Tag Archives: politics

Shiny Objects, Beat Tube Map:

10 Sunday Mar 2013

Posted by in Australian Politics, WA Politics

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Well it seems Colin Barnett has won the ‘Boom State’ election which pitted his grandiose vision of shiny objects against Mark McGowan’s (well really Ken Travers’) Tube Map. Largely missing from the campaign menu, were the usual Cost of Living issues and the focus on service delivery like Health, Law and Order, Power, Housing and Education.

Labor Leader Mark McGowan, leapt out of the blocks early with his pre-emptive ‘Metronet’ campaign launch in January, stealing the spotlight and seemingly irritating Premier Barnett who became ‘Grumpy Colin’ for about a week. This clear air allowed Labor to establish Metronet as the iconic policy for the first part of the campaign. This left Barnett’s team scrambling in a desperate ‘me too’ catch-up phase with its own hurried Airport Rail Line pledge. The downside for McGowan in pitching early with Metronet, was that his campaign peaked early and got distracted by costing arguments.

Without a major second phase focus for Labor to pivot to, their campaign only simmered towards the end.

McGowan’s attempt to turn what should have been a secondary issue into a major winner, the ‘A Vote for Barnett is a Vote for Buswell’ suggestion, came in too late to have any impact. The seeds for that proposition should have been germinating in elector’s minds, long before the start of the campaign. Instead, it came off as a bit desperate in the eyes of many. The question raised, though, is a valid one and if better handled, this issue could have worked for Labor. Instead it was overshadowed by the seemingly hysterical optics of the protagonists.

If Colin Barnett were to complete this term as leader, he would be at least 67 before he could contemplate a succession transition. While that’s not exactly doddering by today’s standard, it would nevertheless make him the 3rd oldest of the state’s past 29 premiers. As well, previous leaders were a sprightly 54 years old, on average, when they left office. With a front-bench pretty slim on talent, other than the ever-present Troy ‘Chair Sniffer’ Buswell, is it any wonder that the harbinger of a Buswell succession looms in 2014. At least the cartoonists will be ecstatic.

Of course, the ALP were at a huge disadvantage coming into the campaign because the electorate had been primed with the Barnett Government’s $2million ‘Bigger Picture’ advertising blitz. This tax-payer funded promotion, featured the shiny vote-sweetening projects, his spending frenzy was bringing to Perth, as well as the much needed hospital projects begun under the previous Carpenter Labor Government. During his election coverage on the ABC, even host Kerry O’Brien seemed incredulous that our State Government was spending $1bn on the Burswood Stadium.

The large state-wide swing against Labor resulted in the loss of at least 6 seats, with 2 more still in doubt. The most surprising result might be the huge 7.9% swing (after distribution of preferences) against former minister, Michelle Roberts who is in a struggle to retain Midland. Of the many Labor members who lost their seat, perhaps the most poignant was John Hyde, the popular member for Perth. Hyde, first elected in 2001, seems to have drowned in the sea of money splashed by the government on expensive inner city projects like Elizabeth Quay and the Burswood Stadium.

With the swing fluctuating wildly, some southern ALP members bucked the trend with small gains. Opposition Leader, Mark McGowan and Deputy Leader, Roger Cook performed strongly with small swings to them. And Labor veteran Peter Watson (Albany) has again proved his fighting value, defending a miserly 83 vote margin from the 2008 election. He might yet pull off the most unlikely win in this otherwise horror election for Labor.

For the geeks:
Check out this bit of ‘Town of Vincent News’ nostalgia, featuring: John Hyde; Deputy Premier, Kim Hames; and former Labor minister, Bob Kucera, who unsuccessfully attempted to resurrect his career in the seat of Mt Lawley.
• Town of Vincent News, March 2001 [pdf]

Will Barnett keep his promises this time or will they get dumped like the “Rail line to Ellenbrook” promise from the last election?

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Why Obama can’t do a deal with Congress:

08 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by in International Politics

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House of Representatives Speaker, John Boehner seems to be quite an amiable fellow (and certainly sensitive, judging from his frequent tears). He also has a hell of a job with the lunatic fringe comprising 1 in 3 of his caucus. This makes his task of leading his party and the House through a legislative program very difficult. House Democrat Leader, Nancy Pelosi’s got it easy by comparison… Her liberal wing (the left of the party, Jay Rockefeller, Barbara Boxer etc) is only 1 in 10.

Speaker Boehner can’t get anything reasonable through his present caucus with such a large chunk of his members (Tea Party and fanatical Ron Paul-like libertarians) locked into uncompromising, fantasy positions that prevent him reaching any compromise with President Obama and/or Congressional Democrats.

It must have been humiliating for Boehner to handball the new year ‘Fiscal Cliff’ temporary fix to Senate Democrat Majority Leader, Harry Reid and Republican Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, knowing that his only chance of getting a deal was a tacit alliance between a small rump of Republicans and the overwhelming majority of Democrats when the fix came back to the House from the Senate.
Unfortunatley for him, this inability to make deals and legislate, renders his hold on the Speakership pretty shaky.

The parties (in particular the GOP) are now so entrenched in their own version of the Battle of Flanders, that even a Christmas Truce would be impossible because anyone venturing out of the trench with a hint of Christmas goodwill towards the enemy would be cut down with a hail of bullets from his own side (Tea Party Primaries and the enemy of reasonable, Grover Norquist).

So, I can’t see any ‘big deals’ being done between President Obama and the Congressional G.O.P., in the near future, unless it’s done by Boehner using the deflection device to the Senate, outlined above.

I think that’s one of the main reasons why Obama has adopted the long-term ‘Theodore Roosevelt’ strategy of taking his message out on the road and through ‘Oganizing for Action’ (which is still filling my in-box) instead of going the traditional ‘Lyndon Johnson’ legislative route. I think Obama knows that the possibility of doing ‘Johnson’ type deals in this Congress is nill. Instead, Obama is hoping to discredit the Tea Party and Norquist from outside, by slowly changing the current ‘Deficit Hawk’ media narrative and moving the conversation back to the middle and away from the current ‘slash government spending and burn the economy’ political orthodoxy that seems prevalent in the USA (and which has resulted in a triple-dip recession in one country where it was unleashed, the UK under Cameron). It was this continuing campaign strategy that President Theodore Roosevelt adopted, at the turn of the last century, to fundamentally change the way Americans saw corporate regulation and the promotion of the interests of the average citizen instead of powerful political and wealthy elites.

Encouragingly, talk of the need for investment in the future (education, R&D, infrastructure etc) coupled with revenue increases – eliminating some industry subsidies (corn, oil etc), closing some tax  loop-holes for the rich, and means-testing safety net welfare for the wealthy (Social Security and Medicare payments) – and long-term deficit reduction (instead of the Sequester’s ‘Shock and Awe’), is already beginning to gain traction.

That the Sequester is a very blunt, indiscriminate instrument that is going to cause a shock to the US and World Economy, is almost beyond question. And, In the short term, there’s not much that can be hoped to wind it back. Obama’s strategy of continuing the ‘fairness’ tour campaigning, banging on about Republican’s protecting generous tax loop-holes for the rich while demanding cuts in programs benefiting the poor and middle-class, might just provide enough media cover to force a narrative change.

So, although a chorus of commentators, including the New York Times’ David Brooks, are urging Obama to quit his campaigning and get back to deal-making and governing, I think Obama is doing precisely what he needs to do to win the long game. He’s not thinking of the next 10 minutes (like Congress, commentators and the media), he’s thinking of the next 10 years and a possible seachange in America. I hope he succeeds.

Gee that boy can prattle on…. Enough!

Check out Nobel Economics Prize-winner, Paul Krugman’s New York Times Column and his piece on the Sequester:
• Sequester of Fools by Paul Krugman
(NYT, 22 Feb. 2013)

For the geeks:
* Although Theodore Roosevelt was a successful president, his long-term legacy was tarnished by his successors who ensured he was the last of the progressive Republican Presidents. From Taft on, the GOP became the ‘cut government’ conservative party of the rich and powerful and the hitherto generally conservative Democrats became the progressive party under the presidency of the husband of Theodore Roosevelt’s niece, Eleanor Roosevelt.
* Yes indeed folks, Franklin Roosevelt was a distant cousin of Eleanor, niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, who in 1918 launched her career as the most powerful political spouse in American History, before or since, with the possible exception of Edith Wilson, who in late 1919 effectively and secretly assumed the Presidency after Woodrow’s catastrophic stroke.

Is there any hope that Congress can get anything done on issues like immigration, gun slaughter, the budget, the sequester?

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Washington’s Political Sclerosis:

08 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by in International Politics

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I was reading a recent Washington Post report about the redoubtable Sth. Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham’s threat to ‘put a hold’ on the confirmation of nominees, Secretary of Defence, Chuck Hagel and CIA Chief, John Brennan. At first glance, I wondered… Are you a right-wing lunatic hiding beneath a relatively moderate Republican skin?… But then I remembered that the competition, these days, isn’t between Republicans and Democrats at elections but within the parties at Primaries; meaning that Graham was pitching to the rabid base to shore up his position against a primary attack. The new reality is, the enemy within is more dangerous than the foe across the aisle.

How has this anomaly of the democratic process arisen that has made compromise between parties, impossible and government, sclerotic?
In the 2012 elections, 85% of House seats and 60% of Senate races, were considered Safe (a winning margin of at least 10%). In the past, staking a claim to these prized pieces of Congressional real estate could give the holder a job for life. Many incumbents took the opportunity to grow fat and comfortable while many others took the relative safety of their position to carve out meaningful and illustrious legislative careers. Until the recent past, ‘lunatic fringe’ primary challenges were rarely successful but with the rise of the rabid right-wing Tea Party within the G.O.P., that all changed. The threat from this intractable faction has led previously rational Republican legislative negotiators to behave like cornered Rottweilers. That coupled with the ludicrous 60% Senate vote (close to that often required to change a national constitution elsewhere in the world) now needed to enact simple legislation; and national government, in any meaningful sense, has ceased to exist in the USA.

It is grievously frustrating to see the lurch from crisis to crisis of Congress’ own design. The members don’t seem chastened by the flirtation with recession, in last quarter 2012, said to be the result of uncertainty generated by Congressional brinkmanship over the ‘Fiscal Cliff’ or the sledgehammer surgery applied to the US economy by the ‘Sequester’ as a result of Congressional failure to act last month.

Republican House members and Senators seem only to be concerned, like Senator Graham, with potential Primary challenges from Tea Party fanatics. And why need they care how low the esteem of the G.O.P in Congress sinks in the eyes of electors, when the only threat to their Congressional survival lies within their own ranks.

Until the threat of a party losing a seat becomes greater than a Primary loss, this sorry state appears destined to continue. In Australia, seat (district) boundaries and redistricting is established by an independent Federal Commission rather than the incumbent majority party in each State. With the Republicans in the ascendancy in ‘State engineered redistricting’ in recent years, the electoral map greatly favours the G.O.P. I noted with interest that at the November election, Democrats won millions more votes than Republicans but 33 fewer seats; a product of majority party redistricting, the Texas Perry-mander etc.

I remember looking at gerrymandering in my political science classes at university and discussing it as a quaint relic of the 19th century ‘rotten borough’ era in England and 1812 Massachusetts (where the term originated). But then I became interested in modern USA politics… Such a glaring and catastrophic democratic flaw would be an amusing subject of harmless banter if the country in question was Chad but when manufactured crises in the Congress of the USA, such as the 2011 ‘Debt Ceiling’ and the recent ‘Fiscal Cliff’, and ‘Sequester’, can cause the US credit-rating to be downgraded and other financial ripples around the world then it becomes a worry for the rest of us.

I just watched Casino Jack and the United States of Money, a documentary about Jack Abramoff and the way he allegedly bought the Republican Party. It was horrifying.

Read New York Times Columnist, Sam Wang’s piece on the 2012 Election:
• The Great Gerrymander of 2012 by Sam Wang
(NYT, 3 Feb. 2013)

I can see China with its booming economy, looking on with envy at the remarkable excercise of democracy in the USA, with its sensible Senate rules that prevent anything getting done. Will any other American organisation adopt the requirment of a 60% vote in favour of any action or would they just laugh? Would any democratic institution anywhere in the world, outside the USA, ever adopt a 60% rule to get anything done? Will the Congressional gerrymander ever be exposed and fixed?

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Uganda’s “Kill The Gays” Bill

07 Thursday Mar 2013

Posted by in International Politics, Religion

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In Uganda, it’s already illegal to be gay. But some government officials — with support from American evangelicals — want to take government sanctioned homophobia a step further. They’ve proposed the Anti-Homosexuality Bill that would, among other things, institute the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” for repeat offenders. This bill was forced off the agenda in 2011 following an international outcry against Uganda but this year it’s back.

If Uganda passes this disgusting legislation, it will represent an irredeemable stain on the beautiful country of my birth and confirm it as one of the ugliest places on Earth, deserving of pariah status.

Is there hope for real progress on human rights in much of Africa while regimes can hide behind religious dogma and repressive culture?

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A Vote for Barnett is a Vote for Buswell:

07 Thursday Mar 2013

Posted by in Australian Politics, WA Politics

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The news is quickening… It’s looking more and more like a chair sniffer for Premier in 2014. Remember, in 2008 Colin Barnett was about to announce his retirement from parliament when he was persuaded to stay and take the Liberal leadership, following the revelations about then leader Buswell’s disgusting behaviour towards women. The only reason, I can see, for Barnett keeping and then subsequently reinstating Buswell to Treasurer, must have been a deal to inure and rehabilitate him in readiness for a handover in 2014. With his record of inappropriate behaviour towards women (that has made news overseas, much like Silvio Berlusconi), and cheating on his wife with his public and sordid affair with Adele Carles, why else would you keep such a liability and lightening rod in such a high profile position.
It’s screaming out at us… It’s going to happen.

Premier Buswell has a noisy ring to it, doesn’t it?

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