On my state's ballot this Tuesday is a ballot question that would roll back the state sales tax from 6.25% to 3%. http://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/elepip10/pip103.htm I guess recent polling indicates the question will probably lose, but it's still close. I just have to throw out a little "what are they thinking" note to proponents.
It's estimated (by both sides) that this change would decrease state revenues by $2.5 billion in FY 2012. Where do proponents think this money is going to come from? OK, people are angry about government, but do they seriously think we can wipe out this much cash from state programs without serious consequences?
Massachusetts has been laying off state workers throughout many departments. There's no fat to cut. If you're angry about high pensions for state workers, this law isn't going to change that one bit- we'll still owe pensions and retirement benefits to those workers, only we'll have to cut aid to cities and towns to pay for them, and now property taxes are going up instead. Or towns will be laying off more police, fire, and teaching staff.
These kinds of votes seem more like tantrums than thoughtful dissection of policy. Government has to be funded from somewhere. I would love to see anti-tax types propose ballot initiatives that cut programs and local aid- then we'd be voting like legislators have to when they're formulating a budget, considering the consequences of our tax cutting. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Department of Election Pre-Analysis (posted by DT)
I'm coming around to the point of view that the electoral deck is just stacked against the Democrats this year:
-The party in power always loses seats in off-year elections
-The party in power always loses seats when the economy is bad
-2006 and 2008 produced lots of democrats in conservative districts, which are bound to swing back
-The economy was such a wreck in '08 that no realistic fix would have been enough to reverse it enough to matter politically. Even if liberals had gotten their $1.5 trillion stimulus, unemployment would still be 8%, which though better than 9.6% still isn't good enough to satisfy the public.
Just looking for excuses for the coming electoral destruction? Fair enough, maybe so. But when you look historically at the previous times that a single party has controlled both houses and the presidency, you see that it never lasts long. The only exception was 2002, and clearly 9/11 had a lot to do with that.
Not that I saw this coming or anything. I was swept up, and figured the GOP had screwed up the economy so badly that it would be years before they'd be back. Color me wrong about that!
Of course the implications of this are that Democrats only had a short window, and needed to pass as much important stuff as possible while they could. The administration would argue that they've done just that- health care reform and financial reform being the big things. I would have liked to see more. If the Democrats somehow do hold on to the House and Senate, they absolutely have to end the filibuster and keep plugging away at their agenda, because they probably won't hold both houses for long after that- no matter what happens. See, I've learned my lesson.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Israel and a "One State Solution" (posted by DT)
Here's an opinion piece in the New York Times that is so many kinds of wrong that it's hard to know where to start:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/a-one-to-two-state-solution/
So for your reading pleasure, here's my fisking of this idiotic piece: (My comments in Blue)
This week’s bad news from the West Bank — the resumption of settlement construction after a 10-month moratorium, just as a new round of peace talks had gotten underway — didn’t much dampen optimism among seasoned Middle East watchers.
That’s because there wasn’t much optimism to dampen. For the past few years, more and more people who follow these things have been saying that the perennial goal of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks — a two-state solution — will never be reached in any event.
These experts fall into two camps.
The more upbeat, while pessimistic about a two-state solution, hold out hope for a “one-state solution”: Israel gains uncontested possession of the West Bank and Gaza but gives Palestinians who live there the vote, and Israel evolves from a Jewish state into a stable and peaceful secular state.
A One State Solution means the end of the Jewish state, which is the whole point of Israel. The only experts in favor of a One State Solution are those who are opposed to the existence of Israel. To imagine that Jews would be safe in an Arab-dominated state, given the recent history of the Middle East, is so ridiculous as to be laughable.
People in the other camp — the pure, 100-percent pessimists — say that even if such a thing could work, even if a democracy with about as many Arabs as Jews could function, it isn’t going to happen; most Israelis would never admit a large and growing Arab population to the electorate.
Agreed!
For a peace deal to happen, Israel’s centrists need to get jarred out of their indifference.
But there’s a third possibility that nobody ever talks about. Pursuing a one-state solution could actually lead to a two-state solution. Instead of following the current road map to a Palestinian state, maybe we can get there by detour.
This seems to be implying that the impediment to peace in Israel/Palestine is "Israel's centrists".
One key to working up enthusiasm for this detour is to get clear on the nature of the roadblock.
It’s common to say that Israel’s intransigence on the settlements issue reflects the growing strength of the right, especially the religious fundamentalists who do much of the settling. But at least as big a problem as the zeal of the radicals is the apathy of the moderates.
Now here's where things start to get crazy. Look, I'm dead-set against settlements deep in the West Bank, and I think they're antithetical to peace; an unnecessary barrier. But settlements are not the primary obstacle to peace. The primary obstacle is that Palestinians continue to reject the legitimacy of the Jewish state, and continue to act and speak as if they intend to do nothing less than kill every Jew in Israel.
A recent Time magazine cover story — “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace” — explained why many Israelis just don’t think a peace deal is all that important: they’ve already got peace. Ever since Israel built its security wall, they’ve been safe from suicide bombers, and homemade rockets from Gaza can’t reach them. They’re prosperous to boot. What’s not to like?
A more accurate description of this phenomenon is that Israelis have decided that Palestinians are not a legitimate partner for peace at this time, so they're trying to make the best of it while waiting and hoping that something changes.
So long as this attitude prevails, the far right will have veto power over policy in the occupied territory. For a peace deal to happen, Israel’s centrists need to get jarred out of their indifference. Someone needs to scare these people.
There’s a way for Palestinians to do that — and not the usual way, with bombs and rockets. Quite the opposite.
If Palestinians want to strike fear into the hearts of Israelis they should (a) give up on violence as a tool of persuasion; (b) give up on the current round of negotiations; and (c) start holding demonstrations in which they ask for only one thing: the right to vote. Their argument would be simple: They live under Israeli rule, and Israel is a democracy, so why aren’t they part of it?
Let's put aside that this prescription is utterly unrealistic. The Palestinians have shown no signs of any willingness to give up on violence-ever. But if they ever did follow this plan they wouldn't "strike fear into the hearts of Israelis"- the Jews would be thrilled! It would take lots of stops and starts, and yes, lots of internal struggles with the Messianic Right in Israel, but Palestinians would indeed get their state this way- and they'd deserve it! The continuing violence is the whole reason that the Israeli center has turned away from the peace process- if you stop the violence, you get them on board again- you don't need any subtle byzantine plan to do it, it's pretty straightforward!
A truly peaceful movement with such elemental aspirations — think of Martin Luther King or Gandhi — would gain immediate international support. In Europe and the United States, leftists would agitate in growing numbers for economic and political pressure on Israel.
They wouldn't have to, because Israelis would negotiate very happily. Again, Palestinian violence and rejectionism is the main impediment to peace, not settlements.
In 2002, some Harvard students urged the university to purge investments in Israel from its portfolio, and the president of Harvard, Lawrence Summers, suggested that the disinvestment movement was anti-Semitic. This time there would be a lot more students, and no university president would call them anti-Semitic. All they’d be saying is that if Israel isn’t going to give up the occupied territories — and, let’s face it, the current government isn’t exactly in headlong pursuit of that goal — it should give Arabs living there the same rights it gives Jews living there.
Past Israeli governments have been willing to give up the West Bank in exchange for peace, and there's no reason future ones wouldn't do the same, if conditions warranted it. The Right is in control in Israel now, but it's a democracy and leadership will change again.
As momentum grew — more Palestinians marching, more international support for them, thus more Palestinians marching, and so on — the complacent Israeli center would get way less complacent. Suddenly facing a choice between a one-state solution and international ostracism, reasonable Israelis would develop a burning attraction to a two-state solution — and a sudden intolerance for religious zealots who stood in the way of it. Before long Israel would be pondering two-state deals more generous than anything that’s been seriously discussed to date.
Obviously, neutralizing Israeli extremists wouldn’t get rid of all obstacles to peace. For one thing, there are the Palestinian extremists. They could sabotage peaceful progress with attention-grabbing violence, and Hamas, in particular, has shown as much. But that problem, which looms large on the current road to peace, would loom smaller on the detour.
You probably get the point by now, but of course this paragraph, a throwaway in the article, really gets at the heart of the matter. It's the main issue.
For starters, if a peaceful suffrage movement gave Palestinians the vigorous international support they’ve long sought, it would be hard for Hamas to conspicuously oppose it.
Besides, given the Arab birth rate, for Arabs to get the vote would theoretically put them on the path toward effective control of Israel, which is exactly what Hamas says it wants. It would be kind of awkward for Hamas to stand in the way of that.
Of course, once Israel started talking seriously about a two-state deal, Hamas could revert to fierce opposition. But if indeed the deal being discussed was more generous than those discussed in the past, the success of the Palestinian peace movement would be undeniable. Hamas might persist in its obstructionism, but it would have less support than it has now. That’s progress.
Aaaahhhh, if only I could agree. I wish Hamas could be so easily marginalized. I'm still an optimist that someday there will be peace; but it's not coming that fast, and Hamas isn't going away that easily.
Given the ongoing damage done to America’s national security by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it’s in America’s interest for Israelis to feel intensely eager for a two-state deal. And some do.
As for the others: if they really grasped their predicament, they’d be intensely eager as well. The menu of futures for Israel features only three items: (1) two-state solution; (2) one-state solution; (3) something really, really horrible. There’s just no way that the situation will simmer indefinitely without boiling over, whether via nuclear bomb (purchased by terrorists from cash-hungry North Korea, say), or via a tit-for-tat exchange with Hamas or Hezbollah that spins out of control, bringing a devastating regional war, or via some other path to catastrophe.
Israelis would love to see a 2-state solution. It's been the policy of the Israeli government since 1947. What I find most obscene about this article is that this (kind of important) detail is completely left out.
Sooner or later, something will alert Israel’s unfortunately silent majority to the high price of leaving the Palestinian issue unresolved. The only question is whether by then the price will have already been paid.
Postscript: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has in the past mentioned the one-state prospect in a way that shows he understands its potential to strengthen Israel’s incentive to negotiate. But regional experts tell me that in general officials on the Palestinian side don’t welcome a one-state solution because that would deprive them of the power they have now, whereas they would remain prominent during the implementation of a two-state solution. So don’t expect Palestinian officials to initiate give-us-the-vote marches; even if they saw that such marches could wind up leading to a two-state solution, they’d probably fear any potentially strong movement that they don’t control. If a peaceful suffrage movement takes shape, it will be a grass-roots movement, perhaps supported by international nongovernmental organizations.
I think the Palestinian polity has made it pretty clear that it wants a one state solution, with all the Jews pushed into the Mediterranean. Not my favorite solution to the problem.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/a-one-to-two-state-solution/
So for your reading pleasure, here's my fisking of this idiotic piece: (My comments in Blue)
This week’s bad news from the West Bank — the resumption of settlement construction after a 10-month moratorium, just as a new round of peace talks had gotten underway — didn’t much dampen optimism among seasoned Middle East watchers.
That’s because there wasn’t much optimism to dampen. For the past few years, more and more people who follow these things have been saying that the perennial goal of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks — a two-state solution — will never be reached in any event.
These experts fall into two camps.
The more upbeat, while pessimistic about a two-state solution, hold out hope for a “one-state solution”: Israel gains uncontested possession of the West Bank and Gaza but gives Palestinians who live there the vote, and Israel evolves from a Jewish state into a stable and peaceful secular state.
A One State Solution means the end of the Jewish state, which is the whole point of Israel. The only experts in favor of a One State Solution are those who are opposed to the existence of Israel. To imagine that Jews would be safe in an Arab-dominated state, given the recent history of the Middle East, is so ridiculous as to be laughable.
People in the other camp — the pure, 100-percent pessimists — say that even if such a thing could work, even if a democracy with about as many Arabs as Jews could function, it isn’t going to happen; most Israelis would never admit a large and growing Arab population to the electorate.
Agreed!
For a peace deal to happen, Israel’s centrists need to get jarred out of their indifference.
But there’s a third possibility that nobody ever talks about. Pursuing a one-state solution could actually lead to a two-state solution. Instead of following the current road map to a Palestinian state, maybe we can get there by detour.
This seems to be implying that the impediment to peace in Israel/Palestine is "Israel's centrists".
One key to working up enthusiasm for this detour is to get clear on the nature of the roadblock.
It’s common to say that Israel’s intransigence on the settlements issue reflects the growing strength of the right, especially the religious fundamentalists who do much of the settling. But at least as big a problem as the zeal of the radicals is the apathy of the moderates.
Now here's where things start to get crazy. Look, I'm dead-set against settlements deep in the West Bank, and I think they're antithetical to peace; an unnecessary barrier. But settlements are not the primary obstacle to peace. The primary obstacle is that Palestinians continue to reject the legitimacy of the Jewish state, and continue to act and speak as if they intend to do nothing less than kill every Jew in Israel.
A recent Time magazine cover story — “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace” — explained why many Israelis just don’t think a peace deal is all that important: they’ve already got peace. Ever since Israel built its security wall, they’ve been safe from suicide bombers, and homemade rockets from Gaza can’t reach them. They’re prosperous to boot. What’s not to like?
A more accurate description of this phenomenon is that Israelis have decided that Palestinians are not a legitimate partner for peace at this time, so they're trying to make the best of it while waiting and hoping that something changes.
So long as this attitude prevails, the far right will have veto power over policy in the occupied territory. For a peace deal to happen, Israel’s centrists need to get jarred out of their indifference. Someone needs to scare these people.
There’s a way for Palestinians to do that — and not the usual way, with bombs and rockets. Quite the opposite.
If Palestinians want to strike fear into the hearts of Israelis they should (a) give up on violence as a tool of persuasion; (b) give up on the current round of negotiations; and (c) start holding demonstrations in which they ask for only one thing: the right to vote. Their argument would be simple: They live under Israeli rule, and Israel is a democracy, so why aren’t they part of it?
Let's put aside that this prescription is utterly unrealistic. The Palestinians have shown no signs of any willingness to give up on violence-ever. But if they ever did follow this plan they wouldn't "strike fear into the hearts of Israelis"- the Jews would be thrilled! It would take lots of stops and starts, and yes, lots of internal struggles with the Messianic Right in Israel, but Palestinians would indeed get their state this way- and they'd deserve it! The continuing violence is the whole reason that the Israeli center has turned away from the peace process- if you stop the violence, you get them on board again- you don't need any subtle byzantine plan to do it, it's pretty straightforward!
A truly peaceful movement with such elemental aspirations — think of Martin Luther King or Gandhi — would gain immediate international support. In Europe and the United States, leftists would agitate in growing numbers for economic and political pressure on Israel.
They wouldn't have to, because Israelis would negotiate very happily. Again, Palestinian violence and rejectionism is the main impediment to peace, not settlements.
In 2002, some Harvard students urged the university to purge investments in Israel from its portfolio, and the president of Harvard, Lawrence Summers, suggested that the disinvestment movement was anti-Semitic. This time there would be a lot more students, and no university president would call them anti-Semitic. All they’d be saying is that if Israel isn’t going to give up the occupied territories — and, let’s face it, the current government isn’t exactly in headlong pursuit of that goal — it should give Arabs living there the same rights it gives Jews living there.
Past Israeli governments have been willing to give up the West Bank in exchange for peace, and there's no reason future ones wouldn't do the same, if conditions warranted it. The Right is in control in Israel now, but it's a democracy and leadership will change again.
As momentum grew — more Palestinians marching, more international support for them, thus more Palestinians marching, and so on — the complacent Israeli center would get way less complacent. Suddenly facing a choice between a one-state solution and international ostracism, reasonable Israelis would develop a burning attraction to a two-state solution — and a sudden intolerance for religious zealots who stood in the way of it. Before long Israel would be pondering two-state deals more generous than anything that’s been seriously discussed to date.
Obviously, neutralizing Israeli extremists wouldn’t get rid of all obstacles to peace. For one thing, there are the Palestinian extremists. They could sabotage peaceful progress with attention-grabbing violence, and Hamas, in particular, has shown as much. But that problem, which looms large on the current road to peace, would loom smaller on the detour.
You probably get the point by now, but of course this paragraph, a throwaway in the article, really gets at the heart of the matter. It's the main issue.
For starters, if a peaceful suffrage movement gave Palestinians the vigorous international support they’ve long sought, it would be hard for Hamas to conspicuously oppose it.
Besides, given the Arab birth rate, for Arabs to get the vote would theoretically put them on the path toward effective control of Israel, which is exactly what Hamas says it wants. It would be kind of awkward for Hamas to stand in the way of that.
Of course, once Israel started talking seriously about a two-state deal, Hamas could revert to fierce opposition. But if indeed the deal being discussed was more generous than those discussed in the past, the success of the Palestinian peace movement would be undeniable. Hamas might persist in its obstructionism, but it would have less support than it has now. That’s progress.
Aaaahhhh, if only I could agree. I wish Hamas could be so easily marginalized. I'm still an optimist that someday there will be peace; but it's not coming that fast, and Hamas isn't going away that easily.
Given the ongoing damage done to America’s national security by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it’s in America’s interest for Israelis to feel intensely eager for a two-state deal. And some do.
As for the others: if they really grasped their predicament, they’d be intensely eager as well. The menu of futures for Israel features only three items: (1) two-state solution; (2) one-state solution; (3) something really, really horrible. There’s just no way that the situation will simmer indefinitely without boiling over, whether via nuclear bomb (purchased by terrorists from cash-hungry North Korea, say), or via a tit-for-tat exchange with Hamas or Hezbollah that spins out of control, bringing a devastating regional war, or via some other path to catastrophe.
Israelis would love to see a 2-state solution. It's been the policy of the Israeli government since 1947. What I find most obscene about this article is that this (kind of important) detail is completely left out.
Sooner or later, something will alert Israel’s unfortunately silent majority to the high price of leaving the Palestinian issue unresolved. The only question is whether by then the price will have already been paid.
Postscript: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has in the past mentioned the one-state prospect in a way that shows he understands its potential to strengthen Israel’s incentive to negotiate. But regional experts tell me that in general officials on the Palestinian side don’t welcome a one-state solution because that would deprive them of the power they have now, whereas they would remain prominent during the implementation of a two-state solution. So don’t expect Palestinian officials to initiate give-us-the-vote marches; even if they saw that such marches could wind up leading to a two-state solution, they’d probably fear any potentially strong movement that they don’t control. If a peaceful suffrage movement takes shape, it will be a grass-roots movement, perhaps supported by international nongovernmental organizations.
I think the Palestinian polity has made it pretty clear that it wants a one state solution, with all the Jews pushed into the Mediterranean. Not my favorite solution to the problem.
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