Quotulatiousness

May 11, 2011

Brendan O’Neill: “The moralising Lib-Cons are New Labour in disguise”

Filed under: Britain, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:38

Brendan O’Neill pronounces his verdict on the first year of the British coalition government:

For all the claims that the Lib-Cons are Thatcher in disguise, with the wicked Bullingdon-braised David Cameron only pretending to be touchy-feely and a friend of Nick, in fact the most striking thing about this government one year in is how similar it has been to its ugly predecessor New Labour. The moralisation of everyday life, including people’s parenting styles and their drinking and smoking habits? Check. A promise to create a new kind of society (Dave calls it the Big Society; Blair called it the Stakeholders’ Society) while actually increasing the role of the state in economic, political and personal affairs? Check. Blather about environmentalism and nervousness about pursuing nuclear power? Check. The bombing of a foreign country in the name of all that is morally pure and right? Check. The New-Labour-Lib-Con eras have shown that Britain is no longer fought over by clashingly opposing parties but rather is dominated by a samey, conformist and vision-lite political class: samey both in terms of its members’ social origins and their political obsessions.

May 9, 2011

What’s coming up in the next set of Canada Health Act revisions

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Health, Law — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:06

This is an old post from 2005, but now that we have a majority federal government, we can expect to see much or all of this program implemented fairly quickly:

As we’ve all been made aware by the constant drumbeat of media-generated panic, obesity is the biggest problem facing the Canadian healthcare system. Canadians are getting much fatter, getting less exercise, and generally imperilling their own health and, in the aggregate, the entire healthcare system — the core of the Canadian identity. The government is moving to confront this looming problem in the very near future.

Tackling Obesity

Because voluntary measures have failed, the federal government, in consultation with the provinces and territories, is going to amend the Canada Health Act, the cornerstone of the healthcare system. Poor health is no longer an individual problem: it affects the entire country. This means that the government is going to get very serious about tackling the causes of the problem, not just treating the patient after the problem becomes severe.

The current provincial health ID cards will become federalized: this is to ensure that all Canadians are able to get consistent treatment when travelling outside their home provinces. The new ID cards will carry biometric information and it will be mandatory to carry these cards at all times.

To ensure that we comply — it is for the sake of our healthcare system — the health ID card will be requested on boarding all public transit, commuter rail, airplanes, ferries, and ships. Inexpensive card readers will speed processing. No ID? No travel. Simple as that. Our healthcare system is too important to risk for minor concerns like individual rights, privacy, or freedom of movement.

It is expected that the major banks will quickly realize the advantage of integrating their ABM networks with the new universal ID card, obviating the need for them to maintain their own card issuing services. Any who do not quickly adapt will find it difficult to get government business. But it will be strictly voluntary, of course.

Once the banks have adapted, the government can phase out the production of printed money . . . there will be no need for it since you will always carry your combined ID/ATM card. This will be a boon to shopkeepers, banks, and anyone involved in handling money right now.

One of the biggest advantages of this will be that the government will be able to act decisively to combat the scourge of obesity: all food purchases will be directly traceable to show who is eating too much or too much of the wrong kind of food. Within a few years, as the existing printed “Nutrition Facts” information is encoded into RFID tags, it will be possible for your ID/ATM card to restrict the amount of food you purchase to the recommended daily allowance for your diet. Won’t that be great? You won’t even need to think about what to eat, because you’ll only be allowed to eat the “right” amount of the “right” foods, as determined by the government.

Of course, those Canadians who have allowed themselves to eat too much should not be given the same top-priority access to healthcare that their less weighty fellow citizens should have . . . overweight patients will be treated in inverse proportion to their deviation from the norm. That’s only fair, and fairness is nearly as important an aspect of Canadianness as Universal Healthcare.

There may be some bleeding hearts in the civil liberties movement who decry this extension of government power, but we can safely ignore them. The only thing that makes Canada the great place it is today is universal healthcare. This has been repeated so often that most of us accept the concept without any doubt or uncertainty.

Universal healthcare is Canada; Canada is universal healthcare.

Universal healthcare matters more than anything else, again as uncounted public opinion polls and government surveys have discovered, so anything that strengthens the healthcare system is good for Canada. Critics of the system are clearly not acting in the best interests of the healthcare of all Canadians, so we must move to suppress such unpatriotic — even treasonous — talk.

Snuffing Out Smoking

After obesity, the next greatest threat to the system is already being addressed by all levels of government: smoking. It will soon be possible, using the same combination of mandatory ID/ATM cards and RFID tags to completely stamp out the purchase of tobacco products. The government would be remiss if they failed to take full advantage of the current wave of public support to make tobacco use illegal everywhere. Canadians are naturally law-abiding: they will quickly adapt to the need for vigilance for signs of illegal tobacco use. Snitch lines may be required in certain areas to provide more support to those Canadians who want to ensure the health of their fellow citizens — and, of course, the essential healthcare system!

Other methods can be used to ensure compliance, especially in the delivery of healthcare: patients who have smoked will be required to wait longer for all services, to be fair to those patients who never smoked. In the model of “plea bargaining”, patients may be able to get faster aid by reporting others who supplied them with tobacco.

Annihilating Alcohol

Alcohol abuse is the next problem to be overcome. The cost to the healthcare system from treating the direct results of alcohol abuse are staggering. It is manifestly unfair that non-drinking Canadians must pay to rectify the self-inflicted damage of alcohol by drinkers. Earlier Canadian and American governments tried to stamp it out during the last century, but they failed. This government will not: we have the tools to enforce compliance that earlier governments lacked.

As a first step, all sales and production of alcoholic beverages will be nationalized. All citizens must apply for permits to allow them to drink alcoholic beverages, which will only be available from government outlets at strictly controlled times. Sensible limits will be applied, so that packaging that encourages abuse (24-packs of beer, 1.18 litre bottles of alcohol, etc.) will be quickly removed from use. Purchase limits will be strictly enforced, to ensure that so called “binge drinking” can be controlled and eliminated. Drunkenness will be dealt with as sabotage of the healthcare system.

Importing alcohol will be eliminated as a source of health problems, and domestic production will be gradually curtailed and then eliminated in turn. Home brewing and winemaking will be very quickly made illegal: snitch lines will certainly be needed to enforce this, but good Canadians will realize that the health of all requires us to clamp down on those who do not follow good health guidelines.

Enforcing Exercise

It’s not going to be easy to make Canadians as healthy as possible, but the vigour of our Universal Healthcare system can only be enhanced by improving the physical well-being of all Canadians. Voluntary efforts to encourage healthy exercise have been a dismal failure, so mandatory exercise is the only way to move forward. In the short term, all public and private schools, offices, factories, and other workplaces will be required to add exercise periods to every workday.

Mandatory exercise, however, will not be allowed to encourage carelessness and risk-taking — so-called “extreme” sports are all foreign concepts to Canadian culture, and should be discouraged at all cost. The healthcare system must not be held hostage to stupid, careless victims of unnecessary accidents. They’ll be in last place for healthcare services, after the obese, the smokers, and the drinkers.

The End Result

Let’s be honest . . . this is going to be a gruelling regime, and some will not have the intestinal fortitude to pull through. By phase IV of our program, we should expect to see some weaker souls emigrating to escape the rigours of our brave new healthy world. We should let them go, but ensure that they have paid a fair price for the privilege of living in the healthiest country in the world: a sliding scale tax on property maxxing out at 90% for the wealthiest.

But what a wonderful country it will be without them: everyone at the absolute peak of health and vitality (because getting sick will be illegal).

May 7, 2011

Bring Mad Max back into cabinet?

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:13

I admit I’m rather fond of Maxime “Mad Max” Bernier, so of course I’m in favour of bringing him back into cabinet:

Mr. Harper also needs to reach out to the inner conservative that lies dormant in the hearts of most Quebecers.

How to kill these two birds with one stone? Appoint Maxime Bernier as President of the Treasury Board.

The position is open, since incumbent Stockwell Day decided not to run in the May 2 election.

Maxime Bernier hails from Beauce, a fortress of entrepreneurship in the heart of the province. He is an efficient communicator who sticks to the message. He emphasizes fiscal conservatism and individual liberties, a stance that resonates with a core of enthusiastic supporters in the province. He preaches the entrepreneurial values that lie at the very centre of Quebec’s conservative past, but are too seldom celebrated nowadays.

May 6, 2011

CRTC: broadband decision now in government’s hands

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:16

Michael Geist sums up the CRTC’s universal service decision:

The CRTC issued its universal service decision this week, which included analysis of funding mechanisms for broadband access, broadband speed targets, and whether there should be a requirement to provide broadband access as part of any basic service objective. Consumers groups and many observers were left disappointed. The CRTC declined to establish new funding mechanisms (relying on market forces) or changes to basic service and hit on a target of 5 Mbps download speed (actual not advertised) to be universally available by the end of 2015. Critics argued this left consumers on their own and suggested that the targets were underwhelming, particularly when contrasted with other countries.

While I sympathize with the frustration over the CRTC’s decision to essentially make broadband a “watching brief,” I wonder why Canadians should expect the CRTC to lead on broadband targets and funding. Universal access to globally competitive broadband (in terms of speed, pricing, and consumer choice) is a perhaps the most important digital policy issue Canada faces and it should not be viewed through a narrow telecom regulatory lens.

Chris Selley on those new “orange posts”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:13

The new NDP youth wing gets lots of fun poked at it (some of it here), but Chris Selley has hopes that they may force the House of Commons to revisit the worst aspects of parliamentary behaviour:

Look. It’s easy, and frankly appropriate, to laugh at the gaggle of orange poteaux — “posts,” as Quebecers call cipher candidates — soon heading to Ottawa to take their seats as New Democrat MPs (and to move into their very first apartments!). But whatever their shortcomings, it’s safe to assume they’re full to bursting with idealism and self-esteem. Many of them aren’t long out of high school. Try to bully them and by God, they’ll probably call the police.

There’s 57 new NDP MPs from Quebec — almost 20% of the House of Commons. They have a real opportunity to make a difference in the way Parliament conducts its business. Jack Layton himself has said he intends to officially oppose the government in a more dignified manner. And it’s hard to think of anyone in a better position to hold him to his word than, say, a 21-year-old student with $600,000 or so coming to him over the next four years, representing a riding he’s barely visited (if at all) and constituents who didn’t (and don’t, and may never) really give a damn who he is.

The complaints of ex-MPs detailed in the Samara report go far beyond Question Period. One ex-parliamentarian said he profoundly regretted toeing the party line on an emotional issue — almost certainly same-sex marriage, although it’s not specified — and recalled colleagues weeping as they voted against their consciences. Another tells of being tasked, very early in his career, with delivering a speech on the mountain pine beetle infestation in British Columbia, which he knew absolutely nothing about, on 20 minutes’ notice.

One of the weaknesses of our system is that there are not stronger supports for MPs voting freely rather than following the direction of the party whips. The constituents are not being represented if their MP is not allowed to vote in line with their preferences but instead has to subordinate their concerns to that of the party. SSM and the long gun registry are recent examples where the outcome was dictated by party leaders refusing to allow their MPs to vote freely.

It’s good that MPs recognize, at least in hindsight, that partisanship fries their brains and makes them act like monkeys. But hindsight isn’t good enough. Unless MPs grow some … uh, courage, when it actually matters — refusing orders to act foolishly or speechify on subjects they know nothing about, or to waste hours filling chairs on “house duty” when they could be out doing something useful, or to vote against their own or their constituents’ beliefs — this is never going to change.

May 5, 2011

Confused about the details of the Bin Laden raid? So’s the White House

Filed under: Government, Media, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:34

Jon sent me this link which is a systematic attempt to draw together all the information/misinformation/disinformation about the Abbotabad raid:

Usually when governments use misinformation, they use it to make themselves look good. The Obama Administration gets points for originality, insofar as it’s been using disinformation and misinformation to make itself look arbitrary, unlawful, helpless and stupid. Here’s jj’s great summary:

Okay, what do we have here:

1) There was a firefight.
2) There was no firefight.
3) Bin Laden was “resisting.”
4) Bin Laden wasn’t armed. (Makes the concept of “resisting” interesting.)
[4.a) And the newest one: the SEALS thought bin Laden was reaching for a weapon.]
5) He used his wife as a shield.
6) His wife was killed too.
7) He didn’t use his wife as a shield. She ran at a SEAL who shot her in the leg, but she’s fine.
8 ) Some other woman — the maid? — was used as a shield. By somebody. Downstairs.
9) That other woman — downstairs — was killed.
10) Maybe not. She was killed unless she wasn’t — and who was she, anyway?

That’s less than half the list.

Stay on message? They’d have to have agreed on what the actual message is first.

Back to the original post, which has been updated a few times:

When people say “something is wrong here,” they’re sort of right. The “here” in which the wrongness resides isn’t this specific news story. Instead, it’s an overarching pathology that we’re talking about.

That is, the SEALS did what they did. What’s driving everyone bonkers is that this administration is incapable of being straightforward. Serpentine deceit is its MO, regardless of the topic, whether birth certificates, health care debates, or sanctioned assassinations. Everything is wrapped in a web of lies and confusion because of the paranoia, personality disorders, narcissism, and sociopathy that walk the White House halls.

“The operation was at this time effectively unknown to President Barack Obama”

Filed under: Government, Military, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:54

If this line of investigation is borne out, we can expect to see some interesting times in Washington:

The operation was at this time effectively unknown to President Barack Obama or Valerie Jarrett and it remained that way until AFTER it had already been initiated. President Obama was literally pulled from a golf outing and escorted back to the White House to be informed of the mission.

I have no idea how solid this line of reasoning is, but if Clinton and Panetta had to force the President’s hand by initiating the strike on Bin Laden’s safe house, the American government is well and truly divided.

H/T to Adam Baldwin for the link.

Brendan O’Neill on why Britons should vote “No” today

Filed under: Britain, Government, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:32

For some reason, British governments for the last decade have found it utterly impossible to organize a referendum on whether Britain should stay within the European Union, but they’ve been able to whip up today’s Alternative Voting referendum in double-quick time. Brendan O’Neill has a few last-minute words for those of you eligible to vote:

But now that we’ve been landed with a referendum for an electoral system that a majority of the public are savagely uninterested in, it’s paramount that we vote NO to AV.

Because AV would accentuate some of the most degenerate trends in politics today.

Through its invitation to voters to express their views about all candidates, it would turn voting from an impassioned statement of political desire or attachment to an ideal into a relativistic process of erming and ahhing.

And by making aspiring politicians potentially reliant on second- and third-preference votes, it would nurture even more public figures who refuse to say anything surprising or provocative for fear of alienating their kind-of constituencies.

In short, AV would water down the act of voting and reduce risk-taking and ideas-making in mainstream British politics – a trend that is already underway but which would effectively be institutionalised under AV.

So go out and say NO.

May 3, 2011

Michael Geist on what the Conservative majority means for digital policies

In short, he sees it as a mixed bag:

For example, a majority may pave the way for opening up the Canadian telecom market, which would be a welcome change. The Conservatives have focused consistently on improving Canadian competition and opening the market is the right place to start to address both Internet access (including UBB) and wireless services. The Conservatives have a chance to jump on some other issues such as following through on the digital economy strategy and ending the Election Act rules that resulted in the Twitter ban last night. They are also solidly against a number of really bad proposals — an iPod tax, new regulation of Internet video providers such as Netflix — and their majority government should put an end to those issues for the foreseeable future.

On copyright and privacy, it is more of a mixed bag.

The copyright bill is — as I described at its introduction last June — flawed but fixable. I realize that it may be reintroduced unchanged (the Wikileaks cables are not encouraging), but with the strength of a majority, there is also the strength to modify some of the provisions including the digital lock rules. Clement spoke regularly about the willingness to consider amendments and the Conservative MPs on the Bill C-32 committee were very strong. If the U.S. has exceptions for unlocking DVDs and a full fair use provision, surely Canada can too.

The Conservatives are a good news, bad news story on privacy. A fairly good privacy bill died on the order paper that will hopefully be reintroduced as it included mandatory security breach notification requirements. There will be a PIPEDA review this year and the prospect of tougher penalties for privacy violations is certainly possible. Much more troubling is the lawful access package which raises major civil liberties concerns and could be placed on the fast track.

QotD: The LCBO’s Trend Report

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Quotations, Wine — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:27

The recent LCBO report says that ‘People are buying Pinot Noir and Ripasso’. Roughly translated the message is ‘we’d like more people to buy these, and other wines in the $16–$20 range, and not the cheap South American stuff. Please be trendy and support our profits.’

[. . .]

In case you’re not clued into the workings of LCBO promotions I suggest you read the fine print on the inside back cover ‘this advertising is paid for by participating suppliers’. It’s no different than all the other fliers.

Billy Munnelly, “LCBO Trend Report”, Billy’s Best Bottles Wine Blog, 2011-04-20

May 2, 2011

Radley Balko: “He won”

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 15:58

A distressing round-up of the lifetime achievements of the late Osama Bin Laden:

We have also fundamentally altered who we are. A partial, off-the-top-of-my-head list of how we’ve changed since September 11 . . .

  • We’ve sent terrorist suspects to “black sites” to be detained without trial and tortured.
  • We’ve turned terrorist suspects over to other regimes, knowing that they’d be tortured.
  • In those cases when our government later learned it got the wrong guy, federal officials not only refused to apologize or compensate him, they went to court to argue he should be barred from using our courts to seek justice, and that the details of his abduction, torture, and detainment should be kept secret.
  • We’ve abducted and imprisoned dozens, perhaps hundreds of men in Guantanamo who turned out to have been innocent. Again, the government felt no obligation to do right by them.
  • The government launched a multimillion dollar ad campaign implying that people who smoke marijuana are complicit in the murder of nearly 3,000 of their fellow citizens.
  • The government illegally spied and eavesdropped on thousands of American citizens.
  • Presidents from both of the two major political parties have claimed the power to detain suspected terrorists and hold them indefinitely without trial, based solely on the president’s designation of them as an “enemy combatant,” essentially making the president prosecutor, judge, and jury. (I’d also argue that the treatment of someone like Bradley Manning wouldn’t have been tolerated before September 11.)

The list, unfortunately goes on.

Yes, bin Laden the man is dead. But he achieved all he set out to achieve, and a hell of a lot more. He forever changed who we are as a country, and for the worse. Mostly because we let him. That isn’t something a special ops team can fix.

April 26, 2011

CBC headline: “Layton open to constitutional talks with Quebec”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:32

Oh, crikey. Because that’s exactly what we need to do to continue our recovery from the recession — re-open the constitutional debate all over again:

NDP Leader Jack Layton is willing to reopen talks on the Canadian Constitution in an effort to get Quebec to sign the document once there was a “reasonable chance of success.”

Layton was asked about the issue of constitutional talks on Tuesday in Montreal, where he is trying to capitalize on an apparent sharp increase in support for the NDP in recent public opinion polls.

The NDP leader, however, said he does not think the federal government should enter into constitutional negotiations with the provinces until “there is some reasonable chance of success.”

“It’s not a question of appeasing anybody. We have an historic problem. We have a quarter of our population who have never signed the Constitution. That can’t go on forever,” Layton said.

April 19, 2011

Things that keep on rising in price … like healthcare costs

Kevin Libin points out that Michael Ignatieff may have been even more accurate than he himself realized:

The politicians are finally talking about it, but if you listened to what Mr. Ignatieff said during last week’s English-language debate, you might have found yourself feeling a bit depressed. Perhaps because the Liberal leader effectively argued that if Canadians wanted to keep getting decent medical treatment, they were going to have to learn to live without lots of other things.

“This comes down to a moment of choice,” Mr. Ignatieff intoned. Canadians could either vote for personal income tax breaks, planned corporate income tax cuts, new equipment for the Canadian Forces, all promised by the Conservatives, or, he said, “you can support health care.”

To be accurate, he used language that was far more politically loaded (“multi-million dollar expenditure on prisons … big gifts to upper-middle class Canadians”), but his message was the same: affording public health care means sacrificing other possible priorities.

There’s certainly much to suggest he’s got a point.

If our healthcare costs keep rising, unbounded by any kind of cost control, it will either consume the economy, or cause its collapse. And, of course, the large number of soon-to-retire Baby Boomers are about to need much higher health spending as the natural aging process starts taking its inevitable toll. Fun times ahead, folks.

Already, nine out of 10 provinces spend the majority of their own source revenues (which excludes federal transfers) on health care, according to the Fraser Institute’s report “Canada’s Medicare Bubble.” Only Alberta is just barely under 50%; Nova Scotia spends 88%.

With all the good will in the world, the government can’t keep increasing their healthcare spending . . . they’re almost out of money already.

April 18, 2011

Oh, stop worrying: everything is going according to the plan!

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:02

Julian Sanchez notes a fascinating parallel:

Batman’s archnemesis the Joker — played memorably by Heath Ledger in 2008′s blockbuster The Dark Knight — might seem like an improbable font of political wisdom, but it’s lately occurred to me that one of his more memorable lines from the film is surprisingly relevant to our national security policy:

You know what I’ve noticed? Nobody panics when things go “according to plan.” Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all “part of the plan.”

There are, one hopes, limits. The latest in a string of videos from airport security to provoke online outrage shows a six-year-old girl being subjected to an invasive Transportation Security Administration patdown — including an agent feeling around in the waistband of the girl’s pants. I’m somewhat reassured that people don’t appear to be greatly mollified by TSA’s response:

A video taken of one of our officers patting down a six year-old has attracted quite a bit of attention. Some folks are asking if the proper procedures were followed. Yes. TSA has reviewed the incident and the security officer in the video followed the current standard operating procedures.

While I suppose it would be disturbing if individual agents were just improvising groping protocol on the fly (so to speak), the response suggests that TSA thinks our concerns should be assuaged once we’ve been reassured that everything is being done by the book — even if the book is horrifying. But in a sense, that’s the underlying idea behind all security theater: Show people that there’s a Plan, that procedures are in place, whether or not there’s any good evidence that the Plan actually makes us safer.

The real secret weapon of the “China economic miracle”

Filed under: China, Economics, Government — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:35

Chriss W. Street thinks the Chinese banks are about to suffer a crisis moment:

It is ironic that China is demanding greater control of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, just as the nation’s banking system is about to be devastated by the white hot flames of inflation.
From a distance, China’s economy seems to be the poster child of sustainable growth. Recent government reports show the economy expanding by 9.7%, retail sales up a blistering 17.4%, foreign reserves at $3 trillion, and inflation only 5.4%. But these statistics mask a dark side; Chinese communist authorities have been artificially holding down fierce inflationary pressures by subsidizing consumer prices.

[. . .]

The less known and far more important secret-weapon of the “China Economic Miracle” is the absolute control of the banking industry by China’s four largest state-owned banks (“SOB”); Industrial and Commercial Bank, Agricultural Bank, People’s Bank of China and Construction. Since the government does not provide adequate social welfare programs and restricts its citizen’s investment options to bank accounts, about 40% of Chinese household income is deposited in SOBs each month. The SOBs then leverage the deposits by ten times and loan 75% of this massive amount of cash at extremely low interest rates to state-owned-enterprises (“SOE”). The other 25% of lending is allocated to real estate development.

China is no stranger to bankers making risky loans to communist party officials and their crony real estate developers. During the Asian Financial Crisis of the mid-1990s, it is estimated that 40% of all SOB loans were non-performing and most were written off. The Chinese paid for the SOB losses with a 76% devaluation of their currency that crushed the people’s buying-power by 76%. From 1997 to 2004 Chinese frivolous lending was somewhat restrained, but since 2003 the bureaucrats have mandated a massive expansion of lending. In comparison to the U.S. and Europe where bank lending is flat, SOBs have been expanding loans by 25% annually.

H/T to Jon for the link.

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