The Kaoshiung KMT mayor candidate. She probably won't beat Chen Chu, but note that both parties have nominated females in the second biggest city in Taiwan. When was the last time the second biggest city in the US had two female mayoral candidates?The NCCU election futures prediction market as of 9/1, from the
NCCU election center blog:
Taipei
KMT: 47.4 DPP 52.4
N Taipei
KMT 48.5 DPP 52.3
Taichung
KMT 64.8 DPP 34.7
Tainan
KMT 18.4 DPP 77.0
Kaohsiung
KMT 15.4 DPP 69.5 Yang 19.8
Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you. In the futures market, people are taking the position that the DPP will win in Taipei and The City Formerly Known As Taipei County. Also, in Kaohsiung, turncoat Yang has plummeted 7 points since the previous week. Yay! Disclaimer: election is three months away. Anything can happen.
A sound truck supports the DPP's Su in Taichung.
A candidate views Pinglin.
More bikes in Taichung. Note that both signs (same candidate) have bike imagery.
Proposing himself for Fengyuan.
The popular mayor of Taichung, Jason Hu (left) with a local candidate in Tanzi, soon to be incorporated into Taichung City.
One of a number of female candidates in Kaohsiung. I like her hand out to the public.
Another Kaohsiung politico.
Chen Chu (right), the popular DPP mayor of Kaohsiung, with a local DPP candidate. The smaller sign to the right also advertises a DPP candidate.
Spot the political ad?
In Kaohsiung I was impressed with the amount and size of the political ads. They seemed much bigger than anywhere else.
In Fengshan, soon to be incorporated into Kaohsiung.
Unusually, this ad not only mentions ECFA but supports it. She is followed by a whole row of giant signs filling the block.
"An old friend/A new future" proclaims this sign.
More female candidates.
More gigantic signs.
Looking dapper, a candidate hangs a sign by the construction project.
A strangely placed ad in Changhua.
In Kaohsiung near the train station.
An ad for Chen Chu looks out over the approach to Fengshan.
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Taipei
ReplyDeleteKMT (Hau Lung-bin): 47.4
DPP (Su Tseng-chang): 52.4
The difference was as large as 7 a couple of days ago. Then the amount of trade suddenly increased to boost Hau's score. It seems very unlikely that large population would favor Hau at this time when Hau's alleged corruption is blown wide open.
Why is the major of Taichung so popular? With the gang activities in that city, you would think the citizens are fed up and want change.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised by the DPP's candidate in Taichung. Su actually looks a tiny bit handsome in that picture. I'm used to the DPP fielding pug-ugly candidates! :D
ReplyDeleteYeah, what's the deal with Taichung. Jason Hu can't be THAT popular can he?
ReplyDeleteI think jason Hu, as the incumbent, has name recognition. People think "Mayor" and his name pops to mind.
ReplyDeleteI think it is more than that. Hu is a good politician, a networker, friendly and extremely kind. He does favors for people, even from the other side. He has a great sense of humor, is far less pompous and more likeable than people like Lien Chan or Ma, and has presided over a building boom in the western part of the city that has rewarded a lot of people. We've also got a new subway going in just in time for the elections.
ReplyDelete"When was the last time the second biggest city in the US had two female mayoral candidates?"
ReplyDeleteWhat a fatuous comment. Judging a woman by virtue of her sex is something a gent keeps to himself.
Mob boss, Lee Chao-hsiung;
ReplyDelete"I think he has a benevolent heart," said Taichung's mayor of the deceased wise guy."
Seems that Hu was not the only "extremely kind" fella in Taichung.
"Birds of a Feather"
What a fatuous comment. Judging a woman by virtue of her sex is something a gent keeps to himself.
ReplyDeleteWhat a fatuous comment. It should be clear even to a Martian that I am criticizing our political parties, not females. Try to spend less time instantly disagreeing, and more time considering what people might be saying.
Richard: Yeah, what's the deal with Taichung. Jason Hu can't be THAT popular can he?
ReplyDeleteWhen you turn the city into a kingdom of gangs, the gangsters become the citizens. So, the more the city is gangsters-infested, the higher Hu's popularity will be. So the deal is: if Hu cracks down on gangsters, his popularity will drop because those citizens will no longer support him.
Oh but I am considering what you are saying - it is not a legitimate criticism of any political party to say they don't have enough female candidates. Whether a candidate is male or female is irrelevant - unless perhaps you represent a large union or corporate interest looking to, ahem, get into bed with a future government.
ReplyDeleteQuite a number of relatively young politicians, too. Seems strange that on the one hand supposedly only few young people are politically interested, and the other hand that it appears quite feasible for them to rise through the ranks fairly quickly.
ReplyDeleteNot sure whether that's a correct impression, but I'd love to hear about this angle.
Love the photos. More election pictures please!
ReplyDeleteBy comparison with his predecessors, Jason Hu is not doing badly. But that sets the bar pretty low.
Whether a candidate is male or female is irrelevant
ReplyDeleteIf you live in a fantasy world where there are no structural or social inequalities.
Firstly, it is the content of a person's character that has moral import Turton - not where they happen to be aggregated along a statistical plot according to something they were born with.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, your "structural inequalities" (of outcome) can be elucidated by observing the operation of two opposed prinicples:
For the first principle, there are the cases of inequality of outcome that result from the aggregate decisions of individuals in a market. So for example, finding a spare alternator for a Toyota Vios is easier than finding one for say, an Alfa Romeo 147. Similarly, if more party members – both male and female – freely vote to nominate male candidates over female candidates, then the result is an inequality of political nominations between the sexes. But since, in such cases as this, the inequality results from freely taken decisions by individuals – it is something which can, in principle, be changed by reasoning, either in the field of mechanical engineering or in the field of argument and persuasion.
The second principle however, is that of the necessarily violent efforts of government to engineer equality of social outcomes. The long-held policy of the British government, for example, to enable more children from poor backgrounds to acquire University degrees and thus achieve greater equality of opportunity between the rich and poor, has in fact, led to a more general debasement of the value of University degrees and of educational standards more generally. It is not the rich who then suffer most from this result – but the very poor kids the policy was designed to benefit in the first place. Government efforts to engineer equality of social outcomes will almost inevitably increase the very disparities they were intended to reduce.
Once you understand that government has no other power but that of forced compulsion, the conclusion that government cannot create but only destroy becomes inescapable.