Larry Gellman2013-05-22T03:35:11-04:00Larry Gellmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=larry-gellmanCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Larry GellmanGood old fashioned elbow grease.Let's Be Honest About Why Social Security is Going Broketag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7890082010-11-29T00:47:57-05:002011-05-25T18:15:22-04:00Larry Gellmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-gellman/
A few weeks ago, my dog Kiva got bitten on the nose by a rattlesnake and I ended up with a better understanding of our health care system. This week, I came to understand why our Social Security system is in such danger just by reading the mail. Actually it was a letter that a friend of mine received from the Social Security Administration outlining his future benefits.
This friend is almost 45 and isn't working at the moment. He worked for a total of about 20 years before his current hiatus. During that time, he paid about $17,000 into the Social Security system -- an amount that was matched by his employer bringing the total contribution to $34,000. He also paid a total of $4,200 into the Medicare system.
According to the letter, When he turns 62, he can start collecting more than $10,000 a year in benefits (with cost of living increases it could be double that) for the rest of his life. So given how long healthy people are living these days (see my recent article on health care reform), he will probably pull between 10 and 25 times more out of the system than he and his bosses ever paid in.
Let's be honest.
The main reason our Social Security system faces so many challenges is pretty simple. We were promised and are receiving benefits based on formulas that tax us too little while we are working and assume that we would not live much past 65 years of age. Now that millions of Americans are living well into their 90s (with the help of very expensive drugs and medical treatments that are paid for by the government) our new-found longevity has created a national financial catastrophe.
Just after reading my friend's letter and doing the Social Security math, I left to spend Thanksgiving in St. Louis, the place of my birth. My 84-year old mother (who still drives -- which is one of the reasons why I don't live there) lives in a retirement community where the average age of the residents is 92 and most of them show up for Happy Hour every day. The young woman who works as the bartender says she is constantly being proposed to by the feisty older men.
Fortunately I had my trusty IPad with me to do research since all the seats in the computer center there were full of people tweeting, emailing, and doing their holiday shopping. My quick check showed that a 92 year old who started working in 1940 paid $100 in Social Security taxes during his first year of work and, if he paid the maximum amount allowed he put a TOTAL of less than $10,000 into the system during his first 30 years of work. Until 1980, no one paid more than $1,000 a year in Social Security -- even if they made millions.
If he retired at age 65, he would now be getting more than $20,000 a year and has pulled almost $250,000 out of the system since he stopped working. He is now getting a monthly check larger than what he paid in for his first ten years of work combined!
It was nice hanging out with these folks and, as my grandmother would have said, they should all live to be 120. But this is not the demographic scenario that the people who set up the formulas for Social Security and Medicare had bargained for. And not one of my new friends was an illegal immigrant or a welfare queen. These once hard-working, "real" Americans are the ones who are bankrupting us -- not the foreign invaders and poor people that Fox and the Right would suggest are to blame.
Responsible Americans need to have a grown-up discussion about what kind of benefit systems we can realistically promise our citizens and what our kids are going to have to pay in taxes to fund it now that we're living so damned long. It's the same grown-up discussion that we have needed to have since 9/11 about how to pay for our wars and security going forward.
But let's be honest.
These conversations have not yet taken place and there is no appetite for them now. Instead, we are encouraged by our political leaders and the cable and radio screaming heads to invent villains and blame them for everything that's wrong with the world--and some of the things that are right. Even the Tea Partiers who are angry about spending money on anything are not interested in dealing honestly with Social Security, Medicare, paying for our wars, or sharing sacrifice by calling for mandatory military or public service.
They just like to complain about politicians in general, Obama in particular, and how big government has gotten out of control. When it comes to specific details of what needs to be done or any kind of positive agenda they don't have much to say. And they sure don't want to talk about the morality of sending poor young rural kids to serve a dozen terms in Afghanistan, why we don't have a military draft or the economics of their favorite entitlement programs.
Instead of having that honest conversation, they spread phony allegations that the costs of providing Social Security and Medicare to illegal immigrants are what is driving us broke. Or they spread professionally manufactured email lies about free "Obamaphones" and other benefits that our president has allegedly decided to give to illegals, freeloaders, and drug dealers as though that would be enough to bankrupt America even if it was true -- which it isn't.
They also like to talk about how we should be investing our own Social Security accounts in stocks and gold and whatever we want. But that's not honest either because it implies that we actually have money in our accounts to invest -- which we don't. Our taxes go to pay our parents' generation and there is no money actually set aside for us to be invested even if we wanted to. That's the way Social Security has always worked and the news media and politicians know it.
We can't even begin to address these serious issues until we can have an honest discussion about the current situation and what our real choices are to effectively deal with it.
But promoting fear and outrage and creating villains is apparently so much easier that it seems unlikely that honest grown-up conversation will take place any time soon. As I've mentioned, CNBC now has a daily segment on Larry Kudlow's show that's called "Viewer Outrage." They are committed to finding people who are really pissed off about something every single day and giving them a podium from which to rant.
When we start seeing segments entitled "Viewer Sacrifice" and "What You Can Do For Your Country" where people talk about the responsibilities that each of us needs to take on to help make things better, then we will be getting closer to the road to fiscal sanity.
If the national obsession with fact-free anger, fear and demonization continues to grow, then maybe I will stop writing and move back in with my mother. Those folks seem to enjoy life more than most of my current friends and they don't seem to be afraid or outraged about anything except running out of Chardonnay during Happy Hour. They won't make very good villains because most of them are white and don't speak with an accent.
Besides, that bartender is really cute. ]]>Let's Be Honest -- About Health Care Reformtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7866302010-11-23T17:48:52-05:002011-05-25T18:15:22-04:00Larry Gellmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-gellman/
She took him to our vet whose office was fortunately just a few blocks away and she was told that the situation was serious. Kiva needed at least one vial of antivenim serum ($900 a vial) along with numerous blood tests, IVs, and other treatments if everything went well. Within an hour, Kiva's head looked like a pinata after a wild party but he was lucky and made a full recovery in just a few days.
But this is not an article about my wonderful dog or our good fortune. It is about the epiphany I experienced during the 24 hours that he was in the doggie hospital.
Actually, it is about the check-in process. Before the hospital would agree to accept Kiva as a patient, we had to go into a special room to make financial arrangements. We were told that his treatment would cost between $2,500 and $4,000 and that they wouldn't admit him unless and until we gave them a credit card up front and let them charge us up front for $2,400 -- 60 percent of the high estimate. If we didn't have the cash, we could take Kiva home and take our chances.
They then told us that unless we signed an agreement to pay them an additional $600 (minimum) up front, they would take no action to resuscitate him if he suffered a heart attack or some other crisis in the middle of the night.
We agreed to their terms and, happily we picked up our very valuable canine son the next day -- well on his way to a full recovery. The treatment was a complete success. Everyone at the doggie hospital was delightful and responsive to our calls and treated Kiva and us wonderfully.
But it got me thinking.
Our dog is alive today because we had $4,000 that we were willing and able to pay to keep him alive. I'm pretty sure that he received a higher level of care than the vast majority of humans in the world and most in our own country.
In the U.S., no hospital would turn away or refuse to treat an accident victim or someone whose life was in imminent danger. But follow up care, treatments for life-threatening conditions, and cutting-edge surgeries are often only available for those who are willing or able to pay up front.
As a type-1 diabetic with a fake hip, no thyroid, and spots on his lung, I am not unfamiliar with doctors' offices. In recent years, the biggest change in their decor are the many signs prominently announcing the types of insurance that are not accepted and other declarations that the physicians understandably want to make sure that they will get paid before treatment is dispensed.
Let's be honest. About health care.
We live in a country where we pay several times what residents of other nations pay for health care and by any objective measure our outcomes are much worse. There are still more than 35 million Americans who lack any insurance coverage at all and where those of us who are insured have been paying more and more each years for less coverage, higher deductibles, and co-pays that have gone through the roof.
As a candidate for president, Barack Obama accurately identified health care reform as a top priority and most Americans agreed with him. After dozens of incarnations and versions (each of which was labeled "Obamacare" by his political enemies), an inadequate but important first step was passed and signed into law this year.
The response of the Republican leadership and and their media promoters has been to convince Americans that this undefined Obamacare has made us worse off today than we were a couple of years ago. That we are being charged much more (we aren't) for coverage that will somehow be worse (it won't) -- even though most of the provisions of the bill haven't even kicked in yet and really haven't been set in stone anyway.
They have convinced millions of Americans that we are being bankrupted by a health care system that caters to dark-skinned people who pay nothing and get everything for free -- Mexican immigrants and black welfare freeloaders -- at the expense of the rest of us.
But let's be honest.
All those people really get is the assurance that if they walk into an emergency room bleeding to death or with some other pressing ailment that they will be treated whether they have insurance or not.
Beyond that, tens of millions of Americans who are too young for Medicare deal with the health care system in the same way that Kristen and I dealt with Kiva's vets. If you have a long-term chronic condition or symptoms of something seems like it might be serious, you'd better be covered by insurance that your doctor accepts (an ever shrinking list) or come up with a whole bunch of cash up front. Otherwise they face the choice that we did with our dog. Find the money or go home and hope you don't die.
All of the fact-free ranting about Obamacare has mainly succeeded in distracting Americans and keeping many of us from coming to grips with what a total disaster our current health care system has become. A comparison with Canada (which has socialized medicine) shows that we spend about 60 percent more per capita on health care than they do. And yet, our infant mortality rates and life expectancy is far worse than theirs.
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen cites a CIA study that shows the U.S. ranking first in the world in health care costs and 49th in life expectancy and 47th in infant mortality. His piece on the subject is well worth reading.
On top of that, about half of all personal bankruptcies in the U.S. -- millions a year -- are due to health care costs. People who don't have the money choose to spend it anyway to save their loved ones or themselves. Who do they think they are?
To make matters worse, most of them have financed those life-saving treatments by maxing out multiple credit cards which has only hastened their slide into bankruptcy.
Meanwhile, in Canada there are zero bankruptcies due to health care costs.
Reasonable people can disagree about how to best fix our broken system. But right now, Republicans seem to be only focused on undoing Obama's efforts to make things better -- and undoing Obama altogether.
Let's be honest.
Our health care system is one of many things that are driving us broke -- not because of freeloaders or illegals or whatever your definition of Obamacare might be. It's because the rest of us are living much longer than we were supposed to. The whole system was financially based on the assumption that we would work until we were 65 or so and live a few years after that before succumbing to old age and/or diseases. Today, many of the members of my golf club are over 80 and some of them can beat me scratch. We all have relatives who are in their 90s and are doing just fine.
They paid in a little and are taking out five and ten and twenty times as much in benefits. Many of them are retired and been net takers for almost as long as they worked and paid into the system. A bipartisan committee has just recommended that benefits to retirees be cut significantly in the future as part of our effort to get out of debt but polls show that most of us and our elected officials just don't want to go that route.
We'd apparently rather get angry and outraged at blacks and Mexicans and single mothers and poor people. And, of course, Obama.
I tried to explain this all to Kiva but he just licked my face and begged for a treat. I'm not giving him anything until he learns to bark at Glenn Beck.
]]>Let's Be Honest: About Jobs and the Economytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7088682010-09-08T16:30:02-04:002011-05-25T17:35:19-04:00Larry Gellmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-gellman/
This will be the first in a series of articles entitled "Let's Be Honest." Each article will deal with an important issue which our news media and political leaders are framing in a way that is so dishonest and misguided that it makes rational discussion impossible.
For example, reasonable people can disagree about whether Barack Obama is doing a good job as president. But they can't disagree about whether he is a Muslim (more than 30 percent of Republicans believe he is) or was born outside the U.S (more than 40 percent of Republicans believe he was). Those are simply lies.
The same would seem to apply to any reasonable assessment of where our economy and job situation stand right now and whether our president's policies have helped or hurt. Reasonable people can disagree about the wisdom and long-term impact of Obama's policies but, as with so much else these days, the news media and politicians have chosen to make rational conversation almost impossible by filling the airwaves and print with so many lies and distortions that useful give-and-take can't even get started.
But let's be honest. When Obama became president the economies of the world were in an American-induced death spiral. We were drowning in debt that could not be repaid. Stock markets and commodities prices were in free-fall, our economy was shedding 800,000 net jobs a month, credit was not available to most companies at any price. General Electric and Goldman Sachs had to pay Warren Buffett 10 percent interest and provide an equity kicker just to get a loan which should give you an idea how impossible it was for mere mortals to borrow. There was a very real risk that hundreds of major companies and financial institutions would disappear. Many actually did.
We still face enormous economic challenges, but let's be honest. It is now 18 months later and the stock markets in the U.S. and around the world are 50 to100 percent higher. With federal help, General Motors and many other companies staved off bankruptcy and are now able to sell stock to new investors. Millions of jobs that were thought to be at risk were saved. Commodities prices have recovered broadly and credit is widely available to a broad range of credible borrowers.
We have enormous debts to repay once we get the economy on better footing and we face lots of other challenges. But the sequencing of the "experts" is backwards. We already had the economic crisis they are predicting for the future and it had nothing to do with Obama, taxes, or socialism. It was due to good old American greed and free-market capitalism run amok.
We are also told that making the richest Americans pay the same level of income tax as they did during the boom times in the '90s would kill the recovery in its tracks. But let's be honest. How many millionaires do you know who are putting off purchases and denying themselves stuff that they would run out and buy if they only had an extra few grand?
Most people are buying less because they are worth less than they used to be, their homes have gone down in and value, they are earning nothing on their savings, and/or they are heavily in debt. And most others are just nervous about the future--in part because they are told all day in the media and by politicians that they should be outraged and afraid. It has nothing to do with uncertainty about a proposed small increase in taxes for a handful of the wealthiest Americans.
The one problem that remains very real for far too many people is jobs. Most companies downsized their work forces during the economic meltdown but now that business has come back--in many cases stronger than ever--they are not hiring new workers. In most cases, they haven't even hired back the ones they laid off during the crisis.
The U.S. unemployment rate is hovering just below 10 percent and the number of people who are holding jobs that pay and require skills far below their qualifications is at least as high. We are told by financial "experts" and politicians that Obama is to blame for reasons that make no sense.
They claim that corporate CEOs are not hiring more workers, even though many of their companies are doing great business and are flush with cash, because they are "uncertain" about the impact of health care reform and tax increases they fear may be coming in the near future. These paralyzing uncertainties are simply the icing on the Obama anti-business, anti-America socialist cake which is yet another reason why the Republicans will take over both houses of Congress in a couple months. Or so the story goes.
But let's be honest. Back during the Clinton years when taxes were much higher and when health care costs were going through the roof each and every year, companies were hiring like crazy. Many, like my employer, offered big bonuses to any employee who referred a prospect who ended up being hired by our firm. It had nothing to do with certainty about the future or tax rates or socialism or health care costs.
It was all about our CEO's belief that we were missing out on a lot of business because we didn't have enough people. So our company hired more people.
Today many companies that survived the financial crisis are flush with cash and very profitable. But instead of hiring back the workers they laid off, they are investing in new equipment and productivity technology that will enable them to do more business with even fewer employees in the future. They are also using their huge cash hordes to buy other companies so they can lay off even more workers in the future and become even more profitable--at least in the short run.
And when companies make more money, their CEOs (the same ones who decide whether to hire or fire more workers) make lots of money. A recent report issued by the Institute for Policy Studies shows that the 50 companies that laid off the most workers last year saw their profits go up an average of 44 percent. And (surprise surprise) the CEOs of those companies made an average of $12 million last year--almost 50 percent more than average CEO pay at America's 500 largest companies.
So let's be honest. There's not a thing that Obama or any other politician can do to lower unemployment in the private sector as long as CEOs and shareholders of our largest companies are getting richer and richer because of mergers, productivity gains, and layoffs. And our free market capitalist system--which I heartily support and have earned my living managing for more than 30 years--guarantees them the right to do that.
So, if we're going to be honest there is a lot to talk about and figure out. It will be tough and it will be complicated. It is so much easier to create villains and phony issues to keep people busy being outraged and afraid. Maybe that's why so many of our politicians and media celebrities are going that route instead of giving us the facts and trying to help America.
]]>Anger and Outrage -- America's Fastest Growing Religiontag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.6946202010-08-26T10:50:19-04:002011-05-25T17:30:22-04:00Larry Gellmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-gellman/
I have been operating under the mistaken belief that those who continually forward emails full of vicious lies and distortions smearing President Obama, his family, and others with whom they politically disagree were simply mistaken. I was sure that if I could send them conclusive proof that they were forwarding deliberately manufactured lies -- not honest mistakes -- then they would be grateful and thank me.
But they never did. In fact, they almost always got angry and berated me for being a liberal -- which I guess is a term they use to describe people who care about the truth. They never said "Thank you so much! I can't believe I just sent a horrible lie about our president to a whole bunch of my friends. I will have to get back in touch with all of them right away and make sure they know it's not true!"
So I wrote the friends who had forwarded me this piece (under a headline encouraging me to be outraged) along with proof that it wasn't true. But this time I asked Doug "now that you know it's a lie, what are you going to do?" His response made it clear to me just how misguided I have been -- and a whole lot more.
"I'm going to keep sending it out," he said. "After all, Obama lies all the time, so we have the right to lie too."
These are Americans who now believe with perfect faith the our black president, dark-skinned Muslim terrorists and Mexican immigrants, and liberal Democrats are the cause of every problem we face in America today. These self-described patriots don't just disagree with their adversaries --they actually believe that the bad guys are pure evil and out to destroy everything is great about America.
They are true believers in the same way that Orthodox Jews believe that the entire Hebrew Bible was given to Moses by God on Mount Sinai -- in the same way that devout Christians believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God. It is not a matter that lends itself to intellectual discussion. It is not about reason or facts -- it is a matter of faith.
Rational discourse and fact checks that prove that what is being said is untrue have become irrelevant to people for whom this was never about truth and accuracy. Glenn Beck has become the high priest of Fox News and of the new religion and his language and demeanor have become increasingly evangelical as this trend has continued.
The business network CNBC has jumped on board as well. The late-morning business program The Call now includes a regular segment entitled "Viewer Outrage." Think about that. They are now committed to a televised segment of outrage on a daily basis in the way The 700 Club might commit itself to airing a daily prayer or bible passage.
But all this anger and outrage and thinly veiled racism and bigotry and lies are only the symptoms. The disease is the widespread and growing sense of fear that is gripping millions of Americans who just a few years ago felt confident about their circumstances and future but who today are more frightened and confused than they have ever been in their lives.
For an entire generation, most people got used to secure employment, a growing economy, rising home, stock, and real estate prices. There were ups and downs along the way but we were all told that if we worked hard, owned quality investments, and hung in for the long term that things would work out fine. And for 25 years they did.
If a person put away a nest egg, they could count on at least 5 percent a year from risk-free investments and an average of 10-15 percent a year in riskier investments. Most of my clients who retired during that period (I'm a financial adviser when I'm not busy saving the world) would go on to buy the nicest house they ever owned, live better than they did when they were working, and see their net worth go up year after year due to the rising value of their investments. This was the case despite the stock market crash in 1987, the savings and loan crisis of the early '90s, the popping of the tech bubble, and even 9/11. We always came back stronger than we were before.
But all that has changed for the worse during the last five years. Million of Americans have lost 100 percent (or more) of the equity in their homes. Most growth-oriented investments such as stocks and real estate have been losers instead of winners. More importantly, most investors have lost confidence in the future pulling more than $33 billion out of stock mutual funds already this year and moving that money into bonds and CDs that are yielding virtually nothing.
Just ten years ago, there was full employment and companies such as mine were offering a $1,000 bonus to any employee who helped find a new worker because the labor market was that tight. Today, we have tens of millions of Americans out of work and most companies are looking to make even more cuts even as business has improved dramatically.
In its effort to stimulate the economy by dropping interest rates to zero, the Federal Reserve has actually hurt most investors by making it impossible to get any income at all from bank deposits and money market funds. A person with a million dollars in the bank used to be able to get $50,000 or more a year in income. Now they are lucky to get $1,000.
People who thought they had a grip on their lives are now scared and confused and looking for someone to blame. They used to look forward to leaving something to their children and grandchildren. Today our kids are inheriting a reverse annuity -- a mountain of debt they can never outlive. The patriots blame estate taxes and Obama's anti-wealth policies, but deep down they know the truth. We just didn't have the guts to act like grown-ups. We paid our bills with credit cards and when we were maxed out, we put them on our kids' tab.
We now face two basic choices. We can look in the mirror and realize that the challenges we now face are due in large part to choices we made as voters and citizens. We elected and supported government leaders who spent too much and taxed us too little. We wanted to keep Medicare and drug benefits and Social Security and to expand homeland security and fight two wars but we didn't want to pay for it. We re-elected a president and Congress who told us we could have it all and make no sacrifices. Those same officials allowed our financial institutions and oil drillers and miners and others to take huge risks in search of profits and personal gain without regard to the consequences to all of us when those gambles crapped out.
And it's not all about money. There are a whole lot of older people who confused brains with a bull market. They made millions of dollars between 1980 and 2000 mainly because they were alive and in business or the stock market or real estate at the right time. They worked hard and some were quite intelligent but because they lived during a time when the stock market went from 1,000 to 14,000 and real estate went through the roof they got rich beyond their wildest dreams.
Human nature being what it is, most of them came away feeling really smart instead of really lucky. Now that things aren't working out so well, instead of feeling really stupid (which is no fun at all) they are just getting angry and blaming all of their challenges and things they just don't understand on the villains cited above. The truth, of course, is that they were never that smart in the first place and now they are not that stupid but rather than unpack all that, they are forwarding slanderous emails and listening to the media high priests of fear and hatred who are preaching the exact sermon they want to hear.
Instead of looking at how they need to change their own behavior and expectations, these cult patriots have chosen to blame others and get very angry. They have chosen to blame a president who wasn't even around when everything was coming unglued. They have chosen to blame every member of Congress, even though we were the ones who elected them. They have chosen to blame a variety of dark-skinned people, starting with our black president but not ending there. We also blame dark-skinned immigrants who, like most of our parents and grandparents came to America seeking a better life and who make a huge contribution to our economy and society.
And now, nine years after 9/11, Fox News and opportunistic politicians are choosing to revive a new wave of bigotry and resentment against the millions of law-abiding, tax-paying Muslim Americans (thousands of whom serve in our military and dozens of whom were killed in the 9/11 attacks) under the guise of showing respect for the Real American victims at the World Trade Center.
The anger and hatred and lies being spread about Muslims and the leaders of the cultural center are yet another embarrassment to our country. The notion that an abandoned Burlington Coat Factory three blocks from Ground Zero is "hallowed ground" while there are already two strips clubs operating even closer to the site without any concern is yet another indication of how our sense of fear and confusion has eliminated any pretense of honesty or fairness in how we think or what we today call journalism.
My friend, teacher and Rabbi Brad Hirschfield of CLAL has taught that anger and fear can be very useful as an alarm system--the flashing red lights and clanging bells that alert us that we are facing a serious challenge. But he goes on to point out that people should not make important decisions while they are angry or afraid, wisely pointing out that those actions never seem to work out well and are often disastrous.
Before a disease can be cured, it has to be accurately diagnosed. As long as a growing group of people continues to believe that our national sickness is all about dark-skinned people who are not like us and evil politicians, our problems will only get worse. This first step toward a cure has to be a return of honesty and rational, fact-based conversation regarding where we are and how to proceed.
And the first step toward that first step must be a rejection of news media and politicians who are the false prophets and leaders of this new, fast-growing cult. And finding the "delete" button on our computers when we receive an email that blares in its headline that we should be angry and outraged and claims to have identified the villains who got us into this mess.
It's going to be long and hard but, as Will Rogers once said, when you find yourself in a hole and need to get out, the first thing to do is stop digging. Because they are angry and afraid, too many self-described Patriotic Americans have used anger, outrage, and demonization as a shovel and as a result they are sinking deeper and deeper into the pit.
]]>The Ground Zero Muslim Center -- How Low Can We Go?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.6871562010-08-20T12:34:31-04:002011-05-25T17:25:21-04:00Larry Gellmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-gellman/
All of these toxic trends have come together during the last month and have been reflected in the media coverage, political opportunism, and email conversation about the new Muslim Center that is being built blocks away from Ground Zero.
Ironically, least affected by all of this hysteria was the government process of the city of New York. The center is being built on private property on a nondescript piece of land and in conformance with all relevant zoning and use guidelines. Approval of the center breezed through the required process with the support of Mayor Bloomberg and unanimous votes by the relevant committees. For years there have been discussions and proposal for development of Ground Zero itself that aroused virtually no national interest.
As has been the case with all proposals on and near ground zero, the developers are long-time American citizens with no legal or tax issues who have a long history of working for pluralism and greater understanding among people. The difference with this project of course is that the developers are Muslim.
That is not supposed to matter in America. We are a country with a long and proud legal and moral tradition of people being innocent until proven guilty. For decades it has be considered both immoral and illegal to discriminate against anyone based on race, religion, color, or ethnicity. Unfortunately, those days seem to be long gone -- the victim of the addiction to anger and outrage and the need for dark-skinned villains that has overtaken our national conversation.
As has become normal in matters of manufactured outrage and controversy, the symbiotic partnership between Fox News and the Republican Right got the ball rolling. But the trend toward more thinly veiled bigotry and demonization of people of color and "the other" continued its acceleration.
As you may have noticed, according to Fox and the Right, the only real racists in our country are now people of color. President Obama, Van Jones, Sonia Sotomayor, and Shirley Sherrod. There are apparently no white racists any more. And every economic, law enforcement, and national character problem Americans face can be directly linked to our socialist Black president, dark-skinned Mexican immigrants, and Muslims (every one of whom is assumed to be a terrorist or embrace a religion that's focused on death and destruction). Not a single one of our national ills can be traced to the behavior of the rest of us. The job of Real Patriots and Real Americans (white people) is to be increasingly outraged and point out how "we" are the victims of "them."
The tactics surrounding the debate over the Muslim Center have taken this national embarrassment to a whole new level. As Mayor Bloomberg, President Obama, and many others have pointed out, there is no way any law-abiding American can oppose the right of American citizens to build a Muslim Center on private land unless they believe that all Muslims share responsibility for 9/11 and that all members of a religion are guilty of the crimes that were committed by a very small group of their co-religionists. As Michael Kinsley has convincingly explained, this thinking is flawed, illegal and un-American on every level.
The most ironic aspect of the debate has been that opponents have claimed that allowing the center to be built would grant a victory to the terrorists. As Jeffrey Goldberg and others have accurately pointed out, nothing could be further from the truth. A Muslim Center run by an Imam who has written a book entitled The American Dream is the Muslim Dream and who has worked for decades to promote cooperation and understanding will become the number one target of Muslim terrorists because he is the ultimate affront to their core belief that infidels should be destroyed -- not embraced.
The fact that presidential hopeful and Fox analyst Newt Gingrich has compared building a Muslim Center led by American citizens committed to peace and interfaith cooperation to putting a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust Museum is disappointing (Jeff Goldberg called Gingrich "an ally of Al Qaeda") but not a surprise. The fact that Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity have spread vicious lies about Imam Rauf and implied that most families of victims of 9/11 are opposed to the center (they aren't -- many are strong supporters) is also not a surprise.
But as a Jew who is deeply involved with and committed to a number of community organizations, the biggest shock has been the extent to which so many Jewish leaders and organizations have gone to the dark side on this issue. Jews have suffered for centuries from bigoted group-think and the spread of slanderous lies which has led to shameful discrimination. And no group has fought more energetically and effectively to combat bigotry, relgious discrimination, and to uphold the rights of all Americans.
Even though the Muslim Center has received approval and will be built, I continue to receive a flood of emails from fellow Jews trying to help me understand through cherry-picked quotes from the Koran and provocative 4 minute videos that Islam is a religion of death and suggesting that "they" need to express remorse for the attack on 9/11 nine years ago before "they" should be allowed to build a mosque in New York--or, as Newt Gingrich has suggested and the New York Times has reported--anywhere else in the U.S.
These suggestions are contrary to American law and tradition on their face, but they are particularly shocking coming from a group that until recently suffered so broadly from the same kind of broad brush discrimination. I ask my fellow Jewish friends how they would respond to a suggestion that since it is common knowledge that Jews are greedy and will do anything to make money legally or otherwise at the expense of others, that rabbis and Jewish leaders should publicly apologize on behalf of all Jews for the actions of financial terrorists Bernie Madoff and Orthodox Jews like former Enron CFO Andy Fastow and Jack Abramoff who swindled and bankrupted thousands of innocent people.
The idea is appropriately greeted as offensive, slanderous and un-American on its face. But for some reason, those who demonize all Muslims don't realize that they are holding millions of peaceful, law-abiding, tax paying, American citizens to a similar warped standard. The angry critics also never point out that dozens of Muslims were victims of the 9/11 attacks -- including six members of Imam Rauf's mosque. Are the families of those victims part of the "they" or are they part of the "real" victims?
Are the families of the thousands of Muslims who bravely serve in our armed forces part of the "they"? Should all these brave Americans be forced to apologize for horrible acts committed 9 years ago by a couple dozen of their co-religionists or are they exempt from the rest of Muslims who owe us an apology and and explanation?
Are our "allies" in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan who we are spending trillions to defend and support and on whose behalf tens of thousands of Americans have been killed or maimed in recent years part of the "they?" Lest we forget, they are all Muslims.
By any reasonable standard, there never was a real controversy over whether the Muslim Center should have been approved and now that American justice and values have prevailed there is really nothing more to discuss. But we all know that this is not about a Muslim Center. It is about political opportunism, the desire for media profits, and our growing dysfunctional need for anger, outrage and villains. After all, without villains we might have to look in the mirror and realize that is was us and the representives we elected who have created the multiple crises we now face. But that's worth a whole article of its own.
That's also why for some time to come, there will be a great deal of heat and very little light created around this and other issues. We have reached a new low in the quality and civility of our national conversation. But there can be no doubt that we haven't yet hit the bottom. This is looking and feeling more and more like a black hole into which there is no limit to how far we can sink.
]]>So Much Heat, So Little Lighttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.6505302010-07-19T11:39:51-04:002011-05-25T17:05:23-04:00Larry Gellmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-gellman/
On the same day last week those who were looking for a right wing perspective on a broad range of issues had some tough choices to make.
They could either attend the Aspen Institute event featuring five A-list Republican governors (Rick Perry-TX, Tim Pawlenty-MN, Haley Barbour-MS, Bob McDonnell-VA, and Linda Lingle-HA) or the day-long Aspen Counterpoint session on "Conflict and Conscience" featuring six speakers who enlightened them about the evils of militant Islamic strategies, Islamic persecution of women, and the media's one-sided treatment of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Both events drew large crowds and those who believe that President Obama is not a Muslim terrorist in disguise or that a peaceful two-state solution is even worth pursuing in Israel felt like they had wandered on to a different planet. But we're getting used to that. What I continue to find shocking is that the message, tactics, and unrelenting anger of the Republican Party are becoming echoed and displayed by so many Americans who call themselves "pro-Israel."
Back in the days of civil discourse when people of goodwill and common positive intent could disagree about issues in a mutually respectful way, it was possible to say things like "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend with my life your right to say it." That has been replaced by "You are a horrible person and every belief you hold represents a mortal threat to everything decent people hold dear." If you were in Aspen last week, you would have heard it in stereo when it came to the issue of President Obama and his true feelings about Israel.
One minute, I heard Governor Rick Perry of Texas (a renowned student of international affairs who happened to be sporting a t-shirt stating that "Marshall Law (sic) has been declared") state "the way the Obama administration has treated Israel is an absolute affront to all democracies around the world."
A couple minutes later and a few hundred yards away I was listening to Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick state that Obama has been by far "the worst president for Israel since the state was founded 62 years ago."
Thankfully, we live in America where people are free to express their opinions. But I remember a time when if a governor or journalist was going to level that kind of attack against the president, they would feel obligated to cite at least one quote or statement or action that backed those charges up. Perry and the Fox-inspired "fair and balanced" crowd on the right abandoned those standards long ago along with fact-checking and a number of other nuisances.
As a proud and serious Jew, I expect more from our people. But apparently facts are no longer required to smear people in the Jewish and Israeli press now as well.
During the last few weeks, Glick (whose rants were greeted with huge applause and no challenging questions at the conference) has stated as fact that Obama has "declared war on Israel" and had told Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu weeks ago that unless Israel released hundreds of Palestinian terrorist prisoners immediately that neither Obama nor anyone from his administration would meet with Netanyahu.
Since then, the two heads of state have met twice and no prisoners have been released. Glick never followed up with a correction or retraction and, as far as I know, none of her equally rabid followers have complained. She has also never cited a single example of a statement or action by Obama that indicated he was at war with with Israel. But when you're outraged, facts apparently don't matter.
She, along with fellow panelists John Bolton and James Woolsey, assured the crowd that Obama had in fact rudely and deliberately snubbed Netanyahu two months ago when the two had a short, hastily planned working meeting in Washington. Of course, none of them were at the meeting or had talked with anyone who was.
Just a few days earlier, Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren told an Aspen Ideas Festival audience that he had been present for every minute of each of the five meetings between Obama and Netanyahu (more than Obama has met with any other head of state) and there was never a snub or a slight of any kind.
Glick's response to Oren setting the record straight was not to thank him for clearing thing up but rather to slam the ambassador in writing and demand his resignation for essentially being a traitor to Israel. She stated that Oren takes his inexplicable desire to be Obama's head cheerleader more seriously than his job to represent Israel's interests. Again, no facts supplied.
Of course there was no mention by any of the speakers that Obama courageously told Muslims in Cairo last year that they needed to abandon terrorism and accept Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. Or the fact that Obama has repeatedly emphasized his unshakable support for Israel. Or the fact that Obama recently pushed through strong sanctions against Iran in both the U.N. and Congress. Or the fact that Obama has never made a negative statement about Israel.
One had to come away wondering how she has the energy to hate so many people (there are surely many others) and still get through her day. She seemed like an Israeli Glenn Beck. Always outraged, often wrong, but never in doubt.
Don't get me wrong. Much of what was said at the conference is true. Israel faces enormous challenges. It is unfairly held to a double standard by much of the world and the international media. But not every word of criticism is completely unfair and the result of Jew hatred and media bias. Israel is surrounded by neighbors who want to destroy her. But it also has an increasing number of neighbors who really do fear the threat of a nuclear Iran more than they do Israel.
It is very challenging to negotiate with terrorists and others who have shown they cannot be trusted. But it is also true that Israel cannot continue to exist as a Jewish democracy for much longer. The birth rate of the Arab and Palestinian residents of Israel and the West Bank is so high that in a few years they will outnumber the Jews. The math is unforgiving.
Like most of the difficult challenges facing the world today, these are complex and troubling issues. But what is more troubling are those who believe that simply demonizing others and backing sketchy claims with partial truths is the answer.
Jews have a tradition of being firmly committed to the truth. We have survived and grown by getting together to talk, study, argue, disagree, and speak freely and try to learn from each other. As our most visible "pro-Israel" leaders take on the values and tactics of the American Right wing, we run the risk of losing a big part of what has made us so special and enabled us to prevail against huge odds for so long.
For centuries, the greatest risks to the survival of the Jewish people and our values have come from the outside--from those who have hated us and wanted to destroy us. Those threats are still very real and can't be ignored.
But at a time when Israel and the American Jewish community have never been stronger, I worry at least as much about the threats from within.
As we have sadly learned in recent months, that approach generates far more heat than light. And far more damage than good.
]]>A Whole Bunch of Inconvenient Truthstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.6421832010-07-12T16:34:58-04:002011-05-25T17:00:24-04:00Larry Gellmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-gellman/
This disconnect between what people like (or need) to believe and the facts is not just annoying. It has actually become pathological since so many seem to feel so angry and out of control about so many things in their lives that it is both convenient and sometimes necessary for them to demonize other individuals and groups and blame them for everything that is wrong with our world.
The problem, of course, is that while their designated villains do have bad qualities and do some nasty things, they are not the pure devils we'd like them to be. Every now and then we get hit in the face with inconvenient truths that should pop the mythical bubbles.
Unfortunately, the need for villains and demons is so pervasive that these facts no longer seem to matter.
Take the self-serving myths that exist regarding the challenges in the Middle East and Israel. Please.
Early in the week, President Obama had his fifth meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu -- more than he has had with any other foreign head of state. As he has since before becoming president, Obama made a statement after the meeting (as did Netanyahu) emphasizing the close and unshakeable bonds between our two countries and how the U.S. maintains a firm commitment to Israel's security and right to self defense.
Many of the self proclaimed "pro-Israel" leaders have been ranting for months that our current president is no friend of the Jewish people and our homeland. But annoying facts keep popping up and getting in the way of a good rant. How inconvenient.
Forget about the fact that it was Obama's appointees and staff who led the successful push in both the U.N. and out Congress to get tough economic sanctions passed against Iran.
And the fact that Michael Oren, the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. (who has been present for every minute of every meeting between Obama and Netanyahu) claims that there has never been a crisis or unproductive interaction between the two leaders.
Instead of thanking Oren for the insight and praising the American president as a true friend of Israel, the ideologues prefer to shoot the messenger and bash Oren as a liar. Typical of the pro-Israel Right is Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post who has simply decided that Oren has turned traitor to Israeli interests and has become a liar and Obama cheerleader.
After all, if you've boxed yourself into an ideological position that is "the truth," competing inconvenient truths must be ignored or discredited.
Many of these same people have been complaining for months that the Goldstone Report (that suggested that members of the Israeli army behaved badly during the Gaza invasion) was the latest in a long chain of unfair assessments prepared for the U.N. by Israel-hating anti-Semites. Virtually every Jewish and pro-Israel group in the world has condemned Goldstone and his report and AIPAC has succeeded in getting most of the U.S. Congress to join the chorus.
After reading Goldstone, I tend to agree with the critics that the report unfairly suggested that the Israeli government attacked Gaza in an effort to systematically punish innocent Gazan citizens. It also didn't acknowledge the fact that nearby Israeli towns were suffering frequent missile attacks from inside Gaza and that the Israelis had to do something to make it stop.
Orthodox Israeli rabbis encouraged soldiers to be particularly ruthless to Gazans during Operation Cast Lead -- reportedly encouraging them to show no mercy to innocent Gazan citizens, women, and children. There is an increasing amount of solid evidence that shows many of those soldiers followed those instructions and behaved very badly -- perhaps criminally.
The response of most "pro-Israel" Jews to this has been "Why did they have to print that in the paper?" Not a single one has said, "Thank God we found out the disturbing truth." Again, it's a case of the pesky truth getting in the way of a clear cut good guys -- bad guys situation.
How inconvenient.
Another simplistic view that is promoted in "pro-Israel" emails is that all Arabs, Palestinians, and Muslim are essentially the same. They are all bad and are either terrorists or condone terror.
He went on to say that he would applaud a decision by the U.S. or Israel to bomb Iran in order to take out that country's nuclear capability.
"If the U.S. bombed Iran it would be a disaster," said ambassador Yousef al Otaiba -- an attractive, sharply clad young man who my wife described as "hot" (pictures available upon request). "But if Iran gets a nuclear weapon it would be a bigger disaster."
He added that he would personally be grateful to Israel if it was the country that took out Iran's nukes although he acknowledged that Israel would face severe criticism from the Arab "street" if that happened.
"Israel gets blamed no matter what it does," said the Ambassador from the United Arab Emirates.
He went on to say that the day that the Israelis and Palestinians reach a peace agreement, twenty-two moderate Arab nations would immediately recognize Israel and its status as a legitimate nation. He suggested clearly that most Arab states fear the rogue nations among themselves far more than they fear Israel.
He made so much sense and talked so rationally that for a brief second I forgot where I was. I actually believed that there are a lot of Arabs in the Middle East who are just as worried about threats from other rogue Arab nations as we are. That they want peace and a better life for themselves and their families as much as we do -- even enough that they would applaud and support actions that would make that outcome more likely.
But then I checked my Blackberry and slipped back into the fact-free zone of simplistic explanations and widespread demonization. I had just received an email from one of my Jewish friends explaining to me how Koran is chock full of lines commanding good Muslims to kill infidels so it is foolish and naive to suggest that we can trust any of them. This friend would not know a Koran if it hit him between the eyes, but he knows "the truth."
At the end of the day, many of us must need villains more than we need hope, real solutions and intellectual honesty.
How inconvenient.]]>What To Do When You Get Screwed By the Refstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.6226622010-06-23T17:05:59-04:002011-05-25T16:50:20-04:00Larry Gellmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-gellman/an incompetent referee from Mali stole the game-winning goal from the U.S. soccer team in its World Cup match against Slovenia.
The ref clearly blew it--as he had all game long--and ruined the Americans' amazing comeback from a 2-0 halftime deficit to what would have been a 3-2 win that would have propelled them into the next round of World Cup competition.
I was among the millions of baseball fans who looked on with ourage as umpire Jim Joyce blew the call on what should have been the final out in Detroit pitcher Armando Gallaraga's perfect game.
I am among the millions of Jews around the world who have looked on with outrage repeatedly over the years as the United Nations and much of the world have consistently held Israel to an outrageous double standard. The U.N. has routinely ignored horrible behavior on the part of dozens of nations around the world while it routinely sanctions, criticizes, and calls for investigations of Israel for actions that seem very tame and often justifiable in comparison. Much of the angry and truly vicious anti-Israel response to Flotillagate over the last few weeks can be cited as an example of that double-standard and the plain fact that there are people and nations around the world who are always looking for an excuse to criticize and de-legitimize Jews and Israel.
What can we learn from all this? The most obvious lesson is that for reasons ranging from bias to incompetence to just making an honest mistake, sometimes the refs get it wrong. Players, teams, people and countries that deserve better sometimes get screwed. In an imperfect and often unfair world, stuff happens.
But these events of the last month can teach us valuable lessons right now regarding how to respond to these injustices in the most productive way.
Players and coaches of the U.S. soccer team at first expressed anger and frustration over the blown call that cost them so dearly. It would be shocking if they didn't. But within a few hours, they seemed to be focused on their next game against Algeria in which a victory would still put them into the next round of the World Cup.
The news media, which ran replays of the horrible call non-stop for more than 24 hours, tried repeatedly to prod U.S. coach Bob Bradley into launching a tirade against the offending official, but Bradley knew that while that response might be fair, it would not be productive.
"You end up saying that's just how it is sometimes and you move on and get ready for the next game," said Bradley after the game.
It is safe to assume that during practice sessions over the next several days, much more time was spent watching tape of the two early goals the U.S. gave up to Slovenia and figuring out how to keep those kinds of mistakes from happening again than was devoted to watching the blown call that cost them the game. If the U.S. team had not played horribly during the first half, the final call would have been meaningless.
The same admirable maturity was shown by the 21-year old pitcher Gallaraga who seemed very philosophical about the baseball immortality that was denied him--particularly after the guilty umpire apologized to him for blowing the call.
"No one's perfect," was Gallaraga's artistic comment after his own bid for perfection was unfairly snatched away. Like the U.S. soccer team, he could have dwelled on the unfairness of it all for a very long time but instead he chose to move on. His whole life and career are ahead of him and what's done is done.
As an American Jew who cares a great deal about Israel, I hope that my many "pro-Israel" friends can show more of that kind of maturity and wisdom when it comes to dealing with the many challenges the Jewish homeland continues to face.
It would be possible and perhaps even justifiable to rant about how unfairly Israel has been treated in the worldwide reaction to Flotillagate as well as dozens of other issues over the years. In fact, I have received dozens of emails and read many articles in recent days that make just that point. Many of the complaints are valid and much of what is said is substantially true.
But like the athletes who have been dealt injustice (admittedly with far less at stake than in the case of Israel), the wisest course of action for that nation's leaders and supporters would be to focus on their future game plan and try to learn from the many questionable decisions its own government has made that might have been counter productive.
In short, focus your time and energy on the things you can control--not on all the factors (fair or unfair) over which you have no influence.
Instead of demonizing all Muslims in the world, constantly ranting about the biased refs, and insisting that Israel has done everything right and its enemies have done everything wrong, it might be more useful for the "pro-Israel" community to do a little more soul searching, self-analysis, and planning for the many games that remain on the schedule.
The issue here is not about right and wrong or fair and unfair. It is about smart and productive versus one-sided and self-defeating.
Most of Israel's political leaders and supporters in the U.S. are far more educated and experienced than the athletes who have suffered injustices this month. But in this case, the older and wiser group could learn some valuable lessons about how to respond to getting screwed by the refs--about not losing the insight that the season is long and that players and teams who learn from their mistakes, bounce back from the bad calls, and continually work on their game plans are the ones who win in the long run.
]]>The 11th Commandment -- Thou Shalt Support Israeltag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.6085132010-06-11T01:36:07-04:002011-05-25T16:45:26-04:00Larry Gellmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-gellman/
From the very beginning, the organized American Jewish community has been all about supporting Israel. The United Jewish Appeal and Federations (where I chaired campaigns and will again) have raised hundreds of millions of dollars every year from American Jews who back in the day would often borrow money to give more than they could afford. Assuring the survival of Israel at a time when that was much more in doubt than it is today was the defining issue and for many it still is. Israel Bonds (where I chaired the Wisconsin campaign and served on the national board) did and does have the same focus.
AIPAC (where I served on the Tucson board until I was recently asked to resign) has exploded onto the scene in recent years as an effective booster club and lobbying organization for Israel and is attracting support from Jews and non-Jews alike.
At most Jewish agency gatherings, Hatikva is sung along with the American national anthem. That custom seems bizarre on its face since virtually all of the audience is American and few know the words to the Israeli national anthem. I have never understood why EITHER is sung at a fundraiser for a local nursing home or day school but it is yet another sign of how support of Israel is woven into the essence of everything Jewish in this country.
The unwritten commandment to support the Jewish homeland is a good one and, in their own way, most American Jews obey it religiously (or secularly). That's not the problem. The challenge is coming up with a shared definition of what it means to support Israel and how to do it.
This is a problem that is common to commandments. There is a misplaced belief that God gave us a complete guide at Mt. Sinai. The truth is that most the Ten Commandments are so vague and subject to interpretation that they have raised far more questions than they answered.
The best example is the commandment to honor your father and mother. It sounds simple. The commandment is one sentence. But tens of thousands of pages have been written struggling with how to do it in real life.
This dilemma was clear to the Talmudic rabbis. In Kiddushin 32a, Rabbi Eliezer deals with the issue of how a son honors a senile father who is about to throw his life savings into the sea in front of the entire community.
Do you honor your father by not embarrassing him publicly and allowing him to leave himself destitute or do you honor him by grabbing his wallet and lovingly leading him back home--saving his money but causing him to lose face?
Rabbi Eliezer, who was a supporter of Judaism, said you honor your father more by not embarrassing him and letting him throw his money away. Other rabbis, also supporters of Judaism, disagree strongly. They felt the father would recover from (and might not even remember) the embarrassment but the consequences of throwing all his money away would cause him physical and emotional distress for the rest of his life.
Rabbis on both sides of the issue were religious people who wanted to "support" the commandments and do the right thing. And as with all disputes, there was room in the Talmud for a number of different opinions and approaches.
There was an understanding back then that seems to be missing today that being part of a religious community or wisdom tradition means finding room at the table for those who seek the same goal but disagree, often strongly, about how to best get there.
I fervently support Israel's right to exist as a Jewish democracy. I believe Israel has the right to defend itself against its numerous enemies who seek her destruction by any means necessary. I strongly condemn the fact that Israel is held to a double standard and constantly faces unfair criticism from the UN and foreign countries.
I also believe that we show our love and support for Israel by pointing out what we believe to be mistakes and bad decisions made by its government in the hope that our voices will lead to clearer thinking and better solutions.
That's why President Obama was showing support for Israel when he was critical of Prime Minister Netanyayu's decision to cave into that country's worst elements--the political Orthodox and Settler movements--and his decision to expand an Orthodox neighborhood in East Jerusalem with no strategic value at a time where the act could only be viewed as provocative.
For going public with this kind of thinking, I was recently asked to resign from our local AIPAC board by a friend and national board member. He accused me of asking inappropriate questions and writing in a way that made it clear I deserved no respect from the community. Goldberg and others who care about Israel so much that they air their views regarding how it can be better have suffered from slings and arrows as well.
The American Jewish community is not in crisis but it is facing a number of serious challenges. Ironically, most of them are the direct result of the successful battles that were fought by our parents to gain us access to every nook and cranny of the American experience, but that's worth its own article. Israel is facing daunting challenges as well but it too has never been stronger and more accepted as a legitimate country in the U.S. and the rest of the world.
There are obviously people and countries who hate Jews and Israel, but as M.J. Rosenberg points out, much of the criticism of Flotillagate has not come from those who think Israel shouldn't exist. It comes from people who support the formation of a Palestinian state in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Israel is often unfairly criticized and is held to an outrageous double standard by the U.N., most of the world media, and the Far Left Wing in the U.S. As with all injustices, those should be pointed out and criticized by fair-minded people.
But instead of branding those Jews who agree with us as pro-Israel and those who don't as anti-Israel and self-hating Jews, it it time to take a long hard look at what it does and should mean to "support" Israel.
Are our community organizations and their leaders required to show that support by unquestioningly applauding every action of the current Israeli government?
Does it show support to forward each other hundreds of emails claiming that Israel was 100 percent the victim of Flotillagate and made no bad judgments and did nothing unwise?
Do we show that support by forwarding emails saying the President of United States has thrown Israel under the bus and has declared was on Israel when he has done neither?
Do we show that support by sharing videos of Muslim extremists saying hateful things and behaving badly and telling each other that the Israeli government can't be expected to talk with these horrible people?
I don't claim to have those answers but I do know that we need to have a conversation. The essence of Judaism has always been about having conversations. We need to return to the Talmudic model outlined by my hero Shimon Ben Zoma who described one who is truly wise as "he who learns from all people."
Jewish leaders may not agree with Peter Beinart's important recent article describing how a persistent move to Right Wing intransigence by many Jewish organizations is causing widespread alientation of younger Jews and leading to the gradual disappearance of liberal Zionism, but they ignore it to the detriment of the organizations they lead and the causes they claim to support.
I became passionate about Judasim more than 20 years ago when I discovered the brilliance and relevance of our wisdom tradition. To the extent that the American Jewish leadership is throwing out that pluralistic model and stifling the conversations that are essential to meeting our challenges, they are guaranteeing a sad legacy.
To mean well is not always to do well. The mark of true leadership is knowing the difference.
]]>What In the World is Going On with Stocks?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.5686942010-05-08T15:23:25-04:002011-05-25T16:25:21-04:00Larry Gellmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-gellman/
For the first four months of the year, business conditions have been improving pretty steadily. Bailed out corporations like General Motors and many banks have retooled and stabilized and paid much of the money back to taxpayers. When Barack Obama became president, the world faced an imminent and obvious financial crisis. The U.S. job market was shrinking as more than 150,000 more jobs were being eliminated than were being created every single week for months on end.
Today it was announced that during April, almost 300,000 more jobs were created than were lost. Company after company has announced improved profits based on growing sales and reduced overhead. That's a net gain of more than a million jobs per month from where we were a year ago.
The stock market seemed to be right in sync with the improving reality. After posting large double digit gains last year, most market averages were up nicely for this year just one week ago. On Monday of this week, all the major indices rose another full percent or more. Everything seemed to be on track. Now just a few days later, in the absence of any apparently earth-shaking news and without warning the tone has completely changed.
The analysts and experts seem clueless. Most have chosen to blame the carnage on news about credit problems in Greece -- problems that have been around and in the headlines for months and which on their face just don't seem to be big enough to warrant the rout and panic that have hit the markets with a vengeance. It appears that the experts don't have a clue what is going on in the stock market so they are grabbing at any news headlines they can find.
On the positive side, the market sell-off this week has caused investor sentiment to shift from complacency to outright panic. The violent swings of the last few days have looked and felt like forced selling from funds and investors just throwing in the towel without regard to price. This type of capitulation tends to almost always take place at market bottoms -- not in the early stages of a protracted bear market.
It also shows that even though the market has been in solid rally mode for more than a year, most investors have never really trusted the move. They just have too many bad memories and the news about deficits, unemployment, and foreclosures have just been hard to ignore.
Skepticism and fear are typically bullish signs because it shows that many investors are still afraid of stocks. The market, like a dance floor, fills up fastest when lots of people are sitting on the sidelines waiting for a song they like. Once everyone is dancing, the floor can't get any fuller -- it can only empty. If the dance floor is already pretty empty, the downside is more limited. That's why high levels of investor fear are historically considered bullish for the market and complacency is viewed as dangerous.
Certainly there has been no fundamental shift in the earnings or prospects for most companies during the last few days. And yet many of those companies have lost 20 percent of their value or more despite the fact that their recent earnings reports and outlook have been quite upbeat. Either these stocks represent attractive value at these levels or something very bad is about to happen to our economy that we just can't see or feel right now.
There is always a chance that the economic disruptions in Greece will spread throughout Europe and eventually to our country as well. There is also legitimate uncertainty and concern about the huge deficits that are being racked up by the U.S. Government and what economic consequences will ensue. But it seems like a doomsday scenario is already being priced into the markets long before it is clear that the current uncertainty will lead to widespread economic problems.
One other complicating factor may have been the proliferation of "super sized" Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) that have become increasingly popular with many investors. ETFs grew in popularity as a way for ordinary investors to participate in specific market sectors, indices, or geographies in a quick and easy way.
But in recent years, the most popular ETFs have been a broad range of "funds on steroids" that provide a way to make leveraged bets with 2 or 3 times the "pop" of a simple vanilla index fund. For example, the ETF that provides investors to bet for or against the technology or energy or financial sectors with 200 percent leverage are far more popular that the plain vanilla funds that simply try to mirror the relevant index.
As a result, individuals now have the ability to make riskier bets using the kind of leverage that used to only be available to larger institutions. A byproduct of that approach is greater volatility at all times, but particularly during buying and selling panics when everyone is trying to get through a small door at the same time.
At the end of the day, it seems prudent to move assets away from markets which might be less resilient to these disruptions and also away from the overweight positions in basic materials which are vulnerable to the impact of the rising dollar which has been moving up against the currencies of countries that are in even worse shape than we are.
There is a risk that disruptions in Europe and elsewhere will grow into a huge economic problem that will cause people to stop buying new TVs and new I-Pads and will slow down business in general. There is also a risk that the long-predicted financial calamity will play itself out as the consequences of huge deficits, major unemployment, and widespread foreclosures come home to roost.
But it seems the bigger risk would be to sell good companies at what seem to be low prices, only to watch prices rise dramatically when the sense of panic lifts. I'm just not convinced that the companies that have done so well over the last year and are forecasting more growth are facing a huge setback due to forces that are hard to see clearly on the horizon.
People should never put money they are going to need over the next few years into stocks. They should also keep as much additional money out of harm's way to enable them to sleep at night during weeks such as this. But for investors with a long term horizon and a tolerance for some risk and volatility, it seems we remain in a time of great opportunity for growth across a broad range of companies and sectors.
But anyone who says they fully understand what is going on is lying or clairvoyant. As a mentor of mine once said, "it seems like the more I know, the less I know for sure."]]>The Flogging of Goldman Sachs -- A Shell Game, A Semantic Problem, or Populist Rage Gone Wild?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.5599642010-05-03T12:05:59-04:002011-05-25T16:20:27-04:00Larry Gellmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-gellman/
The U.S. Senate and the news media showed last week they are still in the Wild West days. Several Goldman Sachs traders and executives were summoned to the Committee on Investigations to be publicly whipped and shamed for whatever it was they supposedly had done wrong. The message was clear. We know these guys are horrible people and need to be publicly berated and hung. The fact that none of them has broken the law is an irrelevant nuisance that shouldn't slow us down.
Perhaps the most telling line of the 11-hour Senate committee ordeal was spoken by Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) who commented at one point that "it's like we're speaking a different language here." Tester was referring to his belief that the Goldman representatives were being evasive and unresponsive to many of the questions they were asked by committee members.
In fact, the Goldman folks weren't being evasive. They really were speaking a different language. The most dramatic example of that disconnect occurred during the opening question asked by Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) of the four young mortgage traders who were involved in the Abacus deal targeted by the SEC. "In your role as a financial advisor," Collins asked each of them, "do you believe you should always act in your client's best interest?"
The traders looked confused by what sounded like a pretty simple question. Collins thought that their confusion must have been contrived and part of a strategy to chew up time. But the fact is that none of the four men she confronted with the question was a financial advisor. I know, because I am a financial advisor. I work with unsophisticated successful people who count on me to tell them what to do with their money. That's what an FA does. In any transaction, I only have one client and I always try to look after their best interests.
But these men were traders and market makers. Their clients are all sophisticated institutions that already know what they want to do with their money. Those clients come to Goldman's trading desk seeking good transactions -- not advice. The question posed by Collins was a non-sequitor and completely irrelevant to their circumstances.
As a market maker, you arrange a transaction between two or more valued clients -- some of whom want to buy and others who want to sell. It is guaranteed that the deal will work out well for one side and badly for the other. As a market maker in custom-designed mortgages, your job is to make sure you are providing a good and fair market -- to provide liquidity and markets for otherwise illiquid securities. That's looking after everyone's best interest.
This would be a conversation worth pursuing if the goal of the hearing in the Senate was to shed real light on any aspect of the situation. The fact that virtually no Goldman clients have stepped forward to complain would also be telling, if informing the public about the issues was the real goal of all this. But we all know that this hearing was not about providing clarity or truth.
Committee chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) spent most of the lengthy inquisition repeating his concern and outrage over how wrong it is for an investment firm to package a security for sale to its clients and then make a bet that it will go down in value. But while Levin made it clear many times that Goldman and the people in front of him should be ashamed of themselves, he never suggested that any of them violated any rules or laws.
In fact by continually pointing out that we need a whole bunch of new laws and rules to make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen again, he essentially was admitting that those laws do not exist today. In other words, the people at Goldman didn't break the law because there are no laws against what they did, even if they did what he said.
This set of facts leads to the following question: Are all these SEC suits and Senate inquisitions and leaked reports of the Justice Department coming down on Goldman supposed to lead to something real? Or has it all been part of a political shell game designed to get the public to divert its attention from the real issue?
Has this entire Goldman show trial been a distraction to take everyone's eye off the ball while, armed with populist rage, the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress set about the business of "protecting Main Street" with far more rigorous and game-changing financial regulation than they could have ever pushed through before the Goldman sideshow whipped everyone up?
Obama and the Democrats are either ideologues with tunnel vision who just don't get it or they are savvy political tacticians who have succeeded in getting everyone to keep their eye on Goldman Sachs while the real story is taking place in the financial regulation committees on Capitol Hill.
If Goldman's stock dropped 20 percent last week over concern about the SEC suit and possible criminal prosecution, it is probably a huge over-reaction. If it dropped because draconian new regulations and tax increases on investments are on the way, then it may have been justified.
I have to admit that I can't figure out which it is.
Which is the whole point of a shell game -- isn't it?
]]>Et Tu Frank Rich? Goldman Sachs and the Death of Journalismtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.5514192010-04-26T14:42:34-04:002011-05-25T16:15:25-04:00Larry Gellmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-gellman/
But for all this slippage over the last few years, this was the week that the music truly died. The feeding frenzy to demonize Goldman Sachs has claimed the last bastions of solid journalism in just a few days.
The all out attack against Goldman began months ago because, unlike their competitors, this was the one firm that was smart and responsible enough not to put their entire company and the world financial system at risk by using huge leverage to make a single bet on a losing number. Instead, Goldman chose to hedge its bets and as a result, unlike many of its former competitors, it is alive and thriving today.
Goldman has been unfairly singled out by the media and politicians from the outset, but on April 16, the SEC filed a civil fraud charge against them with so much fanfare that there was a general media presumption that Goldman must have been caught red-handed doing something really terrible.
The SEC accused Goldman of arranging a high stakes bet between a fund manager named John Paulson who was bearish on the sub-prime mortgage market and two sophisticated institutional investors who felt that high-yield lower quality mortgages represented a good investment since, even during bad economic times, most Americans always found a way to make their house payments.
Paulsen helped select the mortgage portfolio on which the bet was to be based. Goldman went to ACA, a highly respected firm which proudly declared on its website that they were the most sophisticated mortgage experts in the world. Paulson and ACA then sat down together and decided on the final portfolio. ACA made a lot of substitutions to the portfolio and eventually signed off on it.
A German bank bet $150 million and ACA bet $850 million that the value of the portfolio would go up. Paulson's fund bet $1 billion that it would go down. Goldman took a $15 million fee for being the bookie and says it bet $100 million of its own money along with the banks.
As the subprime mortgage market collapsed, Paulson pocketed the whole $1 billion while Goldman lost a net $85 million and the German bank and ACA lost their bets as well.
The SEC claims that Goldman committed fraud because it didn't tell ACA up front that Paulson was the one who was betting against the portfolio. This charge makes no sense for a number of reasons. First, given the magnitude of the collapse of the market, the outcome of the bet would have been the same no matter who picked the sub-prime mortgages.
Second, the claim is false on its face because Paulson did not, in fact, select the portfolio on his own. He did it along with ACA which made many changes before signing off.
In a world where real journalists still existed, one might have expected them to point these things out in their news reports following the SEC charge. How the alleged "duped" investors were actually just two huge savvy institutions who wanted to make the bet they did. How no Goldman management was cited as having done anything wrong. How any winner-take-all bet between two willing and qualified parties by definition entails huge risk.
But instead, they caved and joined the Goldman-bashing party. It seems that the demand to feed the beast has just become too powerful. No media outlet (except the Wall Street Journal) has resisted the temptation to demonize the one firm that had the chutzpah to be right when everyone else was wrong. How dare they stay alive at a time when everyone else was doing the patriotic thing and going broke! They couldn't resist suggesting that the mighty omniscient pariah Goldman was preying on thousands of small helpless investors.
But until now, there were cooler heads around in the media--reporters who realized that mass hysteria and a lynch mob mentality do not constitute proof of wrongdoing. No more. Everybody is now in the pool.
But the more outrageous claim is that Goldman targeted "unwitting investors," implying that thousands of unsophisticated normal families were pressured by Goldman salesmen to put their nest eggs in these things. There were other firms out there doing that at the time, but Goldman was not one of them. Goldman doesn't deal with unwitting investors in transactions like this. They served as the casino where a few very sophisticated gamblers could find someone on the other side of their bet by paying Goldman a fee.
The second major pillar to fall was CBS News, which ran a story (watch it here) detailing how in 2007, while people who had borrowed $500,000 to buy a $400,000 home that cost $200,000 to build were losing their homes, Goldman Sachs executives were joking and laughing about all the money they were making on their cynical bets against America. This was based on 4 emails in which Goldman employees expressed joy over the fact that they were making money on bets they had recently placed against the mortgage market.
To link the two pieces of the story in the way they did was deceptive and outrageous. The foreclosure crisis that is still going on in America was caused when real estate developers, lenders, and real estate brokers encouraged ordinary people to pay more than they could afford for homes that were worth much less than the purchase price. Goldman Sachs had nothing to do with any of that.
We live in a 24-7 worldwide financial trading market where it is possible to bet on the future direction of the price of anything. For CBS, the New York Times, and others to suggest that this is somehow unpatriotic is the height of foolishness and only misleads Americans.
I am a huge University of Arizona sports fan. Five years ago, LSU was coming to Tucson to play our Wildcats. I had watched our team and knew they were just in the early stages of rebuilding and had no chance to win the game. LSU was favored by only 8 points. I thought the spread should have been 50 points so I bet $1000 on LSU--against the team I love. Arizona lost by 63 points and I made $1,000.
My bet had no impact on the outcome of the game just as Goldman's bets against the mortgage market had none on the catastrophe that befell millions of Americans. Neither the homeowners nor the sports teams even knew the bet existed and each bet was irrelevant to the result on the field.
Back in the good old days, the responsible media would be helping us understand the difference. Instead of piling on and adding to the distortions and misunderstanding, they would be writing articles like this one. But the appetite of the beast for outrage is growing daily and it needs to be fed with more and more villains.
Today was the worst--the true stake in the heart. The dagger. The final straw.
I stay up until midnight on Saturday night (it's only 9 here in Arizona) to read Frank Rich's column in the Sunday Times. On just about every issue, I think he has made sense over the years and has done the best job of any columnist of sorting through the political jungle during complicated times.
Part of today's column explained well how the Goldman saga has been used effectively by President Obama to push forward his agenda for new broader financial regulation. Classic Frank Rich. But then he picked up a burning cross and joined the mob concluding that Goldman and "those who shorted the housing market bet against America."
Does Rich also believe that those who buy life insurance are betting against themselves and rooting for their own demise or that those who buy fire or car insurance are hoping that they have a catastrophic accident? Was I untrue to my Wildcats when I used the mispricing of risk in Las Vegas to make some money?
Does Rich think that the firms like Lehman, Bear Stearns, Merrill, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and dozens of others who placed huge bets on the home team with borrowed money and subsequently went broke and created a world financial crisis are the true patriots? Does he think that the network of regulatory and rating agencies who all failed to do their jobs were all just great patriots as well? That Goldman Sachs is the major and only villain in this passion play?
I'm sending this article to Rich. If he apologizes, I'll let you know. Otherwise I'm truly finished. If he doesn't, I'm just going to watch and read more about sports and weather, saddened by the thought that today's reporting bears about as much resemblance to journalism as Hulk Hogan does to an Olympic champion.
If arrogance were against the law, hundreds of people at Goldman Sachs would probably spend the rest of their lives in jail. They were major architects of a toxic Wall Street culture for which we have all paid dearly.
If a reporter says that, it's journalism. But if he writes the kind of trash I talk about in this piece, he's one of the many who have brought the media--all of it--to its current sorry state.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am a managing director of an international investment firm that works and competes with Goldman Sachs. I have many friends and a family member who are current or former employees of Goldman. It is my honest belief that none of those facts played a role in shaping the opinions expressed in this article.]]>Confessions of a Pro-Israel Obama Supportertag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.5259092010-04-06T11:50:03-04:002011-05-25T16:05:22-04:00Larry Gellmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-gellman/
I voted for Barack Obama and I'm glad I did. Like most of my fellow Jews, I think he's doing a pretty good job as President of the United States. I also feel a special connection to the State of Israel and strongly support its right to exist as a democracy, defend itself, and not be held to a double standard by the U.N. or the rest of the world as it so often is today.
Those sentiments don't sound or feel the least bit radical or incongruous to me. But that just shows how out of touch I must be with millions of other people who also say they care deeply about our country and the Jewish state. Many of them have never been angrier or more concerned that Obama would like nothing better than to sell Israel down the river in his spare time as he bankrupts and destroys America with his socialist agenda.
I would apologize for supporting this horrible man if I could just figure out what he is doing wrong.
We have a representative democracy that seems to have served us well over the years. A majority of Americans elected Obama president 16 months ago . The margin was even more dramatic if you consider that he won pretty much every state outside the former Confederacy and the Wilderness states where a large double-digit percentage of the voters acknowledged they would never vote for a black man. He was particularly popular with Jews, who supported him by a 3-1 margin.
But many American Jews who identify themselves as staunchly "pro-Israel" have never been comfortable with Obama. In recent weeks, several respected Jewish leaders have joined others who seem so confused that they don't know the difference between Haman and Mordechai -- the villain and the hero of the Purim story in which an evil politician tries to destroy the Jewish people.
Obama is no Haman. He has made it clear from the outset that he would like to be a force for progress in bringing about the two-state solution that is essential if Israel is to remain a Jewish democracy for longer than a few more years.
He has repeatedly stated his commitment to Israel's security and safety and has made it clear that the Palestinians and Arab states need to renounce terrorism and violence and recognize Israel's right to exist.
But when March Madness began on the basketball court, March Mishegos took over the Jewish press and several pro-Israel organizations. And the insanity continues.
Like his predecessor, Obama has stated that the U.S. role in making peace would be made easier if Israel stopped building neighborhoods in the West Bank and parts of Jerusalem. So the White House was understandably annoyed with both the timing and the substance of the decision to build 1600 new housing units in part of Jerusalem that was announced during Biden's visit.
The White House has made it clear that this awkward incident was a spat among friends -- not a crisis or a major game-changer in U.S.-Israel relations. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu apologized for the timing of the announcement and has repeatedly insisted that this incident did not provoke a crisis between his country and the U.S.
It never seemed like that big a deal. But a number of Jewish "leaders" and journalists clearly disagree.
AIPAC, the largest pro-Israel organization in the U.S., immediately called on the Obama administration to "diffuse the tensions" with Israel, branding statements by the White House "a matter of serious concern." The AIPAC statement cites no specific comments or incidents as the cause of the undefined tension nor did it state what the Israeli government should be doing to help improve the situation.
Glick never offered quotes or any documentation for her dramatic claims but her column was lapped up and spread through the email network by concerned Jews.
A few days later, New York Post and Fox News military analyst Ralph Peters wrote a column featuring a very old photo of Obama standing next to Reverend Jeremiah Wright and stated that "regarding Israel, a lifetime of extremist associations has infected Obama with an emotional loathing for the Jewish state and a romantic vision of Palestinian terrorists as freedom fighters." Like Glick, Peters cited no quotes or facts to substantiate his accusations. But that email has also been widely distributed.
Then former New York City mayor and Obama supporter Ed Koch went on Fox News to echo what he had just written -- that Obama had "thrown Israel under the bus." Koch criticized our president for his "abysmal attitude toward the State of Israel and his humiliating treatment of Netanyahu." According to Koch, Obama insulted Bibi by having only a single photographer take pictures when the two met in Washington last week. That was the humiliating treatment. No specifics, facts, or quotes were cited by Koch to back his other serious accusations and criticism of Obama.
So what am I missing? Where is the tension? Where is the rage? Where is the outrageous treatment of Netanyahu? Where is anything resembling a crisis?
After the embarrassing housing announcement in Israel for which Netanyahu apologized, Biden made a speech there in which he said:
"I am here to remind you, though I hope you will never forget, that America stands with you shoulder-to-shoulder in facing these threats. President Obama and I represent an unbroken chain of American leaders who have understood this critical, strategic relationship. As the President said recently, "I will never waver from ensuring Israel's security and helping them secure themselves in what is a very hostile region."
Doesn't sound like a crisis to me.
All this happened at the time when Obama was working around the clock to get health care reform passed during which he never mentioned Israel once. After its passage, every time he appeared on TV he seemed downright giddy over his legislative triumph. No anger or rage. No mention of a war on Israel or any talk about a crisis.
The larger and more troubling question is why so many Jewish organizations have jumped on the bandwagon expressing their concerns. Their thinly-veiled message seemed to be that despite his repeated public statements of support for Israel they essentially agreed with those who questioned Obama's sincerity and motives.
None of these individuals or groups did themselves or the Jewish people a service by adding to and promoting the unwarranted anger and hysteria that has swept the "pro-Israel" community. A series of polls taken in both Israel and U.S. in recent days that show that most Jews support Obama and his concern about the negative impact of the radical settler movement and their damaging role in shaping Israel's domestic policies.
A separate poll of Israelis showed that 69 percent of Israelis view Obama as "fair or friendly" to Israel while only 21 percent viewed the U.S. president as "hostile."
Recent polls by J-Street and Gallup show that more than 60 percent of American Jews approve of the job Obama is doing as president --15 percentage points higher than the U.S. population as a whole.
In addition, a Rasmussen poll of U.S. voters show that a majority believe that Israel should stop growing neighborhoods in the West Bank and Jerusalem. By a 3-1 margin, American voters also believe that the Palestinians should recognize Israel's right to exist.
So not only are the alarmists who are trying to convince us that a U.S.-Israel crisis exists in the absence an any evidence, they are also out of touch with the majority of the constituencies they claim to represent.
There IS a serious crisis in Israel but it has nothing to do with Obama or the U.S. It is the toxic impact of the Religious Right and the settler movement -- a group that is small in numbers but huge in influence due to Israel's form of government which requires a leader like Netanyahu to put together a majority coalition to remain in power. The religious Shas party is a key part of that group and Bibi had to name a Shas interior minister to form his government. That minister is the one who blind-sided his own boss with the untimely announcement of the new construction in Jerusalem during Biden's visit.
Bibi's greatest challenge is not Obama. It's deciding if and when he is going to spend more time and energy working on the inevitable two-state solution and less on sucking up to the fundamentalist fanatics who have consistently worked against the peace process. Most American Jews don't want to acknowledge (much less deal with) those complexities so they just bash Muslims and Obama and define being "pro-Israel -- American style" to include positions that most Israelis would find frightening.
As a deeply committed Jew who has made almost two dozen trips to Israel and has held top positions in Federation, Israel Bonds, Jewish days schools, and other organizations I am aware of serious concerns in our community about continuity and the shrinking base of Jews who are choosing to become involved with existing community organizations.
It doesn't help our cause for those who claim to be leaders and staunchly pro-Israel to be so out of touch with the values and ideology of the majority of our people -- particularly those who are not yet on Medicare. They are our future and my sense is they are driven even further away by the posturing and lack of a factual basis for many of the claims and accusations that are supposedly being made on their behalf.
Jews are no strangers to crisis and we have suffered in the past under presidents and political leaders who were either indifferent or worse to our legitimate rights and concerns. Now that we have a president and many other leaders who are truly advocates of peace and hope, it seems silly and counter-productive to ramp up the rhetoric and accusations without any facts or documentation to back them up.
Purim and March Michegos are over as is April Fool's Day. Hopefully we can move forward from here with an approach that generates much more light and a lot less heat. And if the leaders of the Chosen People or anyone else want to level vicious attacks against our president, they should at least back them with facts and sources.
That's a change we can all believe in.]]>Feeding the Golem--My Jewish Friends Are Addicted to Anger and Fear Tootag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.4834152010-03-02T23:06:15-05:002011-05-25T15:40:24-04:00Larry Gellmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-gellman/
If that doesn't make you feel bad enough, it is even worse among my fellow Jews -- particularly for those of us who consider ourselves to be "pro-Israel" and purport to care a great deal about the well-being of our Jewish homeland.
I have dealt with this theme in separate articles about Antisemitism and the schizophrenic relationship between the American Jewish community and Israel. But the facts on the ground seem to be getting so much better and yet the problem seems to be getting so much worse that it seemed important to bring it up again.
Just last week, a Gallup Poll revealed that Israel is now viewed more positively by Americans than at any time in history. A full 63 percent of us favor the approach the Israelis are taking in their disputes with the Palestinians while only 15 percent of Americans say they think the Palestinians are behaving better.
That comes on top of a Gallup Poll taken last year which shows that Jews are more widely respected that any other religious group in America.
That comes on top a a poll taken a few years ago that showed that more than 80 percent of non-Jewish parents would be moderately to extremely pleased if their child married a Jew. When a similar poll was taken of the same group 50 years ago, the results were a mirror image -- more than 80 percent of the non-Jewish parents said they would be moderately to extremely upset.
That comes on top of the fact that discrimination against Jews in the workplace, neighborhoods, private clubs, and universities that was once so common has virtually disappeared.
There are certainly still bigots out there who say and do horrible things. But when they do, they are vilified and marginalized by broader society. There is still Jew-hatred out there, but there is no government or societal Antisemitism. There is no place in our country where that type of racist and bigoted behavior is considered acceptable.
As I write this article, I am in Beunos Aires where, like dozens of other places in the world, true Antisemitism exists. If a Jew suffers from discrimination or an act of Jew-hatred, the broader society seems indifferent at best. That used to be the case in much of the U.S. but, thankfully that is no longer the case. It is important to use vocabulary that acknowledges the difference.
We also now have an American president who surrounded himself with Jewish advisers and who has made it clear that he regards Israel as a unique and trusted ally in the Middle East and has repeatedly stated that American support of Israel will never waver.
With all of these amazing and wonderful developments, it seems as though the American Jewish community should be in a state of euphoria and constant celebration. Just about everything we worked and prayed for over the last 40 years has seemingly come to pass.
As we all know, we are seeing the exact opposite.
Every email I receive from a fellow Jew has the same theme as those I get from my friends on the Right wing.
Be very angry and very, very afraid.
My friends who claim to be pro-Israel (none of whom has a first, second, or third home there) are constantly pointing out horrible behavior from some Arabs in the region, Palestinians in particular, and those who believe that Israel is to blame for the problems in the Middle East.
They also make sure we are aware of how unfairly Israel is treated by the U. N. and that the Jewish state is held to a punitive double standard by the international community in general.
We are constantly warned of the risks created by a nuclear Iran and reminded that the only realistic course of action is a preemptive attack by Israel, the U.S. or some combination of our allies.
We are also told of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel incidents on college campuses such as the recent heckling and demonstrations against Israeli ambassador Michael Oren when he spoke at UC-Irvine.
I want to be very clear. Every single one of these complaints and observations has a factual basis. Every one raises valid concerns. We Jews who care about Israel should be aware of the issues and not be naïve or stick our heads in the sand.
But where is the balance to counteract this overly negative perception? Where is the acknowledgment and exultation over the list of wonderful facts I cited earlier? Would anyone who did nothing but read emails and posts from their pro-Israel friends ever have even a hint of all the positive developments that have occurred in recent years?
An old joke that you don't see much anymore gave the definition of a Jewish telegram.
"Start worrying. Details to follow."
That joke was the product of an era where most of the details were not good. There was very little good news that followed for most Jews for many centuries.
But now that so many of the details are so positive, isn't it about time that we sent a new telegram.
"Stop worrying all the time. Some of the details are actually pretty good."
]]>Feeding the Beast--Our Addiction to Anger and Feartag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.4768522010-02-25T17:32:05-05:002011-05-25T15:40:24-04:00Larry Gellmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-gellman/
So why do so many people spend every waking moment watching, listening to, and reading things that tell us up front are specifically designed to make us angry or afraid? This isn't the unpredictable bad stuff that just happens as part of the ups and downs of life. This is going out of our way to to listen to people and read things that advertise their goal is to make us angry and miserable.
During a single 12-hour period last week, I received emails headlined "Do you want to get really mad?"--obviously a rhetorical question since the presumed answer was "of course I do"--another saying "We should all be afraid," and a third that was simply called "OUTRAGE."
Each email was sent by a seemingly normal, well-balanced friend who had included me on a list of 12 or more other recipients. Two of the emails showed a long history of others who had received and forwarded them--more than 100 people in a matter of a few hours for each. Instead of deleting these messages that promised to deliver misery and despair, my friends apparently couldn't wait to open them and send them on as quickly as possible to friends and family members who they presumed also wanted to get more angry and afraid.
If most people say their goal in life is to be happy, then why do they spend so much time and money convincing themselves and others how furious and fearful they should be? Why do millions of us spend much of the day listening to ranting, raving, outraged people on the radio, come home and watch the angry Right wingers on Fox or the angry Left wingers on MSNBC and then read the steady stream of emails telling us how mad and scared to death we should be of our own government, Muslims, Arabs, Obama, Liberals, Congress, the media and everyone else in the world?
It gets even more bizarre. Our addiction to anger and fear has become so insatiable that there doesn't seem to be enough terrible and/or scary real news out there to meet our ever-growing need for outrage. The truth has become irrelevant as we stretch to feed our addiction to the beast of anger, blame, and fear.
The vast majority of emails, blogs, and other angry stuff are full of lies and distortions. The business of providing raw material to the misery pushers has become so large and successful that a number of websites thrive doing nothing other than check the veracity of stories that are flying around the internet. Snopes.com, factcheck.org, and others get millions of hits from people who are suspicious about the truthfulness of the hateful emails they get.
But it gets even more bizarre. When I fact-check the angry lies and find out that President Obama did NOT really attend Occidental College under his real Kenyan name or that Michelle Obama did NOT run up a $450 room service bill for a snack at the Waldorf Astoria or that the calls for a 28th Amendment to the Constitution reigning in Congress are based on phony assertions, I assume that the friends who sent me and others the lie in the first place would appreciate knowing that they were spreading falsehoods.
Guess what? Every time I have informed them of the fact, they get angry at ME, accuse me of being a liberal, and never go back to their sources or the people they have misinformed to correct the mistake or apologize for spreading lies in the first place. One friend said he always fact checks emails before he forwards them but the one full of lies that he sent me was "too good to check out."
Just to be clear, these emails and media reports are not honest mistakes or matters of opinion. They are lies that were created (often with time-consuming care, elaborate layouts, and artwork) and disseminated by people who knew they were lies from the outset. They were never designed to inform or enlighten. On the contrary, they were created for the specific purpose of creating anger and demonizing their targets.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman once said that "addicts never tell the truth to their pushers." He was referring to the unwillingness or inability of the U.S. government to call the Saudis to task for their role in financing and promoting terrorism around the world. Friedman explained that since we are addicted to Saudi oil, we can't, or won't, ever be truly honest with them for fear they might cut us off.
It would appear that millions of Americans have become truly addicted to anger and outrage. Fox News and talk radio figured it out first, and years ago became the crack pipe of the angry Right. They realized early on that there's no money in real journalism any more but they could get rich feeding our insatiable need for heroes and villains.
The other cable channels were slower to catch on, but now MSNBC, CNN, CNBC and the rest all want to make Fox-sized money ($700 million in profits last year with $23 million going to Roger Ailes, the CEO) so they have abandoned journalistic standards as well. Their idea of "balanced coverage" is getting the most extreme advocates of competing positions, putting them on stage together, and encouraging a food fight.
When was the last time you saw a guest on a cable station advocate a nuanced, pluralistic position and acknowledge the partial truth of opinions of the other side? My friends who used to appear frequently on these programs now say they can't get on the air unless they promise to be rabidly partisan.
So, to paraphrase Stan Laurel, "this is a fine mess you've gotten us into, Rush." We all want happiness more than anything else and yet we have become hopelessly addicted to media and emails that promise to make us UN-happy. How do we shed our demons and get back on track?
Here's a thought. First, stop watching cable news and listening to talk radio. I did that six months ago and haven't missed a thing. I have not missed the people I used to disagree with all the time (not surprising) but I also haven't missed the people I used to agree with that are trying to make other people angry. I have seen 132 episodes of NCIS, Law and Order, and CSI and know a lot more about sports and the weather than I used to. I even read a book.
When you get emails that promise to make you angry or unhappy, either delete them or if you have to read them, fact check them and let the sender and other recipients know if they are based on lies. If they are written anonymously, contain provocative pictures and inflammatory phrases, provide no contact information for the original author, and encourage you to forward it to the whole world if you agree but instruct you to delete it if you don't, it is almost guaranteed to be full of lies and distortions. Dozens of examples are available upon request.
Finally, we need to stop looking for villains and start looking in the mirror. What ever happened to the notion of shared sacrifice and shared responsibility? What ever happened to John Kennedy's exhortation to ask what you can do for your country? These are very hard and challenging times for most Americans. The solutions do not lie in anger and demonizing the other. They lie in our own hope, perspective, ingenuity, and ability to be part of the solution.
We may not come up with a lot of good answers right away. But if we can stop feeding the beast and start to break our addiction to anger and fear and villains and hatespeech, it would be a good start.
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