I'm not going to vote for NSW Labor at the next election. It's on principle. There's nothing they can do to get my vote. They've pissed me off sufficiently that they are most definitely not getting my vote.
That being said, I want to note that the NSW Government's budget is in surplus. I was staggered by that fact.
Some of the commentary points out that it's not all their doing and there are may areas of policy where they are failing - and don't we all know it - but on one level they are being responsible. It may perhaps be the only level on which the NSW Government is being responsible, but I have to give them credit for the fact that they're not spiraling into deep debt, like, say Greece or Japan.
With all this talk of endless scandals, including the ill-conceived outing of David Campbell by Channel Seven, you'd think the state was deep in debt to the point that it was going to need a bail out by the Federal Government. Or that perhaps it was a basket case like the State of California which can't pay its employees so they're making them take time off without pay. It's not like Japan where they've been running up irresponsible deficits for 20 years, to the point that the accumulated debt is twice the size of the annual budget. But it's simply not that bad.
Compared to those places, the NSW Government is the model of fiscal responsibility. No wonder Barry O'Farrell hasn't made much inroads, seeing that the traditional way Liberal governments get in to office in NSW seem to be by screaming about mounting debts. If it's not there, then what exactly can they present that's so radically different? Barry's offering $5bn for infrastructure. Whoopee. That's $5bn coming out of somewhere else or $5bn he's going to borrow. Is there really much to be excited about in that? I'm not voting Liberal, that's for sure.
But I'm still not voting Labor at the next State election.
Hooray For Democracy
This one caught my eye today.
Alvin Greene has been on the phone all day. That's to be expected for the guy who just won South Carolina's Democratic Senate primary and is facing incumbent Republican Jim DeMint in November. But everyone calling Greene has just been trying to find out who the heck he is — and one thing reporters learned Tuesday is that a criminal complaint was sworn out against him last year for allegedly showing obscene photos to a South Carolina college student and suggesting they go to her dorm room.
Greene, a 32-year-old unemployed military veteran who lives with his parents, defeated Vic Rawl on Tuesday for the Democratic Senate nomination despite having run essentially no public campaign — no events, no signs, no debates, no website, no fundraising.
The result has baffled political observers, who had heavily favored Rawl — a former state legislator, attorney and prosecutor who had the edge inasmuch as he actually campaigned and tried to win. Many in South Carolina (which has grandly lived up to its reputation as a political circus this year) suspect that somewhere, a crafty GOP political operative is snickering.
As far as the local political press can discern, the only positive step Greene took toward campaigning was when he plunked down a $10,400 check in March to satisfy the state's filing fee and get on the ballot. He never registered a campaign committee with the Federal Election Commission or filed a financial disclosure with the Senate Ethics Committee.
You have to love the odd things electoral politics sometimes casts upon the shores of our awareness. He should run in NSW. He'd annihilate Kristina Kenneally.
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