http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbZEq6wOdnY
Monday, 23 January 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5M50xBz1cU
An explanation of the 3 Branches of Government in the US
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
Saturday, 14 January 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyFaWhygzjQ
Gingrich attacks Romney because he speaks French!
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
Newt v the courts (1)
Newt Gingrich argues that 200 years of Constitutional Law is wrong. http://budiansky.blogspot.com/2011/12/you-can-be-historian-too.html
http://budiansky.blogspot.com/2011/10/constitutional-biblioatry.html
Newt v the courts (2)
Democracy in America Blog
NOW that we’re paying attention to Newt Gingrich, let me muse over the fact that his surge in the polls came on the same day the Supreme Court agreed to review the constitutionality of health-care reform. How fitting. Because you see, Mr Gingrich believes that Supreme Court decisions can be ignored, and that the notion of judicial “supremacy”—that the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of the constitution—is bunk.
Mr Gingrich’s disregard for judicial review is probably the least of hisconcerns during this primary season—in fact, his views on the topic elicit a great deal of applause from conservative audiences. That the concept has become settled doctrine in America has not stopped some court watchers from taking issue with the perceived imbalance of power. And these critics are quick to selectively cite the Founders to back up their claims. Mr Gingrich, for example, lays out his case in a lengthy position paper on the topic, which states, “Our founding fathers believed that the Supreme Court was the weakest branch and that the legislative and executive branches would have ample abilities to check a Supreme Court that exceeded its powers.” In fact, it was Alexander Hamilton, writing in the Federalist Papers, who considered the judiciary the weakest branch. Yet it was Hamilton who argued in favour of granting federal courts the power to review the constitutionality of congressional acts. He considered the judiciary weak because “It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment.” That is still true, but judgment turned out to be a powerful thing.
Now, I’m unclear on why our conception of optimal modern government must rely on the opinions of men 200 years in the grave. In this debate, I’m not even sure which side Alexander Hamilton would come down on today. But the biggest flaw in Mr Gingrich’s argument for a more accountable judiciary stems not from the words of any tricorn hat wearer, but from the words of Mr Gingrich himself. In a recent rant about the judiciary, Mr Gingrich said that as president he would ignore Supreme Court decisions on national-security matters, that he would drag judges before Congress when their opinions didn’t jive with his own, and that he’d warn certain federal courts, like the liberal 9th Circuit, that they run the risk of ceasing to exist. And yet Mr Gingrich says it is the courts that “have become more assertive and politicized to the point of an abuse of power”.
Mr Gingrich would like to “restore the proper role of the judicial branch by using the clearly delineated Constitutional powers available to the president and Congress to correct, limit, or replace judges who violate the Constitution.” But, of course, it is his own politicised conception of the constitution which he hopes to use as a benchmark; while other politicians could use their own to justify, say, kicking a judge off the bench for declaring a health-care mandate invalid. As you can see, the outcome of Mr Gingrich’s vision is chaos, precisely because of blowhards like himself. And whether or not the Founders envisaged a more accountable judiciary, it is pretty clear they did not want the legislature or executive to have the final say, by writ or revenge, over the constitutionality of their own actions. Thus, while it may not be perfect, there is actually some sense in granting the last word on constitutional matters to an unelected, apolitical body, rather than people like Newt.
And I can’t help but feel that there are broader conclusions to be drawn about Mr Gingrich’s candidacy from this debate. As with many subjects, Mr Gingrich starts with an interesting, intellectual argument that draws you in, but he is then carried over the precipice by his eagerness to be bolder and cleverer than anyone who has ever addressed the topic. So I believe it will be with his presidential campaign. Mr Gingrich can often come off as a thoughtful figure, but his ego won’t allow his bluster and bombast to stay in check long enough for the philosopher to come to the fore.
(Photo credit: AFP)
The quantum mechanics of government
From Democracy in America’s blog
EVERYTHING in the world, all the time, is coming down to the last second these days. It’s really incredible when you think about it. The fate of the euro comes down to fundamental transformations of the European Union’s fiscal rules agreed to at 5am after marathon sessions between 27 heads of state. The American government is pushed to the brink of default until last-ditch negotiations pull out a deal to raise the debt ceiling. The payroll-tax cut and extended unemployment insurance come within days of expiration; last-minute deals will be needed to approve a budget resolution just days after other last-minute deals prevented a shutdown of the federal government; global climate negotiators go two days past deadline to salvage a deal that prevents a complete breakdown of international efforts to limit greenhouse-gas emissions. What’s going on? It’s like everybody has been studying negotiations-theory textbooks and they’re all pushing global political systems to the edges of their envelopes, trying to derive one last millimetre of political advantage out of ever-narrower slices of time on the edge of gridlock or collapse.
The latest iteration of this ever-tighter cycle of gridlock may take the American political system down to an interval of time that approaches instantaneity. The GOP is blocking the required Senate votes to confirm Barack Obama’s nominees for the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and for the National Labour Relations Board (NLRB). Normally, Mr Obama could circumvent this opposition temporarily by making recess appointments in the period when the Senate is out of session. To forestall this, Republicans are keeping the Senate technically in session, with a few senators holding pro forma sessions for a few minutes every day over the holidays. In response, Democrats and advocates of the CFPB are pressing Mr Obama to follow a precedent that has only been carried out once, by then-president Teddy Roosevelt in 1903, as The Hill’s Peter Schroederexplains.
[T]he 20th amendment of the Constitution states that Congress shall assemble at least once a year, with each session beginning at noon on Jan. 3. Given that a new session must begin at that day, logic follows that Congress must adjourn for some period of time beforehand, however brief.
In fact, Theodore Roosevelt took advantage of this quirk of the Congressional calendar to push through nearly 200 nominees in a matter of seconds, when the Senate gaveled to close one session before almost immediately opening the new year’s.
The Dec. 8, 1903 story by the New York Times detailing the unprecedented move began succinctly: “Congress passed from one session to another to-day in a unique manner.”
With the units of time shrinking inexorably, the next stage of the argument will inevitably involve quantum mechanics. Republicans will argue that no time need elapse between the end of one session of Congress and the beginning of the next, while Democrats object that such instantaneity implies spooky action at a distance.
David Dayen adds a couple of simpler ways for Mr Obama to force a confrontation over recess appointments. The tradition that the Senate has to be out of session for three days has no force of law; Mr Obama could make a recess appointment when the floor has been empty for a few hours, then test the issue in court. Or he could use his constitutional authority to adjourn Congress, but no president has ever done that before.
Should Mr Obama do these things? It’s always hard to get a moral grasp on procedural questions. But here’s my take. The Republican decision to filibuster any and all nominees to head the CFPB until the institution is reformed to their liking essentially establishes the precedent that either party can kneecap the operations of any government agency, through the appointments process, until its demands for reform or policy shifts at the agency are met. That seems like a recipe for even greater government confusion, regulatory uncertainty and paralysis. Of course, one side of the political aisle in America is very often in favour of government paralysis. And as a practical matter, Republicans are likely to be more effective at using this tool than Democrats, because Republicans are better at maintaining the party discipline necessary to sustain filibusters. So whether or not you think each political party should have the ability to knock out agencies by filibustering appointments probably comes down to whether or not you think that, in general, government agencies ought to function effectively. If you think that in general it’s a good thing when agencies lose the capacity to function, then I suppose there’s nothing wrong with this development.
Ed Miliband says some bold new things about austerity Britain, but voters are not listening
From Bagehot’s Notebook
MY column in this week’s newspaper is about the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Ed Miliband, and why things are looking bleak for him. Here it is:
ED MILIBAND, leader of the opposition Labour Party, has a problem which should not be serious, but probably is. In this buffed and burnished television age, he sounds and looks a bit odd. This makes him increasingly the butt of jokes. Things are so bad that a BBC interviewer this week asked him—more or less directly—whether he was too ugly to be prime minister.
There is not much that Mr Miliband can do about his slightly prissy delivery and doleful, irregular features. In contrast another, genuinely grave, flaw is entirely his own fault. Mr Miliband’s plans for solving Britain’s most pressing problems manage to be both too timid and implausibly ambitious.
On January 10th Mr Miliband gave a speech on the economy, explaining what his party should stand for, now there is less money around. Amid horrible approval ratings (according to YouGov, a pollster, some two-thirds of voters think the Labour leader is doing a bad job) allies of Mr Miliband talked up the importance of the address. They called it a moment to “bash on the head” the idea that Labour is in denial about the need to fix the public finances.
Mr Miliband made an important concession in his speech: that Britain will probably be stuck in austerity after the next general election, planned for 2015. That means a future Labour government would not be able to reverse every spending cut made by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, he said. His Labour Party would not be able to repeat Tony Blair’s and Gordon Brown’s strategy of letting financially turbocharged growth rip, while diverting some of the proceeds into public works and welfare. Labour would have to deliver “fairness in tough times”.
Mr Miliband and his inner circle are convinced this message resonates with the “squeezed middle”: the group that has seen its living standards stagnate while welfare recipients at the bottom of society and bankers at the top seem to have been spared pain. The Labour leader believes that he predicted the current national mood of gloom and anger. He devoted chunks of his speech to explaining just how prescient he has been.
He had been mocked when he first attacked “crony capitalism”, he declared. Now Tories and Lib Dems were scrambling to copy him. A year and a half ago, Labour warned the government about the dangers of cutting spending too far and too fast. It had been proved right, he insisted. Because too much demand has been removed from the economy, the government would have to borrow “£158 billion more” than planned over five years.
The Labour leader is fond of this last argument about missing demand, and repeats it often. But this is odd. For one thing, it is a source of public doubts about Labour’s commitment to reducing the budget deficit, a task most voters say is necessary. For another, it is a ludicrously complex line of attack. Economists disagree about the precise impact of deficit spending (and voters are just as confused, with poll numbers on whom or what to blame for Britain’s economic woes splitting every which way). Most damagingly, Mr Miliband is picking a fight about the past. He is seeking to prove, with numbers, that voters made a mistake when they trusted the coalition back in 2010. That is a strange use of an opposition leader’s time.
It is also not working. Polls show voters far more inclined to trust Mr Cameron than Mr Miliband on the economy, even if they are not sure the Tory leader is worried about fairness. Perhaps this is because, on taking office, the coalition made a much bigger and more easily understood prediction: that a terrifying economic storm was brewing, which would be made more lethal by Labour’s failure to put money aside in good times.
Mr Miliband claims to “relish” the chance to manage the economy differently. But when it comes to embracing austerity, he could hardly sound more grudging. In his speech he did not admit to a penny of wasted spending in 13 years of Labour rule. He offered a single example of spending he might trim, and vowed to offset that with compensation from the private sector. In office, he explained, Labour might not be able to increase the winter-fuel allowance (a universal benefit paid to elderly dukes as well as retired dustmen). To offset that pain, he would push energy companies to offer their cheapest fuel tariffs to the elderly.
The quiet man
What changes does Mr Miliband relish, then? The answer lies in his talk of breaking with New Labour’s economic model. Yes, he says, he is “incredibly proud” of schools and hospitals paid for with the proceeds of growth, and the jobs created under Mr Blair and Mr Brown. But too many of those jobs offered low-paid, low-skilled drudgery. Mr Miliband wants to use “the power of government” in new ways. He vows to harness regulations, tax rules and government procurement contracts to craft a kinder, more sustainable version of capitalism with a marked Rhineland tinge: think apprentices, employee representatives helping to set bosses’ pay, and a Britain in which smart graduates want to design clever machines, not City derivatives.
These are bold plans, at a time when governments worldwide are struggling to survive until next month. Mr Miliband is serenely confident. These are early days, he says. The government is failing. Voters will come round.
Voters’ trust in the government could crumble. But Mr Miliband may not have much time. Grumbling from Labour MPs is turning into on-the-record sniping. Timidity about how to cut spending is less of a problem than their leader’s vaulting ambitions to reshape British capitalism, just when voters have lost faith in the ability of experts of all sorts to improve anything. Mr Miliband is a mid-sized politician making outlandish claims. That credibility gap explains why voters are not listening.
Balls and Keynes
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTQnarzmTOc?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent]Popout
Ed Balls told the Fabians that one of his most precious material belongings is a first edition of a Keynes pamphlet, The Economic Consequences of Mr Churchil. Keynes is the intellectual mantle that Balls is trying to use with the Labour base to justify pivoting towards the voters and away from union demands for ever more deficit spending and borrowing. Already the Labour left are screaming “sell-out”.
Earlier this year Vince Cable argued that Keynes would not support the demands of latter day über-Keynesians. Cable reminds us that the politicisation of Keynes as a heavy spender is misplaced because Keynes was a liberal, not a socialist and he was writing at a time when the level of state spending in the economy amounted to half of today’s level. Keynes was not a friend of socialism, his policies were intended not to save capitalism. Would Keynes have believed government deficit spending at twice the share of GDP as in the 1930s was desirable or sustainable? Cable thinks not, does Balls?
Friday, 13 January 2012
Unit 2: Constitutional Reform: Break of the UK?
The big constiutional issue of the year looks firmly set to be that of Scottish devoltion/independence and the ultimate issue of the fate of the Union. Quite what was David Cameron doing in lighting the toucpaper for a debate on Scotland’s future which could end with the United Kingdom splitting apart? Initially it seemed a masterstroke catching Salmond on the hop, but it seems to have backfired. Salmond in some eyes is a ‘political genius’ but does that make him right on the issue? Very briefly here is a snapshot of a few relevent articles:
1. A question not just for the Scots, but for everyone in Britain - Charles Moore, The Daily Telegraph
What Alex Salmond calls independence is really the break-up of the United Kingdom.
2. A generous offer to Scotland could keep the Union safe - Dominic Raab, The Daily Telegraph
As Alex Salmond makes hay haggling over process points for a referendum on Scottish independence, we risk losing sight of the big picture. Mr Salmond may see crude political capital in casting the debate as Scots versus English, but the referendum will define the constitutional architecture for the United Kingdom as a whole.
3. Of course Scotland can stand on its own two feet - and here’s how ~ Hamish McRae, The Independent
Scotland’s voters will be asked to make a political decision in its referendum on independence, but it will be a decision coloured inevitably by economics – or at least economic perceptions, for the long-term economic impact of independence is far from clear. But such is the nature of politics that economic arguments will be used by both sides to support their case.
4. Scotland’s political bruiser - Andrew Bolger, George Parker, The Financial Times
Alex Salmond, the ebullient leader of the Scottish National party, was in his element this week, doing what even his foes concede he does best: hogging the centre of the political stage, draping himself in history and arguing the case for independence that would break up the United Kingdom.
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