Posts by Graeme Edgeler
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Waaay to early to draw heaps from them
Well cnn are already predicting a Huckabee win...
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It's all very nineteenth century, isn't it?
Early 20th century, actually. The first primary wasn't held until 1910 (it was very much closed shop until then).
while I'm at it: why are the states determining primary dates? Isn't it the private business of the local party, and no business of the state government?
You could make an argument, but if you're running an election and want to state government to pay for polling clerks and voter education etc. you probably can't complain too much.
And if you treat the parties as essentially private organisations, then they're permitted to refuse access on the basis of colour, or sex etc. And could even get in trouble with the US Constitution in that regard.
That said, some state regulation of primaries has been held to breach the guarantee of freedom of association under the first amendment. California proposition 198 - which passed requiring it's primaries to be open was quashed by the Supreme Court. And a Connecticut law requiring a closed primary was also quashed. The date on which a primary is to be held just obviously isn't (yet) considered integral to free speech as freedom of association is.
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Would be nice if McCain makes a credible showing (despite pretty much joining Guiliani in passing on Iowa and New Hampshire)
Giuliani may be passing on the small early contests to focus on some big races (a very risky strategy that must account in part of his long slide in the polls over the course of 2007), but New Hampshire is where McCain is pinning all his hopes.
There's a suggestion recently too that if Fred Thompson doesn't finish in the top two, that he'll urge his supporters to back McCain - which would be nice.
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First?
:-)
Now it really is hours to go. Anyone prepared to buck the trend of punditry everywhere and make solid prediction?
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his knighthood was not greeted with mean-spirited and defamatory accusations like this
Well, blogs weren't all that big at the time :-) And anyway, is what DPF said in his "cash for honours" post all that far from what I/S said in his:
Bluntly, this smells. It reeks. It stinks of payback, of rewarding your donors, of Blairite corruption and the UK's "cash for honours" scandal.
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As I said, it's a legitimate story; it was just the Herald's treatment of it that rankled
If the story is that someone bought an honour, then it is the big story of the day - no matter who else got one, or how.
If that's not what happened, then I don't see that it's much of a story at all.
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No matter what he's done, it just looks unseemly.
Which is why those who perhaps really deserve it are nicely awarded by the other party. Jenny Shipley got her dame-hood equivalent from Labour, and I suspect Helen Clark will get something from National if she loses the next election.
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I think the restriction of donations to NZ nationals (which would also include National's major donors) was in the EFA right from the start ...
It wasn't. The EFA as introduced contained nothing new on donations - all of that was introduced in the select committee.
The story (which hasn't really been denied) is that the select committee had officials draft a bunch of additional crack-downs, among which was a limitation on large donations from people not entitled to vote (e.g. foreigners not on the electoral roll). It was pointed out by someone from National (Ryall, I think?) that this would ban Owen Glenn from donating.
A recess was called, discussions were held in private between Labour and its support parties on the committee, and a new draft provision came back which allowed citizens to donate, even if ineligible to vote (to get on an electoral roll, you need to have resided in the electorate for a month).
whatever the bill's flaws, I suspect that most people would have sympathy with the idea of preventing wealthy foreign interests from influencing elections. Britain has a similar restriction.
Heaps of places have similar restrictions. The US has a complete ban (even on permanent residents living ... um ... permanently in the US). But then the US has a ban on company donations, union donations, and limits people to donations of $2300 to a presidential candidate... :-)
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They really should have brought those figures into line...
Well ... I did tell them to.
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Can you imagine the crap we'll have to endure there? The hysterical advertising campaigns from the deep pockets of Family First?
Deep pockets ... limited to spending not the $120,000 in the Electoral Finance Act, but the $50,000 in the Citizens Initiated Referenda Act.