IR and Political Science links threads

[Cain]

Invest in rice, or, most shameless act of vote-buying in history.  You decide.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-04/rice-may-rally-56-as-pro-thaksin-party-sweeps-to-power-in-thai-elections.html

Rice prices in Thailand, the biggest exporter, may rally 56 percent by yearend as the party that won parliamentary elections implements a policy to buy the crop from farmers above current rates, according to a survey.

The export price may climb to $810 per metric ton by Dec. 31, according to a median forecast of six millers, exporters and traders today and yesterday, who commented after Pheu Thai won a majority in yesterday's contest. "We are ready to implement all policies we have announced," Yingluck Shinawatra, who will become Thailand's first female prime minister, said yesterday.

Costlier rice from Thailand, which accounts for about 30 percent of worldwide shipments, may increase global food costs while making supplies from rival Vietnam more competitive. A Bloomberg survey last month, conducted during the campaign, suggested a gain to $750 per ton if Pheu Thai were to win.

"It isn't only Thai prices that will go up, the rest of the world will have to follow," Mamadou Ciss, chief executive officer of Hermes Investments Pte, said from Geneva. The price may jump $100 within two months and peak at $700, said Ciss, who correctly predicted in 2006 that prices would double.

Thai export prices are a benchmark for the industry. The price of the 100 percent grade-B variety, which is set weekly, was at $519 per ton on June 29, and has risen as much as 7.3 percent since outgoing Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva called the election. Abhisit's Democrat Party won 160 seats in the 500- member parliament while Pheu Thai took 264, with 98 percent of the vote counted.

Hey, remember this?  Well Thailand's rice crop just got wiped out, due to floods.

Expect another massive price rise.

[Triple Zero]

I will refrain ... must ... not ... aaaaaa

Expect another massive price rice.

I'm sorry it's an obsessive compulsive thing

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Invest in rice, or, most shameless act of vote-buying in history.  You decide.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-04/rice-may-rally-56-as-pro-thaksin-party-sweeps-to-power-in-thai-elections.html

Rice prices in Thailand, the biggest exporter, may rally 56 percent by yearend as the party that won parliamentary elections implements a policy to buy the crop from farmers above current rates, according to a survey.

The export price may climb to $810 per metric ton by Dec. 31, according to a median forecast of six millers, exporters and traders today and yesterday, who commented after Pheu Thai won a majority in yesterday's contest. "We are ready to implement all policies we have announced," Yingluck Shinawatra, who will become Thailand's first female prime minister, said yesterday.

Costlier rice from Thailand, which accounts for about 30 percent of worldwide shipments, may increase global food costs while making supplies from rival Vietnam more competitive. A Bloomberg survey last month, conducted during the campaign, suggested a gain to $750 per ton if Pheu Thai were to win.

"It isn't only Thai prices that will go up, the rest of the world will have to follow," Mamadou Ciss, chief executive officer of Hermes Investments Pte, said from Geneva. The price may jump $100 within two months and peak at $700, said Ciss, who correctly predicted in 2006 that prices would double.

Thai export prices are a benchmark for the industry. The price of the 100 percent grade-B variety, which is set weekly, was at $519 per ton on June 29, and has risen as much as 7.3 percent since outgoing Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva called the election. Abhisit's Democrat Party won 160 seats in the 500- member parliament while Pheu Thai took 264, with 98 percent of the vote counted.

Hey, remember this?  Well Thailand's rice crop just got wiped out, due to floods.

Expect another massive price rise.

Oh fuck!

[Cain]

http://enikrising.blogspot.com/2012/04/imagine-no-campaign-donations-its-easy.html

Imagine, for a moment, that you didn't need to raise money to run for office, that the government would pay you to run. Who would that help? Would it encourage more moderate candidates, who are usually pressured out of nomination contests by party money because they don't stand for anything? Or would it enable the extremists, whom are normally de-funded due to concerns about their toxic views?

These findings suggest that it's the more ideologically extreme candidates who take advantage of clean funding to run for office. Under the traditional funding system, party donors function as gate-keepers, reducing the power of extreme candidates by channelling money away from them. Take away the gate-keepers, and it's the extremists who break through, contributing to the polarization of the legislature.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2011.00577.x/abstract

This study argues that President Obama's strong association with an issue like health care should polarize public opinion by racial attitudes and race. Consistent with that hypothesis, racial attitudes had a significantly larger impact on health care opinions in fall 2009 than they had in cross-sectional surveys from the past two decades and in panel data collected before Obama became the face of the policy. Moreover, the experiments embedded in one of those reinterview surveys found health care policies were significantly more racialized when attributed to President Obama than they were when these same proposals were framed as President Clinton's 1993 reform efforts. Dozens of media polls from 1993 to 1994 and from 2009 to 2010 are also pooled together to show that with African Americans overwhelmingly supportive of Obama's legislative proposals, the racial divide in health care opinions was 20 percentage points greater in 2009–10 than it was over President Clinton's plan back in 1993–94.

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/dyanagi/Research/TeaParty_Protests.pdf

Can protests cause political change, or are they merely symptoms of underlying shifts in policy preferences? This paper studies the effect of the Tea Party movement in the United States, which rose to prominence through a series of rallies across the country on April 15, Tax Day, 2009. To identify the causal effect of protests, we use an instrumental variables approach that exploits variation in rainfall on the day of the coordinated rallies. Weather on Tax Day robustly predicts rally attendance and the subsequent local strength of the movement as measured by donations, media coverage, social networking activity, and later events. We show that larger rallies cause an increase in turnout in favor of the Republicans in the 2010 Congressional elections, and increase the likelihood that incumbent Democratic representatives retire. Incumbent policymaking is affected as well: representatives respond to large protests in their district by voting more conservatively in Congress. Finally, the estimates imply significant multiplier effects: for every protester, Republican votes increase by seven to fourteen votes. Together our results show that protests can build political movements that ultimately affect policy, and they suggest that it is unlikely that these effects arise solely through the standard channel of private-information revelation.

http://www.kndu.ac.kr/rinsa/index.jsp?mid1=00000135&mid2=00000684&mid3=&contents_seq=26353&b_mode=R

Kim Jong Il's death is more than just the passing of a chief executive; given North Korea's (NK) hyperpersonalization, it is transformational. As such, Kim Jong Un's ascent offers a unique opportunity to try engagement once again with NK. It may fail, as it has so often before, but the very fluid new circumstances make it worth a major effort. NK is such a dangerous country and the cold war standoff with SK so severe now, that to pass up this rare window would be a tremendous missed opportunity.

More whenever I feel like updating the thread.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Then protesting actually works? So is Occupy going to do any good, or did the baggers only have an effect because the GOP engineered them in the first place?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Posting so I can re-read this thread while sober.

[hirley0]

23 MIN till Mon + 1hr 4 B to Catch

[Cain]

Then protesting actually works? So is Occupy going to do any good, or did the baggers only have an effect because the GOP engineered them in the first place?

It may be the case that because Tea Party trends already existed in the GOP, politicians there were better positioned to take advantage of the trends.  Furthermore, the Tea Party in many cases had specific policy recommendations to make - sure, they were bad policies, but they were something a politician could promise, and then voters could assess their plausibility and commitment to such ideas.  Occupy says "this is fucked up", but doesn't necessarily say how to respond.  Furthermore, its trends are far less prevalent within the Democratic Party, and so it is probably a lot harder for them to take advantage of, despite attempts to do so.

[AFK]

The Tea Party largely coalesced and received a lot of energy from two things.  The Health Care Law, and a new Black President.  In the case of the former, I think with the economic unease, you had enough independents and moderates who were feeling a bit leery about what Obama was proposing with Health Care that Tea Party stuff took hold.  Now, when it came to the nuttier elements of the TP, namely those focused on the new Black President bit, I would like to think most of those same independents and moderates were all set with that. 

So basically, while the TP were wrong about a great many things, they just happened to be asking some of the same questions, and had some of the same concerns, that a lot of other "normal" Americans had. 

I don't think Occupy has had that same fortune.  Nevermind that they also can't galvanize around one central opponent like the TP could.  That factor can't be discounted. 

[hirley0]

I Would rather doubt
in a Long HaiL, that Tp'$ have it wrong
For Future Reference, For the Fun of it
What happens NEXT, come the Last day of the
current Year. & if U think U know
what happens THEN,,,
then,, by all means,
let me know
TOO t=6:20AMpdT

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Then protesting actually works? So is Occupy going to do any good, or did the baggers only have an effect because the GOP engineered them in the first place?

It may be the case that because Tea Party trends already existed in the GOP, politicians there were better positioned to take advantage of the trends.  Furthermore, the Tea Party in many cases had specific policy recommendations to make - sure, they were bad policies, but they were something a politician could promise, and then voters could assess their plausibility and commitment to such ideas.  Occupy says "this is fucked up", but doesn't necessarily say how to respond.  Furthermore, its trends are far less prevalent within the Democratic Party, and so it is probably a lot harder for them to take advantage of, despite attempts to do so.

True. I haven't heard anything except "this is fucked up" since they were kicking this around http://occupywallst.org/forum/proposed-list-of-demands-for-occupy-wall-st-moveme/

[Telarus]

The Tea Party largely coalesced and received a lot of energy from two things.  The Health Care Law, and a new Black President.  In the case of the former, I think with the economic unease, you had enough independents and moderates who were feeling a bit leery about what Obama was proposing with Health Care that Tea Party stuff took hold.  Now, when it came to the nuttier elements of the TP, namely those focused on the new Black President bit, I would like to think most of those same independents and moderates were all set with that. 

So basically, while the TP were wrong about a great many things, they just happened to be asking some of the same questions, and had some of the same concerns, that a lot of other "normal" Americans had. 

I don't think Occupy has had that same fortune.  Nevermind that they also can't galvanize around one central opponent like the TP could.  That factor can't be discounted.

The Tea Party largely coalesced and received a lot of energy money from two things. The Koch brothers.

The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party

They were a coherent movement as long as the money lasted....

[AFK]

Well, yeah, I'm pretty aware of the bankroll behind the Tea Party organizations.  But it makes it that much easier if The People are buying into the message and spreading it to their neighbors, which was my point.  I mean, even if George Soros backed up a truck full of money at some Occupy headquarters, they still wouldn't end up having the impact on policy that the Tea Party and its followers had. 

[Doktor Howl]

Well, yeah, I'm pretty aware of the bankroll behind the Tea Party organizations.  But it makes it that much easier if The People are buying into the message and spreading it to their neighbors, which was my point.  I mean, even if George Soros backed up a truck full of money at some Occupy headquarters, they still wouldn't end up having the impact on policy that the Tea Party and its followers had.

Thing is, most of the teabagger apparatus was in place before there was a tea party.

It was astro-turfed, it wasn't some grassroots thing that the Koch brothers saw and decided to fund after the fact.

[AFK]

But if someone just started dumping cash into Occupy right now would it have the same impact?

I say no because while there certainly was a machine behind it, the Tea Party also had a big singular issue and a The Big Smiler behind the big singular issue to drive the fucker.  Occupy doesn't have that.  They don't have a singular enemy.  They have, what, big greedy fat cats?  Big, greedy fat cats have been around forever, that shit has never got people off the couch.

But buy golly a Black President wants to come and give you some Socialist HealthCare.  Fuck, pack up the guns and go tell those Senators what's what.  And it fucking worked.  We got watered down health care because of it.  Watered-down health care that is probably about to be yanked by SCOTUS.  They fucking won.  The won using bad information, scare tactics, and a bunch of other bullshit, but they won. 

Not even in Occupy's wet dreams does that happen.