Category Archives: Arsenal Pulse

Brief thoughts and mini-analyses on stories in the news.

Who wants to be … a millionaire Illinois ex-governor?

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It’s almost as if some politicians just set out to validate political stereotypes. Just drink in the fact Illinois’s wealthy Republican governor-elect made it one week from the election before the corruption and campaign finance violations came to light.

Illinois Governor-elect Bruce Rauner accepted more than $140,000 worth of campaign donations from executives affiliated with firms in which Illinois pension systems have investments, according to documents reviewed by the International Business Times. The campaign donations flowed to Rauner despite state and federal rules designed to prevent pension investment managers from donating to candidates for public offices that oversee state pension systems. As governor, Rauner will now appoint the trustees who oversee Illinois’ pension investment decisions.

When IBTimes first presented the campaign finance documents to officials at the Illinois State Board of Investment late last week, they said they had never been asked about the donations. Days later, those officials announced they are now conducting a formal review of the system’s private investment managers to see if they complied with campaign finance disclosure requirements.
[…]
The SEC’s 2011 “pay-to-play” rule effectively bars executives at firms that earn fees from managing public pension money from donating to candidates for offices that can influence public pension investments. The Illinois governor appoints trustees to the boards overseeing the $40 billion Illinois Teachers Retirement System and the $13 billion Illinois State Board of Investment.

 
Gov.-elect Rauner is also himself still a partnership stakeholder in a subsidiary of a company he used to run, which also manages public pension money.

I look forward to learning whether Wheaton City Councillor and Lieutenant Governor-elect Evelyn Sanguinetti is cut out to lead a state of 12.9 million people (to Wheaton’s 53,000!) when Gov. Rauner inevitably resigns, is removed by the legislature, or is sent to prison.

I also wonder if, as his hand-picked running mate, she’ll carry through his radical agenda to “reform” Illinois pensions and carve out special anti-union “Right to Work” economic zones, along with other big business goodies disguised as help for small businesses.

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Zimbabwe succession struggle bursts into the open

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Robert Mugabe, age 90, is on his way out of power, after ruling Zimbabwe continuously as either prime minister or president since 1980, just months after independence. This is really happening this time. The scramble inside the ruling Zanu-PF party — between his previously non-political wife and various political competitors — to succeed him is now fully out in the open. No one is pretending otherwise or talking around it.

Given recent events in Burkina Faso and talk of a possible wave of sub-Saharan African dictators and strongmen being toppled or exiting suddenly, Zimbabwe’s succession struggle is rapidly taking center stage on the global radar… and all eyes are on whether the military will get involved.

According to The Zimbabwe Independent newspaper, the military says it has no interest in choosing sides in an internal party matter, but it has recalled all its furloughed troops (previously sent home for budget reasons!) just to keep them from getting involved in the political scene while off-duty.

However, the ruling party has also hired a number of former senior military officials and troops will likely be deployed to restore order after the one faction inevitably loses.

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Just 3 in 10 back Catalonia independence in ridiculous referendum

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The headlines are blaring that 80% of Catalonians just voted for independence from Spain, but the real story is essentially the opposite. Consider these facts:

1. Only about 37% of the 5.4 million registered voters (less than 4 in 10) actually participated in the non-binding referendum. That’s not even 37% of the whole population, but just registered voters.
2. 80% of 37% is roughly 30%. That proportion is even lower (about 21%) when non-voters are factored in to the population count of the region (7.5 million).
3. This referendum was organized and run by over 40,000 pro-independence volunteers after Spain’s high court ruled an official referendum unconstitutional.
(Data Source: BBC)

A ballot campaign orchestrated, organized, staffed by, and managed from start to finish by one side is hardly a recipe for a representative vote. (For all we know, they discouraged turnout in anti-independence areas or made it harder to vote.) And even with all that going for them, they still only managed to get 30% of the voters to back them up.

They got the headline they wanted, but the underlying result is clear: Most Catalonians are not interested in the independence agenda being pushed by hardliners or the wealthy who want to “Go Galt” and stop paying taxes to support their less fortunate regional neighbors in the rest of Spain.

Map of Catalonia region within Spain. (Credit: Wikimedia)

Map of Catalonia region within Spain. (Credit: Wikimedia)

Could Be Worse: Immigration Reform Edition

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Tonight I clicked on a BBC headline with a meaning so opaque to me it might as well have been a string of wingdings characters:
“Kuwait ‘has Comoros plan for Bidun’”

I also clicked because I had been researching Comoros the other day so it caught my attention. But I was actually even more astonished and bemused once I read through the article.

Here’s the problem it turns out Kuwait’s government needs to solve: There are about 100,000 people — referred to as “Bidun” — living unlawfully and long-term in Kuwait without documents from any country. This has been an issue ever since the oil boom started quite a few decades ago. Complicating things, many born there are considered genuinely “stateless” people, since Kuwaiti citizenship is not automatic to every person born on the country’s soil, unlike in the United States and many other countries. A governmental review claims that only 34,000 could already qualify to receive Kuwaiti citizenship. Thus they still needed to figure out what to do with the remaining two thirds.

Kuwait’s solution for that remainder is … to give them all citizenship from the African islands nation of Comoros (off Madagascar). Comoros is a tiny and dirt-poor Arab League member state located in the southern Indian Ocean. It is best noted for having had 20 attempted or successful coups since July 1975 (which is why I was researching the country).

Perhaps even more puzzling in this already oddly capricious and arbitrary plan is that the Bidun wouldn’t actually move to Comoros, they would just receive Comoran citizenship and documents and would be able to stay in Kuwait on economic and other visas … unless deported “home” for criminal activity.

Another fun twist in this plan: Comoros doesn’t even have an embassy in Kuwait yet from which to distribute citizenship papers to all their new patriots.

I mean, I suppose this plan is better than mass deportations, mass enslavement, or mass slaughter — things other countries have employed before for similar problems — but in terms of a comprehensive plan for absorbing a large population of stateless migrants and native-born peoples this has to be one of the most bananas.

It really puts U.S. dysfunction on settling the status of undocumented immigrant populations in a much more charitable light. At least we haven’t tried to solve the issue by making millions of U.S.-born Latinos citizens of the Federated States of Micronesia…yet.

Adapted from Wikimedia by Arsenal For Democracy

Adapted from Wikimedia by Arsenal For Democracy

Libya high court scuttles any governmental legitimacy

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In the literal battle between two rival legislatures — a Western Libyan “Congress” controlled by the Islamist parties elected previously to lead the transition and an Eastern Libyan “Parliament” controlled by anti-Islamist parties elected in this year’s elections — the country’s Supreme Court has poured gasoline on the fire by invalidating the parliament on an apparent technicality and without explanation…or any followup plan for what should happen now that the only currently elected and internationally-accepted legislative body in Libya is no longer constitutional.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday on the ruling:

Libya’s Supreme Court on Thursday ruled the nation’s isolated but internationally recognized parliament is unconstitutional, a decision that threatens to plunge the oil-rich nation into further political chaos.
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The defiant statement [from Tobruk parliamentarians, rejecting the ruling] is likely to heighten tensions in Libya, where the Supreme Court has been seen as one of the few remaining institutions that hadn’t fallen under direct political influence.

The Supreme Court sits in Tripoli and supporters of the Tobruk parliament said it has operated under intimidation by a coalition of armed groups there known as Operation Dawn, raising questions about its ability to rule independently. The court hasn’t responded to any of the accusations.

Late Thursday, the reasoning behind the decision and whether it would result in the dissolution of the parliament, remained unclear. The judges who issued the ruling didn’t offer a public explanation and couldn’t be reached for comment.
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The case stemmed from a lawsuit brought by 30 elected members of the House of Representatives who have Islamist leanings and have boycotted the sessions. They argued the legislature is in violation of the constitution because it doesn’t convene in Tripoli or Benghazi.

 
This ruling just seems like it’s needlessly inflammatory and based on an unreasonable geographic technicality — the emergency evacuation of the parliament to Tobruk from the captured capital of Tripoli and avoidance of the besieged “second city” of Benghazi — a point which they unhelpfully didn’t even confirm or deny.

I predict the international community will ultimately ignore the decision, on the grounds that the parliament is still the (more or less) legitimately elected representative of the people, regardless of its location or any constitutional technicalities about its location. But it will hand a crucial legal victory to all opponents of the parliament and supporters (domestically or abroad) of that opposing camp and its rival government.

Either way, it can only expand the casus belli justifying armed “resolution” to the political crisis, because when neither side wields legal legitimacy for assuming and retaining power, only the use of force remains.

Mexico AG: Even pretending to care is too exhausting

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Even when they’re not directly (or at least provably) working for the cartels, Mexican officials are so terrible at their jobs they can’t even muster the energy to pretend to give a damn from a public relations standpoint:

After weeks fielding questions about the abduction and apparent massacre of 43 trainee teachers by corrupt police in league with drug gang members, Mexico’s Attorney General Jesus Murillo has had enough.
[…]
Facing a grilling over the details of the case, which has sent shockwaves across Mexico and triggered outrage at impunity, Murillo sought to wrap up a news conference on Friday evening, arching his eyebrows with the aside “Ya me canse”, or “I’ve had enough”. The phrase came shortly after he told the press that the trainee teachers were apparently incinerated by drug gang henchmen and their remains tipped in a garbage dump and a river.

 
The current administration in Mexico is a complete joke. They’ve sealed themselves off, in Mexico City’s sanctuary, away from the cartel wars engulfing the rest of the country in one of the most violent civil conflicts in the world right now. They are touting economic reforms and rising trade with China like nothing is happening, just pretending it’s just a beautiful day in the neighborhood being ruined by debbie-downers complaining about beheadings, mass executions, and human incineration. This man — theoretically heading the nation’s “law” “enforcement” “efforts” — has the audacity to say he’s “had enough” of being questioned by journalists and grieving parents about why nothing is being done to bring justice to their missing and murdered children, but he clearly hasn’t “had enough” of the violence to do something real.
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The quiet authoritarian in Hungary

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For those not following the Hungary situation (and I’ll admit I’ve barely had time to pay attention to it myself) here’s a line from an Al Jazeera America article that should demonstrate the severity of the problem (which goes well beyond a tax debate):

It’s rare for the usually aloof and cautious European Union commissioners in Brussels to call for street demonstrations in one of the EU’s member states. But since none of the their badgering had blunted the power plays of Hungary’s autocratic Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the EU commissioner for digital issues, Neelie Kroes, tweeted support for Hungary’s protesters. They took to the streets last week to protest Orban’s latest attempt to curtail anti-government opinion: a proposed nationwide tax on Internet data traffic — an attack on the country’s the last free platform for free thinking and dissent.

 
And the most appalling bit of all? Prime Minister Orban’s Fidesz party is overwhelmingly the most popular by vote and most numerous in members in the whole country. He’s not going anywhere. Authoritarianism does not always come via coup or revolution. Sometimes we just vote it into power with cheers.

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