GlobLog - September 2006
A direct link to each entry is obtained by using the button below the entry.

23:45 - WHEN I AM ASHAMED OF BEING SWEDISH: 

Iran executes gays. That shouldn´t surprise anyone. That´s what awful fundamentalist dictatorships do.

What´s surprising is that Sweden has decided to continue sending Iranian gay men back to Iran. The reason that they don´t deserve our protection: They can live "discreet and reserved" in Iran, so as not to attract the attention and the bloodthirst of the authorities.

In other words, don´t worry, just hide, stay silent and deny who you are, and you have a good chance not to be tortured and executed by thugs.

Here, the new Swedish government has a chance to make a small but important contribution to turn Sweden into a civilised country.

(Via Johanna Nylander)

23:18 - GEMENSAMMA NÄMNARE: 

I veckans Fokus kan man läsa följande citat från en av mina favoritfolkbildare, professorn i internationell hälsa, Hans Rosling:

" - Egentligen tycker jag ganska lika som både Carin Jämtin och Johan Norberg, säger han på sitt underfundiga sätt. Den nyliberala ideologen och den avgående socialdemokratiska biståndsministern. Ett omaka par, men Hans Rosling menar att båda anammar den faktabaserade världsbild han vill förmedla."

Som sagt var, det kan tyckas som ett omaka par, men kanske ändå inte. En kompis påminde mig just om en debatt mellan mig och Jämtin om utveckling och bistånd i Dokument Utifrån 11 december 2003, då Jämtin drog följande slutsats:

"Regeringen gör precis det som Johan säger att man ska göra i biståndspolitiken, dvs skapar äganderätter och bygger marknadsekonomi."

(Tack Marcus)

23:41 - BAD NEWS FOR PROTECTIONISTS IN ALL PARTIES: 

Europe just got a new think tank. Two of the best free traders I know, Fredrik Erixon and Razeen Sally, just started ECIPE - European Centre for International Political Economy. It is a Brussels based institute that will promote trade liberalisation and a liberal international economic order with good research and high-quality studies and conferences. The goal is an open world, and a Europe that participates in it and adapts to it.

Sounds like my kind of organisation. It is. I am one of ECIPE´s fellows.

Worth bookmarking.

23:20 - LIBERAL GLOBALISTS DEBATE IMMIGRATION: 

Martin Wolf is one of the world´s sharpest commentators on global issues. But I don´t agree when he doubts the benefits of immigration (rather than the welfare state´s way of handling immigration). In Financial Times today he argues that "a continuation of net immigration on the recent scale is hard to justify". Most of all Wolf thinks that we need a debate about this.

We certainly do. A person in a great position to take that debate is Philippe Legrain, who will soon publish an excellent book in favour of open borders that I have had the joy to read in advance. Legrain responds to Wolf ´s article on his blog.

15:46 - REVIEWING REVIEWERS: 

Several times I have promised a seminar where I review the reviewers of my new book, "När människan skapade världen". Now is the time, and here is the invitation. Space is limited, so respond quickly if you want to go.

18 October, 17.30 – 20.00

Grev Turegatan 19, Stockholm

(Extracts of reviews here.)

20:49 - TWO PERSPECTIVES ON WAL-MART: 

One of the strangest things here in the US is the leftists´ obsessive hatred of Wal-Mart - the retailer that has done more to support poor consumers than any government program, and that gives jobs to those who have difficulties entering the labour market.

Here is the leftist perspective:

"The only way I think Wal-Mart is going to change is if no one wants to work at Wal-Mart. How come no one goes after the employees who willingly work there? By their silent consent of working at Wal-Mart they really are the ´guilty ones.´ If no one wanted to work at Wal-Mart they would have to change there policies... I will never ever ever work at Wal-Mart."

Commentator on Orange Politics.

And here is the perspective from the workers:

"Chicago´s first Wal-Mart store held its grand opening... More than 15,000 people applied for the 400 jobs at the store"

- USA Today, today.

04:03 - WHY HE SHOULD LEAD LABOUR ANOTHER 12 YEARS: 

"[Free movement] is good for the people of Eastern Europe because it provides them with growth, better jobs and wages, and spreads and deepens European democratic values. Creating a common market means that workers must have rights as well as businesses, and there must be freedom of movement for workers as well as for capital, goods and services."

- Tony Blair, 13 September

“British jobs to British workers”

- Gordon Brown, 10 September

(Via Open Europe)

04:53 - TIME FOR A REPUBLICAN TIME-OUT: 

Today I met with John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, and one of the things we talked about was how big government conservatism has triumphed in Congress. Far from trying to limit government powers, the congressmen spend like drunken sailors on pork barrel projects like bridges to nowhere, and don´t seem to pay any attention to the public outrage against overspending and lobbyist-driven corruption in the wake of the Abramoff scandal.

My conclusion is that the republicans are now in the situation of the Swedish social democrats one and a half week ago - too accustomed to power and in need of some time in opposition to re-evaluate their ideas and ask themselves what is their raison d´être. Fund ends one of his latest articles in this way:

"The federal government is now an astounding 185 times as big in real terms as it was a century ago. A general sense that Republicans have forgotten why they were sent to Washington is a big reason why only 43% of Republicans approve of Congress in this month´s Fox News poll. If Republicans can´t better explain how they plan to get a grip on spending, many voters will conclude they both deserve and need a time-out from power."

22:50 - SANNINGEN BAKOM SANNINGEN BAKOM STATISTIKEN...: 

Jag skulle ha lagt upp detta mail tidigare, men det är fortfarande ett relevant svar på vad jag skrev om sanningen bakom våldtäktsstatistiken:

"Anmälda våldtäkter ökade från ca 1 600 till ca 2 600 från 1996 till 2004, INNAN definitionen ändrades. Går vi tillbaks till 1980 handlar det om 8-900 våldtäkter per år. Det fanns alltså en reell och dramatisk ökning före lagändringen, som du borde påpeka när du skriver om ämnet, så att läsarna inte får intrycket att allt handlar om en lagändring. "

- Tino

13:44 - HAR EN FOLKPARTIST ELLER MODERAT RÄTT GRUNDVÄRDERINGAR?: 

"Jag har inget att skryta med på det journalistiska planet. Men med min bakgrund och mina grundvärderingar tror jag att jag har en stor trovärdighet vad gäller samhällsgranskande journalistik."

- Miljöpartiets Gustav Fridolin blir reporter på TV4:s Kalla Fakta, och väcker frågan vilka grundvärderingar som inte passar om man vill bli samhällsgranskande journalist.

15:27 - I WILL DROP SOME DOCUMENTS AND SEE IF IT WORKS: 

In the next ten days I won’t blog as often as usual, and I will have even less time to respond to email than usual. To participate in two conferences I just travelled to the most polite city in the world. At least according to Reader’s Digest’s Global Courtesy Test, which is based on exposing strangers on the streets to experimental ”door tests”, “document drops” and “service tests”.

No, you didn’t guess it. It’s actually New York. (Stockholm was no. 10, after Mexico City)

23:51 - NEO-NEO: 

Now after the election campaign you need some intellectual stimulation to wake you up from your dogmatic slumber. Luckily, Neo 5-2006 is out now. I don´t write anything in this edition, but it´s filled with great articles. Don´t miss Kristian Karlsson´s report about why Americans are so religious, and Mattias Svensson´s amusing look at the pompous Tällberg conference.  

23:46 - HOW TO SPEND IT: 

As if the EU needed a new spending plan to find innovative uses for the tax-payers´ money:

"The European Commission has released new figures showing that Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) spending jumped to a record €48.5 billion in 2005, up 11.2% over the previous year. By contrast, non-agricultural expenditure fell very slightly in 2005 to €56.3 billion."

- Farmsubsidy.org (thanks Fredrik)

11:26 - PLEASE TRY TO BEHAVE NOW THAT YOU ARE MEMBERS: 

The EU is helping its new members to adhere to the highest international standards. And the EUobserver reports that they have just found a serious problem in efficiency, with "Cyprus, the Czech Republic and Poland scoring the worst results". The average progress is only "gradual" and some even saw declining results in 2005.

So what is this about? Is the EU worried about the rule of law, economic liberalisation, productivity increases or education levels?

No, they complain that the new member states don´t spend their EU funds fast enough, they have not yet learnt to be dependent on subsidies. They have only used a quarter of what they are entitled to. But now, at last, help is on its way. A "multiannual EU spending plan" is in preparation, which "will pressure for more efficient spending".

Apparently, the EU area is doing what it can to become the world´s most spendthrift economy by 2010.

(Thanks Peter)

00:28 - CAPTUS TIDNING: 

Varje gång jag har varit i Göteborg på sista tiden ser tankesmedjan Captus till att bjuda på ordentligt party. Trevligt. Billig bärs och radikala idéer är ett koncept som aldrig går ur tiden.

Om du föredrar att träffa dem virtuellt finns Captus allt snyggare nättidning numera här.

19:44 - CONGRATULATIONS TO CUF: 

All votes for parliament are now counted. And one of the biggest winners is CUF - centern´s liberal youth organisation. They didn´t just get their chairman Fredrick Federley elected in Stockholm (I contributed one vote), I am also very happy to see that their vice chairman Annie Johansson was elected in Jönköping by gaining the most personal votes by a wide margin.

Congratulations, you will make a great team in parliament!

Fredrick´s and Annie´s liberal ideas have been crucial for the party´s ability to gain new voters. In Stockholm centern went from 1.7 to 5.7 percent, and in my districts in the north of the city, they went from being virtually non-existent to 7-10 percent of the votes. This gives the young liberals in the party a strong mandate, which I think that the party would be wise to consider.

A social democrat like Joel Malmqvist thinks that we liberals and libertarians are pathetic because we vote for centern and then criticise their policies. I guess that he would never dream of criticising the social democratic party. But from us, who think that democracy means more than voting once every fourth year, I can promise a continuos examination of centern´s and the new government´s policies, and of course we will vote for someone else the next time if they don´t stand the test. 

My candidate would never dream of asking anything less from his voters.

17:25 - THE STORY BEHIND THE STATISTICS: 

Many are worried (I am not an exception) about the dramatic increase in reported cases of rape in Sweden. It almost doubled between 2004 and 2005. Studio Ett just explained the background. Most of the increase is a result of the new law that defines sexual abuse as rape, and a third of the increase is about the repeated offences of one rapist against one victim during a period of two years (299 reported cases).

So we might not be in the middle of a dramatic increase, after all. Every single case is a tragedy, but when the media and bloggers like me overestimate the number of cases we create unfounded fear which also makes the world worse.

16:36 - THAT´S WHY WE CALL IT DEMOCRACY: 

A lot of media reports about Thailand seem to suggest that most people welcome the military coup against prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, because of his corrupt and chaotic ways. Here is a friendly piece of advise until the next time: Vote him out of office.

08:53 - HOW TO DEAL WITH SVERIGEDEMOKRATERNA: 

When we got the first prognosis on election night that the anti-immigration party Sverigedemokraterna would get around 2 percent, I guessed that this really meant 3 percent. Unfortunately I was right. and they have entered more than 80 local councils.

As Svenska Dagbladet reports this means that they will receive almost 50 million SEK in tax-funded support on national, regional and local level - more than six times more than their entire election budget, which will help them to build a real organisation and enter parliament in 2010. As if we needed further proof that state support for parties is bizarre.

Just like Stefan Geens I don´t think that a successful strategy against Sverigedemokraterna means ignoring and isolating them. They won´t go away just because we don´t look. The result from countries like Austria and Belgium shows that this only strenghtens them since voters get the impression that the politicians don´t care about their views. And if left and right starts unholy alliances politically to keep them away this gives them further support as the only outsider alternative.

Apart from attacking the problems of segregation and unemployment seriously, a better strategy against Sverigedemokraterna means this:

1) Oppose Sverigedemokraterna in open debates. Politicians have ignored them, which meant that they got to present their lies and prejudices unopposed.

2) This one hurts the most, but I think it is necessary to remove their image as brave martyrs: I think that the major parties have to give them limited responsibilities locally. Expose them by forcing them to have real policies for things like elderly care, water and sanitation, so that their incompetence is revealed and so that they can´t go on in a populist way promising everything.

23:32 - LIKA SOM BÄR: 

"Vi har inte förlorat"

- Marita Ulvskog om socialdemokraternas sämsta val sedan den allmänna rörsträtten infördes.

"Är du nöjd med valresultatet?

Absolut, det är mer än jag hade trott."

- Linda Rosing om att Unika partiet fick 208 röster över hela landet.

23:23 - OCH DE BEHÖVER INTE RÖSTA PÅ SD I VELLINGE, FÖR DÄR ÄR DERAS ÅSIKTER REDAN REPRESENTERADE: 

”Det är väl inte så konstigt. Med alla jävla invandrare som finns där.”

- Bengt Hansson, förste vice i kommunfullmäktige i Vellinge (m), förklarar varför Sverigedemokraterna går framåt starkt i Landskrona. (via Sydsvenskan)

23:01 - AND THAT WOULD BE ENOUGH TO CELEBRATE: 

"The country has been liberated and the sceptics aren´t celebrating who won, but who lost."

- Michael Moynihan (the best Sweden has received from the US since the Internet) on the Swedish election in Reason.

22:53 - THE LIMITS OF TECHNOLOGY: 

As you may have noticed, this blog has experienced some trouble the last few days. I am sorry about that, but the reason is a good one: I have more traffic than I can handle. When you can´t access the page, try to restrain yourself and check back in an hour or so, and it should be alright again.

18:30 - THE CURE FOR TERRORISM?: 

Do you remember Lysistrata? The Greek comedy by Aristophanes from 411 BC about the women who protested against the war with a sex strike.

It´s happening for real in Pereira, Colombia, where women withhold sex until the men give up violence, Alvaro Vargas Llosa reports. A good idea when young men join violent gangs because they think that it will impress women.

10:58 - THE RICH GET RICHER AND THE POOR GET RICHER EVEN FASTER: 

From The Economist´s excellent survey on emerging economies:

00:51 - MY NEXT BLOG POST WILL NOT BE WRITTEN BY A WOMAN: 

This must be some sort of record: It didn´t take more than two days before I got disappointed with the party I voted for. The first thing Maud Olofsson does in the negotiations about the new government is not to demand the right policies or individuals, but to demand an equal representation of men and women.

If we begin with quotas straight away, then how many immigrants should the government have? How many homosexuals? How many car mechanics? This is a collectivist mindset that I hoped we abandoned two days ago.

And as several of you point out, this is slightly hypocritical: Centern does not even have a 50/50 representation on their own lists. And by the way, which female politician should leave Stockholm politics, where they dominate?

14:44 - UPPMANING TILL BORGERLIGHETEN: 

Innan ni delar ut statsrådsposterna måste ni läsa Mattias Svenssons varning. 

14:01 - HOW RADICAL IS THE ALLIANCE?: 

Almost all foreign observers - and some Swedish - ask me how radical Sweden´s new government will be. It depends on your comparison. If you compare it to my ideals they are obviously far from it. Don´t expect a liberal revolution. But if you compare it to other governments, my guess is that this government will lead Europe in reform.

It´s true that the moderates were...well...more moderate this time around. But on the other hand, the three other parties are more radical than they have been before, and will push in a more radical direction, for example centern wants more labour market reform and more open borders, folkpartiet wants lower taxes on high incomes and more free trade, and the christian democrats attacks the taxes on petrol and properties.

The logic in 1991-94 was that the moderates in government wanted to do more, whereas the others held them back. This time, they agree on more changes from the start, and the three smaller parties will push for more changes. This - and the fact that they don´t inheret an economic crisis - means that there is a chance that they will reform more than in 1991-94.

The four alliance parties actually won at the peak of the business cycle with a fairly ideological stand for jobs vs welfare benefits. This gives them a strong mandate to reduce benefits and reduce taxes, especially on low incomes. And this gives room to move on with more tax cuts when people move from the welfare rolls to jobs. The taxes on property and estates will be the first to go.

The government will privatise most companies owned by the government, deregulate the product markets, open Sweden for workers from other countries, dismantle the political control of the universities, give parents freedom of choice in child care, open welfare services completely for private alternatives, create more voucher systems and locally they will privatise hospitals. And they will be on the side of deregulation in the EU.

The biggest problem is that the moderates have promised not to touch labour security, which will make their job-creation agenda more difficult. But some smaller reforms of the labour market have been announced and with some luck, after the success in the election, centern can implement the specific deregulated youth contract they have proposed, and if that succeeds it might be followed by more reforms.

Well, how radical will they be? Let´s just say that there is a potential. The ideological climate is not too bad. Three of the parties have strong liberal/libertarian factions, and some of their most vocal representatives are also the most libertarian. And the fourth party, the christian democrats, have a leader who says that he has Ayn Rand´s Atlas Shrugged on his bedside table. You wouldn´t have heard that from Helmuth Kohl.

And the party secretary of the moderates think that my latest book is one of the most interesting books he has read, and a source of inspiration for the party.

I never heard that from Marita Ulvskog.

10:29 - NO SUNSHINE STORY: 

Woops. I thought that the bus driver waived me through because he was happy with the election result. Imagine my double disappointment when I realised that this was because of a bus robbery on Sunday that made bus drivers afraid of handling cash... (Thanks Jan-Erik)

09:30 - THE RICHARD LIONHEART-EFFECT: 

Now everybody wants to see EU commissioner Margot Wallström as the next leader of the social democrats. Well, so do I. But could this just be a result of our tendency to love those who are gone? When Carl Bildt was on the UN mission in Bosnia in the mid-90´s, he was the most popular Swedish politician by far, but then he returned and people remembered that they didn´t really like him that much, and he lost the election in 1998.

This is the Richard Lionheart-effect. The English king has gone down in history as a just and good king. The reason was that he was away on the Crusade, and when people complained about taxes and oppression (implemented by the king) they forgot that he was responsible, and thought that everything would change if the king was back and realised what they went through.

When you are gone, you are untainted by political quarrels and people can fantasise about how decent you are and how you would change everything for the better. When you are back, fantasy makes room for empirical tests.

00:21 - THEY ARE NO LONGER AFRAID: 

At last Göran Persson has resigned. And the mood on Stockholm´s streets (where the social democrats have collapsed) is a little more open and free. When I took the bus earlier today the bus driver didn´t charge me and just waived me through with a big smile.

Two interesting things about Persson:

1) He seems more relaxed and happy now than he has done the last year. I think that he is actually quite happy to resign at last, and look forward to family life on the mansion.

2) After Persson announced his resignation last night, journalists started to ask him much more aggressive questions and social democrats begun to criticise his campaign ideas and methods openly. The spell is broken. They are no longer afraid of the person who destroyed the career of anyone who criticised him.

This is just the beginning. Soon I think that we will see severe attacks on Persson and the way he blocked the modernisation of the social democrats, written by social democrats. And this will help an outsider candidate, like Wallström.

10:22 - GOOD MORNING, NO REALLY: 

It´s a little bit easier to wake up in Sweden today - despite all the champagne yesterday.

Sweden gets a new center-right government, Göran Persson resigns, centern is the third biggest party, Fredrick Federley was elected to parliament and Stockholm voted in favour of the alliance and of congestion charges.

For once everything turned out as it should. Thanks, and congratulations to everybody who has worked for years to make this possible.

So let´s celebrate some more, but then the hard work begins - to be as suspicious of the new government as we were of the social democrats, and consistently push them in a liberal direction. Power corrups, and friends in power...well, corrupt in some nice, friendly way that we hardly notice before it´s too late.

20:37 - THE END OF THE PERSSON ERA: 

The first prognosis shows that the social democrats have lost - big time. So this is what I am thinking about right now.

- Centern is suddenly the third biggest party. It´s nice to be a winner for a change. I think that the liberal swing vote showed its strength today.

- This is the worst election for the social democrats in 80 years. Perhaps this is enough to get Persson not just to step down, but also to lose his control over the party, and then Margot Wallström takes over and modernises the party.

- Sverigedemokraterna gets 1.9 percent, and this underestimates them, since it´s difficult to tell the interviewer that you will vote for the idiots. I would guess that they´ll get around 3 percent. And it´s to early to rule out that they´ll get seats locally.

11:45 - LÄSTIPS I SISTA STUND: 

- Den frihetliga Centern - fyra essäer om liberalism och centerpartism (pdf)

- Kulturrevolution.se: Därför vill vi byta statsminister - 30 bloggare och debattörer sjunger ut.

11:28 - HEALTHY POPULATION, UNHEALTHY POLITICS: 

 "If you believe welfare rolls, Sweden is one of the sickest countries in Europe.

Yet it is palpably one of the fittest, filled with blonde athletes on skis, power-walking grannies and whole families bicycling into the forests to pick berries."

- David Rennie about Sweden´s problems in Daily Telegraph.

11:21 - OM HÖGERVRIDNA MEDIER: 

Om du har tid kan det vara intressant att läsa Kent Asps DN Debatt. Om du har ont om tid kan du läsa Håkan Jacobsons sågning direkt.

10:45 - THE NIGHTMARE SCENARIO: 

Suddenly, everything points to a change of government in Sweden today. According to the last Temo poll, the opposition is 7 percentage points ahead of the social democrats. But there is one big worry. Sverigedemokraterna (the Sweden Democrats), an anti-immigrant party with roots in the neo-Nazi movement, has more than 2 percent in the polls. Since it takes a lot to tell a pollster on the phone that you are voting for the idiots, they probably have many more voters than that, and there is actually a risk that they will enter parliament.

It would be a nightmare with racists holding the balance. In 1973, the two blocs had an equal number of seats in the Swedish parliament, and a lot of decisions had to be made by drawing lots. It is known as the "the lottery parliament of 1973". Because of the failed integration politices in Sweden we now run the risk of seeing "the idiot parliament of 2006".

And for some strange reason, the electoral authorities don´t count the votes of small parties until Wednesday, so it will take time until we know if we are safe.

Some people say that it doesn´t matter much if we have a racist party, since that part of the electorate will force the other parties to adopt similar policies anyway, if such a party doesn´t exist. For example, spokesmen for the early 90´s-populist party Ny Demokrati have many times said that the social democrats have implemented all their anti-immigration demands by now.
 
I think that this underestimates the risks. Even though the policies are bad, it´s better if they are implemented silently by social democrats than being enforced by a racist party that exploits them with aggressive rhetoric, because that would poision the atmosphere in society generally with collectivism, ethnic conflicts and hostility.

If you have no other reason to go out and vote right now, keeping the racists out should be a sufficient reason.

14:49 - INTE KONSTIGT ATT GLÖDEN SAKNAS: 

"Det finns inga lösningar i manifestet eftersom vi helt enkelt inte har några. [...]

[Arbetslivsminister Hans] Karlsson kommer från facket och vågar inte tänka nytt. Börjar han tänka på dem som inte har arbete riskerar det att gå ut över dem som har jobb.

Problemet är att facket fortfarande har de grupper som redan har jobb framför ögonen. De ser inte problemet, att det finns folk som aldrig har kommit in på arbetsmarknaden, såsom invandrare och ungdomar. [...]

Staten lägger ner en massa miljarder på Ams. Och Ams kan inte skapa några jobb."

- Socialdemokratisk valarbetare och tidigare fullmäktigeledamot till Expressen i årets wallraffande valstugereportage.

00:33 - HOW A MODEL UNDERMINES ITS OWN PRECONDITIONS: 

"The intellectual parents of the Swedish model in the 1930s, Gunnar and Alva Myrdal, thought the welfare state could work in Sweden because it was a small, homogenous country with a well-educated population. With their Protestant work ethic, the Myrdals reasoned, Swedes would continue to labor hard despite high taxes and social assistance. In the early days of the Swedish welfare state it was considered ´shameful to live on government handouts,´ Swedish economic writer Johan Norberg says. ´Problems began to surface in the next generations, which were brought up in this system. Attitudes have really changed.´"

- Wall Street Journal Europe on "Swedish remodeling".

22:38 - ANOTHER SIGN: 

By the way, here is a sign that Persson was not his usual self in this debate: I didn´t hear him lie about statistics a single time, as he usually does.

22:31 - DIGITAL PERSSON: 

Someone had told Göran Persson to be nice and calm tonight, to avoid being seen as a bully again. But his calm only made him seem disinterested and bored, and you get the impression that he has already given up. Instead Lars Ohly was the brightest star on the left, and that only serves to remind the audience that a vote for Persson is a vote for Ohly.

Tonight, for the first time, I really believe in a victory for the alliance.

16:34 - ABOUT AN ELECTION: 

Paul O’Mahoney interviews me about the Swedish elections in The Local.

16:07 - GENERALREPETITION INFÖR VALNATTEN: 

"Om de borgerliga vinner valet kan det mycket väl vara just därför att man gjort de här intrången i våra datorer. Det är en demokratisk skandal."

- Göran Persson testar bortförklaringar i Expressen.

12:17 - I READ AND I BLUSH: 

The new edition of Veckans Affärer includes a very flattering article about me. The businessman Mats Qviberg writes that the most important thing for Sweden´s future is not the election on Sunday, but that more people read my books.

Meanwhile, in Nyliberalen, Nils-Eric Sandberg, whom I always read and learned a lot from when he was on the editorial page of DN, describes my new book as "brilliant".

09:18 - CURT NICOLIN (1921-2006): 

Yesterday we got news that one of Sweden´s business legends has died. To me, the essence of Curt Nicolin was that he understood that you have to do the right thing no matter what the majority thinks, in business and in politics. You have to modernise your company, even if that means layoffs and protests. And you have to attack socialist ideas that ruined Sweden, even if everybody hates you for it.

As chairman of the employer´s organisation he was responsible for the highly controversial market-liberal congress of 1980. This morning I have glanced through a 300 page-long selection of articles about the congress. It´s 300 pages of attacks and smears. Everybody portrayed the new ideologically active businessmen as monsters. But 25 years later, most of their controversial ideas - abandon the ideas to socialise businesses, introduce private providers of public services, lower marginal tax rates, abolish the TV-monopoly and the inheritance tax - have been implemented.

When everybody else was a prisoner of the zeitgeist, someone had to invest in the future. History will be kind to Curt Nicolin for doing it.

08:53 - BLOGGERS´ CHOICE: 

Two other heavyweights in the Swedish blogospehere - Henrik Alexandersson and Dick Erixon - also just declared that they will vote for Federley.

13:35 - HOW I WILL VOTE ON SUNDAY: 

When drinking beer with students on my tour of Swedish universities in the last two weeks, the most frequent question I got was: "Whom should I vote for?". It looks like a lot of voters want to change government but are not especially attracted to any of the center-right parties. I can´t answer the question, but I can tell you what I am going to do. Traditionally folkpartiet and moderaterna have been closest to me, and now centern is also a contender. So which one?

Moderaterna (liberal-conservatives)

This used to be the reliable don´t-tax-and-spend party. That has changed as Fredrik Reinfeldt has moved them towards the center. Some of the changes have been welcome, for example more realistic budget proposals and a stronger focus on cutting taxes on low incomes. But others have been bizarre.

They have abandoned their plans to deregulate the labour market and now they cuddle with the trade unions, want to block privatisation of emergency hospitals and promise to spend even more than the social democrats on public welfare services. They have also returned to a more restrictive refugee policy and proposed restrictions on workers from the East. In foreign policy the moderates sacrifice principles for exports and did not speak up for free speech in the cartoon crisis and suggested that EU sells arms to China.

There are a lot of people in the moderates that I respect and admire for their hard work for more freedom, but I don´t want to encourage the party´s transition, so I won´t vote for them.

Folkpartiet (social-liberal)

This used to be the reliable cultural liberal party that combined the market economy with pleas for tolerance and openness, and a pro-freedom, pro-democracy perspective in foreign policy. But under Lars Leijonborg´s leadership it has focused more on being the tough, harsh, strict party, favouring law and order and silence in the class room.

There is nothing wrong with that in itself, if it wasn´t for the fact that they forgot some old truths in the process and begun to favour superveillance and bugging, and even drug tests in the schools. Nowadays folkpartiet talk less about personal freedoms and more about how the government should initiate a canon of literature and a language test for citizenship. And worst of all, they also proposed some forms of restrictions on workers from the East.

There are also a lot of people in folkpartiet that I admire and respect, but I think that the party has moved away too much from their principles in order to attract voters, and I don´t want to encourage that.

Centern (rural-liberal)

This used to be the agrarian party in favour of subsidies and protectionism and opposed to nuclear power. But it also used to be a party in favour of decentralisation, property rights and entrepreneurship. And under Maud Olofsson, that is the dimension that centern has refined and emphasised, and it has downplayed the opposition to nuclear power and deregulation of agriculture.

Suddenly centern looks like the party that takes limited government seriously. It was the only party that really spoke out for open borders in the struggle over EU enlargement, it opposes the rush towards more government superveillance and is in favour of equal rights for homosexuals. At the same time, centern is now the only party that openly talks about deregulating the labour market and Maud is the only one who speaks passionately about entrepreneurship when everybody else talk about systems.

When I vote, I think in terms of giving incentives to politicians. And this is the kind of transition that I want to encourage. It´s true that not all center-candidates have followed the new liberal trend, but the only way to strengthen that transition is to vote for it.

You might have candidates from the other parties with a very strong liberal profile locally, and in that case perhaps you prefer them. But for me, living in Stockholm, there is an excellent center candidate: Fredrick Federley, a brave and principled leader of the youth movement and second on the Stockholm list for parliament. Fredrick personifies centern´s transition, by speaking out for limited government, free markets and social tolerance whenever he has a chance, and in the campaign he has focused on flat tax, abolishing rent control and deregulating labour market. And he loves Ayn Rand.

Naturally, I will vote for Federley on Sunday.

00:53 - THE FIRST TO SPEAK OUT: 

Amazing. The first mainstream media to report about the scandal in the school elections is the satirical Kina-TV - because the story fits their jokes about the similarity between Persson and Mao. (Thanks Mathias)

And by the way, don´t miss their series Sörmlandsresan.

    UPDATE 15:34: Västerbottens-Kuriren writes about it.

13:39 - QUESTION TO SWEDEN´S JOURNALISTS: 

Imagine that we are in the US in the first week of November 2004, just before the presidential election. The federal school board, the electoral comission and the government are arranging elections in American schools to teach the students about democracy. Among them are some in the upper secondary school with a right to vote. And to all schools that want to participate they send an information package, including one dvd about how elections are arranged and one dvd about a specific ideology - compassionate conservatism.

What do you think that American journalists say? I think they would be in shock and say that this was a shameless attempt to influence the students´ views, and perhaps even the election with a particular ideology, on the tax-payers´ expense. And I think that Swedish journalists would say the same thing if it happened in the US.

Now two days have gone since I wrote that this is what is happening in Sweden right now, the days before he election - with socialism instead of  conservatism, of course. The Swedish blogosphere is in uproar about it. But as far as I have seen, not a single mainstream journalist has written a single sentence about it.

What does that say about them? And what does that say about Sweden?

Is this nothing more than what we expect after having social democrats in power for 65 of the last 74 years?

11:51 - 825 MILLION REASONS TO IGNORE THE UNEMPLOYED: 

Do you wonder why few Swedish politicians dare to suggest deregulation of the labour market to create more jobs?

According to Carl B Hamilton´s calculations, the trade union LO spends around 825 million SEK to get the social democrats elected this year. That is around 91.7 SEK per Swede. 

In 2004, Bush´s presidential campaign cost 2.8 billion SEK. That is 9.5 SEK per American.

Per capita, LO´s campaign costs almost ten times more than Bush´s campaign.

09:28 - WHY JODENIUS IS PROBABLY RIGHT: 

Johan Jakobsson is a brilliant spin doctor. He could have stopped the "spy scandal" from erupting last Sunday night by immediately explaining that he knows what the social democrats talk about and that he ordered an end to it already in March, and that he is very sad and assumes responsibility for not following it up. Why didn´t he? Instead he lied about his knowledge about it for two days, which doesn´t make any sense at all.

The only reason I can think of is that this is not what happened in March, and that Per Jodenius´ version is the right one.

Two other interesting things about this that you should read:

Johanna Nylander demonstrates that the (s)-network in Skövde can not be accessed from the parking lot.

Harald Ullman explains that he and other social democrats have always spied like folkpartiet did now, for example by letting cleaners steal the opponents´ documents.

08:56 - OLD TRUTHS: 

But of course, it would have been even better if Jan and Göran had known that Göran Persson´s repeated answers about student loans ("no more than 4 percent per year") applied only to the system that his government changed July 1st 2001. (Thanks Stefan)

22:58 - MY PREJUDICES PROVEN WRONG: 

When TV4 announced that two old leftists, Jan Guillou and Göran Rosenberg, would question the party leaders, I ridiculed them. I hereby take it back. They just produced the best show in this campaign, by being more interested in what the candidates think about ideology than about whom they want to give an extra 500 SEK per month, and by not being afraid of Persson, as other journalists.

21:26 - IT´S THE HYPOCRISY, STUPID: 

After having seen Janne Josefsson´s film about Göran Persson´s country estate, my first reaction is that it´s awful that so many people begrudge the prime minister and his wife a nice place to spend his old days. Why shouldn´t someone with a whole work life behind him be allowed to live as he pleases?

The primary argument against the social democrats should not be Josefsson´s, but the fact that they have has poisoned the Swedish atmosphere with envy, and created a society where building such an estate seems unreasonable. (Persson did it personally four years ago by attacking his former opponent Bo Lundgren for buying an expensive house - worth less than half of Persson´s estate.)

The episode where the old social democratic minister Anders Sundström pretended that the 350 000 SEK he makes every month is far too much will become a humiliating classic in social democratic hypocrisy.

14:26 - MORE ON MADON: 

Today Journalisten writes about Stockholm City´s attempt to silence Sakine Madon

12:19 - UR-SÄKT FÖR SKOLVALSSKANDALEN: 

Efter att jag i går skrev om att Skolval2006 (arrangerat i samarbete med Valmyndigheten och regeringen) skickat ut en DVD om Utbildningsradions program om socialism till landets skolor strax före valet har jag fått följande ursäkter:

 "Vi har förstått att detta kan uppfattas som en preferens eller styrning åt något särskilt politiskt håll, och det beklagar vi och ber om ursäkt för."

- Utbildningsradion i pressmeddelande.

"Din reaktion är helt berättigad, och det inträffade är ett allvarligt misstag."

- Myndigheten för Skolutveckling direkt till mig.

Myndigheten uppger sig ha efterfrågat en DVD med exempel från alla ideologier, men UR beslöt sig för att bara leverera den om socialism till dem och då vidarebefodrade myndigheten den till skolorna. Det är bra att de erkänner misstaget, men man undrar hur det gick till och måste ställa följande frågor:

Vem på UR bestämde sig för att i strid mot förfrågan bara skicka en DVD om socialism - och varför?

Vem på Myndigheten bestämde sig att skicka ut denna DVD när den stred mot deras förfrågan - och varför?

Och varför är ingen förvånad över att misstaget inte var att myndigheterna råkade skicka ut en DVD om liberalism eller konservatism till 1 518 högstadie- och gymnasieskolor?

Andra bloggare om skolvalsskandalen:

ArvebroMörck

Dick Erixon

Federley

Haja

Hallucinating harmony

HAX

Johnny Munkhammar

Kulturrevolution

Machina Liberal

My Cup of Tea

Peter J Olsson

P J Anders Linder

Spookhead

11:01 - CAUGHT AT LAST: 

Mainstream media hasn´t shown much interest in Göran Persson´s almost systematic use of statistical falsehoods in the debates. But yesterday, Rapport´s first story was that Persson didn´t have any factual support when he attacked reinfeldt by saying that Sweden was the only EU country where income gaps have been reduced (that I exposed here).

Rapport can be seen here.

10:51 - SOCIALISM I SKOLAN - VECKAN FÖRE VALET: 

Många har kritiserat Göran Persson för att han kräver att Al Gores film An Inconvenient Truth ska distribueras till alla gymnasieskolor. För att belysa frågan om växthuseffekten ska skolbarnen utsättas för de mest alarmistiska scenarierna framförda av en politisk aktivist och trolig presidentkandidat som landar i kontroversiella politiska slutsatser.

Men det finns ett värre exempel på hur politisk propagandan börjar redan i skolåldern. En värre skandal. Som pågår just nu.

Skolval2006 är ett nationellt skolval på högstadierna och gymnasierna, arrangerat av Sveriges elevråd i samarbete med Ungdomsstyrelsen, Myndigheten för Skolutveckling, Valmyndigheten och regeringen. Skolval2006 bistår med information och material om politik och demokrati och avslutar projektet med ett val på skolan. Resultaten sammanställs och ska presenteras i samband med riksdagsvalet och kan därför ha en opinionsbildande effekt.

Men det är inte vilket material som helst som har tagits fram av Myndigheten för Skolutveckling och skickas ut till högstadie- och gymnasieskolorna berättar Roger, en lärare jag har kontakt med. Bland rollspelsövningar och workshops finns också två DVD-skivor. Den ena handlar om hur ett val går till, oskyldigt och fint. Men den andra handlar om en viss ideologi, ja, ni har gissat det: SOCIALISMEN.

Myndigheten för Skolutveckling ville tydligen ha ett avsnitt ur Utbildningsradions serie om ideologier, och det råkade visst slumpa sig så att det blev det om socialism. I varje paket. Vilket sammanträffande.

Roger berättar att 1 518 skolor hittills har fått informationspaketet som ger utrymme till en enda av de ideologier som strider om segern i valet om mindre än en vecka. Och på gymnasiet går också 18-åringar med rösträtt.

En ideologi ges uppmärksamhet i landets högstadie- och gymnasieskolor på de andras bekostnad.

Av en myndighet.

För våra skattepengar.

Och med ens har vi fått reda på vad Myndigheten för Skolutveckling menar med begreppet "skolutveckling".

07:58 - EXPLAINING SWEDEN: 

Many foreigners wonder how Sweden can be such a rich country, despite all the taxes and regulations. This graph, from The Economist´s excellent Sweden survey, shows that it´s like the old joke about how you end up with a small fortune: You start with a big one...

Two interesting facts about this:

1) In 1950 Sweden was one of the world´s most open economies, with lower taxes than in the US and Western Europe.

2) Sweden bounced back in the 1990s, after a period of economic liberalisation. And that´s what we need again.

(More about this in my National Interest article on Sweden.)

23:53 - AND AGAIN AND AGAIN: 

At least you can´t blame him for a lack of imagination. In the debate tonight, Göran Persson explained that Sweden is the only country in the EU where income inequality is falling.

But according to the European Commission the measure of income inequality (gini) in Sweden increased from 21 to 23 1995-2005. In the Euro area it fell from 31 to 30.

15:29 - OOPS HE DID IT AGAIN: 

I am beginning to sound like a parrot, and I hope I don´t bore you to death. Yes, you´ve guessed it, in the radio debate yesterday Göran Persson lied about statistics - again. He said that job creation is faster in Sweden than in all other OECD countries except Spain. As Johan Magnusson points out, the OECD statistics shows that employment grew faster in 15 OECD countries in 2005 and in 10 others in the 2006 prognosis.

We´ve seen this before:

Persson said that we had the lowest unemployment in Europe - but we were on 9th place.

Persson said that we had the lowest unemployment for immigrants in Europe after the UK - but we were 16th out of 19 countries.

Persson said that we work more than almost all other countries - but we were on 20th place.

Persson said that youth unemployment was being reduced rapidly - by then it had increased from 22 to 27.5 % in four months.

I am beginning to suspect that this is the secret social democratic campaign strategy that folkpartiet found on their computer network: Lie.

(More at NMI)

15:02 - QUESTIONS TO STOCKHOLM CITY: 

In Expressen today, Richard Slätt, Håkan Jacobson and I confront Stockholm City about why they silenced one of their columnists after an article on Press Freedom Day.

10:27 - FREEDOM WORKS: 

The new edition of Economic Freedom of the World has just been published, and you can access it online. And in an election campaign when the Swedish government tries to tell us that it creates wealth and employment it sends the important message that it is freedom that enables entrepreneurs and businesses to create wealth:

And employment:

Sweden is the 24th freest economy. Our result is very good apart from the size of government and the regulated labour market. According to my very rough estimates, Sweden would be the third freest economy on the planet (after Hong Kong and Singapore) if we dealt with those problems.

09:13 - LEIJONBORG´S APOLOGY IN CONTEXT: 

Lars Leijonborg´s apology for the spy scandal yesterday was half-hearted, very brief and immediately followed by a "but". However, most journalists thought that this was a very important and direct apology that will help Leijonborg survive the crisis. Why?

My theory is that the journalists are used to social democratic scandals, and those politicians have rarely, if ever, apologised. Instead they have said that everything has been exaggerated and if they resign they say it´s because they can´t talk politics anymore because the journalists are too aggressive, never because they did anything wrong themselves.

So in the light of the last 30 political scandals in Sweden, even a half-hearted apology seems like an extraordinary example of self-criticism.

00:00 - A LONG GOODBYE: 

The online tabloids talk about Lars Leijonborg´s revenge tonight. And yes, he was better than expected in the interview. But he still cannot explain why he lied about what he knew about Jakobsson´s involvement on Monday. He must have thought that he needed his party secretary more than he needed to tell us the truth. That ruins his credibility.

It´s understandable that he doesn´t quit now and throw folkpartiet into even more chaos ten days before the election. But he should do a Blair - tell people that they can vote for him, and they´ll get someone else after the election.

23:27 - HE´S STILL MAKING IT UP: 

I´ve written about Göran Persson´s tendency to make up statistics in debates, because he knows that the opponent hasn´t memorised the figures. The latest example is from the debate yesterday, where he said that:

"Sweden is probably one of the countries where people work the most."

But the OECD statistics from The Economist doesn´t look that impressive:

NMI has more examples of Persson´s tendency, and in Dagens Media, a DN journalist confesses that he knew that Persson used fake statistics when he interviewed him, but didn´t challenge him.

17:26 - ONE SET OF QUESTIONS FITS ALL: 

I´ve mentioned that I got the sense that public service television in Sweden attacks both the left and the right from a leftist perspective in this election. Now we´ve got numbers to prove it. Aaron Israelson and Fredrik R Krohnman has produced an NMI report that concludes that 64 percent of the questions in SVT´s interviews with party leaders came from a government intervention perspective and only 36 percent from a market-oriented perspective. Astonishingly, Göran Persson got twice as many questions from a leftist as from a market perspective.

When I ask about this, some say that this is because the opposition has to be examined more critically, since they have a new, untested alternative. Interestingly, when I asked why the Swedish media constantly attacked Bush but not Kerry in 2004, journalists defended it by saying that you always have to examine the person in power more than the opposition...

23:06 - OPEN FOR BUSINESS - AFTER ALL: 

Most people, including myself, feared that security measures after September 11 would lead to a slowdown of international trade and transport. In FT I read that the World Bank´s Doing Business 2007 report proves us wrong. For example, Serbia has reduced the time to clear goods into the country from 44 days to 12, and Pakistan from 39 days to 19.

Higher standards in an area of very serious obstacles for trade is compensating for the increased security. Software that identifies high-risk containers reduces the need to inspect all of them and x-ray screening reduces the need to open them. Shippers can more often file and pay for their declarations in advance online, which also reduces the risk that a customs officer demand bribes to let the goods through.

13:47 - PRICELESS: 

The opposition parties generally oppose the experiment with congestion charges in Stockholm, but today I sign an article in Svenska Dagbladet with others from the center-right in favour of them. Because the price mechanism is the right way to allocate scarce resources.

I agree with the critics that the system has been implemented in the wrong way, has not been compensated for by tax cuts, and was the result of a betrayal in the election campaign. But the right way to show our anger with this is to throw the socialists out, vote in favour of the charges, and let the center-right administrate them in a better way.

07:54 - LARS DANIELSSON-EFFEKTEN: 

"Jag minns inte vad jag sa i måndags. Vi pratade om Johan Jakobsson, men jag minns inte vad jag sa."

Lars Leijonborg till Expressen om varför han inte berättade vad han visste om Jakobsson i måndags.

17:40 - DET LÖNAR SIG ATT SÄGA TILL PÅ SKARPEN: 

Så här sade folkpartiets partisekreterare Johan Jakobsson till Expressen igår morse:

"Jag har sagt till folkpartister i min närhet att ´finns det någon som känner till något om detta så träd fram och berätta´"

Och i dag följde äntligen någon uppmaningen, enligt ett pressmeddelande från folkpartiet:

"I mitten av mars berättade Niki Westerberg för partisekreterare Johan Jakobsson att hon misstänkte att Per Jodenius hade inloggningsuppgifter till socialdemokraternas nätverk."

13:57 - THEY LOVE FREE SPEECH WHEN IT´S JUST A SLOGAN: 

Last week, Stockholm City published a column by Sakine Madon which was very hostile to Atatürk, but when a Swedish-Turkish organisation threatened to sue them for racism (am I being racist against Swedes if I attack Per-Albin Hansson?), Stockholm City removed the article from the archives and apologised for the article - in her name as well!

A newspaper has the right to publish or not publish whatever they want, but to engage in self-censorship whenever a group accuses them of hurting their feelings is to undermine their own credibility and freedom. As Gunilla points out, the real story here is that the article was published on Free speech-day - a day instituted by all Swedish newspapers, and that not a single newspaper has written about this story.

09:47 - RADICAL CENTRISM: 

In my last Dagens Industri column before the election I write about the Swedish center party´s move towards classical liberalism. And I also explain why it´s not as surprising as it seems, since there has been strong liberal strains in the farmer´s movement in Sweden historically, and many important individualists have this background.

One center-MP, Håkan Larsson, recently published the interesting book Frihetskämpen från Tullus about one of them, Nils Larsson i Tullus, whom I mentioned in my book on Swedish liberalism. As the speaker in the farmers´ estate in parliament, heavily influenced by Frédéric Bastiat´s ideas, he was an important champion for the liberal reforms in mid-19th century Sweden: Democratisation, free enterprise, free trade and freedom of movement and expression. 

Nils Larsson i Tullus has given Sweden a lot. It´s about time someone gave him a book in return. 

08:50 - SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT ON SATURDAY: 

You might have met them on the streets in big European and American cities, members of Falun Gong who try to convince us that the Chinese government is harvesting organs from imprisoned Falun Gong members while they were still alive. Shockingly, it turns out that they might be correct, according to an independent report published in July and presented in Stockholm yesterday.

China does not allow groups like Amnesty to control the accusations, so a heavy responsibility falls on Western governments to put pressure on China, for example at the EU-China meeting in Helsinki on September 9th. If it´s all lies as China claims, what do they have to hide?

06:30 - TV4 - THE DELETED SCENES: 

This morning, I got up at 5.30, took a shower, glanced through the papers and then went out to take a taxi to TV4 and discuss the "spy scandal" and whether election campaigns are getting dirtier. And that´s when they called me and said that I was not supposed to go, since Marita Ulvskog had just changed her mind, and wanted to appear on the show. Now I know how Fredrik Reinfeldt must have felt Sunday evening...

Jokes aside, this is what I had intended to say:

Why do we see more dirty tricks like this today?

- Partly because technology democratises the campaigns. It´s suddenly possible for more people to participate and in that case, the risk that someone misbehaves increases. Believe me, if 24-year olds had had a chance to sneak through Tage Erlander´s campaign plans, or pass on bad rumours about Jarl Hjalmarson to the press, by the click of a button, they would have done that.

- But it´s also because the campaign has been emptied of ideological substance. When the real conflicts are few and far between, there is a stronger focus on tactics and personality, and in that case the temptations will be stronger. And the media´s attention is bigger, since they have nothing real to report about. 

- And good reporting about politics takes knowledge and resources. Producing a good story about scandals and crime takes nothing but a microphone, an excited tone of voice and a bad attitude. 

So what are the wider implications, and who is the winner and who is the loser?

- In a way all politicians lose when this happens because the fatigue with politics grows generally. But folkpartiet is at more risk than others for obvious reasons, but so are the social democrats. It´s obvious that they timed the story to block the media´s coverage of Reinfeldt (just like they did with Hägglund the week before) and people can see through this. "Spontaneous" press conferences at 23.30 give the voters the impression that this is just tactics.

- Which it is not. It is a real scandal, and probably a crime. And it shows that it´s wrong to assume that the opposition is more decent in itself. As I have always said - the reason why the social democrats produce more scandals is not that they are worse people, but because power corrupts, and they are almost always in power.

23:20 - I AM GLAD HE WASN´T PRESENT AT THE CREATION: 

 "But if we are self-critical we have to say that we should never have set this free from the beginning."

- Thomas Bodström, minister of justice, about the Internet, according to one of HAX´ readers who met him today.

09:18 - VAD (S) DÖLJER: 

Viktig poäng från Johan Ingerö om vad (s) döljer för att blåsa upp spionskandalen. Och han tycks redan ha fått rätt.

08:04 - SOMETHING FOR FP TO CONTEMPLATE: 

If it is true that centrally positioned people in folkpartiet broke into the social democrats´ databases to steal campaign information it gives a brand new perspective on their generous attitude to surveillance and bugging, and their refusal to believe that those systems would leak information, doesn´t it?

23:13 - FOR SOCIAL DEMOCRATS, TIMING IS EVERYTHING: 

Last week, the christian democrat Göran Hägglund surprised positively in the SVT-interview. But that was overshadowed by the social democrats´ revelation, the same day, that they had stopped a young christian democratic women from spying on their campaign one week before.

And tonight Fredrik Reinfeldt was successful in his interview. So what do the social democrats do? They announce a press conference at 23.30, about why they will report folkpartiet to the police for possible intrusion in their computer system.

At 23.30, Sunday evening.

It just couldn´t wait until tomorrow.

21:08 - NEW CANDIDATE - SAME QUESTIONS: 

As I pointed out, most of SVT´s questions to Göran Persson came from a leftist perspective - why doesn´t he spend/tax/regulate/control more? Today it was Fredrik Reinfeldt´s turn, and almost the whole hour was used asking him why he doesn´t want to spend more of the tax-payers´ money on different projects.

Reinfeldt has led a drastic transition of the moderate party in a leftward direction. And still I could only count one question from a market-liberal perspective (about why he doesn´t want to cut the marginal tax rate). So pluralism in SVT means that they are equally critical to both candidates - but always from a leftist perspective.

19:51 - MORE REVIEWS OF MY NEW BOOK: 

In Dagens Nyheter today, Niklas Ekdal outlines a third way between me and Göran Greider, and I am happy to see that he leans more in my direction. In the leftist Arena (not online) Mario Matteoni calls me a "brilliant demagogue", which is sort of semi flattering. In Dagens PS, Peppe Engberg says that I have written the most important political book that has been published in Sweden in years.

More reviews here.

17:14 - MER GUD: 

Debatten om mitt utfall mot Gud i EU-konstitutionen har fortsatt hos Jonas Morian.

16:39 - DAGENS MAUDMAIL: 

"Efter att gårdagens utfrågning var avklarad föll det på Aktuellts Karin Andersson att kommentera Maud Olofssons framträdande. I hennes kommentarer var det framförallt tre saker som stod ut:

1.) Centerns politik om en fri tjänstemarknad kommer att leda till lönedumpning

2.) Maud Olofsson är som Pippi Långstrump

3.) Vill man rösta på någon som är glad, så kan man rösta på Maud Olofsson

Jag hade kunna säga något om härskartekniker för att förminska Maud Olofsson. Anser man att hon kan jämföras med en barnslig och anti-intellektuell, men kraftfull sagofigur, samt tycker att hennes gladlynthet är det bästa hon har att komma med, så kan det knappast undgå någon vad Aktuellt tycker om Maud Olofsson och Centerpartiet.

Väljer man dessutom att lägga perspektivet att fri konkurrens på stela och illa fungerade marknader leder till lönedumpning så har man också tydliggjort sin syn på frihandel. Tänk om de istället hade sagt att Centerns politik för en fri tjänstemarknad kommer att leda till lägre priser och större urval för konsumenterna, samt högre produktivitet i de tillväxtbranscher som finns i tjänstesektorn!

Sist men inte minst kan man ju spekulera i hur det hade låtit om Karin Andersson kommenterat Göran Persson framträdande i samma anda.

-Göran Persson är som Karlsson på taket. En lagom tjock man i sina bästa år. Vill man rösta på någon som är självgod, och inte särskilt varsam med sanningen när det gäller att framhäva sina egna bedrifter och egenskaper, så kan man rösta på Göran Persson.

Ja, tänk om..."

- Pär 

13:17 - LO: SWEDEN´S UNEMPLOYMENT IS 7.4%: 

As I have said before, Sweden´s way of measuring unemployment would make the Enron-directors blush. If we include jobless in latent unemployment and labour market projects the real figure is around 12 percent, rather than the 4.8 percent the government talks about. But they have only commented that this is a "dirty" debate.

Today they face unexpected opposition in Dagens Industri. Dan Andersson, chief economist of Sweden´s biggest and most social democratic trade union, LO, today says that it is an "intellectual tragedy" that Sweden doesn´t have unemployment statistics that is comparable to other countries. He includes job-seeking students, which makes the unemployment rate 7.4 percent.

10:53 - HOPE FROM THE NORTH: 

 "If Sweden, the home of the welfare state, opts for a reformist party it will give heart to economic liberals who want to tackle the excesses of the welfare state in France, Germany and elsewhere in Europe."

- Financial Times today, about the international implications of a likely shift in power in Sweden in two week´s time.

09:40 - THE SOUND OF SILENCE: 

So far, not a single Swedish blogger has explained why they were outraged by a local Nykvarna politician´s racial stupidities, but not by Persson´s.

And Iran´s president Ahmadinejad has not responded to my invitation to debate censorship with me.

Coward.