It turns out that the "racist" party got 330,000 votes which is more than either the Christian Democrats or the Leftists (two of the seven established parties.) The thing is that even with the multi-party system, it really comes down to the ruling coalition and the opposition coalition, and they are expected to always vote together. It would appear that everyone's very obedient and votes according to their party and their party's alliance. While one may vote for individuals within the party, the individuals do not behave as individuals, so I and doubtful how much it matters.
Anyway, it would appear that neither the moderate alliance nor the socialist alliance has the majority, and the racist party is given the extremely powerful position of the swing vote. Or they would be, but all of the other parties have refused to cooperate with them. The winning Moderate party is embarrassing themselves by trying to court the Green party, who are in turn laughing at them.
I won't go into a lot of detail here, so for more background information here's articles from CNN and Fox News.
What bugs me is that everyone is so caught up with distancing themselves from the evil racists, that they may be overlooking the more important stuff. First of all, I don't think it's really a matter of racism; at least for most people, I think they're capable of looking beyond skin color. It may be more of a cultural racism based on religion or a general xenophobia, but I suspect it's more than that. What I really think it is, is a backlash after years of being unable to even discuss the issues of immigration and integration. If anyone even dared to suggest that integration policies were ineffective or that immigration policies should be changed, they were automatically labeled racists and shunned by all. In the meanwhile, ever increasing numbers of immigrants were pouring into ghettos where they had little or no reason to learn the Swedish language or culture, unemployment was rampant, and crime was on the rise. In the rest of Sweden, tough economic times and cuts in welfare and social services effected everyone. I would be more surprised if people weren't resentful.
The last time a xenophobic party held seats in parliament in the 1990's, 70 % of Swedes felt immigration was a problem. This year, the number was only 40%. ONLY! Had the others really changed their minds, or had they learned to keep quiet? And what does it say about the state of democracy when an opinion held by 40% can't even be discussed? Perhaps the established parties should consider themselves fortunate that the unmentionable got less than 6% of the seats in parliament.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Democracy in action?
Today is election day in Sweden. Since I had time, I voted yesterday. One thing I'll say in favor of the Swedish election system: it's very convenient. About a month before the election, you get your voter ID in the mail. You don't need to register to vote; if you're eligible you get one. Just don't lose it! With the ID, you could vote by mail, or you could go by one of the designated early voting places, or you could bring it to the polls on election day. There are 3 early voting places in the county, and one of them just happens to be the local post office/lottery ticket outlet/florist that I drive by every day.
For a country that prides itself on being democratic, high-tech and environmentally friendly, I find it odd that the process of voting is none of these. To vote, you stick a little piece of paper in an envelope. We only get to vote for 3 things: city/county council, the regional governing body (Skåne in this case), and the national congress. There are seven major political parties and several more minor and local ones. For each of the three election categories, each party gets a pile of little pieces of paper with their candidates on them. To cut down on the confusion, these are color coded: white, yellow, and blue. Before the election, almost all of the political parties send a few sets of these pieces of paper along with their propaganda to each household. You can bring them when you vote, or you can take them at the poll or early voting location. There are racks of these papers out in the open, so everyone can see which party's papers you take. If you want some semblance of privacy, you could take one of each then throw out the unused ones, but that's a lot of wasted paper! For added amusement, rival political parties like to accuse each other of throwing out their papers.
You then take your little pieces of paper to a tiny triangular desk behind a screen, and stuff one of each color into an envelope. If you wish to vote for a specific person within the party, you may check their name on the list on the little piece of paper, and that moves that name to the top of the list. The number of votes a party gets determines the number of seats they get, and they take the those people in order from the list. There are no primary elections to sort out the candidates, so this isn't so good if you don't like the people on the top of the list. Do you risk trying to elect an individual who you do like in a party that otherwise doesn't impress, or do you play it safe? Of course, this isn't usually much of a problem since I haven't actually heard of most of the people on these lists. We don't actually get to vote for important posts like the prime minister. We vote for the party, and the party chooses the leader.
I was thinking about how Sweden could get away with such a low-tech system with envelopes, and I realized it's because people only get to vote for three positions. Even though there are 49 councilmen for the local city/county council, we only get to vote for one. And one at the state/regional level, and done regional representative at the national level. We do not vote for sheriff, or attorney general, or controller, or school boards, or judges, or even dog catcher. In some ways, that's kind of a relief not to have to care about such, but I suppose the result of that is the incredibly rigid bureaucracy.
I find that I actually miss all the referendums and propositions. We don't get to vote on the issues at all. We're supposed to select a person or party to represent us, yet we often have no idea what they stand for when it comes to the specific issues. At the national level, the party leaders have debates, but we don't get to hear what the people that we actually could vote for think. Everything is very ideological with a phenomenal lace of concrete solutions. This becomes even more frustrating at the local level where even the ideologies seem to break down. At the local level, at least I know what the issues are, which is more than I could say for the regional level.
I've noticed some other things about democracy in Sweden that I find rather alarming. First of all, you can't be conservative without everyone calling you a racist. The worst thing is that the parties that come closest to being conservative actually are racist (or at least openly anti-islam). But just because their opinion makes some people angry, it appalls me that they aren't allowed to voice it. TV and radio stations censored or pulled their ads. Even mailmen refused to deliver their ads. Left wing parties organize protests to shout down anything that they try to say in pubic. They refer to these parties as anti-democratic, yet it seems to me that the reaction to them is what's anti-democratic.
For a country that prides itself on being democratic, high-tech and environmentally friendly, I find it odd that the process of voting is none of these. To vote, you stick a little piece of paper in an envelope. We only get to vote for 3 things: city/county council, the regional governing body (Skåne in this case), and the national congress. There are seven major political parties and several more minor and local ones. For each of the three election categories, each party gets a pile of little pieces of paper with their candidates on them. To cut down on the confusion, these are color coded: white, yellow, and blue. Before the election, almost all of the political parties send a few sets of these pieces of paper along with their propaganda to each household. You can bring them when you vote, or you can take them at the poll or early voting location. There are racks of these papers out in the open, so everyone can see which party's papers you take. If you want some semblance of privacy, you could take one of each then throw out the unused ones, but that's a lot of wasted paper! For added amusement, rival political parties like to accuse each other of throwing out their papers.
You then take your little pieces of paper to a tiny triangular desk behind a screen, and stuff one of each color into an envelope. If you wish to vote for a specific person within the party, you may check their name on the list on the little piece of paper, and that moves that name to the top of the list. The number of votes a party gets determines the number of seats they get, and they take the those people in order from the list. There are no primary elections to sort out the candidates, so this isn't so good if you don't like the people on the top of the list. Do you risk trying to elect an individual who you do like in a party that otherwise doesn't impress, or do you play it safe? Of course, this isn't usually much of a problem since I haven't actually heard of most of the people on these lists. We don't actually get to vote for important posts like the prime minister. We vote for the party, and the party chooses the leader.
I was thinking about how Sweden could get away with such a low-tech system with envelopes, and I realized it's because people only get to vote for three positions. Even though there are 49 councilmen for the local city/county council, we only get to vote for one. And one at the state/regional level, and done regional representative at the national level. We do not vote for sheriff, or attorney general, or controller, or school boards, or judges, or even dog catcher. In some ways, that's kind of a relief not to have to care about such, but I suppose the result of that is the incredibly rigid bureaucracy.
I find that I actually miss all the referendums and propositions. We don't get to vote on the issues at all. We're supposed to select a person or party to represent us, yet we often have no idea what they stand for when it comes to the specific issues. At the national level, the party leaders have debates, but we don't get to hear what the people that we actually could vote for think. Everything is very ideological with a phenomenal lace of concrete solutions. This becomes even more frustrating at the local level where even the ideologies seem to break down. At the local level, at least I know what the issues are, which is more than I could say for the regional level.
I've noticed some other things about democracy in Sweden that I find rather alarming. First of all, you can't be conservative without everyone calling you a racist. The worst thing is that the parties that come closest to being conservative actually are racist (or at least openly anti-islam). But just because their opinion makes some people angry, it appalls me that they aren't allowed to voice it. TV and radio stations censored or pulled their ads. Even mailmen refused to deliver their ads. Left wing parties organize protests to shout down anything that they try to say in pubic. They refer to these parties as anti-democratic, yet it seems to me that the reaction to them is what's anti-democratic.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Tragedy on the road
Sunday was a busy day for us. I had volunteered to sell coffee and lottery tickets for the local Chamber of Commerce at the town fair. The weather was beautiful and sunny, so . It was very hectic, and even though we were two people at the booth, we couldn't keep up. One person was often off buying more or something, and we had the world's slowest coffee maker. To make matters worse, the filters were the wrong size so the grounds escaped, and it didn't turn off when you removed the pot, so one person had to hold a cup to catch the drips while the other poured coffee. We were directly across from the stage where a reggae band was performing, so we couldn't here what people were ordering or ourselves think. After two hours, I was totally exhausted.
I had exactly 7 minutes to look around the fair, but when I wanted to get something, I realized I didn't have enough cash left after the morning's visit by the ice-cream truck. I didn't have time to run to the ATM, so I just ran back to the car where my husband and daughter were waiting.
We were on our way to look at a new car. My husband had very specific ideas about which car we should get so I would have something to drive in the winter which wouldn't get stuck in the snow all the time, and there were very few for sale in the entire country. We'd looked at a couple, but they were very rusty. My husband was ready to drive over 3 hours to look at one last week, but it sold too fast. This one was less than an hour away. I had a headache and a sore throat (on top of the cold I've had for the past several days), so I was looking forward to a relaxing car ride.
We were driving through the forest about half way there, when a fallow deer bolted into the car in front of us. I saw the whole thing, and it didn't feel like slow motion. The woman who was driving didn't have a chance to avoid it. It was so close that if she'd had enough time to hit the breaks (which she didn't) the deer would have hit the side of her car. The poor creature's neck was probably broken immediately, but seeing it tumble and roll quite some distance along the side of the road, I knew there was no hope for it. We both pulled over immediately.
My first reaction was to call our good friend who hunts in and takes care of our forest. He was also a hunter for the county, so he'd know what to do, and he lives nearby. He'd also would know what to do with the venison. Unfortunately, he was busy, so he told us to call the police. A police report would probably be necessary for the driver's insurance to cover the damage from the accident. The people in the other car were quite shaken up, so they were appreciative of our help. Two more cars stopped, both probably wanting the venison. They both left when they heard we'd called the police.
The worst thing was that my daughter was in the car. I don't know how much she saw, but she did get out and look at the dead deer. She was really sad and cried several times. The worst thing was that this deer was a mother. Her youngster almost followed her onto the road, but it turned in time and disappeared into the forest. We could see that she'd still been nursing, and there was no way that the orphan could survive the winter.
If the system was working correctly, the police would figure out who had the hunting rights for the forest from which the deer had run, and contact them. They if they chose not to collect the dead deer and hunt down the orphan, the county hunter should be contacted to take care of it.
We ended up buying the car, so we drove by the same place on Monday night. The carcass was still there and beginning to bloat. What a terrible waste of venison. And somewhere out there, there's a very lonely little deer.
I had exactly 7 minutes to look around the fair, but when I wanted to get something, I realized I didn't have enough cash left after the morning's visit by the ice-cream truck. I didn't have time to run to the ATM, so I just ran back to the car where my husband and daughter were waiting.
We were on our way to look at a new car. My husband had very specific ideas about which car we should get so I would have something to drive in the winter which wouldn't get stuck in the snow all the time, and there were very few for sale in the entire country. We'd looked at a couple, but they were very rusty. My husband was ready to drive over 3 hours to look at one last week, but it sold too fast. This one was less than an hour away. I had a headache and a sore throat (on top of the cold I've had for the past several days), so I was looking forward to a relaxing car ride.
We were driving through the forest about half way there, when a fallow deer bolted into the car in front of us. I saw the whole thing, and it didn't feel like slow motion. The woman who was driving didn't have a chance to avoid it. It was so close that if she'd had enough time to hit the breaks (which she didn't) the deer would have hit the side of her car. The poor creature's neck was probably broken immediately, but seeing it tumble and roll quite some distance along the side of the road, I knew there was no hope for it. We both pulled over immediately.
My first reaction was to call our good friend who hunts in and takes care of our forest. He was also a hunter for the county, so he'd know what to do, and he lives nearby. He'd also would know what to do with the venison. Unfortunately, he was busy, so he told us to call the police. A police report would probably be necessary for the driver's insurance to cover the damage from the accident. The people in the other car were quite shaken up, so they were appreciative of our help. Two more cars stopped, both probably wanting the venison. They both left when they heard we'd called the police.
The worst thing was that my daughter was in the car. I don't know how much she saw, but she did get out and look at the dead deer. She was really sad and cried several times. The worst thing was that this deer was a mother. Her youngster almost followed her onto the road, but it turned in time and disappeared into the forest. We could see that she'd still been nursing, and there was no way that the orphan could survive the winter.
If the system was working correctly, the police would figure out who had the hunting rights for the forest from which the deer had run, and contact them. They if they chose not to collect the dead deer and hunt down the orphan, the county hunter should be contacted to take care of it.
We ended up buying the car, so we drove by the same place on Monday night. The carcass was still there and beginning to bloat. What a terrible waste of venison. And somewhere out there, there's a very lonely little deer.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino...
Before leaving Kingman on Sunday morning, we went to the Route 66 museum there. It was interesting to learn how the road started off as a trading trail for the Native Americans, was used by the pioneers, became the path for the railroad, and eventually paved because of the logistics requirements of World War II. Route 66's demise was also related to WWII as Eisenhower built the interstate highway system based on the German autobahn which Hitler built.
West of Kingman, Route 66 went from a relatively straight road following the contours of the desert to a winding mountain road through a mining area. We stopped at Oatman, an old mining town which has evolved into a tourist destination. Besides the giftshops, Oatman is known for it's donkeys.
Donkeys were used as beasts of burden in the mining industry. Some were released into the wild when they were no longer needed (and I imagine some escaped), forming a wild population of donkeys in the Oatman area. Lacking a true wild animal's fear of humans, the donkeys come into town looking for handouts, and both the tourists and locals are happy to oblige. There's a stand that sells carrots for the tourists to feed to the donkeys, and the tourists buy more than just carrots.
After Oatman, we followed Route 66 to the Colorado River. As much as we would have liked to take Route 66 as much as possible, we needed to get back also. Vacation was over, and my husband needed to work the next day. We got back on the interstate for the long drive through the desert. In Barstow we took a brief detour to take the historic Route 66 through town where we stopped for ice cream. This is when we noticed that our daughter was not well. It was late, and we were all tired by the time we got to San Bernardino, so we did not stop there.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Get your kicks...
On Route 66! Yes, I had the Manhattan Transfer version of this great song stuck in my head the entire time we drove along Route 66. Or course, we have that song to thank that I even thought of doing Route 66 on this vacation. I was looking at a map trying to see what is about halfway between Lake Powell and Santa Ana in order to break up the very long drive, when I saw Kingman. Immediately the lyrics, "Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino..." popped into my head and I suddenly had a plan.Being interested in anything having to do with automotive history, I knew my husband would be into this. One of our all time favorite kids movies is Cars. We must have seen it a hundred times. This is essentially a movie about Route 66, so I knew there would be a hook to interest my daughter also.
We got on Route 66 just west of Ash Fork Arizona. I love that part of the country which really has that wild west wide-open-spaces feel to it.
We stopped shortly thereafter at Seligman, a town which clearly was well studied by the creators of Cars. We later found out that while this town nearly dried up and blew away, it was saved by the passion of one man who revived interest in the historical Route 66. While nearly everything was closed by the time we got there, and we eventually met our craving for ice-cream from the freezer box at a gas station, there was still one gift shop open. Since my husband collects license plates and such, he got a souvenir sign for his garage.
While most people get off the highway only to visit Seligman, we continued on Route 66 all the way to Kingman. It was a beautiful drive!
At home...
It's been a while since I've written about what's actually happening now. I guess that's because there isn't much happening now. School started a couple of weeks ago. My daughter's in the second grade now and loving it. She's still playing the violin, and she's taking a dance class too. Soccer is a bit up in the air since she's age-wise between teams. She's at least two years older than the kids in the younger team, but she's not ready to compete with the older team. I've asked if she can practice with the older team (but not compete), and we're waiting for their response. She has quit the piano since she had a hard time getting along with the teacher.
I'm still involved with my network for female small business owners and also with a group helping with integration for immigrants, and both of these groups have started up again after the summer.
I'd been hoping for some late summer weather, but that hasn't really panned out. There are some beautiful days like today, in between all the rain, but it's not warm. I've been faked out a couple of times and went out in short sleeves only to regret it later. The nights are downright cold, and the leaves are beginning to turn yellow.
My husband's been in the US again--gone 2 week, then home 2 weeks, then gone again. He's home now, but it still feels like I'm doing the single-parent thing.
Now I've got a cold now too. Bummer.
I'm still involved with my network for female small business owners and also with a group helping with integration for immigrants, and both of these groups have started up again after the summer.
I'd been hoping for some late summer weather, but that hasn't really panned out. There are some beautiful days like today, in between all the rain, but it's not warm. I've been faked out a couple of times and went out in short sleeves only to regret it later. The nights are downright cold, and the leaves are beginning to turn yellow.
My husband's been in the US again--gone 2 week, then home 2 weeks, then gone again. He's home now, but it still feels like I'm doing the single-parent thing.
Now I've got a cold now too. Bummer.
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