Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff won re-election and stretched her Workers’ Party’s rule to a record 16 years by convincing voters her opponent threatened social gains she pledged to expand in her second term.
Rousseff, who has maintained record-low unemployment even as the economy posted the slowest growth under any Brazilian president in more than two decades, had 52 percent of the vote with 99.98 percent of ballots counted by the electoral court in Brasilia. Senator Aecio Neves, a former governor of Minas Gerais state, had 48 percent. The result was the closest presidential election since the return of democracy in 1985.Bloomberg News
Rousseff Re-Elected on Call to Save Brazil’s Social Gains
Mario Sergio Lima and Anna Edgerton
Close call.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting this.
Perhaps the most important lesson: full employment is a vote winner.
ReplyDelete'Socio-economic justice' cohort swings it again.... as usual...
ReplyDeleteyou can't see this if you are biased
Rsp
Hey guys can you explain this to me (as a non-american who tries to follow USA politics tangentially):
ReplyDeletehttp://projects.marketwatch.com/elections2014/?link=quicklinks
Why the only industry donating more to the dems than repubs by some margin are law firms? There is no reason or there is some hidden trend here?
BTW how desperate oil is, it's really hilarious.
Ignacio,
ReplyDeleteThe lawyers are paying the Dems to stave off "tort reform" where the GOP wants to reform the law to cap other than compensatory damages.... plaintiff lawyers over here typically get a % of settlements in their fees....
more self-interest as usual...
rsp,
As Matt points out, it's torts that the GOP is after most vocally, but also includes most suits against business, e.g., medical malpractice, class action, as well as consumer protections, etc. The GOP push to limit government means limiting law and regulation, court actions, etc. So this directly affects lawyers bread and butter issues.
ReplyDeleteShould clarify that the GOP has portrayed tort lawyers as "ambulance chasers" who convince clients that there's money to be made by suiting business for "damages" even where there aren't any, or suing for exorbitant sums.
ReplyDeleteThe argument is that this makes prices higher for everyone.
But when one digs into it, what they are really talking about is immunizing business from the public.
This is also the intention of trade agreements like the one's now being negotiated in secret that give business the upper hand even over national sovereignty.
The GOP Establishment is laissez-faire.
Ok that's sound. But the other side of the question is: why is democrats support so abysmal comapred to the GOP.
ReplyDeleteI mean, I understand it in the case of oil and healthcare industries, but I thought it would be mor e even on other industries.
Cutting to the chase, the business world doesn't yet understand the Kalecki profit equation that says looser fiscal stance and higher deficits results in higher corporate profits. Conversely, they think that austerity increases business confidence and thereby leads to increased investment (Krugman's "confidence fairy").
ReplyDeleteBasically, US business operates on the principle that laissez-faire is good for firms. So they want "limited government," meaning privatization of public ownership, deregulation, a judicial system favorable to business interests, low social spending to reduce taxation, tax incentives and subsidies for business, and a strong foreign policy supporting the interests of American business as identical with US national interests, along with a strong military to back it up, etc.
This translates into neoliberal political theory. It was put in place by Thatcher and Reagan and spread to the EZ. Now the US, UK, and EZ are laboring under the effects, and the neoliberal solution is to double down on austerity and to increase economic liberalization.
Ok, I understand that (business group thinking and ideological bias etc.), but, maybe I'm wrong but I thought in the last elections it was more even and so there was a trend change.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm probably just wrong and the main neoclassical thinking drives this. Or there are other reasons (like ruling party fatigue from being in power and things not improving, although for big biz it has been very profitable, but big biz is more likely to invest in both camps and win whoever wins, so is middle & small corporation which must be driven most of the differences).
Thanks anyway /offtopic