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George Jonas: Canada, a police state? No, but heading that way | National Post

2014-05-19T09:57:00.000-07:00

-from the National Post By George Jonas (May 17, 2014)

A society drifting into a police state displays some early warning signs. They’re not too subtle and I very much doubt if they require previous exposure to tyranny to detect.

Ironically, one is a demand for more freedom and democracy, along with a wider distribution of political power and human rights.

In the jungle screeching birds and chattering monkeys trace the route of a predator on the prowl. In our neck of the woods, scholarly and media voices perform the same function. It begins by academic thinkers discovering rights and freedoms nobody knew existed, or rather everybody knew they existed, but not that they were rights and freedoms. They were viewed as legitimate ambitions at best, and at worst as sins and vices, or even crimes. Still, now that they’re known to be rights and freedoms, i.e. constitutional values in a democracy, they have to be given their due.

All right, so go ahead and implement them, you might say — but here’s the rub: Often such newly minted rights and freedoms run headlong into freedoms and rights established much earlier and regarded as fundamental. They include freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom of religion, freedom of conscience and so on. They remain on the books as freedoms, but their exercise in a direction not approved by the state now becomes known variously as sexism, racism, homophobia and Islamophobia, along with other phobias and isms that have been reduced from philistine norms to hidebound, antediluvian discriminatory practices, very likely human rights violations, possibly criminal offences, and arguably psychiatric conditions, at least in some cases.

If Stockton Is Broke, Why Isn’t San Diego? - Bloomberg

2012-03-03T16:28:00.000-08:00

By Stephen Greenhut - from Bloomberg (March 1, 2012)

Stockton, California, which is heading toward the first steps of Chapter 9 bankruptcy, is described as a crime-racked wretch designated by Forbes magazine as the most miserable city in America.

But it would be wrong to believe that the troubles in the city of almost 300,000 residents in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley are not necessarily a sign of things to come in more upscale municipalities across the state.

Unfortunately, the financial mess in Stockton echoes problems throughout California, even though public-sector union leaders and Democratic state legislators are in denial about this reality. In cities as affluent and diverse as San Jose and San Diego, municipal finances are hitting the wall, driven by unsustainable pension debt and health-care promises made to government workers during more flush economic times.

Stockton has not been a prime location since the Gold Rush, but only a few years ago it was a reasonable destination for commuters who couldn’t swing the prices in San Francisco, about 80 miles west. Now the murder rate is at record highs, and the police union is in a pitched battle with the new city manager. The debt-laden downtown redevelopment area looks like a ghost town, and the city is littered with foreclosed properties.

Stockton is also in the news as the test case for a new state law intended to put the brakes on municipal bankruptcy. It’s a reminder not just of how far and fast a city can fall, but also of problems that are festering everywhere.

‘Ponzi Scheme’

“There was no money set aside to fund those commitments,” Stockton City Manager Bob Deistold Capital Public Radio in reference to $760 million in city debt and unfunded liabilities. “While that was a legal decision they made over 20 years, it was an unsound decision and it has similarities to a Ponzi scheme.”

Blaming past councils, Deis pointed to a health-care plan that pays the entire cost of care for every city employee and spouse for life, after only one month on the job. “In my 32 years of managing finances for various local governments, I have never heard of a situation like this,” he added.

As Bloomberg News reported, the city “granted employees some of the state’s most generous benefits, and now has 94 retirees with pensions of at least $100,000 a year -- more than twice as many as some comparably sized California cities.”

Statewide there are more than 15,000 California government retirees who are members of the $100,000 pension club.

The Stockton police union, which had previously paid for ominous-looking billboards welcoming people to the second most dangerous city in California, is sure there’s some secret fund of money somewhere. Like most California unions, it refuses to recognize the state of affairs driven by the pension and health-care benefit upgrades they succeeded in attaining, mostly in the past decade. Instead of working toward reform, California’s unions and their political allies are trying to stop every possible relief valve short of huge tax increases.

For instance, the new state law requires a 90-day mediation period before bankruptcy can be declared, a watered- down version of a union-backed bill that would have required approval by a committee before cities could proceed with abrogating their debt loads. Previously cities, such as the similarly crime-plagued Vallejo on the northeastern edge of the San Francisco Bay Area, could declare bankruptcy on their own. Vallejo recently emerged from bankruptcy without seriously reworking its pension plans, however, which is a reminder to bankruptcy advocates that it can be helpful but won’t solve everything.

The state’s pro-union forces aren’t content slowing the bankruptcy process. They are committed to halting any serious reforms that would keep cities from reaching that last-ditch process. Read more...

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Lies, Damn Lies, and Quotations...

2011-10-02T19:51:00.000-07:00

Apparently my my Saturday “Sand in the Shorts” column has gotten the attention of the Liberals and NDP. First, the Liberals included a quote from “Hudak Makes the Grade (Barely)" in this press release:

Priority List Faces Horwath's Growing Credibility Gap
Horwath Having Trouble Keeping Her Stories Straight
TORONTO, Oct. 1, 2011 /CNW/ - Andrea Horwath is presenting her so-called priorities list while facing a growing credibility gap.
"[She claimed] that her son went to Hamilton General Hospital with a broken arm and didn't get treated. Horwath was forced to back away from that claim... It was wrong of Horwath to push the envelope in such a way. In fact, it was dumb of her [to] exaggerate about something that could easily be checked. The number one rule of politics is don't lie — because you'll surely get found out. And yes, it speaks to character that she told a big one."
- Christina Blizzard, Toronto Sun, October 1, 2011
"[Horwath] has struggled with facts and figures ... During a visit this week to The Globe and Mail's editorial board, Ms. Horwath confused details of her platform, including implying that a cap on the salaries of public-sector executives would save $20-million, and an acknowledgment that she wasn't sure to what the figure referred."
- Adam Radwanski, Globe & Mail, October 1, 2011
"Tim Hudak's Progressive Conservatives and Andrea Horwath's New Democrats... neither has put forward credible plans."
- Toronto Star Editorial, October 1, 2011
"Horwath was asked whether there was a financial connection between Cornerstone, a company that owns a building on Richmond St. E. where the NDP leases offices for its headquarters, and the NDP campaign. At first, she said Cornerstone had, 'no role whatsoever,' ...In fact, Cornerstone put up $4.3 million collateral for a loan used to finance the NDP campaign."
- Christina Blizzard, Toronto Sun, October 1, 2011
"Andrea Horwath, leader of the NDP, demonstrating her complete unreadiness for the job of premier at every turn, by responding to every concern with another goofy promise."
- James Phieffer, Belleville Intelligencer, October 1, 2011
"Her mantra seems to by 'why let the truth get in the way of a good political rant.' Well, thank you Andrea for providing the Ontario campaign with its first Sarah Palin moment."
- Bill Kelly, CHML Radio, September 29, 2011

Later, the NDP retaliated with this release, quoting other parts of the same articles and statements:

FACT CHECK: Liberals adrift with selective quoting

TORONTO, Oct. 1, 2011 /CNW/ - The Ontario Liberals put out a press release today featuring quotes from comment pieces about Andrea Horwath. They conveniently left out these parts:

"Dalton McGuinty has had two terms to prove he is the right person for the job — and has completely failed. If times get tough over the next few years, we can't afford to have Gilligan in command."

- James Phieffer, Belleville Intelligencer, Oct. 1, 2011

"Frankly, it's a bit rich that McGuinty, the guy who twice promised not to hike our taxes — and then promptly raised our taxes twice — can now look us in the eye and complain about another politician not telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth."

- Christina Blizzard, Toronto Sun, Oct. 1, 2011

"So why's McGuinty so worked up about all of this? Clearly polls are showing them that Horwath is gaining — big time. Compared to the lacklustre performance of the two men during the debate, she shone."

- Christina Blizzard, Toronto Sun, Oct. 1, 2011

"The danger for Mr. McGuinty is that voters, concerned about their pocketbooks and cognizant of new economic realities, are wary of what he'll next ask of them as the province tries to get its finances in order."

- Adam Radwanski, Globe and Mail, Oct. 1, 2011

Apparently, my opinions of other parties are held in high esteem by the powers that be within the Ontario Liberals and NDP. Notably - or likely not - they seem less taken with my observations on their own parties. Significant? No more so than an observation on the likelihood of the sun rising in the east. But for a writer, knowing someone saw fit to read and share my thoughts on anything is something of an ego-boost.

Hudak Makes the Grade (Barely)

2011-10-02T19:29:00.000-07:00

After a complete snooze-fest of a campaign, with important non-issues being argued about for it's entirety, the big day is almost upon us. On Thursday, October 6, Ontarians will go to the polls to decide who will be handed the responsibility of governing us for the next four years (or potentially less, if it's a minority government).

In light of the seriousness of the responsibility, and the economic turbulence already tossing Europe about, and making our fiscal flight increasingly unsteady, it would have been appropriate for the party leaders to demonstrate a solid grasp of what needs to be done to reign in government spending, and otherwise prepare the province for what is increasingly looking like a rough decade ahead.

But no. Instead we got Andrea Horwath, leader of the NDP, demonstrating her complete unreadiness for the job of premier at every turn, by responding to every concern with another goofy promise. Gas prices too high? Cap them – which when done, in practice has locked the prices at that cap, and no lower, in jurisdictions where it's been tried. Similar situations brought forth promises such as canceling contracts with Quebec based industries to supply goods to the Ontario government, and implement a strict “Buy Ontario” policy – ignoring the Ontario business' which would be hurt if Quebec and other jurisdictions returned the favour.

We had “Premier Dad”, Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty, trying to convince us that when he says no more taxes this time, he means it – unlike in 2003 and 2007. But as he's saying this, he's racked up the biggest deficits in Ontario history, government spending has exploded during his tenure at Queen's Park, his government has seen the e-Health boondoggle as well as the worst example of corporate welfare in provincial history – the $7 billion Samsung deal. 50,000 jobs promised, 20,000 supposedly created, but with no evidence to back up this assertion anywhere – your tax dollars at work. His government has been marked by a failure to demonstrate any sense of fiscal sanity, runaway spending, and broken promises. Dalton McGuinty has had two terms to prove he is the right person for the job – and has completely failed. If times get tough over the next few years, we can't afford to have Gilligan in command.

So that leaves Tim Hudak, whom I (ever so reluctantly) endorse as Ontario's next premier. I do so because he has shown fewer flaws than Horwath or McGuinty. While his economic plan is only slightly more solid than McGuinty's, and Hudak's shown a distressing reluctance to actually say what spending cuts he'd make to get the budget balanced, he does seem to get the fact that what has gone on for the last eight years cannot continue. Hudak needs, however, to focus. Deal with the major issues, and do it now – no more of the dog distracted by a squirrel routine. He has to lay out his plan for returning Ontario to fiscal stability – and then do it.

I have a much easier time endorsing Todd Smith for Prince Edward – Hastings MP. He is a solid citizen of the riding, someone who's involved in the community, and through his work in local news and sports, someone who truly sees what's happening in the area. He is someone who is aiming to serve the riding well, and I believe he is the best option for voters in Hastings and Prince Edward counties, and in the city of Belleville.

So give the matter thought. You may agree or disagree with me – we have the freedom to do so in this, the best country in the world. But, regardless of whom you support – make sure you get out and vote on October 6.

And if you can't be bothered to vote – don't complain. The political opinions of those too lazy to vote are not worth others wasting their time listening.

Moore to the Point – Christ, the Church, and Pat Robertson

2011-09-25T12:57:00.000-07:00

By Russell D. Moore - from Moore to the Point

This week on his television show Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson said a man would be morally justified to divorce his wife with Alzheimer’s disease in order to marry another woman. The dementia-riddled wife is, Robertson said, “not there” anymore. This is more than an embarrassment. This is more than cruelty. This is a repudiation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Few Christians take Robertson all that seriously anymore. Most roll their eyes, and shake their heads when he makes another outlandish comment (for instance, defending China’s brutal one-child abortion policy to identifying God’s judgment on specific actions in the September 11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, or the Haiti earthquake). This is serious, though, because it points to an issue that is much bigger than Robertson.

Marriage, the Scripture tells us, is an icon of something deeper, more ancient, more mysterious. The marriage union is a sign, the Apostle Paul announces, of the mystery of Christ and his church (Eph. 5). The husband, then, is to love his wife “as Christ loved the church” (Eph. 5:25). This love is defined not as the hormonal surge of romance but as a self-sacrificial crucifixion of self. The husband pictures Christ when he loves his wife by giving himself up for her.

At the arrest of Christ, his Bride, the church, forgot who she was, and denied who he was. He didn’t divorce her. He didn’t leave.

The Bride of Christ fled his side, and went back to their old ways of life. When Jesus came to them after the resurrection, the church was about the very thing they were doing when Jesus found them in the first place: out on the boats with their nets. Jesus didn’t leave. He stood by his words, stood by his Bride, even to the Place of the Skull, and beyond.

A woman or a man with Alzheimer’s can’t do anything for you. There’s no romance, no sex, no partnership, not even companionship. That’s just the point. Because marriage is a Christ/church icon, a man loves his wife as his own flesh. He cannot sever her off from him simply because she isn’t “useful” anymore.

Pat Robertson’s cruel marriage statement is no anomaly. He and his cohorts have given us for years a prosperity gospel with more in common with an Asherah pole than a cross. They have given us a politicized Christianity that uses churches to “mobilize” voters rather than to stand prophetically outside the power structures as a witness for the gospel.

But Jesus didn’t die for a Christian Coalition; he died for a church. And the church, across the ages, isn’t significant because of her size or influence. She is weak, helpless, and spattered in blood. He is faithful to us anyway.

If our churches are to survive, we must repudiate this Canaanite mammonocracy that so often speaks for us. But, beyond that, we must train up a new generation to see the gospel embedded in fidelity, a fidelity that is cruciform.

It’s easy to teach couples to put the “spark” back in their marriages, to put the “sizzle” back in their sex lives. You can still worship the self and want all that. But that’s not what love is. Love is fidelity with a cross on your back. Love is drowning in your own blood. Love is screaming, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.”

Sadly, many of our neighbors assume that when they hear the parade of cartoon characters we allow to speak for us, that they are hearing the gospel. They assume that when they see the giggling evangelist on the television screen, that they see Jesus. They assume that when they see the stadium political rallies to “take back America for Christ,” that they see Jesus. But Jesus isn’t there.

Jesus tells us he is present in the weak, the vulnerable, the useless. He is there in the least of these (Matt. 25:31-46). Somewhere out there right now, a man is wiping the drool from an 85 year-old woman who flinches because she think he’s a stranger. No television cameras are around. No politicians are seeking a meeting with them.

But the gospel is there. Jesus is there.

Moore is the Dean of the School of Theology and Senior Vice-President for Academic Administration at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He can be reached by e-mail at rmoore@sbts.edu.

Moore to the Point – Christ, the Church, and Pat Robertson:

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Christie Blatchford: Bureaucracy calls shots on reservists | Full Comment | National Post

2011-09-24T21:26:00.000-07:00

By Christie Blatchford - from the National Post

That Canada’s reserve army routinely gets the shaft comes as news to no one, least of all the country’s long-suffering reservists.

As one reserve officer I know says, “In the civilian world, we would be the third shift at the Ford plant … or the casual part-time force that has no union, no guarantees, no benefits and no representation.

“We’re almost like discretionary spending.”

Still, the report, which was released this week by the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute and the Canadian International Council, is nonetheless startling.

Written by distinguished military scholar and veteran Dr. Jack English, it shows how the bureaucracy in Ottawa — an incestuous nest of regular army bosses with turf to protect and intractable civil servants — has consistently ignored or thwarted government directives to increase the size of the reserves.

What’s more, either those defence ministers whose pledges came to nought had the collective attention span of gnats, or they failed to grow a set of nuts sufficient to demand their instructions be followed, or they were simply shifted within Cabinet and the new fellow came in.

Any way you look at it, Dr. English says, the bureaucracy is calling the shots.

In the result, despite pledges to grow the reserves, the militia part-time head count remains still at about 16,500, or, as Dr. English wryly notes, about the size of National Defence Headquarters, or NDHQ as it’s called.

By the way, just getting the damn numbers out of NDHQ is a trick.

David Pratt, the former Liberal MP who wrote another report on Canada’s citizen soldiers for the CDFAI this spring — he takes a different approach, but certainly shares the view that the reserves have been neglected — first asked the Library of Parliament for an accurate count of reservists.

The library approached the Canadian Forces, which in turn essentially said it could go back only three years and couldn’t come up with a proper count.

In referring to this explanation in his report, Dr. English scornfully labels it “typical Byzantine, prevaricating gobbledygook.”

Virtually everyone who has studied the Canadian army, and their number is legion, agrees on a couple of things: The bureaucracy is obscenely bloated, far out of proportion for the size of the army; the citizen soldier, who until called up to full-time service costs only about 20% of the regular one, is a bargain for the taxpayer; the militia is more diverse, ethnically and otherwise, than the regular army.

Easily the most important report was that done recently by Lieutenant-General Andrew Leslie, an NDHQ insider who knew where to look for the skeletons and who has the courage to call them what they are. His findings buttress the veracity of Dr. English’s report.

As Lt.-Gen. Leslie writes in his executive summary of the myriad studies and reviews that preceded his, “These various efforts have resulted in hundreds of recommendations, some of which are innovative and first class, some of which are not.

“A number are quietly buried in the bowels of filing cabinets as being too hard or too threatening of the status quo.

“The eventual result was usually not what was originally intended, and in far too many instances, the headquarters and other overhead grew while ships were being decommissioned, regular and reserve battalions were disbanded and whole aircraft fleets cashed in.”

In other words, both men conclude in their different language, the bureaucratic tail is wagging the Parliamentary dog.

Part of the difficulty in any discussion about the reserves is that as a force based in armouries spread across the country, they are diffused, and don’t always speak with a single voice.

Part of the difficulty is that there are so many categories of reservists — Class A, the part-timers who serve in Canada; Class B, those employed full-time in Canada; Class C, those deployed on overseas operations — that the civilian brain, or this one anyway, can barely wrap her head around the distinctions.

And part of the difficulty is that the reserves are controlled by the leaders of the regular army. There are no reserve generals; the highest reserve position is a major-general, or two-star, role, and whoever has the job is outranked and outnumbered by the regulars.

This is no slur upon the regular army, troops or officers: Canada’s is among the best-fighting army in the world, as its magnificent performance in Afghanistan demonstrated. And on the battlefield level, with regular and reserve soldiers fighting (and dying) together in Kandahar, the differences disappeared.

But the senior leaders of the regular army have the same self-protection instincts as anyone else, and especially in rough economic times, they’re not likely to go to bat for their part-time brothers.

Canadians ought to care about the state of reservists: It’s these men and women who bring to the profession of arms not just the skills but also the sensibilities of the larger civilian world, who best straddle the divide. They are the living connection between the people of this country and the military, and for that reason alone should be treasured and nourished.

Yet it’s harder now to join up as a reservist — an application that used to take a week to process at the local level now takes as long as four months, thanks to that monstrous bureaucracy — than ever before.

Besides, the notion that the fonctionnaires have done and will do what they like, regardless of government orders, should offend everyone, even those who don’t give a fig about matters military.

National Post
cblatchford@postmedia.com

Christie Blatchford: Bureaucracy calls shots on reservists | Full Comment | National Post:

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Link between the Liberals and unions - Belleville Intelligencer - Ontario, CA

2011-09-24T19:13:00.000-07:00

By Christina Blizzard - from the Belleville Intelligencer

I think of it as the missing link.

A slide deck sent to me in a sort of electronic brown envelope shows a link between the Liberal campaign team and union political advertising campaigns that have skewered Tories in the past three elections.

Until now, the Liberals have loudly proclaimed that those expensive ad campaigns a variety of unions have put on since the 2003 election have nothing to do with them.

There's no connection to the Liberal Party, they insist.

That's important, because during an election campaign, there are strict rules governing the amount of money the political parties may raise and how much they can spend on advertising.

There aren't the same kinds of spending rules around third-party advertising. That's why unions — mainly under the guise of the Working Families Coalition, but also through teacher unions — have been able to spend millions on TV ads.

But the presentation leaked to me shows that top Liberal campaign organizer — and fellow QMI Agency columnist — Warren Kinsella actually made a presentation to United Association Local 46, a plumbers' union, where he pitched the idea that they should become politically involved.

The 28-page presentation laid out talking points about the record of the Mike Harris and Ernie Eves governments and tied them to Tim Hudak.

The last two slides tell the union members to act: "Not just a lawn sign," it says.

"Contact your local newspaper. Submit letters to the editor. Open line radio shows." It also tells them to get involved with social media.

"Use paid media, such as radio or television ads," says the presentation.

It said, "politically charged campaigns launched by other unions have been successful in the past" — pointing to the controversial Working Families' "Not this time Ernie," campaign of 2003.

When I contacted him Thursday, Kinsella said the union requested the presentation.

"I was asked by the union to come and speak to them before the election about how to avoid a Hudak-PC government. I spoke to about 200 people, and they were introduced to me as members of all of the political parties," he said in an e-mailed response.

"I encouraged them to get involved in the democratic process in any way they could. One way they could do that is to advertise, and to, of course, ensure that they followed all of the Elections Ontario rules.

"To my knowledge, they have done no advertising at all."

Kinsella has posted the deck at his blog (warrenkinsella.com). He accuses me of being "snarky" in my e-mail to him, which makes me sad because I like Kinsella and wouldn't want to offend him.

I thought I was just being business-like. He also said I e-mailed the deck to him, which I didn't. I sent him a description of its contents.

I admire Kinsella enormously. He's a brilliant political strategist and would be the first person I'd call if I were to run for office. The guy's a genius, and Dalton McGuinty's last two election successes are largely due to him.

And trust me, when I get snarky, I get really snarky.

I believe it's wrong for unions — or any other third party — to be allowed to freely advertise during the election writ period because it makes a mockery of election financing laws.

This presentation shows the Liberals have been soliciting unions for support.

Why have election financing laws if Liberal friendly unions can flout them?

christina.blizzard@sunmedia.ca

Link between the Liberals and unions - Belleville Intelligencer - Ontario, CA:

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The Chicago Way: Union Boss Collects Pension After One Day on Job - Page 1 - Mike Shedlock - Townhall Finance

2011-09-24T10:33:00.000-07:00

By Mike Shedlock - from Townhall.com

If you need evidence on how corrupt self-serving unions and union officials can be, then please consider Ex-labor chief's 1-day rehire nets $158,000 city pension

A retired Chicago labor leader secured a $158,000 public pension — roughly five times greater than what a typical retired public-service worker in the Windy City receives — after being rehired for just one day of active duty on the city payroll, local news reports said.

According to The Chicago Tribune, Dennis Gannon stands to collect approximately $5 million in city pension funds during his lifetime. He now draws the pension while working for a hedge fund, the Tribune reported.

Gannon, former president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, was able to take a long leave from a city job to work for a union and then receive a city pension based on a high union salary. That arrangement is allowed under a state law signed by Gov. Jim Thompson on his last day in office in 1991, according to an investigation by the Tribune and WGN-TV.

The change has enabled a couple dozen labor leaders to become potential millionaires.

What is different in Gannon’s case is that he became eligible for the especially lucrative pension deal only because the city rehired the former Streets and Sanitation Department worker for one day in 1994, before granting him an indefinite leave of absence, according to the investigation. He retired from the city job in 2004 at age 50.

Gannon’s pension is so high that it exceeds federal limits and required Chicago’s pension fund to file special paperwork with the Internal Revenue Service to give it to him, the Tribune reported.

"I am extremely proud of my many years of service to the city of Chicago and the working men and women of organized labor," Gannon wrote in a statement provided to the Tribune.

The Tribune reports ...

The pension came on top of Gannon's union salary, which had grown to more than $240,000. He now draws the pension while working for a hedge fund, Grosvenor Capital Management, that does work with public pensions, including the Teachers Retirement System of Illinois. The firm also was one of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's largest campaign contributors.

Chicago Teacher's Pensions Massively Underfunded
Care to see the results Gannon presided over? Please consider Interactive Map of Public Pension Plans; How Badly Underfunded are the Plans in Your State?

Illinois has the worst public pension plans in the country as of April 2010. I am sure it is still true today. See link for more details.

Gannon says "I am extremely proud of my many years of service to the city of Chicago."

I believe he means one day of service for which he will collect $4 million for ripping off taxpayers for his own personal gain. Yes, that is something to be damn proud of.

For Dennis Gannon to go on leave after 1 day shows this was all planned from the outset. Moreover, by granting the leave, the corrupt Streets and Sanitation Department went along with it all the way.

Any guesses as to how many bribes and payoffs were associated with this chain of events?

It is time to end public unions entirely and all the associated graft.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

The Chicago Way: Union Boss Collects Pension After One Day on Job - Page 1 - Mike Shedlock - Townhall Finance:

Sand in the Shorts: All Means All, and Other Election Silliness...

2011-09-23T15:15:00.000-07:00

By James Phieffer

All:

-the whole number of (used in referring to individuals or particulars, taken collectively): all students. -from dictionary.com

In a scene right out of a Marx Brothers film this week, the following things occurred:

An All-Candidates meeting was held, for some of the candidates,
Truman Tuck was criticized for wanting in when he was left out
Todd Smith was criticized for staying out when he was wanted in,

Some thoughts on this. First, it appears that certain community organizations and columnists (Chris Mallette – this means you) are still weak on the whole “definition of all” thing. For them, and anyone else, I have included it at the beginning of the column. All means all, to use a truism. When the Affordable Housing Action Network announced, in it's invitations and it's signs, an all-candidates meeting, it made a clear statement – that this was to be a meeting where all of the candidates were invited to participate. As such, when they excluded three of the seven local candidates, they made themselves liars – purveyors of an untruth.

If they had wished to have a meeting of only certain candidates, which is their right, they should have publicized it – and stated clearly in the invitations to candidates – that this was to be a meeting of specific candidates only. They certainly have that right, as another columnist pointed out yesterday. But when they used the label of “All-Candidates”, they made a specific statement that this would include all registered candidates.

As to the decisions by Treat Hull (Green) and Todd Smith (Progressive Conservative) not to attend, it seems that Mr. Hull is getting off rather easily. The focus of commentary has been on Mr. Smith, with the references to Hull being left to “he sent his regrets”. Smith commented on why he decided not to attend, but left out one point. Smith decided not to go after hearing that Hull wasn't going to attend, and after considering the need to to other necessary parts of his campaign. It should be noted that Hull was also a no-show at the Canadian Association of Retired Persons meeting Thursday night.

While I give kudos to the NDP candidate, Sherry Hayes, and the Scarlet-Clad Tooth Fairy (Liberal Leona Dombrowsky) for making both events, the attendance of any candidates at all such meetings during this election will be no small accomplishment. There are at least 10 of them during the campaign – and talking to Smith I found out from this past Monday to next Thursday, there are eight (8!) of these events. When the campaign is 30 days long, that is too many to expect the attendance of every candidate at every meeting.

The onus isn't on candidates to attend – the onus needs to be on the multiple special interest groups to get their acts together and merge these into a more reasonable four or five – with one each for North and Central Hastings, and the County, and two for Belleville. If there is a reasonable number of all-candidates meetings, then, and only then, will it be reasonable to jump up on the nearest soap box and decry a candidate's non-participation. But as it stands, such criticism of either Smith or Hull is unreasonable.

And if the title is “all-candidates meeting” – make it one.

Irwin Cotler: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should be locked out of the U.S. | World Politics | Full Comment | National Post

2011-09-23T15:05:00.000-07:00

By Irwin Cotler - from the National Post

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s impending visit to United Nations is a cruel parody of law. Ahmadinejad will enter the U.S. despite being inadmissible under American law. He will address the United Nations General Assembly despite being in violation of its UN Charter and international law. And, he will be indulged — even feted — by universities, institutes and the media, thereby sanitizing his crimes and mocking the suffering of the Iranian people.

This charade — repeated annually since 2007 — ignores and undermines basic principles of domestic, international and humanitarian law.

First, President Ahmadinejad belongs on the U.S. “watchlist” of persons barred from entry — those who “aid terrorists … persecute religious minorities … or commit or incite to genocide.” Indeed, President Barack Obama issued a proclamation just last month barring entry for persons “who participate in serious human rights and humanitarian law violations and other abuses.”

The evidence of Ahmadinejad’s criminality on each of these counts is compelling. The recent U.S. State Department Annual Report lists Iran as a leading state sponsor of international terrorism. Iran directly supports terrorist proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah, whose platforms and policies are replete with genocidal calls.

Under Ahmadinejad, Iran has intensified its persecution and prosecution of religious minorities, especially the Baha’i — its largest religious minority — whose members are subject to harassment, repression, torture, imprisonment and execution. As for Christians, whose persecution has also accelerated, even praying together is a criminal act. These assaults on the religious rights of his own people, combined with the many other repressive acts carried out by his regime, are crimes against humanity.

Ahmadinejad’s violations of the Genocide Convention’s prohibition against “direct and public incitement to genocide” — symbolized by parading down the streets of Tehran with a Shiab-3 missile draped with the emblem “Wipe Israel off the map” — is cause alone for exclusion.

A person who pursues the world’s most destructive weaponry in violation of Security Council resolutions; who has already committed the crime of incitement to genocide in violation of international law; who is complicit in crimes against humanity; and who engages in massive domestic repression against his own people belongs in the dock of the accused, not at the world’s most watched podium.

Yet, Ahmadinejad has been admitted before and is likely to be admitted again. How can this be?

In 1947, the U.S. and the UN signed a treaty wherein the U.S. agreed not to impede access of representatives of member states to the UN headquarters in New York. This “Headquarters Agreement” is said to trump American domestic law. But the Vienna Law of Treaties states that responding to crimes against humanity overrides any treaty. Ahmadinejad’s crimes qualify. Nor would this be the first time a sitting head of state was denied entry — in 1987, Austria’s Kurt Waldheim was barred for complicity in war crimes committed during the Second World War.

If the U.S. allows him entry, Ahmadinejad’s travel should be restricted to only those parts of New York under UN control, the Iranian Mission and the airport. He should be shunned like the criminal he is. Further, countries like the U.S. and Canada should fulfill their responsibilities under international law — including the Genocide Convention — and refer the Iranian leaders’ criminal incitement to genocide to appropriate UN agencies. It is astonishing that this criminal incitement has yet to be addressed by any UN body, though the UN finds it fit to give Ahmadinejad a podium.

Inter-state complaints against Iran could be initiated at the International Court of Justice, while Ahmadinejad and his cohorts could be made to answer for their crimes at the International Criminal Court. President Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders should be placed on a “watchlist” by concerned countries, preventing their entrance as “inadmissible persons.”

Finally, strong sanctions should be adopted — and enforced — not only for Iran’s continued pursuit of nuclear weapons, but for its sponsorship of international terrorism and systemic violations of human rights.

History shows that sustained international juridical efforts can bring dictators like Milosevic and Pinochet to justice. Our choice is clear: We can either act or be on the wrong side of history.

National Post

Irwin Cotler is a Canadian Member of Parliament and is the former minister of justice and attorney-general of Canada. He is a professor of law (emeritus) at McGill University and has written extensively on Iran and has previously prosecuted for incitement to genocide.

Irwin Cotler: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should be locked out of the U.S. | World Politics | Full Comment | National Post:

Sand in the Shorts: "An odd "all-candidates" debate" - Silliness Flies Courtesy Local Housing Group

2011-09-21T23:55:00.000-07:00

By James Phieffer

Is the definition of an "All-Candidates" meeting that complex? In light of it being apparently beyond the ken of the Affordable Housing Action Network (AFAN), and after the Canadian Association of Retired People managed to screw up the concept in the last election, maybe it is beyond the abilities of some to understand. Interestingly, in both cases the poor grasp of democratic concepts was a problem for left-wing, or at least anti-conservative, organizations.

Here's the pertinent part of the article from the Intelligencer:

One candidate did more debating off stage than on leading up to what was advertised as an all candidates meeting.
Trueman Tuck, candidate for the People First Republic Party of Ontario, argued while the Affordable Housing Action Network called Wednesday's session an "all-candidates" meeting they had misled the public as only four candidates — those representing the Liberal, New Democratic, Progressive Conservative and Green parties — had been invited to participate in the actual debate.
"They won't let me on the stage. They won't let me speak," Tuck said minutes after arriving at the event and speaking with Gina Cockburn of the network, the hosting agency for the debate at Eastminster United Church.
Cockburn explained the agency had invited only the four candidates due to a systematic approach to the evening.
"We deliberately looked at statistics from the last provincial election and invited those candidates representing the parties that had received the most percentage of the votes," she said. "Unfortunately, only the NDP and Liberal candidates are participating."
Organizers did, in an effort to appease Tuck, permit him to present a three minute introduction but he was not permitted to remain on the stage and could not answer any questions.
Ontario PC candidate Todd Smith, when reached at home Wednesday evening, said while he had decided not to participate because he had learned only two of the seven candidates were planning on participating it was not the main factor in his absence.
"Basically what it came down to is it's a matter of time. We've got two weeks left in this campaign and, no offence to those people who showed up, but there's a lot of work to be done in those next two weeks and I had a lot of things that I needed to do to get caught up," Smith said.
Green candidate Treat Hull, the crowd of roughly 120 people were told, had "sent his regrets" as he was unable to attend the session.

In the comments section I posted the following (it should be made clear that the majority of comments targetted PC candidate Todd Smith's absence):

It seems that there was the same problem as there was with the CARP "All-Candidates" meeting. If you are going to call it an all candidates meeting, make it one. The Affordable Housing Action Network needs to apologize to those candidates who weren't invited, and to the public at large, for deliberately misleading both groups as to the nature of the meeting.
Democracy is messy, and the idea that a candidate can be arbitrarily excluded when they've filed their papers for whatever reason is execrable. I hope the organizers of all other such meetings will ensure such idiocy is not repeated.
As to the presence of Todd Smith, or lack thereof, it is noteworthy that the above comments excoriating his lack of participation didn't:
a) mention the simultaneous absence of Green Party invitee Treat Hull (notably, Mr. McVicar seemed to leave the matter alone as well...), or subject him to the same level of criticism, implying these comments are indicative more of a dislike of the Tories or their candidate, rather than an objective criticism.
b) attack the deliberate exclusion of the other 3 candidates. If said commentators are indeed concerned about ensuring the continuation of a healthy democratic system, and not simply a political oligarchy, this is a significant oversight.
I am no fan of Truman Tuck or his political ideas, but my belief in the importance of a healthy democratic system forces me to stand up for his, and all other candidates, presence if something is to be presented as an all candidates meeting.
Unfortunately, when the Affordable Housing Action Network put this forward as such a gathering, they lied.

In light of the difficulty some interest groups have in understanding the concept of an All-Candidates meeting, I thought it might be worthwhile to re-post an excerpt from the column which resulted from the CARP debacle. Here it is:

On Wednesday night, the second “All-Candidates” meeting in the riding took place at Loyalist College. You may have noted I put quotation marks around All-Candidates. I put these in quite deliberately, as the machinations of the lobby group Canadian Association of Retired Persons led to it being a “Some-Candidates” meeting, and an ambush attempt at questioning the candidates by organizer Mary Robertson ended the night poorly.
All-candidates events are often hosted by interested groups of voters, sometimes with distinct opinions or agendas, and who seek answers to specific questions. So the idea that the questions asked at such an event might hit harder at one party or candidate is not surprising or unexpected. But what happened last night was altogether different.
While there were some ignoramus' hollering from the crowd at Daryl Kramp, the machinations of CARP stood out as marking an odd nadir in the recent history of local politics, because this group deliberately sought to exclude two candidates from an all-candidates meeting. When Tim Hickey, an independent candidate, called Tuesday to confirm his participation with Ken Prue of the Brighton-Belleville-Quinte West chapter of CARP, all seemed fine. But on the day of the event itself, he was told only the major parties (NDP, Conservative, Liberal, and, in a significant promotion, Green) would be involved. Only with some argument was Hickey able to participate.
Maybe it's an old-fashioned idea, but it seems to me that if one is going to call an event an “all-candidates meeting”, all the candidates for the riding should be invited and allowed to participate. But with the attempt to exclude Hickey, and the lack of an invitation to Progressive Canadian Party candidate Andrew Skinner, this was anything but an all-candidates forum, which was a disservice to those who came hoping to hear all of the candidates comment on how they see, and would attempt to deal with, the issues facing seniors and other Canadians today.

An odd "all-candidates" debate UPDATED - Belleville Intelligencer - Ontario, CA:

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Sand in the Shorts: Premier Demonstrates Lack of Fiscal Understanding - or Lack of Honesty

2011-09-21T23:27:00.000-07:00

By James Phieffer

In the September 21st, 2011 issue of the Belleville Intelligencer, a story appeared concerning the visit of Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty to Belleville, where he held a campaign event at the Kellogg's plant located in this city. In it, he challenged the Progressive Conservative's labelling of government subsidies as "corporate welfare.

From the article:

[Dalton McGuinty] added the Ontario PC Party refers to such incentives as "corporate welfare" which means many jobs across the province, including those at Kellogg which is expanding by 48 jobs, would not be created. The expansion means Kellogg will add Bran Buds and Kashi Heart to Heart brands to its line of locally-produced products.
"That's just evidence of the partnership that we've been able to strike with all our communities right across the province," McGuinty said. "We have found ways through various programs to partner with our communities and our private sector in order to combine our strengths and create jobs and prosperity." -----

I responded in the comments section:

It is corporate welfare - and it flies in the face of provincial fiscal sanity. The alleged idea of corporate welfare is to draw new business' to the province, but in reality it is an attempt by the government of the day, Liberal, PC, or NDP, to "pick the winners" when it comes to business success. And if they pick wrong, billions of dollars go down the drain. It means the risks inherent in any entrepeneurial venture are placed on the shoulders of taxpayers, while the benefits accrue to those who hold an actual ownership stake in the company.
The more logical, and successful, path to building the Ontario economy is through business/corporate tax cuts. These benefit all business' in the province, and in the long term aid in the growth of a tax base that aids all Ontarians - not just those living in and around Toronto. Tax cuts are also cheaper, as there is no need to pay thousands of bureaucrats to implement and monitor corporate welfare programs. Lower taxes need only the same people who handle the current tax regime.
Finally, consider how much each job created through these corporate welfare schemes costs - and don't forget to add in the cost of an increased bureaucracy necessary for the plan's implementation and operation. Even when these schemes work as planned, which is rare, the costs can be well over $100,000/job or higher (see the US Green Energy boondoggle, where the rate is around $5,000,000/job)- and too often, when the subsidy is up, the jobs go away(see the motion picture and television industry credits in Ontario - any cuts will see cuts to investment).
For long term economic growth, lower corporate taxes are the tried and true recipe.

It is important that within the confines of an election a certain level of accuracy is attained in the use of terms. Dalton McGuinty, in his statement, either demonstrated a poor grasp of fiscal economics, or lied.

Premier chides Tories for calling funding “corporate welfare” - Belleville Intelligencer - Ontario, CA:

The Myth of Middle-Class Stagnation — The American Magazine

2011-09-19T21:00:00.000-07:00

By Steve Conover - from The American

It’s time to correct a misconception regarding middle-class income.

Conventional wisdom says that the middle class hasn’t caught a break for at least a decade and that incomes have stagnated or declined. But new research corrects a misconception regarding middle-class income, and therefore should come as a pleasant surprise—not just to members of the middle class, but also to pundits, journalists, and of course, politicians.

Speaking to an audience in Racine, Wisconsin, on June 30, 2010, President Obama repeated a winning theme from his 2008 campaign—the theme that the economic policies of the previous administration had failed those of us who consider ourselves middle class:

Nearly a decade of tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires led to little more than sluggish growth [and] a shrinking middle class. Your paychecks flatlined. Wages and incomes did not go up. Even when the economy was growing, it wasn't growing for you.

It was the same message we had been hearing for two years: the benefits of U.S. economic growth after the Bush tax cuts had allegedly been going to the rich and bypassing the middle class. By today, that mantra has become unchallenged conventional wisdom.

Today’s economy makes the problem even worse: the growth rate is somewhere between zero and pathetically anemic. So, even if the middle class did start getting its fair share of growth, that “fair share” wouldn’t amount to much. The rut just seems to get deeper and deeper for the middle class.

Wishful thinking?

Imagine a better outcome. For example, in the wake of the Bush tax cuts, wouldn’t it have been nice to see the middle class get its fair share of the overall economy’s growth? Wouldn't it have been even nicer if middle class income had grown at a faster pace than that of the rich?

All four versions of ‘middle class’ outperformed every definition of ‘rich’; in short, the gap between the rich and the middle class got smaller, not larger.

If the seven years before 2008 had yielded results like that, it might have driven that year’s political campaigns and subsequent debates away from the rear-view-mirror exercise of assigning blame for unfair distribution of past income growth and towards a forward-looking focus on our society’s choices for enhancing future economic growth. We could today be focusing on the single, overwhelmingly important problem facing our economy—jump-starting overall growth—armed with the confidence that the middle class, as before, would get at least its fair share of that growth.

But imagining those middle-class results is just wishful thinking, isn’t it?

No. In the seven years from 2001-2007 (inclusive), not only did the middle class get at least its fair share of overall income growth, the income gap between the rich and the middle class actually got smaller. In an apparent paradox, the same Census Bureau database that told us that median household income was essentially unchanged in 2007 versus 2000 also tells us that the middle class enjoyed a higher income growth rate than did either the overall economy or the rich—and therefore that their income gap versus the rich had actually decreased.

How is that possible? How could the same official database—the March Supplement to the Current Population Survey—lead us to the following two, seemingly polar-opposite, conclusions:

(a) median household income “flatlined,” underperforming the overall economy; and

(b) middle-class income growth outperformed that for the overall economy as well as that for the rich.

Although it seems impossible, both statements are true. The key lies in the difference between the “median household” versus the “middle class.” The median household is a single theoretical household exactly in the middle of the entire income-ranked list of U.S. households. Conversely, the “middle class” has no official definition, but it is certainly tens of millions of households in size and presumably centered around the median household.

If the median household was an accurate proxy for the “middle class” then both of the statements above could not be true simultaneously. On the other hand, if both statements are true at the same time, then the median household did not accurately represent the middle class. And so it turns out that there’s more to the story than we thought.

Clues strongly suggested that median household income was not representative of the middle class.

For several years, just about everyone has implicitly equated the median household’s performance with middle-class performance. Why? Well, let’s face it: with no official definition of middle class, it’s easy (and plausible) to assume that as the median household goes, so goes the middle class. It’s easier, anyway, than going to the trouble of defining the range of households that comprises the middle class, defining the range that comprises the rich, defending those two definitions, calculating the income growth rates for those two ranges, then, finally, comparing the results. Just hanging our hats on the median household and calling it “the middle class” is a much quicker path to judgment about the success or failure of the policies of the past. Unfortunately, relying on the median as a proxy for the “middle class” can lead to false conclusions about past policies—which in turn can lead to misguided future policies.

Poker hands, middle linebackers, and median households

Why doesn’t the median always tell us what we need to know? A few examples will help illustrate the point.

First, let’s say a poker dealer deals two five-card hands face down in front of her, looks at them, then flips the middle-ranking card face up in each hand: the seven of spades and the seven of clubs, respectively. Do I now have enough information to conclude that both hands have identical value in a poker game? Of course not; I need to see all ten cards, not just two.

Another example: Let’s say a sports fan asks me whether my local pro football team’s defense has improved over the year before, but the only thing I know for sure is that the middle linebacker is the same guy performing at the same level; no change from last year. Do I know enough to reply, “Not a chance; the defense is no better than last year”? Of course not; I need to know about all 11 players, not just one. I need to know about the whole team, not just the middle guy.

Lastly, let’s say an economist (or a politician, or a journalist) points out that the middle U.S. household didn’t enjoy any increase in real income during the seven years from 2000-2007, even though the economy had grown. And indeed, the chart below, adapted from page five of the Census Bureau’s 2007 report (published in mid-2008), unmistakably confirms that point.

But does that give me sufficient information to conclude that middle-class income flatlined, that the benefits of growth had gone to the rich, and that the economic policies of the past had therefore failed the middle class? Of course not; I need to analyze the millions of households making up the middle class, not just the middle household.

Ominous clues about the median household

The Census Bureau booklet published in August 2008 was the source for the median household income statistic, but it also contained some clues that the median might not be telling us everything. For example, the Gini index of income inequality, comparing 2000 versus 2007, indicated no discernable change in overall inequality (0.462 vs 0.463, respectively, with 0.003 standard error; see page 40 of the booklet). Would an increase in rich-versus-middle income inequality be likely, given that overall inequality was unchanged? Hardly.

A further clue was the Census Bureau’s table titled "Share of Aggregate Income Received by Each Fifth and Top 5 Percent of Households," which clearly showed that the middle-income quintile (as well as the middle three quintiles—whichever comes closer to one's preferred definition of "middle class") equaled or increased their share of aggregate income in 2007 versus 2000, while both the top quintile and the top 5 percent lost income share. When the middle class maintains, or increases, its share of total income, is that “unfair” to them? Of course not; instead, it is indicative of a “fair share” of income growth. Indeed, the household income statistics for 2010, released this month and about which there has been much gnashing of teeth, confirm that the middle three quintiles maintained or increased their income share, while that of the top 5 percent decreased.

A closer look at the ‘middle class’

For my doctoral dissertation at the University of Texas at Dallas, I looked deeply into the Census Bureau’s numbers. There are more than 100 million households in the United States; ranking them by income (using proper database tools) enables us to select any portion of them to define income groups. To cover a wide range of plausible definitions of “middle class,” I chose four possible definitions: the middle 20 percent, 40 percent, 60 percent, and 80 percent of households. In a similar manner, three possible definitions of “the rich” were selected: the top 5 percent, 10 percent, and 20 percent of households. (Interestingly, when survey respondents have been asked which income class they’d place themselves in, close to 80 percent have tended to place themselves somewhere in the middle class. In contrast, the various definitions used by social scientists indicate that the middle 40 to 60 percent is a more-defensible range. Hardly anyone thinks they are part of “the rich.”)

I also took advantage of the detailed data and painstaking design of the government’s database, the March Supplement to the Current Population Survey, made available jointly by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Its meticulous design, fine-tuned by experts over a period of decades, enables researchers to control for factors that might otherwise cause misleading inferences. Controlling for such factors helps to isolate the income return to a household for a given amount of work contributed to the economy by that household, and my research has incorporated the nuances.

One example of the results of my research is shown below; a chart that compares the growth rates of income per full-time-equivalent worker for the several possible definitions of “middle class” and “rich.”

Although the recession/recovery during that period resulted in unimpressive aggregate income growth, the observations in the chart above nonetheless contradict conventional wisdom because three of the four chosen definitions of “middle class” outperformed the overall economy. In other words, the middle class got at least its fair share of overall growth, and arguably more. Moreover, all four versions of “middle class” outperformed every definition of “rich”; in short, the gap between the rich and the middle class got smaller, not larger.

Will we use the good news to our advantage?

The middle class finally caught a break. Figuring it out took us longer than it should have, but at least we now know that the middle class has in fact been getting its fair share of whatever income growth has resulted from the work we put into the economy.

And that’s not just good news for the middle class, that’s good news for everybody. Why? Because we now know that, if past is prologue, the middle class should automatically get its fair share of future growth under current tax policy, as it did during the Bush years of the recent past—which means it shouldn’t be necessary to spend any of our limited time for national discourse on whether or how to redistribute the benefits of whatever growth our economy can muster. The time we’ll save by sidelining the redistribution argument and the class-warfare rhetoric can be much better spent on the overwhelmingly important problem of how to kick the economy into higher gear, back to robust growth rates approaching 4 percent or more. The debate about our economy can now focus freely on which policies are best in the long run for creating jobs, jobs, jobs.

_______________________________________________________________________

Steve Conover retired recently from a 35-year career in corporate America. He has a BS in engineering, an MBA in finance, and a PhD in political economy.

Lawrence Solomon: Warmed right over | FP Comment | Financial Post

2011-09-18T21:43:00.000-07:00

By Lawrence Solomon - from the National Post

The global-warming theory is nearing its end as evidence against it mounts

Why do a majority of Canadians — 52% according to the latest Angus Reid poll — still hold the belief that humans are mainly responsible for global warming?

I think I know, based on the feedback I’ve received from literally thousands of Canadians who have commented in recent years on my articles dealing with global warming. Most of that 52% have so often been told that the science is settled on global warming, and so rarely that there is any credible dissent, that they have not yet twigged to straightforward information, such as the rejection by most top scientists of the global-warming dogma.

Just this week, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever resigned as a fellow from the American Physical Society, saying he could not live with its nonsensical endorsement of global-warming alarmism. Dr. Giaever joins a host of other eminent scientists who have dismissed concerns over global warming, including Freeman Dyson, a Princeton physicist and America’s best known scientist, Antonino Zichichi, the president of the World Federation of Scientists and Italy’s best known scientist, Claude Allegre, a former socialist Minister of National Education, Research and Technology and France’s best-known scientist, and America’s Reid Bryson, known as the “father of scientific climatology” and judged “the world’s most cited climatologist” by the journal of the Institute of British Geographers.

In contrast to this Who’s Who of the scientific world, the list of top global-warming scientists falls far short. No scientist has been awarded a Nobel Prize in a science field for his work on global warming because no piece of science in the field has achieved a major scientific breakthrough. This despite the global-warming issue’s dominance of the scientific world for more than two decades, garnering the lion’s share of scientific funding and an inordinate amount of coverage in scientific publications. The only Nobel Prize conferred on global-warming advocates came from the political wing of the Nobel Prize establishment, which awarded them a prize for peace in consolation for their failure to merit a prize for science.

The most celebrated global-warming scientist by far has been NASA’s James Hansen, whose 1988 testimony in the U.S. Senate first brought the climate change issue to the popular press. Hansen presented projections, based on his computer models, showing dangerously high temperatures in the decades between then and now. Had those projections been borne out, he would today have a Nobel Prize in science. Unfortunately for him, his models proved to be duds. And aside from his global-warming work, he has precious few scientific accomplishments.

The next most celebrated global-warming scientist is Michael Mann, developer of the infamous hockey stick model that showed temperatures on Earth to have shot up dramatically in the last century, after 900 relatively stable years. That model, Mann’s sole claim to fame, also proved to be a dud. Once the icon of the global-warming movement, Mann’s hockey stick is now the subject of court proceedings and an icon for deceit.

What about all the thousands of scientists associated with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change who are said to endorse the IPCC’s global-warming theory? Do the global-warming proponents make up in quantity of scientists what they lack in quality? No. Those thousands of scientists never endorsed the IPCC position, or any position. They were merely peer reviewers of the IPCC reports, and they often disagreed with the material they reviewed.

Some Canadians blame humans for global warming because they’ve been told that Antarctica is melting in unprecedented ways, the “proof” being spectacular film footage of huge chunks of ice breaking off into the Antarctic Ocean. They don’t yet know that Antarctic ice has always broken off, that satellites show Antarctica to be gaining ice overall, and that Antarctica has been getting colder, not warmer, over the last half century.

Other Canadians think the Arctic ice is in danger of disappearing, unaware that several times over the last century the Arctic Ocean was actually navigable — today’s Arctic is no different from before.

What about all the hurricanes predicted to ravage our shores because of global warming? They never happened, and for good reason: As the IPCC’s own hurricane expert said in resigning from that organization, there is no evidence that global warming will cause an increase in hurricanes.

The submerged islands in the Pacific? That, too, never happened. Yes, the oceans have been rising, as they have been for centuries, but not because of recent carbon dioxide emissions. In fact, the recent evidence shows the oceans’ rate of rise has been slowing.

The correlation between carbon dioxide and global warming? In the last century, there has been none. While carbon-dioxide emissions have steadily increased, the temperature has gone up and down like a yo-yo. The down period in the 1970s was so severe that many scientists at the time thought we were heading for a period of global cooling, as many do again, now that the planet has again stopped warming.

There is, in fact, not one important claim made by the global-warming alarmists that has stood up to scrutiny. The chief reason why so much of the Canadian public remains misinformed is that the Canadian press has failed to provide the scrutiny, or even to report the news — unlike the U.S. and European press, for example, no mainstream Canadian news outlet has yet reported Ivar Giaever’s resignation earlier this week — this column is likely the first you’ve heard of it.

Despite the media’s general reluctance to report dissenting views of global warming, Canadian are slowly becoming informed. Two years ago, 63% of Canadians told Angus Reid that they blamed humans for global warming; last year 60% did so and last week, 52%. Next year, as Canadians continue to better inform themselves, the percentage should be in the 40s. We will then join the civilized peoples of the world in having a healthy skepticism of those selling us pet theories on global warming as if they were established fact.

Financial Post
LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute and author of The Deniers.

To see Ivar Giaever’s suffer-no-fools letter of resignation, click here. For the American Physical Society endorsement of global warming that led to Ivar Giaever’s resignation, click here.

To see the Angus Reid poll, click here.

Lawrence Solomon: Warmed right over | FP Comment | Financial Post:

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Rex Murphy: The media’s love affair with a disastrous president | Full Comment | National Post

2011-09-18T21:20:00.000-07:00

Larry Downing/Reuters

By Rex Murphy - from the National Post

As the bad economic news continues to emanate from the United States — with a double-dip recession now all but certain — a reckoning is overdue. American journalism will have to look back at the period starting with Barrack Obama’s rise, his assumption of the presidency and his conduct in it to the present, and ask itself how it came to cast aside so many of its vital functions. In the main, the establishment American media abandoned its critical faculties during the Obama campaign — and it hasn’t reclaimed them since.

Much of the Obama coverage was orchestrated sychophancy. They glided past his pretensions — when did a presidential candidate before “address the world” from the Brandenberg Gate in Berlin? They ignored his arrogance — “You’re likeable enough, Hillary.” And they averted their eyes from his every gaffe — such as the admission that he didn’t speak “Austrian.”

The media walked right past the decades-long association of Obama with the weird and racist pastor Jermiah Wright. In the midst of the brief stormlet over the issue, one CNN host — inexplicably — decided that CNN was going to be a “Wright-free zone.” He could have hung out a sign: “No bad news about Obama here.”

The media trashed Hillary. They burned Republicans. They ransacked Sarah Palin and her family. But Obama, the cool, the detached, the oracular Obama — he strolled to the presidency.

Palin, in particular, stands out as Obama’s opposite in the media’s eyes. As much as they genuflected to the one, they felt the need to turn rotweiler toward the other. If Obama was sacred , classy, intellectual and cosmopolitan, why then Palin must be malevolent, trashy, dumb and pure backwoods-ignorant.

Every doubt they hid from themselves about Obama, every potential embarrassment they tucked under the blanket of their superior sensibilities, they furiously over-compensated for by their remorseless hounding of Palin — from utterly trivial e-mails, to blogger Andrew Sullivan’s weird speculations about Palin’s womb, musings that put the Obama “Birther” fantasies into a realm near sanity. (We are now seeing an echo of that — with a new book promoting all sorts of unconfirmed gossip about Palin, including her alleged sexual dalliance with a basketball star.)

As a result, the press gave the great American republic an untried, unknown and, it is becoming more and more frighteningly clear, incompetent figure as President. Under Obama, America’s foreign policies are a mixture of confusion and costly impotence. It is increasingly bypassed or derided; the great approach to the Muslim world, symbolized by the Cairo speech, is in tatters. Its debt and deficits are a weight on the entire global economy. And the office of presidency is less and less a symbol of strength.

To the degree the press neglected its function as watchdog and turned cupbearer to a styrofoam demigod, it is a partner in the flaws and failures of what is turning out to be one of the most miserable performances in the modern history of the American presidency.

National Post

Rex Murphy offers commentary weekly on CBC TV’s The National, and is host of CBC Radio’s Cross Country Checkup.

Rex Murphy: The media’s love affair with a disastrous president | Full Comment | National Post:

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Sand in the Shorts: A Horse, a Horse, My Kingdom for a Horse

2011-09-16T18:18:00.000-07:00

By James Phieffer

As we pass the one week mark of the provincial election, I'm taking a moment to say I'm sorry to be proven right (so far). Tim Hudak's Liberal-Lite campaign has resulted in the Liberals erasing a ten point PC lead in the last month.

Why? Because Hudak has given Ontarians no reason whatsoever to vote Progressive Conservative rather than Liberal.

Locally, the PC's have a strong candidate in Todd Smith, although he is up against the Scarlet-clad Tooth Fairy (aka Leona Dombrowsky), a skilled campaigner and someone who has a strong base in Belleville. But he is being wasted as the PC deep thinkers allow themselves to be distracted by the insignificant story of the week. Add to that the “foreign workers” idiocy of week one, and the question has to be asked – whose running this circus?

This is still a winnable election, and as the old saw goes, “there's only one poll that counts”.

But for October 6 to be a good day for the PC's, and for the province as a whole, there has to be a change in how the Hudak campaign is run.

“A horse. A horse, my kingdom for a horse...”

The weak, flea-bitten glue piles that Hudak has tried to ride to victory thus far now need to be put down for good. There are plenty of strong steeds an able prince might ride.

There is the Liberal energy policy. Windmills where they are not wanted, solar subsidized – and unable to connect to the grid due to a lack of planning. Subsidizing minimum wage solar cell assembly under the guise of building Ontario into a renewable energy technology powerhouse... Wasted money and wasted energy. Where is the PC publicity machine on that?

The most egregious example of corporate welfare in Ontario history – the Samsung Subsidy – seems to have been left by the side of the road.

Tim Hudak and his great minds in Toronto need to get ahead of the game. Enough of the dog distracted by a squirrel routine, where every little matter acts as a distraction from the big one – the chronic mismanagement of the province by the Liberals since they were elected in 2003. The billions wasted in the E-Health boondoggle, the $7 billion Samsung Subsidy, the renewable energy subsidies which threaten to send electricity rates even higher than they already are, while at the same time the province mismanages their implementation, meaning those who built solar facilities can't sell the power they generate.

Time to make the Scarlet-Clad Tooth Fairy and her Liberal cronies work for their re-election.

Incontrovertible – I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means | RedState

2011-09-15T19:28:00.000-07:00

By Caleb Howe - from RedState.com

In the latest blow to “consensus”, Dr. Ivar Giaever, a Nobel Laureate, has resigned from the American Physical Society over the group’s position on global warming. His resignation letter minces no words:

Thank you for your letter inquiring about my membership. I did not renew it because I can not live with the statement below:
“Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes.
“The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.”
In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible? The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this ‘warming’ period.

That’s his emphasis, not mine.

Dr. Giaever’s resignation doesn’t come out of the blue. Fox News reports that he was one of the cosigners of the 2009 letter to President Obama, along with over 100 other scientists,dissenting against the assertion of consensus.

I wrote about the cult of consensus at RedState last year. The point of my post was that it is not only false to state that the case is closed on anthropogenic global warming, it was directly counter to the spirit of scientific inquiry to suppose that it would be, or even to suggest that consensus equals truth. In any other research field, such a claim would be considered preposterous, if not downright heretical.

The news of Dr. Giaever’s resignation comes on the heels of another blow to the notion of “incontrovertible evidence” this past July. A study published in the journal Remote Sensing(PDF) highlights several discrepancies in previously relied-upon data. From the Tuscon Citizen:

Data from NASA’s Terra satellite shows that when the climate warms, Earth’s atmosphere is apparently more efficient at releasing energy to space than models used to forecast climate change have been programmed to “believe.”
The result is climate forecasts that are warming substantially faster than the atmosphere, says Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist in the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.
The previously unexplained differences between model-based forecasts of rapid global warming and meteorological data showing a slower rate of warming have been the source of often contentious debate and controversy for more than two decades.
“The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show,” Spencer said. “There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans.”

Get that? Climate forecasts are warming “substantially faster” than the actual atmosphere. This is a significant problem for modeling.

What does this add up to? Well for one thing, the evidence that there is a global scientific consensus that man is causing catastrophic climate change, and that we have accurately mapped, modeled, and predicted it, is incontrovertibly false. As I cataloged in my post last year, there are a number of discrepancies that are yet to be addressed. And as evidenced by Dr. Giaever’s resignation, there is clearly not a consensus, not that that should matter in the first place.

We should respect Dr. Giaever for the courage to continue to ask questions, to demand rigor, to insist upon research, and above all, to stand with courage of conviction. We must all do the same. The drastic socioeconomic sacrifices the Al Gore crowd would have us endure, and the devastating fallout those sacrifices would entail, require it. Inasmuch as the greenies would have us believe that we must act NOW lest we see dire consequences, we must remain cautious, as rash actions could result in even more devastating outcomes.

There is no consensus. The evidence is not incontrovertible. Of that much, and that much alone, can we be completely certain.

Incontrovertible – I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means | RedState:

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Jonathan Kay on 9/11: How the tragedy made Canada a bolder, prouder nation | Full Comment | National Post

2011-09-14T20:26:00.000-07:00

By Jonathan Kay - from the National Post

How much has Canada changed in the last decade? Consider this: As the World Trade Center rubble was still smouldering, NDP Leader Alexa McDonough declared: “As responsible international citizens, it is important to reaffirm our commitment to pursuing peaceful solutions to the tensions and hostilities that breed such mindless violence.” A year later, in a CBC interview broadcast on the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, then-prime minister Jean Chrétien suggested the 9/11 attacks might have been a reaction to Western greed and arrogance: “You cannot exercise your powers to the point of humiliation for the others.”

Such remarks would be unthinkable now. Ten years after the 9/11 attacks, Canada is a place where even most mainstream leftists recognize the need for military intervention as a means of disrupting terrorism and protecting local populations.

A decade ago, for instance, Canada’s involvement in the bombing of Gaddafi loyalists in Libya would have been a major political issue: Naomi Klein, Judy Rebick and Ms. McDonough would have locked arms and marched on Parliament Hill, demanding a “peaceful solution.” Yet in the 2011 federal election campaign, the word “Libya” was scarcely mentioned by any politician of note. Nor did anyone make much of Afghanistan, where 157 Canadian soldiers have died, and our 3,000-man combat mission is currently transitioning into a smaller, but still vital, training role.

In short, the last decade has fundamentally transformed Canada’s attitude to foreign policy, and the use of force more generally: After a quarter-century pacifist interregnum, we once again became comfortable with our proper historical role as active military ally to the United States and Britain. Canadians now stand up and salute their soldiers at NHL hockey games. A major part of Ontario’s Highway 401 — the road travelled by fallen soldiers from CFB Trenton to the coroner’s office in Toronto — has been renamed the Highway of Heroes. These are small, symbolic gestures, but they would have been unthinkable in the pre-9/11 era, when the military was rusting into irrelevance, and our Liberal leaders still entertained gauzy visions of a world without war.

Twenty-four Canadians perished in the 9/11 attacks. Yet it was not the attacks themselves that changed Canada. Nor was it our initial deployment to Afghanistan, which had many elements of traditional peacekeeping and nation-building. Rather, it was Paul Martin’s courageous decision to transfer the main Canadian contingent from the relative safety of Kabul to the Taliban heartland of Kandahar province. Though Canadian troops had faced live fire in the Balkans and other hot spots for decades, this was different: For the first time since Korea, our military was on the front line of a real, full-time war against a declared enemy of Western civilization.

In 2006, for instance, the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry led the fighting in both Battles of Panjwaii, brutal encounters featuring close-range combat amid mud huts and trenches. Two whole generations of Canadians had never seen our soldiers fight this way before — except in black-and-white TV documentaries. And the sight of it, reported by our journalists, filled us with a pride that has manifested itself in a renaissance in Canadian patriotism (a fact much noted during the 2010 Vancouver Olympics). Even in Quebec, a province historically known for anti-war agitation, the response to the Afghan campaign was more muted than expected. (Indeed, many Quebecers were justly proud that the largely francophone Royal 22e Régiment — the “Vandoos” — distinguished itself in a variety of operations in Kandahar, often at great sacrifice.)

Canada seemed to find a sense of mission off the battlefield, as well. While the Liberals had taken pride in our status as an amoral “honest broker,” that no longer made sense in the Afghan War era: When your troops are shooting and killing an enemy, you have, by definition, chosen sides. Under Paul Martin, and then Stephen Harper, we became more assertive in defending our values and allies at the United Nations. We became the loudest critics of the Durban “anti-racism” sham, and an unabashed friend to Israel when it fought wars against Hezbollah in 2006 and Hamas in 2008. The anti-American inanities of Liberal MP Carolyn Parrish and her ilk became taboo.

Even in the purely domestic context, the after-effects of 9/11 have been remarkable. We give our police and security officials more leeway to interrogate and prosecute accused terrorists, ordinary criminals and even ordinary demonstrators (too much leeway, in some cases, as the G20 fracas shows). And we no longer let multicultural pieties get in the way of denouncing the barbaric misogyny of some unassimilated immigrants. “Honour killings” once were the stuff of back-page crime stories. Now, they are on the front page, for we recognize them as vestiges of the ideology that produced 9/11 and the Taliban.

The 9/11 attacks must be remembered first and foremost as an epic terrorist crime, and as a great tragedy for the victims and their families. Yet they also have had profound political and cultural ramifications that have transformed Canada into a more serious country, and one that plays a bolder and more helpful role on the world stage.

National Post
jkay@nationalpost.com

– Jonathan Kay is Managing Editor for Comment at the National Post, and a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C..

Jonathan Kay on 9/11: How the tragedy made Canada a bolder, prouder nation | Full Comment | National Post:

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Charles Krauthammer: Don’t blame America’s problems on the war on terror | Full Comment | National Post:

2011-09-11T06:51:00.000-07:00

Osama bin Laden went from terrorist mastermind to old dude in a blanket, thanks, in no small part, to America's war on terror.

By Charles Krauthammer - from the National Post

The new conventional wisdom on 9/11: America created a decade of fear and overreacted to 9/11 — al-Qaeda turned out to be a paper tiger; there never was a second attack — thereby bankrupting the country, destroying our morale and sending us into national decline.

The Secretary of Defense says that al-Qaeda is on the verge of strategic defeat. True. But why? Al-Qaeda did not spontaneously combust. Yet, in a decade Osama bin Laden went from the emir of radical Islam, jihadi hero after whom babies were named all over the Muslim world — to pathetic old recluse, almost incommunicado, watching shades of himself on a cheap TV in a bare room.

What turned the strong horse into the weak horse? Precisely the massive and unrelenting American war on terror, a systematic worldwide campaign carried out with increasing sophistication, efficiency and lethality — now so cheaply denigrated as an “overreaction.”

First came the Afghan campaign, once so universally supported that Democrats for years complained that president Bush was not investing enough blood and treasure there. Now, it is reduced to a talking point as one of “the two wars” that bankrupted us. Yet Afghanistan was utterly indispensable in defeating the jihadis then and now. We think of Pakistan as the terrorist sanctuary. We fail to see that Afghanistan is NATO’s sanctuary, the base from which we have freedom of action to strike Jihad Central in Pakistan and the border regions.

Iraq, too, was decisive, though not in the way intended. America no more chose it to be the central campaign in the crushing of al-Qaeda than Eisenhower chose the Battle of the Bulge as the locus for the final destruction of the German war machine.

Al-Qaeda, uninvited, came out to fight the U.S. in Iraq, and it was not just defeated but humiliated. The local population — Arab, Muslim, Sunni, under the supposed heel of the invader — joined the infidel and rose up against the jihadi in its midst. It was a singular defeat from which al-Qaeda never recovered.

True, in both wars there was much trial, error and tragic loss. In Afghanistan, too much emphasis on nation-building. In Iraq, the bloody middle years before America found its general and strategy. But cannot the same be said of, for example, the Civil War, the terrible years before Lincoln found his general? Or the Pacific campaign of the Second World War, with its myriad miscalculations, its often questionable island-hopping, that cost infinitely more American lives?

In the end: 10 years, no second attack (which everyone assumed would come within months). That testifies to the other great achievement of the decade: the defensive anti-terror apparatus hastily constructed from scratch after 9/11 by president Bush, and then continued by President Obama. Continued why? Because it worked. It kept America safe — the warrantless wiretaps, the Patriot Act, extraordinary rendition, preventive detention and, yes, Guantanamo.

Perhaps, says the new conventional wisdom, but these exertions have bankrupted the country and led to our current mood of despair and decline.

Rubbish. The total cost of “the two wars” is $1.3-trillion. That’s less than 1/11th of the national debt, less than one year of Obama deficit spending. During the golden Eisenhower 1950s of robust economic growth averaging 5% annually, defence spending was 11% of GDP and 60% of the federal budget. Today, defence spending is 5% of GDP and 20% of the budget. So much for imperial overstretch.

Yes, America is approaching bankruptcy. But this has as much to do with the war on terror as do sunspots. Looming insolvency comes from the explosion of entitlements. They devour nearly half the federal budget.

In memory: Lokomotiv Yaroslavl

2011-09-07T20:09:00.001-07:00

Wade Belak, Rick Rypien and Mental Illness: Sometimes You Lose the War...

2011-09-01T23:06:00.000-07:00

Belak clowns with former teammate Dan Hamhuis during the 2011 playoffs. (picture courtesy of The Post)

By James Phieffer - from TheHockeyWriters.com

I was deeply saddened to hear of the death of Wade Belak. I didn’t know him, but when I heard he had taken his own life, I realized I understood him.

Suicide is the most extreme symptom of mental illness. And that is something I know, having dealt with it since my teenage years. I understand where he was, because I’ve been there, and remain here only by the grace of God. As to why he isn’t, that is a question which I don’t know the answer to.

I was looking at some biographies of Mr Belak as I began writing this. He sounded like a great guy. A proud father of two daughters, husband to Jennifer. A man who was as renowned for his easygoing sense of humour off the ice as for his intimidating physical presence on it. While his on ice hockey career was done, he had a position with the Nashville Predators organization. Externally, at least, he had it all.

But something that must be understood about mental illness is that it is an invisible illness. While such serious physical illnesses as cancer or muscular dystrophy show themselves through various physical symptoms, the symptoms of mental illness are mostly hidden inside.

So the only way you’ll know if the person you work with, that you meet on the street, or watch on the ice or ball diamond is dealing with any form of mental illness is if they share the fact with you. But as advanced as we think our society to be, mental illness is a handicap that is too often misunderstood, and occasionally discriminated against.

When I read the story about Belak’s passing this inability, or at times disinterest, in understanding mental illness was brought to the fore by some comments which were critical of Belak for abandoning his family through his suicide, as if he made a conscious, rational decision to do so. From my own experience, responses to finding out that I deal with mental illness (depression and anxiety) vary from questioning my mental capabilities and sanity to a pejorative view, where any accomplishments are deserving of a pat on the head (“i.e. that’s so nice, someone like you doing that…”). And the latter is almost as bad as the former.

The inability of people to understand mental illness also has manifested itself in some of the commentary surrounding the deaths of Belak and Rick

Rick Rypien (Wikimedia Commons)

Rypien (and Derek Boogard, although I have not seen anything to indicate his death was caused by mental illness). Too many columnists have used these tragedies to move forward anti-fighting agendas, assuming that too many blows to the head have caused irreparable damage, leading to suicides.

Is it possible that injuries sustained in fights played a role in the lead up to these tragedies? That may never be known. But to assume this is the case is to use his death as a tool to move forward a particular agenda – and in this case one which distracts from what can be seen to be fact – not just supposition.

So let’s deal with a few facts, from the Canadian Mental Health Association:

Suicide accounts for 24% of all deaths among 15-24 year olds, and 16% among those from 25 to 44.
More than half a million persons aged 15 and over (2.2%) reported having activity limitations due to emotional, psychological or psychiatric conditions. An additional 1.8% had activity limitations due to frequent memory problems or periods of confusion.
Stress and mental health-related problems currently represent 40-50% of the short-term disability claims among employees of some of Canada’s largest corporations.
The Canadian economy loses an estimated $30 billion a year in productivity due to mental illness and addiction problems.

While mental illness is becoming better understood, and as a result persons such as myself are able to go public with our battles, more needs to be

done. There need to be support services available with lower wait times. Employers need to commit to treating those dealing with mental illness in as open and considerate a manner as has become common – and expected – for those who deal with physical disabilities.

And people need to realize that mental illness does not mean a person is insane, broken, loony, or whatever other derogatory term has been directed at the mentally ill over the years. We are people who seek to live whole and productive lives. We have aims and goals. And we are capable of making major contributions to society at all levels.

But sometimes we lose battles. And sadly, occasionally we lose the war.

Wade Belak, from everything written and said about him by those who knew him, was an exemplary human being, a gentle giant who, while intimidating on the ice, was recognized by children as a good soul. To see his life ended this way is truly sad. Two little girls now go to bed without their Daddy. His wife is left to deal with the fallout, the questions. His parents have experienced that most painfully absurd of situations – outliving their child.

To them, my thoughts and prayers are with you, as are I’m sure those of the many Canadians who struggle with mental illness every day.

Mike Flanagan, a former star pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles and Toronto Blue Jays, took his own life August 24, 2011

The Wobbly Puck: We Seek the Holy Grail...

2011-08-30T11:09:00.000-07:00

By James Phieffer - first published at The Hockey Writers

As much as I’m sure this is an exciting time for hockey fans and media alike, it is also, I expect, a time when the muscles which surround the eyes of coaches, general managers, and other hockey front office staff get a workout. After all, with each column they read, every fan comment posted after hockey articles of one sort or another, I’m sure the eyes begin to roll.

My last column was a well argued (eye-roll) explanation of what the Senators ought to be doing on their blue line this season in order to build for the future(eye-roll). “All you have to do is…” I wrote, laying out a comprehensive plan for integrating young players while using the now surplus (eye-roll) veterans to secure valuable assets (major eye-roll) useful in building a contender in the coming years. My plan is very simple and straightforward (eye rolls completely over and pops out of head).

I always get a laugh when I read comments on seemingly any story about the Toronto Maple Leafs. While I haven’t checked in the last couple of months, in the last 12 months I have seen more than one suggestion by a commenting fan that “we need to bring back Dougie” (Gilmour) or “Clarkie” (Wendel Clark). Now, after I stop laughing, make sure I haven’t wet myself, and restrain myself from making another derogatory comment about some Leafs fans to the Missus (a Leafs fan…), I wonder about what people are thinking.

I sat beside Doug Gilmour about a year ago. I had taken my nephew Matthew to see the Belleville Bulls play the visiting Kingston Frontenacs. Matt and I had front row seats, and were right across the tunnel from the visiting teams bench, where stood the coach of the Fronts, one Douglas Robert Gilmour, or “Dougie”, in Leaf-speak. He was in a suit, not equipment, and in light of his being about eight years older than my then current age of 39, this seemed unlikely to change. I am sure Brian Burke has just broken down at the news. He’ll have to see if Sundin’s agent is still on speed-dial. Then to let the mayor know he can start planning the Stanley Cup parade route…

But I digress.

Right now, Bryan Murray, Percival to Eugene Melnyk’s Arthur, is trying to assemble a team which will succeed in capturing hockey’s mystical Grail as soon as is humanly possible. But he has no Merlin or Lady of the Lake, nor can he look to Melnyk for anything resembling Excalibur. He did have to trade away a guy who thought he was Excalibur, but Dany Heatley is looking more and more like one of those pseudo-Samurai swords you can find in cheap head shops – if you use them for anything stronger than paper, they get dull and useless in a hurry.

Meanwhile, we, the ink-stained pseudo-Merlins of the hockey’s Camelot, provide our wisdom. We give forth elixirs promising a chemistry never before seen on a single line, let alone throughout a dressing room. We anoint one player after another as the next Bedivere. And yet all too often he turns out to be more of a Sir Robin*.

So, as I turn back to my usual job of making coaches’ lives easier, and demonstrating how simple is the lot of a general manager, in direct contradiction of the rest of this column, I wish all those in actual positions of power throughout hockey a good season, and the forbearance not to strangle the next reporter they see on sight.

Sir Robin? No, just Dany Heatley...

* – from Monty Python and the Holy Grail:

Brave Sir Robin ran away. Bravely ran away, away! When danger reared its ugly head, He bravely turned his tail and fled. Yes, brave Sir Robin turned about And gallantly he chickened out. Bravely taking to his feet He beat a very brave retreat, Bravest of the brave, Sir Robin!

He is packing it in and packing it up And sneaking away and buggering up And chickening out and pissing off home, Yes, bravely he is throwing in the sponge…

Some changes and additions...

2011-08-28T11:57:00.000-07:00

Some changes are underway at this site and its sister sites.

First, I'd like to introduce you to TheWobblyPuck.ca, a site focussing on hockey news. This will include my coverage of the Ottawa Senators (for the site TheHockeyWriters.com) as well as news on the rest of the NHL and the Canadian Hockey League. If you you're looking for hockey coverage, you'll find it here (and at thehockeywriters.com, of course).

Sand in the Shorts: The Race to Succeed Jack Layton

2011-08-26T20:53:00.000-07:00

By James Phieffer - also published in the August 27, 2011 Intelligencer

Whatever else one might say of Jack Layton, he was a key part of the New Democratic Party going from also ran status when he took over as leader in 2003 to being the official opposition party in 2011. And even as he is laid to rest, his own wish that a leadership convention be held in January leads to the question of who might replace him.

The candidates will gradually start to appear over the next month, some sooner, some later, depending on issues such as funding and support within caucus and throughout the membership. A key area of support too will be labour, as provided for under the NDP's constitution. Since others are addressing the question of who, I will focus more on what the NDP should, and shouldn't, be looking for.

First, not Libby Davies. The NDP's lunatic fringe might be a bastion of reliable votes, but the leadership of the party cannot come from here. Davies has embarrassed herself before with anti-Israel remarks and statements, up to the point a couple of years ago when she questioned the Jewish nation's right to exist. Davies or any other leader from this group would destroy the NDP's credibility with mainstream Canadians and doom it to a quick return to fringe party status.

Thomas Mulcair ruled himself out when he made his mind-numbingly stupid comments questioning the veracity of US President Barack Obama's statement that Osama bin Laden was dead. Well, bin Laden was pushing up flowers, and so should any realistic chance that Mulcair might end up leading the NDP.

What the NDP needs to find isn't a Layton clone. Instead, they need to seek out a leader who is capable of controlling the party's left while putting forward the NDP as a party aspiring towards the centre. Essentially, they need a leader known and active in NDP circles who has demonstrated an attractiveness to current Liberal and Green voters.

So, who do I think should be in the mix?

Consider, if you will, Lorne Calvert and Gary Doer. Both are former NDP premiers, who were able to attract votes from areas of their provinces where the federal representation was Liberal or Conservative. Both have demonstrated many of the skills necessary for an NDP leader who aspires to broaden the party's appeal. Doer in particular was known for getting along with Prime Minister Stephen Harper when he was premier. These should both be considered for the party leadership.

And I'll throw out three interesting (but not necessarily likely) possibilities:

First, MP Megan Leslie, who has experience in areas such as the environment. She's young and has a good reputation as on of the NDP's “veteran” (she was first elected in 2008) MP’s.

Peter Stoffer should run. He has perhaps the best potential to lead the NDP into government, as he is known for his populist and pragmatic streak. He has the potential to win over non-traditional NDP voters with his combination of affability and lack of ideological drive. Simply, he won't scare them.

Finally, how about Bill Blaikie? The retired long time MP and runner up for the NDP leadership brings a strong reputation to go with that powerful voice. He is respected both inside the party as well as outside it. He too should run.

So grab the popcorn and beverage of choice, as this ought to be interesting.

Sand in the Shorts: Good Jack Will Be Missed

2011-08-23T09:43:00.000-07:00

By James Phieffer - also published in the Intelligencer (Tuesday August 23, 2011)

"I'm going to fight cancer now so I can be back to fight for families when Parliament resumes."

That line says it all: Jack Layton was a fighter. He was also a good and caring man.

Known as someone with a pragmatic side, he was willing to work toward compromise if that would help his constituents.

It was this pragmatism that has allowed him to enjoy the success he has had as the leader of the New Democratic Party.

Mr. Layton came from a political family, from his father, Robert Layton, who served in the government of Brian Mulroney, all the way back to his Great-Grand Uncle, William Steeves, a Father of Confederation from New Brunswick, and later a Liberal Senator.

He was very active in political affairs as a youth in Quebec, and later involved himself in local politics after he moved to Toronto.

More about his biography will be printed over the coming days; what I wish to consider is the impact he had on Parliament Hill.

Jack Layton was an optimist, according to those who knew him, and that optimism was evident in how he approached his work.

This was part of how he impacted the NDP, as the party became a voice for optimism and possibilities.

He saw possibilities in a province that had only elected one NDP MP in its history, leading the party to a Quebec landslide in the 2011 general election when the NDP took 59 of 75 seats.

It was as much a victory for Jack Layton as it was the NDP. Across the province, unknown 'placeholder' candidates were elected, with the majority of votes being cast for Jack Layton. They didn't know who their candidate was, but they liked Jack.

His "Orange Crush" victory also swept aside the separatist Bloc Quebecois, something for which all Canadians should thank him.

Jack Layton was both a man of principle but also a pragmatist. There are stories about his time on Toronto City Council, where he brought together disparate points of view to form a workable, but principled, compromise.

He demonstrated his hold to his principles in matters such as his opposition to Toronto's bid for the 1996 Olympics as part of the "Bread, Not Circuses" coalition. This may have helped defeat him when he later ran for mayor of Toronto.

I was not a supporter of Jack Layton. He and I stood on different sides of a multitude of issues. But there is no question I respected him then, as I do his legacy now.

He helped build the NDP into a vital party in Ottawa, ensuring Canada has that which is essential to any democracy — a strong opposition.

He believed in standing up for those who could not stand up for themselves. He was a proud Canadian.

Maybe the best way to summarize Jack Layton is to use the words of popular Quebec television host Guy A. LePage. After having him on his show, Tout le monde en parle, he called him "un bon Jack" - good Jack.

He will be missed.