Massachusetts Question 3

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.

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.

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.

Whose fault is the Deficit? (posted by DT)

In my debates on budget matters with conservatives, I am always trying to remind them that the reason we have a huge budget deficit is because we have lowered taxes to an unsustainable level. I should probably also mention more that the 2000s also saw huge spending increases on the military in Iraq and Afghanistan and on the Medicare prescription drug benefit, which were completely unfunded (mind you, I don't oppose all that spending, but it's sort of outrageous that the same people who wouldn't consider paying for spending in good times are now arguing for budget austerity now).

The reply from conservatives keeps coming back: What about Obama's deficit explosion? Well, let's just keep things in perspective:



Stimulus spending, the light blue area, is indeed a huge contributor to the deficit this year. But it's projected to decrease to very little by 2012. The Bush tax cuts (orange), however, continue forever if they are made permanent. And they're a way bigger factor. Also of note, the economic downturn (dark blue) is a really big piece of the puzzle too.

I don't know any more ways to say it: the Republican/ Tea Party position at this time is not about balancing the budget- it's about tax cuts for the wealthy. If taxes don't go up, we'll stay in the red, even in good times.

Income Inequality (posted by DT)

This graph says a lot about what happens to income when Democrats are in charge and when Republicans are in charge (from: http://www.slate.com/id/2266174/slideshow/2266174/fs/0//entry/2266218/ )



Notice that, while the poor do much better under Democrats, the rich do better too! It's just better all around when people with lower incomes are allowed to increase their quality of life- because they buy stuff, which benefits the rich too.

Summing up the 2000s (posted by DT)

From Ezra Klein's blog at the Washington Post. (sorry it's tough to read- the graph shows the decline (!) in real wages from 2000 to 2007-that end point is before the Crash, mind you). I wish more people would think about this before restoring the wage-deadening GOP to power.

More on the Cordoba Center (posted by DT)

I want to post my fisking of an article sent to me recently about the "Ground Zero Mosque" controversy. My comments are in blue.

The Ground Zero Mosque - Lessons from Israel

A Jerusalem Post Column by Daniel Gordis

September 3, 2010
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



The Jerusalem Post
September 3, 2010
In its basic form, the Ground Zero mosque debate boils down to a conflict between two competing values - American freedom of religion versus the sensitivities of the families of the victims of 9/11.

Right off the bat he's wrong. Some families of 9/11 victims have come out in favor of the center. Many victims of 9/11 were Muslim themselves.

The freedom-of-religion argument suggests that if Jews sought to build a synagogue at Ground Zero (or anywhere else, for that matter), they would be within their rights. That's the American way. The opposing view suggests that while not every Catholic was guilty in the Holocaust, and not every Muslim perpetrated the crimes of 9/11, sensitivities still matter. Pope John Paul II had the decency to force the Carmelite nuns out of Auschwitz, and Muslim leaders, too, ought to relocate their project.

Similarly, the mutual accusations are parallel: If you are opposed to
the mosque, you are an Islamophobic racist. And if you're in favor of it, you're
simply insensitive to the pain of those who lost loved ones in the attack.

But we Israelis have learned from our experience that matters are more
complicated. One need not be racist or Islamophobic to be concerned about the
mosque. For life in our region has taught us that the first necessary step to
defending yourself is acknowledging that someone else is out to destroy you. This really ticks me off. It's a straw man argument used constantly by the Right. Everyone knows and understands that Al Qaeda is out to get us. The organization developing the Cordoba Center is not out to destroy us.

In the suburban, well-educated, politically and Jewishly liberal America in which I grew up, we didn't use the label "enemy." "Enemy" was a dirty word, because it implied the immutability of conflict.

Yes, there were people who fought us, but only because we hadn't yet arrived at a fair resolution of our conflict. We needed to understand them, so we could then
resolve the conflicts that divided us.

I still recall being jarred, when we made aliya, by the matter-of-factness with which Israelis use the word "enemy." But it wasn't a judgment or an accusation. It was simply a fact: There are people out to destroy our state, who seek to kill us and our children. And as the intifada later amply demonstrated, they did not yearn for our
understanding or our friendship. They wanted our demise. Making this point here implies that all Muslims are our enemies. That may be true in Israel (though I don't think so), but it's certainly not been shown to be true here.

YEARS AGO, we took our then teenage daughter to an evening sponsored by the army, at which religious parents could ask questions about what the army would be like for their daughters. Some of the parents were downright hostile, clearly opposed to the prospect of their daughters joining the IDF. At one point, an obviously angry father stood up, turned to the base commander and asked (or more accurately hissed), "Do you make the girls work on Shabbat?" The room was perfectly silent, for everyone knew the answer. No one moved. Even the base rabbi said nothing. He stood at the podium, leaned into the mike and, lost in thought, played with his beard.

Suddenly, one of the three soldiers who'd been brought to address the parents, a young woman with her uniform shirt buttoned up to her chin, her sleeves extending to her wrists and her armyissued skirt down to her ankles, looked the father right in the eye, and without being called on, said to him, "Of course we work on Shabbat." And then, after a second's pause, she added, "Gam ha'oyev oved beshabbat" - the enemy also works on Shabbat.

It was a game changer. "What?" she essentially asked. "You think we do this for fun?
There are people out there trying to destroy us. Either we're as serious about
this conflict as they are, or they're going to win." Nice story (really- I do like it), but again it has nothing to do with the Cordoba Center.

I hadn't thought of that young woman in years, but ever since the Cordoba Initiative controversy erupted, I've remembered her repeatedly. For Israelis do have something to teach Americans, and it's very similar to what she said to that father.

It goes something like this: It's fine to say that "America is not at war with Islam," to point out that most Muslims are not terrorists and that many American Muslims are moderates. That's true, as far as it goes. Obviously the author doesn't think
it is true. But in fact the vast majority of Muslims in the US, including most especially the Muslims building the Cordoba Center, are not jihadists.

But it only goes so far. Because America is at war and its enemies are Muslims. Politically correct hairsplitting runs the risk of Americans blinding themselves to that simple but critical fact. I think it's time to point out how stupid this argument is. Does he really think that we're going to forget the 9/11 terrorists are Muslim, or that Osama Bin Laden is Muslim? When we were at war with Japan, the US government locked up Japanese-Americans in concentration camps- after all, we were at war and our enemies were Japanese! That's not seen as a very cogent policy now. It makes no difference what percentage of the world's Muslims wants to destroy America. So if 0.000000000001% is the number it's the same as if it's 50%? By that reasoning, there's no ethnic group that can be trusted. There are enough of them that US air travel is now abominably unpleasant and, more importantly, enough of them that more strikes on America appear inevitable. So what do the attacks by Tim McVeigh and subsequent terror incidents by White Americans mean? What are we
supposed to do about those?

The US got lucky on Christmas Day when the bomber headed to Detroit failed to detonate his explosives, and was lucky again in Times Square in May, but less fortunate at Fort Hood. Yet those may be but the beginning. We could, heaven forbid, come to see 9/11 as child's play. 9/11 as child's play? Building off 2 incompetent
attacks by lone people or small groups and one successful attack by a member of
the US armed forces working alone? Where's the trend?

THE UNITED States' future is under attack, but Americans resist admitting it. President Barack Obama has sent 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, but he has also said that he intends to pull them out by July. Can we imagine FDR declaring war on Germany, but then adding that the war had to be over in a year, or in two? It
would have been laughable. And America would have lost. The US has to decide - is it committed to destroying those who wish it ill, or is it willing to be destroyed bythem? Those, sadly, are its only two alternatives. Not really. In Iraq and Afghanistan we need a mission that is attainable. Creating a peaceful democracy that likes us is not realistic. Unlike in WW II, we can bring our army anywhere we want, even to the heart of Afghanistan, but we'll just see the enemy melt away and reform elsewhere. The proper analogy is to Vietnam, not Germany.

When my parents were teenagers, they watched as evil took hold of Europe. But then they saw America turn itself into an unprecedented, enormous military machine. For America's leaders understood that if the Nazis won, the world as we knew it would be over; we could either destroy Nazism, or have no reason to go on.

But when my children were teenagers, a different evil took root across their eastern
horizon. This time, though, the world has feigned impotence.

Iran is at the nuclear threshold. Iraq was at best a "non-failure." The battle against the Taliban and al-Qaida may take years, or decades, and may require many lives
sacrificed if we are to win. But how do we win? We can conquer territory, but that's not winning. I haven't seen a realistic definition of what it means to "win" in Iraq or in Afghanistan. But America has grown war-weary. Americans see the pointlessness of
continuing an occupation that by its very nature sustains the resistance. Obama is already planning to bring the troops home Why wouldn't he? What is to be accomplished in the next few years that hasn't already been accomplished? What's the next goal?; the word "terrorist" is increasingly off-limits in the US because it is considered "politically loaded." That's just BS. The word "terrorist" is used constantly.

Americans simply want the conflict to be over.

Its tendency to gentility is part of what has made America great. But an unwillingness to call an "enemy" an enemy could lead to America's demise. Again, nobody disputes that Al Qaeda is our enemy. For Islam's radical leaders tell us clearly what they seek: a world united under Islam, with America's sacred freedoms eradicated as a new "morality" replaces them. Yes, and I seek ten million dollars. I'm not going to get it and neither are they. Islamic fundamentalism is not an existential threat. What is much less clear is whether Americans are willing to fight - to die and to kill - to protect those freedoms. I think it's been clearly shown that
America is quite willing to kill to protect those freedoms- tens of thousands of
Iraqis have had the good fortune to be examples. The question is whether
doing so is effective.

Whether or not the Ground Zero mosque ultimately gets built may not matter nearly as much as whether or not Americans are willing to gird themselves for the battles that sadly lie ahead. Now here's some truth- the "Ground Zero mosque" doesn't
matter in this war- it's a red herring. We Israelis understand the fatigue that comes with war. We, like Americans, would much prefer a world in which we did not have mortal enemies.

We, like Americans, would much prefer that our children went to college at 18, and not to years of military service. But we've learned that anything short of absolute clear-sightedness and honesty - coupled with extraordinary sacrifice - could destroy us.

The same is true for America. The truly important question that the "Islamophobia"
accusation raises is not what will transpire with a proposed building, but what
will happen with a worldview. Exactly! Is our worldview that the US is dedicated to diversity and religious freedom? Or are we just a mirror image of Islamic fundamentalists, engaged in a holy war, Judeo-Christianity vs. Islam?

It still remains to be seen if America will do what it must if it is to guarantee the survival of the very values it is now debating. America can remain the "land of the free," but only if it is also the "home of the brave." WOW what a twisted view of American values! American values are first and foremost entrenched in our constitution and the Bill of Rights. Nothing is more antithetical to our values than opposing a religious center being built on private property and dedicated to peace with other religions.

Oh, one more thing: "The Ground Zero Mosque" is neither a mosque nor is it located at Ground Zero. It's two city blocks away, with numerous large buildings in between, and is a cultural center with a prayer space- no minaret.