Ideas and Issues

By George, we will fight on

Was it good politics to file a libel suit against the Liberal Party? No, it was childish – this is how things work in today's political environment, with one party saying nasty things about another. Hardly the stuff of legal thrillers à la Grisham.

Do two wrongs make a right? No, as the Liberals are demonstrating now:

The federal Liberals want a jury to decide if they are guilty of libelling Prime Minister Stephen Harper over the so-called Cadman Affair and whether his $2.5 million lawsuit against the party should be rejected.

In a statement of defence filed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on Tuesday, the Liberal Party of Canada says Harper's claim should be dismissed, arguing his legal action is a "fundamental attack on the freedom of political expression."

They also ask that "this action be tried by a jury."

As if this nonsense had not already taken up enough of our courts' time, now the Liberals want to drag it out and take it all the way, complete with a jury trial (those poor jurors will never get that part of their lives back).

To both Conservatives and Liberals: Grow up, will you?

Andrew Coyne is back!

Man, Andrew, where have you been all this time? I know, I know, you started that fancy new job with Maclean's, which sort of made you forget about keeping your blog up-to-date, eh?

Even when I announced here that I had to remove you from my blogroll because your blog had died, you remained silent.

But stealthily you revived your blog recently without telling anyone. Well, it's good to have you back, Andrew, and your spot on my blogroll has been restored.

Blogs 'n' Bits

These days are quite busy and hectic, so here's just a quick rundown of interesting posts around the blogosphere today:

• The folks at Project Alberta are discussing Ed Stelmach's final transformation into Alberta's answer to Robert Mugabe.
• The Shotgun raises the question, "Taxes: how much is too much?" The answer is simple: Anything that goes beyond a flat-rate income tax of 10-15%.
• Small dead animals demonstrates her passive (?) aggressiveness yet again with a telling post title.
• Jason Cherniak believes that the NDP needs the Liberals if it ever hopes of gaining power. While this may be true, the Liberals can't exist with at least one other party serving as its crutch either.
• Apart from griping about taxes, the Shotgun also tries to read some anti-Semitic (or anti-Israel) sentiments into Barack Obama's statements. Truth be told: the issue has been a sore and a constant wound. The US should have never gotten involved the way it has. Saying this is not anti-Israel or anti-Semitic; instead, it is directed against the ongoing problems in the region, caused by all the parties involved to varying degrees. What Obama meant was that he'd like to see a solution and end to the conflict rather sooner than later – not an unreasonable request at all.
• Right from Alberta doesn't believe that there is such a thing as a "revenue-neutral carbon tax".
• Iain Dale's speculating whether Ken Livingstone, after being ousted as mayor of London, could become the next Labour leader. Nah, Britons have lost their appetite for Red Ken, I think.

Alberta Tories: Stelmach really is Mugabe

If anyone still needed proof that Ed Stelmach is Alberta's version of Robert Mugabe, don't look any further than this:

CBC reporters have been denied access to any embargoed media events held by the Alberta Legislature until after next year's budget is handed down. So says government p.r. director Roxanna Benoit.

This is rather arrogant for a "majority" government elected only by 22% of the total electorate (and even that only through what I observed at my own polling station to be manipulation and stuffing of ballot boxes – or, rather, the unstuffing of ballot boxes, because they would have had to eliminate all those non-Tory votes, which would explain the "low" turnout).

No doubt the Pig Farmer Ed and his good buddy Bobbie in Zimbabwe must be pen pals gossiping about the latest developments in Banana Republic News.

Makes you wonder how long it'll be before opponents of the Pig Farmer will be "disappeared" as well.

h/t Alberta: Get Rich or Die Trying

Ontario needs brighter light bulbs

Regular readers will know that there is very little love lost between Ontario and me. Ontario's light, and in particular, Toronto's, has never shone too brightly. While I lived there, I did my damnedest to notch it up by a few lux units, but eventually I had to give up and move out West. Since then, the dimmer switch in Ontario has been set to the absolute lowest minimum setting.

This guy, whose middle name is "Ostrich", or "I'll just put my head in the sand and pretend that Toronto is a great city", won't like me much for saying those things about Ontario and Toronto, but I am known to call a spade a spade -- nothing but the straight facts, ma'am.

It's not a political thing, really, for it doesn't matter whether it's Liberals, Conservatives or whatever – they are equally benighted. This is why silly decisions and policies are par for the course, regardless of whether your mayor is Mel Lastman or David Miller, or whether your premier is Mike Harris, Ernie Eves or Dalton McGuinty. And let's not forget the dimmest of all specimens: Buzz Hargrove.

If the former Reform Party had not been led by a guy from the West, i.e., Preston Manning, but by an Ontarian instead, the party would have never won a single seat in Parliament.

McGuinty – never the brightest bulb in Ontario's, or the Liberals', chandelier – has yet again broken a fundamental rule in politics: You don't provide your opponents with ammunition they can use against you. In case, you have not noticed, Dalton has scored another own goal, for which, if this were soccer, his fellow team mates would pull down his shorts in front of the entire stadium, while the usual hooligans would go and start a riot in the neighbourhood:

When pressed for specifics, Mr. McGuinty said: "Albert Einstein said the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. We're not going to do the same thing over and over again."

Really? In that case, good old McGuinty must be quite insane, for he keeps doing the "same thing over and over again".

Jeff Gardiner in Ontario has caught on to that too and fired off a letter-to-the-editor:

I agree with Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty. Doing the same thing over and over while hoping for a different result is the definition [of] insanity. And that is exactly why I didn't vote for him in the last provincial election.

I have to agree with Steyn

I have made my views about Mark Steyn perfectly clear over the last few weeks and months (more recently here). But I have to agree with what he wrote about the aftermath of his TVO appearance, in particular about how certain (less intelligent) people see the world:

I was struck by something Naseem said to me on the sidewalk. I'd mentioned that I'd heard her on NPR saying that it was improper for me to attack "multiculturalism" because multiculturalism was officially embedded in Canada's constitution. And I said: So what? A free society shouldn't have an official ideology, but, if it has, I certainly reserve the right to object to it. If I'd lived in Italy 70 years ago, I would have objected to their official ideology (Fascism), and I object to Canada's, notwithstanding its touchy-feelier name. And she looked at me as if I was bonkers. I feel rather bewildered at meeting graduates of an elite institution in one of the oldest settled democracies on the planet who seem to think just because Pierre Trudeau cooked it up it's chiseled in granite. You can only marvel at what an amazing job he did of wiping a society's collective memory. What was the most depressing part of the post-game show for me was realizing that for my accusers the assumption is that every defect in society can be corrected by government intervention. They said one reason they went to the "human rights" thought police is because they're worried Rogers might buy, for example, The Toronto Star and install Ken Whyte, yours truly and the rest of the Islamophobes. Well, maybe. But look: right now, I'm "excluded" from The Toronto Star and so's every other conservative. We're "excluded" from the CBC, which is paid for by the tax dollars of Canadian conservatives. But so what? Society is not perfectable, and for a government tribunal to order the Star to run one Steyn column for every Siddiqui column in runs would only make things worse.

If that's what Naseem actually thinks and believes, then she really doesn't deserve a law degree from any Western university.

For the record, it's not only Steyn who disagrees with multiculturalism; I don't care for it either (i.e., the way it's practised in Canada). And we're in good company, because Tony Blair abhors it, and so does Gordon Brown. And the list of those who revile or hate multiculturalism is growing longer and longer every day (e.g., France's Ségolène Royal is not a fan either, I hear -- you got to love the new European left: a lot more common sense than even Canada's Conservatives).

Even Trudeau himself came to regret what he started. Unfortunately, he had that realization just before his death, and the Liberals have swept that important fact under the rug ever since. Heaven forbid that the world might find out that the Liberal Super Idol, when he had finally matured after all those years of infantilism and grown at least a bit of brain, admitted that multiculturalism was a colossal mistake.

Multiculturalism that benefits the "old country", rather than the host country, is anathema. When in Rome, …. you know the rest, folks. If not, google it and educate yourselves.

Stimulus refund fraud

Americans are in the process of receiving the special economic stimulus cheques, courtesy of George Bush.

So, the time is right for the usual con-artists to wade in, trying to steal people's personal information, such as banking information, social security numbers, etc.

I received the following e-mail today, and I am posting it here as a warning, because even the most up-to-date phishing software has failed to identify it as such:

Over 130 million Americans will receive refunds as part of President Bush program to jumpstart the economy. Our records indicate that you are qualified to receive the 2008 Economic Stimulus Refund. The fastest and easiest way to receive your refund is by direct deposit to your checking/savings account.

Please follow the link and fill out the form and submit before May 15th, 2008 to ensure that your refund will be processed as soon as possible. Submitting your form on May 15th, 2008 or later means that your refund will be delayed due to the volume of requests we anticipate for the Economic Stimulus Refund.

It is sent from the address revenue@irs.us.gov, but a closer look at the e-mail paths reveals that it was really sent through a Hotmail server.

To me, it's just funny, especially the part that I, as a Canadian, am "qualified to receive the 2008 Economic Stimulus Refund" – if only Bush were this generous and made the refund available to Canadians as well.

But if you are an American and receive this, don't think it's legit just because it's identified as being "clean" by whatever firewall/anti-virus software you may run on your computer.

Blogging tools

Scott Tribe has a post up about tools or plug-ins that allow you to write blog posts from outside your usual blogging application.

His two tips, Windows Live Writer and Scribefire, will probably help a lot of bloggers out there, but he forgot one of the main tools available now: the blogging interface in MS WORD 2007 (part of the MS Office 2007 package), which is compatible with all standard blogging applications, such as Typepad, Blogger, Wordpress, etc.

When creating a new document in WORD 2007, you can select the new document to be a blog post, and after entering and saving your settings, you can write blog posts in WORD, with the full functionality of WORD and the features of your blog application combined, and then send the finished post to your blog application – either as a draft or as being ready for immediate publication.

I write all my posts in WORD these days and then send them out to my blog from WORD.

One of the main advantages of this method: you don't have to worry about your Internet connection, or your blog server, giving out while you're typing your new post, only to find out after clicking on the Publish button that the connection or the server is down, resulting in the loss of your blog post.

Dion's carbon tax

Take a gander at this:

Stéphane Dion is poised to unveil a carbon-tax scheme and attempt to neutralize any political damage by offering corresponding personal income tax cuts of between $10-billion and $13-billion to working Canadians, senior Liberal sources say.

It was only a matter of time before Dion would come around to supporting a carbon tax, seeing the kudos British Columbia's premier Gordon Campbell has earned with his revenue-neutral carbon tax.

The Conservatives and the NDP are against the idea, and have already begun to attack Dion for his dipping his toes into this particular pool. But then again, even such ultra-conservatives as David Frum have already come out in full support of a carbon tax.

A carbon tax actually makes a lot of sense. For one thing, people will only start being more careful about their consumption of energy and fossil fuels if wastefulness is punished by draining their pocketbooks. If you want to change people's behaviour, talk is cheap and won't get you anywhere. People will only change as a result of a carrot-and-stick approach, with a bit more stick than carrot, that is.

The other thing is that our current income tax system is such that taxpayers have only very little control over it. Essentially, if you really want to reduce your income tax drastically, the only way to really pull it off is by working much less and thus earning a lot less money. Unfortunately, in a high-price country like Canada, this is not really an option, unless you're fine with sleeping under a bridge.

But by implementing a carbon tax, and reducing income tax by the same amount – $10-13 billion, as envisaged by Dion – would give taxpayers a lot more control. The tax burden would be shifted to one's consumption of energy, and this is something we can all control (e.g., by staging your own personal Earth Hour event once a week or so). We don't have to have lights on in every room of the house or keep all TVs running at all hours of the day.

So, while our (excessive) income tax would be reduced quite a bit, we could reduce our tax liabilities even further by using energy more efficiently and more carefully. If we play our cards right, we may even end up paying less tax in total as result of income-tax cuts and a more responsible use of energy – not to mention the benefit of such modified behaviour for the environment.

I think a carbon tax would be a win-win situation, and conservatives like David Frum (who actually says that a carbon tax should become one of the banner issues to be championed by 21st-century conservatives) seem to agree.

Dion will doubtless face an uphill struggle trying to sell his plan to voters, especially so when even many in his own party would rather sweep the whole idea (and Dion) under the rug. But it seems to be the right approach, regardless.

McGuinty, the hypocrite

Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty is such a hypocrite. Now that Ontario is becoming a have-not province (i.e., a recipient of interprovincial welfare money), he "suddenly" feels that the equalization system should be scrapped. Gee, colour me surprised.

The likes of Liberals like McGuinty have always pushed for their equalization system, which shifts money from a richer province to a poorer one, and Alberta, as a result, has been milked and drained – for a few years in a row, the federal surplus has always been equivalent to the amount Alberta has to ship to Ottawa every year. In other words, without Alberta, Ottawa would not have a surplus.

But now that the equalization system is about to bite Ontarians in the behind (finally), McGuinty dons the mantle of anti-equalization crusader:

The federal equalization program has outlived its purpose, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty said yesterday.

The goal of the system by which the federal government redistributes wealth among the provinces -- to put "have-not" provinces on sound financial footing -- has been achieved, he said.

But wait, there's more funny stuff from McGuinty the hypocrite:

"Ontario is strong and others are strong, too," Mr. McGuinty said.

That's not quite true: Ontario is weak and a loser, and others are strong.

But he is right about scrapping the system. Equalization is an evil tool. Instead of bringing everyone up to the same high level, it pushes everyone down to the same low level. Take the reunification of East and West Germany, for example: The former East wasn't boosted, but the West was dragged down to a level worthy of the former East.

The same is true of the transfer payments among EU member states and the intake of corrupt and backward countries in Eastern Europe: the corruption and crime typical of Eastern European countries has spread widely to the West, and everyone's more miserable as a result.

Last but not least, without equalization, Alberta would get to keep about $15 billion a year and put it towards its own projects. And, perhaps, then, Alberta could even opt out of the federal income tax system altogether.