The West Bank

The West Bank

Without an Israeli extension of the building freeze at the West Bank, Palestinian compromise was somewhere between improbable and impossible. This was understood- or said to be understood- by pretty much everyone involved in peace talks early this month. And yet, the Israeli government did not continue the freeze. As American leaders attempt to compromise with the nations' leaders, construction is already underway on the West Bank.

General optimism for the talks was minimal, to be fair. But this new development doesn't necessarily destroy the proceedings. While a complete solution being reached during this next round of talks is unlikely, some progress is better than none. The US special envoy to the Middle East has already begun to restart talks with Israel to continue the freeze, at least until some compromise is reached by the Israeli and Palestinian governments.
And progress is still completely possible. The Obama Administration's new focus on Israel, combined with the newfound willingness of both parties to meet is conducive to some progress at least. The two-state solution, the plan most commonly discussed in connection to the conflict, has its supporters. In the plan, an independent state of Palestine would be created to coexist with a Jewish state of Israel. While this may be the most popular plan for the people- Palestinians are given their own nation to rule as they like, the Israelis do not have to accept Palestinians as a people, it may not be a solution to the violent conflicts that are currently going on. In fact, a two-state solution may cause violence to escalate.
In a practical sense, the one-state solution works best. However, the willingness for the Israelis to grant citizenship to the Palestinians is minimal, and the Palestinian leadership- if not the people at large- are less than interested in sharing power and land with the Israelis. So, that leaves a two-state solution. If the Obama Administration pursues a two-state solution during talks with the Israelis and Palestinians, they must work to bridge the gap between the two groups of leaders.
None of this will happen overnight. It may not happen for a long, long time. But some change in that area of the world is better than none, and progress- while no long-term substitute for a solution- could quell some of the violence and create an environment more conducive to the creation either of an independent state of Palestine or a nonviolent merge of the two peoples.

Photo via nytimes.com

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Filibustered!

Filibustered!

It is incomprehensible as to how a legislative body, faced with the necessity of repealing a law that is declared unconstitutional, does not do so. And yet, yesterday Senate Democrats were unable to gather enough support to break a Republican filibuster against a bill that includes a proviso to overturn Don't Ask Don't Tell, the military policy limiting the service of gay soldiers that was recently ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge. Though Democrats courted the support of Maine Republican Susan Collins, who, rhetorically, is in favor of Don't Ask Don't Tell's repeal, Collins did not vote for cloture in the end, along with a handful of Democrats.

However, this legislative battle is unnecessary. Don't Ask Don't Tell was originally created through a presidential edict during the Clinton administration. Therefore, President Obama, as Commander-in-Chief of the military, could simply dissolve the policy. At the very least, President Obama could place a stay on Don't Ask Don't Tell, stopping soldiers from being actively discharged from military service until Congress reaches a policy agreement. President Obama has declared his support for the revocation of the policy, as have a majority of his military advisors, including Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
President Obama has the means to and the political climate conducive to repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell. Between the military and policial leaders condemning Don't Ask Don't Tell and socially prominent figures, like Lady Gaga, leading an offensive against the policy, President Obama should have no political reason not to repeal the policy.
This fight is not about how Republican- and some conservative Democrat- elected officials feel about gay marriage. It is not about any mislead fears they might have about soldiers spreading "the gay", as Rachel Maddow calls it. It isn't even about public opinion about gay marriage or Don't Ask Don't Tell. This is one of those issues where public opinion shouldn't have much weight. Don't Ask Don't Tell is a fight over the most basic of American principles, equality. It is about one party fighting for equality and the other blocking it. It is not just unequal to bar gay soldiers from service, it is against everything that any fight for equality in America has stood for. 

[photo credit: cnn.com]

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Graph of the Week: Growth

Graph of the Week: Growth

Featured on The Huffington Post, Ezra Klein's Washington Post blog and The Rachel Maddow Show, this shows the growth of wealth under all Democratic presidents since 1948 (the blue bars) and all Republican presidents since the same time. Certainly, it is staggering. Not only did every income bracket grow more under the Democratic presidents, they each grew at a relatively similar rate with a slightly higher amount of growth for the lowest income group. That is how the economy should operate, as a mutually progressive rate that keeps wealth growing enough to encourage Americans to prosper but not to create such a division that the top percentile is the only one that experiences real growth. Under Republicans, the exact opposite effect occurred. Growth was uneven and polarized, with the top income bracket swelling (though not even growing as much as it had), and the others growing less and less in descending order. If nothing else, this is, in many ways, a validation of the economic policy of liberals in Congress who, for so long, have been treated as the party who didn't understand "real" America's economic problems. But as this chart so clearly lays out, spending works. It moves the economy forward, it creates jobs and it leads to an economic temprate where mutual prospering occurs.
In a chart, this is why who you vote for matters. And it raises the conundrum more clearly than any before it: why do so many low-income voters vote against their direct economic interest, especially when, like the tea party, they cite current financial conditions as a motivator for their vote?

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Some Light Summer Reading for Our Students

Some Light Summer Reading for Our Students

By Senior Correspondent Devon Maloney 
Boy soldiers, violent civil wars, crushing poverty, absent mothers, alcoholic fathers, galloping consumption, destroyed childhoods and young hardened killers are not what many consider ideal summer reading subjects for most teens laying on the beach.
Angela’s Ashes, the memoirs of Frank McCourt, set the mood for the rest of the book about his darkly dysfunctional family and his “miserable” upbringing with the opening lines, “[w]hen I look back at my childhood I wonder how I survived at all.”
Similarly heart wrenching was A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, the memoir of a boy soldier fighting in the bloody civil war of Sierra Lèon in the late 90s. A Long Way Gone becomes a frightening look into the teen years of Ishmael who turns from a simple, happy rural school boy into a numb killer with the help of constant drugs that erased all of his ethics and human morals.

What do both of these sad stories have in common? They were mandatory summer reading assignments this year for rising freshman and sophomores in Fairfax County Public Schools.
However, this theme of ‘not-so-happily-ever-afters’ doesn’t just apply to what is assigned for summer reading by English teachers. During my recently completed freshman year we read the tragic Shakespeare drama of Romeo and Juliet, John Steinbeck’s un-uplifting novel Of Mice and Men, and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel’s Night.
What are our teachers trying to tell us? Are they saying life is “nasty, brutish, and short” as misanthropic philosopher Thomas Hobbes once said on the human condition?
Don’t get me wrong, I understand the position teachers might be taking in trying to tell their students that life isn’t all Northern Virginian bliss with strip malls and full refrigerators if they can, but is it impossible to have good, insightful, deep piece of literature that gives one a happy view of the world?
While I enjoyed and learned a lot from the book’s I’ve been assigned over the years in school, is it too naïve of me to ask for a lighter piece of literature? I’m hardly asking for teen novels about undead heart throbs or, worse yet, a Chicken Soup for the Teen Soul equivalent.
For example, Three Cups of Tea is a real life story that gives one an insight into modern day issues like the crisis in the Middle East and still leaving the reading with the feeling that there is good in the world while raising insightful questions, representing literary elements, and presenting easily discussable topics for a class room.
“The happy childhood is hardly worth your while,” McCourt said. Please teachers, don’t leave us to believe that unhappy books are the only literature that is worth our while.

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Popular Populists

Popular Populists

Democratic ads heading into the midterms have taken an odd, if not unexpected turn. Liberals and left-leaning moderates have feverishly distanced themselves from the majority party's impressive political accomplishments this year and set themselves up to be angry, populist-style advocates for disenchanted voters, especially Republican ones. Some don't even note being a Democrat (Rep. Glenn Nye's, D-VA, rather conservative seeming video is below). The assumption, at least in Washington, is that the anti-incumbent, and, to a lesser extent, the anti-Democrat, sentiment in the country this voting cycle is so strong that detaching oneself from the many policy goals which were completed last year is the only way to survive the midterms.
To the contrary: many voters' biggest issue with the last Congress is what they consider its inability to bring progress to the nation. A representative who absolves him or herself of responsibility for what is, in actuality, an impressive repertoire of accomplishments, does not help their chances of re-election. If anything, they hurt them. Voters want to see something being done to fix the problems in America. Oftentimes, any action is better than no action
"Its about the conservative movement hating the Republican establishment," Rachel Maddow said of the supposed anti-incumbent attitude. She noted that there was no real comparison in the Democratic party. If this is true- and there are many examples of it being so (Delaware, for instance), then the fear among Democrats shouldn't be that they appear to be, well, Democrats. It should be that they appear to have wasted away the last year.
And they haven't. The Democratic congress accomplished a lot this year, and, for all of the legislations' faults, several of the decades-long Democratic goals were met. Truthfully, if the Democrats cannot learn to focus on their progress and the great things passed this year, they will lose the House, because voters- especially the much sought-after moderates- don't really care if you're a Democrat or a Republican. They care if you're getting things done.

Rep. Glenn Nye (D- VA): Path

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[Don't Forget the] Recovery

[Don't Forget the] Recovery

In March, we said:

In order to stimulate the economy, the US government must fund programs to provide jobs to American people, with a heavy focus on infrastructure spending. Infrastructure spending, or government funding of the building of roads, bridges, schools, etc, provides structure to America's crumbling infrastructure.
American buildings are falling apart. Destruction from natural disasters and simple age still ravage America's infrastructure, and the repair of roads and the like has become one of the most important issues today on a local level. America's buildings affect nearly every American every day, as they go to school, work, or home. The long term maintenance of failing infrastructure will result in incredibly high cost for the American taxpayer. If the problems are not immediately fixed, the financial consequences of quite literally rebuilding America will be great.
Additionally, infrastructure spending provides simple, viable jobs to US workers. In the current economy, with the shockingly high unemployment, workers are in desperate need of work that projects created by infrastructure spending will easily provide.
Often, the government will also hire small businesses to restructure the roads and buildings that must be repaired. Not only does that provide jobs, infrastructure spending funds small business, and, by extension, stimulates the economy on a national level.

Monday, President Obama proposed a 50 billion dollar transit spending plan, which is comprised mostly of infrastructure spending. Certainly, the plan is an important step in cementing the economy as President Obama's continued focus into the midterms, but also to confirm Obama's devotion to providing jobs for Americans. The plan includes an "infrastructure bank," which would be developed and run by the federal government but financed by both public and private investments.
This is the sort of plan that would pay dividends to the American people quickly and in large numbers, so the question arises as to why the plan is so small. Obama, as a senator, was a big proponent of plans like this one, so it isn't a policy-based trepidation on the part of the administration. The package was most likely set at a smaller size in hopes of gaining Republican votes, but didn't the President learn anything from the health care debate? Maybe if he set a higher goal, any 'compromise' set in Congress would be closer to what he actually wanted. Also, the administration was able to pass one of their main (if little-understood) policy goals, banking regulation, with a Republican filibuster and without conservative support. If there's anything that Republican congressmen are possibly inclined to support, it is a package like this one that will provide many jobs in their districts, even though conservative support for infrastructure spending is infrequent.
"1. It’s a good idea 2. It’s much too small 3. It won’t pass anyway — which makes you wonder why the administration didn’t propose a bigger plan, so as to at least make the point that the other party is standing in the way of much needed repair to our roads, ports, sewers, and more– not to mention creating jobs. Once again, they’re striking right at the capillaries," economist Paul Krugman wrote on his New York Times blog, Conscience of a Liberal on Tuesday.
Krugman is right. If only because of obstruction for obstruction's sake, passage- at least of this version- of the plan is unlikely. But this doesn't change the fact that the administration essentially threw away a good chance to appear completely in support of and devoted to creating jobs. Now, if the Obama administration wishes to use this economic focus to their advantage come November, they ought to try their hardest to get the new proposal passed.

[Photo credit: nytimes.com]

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New Media, Old Media

New Media, Old Media

Sometimes it seems as though the favorite stories of newspaper editors are those about the impeding end of the newspaper business. It appears to be generally accepted that the way of the future is cable news shows and online, fast-streaming news, free or otherwise.
The problem with the switch Americans have essentially already made to online news is the true downfall of new media: it gives Americans what they want- exactly what they want- instead of what they really need. Cable and network shows cater to the wants of Americans, providing scandalous celebrity stories and airy fluff pieces. On the internet, the people are the station editors- they can choose Perez Hilton over CNN, Hulu instead of Paul Krugman. Today, no one is keeping Americans informed. For the first time, everyone has other options than just the news, and, subsequently, news shows and sites struggle as Americans become less informed.

The Huffington Post, the brainchild of Arianna Huffington, is, for many people, the biggest symbol of new media on the web. But even her site- widely respected as a news source- understands that to survive today, you've got to give people what they want, not just what they need. To be fair, the Huffington Post is probably one of the best at mixing the two, creating a site that not only has pop culture and the news equivalent of MacDonalds, but also one that offers commentary from the leading political minds on important issues. So some junk food in the media isn't bad- you just don't want to consume it exclusively.
Varied media sources are important, and there's nothing wrong with celebrity news sites like TMZ. It's just that, in the past, the 'TMZ'-eque stories were in papers that also provided hard news and expert commentary.
And media junk food isn't always what people think it is. Americans seem to think that commentary in the media- anything ranging from Glenn Beck to Paul Krugman to Rachel Maddow- is bad. That is not the case. Commentary is OK for the media, in fact, it may even be good for it. Sections of the media that are opinion based and acknowledge to be so have been around for a very long time, starting with editorial and opinion pages of a newspaper. And, after all, what is television new commentary but a live op/ed page? As long as editorializing is saved for commentary programs, it isn't a downfall of new media, nor is it even really new.
The new media outlets are, in the long run, good for the news industry. They open new doors and new outlets for publications and make information available in a way it never was before. There are innumerable positives that come with the boom of new media and, if harnessed correctly, it could lead to a more informed public. Today, however, that is not yet happening. New media outlets- if they want to do their jobs- need to give people what they need, not just what they want.

[photo credit: micropersuasion.com]

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Face to Face

Face to Face

As the combat mission in Iraq comes to a halt and the many recent Afghan controversies seem to have cooled off, the administration, in an effort spearheaded by the State Department, has taken up the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the new international focus leading into the midterms. Which, without a doubt, is a noble task- many a president before Obama has tried and failed to aid these two parties to make a peaceful settlement, without any luck. By hosting a series of peace negotiations between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Obama, as well as America, at least symbolically, is expressing commitment to a cease in the volatile relations seen between not only the groups militarily and politically, but also in the people personally. If the president and Ms. Clinton are able to work with Israeli and and Palestinian leaders and help them conclude their sparring and agree on a viable solution, the Obama administration will have taken a huge and notable step forward for peace across the Middle East. However, try though the president might- and, doubtlessly, will- any outcome other than the sort of stale noncommittal ending that is shoved aside later when shots are fired once again is unlikely, simply based on the past. This isn't to say that the president and Secretary of State Clinton have no chance, it's just that they can't- and won't, according to recent statements- force peace upon anyone. No matter how committed America is or becomes to peace in the world, it is the Israelis and the Palestinians who must choose peace. America cannot choose it for them. Last time talks were held, they led to the death of over a thousand Palestinians as well as many Israelis. That being said, the tentatively optimistic tone being taken by administration leaders bodes well for the talks, as no one has more politically to lose from this than the Obama administration. And the commitment given by all parties to meet again, soon, can only be a good thing.
There is no way that any talks can succeed, however, unless all parties understand a few key points. There must be some solution reached regarding Hamas, as Israel's main concern is its security, the underlying theme in all of the Israeli rhetoric this week. If Israeli security is strengthened, the Israeli leaders must accept the creation of a Palestinian state. There is currently no real Palestine, forcing huge numbers of people to lived displaced in remote communities, movement controlled by Israel. This is not a long-term solution, nor is this helpful in any way to Israeli security. Soon, a state of Palestine must coexist with Israel.
As with most issues, the ramifications of an agreement reached-or lack thereof- do not simply affect Israel or the Palestinian people, nor even just the groups in attendance at the talks. The conflict, as well as any two-state solution, causes tremors far outside the Israeli boarders. This is why the issue cannot afford to wait any longer or disintegrate once again. It is imperative, for the future of the Middle East, that something is done.

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