The Thicket at State Legislatures

Unusual News Day for Legislative Junkies

by Karl Kurtz

It's unusual when I find more than one or two stories, excluding ones on Congress, in a newspaper in one day that I mentally file in the legislative junkie category--i.e., potential fodder for The Thicket.  The New York Times, which often has trouble covering its own state legislature in Albany, has five stories of interest today on legislatures in other states or countries, only one of which made it into our NCSL daily clipping service, Grasscatcher:

• A front page story on reactions to California voters' rejection of ballot proposals to implement the Legislature's budget deal and the resulting challenges facing the governor and legislative leaders.  There have been lots of stories on this subject, which is why we haven't covered it in The Thicket.  The angle that interested me in this story was the growing momentum for a constitutional convention in California.  It would be the first in that state since 1878-79.  Many seem to feel that a convention would be the best way to repair both the state's budget process and the mess of amendments that have been placed in the constitution by ballot initiatives.  See also today's Los Angeles Times editorial, "California needs a constitutional convention."
• A story, "Bill to Ease Rules on Development Divides Floridians," about the Florida Legislature's action, now awaiting Gov. Charlie Crist's signature, that would make residential development easier for builders.  Environmental groups that oppose the bill are urging the governor to veto it.
• "Setback to Gay Marriage in New Hampshire," which describes the Granite State House's action to reject amendments to a previously approved gay marriage bill designed to obtain Gov. John Lynch's approval.  The bill will now go back to a conference committee for further efforts to reconcile differences.  This is another story that has received a lot of national attention.
• A news note in the international section about two members of the British House of Lords (true junkies are hooked on legislatures wherever they may be) who were suspended for taking cash to amend bills.  The story notes that "the last recorded suspension of a peer was Viscount Savile [photo], who was barred by Parliament in 1642 for siding with King Charles I at the time of the English civil war."  How many American legislatures can say that the last member ousted from the body was in the 19th century, much less the 17th?
• And finally, an unusual editorial, "Poor, Poor Parliament," about the sorry scandal in the British House of Commons over members' misuse of expense reimbursements.  The editorial concludes with:

Members do have a legitimate compliant [sic] that they are paid too little: less than $100,000 a year, compared with about $170,000 for a member of the United States Congress. Britain’s taxpayers want changes. They want to make Parliament’s doings more open, which is a good thing. They also want to cut out these fat and far too easily abused expense accounts. That’s good too. But they will also have to find a way to pay their representatives a better wage. [Emphasis added]

Barefoot in Oklahoma--in Support of Shoes Around the World

From the Oklahoma Senate Communications Division:

Each day, millions of children around the world contract serious infections and diseases because they have no shoes. To help raise awareness of the problem, State Sen. Andrew Rice authored Senate Resolution 43 Thursday declaring April 16, 2009 as "One Day Without Shoes" in the state and asking Senate members and staff to participate in the world-wide event.

"It's sad that in this day and age there are countries with such extreme poverty that people don't even have the basic necessity of shoes to protect their feet. It's one of those things that most Americans take for granted - just think how many pairs of shoes are in our closets. We think of shoes as an accessory to go with an outfit, not as a necessity," said Rice. "I wanted to make my colleagues and other Oklahomans aware of this issue and encourage them to get involved with charities such as that ran by TOMS Shoes."

The "One Day Without Shoes" campaign was organized by TOMS Shoes, which was founded by American Blake Mycoskie after finding children in Argentina who had no shoes to protect their feet....

Photo: Senators Andrew Rice and Steve Russell applaud the One Day Without Shoes campaign.

Algerian and American Similarities Dwarf our Differences

by Bruce Feustel

I was recently in Algeria with my NCSL colleague, Christy Delafield, to work on an ongoing NCSL project with the Algerian National Parliament, funded by the U.S. State Department. We have been providing a series of workshops for legislators and staff on subjects like media training, constituent service and bill drafting. Our purpose in this visit was to meet with key stakeholders and participants to make plans for the next stage of programs.

In our several meetings with the thoughtful and kind Dr. Tatah, who heads up the training and research efforts for the Algerian National Assembly, I was struck by how similar legislative work is all over the world. He presented us with a long list of requests for workshops, study tours and placements that was well beyond the resources of our project. His approach was polite yet forceful. He took care to touch his political bases by making sure his proposals were in concert with the wishes of the secretary general and the speaker of the Parliament.

What fascinated me was that if you took away the French language (luckily for me, Christy is fluent in that language), everything about his persistent case for funding, his attention to politics, and the appearance of his office with piles of legislative reports was typical of what occurs in our state capitols. His mannerisms, polite formality, loyalty to the legislature, and habit of giving a sad shake of the head when he disagreed with you reminded me a lot of my first boss with the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau, Rupert Theobald. It was a reminder that legislators and staff around the world share many traits, concerns, skills and behaviors. We have a lot to learn from each other and our similarities dwarf our differences.

Algeria was just a few weeks away from the scheduled April 2 presidential elections when we were there. We had the opportunity to visit the campaign headquarters of President Bouteflicka, who is heavily favored to win reelection (see photo of campaign poster). Algerians delighted in comparing their short two-month long campaign for president to the nearly two-year campaign that we recently experienced in the United States. Their next parliamentary elections are in 2009.

A Challenge to Arab Parliaments for Gender Parity

by Karl Kurtz

The best speech at the meeting of the Arab Inter-parliamentary Union that my colleague Christy Delafield and I attended in Oman a couple of weeks ago was delivered by the president of the Inter Parliamentary Union (IPU) and the speaker of the Namibian National Assembly, Dr. Theo-Ben Gurirab. Dr. Gurirab is a long-time leader of the independence movement in Namibia and previously served as that country's representative to the United Nations, which included a term as president of the U.N. General Assembly.

He began his speech with the Palestinian issue:

I stand before you to express my outrage at the violence we continue to witness in the Middle East. I have worked most of my life to achieve the liberation from occupation of my country—Namibia—and to help lead the independent nation during its early formative years….

The continued occupation of the Palestinian territories needs to end. Without it we will never see peace in the Middle East. My experience in fighting for the freedom of my country, however, teaches me that peace can not be imposed. It can not be bought with gunpowder. It can not be won on the battlefield. Peace will only come when the guns are silenced and the parties have sat down at the negotiating table and hammered out the details of an agreement that puts an end to occupation….

He went on to describe a recent visit that he had made to Gaza "where I learnt of the human suffering of the Palestinian people, particularly the many thousands of innocent women and children who once again have found themselves in the frontline of fire." He added that he also plans to go to Israel to observe the situation there firsthand and to engage in talks with the new government.

Speaker Ben Gurirab concluded his remarks with a plea for the advancement of women in politics with a particular focus on the Arab world:

Building Relationships with Arab Parliaments

by Karl Kurtz

250 Arab parliamentarians and staff: 2 Americans representing NCSL: 1 European and 1 African representing the Inter Parliamentary Union (IPU). That was the ratio of participants at a meeting in Muscat, Oman of the Arab Inter-parliamentary Union (APU) two weeks ago. My NCSL colleague, Christy Delafield, and I were the two Americans.

The photo at right shows the chairs of each of the delegations with the chair of the Omani Shura Council in the center, flanked by the speakers of the Egyptian parliament (left in western suit) and the Iraqi parliament.

We were invited to this meeting after the secretary-general of the APU and a delegation of members of Arab parliaments participated in NCSL's Legislative Summit in New Orleans last year. Our goal was to further several legislative strengthening projects that NCSL's international program has with Arab countries and to develop new relationships that might lead to other projects.

The focus of the meeting was on the Palestinian question. Each of the chairs of the 20 Arab delegations that were present made a speech. Without exception all of the speeches included variations on the following three points:

"The Curse of the Colonel"

by Karl Kurtz

Oklahoma State Senator Randy Bass is a former baseball player who after a successful career in the major leagues had an even more stellar stint in Japan with the Hanshin Tigers, winning four batting titles and two triple crowns (best batting average and most home runs and runs-batted-in).

Japanese fans thought that Bass looked like Colonel Sanders.  After Bass led the Tigers to the Japanese championship in 1985, street crowds in Osaka threw a statue of Col. Sanders from a KFC restaurant into the river in celebration.  The statue was not found in the river, and the Tigers have not since won the championship.  Fans of the Tigers refer to this as "the curse of the colonel." 

Now the statue has been recovered from the river, and the Hanshin Tigers faithful think that it means that the curse will be lifted.  Here's a release from the Oklahoma Senate's communication director, Malia Bennett:

Robert Siegal, host of NPR’s “All Things Considered” will air an interview with Senator Randy Bass this afternoon during the second hour of the broadcast, regarding the “Curse of the Colonel,” and whether it may now finally be broken with the recovery of the Colonel Sanders statue in Japan.

For background on this story, please go to http://www.oksenate.gov/news/press_releases/press_releases_2009/pr20090311d.html

The story has now been picked up by USA Today, The New York Times, MSNBC, BBC, NPR, The Daily Telegraph and Guardian newspapers in the United Kingdom, Reuters in India, Bloomberg, AP, and numerous Japanese media outlets.

You can listen to streaming audio from “All Things Considered” at www.npr.org.

A rose from The Thicket to Tom Clapper.

International Eyes

by NCSL International Program Staff

The millions in the United States watching last night’s race to the White House were joined by observers around the globe. Presidents, prime ministers, parliamentarians and ordinary citizens watched events unfolding with us, curious to see who the U.S. would elect as its leader.

Earlier this year, a delegation of German Parliamentarians and staff visited NCSL. They said the highlight of their trip was watching the vice-presidential debate in a D.C. restaurant and feeling the energy and enthusiasm for the race from both parties as each cheered for their candidate. After Obama’s victory was announced, CNN showed footage of Kenyans celebrating the success of a child of one of their own citizens. 

Some international observers simply marveled over the process itself. An Australian member of parliament visiting NCSL’s Legislative Summit in New Orleans this summer said she was astonished by the amount of money spent in a campaign here, especially on the subnational level. “If I had to have that much money, I wouldn’t be in office. How do average people do it?”

The majority of foreign observers expressed a preference for Sen. Obama in polls conducted by Gallup, the BBC and The Economist, but Georgia and the Philippines favored Sen. McCain by a significant margin according to the BBC. Cuban exiles, including Cuban Americans, supported McCain as well, and those in China who rely on trade also favored McCain’s free trade policies.

Iraq and the Congo also showed a slight preference for McCain in the poll conducted by The Economist. European and Canadian citizens supported Obama, and reported the strongest belief that the results would affect their countries.

An NCSL team conducting training programs in Abuja two weeks ago was barraged with questions from Nigerian National Assembly staff about the presidential campaign.  Nigeria may be in West Africa, while Kenya, where Sen. Obama's father comes from, is in East Africa, but throughout both regions there was clearly a sense of pride that the son of an African might be president of the United States.  Nigerian newspapers were filled with feature stories about Sen. Obama.

Comparing Emerging Democracies in Nigeria and Brazil

by Karl Kurtz

During our training program for committee clerks of the Nigerian National Assembly (logo at left) last week, I was struck by similarities between Nigeria and Brazil, where I did some consulting work in the early 1990s.

For starters, both countries have the largest population of any country on their continent—Nigeria with 140 million people and Brazil with 189 million.  Both countries experienced military rule for 30+ years, ending with the emergence of new democracies and constitutions in Brazil (photo of National Congress at right) in 1988 and Nigeria in 1999. 

Both countries’ new constitutions are modeled on that of the U.S.  They operate under a separation of powers, presidential-style system.  The legislative articles of their constitutions read remarkably like any of America’s 51 federal and state constitutions.  Most American legislatures could operate under the rules of the Nigerian National Assembly.  I can’t read the Brazilian legislatures' rule books in Portuguese, but I suspect the same is true of them.

Both have federal systems with a roughly equal number of states (36 for Nigeria and 27 for Brazil) and artificially created, new capital cities (Abuja and Brasilia), which were started in the 1970s and 1960s, respectively, operate as special federal districts, and have rapidly grown to become major cities.  The architecture of both cities suffers from their young age and the uninspired design influences of their times.

These are the superficial comparisons.  More meaningful are the similarities in how politics actually work in both countries. 

Lessons for African Politics--and the American Public

by Karl Kurtz

What lessons can Africa draw from the financial crisis in America?  That's the question that Dimeji Bankole, speaker of the Nigerian National Assembly, asked earlier this week in a guest column, "Five Lessons from America," in the Nigerian newspaper, ThisDay.

I happened to read this commentary because I have been in Abuja--along with my NCSL colleague, Corina Eckl, and Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau director Bob Lang--for the last week conducting a series of workshops on managing committees, budgeting and policy analysis for 120 clerks of the Nigerian National Assembly.

Speaker Bankole said that there were five lessons to be learned from the U.S. financial problems.  The first two were economic lessons (Bankole is an economist): that "markets do fail" and "government cannot afford to fail." 

But the next three were political lessons from the congressional response to the crisis.  I was struck by how similar these latter lessons are to those of NCSL's Trust for Representative Democracy.

The Facebook Political Movement

by Meagan Dorsch

Could organizing the next political rally, demonstration or movement come from cyber space? It is already happening in some international communities.

A colleague of mine at NCSL emailed me an interesting article. It is from the El Watan newspaper in Algiers. I was fortunate enough to be part of an NCSL delegation to Algeria earlier this year to discuss communications and social media, among other things, with the Algerian Parliament.

If you would like to test your French, please click on the newspaper link. If not, here is a quick summary of the article (thank you Ann Driscoll for providing the translation). Two Algerian youths are using Facebook to mobilize against terrorist acts in their country. One goal is to create an on-line demonstration, since public demonstrations are banned in Algeria. 

This 'Facebook political movement' has also taken off in Egypt. One blogger, Sandmonkey, talks about how new media are being used to promote political activism. The LA Times wrote an op-ed on how the Egyptian government has threatened to shut down Facebook, after it was credited for helping to mobilize protests against food prices earlier this year. Moroccans used YouTube to capture protesters clashing with security forces, because sights like this would not be shown on state-run TV. Activists in Lebanon used text messaging to organize an anti-Syria rally. Heck, according to this blog, even al-Qaeda has been using text messaging to organize. And political candidates are starting to embrace text messaging in their campaigns.

Social media tools can be threatening for some governments. It may be the only form of free press these countries have. Sandmonkey mentioned the Syria government closed down Facebook, and some members of the Algerian Parliament voiced their concerns about social media sites earlier this year. On that same note, several other Algerian officials embraced it and welcomed the potential changes that Facebook and other social media sites could bring to their government and country. Social media are not going away, and with millions of users across the globe, we are bound to see various sites used to bring about social change.