Category: Politics

— This op-ed in OpinionJournal fleshes-out some of the details of the center-right forces achieving dominance in Europe:

In any event, we will not have to worry about Mr. Le Pen for more than the two weeks until the runoff. When Mr. Chirac is re-elected, he will have to lead his country in a very new Europe, but not the center-left Europe so long imagined by most of the intellectuals and fashionable politicians. Through no particular merit of his own, Mr. Chirac will be a major player in a center-right Europe that will be more suspicious of the mounting power of the European bureaucracy in Brussels, less inclined to dissolve national identities in a new continental union, and keen on retaining more initiative in national legislatures.

One of the predictable responses to globalization is a resurgence of tribalism. In the third world, this takes the form of religious zealotry, and in the first world, nationalism. It’s an interesting deal.

— I found a couple of things striking about the French election, being basically ignorant of amphibian politics:



* Chirac, the candidate with the most votes, only polled 19% of the vote. While all the media are saying Chirac is the heavy favorite to take the run-off, the difference between 19 and 51 isn’t much less than the difference between 17 and 51, so Jean-Marie Le Pen might just take it all; a little mold on the wheat, and anything can happen.




* Left parties are taking a beating all over Europe. Although the elites and the media say that Europe doesn’t approve of our war on terrorists, the people themselves are saying something very different, and refusing to return their Chomskyites to power.



* The French have a run-off system. What a change it would make in America if we held a run-off every time there’s no clear winner in the presidential election. Minor parties like the reforms and the Greens could run vigorous campaigns without having to deal with the vote-siphoning question, and the level of debate would probably be a lot higher. I don’t assume this means that Al Gore would be in the White House now (scary thought, that) because Bush had Libertarians and Reforms draining his votes down, but a reform like that would be most worthwhile if we could ditch the electoral college as well. But election reform in America today means checking IDs at the polls, an issue that’s still a hot potato due to illegally registered Democrats who swing elections in California. But I can dream.

OK, so that’s three things, shoot me.

— Matt Welch’s review of Nader’s book in Reason is first rate:

September 11 showed that when it comes to foreign policy and critical thinking, the Naderite left is not yet ready for prime time. Which is a shame, because the consumer advocate and his followers have many useful things to say about corporate welfare, third-party access, political hypocrisy, civil liberties, drug legalization, and a host of other issues the Democrats and Republicans largely ignore. And for all its excesses, the leftist foreign policy critique about supporting dictators and addressing “root causes” has found new resonance in the past months. Nader is clearly licking his chops at the Enron collapse, and all signs point to an even more vigorous run for the presidency in 2004.

Now Matt, get that proposal for your Nader book (“Green Fudge and Spam”) to your agent, and do it right now. No more blogging until it’s in the mail.

— Simon’s harsh words on immigration may haunt campaign / Capturing Latino votes could prove difficult: “Republican Bill Simon has promised that as governor he would “have my legal experts look at” resubmitting Proposition 187 — the anti-illegal immigration measure — to the federal courts.”

It seems that the conservative choice made some potentially inflammatory remarks about Prop. 187 on a right wing radio talk show during the primary, which the Davis camp will exploit to huge advantage. It’s not clear from the Comical’s news report what Simon actually said, however.

— Previously we mentioned the attempt by the teachers’ union to control curriculum by making it part of their collective bargaining agreement; here’s another bill aimed at increasing teacher power and harming educational quality, from the Sacramento Bee, about the only place in this state that actually covers the legislature:

California’s largest teachers union is pushing to dismantle the state’s system for testing students, ranking schools and enforcing accountability — linchpins in the multibillion-dollar academic reforms of recent years.

Legislation sponsored by the California Teachers Association would create a new state testing program, controlled by teachers, and would kill plans to require high school students to pass an exit examination before receiving a diploma.
AB 2347 marks a frontal assault on the policies of Gov. Gray Davis, who recently announced his opposition to the CTA’s attempt to expand collective bargaining to include academic issues, such as textbook selection.

This bill provides further evidence of the union’s toxic agenda.

— Jim Brulte discusses the Republican death wish:

Brulte gave other reasons for the California GOP’s problems. Large numbers of new citizens are urban, working-class minorities, who tend to lean toward the Democratic Party. He also said the state Republican Party has been too loosely structured. Brulte was part of an effort to change the state GOP hierarchy and make its staff more professional. The move created friction between conservatives and moderates.

“It’s clear to me we had a ‘brand’ problem,” said Brulte, who was here meeting with congressional lawmakers and Bush administration officials. “The perception of Republicans nationwide wasn’t very good. And like other states, we suffered from that.”

While he’s mainly talking about the national party, the hardcore inside the state have damaged the party as well. Shutting down Free Republic would help.

— Is the Geek PAC going to be a reality? Here’s the story from NewsForge:

The American Open Technology Consortium, the geek lobbying organization that began getting media attention last week, has raised nearly $30,000 in pledges without really asking for them yet, and organizers are thinking about splitting the group in two [to] comply with U.S. political action committee rules.

I have my doubts, although it would be nice for more geeks to get involved in actual politics instead of just stewing in their old-hat ’60s pseudo-politics all the time. The first problem with this PAC will be raising money, since open socialism is primarily the tool of individuals and not organizations (except for IBM, the prime mover behind Linux.) And secondly they’ll have to make concrete and practical decisions on concrete and actual issues, something that no other Geek PAC (EFF, for example) has ever been able to do well.

— Here’s a note from Dianna Thompson of the ACFC about Rod Wright’s bill:

Seventy-five Paternity Fraud victims and their families flooded the
chambers of the California State Assembly’s Judiciary Committee on
Tuesday, April 16, 2002 to plead for passage of AB 2240, the “California
Paternity Justice Act of 2002.”

The victims came from hundreds of miles around to voice their outrage over
the state of California’s complicity in a fraud which victimizes hundreds
of thousands of Americans each year. In particularly moving testimony, the
young daughter of a now-impoverished paternity fraud victim asked the
committee to pass the bill which would allow her and her family to get
their lives back.

Despite some lengthy questioning from a couple of the Assembly members,
the bill emerged from the hearing alive and well. The committee decided it
needed more time to study the bill, and postponed the hearing for two weeks.

The hostility of chair Ellen Corbett is the chief obstacle to the passage of this bill, and she needs for some constituents to pay her a visit.

— Don Perata, State Senator from Alameda, is one of California’s leading demagogues on gun control. The local paper, the Contra Costa Times, well and truly slammed his sorry ass today:

WITH ALL THE significant and unsolved problems facing the California Legislature, one wonders why some members waste their time on senseless measures that solve nothing while needlessly irritating a segment of the population.

The latest bit of nonsense comes from Sen. Don Perata, D-Oakland, the person who helped concoct the disastrous Coliseum deal with the Raiders. His most recent bit of mischief is a proposal to put a measure on the November ballot that seeks to impose a nickel-a-bullet tax on every round of ammunition sold in California.

My friend Rod Wright, Calfornia’s leading champion of the Second Amendment, likes to point out that people living in gang neighborhoods don’t get the same kind of police protection that liberals in gated communities get, so guns are essential for their security. In light of that fact, Perata’s latest tax really is an attack on the working poor, just like the cigarette tax. And no, this isn’t a myth – I once walked precincts for an opponent of Sheila Kuehl’s in the western hills of LA, where the anti-gun liberals proudly sport signs saying their houses are protected by an armed response company.

— Teddy Kennedy spoke at an Equal Pay Day rally in Washington, DC yesterday. According to Bill Maher, Kennedy said it was wrong for women to be trapped by glass windshields as they’re trying to go up in the world. I agree with that sentiment. Mrs. Bennett says that Kennedy’s exoneration for the killing of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick is the reason people like Gary Condit think they can get off for doing what he did.