Left versus Right as a Political shorthand is nonsense. The true Political spectrum is Libertarian versus Authoritarian
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Benghazi - What a Non Issue !
Leave it to the G.O.P. to make hay of an issue that means nothing. The Facts About Benghazi are murky at best and is an example of the Obama administration's misguided attempt to make something out of chaos. If Republicans, on the other hand, think that an ambassador requires five black Chevy Suburbans with a Blackwater team in support of their every move, then I suggest they fund their ad budgets to the maximum with that startlingly great vote getting issue.
I hate those names for legislation that are the exact reverse of what they state
The Patriot Act's name is one of the most egregious distortions of a law's true purpose. "Laws deserve More" by Adam Liptak is a refreshing find in the New York Times.
Monday, December 30, 2013
Bully Politician
David Firestone's editorial perfectly captures my antipathy for Chris Christie. He is an authoritarian. It's a form of the Benito Mussolini syndrome.
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
How to overhaul the Gas Tax
Michael Webber's editorial doesn't consider waste generated by the complexity of a tax. The gasoline tax is efficient in it's collection. In other words, not much bureaucratic effort is required to collect it. A tax that is complicated to figure out and requires an agency to managed it can double the cost and and halved the benefit sought by it's implementation.
Saturday, December 21, 2013
Friday, December 20, 2013
John Boehner's Betrayal
That
title has to be the New York Time's contribution to Jenny Beth Martin's,
cofounder of Tea Party Patriots, editorial, but it is accurate. I
love to see the G.O.P. so divided. Bonehead on one side decrying
divisive self aggrandizing and interested groups that keep the
Republican tent impossibly small while Jenny complain's of mainstream
politicians lack of purity of essence. You go girl, keep on making
the Stupid Old Party even stupider! Make sure those authoritarian
single interest groups get all the money they can so as to offend the
maximum number of voters on any Republican ticket.
Sunday, December 15, 2013
Dear President of China
Having just read Thomas Friedman's letter to the President of China, I can't help thinking of Doris Kearns Goodwin's latest, The Bully Pulpit and The Golden Age of Journalism, where the story of McLures magazine and their muckraking team of reporters was told. I read other books on Teddy Roosevelt, but never one that so clearly delineated the outside force that well documented and reasoned journalism can provide to a country ossifying into its camps of privileged and not so privileged. It appears that we as a country have a way of regenerating. China has had a huge growth spurt to the front ranks by picking the low hanging fruit of commerce. It is now in a new leg where intelligent allocation of resources is required. It requires a free press, certainly one that documents and reasons well enough to expose crony capitalism. By shutting out this outside force, China's economic bloom will be short lived.
Thursday, December 5, 2013
An Imperfect Union
Ari
Shavit makes clear in My Promised Land
that Israel was born with a flaw that it chose to ignore much as our
forefathers did while forming our union. The contradiction of Israel
is that a people that suffered discrimination, pogroms and the
ultimately the holocaust finds itself doing the very same to another,
those who inhabited Palestine. It's a contradiction that poisons
they very soul of those who can't help but see Gestapo tactics
keeping down persons considered inconvenient. If only they would go
away and not remind Israelis of their crime against humanity. But no
they won't so that a country imperfectly formed of democratic ideals
has to fight with it's demons of Hitler Germany. This conflict with
principals and actions is not sustainable, just as slavery was not in
the United States. But does Israel require a civil war too horrible
to think of to resolve this existential flaw?
From
Shavit’s book it appears the original Zionist desired a land where
Jews were welcome, a homeland for a people who had none. The
original Kibbutzes were messianic yet surprising secular in their
determination to make a land hospitable and ultimately prosperous.
Palestinian neighbors watched in awe at the transformation that these
foreigners wrought and a harmony between people developed through
commerce. This harmony was tested by those who let jealousy and fear
overtake them so that people were murdered and maimed unjustly. These
injustices then hardened both sides so that more injustices were
committed culminating in the United Nations declaring that Palestine
be separate. This decree gave the Jews the opportunity to practice
the Pogrom of driving Palestinians out of their homeland to create a Jewish State.
Shavit's
describes a summer as a reservist guarding a
Palestinian prisoner of war camp. A camp where fellow soldiers would
make midnight raids into the ghetto and gather up suspects given up
by acquaintances tortured by their comrades the day before. This
trauma inflicted on the conscience of good people brutalizes their sacrifice.
Who is the enemy? The enemy is us! Yet as sensitive as Shavit is
to this debilitating truth he seems as unable as his brethren to see
the way out.
An
eye for eye is the rough justice of biblical times which is an
unfortunate heritage of the middle east. Possibly the Gospel lesson
of turning the other cheek would be more helpful. For a people
fleeing one horror to create another is a mortal sin because they
understand the sin best. The solution is Jesus like as taken from the Lord's (Christian) prayer, “Forgive us
our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Israel
requires a Mandela to convert it to a secular multicultural state. A
leader who would compensate every encroaching settlement in Gaza with
a re-settlement of Palestinians in the their ancestral villages. The
ruins of Hulda, a Palestinian village mentioned in Shavit's book,
would be a good start. Along with property a nascent commerce would
begin a process of justice based on harmony and not racism but
transforming attitudes on both side formed by years of injustice will
take time and forgiveness. We in the United States know it better
than any other country as we still try to resolve the racism that
slavery engendered.
Israel's
current two state solution does not alter the antipathy of both sides
and the onward march toward Armageddon. Only the formation of
successful and prosperous Palestinian re-settlements heals the soul
sufficiently for Israel to ask for forgiveness. And it's only with
the respect to ask for forgiveness that can throttle back the
antipathy of both sides to a point where enemies become friendly, if
not friends. A Middle Eastern truism is the friend of my friend is my
friend, and the enemy of my friend is my enemy. It's the truism
required to diffuse the bomb that is Palestine.
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