On the move!
Agh! You’re still here? My new site and weblog, ianking.ca is now up and running; new posts are building up over there, never to be mirrored here. Go! What are you waiting for? All the stuff worth keeping has been migrated over to the new server, and I don’t anticipate making any more posts here.
Bloggers and webmasters: Update your links! Simply replace vancouverscrum.blogspot.com with www.ianking.ca in your blogrolls or bookmarks to point to the new site. Old posts will remain on this server for as long as the people at Blogger/Google allow them to remain; unfortunately, I’m not going to bother to come up with any way of converting permalinks on this blog to their corresponding posts on the new site. Yes, I plead laziness. I also realize the irony of switching away from Blogger just it starts to add features that the demanding blog nerds insist upon.
Thanks for reading and linking, and see you over at ianking.ca!
—Ian King, December 13, 2004
Wednesday, August 14, 2002
Republicans go out of their way to ensure preferential treatment of minorities!
(who'd'a thunk it?)
"Yes, perhaps the panel 'looks like America' in its cosmetic inclusion of every ethnic group," he wrote, "But does the panel think like America?"
Well, George W. Bush's recent economic forum in Waco, Texas can be accused of that... but that's not what those comments were originally aimed at. For more, check out Jonathan Chait's piece entitled Skin Deep in The New Republic's online edition.
As often happens at Republican events like the economic forum and other such P.R. exercises, the organizers went out of their way to ensure that visible minorities were prominently featured in the proceedings. It's somewhat like the 2000 Republican National Convention, where the number of African-American speakers disproportionately large when one considers the number of African-Americans among the Republicans at large. It must have been quite an effort to find the people with both the right skin colour and conservative pedigree for the economic forum. But what's all this about, then?
Oh my Goodness! The GOP is giving preferential treatment for a minority! Isn't that against Republican principles, Colin Powell's beliefs notwithstanding?
Well, let's face it: Appearances, and getting votes among those haven't traditionally voted for you, are far more important than principles in the game of politics...
Why the hell am I creating such a stir, then?
Good question. I'll get off it now.
As for the lack of diversity of views at the President's economic thingamajig, what were you expecting? This was a made-for-TV event that TV didn't cover all that much in the end. Just think about the excitement of watching one speaker after another call for the same actions: cut taxes, and uh... when in doubt, cut taxes some more. This is apparently the conservative strategy to deal with any economic situation. But you already knew that. Watching the same set of ideas repeated ad infinitum would drive the most loyal Bushie to tears eventually. A little variety and controversy does wonders to pique peoples' interest.
At least Bruce Bartlett, who is an enthusiastic supply-side economist, and a former Reagan and G.H.W. Bush advisor, said that Bush's economic summit would accomplish nothing. Looks like he was right.
More on the Bush economic whatchamacallit from the Toronto Star's William Walker, including a couple of Doonesbury cartoon panels.
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