In his NY Times Op-Ed of Jan. 15, 2014, M.E. Bowman, a former deputy general counsel for national security law at the FBI and a former deputy of the U.S. Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive clearly intends to slam Jonathan Pollard and convince readers of the NY Times that Jonathan Pollard is to be kept locked up and not released. But while that is unquestionably his intention, like Balaam, in the Old Testament, he woefully fails to deliver the fatal curse on Pollard. Instead, whether he intended to or not, he winds up delivering a powerful argument for Pollard's release.
Presumably, for his purpose to fully disclosure, Mr. Bowman informs us that Lawrence J. Korb, the assistant secretary of defense at the Pentagon at the time of Mr. Pollard's arrest, has said that (Pollard's) punishment was disproportionate to his offense. We are further informed by Mr. Bowman that R. James Woolsey, a former director of central intelligence, echoed that sentiment at a security conference in November (2013). Clearly, people at the highest levels of the government in those areas that concern themselves with intelligence and the defense of this nation are of the opinion that Jonathan Pollard, having served as long as he has, deserves to be released at this time. And, furthermore, as Korb sees it, Pollard has served a sentence far greater than appropriate for his offense.
So, who is this Mr. M.E. Bowman, who disagrees so vehemently with Korb and Woolsey? He apparently has good credentials. But, are they any better than Korb's or Woolsey's? I hardly think so.
Bowman opens his comments with an attack on the character of Jonathan Pollard. Pollard, he claims, is someone "who imagines his life is greater than it was." Quite possibly Bowman is correct. "(Pollard) told fanciful tales to peers while at Stanford (over 40 years ago)," writes Bowman. Very possibly Pollard did. "By the mid-1980's, (Pollard) used his position as a civilian navel intelligence analyst to become an enthusiastic and willing spy for profit by passing state secrets to Israel." So what is Mr. Bowman saying here? Is he aghast that Pollard did his spying as a civilian navel intelligence analyst? No one denies that he did this. If you're going to spy, it's generally helpful to be in a position where you can put your fingers on those secrets you might wish to steal. That's kind of like Spying 101.
Spys have all sorts of motivations. The spy might be threatened with the exposure of some secret that he doesn't want exposed. He might be doing it for ideological reasons. There are all sorts of motivations. If Bowman says Pollard did it for money, who am I to dispute him? But, where are we going with this? Are Pollard's motivations relevant to his crime? Should the enthusiasm with which Pollard carried out his spying net him an additional 10 or 20 years?
Mr. Bowman's comments suggest that Jonathan Pollard not only acted criminally, but also pretty much played the role of a fool. And, again, I have no reason to disagree. Pollard did act criminally. I also believe that because Pollard was less smart than he thought he was, or because of some emotional dysfunction, he acted not only criminally, but behaved like a fool. From earlier readings of his case, I believe the excessive sentence given him was the result of acting foolishly when mounting his defense. Quite possibly, he was given truly abysmal legal counsel.
As to his crime: He gave state secrets to Israel, and, for that, he deserved to be punished. But, the extent of the damage which Pollard did is stretched beyond the point of credibility by Bowman. He cites Seymour Hersh as as the source of remarks by William J. Casey, former director of central intelligence, charging that information stolen by Pollard had been traded to Russia for Jewish emigres. Really? That's quite a charge. And, where do we learn of this charge? Why, of course, from the reporter, Seymour Hersh. This charge is truly serious and deserves being authenticated. But, what is Bowman's source -- the hearsay of a reporter known to delight in un-authenticed information. I'm afraid Mr. Bowman is going to have to do a great deal better than that.
Clearly, Mr. Bowman doesn't like Mr. Pollard. He would, no doubt, like to see him hanged. Baring that, Mr. Bowman is delighted to see Mr. Pollard serve as many years as possible. And, I can understand his feeling of patriotic indignation at the theft of state secrets by Jonathan Pollard. I too abhor people who spy on America in behalf of other nations. But, are men like Lawrence J. Korb and R. James Woolsey any less patriotic than Bowman? Are they any less informed of the facts regarding Jonathan Pollard's crimes? I think not. I don't know what sort of axe Mr. Bowman chooses to grind, but I think it goes way beyond Jonathan Pollard.
Friday, January 17, 2014
Friday, January 10, 2014
U.S. Middle East Policies -- Count The Errors
In Iraq, we made two tremendous errors. First, after a highly successful invasion, someone in the State Dept, Crocker, I believe, decided that in the new government, no one who had been in the Baath Party would be allowed a governmental job. There would be no Baathist police, or administrators, or anything else. How stupid! Who did they think would administer the affairs of Iraq? People who knew nothing of the job? The consequent chaos could easily have been predicted.
The second error, as big if not bigger than that of the first, was failing to divide Iraq into three parts, a Kurdish part, a Sunni part, and a Shiite part. The Kurds for all practical purposes already ran their own part. And, so, we now are left with the Shiites in the south, Maliki as their leader, trying to dominate the Sunni part. It's not working out too well. Who can blame the Sunnis for fighting against a Shiite government.
We allowed Yugoslavia to be divided into its three ethnic entities -- the Croates, the Serbs, and the Muslims. Why not Iraq? As a result of this piece of stupidity on the part of the U.S., we now find the moderate Sunnis allying themselves with al Queda types. Should this surprise anyone?
And what do I hear of the American response? They are going to help the Iraq government, or so I hear. But what does that mean, other than we are going to help the Shiites subjugate the Sunnis. Does this make any sense?
Let's now turn to Syria. The majority of Syrians wanted to dump Assad, and for good reason. We should have promptly supported the Syrians who were largely secular Sunni. We did not do this. Here are the results:
a. Assad gases his people with no consequences for him.
b. Assad drops barrel bombs on Syrian civilians. (Where are the stinger missiles that might take down these bombers?)
c. Al Queda joins the secular Sunnis in their battle against Assad. This is not a good thing, but is anyone surprised when we have turned our back on the secular Sunnis?
To compound our errors, we talk about meaningless "red lines." We make empty declarations such as "Assad must go." And, in the meantime, Russia's Putin arms Assad, and guides the U.S. to a deal on poison weapons that has the effect of keeping Assad in power and allows his army to chew up his secular Sunni enemies.
The problem is that America always teaches others the lessons we always seem to forget. It's Putin, not Obams, who now speaks quietly, but carries a big stick.
One could go on as to how Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are treated by the U.S.. But what's the use? It's only more of the same.
The second error, as big if not bigger than that of the first, was failing to divide Iraq into three parts, a Kurdish part, a Sunni part, and a Shiite part. The Kurds for all practical purposes already ran their own part. And, so, we now are left with the Shiites in the south, Maliki as their leader, trying to dominate the Sunni part. It's not working out too well. Who can blame the Sunnis for fighting against a Shiite government.
We allowed Yugoslavia to be divided into its three ethnic entities -- the Croates, the Serbs, and the Muslims. Why not Iraq? As a result of this piece of stupidity on the part of the U.S., we now find the moderate Sunnis allying themselves with al Queda types. Should this surprise anyone?
And what do I hear of the American response? They are going to help the Iraq government, or so I hear. But what does that mean, other than we are going to help the Shiites subjugate the Sunnis. Does this make any sense?
Let's now turn to Syria. The majority of Syrians wanted to dump Assad, and for good reason. We should have promptly supported the Syrians who were largely secular Sunni. We did not do this. Here are the results:
a. Assad gases his people with no consequences for him.
b. Assad drops barrel bombs on Syrian civilians. (Where are the stinger missiles that might take down these bombers?)
c. Al Queda joins the secular Sunnis in their battle against Assad. This is not a good thing, but is anyone surprised when we have turned our back on the secular Sunnis?
To compound our errors, we talk about meaningless "red lines." We make empty declarations such as "Assad must go." And, in the meantime, Russia's Putin arms Assad, and guides the U.S. to a deal on poison weapons that has the effect of keeping Assad in power and allows his army to chew up his secular Sunni enemies.
The problem is that America always teaches others the lessons we always seem to forget. It's Putin, not Obams, who now speaks quietly, but carries a big stick.
One could go on as to how Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are treated by the U.S.. But what's the use? It's only more of the same.
Monday, January 6, 2014
Housing Bubbles Past and Present
Occasionally light does shine forth from the op-ed page of the NY Times. This time we are indebted to Peter J. Wallison, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Wallison's contention is that valuable insight is to be had by examining the costs of renting a residence. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has been tracking these costs since 1983. They show that a steady rise of about 3% over the last 30 years, which is pretty much as it should be.
Home prices should do the same. If the cost of running a house runs appreciably over that of renting, then in theory people would begin to turn to renting. A divergence of the two prices leads to a bubble.
Between '97 and '02, prices began to diverge. The average compound rate of growth in houses was 6%. The growth in rentals was 3.34%. The 6% growth in houses continued until '07 when the bubble burst.
Today the bubble is beginning to grow again with a rate of growth in houses at 5.83 % between '11 and the third quarter of '13. The increase in rental costs was only 2% for the same period.
According to Wallison, this bubble and the last one were caused by the government's housing policies which made it possible to now buy a house with little to no down-payment. The earlier bubble began after Congress, in '92, adopted the "affordable housing" goals for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the major players in the housing market then as now. Under congressional directive, these institutions were to make mortgages available to borrowers who were at, or under, the median income where they lived.
The ratio of such "affordable" mortgages was raised by the Department of Housing and Urban Development seven times from the 1990's into the 2000's. Such mortgages came to more than 50%. To make such mortgages available to low-income borrowers, Fannie and Freddie reduced the down- payments on mortgages they would acquire. By '94, Fannie was accepting down-payments of 3% and by 2000 they were accepting mortgages with zero down-payment.
While these low down-payments were intended for low income people, they couldn't be confined to those borrowers. No down-payment mortgages also went to people who could have afforded to make a 10% or 20% down-payment. By 2006, the National Association of Realtors reported that 45% of first time home buyers put down no money.
The bottom line was that it became a lot cheaper to own a home than to rent. It also created tremendous pricing leverage. Anyone could afford almost any home -- certainly a home far above one's traditional means. Borrowing was constrained only by appraisals and these rose as "comparables" rose. This produced a bubble in home prices.
The same thing is happening all over again. The FHA is requiring down-payments of only 3.5 %. Fannie and Freddie require only 5%. According to the American Enterprise Institute's National Mortgage Risk Index, set for Oct '13, half of all mortgages for buying homes -- not refinancing -- have only 5% or less being put down as a down-payment. Such low down-payments clearly increase the risk of default.
So why not raise the down-payment to the traditional 10 to 20 % ? This has actually been suggested, but the response from the Congress, from brokers and from home builders is that people won't be able to buy homes if that were done. Wallison maintains that what they really mean is that people wouldn't be able to buy such expensive homes. This is a small price to pay for preventing another housing bust.
So what's the take-away? For me it's that housing bubbles and consequent financial collapses don't come out of the blue. They are caused by misguided government policies. After all, who tells Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac what to do? It's Congress. And, in the case of the first of recent collapses the individuals responsible were Chris Dodd and Barney Frank.
Wallison's contention is that valuable insight is to be had by examining the costs of renting a residence. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has been tracking these costs since 1983. They show that a steady rise of about 3% over the last 30 years, which is pretty much as it should be.
Home prices should do the same. If the cost of running a house runs appreciably over that of renting, then in theory people would begin to turn to renting. A divergence of the two prices leads to a bubble.
Between '97 and '02, prices began to diverge. The average compound rate of growth in houses was 6%. The growth in rentals was 3.34%. The 6% growth in houses continued until '07 when the bubble burst.
Today the bubble is beginning to grow again with a rate of growth in houses at 5.83 % between '11 and the third quarter of '13. The increase in rental costs was only 2% for the same period.
According to Wallison, this bubble and the last one were caused by the government's housing policies which made it possible to now buy a house with little to no down-payment. The earlier bubble began after Congress, in '92, adopted the "affordable housing" goals for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the major players in the housing market then as now. Under congressional directive, these institutions were to make mortgages available to borrowers who were at, or under, the median income where they lived.
The ratio of such "affordable" mortgages was raised by the Department of Housing and Urban Development seven times from the 1990's into the 2000's. Such mortgages came to more than 50%. To make such mortgages available to low-income borrowers, Fannie and Freddie reduced the down- payments on mortgages they would acquire. By '94, Fannie was accepting down-payments of 3% and by 2000 they were accepting mortgages with zero down-payment.
While these low down-payments were intended for low income people, they couldn't be confined to those borrowers. No down-payment mortgages also went to people who could have afforded to make a 10% or 20% down-payment. By 2006, the National Association of Realtors reported that 45% of first time home buyers put down no money.
The bottom line was that it became a lot cheaper to own a home than to rent. It also created tremendous pricing leverage. Anyone could afford almost any home -- certainly a home far above one's traditional means. Borrowing was constrained only by appraisals and these rose as "comparables" rose. This produced a bubble in home prices.
The same thing is happening all over again. The FHA is requiring down-payments of only 3.5 %. Fannie and Freddie require only 5%. According to the American Enterprise Institute's National Mortgage Risk Index, set for Oct '13, half of all mortgages for buying homes -- not refinancing -- have only 5% or less being put down as a down-payment. Such low down-payments clearly increase the risk of default.
So why not raise the down-payment to the traditional 10 to 20 % ? This has actually been suggested, but the response from the Congress, from brokers and from home builders is that people won't be able to buy homes if that were done. Wallison maintains that what they really mean is that people wouldn't be able to buy such expensive homes. This is a small price to pay for preventing another housing bust.
So what's the take-away? For me it's that housing bubbles and consequent financial collapses don't come out of the blue. They are caused by misguided government policies. After all, who tells Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac what to do? It's Congress. And, in the case of the first of recent collapses the individuals responsible were Chris Dodd and Barney Frank.
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Inventing Roger Cohen
How lucky for us to have a Roger Cohen, the man who wrote in the NY Times of Jan 1, 2014, that "(i)f Israel looks like a Jewish state and acts like a Jewish state, that is good enough for me -- as long as it gets out of the corrosive business of occupation. Zionism, the one I identify with, forged a Jewish homeland in the name of restored Jewish pride in a democratic state of laws, not in the name of finicky insistence on a certain form of recognition, nor in the name of messianic religious Greater Israel nationalism."
Here we have our evil son, the one who asks what does this have to do with me? But he is worse than the evil son. Roger Cohen is self delusional. Clearly, he is not simple, at least not by the lights of the NY Times. And, he is hardly a child.
He claims that Israel is in the business of occupation. Really? We have no Palestinian state, in the legal sense, despite the General Assembly's vote; votes largely bought with Arab oil money. We know they have established "embassies." But, they have never been open to the Israelis. They fire rockets from Gaze despite the borders with Gaze having been clearly established. They object to joint ventures with Israeli companies because they do not want "normalization" to take place. And, they celebrate Muslim murderers of Israeli citizens when Israel releases them. They also have their own secret service and their own police officers.
The delusional Roger Cohen fails to appreciate that the PA is a corrupt organization and that their corruption stifles the ambitions of their people. The PA is, therefore, reliant on the funding from those nations who most hate Jews. I might add that Christians and other non-Islamic people don't fair too well either under the rule of Islamic nations. So much for "occupation."
A state that looks like a Jewish and acts like a Jewish state is good enough for Roger Cohen. Really? So what does a Jewish state look like? How does a Jewish state act? Like America? Like Great Britain? Like Russia? Have you ever heard of an American ashamed to say, "I'm an American" or "this is an American country?" Have you ever heard of a Brit or a Russian speaking that way? But for an Israeli to say that Israel is a Jewish country; that's too much for Roger Cohen. Israel today is Israel only because it was made Israel by Jews, for Jews. Sure, it gives equal privileges to Druze, Muslims, Christians, gays, blacks, and whoever else, provided, of course, that they are citizens of Israel.
Can that be said of any of Israel's neighbors? Jews have accomplished a great deal. They have every right to be proud and to demand that the nations of the world recognize Israel as a Jewish state; indeed, the only Jewish state on this planet. For Roger Cohen this insistence that Israel be recognized for what it is strikes him as being "finicky." It might offend the anti-Semite. I, for one consider, it a basic Jewish right.
And, finally, he cones out with someone's "messianic religious Greater Israel nationalism." Ah, yes, when all else fails, bring out that good ol' messianic religious Greater Israel nationalism. Hallelujah.
We all know that one of Britain's early sins, as far as Israel is concerned, was to create the county of Jordan out of thin air. What is now Jordan had always been part of Palestine and was to have been the Arab part. But Churchill had to do some Arab sheik a favor, so he gave him half of Palestine, but called it Jordan. That left only the other half of Palestine to be cut up between the Arabs and the Jews.
We get it. It's old news. Sure, you'll find someone who believes anything including that the world is flat, but get real. No one in Israel expects the Palestinians in the West Bank to be pushed over into Jordan. Yes, we understand that there is a land mass that once constituted Greater Israel. We also know that there won't be a Greater Israel anymore than that the alAqsa mosque will be removed from where Saladin placed it on top of the ruins of the great Jewish Temple.
Here we have our evil son, the one who asks what does this have to do with me? But he is worse than the evil son. Roger Cohen is self delusional. Clearly, he is not simple, at least not by the lights of the NY Times. And, he is hardly a child.
He claims that Israel is in the business of occupation. Really? We have no Palestinian state, in the legal sense, despite the General Assembly's vote; votes largely bought with Arab oil money. We know they have established "embassies." But, they have never been open to the Israelis. They fire rockets from Gaze despite the borders with Gaze having been clearly established. They object to joint ventures with Israeli companies because they do not want "normalization" to take place. And, they celebrate Muslim murderers of Israeli citizens when Israel releases them. They also have their own secret service and their own police officers.
The delusional Roger Cohen fails to appreciate that the PA is a corrupt organization and that their corruption stifles the ambitions of their people. The PA is, therefore, reliant on the funding from those nations who most hate Jews. I might add that Christians and other non-Islamic people don't fair too well either under the rule of Islamic nations. So much for "occupation."
A state that looks like a Jewish and acts like a Jewish state is good enough for Roger Cohen. Really? So what does a Jewish state look like? How does a Jewish state act? Like America? Like Great Britain? Like Russia? Have you ever heard of an American ashamed to say, "I'm an American" or "this is an American country?" Have you ever heard of a Brit or a Russian speaking that way? But for an Israeli to say that Israel is a Jewish country; that's too much for Roger Cohen. Israel today is Israel only because it was made Israel by Jews, for Jews. Sure, it gives equal privileges to Druze, Muslims, Christians, gays, blacks, and whoever else, provided, of course, that they are citizens of Israel.
Can that be said of any of Israel's neighbors? Jews have accomplished a great deal. They have every right to be proud and to demand that the nations of the world recognize Israel as a Jewish state; indeed, the only Jewish state on this planet. For Roger Cohen this insistence that Israel be recognized for what it is strikes him as being "finicky." It might offend the anti-Semite. I, for one consider, it a basic Jewish right.
And, finally, he cones out with someone's "messianic religious Greater Israel nationalism." Ah, yes, when all else fails, bring out that good ol' messianic religious Greater Israel nationalism. Hallelujah.
We all know that one of Britain's early sins, as far as Israel is concerned, was to create the county of Jordan out of thin air. What is now Jordan had always been part of Palestine and was to have been the Arab part. But Churchill had to do some Arab sheik a favor, so he gave him half of Palestine, but called it Jordan. That left only the other half of Palestine to be cut up between the Arabs and the Jews.
We get it. It's old news. Sure, you'll find someone who believes anything including that the world is flat, but get real. No one in Israel expects the Palestinians in the West Bank to be pushed over into Jordan. Yes, we understand that there is a land mass that once constituted Greater Israel. We also know that there won't be a Greater Israel anymore than that the alAqsa mosque will be removed from where Saladin placed it on top of the ruins of the great Jewish Temple.
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