Democracy gone Astray: Saturday, May 09, 2015

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, May 09, 2015

Jeb Bush Proposes More Marriage To Fix Baltimore

Jeb Bush, the former Republican governor of Florida who is expected to run for president, has weighed in on the upheaval in Baltimore and the economic condition of American cities generally. “We have spent trillions of dollars in the War on Poverty, and poverty not only persists, it is as intractable as ever,” he writes. “This represents a broken promise. And it feeds the anger of Baltimore.”

Bush is right that poverty hasn’t been eradicated and that it is particularly pronounced in Baltimore, a city where the rate is 24 percent. But the money spent on the programs that were part of the War on Poverty have significantly lowered the poverty rate, and it would be much worse without them. The poverty rate has droppedfrom 19 percent in 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson first declared his effort to fight poverty, to 14.5 percent today.

The difference between how much women and men are paid in Canada isn't just a large amount — it’s actually a life-changing one.

According to Catalyst Canada, a nonprofit organization that focuses on expanding opportunities for women and business, Canadian women earn $0.82 to every $1 earned by men. That’s marginally better than the U.S.’s $0.78 for every $1, but sets the gap in Canada at 18 per cent — much higher than in other countries, specifically in Europe.

Average global levels of carbon dioxide stayed above 400 parts per million, or ppm, through all of March 2015 -- the first time that has happened for an entire month since record keeping first began, according to data released this week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Scientists with NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory have called the news a "significant milestone" in the growing scourge of man-made climate change.

In early January, the Center for American Progress (CAP) released a report, co-authored by former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, that outlined policy solutions to the weak economic and wage growth currently in the U.S. Given CAP’s well-known ties to the Clintons—Neera Tanden, the president of CAP, is an adviser for Hillary Clinton’s campaign—the policy recommendations are widely considered to be a preview of Clinton’s domestic agenda.

A 2013 study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health laid the problem out in stark terms: Fewer than 50 percent of US youth currently get the recommended amount of moderate to vigorous exercise they need to become healthy adults. Not surprisingly, the amount of movement deemed necessary varies by age; the US Department of Health and Human Services suggests 150 minutes per week for elementary school children and 225 minutes a week for junior and senior high school students.

Indeed, whether it is through game playing during recess, attending regular gym classes, playing a sport, taking dance, karate, Pilates or yoga classes, skateboarding, biking or running, the upshot is the same: Kids, experts agree, should be physically active and should not spend all of their time sitting in class or lazing in front of a TV or electronic screen at home.

But many do.

With federal action expected this summer to regulate the cost of prison phone calls, the National Sheriffs’ Association announced they may “significantly limit or eliminate altogether” the right of prisoners to make those calls.

Incarcerated people and their families — who are disproportionately low-income — have fought for decades against the often exorbitant rates charged for a phone call home by companies that hold exclusive contracts and provide kickbacks to the jails themselves.

ATHENS/BRUSSELS, May 5 (Reuters) - Greece blew hot and cold with its euro zone partners on Tuesday as it struggled to avert a potentially catastrophic funding crunch this month, when it must make a big debt repayment to the IMF as cash reserves dry up.

Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said after talks in Paris and Brussels that he expected euro zone finance ministers to acknowledge next Monday progress towards a cash-for-reform deal, opening the way to easing Athens' liquidity crisis.

WASHINGTON, May 5 (Reuters) - Republican U.S. presidential candidate Carly Fiorina is defending her record as a corporate executive after a critic took over a website with her name on it to highlight job losses at Hewlett-Packard Co while she served as CEO.

Fiorina, who announced her candidacy on Monday in the 2016 race, said she would run on her record at Hewlett-Packard, but added in reference to the carlyfiorina.org website: "Obviously, would I have preferred that we bought up every conceivable domain name? Yes."

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans claim the middle class should like America's pending trade deal with 11 other Pacific nations. But there's one demographic that already loves it: billionaires.

Last week, dozens of New York City's power elite signed a letter to the state's congressional delegation, urging lawmakers to support the Trans-Pacific Partnership now in negotiations. Democrats in Congress largely oppose the TPP, and Republican leaders have said they don't have the votes needed to pass it without Democratic support.

Have we learned nothing from thirty years of failed trickle-down economics?

By now we should know that when big corporations, Wall Street, and the wealthy get special goodies, the rest of us get shafted.

The Reagan and George W. Bush tax cuts of 1981, 2001, and 2003, respectively, were sold to America as ways to boost the economy and create jobs.

As I was glued to Twitter on Monday night watching news of the uprisings in Baltimore roll in, I knew I would spend the next morning giving myself a crash course in the city’s economic ills. As with the protests in Ferguson, the protesters’ immediate grievances focused on police brutality and the loss of black lives at the hands of those supposedly there to protect them. But, in both instances, the community’s anger also stemmed from years of economic segregation and neglect.

OTTAWA - The Bank of Canada is aiming to use lessons learned during the global financial crisis as a way to help cushion the country's own system against future periods of stress.

The central bank announced several proposed changes Tuesday that it believes would help inject beneficial amounts of liquidity into the markets amid any tumult down the road.

PARIS, May 5 (Reuters) - French lawmakers approved a bill on Tuesday to let intelligence services deploy fly-on-the-wall spying devices more easily against suspected terrorists after Islamist militant attacks killed 17 people in January.

The bill, opposed by civil rights groups, some leftists and some members of President Francois Hollande's ruling Socialists, waives the need for judicial warrants to deploy phone taps, hidden microphones, cameras and other devices such as keypad communications readers.

OTTAWA - Canada's trade deficit grew to a record $3 billion for March as the drop in oil prices weighed on exports, Statistics Canada said Tuesday, but economists suggested things may pick up.

"Canada's trade deficit widened to a record in the first quarter, as the weaker Canadian dollar doesn't appear to have had a meaningful positive impact yet and the U.S. economy struggled in the period," Bank of Montreal senior Benjamin Reitzes wrote in a note.

OTTAWA - In August 2011, with six provincial elections on the horizon, the Prime Minister's Office circulated a set of rules for Conservative MPs to keep in mind when wading into provincial politics, including leadership races.

The basic principle was simple — support conservative candidates, but do it quietly.

So much for that.

Widespread protest and souring public opinion has failed to prevent Canada’s ruling Conservative Party from pushing forward with sweeping anti-terror legislation which a battery of legal scholars, civil liberties groups, opposition politicians and pundits of every persuasion say will replace the country’s healthy democracy with a creeping police state.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is looking forward to an easy victory on Tuesday when the House of Commons votes in its final debate on the bill, known as C-51. But lingering public anger over the legislation suggests that his success in dividing his parliamentary opposition may well work against him when Canadians go to the polls for a national election this fall.

In the last two election cycles, whenever Democrats accused Republicans of waging a "war on women," the GOP often cried foul. After the 2012 election, Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus said the party would need to transform but not by “resorting to the cynical, divisive identity politics of the Democratic Party; it means embracing our common identity as freedom-loving Americans.” Freshman Utah congresswoman Mia Love echoed this at a conservative conference in February, saying that the war on women "comes from the idea that they’d like to separate us based on social status, gender, race, income levels.” Hillary Clinton’s one-time opponent Rick Lazio, who lost the 2000 New York Senate race largely due to bad optics, warned in March that Clinton will try to “connect with women who have faced sexism … it will resonate. This is going to be one of the tactics to put the Republican on defense."

The first presidential campaign I remember actually paying attention to was Carter vs. Ford in 1976. My addiction to politics began in true when I heard someone say "That Reagan guy is going to get us all killed" during the I-paid-for-this-microphone election of 1980. Then came the landslide of 1984, followed by Dukakis in the tank in 1988, followed by the one-termer scion getting stomped by Arkansas in 1992, followed by Dole literally falling off the podium in 1996, followed by lockboxes, theft and doom in 2000, followed by "Run on the war" in 2004.

While all eyes were on the unrest in Baltimore last week following Freddie Gray's death in police custody, many miles away Gov. John Kasich of Ohio announced a new advisory board intended to improve ties between police and communities across his state. The initiative, one among a few in the country, comes as Ohio authorities continue to face questions about two controversial police killings of black people. Unlike in Baltimore, where six officers were charged on Friday with crimes including manslaughter and murder, none of the officers involved in the recent killings in Ohio has faced criminal prosecution, despite video footage raising stark questions in both cases about the use of lethal force.

In Baltimore, white people make up 28 percent of the population but 50 percent of the city's police officers. In Philadelphia, where police and protesters clashed last Thursday during a #FreddieGray rally, whites are 37 percent of the population but 58 percent of the police force. In Sacramento, whites comprise just 36 percent of residents but 72 percent of police.

Those are just a few of the departments whose ethnic makeup is dramatically out of sync with the demographics of the cities they serve. Using census data, Chris Zubak-Skees of the Center for Public Integrity crunched the numbers for the nation's 50 most populous cities. In 49 of them—Atlanta being the lone exception—the cops are whiter than the community.

Insulting a police officer or municipal official on the internet has been made illegal in the town of Granby, Que., after the council voted unanimously tonight in favour of beefing up an already controversial bylaw.

In Granby — a town situated about 80 kilometres east of Montreal — it was already illegal to insult a police officer and other municipal officials. Offenders could face fines ranging from $100 to as high as $1,000.

Remember two decades ago, when surpluses in the employment insurance fund started giving the Chrétien government billions in extra revenue to repay debt, cut taxes or fund other things?

For two years only — just until 2017 — those days are back. And how convenient: it's just enough to nudge Joe Oliver's books into the black in time for this year's election.

MONTREAL - Montreal police say they are investigating after a video surfaced showing a man seemingly being hit in the face by officers during Friday's May Day protest.

The video, obtained by CBC News and only a few seconds long, shows an arrest already in progress as three officers are trying to subdue a man who is resisting.

It's taken decades, but Michael Shapcott has seen troublesome housing trends become a full-blown Canadian crisis.

Shapcott was a founding member of the Canadian Homelessness Research Network who serves now as a North American voice on the Habitat International Coalition, a global network of nearly 400 housing rights organizations in 126 countries on every continent. Although his own focus is mainly on street populations, he regards the growing number of homeless in our country as the tragic but predictable outcome of years of political inaction.

Last week's column on the government's surprise budget announcement that it plans to extend the term of copyright protection for sound recordings generated considerable private feedback, with several industry sources suggesting that the change is not quite what it seems.

In fact, despite painting the reform as an effort to protect the rights of artists, foreign record companies have been primarily concerned with eliminating new competitors who offer cheaper, legal public domain recordings of popular artists such as The Beatles, Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, and The Rolling Stones.

Keith Kellom, like too many black parents lately, doesn’t understand why his son is dead today. One day after 20-year-old Terrance Kellom was shot multiple times and killed by an agent with U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement, the grieving father spoke at a press conference and gave an account of the incident drastically different from law enforcement's. According to Al Jazeera America, Keith asserted that the agents who arrived at his northwest Detroit home to arrest Terrance, a suspect in a robbery case, did not serve him with a search warrant, and that Terrance did not reach for a hammer, as the Detroit Police Department had reported. “My son died with clenched fists. He didn't have a hammer,” said the elder Kellom last Tuesday. “I don’t understand why my son was executed.”

I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees.

-- Dr. Seuss

For a while now, I've been banging awake around five o'clock in the morning, but I languish for a time in that warm you're-comfy-and-you-know-it zone of semi-sleep, until I eventually grab myself by the face and drag myself out of bed. Before I leave the room, I make sure to crack both of my ankles; the small hallway connecting us to my daughter's bedroom has the acoustic qualities of a finely-crafted orchestra hall, and when those joints decide to thud out there in the pre-dawn gloom, it sounds like a damn car accident. My poor, stupid, oft-broken and oft-sprained ankles have woken my daughter up more times than I can count when they decide to pop on a pivot, so I always try and remember to kick out the jams before I use the door.

As Mariam Karouny reports for Reuters, the US air strike on Friday that inadvertently hit a village of non-combatants, killing members of six families, raises new questions about the Obama administration’s approach to fighting Daesh (ISIS or ISIL) in Syria. Despite months of bombing raids, Daesh has lost no territory in Syria.

The strike, according to the Syria Observatory, landed on a village on the east bank of the Euphrates River rather hitting its fundamentalist target.

Though he has yet to officially declare his bid for president, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is frequenting early primary states and hinting at what he would do if elected to the White House. In a recent interview with Radio Iowa, Walker said he would champion a federal version of the controversial ‘right-to-work’ law he signed earlier this year.

On Monday morning, Carly Fiorina, a former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and a failed 2010 Senate candidate, announced that she too is running for the GOP presidential nomination. "I think I'm the best person for the job because I understand how the economy actually works," she said on Good Morning America. "I understand the world; who's in it." Not coincidentally, she has a new book coming out this week.

OTTAWA - The Defence Department is refusing to release the text of a ministerial directive that sets out how the Canadian Forces can seek and share information from foreign partners even when it may put someone at risk of torture.

The Canadian Press requested the 2013 directive one year ago under the Access to Information Act and just this month received a draft copy of the document — marked unclassified — with key elements censored.

EDMONTON - Granting bail to former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Omar Khadr while he appeals his war crimes conviction in the United States threatens the entire system of international prisoner transfers, the federal government argues in new court filings.

The claim comes in material filed late Monday as part of Ottawa's 11th-hour attempt to block Khadr's release from prison — which could come as early as Tuesday evening.

"A lack of clarity in the international transfer process may jeopardize the system as a whole," the government states in documents obtained by The Canadian Press.

Truck nuts, Bumper Balls, Trucksticles. For the uninitiated, these simulated plastic scrotums are designed to decorate the discerning trailer hitch. Available online for $26.95, they have become ubiquitous in Alberta's oil patch. They are also strangely emblematic of why Alberta is broke. Because in order to wrench resource wealth away from companies who would obviously like to keep those billions for themselves, you need real nuts -- not the store-bought variety.

Bidders at a recent charity auction had the opportunity to buy access to British Columbia cabinet ministers, courtesy of a lobbying company with close connections to the governing BC Liberals.

"Be privy to behind the scenes at the legislature," said the brochure description of the auction item offered to attendees at the Reach for the Stars Black and White Gala on April 25 in Tsawwassen.

"Meet a minister of your choice," the description said. "Have lunch with one or two ministers."

The Australian government would sell the right to immigrate to Australia - with migrants no longer accepted based on their skills or family connections - under radical proposals being examined by the government's independent think tank.

The Productivity Commission is investigating a price-based immigration system that would use entry fees as the primary determinant for who gains entry to Australia.

TEL AVIV -- Last week's viral video showing an Israeli policeman beating an Ethiopian-Israeli soldier triggered mass protests in Tel Aviv during Sunday's rush hour. Thousands of Israelis poured into the streets to demand an end to recurring racism, particularly within the government and police force.

Some protesters, many of whom were Israeli Jews of Ethiopian descent, sat in the middle of large intersections in Tel Aviv, purposely stopping traffic to bring attention to what they say is inherent racism within parts of Israeli society. Others linked arms and led marches down streets, raising their fists and Israeli flags high above the crowd.

Is selling a big chunk of publicly owned Hydro One to private investors a good idea?

The answer may surprise you. Truth is, there's not much of a downside to selling a big piece of the transmission utility - if we use the money smartly.

First, your hydro costs won't change with new ownership. Hydro One is and will remain a regulated utility that answers to the Ontario Energy Board (OEB). And the OEB already gives publicly owned utilities (e.g., Hydro One, Toronto Hydro) exactly the same rate of return on capital they'd earn if they were owned by private shareholders. So partial privatization should have no effect on Hydro One's allowed rate of profit.

In these two far-reaching interviews on the "Soap Box" with Eric Poulin, Henry Giroux talks about the failure of liberalism in a time of increasing violence, racism, inequality, state terrorism, and the rule of the financial elite over every commanding social, cultural and political institution in the United States. He elaborates on the failure of many liberals to move both beyond the call for weak reforms that do not challenge the fundamental structures of domination and their willingness to often align themselves with repressive policies that benefit the rich and powerful. He points, for instance, to liberalism’s refusal to name the corruption and misery produced by neoliberal capitalism and its willingness to align itself with policies of the right such as the Iraqi War, state torture, a health-care program that largely benefits big insurance companies, and the massive suffering caused by the growing inequality in wealth, income and power. He also points to the refusal on the part of liberals to protest a grotesque and dangerous incarceration and surveillance state, and the failure to address the issue of what it takes to reinvent politics so as not to serve the interests of the rich and powerful - the failure in short to name a counter-revolution politics that has corrupted both political parties. He argues that liberals are more afraid of the left than the right and have consistently, especially under President Obama, gone out of their way to compromise with the right while moving the Democratic Party into more conservative territory, all the while refusing to bear responsibility for destroying the conditions that make a real democracy possible.

As more than a quarter million federal government employees face credit checks and fingerprinting, one of the unions representing them is going to court to stop it.

The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada is citing a case involving New Brunswick's J.D. Irving Ltd.

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — The charges handed down against three former allies of Gov. Chris Christie in the George Washington Bridge traffic scandal provide mixed news for the Republican governor as he tries to regain momentum in support of an expected presidential bid.

Christie appears to have been cleared of any allegations that he personally participated in a scheme to shut down access lanes to the George Washington Bridge in September 2013. But the charges brought by the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Jersey still hit close to home: His former deputy chief of staff, Bridget Kelly, and his former top appointee to the authority that controls the bridge, Bill Baroni, have both been indicted. David Wildstein, another ally, pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy.

On May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush delivered a now-infamous speech aboard an aircraft carrier in which he declared that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended" and that "in the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." That speech, given less than two months after the U.S. initiated combat operations in Iraq, has been derisively labeled "Mission Accomplished" after the banner used as a backdrop.

ST. LOUIS -- Kevin Moore, the man who filmed Freddie Gray’s violent arrest, was detained in Baltimore on Thursday night, along with Chad Jackson and Tony White, two activists who had previously filmed protests in Ferguson, Missouri.

On April 12, Moore released video of Gray's arrest to multiple media outlets immediately after filming it on his cell phone. Moore told the Baltimore Sun that Gray was "folded like origami" by police officers during the arrest.

WASHINGTON -- When it comes to campaign finance law, Chief Justice John Roberts taketh away even as he giveth.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court upheld a state campaign finance law banning judicial candidates from soliciting contributions for their elections in Williams-Yulee v. Florida Bar. The majority opinion, written by Roberts, was a surprising move by a court that has recently been hostile to all campaign finance regulation. But it also contained a line that suggested just how comfortable this court may be with the malign influence of money in politics.

In the last year, the killing of black men by police has become visible as an epidemic. Less visible—at least to those baffled by the scenes of mass unrest in the streets of Baltimore—is the impoverishment of black families. With a median net worth of just $6,446, African-American households in 2011 were 10 percent poorer than they were in 1984, according to a Pew Research poll. In contrast, median net worth for a white family in 2014 was $142,000. Today, the average black family has approximately 1/17 the wealth of the average white family.

TORONTO - Ontario's minister of community and social services can't say whether the government will have to shell out more money to fix a support payment system that has already cost the province an additional $29 million.

The Social Assistance Management System, which is responsible for welfare and disability support payments, has been plagued by problems since it was implemented in the fall, a government-commissioned report found.

Alberta NDP Win Would Be Disastrous, Federal Tories Warn

Some federal Conservatives are sounding the alarm as polls show the Alberta NDP stands an honest-to-goodness chance of forming government for the first time.

On Friday, federal Health Minister Rona Ambrose, who represents the riding of Edmonton—Spruce Grove, told reporters that an NDP government in her province could negatively impact the rest of Canada.

The rushed passage of Bill C-51 through Parliament, the furthest-reaching national security reforms in Canada since 2001, continues. It is soon to be passed by the House of Commons and then head off to the Senate. And all signs are that the government intends to push it through the Senate as quickly as possible, with an eye to the Bill becoming law before the summer Parliamentary break.

Debate in the House at both second and third reading has been limited. The numbers of hearing sessions before the Committee charged with giving it careful and thorough review were far less than required. It still defies belief, for instance, that faced with a bill that will lead to a new statute establishing the most expansive information sharing framework Canadians have ever seen, the government refused to invite the country's Privacy Commissioner to testify before the Committee.

New Ruling Is Bad News For Home Owners Looking To Sell Without An Agent

A push to make it easier for potential home buyers to see sellers' contact information online has been rejected by Canada's Competition Tribunal.

It's a setback for Canadians looking for a more do-it-yourself approach to real estate. The ruling, released Friday, said that the Canadian Real Estate Association's (CREA) current restrictions on the amount of information low-fee agents post on their popular realtor.ca website or any website that links to it are fair and do not contravene competition regulations.

Poor Justin Trudeau. During his infamous coalition flip-flop he looked like a deer caught in the proverbial headlights. He just didn't know which way to run. He's still in the spotlight and will be until he tries again to navigate the most vexing issue he is likely to face in the next six months of electioneering. He and his brain trust know that this question is not going to go away.

It's going to hang over his head right up until the election. The civil society groups and others who cannot bear to even imagine another Harper government will continue to up the ante, and his dodging and bobbing will wear thinner and thinner.

Sexual assault is any unwanted act of a sexual nature forced by one or more persons upon another individual. This includes unwanted touching (also known as sexual harassment) and rape.

Drugs or alcohol may be used to intoxicate the victim. This includes alcohol or drugs that the victim has consumed either voluntarily or involuntarily as well as the use of anesthesiaduring an operation or proceedure.

It's clear that men and boys are victims of sexual abuse, but 86 per cent of victims of sexual assault who reported to police in 2004 were female. This article will focus on sexual assault as a women's and girl's issue.