How I Would Vote

This blog...it still exists ?  Any road...

So, yeah, I don't have a vote in US elections. The whys & wherefores, the (in)justice in denying the vast majority of the global population a say in the governance of a country that acts as defacto ruler of the entire planet, never mind those within the US itself denied a vote, aside...

Who would I vote for in the US general election for President ?

I previously (aeons ago now) discussed having to choose between that theocratic loon Ted Cruz & fascist clown Donald Trump. And, despite some (I think, deserved) criticism of Bernie Sanders, anyone who's read what I've written here, or on Twitter, probably wouldn't be surprised to know that I was leaning towards Bernie Sanders. But...he didn't win.*

Gun to my head, Donald versus Hillary, was always going to be Hillary, Hillary the inevitable one, Hillary 'Her Time Has Come' Clinton, Hillary 'Guess it's time we elected a woman President, so why not her?' Clinton...Vomit !

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I'd like to see more third-party options & support in the US generally (bring on AV voting & abolition of the electoral college), but given a) The US's ridiculously archaic first-past-the-post system, and b) what an utter incompetent maniac Trump is/would be, I'd go along with most Bernie-leaning pundits (Sam Seders of the world, say), and agree that any responsible liberal-leaning voter in a so-called 'swing state' has to vote for Hillary, painful & unpleasant as it may/would be. 'Has to' as in, it's what I would do, what I would advise, what I would expect from anyone with any concern for the continuation of the republic whatsoever; You want to just burn the whole system down to the ground, and gamble on starting over, well I get that too, but...I kinda think yer nuts...

I've only recently decided what I would do, if I were voting in a non-swing state, which is a far more common scenario in a country so politically polarised, and with such corrupt partisan dominance of statehouses (which control electoral boundaries) as the United States.  And...

I'd write in Bernie Sanders.

Why ?

Firstly, obviously, he came far closer to addressing the economic, and to a lesser degree, environmental concerns, that are way at the top of my list for what should be the priorities of this election.

No, I don't dismiss ISIS or Islamic Extremism generally, Yes, I have concerns about the rise & regional hegemony of the PRC, Yes, I even have some concerns about Russia under Putin, though I will maintain that that threat is far overstated, and has far more to do with the Russophobic attitude of Western politicians who grew up as children of the Cold War than anything else. But, after decades of Reaganomics, of Thatcherite hyper-capitalistic insanity, I consider wealth- & income-inequality far greater concerns**, never mind the fact that in our pursuit of infinite economic expansion, on a planet of very finite resources, we are destroying the ability of the planet to sustain human life !

Secondly, Yes it would be a protest-vote. Unfollow me or block me on Twitter if you must Hill-bots, but the way the DNC planned for an inevitable coronation of HRC far in advance of the primaries, and their obvious bias & manipulations against Bernie Sanders disgust me.

I obviously would consider (in any election) a third-party vote, but in this specific case, I feel that writing in Bernie's name would be the only option (for me), because it is the only unambiguous way to protest, the only way that cannot possibly be misinterpreted.

A vote for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson, could just mean that you like the Libertarians, agree with the Greens, take seriously either of those (IMO) completely unserious candidates. A vote for Donald Trump could mean that you are protesting against a corrupt establishment, or equally, that you are one of the fringier alt-right contingent who identity with white nationalism, favouring swastika-themed avatars and Neo-Nazi numerical code (88, asf.) in social media, alongside jokes about gassing Jews... And, staying home, could just mean that you couldn't get time off work, or, and I'm sure this will be mentioned over and over again, that you're a lazy millennial, who just couldn't be arsed...

Writing in Bernie's name on the other hand says:

• This is a vote you otherwise could have had
• I reject utterly the DNC's handling of the primaries
• I reject the establishment candidate you foisted upon the party (in a year of anti-establishment frustration/desperation) and upon the country (despite her huge national unpopularity)
• I reject Bernie's endorsement of same (Yes, a middle finger, a direct FU to Bernie himself)
• I want to send a message that, if you somehow lose to Donald Trump...(to Don-ald f'ing TRUMP...) it is 100% on you. You being the DNC. You being Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. You being that lifelong Goldwater girl, Hillary Rodham Clinton herself.

I won't get to make even that meagre protest, even that pathetic act of resistance against the elites that are strangling our middle classes, killing our poor, destroying our entire planet in the name of putting infinite growth and the profit of billionaires ahead of all other concerns, all other actual humans...All I can do is, for the record, speak my mind here, on Twitter, elsewhere on social media. It's almost certainly all for nowt, but I somehow feel an obligation to exercise my voice in place of that vote where it's otherwise denied.



* Voter-rolls purged, polling-places closed, debates scheduled on holidays, against major sporting-events, efforts to limit independents registering as Democrats, proclaiming Hillary's victory whilst the single largest state had yet to vote.....I'm not going to go here into all the ways one could argue against whether Hillary actually...or fairly won...

** Plutocracy and concentration of wealth, also being inherent corrupting factors in a democracy, inherent threats to the sustainability or integrity of Democracy itself.

Last Week Tonight Takes on America's War on Voting

To celebrate the return of Last Week Tonight, and primary season in America, here's John doing what he does best.  Especially like that trick Oliver has of pulling it all back together at the end, then bam !

Jen Sorensen On Our Economic Era

Toles on National Geographic under Murdoch

Ted Rall on his Favourite* Subject

* For obvious reasons, may not actually be his favourite subject.

Map o' the Day

Zooming in on the capital...

David Cameron, whose family surely wouldn't have any of their millions hidden away in tax-havens, will be addressing this any day now.

And yes, the actual map is interactive and searchable (sadly only by address), if you want to see properties down to the level of individual flats & parking-spaces, and which shell-companies based in which countries or territories, which as the Eye points out may or may not be tax-havens, own them.

Better a screenshot of this address perhaps, than some random flat owned improbably by a company in Liberia.

Though the Channel Islands, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Hong Kong, Seychelles, and the like sure do seem to own a remarkable amount of property in London, for what are surely, entirely normal legitimate reasons.

In Case It Wasn't Obvious

How to get rich by running for president

The year 2008 was great for Mike Huckabee—but not as a politician. The former Arkansas governor bailed out of the presidential race in March of that year after losing steam in the early primary elections. But simply running for president elevated Huckabee to the status of celebrity, while helping him build a devoted following among southern and Midwestern evangelicals. Huckabee has since converted the renown that comes with running for national office into a business enterprise that has made him wealthy, with a palatial beachfront home, access to private jets and other perks of the 1%.

Huckabee is running for president again, of course, which makes him one of perhaps 12 or 15 candidates likely to enjoy free media attention and additional publicity funded by donors—even though polls show they have virtually no chance of winning. The presence of so many obscure candidates in the 2016 race—Jim Gilmore, Lincoln Chafee, James Webb, George Pataki, and so on—prompts an obvious question: Why are they running? Huckabee’s experience suggests one answer: Because running for president can be a highly lucrative form of work.

No serious candidate* will admit to running for president purely as a self-promotional stunt. Some may be trying to gain exposure for a more serious run for office in the future. Others may be using a run to promote their companies or personal brands, like Steve Forbes in 1996 and 2000 and Donald Trump now. And many candidates no doubt feel they have a serious message to convey to voters, while perhaps also angling for a Cabinet position, ambassadorship, or other plum job if their party’s nominee ends up winning the White House. “You can emerge from the campaign as a power broker, as somebody influential with the media and with lobbyists,” says Julian Zelizer of Princeton University’s Center for the Study of Democratic Politics. “I’m sure that’s on the mind of some of these candidates.”

Still, savvy candidates can nonetheless parlay the fame that comes from televised debates, a decent showing in a couple of early primaries, and wall-to-wall media coverage into a juicy 7- or 8-figure income. Huckabee serves as a good case study of the business of running for president because his financial disclosures represent an instructive before-and-after story. Huckabee was Arkansas governor for 12 years, from 1996 to 2007, living for most of that time on a modest salary of around $70,000. He announced his first run for president almost immediately after leaving the governor’s office, in January 2007, when he also started giving paid speeches and accepting other business offers fitting an ex-governor.

At the time, Huckabee was comfortable but far from rich. On the 2007 disclosure form he filed (required for all presidential candidates), Huckabee listed business income of about $325,000, including his governor’s salary, book royalties and a one-time consulting fee of $40,000. He also earned speaking fees of nearly $140,000 during the 15 months prior to filing the 2007 disclosure form, most of it in the first quarter of 2007. Overall, his annual income back then was close to  $400,000.

That was pretty good, but life was about to get much better for "Huck," as he's known. After dropping out of the 2008 race, he scored a Fox News TV show and a national radio program. Huckabee had written several books before running for president, but the books he’s written since then have sold much better, including his 2015 bestseller "God, Guns, Grits & Gravy."Huckabee now earns two to three times as much for giving a speech -- and he gives a lot more of them. He also runs a group of companies called Blue Diamond that handle his travel, publishing ventures and other lines of business, with his wife Janet on the payroll of at least one of them....

I just love how Yahoo! states that Huckabee was 'far from rich' whilst earning $400,000 a year.  Which is about 1400% more than the US' individual median.  But evidently...still...not enough.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with cashing in on fame, as countless other Americans have done in just about every industry. Huckabee, for his part, is an entrepreneurial character with a folksy personality that makes him popular in broad patches of middle America. Santorum has gravitated away from a traditional revolving-door career and found a way to make a living that's more in line with the conservative social values he espouses as a candidate. Both are capitalizing on opportunity in ways many other Americans would if they could.

Besides, Huckabee and Santorum are serfs compared with some other prominent candidates. Democrat Hillary Clinton typically earns at least $225,000 per paid speech, and she pulled in nearly $12 million in speaking fees in the 15 months ended March 31 of this year. Her husband Bill, the former president, earns even more....

The best thing about the business of running for president is that other people typically pay for it. A few superrich candidates fund their own campaigns—as Donald Trump is doing, and Steve Forbes and Ross Perot did before him—but most candidates spend only what they’re able to raise from donors. Huckabee raised about $16 million when he ran in 2008. All of it came from donors, meaning none of his campaign spending was self-financed. But Huckabee’s haul was a tiny fraction of what party nominees John McCain and Barack Obama raised, which limited his staying power in the primary races.

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Huckabee, who now resides in Florida, has reportedly developed a taste for the good life, prompting controversy over whether he’s duping donors into funding what is basically a private venture that principally benefits himself and his family. But Zelizer of Princeton says most donors know what they’re paying for when they help fund a low-probability candidate. “Some of these donors may be gullible, but I think they’re making other bets,” says Zelizer. “Maybe they’re able to walk into the room with a power broker.” There are worse ways to spend money, if you've got a lot to spend.

There's the problem, right there.  We're talking about someone making a high six-figure income as if he were working poor, and the same person making millions as a relative 'serf'.  And the billionaires above that level, well of course it's all monopoly-money, play-money if you will.  And inevitably, someone with that much spare cash, will play with it.  Why the fuck not ?  You could never spend it it in your lifetime, you've already got trusts set up for your children & grandchildren; What else are you going to do with the excess cash ?  Burn it in a giant bonfire for kicks & giggles ?

The best economic arguments for more progressive taxation are fiscal ones, but above and beyond that, closer and closer concentration of wealth, is inherently toxic to democracy.**  The US has at this point passed the boundary from 'nominal democracy' to outright plutocracy.  And the tone of this article suggests that the media at any rate, are still in total denial about that fact, so removed from ordinary economic realities as they would seem to be.  Eight decades ago, even the more radical right-wing American politicians saw the dangers of continuing inequality, the threat of outright revolution if they couldn't contain the rot.  Today, we're leaving the former gilded age behind, and entering uncharted territory.  Whatever happens next, like as not, won't be pretty.


* Huckabee is a serious candidate ?

** Especially when idiots in the Supreme Court decide, à la Citizens United, that somehow money and free speech are one and the same, and that there should be no upper limits or restrictions on expenditure to buy elections.

No Taxpayer-funded Campaigning Under M. Harper, Non

In accordance with our commitment to a fixed election-date, the next general election will be held as prescribed by law.  As it is my intention to begin campaign-related activities, and it's also the case for the other party-leaders, it's important that these campaigns be funded by the parties themselves, rather than taxpayers.

My fucking jaw dropped when I heard this on the CBC.  The balls on this man...

And how about deceptive robocalling-campaigns ?  Is it okay for them to be funded by the taxpayer, Mister 'Message from the Government of Canada' ?


Meanwhile, that economic downturn I'm currently overseeing ?: More reason you be very very afraid of the opposition and keep me in power even longer.  And also, ISIS: VERY, VERY AFRAID !  Liberals & NDP weak !  Justin inexperienced !  Me protect you from Scary Vladimir Putin ! BE AFRAID !

Oh, and in case I don't sound enough like an American Republican: 'Best country in the world !'  But only so long as you keep us in power.  BE AFRAID !!!

Speaking of Corruption

This Country Just Made It Legal for Cops to Keep 70% of All the Traffic Fines They Collect

Officials do not foresee a rash of spurious fines being handed out as a consequence

Drivers in Cambodia have a lot to contend with: cavernous potholes, weaving motorcycles kicking up clouds of choking dust and noodle hawkers trundling down the “fast” lane. Now motorists may find their pockets as ravaged as their nerves, after officials announced a fivefold bump in traffic fines and gave permission for issuing officers to keep 70% of all cash collected.

The new rules, coming into force in January, are an attempt to curb corruption, reports the Phnom Penh Post. Currently, traffic cops keep half of much smaller penalties, meaning that many supplement their meager salaries by soliciting bribes.

The current $1.25 official penalty for not wearing a car seat belt, for example, will rise to $6.25, with the officer allowed to keep $4.38. Of the remaining 30%, some 25% will go to the station where the officer is based, with the final 5% sent to the Ministry of Finance.

I guess I understand the motivation behind this: Cops are taking bribes from drivers, who may or may not have committed an offence, which may or may not be of a significant nature, so they don't get ticketed.  There's a culture of corruption there, with both the officers, and members of the public.  And the government wants to discourage that.

Currently, he said, traffic cops are already given 50 per cent of the much smaller penalties they collect, meaning the change effectively represents a seven-fold increase in the revenue they can legitimately earn from dishing out fines.

Wait, so the government, which apparently knows its cops are underpaid, already have a system in place that encourages spurious stops...and they wonder why drivers are offering, and no doubt some officers, soliciting bribes ?

And rather than top up the base-pay of the police**, to make them less tempted by bribes, they now want to give cops, any way you cut it, an even greater motivation to stop drivers, in which they get a much bigger payout than before, whether the driver attempts to bribe them or not, though they now stand a chance at getting exponentially bigger bribes from those who can afford it ?

What could possibly go wrong ?


h/t Boing Boing

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Back in the West, of course, we may have somewhat less corruption, but there's still far too much motivation for spurious traffic-stops (So, Officer Doe, I see you seem to be having trouble meeting our monthly departmental quota lately ?  Maybe we should have a chat in my office...), and the consequences can be far higher in the case of the gun-loving US -- sadly as we see over and over in the headlines, even fatal.

What we could really do with is some way to disincentivise over-policing of minor violations generally (but without necessarily encouraging cops to not enforce given laws across the board) combined with greater accountability for the cops.  Which yes, includes technologies like body-cameras, which we can fairly easily afford, even if Cambodia could not.

And what we could also do with is to remove entirely the financial incentives for traffic-stops & tickets.***  The motivation for stopping a driver, or a citizen generally, should have precisely zero to do with departmental budgets, zero to do with quotas, zero to do with anxieties about career-advancement, and everything to do with the nature of the offence, the severity or lack thereof of any threat to public wellbeing, and the benefits of a stop versus the risks to everyone, police-officer & civilian alike, involved.


* Apologies for the likely sloppy flow of this post.  It flipped about quite a bit, then bifurcated altogether.

** Yes, I'm aware that Cambodia's not the richest country in the world.  But there have to be better, less abuse-prone if not abuse-rife ways of funding the police than this.

*** And if a municipality in the US is unable to independently afford its own police-force, then maybe it shouldn't exist as a separate municipality at all.  Thinking of  the case of St. Louis/Ferguson et al. here, with the phenomenon of  so-called 'white flight', though there are no doubt similar examples across the US.

Maybe They Should Just Tow the Whole Island to the Caribbean

What with the United Kingdom turning into a tax-haven, foreigners buying up swathes of London as investment-property, and Cameron & Co. seemingly determined to turn Britain into a banana republic.

The Government is reviewing the Bribery Act after business leaders claimed it was making it difficult for British firms to export goods.

The Business Secretary, Sajid Javid, is inviting companies to comment on whether the tough anti-corruption measures are “a problem”.

Critics fear it is a way of weakening the law at a time when the Government should be clamping down on existing loopholes, and supporters of the Act say they are surprised by the move.

They warn that any attempt to water down the Act will seriously damage the UK’s credibility on corruption. They also claim it is undermining David Cameron’s tough personal anti-bribery message, which he reinforced during his visit to South-east Asia to drum up business for Britain.

Simply shameless.  Too difficult to do business without being able to more easily bribe people ?  In Britain ?  Oh, and what was that about a visit to South-east Asia ?

An investigation into alleged corruption worth hundreds of millions of pounds at Malaysia’s national investment company threatened to overshadow David Cameron’s arrival in Kuala Lumpur on 30 July.

Malaysia’s Prime Minister, Najib Razak, has been forced to deny allegations that he has personally benefited to the tune of $700m (£447.5m) from the investment fund that investigators have traced to what they allege are his own bank accounts.

...  

Mr Cameron, whose stop in Malaysia is part of a tour of South-east Asia, during which he hopes to open new markets for British business, said recently that “the wind of economic change is blowing east. “We still do more trade with Belgium than we do with Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam combined,” he said.

The Sarawak Report, an investigative website run by the sister-in-law of Gordon Brown, Clare Rewcastle Brown, which has reported on the allegations, called on Mr Cameron to cancel his visit.

“The British Prime Minister has made the issue of rooting out global corruption one of his key platforms as a world leader,” the website said.

Doesn't sound like it to me.  Well, maybe that's why Cameron was so eager to talk up the merits of doing business with countries with problems of corruption prior to the trip.  So glad British voters voted in the grown-ups in the last election.

David Cameron: We Need More Invisible Unaccountable Wealth

Britain should not shy away from doing business with countries where corruption is a problem, according to David Cameron.

Writing in The Daily Mail ahead of a trade mission to South East Asia, the Prime Minister said the “wind of economic change is blowing east – and not just to China and India”.

He argued that Britain had concentrated too much on trading with Europe, rather than countries in Asia.

He wrote that people were wrong to argue that “we should avoid doing business with countries with barriers to trade including corruption”.

“Many in South East Asia have led the battle against corruption, which costs the global economy billions of pounds a year,” Mr Cameron said.

“Britain is joining them in that fight – I’ve put the issue at the top of the global agenda.

“Given a level playing field, British businesses can out-compete anyone in the world.” *

Sigh. This is an obvious candidate for 'posted without comment', but I will say this:

1. Cameron is interested in certain groups/individuals profiting here.
2. Those groups/individuals are mostly not in Asia.
3. Those groups/individuals are inherently corrupt.
4. Those groups/individuals are Cameron's friends or friends of friends.
5. Those groups/individuals are not you or anyone you are ever likely to know.
6. That offshored 'wealth' is never coming back.

* 'Level playing field' !  Classic !

Just What Are You Thinking, Jack Warner ?

Ex-FIFA Official Slams John Oliver as "Comedian Fool"

John Oliver is not making any friends with FIFA officials.

The HBO host recently bought television airtime in Trinidad to lampoon former FIFA vice president Jack Warner's televised message to the nation. In his video, Oliver encouraged Warner to reveal all the secrets that he had previously threatened to disclose. 

Now, Warner has fired back, posting a video of his own in which he refers to Oliver as a "comedian fool."

Good grief.  Jack Warner surely should be preparing himself for his looming jail-sentence, and whether flipping on a certain other official might shorten said sentence.  Instead of which, he responds to provocation by John Oliver, who is rapidly making a career of taking down people like Jack Warner.

Of course, this is the same man who recently, and very publicly, mistook an article by 'The Onion' as actual news, and was rightly skewered by Oliver for the very same.  Does a man with his kind of money really have no-one around him to provide advice ?  You do not mess with John Oliver and Last Week Tonight.  This cannot end well for you, fool.

And what the hell is up with that music ?


Update:

And did Oliver respond ?  Oh, c'mon, you know he did.

Jack, concentrate on trying to get a cushy cell due to your age.  Taking on the (not-yet) American 'Comedian Fool' is not going to work out for you.

Oh and yeah, they answered the question of the music as well.

That US Presidential Candidate Tracker Thing

No, I haven't been updating it.  I hesitated as new candidates entered the race, as to whether I should add Carly Fiorina & Bernie Sanders despite both not having a cat in hell's chance of winning their respective nominations, and since then the field has just continued to balloon ridiculously.  To have a usable web-graphic, I think something like an image of a cartoony train-carriage, looping around the page would be necessary, and I'm not sure I'm up to it.  At this point, the whole thing is a farce, as is the continuing use of the word 'democracy' to describe the elections.

I mean, yes, many countries have mock-candidates.  John Oliver did a bit on the joke-candidacies as a result of mandatory voting in Brasil, and the Monster Raving Loony Party is a bona fide staple of British elections, but...these people are going to make millions and millions of dollars out of pretending to run for president.  While in the background, the country's multi-billionaires decide amongst themselves the actual winner...

I mean, shit, I can just about identify 2/3 of these assholes, but I'm guessing the average American would struggle to get above low single digits.

That fascist in the far-lower right-hand corner is maybe worth paying attention, as is, solely due to his name, his opposite in the far-upper left-hand corner.  And third from right in the top row, well, that motherfucker's a terrifying prospect given his record and the American public's gullibility.  As for Mister second from the far-left top corner, well...

Dramas involving bridges or not...are you really going to elect...this guy ?*

Let's just chug a quart or two of bleach in honour of Auntie Hill becoming the US' next semi-benevolent dictator...


* Although honestly, Chris Christie is far and away actually one of the better candidates from the GOP.

Getting There...

Six Fifa officials including vice president Jeffrey Webb arrested

Six Fifa officials, including vice president Jeffrey Webb, have been arrested on suspicions of corruption in dawn raids at a Zurich hotel ahead of Friday's presidential election.

The members of the world governing body were held by Swiss police at the US Department of Justice's request.

They are suspected of having received bribes totalling millions of US dollars, the Swiss authorities said.

Yes, yes, yes...

Fifa president Sepp Blatter, who is seeking a fifth term in charge of the organisation when he stands for re-election on Friday, is not one of the arrested.

Ah, crap.

Afzal Amin & the EDL: Strange Bedfellows

Protests against 'mega-mosques' and Pamela Geller's buddies, the English Defence League.  And racial incitement worthy of James O'Keefe himself.  British and American politics really aren't all that different after all are they ?

And such a rapid fall from grace. Almost feel sorry for the guy.