Politics and Press

The interaction of the press and politics; public diplomacy, and daily absurdities.

The Strange Disconnect of the Tea Party

By

Much of the attraction of the Tea Party to Americans has been its avowed commitment to downsizing the government and limiting government’s influence on our lives and the Republican Party has been pleased to play to this mythic tribute to the so-called stubborn independence of Americans.

Recently the woman who calls herself the leader of the Massachusetts Tea Party was on TV demanding the elimination of federal support for PBS because – and I could not make this up – Sesame Street was such a left leaning – possibly Communist show. Her immediate example was that first lady Michelle Obama had been on the show promoting more broccoli rather than cookies for the health of child followers of Cookie Monster. So here was an incidence in her mind of  an intrusive government forcing children to consider broccoli over cookies. (The irony that the Tea Party woman was quite fat and could have done with more broccoli and fewer cookies did not enter her limited mindscape.)

But while they claim to want freedom from government intrusion in their lives, Tea Partiers and their Republican soul mates are nonetheless committed to a strong and intrusive government role in limiting the rights of others, including gay Americans’ rights to serve in the military and to marry; women pregnant from rape or incest’s rights to choose abortion; artists’ rights to express non-conformist views of Christianity; Muslims’ rights to build cultural centers in their chosen locations; and American women’s right to ready access  to birth control information and resources.

The Tea Party is in reality a loose confederation of people intent on telling the rest of us what we can and cannot do in our personal lives and committed to a government bent on forcing their narrow-minded social agenda on the rest of us.

German elections – the nuclear power opponents win a surprising victory

By

The nuclear disaster in Japan will no doubt have a negative ripple effect on the popularity of the nuclear power industry throughout the world – at least one would hope so as the consequences of a nuclear meltdown begin to hit home – and the first plebiscites on the topic in regional elections in southwest Germany have delivered completely unexpected results. In Baden-Württemberg, where the Conservative CDU party has ruled for almost 60 years, the Green Party, which for 30 years has attacked nuclear power programmes from a gradually-growing minority position, will apparently deliver the next premier, as the Greens received, by a very slight margin over the social Democrats, the most votes with 24%. And in neighbouring Rheinland-Pfalz the Greens will have gained a crucial position to rule in coalition with the Social Democrats. There is no doubt that the impulse for this amazing result is German uneasiness with the proposed expansion of nuclear power plants in view of the catastrophe in technologically-proficient Japan.

There is also no doubt about who the big losers are in this. Angela Merkel’s ruling CDU/CSU government has been punished for waffling on the topic of nuclear energy, and its weak coalition party, the FDP, lost half its votes in the elections and fell below the 5% level, which gets you into parliament, in one of them. For the FDP, which traditionally supplies the Foreign Minister when in coalition, it could be a fatal blow. For the CDU/CSU it is a rude wake-up call as analysts have determined that many thousands of voters who normally vote conservative switched to the Greens as a protest on federal nuclear power policy. It seems that a stance that was once the home territory of an offbeat protest party finds a great deal of support among conservatively-minded Germans. After all, the potential spread of radiation in Japan pays no attention to political interests. It looks like it may make everybody’s land uninhabitable for a long time in a wide area around the crippled reactors.

State of Maine Union Blue

By

Yesterday’s NY Times reports that Maine governor Paul LePage has determined that a large mural in the state’s Labor Dept. Headquarters has too many depictions of workers – some of whom are – gasp – union workers.  A spokesperson for LePage claimed that the mural reminded him of “communist North Korea where they use these murals to brainwash the masses,” and LePage has ordered the mural removed. Furthermore, the governor referenced anonymous complaints from business leaders that may or may not actually have been made to justify his action on the grounds that the Labor Dept. building needed to represent both employers and employees.

This is of course one more attempt to punish the middle class for the sins of the country’s investment banks, health insurers and outsourcing corporations. LePage is one more example – along with Governor Walker of Wisconsin  – of a small group of new right-wing, tea party-supported politicians intent on using unions as a whipping boy to cover up and shift responsibility for the country’s dire economic situation from the people whose greed is leading America towards becoming a banana republic oligarchy.

Maine’s reputation as a fair-minded, moderate state is at risk and its citizens are looking at a nasty, fruitless three and a half years of bombastic posturing by the man they elected on what must have been a very foggy day.

Mike Huckabee: Ignoramus of the Day

By

“I would love to know more. What I know is troubling enough. And one thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, [is] very different than the average American…….if you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.”

Republican presidential candidate, Fox News analyst and former governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee  on Steve Malzberg’s right-wing radio talk show.

There are three problems with Huckabee’s comments: 1) Obama was not raised in Kenya; 2) he made them on a national radio talk show; and 3) he has had no comment about them since having it brought to his attention that he was 100% wrong**.

I will add a fourth problem, that he is a likely candidate for President and we really do not need an ignoramus in that position. It would be more than troubling to think of him mistaking Kenya for – oh maybe Hawaii or Indonesia –the two places where Obama actually was raised. What is symptomatic in his comments and most reprehensible is the subtle racism. It is no secret to anyone who follows American politics that the fact that Obama is a black man drives some people nuts. Kind of the way Hillary Clinton’s gender drove them nuts. The fact that people are getting used to hearing this kind of nonsense is not a good sign.

**Huckabee’s spokesman Hogan Gidley did comment::“Governor Huckabee simply misspoke when he alluded to President Obama growing up in ‘Kenya.’ The Governor meant to say the President grew up in Indonesia.” Which does not explain how or why he then segued to discussing how Obama must have thought of the Mau Maus.

Unions, Politics and the Press

By

Oligarchy: a form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique; government by the few.

The moves by Republican governors to eliminate collective bargaining rights by public employee unions represent an attack on what had become a basic human right and goes far beyond any attempt to address states’ deficits. Issues related to costs of pensions and health insurance have been successfully addressed by some cities and states via negotiations; the new strategy of simply eliminating unions’ bargaining rights is a callous affront to the public employees who teach our  children, patrol our streets, fight our fires, treat the mentally ill, etc. The fact that corporate America is running away from providing health insurance and pensions does not make it right.

America’s financial elites managed to take the country to  the  edge of the abyss and then feathered their nests with taxpayer bailouts to save the country from the results of their near criminal behavior.  Add to that the idiocy of choosing an unnecessary war that will cost the country upwards of $3 trillion (according to Nobel prize economist Joseph Stiglitz) and we have the need to find a scapegoat. Could it be that it is the thieves and cheats of corporate America? the “too big to fail” investment banks? the bailed out auto executives? the hedge fund manipulators? the mortgage crooks? No. It is determined in Wisconsin and Indiana and New Jersey and throughout the country that it is the teachers, the school custodians, the librarians, the police and  firefighters, the mental health workers, the hospital scrubbers, the prison guards, the snow plowers, the bus drivers, etc.   They are the unionized public workers with living wages, health care benefits and pensions. They are the ones to punish for having gained those benefits in honest, open negotiations.  Welcome to the new America – the country run increasingly by big money, Ayn Rand greed and – alas – a major dose of ignorance fostered by a weak or complicit press, a  simple-minded tea party and a fully aware, manipulative Republican party leadership.

And just where is the press in all of this? In an apparent intent to present divergent views, it too frequently ends up a tool for information manipulators, promulgating, for instance, the big lie of the Wisconsin governor that unions are responsible for the deficit and that they have some mysterious power to bring the state to its knees. The fact that the Wisconsin unions have offered to make the concessions asked for by the governor has gotten lost in the lack of honest coverage of the governor’s plan to cripple unions as a reward to his corporate sponsors.

Whether workers are entitled to paid vacations, health insurance, retirement pay, paid sick leave etc. are issues of concern to all workers – unionized or not – but having the right to negotiate for those benefits is a human right that needs to be defended.

Where you want to live – – the Commonwealth by Jove

By

The British magazine The Economist has come out with its annual ranking of most livable cities, and the results, controversial though they may be in the particulars, do indicate in their overall findings a remapping of the desired urban world which would have seemed frivolous only a decade ago. For the fifth straight year, Vancouver is ranked first, which is no surprise. But that 3 of the first 5 cities are in Canada – Toronto (4) and Calgary (5) join Vancouver in this group – and that 7 of the first 10 – Melbourne (2) , Sydney (7), Perth (8), Adelaide (9) and Auckland (10)- are from the British Commonwealth must give the Brits a rare sense of pride in the old colonial empire and the feeling that it did bear some fruit. After all, London itself is only ranked in the mid 50s, just after New York, and only 2 European cities – Vienna (3) and Helsinki (6) make the top ten. In its analysis of this surprising shifting pattern of livability, the Economist find a common denominator: the most livable cities are mid-sized and in wealthy countries with a low population density – Canada and Australia -and are splendidly situated, usually on the coast.

American House: How Low Can It Go?

By

When Americans went to the polls last November did the majority really vote for a decline in their quality of life? It would seem so as we see what their elected representatives in the House are choosing to eliminate or reduce. The initial attack in the House of Representatives targets virtually every nominally progressive program subject to discretionary funding. It attacks support for health programs, environmental programs (many also related to the health of Americans), arts and humanities programs, nutrition programs for pregnant women and infants, food supply regulation, student loan programs, clean water programs, public radio and tv and etc. etc. etc. The list goes on and will most likely enter many peoples’ consciousness only when they get a dose of salmonella, or have to drop out of college, or develop asthma, or have to rely on Fox and CNN for their TV news and analysis.

This opening shot is a sample of what seems likely to come. The scorched earth Republicans and Tea Partiers are intent on finishing the job – started during the Reagan years – of increasing income inequality in America, and reducing opportunities for those at the low end of the income ladder to climb out of lives characterized by inadequate educational opportunities for their children, over-priced and inadequate healthcare, and a public life devoid of art and culture.

The driving abstraction for these efforts is the “deficit”, and the Democrats (including President Obama) have joined with much of the national media and press in allowing the Republicans to determine that as the field of battle.  While many Republicans are not actually serious about reducing the deficit (witness their unwillingness to eliminate the Bush tax reduction for the richest 5% of Americans) they are dead serious about eliminating or seriously damaging virtually any program intended to improve the quality of life for all Americans.  The current budget reductions are a spit in the ocean of the deficit but even so those reductions will retard the economic recovery thus reducing tax revenue further and thus adding to the deficit. So be it for rational thought from this crew.

Lost in all the Republicans’ blather is the reality that the deficit grew enormously under Bush due to the bizarre choice of war in Iraq, the Bush tax reductions, and the costly Bush prescription drug program, which turned out to be a gift to the drug companies. So we face a future of declining quality of life while the people who created much of the deficit AND the people who destroyed a healthy economy through near criminal mortgage and hedge fund frauds continue to work their black magic.

Belgium breaks the world record

By

Little Belgium, host of the parliament of big Europe, has set a new world record that may be hard to equal in the foreseeable future. For 250 days it has continued to muddle through without a functioning government. For many decades the mystery has been why the country exists at all since, as Der Spiegel so delicately put it, only three things have held it together: the national football team, beer and the king. And now the football team is third-class, the beer is a globalized brew and the king, like all European kings and/or queens, is quaintly irrelevant. So why should the French-speaking Walloons and the Dutch-speaking Flems be forced into a union that neither of them seems to want?

Nobody seems to know the answer to that, and the proof of dysfunctionality is that democracy has led to a parliament full of parties so antagonistic to each other, largely on linguistic grounds, that no coalition government can be formed or even imagined these days. Bilingual countries like Canada should be taking notes furiously in an attempt to avoid a similar fate. But wait, something extraordinary seems to be happening in Belgium. Without a government, things are running much more smoothly that it did with a government. It turns out that civil servants carry out the necessary work very well without bellowing politicians to bother them.

Back to the Past – Mutiny on the sailing ship

By

German Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg is suddenly in big trouble because of a military incident that recalls the nineteenth rather than the twenty-first century. In early November, 2010, the German military sailing ship Gorch Foch, one of the largest and most beautiful sailing ships in operation, that is now used to train German naval cadets in the skills of nineteenth century seamen, anchored in a Brazilian port. Cadets were ordered up into the rigging to reef the sails and one of them, a 25 year old female officer candidate who had arrived on board two days before, fell to her death. When the captain ordered other cadets to climb up, some refused, an act of mutiny by naval military code, and the entire crew was flown back to germany and replaced by professionals for the return trip. It is a scene out of a work like Melville’s Billy Budd.

Reports that followed did not mention the breakdown of order on the ship. In January the true story emerged through unofficial channels, and only then did the Defence Minister act by removing the captain from command. While he denies having acted only after coming under media pressure, Guttenberg, probably the most promising younger politician to be considered as a Chancellor candidate as Merkel’s tenure seems to be running down, may well be the first post-modern head-of-state candidate to be removed from his potential command because of dangerous winds blowing out of the supposedly long-forgotten past. One thing all agree on: climbing up into the rigging – six people have fallen to their deaths from the rigging since the Gorch Fock first set sail – is an unnecessary task for a modern naval officer.

Ten for the New Year – a quiz

By

A quiz for 2011;
Which of the following stories were covered in the January 14 issue of Globe and Mail and which were gleaned from Tom Lehrer’s blog?

1. China has made clear its willingness to save key European nations from looming bankruptcy.
2. Brussels, the bureaucratic hub of the European Union, will soon be a hub without a country.
3. The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council has banned Dire Straits’ 25 year old hit song Money for Nothing from Canadian air waves because it includes the word “faggot” even though this is spoken in the text by an obvious bigot, and generally understood to be satire
4. A former vice-presentential candidate in the United States said that commentators who registered their disapproval of the shooting of a Jewish congresswoman were engaged in a “blood libel” campaign.
5. Supporters of the vice-presidential candidate defended her on the grounds that she literally didn’t know what she was talking about.
6. 61 year-old Sandra Finley, head of the Albert Green Party, faces jail time after having been found guilty of refusing to fill out a long-form Canadian census. The ruling Conservative Party also opposes this census.
7. 69 year old retiree Barb Copp has had her driver’s licence revoked after her doctor reported to the Ontario government that she had had elevated alcohol levels in her liver after she attending a wake. Ms. Copp had no previous flaws on her driving record and had taken a taxi to and from the wake.
8. Mr. Wally Balloo had his driver’s licence revoked when Vancouver.
police reported that he had used improper diction in a radio report criticizing police.
9. Poland announced that it had removed visa restrictions for all citizens of Belarus except the government leaders.
10. Quebec securité confiscated the pots and pans in 55-year old Mary Magoon’s kitchen after she had been denounced for using cookery made in Newfoundland.