Our ‘peace partners’, protesting ‘peacefully’, with slogans full of ‘love’ for the Jewish people. Let’s negotiate with these reasonable and peace loving people!!!
http://israelmatzav.blogspot.co.il/2013/05/peace-partners-protest-in-new-york-city.html
As long as Palestinians are considering Israel their “top” enemy there is no chance for peace. As an enemy Israel is being demonized. Palestinians use any opportunity they can find to attack and kill Israelis and celebrate any act of violence against Israel and Israelis. This is not a precondition to peace. It is a precondition to war!
Take a minute to listen to this guy, this is exactly what is going on: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWOkEnBl5TO4SCLfSlosjgg
And this article is also very interesting: http://nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=459616
Cheers
D
Immigration is another hot topic that completely paralyses our politicians. I think, as with majority of our country problems, the solution is very simple and pragmatic.
Here are the basis for that solution that i think most intelligent people will agree with:
1. America will not deport millions of illegal immigrants that are already here.
2. We need to secure our borders if not for immigration reason then as a counter terrorism measure.
3. People should not be able to work without paying payroll taxes.
4. Our immigration policy should be designed to make America stronger and more competitive.
Lets start addressing our immigration problems using these simple, what I call axioms.
There are over 10 million illegal immigrants in United States. Most of them work, most of them have jobs that majority of Americans would never hold. Most of them would never be deported! They are here, they are part of this country, part of this economy. Their children are indistinguishable from the rest of the young and hip. So what is the right solution?
I believe the right solution is the work visa, i think these immigrants should work here legally and get work visas, variation of H-1B visa. Normally H-1B is granted for three years, can be extended for another three and holder of that visa can then start applying for a green card. In the case of illegal immigrants, I propose the following:
VISA
1. Immigrants would need to secure a job and with employment offer apply for this new visas.
2. This visa would be also valid for three years, but it would have to be renewed twice or three times before holder of the visa can apply for a green card.
3. Visa would only be valid if immigrant is employed. if immigrant loses a job and can’t find another one within say 90 days he would have to be deported.
5. Visa would be transferable from one employer to another so that holder can look for better jobs.
6. If an immigrant has committed a felony he should be deported.
7. Immigrant shouldn’t be able to collect unemployment or welfare assistance.
Employment verification – Big part of this plan is to eliminate cash side of the economy. Payroll taxes must be paid! If an immigrant is working and receiving compensation in cash, when caught he/she should be deported and employer should be fined a large fee, something in the neighborhood of average annual salary for the position held by the immigrant.
If we eliminate the possibility of work without an authorization we will eliminate illegal immigration.
To make sure employers are only hiring people that are eligible to work in this country, we need to develop a national web site/register where all new hires can be checked. You enter employee name, SSN or visa number, address and it tells you if this person is who he says he is. (I am sure if asked, Google can develop it in about two weeks and for free if it can run it on Android) there will be no more “borrowing” SSN from others… There should be a grace period of may be six month to a year but after that US government should be very aggressive in perusing employers that hire employees illegally.
I also think that all people that come here illegally do it because they really have very few options in their own countries. Most of them have absolutely no legal chance of getting here. So creating this pass for them to be here legally and work and raise their families is a good, humane and American way of helping people help themselves. After all this country is country of immigrants.
Borders – we definitely need to secure our borders. I don’t understand why it is even a question. We are winding down our military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan and if there is no other way may be our military should take part in securing our borders.
Strategic immigration – America should be a lot smarter about our immigration policies. We should dramatically increase our H-1B visa quotas for strategic occupations. America desperately needs more engineers, nurses, scientists, etc. may be we need dedicated quotas for these profession may be we should get rid of quotas all together. If a company is sponsoring an employee and can demonstrate that it can’t fill that position otherwise than that employee should be granted a visa regardless of a quota. If companies were able to fill positions here a lot more jobs would be staying in the USA and won’t be shipped abroad.
Another really simple thing we need to change is the visas for people graduating from American colleges. People come to America from all over the world to study. They get their education here, and then we kick them out, we kick out not just people with undergraduate degrees we kick out people with Masters and even Ph.Ds. I think people that receive their doctorate degrees here, regardless of the subject they study, should get a green card automatically! These are best and the brightest, we should do all we can to try and keep them here. People with undergraduate and master degrees should also be given a chance to find an employment here. May be we can extend their student visas for another year and make it easier for them to obtain H-1B visa (getting rid of the visa quotas would go a long way in that direction).
So that is it. It is that simple. Illegal immigrants will become productive, tax paying members of this society, with path to a Green Card and eventually a citizenship. If there are 10 million illegal immigrants (i think there are a lot more) and they all just get minimum wage jobs, it will bring in at least additional 60 billion dollars to IRS per year (Big Bird could be saved) not counting state, local, ssn and medicare taxes. This reform will also eliminate a sector of the economy that doesn’t pay payroll taxes, which in turn will eliminate unfair advantage the companies that hire illegals have. Reforming the H-1B visa process will also make America a lot more competitive and will open doors of opportunities to a lot of smart and capable people to come here and contribute to making America better and stronger!
Any negotiations are futile as long as Pals continue with their hostile and military attitude towards Israel. As long as each Palestinian man, woman and child is dreaming about killing an Israeli, As long as there is no peace on the ground negotiated peace is not worth the paper the peace agreement is written on. Israel has had a peace agreement with Egypt for a long time. So what, incitement against Jews and Israel continued. No Israeli companies were able to do business in Egypt, and now they are talking about annulling the peace agreement. Will they give Sinai back? I don’t think so. If there is a true peace on the ground and Palestinian people accept Israelis as their neighbors then negotiating a piece treaty is easy.
Third payer system – is the biggest problem with American healthcare. People that have insurance don’t always value what they have and use the system liberally, people that don’t have insurance can hardly afford any healthcare at all. To solve this problem America has to find a way to go back to a direct payer system, and I have a plan to do just that.
To make my plan work we need one prerequisite. We already have medical savings accounts but the way these accounts are set up right now makes these accounts not very practical. Employees have to decide at the beginning of the year how much they are willing to put into these accounts and whatever’s is left unused in these accounts at the end of the year is lost, so people don’t put a lot of money into these accounts and don’t use them to really pay for their healthcare.
Here’s my plan:
1. Change the law governing the medical savings accounts. Essentially these accounts should function like 401Ks. Money go in tax free and what haven’t been used will keep accumulating for future use. There are already mechanisms to make sure the funds in these accounts are used for the right purposes, so that shouldn’t change.
2. Encourage all employers to instead of paying for employee’s health insurance directly just deposit the monthly premiums into each employee’s medical savings account. And if employees don’t want to change their current situation and are happy with their current health insurance they can jus pay the premiums to the insurance company just like their employers would.
That is it! This is the plan. With this new plan people will see real money being deposited into their accounts (in addition to their own contributions) and will be a lot smarter with these funds. People will seek out better insurance alternatives and may even pay for medical expenses directly to the doctors. But the bottom line is people will start comparison shopping and normal economic forces will be in play to reduce or at least contain rising cost of US healthcare services.
Another action the US government should take is to encourage immigration of doctors and other medical professionals, but immigration is a whole new subject, much more political, so I will leave it to a lot smarter people. Not really 
I will post my ideas on immigration in a few days.
Now the big question is, how do we implement this sucker? I am looking forward to any comments or suggestions.
Cheers
D
