A Culture of Entitlement

The panel Mike Duffy's Countdown tonight was Rona Ambrose for the Conservatives, Belinda Stronach for the Liberals and former party leader Alexa McDonough for the NDP. Mike interupted them to say he got a reply from the Liberal War Room saying yes Liberal staffers who had volunteered for the campaign would be going back to their government jobs this week since the Liberals are not campaigning. And since they were on a leave of absence they could do this. The catch is that being on a leave of abscence meant the Liberals paid them, going back to work, which actually is paid holiday time, you and I pay them.

Political Staples has the whole sorid story. With links to All things Canadian who has the video evidence.

I think all three of us, Staples, Canadian and I, must have looked like Rona and Alexa. Disgusted. Belinda proved to be a quick learner as a party flack, saying it was all quite proper and done within government procedures.

Alexa actually fumed, and Rona let her, cause she went on a veritable tirade about how unprincipaled this was, unethical, culture of entitlement, and well plain stupid. And did I mention unethical.

It's not about doing the right thing its about being seen to do the right thing. And this is defintely the wrong thing to do right now. No wonder the Liberals want tougher gun laws they keep shooting themselves in the foot.

In Solidarity With S'amuna' Peoples

I have made this graphic link in Solidarity with Somena's campaign on behalf of the S'amuna' Peoples and against Wal-Mart. Feel free to cut and paste it to your blog.


Wal-Mart Is Desecrating
The S'amuna' Peoples
Sacred Burial Site
And Despoiling Our Lands!

You are on the bus or off the bus

Ken Kesey in the sixties,who with his Merry Pranksters who traveled across Amerika in their hippie painted bus, used to say; "you are either on the bus or off the bus" . The same could be said about Jack Layton's visit to Edmonton. Well actually he didn't visit Edmonton, his bus did.

You see Jack ,like the Harper visited Alberta on the weekend. Guess the press coverage and blogging about how the party leaders were overlooking little ol' Alberta lit a fire under them.

Anyways Jack flapped into Calgary by airplane for a quickie photo op and airport rally on Sunday. Wait, Calgary?! What the heck is with that? Last election the NDP vote was neck and neck with the vote for the Green Party in Calgary.

In Calgary it was a pit stop, he shook hands and waved and got back on the plane. He didn't even make a speech worth a press release. In fact in another pit stop in little ol Castlegar B.C., home of the last of Canada's hippies hmm maybe thats the Kesey connection, he did give a speech.

While in Edmonton we have a two way race in Edmonton Strathcona between Linda Duncan of the NDP and the Conservative incumbent Rahim Jaffer. In fact Jaffer is not touring Canada because he knows its the fight of his life. But does Jack come here? Nope all we got was his empty campaign bus.


A tip o' the blog to Waking Up On Planet X for this

More blog stories:
NDP
Jack Layton

Tags
Alberta
Canada
media
Politics
NDP

China Boom

It's not just the Federal Liberals or the Alberta government that have a hard time telling the truth about their surpluses. Now it appears China has the same problem. It must come from the embarassment of riches they all are awash in. By underestimating capital growth, and income, governments can claim to be 'surprized' when they have surpluses, this is the hold over from the deficit conciousness that was beat into them in the ninties by the neo-con's. Now the neo-con's are singing another tune in the U.S. Deficits are ok by them, thats cause while China, Alberta and Canada boom the US economy is a fiscal basket case of trillions of dollars in debt. China this morning announced a surplus that puts it ahead of the UK in the world economy. Thanks to it rapid adaptation to Fordist production, and it's being the global sweatshop to the world.

China's economy took another Great Leap Forward -- this one overnight.

The economy is 17 percent larger and growing faster than previous estimates, according to a year-long census released in Beijing today that revealed millions of previously unaccounted- for businesses. The findings may vault China three places on the list of the world's largest economies, to No. 4, ahead of the U.K.

Service companies in areas such as retailing, real estate and insurance accounted for 93 percent of the additional output uncovered by the census.

The services industry accounted for 40.7 percent of gross domestic product last year, up from 31.9 percent previously, the government said. That still leaves China trailing countries such as Russia and South Africa, where services make up more than 60 percent of output.

Free Market Reforms

Services ``have been growing much faster than the rest of the economy,'' said Ha Jiming, chief economist at China International Capital Corp., China's largest investment bank. ``This all argues for higher growth this year and for the next few years.''

The share of primary industry, which is mostly agriculture, fell to 13.1 percent of GDP from 15.2 percent, today's release said. Secondary industry, mostly manufacturing and construction, declined to 46.2 percent from 52.9 percent.

Internationalist Perspectives

One of the more interesting groups of Left Communists I correspond with in our little milieu is Internationalist Perspectives. The latest issue of their journal is an exciting debate on the nature of capitalist decadence and the contraditicions between capital for profit and technology that allows for production of abundance for all. I am simplifying the debate. However it's a 'real good read' as they say and my hard copy is well thumbed. Portions of the journal IP #42 are now available here. I have refered to their ideas in some of my articles here.

Intelligent Design is just another word for......

Creationism; the religious belief that the world is flat, that men lived with dinosaurs and the world was created 4,400 years ago.

In a landmark case that will be the Scopes trial for ID, a U.S. judge has ruled that ID is not science nor a scientific theory equivalent to evolution, and cannot be taught in public school science classes.

"Intelligent design" cannot be mentioned in biology classes in a Pennsylvania public school district, a federal judge said Tuesday, ruling in one of the biggest courtroom clashes on evolution since the 1925 Scopes trial.

The Dover Area School Board violated the Constitution when it ordered that its biology curriculum must include "intelligent design," the notion that life on Earth was produced by an unidentified intelligent cause, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III ruled Tuesday.

The school board policy, adopted in October 2004, was believed to have been the first of its kind in the nation.

"The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy," Jones wrote. "It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."

And there I thought lying was a sin.I guess its just a little sin, not really a cardinal sin.

Wal-Mart A Toxic Success

NEWZ FLASH!

This just in the products you buy from Wal-Mart may be contaminated with toxic waste.

Wal-Mart is target of criminal probe over waste
According to the Wal-Mart, the government is looking into whether the company improperly used its own trucks to transport material deemed hazardous to centralized facilities, rather than using certified hazardous waste carriers to ship that material directly to designated disposal sites.

Yep that means all those low cost deals you got, well they may be low cause you spent your bucks on contaminated goods. But it gets better, you see Americas #1 Corporation is also Americas #1 Corporate Criminal.

The investigation is the latest in a series of legal troubles for Wal-Mart, which is also defending the largest-ever class-action lawsuit, which charges it with discriminating against women in pay and promotions.

Wal-Mart faces dozens of lawsuits accusing it of violating wage-and-hour laws, and earlier this year settled a federal investigation into the use of illegal immigrants to clean its stores.

Wal-Mart spokeswoman Sarah Clark said a number of goods, including hair spray, paint, aerosol cans and charcoal, are classified as hazardous.

All corporations repeat the history of capitalism itself., They replicate that through the primitive accumulation of capital, capitalisms origin in piracy and theft of property from the commons, as they grow into monopolies they become more 'legitimate', because in the process they create the State; pro business regulations and laws that they need for expansion locally, nationalionaly and internationally like the WTO. Contrary to the Right Wing view that somehow the State is seperate from the market, the State is the creature and creation of capitalism.

Wal-Mart Hopes WTO Will Help It Open a Door

Big retailers will seek to alter a services pact. Local officials fear a loss of power to limit firms.

Retailers will head to Hong Kong to try to persuade negotiators to fashion a trade pact that would make it more difficult for governments to restrict foreign-owned stores, banks and telecommunications companies. But critics, who include state Sen. Liz Figueroa (D-Fremont) and Los Angeles City Councilman Eric Garcetti, call the move a stealth attack on grass-roots democracy. They fear that the proposals to change the WTO's 1994 General Agreement on Trade in Services would make it easier to attack dozens of U.S. laws designed to restrict the growth of big-box retailers. That agreement was designed to open up trade in services such as retailing, accounting, medicine and entertainment that weren't covered under previous trade pacts. Under the WTO, only governments can challenge other countries' laws. So firms that believe they are being treated unfairly must persuade their governments to take up their case. Dismantling trade and investment barriers is a key concern of Wal-Mart, which has become a leading target of globalization critics around the world. The fiercest battles have been in the U.S., where dozens of municipalities have passed laws aimed at limiting the retailer's expansion. But the company has also seen its growth slowed by government restrictions in Canada, China, Britain, Germany and Japan.