Jimmy Carter, Gaza and me (Discussion 2) - Further Comments

In my last post entitled "Jimmy Carter, Gaza and me (Discussion 2)" I wrote in response to Albert Nekimken’s arguments:

“But before I truly launch into your “presentation”, I have to express my shock at your response earlier to my sending you an article from the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, entitled: "Thousands of Israeli Holocaust survivors still living in poverty.” It seems to me that nothing can be more damming to a Nation founded on the basis that Holocaust survivors need a refuge, if it can’t even take care of this dwindling group. Where is its moral compass?”

and referring to Albert Nekimken's comments I wrote further:

“Your response was:

 The situation of poverty and neglect among Holocaust survivors is a simple scandal that must be remedied, and should have been remedied many years ago. Who exactly is to blame, I couldn't say.

 To which I replied:

 “But who is to blame, - is it not enough to agree that Israel or its government, which is the same thing, is to blame. You suggested "Netanyahu’s tenure as finance minister is to blame when he turned the Israeli economy toward the free market” or at least that the newspaper Haaretz makes that claim. But isn't it obvious that there is money for the settler movement; there is money for the Haredim; but there is no money for Holocaust survivors. What an indictment of the values of the people who govern Israel.

 “And there are many decent Israelis who would not agree with you or the policies of its government. Unfortunately, they appear to be in a minority.”

At this point I just want to share with my readers the article from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz upon which my commnets about Holocaust survivors were based:

Thousands of Israeli Holocaust survivors still living in poverty, fighting for recognition

Seventy years after the end of WWII, some 20,000 aging Holocaust survivors receive little or no support from Israel, and 45,000 live under poverty line.

 Luta “Lusha” Brachfeld was 3.5 years old when Nazi Germany invaded her native Poland in September 1939. Her memories of World War II are few and fragmentary, but no less horrifying. She remembers “buildings collapsing as if they were made of matchsticks” during the three-week terror bombing of Warsaw by the Luftwaffe, which still gives her panic attacks every time an air-raid siren sounds – not an unheard-of event in Israel.

 She remembers the color and texture of her paternal grandfather’s trousers, as he often bounced her on his knees. And she remembers seeing those same legs dangling in the air when she found that he had hanged himself in desperation.

 She remembers the hunger and crush of people in the early days of the Warsaw Ghetto, where her family lived on Mila Street – a few steps from number 18, soon to become the headquarters of the 1943 revolt against the Nazis.

 She also remembers being carried by her mother on a desperate flight in the snow toward the Soviet Union, where she and her family survived as refugees.

 It is partly because of the way in which she escaped death that, today, this 79-year-old widow and grandmother of three is forced to fight an uphill battle in the Israeli courts to receive the same state support given to other Holocaust survivors.

 On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel on Thursday, and 70 years after the end of World War II, survivors and groups that represent them say the complexities of Israeli law have created inequalities in the benefits given to Holocaust victims.

 Despite a new law passed last year that increased the funds and services granted to Holocaust survivors, they say that 1 in 4 survivors in Israel live in poverty, and some 20,000 are unrecognized or only partially supported by the state.

 According to a report published on Monday by the Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Victims in Israel, there are some 189,000 Holocaust survivors in Israel, two-thirds of them female. On average, 14,200 die each year – nearly 40 per day. Some 45,000 have an income of less than 3,000 shekels ($760) per month, putting them below the poverty line, the report says. That marks a slight improvement from the 50,000 impoverished survivors that were counted last year.

 According to the Claims Conference, worldwide there are some 500,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors alive today, mostly in Israel and the United States. The figure includes those who fled due to Nazi persecution or suffered from various restrictions on liberty. About 20 percent were in camps, ghettos or in hiding under Nazi occupation.

 Until recently, only survivors who had immigrated to Israel before 1953 automatically received a monthly pension, regardless of their individual experiences during the Holocaust. Those who arrived later were not entitled to benefits.

 This situation was partially amended last year, when a law spearheaded by then-Finance Minister Yair Lapid allocated an additional one billion shekels ($254 million) per year to survivors and granted them other benefits, including a total exemption on all medical costs and subsidized psychological treatment.

 The law also granted equal treatment to survivors who had immigrated to Israel after 1953 – but only if they had been in concentration camps or ghettos.Brachfeld, who emigrated to Israel after 1953, has gone to court to have her rights recognized. She must now prove to a judge that she lived in the Warsaw Ghetto after it was officially established in October 1940. That is difficult, because her mother never revealed to her when and how she managed to flee the city, and “they didn’t exactly give you a certificate when you escaped from the Ghetto,” as Brachfeld tells Haaretz.

 All Brachfeld remembers is crossing into Soviet-occupied eastern Poland sometime before Hitler launched his invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.

 “We were in a field completely covered in snow and there were three Russian soldiers who were gesturing with their rifles, telling us to go back,” she recalls. “I went up to one of them and said, ‘But sir, my hands are so cold.’ And that saved us – they let us pass.”

 Brachfeld spent the rest of the war mostly in the Urals, where her father, who had fled at the start of the war, worked in a tank factory. They returned to Poland after the war, but, disgusted with the persistent anti-Semitism there, moved to Israel in 1956, where the 20-year-old Brachfeld built her family and worked as an X-Ray technician.

 Lapid’s new law has helped many people, but by restricting benefits for post-1953 immigrants to survivors of camps and ghettos, it has largely left out an estimated 20,000 survivors who went through different, but no less painful, experiences, says Colette Avital, chair of the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel.

 These include Polish Jews like Brachfeld, who were forced to flee to the Soviet Union – as well as thousands of Romanian Jews who were not deported to camps but went through pogroms and were pressed into forced labor, Avital tells Haaretz. There are also thousands of Sephardi Jews who were persecuted in North Africa and the Middle East by Germany’s allies and pro-Nazi regimes.

 Painful disparity

 Under the new Israeli law, some of these survivors qualify for an annual pension of 3,600 shekels. This is much less than what the state allocates for most survivors – a monthly stipend that starts from 2,200 shekels and increases according to degree of disability. This disparity occurs even with members of the same family who lived through the same circumstances but arrived in Israel at different times.

 Dita Greenberg, a 75-year-old survivor from northern Romania, was scheduled to be deported to Trasnistria shortly after her birth. But with the help of a neighbor, she and some of her family members escaped and spent the rest of the war hiding out at the home of relatives in the city of Botosani.

 “We were on the deportation lists, so we lived in fear of being denounced by anyone, even a Jewish neighbor,” Greenberg recalls. “We never left the house. Even when I was sick with dysentery and a lung infection, they were too afraid to call a doctor for me.”

 Her cousin Chaim, who was in hiding with them, came to Israel in 1951 and receives a monthly pension. But Greenberg does not qualify for the same benefits because she stayed on in Romania to care for her ailing father and was only able to leave the country in 1988.

“We have the same biography, and when I went to court, the judge told me that he recognizes my suffering but said in Latin, ‘Dura lex, sed lex’ – the law is harsh, but it is the law.”

 Avital notes that this disparity is particularly painful because it concerns people who are more in need of the state’s support, mainly recent immigrants from former Communist regimes. “Many came as elderly people, who didn’t bring with them pension rights and who couldn’t work anymore,” explains Avital. “People who lived behind the Iron Curtain were punished twice: first in the war; and then because they were stuck living in Communist countries.”

 A former diplomat and Labor MK, Avital says she has written to the heads of all major parties asking them to amend the law. She hopes the new government will take steps to give all survivors the same benefits.

 “There is very little time left, their numbers are decreasing but their needs are increasing,” she notes. “Many cannot fend for themselves, they need home care, suffer from trauma, dementia, Alzheimer’s.”

 In a written response, the Finance Ministry did not address the disparity of treatment between victims. However, it stressed that, thanks to Lapid’s law, it had “independently reached out to 145,000 survivors who are eligible for stipends or benefits” and “significantly reduced the bureaucracy that was a burden for many survivors.”

 Brachfeld, the Warsaw Ghetto escapee, now lives in a small apartment in a retirement home in Tel Aviv. She says she is “not looking for pity” but just wants equal treatment for all survivors.

“My childhood was taken away from me and no one can give it back to me,” she says. “I don’t compare myself to someone who was in Auschwitz, but we are all survivors, and there shouldn’t be any discrimination between us.”

Comments, questions, or corrections are welcome, and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified. However, please give your full name and the town and state in which you reside or have an office.

I AM A JEW (PART XIX - I Almost Wish I Hadn’t Started This Study!)

As the title shows this is the 18th part (actually the 19^th, if you count the Special Bulletin) of the series. If you haven’t read the other parts I urge you to do so. They are, after all a continuum. Easy access to the others can be obtained by clicking on the parts.

Part I, Part II, Part III, Special Bulletin, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X, Part XI, Part XII, Part XIII, Part XIV, Part XV, Part XVI, Part XVII and Part XVIII.

As I reach Part XIX of this series, I am beginning to wish I hadn’t started this research. I started researching and writing on this subject because I was shocked at the brutality of the Gaza campaign, a murderous infliction of collective punishment on innocent civilians, having no other purpose than to terrify. The message was, “accept what we impose upon you - don’t resist - resistance is futile - any attempt at resistance and we will kill you, your wives and your children. We will destroy your homes, your infrastructure and make your lives a living hell, and if you thought it was already a living hell, think again, we can and we will make it even worse.

But for all that I wrote about Gaza before, I neglected to mention other horrors.

J Street called attention to the fact that:

Even before the horrible 50-day military confrontation this summer in Gaza, the water situation for the 1.7 million Palestinians who live there was desperate.

 According to UNICEF, more than 90 per cent of the water extracted from the territory's sole aquifer is unsafe for human consumption; an estimated four-fifths of the water sold by private vendors there contaminated. Additionally, nearly 100,000 cubic meters of wastewater are discharged into the sea every day because sewage treatment plants are overwhelmed.

Currently, potable water flows from Israel to Gaza through two pipelines. A third pipeline has been constructed but has not been turned on. Israel could turn the lever tomorrow and double the flow of clean, potable water to Gaza.

 This action is being held up pending broader negotiations that, of course, are complex and may never reach fruition.

That was bad enough!

But my research uncovered so much more. The massacres from the beginning! The ethnic cleansing from the beginning! I almost wish I hadn’t found out.

But what I have begun must be finished! Pleasant or unpleasant, the truth must be uncovered! It must be told.

The inhumanity of man to man is old. But I thought Jews were better than that. And still my research uncovers more. I started with how proud I was to be a Jew. Can all the achievements of all these Jews, from Einstein to all the others wash away the crimes committed in the name of creating a Jewish state. I hear the lament from Shakespeare’s Macbeth:

Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. 

I thought that the destruction of homes of Palestinians who commit acts of terror had come to an end. (See: Part IV where I wrote:

As long ago as 2005 Israel announced that it was halting the demolition of militant’s homes, an implicit admission that this was a policy that had been in effect. See here.

But here is a headline from the BBC.  See here and here.

 Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered that the homes of Palestinians who have carried out attacks in Jerusalem be demolished.

No one has been convicted. And most of the people living there are not even accused. But there is no respect for due process. No respect for Arabs.

Israel is supposed to be the last refuge for Holocaust survivors, but to quote from Haaretz See here or here:

According to the Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Victims in Israel, 87 percent of Holocaust survivors who request financial aid live on less than NIS 5,000 a month, while 58 percent live on NIS 3,000 or less. Meanwhile, 70 percent of survivors who turn to the foundation cannot afford dental care, and 18 percent need financial aid to pay for eyeglasses.

But where does the Israeli government spend its money, instead of helping Holocaust survivors. According to The Forward: 

“…state spending on the settlers… includes the cost of building homes and other facilities, special hardship subsidies and providing energy, communications, roads and other infrastructure not needed by the military…. They do not include the likes of health, education and welfare spending on the 350,000 West Bank settlers included in the statistics. The CBS data include 19,000 Israelis in the Golan Heights annexed from Syria and, until 2005, 9,000 settlers in the Gaza Strip. They exclude 200,000 Israelis living on land annexed and incorporated into Israel’s Jerusalem municipality.

But where is the money for the Holocaust survivors?

But what about Holocaust survivors in the United States? Some 350 Survivors and Descendants of Survivors ran an ad in the New York Times reading in part:

Genocide begins with the silence of the world, …We must raise our collective voices and use our collective power to bring about an end to all forms of racism, including the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people. 

See here. The complete text can be found here.

Well, they do not represent all Holocaust survivors, and I don’t give this group any special standing, but they are entitled to a hearing. Are they right to claim special status because of their Holocaust connection? I would think not, but at least their Jewishness and their Holocaust connection aught to shield them from the charge of anti-Semitism, just as I asserted my Jewishness, and my pride in being Jewish as a shield against claims of anti-Semitism, or of being a self-hating Jew.

But how were they treated? It tells us much more about the unconditional supporters of Israel, then about their critics.

Here were some of the comments by Israelis that appeared on Facebook translated into English:

David Cohen: Those aren’t Holocaust survivors those are probably collaborators with the Nazis.

 Shmulik Halphon: He’s invited to go back to Auschwitz.

 Itzik Levy: These are survivors who were Kapos. Leftist traitors. That’s why they live abroad and not in the Jewish State.

 Vitali Guttman: Enough, they should die already. They survived the Holocaust only to do another Holocaust to Israel in global public opinion?

 Meir Dahan: No wonder Hitler murdered 6 million Jews because of people like you you’re not even Jews you’re disgusting people a disgrace to humanity and so are your offspring you are trash.

 Asher Solomon: It’s a shame Hitler didn’t finish the job.

 Katy Morali: Holocaust survivors who think like this are invited to go die in the gas chambers.

 Yafa Ashraf: Shitty Ashkenazis you are the Nazis.

Please note the inherent anti-Semitism in many of the comments.  The last comment about Ashkenazi Jews (those who came from Europe) were the primary victims of the Nazis and the founders of the State of Israel, but they are now the double victims of Israeli anti-Semitism.

But they weren’t the only ones who savaged the Jews who spoke out.

The Forward published an article by Alvin H Rosenfeld, Professor of Jewish Studies at Indiana University  and author of The End of the Holocaust, which savages the authors of the Times ad under the title: "Moral Emptiness of Holocaust Survivors Who Took on Israel - TheTrue Face Behind a New York Times Ad" and can be summarized by its last paragraph.

In fact, it is unlikely that many people emerged from Hitler’s camps ennobled or enlightened. To believe otherwise and to arrogate to oneself as a “survivor” or a relative of a “survivor” some special access to wisdom and virtue is, as IJSN’s ad shows, little more than moral pretense.

But since Israel’s very founding was predicated on the persecution of Jews in the Holocaust, it is perverse to denigrate the very group whose existence and suffering formed the impetus for the founding of the State of Israel.

Or as one post in the response to the article points out:

This article is a sad, completely ad hominem, attack on this group of Holocaust survivors. These are people who are carrying on a traditional of Jewish social activism; many have heroically taken the tragedy of their own dehumanization and channel that toward decades of work for peace and justice. It is one thing to disagree with them (and to make reasoned arguments to that effect), quite another to launch into a dismissive rant against them that doesn't even consider the content of the letter that they published in the NYT. Trying to end the violence and build some sort of constructive and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians is not an "anti-Semitic" project. Indeed, it is necessary for the survival of the Jewish state.

 Unfortunately, Professor Rosenfeld essay says nothing useful or constructive about the urgent issues confronting that area of the world. He's more interested in besmirching the reputation of other US-based Jewish intellectuals who happen to disagree with him.  

It is indeed unfortunate that an intelligent, fact based, debate on Israel’s policies cannot be had without this kind of vitriol.

The kneejerk defense and justification for every Israeli action, no matter how ignoble or outrageous, is a sad commentary on the traditional humanism and social consciousness that has so long been the hallmark of Jewish tradition.

I welcome comments, but will not publish any, unless they have a unique relevance to the segment under discussion, until this series is complete.

America’s Place in the World (Still More Discussion)

In my last post entitled "America’s Place in the World (More Discussion)" I set forth my exchange on this subject with Herb Reiner of Cedar Grove, NJ, and then set forth a somewhat lengthy exposition on the subject by Albert Nekimken of Vienna, Virginia.

I decided that I can most effectively juxtapose my views against Nekimken’s by interlineating my comments directly into his. I do so by showing Nekimken’s text in italics and my responses in bold type. Those who may want to re-read Nekimken’s views without distraction can do so by referring to my last post "America’s Place in the World (More Discussion)."

I found myself agreeing the most of your reply to Eric Offner, Did you? It doesn't sound that way! even while remembering that FDR's record was not unblemished: despite all of the admirable decisions that he made, which you summarize, he also refused to admit boatloads of desperate Jewish refugees, such as the ship St. Louis, that was ordered to turn around and return to Europe. 

I don't believe that this is a fair criticism. The immigration laws were clear, and these refugees were not eligible for entry under those laws. I don’t think Roosevelt had the power to ignore those laws. Also disappointing, recent biographical scholarship has revealed the extent to which he shared the general anti-Semitism of people of his class and times. Again I disagree! There is no indication that Roosevelt had anti-Semitic views. To be sure Cordell Hull, The Secretary of State did, but to a large extent Roosevelt was unaware of this, until much later when Morgenthau brought it to his attention Roosevelt was shocked but did not feel there was much he could do about it without shaking up his Administration and he wasn't about to do that.

Your rejection of Eric's list of historical sins of America on the world stage was justified insofar as it has been used as a justification for refusing to take action in Syria today. Nevertheless, it reminds us that nations, including America, make geopolitical and diplomatic decisions based mainly on contemporary perceptions of national interest, not according to high principals of morality. Not every Administration is equally guilty of this. Democrats are much more given to humanitarian considerations, than Republicans.  Clinton acted in Bosnia and Obama in Libya. Carter was always concerned with Human Rights.

More troublesome was your conclusion that the world needs a policeman and the U.S. should accept the mantle of that role because it can.

While I accept and even applaud some of our recent interventions, such as in Bosnia that were a relative success, or in Somalia, which failed, Somalia didn't fail! We didn't act! Overall I think your conclusion is flawed for the following reasons:

The listing below I think is the crux of your argument.

·As Eric's comments suggested, the reputation of the U.S. has been tarnished. The rest of the world is quite suspicious of American motives and tends to fly into a frenzy of conspiracy speculation about them rather than admire us for spending money and taking risks to "do the right thing" wherever that motive takes us. True! , But we can change that perception, if we follow a consistent policy that puts greater emphasis on human rights than national Rights. Can we do that politically, doubtful, but it is worth striving for.

·We also can't undertake the responsibility of being the world's policeman because most of the world rejects our authority in this role, even if a minority welcomes it. This ambivalence results in a high potential that our efforts will continue to have unintended, or counterproductive results. Not so! Neither Bosnia nor Libya had that effect.

·We can't afford to be the world's policeman in terms of either money or manpower. How reminiscent of the mood in 1939. Expensive foreign interventions risk pushing our debt to arguably unsustainable levels while our economy remains weak and the need for domestic spending rises due to demographic changes, globalization, automation and other factors that are shrinking the size of the tax-paying workforce to historic lows. Limited intervention does not have very high costs and non-American lives have just as great value as American ones. Neither Bosnia nor Libya had a major impact on our budget. Iraq is always the bugaboo but that was the wrong war with the wrong commitment.

Also important, we can see from the results of the Iraq and Afghanistan interventions that the detrimental effects on our own military--individual soldiers, preparedness infrastructure and stockpiles--have been considerable and were likely understated. At least one-third of the soldiers returning from those battlefields bring with them serious, lifetime mental and physical disabilities that will require expensive attention for many decades.

But you and those likeminded keep coming back to Iraq and Afghanistan.  Those are not relevant models and references to those are misleading and inapplicable.

·For this reason, new initiatives that put the U.S. in the role of world policeman will inevitably catalyze the trend now underway to replace human soldiers with increasingly automated drones and other robotic equipment. 

This will happen regardless of anything else. Technology, not policy drives this. 

·Even if this trend shows some success on financial and tactical grounds, it exposes us to very dangerous moral dilemmas. Automated drones are being now prepared for global deployment that will either not require human direction, The will always require human direction though from a remote location. or will prevent it as a measure to counter cyberterrorism. As this trend accelerates, so does the probability of error, collateral deaths and anti-American agitation. Only a Defense Department order prohibiting the use of self-piloted drones has prevented their deployment for now.  I don't understand this. Self piloted drones are in use. However, this prohibition will not last indefinitely and it has no effect on the rest of the world where the cost of conducting ever more deadly terrorist operations continues to fall along with fading moral scruples against launching strikes with inexpensive drones or chemical weapons. But this is not relevant to policing atrocities.

Worse, automated drone warfare risks depriving attacks of any identifiable geographical address. We attacked Afghanistan and Iraq because they were perceived to be harboring terrorists. In the future, we may not be able to identify either the source location or even the identity of the sponsors of terrorist activity. It's difficult to be an effective policeman when you can't locate the criminals. Now you are talking apples and oranges. Dealing with terrorists is something we are doing, and will continue to do. It has its challenges as you point out. But it has nothing to do with intervening when mass slaughter on the scale of the Nazis, or in Bosnia and/or Kosovo or in Rwanda, takes place, and as we saw in Bosnia and Libya, it does not require boots on the ground, or even huge expenditures. You are raising a great many irrelevancies and bugaboos.

·Returning to Syria, there seems to be general agreement that, if it had been possible for the U.S. to use military force to quickly eliminate Syria's chemical weapons, we probably should have done so. However, to attempt to do this without a U.N. mandate, without good intelligence about the location of the weapons (which have already and obviously been dispersed or hidden), there was a high probability that our effort would have failed and only worsened the situation. Chemical weapons have not been the issue until now! It has been the slaughter of peaceful demonstrators. Right then and there we should have told Bashar al-Assad, stop or there will be consequences, followed by drone attacks on airfields and on anti aircraft batteries until his capacity to use those weapons was suppressed. Anti tank weapons, to the secular forces would also have made sense.

·Even Israel next door was ambivalent about the wisdom of a unilateral attack on Syria's chemical stockpiles by the U.S.  Nobody has suggested an attack on the chemical weapons.  Such action would only have pleased Saudi Arabia, which continues to sit on its hands and treasure, refusing to risk either--and Turkey whose president, Erdogan, has deployed only his big mouth and volunteered the U.S. to undertake all the risks and costs.

·Erdogan complains with justice that no country has even stepped up to help the refugees who have fled Syria and are living under desperate situations in neighboring countries. Erdogan is absolutely right! His country is bearing the brunt of caring for Syrian refugees, while we are doing nothing to help them. He is in no position to unilaterally take on Bashar al-Assad. (Apparently, such spending doesn't pump money into the hands of defense contractors or create many jobs in American congressional districts, so it has little appeal.) This last is unworthy of you! As you well know I am not looking for spending more on armaments and the humanitarian actions I am urging, have nothing to do with defense contractors. They will do very well regardless.

The slaughter of innocent civilians, whether Jews in Germany or the Soviet Union, or Slavs, or Africans, cannot be permitted. Better that we can unite on it, but it cannot be tolerated unless you feel that the worlds polices toward the Jews in the Holocaust was right. Russia or for that matter China cannot be allowed to be the dogs in the manger, who continues the defense of the indefensible and the absolute obstacle of humanitarianism.

It seems to me your instincts are pacifist and even suggest isolationism, which after Iraq and Afghanistan has gripped the country, just as it did after the WWI.

Final comments, questions, or corrections, are welcome and will be responded to, but not distributed.

Education

My last post "Supreme Court on the Health Care Reform Law & the Ryan (Republican) Budget" was posted and distributed on April 6^th. In that post I explained that my discussion entitled “It’s All About Race” would have to be postponed and now I feel I must do so again, but his time indefinitely. However, I will address this complex and difficult subject in due course.

Now to revert to my post as set forth above, Ernest Hauser of the Bronx, NY called my attention to an error. I stated that the Budget Control Act of 2011 was passed in the Senate by a vote of 74 to 26 with 55 Republicans voting for it. Hauser pointed out that this was impossible since there are only 47 Republicans in the Senate. I should have said “with 28 Republicans voting for it.” Sorry for the error.

I also made a misstatement when I said it has not been reviewed by the CBO. This assertion was made after a long and fruitless search for a CBO analysis caused me to conclude that it did not exist. However, in a NewYorker article by James Surowiecki there is a reference to a CBO analysis. Therefore I stand corrected. Mea culpa!

On the other hand Albert Nekimken PhD of Vienna, Virginia and the author of four books complimented me with this:

Well done, as usual. I haven't had time to follow up all of your links included here, but thanks for doing such meticulous work in documenting the ongoing, attempted Republican takeover of our governmental institutions. It's a sad read.

What prompted me to address the subject of education was an insightful article that was posted on the blog of one of my subscribers, Roger Berkley of Woodcliff Lake, NJ, President and CEO of Weave Corporation and past President of the National Textile association. His article is a must read and can be found here.

It was that article that prompted me to respond to it as follows:

You are right that Santorum as an individual is no longer relevant, but as a philosophy, and as one who undoubtedly speaks for millions, he is very relevant.

                       

It is interesting to note that Santorum knocks education for others, while he himself has a BA an MBA and a JD. How hypocritical for a man who has spent so much time, money and effort gaining an education. Talk about elitism. It’s good for him, but not for those adoring followers of his, who in his view, don't need, and shouldn't want the benefits that an education has bestowed on him. Why can't they see what contempt that shows?

                       

Whether it is Santorum or Romney or Ryan - none of them are interested in making education available to the broad population. They want it to be for an elite group like themselves, who will rule over us and tell us that it isn't about achieving equality, that it is about opportunity. But here they are up to their usual tricks. They resort to the old reliable straw man. As though anyone of any consequence wants to impose equality. Opportunity is precisely what it is all about. And that is precisely what they want to deny the bulk of our citizenry.

Many years ago I read Hitler's Mein Kamf. What struck me, and what I will always remember is that Hitler considered the USA a formidable and dangerous foe because he said the educational system of the US comprises all, regardless of class, while Europe was stuck in a class warp. 

                       

To quote from Wikipedia: 

                                   

"By 1900 educators argued that the post-literacy schooling of the masses at the secondary and higher levels, would improve citizenship, develop higher-order traits, and produce the managerial and professional leadership needed for rapid economic modernization. The commitment to expanded education past age 14 set the U.S. apart from Europe for much of the 20th century. From 1910 to 1940, high schools grew in number and size, reaching out to a broader clientele. In 1910, for example, 9% of Americans had a high school diploma; in 1935, the rate was 40%. By 1940, the number had increased to 50%. This phenomenon was uniquely American; no other nation attempted such widespread coverage. The fastest growth came in states with greater wealth, more homogeneity of wealth, and less manufacturing activity than others. The high schools provided necessary skill sets for youth planning to teach school, and essential skills for those planning careers in white collar work and some high-paying blue collar jobs. Economist Claudia Goldin argues this rapid growth was facilitated by public funding, openness, gender neutrality, local (and also state) control, separation of church and state, and an academic curriculum. The wealthiest European nations such as Germany and Britain had far more exclusivity to their education system and few youth attended past age 14. Apart from technical training schools, European secondary schooling was dominated by children of the wealthy and the social elites. The United States chose a type of post-elementary schooling consistent with its particular features — stressing flexible, general and widely applicable skills that were not tied to particular occupations and geographic places had great value in giving students options in their lives. Skills had to survive transport across firms, industries, occupations, and geography in the dynamic American economy."

                       

I am a refugee from Hitler's Holocaust in Vienna, Austria. Even in Vienna my father was a struggling haberdasher. When we came to the US, he took a job as a bottle washer. Eventually, with the help of relatives he advanced to being a technician in quality control, but he never made much money. My brother never overcame these handicaps, became a high-school dropout and eventually a post office mail handler. I was more ambitious. I wanted to go to college. I could not have done so, (and eventually go to law school) if there had not been a free college available close to home. CCNY of CUNY allowed me to live at home, commute by subway for a nickel, and attend college tuition free. This allowed me to save the money I earned working summers, which I could set aside for graduate school. That is over with. There are no free colleges.

                       

How far we have regressed! And they want us to regress still further!

                       

If we are to remain a great nation it will not be by the strength of our military, though we need that too, but by the strength of our educational system. It is time for every state and every city and county, to have a free college system and that will only happen if it is financed at the federal level. Just as between 1910 and 1040 we moved to make high school within the reach of everyone, so we now need to make college within the reach of all. Only in this way will we make this a land of opportunity again, close the income gap, and assure the greatness of our nation in the 21st century. Those who say we cannot afford this are giving up on the future of America, and dooming, not only an underclass to remain an underclass, but are pushing millions who had achieved middle class status in another age, out of the middle class.

                       

Not only will the middle and lower classes benefit from such an approach, but in the long run, so will those at the top. 

                       

It is true that what we want is a larger pie for all, but that will not be achieved, by lower and lower taxes, particularly on the rich, but by evaluating the needs of our nation and then raising the right amount of money to meet those needs.

                       

We must realize that we cannot go on deciding how little we will tax, and then focus on what we can afford. We need to decide on what this nation's needs are, what it will cost to meet those needs, and then focus on what level of taxation is required, to meet those needs. In 1986, during Reagan's second term, our marginal tax rate was 50%. By the time he left office the rate was 28%. At the end of the prosperous Clinton era it was 39.6%. The Ryan plan would reduce that to 20% and raise additional revenues by unspecified (the rabbit in the hat - now you see it now you don't) elimination of tax expenditures. This is a formula that makes nothing possible. It is a formula for an ever-greater divide between the super rich and the rest, and the decline of our nation.

On another note I must call the readers attention to the stepped up War on Women, at least in Wisconsin. See here.

Comments, questions, or corrections, are welcome and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified.

Hostage Taking at Home - Discussion

Since posting my my commentary "Hostage Taking at Home and Expansionism," I have had four exchanges - one relating to hostage-taking at home and three relating to expansionism abroad. I will post them in four separate posts.

The first response came in the form of a query from Bruce Weintraub, who wrote:

"Since you mentioned you're a Holocaust survivor, may I ask if you had the misfortune of being in a concentration camp? Or were you in hiding like Anne Frank? Your personal history may be the most interesting thing of all. A few years ago, I visited a concentration camp in Oranienburg, about an hour away from Berlin. Made me feel so sad."

I responded:

Thank you for your interest.

The answer to your question can be found in my biography.

"Emil Scheller is a retired lawyer. He was born in Vienna, Austria and came to the US in 1939 at the age of nine. He is a holocaust survivor, his father having been incarcerated first in Dachau and then in Buchenwald for about a year. His father survived and fled to Italy with his wife, Mr. Scheller's mother. After receiving American visas there they were able to join Mr. Scheller in the US in 1940.

Mr. Scheller holds a B.A. degree in in government and political science from CCNY and a Doctor of Juris in Law from Columbia University. Since retiring in 1990 he has spent much of his time studying American history."

I would think that there are very few people still alive who spent time in Nazi concentration camps. Leo Wells, a  recent neighbor of mine was one of those, but he died recently.

Upon his passing I wrote a letter to my local newspaper which you can read here.