Keeping an eye on the weasels of the world

The votes have been cast, the sacred runes read and the results of the first Watcher’s Council contest of 2011 are history.

Our winner this week, Bookworm, took a winter cruise to the Mexican Riviera, and came up with a highly interesting sketch of what she saw entitled What’s the matter with Mexico?:

To begin with, Mexico has no middle. This wasn’t just my impression; this was something I heard from several people, in many of the places we visited. Mexico has a small number of very wealthy people at the top, a huge number of very poor people struggling along at the bottom, and almost no discernible middle class.

In other words, although ostensibly capitalist, Mexico doesn’t have a balanced capitalist economic structure. Instead, its structure more closely reflects either a socialist structure (peons and party apparatchiks) or a rural aristocratic structure (nobles and laborers). Both models make sense, given Mexico’s overwhelming government (high taxes; massive, although often ignored, regulation; and a massive military presence) and its development under the Spanish aristocratic model (as opposed to the 18th Century British enlightenment model that gave America its initial social and economic structure).

Our non-Council winner was Victor Davis Hanson for Raging Against ‘Them’ an essay that went to the core of why various groups are angry and raging – when after all , they only got exactly what they wanted and voted for!

Council News: We have an exciting change scheduled for next week’s contest..but you’re going to have to stop by the Watcher’s Council site next Tuesday to see what it is…

Next up…want to see your work appear on the Watcher’s Council homepage in our weekly contest listing? Didn’t get nominated by a Council member? No worries.

Simply e-mail me a link at rmill2k@msn.com with the subject heading ‘Honorable mention’ no later than Monday 6PM PST to be considered for our honorable mention category, and return the favor by creating a post on your site linking to the Watcher’s Council contest for the week.

The Council doesn’t vote on a winner in Honorable mentions, but it is a great way of exposing your best work to Watcher’s Council readers and Council members. And how good is that, eh?

Here are this week’s full results:

Council Winners

• *First place with 2 2/3 votes! – Bookworm Room -- What’s the matter with Mexico?
• Second place with 1 1/3 votes – VA Right-Filibuster Change May Put Sarah Palin on Supreme Court
• Third place *t* with 1 vote – The Glittering Eye – Declining Home Prices Dampen Year End Spirits
• Third place *t* with 1 vote – Rhymes With Right – JustAs It Has Always Been
• Third place *t* with 1 vote – Right Truth – The mysterious “silver knight on the white horse”
• Fourth place with 2/3 vote -The Razor- The Power of Random Events: Coping with Black Swans
• Fifth place with 1/3 vote – GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Forsaken

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 2 votes! – Victor Davis Hanson- Raging Against ‘Them’ submitted by The Watcher
• Second place *t* with i 2/3 votes – Gates of Vienna – A Passage To Israel submitted by Joshuapundit
• Second Place *t* with 1 2/3 votes – RedState – Epiphany, the Founders, and freedom of religion submitted by Rhymes With Right
• Second place *t* with 1 2/3 votes –Sense of Events – The Crush Depth of Debt submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Third place with 1 vote - Don Surber – Ezra Klein; Honest Lefty submitted by Bookworm Room
• Fourth place with 2/3 votes - Jihad Watch -Demonising Iran submitted by Snapped Shot
• Fifth place with 1/3 vote -Pajamas Media – Burma: The World’s Next North Korea submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD

See you next week!

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