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Vice President Pence met with Egypts President Abdel Fattah Sisi on Saturday in a 2 1/2-hour session that focused, in part, on Egypts anger over President Trumps abrupt decision last month to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

We heard Al Sisi out, Pence, who is making his first official trip to the Middle East, told reporters after the meeting. He described the Egyptian leaders complaints as a disagreement between friends.

Last month, Egypt urged the United Nations Security Council to pass a resolution rejecting Trumps decision on Jerusalem, which upended hopes for a negotiated peace deal with Palestinians. The U.S. vetoed the resolution, but the General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a similar nonbinding resolution.

Pence is likely to hear similar concerns about Trumps Middle East policies at his next stop, in Amman, Jordan, where he arrived Saturday night for meetings with King Abdullah on Sunday. He goes to Israel after that but will not meet any Palestinian officials.

During their conversation, Pence said he told Sisi that the Trump administration would support a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians if both parties agree, long the basis for a proposed resolution of the conflict. My perception was that he was encouraged by that message, Pence said.

Pence is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Cairo since before the 2011 Arab Spring uprising ousted Hosni Mubarak, a longtime U.S.-backed strongman. Sisi, a former Army general, became president in 2014 after he helped lead a military coup in 2013 that ousted a democratically elected leader.

Pence said he and Sisi spoke about joint efforts to combat terrorism, including Egypts battle with Al Qaeda-linked insurgents in the Sinai.

The United States stands shoulder to shoulder with Egypt in their fight against terrorism in this country, he told reporters.

Pence also said he brought up U.S. concerns about religious freedom in Egypt and said Sisi assured him that he wants to promote religious diversity in Egypt.

Despite warming ties between Cairo and Washington, Sisi did not release any jailed journalists, human rights activists or other political prisoners as a goodwill gesture for Pences visit.

Pence said he had raised the plight of two Americans, Ahmed Etiwy and Moustafa Kassem, who are imprisoned in Egypt. He said Sisi assured him he would give very serious attention to both cases, although he did not offer to release them.

Etiwy, a 27-year-old student from New York, and Kassem, 52, an auto parts dealer from New York, were arrested along with hundreds of Egyptians after the 2013 military coup.

U.S. lawmakers have complained that at least 18 Americans are imprisoned in Egypt and its unclear why Pence focused on only those two.

Sisis authoritarian government has effectively banned protests and freedom of expression, jailed political opponents and conducted anti-gay persecution. In September, Human Rights Watch denounced what it called widespread and systematic use of torture by Egypts security forces.

Egyptian security blocked a dozen American reporters who had accompanied Pence from Washington from getting out of their bus when Pence arrived for his meeting with Sisi at the Al Etehadiya Palace. After prolonged negotiations by Pences aides, the media was escorted in after 90 minutes.

Twitter: @ByBrianBennett

brian.bennett@latimes.com

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Vice President Mike Pence gets an earful in Cairo on his ...

[A selection from One Is a Crowd by Frank Chodorov]:

This is a defense of our universities. As they open their doors for another year of business they teach under a widespread suspicion of teaching communism. The suspicion is unsupported by fact; it is pure witchcraft. There is reason to believe that some in the facultiesadvocatecommunism, but noneteachesit. The distinction is important. To illustrate the point, in the field of religion there are many who are intellectually incapable of comprehending Christianity, and therefore of teaching it, but who are quite adept at advocating (preaching) it. So with communism; it is a pattern of ideas following from basic assumptions, and unless one has made a critical examination of these assumptions one is incapable of evaluating the superimposed ideas. Our colleges are debarred from examining the basic assumptions of communism because, as I will attempt to show, these basic assumptions are part and parcel of what is called capitalism, the going order, and it would hardly do to bring this fact to light.

If it is the business of universities to expose students to ideas, they are not doing the job properly if they neglect to includein their curricula a course in communism, simply because as a system of thought, a philosophy, communism is in the ascendancy these days. A graduate ought to be thoroughly at home with the ideas he has to live with, he ought to understand the basic postulates of his ideological environment. It might be difficult to dig up professors able to brush aside the seductive phrases of communism so as to get to its roots, seeing how the subject is beclouded with war hysteria, and expedience might tell against the introduction of such a course of study. This is regrettable. For, lacking the opportunity to investigate communism, the students will come away from their education with the popular notion that it is indigenous to an enemy nation or an inferior people. To illustrate the kind of course I have in mindthis isnotan application for a job; perish the thought!I present herewith a few samples of communist theory that are equally the marrow of current true Americanism. At random, we will begin with a conception of wages.

It is an axiom of communism that wages are a fraction of production given to the workers by those who own the means of production. Boiled down to its essence, this idea can be expressed in three words: capital pays wages. But, is that so in fact? If we define capital as the tools of production, this conception of wages becomes silly, for an inanimate object is incapable of paying anything. If, as the communists do, we include in the definition the owners of capital, we are faced with anotherreductio ad absurdum:competition between these machine owners for the services of machine users automatically fixes the level of wages; capitalists are without the means of affecting the ups and downs of that level.

The capitalist, of course, speaks of the wages he pays. But, he is quick to point out that the wages do not come out ofhis capital, but are derived from the sale of his products; if the market does not absorb the output of his plant he ceases to be a payer of wages. This means that the envelopes he hands out to his employees are filled by the consumers, and these are, in large part, the workers themselves. Thus, the employer of labor is labor, and the wage earner is the wage payer. It follows that the general level of wages is determined by the general level of productionleaving out, for the moment, any purloiningand neither capital nor capitalist has any part in fixing it.

It follows also that political power can in no way affect an increase in wages; nor can capital by itself do so. Wages can go up only as a result of increased production, due to an increase in population or improvement in the skill and industry of the current population. That elemental fact will be admitted even by professors of economics, and it is possible that some legislators will recognize it. Yet, if you dig into some standard economics textbooks or examine the labor legislation of our land you will find ideas that stem from the communist notion that capital pays wages and that the hardheaded capitalist keeps them low. A minimum-wage law, for instance, is based on that notion; the law assumes that cupidity is at the bottom of the marginal worker's low income; the capitalists must be compelled to disgorge. All of which is silly, for the legally enforced increase is simply passed on to the consumer, unless it can be absorbed by increased production arising from technological improvement. Yet, in the course I suggest, it would have to be pointed out that minimum-wage lawsthat all legislation dealing with labor-employer relationsare concessions to the communist conception of wages.

Our immigration-restriction laws pay homage to this idea, for these laws, translated into economics, simply say that there are just so many jobs that capitalists have at their disposal, thatany increase in the working population will lower the wage level by simple division; the idea that the immigrant makes his own wages is rejected offhand. Birth control is likewise advocated as a means of raising the wage level, and Malthusianism borrows all its economics from communism. And, if you go to the bottom of our social welfare enthusiasm you will find the capital-culprit notion.

Space does not permit an examination of all the facets of current thought traceable to this basic bit of communism, but it is evident that the proposed course could do quite a job on it.

This brings us to the communist indictment of private property. The inherent power of capital to fix the level of wages will be used by its owners to defraud the laborers. They will see to it that the laborers receive just enough to keep them alive and on the job, retaining all above that level for themselves. Here communism introduces the doctrine of natural rights, although it denies that doctrine vehemently later on; it says that the laborers have an absolute right in all that is produced by virtue of the energy put into production; energy is a private possession. If this is so, then what the capitalist keeps for himself amounts to robbery. The word generally used isexploitation. This iniquitous arrangement brings on a host of evil social consequences and should therefore be stopped. How? By outlawing private capital. Everything that is produced should belong to the community as a whole (which, by the way, is a flat denial of the original right of the laborer to his product), and the state, acting for the community, must be made sole owner and operator of all capital. The state, particularly when manned by communists, will have no interest in exploitation and will pay wages in full.

The holes in that indictment are many and serious, and wecan leave it to our professor in communism to point them out. It would then be incumbent on him also to point out that capitalism, in practice, accepts the indictment in large chunks. A number of institutions have grown up under capitalism that are obviously concessions to the charge brought against it by communism. The absorption by the state of large parts of the electric power business was facilitated by moral fustian about the power trust, while political participation in the banking, housing, insurance, and several other businesses is justified on the inadequacies, if not villainies, of private capital. Thus, while capitalism carries on its word battle with communism, it pays its adversary the high compliment of accepting its doctrine in practice.

Our professor of communism could, and should, emphasize this point by an analysis of taxation, particularly the direct kind. Income taxes unequivocally deny the principle of private property. Inherent in these levies is the postulate that the state has a prior lien on all the production of its subjects; what it does not take is merely a concession, not a right, and it reserves for itself the prerogative of altering the rates and the exemptions according to its requirements. It is a matter of fiat, not contract. If that is not communist principle, what is? The professor would have to point that out. And he should, in all conscience, show that the considerable amount of capital now owned and operated by the capitalistic state was siphoned out of pockets of producers by means of taxation.

But right here the professor would find himself in a mess of trouble. On the other side of the hall the professor of taxation and the professor of political science would be telling their students that the right of property is conditional, not absolute, that the owner is in fact a trustee answerable to society as a whole. They would deny that this is a concession to communistprinciple; but it is. The professor of philosophy would pitch in with an outright rejection of the theory of natural rights, asserting that what we call rights are but privileges granted to his subjects by the sovereign. The board of trustees would also take notice; the university and its supporters hold a lot of government bonds which are dependent on the power of taxation, and it would hardly do to question the propriety of this power. And, if the professor presumed to point out that communism is quite consistent in advocating taxation as a means of destroying private capital, he would have the whole house of respectability on his head.

A few more topics that our course in fundamental communism should touch uponand then we can close up shop.

Reverting to the concept of natural rightsbasic in capitalistic thoughtwe find that its taproot is the will to live. Out of this primordial desire for existence comes the idea that no man may lay claim to another man's life. How does that idea line up with military conscription? It doesn't, and the only way you can logically support conscription is to invoke the communist principle that the right to life is conditioned by the needs of the state.

Take the subject of monopoly. Communism makes much of it, although by a strange twist of logic it sees in state monopoly all the virtues lacking in private monopoly. Capitalism, in theory at least, equally condemns monopoly, on the ground that any restriction of competition lowers the general level of production and is a deterrent to human aspirations. An examination of the anatomy of monopoly reveals that its vital organ is the power to restrict production, and the source of this power is the state. Without some law favorable to its purpose every monopoly would disintegrate. Hence, the very fact of monopoliesunder a regime of capitalismsometimes called free enterpriselends support to the communist assertion that the state is a committee managing affairs for the benefit of monopolists.

In discussing monopolies the class would most certainly hit upon the topic of exploitation; that is, any legal means for getting something for nothing. Having disposed of the untenable proposition that the ownership of capital is in itself a means of exploitation, the professor, being a man of intellectual integrity, would be compelled to admit that the object of monopoly is exploitation, and that the state, in establishing the special privileges which spawn monopolies, is the guilty one. He might go so far as to declare the stateeven the dictatorship of the proletariatthe only exploitative factor in any economy.

And so on and so on. In dissecting communism and exposing its vital parts to view, this proposed course would demonstrate the unpleasant truth that capitalist practice too often squares with communist theory. That might prove disquieting to the established departments of law, social science, historyto say nothing of the mahogany office up front. It might also disturb the students, inured as they are to a quasi-communist quasi-capitalist environment.

Under the circumstances, no college could entertain the idea of introducing into its curriculum a course in communism, and the charge that they are teaching the subject is unfounded. That they make concessions to communist theory in many of their courses is true, but that is a requirement put upon them by the as-is capitalism. And I might add that I have no fear of being asked by any college president to offer the proposed course.

Continued here:
Let's Teach Communism | Mises Wire

Late Tuesday, the GOP gave up on 2018 budget talks and drafted a new temporarybudget plan, dubbed a Continuing Resolution, which would keep the governmentopen for another month until February 16. That date will mark almost five months after the 2018 budget was slated to begin October 1.

If the CR passes the House and Senate, the GOP and the Democrats will get another month to develop a 2018 budget while Democrats gain another month to wear down GOP and Trump opposition to their amnesty-plus plan.

The amnesty talks are being overseen by the four deputy leaders of the Senate and House , including GOP Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy. Democrats negotiations tactics include emotional public claims of racism, televised sob stories from migrants, skewed polls, as well as intense back-room lobbying by illegal immigrants, open-borders advocates and by the CEOs whose stock-options would be reduced if a shortage of labor drives up wages.

If the amnesty does get approved by an exhausted Trump and GOP, it would wreck Trumps Buy American, Hire American presidency, 2018 turnout and his reelection. The approval would prove that Democrats, the establishment media,and business lobbies have the political power to simply raise the supply of cheap imported labor whenever companies are forced to pay higher wages to Americans, regardless of Trumps stunning victory in 2016.

If the Democrats amnesty push is foiled, then voters will be able to decide in November if they want a Congress to reduce or raise the immigration which has helped freeze Americans wages since 2000.

The GOPs short-term CR plan may get a vote in the House on Thursday, leaving the Senate little time to accept the plan by Friday night, after which the government starts closing down many non-essential functions.

Democratic leaders suggest they are willing to oppose a short-term budget and to force a government shutdown. For example, the House Democrats deputy leader, Rep. Steny Hoyer, told reporters on Tuesday:

We want to keep the government open. But I will repeat, were not going to be held hostage to do things that we think are contrary to the best interests of the American people because we will do the right thing and [Republicans] dont care.

House Democrats will not block the CR, predicted Virginia Rep. Dave Brat.I dont think anybody has any appetite for a shutdown the Democrats dont want to go there . the Democrats polling looks terrible for them, he said.

Democrats can block any budget because their minority of 49 votes in the Senate is enough to prevent passage of any budget through the Senate.

House GOP leaders have tried to win some Senate Democratic votes for the short-term plan by including several Democratic spending priorities, including a six-year extension of the CHIP health-care program for children.

GOP leaders may also need Democratic votes in the House because the GOPs defense-industry members threatened to vote against the leaders budget because it does not guarantee a big increase in defense spending for the rest of the year. The extra defense money is not in the budget because Democratic leaders are demanding that any defense increase is accompanied by a similar increase in non-defense spending.

In response, some of the budget hawks suggested they will approve giveaway-amnesty in exchange for a defense increase. Frankly, I think its not that hard to get a DACA deal, but the question is do [Capitol Hill leaders] want to? Rep. Mac Thornberry, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, told reporters.

GOP leaders have tried to separate the amnesty fight from the budget, partly because any separation would minimize Democratic leverage in the dispute.

But Democrats are keeping the two issues linked by claiming that the budget dispute is about several spending priorities while also all saying those budget issues could be solved if the GOP surrenders on the amnesty.For example, Montana Sen. Jon Tester, who is facing election in November, is trying to portray himself as a Trump ally while he blocks a budget deal by demanding extra funding for health care centers. Politico reported:

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) also declined to commit to voting for a stopgap spending bill this week that didnt address his key priorities, citing community health centers rather than DACA. Any funding bill has to have those priorities included, he told reporters.

The Democrats hide-the-amnestystrategy is acknowledged by a variety of pro-amnesty advocates and makes political sense because polls show the public strongly opposes wage-cutting mass immigration. According to CNN:

If Democrats stay united on all issues, and (DACA) doesnt get isolated the way it was in December, then theres a better chance that Democrats have leverage to compel the kind of negotiations that might produce a deal in time, Frank Sharry, executive director of Americas Voice Education Fund, a pro-immigration reform group, told reporters

Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia said he would reject any characterization of Democrats shutting down the government over DACA or anything else, saying it was essential for Democrats to stay united and keep all their issues together.

Right now, theres a lot of linkage with a lot of issues, and Democrats are doing, I think, the right thing in highlighting the unfinished business and the linkages, right? Connolly said, citing childrens health insurance, veterans benefits, surveillance reform and DACA. And youve got to use all the leverage youve got while youve got it.

The Senate GOPs deputy leader, Sen. John Cornyn, however, says the Democrats are holding up the budget to win the amnesty. Democrats are holding [a budget] deal hostage for a DACA negotiation, he said Monday.

Aided by favorable media, Democrats in the Senate are playing so tough that they plan to formally introduce their amnesty-plus plan on Wednesday.

That amnesty-plus has already been rejected by Trump on January 11 in a meeting where Trump opposed migration quotas from shithole countries. Since then, Democrats have repeatedly claimed that Trump can partially expiate his sins by endorsing their amnesty.Extortion would be a good word for it, probably better than blackmail it seems, said Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations at NumbersUSA.com. She continued:

PresidentTrump is the is only one who is focused on how do we bring people back into the labor market hereare these Democrats saying youre a racist if you dont do what we say which will actually hurt poor Americans, including African-Americans

Trump and some GOP immigration experts oppose the Democrats amnesty-plus because it offers only token changes to the visa lottery program and to the chain-migration rules, and only offers one years worth of wall-building money.

The version of the amnesty-plus plan slated for announcement on Wednesday does not seem to include any additional proposals to meet Trumps election-winning, poll-approved immigration priorities.

The amnesty-plus plan would cover roughly 3 million youngerillegals, plus millions of their parents, plus roughly 400,000 Temporary Protected Status migrants, plus millions of their future chain-migration relatives.

GOP leaders are formally opposing the amnesty but are doing very little to alert thepublic to the Democrats wage-cutting amnesty. For example, GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell denounced the amnesty push as unneeded pending a court battle which has restarted the DACA amnesty but has declined to make any emotional or wage-related PR argument against the Dmeocrats amnesty.

Similarly, the GOP leadership in the House has done nothing to promote the combined reform-and-amnesty plan developed by judiciary chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte.

On Tuesday, House members at a caucus meeting pressed their leadership to push the Goodlatte bill through the House.They were nodding yes in conference today, but they have not given any firm commitment, said Brat. He continued:

Goodlatte stood up and spoke, [Rep. Raul] Labrador spoke at the caucus meeting. That bill has widespread support We think we can get all Republican votes, 218, for real They needtosupport it, whip it, and push it.

[Polls show] we have the leverage now, and want to see our leadership take command, not only with the Democrats but with the Senate. It is time for them to take some votes, not us, as always.

In 2014, House and Senate GOP leaders adopted a strategy of failure theater to disguise their unwillingness to oppose former President Barack Obamas DAPA amnesty for several million illegal-immigrant parents of native-born children. In a series of step-by-step retreats, GOP leaders wentfrom arguing in November 2014 they would fight the amnesty tooth and nail to shrugging their shoulders in March 2015.

Without GOP backup, Trump will come under greater pressure from the media and the Democrats to surrender the amnesty in exchange for some wall-construction funds but without any legal changes to prevent people using legal loopholes in the wall, and without any changes to chain-migration and the visa lottery.

If Trump keeps his policies firm, however, the GOP will be able to use the Democrats pro-immigration, anti-American behavior to win more seats in Congress in the 2018 election.

The Democratic base is rewarding that kind of [pro-amnesty] behavior, said Brat. I think the country will differ when they get the chance to vote on the Democrats refusal to develop popular policies on health care, the economy, and immigration, he added.

Polls show thatTrumps American-first immigration policyis very popular. For example, a Decemberpollof likely 2018 voters shows two-to-one voter support for Trumps pro-American immigration policies, and a lopsided four-to-one opposition against the cheap-labor, mass-immigration, economic policy pushed by bipartisan establishment-backed D.C. interest-groups.

Business groups and Democrats tout the misleading, industry-funded Nation of Immigrants polls which pressure Americans to say they welcome migrants, including the roughly 670,000 DACA illegals and the roughly 3.25 million dreamer illegals.

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Democrats Block 2018 Budget, Gain Another Month to Push ...

The 2018 election season kicked off Tuesday with an upset in ruralWisconsin, where Democrats flipped a state Senate seat that had been held by Republicans since the start of the century.

With every precinct counted in the race for Wisconsins 10th Senate District, Democrat Patty Schachtner was the clear victor over RepublicanAdam Jarchow, a member of the state Assembly. Schachtner, a medical examiner in St. Croix County, won by9 points a massive swing in a district that former senator Sheila Harsdorf, a Republican, won in 2016 with 63.2 percent of the vote.

A change is coming!!! wrote Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Martha Laning after Schachtners victory became clear Tuesday night.

The result in the 10th, which Harsdorf won in 2000 and held easily for years, gave Wisconsin Democrats their first pickup on Republican turf since 2011. In 2010, the party lost control of the governors office and both houses of the legislature; the next year, Democrats rode a brief backlash to Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wis.) and picked up two Senate seats in recall elections.

A Republican-friendly gerrymander wiped out those gains, and in 2014 and 2016, Republicans capitalized on Democrats rural fade and Donald Trumps coattails to grow their majorities.

The Post's polling team analyzed Virginia's 2017 gubernatorial race to see if a "Trump effect" was at play. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)

But last year, after Harsdorf left for a job in Walkers administration, both parties saw the 10th District as potentially competitive. Americans for Prosperity spent $50,000 to boost Jarchow, while the National Democratic Redistricting Committee and Greater Wisconsin Political Independent Expenditure Fund spent nearly as much on advertisements forSchachtner. U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (Wis.), one of 10 Democrats up for reelection this year in states won by Trump, recorded a get-out-the-vote video for Schachtner.

The Democrats upset win was the 34th pickup for the party of the 2018 cycle. Republicans have flipped four seats from blue to red two in the Republican-trending Deep South, one in New Jersey and one in Massachusetts.

But on average, even in races that went against them, Democrats have improved on their margins from the 2016 rout. In other Tuesday elections,DemocratDennis Degenhardtwon 43 percent of the vote in Wisconsins 58th Assembly District; in 2016, Hillary Clinton won just 28 percent of the vote there, and no Democrat contested the seat. In Iowas 6th House District, Democrat Rita DeJong won 44 percent of the vote; in 2016, the partys nominee won just 35 percent. In South Carolinas 99th House District, Democrat Cindy Boatwright lost with 43 percent of the vote; the party had not run a candidate for the seat in this decade.

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Democrats flip state Senate seat in Wisconsin - The ...