Promise made promise delayed.

Soon. Someday. In the future. We will do it. Before the next election. Sooner than later. Any day now. Tommorow or the day after. When the opportunity is right.

MPs to revisit gay marriage

Justice Minister Vic Toews said Tuesday the government would honour a promise to allow a vote on whether to reconsider the 2005 legislation, which made Canada the fourth country after the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain to legalize gay marriage, before Parliament breaks for Christmas on Dec. 15. "The prime minister has made a commitment and he will honour that commitment," Toews said when asked by Reuters if there would be a vote. He was unable to say when it would happen.

See:

Same Sex Marriage



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Not Real Tax Fairness

"Flaherty has tried to pass this income splitting proposal off as a "tax fairness" measure, saying that it will "strengthen the social security system" and "significantly enhance the incentives to save and invest for family retirement security." This is really a calculated mis-description of what income splitting for tax purposes will do. First, it is a tax benefit that is only available to couples — single, unattached seniors need not apply. Second, it is a tax benefit that can really only benefit couples with one high income — couples who have two real incomes cannot take much advantage of income splitting because they each already have income of their own. Thus, income splitting will reserve the largest benefits for just one special set of taxpayers — those couples who live on a single high income. Third, the tax benefits of income splitting are completely unlike those meagrely meted out to people living in poverty — the financial value of the tax benefits of income splitting are virtually unlimited: the higher the single income-earner's income is, the bigger the tax benefit will be. For example, taxpayers with retirement income of $140,000 per year could save nearly $10,000 in federal and provincial taxes in just one year by electing to treat half of that income as having been earned by their spouse or partner. Packaged with the new income trust rules and an increase in the over-65 income tax credit as the "Tax Fairness Plan," permitting taxpayers to split their retirement incomes with their spouses or partners is, as Garth Turner put it at a Conservative conference in early October, "a down payment on the Conservative policy, adopted by party members in 2004, to move toward income splitting for all Canadian couples..."Because income splitting can only give tax breaks to those who live as couples, and because it reserves the largest tax breaks for the richest couples, it is the antithesis of "fairness" in terms of the real needs of those who live on retirement incomes."

Kathleen Lahey is professor of law at Queen's University where she teaches taxation and tax policy.


Real tax fairness would be no income taxes on the working class for those earning $100,000 a year or less.



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Right Against Right

The plan to create an intergrated Free Trade Zone of North America is supported in Canada by the Right Wing, in particluar members of the New Government of Canada and their allies in the Canadian CEO lobby under Thomas d'Aquino and by rigth wing provincial governments like Alberta. In the U.S. however it is the right wing that is opposed to deep integration between, Canada, Mexico and the United States. Ironic ain't it.

In October, Tancredo demanded the United States suspend work on the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) signed last year by Canada, Mexico and The United States until Congress examines its goals and agreements, which include standardizing regulations and dismantling other barriers to trade.

The deal to collaborate on a wide range of trade and security issues is part of a larger plot to merge the countries in a European Union-like arrangement using a common currency, he said, with no oversight from legislators.

A coalition of American conservatives is organizing a grassroots effort to make it an issue in the 2008 presidential race and vow to campaign against any candidate, Republican or Democrat, who won't side with them.

The movement was spearheaded in October by Howard Phillips, chairman of the public policy group Conservative Caucus, anti-feminist activist Phyllis Schlafly and author Jerome Corsi.

The group is calling for a congressional investigation into the SPP and full disclosure of all documents when the new Congress run by Democrats begins in January. They're getting support from the Minuteman Project that monitors the borders to deter illegal crossings, a group Bush has called vigilantes.

Supporters of the anti-union stand point out that a prominent three-country task force backed by Canada's business elite has promoted an elaborate vision of a common economy and security perimeter.

The plan, released last year, drew fire from some Canadians who saw it as a dangerous surrender of sovereignty designed to benefit big business.

Of course in Canada the opposition to this accord comes predominately from the nationalist left.

I await the political confusion and chaos amongst the Blogging Tories who slavisly imitate their Republican idols south of us, as to whether they will support the interests of Canadian Business or their ideological counterparts. Place your wagers.


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Bourgeois Revolution

Nepal has finally entered the modern age, well at least the modern age of the 19th Century.

In the capital of Katmandu, thousands gathered in the heart of the city, waving banners and chanting slogans in celebration.

"Victory is ours! Long live people's democracy and peaceful Nepal!" chanted the participants.

In the southern city of Bharatpur, hundreds gathered and chanted, "Let there be permanent peace! No more autocracy! No more dictatorship!"

Maoist leaders will take seats alongside the elected politicians in parliament and join an interim government to oversee elections for an assembly that will draft a new constitution and decide the fate of the monarchy.

More than 13,000 people were killed before a cease-fire was declared in April following the weeks of mass pro-democracy protests that forced Gyanendra to restore Parliament, which he had usurped 14 months earlier.

The accord came a day after a government commission blamed Gyanendra for the brutal crackdown on the April protests that left 19 people dead, and recommended he be punished.
Under the deal, the rebels will join the interim parliament by Nov. 26 and will get 73 of the chamber’s 330 seats. Koirala’s Nepali Congress will remain the biggest party with 85 seats, and the Maoists will share second place with the Communist Party of Nepal. The rest of the seats will be held by smaller parties.
The rebels’ large number of seats is sure to give them a significant role in a new interim government, which is to be in place by Dec. 1. Officials were still working out the details of how the administration would be set up.
Gyanendra seized power in February 2005, saying he would bring order to a chaotic and corrupt political scene and quell the Maoist insurgency.
Since restoring Parliament, Gyanendra has been stripped of his powers, command over the army, and his immunity from prosecution.

The making of a "Bourgeois Revolution"

Social Research, Fall, 2004 by E.J. Hobsbawm

What this paper has tried to show is that something that plainly forms the foundation of the classical view of the French Revolution as a social revolution, a "bourgeois revolution" and a central and decisive step in the evolution of modern society, emerged in the first postrevolutionary generation, and why this reading of the French Revolution and its consequences seemed more logical and realistic than the modern revisionist view that it was "haphazard in its origins and ineffectual in its outcome" (Runciman, 1982: 318). It seemed realistic to French liberals in three respects, because in 1830 it seemed evident that a middle class actually had come to power. The nineteenth century, moreover, seemed clearly to perpetuate and even to institutionalize the conflict, which had not existed before 1789 but emerged during the revolution, that between "1791" and "1794," between middle class and "people" or "masses" (later specified by some as the "the proletariat"). Above all, it seemed realistic because, as Tocqueville put it elegantly and eloquently, the revolution

   has entirely destroyed, or is in the process of destroying ...
everything in ancient society that was derived from aristocratic
and feudal institutions, everything that was in any
way connected with them, everything that had the least
impress of them (Tocqueville, 1947: 23).

And the canyon with the earthquake of the revolution had opened between the Old Regime and the new society was evidently impassable, its profundity and width demonstrated, in France at least, beyond any doubt by the repeated failure to restore that Old Regime.

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Death of Channel Ten

When cable TV was introduced into Canada, at the same time that the CRTC came into being, it was determined that it should include community access. That meant that community groups, individuals, etc. would have free access to cable broadcasting to meet its 'community' objectives that it state made it an alternative to mainstream TV broadcasters.

The 1968 reform of the Broadcasting Act replaced the BBG with the Canadian Radio-Television Commission, or CRTC (which became the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission in 1976). The CRTC spent most of the 1970s developing a regulatory framework for the rapidly expanding cable industry, which had emerged in the 1950s as community antenna television serving remote areas. By retransmitting signals picked out of the air from U.S. border-town transmitters (for which they paid no license fees until 1989), the Canadian cable industry built an attractive product for the Canadian television audience, which quickly developed a taste for the best of both worlds. To paraphrase the 1929 royal commission on broadcasting, Canadians wanted Canadian programming, but they wanted U.S. programming too.

Aware that the increasingly widespread cable model was undermining its policy to support and promote Canadian content, the CRTC moved to ensure that cable, as well, contributed to the overriding policy objective of delivering Canadian television to Canadians. Must-carry provisions ensure that every available Canadian over-the-air signal in any area is offered as basic service, along with a local community channel. But in exchange, cable companies were authorised to distribute the three American commercial networks plus PBS. This was, for many years, the basic cable package available to Canadian cable subscribers, and on this basis, cable penetration grew to 76% of Canadian homes by 1992.

The cable companies provided a public access channel to meet the CRTC requirements for community access. That channel in most communities in Alberta was Channel 10. It allowed for individuals, non-profit groups, religious, multicultural, social, political interests to have a free voice. Cable companies in the begining relied upon these groups to boost their volunteer base for staffing and content.

As they became more corporate, such as Shaw and its successful production of the comedy SCTV, the role of the community became more and more a drag on the corporate model that cable was becoming. Today cable companies have eliminated all community access, and have transformed Channel 10 into an internal news community announcement channel operated by the cable company and its staff. Thus the short life and death of authentic autonomous community televsion we had been promised when Cable was first licensed.

In Alberta the provincial government created its own public access TV channel, ACCESS, which was part of its radio network, CKUA. This channel slowly evolved from an educational and community access channel to an Eductational TV station linked to Athabasca university for distance learning, modeled on Ontario's Educational Channel. With the coming of the Klein privateers both ACESS and CKUA were privatized. ACCESS is now part of CHUMS Educational TV network. And again the death of community access to the airwaves.

Cable access in the United States still allows for individual and community access. Ironically thanks to Canadian media activists.

According to Ralph Engelman's Origins of Public Access Cable Television 1966-1972, New York's public access began in 1968 by Fred Friendly, a television advisor to the Ford Foundation and chairman of Mayor John Lindsay's advisory task force on CATV and Telecommunications, when he wrote a report recommending that cable companies set aside two channels the public could lease for a minor fee. The fee was opposed by others, and was later dropped. In July 1971 public access started.

From 1968 to 1970, Canadian filmmaker Red Burns, who'd served on the National Film Board of Canada (NFB)'s Challenge For Change and George C. Stoney, who'd likewise served a guest role, co-founded the Alternative Media Center (AMC) at NYU in 1971. AMC started the National Federation of Local Cable Programmers, which is a public access advocacy organization, with interns that help establish access centers throughout America. In 1972 Burns and Stoney worked with FCC commissioner Nicholas Johnson to make the FCC cable access requirements.

The FCC issued its Third Report and Order in 1972, which required all cable systems in the top 100 U.S. television markets to provide three access channels, one each for educational, local government and public use, where if there was insufficient demand for three in a particular market, the cable companies could offer fewer channels, but at least one, and any group or individual wishing to use the channels was guaranteed at least five minutes free. Also required was for cable companies to provide facilities and equipment with which people could produce shows.

We need a return to public access on cable and in any decisions the CRTC makes, fo any forms of broadcasting, TV, radio and new media.

The CRTC mandate changed under the Mulroney Tories to become the voice of capitalist competition in the media marketplace. Public access and the defense of the public interest in licensing our public airwaves, be it TV, radio, phone or the internet has been sacrificed by the CRTC. Instead they view their role as another Competition Bureau to enforce competition between competing oligopolies the Telcos and Cable companies.

SEE:

Pro Monopoly Tories

Monopoly Capitalism in Cyberspace

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Klein To Blame

This would require actually having centres for the menatlly ill to be able to access. But the Klein government shut those down, and tossed folks onto the streets back in the bad old debt/deficit hysteria of the ninties. They have created no community programs to deal with the mentally ill and the result is a large number on the streets homeless, or in family settings unable to get treatment. In a province that forces meth users and under age prostitutes into rehab programs this should be a no brainer.

Death of Mountie also prompts calls for improving mental health system

A fatality inquiry report into the 2004 deaths of an RCMP officer and a gunman in Spruce Grove has recommended changes to how Mounties run their emergency response teams and how the mentally ill are treated in Alberta.

The report also made several recommendations for the mental health system in the province. Ayotte recommended legislating community treatment orders in Alberta, which would force uncooperative patients to seek treatment or take medication. So far, such orders are only legal in Ontario and Saskatchewan.

Also, Ayotte wants to see specially-trained police officers and psychiatric workers team up to handle situations where a mentally ill person comes in contact with police. Such a program already exists in Edmonton and plans are underway to expand it into surrounding areas.

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Another Reason For Her To Resign

Ambrose accused of boosting Quebec sovereigntists Another political opps from the New Canadian Government. And another reason to call for her resignation.

See:

Ambrose


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Dumb Move

Being a grouchy Liberal a firing offence

At least that's what the Liberals are saying about their former caucus-mate Dan Backs, the now-independent MLA for Edmonton-Manning.

Backs was kicked out of the Liberal caucus on Monday by party leader Kevin Taft, who said Backs created "ongoing friction" in the party to the point where everybody in caucus was fed up with him.

"I had to make a decision," said Taft, who refused to give examples of what Backs did wrong.

Taft also acknowledged he never gave Backs a warning before giving him the boot, and Backs says he was astounded by what he sees as an unprovoked ejection.

Proving the Alberta Liberals are no different than their Tory counterparts. They voted him out in secret. Shades of Garth Turner out of the blue they turf Backs. This has got to one of the dumbest political moves yet. No warning. And one of the poorest excuses for turfing someone from your party. Which of course generates all kind of media coverage, for all the wrong reasons.

A tip o' the blog to WP for this. And for a lots of comments on this see Daveberta's post

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Good News Story

This is a good news story. I have seen these fine folks out on the street training the guide dogs. And shared a bus with one today. Loyal donors retrieve help-dog agency from brink of oblivion


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And They Run The Province

This is hilarous. These are the guys who want to be the leader of the province and have been running it for 35 years. Heavy turnout at advance poll 'hell' for some voters

EDMONTON - Hundreds of voters, including seniors and women holding babies, waited hours at an advance poll Monday night to cast a ballot in the Progressive Conservative leadership race.

"This is terrible," said Mike Wincentaylo, as he approached his third hour in the lineup.

"I think a 10-year-old child could have organized this better."

See:

Conservative Leadership Race

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