In politics, you never want to find yourself beholden to a minority whose core interests often clash with the interests of voters. Yet that is exactly where Democrats at all levels of government could find themselves after Nov. 2.
This dilemma could be particularly acute for three of the Democratic gubernatorial candidates who appear likeliest to emerge victorious: Jerry Brown in California, Andrew Cuomo in New York and Martin O'Malley in Maryland. Each would take office in a state burdened by huge public-sector health benefits and pension liabilities. Yet tackling that problem would inevitably put each man at odds with his state's unions -- the very people who helped him get elected.
#1
After all, who can prefer food stamps to paychecks?
There's an entire subclass birthed by the redistributionists who see it as an entitlement, like a magic money tree. They keep voting for more. Why commit oneself to the long road to learn, develop skills, and pay taxes when a free ride is available?
#3
That's true - some parents are even shopping around for a Dr. to give their kids a 'SSI Disability' (usually ADHD). Yet another entitlement stream for the parents.
I'm not saying that some people aren't disabled - but too many (far too many) are simply milking the system. Doctors (and parents) need to be held accountable - as in 10-20 years in a pound-me-in-the-ass-prison for fraud accountable.
#4
Social Security and Medicare Fraud undoubtedly approach tens of billions of dollars. Each system could be made healthier for years to come with a genuine focus on investigation and enforcement.
The Carter efforts to shake up and "moralize" foreign policy (and the State Department) were paralleled by efforts to clean up the CIA. Responsibility for the latter task fell largely to a fellow navy man, Admiral Stansfield Turner. President Ford had already made a step toward requiring greater CIA accountability in February 1976, by limiting the function of intelligence in Executive Order (EO) 1190
The new order at CIA under Turner was best known for what the clandestine services would call the "Halloween Massacre" of 1977, a purge attributed in part to budget cuts, but which also reflected a change of emphasis from paramilitary action to intelligence collection and analysis. Former CIA covert action chief Theodore Shackley has claimed that over 2,800 intelligence officers, many of them paramilitary specialists were fired or forced out of the CIA.28 Turner himself has given a figure of 820 staff positions cut from the clandestine service, but maintained that the tightening up of personnel policies had actually improved both human and technical intelligence collection capabilities.29 Turner's critics also tended to be vociferous about the relative decline in the strength and status of the army Special Forcesâthe CIA's partner in paramilitary actionâwhich in fact began during the Nixon administration. Special Forces had diminished in number since their withdrawal from Vietnam in 1971, from a peak of 9,000 to about 2,000 in the late 1970s.30 The paramilitary side of covert action was indeed curtailed, if not to the extent suggested by Shackley and other ax-operatives.
[Dawn] Given the mayhem all around, one cannot have a very high opinion of the quality of political rhetoric in Pakistain. Missing all along are rudimentary concepts of restraint and responsibility so essential to political discourse. Nevertheless, realisation seems to be dawning on some of our senior politicians of the consequences of an unrestrained outpouring of political venom. This attempt to inject sanity into politics deserves to be welcomed.
On Friday, the PPP and MQM, coalition partners in the federal and Sindh governments, agreed to a political ceasefire after the two sides had issued some wild statements in the wake of assassinations in Karachi. A day earlier, Mian Shahbaz Sharif apologised to Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani for the derogatory words uttered by a PML-N leader about the Bhuttos. Statements counselling restraint have also come from PPP leaders, including the prime minister.
While it would be difficult for us to pinpoint a specific era when political rhetoric started assuming the shape of animosity, the year-long campaign for Pakistain's first general election in 1970 -- when the nation stood polarised in the putative battle between 'Islam' and 'socialism' -- will be remembered for its viciousness. The level of debate plunged to new depths during the 1977 PNA movement when there were focused attacks on some political personalities and their families. Following Ziaul Haq's military coup, even sections of the media contributed in no small measure to the continued degeneration of political debate. The same hyperbolic style was witnessed in the political era between 1988 and 1999, with politicians discovering crimes and conspiracies by their opponents, staging 'long marches' and inviting the army to 'do its duty'. This might have served transient purposes, but it was democracy that lost.
Now that we have a democratic dispensation once again it would be a tragedy if irresponsible statements, threats of street agitation and unrestrained malevolence in utterances were to sabotage democracy. From this point of view the awakening of a new spirit of self-restraint deserves to be watched with the fond hope that expediency does not make our politicians oblivious to what should be the lodestar for them all -- the public good.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/19/2010 00:00 ||
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'Each successive government of Pakistain will be worse than its predecessor.' Thus predicted Mohammad Ali Jinnah to a confidant in mid-1948. How right he was -- how prescient.
In the two-and-a-half years of this PPP-Z government (if it can be called one) the entire governance and economic system has virtually collapsed under the Zardari leadership. (Clarence Darrow, the celebrated American lawyer and civil libertarian, rightly observed "When I was a boy, I was told that anybody could become president; I'm beginning to believe it!" This subsequently applied also to Pakistain.)
Not that matters were much better in the run up, because since the fixed and dishonest 2002 elections the country has taken a severe battering from the military appointed civil politicians. But with the Zardari dispensation the battering has turned into bludgeoning. The government cannot be solely blamed for the catastrophic floods, but the buck for the flouting of precautionary procedures (especially in Sindh) and the inept handling of the ensuing rescue-and-relief-measures stops with the president and the prime minister.
As is usual with all governments (particularly the PPP as we know from past experience) from the first day in office, corrupt political hyenas begin to prey on the more successful, healthy -- and larger (even if not successful or healthy) -- government institutions and ventures. Jiyalas, chelas, relatives, cronies and loyalists are willy-nilly installed at the helm of affairs with the purpose of inducting thousands of party workers into jobs and simultaneously bleeding dry the organisations. In two years such success has been achieved that we wonder what will be left to us at the end of five.
Since the 'rebirth of democracy' from December 1988 to October 1999 (followed by the failed Musharraf dictatorship and distasteful political set-up), major national corporations such as PIA, SSGC, SNGP, PSO, OGDC, PPL, EOBI, NHA, CAA, PNSC, NIC, EPB/TDAP, TCP, Pepco, etc, have become playthings in the hands of successive grubby and grabby politicians, civil and military.
These bodies have been devastated, mismanaged, diminished in value and stuffed with incompetent crony crooks. Despite superior court efforts and accountability mechanisms, NAB convicts land up at the top of organisations such as the OGDC.
In Hamsafar, PIA's flight magazine, the PPP appointed managing director Aijaz Haroon has explained why the airline is highly overstaffed (440 plus employees per plane, compared to an international average of some 150 per plane): jobs in Pakistain are scarce and the government is duty-bound to provide employment to its party people!
Would it not be more sensible to allow a team of hardworking employees to run the airline profitably, and distribute the profits to the jiyalas? But no, PIA has racked up an accumulated loss of Rs144bn, destroyed the morale of honest staff and politicised the airline.
Let us look in some detail at Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC), a jewel in the crown of Pakistain, with a long term AA- rating from the Pakistain Credit Rating Agency. Its policies over the decades have been an example of how even a 64 per cent government-owned public utility can benefit from excellent, efficient and independent management.
During Benazir Bhutto's second round, a Dr Faizullah Abbasi was foisted upon SSGC (1994-97) as deputy managing director, with the primary task of appointing 4,257 superfluous and incompetent employees (thus doubling company strength) without following mandatory selection procedures.
Although these excess employees were rusticated after the second PPP fall, by 2006 some 1,294 were reinstated by the courts (despite resistance); the PPP's valid-for-three-months Sacked Employees (Reinstatement) Ordinance, 2009 brought back a further 2,994. (This Oct 7 the PML-N started a boycott of the National Assembly refusing to participate in PPP efforts to convert this shameless ordinance into a bill.)
Come January 2010, Abbasi was re-imposed on SSGC, this time as managing director. Was it to ensure that the jiyalas were fully absorbed and were paid back-benefits for three years, including career progression, augmented increments, etc? Although the understanding with Khursheed Shah, federal labour minister was that the federal government would bear this needless pecuniary burden, the finance ministry has now reneged, leading to the risk of bankruptcy for SSGC.
The cost: almost Rs3bn this year, with a perennial excess baggage for SSGC (which Abbasi calculates will cost the consumer only Rs5 per MMBTU in gas price increases). Reportedly, he has consequently decided to take on 150 more surplus staff.
Senior management in SSGC, as with all other managements of government-related organisations, is browbeaten and demoralised in this politically commanded fiefdom, having to deal with non-transparent/verbal directives, lack of corporate governance and against-the-rules recommendations from ministers, federal secretaries and politicians. This bureaucratic terrorism operates essentially through two departments -- the MD's secretariat and the human resources department.
Despite the new management's hype on controlling UFG (unaccounted-for-gas, essentially leakages and theft), which galloped, out of control, over the 1999-2009 period, the UFG over the past nine months has actually ballooned to 7.95 per cent (in excess of the Ogra benchmark range of 4.5 to 5.5 per cent), adversely affecting the bottom line and viability of SSGC. Ogra should not pass on this delinquency to hapless consumers.
However, The infamous However... the management at Ogra has its own problems and political pressures: the press reports that a former Ogra member has filed a complaint with the prime minister against the sitting Ogra chairman, alleging favouritism and corruption in the quasi-judicial regulatory body.
A wag once had it that politics derives from two words -- 'poly'(many) and 'tics' (blood-sucking insects). Our politicians of all hues certainly fit the bill.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/19/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Hmpf. I thought it was about Obama and the Dems.
Posted by: Bobby ||
10/19/2010 5:54 Comments ||
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#2
When i saw the headlines i thourght of muslims in the UK!
#3
'Each successive government of Pakistain will be worse than its predecessor.' Thus predicted Mohammad Ali Jinnah... Some things are the same everywhere.
Want to be a successful TV anchor and talk show host in Bakistan? The following is what you need to know ...
Amreeka
A modern-day Babylon. Run by evil men whose bloodlines are linked to epic, evil characters such as Sodom & Gomorra and Gog & Magog. Can be a nice place to visit though, for a personal trip.
Amreeka has a very powerful Jewish lobby that constantly plots against Bakistan. This wicked lobby's members have just one motive in their sorry lives: the destruction of Bakistan, thus Islam, thus Haji Zion Hamid.
Amreeka is also the diabolical modern embodiment of the medieval Christian crusades against innocent (but brave Muslims); using drones instead of horses, dollars instead of swords, Mickey Mouse instead of the Pope and Marlboro Reds instead of ritual burnings. Not a bad place though, for your close relatives working (or living on welfare) there.
Amreeka is at the centre of whatever goes wrong in the Islamic Emirate of Bakistan. Everything coming from them, including financial aid, needs to be judged, denounced and rejected. That being said, advertising from Amreekan banks and multinationals on your channel is fine.
All political analyses should begin with the words: 'Amreeka kya chahta hai?' (What does America want?) -- even if the analysed issue has to do with the vanishing lids of manholes in Lahore's Anarkali area.
Bad mouthing Amreeka is a must -- a prerequisite of becoming a TV news anchor and talk show host. Those who fail to do this should be suspected of being part of the modern Christian crusade against Bakistan, thus Islam, thus famous tarot card reader, Dr. Shahid Fasaad.
However, it is okay, to borrow some of their helicopters to help flood victims in Sindh and the Punjab. Nevertheless, you must insist that the government -- usually full of Amreekan slaves -- be careful. These 'copters may actually be shape-shifting Free Masons spying on the breeding cycle of the blind dolphins of River Indus. Any dolphin seen cooperating with the Amreekans should be turned into halaal sushi.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: john frum ||
10/19/2010 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Dawn] Given the mayhem all around, one cannot have a very high opinion of the quality of political rhetoric in Pakistain. Missing all along are rudimentary concepts of restraint and responsibility so essential to political discourse. Nevertheless, realisation seems to be dawning on some of our senior politicians of the consequences of an unrestrained outpouring of political venom. This attempt to inject sanity into politics deserves to be welcomed.
