Harpers Lethal Injection

It is a specific case of a Canadian facing the death penalty in the U.S. that the Harpocrites have decided they will use as their cause célèbre to arbitrarily abandon our long standing national policy that we do not extradite criminals to countries with the death penalty and that we fight for Canadians facing the death penalty abroad.

The U.S. implemented the Death Penalty in 1976 the same year that Canada in a free vote ended the death penalty. Remember 'free votes' that used to be the cornerstone of the Reform/Alliance/Conservatives parliamentary reform policy until they became the government.

A bill to officially ban the death penalty passed in a free vote in 1976.

A free vote on reinstating the death penalty was held in the House of Commons in 1987. MPs agreed by a 21-vote margin to maintain the abolition of capital punishment.

And the irony is that the Canadian on death row is facing death through lethal injection which is now before the Supreme Court in the U.S. as a form of cruel and unusual punishment, torture by any other name.

Is The Government Finally Scrutinizing The Death Penalty?

Since the Supreme Court effectively legalized the federal death penalty in 1976, death penalty legislation or even legislative oversight has been nearly non-existent. Feingold's hearing this summer on death penalty implementation was the first of its kind since 2001-- the last time a Democratic majority enabled Feingold to chair a Senate committee.

But there are indications that Feingold may no longer be the lone wolf in Washington howling about the death penalty's moral and practical problems. His hearing this summer actually made front-page headlines when fired U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton gave specific examples of the Alberto Gonzales-led Justice Department eagerly pursuing death sentences at the expense of due process. Nationally, executions this year are down to 42, their lowest level in a decade.

Of those executions all but one were done via lethal injection. And the Supreme Court's stay of execution for Mississippi prisoner Earl Berry was, according to the New York Times, an "indisputable indication" that the Court will stop all deaths by lethal injection until next spring.

That's when the nine justices argue Baze v. Rees, which will determine if death row inmates can challenge the so-called three-drug cocktail used for executions as a violation of 8th amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. Some doctors now argue that the drug combination may sometimes result in inmates being paralyzed but not anesthetized, meaning the final moments of their lives are spent in searing pain, unable to move.

Looking at the Ethics of the Lethal Injection Challenge

The Supreme Court decided to halt an execution in Mississippi this week, marking the third stay from the justices since they agreed to hear a challenge to lethal injection. It likely means that states will hold off on all executions until the high court rules on the case, which claims the drug mixture used for the injections can cause severe pain and amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

The "de facto" moratorium and the case itself raise an interesting ethical question. In the past, other inmates have challenged the constitutionality of lethal injection, have lost their appeals and have been executed. And Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, says that the court has declined to take similar appeals in the past. So how is it fair that the justices have just now decided to weigh in, and, in the meantime, executions are likely to stop?

Marin judge rules lethal injection procedures invalid

Portrait of lethal injection reveals a barbaric scene

The other irony is that the Canadian in question is an Albertan. And Alberta is the home base of Harpers Law and Order Government.

The lawyer for a Canadian awaiting execution in a Montana prison says he was shocked by the federal government's announcement it will no longer seek clemency for his client.

In the past, the government has requested that Canadian prisoners sentenced to death in the U.S. be allowed to serve out life sentences here, since Canada opposes the death penalty.

The apparent change of heart came as a blow to Don Vernay, lawyer for Albertan Ronald Allen Smith, who faces lethal injection for the 1982 murders of two men in Montana.

"I mean, talk about having the wind knocked out of you. I'm astounded, is all I can say," Vernay told CTV's Canada AM on Friday.

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day announced in the House of Commons on Thursday that he will not plead for clemency for Smith, since he had been found guilty in a democratic country "that supports the rule of law."

On Friday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper confirmed Canada has no interest in wading into the debate over capital punishment, and would not be coming to Smith's aid.

"The reality in this particular case is, were we to intervene, it would quickly become a question of whether we were willing to repatriate a double murderer to Canada," Harper told reporters.

"In light of this government's strong initiatives on tackling violent crime I think that would send the wrong signal to the Canadian public."

Vernay said representatives of the federal government contacted him about a year ago and said they intended to try and bring Smith home.

"They came to us and they said we want Mr. Smith back in Canada, he's one of our citizens," Vernay said.

"We want the death penalty lifted and we are going to do whatever we can to secure his transfer to Canada and to have the governor of Montana grant clemency. And so we were pleased and we were surprised."

Vernay said he flew to Montana and met with the staff of Gov. Brian Schweitzer late this summer, and got the sense the clemency request was on the agenda.

"It was in the preliminary stages but everybody knew that this is what was on the agenda," Vernay said.

"And we had the Canadian government 100 per cent behind us and then all of a sudden out of nowhere comes this statement."

Vernay said the decision seems to fly in the face of Canada's position on the death penalty and sends a confusing message to the world.

"For your government to make a statement like that to the world internationally that you now support the execution of your own citizens -- what can I say? I mean, it's breathtaking in terms of its implications."

The Harpocrites are abandoning not only Ronald Allen Smith to his fate, but any right to legal intervention that could occur in the Supreme Court hearings on lethal injections. Perhaps fearing their intervention could sway the court.

"We have no desire to open the debate on capital punishment here in Canada -- and likewise, we have no desire to participate in the debate on capital punishment in the United States." Harper told reporters.

Now if one was prone to conspiracy theories one could be forgiven for thinking that the Harpocrites abandonment of this specific case is a sop to the White House, given the President is Executioner In Chief and rather proud of his record of executions when he was Governor of Texas.

And we know that the White House endorses other forms of torture err cruel and unusual punishment; like waterboarding, using public security as an excuse. Which is the excuse Stockwell Day gave for this sudden reversal of policy;

"It would send a wrong message. We want to preserve public safety here in Canada."

One wonders since this announcement has come out of blue. One has to ask why now, and why are they doing this. There is a hidden agenda here despite the Harpers assurances that he does not want to open up a debate on capital punishment.

Except they have.

In 1987, the House of Commons defeated a motion to bring the death penalty back. Among those who voted in favor of the idea was Rob Nicholson, now the federal justice minister. Nicholson did not talk to reporters in Parliament and his chief spokeswoman did not respond to queries about whether he still backed capital punishment.

Yep, a not so hidden agenda. It is the slippery slope towards a return to capital punishment in Canada if the Harper Law and Order government gets a majority.

Mr. Harper added: "The reality of this particular case is that were we to intervene, it would very quickly become a question of whether we are prepared to repatriate a double-murderer to Canada. In light of this government's strong initiatives on tackling violent crime, I think that would send the wrong signal to the Canadian population."

SEE:

Say No To Capital Punishment

Pro-Life Pro-Death

Free Kadhar

More Foreign Affairs Incompetency

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Poitique Vert RIP

As Cliff pointed out in the comments to my post No Comments on Politique Vert it appears that they are no more. The ultimate No Comment Policy.

http://politiquevert.wordpress.com/

The authors have deleted this blog. The content is no longer available.

Of course this might be temporary as was the case recently with a couple of Blogging Tories. See:

Making Lemonade Aid

Another BT Bites The Dust

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The Return of Capital Punishment

The Harpocrites have decided that it is okay for another state to murder Canadian citizens as long as that state is a so called democratic one.

The Conservative government's announcement that it will no longer stand up for Canadians who face the death penalty in the United States is drawing fire from the opposition. The Tories officially announced a change in Canada's foreign policy when it comes to Canadians on death row. "We will not actively pursue bringing back to Canada murderers who have been tried in a democratic country that supports the rule of law," Day told the House of Commons on Thursday.

Though as arch conservative Pat Buchanan reminded us last night on Dan Abrams show on MSNBC , discussing the use of waterboarding as torture, "the United States is NOT a democracy IT IS A Republic."

This is the same Republic that kidnapped Mehar Arar and sent him to Syria to be tortured and is still illegally holding a Canadian citizen at Gitmo.

And there are those in the United States who will be impacted by Canada's failure to support our own citizens whose right to life is threatened by state sanctioned murder.

Feingold Statement on the Severe Injustices of Capital Punishment

So much for Canada's international reputation as a defender of Human Rights. Once again tarnished by the Orwellian logic of the Harpocrites. They have of course used this logic to attack Canadian values and government programs, claiming them to be aberrations; simply the result of the previous Liberal governments, whether it is over the issues like the Middle East, Kyoto or Peacekeeping.

They are now imposing their Conservative values in reshaping the policies of the Canadian state through executive edict. This is just another example of their anti-democratic agenda, an agenda that uses the power of the PMO and cabinet to avoid parliament.


SEE:

Say No To Capital Punishment

Pro-Life Pro-Death

Free Kadhar

More Foreign Affairs Incompetency

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Flaherty's Smoke and Mirrors

More evidence of the Harpocrites Tax Unfairness. Business got the biggest tax cut while you and I got crumbs.

And even though many in booming Alberta are better off now than they were a decade ago, the taxation on working families earning median incomes; $40-$60,000, are paying for the tax cuts to business.

Simply put it is our taxes paying for Flaherty's corporate welfare while the Conservatives fail to invest the remainder of our money in much needed social programs.

Economists say the personal income tax relief in the Harper government's Tuesday mini-budget is paltry and does little to improve incentives to work, save and invest in a country already suffering from weak productivity growth.

The overall tax breaks that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty doled out this week will ramp up to $14.7-billion annually within five years, but less than 11 per cent of that went toward personal income tax rate cuts. Only about $1.5-billion is directed at lowering personal income tax rates, in this case cutting the lowest bracket rate to 15 per cent from 15.5 per cent.

Global Insight (Canada) chief economist Dale Orr calculates that the personal tax burden on Canadians keeps rising despite the Conservatives' fall mini-budget.

"This puts the small magnitude of that [mini-budget] relief into perspective," he says.

As a result of the relief Mr. Flaherty offered, personal income taxes collected by Ottawa as a share of all personal income fall to 9.8 per cent this fiscal year from 10.11 per cent. But then they rise to 10.12 per cent and soar to 10.94 per cent by 2012-13, only slightly less than where they would have been without the mini-budget.

The marginal effective tax rate on personal income - the tax paid on the next dollar of income someone earns - remains extremely high for most earners in Canada.

Typical marginal effective tax rates for families with children climb above 50 per cent for incomes in the $20,000 to $30,000 range and exceed 60 per cent for those earning $30,000 to $40,000, according to calculations by C.D. Howe Institute research director Finn Poschmann.

For most families, the rate doesn't drop below 50 per cent until incomes hit $45,000.

Edmonton's economic boom is making the rich richer, but most households are barely better off than in 1981, says the Edmonton Social Planning Council.

In making the comparison today, the council reached back to the peak year of the last big oil boom, rather than to the leaner intervening years.

It makes sense to compare "apples-to-apples" boom years, council researcher John Kolkman said as the non-profit agency called for more than $1 billion in tax breaks and increased spending for low-income Albertans.

Using Statistics Canada figures, Kolkman said the median earnings level - the point where half of income earners make more and half earn less - stood at slightly more than $32,000 in 1981, and only $300 above that in 2005. He adjusted 1981 earnings to equate them to the dollar's 2005 buying power.

Even so, in inflation-adjusted terms an increasing proportion of Edmonton-area families are making $100,000 or more, the Statistics Canada numbers show. Back in 1981, about 27 per cent of families were making at least that amount, in 2005 dollars. As of 2005, more than 30 per cent were in that earnings range.

About 55 per cent of families in 1981 were earning between $40,000 and $100,000 in inflation-adjusted 2005 dollars. The middle-income range accounted for just 43 per cent of families by 2005.

About 18 per cent of families earned less than $40,000 in 1981, using the same inflation-adjusted dollars. Families in that lower-income range peaked at about 38 per cent in 1995. As of 2005, they accounted for 27 per cent.

"A greater percentage of families are doing better," Kolkman said. Even so, he said some families that were once middle income have since lost ground.

SEE:

Tax Cuts For All

Tax Cuts For The Rich Burden You and Me

Tax Fairness For The Rich

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Income Trusts; Predatory Capitalism

Predatory capitalism comes to the oil patch through this Income Trust merger. Another consequence of the Harpocrites Halloween surprise last year. And clearly farmer Ed's Royalty compromise has not impacted these guys.

Merger creates oil patch giant
Canada's newest energy powerhouse, forged yesterday by the proposed merger of Penn West Energy Trust and Canetic Resources Trust, is poised to challenge the oil patch's biggest players as it seeks even more aggressive expansion through acquisitions and new projects.

The new entity will be comfortably the country's largest oil and gas trust, with market value of around $15-billion and production of more than 200,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day. It will have the size to compete with some of the oil patch's biggest names, said executives of both companies.

The new company will not only be a leader in Canadian conventional light oil production, but its larger size will make it easier to access debt markets to fund significant developments in unconventional gas, enhanced oil recovery and even Alberta's oil sands, a region in which major projects have been the preserve of only the largest and most well-financed firms.

In addition, the company - which will operate under the Penn West banner for now, but may be rebranded in the future - is now buttressed against any potential foreign takeover and positioned to expand aggressively by taking over other trusts in Canada as well as assets in the U.S., said Penn West chief executive officer Bill Andrew. Last year's federal decision to make income trusts pay corporate tax from 2011 is perceived as having left such firms as more susceptible to domestic or foreign buyouts.

The friendly $3.6-billion cash and paper deal, which came together in a series of confidential meetings held in motels outside of Calgary over a three-week period, was facilitated in part by Calgary-based lawyer John Brussa, one of the original architects of Canada's income tax structure.

Income Trusts generate vast pools of capital which they can use to buy up other companies while retaining their ability to pay out dividends to coupon cutters.Income Trusts began in the oil patch in Alberta before becoming popular across Canada.

They are a product of the Alberta stock exchange lack of regulation and the Klein governments deregulation revolution. They avoid paying taxes thus allowing for higher returns to investors. They are a tax avoidance scheme for owners. And they still will generate value for their owners despite Flaherty's tax scheme which only comes into effect in 2011.

That will impact the coupon cutters far more than the companies real owners, the Class A shareholders and company investment managers. And by then the majority of Flaherty's corporate tax cuts will be in place enabling this trust to transform itself into a corporation again if it is a fiscal advantage.

In practical life we find not only competition, monopoly and the antagonism between them, but also the synthesis of the two, which is not a formula, but a movement. Monopoly produces competition, competition produces monopoly. Monopolists are made from competition; competitors become monopolists. If the monopolists restrict their mutual competition by means of partial associations, competition increases among the workers; and the more the mass of the proletarians grows as against the monopolists of one nation, the more desperate competition becomes between the monopolists of different nations. The synthesis is of such a character that monopoly can only maintain itself by continually entering into the struggle of competition.

Karl Marx
The Poverty of Philosophy
Chapter Two: The Metaphysics of Political Economy

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The Carbuncle of Class War

This has been a well known fact for years Marx suffered from boils. Now some dweeb is explaining his theories of alienation experienced by the working class under capitalism as the result of his condition.

Karl Marx suffered from a skin disease that can cause severe psychological effects such as self-loathing and alienation, according to a British dermatologist.

The father of communism’s life and attitudes were shaped by hidradenitis suppurativa, said Sam Shuster in the British Journal of Dermatology. One of its symptoms is alienation – a concept that Marx, a martyr to boils and carbuncles, put into words as he wrote Das Kapital.

“In addition to reducing his ability to work, which contributed to his depressing poverty, hidradenitis greatly reduced his self-esteem. This explains his self-loathing and alienation, a response reflected by the alienation Marx developed in his writing.”

This is reductum ad absurdum that results from a shallow attempt to deconstruct Marx. And it isn't even new. It is pop psychology of the right, an attempt to dismiss ideas by dissing the man. Not unlike Aileen Kelly's attack on Bakunin.

The fact is that Marx's poverty exasperated his disease. If anything his suffering poverty, like that of his fellow European working class immigrants to England, placed him within the class. And his skin condition had nothing to do with his revolutionary ideas, he had evolved those long before his skin condition became a problem.

Karl Marx did his best writing on deadline.

Commissioned by the Communist League in mid-1847 to write a "profession of faith," Marx and Engels procrastinated, traveled, experimented with form and might never have written the manifesto of the Communist Party if not for a sternly worded letter from the league ordering them to deliver the document by February 1, 1848.

A few all-nighters later, Marx produced a stirring document that by now has been read by tens of millions of people. Far fewer realize that regular deadline commentary provided Marx with the closest thing he ever had to actual employment. From 1852 to 1862 he was a regular London correspondent for the New York Tribune. All told, Marx contributed almost 500 columns to the Tribune (about a quarter of which were actually written by Engels). Marx's newspaper writing takes up nearly seven volumes of the fifty-volume Collected Works of Marx and Engels--more than Capital and indeed more than any of Marx's works published in book form.

The Tribune was in some ways a logical place for Marx's journalism. The paper was founded in 1841 by Horace Greeley as a crusading organ of progressive causes with a pronounced American and Christian flavor; one contemporary writer described the paper's political stance as "Anti-Slavery, Anti-War, Anti-Rum, Anti-Tobacco, Anti-Seduction, Anti-Grogshops, Anti-Brothels, Anti-Gambling Houses." During Marx's tenure as a correspondent, the Tribune was the largest newspaper in the world, reaching more than 200,000 readers.

At the same time, there was probably no publication in the world that would have been a perfect fit for Marx's cantankerous prose and personality. Even when Marx wrote in English, his strident Germanic tone dominated. His analysis was so unsparingly radical that at times the Tribune felt the need to distance itself from its fulminating London correspondent; introducing one of his 1853 essays, for example, the editors wrote, "Mr. Marx has very decided opinions of his own, with some of which we are far from agreeing," but then conceded that "those who do not read his letters neglect one of the most instructive sources of information on the greatest questions of current European politics."

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Time For A Made In Canada Auto Industry

Here is a perfect example of Branch plant economics. Despite the auto pact,there is now a disconnect between our national auto industry and it's American owners.

Time to create a made in Canada auto industry. But not one that means co-opting workers through unionization without the right to strike.

Domestic auto sales up in Canada

Detroit's Big Three automakers did something in October they haven't been able to do in 10 long years - they outsold their overseas rivals in Canada by a wide margin.

Chrysler axes 1100 jobs at Brampton plant

By John mccrank TORONTO (Reuters) - Chrysler is cutting around 1100 jobs at its Brampton, Ontario, assembly plant as part of wider layoffs planned by the automaker, the head of the Canadian Auto Workers union said on Thursday.

Brampton's muscle-car party is over

Two years ago this month, Canadian Auto Workers union President Buzz Hargrove joined other car industry big shots on a stage at Chrysler LLC's Brampton assembly plant northwest of Toronto to celebrate what was then the hottest car on the road and one of Chrysler's most popular products ever: The beefy Chrysler 300.

This week, he took a call from Chrysler brass informing him that sales of the 300 and its two sister cars built at Brampton -- the Dodge Charger and the Magnum wagon -- had slipped enough in North America to warrant a major cutback in production. The unbridled optimism in 2005 among the CAW and Chrysler executives that the car would stand the test of time has now hit a cold wall of realism suggesting it may not. And in a flash, Brampton's muscle car party is over.

Blaming a slowing U.S. market, Chrysler announced yesterday it will discontinue the Magnum and cut the third shift at Brampton in February, putting 1,100 factory workers on layoff. It's part of a wider and deeper cutback effort under new owners Cerberus Capital Management that will see the automaker dump four models and cut an additional 10,000 hourly, 1,000 salaried and 1,000 contract jobs as it aims to steer the company back to profitability. Chrysler lost US$2-billion in the first quarter this year before splitting from Mercedes-Benz maker Daimler AG.

Chrysler bows to price pressure

Chrysler Canada is boosting cash incentives on its vehicles to address consumer concerns that they're paying more for cars and trucks here than in the United States -- the biggest automaker to date to adjust prices to the rising Canadian dollar.

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