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Star Trek: Discovery has the potential to make Star Trek great again

2017-10-03T18:57:00.000-04:00

Warning: If you haven’t seen the first three episodes, there are going to be spoilers.

After the first two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery, I was on the fence about the new series. The first two episodes were a bit too action oriented for me. I was afraid that they were going to take the series in the same direction that JJ Abrams tried to go with the movies; more of an action than sci-fi; more Star Wars than traditional Star Trek.

However, after episode 3 I think those fears were unfounded. The first two episodes just set up the back story of Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Saru (Doug Jones) and set up the conflict that will drive the rest of the series.

The story that the third episode sets up is that of a mysterious scientific research vessel during a Federation War with the Klingons. We have a Captain (Jason Isaacs) that we don’t really trust; A human-raised-on-Vulcan officer (Burnham), who had previously been serving a life sentence for mutiny and who no one fully trusts, A by the book First Officer (Saru) who was on the ship where the mutiny occurred; A hard-line Chief of Security (Rehka Sharma); a cynical Science Officer (Anthony Rapp) who trusts no one; Cadet Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman) who is ambitious and smart but awkward, nervous and lacks confidence and we have a number of characters who have yet to introduce themselves.

All in all the story has elements that will be familiar to classic Star Trek fans but it is a different story than we’ve seen before. The captain is not automatically respectable and the crew is not a tight unit. There is no mutual trust or respect among them and the potential for interpersonal conflict is high. In fact, it is almost guaranteed.

This is not the Federation seeking new life and new civilizations, this is Star Fleet at war. It is not humanity as refined and dignified as they appear to be in the Next Generation, DS-9 or Voyager. This is humanity a few hundred years earlier in its development.

Early last year, Charlie Jane Anders wrote a piece for io9 called 'The Essential Difference Between Star Wars and Star Trek'. In it she made the case that "Star Wars is about fighting the Man, and Star Trek is about being the Man." In 'Discovery', the Federation isn't 'the Man' yet but they are trying to get there.

So, while the first two episodes didn’t sell me on the series, this is now a story I want to see play out and one that I’m willing to believe belongs in the Star Trek universe that Gene Roddenberry created.

I would also, and this is likely to be just wishful thinking on my part, a new series years down the road with Sylvia Tilly as captain. There is a point toward the end of the episode when Tilly is trying to bond with her roommate, the mutineer Michael Burnham. She says “Here’s something not a lot of people know about me: I’m going to be a Captain someday.”

It would be amazing if that claim came true. This series focuses on war with the Klingons. Unlike in the other Star Trek series, important characters will probably die before it is over. It would be amazing to watch the bright-eyed cadet grow into a battle-tested veteran and Star Fleet officer; to know the challenges she's overcome, the people she's lost and watch her become the Captain in the post-war series.

As a fan it would have been amazing to watch Kirk, Picard, Sisko or Janeway evolve from a young cadet and know their whole backstory from the moment they walk onto the bridge in the first episode. If this series does well, we may get that kind of introduction this time.

Whether or not we get that, the series and its cast are worth your time. If you bailed after the first episode, or have avoided watching because of negative things you’ve heard, it’s time to tune in again.

The Democrats should get a tax cut bill ready, one for people who need it

2017-08-23T00:38:00.000-04:00

There is a busy schedule waiting for Congress when they get back from summer vacation. Some in the GOP still want to do something on health care, but in the short term they have to raise the debt ceiling, they have to pass a budget or a continuing resolution and they want to do tax reform. The latter is the second big thing that Trump and the GOP leadership are excited about and with the failure of “repeal and replace” they really want to get it done to convince their base that they are worth re-electing in next year’s midterms.

The Democrats shouldn’t simply try to obstruct this time though. They should come up with their own tax cut, one that targets small business, the middle class, working class and working poor. This should include an increase in the personal deduction (the point below which you do not need to pay taxes), an increase in the deductible for dependents, an increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and a reduction in the rate for people that make less than $100 thousand and small businesses. They should make it clear to the White House and Republican Leadership that the bill, as it’s written, has 194 votes in the House of Representatives and 46 (or 48 depending on the independents) in the Senate and leave it on the table.

Then, while Republicans are bickering over how much they want to give the wealthy and large corporations, they should go out and promote their bill in the media, in their home states and their congressional districts. While they’re doing that, they should also get sympathetic wealthy people and CEOs, people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, to tell the media that the Democrats plan is better. Representatives of the “one percent” should go out and tell people that they don’t need a tax cut and that the real drivers of the economy, working people, and small businesses, should get a long overdue break.

While the Republican factions battle about how much money to give back to people who are already wealthy, they and the media and the public will know that tax relief for the majority of Americans, including small business and Trump voters, is only 24 votes away in the House and 3 to 5 in the Senate. In a best case scenario, it would help the vast majority of Americans and those who need it the most. In a worst case scenario, where the GOP rejects the Democrats plan and pass a tax cut for the wealthy and the Fortune 500, the Republicans still lose despite winning.

The scariest question in American politics might be ‘what happens in 2020?’

2017-08-21T09:50:00.000-04:00

Based on the current momentum, it is unlikely that Donald Trump will be on the ballot in November of 2020. Between scandals, investigations, his obvious frustration with Washington, Washington’s frustration with Trump, looming primary challenges and his age (74 in 2020), a second Trump administration probably isn’t in the cards. That still leaves the question of what comes after that?

Despite Trump’s ever decreasing poll numbers, there is little that would indicate that the people who voted for Trump wouldn’t vote for a different Republican. There is also little to indicate that a Democratic landslide is in the offing or that there will be broad ideological support for the Democrats even if they should secure a win.

According to polling, Democrats do well on issues like the environment, health care and 'helping the middle class'. However Republicans and Democrats are roughly tied, or the Republicans have an advantage on the economy, foreign policy, immigration, taxes, infrastructure, reforming Washington and dealing with ISIS and Iraq. Donald Trump's poll numbers are abysmal and a majority of Americans have an unfavorable view of the GOP but almost 50% of the public has an unfavorable view of the Democrats as well.

So while Trump and the Republicans are vulnerable, it is not aclear that the Democrats are successfully taking advantage of the opportunity. According to CNN's polling, 52% of Americans see Democrats as only standing against Trump but not for anything else specifically. They also note that the percentage of people saying that they have a favorable impression of the Democrats hasn't budged since the 2016 convention. And before people start saying that the agenda of Bernie Sanders is what will move people to the Dems side, polling doesn't support that either. While the poll is old, in February people had a less favorable view of Sanders ally Elizabeth Warren than 'a generic Democrat'.

In fact, in my opinion, it would be disastrous for the Democrats to repeat anything like the Sanders vs. Clinton debacle of 2016. The Democratic ticket will be wide open with dozens of contenders (from Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Corey Booker and Kamala Harris to Mark Zuckerberg) potentially vying the nomination, but it will be critically important for Democrats to go into their 2020 convention united behind the primary winner.

The Republican side will be equally wide open and potentially more contentious, with or without Trump in the mix but that won't be the Democrats only worry. The wildcard for both parties is Emmanuel Macron. With a bitterly divided French electorate, Marcon launched a new centrist party and came out of nowhere to resoundingly win the French election. With the American public bitterly divided and both parties at or near majority unfavorability, there is increasing chatter about the possibility of doing that here and potentially a good deal of money to back such an effort.

In 2016, Michael Bloomberg suggested that he might run if Sanders and Trump were the nominees. If a serious 3rd party attempt were made in 2020, the most likely candidates would be Mark Zuckerberg, Arnold Schwartznegger or Seth Moulton.

The risk here isn't necessarily that an independent candidate would be a bad step for a divided America. The risk is that the United States could face another four years where the president does not have a mandate or majority support from the beginning.

However, in order to avoid that scenario, the Democrats (or the Republicans) would have to put together a ticket and a platform that appealed their base while convincing centrists and independents that they had changed and it wasn't going to be business as usual.

This would be very difficult for Republicans to accomplish given that they cannot seem to unite their base at the moment. Despite currently holding the White House, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court and most of the country's governorships and state legislatures, Republicans are having a hard time passing any major legislation because of disunity and an unwillingness to compromise even among themselves.

Democrats, may not fare much better though. In order to be successful, they will have to field candidates who are credible on health care, education and the environment but who are also able to convince people that they understand business, economics, and foreign policy. They will have to appease the Sanders wing of the party as well as the Obama/Clinton wing and moderate independents. They will have to have a civil rights platform that addresses the concerns of women and BLM and an immigration platform that is almost the opposite of Donald Trumps, without seeming overly focused on 'identity politics'.

The left, along with much of the center and even parts of the Republican establishment are currently united in their dislike of Donald Trump. However, that doesn't mean that they are united on the question of what they want instead. There is an opportunity coming up in 2018 and especially in 2020 to reverse course on the current destructive agenda. There is a chance to avoid directionless, unpopular government that is ripe for exploitation by foreign powers and domestic opportunists.

In order to do that though, Democrats are going to need to think beyond merely hating Donald Trump and trying to put out one fire at a time. They will need candidates and a platform that represents a consensus for most of those who dislike Trump while still addressing the specific concerns of a number of key constituencies.

It is going to take a great deal of work, consultation and careful listening to find that platform and those candidates. If the Democrats become complacent, if they don't do the work, if they rely solely on the unpopularity of Donald Trump to propel them to power, they could easily find themselves no better off than they are now in four years.

Likewise, individuals seeking a replacement for Trump need to think hard about what they absolutely need. America is ready for a political 'revolution' but it may not be the political revolution you want. If Trumps foes devolve into drawing lines in the sand and pushing rigid purity tests, it could mean another four years of Trump (or a Trump substitute). Even in victory it could put a left-leaning government where the Republicans are now; with all the power but unable to move any legislation.

Can formalizing the stalemate cool things down in North Korea?

2017-08-09T01:34:00.000-04:00

Let me say right off the bat that I am not an expert on foreign policy so I could be way off base here but it seems to me that there are three possibilities for the current standoff between the United States and North Korea.

1) At some point, there is a war between the United States and China that absolutely no one wants.

2) The current stalemate which started almost 65 years ago continues with no end in site but with occasional flare ups. or

3) Everyone admits that 1) is a distinct possibility and that 2) is getting tiresome and takes steps to avert it.

The Korean War ended in 1953 but with no permanent peace treaty. Since then the two sides have faced off across the border, ready to resume hostility at a moment’s notice.

North Korea would love to reunite the Korean Peninsula, through force if necessary. However, they know that any military action would involve full-scale war with the United States and would alienate China. North Korea is economically dependent on China and China and the United States are economically dependent on one another; creating a sort of economic Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). A war between the two countries would almost immediately cause an economic cotastrophe in both.

South Korea would also love to reunite Korea but seems to want peace more than anything.

China would love for the situation to improve but won’t accept the United States military or a strong ally of the United States on the Chinese border.

The United States would love for the situation to end; would love to be able to withdraw its forces and would love to reunite the Korean Peninsula. The US knows, however, that war with North Korea means war with China.

The rest of Asia, and the world really, would love for the situation to end but primarily lives in fear of it escalating.

So, it seems to me that the first step in resolving the situation involves everyone acknowledging that it’s a stalemate and that there is no solution in the foreseeable future. A permanent de-escalation of the situation could look something like this:

The US accepts that North Korea is now a nuclear power, as suggested by former US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Next, as suggested by former Canadian national security analyst Stephanie Carvin he US and the world shifts focus to making sure that North Korea doesn't become a nuclear arms dealer and nuclear weapons consultant to other countries and terrorist organizations.

China is already recognized as a nuclear power. If we accept that North Korea is essentially a Chinese satellite, and China agrees to take steps to ensure responsible behavior by the North then nothing has changed substantially in terms of geopolitics.

So, China agrees to ensure the safety of Korean nuclear weapons by having personnel at all North Korean nuclear facilities. China and North Korea both agree that North Korea will not sell or trade nuclear technology or secrets and that North Korea will not launch a nuclear first strike or any military action against South Korea. Finally, China agrees to put a symbolic military force on the border between North and South Korea.

The United States agrees to reduce its forces on the Korean border to a smaller, mostly symbolic, UN led force and agrees not to launch a military first strike against North Korea (nuclear or otherwise).

The UN, along with the US agrees to remove all sanctions against North Korea, allowing the North Korean economy to grow so that it doesn't feel the need to sell nuclear technology. The UN additionally strengthens the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement and declares any steps by any nation to develop a new nuclear program to be an act of war against all the members of the UN.

I know that there are many who will oppose ending the sanctions but the reality is that they have never worked, and have done no harm at all to the North Korean regime. It is possible that we can accomplish more through engagement than we've been able to through isolation. It has worked before.

Finally, all parties agree to recognize the current boundaries of North and South Korea and to begin good faith negotiations toward a lasting peace treaty to finally put a formal end to the Korean War.

Again, I'm no international relations expert but it seems to me that by acknowledging and formalizing the current standoff and admitting that it isn't going to change soon, we can calm things down, give all sides some peace of mind and ensure that there won't be any fighting in the foreseeable future, because if there is everyone loses.

If you’re genuinely interested in the world’s economic bottom 50 percent, try the UN podcast

2017-08-08T10:33:00.000-04:00

In January Oxfam released a report which stated that “just 8 men own the same wealth as half the world”. This was seized on by the left to make points about income inequality, poverty and the excesses of modern capitalism.

However, the 50 percent of the world’s poorest mentioned in the report do not live in the United States, Canada or Europe. They live in the world’s war zones, in drought stricken regions of the global South, in failed and failing states, in refugee camps and rural villages. The bottom 50% live on a few dollars per day or less and they are largely ignored by the world’s media unless they show up on the shores of Europe or the United States.

The United Nations podcasts and UN Radio don't just talk about the world's poorest and most at risk, they frequently talk to them directly, along with their political and community leaders. If you're genuinely interested in the bottom 50%; their hopes, dreams, challenges, and fears. You'll also hear about the challenges faced by those trying to provide assistance, whether it is through UN missions, NGOs or their own leaders. If you're genuinely interestd, listen to them directly and not just those who claim to speak for them in the wealthier parts of the world.

What is the point of hating Arcade Fire?

2017-07-25T00:51:00.000-04:00

For awhile today, Arcade Fire was trending on Twitter so I went to check it out. It was almost all hate for their new album, for the dress code at one of their shows and for a lawsuit they've recently filed. I understand having an opinion on lawsuits but really, if you hate the band, why talk about it at all?

For six years I ran the music site NxEW.ca, now only available via the Wayback Machine. In that time I didn't write a single bad review of anything for a few very good reasons:

First, with all of the music out there now, I didn't see the point of telling people what they shouldn't listen to. If people decided to give me a few minutes of their time, I thought it would be better to tell them what they should listen to; introduce them to a new artist or at least a new album that they might not have known about otherwise.

Second, there is enough hate in the world. Music isn't politics or the economy. Artists, even the ones you really don't like, aren't trying to take away your health care, your education or your job. Why spend time and energy on hating them? In 2017 you can just push a button and move on to an artist you like better.

Third, artists don't deserve the hate. They're just people and they are expressing what they like or what they hope you'll like. If they're successful, they'll make some money. Earning a living at it in the age of Spotify and iTunes is no easy task. It is not, in most cases, a job. There is no guarantee of an income and even if you're successful for awhile, there is no severance or unemployment if people suddenly stop buying your music. It is significantly less stable and reliable than driving for Uber.

Several years ago I even abandoned the idea of "selling out". If the members of a punk band decide to pack it in and start an 80s cover band so they can get regular gigs playing weddings, I bear them no ill will at all. If you can find a way to get paid for playing music in the current climate, by all means, take the money.

Everyone will have to answer the question for themselves but if you really, truly, deeply hate Arcade Fire wouldn't all the Tweets and Facebook posts about how much you hate them be better spent telling people about artists you do like? In a world where Donald Trump is President of the United States, couldn't we stand a little less hate?

What the West really needs is a revolution of the rational middle

2017-07-11T16:11:00.000-04:00

For most of my life, I’ve considered myself a “progressive”. Over the last few years I’ve changed that description to “moderate progressive” - something US Senator Bernie Sanders said, during the 2016 election, a person could not be. I do not know if I left the progressive movement or if it left me but at the moment we are not together. I am also not comfortable with the right, which I consider a threat to Western Civilization.

It is not that I no longer share progressive goals of fairness, equality and an end to poverty - I do. However, I believe in getting there using the best available evidence, sound economic policies, cooperation and consensus building rather than the sheer force of my belief in an ideology to shove my ideas down the throats of people who disagree or don't understand.

The “progressive” left relies heavily on the idea that “capitalism is dying” and it is not. There is simply no evidence, other than a slight uptick in votes in a few elections, to suggest that either pure socialism or communism is on the rise. Globally, the evidence suggests just the opposite China and Russia are not communist anymore, Cuba is quickly moving away from it, Hugo Chavez's socialist revolution in Venezuela has failed miserably and the last of Latin America’s communist rebel groups FARC has reached a peace agreement with Columbia’s government ending decades of civil war. For the first time since we moved away from the barter system, the entire world will soon function under roughly the same economic system and that system is capitalism.

It is not even clear how socialism, as proposed by Karl Marx, would work in the 21st century and beyond. After all, how can "workers" control the means of production if everything is made by robots and companies do not need workers anymore.

That does not mean though that pure laissez-faire capitalism is triumphant. That approach too has failed where it has been tried. It failed with great fanfare in the collapse that led to the great depression and it failed again in 2008 leading to the ‘great recession’. In Kansas and Louisiana, Republicans gained enough power to put the principles of the modern conservative movement to the test - slashing taxes and government services to the bone. In both cases, Republican ideology failed miserably. On the whole, since the 1980s the idea of trickle down economics, as espoused by Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and others has failed. Since that time, the wealthy have certainly accumulated more wealth but it has not trickled down very far.

However, contrary to attacks from the right and the left, globalization has worked very well - just not for everyone. Since 1990 global GDP has surged, extreme poverty is in freefall, education levels, health outcomes, and life expectancy are all rapidly improving in the global South. And while the West has lost some high-end manufacturing and mining jobs, many products have become more affordable for average families. Adjusted for inflation the cost of things like cars, televisions, home appliances, computers, and smartphones keeps coming down - allowing nearly anyone to own what were once high-end luxury items (or at least things that were considered major purchases and required a considerable slice of a family's annual income to obtain.

It would be reckless and dangerous to pull back from globalization now. Doing so might create a few jobs for a few people (though most of those would be done by machines now) but it would also make many products much more expensive and it would have a devastating impact on many of the world's poorest leading to increased political and economic instability. Most important of all, it would lead to more wars. Looser borders might (might) increase the chances of a one-off attack by a madman, but they decrease the chances of full-scale war between major powers. Countries with strong economic ties and where a significant number of one country's nationals live in the other country and vice-versa simply do not go to war with one another easily or frivolously.

Going forward, our relationships with other countries will be even more important. Of the major problems facing the world in the 21st century almost none of them can be solved by any one nation, or even a small group of nations, acting independently. Climate change, mass drought, and desertification, waves of immigration, water pollution, overfishing, food security, cybersecurity, fighting invasive species and pandemic diseases, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, energy security, the regulation of robotics and biotechnology and a host of other problems will require levels of international cooperation that we have never achieved before. That level of cooperation cannot be achieved in the midst of hot wars, cold wars or trade wars.

Domestically I believe that we need to focus on both income inequality and "identity politics".

It is sad that we still have to focus on "identity politics" or as it was called before 2016 "civil rights". After all, the West has spent most of the last two centuries on the issue - first for "the people" generally and then on women's rights, rights for racial minorities, religious minorities, LGBT people, people with mental and physical disabilities, etc. At this point, we should be all set but we're not. Nearly all "minority" groups still demonstrably suffer from discrimination in employment, income, education, the legal system, housing and more. We cannot back down from that fight until we've achieved a much larger sense of fairness and equality.

We also have to have to limit income inequality for the good of everyone. In this, I'm of two minds. We do not need a ceiling on how high people can climb, but we do need a floor on how low we'll let them fall. The government has a large role to play in ensuring greater income inequality but I believe that we can do it without swelling the size of government. I believe that a universal basic income, combined with universal health care and universal access to education and skills training should be the basis of a new, new deal. To get there it will take a combination of tax cuts and the elimination of many existing government programs.

In the end, we will have given people enough of an income to survive regardless of what else happens, combined with the ability to tackle any physical or mental health issues they may face and the ability to improve their economic prospects. It would require the left to give up the idea that government is best at solving people's problems - that most people can solve their own problems if given the tools. It would require the right to abandon the notion that government has no role to play in inequality. But, as I've shown above, neither pure socialism nor pure capitalism work. There would no doubt be some problems left to solve but if you were to remove people who need a little more money, people who have mental and physical health issues and people who need more education or job skills from the government assistance list - it is not at all apparent that those problems would be especially large or widespread.

These are my core political beliefs but perhaps, more importantly, I'm open to better ideas. I am willing to be proven wrong. I'm willing to have conversations with people to my left or my right provided they've done their homework and their arguments are fact based rather than ideological. Anyone can watch Fox News, read Breitbart, Rebel Media or their left wing equivalent and simply parrot talking points. I believe in researched, evidence-based solutions. And this is the basic for the revolution that the West needs.

I am a Canadian-American dual citizen and am well aware of the politics in both countries and also try to follow politics in the rest of the world. Nowhere are things as bad as they are in the United States, but I see symptoms of the same illness in Canada, the UK, and parts of Europe. We are becoming more and more focused on ideology and less on evidence and compromise. We've come to see those who have different perspectives, who have come to different conclusions or have different ideas as an evil other.

When elections come the only goal is winning, even if that means supporting bad people or attacking good people. In the case of the Republican Party in the US, they've courted support from white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups and accepted help from a hostile foreign government to help ensure the election of a man who many long-time Republicans don't particularly like. They've also convinced their core supporters that education and journalism are bad for society. In the case of the "progressive" left, they've shown a willingness to use Republican propaganda and demonize and sabotage a woman who agreed with them on many of their core issues simply because they did not like her as much as another candidate. They've also come up with a laundry list of government programs and services they would like without any real plan for how to pay for it and that they themselves aren't willing to contribute to financially.

When one side wins an election the push forward with as much of their agenda as they can, completely ignoring the wants and needs of the other side. This inevitably results in greater energy on the losing side and when they win the next election they push back, undoing the 'reforms' of the other side. This two-steps forward two-steps back approach does not lead to change, it leads to increasing division and hostility without any lasting improvements for anyone. In the most extreme cases, it can lead to political instability and even civil war.

The West definitely needs a revolution but it needs a revolution of reasonable adults; people willing to have conversations and debates based on evidence; it needs a revolution of people who are willing to negotiate and compromise with people they disagree with; people who are willing to push back against the worst impulses of people who are fundamentally on their side; people who are willing to call bullshit on a piece of false information even if it does support their worldview; people who are liberal enough to recognize that very few problems ever go away on their own but conservative enough to avoid trading their cow because someone promised them magic beans. We need serious people, willing to look at solid evidence, have serious conversations about serious issues and try to forge consensus. In the current political environment that would be a revolution, the rest is just destructive noise.

Canada is worth celebrating if we look forward as much as we look back

2017-07-02T00:11:00.000-04:00

The great thing about Canada, to me, isn’t what it is or has been but what it might yet become and, given our history and culture that could be pretty much anything it wants to be.

My social media feed today, Canada Day, the 150th anniversary of Confederation has been a mixed bag. There have been many celebratory posts, many condemning Canada’s history and many which try to strike a balance between the two.

I suppose that I belong to the latter camp. Obviously, there are things in Canada’s history and even in its present that are worthy of condemnation. However, Canada as a whole can’t be condemned any more than a toddler can be wholly condemned. The truth is that 150 years isn’t a very long time and very little about what kind of country this is, is set in stone.

Being an immigrant from the United States, I can see the stark difference in Canadian history, culture, and identity (or lack thereof). Anytime you attempt anything progressive in the United States you are going up against history. You have to find justification for the change in American history and ingrained American culture. It’s as if you are going to court with an issue and need to find precedent to proceed.

America cannot be understood without its history: From the Pilgrims to the Founding Fathers, the Revolution, slavery, the Civil War, Westward Expansion, Native American genocide, the great depression and the World Wars, history hangs heavy around America’s neck. When you talk about what the United States might become, most Americans look to the past for continuity with what it has been before. People like Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and FDR and many others have an almost cult-like status; as if they were wiser than anyone else is today and any current changes must be ones they would approve of. There are places in the US where the Civil War and even the Revolution are treated, almost, as current events.

Canada does not bear the same weight, at least not in the same way. Yes, John A. McDonald is held in some regard but the Fathers of Confederation are hardly considered infallible. In addition to their patriotism and anti-Americanism, most of Canada’s founders were well known for alcoholism, corruption, and racism. Most Canadians revere important historical figures from around the world as much as, if not more than, our own founders.

Canada’s “dominant culture” barely exists. It has become, primarily, a dog whistle for small groups of white nationalists. The truth is that, while 150 years isn’t very long, very few settlers can trace their roots in this country back that far. According to Statistics Canada more than 12 million people, roughly one-third of Canada’s population, are either first or second generation. Each year 300 thousand to 400 thousand new immigrants arrive here, which is roughly equal to the number of people born here. Meanwhile, thousands of Canadians move abroad anually. As of 2014, there were more than 2.8 million Canadian citizens living abroad. So, “Canadian culture” is constantly being defined, or redefined.

All of this means that many of the most important chapters in Canadian history have yet to be written and these chapters are likely to be good ones. One of the few things that unite Canada's settlers from around the world is that most of them came fleeing war, economic or environmental hardship or persecution (due to race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation). The history of the world's conflicts and disasters is written in the stories of Canada's settlers. And one of the requirements for coming to Canada is that they leave their old religious, ethnic and national conflicts behind.

Canada has few enemies in the world because Canadians come from everywhere in the world. Canadians understand many of the world's conflicts first hand but play an active role in few of those conflicts (Canada invented peacekeeping).

In the coming decades, Canada's tolerance and openness to newcomers will be tested by the waves of immigration caused by climate change, sea level rise, food and water shortages and the political and economic instability that will accompany it. But it is also over that time that Canada will decide what kind of country it wants to be. The most diverse population in the history of the world; immigrants, refugees and their children and grandchildren will make that decision.

Obviously, reconciliation with Canada's Indigenous people will be a big part of the near-term future. However, there is a growing consensus that a true, just and lasting peace with First Nations people is necessary and a growing willingness to work toward that goal.

Beyond that, Canada can become whatever kind of country we choose. Canada is fluid. Even our constitution, which Quebec has never signed, is only 35 years old. We, collectively, have a great deal of history but it is not a history that defines or dictates who we can become. In many ways Canada, where the world's people come together in a mosaic, not a melting pot, is the best hope for humanity's future and that is worth celebrating; Not our past but our future potential.

The case for Canada joining the European Union

2017-06-17T17:58:00.000-04:00

Since the start of the American Revolution, Canada has lived in the shadow of the US. At times America has been the enemy, at other times a close ally, Canada’s number one trading partner, the source of waves of immigration and the destination of Canada’s ‘brain drain’. For the entire time though, Canada’s politics have been determined by what they Americans are doing or how the Americans might react. It is time to change that, at least to the extent possible.

The United States is proving to be an unreliable partner. They fluctuate between free trading internationalism and tight bordered isolationists. When Bill Clinton was president, the US eagerly signed NAFTA. Under Bush, the decision to go to war in Iraq under false pretenses in 2003 caused tens of thousands of deaths, contributed to the rise of ISIS and the Syrian refugee crisis. Under Obama, they led the charge to create the Paris Climate Accords. Then, a few years later, they elected Donald Trump and pulled out of the agreement. Trump’s decision to create immigration policies based on race sealed off the border to some Canadians and now they may bring an end to the North American Free Trade Agreement unless Canada agrees to conditions more favorable to the United States. It is almost as if the US is playing an electoral game of good cop, bad cop.

Canada can remain, when possible, America’s neighbor, friend and trading partner while tying its fortune and its culture to Europe.

This may seem counterintuitive because Canada is not in Europe but that is not as important as it sounds.

According to the European Commission, the basic requirements for joining are

stable institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities;
a functioning market economy and the capacity to cope with competition and market forces in the EU;
the ability to take on and implement effectively the obligations of membership, including adherence to the aims of political, economic and monetary union.

Additionally, it states that: “The Treaty on the European Union states that any European country may apply for membership if it respects the democratic values of the EU and is committed to promoting them.”

While Canada is not geographically in the EU, it is certainly a “European country.” At least the country made up of settlers is European; largely of European origin and culturally and politically a descendent of Europe. Additionally, Malta is in Africa and Cyprus is technically in Asia but both are EU countries. So, geography aside it is theoretically possible for Canada to become a member, pending the approval of current EU countries.

Now we come to the biggest hurdle to Canada’s membership and one that absolutely must be addressed; Canada’s First Nations and Metis people. Any contingent of Canadian representatives sent to talk with the EU must include First Nations and Metis representatives and there must be a consensus among Canada’s Indigenous people before any union is agreed to. Even if Canada doesn’t insist on this, it is very likely that Europe will.

The European Union has made multiple statements and adopted clear policies on the rights and treatment of Indigenous people. A list of documents can be found here.

This may benefit Canada’s first nations people tremendously. When settlers first arrived in North America, First Nations people were unable to negotiate. At the very least they negotiated without understanding the extent of the invasion that was to come or the extent to which settlers would ignore any agreements. If terms can be negotiated between Indigenous people, Canada and the EU, Canada’s First Nations and Metis people would find themselves with guaranteed rights, privileges and protections enforceable by an international court.

Assuming such an agreement can be made, it would benefit all sides greatly.

Canada would go from a market of 35 million to a market of about 635 million. Canada’s maritime provinces would boom as the main point of entry and departure for goods and people going between Canada and Europe. Canadian businesses, workers, and students would be free to live, work and play in 28 European countries. Domestically, Canada has an abundance of land and resources and Europe has an abundance of people and capital. It would strengthen Canada and, in light of Brexit and problems since the 2008 financial crisis, it would strengthen the EU.

Who knows, maybe if the reformers ever win out in Russia, Canada could be part of a single market that spans the top of the world.

Canada has always had an uneasy and uneven relationship with the United States but membership in the EU would change that to an extent. Canada is already tied to Europe culturally. We are already a member of NATO and other treaties with the EU and Canadian soldiers lie buried in European soil from two world wars.

We are entering an age when most of our major problems including climate change, ocean pollution, mass migration of people, invasive species, pandemic diseases, terrorism, cybercrime and others are global, not local. None of them can be solved except in cooperation with other countries. Greater international cooperation is the only way any of these, or dozens of other problems will be solved.

We are entering into a future where the brief tenure of the US as the world's lone superpower will be over. China and India will be global superpowers as will the EU. Canada, left on its own, will be vulnerable to exploitation and intimidation by the US or either of the Asian powers.

Formalizing Canada’s historic ties to Europe in a political and economic bond could easily be of benefit all parties involved immediately and far into the future.

The West needs to do better at calling out our own extremists

2017-06-05T20:26:00.001-04:00

Every time there is a terrorist act committed by Muslims against westerners there are calls for Muslims to denounce terror. This has always been something of an absurd request because most victims of terror are, themselves, Muslim - it should be fairly obvious that they don’t support terror. Still, the requests always come and Muslims comply with them.

However, Islam is not the problem, extremism is the problem and radical Islam only makes up part of "extremism". Western white supremacist, xenophobic and Islamaphobic individuals and groups are the flip side of ISIS. Without their contributions, groups like ISIS and Al Queda would have a hard time existing.

The pattern goes like this:

1) There is a terrorist incident (in the west, terrorist incidents that happen in the Middle East, Africa or Asia are largely ignored).

2) White Nationalists and related individuals and groups use it as an excuse to denounce Islam; to call for mass incarceration and violence; to label Islam a religion of hate and generally to try to convince people that Islam hates the West and that people need to defend themselves

3) Radical groups use this as a recruiting tool to show young Muslims that they are hated in the west and that they need to act to defend themselves.

And then the loop repeats, with each side using the other to recruit and inspire more hate and violence. Each side is dependent for existence on the other and both sides are at least partially responsible for the actions of the other.

While Muslim leaders, groups and individuals now almost automatically condemn any illegal act by a Muslim, people in the West tend to let our half of the equation slide.

Today, in response to recent terror attack in London Louisiana Republican Rep. Clay Higgins said, on his Facebook page, that "The free world... all of Christendom... is at war with Islamic horror" and that anyone suspected (supected!) of belonging to a radical muslim group should be hunted down and killed: "Hunt them, identify them, and kill them. Kill them all. For the sake of all that is good and righteous. Kill them all." Statements like this provide ISIS with a whole new catalogue of recruiting tools and statements like that are plentiful after any Islamic terror attack in the west.

Such statements are far less likely after incidents such as the mass shooting by a white nationalist at a Charleston, SC Church or the mass shooting, by a white nationalist, at a Quebec mosque. Why? Because the people who commit those acts are on the same side, or at least inspired by, people like Rep. Higgins.

This is not a war on terror, it is not a war of Christianity vs. Islam or West vs. East it is a war between conflicting racist, xenophobic, extremist groups. Most of us have no real side in that war at all and neither do most of the war's casualties.

I take no issue with governments maintaining lists of terrorist groups and known supporters of those groups. However, all racist, ultra-nationalist and religious extremist groups and their supporters belong on the same list. This includes white nationalist and other extremist groups operating in North America, Australia, New Zealand and Europe.

Winning this war can only happen if all of the extremists lose. A blow to any one of them is a blow to all of them. It is not enough for Muslims to denounce Islamic extremism, it is up to all of us to reject all form of extremism and push back against those who promote it.

No one cares about sovereignty when they're winning

2017-05-26T16:18:00.000-04:00

As a dual citizen who believes in open borders, free trade and the need for a global constitutional republic to deal with an increasing number of issues that require an international response, I admit that sovereignty is a complicated issue. However, I certainly feel that people have the right to elect their own government representatives without outside interference.

As basic as this principle seems to me, it does not seem to be shared by anyone on the right or the left. All politicians, political parties and ideologues will beat their chest over sovereignty when it suits their purpose but as long as their side is winning, they don't really care. The hypocrisy on this issue in recent years, from all sides, has been staggering.

In Canada, 3rd party groups stand accused of having undo influence on the 2015 election - in part using foreign donations and loophole that allowed that to happen may soon be closed. At the same time, the Tories who were hurt most by this spending were accused of bringing in professional campaigners from the US in 2011. Stephen Harper, the leader of that party until 2015 also never fully disclosed the list of donors to his leadership bids.

In British Columbia, the governing Liberal Party had no qualms at all about openly accepting large foreign donations.

The NDP who, along with the Liberals, benefited from the 3rd party spending in 2015 claim to believe strongly in sovereignty. One of their big issues in 2015 was defeating the Trans Pacific Partnership which, they claimed, was a threat to sovereignty. However, the NDP had to issues with voicing opinions on the US election and even campaigning for Bernie Sanders.

On a personal note, I know that many of the NDP rank and file were among the most militant supporters of Sanders. I lost friends and saw American friends verbally attacked (including having racist and sexist comments hurtled at them) by Canadian “progressives” supporting Sanders. These same people would turn around and immediately begin talking about sovereignty if you mentioned the TPP. They would even openly say that they would not be ok with US influence in Canadian elections, even while making plans to drive to New York or Michigan to campaign for Sanders.

Of course Clinton, Obama and even Donald Trump all got some help from Canada as well.

For whatever it's worth, I've never heard of an American candidate or party turning away Canadian volunteers because of sovereignty (but it is illegal for them to take financial donations). As hypocritical Canadians of all political stripes may be about sovereignty, Americans are worse.

Right now the US is justifiably obsessed with Russian interference in the 2016 election. Prior to the election, much of the US was concerned with foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation. Over the years the US has worried about foreign donations, foreign influence, hacking, voter fraud, communist influences and anything that might make an election anything but free, fair, democratic and American.

At the same time the US has had its fingers in just about every election, anywhere in the world since at least World War II. The US has helped to overthrow democratically elected governments, propped up tyrants and helped them put down democracy movements, funded armed rebels and supported military coups d'etat.

As I said at the start, sovereignty is a complicated issue for me. I am legally entitled to vote in two countries but I've never been certain that I should. It seems to me that the residents of an area, citizens or not, should select their representatives in government.

I also believe that people are going to have to give up some amount of local sovereignty in the coming years. I do not see a way to seriously address the important international issues of the 21st century without some form of global government. Issues like climate change, ocean pollution and over fishing, mass immigration due to climate change, food and water shortages, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, cybercrime and dozens of other issues are going to require international consensus and a coordinated global response, otherwise it will be nearly impossible to act on or regulate them at all. In crafting such an international consensus, it will simply not be possible to appease every local community.

With that said, people still need to be able to freely choose their own representatives in government without undo influence from outside individuals or groups. National and international interests and people pushing specific ideologies should not have play a significant role in choosing local candidates (unless those interests and ideologies are themselves rooted in the local community).

Justin Trudeau's government should take this opportunity to close every loophole and not just one. When it comes to elections, jurisdictions should become walled gardens. People from outside the community can certainly have and voice opinions and federal and provincial political parties should be able to contribute a limited amount to local candidates but other than that, isolation should be the rule.

Federal candidates and campaigns should be prohibited from receiving funds or volunteers from outside the country, but also from outside the riding. Additionally, the government should make it a misdemeanor to actively participate in or contribute to an election that is not your own (in a location in which you are not a legal citizen or resident), whether it is in another riding, another province or another country.

If we are going to respect sovereignty and the democratic process, then let's do that without leaving any wiggle room or loopholes.

I also think that independent election monitors should become standard, in any election anywhere in the world but that is a discussion for another day.

Universal Basic Income isn’t just a solution for the future, it’s a solution for now

2017-05-19T19:25:00.000-04:00

Much has been written in the last few years about Universal Basic Income (UBI) as a solution to the coming wave of job automation. It has come to be seen by many as the only way to provide economic security in an age when job displacement is high and frequent. However, there is no good reason to wait. UBI could do a great deal to sooth the current wave of left wing and right wing populism in Canada, the United States, United Kingdom and Europe.

It is true that job loss to automation will be deep and many will be displaced. That is no longer something in the far off future, it is something that is already underway. Politicians could wait until the pain is felt a little more deeply to implement a UBI but it seems to me that doing it now, before people lose their jobs, will make the process a little less frightening to individuals and society. It will also give people a chance to make adjustments to their skills and career trajectory before they are replaced by a machine.

Beyond that though, a UBI could quickly solve a number of problems for a wide variety of constituencies and quiet the current wave of populism which has manifested itself as nationalism, xenophobia, racism, sexism and protectionism. In other words it could allow national leaders to make better decisions rather than being forced into self-destructive measures like Brexit and harsh immigration restrictions. Measures that are meant to reassure an angry or fearful population but that are economically destructive.

Of course racism, nationalism and protectionism are always present to an extent in society but those forces only seem to become truly dangerous to large numbers of people at times of economic insecurity. When people are feeling anxious about their own economic future, or that of their children, it is easier to sell them economic snake oil or to point to “others” as scapegoats for their stress and anger.

In general, when people aren’t stressed about money they sleep better, they seem to make better and more thoughtful decisions. They also appear to be more tolerant and peaceful and enjoy a variety of other personal and social benefits.

Over the last few decades, wages have tended to stagnate for the middle class and the working class. Automation began taking jobs as early as the 1990s and while globalization, and the computer revolution has helped some tremendously others have been left out entirely. Additionally, better health care, longer life expectancy and a lack of retirement savings have kept people in the work force longer, which has kept younger people from being able to get in at all.

At this point a short list of economic stresses being faced by significant portions of the population would include:

An inability to pay for university education
An inability to pay back loans from university
Being stuck in the (short term, temporary, part time, freelance) “gig economy”
An inability to afford health care (in the United States)
An inability to afford prescription medications (in many places)
An inability to afford mental health care or dental health (in many places)
An inability to afford housing (especially in large cities)
Being asked to accept unpaid internships to gather experience (before being hired for an actual job)
An increased use of homeless shelters and food banks
Working people, including military families, forced to apply for food stamps and welfare benefits
An inability to afford quality day care (coupled with an inability to work full time as a result)
Parents who can almost but not quite afford private school
Parents who can’t meet the needs of special needs children or develop the gifts of gifted children
Workers who can’t take time off to help a sick or incapacitated loved one
High levels of credit card debt at very high interest rates
The inability to miss more than a single paycheque without being late on bills
[the list goes on, but that’s a good start]

Add to all of that a general uncertainty about the future. People have these stresses (or some from the list) and aren’t sure things are going to get better; In fact there is a growing sense that things are going to get worse due to economics, or climate, or globalization, or technology or all of the above. It should not be surprising that when people get a chance to vote, many of them express themselves in angry, even reckless and irresponsible, ways.

Yes, you can take a hard right wing approach and circle the wagons; call government a failure, scream 'every man for himself' and ‘take care of your own’. You can take a hard left approach and try to address each of these problems (and more) individually through a myriad of new government programs and services. But with UBI you can simply significantly increase the incomes of everyone proportionally, to the extent that they need it and give people an opportunity to solve whichever problems on the list impact them the most.

UBI, in the most general sense, is typically pegged at ‘the poverty line plus a bit’. Basic Income Canada recommends twenty-thousand dollars for each Canadian adult, so I’ll use that as an example, for now. Imagine what a poor, middle class or working class person could do to solve their own problems with an extra $20 thousand - go down the list above and imagine how many of the problems on that list could be solved with the money. Imagine what it would do for poor communities, for First Nations people and for the peace of mind for just about anyone who is currently feeling less than comfortable.

Would it be expensive? Yes, absolutely it would but the UK has just voted to diminish their geopolitical and economic clout for the long term, possibly permanently, out of fear and anger. The United States has just undermined its own democracy, damaged its international reputation and possibly national security, added fuel to the fire of racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia that have always lurked there and done other damage to itself still unknown out of fear and anger. Those things are going to be expensive too and who knows how much more damage may yet be done if the anger, stress and anxiety is allowed to foment for years to come.

Even if you wanted to create dozens of individual programs to address all of the concerns I listed, it would take many years to do so, would greatly expand the bureaucracy and would certainly cost even more than UBI.

The bottom line is that there is an opportunity to nearly eliminate poverty, at least in its extreme forms; to create a system where nearly anyone who is working full time is thrust into the middle class and to remove much of the stress and anxiety from the working class. To create economic stability and freedom for individuals but with a system that still rewards hard work and actually shrinks government.

In it's own way this is as ambitious as the Moon landing. It is something that has long been dreamt of but never accomplished in the history of civilization. However, in this case there is nothing to invent, we don't have to figure out how to get people onto the surface of the moon and back safely or overcome the dangers of space. We just have to figure out how to come up with the money.

The idea of the social contract has been the bedrock of western, liberal democracy since the beginning. In North America we haven’t revisited that contract in significantly since the 1930s. Given the technological, societal, economic and geopolitical shifts since that time it is no wonder that the old one isn’t holding up well.

Whatever the future may hold and whatever direction we decide to go in, it is time to pass a universal basic income and put an end to the days when anyone is forced to go to bed hungry or sleep on the street in the world’s most affluent societies.

James Comey and the GOP establishment may be the winners of the 2016 election

2017-05-17T10:39:00.000-04:00

Embed from Getty Images

No one but James Comey knows what his future plans or ambitions are. However, whatever they may be, the Republican establishment will be sure to help the former FBI Director to achieve them. If the memo reported by the New York Times leads to the downfall of President Donald Trump, Comey will have orchestrated the downfall of both of 2016's major party candidates, inserted Mike Pence (or Paul Ryan) into the white house and emerged looking like a patriotic hero.

Just days before the 2016 election, Comey publicly announced he was re-opening the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails. The move caused Clinon's poll numbers to spike downward and is widely credited with costing her the election. On May 9, just before Comey was fired by Trump, it was revealed that Comey's testimony to congress about the Clinton investigation wasn't accurate.

While Comey originally stated that Clinton aide Huma Abedin "forwarded hundreds and thousands" of emails to her husband, Anthony Weiner's laptop. In reality it appears that there were relatively few emails, all a result of Abedin backing up her phone. The matter probably could have been cleared up in a matter of hours without any need to re-open the investigation and it is likely that Hillary Clinton would be sitting in the White House right now.

Of course that news got buried by the events that followed shortly after: Immediately after the updated reports about Abedin came out, Comey was fired by Trump. This was followed by several days of accusations and recriminations because Comey was also handling the investigation into the Trump administrations connections to Russia. While all of that was happening, news broke that Trump had shared top secret intelligence with Russian officials and then last night the New York Times reported that Comey had evidence proving Trump tried to obstruct the Russian investigation.

Obstruction is the offence that marked the beginning of the end for Richard Nixon and it could lead to the resignation or impeachment of Donald Trump.

Throughout 2016 as Donald Trump continued to gain momentum in the primaries, the GOP establishment tried repeatedly to put together a "Stop Trump" movement. In the end, they failed to unite or coalesce around a candidate and were forced to choose between supporting Trump and holding their noses and voting for Hillary Clinton (who most Republican insiders have hated since the 1990s).

If Trump goes, Comey will have almost single-handedly solved the problem for them - removing both Clinton and Trump from the picture and installing an unpopular Indiana governor who no one voted for into the Oval Office. Vice President Mike Pence is a unspectacular but reliable footsoldier for the GOP establishment, who was facing an uphill battle to win re-election in Indiana before joining the Trump ticket. While perhaps not the first choice of GOP power brokers, Pence is a fiscal conservative who is liked by the religious right and is unlikely to get in the way of anything the Republican controlled congress tries to do.

Some on the left want Pence to be impeached too, but that is unlikely. The Vice President has been careful to keep his hands clean. The reason given for the firing of National Security Advisor Mike Flynn was that he lied to Pence. And the story about Trump asking Comey to "get over" the Russia investigation also states that Pence was asked to leave the room before Trump and Comey talked. Even if Pence were to go out with Trump, the order of succession would put Paul Ryan in the White House - also an acceptable outcome for the GOP establishment.

If the Republicans need a new face for 2020, one that is considered highly credible on the right and the left, I hear James Comey is looking for a job.

America, as we know it, cannot survive without an independent investigation of Trump and Russia

2017-05-10T00:53:00.000-04:00

People frequently say that, at certain times, politicians must choose country over party. Sometimes it is true and sometimes it’s just hyperbole. However, if there has ever been a time when it was true, then the Trump - Russia scandal is it. It has the potential to weigh as heavily on the American consciousness as Watergate and the John F. Kennedy assassination combined.

Most Americans do not really understand what is being investigated and that is part of the problem. The number of players mentioned by various reports is mind boggling. The list includes but is not limited to most high ranking members of the Trump administration and cabinet, almost everyone in Trump’s immediate family, a former member of British Intelligence, a number of Russian officials (some of whom are deceased now), other high ranking Republican elected officials, individuals from the FBI, CIA and the Justice Department, Julian Assange, Russian business and mafia figures, individuals from the so-called “alt-right” and (indirectly - as witnesses not actors) members of the Obama administration and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Without a thorough, transparent, completely independent and non-partisan investigation during which everything is made clear and no questions are left unanswered, America will never be seen the same way, domestically or internationally.

America’s allies around the world are currently, no doubt, wondering whether the United States is a reliable partner and whether any intelligence of any kind can be shared. Global intelligence agencies currently have to wonder whether their assets around the world are safe or whether they have been compromised by the current administration, its allies and the leaks springing from every part of the US government.

More importantly, Americans confidence in their government is currently shaky at best. In many quarters it is already non-existent. America can handle another scandal. Voters can accept that corruption and unethical behavior has taken place, if it is uncovered, exposed and punished. What people can’t handle is not knowing. Anyone who knows American history (or anyone who just remembers) knows that the JFK assassination still breeds conspiracy theories today. The Watergate scandal shook people’s faith in government for years and created an increased appetite for investigative journalism, especially where political scandal is concerned. It is hard to count the number of things that have had a “gate” attached to them in the news cycle since Nixon’s resignation.

However, the Kennedy assassination is 50 years in the past now. Watergate has been over for 40. Most people see those events as part of ancient history and, at least in the case of Watergate, feel like they know what happened and who the players were.

If Republicans in congress continue to try to sweep this under the rug, to bury it and diminish its importance it will not go away. It will fester and grow and shape people’s feelings about the United States, its government and most especially the Republican Party for decades to come. It will breed conspiracy theories and create deep distrust, not only among American voters but among America’s allies. It will not only impact the feelings of foreign leaders, but shape the way that everyday citizens in countries around the world feel about America.

I have little doubt at this point that a dark cloud will be cast over parts of the Republican party if this scandal is ever fully exposed but the damage there is done. If the truth doesn’t come out, people will be left to draw their own conclusions, right or wrong, based on whatever information they have been exposed to. Trying to bury it now only makes more people look guilty.

No one can say that voters in 2016 weren’t already nervous, angry and distrustful of government. America simply can’t bear the weight of the current scandal and remain the same country - not unless every fact of the case is laid bare for the world to see and every person involved in illegal or unethical activity is made to answer for their actions.

If they have any patriotism, even any honour at all; if they don’t want the United States to be viewed as a corrupt and diminishing world power, on its way to being a banana republic, Republicans in Congress must turn the Trump/Russia investigation over to a special prosecutor.

That person must be seen as non-partisan and independent and charged with reading every document, interviewing every witness with the full cooperation of everyone involved. They must reveal to congress and the public the full story behind interference in the 2016 election, any and all ties between the administration and Russia and any efforts to cover up wrongdoing. The prosecutor must be allowed to independently subpoena any and all documents and to compel the testimony of anyone who may have knowledge of the issues. Finally, they must be given the power to level charges against anyone involved.

That is not simply a wish-list from the Democrats. It is the only way forward for the Republican Party and for the United States.

Things you can call bullshit on, according to science

2017-04-30T13:40:00.000-04:00

Regardless of what memes pop up in your timeline or what it says in the emails your mom sends, the following things are true according to science:

Chemical-free isn't a real thing, everything is made of chemicals
Chemtrails are just water vapour
Chiropractors are not doctors
Climate change is real and caused by humans
Conspiracy theories that involve any large number of people are very unlikely to be true
There is no cure for the common cold (secret/suppressed or otherwise); there is also no cure for cancer yet.
Detoxing is fake, your liver and kidneys remove toxins from your body but nothing else does
Gender differences; differences between men and women, aren't that significant scientifically speaking
Homeopathy doesn't work.
Modern humans came out of Africa, most of us can trace our ancestry to a single migration from there.
the Earth is not flat and it is 4.56 billion years old, not six thousand
Earth's 6th mass extinction event is currently underway.
Evolution by natural selection is the key to understanding the development of life on Earth
Fluoride in drinking water is a good idea.
The left brain vs. right brain thing is a myth, so is the idea that we only use 10 percent of our brain
Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are perfectly safe
Gluten-sensitivity, among people who do not have celiac disease, may not exist.
Herbal medicines are less regulated than pharmaceuticals, aren't tested as carefully and aren't necessarily any safer
Most Juice is not any healthier than soda.
Milk is pasteurized for a reason.
the Moon landing was not a hoax
Naturopaths are not doctors
Nuclear power will be a part of any clean energy future and that's ok
Organic produce isn't better for you or the planet
Personality tests such as Myers-Briggs have no value.
Pluto is still not a planet but there may be another planet in the distant reaches of our solar system.
Race is a social/cultural construct with no foundation in biology/science
Vaccines are safe and effective; they do not cause autism.
Vitamin and mineral supplements don't help most people most of the time, with a few exceptions

Fox News should seize this moment to reinvent themselves

2017-04-23T23:34:00.001-04:00

Fox News is rapidly becoming the network of racists and sexual predators. Every day new allegations of harassment, intimidation and abuse are coming to light. These are periodically followed by multi-million dollar court settlements and occasionally someone else gets fired.

The supposedly ‘fair and balanced’ Fox rose to prominence during the Rush Limbaugh right wing radio talk show days and, quite apart from its legal problems, is in danger of being killed by the monster they created. Through Fox’s one sided coverage that played fast and loose with facts, their audience drifted farther and farther right and now is losing part of its audience to organizations like Breitbart. Fox simply doesn’t seem capable of moving far enough to the right, or fast enough. They don’t seem willing to abandon reality altogether in favour of a paranoid, flat-Earth, what-if-the-South-had-won-the-Civil-War fantasy land.

At the moment though, the market is wide open for a new cable news network.

MSNBC is ok, if you agree with them ideologically. It’s not that they’re bad, it just that you have to remember to pack a few extra grains of salt if you’re going there. They don’t lie, but they are in the business of telling liberals what they want to hear.

CNN at this point is only really liked by people who love reality television but aren’t really into politics. The right hates them because Donald Trump says to and because they don’t spend enough time saying paranoid fantasies are true. The progressive left hates them because they’re corporate. At the moment, the middle / left-centre is displeased with them because they did a poor job of covering the election - treating it more like a reality TV show and less like something of profound national and international importance.

So, there is an opportunity here for Fox to steal a good chuck of the center from CNN, but to do it the network would have to reinvent itself. Between Trump, fake news, the March for Science and the many important issues facing the world there is a demand for something real and reliable. If Fox wants to reinvent itself this could be the moment to clean house and start something new; to get rid of their usual suspects and all of their baggage and start an intelligent, thoughtful, fact based cable news network.

They might even want to go off the air for awhile, build their new team and do it right, then come back with a solid team that combines respected veterans and talented newcomers; make sure the faces on the air reflect the diversity of America in terms of race, ethnicity, gender and age.

Cover news, politics and current events - with a eye to international affairs currently lacking on all of the cable news networks. Also, cover science, economics, business, sports, arts and entertainment but cover it all well. Thoroughly fact check everything you say, bring in recognized experts in their fields to talk about important issues and avoid rumour, gossip, pointless bickering and the rest of the traps that have diminished the credibility of CNN. Bring in intelligent liberals and conservatives to have rational, moderated discussions (complete with fact checking) on issues facing the nation and the world. Encourage respectful disagreement based on mutually accepted facts.

How likely is this? Not very, but not completely impossible either.

At the moment, Fox News is in a bad place. Its audience is shrinking and it is under a cloud of distrust because of the way women and minorities have been treated there - apparently for decades. Even prior to this though, there were signs that the news division was out of step with the overall strategy of 21st Century Fox.

This is, after all, the same company that brings you the Simpsons, the X-Files, In Living Color, Sons of Anarchy, Fargo, American Horror Story (and many others). It's the network that at one time aired Michael Moore's short lived TV Nation. It's the studio that made the Star Wars films, Alien, the Martian, the X-Men and Deadpool. It's the network that made Neil Degrasse Tyson's Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey and aired it across all of their networks. It's the group that bought National Geographic and gave Tyson a regular talk show as well.

There have also been reports, for many years, of disagreement within the Murdoch clan (Fox's owners) about the network, its future and how it fit into the overall Fox empire. According to the Hollywood Reporter:

"Forsaking establishment cred, the new network, in Ailes' aggressive bid for an under-served right-wing audience, went on to clobber CNN in ratings and profits. But 20 years later, CNN is again becoming the model for Murdoch's sons, Lachlan and James, as they envision a post-Ailes world. CNN's current chief, Jeff Zucker, is even said among industry insiders to be one of the sons' top choices to take over at Fox News. In part this reflects the Murdoch sons' view of the future of 21st Century Fox as a modern, multiplatform content and distribution company, one without their father's political stain."

While the sons' fascination with Zucker and CNN may not sound promising, CNN is also running into some credibility/trust issues of their own and there is hope. From the same Hollywood Reporter piece:

"James Murdoch ... has a lot of TV news experience. Sky News in the U.K., under his oversight as BSkyB CEO from 2003 to 2007, was an aggressive BBC competitor, a tad right of the BBC perhaps, but self-consciously objective and decidedly not Fox News — CNN in its Turner incarnation [old CNN, pre-OJ Simpson trial] was something of its model."

So it is possible that the Murdoch's could see the writing on the wall and the opportunity. They could make Fox News relevant again, and relevant to people for whom it never has been before. They could make Fox an integrated network with quality entertainment programming and high quality news and information and they could get something that marketers drool over: A good story; 'the disgraced right wing network that did the completely unexpected and restored quality and ethics to television journalism'.

I'm not saying that the will do this, but they can - if they want to.

Before we can have better government, we're going to need better voters

2017-04-20T14:29:00.000-04:00

: Photo credit: eldeeem via Visualhunt.com / CC BY-NC-SA

One of the primary roles of any government, under any political system, is to allocate resources. Government regulates industry, controls public lands and sets tax rates to determine how big the “pie” is going to be and then decides how much of the pie various individuals and groups receive.

The problem is that very few people have any real understanding of how this works and even fewer people understand how it plays out in a global context, with people and governments around the world competing for resources.

Setting social issues aside for the moment: The right generally prefers smaller government, less regulation and lower taxes despite being frequent beneficiaries of and in some cases dependent upon government programs. The left tends to prefer larger government, more regulation and more programs (so higher taxes) but in many cases don’t seem to know or care where the money comes from.

Conservatives favour some of the most expensive things government does including the military, border patrol, law enforcement and prisons. They also tend to support programs that help rural communities, veterans, farmers and the elderly. When you add all of that up, it amounts to a large government budget but they consistently ask for lower taxes.

In the United States, the largest recipients of government largess (those who get back the most for each tax dollar paid) are South Carolina, North Dakota, Florida, Louisiana and Alabama (source: the Atlantic). All of these states get at least $3 back for every one they send to Washington; all are fairly reliable ‘red’ states (though Florida is wavering) and all would suffer tremendously if they ever got their way on taxes.

As ironic as all of this is, the reasoning on the left is frequently not much better. They tend to like social programs like education, housing, infrastructure, health care and financial assistance for the poor. Again, all of this amounts to big government. The left likes to tax and spend, the right likes to spend without taxing (which creates the deficits that they dislike so much).

At the moment the big, overarching issue on the left is income inequality - which is inarguably a serious problem. However, their logic on this issue leaves a great deal to be desired. They like to use statistics like this one: currently 8 people have as much wealth as the bottom 50%. What they are loath to acknowledge is that they are not the bottom 50%. Almost none of the world's poorest half live in Western, developed nations. An income of $32,500 (USD) puts you in the top 1% of earners globally (just $12,000 annually puts you in the top 15%, even $100/month keeps you out of the bottom 50 percent). They also don’t like to talk about the fact that for the bottom 50% of the world’s population, things have been steadily getting better for the last few decades.

The problem isn't that they are wrong about the problem, it's that their solution won't work. If I come up with a product that is so popular that (on average) everyone in Canada gives me $1 for it, I'd have 33 million dollars and would be in the 1 percent anywhere in the world but if government takes that money away and divides it equally among the people, everyone still gets only $1 back. If the government divides it only among the poorest 20 percent of the population of Canada, everyone gets $5. If you took Bill Gates entire $80 billion fortune and divided it equally among everyone in the world, everyone would get $10.66. If you divided it only among the poorest 50 percent, only in the United States everyone would get a one time payment of $484.

People are upset because so few have so much but because there are so few of them, if you take all the money from the 1% and divide it among the other 99% the result is going to be disappointing. (If you take an extra large pizza and share it with everyone in your apartment, the result will be very different than if you share the same pizza with everyone in your neighbourhood.)

This isn't to say that taxes can't go up or that new programs aren't needed just that people have to be selective about what they want because “tax the rich” won't pay for everything people on the left want. Even if people said “well, we'll get what we can” and dramatically raised taxes, the result would be a flight of capital into other countries with lower taxes. People would stop investing in the US, would stop keeping their money here and might leave altogether. In the end, this will cost more than tax revenue because in 2017 it is technical skills, creativity and innovation that create jobs and drive economies. If the best and brightest leave, so do jobs and economic growth.

International competition is both a blessing and an obstacle for many countries. If the US says 'we're going to raise corporate taxes', Apple can move jobs and resources to Ireland; If the US says, 'we're going to curtail immigration', Microsoft can move jobs to Canada; If the government says 'we're not going to let you develop this new technology here', just about every other country in the world would line up to let Elon Musk develop it in their country; If the government says 'we're going to raise minimum wage to $20', companies can move jobs overseas. If that isn't a possibility then they will soon be able to automate many of them, replacing employees with machines.

There are few solutions to get around this international reality; one is isolationism but that will inevitably lead to the flight of talent, capital and jobs, resource shortages, inflation and a shrinking economy overall as exports dry up. Post Brexit Britain is only starting to see the unforeseen consequences of trying to build walls around your economic garden.

The other way to deal with globalization and unequal global competition would be the opposite of isolationism: We could create some form of global government with the power to set health and safety regulations, environmental regulations, trade and immigration policy, a global corporate tax rate and have the power to enforce all of the above. That will almost certainly come to be at some point, but would be incredibly unpopular across the political spectrum in Western countries at the moment. In a global parliament, if we achieved unity and voted as a block, the US, Canada, the EU, Australia, New Zealand and the UK would only hold about one-seventh of the seats. In other words, India and China voting together could outvote the West by more than two to one.

Add to all of this that substantial changes are occurring in technology that will reshape local and global societies and economies: Robotics, artificial intelligence and automation will eliminate hundreds of millions of global jobs, including low-skilled, menial labour and highly skilled jobs requiring post-graduate degrees. While this is happening people will begin living longer, healthier lives and retiring much later (if at all). As 'developing nations' make improvements to infrastructure and education, competition for remaining jobs and industries will become more intense. While all of this is going on, the world will be dealing with the fallout of climate change, global water shortages and resource shortages from polluted and over-exploited oceans.

What the US and Canada and every other nation need to do going forward is a bit of everything. We need a military, law enforcement and border patrol. We also need education and infrastructure in order to remain competitive and programs aimed at creating a certain level of fairness and equality in order to create social and political stability. We need to forge strong international partnerships and trade agreements because none of the challenges facing us in the 21st century can be solved by any one nation acting alone and because access to the global marketplace will be essential to survival for companies of any substantial size.

We also have to do all of this while keeping taxes and regulation at a level that is competitive globally so that companies and individuals will want to invest and create jobs here, instead of moving operations to China, India, Latin America or elsewhere. The US, UK and even some in Canada like to think that their country can go it alone and be self-sufficient but none of them can very effectively.

Hollywood movie studios (as an example) are already starting to care more what the Chinese think of a film than what American audiences think. If forced to choose between an American market of 330 million and a Chinese or Indian market of more than a billion, most companies will take the later. If forced to choose between a British market of 64 million and a EU with more than 700 million, most companies will take the latter.

No ideology, left or right, lends itself to the delicate balance that is required going forward. Unfortunately, at the moment, a balanced approach can make it difficult to get elected. This is especially true in the United States where people are tarred with labels like Democrat or Republican In Name Only (DINO/RINO), where people are 'too corporate' or not conservative enough; where deviation from an ideological agenda, on even a single issue can cause a primary challenge or keep part of a candidate's base from the polls.

It is currently fashionable to blame people who don't share your ideology, the media, schools, lobbyists, corporations, bureaucrats, the generation of people before or after yours and elected officials themselves for the state of Western democracy and economics. However, if western democracy fails it will ultimately be because of the voters, not those who are elected.

Andrew Scheer is wrong: Freedom of speech in Canada is just fine

2017-04-19T15:36:00.001-04:00

As part of his bid to win the Conservative leadership, Andrew Scheer is pretending that free speech is under threat on Canadian campuses. What he is really talking about however, is protecting people from the consequences of unpopular speech including protecting hate speech from negative reactions.

What really seems to trouble conservatives like Scheer is that bigoted positions which have long been the norm in most of the Western world are not as welcome as they once were.

The right to free speech, thought and expression are meant to protect individuals from official government sanction. The government cannot, for example, punish an individual for being “pro-life”. The government cannot punish journalists for paining them (deliberately or not) in a bad light. Free speech protection does not mean that anyone has to listen to your opinion or read the article you wrote.

Free speech does not guarantee your right to speak your mind at work. It does not guarantee that you can shout your views in a crowded restaurant or private club. It doesn't give you the right to wander into a store and start harassing customers because they are buying products you don't like. All institutions, outside of government, are free to set their own rules and standards governing free speech, individuals are free to ignore what you have to say and to use their own right to free speech to say they don't agree.

According to the National Post, Scheer feels that:

”A “troubling trend” has surfaced where small groups on campus can shut down events, prevent guest speakers from giving lecture and ban activities or clubs they disagree with, Scheer said in an interview Wednesday. “Campuses are no longer the bastions of free speech that they once were.”

Recent examples include a pro-life group having its event canceled at Wilfrid Laurier University; a student newspaper at McGill refusing to print pro-Israel articles; and protest surrounding University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson for his views on gender pronouns.”

While I’m not sure what event at Laurier which Sheer is referring to, it is the right of any publication (student run or otherwise) to publish whatever they choose. The right to free speech does not guarantee a right to publication. It also does not guarantee the popularity of your speech. Jordan Peterson’s refusal to refer to people using their preferred pronoun has offended a great many people and some of those people have used their own right to free speech to protest.

It is hardly a new thing that some groups have a hard time on campus. It used to be LGBT groups and (real or imagined) communist organizations. Those who wield very unpopular or controversial opinions have always faced enhanced levels of scrutiny and have had extra obstacles placed in their path. However, in 2017 very few groups are actually banned from campus anywhere. What has changed is which groups and opinions are unpopular and this has become a serious issue on the far right of the political spectrum in Canada and the United States.

Every year, the Campus Freedom Index from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) releases a report in which they lambaste Canadian universities for their lack of freedom. These reports are regularly covered by media outlets but most of them don't mention John Carpay. Carpay, a former Reform Party and Wildrose Candidate and provincial director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation is also the founder of the JCCF.

Again it is not free speech in general that conservatives are concerned about. It is, in fact, just the opposite. Scheer and like-minded conservatives want to stifle dissent and protest against unpopular points of view - primarily as it concerns things like LGBT rights, sexism, racism and Islamophobia. Specifically Sheer would like to strip government funding from universities which do not provide a forum for these views, even when it is against the wishes of the student body. It is an attempt to extend to right to free speech into a right to be heard and published. It is an attempt to shield people who have unpopular views from the negative reactions of others to those views.

It is not surprising, I suppose, that intolerant and bigoted people feel that their opinions should be more protected than the opinions of others. However, it is not something that any rational person should vote for in the 21st century.

How Trump's moves against Syria may benefit Vladamir Putin

2017-04-11T14:52:00.000-04:00

: Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via VisualHunt / CC BY-SA

The US attack on air bases in Syria last Thursday obviously help Donald Trump domestically. They came just as Congress took it’s scheduled Easter recess. With Congress not in session, changes are that there will be no significant developments in the multiple ongoing investigations into the Trump administration’s ties to Russia and the media could focus instead on Trump’s newfound differences with Putin. If nothing else the bombing helped push the news that House Intelligence Committee chair Devon Nunes had recused himself earlier that day and that Nunes himself was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee.

Trump surrogates were quick to take to the air to proclaim that the attack showed that the administration was not colluding with Russia. But it is not immediately clear that the attack itself or calls for regime change hurt Vladamir Putin or are contrary to Russia's interests. It may actually help him in several ways.

First, Putin's primary interest in propping up Assad is not based on Russia's economic interests or even the fact that Syria has been an ally of Russia since gaining its independence. Instead, Putin seems to view this as a move to stop western interests and help to prevent a westernization and liberalization of the Middle East. It is an old KGB officer fighting a proxy war against 'Western imperialism' and win or lose, it plays well with Putin's base in Russia. (See The Economist explains: 'Why Russia is an ally of Assad' from September 2015.) A direct US strike, causing limited damage, combined with additional sabre rattling and calls for Assad to step down actually enhances the propaganda value of Syria for Putin without costing him anything.

For his part Putin, and some of his allies in the Western media, denied that Assad was behind the chemical attacks at all and attempted to generate conspiracy theories to cause confusion.

Additionally, calls for regime change in Syria, combined with evidence that the US is willing to get militarily involved have the potential of prolonging and/or deepening the conflict in Syria. As of late last year, the consensus opinion was that Assad was in the final stages of winning the Syrian civil war and that ISIS was crumbling.

The stated goal or regime change keeps the conflict going indefinitely or at least through next year's Russian elections. An extended conflict means keeping already depressed energy prices from sinking even lower (which helps both Putin and Trump), it likely means increased weapon sales to Syria and Iran for Putin (and for the US and various other Western countries to various clients) and it helps to keep the minds of the Russian people off of their weak domestic economy.

Finally, an end to the fighting in Syria would cause many of the millions of refugees in the Middle East and Europe to head for home. Currently Putin is using the refugees to great advantage to cause discord in Europe and put politicians in power who better serve Moscow's interests.

The Syrian conflict has numerous players, many of whom have multiple conflicting interests (see video below). It is entirely possible that I'm missing multiple angles on this. However, it does not seem obvious to me that Donald Trump's bombing of a Syrian air field and calls for regime change hurt Vladamir Putin's interests in any way.

At any rate, Putin felt comfortable enough to release his chief domestic opponent from prison on Monday.

Republicans lost on health care for the same reason Democrats lost the election

2017-03-27T10:19:00.001-04:00

In the United States there are two major parties, both of which consist of big tent coalitions. The Democrats start from the socialist left and run to moderates who could just as easily be moderate Republicans. Republicans do the same from the right, from the Neo-Nazi alt-right to people who could just as easily be moderate Democrats.

Both parties have the same problem. If the various constituencies that make up the party fail to compromise and unite, the other side wins.

The Canadian left typically suffers from the same problem, despite having three significant parties. The Conservative Party in Canada typically pulls 35 to 40 percent of the vote, but managed to rule for a decade because of divisions on the left (and moderate/centre-left). For a decade, “progressive” or socialist democrats supported the New Democratic Party while moderate and left-centre Canadians supported the Liberals. This created an environment where the Conservatives could win without a majority.

In the US there is no significant 3rd party, but people can still make a protest vote for a minor party or a write in. They can also simply stay home on election day. In 2008, moderate and progressive Democrats both turned out in large numbers, handing victory to the Democrats and Barak Obama. Progressives came out again in sufficient numbers to at least put Obama back in the White House, even if it didn’t lift congressional Democrats. However in 2010 and 2014 many progressives stayed home and some moderates switched sides resulting in Republican gains in congress and at the state level.

As successful as Republicans have been in recent years, they have been held back to an extent by infighting in their own ranks. However, the cracks really started to show in the 2016 race when “establishment” pick Jeb Bush suffered humiliating defeats and anti-establishment candidates like Ted Cruz and Donald Trump soared. Ultimately the GOP was able to silence the “Stop Trump” forces within the party and pull together, especially after the election. However, the divisions haven’t gone away and the cracks were clearly visible when the Republican Health Care plan went down in flames.

According to the Associated Press, following the flame out of the health care plan, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said: “We were a 10-year opposition party where being against things was easy to do. You just had to be against it. And now, in three months' time, we try to go to governing where we actually have to get ... people to agree with each other."

And that’s the rub. It’s easy to hold together and build on a coalition in opposition, it’s far more difficult when you’re actually in power and the various factions want their conflicting demands met.

In Canada, Liberals and the NDP (and leftish Canadian independents) tend to become almost a united front when Conservatives are in power. When there’s an election or the Liberals are in power, all that cooperation and general good will vanishes faster than a revenue surplus.

In the US, the left didn’t really think the Republicans would be a threat and they shouldn’t have been. Outgoing President Barack Obama was immensely popular and every poll showed he could have easily claimed a third term. The economy was booming, unemployment was very low, more Americans than ever had health insurance and wages were rising for the first time in decades.

A win seemed like such a sure thing that the left-centre and progressives sabotaged themselves by running the election as if it was ultimately between the two sides of the party and not Democrats vs. Republicans. It was the same thing that Republicans did last week. None of them liked Obamacare. After voted to defeat it multiple times during the Obama years they thought its destruction was a given but the battle over what to replace it with became so intense that Obamacare survived and is now more entrenched than ever.

There is a lesson for non-conservatives of every stripe in the health care fiasco. Bernie Sanders supporters are fond of pointing out that the Democrats can’t win without them, and that could be true at the moment. They should also be aware though that they can’t win without the rest of the party. If they actually pursue the “#DemExit” strategy their best case scenario is mimicking Canadian politics.

However, despite the American lefts romanticization of Canadian politics, that wouldn't serve them well: The “progressive” / democratic socialist NDP does have seats in parliament but has never actually been in power, nor do they look like they will be anytime soon. If they have an idea or platform that becomes popular enough to win significant votes, the Liberal party adopts it and leaves them on the fringe holding on to their less popular ideas.

There is also a possibility that if the progressive wing actually walks away that the Democrats can win without them, the same way the Liberals have in Canada. Democrats would be free to reach out to moderate and fiscally conservative, socially liberal independents and Republicans. Democrats would be able to say ‘No, we’re not socialists, the socialists are over there and we’re not the racist, sexist, alt-right - those people are over there. We’re the party for everyone else’.

On the left and the right, when big tent parties work together, compromise and are willing to accept partial victories, they win. When they fail to do all that they lose. When hard-core ideologues refuse to budge and issue ultimatums and lists of demands they inevitably wind up losing considerable ground on their core issues instead of making modest gains.

Why congressional Republicans are probably stuck with Trump

2017-02-15T11:29:00.000-05:00

: Photo credit: DonkeyHotey via Visual Hunt / CC BY-SA

People waiting for the GOP controlled congress to act against Donald Trump are probably in for a long wait. The treasonous acts which Trump administration officials are suspected of are what is holding the Republican party together and the Republican base still strongly supports the Trump administration.

Analysts have written volumes about turmoil within the Democratic party since the last election. However, if things had gone slightly differently the talk would have been about the collapse of the Republican party which, just below the surface, is bitterly divided. And it is the email hacks at the core of the Trump/Russia controversy which allowed the Republicans to prevail despite internal differences.

And were it not for the email hacks which the Russians are suspected of launching, possibly in coordination with the Trump campaign, the election almost certainly would have gone differently.

To make things even more complicated, the Trump administration and its policies remain very popular with the Republican base. As of January 30, Trump still enjoyed the support of 86% of Republican voters in Republican congressional districts (and 81% of Republicans in Democratic districts).

It is not clear what it would take to change the minds of Republicans. Traditional media outlets have very little influence there. As of September of last year just 14% of Republicans had confidence in 'the media'. At Donald Trump rallies during the election, reporters were treated as the enemy and the constant stream of bad news for Trump since the election won't have endeared the media to conservatives.

No recent polling is available on how Republican voters feel about the allegations of collaboration between Trump campaign officials and Russia but it is a safe bet that it is different from the perceptions of the public at large. Between 2014 and the end of last year, support for Russia among Republicans had risen from 10 percent to 37 percent (23 points higher than Republican support for 'the media'. Republicans also seem to believe in the 'alternative facts' coming out of the White House. In a recent survey 51 percent of Trump supporters said that the, entirely fictional, 'Bowling Green Massacre' justified the travel and immigration restrictions. If the White House says that the Russia allegations are false most Republicans are likely to believe that they are false.

So how does all of this look if you're a Republican in Congress? The short answer is, scary.

Most GOP lawmakers are bright, educated people. They may perceive the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN as biased but know they are not 'fake news'. However, whatever they believe, their choices are not attractive.

If a Republican in the House or Senate decided that it was time for Trump to go it would mean that they were ready to admit that officials high in their party had committed treason. It would mean conceding the moral, patriotic and national security high ground to the Democrats for years to come. It would mean abandoning the congressional agenda at a time when Republicans control all three houses of government for the first time since the great depression. It would also mean launching a civil war within their party and it would likely mean the end of their personal career.

Republicans know that not acting against Trump could cost their party in 2018, 2020 and beyond. They also know that it is not the will of the people who elected them; the same people who elected Trump. Perceived by their base as disloyal or anti-Democratic and will struggle to survive the next primary battle for their seat or to advance to any higher office. Republican primary voters have been thinning the number of moderates in their party for years.

Congressional Republicans, at least those who concerned about possible connections between the administration and Russia, are literally facing a choice between their party (and their own career) and their country.

Unless the Republican base turns on Trump for some reason, those are the obstacles to overcome. Democrats will have to convince Republicans in congress that it's worth it and they will have to convince more than a few before there is any serious action.

Otherwise Republicans, who have been demographically losing ground for decades anyway, will simply have to live with the consequences in future elections.

Canada needs to respond to Trump with an emergency Safe Harbour immigration law

2017-02-12T14:35:00.003-05:00

Given the turbulent times in the United States, Canada needs an emergency safe harbour law to protect vulnerable populations in the short term.

The law would serve as an addition to our normal immigration laws and would serve as a test case for future global emergencies.

It would grant a temporary version of permanent residency, with fewer entry requirements, to people who didn’t necessarily want to immigrate to Canada permanently but who did not currently feel safe at home.

It would also allow US companies to set up or expand offices in Canada for workers from outside the United States who are currently under threat.

Safe Harbour would grant essentially the same rights and protections given to permanent residents to Americans or recent residents of the United States but for a period of two years and not longer than five years. It would not however, require applicants to meet the same criteria as potential Canadian citizens or asylum seekers.

After the first two years in Canada, individuals would have to apply for a renewal of their safe harbour status and show that conditions at home had not changed. At the end of the second two year period, individuals would have 12 months to apply for permanent residency, a traditional guest worker visa or make plans to depart Canada.

During their stay, refugees would be allowed to work and to apply for health coverage after meeting the same residency requirements that permanent residents must meet in the various provinces.

This temporary measure would allow Canada to meet the requirements of the current crisis and maintain our position as a multi-cultural leader in human rights, without making permanent changes to Canadian immigration policies or quotas. It would also help strengthen the unique relationship that has historically existed between Canada and the United States.

Since the American revolution, Canada has provided a safe harbour to vulnerable Americans. British loyalists came during the Revolution, escaped slaves and free black people came during the years prior to the American Civil War. Later in the century, hundreds of thousands of Canadian farmers helped to settle the Western provinces. During Vietnam draft-eligible individuals who objected to the war found a safe haven, many of them only temporarily and during the George W. Bush era as many as 10,000 Americans per year moved to Canada for ideological reasons.

All of this has contributed significantly to Canada's relationship with the United States. Despite any temporary differences between the Canadian and U.S. governments, most Canadians have a very positive opinion of the United States and most Americans have a very high opinion of Canada. More than that, thousands of businesses have offices on both sides of the border and many Canadians have family members on both sides of the US border.

Donald Trump is a new element on the American political scene and is, to many, a new threat. The United States has seen a rise in hate speech and hate crimes. People have been subjected to official harassment and worse over their ethnicity, national origin or faith and laws are being contemplated which could put people at risk over their sexual orientation or gender.

This has understandably led to a great deal of confusion and fear among many Americans. This is not necessarily, however, a permanent situation. Many of those who are seeking refuge or who are contemplating doing so, do not necessarily want to become Canadian on a permanent basis. Some simply need time to assess the situation and weigh their options. By allowing them time to do so and to experience life in Canada.

By creating this special immigration provision, Canada would strengthen its historic relationship with America and individual Americans. It would also be a good test case for future crisis in the United States and elsewhere in the world. On January 28, as the response to Donald Trump's travel ban build up steam, Justin Trudeau Tweeted "To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada"

To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) January 28, 2017

Now the Prime Minister needs to show the world what he meant. We must send a message to the voices of fear and division in Canada to let them know that theirs is not the Canadian way and a message to frightened and vulnerable people in the United States that their is shelter for them in the North.

The rise of protectionist populism in the US will speed up the robotics revolution.

2016-12-11T23:32:00.001-05:00

: Photo credit: Merrill College of Journalism Press Releases via Visual Hunt / CC BY-NC

For years people have been predicting that robotics and automation will start taking middle class and working class jobs at an alarming rate. So far, those predictions been quietly coming true and it is probably going to get much worse in the next few years.

As far as business is concerned, the rise of populism among Republicans and Democrats in the 2016 election can be boiled down to a few key points. Democrats want to make it more expensive to have human employees. Republicans want to make it more expensive to outsource jobs and to export goods. Republicans also want to clear away obstacles to replacing those human employees with machines. If robots have the capacity to do the work, and in many cases they do and the price is right. The safe bet for corporations is to stop hiring humans altogether.

My purpose here is neither to defend or attack capitalism, only to explain the realities. It is the job of executives at a publicly traded corporation to maximize profits. This is not optional for them, it is the law. A CEO can be successfully sued by shareholders for failing to do so.

This means that they have to keep costs down and get the best price they can for their products. Using overseas employees can reduce costs for a company. For most industries, for the moment, automation is more expensive than either domestic or overseas human employees. However, with each passing year robotics and artificial intelligence become less expensive, more reliable and capable of new things. Overseas workers are not really the competition for domestic workers anymore, robots are. If those jobs "come back" to North America in any significant numbers, it will probably be automated systems and not human employees that do the work.

According to a 2013 study from Oxford, half of all North American jobs will be lost to automation by 2033. President Obama got more specific with a report that said 83 percent of jobs that currently pay less than $20/hr, 31 percent of jobs that currently pay $20-40/hr and four percent of jobs that currently pay more than $40/hr will be gone in 20 years.

All of this, again, relates to current jobs and current wages. Domestic manufacturing jobs are already being taken over by robots at a rapid pace. New, modern factories have so few human employees that the company can save money by leaving the lights off. The next likely jobs to go are transportation jobs such as cab drivers, Uber drivers and truck drivers as self driving cars and trucks hit the road. Retail jobs are also going to disappear rapidly as stores like the new Amazon grocery store begin to appear. And these are just a few of hundreds of areas where robotics will begin to take human jobs. Basically, if your job is repetitive, boring or analytical it is on death row, ticking down the days.

Obviously, from a corporate/management perspective, robots are attractive. They may be expensive initially but after that there is little comparison between them and human employees. If properly maintained, they will work 24/7/365. They will never ask for a raise or any wages at all. They will not ask for benefits or holidays. They may occasionally need repairs but they do not get sick. They do not have any children that get sick or have any other sort of family emergencies. There are no federal or state workplace safety regulations for them. They are hard working but not ambitious, they will never ask for a better job or job training. They do not need to be motivated or have morale problems. They can not be hired away by your competition. They do not form unions, file complaints, leak secrets or blow whistles and if the company needs to make cut backs, production can be reduced by pushing a few buttons - no layoffs, no severance packages and no complaints.

Even if you prefer the human touch and dislike the idea of automating your business, you know your competitors at home and abroad are making the same calculations and that, in the long run, companies that automate will save a great deal of money. Those companies will make more money and will likely be able to offer their goods and services for less, while still increasing profits.

So these are the calculations and decisions that you are trying to make when the 2016 election comes along with strong populist and nationalist sentiments on the left and the right. Among the many suggestions and campaign promises are increased wages and benefits, penalties for laying off workers, penalties for outsourcing jobs overseas, increased import and export duties and demands that companies bring overseas jobs back to the United States.

Of course none of this is certain. Any proposals must make their way through committees and congress. However, for most companies, uncertainty itself is an enemy.

For now the right and its brand of nationalistic populism won, but the Democrats actually got more votes and the next election is just two years away. And on some level you know that simply not hiring humans anymore is becoming more and more of an option. It might cost more initially but some of that could be tax deductible as a capital improvement. After automation, you no longer need to worry about minimum wages or benefits or pensions or workplace safety or any of a score of other costs and considerations that come with human workers. In other words you've re-established a long term sense of certainty, regardless of election outcomes or populist legislation.

By staging a 'revolution' and fighting for more the American working class and middle class may well find themselves with nothing - at least until ideas like Universal Basic Income (UBI) gain more mainstream attention.

After Brexit and Trump, electoral reform is more important now than it was in 2015

2016-12-04T20:21:00.001-05:00

: Photo credit: FutUndBeidl via Visualhunt / CC BY

Fortunately, despite skepticism by many, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says that electoral reform is still on the table. When Trudeau was elected just over a year ago, his promise that 2015 was the last election to be fought under the “first past the post” system. Since that time the passage of Brexit in the UK and the election of Donald Trump in the United States have made it even more important that electoral reform go ahead.

White supremacy is on the rise throughout the western world. Anti-immigrant sentiment, a backlash against women’s rights, a backlash against LGBT people, Islamophobia is on the rise. The victories of Trump and Brexit were both followed by waves of violent attacks against women and people of colour. Everything possible must be done to ensure that Canada remains a safe harbour for people from around the world who are ready to leave their past conflicts and hostilities behind and live peacefully in a multi-cultural country.

No one can control how people choose to vote but one thing we can do, to protect Canada and Canadians is to make sure that no government can have majority power without a majority of the votes. Not only will this new reality help to hold back the forces of hate, but it will help to dispel some of the cynicism which has allowed hate groups to flourish.

It will make majority governments a rare thing and by doing so force governing parties to cooperate on legislation. This, in turn, should lead to laws with broader popular support even if it does also mean more frequent elections.

In 2015 the Liberals received 39.5% of the vote, which gave them 54% of the seats. Under a PR system the Liberals would have to reach out either to the NDP (19.7% in the last election) or to the Conservatives (31.9%) to get legislation passed. While that would, no doubt, mean difficult compromises it would also create laws that had the support of either 59.2% or 71.4% of the people’s representatives. Who knows, this new spirit of forced cooperation could even lead to a more civil parliament.

The Trudeau government was elected based on a multitude of promises but electoral reform was at or near the top of the list. No matter how uncomfortable it may be, no matter how much of a compromise may be required it is one of the things that must be done in order for this government to be considered successful.

I am personally, as I suspect Trudeau is, more fond of ranked ballots than proportional representation. However, I believe that some form of proportional representation has stronger support and some form of reform must happen. If it takes a referendum then so be it but the government and its ministers should put their full weight and full throated support behind the ‘yes’ side. The government would also be wise to be ready to compromise so that opposition parties will support the referendum as well. Finally, one way or another it must happen prior to the next election in 2019 to hold back the forces of white nationalism which have gripped the US and UK.

Sunny ways are great. Canadians appreciate positivity, optimism and hope (as Jack Layton demonstrated before Mr. Trudeau) but Canadians also expect results and it is time to start delivering them. It is time to put partisanship aside for the good of the country and end the first past the post system.

If the left wants to win the big fights, we need to step up our game

2016-12-01T21:15:00.000-05:00

: Photo credit: gabrielsaldana via VisualHunt / CC BY-SA

As a dual citizen of the United States and Canada I’ve had the opportunity to participate in and observe both political systems. One of the things that I’ve found as a constant in both countries, and in the UK as well from what I’ve observed, is that the ‘left’ (for lack of a better term) is losing; some battles are being won but the war is definitely not going well.

In this context, the term 'left' doesn't mean the traditional ideological left. In my opinion, rigid ideology is as dangerous and limiting as religious conservatism. Instead, I’m talking about the ideas and principles that have been the foundations of Western civilization since the Enlightenment. Sadly, ideas like humanism, the social contract, equality, democracy, education, scientific and evidence based reasoning and even truth itself are now considered 'liberal'.

Normally, this might simply be considered a conservative period in human history that would later be remedied by a liberal period. Unfortunately, we can not afford to think that way at the moment. We are currently approaching a crucial crossroads for the future of our species. Down one path lies a Utopian future, free from disease, poverty, war, want and possibly even disease and death. This future is almost guaranteed to the wealthy and powerful, regardless of what happens to the rest of us. For the bulk of humanity, the second path leads to any number of dystopian futures, the failure of the democratic experiment and all that has been gained by humanity over the last thousand years or so. The left cannot afford to keep losing under those circumstances.

Despite the critical nature of this period in history, I keep seeing activists and operatives on the left make the same mistakes over and over again. They frequently are not even fighting the right battles and are losing most of them anyway.

In no particular order:

First: The progressive left has become almost as backward looking as the right. Both sides seem to want to go back to the glory days of the post WWII era and we can’t. There won’t be and can’t be a return to the days when you punched a clock 40 hours/week for 40 years for one company and then retired. Automation, globalization and other geopolitical, economic and technological changes have brought that to an end. We need a new vision for the future, not a vision of a rapidly fading past that we’re trying to return to. Time travel is not possible, particularly for an entire civilization.

Second: It does no good to see where the ball is and chase it. To win in the long term you need to figure out where the ball is going and get ahead of it. We need to start fighting for solutions that fit that new vision of the future rather than solutions that seek to simply address 'right now' problems. Even if we win on these issues it won’t matter for long. For example: progressives are currently fighting for higher paying jobs, which is fine, except that robots and artificial intelligence are coming to take most of the jobs. We could win this battle and in a few years have high paying jobs in a field that employs almost no one. The left is fighting to reduce the cost of undergraduate education at a time when our entire education system, from kindergarten up, needs an overhaul to prepare for the future we’re moving into, a future where people will continually be in and out of school to keep their skills up to date. If this battle is won, we will reduce the cost of a few years of post high school education in a system that still does not prepare people to succeed and in many cases trains them for jobs that no longer exist. We need to fight for progressive solutions, but we need long term solutions for a rapidly changing world, not solutions that will be meaningless a few years down the road.

Third: We need to stop confusing activism with electoral politics. Activism seeks to inform people and change their minds on important issues. Electoral politics seeks to put competent people in office who can be trusted to make intelligent decisions and hold back the forces of fear, greed and hate. If activists haven't won the battle for hearts and minds and laid the groundwork for political change, office holders may not be able to help, but that doesn't mean we want them to lose their jobs to people who will actively work against activists. In other words, you want someone who is basically on your side to put the ball through the goal posts once you get it close enough to the end zone.

Note: What people describe as ‘revolution’ in electoral politics is almost always the tipping point of a movement after years or even decades of activism and incremental progress. The goal of political leaders should be evolution, not revolution.

Fourth: We need to work on our empathy. Progressives and liberals pride themselves on their “empathy” for others. All too frequently though our empathy only extends to ourselves and people like us or people in a similar situation. When we have empathy for a group of ‘others’ we usually end up with how we think they should feel (based largely on stereotypes) or how we would feel, given our background and experiences not theirs but we don’t really try to put ourselves in their situation, understand their life experiences and then ask how we would feel. The solutions or reforms we like tend to look good on paper or sound good in books and Ted Talks. However, people impacted by a proposed change may not have read those books, may not have the intellectual inclination to understand the proposed change or may simply not like the idea because they are impacted in different ways than we would be. We need to dig deep and think about how everyone involved is going to feel and how changes are going to impact them, including groups we don’t particularly like. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be winners and losers or that we can, or even should try to, please everyone. Some people and groups, such as white supremacists, simply have to be defeated regardless of how they feel about it. Some can't be accommodated because, for example, we need to reduce carbon emissions, even if it does cost them their job and dramatically alter their life. With that said, we still need to try to understand who is impacted, how, what they are likely to feel about it and how they may react. The fewer the losers, the lower the losses and the greater the compensation for those losses the greater the chance we have of winning.

Note: As an example of the above, many progressives and populists are deeply opposed to globalization because of its impact on the working class but globalization has been very good for billions of people in the global South. Poverty is in free fall, life expectancy is increasing, public health and education are improving rapidly, democracy is expanding, political stability is improving and fewer people are dying in wars than ever before. Our focus however is on working class people closer to home who are negatively impacted without regard for the impacts elsewhere.

Fifth: We need to learn more about our issues. There is a tendency to write off people who don’t agree with us as stupid and uninformed. In my experience though no political group has a monopoly on being thoughtless and uninformed. I’ve sat with self-described democratic socialists who listed programs that would have government spending three times the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) but without impacting their own personal taxes or income in any way. I've listened to environmental activists propose "solutions" that are have no scientific basis whatsoever. We need to do our homework, we need to read a variety of opinions and we need to fact check our friends as carefully as we do our foes. We need to search out hard evidence and not simply rely on web sites and publications that share our point of view. Before asking government for a program, we need to do math and have at least a rough idea of how much it would actually cost and where that money might come from. We need to think through the ideas we support, understand the costs and benefits (including who it costs, who benefits and how much) and push for the solutions that make the most sense, not just rhetorically or ideologically but financially as well.

Note: Big numbers tend to confuse people. Bill Gates is the top 1% of the top 1% of the top 1%. He has an estimated net worth of $83 billion dollars. If we took all of that money and divided it up among only the bottom 40% of Americans, it would fix a lot of problems right? Well, each person would receive a one time payment of $619, so a family of four would get almost $2500. I’m sure they would all appreciate it, and it would provide some short term relief but it probably wouldn’t solve any long term problems and the largest private fortune in the world would be gone. The Gates foundation which has done a great deal of good work in improving public health and education in Africa (among other things) would also be gone. Can wealthy people pay more in taxes? Absolutely. But we need to be careful, know what we’re talking about and actually do the math if we’re going to solve problems. Even the bank accounts of “the 1%” and “big corporations” are not a bottomless well. Also remember that if you make more than $32,400 (US) you are part of the 1%, globally speaking.

Sixth: Learn to prioritize, compromise and negotiate: To listen to many on the left, there are hundreds of issues to deal with, they are all equally important and there is no room for compromise on any of them. That is a recipe for bad political strategy. All put together it represents a level of change that will make many uncomfortable. What is likely to lead to is burning out activists, rapidly exhausting financial resources and accomplishing little or nothing. Leaders on the left need to set priorities and be willing to compromise and negotiate in order to gain ground and win on the most vital issues. Obviously there are some core values you can never sell out. The current Republican party doesn’t stand for anything anymore except white supremacy, guns and protecting the very wealthy. However, it is OK to not get everything you want all at once. It is OK to take an easy win, even if it’s a small one and come back to fight for more another day. One step forward is always preferable to holding still or moving backward.

Seven: Keep the infighting civil. When the left fights amongst ourselves we lose. In Canada this is characterized by the split between the Liberals and the New Democratic Party. When the two sides are too evenly divided, we end up with Conservative governments. In the US it is fighting within the Democratic party that sometimes leads to a 3rd party candidate. In 1980 when Jimmy Carter “wasn’t liberal enough” it resulted in the election of Ronald Reagan. In 2000 when Al Gore wasn’t considered Liberal enough it led, by the narrowest of margins, to the election of George Bush for two terms and a “War on Terror” instead of a serious battle against climate change and in 2016 it led to the election of Donald Trump. When the left fights amounts ourselves it leads to conservative governments and social and economic progress are set back by decades. In Canada roughly half of the population considers themselves to be “small-l liberal” but when divided, we still lose. In the United States only 24 percent of the population considers themselves “liberal” (a number which includes ‘progressives’ and ‘social democrats'). By comparison 35 percent of Americans consider themselves moderate and 37 percent conservative - so the idea that the country is on the verge of a social democratic revolution is ridiculous. The left needs to be about ideals, inclusion, civil debate and evidence based policy. We need to have robust, but civil and respectful, debates and then pull together so that we can continue to make progress at whatever pace it is possible to do so.

Eight: The left needs to show up. The left frequently loses simply because people don’t show up when it matters. This is not just federal elections but state/provincial elections, local elections and any other time decisions are being made. Local elections have a greater impact on most people’s lives than federal elections do, but voter turnout is always down when anything less than the president or prime minister is on the line. We simply can’t win by staying home.

Ninth: We need to switch up our tactics. When the left is upset about something, the response is fairly predictable. We hold rallies, we sign petitions and if there is a company involved we organize a boycott. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome, then it is little wonder we lose. Protests are good for letting off steam, they are good for building a sense of solidarity but they don’t convince anyone of anything unless they were convinced or inclined to be supportive already. It has been used too frequently by too many people for too many things. Petitions may have some impact, they at least show that significant numbers of people are paying attention but unless signatures number in the millions they may have the opposite effect. Ten thousand signatures on a national petition suggests that you're bad at petitions or that not many people care about an issue. Boycotts, in most cases, accomplish nothing at all. There are obvious exceptions of successful boycotts such as the one against Chick-fil-a but I can’t count the number of boycotts I’ve seen launched against Wal-Mart, Nestle and McDonalds over the decades and none of those companies seems to have noticed. I’m not sure what the new list of tactics need to include. It’s one of the many things that is up for debate. Maybe it includes more phone calls to representatives; maybe it includes more fund raising; maybe it involves more canvassing even when there isn’t an election or informational town halls (preferably involving names that will draw a crowd) but the current bag of tricks isn’t getting the job done.

This list may not be perfect. It may be incomplete, it may even be wrong but these are my observations. It is certainly hard to deny that, for whatever reason, the broad left is losing too frequently of late and we have to stop doing that.

To use another sports analogy, it’s getting late in the season, we’re in last place and we need to win the World Series. What’s at stake isn’t a pennant or a trophy or a ring but the future of mankind. Over the next few decades we’ll decide whether humanity has a Utopian or a dystopian future. If we want humanity to win, we have to start winning and we have to do it consistently. They don’t have to be big wins, our progress can be incremental but we must make progress. The election of Donald Trump is going to set humanity back decades. If we have many more such setbacks we lose, permanently.