Man Formerly Charged With Rigging Student Ballot Exposed As Labor Official 96
First time accepted submitter pocock writes "Motivated by reports of Matthew Weaver's twelve month jail sentence for rigging CalState student elections, a comprehensive blog describes in detail how a generation of student ballot riggers from the late 1990s have graduated unhindered into federal politics, playing a pivotal role in Australia's upcoming federal election. One can only wonder if Weaver had not been caught, would he too have eventually swiped a million dollars and put the SRC into liquidation?"
Aus Labor Party is anything but democratic (Score:1, Interesting)
They might come from the "social democratic" tradition but there's nothing democratic about the Australian Labor Party. They're the masters of branch stacking and rigging votes, especially through union representation at national conferences. The party has become a joke and the sooner they're turfed in the coming months, the better. They need a few terms in the wilderness to clean up their filthy act.
Re:Aus Labor Party is anything but democratic (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, but the only alternative is the "Liberal Party", which has nothing liberal about it.
Both major parties are bad (Score:3, Interesting)
The two major parties are very similar in most respects. Both parties have been trying to out-do each other in reprehensible policies.
For me the election has come down to just a few issues:
1. The (incumbent) Labor party has a future-proofing, infrastructure-based Fibre-to-the-Premises broadband policy that is in build at the moment. The (opposition) Liberal/National coalition has a patchwork Fibre-to-the Node policy that they've been dragged kicking and screaming to because the FTTP policy has been so popular. The FTTN policy will cost almost as much to implement, cost more to maintain, and need replacing with FTTP before the FTTN build is complete.
2. The Labor party is still slightly less nasty on social issues (but they're doing their best to convince me otherwise right now).
3. The leader of the Liberal/National coalition - Tony Abbot - is a truly nasty piece of work. He is an intolerant bigot. He makes my skin crawl every time I hear him talk. I don't like the leader of the Labor party (Kevin Rudd) and was ambivalent on the recently-deposed leader (Julia Gillard) but there are some things they say that don't make my guts turn.
Disclosure: I'm personally scheduled to have the FTTP NBN start building in my town in about 1.5 years. For purely selfish reasons I need to vote for a party in the Senate (upper house) that will work to ensure that the NBN stays on track (I'm in a safe Liberal seat, so my vote in the House of Representatives means nothing). However I happen to think that the FTTP NBN is the most important infrastructure project we're likely to see in the next 50+ years, so my vote is not just for selfish reasons.
Re:"Ratfucking" (Score:4, Interesting)
BERNSTEIN
...
At USC, you had a word the this--
screwing up the opposition you all
did it at college and called it
ratfucking.
(SEGRETTI half-smiles, nods)
Ever wonder if Nixon might turn out
to be the biggest ratfucker of them
all?
DEEP THROAT
My turn to keep you waiting.
(approaches)
What's the topic for tonight?
WOODWARD
Ratfucking.
DEEP THROAT
In my day, it was simply called the
double cross. I believe the CIA refers
to it as Mindfuck. In our context,
it simply means infiltration of the
Democrats.
WOODWARD
I know what it means--Segretti
wouldn't go on the record, but if he
would, we know he'd implicate Chapin.
And that would put us inside the
White House.
DEEP THROAT
(nods)
Yes, the little ratfuckers are now
running our government.
I own the movie on DVD, but ironically, I had to go to a Russian site for the transcript [sfy.ru].
Re: Aus Labor Party is anything but democratic (Score:1, Interesting)
Funny how you forget to mention the court case involving defendant Tony Abbott and his involvement with both arranging the funding to seek the imprisonment of political opponents, the Battlerorts fiasco, the current court case involving defendant Sophie Mirabella or the involvement of the Liberal Party in the trumped up sexual harrassment charges (according to the presiding magistrate) against Peter Slipper. Both parties contain the odd shady individual, the difference being that one of the shady individuals in the Liberal Party wants to be PM.