Fixing Harper - Part 7 - The Checklist

It's just so refreshing to be able to talk about how some of the damage of the past 10 years is being reversed, where possible.

So, in the interests of keeping track, here is a list of some of the Harperisms that the new Liberal government might/could tackle.  Some have already been announced.

Undoing the Tories: A Complete Guide to All the Harperisms That the Liberals Might or Have Killed.

There is also this article from Abacus Data: "Promises, Promises: Which Liberal campaign promises do Canadians want the government to follow through on?"

Some readers might recall Allan Gregg.  He was a former Tory strategist and he recently offered some not-very-flattering opinions about what the Harper regime did during it's tenure.  You can read about his comments here.  In particular, he slammed the regime's attack on evidence-based research.

It will be a big job.

Fixing Harper - Part 6 - Tax Fairness

In fairness, this problem of tax fairness didn't start with the former Harper regime.  It's been developing for some time.  Both Conservative and Liberal governments are responsible.

The new government has been making nice-sounding noises on many things and the mandate letter given to the new National Revenue Minister seems to be singing the same tune, but what are the chances that real changes will take place?

This article from iPolitics discusses the elusive nature of the problem.

The organization Canadians for Tax Fairness published a research report called: "What is Wrong at the CRA and How to Fix It".  It should be mandatory reading for all taxpayers.

So if the new Liberal really wants to start making a difference, here is yet another issue that should be high up on the list.

Ill-advised tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations.  Failure to crack down on off-shore tax havens.  Even Oxfam weighed in recently about the concentration of wealth in the hands of so few people.  The root reason seems clearly to be tax policies of federal governments.

One recent Canadian case involves Cameco, the uranium mining giant.  More on that story here...

Reigning in the CRA in it's partisan attacks on charities the former government didn't happen to approve of is another important step.  It appears that this is happening.  Already.

As a random commentator put it:  Friedman, Reagan and Thatcher are all dead.  It's time to bury them.

To which I'd add.... and Harper is gone too.

That Pesky TPP Thing

Yes, the Trans Pacific Partnership.  That "Trade Deal" that isn't really a trade deal.

We're going to hear a whole lot more about it in the coming months.  In the meantime, here's some reading material about it.

From Huff Post Politics: The TPP Hands Control Over Trade to the World's Wealthiest.

From BoingBoing: Independent Economists: TPP Will Kill 450,000 US Jobs.... 

From the Vancouver Sun: Nobel Laureate Warns of TPP Dangers

From the Washington Post: People Are Freaking Out About the TPP ISDS....

Very few governments have turned down any trade deals, but this isn't, apparently, about trade.  It's about "Investor State Dispute Settlement" which will usurp the rights of sovereign countries to make and enforce their own laws and regulations in a manner that is best for their country.

The Green Party of Canada has posted an article on the subject, giving several good reasons why the deal must not be ratified.

A recent article from The Tyee delves into some of the history of other trade agreements and links the fallout from those to what will happen as a result of the TPP.

One commentator put it this way:

Top ten reasons PARLIAMENT must kill the TPP 

1. The Trans Pacific Partnership is not a partnership. It was initiated in the US by large corporations to consolidate their control over the smaller economies of the member states.
2. It is not about “free trade.”It has more to do with investor rights which serve to debilitate national governments (nation states) as is already happening with NAFTA and other such agreements.
3. As they can already do under NAFTA corporations will be able to sue governments for non-compliance. This has already cost Canadian taxpayers millions of dollars.
4. It is about labor mobility. Corporations want to be able to hire the
cheapest possible labor, where ever and whenever. There will be open
immigration to bring in low wage workers from other countries. In 2013 the RBC
did this very thing.
5. It is an extension and intensification of existing agreements that are already debilitating the middle class in the US, Canada and numerous other countries. They hollow out democracy and destroy our social fabric.
6. It is about ISDS. These are to be legal tribunals where laws and judgements can be made to supersede a country’s regulatory structures. This in itself will make it next to impossible to make real progress on climate change and other environmental issues.
7. Over the past forty years there has been a massive retreat from real governance in this country. Politicians have yielded too much power to corporations. The neo-liberal free market economy, dominated by corporate greed, is a race to the bottom where all countries end up as Third World countries.
8. Over the past forty years Canada has suffered one incremental loss of sovereignty after another. We are generally regarded internationally as a weak-kneed American vassal state. Signing on to the TPP for us is the final
capitulation.
9. Governments everywhere must get back in the business of real leadership and quit pandering to what is a global corporate fascism being consolidated by agreements like the TPP.
10. We cannot assume for a minute we are immune to consequences. Like Greece we too can hit bottom.

It needs to be stopped.

Update - An older article from January 2015, written by Robert Reich, was titled "Why the TPP Agreement is a Pending Disaster"

Really Cool Bird Stuff

From the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.....

Watch 118 bird species migrate across the Western Hemisphere

Nature is truly amazing.

Fixing Harper - Part 5 - Regimes we Support

Believe it or not, Canada has an arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

Here are some things you should know about that deal.

Maybe this won't surprise you, after all, we buy oil from them, we have diplomatic relations with the regime.  So we're friends, right?

The deal was brokered, in secret, a couple of years ago now and even though it became public before the election, it did not become an election issue.  Not really.  There were, of course some pointed pictures that floated around.

In recent days, it has become somewhat of an issue, mostly because there seems to be pressure for the new Liberal government to cancel the deal.  Also, there is Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition now asking for information about the deal.  Huh?  The party that brokered the deal in the first place?

The brutality of the Saudi regime has been much in the news of late.  Beheadings.  Oppression of women (although that's nothing new).  And, of course, the regime's ties with certain terrorist groups.  Not to mention how the regime is flooding the world with crude, depressing prices... and how the previous government sold the Wheat Board to the regime....  I don't think I've seen any positive articles about the regime - one of our allies, supposedly.

Frankly, I think the deal was a mistake.  Mind you, the past 10 years were mostly mistake after mistake.  Canada has no business doing business with thugs like these.  Jobs or no jobs.  

I wonder if Kim is thinking these thoughts now?

Rick Mercer even weighed in on this one.  See his rant here.

Canada has, of course, sold arms (military equipment) to other regimes that most of us would label as unsavoury.  Certainly unstable.  Examples would include Iran, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Libya, to name a few.  Should we be selling such equipment to places like these?  

If you want some additional information about arms deals to Saudi Arabia, Project Plowshares has a few that are well worth reading.

Fixing Harper - Part 4 - Ending the War on Pot

Changing the laws that make growing and using pot (marijuana, weed, whatever) may seem like focusing on a trivial matter, especially when considered against other weighty matters of state, but, believe me, it's not.  Not trivial at all, and there are historical precedents.

For decades now, pot has been illegal to grow and to use.  Substantial police resources over the years have been devoted to enforcing this ban.  Many have ended up in jail.  And although sentences and police attention have both been reduced in recent years, pot still isn't legal, it's not regulated and it's not taxed.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

When I was a university student, it was apparently easier (and legally much safer) to get gallon jugs of pure ethanol from the chemistry lab to fuel parties than to score pot.  (I led a sheltered life and so only pass this information in the belief that it's true).  However, I do recall quite clearly a situation that happened where I was working for the summer back in the late 1960s.  More or less unbeknownst to most of us, one of the student engineers was selling pot from the bunkhouse.  He was caught, arrested and left his job.  I don't know what the outcome was, but it probably didn't end well for him (criminal record, unable to join certain professions because of that, and so on).  So most of us stuck to booze.  Even though we were mostly all younger than the legal drinking age of 21 at the time, it was far, far safer.  Any legal consequences were trivial.  And in Nova Scotia at the time, you could buy beer in cases of quart bottles.  Life was good.

Canada never had Prohibition as they did in the USA.  South of the 49th, the 18th Amendment came into effect January 17, 1920.  America went dry.  It lasted until 1933, when Congress passed the 21st Amendment, which repealed the 18th.  There were several reasons for this reversal.  First, Prohibition really wasn't working.  It did reduce alcohol consumption, but it spawned a huge underground criminal market for the stuff, organized crime flourished, there were more "speakeasies" in central NYC (about 2500) than there are bars there now.  About 75% of the government's tax revenue disappeared (only partly replaced by the 16th Amendment - income tax - in 1913).  And a future president, FDR, seemed to like moonshine and supposedly bought it (or just drank what was given to him - stories vary), thus violating that part of the Constitution.  And therein lies the story.  NPR's Planet Money ran a story about this called The Moonshine Stimulus.  You can download it as a podcast or listen on-line.

That explains the following image of a float in an anti-Prohibition parade in 1925.  Note the slogans: "Give Us Beer", "Balance the Budget", "Beer for Prosperity" and "Very Few Working"

Once Prohibition was repealed, the beer industry boomed with thousands employed, breweries constructed and, significantly for this post, vast increases in tax revenue.

The real story for Canada has, however, to do with pot.  The former Conservative administration adamantly refused to even consider de-criminalization of the pot laws or especially legalization.  

Despite the drug antics of one of Harper's supporters, despite the evidence....  Although most courts in the country have been handing out lighter sentences in recent years, pot's illegal status hasn't changed.  

Despite the USA's "War on Drugs" (a war that has failed spectacularly) and recent moves by a few states (Colorado, Washington, etc) to legalize pot, Canada has remained firmly in the pot prohibition camp.  

Until now, however.

The current Liberal administration has vowed to change the laws on pot.  It's unclear when or how, exactly, but the idea is, at the very least, to regulate and tax the stuff, taking a page from the way governments have treated, and profited, from booze.

Save Your Prayers

In the aftermath of yet another mass shooting in America, more meaningless words, more expressions of sadness, the offering of prayers.... but, once again, no action.

The Senator from Sandy Hook made his feelings about such meaningless tripe quite clear in comments made following the San Bernardino shootings on December 2nd.  

Your "thoughts" should be about steps to take to stop this carnage. Your "prayers" should be for forgiveness if you do nothing - again.

The Guardian ran a lengthy article that showed, in graphic form, all the mass shootings that have occurred in the USA over the past 3 years. The article was titled: "1052 Mass Shootings in 1066 Days. This is What America's Gun Crisis Looks Like".

America obviously has a gun crisis, as the graph above clearly shows. Mass shootings are only one part of the problem. The Gun Violence Archive has much of the data, but the yearly numbers tell as much of the story as is needed. In 2015 (so far) there have been 12,282 gun-related deaths. In 2014, there were 12,469 deaths. Each day, in 2013, there were about 30 deaths.

A report by NBC laid out the shocking statistics this way.

And of course, these are only the deaths.  Each year, over 100,000 people are shot.

These are figures that would be "normal" in a Third World Country, or perhaps a war zone.  Not in a so-called First World Country like the USA.  

It boggles the mind that, faced with this crisis, that there hasn't been an enraged public driving American legislators to do something.  But that hasn't happened.  Even the President seems to be resigned to the sorry situation.  Perhaps the main reason why inaction has been the policy is illustrated by this image:

One source has listed all the members of Congress who have basically been bought off by the NRA.  The gun lobby bleats on about 2nd Amendment Rights, or "God Given Rights", or that "guns don't kill people.  People kill people."  Obviously following this flawed logic, the Senate just recently defeated a bill that would have tightened up background checks and made it more difficult for individuals on "terrorist watch lists" to obtain guns.

Of course, there has been plenty of talk about terrorists.  Especially Muslim terrorists.  Especially those supposedly hiding among masses of Syrian refugees.  

It is a sorry state of affairs when the images above really, truly, represent the reality in America today.

Don't keep telling us that gun controls don't work.  They obviously do work.  Just take a look at Japan, at Australia .... so many examples.

What gives America?  Are your citizens worth so little?

NOTE:  There have been many stories about gun violence in the USA.  Some recent ones include this one from the CBC, and this personal account from a CBC journalist.