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Title: Paris Muslim who killed policeman, shot two others just days before French election was released EARLY from 20-year sentence for trying to kill cops
Source:
Pamela Geller
URL Source: http://pamelageller.com/2017/04/dra ... entence-trying-kill-cops.html/
Published: Apr 21, 2017
Author: Pamela Geller
Post Date: 2017-04-21 08:26:52 by HomerBohn
Keywords: None
Views: 6485
Comments: 31
Dramatic video captures French police shooting dead terrorist who killed officer and wounded two others just days before French election – as it’s revealed he was released EARLY from 20 year sentence for trying to kill cops (By Abe Hawken and Amie Gordon For Mailonline and Peter Allen In Paris for MailOnline, 20 April 2017) A policeman was shot dead while two other officers were seriously injured by a Kalashnikov-wielding gunman on the Champs Elysees in central Paris – just three days before the French presidential election. The alleged ISIS gunman, identified as 39-year-old Karim C – who was jailed for 20 years for trying to kill officers in 2001 – parked his Audi and opened fire after police stopped at a red light on the world famous avenue. French police said the attack was probably a ‘terrorist act’ and dramatic video footage captured the moment police shot at the assailant, who later died. Police have now launched a desperate manhunt for a second suspect after heavily armed officers flooded the area in the heart of the French capital. Officers have been searching the home of the alleged shooter – who was known to security services and had been flagged as an ‘extremist’ – in east Paris and he had previously said that he ‘wanted to kill police’. The fatal incident unfolded as presidential candidates, including National Front party leader Marine Le Pen, debated on a TV show nearby before Sunday’s election. French presidential election candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon took part in the TV show as the nearby attack happenedFrench newspaper Le Parisien named the attacker as Karim C, who used the alias ‘Abu Yousuf the Belgian’, and reportedly made threats to kill police using the social media app Telegram, an instant messaging service. Karim was born in France and lived in Chelles, a commuter town close to Paris and was jailed for the 2001 attack – but is believed to have been released early in 2016. The gunman has been identified by police but they will not officially reveal his name until investigators determine whether he had accomplices, according to the Paris prosecutor. Francois Molins said: ‘The identity of the attacker is known and has been checked. I will not give it because investigations with raids are ongoing. ‘The investigators want to be sure whether he had or did not have accomplices.’ The Interior Ministry spokesman said the officers were deliberately targeted and the police union added that the policeman was killed while sat in a car at a red light. US President Donald Trump said: ‘It looks like another terrorist attack. What can you say? It never ends.’ ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack and dramatic video footage showed the immediate aftermath of the incident which left one policeman dead. In the video, posted on Twitter, several figures can be seen moving around next to a police van on the Champs Elysees. One of the figures then appeared to fall to the ground and a silver car – believed to have been used by the suspects – can be seen parked next to the van. Police have issued an arrest warrant for a second suspect – a man understood to have arrived in France by train from Belgium. French President Francois Hollande said the attack was ‘terrorist related’ and scheduled an emergency meeting following the shootings on Thursday evening. French prosecutors have opened a terrorism investigation. Mr Hollande said a national tribute will be paid to the policeman and added that a ‘passerby was hit’ before the ‘assailant was neutralised’. Poster Comment: Heinous butchery like this will insure Marine LePen's victory which will be a victory for the French people and another death knell for Merkel's EU. US and Europe's Muslim murderers are 'under surveillance' or known to 'security services' who do nothing until the vile piece of Muslim filth murders people. By now it should be evident that at some point they will murder someone, so why not find a pretext to lock him up or get them out of the country? What a pity rogue elements don't arise within police ranks, who quietly 'take out' a Muslim on police radar. By now if even the most bleeding of hearts doesn't see what a danger ALL Muslims are to a society then we are, indeed, lost. Moderate Muslims? No such thing. They all read the same damned book that instructs them to kill us. While the terrorist is sawing off our heads with a scimitar, the 'moderate' is holding down our feet so we don't wiggle around and spoil the cut.
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#1. To: HomerBohn, Vicomte13 (#0)
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You would think so. I think the fear of a Le Pen win will drive up voter turnout to vote for one of the two "moderate" candidates. Without France, the EU falls apart. And the Euro too. And without the EU and the Euro, the French are just a powerless unimportant little tourist stop. Le Pen's only hope is that the commie candidate (recently surging) can end up in the runoff with her. Faced with an impractical loon communist in the final round, she would win. Otherwise, it will be the usual Lucy-grabbing-the-football outcome for Le Pen. After Trump's big win, never say never. But a Le Pen win would be a bigger surprise to me than the Brexit outcome.
Without the EU and the Euro, GERMANY collapses utterly - their economy is literally BUILT on exports. France's is not. Le Pen will not simply tear up the European Union. She will SUBORDINATE the EU to the democracies that compose it. The current "European Union" is a Lincolnian model. Le Pen's model is a "European Confederacy", not a return to 1913.
Maybe. But I don't see the French voters giving her a chance to. French voters almost never turn to the Right in the last century. They never had a Thatcher and even Sarkozy was no Thatcher type. Le Pen is bigger now than her dad ever was but I don't see anything here to help her over the top. And FN has underperformed in regional elections, leaving a Le Pen presidency very weak, perhaps helpless, in the French parliament. A big massacre, like the truck attack in Nice, just before the second-round election might put her over the top though.
Article 16. Terror attack - respond with Article 16. Then the President becomes the King, with absolute power.
But are French voters ready for that? The record of French elections doesn't support it. I would argue it supports an opposite view. Even after 9/11 and passing the Patriot Act, Americans weren't willing to go that far. You'd have to have something like 9/11, like an attack that destroyed the Louvre and killed thousands, for the French to go for it.
Or, simply continue the current Etat de Siege, under which the French authorities can raid any house and inspect it. They have raided thousands of Muslim houses, found hundreds of weapons and made hundreds of arrests as a result. In a state of siege, civil privacy is suspended and the government can intrude on whatever space it sees fit, through executive action (unreviewed by any court, and not subject to judicial intervention). If Le Pen is interested in breaking the terrorists and driving hostile elements out of the country, she can easily do so by invoking extraordinary Presidential powers to deal with security threats. There's no mechanism to prevent her from doing this other than the next election. So, if the political opposition attempts the French equivalent of a filibuster and refuses to acknowledge the existence of the President, the fact of repeated terrorist attacks simply allows the President to assume plenary power, at least for periods of time, to enforce security provisions and deport people. And nothing prevents her from doing it again and again and again. The sort of "absolute block" of the executive that can be achieved in the American system by the filibuster in Congress and judicial review cannot be achieved in France. In "emergencies" the French President always has the power to take whatever steps HE thinks are necessary, and these acts are not subject to any review other than voting him out of office at the next election. If the people elect Marine Le Pen and the French legislature tries to behave like a filibustering American Congress, they will soon be screaming that she has become a dictator, because she WILL become a dictator, if necessary, to enforce her will on key things. If the French people vote her in, they are angry, and the legislature will listen to them, because in the French system, the President is much like the Supreme Court in America. In America, the Supreme Court has the final word, but in the French system, the President has the final authority to act and decide. The British elect MPs, who choose a Prime Minister, who is limited by the majority in Parliament. The Americans elect a President, who is ultimately limited by the Supreme Court. But the French elect a King they call "le President", who in normal times presides while the Prime Minister practices politics, but who in times of crisis becomes the ruling monarch. And the President has the authority to determine when such a crisis exists. The Conseil d'Etat - the Supreme Court for matters involving the government - has declared that it does not have the power to review the existence of a crisis, that that authority reposes in the President alone. To attempt to ignore a French President in the French system is to play with fire. The opposition, even if they control Parliament, HAS TO keep the politics to a low boil, because if anything overheats and goes into the streets, the President, alone and without review, commands all of the state security forces, and the President has the sovereign power to determine when an "emergency" exists. Partisan gridlock has to be tempered in the French system. And since all politicians everywhere are corrupt, the fact that virtually any leader can be brought down by the President through a secret investigation and exposure of wrongdoing, followed by dismissal (the French President CAN dismiss the Prime Minister, and does not HAVE to appoint the Prime Minister from the dominant party - they DO, precisely because French politics have to be played delicately, given the hard power that is wired into the offices). As far as the French voters not "turning" to the Right, the French are customarily already ON the Right. De Gaulle, Pompidou, Giscard, Chirac, Sarkozy - these were all men of the Right. Mitterand was of the Left, but a World War II leftist, not a Marxist. Hollande is of the Left, and he has been an abject failure as President too. The French reliably put men of the Right in charge of the armed forces, intelligence, national security, the police and investigative services. And in France, government industries ARE of the Right. The Kings were the operators of the biggest industries in France in their day, and private enterprise has always been in second position to the large state-run enterprises, going all the way back to the dawn of the modern economy with Louis XII. The Revolutionary legacy is really one of social solidarity: universal health insurance, pensions, education - the fundamental supports of life so that everybody lives as a middle class (and therefore not violently revolutionary) Frenchmen. This thought process is well over 200 years old, and is not Leftist in any meaningful sense. It's pretty damned conservative, really, if you're trying to conserve that particular way of life and government. Where the French have gotten "Lefty" is in terms of social tolerance, immigration, and a resentment of the corruption of the super-rich. The latter is probably a permanent feature of a country whose upper crust used to live very visibly apart in places like Versailles, Chambord and the Louvre, and who still live in stunning chateaux. The differential grates, just like having to walk through First Class before seating in Economy class is one of the strongest indicators of flights that have unruly passengers. People don't like to FEEL the differential, and in airplanes, and France, you FEEL it, because it's right there in your face. THAT pushes a politics of envy. But the features of the American Left, the "dismantle the army and embrace Castro!" types - they never get power in France, not ever. France is a more systematically Right-wing country in its bones than America. Those are socially conservative people.
If the French people vote her in, they are angry, and the legislature will listen to them, because in the French system, the President is much like the Supreme Court in America. In America, the Supreme Court has the final word, but in the French system, the President has the final authority to act and decide. Which is why I don't think the French voters will give her a chance. Unless there is a massacre fresh in their minds. Le Pen will always be a bridesmaid, never a bride. I wish it was otherwise.
On the other hand, are they ready for LE PEN? That's hard for them. It's like asking Americans to embrace...Al Gore again, or Romney, or Hillary Clinton. Once the public has well and truly REJECTED somebody as a shit sandwich, it's really, really hard to get them to accept having that person shoved down their throat later. That's the problem so many had with Trump. They so virulently opposed him that they cannot accept him now that he won. Everybody else moves on.
I wish that the French Right and French Left were more reasonable. But then, I wish that of the American Right and Left also. I guess reasonable people don't get very far in politics, because to be a political leader you have to be an aggressive, cut-throat scumbag. It's the nature of political leadership.
She has cleaned up the party a lot, dumped the antisemites and some others. But she is still a perennial candidate like her father. Voters never like that. And it is quite rare for a perennial candidate to finally win. Even Nigel Farrage, the main figure associated with Brexit, never managed to win more than a few seats in Parliament. And Geert Wilders can't do much better in the Netherlands.
Nixon managed it. But yeah.
Nixon lost only once in 1960. Le Pen and her father have lost, what, over 10 times? Not the same. And Churchill couldn't really be counted as a perennial either. He was more of a perennial critic and backbencher type who finally made good when Hitler turned out to be as bad as he predicted.
The whole anti-Semitism business bores me. People don't like Jews? Well, more Americans don't like Catholics than don't like Jews. Suck it up and move on. I dislike seeing opposition to Israel morphed into "anti-Semitism". I dislike seeing the history of World War II morphing into it being essentially all about the Jews. I've never thought the Jews were important enough to hate, and I don't think most people spend a lot of time thinking about them. But thanks to all of the ENDLESS parade of overwrought claims of anti- Semitism, I certainly have to pay more attention to Jews than I want to, and that causes me to think that maybe they DO warrant more attention, because they have the power to keep shoving these issues in front of my face and the media, and get so much money for Israel. I would say that the endless parade of "anti-Semitism" issues has had the effect of making me markedly less sympathetic to Israel and to Jewish causes. I think they are whiny, arrogant, and a lot more powerful than I thought they were. And why, exactly, should THEY have that power? The answer, in America, is the lunacy of the fundamentalist far Right, who in their zeal to burn witches seem to have missed the whole New Testament. The thing that Jean-Marie Le Pen said that got him PROSECUTED was merely that the Holocaust was a "mere detail" of World War II. But actually, that's right. That's true. The MAIN EVENT of World War II was a whole bunch of countries putting massive armies in the field to stop Nazi Germany from conquering Europe and Imperial Japan from conquering China and the Western Pacific. It was not ABOUT the Jews. They suffered and died, as did millions of others, because the Nazis and Japs and Fascists were evil bastards. The Nazis had a particular hard-on for the Jews, which caused them particular suffering. And that's too bad. It's one of the reasons why it's a good thing we destroyed Nazi Germany. But it's not THE REASON we fought the war, and it was not the PRIMARY suffering of the war. 100 million people died in World War 2. The Jews were 6% of that. And that really is a detail of history. And it's not anti-Semitism to say it.
Yeah but it isn't the same in France. Ever since the Dreyfus affair, politics in France changed forever. And not just politics with regard to the treatment and status of Jews. They worry a lot now that if all the Jews finally leave (due to Muslim persecution), that France will no longer be the France they've always known. They have a point there. The Dreyfus affair shaped a lot of bits and pieces in subsequent French politics, a touchstone that has shaped countless other issues. I would point out that importing tons of hostile Third World Muslims is the much bigger problem and it contributes directly to the flight of Jews from France.
Yes. And as I perennially point out, Nature abhors a vacuum. THe Western World as a whole has decided that sex is a recreational behavior that should be separated from reproduction, and has done so through contraception. This has been done primarily for economic reasons: salaries and benefits are insufficient for people to maintain their standard of living and provide the living they would like to provide their children if they have 3 children, which most families must have in order for the population to maintain its size. (Population stability requires 2.1 children per woman, but given that children only come in whole units, and many women do not marry or have none, that means that most families need to have three in order for the population to remain stable or grow slightly.) Raising three children without losing one's standard of living, and being able to guarantee those children the same or better standard of living, is not possible under the current wage and benefits structure in any Western country. France and Denmark get the closest, and have the highest middle class white native birth rates in the Western World, but it is still below replacement levels. The white population is nowhere close to replacement level in any other country. In the USA, white women have about 1.8 children, which puts the US white population on the same demographic death spiral as Europe. Because of class-based thinking, and a stubborn "fight the last war" mentality of most working people, to provide the sufficient benefits for actually promote middle class population stability is not acceptable policy ANYWHERE in the world. Indeed, environmentalists think that population decline is a virtue. Trouble is, fianciers, economists and businessmen, and the consuming public, DO NOT. In order to keep vegetables cheap, and services cheap, and construction cheap, large numbers of bodies are needed. Large numbers of bodies are needed OR ELSE wages will skyrocket, as will the prices of food, services and construction. This is inevitable - an iron law of economics. Someday, robots may replace some tasks, but those days are far off. The WHITES are not producing the bodies needed to man an economy that maintains this level of middle class living. THEREFORE more bodies are needed. Nature abhors a vacuum: those bodies are imported. In most cases, they self-import. And once in the new country, the transplants, now going into the second and third generations, do NOT simply become more middle class people. That happened in America in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, because of unusual circumstances related to a frontier. But TODAY those conditions do not exist. TODAY the native white middle class population is physically dying out everywhere in the world: they are not having babies, their children do not have the same prospects. Their numbers are shrinking, due to economic pressures, which FURTHER depresses the birth rate. And so the foreign labor is imported from the nearest source of poor, cheap bodies. In America, that's Latin America. They have lots of babies down there. They move here and have lots of babies too - so not only is the demographic death spiral of whites moving its inexorable path on internal numbers, but the whites are being REPLACED through immigration, and juiced further by HIGH birth rates among Latinos. When I first moved to California in 1985, Latinos were about 5% of the US population, and perhaps 20% of the California population. Today, a mere generation - 30 years - later, Hispanics outnumber blacks, they are 18% of the population, and outnumber the whites in California. NOTHING will reverse these trends other than Whites having babies. And THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN without a fundamental restructuring of our economy and society. Having spoken with so many people on the Right (on boards like this), and on the Left elsewhere, I know that people do NOT see this, do NOT perceive it as a problem, and are completely unwilling to consider the sort of complete overhaul required to save the population. Right Wingers think that putting up a Wall and stopping illegal immigration will keep America "America", but it won't, because WITHIN the Wall the White population is reproducing well under replacement, and the Latinos are reproducing at well over replacement - and that means that America will be Latino ANYWAY, in time. It'll take longer, but the path is set, the cow is already in the chute. This is driven by pure demographics, and NOTHING can stop it. No amount of handwaving or political jawboning (or abusive language) will do one goddamned thing to change the INEVITABLE course of history. Demographics is destiny. Accept the truth, or be an idiot, but either way, that's the future. In Europe it's the same way, but things are bleaker for the Whites there, because the nearest burgeoning population isn't Latino Catholics but Arab and African Muslims and Turks. In Russia it is the same thing: the Muslims are vastly outstripping the Orthodox or secular Whites in birth rates. I have had nationalists and religionists dispute those facts with me. They are living on fantasy and don't know their asses from a hole in the ground. Facts are stubborn things, and these demographic facts are the facts of life, and of extinction. So, France is indeed dying. As is Italy, Germany, Russia, Canada, America - EVERY WHITE COUNTRY ON EARTH. Japan is SAID to have chosen a different course, because they are dying out too. But it's a lie. The Japanese have restrictive immigration, so the country is literally depopulating. But they STILL need the backs to crack, and the Koreans are the largest growing segment of the Japanese population. Japan can slow down the process, but in 100 years Japan will be a third ethnically Korean. And 100 years after that, should the trend continue, the Japanese race will have ceased to exist and Japan will be the Korean Islands. No amount of bristling about religious, or ethnic, or intellectual, or cultural superiority matters a good goddamn here. The Romans were MUCH superior in every intellectual and technical aspect to the Goths and Franks. They were nevertheless overwhelmed by sheer numbers and replaced in the land. That's the way it is, and it cannot be changed in any way, except by having babies, which will not happen under our current economic configuration. Given what I see in human nature and American character, I recognize that the future is to become a part of Latin America. I've already accepted that, learned quite a bit of Spanish, and found things that are good about that. Of the different cultures I could choose to emphasize, the Catholic one is the one I favor most, so for me the primary change is really just one of the skin color and accent of the people I will be seeing as I age. And I think Latinas are hot, so the Latin future of America is an inevitability I accept with equanimity. I mourn for Europe though. I could live quite happily in most of Latin America, but there is no Muslim country I even want to visit, let alone live in. Islam is religious Naziism. It's ugly, evil, relentless and unappeasable. It's also unreformable, on its own terms. The only successful mass-converstion of Muslims to Christianity in history was the Reconquest of Spain (so perhaps the tenaciously Catholic and rather high- spirited - and heavy-drinking - Latino nation will eventually be the antidote to Islam. Or maybe Latin America will simply secularize and collapse like the White North. In any case, Islam is the mortal threat that will kill Europe. Now, in the same vein as with things Spanish, I have read the Koran and learned the religion and aspects of the culture. But whereas I like Latin culture, and live in and among it with ease and comfort, even happiness, Islamic culture is ugly and vicious. I don't want to live in that, and neither does any white person in Europe. But the things required to save Europe are so broad reaching, such a fundamental reshaping of economics and the structure of society, that Europe very probably will just continue to die out and be replaced. That's sad, but it's the way it is. America's future is Los Estados Unidos Norte Americanos. Europe's future is Sharia 2100.
Maybe our population is too big and simply unsustainable. There are also problems with people even wanting to have more kids. Most of those having the most kids now come from the largest families in the last generation. When was the last time you saw a Prot family with five kids? Or a Catholic family with eight? You and I are old enough to recall when it wasn't unusual, especially in rural areas. I think the sharpest dropoff in birth rate comes from contracepting Catholics, more so than from Prots not having kids. I can hardly find Catholics with more than two kids now and my Prot niece with her five is the largest family I know personally (her husband is inheriting well from a rich clan). Even you, with your opinions, haven't ever mentioned more than one child in your household. And you are at least comfortable financially and in a stable household. I think the signs are already apparent.
There are two things at work here. First, my wife and I were unable to have children. Our daughter was literally a full-blown miracle. My wife comes from a family of nine. I was an only child. Had we been able, we would have probably only have had two. Our economic situation has been parlous at several times. It is pretty good now, and we're both past childbearing age. That's how it goes in our society, and in all of Western societies, and it is THE thing that needs to be restructured to avoid Spanish North America and Sharia Europe. People cannot be bullyragged or nagged into having children. In the end, propaganda works at small things, but when it comes to reproduction, it doesn't work - at all. Nor does religion. People decide based on their own opinion, and it's generally an economic one. People don't need EIGHT children to restore the curve, they need THREE. If children had a free education, and housing with children were a guarantee (so that women could take the time to raise them - thereby, incidentally, creating a lot of new jobs in the workforce), and if health care were universal, a lot more women would stay at home and have babies. We spend trillions to try to defend a country and a culture, which we are going to lose anyway, without a fight, because of demographic issues. Spend that money on the firm and permanent social supports that enable and encourage childbearing, and you will keep the culture and have a happier, more youthful society. There is no way that people are willing to listen to that, though. Instead, they will be shortsighted and spiteful, and other people's grandchildren, speaking Spanish, will rule them in a country that belongs to the newcomers. The Whites are the Indians. The Indians could not even dream of changing their culture. So they died and the newcomers took over and remade things in their image.
I think the signs are already apparent. In which case the Americas will be Muslim in 300 years. Adjusting to Islam is not so hard for men. You can have four wives, and they cannot divorce you for it. It'd be a bitch for the current crop of women, but future women, growing up with it, will resign themselves to it. Too bad for them, I guess. If I were suddenly empowered as King, I would simply make the societal changes necessary to save the society. The Left and Right would scream, and within 5 years most people would say "He was right".
The fact that the Snowflake Generation comes out of college saddled with huge debt and many with poor job prospects delays purchases of cars and houses and starting a family. They don't get married and have kids living in their parents' basements. Well, a few do but most don't. Many of them, a majority in many areas like the east coast, don't become independent until they are in their thirties. When we were young, everyone was independent in their twenties. I probably shouldn't have mentioned your own personal circumstance. But I was making a larger point about those big Catholic families having disappeared, even more, in my experience, than the Prot families (who also have done poorly overall). Look around your local Catholic church. How many Catholics there even have 3 kids, let alone more? I see the same in my own extended family with only a few exceptions. And several who have no children at all. My parents had 4 kids but only 7 grandkids. Those 7 grandkids have had only 12 grandkids (but I expect a few of the grandkids will still have maybe 3 more kids if finance permits). Those numbers are quite consistent with the points you made.
Adjusting to Islam is not so hard for men. You can have four wives, and they cannot divorce you for it. I tend to think Islam will run out of steam too. They're just behind the curve at present because they are such backward countries. Look at the dim financial outlook for even the richest of the oil kingdoms in the Mideast.
People don't have kids because they don't think they can raise them right. What does that mean? That means, generally, that one parent needs to stay home to raise them, full time. And the OTHER parent needs to be there for meals - breakfast and dinner anyway - and weekends. Both parents need to be very present in their children's lives. Which means that working hours need to be reasonable: 9 to 5, 5 days per week, not 6:30 to 11:30, 6 days a week. It means that salaries need to be high enough for one parent to support the other parent and three children at home for 18 years, and then those three children through college, until they find jobs and are able to work. It means that housing must be stable. If I were King, I would kick banks out of the business of lending to people at interest on their primary home. Instead, I would have the national treasury lend to each individual, at zero percent interest, repayable as part of taxes, over a lifetime, with the balance against the estate if there are assets, or otherwise written off. Stable permanent housing is the most fundamental and necessary pillars of all social stability. There should be no role for residential landlords in this society, or for mortgage lenders and brokers on individual housing. Vacation homes, pieds-a-terre in the city, sure, but the primary home? Never. There should be no homelessness because of that loan from the government. Yes, this fundamentally changes residential real estate - into something that very much resembles the housing rights under the Torah. Private school should likewise be part of that lending structure, without interest. But private universities should not have tax free endowments. Private institutions are for profit. It is masked, but the profits go to the high salaries of employees, sinecures, lavish packages for executives. Universities use their endowments to buy up the land all around and rent it out, and have become like the Church became by the time of the Renaissance: massive landowners with whom nobody could compete. Not in my Kingdom. And medical care should be provided through the French system. But who cares what I think. Unable to change any particular part of the world, we do have the option of living anywhere in it that we please...provided we speak the language and can get a job to support ourselves, or have social security. While I love the idea of someplace cold and snowy, like Trondheim for instance, my wife needs something warmer. Paris is drifting towards Islamic squalor. I'm thinking somewhere nice and tropic and Spanish, perhaps an island.
Look at the dim financial outlook for even the richest of the oil kingdoms in the Mideast. I doubt it. There's a demonic energy there. Islam never reformed. We're 500 years into the modern era, and the Muslims are becoming more medieval, not less. Yes, the oil wealth and structures of the modern world are running out. But that changes considerably as the Muslims gain a greater and greater share of Europe and the Americas. Islamic men share in common their religious culture, which exceeds the power of nationalism for them, and which makes them share in the brotherhood of mastery of women.
I'd generally prefer your system to the one we have. We're in a period of rampant greed, perhaps unparalleled. It is the driving force behind the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of the tycoons. Bad as it was in some past generations (railroad barons, the Gettys/Rockefellers, etc.), it is far worse today. And it is only accelerating. A bad sign for the future.
French dedication to degenerate multiculturism is profound. He'd be out of jail in five years as a good example of French cultural psychosis.
We're in a period of rampant greed, perhaps unparalleled. It is the driving force behind the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of the tycoons. Bad as it was in some past generations (railroad barons, the Gettys/Rockefellers, etc.), it is far worse today. And it is only accelerating. A bad sign for the future. There are two ways to rectify the situation. (1) Through coerced redistributive taxation. (2) Through violent revolution. Some people think that it can be done a third way: (3) Through voluntary charitable contributions. Number three is pure fantasy. It never happened during the Age of Faith when everybody was a devout Christian. It never happened in any culture under any religion. It will never happen here. In the real world, our options are number 1 or number 2. Both are effective. Both make the rich and the wannabee rich very angry. One leaves them alive to amass more. I prefer option 1, but I recognize that option 2 is always there. It's when the rich think that themselves so secure that it isn't that it becomes inevitable.
There is another key difference you overlook, I think. Our grandparents all died, on average, around the age of "retirement", 62-65. Maybe the young people can't afford to have kids in their 20s in part because we have so greatly extended lifespan (at greatly diminished quality) and therefore we spend a lot on social security and Medicare/Medicaid and all the rest. Quite often, just so someone with Alzheimers can breathe a little longer. But no one has the courage to say it. The funny thing is that I think most of the old people do know it. I kinda wonder whether they would rather live another 10 years or if they'd rather have another 10 grandkids before they die. I think I know which option my mother and grandmothers would choose. They wanted to live as long as they were in good health but they absolutely doted over their grandchildren and great-grandchildren and never thought they had enough grandkids. How about just raising the "retirement" age, assuming for the moment the common use of that term even though S.S. was never intended to be a general retirement program or similar to a pension. How would the public ledger change if you simply raised the retirement age to 70?
That does not work. The rich, those who have vastly concentrated the wealth and who are concentrating it at an accelerating pace, and making decisions (on trade, for example) that wipe out whole sectors of the American industrial economy, do not pay Social Security and Medicare. Social Security and Medicare hit WAGES, just wages, which are middle class wealth. Upper class wealth comes in the form of dividends and capital gains, both of which are immune from Social Security and Medicare taxation, and both of which are taxed at a rate about 10% lower than middle class wages are. Your proposal, which imposes more burden on middle class people to move around the ages and taxes they pay, merely redistributes middle and working class suffering to the old. The PROBLEM is the 80% of the wealth (and growing) that is trapped by the upper class, on which they pay maybe 20% taxes. They need to be paying 33% taxes on that, just like the middle class do on their wages. No scheme to redistribute the pain and work and taxes around the middle and working classes can work, because they only control 20% of the wealth. No. The extra wealth has to be extracted from the upper class, because they have concentrated it, and will continue to do so. We don't need to raise the retirement age. We need to increase taxes on the wealthy and super- wealthy so that they pay the same proportion of their wealth every year in taxes that the middle class does. The rich don't have to pay MORE as a percentage of their gross wealth than the middle class do. If they just paid the SAME our budgetary situation would rectify itself without going back to figure out ways to fuck over old working class and middle class people. To make the rich pay the SAME proportion of their total wealth as the middle class pays is NOT fucking over the rich. It's making them pay the same thing that the rest of the citizenry pays. As it is now, their favorable tax regimes are the result of their great political power, and the source of their ability to further accumulate wealth. We are headed towards a Latin American situation if we don't fix it. No, raising the retirement age is NOT the answer. FIguring out new and clever ways to put MORE burdens on working people's lives is NOT the answer - unless you want to keep the birth rate collapsed. The answer is to significantly hike taxes on the wealthy who have 80% of the nation's wealth, to significantly redistribute that so that working and middle class people have less stressful and more secure lives (free education, universal health care, universal pensions, and an economy that can support a family on one wage earner, freeing up women). Going after the middle class AGAIN by raising the age they can retire will make the situation worse. No. The only correct answer is to tax the massive concentration of wealth in the upper class and redistribute it. The wealthy NEVER go along with this, not ever, so you either do it coercively and peacefully, through tax codes. OR you keep on drinking the propaganda kool-ade of the Ayn Randians, do nothing, and end up with a violent revolution in which the wealth is redistributed by killing many of the wealthy and taking it. The third option, a quiet return to feudalism, which is what we're headed for, is derailed by the fact that the working class and middle class simply will not have babies, and you'll end up with a Latino population instead, and Latinos have revolutions and kill the rich. The truth has to be faced: the rich have accumulated more of the nation's wealth than is in the national interest, and a significant portion of it has to be taken from them and redistributed to the rest of the population. This is best done through pensions, medical care, education, and better working hours, because those things lead to the higher birth rate that will save the culture. We already KNOW they lead to a higher birth rate, because the most middle-class-birth friendly policies and supports are in France and Denmark, and they have the highest birth rates. They DIDN'T, but now they DO. People will act according to their desires IF they have the means to do it. We are not talking about redistributing probably 40% of the wealth of the upper class, to bring them down to a total of about 50% of the national wealth vice 80%, so that everybody can party and binge. We're doing it to have a fully funded social security that is the national retirement program, to have better schools and free education through college, and to have universal health insurance, and to have a set of labor laws and financial supports for child rearing that get women out of the work force and at home raising kids. We're doing it to save America. I said before that the resistance in the American mind to these things is quasi total, and therefore I have already written off the American future as an English one. We will not do the necessary things. We do not love the English language and Anglo-Saxon Common Law traditions nearly enough to try to maintain the white population birth rate. We will not redistribute. We will import Latinos, they will become the majority, and then they will violently redistribute the wealth (because the rich in Latin America don't give up their wealth and power peacefully either - they have to be killed in revolutions). So, that's what we will have. Our future will resemble Mexico's, Cuba's, Venezuela's, Brazil's, Argentina's, Nicaragua's, El Salvador's - the same conditions of wealth maldistribution prevail there as we are turning into. The same utter unwillingness of the people running it to see the light and fix it through redistribution (and when they tried to, in a place like Chile, the Americans assassinated the President!). But they have babies. And those babies flee that to come here, where they are currently exploited, but where they are replacing the population. In the end, we will have a Latin majority, and we will redistribute through violent revolution. I'd rather see it done smarter, but people are stubborn and stupid and will not learn. The revolution won't come in the next few decades, but after that, the deluge...unless we actually come to our senses and redistribute peacefully. Scandinavia did, and their kings and queens all kept their heads, and they have the best life expectancies and highest standards of living in the world - and very nearly the highest white birth rates. They still haven't done ENOUGH, but the Danes have led the way and have demonstrated that with enough solid social infrastructure and security, even white women will still have more babies. THAT is ultimately what it is all about: saving the country and the culture. Myself, being predominantly French, and Catholic, have no particular love for the Anglo-Saxon common law and traditions. I think our legal system is the worst in the civilized world. I don't care about the English language. I'm just as happy speaking French, and Spanish is just another language. The CULTURAL change from Anglo-American to Latino does not bother me at all. Neither does the racial change. What bothers me is the reason that it's happening. We're simply letting the rich destroy our country and culture, and our fertility, by refusing to impose burdens on them that will curb and reverse their excess wealth concentration. We still haven't gotten the lesson of slavery, which is that if you import cheap exploitable labor, eventually they outnumber you, you lose control of them, and then you lose control of your cities, your states and your countries. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is not a feature of American-style economic culture, and Christianity here is concentrated in the poor and working class, and thus does not determine economic policy. The key thing, though, is that although America has cancer, a visible one that is relatively easy to treat. Americans view the necessary treatment as pure evil, "contrary to everything they believe in", so they'd rather die out as a race and end up being ruled by Latinos, and eventually having bloody revolution, than change anything. And THEREFORE that is precisely what will happen. I don't give much more thought to it. America will be Latino, and once that happens, it will be a very violent and revolutionary place. Europe will be Muslim and Arabic. Europe will suck worse than America. It doesn't HAVE to be this way, but it will be, because Americans are like chainsmokers who already have spots on their lungs, but who nevertheless will not quit.
Social Security and Medicare hit WAGES, just wages, which are middle class wealth. SS/Medicare/Medicaid are, ultimately paid out of the general treasury and they most certainly are driving federal budgets and will increase throughout the Boomer retirement era. Money is truly fungible, especially to the feds. BTW, I also advocate fully taxing everyone at the same rate for SS. But with no upper limit on how much they can be taxed for SS. Currently, they max out at a ridiculously low level ($118,500 in 2016). Yet those with more means are those most likely to survive well into old age and suck up the most benefits from the SS programs. I want to see the Google and Facebook and Microsoft millionaires and billionaires and those on Wall Street all pay SS tax on every dollar they make. They should not have any limit at all. I think my plan is at least as good as yours and could probably be passed in Congress, well, if the winds were right. Your plan, however much you like it, would never pass in America. Never. If we fix entitlements, we fix a lot of other things along with it and we have new options to address other public policy needs.
If you "fix" entitlements, you do so by reducing benefit payments. That's the net-net of it. By doing so, you will further depress the white birth rate, and thereby ensure the more rapid turnover of the country to its Latin future. That's ultimately the issue I am addressing. All of the playing around with the politically expedient is in the sandbox, against a gradient of a rising flood that will swamp the sandbox. I do not doubt for a moment that what you suggest would be easier to pass, and would address the things that conservatives focus on. But the end point of that trajectory is the loss of the country to Latinos, because "entitlement reform" MEANS titrating more assets out of the middle class, which is already struggling, and driving down the birth rate. Hiking Social Security taxes to cover ALL wages will bring in more revenue, but it does not really address the issue. The super-rich, who among themselves have 80% of the national wealth, don't earn much in wages. Their take-home is in the form of dividend yields and capital gains. So, taxing all WAGES will put pressure on the managerial class, but not on the wealthy. If you're going to impose that tax, then you must also be sure to tax capital gains and dividends with the Social Security and Medicare tax (which have no deductions whatsoever). THAT will certainly help. But even then, the base problem is that the wealthy hold their assets in a form that allows them to completely avoid taxation and take out profit as tax deductible loans. That's "the trick" that is only available to multi-multi-millionaires and billionaires. What is needed is a sales tax on securities transactions, and a property tax on securities of an equivalent rate to the property tax on real estate. THOSE two things will do MUCH MORE to right the scale than entitlement "reform" (e,g, screw the middle), or putting Social Security on all wages. Mortgages are taxed, car sales are taxed, hotels and prepared food and gas and alcohol and tobacco are all taxed. Telephones are taxed. Online service is taxed. Everything you have in your house was taxed when you bought it. And your house and cars and boats are taxed every year. There is no justifiable reason for property in the form of securities and ownership shares of companies to NOT be taxed by a sales tax and a property tax. There is more wealth in securities than in land. Land wealth lies in houses, and that is middle class wealth (farmland has very low taxes). Property rights in companies should be taxed on their value exactly like land, and at the same rates - about 1.25% per year.
If you impose a property tax and a sales tax on equities and dividend paying instruments, and raise the tax on dividends and capital gains to be identical to the tax on wage earnings - so that a dollar is a dollar is a dollar (and there is no advantageous way to shelter dollars), then you can go ahead and eliminate the estate tax. Yes, some people will inherit great wealth, but it will all be taxed every year so it doesn't MATTER. The estate tax only matters because most wealth of the super-rich completely escapes taxation until the estate tax, and that is largely avoided with artful trust structures. The super rich must be made the pay the same percentage of their wealth in taxes every year that the middle and working classes are. Then you have a fair system. You also have plenty of money flowing into the treasury.
Or more. It is they who benefit the most from the statist accommodation of their needs for infrastructure and it is they who hire the lobbyists to twist the laws to favor themselves. Anything else amounts to regressive taxation and preying on the poor, the working class and the middle class. I know, 0bama made this argument (incompetently). Nevertheless, he was not fundamentally wrong.
Heinous butchery like this will insure Marine LePen's victory which will be a victory for the French people and another death knell for Merkel's EU.
#2. To: Tooconservative (#1)
I think the fear of a Le Pen win will drive up voter turnout to vote for one of the two "moderate" candidates. Without France, the EU falls apart. And the Euro too. And without the EU and the Euro, the French are just a powerless unimportant little tourist stop.
#3. To: Vicomte13 (#2)
Le Pen's model is a "European Confederacy", not a return to 1913.
#4. To: Tooconservative (#3)
leaving a Le Pen presidency very weak,
#5. To: Vicomte13 (#4)
Then the President becomes the King, with absolute power.
#6. To: Tooconservative (#3)
#7. To: Vicomte13 (#6)
If the people elect Marine Le Pen and the French legislature tries to behave like a filibustering American Congress, they will soon be screaming that she has become a dictator, because she WILL become a dictator, if necessary, to enforce her will on key things.
#8. To: Tooconservative (#5)
#9. To: Tooconservative (#7)
I wish it was otherwise.
#10. To: Vicomte13 (#8)
Once the public has well and truly REJECTED somebody as a shit sandwich, it's really, really hard to get them to accept having that person shoved down their throat later.
#11. To: Tooconservative (#10)
But she is still a perennial candidate like her father. Voters never like that. And it is quite rare for a perennial candidate to finally win.
#12. To: Vicomte13 (#11)
(Edited)
#13. To: Tooconservative (#10)
(Edited)
dumped the antisemites
#14. To: Vicomte13 (#13)
(Edited)
The whole anti-Semitism business bores me. People don't like Jews? Well, more Americans don't like Catholics than don't like Jews.
#15. To: Tooconservative (#14)
I would point out that importing tons of hostile Third World Muslims is the much bigger problem and it contributes directly to the flight of Jews from France.
#16. To: Vicomte13 (#15)
(Edited)
The WHITES are not producing the bodies needed to man an economy that maintains this level of middle class living.
Or maybe Latin America will simply secularize and collapse like the White North.
#17. To: Tooconservative (#16)
Even you, with your opinions, haven't ever mentioned more than one child in your household.
#18. To: Tooconservative (#16)
Or maybe Latin America will simply secularize and collapse like the White North.
#19. To: Vicomte13 (#17)
Our economic situation has been parlous at several times. It is pretty good now, and we're both past childbearing age. That's how it goes in our society, and in all of Western societies, and it is THE thing that needs to be restructured to avoid Spanish North America and Sharia Europe.
#20. To: Vicomte13 (#18)
In which case the Americas will be Muslim in 300 years.
#21. To: Tooconservative (#19)
#22. To: Tooconservative (#20)
I tend to think Islam will run out of steam too. They're just behind the curve at present because they are such backward countries.
#23. To: Vicomte13 (#21)
#24. To: HomerBohn (#0)
(Edited)
Paris Muslim who killed policeman, shot two others just days before French election was released EARLY from 20-year sentence for trying to kill cops
#25. To: Tooconservative (#23)
I'd generally prefer your system to the one we have.
#26. To: Vicomte13 (#25)
There are two ways to rectify the situation.
#27. To: Tooconservative (#26)
How about just raising the "retirement" age, assuming for the moment the common use of that term even though S.S. was never intended to be a general retirement program or similar to a pension.
#28. To: Vicomte13 (#27)
That does not work. The rich, those who have vastly concentrated the wealth and who are concentrating it at an accelerating pace, and making decisions (on trade, for example) that wipe out whole sectors of the American industrial economy, do not pay Social Security and Medicare.
#29. To: Tooconservative (#28)
#30. To: All (#29)
#31. To: Vicomte13 (#30)
(Edited)
The super rich must be made the pay the same percentage of their wealth in taxes every year that the middle and working classes are.
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