(iWIDK by Danny Fisher) – In a regulation issued this week, the IRS presented an example of the lowest tiered health plan for a family of five under the Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare.

Failure to comply with purchasing health insurance results in a penalty, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled was constitutional as it considered such penalty a “tax.”

Do you believe Obamacare will make healthcare more affordable?

Danny Fisher is the CEO of film distribution company Fisher Klingenstein Films and CEO/Editor /Founder of website iWIDK (I Wish I Didn’t Know).  He was also the founder and CEO of  former film studio City Lights Media.

(iWIDK by Danny Fisher) – The U.S. economy contracted to a stunningly low negative .01% in the fourth quarter. 

I ask my iWIDK community three things:  does this come as a surprise to anyone?  Is this a harbinger of things to come, or a one-time anomaly?  Are we headed for another Great Recession?

According to The Wall Street Journal:

U.S. economic momentum screeched to a halt in the final months of 2012, as businesses pared back inventories and government spending fell sharply, while lawmakers struggled to reach a deal on tax increases and budget cuts.

The nation’s gross domestic product shrank for the first time in three and a half years during the fourth quarter, declining at an annual rate of 0.1% between October and December, the Commerce Department said Wednesday.

Danny Fisher is the CEO of film distribution company Fisher Klingenstein Films and CEO/Editor /Founder of website iWIDK (I Wish I Didn’t Know).  He was also the founder and CEO of  former film studio City Lights Media.

(iWIDK by Danny Fisher) – More than 100 people in the WIDKsphere so far expressed support for a new political movement.  Neither Democrat nor Republican.  Both liberal and conservative.

The Progressive Conservative Movement advocates the following principles:

1. Fiscal conservatism: Advancing/restoring free market principles, with reduced regulations that stifle commerce and job creation. Tax rates and policies for businesses that are globally competitive. Reduce the national debt and balance the budget. Reform all entitlement programs to make them sustainable and affordable.

2. Social liberalism: pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro stem-cell research.

3. Drug policy: Decriminalize marijuana.

4. Immigration: Secure our borders to stop further illegal immigration. At the same time, grant amnesty and create a path to citizenship for those already here.

5. Foreign policy: American exceptionalism and values.  Maintain strongest military in the world. Support our allies and friends. Caution our enemies. No nuclear Iran.

6. Energy: Promote energy independence by increasing production of traditional sources and granting more permits for oil, gas and coal. Develop renewable energy by encouraging innovation from the private sector.

7. Federalism: Strong central government – but with limitations. More authority to the states, as our founders had envisioned. Observe and respect the constitution.

Please share your thoughts.

Danny Fisher is the CEO of film distribution company Fisher Klingenstein Films and CEO/Editor /Founder of website iWIDK (I Wish I Didn’t Know).  He was also the founder and CEO of  former film studio City Lights Media.

(iWIDK by Danny Fisher) – In 1944, my father got together with a dozen of his companions in a Nazi forced labor camp. 

Alan and Esther, Vienna, 1946

He knew what happened to his family, and he realized the only way out was to plan and implement an escape, however risky and dangerous.  They all agreed on a plan.

In the middle of the night, more than half dropped out, too afraid of the odds of near certain capture and execution.  There were now five including my father and they leaped over the fence under cover of night, somehow escaping the notice of the patrolling SS guards.

They wandered through the woods for days. For food and drink, they stopped at isolated houses belonging to local farmers. My father’s group had no weapons, but local villagers supplied them with water and an occasional crust of bread – more out of fear than sympathy.

They arrived in a German town on Christmas eve, where townspeople were celebrating along with SS officers.  My father’s group disguised themselves as Germans in an attempt to blend in.

My father knew German, although his accent was suspect and he was careful to avoid speaking.  The group of five found themselves in a tavern, where the locals and SS officers were singing Christmas carols in German.

I am reminded of the tavern scene in “Inglorious Basterds,” which was very well done and tense.  This, however, was not a movie, but part of a life story and an indelible memory for my father.

Everyone began to sing “Silent Night” in German, and the SS noticed that my father’s group was not singing.  The SS did not suspect my father’s group and encouraged them to sing along.  My father did not know the words, but he was able to mouth the words along with the group convincingly enough to stay alive.

The group arrived at a barn at the edge of the town – it appeared to be a good spot to spend the night. They gathered hay to make beds on the floor of the barn.  One of the group went outside of the barn to pee against the wall of the barn.

He did not notice the pair of SS guards that were patrolling nearby.  He unbuttoned his pants and the SS guards, who were quite drunk, began to laugh at the sight.  Suddenly, their mirth turned to shock – they noticed the man was circumcised.

They walked up to the man, who suddenly realizing his predicament, quickly buttoned his pants – but it was too late.  They put a gun to his head and demanded he expose himself.  The man unbuttoned his pants.  Inside the barn my father and the rest of his group heard loud gunfire piercing the night.  They were terrified and scrambled to hide.

The SS guards called for reinforcements, and there were now a dozen SS officers inside the barn.  One by one, the SS found each of the hiding men and forced them to strip.  One by one, each of my father’s group was executed, the sound of the gunfire followed by the thud of a falling body and the laughter of the SS troops.

My father lay motionless and undetected beneath a thick pile of hay, holding his breath for what seemed an eternity.  He was close to a horse that was in the barn, and felt that the horse knew of his presence.  The SS troops took one last look around, leaving the bodies in place, the blood soaking in the hay.

An SS officer went up to the horse near my father and began to stroke its mane. “What a beautiful horse,” the officer said in German.

My father stayed motionless under the hay until dawn without sleeping.  He carefully exited the barn and then raced through the countryside as fast as he could, getting as far away from the town as he could.

He wandered several more days in the woods, hungry and thirsty.  Suddenly he heard the voices of soldiers and dropped to the ground.  The soldiers were not speaking German, but another language, one that he did not know well but recognized.  It was Russian.

My father emerged from the woods and walked up to the group of Russian soldiers, who were standing outside their truck.  They pointed their guns at him and he raised his arms.  “Who are you?” they shouted in Russian and then in German.  My father understood the German.  “I am a Jew,” he cried in his broken Russian.

The Russians laughed and lowered their weapons. “Who are you with?” they asked.  My father explained that he was the only survivor of his group.  “Have some water and something to eat,” they said.  “You are a free man.”  He drank water and ate chocolate and bread.

My father made his way back to his small home town in Czechoslovakia, in the Carpathian mountains.  My father today has a bungalow in the Catskills, and the rolling hills outside his bungalow resembles the Carpathian mountains of his youth.

My father was 21 when he became a free man in a forest in Germany – my youngest son is 23 and is attending film school in Manhattan.  My father surveyed his home town.  He was the only Jew in the town, half of whose population before the war was Jewish.

My father met a girl he knew from his youth, a gentile, whose family was kind.  He became engaged and the girl’s family looked forward to the wedding.  But my father wondered if there were other Jews who survived the war.

He spoke with his fiance’s father and said before he could marry the man’s daughter he needed to travel through Europe to learn whether any of his family or friends survived.  My father said he would return, but he never did.

He traveled through Europe and ended up in Vienna.  On a street corner, a bespectacled man with a briefcase approached him and handed him a leaflet.  The man was locating Holocaust survivors and organizing groups for eventual emigration to Palestine.

My father joined a commune in Vienna that was set up for displaced Holocaust survivors.  Everyone was young and the atmosphere was filled with joy and hope. My father met my mother there, and before long they were married.

Alan and Esther’s wedding, commune in Vienna, 1946

In 1947, my parents boarded a sister ship of the “Exodus” called the “Theodore Herzl” – named after the 19th century founder of Zionism, which was a movement that advocated the return of Jews to their ancestral homeland – and both ships were bound for Palestine.

As with the “Exodus,” my parents ship was stopped by a British blockade outside the Mediterranean port of Haifa.  The Jewish passengers through bottles and anything else they could find at the British, but the ship was turned back.  My mother was pregnant.

Alan with son Joe, Cyprus detention camp, 1947

The “Theodore Herzl” arrived  in Cyprus, where my parents lived in tents at a detention camp, with their future hopeful but uncertain.  My mother gave birth there to my oldest brother, Joe, and that was cause for great hope, joy and the affirmation of life.

Alan and Esther, with first son Joe, Cyprus detention camp, 1947

* * *

Excerpt from an autobiographical novel I have been writing called “White Sand Falling.”

Danny Fisher is the CEO of film distribution company Fisher Klingenstein Films and CEO/Editor /Founder of website iWIDK (I Wish I Didn’t Know).  He was also the founder and CEO of  former film studio City Lights Media.

(iWIDK by Danny Fisher) - CIA Director David Petraeus resigned today, purportedly over an “extramarital affair.”  

 President Obama accepted his resignation, and Petraeus will NOT be testifying in Congress about Benghazi next week as had been scheduled.

According to CBS News:

Petraeus was scheduled to testify next week at a closed hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee on the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, as well as intelligence and security in the region. The Senate Intelligence Committee says Morrell will testify in Patraeus’ place.

It’s now three days after President Obama’s reelection.  Attorney General Eric Holder announced that he may step down (remember “Fast and Furious”?).

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that she will leave within “days” of the inauguration.

The maker of the anti-Islam YouTube video that was initially claimed to be the cause of the murder of our ambassador and three others has just been revealed to be serving a one year prison term.

And we also just learned that Iranian warplanes had fired shots at an American drone last week.

Seems to me that we are learning a lot of inconvenient facts a few days after the election, and that those who know the most about Benghazi and Fast and Furious are making quick exits.

 Danny Fisher is the CEO of film distribution company Fisher Klingenstein Films and CEO/Editor/Founder of website iWIDK (I Wish I Didn’t Know).  He was also the founder and CEO of  former film studio City Lights Media.

(iWIDK by Danny Fisher) – In the aftermath of the election, I have decided to form a new political party.  So far, it has one member (me), so one thing it has going for it thus far is that it is unified.

I do not identify with either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party of today, as neither party reflects my overall political positions.

I will lay out some of my party plank positions, and I would like to hear from you and see where my positions stand with those of you in the iWIDKsphere.

1. Abortion: This is a sensitive issue with profound moral complexities.  I respect the positions of those who are “Pro Life” and those who are “Pro Choice.”  Since I need to take a position, I will side with leaving this important moral choice to the individual, rather than to the dictates of government.  That makes me Pro Choice.

2. Gay Marriage:  If you are against gay marriage, don’t enter into one.  If two people want to get married and they are gay, they should have all the rights of a heterosexual union, including the right to not have to be ashamed of their sexual orientation or their chosen life partner.  That makes me Pro Gay Marriage.

3. The Economy:

A. The National Debt: We have over $16 trillion in debt and growing.  At some point, China and others are going to stop lending us money.  Or do what other creditors do when their borrowers cannot pay their loans back – take over the company – in this case our country.  Our nation is heading towards bankruptcy, and some of our cities are already bankrupt.  This is more than a serous problem, it is an astronomical crisis.

Lots of my friends on the Left think the Tea Party are a bunch of racist wing nuts. While most of my friends are liberal progressives, I do have friends in the Tea Party and do not personally know anyone there who is either racist or a wing nut.  The Tea Party was instrumental in bringing to the forefront the issue of the national debt as an urgent crisis. But while the Tea Party has supported some genuinely intelligent candidates and politicians, including Latinos and African Americans, they have also supported a number of buffoons and genuine nut jobs (see: Akin, Todd “legitimate rape”). I am not a Tea Party member but am a registered Democrat with liberal/progressive views in many areas – who does not vilify the Tea Party en masse and rather views the movement as a vibrant wake up call and reality check to the nation about deep flaws in the economic direction of the country.

B. Regulation: I owned a business (a mini-major film studio) with 400 employees, which collapsed in 2009, along with most independent film studios and many other businesses that year. I learned a lot during my three decades in business.  Regulations have been put into place that were well intended.  For example, Sarbanes-Oxley (aka “SOX”), put in place under Republican George W. Bush, seemed to be a sensible response to the excesses, greed and fraud of companies like Enron.  But our regulations have unintended consequences.  On balance, our regulations are STRANGLING business, resulting in huge unemployment - in actuality very much higher than the 7.9% official rate.

I am in favor of substantial deregulation of business, so that new businesses can be created, and our public stock exchanges can once again be open to small businesses.  Prior to Sarbanes-Oxley, my company had numerous offers for capital in exchange for eventually going public.  As I was considering my options, along came SOX and immediately eliminated that opportunity to me for much needed capital.  How could anyone invest in a small company with a view towards going public when the additional accounting expenses required by SOX amounted to $1 million a year?

The larger businesses that were public could afford the accounting expense. But I learned through my direct business relationships with large public companies that SOX regulations restricted businesses in ways that appeared nonsensical to me, and made me wonder what the ramifications were for businesses across the nation.  And Sarbanes-Oxley is just one of many regulations that are stifling business growth and stifling job growth.

I certainly am not in favor of zero regulations – that would of course be absurd.  But on balance: too much restrictive regulation in the marketplace, resulting in too few new business start ups, resulting in too few new jobs.

C.  Quantitative Easing: The Fed is printing money to give the nation the illusion that things are not as bad as they seem.  The stock markets have not crashed – yet.  Inflation has been under control – so far.  The dollar has devalued, but has not collapsed – yet. The rampant money printing is a short term solution for a long term catastrophe.  It feels good to have all that extra paper printed into money – until the day of reckoning when all that printed money has to be accounted for through devastating devaluation and inflation.

D. Taxes: My friends on the Left believe that if the wealthy pay a larger share of taxes, that will somehow fix things by making things “fairer.”  Redistribution of wealth will make the rich less rich and the poor less poor, many claim.  I believe the opposite would happen.  Taxing the “wealthy” translates into fewer jobs and greater poverty.  For business to compete in a global economy, tax rates for businesses - large and small – need to be competitive.  That means lower taxes.  I believe growing our economy is the primary issue that should be focused on, rather than trying to impose fairness in a manner where everyone loses – especially the poor, the middle class, and the unemployed.

E. Entitlements: I believe FDR was one of our greatest presidents, and that the safety net provided by the New Deal remains an incredible and important achievement.  But in FDR’s day, people had shorter life spans, and that made Social Security far more affordable.

I believe in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps and our overall safety net, and I want to see it reinforced.  The problem is, these programs – as we know them – are going to end.

They are unsustainable, and no one on any end of the political spectrum believes they are sustainable without major changes.  So we either pretend we do not have an entitlement crisis and wait for it to crash and burn, or we guide it to sustainability- which would require severe and unpopular choices made now.  I favor coming to grips with the reality that we have an entitlement crisis, and implementing a plan for entitlement sustainability.

F. Energy: I favor an “all of the above” policy on energy.  Oil, gas, coal and renewable energy.  I favor relaxing the sizable red tape for drilling permits.  I favor the Keystone Pipeline, and I believe that Barack Obama may in fact soon reverse his past opposition and approve the Keystone Pipeline as a bipartisan gesture, and because he no longer needs to worry about anyone’s votes, in this case his environmental supporters, who will no doubt feel betrayed.

I am not without concern about our environment.  But we face an economic crisis that threatens our very being, and so environmental issues need to be considered in the context of the gravity of the potential bankruptcy of our country.  As for renewable energy, I believe innovation comes from the private sector.  It comes from people like Steve Jobs.  Innovation does not come from providing huge grants to Solyndra.

Renewable energy innovation should and will come from the private sector.

4. America’s Role in the World:

A. I believe in peace, not war. But I believe that in order to have peace, one must project strength.  Teddy Roosevelt said “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”  George W. Bush carried a big stick.  Barack Obama spoke softly. Neither got it right.

B. I believe in American Exceptionalism.  We’ve made mistakes and are not perfect.  But look around at the rest of the world. We ARE better, and should be proud of America.

C. I believe the Arab Spring is the Arab Winter.  I do not agree with either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, who in their third debate agreed with each other about our support of “the people’s rise” in Egypt against the cruel dictator Mubarak.

We invested decades of foreign aid to create an ally in Egypt – and even in Libya.  Mubarak was not a nice guy.  But he was a friend of America.  And what has succeeded him – just as in Iran in 1979 – is far worse, both for the people in Egypt, and for America’s national security interests.

We walked away from our loyal ally Mubarak, imperfect as he was, and supported Egypt’s transition from an American ally that was a highly moderate state compared to the rest of the Arab world, to an Islamic theocracy ruled by terrorists – the same Muslim Brotherhood that assassinated Anwar Sadat for making peace with Israel.

Ask CBS correspondent Lara Logan about the Arab Spring.  She witnessed the people’s liberation firsthand – and was gang raped by a mob of hundreds.  She is profoundly angry today about America’s naïveté about the threat posed by Islamic terrorists – and who can blame her?  This CBS correspondent now says: “The Obama administration is LYING to you,” and “they” still hate us – now more than ever.”

D. Iran is our greatest national security threat.  A nuclear Iran will intimidate the entire world. Iran does not take us seriously.  If we want to avoid a war with Iran, its leaders must understand unequivocally that the U.S. and Israel are prepared to jointly attack them if they continue on their path to becoming a nuclear armed terrorist Islamist nation.

When dealing with crazy and powerful leaders like Ahmadinejad, the credible threat of war is the only way to achieve peace.  Projected weakness will bring about war.  And when Israel’s Prime Minister comes to the U.S., don’t go on The View and snub the Israeli leader.  Because Iran’s leaders are watching – and what they see is disunity, lack of resolve and weakness.

5. The Media: I grew up with Walter Cronkite.  What on earth happened to our media?  The mainstream media is a circus.  Every media outlet has become a mouthpiece for their own political beliefs.

The media has by and large become a mouthpiece for the political party it favors.  It is a national disgrace.  There is not even a hint of objectivity anymore.

The New York Times has an independent Public Editor to respond to reader’s views and complaints.  The most recent Public Editor resigned, stating that the paper’s liberalism led to one-sided coverage - that their progressive worldview “virtually bleeds through the fabric of the Times.”

A new Public Editor was installed, Margaret Sullivan, who scolded the Times’ editors’ poor judgment for their failure to run a front-page story on a congressional hearing on Benghazi.

Yes, the paper of record stated that it did not consider the congressional hearings about Benghazi – the first terrorist attack since 9/11/01- to be news fit to print.  The reality is that such coverage would not support the candidate they were endorsing.

How on earth did we sink so low?  Where does one go for objective news these days?  Fox? MSNBC?

6. Bipartisanship:  The government is divided and in gridlock. The recent election has reaffirmed the status quo: same president, same House, same Senate.

Is anyone ready to work together to repair our nation?

Thank you for reading some of my views.  They do not fit neatly into the label of Democrat or Republican, nor Liberal or Conservative.

I do not have a name for my new party, and it is so far a party of one and will likely remain so.

But I am eager to hear your views and welcome your comments.

 Danny Fisher is the CEO of film distribution company Fisher Klingenstein Films and CEO/Editor/Founder of website iWIDK (I Wish I Didn’t Know).  He was also the founder and CEO of  former film studio City Lights Media.

(iWIDK By Danny Fisher) — I continue to make progress in my efforts to rebuild my life and career.  But as I think about what my parents went through, I feel that what I am rebuilding is nothing.

My mother, Esther

My parents truly rebuilt their lives after they and their families were devastated in the Holocaust.

Angel of Death, Marc Chagall

My mother was a beautiful girl – just 16 years old – when she was rounded up and put on a cattle car bound for Auschwitz.  Her sister was even younger, just 13.

When her train arrived at Auschwitz, she was quickly separated from her mother and most of her brothers and sisters – they were never again to be seen and soon disappeared into the black smoke that rose from the tall smokestacks at Auschwitz.

My mother and her sister were forced to strip naked, their hair was cut and their heads were shaven and my mother watched with tears as her sister’s beautiful locks of curly hair fell to the ground.

Doctor Mengele, Auschwitz’s notorious “Angel of Death,” examined my mother each day as she stood in line and Mengele made his “selections” – who was to live and who was to die.

My mother had a boyfriend who was put to work in the crematorium and who knew the fate that soon awaited him.  He saw my mother and pleaded with her to do anything she could to get out of Auschwitz – anything.

He forced her to repeat the following words to him out loud:  “I will do anything to get out of Auschwitz.”

Soon after his warning, the German SS were rounding up the most beautiful girls to be taken somewhere – my mother did not know where but suspected the worst.

She remembered what her boyfriend had made her swear – he had already disappeared into the black clouds that hovered over the camp – and she raised her hand and called out to the SS soldiers and asked to be taken.

A fellow inmate was horrified and said to her:  “Are you crazy? Do you know where they are taking you?  For the pleasure of the Nazis!”  But my mother decided to keep her promise to her boyfriend.  Her instincts were to survive.

She survived.

Esther and Alan, Cyprus, 1947

After her liberation, she learned that her 13 year old sister had survived, too. They embraced in tears and in joy and the first words her sister exclaimed were: “I’m a virgin!”

My mother answered, “I am, too!”  And they hugged and cried on the street corner for a long time.  My mother told me this story, among many others.

I will never know what she had to do to survive, and it is possible that whatever she had to do, along with so many things she experienced, were just too shocking for even her to recall.  But she did have recurring nightmares throughout her life.

The worst nightmares she had, however, were in Auschwitz.  Sleeping on cold planks in barracks with hundreds of other starving inmates, she would awaken from her nightmares only to find herself in a reality that was even worse than her nightmares.

My mother passed away five years ago, from Alzheimer’s.  As she deteriorated from the disease, she began to mistake me for one of her younger brothers who did not survive the death camp and she called me by his name whenever she saw me.

I took her aside once and explained to her that I was her son, not her brother, and that her brother was murdered by the Nazis.

She laughed and claimed that I was speaking nonsense and said, “why would anyone want to murder my young brother – he was so sweet and innocent and just 12 years old – and besides I just saw him riding his tricycle and you are speaking complete nonsense that anyone would want to murder innocent people like my little darling brother for no reason.”

I did not cry when my mother lay in a coma for days at a hospice in Brooklyn in her final hours.  I did not cry at her funeral.  I cried when she sent me a birthday card shortly after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, while she was still able to communicate.

She wrote: “God has blessed me with a wonderful life.”

The photograph above is of my parents, taken in 1947 at a Cyprus detention camp, where my parents were refugees and waiting and hoping for a chance at a new life, in Palestine, soon to become Israel.  There is joy in their eyes, the joy of liberation, the joy of a new beginning – the joy of life.

“We were slaves unto Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Lord took us out from there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. If the Holy One, blessed be He, had not taken our fathers out of Egypt, then we, our children and our children’s children would have remained enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt.  Even if all of us were wise, all of us understanding, we would still be obligated to discuss the exodus from Egypt.” – From the Haggadah of Passover.

* * *

Excerpt from an autobiographical novel I have been writing called “White Sand Falling.”

Danny Fisher is the CEO of film distribution company Fisher Klingenstein Films and CEO/Editor/Founder of website iWIDK (I Wish I Didn’t Know).  He was also the founder and CEO of  former film studio City Lights Media.