Democracy gone Astray: Friday, January 06, 2012

Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.

This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Friday, January 06, 2012

Labor Takes Aim at Walmart—Again

In October two shabby buses filled with Walmart employees stopped unannounced outside the company’s headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. As the employees filed into the building’s expansive parking lot, plainclothes private security personnel sporting sleek sunglasses and Walmart emergency response badges rushed in and swiftly corralled the employees onto a public sidewalk. Members of a new union-backed campaign to organize Walmart, the workers had come from around the country to ask Walmart’s CEO, Mike Duke, for better wages and better treatment.

The hoped-for meeting was not granted. Within minutes, a dozen Bentonville police officers rushed in to reinforce the security guards in forming a barricade between the employees and their headquarters’ front door. A labor relations representative emerged from the mostly windowless building. She announced that she would meet only with workers who carried Walmart employee discount cards in addition to their company badges and state IDs. Without discount cards, the protesting employees would be arrested.

“I didn’t come here today to go shopping, so why do I need my discount card?” said Girshriela Green, a young mother who until recently worked at Walmart in Southern California. “I feel totally disrespected. Shame on them for not having the common decency to sit down and talk to their own associates.”

President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced Thursday a new strategy for the U.S. military, emphasizing it will be smaller, but “flexible and adaptable.” The plan comes in response to massive cutbacks planned for the next decade, over which time roughly $450 billion will be sliced from the Pentagon’s coffers.

That, according to reports in the U.S., means the JSF program, under which the F-35 is being produced, will be restructured yet again.

According to Reuters Thursday, the Pentagon’s new plan could delay production of 120 of the 423 F-35 planes scheduled to be built between 2013 and 2017.

That is the same period when Canada was expected to purchase and begin receiving its first F-35 fighters, and delays could put pressure on its aging fleet of CF-18s.

Delays are not new. In March, U.S. Lt. Gen Mark Shackleford told a U.S. House subcommittee the U.S. Air Force was, even then, not expecting its planes to reach initial operational capability by 2016, as anticipated. Instead, “we currently expect up to a two year delay,” he said.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper took time this week to condemn an attack by vandals at a mosque in Gatineau, Que., across the river from Ottawa.

“Our government strongly condemns these heinous attacks that have been terrorizing the whole community,” the Prime Minister said in a statement in French.

“Members of the mosque have asked for help in funding infrastructure and security projects and have received funding from our government.”

The Outaouais Islamic Centre was targeted sometime between Wednesday night and Thursday morning by vandals who spray painted anti-Islamic messages about Allah and Arabs.

It was discovered by a police officer who was taking part in an extra patrol of the building because of repeated vandalism. Mosque officials told reporters there have been four such incidents in the past six months.

Even though more workers are witnessing violations of company rules, they're feeling pressure not to say anything.

Nearly half of workers witnessed a violation of the law or their company's ethics policy, according to the 2011 National Business Ethics Survey. Though 65 percent of workers who saw a violation reported it -- an all-time high -- retaliation against whistle blowers rose to a high as well: More than a fifth of employees who reported a violation said they experienced some kind of retaliation.

The survey's findings indicate that even in the aftermath of the financial meltdown, which many blame at least in part on a crisis of ethics, corporations are still fostering an environment conducive to rule-breaking. That could be because firms aren't getting punished for ethical violations; prosecution for certain financial crimes is at a 20-year low, according to a November report from a watchdog group.

Ethical violations may also be up because workers fear the consequences of reporting them. Michael Woodford, the ex-CEO of Olympus was fired after he called attention to excessive spending that turned out to be part the camera giant's accounting cover-up. Two auditors at Boeing were sacked after they told a Seattle newspaper about worries over internal controls at the company -- a concern they allegedly brought up 27 times before going public.

Efforts to amend the Constitution to declare that corporations are not people and money is not speech gained support in two notable New York forums this week. The New York City General Assembly of the Occupy Wall Street movement on Tuesday officially called for a constitutional amendment to overturn a controversial Supreme Court decision from 2010 . On Wednesday, a similar resolution passed the New York City Council.

Such an amendment would reverse not only the Supreme Court's 2010 opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which held that corporations have the constitutional right to spend unlimited sums of money to influence elections, but also its seminal 1976 decision in Buckley v. Valeo, which first established that money constituted speech for First Amendment purposes.

Beyond New York, the Los Angeles City Council almost a month ago and several other city governments across the nation have supported anti-Citizens United resolutions. MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan has launched a petition calling for an amendment that has pulled in nearly 300,000 signatures, and members of Congress have proposed various joint resolutions in the House and Senate to start the process from Washington.

Occupy New Hampshire Member on His Exchange with Mitt Romney over Support for Corporate Personhood

Occupy New Hampshire activist Mark Provost made national headlines Wednesday when he attended a town-hall meeting hosted by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and asked about his past comment that "corporations are people." Provost’s question to Romney came as Occupy New Hampshire is preparing for a series of events leading up to the state’s Republican primary to highlight the disproportionate impact corporations and wealthy donors have on the political process. We play an excerpt of the town-hall exchange and get Provost’s response to Romney reply. "I think his response really, again, is this denial that there’s this class in the country and that there are some people within the corporation, specifically the workers, that are taking it on the chin so that the United States’ executive management can make massive bonuses, and serve their shareholders rather well, too, because the profits largely go to capital gains and dividends."

Video
Source: Democracy One!

Rick Santorum-Linked Universal Health Services Facility: Fraud, Assault And Alleged 'Exorcism'

WASHINGTON -- Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) has become a top-tier candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in recent weeks by appealing to evangelical voters as a man steeped in family values and his Christian faith. From 2007 to 2011, however, Santorum served on the board of directors of Universal Health Services Inc., a large hospital chain which racked up dozens of allegations of abuse during that time -- including everything from rape to suicide attempts allowed by neglect to murder.

Over the years, states have barred children from attending UHS facilities over safety concerns and the feds have put UHS on their radar. Department of Justice lawyers have filed two lawsuits accusing the chain of fraudulent activities. One lawsuit settled for $27.5 million. Another suit still pending in federal court in Virginia centers on a facility called Keystone Marion Youth Center.

The facility, located in Marion, Va., is a residential treatment center for troubled boys with mental-health issues. The majority of patients come from states' child-welfare and juvenile-justice systems. The center promises stability, schooling, and clinically-approved therapies. It was also approved to accept Medicaid patients.

It did not have approval to perform an "exorcism."

Deportation of U.S. Teen to Colombia Latest Failure of Immigration System

The family of a Dallas teenager Jakadrien Turner is demanding answers after she was deported to Colombia, despite the fact that she is a U.S. citizen and speaks no Spanish. Turner, a 15-year-old African-American runaway, was living in Houston when she was arrested for shoplifting and gave police a fake name that belonged to a 22-year-old undocumented immigrant from Colombia with warrants for her arrest. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) reportedly discovered Turner’s fingerprints did not match those of the Colombian national, but deported her anyway. "The country has no idea that we have got a rogue police force. That rogue police force is called ICE," says Ralph Isenberg, a Dallas businessman who has become an advocate for immigrants. "I’m hoping that Black America, who have a history of understanding the destruction of our families, because slavery done that to our families, will at some point wake up and understand that the problem of immigrants is something we cannot ignore," adds Dallas Reverend Peter Johnson, a longtime civil rights advocate who has worked with the Turner family. We also speak with Jacqueline Stevens, a political science professor at Northwestern University who recently published an exhaustive report on U.S. citizens who have been detained and deported.

Video
Source: Democracy Now!

Female B.C. Mountie Launches Harassment Lawsuit

Another female RCMP officer has come forward with allegations of harassment by her male colleagues and inaction by her superiors after she went to them with complaints.

Const. Karen Katz, who took medical leave in February 2009 due to post-traumatic stress disorder she says was caused by her oppressive work experience, filed a lawsuit at the B.C. Supreme Court this week.

Katz is suing fellow officer Baldev Singh Bamra, the federal attorney general, the federal minister of public safety and the B.C. solicitor general.

She claims Bamra harassed and sexually humiliated her on the job.

Katz said the harassment started when Bamra launched what she describes as a "campaign of …complaining" about her.

OTTAWA - The Harper government may be ready to deliver on its long-standing promise to buy new search-and-rescue planes for the air force.

The procurement plan, stuck in bureaucratic limbo for almost a decade, was approved by the federal cabinet just before Christmas and with a slightly bigger budget of $3.7 billion, according to defence sources.

Initially given the green by Paul Martin's Liberal government in late 2003, the program is meant to replace the aging twin-engine C-115 Buffalos and older model four-engine C-130 Hercules transports.
When the plan was re-announced by the Conservatives almost six years ago, the budget was estimated at $3.1 billion.

Defence sources say the Defence Department is expected to hold a so-called industry day in the next few weeks to brief potential bidders on what kind of plane is needed by the air force.

That is expected to be followed by an open competition later this year with the aim of delivering the new planes by 2015.

The head of the Royal Canadian Air Force says he's confident the program will make important strides this year.

Canadian Jobs Lost to the Tar Sands

Just because something is a bit complicated, it doesn't mean you can ignore it, especially when it's hurting you.

And yet, this appears to be the case with the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs in the past several years -- 627,000 by one measure -- mostly in Ontario and Quebec where these jobs have historically existed.

The phenomenon even has a name already: "Dutch Disease." Canada now has a bad case of it, yet you won't hear the government in Ottawa talk about it, since that would run counter to its blinkered agenda of accelerating the strip mining of Northern Alberta to push more oil through pipelines to China and America.

The term "Dutch Disease" was coined in the 1970s after the Netherlands discovered a large natural gas field. The country's exchange rate became tied to the rising price of natural gas, pricing its manufacturing goods out of international markets and leading to job losses.

In 2011, the Canadian dollar traded on average above the U.S. dollar for the first time since 1976. This puts an extra burden on Canadian companies who export, since it makes their products less competitive versus products from other countries.

WASHINGTON -- As Wisconsin Democrats continued their push to force his recall, Gov. Scott Walker (R) came to Washington on Thursday to raise funds for the election that is all but certain to occur. But while Walker has slammed the influence of out-of-state money in the recall effort, he defended his own fundraising from non-Wisconsinites as fundamentally different from what he called the "excessive amounts" raised by unions and liberal groups.

"The people from around the country who are helping us at the grassroots level are trying to match the amazing levels of money coming in from unions from Washington and throughout the country," said Walker at a question-and-answer event at the American Enterprise Institute on Thursday morning. Walker spoke at AEI before meeting with Republican donors at the Capitol Hill Club later in the day.

According to his latest campaign finance report, Walker has raised $5.1 million since the start of the recall effort on November 15th. Nearly half of that amount, $2.4 million, has come from outside of Wisconsin.

When asked by The Huffington Post about his fundraising, Walker acknowledged that the high amount of out-of-state donations was accurate but placed the blame on unions for his reliance on non-Wisconsin donors. "I wouldn't be raising a penny right now if it weren't for these recalls which were largely driven by the national unions," Walker said. He later added that "even money that's coming in from outside of Wisconsin in many cases is coming from people giving us 10, 15, 20 dollars, saying, 'We want to help you counter money coming from Washington and elsewhere.'"

CONCORD, N.H. -- The cozy conservative confines of the Iowa caucuses have given way to an unpredictable and often unruly New Hampshire primary, where the questioners are a bit more salty and the political terrain a lot more difficult to traverse. On Thursday afternoon, Rick Santorum became the latest in the GOP field to encounter the type of hostile crowd that never really presented itself as he became the latest candidate-de-jour in Iowa.

Appearing at the College Convention in Concord, N.H., the former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania faced boos and hisses as he launched familiar defenses of his positions on same-sex marriage, federal drug laws and Judeo-Christian values. When his answers failed to persuade the crowd, he was forced to resort to Socratic method -- a tactic that frustrated some in the audience and led to shouts that he was avoiding the questions.

"If it makes three people happy to get married, based on what you just said, what makes that wrong and what you said right?" Santorum asked a young woman grilling him on marriage equality, comparing same-sex marriage to polygamy.

When she responded that his question was "irrelevant," Santorum replied, "You know, it's important, if we're going to have a discussion based on rational, reasoned thought, that we employ reason." There were audible groans from the audience.

The dire economic situation in which most of the rich world found itself in 2011 was not merely the result of impersonal economic forces, but was largely created by the policies pursued, or not pursued, by world leaders.

Indeed, the remarkable unanimity that prevailed in the first phase of the financial crisis that began in 2008, and which culminated in the $1 trillion (£645bn) rescue package put together for the London G20 meeting in April 2009, dissipated long ago. Now, bureaucratic infighting and misconceptions are rampant.

Worse still, policy disagreements are playing out more or less along national lines. The centre of fiscal conservatism is Germany, while Anglo-Saxon countries are still drawn to John Maynard Keynes. This division is complicating matters enormously, because close international co-operation is needed to correct the global imbalances that remain at the root of the crisis.

Doubts about sovereign debt in Europe have revolved around the euro to such an extent that some now question whether the single currency can survive. But the euro was an incomplete currency from the outset. The Maastricht treaty established a monetary union without a political union – a common central bank, but no common treasury. Its architects were aware of this deficiency, but other flaws in their design became apparent only after the crash of 2008.

Oil Prices Rise as Iran Warns US Over Aircraft Carrier

UPDATE: Oil prices jumped Tuesday as Iran warned the U.S. not to move an aircraft carrier back into the Persian Gulf.

On the first trading day of the new year, the benchmark crude oil price rose 4.2 percent, closing at $102.96 per barrel in New York, the Associated Press reported.

The spike looks like a response to increasing tension between the U.S. and Iran, which on Monday capped 10 days of military exercises by successfully test-firing a domestically produced cruise missile.

Iran followed up Tuesday by warning the United States it would not accept the return of a U.S. aircraft carrier to the Gulf, CNN reported. It was apparently referring to the Fifth Fleet’s USS John C. Stennis, which sailed from the Persian Gulf to the North Arabian Sea last week in what U.S. officials said was a pre-planned movement.

A series of Ohio earthquakes is being blamed on fracking.

The area around Youngstown, in the state’s northeast corner, has seen 11 minor quakes in recent months, the Associated Press reports. The last was a 4.0 on New Year’s Eve that reportedly was felt as far away as Buffalo.

The AP cites a seismologist who says the quakes were almost certainly caused by operations at an injection well used for the disposal of wastewater from hydraulic fracturing operations. The state has temporarily closed that well and others nearby.

The theory is that when the wastewater is shot back into the ground, it can slip into cracks along a fault line and “act like a hydraulic jack” to trigger quakes, the Christian Science Monitor explains.

The quakes could continue for up to a year even after the well is closed, the AP’s expert warns.

Bain, Barack and Jobs

America’s recovery from recession has been so slow that it mostly doesn’t seem like a recovery at all, especially on the jobs front. So, in a better world, President Obama would face a challenger offering a serious critique of his job-creation policies, and proposing a serious alternative.

Instead, he’ll almost surely face Mitt Romney.

Mr. Romney claims that Mr. Obama has been a job destroyer, while he was a job-creating businessman. For example, he told Fox News: “This is a president who lost more jobs during his tenure than any president since Hoover. This is two million jobs that he lost as president.” He went on to declare, of his time at the private equity firm Bain Capital, “I’m very happy in my former life; we helped create over 100,000 new jobs.”

But his claims about the Obama record border on dishonesty, and his claims about his own record are well across that border.

Start with the Obama record. It’s true that 1.9 million fewer Americans have jobs now than when Mr. Obama took office. But the president inherited an economy in free fall, and can’t be held responsible for job losses during his first few months, before any of his own policies had time to take effect. So how much of that Obama job loss took place in, say, the first half of 2009?

The answer is: more than all of it. The economy lost 3.1 million jobs between January 2009 and June 2009 and has since gained 1.2 million jobs. That’s not enough, but it’s nothing like Mr. Romney’s portrait of job destruction.

Top 1% of Mobile Users Consume Half of World’s Bandwidth, and Gap Is Growing

The world’s congested mobile airwaves are being divided in a lopsided manner, with 1 percent of consumers generating half of all traffic. The top 10 percent of users, meanwhile, are consuming 90 percent of wireless bandwidth.

Arieso, a company in Newbury, England, that advises mobile operators in Europe, the United States and Africa, documented the statistical gap when it tracked 1.1 million customers of a European mobile operator during a 24-hour period in November.

The gap between extreme users and the rest of the population is widening, according to Arieso. In 2009, the top 3 percent of heavy users generated 40 percent of network traffic. Now, Arieso said, these users pump out 70 percent of the traffic.

Michael Flanagan, the chief technology officer at Arieso, said the study did not produce a more precise profile of extreme users. But the group, he said, was probably diverse, with a mix of business users gaining access to the Internet over a 3G network while traveling, and individuals with generous or unlimited mobile data packages watching videos, the main cause of the excess traffic.

Santorum's Empty Rhetoric of Economic Populism

My colleague John Nichols is right to frame Rick Santorum’s appeal to working-class voters as primarily a question of electoral strategy rather than substance. And he’s also right to acknowledge that Santorum’s economics policies are mostly generic right-wing conservatism.

But Nichols still gives Santorum too much credit. Nichols writes, “Eschewing predictable ‘let-the-market-decide’ rhetoric about free markets and free trade, Santorum has made proposals for the renewal of American manufacturing an important part of his Iowa agenda.” The problem is a category error. Nichols praises Santorum for departing from GOP orthodoxy a handful of times to vote against free trade agreements. But that is of a piece with Santorum’s false premise about the struggles of working-class Americans, whicih Nichols fails to confront. Santorum’s votes against free trade agreements, like his current proposal to remove corporate income taxes on companies that bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States, rests on the conservative assumption that the only thing government should do for regular Americans is try to boost their employment prospects.

Guantánamo: Ten Years and Counting

On January 11 it will have been a decade since the first of the men we once called “the worst of the worst” were brought to Guantánamo Bay, a location handpicked by the Bush administration so that it could detain and interrogate terror suspects far from the prying eyes of the law. In the intervening years much has improved at this remote US-controlled enclave in Cuba. Allegations of ongoing torture have ceased; the detainees have access to lawyers and court review; and more than 600 of the 779 men once held there have been released.

But in another way, Guantánamo is a deeper problem today than it ever was. No longer a temporary exception, it has become a permanent fixture in our national firmament. And although at one time we could blame President George W. Bush’s unilateral assertions of unchecked executive power for the abuses there, the continuing problem that is Guantánamo today is shared by all three government branches, and ultimately by all Americans. With President Obama’s signing of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on New Year’s Eve, the prison is sure to be with us—and its prisoners sure to continue in their legal limbo—for the indefinite future.

President Bush undoubtedly committed the original sin. Had he followed the rules governing wartime detention from the outset, Guantánamo would not be an international embarrassment. It has long been established that in an ongoing war a country may detain the enemy for the conflict’s duration. But the laws of war require that we afford hearings to those whose status is in doubt, that we release them when the conflict ends and that we treat them humanely throughout. Bush refused to provide hearings, asserted the prerogative to hold people during a never-ending “war on terror” and authorized systematic cruel and inhuman treatment. For years, Guantánamo was synonymous with Bush’s defiantly lawless approach to the “war on terror.”

The Obama administration's new defense strategy unveiled today says China is actively trying to curb America's military might but, in covert and overt ways, the Defense Department is bulking up its presence in the Middle Kingdom's backyard.

Outwardly, the summary of the Pentagon's strategic review says the U.S. military will " of necessity rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region." Though President Obama's speech today announced the need for a leaner U.S. military, he emphasized that "reductions in U.S. defense spending will not -- I repeat, will not -- come at the expense of the Asia-Pacific” region.

So what does that mean? According to Roxana Tiron at Bloomberg, it means preparing the military for a different type of threat. "The U.S. should be able to deter any emerging anti-access capabilities such as the diesel attack submarines being developed by China and the anti-ship ballistic missiles deployed by China and Iran, and if necessary, defeat them," an administration official tells her. They also said the new strategy will insist on greater cooperation by the U.S. Army, Air Force and Marines to fend off efforts by China to block access to the South China Sea or the Persian Gulf.

About a week after protesters in the southeastern Chinese village of Wukan forced out all police and political officials, establishing a brief independence from Beijing, they taped a sign to the wall of the makeshift press center where foreign reporters congregated. It instructed journalists, in English and in Chinese, not to call their movement an uprising. "We are not a revolt. We support the Communist Party. We love our country," it read.

Wukan's movement in December was not as unusual as it might have seemed. China saw 180,000 protests, riots, and mass demonstrations in 2010 alone -- on average about 500 every day -- a number that has likely since increased. The villagers' complaints were common ones: local officials exploiting land sales for personal gain and violently repressing dissent (a village advocate had died while in police custody). That the protesters won some real concessions from the authorities was also not unheard of, although the one-sidedness of their victory was rare, as was the international media attention they garnered (that media attention likely secured the victory, for now).

But what is perhaps most remarkable, and remarkably typical, of the Wukan movement was the protesters' insistence on declaring fealty to the Chinese Communist Party. Though China's 2011 could have possibly seen more mass demonstrations than the entire Arab world, this is one reason that China probably remains far away from an Arab Spring-style revolutionary movement. Popular movements here seem to express relatively narrow complaints, want to work within the system rather than topple it, and treat the Communist Party as legitimate. Protests appear to be part of the system, not a challenge to it -- a sort of release valve for popular anger that, if anything, could have actually strengthened the Party by giving them a way to address that anger while maintaining autocratic rule. In the absence of real democracy, this give-and-take between state and society could actually help maintain political stability in China -- for now.

Here's a fresh quote from the latest non-Romney front-runner in the GOP presidential race. "This dividing of America [between] 99-1," Rick Santorum said this morning in New Hampshire, "It's anybody that makes money and pays taxes and everybody who doesn't. That's the 99-1."

Santorum (like Michele Bachmann before him) is picking a fight with the millions of Americans who make money and don't pay federal income taxes. For the last few years, this group has accounted for about half of the country. The statistic inspired a website, "We Are the 53 Percent," which called out the 47% (or more) of households who owed no federal income tax in 2010 and again in 2011, because tax credits and deductions wiped out their liability.

For a few months now, Obama's FDA has been showing zero appetite for standing up to the meat industry on factory-farm livestock use. In two key decisions (here and here), the agency declined to impose real restrictions on farm drug use, promoting a "voluntary" approach instead.

But today, the FDA abruptly canned the lapdog schtick and growled like a real watchdog: It banned certain uses of the cephalosporin family of antibiotics. The FDA declared in a press release:

Cephalosporins are commonly used in humans to treat pneumonia as well as to treat skin and soft tissue infections. In addition, they are used in the treatment of pelvic inflammatory disease, diabetic foot infections, and urinary tract infections. If cephalosporins are not effective in treating these diseases, doctors may have to use drugs that are not as effective or that have greater side effects.

Citing concern that routine use on factory farms will push pathogens to develop resistance to these antibiotics, the FDA has banned certain uses of them. Now before I show just how limited this move is in the grand scheme, I have to stress its historical significance. For 34 years, the agency has been wringing its hands over the dangers of farm antibiotic abuse, all the while doing precisely nothing about it (save for appointing committees and issuing polite requests for "judicious" use). Now it's actually regulating. The Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farms, which advocates a ban on routine antibiotic use, praised the move Wednesday as an "important first step" in addressing the problem.

First Nations, Indian Act high on government agenda for 2012

In a government that has been racing through its agenda and its campaign promises at lightening speed, reforming the living conditions of Canada’s First Nations stands out as one of the few initiatives not yet underway.

However, many Conservative insiders believe that is about to change.

While the economy will be the government’s overarching priority as it heads into 2012, some of those closest to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s administration predict overhauling Canada’s Indian Act will be one of the next big things the government tackles.

“This is a file that cries out for some fundamental rethinking and fixing,” said one longtime Conservative strategist who traded anonymity for candour. “It’s brutally complicated for a whole host of reasons.”

He said part of the problem is the wide range of situations among Canada’s hundreds of aboriginal communities — from bright young leaders who say their communities are doing well economically and don’t need the Indian Act anymore to those “who will defend to their dying breath the sanctity of the Indian Act and the federal fiduciary responsibility and want first world conditions on reserves that have absolutely and utterly no economic viability.”

Will Prime Minister Stephen Harper proceed with promised ‘major’ reforms in 2012?

What does Stephen Harper want to do with his parliamentary majority? “I want to make sure that we use it,” he told CTV’s Lisa LaFlamme in a year-end interview. “You know, I’ve seen too many majority governments, the bureaucracy talks them into going to sleep for three years, and then they all of a sudden realize they’re close to an election.”

Let’s see what the Prime Minister meant, if he meant much. Harper has born while John Diefenbaker was prime minister. He saw eight majority governments elected between that one and his own. History does not record much napping.

Pierre Trudeau introduced official bilingualism and multiculturalism during his first mandate, and invoked the War Measures Act to stop the October Crisis in Quebec. In his second majority, from 1974 to 1979, he introduced wage and price controls and joined the G7. During his third he won the 1980 Quebec referendum, repatriated the Constitution with a Charter of Rights, and introduced the National Energy Program.

Top Conservative staffer’s mom gets nuclear regulator gig

The mother of a top Conservative staffer and former adviser to Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is the newest member of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, raising opposition concerns over whether it was a patronage appointment.

Rumina Velshi recently retired from a decades-long career with Ontario Power Generation. She is the mother of Alykhan Velshi, a lawyer in his late 20s from Toronto, who made a name for himself on Parliament Hill over five years on and off as a Conservative staffer.

Most notably, he worked as Mr. Kenney’s director of parliamentary affairs and communications before the 2011 federal election. He defended Mr. Kenney on several controversial topics, including when the federal government blocked outspoken former British MP George Galloway from Canada in March 2009, based on what it believed was his support for the Palestinian group Hamas. Mr. Galloway later filed a lawsuit against Mr. Velshi and his boss, claiming that they had defamed him.

Mr. Velshi also worked for Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird when he was environment minister in 2008. He later left government to work as the executive director of EthicalOil.org, debating American actress Daryl Hannah on CBC television over the Keystone XL pipeline.

Mr. Velshi returned to government in late fall 2011 as the director of planning in the Prime Minister’s Office.

After two consecutive months of declines, the Canadian economy created jobs again, though the unemployment rate still inched up to 7.5 per cent from 7.4 as more people looked for work and outpaced the gains.

While the net increase of 17,500 jobs nearly met the expectations of most economists, details in the latest figures released Friday morning by Statistics Canada left some analysts pessimistic.

“It remains evident that Canada has lost jobs momentum,” Bank of Nova Scotia economist Derek Holt wrote in a note.

The gains came from a 43,000 increase in part-time jobs while the country lost 26,000 full-time jobs. “Thus hours worked took a hit and that's a negative for GDP,” Mr. Holt wrote.

He also added that 3,800 newer jobs in the private sector were offset by a drop of 17,300 positions in governments. “The public sector took it on the chin.”

CIBC chief economist Avery Shenfeld also found the numbers “not particularly encouraging” because the gains were driven either by less lucrative part-time work or self-employed work, where there was a 31,000-strong increase.

WASHINGTON -- Behind the sweater vests, the faith and family, and the self-definition as a congressional reformer lies another Rick Santorum. This Rick Santorum favors big business, curries favor from lobbyists, and helped to bind the Washington influence industry to the Republican Party while serving in Congress.

Beginning in 2001, after Republicans seized control of Congress and the White House, then-Sen. Santorum (R-Pa.) began hosting Tuesday morning meetings with a select group of lobbyists. These meetings were part of a larger plan -- originally launched in the 1990s by Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), conservative activist Grover Norquist and others when the GOP retook the House of Representatives after 40 years of Democratic control -- to pressure lobbying firms and trade associations to dump their Democratic lobbyists and replace them with Republicans. Named after the Washington business corridor famous for housing lobbying firms, the K Street Project was aimed at installing a permanent Republican majority in Washington.

Journalist Nicholas Confessore explained Santorum's role in the K Street Project in a 2003 Washington Monthly article: "Santorum's responsibility is to make sure each [top lobbying job] is filled by a loyal Republican -- a senator's chief of staff, for instance, or a top White House aide, or another lobbyist whose reliability has been demonstrated. After Santorum settles on a candidate, the lobbyists present make sure it is known whom the Republican leadership favors."

What do the Occupy movement and IRS have in common? They're both taking an interest in the one percent.

Tax audits for millionaires jumped in fiscal 2011 by roughly a third, with the Internal Revenue Service examining income tax returns for 12.48 percent of people who earn $1 million or more, according to Bloomberg. In other words, about one in every eight millionaires got an audit this year. By comparison, in fiscal 2010 the IRS only audited 8.36 percent of millionaires.

A comparison of the audit rates for millionaires and less wealthy taxpayers suggests the IRS is giving special care to the upper tax brackets. While the IRS audited one in eight millionaires in 2011, the same thing happened to just one in 100 people earning less than $200,000, according to the Associated Press.

By paying closer attention to the finances of the well-off, the IRS is putting itself in good company. Critics ranging from billionaire investor Warren Buffett to protesters in the coast-to-coast Occupy movement have said in recent months that U.S. tax law unfairly favors the rich.

At a time when millions of Americans are struggling to make ends meet -- and when the federal government faces revenue shortfalls that could bring about a wave of layoffs next year -- the country's high earners have drawn increasing scorn for paying what critics call comparatively low tax rates.

And such complaints have data backing them up. In 2009, more than 1,400 millionaires paid no federal income taxes at all, according to an August Tax Policy Center report cited by the Los Angeles Times. By 2010, that number had risen to about 4,000, and by 2011 it was up to about 7,000. Then there are the tens of thousands of millionaires who pay taxes at a rate lower than many middle-class households.

Whether increased audits will translate into more criminal investigations is not yet known. But in 2010, the IRS ramped up probes by 14 percent, according to Businessweek.

Original Article
Source: Huff

LIHEAP: Congress, White House Cut Heating Assistance Just In Time For Winter

Ralph Olivieri of Coventry, R.I., says he and his wife Alexis will run out of heating oil in a couple weeks after receiving roughly $400 worth courtesy the federal government's heating assistance program in December.

"I got the temperature down to 65, and I got to keep a jacket on and a couple of sweaters in the house, because I never know when the next oil's gonna come," Olivieri said.

Olivieri, 81, had applied to a local nonprofit for heating oil under the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. "They send you a letter, they call the oil company up and send the $400 to them," he said. "On the letter they say that's my allotment for oil. They don't say that they're gonna give you any more."

It's not likely they will: Just in time for the start of winter, Congress and the White House reduced LIHEAP funding by 25 percent. The federal government doled out $4.7 billion for heating assistance in fiscal 2011; the 2012 allotment is $3.5 billion. The cut happened in December as lawmakers scrambled to fund the government before they left town. The result will be less heat for fewer people.

To die for: PPD in hair dye -- what we don't know won't kill us or will it?

Almost 2,000 new chemicals are introduced each year -- that is an alarming seven new chemicals per day.

This knowledge could have flown under the radar for me, as it does for so many, but for the fact that a few months ago I decided to colour my hair with hair dye and as I write this I am still suffering from the symptoms of a severe allergic reaction. Why? Well according to the Cosmetics Database, hair dye does not require regular testing like cosmetics -- both in Canada and the U.S. and I was unaware of the implications.

My symptoms, some of which can be seen in the accompanying photograph of myself:

• Skin sores on face, and head

• Anaphylactic shock

• Panic attacks

• Itchy scalp, chest and shoulders

• Hives

• Headaches

• Increased heart rate

• Nightly sweating

• Lymph nodes behind right ear (pea size)

Does the mobile "cash" wallet popular across Africa make sense for the North American market?

This is Part 1 in a two-part series exploring the opportunity to service the large unbanked and underbanked population in North America through innovative new banking services. Part 1 discusses the “mobile wallet,” and explores the applicability of this service offered in Zambia and other countries to the North American market.

With approximately 60 million people unbanked (or underbanked) in North America, Africa has become a technology poster child for wireless carriers, retailers, and financial institutions that are trying to de-risk banking for the poor. But can mobile business models and banking solutions from Africa be transferred to main-street North America?

Not if the banks have any say. As one banking colleague explained to me, “There is often a reason why the underbanked are underbanked.” For the financial institutions, it requires a considerable amount of effort to reach and service this population without a robust business case.

Nobody Hates the Rich... But Everyone Hates the Bad

It seems that those nestled snugly in the crack of our nation's ultra-wealthy are confused about why they seem to be unpopular in the media. Many are now publicly expressing their support of the financial-legislative complex, but still wondering why thousands of people all across the country are identifying with the Occupy movement. Maybe it has something to do with the disturbing mentality of the elite that asks with arrogantly wide-eyed obliviousness, "Is it too much to ask that everyone just sit down and be nice while we destroy the middle class?"

In response to the protests, Chase CEO Jamie Dimon recently stated:

"Acting like everyone who's been successful is bad and because you're rich you're bad, I don't understand it... Sometimes there's a bad apple, yet we denigrate the whole."

Let's clarify once and for all that the Occupy protests are not about targeting "successful" or "rich" people. Here, Dimon is twisting the issue by trying to equate "rich" with "I-teabag-senators wealthy." When I was a kid, I thought my aunt and uncle were rich because they could afford to make their toilet water blue; however, I wouldn't say that those successful people had anything to do with tanking our national economy. The Occupy protests are about singling out the top 1% that has seen their income triple over the last generation (while other wage classes have remained largely stagnant) and the Houses of Ill Finance that they run.

Toronto's labour relations committee has issued a mandate to its negotiators as they head into crucial talks with the city workers that one city councillor calls "extreme."

Tensions between the city and its two major unions — CUPE 416 which represents about 6,000 outside workers and CUPE 79 which represents about 23,000 inside workers — have been rising ever since their contracts expired at the end of 2011.

A strike or a lockout could come in early February, some predict.

The labour relations committee, chaired by deputy mayor Doug Holyday, met Thursday to take stock of the negotiations and to issue new instructions. The terms and language of the mandate are confidential, but Coun. Janet Davis said she doesn't believe it will lead to a negotiated settlement.

"I think this is quite an extreme mandate that we haven't seen in the city before," she said.

Fletcher wouldn't reveal any of the details but did say that she was "concerned" that "it doesn't reflect what the majority of council would want or the public would want" when it comes to negotiating a settlement with city workers.

Stephen Harper has called the escalating standoff between Iran and the West the greatest threat to world peace.

The prime minister offered that assessment of the growing tensions in the Persian Gulf during an interview Thursday on an Alberta radio program.

“Your listeners should be under no illusion, Iran is a very serious threat to international peace and security. In my judgment, it is the world's most serious threat to international peace and security,” Mr. Harper said during an appearance on the Rutherford Show, an Alberta-wide radio call-in program.

Mr. Harper also said he has no doubt Iran wants a nuclear weapon and would be prepared to use one.

“This is a regime that wants to acquire nuclear weapons ... and has indicated some desire to actually use nuclear weapons,” he said.

Mr. Harper's remark about Iran expressing a desire to use a nuclear weapon appears to fly in the face of the facts, said one expert.

“I think it would be an overstatement. To all intents and purposes, it looks like they're trying to acquire a nuclear weapons capability. But they have yet to cross the threshold,” said Fen Hampson, director of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa.

Shrinking sea ice cover in the North Atlantic over the past three decades due to warming has led to a "dramatic" spike in deaths among seal pups, a new U.S. study says, offering a glimpse into a population issue while numbers are still abundant.

The study from Duke University in North Carolina warns climate change and disappearing sea ice off Canada's east coast could prove to be a more dire challenge for the animals going forward, with entire year-classes of seal pups dying as a result of diminished breeding spaces.

The study said a look at the Gulf of St. Lawrence shows that population fluctuation — for better or worse — is dependent on a climatic phenomenon known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), which controls the strength and path of westerly winds and affects the volume of sea ice in the region. The Gulf region serves as a breeding zone for many harp seals.

"When you account for the good-ice years vs. bad-ice years . . . the result is a long-term decline in sea ice . . . of about six per cent per decade," said David Johnston, a research scientist at the Duke University Marine Lab. "You'll still have good-ice years and you'll have bad-ice years, but it seems over time, the number of bad ice years overwhelms the number of good ice years.

"Harp seals aren't endangered right now, so we're not worried they're going to disappear off the face of the earth . . . but we're all concerned about what's happening with climate change, so it's important to try and anticipate what's in store for these animals over time."

WATERLOO—Doctors, professors, teachers, and others on the public payroll will have do their bit in the new age of austerity, warns Premier Dalton McGuinty.

“We’re all going to have a role to play,” the premier told reporters here in his first public event of the New Year.

“If we’re going to be as effective as we need to be in terms of strengthening this economy and ensuring that we’re getting ever more value for the public dollars that are being invested in our public institutions, whether that’s education at whatever level or health care ... then we’re all going to bring something to the table,” he said.

Against the backdrop of cuts czar Don Drummond’s new report that will urge sweeping reforms to eliminate the $16 billion deficit, that suggests public servants will have to be more efficient.

McGuinty stressed that the minority government (with some needed opposition help) — not Drummond — will ultimately determine what course to take.

This morning the mayor appeared on CP24 for an interview with Stephen LeDrew. The whole interview is posted in three segments on the CP24 homepage right now—I have no idea where it will live on their site once it gets bumped from the main story slot. Overall, I got a reminder while watching it that as much as he can be a controversy time-bomb when speaking off the cuff, he is also his own best weapon when he finds himself in a friendly interview environment. A lot of what he says about cutting the Land Transfer Tax or making the city responsible sounds perfectly reasonable and sensible to those not involved in the day-to-day debate at City Hall, and his “I’m just a regular guy” schtick (which isn’t actually a schtick, I don’t think, it’s how he thinks of himself) comes off perfectly. See for example how he ruefully laughs off talking on his cellphone while driving, “My staff are always on me, everybody’s on me…” Despite being born wealthy and getting wealthier, it is a role he is in many ways born to play.

In 2011, no file was more screwed up by Mayor Rob Ford’s administration than public transit. And as we enter 2012, no other issue will require as much attention to ward off imminent disaster. Luckily, fixing the situation should be relatively simple and painless, as long as we act quickly. For those who haven’t been paying close attention, here’s a recap of the headline-level problems:

(1) The penalty tab for cancelling the old Transit City plan currently sits at $65 million and is climbing, according to TTC General Manager Gary Webster. Former TTC chair Adam Giambrone has said he thinks it could reach almost $200 million. This expense was incurred by the mayor without approval from city council.

(2) Burying the entire length of the Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown LRT line instead of just the parts from Keele Street to Laird Drive has almost doubled its cost to $8.2 billion, making it the most expensive infrastructure project in the country, according to ReNew Canada magazine. This will eat up all of the money the provincial government has committed to spending on transit in Toronto for the next decade, and delay the opening of that line by several years. Even worse, there is absolutely no point in tunnelling the line underground east of Laird Drive, where Eglinton is a highway-style boulevard that could easily accommodate LRT tracks without hurting car traffic flow. As Councillor John Parker—normally a Ford supporter—has said, “It’ll be the goofiest LRT line known to man.”

(3) The mayor’s plan to build a Sheppard subway extension financed entirely by private sector money is dead in the water. Gordon Chong, who Ford hand-picked to shake the business trees and make it rain free subways, will report early this year to the mayor, but he’s already told the daily newspapers that the private sector won’t pay more than 10 to 30 per cent of the expected $4.2 billion cost. It appears at this point unlikely to be built at all.

Jane Mercer of the Toronto Coalition for Better Child Care explains Toronto's current childcare crisis, and how the impending budget cuts will only make the problem worse.

The proposed 2012 budget stands to affect anyone who swims in Toronto’s pools, relies on its homeless shelters or frequents its theatres. In the lead-up to council debate this month, we’re speaking to those organizations who will be significantly impacted by the budget—and examining what that means for Torontonians. Today: Jane Mercer of the Toronto Coalition for Better Child Care.

What does the Toronto Coalition for Better Child Care do?

We are primarily an advocacy organization that works with the community of childcare programs and parents. We work with the community to advocate for more high quality, affordable childcare for families in Toronto.

Before any talk of fee hikes or service cuts, how would you have rated the state of childcare availability in Toronto?

Not great. We have 20,000 children waiting for a subsidy. The City tries very hard with really insufficient funds from the province to manage the childcare system, but they are constantly struggling to meet the demand. We have about 54,000 childcare spaces across the city and we have about 24,000 subsidies to help families access those spaces. Many families, because of the age of their child or the area that they’re living in, will never get a subsidy.

If the Code Blue T.O. campaign saved Toronto’s waterfront, can Code Red (coderedto.com) rescue Transit City from oblivion?

That’s the hope behind a burgeoning movement spearheaded by some of the same folks who did in Doug Ford’s port lands fantasy. That battle dealt the mayor his most dramatic council defeat to date, and transit activists now hope to stage a repeat.

“It would be amazing to emulate the success of Code Blue,” says Laurence Lui, a transportation planner and one of a core of urban experts who set the Blue campaign in motion. Now he’s working to kick-start, Code Red, a movement to resurrect Transit City.

The mayor has promised to ditch Transit City’s multiple light rail lines and replace them with a Sheppard subway and an underground Eglinton Crosstown LRT, both of which are prohibitively expensive and would serve fewer people than David Miller’s extensive light rail network.

“We need to put a halt to this unnecessary, unaffordable and irresponsible transportation plan by Mayor Ford,” says Lui.

Whatever his past very public, booze-fuelled mistakes, You’d think Rob Ford would have his shit wired extra-tight now that he’s mayor. But just the opposite is true.

I don’t know if the mayor has a drinking problem.

But the question has to be asked in light of last week’s revelation in the Star of several 911 calls from the mayor’s home in recent months, including one early Christmas morning by Ford’s in-laws to report that the mayor had been drinking and was allegedly involved in a “domestic dispute” with his wife, Renata. According to the Star, the mayor was taking his kids to Florida against his wife’s wishes.

Big brother Doug, the councillor from Ward 2, told the Sun the mayor was not drinking, that the Christmas-morning incident was all a “misunderstanding” that was “blown out of proportion.” That doesn’t explain the other 911 calls, described in the Star account as an ongoing “reality” for 22 Division officers.

A fight over workers’ right to unionize erupted in Indiana on Wednesday as Democratic state representatives stayed away from the House floor, depriving the Republican majority of a quorum needed to push through a measure that would prohibit union contracts at private sector workplaces from requiring workers to pay dues or other fees to a union. If enacted, it could give new momentum to legislators who have previously pushed such measures in Maine, Michigan, Missouri and other states. Democrats say the legislation is an attack on organized labor that will result in lower wages and diminished collective bargaining rights. Meanwhile, Republicans claim the bill will help Indiana attract new and needed businesses and jobs. We host a debate between two Indiana state representatives, Republican Bill Friend and Democrat Kreg Battles.

Video
Source: Democracy Now!

Jimmy Carter Interview: Real Story Behind Egypt Israeli Peace Deal

Jimmy Carter is the 39th president of the United States, founder of the Carter Center and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He has authored many books, the most recent being "Through the Year with Jimmy Carter: 366 Daily Meditations from the 39th President." In this wide-ranging interview, HuffPost's Senior Religion Editor spoke to President Carter by phone about the role faith played in the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty, the time of his greatest alienation from God, faith in the White House and his personal daily devotional practice.

In addition to being a Governor of Georgia and President of the United States, you are known as a Sunday School teacher. Are you comfortable with that identity?

I started teaching Sunday school when I was 18 at the Navel Academy Chapel. I led services when we were out at sea while I was in the navy; taught Sunday school 14 times when I was U.S. President at First Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. I just finished my 650th lesson at Maranatha Baptist Church, so you might say I have been a Sunday school teacher all my life.

Who were some of your most influential religious teachers?

Well, my father was the main one. He was a Baptist deacon and Sunday school teacher, and I started going to Sunday school when I was 3. He shaped my early knowledge of Jesus, and I was baptized as a Christian when I was 11 years old.

Later, Billy Graham was probably the closest one to me. I believed what my father taught me about the separation of church and state, so when I was President I never invited Billy Graham to have services in the White House because I didn't think that was appropriate. He was injured a little bit, until I explained it to him.

Among the theologians, I think Paul Tillich is probably the one I have read the most because he shaped my thoughts about the relation between religion and politics and the fact that religious faith was not incompatible with political service. I tried to apply my religious beliefs when I was governor and later president without being ostentatious about it.

But I don't claim to be knowledgeable about theology. Most of my knowledge comes out of my experience and the lessons in the Bible. Every Sunday I'm home I teach 45 minutes and we boiled them down to one page for the new book, "Through the Year with Jimmy Carter."

Where in the world are children forced to work in dangerous conditions, often toiling at the expense of receiving education and basic freedoms?

The risk analysis firm Maplecroft released a report showing that worsening global security and the economic crisis have increased the risk of child labor violations in several countries. Maplecroft studied child labor conditions in 197 countries and concluded that nearly 40% of those countries showed "extreme risk" of violations.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) defines child labor as "work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development." The ILO argues that not all work carried out by children is harmful or detrimental, but the organization condemns forms of labor that are physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children or interfere with their education and development.

UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, estimates that 158 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 are engaged in child labor, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. According to the organization, more than one third of children in Sub-Saharan Africa work, most of them in the agricultural sector.

Maplecroft notes a strong link between household poverty and child labor. When the poor's children are kept out of school to work, they have limited prospects for upward social mobility. This creates a cycle of poverty for generations.

6 countries out of Maplecroft's list of worst child labor offenders are located in Africa. Tens of thousands of children in Congo are employed in the mining sector in often "hazardous conditions," the report shows. In countries hit by conflict such as Sudan, Chad and Ethiopia, the abduction of children and forced labor continue to pose extreme risks.

Original Article
Source: Huff

Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs

WASHINGTON — Benjamin Franklin did it. Henry Ford did it. And American life is built on the faith that others can do it, too: rise from humble origins to economic heights. “Movin’ on up,” George Jefferson-style, is not only a sitcom song but a civil religion.

But many researchers have reached a conclusion that turns conventional wisdom on its head: Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. The mobility gap has been widely discussed in academic circles, but a sour season of mass unemployment and street protests has moved the discussion toward center stage.

Former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a Republican candidate for president, warned this fall that movement “up into the middle income is actually greater, the mobility in Europe, than it is in America.” National Review, a conservative thought leader, wrote that “most Western European and English-speaking nations have higher rates of mobility.” Even Representative Paul D. Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who argues that overall mobility remains high, recently wrote that “mobility from the very bottom up” is “where the United States lags behind.”

Liberal commentators have long emphasized class, but the attention on the right is largely new.

“It’s becoming conventional wisdom that the U.S. does not have as much mobility as most other advanced countries,” said Isabel V. Sawhill, an economist at the Brookings Institution. “I don’t think you’ll find too many people who will argue with that.”

One reason for the mobility gap may be the depth of American poverty, which leaves poor children starting especially far behind. Another may be the unusually large premiums that American employers pay for college degrees. Since children generally follow their parents’ educational trajectory, that premium increases the importance of family background and stymies people with less schooling.

A major pension fund and longtime investor in Walmart has blacklisted the retailing behemoth, citing poor labor practices and the company's anti-union stance as the driving force behind its rejection.

Walmart typically shrugs off criticism of its labor practices as union-driven propaganda and insists that its employees are happy and well-managed, but investing experts say that when one of the largest pension funds in the world divests, the company would be wise to listen to the message. It's the same message the American labor movement has been pushing for decades.

On Tuesday, the Netherlands' biggest pension fund, Algemeen Burgerlijk Pensioenfonds, with more than $300 billion in assets, announced that it was blacklisting the largest retailer in the world for noncompliance with the United Nations' Global Compact principles. The Global Compact presents a set of core values relating to human rights, labor standards, the environment and anti-corruption efforts. Sixteen other companies were blacklisted along with Walmart, nearly all of them excluded for producing chemical or nuclear weapons that violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

ABP said on Wednesday that the decision to pull its investment from Walmart was not hasty. The fund declined to say how much money is involved, but according to ABP records, it had invested some 95 million euros, worth $121 million today, in U.S. Walmart stores as of June 30, 2011. The fund first sent a letter to Walmart executives in 2008, a year after ABP formalized its responsible-investing policy. Four years later, after many meetings with employees and all levels of management, ABP concluded the retail giant was still falling short.

TILTON, N.H. -- The rapid rise and far-reaching impact of super PACs -- the well-financed non-party groups that helped carry former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to victory in the Iowa caucuses -- have persuaded some prominent Republicans that restrictions of some sort on the groups' activities may be in order.

In an interview with The Huffington Post on Wednesday evening, former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge said he saw no legal way in which to limit the amount of money that these groups could spend or raise. But he said that both he and the candidate he supports, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, believed firmly that the names of the donors funding those groups should be subject to near instantaneous disclosure.

"I've talked to Jon about this and he and I are like-minded," said Ridge. "He has a modest super PAC [supporting him]. I have felt for the longest time, it is very unlikely that the Supreme Court of the United States would put financial limits on free speech. But I think it is within the power of the president and the Congress to say: 'Guess what? Any contribution in excess of $500 to $1,000 to you personally or the super PAC, it is on the Internet within 24 hours, so people can know.' Not quarterly. Transparency now, it is the best antiseptic."

OTTAWA - First Nations in the James Bay region of Northern Ontario say their housing crisis is deepening despite the federal government's recent response to Attawapiskat.

In a statement issued Thursday, the troubled Attawapiskat First Nation said it won't be able to make its January payroll unless the federal government shows more flexibility.

Many families are still living in tents and substandard shelters there. And now, essential services such as education are at risk because the $1.5 million earmarked for them has been placed in the hands of a government-appointed third party, according to a statement from the regional Mushkegowuk Council.

Neighboring Cree communities along James Bay are crying out for emergency help as well.

"With temperatures now in the minus 30s and 40s, the chiefs are now calling on the federal and provincial governments to take immediate action on the housing crisis in Fort Albany and Kashechewan as well," the statement said.

In the wake of the U.S. financial collapse in 2008, Canadian banks -- which were largely spared the devastation in the U.S. -- were lauded as an example of a properly regulated banking industry. One of the people praising Canadian finance was Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve.

But it seems Canadian financial institutions don’t feel the same way about Volcker -- or at least the financial reform named after him.

The “Volcker Rule,” a core part of the U.S.’s financial reform package passed last year, would limit the ability of U.S. banks to engage in proprietary trading -- buying and selling financial instruments for their own benefit. (Banks would still be allowed to trade on behalf of clients.)

That has many in Canada’s financial industry evidently upset. In a letter to U.S. government officials sent last month, the Investment Industry Association of Canada argued that the Volcker Rule could potentially destabilize Canada’s financial sector by making it harder to trade government debt and to take actions that minimize risk.

PARLIAMENT HILL—New Democrats are gearing up to take on Prime Minister Stephen Harper over what they’re calling a “Republican style” attack on wages and benefits in 2012, with the latest flashpoint a New Year’s Day lockout of nearly 500 workers at the only remaining locomotive manufacturer in Canada.

The standoff at the London, Ont., Electro-Motive plant, now owned by U.S. machinery giant Caterpillar following a Canadian-government approved takeover, has surfaced as a key issue in the NDP leadership race, with candidate and NDP MP Paul Dewar (Ottawa Centre, Ont.) inviting all seven other candidates in the race to London this Friday in a show of support for the locked-out members of the Canadian Auto Workers union.

Leadership candidate and former party president Brian Topp, Toronto region director for the Association of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists, also joined the fray Wednesday, sending a letter of support to the locked-out London workers.

"I think the NDP should take on Mr. Harper for his approach on labour relations,” Mr. Topp told The Hill Timesin an email. “Not only will Mr. Harper not help Canadians and their families in this economy, he doesn't want them to help themselves.”

Two government audits show Ottawa is earmarking about a billion dollars a year to build and repair first-nations infrastructure, but its myriad officials are not keeping proper tabs on how the money is spent.

Even as Prime Minister Stephen Harper accuses the Attawapiskat First Nations of mismanaging federal funds, the internal audits posted recently suggest the criticism could apply to the federal bureaucracy as well.

The audits say there are “significant gaps” in how the on-reserve infrastructure funding is controlled, and that the financial reporting system is riddled with inconsistencies.

The audit of on-reserve community infrastructure says targets, standards and compliance systems are often ignored or inconsistently applied, leaving the government with an unclear picture of how well its money is working.

When it comes to water and waste water, for example, the report notes the Aboriginal Affairs Department has ranked many water systems to be low risk. At the same time, there were no inspections for more than a year on these water systems – at least not until a national assessment of first-nations water systems prompted some regions to undertake testing.

A few months ago, the cable-television and radio host Glenn Beck began his Fox News show with one of his favorite props: a pipe clenched between his teeth. “I’ve got my pipe,” he told his audience, his speech slightly muddled by the stem, “because we’re going to speak about schoolish kind of things.” The theme of the day was “Restoring History,” and Beck, looking professorial in a neat dark blazer and a pink button-down shirt, began the lesson by peering at a stack of history textbooks and pronouncing them full of falsehoods, produced by “malicious progressive intent.” Progressives, he explained—liberals, socialists, Communists, the entire spectrum of the left—“knew they had to separate us from our history to be able to separate us from our Constitution and God.” For the next hour, Beck earnestly explained some of the history that “is being stolen from us”: the depression of 1920, for example, or how conservative economics saved the nation from the “near-depression” of 1946—crises that progressives don’t want you to know about. “You’ve been taught one lie, I think, your whole life,” he said.

For the fractious Tea Party movement, Beck—a former drive-time radio jockey, a recovering alcoholic, and a Mormon convert—has emerged as both a unifying figure and an intellectual guide. One opinion poll, released in July by Democracy Corps, showed that he is “the most highly regarded individual among Tea Party supporters,” seen not merely as an entertainer, like Rush Limbaugh, but as an “educator.” And in the past few months Beck has established his own institute of learning: the online, for-profit Beck University. Enrollees can take courses like Faith 102, which contends with “revisionists and secular progressives” about the separation of church and state; Hope 102, an attack on the activist federal government; and the combined Charity 101/102/103, a highly restrictive interpretation of rights, federalism, and the division of powers.