Austrian government in shock as far-right triumphs

(Hat tip: KimR) - Austria's government was licking its wounds Monday after a historic debacle that saw the opposition anti-immigrant far-right triumph in a presidential ballot two years before the next scheduled general election.According to preliminary results, Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party (FPOe) came a clear first with 36 percent of the vote, while candidates from the two governing parties failed to even make it into a runoff on May 22. Read more at France 24 Read More......

Another Black Swan? Turkey Holds Snap Elections Amid NATO-Backed Civil War

There’s a potential black swan event taking place in Turkey on Sunday and no one seems to care. That is, the media isn’t devoting nearly enough coverage to Turkish elections considering the impact the outcome will invariably have on the situation in Syria, on the fate of the lira, and on the Pentagon’s strategy with regard to embedding spec ops with the YPG.

Read more at Zero Hedge
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

Stephano: What really went down in Wisconsin

FOX/Opinion by Jennifer Stephano - What happened in Wisconsin Tuesday night was not about an election or a politician. It wasn’t about collective bargaining or budget deficits. It was about something far more important and far more intangible. It was about who and what we are as Americans. ✧ The people of Wisconsin had a choice. Would they, and in turn the rest of America, whose eyes were riveted on this small northern state, be a people with their hand constantly extended to the public trough shouting “give me, give me, give me”? Or, as the Tea Party has tried to exemplify, would we become the people pushing the plough, demanding, “give me liberty,” whatever the cost. It was about Barack Obama’s view of America versus the Tea Party’s. And once again, the Tea Party emerged victorious. Read more at Fox News...

Jennifer Stefano is the Pennsylvania state director for Americans for Prosperity. Read More......

Unions angry with Dems over lack of help in Wisconsin recall

Top union officials are lashing out at Washington Democrats, claiming they haven't done enough to help them unseat Gov. Scott Walker (R) in Wisconsin's recall election. ✧ President Obama has been silent on the race since his campaign released a statement endorsing Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (D) immediately after his primary victory two weeks ago. The Obama campaign is helping Barrett with get out the vote operations, but the president has not publicly mentioned the race. ✧ The Democratic National Committee has been similarly tight-fisted. The DNC sent out a fundraising email for Barrett and DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) will be in Wisconsin for a fundraiser next week, but the national party has refused entreaties to give the state party money. ✧ The election is on June 5, ten days away. Read more at THE HILL... Read More......

Wisconsin GOP Holds Off Democrats in Recall Elections

Madison – Republicans held onto control of the Wisconsin Senate on Tuesday, beating back four Democratic challengers in a recall election despite an intense political backlash against GOP support for Gov. Scott Walker's effort to curb public employees' union rights. ✧ Fueled by millions of dollars from national labor groups, the attempt to remove GOP incumbents served as both a referendum on Walker's conservative revolution and could provide a new gauge of the public mood less than a year after Republicans made sweeping gains in this state and many others. ✧ Two Democratic incumbents face recalls next week, but even if Democrats win those they will still be in the minority. Read more at Fox News...


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Detweiler on voter turnout in Corvallis regarding measure 02-74

LETTER TO THE EDITOR submitted to the Corvallis Gazette-Times today, June 4, 2011 by John H. Detweiler

On May 17, 2011, Corvallis voted on measure 02-74 - a levy to fund various programs that does not solve our financial problems. The numbers describing voter participation on the Benton County web site are at the county level and do not describe participation at the city level. They need to be massaged to get participation numbers at the city level.

The voter had three choices: Yes, No, or Abstain. Many people abstained and the levy passed by a wide margin -- by an almost 2 to 1 ratio. However, only 48% of the 27,678 voters bothered to vote. The rest abstained. In other words, the levy was passed by only 31% of the total voters in Corvallis -- an abysmal performance by the Corvallis voter.

At the sub-precinct level, the performance is both better and worse. Some sub-precincts voted in greater numbers and other sub-precincts voted in lower numbers. In the sub-precincts with the best turnout only 32% of the voters abstained. In the sub-precinct with the worst turnout 95% of the voters abstained. The definition of sub-precincts and details on performance of all Corvallis sub-precincts can be found at www.peak.org/~detweij

My conclusion is that not enough people care about local government to bother to send in their ballot -- which is sad. As always, we get the government we deserve and not necessarily the government we need.

John H. Detweiler
www.peak.org/~detweij

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Ballots due today!

Ballots must be turned in to the Elections office or drop sites by 8:00PM tonight!

See full election results at the Benton County website. Read More......

Reince Priebus Wins Race for RNC Chief

WASHINGTON --Reince Priebus was elected chairman of the Republican National Committee on Friday after Michael Steele dropped his bid to stay atop the party for another two years. Read more at Fox News... Read More......

GOP, Poised for Gains, Plan $100B in Cuts

Republican leaders, ever more confident of their chances of winning control of the House, begin devising an agenda topped by a push for more than $100 billion in spending cuts. Read more at Fox News... Read More......

Rep. Barney Frank: Congress should not bypass the election results

POLITICO/Live Pulse, 1/20/2010 - Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) released a statement Tuesday night warning that it would be wrong "to pass a health care bill as if the Massachusetts election had not happened." ∴ The statement seems to advocate against ramming reform through Congress before Republican Scott Brown is seated and acknowledges that the House-Senate-White House negotiations are likely over. ∴ The liberal congressman said he was "disappointed" in Tuesday's election results—and that with Brown's victory, "a reasonable compromise" between the House and Senate bills is no longer possible and support from GOP senators is now required to move the legislation. Read more at Politico... Read More......

MPs 'snub' Ahmadinejad poll party

BBC NEWS|Middle East| 6/25/2009 - More than 100 MPs appear to have snubbed an invitation to celebrate Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election win, local press reports say. ∴ All 290 MPs were invited to the victory party on Wednesday night but 105 did not turn up, the reports say. ∴ A BBC correspondent says the move is a sign of the deep split at the top of Iran after disputed presidential polls. Read more at the BBC... Read More......

A message to Mr. Obama from one of America's finest

(Hat tip: Linda Bartcher)

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Jobs pay for our quality of life

Corvallis Gazette-Times, LETTERS, May 13, 2008

When I read about the choices for Corvallis City Council Ward 7, my humble opinion is that Jeannie Raymond couldn't be more wrong for Corvallis.

Her idea that we need to worry about Corvallis' "carbon footprint" seems entirely irrelevant given Hewlett Packard Co.'s pending layoff of 300 people.

We're all concerned about our "carbon footprint," but we need to put first things first.

The bottom line, at least to me, is that a high quality of life is not possible unless people have jobs.

In order to have a thriving arts community, a tax base that supports sustainability initiatives, clean water, paved roads, bridges that dont fall into the river, and so forth, people first have to be employed.

I appreciate Rick Schroffs more balanced approach. As a service-oriented businessman who is conscious about sustainability, I think hes going to be able to make the necessary intelligent tradeoffs that can help us retain the high quality of life that perhaps too many of us take for granted, while helping Corvallis keep and attract high-quality jobs.

That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.
Jeff Limon, Corvallis

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Book: Party Time

Smear tactics, skulduggery, and the début of American democracy.
The New Yorker, September 17, 2007 - By Jill Lepore

The year is 1800. Americans go to the polls to elect a President. Which Founder do you favor? The Federalist incumbent, sixty-four-year-old John Adams, or the Republican [not today's Republican Party] challenger, fifty-seven-year-old Thomas Jefferson, who, awkwardly enough, is currently serving as Adams’s Vice-President?

Consider your vote carefully. This is the most important election in American history. What Jefferson dubbed “the revolution of 1800” marked the first transition of power from one party to another. It led to the passage, in 1804, of the Twelfth Amendment, separating the election of Presidents and Vice-Presidents. (Before that, whoever placed second became the Vice-President, which is what happened to Jefferson in 1796.) It might have—and should have—spelled the end of the Electoral College. At the time, many people, not all of them members of the Adams family, thought that it might spell the end of the American experiment. As Edward J. Larson observes in his new book, “A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America’s First Presidential Campaign” (Free Press; $27), “Partisans worried that it might be the young republic’s last.

”To size up the candidates, what you need, for starters, is the word on the street—or, since the United States in 1800 is an agrarian nation, the word on the cow path. Adams: a Harvard graduate and Massachusetts lawyer who helped negotiate the Treaty of Paris in 1783 and served two terms as Washington’s Vice-President before his election to the Presidency in 1796. Distinguished, disputatious, short, ugly, hot-tempered, upstanding, provincial, learned (president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences). Very clever wife. Suspected of wanting to be king. Loves England. Thinks his diplomats have to tread carefully with Napoleon. Signed into law the Sedition Act in 1798; depending on your point of view, this was either so that he could have anyone who disagreed with him thrown in jail or so that he could protect the country from dangerous anarchists.

Jefferson: former governor of Virginia, onetime Ambassador to France, Washington’s Secretary of State. Eminent, brilliant (president of the American Philosophical Society), surpassing prose stylist, author of the Declaration of Independence (with help from Adams), unrivalled champion of liberty, slave owner, grieving widower, rumored to have fathered children by one of his slaves. Tall, humorless, moody, zealous, cosmopolitan. Artistic. Loves France, not so worried about Bonaparte. Ardently opposes the Sedition Act. Reputed atheist.

Are you still on the fence? You’re out of luck: there will be no Presidential debates, and precious few speeches. (In 1800, Americans considered politicians’ putting themselves so far forward to be unforgivably tacky.) No campaign managers, no Web sites, no television ads, no YouTube interviews, not so much as a Horse and Cart Across America tour. When Adams took a roundabout route through Pennsylvania and Maryland on a ride from Massachusetts to the nation’s new capital city, one Jeffersonian newspaper editor asked, “Why must the President go fifty miles out of his way to make a trip to Washington?” Continued...

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