Jim Dwyer of the NY Times reports that Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani’s ideas about transparency in government are quite similar to his crimebuster practices.
Giuliani’s ideas on transparent government
Reply
Category Archives: Politics – General
Say what, John Edwards?
Following on the previous post, have you heard about demagogue John Edwards‘ latest proposal?
A two-year ban on advertising for prescription drugs.
Paul Jacob suggests a common sense ban of another sort.
The key issue in the 2008 Presidential race
As usual, the Onion identifies the issue with precision:
Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters
Remembering 1968
In 1968, I was a 15-year old concentrating on playing various high school sports in Iowa City, a Midwestern college town. However, even in that somewhat sheltered environment, it was impossible not to realize that 1968 was an unusually tumultuous year. This Daniel Henninger/Opinion Journal op-ed reminds us of just what a wild ride 1968 was:
In 1968, Nicolas Sarkozy was 13 years old. John McCain was 32 and Hillary Clinton was 21. Barack Obama was 7. It is not beyond imagining that the precocious Messrs. Sarkozy and Obama were alert to events in 1968, but for the first wave of baby boomers just touching adulthood that year, it was the beginning of a strange journey.
Nearly any one of the events that went off in 1968 would have been enough to dominate another year. To list what actually happened that year even today boggles the mind, and spirit.
The year began with sales of the Beatles album, “Magical Mystery Tour.” In retrospect, it was a premonition. In late January, North Korea captured the USS Pueblo and crew members. A week later, the North Vietnamese army launched the Tet offensive.
On Feb. 27, Walter Cronkite announced on CBS News that the U.S. had to negotiate a settlement to the Vietnam War. On March 12, Sen. Gene McCarthy defeated incumbent President Lyndon Johnson in the New Hampshire primary, aided by antiwar students that Sen. McCarthy called his “children’s crusade.” Two weeks later, LBJ announced on TV that he would not run for re-election. One week later, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. It was only April 4.
There were race riots everywhere. On April 24, students occupied five buildings at Columbia University, protesting the war. In May bloody student riots erupted in France, likely witnessed by the impressionable Mr. Sarkozy.
On June 3, Valerie Solanas shot Andy Warhol in a New York City loft. Two days later, Sirhan Sirhan assassinated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In August, the Soviet Union occupied Czechoslovakia. Seven days later, antiwar demonstrators at the Democratic convention fought pitched battles with the Chicago police.
On Nov. 4, having absorbed all this, the people of the United States voted. They gave 43.4% of their vote to Richard Nixon and 42.7% to Hubert Humphrey. Alabama Gov. George Wallace got 13.5%. Four years later, George Wallace was shot while running for president. 1968 lasted a long time.
Whatever civic culture the U.S. had until the 1960s, it was now transformed. After ’68, we had a new kind of political and social culture, pounding like a jackhammer into the older bedrock. The country cracked. Look at those 1968 popular vote numbers; half the country went left and half went right.
Read the entire piece.
Edwards returns to demagoguery
After an effective television ad, the John Edwards campaign returns to Edwards’ usual form of demagoguery against business interests in the ad below:
By the way, one of Edwards’ proposed ways in which to force Congress to take action on his call of universal health care coverage won’t fly.
Bad judgment alert
As if corruption in the Texas Youth Commission, the bursting state prison system, reform of the judicial selection system, or reorganization of TSU isn’t enough to keep Texas legislators occupied. Now, a local state legislator is teaming up with a colleague to confront a truly important issue — that Texans are not going to be able to watch certain NFL football games on certain cable television networks:
Cable companies and the NFL Network are competing for Texas lawmakers’ support in their national fight over whether cable customers should be charged extra for the football channel.
While some cable companies have agreed to carry the network’s eight regular-season games, Time Warner Cable, the largest in Texas, has not come to terms with the network.
Pressure has been mounting on all parties as the Dallas Cowboys’ Nov. 29 matchup with the Green Bay Packers approaches. The game will only be shown on the NFL Network.
“I’ve had a lot more people contact me about NFL football the last two months instead of child protective services, windstorm insurance or worker’s compensation, which are frankly more important issues,” said Rep. Corbin Van Arsdale, R-Tomball. “I don’t control what constituents call me about.” [. . .]
Van Arsdale and Sen. Kim Brimer, R-Fort Worth, said last week that they would consider introducing consumer-oriented legislation in the 2009 session if the two sides don’t reach an agreement.
“Cable companies need to focus on giving their customers what they want, which is football,” Brimer said. [. . .]
Five Democratic members of the Texas House from Bexar County have sent letters to the Federal Communication Commission asking it to intercede in the argument.
Of course, all of these games are readily available on the Dish Network, so no consumer is prevented from buying that product if they want to see these NFL Network games bad enough. However, that doesn’t stop the seemingly limitless amount of bad judgment in legislative circles over defining a legitimate legislative issue.
Edwards scores
I’ve criticized John Edwards over the years for his demagogic tendencies. However, I must admit that the video below by the Edwards campaign is darn effective. Don’t you know that Team Hillary will be working on those debating skills in the coming weeks?
Speaking with authority
I swear, you can’t make this stuff up.
On Tuesday morning, Ohio congressman and chronic Democratic Party presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich questioned President Bush’s mental health:
“I seriously believe we have to start asking questions about his mental health,” Kucinich, an Ohio congressman, said in an interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer’s editorial board on Tuesday. “There’s something wrong. He does not seem to understand his words have real impact.”
On Tuesday evening during a debate between Democratic Party presidential candidates, Kucinich confirmed that he had once seen a UFO and that it was O.K. because former President Jimmy Carter once admitted that he had seen a UFO, too.
As the blog post notes, at least Carter didn’t admit it on national television.
Mayor White’s L.A. moment
Houston Mayor Bill White is capriciously manipulating local governmental power to sidetrack development of a condominium project (nicknamed the “Ashby high-rise”) in a neighborhood where he raises a substantial political campaign funds. The incident has received some national attention through this Wall Street Journal ($) article, which somehow suggests that Houston’s phenomenal growth over the past 50 years has been in spite of — rather than because of — the city’s lack of zoning and liberal land use policies.
At any rate, it’s really a sad reflection of the state of political discourse in Houston that the Mayor has been given a pass on undermining a project for the benefit of his campaign war chest. The property was valued and sold to the present owners on the assumption that a large-scale redevelopment would be built there and the owners followed all the city’s rules and regulations in obtaining the necessary permits to proceed with construction. When a few wealthy neighbors of the development pulled Mayor White’s chain, he blithely ordered one of the city’s approvals to be revised to delay the development and now is attempting to ramrod two ordinances through city council to stop the project altogether.
In short, the developers invested a substantial amount of money in buying the property and followed the laws in preparing the large-scale redevelopment, dozens of which dot Houston’s landscape. Mayor White and his friends don’t like the development, so White is changing the laws. And this is political leadership?
At any rate, all of this reminded me of this excellent Virginia Postrel/Atlantic.com article that compares the radically different land use policies of Los Angeles, on one hand, and Dallas (which are quite similar to Houston’s), on the other. Suffice it to say that the likes of Mayor White favor the Los Angeles approach over that of Dallas and Houston. Think about that the next time you vote for mayor.
Update: The website for the group opposing the project is here. A copy of the proposed “emergency” ordinance is here.
Update 2: A recent West U Examiner article on the project is here.
The genesis of bad regulations
I’m not an advocate of using cell phones indiscrimately while driving. In fact, I try to avoid it as much as possible. But every few months or so, some media outlet passes along another superficial story (see also here) on the latest study or tragic story that supposedly suggests that use of cell phones while driving leads to accidents and, thus, should be outlawed.