Tax The Social Conservatives

Here we go again tax free charitable associations violating the Revenue Canada Act which says they cannot engage in "partisan" political activities such as endorsing specific political parties or candidates for public office, making contributions to political parties and candidates, or participating in fundraisers for such individuals.

So when will that happen to these creeps who ran McVety against Garth Turner with the tacit support of the Harpocrites.

Same-sex supporters, opponents battle

Brian Rushfeld of the Canadian Family Action Committee, said the same-sex law poses a danger in schools, because teachers are being forced to teach students that gay marriages are the same as heterosexual marriages.

“Bill C-38 is now being used as a hammer to hammer homosexual teachings into public education.” he said. “That’s a great concern to us.”

Charles McVety, president of Canadian Christian College and a member of the executive committee of Rushfeld’s committee

See:

Tax The Churches

What’s Love Got To Do With It?

Whose Family Values?

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Begging Bowl

Oh this is rich, pardon the pun, Cherniak is begging online for folks to pay his way to the Liberal Convention.

I thought there were laws against panhandling.

But of course he is not a poor person........


Private Needs and Public Space: Politics, Poverty, and Anti-Panhandling By-Laws in Canadian Cities" by Damian Collins and Nicholas Blomley,
examines the recent rise in anti-panhandling regulations in Canadian cities within the greater context of a North American movement to purify public spaces. Being geographers, their focus is the interaction of geography and law. Their stated aim in this essay is to spatialize anti-panhandling by-laws. They are intrigued that the individual transaction of begging for money is politicized and regulated because it occurs in a space that is public. Their argument focuses specifically on Canadian downtown spaces, highlighting as dynamics in this contemporary situation the great financial investment in urban spaces, growing economic disparities between the inhabitants of city cores, and moral apprehensions about how the homeless spend this money. There is fear that allowing certain marginalized people to pursue their lives in our streets will promote socio-economic decline, and prevent the majority from being able to engage in legitimate public activities. The authors suggest that this regulatory movement is more than a further privatizing of public space. The private actions of the panhandlers have become enmeshed in public values regarding the appropriate use of public space. Examining the interaction of law within society as well as the space it occupies is key to a greater comprehension of the issue.

See:

Cherniak


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Voodoo Doll

This is just what everyone needs. The ultimate Voodoo Doll of the Self-Righteous Right Wing. Unfortunately you can't tell it to STFU. Because like the real Dr. Laura it just keeps on talking. But you can stick pins in it

Also available the Ann Coulter Love Doll.

Our Price: $29.95 Product Details: Type: Book and Doll Item#: c6766 ISBN#: 0

Brand New: Listen to Dr. Laura Preach, Teach & Nag! Preorder now and be among the first to own a "Dr. Laura Talking Action Figure" when they ship in early November! "Dr. Laura Talking Action Figure" Dr. Laura Schlessinger is not only one of the most popular radio personalities in America, she is also a best selling author of 14 books, including 4 children's books. Best known for her no-nonsense approach to parenting and her unwavering commitment to children, Dr. Laura always believes everyone should "go do the right thing". Now you can share Dr. Laura’s wit and wisdom with your friends and family with the "Dr. Laura Talking Action Figure".

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China Needs Free Unions

I was taken to task for being quick to denounce the new China Labour Law. Apparently I was another one of those cheerleaders on the left who apparently did not give the American Chamber of Commerce their due, according to China Law Blog. China's Proposed Labor Law:Going After Capitalists Like China, 1967

Dan Harris the blogger does praise one union blogger saying;

"I did come across a single blog post, however, that actually engaged in some thought and analysis on these issues. In a post, entitled, "Unions in China," on the decidedly pro-union Peter Levine blog, Mr. Levine actually seeks to discern what is going on with China's labor laws and with the American Chamber's (AmCham) opposition to them.

Levine then goes on to say in an addendum that he is "beginning to think" that the New York Times article was misleading because the proposed law would not in "any way increase the independence of unions in the PRC. It would impose some new labor laws, but they might not be enforced fairly. Workers would have no voice in their enforcement. There would be no increase of pluralism or democracy."

Bravo, Mr. Levine for starting an important discussion that just about everyone else in the blogosphere seems to want to avoid.

Well gee Dan, I said that too. "The restructuring of China from a State Captitalist economy to a mixed economy forces it to liberalize its labour laws. This does not yet mean that there will be independent worker controled unions, but it is a step forward.What China needs, is a new workers movement and free unions not State unions."

Dan's concern and that of the American Chamber of Commerce is that China labour laws will not allow employers to fire shiftless, lazy workers. This is a surprising admission from a lawyer who should know better. The fact is that union grievance procedures also mean that employers cannot just fire workers without 'just cause". It's the trade off for management rights in a contract. And it is to the benefit of employers, because otherwise they would be sued under common law. Which is far more costly.

See:

China

State Capitalism

Unions


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Lyle Oberg Is Scary

Lyle Oberg is scary. As the guy who is running second for the PC leadership, we should all be worried. While the self identified social conservatives in the Tory leadership race such as Ted Morton and Victor Doerksen are seen as such, Oberg is just the same.

When he was Minister of Social Services he wanted to kick the disabled off AISH. He denounced the report critical of the Governments failure to provide safe long term care for seniors.

What makes him scary is that he has downplayed his social conservatism by focusing on infrastructure, taxes and other 'safe' populist issues, rather than moral issues. That makes him more dangerous than either Morton or Doerksen.

See:

Alberta

Ted Morton

Lyle Oberg



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Cardston Home of Bigots

Cardston Crazies Still At It They want to ban same sex marriage in their town.

Cardston was the first Mormon settlement in Alberta. The irony being that while Cardston today opposes Same Sex Marriage, it's original settlers were polygamists.

While no longer polygamist, Mormon Cardston continues it's white only seperatist culture.


The Mormon Way
By Bruce Serafin
How wonderful it must be, I thought, to grow up Mormon and blonde in Cardston! A similar idea came to me the next day when I went to eat my lunch in Cardston's municipal park. Four Mormon families (each of the young women in long skirts, tight around their hips and rear ends) were sitting at the park's tables; a Native family sat far from them at at the edge of the park. People go where they’re comfortable; and in Cardston, Mormons and Natives didn't mix.

The Alberta Temple, located in Cardston, in southern Alberta, and dedicated in 1923, was the first LDS temple built outside the United States and its territories. Constructed of handhewn white marble from British Columbia, it won architectural acclaim.

Mormonism is a political as well as relgious movement, as a political movement it is Republican and socially conservative.

LDS lobbying efforts in several states against the ERA in the 1970s threatened to reawaken major apprehensions of priesthood influence on LDS voters.

In Canada that means it is the base for the Reform/Alliance/Conservative party federally and the Tories provincially.

Cardston is represented by the Alberta Alliance, a right wing rump party that was created by Randy Thorsteinson.

Former Social Credit Party of Alberta leader Randy Thorsteinson was selected as the first leader of the party. Thorsteinson, a devout Latter-day Saint, had quit the Social Credit Party in April 1999 in protest of an internal party proposal to limit the involvement of Mormons.

Th AA Party Leader and MLA for Cardston, Paul Hinman supports Republican Ted Morton for leader of the P.C.'s. Morton is famous for his bill C-208 which would have done what Cardston wants but for the whole of the province. Morton is also notoriously anti-native. He would feel right at home in Cardston.


A tip o' the blog to A Slap Upside The Head for this.

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Carnival of Socialism 10

Wow the Carnival of Socialism is now ten.



See:

Carnival

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Life Goes On

This is good news. Life will survive a nuclear war/nuclear winter. Of course not human life.....

Scientists Discover Bacteria That Use Radiated Water as Food; 'A Completely Different World'

Subterranean bacteria hint at life on Mars



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Wetmonton

Hark what light on yonder window breaks....why it's the sun....after weeks of depressing overcast weather and cold rain.If I wanted to live on the Wet Coast I would move there. But for the past three weeks Edmonton has had rain. Rain in October.

Not exactly our normal weather for the fall. Sigh. But at least it's a dry rain ;)

Rainfall in Edmonton varies from 36.0 to 258.0 (mm/month).

Rain mm inch 500 20 400 16 300 12 200 8 100 4 0 0 J F M A M J J A S O N D

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Ralph Keynes

Oh what a clown King Ralph is. Having spent a decade denouncing Keynesianism, he ups and turns out to be one....

Klein's advice to cities illogical

Ralph Klein found the biggest cow pie in the field this week and jumped right in -- with both feet.

The premier now says Edmonton and Calgary should put off building new roads and arenas because it's just too expensive in this overheated economy. Don't worry about all those new citizens who need libraries, more transit and fire halls.

"Delay the projects. Put them on hold until they're affordable," thundered Klein, who will retire shortly -- though it's not soon enough in our view.

The premier then proceeded to pass on a little helpful advice.

"The best time to build is during a recession or depression. That's when you get the best possible prices," he said.

Really? So why did Klein spend a decade doing exactly the opposite?

Because he is a neo-con who said Keynesianism was dead all that is important is to fight the debt and deficit. And of course toss in the privatizing of public services, which leads to private profit at public expense.

Shame on Ralph

Alberta Liberals say Ralph Klein is being hypocritical for telling cities to delay projects with runaway costs when his own government is routinely approving massive cost increases on its own projects.

The Liberals produced documents showing more than 50 projects with cost overruns as high as 106% in the past two years - and that doesn't even include recent projects.

"Ralph is saying you have to get your costs under control," said Liberal MLA Maurice Tougas.

"Maybe he should practise what he preaches. We've found cost overruns by the truckload."

Tougas said he was concerned millions of dollars in overruns are being quietly approved behind closed doors without any discussion in the legislature.

See:

Klein


Klein, Martha, Henry, severely, normal, Albertans, Alberta, PC, Conservative, Tory, government, politics, drunk, KingRalph, Ralph, leadership, PCleadership, race, Premier

PET Would Not Be Amused

The quiet death of Trudeau Liberalism. Grits declare Quebec a nation And the guy touted as the New Trudeau, well he ain't. Frontrunner Michael Ignatieff was among those to welcome the move. "I speak for those who say Quebec is a nation, but Canada is my country," Ignatieff said in his opening remarks.

Of course the NDP already beat them to it.



Also See

Liberal Leadership Race



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The Church of Global Warming

It appears that the some in the Evangelical Movement in the United States have seen the light and are now concerned that Global Warming might not be good for God's creatures.

In other words Global Warming must be the work of the Devil. After all Satan's abode does produce a lot of Greehouse Gases.

And Lucifer ,as Promethean Man, is the meme for fire which leads to industrialization.

Took them long enough to realize what William Blake did three hundred years ago when he denounced capitalism for it's dark satanic mills.

Of course these evangelists aren't that radical.

Holy Global Warming!

An alignment of faith, science for the planet's sake




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More Corporate Welfare

During her press conference on the Tories Hot Air Act Environment Minister Rona Ambrose tossed about the phrase CO2 sequestration It is experimental technology and it is being developed in Socialist Saskatchewan thanks to government funding.

Now this is interesting the guys who are making record profits want more government handouts to create Greenhouse Gas Technology. CO2 sequestration to be exact. And that is what the Tories Hot Air act promises, an infrastructure fund. A fund paid for by taxpayers, not by fining business or taxing them for their Greenhouse Gas emissions. More corporate welfare from the New Canadian Government just like the Old Canadian Government.

Alberta's booming oilpatch pleased with Ottawa's new clean air act
In April, Shell Canada CEO Clive Mather said the energy giant was in the early stages of lobbying officials in Ottawa and Alberta to develop a framework for an emissions market and help fund infrastructure to make such a project, commercially viable.

CO2 sequestration is being looked at not to reduce Greenhouse Gases, but as a way of extracting Methane gas from coal and for Natural Gas extraction. Business after all doesn't exist to be charitable or do good for the environment unless there is a profit in it.

Study Finds Plenty of Carbon Dioxide Storage Capacity Underground

Geologic sequestration refers to the process of permanent underground storage of carbon dioxide captured from sources such as coal-fired power plants, cement plants, and others manufacturing plants. Widespread deposits of shale are generally thought to be the seal or cap for deeper storage reservoirs that would prevent sequestered CO2 from leaking to the surface. Injection of CO2 into black gas-producing shales may have an additional value of enhancing the recovery of natural gas.

However as with so called clean coal technology this too is experimental and may not actually work.

US researchers who injected carbon dioxide in a depleted oil field in Texas found it caused the minerals underground to dissolve, raising fresh doubts about carbon capture and storage technology as a viable solution to global warming.


Of course that makes it a risky investment. Risk is of course something capitalists abhor, so pass it on to the taxpayers instead with a innovation fund as proposed by the Tories with their Hot Air Act. Which Shell lobbied for.

As my pal Larry Gambone calls it Socialism for the Rich. Public investment for private profit.

The irony in all this is that the forests in Canada are the largest carbon sink going, they actually scrub the CO2 out of the air, but are being destroyed for the sake of the lumber industry. Another of the contradictons of capitalism, which is not sustainable.

See:

Ambrose

Environment

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Time To Resign

Remember this; Environmentalists call for Ambrose to resign, that was back in May.

Now that she has proven she is a shill for the oil industry, with her hot air act, that makes it even more of a reason to call for her resignation.

Clean Air Act wins plaudits from business

A tip o' the blog to Devin Johnston for this.

See:

Ambrose

Environment

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Whistle Blower

In a Globe and Mail story on the WestJet scandal and the whistleblower who exposed WestJets rip off of confidential Air Canada computer information, the whistleblower; Melvin Crothers, may have had more than just good intentions for his actions. Mr. Crothers made $180,000 a year at Signature Vacations in the late 1990s, plus bonuses. At WestJet, he drew an annual salary of $50,000. Hell hath no fury like an employee scorned.

Comments on this story were rather interesting with several commentators calling him a rat and a snitch. These are probably the same people that approve of scabbing during strikes.

The fact is that Westjet owners, you know those folks who work for Westjet and are featured on their TV ads, aren't. They may have profit sharing but the ownership is a fiction, it is WestJets way of avoiding unionization. The real owner is Clive Bedoe who is the guy responsible for the WestJet/ Air Canada scandal.WestJet CEO used purloined data, court files show

And of course while the whistle blower is fired the big guy keeps his job. It's business as usual.

As a result of the legal suit between Air Canada and West Jet, they both collude to appear as good corporate citizens.Air Canada, WestJet feeling charitable
Call it forced charity, the result of the court case not corporate generosity. Since both companies are making record profits, at the expense of their workers.

The funniest thing about all this is that Westjet is awarded for having the best corporate culture in Canada. Of course they overlooked the fact that it is also a 'criminal' corporate culture. Who say's crime doesn't pay.


See:

Criminal Capitalism



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Make Robert Milton Happy

This should be good news to Robert Milton CEO of Air Canada, it's what he has been waiting for; open skies. Remember Open Skies....it was brought into Canada by the Mulroney Conservatives as part of NAFTA and allowed for the privatization of Air Canada. it led to the death of Canadian Airlines and the small air carriers to be swallowed up by the privatized monopoly.

Capitalists love privatized monopolies, which is what happens with globalization. And thats what United is hoping for. Since it is the only airline in the U.S. that is not teetering on bankruptcy, with foreign ownership, say ACE which is the parent company of Air Canada and rolling in dough, it could buy up its competition and we could end up with two or three airlines operating in contiental North America.

United CEO: Bring globalization to US airlines

United CEO Glenn Tilton is calling on U.S. regulators to lift ownership restrictions that limit how much of a U.S. airline can be owned by foreign investors. Such rules have so far blocked a global consolidation that some in the industry say is needed, Tilton says. "U.S. airlines should have the right to grow their businesses in the global marketplace," Tilton is quoted as saying Thursday to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. "It's about time we abandon the policy of fragmentation," he adds. Reuters writes that "Tilton, long an advocate for international airline partnerships, reiterated his view that foreign airlines are better positioned to thrive than those in the United States partly because foreign carriers face fewer restrictions to cross-border consolidation." Current rules dictate that U.S. carriers must be controlled by American citizens, though foreign investors are allowed to hold up to 25% of a U.S. airline's voting stock. Reuters adds that "there is little or no foreign investment because of [that] long-standing federal regulation that prohibits overseas interests from having a say in airline operations."

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Fox Guarding Hen House

Remember those coal mining disasters last year in the United States, they weren't a problem of enforcement of the law, say corporate apologists, just mine companies failures to comply with exisiting regulations, and this guy should know....

Ignoring Senate, Bush Taps Mine Exec to be Safety Chief

The Senate has refused to confirm former coal company executive Richard Stickler as the head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). So, while they were out, Bush gave him a recess appointment to the post. According to the Charleston Gazette, Stickler's mines had accident rates of twice the national average. At a Senate hearing in March, Stickler explained that if U.S. mines were unsafe, it wasn't an "enforcement problem," merely a "compliance problem.".

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