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Shmuel Sackett: The West Is Dead – Return to Israel!

The Wet Head is Dead: By Shmuel Sackett

Nov-06-2017

Back in the 60’s, the popular look for men was to have a greased head of hair. They used Vitalis or Lucky Tiger to keep their hair slicked back and looking good. In the early 70’s, Gillette changed all that with a product called “The Dry Look”. It was a hairspray for men that promised a cool, yet totally dry look. The advertising campaign they ran was tremendously successful and their slogan was quite catchy; “The Wet Head is Dead”. The tv ad was very direct; “You don’t have to use oil, creams or even water on your head… the wet head is dead! Long live the dry look!”

Why do I mention this, all of a sudden? Because 40 years later, I have come to the conclusion that the wet head is alive and well. I discovered this because I am presently in New York where, unlike Israel, men work on Friday. Since Shabbat starts very early these days, I noticed that many men come to shul Friday night with a “wet head”. I don’t blame these men who are forced to work Friday afternoon and race home on the last train before Shabbat. I used to be one of them. I remember the days of running full speed, straight into the shower on Erev Shabbat, then continuing my race to shul with a head still dripping. (I never minded the wet head but feared that I left some shampoo behind…) As I looked around the shul these last two weeks, I noticed many of these “wet heads” and I felt bad.

I felt bad because I know now, what I didn’t know back then, when I too was a “wet head”. I know now that it doesn’t have to be this way. The fighting with the boss to leave early Friday afternoon, the working on Chol Ha’Moed, the davening shacharit in the pitch dark just to make it to work on time, the uncomfortable feelings of eating an “airline kosher meal” at the annual convention, the search for a heter to shave during sefira and the nine days, the internal battle of wearing vs not wearing a kippa at work… All of these struggles – and I sympathize with everyone because they are indeed struggles – can be completely avoided. How? By living in a country where Jews are not the minority.

America is a wonderful country and we need to thank Hashem for the fantastic blessings we have had here but let’s be totally honest; it’s not where we belong. As wonderful as things are, this is a non Jewish country and we will always be foreigners in this land. Yes, we have built Yeshivot here and Jewish communities have thrived but we are – and always will be – the guests and never the hosts. This is why Fiday afternoons in the winter become very uncomfortable for Jewish professionals. It is the same reason why the most religious man feels he must shave during the nine days – or during the “shloshim” for a parent… because a guest must follow the rules.

Things in Israel are much different. As I have written many times, there are many areas that we still need to improve on, but for the Jewish professional working man and woman, you simply cannot beat working in Israel. All major companies work Sunday-Thursday, which means no work on Friday so, like Gillette said; “The Wet Head is Dead!” You come to shul Friday night with a nice, dry head of hair. But there’s more… much more. Most companies are closed the entire Sukkot and Pesach so you can enjoy the holiday the way it was designed to be (and not have the days deducted from your vacation time!). All hotels are kosher so the annual convention, even if held in Eilat, is no problem at all. You can sit and enjoy the food together with your co-workers and not feel isolated. Men will never have a problem with a kippa nor will women have problems with head coverings. There is never any work on Erev Yom Tov and you can take off work on Purim and  Tisha b’Av. Nobody will question your “sefira beard” and by law, should you need to sit shiva, you will be given 7 days off – once again, not deducted from your vacation time.

This is what it means to live in a Jewish state. Is everybody frum all around us? No. But that’s not what I am referring to. My focus here is on a Jewish culture vs a non-Jewish culture. Like it or not, in the coming days, no matter where you are in America, you will hear Christmas songs. There’s no way around it. The newspapers will be filled with Christmas sales, you will see your neighbor’s house light up and you will probably bump into 5-6 Santa Clauses each day as you walk in Manhattan. That’s what happens when you live in New York.

In Israel, even in a secular city like Tel Aviv, you will not see any Santas. Rather, you will trip over stores selling jelly donuts (some may even have some jelly!!) and you will see store after store selling gifts for… Chanukah! Almost every store lights a menorah each night of Chanukah and every person you meet – even the ones most removed from Jewish observance – will wish you a “Chag Sameyach”!

Let’s stop living as guests in someone else’s home. Yes, the host has been very kind to us but we have overstayed our welcome. The time has come to thank the host and move out to our own place, with our own culture and traditions. No more being the weird guy who leaves early on Friday, doesn’t show up for work in September and eats airline food instead of rib steak. And no more coming to shul with hair that’s dripping wet. The wet head is dead! Long live Erev Shabbat in Israel! Come home now.

From Zehut, here.

Ron Paul on Trump’s Inflation Tax Increase

GOP Tax Plan Increases the Most Insidious Tax

By 

Ron Paul Institute

November 7, 2017

Last Thursday, congressional Republicans unveiled their tax reform legislation. On the same day, President Trump nominated current Federal Reserve Board Governor Jerome Powell to succeed Janet Yellen as Federal Reserve chair. While the tax plan dominated the headlines, the Powell appointment will have much greater long-term impact. Federal Reserve policies affect every aspect of the economy, including whether the Republican tax plan will produce long-term economic growth.

President Obama made history by appointing the first female Fed chair. President Trump is also making history: If confirmed, Powell would be the first former investment banker to serve as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Powell’s background suggests he will continue Janet Yellen’s Wall Street-friendly low interest rates and easy money policies.

Powell is an outspoken opponent of the Audit the Fed legislation. In 2015, Powell delivered an address at Catholic University devoted to attacking Audit the Fed. Like most Fed apologists, Powell claims the audit would compromise the Fed’s independence and allow Congress to control monetary policy. However, like all who make this claim, Powell cannot point to anything in the text of the audit bill giving Congress any power over the Federal Reserve. Powell’s concerns about protecting the Fed’s independence are misplaced, as the Fed has never been free of political influence. The Fed has a long history of bowing to presidential pressure to tailor monetary policy to help advance the president’s political and policy agenda.

The Republican tax cut plan has some positive elements, such as increasing the standard deduction, creating a new family tax credit, eliminating the death tax, reducing the corporate tax rate, and lowering taxes on small businesses. It also has some flaws, such as the “millionaire surcharge” imposed on upper-income taxpayers. This provision reflects a belief that upper-income taxpayers only “deserve” a tax break if reducing their taxes serves the interest of government by increasing economic growth.

The worst part of the tax plan is that it adopts the chained consumer price index (chained CPI). Chained CPI is a way of measuring CPI that understates inflation’s effects on our standard of living. It does this by assuming inflation has not reduced Americans’ standard of living if, for example, people can buy hamburgers when they can no longer afford steak. This so-called full substitution ignores the fact that if individuals viewed hamburgers as a full substitute for steak they would have bought hamburgers before Fed-created inflation made steak unaffordable.

Chained CPI increases the inflation tax. The inflation tax may be the worst of all taxes because it is hidden and regressive. The inflation tax is not even a tax on real wages. Instead, it is a tax on the illusionary gains in income caused by inflation. The use of chained CPI to adjust tax brackets pushes individuals into higher tax brackets over time.

Politicians love the inflation tax because it allows them to increase taxes without having to vote for higher rates. Instead, the Fed does the dirty work. Since their creation in 1913, the Federal Reserve and the income tax have both enabled the growth of the welfare-warfare state and the erosion of our freedom and economic well-being. The key to restoring our liberty and prosperity, as well as avoiding a major economic crisis, is reversing the great mistakes of 1913 by repealing the 16th Amendment and auditing and ending the Federal Reserve.

From Lewrockwell.com, here.

Medical Mass Murder

How Pharma Sabotaged the Drug Enforcement Agency and Caused Hundreds of Thousands of Deaths

By 

Mercola.com

November 3, 2017

Opioid-related statistics reveal the U.S. has an enormous problem on its hands. Americans use 80 percent of all the opioids sold worldwide.1 In Alabama, which has the highest opioid prescription rate in the U.S., 143 prescriptions are written for every 100 people.2 A result of this over-prescription trend is skyrocketing deaths from overdoses.3,4

As recently reported by CNN, the Manchester, New Hampshire, fire department responds to more calls for drug overdoses than fires these days.5 In 2015, 52,404 Americans died from drug overdoses; 33,091 of them involved an opioid and nearly one-third of them, 15,281, were by prescription.6,7,8

The following graph by the National Institute on Drug Abuse shows the progressive incline in overdose deaths related to opioid pain relievers between 2002 and 2015.9 This does not include deaths from heroin addiction, which we now know is a common side effect of getting hooked on these powerful prescription narcotics. In all, we’re looking at just over 202,600 deaths in this 13-year time frame alone.10

Meanwhile, kidney disease, listed as the ninth leading cause of death on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) top 10 list, killed 48,146.11 The CDC does not include drug overdoses on this list, but if you did, drug overdoses (63 percent of which are opioids), would replace kidney disease as the ninth leading cause of death as of 2015. As if that wasn’t bad enough, recent statistics reveal that in Americans under the age of 50, opioids are now the LEADING cause of death.

Continue reading…

From Lewrockwell.com, here.

The ‘Robber Baron’ Myth

The Truth About the “Robber Barons”

[This article is excerpted from chapter 7 of How Capitalism Saved America.]

Free-market capitalism is a network of free and voluntary exchanges in which producers work, produce, and exchange their products for the products of others through prices voluntarily arrived at. State capitalism consists of one or more groups making use of the coercive apparatus of the government… for themselves by expropriating the production of others by force and violence.

— Murray N. Rothbard, The Logic of Action (1997)

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are often referred to as the time of the “robber barons.”

It is a staple of history books to attach this derogatory phrase to such figures as John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and the great nineteenth-century railroad operators — Grenville Dodge, Leland Stanford, Henry Villard, James J. Hill, and others. To most historians writing on this period, these entrepreneurs committed thinly veiled acts of larceny to enrich themselves at the expense of their customers. Once again we see the image of the greedy, exploitative capitalist, but in many cases this is a distortion of the truth.

As common as it is to speak of “robber barons,” most who use that term are confused about the role of capitalism in the American economy and fail to make an important distinction — the distinction between what might be called a market entrepreneur and a political entrepreneur. A pure market entrepreneur, or capitalist, succeeds financially by selling a newer, better, or less expensive product on the free market without any government subsidies, direct or indirect. The key to his success as a capitalist is his ability to please the consumer, for in a capitalist society the consumer ultimately calls the economic shots. By contrast, a political entrepreneur succeeds primarily by influencing government to subsidize his business or industry, or to enact legislation or regulation that harms his competitors.

In the mousetrap industry, for instance, you can be a market entrepreneur by making better mousetraps and thereby convincing consumers to buy more of your mousetraps and less of your competitors’, or you can lobby Congress to prohibit the importation of all foreign-made mousetraps. In the former situation the consumer voluntarily hands over his money for the superior mousetrap; in the latter case the consumer, not given anything (better) in return, pays more for existing mousetraps just because the import quota has reduced supply and therefore driven up prices.

The American economy has always included a mix of market and political entrepreneurs — self-made men and women as well as political connivers and manipulators. And sometimes, people who have achieved success as market entrepreneurs in one period of their lives later become political entrepreneurs. But the distinction between the two is critical to make, for market entrepreneurship is a hallmark of genuine capitalism, whereas political entrepreneurship is not — it is neomercantilism.

In some cases, of course, the entrepreneurs commonly labeled “robber barons” did indeed profit by exploiting American customers, but these were not market entrepreneurs. For example, Leland Stanford, a former governor and US senator from California, used his political connections to have the state pass laws prohibiting competition for his Central Pacific railroad,1 and he and his business partners profited from this monopoly scheme. Unfortunately, the resentment that this naturally generated among the public was unfairly directed at other entrepreneurs who succeeded in the railroad industry without political interference that tilted the playing field in their direction. Thanks to historians who fail to (or refuse to) make this crucial distinction, many Americans have an inaccurate view of American capitalism.

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From Mises.org, here.