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3/31/2006 Loose cannons sink ships, Harper Administration editionHT to Nunc Scio: I was not going to write about this since other bloggers have pounced on this today, but I'm joining in because I've been getting angrier about it as the day has progressed.
The Globe and Mail reported this morning that Conservative MP Colin Mayes, who represents the district of Okanagan-Shuswap riding, sent a column to several local papers earlier this week suggesting that members of the press who wrote distorted articles or pieces that in the view of the governing party did not accurately represent the intent of legislation or government policy should be imprisoned. Shades of Bible Bill Aberhart's attempts to gag the press in Alberta back in 1935.
Late today, however, Mayes retracted his statement saying he supported freedom of the press and regrets the earlier comments.. The fact remains, however, his original comments are on the public record.
It also points to the fact Harper can't control the loose cannons, especially when he's out of town in Cancun. Now that everyone's going back to Ottawa, it'll be fun to see what garbage comes out from all sides within the hallowed halls of the House of Commons and its committees, where all comments made by MPs are privileged.
Already, we're seeing a government elected on the principle of more democracy actually wanting to take it away from us, piecemeal, starting with styming the press. Could the next logical step be the creation of the office of gauleiter, or am I getting just a bit too much worried? I hope it's the latter but I can't be too sure anymore.
Read the definition for yourself at the link, and draw your own conclusions. I didn't even realize there was such a word until last year when Bob Woodward recalled how he first met Mark "Deep Throat" Felt, and how at one point Felt, number two at the FBI, referred to the Nixon Administration as gauleiters -- well before Watergate and even before Danny Ellsberg of the RAND Corporation leaked most of the Pentagon Papers.
Let me be clear: I am convinced Harper is absolutely not a facist, nor does he have those tendancies. But there are a lot of his team members who, while they are not like that themselves, have the ability to make off the cuff comments that could be misinterpreted -- and they are waiting on standby to start firing again, and he's going to have to hope this is the last time something like this happens during his term.
This is not the time for Canada's media to crawl and cowtow to Harper, as the US press has repeated done to GWB and who has missed repeated opportunities to call and his henchmen's bluffs, as Think Progress and Media Matters have repeated noted. The Four Estate of the True North need to keep digging and finding all the off the cuff comments and keep reporting on them over and over -- whether they are later retracted or not.
The more loose lips they find, the more we can hope the Conservatives will sink faster than a certain ship did off the Grand Banks some ninety-four years ago. Are there too many "saints"?About the highest honour a dead Roman Catholic may receive is the title of "Saint." So many have been created over the last twenty years or so, however, I'm beginning to wonder as a Catholic if the office has been so diluted that it's become a joke.
There used to be a very high burden of proof that had to be met. Not only did there have to be three medically verifiable "miracles" which happened, supposedly at the intercession of the candidate in question somewhere in the afterlife; they had to meet an even higher standard -- they led a life completely free from sin. One mistake, even an error in judgment, and it was game over. One typical way they check for signs of sanctity is to dig up the body. Most people's bodies have decayed to the skeleton. Saints traditionally have remained intact (unless they were cremated -- and given the Vatican now permits cremation, this may add new candidates to the list in the future).
The title used to be reserved for religious people and virgins. In recent years and perhaps in recognition that married people can lead lives of virtue as well, a growing number of lay people have also become eligible for sainthood -- including Canadians Georges and Pauline Vanier, who have been nominated for their humanitarian work (and whose candidatures, if successful, would make them the first married couple in centuries, if not ever, to win the title).
They used to have a "Devil's Advocate" office in the Vatican, someone whose job it was to dig up any and all the muck they could find about a canonization nominee -- come up with any reason whatsoever to deny them the august title of Saint. Under Pope John Paul II, the office was eliminated in 1983. The number of miracles has also been cut -- from three to just two. By some estimates, JP2 created as many saints as his precedessors in the previous five centuries -- combined.
Getting rid of the Devil's Advocate has allowed some people who probably don't deserve to be saints to make the short list of candidates who haven't been yet named saints but could very well be -- including Eugenio Pacelli a.k.a. Pius XII, who may have saved quite a few Jews (though not nearly enough, in my opinion) from extinction during WWII but who also turned a blind eye to the atrocities in areas under Nazi control which in effect gave Hitler carte blanche. He should have excommunicated Adolf, even posthumously. He did not. Frankly, and I'm not the only Catholic who thinks this, if Pacelli was named a saint I would be very embarrassed.
Today, there are some people who bring complete contempt to the name Roman Catholic. I'm not talking about guys like John Kerry and Ted Kennedy. At least they're willing to own up to at least a few of their faults and admit their struggle between their personal convictions and some of the Church's teachings.
No, I'm talking about outright amoral -- I'm not going to use the word in this post, but it is one of the unholy seven words of George Carlin -- people like Zimbabwe's dictator, Robert Mugabe. Things have gotten so bad there that most women can't even get proper sanitary products anymore. He's forced people off their land without compensation and turned the breadbasket of Africa into the world's basketcase. And he has the termerity to call himself a Catholic?
JP2 should have excommunicated him, because Mugabe is beyond any repentence whatsoever. Much as I would like Benedict XVI to show Mugabe the door, I doubt it'll happen while he's alive -- it could make things in Zimbabwe even worse.
Meanwhile, JP kicked out or censured a fair number of Catholics who actually stood up for the historic faith even if their viewpoints -- technically and Biblically accurate as they may have been -- violated official Church doctrine or rubbed the Vatican the wrong way.
It goes back to the definition of "Saint," as I was taught it was in school -- someone who doesn't sin. That definition doesn't exist anymore, which is disappointing.
It's that very rare breed of people, the proud and virtuous, but they do exist and should be so honoured. Many of the rest of them who got the title "Saint," I'm not so sure about. Maybe it's time to bring back the Devil's Advocate and give them a second look. I think at least a few would be dropped from the list if people really took a hard look at their lives -- many of which are still within living memory of those who truly knew them and remain in this world today.
So does JP2 deserve to be a saint? Well, I think there shouldn't be such a rush to judgment as the current stampede wants -- calling him "John Paul the Great" right after he died a year ago this weekend was a bit over the top.
They should put aside the file for maybe five, ten years so we can think about whether he really ended Communism or whether the people in Eastern Europe rose up and ended it themselves. Then, and only then, should the discussion of canonization begin.
The Vaniers definitely deserve to be saints.
Given JP2 refused to stand up to Mugabe and a couple of other self-styled "Catholic" dictators in Africa and Latin America in the name of political expediency, I think that as great as he may have been he does not deserve to be of the "Greats." 3/30/2006 Game over for MLB's biggest stars?Former US Senator George Mitchell has been asked by Major League Baseball to conduct an investigation into allegations of steroid use by some of the game's top players, including Barry Bonds.
All I can say is, it's about time! Why the child care issue is important to me: I used to be a kid, tooI've noticed with some increasing frequency that people -- both in my inbox as well those at work who know I write this blog -- want to know why the issue of child care is such a big deal for me when I don't have kids.
True, I don't have children. Matter of fact, I'm now a year older than my Dad was when he had me. Given the fact my temperament is rated somewhere between choleric and sanguine, it's unlikely I'll ever be able to find someone to fall in love and have children with, much as I want to however. Just because I don't have kids doesn't mean I don't have a right and duty to speak out about it. In fact, having no kids I think I can look at this from a bigger picture.
Where and why I take the stand I do on this comes from my personal background.
I have at least one and perhaps two learning disabilities. They had a huge impact on my early development. They also indirectly made me extremely prone to temperamental outbursts for much of my childhood -- although thankfully I eventually got past the tantrums.
Fact of the matter is, I was diagnosed with autism. Now, I think that's a load of crap -- I don't exactly exhibit the signs that I do; not any more anyway. But I used to speak with an extreme lisp and a terrible stutter and to make matters worse I mistakenly thought English was a phonetic language. (Of course, it isn't.)
So here I was at three or four in a day care at Chedoke Hospital on the West Mountain of Hamilton, when it was still a hospital. (Now, it's just mostly a research centre when that part of the city is growing by leaps and bounds -- fucking Ontario Ministry of Health!) This was a program for special needs kids like me, and I was just a hell raiser. I must have made Mrs Gerber and Mrs Henderson's life a living nightmare. It also cost my parents a fortune -- they had to postpone a few vacations because of that. With after tax money, of course.
On to kindergarten. I didn't make Mrs Jamieson's life any easier either. To make matters worse, while I was as smart as any in the group, one student was even smarter and she had the vocabulary of a high school student; and she was fluent in French, too. This was not an immersion program by the way and she was an Anglophone. While I kept up with the schoolwork, my behavioral problems got worse and worse. So much that one day, I took the "pull down" message on the fire alarm literally and pulled it down -- even though there was no fire. I didn't understand that it meant "in case of emergency."
They decided, without consulting me, that I really needed help. Let me repeat that, I had no say in this, I wasn't even asked if I needed a time out -- they just forced me.
So for the better part of two years, I was transported by taxi from my suburban Stoney Creek home to another Catholic elementary school on the East Mountain of Hamilton -- in what can be best called the "Leg Up" program. To this day, I still harbour a bit of resentment at that. Somehow, though, the triumverate of teachers in the all grades program -- Mesdames Rankin, Weusten and Barnes -- got through to me. I also became good friends with the principal, Mr. Peet, who understood my classmates and I needed a break.
By the time I was ready to go back to regular school in Grade Three, I was doing math at a fourth grade level and I had mostly controlled both my lisp and stutter. Mostly -- I still have a slightly strained accent that comes off as sounding American, something I still get comments on when I work the phones at the call centre.
I still had the odd outburst and there are times when at work and at home I just feel like pounding the desk. But we're all like that to an extent, I guess. Perhaps now I could be considered as "normal, with a few odd quirks." Not quite eccentric though.
I do dwell on those early years however and three things come up.
First was my first experience of being confronted with death. During the Christmas 1979 season one of my classmates in the "special" program, an heiress to a now defunct cactus fortune, died of complications from leukemia. What I remember about her was she was so tiny, almost a midget, yet she had a heart of platinum. I also remember that no one ever told me about her death until after the holidays were over. I would have wanted to pay my respects to her at the funeral home. I wasn't even asked to sign a sympathy card. I still am angry about that to this day -- but it's softened over time because I now guess her parents were just as exasperated with the course of her progress as my parents were at mine, although we had very different problems.
The second was the fact that I was a product of the daycare system. Given my needs, it was very expensive in those days and I think it would be many times more now even with inflation factored in.
But it worked, albeit much longer than expected.
The third was that until I was eighteen, my late Mom continued getting family allowance cheques, slightly indexed once a year but a laughable amount -- something like 34 bucks a month in the final year, 1990. It of course was taxed and since a few years my mother stayed at home, it ended being taxed in the name of my Dad, since his spousal amount dropped by an equivalent amount.
That gets to the heart of my argument about child care and why I take it so personally.
Special needs or none, rich or poor, and regardless of race, Canada's pre-school children need to be able to get afforable and accessible child care. People keep pointing to the fact Québec's $7 per diem program is actually a windfall for middle and upper class parents while poorer families don't get much out of it, and that can be a concern. However, when you see a province like Saskatchewan threatening to cancel the expansion of Junior and Senior Kindergarten because of Harper's ideas about the issue and many cities and towns across Canada scrambling to figure out a way to keep programs going without offloading the costs to local ratepayers, you begin to see what the problem is -- and what the Harper program is really about.
I have never said Paul Martin's plan is perfect. It is, however, a first step in the right direction -- an understanding that if we build it they will come. It also understands that different provinces have different needs and that's completely understandable in a federation as vast and diverse as Canada's is. It's not meant to be a permanent arrangement, the agreements were for five years and meant to be improved on.
Harper says he wants to replace it with a per capita payout, plus subsidies for big business to build spaces. Well, first point -- as word gets around, more and more Canadians are beginning to realize the hundred bucks isn't a hundred, it's way less. Since other refundable credits are clawed back and income taxes are going up under Harper along with a GST cut that is worth far less than what an income tax cut would have been worth -- families will be worse off, not better. Net result is the average family will get even less under this plan, adjusted for inflation, than they did under the old family allowance.
On the second one, there's no set of standards or even guidelines; not even oversight. For all we know, they could claim they're building spaces but instead they're enriching the stock option plan for their senior executives. Like some committing GST fraud by selling phantom cars to Indian Reservations and the United States and getting rebates for cars they never bought in the first place, there would be no way to audit whether spaces had even been built in the first place.
That's not Choice in Child Care. That's Cowardice in Child Care.
I wish there had been the much more generous child tax benefits when I grew up as well as affordable day care. My parents would not have had to make the sacrifices they made in the early part of my life. Because of that and similar stories I hear about from my generation, those with special needs and those without, I am convinced more than ever that today's crop of parents and kids shouldn't be forced to make the choices my parents were forced to make at great personal expense.
The opposition parties must hold their ground. The agreements with the provinces and territories must be respected, and the tax-free Canada Child Tax Benefit brought up to a livable level -- both at the same time.
So the answer is yes: You're damn right I take this issue personally. Because I was a kid once -- and Harper seems to have forgotten he once was, too. 3/29/2006 Harper's splitting hairs on lobbyistsStephen Harper promised more accountability, but he's already begun to hold Cabinet meetings without notifying the press first when a meeting will happen -- as is standard practice in most democratic states. Just like dictators do.
Now, we learn that he's trying to split hairs by allowing former staffers for now Cabinet ministers to lobby the government despite his promise to impose a five year ban on people turning around. His argument, says today's Globe and Mail article, is that they were Parliamentary aides and not ministerial ones.
Does Harper really think Canadians are that stupid? We're less than a week away from Parliament reconvening, and already he's setting himself up (quite possibly, albeit remotely) for a vote of non-confidence on sitting day ten -- the earliest such a motion can pass. Day one is the election of a new Speaker, day two is the Speech from the Throne, the next eight are the debate on the Throne Speech.
For heaven's sake, we have already had one election this year. Several provinces have theirs this year as well, and Ontario (and maybe the other provinces) are going to have local elections in the fall. Running back and forth to the polls is not my idea of a stable democracy.
If Harper wants to be PM at least as long as Joe Clark, he'd better get a new attitude and fast. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt back in January, the night he was elected (even though I voted for someone else) but my patience with him has just about expired. So too will that of many other Canadians if he doesn't stop a moment to realize he leads a minority or "hung" Parliament.
At least he has to be held accountable to Parliament -- not like in the States where You Know Who can do whatever he damn pleases without being questioned.
Fasten your skates, folks. We've only just begun. What next for Israel?Kadima didn't do as well as originally thought -- not well enough to go into coalition just with Labour -- but they are going to be the largest party in the 120-seat Knesset, and Ehud Olmert will continue to be Prime Minister. This means the planned withdrawal from much of the West Bank is likely to proceed. For a party that was formed just a few months ago, the win is almost unpredecented -- in the sense that, in the democratic world, for a bunch of newbies or people who broke away from other well established parties to just come to power like that.
The real shock, however, is Likud. Long the favourite of many US televangelists, they finished not in second or third place, but fifth, behind a party backed by immigrants. Also doing well was a one-issue party that ran on the issue of enhanced pensions and free prescription drugs for seniors.
Israel is one of the very few countries that has pure proportional representation, where you get in if you just get 2% of the popular vote. Coalitions rise and fall so fast it's hard to keep track, but I think Olmert might be able to put together a stable one, one that should last to what his end goal is -- a final settlement with the Palestinians.
My sense is that Hamas had better get used to the new reality. They're going to get a country whether they're ready for one or not. Given the border is almost certainly going to be the "security fence," some parts of which are well beyond the 1967 "Green Line," it is going to be in their best interest to negotiate for what they can get. That includes the water rights.
Some are never going to want peace, others just want to annex the Occupied Territories outright. Like in so many other places, I think there is a middle ground ... and it can be sought without triggering the so-called "final countdown" that the false preachers are so eager to pounce on in their never ending hatred of all things Arab and Muslim.
Hey, guys, if you hate them so much, stop using Arabic numerals and start using the Roman ones, e.g. 1967 becomes MCMLXVII. Try doing your falsified income tax returns that way, and even you'll begin to understand why we need to make peace with the other guys. Dr Tom Cruise, MDHT to Andrew Sullivan: On the news that Katie Holmes will be forced to shut up (or else) while giving birth to Tom Cruise's love child any day now, some clever person came up with this clever "interview" with Dr. Tom Cruise, MD. If this one doesn't give a better memorandum on what Scientology believes or could have happened but for their intervention, I don't know what is.
3/28/2006 "They get letters" -- they printed mine about Harper's child care "plan"When my local paper ran an op-ed piece about the Harper plan last Thursday, they mistakenly called it a "tax credit," when we all know that in fact it is taxable income. So I sent an e-mail to their editor. The whole weekend goes by, and so did most of yesterday and I figured they just dumped it in their delete bin. Then I get a voice mail mid day yesterday saying they were going to print it -- which they did today.
You can find it here, at the Hamilton Spectator. In case the link doesn't work, I'm also putting it here.
Lest there be any doubt about my position, I'll state it again as clearly as I can: A promise made is a promise that must be kept no matter who rides the horse. The current child care agreements should be respected, and should be built upon to get rid of the rough edges if need be. However, if Harper wants to pay parents a hundred bucks a month, he should let them keep the hundred bucks. All of it. 3/27/2006 I used to like Lou Dobbs, until he starting ranting 24/7It's Cesar Chavez Day, and across America people the last few days have been protesting a new immigration law that would make it a felony to be an illegal immigrant and would put more funding into building a Berlin Wall along the US - Mexico border along the sections that currently are not fenced.
Over a half million people took to the street of LA the other day. Even more remarkable is that hundreds of students in the city walked out of classes today to express their disgust -- and they're not all Hispanic. The school administrators tried to lock down the schools and fenced them in, but they still climbed over them so they could attend the protests. Bully for them.
It all comes down to the issue of what to do with the undocumented workers. Should there be a general amnesty offered to those who've been here a certain amount of time? Or should they be rounded up and sent home? After seeing how a Portuguese family was sent back from Toronto forcibly over the weekend -- and given my father was a legal refugee -- it's a very sensitive topic for me.
Frankly, I would prefer those who want to come here to use legal channels to cross the border. However, there have been people who have lived in Canada and the United States -- illegally -- for years. They've broken no laws and mind their own business. They contribute to the economy. They're not going to go away without a fight, and after having thought about it for a long time I've come to the conclusion they should be allowed to stay; provided they come forward, make their status legal and pay back taxes within a reasonable period of time.
Lou Dobbs, who for the most part is the smartest money person on TV -- maybe only CNBC's Maria Bartiromo is his equal -- has made a forceful point on the issue of outsourcing jobs to Third World countries. It has become a plague, and something that both countries that straddle the 49th should be worried about. Where I draw the line with him, however, is on the issue of illegals. Contrary to what he may want us to believe, the "citizen patrols" are little better than vigilantes and are not patriots whatsoever.
By all means, beef up the resources so border patrols can do their jobs. That includes the Canadian patrol. Fences aren't really necessary in this high tech world -- and besides, people can always go underground, literally.
We should also show compassion for those who are already here. Provided no other criminal acts have been committed during their time here, they should be allowed to stay.
If I was in the States, I'd be taking to the streets too. Congress should be voting this thing down and telling Bush to offer an amnesty, not a so-called "undocumented worker" program.
UPDATE (4:12 PM EST, 2112 GMT): Turns out I'm not the only one pissed off at Lou. So is Media Matters. Is the Caledonia blockade coming to a head?A little while back, I made note of the current blockade of a housing development in the community of Caledonia, which development abutts the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, the largest reservation in the country. As I mentioned, the protestors claim the new subdivision is on traditional native territory which the Government stole.
It looks like this one might be coming to a head. Last week, a judge issued an injunction ordering the protestors to cease and desist or be held in contempt. Most packed up, but some are holding in. They claim the courts have no jurisdiction -- they want direct negotiations with the Crown.
The Hamilton Spectator (still "temporarily" free to non-paid subscribers) reports this morning that the normally cordial relations between Caledonia and Ohsweken are starting to get just a bit testy. The two communities do a fair amount of business with each other. People in general don't think it'll get to the point of Oka or Ipperwash, but the normal goodwill between natives and non-natives is being pushed to the limit the longer this goes on.
The article notes, and I do have to agree with it, that the problem may have a bit to do with urban sprawl. While there is a fair sized "greenbelt" separating Hamilton and Caledonia -- mostly agricultural land, actually -- many people have moved to the latter community which is part of the massive County of Haldimand (50% larger than the Hamilton "Megacity") because of the much lower taxes. Just drive through the main drag, Argyle Street (the Haldimand extension of Upper James Street) and it's often bumper to bumper even during non-peak hours. Not at all like in the days of my youth when I just zipped through town on the way to the beaches of Lake Erie.
It's like about the only thing that Six Nations and Caledonia now have in common is the native radio station and their Sunday Night Bingo. That's not meant to be perjorative, of course; but when natives and non-natives are now forced to do business on the sly because of the ongoing standoff, one can understand where this might be headed.
At least most residents on the non-native side understand the natives have a gripe and it needs to be settled; and the sooner the better. I hope it is. I don't want to be forced to take a long detour to get to Port Dover or Long Point just because two normally civilized groups can't agree on something as simple as the right to who has what. Besides, Caledonia despite its rapid growth is still the kind of place I'd like to raise a family when I finally have one of my own -- the small town values I never got to have because I grew up in what really was suburbia. 3/26/2006 Why aren't charities being more scutinized?Today's edition of the Washington Post has this Page One story about a former aide to Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX) pocketing a large chunk of the funds from a charity called the US Family Network that was set up to try to influence Congress to adopt a so-called "pro-family agenda" (and by pro-family, they of course mean women banned from the workplace, gays and lesbians in prison, all forms of birth control banned, etc.).
Edwin Buckham and his wife Wendy, according to the report, took salaries and other payments totalling over a million dollars; nearly a third of the just over 3 million the group took in over a five year period during 1996-2001. This, during a time when Mr Buckham was still in Delay's employ and the latter was beginning to set up the attack dog methods to ensure the GOP kept its grip on the House. It also appears that people working on behalf of USFN did not register as lobbyists until 2000 -- in other words, they were probably acting illegally during the first four years.
Moreover, most of the money that was donated to the "charity" came from clients of the convicted Jack Abramhoff; who as I write this is still cooperating with prosecutors and could possibly take down quite a few more members of Congress, mostly Republicans but possibly a few Democrats too, before it's all over. Early meetings had nothing to do with family issues either -- one of them discussed the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), a US territory.
This story raises two issues for me. I could pound these down to the ground, like I'm trying to do on the child care issue, but I'll be rather brief this time.
First: I am not against not for profit groups lobbying for money or legislative changes -- whether it's the charitable arm of a church (such as the Development and Peace branch of the Roman Catholic Church of Canada), a performing arts group (like the Stratford Festival) or a charity as we traditionally understand it (like the Red Cross) . They just need to make clear where their community service ends and their politicking begins. If the sole purpose of a "charity" is lobbying, they should be taxed like a corporation is. If they use the mask of a charity to run real estate or take private trips and claim them as business expenses, they should be imprisoned and made to pay back all the money they stole plus penalties (I think in Canada, they can be as much as 200%) and interest.
Second: A general rule is that if a not for profit refuses to release its financial reports so we can scrutinize them for ourselves, they should be avoided at all costs. Even if they do, take a look at the administration costs. If they're spending more than twenty percent on salaries and fundraising, one has to ask what's really going on. Here in Hamilton, one local "charity" which may have been put out of business but still might be running -- not sure which, which is why I am reluctant to name it at this time -- claimed to raise money for a specific illness. But their annual report, according to the local daily, showed 92% of the money went as salary to its founder and president. Two or three percent was fundraising, leaving less than five percent going to kids with the disease. Frankly, the duped donors would have been better giving the money to well established and more commonly known research groups which actually spend money on research.
The government here in Canada is doing a good job of keeping most not for profits in line, but they could do much better. Since the groups can often claim property tax exemptions, it's also a local issue and we need to make sure the downloading from provincial governments doesn't negatively impact those of us who are honest with our dealings with the powers that be.
As for the States, the IRS would be well served in keeping a tight leash not just on lobbying groups like the one mentioned above but also preachers like Benny Hinn. The Treasury is supposed to be collecting taxes on behalf of all, without playing favourites with anyone regardless of political affiliation. They need to spend less time going after innocent spouses who got slammed by their criminal spouses on joint returns and more going after the real cheats -- presuming, of course, guys like Hinn did break the laws, which right now are just allegations. 3/25/2006 Teaching kids values Part II: Gratitude and making the world betterI couldn't believe the temerity of some commentators, including Michelle Malkin and Rush Limbaugh, when they criticized the rescue of the Christian Peacemaker Teams hostages on Thursday because they didn't thank those that got them out, including black ops from Canada, Britain and the US. Are they actually saying the CPTers should be "unrescued" or handed back to the terrorists?
Perhaps the right wing forgets -- or I believe, would rather ignore -- the Bible story about how Jesus healed ten guys with leprosy -- or Hansen's Disease, or whatever they call it nowadays -- and only one thanked him. Moreover the one who was thankful was a Samaritan, the sworn enemy of the Jewish people. Years ago, Dale Carnegie pointed out we shouldn't get bent out of shape over people's ingratitude because we shouldn't expect to get any more than Jesus got.
I do think, however, that gratitude is a learned virtue.
So adding to my thoughts about values last month, I say what kids value number two should be. I agree with Carnegie on this point: We should teach our kids to be grateful -- how to be, and when to be. Sometimes, when people least expect us to be grateful.
Flowing from that, it's also important to keep in mind that unlike today's faith healers Jesus didn't take back his miracles or blame the recipient later on, because of ingratitude or lack of faith. When he healed, it was permanent. That should also set an example for our kids: Don't just treat the symptom, go at the root cause. Make the world a better place for others, not for ourselves.
I'm not so naïve -- or heretical -- as to think that we can have heaven on earth. But surely we can prove we're worthy for the next world. 3/24/2006 My grade for Ontario Budget 2006: B-After a quick review of Ontario's budget for 2006 (they really should say 2007 since it covers the year ending March 31 of next year), here are my thoughts:
A good budget, however. Not excellent -- as in Paul Martin excellent during his prime as the Federal Finance Minister -- but good nonetheless. Under pressure, Dwight Duncan tried to strike the right balance, and for the most part did. I give it a B-. 3/23/2006 WB offers two versions of "Bedford Diaries"If this is a sign of the times, I'm not sure whether to be worried or perplexed. Today's edition of the New York Times is reporting that The WB -- frightened by the recent FCC crackdown on "indecency" -- will offer two versions of their new series The Bedford Diaries -- that had been cleared by the network's Standards and Practises Department but was given a second look. Several scenes were cut out of the final broadcast version that will air next week -- including two girls kissing and another girl unbuttoning her jeans, according to the NYT. However, in an unusual decision, the network will offer the uncensored version on their website, starting today. While the network insists the pilot as done by director Tom Fontana (best known for St. Elsewhere and Oz) meets FCC guidelines, they also indicated they felt a lot of pressure from the Super Bowl "incident." I've heard of some networks running two versions of a movie simultaneously, on the main network and one of their partner cable arms. Such as when ABC ran a movie about controversial basketball coach Bob Knight -- they showed one version with a lot of bad words bleeped out on ABC; at the exact same time they showed the director's cut on ESPN. Guess which one got the higher ratings? To see them doing this may be a realization that the iPods and other methods of viewing programs other than on TV is here to stay. It also makes one wonder whether the crackdown has gone too far. In the EU, for instance, the pilot episode in question here would have cleared the censors without breaking a sweat. It also indicated Neilsen and Arbitron have to change the way they count people watching. Currently, people in bars and dorms are not counted and certainly not people who download radio or TV shows onto their iTunes or other mp3 players. It'd be interesting to see whether more people download the Fontana version than watch the "FCC approved" one. If this is Ralph's idea of "sobriety ... "As the countdown to today's Ontario budget continues, I note with a bit of sadness at the missed opportunities that Alberta passed up on in their provincial budget yesterday.
For a province with about $7 billion coming up the wazoo for the year ending on March 31st, one would think they would have eliminated the health (head) tax or cut the flat provincial income tax. Instead, the average Albertan will get an income tax cut of just ten bucks. You can barely buy lunch for two at most fast food joints with ten dollars. The lion's share of the cuts will be cuts to the already low corporate income taxes, and subsidies for the province's horse racing industry.
Schools are crumbling, so are hospitals. Any new money for them? Not a lot.
There's a housing shortage in boom towns like Calgary and Fort McMurray. Is there money to address that? Not much. What about boosting public transit or twinning jam packed highways to remote towns that more and more are no longer remote because they're meeting the coming challenge to peak oil? Don't make me laugh.
Alberta seemed like the kind of place I would have liked to live -- the open skies, the clean air, the volatile temperature swings. Then along came Ralph Klein. He's not so much a conservative as he is a reactionary. He increased choice in hard liquor in the big cities, but practically eliminated it for small towns. And that was just the booze.
It's worth remembering he did most of the damage while he was drunk. Now that he's stone cold sober, one can only shudder at what he would have done if he never touched demon run or even nettle wine once in his life. Or yet another missed opportunity to make Alberta a place for everyone now that he's walked away from that nasty part of his life.
I really don't care if our politicians are drunk. Just as long as their judgment doesn't impair the lives of the people they've been elected to serve.
The long term damage is already starting to bear fruit. Alberta seems like such a cold place now. Only reason why I want to go there now is to visit, and just the friends I have.
Ontario's starting to turn the corner. I can only hope the government here starts to get its priorities straight again. They could start by getting rid of the health tax. 3/22/2006 Opposition parties' ultimatum: Give in on child care, or it's no-confidenceIt's a longshot, but all three of the opposition parties are threatening to bring down Stephen Harper's government if he doesn't show a willingness to compromise on the child care issue in the Throne Speech -- so says this morning's edition of the Toronto National Post.
This could prove to be a very, very interesting scenario. Does Harper then go to our de facto head of state, Michaëlle Jean, and ask for a spring election? Or does Madame Jean give the Liberals the chance to cobble together a coalition?
Paul Martin is officially out of the picture, or at least that's what we've been led to believe. Then again, Joe Clark thought Trudeau was gone forever until the former didn't get his math right (but then lowly MP Bob Rae did) and lost the Créditistes on the eighteen cent a gallon tax increase. Trudeau came roaring back, and Clark's more pragmatic vision of a "community of communities" was vanquished in favour of PET's One Canada.
Can you imagine the party suddenly asking Martin to come out of semi-retirement (well not exactly, he has promised to serve a full term as the MP for the Lasalle-Émard district of Montréal), to go to the voters and do his rendition of the Gatlin Brothers' hit song, "Won't You Give Me Just One More Chance?"
Somehow, I can't imagine Bill Graham agreeing to be Prime Minister if he was going to be just an interim head of government until this fall's convention. But stranger things have happened -- I'm young enough to remember the rise and fall of Clark. He lasted nine months. If Harper doesn't take the bait, he could be gone in two; and even the West who wanted in for so long are probably going to punish him for squandering his chance.
UPDATE (4:50 PM EST, 2150 GMT): I "assume" nothing, No Name. I suspect another election would result in pretty much the same stalemate too -- which is why I'm going with Jean turning to the Liberals first and give them another chance. An out of the gate no-confidence vote is quite rare in Canada -- and like I said at the top, it's an outside chance. But nothing should be taken for granted. Harper will want at least a year to try some of his ideas, so I suspect he might back off on the child care issue for now; rather than risk a quick fall and giving world markets the impression Canada's not a stable place to invest anymore.
After all, the last thing we need is a situation like there used to be in Italy -- if you didn't like the government, you just had to wait ten minutes. 3/21/2006 Helen Thomas stands up to Dubya ...Bigtime. HT to TPM.
Don't take my word for it -- or Josh's: Read the official White House transcript for yourself. At least the legendary Washington correspondent has some backbone. If only Tim Russert and Katie Couric would get some, too. Alternative Minimum Tax: It's not just an American gorillaThere was an article I saw this morning (via Disinformation) about the effect of the Alternative Minimum Tax in the United States and how rather than hurting the super wealthy, as it was originally designed to do when first introduced in 1969, it actually is a whammy against the upper middle class -- those with incomes between $200,000 and $500,000 US; as well as people who draw their incomes from the resource based industries like farming, fishing, forestry and so forth.
Canada introduced the AMT in 1985, and all the provinces and territories quickly followed suit -- including Québec for its segregated income tax regime. It's hard not to see why: It goes after people who use the kinds of deductions that are designed to defer or even eliminate taxes all together, especially so-called tax shelters.
There's a rough explanation at the Canada Revenue Agency's site of how it works, here; but in a nutshell, the AMT requires individuals who try to take one of those deductions to do a separate calculation. You add back in the sheltered write-offs, subtract a deductible of $40,000, then multiply by the lowest tax rate (currently 15% federally, although Stephen Harper's going to bring it back up to 16% next month). If the AMT is higher than regular tax, the AMT applies. The good news is that for most it's a one time hit, so the "minimum tax carryover" (the difference between regular and minimum tax) can be carried over for seven years to a year when AMT doesn't apply to write down regular income tax.
Consider it a retainer of sorts, except the government can then invest that money at market rates and we don't get the interest back when we get back the retainer.
There are no figures I'm aware of that suggest how many people are liable to the AMT, but it's worth noting that the $40,000 deduction has remained unchanged since 1985. During that time, the Basic Exemption has gone from about $4,000 to $9,000. One would think that, at the very least, they should be keeping up with inflation on minimum tax as well. They haven't, which can only lead one to presume that more people are being hit by it.
Most software programs as well as tax filing agencies will flag this for filers and offer suggestions on how not to be hit the next year; but imagine those souls still brave enough to do their taxes by hand -- and weeks later after filing, they get a huge ten page letter from Surrey, Sudbury, Shawinigan or Summerside saying: "You did not submit a T691, as the law requires you to. Please remit the minimum tax immediately, in the amount of X" The first question that's asked is, what the blank is a T691?
The AMT has become the five hundred pound gorilla that's threatening families in the United States but could wind up a huge windfall for the cash strapped US Treasury.
Before it gets to that point in Canada, we need a discussion on how it affects ordinary Canadian families -- and probably more than we think. At the very least, we need the kinds of tax policies that allow parents to raise their kids with dignity such as real child care expense deductions or credits and a tax free transfer of assets from parents to children; and at the same time figure out how to make a tax designed for the 1980s when there were a lot of scofflaws, work in the aughts when CRA is more and more staying (and finally, thank God) one step ahead of the cheats.
The last thing we need are people jamming our prisons because they had to pay a tax they didn't even know existed -- or applied to them. Head of Anglican Church: Thumbs down on Intelligent DesignThe Anglican Archbishop of Cantebury, Rowan Williams, has said that he thinks creationism or intelligent design should not be taught in schools -- although he thinks it should be discussed. Guess there's a distinction to be made there.
No further comment is necessary; other than when my Catholic high school talked about evolution in Grade 9 science and said further it was the most likely explanation for how the world was created, that was satisfactory enough for me. Not definitive, mind you -- but satisfactory. My previous entry about why I think ID should not be taught in schools is here.
3/20/2006 A Tale of Two HurricanesA category five cyclone -- what they call hurricanes in the South Pacific -- slammed into Australia today. Plenty of property damage; and the sugar and banana crops for this year have been wiped out. Unlike Katrina, however, Larry appears (as of my writing this) not to have caused serious injury or death.
The Land Down Under has a right-wing government, one that Harper may be trying to emulate in trying to restructure our social programs here.
However, unlike Dubya who had plenty of warning but didn't mobilize the Armed Forces to force people out before it was too late, the Aussie government of John Howard had plenty of warning and enough sense to evacuate the projected disaster zone well in advance. Perhaps in reward of this, the stock market in Sydney reached its highest ever close today.
True, the geography might be different and complicated by the fact New Orleans is below sea level and much of the rest of the Gulf Coast just a few feet above. However and inevitably, people in the States are going to look at what happened in Cairns and say, "Why the hell didn't our government do what they did down there?"
In other words, Americans are probably going to have to conclude, Australia has someone leading them who not only says he's a compassionate conservative but actually is one too. (Whatever "compassionate" passes for these days.) Bush 43 might want to take a hint for this year's hurricane season or his Republican party will be toast, no matter how disorganized the Democrats still are.
Canadians have always rallied around our own in times of disaster -- the Saguenay and Red River floods, the ice storm, the hurricane that hit Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island a couple of years back. There's also been, I think, a better sense of coordinating resources in the worst case scenario.
They were minor, however, compared to what havoc a Category Four or Five might do -- or, perhaps more ominously, The Big One. If Harper has any sense, he'll boost front line and community based emergency preparedness funding -- not slash it to subsidize a pointless foreign civil war like the GOP has done in the States.
UPDATE (12:46 PM EST, 1746 GMT): Thanks for the heads up, Roy. I have to admit that it may be a different beast down where you are... but still, with the kind of damage that there was, you've made the point I was trying to make; the authorities Down Under may not have anticipated the worst case scenario on such short notice but were still ready for it. I say kudos for that.
By contrast, it's been seven months since Katrina and I still can't believe how uncommonly unprepared the Americans were for it. I went down to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina the week after. They had been expecting a huge wave of "refugees" but what ended up arriving was a mere trickle ... for instance, the hotel I was at had thirty or so rooms reserved by the Red Cross for the aftermath; only two showed up, according to the manager. So even the recovery and relief effort was botched.
UPDATE #2 (3:58 PM, 2058 GMT): I am not entirely certain about the Aussie framework either, Pete; Roy did a better job explaining it. I am, however, well acquainted with the Posse Comitatus statute you refer to -- although if you ran those words on your search engine, the first thing that usually comes up is a certain white racist group known by the initials W, A and R; as I discovered to my chagrin serveral months ago.
I also have said on several occasions both here and in other forums that I am disgusted by the total lack of response at all levels of government and no plan for an Armageddon like situation before hand. The fact is there could have been and should have been some leadership at all levels, and the evacuation should have begun three or four days before.
The fact remains, people do look to the top. GWB simply could have phoned the state and local governments and asked: "This looks like it's going to hit, and hit hard. Is there any way we can help?" I doubt every life could have been saved, but a few hundred more could have been. |
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