increase. It’s a tax reduction,'” said Paul. “We had someone at one of our caucus meetings just the other day say, ‘Why don’t we raise $750 billion in taxes but we’ll call it a tax cut because if we do nothing and all the tax cuts expire, taxes go up by two trillion.’ Now only in Washington can you come up with math that says, ‘We’re going to raise taxes by a trillion dollars over what they are now but we’re going to call it a trillion dollar tax cut.'”
In addition to the fuzzy math, Paul says the exchange shows that Republicans are already acting like the tax cuts the Obama administration wants are all but a done deal.
“My fear is the dam is cracking and that many people, once they accept the idea that any kind of tax increase short of the tax increase that will occur when the Bush-era rates expire is not really a tax increase – that sort of convoluted logic is going to lead us to a really bad outcome. The people who will suffer for this are the people trying to find work. It’s the people who are unemployed or underemployed, kids getting out of college. You want more money in the hands of those who create jobs. You do not want more money in the hands of your politicians. It will be wasted, squandered and counterproductive if you send it to Washington.”
Sen. Paul is a staunch opponent of raising marginal tax rates on anyone.
“I don’t think it’s good for the economy to squeeze more revenue out of it and send it to Washington,” he said. ” I think the best way to stimulate the economy is to leave more money in Kentucky, Ohio, Florida. Leave more money with the people who earned it. They will spend it more wisely.”
The senator says this debate boils down to simple economic truths.
“(Milton) Friedman often said that nobody spends somebody else’s money as wisely as they spend their own, or as frugally,” said Paul. “The private economy is the productive economy. That’s where jobs come from. Government jobs are paid for when the private economy is growing. The private economy is stagnant, so the last thing you’d want to do is squeeze more money out of the private economy. What you want to do is leave more money in. So it’s precisely the opposite of what we should do right now.”
Instead of tax increases, Sen. Paul believes much of the fiscal dysfunction in Washington can be addressed through intelligent spending cuts and tax reform. When it comes to spending, Paul says both sides have to be ready to give a little.
“I think the compromise is both Republicans and Democrats giving up on some of their sacred cows and admitting that spending could be reduced across the board,” said Paul. “That also means looking at entitlements. Entitlements are two-thirds of the budget and they’re squeezing out all other spending. You have to reform entitlements or you can’t balance the budget and you can’t live within your means. So we do need to look at ways to save Social Security and Medicare. That means there will be changes.”
If entitlements are the “sacred cows” of Democrats, Sen. Paul points to defense spending as an area where the GOP needs to give some ground.
“There is a certain bit of irony in that many of the folks that are running around caterwauling, their heads are exploding because the military spending might go down. They all voted for it,” said Paul. “I didn’t even vote for the military sequester, but the people who did vote for the military sequester are now the loudest ones saying we can’t cut the military.”
Sen. Paul reiterated he is not a supporter of the sequester but he contends the scheduled cuts would not be as devastating as some in his party allege.
“It’s $600 billion in cuts to proposed increases in spending,” said Paul. “If you look at spending in the military over the ten years, even with the sequester, military spending will be higher in ten years than it is now. I won’t argue that there’s not a pretty significant and steep cut in the first year. But would I would argue is that military spending has doubled in the last 10 years. Our military spending is greater than all of our NATO allies combined. Our military spending is greater than all of the next 14 in line combined. So really we are spending quite a bit.”
Sen. Paul takes a pretty aggressive path towards balancing the budget. His recent plan calls for the books to balance within five years, compared to a 28-40 year span in the House budget authored by Paul Ryan.
But as for the current standoff, Sen. Paul is not optimistic things will end in a way that benefits the country. In fact, he thinks it will be resolved the way most things are as a major deadline approaches – through a massive bill.
“I fully predict that some big, huge package, stuffed full with everything you can imagine that’s coming to the end,” he said. “It’s not just this. There’s probably ten other items. I believe they’ll all be stuffed into a very unsightly package and that it’ll pass.”
Hamas rockets aimed at Tel Aviv is tantamount to a declaration of war from the terrorist group and Israel will do whatever is necessary to protect its people and remove the threat, according to retired Israeli Brigadier General Elihu Ben-Onn.
On Wednesday, Israeli Defense Forces targeted and killed Ahmed Jabari, the militant leader of Hamas. In response, Hamas is launching even more rockets – this time into the suburbs of Tel Aviv.
“Absolutely this is a declaration of war by those bloody Muslim radical terrorists, Hamas, Palestinian terrorists. That’s a new situation in the Middle East,” said Gen. Ben-Onn.
The threat of rockets fired from Gaza reaching the Tel Aviv area is only a recent one. Gen. Ben-Onn says Hamas has expanded its range thanks to weapons from another threat to Israel.
“We know that those terrorists in the last two, three years got some ammunition and missiles and rockets from Iran,” he said, noting that some components are coming through Lebanon and Sudan and give Hamas the possibility to enhance and enlarge the range of the missiles.
Gen. Ben-Onn says when Israel left Gaza voluntarily in 2005, militant rockets had a range of only five kilometers. In the subsequent seven years, Hamas has acquired rockets and missiles that increased the range to 10 miles and now they can reach targets 30 miles away.
Ben-Onn supported the controversial decision by then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to unilaterally leave Gaza seven years ago as a gesture toward peace. The general now says that didn’t move the peace process forward. It only exposed the true intentions of the Palestinians.
“The conclusion is very clear,” said Ben-Onn. “If you give territory to terrorists, like other criminals, you cannot trust them. Hamas keeps saying Israel has no right to live in this area, ‘we do not recognize your existence. You should leave the state of Israel.'”
Gen. Ben-Onn says there is a distinct difference between the rhetoric and levels of radicalism between Palestinians in Gaza led by Hamas and those in the West Bank represented by Fatah.
Another wildcard in this clash between Israel and Hamas is the role of the new Egyptian government ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood. Gen. Ben-Onn says the relationship between Israel and Egypt has definitely changed, but he’s convinced Egypt won’t do anything radical in this conflict because of it’s reliance on American military aid and other foreign aid.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Daniel Foster of National Review Online are encouraged by a new Gallup poll showing Americans far more interested in tax reform, entitlement reform and spending cuts than in tax hikes on the wealthy. They also cringe as jobless claims skyrocket in the past week – most noticeably in two key battleground states. And they have some choice words for Illinois Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., who refuses to leave Congress on corruption charges unless a disability payment package can be arranged.
North Korea routinely ranks at the top of lists of the world’s nations in terms of most repression, least open to the rest of the world and greatest persecutor of Christians. Any disobedience to the communist regime is dealt with very harshly, yet the dire conditions motivate many there to attempt an escape.
Former Wall Street Journal Deputy Editorial Page Editor Melanie Kirkpatrick has studied the stories of those with the courage to lave for a better life. Her new book on the subject is “Escape from North Korea: The Untold Story of Asia’s Underground Railroad.”
Kirkpatrick says being caught trying to escape results in horrific imprisonment for the the offender and usually all of his immediate family. Nonetheless, many try to get out of the country – either by paying off guards at the Chinese border or sneaking across on their own. But once they’re in China the challenges really begin.
“China’s policy is to track down North Koreans, arrest them and send them back to North Korea,” said Kirkpatrick. “So once they reach relative safety in China, then that’s when the underground railroad kicks in and they need help to help them make their way across China and eventually to South Korea.”
So knowing what to do and where to go after getting into China is critical. Kirkpatrick says most escapees are desperately looking for one thing.
“The first thing a North Korean learns when he gets to China is to find a Christian,” she said. “Many of the people I interviewed told me that the advice they were given was to look for a building with a cross on it, that is a church. If a North Korean is lucky enough to hook up with a local Chinese Christian, that person is likely to help him. Christians are really the only people in China who are willing to help the North Koreans.”
Once that contact is made, the North Korean can be introduced to one of two networks that will help them get to South Korea – human traffickers who will take them to South Korea for a hefty fee or a network of South Korean and American Christians who are in China for the sole purpose of helping North Koreans escape their brutal homeland. In the Christian network, Kirkpatrick says people are shuttled from one safe house to another, until the North Koreans can find a South Korean consular office in Southeast Asia and apply for asylum.
Women want to escape North Korea just as much as the men do and some of them have opportunities to go to China as arranged brides for Chinese men who can’t find wives as a result of China’s one-child policy. The women are not told this, however. Instead they are promised good jobs or the chance to visit distant relatives. Only when they arrive at the Chinese man’s house are the North Korean women informed this is their new husband.
“This is very, very sad. The woman is so desperate that she will agree to a ‘marriage’ with a Chinese man,” said Kirkpatrick. “Sometimes these marriages work out and the women are happy to be there. They don’t want to risk leaving China on the underground railroad.”
But Kirkpatrick says those are the rare exceptions. Normally, this new arrangement is just the start of another nightmare.
“Many other times, there are terrible situations,” she said. “The women may have children in both countries, North Korea and China…Once these women reach safety in South Korea, one of the first things they do is start saving their money to try to get their children out of China or North Korea. It’s very, very sad.”
There’s another surprising group looking to escape the clutches of the communist regime in North Korea – the South Koreans still being held as prisoners 60 years after the end of the Korean War.
“The South Korean government estimates that there are around 500 South Koreans who are still being held captive from the Korean War,” said Kirkpatrick. “These men of course are now very elderly…I uncovered a secret network that since the late 90s has been helping get these old soldiers out of North Korea, to China and then on to safety back home in South Korea where they are of course treated like returning heroes. There about a hundred of them, so far, who have made their way back to South Korea.”
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Daniel Foster of National Review Online are glad to see disgraced former CIA Director David Petraeus will testify about the Benghazi terrorist attack later this week. They split on whether Nancy Pelosi staying on as House Democratic Leader is good or bad, with Dan seeing her many flaws as good for the GOP agenda and Greg shuddering over anyone of Pelosi’s intellect being anywhere close to the levers of power. And they shake their heads as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie flirts with raising property taxes and shying away from income tax cuts in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
David Petraeus may have resigned last week as a result of personal failings, but his biggest mistakes were to back up a false Obama administration narrative on Benghazi and place himself in a position to be compromised.
That’s the conclusion of Wayne Simmons, who spent 27 years as part of an Outside Paramilitary Special Operations Group for the CIA. He is also the author of the new political thriller, “The Natanz Directive”.
“He sold out,” said Simmons of the decision by Petraeus to publicly conclude a spontaneous demonstration over an anti-Islamic YouTube video was responsible for the deadly attacks against the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that resulted in the deaths of four Americans.
“I have met multiple, multiple times with Gen. Petraeus at the Pentagon,” he said. “One of my biggest disappointments and certainly of my colleagues, our disappoint is because we absolutely are convinced that he sold out. And when I say ‘sold out’, he sold out to the administration (and) got himself tangled into this web.”
Simmons is convinced there is a whole lot more to come on this story.
“I promise you there are going to be many more very powerful people embarrassed about what’s getting ready to come out. This doesn’t just happen with one guy,” he said.
Over the past few days, Petraeus associated have labored to state his affair with Paula Broadwell occurred after he left the U.S. Army and after he was confirmed as CIA Director. Simmons says the timing is irrelevant to him. He says Petraeus never should have let himself become compromised by this.
“Everyone makes mistakes, but you cannot put yourself in a position to make this kind of monumental error and mistake and not have the same monumental repercussions come back that not only harm him (and) harm his family which is bad enough, but will absolutely put the national security interests of the United States at risk,” said Simmons. He believes the intelligence operatives of our allies and enemies certainly knew about the Petraeus affair.
Petraeus was almost universally respected as a military commander and strategist, but Simmons says the general was not the right fit at the CIA.
“There are no tears being shed today for his resignation,” said Simmons. “He’s not an intelligence professional. He is a military professional.”
Simmons says the next director should definitely be an intelligence professional but he anticipates Obama nominating someone “out of left field”.
But the chaos over Benghazi and now this Petraeus scandal suggests to Simmons a stunning lack of national leadership.
“This is absolutely indicative of what has been going on for four years around the world, in the military, in the intelligence community, in the State Department,” said Simmons. “We are in shambles. And that is because of the lack of leadership coming out of the White House.”
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Dan Foster of National Review Online applaud Paul Ryan taking a more prominent role within the Republican Party and in House leadership races. They also slam Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard for suggesting Republicans really shouldn’t try to stop the Obama tax hikes. And they try to sift through increasingly bizarre sex scandal surrounding former CIA Director David Petraeus.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Charlie Cooke of National Review are outraged and disappointed by the fall of former CIA Director David Petraeus and wonder when we’ll ever hear the truth on Benghazi. They also express their amusement at pundits who were nowhere close on predicting the election results but suddenly know exactly what went wrong for the GOP. And they pay tribute to those who have served our nation in uniform with courage and dignity both in this war and in past generations.
