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In this issue
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Nov. 31, 2008 / 4 Kislev 5769

Addressing the States' Dire Straits

By David Broder


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | When Barack Obama meets Tuesday in Philadelphia with governors of both parties, an additional dimension of the credit crisis and financial meltdown will come into focus. We have heard a lot about the collapse of housing prices, the threatened or actual bankruptcy of many banks, and the rise in unemployment. Individuals, families and firms of all sizes have been clobbered by these events.


What the governors will point out to the president-elect is that most of their budgets are in such trouble that their states may not be able to meet their responsibilities to their residents. When Obama puts his economic rescue plan together later in December, he will have to build in significant aid to state and local governments, lest they add to the public woes by slashing their own spending to meet the constitutional requirements for balanced budgets in most states.


Living in Chicago, Obama is already well aware of the problem. His willingness to call this meeting less than a month into the transition has been welcomed by governors of both parties. Veteran officials cannot recall a similarly early summit of governors and a newly elected president.


When I spoke with Gov. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the head of the Democratic Governors Association, the other day, he was effusive in his praise of Obama for reaching out to the governors of both parties. Manchin's state voted for Hillary Clinton in last spring's Democratic primary and for John McCain in November. But he insisted that Obama had gone more than halfway in involving governors during the campaign and now in the transition.


Manchin said he had advised other governors to be prepared when they meet Obama to talk in specifics about the biggest challenges facing their states. "I don't want to see us going there with our hands out," he said. "I want us ready to roll up our sleeves and go to work with Washington."


That is brave talk, but the reality is that state and local governments from one end of the country to the other are hurting badly. Tomorrow, the National Governors Association and the National Conference of State Legislatures are holding a bipartisan phone-in news conference to "outline the current fiscal situation and urge Congress and the next administration to provide a recovery package that will spur job growth, support infrastructure projects and ease the burden of Medicaid costs."


The House passed such a measure recently, but it died under threat of a veto by President Bush. It is almost a certainty that Obama will support and sign such a bill.


The help is urgently needed. In Philadelphia, Mayor Michael Nutter announced recently that he was closing 11 libraries, laying off 220 workers, eliminating 600 other unfilled positions, postponing a promised tax cut and slicing his own salary by 10 percent.


In Obama's Chicago, Mayor Richard Daley, looking at a budget shortfall of almost half a billion dollars, has called for hundreds of layoffs. In Atlanta, the fire department is losing people. In Seattle, it's housing for the homeless that is taking a hit. New York — where Wall Street has hemorrhaged jobs — measures its shortfall in the billions and is whacking education, police and almost every other service.


The forced cutbacks in state and local spending hit the most vulnerable of our citizens. And they damage the prospects for a strong and swift economic recovery.


The federal government is following the Keynesian blueprint by rapidly increasing its spending — letting deficits explode past the trillion-dollar mark in hopes of stimulating the private economy. But if declining tax revenue and increasing Medicaid and welfare payments force state and local governments to cut back, that will work against the stimulus.


Obama and the governors are in this together. It is good that they are meeting now and important that their dialogue continues when he takes office.

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Previously:


11/28/08: Good time for a brainy president
11/24/08: Rising Hope For Fixing Health Care
11/19/08: A Force for Good — but Not at State
11/17/08: GOP has work to do
11/13/08: Obama's good start
11/10/08: Governors Know Best
11/06/08: The Task Ahead
11/03/08: The Amazing Race: I thought 1960 was the best campaign I'd ever cover. But 2008 has that election beat
10/30/08: What We've Learned About McCain
10/27/08: A New England Brawl
10/23/08: Blue Sparks in Red Ohio
10/17/08: Obama's Assurance Policy
10/14/08: Live from the Pennsylvania frontlines
10/12/08: The proposals that could bind Obama
10/09/08: What do we really know about them?
10/06/08: The uplifting debate
10/02/08: Economics Exam in Michigan
09/28/08: McCain out-pointed Obama
09/26/08: Credibility Test for Congress
09/22/08: A debate's high stakes
09/22/08: Down days for McCain
09/15/08: The Next President's Due Bill
09/11/08: GOP celebration and Dem gloom are premature
09/08/08: Can we count on change?
09/03/08: Palin's Learning Curve
09/02/08: How Palin could help
09/02/08: What Happened to the Obama of 2004?
08/26/08: The Women Hit Their Mark
08/25/08: The Joe I know … and what it means for McCain
08/21/08: In N.H., a Deal to Close
08/18/08: Obama's Well-Oiled Machine
08/14/08: Pros and Conventions: Useful Ideas From the Stevensons and Friends
08/11/08: Rivals in Search of Trust
08/07/08: A Way Back to the High Road?
08/04/08: A Slate To Revive The Senate
07/31/08: When Congress Works
07/29/08: Management 101 for Senators
07/24/08: Obama's success abroad was pure luck
07/21/08: Obama's success abroad was pure luck
07/17/08: Governors offer real world wisdom. Obama and McCain would be wise to listen
07/14/08: Foes and allies strive to peg a shifty Obama
07/10/08: Fixing How We Go to War
07/07/08: Decider on the High Court
07/03/08: One Nation No More? Civics Needs a Boost, but Our Identity Endures
06/30/08: Dumbing Down the Presidency
06/26/08: Voting's Neglected Scandal
06/23/08: Why don't we know what makes Obama tick?
06/19/08: Foreign Policy's Best Hope
06/16/08: Perot, Back On the Charts
06/16/08: The Many Gifts of Tim Russert
06/12/08: Why Hillary played the womyn card
06/08/08: Eclipsed by the Adventures of Hillary
06/02/08: Obama in retreat
06/02/08: Reality vs. the Mythmakers
05/29/08: Hamilton Jordan's Message to Obama
05/27/08: Let the Veepstakes Begin
05/19/08: The mental exercise of placing Obama in the Oval Office requires more imagination than did moving Reagan from the silver screen to Pennsylvania Ave.
05/15/08: For Obama, a Lost Moment
05/12/08: The price of delay
05/08/08: Phoniness and inevitability
05/05/08: Winning by destruction: An insider reveals the Hillary game plan
05/01/08: Candidates' high-mindedness is rooted in religiosity; but Hillary and McCain don't have hater as inspiration


© 2008, by WPWG

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