Occupy: Why Voting Isn't Enough

Overhead view of the Occupy Toronto encampment, St. James Park (from Torontoist)

Al Gore's book, "The Assault on Reason" is one of the best treatises on American democracy I've ever read. Written almost five years ago, the book goes into great detail about the many ways in which that democracy has been undermined in recent decades, and gives this warning:

"The derivation of just power from the consent of the governed depends upon the integrity of the reasoning process through which that consent is given. If the reasoning process is corrupted by money and deception, then the consent of the governed is based on false premises, and any power thus derived is inherently counterfeit and unjust. If the consent of the governed is extorted through the manipulation of mass fears, or embezzled with claims of divine guidance, democracy is impoverished. If the suspension of reason causes a significant portion of the citizenry to lose confidence in the integrity of the process, democracy can be bankrupted."

This is precisely the situation we find ourselves in today - more so in the States, but also starting here in Canada.

We are brought up to believe that democracy is a pure and noble process, and that government can be a perfect reflection of the will of the people so long as the people exercise their franchise by voting. Unfortunately, the process itself has become so thoroughly corrupted and manipulated that many have come to believe this is no longer the case.

Blowing the Whistle on the U.S. Health Insurance Industry

There's an extraordinary interview with former CIGNA executive Wendell Potter on 'Democracy Now!' this week. Potter spent twenty years working for the health care industry, and up until a few months ago was the chief spokesperson and PR pointman for health insurance giant CIGNA. He even developed and launched the industry's counterattack against Michael Moore and his documentary, 'Sicko'.

But when Potter saw his industry using the same talking points and scare tactics against President Obama's health care plan that they had used to destroy Hillary Clinton's efforts at reform back in the '90s, he knew he couldn't do it any more.

The interview is a fascinating look at the tactics used by the U.S. for-profit insurance industry to discredit anyone who would suggest having a public health care system - even a watered-down, parallel system to their own. And a single-payer system like we have here? That, according to Potter, is the industry's worst nightmare.

Well, the game plan is based on scare tactics. And, of course, the thing they fear most is that the country will at some point gravitate toward a single-payer plan. That’s the ultimate fear that they have. But currently—and they know that right now that is not something that’s on the legislative table. And they’ve been very successful in making sure that it isn’t. They fear even the public insurance option that’s being proposed, that was part of President Obama’s campaign platform, his healthcare platform. And they’ll pull out all the stops they can to defeat that.

Towards the end of the interview, Potter does a fair job of explaining Canada's health care system to an American audience used to having the bejeesus scared out of them about the evils of Canadian socialism ("Do you want a Government bureaucrat standing between you and your doctor?"). That fear has been generated largely by third-party ads using people like Dr. Brian Day, who has his own reasons for promoting private health care.

Happily, people like Wendell Potter are pulling back the curtain and exposing the health care industry's use of the same sorts of lies and PR tactics the tobacco industry used so effectively for so long. It's a long interview but well worth listening to and/or reading in full. Especially if we start seeing those same tactics being deployed here in Canada.

How To Build a Better Candidate

I've found myself thinking a great deal lately about the quality of our MPs and candidates, and what sorts of people I would like representing me and making decisions on my behalf.

Part of this reflection came from listening to Gerard Kennedy speak at our fundraiser last month. I've admired Kennedy ever since he was the outspoken director of the Daily Bread Food Bank, and it got me thinking about how much that background has informed his views and his priorities as a politician. It also made me wish we had more MPs with a background like that, which in turn led me to investigate just how many of them actually did.

I decided to go through the list of MPs on the Parliamentary website and find out what they've done besides working as MPs. The little profile they give is hardly detailed, but it does list previous occupations and electoral history. I wasn't going to go through all of them, so I just did the 100+ from Ontario since that's my region, and the three major parties are all well represented here (keep in mind that most MPs have multiple jobs in their background, so percentages are going to add up to more than 100%).

What I found was interesting, but not really surprising. To start, nearly half - 47% - of our Ontario MPs come from the corporate world. Among Conservatives its 53%, but even the NDP caucus has more than 1/3 of their members with a corporate background. When I compare that to the number of people I personally know who are corporate execs, managers or directors, I can't help but think that this is a grotesque over-representation.

The next most common profession or background at just under 30% was municipal politician, which I consider to be a good thing. In general, town councillors, reeves and mayors are less rabidly partisan, more practical, and more cognisant of the effect of their decisions on real people. The NDP have the most municipal politicians on their roster, followed by the Conservatives and lastly the Liberals.

Then come the lawyers and the teachers, tied at 17%. The Liberals have the most lawyers (24%) and the same percent with an education background. The NDP have the most teachers (29%). Teachers and professors are good. Lawyers are ok, although there are vastly different kinds of law and a constitutional lawyer, a criminal lawyer and a corporate attorney are going to have very different perspectives.

My favourites, the social workers, social activists and the dreaded "community organizers" only account for about 10% overall, with the vast majority being NDP members. I like these people as politicians because like municipal politicians, they have the needed organizational and administrative skills without ever losing sight of the fact that they are working for the benefit of people.

We need more of these people in the Liberal Party, and in politics in general.



Getting back to those corporate people. I've tried to distinguish wherever possible between corporate 'business people' and people who actually run a business (usually listed as entrepreneurs) because I consider them to have completely different mindsets. I'm a business person. I started a numbered corporation and opened my first business when I was eighteen. I've managed everything from bookstores to print shops. I've run the same mail-order crafts business for over 20 years. My website is as old as eBay.

I've never made a great deal of money with my current business, but I consider it to be successful because a) it let me be home with my son when he was little, b) I get to do something I love and can take pride in, and c) people around the world buy my wares and write me back to tell me how much they appreciate what I've made for them.

If I were a corporate executive, I'd be a total failure. If I were a corporate manager, I'd be outsourcing my inefficient one-person crafts workshop to one of the dozen or so companies from India who email me every month offering to duplicate my work for pennies a piece.

Corporations have their place I suppose, but here's the thing: you CANNOT run a government like a corporation. You just can't. You can sort of run it like a business because real businesses provide tangible goods and services, and frequently measure success by something other than pure profit.

Corporations exist to make money for their shareholders. Period. They don't have to care about the people they employ or the communities they set up shop in or the products they produce, except to the extent that these considerations might impact their quarterly statement.

Governments are in many ways the exact opposite of corporations because their primary purpose is to provide services and other tangible benefits to the public. They accomplish this using the taxpayers' own money and so are obligated not to waste it or spend it frivolously, but it's understood that any given government program or service is not necessarily going to be 'profitable'. Many are distinctly unprofitable and inefficient by corporate standards - but they are also carefully regulated and made accessible to all according to their need. The measure of their success is public benefit, not profit.

A corporate manager would look at Canada Post and ask why they charge the same minuscule amount to send a letter across the street or across the country. They would ask why post offices or RCMP stations or even roads exist in remote communities when centralization is so much more efficient. They would question the wisdom of hiring Canadians to print or process government forms - or make those little Canadian flags - when such work could be done in Mexico or India far more cheaply. They would question why the government is running operations like the LCBO or AECL at all when they would be so much more profitable being run by the private sector.

The fact that such questions are, in fact, being raised indicates to me that there are far too many people with a corporate mindset running our government.

So what would I look for in a political candidate? I'd look for someone who's been in the trenches. Someone with a lot of volunteer hours, or experience working for a charity or an NGO. Someone who has run their own business, or has a real job producing something, creating something, or providing a useful service. Someone who has been involved politically on a practical level, served on planning committees or riding boards or administered local programs. Someone with enough education and life experience to see the bigger picture and make informed decisions. Someone who has demonstrated a real desire to do good in their community and has actually done something about it.

These are the kinds of people we should be actively recruiting as candidates and even public servants. Not just for the Liberal Party, but in general.

What I do NOT want to see is more CEOs, CFOs, corporate managers, or people who seem to do nothing but sit on boards of directors. I'm sure they're very nice people and have skills to offer, but we already have plenty of people like that running the country, thank you very much.

MAPLEs Shutdown Prematurely: Scientists

The head of the MAPLE engineering team, as well as several independent nuclear scientists appearing before the NR Commons Committee, were united yesterday in their opinion that shutting down the MAPLE reactors was a mistake, and that they should be restarted.

The money quote:

"We were probably four months away from putting the final test in. That test would have contained the engineering fix."

Meanwhile, Lisa Raitt is starting to back peddle a bit from the government's official position that the MAPLEs should be completely written off. Of course, this isn't keeping her from continuing to promote the keystone of her party's ideology: Privatize Everything.

Ms. Raitt told reporters yesterday that the government would consider allowing a private company to take over the MAPLE project. "There are pieces that are not the reactor that are still utilizable, with still-good infrastructure," she said.

Once again, what you are hearing is the sound of a government that doesn't believe in government. A government that believes that there is nothing government can do that private enterprise can't do better. A government convinced that financial profit is the only true barometer of value, regardless of the long term societal benefits of a given enterprise.

I can't wait for them to get around to Canada Post.

UPDATE: The always awesome David Akin has a quick & dirty summary on his blog of both the MAPLEs timeline and the testimony of those independent experts who testified today.

Death By TV Dinner

There's a great article from the NY Times (via MSNBC) about the perils of processed foods. Not just the trans fat or the chemical preservatives or the high fructose corn syrup - it's the salmonella and the E. coli that'll kill ya.

The story focuses on a salmonella outbreak about two years ago from a specific brand of pot pie that sickened some 15,000 people, using it as an example to point out much larger issues in the food industry.

In this case, ConAgra could not pinpoint which of the more than 25 ingredients in its pies was carrying salmonella. Other companies do not even know who is supplying their ingredients, let alone if those suppliers are screening the items for microbes and other potential dangers, interviews and documents show.

Yet the supply chain for ingredients in processed foods — from flavorings to flour to fruits and vegetables — is becoming more complex and global as the drive to keep food costs down intensifies. As a result, almost every element, not just red meat and poultry, is now a potential carrier of pathogens, government and industry officials concede.

In addition to ConAgra, other food giants like General Mills, Nestlé and the Blackstone Group, a New York firm that acquired the Swanson and Hungry-Man brands two years ago, concede that they cannot ensure the safety of items — from frozen vegetables to pizzas — and that they are shifting the burden to the consumer. General Mills, which recalled about five million frozen pizzas in 2007 after an E. coli outbreak, now advises consumers to avoid microwaves and cook only with conventional ovens. ConAgra has also added food safety instructions to its other frozen meals, including the Healthy Choice brand.

Remember the salmonella in the peanuts last year that was traced back to that sleezy company in Georgia that was supplying dozens of companies making hundreds of products? Remember the tainted salsa fiasco where they thought it was the tomatoes at first, and then maybe the peppers, or perhaps the onions - and meanwhile millions of tomatoes rotted in the fields?

It's a HUGE problem, but no one is doing anything about it because (you guessed it) it's too expensive.

Ensuring the safety of ingredients has been further complicated as food companies subcontract processing work to save money: smaller companies prepare flavor mixes and dough that a big manufacturer then assembles. “There is talk of having passports for ingredients,” said Jamie Rice, the marketing director of RTS Resource, a research firm based in England. “At each stage they are signed off on for quality and safety. That would help companies, if there is a scare, in tracing back.”

But government efforts to impose tougher trace-back requirements for ingredients have met with resistance from food industry groups including the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which complained to the Food and Drug Administration: “This information is not reasonably needed and it is often not practical or possible to provide it.”

I wonder - does all this make food safety an externality, even if they're externalizing the costs and risks to their own customers?

The article came with this entertaining video showing two people trying desperately to follow the four-part cooking instructions on a microwavable pot pie, but still failing to bring the thing up to sterile temperature.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

My recommendation: LEARN TO COOK REAL FOOD!!

Ian Brodie and the End of Idealism

John Geddes has a disturbing account of how Harper's former Chief of Staff Ian Brodie considers the GST cut to be a resounding success, even though by any economic standard (and he admits this) it was a terrible idea. Why? Because the purpose of the GST cut was not, apparently, to help the economy or the Canadian people.

The purpose of the GST cut was merely to get the Conservatives elected.

The whole article is worth a read, not only as an insight into Conservative strategy, but as a numbing indictment of the political process as a whole. It's kind of depressing, actually - especially since he might be right.

One person made the following comment about the difference between business and government:

A business is about making profit and we all know it is about making profit. Some of the sales may be result from marketing, but the marketing is very targetted and driven by detailed market analysis. If they don’t base their decisions on facts they will fail, the owners will lose some money and then go and start a new business. Plus as a consumer I can choose not to buy from one company or another.

A government is representing its constituency and we don’t have an option to go get ourselves another government and the government gets to tell us how much we have to spend after we’ve “bought” it and can change what we bought after the fact. And then if the policies fail, or screw up, it is other people who lose money.

It's actually a reasonable point in many ways, and I'm sure it was well intended. And yet, I just couldn't help myself:

Thank you for that fine analysis of 18th century capitalism. Allow me to introduce you to the 21st century:

Business is about making profit for its shareholders - unless it is merely about moving money around in a way that gives the appearance of making a profit. Sales (if the business still indulges in such a quaint practise as selling things to people) result from maximizing the market share, usually by undercutting competitors through integrating the supply chain and cutting costs by any means necessary, then absorbing and thereby eliminating their competitors before jacking up the prices.

If they don't base their decisions on facts they will fail, but it will not be called 'failure'. It will be called 'restructuring', or 'divestment of assets'. Or maybe 'Iceland'. In any case, by the time such a failure is recognized, everyone involved in the decision-making process will have cashed out and moved to a tax-sheltered island somewhere. And someone will blame the government, but for all the wrong reasons.

As a consumer, I can choose to time travel back to the 18th century, when there was still legitimate competition between locally owned businesses whose owners were accountable to their customers and not solely to the value of their stock options.

The problem with governments is they have convinced us that we are their customers, when in fact we are their shareholders.

There. I feel a little better now.

The Plan for AECL: Private Profit, Public Liability

Those of us following the Chalk river / AECL saga have been anxiously awaiting a report from the National Bank of Canada regarding the crown corporation's disposition.

Actually, 'anxiously' might be an overstatement, since the report's recommendations were pretty much a foregone conclusion.

Ottawa urged to sell controlling interest in AECL

TORONTO, OTTAWA — The federal government should relinquish control of its flagship nuclear energy company but retain its problem-plagued Chalk River research facility, says a report commissioned by Ottawa.

The report by National Bank of Canada recommends that the federal government sell off at least a 51-per-cent interest in Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.'s commercial operations, according to sources who have been briefed on its contents.

Ottawa has refused to divulge the report's recommendations and has left the fate of AECL in limbo until the Ontario government decides whether to buy the Crown corporation's Candu technology or opt for its main rival, France's Areva Group.

...But even if AECL succeeds in winning the bid, the federal government, which has been heavily subsidizing the business since the 1950s, plans to restructure the company to make it more competitive.

The National Bank report recommends the government break up AECL, sources confirmed yesterday. The commercial venture, with new investors as majority owners, would handle reactor sales and service, while the government would retain ownership of the research and technology division, which runs AECL's Chalk River laboratories and the NRU reactor.

... National Bank recommends that the Chalk River site be excluded because AECL – and its government shareholder – face liabilities totalling about $7-billion to clean up waste at the Chalk River site.

“No company would want to buy that,” said Greenpeace energy campaigner and nuclear opponent Shawn-Patrick Stensil.

In other words, they're selling the store and keeping the dumpster out back.

I shouldn't be surprised, though. This is exactly what the government wanted to hear. When you don't believe in public ownership, it's easy to find ways to make public assets unprofitable so you can justify selling them off to your corporate buddies - and then call it being 'competitive'.

Welcome to Canada's new Free Market Nuclear Industry.

Auto Industry CEOs: Curing the Company by Killing the Jobs

The Big 3 CEOs have been testifying before Congress about why they deserve a big fat piece of the taxpayer-funded bailout pie. They have been voicing the very real concern that if they go under it would be an economic disaster for the entire continent and result in the loss of millions of jobs. But their principle argument seems to be that they are already doing their level best to be 'more competitive' and 'restore profitability'.

Here's Ford CEO Alan Mulally on his company's "Competitive Transformation":

Few companies in the history of our country have restructured more aggressively. I can tell you that in my experience, the union under Ron Gettelfinger is working with us as part of the solution.

In a very short period of time, working together, we have reduced excess capacity, closing 17 plants in North America – including more than one-third of our assembly plants – in the past five years. We have also reduced our workforce by 51,000 employees in the past three years, shrinking our hourly workforce from 83,000 to 44,000 and reducing salaried headcount by around 12,000 from a base of 33,000.

...Our agreement with the union also established an entry level wage that reduces future costs and will make us more competitive going forward longer-term. And, for the first time ever, it included no base wage increase during the four-year period covered by the agreement.

...We also will continue the ongoing consolidation of our dealer and supplier network. Our plans call for reducing our supplier network by more than 60 percent and thereby improving supplier capacity utilization and financial viability.

...We have announced plans to further reduce employment and cut benefits and compensation at all levels. We have eliminated merit raises and bonuses in 2009, and we continue not to pay any dividends to our shareholders.

Of course, all of this admirable belt-tightening doesn't apply to the private jets they flew in on so they could appear before Congress in a timely and efficient manner. But hey, at least they're willing to make some other personal sacrifices to help their ailing companies - like giving up their multi-million dollar salaries. Except, apparently, Mr. Mulally.

Chrysler was bailed out by the federal government once before, in 1979, with $1.2 billion in loan guarantees. The company repaid the loan, plus interest, ahead of schedule. Back then, former Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca reduced his salary to $1.

Under questioning from Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., Mulally didn't join the other two executives in saying he'd do the same now.

"I sure respect the intent of it, but the most important thing is that we not degrade our ability to be competitive and deliver this plan," Mulally said.

Time to Talk About NAFTA

With Barack Obama and the Democrats looking more and more likely to sweep the U.S. election on Tuesday (knock on wood), we are faced with the real possibility that they will follow through on their promise to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. They will, of course, be looking to gain further advantage for the U.S., and particularly for U.S. workers.

But what about Canada?

The fatal flaw in NAFTA, as in most other free trade agreements, is that it tends to favour corporate interests above all other considerations. One result of this has been the string of lawsuits filed under NAFTA's Chapter 11 over the past 15 years by transnational corporations against governments who presume to implement policies or pass regulations that interfere with their 'investors rights' (i.e. profits). While many of these suits have been brought against the U.S. and Mexican governments (with several aimed specifically at California), Canada has always been a favourite target because of our more stringent regulatory regime and our fondness for keeping things like health care out of private hands.

Two cases which have made the news recently illustrate the danger:

NAFTA-based suit threatens Canada's medicare
Suit seeks to open Canadian health care to privatizers

... a group of 200 private investors led by Arizona businessman Melvin J. Howard is planning to use the NAFTA national treatment mechanism to pry open Canadian medicare — often described by neoconservatives as “the last great uncracked oyster in the North American marketplace.”

Howard and his partners want to open a private surgical centre in B.C. similar to the Cambie Clinic owned by Dr. Brian Day, past-president of the Canadian Medical Association, but are facing what they call anti-American roadblocks in several municipalities.

And even more recently:

Quebec herbicide ban violates NAFTA, pesticide maker alleges

A company that makes the commonly used herbicide ingredient 2,4-D is challenging the Quebec government under the North American Free Trade Agreement for banning its product.

The Canadian unit of Dow AgroSciences alleges the prohibition of the weed killer is without any scientific basis and in violation of the trade agreement between Canada, the United States and Mexico.

Other NAFTA-based corporate lawsuits and trade actions against Canada have involved the Wheat Board, Canada Post, a ban on a toxic gasoline additive, (we lost that one), and perhaps most disturbing - repeated demands for commercial bulk water exports.

If Obama really is serious about re-negotiating NAFTA, we must demand that our government use the opportunity to protect the public interest and remove Chapter 11.

It won't fix everything that is wrong with NAFTA, but it's a start.

(cross-posted from Canada's World)

Number Crunching 2: Where Did All the Liberal Voters Go?

The inter-party dynamics took on a rather different tenor during the recent election. Instead of the usual 'blue vs. red and let the weirdos take the dregs' approach, the NDP and even the Green Party were finally recognized as a force to be reckoned with. At least by the Liberals - the Conservatives, of course, paid them no mind as they recognized that all of their new votes were going to be coming from the Liberals, thus regarding the other parties (except the Bloc) as beneath their notice.

The Liberals, on the other hand, had the rare good sense to recognize the NDP and the Greens as a significant potential drain on their votes. But instead of simply agreeing with them on principle while arguing that Liberals are better and more experienced at the application, they chose to go on the attack, making party level pleas for strategic voting and practically calling Jack Layton a dirty commie.

They actually seemed surprised by the results.

I mentioned earlier that the Liberal Party is hemorrhaging to the left. Most election post-mortems have noted this, but have been focusing on the seat counts and the percentage shifts, which don't really tell the whole picture because they are skewed by the vagaries of our FPTP system and the size of the smaller parties. I've found the raw numbers of voters to be far more telling. Here's the evidence:

- Compared with 2006, the only party which showed a net increase in votes was... the Green Party. To the tune of about a quarter million votes. Independents and miscellaneous fringe parties also showed an increase.

- If you adjust for the drastic decrease in voter turnout this year, you would get the following net losses and increases:

Conservative: +198,011
Liberal: -597,097
NDP: +95,191
Green: +342,907
Bloc: -76,648
Other: +21,612

In other words, only about a third of the Liberals' lost votes went to the Conservatives. The other two thirds went to the Greens and the NDP. This is in stark contrast to the previous election, where almost all of the Liberal losses benefited the Conservatives.

- In Quebec, the big losers were the Bloc and the Conservatives, who each lost the adjusted equivalent of over 100,000 votes. Many of those were picked up by the Liberals - many more by the NDP.

These numbers tend to verify the impression I got listening and talking to people during this election. Right-leaning Liberals were drifting to the Conservatives, or just choosing not to vote, because they felt that Dion was a weak leader. However, there don't appear to have been a lot of them this time, and I believe the Conservatives are approaching their ceiling in terms of numbers of voters.

But left-leaning Liberals, as well as NDP and Green supporters who might have otherwise voted strategically, told me that they could not bring themselves to vote Liberal because they did not consider the Liberals to be a truly progressive party. In fact, they didn't see much difference between the Liberals and Conservatives at all - an impression left by Chretien and Martin's centrist, corporate-friendly fiscal policies, as well as the embarrassing record of abstentions during the last Parliament.

The decision the Liberal Party needs to make right now is if they're ok with that.

If they are - if they want to continue presenting themselves as a kinder, friendlier version of the Conservatives who know how to balance the books and keep the Bay Street boys happy - then by all means, they should go with someone like McKenna, or Manley, or even Ignatieff. They might even win a few of those Red Tories back with a more palatable leader making their case.

However, leaving aside for the moment my philosophical revulsion for that sort of approach, I honestly don't think that anything can be gained by it. Fiscal prudence might appeal to pensioners and corporate donors, but it's hardly the way to generate voter enthusiasm or grassroots donations, and that's what the Liberals desperately need right now.

Going by the numbers and not just the seats, the message is clear: the Conservatives have stalled, and the moderate left is on the ascendancy. The only question is, will the Liberals stop pandering to the corporations and money men whose influence and vote-buying powers are no longer what they once were? Or will they wake up and start paying more than lip service to what the majority of Canadians clearly want - sound fiscal and social policies that actually put people and the planet first?

The answer will determine their survival as a political force in this country.

Voters, Schmoters: How the Real Decisions Are Made

It's been a week and a bit now since a little more than half of us marched into our polling stations to do our duty and cast our ritual vote for our candidate or party of choice.

Yay us.

As sick as some of us might feel about the results, we all somehow manage to convince ourselves that "the people have spoken". That as much as we might disagree with the choices they made, however pathetic the turnout was, however dishonest and manipulative the political advertising campaigns were, however shoddy and superficial the media coverage, the plurality of Canadians who bothered showing up had somehow ferreted out enough information about their candidates and party leaders to make something resembling an informed decision.

Meanwhile, the real decisions about our economy had already been made by Stephen Harper's true constituents:

Politics factored into bank aid deal
Dialogue between Ottawa, Bay St. behind the scenes

… Several of the people involved in the process said that even while pillars of Wall Street were crumbling and world leaders were invoking the spectre of financial armageddon, a central consideration for the Prime Minister’s Office seemed to be Jack Layton and the New Democratic Party.

The Conservatives and key allies on Bay Street feared both the immediate and lasting consequences of giving political adversaries an opening to turn the banking industry and its ties with Ottawa into a matter of public scorn. This concern reached a peak immediately before the election with the meltdown in markets, co-ordinated global interventions and the approach of polling day.

Amid late-night phone calls to the homes of senior officials in Ottawa, a loose strategy emerged to split the federal government’s response into two stages, with a decision to delay until after the election the explicit commitment to insure interbank lending that was finally unveiled yesterday.

But bank executives insisted on a long-sought move to shift mortgages off their books and supply them with cash before the election, because they feared the uncertainty of polling day and the possibility Mr. Flaherty might not return as finance minister, according to participants in the process and observers. This first stage was held back until the last possible moment, the eve of the Thanksgiving weekend, the last day of market trading before polling day, when a $25-billion scheme to aid banks was announced by Mr. Flaherty. “The strategy [was] trying to low-key it, [unveiling it] when people were running away to the cottage to pull the dock out of the water and making their pumpkin pies,” said one person involved in the discussions.

This is what happens when a government is confident that nobody is paying attention. Get ready for more of the same.

Cruel Times

Creative Revolution has a remarkable post about... well, it's about a lot of things that I've been thinking about recently. Peripherally, it's about the recent shooting rampage at that Unitarian Church in Tennessee that was apparently inspired by the venom spewed daily on the American airwaves by right-wing vipers like O'Reilly, Hannity and Savage.

More fundamentally, it's about hate, and fear, and cruelty, and it wonders aloud who might stand to gain from us tearing each other to pieces.

Crime and the police state = private prison Industrial complex? Occupation and the Military Industrial complex, and never ending, no bid-corporate wars. Hating your neighbour, divide and conquer....Someone is making money off all this hatred. Someone, is cashing in on all this festering, obnoxious, divisiveness.

Its all just show-business though. It's just a joke?..No one would ever act on any of this hateful rhetoric? Perhaps not in a vacuum, but as I have outlined, there are many, many things happening here all at once.

It's upsetting. It's complicated. Go read it.

Conservatives Hate Rural Voters

I don't usually do this, but April Reign has a brilliant post about rural politics that you really must read, especially given the noise coming out of the more right-wing denizens of Alberta these days.

Rural areas of Canada and the U.S. are strongholds for Conservative/Reform/Republican politics. Words like liberal, welfare, rights, environmentalism are bandied about like slurs, while abstract concepts like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, making your own work, and loyalty to your country and used almost as religious mantras and identifiers of the true believers. Spin doctors are quick to latch on to this blind faith and give impassioned speeches about the farmer, the way things were, the heartland. But do they really have their best interests at heart? Time and again it seems the answer is no.

She goes on to draw a straight line between meat packers receiving a chunk of Alberta's mad cow aid money, potential plans to privatize Canada Post, and the relentless and ongoing dismantling of the Wheat Board as evidence of the myriad ways in which Conservative/Reform policies screw over farmers and other rural Canadians, all in the service of corporate profits.

I would love to see this one published in the Calgary Herald. After all, nothing is more convincing to a westerner than enlightened self interest.

Bloggers Return Fire on the AP

Nothing brings together bloggers of all stripes and political leanings than an attempt by the dreaded mainstream media to curtail our pseudo-journalistic freedom.

The first salvo was fired by the Associated Press when they set up a per word fee schedule for bloggers wishing to excerpt their articles. Now conservative blogger Michelle Malkin has turned the tables. After finding two separate AP articles that quoted a total of 40-odd words each from posts and comments on her blog, she decided to ring up the bill:

According to the AP, it has:

-1,700 U.S. daily, weekly, non-English and college newspapers;

-5,000 radio and television outlets taking AP services; and

- 850 AP Radio News audio affiliates.

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that half of all those clients published the AP dispatches quoting this blog’s content without prior usage agreement (which would be 3,775) and let’s apply the exact same fee structure AP wants to impose on the blogosphere ($17.50 for 26-50 words). I calculate that the AP owes me:

$66,062.50 x 2 = $132,125.

(A substantial portion of that sum would go to commenter SalsaNChips, of course. See? Commenting at MichelleMalkin.com pays! Well, theoretically.)

Now other popular bloggers are coming forward with examples of the AP quoting text from their blogs and calculating their own bills.

Of course, as Malkin points out, none of them would ever think of actually sending AP their bills - because bloggers WANT people to reference their blogs! Quotes mean links. Links mean hits. Hits mean power and influence and (if you carry ads) money.

'Cause that's how it works out here in the intertubes. Enjoy your stay.

AP's War on Bloggers

I am about to run afoul of yet another potentially draconian copyright restriction. This time it isn't the Canadian or American government that's telling me I'm being a naughty, naughty girl - it's the Associated Press and their brand new definition of "fair use":

The Associated Press to Set Guidelines for Using Its Articles in Blogs

The Associated Press, one of the nation’s largest news organizations, said that it will, for the first time, attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt without infringing on The A.P.’s copyright.

...Last week, The A.P. took an unusually strict position against quotation of its work, sending a letter to the Drudge Retort asking it to remove seven items that contained quotations from A.P. articles ranging from 39 to 79 words.

On Saturday, The A.P. retreated. Jim Kennedy, vice president and strategy director of The A.P., said in an interview that the news organization had decided that its letter to the Drudge Retort was “heavy-handed” and that The A.P. was going to rethink its policies toward bloggers.

Oh dear. That was 142 words. Well, lets go see what AP would want to charge me for that quote... ouch! Fifty bucks. Well, at least it's just in U.S. dollars. That's ok - I could just go for their 'Free Web Post' option that lets me post the excerpt for a month. With ads, of course.

Oh, but wait... there's those pesky Terms of Service:

...You shall not modify, edit, change or alter in any manner the Content, or create any derivative works therefrom, including translation of the Content.

...You may not email, print, or save the content by cutting and pasting it.

...The Content delivered to You by the iCopyright system under this Agreement contains the Publisher's logo, copyright notice and credit line containing a unique alphanumeric number. You may not remove these elements when printing, copying, displaying,transmitting or making any use of the Content and you may not authorize any third person or entity to do so.

And my personal favourite:

...You shall not use the Content in any manner or context that will be in any way derogatory to the author, the publication from which the Content came, or any person connected with the creation of the Content or depicted in the Content.

Well. I'm just fucked.

I cannot begin to guess what the people at the Associated Press are thinking, but I'll bet it has nothing to do with "the people's right to know".

Saul Hansell of the NYT (who also wrote the article I so shamelessly quoted from earlier) also wrote a little op-ed piece that makes some attempt to see both sides of the issue, and in the process manages to discredit himself as both a journalist and a blogger. Still, he makes a few valid points. Yes, this is an issue that goes way back to the birth of syndicated news. And yes, some bloggers have been known to quote most or all of an article with a minimum of commentary in the "Look what I found!" mode of blogging that we've all been guilty of now and again.

Such wholesale lifting of text is sometimes in response to online articles being firewalled by newspapers, in which case the argument could be made that it is costing them money by distributing for free what they are trying to charge for - however much we cheapskates may object to the practice. More often, however, it is merely a symptom of laziness on the part of the offending blogger. If this is something blogger does on a regular basis, the problem solves itself because nobody reads blogs like that.

In general, though, I have found most bloggers to be very responsible in the use of quotes from articles. They rarely exceed two or three paragraphs, and they invariably link back to the original article, thus increasing readership for the original author and publisher. The ones who don't... well, like I said, they get old pretty quick.

Don't get me wrong. I get the whole 'intellectual property' thing. I do. I'm a writer. I myself have been the victim of plagiarism, and let me tell you - it leaves you feeling violated and used. But let me explain the difference to you:

I am the author of a little self-published, self-distributed book entitled "Raido, the Runic Journey". If you have to ask you probably don't want to know, but suffice it to say it is a rather well regarded book amongst those who care about such things and it sells consistently and well. As a public service, I have even posted about 70% of the book's text on my website - to no detriment to my book sales, I might add.

I have often been asked permission by other websites to re-print some or all of this text, and I have generally granted permission on the condition that a) I was clearly identified as the author, and b) a link was provided back to my website. I eventually stopped granting permission to reproduce because not all of them did (oh, look, there's another one), but in general the whole arrangement was profitable for me and helped put my website at number four when you Google "runes".

Then one day someone pointed out a website that not only contained entire paragraphs lifted verbatim from my book, but was quoting them from an actual, professionally published, dead tree book called "Cryptorunes" by Clifford A. Pickover. Not only that, but this Pickover character was, in fact, a PhD from Yale who really, REALLY should have known better.

In the end there wasn`t much I could do except call him out and insist that he stop using the quotes to promote the book on his website, which he did. I couldn`t prove damages or even afford a lawyer, and I suspect he wasn`t made of money anyway, but he was sufficiently sheepish and did agree to get me in with his publisher if I wanted, so I didn't call Yale. (and oh look - he's got a blog!)

My point (and I`m getting to it) is that this particular case constituted both copyright infringement and plagiarism because a) the offender was presenting my work as his own, and b) he was using my work for monetary gain without my permission. If it had just been some guy who got lazy with a website providing free information, then I'd just yell at them and leave it be. If he had actually put quotes around my words and said, "This part is from 'Raido, the Runic Journey' by Jennifer Smith", then I would have been thrilled to bits for the extra business.

In cases like the ones the AP is all up in arms about, however, AP and its writers aren't losing any money, the bloggers likely aren't making any money, nothing is being misrepresented, and if anything both AP and its writers are benefiting from the added exposure. Therefore, I can only assume there is something else going on here. Maybe it's about money. Maybe it's about control. I don't know.

BTW, in the time it took me to write this post, the article I quoted at the top disappeared behind a firewall, and the only way to access it now is to sign up for "Free Registration" by telling the New York Times your name, age, job title and household income.

Household income?

I think I get it now.

Confessions of a Future Copyright Criminal

As Bill C-61 (aka the Canadian DMCA) hits the floor of the House of Commons, there are plenty of smart people doing an excellent job of explaining exactly what the implications are and why this bill needs to be strangled in the cradle. McGrath has an excellent post today, and Michael Geist and Laura Murray have been all over this since C-61 was just a glimmer in Harper's eye.

Me, I'm not a big downloader. I'm a relative newcomer to high speed, I don't own an MP3 player, and I get my fill of movies working at a video store. And yet, under this bill, I would be a multiple offender just because of one project I recently completed.

My husband does props and wardrobe work in the film industry, and I wanted to put together a clip reel for him to show potential clients what he has created for movies like Skinwalkers, Resident Evil: Apocalypse and Saw II-V. So my first offence was obviously going to be transferring scenes from these movies from DVDs that we had bought and paid for onto my laptop in a form that I could edit and play with. This meant that I had to download a utility that would get past the digital lock on the DVDs and convert the files to WMV format. Definitely illegal under C-61.

Even more galling was the process of adding music to the video clips. I particularly wanted Van Morrison's 'Moondance' for the 'Skinwalkers' werewolf sequence, which is an old enough tune that I probably could have found a free copy somewhere. But I was a good girl and spent my 99 cents to purchase the song from ITunes - only to discover that I couldn't actually incorporate the music into the video without downloading yet another soon-to-be illegal utility to get through the digital lock and convert the file. For a song that I bought and paid for!

Keep in mind, this is not something we're going to be selling, nor do we intend to post it on YouTube or even on my husband's website. This is a DVD showing work that he created in the form of a video resume to promote it to people who make movies and TV shows. And yet, under C-61, I would have broken the law many times over to create it and would be charged hundreds of dollars in fines.

The final irony in all this is that my husband is one of the people that copyright laws are supposed to protect. We both recognize the impact that large scale video piracy has had on the film industry and on his livelihood, so we are horrified when we see the open sale of thousands of blatantly pirated DVDs at places like the Pacific Mall. We won't buy them, we discourage our friends from buying them, and we don't understand why the malls aren't fined for leasing space to people who sell them completely out in the open.

But sadly, this bill is NOT about industrial movie piracy, nor is it about protecting the artists and writers who create music and film and television content by making sure that they are fairly compensated for their work. It's just about protecting the profits of the studios and the corporations that produce and distribute that content.

If anyone actually gave a rat's ass about bootleg DVDs or the poor starving musicians losing money to illegal downloaders, a levy system like they have in Europe would have been the way to go. Which is what creative types like the Writers Guild of Canada were pushing for, to no avail.

Alas, money trumps art every time.

Baghdad Still a Hellhole and...Oh Look, a Bunny!

Just when you start thinking that Naomi Klein might be just some wigged out doomsayer, the corporatocracy goes and pulls something like this:

Disneyland goes to war-torn Iraq, with a multi-million dollar entertainment complex, to be built on a 50 acre lot adjacent to the Green Zone. ("Fun park rises from ruins of Baghdad zoo", The Times, London, 24 April 2008)

The American-style amusement park will feature a skateboard park, rides, a concert theatre and a museum.

The occupation forces are of the opinion that Baghdad is "lacking in entertainment". General David Petraeus, is said to be a “big supporter” of bringing Disneyland to Baghdad.

...Supported by the Pentagon, an unknown Los Angeles based holding company C3 of unnamed private equity investors, will be developing the "Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience". The park will be designed by Ride and Show Engineering (RSE)

In other words, they are going to be turning this:



...into this:



They're trying to make it sound like they're just rehabilitating an area that was destroyed in the invasion, but that isn't quite correct:

The 50-acre (20 hectare) swath of land sits adjacent to the Green Zone and encompasses Baghdad’s existing zoo, which was looted, left without power and abandoned after the American-led invasion in 2003. Only 35 of 700 animals survived – some starved, some were stolen and some were killed by Iraqis fearing food shortages.

In the years that followed, the zoo and the surrounding al-Zawra park became an occasional target for insurgent attacks. But in recent months, families have begun to return cautiously for weekend picnics. Renovations have already begun on the zoo, with cages being repainted and new animals arriving, including ostriches, bears and a lion.

That's not good enough, apparently. So instead of continuing to rehabilitate an existing public space that is part of the fabric of Iraqi society, let's just raze the whole thing, hand it over to an American corporation and start over with a shiny new American-style FOR PROFIT theme park.

Call me crazy, but I'm going to make two predictions here. One: that a significant percentage of the park's patrons are going to be residents of the Green Zone. And two: that the rolling blackouts and brownouts that still plague Baghdad are somehow not going to be a problem there.

Because we wouldn't want our Iraqi friends to get trapped in the 'Carousel of Progress' or anything.



(H/T to Dana at The Beav)

Immigration Bill: It's Not About Doctors

One of the most frustrating aspects of our current government is having to constantly decipher their true intentions. Nothing is ever what it seems, and you can bet that whatever the truth is, it will bear no resemblance to what is being publicly stated.

Take, for example, the current flap over the Conservative effort to fold major changes to Canada’s immigration policy into a budget implementation bill. The Opposition screams that the changes will allow the Minister to arbitrarily shut out immigrants from certain countries. The Government poo-poos this notion, insisting that they merely want to expedite the applications of "skilled workers".

So just what kind of "skilled workers" are we talking about here, anyway?

Under the new law, the Minister is expected to issue annual instructions on "categories" of applications that should be fast-tracked, such as those from high-demand professionals such as doctors. The Minister will decide which categories to prioritize based on input from the provinces and territories, the Bank of Canada, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, as well as employers and labour unions.

And again:

The Conservatives say the proposed changes would give the immigration minister the power to fast-track applications from workers with specific skills that Canada needs — such as doctors — and would help clear the backlog of cases by allowing the minister to set an annual limit on cases the department can process.

It sounds great, doesn’t it? We could always use more doctors, right?

Trouble is, we already have plenty of doctors, engineers, and other highly educated, highly skilled immigrants being fast-tracked into this country under the current points system. Unfortunately, their credentials are frequently not recognized in Canada, so many of them are driving cab or running convenience stores. The lucky ones are only slightly less under-employed: surgeons working as nurses, nurses working in blood labs, engineers doing tech support. I used to work at a print shop where my boss was an electrical engineer from Egypt.

Three years ago, about a quarter of recent immigrants with university degrees were working at jobs that required only a high school diploma or less, and it’s only getting worse. And yet everyone keeps talking about the proposed changes being intended to fast-track "skilled professionals like doctors".

Assuming that’s a lie, what’s really going on here?

One need only look at where the real labour shortages are in this country to understand what sorts of immigrants the government is really hoping to expedite.

The system's bias toward the educated has left some industries crying out for skilled blue-collar workers, especially in western Canada, where Alberta's busy oil fields have generated an economic boom. Studies by the Alberta government show the province could be short by as many as 100,000 workers over the next decade.

In response, some Canadian employers are sidestepping the point system and relying instead on a program initiated in 1998 that allows provincial governments to handpick some immigrant workers and assign temporary foreign-worker permits.

"The points system is so inflexible," said Herman Van Reekum, an immigration consultant in Calgary who helps Alberta employers find workers. "We need low-skill workers and trades workers here, and those people have no hope under the points system."

Alberta is, of course, attracting thousands of workers from other parts of Canada, but many of them have been finding the isolation, high housing costs and poor working conditions too much to take, even with the high wages being offered. I know one fellow who tore up his entire life in Toronto and moved to Calgary for what was supposed to be a great construction job, only to return six months later because the accommodations and the working conditions were intolerable.

Now that the Unions are starting to organize oil sands workers, it’s no surprise that Alberta is doing its utmost to bring in more immigrants who might not be quite so fussy about things like worker safety or fair wages or being crammed into dorms with hundreds of other workers.

However, those ‘guest workers’ with temporary work visas are generally only useful for unskilled labour. What the province really needs right now is skilled trades people - pipefitters, carpenters, electricians - in other words, exactly the kind of people the government will be able to ‘fast-track’ under its new policy. In fact, this process had already started a year ago when Alberta signed an agreement with Ottawa giving the province more autonomy in recruiting and hand-selecting immigrant workers.

Alberta Government Taking on Labour Shortages with Immigration
Friday, 04 May 2007

Early next week, the Alberta government is expected to sign a special immigration deal with the federal government. As Canada’s fastest growing province, Alberta regards immigration as an important solution to its chronic labour shortages. With a job market growth rate outpacing all other provinces, Alberta currently has more jobs than they do people to fill them.

Though immigration is under federal jurisdiction, the new immigration deal would transfer much of the responsibility to the Alberta government. Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach has made this deal a priority since campaigning for his position and taking office in December. He hopes to set up Alberta "desks" in Canadian embassies and consulates worldwide, to recruit immigrants to Alberta. The deal will give the province more control over selecting immigration candidates to fill jobs in the industries most pressed by the labour shortages. It will also reduce bureaucratic red tape so that immigrants can settle in Alberta more easily and more quickly.

Sound familiar?

This would be all well and good if these new ‘skilled workers’ were going to be welcomed into Alberta as full and equal citizens, encouraged to buy homes and bring their families and put down permanent roots in a real community.

Sadly, the situation for these ‘skilled workers’ probably wouldn’t be much better than that of your average temporary worker because they are being brought in to fill what are essentially temporary jobs. They still wouldn’t be able to afford to own or even rent their own homes in Alberta’s inflated housing market. There would still be no guarantee that their families would be able to join them - even assuming they wanted their wives and children to live with them in cramped and chilly ‘company housing’.

And what happens to them and their families once the oil boom comes to an end? Would they still find themselves welcomed in communities facing a glut of newly unemployed oil sands and construction workers, or would they face discrimination and resentment in a newly competitive Alberta job market?

The opposition parties, and particularly the NDP, are trying to portray the new Conservative immigration policies as racist and anti-immigrant. But while those aspects might be an added bonus to please the party's right-wing base, I suspect that the truth is somewhat more callous and baldly mercenary.

Perhaps the Conservatives reveal themselves best through the language they chose:

The proposed legislative changes will provide flexibility for concrete measures, as required, to more effectively manage the future growth in the inventory, such as addressing the number of applications accepted and processed in a year… These changes will allow Canada to take the first steps towards establishing a “just-in-time” competitive immigration system which will quickly process skilled immigrants who can make an immediate contribution to the economy.

Immigrants aren't people. They're a commodity. Welcome to Canada.

Tomorrow Is Another Day

Shorter Jim Prentice on the MacDonald Dettwiler sale: "I don't feel like deciding today. I think I'll decide later, after everyone's stopped paying attention."

Feds delay ruling on sale of Canada's top space firm

OTTAWA -- In the face of mounting domestic pressure, Industry Minister Jim Prentice is holding off government approval of the sale of Canada's top space company and a multi-million dollar taxpayer-funded satellite to a U.S. weapons maker, CTV News has learned.

Government insiders say Prentice has ordered another 30-day review of the proposal sale that has been strongly denounced by Canadian scientists, editorial writers, and Calgary Conservative MP Art Hanger.

Remarkable how many of the comments on that article are drawing parallels with the Avro Arrow. They have some valid points, but I'm looking more at parallels with AECL. There is an emerging pattern of hiving off the most successful and profitable divisions of public companies or (like MDA) companies with significant public investment, and selling them off for a quick profit. Then the government can point to what's left and say, "See? Why should we keep throwing money at such an unprofitable enterprise?"

Kinda like eating all the carrots and croutons and bacon bits out of your salad, and then saying you don't like salad.

Anyway, it'll be interesting to watch Prentice and Harper squirm their way out of this one, because I have no doubt they are determined to see MDA sold, one way or the other.

_____________

UPDATE: This bit from the Globe & Mail really says it all, doesn't it?

"Shareholders were expecting a windfall from this transaction. At this point it may not happen," Dundee Securities Corp. analyst Richard Stoneman said yesterday.

The controversy has placed Mr. Prentice in the delicate position of having to balance pro-business considerations with concerns about Arctic sovereignty and military security.

Hmm... shareholder profits versus national security and sovereignty. Profits, sovereignty... profits... sovereignty... the corporation... the country...

Yeah, I can see that being a tough one, Jim. Let me know when you work it out.