The NSW government will change the child welfare reporting laws to stop DOCS being crippled by the volume of trivial complaints (here), but will there be any examination of how things reached this juncture? Perhaps policy has been made thoughtlessly in response to headlines and spin rather than with careful consideration and development? Either the current reporting laws should never have been introduced, or the funding and structure should have been put in place right away to ensure they could be implemented successfully. A government that cared even slightly about good policy rather than polls would ensure that its agencies, particularly those of such immediate human importance, were fixed before they fell apart, not after.
Even more irritating for me personally has been the budget debacle. It seems Nathan Rees only goal is to keep the budget in surplus, regardless of any consequences to the state, at a time when any halfway competent government would be posting significant deficits. In a state choked by aging and inadequate infrastructure, caught in the fierce currents of a global economic downturn, after that state has posted surpluses for years consecutively, choosing to throw out spending for the sake of balanacing a one-off budget is baffling.
I refuse to believe that an individual could scale the heights of public administration that Nathan Rees or any of his ministers have without acquiring so basic a level of economic understanding, so that leaves only one explanation for this behaviour, that deficits poll badly and surpluses test well. The irresponsibility astounds me.
The Labor government in NSW has worked this way for over a decade, so it's unlikely to change anytime soon. All that really has changed is that Bob Carr, the man who was actually made it all look good, is gone, and the machine men who use the state government as a machine for milking developers of dodgy campaign contributions have advanced increasingly incompetent front men in attempts to extend their cosy situation. If Barry O'Farrell wisens up and avoids actually appearing in public or allowing any of his MPs to speak to the media before the next election, I might even find myself accidentally voting Liberal in a state election in the next few years.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
False premises
Gary Kamiya has an article on Salon.com that got me agitated about one of my pet peeves, the accepted wisdom amongst progressives that the US (and by extension everyone else) should withdraw from Afghanistan, that somehow this war is morally on par with Iraq. (article here)
While this article and the commenters make some good points, it ignores some important facts about the situation in Afghanistan.
First is the state of Afghanistan before the war. The bombast and propoganda of the right over the last seven years has made it difficult to retain clarity on this issue, but the fact is the Taliban were, between 1996 and 2001, the most brutal and repressive regime on the planet, and that they were allowed to rage through Afghanistan unchecked should shame us all. When Gary Kamiya and apparently almost the entire left advocate abandoning Afghanistan, they advocate leaving over 30 million people in the hands of a system of deliberate evil. At least for the sake of 15 million Afghani women, troops must remain in Afghanistan.
Second is the fact that terrorism does, in fact, offer an existential threat to democracies. There is no more compelling proof of that than the de facto repression of free speech, imprisonment and torture of the innocent sometimes unto death, and disregard for constitutional rights allowed by the electorate in the United States over the last seven years. Because of a single terrorist attack, liberal democracy was dormant if not dead in the nation where it should have been strongest of all.
Or consider the depopulation of half of Israel in July 2006 in response to the Hezbollah rocket attacks, as vast numbers of citizens became refugees. Democracy depends on the calm rationality of the citizenry, and that is exactly what terrorism targets.
Third is the enormous progress that can be made in the internationalisation of the conflict. Anyone with real knowledge of what is going on in Afghanistan knows that great strides have been made as the military of the UAE have engaged. The tribes whose insular, tenacious and warlike nature, and ironclad laws of hospitality, made winning the war impossible for the US alone, are being won over with the help of these valuable allies.
Although saying it induces reflexive cynicism, the international coalition MUST stay in Afghanistan until the government of Afghanistan can defend itself from the mainly foreign extremists who insinuated themselves into the national life.
The most valuable thing Bush and the neoconservatives stole from the thinking left when he politically capitalised on national disaster was not freedom, compassion, or peace, it was clarity of thought. Barack Obama is approaching the situation with neither the concept of American exceptionalism and pre-determined victory that caused the right to bungle the job, nor from the ideologically blinkered corner the left has allowed itself to be pushed into, but instead from the direction of making policy based on reality, needs and results. Now that the shadow of an imperial presidency is contracting, it's time to examine our preconceptions and start to apply knowledge and logic rather than college campus ideological assumptions.
While this article and the commenters make some good points, it ignores some important facts about the situation in Afghanistan.
First is the state of Afghanistan before the war. The bombast and propoganda of the right over the last seven years has made it difficult to retain clarity on this issue, but the fact is the Taliban were, between 1996 and 2001, the most brutal and repressive regime on the planet, and that they were allowed to rage through Afghanistan unchecked should shame us all. When Gary Kamiya and apparently almost the entire left advocate abandoning Afghanistan, they advocate leaving over 30 million people in the hands of a system of deliberate evil. At least for the sake of 15 million Afghani women, troops must remain in Afghanistan.
Second is the fact that terrorism does, in fact, offer an existential threat to democracies. There is no more compelling proof of that than the de facto repression of free speech, imprisonment and torture of the innocent sometimes unto death, and disregard for constitutional rights allowed by the electorate in the United States over the last seven years. Because of a single terrorist attack, liberal democracy was dormant if not dead in the nation where it should have been strongest of all.
Or consider the depopulation of half of Israel in July 2006 in response to the Hezbollah rocket attacks, as vast numbers of citizens became refugees. Democracy depends on the calm rationality of the citizenry, and that is exactly what terrorism targets.
Third is the enormous progress that can be made in the internationalisation of the conflict. Anyone with real knowledge of what is going on in Afghanistan knows that great strides have been made as the military of the UAE have engaged. The tribes whose insular, tenacious and warlike nature, and ironclad laws of hospitality, made winning the war impossible for the US alone, are being won over with the help of these valuable allies.
Although saying it induces reflexive cynicism, the international coalition MUST stay in Afghanistan until the government of Afghanistan can defend itself from the mainly foreign extremists who insinuated themselves into the national life.
The most valuable thing Bush and the neoconservatives stole from the thinking left when he politically capitalised on national disaster was not freedom, compassion, or peace, it was clarity of thought. Barack Obama is approaching the situation with neither the concept of American exceptionalism and pre-determined victory that caused the right to bungle the job, nor from the ideologically blinkered corner the left has allowed itself to be pushed into, but instead from the direction of making policy based on reality, needs and results. Now that the shadow of an imperial presidency is contracting, it's time to examine our preconceptions and start to apply knowledge and logic rather than college campus ideological assumptions.
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