Democracy gone Astray: Saturday, February 18, 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.]

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Canada Housing Heads for Severe Correction on Investment: Chart of the Day

Canada may be on the cusp of a “severe” housing correction as real estate investment surges above a tipping point relative to economic output, according to George Athanassakos, professor of finance at the Richard Ivey School of Business.

The CHART OF THE DAY shows Canada’s housing investment as a percentage of gross domestic product, and the declines in inflation-adjusted house prices that follow when this ratio tops 7 percent.

“Eventually, everything boils down to demand and supply,” Athanassakos said in a telephone interview from Western University in London, Ontario. “Whenever this ratio goes over 7 percent, it signifies overinvestment in housing and two or three years later, we have a severe correction.”

Canada’s housing market is booming as historically-low interest rates fuel purchases, driving up home prices and adding to record household debt. Canada’s ratio of housing investment to GDP has averaged 5.8 percent over the last 50 years and is currently at about 7 percent, based on Statistics Canada figures as of the third quarter of 2011, Athanassakos said. Housing investment includes spending on new homes, renovations and real estate transaction fees.

U.S. housing prices plunged by a third between the peak in July 2006 and November 2011, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller Composite-20 Home Price Index. By comparison, Canadian housing prices rose 30 percent in the same period, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association.

“We have experienced bubbles and busts before in Canada, it’s nothing new,” Athanassakos said. “I don’t know why this time would be different.”

Original Article
Source: Bloomberg
Author: Doug Alexander, Ilan Kolet

Long Gun Registry: PQ Requests Meeting With PM On Quebec, Harper Says 'Non, Merci'

MONTREAL - It never hurts to ask.

Parti Quebecois Leader Pauline Marois sent a letter Friday to Prime Minister Stephen Harper asking to meet him about the federal gun registry.

If the provincial opposition leader was holding her breath waiting for a reply, she needn't have waited very long. The response from the Prime Minister's Office was an immediate and unequivocal refusal.

In a letter dated Friday, Marois noted that the registry was set up in the wake of the Ecole polytechnique massacre of 14 women in 1989 and says it has since proven useful to police.

Marois also said that since Ottawa has voted to abolish the registry, Quebec would like to set up its own system and use the information gathered by the federal government — even though the feds have steadfastly refused such a request.

The letter does carry a whiff of internal Quebec politics.

Gov't faces unprecedented challenge with Twitter

For the first time, the power of social media has caught a Canadian government in its cross-hairs.

The Twitter universe has been swamped by opponents of changes in the laws which allow police to collect personal information on Internet users without having to clear it with a judge.

Critics say the government has opened the way for widespread police intrusion into the private lives of Canadians, even though their purpose -- to catch child pornographers -- in itself is desirable.
The most provocative and unprecedented part of this was for one Twitter user to obtain salacious divorce details of Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews, and spread it through the Twitter world.

Another Twitter user started a hashtag called #TellVicEverything, which some regarded as a hilarious put-down of what critics saw as the effort by the public safety minister to use the police to find out their personal information.

Many believe Toews had himself to blame for this reaction when he stated that people who opposed his legislation were on the side of child pornographers, which angered many in the opposition parties who felt this was a civil rights and privacy issue.

An investigation by an Internet-savy newspaper concluded that the anonymous Twitter account originated somewhere in the Parliament buildings, which caused Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird to blame the NDP of being the culprit.

Whoever was responsible, it has raised new issues about ethics in journalism and in the use of the Internet. Will the Twitter universe become the new tabloid journalism -- with the great advantage of hiding behind anonymity?

The government House leader called all of this a grave matter and demanded an investigation. But others contend it is no different from using a government computer to write press releases critical of the Conservative party or its MPs, which is a common practice.

We will examine these issues on Question Period this Sunday, with politicians from all parties, including a representative from the Prime Minister's Office, and with experts on the use of social media.

Original Article
Source: CTV
Author: Craig Oliver

A Third of Canadians Perceive Country Leaning to the Right

Quebecers and British Columbians are more likely to feel that the values of Canadian society are more right-wing now than a decade ago.

Some Canadians believe that the country’s values have shifted over the past decade, a new Angus Reid Public Opinion poll conducted in partnership with L’Actualité has found.

In the online survey of a representative sample of 1,006 Canadian adults, more than a third of respondents (37%) believe that the values of Canadian society are more right-wing now than 10 years ago, while 22 per cent report no change. Only 15 per cent of Canadians think the country is now more left-wing oriented.

Almost half of Canadian men (48%) think the values of Canadian society are more right-wing than ten years ago. Only one-in-ten respondents over the age of 55 (9%) say that Canada is now more left-wing oriented than a decade ago.

More than half of Canadians (56%) believe the Federal Government has an important role to play to redistribute the wealth and intervene in the economy, even if it means increasing taxes.

However, not all regions hold the same sentiment. Ontarians (62%) are more likely to agree with this assertion, along with a majority of British Columbians (55%) and Quebecers (52%). However, only 44 per cent of Albertans concur.

Original Article
Source: angus-reid
Author: --

Toews surprised by content of online surveillance bill

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews says he is surprised to learn that a section of the government's online surveillance bill provides for "exceptional circumstances" under which "any police officer" can request customer information from a telecommunications service provider.

In an interview airing Saturday on CBC Radio's The House, Toews said his understanding of the bill is that police can only request information from the ISPs where they are conducting "a specific criminal investigation."

But Section 17 of the 'Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act' outlines "exceptional circumstances" under which "any police officer" can ask an ISP to turn over personal client information.

"I'd certainly like to see an explanation of that," Toews told host Evan Solomon after a week of public backlash against Bill C-30, which would require internet service providers to turn over client information without a warrant.

Some city councillors fear that Mayor Rob Ford could install an under-qualified ally in the TTC’s top job, if the mayor’s loyalists on the transit commission oust the system’s chief executive Tuesday.

It’s an open secret at City Hall that TTC chair Karen Stintz has been protecting Webster from the mayor’s office over his refusal to build a case for a subway on Sheppard Ave. E. and a completely underground Eglinton LRT.

“Gary and I knew it was a matter of time. They’ve been itching to fire him since July,” said Stintz, who has been vacationing out of town with her family.

Reached Friday afternoon, she said she was “completely unaware” that five Ford loyalists on the transit board had called a special meeting Tuesday.

This is the last thing the system needs, she said, “at a time when the TTC has been dealing with so much uncertainty.”

ORNGE scandal: Tougher legislation, but whistleblowers muzzled

The whistleblowers of ORNGE, who brought serious patient safety and financial concerns forward, are being warned they may go to jail if they keep talking.

“If you leak information you can be held criminally liable for obstructing a criminal investigation,” interim ORNGE boss Ron McKerlie warned ORNGE’s 400 employees Thursday at a town-hall meeting.

“You can go to jail,” he said.

The stiff warning appears to be directed at the many ORNGE employees who helped the public learn just how troubled the air ambulance service was. It came just before Friday’s announcement that the province hopes to tighten its grip on the service, which the Star found was riddled with problems.

The province, Health Minister Deb Matthews told reporters, is drafting legislation to provide tougher oversight and to ensure no changes to the corporate structure or sale of assets happen without health minister approval.

One thing the Star uncovered was the creation by ORNGE of numerous for-profit companies that did nothing to help patient care in Ontario. Questioned about it earlier, Matthews said she had no power to stop ORNGE and its former boss Dr. Chris Mazza.

Political action committees affiliated with companies owned by Canadian corporations but based in the United States are pouring money into this year’s U.S. House and Senate races.

Fundraising data provided by the website OpenSecrets.org show American subsidiaries of Canadian companies have formed political action committees that so far have given $163,500 (U.S.) to candidates running in the Congressional elections.

Donations to Republicans were $89,250 (U.S.), compared with $74,250 (U.S.) for Democrats.

Political donations from foreigners are banned in the United States. But there is nothing to stop businesses based in the States but owned by foreign companies from forming entities called political action committees, or PACs, which are then funded by donations from their American employees.

These PACS are set up and run by corporations, labour unions, membership organizations or trade associations. They can only solicit contributions from people associated with the connected or sponsoring organization.

U.S. subsidiaries of some of Canada’s biggest companies have already formed PACs ahead of the November Congressional vote.

The contrast of the image force symbol. On the one hand, conservatives who celebrate in jubilation - and expense - the abolition of long gun registry. The other, the mother of one of the 14 victims of the Polytechnique that shocking feeling that "dance on the grave" of his daughter. Between joy and tears, a huge shift. And an eloquent illustration of the gulf that divides Canada.

This same gap that Justin Trudeau wanted to denounce last Sunday by claiming that he still prefers a sovereign Quebec to Harper Canada too. The son of former Prime Minister do not go softly: Canada is in "going too far right," he "becomes petty, small-minded, closed, anti-intellectual," it "back" on issues crucial to him. "Excuse me, but I do not recognize this country. And millions of Canadians do not recognize this country, "Mr. Trudeau launched a dramatic tone.

The allusion to the sovereign Quebec (one way "provocative" to tell it to "wake people up," said MP) has earned Justin Trudeau few attacks calling him a "closet separatist." But beyond the spectacular nature of his statement, the fund has also generated a lot of reactions: for a Trudeau come to suggest that it would be more comfortable in an independent Quebec in Canada where a code of values have been redefined by the Harper Conservatives, is that there is something wrong.

LONDON -- Opponents of a controversial global copyright treaty counted three victories Friday as American government websites were hacked and the Eastern European nations of Poland and Slovenia distanced themselves from the deal.

Sites belonging to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the National Consumer Protection Week were vandalized by Anonymous, a loose collection of cyber rebels who have helped lead the charge against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA.

The hackers replaced the sites with profanity-laced statements and a violent German-language video satirizing the treaty.

At the same time, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Friday the country was abandoning plans to ratify the deal. He said he now sees his earlier support for ACTA as a mistake. "I was wrong," he said at a news conference.

WASHINGTON -- Recently leaked documents show that a Chicago-based conservative think tank plans to spend money on an issue-advocacy campaign timed to influence a potential recall election of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, which could happen as early as April. The proposed campaign highlights the invisible hand that nonprofits, shielded from disclosure laws, can wield in electoral politics.

According to documents leaked and posted to DeSmogBlog, the Heartland Institute has budgeted $612,000 for a Wisconsin campaign called Operation Angry Badger. The campaign consists of an effort to inform voters of the success of Walker's budget law, passed on June 26, that included a reduction in the collective bargaining rights of workers in public employee unions. The budget sparked a labor-led protest movement that has consumed Wisconsin politics over the past year.

The leaked budget document describes Operation Angry Badger as "a research and education project built to take advantage of the public interest in Wisconsin’s Act 10 generated by recall elections that could take place." The plan includes print and Web advertising to help publicize Walker's changes to collective bargaining rights and what the institute claims are the high salaries of public school teachers and poor educational results within Wisconsin's schools. The group also proposes creating blogs during a potential recall election to counter local newspaper and media reports on the Walker budget, school teacher salaries and public employee unions.

Aspirin as the New Birth Control: The GOP War on Women Reaches New Lows

We all heard about the War on Women's Health last year, when Tea Party-empowered state legislatures passed a record slew of anti-choice laws -- including deluded bills such as Arizona's ban on "race-based abortions" and dangerous ones like Virginia's attempt to shut down most abortion clinics in the state. These unhinged state legislatures were joined by an enthusiastic right-wing Congress that attempted to defund the entire $317 million federal family program, tried to redefine "rape," and ate up lies about their favorite bogeyman, Planned Parenthood.

Well, the War on Women's Health is back -- and now it's a flat-out, all-out War on Women.

Just this week, we have seen not just the stunning spectacle of major presidential candidates coming out against birth control coverage, but Republicans in the Senate holding up domestic violence protections because they protect too many people; a potential vice presidential candidate pick poised to sign a law requiring women to receive medically unnecessary vaginal probes without their consent; a leading presidential candidate claiming that "emotions" will get in the way of women serving in combat; and a House committee holding a hearing on birth control access -- with a panel consisting entirely of men.

And it seems that in the lead-up to 2012, the War on Women isn't going to die down.

The two Republican presidential front-runners, Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney, have signaled that they are 100 percent on board with the anti-woman agenda of their party's farthest-right element.

Citizens United Revisited? Buckle Up, Chief Justice Roberts

On Friday night, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the Montana Supreme Court's December, 2011 decision upholding the state's century-old ban on corporate political spending. The implications of this are huge, as it paves the way for a potential re-opening of the disastrous Citizens United decision that has spawned billionaire-sponsored super PACs. And if that happens, Chief Justice John Roberts better buckle up for a grassroots mobilization unlike any the court has seen in years.

Friday's decision was in response to a request by the American Tradition Partnership (ATP) to reverse the Montana ruling. ATP -- a conservative group that that says it fights "the radical environmentalist agenda" -- has six weeks to formally ask the Supreme Court to review the case. If they don't, the Montana ban on corporate spending will stand.

Since the Citizens United ruling over two years ago, millions of dollars have flowed from the super-rich and corporations to elect or defeat candidates. A handful of billionaires have manipulated election outcomes in a matter of days, buying vicious ads through super PACs that candidates pretend are independent from their own campaigns -- while their former colleagues and pals run those PACs. As Ari Berman reported in Huffington Post, some 196 individual donors have provided nearly 80% of the money raised by super PACs in 2011 by giving $100,000 or more each. Secret donors using 501C4's have purchased 40% of total GOP primary ads with no disclosure of who is signing the checks.

Private equity has an image problem. What began a few months ago with questions about Mitt Romney's background as chief of Bain Capital has ballooned into a tidal wave of legislative, regulatory and media attention -- and much of it unflattering. Now the industry is working to fight back, as some fear that the bad press could lead to greater regulation.

“This is probably the most challenging period our industry has faced," said one private equity industry executive, who spoke to The Huffington Post on condition that he not be named.

Before Mitt Romney entered the political fray, private equity firms -- which specialize in pumping investors' money into companies that aren't listed on the U.S. stock exchange -- enjoyed relative anonymity. Few people outside the business community had a detailed understanding of how they worked, and many of the firms in turn did their best to stay clear of the spotlight.

"We haven't done a particularly good job of amplifying [what we do] because we haven't been under attack before," an executive at a global private equity firm said, also on condition that he not be named. "Do we have reason to be concerned? Hell yes." He added: "The identity of the industry's going to be shaped in 2012."

Supreme Court Blocks Montana Campaign Finance Ban

The U.S. Supreme Court has blocked the Montana Supreme Court's decision in December upholding the state's century-old ban on corporate political spending.

The ruling Friday evening sets up a possible full-blown U.S. Supreme Court rematch over the 2010 Citizens United decision that allowed unlimited corporate campaign spending. It came in response to an application submitted last week by American Tradition Partnership, a conservative interest group that says it fights "the radical environmentalist agenda," and two companies, seeking to have Montana's ban struck down. A five-member majority of the U.S. Supreme Court in Citizens United declared that corporations' independent spending in elections does not corrupt -- or even appear to corrupt -- the political process.

The Montana Supreme Court held that the state's history of corrupting corporate influence in politics, as well as the relative ease with which corporations may currently make expenditures through political action committees, distinguish the state's Corrupt Practices Act from the provisions of the federal McCain-Feingold Act that the U.S. high court struck down in Citizens United.

American Tradition asked the court to treat its application the same as a petition asking to reverse the Montana Supreme Court without additional briefing or argument. The justices, however, stayed the case "pending the timely filing and disposition of a petition" for a merits determination. That means American Tradition now has to return to the court with a more complete request for the justices' review.

This Week in Poverty: Obama’s Budget, Your Server’s Budget

Obama’s Budget

Let’s review: on January 24, President Obama delivered his sixty-five-minute State of the Union address and decided poverty—the p-word—merited barely a mention. One week later, Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney did him a solid by announcing, “I’m not concerned about the very poor.” The very next day, in a stroke of luck I’m sure some would be hard-pressed not to attribute to divine intervention, Obama had the good fortune of attending the annual National Prayer Breakfast, where the specter of Romney stuffing coal in children’s stockings still hung in the air.

For the president, a preternatural campaigner, it was carpe diem.

“Living by the principle that we are our brother’s keeper. Caring for the poor and those in need. These values are old,” he said. “It also coincides with Jesus’ teaching that ‘for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.’ It mirrors the Islamic belief that those who’ve been blessed have an obligation to use those blessings to help others, or the Jewish doctrine of moderation and consideration for others.… They are values that have always made this country great—when we live up to them; when we don’t just give lip service to them; when we don’t just talk about them one day a year. And they’re the ones that have defined my own faith journey.”

Just over a week later, Obama’s faith journey would arrive at the release of his 2013 budget—for what is a budget if not a moral document, a statement of principles and priorities? Would he live up to the standard he laid out at the prayer breakfast? Or was the breakfast “one day a year” when he gave “lip service,” quickly receding when the political moment passed.

The short answer is: depends whom you ask. It seems for the majority of antipoverty advocates the president’s budget is mostly good news.

Israel's New Left Goes Online

In mid-December a young Palestinian named Mustafa Tamimi was struck in the face with a tear-gas canister fired from an Israeli armored vehicle. It happened during one of the Friday protests, a weekly event in West Bank villages like Nabi Saleh, where Tamimi lived; he later died from his wounds. In the ensuing battle over culpability—so much of which took place, like everything else these days, on Twitter—a number of English-language bloggers challenged Israeli military spokespeople about the event, again and again, and kept the story of Tamimi’s death in the news.

Obama’s Plan to Save the Military From Cuts—at the Expense of Domestic Programs

As budget wonks comb over President Obama’s outline for fiscal year 2013, a startling White House plan has become clear: the administration is seeking to undo some mandatory cuts to the Pentagon at the expense of critical domestic programs. It does so by basically undoing the defense sequester that kicked in as a result of the Congressional supercommittee on debt. This wasn’t a featured part of the White House budget rollout, and for good reason—it undercuts the administration’s carefully crafted message of benevolent government action and economic fairness.

The process for this shift is complicated, and has been flagged by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Essentially, Obama wants to eliminate individual spending caps for both military and non-military spending, and institute one single discretionary spending cap instead. Here’s the basic rundown.

To understand how deep the retreat really is, one first needs to understand the difference between security spending and defense spending. Spending on defense applies to the “National Defense Function”—that is, the entire Pentagon budget, plus $24 billion for nuclear weaponry and environmental cleanup programs at the Department of Energy, the defense activities of the FBI, and a small handful of other defense programs. Security spending, on the other hand, excludes some of the Department of Energy money, along with some of the other FBI and small program funding—but includes the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Homeland Security and the “International Affairs” part of the budget, which is mainly State Department funding and foreign aid.

So from a progressive point of view, to cut the most fat from the military budget you want defense cuts, not security cuts—otherwise funding for veterans’ health and diplomatic efforts is also in jeopardy.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie preserved his chances of being picked to run as vice president and vetoed the gay marriage bill passed by the state assembly Thursday, as he promised, the Associated Press reports. "I am adhering to what I've said since this bill was first introduced — an issue of this magnitude and importance, which requires a constitutional amendment, should be left to the people of New Jersey to decide," Christie said in a statement. Though polls show a majority of New Jersey residents support gay marriage, a majority of Republicans do not. That's why Mitt Romney is portraying himself as a staunch defender of "traditional marriage" after governing Massachusetts, where same-sex marriage is legal, and why Christie, who is on lots of lists of potential vice-presidential nominee, needs to keep his hetero marriage bona fides rock solid.
Original Article
Source: the atlantic wire
Author: Elspeth Reeve

Never Fight a Culture War on the Internet

Maybe the GOP (or more specifically, certain members of the party) returned to the '50s in just one day, but the rest of us haven't. Beyond the obvious social and cultural shifts of the last 60 years, there is one major factor: the Internet.

Talking Points Memo's Evan McNorris-Santoro looked at the confluence of events on Thursday and pronounced it "the day Washington fell into a time-warp," turning back the discussion of women's rights 60 years. Others, such as the editors of The New Republic, think we are on the brink of a "culture war" over women's rights. They're reacting to the last few weeks of controversy: most recently women were kept out of a hearing on Obama's new contraception ruling so that men could discuss the "religious freedoms" at stake without having to be bothered by that silly context of female health concerns, and one 71-year-old Rick Santorum backer made a horrible grandpa joke about birth control, for which he has apologized. It goes back further -- we're also talking about the recent public battle between Susan G. Komen for the Cure and Planned Parenthood, in which Susan G. Komen initially withdrew funding to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screenings (for "legal reasons" that seemed very clear to many were actually anti-abortion ones) but changed their tune when the backlash appeared detrimental to their organization.

Last time we checked in with Maine, the Pine Tree State's Republican Party was frantically defending its decision to disenfranchise GOP voters whose caucus was postponed due to snow last weekend. There's been some good news and bad news since then.

Starting with the good, state party Chairman Charlie Webster has announced that the results of Washington County's caucus, which is scheduled for Saturday, will be included in the straw poll of presidential support. Confusingly, the straw poll is non-binding: caucusgoers are asked to indicate preference, but while caucusing, they're really choosing delegates for the state GOP conference in May, which will then choose the delegates to the Republican National Convention. When the party announced the results on Saturday, Mitt Romney had won a narrow victory over Ron Paul. But the total didn't include Washington County, where snow had forced events to be postponed. After an array of commentators -- from Paul supporters to the Romney-backing county GOP chair to national media figures -- bashed that decision, Webster announced that they'd include them after all.

Now the bad. It turns out the results on Saturday may have been even more tainted than the original critics presumed. The party has admitted that some results were missing because they were caught in email spam filters, and there were other counting errors in jurisdictions across the state. Webster said Friday that a recount had not changed Romney's win, although the new vote total hasn't been released yet.

That leaves the Washington County caucus to settle things. Skeptics say a Paul surge that sways the result is unlikely: in the original tally, he trailed Romney by 194 votes, more than the total number of ballots cast for all the candidates in the county four years ago. The Paul campaign was expected to lead a concerted effort to get its supporters out Saturday, but details on how they'll do it and what they expect have been hard to come by. Calls and emails to the Paul campaign's Maine and national headquarters were not returned Friday.

Why all this fuss over a few hundred votes and 24 delegates of the 2,286 total? It's all about momentum. Paul is still searching for his first primary or caucus win of the campaign. For Romney, meanwhile, it would be an embarrassing reversal. His proclaimed victory last Saturday came on the heels of three losses earlier that week, and gave the impression that he had stanched the bleeding. If Paul were to win, however, it would mark the second time this year that Romney has been declared the winner of a caucus only to see his victory revoked, and a rerun of the Iowa debacle that helped upend Romney's campaign narrative.

Original Article
Source: the atlantic
Author: David Graham

The Inside Story on Climate Scientists Under Siege

It is almost possible to dismiss Michael Mann's account of a vast conspiracy by the fossil fuel industry to harrass scientists and befuddle the public. His story of that campaign, and his own journey from naive computer geek to battle-hardened climate ninja, seems overwrought, maybe even paranoid.

But now comes the unauthorized release of documents showing how a libertarian think tank, the Heartland Institute, which has in the past been supported by Exxon, spent millions on lavish conferences attacking scientists and concocting projects to counter science teaching for kindergarteners.

Mann's story of what he calls the climate wars, the fight by powerful entrenched interests to undermine and twist the science meant to guide government policy, starts to seem pretty much on the money. He's telling it in a book out on March 6, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches From the Front Lines.

"They see scientists like me who are trying to communicate the potential dangers of continued fossil fuel burning to the public as a threat. That means we are subject to attacks, some of them quite personal, some of them dishonest," Mann said in an interview conducted in and around State College, home of Penn State University, where he is a professor.

Like any good presidential candidate, Rick Santorum heaps praise on America's soldiers and veterans. He's pledged to "make veterans a high priority" if elected president, adding, "This is not a Republican issue, this is not a Democratic issue, it is an American issue." But as a US senator, Santorum engineered a controversial land deal that robbed the military's top veterans' home of tens of millions of dollars and worsened the deteriorating conditions at the facility.

The Armed Forces Retirement Home, which is run by the Department of Defense, bills itself as the "premier home for military retirees and veterans." The facility sprawls across 272 acres high on a hill in northern Washington, DC, near the Petworth neighborhood. The nearly 600 veterans who now live there enjoy panoramic views of the city—the Washington monument and US Capitol to the south, the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception to the east. At its peak, more than 2,000 veterans of World Wars I and II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War lived at the Home.

But with the rise of the smaller all-volunteer military, the Home began to run into serious financial problems. It was clear that one of its primary sources of revenue—a 50-cent deduction from the paychecks of active-duty servicemembers—wasn't enough to keep the Home operating fully. In the 1990s, the Home scrambled to find ways to avoid insolvency, trimming its staff by 24 percent and reducing its vet population by 800. Still, the money problems began to show, with its older historic facilities slipping into disrepair and decay. To grapple with its worsening shortfall, officials running the Home eyed a valuable, 49-acre piece of land worth $49 million as a potential financial lifeline.

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has given NB Power clearance to refuel and restart the Point Lepreau nuclear generating station later this year.

The commission has also granted Lepreau a five-year operating licence, but attached two conditions in its decision, released Friday.

NB Power must improve Lepreau's firefighting capability, which the commission called substandard, and conduct updated earthquake risk assessment testing around the plant using modern techniques.

"NBPN's [NB Power Nuclear] fire protection program is currently below expectations and requires improvement," the decision states.

"NBPN would be required to comply with the latest fire protection codes and standards by Dec. 31, 2014."

VANCOUVER - For almost three weeks after David Tarasick published findings about one of the largest ozone holes ever discovered above the Arctic, the federal scientist was barred from breathing a word about it to the media.

Kristi Miller was similarly gagged from granting interviews about her own research into a virus that might be killing British Columbia's wild sockeye salmon, despite going to print in the prestigious journal Science.

Such incidents aren't one-off occurrences, but instead represent a trend of "muzzling" policies being imposed on Canadian scientists by federal agencies under the Conservative government, a panel told their international peers Friday at a global science conference in Vancouver.

"It's pretty clear that for federal scientists, Ottawa decides now if the researchers can talk, what they can talk about and when they can say it," senior science journalist Margaret Munro, with Postmedia News, told a group gathered at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting.

"We're not talking about state secrets here."

WINNIPEG - The chairman of Canada's truth and reconciliation commission says removing more than 100,000 aboriginal children from their homes and placing them in residential schools was an act of genocide.

Justice Murray Sinclair says the United Nations defines genocide to include the removal of children based on race, then placing them with another race to indoctrinate them. He says Canada has been careful to ensure its residential school policy was not "caught up" in the UN's definition.

"That's why the minister of Indian affairs can say this was not an act of genocide," Sinclair told students at the University of Manitoba Friday. "But the reality is that to take children away and to place them with another group in society for the purpose of racial indoctrination was — and is — an act of genocide and it occurs all around the world."

About 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Metis children were forced to attend the government schools over much of the last century. The last school closed outside Regina in 1996.

The $60-million truth and reconciliation commission is part of a landmark compensation deal between the federal government, the Crown and residential school survivors. It is about halfway through its mandate and has visited about 500 communities, where it has heard graphic details of rampant sexual and physical abuse.

The commission has taken 25,000 statements from survivors so far and has heard from about 100 people who worked in the schools, Sinclair said.

Their legacy has left an indelible impact on Canadian society, he added. The commission has heard stories of survivors continuing the cycle of abuse with their own children.

My neo-con vacation

Whatever political legacy Justin inherited from his famous father, it sure wasn't the diplomacy part. Poor Trudeau fils, born with chronic foot-in-mouth disease.

Still, many of us sympathize with what he was trying to say.

No, not the notion of a separate Quebec. But Trudeau's dismay at the prospect of a Canada rendered deeply conservative under Stephen Harper, a Canada where social progress is undone and the clock aggressively turned back - that's a dismay shared by the millions of Canadians who do not support the current government. We understand Trudeau's alarm.

Some of us even understand it with unprecedented, and disturbing, clarity. If we're really headed down the neo-con road, then I have seen our future. In fact, I'm living in it.

As a first-time snowbird, I have been spending the month in Florida, where temperatures are warm, palm trees dapple the sunlight, seniors frolic merrily and life is but a dream. Especially for the neoconservatively inclined.

Snoop and spy is already here, thanks to Liberals

By any political measure it has been a pitiful and, to some extent, humbling week for the beleaguered Vic Toews.

The public safety minister has earned the justifiable wrath of frothing opposition members, a bevy of pundits of various political pedigrees, and, decidedly more mutedly, even his caucus colleagues, for his bellicose championing of the socalled "protecting children from Internet predators act."

Given the bill's politically charged moniker, you knew that Toews was going to employ the kind of pitbull rhetoric this Conservative government has become accustomed to using against its perceived political adversaries in and outside the House of Commons.

In this case, the near unanimous condemnation of the bill was triggered by its central provision that would grant the police, in their supposed hunt for child predators, extraordinary powers to intercept the electronic, Internet and cellular communications of Canadians without a judicial warrant.

The opposition, pundits, academics and civil libertarians pounced, describing the proposed legislation as a gross invasion of Canadians' privacy that would render this country a near police state.

The Conservatives have introduced a bill that would allow same-sex marriages of foreigners performed in Canada to be dissolved in Canada.

While gay advocacy groups are hailing it as a victory, the legislation proposed Friday would create one set of divorce rules for Canadian couples and another for those foreign same-sex couples married in Canada.

As far as the government is concerned, the amendments to the Civil Marriage Act tabled by Justice Minister Rob Nicholson would fix the legal loophole that surfaced after a Globe and Mail report on a high-profile court case involving a lesbian couple seeking a divorce in Ontario.

“Recently it came to light that there was an anomaly in our civil marriage laws,” Mr. Nicholson said in a statement. “We are fixing the anomaly in the law.”

The amendments to the Civil Marriage Act state that a couple’s marriage can be dissolved in Canada if they have separated, and been living for at least one year, in a state that does not recognize the validity of their marriage.

But some critics, such as Michael Cochrane, a prominent Toronto-based family lawyer, said the proposed legislation is riddled with “pretzel logic” that creates a “double standard.”

Internet bill seriously flawed

"You're either with the government, or with the child pornographers."

-- Public Safety Minister Vic Toews

Don't be an idiot.

There is a huge difference, Minister, between demonizing child pornographers and those of us who believe in the democratic right to privacy and free speech.

The legislation, Bill C-30, tabled this week as the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act, had virtually no safeguards to protect law-abiding Canadians, including the media, from being spied upon by police, bureaucrats, CSIS -- even the competition bureau.

Until Prime Minister Stephen Harper punted the bill straight to committee for a badly-needed overhaul, his government appeared unconcerned about its own inconsistency.

Earlier this week, for example, the long-gun registry was finally put down, killed by the Harper majority for one reason and one reason alone.

Premier Christy Clark has hired Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s former press secretary to be her new director of communications.

In a note sent to MLAs and staff today, Clark’s chief of staff, Ken Boessenkool announced the move. The note reads as follows:

It is my pleasure to announce that Sara MacIntyre will join the Office of the Premier as Director of Communications effective March 6th.
Most recently, Sara served as Press Secretary to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Some of you may recall her days in Victoria as the B.C. Director for the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation.
As part of the office restructuring, Shane Mills will assume the role of Director of Issues Management in the Office of the Premier.
I am confident these changes will allow us to continue delivering the government’s agenda as we focus on strengthening British Columbia’s economy and strengthening B.C. families.

The Last Word: Government's law agenda in disorder

The Twitterverse erupted with such fury yesterday that a Canadian politician was briefly the number two target on the planet.

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews (@TellVicEverything) was besieged with thousands of followers posting every tiny detail of their lives to protest his Internet snooping bill.

It was a fun display of social media in full mocking attack mode.

But there’s something Vic Toews really needs to know beyond what a lot of followers had for lunch. His government’s law agenda is in disorder.

Never mind the big picture of an omnibus crime bill out of step with public opinion. Polls show a preference for prevention and rehabilitation over this government’s fixation on punishment and imprisonment.

Or that mandatory prison sentences will turn jails into a kindergarten criminal school for minor offenders. Six months for growing six marijuana plants? Three years for a kid caught holding a loaded gun? Where’s the logic in that?

Yet the loudest public backlash was reserved for this week’s lawful access bill, which would give police invasive Internet surveillance powers without a warrant.

Vic Toews wanted unlimited online surveillance, and now Twitter has given him just that

As Public Safety Minister Vic Toews demands an investigation into how the story of his alleged infidelities, love child and subsequent divorce ended up on Twitter, I am demanding a different investigation entirely.

How did a man like Toews find not one, but possibly three women who found him attractive enough to go the distance, so to speak? I would have thought it would be just the long-suffering one, Lorraine, to whom he was married for more than three decades.

Toews, a 59-year-old lawyer from Steinbach, Man., is a severe, humourless man, rigid in his Bill C-30 quest for online surveillance of Canadians. And indeed no new laws were required to find out about his 2010 divorce, which is public information.

In Canada we have never cared to know about the private lives of our politicians, however faultless or grotty, dull or delicious they may have been. I myself am not entirely certain how many children Stephen Harper and his wife have. Two, possibly seven. It’s not my business.

Unmuzzle federal scientists, group tells Harper

Groups representing scientists and science writers sent an open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Friday calling on his government to stop "muzzling" federal researchers.

The release of the letter coincided with a panel discussion at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual conference, which heard numerous examples of alleged government interference and reporters being denied timely access to scientists.

Such control is sinking morale among scientists and denying the public access to important information about climate, agriculture and the environment, the conference heard.

"Why are we suppressing really good news to Canadians - that is, successful science being done in federal government labs?" asked Andrew Weaver, a climate scientist at the University of Victoria. "Why don't we open it up? There's nothing to be feared but success."

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States recently adopted a policy that encourages its scientists to talk freely to the media without an intermediary.

VANCOUVER -- For almost three weeks after David Tarasick published findings about one of the largest ozone holes ever discovered above the Arctic, the federal scientist was barred from breathing a word about it to the media.

Kristi Miller was similarly gagged from granting interviews about her research into a virus that might be killing British Columbia's wild sockeye salmon, despite going to print in the prestigious journal Science.

Such incidents aren't one-off occurrences but represent a trend of "muzzling" Canadian scientists by federal agencies under the Conservative government, a panel told their international peers Friday at a global science conference in Vancouver.

"It's pretty clear that for federal scientists, Ottawa decides now if the researchers can talk, what they can talk about and when they can say it," senior science journalist Margaret Munro, with Postmedia News, told a group at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting.

The views were aired in tandem with the release of an open letter by a coalition of six science and communications organizations, jointly calling on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to "tear down the wall" that's been raised over the past four years separating scientists, journalists and the public.

OTTAWA - Prime Minister Stephen Harper's former right-hand man is laying bare some simmering tensions inside powerful Conservative circles around Parliament Hill.

Ex-chief of staff Guy Giorno posted a message on Twitter this week, calling out a political staffer in the office of Treasury Board President Tony Clement.

Giorno had appeared at a Commons committee on Tuesday on behalf of the Canadian Bar Association, outlining how lobbying rules could be beefed up by the Conservative government.

Several Conservative sources within government said Clement adviser David Pierce had made a negative remark about Giorno's testimony during a regular morning meeting Wednesday with other political staffers led by Harper's office.

It seems the remark got straight back to Giorno.

"Seems a staffer for @TonyclementCPC, one David Pierce, didn't like my testimony before the Ethics Committee yesterday. Truth hurts, Dave," wrote Giorno,who was also Harper's campaign chairman last election.

"Tony, when David Pierce attacked my Ethics Committee testimony @TonyclementCPC I assume he was *not* speaking for you. What's up then?"

Clement's office said it had no comment on Giorno's tweets.

After a B.C. lawyer’s dinner companion left the restaurant, police officers came to the table and asked everyone still seated to hand over identification. To clear up any misunderstanding, the lawyer complied.

He was then registered in a government database as having a known association with a gangster. Befuddled, he learned the person he had dined with had said hello to a gang member on the way out, the lawyer’s supporters say.

He is quietly fighting, so far unsuccessfully, to have that designation deleted, concerned that anytime police check he will immediately be flagged as suspicious and dangerous.

Welcome to the age of the data shadow.

A proposed federal law, Bill C-30, tabled this week by Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, requires Internet service providers and cellphone companies to hand over basic customer information to authorities without a warrant.

It is causing a furor.

“Now, every single Canadian citizen is walking around with an electronic prisoner’s bracelet,” NDP critic Charlie Angus said.

Governments around the world are taking a more active role in the economy. Is that a threat to Canada?

Visit the new CIC website at OpenCanada.Org. Canada's hub for international affairs.

A week before Prime Minister Stephen Harper left to China to sign $3 billion worth of deals and collect two pandas, The Economist published a special report on state capitalism. Inspired by Ian Bremmer’s provocatively titled The End of the Free Market, the report proclaimed that “The era of free-market triumphalism has come to a jarring halt,” and cited state capitalism’s claim to the “most successful big economy” – China’s – as proof.

In a system of state capitalism, Bremmer writes, “the state [uses] markets to create wealth that can be directed as political officials see fit … the ultimate motive is not economic (maximizing growth) but political (maximizing the state’s power and the leadership’s chance of survival).”

What, then, are we to make of Canada’s $3-billion trade deal with Beijing? What of Petro-China’s $1.9-billion investment in Alberta’s oil sands? While economic freedom in the rest of the world is in decline, Canada’s economic freedom remains among the highest in the world (higher, even, than our southern neighbour’s). If eastern state capitalism is the new western liberal capitalism, has Canada missed the boat?

OpenCanada interviewed the top minds on economic freedom and Canada-China relations, asking them to consider what this new capitalism means for Canada, how the prime minister is approaching it, and whether Bremmer and The Economist simply got it wrong.

Original Article
Source: the Mark
Author: Canadian International Council

The problem in public life isn’t Islam, but religion itself

We always knew it could happen: A devout Muslim heads a conservative political party that takes office in a multicultural Western country, then leads a campaign to enforce mandatory prayer and to lobby for religious-based values and laws. How will people react?

Well, it happened in Britain this week, and here’s how they reacted: Judges and leading thinkers fought back in the name of a secular state, but the Queen, the Pope and Britain’s right-wing newspapers all spoke up in support of the Muslim party leader’s campaign.

This was because the leader in question is Baroness Warsi, chairman of the Conservative Party and a senior minister in David Cameron’s government. She’s a popular figure among Tories and an entertaining personality who frequently appears on British TV. She’s also a devout Muslim, a faith-based cultural conservative and a staunch defender of religion’s role in public life.

Her campaign began Monday, after Britain’s High Court ruled that the practice of holding prayers during municipal council meetings is unconstitutional (as, by extension, may be those held during sittings of the House of Commons). Prayer, the judge ruled, is a private matter that has no place in the formal proceedings of a legal assembly.

What's wrong with Ontario – and how to make it right

It got most of its attention for its warning of a $30-billion deficit, and its 362 cost-cutting recommendations to help avoid that fate.

But the scariest number in Don Drummond’s landmark report to the government of Ontario is a much smaller one: two, as in 2 per cent.

That’s the level of annual economic growth that Mr. Drummond, a former economist at Toronto-Dominion Bank, thinks the country’s largest province will have in the years to come. And while long-term projections are notoriously unreliable, that pessimism is grounded in the reality of a manufacturing-reliant province that coasted by on built-in advantages – a low dollar, low energy prices, a reliable U.S. market in close proximity – that have now evaporated.

For all that there is to fear in Mr. Drummond’s projection, and for all the consternation that his doom-and-gloom projection is causing, there is also cause for hope. Something is happening in the boardrooms of the private sector and the backrooms of government: The grim outlook is kicking off an overdue debate about how to reinvent a province that is still the economic heart of Canada.

Knives are out, and not just for Gary Webster

What sniveling toadies we have masquerading as transit commissioners.

Denzil Minnan-Wong. Cesar Palacio. Norm Kelly. Frank Di Giorgio. Vincent Crisanti. Remember their names for induction in the transit hall of shame.

The querulous quintet — censorious and calculating city councillors — have called a special meeting of the Toronto Transit Commission on Tuesday to knife the chief general manager, Gary Webster.

For more than a year, Mayor Rob Ford has schemed to get Webster out of the way. Webster’s sin? He spoke truth to power. He told Ford he could not support the mayor’s subway plan because it did not make sense any more.

That, apparently, is a firing offence at city hall — a system of government where the civil service is supposed to be independent.

At city council last week, councillors asked Webster his views on subway versus LRT. Calmly, professionally, hesitantly, Webster gave them his internationally renowned professional opinion. For that, Ford has not forgiven him — despite Webster’s 35 years’ experience at the TTC.

OTTAWA — Canada's parliamentary budget officer is urging the Harper government to release a long-promised internal report on demographic trends that could cast light on the prime minister's assertion that the pension system must be slashed or it will be unaffordable.

Kevin Page made the request in a letter he distributed Thursday to MPs and senators. It came in the wake of a withering attack last week from Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, who accused Page of releasing conflicting analyses that made no sense.

But Page defended the work of his office, saying it maintains its non-partisan independence and adopts "widely-used" concepts that are employed by budget offices in the United States and in Britain.

Moreover, Page turned the tables on the government and called on it to release key information "in the interests of budget transparency and accountability."

Specifically, he urged the government to publish "medium-term" projections on the GDP, and other fiscal questions.

Hacker group Anonymous posts video demanding Vic Toews resign and scrap Bill C-30

The Internet assault on Public Safety Minister Vic Toews’ personal life and the Conservative government over its controversial Bill C-30 — which would give police much broader powers to snoop on the online communications of Canadians — appears to just be heating up.

The hacker group Anonymous has posted a YouTube video insisting the fight against Toews and the government is only just starting. The group is demanding Toews resign as minister and that the Conservatives scrap an “Internet spy bill” that only gives the government more power to snoop on its citizens.

“Anonymous will not stand for this,” the group says in the video. “We know all about you Mr. Toews, and during Operation White North, we will release what we have unless you scrap this bill. We told you to expect us. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. We are here.”

Here’s the video:

Original Article
Source: ccanada.com
Author: Jason Feket