Last week a neighbor comes over to give my wife some greens, and remarks on how bad the new train stations in Taichung are. After complaining about the Tanzih and Fengyuan stations, she turns to Taichung station: “It’s all Lin Chia-lung’s fault. He had the stations redesigned.” Although the claim is absurd, the underlying perception is not: Taiwanese voters tend to assign responsibility for events to whoever is in charge. If the DPP is not perceived to be working for the people, then discontented workers across the nation may well switch parties come 2018, or refuse to vote._______________________
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Nice commentary. Thoughtful and well written. President Tsai and her mayors have a lot of work to do when it comes to making the voters happy. Like in the U.S. the economy and personal incomes are the biggest issues to be dealt with. Working behind the scenes on those issues won't make the voters happy. The administration has to be more vocal about how it will improve both of these areas.
ReplyDeleteNice article. I hope to see more down the road.
ReplyDeleteGuy
“It’s all Lin Chia-lung’s fault. He had the stations redesigned.” Although the claim is absurd, the underlying perception is not: Taiwanese voters tend to assign responsibility for events to whoever is in charge.
ReplyDeleteWhy is that claim absurd? It looks perfectly reasonable - blame the guy in charge of the fuck up because... he was in charge of the fuck up. What's missing that makes this absurd?
Congrats on the new gig at Taiwan News.
ReplyDeleteHmm...something is not adding up with these troop carriers.
It's not really a great distance to travel – surely, both Singapore and Taiwan would be aiming to ship a cargo of this nature directly, without a Hong Kong stopover?
And (according to one report) no-one thought it would be a good idea to remove the Taiwan number plates from the vehicles?
"On almost any issue of note, Obama failed to take progressive, people-centered action, especially about problems in the heartland where the Democratic Party was crushed. Endemic problems in red and swing states such as drug abuse, suicide, environmental pollution, unemployment, stagnant wages, crumbling infrastructure, and widespread poverty were largely ignored. The Wall Street bankers who crashed the global economy went unprosecuted. No meaningful action was taken on the climate. Key symbolic issues such as the Flint water crisis or the Dakota Pipeline received only soothing words. Tellingly, the only moderately progressive major legislation of his tenure, the Affordable Care Act, began life as a Republican plan, and was widely panned by critics as a subsidy program for insurance companies."
ReplyDelete1. So drug abuse is Obama's fault? Funny how we didn't hear how it was Reagan or Clinton's fault when it was black people getting thrown in jail for crack in the 80's and 90's, but now it's white people getting hooked on heroin and its time to analyze why the system failed them.
2. The unemployment rate dropped to 5% under Obama. That's pretty good considering the mess he inherited. Real weekly earnings were up 3.4%. Let's reason from data, not from innuendo from the right wing echo chamber. (Source: Factcheck.org)
3. Wind and solar are up 273% under his administration, and he got the US on board with the Paris agreement, which may seem inadequate but given that 8 years ago it wasn't even being taken seriously as a problem that's progress, especially in light of GOP obstructionism.
4. The ACA may have been criticized as such, but it still added 14 million people to the health care rolls that had no coverage before, and was a measure that was realistic given that the states will never accept universal health coverage.
5. Wall St. Bankers, not punished, Flint, Standing Rock definitely lame. It hurts his legacy.
6. Nowhere in your analysis of Obama's legacy are you including the fact that he had 8 years of unrelenting obstructionism from the GOP who kneecapped everything he tried to do, and he did an admirable job of bringing economic recovery to the US in spite of that. Thoughtful historians will remember the mess he inherited and the context of his presidency.
You're calling your neighbor absurd but your reasoning on Obama's legacy sounds just like him.
"... the fact that he had 8 years of unrelenting obstructionism from the GOP who kneecapped everything he tried to do..."
ReplyDeleteIf that were true, then the Affordable Health Care Act would not have been passed. It wasn't true, because in the congressional elections of 2008 the Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate as well as the Presidency, so blaming Republicans for "kneecapping" everything Obama tried to do is a bit off base: they couldn't "kneecap" anything in the first few years because they were the minority party.