Politics of trinkets

Once upon a time, there was a company that sold books and stuff online called Amanzo. It sold billions of dollars worth of stuff. Then inevitably one day, elections were held in the land of its headquarters. It was a hotly contested election. The company decided that it should join the thousands of polling companies trying to figure out the outcome of the elections. One executive at the company realizes that they have millions of customers. Couldn't they poll them? Another adds a brilliant twist: why don't we sell Republican elephants and Democrat donkeys? Based on their sales we will know which party is going to win. The executives congratulated themselves on this brilliant plan!

The trinket selling began in earnest. The sales leaned this way and that.

But some customers realized that this is quite stupid. What this measures is how likely are repulican and democrat supporters to buy silly trinkets to display their affiliation at places of work and home. And before an executive could say 'golden parachute', a more interesting thing had happened. The customers of the company were engaged in a debate about the implications of such a "poll".

Importing US law, or not

It seems that Supreme Courts of countries around the world are relying less and less on US law.  The number of cases where they cite American judicial decisions has fallen to ½, and in some cases to 1/3^rd in a period of a decade or so. It seems more countries are citing Canadian and European decisions these days.  And, in the case of Australia, even judicial decisions from India.

 

This could also be one way of measuring American popularity and respect overseas.  If you don’t respect a country you would not be particularly inclined to cite its decisions in making your own, would you?

 

Read full article at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/us/18legal.html?em

 

 

Finally, it's over

Of course, I’m referring to the Democrats’ nomination for US Presidential Elections next year. Perhaps there is a lesson in all of this somewhere -- for the Dems to shrink the length of the whole process, to avoid apathy simply due to the seemingly never-ending process.

Pork barrel scheme, literally

Here's one from Canada. The Canadian government is offering farmers $50M to kill 150,000 pigs without letting the pork enter the human food supply. This amounts to 10% of the total size of pig herds. The goal: to arrest the decline in pork prices. Link.

How to avoid accountability

2 of the only 3 US senators who abstained from voting one way or the other on the US economic stimulus package were, who else: Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Voting “yes” were 46 Democratic senators, 33 Republicans and the Senate’s 2 independents. Sixteen Republicans voted “no.” Three Democrats did not vote: Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama, who are campaigning for the presidency, and Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

NYT: $168B Stimulus Plan