H1N1: Somebody Tweet Justin Trudeau!

This clinic must be stopped immediately! There is no way we can have health care administered in this country by untrained, non-government professionals!! After all, this vaccine that the Medcan clinic is wasting the precious nectar on the unwashed masses of Toronto when, as Hedy Frey (Liberal, Vancouver Centre) pointed out this week, it should be going to our noble Liberal Parliamentarians first!!! Oh Justin, where art thou?

Should Parliament Repeal the Faint Hope Clause?

There is a debate going on at The Mark inspired by the Conservative government’s desire to do away with the Faint Hope clause (which allows for a chance at a parole hearing after 15 years for those sentenced to life imprisonment).  I can’t believe I’m going to type this, but I’ve got to side with Pierre Trudeau over Stephen Harper on this one (it was Trudeau’s government that initially brought in the Faint Hope clause).

Despite my inclinations, the debate at The Mark is clearly won by Bob Tarantino, who is arguing for the clause’s repeal.  Simon Fraser’s Neil Boyd does a wretched job making a cased for the Faint Hope clause.  His opening statement focuses not on the subject at hand, but on drug laws and minimum sentences for drug offenders.  I’m in agreement that our drug laws are confused and ridiculous, but that doesn’t really have a lot to do (specifically) with the Faint Hope clause (which tends to apply to murderers).  Mr. Boyd’s rebuttal is minimally more persuasive.

Mr. Tarantino, however, puts together a strong argument against the Faint Hope clause.  Nonetheless, he manages to steal a base:

Bizarrely, he then states that “such legislation certainly wouldn’t enhance the safety of the men and women who work in Canada’s prisons.” This is an implicit admission that the very people the faint hope clause releases into the community are dangerous, even to prison staff. If the people who are being released under the faint hope clause are such a threat to the safety of prison workers, then why is Boyd so intent on making sure these same people have the chance of being released? Won’t they be that much more of a threat to people outside prison? In a perfect distillation of the inversion of rational thought which governs so much of our criminal justice system, the criminals that Boyd thinks are too dangerous to keep in prison are the same ones he thinks should be allowed to apply for release.

Considering the obvious intelligence of Mr. Tarantino, I must assume that this paragraph is intended to score points against Mr. Boyd’s article rather than actually address the argument that the Faint Hope clause makes Canadian prisons safer (hopefully not just for guards, but for inmates, as well).  Without any hope of parole, these prisoners have nothing to lose.  Regardless of what crimes they commit while incarcerated, they cannot be executed; all that can happen to them is that they are doomed to a similar fate to the one they were already facing.  The argument is that the Faint Hope clause is the very thing that fosters rehabilitation and leads to fewer attacks against prison workers.  It is a point that can be rebutted, but it is a point that Mr. Tarantino does not address.

There may never be a prisoner deserving of parole gained through the Faint Hope clause; there may be no rehabilitating this type of criminal (though I’d suggest there is), but hope is perhaps the one thing we can afford these people.  Whether they deserve it or not, we should give it to them.

As an aside, in his preface to the debate, the editor of The Mark notes that the issue comes down to the question of whether the primary purpose of the justice system is to protect or to punish.  I tackle that here.

H1N1 Hysteria and Hypochondria

An acquaintance of mine whose political and sociological opinions I rarely respect, asked me if I was going to get the latest swine flu shot that, for some peculiar reason, seems to be so popular these days. I said I was not. Then, he went on enthusiastically about how he was going to get his shot and protect his children and make the world a safer place.

He said the most astounding things: “well, vaccines do work” and “that’s not rocket science” after I told him that I do not trust this new vaccine. Then he went on a diatribe about how vaccines against polio and malaria have proven to work.

Somehow, he did not get it that years and years of experience with vaccination for one disease does not prove that the latest vaccine (which has no track record) for a different disease is safe. Oh, well.

I just find it so amazing to see so many eager people blindly ready to jump on the latest health solution peddled by the government. All of these trusting people lining up to get inoculated as if they were waiting to get milked by their farmer. They do not even know what is in those syringes yet they are convinced that they are protecting themselves from a deadly epidemic. Wow.

Enjoy your flu shots everybody!

UPDATE — (Sunday, November 1st, 2009)
Trying to look on the bright side of all this hysteria, I think I have found something positive among all of the hypochondriac parents waiting in line with their young children. This nonsense may provoke a natural revulsion to waiting in line. Future generations may shake our soviet Canadian culture of socialist obedience.

Are Liberals suffering from a millstone named Quebec?

It’s debatable I think. The main comparison I’d make is that Liberal fortune is so dependent upon the good graces of Quebec and the Conservatives are not. Liberals can’t obtain a majority government without Quebec and that’s mostly because they don’t have The West, whereas the Conservatives can technically obtain a majority without Quebec, even if that’s unlikely by virtue that they DO have The West by and large.

On Steve Janke’s blog post about Michael Ignatieff firing his Chief of Staff, Soccermom made a comment that got me to thinking about this:

Any Quebecker who becomes Liberal leader in the next couple of years will get laughed out of the West.

Now, while most Liberal leaders recognize the importance of wooing Western votes (even if unsuccessfully), doing so earns them the scorn of too many Quebeckers for them to put a serious effort into it lest they lose their support. This is mostly because many (not all) Quebeckers view themselves above and apart from Canada, especially those western places.

Now don’t get me wrong. I love Quebec, it’s culture and it’s people, I just wish that they’d come down from their cross sometime and accept that they are fully a part of Canada and not above or separate from it.

So Liberal leaders become hamstrung from “including the west” too vigorously and end up simply speaking hollow words to Westerners (which comes across as patronizing, and rightfully so because it is) which further wides the rift between the East and West. As a result, in order to achieve their majority governments, Liberals dig themselves deeper into the graces of Quebec by lavishing praise, concessions and money on them. Again, this practice is abhorrent to other Canadians, and especially to the Westerners who don’t hate Quebec but just want the special treatment to end and achieve equality.

Unfortunately, until Quebec officially signs onto the Constitution, this divide will continue to exist and fluctuate. And why should they? They get so much more with really no consequences. Again, this isn’t personal, it’s politics.

Now, the only way I see this changing is if the Conservatives are able to secure a Majority Government without having to be obliged to Quebec for it. Technically, it’s possible; it’s just REALLY unlikely.

If Quebec suddenly becomes not so important to the ever important majority it could spur one of two things, and this is the risk that politicians aren’t willing to take:

1) Quebec becomes aware that it needs Canada

If Conservatives were able to achieve that majority without needing Quebec, it may send the message that the time of blackmail is over for Quebec, at least for the next 4 years. It would no longer have the numerical leverage it has used to hold the rest of the country hostage. This might jolt them into conceding that unless they join the Confederation as an equal partner, they could be handed only what the rest of the country deigns to give them.

2) Quebec fears being ostracized and separates

This is the greatest fear of politicians. We know that practically, Quebec as a sovereign nation would ultimately fail without massive provisions and support by Canada or the United States. The problem is that Quebec would still have to give up part of their absolute sovereignty in order to do that. They want all the benefits without any of the consequences. Our currency, our Passports, our National Defense Organizations, our inter-provincial trade agreements etc. etc. But if they feel that becoming subject to Canada is a worse fate than trying to go it on their own, Separatism could well rise up in sufficient numbers to make it happen.

Legally.

And so, in order to avoid this disastrous event for Liberal fortunes, they continue to bribe Quebec into staying like some fair-weather spouse whom they can’t bear to leave, but can’t afford to keep indefinitely.

NDP House Leader Libby Davies, how do you respond?

In the not too distant past (March 13th of this year actually), Libby Davies spoke to Parliament regarding the decorum of the House:

When is this going to stop? Things are really bad around here. People who watch us from the gallery or on CPAC are appalled at the kind of behaviour that takes place. To somehow characterize this as we are shutting down criticism or legitimate debate, that is not what this is about. This place is about debate, analysis and criticism and we do that every day, but this is about the kind of personal attacks that are being made.

We should be calling on the Speaker to stand by his ruling and to say to the majority of members of the House, I would dare say from all parties and maybe some people do not feel comfortable saying it, to support the Speaker’s ruling. I believe that things have gone too far. We should be upholding our Speaker. How many times have we called on the Speaker to intervene and to bring back decorum? He is trying to do that, and we should support what he is trying to do. You did it today, Mr. Speaker.

In light of recent events, I wonder just how self-righteous the House Leader for the NDP is feeling about her party’s commitment to restoring order and decorum to the House of Commons when her Leader, Jack Layton, is being implicated in orchestrating a virtually unheard of disruption in the House of Commons himself?

“…somehow the NDP organized the protest in the House is ludicrous. There is no conspiracy except in the mind of the Government House leader. The fact is we knew nothing about the protest.”

And Jack Layton’s press secretary Karl Belanger?

“Ya, that’s right. We organized a protest to interrupt our Leader during his question. Clearly, it was a socialist plot from the NDP.”

‘ll admit, it’s a weak suspicion with no proof, but hey, since they opened the door to conspiracy, does having a protest take place during one of their own speeches give some grounds for plausible deniability? Hey, it’s a weak argument, but that’s what you get with a weak defense.

So ultimately, if the NDP are in fact to blame for this ruckus, can Ms. Davies truly stand up in the House of Commons any longer and preach about NDP desires for decorum with any credibility?

The Cruelty of Circumcision

Over at my blog, I comment on a recent story of the effects of routine circumcision on a boy’s brain.  I’d love to hear people’s comments.

On a related note, here’s an old post by Freddie at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen in which he completely eviscerates a Matt Steinglass post on circumcision.  Putting aside the substance, it’s a great explanation of how not to write a blog post.

All Extortion is Local, Broadcast Television Edition

Anyone else irritated by the fight that broadcast television companies have brought against cable providers?  For those who haven’t been introduced to their little campaign, here is the raison d’etre of Local TV Matters:

Local TV Matters is a campaign launched by local Canadian television broadcasters with a focus on the protection and preservation of local television for viewers across Canada. Members include CTV, /A\, Global, CBC, CHEK NEWS, V and NTV, with thousands of supporters across the country. The campaign encourages all Canadians to share their voice and support local television.

Their beef seems pretty straight forward.  They send their signal out for free, cable companies pick it up, bundle it with their other offerings and sell it all to us lowly consumers.  We pay the cable companies, but none of that money sees its way back to the local broadcast stations.  Seems pretty legitimate.

Ahh, if only ’twere so.

The broadcast giants are not looking to merely sell their product to cable providers; they are seeking a government agency to force cable providers to buy their product.  This isn’t about a free exchange of goods and services; this isn’t about proper remuneration for a service provided; this is about getting the government to bully your competition into giving you money.

Local TV Matters Media giants like CTV and CBC cry foul over the increase in revenues that cable providers have earned in recent years.  Understandably, they want their piece, but they seem unwilling to earn this windfall.  Cable providers have begun offering consumers greater selection of channels, more robust packages, time shifting and HD.  Broadcasters have offered consumers… umm… Little Mosque on the Prairie?

In response to the bullying, cable providers have set up their own little action committee, Stop the TV Tax.  They’re working hard to frame this issue as broadcasters asking the government to make consumers pay more for the service they are currently receiving.  Granted, this probably doesn’t equate, exactly, to a tax.  The organization should probably be called, Stop the TV Wealth Re-distribution, but their point is valid.  Broadcasters claim they are not asking for added fees to be levied against customers; they just want the government to force cable companies to give them money.  The fact that increasing the costs of cable service will exert a natural upward pressure on the price of the service seems lost on them.  Though, if they had a better grounding in issues regarding costs, revenues and profits, there’d be little need to run to the CRTC for a hand out.

Amusingly, their economic illiteracy is on full display on their web site:

Negotiation for Value (“NFV”) is a term used to describe a free market negotiation between cable and satellite companies and local television stations to establish the appropriate compensation to be paid by the cable or satellite company for the distribution of the local television station’s signal.  At present, your cable and satellite provider collects money from you each month for our service, but pays nothing to local television stations for the signals we provide.  This is not the same as “fee-for-carriage”, which is a term used to describe a regulated rate to be set by the CRTC for the distribution of local television signals.

I guess I forgot that bringing the weight of the government down on your competition is merely “free market negotiation”.  Silly me.

The whole ruse underpinning Local TV Matters is absurd:

You demand local TV, and local choice, and we want to continue to deliver it for you. It’s time to stop cable and satellite companies from charging you more for the local TV you’re already paying for.

It’s nice of broadcasters to have our best interests at heart, though it seems completely lost on them that if we really do “demand local TV”, there’d be no need to run to the regulator.  I have no doubt that the existing business model for local broadcast television is no longer viable, however, in most every other industry, companies are forced to change a failing business model lest they cease to exist.  Apparently, if you dabble in local broadcast television, you’re immune to such market realities.  It certainly takes some gall to seek out this form of corportatism and parade it about in the guise of the free market.

It takes even more gall to force an artificial increase to the costs your competitors must incur and then imply that they are simply being greedy for raising their prices.

Alright, so far it probably sounds like I’m advocating some form of digital free riding – that I think cable providers should just be able to take someone else’s service and re-sell it without passing along any of the revenue.  Such an analysis would be correct but for one annoying little fact: the government is forcing cable companies to offer broadcast television.  So Rogers and Shaw and Cogecco have no choice but to provide this service.  And, let’s not forgot, broadcasters have never passed along any of the increased ad revenue that they receive as a result of their increased audience to the cable providers who are responsible for the increased audience.

There is a pretty easy solution to all this.  Don’t let cable providers transmit broadcast television for free.  I’ll watch NBC, Fox, CNN, the Discovery Channel, Teletoon, the NFL Network, the History Channel, etc on cable, and then if I feel like watching CBOT, CJOH or ‘A’ Channel, I’ll pull out the ol’ rabbit ears.  Seems fair.

Maybe Charles Anthony was right.  Maybe the simplest solution is to just dissolve the CRTC.

Where Does Obama Stand on Civil Liberties?

Everyone should probably read The League of Ordinary Gentlemen.  It’s a great political blog that seems to be made up of progressives, liberals and libertarians.  I don’t agree with everything that is written there (far from it), but it is generally well written, well reasoned and, well, good.  Liberals and libertarians won’t always agree, but they tend to come together when they start talking about civil liberties.  On that note, Mark Thompson has a great post on the worries that we should have about the Obama administration.

What has frustrated me far more about the Obama Administration, however, has been its performance on civil liberties issues that are less important to the liberal base of the Democratic Party.  This performance suggests that the Obama Administration’s interest in Constitutional liberties goes little further than is needed to keep the liberal base happy.What are these small incidents?  In no particular order:

1.  The NEA political art hubub.  The Right’s reaction to this largely seemed to me to be making a mountain out of a molehill – we’re talking after all about a conference call orchestrated by a very minor government agency primarily dedicated to soliciting artwork for a National Day of Service.  Still, there is something at least unseemly about the government telling artists to make more art similar to the “Hope” campaign poster.

…

8.  Perhaps most significantly – the co-sponsoring of a UN Commission on Human Rights resolution (via Radley Balko) with Egypt.  On this, Professor Turley writes:

The Egyptian ambassador to the U.N., Hisham Badr, wasted no time in heralding the new consensus with the U.S. that “freedom of expression has been sometimes misused” and showing that the “true nature of this right” must yield government limitations.

His U.S. counterpart, Douglas Griffiths, heralded “this joint project with Egypt” and supported the resolution to achieve “tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.” While not expressly endorsing blasphemy prosecutions, the administration departed from other Western allies in supporting efforts to balance free speech against the protecting of religious groups.

This put me in mind of a post I wrote a few months back.  Like Mark, I’m not too worried about a Barack Pinochet suddenly executing dissidents, but the president seems to have priorities that trump basic freedoms.

I mean, it’s not like they’ve ever set up an online propaganda tool to try to avoid political debate… oh wait.

Okay, I know, everyone propagandizes a bit, but it’s not like they’ve ever sent out talking points and marching orders to try to get people to bully and silence political opponents… oh wait.

Well, astroturfing isn’t great, but it’s not like they’d ever try to get the Department of Justice to silence political opponents… oh wait.

Granted, that one’s bad, but it’s not like they actually got law enforcement officers to form truth squads in order to ‘dispel’ misinformation… oh wait.

Basic civil liberties should never be ignored.  We shouldn’t assume that our leaders would never do anything that would really be an affront to freedom.  Liberty and personal autonomy are the backbone of western democracy, and we should never allow our governments to trample them just because it doesn’t seem like a big deal.

Civilized People Can Be Rude

Jonathan has provided some very engaging commentary here and here. Following up on this theme of civility and objectivity in journalistic reporting, Jonah Goldberg has an excellent piece over at National Review Online:

… American democracy has always been a hurly-burly. More important, a lot of the complaints about incivility today are really complaints from the people in power or their supporters in the media, aimed at the folks who won’t shut up and get with their program.

And there’s something distinctly undemocratic about that.

The civility caterwaulers claim that Obama’s opponents are trying to “delegitimize” the president, often suggesting that such efforts are racist. But what some see as delegitimization, others see as criticism. What strikes me as truly uncivil is the effort to demonize critics of the president with racial bullying.

In fact, I think Obama really does have a problem with dissent. In August he said: “I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way. . . . I don’t mind cleaning up after them, but don’t do a lot of talking.”

On health care he’s been saying the time for debating his plan is over, even though the president didn’t even have a plan to debate.

Now his White House is targeting Fox News and urging other news outlets to ostracize it. Does any serious person in America believe that if Fox News were supportive of the president’s agenda, this White House would be bemoaning the network’s lack of objectivity?

Democracy is about disagreement, arguments. Citizenship in America requires speaking your mind. Indeed, it’s worth recalling that the freedom of the press enshrined in the First Amendment always envisioned a partisan press. “Objective” journalism is a 20th-century confabulation, as alien to the Founders’ vision as transporter beams and time travel.

Civility came to mean politeness in the 16th century; before that it meant being a citizen. It seems to me that authentic civility requires some incivility.

Turning back to the interview with Conor Friedersdorf from the other thread, the following is an excerpt that raises significant questions.

Unfortunately, there is also a lot of dreck that harms public discourse. I’d never want to be the arbiter drawing a definitive boundary between folks who add to the conversation and those who take away from it. That line is impossible for anyone to consistently and reliably discern. But it is possible to identify folks whose transgressions are so frequent, blatant and influential that one must either oppose them or stay silent as they corrode our polity’s primary means of testing ideas and deciding among them. I think it is important that this opposition is grounded in substantive arguments, that it avoids ad hominem attacks, that it is rigorous, and that it is intellectually honest.

As I argue in the other thread, ad hominem argument, be it rude or funny, is often the only way to check intellectual dishonesty at the door. Often it is necessary to take a swipe at people who are unwilling to face the truth. A well placed insult forces them to challenge why what you are calling them isn’t true, to make a come back, the result being that they either face the truth and the conversation continues, no doubt robustly, or they leave—good riddance. It is individuals of genuine civility who can take a hit and keep on coming; re: Juan Williams.

I’m not arguing that conservatives benefit from “echo chambers.” Hardly! I’m making the point that in any “political discourse” there are likely to be intellectual swindlers, however polite and well-intentioned, that want to narrow the choices we face into one way, THEIR way, whatever the cost. Conservatives are seeking to provide people with “A Choice, Not An Echo” and doing so will often infuriate their opponents (Many thanks, once again, to Kathy Shaidle for the link.), as we see now with the current White House attacks on Fox news.

To engage in democratic politics, it is best if one comes with some principles, broad shoulders, a quick wit, and the capacity to laugh at oneself.

Electric Kool Aid Conservatism

Responding to a recent post of mine, Christopher links to a post by Kathy Shaidle that takes issue with a column by Conor Friedersdorf, a rising conservative journalist/writer/blogger/thinker.  (Mr. Friedersdorf is a contributor to The American Scene, The Daily Beast and True/Slant.)

At The league of Ordinary Gentlemen, Scott H. Payne has a great interview with Mr. Friedersdorf (Scott also has some good interviews with other prominent bloggers).  Here’s a tease:

In Electric Kool-Aid Conservatism, I argue a few things: a) certain conservative insights and core critiques of liberalism intrinsically resist the narrative form. b) As the right’s echo chamber grows, the ideas that reverberate weaken. Ghettoizing smart writers within rally-the-base publications is something the left can afford, given the present media landscape, while the scarcity of journalists who grasp right-of-center ideas make their isolation particularly costly. c) The right doesn’t need more activists, it needs more journalists — folks who buy into and excel at the journalistic project, rather than folks intent on trying to destroy it. Unlike the Doublethink piece, in which I am offering advice to the right, however, my criticism of talk radio hosts is grounded not in the accurate notion that they are bad for the right, but in the larger conviction that they are bad for healthy political discussion, and thus the country. Put another way, all my work is predicated on a belief that public discourse is important, that journalism properly executed improves it, and that various journalistic benefits are undervalued on the right. But I’d say that Electric Kool-Aid Conservatism and my criticism of talk radio folks are overlapping projects, not identical ones.

The entire interview is a must read for those of us on the right who participate in political discourse… actually, it’s a worthwhile read for anyone interested in honest political debate.

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