Double standards

New Conservative Party policy:

"Federal public service unions and those in federally-regulated industries should tell their members how much of their dues go to political donations, media organizations and other political activism. Union members should be allowed to “opt out” of the portion of their dues that go to such activities." 

Does that mean that corporations should also be required to reveal how much of their profits go to 'political donations, media organizations and other political activism' and their customers should be allowed to opt out of the percentage of the costs of their products that go to such activities?

In Celebration of Labour Day: Market Failure's Biggest Hits

What so many managerial class fiscal conservatives never seem to get, is that the health of the Labour Market affects the health of the Market in general - and even the health and well being of the people in it. 

EG: The people least likely to get paid sick days or be able to afford unpaid ones are the people who handle your food.  The impact in lost productivity is many times what paying service workers enough to be above the poverty line and provide sick days would cost.

EG: With the winding down of train service and the increasing price of gas for a huge chunk of the Canadian population a single company, Greyhound, is their sole and only way of traveling.  A Corporate Monopoly controls the travel of millions of Canadians visiting family, following work or fleeing disaster.  They have used this monopoly to let service quality slide to virtually Dickensian levels and threaten to withdraw service without extortionate payoffs from provincial governments. 

EG: A neighborhood acquires a reputation and a customer base because of its character, its unique and independent businesses providing goods and services people cant find elsewhere.  That success causes commercial rents to rise.  And to continue to rise until all the independent, character filled small businesses are forced out of the area and replaced with the soulless  big-box chains that can afford the rents.  The thing that added value to the neighborhood is killed in the process of squeezing every last penny out of that value..

Anybody else have any examples?

Kelly McParland resurrects a classic racist smear divorced from history and reality

"If the U.S. does go ahead with plans to intervene, it will be doing so despite overwhelming public weariness across the western world with problems in the Middle East and Arab countries, with limited support from other western governments, and with no real appetite from Americans themselves. The experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan, the ongoing crisis in Egypt, the apparent lack of any progress in a region addicted to violence, have all been effective in diluting the West’s innate sympathy for the people of the region.  How often can you try to help people who don’t seem to want it and respond largely with anger and even more violence?"

Ahistorical, racist nonsense that deliberately ignores how often the West has intentionally stamped out any stirrings of real democracy in the region.

The end of Inevitability?

We all know that helpless frustrating feeling.

We are allowed to debate all we want, the majority can express their view clearly and unambiguously objecting in the streets and the ballot box.

The the elites will do what they want anyway.  'Austerity economics are inevitable and unavoidable', throwing ourselves into the latest military quagmire is the only real option, the drug war will continue no matter how much the majority object. Lie back and enjoy it or shake your adorable little fists either way the 'grown ups' will make the real decisions.

But suddenly that aura of inevitability is wavering.  The UK parliament stuns observers by actually reflecting the will of the British people and deciding NOT to blindly sign on to raining death down on the Syrian people to object to the Syrian government possibly having rained death down on the Syrian people.  Harper and Mckay go back to the old filthy propaganda well to try to smear Trudeau as promoting drug use to children (won't SOMEONE think of the children?) but despite their smears the Liberal's popularity actually jumps as Canadians go, 'Yeah? So he's admitting publicly to what a huge percentage of Canadians do or have done privately? Good for him.'  In the US the drug war shows every sign of beginning to officially wind down as Obama's Justice Department signals it will not sabotage the will of individual states to stop treating Marijuana like Satan's leafy friend.

The discredited orthodoxy of austerity still dominates the discourse of mainstream politics worldwide, despite the will of the public but even there cracks are beginning to appear.

Could we finally be getting past the stale argument that there is no choice but what the elites tell us so we should just be grown ups and accept it?

Starvation Experiments

The story appeared yesterday and seems to have sunk beneath the surface with nary a ripple.

Beginning in 1942, and ending nobody seems to know when, Canadian government bureaucrats deliberately withheld food and nutritional supplements from native communities and native children to chart the progress of various kinds of malnutrition.

Some communities would get vitamins, others as the control groups would not.  Residency schools would get half their milk ration cut to observe the effect on the tiny bodies imprisoned within. Dental services would be deliberately withdrawn from groups of children to better see the progress of malnutrition related gum disease and tooth decay.  Adulterated food that could not be legally sold to white people would be provided to see its effects.

These horrific, Mengele reminiscent experiments with the hungry bodies of children weren't performed in Nazi death camps they were conducted in Canada only a few short decades ago.

Where is our outrage?

Underwater

Been a wet day here.

This is three blocks away from me.

I live in the downtown core of Calgary.  A relatively dry spot two blocks outside the evacuation zone.  I'm high and dry on the 26th floor of an apartment building but I'm not going anywhere.  We are completely surrounded by evac zones and all of the bridges in and out of downtown are closed.

On the plus side still have power and clean water and the river water appears to have crested.

 

New occupants of the courthouse jail-cells, evac'd from the zoo.

There's an eerie ghost town quality to the streets below.  I've lived in Calgary almost 25 years this is dramatically different in scope and severity to any flooding the city has experienced in the past (1994, 2005 - neither were anywhere close to as severe.)  the irony is inescapable: the major power center of the global warming industries of Canada is experiencing what is very likely the consequence of severe climate change.

And next week a political party more concerned with attacking trade unions than even acknowledging the existence of climate change is meeting here.

Class War at its most blatant

To the Tories this is win-win.  

Get a Judge venal enough to jump at a dangled Senate appointment and they get legislation designed to crush Canada's Labour movement past the courts.

 Get a Judge who actually respects Canada's constitution they get to rant about activist judges to their base when its over-turned.

Either way the Canadian people pay for the Conservative Party's ideological war with the concept of workers banding together to protect and promote their interests.

Critics of a controversial bill requiring unions to disclose in-depth financial details are calling on its supporters to produce a constitutional expert to testify the bill can pass legal muster — because they don’t believe that one exists. 

As Bill C-377 enters its second week of Senate committee hearings, several constitutional scholars are speaking out against the Conservative private member’s bill that would force labour organizations to disclose to the Canada Revenue Agency how they spend the dues they collect. 

Such experts — including the Canadian Bar Association and law professors who testified at last week’s Senate hearings — say it violates Charter guarantees to privacy and freedom of association, and encroaches on provincial jurisdiction.

Perspective

So Torontonians, the next time you are tempted to stereotype Calgarians as a bunch of redneck rubes, our Mayor is an urbane Muslim college teacher.

Your Mayor is Chris Farley with a crew-cut.

$90,000

It appears to be the magic right wing scandal number right now.  It's the amount Stepen Harper's chief of staff surreptitiously paid to a sitting Senator in order to stonewall an embarrassing audit.

And now its the amount the Alberta Wildrose Party has been charged by the CRTC for unsolicited and deceptive robo-calls during the the last provincial election.  Good luck finding out about it from Alberta's right wing cheer-leaders pretending to be unbiased media. Only Global Media tersely reports the story but declines to report the nature of the calls.

I received one of the calls personally and immediately recognized it as a Wildrose push-poll.

There were lots of questions like "If you knew that PC leader Allison Redford supported the Liberal daycare plan of Paul Martin and opposed Stephen Harper's parental credit alternative and hired a campaign manager who didn't pay his debts would you be more or less likely to support her?"

The call didn't identify itself as being from the Wildrose Party, didn't identify itself as campaign material, in fact deliberately presented itself as a poll with the implication of impartial information gathering and was a deliberate, sleazy attempt to damage Allison Redford by implying, horrors, that she was a squishy liberal.

Global's story twists itself into knots to avoid mentioning any of this.

$90,000.  A number that now represents the venality, arrogance and media granted impunity of Canada's political right.

Don't insult us

The most rigid control freak running the most hierarchical top down PMO, controlling the most micro-managed government in Canadian history and we're supposed to believe Harper's chief of staff short-circuited Puffy's embarrassing audit with a thick wad of cash WITHOUT Harper's knowledge? Pull the other one.

The BC voter:

Wait, what?

Am I the only one weirded out by the reaction of Americans to the shooting of 19 people at the New Orleans Mother's Day Parade? 

"OhGodOhGodOhGod!!!....wait it's just drug and gang related? Whew! We were worried for a second..."

What?

"Public Sector unions are a blight on society"

 ...says convicted felon and well known douchebag.

Region of Guatemala under Martial Law to Protect Canadian Business Interests

A Canadian silver mine.  Local residents afraid their home and way of life will be irretrievably poisoned frustrated that their protests are ignored and the mine is treated as inevitable.

Now military, police and Canadian paid private security forces hold sway and civil rights are on hold. 

Does this make you proud to be a Canadian?

[Posted from Guatemala City]
Residents of four towns east of Guatemala's capital woke up to news that their communities had been placed under a 30-day State of Siege by the administration of President Otto Perez Molina, following anti-mining protests that turned violent. One policeman was killed, six civilians were wounded by rubber bullets, and a number of police cars were burned and overturned on roadways. Here is the government's official public announcement. Public gatherings in the area are banned for 30 days.


According to Guatemalan Defense Minister Col. Ulises Giron Anzueto Noah (shown at right, photo today by Carlos Andrino), 3,500 total personnel participated in operations to bring the "estado de sitio" (state of siege) into effect. Some soldiers entered the areas in armored personnel vehicles and tanks. Hundreds of police officers were involved, as were private security officers for the Canadian-owned Escobal mine at the center of the controversy.

Whining Corporate Welfare Bums

Quebecor, the owners of Sun News also own Videotron, a cable company serving almost two million subscribers in Quebec and Ontario.  They are before the CRTC right now demanding that Canadians subsidize their Sun News operation by being forced to have it added to all cable packages with an accompanying increase in cable bills.  They claim this is necessary because they aren't seen in enough households and they need this forced government subsidy to survive.

When asked why they don't automatically add Sun News to their own Videotron cable network with prominent channel placement as they have every right to do and are NOT doing now they had no answer.

Why should the Canadian people be forced to provide corporate welfare to a private TV channel that their own owner won't support and promote?

25 Years Ago

Dedicated to all the Truthers, Birthers and Midnight Nerf Herders.

"The kooks are our future. The average fifth-grader these days doesn't know whether Japan is a state or a city; wonders what happens when you get to the "edge" of the United States on a map...and even believes that the government is there to protect him!

The years to come promise incredibly fertile fields for the sowing of superstition, cultism, and pseudoscience; they'll grow so fast we'll wonder if there had ever really been an Age of Reason.

Make no mistake, it shall be a rich harvest for industrious Skull Farmers of every creed; the brains of the all-too-willing are out there, ripening...millions of potential vegetables just waiting to be plucked, shucked, and hauled off to market."

-Introduction to High Weirdness by Mail by Rev. Ivan Stang of the Church of the SubGenius, 1988

Keep Calm and Stay Strong

Muslims all over the world today woke up, read that the Marathon bombers had been tentatively identified as being from Chechnya, home of Russia's own simmering war with Islamist insurgents and thought some variation of 'aw, crap.'

Muslims are once going to be tarred with an ugly brush over this and an overwhelmingly loyal and law abiding American Muslim community is no doubt battening down the hatches and preparing themselves for a long national strip search.

 They will be accused of 'Not condemning terrorism' vociferously enough - were all white right wingers quizzed about their loyalty after Oklahoma City? Muslims from different regions, different ethnicities and different religious traditions will again find themselves conflated with the kind of extremists every faith produces and Jihad, a word with far ranging and subtly distinct definitions, primarily meaning to most Muslims a kind internal spiritual struggle to live up to the tenants of their faith will once again be bandied about as meaning nothing but terrorism and murder.

I'd like to believe Americans have been inoculated against the hate-mongers and divisive demagogues by the last decade - but I'm very much afraid that the terrorist goal of spreading division and fear and mistrust will be eagerly abetted by the same people who helped fan it last time.

 This week has kind of sucked.

The Personal and the Political

"Did they expect us to treat them with any respect?

they can polish their medals and sharpen their

smiles, and amuse themselves playing games for a while

boom boom, bang bang, lie down you're dead" 

Pink Floyd, The Fletcher Memorial Home

I've read some truly nauseating screeds in the last few days about individual acts of civility and grace by Margaret Thatcher that supposedly put the lie to her being heartless and cruel. I'm reminded of Sam Donaldson saying of Reagan that if you were down on your luck he would give you the shirt off his back - then sit down shirtless at his desk in the Oval office and with a stroke of his pen take your parent's social security away, your kid's school lunches away and the poor's welfare away. That kind of disconnect between the personal and political isn't evidence of a secret hidden heart, just a failure of imagination and empathy bordering on psychopathy.

Remember when Jack Layton was harshly attacked for pointing out that the social cuts that Paul Martin's liberals committed literally meant they had blood on their hands because of the deaths they would cause? Who's interests are served by the suggestion that pointing out the real human costs of policy is out of bounds?

Maggie Thatcher was hated and reviled for causing real human costs and suffering to thousands of real people. Suggesting that hatred is inappropriate is the real disrespect.

DING DONG

Margaret Thatcher, dead at 87.

For those about to whine about respect for the dead, showing respect for this monster would constitute disrespect for her victims.

She was a vicious autocratic demagogue who figured out how to scrape up a working majority of barely 30% of the population while viciously abusing the rest - sound familiar at all?  She engaged in active class warfare massively redistributing wealth upwards while slashing away at the social safety net at the same time and demonizing the poor.

She attempted to outlaw the very concept of homosexuality.  She engaged in a shameless military adventure to hold onto power before an election she was about to lose, instituted a poll tax to suppress the vote of those who opposed her, supported fascist dictatorships like that of Chile's Augusto Pinochet as if keeping autocrats holding power through torture and death squads in charge was a holy mission and supported the racist regime of Apartheid South Africa - and for those about to argue that was just Cold War anti-Communism her own values can be inferred by the fact her son was later convicted for plotting a Rhodesia style white military coup against an African government.

Good riddance, the world would have been better off without her.
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The leeches at the top bleeding us dry

So private interests take over gigantic communications infrastructures built by the sweat and millions of the Canadian public for pennies on the dollar.  They then reduce quality of service to the bare minimum they can get away with, eliminate thousands of well paying jobs reducing the anemic Canadian middle class even further while exporting those jobs out of Canada to third world sweat shops and taking away all the rights and job security of those few employees left that they can. 

For this their soulless, piggy eyed CEO is feted as a corporate genius and paid 11 million a year.

Welcome to Canada.