Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Four Little Words

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he will introduce a motion recognizing that Quebecers form a nation 'within a united Canada' — but not an independent one.

Touché. Today was the making of a Prime Minister. To a standing ovation from all three federalist parties, the Right Honourable Stephen Harper outflanked the Bloc Quebecois by adding four little words to the motion they are presenting in the house tomorrow. The motion will be that the parliament of Canada recognizes Quebec is a Nation, "within a united Canada."

Liberal Leader Bill Graham was choked with emotion as he responded to the Prime Ministers speech, agreeing that this went beyond partisan politics. He was probably overjoyed that the Conservatives had rescued the beleagured Liberals from what was sure to be an internecine feud over exactly the same resolution at their upcoming convention. One that had been one of the most devisive issues in their leadership race for the last month. He will probably claim it had not even crossed his mind, as we waxed poetic about bi-partisan federalism.

Duccepe was outraged, that he had been upstaged by the PM. That his clever motion that was neither for federalism or seperatism was now reformulated to be a federalist motion. And by the fact that the PM had the audacity to lecture him on how it was not the place of parliament to decide Quebec's fate, but since Mr. Duceppe had brought it up he would be glad to address it.

And Jack Layton was far from non-partisan, getting his digs in reminding the house that Quebec is a social democratic society, but that had not always been the case. It once was dominated by the right wing dictatorship of Maurice Duplessis not unlike the politics of the current Conservative government. That Quebecoise would feel most at home in a Social Democratic Canada.

It was a 'historic moment' for Quebec and Canada. And in the making of a Prime Minister.

Of course this had nothing to do with it.
Conservatives Support Slips – Most in Quebec




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Income Spliting is Anti-Libertarian

There is an irony in the Conservatives fetish for income splitting. It of course favours the rich, and it denies individual responsibility in taxation. While the right wants to see aboriginal peoples accept indvidual property rights rather than their traditional familal collective rights, for white rich people they want collective familal rights for tax purposes.

A libertarian feminist critique of the income spliting is available online I am publishing an excerpt from this presentation to the Law Reform Commision in 2001.


WHAT’S SEX GOT TO DO WITH IT? TAX AND THE “FAMILY”
Professor Claire Young
Faculty of Law
University of British Columbia
pgs 209-212

Conclusion

Perhaps the most persuasive reason for moving away from rules that take spousal and
familial relationships into account is that these rules complicate the tax system. If
simplicity really is an underlying goal of the income tax system, then repeal of many of
these rules would enhance that objective considerably. The integrity of the individual as
the unit would be ensured and there would be other benefits. Writing about the rules that
treat spouses as one unit, Jack London notes that they:

[e]xacerbate the schizophrenic and incoherent focus of the tax system on who
should comprise the appropriate human tax units. The federal income tax
system, more than ever before, lacks an intellectually or rationally defensible
perspective on whether married persons are, or ought to be, considered tax
units… In the result, the system is less equitable, both horizontally and vertically,
than it could be, or than it would be, under an ideal tax system, when only tax
equities are considered.
Jack London,
“The Impact of Changing Perceptions of Social Equity on Tax Policy:
The Marital
Tax Unit”, (1988) 26 Osgoode Hall Law Journal 287 at 288-289.

But repeal of all the rules that refer to “spouse” or “child” is not recommended. Some of
the rules have an important objective and are effective in accomplishing that objective. In
other instances it is difficult to determine if a rule is achieving its intended objective.
Therefore, in some cases the report recommends the collection of more empirical data in
order to reach a conclusion about the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of a particular rule.
Some of the major issues raised by the report include the following. While the attribution
rules are intended to stop income splitting between spouses and between adults and
minor children, there is a dearth of information about whether, in the absence of the
rules, there would be a proliferation of income splitting transactions with a consequent
tax leakage. Repeal of the rules would be a positive move to the extent that it results in a
removal of the disincentive for high-income taxpayers (primarily men) to transfer
property to their low-income spouses (primarily women). The problem is that repeal of
the attribution rules would only benefit those who have high incomes and who own
income-producing property. The report recommends more empirical research on the
issue of the cost in terms of tax dollars lost through income splitting in the absence of the
rules before a decision is made about retention or repeal of the rules.

The report recommends the repeal of rules that are based on dependency. These rules
include the spousal tax credit and the ability to transfer unused tax credits to a spouse.
The primary reasons for this recommendation are that these rules undermine women’s
autonomy, they act as a disincentive to women’s participation in the paid labour force
and the tax subsidy is delivered to the economically dominant person in the relationship
and not the person who needs it. Provisions based on economies of scale are subject to
the critique that it is not only spouses who benefit from economies of scale. Any two or
more persons living together benefit, but they are not penalized by the tax system. In this
context the child-care expense deduction, the GST Tax Credit and the Canada Child Tax
Benefit are discussed in detail and recommendations for improvement made.

The provisions that are based on economic mutuality are discussed in some detail.
These provisions are subdivided into those that are of advantage to the taxpayer
because they result in less tax payable and those that disadvantage the taxpayer
because they increase the amount of taxes payable. These two main classifications are
further subdivided into other classifications that look to the nature of the provision. The
problem with rules that are based on an assumption of economic mutuality is that in
many spousal relationships, this economic mutuality is not a reality. There is little or no
sharing or pooling of income. Therefore, unless the provision has an underlying other
rationale, it is difficult to argue that it should form part of the tax system. The conclusion
is that some of the rules that advantage the taxpayer should be retained because they
do have valid other objectives. But rules such as the inclusion/deduction system with
respect to spousal support cannot be defended on any basis.

In summary, there are many reasons why tax rules that take spousal and familial
relationships into account should be rethought. Perhaps the most compelling reason is
that the nature of spousal and familial relationships has changed dramatically over the
years. The percentage of Canadians who are married or living in heterosexual commonlaw
relationships is declining. Within those relationships, the role of spouses is changing.
Other non-spousal relationships, such as mother and daughter or two or more good
friends, share many characteristics with spousal relationships. Yet it is spousal
relationships that the tax system treats differently. It is time that this policy was
reconsidered and this report is intended to facilitate that reconsider
ation.

See

Not Real Tax Fairness



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Kumbaya

The image “http://www.thestar.com/images/thestar/img/061122_liberals_300.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya!
Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya!
Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya!
O Lord, kumbaya!
Someone’s laughing, Lord, kumbaya!
Someone’s laughing, Lord, kumbaya!
Someone’s laughing, Lord, kumbaya!
O Lord, kumbaya!
Someone’s crying, Lord, kumbaya!
Someone’s crying, Lord, kumbaya!
Someone’s crying, Lord, kumbaya!
O Lord, kumbaya!
Someone’s praying, Lord, kumbaya!
Someone’s praying, Lord, kumbaya!
Someone’s praying, Lord, kumbaya!
O Lord, kumbaya!
Someone’s singing, Lord, kumbaya!
Someone’s singing, Lord, kumbaya!
Someone’s singing, Lord, kumbaya!
O Lord, kumbaya!
Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya!
Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya!
Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya!
O Lord, kumbaya!
See:

Liberal Leadership Race



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Promise made promise delayed.

Soon. Someday. In the future. We will do it. Before the next election. Sooner than later. Any day now. Tommorow or the day after. When the opportunity is right.

MPs to revisit gay marriage

Justice Minister Vic Toews said Tuesday the government would honour a promise to allow a vote on whether to reconsider the 2005 legislation, which made Canada the fourth country after the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain to legalize gay marriage, before Parliament breaks for Christmas on Dec. 15. "The prime minister has made a commitment and he will honour that commitment," Toews said when asked by Reuters if there would be a vote. He was unable to say when it would happen.

See:

Same Sex Marriage



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Not Real Tax Fairness

"Flaherty has tried to pass this income splitting proposal off as a "tax fairness" measure, saying that it will "strengthen the social security system" and "significantly enhance the incentives to save and invest for family retirement security." This is really a calculated mis-description of what income splitting for tax purposes will do. First, it is a tax benefit that is only available to couples — single, unattached seniors need not apply. Second, it is a tax benefit that can really only benefit couples with one high income — couples who have two real incomes cannot take much advantage of income splitting because they each already have income of their own. Thus, income splitting will reserve the largest benefits for just one special set of taxpayers — those couples who live on a single high income. Third, the tax benefits of income splitting are completely unlike those meagrely meted out to people living in poverty — the financial value of the tax benefits of income splitting are virtually unlimited: the higher the single income-earner's income is, the bigger the tax benefit will be. For example, taxpayers with retirement income of $140,000 per year could save nearly $10,000 in federal and provincial taxes in just one year by electing to treat half of that income as having been earned by their spouse or partner. Packaged with the new income trust rules and an increase in the over-65 income tax credit as the "Tax Fairness Plan," permitting taxpayers to split their retirement incomes with their spouses or partners is, as Garth Turner put it at a Conservative conference in early October, "a down payment on the Conservative policy, adopted by party members in 2004, to move toward income splitting for all Canadian couples..."Because income splitting can only give tax breaks to those who live as couples, and because it reserves the largest tax breaks for the richest couples, it is the antithesis of "fairness" in terms of the real needs of those who live on retirement incomes."

Kathleen Lahey is professor of law at Queen's University where she teaches taxation and tax policy.


Real tax fairness would be no income taxes on the working class for those earning $100,000 a year or less.



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Right Against Right

The plan to create an intergrated Free Trade Zone of North America is supported in Canada by the Right Wing, in particluar members of the New Government of Canada and their allies in the Canadian CEO lobby under Thomas d'Aquino and by rigth wing provincial governments like Alberta. In the U.S. however it is the right wing that is opposed to deep integration between, Canada, Mexico and the United States. Ironic ain't it.

In October, Tancredo demanded the United States suspend work on the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) signed last year by Canada, Mexico and The United States until Congress examines its goals and agreements, which include standardizing regulations and dismantling other barriers to trade.

The deal to collaborate on a wide range of trade and security issues is part of a larger plot to merge the countries in a European Union-like arrangement using a common currency, he said, with no oversight from legislators.

A coalition of American conservatives is organizing a grassroots effort to make it an issue in the 2008 presidential race and vow to campaign against any candidate, Republican or Democrat, who won't side with them.

The movement was spearheaded in October by Howard Phillips, chairman of the public policy group Conservative Caucus, anti-feminist activist Phyllis Schlafly and author Jerome Corsi.

The group is calling for a congressional investigation into the SPP and full disclosure of all documents when the new Congress run by Democrats begins in January. They're getting support from the Minuteman Project that monitors the borders to deter illegal crossings, a group Bush has called vigilantes.

Supporters of the anti-union stand point out that a prominent three-country task force backed by Canada's business elite has promoted an elaborate vision of a common economy and security perimeter.

The plan, released last year, drew fire from some Canadians who saw it as a dangerous surrender of sovereignty designed to benefit big business.

Of course in Canada the opposition to this accord comes predominately from the nationalist left.

I await the political confusion and chaos amongst the Blogging Tories who slavisly imitate their Republican idols south of us, as to whether they will support the interests of Canadian Business or their ideological counterparts. Place your wagers.


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Bourgeois Revolution

Nepal has finally entered the modern age, well at least the modern age of the 19th Century.

In the capital of Katmandu, thousands gathered in the heart of the city, waving banners and chanting slogans in celebration.

"Victory is ours! Long live people's democracy and peaceful Nepal!" chanted the participants.

In the southern city of Bharatpur, hundreds gathered and chanted, "Let there be permanent peace! No more autocracy! No more dictatorship!"

Maoist leaders will take seats alongside the elected politicians in parliament and join an interim government to oversee elections for an assembly that will draft a new constitution and decide the fate of the monarchy.



More than 13,000 people were killed before a cease-fire was declared in April following the weeks of mass pro-democracy protests that forced Gyanendra to restore Parliament, which he had usurped 14 months earlier.

The accord came a day after a government commission blamed Gyanendra for the brutal crackdown on the April protests that left 19 people dead, and recommended he be punished.
Under the deal, the rebels will join the interim parliament by Nov. 26 and will get 73 of the chamber’s 330 seats. Koirala’s Nepali Congress will remain the biggest party with 85 seats, and the Maoists will share second place with the Communist Party of Nepal. The rest of the seats will be held by smaller parties.
The rebels’ large number of seats is sure to give them a significant role in a new interim government, which is to be in place by Dec. 1. Officials were still working out the details of how the administration would be set up.
Gyanendra seized power in February 2005, saying he would bring order to a chaotic and corrupt political scene and quell the Maoist insurgency.
Since restoring Parliament, Gyanendra has been stripped of his powers, command over the army, and his immunity from prosecution.

The making of a "Bourgeois Revolution"
Social Research, Fall, 2004 by E.J. Hobsbawm

What this paper has tried to show is that something that plainly forms the foundation of the classical view of the French Revolution as a social revolution, a "bourgeois revolution" and a central and decisive step in the evolution of modern society, emerged in the first postrevolutionary generation, and why this reading of the French Revolution and its consequences seemed more logical and realistic than the modern revisionist view that it was "haphazard in its origins and ineffectual in its outcome" (Runciman, 1982: 318). It seemed realistic to French liberals in three respects, because in 1830 it seemed evident that a middle class actually had come to power. The nineteenth century, moreover, seemed clearly to perpetuate and even to institutionalize the conflict, which had not existed before 1789 but emerged during the revolution, that between "1791" and "1794," between middle class and "people" or "masses" (later specified by some as the "the proletariat"). Above all, it seemed realistic because, as Tocqueville put it elegantly and eloquently, the revolution

   has entirely destroyed, or is in the process of destroying ...
everything in ancient society that was derived from aristocratic
and feudal institutions, everything that was in any
way connected with them, everything that had the least
impress of them (Tocqueville, 1947: 23).

And the canyon with the earthquake of the revolution had opened between the Old Regime and the new society was evidently impassable, its profundity and width demonstrated, in France at least, beyond any doubt by the repeated failure to restore that Old Regime.



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Death of Channel Ten


When cable TV was introduced into Canada, at the same time that the CRTC came into being, it was determined that it should include community access. That meant that community groups, individuals, etc. would have free access to cable broadcasting to meet its 'community' objectives that it state made it an alternative to mainstream TV broadcasters.


The 1968 reform of the Broadcasting Act replaced the BBG with the Canadian Radio-Television Commission, or CRTC (which became the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission in 1976). The CRTC spent most of the 1970s developing a regulatory framework for the rapidly expanding cable industry, which had emerged in the 1950s as community antenna television serving remote areas. By retransmitting signals picked out of the air from U.S. border-town transmitters (for which they paid no license fees until 1989), the Canadian cable industry built an attractive product for the Canadian television audience, which quickly developed a taste for the best of both worlds. To paraphrase the 1929 royal commission on broadcasting, Canadians wanted Canadian programming, but they wanted U.S. programming too.

Aware that the increasingly widespread cable model was undermining its policy to support and promote Canadian content, the CRTC moved to ensure that cable, as well, contributed to the overriding policy objective of delivering Canadian television to Canadians. Must-carry provisions ensure that every available Canadian over-the-air signal in any area is offered as basic service, along with a local community channel. But in exchange, cable companies were authorised to distribute the three American commercial networks plus PBS. This was, for many years, the basic cable package available to Canadian cable subscribers, and on this basis, cable penetration grew to 76% of Canadian homes by 1992.


The cable companies provided a public access channel to meet the CRTC requirements for community access. That channel in most communities in Alberta was Channel 10. It allowed for individuals, non-profit groups, religious, multicultural, social, political interests to have a free voice. Cable companies in the begining relied upon these groups to boost their volunteer base for staffing and content.

As they became more corporate, such as Shaw and its successful production of the comedy SCTV, the role of the community became more and more a drag on the corporate model that cable was becoming. Today cable companies have eliminated all community access, and have transformed Channel 10 into an internal news community announcement channel operated by the cable company and its staff. Thus the short life and death of authentic autonomous community televsion we had been promised when Cable was first licensed.

In Alberta the provincial government created its own public access TV channel, ACCESS, which was part of its radio network, CKUA. This channel slowly evolved from an educational and community access channel to an Eductational TV station linked to Athabasca university for distance learning, modeled on Ontario's Educational Channel. With the coming of the Klein privateers both ACESS and CKUA were privatized. ACCESS is now part of CHUMS Educational TV network. And again the death of community access to the airwaves.

Cable access in the United States still allows for individual and community access. Ironically thanks to Canadian media activists.

According to Ralph Engelman's Origins of Public Access Cable Television 1966-1972, New York's public access began in 1968 by Fred Friendly, a television advisor to the Ford Foundation and chairman of Mayor John Lindsay's advisory task force on CATV and Telecommunications, when he wrote a report recommending that cable companies set aside two channels the public could lease for a minor fee. The fee was opposed by others, and was later dropped. In July 1971 public access started.

From 1968 to 1970, Canadian filmmaker Red Burns, who'd served on the National Film Board of Canada (NFB)'s Challenge For Change and George C. Stoney, who'd likewise served a guest role, co-founded the Alternative Media Center (AMC) at NYU in 1971. AMC started the National Federation of Local Cable Programmers, which is a public access advocacy organization, with interns that help establish access centers throughout America. In 1972 Burns and Stoney worked with FCC commissioner Nicholas Johnson to make the FCC cable access requirements.

The FCC issued its Third Report and Order in 1972, which required all cable systems in the top 100 U.S. television markets to provide three access channels, one each for educational, local government and public use, where if there was insufficient demand for three in a particular market, the cable companies could offer fewer channels, but at least one, and any group or individual wishing to use the channels was guaranteed at least five minutes free. Also required was for cable companies to provide facilities and equipment with which people could produce shows.


We need a return to public access on cable and in any decisions the CRTC makes, fo any forms of broadcasting, TV, radio and new media.

The CRTC mandate changed under the Mulroney Tories to become the voice of capitalist competition in the media marketplace. Public access and the defense of the public interest in licensing our public airwaves, be it TV, radio, phone or the internet has been sacrificed by the CRTC. Instead they view their role as another Competition Bureau to enforce competition between competing oligopolies the Telcos and Cable companies.


SEE:

Pro Monopoly Tories

Monopoly Capitalism in Cyberspace




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Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Klein To Blame

This would require actually having centres for the menatlly ill to be able to access. But the Klein government shut those down, and tossed folks onto the streets back in the bad old debt/deficit hysteria of the ninties. They have created no community programs to deal with the mentally ill and the result is a large number on the streets homeless, or in family settings unable to get treatment. In a province that forces meth users and under age prostitutes into rehab programs this should be a no brainer.

Death of Mountie also prompts calls for improving mental health system

A fatality inquiry report into the 2004 deaths of an RCMP officer and a gunman in Spruce Grove has recommended changes to how Mounties run their emergency response teams and how the mentally ill are treated in Alberta.

The report also made several recommendations for the mental health system in the province. Ayotte recommended legislating community treatment orders in Alberta, which would force uncooperative patients to seek treatment or take medication. So far, such orders are only legal in Ontario and Saskatchewan.

Also, Ayotte wants to see specially-trained police officers and psychiatric workers team up to handle situations where a mentally ill person comes in contact with police. Such a program already exists in Edmonton and plans are underway to expand it into surrounding areas.





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Another Reason For Her To Resign

Ambrose accused of boosting Quebec sovereigntists Another political opps from the New Canadian Government. And another reason to call for her resignation.

See:

Ambrose


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