Harper’s on thin ice snubbing the premier of Ontario

In December 2013, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne had a meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Parliament Hill to discuss plans to build infrastructure to allow miners to exploit the Ring of Fire mineral fields north of Thunder Bay.

Both sides said that the meeting went well, but the next day, Wynne complained to reporters that Harper wouldn’t agree to her plan to expand the Canada Pension Plan.

Woman dies after airport scanner interferes with her pacemaker

A woman fitted with a pacemaker has died after passing through an airport scanner in the southern Russian town of Ulan-Ude.

Diana Tolstova, 30, died in the airport minutes after passing through the scanner. Her husband Maxim, 33, said that they had provided papers proving that Mrs Tolstova was fitted with the heart device – which is adversely affected by airport scanners.

"I don’t know what happened but she went through it anyway," he told Central European News agency.

"When we got to the departure gate she began to feel dizzy and suddenly collapsed.

Finally, you can hold buy-to-let in your pension. Here's how

Buy-to-let landlords may be about to have their biggest dream come true: being able to hold their properties in a personal pension.

This would make any future capital gains tax-free. Holding residential property in a pension has previously been impossible.

The change, which comes about as a result of a new fund that invests in rental properties, could even see investors receive a windfall from the taxman if the value of their buy-to-let portfolios is boosted by tax relief when it is put into the pension.

The Absolute Worst Reactions To Obama’s Immigration Action

In announcing a plan for executive action on immigration Thursday, President Barack Obama did something similar to every president since Dwight Eisenhower — including Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. In fact, presidents have deferred the deportations of immigrants at least 39 times over the past 60 years, in orders that have affected as much as 40 percent of the undocumented immigrant population.

But to watch Republican commentary surrounding Obama’s announcement, one would have thought there was a constitutional apocalypse. Sen. Jeff Session (R-AL) warned that “the president is endangering our entire constitutional order.” House Judiciary Chair Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) said Obama’s “rogue” action “threatens to unravel our government’s system of checks.” And Rep. Steve King (R-IA) was ready to move forward with a three-step plan for all-out government obstruction and political retribution.

President Obama Acted Unilaterally on Immigration and the Right Is Predictably Outraged

President Barack Obama, who has issued fewer executive orders than any president since Grover Cleveland, issued a set of directives this week to protect 5 million undocumented residents from deportation. The new executive actions will allow undocumented parents of US citizens to stay in the country, and allow children who were brought to the United States by their parents to apply for employment visas. It also, according to various Republican critics, cements Obama's status as a dictator, a king, an emperor, and maybe even a maniac bent on ethnic cleansing:

Obama is a king. "The president acts like he's a king," Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said. "He ignores the Constitution. He arrogantly says, 'If Congress will not act, then I must.' These are not the words of a great leader. These are the words that sound more like the exclamations of an autocrat."

This will lead to anarchy. "The country's going to go nuts, because they're going to see it as a move outside the authority of the president, and it's going to be a very serious situation," retiring Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) told USA Today. "You're going to see—hopefully not—but you could see instances of anarchy. ... You could see violence."

He could go to jail. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) told Slate that the president might be committing a felony: "At some point, you have to evaluate whether the president's conduct aids or abets, encourages, or entices foreigners to unlawfully cross into the United States of America. That has a five-year in-jail penalty associated with it."

Is ethnic cleansing next? When asked by a talk-radio called on Thursday if the new executive actions would lead to "ethnic cleansing," Kansas Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach said it just might:

What protects us in America from any kind of ethnic cleansing is the rule of law, of course. And the rule of law used to be unassailable, used to be taken for granted in America. And now, of course, we have a President who disregards the law when it suits his interests. And, so, you know, while I normally would answer that by saying, 'Steve, of course we have the rule of law, that could never happen in America,' I wonder what could happen. I still don't think it’s going to happen in America, but I have to admit, that things are, things are strange and they're happening.

Kobach is hardly a fringe figure. He was the architect of the self-deportation strategy at the core some of the nation's harshest immigration laws.

Original Article
Source: motherjones.com/
Author: Tim Murphy

The Ohlone People Were Forced Out of San Francisco. Now They Want Part of Their Land Back.

"There are only three ways to get land," said Tony Cerda, chairman of the Costanoan Rumsen Carmel Tribe, in 2010. "You can buy it, have it given to you, or steal it." It's clear which one of those applies to his people, the Ohlone, who lived in the central California coastal region for thousands of years prior to the arrival of Spanish missionaries in the 1700s. The Ohlone once numbered as many as 15,000 on lands stretching from the San Francisco Bay to Big Sur. But following years of enslavement under the Spanish mission system and, later, persecution by settlers, they are now largely a people in exile.

Cerda's tribe—about 2,000 people living in the Pomona area east of Los Angeles—are now the largest contemporary Ohlone group in the state. They're leading the push for cultural recognition in the city of San Francisco. Specifically, they're asking the city for land to build a cultural center as part of a proposed shoreline redevelopment project in the Hunters Point Shipyard area. The area was once the location of a historic Ohlone village and burial site—one of over 425 in the San Francisco Bay region.

Ohlone leaders say a cultural center would highlight the oft-overlooked history of California's native people while serving as a permanent place for today's tribes to continue their song, dance, language, and art traditions. And they're also hoping to rebuild their cultural presence through community events like the annual Big Time Gathering, which took place in October in San Francisco's Presidio National Park. This year's gathering was the biggest yet, drawing more than 100 Native Californians from seven different tribes. Their goal is to honor their roots, says Neil Maclean, one of the event's organizers: "Through hearing them sing, seeing them dance, and joining with them in ceremony, the Ohlone will tell their side about what it is like to survive."

Original Article
Source: motherjones.com/
Author: Prashanth Kamalakanthan

Tories Slam Megan Leslie For Event Listing On Website Calling NATO Allies 'Warmongers'

A Conservative MP says he is "disgusted" by an event listing on the website of the NDP's deputy leader, in which attendees at this weekend's Halifax International Security Forum are called "warmongers."

NDP MP Megan Leslie allows hundreds of different community activities in Halifax to be promoted in the "events" section of her site, from holiday craft workshops to local basketball games. There's a disclaimer at the top of the page making clear "the topic of events listed do not necessarily reflect the views or position of the Member of Parliament or the New Democratic Party of Canada."

National Archives: Ok, So Maybe Letting The CIA Destroy Emails Wasn't A Great Idea

WASHINGTON -- The National Archives told lawmakers Friday that it is reconsidering its tentative approval of a new CIA records-keeping strategy that would have allowed the agency to destroy the emails of non-senior personnel, according to a letter obtained by The Huffington Post on Friday.

The National Archives’ backtrack comes after blowback from the agency’s top Senate overseers on the upper chamber’s Intelligence Committee, who wrote letters to the office this week blasting its green light to the proposal and its reliance on the CIA’s good faith.

The Fed Just Acknowledged Its Too Big To Jail Policy

WASHINGTON -- The federal government until recently shielded big banks from criminal prosecution out of concern that convictions may damage the financial system, a top Federal Reserve official said Friday, explicitly acknowledging a policy long denied by the Obama administration.

The admission came during a tense exchange between William Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) at a Senate Banking Committee hearing meant to explore the cozy relations between federal regulators and the banks they supervise.

Chief Tax-Dodging Officers

Republican and Democratic leaders don’t often see eye to eye on taxes.

But surprisingly, corporate tax reform looks like one area where there might actually be some potential for bipartisan action in Washington. This should be good news, since our corporate tax system is clearly hopelessly broken.

Here’s a stark indicator of just how broken: Last year, 29 of the 100 highest-paid CEOs made more in personal compensation than their companies paid in federal income taxes. That’s according to a new report by the Institute for Policy Studies and the Center for Effective Government.