Taiwan, Hungary, and ... Thailand

Citizens can demostrate--like in Taiwan. Citizens can protest and occupy government offices--like in Hungary. Citizens are citizens after all. If one wants to threaten a sitting government, one uses the military, with tanks--like in Thailand. Let's recap. Monday night, 19 September, protesters held a rally, smashed windows and battled police around the state television headquarters in Budapest after local media broadcast a tape recording. In it, Hungarian Prime Minister and Socialist Party Leader Ferenc Gyurcsany admitted in May that his officials lied about government finances to win April's elections. Last Sunday, 10 September, thousands of demostrators marched in Taipei to protest alleged corruption related to the son-in-law and the wife of President Chen Shui-bian, also Democratic Progressive Party chairman, and also to protest news of an investigation on the use of false invoices and a secret fund by Chen's office. Today, Tuesday, 20 September, Thai military TV Five reported the Thai military declared a coup d'état with over a dozen tanks blocking roads and surrounding government offices. Thailand's Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, on a visit at the United Nations in Manhattan, announced a "severe state of emergency."

Tax cuts, yes, but first reform public services

Sir Richard Sykes is Rector of Imperial College London and the new Chairman of the Advisory Board of the independent think tank Reform. Sir Richard published in the Telegraph on 3 September, "Tax cuts, yes, but first reform public services." .... But we are in danger of spiralling into an ad hoc debate about tax reduction without facing up to the underlying necessity for spending reform. Reforms to make public spending more efficient and to limit government's activity will create the room for tax reductions. They are the essential precondition for tax reduction. It will not be possible without them.... Political leaders would gain great credit by being more honest about the outputs of the services for which they are responsible. For example, it is astonishing that ministers take credit for improving exam results when around 50 per cent of A grades in A-level mathematics, physics and modern languages are achieved in independent schools (which teach only one in eight A-level students).... We are now approaching a genuine turning point.... There is a clear and urgent choice. Either reform to improve services, keep government affordable and enable tax reductions. Or a continued failure to reform, leading to rising costs, reductions in services and further tax increases. Either economic growth, with all its benefits, or the disaster of low growth and its creeping social and economic cost. We need much greater honesty in the political debate about the extent of change that is needed and the greater role that markets can play in delivering better government performance and value for money. On the one hand it means an end to the one-size-fits-all attitude that characterises the provision of public services. For example, we select in every other part of life, so why not in education? The idea that the comprehensive system would increase social mobility, would "give everyone a grammar school education", is one of the greatest lies told to the British people. We must end the waste of human potential. On the other, it means the recognition that funding for services will not come from the taxpayer alone. Despite its calls for long-term thinking, the Government has done nothing to reconcile rising expectations with inevitable limits on the funding that the taxpayer can provide. The NHS is already struggling to fund the latest cancer medicines. The future of universal public services depends on the creation of mixed funding systems. The introduction of tuition fees in higher education represents a first step in the right direction. This approach is not "Right-wing"; recent experience shows how markets have advanced opportunities for everyone in society. Following the privatisation of telecom-munic-ations and air travel, mobiles and international flights have become accessible to all. But a decent education, the crucial thing in life, is not available to all. Only two-fifths of 16-year-olds achieve good passes in the core subjects of English, maths and science.... Next year's Spending Review ... should be based on a "growth rule", that public spending will rise by less than the rate of growth of the economy, to focus minds and allow for tax reductions in the near future.

UK Conservative group calling itself No Turning Back

Telegraph editor Melissa Kite reports on 3 September in "We must cut tax as a matter of morality, senior Tories insist". John Redwood MP is the chairman of No Turning Back and head of UK Conservative Party leader David Cameron's policy review on economic competitiveness. "If you keep the proportion spent on public services down, you can benefit from lower taxes and faster growth, giving you a better rate of increase in the amount of money you have available for public spending. Lower tax rates represent a win win." "Lower taxes are not a desirable extra you can add when everything is going fine. Lower tax rates are the way to get everything going well." "Taxation at best is compulsory charity. At worst it is theft by kleptocrat politicians. There is nothing moral about demanding high taxes from people. It is one of the distortions of the British debate to accept that public spending is good, and private spending is selfish. Public spending includes the money to pay for the entertainments of those who rule us, the cash to buy fireworks displays, banquets and civil servants to manage the lives of ministers." "Private spending includes the money families spend on their children, the cash to pay for care for elderly relatives." "Who dares say that it is morally right for government to waste so much of other people's money on a centralised health computer system? Or right to subsidise the empty Dome? Or good to increase spending on consultants to £3 billion- a year? Or uplifting to spend £20 billion on mending the railway, which still does not perform as well as it did when they took it on?" The pamphlet argues that a low tax economy is more moral because it leaves people with the choice of "whether to indulge ourselves, or give to charity". "Of course some state spending is good. We welcome the payments to the disabled, who need the help of other taxpayers to enjoy some of the benefits of our rich society." "We do begrudge the money wasted on regional government, on Regional Development Agencies in England, on health reorganisation, police reorganisation, on EU waste and fraud and the growing army of regulators." It declares there is "colossal waste in public spending". While Gordon Brown had outlined plans to cut expenditure in some government departments by five per cent, "bigger reductions are possible and should be pursued more vigorously". Although it backs the leadership's stance that a Conservative government will share the proceeds of growth between lower taxes and spending on services, the pamphlet adds: "It is important to remind people that we can have our cake and eat it. If we raise the growth rate of the UK economy, there can be substantially more money for tax rate cuts and for better public services."

New York Times interviews Wang Guangya, Chinese ambassador to United Nations

"The World According to China" by James Traub, New York Times Magazine, 3 September 2006. This interview reminds readers the change in how Communist China conducts diplomacy in the United Nations. From Traub: It’s a truism that the Security Council can function only insofar as the United States lets it. The adage may soon be applied to China as well. Quotation of the last few paragraphs: Wang told me he believed that blunderbuss diplomacy is the American way “because America is a superpower, so America has a big say.” China would appear to have a big say of its own, but that’s not Wang’s view. At the end of our second conversation, he returned to a favorite theme. “The Americans have muscle and exercise this muscle,” he said. “China has no muscle and has no intention of exercising this muscle.” I said that, in fact, China had a great deal of muscle but punched below its weight. Wang smiled at the expression and said, “It’s not good?” Well, I said, that depends. And then Wang said something quite startling: “China always regards itself as a weak, small, less powerful country. My feeling is that for the next 30 years, China will remain like this. China likes to punch underweight, as you put it.” Why was that? Why did China want to punch underweight? Wang spoke of China’s peaceful rise, of the need to reassure all who fear its growing clout. “We don’t,” he said, “want to make anyone feel uncomfortable.”