The economy is the most important consideration. Except when it isn't.

It's interesting, how all conservatives, such as Alberta's governing PCs,  firmly oppose higher corporate taxes because of nebulous, highly debatable and entirely theoretical negative economic impacts. 

But anti-gay laws with real, unambiguous, no doubt about it, BIG MONEY negative economic consequences? Well hey, who cares if Salesforce, a company that invested 2 and a half BILLION dollars in Indiana last year says they are now firmly cutting ties with the state over its anti-gay legislation? Who cares if GenCon, the largest gaming convention in North America is making plans to move their annual convention out of Indiana to the tune over 50 million dollars being pulled out of the state's economy EVERY YEAR? So what if the NCAA is seriously re-evaluating any plans to host future events in the state which could add up to hundreds of millions of dollars in economic impact.

Add in potential losses in the millions from the tourist industry, jobs from the tech industry and the huge economic loss caused by an exodus of Gay Indianans and the only question remaining is just how many billions of dollars this new law will cost the state of Indiana's economy.

The entirely theoretical risk to jobs and economic growth cited as a reason to never even consider making corporations pay a fairer share of the tax burden is turned on its head with the argument that treating gays like shit is more important than the devastating effect it will have on the state's economy. 

It's almost as if it was never a good faith argument and Republican Governor Pence is happily abandoning it until the next time someone suggests 'Hey maybe our budget problems could be helped by making corporations pay a higher share?' at which point it will be swiftly resurrected.

Learning to Cope

It's been nine days since he was laid off, lets see how Ezra Levant is dealing with unemployment...

In Character

Honestly anyone surprised by Danielle Smith's craven rat paddle away from the sinking Wildrose ship just hasn't been paying attention. When she couldn't control the Calgary school board with the the sheer self evident perfection of her Fraser institute indoctrinated ideology she blew it up in a display of juvenile mean girl behaviour that has typified her career. 

When it became clear that her deeply held passionate conviction that global warming was just a nasty fraud perpetrated by the 99% of scientists who belive in it meant a permanent exile in the electoral wasteland she abandoned it - publicly at least - with barely a moments delay. When it became obvious that good, moral gay hate clutched close to the withered hearts of her bigoted supporters had inexplicably become a barrier to her ambition she suddenly began pretending to be a lifelong defender of diversity and proud friend of Dorothy.

She's one of Canadian politic's most calculating, chameleon like, weather vanes to ever leave principle lying in a pool of its own roadkill blood as she tools down the highway to the bright future of power in devoted service to the elite.

Don't these mewling whiners understand her needs are what really matter?

Christy Clark's Liberals sacrifice BC children to protect Christy Clark's Liberals

School will start late in BC because the BC government wont agree to any deal with its teachers that doesn't give the government immunity from the Supreme Court for any consequences of its failure to bargain in good faith.

This government is sacrificing BC kids on the altar of protecting the BC Liberals from the consequences of their own misdeeds. Their blatant bad faith bargaining is going to end up costing millions of taxpayer dollars once the grievances finish winding through the arbitration process and they don't want to explain that to the voters.

When Fassbender proposed leaving grievances out of bargaining, and allowing the courts to settle the matter, he argued it would allow negotiations to focus on the key issues.

Iker, however, dismissed that proposal after Saturday’s talks.
“Does the government really expect that teachers would bargain away everything the B.C. Supreme Court has already awarded us?” he wrote in a release. “And what future decisions might bring?”

On the Value of Scorn

Of late we've been seeing a lot of bigots, kooks and reactionaries trying to adopt the language of victimization.

Gay rights advocates in the US are not being gracious in their victory over decent people who just wanted to go on treating a whole subset of humanity as second class citizens.  Now various laws designed in the last few years to attack, dehumanize and marginalize gay Americans  topple like dominos and they have the sads and gay rights supporters are being MEAN to them.

A conservative spokes clone accuses Bill Nye of being part of a vast conspiracy to bully people who believe that scientists must just be fibbing with this silly 99% of scientists believe global warming is real and human caused stuff. 

You big meanie!

Scorn is a useful social construct.  It exists for a reason.  In the marketplace of ideas scorn is the health department closure poster on a cafe door.

Some ideas and the people who promote them SHOULD be scorned.  Some positions should be career limiting and socially devastating. 

If you believe this nonsense you are wrong and you should feel bad.

That's how society evolves, less from the new ideas we adopt than from the ones we outgrow.

The next time the Sun or one of their odious commentators attacks someone else's patriotism...

Lets just stop and enjoy the irony for the moment, of the owner of the rabidly right wing, aggressively 'patriotic' Sun newspaper chain and the even nuttier far right Sun TV network being a Separatist candidate in Quebec with the avowed goal of breaking up Canada.

Don't insult us

The most rigid control freak running the most hierarchical top down PMO, controlling the most micro-managed government in Canadian history and we're supposed to believe Harper's chief of staff short-circuited Puffy's embarrassing audit with a thick wad of cash WITHOUT Harper's knowledge? Pull the other one.

Republican outreach to Women:

Taking on a Revolting Bully

A billionaire Mormon backer of Mitt Romney with an anti-gay axe to grind and a habit of using his vast wealth to harass, intimidate and silence critics gets openly challenged by Glenn Greenwald to put up or shut up:

Frank VanderSloot is an Idaho billionaire and the CEO of Melaleuca, Inc., a controversial billion-dollar-a-year company which peddles dietary supplements and cleaning products; back in 2004, Forbes, echoing complaints to government agencies, described the company as “a pyramid selling organization, built along the lines of Herbalife and Amway.” VanderSloot has long used his wealth to advance numerous right-wing political causes. Currently, he is the national finance co-chair of the Mitt Romney presidential campaign, and his company has become one of the largest donors ($1 million) to the ostensibly “independent” pro-Romney SuperPAC, Restore Our Future. Melaleuca’s get-rich pitches have in the past caused Michigan regulators to take action, resulting in the company’s entering into a voluntary agreement to “not engage in the marketing and promotion of an illegal pyramid”‘; it entered into a separate voluntary agreement with the Idaho attorney general’s office, which found that “certain independent marketing executives of Melaleuca” had violated Idaho law; and the Food and Drug Administration previously accused Melaleuca of deceiving consumers about some of its supplements.

But it is VanderSloot’s chronic bullying threats to bring patently frivolous lawsuits against his political critics — magazines, journalists, and bloggers — that makes him particularly pernicious and worthy of more attention. In the last month alone, VanderSloot, using threats of expensive defamation actions, has successfully forced Forbes, Mother Jones and at least one local gay blogger in Idaho to remove articles that critically focused on his political and business practices. He has been using this abusive tactic in Idaho for years: suppressing legitimate political speech by threatening or even commencing lawsuits against even the most obscure critics (he has even sued local bloggers for “copyright infringement” after they published a threatening letter sent by his lawyers). This tactic almost always succeeds in silencing its targets, because even journalists and their employers who have done nothing wrong are afraid of the potentially ruinous costs they will incur when sued by a litigious billionaire.

Given Vandersloot's MO, Greenwald and Salon have to be expecting to be in the sights of the billionaire's legal arsenal for this blistering broadside.  It's an open challenge and a slap to provoke a SLAPP.  Repost this widely folks.

If Ezra Levant pushed his way into your house and wouldn't leave, wouldn't YOU call the cops?

OTTAWA - When the CBC's Mary Walsh shows up unannounced with a camera crew at Toronto mayor Rob Ford's house, the state broadcaster considers it comedy.
When Sun News Network's Ezra Levant pops up in the lobby of the CBC's Toronto headquarters with a camera operator, it's a matter for police.

Access to information requests have revealed then-director of operations and contingency planning at the CBC, Julie McCambley, authorized a call to police on Aug. 19 to force Levant to leave the 13-floor tower.

"Mrs. McCambley approved the ejection of the group with police involvement if they continued to be disruptive," reads an internal security report obtained by QMI Agency.
Levant showed up demanding a meeting with Hubert Lacroix, Ottawa-based president and CEO, or Jeff Keay, head of media relations.

The CBC denied the fiery talk show host any meeting and told him to stop recording his encounter with security.

"This is a public building and I can record here if I like," responded Levant.

Note that the source of this story is Canoe, ie Quebecor, ie Sun Media.  

Hence why an obnoxious, spoiled wannabe demagogue being told to get lost is treated as a major news story.

A convicted felon with delusions of grandeur

That it was published in the paper that used to be his own personal Hearstian plaything and vanity project must add insult to the injury of this damning report:

Conrad Black was not the model prisoner depicted by his legal team, rather he “projected the attitude that he was better than others” and treated some of his fellow inmates “like servants,” according to documents filed by the U.S. government in court.

In two affidavits sworn by a unit manager and an education specialist at Coleman Federal Correctional prison in Florida, where Lord Black spent 29 months, the former media baron is depicted as a haughty inmate and an uninspired tutor.

“Black initially demanded special treatment, expecting counsellors to prioritize his requests over those of other inmates,” said Tammy Padgett, the unit manager of Lord Black’s prison ward.

“During the time that Black was at Coleman, I observed that he gathered a following of inmates who performed services for him, acting like servants,” she said in a two-page affidavit filed by U.S. prosecutors in advance of a June 24 re-sentencing hearing.

“These inmates cooked for Black, cleaned for him, mopped his floor, ironed his clothes and other similar tasks. This is not at all frequent at Coleman.”

“Based on my interactions with Black, he projected the attitude that he was better than the others in the class, both faculty and students,” Ms. De LaGarza said in her affidavit. “A lot of the inmates looked up to him, and there were some who saluted him each day in class.”
...

Lord Black’s lawyers have asked the trial judge to release Lord Black for time served.

According to Ms. Padgett, Lord Black’s case manager while in prison noted that on the day before the Canadian-born businessman was released on bail, he told her in “words to the effect of, ‘I believe I should be addressed as Lord Black from this point forward.’ ” Apparently, the case manager refused.

Like Al Capone in his furnished luxury cell stuffing bills into guards pockets when they delivered his cigars.  Another petty, sleazy, grubby little criminal who thinks he still is owed the respect of the peons.

Regime 'Alteration'

America to Arab protestors: 'Your freedom would be incovenient to us and our allies.  We'll push our client despots to throw you a few more crumbs, you just need to learn to expect less than full democracy.'

WASHINGTON—After weeks of internal debate on how to respond to uprisings in the Arab world, the Obama administration is settling on a Middle East strategy: help keep longtime allies who are willing to reform in power, even if that means the full democratic demands of their newly emboldened citizens might have to wait.

Instead of pushing for immediate regime change—as it did to varying degrees in Egypt and now Libya—the U.S. is urging protesters from Bahrain to Morocco to work with existing rulers toward what some officials and diplomats are now calling "regime alteration."

An Inevitable Outcome

Saskatchewan's right wing government is given the legal judgment anybody with basic reading comprehension skills and a copy of the Charter could have predicted:

The Saskatchewan government says it will not appeal a court ruling that says marriage commissioners cannot refuse to wed same-sex couples on religious grounds.

The province had asked the Appeal Court to rule on proposed legislation that would have allow commissioners to cite their religion in saying “no” to gays and lesbians.

The court said the law would be unconstitutional and would amount to discrimination against same-sex couples.
Justice Minister Don Morgan says the government will take some time to review the decision so it can decide how to proceed.

But Justice Morgan adds that the Appeal Court's analysis was thorough and he will not recommend that the government appeal.

At least one marriage commissioner who was an intervener in the case says he may give up his role over the ruling.

Any number of people, including yours truly, warned them that this ruling, that government licensed marriage commissioners cannot discriminate based on their own bigotry, was inevitable.  The right wing Saskatchewan Party government chose to waste hundreds of thousands of Saskatchewan tax-payer's dollars on a legal battle they knew they would lose in order to pander to the most intolerant and bigoted core of their base.

The people of Saskatchewan should be asking why their money was knowingly wasted on this hateful nonsense.

The Self Destructing BC Liberals

Meanwhile, the freshly fired Mr. Bennett – his cellphone and cabinet credit card cancelled before he could hop on a flight to Victoria – arrived in the capital for an extraordinary 35-minute gathering in which he described what it was like to serve under Mr. Campbell for the past decade.


“He’s not a nice man,” Mr. Bennett said.


The Kootenay East MLA said Mr. Campbell has reduced members of his caucus to tears, and recounted an incident when he was left wiping the Premier’s spittle off his face after Mr. Campbell leaned close to yell at him.
Mr. Campbell is a bully whose intimidation tactics have created a government caucus and cabinet that suffers from “almost a battered-wife syndrome,” said Mr. Bennett.


“I’m tired of the bullshit that goes on in politics and I’m really tired of the way that Gordon Campbell thinks that he can just run on people,” he said.


“I’m a tough guy, I can take it. But I’ve seen him do it to other people in caucus.”

I'm getting flashbacks to the last days of Bill Vanderzalm.  He brought the BC Social Credit party down with him through scandal, extremism and completely losing the public trust.
 
With Gordon Cambell though, the level of public loathing is really quite remarkable.  He's despised as a liar, a bully and an arrogant autocrat with a contempt for the public.  After announcing it only weeks after the election where they denied any plans to introduce it, nobody believes the Campbell and the Liberals weren't planning to bring in the HST even while they were denying it. 
 
There's a meme developing, promoted by Gary Mason in the Globe and Mail, among others that Campbell has been mistreated by the public, and the hatred and opprobium he's received is deeply unfair and part of a trend that discourages qualified people from wanting to serve.
 
On the contrary, I suggest that the contempt and disgust Campbell is held in by the BC public is a healthy sign of an engaged and socially concious population rejecting a lying, contemptuous bully who treats them like easily bribed children who can be convinced to believe transparent lies. 
 
That's a good thing.

"You turned down my bribe, so you can all suck it."

Hands up anybody surprised.

"In order to ensure the Executive Council has maximum flexibility to set government's economic and fiscal agenda, cabinet has decided to suspend the planned tax reduction." Campbell said in a statement.

At the stroke of Midnight the Sun turned into a pumpkin

Dateline, exactly one minute after midnight, Saturday Sept. 18. Let the groveling commence:

Retraction and apology to George Soros

September 18, 2010 12:01am

On September 5, 2010, a column by Ezra Levant contained false statements about George Soros and his conduct as a young teenager in Nazi-occupied Hungary.

Upon receiving a letter of complaint from Mr. Soros’s legal counsel on September 13, 2010, Sun Media Corporation always intended to publish a retraction and apology for this column. Despite constant efforts on both sides, Sun Media and Mr. Soros’s counsel were unable to reach agreement on the content of a retraction.

The management of Sun Media wishes to state that there is no basis for the statements in the column and they should not have been made.

Sun Media, this newspaper and Ezra Levant retract the statements made in the column and unreservedly apologize to Mr. Soros for the distress and harm this column may have caused to him.

Translation: "Please sir, have mercy, don't sue us into greasy stains."

I sincerely hope that the apology is not accepted and Soros' lawyers administer the kind of punishment that makes grown hatemongers and Quebecor executives cry like little children.

A gentle reminder from the service economy workforce

Dedicated to former JetBlue employee Steven Slater:

They break the banks, we pay the tab

Naomi Klein bottom lines it:

My city feels like a crime scene and the criminals are all melting into the night, fleeing the scene. No, I’m not talking about the kids in black who smashed windows and burned cop cars on Saturday.
I’m talking about the heads of state who, on Sunday night, smashed social safety nets and burned good jobs in the middle of a recession. Faced with the effects of a crisis created by the world’s wealthiest and most privileged strata, they decided to stick the poorest and most vulnerable people in their countries with the bill.
How else can we interpret the G20’s final communiqué, which includes not even a measly tax on banks or financial transactions, yet instructs governments to slash their deficits in half by 2013. This is a huge and shocking cut, and we should be very clear who will pay the price: students who will see their public educations further deteriorate as their fees go up; pensioners who will lose hard-earned benefits; public-sector workers whose jobs will be eliminated. And the list goes on. These types of cuts have already begun in many G20 countries including Canada, and they are about to get a lot worse.
They are happening for a simple reason. When the G20 met in London in 2009, at the height of the financial crisis, the leaders failed to band together to regulate the financial sector so that this type of crisis would never happen again. All we got was empty rhetoric, and an agreement to put trillions of dollars in public monies on the table to shore up the banks around the world. Meanwhile the U.S. government did little to keep people in their homes and jobs, so in addition to hemorrhaging public money to save the banks, the tax base collapsed, creating an entirely predictable debt and deficit crisis.
At this weekend’s summit, Prime Minister Stephen Harper convinced his fellow leaders that it simply wouldn’t be fair to punish those banks that behaved well and did not create the crisis (despite the fact that Canada’s highly protected banks are consistently profitable and could easily absorb a tax). Yet somehow these leaders had no such concerns about fairness when they decided to punish blameless individuals for a crisis created by derivative traders and absentee regulators.

The elites have used a giant crisis created by their own hubris and incompetence to stage one of the largest heists of public funds ever even attempted. Socialism is a wonderful thing... when its the risks taken by financial elites that are getting socialized.

UPDATE: Off the hook.

Alan Grayson is my hero

Alan Grayson defies the standard American liberal stereotype of huddling in a corner whimpering at conservative attacks - when attacked by Rush Limbaugh, he'd rather accuse him of being a drug addicted boy prostitute lover.

Limbaugh was still smarting from Alan Grayson (D-FL) pointing out at DownWithTyranny last January that ole Rush was more lucid when he was still taking hillbilly heroin than he's been lately. "Rush Limbaugh is a has-been hypocrite loser, who craves attention. His right-wing lunacy sounds like Mikhail Gorbachev, extolling the virtues of communism. Limbaugh actually was more lucid when he was a drug addict. If America ever did 1% of what he wanted us to do, then we'd all need pain killers." So it came as no surprise to anyone when Limbaugh launched into another childish tirade against Congressman Grayson, the member of Congress the extreme right fears most.
On his Hate Talk Radio show Friday Limbaugh started babbling that the congressman who represents Orlando, home of Disney World, is "loony tunes," mixing up his media conglomerates, and claiming that he's an order of fries short of a happy meal." Grayson, laughing, pointed out that the binge-eating and drug addled Limbaugh's life is "like a 5-alarm fire and all his money doesn't make it any better." Limbaugh huddles in his $27 million mansion, broadcasts from his basement and never ventures out unless it's to hunt for underage boy prostitutes in the Dominican Republic. He sends his servants out to score his drugs and bring back food. "He's one pizza short of exploding," chortled Grayson yesterday. "If there is anyone who knows about Happy Meals, it's Rush Limbaugh. He certainly has consumed a lot of them. He likes them with an oxycontin chaser."

Flashback: Rush Limbaugh busted trying to smuggle a bag of Viagra into the Dominican Republic - a notorious sex tourism spot.

Canada Punk'd by the Yes Men in Copenhagen

For a brief shining moment it looked like we weren't going to be a global embarrassment in front of the whole world.

So, did you hear the one about Canada making a huge splash at the COP15 Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen by completely reversing its climate change policy and setting aggressive new carbon reduction targets?

The fun began this morning when the Yes Men put out the following release, purporting to come from the Assistant Press Secretary, of the Canadian Office of the Minister of the Environment. Here it is in full:

CANADA ANNOUNCES NEW AGENDA FOR CLIMATE AND WORLD DEVELOPMENT Plan includes stricter emissions reductions and immediate "climate debt" bailouts for most affected countries

COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- In a major development coming three days before the final round of UN climate change negotiations in Copenhagen, and responding to the recent concerns expressed by the G77 bloc of countries, Canada's Attache for Environment and Planning announced today an ambitious plan for a new climate change framework that answers vital concerns voiced by developing nations.

Dubbed "Agenda 2020," the plan sets strict new emissions-reductions guidelines for Canada and fast-tracks financing for vulnerable countries beginning in 2010.

"Today the G77 has again made their voice very clear," said Jim Prentice, Canada's Minister for the Environment. "This policy is our answer. Long in discussion, and slated for release later this week, Agenda 2020 is Canada's commitment to a science-based approach to climate change, and our way to assert our partnership with the developing world." Agenda 2020 sets binding emissions reductions targets of 40% below 1990 levels by 2020 and at least 80% by 2050, in line with the recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and approaching the levels demanded by the African Group (link). The plan also introduces a new instrument, known as the "Climate Debt Mechanism" (CDM), committing Canada to much-needed funding to those developing countries facing the most dire consequences of climate change. CDM payments will begin with 1% and rise to the equivalent of 5% of Canada's GDP annually by 2030.

"We believe all people will benefit from an equitable climate deal that truly energizes the world economy," said Prentice.

The initial 2010 CDM outlay (representing 1% of Canada's GDP, or $13 billion) will be allocated to the African countries for emissions-reduction strategies and alternative-energy development programs. Payments will also finance resilience-building projects in specific communities already facing the results of climate change or threatened with its most dire consequences.

The CDM is the world's first financial mechanism that truly addresses the rising costs of climate change in developing countries. It follows a November announcement from Canada and its Commonwealth partners committing $10 billion to climate change adaptation for vulnerable countries (link). By providing quick access to adaptation finance, the CDM builds on this commitment and takes the global lead in supporting vulnerable countries. CDM payments will be completely separate from pre-existing development assistance and will be considered to be payments in a balance of trade.

"Canada is taking the long view on the world economy," said Prentice. "Nobody benefits from a world in peril. Contributing to the development of other nations and taking full responsibilities for our emissions is simple Canadian good sense. We want to show the world that Canada is a leader on climate change."

The full details of the CDM framework will be released when Prime Minister Stephen Harper attends the high-level session of the Copenhagen climate talks this Wednesday.

Sigh.

If only.