Political lobbying explained through the example of all-pay auctions

President Jose Manuel Zelaya was arrested at his residence by the military on Sunday June 28, 2009 and flown to Costa Rica. He had promised to put a referendum on the ballot that would change Honduras’ laws, allowing him to run for another term. The Supreme Court had previously ruled that the referendum was illegal. Around 100 Zelaya supporters protested the arrest by blocking the gates to the presidential palace and throwing stones at soldiers. It is not clear who has control of the executive branch at this time, but the constitution of Honduras says the head of congress would succeed the president. (From Wiki)

CNN has more information.

State Department to Twitter: Keep Iranian tweets coming

Senior officials say the State Department is working with Twitter and other social networking sites to ensure Iranians are able to continue to communicate to each other and the outside world.

…they do want to make sure the technology is able to play its sorely-needed role in the crisis, which is why the State Department is advising social networking sites to make sure their networks stay up and running for Iranians to use them and helping them stay ahead of anyone who would try to shut them down.

For example, senior officials say the State Department asked Twitter to refrain for going down for periodic scheduled maintenance at this critical time to ensure the site continues to operate. Bureau’s and offices across the State Department, they say, are paying very close attention to Twitter and other sites to get information on the situation in Iran.

[From CNN blog]

Summary

The longtime host of the award-winning Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman has steadfastly covered grassroots activism, the political process, and government accountability. She has co-authored many books with her brother and fellow journalist, David Goodman.

Their collaborations include investigations into the mercenary aspects of war, media culpability, freedom of information, and international human rights, and seek not only to expose endemic corruption, but also to affect change.

Their bestselling book, The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them, examines the full political spectrum, from The Washington Post to Bill Clinton, in an effort to bring genuine accountability into public discourse. The Goodmans’ latest project is Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times. Standing Up to the Madness celebrates grassroots activists across America and the power of the individual to bring change on a local and national level.

Amy and David Goodman: Standing Up to the Madness

“Right now we have Low Thia Khiang, Chiam See Tong, Steve Chia. We can deal with them. Suppose you had 10, 15, 20 opposition members in Parliament. Instead of spending my time thinking what is the right policy for Singapore, I’m going to spend all my time thinking what’s the right way to fix them, to buy my supporters votes, how can I solve this week’s problem and forget about next year’s challenges?”
Lee Hsien Loong, 3 May 2006.

“…you have to pay the market rate or the man will up stakes and join Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers or Goldman Sachs and you would have an incompetent man and you would lose money by the billions!”
Lee Kuan Yew said on April 2007

“For a person who runs a million-dollar charitable organisation, $600,000 is peanuts as it has a few hundred millions in reserves.”
Mrs Goh Chok Tong

“If you don’t include your women graduates in your breeding pool and leave them on the shelf, you would end up a more stupid society… So what happens? There will be less bright people to support dumb people in the next generation. That’s a problem.”
Lee Kuan Yew in 1983

“Only 5% are unemployed. We still have 95% who are employed.”
Yeo Cheow Tong

“Retrenchment is good for Singapore. If there is no retrenchments, then I worry.”
Goh Chok Tong

“We must encourage those who earn less than $200 per month and cannot afford to nurture and educate many children never to have more than two… We will regret the time lost if we do not now take the first tentative steps towards correcting a trend which can leave our society with a large number of the physically, intellecually and culturally anaemic.”
Lee Kuan Yew in 1967

“Contrary to public perception, the White Horse classification is not to ensure that sons of influential men gets preferential treatment. Instead it is to ensure that they do not get preferential treatment.”
Cedric Foo

“No, it was not a U-turn, and neither was it a reversal of government policy. But you can call it a rethink.”
Yeo Cheow Tong

“I give you an example: you put out a fun podcast, you talk about”bak chor mee’; I will say “mee siam mai hum”, then we compete.”
Lee Hsien Loong

“I don’t think that there should be a cap on the number of directorship that a person can hold.”
PAP MP John Chen who holds 8 directorships

“It’s not for the money because some of the companies pay me as little as $10,000 a year.”
PAP MP Wang Kai Yuen who holds 11 directorships.

“We started off with (the name) and after looking at everything, the name that really tugged at the heartstrings was in front of us. The name itself is not new, but what has been used informally so far has endeared itself to all parties.”
Mah Bow Tan on the $400,000 exercise to rename Marina Bay as Marina Bay.

“Having enjoyed football as a national sport for decades, we in Singapore have set ourselves the target of reaching the final rounds of World Cup in 2010.”
Ho Peng Kee

“I would want to form an alternative policies group in Parliament, comprising 20 PAP MPs. These 20 PAP MPs will be free to vote in accordance with what they think of a particular policy. In other words, the whip for them will be lifted. This is not playing politics, this is something which I think is worthwhile doing.”
Goh Chok Tong

“If you want to dance on a bar top, some of us will fall off the bar top. Some people will die as a result of liberalising bar top dancing – a young girl with a short skirt dancing on it may attract some insults from some other men, the boyfriend will start fighting and some people will die.”
Vivian Balakrishnan, Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports

“People support CPF cuts because there are no protest outside Parliament.”
Lee Hsien Loong

“Save on one hairdo and use the money for breast screening.”
Lim Hng Kiang

“Singaporean workers have become more expensive than those in the USA and Australia.”
Tony Tan

“I regret making the decision because, in the end, the baby continued to be in intensive care, and KKH now runs up a total bill of more than $300,000″
Lim Hng Kiang, regretting the decision to save a baby’s life because KKH ran up a $300,000 bill

“Without the elected president and if there is a freak result, within two or three years, the army would have to come in and stop it.”
Lee Kuan Yew Kuan Yew

“Please do not assume that you can change governments. Young people don’t understand this”
Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, post-2006 General Elections

“How much do you want? Do you want three meals in a hawker centre, food court or restaurant?”
Dr Vivian Balakrishnan

“People could buy frozen food instead of more expensive fresh food… They could opt for house brand goods, which cost less than others..”
Lee Hsien Loong

“Based on figures provided by ComfortDelGro, Singapore’s biggest taxi operator, cabbies are pocketing about $11 more a day, earning about $318.”
Mr. Raymond Lim

“GST hike is to help the poor.”
Lee Hsien Loong

“I mean, we are different. This was a lapse, what to do, it’s happened.”
Lee Hsien Loong

“You know, the cure for all this talk is really a good dose of incompetent government. You get that alternative and you’ll never put Singapore together again: Humpty Dumpty cannot be put together again…and your asset values will be in peril, your security will be at risk and our women will become maids in other people’s countries, foreign workers.”
Lee Kuan Yew – Justifying pay hikes for Singapore ministers, The Straits Times, 5 April 2007

“This should never have happened. I am sorry that it has.”
Wong Kan Seng

“Every month, when I receive my CPF statement, I feel so rich and the best part is, I know the CPF money won’t run away. CPF will still be around for a long, long time to come. Not only is it earning good interest, my capital is protected.”
Lim Swee Say

All quotations are attached with little to none context. They may not be representative at all. Read it for leisure only.

PM: Rice left embarrassed in UN vote

The Security Council resolution passed on Friday calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza was a source of embarrassment for US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who helped prepare it but ultimately was ordered to back down from voting for it and abstain, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Monday.

Rice did not end up voting for Resolution 1860, thanks to a phone conversation Olmert held with US President George Bush shortly before the vote, the prime minister told a meeting of local authority heads in Ashkelon as part of a visit to the South.

Upon receiving word that the US was planning to vote in favor of the resolution – viewed by Israel as impractical and failing to address its security concerns – Olmert demanded to get Bush on the phone, and refused to back down after being told that the president was delivering a lecture in Philadelphia. Bush interrupted his lecture to answer Olmert’s call, the premier said.

America could not vote in favor of such a resolution, Olmert told Bush. Soon afterwards, Rice abstained when votes were counted at the UN. (Source: JPost)

Sometimes siding allies can go a little too far.

All politicians are prone to make slips of the tongue in the heat of the moment – and President George W Bush has made more than most.

The word “Bushism” has been coined to label his occasional verbal lapses during eight years in office, which come to an end on 20 January. (Source: BBC)

And out of the list of memorable quotes compiled by BBC, here are some worthy mentions:

1. “They misunderestimated me.” 
   Bentonville, Arkansas, 6 November, 2000
2. “There’s an old saying in Tennessee – I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee – that says, fool me once, shame on… shame on you. Fool me – you can’t get fooled again.”
   Nashville, Tennessee, 17 September, 2002
3. “I want to thank my friend, Senator Bill Frist, for joining us today. He married a Texas girl, I want you to know. Karyn is with us. A West Texas girl, just like me.”
   Nashville, Tennessee, 27 May, 2004
4. “The ambassador and the general were briefing me on the – the vast majority of Iraqis want to live in a peaceful, free world. And we will find these people and we will bring them to justice.”
   Washington DC, 27 October, 2003
5. “You know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror.”
   CBS News, Washington DC, 6 September, 2006
6. “You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.”
   Townsend, Tennessee, 21 February, 2001
7. “It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it.”
   Reuters, 5 May, 2000
8. “Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB/GYN’s aren’t able to practice their love with women all across the country.”
   Poplar Bluff, Missouri, 6 September, 2004
9. “I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.”
   Saginaw, Michigan, 29 September, 2000
10. “That’s George Washington, the first president, of course. The interesting thing about him is that I read three – three or four books about him last year. Isn’t that interesting?”
    Speaking to reporter Kai Diekmann, Washington DC, 5 May, 2006
11. “And truth of the matter is, a lot of reports in Washington are never read by anybody. To show you how important this one is, I read it, and [Tony Blair] read it.”
    On the publication of the Baker-Hamilton Report, Washington DC, 7 December, 2006
12. “I’ll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office.”
    Washington DC, 12 May, 2008

I think I’m going to miss his jokes when he leaves. Obama doesn’t make too many funny mistakes.

This reminds me of Civilization IV where the internet upgrade icon as Al Gore’s head which I thought is just brilliant.

Carly Fiorina, a McCain advisor, was asked if she thinks Sarah Palin is ready to lead a company like HP. To which Fiorina responded, “No, I don’t, but you know what? That’s not what she’s running for.” Fiorina then clarifies that running a company is different from running a country.

It’s okay, ahem, the fundamentals of our economy are strong.

I love to see what the McCain camp has to say about technology. They haven’t exactly been the tech guys in politics and, if anything, they’re rather anti-Internet. McCain himself confessed he couldn’t do these techie stuff.

Then, oops, yesterday morning, a couple hours before the event began, the McCain camp emailed to say that, actually, no, sorry, Holtz-Eakin can’t make it for the 12:30 debate. Apparently he had very important meetings to attend. Right. Apparently, though, he stepped out in the middle. At 1pm he was on MSNBC attacking Obama, trying to tie him to George Bush’s economic policies. Meanwhile, Reed Hundt ended up talking about complicated tech issues alone. The event was still fascinating (and you can see video here) but a huge opportunity was lost.

In short: the McCain camp chickened out. Spinning is easy; debating is hard. And defending John McCain’s record on broadband deployment, spectrum issues, and net neutrality is particularly hard. “If I was voting on technology issues only, even I wouldn’t support McCain,” said one Republican who I interviewed while researching the scorecard. (Source: Wired)

But no. McCain camp won’t be doing tech talks. Gobama 2008.

The thing that got me interested in politics is not the results the politicians are going to deliver. After all, staying thousands of miles away from the USA makes little difference on who’s elected anyway. What made me look at politics is the speeches, or more precisely, the ingenious use of the English language to reach people emotionally.

Introducing characters is just one way of doing so. As stupid as these phrases sound, people actually remember them. You can laugh at time but as long as you talk about it (even in a negative way), you are spreading the point of the politicians indirectly.

I think of these characters as stock characters (in the theater arts way) as they’re recycled time and again for every election. And politicians would just rebrand them in some little ways to make them sound new again.

McCain-Palin campaign has numerous such characters. I’m sick of them but I still laugh at them (alone, since no one bothers about US in Singapore). Anyway, here’s one endorsed by the Obama campaign:

Obama campaign introduces Al the shoesalesman

Find out your tax cut under Barack’s plan at http://taxcut.barackobama.com whether you’re single or married with children.

Previously John McCain repeated mentioned Joe the Plumber during his speeches, claiming he is a concern citizen who prefers the McCain tax plans.

Just to digress

For those people who knows the location of my other blog, it’s a tough decision if I want to put this post in this blog or that which is rather US. In the end I figured I should put it here since I want this blog to have more of my opinion. The other blog is visited by McCain supporters and they blast me even when I post a video that’s pro-Obama. That’s freedom of expression for me I guess.

And speaking of “plumber”, Uzyn corrected me on my pronunciation. I had always been pronouncing it as “plumb-ber”. Read it wrong for many years. “Plum-er,” he corrected me.

To the question whether Obama is a Muslim, Powell stressed that Obama is not, but highlighted the real answer to the question is – so what if he is. Powell then publically endorsing Obama and expresses discontent toward the Republican party, that is his Republican party.

It is courageous of him to be able to stand up for what he believes in (and that meant the opposition). Unfortunately much of these were not shown back then when he presented the case for the invasion of Iraq. Powell later claims he spent 2 hours convincing Bush not to invade Iraq but what’s done been done.