Do you notice anything unusual about this street?

Neither do I.

This is one of the main thoroughfares in Oslo and there is nothing different about it today than any other day. This surprised me given that the national election would happen the day after I took this photo.

If this were a street in any city in America the day before a local election, much less a national one, the streets would have been littered with hundreds of campaign signs for various candidates and initiatives. Not so here. Not allowed. Billboards aren’t allowed to disfigure the freeways either. Innterrehsting…

We don’t watch Norwegian television, but even that wouldn’t have helped. Political commercials are not allowed either. They don’t want the parties to be able to influence the electorate with marketing savvy propaganda. By not allowing commercials, advertisements, or placards, the only way a party can get their message out is through debates–of which there are many–and by meeting the people out in the street.

And this is exactly how we found out about the election.  Linnea, Joakim and I walked across the street to go to the grocery store and we saw this stand on the corner. It’s being run by Arbeiderpartiet, the labor party, and they were handing out roses and brochures. They gave the kids a deck of cards and a traveling toothbrush in there special “Red” color. I’m not sure what cards or toothbrushes have to do with the party, but the kids were sure excited to receive their goodies–maybe that’s just the point, to get people excited about their party.

Down the street was this group, but they weren’t giving anything away so they didn’t have much of a crowd. The campaign begins about 2 months before the election and is traditionally issue based. In other words, no mudslinging or negative ads–well there are no ads at all, but you get my point. It’s about the issues and that’s it.

Linnea and Joakim stashed their competing party’s red roses and goodies in my grocery bag and headed for the Hoyre (conservative) party for balloons. They’re bipartisan I guess.

This was a Saturday. I actually had no idea when the actual election was to take place until Monday when I went back to the grocery store and saw that the beer section was closed off due to the “red” day. Red days are holidays here, but usually that means that everything is closed, not just the beer section.

Completely confused, I went home and called a Norwegian friend to get the scoop. She informed me that the election takes place over two days, Sunday and Monday and the Monday is a semi-red day in that public buildings and such are closed, but everyone else goes to work.

Apparently, they don’t want you drinking beer on this day. Again, not sure the correlation between beer drinking and voting, but there you have it…the run down on the Norwegian election 2009.

PS The Arbeidarpartiet won–guess those red roses, playing cards and toothbrushes did the trick:)!

PPS When Niklas was proofreading this for me he said that there actually is a purpose to the toothbrushes if you read what it says on them (clearly I didn’t). It says, “all holes need to be filled” as in everyone needs to be cared for. Still no idea on the playing cards.

AP: Jimmy Carter – Wilson comments ‘based on racism’

AP: President’s opinion of Kanye West sparks debate

AP: Hatoyama elected Japan’s leader, names Cabinet

RCP: Sen. Lamar Alexander Calls Czars “Antidemocratic”

Washington Post: As Right Jabs Continue, White House Debates a Counterpunching Strategy

BBC News: Karzai condemns EU’s fraud claims

AP: Health interests fund senators

Bloomberg: Obama Says Tariffs on Tires Won’t Spark Trade War With China

BBC News: Norway’s government is re-elected

TVNZ: Italy media row spotlights Berlusconi control of TV

TIME THE NORWEGIAN PEOPLE WAKE UP  – THE NORWEGIAN 2009 ELECTIONS ARE A SCAM !!!!

LEDER I  FRP SOM ER NORGES MEST SKAMLØSE  PARTI SIV JENSEN STÅR FREM !  IKKE STEM PÅ SIV JENSEN

FOLKENS !

IKKE RART ISLAM DEBATTEN BLE TATT OPP I NORGE RETT FØR STORTINGSVALGET I 2009

FRP har fått en Islamkritisk rådgiver til å hjelpe seg til å vinne stortingsvalget i 2009 ! Ikke rart at Islam debatten ble tatt opp i Norge før valget i 2009 .En annen aktør som skal bygge opp Frp er Ayn Rand Institute, som blant annet har gjort seg kjent med sin knallharde islamkritikk. Siv Jensen snikislamisering Musikkvideo – slik juger Siv Jensen for å sanke stemmer  !!!

LEDER I FRP NORGES MEST SKAMLØSE PARTI  Siv Jensen : Jeg skal bli statsminister . Det eneste Siv Jensen I FRP er ute etter er å bli statsminister ! Her sitter Siv og lyver – Frps partileder er blitt tatt i å ha løyet bevisst overfor velgerne i Norge i mange mange år .

 VIL DET NORSKE FOLKET VIRKELIG HA HENNE SOM STATSMINISTER I NORGE I 2009 ?

Har det Norske folket glemt Frps skatte skandale ? .Frp til krig mot skattemyndighetene – Frp går rett i strupen på Skatt Øst etter krav om arbeidsgiveravgift og tilleggsskatt på rundt 1,9 millioner kroner. Frps stortingsgruppe ble tatt i en rekke tilfeller der hhvor de ikke klarte å dokumentere tilstrekkelig at utleggene for reiser, hotellopphold, mat, drikke og klær til personer tilknyttet partiet og i visse tilfeller ektefeller er berettiget. Det ble pekt også på manglende faglig relevans i flere tilfeller.

FRP bruker også Operaen som illustrasjon når partiets kulturpolitikk skal profileres!  Må bare le av det fordi Norges mest skamløse parti FRP bruker Operaen som skrytebilde i partipropagandaen sin og deretter legger de valgvaken sin for 2009 der !. Husk at FRP var i mot å bygge operaen da !.

FRPs profilerte politikere er blir tatt for narkotikabruk og tukling med ungjenter også . Det er ikke lenge siden vi leste i avisene at en Frp-topp i Østfold var blitt dømt til ubetinget fengsel for å ha blottet seg tre ganger utenfor en barneskole. Dette toppet seg etter at Lorch-Falch i FRP sendte en mobiltelefonmelding (MMS) med pornografisk innhold til en elev i klassen.

Jenta følte det svært ubehagelig. MMS-meldingen som han sendte til jenta i klassen, var en animasjonsfigur av en mann som onanerte. Gud-hjelpe Norge om partiet FRP kommer i regjeringsposisjon. Da sier jeg bare: Stakkars lille Norge.

Husk at : The Bilderbergers are advancing in Norway da !

Siv jensen er sikker på at hun blir statsminister i Norge i 2009 fordi hun har Bilderberger eliten bak seg . The leader of the Norwegian “Progress party” (Fremskrittspartiet, FrP), Siv Jensen, attended the Bilderberg meeting in 2006. This also got some attention by Norwegian mainstream media.

Then in 2008 the mainstream media reported that Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation will help FrP to win the 2009 election, making Siv Jensen the Prime Minister of Norway in 2009.

Then Siv Jensen was invited to speak in the British lower house. Here she called herself the new “iron lady”, the new Maggie Thatcher of Norway. And she was very confident that she will become the next Prime Minister of Norway. Norges nye jernlady : Siv Jensen vil bli Norges «Maggie». 

Norges Nye Kommende statsminister?
I invitasjonen blir Jensen beskrevet som «trolig en kommende norsk statsminister» og «Norges Margaret Thatcher».

Siv jensen er en feig politiker- I Norge har man en tendens til å få politikere som streber etter å bli likt av alle, og som ikke vekker noe engasjement. Siv Jensen står virkelig ikke for noe som helst.

Bilderberger and member of the Illuminati Siv Jensen will do an excellent job of keeping the Norwegian citizens in the dark concerning the Bilderberg group and their globalist New World Order agenda. That explains why most norwegians remain totally unaware that the club even exists.

Siv Jensen ankommer bilderberger 2006 medlem av NWO ELITEN !

Husker at Mens det stormet rundt Fremskrittspartiet , var
Siv Jensen for første gang på det topphemmelige møtet
Bilderberg Gruppen avholdt i Ottawa, Canada.

Siv Jensen (Frp) er inne i varmen til verdens
industriherrer, tidligere amerikanske utenriksministere
og toppsjefer i verdens industriforetak.

From Norway: Bilderberg attendee list 2006

Siv Jensen, leader of the Progress party (extreme right)
Johan O. Koss, former speed-skater and now Chairman of Right to Play (politically conservative)
Egil Myklebust, Chairman Norsk Hydro, very powerful, has been attending a number of B. meetings (politically conservative) . Harald Norvik, Chairman in a number of Norw. companies, belongs to the top 40 in power, private sector

Dette er nok et eksempel på at politikere bruker politikk og velgere til å fremme egne interesser. Nå blir også FrP et parti som kommer til å stadig gå på nye kompromisser med sine standpunkter som har skaffet dem den velgermassen de har i dag og gli lenger og lenger inn mot midten i norsk politikk.Folk som har standpunkter ute på den andre fløy må i hvertfall ikke kaste bort stemmene på FrP.

Stem blankt Folkens . Det norske Demokratiet er i ferd med å råtne opp innenfra.

Siv Jensen attended the Bilderberg conference in 2006, she is clearly shown on camera arriving at the conference in Alex Jones’ documentary of the same, Endgame, just under 27 minutes into the film, very shortly after the arrivals of Augustos Santos Silva, Matias Rodriguez Inciarte, Bernardino Leon Gross and Juan Luis Cebrian.

Siv Jensen is considered most likely to be the Progress Party’s candidate for Prime Minister of Norway in 2009 – Every thing is faked so that it is belived by the NORWEGIAN public that Jens Stoltenberg the current primeminster is going to win the election in 2009 in Norway . But Siv jensen and FRP is going to win !

Jens Stoltenberg ( AP) and Siv Jensen (FrP) are both members of the Illuminati and the Bilderberger group .

The Bilderbergers are advancing in Norway !

http://www.infowars.com/meanwhile-the-bilderbergers-are-advancing-in-norway/

Bush-rådgivere skal bygge opp Frp

http://www.dn.no/forsiden/politikkSamfunn/article1395158.ece

Fremskrittspartiet tar steget ut i verden og håper at noen av verdens mektigste liberalistiske og konservative tankesmier kan hjelpe partiet til å oppnå regjeringsmakt.

Flere av de mektigste tankesmiene i verden skal hjelpe Frp til regjeringsmakt. MED ISLAM OG TERROR SOM HOVED FOKUS ! THE Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute og Heritage Foundation er blant dem. Disse tre organisasjonene er blant de mektigste premissleverandørene for republikanerne og president George W. Bush.

FRP har fått en Islamkritisk rådgiver TIL Å HJELPE DEM MED JOBBEN ! Ikke rart at Islam debatten ble tatt opp i Norge før valget i 2009 . En annen aktør som skal bygge opp Frp er Ayn Rand Institute, som blant annet har gjort seg kjent med sin knallharde islamkritikk. Videre skal en av de sterkeste kritikerne av FNs klimapanel – Science & Environmental Policy Project – bistå Frp med kunnskap, kurs, seminarer og nettverksbygging.

Frp-formann Siv Jensen har allerede blitt undervist ved de liberalistiske pressgruppene Institute of Economic Affairs og Adam Smith Institute i London. Jensen har i tillegg hatt personlig møter med David Frum, som tidligere var rådgiver og taleskriver for George W. Bush.

Siv Jensen har dessuten møtt president Yaron Brook i Ayn Rand Institute og Thatchers tidligere konservative finansminister Nigel Lawson.

ALT ER I BOKS FOR SIV JENSEN SOM STATSMINISTER I 2009 FOLKENS !

KLARER SIV JENSEN VIRKELIGÅ  FJERNE DEN SÅKALTE OPPFUNNEDE TALIBAN – AL- QAIDA I NORGE NÅR PST IKKE KLARER DET !!!!  WE DONT THINK SO  !!!!

SIV JENSEN AGAINST MULLA KREKAR – Norwegian Jihad – Norway –  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S0j8WZvYIs&feature=related 

Siv Jensen snikislamisering Musikkvideo – slik juger Siv Jensen for å sanke stemmer  !!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As-opCak8uM

DETTE ER HVA FRP  SIER  SNIKISLAMISERING  ER!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt_sfq43Eeg

SLIK JUGER SIV JENSEN OM ISLAM FOR Å VINNE STEMMER FRA DET NORSKE FOLKET !!!!

HUN KJEMPER FOR MUSLIMSKE KVINNER OG KJEMPER I MOT RADIKALE MUSLIMER I NORGE !

DETTE JUGER HUN OM TIL FOLKET .

Siv Jensen (FRP) i Debatt 24/2 2009 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mst8AG9Tzfg&feature=related

SIV JENSENS PROPAGANDA Hijab debatten i Norge/ hijab debate in Norway

Siv Jensen om hijab saken !!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df58dTFIvWI

Vinner Siv Jensen valget i grilldress?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNAGxQjTUVs&feature=related

BECAUSE SIV JENSEN WANTS TO WIN THE ELECTIONS IN 2009 , SHE USED ISLAM AND TERROR AS HER FOREFRONT TO WIN – SHE LIED TO THE PUBLIC OF NORWAY .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPG42iJlK1A

Siv Jensen og aggresive palestina aktivister – Siv Jensen støtter staten Israel SOM ER makten bak makten

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8em7a4olo4U&feature=related

Siv Jensen holder appell for Israel 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84W2ZICiK_U&feature=related

Siv Jensen forteller om sitt besøk i Israel (2/7) 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz9aNFbL7Do&feature=related

DETTE ER VÅRE ELITE POLITIKERE – IKKE RART DA AT SIV JENSEN BLIR STATSMINISTER I 2009

Jens Stoltenberg nachspiel-full på talerstolen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmvOccjod6U&feature=related

ITS TIME THE NORWEGIAN PEOPLE WAKE UP  – THE NORWEGIAN 2009 ELECTIONS ARE  FAKE AND A HUGE

SCAM !!!!

On May 25th a giant in Norwegian politics, passed away. Haakon Lie might not be very well known to foreginers, but he was certainly one of the most influential people in Norway in the 20th century. He was a man of many controversies, but it is hard not to respect his role in building social democracy in Norway.

He was party secretary of the Labour party from 1945 to 1969, a period through which the Labour party was in government for most of the time. The joint leadership between Lie and the most prominent prime minister during the period, Einar Gerhardsen has become famous in Norwegian politics both for its effectiveness in building the country and for its latter days bitter rivalry.

Lie was one of the people who rebuilt the Labour party from a party of class struggle to a broader mass party building the welfare state on a compromise between capitalism and socialism. He was one of the ideologers that formed a new kind of socialism where anti-capitalism was replaced by a modern social democratic quest for liberty for all. In domestic policy he pushed for social reforms along with his comrade in arms Gerhardsen.

In foreign and security policy he was much more controversial. He was driven by a distaste for communism whose anti-democratic tendencies he felt was a corruption of socialism.  He feared its spread and favoured NATO membership and nuclear armament. He went as far as agitating for nuclear arms on Norwegian soil and was somewhat of a Norwegian McCarthy in actively organizing networks to report on “suspicious activities”, and demanded internal loyalty. These things created a growing divide between him and Gerhardsen who had a less realist approach to foreign policy and a more open approach to dissent.

In 1967 the conflict between Gerhardsen and Lie came to a boil as Gerhardsen confronted him at the party congress, proposing to depose him as party secretary. According to eye witnesses Lie responded by threatening to “crush you like a louse”. Lie’s reign survived the attack at the ‘67 congress, but he stepped down in 1969.

This was however not the end of his political influence. Even unto his sickbed for the last half year of his life, at age 103, he was approached by politicians and journalists alike for advice and comment. He remained an outspoken critic of the Labour party leadership whenever he meant that they strayed from the right path of social democracy. His retirement was also spent writing books, of which he published a respectable number.

Haakon Lie remained a giant in Norwegian politics until his death, and although controversial in many ways he will remain in Norwegian history as one of the architects of the post-war welfare state.

See also

• Obituary in the Guardian
• Haakon Lie on Wikipedia

“As a socialist, I have always said that the market can’t regulate itself,” she said. “But even I was surprised how strong the failure was.”

These are the words of Norway’s Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen from the political party Socialist Left (SV), which is part of the current centre-left government coalition in Norway. The words come from an article in the Global Business section of The New York Times, which praises the economic management of the Norwegian state, among other things  how it has stuck with its social democratic welfare model through boom and bust.

The global financial crisis has brought low the economies of just about every country on earth. But not Norway.

With a quirky contrariness as deeply etched in the national character as the fjords carved into its rugged landscape, Norway has thrived by going its own way. When others splurged, it saved. When others sought to limit the role of government, Norway strengthened its cradle-to-grave welfare state.

And in the midst of the worst global downturn since the Depression, Norway’s economy grew last year by just under 3 percent. The government enjoys a budget surplus of 11 percent and its ledger is entirely free of debt.

The debt free government is of course something the current centre-left coalition can’t take the credit for alone. The Norwegian government has passed between Labour, centre-right and centre-left governments for the last decade.  Since 1990, there has been a broad consensus in the Norwegian parliament for a programme of  national savings in a government pension fund, to preserve value for future generations and avoid “Dutch disease“. I mentioned this policy in an earlier post on this blog.

The description of Norway as always sticking with its welfare model is another issue, though. Norway did go through a phase of privatization of welfare, for example the schooling system, during the last government, but this was abruptly stopped by the centre-left Stoltenberg administration when it came into power four years ago. Of course this didn’t necessarily affect government expenditure.

If the right wing were to come into power in the upcoming parliament elections, we might see another shift in this policy. Although supportive of the need for government stimuli to the economy, their preferred stimuli come in the form of tax cuts rather than the countercyclic government expenditures the current government favours. Last week’s conservative party congress heavily emphasized this.

(Hat tip to Tromp for bringing this to my attention).

The so called “long campaign” before the Norwegian parliamentary election is well under way, and once again it appears that immigration will be a central topic. In the aftermath of a controversy over whether or not to allow islamic headdress (hijab) with Norwegian police uniforms, the populist right-wing party Fremskrittspartiet has started campaigning about the so called secret “Islamization” of Norwegian society. If they succeed in keeping this a hot topic throughout the campaign, previous experience shows they might gain  much in terms of votes.

Fremskrittspartiet has always been a party critical to immigration and foreign cultural influence. It may not be quite fair to compare them with Jörg Haider in Austria or Gert Wilders in the Netherlands, but to a certain degree they play on some of the same fears.

In a project paper I previously posted on this blog, one of the few clearly significant correlations I could find in the occasionally rather contradictory voter mass of this party was between the propensity to vote for FrP and a scepticial attitude to foreign culture. In previous elections they have gained much whenever immigration and scepticism to foreign cultures has been allowed to become a dominant topic in the election campaigns

At the moment, foreign influence on Norwegian culture is one of the hot topics in Norwegian politics. But the election is still many months off, and it will take hard work, skill and some luck for Fremskrittspartiet to be able to keep this topic alive all the way until September, but if they manage it they might actually be able to make their ambitions for government power somewhat more credible than they are today.

And with so much to gain, I suspect that Fremskrittspartiet will give it a go. Besides the general comments about islamization, party leader Siv Jensen has also recently launched (verbal) attacks at a university college for allowing an imam that denies Holocaust to speak to students and the government for letting international agreements get in the way of expelling suspected Iraqi terrorist-supporter Mullah Krekar.

We may be looking at a season of political debate that might become very ugly indeed…

Further reading:

• This blog: “Who votes for Fremskrittspartiet?“
• Dagbladet.no [in Norwegian]: “- Kampen mot radikal islam er vår tids viktigste“
• NRK.no [in Norwegian]: “-Sivs beskrivelse er langt fra sann“
• Dabladet.no [in Norwegian]: “Siv Jensen advarer mot snikislamisering“
• Daniel Pipes blog: “How many islamists?“

In recent weeks, there has been som controversy in Norwegian media over an article by Leif Helland and Rune J. Sørensen of the Norwegian School of Management (BI) about a systemic skew in Norwegian road building. Their research shows that there appears to be systematic self-serving rational choice behavior by Norwegian politicians, as districts with important swing voters tend to get more grants for road building, and that this affects the social efficiency of road building in general. Read the article (link at the bottom) for more on their findings.

This was picked up by Norwegian media when Norwegian parliamentarians met with Swedish counterparts and presented under the heading “Met by laughter in Sweden”. What the Swedes were laughing at was the level of micromanagement in road building that the Norwegian parliament is involved in. In Norway, every road builiding project is a parliament issue, and Helland and Sørensen have proved that this leads to non-optimal distributions of road construction money.

Norwegian Secretary of Transportation Liv Signe Navarsete doesn’t get the most important point:

- These are scientists that think the country can be planned with a calculator and that obviously find it profitable to close down local communities. There are numerous considerations to be made regarding housing distribution, industry and tourism. We need to develop business and work all over the country, not just in central areas. (Aftenposten, my translation)

The virtues of cost-benefit analysis can of course be debated, and there is a long standing Norwegian tradition of valuing distributed settlement of a lot higher than what is done in economic models. I think politicians might have been over-valuing it, but that isn’t the most important point here.

The most disturbing point isn’t that the distribution of money is non-optimal from a cost-benefit perspective. That’s the nature of politics. The big problem is that there is a skewed distribution as a result of election strategy concerns. That is the point that should be debated, and which Secretary Navarsete is drawing attention away from. Valuing decentralized communities highly is acceptable from a democratic point of view. Consistently bribing swing voters with public money isn’t.

Sources:

• Helland and Sørensen (2008) [Requires subscription] “Geographical Redistribution with disproportional representation: a politico-economic model of Norwegian road projects.” Public Choice, October 2008
• Helland and Sørensen (2008) [Open access] “Geographical Redistribution with disproportional representation: a politico-economic model of Norwegian road projects.” Open access working document, Oslo:BI
• Are Slettan [in Norwegian]: “Navarsete ler av forskere“

Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten had an interesting report before the weekend about the games surrounding the Norwegian government relief packages. They compare the game now played between the government and the banks. On one side of the table we have Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg (Labour), and on the other we have the major bank managers, represented by Nordea CEO Gunn Wærsted. Each has three visible cards: a 7, Jack and Ace. The analogy might not be brilliant and ingenious, but it describes the game in a simillar manner to the game theories of Political Economy.The finance crisis ace of the government is that great revenues from offshore oil drilling means they have large reserves of capital. The government is able to dispense large relief packages if it wants to. But naturally, the government doesn’t want to play its ace and hand out government capital as subsidies to still profitable private banks unless it’s absolutely necessary.

The banks, on the other hand, are holding their ace, being the necessary lifeline business needs to stay afloat. Despite packages and central bank interest cuts, Norwegian banks are still holding back on loans to business and have been slow to cut interest rates. This is becoming a major problem for businesses that used to finance activities in the international bonds market. Current estimates are that Norwegian companies need to refinance about NOK 90 billions in bonds this year(2). With a dried up international finance market this needs to be replaced with domestic loans. Bank manager Wærstad is trying to make Prime Minister Stoltenberg play his capital ace before she needs to play hers – extending refinancing loans at acceptable terms to private business.

Both players have more cards in their hands. What Aftenposten designates as Wærsted’s jack is the fact that Norwegian banks are still making money. None of them are threatened by bankruptcy just yet, and can afford to wait. On the other hand, Stoltenberg holds a jack of his own – that bank losses will begin to increase as business get into trouble because of tight lending.

These cards all seem to amount to a classical scenario from game theory: The Chicken Game, also known as the Hawk-Dove game. Neither player wants to yield, but the worst possible outcome for both is if neither yields and they crash. And this all fits rather well. The worst possible outcome for the banks is is nobody extends credit to private business and we start to see mass bankruptcies. This will in turn give banks problems with getting their money back, getting them in trouble. The government on the other hand doesn’t want to hand out free money, but mass bankruptcies will lead to massive unemployment at a great political cost.

The last cards seem to me to be a different altogether, or possible strategies for avoiding the chicken game. The last of Stoltenberg’s cards Aftenposten identifies is the opportunity the government has to circumvent banks and start lending money to business directly. A number of government institutions already exist to support business. Already the semi-governmental export finance institution Eksportfinans has already received a substantial crisis package. Stoltenberg might also channel more money into various development and venture capital funds, or even in the last instance start a complete government bank.

The last cards the banks hold, according to Aftenposten is the opportunity to say no to help from the government if there are too many strings attached. Management bonuses and pay raises is a particular point the government wants to curb, not unlike the recent statements by Obama (Yahoo! News, Marketwatch) This seems to me like the one point where the analogies falter somewhat. Firstly, Norway doesn’t quite compare to the United States when it comes to executive bonuses. They are substantial, but not on the billion dollar level we’ve seen in banks like Merril-Lynch across the pond. Secondly, even if they should want to play hard ball with the government, I fail to see how refusing government subsidies or better than market rate loans from the government is likely to be a win situation for the banks.

Wærsted seems to agree this card is so poor she doesn’t want to play it. Today she, along with a number of finance top manager colleagues went public with a promise not to take any pay raises this year.  Even though they claim this has been the plan all along, it seems like a way to make themselves more acceptable to receive good terms on the new bank relief package promised by the government to be announced soon.

In the end, it looks to me like a piece of journalism in which Aftenposten wants to make this whole thing seem like an interesting game. In reality the government knows business depends on the banks, and the banks know they can’t run forever with nearly no access to international financing. Government can’t do away with the banking sector, but it really looks like Stoltenberg is holding the best cards.

The ongoing finance crisis has certainly given classic Keynesianism a new boost. And few countries have embraced this as clearly as Norway did today. The center-left government under Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg from Labour (Arbeiderpartiet) and Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen from the Socialist Left Party (Sosialistisk Venstreparti) introduced a massive expansion package aimed at combating unemployment.

The package expands the national budget directly with about 2o billion NOK (roughly 2.2 billion € or 2.86 b$), with nearly 17 billions increased expenditure and over 3 billion worth of tax cuts. With secondary effects, the government estimates a total expansive effect of 27 billion NOK, reducing the substantial oil-boosted government surplus. When correcting for petroleum-based offshore income, the government now estimates a government deficit of 119 billion NOK for 2009. This sums up to an expansion of the oil-corrected government budget of 2.3%, substantially higher than the 1.5% goal set by the EU.This represents a deviation for what has been known as Handlingsregelen, a term that can be roughly translated into the Rule of Thumb (or the Budgetary Rule according to Wikipedia). It states that only 4% of the expected capital gains from the government pension fund (formerly The Petroleum Fund) should be spent each year. This fund is in turn comprised of all the government surplus from the Norwegian offshore petroleum activity.

This is also a powerful political broadside before the upcoming parliament elections in Norway. The expansion of the budget, heavily focused towards public expenditure gives the package a strong leftist profile as well as allowing the government to support popular causes such as strengthening the economy of municipalities (which are responsible for primary education and care for the elderly among other things), more public building projects and increased spending on education and research.

This certainly represents a bold move, and a classical Keynesian one. It will be interesting to see if Norway’s oil economy will allow the government to soften the blow and if this was the right way to do it. Personally, I applaude.

You can find the details of the package here (PDF – in Norwegian).

Norwegian media today references a survey conducted by Norstat for Norwegian State Broadcasting (NRK) that shows that voters for the Norwegian party Fremskrittspartiet (The Progress Party) are more diverse than voters of other Norwegian parties. This corresponds quite well with a paper I wrote for a class in advanced statistics, analyzing the FrP voter based on data from the European Social Survey (ESS).

I analyzed the FrP voters according to the so-called “FrP code” presented by Norwegian Author Magnus Marsdal in the influential book FrP-koden. He claims that the success of FrP can be explained by the tension between a left-oriented cultural elite and a group of disgruntled voters identifying themselves with working class values. These are perceived to have little education and a low income, to be xenophobic and sceptical to the government and people in power. Marsdal employs mostly univariate analysis and anecdotal evidence to support these claims. I performed a regression analysis, testing these and a few other hypotheses, concluding that both low education, low age, scepticism to government and scepticism to immigration seems to increase probability of voting FrP. However, the tests of statistical reliability indicate that there are groups of voters that are very poorly predicted by these indicators, appraently voting FrP for some other, unexplained reasons.

With the analysis now referenced by Norwegian media (which unfortunately doesn’t seem to have been publicized in its entirety) it seems that these theories are strengthened. There is a core group of young, lowly educated, xenophobic voters sceptical to government, but there are also significant groups of voters who don’t fit this pattern.

I believe this to be the result of extremely successful populism by FrP, recruiting voters on the basis of popular issues, not on commitment to their policies as a whole. This allows them to recruit voters that aren’t really that interested in political issues in general, but feel strongly about single issues. For example they have recruited many Christian conservative voters in south and southwest Norway by being staunch supporters of Israel, even though the mass of their voters don’t agree. But that mass of voters probably don’t give a damn about Israel and are content with voting FrP because they agree with the party on their favourite issues.

I might not think this is a good way to do politics, but I have to admit it works in terms of getting votes.

If you want to read the entire paper, entitled “Decrypting the FrP Code – a multivariate analysis of FrP voters”, you may download it in PDF format: Decrypting the FrP code (PDF)

President of the Norwegian Parliament (Stortinget), Thorbjørn Jagland, this week called for a “New political culture” in Norway in a feature article in the newspaper Aftenposten. He claims that the combination of media, opinion polls and opportunist politicians have displaced the political virtues of long term and larger view thinking. In his words political leaders have been made into characters in a play organized by media and opinion polls. Political leaders no longer show the leadership necessary to enforce policies that are too complex to be explained simply to the public.

His answer to these problems:

Vi trenger en annen politisk kultur enn den mediene og mange andre har forsøkt å oppdra oss til i sommer. Vi trenger en styringsdyktig politisk kultur i stedet for en galluppreget politisk elite. Vi trenger politikere som også er i stand til å se inn i fremtiden og føre an. Hvis ikke kan en stadig økende kravmentalitet ødelegge for oss alle.

My translation:

We need a different political culture than the one the media and many others have tried to educate us about this summer. We need a political culture for leadership rather than a political elite dominated by opinion polls. We need politicians that are able to look into the future and take the lead. If not, an ever increasing mentality of demands will ruin things for us all.

This isn’t a particularly novel point. Edmund Burke warned his constituency in Bristol about leaders who were nothing but slaves to public opinion all the way back in 1774. And in 1784, James Madison stated that:

Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another or the good of the whole.

It may be an old issue, but it’s an important one, and one that has become very visible in Norway over the last months. A series of cabinet ministers have come and gone – not because of their policies but because of media campaigns where they have been tricked into making blunders. Over the last few years, we have also seen the populist radical right grow bolder and more confident, gradually boosting the close combat fight over next week’s opinion polls.

The usual explanation is some sort of meaningless catchphrase about how media has transformed politics. It’s far too simple to blame it all on the media. It’s been going on since 1774, and most likely before. Media may have been a catalyst, though. Surely the pressure on Burke who had to correspond with his constituents by Royal Mail must have been a lot easier than the pressure on Thorbjørn Jagland who has TV reporters ready to have his response in the voters’ living rooms in a couple of seconds.

So what can be done about it? If media is the catalyst (or according to some the main reason), can we somehow reform them and make them put a more responsible focus on the long term? At first thought this might make some people nod. But what if I refer to ‘media’ by the term usually used in democracy theory: ‘the free press’. Making the press behave more responsibly sounds like what every dictatorship claims it’s doing. And it’s the same point Madison makes in the same 1784 article:

There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence… …It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.

When we’re building democracies, we praise them under the name ‘the free press’, when our democracies are in trouble we berate them under a different name. The media themselves, on the other hand, defend themselves as being mere reflections of society. I believe we have to look for a more substantial explanation than merely blaming them for democracy’s ailments. Curbing media’s freedom to write what they want when they want will be more dangerous than the problem we’re trying to cure.

So we’re back to Jagland’s call for a “new political culture”. What does that really mean?

Let’s look at what the problem really is. As Burke said it, it will always be difficult to prioritize long term concerns over the immediate. The challenges of the present are apparent, the challenges of the future are uncertain at best. In mature democracies, the practical difference between the major political parties are rather minor and complex in nature. Those minor differences are much more easy to see in the well known short term than in the little known long term. Thus it’s a lot easier to prove you’re better than your opponent when you can show immediate results. If you focus on the long term and your opponent delievers results now, then he’s sure to beat you at the upcoming election, and your brilliant long term plan wil be of little consequence.

Political Economists call it a ‘chicken race’ or a ‘hawk-dove game’. If both keep going, they’ll crash. In our case the future for either politician will be wildly unpredictible, and politicians in general will lose influence as voters grow frustrated by the lack of clear direction. The politician who backs down first will, however lose right away to the one that keeps going. If both turn away, in our case abandons short-sightedness, the future is less certain for either, but society is sure to gain some sort of consistent long term strategy. Society would be best off if both backed down, but politicians are at a so-called Nash equilibirum: Unless they can influence the behavior of the other it will be in their interest to continue.

So the only one who can find a way out is a politician who can, by his own actions, change the behavior of his opponents. The kind of great political leader that by force of his own personality can stake out a long term course and shrug off short term attacks. The kind of leader with a so strong vision of the future that whoever wants to compete with him (or her) must compete with that vision, not trying to trip (or Tripp?) him and push him aside over issues that’ll be minor and inconsequential in the long term. We certainly won’t find him among Norwegian politicians who for example fall from grace over issues of violating the rules for renting out a farm outhouse, or Americans who keep being dismissed for their personal indiscretions. Neither will we find him among leaders who manage to stay in power by trampling freedom of speech and other liberties.

Some say that the time of great leaders is gone. I sincerely hope they’re wrong….

De fire borgerlige partiene snakker høyt om å fjerne NRK-lisensen og heller overføre denne til statsbudsjettet. AP-Giske er, til ingens overraskelse, lite mottagelig for dette og mener at NRKs tilbud i både radio og TV vil svekkes.

Og han har faktisk helt rett, men dette er også litt av poenget. Noen få sverger til at NRK opprettholder et mangfold i det norske mediebildet som de andre norske kanalene ikke gjør. De aller fleste har derimot sett seg lei på å betale penger for en kanal de aldri ser på.

Ved at kanalen forvaltes gjennom statsbudsjettet vil man riktignok indirekte fortsatt betale for NRK, men midlene som går til kanalen vil være færre. Dette betyr igjen at NRK må prioritere hvordan de bruker sine penger og det må større grad tenkes på hva som appellerer til den større seermassen.

Det vil bety færre diffuse programmer for spesielt interesserte seere, og flere programmer som har et innhold av generell interesse. Et steg i riktig retning, spør du meg.

Haakon Lie uttaler seg i dag i en svært interessant artikkel i Dagsavisen om både narkomane, tiggere, prostituerte og boligmarkedet. En høyst spesiell blanding av tema, men som vanlig har Arbeiderpartiets gamle partisekretær sjeldent lite på hjertet når han først uttaler seg.

Narkotikaavhengighet og tigging er emner som titt og ofte er oppe til diskusjon i norsk politikk. Særlig hva gjelder narkotikaavhengighet finnes det en viss bredde i hele vårt langstrakte land, men først og fremst gjelder problemstillingene for hovedstaden. Likevel skal det være bemerket at de grunnleggende spørsmålene rundt dette ikke går tapt.

Det er i mine øyne paradoksalt at Lie uttrykker sympati overfor narkomane, og ikke overfor tiggere. For begge gruppene gjelder det faktum at deres ulykke generelt sett er selvpåført og deres problemer føres som en del av en livsstil. Det eneste som skiller dem enkelt sett er at de narkomane som oftest er nordmenn, mens tiggerne i stor grad er organiserte og fra utlandet.

Man stiller sjeldent spørsmål ved hvor Lie henter sine slutninger, selv om det som oftest kan være grunn til det. Som regel forblir hans uttalelser aldri kritisert da hans autoritet i både Arbeiderpartiet og det norske samfunnet er stor; dette er tross alt mannen som var med på å bygge opp Norge i etterkrigstiden. Ikke overraskende legger de fleste i Arbeiderpartiet seg flate straks denne mannen ytrer et ord også denne gangen.

Det er beklagelig at Lies konservative og gammelmodige utspill tas til følge på denne måten. Først og fremst avfeier han all betydning konsekvensene et menneskets valg har. Uavhengig av om man er narkoman eller tigger har man gjort seg selv skyldig i sin situasjon, og man har på ingen måte gjort seg fortjent til noen sympati. Særlig mer sympatisk blir man heller ikke når disse menneskene ikke evner gjøre noen forsøk på å forbedre sin egen livssituasjon.

Selv når staten gang på gang gjør forsøk på å gi dem arbeid gjennom forskjellige ordninger uteblir resultatene. Lie mener selvsagt at man må prøve nok en gang, bare med bedre innsats. En svært typisk slutning for en mann på venstresiden som faller på seg selv; bare fordi man gjør noe flere ganger blir det ikke nødvendigvis bedre – og særlig ikke når utgangspunktet allerede er feil.

Staten skal ikke søke å gripe inn i disse menneskenes liv på denne måten. Det vil ikke være noen vinning, verken i form av økte menneskelige ressurser eller økonomisk vinning. Og videre er det allmennhetens hardt ervervede skattepenger som går til spille. Årsaken til dette er enkel:

1) Når det offentlige iverksetter sine prosjekter ender de alltid opp som halvhjertede forsøk som stagnerer som følge av feilaktige fremgangsmåter og økt byråkrati. Hver gang ender man alltid opp med et mislykket eksperiment.

2) Mange av disse menneskene ønsker ikke å komme seg ut av sin ulykke. Drevet av sin avhengighet ønsker de å fortsette den. De er håpløse tilfeller, som det norske samfunnet sløser sine ressurser på – i den tro at de gjør det riktige.

Det er dette Haakon Lie ønsker å videreføre. Jeg sier: Avslutt det hele nå. Om et menneske er blindt for sin ulykke er det lite man kan gjøre, og de får så heller svømme rundt i sin onde sirkel. Dette fordrer såklart at disse menneskene følger samfunnets lover; de er ikke unnskyldt, og deres ulykkelige skjebne skal ikke hente noen lettelse hva gjelder konsekvens og straff.

Hva gjelder tigging problematiseres dette ytterligere i de tilfeller det er snakk om profesjonelle utlendinger – hvilket er ofte. Det er ikke til å legge under en stol at dette kan være til stor irritasjon når man tar seg en tur opp langs Karl Johan. Problemet her er at mange mennesker, som ønsker å handle godt på grunn av et altruistisk motiv, faktisk gir disse tiggerne penger. Det sier seg selv at de heller da ikke vil forsvinne så lenge det er økonomisk gevinst å hente.

Løsningen er enkel, om ikke absolutt. Tiggerne på ignoreres. Man kan ikke nekte noen å sitte på gata å spørre om penger, så lenge det er snakk om offentlig rom, men man kan se bort fra dem. Og videre står man i den fulle rett å be om at tiggerne fjerner seg om de bruker privat eiendom til sitt ærende, eventuelt er til fysisk plage for deg eller andre. Og skulle det så være at de bryter med vårt lovverk vet vi hvor det skal bære hen.

Disse samfunnsproblemene angår oss fordi mange møter dem hver dag. Kynisk nok vil det være slik at så lenge man bryr seg om dem vil de også fortsette å eksistere – først og fremst som et irritasjonsmoment. Det er med andre ord på tide å si at kalle en spade for en spade og slutte å bry seg om disse fremmede skjebnene man ikke har noe forhold til.