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February 28, 2007
Segolene Royal A Bit Authoritarian
"Royal, during a recent trip to China, seemed to compliment her hosts by saying, 'Sometimes the justice is swifter than in France.' The period between arrest and execution in China can sometimes be only weeks, and Royal was criticized by human rights advocates and her political foes as having been naïve."
"[Sarkozy] parted company with Royal, who has said that Iran must be denied access to a civilian nuclear program even though it enjoys that right as a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty."
Posted by Barron YoungSmith at 11:45 PM | TrackBack
February 12, 2007
Segolene Royal, fascist. Say it ain't so!
Nicolas Sarkozy has oft been tarred as a law-and-order "rightist"; well, he's starting to sound like a moderate version of Royal.
"In a two-hour speech to about 10,000 supporters north of Paris, she pledged to raise pensions, increase the minimum wage to €1,500, or about $2,000, a month and guaranteed a job or further training to every youth within six months of graduating. She also said randomly selected citizens' juries would watch over government policy and that juvenile delinquents could be placed in educational camps run by the military." (link)
Can anybody argue that this is good policy? Her proposed minimum wage is twice my salary and it will make jobs for "delinquent" youths even less available, meaning a deepening color divide to the point where employment will basically become a matter of caste. (Calculated out at $15.50 an hour, incl. govt mandated 10 weeks vacation and 35 hour workweek).
Even members of Royal's Socialist Party are compaining that "randomly selected citizens' juries" "watching over" government policy hark back to the French Revolution. At best, they'll serve to veto painful reforms of the kind that France most needs.
A socialist proposing to put delinquent children in military camps doesn't exactly sound open-minded. Royal isn't worried that young Guillaume Apollinaire has been distracted from his work, chasing women and spending his argent de poche. She's worried about threats to law and order, meaning riots in France's mostly North African slums. Royal is talking about putting black people in military reeducation camps. Wow. Say it ain't so.
Posted by Barron YoungSmith at 01:08 AM | TrackBack
February 10, 2007
On Faust... President Faust
My non-analysis at Slate.
