Harper’s very political budget

Revolution, ladies and gents! Light the torches! In his December year-end interviews, Stephen Harper used the term “major transformations” a half-dozen times. He made fun of earlier majority prime ministers. They let the bureaucrats put them to sleep! For years! No chance of that happening to Harper. Major transformations, coming right up.

Fast forward to this afternoon. “We will eliminate the penny,” Jim Flaherty told the Commons. It was literally the first new policy measure he announced. “Pennies take up too much space on our dressers at home.”

Now you know why Trudeau and Mulroney and Chrétien were such snoozers. It was the pennies. Weighing them down all day. Cluttering their dressers at night. Pennies wear a guy down. Harper, the Interac Prime Minister, will be fleet of foot, full of vim, and ready for —

— major transformations? No. I don’t have a searchable electronic text of Flaherty’s speech, but I do not see the word “transformation” anywhere in it. The rhetoric is altogether more reassuring. “The reforms we present today are substantial, responsible, and necessary,” he said, and “We will stay on course,” and “We will maintain our consistent, pragmatic, and responsible approach to the economy,” and “We will implement moderate restraint in government spending.”

Fraudulent robocalls 'absolutely outrageous': chief electoral officer

Fraudulent robocalls pretending to come from Elections Canada are "absolutely outrageous" and should not be tolerated in a democracy, the chief electoral officer told parliamentarians Thursday.

"These are very serious matters that strike at the integrity of our democracy," said Marc Mayrand.

"Whether it was organized or bigger or whatever, the fact that electors, at least that we know in Guelph (Ont.), were misdirected by calls falsely made on behalf of Elections Canada is absolutely outrageous."

Mayrand suggested that Parliament consider strengthening the penalties for breaches of the elections law and said that the fines and jail sentences under the current regime are "disproportionately light."

"It should be sanctioned severely and we need to look at the legislation to see if we have the right framework in a modern democracy."

Mayrand was addressing MPs on the Procedure and House Affairs committee in his first public appearance since Elections Canada's investigation into the calls made was revealed last month.

Tory MP Breitkreuz lauded guns for teen girls, student's mom says

OTTAWA — Saskatchewan Tory MP Garry Breitkreuz found himself in hot water Thursday after an Ottawa mother complained he told a Grade 10 class that everyone in Canada should be armed — especially girls.

Dianna Sakisheway wrote a scathing letter to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews this week. Her complaint stems from a speech Breitkreuz — known as the father of the legislation to repeal the long-gun registry — gave during a career day at Canterbury High School on March 7.

"I am outraged at the irresponsible conduct of the federal government in promoting gun violence to schoolchildren," she wrote. "You have gone much too far."

"Mr. Breitkreuz spent most of his allotted time discussing firearms and cited a Texas study that showed women who carry guns are less likely to get raped, including a specific number of women who avoided rape as they were armed," Sakisheway wrote in another letter obtained by Postmedia News. "Stop assaulting the sensibilities of our children."

Newfoundland and Labrador Liberal MP Judy Foote — who was copied on the letter of complaint to Toews — raised the issue in question period Thursday.

‘Concerned citizens’ interrupt Flaherty’s budget speech

A group of about 16 protesters who say they are concerned about cuts to programs and services were escorted from the House of Commons after they interrupted Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s budget speech.

Wearing identical tee shirts, they stood in the visitor’s gallery and shouted “Where are we in the budget?” as Mr. Flaherty delivered his annual financial plan on Thursday afternoon.

They were taken by security guards to the basement of the Centre Block then released about a half hour later without being charged.

“We’re just a bunch of concerned citizens who really wanted to highlight how bad this budget is,” said Jo Wood, 73, who spoke for the group as they left the building.

“The pretext is that we are running out of money and have to go in to all this austerity when actually we feel that things like prisons and military jets and so on are being heavily funded,” said Ms. Wood who said she and her cohorts were not affiliated with any political party or organization.

“So we think it’s a matter of priorities and we think they’ve got the wrong priorities for the average Canadian,” she said.

10 Countries Spending The Most On Health Care: 24/7 Wall St.

24/7 Wall St.: This week, the Supreme Court considered President Obama’s health care reform law. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act expands health coverage to millions of uninsured Americans. If the law is overturned, health care costs covered by the federal government would drop substantially.

While government spending on health care could decline, that will not result in lower health care costs. Based on data published by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development on global health issues, 24/7 Wall St. identified the countries where health care costs are the highest per person.

Spending a great deal on health care does not result in a healthier population. Of 34 OECD member countries, only three that spent the most per person have citizens that live the longest. The United States spends more than any other country but only has the eighth-lowest life expectancy in the OECD. Japan, meanwhile, spends $2,878 per person — about $5,000 less than the U.S. — and has the highest life expectancy among developed nations.

According to OECD chief media officer, Matthias Rumpf, health care spending does not result in better treatment. In countries that spend more, he says, people opt for expensive tests and elective procedures that drive up costs. To discourage excess in Germany, for example, citizens are penalized if they see a specialist without first consulting their doctor.

Ryan Budget: Early Education Cuts Would Pull More Than Two Million Kids From Public Preschool

Even as a growing body of research attests to the importance of early childhood education as an antidote to poverty, the House is preparing to pass a Republican budget that would slash funding for Head Start, a federally funded program that provides a wide range of services to a million young children living in poverty and their families."

The plan, proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who chairs the House Budget Committee, would eliminate slots for about 200,000 children in 2014, according to an analysis by the National Education Association. Over the next decade, the NEA estimates, more than two million children would lose opportunities to attend Head Start centers as a result of the cuts.

As it stands, only 30 percent of eligible children participate in the program, but children's advocates tend to argue that the program should be expanded, not diminished.

The proposal "translates directly into lost opportunities and outcomes for our students," Roberto Rodriguez, President Barack Obama's education policy advisor, said on a Thursday call with reporters. "It really has the potential of turning us backwards."

Trayvon Martin's Email And Facebook Accounts Allegedly Hacked By White Supremacist

A white supremacist hacker claims to have broken into Trayvon Martin's email and social networking accounts and posted his private messages online.

"I realize that some of this information might be to [sic] extreme to believe," a hacker named Klanklannon wrote, according to Gawker, which has an original copy of the message thread posted to the popular, unruly message board 4chan. "That's why I offer you evidence. Here are my sources."

Editor's note: Some readers may find language in this article objectionable.

A slide posted to the message board titled "Trayvon Martin Used Marijuana Habitually," apparently shows a conversation between Martin and a friend about getting high. Another alleged that Martin was a drug dealer and showed a picture of Martin standing "aggressively with a large amount of cash in his hand."

Paul Ryan Budget: House Passes Plan 228-191

WASHINGTON — A divided House approved a $3.6 trillion Republican budget on Thursday recasting Medicare and imposing sweeping cuts in domestic programs, capping a battle that gave both political parties a campaign-season stage to spotlight their warring deficit-cutting priorities.

But the partisan divisions over the measure, which is dead on arrival in the Democratic-led Senate, also underscores how tough it will be for lawmakers to achieve the cooperation needed to contend with a tsunami of tax and spending decisions that will engulf Congress right after this fall's elections.

"This is very easy," Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan group that advocates debt reduction, said of House passage of a budget that will go no further in Congress. "When you get to the budget bomb at the end of the year, it's for real. You're going to actually have to pass something."

GOP 'War On Women' Loses Momentum In The States

At this time last year, GOP-controlled state legislatures across the U.S. were passing a record number of laws restricting women's access to reproductive health care. Now in the spring of 2012, as those same lawmakers attempt to impose new, harsher restrictions, they're meeting with a great deal more resistance from women.

In the past two weeks, four conservative state legislatures -- in Tennessee, Idaho, Pennsylvania and Arizona -- have backed off of controversial anti-abortion or anti-contraception bills after facing significant public backlash over the proposals. Women who previously weren't as politically active in those states have come out of the woodwork to protest, women lawmakers have introduced "message amendments" that target men's health, and legislators are personally hearing from angry women through Facebook posts, emails and phone calls to a noticeably higher degree than previous years.

"I would say there's some cautious optimism," said Elizabeth Nash, an expert on state policy for the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health policy research organization. "I do think the attention that has been paid to all of these restrictions is beginning to have an impact."

Foxconn Factory's Violations: iPad Factory Workers' Grievances Detailed In Report

The results of an audit of three Foxconn factories that manufacture Apple products has turned up "serious and pressing" violations of Chinese labor laws, according to a report by the Fair Labor Association, a non-profit commissioned by Apple to investigate Foxconn's facilities.

A team of five to seven inspectors from the FLA visited three different Foxconn factories -- two in Shenzhen, one in Chengdu -- and spent up to five days at each conducting hundreds of interviews with workers and managers in an attempt to understand what labor problems existed at the manufacturing facilities of China's largest employer.

According to the FLA's 13 page report, the non-profit "observed at least 50 issues related to the FLA Code and Chinese labor law, including in the following areas: health and safety, worker integration and communication, and wages and working hours." (See the full report below.)