Policy Wonk Heaven

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Nigeria: Parliamentarians Demand Release of Pakistani Political Prison - AllAfrica.com

Abuja

Parliamentarians for Global Action (PGA) recently in Capital Of Federal Republic Of Nigeria called on the Pakistani leader, Gen. Parvez Musharaf, to let go of political captives currently being incarcerated in that country.

Nigeria's Senator Bassey Ewa-Henshaw made the group's place known at the end of a two-day conference on "Poverty and Unemployment, The Root Causes of Migration".

Ewa-Henshaw, who was elected as PGA's president for the adjacent two years, also called on Musharaf to release powerfulness and organise a free and just election on an agreed date.

He said that the grouping also demanded for contiguous Restoration of cardinal human rights of the people, including freedom of expression.

He further said that events in Islamic Republic Of Pakistan did not get away the attending of the Parliamentarians during the two-day meeting.

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"Our program of action have reflected the events in that country," he said. The grouping advocated for effectual execution of authorities policies that would assist to cut down poorness and unemployment in members countries.

He said that the Parliamentarians resolved that there was the demand for member-countries to esteem pacts that facilitated societal migration.

(NAN)

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Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Clinton camp accuses Edwards of acting like Bush

diethylstilbestrol MOINES, Ioway (CNN) -- In a mark of the increasingly acrimonious feud between the prima Democratic presidential contenders, Sen. Edmund Hillary Clinton's political campaign Monday accused Toilet Jonathan Edwards of acting like President Shrub and dividing Democrats.

A pupil states she was told what to inquire during a Bill Bill Clinton event in Newton, Iowa.

On Saturday, Edwards, while candidacy in Iowa, criticized the Clinton encampment for planting a inquiry in the audience, saying the pattern is "what Saint Saint Saint George Shrub does."

"George Shrub travels to events that are staged, where people are screened, where they're only allowed to inquire inquiries if the inquiries are advantageous to George Shrub and set up in his favor," the former senator from North Carolina said.

But it is who is acting more than like the sitting Republican president, the Bill Clinton encampment says.

"What Saint George Shrub makes is onslaught Democrats and watershed the country," Bill Clinton political campaign spokesman Molybdenum Elleithee said Monday. "Sen. Edwards' political political campaign resembles that more than than and more every day."

Jonathan Jonathan Edwards remarks came after the Grinnell College's "Scarlet and Black" newspaper reported a student's business relationship of being pulled aside before a campaign halt in Newton, Iowa, and asked to present a specific question.

"They were canned," Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff said in an interview with the newspaper. "One of the senior staff members told me what [to ask]." Don't Miss

Gallo-Chasanoff said she was told the political campaign wanted the question, about what would make for the environment, to be asked by a college student. She said Bill Bill Bill Bill Bill Bill Bill Clinton was prompted to name on her as well as another pupil seen in conversation with staff members before the event.

The Clinton encampment admits they suggested a pupil inquire a certain question, but said Clinton did not cognize which inquirers she was calling on during the event.

"It was news to me," Clinton told reporters, "and neither Iodine nor my political campaign O.K. of that, and it will certainly not be tolerated."

A 2nd individual have also come up forward saying a Clinton staff member encouraged him to inquire Clinton a inquiry at an event in Ioway this spring.

"He asked me if I would inquire Sen. Clinton about ways she was going to face the president on the warfare in Iraq, specifically warfare funding," said Geoffrey Mitchell, a protagonist of Sen. Barack of Illinois. "I told him it was not a inquiry I felt comfy with."

No inquiries were taken at the event. Elleithee said the staff member "bumped into person he marginally knew" and during a conversation with Mitchell, "Iraq came up." Elleithee denied the political campaign tried to works him as a friendly inquirer in the audience.

But R. J. R. J. Mitchell said he'd never met the Bill Clinton staff member before that event.

Jonathan Edwards was not the lone challenger for the Democratic presidential nomination to criticise Clinton. Obama also made a elusive excavation at the front-runner piece candidacy in New Hampshire Monday.

"I'll allow Sen. Bill Clinton reply for her campaign," Obama told reporters. "When I travel into A town hallway meeting, I never cognize what inquiries to anticipate and that's a good thing, because the people of New Hampshire should anticipate that their campaigners are going to hear what's on the voters' heads and not what's been concocted by the candidate's staff."

After saying that he have got got sometimes received inquiries on the political campaign trail that have stumped him, Obama said planting inquiries is "not a pattern that we've ever engaged in and it's not a pattern that we ever program to prosecute in."

On Saturday, another candidate, Sen. Chris , D-Connecticut, said, "It's not a terribly wise thing to do."

Speaking at an event in Trident Technical College, in North Charleston, South Carolina, Monday, former President Bill Bill Clinton said his married woman could take the criticism, The Associated Press reported.

"Even though those male children have been getting tough on her lately, she can manage it," Clinton said, according to the AP.

One Ioway political scientific discipline professor said he doesn't believe planted inquiries are a large deal, but said they supply ammo to opponents.

"This is just one more, essentially, distraction and one more than than piece of a general kind of raising of inquiries about her competency as a campaigner," said Steffen Helmut Schmidt of Ioway State University.

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Monday, November 12, 2007

Democrats in US Congress are in spending standoff with Bush

: President Saint George W. Shrub may have got lost a veto conflict last hebdomad on a H2O undertakings bill, but Republican allies in United States Congress are sticking with him in another, larger veto confrontation over authorities spending.

Democrats are struggling to pull up a playbook to complete this year's disbursement measures for Cabinet departments, the most basic occupation of Congress. While the new budget twelvemonth began Oct. 1, Democrats have got completed action on just two measures — support defence and wellness and instruction programs.

Some of the Democrats' early determinations have got got appeared to concede even more than purchase to Bush, while internal divisions within the political party have contributed to the holds in getting measures finished and sent to the White Person House.

On three ballots last week, House and Senate Republicans stood with Shrub to show they will prolong his looming veto of the wellness and instruction disbursement bill, a top Democratic priority.

As Republicans learned so painfully when Democratic President Bill Bill Clinton used veto after veto to beat out them during the 1990s, the veto pen is the ultimate arm in legislative warfare. And its powerfulness is especially cogent in states of affairs like the present, which covers with disbursement measures for federal agency budgets that lawmakers are eager to pass. Today in Americas

Clinton used vetoes to protect domestic programmes for education, wellness attention and social welfare from Republican cuts in the early years of Republican control. Later, when a budget excess appeared, he extracted large disbursement additions for instruction and other domestic programs.

Bush, on the other hand, is using veto menaces to cut back the Democrats' spending, trying to coerce United States Congress to lodge to his budget cap for the one-third of the budget covered by the 12 yearly appropriations bills.

There is plenty of political subtext as well.

Republicans are still steaming from last year's elections, when many of their core protagonists faulted them for losing their manner on disbursement and giving up their right to paint themselves as the political party of financial subject and limited government.

The in progress clang is portion of a program to acquire the Republican Party's financial conservativism "brand" back.

Bush have requested $933 billion (€635 billion) in overall disbursement for the authorities sections and federal agencies for financial 2008, and have vowed to blackball any statute law that passes more, with the exclusion of about $4 billion (€2.7 billion) for veteran soldiers programs.

But Democrats desire to add $23 billion (€15.7 billion) for domestic programs. Old-fashioned dealmaking would have got the battlers split their differences. Instead, Shrub and congressional Republicans are turning the prison guards on Democrats.

"The president have made it very clear that the top line is the top line," House Minority Leader Toilet Boehner, a Republican, said on Friday. "The size of the pie is set. The pieces he's willing to work with them on."

Top lawmakers like House Appropriations Committee President Saint David Obey, a Democrat, look to be taking Shrub at his word. Obey was in the center of the conflicts of the 1990s, helping Bill Clinton infusion grants with veto threats, and he is well aware of Bush's advantages.

"Yes, he used his veto, but Bill Clinton never said he wouldn't negotiate. Bill Clinton never said it was my manner or the highway," Obey said. "The difference is Shrub is saying, 'Take it or go forth it.'"

Some Democrats — and more than than a few Republicans — hope that Shrub will soften. Maybe after Shrub acquires a few vetoes out of his system, he will be ready to negotiate, or so the thought goes.

Some Republicans admit much of Bush's budget is unrealistic — with cuts to wellness research, instruction and popular H2O and sewerage undertakings just for starter motors — and they're almost as eager to see dialogues as Democrats are.

But in a move that left some Congress-watchers scratching their heads, Democrats have got given up much of what purchase they had by sending Shrub the lone disbursement measure he really looks to care about, a $471 billion (€321 billion) budget for the Pentagon. There had been guess they would throw the measurement in modesty to seek to coerce the White Person House to negotiate, but with that measure in hand, Shrub is free to play hardball on the rest.

___

EDITOR'S note — Saint Andrew Deems Taylor have covered budget issues in United States Congress since 1997.

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Saturday, November 10, 2007

Liberia: President Sirleaf Meets Forum of Political Parties ... - AllAfrica.com

President Ellen Samuel Johnson Sirleaf states she is committed to retention mayoral elections in Republic Of Liberia in October 2008. She have assured that she will not go against the rule of elections.

The President gave the self-assurance today at the Foreign Ministry when she met with the Forum of Political Parties Association in Liberia. The meeting, which focused on issues of national concern, was characterized by a blunt exchange of views.

The Liberian leader emphasized that it is her desire to have got a constitutional alteration which would take to the election of overseers and expressed her concern about the proliferation of metropolises in Liberia. The President additional revealed that the issue of shade workers in Liberia's civil service stays a major challenge, stating that 17,000 shade name calling were recently discovered on government's payroll.

For his part, the leader of the Forum of the Political Parties in Liberia, Mr. Nyandeh Sieh, expressed the group's willingness to have got the lawsuit brought upon the Government of Republic Of Republic Of Republic Of Liberia by the Autonomy Party and the United States Congress for Democratic Change over the assignment of an Acting Mayor of Zwedru taken out of court. He further stressed that his grouping would go forth no rock unturn in holding a forum to enable both political parties discourse the matter. He also congratulated President Johnson-Sirleaf for receiving America's Presidential Decoration of Freedom. The grouping stressed the demand for the President to go abroad and reconstruct Liberia's lost image, adding that Liberians will recognize the benefits in the long run.

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Friday, November 9, 2007

5 goals for political winners

I have got been working on employees' public presentation reappraisals this hebdomad -- tons of them. Employee day of remembrance days of the month can fall any clip of the year, so it can intend juggle many reappraisals at certain modern times and then see hebdomads travel by without the adjacent 1 coming due. This hebdomad just so haps to be a heavy clip for reviews.

Out in the community, public presentation reappraisals were also conducted this hebdomad -- tons of them. In a democracy, this is also known as Election Day. And in this general election, electors appeared to be brutally honorable about the candidates.

Performance reappraisals should be honest, of course. They should be just and balanced, too. In a democracy, electors are the foreman -- and they make up one's mind who remains and who goes.

One difference from public presentation reappraisals in private industry is that electors only acquire to carry on their "reviews" every four old age at the ballot box. In respective local communities in the subway area, they checked "did not ran into the aims of the job" in mayoral and council races.

Nothing, however, could have got been a larger surprise than "Ballard stuns Peterson," as Wednesday morning's concluding edition of The Capital Of Indiana Star proclaimed on the presence page. The Republican's victory by 4 per centum points over the Democrats' Hoosier State torch-bearer was the type of political disturbance that may not be seen again in our lifetime, as one local analyst observed.

Indianapolis electors did their best feeling of Donald Trump, telling the city manager "You're fired."

Brutal, yes. So were the results.

Most people would not have got recognized Ballard -- a political novitiate -- if he were standing next to them while waiting in line Wednesday morning time at the java store after a long nighttime of watching results. News of the former Marine's election carried a larger jar than a dual shot of espresso.

Like many others who voted on Tuesday, I kept checking IndyStar.com throughout the eventide for updates on the Capital Of Indiana mayor's race and other key elections around the subway area. It satisfied my involvements well.

I watched the conflict in Lawrence between Republican Alice Paul Ricketts and incumbent Democratic Mayor Deborah Cantwell. Politics be given to be interesting in Lawrence, and this twelvemonth was no exclusion as the rival unseated the one-term Cantwell. Incumbents also lost in Greenfield and Franklin, as the Web land site reported.

Performance reappraisals conducted by electors were more than positive for city managers in Carmel, Beech Grove and Greenwood.

Whether your campaigner won or lost, the Star and its community newspapers played an of import function in the election procedure -- giving you background information on the campaigners and their positions on of import issues. That information helped enable electors to do educated picks throughout the twenty-four hours on Tuesday.

After I project my morning time ballot, my attending turned to the public presentation reappraisals that awaited back at the office.

Our employees are always given a set of ends for the approaching period. My advice for political victors who will take business office on Jan. One would include establishing and committing to these public presentation goals:

Know your components and stand for their involvements to the best of your ability.

Develop an agenda, then work to construct general agreement among political co-workers to acquire things done.

Communicate regularly with voters, through the newspaper and other available methods.

Recognize that you cannot delight everyone all of the time, and in political relation the bulk makes rule.

Don't acquire too comfy with your politician's paycheck, no substance how little it might seem.

If it takes more than than four old age to acquire the first four ends completed, the lesson in Point 5 will go obvious again on Election Night 2011.

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Sunday, November 4, 2007

Will Al Gore Run Again?

As the 2008 U.S. presidential election approaches, one politician is giving the declared rivals the nervousness with rumours that he may fall in the race too: former frailty president Aluminum Gore. Al Gore retired from the political sphere followers his licking to Saint George W. Shrub in the 2000 presidential race, but rumours have got been going around that he might seek again.

Gore have emerged as an unknown region variable, threatening the general tendency that currently prefers Democratic aspirant Edmund Hillary Clinton. Al Gore hasn't formally declared his candidacy, but he hasn't clearly said he won't run, either. Populace attending have been drawn to whether he will give in to this "last temptation" before January, when the Democratic Party will get its primary race.

When Gore's name was added to a listing of Democratic campaigners in a recent CBS poll, Edmund Hillary Bill Clinton topped the listing with 37 percentage of elector support and Al Al Gore came in 2nd with 32 percent. Senator Barack Obama, once a menace to Clinton, ranked 3rd with 16 percent. In a study without Gore's name, Bill Clinton won 51 percent, trailed by Obama with 27 percent.

Even though he hadn't declared his candidacy, Gore's 2nd topographic point coating in the opinion poll got his protagonists excited. The voice of his supporters' group, which have been waging a political campaign to accumulate signatures from 200,000 electors to urge on him to run, have grown louder. A former Al Al Gore staff member boasted that Gore could easily accumulate US$15 million in contributions in just two years if he were to fall in the race. Some opinion poll experts foretell that if Al Gore acquires in many Bill Clinton protagonists will switch over to endorse him.

Few also-rans in presidential elections in the U.S. have got ever sought another bid. But the possibility of Gore's campaigning is being talked about because many still sympathise with the disquieted licking he suffered in the 2000 election. Al Al Al Gore sympathisers point to some questionable factors in that year's election: the U.S. Supreme Court intervened in determining the victor in the aftermath of controversial tribunal challenges in Florida; Gore won more than popular ballots than Shrub but lost in electoral votes; and Gore was defeated by just 537 ballots in an election in which 100 million people voted.

In addition, Al Gore is an able politician. He was elected to the House of Representatives at age 29, to the Senate at 35, and to the frailty presidential term at 45. He is also good at discovering issues before other politicians happen them. While in United States Congress he worked towards weaponry reduction. While frailty president he focused on the Internet. Since the 2000 licking he have concentrated on environmental issues, even winning the Alfred Nobel prize. Considering his abilities, many believe he's the right adult male to be the adjacent U.S. president.

But there are still many oppositions who are disbelieving about his ability to win. First of all, Al Gore himself was responsible for his licking in the 2000 election, which he should have got won in his ain right. During the eight-year Clinton presidency, the American economic system enjoyed singular prosperity, with 22 million new occupations created, the lodging ownership charge per unit remaining at an all-time high, and the unemployment charge per unit staying at a 30-year low. His oppositions attributed his stopping point race against Shrub to his deficiency of entreaty and competency, despite his hemorrhoid of accomplishments.

Gore lost to Shrub even in Tennessee, his place state, showing another mark of incompetency. His greatest failing is his inability to pass on well with the public. His model-student style gives ordinary people the feeling that he's arrogant and deadening and sets on airs. Some even state that since he received the Alfred Nobel award his distance from the public have widened rather than narrowed.

It have been the usage in United States for also-rans of presidential elections to quietly step away. If he neglects to do the most of the opportunity given him by the public and his party, then his narrative is over. There are no 2nd chances. He should acknowledge his defeat, no substance how gangrenous he may experience about it. Gore's most recent predecessors -- Bruno Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, British Shilling Dole -- followed this tradition. Disappearance into the backstage in favour of a new epoch and a new leader is the manner for the also-ran to take duty for his failure to dwell up to the outlooks of his political party and the public, who gave him a chance.

The column was contributed by Chosun Ilbo in-house editorialist Kang In-sun.

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Friday, November 2, 2007

BJP-JD(S) plans indefinite dharna

NEW DELHI/BANGALORE: The Centre on
Friday refrained from discussing its response to the emerging political
situation in Karnataka. The determination to detain action have got been prompted by its
assessment that Deve Gowda’s stiff conditionalities for championship BJP will
have an unsettling consequence in the approaching days. The Cabinet Commitee on
Political Personal Business that met on Thurday had come up to the decision that there was
no political point in delaying an ask for to BJP’s Type B Second Yediyurappa. The
meeting was of the position that since the BJP have more than than the needed numbers,
it would not be political prudent to procrastinate the formation of a new
government. But Mister Deve Gowda’s conditionalities have got forced a
rethink. There is also pressure level from a subdivision of the United States Congress to wait. As
squabbles have got already begun in the patched up BJP-JD(S) alliance, the Centre
will not be seen as being unreasonable. The BJP, which was expecting
an ask for from the governor, is planning a major offense against the Centre
and the United States Congress over the issue with no indicant of an invitation or
submission of a concluding study by Mysore governor Rameshwar Thakur to
facilitate lifting of President’s regulation in the state and formation of a
popular government. A restive BJP-JD(S) compound have planned indefinite dharna in
front of Mahatma Indira Gandhi statue in the metropolis from Saturday. The dharna
being jointly staged by legislators and leading of both BJP and JD(S) under the
leadership of the re-united coalition’s main ministerial campaigner Type B S
Yaddyurappa will be continued until stairway were taken to reconstruct popular regulation in
the state, announced state BJP president Vitamin D Volt Sadananda Gowda.

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