Thursday, February 24, 2011
Class Blog Instructions
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Introducing, The International
Kudos to Anagha S. and Zaic H. for publishing a new blog, "The International," that is linked at the right. Focusing on politics, policy and movements in the Middle East, check it out. Remember Russia class blog presentations, due Monday, 2/28.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Gorby: 'Looks are not everything'
Russia under prime minister Vladimir Putin is a sham democracy, Mikhail Gorbachev has said in his harshest criticism yet of the ruling regime."We have everything – a parliament, courts, a president, a prime minister and so on. But it's more of an imitation," the last president of the Soviet Union said.
More on plurality and majority elections
(From Teaching Comparative Blog)
Joshua Tucker, an Associate Professor of Politics at New York University and one of The Monkey Cage bloggers, wrote a good piece for discussion in The Wall St. Journal. Applying the concepts to other countries (including the USA) should not be difficult. We will discuss, with added in some information about the proposed "Alternative Vote" in the UK and about proportional representation, used in the Russian DUMA, on Thursday. (See: Q&A: Alternative Vote referendum and State Duma adopting proportional vote)
Why Egypt Needs a Two-Round Presidential Election
In the coming months, it appears Egypt will be rewriting its constitutional laws, which will include rules for conducting elections. If Egypt retains a presidential system of government, then the rules for electing the Egyptian president will be of paramount importance. Outside of the United States—which uses a convoluted indirect system of electing its president—most countries with presidential systems employ one of the following two direct ways of electing their president:
- In a plurality election, a single round of voting is held, and the candidate with th
e most votes at the end of that round is declared the winner of the election. - In a majoritarian election, a first round of voting is held. If a candidate passes a pre-arranged threshold (we’ll call this X% of the vote) in the first round, then he or she is declared the winner of the election. If no candidate gets more than X% of the vote, then a second round of voting is held at a later date. However, participation in this second round is limited to only the candidates that performed the best in the first round. The exact number of candidates allowed to advance to the second round is set by law. As majoritarian elections often feature two rounds, they are commonly referred to as “two-round presidential elections.”...
http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2011/02/18/why-egypt-needs-a-two-round-presidential-election/
On Wisconsin
Cheeze-whiz, (sorry, this is serious) what's going On (in) Wisconsin, is big.
Here are posed some questions to hope you get your answers to what is going on in Madison that may have serious Labor/Budget/Constitutional/Media implications for the rest of the country. Like our Federal government, the budget of our state houses are also busted.
(None of these answers are absolutes, just my take from the Soap Box. Enter yours in the comment section.)
Q: Do elections have consequences, without any need to compromise?
A: One of the basic Concepts of Democracy that we teach is, "Necessity for Compromise." Another is, "Majority Rules, but Minority Rights must be Respected." If one follows the "Politics is Easy, Governing is Hard," mantra, then the government leaders in Wisconsin (and Washington) must work together. However, the guy interviewed in Bob Woodward's piece above and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker apparently disagree.
Q: Is this about trying to solve a budget crisis or trying to break the back of a the state teachers union.
A: Yes and Yes. Depends on who you ask, but it appears the Governor is trying to do both. He is not in this bill planning to take away the right to collective bargain from state troopers, for example.
Q: Is there a Constitutional Right for public employees to Organize and to Collective Bargain?
A: Yes to Organize. No to Collective Bargain. Today over 40 states have statutes guaranteeing that public employees have the right to engage in collective bargain, but many state legislatures are watching Wisconsin to see a road map for rolling back this right of public employees.
Q: Why did 14 Wisconsin state senate Democrats flee to Illinois?
A: (insert your own joke here) Without the "Wisconsin 14" the Wisconsin Senate did not have a quorum.
Wisconsin Senate rules require a 3/5 quorum for binding action in the Senate. There are currently 19 Republican senators, and 14 Democrat senators.
The GOP needs one more to get to 20.
Q: Was this Bob Woodward ABC News piece, "Fair and Balanced" for real, or did it have bias?
A: I thought it gave a good view of the situation from both sides (though, I was watching from my Soap Box), but it got criticized on blogs from both the right :
And the left:
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/liberal-media-this-week-unfairly-balances-tea-party-and-union-protests/
(Seems to me that means it was good journalism)Q: What does the public think about public vs. private sector unions?
A: I must admit, when I saw the Pew report 9see chart) reported on the news, and it said, "For the first time since the Progressive Era," less than 50 percent of Americans vi
ew Unions as favorable, I thought boy the Labor movement is going down. But a look inside the poll shows that the public viewed Unions more favorable than unfavorable. It further showed that Americans had an equally declining view of Business and Labor.
______________
One of my former students, WV grad Matt Beaty, is on the ground in Wisconsin, taking part in the process building his political efficacy. Matt will stop by in early March and share his observations with us during his Spring Break in early March.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Vote referendum: Clegg v. Cameron
While promised by Prime Minister David Cameron, the Conservative oppose, while the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, supports the measure which would could change Britain's first-past-the-post voting system.
(See my briefing article linked under UK Legislature on the WV Thought Hive)
The BBC breaks down Clegg v. Cameron AV arguments:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12495429
The Guardian has video of their arguments:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/video/2011/feb/18/alternative-vote-david-cameron
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/video/2011/feb/18/nick-clegg-av-yes-vote-video?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3486
Too Close to Call
By the way, polls say the yes campaign is leading by a statistically insignificant 51% to 49%.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/feb/21/av-campaigns-icm-poll
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Lessons from Mao for 'Facebook Revolutionaries'
From Mao's Little Red Book:
(Chapter 5)
"Every Communist must grasp the truth: Power grows out of the barrel of a gun."
(Chapter 9)
"Without an Army for the people, there is nothing for the people."
The video from Iran Monday, the men named the chant, Mousavi and Karroubi, are opposition leaders.
Iran bloggers...take notice. And remember two years ago following elections a similar-looking uprising of the people to last week's events in Egypt was put down by the theocratic regime in Iran.
Was the only difference that in Egypt last week, the military sided with the protesters?
Peterson case makes history: First time for cameras in Illinois Appellate Court
The raw video of the proceedings of the Illinois Third Appellate Court is posted here. Prospective attorneys (like Y&G'ers) can use it for Springfield prep. For the rest of you, use it to consider the law in this high-profile case. As the Chicago Tribune reported Will County prosecutors actually argued against the state statute they helped to create, but may in fact, be unconstitutional.
Saddled with a botched police investigation several years ago, State's Attorney James Glasgow had pushed for a state statute that would allow hearsay statements against Peterson at trial. Dubbed Drew's Law by legal experts and legislators, he hailed the bill's passage as a way of letting Peterson's third and fourth wives speak from the grave.
Glasgow acknowledged the strange turn as he asked the Third District Appellate Court to ignore his statute in favor of the less-restrictive common law. "Ironically, I'm in a unique position here," he told the three-member panel. "I wrote the statute."
The proceedings -- which were televised live, a first in state history -- focused on prosecutors' desire to admit several hearsay statements at trial.
Glasgow's statute requires judges to consider two things: whether the statement is reliable and whether the bulk of the evidence shows that the defendant made the witness unavailable to testify.
After a landmark hearsay hearing last year, Judge Stephen White sided with prosecutors in finding that the preponderance of evidence suggested Peterson killed his third wife, Kathleen Savio, and caused his fourth wife Stacy Peterson's disappearance. The "preponderance" standard does not imply that Peterson would be found guilty at trial because the burden of proof is lower than the beyond-reasonable-doubt standard imposed on juries.
Though he ruled in the state's favor on that point, White still barred the majority of hearsay witnesses because they did "not provide sufficient safeguards of reliability."
On the eve of trial, Glasgow announced he would appeal the judge's ruling to help convict Peterson and let Savio speak from the grave. He argued that the judge's decision -- made under the guidelines established by Drew's Law -- should have adhered instead to less-restrictive common law.
Peterson's defense team likened the move to changing the rules in the middle of a game.
"They went out and wrote the law," defense attorney Steve Greenberg said. "Now they want to apply a different standard."
Appellate Judge Robert L. Carter acknowledged the prosecution's change of heart during Glasgow's arguments. "What do you want to hang on now?" he asked. "The common law or the statute?"
The common law, Glasgow said, as some in the gallery laughed.
http://www.wgntv.com/news/wgntv-drew-peterson-trial-feb15,0,6413497.story
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Foreign policy for 27 countries?
(From Ken Wedding's Teaching Comparative Blog)The growing pains for the new EU foreign policy are obvious. Especially in times of turmoil, making, publicizing, and implementing policy in one nation can be difficult. What if you're working with 27 negations? And, do you know why she's competing with the European Commission?
Europe’s Foreign Policy Chief, Struggling for Mandate, Faces Criticism on Uprisings
After President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt refused to step down… the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, issued a sharp statement saying that “the time for change is now” and that Mr. Mubarak “has not yet opened the way to faster and deeper reforms.”
Her rapid response was a marked change from the past few weeks, when she has been increasingly criticized as being painfully slow to respond to the crisis in Egypt and elsewhere…
It has been very difficult for Ms. Ashton, whose job was created in December 2009 by the Lisbon Treaty, to get ahead of the curve.
She must maneuver among the 27 member states — all with their own foreign ministers — as well as the European Union bureaucracy and the European Commission, run by José Manuel Barroso, who has foreign policy aspirations of his own…
On Jan. 29, to her embarrassment, the leaders of the most influential nations in the European Union — Germany, France and Britain — issued a statement calling for free and fair elections in Egypt in advance of a European foreign ministers’ meeting set for two days later, at which Ms. Ashton was scheduled to try to find a European consensus…
A senior aide to Ms. Ashton said that a clear European mandate was hard to achieve, with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy “saying Mubarak is great, France saying you can’t talk of free and fair elections now, and others saying you can’t tell Egyptians what to do.”…
“They want her to be Hillary Clinton, and that’s what she tries to be and wants to be,” the aide said. “But the states have to give her the tools and the mandate. If they want her to be the Hillary Clinton of Europe, give her the power.”
Part of Ms. Ashton’s problem is exactly that: the member states do not want to give her the power. They do not really want a European foreign minister…
Gerrymandering the Movie March 7 at NV
A great opportunity to increase your political efficacy as well as your grade (EC?) comes if you take advantage of the opportunity explained in the following press release from the League of Women Voters of Naperville:For Immediate Release:
The League of Women Voters of Naperville and the Social Studies Department of Neuqua Valley High School will sponsor two viewings of the documentary film “Gerrymandering” on Monday, March 7, and Tuesday, March 8. The 90-minute film details the history of drawing legislative districts as well as the abuses and consequences of the political choices, with a view to improving the process in the wake of the 2010 census. As Illinois and DuPage and Will Counties work to redraw district lines, this film will generate informed discussion between voters and lawmakers.
High School students from the area as well as the general public are invited to attend one of the showings of the film:
Monday, March 7, 6 pm Neuqua Valley High School
Tuesday, March 8, 7 pm Madden Theater, Lower Level of Wentz Auditorium
Information on the current redistricting activities in Illinois will be available and the audience is invited to stay for discussion of the film and its implications. This information opportunity is underwritten by the League of Women Voters of Illinois Education Fund._______________
For more on the movie, check out:
http://www.gerrymanderingmovie.com/
The Washington Post's Aaron Blake outlined the importance of the map drawing in the re-districting of Illinois:
This is the fourth in an occasional series that focuses on the decennial redistricting process in key states. We call it "Mapping the Future". The series aims to look forward to how the maps in these states could be drawn and what the best and worst outcomes for each party might be. Today we take on Illinois. (And make sure to check out the first three installments: Texas, Indiana and Georgia.)
When it comes to redistricting, Illinois is Democrats' prize pig. And it might be the biggest prize on the map for either party.
The Democrats control the drawing of the map in only seven states this year. But none of them compare in size or influence to the Land of Lincoln.
In fact, in the other six -- Massachusetts, Maryland, Connecticut, Arkansas, West Virginia and Rhode Island -- the Democrats already control 25 of 32 congressional seats. That doesn't leave much room for map expansion.
Illinois is another story. Republicans just won four seats from Democrats this November and now hold an 11-to-8 edge in the state's congressional delegation. That means lots of room for gains for the other guys.
"This is really the one state where Democrats can do something," said David Wasserman, a redistricting expert at the Cook Political Report.
Illinois Republicans are scared. And they should be.
Those who should be most concerned are four new members -- Reps.-elect Joe Walsh, Bob Dold, Bobby Schilling and Adam Kinzinger -- and a member who just won his second term, Rep. Aaron Schock.
Walsh and Dold just won districts in the northern Chicago suburbs/exurbs near the Wisconsin border. And there's plenty of Democratic territory that can be added to both of their districts by drawing in parts of the Rep. Jan Schakowsky's (D) 9th district and some of the more Democratic areas of Rep.-elect Randy Hultgren's (R) 14th district.
(Be sure to follow along on the congressional map here and, for a closer look at the Chicago area, here.)
Besides the maneuvering in the Chicago area, the main change will be the likely loss of a district somewhere in the state. This isn't a done deal yet (we'll find out Tuesday when reapportionment data is released by the Census Bureau -- an early Christmas present for political junkies!), but chances are reasonably good the state will drop from 19 districts to 18.
The axed district is expected to come out of the middle of the state, and that would hurt Schock the most, since his Peoria-based 18th district is the most centrally located.
Democrats could pretty easily run Schock out of a district by absorbing his district into the 17th to the west (soon to be held by Schilling), the 11th to the north (held by Kinzinger) and the 19th to the south (held by GOP Rep. John Shimkus).
Democrats could eliminate Schock's district and create a more friendly 17th by adding Democratic-leaning Peoria to the 17th and putting more GOP parts of the 17th and 18th into the 19th to the south, the 11th to the north and Rep. Tim Johnson's (R-Ill.) 15th district to the east. By doing that, two GOP districts suddenly morph into one Democratic-leaning district, while shoring up nearby Republicans.
Indeed, Schilling's 17th district was initially drawn (ahem ... creatively) for Democrats and was a surprising GOP pickup this year. So any further shift toward Democrats would make it very tough for Schilling to hold it. (President Obama won the seat by 15 points in 2008.)
It would also create a very tough situation for Schock, who is from Peoria. He would be faced with a choice between running in his home district against another GOP member of Congress, with a tough road ahead in the general election or potentially having to run in a primary against Kinzinger in a friendlier GOP district. (Wasserman explains the scenario further in a lengthy reapportionment preview today.
Schock and Kinzinger have close ties including sharing some campaign staff. It's hard to see them running against each other, but redistricting can lead to some tough choices.
A source close to Schock said the congressman is "well aware that the state may lose a seat, and Aaron's been preparing for what could and might happen" -- mostly by expanding his profile back home.
Kinzinger gains on the deal by getting a friendlier 11th district and more territory around his home in the Bloomington-Normal area. But those gains could be offset by the prospect of a primary against Schock.
By shifting Kinzinger's district south, Rep. Judy Biggert's (R) GOP-leaning 13th district southwest of Chicago could pick up some Democratic-leaning voters in Kane County and Will County -- both which have added significant population in recent years -- and make her district more marginal.
Adding Will County to Biggert's district could allow outgoing Rep. Debbie Halvorson (D), who lost to Kinzinger this year, to run for Biggert's seat when the 73-year-old congresswoman retires -- or if the Democrat decides to challenge the incumbent outright.
Of all the GOPers in the Chicago area, the two members west of Chicago -- Hultgren and Rep. Peter Roskam -- probably have the least to be concerned about. If Democrats try to pack the other districts with Democratic voters, the Republican areas have to go somewhere, and Roskam and Hultgren's districts are the most logical choices, given their current geographic bases.
All these changes considered, Democrats have a good shot at turning five Republican-held seats (Biggert, Schilling, Schock, Dold and Walsh) into four Democratic ones in the coming years (assuming one of those five districts is eliminated).
Another question for the map-drawers will be what to do with Rep. Luis Gutierrez's (D) C-shaped 4th district in Chicago -- a district that is often compared to a set of earmuffs. The district was drawn that way to incorporate most of the city's Hispanic voters both on the North and South Sides of Chicago, but as the Hispanic population has grown and other ethnicities have dropped off, a case can be made for drawing two separate Hispanic-majority districts.
That, of course, could heavily impact other Chicago members -- specifically, nearby Reps. Dan Lipinski (D) and Mike Quigley (D), who each have between 25 and 30 percent Hispanic districts and could see big changes.
But Rob Paral, a demographic expert at the University of Notre Dame, is skeptical that there is a good way to draw two Hispanic-majority districts. "The Latino population is so dispersed," said Paral, who specializes in Hispanic demography. "It doesn't look like it's there."
Gutierrez is open to the idea. That's important, because member input matters. The last time redistricting came around, members of the congressional delegation hammered out their own map and sent it to the state legislature for approval.
Of course, back then, there was split control of the process. Now, it's controlled by the Democrats, and all-powerful state House Speaker Mike Madigan (D) has the power to make or break several members of Congress.
With Democrats poised to bear the brunt of redistricting in so many states this year, they'll have to get their shots in where they can. Unfortunately for them, the opportunities begin and end with basically one state.
Expect an aggressive map.
Choose your weapon -- scalpel or machete?
Question: What is the difference between fiscal and monetary policy?
Answer: Fiscal = budgetary choices of taxing and spending
Question: What is the best way to attack the budget in 2011, with a scalpel or a machete?
Answer: Depends on who you ask, the President who submitted his 2011 $3.69 trillion budget this week, or the House Republicans who critiqued that in increasing the federal budget from $3.60 trillion in 2010, President Obama "punted" the fiscal train wreck once again.
The Two Teachers at CBS 2 School had their take, with a comparative analytical eye on the Grammy's:
Just look at this year’s Grammy winners and decide for yourself. President Obama could not have asked for a better opening act to his budget proposal this week.
Lady Antebellum, who brought both shock and awe to the Grammys this year, won big for their song, “Need You Now.” Equally showing shock and awe the president this week proposed his $3.7 trillion budget for 2012. The leadership from both political parties rained down criticism. Obama is going to need, at the very least, the help from his own Democratic Party.
President George W. Bush shocked us in 2002 by proposing a $2 trillion dollar budget. The trillion-dollar marker was first crossed back in 1967. It would not take another thirty years to add another trillion. Obama crossed into $3 trillion just six years later. Combined with historically high deficits today’s outrageous budget numbers make Lady Gaga look down right dull.
President Obama and his budget team are attempting to pass off these record deficits and debt by assuring us we were just “Born This Way.”
Strangely, the Republicans seem to be channeling Eminem. His most recent effort “Recovery” was the top selling album of 2010. The same could be said of the Republican Party. Aided by the Tea Party, Republicans have recovered their majority of the House of Representatives.
With their newfound confidence Republicans are “Not Afraid” to take a stand against the president and his “monsters.” Resurrecting memories from the Carter administration, House Speaker Boehner can be heard crying out, “Holla if you feel that you’ve been down the same road.”
The Grammy artist who seems to have touched closest to our nerves, however, is singer-songwriter Cee Lo Green. Some might remember him as vocalist of Gnarls Barkley and the smash hit “Crazy.” We were singing that song just as the unknown Barack Obama was deciding to run for president four years ago.
Today Cee Lo Green is singing a different tune.
He is no longer crazy. He is angry. The new normal is unacceptable.
His monster hit can be song in many different ways. Even Gwyneth Paltrow covered it during an episode of “Glee.” Cee Lo Green’s “Lady Killer” lyrics reflect the angst of our age.
President Obama is singing about mo’ green. You can understand if our first reaction is “Forget you.”
Obama: I didn't punt on entitlement reform in federal budget
(Christian Science Monitor)
Washington
President Obama pushed back Tuesday on bipartisan criticism that his 2012 budget proposal fails to address the unchecked growth of government entitlement programs – foremost Medicare and Medicaid, which are big contributors to the nation’s unsustainable fiscal picture.
In an hour-long press conference, Mr. Obama suggested the omission was by design, and that the goal is to reach consensus in a negotiation, not through public posturing. Obama also asserted that the report last December by his bipartisan deficit commission, which called for far steeper deficit reduction than in his 2012 budget, has not been “shelved;” it still provides the “framework” for a conversation.
"Look at the history of how these deals get done," Obama said. "Typically it's not because there's an Obama plan out there. It's because Democrats and Republicans are committed to tackling this in a serious way."
RELATED: Can economy's 2010 growth spurt last? Five clues.
Obama referred to the 1983 deal struck by President Ronald Reagan and Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill addressing the insolvency of Social Security as a model of bipartisan problem-solving. He suggested the same approach in tackling entitlement reform and tax reform.
“This is going to be a process in which each side, in both chambers of Congress, go back and forth and start trying to whittle their differences down until we arrive at something,” Obama said. That’s his “goal,” he said, not to “get a good headline on the first day.”
Patience urged for 'negotiation process'
Obama also chided the news media for being “pretty impatient,” not just on his approach to the deficit commission but also on Egypt, health-care reform, and repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” By referencing those three historic events that took place on his watch, Obama in effect promised progress, sooner or later, in addressing the nation’s structural deficits. He left the timing vague.
“We're going to be in discussions over the next several months,” he said. “I mean, this is going to be a negotiation process.”
When asked about the possibility of a government shutdown, if Congress and the president cannot agree upon funding levels beyond March 4, Obama again preached bipartisan negotiation. He warned against making “symbolic cuts” that could endanger the economic recovery.
“Let’s use a scalpel. Let’s not use a machete,” he said. “And if we do that, there should be no reason at all for a government shutdown.”
This NY Times graphic breaks down how the 2011 budget, if approved, will be spent:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/02/01/us/budget.html?src=tp
And here is a re-run graphic of what $1 trillion looks like....now times 3.69 and you have the 2011 Federal Budget.
Monday, February 14, 2011
The New Crusade? Inro to the Post-Communist World
Part Two:
Read and highlight the first two Chapters of the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels.
Friday, February 11, 2011
New Egyptian Nation Building: Stage One Historically Done
It took 18 days to topple an authoritarian regime in Egypt. What comes in the days to come will see if a new nation can rise from the bottom up like, well, the image fits, the Great Pyramids.
As the AP reported:
Egypt's youthful uprising has prevailed, after taking on for 18 days the full might of the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak, President for 30 years.
Soon after evening prayers were said, a grim faced Vice-President Omar Suleiman, a long-serving regime loyalist, announced on state television that Mr. Mubarak had resigned. He read out a statement: “President Hosni Mubarak has decided to step down from the office of President of the republic and has charged the High Council of the armed forces to administer the affairs of the country.”
Earlier during the day, Mr. Mubarak and his family left for the Red Sea resort city of Sharm-el-Sheikh, bringing the curtains down on an authoritarian era, which began when he assumed power in 1981 following the assassination of Anwar Sadat during a military parade.
Mr. Suleiman's words broadcast for less than 30 seconds were electrifying, causing the bottled up emotions of anxiety, defiance, courage and hope among the youthful protesters to explode. Some fainted with emotion at the Tahrir Square, which became an arena of unending celebrations; the sound of firecrackers was often drowned by the overhang of a deafening roar, which emerged from the joyous flag-waving masses.
“It is the beginning of a new Egypt which seems to have been cleansed and reborn,” a man at the square said. Others said they were experiencing a new sense of pride in being Egyptian. “I feel I am again empowered and in control of my destiny,” said Amira, an engineer and regular visitor to the square.
The deserved euphoria notwithstanding, some said the “revolution” was incomplete, expressing fears that the military might yet block the political space the pro-democracy movement, led by a new cyber-active generation, now wishes to occupy.
Analysts say that after the military's assertion, the country is returning to a model defined by Gamal Abdel Nasser, modern Egypt's founder, of running the state by an army officers' council. Defence Minister Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi has emerged as the new strongman and will remain so till the time the political transition is complete.
In a day of tumultuous developments, protesters, angered by Mr. Mubarak's Thursday night announcement that he was not immediately stepping down, decided to target more symbols of the regime. For the first time since the January 25 revolt began, protesters decided to directly take on the President by marching towards the heavily guarded presidential palace. A stand-off with the military had begun there but it melted into scenes of joy in the face of Mr. Mubarak's announced exit from the presidency.
Protesters also gathered in large numbers in Alexandria, outside yet another palace belonging to the former President. Besides, several hundred people surrounded the state television building, from where Mr. Mubarak's address was broadcast. Disregarding the extra layers of razor wire and heavy military presence, the protesters successfully blocked people from entering the building.
But as night thickened over Cairo, pro-democracy leader Mohamed ElBaradei poignantly said on his Twitter page: “Today, my dream has come true. Egypt has been going down the drain for the last few weeks and we need to get it back to where it should be… We need a democratic country based on social justice.”
_______________
Watch the historic events in Egypt closely. Analyze how things move from Tahrir Square from the first stage of nation building -- identity -- to the remaining five.
Identity, the people need to have a sense of belonging to a group. As quoted above Egyptian citizens have said they identify with their Egypt for the first time in their life.Legitimacy, a government must cultivate the respect and the willing obedience of its citizens. The regime must rule the people. So far, the people of Egypt respect the military, they did not respect the now ex-President.
Penetration, the government policies reach the people and people follow the policies.
Participation, the regime must allow the people to believe they participate in the regime.
Distribution, does the regime distribute services, and social justice as ElBaradei said above.
The first step in Nation Building is identity, which comes from a people, because they have a sense of belonging to a group. Identity must be from a grass roots level, it must be from the people. On a day that has been called the greatest in Egypt's history, where Egyptians have been seen willingly cleaning the streets, claiming ownership in their country, this has been accomplished in 18 days. What happens in the days to come will see if the seeds of democracy can take root.
The second and third steps have one theme in common, the obedience of the people to the government of men. How this plays out is still unsure. Stay tuned. Usually a military coup and democracy are not synonymous, but these are revolutionary times in Egypt.
Tom Friedman's take on Revolution impresses himself
Those of you who read Friedman over the summer should not be surprised by this, but the NY Times columnist quoted himself while writing today about events in Cairo. He then used another one of his classic aphorisms to describe the new-found identity Egyptians have in their home.
FAIR blogged these Friedman quips:
It might be hard for you to imagine covering the democratic uprising in Egypt as a way to reflect upon all the wise things you've written in the past.
But you're not Tom Friedman. He wrote today (New York Times, 2/11/11):
I spent part of the morning in the square watching and photographing a group of young Egyptian students wearing plastic gloves taking garbage in both hands and neatly scooping it into black plastic bags to keep the area clean. This touched me in particular because more than once in this column I have quoted the aphorism that "in the history of the world no one has ever washed a rented car." I used it to make the point that no one has ever washed a rented country either--and for the last century Arabs have just been renting their countries from kings, dictators and colonial powers. So, they had no desire to wash them.
That wasn't the first time Egypt reminded him of something smart he'd written (NBC's Meet the Press, 1/30/11):
For the first 15 years or so of his rule, Egypt really did stagnate. I visited, gosh, back 12 years ago. I remember writing that Mubarak had more mummies in his Cabinet than King Tut, OK. Then he slowly, under our pressure, and under the pressure, really, of globalization, started to open up. And in the last few years, actually appointed a lot of reformers to his Cabinet who produced a real opening, a 6 percent growth, I believe, last year.
Appearing on Charlie Rose last night (2/10/11), Friedman said this:
We've had this conversation before where we talked about the Iraq War and the whole idea of why it's important to democratize a place like Iraq. I think I said to you the old aphorism that in the history of the world no one has ever washed a rented car. And the point I made about Iraq is that no one's ever washed a rented country, either.
Is this guy wise or what?
Here is Friedman's interview with Charlie Rose :
//www.charlierose.com/view/content/11466
Tea-partiers today's Anti-Federalists?
The states-rights, neo-secessionist, small-government ideologues who seem to have taken over the Republican Party might have a coherent political philosophy. But their views align less with the constitutional framers than with their opponents, the Antifederalists. (An Opinion piece in the Christian Science Monitor, not usually lumped a a liberal rag sheet...except in the comment mode of this article)
One of the drums that the tea party beats again and again is that the Founders favored limited government because they thought the power of taxation was an essential tool of despotism. They argue that our current government, with its large and growing debt and with its tendency toward what some conservatives see as socialism, violates the small-government Constitution created by the Founders.
So concerned are the newly elected tea party members in Congress that they have threatened to bring the government to a standstill in the next couple of months by voting against a bill to raise the US debt ceiling, which caps the amount of money that the federal government is allowed to borrow.
With increasing frequency since budget deficits started soaring under George W. Bush, Congress has repeatedly raised the debt ceiling to avoid default and the temporary shut-down of the federal government, both of which threaten serious long-term economic consequences. But tea party proponents have argued that the debt must be contained as a first engagement in a longer battle to lower taxes, diminish federal expenditures, and return the federal government to the size and purpose intended by the Founders.
Tea partiers are today's Antifederalists
This argument is instructive, but not quite in the way that tea partiers imagine. Though the tea party’s philosophy is clear enough, it obscures a telling irony: Even though tea partiers appeal to the Constitution to support their position, they often sound more like Antifederalist opponents of the Constitution than the Constitution’s supporters.
This is because the original vision of the Constitution did not seek to keep the national government small and in its place, as the tea partiers claim. The Constitution sought, instead, to strengthen the national government in order to solve the problem of federal taxation.
That problem arose directly out of the War for Independence. After the American Revolution, the United States assumed the debts that state governments had incurred during the war. But, under the Articles of Confederation, the federal government had to go cap in hand to the states in order to ask for financial support.
This left the national government paralyzed, since states had, in the words of the Antifederalist William Grayson, “a disinclination to pay money” to the federal government.
This balance of power toward the states threatened to undermine the union of liberty for which the American Revolution was fought. To remedy the situation, the Federalist supporters of the new Constitution aimed to create a national government of enough power that it could levy so-called direct taxes, without the prior consent of the states, in order to support the national purposes that had created a national debt....
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2011/0210/Would-today-s-tea-party-have-opposed-the-US-ConstitutionWednesday, February 9, 2011
The Pint: A battle EU importers couldn't win
A classic blurb re-run to teach about the European Union and its struggles when its bureaucratic rules, backed up by legislation from the European Parliament, challenge national sovereignty, sparks fly. What's a sovereign nation to do?In this, the latest example involving the EU and its members, the EU bureaucrats, using their wide range of discretion, seem to have backed down.
We're bringing this battle to an end.'..."John Gardner, director of the pro-imperial British Weights and Measures Association, said: 'If a trader tries to conduct his business in just imperial measurements that will be illegal.'"The UK Metric Association said the statement does not mean that traders can go back to weighing and pricing in imperial measures, and it will be 'business as usual'..."Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Bono: EU definition lies eight miles away
In saying the West’s (particularly Europe’s) greatest depends on how it deals with Africa, Bono wrote in an essay in Time Magazine:
“Fast-forward 50 years. An Irish rock star reads the treaty with the enthusiasm a child has for cold peas but does uncover what I think technocrats might call poetry. Not much of it--just a turn of phrase here and there. Like Article 177, which summons the signatories to foster "the sustainable economic and social development of the developing countries and more particularly the most disadvantaged among them" and calls for a "campaign against poverty in the developing countries." Not exactly Thomas Jefferson but a glimpse of the kind of vision that might bind us.
Over the next 50 years, we might need a little more poetry. Europe is a thought that has to become a feeling--one based on the belief that Europe stands only if injustice falls and that we find our feet only when our neighbors stand with us in freedom and equality. Our humanity is diminished when we have no mission bigger than ourselves. And one way to define who we are might be to spend more time looking across the eight miles of Mediterranean Sea that separates Europe from Africa.
There's an Irish word, meitheal. It means that the people of the village help one another out most when the work is the hardest. Most Europeans are like that. As individual nations, we may argue over the garden fence, but when a neighbor's house goes up in flames, we pull together and put out the fire. History suggests it sometimes takes an emergency for us to draw closer. Looking inward won't cut it. As a professional navel gazer, I recommend against that form of therapy for anything other than songwriting. We discover who we are in service to one another, not the self.
Today many rooms in our neighbor's house, Africa, are in flames. From the genocide in Darfur to the deathbeds in Kigali, with six AIDS patients stacked onto one cot, from the child dying of malaria to the village without clean water, conditions in Africa are an affront to every value we Europeans have ever seen fit to put on paper. We see in Somalia and Sudan what happens if more militant forces fill the void and stir dissent within what is, for the most part, a pro-Western and moderate Muslim population. (Nearly half of Africa's people are devotees of Islam.) So whether as a moral or strategic imperative, it's folly to let this fire rage.”
The entire text of Bono’s essay is linked at the top. You, of course, can refer back to http://www.data.org/ and http://www.one.org/ for more information. The ONE Campaign is an example of a grassroots (really netroots) linkage institution.
As a group, the EU countries have committed 0.7% of GDP to help the poorest of the poor. So far, as the saying goes the check is, well, in the mail. At the end of the essay, the songwriter pens, “What will define Europe in this new era…..Part of the answer lines eight miles away.”
If only it could become a hit.
Monday, February 7, 2011
The Lords' Filibuster: Undignified and inefficent?
We never got through this whole short entertaining video in class about Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), which is part of the UK coalition government's bill that would call for a Voting Reform Referendum to be held. Labour is against the measure, because it would reduce the number of seats in the House of Commons from 650-to-600.From Ken Wedding's Comparative Government blog, the Lords are doing the delaying for Labour in a less than traditional way:
Undignified and inefficient?
Nearly 150 years ago, Walter Bagehot (in his book The English Constitution) drew a distinction between the dignified and efficient parts of the British regime. The dignified part represented the nation and "excited" the loyalty of the people. The efficient part of the regime did the "work of government."
The monarchy obviously was "dignified." Commons was "efficient," even if it got bogged down in political wrangling sometimes.
In the last 150 years, the House of Lords became more and more an element of the dignified part of the UK regime. However, its ability to "excite" the loyalty of the people has been questionable. Questionable to the point that there are suggestions floating about to abolish the Lords or to make it an elected body.
Recently the debate about alternative voting in the UK has dragged the House of Lords directly into the political fray. Observers like the New York Times' Sarah Lyall wonder whether Lords is dignified or efficient. How dignified can it be when peers drag out cots for naps during all-night debates like common state legislators in the US? And how efficient can they be when legislation is stalled by what amounts to a filibuster?
Election Bill Erodes Decorum in House of Lords
It was nearly midnight on Day 12 of the most grueling debate in recent House of Lords memory, and not all the Lords present were, strictly speaking, awake. But the Right Honorable Lord Davies of Oldham was warming to the question of the hour: a proposal to change “may” to “should” on Page 10, Line 7, of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill…
Give him points for enthusiasm, at least. With the coalition government and the Labour opposition both refusing to compromise on a measure that has severely divided them, the debate had already ground on for 98 hours across several weeks. The peers are not the youngest group of people ever to populate a legislature, and on Monday, after several all-nighters, some Lords were reaching the outer limits of coherence, patience and stamina…
The bill would trigger a referendum May 5 on whether to change the way election votes are calculated, and it would redraw Britain’s parliamentary boundaries, reducing the number of seats in the House of Commons to 600, from 650. The coalition government wants it, because it would fulfill the Liberal Democrats’ pledge to enact voting reform, and because the Conservatives would benefit from the boundary changes.
Labour is resisting because, while it supports voting reform, it vehemently opposes the redistricting proposal. The measure must become law by Feb. 16 in order for the May 5 referendum to proceed, and Labour is determined to delay the bill so that it misses the deadline.
Normally, opposition parties adopt a spirit of compromise and bonhomie in the House of Lords. Not this time. The government seems unwilling to budge, and Labour has resorted to virtually unprecedented delaying tactics.
These include proposing picayune amendments — more than 270 so far — discussing them for hours, and then, because they have no chance of passage, withdrawing them…
At one point during last Monday’s all-night session, Baron Trefgarne, a Conservative, drew gasps from other Lords when, saying he was fed up with the “abuse of the procedures of this house,” set in motion a procedural tool to bring an end to debate on the amendment in question — the first time such a tool has been used in 40 years, and only the sixth or seventh time since 1900...
//www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/world/europe/26lords.html
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Scandal Between the Sheets in Parliament?
//www.mizozo.com/weird/02/2011/04/sally-bercow-wife-of-the-speaker-of-britain-s-hous....html
Would this be different if it was, say, the U.S. Speaker of the House's wife?
BTW, here is a brief Bio on the British Speaker and his role in the House of Commons (from Wikipedia):
The Speaker of the House of Commons is the presiding officer of the House of Commons, the United Kingdom's lower chamber of Parliament. The current Speaker is John Bercow, who was elected on 22 June 2009, following the resignation of Michael Martin. He was returned as a MP in the 2010 general election and was re-elected as Speaker when the House sat at the start of the new Parliament on 18 May 2010.
The Speaker presides over the House's debates, determining which members may speak. The Speaker is also responsible for maintaining order during debate, and may punish members who break the rules of the House. Unlike presiding officers of legislatures in many other countries, the Speaker remains strictly non-partisan, and renounces all affiliation with his former political party when taking office. The Speaker does not take part in debate nor vote (except to break ties, and even then, subject to conventions that maintain his or her non-partisan status), although the Speaker is still able to speak. Aside from duties relating to presiding over the House, the Speaker also performs administrative and procedural functions, and remains a constituency Member of Parliament (MP). The Speaker has the right and obligation to reside in the Parliamentary estate, near to Big Ben.[1]
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Can't Search for "Egypt" in China
(from the apgov.org blog)
Check out this post about the Chinese Government regulating what Chinese citizens can see about the Crisis in Egypt.
Separate and Equal Branch?
Last weekend when talking on CNN about raising the debt ceiling to avoid a shutdown of the government, NY Senator Chuck Schumer mis-spoke about the three branches of government..."the House, the Senate and the President." Embarrassing when hopefully any one of my students could have taken him to task on the sound-byte blooper.
But if he followed the latest news of the Judicial Branch, Schumer may have wanted to forget the political actions that should concern those who want a "Separate, But Equal," Federal Judicial Branch that protects our Rule of Law.
First,
(From Jonathan Cohn, in the New Republic on the Federal Court ruling that the Affordable Health Care Act was unconstitutional)Did Roger Vinson, the federal judge who on Monday ruled the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional, have a particularly conservative take on politics as well as the law? His ruling certainly suggests as much. There’s what looks like a shout-out to the Tea Party — specifically, a reference to the American Colonists’ outrage over the tax on tea. (Page 42.) There’s the gratuitous reference to General Motors as “partially government-owned.” (Page 45.) And there’s the use of President Obama’s campaign rhetoric against the law Obama now supports. (Page 68).
Nor is the first time a judge invalidating the Affordable Care Act may have tipped his political hand. Henry Hudson, the federal judge who issued a narrower ruling against the law late last year, noted in his decision that the bill was rushed through the legislative process — which is a strange way to describe a law nearly fourteen months in gestation, unless you are trying to argue there was something fundamentally illegitimate about the process that produced it.
But perhaps the clearest indicator of bias in the decisions against the Affordable Care Act is the gist of the decisions themselves. For generations, conservatives have championed “judicial restraint.” If judicial restraint means anything, it means deferring to the Congress on matters of policy preference — like, for example, whether it’s better to run a national health insurance system with a system of regulated private insurance (which is what people will get with the Affordable Care Act) rather than via a single-payer, government-run plan (which is what the elderly already get with Medicare). But if these these decisions by Judges Vinson and Hudson carry the day — and, please remember, two federal judges have already ruled the other way — they would effectively take that discretion away from the Congress.
//blog.cagle.com/2011/02/shocker-a-court-decision-tinged-with-politics/
Next,
The NY Times reports on Virgina Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, setting up a "Conservative Lobbying Shop" in Washington, D.C. to have "hands-on operational duties on Capitol Hill:
WASHINGTON — The wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, who has raised her political profile in the last year through her outspoken conservative activism, is rebranding herself as a lobbyist and self-appointed “ambassador to the Tea Party movement.”
Virginia Thomas, the justice’s wife, said on libertyinc.co, a Web site for her new political consulting business, that she saw herself as an advocate for “liberty-loving citizens” who favored limited government, free enterprise and other core conservative issues. She promised to use her “experience and connections” to help clients raise money and increase their political impact.
Ms. Thomas’s effort to take a more operational role on conservative issues could intensify questions about her husband’s ability to remain independent on issues like campaign finance and health care, legal ethicists said.
Justice Thomas “should not be sitting on a case or reviewing a statute that his wife has lobbied for,” said Monroe H. Freedman, a Hofstra Law School professor specializing in legal ethics. “If the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned, that creates a perception problem.”
Ms. Thomas’s founding of her own political consulting shop, Liberty Consulting, was first reported Thursday by Politico, which said she had begun reaching out to freshmen Republicans in Congress.
The move comes a few months after she gave up the top spot at Liberty Central, a conservative Web site that she founded in 2009 and that has strong links to the Tea Party movement.
An anonymous $500,000 donation to start up Liberty Central came from Harlan Crow, a Dallas real estate investor and Republican financier, Politico reported.
Mr. Crow, reached by phone Friday, would not say whether he was the source of the money. “I disclose what I’m required by law to disclose,” he said, “and I don’t disclose what I’m not required to disclose.”
Ms. Thomas did not respond to telephone and e-mail requests for an interview on Friday. The Daily Caller reported in December that she had said in an interview that she was looking forward to a new role involving “lobbying on Capitol Hill” and a variety of other hands-on operational duties.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Democracy? Sharia law in Egypt if a majority 'allows it'
In the current turmoil in Egypt, one of the oldest and biggest opposition parties, the Muslim Brotherhood, has kept a low profile.
Banned in the past, it is now keen to play a greater political role in a post-Mubarak Egypt.
BBC HARDtalk's Zeinab Badawi speaks to Kamal El-Helbawy, a member and former spokesman of the Muslim Brotherhood, about whether the party will attempt to implement Islamic law in Egypt.
In 2008, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, sparked a stormy debate when he appeared to suggest that some aspects of Sharia law should be adopted in the UK.
//news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7232661.stmA parallel system does already exist in several countries, including Nigeria, which we will study later in the semester. The BBC reports:
//news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7235357.stm
A Flurry of Snow Day Thoughts
City Defends Decision to Leave Lake Shore Drive Open: MyFoxCHICAGO.com
Snow Day Thoughts:
Politics is Easy Governing is Hard
Notice how nobody has heard from Rahm, Gery Chico, Carol Mosely Braun or Miguel De Valle the past two days. Wonder how their snow removal plans would have worked?
Then again, we also haven't heard much from Mayor Daley. To me he seemed checked out and sent his Chief of Staff to face an avalanche of questions about the Lake Shore Drive fiasco.
Depending on who you listened to, that was either good, or bad political strategy:Fran Spielman of the Sun-Times said that Daley learned from the 1979 "Bilandic Blizzard" that cost Michael Bilandic the mayor's race, to Jane Byrne, and his image:
"A few inches of snow and 32 years separate the Blizzards of `79 and 2011. But from a public relations standpoint, they were worlds apart.
The late Mayor Michael Bilandic was publicly vilified — and ultimately booted out of office — for mismanaging post-storm communications even more than he botched the city’s emergency response to the storm.
Under retiring Mayor Daley — who has nothing but his legacy to preserve — image management has been flawless, even if storm management wasn’t.
As many as 900 vehicles, including CTA buses, were stuck on Lake Shore Drive for hours after three accidents in 28 minutes, followed by ramp closures caused by high winds, drifting snow and white-out conditions.
Ray Orozco, the mayor’s chief of staff, responded to the interminable wait by apologizing to motorists for the inconvenience — even as he defended the city’s decision to keep the Drive open.
“While city personnel worked as quickly as possible to get motorists, buses and cars off the Drive, we certainly understand everyone’s frustration ... We know that hundreds of people were very inconvenienced, and we apologize for that,” Orozco said.
“Nevertheless, it was clear that thousands and thousands of motorists leaving the Loop were relying on [Lake Shore Drive] as a major artery to get home. ... We did not want to eliminate that option for those motorists, further pushing that large quantity of vehicles to arterial streets that could clog up those roads, maybe cause more accidents or hamper emergency response.”
Orozco urged motorists to call 311 to identify one of five locations where their abandoned vehicles had been towed. He even offered them free gas.
He also didn’t make the mistake of over-promising. He vowed to “eventually re-open Lake Shore Drive when we believe it is safe to do so.” But, he initially refused to say when that would be."
//www.suntimes.com/news/politics/3623320-418/bilandic-mayor-storm-drive-motorists.htmlNBC Chicago's Ward Room had a different take:
"When severe weather strikes, city officials always issue a reminder that the more fortunate among us should check on our poor, our infirm and our seniors.
Has anyone checked on Richard and Maggie Daley?
The mayor, who has in the past called himself "the most accessible public official you've ever met," has been strangely absent since Mother Nature unleashed her winter fury over Chicagoland.
There was word that Daley was going to address the public during a press conference at the Office of Emergency Management and Communications on Wednesday afternoon, but he apparently backed out, leaving his chief of staff, Ray Orozco, to face the cameras...
But the main department head in this city is Daley, and while he's been known to dodge questions in the past, his absence in the wake of what became the third-biggest winter storm in Chicago's history is uncharacteristic.
While the men who want to be mayor are pushing cars and digging out neighbors, the man who is mayor isn't taking questions.
In the end, maybe he doesn't have to. The lame-duck mayor will be out of office in a little more than three months.
But it's interesting that a massive snow storm -- like the one that many say was the downfall of the late Mayor Michael Bilandic -- would leave some wondering what's going on at City Hall."
Robo Calls
I received two calls from the City of Aurora to tell me not to go outside and and three calls and six e-mails from District 204 to tell me that school was canceled for the past two days. While canceling in the middle of the afternoon on Wednesday for Thursday, may have seemed earlier than usual, local governments are trying to stay ahead of the curve in providing information to their citizens.
Some I know criticized the calling off today. That's what we do in our democracy. But I just appreciated the efficient use of technology to help get the message out early.
Snow Day Tea Party?
If less-government, Tea Party Patriots were running things all over, whose job would it be to move the snow in places like Chicago, Naperville and Aurora. Government bad, but snow removal good.....once again, Politics is Easy, Governing in a 20-inch snow fall with drifts is Hard.
From the Peoples World Blog:
"Our nation is experiencing what is being described as the largest snowstorm in the country's history. This massive storm is spread over 30 states and weather experts are saying it is going to leave a foot of snow stretching some 2,100 miles....
Meanwhile, governors and mayors are cutting back services and laying off tens of thousands of skilled public workers, replacing them with non-union private contractors with some working overtime, but they don't have the capacity to solve crises such as this one....
There's a real problem here, people! It is the role of government to do something about it. This is a national emergency and people are in danger. The government must act.
There are 15 million unemployed in our nation. Many are able-bodied, ready and willing to work. It's time to hire the unemployed at union wages and help save lives and clean up this mess.
Laid off public workers should be the first to be hired back. The money should come out of federal disaster funds and from taxing the rich individuals and corporations who are hoarding billions and refusing to invest in the American people.
The right-wing corporate-financed Republican and tea party fanatics only want to talk about high taxes and big government. The truth is that public workers and government are key to our everyday ability to function as a nation."
//peoplesworld.org/hire-the-unemployed-to-meet-the-snow-emergency/Two Year Anniversary: 4 inches of Snow had London Crawling
Not sure if getting all the unemployed to remove snow works, but unitary national government's like the UK have had snow troubles, too. As reported two years ago yesterday, London was shut down after just 4 inches of the white stuff:
LONDON (AP) — It was hardly a blizzard, but it still shut down the city that beat the Blitz.
The biggest snowfall to hit London in 18 years idled the city's trademark red buses and Underground trains Monday, stranded thousands of airline passengers, and raised the vexing question of why a predicted winter storm caught authorities so unprepared.
Transit officials had nearly a week to get ready, but they failed to keep things running normally in the capital, which was buried under more than four inches of snow overnight and another four inches in the afternoon.
Londoners who needed to get somewhere often found they couldn't — unless they were willing to walk for miles.
"There's no point in going to work today," said office worker Caroline Samuel after waiting for an Underground train that never arrived. "I'm going home."
All five of the capital's airports briefly shut down — with nearly 800 flights canceled throughout the day and thousands of passengers stranded. An international flight skidded off a taxiway at Heathrow, causing no injuries.
Buses kept off streets
The city's extensive bus network was completely closed for most of the day and many trains simply didn't run.
Colossal traffic jams clogged roads because of fender benders and more serious accidents.
London Mayor Boris Johnson conceded that the city lacked the plows and other equipment — mostly because buying it is a gamble with big snowfalls so rare here.
The usually upbeat mayor said "the volume of snow was so huge" that the city's efforts to keep up were doomed and that skidding buses could become "a lethal weapon."
The mayor's official spokesman denied that concerns about insurance coverage led to the decision to keep the buses off the streets.
"It never got that far," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with department policy. "It was a basic safety issue. It might have caused some inconvenience, but it's nothing compared to the damage that could be done by a 12-ton vehicle cruising over crushed ice. The roads weren't fit."
Richard Tracey, a Conservative Party member of London's city council, told the British Broadcasting Corp. that the bus company's willingness to deal with snow is different than in past years because of growing levels of health and safety legislation.
"I think the public are prepared to go out, but the bus drivers and the companies won't drive if there's even the tiniest risk of the bus skidding and people being injured," Tracey said. "Government legislation, European legislation and all that, that's what stops these things."
Former Mayor Ken Livingstone blasted London's storm preparations. He said it had been more than a century since the city buses were idled.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the government was doing "everything possible" to keep transit systems operating.
The harsh conditions led to hundreds of school closures, and many courts shut as well, including London's landmark Old Bailey. Hospitals remained open, but staffing levels were reduced.
A Transport for London spokesman said the agency must largely rely on London's local councils to treat roads — and that not all of the councils have the same level of ability to deal with a heavy snowfall."We're not in Russia here," said Guy Pitt, a press officer for the agency. "We don't have an infrastructure built for constant snow."
Mayor comes out defends City response: This is not the 'Daley Show'
On Thursday afternoon, the day after the groundhog day, Mayor Daley came out for Q & A with the press. He has a bit more than 6 weeks left (the new mayor takes office May 16), but this may be one of the last times to witness classic city mayor spar with those on the beat. Great stuff.