Welcome everyone to One-Eyed Richmond's Tiger Forum Cheers from mightytiges and WilliamPowell.
Mal has been in the job for what 5 mins and your already tarnishing him with the same brush as his predecessors. Come on I bet if it was Mr Union you'd be singing a different tune.
Quote from: Angus Hampson on September 26, 2015, 05:04:02 PMMal has been in the job for what 5 mins and your already tarnishing him with the same brush as his predecessors. Come on I bet if it was Mr Union you'd be singing a different tune.You've missed he point (again)Point being the replacing of another PM by his party had more to do with the fear of losing the next election. It was about power. Over the last 5-6 years every single political party has done the same thing As opposed to each govt actually doing what they are supposed to be doing and that's running the bloody country in the best interest of its constituents Not about who the leader is, it was about the ineptitude of our pokies and their collective born to rule mentality
Maybe we should adopt the US model in part.A PM can only have two terms before giving up the leadership.Might change their focus.
Maybe more if thisBut it'd pee off too many big wigs Brazil's top court bans corporate money in election campaignshttp://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0RH33A20150917BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil's Supreme Court decided on Thursday to ban corporate donations to election campaign financing in a move to clean up Brazilian politics caught in a massive kickback scandal.The top court voted 8-3 to allow election donations from individuals but not from companies, a decision that renders unconstitutional a bill passed last week by the country's Congress allowing corporate funding for political parties.The ruling comes in the midst of Brazil's biggest corruption investigation into bribes and political kickbacks on contracts with state-oil company Petrobras. The funds allegedly went into the pockets of dozens of politicians in President Dilma Rousseff's governing coalition.
Quote from: Stalin on September 29, 2015, 12:29:21 PMMaybe more if thisBut it'd pee off too many big wigs Brazil's top court bans corporate money in election campaignshttp://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0RH33A20150917BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil's Supreme Court decided on Thursday to ban corporate donations to election campaign financing in a move to clean up Brazilian politics caught in a massive kickback scandal.The top court voted 8-3 to allow election donations from individuals but not from companies, a decision that renders unconstitutional a bill passed last week by the country's Congress allowing corporate funding for political parties.The ruling comes in the midst of Brazil's biggest corruption investigation into bribes and political kickbacks on contracts with state-oil company Petrobras. The funds allegedly went into the pockets of dozens of politicians in President Dilma Rousseff's governing coalition.Its alarming how close this hits the mark in our own systems. Unions and corporations alike.
Dooks ..dont labour also get business donations also?Not to the same extent as the Libs but they certainly do get them
national security policy has scarcely changed from the Bush tothe Obama Administration. The theory of Walter Bagehot explains why.Bagehot described the emergence in 19th-century Britain of a “disguisedrepublic” consisting of officials who actually exercised governmental powerbut remained unnoticed by the public, which continued to believe thatvisible, formal institutions exercised legal authority.601 Dual institutions ofgovernance, one public and the other concealed, were referred to byBagehot as “double government.”602 A similar process of bifurcatedinstitutional evolution has occurred in the United States, but in reverse: anetwork has emerged within the federal government that exercisespredominant power with respect to national security matters. It has evolvedin response to structural incentives rather than invidious intent, and itconsists of the several hundred executive officials who manage the military,intelligence, diplomatic, and law enforcement agencies responsible forprotecting the nation’s security. These officials are as little disposed to stakeout new policies as they are to abandon old ones. They define security morein military and intelligence terms rather than in political or diplomatic ones. Enough examples exist to persuade the public that the network issubject to judicial, legislative, and executive constraints. This appearance isimportant to its operation, for the network derives legitimacy from theostensible authority of the public, constitutional branches of thegovernment. The appearance of accountability is, however, largely anillusion fostered by those institutions’ pedigree, ritual, intelligibility,mystery, and superficial harmony with the network’s ambitions. The courts,Congress, and even the presidency in reality impose little constraint.Judicial review is negligible; congressional oversight dysfunctional; andpresidential control nominal. Past efforts to revive these institutions havethus fallen flat. Future reform efforts are no more likely to succeed, relyingas they must upon those same institutions to restore power to themselves byexercising the very power that they lack. External constraints—publicopinion and the press—are insufficient to check it. Both are manipulable,and their vitality depends heavily upon the vigor of constitutionallyestablished institutions, which would not have withered had those externalconstraints had real force. Nor is it likely that any such constraints can berestored through governmental efforts to inculcate greater civic virtue,which would ultimately concentrate power even further. Institutionalrestoration can come only from an energized body politic. The prevailingincentive structure, however, encourages the public to become less, notmore, informed and engaged.To many, inculcated in the hagiography of Madisonian checks andbalances and oblivious of the reach of Trumanite power, the response tothese realizations will be denial. The image of a double national securitygovernment will be shocking. It cannot be right. It sounds of conspiracy, “astate within,” and other variations on that theme. “The old notion that ourGovernment is an extrinsic agency,” Bagehot wrote, “still rules ourimaginations.”603 That the Trumanite network could have emerged in fullpublic view and without invidious intent makes its presence all the moreimplausible. Its existence challenges all we have been taught.There is, however, little room for shock. The pillars of America’sdouble government have long stood in plain view for all to see. We havelearned about significant aspects of what Bagehot described—from someeminent thinkers. Max Weber’s work on bureaucracies showed that, leftunchecked, the inexorability of bureaucratization can lead to a “polar nightof icy darkness” in which humanitarian values are sacrificed for abstractorganizational ends.604 Friedrich Hayek’s work on political organization ledhim to conclude that “the greatest danger to liberty today comes from themen who are most needed and most powerful in government, namely, theefficient expert administrators exclusively concerned with what they regardas the public good.”605 Eric Fromm’s work on social psychology showedhow people unconsciously adopt societal norms as their own to avoidanxiety-producing choices, so as to “escape from freedom.”606 Irving Janis’swork on group dynamics showed that the greater a group’s esprit de corps,“the greater the danger that independent critical thinking will be replaced bygroupthink, which is likely to result in irrational and dehumanizing actionsdirected against out-groups.”607 Michael Reisman’s work on jurisprudencehas shown how de facto operational codes can quietly arise behind publiclyembracedmyth systems, allowing for governmental conduct that is notapproved openly by the law.608 Mills’ 1956 work on power elites showedthat the centralization of authority among officials who hold a commonworld view and operate in secrecy can produce a “military metaphysic”directed at maintaining a “permanent war economy.”609 One person familiarwith Mills’ work was political scientist Malcolm Moos, the presidentialspeechwriter who five years later wrote President Eisenhower’s propheticwarning.610 “In the councils of government,” Eisenhower said, “we mustguard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought orunsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for thedisastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”611Bagehot anticipated these risks. Bureaucracy, he wrote, is “the mostunimproving and shallow form of government,”612 and the executive thatcommands it “the most dangerous.”613 “If it is left to itself,” he observed,“without a mixture of special and non-special minds,” decisional authority“will become technical, self-absorbed, self-multiplying.”614 The net result isresponsibility that is neither fixed nor ascertainable but diffused andhidden,615 with implications that are beyond historical dispute. “The mostdisastrous decisions in the twentieth century,” in Robert Dahl’s words,“turned out to be those made by authoritarian leaders freed from democraticrestraints.”616The benefits derived by the United States from double government—enhanced technical expertise, institutional memory and experience,quick-footedness, opaqueness in confronting adversaries, policy stability,and insulation from popular political oscillation and decisional idiosyncrasy—need hardly be recounted. Those benefits, however, have not been costfree.The price lies in well-known risks flowing from centralized power,unaccountability, and the short-circuiting of power equilibria. Indeed, in thisregard the Framers thought less in terms of risk than certainty. John Adamsspoke for many: “The nation which will not adopt an equilibrium of powermust adopt a despotism. There is no other alternative.”617The trivial risk of sudden despotism, of an abrupt turn to a policestate or dictatorship installed with coup-like surprise, has created a falsesense of security in the United States.618 That a strongman of the sort easilyvisible in history could suddenly burst forth is not a real risk. The risk,rather, is the risk of slowly tightening centralized power, growing andevolving organically beyond public view, increasingly unresponsive toMadisonian checks and balances. Madison wrote, “There are more instancesof the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silentencroachments of those in power than by violent and suddenusurpations.”619 Recent history bears out his insight. Dahl has pointed outthat in the 20th century—the century of democracy’s great triumph—someseventy democracies collapsed and quietly gave way to authoritarianregimes.620 That risk correlates with voter ignorance; the term Orwellianhas little meaning to a people who have never known anything different,who have scant knowledge of history, civics, or public affairs, and who inany event have likely never heard of George Orwell. “If a nation expects tobe ignorant and free, in a state of civilization,” Thomas Jefferson wrote, “itexpects what never was and never will be.”621 What form of governmentultimately will emerge from the United States’ experiment with doublegovernment is uncertain. The risk is considerable, however, that it will notbe a democracy.
lol do you really expect anyone to read all that?
