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.]

Thursday, December 11, 2014

The US Government Deported 438,000 People in 2013. 83 Percent Never Got a Hearing.

The past couple of weeks have been filled with stories of relieved immigrants: Undocumented parents of American citizens, children who arrived in the United States years ago, and other immigrants without papers can step out of the shadows now that Obama has issued an executive action granting relief to 5 million undocumented residents. (Read more details on the president's plan here.)

OTTAWA - One terminally ill Canadian denied Canada Pension Plan disability benefits has been "diagnosed with brain cancer and is currently undergoing chemo and radiation treatments," according to the government's woefully backlogged social security tribunal.

Another of the tribunal's so-called crisis files, obtained under the Access to Information Act, describes an applicant as having been "diagnosed with liver cancer and received a liver transplant."

Recent visitors to Victoria International Airport will have noticed a massive silver-and-blue hangar on the west side of the airfield. At 215,280 square feet, the new building's floor area is larger than three soccer fields.

Built to house the Royal Canadian Air Force's much-anticipated Cyclone maritime helicopters, the hangar has cost taxpayers a cool $104 million. That's a lot of money for a facility to house and service just nine aircraft.

Ann Craft is a self-described strong willed and caring Irish woman who has been selling real estate in Central Alberta for 19 years.

But now she is getting rather upset.

"I'm more than pissed off. I'm appalled."

Appalled, she says, by the two-year fracking horror story she has lived through. And the consistent failure, she charges, of Alberta's regulatory bodies including Alberta Environment, Alberta Health Services and the Alberta Energy Regulator to do their respective jobs.

"It's mind-boggling."

For two years now Craft has been involved in a fight with the Alberta government over the structural damage to her property along with the appearance of strange substances on her land and dug-out along with changes to her well water due to oil and gas activity.

The federal government’s new financial transparency law for First Nations is a redundant piece of legislation based on a “complete lie,” according to a lawyer specializing in aboriginal law.

“Every First Nation has to file an audited financial statement with Indian Affairs every year to account for federal funds and it’s 100 per cent accessible by band members either through the band or Indian Affairs," said Ryerson University associate professor Pam Palmater on Power & Politics on Tuesday.

Shortly before 2 in the afternoon on Sunday, more than a dozen people walked onto an interstate near the Capitol in Washington and formed a human chain. Eight lanes of traffic came to halt. During rush hour the next morning, protesters closed down the Fourteenth Street bridge. And then the Twelfth Street tunnel. “Shut it down for Mike Brown,” they chanted.

In the week since a grand jury declined to indict Darren Wilson, the police officer who killed Michael Brown in August, demonstrations have occurred in more than 150 cities across the United States. In Missouri, protesters are marching 127 miles from Ferguson to Jefferson City, the state capital. Shopping malls and public-transit stations and major roadways have been shut down in several cities. On Monday at 12:01 pm—the time Brown was shot—workers and students across the country walked out of their offices and schools.

That a grand jury decided not to indict NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo for killing 43-year-old Eric Garner the same week that President Obama proposed spending $75 million in federal money to outfit 50,000 police officers across the country with body cameras would seem to be hack Hollywood writing with neatly applied plot points. Garner’s death was caught on video—video that the police were aware was being taken—and it still was not enough to indict anyone, least of all the man responsible for choking Garner to death, for any type of wrongdoing. It’s as if this decision was handed to us at this time in order to get us to say, “Now what?”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper on the federal campaign trail in 2011 pledged to allow spouses and common-law partners with children to split their incomes on their tax returns once the budget deficit was eliminated.

This would mean that when one partner is in a higher marginal tax bracket, that person would be able to split some income with the other person. When the money moves to the other return it is taxed at a lower rate and they save tax dollars.

VANCOUVER - Major Mark Campbell was lying in a hospital bed, just starting to comprehend losing both his legs above the knees in a Taliban ambush, when he found out the federal government had stripped his lifetime military pension.

"I expected to just move off into the twilight and retire, but unfortunately it's just like the clichè out of a Hollywood movie," said the Edmonton man, describing the conclusion to 33-years of service after a final tour in Afghanistan.

OTTAWA - Veterans Affairs spent millions less than it budgeted for maintaining war graves last year in cemeteries like those in Italy visited recently by Julian Fantino, a report reveals.

The departmental performance review of the memorial and cemetery maintenance program shows just 2,500 of 7,000 grave markers were properly maintained last year.

Fantino, the Veterans Affairs minister, is under fire for attending Second World War commemorations in Italy last week while controversy raged in Ottawa about his department's treatment of veterans seeking mental health benefits.

Democracy gone Astray