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Although I can’t blame my now-ending posting lapse on it, I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how bloggers, or indeed any information synthesizers / analyzers remain relevant.  Especially now that there are so many smart people writing about pretty much everything, it becomes difficult to actually say anything original.  I don’t think this is a reason that one shouldn’t write (or speak, or whatever) – if you aren’t willing to try to contribute, you can’t develop your opinion, and even if you are repetitive at times, it’s worth it in the long run.  But it is a consideration.

It doesn’t seem that there’s a single ingredient that makes for always-relevant material.  Focusing solely on national or global issues certainly puts you in a pretty big pond, but getting too local makes you irrelevant to anyone outside where you live, or worse, anyone who lives differently than you do, even in the same location.  So while I intend to start focusing on local issues more frequently, I’m not planning to give up analysis of larger affairs, particularly because I think there’s a dearth of attention being paid to some of them (climate change comes to mind).

Some upcoming blog-projects: a series on drug policy, maybe a review of the upcoming Northampton Coke plant expansion (“Lane wrote that without a local property tax break, freedom from having to pay for infrastructure upgrades, state tax credits and job training funds, Coke’s investment here was no sure thing.”), and some stuff on the Northwestern DA election and the pros/cons of statutory rape prosecutions.  Also working on a new title for the site (yes, “working on.”  It’s a big decision!)

I’ve issed a correction and a reflection on my last Jewschool post.

Here’s my newest post for Jewschool.

I’ve differed with Richard Silverstein before, and I find myself doing so again today.  I joined an FB group he created, but upon further thought, I’ve decided to leave it.  This is due to a very specific grievance; the second item on the group’s manifesto reads “2. that the U.S. government condemn unequivocally the attack on a Turkish ship in international waters; and join other EU countries in withdrawing our ambassador.”

I’ve got no problem with the U.S. unequivocally condemning the attack.  While I blame the activists for not remaining nonviolent (which they clearly didn’t) from both a moral and tactical perspective (if they had stayed peaceful, this could have been an incredible way to draw attention to the cruelty of the blockade), that doesn’t excuse Israel’s actions in the first place.  All parties involved in yesterday’s events made clear that they have no interest in a peaceful resolution to the conflict.  It’s going to take a lot of work to get them there.

And this is something we already know.  Which is why I can’t support any kind of intentional deterioration in diplomatic relations right now.  Crises like this one make the moral and practical imperative for productive dialogue even more pressing.  I object to the group’s belief that we should withdraw our ambassador.

I urge Richard to remove the second part of second item of the group’s beliefs.  Only then will I feel comfortable rejoining, because only then will the group truly be advocating for peace.

You can’t plan for everything.  We know that BP avoided paying $500,000 for a piece of safety equipment that’s mandatory in other countries, a remote shutoff valve that might have been able to prevent the worst of what we’re seeing now.  Clearly this is a pretty loud cry for better regulations.  And while I certainly don’t think this is Obama’s fault, I’m also reluctant to blame the Bush administration:

BP and its employees have given more than $3.5 million to federal candidates over the past 20 years, with the largest chunk of their money going to Obama, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

I’m not saying this to advance some sort of crazy conspiracy that Obama conspired to blow up the rig to improve the chances of banning offshore drilling and getting a comprehensive energy-climate bill through (because somehow in this country’s political discourse, 11 dead workers and massive environmental and economic damage is a reason to drill more, not less, and it looks like this is going to make Kerry-Graham-Lieberman harder, not easier), or that the response was deliberately slow (it wasn’t [and if you only read one of the links from this piece, it should be that one]), just that a culture of deregulation has been normal for a long time.  Notwithstanding smaller regulatory moves like this (which in my opinion are what differentiate this administration from the last), I don’t think that it’s fair to blame the laxity of American corporate (especially energy) regulations entirely on Bush.

What we have a chance to do now is to reclaim the externalities.  It’s time to impose a windfall profits tax on all non-renewable energy companies, and mark all revenues collected for clean energy R&D and investment.  That’s going to be hard with people like Mary Landrieu and John Boehner holding as much sway as they do because of bizarre and misused parliamentary procedures, but it needs to be done.  A price on carbon would be nice too.  We need strong leadership from Obama right now.  His history with offshore drilling is complicated, but I really do believe he wants it ended.  It’s a question of political feasibility.  And this is his chance.

If we let the GOP (read: the ones calling for expanded offshore drilling) get away with painting themselves as the true bearers of a “comprehensive” (and their plan is anything but), it won’t just be a political defeat.  Cap-and-trade (which I continue to defend as the best system out there) will be dead, and if the GOP gains a majority in the House this year (which is looking increasingly likely), we may not get a comprehensive energy-climate bill until it’s too late.

A while back, I wrote about why I thought conservatism as a set of ideological principles was functionally obsolete.  Several recent events have highlighted to me some pretty glaring contradictions on the part of prominent conservatives which I think deserve highlighting.  My purpose here is not to argue that all people who argue for limited government are always wrong (there are cases where I do the same), merely that blind adherence to this principle is just as dangerous as blind adherence to any other.  Conservatives have managed to paint themselves as the exception to this rule, and I think that’s a big problem.

Okay, here we go.  Case number one is Bobby Jindal.  I swear that I noticed this contradiction all on my own, but Salon.com has a good piece about it, which I’ll excerpt here:

Remember when Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal briefly became a right-wing hero for threatening to refuse stimulus money that would boost unemployment payments?

Ah, yes.  Good old ideology-over-results.  Well, that’s not a purely conservative flaw.  Everyone’s been guilty of that.  Give the guy a break.  NYTimes, any commments?

Governor Jindal of Louisiana had declared a state of emergency on Thursday and mobilized the Louisiana National Guard to participate in response efforts.

On Friday, Mr. Jindal also requested federal assistance for state fishermen, asking the Secretary of Commerce to declare a commercial fisheries failure.

I’m not suggesting that Jindal should have just let his citizens (and wildlife) get all oily because of his principles.  No, I think he did exactly the right thing by calling the Guard and asking for federal assistance.  Furthermore, I’m not assailing him for changing his mind, because I don’t think he did.  I think he was lying through his teeth to begin with.  He turned down the stimulus money as a political move, but as soon as he saw a tangible benefit to accepting federal help, he jumped at it (like any sane person responsible for other people’s lives would).  Yes, it’s petty politics.  But there’s a good case to be made the stimulus had some pretty damn tangible benefits too, they just weren’t as obvious as ducks covered with oil, which make for a pretty sad cover story.  Whether Jindal’s putting his reputation or his ideology before his citizens, he’s doing the wrong thing.

Let’s move on to someone a little closer to my heart, or at least my hometown.  My old governor, Mitt Romney, passed a health care bill that’s remarkably similar to the one that ultimately was signed into law in March.  In fact, here’s Romney quoted by NPR shortly after passing the thing in ’06:

After studying the problem, Romney says, he came away with a key insight: “People who don’t have insurance nonetheless receive health care. And it’s expensive.”

Some good sense from a businessman, who, for all of his failings, wasn’t actually that terrible of a governor.  Yes, our health care wait times have gone up, but, as BZ so aptly pointed out on a Jewschool comment thread, “Without insurance, the wait for a doctor’s appointment is infinite!”  If the cost of covering everyone is that I have to wait a little while longer, I’m really okay with that.

Further evidence of Romney’s practical approach to HCR in MA:

“We’re spending a billion dollars giving health care to people who don’t have insurance,” Romney says. “And my question was: Could we take that billion dollars and help the poor purchase insurance? Let them pay what they can afford. We’ll subsidize what they can’t.”

Perhaps this pleases me because it’s such a vindication of liberal policy ideas: that the government can actually help poor people in some way other than deregulating large financial firms and waiting for their executive bonuses to trickle down (I suppose in the form of the minimum wage paid to Lloyd Blankfein’s personal head-shiner [seriously, if he doesn't have one of those, he really should]), but it could also be that Romney was embracing a concept that a lot of people thought was a really good idea (and has worked pretty well).

In promoting the plan, Romney brushes off those in his party who attacked the plan as just another big-government scheme. He emphasized that those who can afford insurance should get it.

“Otherwise you’re just passing your expenses on to someone else,” Romney said. “That’s not Republican, that’s not Democratic, that’s not Libertarian. That’s just wrong.”

Damn, Romney.  I couldn’t have said that better myself.  I’m sure glad that someone with as much interest in the substance of policy and making a difference in people’s lives is probably going to run for national office.  We could use more pragmatic Republicans like you, especially on matters of importance like health care.

“An unconscionable abuse of power,” Romney declared while asserting that the president “has betrayed his oath to the nation.”

Well, that’s current-day Romney, with an about-face covered in another great Salon.com article.  Fortunately, the GOP base doesn’t care that much about facts, so he probably won’t have a very hard time convincing them that his health care plan is nothing like the national one, thus conveniently distancing himself from the tyrannical socialists he’ll be running against.

Jon Kingsdale was appointed by Romney in 2006 to run the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority, which operates the state exchange that serves as a health insurance marketplace for Massachusetts citizens. Kingsdale announced Thursday that he is stepping down from that position to pursue opportunities in implementing the national reforms, according to reports.

Ouch. And it gets worse.

“We should all feel very proud of having created the model for national health reform,” Kingsdale wrote in his resignation letter, the Washington Post reports. “The power of the Bay State’s example is enormously consequential. I believe that national reform would not have happened without it.”

So now one of the people with the best understanding of the day-to-day operation of MA’s health insurance exchanges, which were the model for the ones that the Patient Protection Act institutes in all other states, has drawn a direct parallel between them.  And of course Romney hasn’t stopped distancing himself from something that he actually did a good job on.  Yet another case of conservatives realizing that reality is catching up, in the form of sensible policies that just aren’t quite libertarian enough for the increasingly rabid right-wingers the GOP is courting.

Trouble is, as Stephen Colbert said (and in front of W, no less), reality has a known liberal bias.  I might modify that slightly to say that reality has a known reasonable bias, and that reasonable lawmakers are always vindicated if they just stick with being reasonable. But given today’s increasingly uneven party dichotomy, where a core group of liberal pragmatists looking to get things done squares off against a group of disciplined conservative ideologues ready to ignore any facts that stand in their way, asking said ideologues to remain reasonable is just a little too much.  Whether it’s Arizona empowering its police to ask anyone for identification at any time for pretty much any reason, Oklahoma allowing doctors to lie to a pregnant woman about possible fetal birth defects if they think the truth would incline her to consider abortion (not to mention requiring that she see be shown an ultrasound of the fetus and hear a verbal description of some of its body parts [and that ultrasound?  If a normal one isn't good enough, the doctor has to perform a vaginal ultrasound, which, if you haven't heard of it (I hadn't), sounds pretty damn scary]), or the government deciding which of the various types of people who fall in love should be allowed to get married and visit each other in the hospital, it’s just another example of conservative inconsistency.  Legislate women’s bodies all you want, restrict consenting adults from getting married, and feel free to detain brown people on street corners, but don’t you dare close the gun show loophole, or think about putting a price on carbon.

And keep your government hands off my Medicare.

Eugene Robinson has what I think is so far the best analysis of the new immigration law in Arizona:

Arizona’s draconian new immigration law is an abomination — racist, arbitrary, oppressive, mean-spirited, unjust.

I’d recommend reading the whole thing; he goes into some pretty specific detail, and also mentions something that’s otherwise absent from the debate.

Let me interrupt this tirade to point out that while Arizona has unquestionably done the wrong thing, it is understandable that exasperated officials believed they had to dosomething. Immigration policy and border security are federal responsibilities, and Washington has failed miserably to address what Arizonans legitimately see as a crisis.

It’s a good point.  Looking at this as a deliberate attack on illegal immigrants (and a deliberate attempt at racial profiling) would be misleading.  I don’t think the people who passed this law actually favor legalized discrimination against Latinos, at least not consciously.  But the law’s passage reveals something about ethnocentricity and Americanism – that we still see whiteness as the “default” in this country.  Somehow, the existence of other races and cultures is a threat to “American-ness”.  Clearly this is a load of junk; this country was built on immigrants and continues to thrive off of their cheap labor.  In the present day, easier paths to legalization would lead to significant economic benefits.

Opposition to flexible and fair immigration policies is in my experience associated with an extreme form of nativist patriotism; the idea that America is intrinsically better than other countries.  I’m the first person to defend the Constitution as one of the finest documents on which to establish a government, and I think there are in fact intrinsic advantages to the American judicial and legal systems.  But that’s not the same as saying that this country is better by virtue of its existence, or is fated to be that way.  We got a lot of stuff right that a lot of other countries didn’t.  We also got a lot of stuff wrong.  And like every country, we should be trying to fix the things that are wrong, and we should be helping others do the same.  In a way, this means that I see America’s “greatness” not as a gift, but as a privilege that implies many important responsibilities.

So here’s where I get confused: if the type of uber-patriots I’m talking about really think America’s so great, they should have no problem with allowing others access to it.  If this is really the greatest country in the world, how can a bunch of poor people who want a better life be that much of a threat?  The answer is that American nativists believe that they’re special by virtue of having been born here, and immigrants are somehow “less American”.  Obviously illegal immigrants aren’t citizens, but don’t forget that what makes this country fundamentally different from the world of nation-states from which it arose is that the only thing required to be part of it was to want to.  In practice, there were and are a fair amount of obstacles to this rather lofty dream, but it’s undeniable that we have gotten and continue to get closer and closer to it.

For modern-day nativists to claim that American-ness should be restricted to those of us who are already here is totally contrary to the principle of equal access and to the historical trend towards this principle.  It’s a disguised form of racism, a historical tendency to view whiteness, and only whiteness, as “true American-ness”.  While the definition of who is and is not white has changed over time (historically excluding, to name a few, Catholics, Irish, and Jews, all of whom are considered “white” today), it’s sure that Latino immigrants aren’t included in it now.  Comprehensive federal immigration reform would be a good opportunity to affirm that whiteness is no longer required to receive the full benefits of citizenship.  Obviously it won’t fix racial inequalities in and of itself, but a progressive immigration policy would do a lot to put us on the right track.

For some more interesting reading on the economic implications of immigration policy (an angle I haven’t really explored in much depth here), check out this terrific Free exchange piece in response to Krugman and Yglesias.

If you’re not reading Climate Progress already, you should be.  Period.  CP is pretty much the best source out their for the politics and policy of energy, climate, and their economic impacts.

Joe Romm’s post on the DC climate rally got me thinking about media coverage.  More specifically, how should media organizations make decisions on what to spend their airtime/journalistic space covering?  Clearly, decisions on this subject are complicated and the responsibility for making them doesn’t rest on a single person.  It’s thus rather irresponsible to denounce a news organization as partisan or having an agenda based on a single editorial decision.  Smart people can and do disagree on what deserves reporting.

But faced with the overwhelming lack of reporting on the threat from and policies intended to combat climate change, it’s hard to excuse any news outlet from ignoring or downplaying the the issue.  As Romm puts it:

Yes, the biggest single climate rally in U.S. history is dismissed by comparison with the hypothetical cumulative turnout of dozens of future rallies on immigration.  Who says the media isn’t fair?

Now, the obvious response to this is that the size of a protest shouldn’t really determine how much coverage it gets.  For example, I don’t dismiss Tea Party protest because they’re not big enough (in fact, I think they’re alarmingly large), I dismiss them because they have no idea what they’re talking about. I find it difficult to believe that any journalist takes the grievances of the Tea Party as seriously as the threat from climate change, but that sure is what it seems like based on the quantity (the New York Times doesn’t appear to have much coverage at all) of coverage.

Bottom line: if you think that socialism is a greater threat to this country than climate change, I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell you.

While fisking Evan Krasner’s New Voices post yesterday, I came across this gem of an article by Sam Green.  I quickly posted it to Twitter, along with some suitably snarky comments, and a lively conversation ensued.  KFJ posted his own fisking, and I’m going to do the same.  I definitely recommend that you read his; it’s very good, and I’ll be hitting some different points, so if you see something I appear to have missed, it may just be because he already covered it.

Right off the bat, Sam’s got a pretty questionable statement:

…when we speak of Jewish anti-Zionism today, we refer to a growing number of secular, disaffected Jews…

In what world does Sam live in where the only anti-Zionists are secular and disaffected?  There are all sorts of reasons for opposing Israel as a religious state.  Many are valid.  Many are not.  Lumping them all together under the categories of “secular” (implying “not Jewish enough”) and “disaffected” (implying “lacking in proper Jewish education”) does a great disservice to the diversity of opinions on the nature of Israel.

But these students, like one who said—at a Shabbat dinner, no less—that she believes that Israel “shouldn’t exist as a Jewish state,” maintain a confused ideology.

First of all, note the derision towards a student expressing anti-Zionist sentiments at a Shabbat dinner, as if the notion of Shabbat (in its capacity as a ritual of Jewish observance) is antithetical to a certain political opinion on Israel.  Second of all, the fact that Sam falls back on “confused” is a good demonstration of the fact that there isn’t a substantive flaw in the anti-Zionist argument.  That doesn’t mean by any stretch that you can’t disagree with it, only that it’s not an inherently invalid argument.  Sam fails to give it the consideration it merits.

Advocacy for Palestinian human rights and self-determination must come alongside equal support of the same rights for Israelis. Eliminating Israel as a Jewish state will not achieve these goals for either people. The death of Israel will hurt the lives of the former Israelis and will not improve the lives of the oppressed Palestinians, whose leadership is proving unable to run a democratic government.

I tend to agree with Sam on this one on a purely practical level; dissolving Israel would lead to more violence in the region given the current political and economic situation.  But it’s wrong of Sam to lump together those who question or oppose the existence of Israel as a religious state with those that actually want to wake up the next morning and have it no longer exist.  To be clear: I harbor serious moral problems with the idea of a Jewish state, but I don’t advocate for dissolution.  Given a peaceful two-state resolution to the conflict, we’ll have space to deal with more fundamental questions of Israel’s cultural and religious identity.  For now, those have to wait until people aren’t dying anymore.  Sam’s argument doesn’t account for a position like mine, which, while questioning Israel’s nature (as many Jews do), recognizes the functional problems associated with its dissolution.

I also seriously question the assertion that the Palestinian leadership “is proving unable to run a democratic government”.  Have you ever tried governing in an occupied territory?  It’s a bit difficult.  We should recognize that the circumstances under which the Palestinians are attempting to govern are far less than ideal, to put it quite rosily.  It’s unfair to hold them to the same standards that we hold, for example, Israel or the US.

Whether or not these anti-Zionist Jews choose to recognize it, the state of Israel exists for their benefit and has made significant efforts toward peace with the Palestinians.

Good to know that Big Brother is watching out for me.  This is honestly some of the most condescending nonsense I’ve read in a long time.  There are absolutely Diaspora Jews who feel that the existence of Israel is vital to their identity as religious and cultural Jews.  I’m not one of them, but I’ve learned to deeply respect that feeling.  I resent Sam’s implication that all Diaspora Jews should take on the same feeling about Israel that he clearly possesses.  Sam, kudos to you for understanding and being proud of your strong connection to Israel.  Don’t imply that I or anyone else is obligated to feel the same way.

I agree with Sam that Israel has made significant efforts toward peace with the Palestinians, but it’s not a terribly convincing argument when you’re actually trying to determine why there still isn’t peace.  Rather than saying “look how much they’ve already done”, Sam should be arguing why the existence of Israel is crucial to the peace process.  As it is, his argument is that since Israel is trying to make peace, it should exist.  Not very convincing.

Many liberal Israelis, such as the members of the leftist Zionist group Peace Now, support human rights and self-determination for Palestinians under a two-state solution. But such a voice is weak in the leadership of the Palestinian side and some leading Palestinian groups are dedicated to Israel’s destruction.  Screaming to high heaven in the name of human rights, therefore, every time the Israeli government is required to conduct a military operation against these groups is about as confused an action as a liberal political activist can take.

Since when does Palestinian leadership not endorse a two-state solution?  When last I checked, Abbas was busy actually building one.  As to the inflammatory claim that some Palestinian groups are dedicated to Israel’s destruction, this depends on how you define “leading.”  If you’re going with “whoever gets the most media attention”, then sure.  The guys in masks with rocket launchers always get more airtime than the ones in suits building the economic infrastructure for Palestinian self-sovereignty.  It’s also notable that there are plenty of hard-right Israeli groups that would be just as happy to see Palestine disappear.  Sam applies a double standard in judging Palestinians by their most extreme elements but giving Israel the benefit of the doubt.  In reality, we should be listening to the reasonable people on both sides, not the ones with guns and bombs.

Furthermore, decrying an Israeli military operation that you believe is doing something wrong is not a “confused” point of view, nor is it inherently incongruous with being “a liberal political activist”.  Sam, you can either discuss the nuanced merits and faults of Israeli military policy and the actions of the IDF, or you can just say that people are confused when they disagree with you.  Your choice.

Supporting Israel may not be attractive to young, disaffected Jews because they think of the pro-Israel community in terms of guys wearing large Israeli-flag kippot in synagogue to cover their bald spots. The reality, however, has changed: J Street and its campus subsidiary J Street U are new “pro-Israel, pro-peace” organizations that support, according to their website, “Israel as a democratic home for the Jewish people, the full and equal rights of Arab and other non-Jewish citizens of Israel and the right of the Palestinian people to a state of their own.”

Sam’s description of the pro-Israel community is pretty accurate as far as I’m concerned, but his description of the perceptions of anti-Zionists is decidedly not.  Has he even considered that perhaps anti-Zionists hold their beliefs not because they’re confused, disaffected, or tired of Israeli-flag kippot, but because of legitimate political and moral disagreements with the pro-Israel community?  Nope.  Sam again refuses to take on the structure and substance of anti-Zionism, preferring instead to ignore it with an offensive mixture of disdain and pity.

…at my college, where radical-chic is most definitely in.  I suspect that the motivation of the Jew who claims that Israel should not exist as a Jewish state is really a strong desire to break with the past, advocate for radical change and be different from the previous generation.

Wow, “radical-chic”?  Congratulations, Sam, on one of the most condescending phrases I’ve ever heard to describe an entire class of ideas.  And your suspicions about the motivations of Jewish anti-Zionists?  They’re just that: suspicions.

…anti-Zionist Jews may be raising valid protests, but they are taking it too far.

According to you.

No matter how disconnected a Jew may feel from the Jewish people or Jewish culture and religion, she should strive to retain some semblance of group identity and belonging.

Hey Sam, ever wonder why Jewish anti-Zionists feel disconnected?  It’s because of people like you.  People who hold standards for what counts as an “acceptable” Jewish opinion.  People willing to marginalize, condescend, and ignore those who they disagree with (incidentally, the exact same tactics I decry when used by some anti-Zionists).  Maybe if the Jewish community were willing to perceive a vigorous, respectful, and honest debate about the nature of Israel as something other than a threat to the community’s existence and identity, Jewish anti-Zionists would feel a bit more connected.

Israel needs the Diaspora, and the Diaspora needs Israel.

Again Sam, maybe you need Israel, and I’m not trying to minimize that.  I have absolutely no problem with Diaspora Jews who feel a strong connection to Israel, but you have no right to apply that connection to others and claim that if they don’t have it, they should.

Maybe the whole “I’m a Jew and I oppose Israel” thing is just a phase.

It isn’t.  But next time, could you be a little more condescending?

Hopefully such folks are a small enough minority to pose little threat to solid American Jewish support of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

Read: hopefully the mainstream Jewish community will be effective enough in shutting down debate so that the other side never gets heard.

All the same, the Jews who advocate Israel’s end are on a slippery slope toward a break with their Jewish identity and Jewish civilization.

Wrong again.  The real break with Jewish identity is in the stifling of discourse, the marginalizing of those with whom you disagree.  Sam is almost threatening Jewish anti-Zionists with intellectual exile, saying “if you don’t watch out, you’ll be so far gone that we won’t consider you Jews any more.”  This shows Jewish anti-Zionists how disinterested in their opinions the Jewish community is, driving them further away.  If Sam really wants to prevent Jewish anti-Zionists from being totally separated from the rest of the Jewish community, he should welcome their opinions, and look for ways to engage them, instead of deriding their motivations, ignoring their arguments, and marginalizing their existence.

I’m disappointed in the lack of depth Sam’s article shows, especially for someone who is clearly so committed to peace.  The challenge ahead for the Jewish community is to recognize that divergent and oppositional opinions on Israel are vital to furthering the debate and advancing understanding.  If we can learn to accept them, we can move forward.  If not, we’re dead in the water.  Let’s get this one right.

Since there’s not really anything to talk about, I’ll just link you to this post I wrote for Jewschool.  Wouldn’t you know it, Alan Dershowitz is back again!