I was listening to Pat Caddell today and though we might differ in our political thinking he is one bright intellectually honest guy.
He made the point that if the Republican Party and Tea Partiers are serious about their mission of governing they must get equally serious about training and selecting worthy and capable candidates equipped to compete in the political arena.
I agree and I do not disparage the current crop of candidates some of whom may not measure up because The Tea Party is grassroots and new. They have much to learn but can if they so choose.
Caddell also made another observation with which I agree. The Republicans, by and large, have spent a ton of money but basically failed to deliver a clear, focused and repeated message about the omissions and commissions of the Obama crowd.
The best way to defeat someone is by using their own words against them. A clear example would be running repeated ads showing Pelosi telling everyone we have to pass Obamascare in order to find out later what it means for us simpletons. And more recently showing Obama talking about shovel ready projects and then in an interview saying shovel ready never existed.
I wrote a memo recently entitled Obama Shoveling Excrement Not Cement.
When a person lies the best attack is to hang them with their own rope. Obama has provided enough to swing from the top of Mt. Everest.
I remain highly skeptical of the ability of the incoming crowd to co-ordinate their message and programs to undo Obama's damage.
The titular head of the Republican Party is a dunce. Newt Gingrich and/or Karl Rove would have been superior choices but Party Insiders must have thought copying the Democrats, racially speaking ,would gain them points among the politically correct crowd or the like.
Will the incoming crowd have the guts to unfund? Will they conduct scrupulous oversight as Obama continues to enact administratively outside the Constitution? Will they actually cut deeply into the cost of government? Inadequate revenue is not our problem nor has it ever been. It is unbridled, wasteful spending and outright theft by corrupt politicians who see themselves above both the law and their constituents - I offer you Barney, Rangle and Waters for starters but the list reaches far beyond these three and transcends aisles.
Harry Reid said he made his fortune through wise investments. Perhaps he did but I suspect they were sweetheart deals akin to Hillary's cattle trading bonanza.
Politicians have every reason to take advantage because they get away with doing it, so why not keep on doing it? After all, repetition should only improve their success rate and skills at skulduggery.
Nov. 2 should prove a watershed election of seismic proportion but unless those who comprise the new Congress are serious and prepared, this country will drown in Obama debt and that incurred by the many irresponsible Congresses before his ascension to the throne.
Stay tuned, stay vocal and informed. Politicians do not like hot breath on their necks. We are a large nation, our attention is often fractured by a manipulative media intent on protecting its own.
Franklin was alleged to have said - 'We have a Republic if we can keep it.' Ben would stand in awe at what we have accomplished but would also turn over in his grave at how we have squandered. (See 1, 1a, 1b and the excellent 1c below.)
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Would taking an axe to our U.N. contributions be effective? (See 2 below.)
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In Germany, is multi-culturalism dead? Back to the "fuehrer?" (See 3 below.)
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In order for Israel to be welcomed back into the Islamic community, Israel must grovel to those who are intent on world terror.
Maybe it is time for Turkey, Iran, Syria and Germany to form a new axis. (See 4 below.)
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Glick to Netanyahu - Do what is best for Israel not the nation's Left!
She accurately points out: "After all, recognizing Israel as a Jewish state means recognizing that the Jewish people are a nation, and as a nation, the Jews have a right to self-determination in our national homeland. So recognizing Israel as a Jewish state is recognizing Israel’s right to exist. (See 5 below.)
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Is Syria a cancer? It certianly is a nation of self imposed low GDI and corrupted economics. (See 6 below.)
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Did Joe Klein have a meltdown because acts of 'his ilk' are allowing the unwashed to swamp the elite? (See 7 below.)
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Britain's new ambassador to Israel also happens to be Jewish. (See 8 below.)
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Being a 'political junkie' it is fascinating watching the Liberal's world disintegrate and how they are handling it. Not too well I'd say.
When Republicans lost power I was not happy but since they largely brought it on themselves, by forgetting their principles, I did not feel any extended remorse.
What is even more fascinating is watching the reaction of the bimbos on Barbara Walters TV show, reading the Joe Kleins' and listening to the Barneys' and Harrys' let's not forget about their 'audacious' leader who is the most intriguing of all.
He is campaigning all over the place lashing out at everyone and digging his own hole deeper and deeper. Americans have short memories, we no longer are taught history so who knows what this will all mean years hence and where it will eventually lead.
The financial plight of our nation borders on disastrous. The Fed is unhappy that inflation is not above where it is, unions are increasing their numbers in the public sector imposing exorbitant costs on our already deeply in debt state governments. John Stassel presented an excellent program last evening on Fox portraying all of this. Stossel is a Libertarian and does not agree with a lot of the tragedy our misguided royal highness has perpetrated upon his hapless subjects but does not understand why their discontent.
It is difficult to remain dispassionate about all of this but at least I have refrained from calling Liberals, Nazis as my Liberal lawyer volunteered recently regarding those nasty, ingrate Tea Partiers who are not happy campers.
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Dick
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1)Ordinary Americans Heed the Call to Take Back America!
By Lloyd Marcus
The Natural starring Robert Redford is my favorite movie. I relate to Roy Hobbs, the film's title character. Roy is a gifted baseball player who finds great success in his craft very late in life. Such is the case with my career as a singer/songwriter.
In his youth, Roy was full of enthusiasm, hopes, and dreams of breaking every Major League Baseball record. But while on the road to his dream, life threw Roy a devastating unexpected curve which crushed his dream. Discouraged and depressed, Roy surrendered his dream. Sixteen years later, Roy said, "I decided to give it one more try."
Watching the movie, I was struck by how Roy Hobbs' decision to muster up the courage to pursue his dream affected the lives and fulfilled the hopes and dreams of countless others.
Signed as a fluke, Hobbs, at the age when most players end their careers, found himself on a last-place, failing Major League Baseball team. Still extraordinarily talented, Roy led the team to win the league championship, saved the old coach from losing his financial share of the team, and inspired countless youths. God's purpose for our lives is bigger than we are.
I think about myself and the Tea Party Movement. In 1993, I was fifteen years into a successful career as a graphic design supervisor at an ABC affiliate TV station in Baltimore. While listening to Rush Limbaugh at my desk, volume down low, I heard Rush encourage middle-aged callers who were downsized to view their dismissal as an opportunity to pursue their dreams.
Inspired, and with my amazing wife's blessing, two weeks later, I quit my job to pursue full-time my lifelong dream of a career in music. It was hard, very hard. For ten years, I performed everywhere from bar mitzvahs to biker bars, most times for peanuts. We went through numerous agents, managers, and producers, including a few con men. Finally, I landed a record deal to record jazz for the European market.
However, I have always been passionate about political issues. Music industry experts advised, "Keep your politics extremely private. Going public will kill your music career." In 2009, unable to stop myself, I penned and recorded the "American Tea Party Anthem." The song has taken my name around the world and me across the U.S. four times. October 18 to November 1 will be my fourth Tea Party Express tour across America.
Like Roy Hobbs in the movie, I have come to realize that my personal journey and struggles were really not about me, but about fulfilling God's higher purpose. My wife Mary and I are amazed how my crazy decision to quit my great job back in 1993 has lead to God using me to touch the lives of millions in a positive way -- totally awesome, totally humbling.
Folks, I'm just one guy in our incredible, divinely inspired Tea Party Movement. In my travels attending hundreds of Tea Parties across America, I have heard numerous stories similar to mine: how God appeared to set up circumstances to lead people into the Tea Party Movement.
For example, in Buffalo, NY, a senior stuck at home after two knee operations decided to start a conservative newspaper, which is very successful. In Texas, I met a 21-year-old truck driver. Frustrated by the negative effect Obamanomics is having on his industry, this fine young man has decided to run for public office.
God is using ordinary people like you and me, not "ruling class" career politicians, to restore our great country.
Running for public office is extremely challenging. And that says nothing of the strong possibility of every stupid, wrong, and/or embarrassing thing you have ever done being made public. Wow, pretty scary.
Still, upon witnessing Obama's destruction of America, an extraordinary number of first-time candidates across America are finding the grace and courage to "go for it." These last thirty days are "crunch time" for our courageous Tea Party candidates. Brothers and sisters, please support them in whatever ways you feel led to.
Referring back to Roy Hobbs pursuing his dream in the movie and how it touched the lives of many, patriots heeding the call will save America. This amazing Tea Party Movement has no single leader. It is about We The People, individual patriots, following our passions and using our talents and gifts to restore our freedom, liberties, and culture. I am extremely blessed and honored to be named among you. Together, we truly are Taking Back America!
Please enjoy this trailer for the "Tea Are The World" documentary, musicians across America united to Take Back America!
1a) A Shovel-Unready President
By Jonah Goldberg
Back in early 2009, President-elect Barack Obama was asked on Meet the Press how quickly he could create jobs. Oh, very fast, he said. He'd already consulted with a gaggle of governors, and "all of them have projects that are shovel-ready." When Obama revealed the members of his energy team, he explained that they were part of his effort to get started on "shovel-ready projects all across the country." When he unveiled his education secretary, he assured everyone that he was going to get started "helping states and local governments with shovel-ready projects."
In interviews, job summits, and press conferences, it was shovel-ready this, shovel-ready that. Search the White House website for the term "shovel-ready" and you'll drown in press releases about all the shovels ready to shove shovel-ready projects into the 21st century, where no shovel is left behind.
Only now it turns out that the president was shoveling something all right when he was talking about shovel-ready jobs - a whole pile of steaming something.
In the current issue of The New York Times Magazine, Obama admits that there's "no such thing as shovel-ready" when it comes to public works.
It's not that Obama was lying when he said all that stuff. It's just that he didn't know what he was talking about. All it took was nearly a trillion dollars in stimulus money and 20-plus months of on-the-job training for him to discover that he was talking nonsense.
It seems to me that, if I were president, and I not only staked vast swaths of my credibility but gambled the prosperity of the country generally on this concept of "shovel-ready jobs," I might be a bit miffed with the staffers who swore that shovel-ready jobs were, like, you know, a real thing.
And yet, if you read Peter Baker's Obama profile, it's clear that Obama isn't mad about that. In fact, he still thinks he got all the policies right. Baker writes that Obama is "supremely sure that he is right," it's just that the president feels he didn't market himself well.
"Given how much stuff was coming at us," Obama explains, "we probably spent much more time trying to get the policy right than trying to get the politics right. There is probably a perverse pride in my administration - and I take responsibility for this; this was blowing from the top - that we were going to do the right thing, even if short-term it was unpopular. And I think anybody who's occupied this office has to remember that success is determined by an intersection in policy and politics and that you can't be neglecting of marketing and PR and public opinion."
This is an old progressive lament: Our product is perfect, we just didn't sell it convincingly to the rubes.
But wait a second. If they spent "much more time trying to get the policy right," how come nobody said, "Uh, Mr. President, these ‘shovel-ready jobs' you keep talking about? They're sort of like good flan - they don't exist."
Let's not dwell on such things. Besides, Obama has already said that his problems come from "neglecting marketing and PR and public opinion." Indeed, that, and only that, explains why people think he looks like "the same old tax-and-spend liberal Democrat."
The only problem with that: facts. Obama's health-care plan raises taxes on Americans (though Obama says this is not so, they're merely mandatory fees and premiums) and will cost trillions. He wants to raise taxes on "the rich" - defined so that a cop married to a nurse might well count as rich - and on small businesses.
Meanwhile, Washington is now spending 23 percent more than it did two years ago. As the Washington Post recently editorialized, Congress's "emergency" bailout to avoid "a teachers crisis" was a fraud to simply transfer billions to the teachers' unions in advance of the midterms.
And then, of course, there's the stimulus that paid for all of those "shovel-ready jobs" that Obama now admits never existed. Los Angeles County deployed $111 million in stimulus money to "save" 55 jobs at the cost of $2 million apiece. The White House has spent $192 million on road signs that brag about how the construction delays ahead were paid for by the stimulus. Meanwhile, unemployment is a full three percentage points higher during Obama's "recovery" than it was during the "worst recession since the Great Depression."
Maybe it's unfair for people to think Obama is just another tax-and-spend Democrat. After all, some tax-and-spend Democrats are actually competent at it.
1b)The Democratic vision of Big Brother
By George F. Will
With Barack Obama restoring solar panels to the White House roof -- the first were put there by Jimmy Carter -- will Carter's cardigan sweater be reprised? The panels -- environmentalism as a didactic gesture -- are evidence of a '70s revival.
"Energy we have to deal with today," said Obama during a debate with John McCain. "Health care is priority No. 2." Instead, Obama decided that having priorities -- doing this but not that -- is for people less Promethean than he. The cap-and-trade centerpiece of his agenda for turning down the planet's thermostat (as Carter turned down the White House's) has foundered.
But at least when Democrats got control of Congress in 2007 they acted to save the planet from the incandescent light bulb, banning it come 2014. For sheer annoyingness, that matches Congress's 1973 imposition of a 55 mph speed limit, which was abolished in 1995.
Nothing did more to energize conservatism in the 1970s than judges and legislators collaborating in the forced busing of (other people's) children to achieve racial balance in (other people's) schools. This policy expressed liberalism's principled refusal to be deterred by the public's misunderstanding of what is good for it. Obamacare is today's expression of liberalism's kamikaze devotion to unwanted help for Americans, the ingrates.
Another '70s project, in the wake of Watergate, was campaign finance reform -- government regulating the quantity, timing and content of speech about government. But political purity has been elusive, and today, as usual, there is, from the usual people, high anxiety about "too much" money being spent on politics. That is, what the improvers consider too much political speech, the dissemination of which is what most campaign contributions finance.
Total spending, by all parties, campaigns and issue-advocacy groups, concerning every office from county clerks to U.S. senators, may reach a record $4.2 billion in this two-year cycle. That is about what Americans spend in one year on yogurt but less than they spend on candy in two Halloween seasons. Procter & Gamble spent $8.6 billion on advertising in its most recent fiscal year.
Those who are determined to reduce the quantity of political speech to what they consider the proper amount are the sort of people who know exactly how much water should come through our shower heads (no more than 2.5 gallons per minute, as stipulated by a 1992 law). Is it, however, really worrisome that Americans spend on political advocacy -- on determining who should make and administer the laws -- much less than they spend on potato chips ($7.1 billion a year)?
Desperation drives politicians to talk about process rather than policy. Obama, who is understandably reluctant to talk about what people are concerned about, the economy, is instead talking about the political process. He is in a terrific lather of insinuation, suggesting that torrents of foreign money are pouring into U.S. campaigns.
He recently said: "Just this week, we learned that one of the largest groups paying for these ads regularly takes in money from foreign corporations. So groups that receive foreign money are spending huge sums to influence American elections." It takes a perverse craftsmanship to write something that slippery. Consider:
"Just this week, we learned. . . ." That is a fib. The fact that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- this is what he is talking about but for some reason is reluctant to say so -- receives membership dues from multinational corporations, some of them foreign-owned, is not something Obama suddenly "learned." It is about as secret as the location of the chamber's headquarters, a leisurely three-minute walk from the White House.
"Regularly takes in money from foreign corporations." Obama cites no evidence to refute the chamber's contention that it sequesters such funds -- less than one-twentieth of 1 percent of its budget -- from the money it devotes to political advocacy. The AFL-CIO, which spends heavily in support of Democratic candidates, also receives money from associated labor entities abroad, but Obama has not expressed angst about this.
"So groups that receive foreign money are spending huge sums to influence American elections." The "so" is a Nixonian touch. It dishonestly implies what Obama prudently flinches from charging -- that the "huge sums" are foreign money.
In the '70s, Richard Nixon begat the supposed corrective of the high-minded Carter. His failure begat Ronald Reagan. American politics often is a dialectic of disappointments. Nov. 2 may remind the apostle of change that (as a 2008 Republican bumper sticker warned) "Every Disaster is a Change."
1c)Why Liberals Don't Get the Tea Party Movement
Our universities haven't taught much political history for decades. No wonder so many progressives have disdain for the principles that animated the Federalist debates.
By PETER BERKOWITZ
Highly educated people say the darndest things, these days particularly about the tea party movement. Vast numbers of other highly educated people read and hear these dubious pronouncements, smile knowingly, and nod their heads in agreement. University educations and advanced degrees notwithstanding, they lack a basic understanding of the contours of American constitutional government.
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman got the ball rolling in April 2009, just ahead of the first major tea party rallies on April 15, by falsely asserting that "the tea parties don't represent a spontaneous outpouring of public sentiment. They're AstroTurf (fake grass-roots) events."
Having learned next to nothing in the intervening 16 months about one of the most spectacular grass-roots political movements in American history, fellow Times columnist Frank Rich denied in August of this year that the tea party movement is "spontaneous and leaderless," insisting instead that it is the instrument of billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch.
Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne criticized the tea party as unrepresentative in two ways. It "constitutes a sliver of opinion on the extreme end of politics receiving attention out of all proportion with its numbers," he asserted last month. This was a step back from his rash prediction five months before that since it "represents a relatively small minority of Americans on the right end of politics," the tea party movement "will not determine the outcome of the 2010 elections."
In February, Mr. Dionne argued that the tea party was also unrepresentative because it reflected a political principle that lost out at America's founding and deserves to be permanently retired: "Anti-statism, a profound mistrust of power in Washington goes all the way back to the Anti-Federalists who opposed the Constitution itself because they saw it concentrating too much authority in the central government."
Mr. Dionne follows in the footsteps of progressive historian Richard Hofstadter, whose influential 1964 book "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" argued that Barry Goldwater and his supporters displayed a "style of mind" characterized by "heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy." Similarly, the "suspicion of government" that the tea party movement shares with the Anti-Federalists, Mr. Dionne maintained, "is not amenable to 'facts'" because "opposing government is a matter of principle."
To be sure, the tea party sports its share of clowns, kooks and creeps. And some of its favored candidates and loudest voices have made embarrassing statements and embraced reckless policies. This, however, does not distinguish the tea party movement from the competition.
Born in response to President Obama's self-declared desire to fundamentally change America, the tea party movement has made its central goals abundantly clear. Activists and the sizeable swath of voters who sympathize with them want to reduce the massively ballooning national debt, cut runaway federal spending, keep taxes in check, reinvigorate the economy, and block the expansion of the state into citizens' lives.
In other words, the tea party movement is inspired above all by a commitment to limited government. And that does distinguish it from the competition.
But far from reflecting a recurring pathology in our politics or the losing side in the debate over the Constitution, the devotion to limited government lies at the heart of the American experiment in liberal democracy. The Federalists who won ratification of the Constitution—most notably Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay—shared with their Anti-Federalist opponents the view that centralized power presented a formidable and abiding threat to the individual liberty that it was government's primary task to secure. They differed over how to deal with the threat.
The Anti-Federalists—including Patrick Henry, Samuel Bryan and Robert Yates—adopted the traditional view that liberty depended on state power exercised in close proximity to the people. The Federalists replied in Federalist 9 that the "science of politics," which had "received great improvement," showed that in an extended and properly structured republic liberty could be achieved and with greater security and stability.
This improved science of politics was based not on abstract theory or complex calculations but on what is referred to in Federalist 51 as "inventions of prudence" grounded in the reading of classic and modern authors, broad experience of self-government in the colonies, and acute observations about the imperfections and finer points of human nature. It taught that constitutionally enumerated powers; a separation, balance, and blending of these powers among branches of the federal government; and a distribution of powers between the federal and state governments would operate to leave substantial authority to the states while both preventing abuses by the federal government and providing it with the energy needed to defend liberty.
Whether members have read much or little of The Federalist, the tea party movement's focus on keeping government within bounds and answerable to the people reflects the devotion to limited government embodied in the Constitution. One reason this is poorly understood among our best educated citizens is that American politics is poorly taught at the universities that credentialed them. Indeed, even as the tea party calls for the return to constitutional basics, our universities neglect The Federalist and its classic exposition of constitutional principles.
For the better part of two generations, the best political science departments have concentrated on equipping students with skills for performing empirical research and teaching mathematical models that purport to describe political affairs. Meanwhile, leading history departments have emphasized social history and issues of race, class and gender at the expense of constitutional history, diplomatic history and military history.
Neither professors of political science nor of history have made a priority of instructing students in the founding principles of American constitutional government. Nor have they taught about the contest between the progressive vision and the conservative vision that has characterized American politics since Woodrow Wilson (then a political scientist at Princeton) helped launch the progressive movement in the late 19th century by arguing that the Constitution had become obsolete and hindered democratic reform.
Then there are the proliferating classes in practical ethics and moral reasoning. These expose students to hypothetical conundrums involving individuals in surreal circumstances suddenly facing life and death decisions, or present contentious public policy questions and explore the range of respectable progressive opinions for resolving them. Such exercises may sharpen students' ability to argue. They do little to teach about self-government.
They certainly do not teach about the virtues, or qualities of mind and character, that enable citizens to shoulder their political responsibilities and prosper amidst the opportunities and uncertainties that freedom brings. Nor do they teach the beliefs, practices and associations that foster such virtues and those that endanger them.
Those who doubt that the failings of higher education in America have political consequences need only reflect on the quality of progressive commentary on the tea party movement. Our universities have produced two generations of highly educated people who seem unable to recognize the spirited defense of fundamental American principles, even when it takes place for more than a year and a half right in front of their noses.
Mr. Berkowitz is a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution.
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2)How to Really Reform the U.N.
By Ken Blackwell
President Obama famously responded to a question about "American exceptionalism." Asked by a reporter if he believed in it, Mr. Obama replied, "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." It was if he'd just gotten back from Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average.
So if America's exceptional and so are the Greeks and the Brits -- and presumably, too, are the Bangladeshis and the Paraguayans and everyone else -- what remains of our exceptionalism?
Well, if that's the president's position, let's apply it to one area greatly in need of such a formula: Reform of the United Nations.
The U.N. was originally supposed to be a world body, a forum for the prevention of war and the maintenance of a just and durable peace. That was FDR's great vision. But it never achieved that lofty goal. It never has come close.
The U.N. has managed to overlook the captivity of hundreds of millions of people in the Soviet bloc for nearly half a century. The U.N. never heard of the Gulag Archipelago. The U.N. turned a blind eye on Mao Zedong's half century of murderous rule in China. Tens of millions of forced abortions take place in China today -- with the active assistance of the U.N. Fund for Population Activity (UNFPA).
Cuba -- a member of the U.N.'s notorious Human Rights Council -- is under the grip of a senescent Communist dictatorship. Orlando Zapata -- the true Cuban champion of human rights -- died in a Castro prison recently, following a hunger strike in which he demanded nothing more than what the U.N. proclaimed in its Universal Declaration of Human Rights more than sixty years ago.
Still, the United States pays more than 22 percent ($1,800,000,000) of the U.N.'s annual budget. That's because FDR considered the United States exceptional, the leader of the free world.
Since President Obama thinks everyone is exceptional, let's cut the U.S. share of the U.N. budget back to 6 percent. After all, we are constantly told by the Obama administration that U.S. claims to preeminence are arrogant and offensive to others in Europe and the developing world.
So let's be more modest. Liberals constantly tell us how much we consume and suggest that because we are only 6 percent of the world population, we are somehow hogging more than our fair share. (They never note that we produce a huge portion of the world's GDP).
If we are only 6 percent of the world's really exceptional folks, let's knock our contribution to the U.N. down to that figure.
What? The U.N. as currently structured could not survive on that amount? Precisely.
But a U.N. headquarters moved from New York to Geneva, Switzerland could be trimmed back to its core functions as a world forum. The UNFPA should be the first body to be scuttled, followed by the Inter-Governmental Climate Panel (IPCC), which has become nothing more than Al Gore's sandbox. The IPCC recently had to backtrack on its environmental doomsday predictions. Those glaciers in the Himalayas are not going to melt by 2035, after all. They're slated to melt by 2305. Just a typo, the IPCC gnomes claimed.
The U.N. Human Rights Council should be deep-sixed. It's more than an outrage to have Cuba, Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia sitting on a body so named -- it's hypocrisy on stilts.
By moving the U.N. headquarters to Geneva, the traditional city of diplomacy, we can avoid the gross humiliation of having the world's leading terrorist -- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- come to our greatest city to spew his hatred from the platform of the U.N. He represents an Iranian regime that murdered 241 U.S. Marines and Navy Corpsmen in Beirut in 1983 and that threatened 52 American hostages with death for 444 days in our Tehran embassy. He is killing American servicemen and women in Iraq and Afghanistan today. Even as he spoke to the U.N. General Assembly, he was holding two American hikers prisoner. And yet we have to pay New York's police for providing security for his wretched life!
If all the U.N. can be is a forum for the airing of international disputes, then Geneva is the obvious location. President Obama could embrace this move as a cost-cutter and a first step in his effort to show the world a kinder and gentler U.S. profile.
Ken Blackwell is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council. He serves on the board of directors of the Club for Growth, National Taxpayers Union, and National Rifle Association and is co-author of The Blueprint: Obama's Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency.
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3) We Can't Solve America's Budget Problems without Changing the Culture
By Jeffrey A. Rendall
With all the talk of "Pledges" and parties, big versus limited government, and economic numbers that make many a grown man cry, it seems that the American People are ignoring one basic question: are we tough enough as a culture to do what it will take to fix our society?
There's little doubt that government played a large role in creating the financial ague in America today, though we'd be remiss to ignore the average citizen's complicity in our own demise. Many of us were caught up in home values that soared so high that we couldn't fathom that our assets weren't worth nearly as much as the banks were telling us that they were.
Throwing caution to the wind, we went out and borrowed against them, astonished at the pittance that was required to be paid back on a monthly basis, adopting the attitude of "live for the day and worry about it tomorrow."
We got hooked on credit and used it to buy all sorts of things we didn't need, such as the car we've always wanted, a boat, large high-definition TVs, new counter-tops (when the old ones functioned just fine) -- the list goes on and on and on.
Even our kids got in on the act. Just look at the gadgets that they're becoming increasingly addicted to -- cell phones, iPods, Droids, personal computers that are about the size of a wallet, and communications devices that travel anywhere and offer the opportunity to send messages instantaneously. Many a family dinner conversation has been usurped by these toys as teens and even adults text nonstop, drunk with the pleasure of being able to reach their friends and colleagues at all hours of the day.
America's problem isn't so much a fiscal crisis as it is a cultural one. History tells us that eventually the economy will turn around, hopefully under the watchful eye of our newly motivated citizenry (aka the Tea Parties) and a new type of congressional representative who's more interested in what government shouldn't do than what goodies he can secure for himself or a campaign contributor.
But who's going to fix the culture? Who's going to tell us that there's a difference between needing and wanting something?
The reality for the generations growing up right now and yet to be born is that they're going to have to work a lot harder than most of us ever did to be able to afford to buy a house, let alone a big one. They're going to have to accept entry-level positions and do it the "old-fashioned way" and learn to work at things that aren't necessarily "fun."
They're going to have to think outside the box in a world that's increasingly designed to put them in a mental one, with a government that's buried them in debt, promises of an easy retirement, free health care for life, and a regulatory system that heavily discourages innovation, investment, and creativity.
They're going to have to save money, too, and our culture doesn't teach them to do that, with its emphasis on quick adrenaline fixes, "gotta have it now" mentality, and media influences that bombard them with the yearning to find emotional satisfaction at the expense of moral practicality.
I look at a lot of today's youth, and I just don't see it in them. Forget the older generations and the discussion over Social Security and Medicare -- if you really want to see the truly entitled, look at the young folks. Try telling them that they should put away the cell phone or the Wii until their homework's done and that they should strive to do more than what their teachers ask them to do not only in their studies, but also in the community.
Every generation thinks the one coming after it doesn't have the gumption to pick up where it leaves off, but today's kids face a wealth of challenges that simply didn't exist in the "old days," and most of the obstacles are cultural.
For example, First Lady Michelle Obama has taken a lot of heat for her campaign to end childhood obesity, but anyone who's attended a holiday performance at their local grade school in recent years knows that the children are a lot heavier now than they used to be. Our "supersized" culture teaches them to overeat and provides comfort (or "reward") sweets at virtually every turn -- and scales everywhere are definitely reflecting the difference.
It's not government's place to control what anyone eats, but you can't fault Mrs. Obama for highlighting the issue.
Much has also been written on the over-sexualizing of the popular media (which is indeed a problem), but what about the very availability of media? When you can buy hand-held devices that can access TV and the internet with a mere few clicks of the button, you've got kids with the chance to find out a lot about things very quickly and with virtually no supervision.
Technology is a good thing -- but these young folks are being weaned on these conveniences, and they're becoming as standardized in our culture as television in the home or basic phone service. All of it bleeds money from already stretched personal and family budgets (another family "entitlement"), and our culture doesn't mandate that children sacrifice any of these things for the good of the family.
Even if they have to go into debt every month, I don't see anyone giving up their cell phones, satellite TV, and high-speed internet connections. Is that wrong?
Adults are every bit as bad. A big part of the reason why the housing bubble burst so dramatically is because Americans decided they needed more space and more gadgets than they truly did or could certainly afford. Cultural influences told us that a big master bedroom is preferable to a small one, and who really needs a sun room when you've already got a breakfast nook?
The point is not to say that people should not desire these "extras" in life, but with times changing as fast as they are and the American economy in as deep as it is, we're all going to have to take a good, long, hard look at what it is that we can stand to do without -- and live accordingly.
People used to live with a lot less, and they seemed to be happier. Culture evolves, but that doesn't always make it better.
As conservatives, we're demanding that government live within its means, and we're right -- but if we don't deal honestly and personally with the cultural factors that have led to our current situation, we'll have no one to blame but ourselves.
Jeffrey A. Rendall is a freelance writer living just far enough outside the Beltway for comfort in Manassas, Virginia.
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3)New Germany? Is Multiculturalism dead?
German politician says country's values only drawn from Judeo-Christian tradition, not Islam
By Assaf Oni
Multiculturalism in Germany is dead, the chairman of the country's Christian Social Union (CSU) told a meeting of the party's young guard Friday.
Hosrt Seehofer, whose party is a member of Germany's current government coalition, stirred a row last week after declaring that immigration to Germany from Turkey and Arab states must end.
New Germany?
This time around, the right-wing leader was quoted as saying that his party stands for "the dominant German culture and against multiculturalism – multiculturalism is dead."
Seehofer added that Germany's values are only drawn from the Judeo-Christian tradition and humanistic values, and not from Islam. The comments contradicted recent remarks made by German President Christian Wulff, who said that Islam is part of the modern Germany's character.
Merkel's silence
Although Seehofer's comments last week were met by condemnation, including some by members of his own party, Chancellor Angela Merkel's silence was especially prominent. In a speech Friday, Merkel urged immigrants to integrate into German society, adding that familiarity with the German language must be mandatory for local immigrants.
A wide-ranging survey published earlier this week showed that more than one-third of Germans want immigrants, some of whom had been leaving in the country for more than 40 years, to be returned to their native lands.
According to the survey, 58% of Germans would like to see limitations on Islam, while one of 10 Germans would like to see a "fuehrer" leading the country.
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4)Turkey slams Israeli 'state terrorism'
PM Erdogan calls on Israeli government to apologize for flotilla raid, compensate victims
By Associated Press
Turkey's prime minister has again accused Israel of "state terrorism" and called on the Jewish state to apologize and compensate victims of a raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan said: "the Israeli government must apologize and compensate (victims) for the state terrorism in the Mediterranean."
He was addressing members of his Islamic-oriented party at a weekend retreat Saturday.
Eight Turks and one person with American and Turkish nationality were killed in the May 31 raid on a ship carrying pro-Palestinian activists trying to breach Israel's naval blockade of Gaza.
Peres refuses to apologize
Relations between the two former allies have been deteriorating since Israel's Gaza war and hit a low point after the raid.
Last month, Turkish President Abdullah Gul refused to meet with President Shimon Peres in New York. The Turkish leader said that "we will not forgive Israel for those killed in the Israeli attack on the aid flotilla, even if Israel apologizes." His remarks were quoted by Turkey's official Anatolia news agency.
According to Israeli sources, the meeting was thwarted due to Peres' refusal to apologize for the deadly Navy raid. The sources said the Turks demanded the apology as a condition for holding meeting.
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5)Obama and the US-Israel alliance
By CAROLINE B. GLICK
If Netanyahu wishes to secure Israel’s alliance with the US, he should do what is best for Israel, not what is best for Israel’s Left.
Israel’s opposition leaders spent the past week trying to prove their relevance. On Tuesday, both former prime minister Ehud Olmert and Kadima leader Tzipi Livni accused Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of wrecking Israel’s relations with the US. Both Livni and Olmert claimed that Netanyahu is taking a knife to Israel’s most valuable alliance by refusing to bow to US President Barack Obama’s demand that the government extend the ban on Jewish building in Judea and Samaria for an additional 60 days.
As Olmert put it, “The United States, the great superpower, says: ‘You held a building freeze for 10 months, now extend it by two months...’”
“Sure we are an independent state,” Olmert allowed, but then he continued, “But doesn’t reason, a sense of responsibility and foresight, justify giving two more months?”
Finally, he warned, “We can refuse the efforts by friendly states, but will we then be able to continue to conduct a relationship of goodwill with them in the future?”
So as far as Olmert is concerned, if Israel refuses to bow to the Obama administration’s demand that Jewish property rights be abrogated for an additional two months, the US will be justified in ending its support for Israel.
Livni accused Netanyahu of sacrificing Israel’s relations with the US in order to placate his coalition partners.
Olmert’s and Livni’s assaults on Netanyahu made clear that like most of their colleagues on the Left, they believe that relations between countries and relations between governments are the same thing. They recognize no distinction between ties with autocracies like Egypt and Jordan on the one hand and ties with democracies like the US on the other. In both cases, as far as the Left is concerned, alliances or conflicts between nations are determined by the status of relations between political leaders.
Assuming for a moment that Livni and Olmert are right about the nature of US-Israel ties, does it follow that Netanyahu is wrecking those ties by defying Obama? Tuesday’s State Department press briefing indicates that this is not the case.
On Tuesday, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley was asked, “Do you [i.e. the administration] recognize Israel as a Jewish state and will you try to convince the Palestinians to recognize it?
As Rick Richman at Commentary’s blog noted, Crowley repeatedly tried to evade answering the question. Reporters were forced to repeat the question six times before Crowley managed to say, “We recognize that Israel is a – as it says itself, is a Jewish state, yes.”
As for whether or not the administration will try to convince the Palestinians to recognize the Jewish state, Crowley could not bring himself to give a simple affirmative answer.
Crowley’s refusal to give straight answers to straight questions about US recognition of Israel as a Jewish state shows that Israel has never faced a more unfriendly US administration. After all, recognizing Israel as a Jewish state means recognizing that the Jewish people are a nation, and as a nation, the Jews have a right to self-determination in our national homeland. So recognizing Israel as a Jewish state is recognizing Israel’s right to exist.
Crowley’s unwillingness to state flat out that the US recognizes Israel as a Jewish state and expects Israel’s supposed Palestinian peace partners to do so as well means that the Obama administration’s basic hostility to Israel is so salient that no amount of appeasing on any specific issue will alter its position.
What this means is that if Livni, Olmert and the Left they represent are correct, and the sole or even major determinant of the strength and quality of US-Israel relations is views of the US president, then Netanyahu’s actions are irrelevant. Relations with America are doomed no matter what he does.
LUCKILY FOR Israel, Livni, Olmert and the Left they represent have no idea what they are talking about. Contrary to what they would have voters believe, there is a world of difference between how democracies conduct foreign relations and how autocracies conduct them.
Whereas in places like Egypt, Israel’s relations with the country are completely contingent on the identity of Egypt’s leader, in the US, the president does not determine whether the alliance between Washington and Jerusalem will remain strong. The American people make that decision. And the American people have no intention of abandoning their alliance with Israel.
As a poll released last week makes clear, Americans are far more likely to ditch leaders they believe are harming the US-Israel alliance than they are to ditch the alliance. The poll was carried out from October 3-5 by the non-partisan McLaughlin and Associates survey research group for the pro-Israel Emergency Committee for Israel. It is the most in-depth poll of US sentiment towards Israel in recent memory. The poll broke down respondents by political affiliation, geographical area, religion, race, age, education level, sex, income level and ideological outlook.
The results were extraordinary.
Some 93.5 percent of Americans believe that the US should be concerned about Israel’s security. Whereas the Obama administration is unconvinced that the Palestinians need to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, 77% of Americans believe that they must do so. Only 6% of Americans believe the Palestinians shouldn’t recognize Israel.
And not only do Americans support Israel, they expect their leaders to support Israel as well.
Some 50.9% of Americans are more likely to vote for a staunchly pro-Israel candidate, and only 25.2% are less likely to do so. Fifty-three percent of Americans say they could not vote for an anti- Israel candidate even if they agreed with the candidate’s positions on most other issues.
As for Obama’s treatment of Israel, some 42.7% of Americans believe that the president’s Middle East policies harm Israel’s security, and only 29.6% believe that they are improving Israel’s security situation. Some 51.6% of Americans believe that Obama is less friendly towards Israel than his predecessors have been. Only 35.4% believe that he is as friendly towards Israel as his predecessors were.
No less noteworthy than the poll’s exposure of the massive support Israel enjoys from the American people is what it tells us about the relative strength and weakness of that support along the partisan and ideological divide. As the Emergency Committee for Israel’s Chairman Bill Kristol summarized the poll’s findings in The Weekly Standard, 69% of Republicans are more likely to vote for a pro-Israel candidate, while only 40% of Democrats are. Furthermore, a mere 15% of Republicans are less likely to vote for a pro-Israel candidate while 33% of Democrats are less likely to vote for a candidate who strongly supports Israel.
The Right-Left divide mirrors and amplifies the partisan divide. A majority of US conservatives are pro-Israel and only 5% of self-described liberals are pro-Israel.
WITH EVERYONE from Glenn Beck to George Soros predicting a massive Republican victory in next month’s midterm congressional elections, it is clear that the disparity between Obama’s policies and the preferences of the American people is about to massively constrain Obama’s ability to implement his agenda.
From Netanyahu’s perspective, what this means that if he wishes to maintain US support for Israel, his best bet is to do exactly the opposite of what the Left proposes. He should continue to defy Obama and explain to the American people why Israel cannot accede to the administration’s demands.
As the electoral clock runs down it is becoming increasingly clear that it is Obama and his supporters, not Israel, that will be forced to pay a price for Obama’s Middle East policies. In fact, those most strongly identified with Obama’s anti- Israel positions are already paying a price for their highly unpopular positions. Take the pro-Palestinian lobby J Street for instance. If Obama’s policies towards Israel were popular, J Street wouldn’t be concerned about The Washington Times’ recent exposes about the group.
Those reports revealed that contrary to repeated claims by J Street’s leaders, the virulently anti- Israel George Soros is one of its largest financial backers. Moreover, again, in spite of the group’s denials, J Street’s senior personnel set up meetings with US lawmakers for notoriously anti-Israel Richard Goldstone. Indeed, J Street’s co-founder Daniel Levy accompanied Goldstone to his meetings on Capitol Hill.
As things stand today, the group that positioned itself as Obama’s chief defender in the American Jewish community is teetering on the verge of collapse. J Street’s credibility is in tatters and the administration that sought to empower J Street is now distancing itself from the group.
J Street’s central contention is that American Jews stand to the left of pro-Israel groups like AIPAC. By staking out a position to the left of AIPAC – and in line with the White House’s policies – J Street claims it serves as the true voice of American Jewry. But another recent poll shows that this is untrue.
A survey of American Jewish opinion published this week by the American Jewish Committee shows that J Street’s agenda is rejected by American Jewry. Whereas 78% of American Jews voted for Obama in 2008, today a bare majority of 51% approve of his performance in office. As political analyst Larry Sabato noted, “A 50% positive rating for a Democratic president among Jews is, frankly, terrible.”
The unprecedented drop in American Jewish support for Obama is directly related to his hostility towards Israel. Today a mere 49% of American Jews support his handling of US-Israel relations, while 45% disapprove. Tellingly, 62% of American Jews approve of Netanyahu’s handling of US-Israel relations and only 27% disapprove.
Democrats supported by J Street – that is Democrats who have supported Obama’s policies towards Israel – are running scared today. The Emergency Committee for Israel and the Republican Jewish Coalition are running ads against members of Congress supported by J Street to great effect. In Pennsylvania, Democratic Senate candidate and J Street ally congressman Joe Sestak is polling far behind Republican nominee Pat Toomey.
In Chicago, far-left six-term Democratic congresswoman and J Street sweetheart Jan Schakowsky’s approval ratings have fallen below 50%. Her unabashedly pro-Israel Republican opponent Joel Pollak is making Schakowsky’s record on Israel a pillar of his campaign. For his efforts Pollak was the recipient of Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz’s first ever endorsement of a Republican.
Likewise, in New Jersey seven-term Democratic congressman Rush Holt is facing a tough challenge from Republican Scott Sipprelle. Sipprelle is also pounding his opponent over his ties to the Obama-aligned J Street.
In Florida, Democratic congressman Ron Klein is expected to lose his reelection bid against Allen West. Although Klein is Jewish and West is African-American, West has been running to Klein’s right on Israel to great effect. Klein has also participated in J Street events.
The Israeli Left’s failure to recognize what is happening in the US today is not surprising. After all, the Left has ignored the sentiments of the Israeli people for years. But as the elected leader of the Jewish state, Netanyahu should recognize the truth. If he wishes to secure Israel’s alliance with the US, he should do what is best for Israel, not what is best for Israel’s Left.
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6)Sponsored Corruption and Neglected Reform in Syria
By Anna Borshchevskaya
A decade into Bashar al-Assad's rule, the Syrian economy is languishing. The police state Bashar inherited from his father Hafiz continues to obstruct any kind of reform whether in the political or economic spheres. Outspoken dissident Riad Seif, who as a member of parliament from 1994 to 1998 had firsthand exposure to the actual state of affairs, described the situation:
More often than not, the discussions were prefabricated by the speaker as if we were in a theatre rehearsing a play with a crew of talented speech makers ... If any of the new members … insisted on going against the flow, he would be brought back to the "correct" path either through incentives if available or through terrorization and punishments if necessary.[1]
Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah (left) speaks with Syrian president Bashar Assad (center) and Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on their arrival for a dinner in Damascus, February 25, 2010. The dinner came only one week after U.S. Undersecretary of State William Burns visited Damascus and was a clear indication of how little Bashar valued U.S. efforts to try to pry Syria away from its ally Iran.
Thus in 2008, Transparency International, the most respected index of perceived corruption, ranked Syria as second worst in the Middle East and North Africa, after Iraq,[2] with marginal improvement in 2009.[3] According to the World Bank, Syria ranks among the world's lowest in the ease of doing business—143rd out of 183 countries surveyed, a drop from a previous 138th place.[4] The Syrian government persists in making superficial gestures of improvement, but most state initiatives are Potemkin reform at best, merely facades.
While it is certainly possible to reform the Syrian economy, Damascus has little incentive to do so, monopolizing as it does the profits of widespread corruption. Absent pressure from external sources such as the U.S. government or the European Union, corruption—and security risks to the region and the West which derive from it—will worsen. The Syrian regime's primary goal is to stay in power and as long as this is so, its interest will never shift to economic growth and development. Syria's culture of corruption inherently blocks meaningful long-term domestic reform, and the regime instead will continue to focus on sponsoring terrorism and blaming Israel and the West for its woes. High hopes for a Damascus spring have ended in an ongoing winter.
State of the Economy
Under the leadership of Hafiz al-Assad (1971-2000), Syria closed itself to the world. Even before the 1970 coup that brought him to power, the Baath party he would soon head had enacted an emergency law on March 8, 1963, that suspended basic constitutional rights such as freedom of speech and assembly.[5] Article 8 of Syria's 1973 Constitution, developed by the Assad regime, assigned all government posts to Baath Party members. The Syrian government soon put heavy and impractical regulations in place; any significant commerce required bribery of key officials.[6] Although Syria struck oil in 1968, and high prices during the 1973-74 oil crisis boosted the country's economy significantly,[7] by 1995, Syria's oil output began to dwindle due to technological problems and depletion of oil reserves.[8] By 2007, Syria had become a net oil importer.[9]
To get an appreciation of the current state of the Syrian economy, it is instructive to look first at Syria's gross domestic income (GDI) per capita. According to the most recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) figures, that number was $2,579 in 2009. By comparison, Lebanon's GDI was $8,707 and Turkey's, $8,723. Israel's was $26,797 while two other authoritarian states, Libya and Iran, had a GDI of $9,529 and $4,460 respectively.[10]
Inflation, while fluctuating, has increased in relative terms almost every year since 2000, Bashar's first year in power. It reached double digits in both 2006 and 2008,[11] and by 2007, Syrian newspapers were openly discussing the price of eggs almost as much as key economic issues.[12]
The unemployment rate has also increased dramatically. While the government acknowledged a rate of around 8 percent in 2007, the International Labor Organization estimated the reality was more than double that.[13] The IMF assessed Syrian unemployment at the end of December 2009 at close to 11 percent.[14]
In June 2005, the United Nations Development Program found that 30 percent of Syrians (more than five million) lived in poverty, with 11 percent (almost two million) in extreme poverty.[15] In January 2008, the official Syrian daily Al-Thawra reported that the "average share of food per capita in the Arab world indicate[s] a decline in the per capita share of the Syrian individual, ranked second in 2003 among the 19 Arab nations to sixth place in 2005."[16] As recently as March 2010, Al-Thawra stated that the "real income of the majority of the population has declined."[17]
The Syrian infrastructure is also severely outdated. In the summer of 2007, widespread blackouts hit Syria. Former Minister of Industry Issam Zaim complained, "We're seeing none of our officials being held accountable for their mistakes."[18] While the regime tried to blame sanctions for the power failures, Zaim contended that real responsibility lay with those who for years procrastinated in upgrading the national power grid, which operates on decades-old technology.[19] Nevertheless, the blackouts continue.[20]
According to the U.S. State Department, Syria's trade numbers remain "notoriously inaccurate and out-of date," raising questions about the veracity of the Syrian government's claims that its non-oil export sector has been expanding.[21] While it may hope to bolster the economy through trade, its recent agreements are little more than mirages. Syria now has "all kinds of memoranda of understanding with Iran, but … most of them are worthless," said former World Bank official Nimrod Raphaeli.[22] Iran and Syria reportedly reached an agreement in May 2010 to create a joint bank to improve weak economic relations between the two countries. However, Arabnews.com reported one analyst view that the announcement is most likely "just a propaganda trick and nothing will really change."[23] Only Qatar and the United Arab Emirates invest significant money in Syria, mostly in the real estate and tourism sectors, but the amounts are not substantial enough to spur growth. The tobacco industry may have potential for development, but the Assad family's large and controlling interest prevents the entry of other investors into the sector. Indeed, Volcker Perthes, director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs and an expert on the Syrian economy, said that while corruption might be "more diversified in Iraq … in Syria it is more strongly linked to the 'royal family'… Nothing moves … politically, and of course, the best people are leaving the country." He notes by comparison that neighboring "Jordan has done much better … even though they have less resources."[24]
The country's population has doubled since the mid-1980s[25] with population growth estimates of 3.3 percent for 2008.[26] By comparison, the World Bank's latest available statistics put the entire Middle East-North Africa regional population growth at 1.7 from 2008 to 2009 and project it to go down to 1.6 in the next two years.[27] In fact, Syria was among the top twenty fastest growing populations in the world in the 1980s[28] with average population growth of 3.4 percent between 1981 and 1990. [29] Adding to the strain on the stagnant economy are Iraqi refugees, whose numbers are estimated at 300,000,[30] 750,000,[31] or more than a million[32] by various sources.
The Syrian government may acknowledge difficulties but seldom takes direct responsibility for the state of the economy. In a 2006 speech to Baath party loyalists, Prime Minister Muhammad Naji al-Utri blamed factors such as population pressure, a low level of foreign investment, and low technical standards for Syria's poor economic performance without drawing any connection to how the Syrian policies themselves led to some if not all of these problems.
Culture of Corruption
By the beginning of the 1980s, the desire for financial benefit and political advantage had supplanted ideology as the main reason for Syrians to join the ruling Baath Party.[33] Three families emerged as the new Syrian business elite—the Assads, the Shalishes, and the Makhlufs with perhaps ten other families forming a second tier.[34]
Upon his death on June 10, 2000, Hafiz al-Assad left Syria's economy in debt, underdeveloped, and in a shambles. Many Syrians and Western diplomats greeted his son Bashar's accession with optimism.[35] And, indeed, there was reason for hope: Analysts noted that Bashar was Western-educated and might be more reform-minded and less inclined to continue his father's rejectionist path.[36] Initially, it indeed looked as if the younger Assad might tackle corruption; as heir apparent, he had spearheaded an anticorruption drive.[37] But whatever reduction in corruption occurred at lower levels of government, it was more than offset by increases at higher levels.
For example, in 2001, when Bashar's maternal cousin, Rami Makhluf, won a monopoly over telecommunications, prominent businessman and parliamentarian Riad Seif insisted on investigating the licensing and published a report documenting the corruption involved in the deal, despite the government's warning him off. Seif's bold declaration resulted in his arrest and imprisonment.[38] Upon his release in 2006, he reiterated his claim and described how two telephone companies, Syriatel and Ariba, had colluded with the government to create a monopoly, enabling them to charge exorbitant prices—higher than in the United States—and make enormous profit while paying little tax.[39] All the while, the government continued to refuse to enforce regulations while Syriatel and Ariba unilaterally voided consumers' contracts by refusing to supply agreed-upon minutes or provide promised discounts. These two companies won a contractual concession to provide service for a maximum 1.7 million persons, but they have already doubled this number and may even double that, which went against the terms of their contract and further secured their status as twin monopolies.[40]
By 2005, corruption had reverted to the levels of pre-Bashar days, albeit with a smaller circle of participants as Bashar had purged many of the old guard. The Assad family and assorted cronies appeared to have siphoned off as much as 85 percent of Syrian oil revenues that year, according to Syrian officials' private estimates.[41] But the identities of the members of this business elite remain shadowy. It took the Syrian news magazine Al-Iqtisadi more than a year to compile a list of Syria's top businessmen because of the paucity of publicly-available information.[42] Even then, some figures were simply too sensitive to include: It is telling that Rami Makhluf, one of the biggest players in the system, was absent from the list.
According to Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index, Syria's score dropped from 2.4 (out of a possible 10) and 138th place (out of 180) in 2007,[43] to 2.1 and 147th place in 2008.[44] In 2009, Syria still hovered near the bottom of the list with a score of 2.6 and 126th place.[45] The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal's annual Index of Economic Freedom, which measures freedom from corruption, government intervention in the economy, and the preservation of property rights, rated Syria's economic freedom lower in 2010 than in the previous year—145th out of 179 countries, and 15th out of the 17 countries in the region,[46] ahead only of Iran and Libya at 16th and 17th respectively).[47] The index also notes a decline in areas including an individual's ability to accumulate private property, how well private property rights laws are written and enforced,[48] investment freedom, and freedom from corruption. The index's authors stated:
the overall entrepreneurial environment is hampered by significant institutional challenges. The regulatory and legal frameworks are deficient, and persistent state influence in most areas of the economy suppresses market competition. The judicial system is inefficient and remains vulnerable to political influence and widespread corruption. Average tariffs are high, keeping trade freedom far below the world average.[49]
Even within Bashar's police state, this sorry situation is widely known. In 2008, Syria Today, the country's only independent English magazine, reported that "the overwhelming majority of Syrians believe their country's institutions are inherently corrupt."[50]
Obstacles to Investments
Private sector growth in Syria remains sluggish and rampant corruption undercuts investment. As Volker Perthes states:
You have laws [in Syria], but you don't have rule of law … You don't have a fair, transparent judiciary system, so if you are a foreign investor, and you happen to draw the greed … of a figure closely linked to the system, you may end up with much of your investment lost.[51]
In 2002, the regime established an Expatriate Ministry in order to cultivate direct investment from abroad. But while the ministry initially attracted investment from the Syrian diaspora, financial backers' patience did not last long when they saw how unwilling the regime was to tackle corruption. A case involving SyriaTel illustrates regime tactics. In 2000, SyriaTel received a governmental license for mobile phone services. Rami Makhluf owned 75 percent of the company while Orascom, an Egyptian company, owned the remaining 25 percent. Two years later, Makhluf complained in a Damascus court that Orascom had cheated him. The Egyptian CEO and marketing director claimed they were then threatened by Syrian intelligence (Mukhabarat) and by April 2002, the CEO was given three days to leave town.[52] As Perthes observed, "If an Egyptian company with good knowledge of the intricacies of doing business in the Middle East was not able to prevail in the Syrian market, international investors are unlikely to be optimistic about their prospects."[53] As a result, many investors pulled out although those who were able to link themselves to high officials in the regime benefited greatly and stayed.[54]
The majority of Syrians who have no ability to leave the country are all too vulnerable to these kinds of manipulations. Once a business becomes profitable, the Assad government either demands a share of the profit or simply does not allow it to operate. Syrian officials who dare to go against the regime find themselves in jail or worse. Issam Zaim, for example, was forced to give up his post as minister of industry in 2003 because he made a decision in favor of a German company based on the actual text of Syrian law. His personal assets were frozen, and he temporarily left Syria in fear of his life.[55] It should come as no surprise then that domestic investment is paltry.
In 2005, the Baath Party Congress called for the creation of a "social market" economy without defining what this meant. Subsequent initiatives were haphazard,[56] and it is now evident that the tenth Five Year Plan has failed to reach its objectives. Today, the Syrian economy is less than a third of Egypt's; the IMF reported Syria's gross domestic product (GDP) in 2009 to be $53 billion, in contrast to Egypt's $188 billion. Even in war-recovering Iraq, GDP was $66 billion.[57] The World Bank ranks Syria as a lower middle-income economy.[58]
The Washington Post recently credited Bashar with reforming the Syrian economy by lifting Soviet-style economic restrictions while noting the need to tackle widespread corruption.[59] Although Syria looks different today than it did under Bashar's father, movement is not always synonymous with change. Bashar's reforms ultimately are aimed at keeping the regime alive given new regional and international realities, which necessitate a different style than his father's. Corruption in Syria prevents it from being as open to the world as it would like to appear.
Restructuring the Banking Sector
Absent any serious reform in the Syrian banking sector, it will be impossible for Damascus to mobilize foreign savings and attract foreign capital. Thirteen private banks opened in Syria as of January 2010[60] but the six state-owned banks—the Commercial Bank of Syria, the Agricultural Bank, and the smaller Real Estate Bank, Popular Credit Bank, Savings Bank, and Industrial Bank—dominate, making it harder for the private banks to grow. There has been little restructuring of public banks in order to improve their regulatory and supervisory framework.[61] The first private bank only opened in Syria in 2004,[62] and while branches have opened around the country and private banks have increased their market share, the Central Bank of Syria, under the control of the Ministry of Finance, continues to regulate these banks, so they cannot make such decisions as setting their own budget or developing a business strategy,[63] a situation reminiscent of eastern Europe during the Soviet era.
Credit remains centrally allocated and subject to manipulation. A private consultant, who compiled a confidential study on the Syrian banking sector in 2006, found that bankers expected 15 percent kickbacks on loans, in exchange for which they overvalued collateral. A bank reform expert explained that only two banks, the Commercial Bank of Syria and the Real Estate bank, "are allowed to get involved in foreign correspondence,"[64] further choking off robust growth.
Monetary policy also remains problematic. While the IMF commended Syria in 2008 for "making significant progress in strengthening the role of the Central Bank of Syria (CBS) in formulating and implementing monetary policy,"[65] Damascus has not made public information indicating its adherence to the IMF's Code of Good Practices on Transparency in Monetary Policies. Indeed, in August 2008, the IMF expressed "serious doubts about the operational independence" of Syria's Central Bank in setting monetary policy and recommended that Syria establish a new central bank law to strengthen the Central Bank, the country's monetary policy framework, and banking supervision. [66] Further, the market for Syrian treasury bills, which were introduced in late 2008, remains relatively thin because the government restricts their use to project financing, resulting in their being used sporadically rather than on a regular basis.[67] While the IMF observed overall progress in transition to a market economy, in March 2010, it noted that "the remaining structural reform agenda is substantial."[68]
Syria's regulatory environment and compliance with international standards in 2008 remained "extremely weak" according to the Financial Standards Foundation in New York:
Nine out of twelve standards are at an "insufficient information" level, indicating a serious lack of transparency. In two other areas—data dissemination and payment systems—Syria is non-compliant. Although a written bankruptcy law exists, it is not applied fairly.[69]
The Syrian government is further unwilling to take serious steps necessary to make those banks it controls more efficient. Knowledgeable insiders report that each of the six publicly-owned banks employs around 12,000 Syrians. One analyst working in the banking sector, who spoke on condition of anonymity, estimated that any reform would require the firing of between 50-70 percent of these employees.[70] The lack of any social security net further hampers government options since the regime would be forced to deal with a significantly larger unemployed population without financial or health benefits in a situation where unemployment is already high.[71]
Nor is it likely that bottom-up reform will occur. A repressive mentality predominates in which employees are unable, unwilling, or afraid to make decisions, fearing the wrong decision could earn them a jail sentence or worse. Supervisors hesitate to offer training to subordinates, fearing that they will be eclipsed by their own employees. Even when employees do receive professional training, they find little opportunity to use their new skills. The managers, ironically, also have little power. "Unless you're linked to the regime, you have no power," explained one member of a banking reform project who spoke on condition of anonymity.[72]
Can Washington Tackle Syrian Corruption?
On February 13, 2008, the U.S. Treasury Department issued an executive order linking Syrian corruption to Damascus's ability to engage in terrorist activities declaring that the corruption "entrenches and enriches the Government of Syria and its supporters and thereby enables the Government of Syria to continue to engage in certain conduct that formed the basis for the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13338." [73] (Executive Order 13338 of May 11, 2004, determined that Syria's support of terrorism, its occupation of Lebanon, and its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and missile programs undermined U.S. efforts in Iraq and constituted "an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.")[74] In July 2008, the Treasury Department designated Rami Makhluf, Bashar al-Assad's material cousin, a specially designated national (SDN),[75] finding that he
used intimidation and his close ties to the Assad regime to obtain improper business advantages at the expense of ordinary Syrians … The Assad regime's cronyism and corruption have a corrosive effect, disadvantaging innocent Syrian businessmen and entrenching a regime that pursues oppressive and destabilizing policies, including beyond Syria's borders, in Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories.[76]
How effective such actions are in forcing change in Damascus is a matter of debate. SDNs are subject to the freezing of their assets, and American "individuals or entities"[77] are prohibited from doing business with them. However, like most SDNs, Rami Makhluf does not have assets in the United States. Still, it is often not in the best interest of other countries to do business with any SDN. According to the Treasury Department, the designation made it hard for Makhluf to do business, and a deal he had struck with Turkcell, Turkey's leading mobile telephone operator, fell through.[78] However, The Washington Post reports that the effect of the Makhluf designation was largely political and psychological[79] although still significant. The Syrian business community, which largely resented Makhluf for his bullying business tactics, was particularly happy to see this restraint on government-sanctioned corruption.[80]
Conclusion
The Syrian regime's corrupt practice is aimed at only one thing—maintaining power. While Syrian diplomats trumpet a series of reforms, Bashar al-Assad's regime is simply trying to stay alive, adapting to regional and international realities while impoverishing the country and eliminating anyone who wants to see change. The economy, despite many reports about improvement, is headed downward. The culture of corruption and an old, Soviet-style mentality in both the political and economic spheres prevent meaningful reforms in banking, telecommunications, and non-oil exports, all of which would help integrate Syria into the global economy as a respectable partner and improve living standards for its citizens.
The Obama administration's shift in focus in an effort to engage Damascus has emboldened the Assad regime. Bashar al-Assad openly mocked U.S. efforts to try to pry Syria away from its ally Iran only days after U.S. Undersecretary of State William Burns' visit to Damascus.[81] This is all the more troubling since Syria's clandestine nuclear program, "together with [its] extensive surface-to-surface missile capabilities, is a major source of potential contention and conflict between Syria and Israel."[82] A week after Burns was sent to Damascus, Bashar made clear how little he values U.S. concerns when he hosted Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah for dinner in Damascus.[83]
Syria's recent revival of economic and political ties with Russia is also a cause for concern. After Russian president Dmitry Medvedev went to Damascus in May 2010 (the first meeting between the two countries' leaders in nearly a century), a series of deals was concluded on weapons sales alongside discussions on boosting economic ties and nuclear cooperation. Abu Dhabi's National wrote that, given slow U.S. rapprochement with Syria, "Damascus could be forgiven for thinking that, following the Russia summit, it is successfully outmaneuvering Washington and holding an increasingly stronger hand."[84]
Washington's new policy of engagement has also encouraged Syria to flex its muscles in neighboring Lebanon. As a consequence of U.S. attempts to diminish Syria's diplomatic isolation, the Lebanese leadership has had little choice but to work with Bashar, this despite the fact that Syria had occupied it for twenty-nine years and only recently was forced to leave following international pressure. These developments appear to have done nothing to hinder the Syrian regime from continuing to operate as usual.
It is in the interests of the United States and the West to put pressure on the Syrian regime rather than to continue to extend a hand in the hope that the regime will unclench its fist. By catering to Syria's demands, the West appears to be abandoning the few advocates in Syria who want reform. The corrupt practices of the regime hurt Syrian citizens but also fuel Syria's terrorist activities and interference in the affairs of neighboring states with direct consequences for the United States and the West.
Anna Borshchevskaya is a research analyst at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
[1] The Syrian Monitor, Center for Liberty in the Middle East, Washington, D.C., Apr. 21, 2007.
[2] "2008 Corruption Perceptions Index," Transparency International, Berlin, accessed May 4, 2010.
[3] "2009 Corruption Perceptions Index," Transparency International, Berlin, accessed May 4, 2010.
[4] Doing Business 2010: Reforming through Difficult Times, The World Bank, Washington, D.C., Table 1.3, p. 4.
[5] "Background Note: Syria," U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, Washington, D.C., Feb. 17, 2010.
[6] Author interview with analyst for Western firm in Damascus, Damascus, Aug. 13, 2008.
[7] Eliyahu Kanovsky, "Syria's Troubled Economic Future," Middle East Quarterly, June 1997, 23-9.
[8] Business Intelligence Middle East (Dubai), Dec. 21, 2004; "Syrian Arab Republic: 2008 Article IV Consultation," Country Report No. 09/55, International Monetary Fund, Washington, D.C., Feb. 2009, p. 9.
[9] "Syrian Arab Republic: 2008 Article IV Consultation," Country Report No. 09/55.
[10] "World Economic Outlook Database," International Monetary Fund, Washington, D.C., Apr. 2010, accessed May 8, 2010.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Nimrod Raphaeli, "Syria's Fragile Economy," The Middle East Review of International Affairs (MEMRI), June 2007, p. 37.
[13] Ibid, p. 45, 35.
[14] "Syrian Arab Republic—2009 Article IV Consultation Preliminary Conclusions of the IMF Mission," International Monetary Fund, Washington, D.C., Dec. 21, 2009.
[15] Heba El Laithy and Khalid Abu-Ismail, "Poverty in Syria 1996-2004, Diagnosis and Pro-Poverty Considerations," United Nations Development Programme, New York, June 2005, p. 1.
[16] Al-Thawra (Damascus), Jan. 22, 2008, in "Syria: Population Growth Exceeded Food Production Rate," MEMRI Economic Blog, Jan. 22, 2008.
[17] Al-Thawra, Mar. 11, 2010, in "Syria: 5-Year Plan Failed to Meet Objectives," MEMRI Economic Blog, Mar. 3, 2010.
[18] The New York Times, Aug. 15, 2007.
[19] The New York Times, Aug. 15, 2007.
[20] The Moscow Times, May 12, 2010.
[21] "Background Note: Syria," Feb. 17, 2010.
[22] Author telephone interview with Nimrod Raphaeli, Washington, D.C., Mar. 2, 2009.
[23] Arabnews.com, May 27, 2010.
[24] Author telephone interview with Volker Perthes, director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Berlin, Mar. 5, 2009.
[25] Paul J. Sullivan, "Perspective: Waters, Wars, Wheat, Watts, Waste and Wasta Add Up to Syria's Liquid Worries," Circle of Blue-WaterNews (Traverse City, Mich.), Feb. 16, 2010.
[26] Al-Thawra (Damascus), Jan. 22, 2008, in "Syria: Population Growth Exceeded Food Production Rate."
[27] Author calculations: See "Regional Forecast Detail: The Middle East & North Africa," Prospects for the Global Economy 2010, The World Bank, Washington, D.C., accessed May 10, 2010.
[28] Andrew Tabler, "Global Economic Crisis Boosts Utility of U.S. Sanctinos on Syria," PolicyWatch, no. 1482, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Washington, D.C., Feb. 26, 2009.
[29] Author calculations: See World Economic Outlook Database, Apr. 2010.
[30] The National (Abu Dhabi), Mar. 3, 2010.
[31] "2010 UNHCR country operations profile: Syrian Arab Republic," The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, accessed May 14, 2010; The National, Mar. 3, 2010.
[32] The National, Mar. 3, 2010.
[33] Author interview with Bashar Elsbihi, Washington executive director, National Salvation Front in Syria, Washington, D.C., Apr. 16, 2009.
[34] Author interview with analyst for Western firm in Damascus, Damascus, Aug. 13, 2008.
[35] Alan George, Syria, Neither Bread Nor Freedom (London: Zed Books, 2003), p. 33.
[36] See, for example, Farid N. Ghadry, "Syrian Reform: What Lies Beneath," Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2005, pp. 61-70.
[37] BBC News, June 11, 2000.
[38] Mona Yacoubian and Scott Lasensky, "Dealing with Damascus. Seeking a Greater Return on U.S.-Syria Relations," The Center for Preventive Action, Council on Foreign Relations, New York, CSR 33, June 2008, pp. 10-1.
[39] At-Tiyar as-Sooriy ad-Dimocratiy (Coventry, U.K.), July 12, 2006.
[40] Al-Tiyar al-Sooriy al-Dimocratiy, July 12, 2006.
[41] Ghadry, "Syrian Reform: What Lies Beneath," pp. 61-70.
[42] "Qaaima biAhm 100 rijal 'amaal, fi Sooriya, wa Rami Makhluf yaghiib, 'anha," Al-Iqtisadi (Damascus), Apr. 30, 2009.
[43] "2007 Corruption Perceptions Index," Transparency International, Berlin, accessed May 4, 2010.
[44] "2008 Corruption Perceptions Index," Transparency International.
[45] "2009 Corruption Perceptions Index," Transparency International.
[46] "2010 Index of Economic Freedom: Syria," The Heritage Foundation, Washington, D.C., accessed May 26, 2010.
[47] "2010 Index of Economic Freedom: Libya, Iran," The Heritage Foundation, Washington, D.C., accessed May 14, 2010.
[48] "2010 Index of Economic Freedom: Syria"; "2010 Index of Economic Freedom: Property Freedom," The Heritage Foundation, Washington, D.C., accessed May 10, 2010.
[49] "2010 Index of Economic Freedom, Ten Economic Freedoms of Syria," Heritage Foundation, Washington, D.C., accessed May 4, 2010.
[50] Obaida Hamad, "The Cancer Within," SyriaToday (Damascus), July 2008, p. 16.
[51] Author telephone interview with Volker Perthes, Mar. 5, 2009.
[52] Søren Schmidt, "The Developmental Role of the State in the Middle East: Lessons from Syria," presented at the Economic Research Forum 14th Annual Conference—Institutions and Economics Development, Cairo, Dec. 28-30, 2007.
[53] Volker Perthes, Syria under Bashar al-Asad: Modernisation and the Limits of Change, Adelphi Paper 336 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 38.
[54] Author interview with Bashar Elsbihi, Apr. 16, 2009.
[55] Author e-mail correspondence with Bente Aika Scheller, country director, Heinrich Boell Stiftung, Afghanistan, Apr. 8-11, 2010; Economist Intelligence Unit, London, Oct. 14, 2003.
[56] Author interview with analyst for Western firm in Damascus, Damascus, Aug. 13, 2008.
[57] "World Economic Outlook Database," Apr. 2010.
[58] "Syrian Arab Republic, Country Brief," The World Bank, Washington, D.C., Mar. 2010.
[59] The Washington Post, May 26, 2010.
[60] "Background Note: Syria," Feb. 17, 2010.
[61] Author interview with anonymous source, Damascus, Aug. 24, 2008.
[62] Raphaeli, "Syria's Fragile Economy."
[63] Author interview with anonymous source, Damascus, Syria, Aug. 24, 2008.
[64] Ibid.
[65] "Syria: Code of Good Practices on Transparency in Monetary Policy Article IV," EStandardsForum, Financial Standards Foundation, New York, Aug. 2008.
[66] Ibid.
[67] "Country Report Syria: Economic Performance," Economist Intelligence Unit, London, May 2010.
[68] "IMF Executive Board Concludes 2009 Article IV Consultations with the Syrian Arab Republic," International Monetary Fund, Washington, D.C., Mar. 25, 2010.
[69] "Syria: Overall Standards Summary," EStandardsForum, Financial Standards Foundation, New York, Aug. 2008.
[70] Author interview with anonymous source, Damascus, Syria, Aug. 24, 2008.
[71] Ibid.
[72] Ibid.
[73] Executive Order 13460, "Blocking Property of Additional Persons in Connection with the National Emergency with Respect to Syria," United States Department of Treasury, Washington, D.C., Feb. 15, 2008.
[74] Executive Order 13338, "Blocking Property of Certain Persons and Prohibiting the Export of Certain Goods to Syria," United States Department of Treasury, Washington, D.C., May 13, 2004.
[75] "Treasury Targets Rami Makhluf's Companies," United States Department of Treasury, Washington, D.C., July 10, 2008.
[76] "Rami Makhluf Designated for Benefiting from Syrian Corruption," United States Department of Treasury, Washington, D.C., Feb. 21, 2008.
[77] Executive Order 13460, Feb. 15, 2008.
[78] Author interviews with U.S. Department of Treasury officials: Stephanie Aken, international economist; Hagar Hajjar, Middle East policy analyst; Dan Moger, Middle East policy advisor, Washington, D.C., Mar. 6, 2009.
[79] The Washington Post, Feb. 22, 2008.
[80] Tabler, "Global Economic Crisis Boosts Utility of U.S. Sanctions on Syria."
[81] Andrew Tabler, "How to React to a Reactor," Foreign Affairs, Apr. 19, 2010.
[82] Ibid.
[83] David Schenker and Matthew Levitt, "Dinner in Damascus: What Did Iran Ask of Hizballah?" PolicyWatch, no. 1637, Mar. 2, 2010.
[84] The National, May 17, 2010.
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7)Ignborance as Authenticity
By Joe Klein
I was struck by this comment by a voter in today's New York Times account of last night's U.S. Senate debate in Delaware:
While Mr. Coons had broader range on issues and current events, he sometimes seemed mean-spirited. When Ms. O'Donnell asked whether a company he was connected to would benefit from the clean energy bill, he scoffed, “It was difficult for me to understand from her question what she was talking about.”
That could just serve to reinforce Ms. O'Donnell's image, which has had deep resonance this election season — that of an ordinary person trying to bring common sense to Washington.
That appealed to Alexandra Gawel, 23, a sociology major at the university who has worked her way through college as a waitress.
“She is someone I can relate to,” Ms. Gawel said, outside the debate hall in the late afternoon. “She's not had everything handed to her.”
This is a classic American myth, perpetrated by Hollywood, starting with Mr. Smith Goes to Washington--and it's a lovely fantasy. Mr. Smith was an inspired amateur. He followed the news and astonished his local oligarch puppet-master by actually reading the bills he was about to vote on, then making up his own mind. He was part of generation that took citizenship seriously and kept itself informed--even the "average" folks, our grandparents, who came home from work on the assembly line and read the evening newspaper (which actually had news in it, unlike the crapola sensationalism that passes for news on cable TV). I'd take a couple of average citizens like that in the Senate anytime, especially if they made the effort to learn the issues once they got there.
But Christine O'Donnell is not like that. She is attractive, to some, because she doesn't know anything. She couldn't name a Supreme Court decision she disagreed with, not even Roe v. Wade. There is no way she could ever be confused with a member of the elites; there is no way she could be confused with an above average high school student. Her ignorance, therefore, makes her authentic--the holy grail of latter-day American politics: she's a real person, not like those phony politicians. In that sense, she--and the lifeboat filled with other Tea Party know-nothings--follow in the wake of our leading exemplar of ignorant authenticity, Sarah Palin (who seems every bit as unaware of public policy--she certainly never talks about it--as she was when a desperate and petulant John McCain chose her to be his running mate).
There is something profoundly diseased about a society that idolizes its ignoramuses and disdains its experts. It is a society that no longer takes itself seriously. This is not a complaint about the current Republican tide, by the way: that's part of the natural flow of political life, a result of the economy and the President's abstruse brand of politics. I'll welcome the arrival in Washington of smart Republicans like Ohio's Rob Portman; I won't welcome an ideologue like Rand Paul, but at least he's done some thinking about what constitutes good public policy (although his notion of such is puerile and ultimately fatal to a democracy). A businesswoman like Carly Fiorina certainly has the qualifications to be a Senator, even if you disagree with her politics. Christine O'Donnell does not, nor does Sharron Angle, nor does Ron Johnson in Wisconsin; nor does Carl Paladino have the qualifications to be governor of New York.
But they are all certifiably non-elite. Steve Rattner, on the other hand, is a card-carrying member of the financial elites--and his story may help explain why the public has so little time for the Establishment these days. Rattner is a journalist turned investment banker, an Ivy Leaguer, a denizen of Manhattan's happiest haunts and of summers on Martha's Vineyard, vacation spot of choice for Democratic Presidents. He did a fine job as Barack Obama's auto czar; the GM and Chrysler bailouts seem to be working brilliantly, saving thousands upon thousands of good American jobs. I know Steve pretty well; I've had dinner at his house; we've had good conversations; our kids have played together.
He also is lucky that he's not going to jail. The Securities and Exchange Commission has fined him $5 million and banned him from finance, for a time, because he and his partners apparently attempted to bribe major pension funds in New York to invest with them. In addition to Manhattan and Martha's Vineyard, Rattner lives in Private Equity World, a particularly shady and opaque precinct of Wall Street, where gazillions have been made through leveraged buyouts that have caused nothing but pain in the middle-class neighborhoods of America. People like Steve have populated Administrations of both parties at the highest levels, especially in the Treasury Department (indeed, Rattner once hoped to be Treasury Secretary). From Bob Rubin to Hank Paulson, recent Presidents have turned to financiers who gained fame by making deals rather than by making products (the current Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, never was a Wall Street dealmaker, but he comes from that world). Their disastrous chicanery is part of the reason--a good part of the reason--why voters are rebelling against expertise this year.
It occurs to me that George W. Bush had the right idea the first time around, hiring Paul O'Neill, who came from the world of manufacturing, as his Treasury Secretary--and then, of course, he fired O'Neill, who couldn't stand the irresponsibility of Bush's economic policies.
I am not saying that Steve Rattner is directly to blame for Christine O'Donnell. But he is part of a generation of financiers, the most respected figures in our society, who have been disgraced utterly by their greed and shenanigans--and who have made the world safe for Mama Grizzlies. This is how a great power wanes. This is why Barack Obama's next Treasury Secretary has to be a successful business executive with an unimpeachable record of creating jobs, not financial parlor tricks.
7a)What's So Funny About American Voters?
By Russ Smith
.
Political experts like Joe Klein despair about the stupidity of their fellow citizens.
Maybe Time’s Joe Klein was having a really crummy day. Maybe he’s feeling the pressure of blogging about the midterm elections—in addition to writing old-fashioned columns that afford him more than 15 minutes to gather his thoughts—so that Politico won’t embarrass his magazine yet again by coming up with a “scoop.” Or maybe the 64-year-old just hates his profession now and is ready to chuck it all and write non-political books, as he did a lifetime ago (1980) with the fine Woody Guthrie: A Life. I’m just speculating here, for it’s really a riddle as to why Klein would toss off such a condescending and hateful “Swampland” post about how his fellow American citizens are mostly idiots.
Reacting to a Senate candidate’s debate held in Delaware on Oct. 13 between Republican Christine O’Donnell and Democrat Chris Coons, Klein, after some requisite O’Donnell-bashing, writes: “There is something profoundly diseased about a society that idolizes its ignoramuses and disdains its experts. It is a society that no longer takes itself seriously.” I understand that the world moves a lot faster than a generation ago, when I read (and enjoyed) Klein’s political dispatches for Boston’s The Real Paper and Rolling Stone, but surely it’s not all that different than just two years ago when Klein and his ilk were celebrating the American electorate for its wisdom in electing Barack Obama as president. (He now labels the President’s politics as “abstruse.”) Is Klein saying that in 2008 our society didn’t take itself, or politics, seriously? If so, there are about 100,000 articles and scores of books that would claim otherwise.
Klein travels back to the 1940s, invoking the hero Jefferson Smith in Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, as the kind of “inspired amateur” who believed in the sanctity of government and the ideals upon which the United States was founded. He says, “[Smith] was part of a generation that took citizenship seriously and kept itself informed—even the ‘average’ folks, our grandparents, who came home from work on the assembly line and read the evening newspaper (which actually had news in it, unlike the crapola sensationalism that passes for news on cable TV). I’d take a couple of average citizens like that in the Senate anytime, especially if they made the effort to learn the issues once they got there.”
Klein specifically objects to someone like O’Donnell (or Sharron Angle, Ron Johnson and the “Tea Party know-nothings”) donning, perhaps subconsciously, the “lovely fantasy” that Capra’s movie represented. Capra was often full of malarkey, but so is Klein if he really believes that “average” citizens in the 1940s dutifully returned home from the “assembly line” and boned up on the political issues of the day. Some did, some didn’t, much like today. People read evening newspapers back then for late sports results, financial news and breaking stories, many of them about “sensational” crimes or the latest Hollywood scandal. Voting patterns have changed since the mid-20th century, and while apathy over elections has increased, so has the pool of people eligible to vote—blacks, of course, immigrants and young men and women who are 18 rather than 21. And American citizens are indisputably better educated than their grandparents.
So, once Klein is finished spitting out his diatribe about the swell of unqualified candidates this year—he must’ve forgotten Nebraska Sen. Roman Hruska’s 1970 defense of “mediocre” judges, politicians and the similarly mediocre Americans who deserved representation—he tramples on the “elites.” By way of example, he points to Steven Rattner, the onetime journalist (and close friend of New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.) who left the field for finance, made a fortune, and who recently copped a plea with the Securities and Exchange Commission for alleged bribery. Rattner, who briefly worked in the Obama administration, was fined $5 million and is at least temporarily barred from the industry.
Typically, getting into the inter-mingling of elites, as a media macher, Klein is on a first-name basis with Rattner. He writes: “I know Steve pretty well; I’ve had dinner at his house; we’ve had good conversations; our kids have played together.” And while Klein says he’s not directly blaming “Steve” for the rise of “Mama Grizzlies,” (or past Wall Street heavies like “Hank” Paulson or “Bob” Rubin), it’s because of men like him that someone like Christine O’Donnell could be nominated by her party for the office of senator. “[Rattner] is part of a generation of financiers, the most respected members in our society, who have been disgraced utterly by their greed and chicanery,” and as a result the inmates are now poised to take over the asylum.
It was always my understand, at least according to surveys produced by “experts,” that doctors, entrepreneurs, firemen and religious leaders were “the most respected members in our society,” and not millionaire dealmakers, but then again, my kids have never played with those of Steven Rattner.
When the Republicans took over Congress in 1994, the late ABC anchorman Peter Jennings proclaimed that American voters had a “temper tantrum.” I didn’t agree with Jennings 16 years ago, but maybe he was on to something, for more than any other profession, it appears that political reporters and pundits like Klein are the ones who need a time out.
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8)Editor's Notes: A most intriguing ambassador
By DAVID HOROVITZ
Matthew Gould, Britain’s first Jewish ambassador to Israel, has no hesitation in acknowledging ‘my love of Israel’ in an interview.
Talkbacks (12)
Matthew Gould says he hasn’t counted how many ambassadors Britain has appointed to the modern state of Israel, but estimates it “must be in the low teens.” Of these envoys, he is likely one of the youngest – not yet having turned 40 – but far more intriguingly, he is certainly the first who is Jewish.
And Gould is not incidentally Jewish, or awkwardly Jewish, as seems so often to be the case with British Jews who rise high in politics and diplomacy. He is passionately and comfortably Jewish.
For me, an ex-British Jew a few years older, discussing his childhood and background over coffee last week made for a conversation in which plenty of his experiences resonated with mine.
Gould is charming and reasonably candid – choosing to vouchsafe a dramatic, defining incident from his family’s past. He was, in fact, as candid as a newly appointed, unprecedentedly Jewish ambassador to that problematic State of Israel could possibly be expected to be in an interview with the editor of a newspaper whose editorial line on blame and possibilities in the peace process often differs quite significantly from that of the British Foreign Office.
Meeting him less than two months after I had interviewed his departing predecessor Sir Tom Phillips, it was impossible not to be struck by the similarity of some of their answers on those British policies, and by the contrast this constituted with Israeli norms. Whereas our prime minister and his foreign minister, to take the most glaring example, often set out two entirely conflicting world views, the outgoing and the incoming British envoy, no matter how different their backgrounds, plainly read from the very same diplomatic rule book. Questions as to whether Gould’s Jewish heritage might have engendered a more forgiving attitude than Phillips had displayed toward Israeli claims in Judea and Samaria, for instance, were swiftly and efficiently dispatched.
Still Phillips, self-evidently, could not have made this kind of comment: “I do think that one of the things that being Jewish and having my background gives me is an appreciation of what security means to the Israeli people, to the Jewish people... From a very young age I was taught about the struggle for independence, the Six Days War and so on. I think I can say I have a more visceral understanding of what security means, and what craving for security means.”
The new ambassador, who was awarded an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) at the precocious age of 26 for his role in arranging the Blair government’s London Conference on Nazi Gold in December 1997, is razor-sharp, confident, extroverted and disarming – a highly potent combination. It lies at the heart of his career success, which has notably included an effective stint as deputy head of mission for Britain in Teheran. There too, true to form, he made no secret of his Jewishness, went to shul, and had no hesitation in intervening on behalf of the Jewish community and other minority communities when appropriate.
Although Israel “loomed large in my childhood,” Gould does not presume to know the country inside out. Far from it. He spoke to British Jews and British Muslims at length about this region before coming here. And he intends to speak to Israeli Jews and Arabs, and anybody else, as he shapes his thinking now that he’s arrived.
“My most important task here is not to come and wag a finger and tell the Israelis what the answers are,” he says at one point.
“The single most important thing I can do here is to listen – and to listen not just to the people who agree with British policy, but to go round the country and talk to the Right and the Left. Talk to settlers. Talk to Israeli Arabs. Talk to the religious and secular.
And really get a sense for myself of where Israeli thinking is, and where the divides are in Israeli society, and what motivates people, and what their fears are, and what their worries are. I need to spend the next few months doing that. And that’s what I’m going to do.”
His earnest, affable appeal is such, I suspect, that his Israeli protagonists will pour out their hearts to Gould, this tantalizing appointee who is both one of our own and one of them.
His appointment, as he rightly asserts, “sends a nice signal about the maturity and place of the Jewish community in the UK.” But it should not be misinterpreted: “At the end of the day,” as he takes pains to stress, “I’m here as the British ambassador, not the Jewish ambassador.”
Excerpts:
It’s quite a precedent – being the first Jewish ambassador.
As a British Jew I’m incredibly proud to be doing this job. To be Jewish and to represent my country to the State of Israel, that’s something very special. The degree to which it’s a big deal geopolitically, I don’t know, but for me it’s a big deal. That said, I don’t think I was chosen because I’m Jewish. I don’t think I was chosen in spite of being Jewish. I think the Foreign Office decided that I was the right person for the job. They did that knowing that I was Jewish. But it wasn’t a deciding factor either way.
It sends a nice signal about the maturity and place of the Jewish community in the UK, and about how the UK sees the Jewish community, that it will send a member of that community to be the ambassador here.
I think as well it helps give the lie to this idea of the Foreign Office as a sort of anti-Semitic nest of vipers. When I joined the Foreign Office my friends and family were queuing up to say to me, “You’re mad.” It’s never been my experience. The idea that British Middle East policy is run by a sort of tight clique of Arabists is no longer true either. The Foreign Office has changed a great deal. If you just look at the individuals who run the Middle East policy, it’s just not the case any more that they’ve all spent 30 years of their lives in Arabic-speaking countries.
Why did you want to do this job?
It is the most extraordinary job we’ve got in the foreign service.
The whole question of peace in the Middle East, it’s for decades been the holy grail of international diplomacy. To have a chance to work on that, possibly to contribute something to it, is extraordinary. To be able to do that and at the same time help promote the wider relationship between the UK and Israel, is also very important.
I grew up in London and always felt an undertone of anti-Semitism. Did you share that sense?
Actually, very little. And it’s not because I wasn’t looking for it, because I’m very sensitive about it, as every Jew is. I’ve had a very small number of anti-Semitic comments, and I put them firmly into the category of stupid rather than anything more dangerous.
There is anti-Semitism in the UK, but I don’t think it’s a fundamentally anti-Semitic society. I don’t agree with the suggestion that it’s a place where you have to be brave to be Jewish or where the Jewish community is under serious threat.
What is your family background? How Jewish are you?
(Laughs) Do you want a percentage?
If you like, but I’m talking about the degree to which it is important to you.
My grandfather came from Warsaw; he came over in the 1920s. We grew up in north west London. I didn’t go to a Jewish school, but I went to a school [St. Paul’s] which had a big Jewish population. When Christian kids went off to assembly every day, we went off to Jewish prayers. I went to cheder from when I was about six to when I was about 16. I went to Jewish summer camp every summer. When I was at university [at Cambridge], I spent one summer as a counselor at a Jewish kids’ camp in the States. A large part of my life was going to shul on the High Holydays in religious terms, but in the last couple of years my wife [Celia] and I have been going much more to our shul in London.
I feel thoroughly Jewish. It’s a large part of my identity, but more importantly, it’s a part of my identity I’m entirely comfortable with. I’m asked about this issue between being British and being Jewish, and I have to say that from my perspective, in my skin, I feel no problem, no tension.
There’s no issue to be resolved. I’m very proudly British. I can hardly be British ambassador and not be. And I’m very proudly Jewish. And from my perspective those two sit very comfortably together.
You lost relatives in the Holocaust?
My grandfather was one of 10. Three including him got out before the Nazis took over, and the others all died. His part of the family was decimated. He left Warsaw in the 1920s because of an incident that has shaped my family quite considerably.
He was coming back from yeshiva one evening through the park near where he lived and saw two Cossacks beating up an old Jewish man. He went over to stop them and found it was his own father. He was a strong man and ended up beating them up.
At which point he had to leave the country.
So he was then a refugee around Europe for several years.
He had a trade. He could mend knitting machines. It was a source of great pride to him that, whichever country he went to, he would arrive one day and start work the next. He ended up in Birmingham because he met my grandmother, and that’s how the family started in the UK. That story looms very large in my family’s consciousness…
Let me take you from that to Israel: Here was a country that was set up, too late to save people from the Holocaust, but to ensure that there wouldn’t be a climate in which Jews wouldn’t be defenseless against hostile majorities in Diaspora communities if they didn’t want to be. So where did Israel fit into your life growing up – into your psyche personally? You never thought about coming to live here yourself permanently?
No. I feel very comfortable being British. My job is obviously in the service of the UK.
I’m talking about when you were younger. Were you in Zionist youth movements?
I mostly went to the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues’ (youth movement), and on those summer camps we learned a lot about Israel. About the founding of Israel. About modern Israel. About what Israel has to offer. And my grandparents took me as well. I remember, I must have been 9 or 10, being taken here. And rather than just going to Eilat, we had several weeks of going round, being shown round, seeing Masada, going up to the north, into the Negev, and seeing Ben- Gurion’s house. And when I left university, before I started in the foreign service [in 1993], I came back and spent a couple of months backpacking around, never thinking I’d end up as ambassador here. So I’d been a good number of times.
Israel had loomed large in my childhood as a country which, as proud British Jews, we had a love of and an affinity towards and cared about and which mattered to us. So, yes I was brought up very conscious of Israel, the role that Israel plays for the Jewish people, and learning from a very early age about the threats that Israel has faced and the challenges that Israel has faced.
At the end of the day, I’m here as the British ambassador, not the Jewish ambassador.
But I do think that one of the things that being Jewish and having my background gives me is an appreciation of what security means to the Israeli people, to the Jewish people. Because in my family’s history we’ve known what insecurity means and the price of insecurity. So it’s not just a political concept. It’s something very, very important and tangible. But also because from a very young age I was taught about the struggle for independence, the six days war and so on. I think I can say I have a more visceral understanding of what security means, and what craving for security means, than I might have otherwise.
You have relatives all over the country. In settlements as well?
Not as far as I know.
As a British ambassador who is Jewish, and has a family that fled Europe, I think if I was sitting here as the current prime minister of Israel, I would probably be saying to you: “I hope you recognize Judea and Samaria as the heartland of the Jewish historic narrative. Does that speak to you, Mr. Ambassador? Do you not understand how much we resent the notion that these areas are consigned to the definition of ‘occupied,’ over which we have no rights, when we feel so strongly that we have a peerless claim?” How does that resonate with you?
Like a continuing strong majority of Israelis, I feel very strongly, as does my government, that ultimately Israel’s peaceful, secure, democratic, Jewish future lies in the two-state solution. And working from that, the two-state solution requires the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. So we approach everything through that prism.
I don’t think it is remotely in tension with my background, or my love of Israel, or my desperation that Israel should find the security it wants, to wish for the creation of that Palestinian state. Because I think in the longterm -- and actually, worryingly, not even necessarily that much in the long-term -- it is heavily in Israel’s security interests that that state should be created.
I’m not saying it’s very easy and the answer is obvious, and all Israel has to do is X, Y and Z, and it’ll all be sorted. I’ve never believed that. If it was that easy, we’d have sorted it. But I do firmly believe that the answer has to be a two-state solution.
That two-state solution will mean the West Bank and Gaza, with whatever appropriate land swaps are agreed, becoming a Palestinian state.
Do you think Israel has been messing that up, that Israel could have done more, that the settlement enterprise has been damaging?
Our view is that, first of all, settlements, we consider them to be illegal. Just as important, we believe they corrode the prospect of peace. Settlement building undermines the trust you need to create a dialogue. And that trust is in too short supply at the moment.
And they are creating facts on the ground which won’t make the creation of a Palestinian state easier, but more difficult. For that reason, settlements give us great cause for concern. We’ve been very clear and straightforward about that. When I speak to Israeli ministers or politicians or others, they know where we’re coming from on this.
Does Britain entertain any notion that that blanket designation might be open to question? Official Israel believes that it is wrong to claim under international law that the settlements are illegal. Is that something where Britain made its mind up a long time ago, and that’s not going to change?
Not just Britain but pretty much the entire international community. We would say that in international legal terms, our very strong view is that the territories are occupied, therefore everything that follows from that also, and that there is no basis to change that.
And therefore of course Israel should extend the settlement freeze now? And do nothing to prejudice the possibility of the direct talks moving forward smoothly?
We start from the basis that we don’t believe they should be building settlements at all. So it’s an obvious logical step from that to say that we support the settlement freeze. We particularly support the settlement freeze now because we believe it will help create the right environment for peace talks.
And what then to make of the fact that for nine months of the 10, when this unprecedented Israeli settlement freeze was in place, the Palestinians refused to come to the negotiating table?
We are where we are. We had a month of talks. The focus now needs to be on how we ensure that process continues. I’m not sure it’s necessarily helpful to go back and start allocating blame for this period of things not happening or that period of things not happening.
You could set up a whole separate process to do that. Our focus is very much: Where do we take it from here?
Does Britain feel that the onus here is overwhelmingly on Israel, and that if the Israelis were more forthcoming, peace would be attainable?
Peace needs to be made on both sides. I’m asked repeatedly about what happened after the withdrawal from Gaza, and that the withdrawal from Gaza did not lead to a peaceful border there, but rather a flood of rocket attacks. That underlines to me the importance of a peace settlement on both sides – a negotiated settlement where both sides have bought in.
Can I take you way back, as the guy who’s come from Britain: Is it not Britain that messed this region up in the first place, with the way this territory was divided, with the creation of Jordan immensely complicating matters? Did Britain not fail the Jewish sovereign revival here by carving up the territory ridiculously?
I’m not going to be issuing an apology on behalf of the UK for our history in the region. I know that I’m here carrying an awful lot of historical baggage, and that the relationship between Britain and the region, and the relationship between Britain and Israel, is a very warm and important one, but it’s not a straightforward one… There are some very difficult, painful memories on both sides. Now, as ambassador I’m incredibly pleased that where we are now is we have a very warm relationship, albeit with certain differences and certain issues. In trade and culture and science and universities, there are fantastic things going on that mean, on both sides, we’ve moved on from that history.
Sir Tom spoke about a popular British drift away from Israel. Is that a sense that you share?
The British public continues to support Israel’s right to exist, but there is a concern about the occupation and about some of the activities that the occupation has resulted in.
That concern is growing.
Now there is also a small number who do want to take that concern one step further and turn it into delegitimization. I don’t believe that delegitimization represents the bulk of where British people are. The quickest and most effective and probably the only way to really tackle it, and tackle its very corrosive effect, is to pursue peace vigorously.
And we should be pursuing peace not because of the delegitimizers but in the knowledge that actually the single thing that will take the wind out of their sails is a successful search for peace. I should just say the British government is absolutely, wholly opposed to boycotts of Israel and we will continue to be so.
There is a sense here that Britain underestimates how traumatic the second intifada was, that there’s been a failure to internalize the degree to which the supposedly moderate Palestinian leadership was complicit in a deliberate resort to a strategic terrorist onslaught against Israel, and that there’s an underestimation of the residual trauma and the reservations and skepticism about the Palestinian leadership now.
I would be a very shoddy ambassador if I came out here thinking I knew what all the answers were. I would be a very foolish ambassador if I came out here thinking I knew and understood what motivates Israelis and where their fears are and where their worries are. But of course we understand the real absence of trust that there is on both sides, and understand that a very large element of a successful path towards peace will be building up that trust.
Do you think Tony Blair’s support for Israel was a driver for radicalization in parts of the British Muslim community?
What goes on in the Middle East, and in Afghanistan and Pakistan, is one of the causes around which Islamist radicals rally.
That is self-evident and demonstrable. The UK’s policy to those regions is also one of the causes around which British violent extremists rally as well. But it is absolutely not our view that the tail should wag the dog. Our policies should be the right policies towards those regions. We should regard as absolutely illegitimate any view that says: because of the reaction of violent extremists, we should change our policies towards those areas.
Do you think that Britain’s policies, or Israel’s actions, or the failure to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, can be described as legitimizing a resort to violence?
No, absolutely not. It is absolutely legitimate to have a concern about what is going on in the Middle East. It is absolutely legitimate for British people regardless of their background to have a real worry about, for example, the treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza, or any number of other issues which are a cause for concern. But it is never a legitimate basis for resorting to violence.
What was it like being a British diplomat who is Jewish in Iran? And what can you tell Israelis, who see a leadership there that is viciously hostile to this country?
I didn’t hide being Jewish there. I went to synagogue, I met with members of the Jewish community there – the leadership. I’d go to Seder night and Jewish homes. I was made to feel very welcome. We as an embassy and as a government made it very clear that we were watching what was going on with the Jewish community there. And we did intervene, for example, when Jewish cemeteries were being threatened. We intervened with some effect at key points on behalf of the Jewish and indeed other minority communities.
The Israeli public is right to be deeply concerned about the threat from Iran. The British public and government are also deeply concerned. To have a government which is pursuing its nuclear program as it is, at the same time as its president is calling for the destruction of Israel, is a profound worry. Britain and Israel, along with France and the US and other countries, are working rightly, incredibly closely, about what we do about that.
Iran is intensely complex, almost impossible to predict, extremely difficult to understand.
Power structures, and the motivations, are extremely subtle. But the regime, for all its policies and its rhetoric, is not an irrational regime. It is not a regime which is suicidal. Quite the reverse. It’s a regime that has a very clear focus on its own survival.
And we have a policy of building up pressure on that regime, through the ratcheting up of sanctions. And sanctions have now got to the stage where they are starting to have a very serious and real impact.
If the worse came to the worst, and they did attain a nuclear bomb capability, they are sufficiently rational not to use it against Israel?
It is absolutely unhelpful to speculate about how we would handle an Iran with a nuclear capacity, because our single goal is to stop that from happening. Talking about how we would handle it if we failed sends entirely the wrong signal and does nobody any good.
By definition, then, this is still a doable aim? Iran can yet be stopped? It has not achieved near-breakout capability, and mastered everything, and it’s simply a matter of time and will for them?
Have a good look at the Iranian economy.
Have a look at its oil production, which is coming down. Look at the state of its finances. Look at how much pressure the Iranian economy is under. That’s what gives me some confidence that our policy is actually a viable one.
That Iran can yet be stopped?
That the Iranian government can be persuaded that there is a better course of action than the one it’s pursuing.
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