New Israel Fund

I recently received a very nice fundraising letter from the New Israel Fund, which prompted me to look at the NIF website. I was a donor to NIF in 1979 and several subsequent years, but have become what is referred to in the recent news articles on the site as a “disaffected” Jew. As much as I like NIF’s programs and believe that they help some very needy people, I am not persuaded that sending medications to the Titanic, as it were, is a good use of my very limited funds. I suppose my point is to say why I am so disaffected, although you have no doubt heard it all before, and better said to boot.

I am not disaffected out of any sentiments favoring the Palestinians or their Arab enablers. On any comparative scale they are far worse. But the scale is not comparative. Should the day arrive when Israel is judged the same as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, or Syria, it will be a day of shame for the Israeli and Jewish people.

But it is Israel whose survival is being threatened, and the Jewish people who have much to lose by the viciousness and stupidity of Israel's leaders. I truly believe that the policies Israel’s dominant politicians have been pursuing will lead to its complete destruction within a few years or decades. Their approach, imposing gratuitous humiliation and cruelty on the non-Jews subject to their power, is a tragic failure of leadership, and the American Jewish establishment cheers them on as though we Jews had always been the dominant and privileged people of the world, learning nothing about the horrors of cruelty and unkindness, and having gained no empathy for the oppressed. Even apart from their personal criminality, Israel’s leaders since Likkud first came to power have provided an obscene and depressing spectacle (with the exceptions of Rabin and Barak). Jimmy Carter and Meersheimer and Walt are right in the essentials. Israel’s leaders seem to foolishly believe not only that might makes right, but that they will always have the might. In addition, they have used the basest kind of demagoguery to advance fundamentalist agendas, cynicism, and ignorance at home, with a corresponding malign influence on the nature of Israeli society.



In sum, NIF's struggle against these forces is a noble and honorable one, but unfortunately history is replete with societies that have been destroyed or immiserated for centuries by leaders like Israel’s.

Clintonism

Re Matt Bai's NY Times Magazine article about Clintonism: What Bai calls Clintonism is nothing more than smart liberalism, constrained by the art of the possible. Traditional liberalism came to embrace a lot of dumb, bad policies, the faults of which experience and a better understanding of psychology, sociology, and economics have clarified. Clinton rejected the most obvious of those bad policies. He could not implement major replacement programs, however, because of the political climate he faced, a climate partly engendered by the old-line lefties whose advocacy for those stupid policies helped poison it.

Romney vs Hilary

I agree with the posters who believe Romney will be the GOP nominee. I think it was the Washington Monthly that reported, about a year ago, that Jeb Bush had put his staff and donors at Romney's disposal, and that meant to me that R would likely prevail if McCain faltered, as he has done. If the Dems reject Hilary, I predict that Romney will have an excellent chance of winning the Presidency (or getting so close that the Supremes can steal it for him). That's because he's physically attractive, apparently very competent, and despite current pandering to the crazies who vote in GOP primaries, he's not scarily fanatical. He is by far the most dangerous of the Republican candidates, apart from McCain. I like both Obama and Edwards as well as Hilary, but she's the only Dem candidate who can survive the scurrilous Republican campaign tactics that will be coming.

On the other hand, I doubt that anyone who by winning this election has to deal with Iraq and global warming will manage to last more than one term.

14th Amendment and segregation

The school discrimination cases generated five different opinions, but the ones I wish to discuss are Chief Justice Roberts's, with 3 concurring conservative justices, Justice Breyer's, with 3 concurring liberal justices, and Justice Kennedy's, which therefore decides the case.
The case is about efforts by two different school districts, one in St. Louis and one in Seattle, to overcome residential and income segregation by prohibiting certain white students from attending their preferred school. In other words, it's about when the government may engage in racial discrimination. Roberts says this can be done (1) to correct segregation that can be traced to governmental action, and (2) to implement, in the narrowest possible way, a valid and urgent governmental interest in the goal of the discrimination. Breyer says that governmental discrimination can be done to enhance democracy and social cohesion, and that this reasoning has led to many Supreme Court decisions oking discrimination to combat segregation, whether of government action origin or not.
Kennedy agrees with Roberts’ interpretation of the 14th Amendment, but claims that the government could validly discriminate if it uses ways other than identifying and injuring individuals, which is what it was doing in these cases.
It seems to me that most of the objection to this decision is based on the outcome, and some of it is based on the less than completely candid way in which the majority explained its preference for the narrow over the broad interpretation of acceptable discrimination. But from an outcome point of view, Fish’s argument also has a lot of merit: namely, that the majority’s narrow definition of acceptable discrimination is likely to protect liberal interests in the future, whereas Breyer’s broad definition could easily be used to support unfair State action.
Every Supreme Court case results in two decisions. One decision is about the outcome, as above. The other is about the law, and what matters in the legal decision is both the legal principle that is enunciated, and how the Court reasons its way to that principle. In Bush v. Gore, the legal principle was reached by a lunge for the desired outcome, not through any reasoning supported by jurisprudence. It was a corrupt decision reached by morally corrupt judges, and the five who voted for it will be forever infamous. But the decision in the school cases is far from that. The reasoning by Roberts is scrupulous and plausible, whether one quibbles with certain phrases or not. To me, it indicates that at least Roberts and Alito are prepared to play fair with the Constitution, a document which can be interpreted in many different ways.

Democrat Economic Policy

I don't believe it's necessary for Dems to have economic policies, except as illustrations of our principles and standards. I believe ALL Democrats share such principles and standards. We are wholeheartedly in favor of wealth and its fair distribution, as well as the prevention and punishment of economic crime. We don't have to specify how we would implement these goals, except for purposes of illustration. What distinguishes us from the Republicans is the direction we face: forward, not backwards; toward all the people, not just the privileged.

What is Art?

Dear Fred,
I would like to try out on you a definition of art, sparked by the discussions we have had and what you said last night. I think there are four fundamental elements that must be included in a definition of art: as you keep insisting, it is a mode of communication; more particularly, I think, it is an aesthetic communication; it is an extremely well done (artful) aesthetic communication; and it is recognized as such. I would also say that the label “art” is an accolade. In short, art is a term of respect that we give to the aesthetic communications we consider particularly well done.
Respectfully,
Keith

Impeach them!?

There is quite a lot of discusion among our friends here about impeachment. I would love to impeach Bush and Cheney, and the talk of it is interesting. But there are two big problems. First, impeachment aims at the wrong target. It changes the subject from the terribleness of Republicans and their policies to specific personal crimes by two soon-to-be former politicans. Impeachment would not be for misleading us into a disastrous war, winning elections through lies and slander, shredding the Constitution, subverting the rule of law and the judiciary, enriching cronies and other rich people at everyone
else's expense, kicking the poor and the ill when they're down, squandering our resources, leaving New Orleans for dead, ignoring global warming, turning the environment over to corporate goons, destroying federal efforts to protect health and safety, or even authorizing Abu Ghraib. It would be for some specific, provable, and probably relatively minor set of offenses. The Mitch McConnells, Rudy Giulianis, Mitt Romneys, and Newt Gingriches of this world would emerge completely unscathed, although they have been the ones who made Bush-Cheney possible.

The second big problem is that there may well be no impeachable offense. Not every wrong is a crime, and the greatest wrongs are probably neither criminal nor provable. I read through the entire transcript of the Moyers interview looking for an impeachable offense, and the closest to one was "What you need to look for is a pattern of behavior that says that the presidency is superior not merely to Congress but to the laws of the land, to the rules of law. And that is why we ought to be discussing impeachment. Not because of George Bush and Dick Cheney but because we are establishing a presidency that does not respect the rule of law." Impeachment is for crimes, not contemptuous behavior or the assertion of objectionable viewpoints. For example: If Cheney claims that he doesn't have to show certain documents to Congress, that is not an offense. If a court rules that he must, and he continues to refuse, then he can be held in contempt of court, and that would be an offense. Again: If Bush claims the right to waive the Geneva Convention, that is not a legal offense. If a court rules that he must comply, and he continues to waive the Geneva Convention, that is impeachable. N'est-ce pas?

Torture & Rule of Law

It's too easy for liberals to dismiss torture as ineffective as well as despicable. There are strong arguments for believing that torture can force people to reveal knowledge they might not otherwise disclose. Let us suppose, then, for the sake of argument, that torture can be an effective tool in dealing with terrorists. Given that premise, what is the morality of using torture?

In my view, torture can only be justified when (1) there is an immediate danger, (2) there is reason to doubt the effectiveness of nonviolent interrogation methods, (3) the decision to proceed is made through a procedure that provides for the unanimous agreement of a dispassionate fact-finder and those who would inflict the torture, and (4) the torture would be carefully monitored to prevent sadism or excess. In such a procedure, the people making the decisions would suffer no liability for deciding against torture, but could suffer liability for deciding in favor of it or proceeding with it if they knowingly used false information or personal malice.

In both the first and second conditions, there must be independent evidence. That is, the premises must be established by some evidentiary indication, not simply the captor's fear or speculation. Torture, then, should be available in extreme situations as a last resort.

Getting Analysis of NJ Budget Dispute

Today, hoping to find some discussion of the rights and wrongs of the NJ budget dispute between Gov. Corzine and the State Assembly's Democrats, I searched Google for articles, even blogs, on the subject. All I could find were news reports about the existence of the dispute, and the effect of the shutdown. Not a word anywhere that I could find about the merits of the positions. This is the pathetic state of the press in America today.

Jobs

Rob Shapiro of NDN's Globalization Project recently commented that low job creation in the US is the result of higher energy and healthcare costs in the US than elsewhere. I question both premises. First, US energy costs are, if anything, lower than in our competitors because we have low energy taxes, subsidize our energy business, possess abundant fuel resources, and have an infrastructure that allows industry to switch between fuels fairly easily. In addition, since we have been worse than other countries in conserving energy since the Reagan administration, we have more ability to reduce our consumption if necessary.

As to healthcare costs, we know that we pay about twice as much as other industrialized countries, and in return receive a lower quality of care. But that doesn't mean industry pays more than elsewhere. Companies receive tax deductions for their expenditures, while other countries charge higher taxes. In addition, US companies have fewer retirees compared to Japan and Europe. I don't know the costs after factoring in these considerations, and perhaps they are still higher, but until someone does the study, the claim that we suffer from higher healthcare expenses is just conventional wisdom.

Neoconservative idealism

Francis Fukuyama's wonderful article in a recent NY Times Magazine, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/magazine/neo.html, gives a succint overview of the intellectual roots of neoconservatism and discusses their idealistic thinking in advocating the Iraq War.

I have some difficulty with terming the neoconservative agenda "idealistic, as Fukuyama does. Idealism is generally thought to be benign, a posture of directly seeking the good because that's the right thing to do. The friendly critique of idealism is that it ignores reality, and in doing so leads to bad results; the unfriendly is that conceptualizing and pursuing the good is not worth doing, either because there is no such thing as the good, or the pursuit inevitable ends badly.

The so-called idealism of the neocons, though, is not exactly a pursuit of the good for its own sake. Whether to preserve access to oil, or safeguard Israel, or foreclose a base for terrorism, or revenge Bush's father, there were more dominant motivations for invading Iraq than an abstract idea that getting rid of the evil dictator would be a good thing to do. It isn't very pure, that is, and it serves more as a fig leaf for baser motives than as anything important in itself. Since the neocons are themselves far from naive people, I assume they know this as well as anyone else. In other words, the use of the term "idealism" to characterize their argument is an unwarranted rhetorical cleansing of what they were actually doing.

That said, I was delighted with Fukuyama's intellectual history, and especially with this gem:
""The End of History," in other words, presented a kind of Marxist argument for the existence of a long-term process of social evolution, but one that terminates in liberal democracy rather than communism. In the formulation of the scholar Ken Jowitt, the neoconservative position articulated by people like Kristol and Kagan was, by contrast, Leninist; they believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practiced by the United States. Neoconservatism, as both a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something I can no longer support."

Howell's Washington Post piece

I've been following the dust-up over Deborah Howell's biased reporting in the Washington Post. She wrote that Abramoff contributed to both Dem and Repub representatives, as if the wrongs were equal, and when the Post blog got tons of angry comments, she give an insipid and misleading "correction." Recently there was a discussion by bloggers and the Post's editor, Jim Brady, about the Post's shutting down its blog to get rid of obscenity. In all this discussion, the whole point of the brouhaha has been lost: namely, Howell's biased reporting! Amazing to me. If her reporting had been on the Fox network or in some other overtly partisan place, nobody would have objected. But when, like Judith Miller's, it comes as a factual piece in a liberal medium, her falsifications and misleading statements have a lot of malign impact.

Moral Majority

The WSJ this morning has an article about how China, the Islamic world, and other parts of the world are developing new internets. The reason these are gaining some traction, rather than being technological toys, is the world's distrust of American control over the internet through ICANN, a distrust based on its hatred of Bush. In other words, out of a world population of, say, 5 billion people, 150 million support Bush, and the other 97% hate and fear him.

I do not think the hatred of the world, the nearly universal view of the Bush people as villains, derives from their policies per se. Of much greater importance, and danger to human well-being, is their systematic distortion of humanity's core moral values. That they often do so in the name of Christianity is simply hypocritical icing on their stinking cake. The distortions I am talking about consist of a publicly asserted and defended moral relativism that turns values like truth, charity, and justice into propaganda tools, to be used or betrayed as necessary to advance the user's personal agenda. They speak contemptuously of the "reality-based community," proclaim actions compassionate that injure the people they affect, and assert the right of the President to ignore the laws and Constitution when it suits him. These statements openly trivialize and debase the values they purport to use.

Even Richard Nixon, the last truly villainous Republican President, did not go so far. He tried to conceal or deny doing the wrong and immoral things that were eventually proven, but he never tried to deny that those things were in fact wrong or immoral. In other words, when he abused the powers of the Presidency his defense was that he didn't do it. Bush, by contrast, admits that he did it, and claims that it was right and proper for him to do so.

It cannot be truthfully said that terrible people like Bush et al reliably meet their comeuppance. More often than not they prosper from their behavior (except to the extent that they must live with themselves and their ilk), and when such people run political units, they create hell on earth for everyone caught in their web. Often these hells then last for decades or centuries. The good news is that we are still a democracy, with the power to stop and reverse the horrible policies these people are imposing on us and the world at large. The bad news is that every new day makes their impact more indelible.

Health care reform

Yesterday's WSJ contained discussions of health care reform that I found simultaneously interesting and obscure. It was interesting because of intelligent reader comments and some good comments about the limited value of making consumers pay for their medical care. But it was obscure because the writers were throwing around supposed facts that were not placed in context, and were used as debating props, rather than aids to reasoned discussion. In general, advocates don't seem to work from a common database, and many of the supposed "facts" people cite are either falsehoods or distortions. For example, wingnuts claim that malpractice law is a major culprit, but all available data suggests that malpractice cases are rare, hard to win, and barely touch the hundreds of thousands of actual malpractice.

Nobody seems to mention, any more, the carefully crafted approach worked out by Hilary Clinton and Ira Messenger in 1993, yet as far as I can tell it was the closest thing to a comprehensive and intelligent solution that we have ever had. It was defeated by partisan politics, special interest activity, and clumsy advocacy, not on its merits. I find it hard to take health care reform proposals seriously if they don't build on that proposal, or explain convincingly why not.

Alito

I am sorry to see so many ill-informed comments on Judge Alito's decisions. The fundamental distinction between good judges and bad ones is whether they proceed by choosing the result they desire first and then chopping logic to get there (Scalia, Rehnquist), or by following careful legal reasoning to either the result required or the discretion that the law allows (Harlan, Frankfurter). In my reading of Alito's controversial decisions, he has consistently followed the latter approach. Even where the discretion he exercises is not what I might have chosen, I respect how he got there. Whether Alito now holds the personal views he held in the Reagan years is another matter. But even if he does, I do not see him as an idealogue. Many Supreme Court justices have changed over the years, and given Alito's temperament it seems likely that he comes from the "reality-based" community, and will grow more liberal over time as he considers the consequences of his decisions.

Who I am

I'm a lawyer by training and inclination, have been a business entrepreneur most of my life, and consider myself to be fairly conservative on economic policy, while favoring social policies based on fairness, kindness, and community. I have lived in three cities: Boston, San Francisco, and for some time now, NY. I divide my time between managing investments, arbitrating and mediating legal disputes, working for improved legal systems, serving as chairman of the board of a cosmetic company, and writing a history of the origins of business. I have published articles about antitrust problems in the newspaper industry, Harvard's investment policies, the cost-benefit evaluation of water development in California, and energy policies from an environmental point of view.

Casino corruption is a sideshow

Casino corruption is a sideshow. The main event is far more serious: a full-scale attack on the structures and values that have made America the closest nation to paradise on earth for the last two centuries. This is corruption of a grand order, and responses that merely criticize this or that practice or policy are inadequate. Kerry laid out very well and very clearly what was wrong with Bush's policies in a host of areas, and most Americans consistently agreed with him, but he still lost because he failed to nail the rot from which those policies spring. The basic problem is that the Bush people are fundamentally un-American and immoral. It is not just that they engage in torture, murder, lying, deception, and unlawful conduct. Even worse, I think, is that they openly argue in favor of such behaviors, which were formerly regarded as so shameful that even inveterate crooks like Nixon felt it necessary to deny engaging in such conduct.