Monday, April 23, 2007

Pick Your Politics

Carrying on with my strategy of mixing up the content to keep y'all on your toes and promote my other site-tabs...

Here are a few links to some political type commentary I found noteworthy. There's a little something for everyone :

First off, here's an ode to Americans from an unlikely source. Keep in mind that this reporter is usually left-of-centre and he works for a network, the CBC, that is notoriously ultra-lefty. Not that I'm a big America-lover or anything, but this piece really does say some important things that deserve to be said. His closing question is worth particular attention:

As China and India rise, and Russia wields its extraordinary resources, one gets the feeling we may be watching the decline of the American empire. Many will cheer that. I find myself wondering whether the next dominant power will feel anything like the same desire to do the right thing.

Further on this topic, here's a story about all the outrageous pollution going on in China. So, tell me, why is it that we never hear David Suzuki, Greenpeace, etc. raise alarm bells about China? Why does the Left all over the world work overtime to come up with conspiracy theories to attribute all the world's woes to the US and the West in general - countries that have environmental regulations, that have civil rights and freedoms, that have systems, albeit half-assed, to keep governments accountable - yet never ever ever does the Left say a word about countries like China that are clearly, unabashedly, indisputably bad?

Finally, in honour of Earth Day, I give you the immortal wisdom of Dilbert. Damned if this isn't the smartest yet funniest environmental commentary I've ever read.

posted by Mentok @ 11:02 a.m.,

20 Comments:

At 2:52 p.m., Anonymous said...: oh my god, mentok--we already ARE using poor people for fuel. the soldiers who volunteer to go to iraq--they are "voluntarily" giving their lives so we can drive our cars and have our plastic bags and all the other crap we use and discard and completely take for granted. wow.

i just read bill maher's piece on how the bees are dying out in incredibly large numbers and how if they're gone, we're goners, too, coz nothing will be able to polinate our food. yikes. now i'm really depressed!
At 3:09 p.m., Mentok said...: Thanks for reading the Dilbert piece so quickly, Marcy. I think it is an absolute must-read.

I tend to take all eco-holocaust predictions with a grain of salt because there have been so many of them over the past century.

Nonetheless, as much as I'm sick of the word "sustainable" I still think it's a concept that's long overdue in our civilization.

We've created a society in which nothing has value. You can buy a DVD player now for $20, so there's no point in trying to repair it. We're in the midst of spring cleaning and there must be three broken-down DVD players sitting out by the trash. I should take a picture, since I think that image speaks volumes about our society.

The only thing to which our society attributes value is branding (how much are those Hilfiger t-shirts?), which of course is only the illusion of value.
At 5:24 p.m., Bathroom Hippo said...: Meh...
At 5:29 p.m., Mentok said...: Well, that was disappointing, Hippo. I thought for sure you'd get off on that whole "America is great" bit.
At 7:31 p.m., Bathroom Hippo said...: There's nothing ultra-negative about America in this post.

As for Bee's dying out and Bill "The Communist" Maher: Never liked him. He was wrong on global warming and lied about Bush.
At 9:19 a.m., Anonymous said...: i hear what you're saying about the eco-holocaust predictions. could be next week they decide the complete opposite, so you do have to take things with a grain of salt.

but yes, sustainable should be the operative word. unfortunately, long-term thinking doesn't seem to factor in to planning these days. all the politicians care about is getting re-elected, so they're about the least-likely folks to trust with these kinds of life-and-death decisions. there really needs to be some kind of objective oversight devoid of political agendas, if that's even possible.

hippo--i'm not sure i'd agree that bill maher is a communist--he's much more into personal freedom than the good of the collective. but how do you mean he lied about bush?
At 9:39 a.m., Mentok said...: Given that I used to (and still a little bit) work in politics, I always find it a little curious when people attack politicians for "just wanting to get re-elected". I mean, what are they supposed to be doing? That's like saying "oh, those carpenters, all they think about is cutting wood and hammering nails."

The short-sighted venality of democratic politicians is a mirror of the voters who put them there. I can't count the number of times fresh, new idealistic politicians have tried to engage in long-term planning, only to go down in flames to the electorate.

We're all to blame in this. Imagine if someone said to you: "I've got this great investment, but it's going to take a big chunk of your income and it won't pay off for 100 years. You won't see any benefit from it, but it will make life much better for your grandchildren."

If you're like me, your answer would be: "Um, yeah, that sounds great and all but, hey, how does this sound as a plan B: how about I keep the money and I invest a bit of it for my children and grandchildren? I think that's a better plan."

... and that's exactly why our civilization is what it is.
At 11:52 a.m., Anonymous said...: sad but true, mentok. we are all complicit. that said, i find a certain portion of elected officials to be self-serving in the worst way possible.

granted, they do need to be relected, and our system of government--with no built-in term limits--contributes to that cycle. but some of them, and i'm thinking of folks like tom delay, the former speaker of the house, become way more concerned with their own power and filling their own pockets than the good of the country. and sure, he got re-elected right up until he got indicted, but that's because he helped gerry-mander the state's congressional districts so that his party would have "sustainable" majorities and hence the opposition would have no chance. why the good people of texas kept re-electing him isn't really too hard to figure out--they liked having a very high-ranking representative, regardless of how shady (or criminal) his behaviors turned out to be.

then you have the whole fundraising ball of wax--it goes hand in hand with keeping your politics palatable.

it really is sad. we get what we deserve, i guess. god i love to talk politics. : )
At 12:19 p.m., Bathroom Hippo said...: Since you asked...

Bill Maher is the man who was sorry the assassination attempt on Dick Cheney failed. He is the man who accused Bush of being a traitor.

Remember when Maher said America was "a stupid country with stupid people" or when he said "Saddam was actually a bulwark against terrorism" ?

The guy compared pro-lifers to murderers. He said Sam Alito wanted to bomb abortion clinics and kill people with pipe bombs.

My personal favorite from Maher was when he said church going old ladies are basically enablers to religious violence.

Bill Maher is just a nut job.
At 12:38 p.m., Mentok said...: marcy - Really you love talking politics? Well, I'd always wanted the Opinions tab to be a forum for such debate, so perhaps this post will help re-energize that.

I knew your head would explode, Hippo. All valid points you make. Let's face it, Maher is first and foremost a comedian and shouldn't be treated seriously by either side.

Me, I just like to argue with everyone, so I try to both respect and disrespect all opinions equally.

In my experience, talk of gerry-mandering is just part of Hatfield vs. McCoy feuding. Everybody figures the last guy gerry-mandered, so they try to fix things to make things "fair", except of course the last guy doesn't think it's fair, makes accusations of gerry-mandering and round and round we go.

Contrary to popular opinion in the US, fundraising isn't the problem. You Americans have some of the toughest fundraising laws in the Western world.

The problem is on the other side of the balance sheet: spending limits. US election spending is outrageous and the few laws that exist to limit it are so lax that they're a joke.

For example, a Congressman in North Dakota (which would be equivalent to a Canadian federal MP) typically spends $1.5 million getting elected/re-elected. There's no real limit to what he can spend.

Candidates for Member of Parliament in Canada can't spend more than $70,000 getting elected. Pretty big difference.

Of course, ND only has one Congressional District, so you'd have to times that by 10 to make it comparable to a Canadian constituency. It still means a rinky-dink North Dakota nobody spent twice as much getting elected to Congress as his peers in other countries would have been allowed to spend.

[p.s. no offence intended to North Dakotans.]
At 1:47 p.m., Anonymous said...: interesting what you say about the spending not the fundraising being the problem. you're right, of course. only in america, spending money to get your message out is equivalent to free speech, ergo, if you limit how much you can spend, you are somehow limiting speech. i kid you not, that's the argument they make.

i tend to think any politics beyond the local level is so contaminated that i can't imagine why anyone would want to do it. even our state representatives are corrupt. in my own state of pennsylvania, the lawmakers voted themselves an ungodly payraise of some 14%--in the middle of the night, literally--and it was only after pronounced public outcry that they rescinded it.

i really do love politics. in both 2004 and 2006 i worked in my local democratic campaign headquarters. it was a blast. i'm getting excited for 2008 already. : )

and yes, bill maher is a genuine nut job, but he is pretty funny nonetheless. and he makes sense from time to time--kind of like the rest of us, i guess!
At 2:23 p.m., Mentok said...: yes, Canadian courts have been more conservative in their interpretation of free speech, so things like spending limits have had an easier ride here.

Likewise, soft money isn't an issue here at all, because the electoral office is given powers to regulate the advertising of lobby groups, interest groups, etc. during a campaign period.

(that's another US - Canada difference: here, there is a defined campaign period during which candidates have special rights and duties and the electoral office has special regulatory powers.)

I have to concede that US politics, even at the state level, is pretty corrupt by world standards. I've worked on US campaigns and there are things you guys do down there that are considered normal that would be considered criminally scandalous on this side of the border. And, of course, both the Dems and the Republicans do them equally.

Pay raises ... meh ... most places underpay politicians. Public outcry about pay raises happens whether it is justified or not. Again referencing North Dakota (that's where I did my stints of US campaigning), state legislators there are paid something like $5,000 a year. No, I did not miss a zero. I've personally talked to NoDak cabbies and convenience store clerks, asked them what they think of their local politicians and the universal reaction: "They're overpaid."

There as everywhere, there was a big outcry when the politicians gave themselves a raise. So clearly it's an issue on which there is no objectivity and on which politicians can never win the argument.
At 3:02 p.m., Anonymous said...: my state legislators are paid pretty well. upwards of $70,000, plus their pay raise was more like between 16% and 34%.

of course, 70K in the scheme of things is not really all that much money, but it's not chump change!

i found an interesting website that details state leg. wages in terms of how much they work. i wish i knew how to use html so i could put it here, but if you take a quick look at the contrast podcast comments section, you'll see why i hesitate to do it!

someday maybe the courts will stand up and set some limits on spending, because we know the politicians probably won't. and of course you know they started the 2008 campaign the day after the election last year.

waaaay back in the day i used to listen to the canadian news show "as it happens." is it still on the air? i loved to hear their perspective on events in the u.s. and around the world. it was a great show.
At 3:19 p.m., Mentok said...: Granted $70,000 isn't chump change, but it's in line with what school principals make. Is a person who is supposed to help make decisions about taxes and laws worth less than a school principal? Of course, educators are underpaid too, so that throws the whole valuation system for politicians further out of whack.

Don't underestimate politicians' ability to undertake electoral reform when properly motivated. All it takes is one really big scandal and they'll start competing with each other to be the most reform-minded. That's what happened here in the last election.

Yes, As It Happens is still on the air. They even podcast now. I'm always amazed how many Americans love CBC radio. When I campaigned down in NoDak, my Republican friends went on and on about how they listened to CBC all the time because they couldn't stand either commercial or public radio in the US. I didn't have the heart to tell them that, in Canada, no self-respecting right-winger would ever admit to listening to the CBC (even though they all do ;-)
At 6:27 p.m., Anonymous said...: that was a great discussion, mentok. i'm glad to be able to talk about stuff like that. i feel like it's gotten the old wheels greased up a bit. : )

and thanks for the cbc podcast link. that's terrific.

i loved your intro on the podcast, too, btw. poor fil, he sounded a bit jet-lagged still . . . ;-)
At 4:20 p.m., FiL said...: Uuuuhhhhrrgghhhh....
At 4:32 p.m., Mentok said...: What FiL is trying to say is that current proposals before Congress aimed at limiting the use of soft money in campaigns are doomed to fail since similarly worded pieces of legislation have already been struck down by the courts as infringing on freedom of speech.

Either that or he's saying "listen to this week's Contrast Podcast". I can't quite tell with that accent of his ;-)
At 12:33 a.m., Elizabeth said...: Speaking as a [gulp] historian, I'll have to disagree that the 'American Empire' is waning...simply because there is no such thing as the American Empire.

You can argue that the country's activities in the Middle East smack of expansionism, but I think the whole China vs. America debate is flavored quite a bit by individuals wanting to apply old models of global diplomacy to the current climate.

But yes, it is distressing to think America's influence on its worthier causes (the environment, human rights) might be negated by demographically larger nations that have other priorities.
At 10:00 a.m., FiL said...: Ah, the American Empire argument... I far prefer the term American Hegemony - much more accurate in my opinion.
At 10:27 a.m., Mentok said...: It is certainly true to say that America largely pioneered the softer, more economic oriented super-power style of international dominance. Even the Soviets acted much more like a traditional empire. Still and all, the fact that America has military bases and intelligence collecting facilities in other people's countries suggests that superpowerhood is not completely divorced from old-style imperialism.

The next international showdown, US v China, will be interesting and a bit ironic, in that China is even more focused purely on profits, less interested in direct control, less interested in political meddling than the Americans. This will make them more attractive as a patron to dictorships and oligarchies who'd rather not have the yanks come in and always try to democracy up the place.

... All of which just further underlines Macdonald's thesis.

Mentok the Mind-taker

Site menu:

Pick Your Politics

20 Comments:

About Me

Active Links

Powered By