I’ve been following the French papers a bit in keeping up on the riots in les banlieue.

And found an interesting thing today which I’m mulling over.

In Le Monde, an article discussing the politics around response to the riots mentions in passing that the public housing budget in the 2005 budget had been cut by 310 million euros.

L’annulation de 310 millions d’euros de crédits dans le budget 2005 (Le Monde du 5 novembre), affectés à l’insertion et au logement social dans les banlieues, ne peut que renforcer leur défiance. “Il est impératif que toutes les leçons soient tirées de ces émeutes. Autant sur les failles de la politique de la ville que sur l’organisation des services publics” , dénonçait, le 3 novembre, le Forum français des maires pour la sécurité urbaine (FFSU). Au fil des crises depuis un quart de siècle, la politique de la ville a en effet subi de multiples inflexions. Aux Grand Projets urbains du gouvernement Jospin de la fin des années 1990 a succédé “le programme national de rénovation urbaine” , mis en oeuvre depuis 2003, par Jean-Louis Borloo, ministre de la cohésion sociale. Au “traitement social” des banlieues dont la droite stigmatisait les échecs, s’est substitué un projet, certes ambitieux mais centré sur le logement et l’habitat.

The response of the French council of “mayors for urban security” was simple – the problem is both urban policy and the organization of social services to the public.
I’m going to dodge the issue of whether a dependent welfare class – confronted with a decline in the government’s commitment to fund their benefits – can be expected to react this way.

I’ll move directly to the meaty question:

In the face of national fiscal crises – and a dependent minority who has been in essence, pacified through generous welfare programs – what happens when you can’t afford those programs any more?

What is the social and political fallout of unintegrated minorities who can’t sustain themselves, and whose subsidies are being cut off?

Remember Yglesias’ notion that hope for democratic progress in Iraq had been defeated – not under challenge or at risk, but kaput?

Maybe not.

Iraqi blogger Ali, writing at Free Iraqi was concerned after the elections:

After the results of the January elections appeared, many Iraqis who were hoping for a democratic Iraq were discouraged. The results not only showed a significant dominance by the religious She’at parties but also gave a serious warning sign that democracy, while what the vast majority of Iraqis want, still may divide Iraq into three small countries or lead to a civil war given that the decades of oppression mainly directed towards the She’at and Kurds may cause these two to always vote along sectarian and ethnic lines, which subsequently would cause the Sunnis, who are till that time seemed to be living in the past and not accepting the fact that they’ve lost power, to vote similarly.

I myself was very discouraged during that time and started having serious doubts that democracy would ever work in Iraq. My best thoughts in the beginning were that we needed a civil war. I thought that it was probably inevitable once the Americans leave and may in the end convince everyone that the only way to succeed is to accept and tolerate each other instead of trying to dominate or isolate themselves. A couple of things gave me hope though, the fact that we have another election coming soon and that the elected government was doing terrible.

But then he reviews the current politics and politicians, and finds one he likes:

It may look strange to many that I consider a man like Mithal Al Alousi as a significant player in Iraq’s politics and it was even stranger months ago. There are reasons why I believe this guy will have a major effect on Iraq’s politics in the near future. While still not as well-known or popular as Allawi or even Chalabi, the man and since he was expelled by Chalbi from the “National Accordance” following his visit to Israel has been gaining support very rapidly. When he started his own party “The Democratic Iraqi Nation Party” a year ago he had only 1600 members in it. Today, only in Hilla he has 15000 registered members in his party. He’s a secular Sunni that gained a lot of support in the south among She’at. That’s something that gives hope. Moreover, and to me this is the most important point, he’s the only Iraqi politician who says it loud and clear all the time that Iraq’s interests lie in a strong strategic alliance with the United States and the free world, and people are not pushed away by that or by his visit to Israel for that matters but in fact it’s having the opposite effect!

and talk to his neighbors:

With these factors considered, the main element that will change Iraq’s fate remains by far the brave and smart Iraqis who may have followed their emotions in the start but that’s changing now. A committed Sunni relative of mine said to me while we were talking about the next elections and the general situation, “I’m sorry Ali, this time I won’t vote for you, I’ll vote either for Allawi or Mithal” I told him that we have joined Mithal and he seemed to be relieved that he was going to vote for someone he believes in and still not breaching his commitment to his family or tribe. He didn’t know how happy and optimistic he made me seeing that he was using his brain, not what traditions, sectarian or tribal laws tell him, to decide on what he thinks is good for him, his family and his country.

Check out his whole post. He’s not mindlessly saying “all is well;” he’s providing a ground-level view of what politics looks like.

And that’s what Iraq needs – politics to replace thug power. I deeply hope Ali helps bring it to be.

It should be clear from reading my stuff that I am generally supportive of unions. Our system of government is designed to allow for – even encourage – the collision of interests as a way of restraining the power of any single interest, and until unions came along, the interests of workers were generally undefended.

But all interests – even admirable ones – can over-reach.

In the case of government, one of the problems is that the employees are also constituents. That is to say that they also help select those who – in turn – make the decisions that govern the work conditions, pay and benefits which those constituents receive. That kind of back-scratching happens at all levels; the California Citizens Compensation Commission sets the salaries for legislators, and includes members who do business with the state.

That problem is amplified in this era of ‘electoral politics for hire.’

The reality is that a moderate-sized constituency with significant money can easily dominate state politics in the same ways that the old business interests did back in the Union Pacific days. And that is, exactly, what is going on today in California.

Increasingly, our penal policies are being set by the prison guards’ union; our educational policies by the teachers’ union; state compensation is wildly out of whack as state employees, who enjoy job security and benefits packages well above those in the private sector now appear to outearn them as well.

Currently a California Highway Patrol officer will earn 90% of their final salary (which may include significant overtime, which is often allocated to those about to retire) in retirement as early as 50.

Add this budget overhang to work rules which make it more difficult to flexibly manage state employees, and suddenly the ability of state government to effectively deliver the services we pay taxes to get is pretty seriously challenged.

I think that the simple fact that the teacher’s union alone has budgeted over $50 million into opposing this measure…which gives you an idea of the magnitude of cash they have available for political spending.

It’s too much cash, the effects are visible and pernicious, and it’s time that the balance of power in state government was tipped away from state employees.

For those reasons, I’m voting for Proposition 75, and encourage you to as well.

Check out Omar’s profile over at Norm Geras’ place.

I’m proud to have shaken Omar and his brother Mohammed’s hand (hugged them actually), and their faith in the future – tested as is it by the harsh reality of their present – inspires me every day.

I look forward to a sharing meal with all three brothers – Omar, Mohammed, and Ali – sometime soon.

Proposition 74 would lengthen the duration of the “probation” period during which new schoolteachers could be dismissed at the end of the year without cause from two to five years.

After this period, dismissing teachers with unsatisfactory ratings would be simplified.

Job protections are often a good thing; the notion that one’s livelihood depends on the whims and mood of one’s supervisors isn’t a good thing. But conversely, at some point the web of protections gets so strong that it’s virtually impossible to fire bad employees, and around that time the enterprise begins to be run for the benefit of the employees rather than the other stakeholders.

In vastly simplified blog-speak, that’s a big part of what has happened to public schools in much of the country. They are no longer run primarily for the benefit of the children or community, but instead have become the captives of their employees.

My ex’s husband (who is a great friend and I usually call my “brother-in-law”) left his career in Hollywood to become a high school teacher at a high school in a near-bankrupt poor school district about five years ago.

When we get together to make plans for Littlest Guy, we talk a lot about politics, and his work. He’s a dedicated progressive, can’t understand my support of Bush or the war, but – to put it simply – sees the need to significantly shake up and reform the public education establishment.

He’s voting for 74, as am I.

Teachers (and others) deserve some protection against whimsical or retaliatory firing. But our children, the schools and the taxpayers who pay for them deserve a staff that isn’t marking time until retirement with little concern for the quality of their work – for the quality of education our children get.

So over the next few days, I’ll go through my thoughts on the California initiatives.

I’ll start with what is, for me, the most difficult decision – Proposition 73.

The gist of the proposition would require that pregnant minor girls would have to have parental consent to get an abortion, or lacking that, consent from a juvenile court.

A tough one for me.

I have no daughters, only sons. I’ve paid for some abortions in my time, and while I’m not tormented by those memories, neither am I exuberant about them. Personally, I subscribe to the “legal, safe, and rare” formulation where abortion is concerned.
But – to set out something which I think closely parallels abortion (although abortion is to me far more complex, because it represents the intersection with three sets of rights – the woman’s, the to-be-born fetus’, and the father’s) – I also believe strongly in the individual right to own guns. And in the notion that that right may be limited by reasonable regulations.

One of the reasonable regulations on gun ownership says that minors may not buy guns, or in many states, possess them without an adult’s presence.

I don’t think that’s a bad thing. And yes, I know about the idyllic days when kids would bring their 30-30 to school on the opening day of deer season.

Similarly, I’m a strong supporter of some core right to abortion – probably not including late-term abortions. But I’m troubled at the idea that a girl who cannot get her ears pierced (or here in L.A., her bellybutton pierced) without Mon or Dad signing off can go to a clinic and have an abortion with no adult supervision or involvement except by the abortion provider.

So I was spinning around this issue pretty tightly, until TG and I discussed it. She hates initiative law in general (she works with lawyers, and thinks that we ought to leave it to the pros – riiiiight).

But she made the telling point on this to me when she said “I’d support this if the Legislature passed it. But it just doesn’t seem to rise to the level of the kind of issue we ought to be passing in initiative law.”

She’s right.

So I’ll be voting – more than a bit reluctantly – “No” on Proposition 73.

Next week, we’ll be voting on a series of initiatives here in California.

I’ll take some time and go through them in some detail over the next week.

They are:
Proposition 73: Requires parental or judicial notification before a minor can get an abortion.

Proposition 74: Lengthens the period before unionized public school teachers are granted tenure from two to five years.

Proposition 75: Requires that public employee unions get individual annual approval from their members before spending dues on political campaigning.

Proposition 76: Limits state spending, mandates legislative or gubernatorial budget cuts midyear if the budgets are not being met.

Proposition 77: Removes redistricting from the power ofthe legislature and instead mandates that it be done by a panel of retired judges.

Proposition 78: Prescription Drug Discounts: Big Pharma’s version.

Proposition 79: Prescription Drug Discounts: the non-Big Pharma version.

Proposition 80: Reregulation of state electricity market.

All links are to www.smartvoter.org

I’ve always been fond of Bill Mauldin’s “Willie and Joe” cartoons as a good check on the heroics that predominates in so much of written history.

And it leads me toward the point I made in slagging Matt Yglesias’ defeatist (defeatist? defeated!) post a few days ago…

The troops in Vietnam turned against the war before the mass American population did. As a ‘chickenhawk’ (and as a snarky sidenote, given the recent column about the wealthy and tax-avoiding Norm Chomsky – I’ll go back to my [buddy Duncan] Black and suggest that when he advocates that Chomsky or George Soros pay what would be ‘fair’ for his taxes, as opposed to what he owes under law – I’ll gladly make a ‘chickenhawk’ pin and put it on the site), I guess I just ought to keep listening to the troops.

And I can’t reccomend that you do as well…the voice of the troops, unvarnished & direct is the best indicator of how we’re doing.

Which leads me to an email I got today from Jean-Paul Borda, who is building a directory of milblogs at http://milblogging.com .

Go check them out yourself and see what they are saying. I can’t suggest strongly enough that you spend some significant time reading what these men & women have to say.

Because if you wait to read their words in the New York Times, they’ll Dowdify them to invert their meaning.Take this story (via Michelle Malkin):

Yesterday’s New York Times on-line edition carried the story of the 2000 Iraq US military death[s]. It grabbed my attention as the picture they used with the headline was that of my nephew, Cpl Jeffrey B. Starr, USMC.

Unfortunately they did not tell Jeffrey’s story. Jeffrey believed in what he was doing. He [was] willing put his life on the line for this cause. Just before he left for his third tour of duty in Iraq I asked him what he thought about going back the third time. He said: “If we (Americans) don’t do this (free the Iraqi people from tyranny) who will? No one else can.”

Several months after Jeffrey was killed his laptop computer was returned to his parents who found a letter in it that was addressed to his girlfriend and was intended to be found only if he did not return alive. It is a most poignant letter and filled with personal feelings he had for his girlfriend. But of importance to the rest of us was his expression of how he felt about putting his life at risk for this cause. He said it with grace and maturity.

He wrote: “Obviously if you are reading this then I have died in Iraq. I kind of predicted this, that is why I’m writing this in November. A third time just seemed like I’m pushing my chances. I don’t regret going, everybody dies but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, it’s not to me. I’m here helping these people, so that they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark.“

In quoting Cpl Starr’s letter, the Times left out the part in bold.

The tagline for the (generic, pretty uninteresting) New York Times article on the future direction of African-American politics is:

Many African-Americans are uncertain of what the civil rights movement accomplished and how it should move forward.

“…what the civil rights movement accomplished…”??

My God. I spent a lot of time as kid with two black families and both Joe and Theodis could tell me and told me at every opportunity that they could – very clearly and elequently – what the civil rights movement had accomplished, and how proud and happy they were for their fellow Southern blacks who’d finally had enough.

I’d suggest that a better use of the time of whatever editor wrote that, and of the Times’ valuable newsprint (and web space) would be collecting some oral histories of just what the civil rights movement accomplished so that we all have some appreciation for it. Then once they – and the rest of the country is in touch with what we’ve done we might be able to think about “how to move forward.” You’d think that in honoring Rosa Parks, the New Freaking York Times would be able to do that.

Good grief.

Greg Djerejian has a great post up at the Belgravia Dispatch that pretty well sums up my views on the state of play in Iraq and on my posture toward the Administration.

I think I have broader domestic-policy differences with Bush and his crowd than Greg does, but that’s kind of a given given that I’m a liberal. But he speaks for me when he says that

Back in October of 2004, I wrote a a long post in this blog supporting the re-election of George W. Bush largely based on the central importance of Iraq. Then and now, I believe to my core that the stakes in Iraq are immense, and could well determine America’s standing on the global stage for score years or more. Despite my revulsion at Abu Ghraib, my contempt for hubris-ridden, reckless Administration officials like Donald Rumsfeld, and my fear that George Bush’s lack of foreign policy expertise could have him proving an emperor with no clothes–I calculated that the alternative would be materially worse.

I’ll offer a cavil about a few things, and then sit back and try and figure out how I can do nearly as good a job as he is of making concrete suggestions.But let me start with the cavils.

I’ve read a ton of history, and I have a fondness for reading contemporary sources where such exist. All of them – from Thucydides onward – talk about war as the province of error, of chaos, of the worst in human nature – and they’re not just talking about the killing part.

I really do think that one product of the centrality of television and movies to our generation’s learning; the ‘closedness’ of experience in television and films – the neat way that events interact with intentions, and the way that the experiences on screen end as the closing credits come up.

We just flat don’t understand how messy the real world is, and when we’re presented with that mess – errors, misjudgments, the bad judgement and dishonesty that are inescapably part of human action, we throw up our hands and react like a Hollywood star who sees an imperfection in the paint on our new Ferrari and just walks away from it.

This doesn’t excuse errors, and don’t for a moment think that I believe that those who make them should not have to bear the consequences. In fact the thing I like the most about our system is that people bear the consequences – even if it is at times one that seems just but unfair. And no, I don’t think this Administration should escape consequences either.

But the really sad thing is that people like me have no choice but to support the Administration, because the alternatives – as much as I’ve tried to look for them – look as doltish as John Kerry. I’ve got – we’ve all got – the choice between someone who is trying to do the right thing for what appears to be the right reasons, but is both feckless and mulishly stubborn; and those who neither convince me that they know what the right thing to do is, and certainly offer little evidence that they would do better.