local elections

In our national elections, the NRP has decided to merge with the a number of right wing parties to build a united "right-wing" front. From a political perspective this is a great idea, if they can form some sort of agreement on policy. From a Jewish perspective, it is marketed completely wrong. The Torah says very specifically that we should go straight and not turn right or left. Therefore the party should market itself as a centrist party, in keeping with the Torah, instead of saying they are a religious party that believes that right-wing is better, against what the Torah says. They should market every party that is more left-wing then themselves as right-left (Likud), center-left (Labor) and left-left (Meretz, Kadima). If there are other parties that are more right wing then them, they can be marketed as right wing.

It's all in the marketing. Kadima marketted themselves as a centrist party and then apologized to the Palestinians for the refugee problem, something that not even President Peres would consider.

In our local elections, the supporters of the guy running against the current mayor called our house to convince us to support them. MY wife, who is mostly apolitical, answered the phone. They started telling her what the problems were with the current mayor and that their guy was going to fix it. Instead of hanging up on them or passing the phone to me, she asked them how they were going to fix those problems. They replied that there are a lot of problems. So again she asked HOW they are going to fix them. They had no response so the candidate himself got on the phone. He told her that the current mayor puts a lot of money into making the city look nice, so he would take all that money and put it into education, as an example. She finally hung up without making any commitment to vote for him.

She didn't ask him this question, but according to what he is saying, the ugliest cities should have the best education. Does he have any statistics to back that up? The facts are that the more beautiful cities generally have better education because the way a city looks says something about the population. I wouldn't want to live in a city that looks like a ghetto and I would bet the level of education would sink very rapidly if the city stopped investing in its looks.