International Thread 4

[Makk]

On 10/18/2020 at 7:28 AM, felice said:

7.7% of the vote being wasted really sucks. None of the affected parties are ones I actually wanted to see in parliament, but the 5% threshold is still profoundly undemocratic.

I can't say I'm anything but glad to see all of those parties out. Having Winston being the most powerful politician in the country was bad enough when he had 6% of the vote, if he ended up in that position with 2.5% it would be dreadful. It is not democratic to have parties with such a low number of votes gaining the influence he as had 3 times since MMP began. 

[felice]

5 hours ago, Makk said:

I can't say I'm anything but glad to see all of those parties out. Having Winston being the most powerful politician in the country was bad enough when he had 6% of the vote, if he ended up in that position with 2.5% it would be dreadful. It is not democratic to have parties with such a low number of votes gaining the influence he as had 3 times since MMP began. 

That's true, but it only happens if Labour and Nation let it happen. Treating them as the respective primary parties of two opposing sides is a relic of FTP that I wish we'd grow out of; policy-wise, they'd work just as well as coalition partners as any other pair of parties.

[felice]

17 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Honestly that sniping from the left outside govt seems motivated by cunning political gamesmanship. If they think environment and climate change are as urgent as they say then there isn't time to play games and hope for a bigger vote share and Labour to lose their absolute majority at the next election.

That's only relevant if a coalition deal would result in Labour adopting meaningful environment policies, and they don't have any real motivation to agree to anything that they wouldn't be doing anyway. I think the Greens would be more effective during this term by building strong public support for green policies and putting pressure on the government that way, rather than working with their hands tied behind their back inside government. The impact on future elections is secondary.

[Makk]

13 minutes ago, felice said:

That's true, but it only happens if Labour and Nation let it happen. Treating them as the respective primary parties of two opposing sides is a relic of FTP that I wish we'd grow out of; policy-wise, they'd work just as well as coalition partners as any other pair of parties.

Both Labour and National have let it happen every single time he has been in that position. Falling over themselves to offer him almost any realistic policy or portfolio he requests. I doubt Labour and National would ever work together (unless one of them becomes a minor party) even though they are probably more similar to each other than the extremes on either side who they will work with. There was also Peter Dunne who could go either way except he didn't get the policy concessions. I'm not a fan of this aspect of MMP.

[The Anti-Targ]

9 hours ago, felice said:

That's only relevant if a coalition deal would result in Labour adopting meaningful environment policies, and they don't have any real motivation to agree to anything that they wouldn't be doing anyway. I think the Greens would be more effective during this term by building strong public support for green policies and putting pressure on the government that way, rather than working with their hands tied behind their back inside government. The impact on future elections is secondary.

Labour has a new consituency, and it's not come from the left, it's come from the centre. The Greens sniping Labour form the left and Labour ignoring them as too extreme may bleed a few more votes from it's left flank, but it will give all those new constituents on its right flank confidence that Labour is not such a risk of being pulled towards the looney lefties. If Labour wants to poll in the mid to high 40s in the next election its best strategy is to ignore the Greens if they play outside the sandbox. Labour can't afford to let the Greens have influence on their policies outside of govt. The other strategy for shoring up the centre is for the Greens to be part of govt and show the nervous centre that they are not as scary as the right makes out.

If the Greens stay out of govt (assuming Labour even invites them along for the ride) and spend the next three years complaining Labour isn't being transformational enough, they mostly damage their chances of being a viable coalition partner in the next term, and if Labour is looking like they have no viable option other than the Greens at the next election, Labour's centre constituency will run back to National and NZ First. I expect Christopher Luxon to be leader going into the next election and he won't outright reject working with NZ First, and all of a sudden National has a coalition with Act and NZF in 2023.

[Larry of the Lawn]

Congratulations Bolivia!

[Varysblackfyre321]

1 hour ago, larrytheimp said:

Congratulations Bolivia!

Fuck the fascists, and their sympathizers.

But let's see in a couple days what the right-wing fanatics who staged a coup will do. 

[felice]

10 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Labour can't afford to let the Greens have influence on their policies outside of govt.

On the other hand, they can't afford to always agree with National when the Greens and National take opposite sides on an issue, either. And having the Greens advocating for more extreme options lets Labour sell moderate leftward moves as the reasonable centrist position.

10 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

The other strategy for shoring up the centre is for the Greens to be part of govt and show the nervous centre that they are not as scary as the right makes out.

That works for Labour, but I don't see what's in it for the Greens? Being part of a government that only passes centrist-friendly legislation will just piss off their base; what's the point of voting for them if they're not making a significant difference?

[The Anti-Targ]

Looks like Labour doesn't want to have any formal arrangement with the Greens but may want to do something informal with them?

[Winterfell is Burning]

Lots of complaints (justified ones) about Amy Barrett, but if you Americans think she's bad, you really don't know Brazil's Supreme Court long tradition of choosing the most corrupt and inept ones; just in the last 30 years alone we had:

Fernando Collor nominating his first cousin, who was 44 and had the fastest ascent in the history of the country (from graduation to a sit in the appeals court of Labor Justice in two years, then appointed to the Superior Labor Court after 8 years- the fact Collor's father was one of the most powerful members in Congress, a man that literally killed another Senator in the Senate floor and got away with it and spent another 20 years in politics, was just a coincidence, surely).

Fernando Henrique Cardoso nominating one of this cabinet ministers (actually, the second one he did), a guy who had no problems running a private college while still having a job roughly equivalent to the solicitor-general in the US (though here it's independent from the Justice department) and continued to do so while in the Supreme Court, and while he's there he publicly attacks other politicians and judges in the press and trials, comments openly about cases he's supposed to judge on, sits on cases involving friends and relatives, and has multiple accusations of corruptions.

Lula nominating an obscure appeals judge (who only got there because of political connections in the first place) because his mother was best friends with the first lady, and the guy repaying by not only voting for his government pretty much 100% of the time, but doing things like allowing Dilma Rousseff's lawyer in a case directly related to her impeachment be allowed to testify at her impeachment trial as an expert witness and then allowing her to retain political rights despite the Constitution expressly forbidding it.

Lula again nominating of his cabinet ministers, who was 41, had flunked twice the entrance exam to be a judge, had two convictions for misuse of public funds (more precisely, being hired illegally) that were conveniently overturned after he was appointed, and has refused to recuse himself in cases involving him or other members of his government (and conveniently voting in their favor nearly all the time). He has since been accused of corruption multiple times too.

Dilma Rousseff choosing a candidate only after he promised his allies that he would vote for them in a pending corruption trial (which is a promise he didn't fulfill and already publicly confessed to have made).

Michel Temer nominated another one of his Cabinet ministers, who didn't bother recusing himself in cases involving directly or indirectly Temer, his minister or his own political allies.

But now Bolsonaro probably outdid all of them- he chose a guy who turned out to have a long history of plagiarism, as well as putting courses that last a few days as "post-graduate" or "master" degrees. And he's not even a conservative, as one would expect. He was chosen quite clearly because he promised to save him and his family for prison, and in the hearing he made quite clear he'll extend the privilege to other corrupt politicians, so naturally the senate (including politicians from the left, who have shown to be quite excited with the appointment) approved him comfortably- yes, in one day. He even has his wife working in a senator's cabinet.

In Brazil, the Supreme Court is a lot more powerful than in the US and most places, judging tens of thousands of cases every year, including cases involving crimes of members of Congress that happened during their term, as well as multiple cases involving criminal convictions from lower courts (conveniently, cases involving politicians and other powerful people tend to make their way there) so essentially presidents pick the members to save them and their allies from jail and in return they don't impeach said SC members when they go against the law. Some of them turned out to be pretty decent, but that's usually a complete accident (like the guy that lied his way in). It's probably both the biggest symptom of why Brazil can't quite go the next stage of development and one of the causes- systemic corruption is so entrenched that any progress made by society- or in lower courts- tends to be broken or mitigated at the highest levels.

 

 

[Paxter]

RE: the Bolivian election, Mesa seems to have performed much worse in this election than last year and promptly conceded defeat.

Añez conceded via Twitter and no doubt contributed to her faction's own defeat given the way that she governed as interim president.

 

[The Anti-Targ]

4 hours ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

Lots of complaints (justified ones) about Amy Barrett, but if you Americans think she's bad, you really don't know Brazil's Supreme Court long tradition of choosing the most corrupt and inept ones; just in the last 30 years alone we had:

 

I guess the awesome thing about corrupt court appointments is that presidents can't be ousted from office or prosecuted for corruption, since appointment to the court is a collective decision, therefore no one is accountable. How individuals corruptly interact with the judge after the appointment is a different matter.

 

[Winterfell is Burning]

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I guess the awesome thing about corrupt court appointments is that presidents can't be ousted from office or prosecuted for corruption, since appointment to the court is a collective decision, therefore no one is accountable. How individuals corruptly interact with the judge after the appointment is a different matter.

 

Exactly. There's of course the risk of your nominee being rejected if most of the Senate is not crooked, but that has never been the case in Brazil- the only year in which nominees were rejected was in 1894, when the then president decided to appoint not one, not two, but five people that didn't have a law degree, and that was too much even for them.

 

 

[The Anti-Targ]

7 minutes ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

Exactly. There's of course the risk of your nominee being rejected if most of the Senate is not crooked, but that has never been the case in Brazil- the only year in which nominees were rejected was in 1894, when the then president decided to appoint not one, not two, but five people that didn't have a law degree, and that was too much even for them.

 

 

One must have standards, after all.

[Corvinus85]

And the best 2020 headline goes to > https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/23/escaped-cloned-female-mutant-crayfish-take-belgian-cemetery/

[Varysblackfyre321]

On 10/22/2020 at 12:42 PM, Paxter said:

RE: the Bolivian election, Mesa seems to have performed much worse in this election than last year and promptly conceded defeat.

Añez conceded via Twitter and no doubt contributed to her faction's own defeat given the way that she governed as interim president.

 

It’s not  surprising.

MAS faced a coup. They weren’t ousted by a popular vote and the only reason one of them wasn’t the interim president was because right wingers kept kidnapping/assaulting/and threatening to kill anyone that was in Morale’s line of succession.

 

[broken one]

Seems our beloved leader has lost touch completely: https://wyborcza.pl/7,173236,26445645,poland-stopped-in-its-tracks-as-protesters-block-the-streets.html

https://wyborcza.pl/7,173236,26444133,poland-signs-a-us-sponsored-anti-abortion-declaration-joining.html

I think this is critical moment for Poland. And good lesson for some young left wingers who have distanced themselves from demonstrations in recent years, claiming that the constitution or division of power is some old-liberal-people's-bullshit as it does not guarantee....list of benefits goes here... . Now everyone may feel on one's own skin what happens when a high tribunal becomes a puppet .

[The Anti-Targ]

https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/covid-19-kiwis-fight-back-after-nz-compared-nazi-germany

Apparently we're fascist now. If this is how fascism feels, I don't know what y'all are afraid of.

It's possible she's a troll it's hard to really know.

Quote

Suzanne Evans, a former journalist who hopped from the Conservative Party to the UK Independence Party before ditching politics, regularly shares posts critical of using lockdowns to tackle Covid-19.

Yesterday Evans said that "New Zealand now has a fascist government under @jacindaardern. Are you going to act, @amnesty?".

[Edit] Cool, cool, cool Fox News is picking up what Evans is throwing down.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/covid-19-coronavirus-fox-news-host-laura-ingraham-attacks-new-zealand-covid-response/J645WLL7EOVZM2N2V7UGCFJZZ4/

I reckon we'll have some police no go zones in certain neighbourhoods pretty soon, where there are a high proportion of people with a natural tan and beards.

[Ferocious Veldt Roarer]

10 hours ago, broken one said:

Seems our beloved leader has lost touch completely: https://wyborcza.pl/7,173236,26445645,poland-stopped-in-its-tracks-as-protesters-block-the-streets.html

https://wyborcza.pl/7,173236,26444133,poland-signs-a-us-sponsored-anti-abortion-declaration-joining.html

I think this is critical moment for Poland. And good lesson for some young left wingers who have distanced themselves from demonstrations in recent years, claiming that the constitution or division of power is some old-liberal-people's-bullshit as it does not guarantee....list of benefits goes here... . Now everyone may feel on one's own skin what happens when a high tribunal becomes a puppet .

Indeed. For those not exceedingly interested in the internal politics of Poland (and shame of you), a brief synopsis of the last few years: the Chairman of the ruling party has been doing a spot-on impression of Aerys II Targaryen (and I doubt he's even read the books!) for five years now, and it looks like this time he went too far for real. People have raised their banners.

Now I wonder if someone's going to play Ser Jaime.

[Paxter]

On 10/26/2020 at 5:49 PM, Varysblackfyre321 said:

It’s not  surprising.

MAS faced a coup. They weren’t ousted by a popular vote and the only reason one of them wasn’t the interim president was because right wingers kept kidnapping/assaulting/and threatening to kill anyone that was in Morale’s line of succession.

Why are you assuming that I'm surprised? I am not surprised by the result at all. It was consistent with the polling.