June 25th, 2009 by Michael Toney
On June 12, 2009, Iran held a presidential “election” that saw the unabashedly anti-American incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad win an astonishing and suspicious 66% of the vote, while his only real challenger - moderate reformist Mir-Hossein Mousavi- received a mere 33%.
There have been many allegations of fraud made by Mousavi’s supporters, who have been protesting in the streets of Terhan. Nonetheless, it will be difficult to conclusively prove election fraud with the information currently being made available. Lacking concrete proof, the combination of the security council admitting the number of votes recorded in 50 cities exceeded the number of eligible voters by a combined 3 million votes, and statistical analysis indicating that there is only a 1 in 200 chance the published vote numbers were not altered make it reasonable to conclude the election was fixed. Many columnists have questioned how this ‘farce’ of an election should impact President Obama’s diplomacy with Iran. The spirit of these questions are wrongheaded; I am more curious why so many pundits think the Iranian election th should affect Obama’s diplomacy with Iran in any way.
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Posted in Government in the Middle East | »
June 13th, 2009 by Jesse Smith
Exactly who speaks for the Republican Party these days? According to the latest Gallup poll, 18% of democrats think Rush Limbaugh is the primary speaker for the Republican Party, while republicans themselves can’t come to more than a 10% consensus for any republican leader. Only a year ago the answer would have been a resounding ‘John McCain.’ But the subsequent political maneuverings of the McCain campaign not only compromised McCain as the present and future leader of the Republican Party, but also left the party without a clear direction, as reflected in this latest poll. Even during the Republican primaries there was a great deal of political division among the republican presidential candidates and the priorities of their voter constituencies - most notably between the Christian base of Mike Huckabee, the Mormon and fiscal bases of Mitt Romney, and the military and moderate republican bases of John McCain.
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Posted in In American Politics | 2 Comments »
June 9th, 2009 by Keenan Pontoni
Michigan is sad. I hear about it everyday from the family and friends I have who still live there. “It’s a sad day for Michigan,” my mother says nearly every time she calls. “But the weather is nice today,” she concedes. Michigan is sad, as is the country, after GM’s collapse. Indeed, we should not downplay the significance of GM’s apparently ineluctable filing of Chapter 11 bankruptcy on 1 June 2009 - more than a century after GM’s founding on 27 September 1908. It comes as an unsurprising but hard-to-swallow finale to a decades-long decline in market share and profits. Unfortunately, the predictability of GM’s demise, or a comprehensive understanding of why it occurred, does little to soften the blows endured by manufacturers, auto workers and Americans in general as a result of GM’s fall and ultimate collapse.
Just what does this mean for the U.S. economy, already saddled with the collapse of Lehman Brothers and burgeoning government debts? The negative affect of the ensuing layoffs will take time to reveal itself as the loss of industry spreads from its epicenter in Detroit, but when put in the context of the entire U.S. industry sector certain indicators suggest that the actual impact of the GM collapse may not be commensurate with its symbolic impact as a face of industry.
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Posted in A Political Economy, In American Politics | 1 Comment »
May 31st, 2009 by Alex Bowers
Before we delve into the particulars of Obama’s broken promises, something must first be said about assessing the relative “badness” of a broken presidential campaign promise in the first place. Clearly all skilled candidates (even those without Obama’s incredible rhetoric) need to paint a glossy picture of the future they’ll be able to provide us as President.
However, not surprisingly, candidates often find it difficult to follow through 100% of the time – even when they want to. Sometimes political expediency and/or the realities of a new day get in the way. Determining the relative “badness” of a broken campaign promise, then, has to do with how blatant, outrageous and unfathomable the betrayal - did the candidate lie, foolishly over-promise, or simply make a mistake? Perhaps a situation changed rendering the execution of a particular promise impossible.
So, four months into his Presidency, Obama is bound to have either forgotten, lost interest in, or even just plain shelved some of the things he vowed to change while he was out stumping for change. Here are a noteworthy few - but check out Politfact.com for a complete list.
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Posted in In American Politics, President Obama, The Politics of Government, Law | 2 Comments »
May 30th, 2009 by Keenan Pontoni
The federal bailout allocated $150 billion for education – a 2-year commitment that should have doubled the current funding for local schools. While it would certainly be too early to notice significant gains in education, as new hirings and new investments would likely occur this summer, one might expect to see, at the very least, a static picture in light of the recent funding boost. But we see the opposite: schools are in a frenzy to keep their doors open, teachers are losing their jobs, and special projects are being eliminated.
So why, then, does the education system seem anything but static if there is so much money being graciously pumped into the system by the federal government? Why have California, New York, Pennsylvania, and Arizona announced profound decreases in education spending, despite receiving education funding relief from the bailout? Many states are following suit. In the midst of the boldest federal commitment to education since World War II, educators are running for the hills instead of celebrating.
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Posted in A Political Economy, In American Politics | »
