Ask Arthur 2022, Part 5: Sheepish

Here we are, finally at the end of this year’s “Ask Arthur” series. I saved this one for the end, precisely because it’s a non-serious topic—a bit of fun (for me, anyway…) to end the series.

This final question is from Roger Green, but it wasn’t actually intended as an AAA-22 question. Instead, it was a comment he left on a post last month, “Again seizing opportunities”, where he said:

I'm only partially kidding, but couldn't you just rent some sheep? I hear you have a lot of sheep in NZ. In fact – REALLY – there are sheep for rent in ALB, though I've never used them.

The context here is that my post was about mowing my lawns, something I’ve had to do frequently over the past few months, and rain was making that difficult. The serious (more or less) part is that I didn’t know the answer to the specific question, and the non-serious part (for me…) is that it touched on something that to me—an immigrant to New Zealand—is funny.

But, first things first: Is it even possible to keep sheep in a city?

The short answer seems to be “no”. Maybe—it’s absolutely unclear. In April 2018, Stuff published an article, “Can I keep a farm animal in my backyard?” The article talked about some of the varying regulations for keeping farm animals in cities around New Zealand, and was updated “to reflect bylaws in 2019 after police found a horse roaming the suburban streets of [Auckland’s] Epsom”. The regulations vary widely, but sheep weren’t specifically mentioned.

My next step was to try and find out from the website of Hamilton City Council (HCC) if having sheep within the city was permitted, but in typical HCC fashion, the website was largely unfathomable (yes, I could’ve rung and asked, but I didn’t). As near as I can tell, some farm animals may be okay if the section (property) is large enough, and if the animal won’t be a nuisance to neighbours. Animal welfare seems to be the primary concern, as it should be, and it appeared that in at least some cases, HCC would have to issue permits to keep an animal. Overall, the HCC website had no clear, easy to access answers to my questions (definitely not the first time that’s been the case…). So, I’m going to assume that no, you can’t have sheep in an urban area of Hamilton, like where I live.

I do know that in rural areas people with what we call “lifestyle blocks” (large properties, like, say, a couple acres that aren’t farmed) will sometimes have neighbouring farmers graze stock on their property so it doesn’t have to me mowed. When Nigel and I talked about moving out to a more rural area (even when we still lived in Paeroa), he sometimes talked about exactly that: Having a nearby farmer graze stock on our property. He also said goats weren’t an option because “they eat anything and everything.” We ended up moving back to Auckland, and by the time we moved to a more rural part of Auckland, he was over the idea of having a large property, and so, having stock graze on it.

I don’t know if there’s anyone who actually “rents” stock to property owners, and in the situations I described the farmer looks after the stock and the landowner provides, essentially, free food for it. There may well be financial arrangements akin to rentals going on, but it’s not something I know anything about.

There are times, I’ll admit, where having some grazing animal seems like an attractive option (not counting Leo eating grass, as he sometimes does), but it’s not practical and would be just another burden for me. In otgher words, not an option.

There—that’s the "serious" part done.

The thing that amused me was one thing Roger said: “I hear you have a lot of sheep in NZ”. This is always reminds me how some New Zealanders are irrationally sensitive about the topic of sheep. I think it comes from decades of mockery, especially from Australians, about how there were more sheep than people in New Zealand, and how Kiwis were “sheep shaggers”. The irony is that when I arrived in New Zealand, Australia had far more sheep than New Zealand did, and while I wouldn’t care to speculate on how personally attached individual Australians were to their flocks, I suspect there may have been some very close bonds among them.

Here are the actial facts, for the record: New Zealand’s sheep numbers have been declining for decades as more and more farms are converted from sheep to dairy cattle, urban areas grow to accomodate a rising human population, and lamb, and especially wool, become less profitable. The crash in the price of wool could well be the biggest single factor in the decline of sheep as an industry.

New Zealand had a peak of 70 million sheep in 1982, and that had dropped to 26 million sheep in the year ended June 2020, according to Stats NZ, which was a drop of 800,000 from the previous year (that drop in 2020 was largely because of persistent drought conditions). Over the preceding decade alone, sheep number dropped by 6.5 million, which was a fall of 20%.

For comparison, there were 6.2 million dairy cattle in June 2020, down slightly on the previous year. There were also 3.9 million beef cattle, which was similar to the previous year.

In June 2020, sheep meat exports brought in $4 billion, but wool brought in only $460 million, and that was almost half of the $800 million it earned only 8 years earlier, in 2012. The annual value of dairy product exports in 2020 was $16.6 billion (about a third of which went to China, NZ’s largest dairy export market), and total beef exports were worth about $3.8 billion for the year ended June 2020, up around half a million from the year before. The fact that dairy and beef exports collectively earn so much more than all sheep product exports is why I say it's the main driver for the decline in sheep numbers.

Back in 1995, I was fascinated by NZ’s perceived dependence on sheep, and amused by Kiwis' reluctance to talk about it. I was working for a company that published magazines (as vehicles for selling ads), and one of them was a guide for backpackers visiting New Zealand. We needed some fillers and decided to put in a series of “Did you know?” fun facts about the country to entertain foreign visitors. I decided to find out how many sheep per person there were at the time, so I rang some government agency (it may have been Stats NZ—I don’t remember) to find the answer. A coworker, who also edited the publication, said to me, “I never could’ve done that!” I think she thought it was kind of funny, though perhaps not as much as I did. To me, the whole “how many sheep per person” thing played right in the face of the mockery, which is actually what appealed to me the most.

So, I chuckled when I saw in the Stats NZ piece I linked to above that “there are now five sheep per person – a drop from the 1982 historic high of 22 per person.” When I asked in 1995, there were approximately 14.5 sheep per person, and to update a joke I made when talking about the fall in sheep numbers some years ago, I might say, “In 1995, there were 14.5 sheep per person in New Zealand, and now it’s only 5. Who got my other 9.5 sheep?!”

I mainly made the joke just to watch someone squirm at the mention of the number of sheep per person, because at the time many Kiwis were still uncomfortable with the topic. The truth is that while sheep numbers have been declining for forty years, the human population of New Zealand has also been rising: New Zealand’s population was only 3.2 million in 1982, and had risen to 5.1 million by 2020. Obviously the sheep-to-human ratio had to change.

In my defence, I should point out that I wasn’t being a jerk: One of the best ways to get over a sort of cultural squeamishness is to joke about it. Insults, including ones made by Aussies, lose their power if we’re the ones making the jokes. But, then, I’m an immigrant, so it’s entirely possible I simply don’t get it. But I also know that I don’t get 9.5 sheep that I got in in 1995.

And, that’s a wrap for this year’s “Ask Arthur” series. While I’ve always found these series fun, interesting, and/or educational to work on, they’re also a lot of work. Interest in the series ebbs and flows, and this was a low year. I seriously considered making this tenth annual series the last. On the other hand, this series used to be a good way to beef up the number of my posts at the end of the year, a time when I used to try to hit an annual average of one post per day. I haven’t hit that goal since 2018, and this year will be my lowest full-year annual total ever—and not dramatically higher than the three and half months I blogged in 2006 (this year will have had an average of fewer than one every other day). On the other hand, this series did help make December my “most blogged” month of 2022, so, there’s that, I guess.

Huge thanks to Roger and Sherry in playing along and asking questions. I hope I wasn’t too sheepish in my replies.

All posts in this series are tagged “AAA-21”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.

Previously:

A decade-long inquisition
Ask Arthur 2022, Part 1: Speaking in the House
Ask Arthur 2022, Part 2: Indepen-dunce
Ask Arthur 2022, Part 3: Ranking choices
Ask Arthur 2022, Part 4: Helping Ukraine?

Ask Arthur 2022, Part 4: Helping Ukraine?

This post is the actual penultimate post in this series, thanks to a question I received after Part 3. The final post in this year’s series will be at the end of this week.

Today’s question is from my long-time friend Sherry, who wrote:

The situation in Ukraine is heavy on my mind. I have no idea how there is never enough money for America, but something like helping Ukraine becomes a global crisis and all of a sudden we have the money to help another country. I can't help thinking what that kind of money would do for the U.S.

I wonder if we will ever get our money back from Russia. We should confiscate the assets we can to help pay for what they have done.

So, my question is… how does the world get Russia out of Ukraine so we can stop funding the war, and so Ukraine can become whole again? I believe in the 10 steps The President of Ukraine laid out...but it seems impossible!

That’s a really good question, and it’s one that comes up in one form or another all the time. I think there are several different aspects to this situation.

The thing that’s probably the most obvious is that there’s only one way to get Russia out of Ukraine without a global, possibly nuclear, war, and that’s funding Ukraine itself. If Western nations can prevent Russia from conquering Ukraine, over time the regime will become so weakened that they will agree to peace terms, or else the Russian dictator “falls out a window”, as so many of his enemies have. Either way, the war will end when Russia has had enough.

There’s no way that Russia will ever pay for its illegal war, and Western governments have (so far) shown very little appetite for penalising big corporations that do business with the Russian regime. The main barrier to cutting Russia off from the global economy is that Europe is still dependant on Russian oil and gas. The European Union is trying to rapidly accelerate their move away from that dependence, but there’s no easy or quick solution, and while it remains, Russia has a source of foreign money to spend on its war, and European nations can’t push too hard without retaliation, as we’ve already seen.

All of which means that the question of cost in a situation like this has to be seen in its larger context, namely, how much higher the cost would be to do nothing—or to do more. The reality is, this isn’t just about saving the Ukrainian people and nation, but about preserving freedom and democracy throughout Europe and beyond. Time was, that sort of statement would have been hyperbole, but now it’s simply the truth.

The Russian dictator is determined to restore the Russian Empire—not merely the Soviet Union, but going back to czarist times. So far, he has relied on installing compliant regimes in former Soviet “republics”. For example, he’s done that in Belarus, which gave him a staging point to use to invade Ukraine when the Ukrainian people had the audacity to depose the Russian regime’s hand-selected despot. It’s obvious now that the Russian dictator really did think that Kyiv would fall in a few days, and the Russians would be able to install an obedient servant to rule what would essentially have been a Russian vassal state. The Russian dictator vastly underestimated the fierce determination of the Ukrainian people and army, and vastly overestimated how good his own army was.

We also know how reliant the dictator is on mercenaries, who are responsible for most of the war crimes, acts of genocide, and brutality—most, but not all. Russia has deliberately targeted civilians in their homes, but they’ve also target hospitals, which itself is a war crime under international law going back the first international convention of 1864. The International Criminal Court and the United Nations have sent war crimes investigators to Ukraine to document Russia’s crimes—and, Russia is obligated by membership in the United Nations to turn over war criminals for prosecution, though no reasonable person could imagine them ever agreeing to do that while the current dictator is in power.

All of that is important to note because it underscores the Russian dictator’s imperial ambitions, ruthlessness, and gleeful brutality. He will never stop with Ukraine: He plans to eventually invade Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and also—at the very least—the rest of the European nations that were formerly controlled by the Soviet Union. However, that would mean a direct attack on NATO nations, which would cause a global war. He’s trying to avoid that by weakening western resolve so countries in the west give up and don’t resist, and then one day, it would be too late to resist.

The Russian dictator’s giddy embrace of war crimes and genocide, along with more routine brutality, is, like his constant threats of nuclear war, intended to frighten the citizens of nations supporting Ukraine. It’s why, as winter loomed, Russian agents sabotaged a natural gas pipeline leading to Germany. This is also why he courts direct support by far-right politicians in countries around the world, people who would be a sort of “fifth column” to help prevent foreign military opposition as he expands his empire.

It’s obviously far cheaper to fund Ukraine than to wage a global war, but it also drains Russian resources which would make a global war less likely, or less likely to succeed, the longer the current conflict continues. In the short term, that does nothing to help the folks in Ukraine or among its supporters, and the Russian dictator is counting on that fact to dissuade the West from supporting Ukraine long term.

So, funding Ukraine is far cheaper than waging a direct war with Russia or doing nothing and waiting for Russia to further expand its empire. However, no matter how important funding Ukraine is, that doesn’t address the heart of your question, about how much good could be done “at home” with money being spent in Ukraine.

I think it’s important to look at why, precisely, the USA never has enough money for its own needs: Pure, bald, crass, selfish politics. The USA could well afford to look after its own and help with problems around the world, but money is always short by design and on purpose.

We all know that the USA’s rightwing doesn’t much like international cooperation: Some factions hate the United Nations, others hate government funded humanitarian aid, and others adore the Russian dictator and his brutal regime. At the same time, other rightwing factions are concerned only with the needs and desires of the ultra-rich and corporations, and the needs or ordinary people are invisible to that faction.

Imagine an alternative reality where the ultra-rich and corporations paid their fair share in taxes—that doesn’t even have to mean higher taxes, just that they pay their existing tax obligations like ordinary people have to. Imagine if all the loopholes that favor the ultra-rich and corporations were closed—not just the ones that let them avoid paying any income tax, but also the ones that let them claim federal welfare payments, too.

Put another way, it’s not that the USA can’t take care of its own AND be an active participant in the world, it’s that the rightwing in the USA won’t allow it, and the electoral system is sufficiently rigged to allow that to continue being the case.

In my opinion, the problem isn’t that there’s a shortage of money, it’s that there’s an excess of greed. It’s not that there’s not enough money available to deal with problems at home and overseas, it’s that there’s not enough humanity among politicians to find ways to solve problems. Fixing that is up to ordinary people, because despite all the nefarious shenanigans of the politicians working to block change, ordinary people in democratic nations are the most powerful force in their countries. They just have to use the power they already have.

Thanks to Sherry for today’s question!

All posts in this series are tagged “AAA-21”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.

Previously:

A decade-long inquisition
Ask Arthur 2022, Part 1: Speaking in the House
Ask Arthur 2022, Part 2: Indepen-dunce
Ask Arthur 2022, Part 3: Ranking choices

Ask Arthur 2022, Part 3: Ranking choices

This is, at the moment, the penultimate post in this series: I still plan on publishing the final post next week. However, there’s still time to ask a question (details below), should one so desire, and I can always add more posts.

Today’s question is back in sequence: While related (sort of) to Parts 1 and 2, it’s still its own topic. It's also from my pal Roger Green, who asked:

Please explain (again) how an instant runoff voting scenario would work v. first past the post. If you want to, use the GA runoff as an example of a wasteful government expenditure, IMO.

For most Georgia voters (about which, more later), the state’s runoff election is an entirely separate election, held four weeks after the November election. The better, and far less expensive option, is ranked choice voting, the collective name for many different flavours of voting systems, all of which are completely different from what Georgia and other places use for most voters. In the USA, it’s also known as "alternative vote" (AV) or "instant-runoff voting" (IRV).

What all ranked choice systems have in common is that instead of voting for the only ONE candidate for an office, like in a typical first past the post (FPP) election, voters rank their choices from one (the candidate they most want) on down to the candidate they least want. In every system I’m aware of, a voter doesn’t have to rank all the candidates on the ballot. This matters because if a voter deeply loathes parties or candidates, it’s okay to simply ignore them. It’s what happens next that starts to get complicated.

The goal with ranked choice voting is that the eventual winner has a majority of the vote, something that may not happen with FPP. Let’s assume that that we’re looking at an election for a legislative representative in a single-member district, which means only one candidate can win. Let’s also assume that there are six candidates running for the office, and no clear favourite.

Let’s now assume this was the result of the election: Candidate A got 25% of the votes cast, Candidate B got 23%, Candidate C got 20%, Candidate D got 15, Candidate E got 12%, and Candidate F got 5%. Under FPP, Candidate A would be elected with only a quarter of the votes cast because they got the more than any other candidate—BUT the vast majority of voters did NOT vote for Candidate A. This can happen in any FPP election with multiple candidates.

In the real world, votes aren’t usually as close to each other as in this example, especially in elections that historically lean toward one party. The point, however, is that FPP doesn’t always elect someone that the majority of voters are at least okay with, and frequently elects candidates that only a minority voted for. When that happens, it’s typically said the candidate declared the winner got “a plurality of the vote”, which is a nice way of saying that the majority of voters didn’t vote for the winning candidate. That masks how undemocratic the result is, in my opinion.

In Georgia, no candidate won 50% of the votes cast in the November election, though Sen. Raphael Warnock, the Democrat running for re-election, won more votes than his Republican or Libertarian Party opponents. Under FPP, Sen. Warnock would’ve been reelected with less than half the vote, but instead there was the separate runoff election four weeks later, which he won.

In ranked choice voting elections, there are rounds (called different names in different places, but we’ll use that). In the example above, voters could rank their choices from 1 up to 6. The result only be the first round because no candidate received 50% of the vote. So, the lowest ranked candidate (Candidate F, in the example) is eliminated, and their votes are redistributed to the second choices of Candidate F’s voters. This continues with an as many rounds as it takes until one candidate passes 50% and becomes the winner.

This all happens through mathematics, which is certainly not my strongest subject, so I can’t explain the precise mechanisms. I understand what happens, but not precisely how it happens. The important thing is that it follows mathematics.

This gets at the biggest problem with ranked choice voting: It’s complicated. It’s hard to educate voters used to FPP on how the system works and how to use it. Once they understand the principle of ranking choices, though, it’s simple to use. The next question is, why use it?

The biggest reason is that it guarantees that the winning candidate(s) will have a majority of voters who, at the very least, don’t totally reject them. Under FPP, it’s very easy for someone disliked by the majority to nevertheless win. That also means that the “spoiler effect” inherent in FPP is vastly reduced: Under ranked choice voting, people don’t “throw away” their votes on minor party candidates because if they’re eliminated, their votes will be reallocated to other, possibly similar choices that might win. Under FPP, casting a vote for a minor party candidate could help a candidate one loathes to win. Partly because it reduses the spoiler effect, over time ranked choice voting encourages more minor parties, though, it must be noted, ranked choice voting results usually coalesce around dominant parties.

All that said, another (and completely different) reason to use ranked choice voting in elections is the savings: The immediate “run off” saves the costs of holding an entirely separate election day and having entirely separate vote counting. Equally as important, it spares voters from having to endure further weeks of incessant election advertising and campaigning.

In sum, ranked choice voting is fairer and more democratic than FPP, it encourages the development of smaller parties, and it saves taxpayers money, all while ensuring they don’t have to endure any more electioneering than is absolutely necessary. Infinite wins, in my opinion.

Even Georgia sees the common-sense practicality of ranked choice voting: Overseas Georgia votes (and maybe other absentee voters—I don’t know) were given a ranked choice ballot to use in the November election. This was entirely practical: It would be physically impossible to get run-off ballots to overseas voters and get them returned in time to be counted. What I don’t know is how they were counted. To me, it seems likely that they could’ve eliminated minor party candidates in the second round to get to the two in the run-off, then add those votes onto the total in the run-off. I should emphasise that I’m speculating, because I absolutely don’t know, and it’s also possible that the votes of overseas Georgians weren’t used at all in the runoff.

Finally, ranked-choice voting, in all its many flavours, isn’t merely always fairer and more democratic than FPP, it’s also a system that could be adopted everywhere in the USA without changing the country’s system of government or amending the US Constitution (or, probably, any state constitutions—I haven’t checked that). This would do more to change the USA’s poisoned politics faster than pretty much any other democratic reform. All of which is why the USA’s rightwing and their wealthy donors would oppose it with with all their might: Ranked choice voting would mean they’d lose their unearned, unelected power. To me, that’s just one more excellent reason for the USA to switch to ranked choice voting.

Thanks to Roger for today’s question!

It’s not too late to ask a question: Simply leave a comment on this post (anonymous comments are allowed). Or, you can email me your question (and you can even tell me to keep your name secret, although, why not pick a nom de question?). You can also ask questions on the AmeriNZ Facebook page, though keep in mind that all Facebook Pages are public, just like this blog. To avoid being public there, you can send me a private message through the AmeriNZ Facebook Page..

All posts in this series are tagged “AAA-21”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.

Previously:

A decade-long inquisition
Ask Arthur 2022, Part 1: Speaking in the House
Ask Arthur 2022, Part 2: Indepen-dunce

Ask Arthur 2022, Part 2: Indepen-dunce

Today’s question is out of the sequence I’d planned—it’s the latest arrival, in fact—because it seems more closely related to Part 1 than the question I’d planned for this week. Because this will (still) be a short series this year, I planned one post per week to conclude before Christmas. I’ll now post the final part in this series the last week of the year (and, where has the year gone?!). This means there’s extra time to ask a question (details below).

At any rate, today’s question is from my pal Roger Green, who asked:

How, if at all, does Sinema becoming an independent change the Senate operations? How does it affect her running for reelection in 2024? Will Manchin follow suit?

The first question is the easiest: It won’t necessarily change anything because under the very, very best circumstances, her vote for Democratic bills was always unreliable, and her demands many. Her being an independent won’t change her behaviour at all.

It’s also true that there were already two independents in the US Senate who caucus with the Democrats: Bernie Sanders of Vermont and also Angus King of Maine. Sanders might be considered an “Independent Democrat” mainly because he’s sought the Democratic Party’s nomination for US President. Like Sinema, he’s often criticised Democrats’ policies, priorities, etc., though for reasons opposite hers. That means that there’s a precedent for Sinema caucusing with Democrats while also criticising Democrats.

It seems probable to me that the entire reason Sinema declared herself an independent is Arizona’s 2024 US Senate election. She’s too far to the Right for the Democratic Party that selected her—on a supposedly progressive platform, no less—and she’s too far Left for the Republican Party (although, to be fair, the vast majority of Americans would be called “far leftist” by many Republicans…). Her political problem arose because she betrayed the Democratic voters of Arizona who nominated her, and all the voters of Arizona who sent her to the US Senate believing her when she campaigned as a progressive.

Her treachery means that she was absolutely certain to have been primaried in the 2024 elections, and it’s highly likely that she would have lost re-nomination as a Democrat. However, she could never win nomination as a Republican, so that left only one option: Become an independent. It’s just her typical self-centred, “it’s ALL about me!” vanity. It’s also a sensible move—though crass and somewhat egomaniacal.

The fact is, she has—yet again—betrayed Democrats by blocking their options through giving them the poison pill of letting her win to prevent Republicans winning the seat. This is because Arizona still has a large and powerful rightwing in the state, despite trending “Blue”. She’s betting that Republicans might nominate an at least “not absolutely horrible” candidate, and if Democrats don’t nominate a strong candidate (or one at all), then she can get re-elected by slipping between the two parties.

She may well think that Democrats would prefer to nominate a weak candidate—or none at all—to avoid the possibility of losing the seat to the Republicans (again, assuming Republicans don’t nominate a whack-job). That’s because 2024 could well be a difficult year for Democrats to hold the Senate (and in general, actually…): The party risks losing seats in the Senate. Sinema thinks that Democrats will see letting her win as making it a bit less likely they’ll lose control of the Senate in 2024—and she’s probably right. It’s actually brilliant, in an “evil genius” and “Machiavellian” sort of way.

However, none of this applies to Joe Manchin. No one could credibly call him a “liberal”, and absolutely not a “leftist”. However, with the Republican Party as extremist as it now is, there’s no room for a conservative Democrat to join them because he’s definitely not conservative enough for the Republican Party. If he were to become an Independent, he’d probably lose re-election: West Virginia is hard-right, and were he an independent conservatives would probably vote for the “real” conservative, the Republican.

In West Virginia’s 2018 Senate election, Manchin won with only 49.57% of the vote (the Republican and the Libertarian split the rest of the vote). If a Democrat—even a weak candidate—was in the race with a Republican and an independent Manchin, the Republican would be almost certain to win. There's currently no reason to think that West Virginia voters would be keen to elect an independent Senator if Democrats sat out the election. On balance, if re-election is something he cares about—and he’s said it isn’t—he’d be better off becoming a Republican, but that would be an even bigger betrayal of voters than Sinema’s. On the other hand, Manchin will be 77 in 2024 and may choose to retire, which would make all of this moot—and an almost certain pick-up for Republicans.

So, Sinema becoming an independent won’t change much of anything about the way the Senate operates under Democratic control, nor will it change her behaviour as a Senator. The only thing it may change is the political calculations relating to who might win that Arizona Senate seat in 2024, and so, who does win it. None of that applies to Manchin. He stands to gain almost nothing from becoming an independent, and it could make it harder for him to win re-election, should he choose that.

Thanks to Roger for today’s topic!

It’s not too late to ask a question: Simply leave a comment on this post (anonymous comments are allowed). Or, you can email me your question (and you can even tell me to keep your name secret, although, why not pick a nom de question?). You can also ask questions on the AmeriNZ Facebook page, though keep in mind that all Facebook Pages are public, just like this blog. To avoid being public there, you can send me a private message through the AmeriNZ Facebook Page..

All posts in this series are tagged “AAA-21”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.

Previously:

A decade-long inquisition
Ask Arthur 2022, Part 1: Speaking in the House

Ask Arthur 2022, Part 1: Speaking in the House

It’s time to begin answering this year’s “Ask Arthur” series, and this year I decided to do what I’ve done in the past: Start with the first question and go to the last, in order. It doesn’t usually matter what order I answer them in, anyway, so chronological order is as good a way as any.

There are few questions this year, so there will also be few “Answer” posts, too. Of course, anyone can still ask new questions, but that seldom happens at this point in the process, which is why I expect it to be a short series this year.

Today’s questions are from my pal Roger Green, and are all related. Here’s the first one:

what you think is the legacy of Nancy Pelosi's tenure as Speaker and minority leader?

I have two thoughts upfront. The first is that it’s almost impossible to know a famous person’s true legacy in the moment, because time and distance are usually vital to gain some perspective. The other thing is that, generally speaking, people’s perceptions of her legacy will depend on which side of the USA’s partisan divide they live on, and even which end of the Democratic Party one resides in. Nevertheless, I definitely have my own view.

I think that Nancy Pelosi was the most important Speaker of the US House since Tip O’Neill. Like him, she could (usually…) keep the Democratic caucus in line, and so, she was able to get the House to pass all sorts of hugely important legislation. The other speakers surrounding her terms Underscore why I say that.

Her predecessor as Speaker, prior to the 2006 midterm elections, was Illinois Republican Dennis Hastert, whose reputation was destroyed by a sexual abuse scandal, and the resulting financial fraud because of it, all of which came to light some eight years after he left Congress. His Congressional legacy is now limited to a grudging acknowledgement that his 8 year term was the longest of any Republican Speaker of the House.

When Democrats lost control of the US House following the teabagger midterm election of 2010, John Boehner of Ohio became Speaker. This was a turning point, and a foreshadowing of what was to come: Teabaggers elected to the House, like those allied to the Republican presidential candidate of 2016 and 2020, were opposed to comprise of any kind, especially bipartisanship. Boehner struggled to maintain control of the Republicans’ agenda, and so, cannot be seen as having been a successful Speaker. Things got so bad that he resigned from the House in 2015, and Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan succeeded him.

Just like Boehner, Ryan was plagued with a combative, restive, and hard-right Republican caucus. Making matters worse for him was that he was Speaker after the orange Republican got into the White House in 2016, and they clearly didn’t get along (which wasn’t unusual for the orange Republican, of course, whose only concern was that everyone worship him). Ryan’s only significant “accomplishments” in his two terms as speaker was to pass Republicans’ massive tax cut for the rich (which added $7.8 trillion to the USA’s national debt) and the gutting of the Dodd-Frank Act, which had been passed in 2010 to try to fix the loopholes in the law that allowed the Great Recession to happen in 2008 (corporations and Wall Street banksters hated the act).

Republicans’ attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act only passed the House by a narrow vote, but then famously failed in the US Senate when Republican senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and John McCain all joined Democrats in voting against it (and McCain received most of the venom and fury of hard right Republicans and their orange partyleader). Ryan didn’t get to privatise social security and Medicare as he wanted to, nor gut Medicaid. He cannot be considered to have been a successful Speaker, and he finally just gave up and didn’t run for re-election in the 2018 midterms, after which Nancy Pelosi became Speaker for the second time.

In between Tip O'Neill and Dennis Hastert was the vile Newt Gingrich, the person who we can all thank for giving birth to Republicans' "slash and burn" hyper-partisanship and the partisan gridlock that Congress is now known for. Gingrich was such an arrogant, aggressive,and aggressively negative Speaker that even his own caucus grew to loathe him, and he’s become only more and more and more contemptible since he—thankfully—quit the House ending the four-year long nightmare of him as Speaker.

What all of that history shows us is that none of the Republican speakers since Tip O'Neill were even partly as effective as he was, though one could argue that through longevity alone, Hastert was at least the least infective of the Republican speakers. By sheer comparison, then, Nancy Pelosi was a far more successful speaker than any of the Republicans I mentioned in this recap.

Another indication of her success was the depth of hatred for her among Republicans, a reaction that became more fetid the farther right a Republican was. However, Progressive Democrats also didn’t like Pelosi—though “hate” is far too strong a word for their reaction. They felt that she wasn’t progressive enough (which was probably a fair assessment, in my opinion), and they resented her unwillingness to take the caucus to the Left. One can ague whether she was right or wrong about keeping the caucus more moderate (in the modern sense), and one can be suspicious of progressives’ claims that the electorate is actually progressive, not centrist, but it is inarguable that they didn’t want her as Speaker. However, it’s also true that they were realistic that they didn’t have the numbers to stop her, and so, their best option was to work with her to get legislation passed that was at least somewhat more progressive than it otherwise might have been. The arrangement worked, and Speaker Pelosi made sure it did.

Which leads naturally to Roger’s next question:

What kind of Speaker will Kevin McCarthy be? Will he be able to keep the "Freedom Caucus" in check?

He will be a terrible speaker—if he actually wins the role, of course. People on the centre and, of course, the left, but also sane conservatives, don’t trust him—at all. He coddled seditious conspirators and when he had the chance to stand up and do the right thing about the orange guy’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election—and the constitution—to steal another four years as president, Kevin repeatedly failed the country—and the Constitution and his oath to defend it.

If he becomes Speaker, he'll be utterly beholden to that same Treason Caucus among Republicans in the House—and they don’t even like him. The first time he even micro-pauses before bowing and scraping to the Republicans’ lunatic fringe, they’ll try to dump him. It could well be a major miracle if he manages to serve out the entire two-year term, but there’s also this: If the lunatic fringe pushes too hard, Democrats and sane Republicans may well join forces to install a sane conservative as Speaker. Likely? Probably not. The old saying about Republicans falling in line may still prove true, and the seditious lunatics' posturing now may just be to make sure Kevin is fully under their thumb. I certainly wouldn’t place a bet on him still being Speaker at the end of 2024.

And this actually leads to Roger’s last question for today:

Will anything get done in the federal government in the next two years, or will we fuss over the debt limit and federal budget twice a year?.

Nope: Nothing good or useful to anyone will get out of the House for the next two years. Most of the Republicans in Congress—the House in particular—don’t believe in governing, and their record over the past decade and a half or so underscores that reality. We know the radicals’ agenda consists of launching 2,083 different investigations of Hunter Biden’s laptop, of attempting to impeach Joe Biden for the crime of being a Democrat, and they’ll also focus on hurting the American people every chance they get, including by shutting down the US Government. Everything terrible about the Republican Party that voters rejected in the midterm elections? They’ll double and triple down on that extremism, and pile more on top of it.

However, just as Kevin’s hold the speakership, if he actually gets it, will be highly fragile and tenuous, so, too, is the power of the Treason Caucus. All it will take is a few of the sane conservatives to vote with Democrats to kneecap the radicals, however, the counter to that is the fact that the majority caucus sets the House agenda through the Speaker, so it will be hard for the sane majority in Congress to do an end run around the radicals—difficult, but not impossible. The House doesn’t have a filibuster, after all. Progressive legislation is definitely dead for two years, but centrist legislation might manage to get through with the help of sane conservatives. Maybe.

Thanks to Roger for today’s questions!

It’s not too late to ask a question: Simply leave a comment on this post (anonymous comments are allowed). Or, you can email me your question (and you can even tell me to keep your name secret, although, why not pick a nom de question?). You can also ask questions on the AmeriNZ Facebook page, though keep in mind that all Facebook Pages are public, just like this blog. To avoid being public there, you can send me a private message through the AmeriNZ Facebook Page..

All posts in this series are tagged “AAA-21”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.

Previously:

”A decade-long inquisition” – The first post in this year’s series.

AAA 2022: A decade-long inquisition

Here we are again—and it's a decade of asking. Ten years ago, in 2012, I began an annual year-end series of “Ask Arthur” posts (I also had two July series, but abandoned that idea). I skipped 2019 because I was “a bit absorbed by other things going on at that time”, as I put it last year.

The “Ask Arthur” series of posts is a chance for people to ask me nearly anything, and I try to answer whatever I’m asked. I’ve never had a question about a topic that was “off limits”, however, I’ve always said that if I couldn’t answer a question for any reason, I’d say so. It turned out that I've never had a question that I wouldn’t answer. It also turned out that I haven’t yet met a topic I don’t have an opinion on. Who’d have guessed that?

Over this ten-year series, I’ve been asked about myself, my past, about life in New Zealand—mine or in general—about being an expat, and what I think about various topics or events in the news. The possibilities are nearly endless.

To ask questions, simply leave a comment on this post (anonymous comments are allowed). Or, you can email me your question (and you can even tell me to keep your name secret, although, why not pick a nom du question?). You can also ask questions on the AmeriNZ Facebook page, though keep in mind that all Facebook Pages are public, just like this blog. To avoid being public there, you can send me a private message through the AmeriNZ Facebook Page.

Finally, as I always note, this idea is stolen from inspired by Roger Green’s “Ask Roger Anything” (“ARA”) posts. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Or, something like that.

So, over to you: Ask your question whatever way works best for you, and I’ll do my best to answer.

All posts in this series will be tagged “AAA-22”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.

Previously:

What do you want to know? (December 2012)
Ask Arthur (July 2013)
Ask Arthur – Again (December 2013)
Ask Arthur Again, again (December 2014)
Ask Arthur yet again (July 2015)
It’s that time again (December 2015)
It’s ‘Ask Arthur’ time again (December 2016)
Let the 2017 asking begin (November 2017)
Let the 2018 asking begin (November 2018)
There was no “Ask Arthur” series in 2019.
Sure, why not ask again? (December 2020) Yes, ask again (November 2021)