Obviously it’s kind of a thing to talk about now, leaving Facebook, or at least how begrudgingly you’re staying on Facebook.

And then today, this in my “Updates:” “In the future, all notifications of proposed changes will come through the Facebook Site Governance Page. To receive future updates to Facebook’s site governance documents, become a fan of the Page.”

They’re sticking it to me. I’m going to have to have everybody see me “Likes Facebook Site Governance” if in the future I want to know in what ways my privacy is being violated.

Horrible.

He’s going to create 250,000 jobs. Vote for me instead and I’ll create ONE MILLION JOBS!

While we’re just picking numbers out of hats.

I’m thinking at least half of Rossi’s jobs have to be imaginary. That is, they’ll exist in his mind, but nobody will be doing them.

First off, I’m not sure where 9.6% comes from, but that’s fine. That may be the number for the actual city of Toronto. But then there aren’t 250,000 people looking for work in actual Toronto.

The article notes that “Rossi did not explain the formula he used . . . to come up with the 250,000 figure.”

OPTION ONE
Take population of Toronto (somewhere a bit over 2,500,000), multiply by apparent unemployment rate (9.6%), round up, equals 250,000. Which is patently ridiculous (a. it’s impossible to create a job for every single unemployed person, b. there aren’t actually 250,000 unemployed people in Toronto because at any given time about a third of the population (kids, retired people, the hopeless) aren’t looking for jobs). Therefore, Rocco Rossi is ridiculous.

Unless… OPTION TWO
Forget about just Toronto. Consider the Toronto CMA. This includes Ajax, Aurora, Bradford West Gwillimbury, Brampton, Caledon, East Gwillimbury, Georgina, Halton Hills, King, Markham, Milton, Mississauga, Mono, New Tecumseth, Newmarket, Oakville, Orangeville, Pickering, Richmond Hill, Toronto, Uxbridge, Vaughan, Whitchurch-Stouffville. (NB: Most of these places are not voting for the mayor of Toronto.) Here there are a shade over 300,000 people looking for work. Create a job for 80% of them, equals 250,000. Of course, this would reduce the unemployment rate to about 2%. Which is economically impossible. Therefore, Rocco Rossi is ridiculous.

Unless… OPTION THREE
What he’s really thinking is that his policies will create jobs throughout all of Ontario. In this case there are say, generously, 650,000 people looking for work. Figure you can make jobs for about 40% of them, equals 250,000. Of course, this would reduce the provincial unemployment rate to 5.5%. Which would be well below where it’s ever been before. Therefore, Rocco Rossi is ridiculous.

CONCLUSION
Rocco Rossi is ridiculous.

No matter what they say, MPs have to sound ridiculous when trying to defend their unwillingness to be held accountable.

So let’s call that “baseline stupid.” Anything other than “Sure, here are the records” is going to be at least baseline stupid. And then there’s the next level:

“She is an employee of the house,” Liberal MP Scott Andrews said. “We appoint her. So why would she audit the people who appoint her?”

Oh god.

I’m getting the sense that nothing’s going to work to stop the oil leak. I also get the sense that this is known. But when you know there’s nothing you can do, you still have to try something. It looks a lot better to say “Look, we’re trying all of these never-before-tried and generally unstudied ideas” then to just sit back and say “It has to stop eventually.” But when is that? I haven’t seen a date.

I didn’t read this whole post, because it’s way too long without saying somewhere near the top “Sorry, this is really long.”

The thing with music theft is people keep making it anyhow. The argument for strong intellectual property rights is primarily that without those rights people wouldn’t bother to innovate/invent/produce. And that’s probably true, generally. I don’t imagine Pfizer saying “That’s fine, even though everything we make is stolen we’ll continue investing billions in medical research.” But that’s apparently exactly what happens with music.

It’s not that “musicians in particular should be giving their music away for no cost” (emphasis mine), it’s that they do. Not intentionally of course (well, not usually), but they know while making music that it will be stolen in large quantities. Yet they keep doing it.

That said, what I personally support is something like an “Artistic Freedom Voucher.” Or full paper here.

There’s lots of “This year we’ll spend this,” or “This month so many soldiers were killed,” or “Today this many civilians were blown up,” but it’s hard to keep tabs on the totals.

Well, they’re here. And they’re very big numbers.

So the federal government isn’t going to fund Pride. The justification for it is that there are other events that need funding too, and Pride can support itself. That actually sounds reasonable, and it’s the most politically pragmatic reason/excuse you can give, since as much as people want funding for their own events it’s hard to say “And to get it you should take it away from that event.” But in this case, that can’t be seen as valid.

Last year Diane Ablonczy had responsibility for this sort of funding removed after supporting Pride. This removal immediately on the heels of announcing Pride funding was too unlikely to be a coincidence, meaning this was obviously a political issue for the Conservatives. They didn’t want to alienate their social conservatives supporters, and it’s easy to alienate such people when they see people not like them receiving $400,000.

If there had been no such issue last year, this year’s rationale may have to fall into the “Well, fine, I guess that’s reasonable enough” category. But given that this is obviously an issue for the Conservatives, this year’s rationale instead falls into the “bullshit” category. This is simply a governing reactionary party’s abuse of a minority group.

From the Star article:

“Last year, Clement said the lion’s share of the marquee program’s funding went to large urban centres, particularly Toronto and Montreal. This year, the major cities were limited to two successful applications, allowing the government to spread the largesse around to smaller centres across the country.”

A dollar spent attracting someone to Toronto or Montreal is going to do a lot more than a dollar spent trying to get someone to visit some small town (I don’t want to pick anywhere specific). Toronto and Montreal are cities people look for a reason to visit. People already know they can go to those cities for world class theatre, galleries, restaurants, sporting events, night clubs, concerts, whatever. So they wait until they think “Hey, why don’t we go for [Pride, Luminato, etc.].” That’s the axis around which their trip will orbit, but it’s far from where they’ll spend all their time. In hypothetical small town, that doesn’t exist.

So this is fraud on a pretty large scale with a huge scope. That said, I’d like some more details. Did these people stop paying their mortgages? Presumably. The straw buyers and fake income documents are certainly fraudulent, but it seems a big part of what made this work was the bank doing a lazy job of valuing houses. That part’s not fraud.

This will become more (or less) interesting once there are more details. Are the straw buyers stuck with mortgages they can’t pay? Were they willing accomplices or coerced? Who knows.

I should have started this post with a quick summary of what the fraud actually is, but I’m tired right now.

Case in point.

This post at Impolitical links to a Toronto Star online poll showing overwhelming public support for Sheila Fraser to have access to MP’s receipts. In this case I’m willing to believe the online poll results. The post ends up wondering, “Why no party is grabbing this issue for advantage… is a mystery.”

It’s no mystery. Even someone with only “legitimate” expenses is going to have something that they’d be forced to apologize for if someone else decided to make an issue of it. Then there’s all the illegitimate expenses. Nobody would come out of this looking good. Even if there are a few scattered individuals who could make it through an examination, within each party there will be at least a few bad spenders who make the entire party look bad. Frankly it would probably undermine confidence in our entire political representation. You could argue that so will not giving them up in the first place, but that’s not true, people forget things quickly.

For the record I’m for MPs having to give up their receipts to the auditor general, and think it’s horrible that they’re not. I’m just saying it’s no surprise.

I understand the political reasons for promoting it, but I’m less sure why we should subsidize rural broadband access. If it is important (and I’m willing to believe it might be), I’d think a stick would be better than a carrot for realizing that goal. Instead of subsidizing the infrastructure, just fine internet providers who don’t offer some measurable amount of rural broadband service. I don’t know what the actual policy would look like, I’m just saying.

I agree with pretty much everything here, and mainly I’m glad I didn’t have to create something like that for my paycheque, to dwell on the turditude of Lost.

The show still has a few episodes left to be awesome, but it seems unlikely. Basically, there was a whole bunch of crap that we could never understand. (Not including how the characters never, ever ask each other the natural follow-up questions any human would, especially while trudging through the forest for hours on end–but I’m willing to grant concessions like that.) So when being shown the ghost in the machine we can (if it’s awesome enough) be blown away or (if it’s perfectly senseless or mundane) be disappointed. So far it’s the disappointment.

“But that’s the point!” No it isn’t. That’s stupid.

UPDATE: I think I’m wrong to say “is getting really stupid.” Because of how mysterious everything is, we just never knew for sure whether it was stupid. So it’s not that it’s getting stupid, it’s that its stupidity is being confirmed.

So apparently a (female) Conservative senator said “We’ve got five weeks or whatever left until G-8 starts. Shut the fuck up on this issue.”

According to The Star, “Ruth’s remarks, intended more as friendly advice than a warning, were met with gasps of disbelief and even anger…” The article’s framing makes it seem as though it wasn’t a threat, but an attempt at help. The way a complicit mother might say to an abused child, “Please, just stay in the closet for tonight.”

Which is of course more disconcerting than if it were just some loony making threats. We’ve seen that before. In this case it seems much more indicative of vindictive policy decisions, which would seem to constitute something of a pattern.

It’s true that the leading party should have some discretion over where funds go. But a leading party in a minority government needs to tread more carefully. Or should need to.

I think we’ll get the hang of this minority thing eventually, once “coalition” stops being a bad word.

Apparently today he was trashing Mother’s Day. Right before reading out a Mother’s Day ad.

Either he doesn’t have any clue what he’s doing, in which case he’s completely insane and should be transferred to a tollbooth or the back of a KFC (along with everybody who takes seriously the words that leave his face), or he does know exactly what he’s doing, in which case he’s hilarious (and everybody who takes seriously the words that leave his face should be transferred to a tollbooth or the back of a KFC). I try so hard to think it’s option 2.

Yes, there are plenty of basic health and humanity issues with respect to why Canada shouldn’t be holding back abortion funding, but there’s also the personal reputation issue. To go out on the world stage and announce proudly that we’re the only country still in the dark ages, well that’s just embarrassing. It’s like being up to bat at a little league game with your racist father putting down the other team.

Or at least female politicians? I don’t know. I’m willing to assume that’s the case, generally. As to whether more female politicians would lead to more progressive legislation, I’m less sure. I think it depends on how quickly the shift were to happen. Right now, if women are generally more progressive, I’d assume it’s in part because as a group they have less reason to feel heavily invested in the male status quo. If all of a sudden Parliament (or at least the House) found itself made up of mostly women, I’d assume they’d look around and say “Well, the system works.”

Canada has more women (22%) in the House of Commons than the US has (17%) in the House of Representatives. It looks like in the Netherlands 42% of their house is female.

This article on a crappy (in planning, not in existence) park in Boston–the Rose Kennedy Greenway–reminded me of the skate park strangely dumped at Coxwell and Lakeshore here in Toronto.

It’s great to have what is apparently a world class urban skate park, but what would be even greater is to have people using it. But nobody lives there. Christie Pitts is much closer to the design ideal expressed in the linked article, and anectodally (i.e. based only on my own observation) I think it’s a much busier park.

I don’t know what the future plans are, but right now the area along the Lakeshore is one of the lowest densities in the city, seen here or (more recently but less clearly) here.

Ignatieff suggesting Jean just remain isn’t too strange, but his framing seems off: “Ms. Jean has done a superb job. I am calling on Stephen Harper to reconsider his decision to replace her.”

Putting it this way implies that Harper’s replacement of Jean is an indication of some sort of failing on her part, and that Harper’s to be blamed for her replacement. There’s really no point in this. It’s true that whoever he selects will likely be worse, but I don’t know who this tact is supposed to appeal to. The left is already upset at Jean’s handling of various prorogation requests.

The Star suggests the concern is “that Liberals also would like Jean to stay in office in case the ongoing dispute between Parliament and Harper’s government, over the release of Afghan documents, lands in the office of the Governor-General to be settled.”

First, I’m not sure how it would land there. Second, with a minority government, if it were to land there it would only land as a bomb that would end the office.

I’m not sure how great an idea most of what Obama said in his address at the White House Correspondents Dinner was.

It was funny, but a little wrong coming from someone who actually has (or is at least perceived as having) significant power. Should the President be saying (or even half-saying) “fucking?” Should the President be joking about how Goldman Sachs will always be fine? If they will, then it’s not funny. If they won’t, well there are some real people who will be affected by that. Should the President be joking about Latinos being targeted for deportation in Arizona (“Adios, amigos!”) when that’s exactly what will happen? Should the President be joking about using predator drones to kill the Jonas brothers, when he really does oversee the killing of people by predator drones? It all comes off a little awkwardly.

Obama did seem pretty laid back when it came to his opponents and various birther-type issues, almost disconcertingly so. It’s true these people are crazy and shouldn’t be taken seriously, but as a movement they should be. Fox News isn’t just some organization broadcasting to the thousand craziest people on Youtube. It’s worth being respectful of the size of the loony bin, which the above jokes will only make giddier.

I suppose the theory with them is that you fan their flames until they actually start to burn, as we’re seeing in Arizona (with the anti-other bill, not with any wildfires that may be ongoing). That actually seems like a reasonable tactic to me.

Leno didn’t seem to go over so well. Partly he wasn’t that funny, partly I suspect journalists aren’t as interested as being liked by Democrats. They know if they piss off Republicans, they’ll lose access. If they piss off Democrats, they’ll lose nothing. People respond to incentives.

It was somewhat obvious that the right wing would suggest the oil spill was a left wing ploy. If left=right in all but ideology, we should start seeing high profile left wingers suggesting the possibility that the right wing planted this bomb, for whatever reason, to make elites realize they should hate immigrants and love the military or something. We know they know the East Coast needs some straightening out.