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.



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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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