I put an album of photos from Julia's and Ian's wedding on facebook. Aviva and I took the photos at the rehearsal, rehearsal dinner, a dinner at Buca, the wedding (Aviva took all of these) and the reception (Aviva took most of these).
$700 Billion Bailout: Let’s Do Some Simple Arithmetic
Category: News and Politics
As economists and politicians like to say, let's do the numbers. The Bush-Cheney administration proposes a $700 billion bailout plan for Wall Street. For a moment, let's forget the invitation to larceny provided by the lack of oversight in the plan. What do we expect? Haliburton likely will get the contract, given past precedent for highly funded government spending with little oversight in the Bush-Cheney administration.
Instead, let's look more carefully at some basic arithmetic. According to the CIA World Fact Book, the estimated population of the US for July 2008 is 303,824,640 people. That's everybody: adults and children. The population over the age of 15 is 272,567,532. So, here's the arithmetic: $700 billion bail out divided by 272,567,532 people 15 and over equals $2,568.17 (and a tiny fraction).
Pause a moment to let that sink in. The Bush-Cheney-Haliburton administration proposes to hand over to Wall Street over twenty-five hundred dollars for each person over the age of 14 in the U.S. That's over $10,000 for a family of four where the children are teen-agers. Do you know many families of four, with two teens, who can cough up $10,000 to help bail out Wall Street?
At the risk of sounding like a Republican, that's our money, not the government's. If the government borrows the money, we pay for the interest, too. Of course, they claim that there is a "chance" of gaining some return on this bailout money. We've seen how reliable market investment "returns" can be. The government wants to gamble with your money.
I propose another plan: Give each person aged 15 or over an IRA account of $2,500. Let them invest the money as with any 401(k) or IRA into stocks, bonds, treasury notes, certificates of deposit, or even a savings account. It will cost about the same.
Investment in short-term trading funds should be limited to less than ten percent of the $2,500, with long-term investment funds limited as well to twenty percent, to limit incentives to show short-term profits by trading gambles. These new IRAs should limit changes in position to once every three years for mutual funds and once every year for direct ownership, thus further limiting gambling in the form of short-term profiteering, what is called "trading."
U.S. citizens will increase direct ownership in companies, and given the fact that the IRA would be a long-term investment for most of the population, these new owners will have an interest in limiting short-term greed in favor of long-term returns. That is, investment will replace trading. Investment requires a long view, sustainability, and practices that stabilize markets, as opposed to the short view of trading for immediate profits.
As a result of long-term investment, oversight will be dispersed—over 270 million individuals will decide which investments deserve the funds. The influx of investment will prop up Wall Street; the increase in direct ownership with a long-term interest will provide better oversight. Citizen-owners might even be encouraged to set up oversight groups in order to pool proxy votes and gain larger influence in the boardrooms.
The additional retirement funds might help with the Social Security problem. Remember how the Republicans used to complain that Social Security debt would ruin the country?
If we are going to be asked, as taxpayers, to pay more than twenty-five hundred dollars per individual over the age of 14, then at least give us the money to let us choose how to spend it, and let us profit directly from the returns. Isn't this the logic behind the school voucher arguments? Behind the Bush-Cheney tax reductions for the rich? Behind the incumbent voter bribe, er, economic stimulus package of last summer? Trust the consumers. Let the market play out. Or does that only work until you need to repay your rich, greedy buddies for all of the favors they've given you and your family, Mr. Bush?
Guilt by (non-)Association: the case of Farrakhan and Obama
Category: News and Politics
I recently ate a shabat meal with family and visiting US friends of family. One of the family members had just heard a prominent public figure here in Israel speaking to a group of Americans touring with a radio talk-show host. This man spoke cautiously about the US elections, stating that he isn't a citizen. However, he raised questions about Barack Obama because Louis Farrakhan is one of his advisers. Despite my comment that I didn't think that was accurate, the discussion centered on Farrakhan's role in Obama's politics. One of the US visitors at the dinner said that Farrakhan didn't advise Obama, but did advise Obama's minister, Jeremiah Wright.
So, today I did some fact checking on the question of Farrakhan's relationship to Obama.
Farrakhan is not an adviser of Obama's, nor of his minister, according to anything I found. What I found is that a magazine associated with Obama's church and run by his daughters gave Farrakhan an award in 2007. This appeared first, apparently, in a Washington Post column that reported on Obama's church's magazine, edited by Wright's daughters, giving Farrakhan the award and complaining that Obama didn't condemn the award. A lot of anti-Obama blogs took off with the award, claiming more than there seems to be to claim about it... Obama condemned Farrakhan's racist and anti-semitic views (apparently not for the first time, given what I found in my searching), as reported in the Chicago Sun-Times. The Chicago Sun Times reported on the controversy over the column and Obama's condemnation of the award. Obama's comments were welcomed by the Anti-Defamation League, according to this article.
The next big flaming erupted after Farrakhan endorsed Obama to the Nation of Islam meeting in February 2008. Obama's campaign immediately repeated his repudiation of Farrakhan's views, despite the unsolicited endorsement. Farrakhan endorsed Obama, mostly as a black man who could heal US racial divisions (see article in The Chicago Tribune). The quotes from Farrakhan seem to indicate that he endorsed Obama as a black man who seemed to be crossing racial boundaries. His words: "This young man is the hope of the entire world that America will change and be made better." The conservative blogs flamed with a shortened quote, saying Farrakhan said Obama "is the hope of the entire world..." And the "stop-Obama" crowd argued, from thin air apparently, that Obama sought Farrakhan's endorsement. I'm not willing to provide weight through links to the obvious propaganda of these blogs, but you can search on the two names together (Louis Farrakhan Barack Obama) to find them if you wish.
A year earlier, on the ABC TV show Nightline, Farrakhan said he liked Obama, but at that time was cautious about the taint of politics / power / money on anyone who becomes President, and seemed more or less reserved about Obama back in 2007. Despite this, even Nightline ran a headline on their website about Farrakhan praising Obama's politics (he did praise his ability to attract white, black and Hispanic voters and said he liked Obama, a "beautiful young man"). But Farrakhan says "we'll see" almost as often as he says anything else (see The ABC Nightline unedited transcript).
Obama repeatedly seems to say that Farrakhan's racist and anti-semitic views are unacceptable. There is a photo, from Jet Magazine (Chicago) from 2004 with Michelle Obama and Louis Farrakhan that led to a series of flames, but the photo I saw on one of the yellow journalism pages was a group photo. Michelle Obama and Louis Farrakhan weren't really near each other, standing in separate rows, and it looks as though the photo was at some public event.
My conclusion is that even the foaming-at-the-mouth blogs don't seem to claim Farrakhan advises Obama. However, a Jerusalem Post opinion piece titled "It's Barack Obama's advisers who concern me" mentions Farrakhan, although still once removed from Obama, citing the fact that Obama's minister admires Farrakhan (the award) and Obama cites this minister as influential in his life. The writer, Marc Zell, is co-chairman of Republican Americans Abroad Israel, so he might have an agenda. Yet, even Zell acknowledges that Obama calls Farrakhan anti-semitic, and Zell doesn't go so far as to say Farrakhan is an adviser of Obama's (just the title suggests the possibility). The column implied that somehow Farrakhan's views must be Obama's as well, given that Obama's minister is one of Obama's influences.
Guilt by association lives. Zell is responding to Larry Defner, another Jerusalem Post online columnist and McCain supporter, who wrote a column that criticized an earlier article of Zell's ("Obama and the Jews") for, among other things, guilt by association. In the end, the tactic appears to be working for the Republicans, judging by the dinner conversation on Shabat: Farrakhan's name is in some quarters associated with Obama, thus inciting fears of anti-semitism and anti-white racism somehow dormant within Obama. If others ask Obama to repudiate (again and again) Farrakhan's positions, I ask McCain to repudiate the smear tactics, if not of all the flamers, at least of the co-chairman of the Israeli branch of the Republicans.
Essay on the role of water in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Water, Conflict and Israel While attention and hopes focus on Israeli-Palestinian ceasefires, prisoner exchanges, and negotiations, the water crisis in the Jordan River valley may prevent peace in the Middle East. Regional water issues have been ignored for too long and must be addressed immediately.
Aviva and I organized a hike for the Jerusalem Mosaic Hiking Club from the Nes Harim area outside Jerusalem to Beit Itav (a site going back to the Crusaders), through Nahal HaMe'arah to the Twins Cave, also known as the bat cave (several species of bats make their home in this large cave). Here are a few of my more successful photos from the hike.
If you are having trouble seeing the slide show, you may need a plug-in that plays Shockwave Flash applications.
Last year I wrote about the sirens stopping the busy streets of Tel Aviv for a minute or two of silent remembrance of the Holocaust (revised into prose-poetry, prose-try?, and available here).
Today at 10 am the sirens went off again. I was in my flat, but walked out to the street to stand with the others--it's a quiet street, only a few were out here. But we stood and remembered.
Across the street there was an older man, dressed in white--shirt, pants, kipah (skull cap). His hair and beard were white. He stood with his hands clasped together in front of him, hanging down and relaxed. His face had a contemplative look. As the sirens' mourning wail subsided, he turned and walked on his way.
I returned to my flat and my email and my editing and my writing. Life goes on.
A friend wrote to me that she, a single mother of two, wonders about the "whys" of the suffering, the Shoah and the genocides that continued as the memorial sirens called for a halt, that continue as I write this.
And for me, I don't know the whys. But I figure the best I can do is not forget--both not forget the past, and not forget the human suffering of today. It is not much, but to remember perhaps allows us a chance to become members again (re-member) of the human race, together, with love and peace.
We can hope, at least.
But I fear we miss the chance to re-member ourselves in the present by re-collecting the past. We are too busy with re-criminations and self-justification for our own acts of barbarism, for our own privileges arising from the oppression and suffering of others.
NOTHING REMEMBERS where our times we these rocks piled into buildings that fell down a thousand years ago dis(re)membered from war or earthquake raised and razed again into where nothing recalls again the warm day anemones bloom hollyhocks poppies forget no one and another rain another dry day pass hot and cold while an orvani drops blue feathers in flight a hawk sits calmly on a fencepost and flocks of egrets traipse toward the sea no cattle no grains left all harvested in this place we would call holy land nothing left to it but conflict with the passing of her life that tried so hard to hang onto one moment many moments and missed so many more empty echoes a difficult way to say goodbye to a mother watching her evaporate like rain in the desert her mind dust that dries lips her infamous voicing faded as warmth from a midnight rock meaning what the layers of history these rocks un-piled reveal sepia photos a couple of tin-types dust school reports cards newspaper holes the shells of bugs raised and razed again and again into our times where nothing remembers
-- 
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