Rescue The State
Fate has found a way to conspire against our elected officials, forcing them to contemplate our options for cushioning the ailing American automotive industry at perhaps the most inconvenient time: a lame-duck session of Congress. Having burnt through nearly $7-billion in cash during the third quarter, General Motors last week sounded a death knell by announcing it would be delaying by two weeks the payment of rebates and sales incentives. GM’s decision to share the pain with its downstream dealerships is not to be taken as a unique case; by all accounts, privately-owned Chrysler is in a far more serious situation and CEO Bob Nardelli (formerly of Home Depot fame) indicated that the company’s only option for survival is to find a partner, either foreign or domestic.
GM’s decision to send its dealers the equivalent of a “the checks in the mail” letter conveys the urgency of the situation – by some measures, the industry could be out of cash by the end of the year. It was in that spirit of urgency that an automotive lobbying task force of sorts was formed, including executives from the three major automotive makers, representatives of the United Auto Workers, and many from the Michigan congressional delegation. Despite their best efforts – and even with the encouraging noises out of the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate – the lobby group will probably face an insurmountable challenge, namely the aforementioned lame-duck Congress. The election result, as comprehensive a victory as it was for the Democrats, does not take effect until January 20. Until that day, the sitting Congress is still in charge and President Bush still wields his veto stamp and signing pen.
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In Her Majesty’s Beehive
When they voted to adopt an electoral system known as Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) for the 1996 General Election, New Zealanders surely failed to brace themselves for the onslaught of political vectoring which ensued. Held on October 12, 1996, the election pitted Jim Bolger’s incumbent National Party (for my American friends, consider these the Republicans) against Helen Clark’s Labour Party (the Democrats). The prior election in 1993 had drafted just four parties into the chamber, with National and Labour carrying 50 and 45 seats respectively, while political minnows New Zealand First (populist) and The Alliance Party (liberal) attended to two seats each. But with the first MMP election rapidly approaching, both major parties fractured dramatically as various factions sought to establish their own identities. A total of thirteen Members of Parliament (MPs) defected from National and Labour and by Election Day, the number of parties had doubled from four to eight.
The left-right balance in the final tally was extraordinary. Labour and The Alliance carried a total of 50 seats, while, to their right, National and ACT (a libertarian faction which emerged from the National Party) held 52. Neither had the commensurate 60 seats to govern in New Zealand’s 120-seat unicameral legislature, meaning that Winston Peters’ New Zealand First party became the “kingmaker” as the two major parties courted his delegation of 17 MPs.
Six weeks of protracted negotiations ensued while Parliament was seized by caretaker protocols which limit the ability of the incumbent Government to pass major legislation. With the voting public rendered powerless following the ballot Winston Peters proceeded to extract a Venetian penalty from National, anointing Jim Bolger for a second full term in exchange for both the Deputy Prime Ministership and the post of Treasurer.
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What We’re Watching at Eleven O’clock
Barack Obama is the Forty-Fourth President. So what else are we watching?
- Florida: Focus now shifts to the potential for an emphatic victory. Florida still retains importance in that context, and Obama has strengthened (with an assist from a growing Latino population) in the I-4 corridor through Orlando and the middle of the peninsula.
- Virginia Fifth: Alongside the fact that many networks are now projecting Obama to win this state, this Congressional seat is a terrible harbinger for the GOP in Virginia. Incumbent Virgil Goode is presently trailing and, while his deficit is less than 1,000 votes, over 95% of precincts are reported.
- North Carolina: Kay Hagan swept Elizabeth Dole out of her Senate seat, one of several Democratic pick-ups in the upper chamber tonight. McCain is currently leading by approximately 14,000 votes, but many votes are yet to be counted in metropolitan areas such as Charlotte and Durham.
- Indiana: Obama has picked up generally conservative districts around South Bend (go Irish!). Troubling for McCain is the substantial lag between himself and President George W. Bush’s performance in 2004.
- Minnesota Senate: Pity Norm Coleman. First Jesse Ventura, now – potentially - Al Franken for Minnesota’s Senate seat. Large swathes of the state are yet to report and the Twin Cities are underreporting, with just a tenth of the vote.
The current electoral vote map has Obama on 297 and McCain on 139. There is a scenario emerging in which Obama reaches nearly 370 votes, by carrying all of Florida, North Carolina, Indiana, Missouri, Colorado and Nevada.
The Cannonball Run: A Viewers’ Guide
Today, Americans vote in a Presidential election, 33 Senatorial races and 438 Congressional contests, not to mention voting to elevate numerous state and local officials. From this field, we provide a selection of races to watch, hour by hour.
It’s Time
When I immigrated to the United States of America some sixteen months ago, I was unoriginal in following the footsteps of those who came well before me, and who indeed helped craft this country into what it is today. I had the grand fortune of ‘winning’ this opportunity via the Diversity Visa Program (Read: ‘the lottery’), but my membership in that select group obscures the fact that I am much like any other immigrant in that I myself chose to leave family and friends in one of the most painfully beautiful corners of the world to live and work amongst strangers in a foreign land. Let that speak for how compelling the American story is.
It is mere self-aggrandizement to think that my status as an immigrant and the story of how I ended up as one add to the fabric of the community within which I live. More important are the values that I (and to a large extent all other immigrants) share with Americans, namely a profound belief in democracy; optimism about our collective potential; and belief in the power of an individual given opportunity. These are the common values that have allowed American culture and society to endure wave upon wave of immigration, and should be heeded by those who speak of immigration as a threat to the fabric of the country.
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The People Of The Fourth
We can thank the Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle for baptizing the press as “the fourth estate”. Finding the three pillars of the pre-Revolutionary French Ancien Regime – the monarchy, clergy and aristocracy - as incomplete, Carlyle sought to describe more completely the great forces of power acting upon society.
In his 1841 essay On Heroes and Hero Worship, Carlyle described the power of the printed word.
Literature is our Parliament too. Printing, which comes necessarily out of Writing, I say often, is equivalent to Democracy: invent Writing, Democracy is inevitable. Writing brings Printing; brings universal everyday extempore Printing, as we see at present. Whoever can speak, speaking now to the whole nation, becomes a power, a branch of government, with inalienable weight in law-making, in all acts of authority. It matters not what rank he has, what revenues or garnitures. The requisite thing is, that he have a tongue which others will listen to; this and nothing more is requisite. The nation is governed by all that has tongue in the nation: Democracy is virtually there.
‘The fourth estate’ implies an aristocracy; an exclusive society not beholden to influence by those not worthy of membership. As such the press takes issue when they are described as ‘biased’ and fiercely guards against any label other than being purveyors of dispassionate verbiage. Note the scorn which many in the press heap on one Fox News Channel, which has the temerity to throw flames at its brethren in the ‘Liberal Mainstream Media’.
In spite of the public’s low concept of the media, the editorial pages of America’s many daily newspapers and the endorsements issued thereon hold something of a special status in American politics. Editorial boards which profess utter commitment to the idea of balanced reporting grant themselves a daily page on which to let forth their own opinions. Scores are kept as the respective candidates rack up endorsements, and the issuance of a mold-breaking endorsement – such as that issued in favour of Barack Obama by Utah’s Salt Lake Tribune, a daily which endorsed President George W. Bush in 2004 – can occupy a respectable fraction of the news cycle.
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Annus Platitudinus
March 11, 2006 was the first of what has been an almost one-thousand day campaign for the Presidency. On that date - seemingly eons ago - the Southern Republican Leadership Council conducted a straw poll to gauge the sentiment of the Republican base. Turnout was “tremendous” according to the SRLC, with 1,400 votes being cast and a plurality of almost 37-percent going to Senator Bill Frist (Tenn.). Mitt Romney was the strongest among those who eventually went on to become candidates for the nomination (14-percent), while John McCain struggled to get over the 5-percent threshold (a phenomenon which continued in later conservative straw polls) and was in fact outdone at a rate of two-to-one by a write-in for President George W. Bush (a constitutionally interesting choice).
Given the longevity of the campaign, it is almost surreal to acknowledge that the next President of the United States will be elected just nine days from now. Given the state of the economy and the multifaceted geopolitical issues which the forty-fourth President will inherit, either Barack Obama or John McCain will lead what is likely to be one of the most consequential Administrations in contemporary history.
I do fear that each new Presidency is described as “consequential”. However the next four years is likely to be a period in which the core tenets of liberal democratic economics will be rigorously debated, and either Messrs. Obama or McCain will find themselves in a position to forcefully prescribe a vision for the role of the free market in America’s future. What is more, multilateralism is suddenly chic: The European Union still struggles the define itself, but is presently lead by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his grand vision for European ascendancy. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd continues to pay homage to the pre-eminence of the relationship between Washington, D.C. and the antipodes, but imagines a day when Asia disposes of its bilateral ways and goes all-in with a regional economic and security pact. Should the African continent ever muster the courage to resolve its many governance issues (take Robert Mugabe as the exemplar), it too may eventually free itself from the economic and political shackles fashioned from dependence on foreign aid. Even the Bush Administration has more recently adopted a multilateral approach with its measured success in dealing with North Korea.
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