Of course compulsory voting is a good thing | Van Badham Australia is one of only 10 countries in the world that enforce compulsory voting, and one of only two majority-English-speaking countries to do so, alongside our neighbour Singapore. It's a policy that activates loud bleating of complaint from the neo-libertarian crowd. Their opposition to compulsory voting is usually expressed in the identical vocabulary of waaaaaaaaaaah as their resistance to wearing seatbelts, educating their children with other people's children, not plastering stores' shelves with titty-porn, and being told they really shouldn't smoke in front of a baby. Compulsory voting is also opposed by politicians keen to attack it for partisan advantage. Liberals of Minchin's ilk have realpolitik reasons to campaign against compulsory voting. The voters who tend to vanish are, of course, poor, isolated, minimally educated, sick, low-paid, casualised or vulnerable. In the same vein, this week the US state of North Carolina passed "the mother of all voter suppression bills".
JEP (27,3) p. 103 - Why Hasn't Democracy Slowed Rising Inequality? Article Citation Bonica, Adam, Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal. 2013. "Why Hasn't Democracy Slowed Rising Inequality?" DOI: 10.1257/jep.27.3.103 Abstract During the past two generations, democratic forms have coexisted with massive increases in economic inequality in the United States and many other advanced democracies. Article Full-Text Access Full-text Article (Complimentary) Authors Bonica, Adam (Stanford U) McCarty, Nolan (Princeton U) Poole, Keith T. JEL Classifications D31: Personal Income, Wealth, and Their DistributionsD63: Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and MeasurementD72: Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting BehaviorH23: Taxation and Subsidies: Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies Comments
“One day, son, our votes may count” | Without Leukemia (You can also read this post at the permanent home of my blog, One of the things that distracts me from what I might otherwise be writing is the political situation in Canada. I have always been a politically engaged sort of person. In recent years, however, even I have started to tune out from Federal and, to a lesser extent, Provincial politics. I have resigned myself to the fact that until there is a change to our electoral system that allows citizens’ real choices to be reflected in parliament, my energy is best spent elsewhere. The energy I do manage to muster is directed to supporting and encouraging the efforts of the Green Party of Canada, the party most consistently supportive of reform, and Fair Vote Canada. For the first time, electoral reform is getting some serious attention. Take my riding, for example. Now, of course, the Conservative zombies are entitled to vote for whomever they choose; more power to them.
How Egypt Killed Political Islam A supporter of ousted President Mohammed Morsi prays near the Rabaah al-Adawiya mosque in the Nasr City neighborhood in Cairo, July 12, 2013. (Photo: Narciso Contreras / The New York Times)The rebirth of the Egyptian revolution ushered in the death of the first Muslim Brotherhood government. But some near-sighted analysts limit the events of Egypt to a military coup. Yes, the military is desperately trying to stay relevant — given the enormous initiative of the Egyptian masses — but the generals realize their own limitations in this context better than anybody. This wasn't a mere re-shuffling at the top of society, but a flood from the bottom. In reality the Egyptian people had already destroyed the Morsi regime (for example government buildings had already been occupied or shut down by the people), which is why the generals intervened — the same reason they intervened against Mubarak: better to try to lead than be led by the people.
Inverted totalitarianism Inverted totalitarianism is a term coined by political philosopher Sheldon Wolin in 2003 to describe the emerging form of government of the United States. Wolin analysed the United States as increasingly turning into a managed democracy (a concept which has similarities to illiberal democracy). Wolin uses the term "inverted totalitarianism" to draw attention to the totalitarian aspects of the United States governmental system while emphasizing differences between it and proper totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union. Inverted totalitarianism and managed democracy[edit] Wolin argues that the United States has increasingly adopted totalitarian tendencies as a result of transformations undergone during the military mobilization required to fight the Axis powers in the 1940s, and the subsequent campaign to contain the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and more recently, after 9/11, the war on terror campaign.[2] Inverted totalitarianism reverses things.
George Lakoff: 'Conservatives don't follow the polls, they want to change them … Liberals do everything wrong' "The progressive mindset is screwing up the world. The progressive mindset is guaranteeing no progress on global warming. The progressive mindset is saying, 'Yes, fracking is fine.' George Lakoff, professor of cognitive science at the University of California, Berkeley, has been working on moral frames for 50 years. Lakoff is affable and generous. When he talks about the collapse of the left, he clearly doesn't mean that those parties have disintegrated: they could be in government, as the Democrats are in the US. Lakoff predicted all this in Moral Politics, first published in 1996. Yet equivalent rightwing positions – that efficiency is all, that big government is inefficient and therefore inherently bad, that nothing must come between a business and its pursuit of profit, that poverty is a lifestyle choice of the weak, that social breakdown can be ascribed to single mothers and immigrants – have been subject to no abatement, no modification, no "modernising".
Why do our leaders hate us, we wonder: Hume As the pendulum swings ever further to the right; the politics of spite are the new normal not just in Toronto, but across Canada. In this city, Mayor Rob Ford now feels free to be up front about his homophobia. Though that was something he and brother Doug were always at pains to deny, these days they barely bother. In an apparent retreat from policy and substantive issues — even the gravy train seems to have been dropped — Ford no longer pretends to offer anything more as mayor than what he is, an acknowledged drunk with a small mind and a big sense of entitlement. In Ottawa, Stephen Harper’s Tories have pretty well abandoned the pretense they’re interested in anything more than settlings scores and attacking the usual conservative suspects. The party is blithely indifferent to widespread concerns about Employment Insurance, the Canada Pension Plan and the government’s contempt for the environment. Why do the Tories hate us so much? Christopher Hume can be reached at chume@thestar.ca
Twitter pundit Haque's Starting Point? The Political Thought of Etienne de la Boetie The Political Thought of Étienne de la Boétie By Murray N. Rothbard [Introduction to The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude by Étienne de la Boétie, written 1552-53. Étienne de La Boétie[1] has been best remembered as the great and close friend of the eminent essayist Michel de Montaigne, in one of history’s most notable friendships. Étienne de la Boétie was born in Sarlat, in the Perigord region of southwest France, in 1530, to an aristocratic family. La Boétie’s great contribution to political thought was written while he was a law student at the University of Orleans, where he imbibed the spirit of free inquiry that prevailed there. In the ferment of his law school days at Orleans, Étienne de La Boétie composed his brief but scintillating, profound and deeply radical Discourse of Voluntary Servitude (Discours de la Servitude Volontaire).[4] The Discourse was circulated in manuscript form and never published by La Boétie.