Total Recall

The two people pictured above are my dad, Adrian Mirvish, and my mom, Lissa Rechtin. My dad’s a philosophy professor at CSU Chico, and my mom’s a child psychiatrist at Kaiser Permanente. Their jobs cumulatively pay pretty well, and the 5 of us in my nuclear family are acutely aware of how lucky we are; nonetheless, the family does have many sizable drains on finances. As regular readers know, I’m a student at UC Berkeley; as the enormous percentage of those few and (hopefully) proud readers who are also close friends of mine know, my older brother, Ezra, is a medical student at the University of Pittsburgh, and my younger brother, Asher, is set to enroll at UC Davis. The price of having 3 kids living away from home while enrolled in institutions of higher learning is, as comedians with no original material will tell you, significant. My family also lives in a house big enough for 5 in San Francisco, with a correspondingly expensive mortgage. We are in the process of paying off two cars. Taxes are significant on a doctor’s salary. My dad, lamentably, has to pay for fairly regular dental work; I, as the inner circle will already be aware, am on a bevy of fairly costly ophthalmic medication; my mom takes an expensive osteoporosis pill. We also all like to own warm clothing and indulge in some food on a fairly regular basis. My parents pay for all of the above and much, much more.

An unusual election is taking place in Berkeley tomorrow and the day after, polling the student body as to whether or not to remove ASUC Senator John Moghtader from office. For the uninitiated, the ASUC is a worthless governmental institution, one which gets nothing done (as a dual result of widespread incompetence and constitutionally-granted power that doesn’t entitle it to accomplish much under the most ideal of circumstances), yet constitutes a very sizable drain on university finances. John Moghtader is a fully competent officer of this hopeless legal body, whose threatened removal from office stems not from illicit activity or conduct unbefitting a Senator, but from the personal vendetta of a small group of UC Berkeley students. The details on this are as follows:

Senator Moghtader also serves as the president of a student group known as Tikvah: Students for Israel, devoted to Israel advocacy on campus. On November 13, 2008, on an Eschelman Hall balcony overlooking a concert being held on Lower Sproul Plaza by the Zionist Freedom Alliance, an (in the eyes of this direct eyewitness) exceedingly minor physical altercation broke out between Israel and Palestine student advocates. The organization of this concert had seen significant effort and input at the hands of members and associates of Tikvah, and it was one of these, Berkeley alum Gabe Weiner, who was most actually involved in the scuffle. Moghtader himself was at the time in the area of the so-called “fight” but remained visibly uninvolved.

The recall campaign has been run by members and friends of the Palestine advocacy group most associated with the counter-demonstration that served as the basis of the fight, Students for Justice in Palestine. A number of these have been people involved in the altercation themselves, or else friends of participants, such as Husam Zakharia, the man who (as I can directly attest) started the “fight” by punching Weiner in the right cheek. They claim that Moghtader’s behavior in light of the event – which, as far as a number of eyewitnesses and the District Attorney of Alameda County can tell, was limited to being nearby – was unbefitting of an ASUC Senator, and that, for this reason, the democratically-elected official needs to be removed from office.

I almost wish there was any more to the charge than that, but there isn’t: the only ostensible reason Berkeley senior Yaman Salahi and his like-minded compatriots are seeking to have Moghtader removed from office is his demonstrably nonexistent participation in the events of that evening. This can only lead me to believe that the real motivation behind the campaign has less to do with anything Moghtader has done than with what he represents to Salahi and his fellow members of SJP: a political opponent, one whom they simply wish hadn’t found enough support to win office in the first place. My late, great friend Dan Kliman immediately diagnosed the campaign as a “witch hunt,” and he was right. Regardless of where one stands on Israel/Palestine or any other pertinent political issue, it should be clear from the evidence that Moghtader did not do anything to warrant removal from office – that this entire grandiose production is based on nothing more than petty resentment, and that the cause is a repugnant if magnificently-orchestrated sham.

Yet it gets a good deal worse: by dint of the evil miracle that is modern bureaucracy, the recall election is going to cost the University of California $25,000 – a bill which goes directly to the taxpayers. Admittedly, particularly spread across everyone who pays the University, $25,000 is not that much money (for scale, the projected California budget for 2009-10 is $135 billion.) Nevertheless, especially in light of the widely-acknowledged financial difficulties the United States and all its constituent parts find themselves in, any new addition is a crime.

I am unrepentant about my political stances: I am myself conservative (and just for the record, you’d do well not to equate that to “Republican”) and stand firmly in support of the State of Israel. This means that though I think that debates in Berkeley about the situation in the Middle East are a stupid and worthless enterprise – dividing a populace as they do and, let’s face it, having as nonexistent an impact on the Middle East as they do – I still believe it my duty to defend my political beliefs when they are assailed on campus. In essence, this means that when Salahi and company attack Senator Moghtader’s ASUC position because they disagree with him on grounds irrelevant to his post, I am both ideologically obligated and personally happy to argue the charges and do whatever I can to come to his aid. However, I am adamant that this responsibility does and absolutely should not extend to my mom and dad – both unflinchingly wonderful both as parents and as people – who sacrifice far too much for the good of the family already, and for whom ANY additional burdens are not only uncalled for, but also, I’m convinced, morally reprehensible.

My situation could not be further from unique: in all likelihood, there is no family out there that could not use any extra money they could get their hands on. Accordingly, there should be no one out there willing to outlay money that could – inevitably must – be used to pay mortgages, fund down payments, buy food or clothes or medicine, or even (heaven forfend) simply enjoy life to instead collectively fund an isolated case of puerile, narcissistic greed. That Salahi and co. are bothering the public to win that 3:15 fight at the flagpole on the proverbial schoolyard playground of life makes me angry; that they’re succeeding to do so at the expense of innocent people across the state makes me absolutely furious, and if, dear reader, you’ll forgive my forcing feelings upon you, it should do the very same to you.

Of course, as everyone is aware, it’s too late to stop the election: too late to amend the constitution to allow an ASUC Judicial Council to dismiss transparently frivolous suits; too late to stop the ASUC from accepting a laughably insufficient online petition; and much too late repair the abysmally-worded bylaws that allowed this entire monstrosity to take place after those first two failures had occurred. The $25,000 are already spent, and so in some sense, the outcome of the election itself is irrelevant. Yet I beg all who are entitled to vote to go out of their way into the wet, gray abyss of Berkeley to vote no on removing Senator Moghtader from office for two reasons:

First, simply, because a detached, discerning mind should come naturally to the conclusion that it’s the right decision. Second, because only by stopping this witch hunt where it currently stands can we, the students of UC Berkeley, assure that when, in the future, the University’s twin jewels of illustrious incompetence, the administration and ASUC Senate, fail to do anything/enough to prevent a similar event from recurring, history will have already shown that the student body is wholly unwilling to be party to such vainglorious horseshit.

For yourselves, for me, for our parents, for everyone - get out and vote NO on the recall of Senator John Moghtader.

(The online voting site can be found here. Thank you.)