Democracy gone Astray

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, August 29, 2015

Keystone XL Pipeline Fate Rests In Obama's Hands, Says Harper

MARKHAM, Ont. — Stephen Harper offered a glimpse Thursday of how he might distance himself from the Obama administration's long-awaited decision on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline: if it gets rejected, don't blame Ottawa.

Harper said U.S. President Barack Obama has never linked any particular Conservative policy to the decision-making process on the multibillion-dollar project, which would pump bitumen from Western Canada's oilsands to the U.S. Gulf Coast.

OTTAWA — The Conservatives are using former members of the Canadian military to act as security guards at their election campaign events, in addition to the RCMP officers who are assigned to the prime minister's personal detail.

The former Canadian Armed Forces soldiers, who are travelling with members of the media on the Conservative campaign bus, wear suits and earpieces much like the Mounties assigned to protect Stephen Harper.

One member of the private security team, a former sniper, escorted a man out of a Harper event with the help of RCMP officers Thursday in Markham, Ont., when he tried to line up behind journalists to ask the prime minister a question.

As Canada braces for the anticipated confirmation next week that it’s in a recession, a former chief statistician says the country has no one else to blame but itself.

Munir Sheikh told CTV’s Power Play on Thursday that the country is likely headed into a “made in Canada recession,” especially given recent news that the U.S. economy grew 3.7 per cent in the last quarter.

“Obviously we are doing something in this country, given that three quarters of our exports go to the U.S., which will make the economy pretty weak. So to some extent, our recession is a made in Canada recession.”

Last week there was a touch of bitterness in the Vancouver media sphere when it was discovered that Conservative Jason Kenney hosted a roundtable meeting for Chinese media only in Richmond.

Kenney is Canada's former immigration minister, and his presentation focused on the government's performance on immigration issues over the last nine years.

With nearly 15 per cent of Vancouver residents identifying a Chinese-language as their mother tongue, the demographic could be key for the Tories' voting efforts in British Columbia.

There are two cardinal rules for a leader's campaign tour. Rule one: the leader has to stay on message. Rule two: no screw-ups by the staff on tour or back in the war room.

Well, Stephen Harper has been off-message since the start of the campaign. And the Conservative campaign team has been screwing up on a regular basis, stepping on the leader's message.

Last Thursday, Harper made a nice family announcement about increasing the Adoption Expense Tax Credit from $15,000 to $20,000 for thousands of parents adopting children from Canada and abroad. Laureen and Stephen Harper walked in a field with a family and their adoptive daughter. The images were lovely.

"It's a big, big clusterfuck."

In private conversations and online, this is hardly an unusual descriptor for any number of debates in Toronto politics, perhaps trailing only "shitshow" and the elegant simplicity of "mess." Its use, however, is especially apropos as an encapsulation of the city's transit planning woes and our leaders' terminal inability to chart a course based on policy instead of populism.

Low income people in Alaska are on the verge of getting health care. So, in a story that’s become so familiar that it’s practically a cliché, Republican elected officials filed a lawsuit on Monday trying to prevent this expanded access to health care from happening.

As a bonus, they’re sending the bill for this lawsuit to the state’s taxpayers.

Sun Media Parliamentary Bureau Chief David Akin says Stephen Harper’s Conservative government cheats its way to power year after year.

Akin posted a diatribe about the Harper government’s record of cheating on a thread on his Facebook page. The post went viral.

To recap, the prime minister is not responsible. He is not responsible for appointing Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau to the Senate. He is not responsible for appointing senators from provinces in which they were not resident, and he is not responsible for their subsequent activities shilling for the Tories across the country at public expense.

And he is most certainly not responsible for the clandestine campaign, involving officials in his office, the chairman of the Conservative Fund Canada, and several leading Conservative senators, to repay Senator Duffy’s falsely claimed expenses on his behalf and conceal his misdeeds from the public. He is not responsible for his spokesman’s statements, even after the plot had been exposed, praising Mr. Duffy for “doing the right thing” and vouching confidence in his chief of staff, Nigel Wright.

Mike Duffy’s ads for the Conservative Party look surreal and ironic.

For instance, there were hundreds of personalized ones he taped where, clutching a rolled up piece of paper in his right hand and dressed in a dark suit against a black background, Duffy stares into the camera and says things like, “Hey Aaron, how’s it going? The Old Duff here.”

These were emailed to supporters.

Democracy gone Astray