Morning Round Em Up

The parliamentary elections in the United Kingdom are today, with a hung parliament (which may allow the Labour government to hang on or perhaps form a new Lib-Lab pact with the Liberal Democrats) expected to be the result, although the Tories (Conservatives) may yet win an outright majority of the seats. The UK system is odd to me. They have single member winner take all districts like we have here in the States, but then they have a parliamentary system with more than three parties, which means that a party winning a majority of the seats could actually receive only 33% of the vote. Indeed, there is a scenario where Labour could come in third in the popular vote yet still win the most seats in Parliament. That is ridiculous. If you are going to have more than two major parties and a pariliamentary/prime minister system of government, you should also have proportional representation instead of single member winner take all districts.

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Rep. David Obey’s retirement because he is worn out means the Dems now have 17 retirements and thus open seats to defend, compared to the Republican’s 20. In 1994, the Republicans had a 2 to 1 advantage in open seats to defend (Democrats had to defend 28 seats to the GOP’s 14 in 1994). Considering that the GOP has much less money in their congressional campaign committees than their Dem counterparts, and considering the upward trends in job creation and economic growth, as the resultant upward polling trend in how the public feels about the economy, the GOP chances at taking back the House are now receding. Sure if the midterms were held in January, the GOP probably would have won the House. By November, it will almost certainly remain in Democratic hands.

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Sure, it is a sure fire way to protect against Identity Theft, but the headline in the online News Journal article about the “AG’s office sponsoring shredding event” sounded a little too scandalous for my tastes.

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State wide recycling is headed to the House floor for a debate and vote. Cheers!

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Krank Knotts of Delaware Politics gets himself worked up over, get this, the campaign donations of an ergonomic office furniture manufacturer to Mike Castle. Yeah, $31,000 dollars is a hefty donation, but I cannot imagine the nefarious agenda of a furniture manufacturer. Sure, it may hope that the federal government buys furniture from them, but what is wrong with that? Is Knotts now against Humanscale doing business in a capitalist way? Or does Knotts want all federal employees to stand all day?