Department of Bias
The Department of Justice just invalidated a move by the residents of Kinston, North Carolina, to have non-partisan local elections. Rationale?
The Justice Department’s ruling, which affects races for City Council and mayor, went so far as to say partisan elections are needed so that black voters can elect their “candidates of choice” – identified by the department as those who are Democrats and almost exclusively black.
The department ruled that white voters in Kinston will vote for blacks only if they are Democrats and that therefore the city cannot get rid of party affiliations for local elections because that would violate black voters’ right to elect the candidates they want.
This, coming from the same Department of Justice officials that wouldn’t know a civil rights violation if it picked up a club and barred them access to a polling place.
Filed under: Government and Politics; Law and Civil Liberties
Wednesday Links
- Convicted pedophile in the United Kingdom given taxpayer-funded Viagra through the National Health Service.
- Cato senior fellow Tom Palmer filing a lawsuit to legally carry firearms in Washington D.C.
- How it all came crashing down: The causes of the financial crisis.
- A few things you should know to better understand the elections in Afghanistan.
- Podcast: How some on the right-wing are doing everything they can to defend torture. Let’s just call them “enhanced justification techniques.”
Majority of Americans Say Afghan War Not Worth Fighting
According to a recent Washington Post-ABC Poll, the majority of Americans say the war in Afghanistan is not worth fighting.
Usually, I don’t take kindly to polling data; they are ephemeral snapshots of public opinion that fluctuate with the prevailing political winds. But I will say (as I’ve said before) that Central Asia holds little intrinsic strategic value to the United States. In that respect, I can understand why Americans are growing skeptical of continuing what’s become an “aimless absurdity.”
America’s flagging support for the war comes as millions of Afghans head to the polls to elect their next president. Hamid Karzai, the incumbent, is the front-runner, but if he is unable to secure more than 50% of the vote there will be a run-off scheduled for early October. Given the pervasive levels of corruption within his own government, if Karzai ends up winning, America and the international community might be perceived as propping up an illegitimate government; however, if Karzai loses, it might further alienate the country’s largest minority group, the Pashtuns, among whom Karzai, and the Taliban, pull most of their support.
This morning, New York Times reporter Carlotta Gall writes from Kabul, “initial reports from witnesses suggested that the turnout was uneven, with higher participation in the relatively peaceful north than in the troubled south.”
Before the elections, Taliban militants, mainly concentrated in the southern and eastern provinces but now spreading to the north, threatened to cut off fingers marked with purple ink used to indicate when someone casts a vote. Ms. Gall writes: “In the southern city of Kandahar, witnesses said, insurgents hanged two people because their fingers were marked with indelible ink used to denote that they had voted.” Wow! Maybe the elections will be a watershed moment in Afghanistan’s history: the democracy experiment comes as a death sentence.
On a lighter note, there are already allegations of voter fraud. An inspection of the rolls revealed the name of an unlikely voter, “Britney Jamilia Spears,” one of a number of phantom voters.
Many people would agree that the atmosphere surrounding Afghanistan’s presidential elections is analogous to the country as a whole: dysfunctional. Candidates are forging alliances with warlords; tribal elders are being offered jobs, territory, and forgiveness of past sins to secure their allegiance; and Britney Spears is a registered Afghan voter. It’s about time that America narrow its objectives and start bringing the military mission to a close.
Campaign Finance Reform, European Style
Europe just held elections for the European parliament. The British National Party — an essentially fascist, all-white grouping — won two seats. And access to potentially a lot of money.
It isn’t literally public campaign financing, but once elected, parties in the European parliament often can get their hands on a lot of public funding. Reports the Independent:
Both men will be entitled to about £310,000 in annual funding, including an £80,443 salary, a staff budget of up to £182,000 and £40,000 for office expenses. But the British National Party (BNP) could also unlock a share of the £22.8m allowance that is given to parliamentary groups if it can find at least 25 fellow MEPs from seven member states willing to form a bloc within the European Parliament.
Being part of a group is crucial in terms of power as it entitles members to EU funding, a party office, administrative staff and, crucially, the right to vote in committees which are the nerve centre of the Parliament.
A parliamentary group is also entitled to up to £5m of extra funding over the next five-year term.
A number of far-right groups have secured seats in the European Parliament, many of whom hold outwardly racist or neo-fascist policies. Prior to the European elections, high-ranking members of the BNP had attended rallies held by neo-Nazis in both Italy and Hungary.
It’s bad enough for Europeans to have to tolerate such folks in the European Parliament. But subsidizing their activities seems ridiculous. So it is with the public funding of elections and government restrictions on private fundraising and advertising in elections in the U.S. The thought of jackboots at the trough, as some in Britain put it, is as good an argument as I can imagine against the public financing of elections here.
Elections in India
Despite being hit by the global recession, the ruling Congress Party-led coalition swept to an unexpected victory in India’s general election, mainly because of rural prosperity in a country where 70 percent of the population is rural. Good monsoons and high agricultural prices—linked partly to the global commodity boom—helped agriculture grow at a record annual rate of almost 4.5 percent for five years. The combination of high prices and high output yielded a happy peasantry. High food prices did not outrage rural workers because of a new rural employment scheme guaranteeing up to100 days work, and this helped despite corruption in implementation. Many states raised minimum wages too, raising worker pay faster than prices, and this was sustainable because of high crop prices. The government had partly or fully forgiven bank loans to small farmers, and this too won its votes.
However, this policy will encourage loan defaults in future: far better would have been cash payments to the needy, while maintaining loan discipline. The world commodity boom made it possible for the government to hike its support prices for crops as well as minimum wages, but such happy conditions will not last. India needs agricultural reform that focuses on raising productivity rather than loan waivers and hikes in controlled prices. And it must carry on its good work in improving rural infrastructure.
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