Klein Chokes

Well no sooner had the special privileges of the aristocracy around King Ralph been announced than the backlash swept over them.

While the peasants must butt out in public the King and his clowns could smoke in their offices in their castle on the shores of the North Saskatchewan. But the public outcry was a little too much. Public butts in; MLAs butt out

King Ralph choked when he and his courtiers arrogance was shoved back in their faces.

Liberal Endorses Edmonton Strathcona NDP Candidate

In an Edmonton Journal article yesterday profiling Edmonton Strathcona NDP candidate Linda Duncan, was the following endorsement from a local Liberal;

Elly de Jongh, a long-time Liberal who also is helping McLellan in Edmonton Centre, has known Duncan since they worked together on saving river valley communities in the 1970s. "I think she would be a real asset for Ottawa," de Jongh said. "

I would be putting that quote out in the campaign literature and on the front of her web page.

As I have said Edmonton Strathcona this time around is a two way fight between the Conservatives and the NDP.

And congrats to the Duncan Team running their web site they have added 'Citizens Media', comments and links to the blogosphere on their 'In the News' page.

Take note Brad Lavigne.

NDP Fights Back

With an attack TV ad that gives the Liberals the Xmas Boot....it's called The Gift very clever and very funny. Well done guys.

And their rapid response to the Liberals Gun Ban announcement was quotes from the community that the Liberals are supposedly speaking for, except nobody thinks the Liberals ban will work....The community is calling for more butter and less guns, but not a gun ban.

Attacking the Liberals is a good response to mitigate last weeks Buzz Factor.

Redmonton Votes

Daaveberta my fellow Redmontonianblogger has provided us with the voting numbers from the 2004 Election. So I left this comment on his site:

The Edmonton Strathcona numbers are telling, while some would look at this as vote splitting between the NDP and Liberals, the NDP actually improved their numbers, far beyond what they had gotten in the last two Federal elections in the riding. Now they did have a high profile candidate, which is one reason. The other may have been the Liberals ran a hand picked Martinite, who had been a provincial MLA. Togther the NDP/Liberal numbers show that Rahim Jaffir gets in up the middle. But I see no urge to strategic voting here where it might actually make a difference. Though with a high profile NDP candidate this time, and a no name Liberal the numbers might change in favour of the NDP.
The other two ridings to watch are Edmonton East total opposition numbers could defeat Goldring And they may coalace around the high profile NDP candidate there since the Liberals last time ran a high profile candidate, but this time its no-name brand.
And Beaumont-Mill Woods could go strongly Liberal as they have the only Indo-Canadian candidate running, the Conservatives ran Uppal last time and seriously challenged Kilgour with the South Asian vote, this time the Conservatives are running a no name White Guy....big mistake.....
Yep four ridings to be watched in Redmonton this time around. Place your wagers gentlemen.

Also See Redmonton Not In The Bag for the Conservatives

CTV does it again

Cutting edge at CTV on their Election Blog page. They now have Blogging Banter
where you can leave your comments unmoderated and they appear instantly. Gee just like a real blog. And of course the usual suspects are there plugging errr blogging away.

Note to Brad Lavigne; we know you don't read blogs, but maybe you should check this one out.......it is after all MSM which we know is all you respect.

The Real Liberal Hand Gun Ban

The majority of hand guns on the streets are illegal, smuggled in from the U.S.A. And we don't have enough border patrols to actually reduce the influx of smuggled guns. Well the Liberals are already enforcing a hand gun ban in Canada. No, not the one that severely restricts the legal ownership of hand gunds. Rather they continue to ban handguns from use by the very folks who patrol the borders. They are overworked, understaffed and un-armed. They also have no powers to arrest anyone for bringing guns into Canada!

The real Liberal Hand Gun Ban has been in effect for years, on the border guards. See how effective that has been.

A note; I am opposed however to issuing border guards Tasers, they are an offensive weapon that kills instead of stunning. Guns are guns, you know they are lethal. Arming border guards is sufficient.

CANADA EMPLOYMENT AND IMMIGRATION UNION FEDERAL ELECTION 2006

December 6, 2005 06:45 Tasers and sidearms needed by Immigration Officers to enhance border security and own safety; union president urges federal party leaders to act OTTAWA, Dec. 6

The President of the Canada Employment and Immigration Union today called for heightened protection, up to and including the issuing of tasers and sidearms, for Immigration Officers of the Canada Border Services Agency. Jeannette Meunier-McKay said the CEIU would be contacting the campaigns of all major federal parties to seek their support for making higher levels of protective force for Immigration Officers a post-election priority. She also stressed that the union was representing the views and wishes of its Immigration Officer members. "A recent, internal union survey revealed that an overwhelming majority of Immigration Officers - 86.5% of Enforcement Officers and 74% of Port of Entry Officers - expressed a strong need for additional protective devices, including tasers and/or sidearms," she said. "Our members have spoken strongly with a united voice - that current force options are inadequate to ensure their security when carrying out their duties to protect the public by keeping high-risk criminals and terrorists out of Canada." Meunier-McKay also pointed to last June's interim report of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, which called for strengthened port of entry security and concrete measures to improve the safety of CBSA enforcement staff. "The Senate Committee was very clear in urging the Martin government to give CBSA workers the tools they need to carry out their important duties in a safe and secure work environment," Meunier-McKay noted. "Whatever the composition of the next Parliament, the federal government has a clear duty to ensure the highest level of protection for these frontline peace officers." The Canada Employment and Immigration Union represents more than 17,000 federal public service workers, including some 1,300 immigration staff at both ports of entry and at inland enforcement offices. : Jeannette Meun

Why Jack Doesn't Blog

Many of us Dipper and progressive bloggers have wondered why the NDP is the only election site without a blog. And now we know. The PTB in the NDP war room have decided in their divine wisdom that blogs are not where its at. In fact they are so fixated on old media, that no less a high mucky muck than Communications/Media Director Brad Lavigne dismisses the importance of blogs.

In the NDP camp, insider Brad Lavigne says blogs have had a minimal impact so far on leader Jack Layton's campaign. The top priority is to track the other leaders' daily campaigns and mainstream news coverage."Our focus is established by our team,'' said Lavigne, the party's campaign communications director. "While from time to time it's interesting to see what these people are posting, they certainly don't drive our agenda.'' Election war rooms consider impact of blogs

Ah ha thats why the NDP is so behind on the communications eight ball, failing to take advantage of the blogosphere. Yep Lavigne is really old school, you can tell from his hair cut and their communications strategy so far.

Guess I will have to e-mail this little missive to the NDP cause they don't read blogs.

Correcting Kinsella

Well its always a joy here in mudville to correct Warren Kinsella's jaundiced view of the blogosphere, which is always highly coloured by his own blog prescence and his belief that he plays a more important role than he does.

Warren Kinsella, an aide to former Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien, says his blog gets as many as 100,000 hits a day. He has traced some of the heaviest traffic to Prime Minister Paul Martin's most trusted advisors and says his sources of information include former and current cabinet ministers, party leaders and rank-and-file members.
Election war rooms consider impact of blogs

100,000 hits a day?! Methinks Warren doth exaggerate his popularity a wee bit. Oh by at least five zeros. (see comments)

On December 8 after this article came out on CP, he posted it on his blog, he writes his latest backhanded defence of the importance of blogs in this election. He says that so far the blogs have not found a scandal of equal importance as American blogs did in the 04 election.

"In this bizarre two-part election, no big political story has been unearthed by Canadian bloggers - at least not in the way the American blogs broke the Trent Lott or Dan Rather stories. But it's coming."

Well gee what would he call this? The undue influence of American right wing lobby groups with the Conservatives is a major scandal,that has not been covered in the MSM as well as it has in the blogosphere. And I would call that a scandal uncovered by the blogs. Just not by Warrens blog. Hmm do I detect a bit of jealousy in his comment?

For an updated page on this Scandal go here.

Retirement Reverse Discrimination

The Ontario Government has ended a great injustice today, they have ended legislated compulsory retirement. Yep now you can work till ya die. The logic of this reversal of discrimination, is classic liberalism; the rights of the individual over the group. And classic Liberalism.

Moments after the province approved the legislation, Ontario Labour Minister Steve Peters hailed it as an opportunity for workers, especially those who joined the workforce later in life, to continue to contribute to their families and the economy. “It’s a very historic day,” Peters said. “We’ve ended a great wrong in this province.”

They found that the law restricted individual choice. For shame. But in changing the law to meet the sacred rights of the individual they lost site of that other important value of classical liberalism, utilitarianism, the greater good.

The so called compulsorary retirement law while restricting the rights of some was for the greater good of the many. Which is why unions lobbied and won compulsorary retirement, because they knew that if the bosses had their way, they would work us till we died, or toss us out with no pensions in order to hire younger workers who will not earn a pension for years. The idea of compulsorary retirement is directly tied to pensions, and to corporations paying into those pensions.

The McGuinty Liberals capitualted to the business community, who having underfunded their pension plans in order to put their capital into the stock market, wanted the government to bail them out. The best way to do that was to up the age of retirement. Business have campaigned provincially and federally to turn the clock back on retirement.

Of course for academics, such as the one who challenged the law in Alberta and got it overturned, or managers and bosses and even journalists working into your seventies or eighties is a career choice. For those of us who do blue collar work, by the time we are 65 we beasts of burden are well willing to give up the work life for the cottage life and we deserve it.

But now our pensionable earnings, our ability to retire early, or to retire at 65 have been put at greater risk.

Wayne Samuelson, president of the Ontario Federation of Labour, warned that in years to come, employees can expect to work up to the age of 67 or beyond before they can access government benefits.

Samuelson also brushed aside assertions by the province that the law won’t undermine early retirement rights or existing pension plans.

“That’s crap,” Samuelson said. “I’ve been going to union meetings all my life . . . and I’ve never seen anybody stand up and demand that they work longer. People want to work less. They want to have a decent pension. That’s the debate we should be having.”

He pointed to the United States, where access to government benefits has been increased to age 67.

New Democrat critic Peter Kormos slammed the law for not resolving fears of under-funded pensions.

“This legislation . . . is going to result in employers reducing pension benefits for younger workers who have not yet become vested,” Kormos said.

“This is going to create some real iniquities and further worsen, heighten, aggravate the crisis in under-funding of pensions and levels of pension benefits.”

It’s expected that less than two per cent of Ontario’s 1.5 million people 65 and over would continue to work, Peters said.

So you change a progressive law, compulsorary retirement for less than 2% of the working population, hmmm thats the same number that represents the ruling class in Ontario. So 98% of the working population must be subjected to the opportunism and greed of the ultimate minority. So much for the idea of majority rule, or even the greatest benefit for the greatest number. The McGuinty Liberals are classic neo-liberals, not real liberals like Bentham and Mills.

Previous Pension Articles are Here and Here

And Now A Word From David Orchard

The populist iconoclast David Orchard who was stabbed in the back by Peter McKay over the merger of the PC's with Harpers Alliance Party, never forgets. Nor should we. Last April he wrote; David Orchard campaign says Conservatives as unethical as Liberals

And it applies as much in this election as the one the Harperites were hoping for last spring. In fact the unethical behaviour of the Conservative party regarding David Orchard came back to bite them in the ass just before this election was called.

Two and a half years after the Progressive Conservative leadership race, the Conservative Party of Canada has yet to pay David Orchard more than $70,000. About $55,000 of that is owed to the Borden-area farmer from donations to his leadership campaign.

Nor has the Harper yet released who donated to his leadership race where he defeated Peter McKay for the leadership of the newly merged Conservative party.
So when it comes to ethics Mackay and Harper prove that old cliche that the fruit doesn't fall far from the tree, in Davids Orchard.

Rumours had it that Orchard might run for the Liberals, it was a reporters fantasy, but that would never be. He is too principled for that. Unlike his opponents for the PC Leadership or those who now run the strange beast that is the Reform/Alliance/PC Conservatives.

David is still fighting NAFTA and is the only Canadian to continue to offer a real solution to the Soft Wood Lumber crisis, Abrogate NAFTA.

Wanna disrupt a Conservative rally? Just start chanting; Orchard! Orchard!