Category / Politics

by hereandsphere

IRAQ, THE KURDS, HAMAS, ISRAEL, THE YAZIDIS, IRAN AND … US

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War on Kurdistan : (top) Kurdish fighters escort the Governor of Kirkuk (in flak jacket) into the newly captured city (bottom) men of ISIS march furiously

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Major events are taking place in the Middle East, at its heart — what as kids we were taught to call “the Fertile Crescent” — and they would affect the US hugely even if we were not as a nation involved : which we are.

From Gaza to Jerusalem, and from the Lebanon border to Damascus,and from northern Syria to the gates of Baghdad, and from Sinjar Mountain to Erbil in Kurdistan, armies formal and informal are killing each other. Some of these armies are raping women, beheading men, committing atrocities beyond description, almost beyond belief.

Our own interests are in harm’s way here. Our friends the Israelis and the Kurds are at risk ; the one hounded by world anti-Semitism and hurt by Hamas rockets, the other attacked fiercely along a 650 mile border by an army of Orcs forged in the evil crucible of Assad’s Syria.

We could not stand aside even if we want to; and fortunately our President has not wanted to. He, as our leader, has responded forcefully and, for the Kurds, decisively.

Less sure is the outcome of Israel’s fight with Hamas, a seemingly endless yin and yang of war and truce, truce and war.

These commitments call our nation to action that we can deliver. Less sure is the question, what does it all portend ? At times the peoples of the Fertile Crescent seem determined to exterminate one another and take pleasure in doing that. Under the rubrics of delusional ideologies they commit actual atrocities almost without realizing it, so frenzied are they by anger and vitriol.

Then there’s Iran. Its leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, has a twitter account, but what he discusses in his tweets seems a distraction. He talks of bombs dropped at Hiroshima and accuses us, but while he talks that up, his negotiators are working out along term deal on Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Khamenei tweets a lot about the plight of Gaza, in which his armies have no part and where Hamas, once his proxy, is a proxy no longer. meanwhile, he says nothing about ISIS, whose recent advances gravely threaten Iran’s borders and have brought war to iran’s friends, the Shi’ites and the Kurds. About ISIS, whose ferocity cannot leave Khamenei unconcerned, he tweets not a word.

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Ayatollah Khamenei : a shrewd leader. follow his moves, not his words

As i see it, with Khamenei, one attends the events he does NOT tweet about. You have to follow his moves, rather; and they have been sure : his best soldiers have organized the defense of Baghdad. He, like us, has pressured Prime Minister al-Maliki to quit; and he, like us, is befriending the Kurds.

He will never say it, but his moves right now parallel ours. And I sense that he is glad to make moves under the cover of big bad Uncle Sam.

But nothing about Iran’s moves rises to the level of an agreement; we have to sus Iran’s intentions out, and that means that uncertainty is written into a large part of our Middle east policy.

It matters, because Iran has backed some of the actors whose atrocities have boiled the Fertile Crescent’s peoples and because nations far closer to us than iran gravely distrust Iran and are making their own policy decisions incorporating that deep distrust.

Of course distrust is not limited, in the Middle East, to the motives of Iran. hardly anyone in the Middle East trusts anybody else. it it hard to steer the ship of any state, much less ours, across a sea of distrust. Most people don’t want anything to do with people one can’;t trust; Americans are no exception. but we cannot simply walk away from Middle East distrust. the fires of war in that region can envelop the entire world if someone doesn’t try to tamp them down.

This is what our policy seeks to do; yet even as we try to cool the fires of war, there are wars that we cannot ignore and cannot cool down. the war of ISIS against the Kurds is one such. It cannot be put off, cannot be smiled away; it is at our front door now.

It is at our door in part because the Iraq government cannot get out of its own way. Nori al-Maliki, who began well, has become a selfish stump in the ground, and pushing him out, as now seems assured, is a decent beginning, hopefully, in making Iraq an actual nation rather than the three sided anarchy it has become under Maliki’;s misleadership.

Some want to call all this anarchy — atrocity and distrust — a fruit of Islam. I reject that. Islam has often been a religion of great progress; of science; of invention. The problem lies not with Islam but with some of the people who profess to be Islamic. Crimes are nor committed by religions but by people. No religion has executed Yazidis or persecuted Chaldean Christians; people are doing that.

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improverished Yazidis stick on Mount Sinjar carry their dead

The ordinary people of the Middle East have lived side by side without hate since time immemorial. today’s fires of hate are not inevitable, not permanent. Eventually they will retreat; and that will be the work, mostly, of the Middle East peoples themselves. All that we can do is to support our proven friends — Kurds and Israelis, most Lebanese, Jordanians, Saudis,and Egyptians, Kuwaitis and UAE citizens, steadily and strongly so that they can relax a little, counting on us to keep them somewhat from harm. that’s the rub : whoever feels that he is more or less safe from harm puts away some of his fear, of his hate, of his need to kill and destroy.

As for the brutality that is ISIS, we must never forget that it was forged by the torture and killing brought upon Sunni Syrians by Bashir Assad and his butchers. The Sunnis oF ISIS were not born killers, rapists, beheaders of harmless Yazidis, persecutors of Christians. They were made all that by the evil work of Bashir Assad. I suspect that if you, like many men of ISIS, had seen your brothers hung from ceiling hooks and tortured for days, your sisters gang raped, your father hanged and beheaded — as has happened to tens of thousands of Syrian Sunnis — you’d likely seek violent revenge madly too.

The Syrian civil war has been a monstrous disaster for the Middle East and a huge problem for our own nation, globally committed. The fighting between Israel and Hamas pales by comparison. Israel and Hamas do not wage war to the death. They fight, then truce. Hamas is irksome, and it pursues a dead end anti-Israel policy, but it is not consumed by ferocity. The fighters in Assad’s Syria are consumed, indeed have no choice but to be consumed, lest they themselves be slaughtered.

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War on Israel : soldiers of the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) enter Gaza

Meanwhile, though there is practically nothing we can do — or should try — to end the Syrian civil war, its ripple effects through the Middle East can bring about a better day if we seize the opportunities : solid friendship with the Kurds, support for Israel, a quiet understanding with iran, co-operation with the new Egypt — and rescue of maybe 100,000 Yazidis, whose fate has caught the attention of the world and focused a world of anger on ISIS. These are not small advances. A coherent foreign policy is achievable here — if we understand our limitations as well as advantage our opportunities.

—- Mike Freedberg / here and Sphere

by hereandsphere

AMERICA AND THE MIDDLE EAST : TOWARD A COHERENT POLICY AT LAST

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Defending our friends ; (top) Kurdish troops rescue the Yazidis on Sinjar Mountain (photo by Harem Karem) (bottom) big rally “I Stand With Israel” in Paris

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The world is finally alive to the barbarians who call themselves ISIS. It took a while; but the world is now responding, and so are we, the United States. we are defending the Kurds, our best allies in the Mesopotamia region. We are fighting on their side. we will not fail; because we can’t, and neither can they.

The President’s people that they are doing this because they didn’t want another Benghazi. Maybe so ; but on the ground, the facts are what they are. And what they are — along with the facts of our rock solid support for Israel in its fight against Hamas, is that we, the United States, are now actively defending — with money and weapons and with people — our two best allies in the entire region, the only full democracies in it.

We are doing this at the same time that we have a friendly, solid government in place in Egypt, for the first time in six years; a solid, moderately reforming autocracy in;place in Saudi Arabia; a solid friend ruling Jordan; a deal in process with Iran, whose enemies are ours too; and with Russia distracted by its dead-end adventure in the Ukraine.

We are defending our friends and showing our other friends in the region that we mean business — finally.

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President Obama ; ‘this will take a long time”

Not since the Fall of Iran’s Shah in 1979 has our Middle east Foreign Policy shown such effective coherence. that event upended the region and unhinged our own policy. An era of terrorism came upon us and demanded our attention. we focused on the immediate crisis. Even Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, in 1990, was an immediate, local crisis; we solved it as we had the other local crises; but our policy seemed to look no further.

then came the biggest crisis of them all, 911; also a local crisis, though we did not realize it at the time. this one, too, we solved — so thoroughly that President Bush was riven to overreach ; the second Iraq war was terribly planned, miserably misconceived; it was pursued under flag of freedom : the President said so. freedom is, of course, a good thing; but most of the Middle East has rarely known any freedom and moves at a tribal level merely. Reaching for freedom was several bridges too far.

Then there is Israel. Again, we have treated Israel’s many struggles with Hamas and others as local crises; we support Israel, yes we do — always. But that support has often, since 1979, seemed unrelated to any general policy principle, much less ;policy in action.

But now that has changed — If we realize it. If we see that we are now defending not freedom but autonomy; not democracy as such, but the right of our allies not to be slaughtered by barbarians or terrorist rockets. Not regime change, but regime support.

Encourage our friends, whatever their lifestyle, so to speak. In this, our Middle East policy seems to mirror the best of our domestic arrangements : celebrate diversity. Don’t try to make people be who you want them to be; respect them as they are, and defend their rights.

That, it seems to me, is the right policy for us to parade all across the Middle east, as we fight only those who threaten our friends without seeking to make our friends be what we are.

The new policy has enormous political consequences here in America. Yes, almost everybody supports the Kurds, but a significant portion of the non-Jewish left does not support Israel — indeed, oppose it. The new Middle east policy unites almost all the Republican party : the Christian right, for religious reasons supports Israel; the realists support it for policy reasons. the Democratic party, however, looks badly split, between the realists in Washington and Jewish Democrats on the one hand versus the non-Jewish left on the other. Before the ISIS mob attacked the Kurds, the split over Israel looked a big deal. Now it has, to a large extent, been forgotten in light of the horrors being wreaked in northern Iraq.

Still, that split is real. I myself have been “unfriended; on facebook by a few people who I thought were pretty good friends — obviously i was mistaken. I imagine the same thing has happened — a lot — to everyone who defends Israel on social media.

The split may heal before the 2016 election begins to heat up ; but it also may not heal. Friendships have been broken, and no one on either side is likely to forget that. Certainly Jews can NOT forget it. Jewish history reeks of abandonment by almost everybody. Every person of Jewish ancestry knows the history and has probably experienced it personally as have I.

Meanwhile, the disparate pieces of our local-crisis Middle East policy are cohering into one comprehensive, very doable, very realistic message : “friends, we stand with you, money and weapons if need be; to defend you as you are and as you want to be !”

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

below : ( 1 ) the Goldins bury a son ( 2 ) Kurdish Pesh Merga fighter rescuing & embracing a Yazidi child (photo by Hare,m Karem)

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by hereandsphere

FOR REFORM FROM BOTH DIRECTIONS : CHARLIE BAKER & MAURA HEALEY

Baker and Local 26

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^ top : Charlie baker with leaders of Local 26 Hotel and Hospitality Workers Union

(bottom) Maura Healey with Charlestown State Rep Dan Ryan and (behind him) Chris Remmes, who was a Ryan opponent in the recent special St rep election

A few days ago i made up my mind whom I wanted to be our state’s net Attorney General. I chose Maura Healey. I had already chosen Charlie Baker to be our next Governor; so I put stickers for both on my car’s bumper, and I posted a picture of my Baker/Healey “ticket.”

To me, Healey and Baker were, respectively, the best candidates, of those on offer, for the offices at issue, and at that time I thought no further.

Tonight, however, after journo-ing Maura Healey’s meet and greet event at the Ironside Grille in Charlestown — more about this event later — I realized that there is a far more profound purpose than I had realized, in selecting Baker and Healey rather than any of their rivals.

That purpose is reform. “Reform from both directions,” i call it.

Baker brings a radical change vision to state administration, changes he is well gifted to accomplish and which are sorely needed : vastly improved data management; transparency; user-friendly online access, coherence, and hugely more effective dollar deployment. Waste, incompetence, obscurity, DCF failure, shady managerial hires (remember Sheila Burgess ?), health care connector collapse, legislative confusion : you name it, state administration during the past four years has fallen from grace.

Baker passes all the prerequisite policy tests — of women’s health rights, marriage equality, transgender rights, support for fair wages, even an ability to work with the state’s major private sector unions. On these scores, he supports what most voters in Massachusetts support. Thus putting him in charge of reforming state administration does not, at the same time, risk losing our progressive momentum on the issues.

At the same time, Baker, politically, cannot do things that Maura Healey can; just as Healey cannot, as attorney general, undertake reforms that Baker as governor can. Healey as attorney general can use the power of law enforcement and oversight to advance women’s rights, the rights of small people against the big banks and bureaucratic systems, the rights of transgender people, matters of public safety and gun regulation. She talks about these tasks all the time, and does so with passion and in detail.

Healey has the voice of a stump speech reformer; Baker has it too. The culture of Beacon Hill badly needs to hear both of these voices.

Yes, she and he are, otherwise very different. One is a Democrat, the other a Republican. One is managerial, the other a crusader. They complement one another marvelously.

Together, they have the power, and will have sufficient public attention, to force Speaker DeLeo to listen. DeLeo, like many Speakers before him, has used his complete control of the House to pass only the legislation that he wants, in the shape that he wants it, and to see off legislation that he does not want — even bills offered by the (Democratic) Governor have gone nowhere without DeLeo aboard. Martha Coakley, as attorney general, has made no moves — none that i am aware of — to use the force of office to bolster any of Governor Patrick’s initiatives. I suspect that Maura Healey will not be so shy; and on matters where she and Baker can agree, I suspect that their joint efforts will force Speaker DeLeo to change his priorities more than once.

In Charlestown tonight, in the neighborhood where she lives (and, indeed, was given her first job, so she told us) Healey showed her strength on the ground. The event was hosted by Chris Remmes, a classic city progressive who ran for State Representative in a special election this year and drew only about 550 votes. But midway through the event, the man who defeated him, State Representative Dan Ryan, showed up, as did quite a number of Ryan’s Teamster supporters. When Healey began her speech, the Ironside was packed, close to 100 people.

This of itself was news; unions form the base of support for Healey’s primary opponent, Warren Tolman. It was pointed out to me that Teamsters Local 25 supports Healey’s current boss, Martha Coakley, for Governor. Fair enough; but support for one doesn’t require support for the other. Perhaps the Teamsters Local 25 leadership has recognized that the guarantee of unionism’s newly improved political power in Massachusetts is to ally, at ;least in the Attorney General race, with the state’s progressives and reformers.

In that, i think the Teamster leadership has it right. There is, for a smart union, no further advantage in remaining faithful to old arrangements. The smart union is the one that sees the new coalition forming and moves to join it. This the Teamsters of Local 25 hae now done in the matter of Maura Healey versus Warren Tolman.

By making that choice, the Teamsters — and, so it seems, Dan Ryan — have probably assured that Maura Healey will win the hotly contested primary that she is in and will thereafter fairly easily beat her November opponent, a skilled lawyer to be sure but, politically, of unsympathetic instincts and scant imagination.

I wish the Teamsters would also choose Baker and not Coakley. Baker’s mentor, Bill Weld, enjoyed widespread union support when he was Governor, and for good and tangible reasons. The same can be true of a Baker administration, and he is making moves to demonstrate that to major unions in the state. The reforms of state administration which he voices are no less significant to labor than to anyone else, because all of us suffer from state incompetence.

If Baker can pass the issues tests — as Healey has done in her own way — he can bring other smart unions, if not this time the Teamsters, to his side, as she has.

Were that to happen, there’ll be a very, very different state leadership than we have seen these past eight years. All to the good.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

by hereandsphere

ANNALS OF POLITICS IN AMERICA : THE NEXT PHASE

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^ the new unionism : SEIU members raising up

 

The first significant signs of a new alignment of American politics are already apparent.

Even as the Tea Party and its corporate enablers roar through many “red” states, and even as marriage equality takes hold as the law of all states, new civil rights battles are coming to the fore as well as new economic urgencies.

Free-for-all banking is crashing to the ground as huge financial institutions rely, almost always unsuccessfully, on low level staffs with huge turnover that precludes learning the intricacies of customer service in the age of investment by hedge fund pools and pass-throiugh securities. The future of banking is “go small” : no big bank of today comes close to matching the efficiency and customer service smartness of medium-sized and community banks.

The needs of high-tech and cutting-edge employers for entry-level hires fluent in the basics of programming, math, and reading are pressuring public education to sacrifice common ground for small-unit specialization. This is the motive force behind charter schools, and also the inspiration for opposing common core curriculum standards. Supporters of small, experimental eduction don;t want common standards or a one size fits all school. they want individualized schooling.

 

that entirely individualized schooling cuts children off from the other great educative principle — citizenship in a common community, Horace Mann’s ideal — is less important to these folks, entirely fixated on securing their children a good career.

I oppose their single mindedness, as do many other Americans in the new politics. It’s a battle that will divide old alliances and is already creating new ones. Witness the coalition that opposes “common core” : right wing Republicans and teachers’ unions.

Income inequality in America has reached a level where it threatens the sustainability of the entire economy. Many states are already taking steps tp remedy this imbalance. Some are raising the minimum wage radically; proposals to raise the minimum wage even higher are taking hold in the most progressive cities. Unions, too — until recently dubbed “obsolete” by some “conservatives” — are finding themselves newly popular and powerful. in the service work world, unions are winning huge wage increases — with more to come — and new unions are being organized for the most basic of worker demands : a living wage and basic benefits.

At the same time, many public sector unions are losing popular support, as more such unions are seen to protect wage packages that bust city budgets, packages for six-figure earnings that look to fall on the tycoon side of income inequality.

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^ SEIU leaders : economic power AND women power

Nor does it help public sector unions that they often stand in the way of system reforms. Big changes are coming in how public education is delivered. Many teachers unions are fighting all these changes rather than getting aboard them; and the larger public — much the same public that supports service worker unions — is noticing and not liking.

American living arrangements are shifting radically. Millerites want to work, live, shop, and play in the downtowns of big cities, and in many cases to do so without cars. Almost all the well-paid young techies live this way; few if any have any interest at all in living in suburbs enduring hour to two-hour commutes to work. Meanwhile the less well paid have no choice bit to move away from Downtown — the farther away, the cheaper the housing — and to endure commutes, while shopping in malls along Interstate highways and socializing via online social media. Meanwhile, within the big cities, neighborhoods are reshaping as mini Downtowns, complete with boutiques, nightclubs, leafy restaurants, and young activists, many of them members of education/commerce co-operatives.

In all of these new living arrangements, personal diversity is the norm. Gay, lesbian, transgender people participate as regularly as anyone else; for millennials, personal lifestyle is no more an issue than one’s hair color or choice of beverage.

These changes read like “blue state America,” but they are also occurring in “red’ states. The difference — if it is one — is religion. In most of “blue” America, religion embraces, or tolerates, people’s choices rather than condemn them; the churches of big cities mostly look outward to the whole world as much as, or more than, they look inward into the individual soul. This orientation has big consequences, and a large future. The same, more or less, is true of churches in “blue’ state suburbs. But even if the churches of “red” stares orient opposite, the economies , education, and living arrangements of “red” states are changing in much the same direction as they are in “blue’ states. nd this too has consequences.

One consequence is that the “angry, old, straight white man” who has embodied right wing populism is fading from the scene, like the hippies of 40 years ago. In his place we find nerdy think tankers, big-stomach gun toters, and — ba-da-bing ! — women and people of color. Because, yes, even the South is becoming less nativist, less male dominant, less white.
The Hispanic population of practically every deep Southern state is growing fast. Georgia, South Carolina, Louisiana, even Alabama will be 20 percent Hispanic soon — or higher than that. Texas will be majority Hispanic by 2030 at the latest. The populations of these states will be younger, too. And more female, because women are the glue that holds immigrant families together.

Thus we arrive at the biggest change of all : America is rapidly moving toward having a majority of its people being of color. This matters in every way, but right now it most matters because the rights of people of color, and of women, have not been achieved as thoroughly as lifestyle civil rights. After all, gay, lesbian, and transgender people are just as likely to be Caucasian as not. Identity civil rights are this mot a matter of skin color or immigrant status.

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the voice & face of change in the Democratic party : Senator Elizabeth Warren

The rights of people of color, and the rights of immigrants, continue to be an issue. But these will be solved by the change in our population. As for the rights of women, these too may well be secured, finally, as women become more powerful politically by way of their primacy in the newly powerful service worker unions. By far the majority of service workers are women; and as service worker women acquire higher pay and greater political power thereby, so will they — as women and as union leaders — secure the personal, body rights that men take for granted.

It was noted that Hobby Lobby, while denying to its women employees health insurance coverage from some contraception, made no such detail for men’s Viagra. In the new era of financially and union empowered women, that kind of discrimination will become unlawful no matter what the excuse.

Our two political parties are only now beginning to adjust to the new America. The Democratic party has adjusted more quickly ; the new unionism unifies Democratic politics in some places, even as the huge change in education is dividing it. The GOP has changed less ; yet even in the GOP, new voices are working out new responses to the change in education, income inequality, and population shifts. The difference is that change in the Democratic party arises from activists and large interest groups, whereas so far in the GOP it is coming mostly from think tanks. Curious, the asymmetry. We live in a democracy, where voters rule. the Democratic party operates on this principle; the GOP doesn’t — yet. My guess is that the GOP will have to change its ways as radically as the nation is changing — will have to start acting like a party of voters, not of researchers; and to trust the voters, not disdain them — or its recipe will fade from the new America.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

by hereandsphere

ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE

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^ enemies ? really ? to the national GOP, yes

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The phrase arises from revolutionary Europe of 100 years ago, where it was often misapplied; but today, here in America it applies precisely. The national GOP has made clear that it is the people’s enemy. Time and time again, and yet again: for on Friday, the House GOP voted to adopt enemy status.

I refer to the so-called “Border Bill.” It passed the House by a vote of 223 to 180. The story may be read by clicking this link : http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/08/01/border-funding-house-bill/13457447/

This Border Bill — which is dead on arrival at the Senate — provides additional immigration judges, some $ 684 million to states to cover the cost of housing refugee children — whom it wants gone ASAP — and goes on to authorize the National guard to patrol the border.

The National Guard ? Really ? So it is coming to that, in the minds of the national GOP ? Fortress America ?

Clearly the national GOP doesn’t much value (or doesn’t know) Napoleon’s saying : “it is an axiom of the art of war that the side that stays within its fortifications is beaten.”

To the national GOP, we ARE at war — with the entire world, whose beneficial practices it rejects, whose people it fears, and whose dark side it doesn’t understand at all — and might as well circle the wagons and lose.

The House bill digs a deeper grave. At the Tea Party’s insistence, an amendment was added, repealing President Obama’s executive order of two years ago, which gave about one million young undocumenteds — so-called “Dreamers” — permission, under conditions, to remain in America and not be deported. This amendment was too muhch for all of eleven (11) House Republicans. they voted “no.” The amendment still passed, 210 to 192.

Can the national GOP really be so stupid as to offend nearly every Latino family in America — for nearly every such family has a relative or a friend, or both, who face deportation — by voting such punitive legislation ? It seems that yes, the national GOP is just that stupid.

An enemy of the people.

Here in Massachusetts, even, running in a Congressional District loaded with immigrants — the 9th, now represented by Bill Keating (D) — the most “reasonable” of the four Republicans running against Keating yesterday posted on his facebook page a long and pointed critique of Keating for voting “no” on the border Bill.

The candidate who did that is John Chapman. Can Chapman really be that stupid / that offensive to those whom he hopes to represent ? The gods only know what his three “unreasonable’; GOP opponents must be posting.

It turns out that Chapman isn’t as stupid as i would like to think him. In the Republican primary, he does in fact face voters who mostly share his views. recent polls have shown that about 43 to 44 percent of all Massachusetts voters oppose Governor Patrick’s plan to house the 1,000 refugee children being sent to this state. Among Republicans, who in Massachusetts reject almost everything that most of our state’s voters want, the figure in opposition must be hugely higher.

But if Chapman’s anti-immigrant posting probably represents majority opinion among GOP primary voters, it is very much a minority opinion in his District, which has far more immigrants than the state average. Moreover, Chapman’s post fails the moral test ; a test which Jeb Bush so well summed up, about immigrants coming to America against the law, that “it’s not a felony, it’s an act of love, to give their families a better life.”

One would think that the national GOP, and John Chapman, would embrace Bush’s view, which holds so much promise for welcoming the millions who risk life and limb to come to the country that used to represent the best hope of mankind. But no. the national GOP does not embrace Bush’s vision. probably because it also doesn’t believe that America is the last best hope of mankind. One surmises that to the national GOP, as it rejects immigrants, who are, after all, the very definition of our nation, America is finished, and all that is left is to give it a good swift burial.

No guarantee of health care for all. No advocacy of fair wages for all workers. Suppression rather than enablement of voting. Harassing women in their most intimate health concerns. No help for the unemployed or for veterans. Shutting down the government. No money for infrastructure repair and improvements. Tax breaks for corporations that outsource jobs overseas. Demonizing gay people and transgenders. And boundless hatred for immigrants who risk all to come here.

Enemy of the people ? Yes. Enemy of the people.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

by hereandsphere

MAGOV14 : THE RIDDLE OF STEVE GROSSMAN’S CANDIDACY

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^ speaking to the few : steve Grossman at Merengue Restaurant on Blue Hill Avenue (to his right, Merengue’s Hector Pina and, to the left of Pina, Mrs. Grossman)

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Here’s the riddle ; Steve Grossman, Massachusetts’s State Treasurer, should be the front runner for the Democratic nomination, but he isn’t. In every poll, he badly trails his main rival, Attorney General Martha Coakley.

That he won the Democratic convention’s endorsement doesn’t seem to matter at all. It often doesn’t matter to ordinary Primary voters, but never have I seen a convention endorsee trailing a rival by 30 points, as Grossman has until recently.

Grossman is articulate and authoritative, Coakley glib and vague. Yet she leads, and he trails. badly.

Grossman attributes it to “lack of name recognition,” and he’s right about that ; over 50 percent of voters intending to vote in the Democratic primary ay they don’t know him at all, or too little to have an opinion. But why is this so ? Grossman was elected statewide in 2010, in a hard fought and close race, and for at least twenty years before that he was a major Democratic activist — party chairman, national committeeman. Granted that these are party offices, not general public. But you would think that most members of his party, at least, would be fairly familiar with their top leaders.

I certainly thought so, but I have been wrong. Grossman’s lack of name recognition tells me that in Massachusetts, party identification doesn’t matter very much. Who we elect to state offices — unlike to national ones — is pretty much a non-partisan thing.

That, i think, is the real reason that Steve Grossman polls so poorly only seven weeks before the Democratic primary ; nonpartisan is something he has scant experience at being. His entire career has blossomed inside the cocoon of Party.

This year, Grossman’s career as party man especially hurts, because in this election the Democratic party — Grossman’s party — has concentrated its efforts almost entirely in the high-income, technology-oriented suburbs that surround boston and drive its economy and culture : Newton (where Grossman lives, Brookline, Watertown, Belmont, Cambridge, Wellesley, Lexington, Arlington, Concord, Lincoln, Winchester. In these communities os the money that Democratic candidates need. And the activists : the first Governor Forum of this season took place in Lexington in January and was attended by at least 300 people. When Juliette Kayyem chose a location whence to re-up her underdog candidacy, she chose Arlington. even Don Berwick, the Democrats’ ,most outspoken progressive, voices the issues of the high-income suburbs.

Meanwhile, the big cities, the most Democratic-voting communities in our state, have gone almost unattended until lately, and it shows. Last night Steve Grossman held a meet and greet at Merengue Restaurant on Boston’s blue Hill Avenue : about 20 people attended.

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20 for Steve : that was all…

This had to disappoint Grossman. He’s the convention endorsee, the meet and greet was hosted by a major Boston political player — Jovita Fontanez, a former election commissioner and veteran of 30 years of campaigns — and yet only 20 people showed up. Only two months ago, Felix Arroyo, running for a low-level office, Register of Probate in Suffolk County, put 100 people in the same room; and last year, Mike Flaherty, running or Boston City Council, drew at least that many to the same Merengue room.

Quite obviously, city activists have noted where the Democratic candidates have put their chips down and where not.

All three Democratic governor rivals — Coakley and Berwick as well as Grossman — are now making campaign stops all across boston, but it’s very late in the game, and it’s summer : many boston voters are off to Cape Cod or thinking vacation, not politics. it was so even in last year’s intense Mayor campaign. all the more so for governor candidates who talk the talk of Newton, Brookline, Lexington, and Arlington.

But Grossman is beginning to get it. campaigning to city voters entails something other than high-minded reform. it entails jobs. Speaking to the 20 attendees at last night’s meet and greet, Grossman hit a home run, not by voicing his strong support for the 1,000 refugee children now in Massachusetts — that was a given, for this entirely hispanic audience — but when he mentioned that “as governor i will supervise 85,000 jobs. imagine what it would mean for diverse communities if 35 percent of them were from diverse backgrounds !”

Jobs and more jobs. That is indeed what city activists want to hear. Jobs that won’t be laid off — as united Airlines is now doing to 650 gate attendees, whose $ 50,000 salaries will be replaced with minimum wage subcontractors. Jobs that can help a three-decker, renting family move up in life.

That Grossman cannot simply fire 35 percent of the state work force and replace them with his supporters didn’t seem to matter to his listeners. It was enough that Grossman at least understood what the objective is.

Grossman knows all the issues and articulates sensible answers to most. He spoke about the obstacles faced in Massachusetts by small businesses, especially those run by immigrants, women, and minorities — Merengue is just such a small business, nd its owner, Hector Pina, was in the room — and touted his work as Treasurer in securing $ 1.7 billion of bank loans for small businesses owned by women, minorities, and immigrants. No candidate for governor this year has a better handle on what such small businesses need; certainly Martha Coakley has yet to say anything of substance about it.

Grossman speaks with equal authority on just about every issue you can name, from state management to technology to energy to transportation, even education; yet it hasn’t mattered much — so far. That may be changing ; today’s Boston Globe poll has Grossman at 18 percent, Coakley at 46 : his best, her weakest showing yet.

A 28 point gap, however, is nothing to cheer about with so little campaign time left. And so Grossman is going to start door-knocking. He makes the point ; “door knocking, in a statewide race ? Yes. i want the people to see me and hear from me,” he told last night’s attendees.

He may well want voters to see and hear him; but the big reason for him to door-knock is that it will likely get him major media attention. door knocking, in a statewide race ? That IS news. And news, he needs. Lots of it, and lots more. Door-knocking is Grossman’s Hail Mary pass.

It may work. That and the one million dollars that he has in the bank, to spend on advertising, the final two weeks of the campaign, to all those 52 percent of primary voters — probably mostly City people — who don’t know much about him.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

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THE REFUGEE CHILDREN : AROUSING MASSACHUSETTS’S DARK STRAIN OF UGLY NATIVISM

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^ 1,000 refugee children : a threat to white picket fence, suburban fantasies ?

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By the narrowest of margins, according to Boston Globe’s poll of opinion on the refugee children coming to Massachusetts, our State passes the moral test.

It appears that a bare 50 % of voters support Governor Patrick’s plan to shelter 1000 refugee children temporarily, with 43% opposed. The poll also finds that only 52 % of Massachusetts voters favor a path to citizenship for immigrants here undocumented.

Not surprisingly, the poll finds that 79 % of Republicans oppose Massachusetts housing the children. More surprising is that only 69% of Democrats favor the children. Independents are evenly split; younger voters more inclined to favor the children than older.

You should read the entire Globe article : http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/07/22/voters-wary-immigration-split-patrick-plan/215sbf5pmQCVkgdzoxUVoI/story.html

Some observers want to say that the poll’s findings contradict Massachusetts’ reputation for progressive views. I disagree with this. On immigrant matters, Massachusetts voters have always exhibited a nativist, even violently bigoted, strain, beginning with opposition to Irish Catholic immigration in the 1830s-1840s and continuing with opposition to Italian and Jewish immigration in the period 1900-1919. Who can ignore the burning, in Charlestown, of a Catholic convent, in the late 1830s, by Protestant nativists ? Or the rise of the anti-Catholic “know nothing” party in the 1850s ? Or the Sacco-Vanzetti case that roiled Massachusetts for seven years beginning in 1920 ?

Allied to our nativist strain has been, at times, an equally fierce slice of out and out racism. Who can forget the school busing crisis that beset Boston in the 1970s and poisoned the city for almost twenty years ? Or that the suburbs, asked to share the desegregation burden — and it was a big one — refused to do so ?

Housing segregation has also been — continues at times to be — a dark presence in our state. Though our cities are strongholds of amazing diversity of peoples, the suburbs almost entirely lack the presence of people of color and of diverse origins. Much suburban policy is directed to keeping diverse peoples out. It is there that one finds movements to repeal the MGL c. 40B housing law. Suburban gate-keeping is why the Blue line has never been extended, as it should be, to the North Shore; why the Orange Line has never has made it past Forest Hills — to West Roxbury and Needham, as has been proposed in times past; and why communities constantly fight — by means fair and foul — the construction of affordable housing.

The same division also affects lifestyle civil rights for people living in Massachusetts. Though our cities have fully embraced and mainstreamed LGBT people, most of our suburbs have not. It’s one reason why Massachusetts still hasn’t enacted full civil rights protections for transgender people despite 17 other states having done so. Progressive we are, on economic issues; on diversity issues, we barely pass the moral test.

A Republican candidate for statewide office — his name John Miller — issued a statement yesterday in which he made plain that to him, the refugee children are first of all a public health crisis and a budget burden. Not a word about their humanity ! It made me angry to read his statement. It makes me angrier still to know that an actual candidate said it.

Guess what, Mr. Miller ? The refugee children are not coming to your picket fence Ozzie and Harriet-ville. They are coming, almost all, to our cities — our overcrowded, triple-decker, public school, dance culture, pig-roasting, ghetto-fab — cities, as their predecessors always have.

Myself, I welcome the children. I wish all 57,000 would come here and impart their enthusiasm and diversity to cities already enriched by thousands of Viet Namese refugees, Haitians, Cape Verdeans, Somalis, Trinidadians, Iranians, Albanians,Koreans, Syrians, Iraqis, Bosnians, Irish. Ride the bus into Boston, and you will see them — taking always the hard road, because we deny them drivers’ licenses, to hard and thankless jobs. Ride the “T” and you will see them again. They keep our society going. They are our drive train, the diesel for our engines, the stokers in the stokeholds. I take my hat off to them and wish their children a rapid rise to the top of a nation that should be grateful for their coming here and thankful as hell if they choose to stay here and make us a better and more imaginative society.

I only wish that those who do not, like me, live in our cities, could see what I see, feel what I feel. Maybe someday.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

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MAGOV14 : CHARLIE BAKER’S BEST POLL NUMBERS YET SEND A MESSAGE

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^ being a Massachusetts governor means speaking Massachusetts language : Charlie Baker speaking Massachusetts-ese to voters at a meet and greet

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The Boston Globe’s new poll of Massachusetts’s Governor election yields Charlie Baker his best numbers yet. He now polls 36 percent, while his likely Democratic opponent, Martha Coakley, draws only 39 percent.

Last week, the same poll had it Coakley 40, Baker 35. And that poll was a better Baker result than the previous Globe poll, which showed Coakley at 40, Baker at 32.

Clearly, Baker is amassing support, and doing so the best way : slowly, gradually, one voter at a time, so to speak. He is doing it as it should be done : by increasing his own support, not by taking support away from an opponent.

The strongest campaigns take care to run themselves : not to negate the other guy or gal, but to create a Yes and add many Yes’s to it. Positive support is hard to lose. Voters voting against one candidate can be swayed easily; their loyalty is to “dislike,” not to a candidate. Baker will surely take votes from people disliking his opponent, but he much prefers — or should much prefer — votes that want him no matter who the opponent is.

Baker seems to understand that in Massachusetts, voters for offices other than national do not vote party, they vote the man or woman. And though in November, there’ll only be two candidates, it’s much wiser for a candidate to run against all of his or her rivals than to pray for the “right” November opponent. Baker is doing that. He is running as if he, Coakley, Grossman, and Berwick were all in the same primary. This is how one wins in Massachusetts.

One runs for Governor of Massachusetts not on a party basis, because the issues aren’t party issues. 80 % of Massachusetts voters know what they want : a positive agenda, progressive but not pie in the sky, well managed, reformist, sensible and flexible, on issues economic, administrative, judicial; on energy policy, criminal justice, immigration. The one issue that almost all Massachusetts voters agree should be uncompromised is civil rights. A governor must voice passionately full rights for every sort of person. A governor candidate who trims on civil rights is in trouble; one who opposes them is toast.

Because 80% of Massachusetts voters agree on what they want and to what degree, the deciders become (1) who can do the job the best (2) whose priorities do we want and (3) who can best work with the Legislature to get them done.

None of this is a party matter. Baker gets this. His campaign has been devoid of party bias. He is campaigning in Massachusetts language and doing so convincingly.

Baker is quite lucky that none of his three opponents matches his command of Massachusetts-speak. Berwick cannot do so because his policy agenda is too radical. Coakley cannot do so because she speaks vague rather than competence. Steve Grossman can’t do so because his support rises from the Democratic party voters who insist on being Democrats first. The party Is their agenda, as it is not for at least two-thirds of Massachusetts voters. Only of late — probably too late — has Grossman begun to sound less like a Democrat and more like a Massachusetts. He remains far, far behind Coakley in the new Boston Globe poll.

But now to the Poll and its message about Baker.

Baker’s favorable-unfavorable-not well enough known numbers are 47 to 18 to 35.
Coakley’s numbers in this regard are 54 to 37 to 9.
Grossman’s numbers here stand at 33 to 14 to 52.
Don Berwick’s numbers embarrass his progressivism : 10 to 5 to 85.

Head to head, Baker gets 36 percent to Coakley’s 39; 37 to Grossman’s 29; and 42 to Don Berwick’s 18.

On the issues, Massachusetts voters differ hugely from voters in “red” states :

Do you own a gun ? 66 % say no, only 30 % say yes.
Should we have stricter gun control ? 47 % say yes, 35 % say we have enough; only 15 % say we should have less gun control.
Should the casino law be repealed ? 51 % say no, 41 % say yes.
Do you feel safe at night ? 96 % ay yes, only 4 % say no.
Do you feel safe walking your neighborhood at night ? 84 % say yes, only 13 % say no.

Clearly Massachusetts voters are not ruled by fear and thus are not obsessed by guns. Indeed, far more people (37 %) have a very unfavorable opinion of the NRA than the 17% who have a very favorable opinion of it.

28 % of our voters identify as liberals, 28 % as conservatives, although of the 39% who identify as moderates there is a 26 to 39 lean toward conservative. Query, however, what Massachusetts voters mean by “conservative.” i doubt that they mean Tea Party or Koch Brothers. Probably more a state of mind than a political agenda.

Massachusetts voters are optimistic about themselves and their community, pragmatic, open minded, wanting reform but not repeal — a way of saying “decided questions should remain decided” — and ready to think as citizens, not loners. Thinking as citizens, Massachusetts voters want a governor who knows what he or she believes in, who can articulate an agenda authoritatively, who speaks the phrases of flexibility, open to new facts and situations, able to change his or her mind if need be, to walk back inadequate remarks without hedging; a shrewd dealer and a good guy or gal who treats everyone as a friend and neighbor.

As you must already have surmised, that is a description of Charlie Baker.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

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SCHOOLS REFORM : THE SENATE KILLS A BAD CHARTER CAP LIFT BILL

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^ State Senator Sonia Chang-diaz : her Senate version of Russell Holmes’ charter cap lift bill was amended with poison pills, and as intended, these killed it.

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Yesterday, the Massachusetts State Senate killed, by a 26 to 13 vote, a charter cap lift bill much changed from the proposal that the House voted for by 113 to 33 a few months ago.

The bill voted down in the senate included, if i am to credit the Globe’s cot Lehigh, who wrote of it, many provisions that made no sense and were rightly voted down. Its transportation formulas, funding compensation,  attrition rules, and equivalents guaranteed that charters enabled under this law would not really be charters at all, or would fail.

Much of the Senate bill’s content was put in because of protests by teachers’ unions and groups allied therewith. My friend ed Lyons has called these provisions “poison pills,” and he’s right. they were meant to kill, and they did.

Undoubtedly, the teachers’ unions will view yesterday’s charter cap lift vote as a victory. It isn’t. Yesterday’s vote will only anger charter school supporters and assure a huge issue for this year’s Governor race — except that almost certainly both candidates will voice strong support for increasing the number of allowed charter schools, this assuring that yesterday’s vote will be a defeat for the teachers’ unions.

Ever since i began my in depth coverage of last year’s Boston Mayor race, it became apparent to me that teachers’ unions were going to take the route, not of spearheading reform, but of intransigence in opposition to the school reforms that almost everybody in Massachusetts wants. This is a shame and quite beside the real point, which is that public schools in low income neighborhoods and most communities of color do not work because of deep-seated racism and class bias. Poor people have almost no political power, even in supposedly progressive Massachusetts; and people of color have not much more. Almost all the problems besetting our public schools arise from this.

The charter school cap lift bill arose from the state’s communities of color, whose district schools are among the worst in our state. We need to assure, probably by legislation,l that public schools are funded equally, regardless of income level of the district or the racial composition of the student body; and we need to assure that schools especially in low income and COC districts are accorded the best, most committed teachers. Today these schools often get the worst. Let me repeat : this is a matter of institutional, cultural racism and class. it can be broken by assuring full hiring autonomy to the superintendent AND to the individual school principal. Raising the charter school cap does nothing to solve this cultural bias; indeed, raising the cap — for “underperforming districts,” mind you — aggravates it, in two ways ; (1) by taking the most ambitious students out of low income or COC public schools and by taking funds away from those schools, thereby assuring they will continue to draw the worst teachers. Of course my solution will probably not work, as the poor have no political clout at all in a Citizens United America, and COC people have not much more. All the clout lies in the upper income suburbs, whose people have zero interest in improving the schools that other kids go to and thereby increasing the competition (with the high income kids) for college admissions and, eventually, good jobs. Heaven forfend that low income or COC kids should actually compete with Johnny from Belmont and Mary of Wellesley !!!
Charter schools — innovation schools generally — should be accorded all respect and opportunity, both as laboratories for reinventing how we educate and as best practices alternatives. I support their existence. But reform of schools — transformation of them, as John Connolly eloquently said — must arise from within the public school environ, not in opposition to it. he Horace Mann idea, that all kids of a community larn together and grow up together,. and thus become a more positively bonded community, is a noble one, a democratic ideal that fulfills our nation’s most basic premise : that all kids matter equally and must be given the same level of primary education.

Innovation education may allow kids to grow their own life missions, diversely and more : but schooling is also about citizenship, and the common school teaches it by demonstration and example and does so better than any alternative method. It must be maintained and cherished. Looking to charter schools as an escape from bad public schools is an act of desperation, not improvement. looking to charters as a way to bust unions is an act of selfishness. And in such a con text, charter schools will look more and more, to teachers’ unions, as a threat rather than a boon. we are traveling the road of education disaster if we do not stop and recalibrate our political GPS.

Yesterday’s Senate vote should be taken as an opportunity to do just that.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

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OF BUFFER ZONES AND IMMIGRANT KIDS

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^ the reality of no buffer zones ; perfect strangers getting in the face of women seeking pregnancy counseling

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Much there is in today’s news here in Massachusetts about immigrant children being sent here for ICE detention and of the legislature’s crafting a law to replace the recently struck down Buffer Zone Law.

Both situations present Massachusetts people with basic questions about what kind of a society we are. Being a “values state,” we are well situated to make the right decision. Below, I will write what I think we should do. First, however, a few words about today’s Boston Herald, which screams loud headlines about the busloads of immigrant children being sent to detention at county lock-ups in our state : the gist of Herald immigrant headlines is that “we don;t want these dirty foreigners bringing their diseases into our society.” Yes, to the Hera;ld, immigrants are pests, locusts of a plague, so to speak. And there are voters out there who think the same, or worse, of immigrants driven to refuge with us.

When you actually look past the “plague of locusts” headlines in the Herald, however, what you read is much ado about nothing. The Governor says that it’s an ICE contract with local sheriffs — he’s not involved. The sheriffs want the Feds to pay for the kids they must house. Steve Grossman attacks Charlie Baker for not voicing our state’s concerns in Washington. Charlie Baker berates the Governor for not doing so. Martha Coakley says she isn’t sure of what the ICE is up to.

Yawn…

Meanwhile, the kids await closure. Will they be welcomed into our society to grow up safely and, maybe, prosperously ? Or be sent back to parents who sent them here for safety ?

I see no good resolution to these questions. I see failure on our society’s part, and it hurts me.

Meanwhile, the legislature is hurrying to enact a new abortion clinic law that will provide women seeking pregnancy counseling space within which no stranger can assault, harass, intimidate, or imcede their access. The proposal includes a moving 25-foot protection zone and specified hours during which protesters can protest. The bill also enacts quite severe criminal liability for those who assault, harass, or intimidate women coming to pregnancy clinics.

Will this new proposal succeed where our 35-foot Buffer Zone Law did not ? I think the criminal liability sanctions will be approved, because no free speech rights give speakers any right to assault, harass, or intimidate anyone. The moving 25-foot zone, and the restriction of what times of day protests can take place, may not survive, however. If panhandlers can get in one’s face by way of the First Amendment,and if Jehovah witnesses can ring my doorbell every morning to find out if I know the Bible, why can’t abortion protesters ? I really think there’s no good answer to the intimidation of women seeking abortion counseling than a large police presence at clinics, all day long, to keep the peace. At great expense to taxpayers.

I hope that I am wrong.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere