Politics of the Day

[greybeta]

You would think that as an opinion editor for a campus newspaper that I would have a lot of opinions on the politics of a day. I do, but a little thing called "senior project" gets in the way. While I have already presented, there's the matter of the final product where I have to dot all my i's and cross all my t's. I do have some quick thoughts about the politics of the day...

Domestic

• Immigrant situation seems to be yet another application of realistic vs. idealistic thinking. Realism says we have to deal with the over ten million "undocumented workers" living within our borders. Idealistic thinking says we can pass laws to solve the problem. The thing is that each party wants to control who these illegal immigrants will vote for down the road (if they aren't already voting).


• The Bush leaks have caused some consternation among certain members of Congress. The only thing is that this isn't anything new...just more public thanks to advent of the Internet. I wonder if the Bush administration will increase the time for released gov't documents (currently 30 years) in an effort to improve national security.


• Sixty-two percent of students who identified themselves as Republicans said religion was losing its influence on American society, while 54 percent of Democrats said it was increasing its influence. Most agreed, however, that a candidate's religion wouldn't affect how they voted.

Foreign

• Iran wants to play ball with the big boys. The big boys are going to play ball back. Gotta love the "we came here first" mentality. Even if Iran is discouraged from continuing its nuclear program, it will win many favorable concessions as a result of doing so. Why wouldn't Iran stay on its current path? America is too outstretched to invade and nobody else is going to want to invade Iran.


• Prodi wins Italian elections. The boon of coalition politics is that it gives you a lot of choices. The downside is that it's difficult to create a stable and coherent direction. It's a razor thin coalition though, so I don't expect this setup to last more than two years.


• France back downs on youth law. One Fox News commentator said that the French just want cushy jobs where they can't be canned and that doesn't work under capitalism. I don't know just how true that is, but something tells me that's what a lot of Americans think. No, don't give me all that high end theoretical economic theory, I'm talking about your average American here who watches Fox News. You know there are a lot of them because otherwise we wouldn't have elected our current president otherwise.

Comments

[usmu.livejournal.com]

- Even more interesting: according to dutch news show a senior participant in strategy sessions in the pentagon said that when the people playing Iran genuinely decided to stop testing they people playing the US just didn't believe them, no matter how hardt they tried to convince them.

- The dutch government hasn't had any real problems in deciding a stable an coherent direction in which to proceed. The funny thing about the elections in Italy was the fact there weren't that much choices: you vote either left wing and Prodi or right wing and Berlusconi. Along with what seems to be a long winded, possible judicial, end to the elections it's rather more like US elections than European ones.

- The entire notion is crap. France has a six months evaluation period after which you can be fired, just not easily. Firms have to specify why they're fired and there are appeals against losing jobs and compensation for doing so. More worker friendly, but reasonably comparable to what we Dutch, and quite possibly the rest of Europe, have.

[greybeta.livejournal.com]

The dutch government hasn't had any real problems in deciding a stable an coherent direction in which to proceed. The funny thing about the elections in Italy was the fact there weren't that much choices: you vote either left wing and Prodi or right wing and Berlusconi. Along with what seems to be a long winded, possible judicial, end to the elections it's rather more like US elections than European ones.

Well, dunno, that depends on your definition of European. To American eyes, anything that has more than two parties and elects a Prime Minister is European. Could you explain a little more on the difference between Italian and Dutch elections?

[usmu.livejournal.com]

Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. Limited access the last couple of days.

Anyway: there isn't much difference in the actual process. The dutch system only has one directly chosen chamber, which can makes law, and an indirectly chosen one which has right of veto by majority. Both Italian chambers (US: congress and senate) have the same legislative powers and directly chosen by the Italians. This means you need to have a clear majority in both, otherwise the country becomes ungovernable.

To make this happen the Italian parties formed two alliances before the election. Which meant that though more than two parties were taking part in the elections there were basically only two choices for the Italian people: a left wing government under Prodi or a right wing under Berlusconi.

The forming of a pre-election coalition of parties hasn't happened and doesn't happen in the Netherlands, which means voting for a party does in no way guarantee what coalition will actually govern the country.

Hope this helps.