In Washington and Israel, negotiated compromise essential

 

Gordon L. Weil

The federal government has been paralyzed.

The Middle East teeters on the edge of a major conflict with unknown limits and duration.

Both situations call for statecraft and finding a common ground.  Without that, both situations yield destructive results.

The U.S. problem arises in the House of Representatives. The Republicans hold a narrow majority and can lead only if they are unified.  Their lack of unity is what has created the crisis.

A small group of GOP House members believe that, because their votes are critical to their party’s control, they can insist that all Republicans should give in to their views.  They toppled House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, because he was willing to compromise with a unified Democratic minority.

Their success continued to encourage them to insist on control by the party’s right wing, followers of former president Trump.  For a while, other GOP members would reject their push for control.  The result was a lengthy period with no speaker and no compromise.  That causes a non- functioning government, because the House simply could not act.

The unyielding stance of the Trump loyalists on the right is merely for show.  If they prevailed and fellow Republicans went along with them on urgently needed legislation, a more moderate Senate under Democratic leadership and a Democratic president would not accept their proposals.  The government would be blocked, pretty much where it is now without a speaker.

Because either a Trumpian blockade, now under way, or a House under right-wing domination yields the same non-functioning government, there is only one way out.  There must be a compromise between the Democrats and as many Republicans as are willing to risk their seats to protect the national interest.

The Democrats signaled they were ready for such a compromise, and their demands seemed relatively limited.  They wanted the House to be able to vote on necessary legislation on aid to Ukraine and Israel and on the budget.

The Democrats want a more open process, but do not insist on Republicans voting in line with them.  Compromise would produce results.  Yet the GOP right sees any concession as allowing the Democrats to control the House.  They view the Democrats with so much hostility that any compromise is too much.  Inevitably, they must lose.  The questions are how and when.

In the end, the GOP conservatives won and the GOP elected a speaker. Now we shall see if the House works better.

While the American government was blocked, the situation between Israel and Hamas in Gaza is explosive. That crisis intersects with the fumbling failure of the U.S. government to function even in a situation where there is broad bipartisan agreement.

The crisis arose at this time because Hamas launched an incredible terrorist attack on Israel.  It killed wantonly and took hostages. Its attack was obviously well planned and had no clear intent except to undermine Israel, a country it would abolish.

Understandably, Israel was embarrassed by the failure of its intelligence to foresee the Hamas attack and has responded with great force.  It cannot accept the risk of an event like this happening again.

Israel has gone beyond a military response, subjecting more than two million residents of Gaza to severe punishment to pay for the actions of the militants that control the Gaza Strip.  Israel has cut off supplies of food, medicine, water and fuel. Its philosophy appears to be that Hamas has shown no mercy, so Israel won’t.

The difference between Israel and Hamas is that Israel is an established member of the world community and Hamas is a gang of terrorists.  The Hamas attack and Israeli anti-civilian tactics bring them both to the level of Hamas. The Middle East has fallen into the Middle Ages. 

While Israel’s fury is understandable, its role as nation should drive it to a higher standard.  Instead of negotiating with the U.S. and Saudi Arabia over the heads of the Palestinians, it should pursue a solution with all parties. A permanent impasse, coupled with a continual effort to weaken the Palestinians, has not proved workable.  It produces terrorism and conflict, not peace.

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres has called for a ceasefire, not because he favors Hamas but because he abhors the waste of human life.  But Security Council resolutions for a pause or a ceasefire were both vetoed. The conflict continues unabated, because the world’s premier peace organization cannot find a compromise.

No political process can function over the long haul unless it includes compromise, even between those holding the strongest sentiments.  This is the responsibility of the people selected to govern. Using force, whether by a critical House cabal or Middle East actors imposing their will without regard for the cost, does not produce the needed workable and stable result.

U.S. government, world affairs in deep crises

Gordon L. Weil

“This may be the most dangerous time the world has seen in decades,” says Jamie Dimon, a top U.S. banker.

American constitutional government halts, blocked by the failure of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives to compromise and resume their role in government.  The process of government becomes hostage to a small group of extreme Republicans, exploiting their power for their own purposes and ignoring the national interest.

The U.S. is the world’s model for democracy.  But the Constitution cannot guarantee that its institutions will work.  That depends on a shared commitment to place the effective functioning of the model ahead of any purely partisan interest.  That commitment, once breached to the point of the Civil War, is once again breached by the deep ideological conflicts of a new civil war.

Donald Trump’s loyalists battle others in their party, producing congressional stalemate.  Meanwhile Trump, the pollsters’ pick for the GOP presidential nomination, goes from one courtroom to another.  Though the charges look serious, he seems immune from political harm and has effectively taken control of the Republican Party.

Democrats rally around Biden and display uncharacteristic unity, not bailing out the GOP.  They see him as their best bet to keep Trump out of the White House, just as they saw Hilary Clinton in 2016.  He suffers from seeming bland in the Age of Celebrity, when it counts to be flashy.  Once again, the Dems see competence as a substitute for charisma. 

At the same time, America’s place in the world is threatened not only by the failure of its government, but by the hostility of its adversaries.  China, together with Russia, Iran and North Korea, strive to show that dictatorship is the natural and workable form of government.  

A new report emphasizes that these four countries have more nuclear capability than the U.S.  Pax Americana, when U.S. nuclear power guaranteed world peace, is gone. While either side can destroy the other, wielding nuclear arms is more a matter of influence than of destruction.

Trump has openly fawned over the dictators in Russia and China, while they stealthily tampered with the American political system.  He envied the authoritarian power of Russia’s Putin and China’s Xi, both of which are now openly threatening.

Trump thought he could charm the North Korean pipsqueak dictator.  He turned Iran, at least temporarily restrained by a nuclear accord, into an immediate and dangerous enemy.  Now, we pay the price.

The growth of the menacing nuclear powers would be bad enough.  But it is accompanied by the failure of the United Nations system to promote and preserve peace.  It was supposed to be the way to end territorial wars, especially in Europe, and to unite the world’s great powers in preventing conflict.

A land war in Europe rages as Russia, once a great power, invades Ukraine, its neighbor.  Countries have stepped up to support Ukraine, as much to draw a line against this kind of territorial expansion as to help a victim of aggression. 

But now the world grows tired of the effort and resumes drifting away from the U.N.’s purpose.  Its Secretary General launches platitudes from the safety of New York, accepting obscurity and enhancing his organization’s irrelevance.  He should have gone to the Middle East, not Biden.

The problem of Israel and Palestine, ripe for settlement by the U.N. in 1947, grows worse.  Israel, founded as a territorial homeland for Jews, deserves to exist free from constant threat.  But full U.S. support for it seems to lead to a nuclear deal with the Saudi dictator over the heads of the Palestinians.   That fires up the Hamas terrorists, who only know how to lash out brutally.

Perhaps even worse over the long term is the increasing threat to life on earth.   Short-term corporate profit and the quest for personal wealth build walls that block our view of the future that will result from the climbing global temperature.

The Wall Street Journal has revealed that, while petroleum mammoth Exxon publicly pledged support for the development of energy alternatives to oil and gas, it actively opposed such efforts and pushed more fossil-fuel production.  It has just acquired a major shale oil company.  Exxon boss, Rex Tillerson, later Trump’s first Secretary of State, was a monumental liar. 

If things are not at rock bottom, we are making good progress getting there.

The problem is leadership.  We don’t have any.

Congress and the White House are led by the elderly, seemingly more intent on holding office than on reform.  Younger people are forced to wait respectfully.  Where are the leaders who speak out with some courage even at the risk of losing elections?  Politics shouldn’t just be a job to be held onto.

It’s time for strong leadership, and that requires new people at the top.

  

Nobel Prizes signal rise of women

 

Gordon L. Weil

Among this year’s Nobel Prizes, four of the six awards went to a woman – two of them without a male counterpart.  The world’s top prizes recognized the role of women in a rare year of multiple women winners.  They won outright the Peace and Economic Sciences prizes and shared with men in Physics and Medicine. 

The stories of two of them, both Americans, reveal both the progress and the obstacles to redressing the exclusion of half the population from leadership and recognition.

Katalin Karikό, who came to the U.S. from Hungary in 1985, was a key scientist in developing mRNA, the basis for the most reliable vaccinations against Covid.  She shared the award with a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, though she could barely gain an academic foothold there.

Her research was so advanced that skeptical funders were reluctant to give her grants.  Instead of stepping up, Penn demoted her and moved her to a remote lab.  After she and her male colleague perfected their discovery, Penn patented it and has made millions.  She got none of the money and went to work for one of the companies that produce the vaccine.

Now, she’s a marginal Penn faculty member.  Penn is glad to claim her as one of its own, but even now it seems a bit cool to her.   She may be more popular in Hungary, where she holds professorial rank, than in Philadelphia, where she doesn’t.  Her counterpart remains a top professor.

Claudia Goldin won the economics prize for her work on understanding the gender gap in employment.  With a career at top universities, she is now a professor at Harvard.

Goldin has challenged the belief that women will gain equal pay with men and to rise to the top of business organizations.   She found that child care responsibilities cut their earnings prospects; she has no children.  She also explored the “blind auditions” for women seeking seats in orchestras and confirmed the discrimination when they auditioned with no screen hiding them.   

Goldin was given tenure, a permanent professorship in 1990, the first at Harvard in her field.  Harvard was founded in 1636 as a men’s college and for most of its history wouldn’t allow women to teach men. Bowdoin College, a Harvard spin-off, was founded in 1794 and followed the same rule.

One of the arguments used against promoting women, Goldin found, was that they were less well educated.  Now, more women than men are getting college degrees, undermining that argument.  It is also linked with changes in American politics.

Among the top 25 states by percentage of college graduates, all but five routinely vote for Democrats.  Those states and D.C. include Maine.   

The last state in this top group is Georgia, now clearly on the cusp and no longer to be counted on by the Republicans. Just ask Donald Trump.  The next group of states includes Arizona, Wisconsin, Texas and Alaska, which may not be far from flipping.

The politics of states with more college graduates may show the increased influence of women among voters.  If that’s true, then as women increasingly outnumber men among college graduates, state voting may increasingly tip to the Democrats.

Some Republicans say their congressional election results were disappointing in 2022 and attribute a shortfall from their expected results to the effect of the abortion issue, which resonated with many women voters.  It may have mattered more than merely serving as a partisan wedge issue.

This possible trend toward more women being educated and more educated voters being Democrats might help explain Republican efforts in states like Texas and Wisconsin to make it more difficult for Democratic voters among the poor to gain access to the ballot box.  If so, this move can only work temporarily at best.

Maine is a good example of the political change that’s taking place.  It is a rare state that once had two women senators at the same time.  It now has one woman and one man in each of the Senate and the House and its first woman governor. The Senate president is a man and the House Speaker is a woman.  The Chief Justice is a woman. 

Congress is also changing, but none of the top eight leaders is a woman, while 29 percent of the House and a quarter of the Senate are women.  Since Congress first convened in 1789, only one, California Democrat Nancy Pelosi, has ever risen to the top.

The courts are doing better. Thanks to presidents of both parties, four of the nine justices of the Supreme Court are women.

Both parties have good potential candidates for the presidency who are women.  What stands between them and major party nominations are old men.   Is it now time for a change?

Voters take control; the referendum wave

 

Gordon L. Weil

Democracy is breaking out all across the country.

Not representative democracy, the hallmark of the Republic, but the original version– direct democracy.  That’s when people themselves decide, legislating in place of their elected representatives.  In Maine and other New England states, many local governments use the Town Meeting, the people’s legislature.  That kind of popular control is becoming, well, more popular.

In Arizona a few years ago, voters grew unhappy with legislatively drawn election districts.  Through a referendum, they adopted an independent districting commission. The legislature sued the commission, claiming that it alone had power over districting.  The U.S. Supreme Court confirmed that the people are the ultimate legislature, and the commission went ahead.

Decision-making by the people had taken off early last century, and the people now adopt laws in 26 states.  The movement grew as populism placed greater trust in average voters than the U.S. Constitution’s drafters had thought wise.  A turning point came when the Constitution was amended to move U.S. Senate elections from state legislatures to the voters.

Early populism favoring government by the people grew under progressive Republican leadership in the Midwest.  That movement also promoted public control of electric power, which helps explain why Nebraska, a conservative state, is dominated by consumer-owned electric utilities and has no for-profit power companies.

In 1908, Maine became the first state east of the Mississippi to adopt popular legislative action.  Voters must approve amendments to the state constitution, as in 48 other states, but, unlike some other states, they cannot propose amendments.  They may also decide by referendum on proposed laws sent to them by state government. 

Maine also uses “initiative,” allowing voters to propose and vote on laws without state government involvement.  This includes the “People’s Veto,” allowing voters to overturn legislative acts.   However, the Legislature can amend initiatives adopted by voters.

Four of this year’s ballot items are initiatives, with three relating to Pine Tree Power, the proposed consumer-owned, non-profit utility.  It was petitioned onto the ballot after Gov. Janet Mills vetoed the referendum proposal of the Legislature. 

Question 3 asks if voters will approve Pine Tree Power replacing CMP and Versant Power as their wires company.

Question 1 asks if voters want to approve major loans by certain entities. It is meant to require a later vote on Pine Tree Power’s borrowing to acquire the utility property, giving the two ousted utilities a second chance to block the new company.

Question 2 asks if voters want to bar foreign government-backed entities from financing future Maine elections.  CMP is owned by a Spanish company and Versant is owned by a Canadian utility. Their role could arise in future votes on new power lines and the loan approval, if it is required.

Question 4, the fourth initiative, would require automobile manufacturers to standardize repair diagnostics.  They oppose it.  Its proponents claim such a law would help independent shops to service new vehicles.

There are four referendums to amend the state constitution.

Question 5 would extend the period for judicial review of written petitions by an estimated 40 days.

Question 6 would require the full text of the state constitution to be printed, not now the case.  Omitted are the state’s treaty obligations to American Indians, inherited from Massachusetts upon Maine becoming a state.

Question 7 would remove the requirement that people circulating election petitions must be Maine voters, bringing Maine into compliance with federal court rulings.

Question 8 would eliminate the current ban on voting by people under guardianship for reasons of mental illness.

If political divisiveness continues to plague the federal government, more key decision-making could be left to the states.  With many Republican red states and Democratic blue states, political divisions could align with state boundaries.

The influence of money in politics does not disappear when referendums are used. As Mainers are experiencing in the campaign about Pine Tree Power, the two investor-owned utilities are far outspending a volunteer band of citizens in an effort to defeat the proposed non-profit utility.

In referendums, unlimited spending can reveal the power of vested economic interests.  That’s less true for abortion, a social issue where politics not profit may dominate.

Last year, the Supreme Court reversed itself on the federal right to abortion, and said the issue was up to the states.  Rather than let either ancient laws or conservative legislatures decide, people resorted to referendums.  In five of six states that voted, popular votes have protected the abortion right.  More such votes are slated.

If political power shifts somewhat to the states, direct democracy there may grow, especially when statewide popular votes could overrule artificial legislative majorities made possible by partisan gerrymandering.   The abortion votes may also encourage the increased use of referendums on other issues in many states.

We could be turning a constitutional corner.