The LDP’s coalition partner, the New Komei Party, has released a position paper that gingerly revises its former position on the export of weapons. Its new approach may make it easier to relax restrictions on technology transfers to the US.



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Koizumi has been somewhat more assertive in ensuring that other proposals by his administration are realized. Or not–the article veers back and forth a lot. It also gives a good indication of the headache-inducing nature of factional politics in the Diet, which you need several flow charts, an almanac, a sextant, and perhaps a rabbit’s foot to navigate through. Suffice it to say that–duh!–the Koizumi administration is hoping that it’s posted enough higher-ups who support its Japan Post privatization plan that there will be pressure on those who don’t to fall in line.



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Finally, two consecutively-posted stories over at the English Yomiuri sum up the state of government spending with (surely unintentional?) dark comedy: Most federal ministries are bankrupt by normal accounting standards, but they are eager to maintain the amount they dole out in subsidies. (Note: The River Bureau is part of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport.)



The proposal to cut subsidies is part of the Koizumi administration’s proposals for “three-pronged reform” (which is usually rendered “trinity reform,” but that kind of weirds me out). The idea is to cut federal subsidies to local governments, to lower the amount of money passing through the allocation tax system (whereby federal tax money makes a U-turn and is sent back in specified amounts to local governments), and to make up for the decreased amount of money flowing from federal to local government by localizing more tax collection. Take a wild guess why federal ministries are lukewarm on that idea.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 6th, 2004 at 12:03 and is filed under Japan Post, misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.