Whew!
The votes from Italians overseas are in, and the Senators they chose split 5-1 for the center-left, giving Prodi control of the Senate as well as the lower chamber. Berlusconi is calling for a recount, but with a 25,000-vote margin and only 43,000 disputed ballots, it looks as if he’s out of luck and out of office.
About time, too.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
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What is especially wonderful is how the strange new representation of Italians abroad introduced by the center right completed the defeat of Berlusconi.
The post-neo-fascist Allianza Nazionale has been agitating for votes for Italians abroad for years (decades maybe but no one paid attention to them before Berlusconi allied with them). They seem to have assumed that emigrants (and children of emigrants) who want to vote in Italian elections will be loony nationalists.
My personal reading of the 5-1 result (which surprised analysts who expected a 3-3 split) is that anyone who gets news from any source other than Berluscavision TV knows that he is a crook and a buffoon.