How NOT to do prison reform

September 18, 2009

How many could avoid prison with drug treatment?

How many could avoid prison with drug treatment?

For decades, people in California have talked about prison reform. Even while we were locking up record numbers of young Californians with laws such as Three-Strikes-and-You’re-Out, Democrats and Republicans (well, not the troglodytes) alike have been talking about how we need to divert nonviolent offenders to rehabilitation programs instead of simply jailing them. And California did have some innovative programs to do just that. Only, they were pilot programs. They never became institutionalized. And they were never really supported by the all-powerful prison guards’ union, because they didn’t create enough prison jobs.

It’s long been known that most criminal offenders are substance abusers; most of them are untreated addicts, hence the high recidivism rate. They get out of prison with no treatment, go score their drug of choice – whether its alcohol, crack or crystal – then get loaded and commit new crimes. It ain’t rocket science to prevent this. Oodles of research and pilot projects show that providing treatment and aftercare to addicted offenders reduces recidivism and criminal justice costs. The famous CALDATA study from the early 1990s found that every $1 spent on drug and alcohol treatment saved $7 in taxpayer money, mostly because of reduced crime.

Meanwhile, California’s Little Hoover Commission continually over the years urged more drug courts, treatment, rehabilitation, education and training for both youth and adult prison inmates to reduce overcrowding and huge taxpayer costs.

But, we didn’t do it, not in any meaningful way. A meaningful way would have been to divert incarceration dollars to treatment and rehabilitation programs and push most inmates and parolees into treatment and long-term aftercare for their addiction. But the prison guards’ union wouldn’t allow that, and neither would conservative politicians — or most liberal politicians who either didn’t want to be seen as soft on crime or who just didn’t think it was very important. The state’s prison budget has increased fivefold since 1994. But we didn’t see fit to use that money to transform our corrections system so that it would stymie recidivism.

Now, it’s too late. The federal government is forcing the State of California to release 45,000 inmates – the size of a small city – because of overcrowding and inadequate health care in prisons. The State Legislature recently passed bills called prison reform, but they were really just ways to cut a billion dollars from the prison budget with some window dressing to try to fool people into thinking that lawmakers were doing something positive.

The state says that it will be sending these released prisoners to local programs. But they’re being cut by the state revenue raid of

California prison population outta control

California prison population outta control

local government and cuts to state-funded treatment and rehabilitation, like the deletion of  Proposition 36 funding. So those local programs, such as probation, jails and rehabilitation, actually have less capacity then they did six months ago, yet the state is sending more offenders to local jurisdictions. All these problems will only get worse as California’s budget problems grow next year.

The moral to this story is…well, there is no moral. People give lip service to prison reform, but I’ve never seen it really done, not in California or anywhere else in the United States. We could be diverting huge numbers of offenders from our prisons. But the truth is — we don’t really want to.

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Posted by jgogek

Wacky whitefolks last waltz

September 13, 2009

Watching the antics of America’s angry, confused conservatives, many of Tea Party 1us wonder, “how long must we endure these people?” Thankfully, as Martin Luther King once said: “How long? Not long.”

Look at the faces of the Tea Party folks who gathered in Washington D.C., on Sept 12 to stage a very muddled protest against what they alternately called President Obama’s socialist, fascist, Marxist or racist health care reform. Tea Party 4What do you see? That’s right. White people. What do Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Joe Wilson, and the Tea Party folks all have in common? The crazed conservatives of this country  are not people of color. They’re not Hispanics or Asian or African American. They’re white.

So what? Well, white people won’t be the dominantTea Party 2 race or culture in America for much longer. By 2042, they will be a minority, and their percentage of the population will continue to decline throughout the century and beyond. The numbers and power of white people are eroding, not only in the United States but around the world.

chart tea party

As the color and culture of our great nation changes, so will the crazed conservatives find themselves steadily marginalized. My biggest fear is that, in the meantime, some individuals of their ilk will do something really crazy. But beyond that, we only need to wait them out.Tea Party 3

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Third-world California

May 30, 2009

Proposition 13, and the whole Proposition 13 mentality, is finally comingCalifornia motto home to roost in California. The arrogant and foolish California idea that we could have whatever we wanted without taxing ourselves to pay for it is the same kind of heedless thinking that brought America the banking and mortgage crisis.  Californians actually believe that they are overtaxed, that state government is hoarding cash or wasting it through fraud, abuse and avariciousness. But the populist idea that if we just cut waste out of government, everything would be fine is finally being proven false.

Coping with a $20 billion to $40 billion budget deficit without raising taxes means that we will lose our state parks. We will lose the safety net for the poor and disabled. People — including children — will die because they can’t afford health care and the state won’t have the money to provide it. Hospital emergency rooms will be so overcrowded that they’ll shut down. Our schools will see widespread teacher layoffs and staff layoffs.  Local governments will find their property taxes siphoned off from the state, resulting in cuts to police, fire, libraries, local parks and rec. Higher ed will be deeply cut; California’s world-leading university systems will be degraded. And on and on.

Why? Because Californians would not raise their own taxes. For the cost of a few dollars, we will turn the Golden State into a third-world country, destroy our parks and schools,  and turn the poor and disabled — including the children — out into the streets. Nice work, people of California.

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Taxing marijuana to balance California’s budget? Just another stoned daydream…

March 26, 2009

stoned-aginThe romance with weed is never-ending for California marijuana devotees. Now, they claim their beloved drug can save the state by solving its unrelenting budget nightmare.

State legislation is afoot to legalize and tax marijuana to backfill the state budget. But, like the grandiose daydreams of a stoner, the reality of this plan would be far different from its vision. I won’t go all “Reefer Madness” on you or claim that hemp T-shirts are a slippery slope to damnation. The problem with marijuana legalization is simpler and worse.

California cannot afford more stoned people, especially stoned young people. We need a lot fewer stoned people.

Prevention experts understand the problem with legalization: The greater the access to an intoxicant, the more abuse there will be of that intoxicant. Alcohol isn’t the most dangerous drug in the world because it’s worse than heroin or cocaine. It’s the most dangerous drug because it’s so easily accessible. You can get large quantities of it anywhere, and cheaply, too. Underage drinking is a big problem because kids can get alcohol so easily.

Legal marijuana would mean more access to marijuana. The number of marijuana users would spike, including teens. Problems related to marijuana use would spike. Marijuana lobbyists argue that if a dangerous drug such as alcohol is legal, then marijuana should be, too. I’ve never understood that. With all the problems we have with alcohol, why would we want to legalize another intoxicant?

Right now, there are 127 million alcohol users and 14 million marijuana users in this country – because one is legal and the other isn’t. But, most alcohol users don’t get intoxicated. About one-fifth of alcohol users binge drink or regularly drink heavily.

The serious problems from alcohol occur when people get intoxicated. With marijuana, you get intoxicated every time you use it. That’s the whole point. Marijuana intoxication and alcohol intoxication may be different, but both are bad for society.

Marijuana intoxication means cognitive impairment, grandiosity, short-term memory loss, difficulty in carrying out complex mental processes and impaired judgment. It severely hurts your ability to perform at school and work. It saps initiative and drive. It increases confusion. In other words, it makes you stupid.

ob-morning1An increase in stoners among California’s young people and work force would be very bad for the state. Right now, we’re in a recession in which people without college degrees are losing jobs twice as fast as people with college degrees. Our future economy will be based on innovation, education and highly skilled labor.

But we’re already not producing enough college graduates for our future work-force needs. With many more stoned teens and young people, the problems of an unskilled, uneducated and unmotivated work force will get worse. Stoned people can’t learn or work very well. Marijuana is the loser drug: That’s the big problem with it.

What about the idea that California can balance its budget by legalizing marijuana and taxing the heck out of it? You haven’t been paying attention to special-interest politics if you believe that.

Moneyed special interests run policy in this state. Look what happened when California criminal justice policies made prison guards one of the most powerful lobbies in the state. The union quickly began dictating policy in its own interest.

The alcohol industry is so powerful in California that beer taxes haven’t increased in nearly 20 years; the last time they were raised was by a minuscule amount and the industry almost killed that. A wealthy marijuana industry will soon co-opt policy-makers and dictate how much tax we charge, where we sell the product and who gets to buy it. Why would a marijuana industry be different from any other special interest?

Personally, I don’t think the marijuana lobby believes its own arguments. When I talk to legalization proponents, it usually boils down to their angry demand that people should be left alone to get stoned if they want to. That libertarian sentiment shows a complete disregard for the public good. If legalizers can’t understand that, elected policy-makers certainly should.

The disingenuousness of the marijuana lobby becomes clear on the subject of medical marijuana. For marijuana lobbyists to push both recreational marijuana and medicinal marijuana at the same time is duplicitous. It’s nakedly obvious where their real desires lie.

Recreational drug use and medical drug use have nothing in common. If pharmaceutical lobbyists pushed recreational and medical use of the same drug, they’d get hauled before Congress and slammed by state attorneys. But the marijuana lobby sees nothing wrong with its tactics.

How about a little more candor from marijuana romantics? Like the panhandler standing on a street corner with a sign that says, “Why lie? I just want a beer.”

Reprinted from San Diego Union-Tribune

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Could California finally end its budget madness?

February 23, 2009

Have we had enough insanity yet? I don’t think most people in California 19budget480realize it, but the Golden State just dodged a self-created economic depression by finally passing a budget. The world’s 7th (or whatever) largest economy almost committed suicide when a legion of state employees faced layoffs, which would have led to skyrocketing home foreclosures, vital services grinding to a halt, etc.

Even with the new budget, education will be slashed, which will severely harm our state’s future economy. Anyway, the tyranny of minority rule by extremists that brought California this craziness can be stopped with three public policy changes now in the works. The good news is that any one of these policies may be profoundly beneficial. The bad news is that they each depend on ballot initiatives, which means, even if they pass, they may be subject to the law of unintended consequences.

Policy 1: A movement is afoot to get rid of the ridiculous two-thirds vote requirement to pass a budget, something California shares only with those notably progressive states of Arkansas and Rhode Island. This mandate not only allows minority rule, but it has given a platform to ideologues to hold up the state budget so they can fulfill senseless campaign pledges. In this case, Republican extremists who had foolishly pledged “no new taxes” during the worst recession in 70 years were allowed to almost turn a recession into a depression because of two-thirds vote. The California Budget Responsibility Act would amend the State Constitution from a two-thirds mandate to 55 percent (which still doesn’t make sense to me because democracy is 50 percent plus one, right? But, oh well…) This policy change attacks the budget stalemate problem head-on.

Policy 2: State Sen. Abel Maldonado, one of the few moderate Republicans in Sacramento, forced the state Legislature, in exchange for his yes-vote on the budget, to place on the ballot a constitutional amendment mandating open primaries. Under our current primary system, with our gerrymandered districts, extremists have an easy time of it because they can always get the faithful Kool-Aid drinkers out to vote in the primaries. Open primaries will allow the two top vote-getters to make it to the general election, no matter what their party. Candidates will have to appeal a much more diverse electorate, and that means moving toward the center. The result – fewer zealots in general elections. (Both the Republican Democratic parties oppose open primaries, which means they are a good idea.)

Policy 3: Last fall, California voters barely passed Proposition 11, the Voters First Act, which takes redistricting away from the state Legislature and gives it to a commission made up of five Democrats, five Republicans and four of neither party. The commissioners cannot have run for office – or have a close relative who has run for office – in the last ten years, and neither can they be lobbyists or campaign donors of more than $2,000. The multi-partisan commission will get its first chance next year. Under the current districts, state Legislative districts are gerrymandered so that incumbents win 99 percent of the time. Both Democrats and Republicans liked the gerrymandered system; even though it guaranteed a Republican minority, they supported it because it also guaranteed individuals their seats. The result of Proposition 11 should be more competitive races which means that candidates will have to campaign toward the center. The result – fewer zealots.

These measures could very well end budget stalemates, which have harmed the state’s economy and nearly destroyed our educational system.

California ranks 49th in the share of population age 25 and older that is at least a high school graduate. From 1977 and 1983, California ranked 1st among the 15 largest states on this measure.

– California Faculty Association Report, 2009

Then again, it’s hard to imagine California without a budget stalemate. The impulse for self-sabotage may just be too great.

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Water conservation in California needs to begin down on the farm

February 11, 2009

 

Flooded rice field in California's Sacramento Valley

Flooded rice field in California's Sacramento Valley

When people talk about conserving water in California, it’s always about turning off your yard sprinklers, taking shorter showers or shaving without the water running. We fret about watering golf courses and lawns in the suburbs. In presentations at schools, at Rotary clubs and on public service announcements, we’re continually told that, as dwellers in a semi-arid state, we must conserve water. All true. But what we don’t hear about is conservation on the farm. And that’s where we need it most.

Most urban Californians have no idea that agriculture uses about four times as much water as cities. Farmers know it, but they don’t talk about it much. All cities and suburbs combined in California use between 8 million to 9 million acre feet a year. Agriculture uses 34 million acre feet. An acre foot is how the West measures big amounts of water. It’s an acre one foot deep, or 325,851.4 gallons. water-pie-chart

The largest water projects in California are dedicated to agriculture. The federal Central Valley Project delivers 7 million acre-feet of water a year to grow thirsty cotton, rice, alfalfa and other crops. The All-American Canal in Imperial County delivers at least 4.4 million acre-feet, of which 3.8 million acre-feet go to ag. By contrast, the notorious Los Angeles Aqueduct of Owens Valley/Chinatown fame provides only around 200,000 acre feet a year to Los Angeles. The total that city uses is about 650,000 acre feet. Alfalfa – hay — uses between 4 million to 5.5 million acre feet a year.

Cities have been successful in conservation in recent years. But conservation on the farm is much harder because nothing grows in California if you don’t water it. The amount of field crops, vegetables, fruits and nuts we produce directly correlates to how much water we use. Remember, like California cities, there is nothing natural about California agriculture. The Central Valley was a vast marshy place with only seasonal rainfall that we drained and now use to grow water-intensive crops. The Imperial Valley is one of the hottest places in the country with almost no rainfall at all. Without water taken from rivers and poured on the dirt, there would be no California ag.

Don’t get me wrong, California’s rural-based agriculture is very important. The Golden State is the nation’s breadbasket. But California’s urban-based manufacturing is even more important. In 2006, the California gross domestic product for crop and animal production was $15 billion. For manufacturing, it was $172 billion. California needs all of its industries to survive and thrive. So when we talk about conservation, let’s start the conversation with the biggest user – agriculture. After that, we can talk about three-minute showers.

Reports used in this blog post:

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Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown try to shoot the messenger of California’s prison disaster

February 2, 2009

California Gov. Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown are california_prisons_1_4001
firing blanks at the messenger heralding the disaster that California prisons have become. Both the governor and attorney general asked U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson to remove J. Clark Kelso, who was appointed receiver of prison healthcare three years ago by Henderson, and return inmate medical care to state control. Schwarzenegger and Brown complain that Kelso is going to spend $8 billion to build a gold-plated health system. However, their ploy to remove Kelso probably won’t work.

Let’s set aside whether Kelso’s $8 billion plan is a good one or not and instead look at how we got into this mess and whether we’re anywhere near getting out of it. The last question is easy to answer. Judge Henderson appointed Kelso because prison healthcare in California was terrible. There’s no evidence to show that it’s improved, nor that it will any time soon, considering the state’s multibillion-dollar deficit. Why would Henderson suddenly remove the receiver when nothing has changed?

How did we get into this mess? That’s easy, too. The politicians and people of California created it by foolishly thinking that they could punish crime away — without giving any consideration to the ultimate cost and impossibility of such a plan.

With rehabilitation almost nonexistent – the public and politicians never wanted to pay for that – recidivism remains at more than 66 percent. Two out of every three people released from California prisons go back – the highest rate in the nation.  Politicians and the public thought they could scrimp on health care, drug treatment, rehabilitation, education – anything that might benefit the lives of inmates once they were released because, well, they’re inmates and they deserve only the worst. Only 7 percent of inmates receive alcohol treatment, although 42 percent have a high need for it. And only 2.5 percent of inmates who have a serious need for drug treatment actually get it. And even for those who get treatment in prison, aftercare programs when they’re on parole are wholly inadequate.

The fact is that inmates are wards of the state and the people of the state are responsible for their welfare – all 172,000 of them. The people of California have volunteered to take care of as many inmates as possible, and now they’re complaining about the cost. Maybe Californians should have thought of that before they embarked on their prison-building binge while incarcerating as many people as possible. Since 1977, about 1,000 laws have been passed increasing penalties for all sorts of crimes. California politicians run for office by touting how they got tough on crime by increasing prison sentences. And the public eats it up.

Crime rates are lower in California than they were when we started our prison building and people punishing obsession. But they are lower
everywhere, including in states that didn’t try to throw everybody behind bars. Nobody’s exactly sure why crime goes up and down.

But one thing is sure: Californians chose an impossibly expensive way to fight crime. And now, we don’t want to pay for the program we chose and we don’t have the political will to create real change. The result will be continued billions of dollars in costs for prisons (more than we pay for higher education), continued high recidivism rates and large-scale inmate releases as the system we chose collapses.

That collapse is upon us. A panel of three judges is considering whether to cap the population and release up to 52,000 inmates – with almost no rehabilitative or re-entry programs in place for them.

This whole thing is dumb public policy, folks. A child could devise a better plan.

Recommended read on prison reform on the California Progress Report.

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More consumer loans from TARP? Wouldn’t take it to the bank…

January 25, 2009

bank-crackedThe Obama administration wants banks to use some TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) money to increase consumer and business loans. Or so they say.

“The point is to get credit flowing again to businesses and families across the country — that hasn’t happened with the expenditure of the first $350 billion,” top advisor David Axelrod said in early January.

There’s talk of stricter controls and oversight for TARP II. But exactly how the Obama administration will force banks to start lending more money to consumers and businesses isn’t clear. Does the Obama administration really want to do it? Axelrod’s words may be for public consumption only.

Banks know that with the economy stumbling and more and more businesses going under and people losing their jobs, defaults on mortgages and unpaid auto loans and credit cards increase. Delinquencies rise for all types of consumer credit. With fewer people buying, business lending gets riskier. In such an environment, banks loan less, not more. They hoard cash for an even rainier day.

A better idea is to help consumers pay the debt they already have through mortgage restructuring or mitigation and economic stimulus through job creation. If you lose your job, the best way to keep paying your mortgage, car note and credit card bills is to get another job. At the same time, government can twist lending institutions and investors to renegotiate consumer debt, like threatening them with cram-downs, which already seems to have worked. Use TARP to help banks stay solvent, while economic stimulus creates jobs so people can pay their bills, then debt restructuring makes those bills easier to pay. That will loosen up credit – slowly, but in a sustainable way. Anyway, do we really want to increase consumer and business debt right now?

The public hates all this talk about bank bailouts, of course. But what of it? They should hate it; it’s hateful. I hate the fact that our financial institutions acted so irresponsibly in giving out mortgages and credit cards to anybody with a pulse. But arguing against bank bailouts is foolish. Banks hold all the money. Not just bankers’ money – your money, my money, everybody’s money. And their investors hold everybody’s notes. If they go down, we all get hurt.

In return for bailing out banks, let’s get the biggest equity stake possible. I’m not afraid of the N-word: nationalization. We don’t nationalize like Venezuela does; whatever chunk of the banks that taxpayers buy will be sold back to private investors later on. The key to whether Obama’s bailout of banks is a success is whether the federal government recoups its losses, or turns a profit, a few years from now. If it does, it will all be worth it.

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President Obama and cigarettes: If he quits, he can help reverse the global tobacco epidemic and save millions of lives

January 17, 2009

barack-obamaWith the country is facing an economic disaster and crises throughout the world, it may not seem very important whether President Obama smokes cigarettes. The public response to his struggle to quit seems to be: Give the guy a break.

But, tobacco smoke kills 440,000 a year in the United States and 5.4 million each year worldwide. That number will reach 8 million by 2030, with 80 percent of those deaths in developing countries. Tobacco will kill 1 billion people this century. It’s the most preventable cause of death, in rich and poor countries alike. President Obama can save millions of these lives by joining the fight against this global epidemic. But unless he can quit smoking and stay quit, he might actually hurt the cause.

The international tobacco industry spends tens of billions each year pushing its message that smoking is normal and desirable. A charismatic world leader who is an inspiration to young and old — and who smokes –would be a godsend for the industry. But if the same world leader publicly quits, and supports changes that help others to quit and children never to start, he could turn the tide on this epidemic.

Smoking in the United States has declined in recent decades; leveling off at about 20 percent of the adult population. Meanwhile, the global reality is much worse. Countries with low or moderate per capita incomes are particularly at risk because of low tobacco prices, lack of awareness and aggressive tobacco marketing.

Indonesia is a tragic example. Over 60 percent of adult males smoke. So do a quarter of teenage boys under 16. The rate among young girls is rising fast. Tobacco advertising is rampant and, like most developing countries, Indonesia has few of the controls that can reverse the tobacco epidemic. Treatment for tobacco dependence and anti-smoking messages are rare. Tobacco advertising is everywhere. And, tobacco taxes, and hence prices, is low.little-kid-smoking-cigarette-copy21

It’s also a country where President Obama is very popular, having spent some of his childhood there. By speaking out as an honored world leader who has quit smoking, he could help countries like Indonesia overcome tobacco industry muscle and enact desperately needed anti-tobacco measures. Africa is another region with a growing tobacco epidemic where President Obama can help.

While tobacco prevalence in Africa is still relatively low, it’s a vast new marketplace for the tobacco industry because of lax controls and young populace. President Obama could spur tobacco controls there, too, and help save millions of lives.

Reversing the global tobacco epidemic is not complex. It doesn’t require breakthrough cures or heroic medical treatment, just policy changes that already have been tested, plus enforcement. A recent World Health Organization report laid out the path countries must take by using the acronym MPOWER: Monitor tobacco use and prevention policies; protect people from tobacco smoke; offer help to quit smoking; warn about the dangers of tobacco; enforce bans on advertising, promotion and sponsorship; and raise taxes on tobacco. These are well-researched and proven methods. If adopted by all countries, these policies would save hundreds of millions of lives.

mpower_report_2008_cover1The tobacco industry vigorously opposes the MPOWER measures. And many countries have yet to develop the political prowess to resist the industry’s powerful influence and sophisticated tactics. President Obama can help by supporting global adoption of these policy changes. He could begin by getting the United States to ratify the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. This treaty is blueprint for reducing the worldwide supply of and demand for tobacco. While 161 nations are parties to the treaty, the United States isn’t one of them.

President Obama will battle unemployment, the real estate collapse, worldwide recession, climate change, a broken health care system, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and crises still beyond the horizon. But he should not ignore the planet’s greatest preventable health threat. Because he’s admired throughout the world and because he himself struggles with addiction to cigarettes, President Obama could be instrumental in reversing the global tobacco epidemic.

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We don’t have to choose sides in the Israeli-Palestinian war

January 9, 2009

MIDEAST ISRAEL PALESTINIANS

With each new paroxysm of hideous violence between Israelis and Palestinians, I become more convinced that the rest of the world will not put up with this insanity forever. At some point, supporters of each side will say, it’s just not worth it.

Many Muslin states already have cooled their ardor toward Palestinians, and particularly Hamas. This may have something to do with the fact that they’re more afraid of extremists undermining their regimes then they are about the threat from Israel. But it also may be that they’re simply moving on. Gulf states’ leaders building the fantastic and futuristic first-world city of Dubai may feel little in common with Hamas extremists who won’t put down the gun to pull their nation out of poverty. Saudi royalty investing in the multi-billion-dollar King Abdullah University of Science and Technology to build Arab ascendency in research may be sick and tired of the Palestinian leadership that’s kept Gaza City as a teeming slum. Moderate Arab leaders may not like Israel, but they don’t like the Hamas/Hezbollah solution to Israel, either. Iran is continuing to support Hamas, but for how long? Iran has serious domestic problems of its own, that will eventually demand most of its leaders’ attention. With high unemployment and inflation at 25 percent, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can’t spend all his financial and political capital helping Hamas and Hezbollah. His successors will be forced to turn inward.

And, how long will the United States continue providing Israel with unconditional support in its war against Palestinians? Longer than Iran will support Hamas, but not indefinitely. About half of Americans say their sympathies lie with Israel in the conflict with Palestinians. And the Israel lobby, with help from Christian conservatives, will try to keep it that way. But there will come a tipping point where the American public begins asking itself: Why are we sticking their necks out for the Israelis? What does the United States get out of it? What have the Israelis ever done for the United States?

Demographic change in the United States is not in Israel’s favor. The percentage of whites – which includes the Jewish and Christian conservative populations – is declining. The nonwhite population does not have the same connection with Israel. And, while the number of Muslims in America is uncertain, the population is clearly rising, becoming wealthier and slowly gaining political power. us-pop

The tipping point may not come for years, but I think I know what it will look like. Remember when U.S. public opinion turned against the Iraq war? War fever ran high following the Iraq invasion, but once the futility, carnage and immense cost could not be ignored, public opinion reversed and nothing could change it. Americans were simply done with the Iraq war. The question is not if but when the same will happen with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Like the Iraq war, the situation in Israel-Palestine is just too untenable – and outrageous — to continue engaging the American public forever.

The arrogance and presumption of Israelis and Palestinians is that they believe they can do whatever they want and their supporters will not turn away from them. It never dawns on them that the world will get fed up with their act. Through their actions, Israelis and Palestinians show that they don’t care about the rest of the world. Why should the rest of the world care about them?

The best policy toward both Israelis and Palestinians is to stop the enabling, to throw up our hands and walk away. Then, the only options left to them will be peace — or mutual destruction.

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