Disappeared News

“
With each election cycle, it becomes more difficult to take Hawaii Republicans
seriously as a major political party. –Volcanic Ash, 6/10/2018

”

by Larry Geller

One can argue that it is a good thing to have a “loyal opposition,” and that Hawaii’s state government has not had that for some time. So should the state Republican Party be revived somehow? It’s actually too late, the GOP expired here some time ago. Some still cling to its ghost as though it still were alive.

Since each of us became adults we have been used to the two party system that the Constitution requires (wait… you say that’s not in the Constitution??).

It’s always been elephants vs. donkeys with a few strange animals at the fringes.

The GOP’s irrelevance is most apparent in the Legislature, where it now holds none of 25 Senate seats for the first time and a historic-low five of 51 House seats.

[Star-Advertiser, Top-two system offers better choices than party primaries, 6/10/2018 (paywalled) ]

There have actually been no GOP members of the Senate for several years now. When there was only one, the Senator was respected but powerless as he took ideologically-based positions on each bill under consideration.

It’s time to move on. Like it or not, we have something different here.

Hawaii is uniquely positioned to demonstrate that the failed rivalry between Republicans and Democrats is not the only, and certainly not the best, model of state government.

The parties still caucus separately and hold their conventions as in any other state. Candidates still receive some national support because the two-party system is alive, if not well, nationally. Also, the two-party mindset, which has been with us for countless generations, is difficult to dislodge. It’s hard to visualize a political system without that convenient split.

So what do we have instead?

We have a political system free of polarizing ideologies. A nominally Republican House member supports renewable energy and the environment. A nominal Democrat (who used to be a Republican) opposes marriage equality. We do not condemn them for not toeing party lines. The ideologies can be held by anyone.

The closest model I can find is the ancient Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan. It was a system based on accumulating power and rank, not by party divisions.

There’s an emperor up on the fifth floor—the Governor—but the extent of his power is questionable.

The real power is wielded by the shoguns (Speaker of the House and President of the Senate) and the major daimyos (feudal lords, the chairs of the powerful Finance, Ways and Means, and certain other committees).

This is far from an ideal arrangement, but it could be at least the beginning of something better than the two-party split. It will take public pressure and rule changes to end the abuses of the current system. Perhaps a constitutional convention, if one is held soon, as is a possibility, could straighten out the kinks and tame the power of the lords and ladies.

There’s no question that there are major abuses including blatent ethical violations and constitutionally questionable procedures. Those in power, as we see so vividly on a national scale, don’t feel very much bound by ethics or even the law.

No fewer than a reported 77 fundraisers were held during the just concluded legislative session, perhaps a record number. Usually these are held not in a representative’s district but in a handful of Honolulu restaurants convenient for lobbyists and business interests to attend. The per-plate donation requests are often way above the budget of ordinary constituents.

Of course, bills are still moving through committees that these lobbyists support or oppose, hence the ethical issue.

Those in power here seem to have a disdain for political ethics (and there are other examples).

The state constitution requires that a bill have three readings but in each session many suffer a “gut and replace” procedure that replaces the wording of a successful bill with one that did not make it that far but which the leadership wishes to advance anyway.The successful bill effectively dies. So far there has been no remedy in the courts, and the judiciary is perhaps unlikely to interfere with legislative procedure. The maneuver is hidden on the state capitol webpage so as to shroud it from public view.

This session saw the Shogun [Speaker] of the House pull conference committee members at the last minute when it looked like bills he didn’t like would pass, thereby trashing the many hours of testimony submitted during session supporting those bills. It costs real money for Neighbor Island residents to fly to Honolulu to attend committee hearings—their time and investment (and perhaps willingness to participate further in the legislative process) is hijacked for who-knows-what purpose. This is not how a fully-functioning, healthy democracy is supposed to operate.

Even the constitutionally-required “three readings” are a sham.

So we could do with some work to improve our system of governance, but the raw material is there and the obstacle of the two-party division is gone.

We can build on what we have instead, improving it, perhaps with a top-two voting system as David Shapiro suggests in his column today, along with other safeguards to eventually end the feudal power structure.

The opportunity is here for us to create a truely democratic state government.

Instead of lamen

Permalink posted by Larry @ 6/10/2018 01:57:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

Meanwhile, Around the World

4 Jun 2018

#537 | Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service

Kyoto

The world may be losing a peace opportunity in the USA-North Korea conflict.  With NK nuclear-tipped missiles capable of reaching mainland USA something close to “balance of power” had been obtained, by many seen as the key to peace via “mutual and balanced” disarmament even to “general and complete disarmament” (GCD).

Whether this ever happened is unclear.  States tend to see “balance” as having more than the other and suspecting that of him.  But something else may happen: distargeting, not aiming at each other.

However, in all these formulas there is an element of equality, of the symmetry that may be a condition for peace. But symmetry is unacceptable to USA. That state does not see itself as being on an equal footing with anybody in the world, and certainly not with small, even if very powerful, North Korea.

The same applies to “negotiation” as a mutual give-and-take.  USA as “the most powerful in the world” is ready to take, not to give. Their sense of a “summit meeting” is informing the other what to give, with Kennedy-Khrushchev over Turkey-Cuba in 1962 as an exception.

North Korea had developed a nuclear capacity as bargaining card for its three goals: turning the armistice into a peace treaty, normal diplomatic relations with Seoul, Tokyo, Washington, and a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, duly inspected by United Nations.

This has a symmetry taste of peace, but to the USA the stench of equality. And North Korea is forced to give up one after the other.

North Korea–today much less vulnerable–may have been threatened with a repetition of the 1952 US Air Force bombing, killing 3 million.  USA, extremely vulnerable, must eliminate any threat, even bargaining cards. And that may look like the end of the story.

The only thing remaining is the unsolved USA-NK conflict, and the next violence or threat of violence.  A sadly missed opportunity.

It also looks as if Japan will do nothing to solve its contested islands problems, with Russia, (the) China(s), and the (the) Korea(s). Mutually acceptable solutions might include dividing them, or, as this author argues, sharing ownership, dividing the revenue equally.

Akifumi Fujita, a nuclear scientist turned peace researcher, argues that it is because of their intellectual attachment to the state system, as a zero sum game with (threat of) force as ultimate arbiter. All efforts to go beyond that, with cities cooperating directly across conflicts to mention one example, pass unnoticed.

PM Abe now militarizes Japan much more, with offensive capacity, possibly nuclear, accepted as “normal” for states. USA holds back, worried about a Japanese revenge. Joseph Nye: “Japan’s image hurt by Abe’s militarist facade” (Japan Times 5 Apr 2014).  Well, more than a “facade”, stark reality; more than hurt “image”, hurt peace.

Roberto Savio’s “Ten reflections on today’s crisis” (other-news.info/2018/04) include:

“Ten years ago, 852 people has the same wealth as 2.3 billion people. Now there are eight”; “we are-breaching the 2 degree temperature limit beyond which our planet-undergoes irreversible changes; “financial transactions on any given day is forty times higher than the production of goods and services around the planet”; “political participation has declined from an average 86% in 1960 to 64%”.

More inequality, insults to nature, speculation; less politics.

In December 2011, Chávez, treated for cancer, wondered “have they invented a technology to spread cancer, a day after Argentine’s leftist president Cristina de Kirchner had been diagnosed,–after “three other prominent leftist leaders, Dilma Rousseff, Fernando Lugo, Lula da Silva.

“With Unemployment So Low Why Are Wages Stagnant?”–“decline and war on trade unions” (David Schultz Counterpunch 8 May 2018).

China expands economically, politically in the sense of shaping others (including the USA, more than Americans are aware of), now also militarily–but culturally?  Not really. There is much talk about Confucianism, but very little about the more important Daoism.

“Is China’s Silk Road project the new colonialism?” (NYT 5-6 May 2018).  The article has an answer: “Or is it presenting an alternative model of development to a world that could use one?”

The answer is, of course, both-and.  Ever stronger East-West rail and road links built by China for mutual benefit and cooperation can also be used like the North-South shipping and air links made by Europeans for their conquest and colonization of Africa and Asia.

And by a small group of Polish Jews, the zionists, focused on the Middle East.  Their colony, on Arab-Muslim lands with Jewish history, the “Jewish Homeland”, is now celebrating 70 years as a state.

“What keeps Xi awake at night?” (NYT 14 May 2018) according to Xi brings up “winning the technological race, taming the internet, racing for military edge, hidden financial risks, unrest over pollution”.  He is probably not alone among statesmen being awake over those issues.

A more basic issue and not only for statesmen: “You are going to die.  Just face it” (NYT) about a book by Barbara Ehrenreich, Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer, 2018.  The way we live “every death can now be understood as suicide”.  Reviewers Chris Buckley and Paul Mozur: there is also “the obvious point that most Americans suffer from a lack-not excess-of access to basic health care”.  The obvious matters.

Last selected article this month: “Does math make you smarter” by Manil Suri (NYT).  The general tone of the article is a cautious “no”. “Knowing more math” is not the same as “smarter”.  But knowing about creating new mathematical realities, like negative numbers, fractions, may be useful.  How to transcend limitations, in other words.

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Johan Galtung, a professor of peace studies, dr hc mult, is founder of TRANSCEND International and rector of TRANSCEND Peace University. Prof. Galtung has published more than 1500 articles and book chapters, over 500 Editorials for TRANSCEND Media Service, and more than 170 books on peace and related issues, of which more than 40 have been translated to other languages, including 50 Years-100 Peace and Conflict Perspectives published by TRANSCEND University Press. More information about Prof. Galtung and all of his publications can be found at transcend.org/galtung.

This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 License.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 6/04/2018 09:52:00 AM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post