Category Archives: Arsenal Essay

Oped | Victors’ Bonus: What Israel Could Learn From Athens

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The following essay and original research first appeared in The Globalist.

On Tuesday, more than a dozen Israeli political parties are expected to win seats in the country’s snap parliamentary elections that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called after his coalition broke up last year.

These parties will vie for a total of 120 proportionally elected seats in the Knesset. Israel’s threshold to win seats has this year been raised to 3.25% of the vote (translating to 3-4 seats).

As a result of this fractious system, no single Israeli party or joint list has ever won a majority (61 seats) in an election.

No clear winners in Israeli elections

In the past five elections, the party or list that ended up forming the coalition won an average of just 30.2 seats out of 120 – i.e., only a quarter of the seats – with 11-14 other lists also winning seats.

To form a government thus requires coalition building among quite a few parties, usually with very different (if not diametrically opposed) policy views. No wonder that, under those circumstances, coalitions do not last very long.

The public has previously shown a desire for a stronger executive mandate. Israel briefly adopted direct elections for Prime Minister in the 1990s. To exclude unserious candidates, only major parties could nominate someone. In each of the three times Prime Ministers were directly elected, only two candidates competed.

This modification unfortunately did not fix the problem because the Prime Minister could win an outright majority of the vote but still lack a majority of legislators to support his cabinet or agenda.

Since then, other than tinkering with the electoral threshold very slightly, Israel has not tried to deal with the leadership and policy instability problem inherent in its system.

Where Athens does provide inspiration

One possible place to seek electoral reform inspiration for Israel might be Greece – the birthplace of democracy and a country with a similar population size – despite its own serious current political challenges.

Similarly to Israel, 250 members of Greece’s parliament are elected through a system that ensures fair geographic representation along with the proportional will of the national electorate, using a 3% threshold.

However, there is one big innovation to clarify the executive mandate. As of the 2008 revisions to Greek election laws, the top-finishing party is given a victory bonus of 50 extra seats – bringing the total to 300 seats in parliament – to help the winner get closer to a governing majority.

This represents a bonus equal to 20% of the proportionally elected seats. (An earlier law gave the winner 40 seats.)

It’s not a perfect setup, of course. A party earning relatively low percentage of the vote share can gain an extra 20% of the seats even if it falls well short of capturing the confidence of a majority of voters and even if another party were to capture just 1% less of the electorate than the winner.

However, it substantially boosts the chances of quickly forming a government and allowing that government to push through its major agenda items, rather than floundering along with the status quo due to internal gridlock.

Meanwhile, it still allows for diverse, multi-party elections — but constructively counteracts the growth of fringe, single-issue, or personality-centric parties that take up seats or weaken serious parties without actually contributing to the government or the opposition in any substantive way.

Israel’s political system, even more so than Greece, would benefit from being cleared of such parties. Politicians would have more incentive to remain inside a major party, rather than splintering, as often happens.

Applying Athens in Jerusalem

If a comparable bonus were applied in Israel, it could mean 120 seats would be elected proportionally with 24 additional seats awarded to the winning list. (The Knesset would expand to 144 members in this scenario, and 73 seats would be a majority.)
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A subjective case for humanities education

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I’ve often heard advocates for the preservation of humanities education programs make their case in quantitative terms. Usually, this case is made by pointing to various studies on how art or music classes translate into X percentage points of increased intelligence, or college admissions chances, or other individual and social benefits.

I have nothing against those studies, and I can’t say for sure whether or not such an approach is effective in persuading anyone to change their mind and make humanities education a priority. Perhaps this strategy makes sense: Provide numbers and data from the scientific community to communicate with the people interested in science and math in their own language, so to speak.

But I’m not entirely sure it’s the best way to make the case. After all, humanities subjects by their nature are fairly abstract and not easily boiled down into calculations and percentages, even with the advent of “big data” and the entrance of sabermetrics into every possible field.

Reframe the debate

I suspect that trying to compete with sciences in purely STEM-oriented terms is not the most effective approach after all. It’s hard to compete with STEM for budgetary prioritization by shoehorning the arts, literature, and history into STEM’s turf, where STEM defines the terms of the debate.

There is a prevailing assumption that everything can be converted into numerical values, and that we can forge our country into a Blue-ribbon technocracy of “best practices” with no subjective judgment calls (or perhaps eventually even directional disagreements altogether). This assumption cannot be accepted at face value if the humanities are ever to regain their rightful place as an integral feature of American public education alongside STEM.

I’m certainly a proponent of ensuring that all our children receive strong sciences educations – I want everyone in a society to know at least the fundamentals of how things work in fields other than their own, so that they are informed, not ignorant – but the advocates of STEM have already made their cases persuasively, while the humanities advocates are struggling (or often failing) to win support in budget battles each year.

For that reason, I think it’s time to make a more subjective and abstract case for humanities education. The terms of the debate itself have shifted too much toward the sciences, a development which undercuts the ability to promote the broader values of strong humanities educations.

As I noted in my rationale above for supporting STEM as well, for me, a big purpose of public education up through high school is to ensure every child graduates with at least a minimum and functional knowledge of how the world works, across all disciplines. Not only does this allow everyone to make a fully informed decision on what profession to pursue, but also it prevents society from Balkanizing into disparate occupations with no systemic knowledge or understanding. The business world buzzword battalion might call this “big picture thinking.”

Reframe the world

One of the key benefits of history and social studies classes, for example, is the ability to formulate a narrative understanding of the world: How we got here, where we are, and where we can (or even should) go next.

Literature classes compel us to ask these questions in hypothetical scenarios, fictional scenes, and timeless situations. English reading courses can teach us critical thinking and assessment of evidence quality in the non-fiction realm.

Language classes allow us not merely to compete in the global economy but to understand how vocabulary and linguistics shape national psychology and individual worldviews.

Music classes unite or bridge us across time and place and culture. Art courses can show us other ways of thinking about the world we live in and the world our forebears lived in.

All of these elements add a dimension of creativity to the future workforce that used to set the U.S. economy apart from its peers for so many years. We need that back.

The new Renaissance human

To me, it is worth noting that many of the early scientific pioneers and thinkers had extensive multi-disciplinary backgrounds. It helped foster their curiosity into making certain discoveries, and it helped them communicate those findings to the wider world. Those days are long over – sciences, mathematics, and more have all branched out deeply enough to require total specialization – but STEM professionals should still have a strong foundation in the full range of humanities, so that they can contextualize their own work within wider policy and political debates.
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The Oscars and the Pitfalls of White Feminism

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After the initial controversy about the lack of diversity in the nominations for the Academy Awards, you would think that the awards show and everything associated with it would have done a better job of keeping away from controversy. Yet it seems the opposite.

Despite their extensive advertising coverage featuring videos of Lupita Nyong’o, Kerry Washington, and Viola Davis being their elegant selves at previous shows and rehearsal recordings — as if to say “Hey! We do have black friends!” — it seems that the show couldn’t help but make one misstep after another. The host, Neil Patrick Harris, opened the show with a very awkward attempt to make fun of just how White this year’s nominees were, and later on baited David Oyelowo into making yet another unnecessary joke about Quvenzhané Wallis’ name. Sean Penn also made an extremely racist joke about Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu that would not have been made about any European, British, or Canadian nominees.

Another terrible incident that happened was some of the comments made about one of the attendees. In an Oscars Pre-Show, Giuliana Rancic made comments about the faux dreadlocked hairstyle that actress Zendaya wore for the awards. In her comments about the actress (which was later revealed to be actively scripted) Giuliana stated that Zendaya’s dreads made her look like she smelled of “weed and patchouli.” Giuliana later apologized for her statements after Zendaya released a statement addressing the disparaging comments. This comes just weeks after several blog posts praising Kylie Jenner and her faux dreads as edgy and innovative.

Although the aforementioned incidents are ghastly themselves, another incident is equally offensive though it tried to hide itself in a positive speech. Patricia Arquette during her acceptance speech called for wage equality for women, a speech that excited many of the folks watching. Backstage, when she received the award and was asked by the press to elaborate, Arquette stated that “men who love women, gays and people of color that we’ve fought for need to fight for us now” (video). She didn’t explain who “us” were, but in her initial speech she was speaking about wage equality for women and in the press conference she seems to be listing the people outside of that group who she believes should be allies, so it’s not a huge leap to assume that in Ms. Arquette’s mind she was referring to White women.

Pictured: Patricia Arquette, file photo. (Credit: HeartTruth.gov / Wikimedia)

Pictured: Patricia Arquette, file photo. (Credit: HeartTruth.gov / Wikimedia)

I’ve written before about what does and does not get to be seen as Women’s or Feminist issues in society, and this is a new case of that classic problem. Wage equality for women is definitely a challenge, but to say that gays and people of color “need to fight” for wage equality ignores the fact that they’ve been doing it all along. Solidarity is important, but you add insult to injury when you ask people who are already working towards change to work harder. Calling for solidarity makes sense, but it’s insulting to demand solidarity from those already showing it and from those who are themselves part of the movement.

Moreover, Women of Color have always had a particularly strong disadvantage when it came to work and wages. Even today Black, Native American and Latina women make less money than even White women, earning $0.64, $0.59 and $0.54 respectively for every dollar a White man makes. In contrast, White women make a total of $0.78 per dollar a White man makes. While that still is unequal, it doesn’t make sense to turn around and tell those less fortunate to help you make it to the full dollar when you may or may not have helped them get only halfway there and seem to believe their struggle is complete.

It’s a shame. In the year 2015, Women of Color, especially Black women, are still not considered part of the movements that should include us. Our fashion and style is considered unique and interesting only when it’s not on our bodies, and our hard work is only used to help folks with more than us to get ahead while we suffer in the background. This shouldn’t be happening — not in media or in any other fields we get into. It’s a shame. It’s a travesty. And it needs to stop.

Black Wall Street: We did it by ourselves and were punished.

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When Black people and other People of Color speak out about the lack of representation for them in any medium there is usually a lot of pushback. Replies range from pointing to the one example of non-White representation they can find, to the more extreme and exclusionary “If you want to be represented, make it yourself!” The latter is an interesting piece of advice, but it’s entirely too simple.

Moreover, it ignores the fact that Black people have for many years have been doing just that, only to then be punished for it. Throughout history, in instances where Black people in the U.S. tried to make their own place in society, they were met with extreme opposition.

In Memphis TN in 1889, because the success of his grocery store was taking Black customers away from the competing White-owned grocery across the street, Thomas Moss was lynched.

In 1923, the town of Rosewood FL, a primarily Black town, was destroyed after a rumor was spread that the town was housing an escaped Black prisoner. In both cases, and in many other instances of lynchings or any attack on Black communities, the Black victims were attacked because White people were uncomfortable with the idea of Black Success — or even Black Self-Esteem and Assuredness.

The bombing of Black Wall Street (otherwise known as the Tulsa Race Riot) is a textbook example of the results of this discomfort. In the early 1900s, the city of Tulsa began to grow at a rapid pace. By 1921, just after the first world war, the city was already going through its second oil boom.

The Black neighborhood of Greenwood, although not oil-rich, was prospering in its own right. Segregation meant that the Black residents could not patronize most place outside of the area, but they could own businesses, homes, and more in Greenwood. They did so, establishing good businesses by the hundreds. The neighborhood flourished and became a center of Black affluence, earning it the nickname “Black Wall Street.”

Then, predictably, in May 1921, there was a crime reported. A young White woman was assaulted, and the assailant was said to be a young Black man. The young man under suspicion was arrested and, shortly after the rumors of the events spread, a mob of angry and armed white men decided to take matters into their own hands. They were met by a counter-mob, of Black men, and then the confrontation escalated when shooting broke out.

By the next morning, on June 1, Greenwood had been burned almost to the ground, and up to 300 people were killed. Residents even reported that planes had gone over the neighborhood and dropped crude bombs on businesses and residential buildings. Troops were deployed to try to restore order, but it was too late. The destruction left many of the residents homeless and living in tents for almost a year.

Postcard in the collection of McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa, showing the fires the day after the destruction of Black Wall Street. (via Wikimedia)

Postcard in the collection of McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa, showing the fires the day after the destruction of Black Wall Street. (via Wikimedia)

There is a lot of speculation on what the actual motivation behind the attack was. Although it was initially stated that it was because of the alleged (and later dismissed) attack of the young White woman, there was already high racial tension before then. White residents’ membership in The Ku Klux Klan had grown rapidly in the few years before the attack, and many of the White people in the Tulsa neighborhoods just outside of Greenwood were poor.

Seeing the neighborhood just next door doing so well probably made the already existing tension even worse. The initial accusation of an assault on a White woman by a Black man was a common trope in, and racist excuse for, lynchings or attacks on Black neighborhoods that were doing well economically in the South.

Whatever the motives behind the attack were, this is still a horrendous moment in U.S. history. Although the neighborhood was able to eventually rebuild itself over the next five years, it still goes to show that even when Black people are able to build their own communities, there is still the threat of people on the outside destroying everything.

Maybe instead of the emphasis just being on Black people “making their own” there could be an equal emphasis placed on others not destroying what we do make.

Let’s talk money

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As kids, we’re told money can’t buy happiness — but our parents never said anything about presidential elections. The Koch brothers announced last month their intentions to spend $889 million on the 2016 presidential election.

$889 million. Let’s get some perspective on that number. $889 million is twice as much as Mitt Romney spent in the 2012 election. $889 million is more than George Bush and John Kerry spent combined in the 2004 election. Dad joke of the year: “What can you buy with 889 million dollars? A President!”

All joking aside, the Koch brothers are a simple reminder of the dangers of money in politics. Their network is made up of a plethora of advocacy groups and nonprofits; a system that allows their donors to stay mostly anonymous. Which means we don’t know where the money is coming from (although a safe bet is that it’s the 1%).

The announcement was made at a donor meeting for Freedom Partners, a business lobby that serves as the head of the snake. Keep in mind that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) — all likely candidates for the Republican nomination in 2016 — were all in attendance and available for mingling with the wealthy Americans pulling the strings of politics. The conservative donors also stuck around for strategy sessions and issue seminars, according to The New York Times.

The strategy sessions must be paying off though, as the Koch brothers have been using their wealth to influence more than just national elections. They have played a role in state elections as well.

The American Legislative Exchange Council is a conservative advocacy group, and a part of the Koch network, that has more than 2,000 state legislators as members. ALEC has been most useful in their fight against the Obama administration’s energy and environmental regulations.

Does this sound familiar? In December I wrote about Republicans not only taking over the Senate, but also dominating state legislatures across the country, as well as about the combined efforts of Republican State Attorneys General to overturn environmental regulations. The Koch brothers, and their money, have seeped into every crevice of American policy and politics.

When it comes to state campaign finance, it’s mostly uncharted waters. The rules vary a lot more already. But on the national stage there has been a lot more influence from a select few in recent years, mostly due to the significant new changes in campaign finance law.

Without delving too deeply into the Citizens United v. FEC, the court majority’s main argument was restricting political spending was restricting free speech, even of associations of individuals (i.e. corporations). The court went even further in 2014 with the ruling of McCutcheon v. FEC, which places no cumulative limit on individual contributions to candidates. The trend continued in Congress, when in December 2014 they passed the “CRomnibus” (continuing resolution omnibus spending bill), which rolled back more campaign finance rules, significantly lifting the caps on donations to campaign committees. These decisions and new laws have had many different impacts, but the one to focus on here is that the billionaire Koch brothers get a louder and more influential voice in politics because their pockets are deeper than most Americans.

I say most Americans, because there are other wealthy people (besides the Koch brothers) who have increased their donations to political campaigns since the Citizens United decision. As the chart below illustrates, spending that once hovered under $10 million has skyrocketed in the past 7 years. Still, conservative donors are, by volume of donations, effectively the only ones throwing money at candidates. True, names like Michael Bloomberg and George Soros show up on the invite list to big Democratic donor events, but even their combined contributions for 2014 were less than $30 million. That’s equal to 3% of my new favorite number: $889 million. And the rest of Americans are barely noticeable.

The dramatic growth of independent expenditures in presidential elections following the Citizens United decision. (Center for Responsive Politics via Reclaim Democracy)

The dramatic growth of independent expenditures in presidential elections following the Citizens United decision. (Credit: Center for Responsive Politics via Reclaim Democracy)

The pressure is on for Democrats and anticipated frontrunner candidate Hillary Clinton. While Barack Obama spent just under $800 million in the 2012 election, he managed to raise more than any other presidential candidate in history. So despite claims that liberals run most of Hollywood and the news media, it’s clear that they don’t come anywhere close to scrambling up nearly a billion dollars to elect a president. The Koch brothers are essentially doubling the Republican war chest with the extra $889 million, while the Democrats will be lucky to raise half of that combined total.

Even so, the reason $889 million is so outrageous is not because there is no way Democrats can compete. It’s because, for working and voting Americans, I think it highlights the question: Who is really electing our President?

 
Correction: An earlier version of this article included a numerical error in contributions to Democratic candidates due to an editing mistake. Tom Steyer donated $74 million to Democratic candidates in the 2014 cycle. He should not have been included in the $30 million / 3% figure in the original version. Steyer’s 2014 contributions amount to about 8% of $889 million.

Op-Ed | Israel: There’s No Crystal Ball for Election Consequences

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The following op-ed was originally published in The Globalist.

Pictured: Israel's Knesset (parliament) building in Jerusalem. (via Wikimedia)

Pictured: Israel’s Knesset (parliament) building in Jerusalem. (via Wikimedia)

U.S. media is abuzz with rumors over which Democrats will or will not attend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s scheduled March speech to the U.S. Congress at the invitation of the Republicans. Many expressed concern that attending could be viewed as endorsing him in the upcoming elections.

Meanwhile, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry “spoke informally” in Munich with Mr. Netanyahu’s leading challenger, Isaac Herzog, fueling further controversy. This framing of the news speaks to the overly reductive nature of U.S. coverage of overseas elections, which tries to fit all stories to the U.S. horserace model.

Outside that lens, the Israeli electoral system is notoriously complex. This year, at least 16 parties will contest the snap parliamentary elections that current Prime Minister Netanyahu has called for March 17.

These parties vie for a total of semi-proportionally elected 120 seats. A number of the parties will run their candidates, as usual, on temporary fusion lists, in part to clear the new three to four seat threshold.

Due to the voting complexity, predicting even the approximate distribution of seats across these many parties is often a fool’s errand.

A complex electoral system

This electoral reality in Israel generally produces short-lived coalition governments featuring a kaleidoscope of parties and unstable partnerships of two or more parties.

Even so, at the present time, much is made in Washington about who will head the next Israeli coalition government – incumbent Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud, or Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog and list partner Tzipi Livni of centrist Hatnuah.

Independent of who “wins” – by taking the most seats or forming a coalition government — it is almost impossible to predict what the policy results of the election might be under either outcome.

Those policies – changed for the better or as static and uncooperative as at present – are not so much determined by whoever is prime minister, but by the governing coalition’s composition.

In other words, even a change in the prime minister’s chair might not actually significantly shift policy – domestically or on military/diplomatic affairs – unless there is a perfect storm of results for every party necessary to forge such changes.

In a more traditional and simplified election system, Mr. Netanyahu would provide a conservative government, while Mr. Herzog would provide a center-left government assisted by Ms. Livni. (Even then, the ideological alignment of the latter would be in some doubt because it really consists of a center-left and centrist party.)

No clear winner in sight

Based on recent polling, however, Herzog/Livni alone would win between 22 and 26 seats, far short of a 61-seat majority. Likud could win 20 to 27 seats, also falling short.

Therefore, in reality, getting to a majority (or stable minority government) depends on a range of parties outside the big two or three.

Even the four major left-leaning lists together and the four major right-leaning lists together are expected to win only about 43 and 61 seats each, respectively, under their current best-case projected outcomes. It seems likelier that they will take about 40 or 45 each. That makes this election even more complicated.

Thus, even with four big lists cooperating on each side after the election, either winner would still need to cobble together a coalition – beyond that core four – from the smaller lists expected to cross the minimum threshold to hold seats.

Within the nine other party lists (beyond Labor/Hatnuah and Likud) that are expected to win seats in the Knesset is a veritable pantheon of ideologies.

These run the gamut from communist to right-wing nationalist, from Islamist (the “United Arab List” Party currently represented with three seats in the Knesset) to hardline Orthodox Jewish (e.g., “United Torah Judaism” currently represented with seven seats), as well as everything in between.

What this means in practical terms is that the ultimate policy positions of a resulting coalition could be very contradictory.

Based on past coalitions, it is entirely possible, for example, that Mr. Herzog of Labor could become prime minister, but have extremely right-wing cabinet members outside his own party.

All of the combinations themselves depend on how each party fares in the election and how many seats it can bring to the majority. The electoral math for the smaller parties alone makes one’s head spin, even assuming relatively logical ideological groupings in a final coalition.

The hopeful scenario

One scenario that might actually change things on both economic issues and the question of the Palestinian territories would be a nine-party coalition led by Herzog. Read more

American History: Ida B. Wells and Intersectionality

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If you’ve been on Facebook for more than 5 minutes, you’ve probably come across one of two specific types of articles: the “Is Beyonce/Nicki Minaj/Rihanna a Feminist?” article — which criticizes those celebrities, usually for their scantily clad music video performances — or the “Why Lady Gaga/Miley Cyrus/Katy Perry is a Feminist icon” article — which lauds those celebrities, usually for their scantily clad music video performances. These two article types are very popular, especially after major award shows or the release of new music videos.

But the thinly veiled racism behind who gets to be a Feminist Icon, and whose feminism gets questioned has been receiving a lot of pushback on other social media sites. Women of Color are especially vocal, pointing out that much of mainstream feminism ignores the intersections that race, class, sexual orientation and gender identity play in the lives of anyone other than White women.

This fight isn’t new. In fact, Black women in the US have been talking about the intersection between race and gender for a very long time.

ida-b-wellsOne woman who was a very outspoken voice for the rights of Black women was Ida B. Wells, a writer, businesswoman, activist, and suffragette. Ida B. Wells’ work is often framed around race, not just because she was such an outspoken anti-lynching advocate, but also because she was not afraid to speak against the racism she saw happening in the female-dominated Suffrage and Temperance movements for women’s voting rights and alcohol limit laws respectively.

Wells was especially vocal about Frances Willard, a prominent figure of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Willard used racism to try and sway US Southerners towards Temperance and Suffrage. In order to gain Southern support Willard played to their fear of Black economic success, stating that liquor was at the center of it. Willard also claimed that liquor caused Blacks to be aggressive, which could endanger White women and children.

At the time, Black men purportedly being dangerous and aggressive was the reason given for lynchings in the South, but after tireless research and personal experience, Well’s had already known that Black economic growth was one of the main reasons for the lynchings. Wells also knew that Black women as well as Black men were being lynched in the South. In 1893, while both Wells and Willard were on tour in Europe, trying to garner support for anti-lynching and Temperance respectively, Wells exposed Willard’s racism to Europeans who previously couldn’t believe Willard would do such a thing.

This wasn’t the only time Wells had to deal with racism in women’s movements. In 1913 during the World Suffrage Parade, Black women were asked not to march in the parade with White Suffragettes because of fear it would set back progress Suffrage had made with Southern states. Instead, Black Suffragettes were asked to march after several other groups. Although many of the Black Suffragettes agreed to the segregated march, Wells did not. Wells initially was going to boycott the parade, but instead waited in the crowd and joined the parade after it started, making sure to join with the White Suffragettes.

Although the idea of intersections in Feminism may seem new, in reality it isn’t. And although many will tell you that the relationship between major Feminist movements/activists and Women of Color has gotten better, it hasn’t. Wells was considered a “radical” in her time by bothering her contemporaries in issues of race and gender, many of whom disliked the way she fought for her causes — or the fact that she spoke up at all about the issues that she faced as a Black woman.

Nowadays, with the rise of blogs and the internet generally, Black women are given far more access to spaces where they can speak about their issues with people who aren’t aware — and also with each other. The downside, of course, is that with this new access also comes new opposition. But despite all of that, Black women still speak out, just as Ida spoke out.