Friday, September 07, 2007

A hint of change?

Montgomery County’s ethics commission decided last month that council members are prohibited from traveling at the expense of the local Jewish community, even when funding is indirectly provided by a private foundation. A trip planned months in advance was subsequently canceled.
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Now this is what is called "grass roots" politics! Hats off to the ethics committee of Montgomery County, Maryland.

This news confirms my belief that American politics, should it ever be regenerated, will be regenerated from the local level. Micro-financing and hands-on citizen participation are the answer to the corruption of the political process.

When power is delegated too far away and in too few hands it makes it easy for a small group of highly focused, well funded operators to game the system. This is how and why so many Americans have no health insurance and are awash in firearms. This also explains America's relationship with Israel. DS
Ban on Political Junkets to Israel Deals Blow to Lobbying Efforts - Forward
In a challenge to one of the most powerful lobbying tactics used by the Jewish community, a county in Maryland decided last week that local legislators could no longer go on sponsored trips to Israel.

Montgomery County’s ethics commission decided last month that council members are prohibited from traveling at the expense of the local Jewish community, even when funding is indirectly provided by a private foundation. A trip planned months in advance was subsequently canceled.

“We were stunned by the commission’s decision,” said Ron Halber, executive director of the Greater Washington Jewish Community Relations Council, which organized the trip.(...)

The decision has such weight because sponsored trips to Israel are widely used by Jewish groups both nationally and locally to build support for Israel among non-Jewish leaders and to cultivate one-to-one relationships between American and Israeli leaders. On a national level, the trips have recently come under scrutiny amid the scandals surrounding Washington lobbyists and their relationships with lawmakers. The Montgomery County decision now brings the dilemma to the local level, as communities face the need to adjust to the changing winds in Washington and growing concerns about the power of lobbyists.

Hadar Susskind, Washington director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, called the Montgomery County decision “mistaken.” Susskind said that his organization has already begun looking into the decision in order to check if it represents a wider trend that could affect other Jewish communities.

“If it will become a widespread phenomenon, that would be misguided and unfortunate,” he said. According to Susskind, the trips to Israel are seen as an important tool for educating local leaders on issues relating to Israel and for building ties between Israeli and American leaders on the local level.

The attention given to lobbying trips to Israel has caused a number of organizations to make a formal separation between their lobbying arm and the branch in charge of sponsoring travel to Israel. Groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee have founded subsidiary organizations that deal with taking lawmakers, officials and journalists to Israel. As accompanists for trips to Israel, other organizations now have dedicated staffers who are not registered lobbyists.

The concern about the trips has already seeped down to the local levels where policies tend to depend on state and county ethics rules. Many JCRCs have turned to private foundations to cover the costs, and some have given up funding the trips altogether.

In Boston, the JCRC has asked since 1999 that trip participants pay their own way, covering an estimated $3,200 in travel costs. A Massachusetts ethics commission approved the community’s funding of the trip, but the local JCRC decided to drop the funding anyway, according to executive director Nancy Kaufman.(...)

“It would not be fair to ask elected officials to pay from their own pocket,” an official with a major Jewish group said.

For the local Jewish community, the trips help forge stronger ties with the lawmakers and government officials and help to make them aware of the political issues relating to Israel.

In Maryland, each and every member of congress and most of the local officials have taken part in trips to Israel. Many of them later moved on to higher positions on the local and national scene. READ IT ALL

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