America Has No Right To Be Embarrassed

The revelations of the extent of American spying has thoroughly embarrassed the Obama administration.

The original revelations that the NSA was spying on ordinary people and taking a drag net approach to internet information didn't embarrass them at all. They were just furious that the public had found out about their spying as it would mean that the programs might be properly scrutinised. What has really embarrassed the US is the revelations that the NSA had spied on the allies of the US. It was discovered that the NSA had bugged European Union offices in Brussels, infuriating the US' European allies. This week it was revealed that the US had tapped the phone of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, needless to say Merkel was very unhappy. She called in the US ambassador and told him "frankly" to stop tapping her phone. What an awkward conversation that must have been for Obama.

Naturally this has raised tensions between the two countries. Things can only get worse for the President as not all of Edward Snowden's stolen information has been released.

To be honest I don't feel sorry at all for Obama or the American government. If they didn't want to be embarrassed then they shouldn't have spied on their allies. The revelation of Merkel's phone being tapped really shows that nobody is safe from the NSA. Who else have they spied on; Blair? Sarkozy? People within the American government? 

The Shutdown Ends

The shutdown has finally ended, much to the relief of the American people and to the thousands of federal workers who had been furloughed during the crisis. In terms of partisan politics, the Democratic Party certainly ‘won’. In polls Democrats are consistently ahead and liked a lot more than the Republicans.

Hopefully the Democrats and Obama have learnt a lot from this crisis. They finally said no to the Republicans and refused to negotiate with their brinkmanship tricks and look how well it turned out. They won the policy fight and devastated the Republican Party’s popularity. Perhaps in the future Democrats will start winning instead of losing consistently.

Unfortunately some Democrats have taken this win too far and headed into rabidly radical territory. A petition has been set up that’s been going round on the liberal blogs and facebook page calling for the arrest of Republican leaders on the charge of sedition. The petition, started on moveon.org, reads as follows:

“I call on the Justice Department of the United States of America to arrest Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Speaker of the House John Boehner, and other decision-making House Republican leaders for the crime of seditious conspiracy against the United States of America.”

Republicans absolutely need to be punished for what they did to the United States when they shutdown the government, but you can’t do that by arresting them – you do it through the ballot box. Arresting politicians for sedition has all the hallmarks of a dictatorship, not a democracy. Anyone who signs this petition cannot call themselves a liberal or a supporter for Democracy. If you really feel that strongly about what the Republicans did, then volunteer to help the Democrats in 2014 or organise a petition to have them recalled. Arresting them is not the answer.

The Rapid Rise and Decline of the Far Right (Hopefully)

When times are hard, people turn to extremes. This was very evident following the 1929 Wall Street Crash, all across the world people looked for alternatives to the system that had just destroyed their lives. Some went to the communists and others went to the fascists. Without a doubt WWII can be directly linked to the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Fast forward 79 years to 2008 and you find yourself in the midst of another economic catastrophe, again Wall Street has failed. People once again were forced to the extremes, but this time it is all very different. Unlike in 1929, only the far-right seems to have really made gains, the ranks of communists and socialists have barely increased at all whilst across the world the far-right has made fantastic gains!

 In the European elections in 2009 the BNP managed to gain two seats. In last year’s election in Greece the neo-Nazi party, Golden Dawn, managed to win 21 seats in Greece’s parliament. In France the National Front candidate, Marine Le Pen, took 20% of the votes in the first round. In Italy the Northern League has helped to form a right-wing coalition! In America the Tea Party movement sprang up following the election of Barack Obama. There are a few non-economic reasons for their rise, immigration is usually a major campaigning tool for the far-right, and that isn’t exactly a new issue.

Yet, thankfully, the tide appears to be turning, at least in some countries. In the UK the BNP is already falling apart, in the 2010 General Election they failed to gain any seats. In the 2012 London Assembly elections they lost their one MLA. The next European elections in 2014 should see their success in 2009 reversed.

In the states, the popularity of the Tea Party seems to be dwindling. Although they are still a vocal minority, only 21% of Americans in a recent poll actually approve of the Tea Party.

In Greece the government appears to be finally cracking down on Golden Dawn. Six of their MPs have been arrested, including the leader of the party, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, and the deputy leader, Christos Pappas. The Party was the most neo-Nazi of all the new movement, actively advocating racial superiority. Most other parties across the West were more subtle when it came to being that extreme.

The next big test for the far-right will be the 2014 European Elections. How many seats the far right gets in the European Parliament will be extremely telling when election time comes. Let’s hope they fail – and don’t forget to vote!

Day Six of the Shutdown

Day Six of the Shutdown

The shutdown of the US federal government is now in its sixth day and it seems as if there is no end in sight. As I’ve already written about, the fight is over whether or not to fund the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. Many pundits have been predicting a short shutdown as it is deeply unpopular with the American people. Unfortunately this has not been true and the shutdown continues.

There has been a lot going on in the last few days that you should know about and I will endeavour to explain them to you.

Two factions are beginning to form in the Republican Party over this debate. On one side you have radicals like Ted Cruz and Michele Bachmann who are enjoying the shutdown and want it to continue as long as possible. Opposing them as the likes of John McCain and Peter King (when you make Peter King look like a moderate you know you’ve gone too far). Now it’s not like any of these more ‘moderate’ Republicans actually like Obamacare, they just recognise that staging a government shutdown to try and defund it is political suicide. The latter group’s worries are entirely justified; polling consistently puts opposition to the strategy at around 70% and Republicans are blamed more for the shutdown than the Democrats. In ways you also have a third faction, not radical enough to enjoy the shutdown but too scared to speak out against the Tea Party. If you were to split the 232 House Republicans into the factions, about 20 would be in the vocally anti-shutdown faction, around 40 in the radical faction and the rest form the silent majority. Think about that for a moment, if only 40 Republicans want the government shutdown out of 232, then why is it happening? The simple answer is fear and gerrymandering. The radicals here have come from districts that have been gerrymandered to the extreme and so they know they will never face the wrath of the voters, no matter how unpopular the policy. The silent majority fear the wrath of the Tea Party, if they do not do the bidding of the Tea Party then they face a challenge within the party and they lose their job.

John Boehner, the speaker of the House, also is deeply unpopular in his party. Earlier this year he narrowly was re-elected as speaker with just six votes to spare! If he upsets the Tea Party then he risks losing his job. John Boehner could end the shutdown any time he wanted. If he brought a government funding bill (with no mention of the Affordable Care Act) to the floor of the House, it would pass.

If you have been listening to any Republican over the past few days then you will have heard the talking point “Obama won’t negotiate”. As a tactic it has been working well and people are beginning to ask questions about this. The truth however is very different, the Democrats have already compromised! When you hear talk of a “clean continuing resolution” (sometimes referred to as a “clean CR”), what that means is; a bill to fund the government without anything else attached. So since the Democrats want a clean CR and Republicans want one that defunds the Affordable Care Act, Republicans argue that there has to be some sort of compromise. Sounds reasonable, right? Wrong. The clean CR is already a massive compromise for the Democrats as the funding levels provided are several hundred billion dollars lower than the Democrats want, almost exactly in line with the Republicans. So next time a Republican tells you the Democrats won’t compromise, you tell them the truth.

Another note of frustration for much of the general public is the fact that Congress still gets paid during the shutdown, while other federal workers are not paid. Some Congressmen have decided to give up their pay, or donate it to charity, as long as the shutdown is in effect. To be honest this doesn’t really matter to them as most are incredibly wealthy already. Those refusing pay include Harry Reid, Ted Cruz and John Boehner. Yet not all of members of Congress have given up their pay, some of the reasons are laughably ridiculous and show just how out of touch the current Congress is! Congresswoman Renee Ellmers (R-NC) was quoted as saying “I need my paycheque, that’s the bottom line”, considering her husband is a surgeon, need might not be the word she was looking for.

Members of Congress get paid $174,000 per annum, which works out at $477 every day. If the shutdown goes on for a week, they get $3,339 for being incompetent, if it continues for a month (30 days) then they get $14,310 for being incompetent. And Congress wonders why its approval rating is at 10%?

What the coming week will bring us, I don’t know. The dynamics within the Republican Party are too difficult to predict. On the other hand I will happily predict that the Democrats will not buckle under the pressure and finally beat the Republicans in a policy debate on Capitol Hill. 

The US Government has Shutdown

The federal government shut down at around midnight last night after Washington failed to pass a bill to fund the government. The fight was all over the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and whether or not to defund it. The Republicans were demanding that Obamacare be defunded or at least delayed. Naturally this was something that the Democrats were never going to agree to.

Quite what happens next, nobody really knows. Most pundits are predicting that the charade won't last long. The move is very unpopular and Republicans are getting the blame. A CNN poll showed 46% of Americans blaming Republicans for the shutdown, 36% for Obama and 13% for both. The longer they hold out, the worse it will get. If the Speaker of the house, John Boehner, were to table a bill that funded the whole government, it would pass as there are enough Republicans who support the measure.

It will be interesting to see how this all will effect the 2014 mid-term elections. The President's party should struggle as mid-terms never play out well for the incumbent. The likely outcome at the moment is a Republican House and a very tight Senate. If Republicans keep this shutdown for too long it could seriously hurt their chances. If they do the same with the debt ceiling it would be catastrophic.