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Israelis’ “sense of security” prevents them from feeling sufficient urgency to resume peace talks with the Palestinians, US Secretary of State John Kerry said in Jerusalem Thursday, warning of fast-approaching “challenges” that required a change of approach for the Jewish State. “I think there is an opportunity [for peace], but for many reasons it’s not on the tips of everyone’s tongue,” Kerry told reporters before entering a meeting with President Shimon Peres. “People in Israel aren’t waking up every day and wondering if tomorrow there will be peace because there is a sense of security and a sense of accomplishment...

You can tell a lot about prosperity in America by observing the places people are moving to and where they are packing up and moving from. New Census Bureau data on metropolitan areas indicate that the South and the Sunbelt regions continue to grow, while the Northeast and Midwest continue to shrink. Among the 10 fastest-growing metro areas last year were Raleigh, Austin, Las Vegas, Orlando, Charlotte, Phoenix, Houston, San Antonio and Dallas. All of these are in low-tax, business-friendly red states. Blue-state areas such as Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo, Providence and Rochester were among the biggest population losers. This migration...

The recent political entanglements over the budget have focused more on political maneuverings and who is right about what statement, rather than what the policies mean to average, everyday Americans. It might be standard politics, but it does not create the right framework. The right framework includes thinking about the impact to everyday Americans and to future generations of Americans. When our founders fought for freedom, they did so for future Americans as well as themselves. Our nation has long led the world's fights for freedoms -- freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom to bear arms. Our founding document,...

The American economy has had little to cheer about since the 2008 financial meltdown and the resulting recession. Recovery has been feeble, and many states continue to struggle. One bright spot in the general gloom, however, is Texas, which began shining long before 2008. Not only has Texas created jobs at a stunning rate; it has also—pace critics like the New York Times’s Paul Krugman—created lots of good jobs. Indeed, the rest of the nation could turn to the Lone Star State as a model for dynamic growth, as a close look at employment data shows. The first thing to...

Ronald Reagan was born Feb 6, 1911. This week marks the 102nd anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birthday. It provides a time to reflect on the leader and on his vision for America. A former Democrat turned Republican, he had led a labor union and as an actor was an unlikely Presidential candidate when he first ran for President in 1976 against then-President Ford. He was not the typical Republican and frankly rocked the Republican establishment. But he eloquently articulated optimism for our country and a vision which garnered the support of voters from both parties as well as citizens who...

At some point, sooner or later, all new parents experience that moment when they realize that this new little life is their unique responsibility. It can be a bit surreal. Holding your little one, it strikes you that a tremendous gift has been given to you, a gift that brings with it significant and life-altering responsibilities. I, who am a bit slow on the uptake, took some weeks to realize that I was not only able but also allowed to bundle up my tiny son in his car seat and take him out of the house to run errands....

You know that period between sleep and wakefulness where you're not quite sure you're still dreaming? I read this blog item at Powerline and had the exact same reaction: Via InstaPundit, we learn that for the first time, the United States does not rank as one of the world's ten most prosperous nations, as rated by London's Legatum Institute. The authors of the report found that the U.S.'s slippage is being driven by "a decline in the number of US citizens who believe that hard work will get them ahead." Well, they're right: in Barack Obama's America, hard work...

The United States is no longer one of the world's ten most "prosperous" countries for the first time according to the Legatum Institute.The Legatum Prosperity Index assessed and ranked the prosperity of 142 countries based on eight sub-categories: economy, entrepreneurship and opportunity, health, governance, education, safety and security, personal freedom, and social capital.America experienced an "unprecedented" fall to twelfth in the rankings, as it experienced "weakening performance across five of the Index’s eight sub-categories."When referring to the U.S., the language of the report had a somewhat dire tone. It claims that "the American Dream is in jeopardy," and "the national ethos of the...

Texas has been on a roll recently. Fueled by a booming energy sector, the state has easily outpaced others in job growth. Business executives consistently rate it among the most desirable places to invest in, and Texas has made a habit recently of poaching jobs from places like California. Although Texas legislators did confront a budget squeeze a few years ago, the booming economy has provided Austin with plenty of fiscal room to maneuver, even as other states confront perhaps another decade of fiscal adjustments. Now Texas faces the challenge of managing its success over the long term. Although Texas...

The mainstream media in the United States is almost totally ignoring one of the most important trends in global economics. This trend is going to cause the value of the U.S. dollar to fall dramatically and it is going to cause the cost of living in the United States to go way up. Right now, the U.S. dollar is the primary reserve currency of the world. Even though that status has been chipped away at in recent years, U.S. dollars still make up more than 60 percent of all foreign currency reserves in the world. Most international trade (including the...

CINCINNATI, Sept. 1 (UPI) -- U.S. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, campaigning in Florida Saturday after a stop in Ohio, said America deserves "a brighter, prosperous future." "We're going to encourage individuals to know that they can build it here in America, that there's a brighter, prosperous future here," Romney told his supporters in Jacksonville, Fla. "You deserve that. You deserve that after these four years of trouble that you've had." GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan joined Romney in Jacksonville and urged Floridians to back Romney at the polls, Politico reported. "Florida's going to elect Mitt Romney for the...

My Outlook junk-email option is set to low (filter only the most obvious junk e-mail). Why are Americans For Prosperity emails (I subscribed to) being sent to my junk folder? Anyone else experiencing this? Emails are coming from the domain afphq.org which is not specifically blocked in my junk email settings.

.....Forced "sharing" is coercion plain and simple. Government-enforced "sharing" is coercion at the point of a gun: "your prosperity or your life." Go back over the list of implications of "shared prosperity" that I offered a few paragraphs back. This time, each time you see the word "sharing," try substituting "relinquishing at the point of a gun." Now you can see exactly what Obama's "new vision" for America really means. It means that you will no longer own yourself. You will no longer have first claim -- or any meaningful claim, for that matter -- on your goods, your time,...

When pressed for a “success story” of their policies, Keynesians point with pride to World War II. They claim that it is the perfect illustration of the ability of massive government spending to lift an economy out of the doldrums. In the effort to battle this myth, Steve Horwitz and Michael J. McPhillips offer an interesting new article that analyzes diaries, newspapers, and other primary source documents from the wartime era. They show that average Americans on the home front certainly did not think they were living amidst a great economic recovery. Yet as I’ll show in this article—relying on...

The guy has zero college and walks out of high school and is making 90-grand," said a Williston, N.D., teacher with a master's degree, speaking to The Associated Press about a former student who's working in the Oil Patch. "To me, that seems to be an injustice." Say what? Neither justice nor a degree entitles a person to a higher income. That's one of the fundamental truths of the labor market, and people in Williston and elsewhere should understand why.

It was determined a long time ago, that hot money from all over the world would fund big business and mortgages. Forget small business, that had to continue to rely on bank deposits. Mortgages and Big Business are funded by hot money. Hence, housing bubbles and momentum trading on Wall Street. The average investor has no clue that all this is going one. One of the pioneers of this strategy was George Romney, Mitt's dad. This funding through the securitization of mortgages resulted in the first subprime lending machine. Mitt Romney believes in this, even though small business is the...

When Hillary Rosen said that Ann Romney had "never worked a day in her life," it was among the better days of the Romney campaign. For Rosen -- present whereabouts unknown -- both revealed the feminist mindset about women who choose to become wives and mothers and brought Ann Romney center stage. Before a Connecticut audience recently, Mrs. Romney spoke of her reluctance to see her husband pursue the presidency a second time and said she resisted, until she got an answer to one critical question. "Can you fix it?" she asked Mitt. "I need to know. Is it too...

BOSTON (Reuters) - The rural New England states of Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire are the most peaceful U.S. states, a distinction that gives them an economic advantage over the most violent, including Louisiana, Tennessee and Nevada. Violence and its aftermath cost the entire U.S. economy some $460 billion last year, according to the Institute for Economics and Peace's second annual United States Peace Index, which was released on Tuesday.

I thought it was worth spreading around.

When Paul Simon sang “Mama don't take my Kodachrome” in 1973, he claimed he'd “read the writing on the wall,” but he couldn't have foreseen how a transformative technology — making photos from digits — would render obsolete his precious color film. The global brand icon that revolutionized photography, making it affordable and convenient for ordinary people, now teeters on the brink of bankruptcy. Unfortunately for Kodak workers and the residents of Rochester, N.Y., consumer choice — not Mama — vaporized Kodachrome. Because election season coincides with economic stagnation, lost jobs and defunct companies are political hot potatoes, putting capitalism...