I have a feel­ing sim­i­lar poli­cies will be used for the euro bailout nations, where Ger­many will do a Barter style deal for workers/labourers, as well as food­stuffs, as part pay­ment for debts etc.

http://germanywatch.blogspot.com/2011/08/fundamental-change-of-regime-extensive.html

You have to won­der what other inno­v­a­tive pol­icy solu­tions will be enabled in Hun­gary now that he far-right has uni­lat­er­ally over­hauled their con­sti­tu­tion:

Decem­ber 19, 2011, 10:31 am
Hungary’s Con­sti­tu­tional Revolution

Last week I devoted a col­umn to the unset­tling polit­i­cal devel­op­ments in Hun­gary. To expand on all this, I’ve asked my Prince­ton col­league Kim Lane Schep­pele, who has been work­ing exten­sively on the sit­u­a­tion, to con­tribute a post. It’s below the fold.

Hungary’s Con­sti­tu­tional Rev­o­lu­tion
Kim Lane Scheppele

Last week, Paul Krugman’s col­umn “Depres­sion and Democ­racy” called atten­tion to Hungary’s “author­i­tar­ian slide.” Since I was one of the sources for Paul’s col­umn, I’d like to explain why I have been alarmed at the state of both con­sti­tu­tion­al­ism and democ­racy in Hungary.

In a free and fair elec­tion last spring in Hun­gary, the center-right polit­i­cal party, Fidesz, got 53% of the vote. This trans­lated into 68% of the seats in the par­lia­ment under Hungary’s cur­rent dis­pro­por­tion­ate elec­tion law. With this super­ma­jor­ity, Fidesz won the power to change the con­sti­tu­tion. They have used this power in the most extreme way at every turn, amend­ing the con­sti­tu­tion ten times in their first year in office and then enact­ing a wholly new con­sti­tu­tion that will take effect on Jan­u­ary 1, 2012.

¶This con­sti­tu­tional activ­ity has trans­formed the legal land­scape to remove checks on the power of the gov­ern­ment and put vir­tu­ally all power into the hands of the cur­rent gov­ern­ing party for the fore­see­able future.

¶The new con­sti­tu­tion has attracted a great deal of crit­i­cism from the Venice Com­mis­sion for Democ­racy through Law of the Coun­cil of Europe, the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment and the United States. But the Fidesz gov­ern­ment has paid no attention.

¶Under the new con­sti­tu­tional order, the judi­ciary has taken the largest hit. The Con­sti­tu­tional Court, which once had the respon­si­bil­ity to review nearly all laws for con­sti­tu­tion­al­ity, has been killed off in three ways. First, the gov­ern­ment expanded the num­ber of judges on the bench and filled the new posi­tions with their own polit­i­cal allies (think: Roosevelt’s court-packing plan). Then, the gov­ern­ment restricted the juris­dic­tion of the court so that it can no longer review any law that has an impact on the bud­get, like laws per­tain­ing to taxes and aus­ter­ity pro­grams, unless the law infringes par­tic­u­lar listed rights. Finally, the gov­ern­ment changed the rules of access to the court so that it will no longer be eas­ily able to review laws in the abstract for their com­pli­ance with the con­sti­tu­tion. More­over, indi­vid­u­als can no longer chal­lenge the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ity of laws with­out first going through a lengthy process in the ordi­nary courts. The old Con­sti­tu­tional Court, which has served as the major check on gov­ern­men­tal power in a uni­cam­eral par­lia­men­tary sys­tem, is now func­tion­ally dead.

...

The new con­sti­tu­tion makes huge swaths of pub­lic pol­icy change­able only by a two-thirds vote of any sub­se­quent par­lia­ment. From here on, all tax and fis­cal pol­icy must be decided by a two-thirds super­ma­jor­ity. Even the pre­cise bound­aries of elec­toral dis­tricts can­not be changed by sim­ple major­ity vote, but only by a two-third super­ma­jor­ity. If a new gov­ern­ment gets a mere major­ity, poli­cies insti­tuted dur­ing the Fidesz gov­ern­ment can­not be changed.

¶That’s not all. The long arm of the cur­rent Fidesz gov­ern­ment can grab and shake any fore­see­able future gov­ern­ment through the offi­cials they are now putting into place. The new con­sti­tu­tional order extends the terms of office for the pub­lic pros­e­cu­tor (9 years), the head of the state audit office (12 years), the head of the national judi­cial office (9 years), the head of the media board (9 years), the head of the bud­get coun­cil (6 years) and more. Each of these posi­tions has been filled with Fidesz party loy­al­ists who will be able to con­duct pub­lic inves­ti­ga­tions, intim­i­date the media, press crim­i­nal charges and con­tinue to pack the courts long after the government’s cur­rent term is over. More­over, unless there is a two-thirds vote to replace these new office hold­ers, they can stay in office until such a two-thirds vote can be achieved, which could extend these long terms of office even further.

...

A les­son from “Fas­cist takeovers 101″: When you want to “refur­bish” a soci­ety, break it first. Then offer solu­tions that involve the uni­lat­eral acqui­si­tion of power. Or ride in on vague cam­paigns for reform and just take the uni­lat­eral power when you get a chance. Either way, Mis­sion Accom­plished:

Foes of Hungary’s Gov­ern­ment Fear ‘Demo­li­tion of Democ­racy’
By NICHOLAS KULISH
Pub­lished: Decem­ber 21, 2011

BUDAPEST — In less than two years as a mem­ber of the Hun­gar­ian Par­lia­ment, Timea Szabo says she has looked on help­lessly as the rul­ing Fidesz Party has used its two-thirds major­ity to tighten its grip on the news media and the courts, redraw par­lia­men­tary dis­tricts in its favor and pack the con­sti­tu­tional court with sup­port­ers. On Jan. 1, a new “majori­tar­ian” Con­sti­tu­tion writ­ten and rat­i­fied by Fidesz takes hold.

“They are prepar­ing the funeral for the Hun­gar­ian Repub­lic,” Ms. Szabo said. Oppo­si­tion groups, includ­ing Ms. Szabo’s small, green Pol­i­tics Can Be Dif­fer­ent Party, known by its Hun­gar­ian abbre­vi­a­tion L.M.P., have called for a demon­stra­tion on Fri­day against the “demo­li­tion of democ­racy” by Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Orban.

Democ­racy here is dying not with a sin­gle giant blow but with many small cuts, crit­ics say, through the legal processes of Par­lia­ment that add up to a slow-motion coup. And in its drift toward author­i­tar­ian gov­ern­ment, aided by pop­u­lar dis­af­fec­tion with polit­i­cal grid­lock and a pub­lic focused mainly on eco­nomic hard­ship, Hun­gary stands as a poten­tially trou­bling bell­wether for other, strug­gling East­ern Euro­pean coun­tries with weak tra­di­tions of demo­c­ra­tic government.

...

Mr. Orban and his sup­port­ers counter that they are only fol­low­ing through on their promises in last year’s elec­tion cam­paign to sweep away the old order, which they say was ham­strung by com­pro­mises to ensure a smooth tran­si­tion from com­mu­nism but left behind a legacy of grid­lock. Gov­ern­ment sup­port­ers note the left-wing opposition’s con­tra­dic­tory claims, on the one hand say­ing that Fidesz is estab­lish­ing unas­sail­able author­i­tar­ian con­trol while warn­ing that the real dan­ger is the far-right party Job­bik tak­ing con­trol of a sys­tem of gov­ern­ment shorn of checks and balances.

The con­sti­tu­tional court this week struck down por­tions of the con­tro­ver­sial media law, as well as changes to the crim­i­nal code and a law gov­ern­ing churches, but the high court’s own purview will be lim­ited by the new Con­sti­tu­tion, one of sev­eral steps rein­ing in the power and inde­pen­dence of the judiciary.

...

“It’s a lit­tle bit curi­ous for an exter­nal observer because it seems to be fast, it seems to be too much at once, but that’s actu­ally what we have promised,” Mr. Kovacs said. “We are refur­bish­ing; we are renew­ing the coun­try.”

The level of antag­o­nism in Hun­gar­ian pol­i­tics rose sig­nif­i­cantly start­ing in Sep­tem­ber 2006, when radio sta­tions played a leaked record­ing of Fer­enc Gyurcsany, the Social­ist prime min­is­ter, who admit­ted that he had lied to the pub­lic about the dire state of the country’s econ­omy before elections.

Before aus­ter­ity became the watch­word for coun­tries like Greece, Ire­land and Spain, the Hun­gar­ian gov­ern­ment was cut­ting gov­ern­ment jobs, rais­ing taxes and impos­ing new fees to try to con­trol its grow­ing bud­get deficits as early as 2007. Steel bar­ri­ers sur­rounded the Par­lia­ment build­ing to pro­tect it from tens of thou­sands of demonstrators.

Dis­sat­is­fac­tion over cut­backs and Mr. Gyurcsany’s speech helped fuel the rise of the nation­al­ist, anti-Semitic Job­bik Party. Once a fringe group with a para­mil­i­tary wing, an ener­gized Job­bik won nearly 17 per­cent of the vote in 2010.

But the main ben­e­fi­ciary of voter out­rage toward the Social­ists was Fidesz, which gained a crit­i­cal two-thirds major­ity in Par­lia­ment — enough to pass con­sti­tu­tional amend­ments and even an entire new Con­sti­tu­tion with­out votes from oppo­si­tion parties.

...

Also, note that the claims by Fidesz that they are merely imple­ment­ing the sweep­ing changes that they cam­paigned on appear to be BS.

[...] Hun­gar­ian gov­ern­ment imple­ments forced labour program [...]

The “Parlia-military”: Because one new Hun­gar­ian secret police force with broad pow­ers and and no unac­count­abil­ity just wasn’t enough.

@Pterrafractyl: I am quite frankly begin­ning to won­der if we may some­day see a new era of Euro­pean immi­gra­tion to the U.S.? As bad as things may have been here, we, at least, have a good shot of pulling our­selves back up. Much of Europe, it seems, doesn’t.

@Steven: It’s already under way. There have been a lot of French that either immi­grated or came to Que­bec for work, stud­ies, etc, in the last years. I think the dis­in­te­gra­tion of Europe has a lot to do with it, dif­fi­cul­ties to find work, and the slowly con­ver­sion of euro­pean soci­ety to Sharia Law through hyp­o­crit­i­cal means like halal food, islamic veil for women, spe­cial rooms for prayers in build­ings, etc. Many Euro­peans feel like that they have been betrayed by their lead­ers, and rightly so. In the U.S., you may encounter a sim­i­lar wave of immi­gra­tion from the U.K. in the com­ing years if the sit­u­a­tion con­tin­ues to deteriorate.

@Steven and Claude: It’s a tes­ta­ment to how rad­i­cally the world has regressed in the last decade that we’re now look­ing at some sort of repeat of the 1930’s...except instead of a failed Weimar Repub­lic implod­ing eco­nom­i­cally from hyper­in­fla­tion there’s an entire euro­zone super­state that seems to be intent on turn­ing the whole con­ti­nent into some sort of defunct defla­tion­ary Weimar super­state. Let’s just hope the US doesn’t end up turn­ing away waves of immi­grants flee­ing for the lives. Again.

@Claude: I hate to dis­agree with you, man, but I am highly skep­ti­cal of the sup­posed ‘Sharia law’ con­spir­acy the­o­ries, given that nearly every­body that’s been push­ing them in the MSM have been right-wing bull­shit machines, not just in your country(Canada) or mine(U.S.), but in Europe as well.
With that said, though, it is cer­tainly true, sadly, that rad­i­cal Islamist extrem­ists won’t be going away any­time soon in any of these places.

And, hav­ing looked into Gaffney, I have some bad news for you; he may have come out against Grover Norquist, but unfor­tu­nately, he isn’t exactly one of the good guys, either. He too, is con­nected to PNAC, and has been involved in the ‘Obama is a secret Mus­lim ille­gal alien’ bullshittery.

John Lof­tus, at least, seems to be a gen­uinely decent guy. Gaffney? Not so much.

@Steven: Con­cern­ing Sharia Law, I am afraid that it is not a mat­ter of opin­ion but rather of facts. It has noth­ing to do with con­spir­acy the­ory. All reports com­ing from Europe are scary. Mus­lims pray­ing in the streets, impos­ing halal food in school cafe­te­rias, impos­ing islamic veil in cer­tain neigh­bour­hoods. Did you know that there are whole neigh­bour­hoods in France where the police don’t go, either because they are scared or because they don’t have the orders to arrest peo­ple? These areas are con­trolled by crim­i­nal gangs, and the mix­ture of that with rad­i­cal or even vio­lent Islam is toxic. Imag­ine com­plete sec­tors of New York or Los Ange­les where State Police wouldn’t go... That’s the sit­u­a­tion in France.

And the other thing is that only by repro­duc­tion, Mus­lims will become the major­ity some­where between 2030 and 2050. Then, accord­ing to the spec­i­fi­ca­tions of Sharia Law, when they become the major­ity, Sharia Law will become auto­mat­i­cally the Law of the Land, replac­ing any Con­sti­tu­tion, Bill or Rights, crim­i­nal code, etc. Euro­peans along other west­ern­ers don’t repro­duce enough to main­tain their pop­u­la­tions. And so they will be replaced by another group with dif­fer­ent val­ues. But cor­po­ra­tions will love them for their “sub­mis­sion”. That’s the mean­ing of the word “Islam”.

And for Gaffney, I take note of your com­ment but I need more infor­ma­tion to come to this con­clu­sion at this time.

“Hun­gary Reha­bil­i­tates Far-Right Fig­ures
By Keno Ver­seck in Budapest”

06/06/2012 06.06.2012 Spiegel Online

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/right-wing-extremists-cultivate-horthy-cult-in-hungary-a-836526.html

Awwwww, poor dear:

Hun­gar­ian Far-Right Leader Dis­cov­ers His Jew­ish Roots
As a politi­cian known for his anti-Semitic atti­tude, Csanad Szegedi was caught by sur­prise when he dis­cov­ered his own Jew­ish roots.
By Asso­ci­ated Press

(BUDAPEST, Hun­gary) — As a ris­ing star in Hungary’s far-right Job­bik Party, Csanad Szegedi was noto­ri­ous for his incen­di­ary com­ments on Jews: He accused them of “buy­ing up” the coun­try, railed about the “Jew­ish­ness” of the polit­i­cal elite and claimed Jews were des­e­crat­ing national symbols.

Then came a rev­e­la­tion that knocked him off his perch as ultra-nationalist standard-bearer: Szegedi him­self is a Jew.

Fol­low­ing weeks of Inter­net rumors, Szegedi acknowl­edged in June that his grand­par­ents on his mother’s side were Jews — mak­ing him one too under Jew­ish law, even though he doesn’t prac­tice the faith. His grand­mother was an Auschwitz sur­vivor and his grand­fa­ther a vet­eran of forced labor camps.

Since then, the 30-year-old has become a pariah in Job­bik and his polit­i­cal career is on the brink of col­lapse. He declined to be inter­viewed for this story.

At the root of the drama is an audio tape of a 2010 meet­ing between Szegedi and a con­victed felon. Szegedi acknowl­edges that the meet­ing took place but con­tends the tape was altered in unspec­i­fied ways; Job­bik con­sid­ers it real.

In the record­ing, the felon is heard con­fronting Szegedi with evi­dence of his Jew­ish roots. Szegedi sounds sur­prised, then offers money and favors in exchange for keep­ing quiet.

Under pres­sure, Szegedi resigned last month from all party posi­tions and gave up his Job­bik mem­ber­ship. That wasn’t good enough for the party: Last week it asked him to give up his seat in the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment as well. Job­bik says its issue is the sus­pected bribery, not his Jew­ish roots.

Szegedi came to promi­nence in 2007 as a found­ing mem­ber of the Hun­gar­ian Guard, a group whose black uni­forms and striped flags recalled the Arrow Cross, a pro-Nazi party which briefly gov­erned Hun­gary at the end of World War II and killed thou­sands of Jews. In all, 550,000 Hun­gar­ian Jews were killed dur­ing the Holo­caust, most of them after being sent in trains to death camps like Auschwitz. The Hun­gar­ian Guard was banned by the courts in 2009.

By then, Szegedi had already joined the Job­bik Party, which was launched in 2003 to become the country’s biggest far-right polit­i­cal force. He soon became one of its most vocal and vis­i­ble mem­bers, and a pil­lar of the party lead­er­ship. Since 2009, he has served in the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment in Brus­sels as one of the party’s three EU law­mak­ers, a posi­tion he says he wants to keep.

...

Szegedi’s expe­ri­ence is not unique: The Holo­caust was a taboo sub­ject dur­ing Hungary’s decades of com­mu­nist rule that ended in 1990, and many sur­vivors chose to keep their ordeals to them­selves. Russ­ian far-right fire­brand Vladimir Zhiri­novsky was anti-Semitic until he acknowl­edged in 2001 that his father was Jewish.

...