In a canny move to dodge Beijing’s efforts to control the direction of Tibetan politics, the Dalai Lama announced Thursday that he will cede his role as political leader of Tibetans to the elected prime-minister-in-exile.

“This is a revolutionary thing that he has suggested,” said Srikanth Kondapalli, a Tibet expert with Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. The Chinese government has been trying to insert itself into Tibetan succession questions, he said, one factor that no doubt motivated the move. At the same time, the Dalai Lama has taken note of both the messiness in other lama succession cases, and is intent on investing as much authority as possible in an elected leader.

via Dalai Lama cedes control in hopes of curbing Chinese control – The Globe and Mail.

I’d guess he’s planning to spend more time working on the slice.

I, for one, am still looking forward to the total consciousness thing (it turns out we are our own overlords).

Here’s the gist of it…

MADISON, Wis, March 10 (Reuters) – Wisconsin lawmakers, after three weeks of angry protests that drew tens of thousands of union workers to the state capital, were expected to vote — and likely approve — Republican Governor Scott Walker’s plan to curb public workers’ union rights.

What began in one heartland state last month as a move by the Republican governor to curtail state workers’ bargaining rights has evolved into a showdown across the country over efforts by budget-strapped state governments to rein in the power of unions.

Wisconsin’s Republican-led Senate on Wednesday night outflanked Democrats’ three-week boycott to approve the heart of the plan

[full story]

So the way they “outflanked” the D’s was to strip away the part of the bill dealing with the budget.  Note, at this point, that the argument coming from the Koch sucker, Walker, was that this was about the budget, not busting unions.

This is now shown to be completely untrue.

The Senate requires a quorum to take up any measures that spend money. But Republicans on Wednesday split from the legislation the proposal to curtail union rights, which spends no money, and a special conference committee of state lawmakers approved the bill a short time later.

The lone Democrat present on the conference committee, Rep. Peter Barca, shouted that the surprise meeting was a violation of the state’s open meetings law but Republicans voted over his objections. The Senate convened within minutes and passed the measure without discussion or debate.

[full story]

There is also another pre-emptive attack going on now, as the momentum to recall these folks builds up…to use the Republican super-majority to change recall statutes to make sure and retain the Republican super-majority.