“‘You’re a criminal serving time in prison – you should not be getting an HST bribe cheque,’ Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak said Friday.”

But

“Mail call will be welcomed by those inmates serving less than 90 days in provincial correctional facilities, as they are the only convicts eligible for the payments.”

Ok. That seems fine. Tax adjustments shouldn’t apply to inmates? So if an inmate has an income while in prison, and tax rates are increased for his tax bracket, he shouldn’t pay the increased rate?

I’m not that dense, I realize that considering the cheque literally as a bribe means why let criminal offenders benefit from a bribe, but of course it’s not actually a bribe. It’s a bit of money to say “Look, prices won’t come down overnight after businesses start seeing the benefits of HST, so in the meantime here’s a bit of cash to smooth things out.” People in prison for less than 90 days will certainly need that sort of help. And that’s fine.

It’s this kind of stuff that scares people who know anything about economics away from the party: “No one believes that businesses will pass on their savings to consumers. If the government’s own business—the LCBO—isn’t going to pass on the savings, why should those in the private sector?” said [NDP leader] Horwath.

It’s not a matter of why should they as in why would they feel any moral compunction to do so, but a matter of that’s just how competition works. Unless you have mass price fixing, eventually someone says “Hey, it’s costing me a bit less to produce my crap, so I’m going to lower my costs a bit to beat out my competition,” and then the competition does the same thing and so on and so forth until prices come down.

In my post a moment ago I mentioned a stupid graph.

I just came across it here.

Copied here:

(Without having a link to a specific instance, what I was talking about is the kind of crap nobody likes to see the other side doing, just restating the party line.)

Southen neighbour Steve Benen reports that conservatives in his country are happy that the health care system in our country has problems. It validates their criticisms of their recently passed health care bill, they believe.

Benen notes, “the new health care law in the United States creates a system that isn’t similar to the Canadian system at all, so condemning the Affordable Care Act by pointing to Canadian budget problems doesn’t make sense.”

Yes. But even if it is similar, it’s still better than no system at all.

Yes. But even the underlying premise that something that needs work is something that shouldn’t exist, is completely stupid. When brakes go in a car, you get new brakes, you don’t say “Ha! Told you cars were a bad idea!” Because you’d sound like an idiot. Because you would, in fact, be an idiot. Conservatives are idiots.

So the combined spending for the G8 and G20 events dwarf the spending of other large but in no way obviously directly comparable events.

Comparing the G8 and G20 to another G8 doesn’t make any sense.

If the 2002 G8 was $190 million, and the G20 is equal to the G8*20/8, then the combined expense would be expected to be $665 million. Which is a stupid calculation. But that’s what you get when you start with a stupid comparison.

I’m not saying the spending isn’t ridiculous, I’m just saying poor comparisons are no way to support that ridiculousness.

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 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.

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.

Case in point.

The most recent Conservative Party post, in its entirety:

The Liberals, Bloc Québécois and NDP came together today at the Canadian Heritage Committee just as they did when they tried to seize power through their undemocratic Coalition.

They voted AGAINST a Conservative motion to require CBC executives to explain themselves for using Frank Graves, a Liberal-supporting and self-described “progressive” as the network’s “neutral” pollster on party politics. By voting against this motion, they are endorsing Graves’ call for a “Culture War”.

Graves’ “Culture War” is designed to divide Canadians – East against West, young against old, urban Canada against rural Canada. It’s also ideologically consistent with the world view of the Liberals, Bloc Québécois and NDP.

At the next election, Canadians will have a clear choice between a strong Conservative Government, or a reckless Coalition that will aggressively wage a divisive “Culture War” to divide our country.

First, no matter what I’m against any political involvement in the CBC. I’d be happy to support a constitutional amendment ensuring their separate existence and guaranteed funding.

Having said that, I’m not exactly clear on how when three parties representing a majority of the country come together on an issue, that’s somehow “undemocratic.” I also don’t understand how something being “ideologically consistent with the world view of the Liberals, Bloc Québécois and NDP” is wrong. Because it excludes a single party?

Here’s the basic logic as I understand it (and I’m pretty sure I do). If YOU want it (no matter how many of you want it), it’s undemocratic. If WE want it (no matter how many of you don’t want it), it’s democratic.

It’s tempting to think that Canadian Conservatives are importing that sort of thinking from their batshit insane bretheren to the south, but I have a feeling it’s just a distinguishing feature of the right-wing mind.

In BC a poll was taken showing support for increasing early childhood spending.

Polls will always show people saying they want more stuff. They just don’t want to pay for it.

Dan Gardner comments, by way of comparison against the general acceptance of widely exclusionary bilingualism requirements for top level legal/political positions:

It’s an interesting state of affairs, particularly when it is contrasted with one of the traditional arguments in favour of gender equality. Women make up 51 per cent of the population, this argument goes. If they are excluded, one-half the available intelligence and energy is squandered. Thus, a country, corporation, or government that wishes to accomplish all it can must make every reasonable effort to include women in their recruitment pool.

Um, yes, the benefits of women in the workforce are economic. The reasons for not disallowing women into the workforce are moral.

Also: “The consequence of mandatory bilingualism is as obvious as it is unmentionable in the polite circles of Official Ottawa: the top jobs often won’t go to the best people.”

That may be technically true, but it’s more or less meaningless. In just about any given job (including prime minister), the difference between the best person (if that person could even be discovered) and the hundredth best person is going to be small enough to be meaningless.

Um. Canada has better health care because Canada has better health outcomes. Not because it treats rich people better than everyone else.

Well it’s apparently official. Parliament’s been prorogued until March 3, 2010. Two months (and a bit) without governing.

Throughout the day there was no shortage of good reactions to the possibility of prorogation and a few of the potential effects.

Given the notably scarce conservative reaction, it struck me that this whole prorogation thing was just an idea being floated, to see the response, to see how it would play politically. Would it hurt among supporters would be the main question, since the non-supporters aren’t likely to be brought over anyhow. It seems the answer to that would be negative, given the assbackwards conclusion-first reasoning of some of the popular party dullards.

And here we are.

Does this happen elsewhere? Is this a surprisingly common thing in parliamentary democracies? I’m asking seriously, because I don’t know. But what I do know is that wherever it happens, it’s completely fucking ridiculous and seems the kind of thing we should be taking to the Ottawa streets over, though of course those of us who feel that way are also (as I’m sure the Conservatives figured) the people who have a general sense that being governed by nobody at all might be better than being governed by Harper.

Well, mark your calendars, enjoy the Olympics, and remember on March 3rd that Harper has to stop ignoring parliament, stop making us look ridiculous on climate change, and create 265,000 jobs. And that he’s just had a two month vacation and is a douchebag.

This whole underwearman thing is driving me nuts, the reaction to it.

Dibgy quotes Chris Matthews:

You know what when we get on an airplane, we give up all kinds of checks we don’t do by just walking down the street. I think we give up a certain amount of rights just getting on an airplane and I think you’ve got to recognize that your safety is tied up with everyone else on that plane’s safety and anybody else that gets hit on that plane. You don’t own the right to be on that plane because you’re getting on an airplane so you do have to yield some civil rights…

You know, people can do horrible shit in places other than planes.

You know, on a Greyhound bus, someone decapitated someone else and started eating his brain. Maybe before getting on a bus you should have to give up all kinds of rights.

A 737 will have about 150 people on it. In terms of the human toll (the economic toll/disruption would be different), bombing three coach buses (at 50 people apiece) would be about equivalent to bombing one plane. Yet it’s definitely more than three times as easy. Yet it doesn’t happen very often. Because people, generally, aren’t completely fucking insane. People are generally stupid, assholes, and schmucks, but it’s a big step to go from yelling at your kids and their baseball coaches to blowing up tens or hundreds of people.

What about buildings? Maybe before entering a building you should have to give up all kinds of rights. You could blow up a building really easily. In an average apartment building, you could run from top to bottom through the stairwells, dropping a bomb on each floor, without anyone saying anything. Yet it never happens. Because people, generally, aren’t completely fucking insane.

The list goes on.

It’s important to have security. And with good security, sometimes shit will still get blown up. And every time someone dies in such an incident it will be tragic. But it’s important not to lose our shit about it, especially when instead of blowing something up someone just sets his junk on fire.

So of course she is and always has been and so theoretically will always be a complete moron who by any rights should be an embarrassment to anyone who knows her:

MARVEL AT THE ‘ARROGANCE’ AND ‘NAIVETE’…. CNN is telling me that Sarah Palin said something on Twitter.

…the former half-term governor believes it’s “arrogant and naive” to think human activity is responsible for climate change, which she describes as “man overpowering nature.”

I’m not sure what that phrase means, exactly. It’s winter, which makes it cold in my office. I’ve turned on the heat, so I’m comfortable. Have I “overpowered nature,” or is it possible that people can take steps that alter natural conditions?

Palin added that the climate has been changing “for ions” — one assumes she means “eons,” and wasn’t actually referring to electrically charged atoms — and will continue to change, regardless of the 90 million tons of carbon emissions we put into the air every day. We have a “responsibility,” Palin added, to “responsibly develop resources for humankind, not pollute and destroy,” but humans are incapable of “altering natural change.”

What CNN did not tell me is that Palin said the exact opposite just last year, repeatedly arguing that human activity contributes to global warming, right around the time she endorsed caps on carbon emissions, which she now rejects.

I suppose the moral of the story, then, is that Sarah Palin believes Sarah Palin is “arrogant and naive.”

Since the right is so cavalier with equating things to Hitler and the Holocaust, how about this: Going Rogue should concern us as much as Mein Kempf should have. Even if we assume the ideas in it are wrongheaded, we have a responsibility to know, to not repeat the mistakes, to make sure she never has a chance to derail the world.

Maurice Vellacott appears to be a generally horrible person.

New to the list is this:

Vellacott, who was not available for further comment Monday, said in the release “a growing body of research reveals significant health problems caused by abortion,” including breast cancer, cervical injury, uterine perforations, hemorrhaging and infections. The release does not include statistics from research studies.

Of course this isn’t the kind of thing people just forget about, at least not for a few days.

In the question period, the issue was raised (here is the actual audio, the full session is available here):

Yesterday the minister responsible for status of women refused denounce the unacceptable statements made by a conservative MP who implied that abortions contributed to the development of breast cancer. Besides being wrong medically, this assertion is meant to make women feel guilty. We would expect that the minister would defend women and the right to abortion with vigour, rather than saying things worthy of Sarah Palin.

That was Nicole Demers, of the Bloc.

This was the response, from Helena Guergis, Minister of State (Status of Women):

…this member is actually fully aware that there are elected members of this house who have said very similar things at different times. Members in this house represent their constituencies and they are free to have any opinion that they choose to. It does not mean it represents the government. Please let me highlight one of our most recent achievements to protect women across this country…

(In case you’re wondering, the recent achievement (there was only one) was that the citizenship guide now informs immigrants that female genital mutilation is not tolerated here.)

I feel the shared frustration of humanity past present and future a I explain this: a fact is not something you can disagree with. When the study says one thing, you can’t just say the opposite.

Shit on science, shit on women, it must be easy when you’re so full of it.

On the bright side, what I enjoy about all of this is the use of Sarah Palin as a bookend on the acceptable limits of political ridiculousness.

Maybe not in the States where Obama is Hitler and Palin is not immediately written off by everybody, but so far as the rest of the world is concerned it looks like in the area of political discourse Palin is the real Hitler replacement so far as Godwin’s law is concerned.

I admittedly don’t know much about federal infrastructure planning, but the ideas here for a Canadian autobahn strike me as patently absurd. The full report (which reads more like a high school project by an ambitious 16-year old attempting to take $60 billion from the government) is here.

The United States has the longest motorway system in the world, at approximately 88,000 kilometres. . . The European Union (EU-15) and Japan also have extensive motorway systems, which connect virtually all major urban areas. Moreover, some developing nations have extensive motorway systems.

China’s motorway system is already the second longest in the world, at more than 60,000 kilometres as of the end of 2008. . . India began its system later but is in the process of developing a national network, major parts of which are already in operation. Mexico and Brazil also have extensive motorway systems.

Therefore, Canada should have such a system. Or so the argument seems to go.

“But mom, but mom! Billy’s parents gave him a vast highway network connecting every city with a population of over 50,000 people!”

“Oh yeah? Well did Billy’s parents give him one of the lowest population densities in the world?”

“I hate you!”

I’m sure many parts of the Canadian highway system (as with every other highway system) could use some repairs and upgrades, but making this argument in the context of how good other countries have it is off-base and stupid.

It’s pointed out that “For many trips between Canadian metropolitan areas, it takes less time to travel through the United States on its motorways than on the Canadian roads (such as between Winnipeg or Calgary and Toronto).” First off, so what? Second, let’s look at that Winnipeg to Toronto trip. You can go through Canada, through Manitoba and Ontario. Or you can go through the US, through North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and then Ontario.

Let’s see.

The US route takes you through a total population (at the state level–which, as I understand it, is the level at which people now pay for these things) of 54 million people at a population density of 25 per square kilometer. If you want to cut out North Dakota and Indiana (brief parts of the trip) fine, you have 47 million people at a density of 25 per square kilometer. The Canadian route (24 hours instead of 22, according to Google) takes you through 14 million people at a density of 8 per square kilometer.

Obviously that’s a quick way of looking at it, but there’s going to be no way to sift those numbers without coming up with way fewer people living anywhere near highways over any considerable distance within Canada.

The full report notes that “The heavy summer traffic in the northern Great Lakes and eastern British Columbia limit substantial tourist growth from the U.S. market.” Colour me sceptical, but I don’t know that “I don’t feel like fighting the traffic” is why there aren’t more people summering in Thunder Bay.

EDIT: I forgot this piece of wisdom: “The Canadian Autobahn should have a national logo…”

Of course it should. Every good grade nine high school geography assignment has at lease one graded component involving how good you are at colouring.

This point, too, was in the National Post op-ed (emphasis added):

Some may say the PBO is non-partisan and independent, unlike other government organizations that have their own political incentives. But public choice economics tells us that we shouldn’t expect Page’s PBO to behave any differently than any other government-financed organization. In fact, observers have accused the PBO of being politically active, contrary to its mandate.

Of course “observers have accused” isn’t much better than “some people are saying” or the even worse “some might say.”

It’s one of those alarms that means the person saying it is probably arguing from the gut and some sort of an asshole.