Edmonton PC Votes

Ken Chapman has a breakdown of how the PC leadership vote turned out in Edmonton.

"The Edmonton vote was split up all over the place. Dinning had 5575 in Edmonton and Hancock had 4995. No doubt some Hancock votes will bleed to Dinning. Oberg was third in Edmonton with 3228 and they have no reason to go to Dinning but will bleed some to Morton who had a respectable 2739 total in Edmonton. Norris was fourth in Edmonton with 3125 and Stelmach was only 200 votes behind him at 2925."

And he speculates on how Stelmach could come up the middle. It still think it's a two way race as I have said before. However the anybody but Dinning camp now has Stelmach to back not just Morton, which is why he credits his chances at coming up the middle. Oberg becomes 2nd defeated candidate to back Stelmach in Alberta I remain doubtful.Even though the nubers add up right now if all of Hancock and Obergs votes go to Stelmach, however Oberg is as right wing as Morton, so his votes could split to Morton, they will certainly not go to Dinning. And sore loser Norris has yet to say whom he will support.

Chapman will be doing a breakdown of Calgary later. He also looks at how the candidates MLA backers pulled the vote in thier ridings. Interesting stuff. Chapmans blog is great for straight forward political analysis of the Tories, from a Tory (who claims to be interested in progressive politics, go figure) who supports Hancock.

As I said the biggest losers in this race were Oberg and Norris. Both suffered the delusion that they were contenders.

For Norris he came in fourth in his hometown even as the fairhaired boy of the Edmoton business community and the Edmonton Sun. Fourth.

Hancock whom many pundits wrote off came in a close second in Edmonton, after Dinning. Of course he is a social and fiscal liberal, a Red Tory. This is Redmonton after all where even the Conservatives have to run a Red.

A tip o' the blog to Daveberta

See:

Conservative Leadership Race

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Uh Oh Maybe The Tories Were Right

But for the wrong reasons. It is not just Canada that cannot meet its Kyoto targets, it's the whole world. It is the heat death of the planet so lets make lots of money while we can.

Maybe the Harpocrites were right it is impossible to meet the Kyoto targets. So why bother.As Prince said lets party like it's 1999.

Hello, earth to humans; Capitalism is NOT sustainable.

The rate of increase in carbon dioxide emissions has more than doubled since the 1990s, according to a new Australian study, raising fears that the rising levels of carbon dioxide may be unstoppable.

"From 2000 to 2005, the growth rate of carbon dioxide emissions was more than 2.5 per cent per year, whereas in the 1990s it was less than one per cent per year," said study co-author Mike Raupach of Australia's national science agency, the CSIRO.

Carbon dioxide has been implicated as a major cause of global warming, and the new findings suggest that recent global efforts to reduce emissions have had little impact.

According to Raupach 7.9 billion tonnes of carbon were emitted into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide in 2005 and the rate of increase is accelerating.

According to CSIRO's Paul Fraser, another of the study's authors, "The trend over recent years suggests the growth rate is accelerating, signifying that fossil fuels are having an impact on greenhouse gas concentrations in a way we haven't seen in the past."

"The jump in emissions is remarkable … it seems there has been a tremendous shift in the past five years," said independent expert Paul Crutzen of the Max Plank Institute for Chemistry in Germany, a Nobel Prize winner for his work on holes in the ozone layer. "Unfortunately, once emissions go up, it's very hard to bring them back down."

Also See

Ambrose

Kyoto

A Critique of Kyoto Capitalism Is NOT Sustainable

Socialism

industrial ecology

Social Ecology

Green Capitalism



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Left Wing Pragmatism

Leftist Candidate in Ecuador Is Ahead in Vote, Exit Polls Show

Rafael Correa, an urbane economist who has rattled nerves in Washington with plans to limit American military activities in Ecuador and renegotiate the country’s foreign debt, seemed headed to an easy victory on Sunday in the presidential election, according to several exit polls.A win by Mr. Correa, 43, could bring Ecuador into a group of Latin American nations with leftist presidents, including Bolivia, Cuba and Nicaragua, which are allied with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. Mr. Correa has close ties to Mr. Chávez, whose government is prepared to offer Ecuador assistance to strengthen its national oil company.

As I wrote here the new left wing regimes in Latin America are not the old Stalinist model that the red baiting American right likes to claim they are. They have learned the lessons of defeat, of compromise, and that the need to create social democracy is as important as the need for economic social justice.

Depite the rhetorical bluster of a Hugo Chavez, the reality is that the recent victories of the Left in Latin America and now Central America are tempered with realism that they need to develop social captialism, a mixed economy, if they are to get out from under the thumb of Imperialism. Even Chavez is a realist, and his oil compan CITIGO is one of the most successful in the United States, and you can't argue with success.

No shocking revelation that. State Capitalism of the Stalinist model which was based on militarism and rationing, was really the War Communism of the Bolsheviks which was modeled not on Marx but Bismark.

The Cuban revolution was the model for the anti-colonialist movements in the sixties and seventies. But with the electoral success of Allende in Chile that changed. Despite the Pinochet coup, that model is what has been put into practice now in Latin America.

Today's left in Latin America is about as revolutionary as the NDP and no more a threat than they are to the interests of capitalism.

Cold War Icon Ortega Trades Marx for God

But Ortega, who was president in 1985-90, the height of the Contra insurgency, says he has traded war for peace, love and consensus.

His victory speech late Wednesday was tinged with some of his old fire. Raising his arms in victory, he led thousands in a rendition of an old revolutionary song: "The people united will never be divided."

He promoted socialist ideals such as free education and medical care, lambasted U.S. Republicans for the war in Iraq and thanked other leftist Latin American leaders for their support. But most of his speech was dedicated to praising democracy and reaching out to opponents.

"Don't let one criticism slip from your lips against those who didn't vote for us," he warned his supporters. "We have to be humble."

Ortega, who turned 61 Saturday and takes office Jan. 10, has been careful not to sound triumphalist. Even though his strong lead over Harvard-educated banker Eduardo Montealegre was clear soon after Sunday's election, he waited two full days for Montealegre to concede defeat before declaring victory.

His speeches have focused on reassuring skeptics that he plans no radical changes and will embrace free trade, job creation and close U.S. ties.

On Saturday, Ortega said his Cabinet ministers will be named by the people _ not himself _ and he had asked local representatives to send him proposals for candidates. He vowed that half of his top officials would be women and he would include people who didn't vote for him.

He also promised more than 1,000 Sandinista peasant leaders that the government would buy land for people who need it, which they could pay for "little by little even if it is with a sack of corn."

Bolivia
A hard bargain
Evo Morales deals and wins on gas

WHEN Evo Morales, Bolivia's socialist president, announced the “nationalisation” of his country's oil and gas on May 1st, he gave the foreign companies that had invested $3.5 billion in the industry six months to accept new contracts. These would turn them into heavily taxed providers of services to Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB), the revived state energy company. Just minutes before the deadline, late on October 28th, ten energy companies signed up to new terms that Mr Morales said will raise the government's energy revenues to $1 billion this year and four times as much by 2010.

See:

State Capitalism

Globalization

Latin America

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Liberal No Show

Supppose they held a convention and nobody showed? It's time for the Liberals to adopt one person one vote.

"There is some concern about the attendance and I think that's across the board, by the way," said one Liberal strategist, who estimated that about 2,000 and 3,000 delegates will attend the convention. "If there's a low turnout, the camps that get their vote out, just like in an election or in a nomination, will do better than the average. We'll be glad to get by this and past this, because it's been hard on everybody."

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Liberal Leadership Race

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Green Capitalism

Is Canada missing out on an business opportunity with Kyoto. Apparently.

Canada could be hurt by Kyoto retreat, says head of UN Environment Program

Steiner, a German who took over as UNEP executive director earlier this year, said there was disappointment with Ottawa's stance at the UN Climate Conference that has just ended in Nairobi.

He predicted Canadian investors will press for greater certainty about the government's intentions. "I think the best answers will come from the corporations."

Steiner added in an interview that there's nothing wrong with making profits if the result is lower emissions; that is precisely to purpose of the Kyoto Clean Development Mechanism, which allows companies to generate and trade carbon-emissions credits. "Frankly, some people will make money."

For example, a Canadian company could design and build a solar power project in Africa, creating credits which then could be sold on the international market. In this way, emissions cuts would be obtained wherever they can be done at lowest cost.

According to the Stern Review, recently published by the UK government, markets for low-carbon energy products will likely be worth at least $500 billion per year by 2050.

Mark Holland: 'If you can't make money saving the world, you won't save the world.'

RAND Corp. says big gains can be achieved at little cost

Renewable sources of energy could meet 25% of U.S. demand for electricity and motor fuels by 2025 with little additional costs, says a study by RAND Corp. released last week. Currently, renewable energy sources provide about 6% of U.S. energy.To generate renewable energy without new costs, however, fossil fuels must remain relatively expensive—at least $54 per barrel—and renewable energy production costs must fall about 20% between now and 2025, the report determined. Both assumptions match government predictions and historical trends, the report says.

As I have said Kyoto is about creating a green capitalism. It is based on carbon sinks and carbon emissions trading. A new market approach to the environment.

But the Conservatives ideologically oppose this market approach, for which they can give no good reason.That is because the believe the handful of Fox newsbroadcasters who claim that global warming is a myth.

But here is a business opportunity they are denying themselves, and Canadian corporations and NGO's.

In reality carbon trading was embraced by the Liberals because they saw they could tie it into CIDA development projects killing two birds with one stone. They didn't have to increase government expenditures on Kyoto committments they just had to earmark existing CIDA development funding as part of their Kyoto comittment.

It is this CIDA funding with its Kyoto monicker that Rona Ambrose claims is the billions spent on carbon trading outside of Canada, as if all we were doing was buying someone elses carbon credits. It was a convient lie for the moment. But now the inconvient truth is going to come back and bite the Conservatives on the ass.

See:

Ambrose

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Success Iraq Style

The New York Times is reporting that there is some success in Iraq. But not the kind the Americans were expecting. Of course its not what the neo-cons predicted but in one of those twists of fate it is a neo con strategy. Remember Wolfowitz saying that Iraq would be self-sustaining after the American Invasion. Well it is.

The insurgency in Iraq is now self-sustaining financially, raising tens of millions of dollars a year from oil smuggling, kidnapping, counterfeiting, connivance by corrupt Islamic charities and other crimes that the Iraqi government and its American patrons have been largely unable to prevent, a classified United States government report has concluded.

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Iraq

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Who Knew

Live blog of Conservative leadership vote
Canada.com, Canada - 3 hours ago
Calgary Herald Q Bloggers Ben Li and Maclean Kay will be filing real-time reports and video updates from the Round-Up Centre as we find out who the next ...

Really the Calgary Herald was live blogging were they, please note the time date of the posting above. As the political blogosphere, including yours truly, scrambled to find results for the Albert Leadership Race, these guys were apparentlylive blogging.

Except they didn't tell anybody, and they were anything but live since none of us knew about it. And they were not found when I googled. Until this morning.

Check out the postings at Progressive Bloggers, Blogging Tories and the Canadian Blog Exchange. Folks posted information from QR77 and other sources not these dweebs.

The point of live blogging is that it is live, at the time, accessible on the internet, not published posthumously. Typical MSM psuedo-blogging.

See:

Conservative Leadership Race

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The Biggest Losers

In the race to be the guy to replace Ralph. Lyle Oberg and Mark Norris.


FINAL RESULTS (courtesy The Invisble Hand)
11:45pm:
Dinning 29,470 (30.2%)
Morton 25,614 (26.2%)
Stelmach 14,967 (15.3%)
Oberg 11,638 (11.9%)
Hancock 7,595 (7.8%)
Norris 6,789 (6.9%)
Doerksen 873 (0.9%)
McPherson 744 (0.8%)
Total: 97,690



Lyle Oberg ran the race with all the self assured bravado of being in second place. That bravedo and confidence was a case of believing his own press.Unfortunately through out this campaign Oberg created nothing but bad press and on Saturday night the reality of that came through loud and clear.

As I write this, Lyle Oberg has finished fourth, and is off the final ballot. He was ashen, looking like a 10-year-old who has just discovered his bike was stolen. Edmonton Journal Legislature Reporter Graham Thompson

And all those PC memberships that the Building Trades bought for their membership to support Oberg added to his self delusion. And in the end made little difference as I predicted.

Mark Norris had lost his seat last provincial election not a great place to run from, especially when he had been a cabinet minister. And despite rallying the Edmonton Conservative business community, with constant propagandizing from his biggest cheerleader the Edmonton Sun, he actually came in behind the only Red Tory in the race, his fellow Edmontonian David Hancock. Like Oberg he believed his own press.

That makes Oberg and Norris the biggest losers.

While Stelmach came in third his numbers are so low he is neither a king maker nor a spoiler. He is however a rich widow that the two princes left in this race will come courting.Edmonton Journal Legislature Reporter Graham Thompson agrees with my initial assessment of Stelmach.

Some of the biggest cheers of the night came from Ed Stelmach's supporters, who were overjoyed their guy finished third and is on the second ballot. But third place is the booby prize. It's hard to imagine Stelmach bouncing back when he's so far behind.

But as usual with the Tories, some continue to live in their own fantasy worlds. Like Oberg and Norris did. Stelmach thinks he stands a chance on the third ballot, despite it obviously being a two way race between two conflicting ideologies in the party.Stelmach not quitting

Stelmach is no Third Way. And he should bow out gracefully.And for the good of the party endorse Dinning. Though frankly I have never been one to give one hoot for the good of the Party of Calgary. But that is the realpolitick that faces Stelmach and the other losers.

With a Morton win the old Reform party will consoldiate its rule in Edmonton and Ottawa. And woe to the party and Canada. If that happens, until the next provincial election, the other big losers will be you and I.

Morton's strong second-place showing could be seen as surprising for a rookie MLA who's never held a cabinet post and was only elected in 2004.However, the former senator-in-waiting has been thumping the war drums against the federal government for years on several fronts, and had deep roots to the former Reform and Canadian Alliance parties.He's also backed by many Alberta Tory MPs and has been using his network of supporters to build a political machine many analysts believe is only surpassed in size by Dinning's.

Though I personally believe it would be the best thing. A Morton led PC Party will be fractious and split, interncine power struggles between the progressives and the social conservatives will ensue. Causing Progressive Conservatives, liberals, centerists and Red Tories to abandon the party for the Alberta Liberals, their natural home. And with Taft purging the party of one if its most Red Liberals the outspoken trade unionist, Dan Black, he is preparing a home for them.

Peter Lougheed created the PC's as a popular front party of Liberals, Progressive Conservatives and the old Socreds. The later have morphed over the years into seperatists like the old Western Canada Concept, Republicans, Federal Reformers, social conservatives and fundamentalists. With Morton in charge it would be the final death of the last lingerings of the Lougheed era political party. Which is why he endorsed Dinning.

See:

Conservative Leadership Race

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Libertarian Justice

Our New Law and Order Government proposes to have police appoint judges, calls for mandatory sentencing, three strike laws, and the whole raft of authoritarian solutions to 'crime' . What they have missed doing is to actually reform the real failure in our so called 'justice' system. That failure is the lack of a genuine jury system.

Like most judicial systems Canada's has little to do with real justice because it is all about state sanctioned law. It lacks the very basis of libertarian justice; the jury system.

Rarely are court cases in Canada heard by a jury. The prosecution can opt for a Judge in many cases of minor to serious crimes. And even in cases of very serious crimes, assualt, murder, etc. a jury is optional. It is NOT a given. It is an option. And thus it's power and relevance remains diminished in Canada, even more so than in the United States.

Yet for real justice to be done, the jury system is key to a libertarian approach to law. Ironic that those who laughingly call themselves libertarians like the Harpocrites quickly abandon any such pretext once they achieve state power. Then like Tories of old England they return to their reactionary artistocratic roots; law and order, God, Queen and Country.

They of course are really speaking of liberaltarianism, that species of false or vulgar libertarianism that is commonly called fiscal conservativism, neo-conservativism or neo-liberalism. When it comes to justice and morality they are not classical liberals nor libertarians but Burkean Reactionaries at best and fundamentalist Christians at worse. They fear anarchy and embrace law, order and good government.

The very beginings of Anarchism lay in the liberal utilitarian belief in self government and self reliance.It is about poltical justice. And as the author of that treatise William Godwin asserted it is about contractual relations between people. No contract is valid if it is not voluntary and freely entered into. This is the basis of anarchism and American libertarianism.

Punishment inevitably excites in the sufferer, and ought to excite, a sense of injustice. Let its purpose be, to convince me of the truth of a position which I at present believe to be false. It is not, abstractedly considered, of the nature of an argument, and therefore it cannot begin with producing conviction. Punishment is a comparatively specious name; but is in reality nothing more than force put upon one being by another who happens to be stronger. But strength apparently does not constitute justice. The case of punishment, in the view in which we now consider it, is the case of you and me differing in opinion, and your telling me that you must be right, since you have a more brawny arm, or have applied your mind more to the acquiring skill in your weapons than I have. OF THE RIGHT OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT

An excellent essay on Libertarianism and the Jury system; The Jury: Defender Or Oppressor outlines the ideals of American libertarians Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker. See the excerpt below.

Key to Spooners idea of justice was the fact that no Constitution or law could be accepted except by the people, because it is the people who make the laws. And Spooner viewed the real Jury system as not one appointed by the State but made up by the people themselves.

Our constitutions purport to be established by 'the people,' and, in theory, 'all the people' consent to such government as the constitutions authorize. But this consent of 'the people' exists only in theory. It has no existence in fact. Government is in reality established by the few; and these few assume the consent of all the rest, without any such consent being actually given.

Interestingly this was similar to the position of the great Canadian liberal Papineau in his critique of the Act of Confederation. In light of todays controversy over what is the Canadian Nation State one should remember that the people of Canada never had any say in either Confederation or the repatriation of the Constitution. Just as we have no say in the courts.

In fact on those occasions when the people attempted to have a say in their own government, the Rebellion of 1837 and again with the Riel Rebellion, the Canadian Law and Order State of the day ruthlessly put down the rebellions. And in the case of Riel he was tried and found guilty by a Judge. A jury of his peers would have declared him a free man.

Why shouldn't every law be subject to review by the citizens? When authority springs from the people, why shouldn't it also return to them through a system of of citizen enforcement of the laws? Why shouldn't citizens have a practical, direct, effective way of defending their freedoms and property and that of their neighbors from any undue invasion of the state?

Juries by no means are a prerequisite to a libertarian judicial system, but they are practical and they can work. They've proven that. They have the added advantage of a wide-spread popularity among a broad base of people. It's only a matter of degree to take people from understanding better the concepts behind the jury's right to determine law and fact, to help them to understand other elements of libertarian philosophy. the jury can help bridge the enormous abyss between the current statist society and a future libertarian society. One of the advantages a properly organized jury offers, no matter when or where it exists is that it has its own built-in safeguards which protect it from the kinds of pressure and decay that have affected all government judicial systems. These internal mechanisms which make juries immune from this rot include: jury does not establish precedent because every case is different and must rest on its own merits

A jury's powers are limited

The requirement that all verdicts be unanimous protects minorities from the abuse of majorities

A jury does not need to be subservient to the legal community or to other minions of the state

A jury has no vested power interests to protect

A jury views justice from a layman's perspective

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