“Political differences are a good thing in a free society, so you’d think people espousing a philosophy they claim to be rooted in “democracy” and righteousness would revel in the opportunity to engage those with whom they disagree on the field of intellectual battle. But for modern liberals, nothing is further from the truth.”

I like the term metastasizing in this article. It connotes a cancer that is slowly eating away the heart and soul of this country. I guess I am a pessimist by nature. I don’t think that the U.S./Western culture will ever recover from the pits that it has sunken to.

Erin Brockovich Arrested for Drunk Driving

… a Boat!!!

Erin Brockvich — who was famously immortalized by Julia Roberts in the movie about her life — was arrested in Las Vegas on Friday for allegedly operating her boat while under the influence … TMZ has learned.

The Nevada Department of Wildlife tells TMZ one of their game wardens observed Brockovich (now Brockovich-Ellis following her marriage in 1999) struggling to dock her boat at Lake Mead, just outside Boulder City. [snip]

A law enforcement source tells TMZ that Brockovich’s blood alcohol content was almost twice the legal limit of .08. [snip]

When your 15 minutes of fame are over, the need for another fix of fame becomes a driver. Brockovich diverts us from the quotidian treachery of Obama.

Some background: I consider myself to be mostly liberal in my social/political views, (like supporting gay marriage and guncontrol, for example) but that has t always been the case. At one point when I was younger my views were modeled after the people close to me and that of the people In my area, that is to say, predominantly conservative. I wasn’t a particularly hateful person, but I did have quite a few views and tendencies that to me know I consider to be abhorrent. The focus of this will be on hose tendencies, and something I’m quite ashamed of.

I still have some if them. To clarify: I, regrettably, have knee jerk reactions to many things, though I know that I should t be. For example: when I view media of two gay couples kissing or otherwise showing their affection, my automatic reaction is to recoil, to be disgusted,though I know that I shouldn’t. I believe in my heart that there’s nothing wrong with it. But I believed it was wrong for so long, told it was wrong for so long, that it became very deep-set. When this occurs, I immediately scold us myself, because I know it’s wrong to think that way about it. Honestly, it makes feel like a pretty shitty person. For all my held views, I can shake these bad habits. And it’s not exclusive to gays either; I find myself subconsciously being nervous around African Americans, and again realizing and fighting that off. You see, this change of morals for for me was incredibly abrupt and rapid, I have different views, but I haven’t changed enough on a subconscious level yet. That’s something I plan to work on in the future, as I strive to push myself closer to the kind of person I want to be. I would hope that people wouldn’t hate me over this admission, but I’m being honest here, trying to express the thoughts that plague me somehow. Please know that I’m incredibly ashamed at these tendencies, and there not representative of who I want to be.

▪ James Kalb, The Tyranny of Liberalism (ISI Books, 2008) extract from page 27.

SydneyTrads is the internet portal and communication page of the Sydney Traditionalist Forum, an association of individuals who form part of the Australian paleoconservative, “traditionalist conservative” and “independent right”.

Quite apart from the question of the extent to which empirical evidence and common experience back up either of these, it is instructive to reflect on the consequences of these views for their adherents respectively. For instance, adherents of vision A tend to believe in Free Will and personal moral responsibility, because in this view the injustices in society are referred to individual flesh-and-blood agents, rather than to abstract systems. Adherents of vision B tend towards a deterministic view, which sees our moral choices as more or less completely predetermined by the circumstances in which we were born and raised. Adherents of vision A are more concerned with equality before the law than with equality of real world outcomes, recognising that ‘life is unfair’, that is, that God dishes out to each one of us his own hand, and for some that will mean an advantage above the average, for some a disadvantage. Adherents of vision B are more concerned with equality of outcomes than with equality before the law, because they view cosmic inequality as an aberration, rather than as the norm.

More significantly, adherents of vision A by definition see themselves as, at least potentially, part of the problem, as well as being part of the solution. Adherents of vision B must personally believe that they alone have THE answer, because it is only from that perspective that one can justify dismissing the limitations, trials, triumphs, and failures of societies past and present as the result of people ’just not getting it’. They seem themselves in some sense as messianic figures. This has direct and far-reaching consequences for any political debate between the As and the Bs; the political measures advocated by As are always subject to caveats, and circumscribed by all manner of contingent conditions. The A adherent has no personal stake in his theory, because he has already accepted implicitly that he might very well be completely wrong, and knows as a point of certainty that no prudential measure of his can be perfect, at least not as applied to all times and places. The B adherent, on the other hand, has a heavy personal stake in the measure he is proposing, because if it is shown to be in any way deficient, that would reflect intolerably on his messianic (hence, ‘anointed’ in Sowell’s analysis) credentials.

The moral perfection which liberals must claim for themselves as an indispensable accessory to their world-view also makes them natural allies of big government because – they reason – so long as philosopher kings like themselves can be given the leading role, what could possibly go wrong? The more government power, the more expeditiously and exactingly the Plan can be implemented to everyone’s greater benefit. Conversely, the moral frailty which conservatives must claim for themselves – and by extension for the whole of humanity – makes them the natural allies of small government, according to Lord Acton’s maxim that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

* As Sowell himself points out, the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ are imperfect, but they will do well enough here.

The National Security Agency’s collection of phone data from all of Verizon’s U.S. customers is just the “tip of the iceberg,” says a former NSA official who estimates the agency has data on as many as 20 trillion phone calls and emails by U.S. citizens.

William Binney, an award-winning mathematician and noted NSA whistleblower, says the collection dates back to when the super-secret agency began domestic surveillance after the Sept. 11 attacks.

“I believe they’ve been collecting data about all domestic calls since October 2001,” said Mr. Binney, who worked at NSA for more than 30 years. “That’s more than a billion calls a day.”

He called his figures “back of the envelope” estimates, adding that they include emails as well as telephone calls.

Mr. Binney, who left the agency in October 2001, said the data were collected under a highly classified NSA program code-named “Stellar Wind,” which was part of the warrantless domestic wiretapping effort — the Terrorist Surveillance Program — launched on orders from President George W. Bush.

Read more here

Reblogged from GenderTrender:

CounterPunch WEEKEND EDITION JUNE 7-9, 2013

Transcending the Norms of Gender

The Left Hand of Darkness

by JULIAN VIGO

Since January of this year, the word ‘transphobia’ has been bantered about in mass media and social networking circles to such intensity that its definition has been expanded and in some instances grossly misrepresented.  ‘Transphobia’ has been used in recent months to indicate everything from the range of negative attitudes and actions towards transsexualism and transgender people to the overt censorship of any expression that takes issue with the theoretical and political expressions of the transgenderism or certain trans activists.

Read more… 1,638 more words

Mayor Bloomberg to Kids: Learn to ‘Speak Grammar’ or You Won’t Succeed

Mayor Michael Bloomberg–who previously suggested so-so students skip college to become plumbers–dished out some more advice to young people Friday morning during his weekly radio show.

The Nanny Plumber

Mr. Bloomberg, whose own syntax has sometimes been the butt of jokes, warned kids to pay attention to their grammar lessons or risk losing opportunities later in life.

“Kids have to learn to speak grammar,” said the mayor, in response to a caller who suggested kids weren’t being taught the subject in schools. [snip]

“People think it’s cute to jive. And it may be for entertainment, but you just still have to have a command of the English language,” concluded Mr. Bloomberg, who admitted he was never good at the subject at school.

“I could never figure out a dangling participle,” he joked. [snip]

Guess the Mayor went through the liberal education too. He don’t talk proper grammar no way either.

While the United States still has military hegemony on the global stage (although this too is increasingly antiquated and out of touch with modern realities), its economic share of the global pie has been in a long slow decline since its statistical peak in 1972.

Where once America was 75% of the global economy it is now down to 25% and dropping year-to-year.

This was inevitable. As the emerging economies of Asia and South Asia got on their feet after their wars and revolutions and de-colonization processes – and as they built the necessary infrastructure to play the capitalist game – there was no way America could maintain the lion’s share of the pie.

Demographics alone would tell you that America cannot maintain, or sustain, its perch atop the economic mountain. America only has 5% of the world’s population. China has 20%, India another 22%.

But when you focus more on “who” is feeling most trapped in America by the newly emerging realities, you have to focus on socially conservative Americans.

Historically speaking, so-called conservatives have never done well in times of historic change. The ancient Greeks would rather sentence Socrates to death than listen to what he had to say about the changing times.

White Southerners would rather shoot Martin Luther King than share the pie with blacks.

Look at the history of religion: it has been about the clash between conservative and liberal views of morality, acceptance, and community. Jesus wasn’t crucified because he was a Jew. He was crucified because he called for change.

Conservative Americans have never had to seriously consider the idea of cooperating on the world stage. An Imperial Power only ever cooperates at its own whim.

But economic sovereignty is no longer for the American conservatives to decide. And their vented anger, seen daily on FOX News and in Tea Party protests, shows the world that American conservatives are feeling increasingly cornered in a rapidly changing world. They prefer to obstinately cling to the sides of the Titanic, and blame their demise on the colored people of the world. Or on unions. Or on un-Christian behaviors like same-sex marriage and the legalization of marijuana. Or condoms in high schools.

Conservatives never rationally approach the inevitability of historical change. And American conservatives will be no different.

Some have recently called for an armed march on Washington. Some are actively calling for violent civil disobedience. Some are saying it is time for a second American Civil War. Some want to secede from the nation. Some want to throw out the Constitution, in the name of protecting freedom.

Liberals dismiss these cries at their own peril.

Violence is brewing on the Plains of Sauron. And the Orks are increasingly beating the drums of war.

Liberal America is sadly unprepared for this.

And while the rest of the world – us Canadians included – like to laugh at all the silliness happening in America at the moment – we too will be dragged into this quagmire.

History always demands its sacrifices in the times of great change.

This century, inevitably, will be no different from the century just past.

Stereograph showing Professor Thaddeus S. Lowe observing the battle from his balloon “Intrepid” while soldiers in camp hold the balloon’s ropes in Fair Oaks, Virginia. Published: Hartford, Conn. : The War Photograph & Exhibition Co., No. 21 Linden Place, 1862 May 31. To me this photograph is both funny and a fascinating bit of history. Since I climbed trees as a kid I can appreciate the professor’s line of sight, he is at about tree top level. Why not pick a especially tall tree and get a young recruit to climb up. On the serious side he was establishing the importance of air power and technology, the ability to track adversary movement and intelligence gathering.

In case anyone missed it, some of the basics of the NSA’s surveillance program, What You Need To Know About The Government’s Massive Online Spying Program

PRISM appears to closely resemble the warrantless surveillance orders issues by President Bush after the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks rather than a dragnet data collection operation, but the NSA has the capability to search through the company’s servers for whatever it likes. To collect data, analysts in Fort Meade key in search terms designed to produce an “at least 51 percent confidence in a target’s ‘foreignness.’”

FaceBook and Google are both denying that they simply hand over any and all data or provide direct access to their servers at the mere request of government officials.

back when Bush was found to have enacted his very own massive surveillance program without telling Congress or going to the FISA Court for warrants, conservatives thought that was great. In their view any violation of the law was justified in the supposed cause of national security. One example from a far Right conservative site that is alleged to represent the height of conservative intellectual thought and constitutional expertise, called American Thinker, NSA surveillance and the contrapositive By Greg Richards

We can apply this to the NSA anti—terrorist wiretaps.  President Bush’s political opponents and some civil libertarians are upset that he approved wiretaps without a court order.  AT and other blogs have already demonstrated that doing so is (a) well within the letter of the law and (b) is in accord with practices of previous presidents.  But for those still not convinced, let’s try the contrapositive:

President Bush receives information from the NSA or the CIA or the FBI or some other source that a conversation is very likely to be carried on between a suspected terrorist and a foreign source.  Suppose the President does not approve this wiretap, or, what amounts to the same thing, suppose he applies to a FISA judge for a court order and the order is refused.  What does President Bush do then?

AT and Richards would gladly give Bush dictatorial powers, even though presidents take an oath to uphold the Constitution. Laws passed by Congress supersede presidential directives. That is case law. Period. See President Truman versus U.S. Steel as a prime example. Even in a war time emergency preferential power is not unlimited. At the time Bush violated the law, and was thus guilty of high crimes that merited impeachment, the patriot Act did have a spy first get a warrant later provision. The NSA or FBI could perfumer any surveillance they liked for 72 hours and then get a warrant. Conservatives back during the Bush years were very prone to using thriller spy novel scenarios to justify any trampling of the law by the executive branch. Something the Constitution was written to guard against. In our over two hundred years of assistance there have been very few years we were not engaged in some kind of combat somewhere. Which brings us to a history lesson from Michelle Malkin. Which is like taking lessons in how to make your marriage work from Rush Limbaugh, History lesson: The crucial differences between Bush and Obama’s NSA phone surveillance programs

It is certainly schadenfreudelicious to see Al Gore and assorted Democratic tools going bonkers over news of President Obama’s radically expanded phone call data collection program — which he, ahem, inherited from the Bush administration and has apparently now widened far beyond anything Bush ever enacted or proposed.

But unlike Gore and company, I am not going to engage in a full, NSA-bashing freakout. Some of us have not regressed completely to a 9/10 mentality.

I will instead provide you with a sober reflection on why I supported the Bush NSA’s work and why Obama’s NSA program raises far more troubling questions about domestic spying than his predecessor.

As longtime readers know, I supported the NSA’s post-9/11 efforts to collect and connect the jihad dots during the Bush years. When left-wing civil liberties absolutists were ready to hang Bush intel officials, I exposed the damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t hypocrisy of Bush-bashers who condemned the administration for not doing enough to prevent the 9/11 jihadi attacks and then condemned it for doing too much. Bush defended himself ably at a press conference in December 2005 — refresh your memories here.

Malkin still cannot write, make an argument without using a straw man liberal. Malkin is also a great case against using the falsehoods she used before to justify her new argument. Bush’s program was ruled illegal because, as mentioned before, he thought being president was the same thing as being absolute ruler. Or as John Yoo argued, still a respected constitutional legal scholar on the far Right; if the president does it, it is legal. Liberals never argued – one or two obscure liberal bloggers don’t count – that Bush could not take full advantage of FISA, they generally argued that he could not break laws passed by Congress or violate the Constitution. The difference between the Bush program and the Obama program is that president Obama is not violating the law as far as we know, today. That is the history lesson. If anyone dislikes what President Obama is doing, and doing within laws passed by Congress that’s fine. By all means don’t like what you see as over reach on national security – and do something about it with my full support. Though do not forget that Congress – with almost all conservatives and quite a few Democrats passed the laws that allowed this president or any president to conduct this type of surveillance. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) makes a good poster boy for the faux outrage and shameless hypocrisy of pundits like Malkin and AT. here’s a history lesson, Author Of Patriot Act Now Seeks To Limit Government Surveillance

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), who helped draft the PATRIOT Act, is exploring options to narrow a provision of the law that allows the National Security Agency (NSA) to obtain telephonic metadata on nearly all Americans.

[  ]…Section 215 of the Patriot Act allows the government to order businesses to turn over “the production of any tangible things” if it can prove that “there are reasonable grounds to believe” that the tangible things sought are “relevant to an authorized investigation .. to obtain foreign intelligence information… or to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.” The government has been obtaining metadata records from telephone companies for years and has used three-month secret warrants fromt the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) court since 2006. ( Malkin conveniently leaves out that what she is so outraged about and so vvvery different from a program started under Bush)

So the brilliant mastermind Jim Seensenbreener is now saying that the law he helped draft is so  vaguely worded that someone like the president might not keep within limits that Jimbo meant to include but forgot.

Then we have Congressional reps who are saying, yea well, he might be obeying the law, but President Obama has not kept us fully informed as to the details of the program. let’s say that Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) – a pretty decent guy – is not completely bullsh*ting everyone. And even if he is might have part of a point. Why hasn’t Congress kept it’s foot in the door and demanded regular reports on the details of PRISM or any other activities authorized by the FISA Court. This is the Congress we’re talking about,  Mad about NSA’s overreach? Blame Congress. There’s plenty of fault to go around, from Bush to Obama to NSA itself. But the legislative branch truly failed us

Did you notice the word I used in each of the other cases? The key word: law. As far as we know, everything that happened here was fully within the law. So if something was allowed that shouldn’t have been allowed, the problem is, in the first place, the laws. And that means Congress.

As the Washington Post reports, two laws in particular. The Protect America Act of 2007 passed the Senate 60-28; Democrats split with 17 voting in favor and 28 against, while Republicans were unanimous in support. In the House, Democrats opposed it by a wide 41-181 margin, while Republicans vote for it 186-2. However, Democrats can’t simply pass the blame; they had majorities in both chambers and could have brought different measures to the floor. And then the next year the FISA Amendments bill had a similar partisan breakdown, although with a bit more Democratic support. The latter was then extended last year. This time, a majority of Senate Democrats voted for it, with only 20 dissenting, and they were joined by three Republicans; in the House, most Democrats still opposed it, while all but seven Republicans voted yes.

Of course, if Democrats had really wanted to change the law, they could have done so during the 111thCongress early in Barack Obama’s presidency, but they did not.

The point isn’t so much which party in Congress is responsible; it’s that both parties have more than enough responsibility to go around. Republicans simply flat-out favored pretty much a blank check, with only a handful of exceptions; Democrats were legitimately split, but overall failed to draft good laws. Give those Democrats who did oppose surveillance, along with the tiny GOP civil liberties caucus, the credit they deserve – but overall, this policy happened because Congress wanted it to happen.

One of the worse kinds of framing that the media does, and too many Democratic voters go along with is the if four conservatives do it and two Democrats, both sides do it and both sides are just as bad. Numbers matter. Not thinking everything the president does is legal just because he is president matters. Not everyone is guilty – the champions of civil liberties are still most left of center, the party that at least stays within the law is Democratic, not conservative. If Congress changes the law and severely curtails surveillance by any government agency, this president will at least abide the law. Though let’s step back and take a breath. Clearly conservatives are being dishonest and disingenuous – they should shrub their archives from the Bush years if they do not want to end up looking ridiculous – oh, its too late. There will be lots of noise, more congressional hearings, and nothing to very lintel will change because America decided 12 years ago to trade liberty for some imagined security. These screen captures below are from a satire Twitter account, but the tweets are real,

Nothing to Hide1

Nothing to Hide 2

Those people are ridiculous. They should be taking a serious interests, beyond seat-of-the-pants notions about privacy, before they tell the world how naive they are. Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have ‘Nothing to Hide’.

On the surface, it seems easy to dismiss the nothing-to-hide argument. Everybody probably has something to hide from somebody. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn declared, “Everyone is guilty of something or has something to conceal. All one has to do is look hard enough to find what it is.” Likewise, in Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s novella “Traps,” which involves a seemingly innocent man put on trial by a group of retired lawyers in a mock-trial game, the man inquires what his crime shall be. “An altogether minor matter,” replies the prosecutor. “A crime can always be found.”

One can usually think of something that even the most open person would want to hide. As a commenter to my blog post noted, “If you have nothing to hide, then that quite literally means you are willing to let me photograph you naked? And I get full rights to that photograph—so I can show it to your neighbors?” The Canadian privacy expert David Flaherty expresses a similar idea when he argues: “There is no sentient human being in the Western world who has little or no regard for his or her personal privacy; those who would attempt such claims cannot withstand even a few minutes’ questioning about intimate aspects of their lives without capitulating to the intrusiveness of certain subject matters.“

Maybe, fingers crossed, everyone will thoughtfully consider changing the Patriot Act ( the most ironic name for legislation since Bush’s Clear Skies Initiative) and reign in the worse excesses. Obama is right when he says we have to have some compromise between privacy and security, but some of us think that compromise may have drifted too far into compromising our civil rights and spending too much on massive, and mostly worthless data mining.

“the voice of an unqualified human atom” (Ballard on MacIntyre, 2000:45).

The name of this blog is a quote by Ballard who is discussing a critique by MacIntyre of the liberal conception of the individual. Liberalism assumes that we are ahistorical, atomised individuals, and central liberal theory (like Rawls’) is built up off of this assumption (whether or not intended). This fits in with the neoliberal, economic understanding of humans, not as people but as isolated consumers, with a fixed rationality that responds to market forces. By basing mainstream economics on this rigid account of individuals, and assuming individuals respond rationally in the same way, mainstream theory is normalised and legitimised. Of course this befittingly acts to obfuscate problematic power relations and the way that markets are gendered, for instance. Instead the current dogma is portrayed in a neutral, universal, rational and legitimate way, supporting the status quo. Once the neutrality of liberalism and neoliberalism is contested it’s very hard to avoid accusing (neo)liberalism of being a method of control.

The Dhaka factory crisis perfectly brings out the gendered nature of (neo)liberalism, the human cost of capitalism, and the imperfection of a system that is portrayed as perfect. It is these sorts of issues and how they intersect that interest me, and this will be the focus of my blog. Thank you for visiting, please share your thoughts!

I am a Jamaican, sometimes American, college student. If you just thought ”Alright, mon!”, I need to have a stern conversation with you. Sometimes I’m cold and heartless, other times I’m just cold. I’m joking-I can be quite warm and lovely when I’m in the mood and I like being silly and entertaining.

I like Romance Novels. There’s just something about eating an edible-gold topped chocolate sundae while being romanced away by a sexy, suited man in a sexy car that….

Sorry, where was I? Basically, I find some Romances very good, some silly and comical and deserving of the snarky jokes that I will make at their expense.

Per the black, womanist, kinda-liberal part of me? Well, I’ll just let that unravel (hilariously) as time goes a-passing.

I love the word “per”. It reminds me of cats, which I also love.

I don’t like Hipsters. Don’t mention Lena Dunham to me either.

Pagan Gnosticism Is Modernist Christian Babel

Given the institutions where I have taught during my professional life, it is appropriate to begin my overview of the Paganization/Gnosticization of NT Studies with a quote from J. Gresham Machen, speaking of the inroads of Liberalism into the American church at the beginning of the last century:

“The truth is that liberalism has lost sight of the very centre and core of the Christian teaching. In the Christian view of God as set forth in the Bible, there are many elements. But one attribute of God is absolutely fundamental in the Bible; one attribute is absolutely necessary in order to render intelligible all the rest. That attribute is the awful transcendence of God. From beginning to end the Bible is concerned to set forth the awful gulf that separates the creature from the Creator. It is true, indeed, that according to the Bible God is immanent in the world. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without Him. But He is immanent in the world not because He is identified with the world, but because He is the free Creator and upholder of it. Between the creature and the Creator a great gulf is fixed.

To be sure, Machen does mention Gnosticism, but he does define the essence it religious belief. Gnosticism, which builds on the common pagan notion of humanity as divine. Plato taught that the soul “was immortal by its very nature.” This notion is integrated into Jewish thinking by Philo, and developed by later Gnosticism as the alien “divine spark” within humanity.

Hans Jonas defines Gnosticism as radically dualistic–a dualism between man and the world, “an anthropological acosmism.” “The essence of man is knowledge, of the self and God.”

As the famous Messina Colloquium on Gnosticism in 1966 clearly recognized, “the idea of divine consubstantiality” is a defining notion of Gnosticism. Such a notion effectively eliminates the uniqueness and transcendence of God.

Read more

In the name of objectivity, Ralph Goodale, Mark Holland and the Liberal Caucus argued for the protection of the Long Form Census. In that Debate, Liberals argued that there was no better way to maintain statistical integrity than by having Canadians answer a long list of questions. In fact, Liberal MP Marlene Jennings said that “the decision is dangerous and must be reversed. By making the survey voluntary, its findings will likely be skewed and rendered irrelevant. Municipalities, provincial governments, community groups, business and other organizations that depend on the data for developing sound policy, will be negatively impacted.” (Don’t cut long census form: Liberals, Last Updated: Wednesday, July 7, 2010 | 1:26 PM ET, CBC News)

For, they listened to former chief statistician Munir Sheikh. They listened to a man who resigned his position because he felt that the government of the day “cancelled the long-form census with little heed to the consequences of its decision”. He argued that “the census decision has shaken Statistics Canada’s neutrality and independence, and put at risk the government’s own work in many areas” (Former chief statistician picks apart Tory long-form census decision, by Heather Scoffield, Globe and Mail, Published Tuesday, Sep. 20 2011) Or put differently, the Conservative Government was not being objective in their decision making process. Unlike the ideological driven Harper Government, the Liberal Party fought for an objective policy process and we became quite incensed that other Parties were not doing the same. Consequently, our Party was energized and exercised by the principle of objectivity.

After almost four years, an interesting observation can be made: the Liberal Party has been proven to be right. To quote Aaron Wherry of Maclean’s: “If you adjust for inflation, the amount spent in 2006 is equal to about $623 million in 2011. By that measure, the 2011 census and NHS cost $29 million more. If you’d rather use the acknowledged supplementary funding, the 2011 census and NHS cost $22 million more. Either way, it would seem to have cost more money to produce less reliable data.” (The cost of scrapping the long-form census, By Aaron Wherry – May 9, 2013)

Therefore, it is easy for me to argue that Objectivity is a Liberal value. For it provides “the greatest benefit to the greatest number”. From George Brown onward, we have shown that providing the greatest benefit means that Government has had to balance the needs of society with the needs of individuals and minorities. By recognizing the needs of individuals to have liberty, we all benefit. In this same way, I would argue that Liberals should argue for Senate Reform and not the status quo or the abolishment of the Senate.

This is something that the NDP has never understood. Thomas Mulcair has noted that the NDP, since its founding, has argued for the abolishment of the Senate. Or as he noted, “We’re starting now to explain exactly what we’re going to do, which is to work with the provinces and territories to abolish the unelected, unaccountable, and unapologetic Senate, and we’re not going to change our point of view. That’s been our position for the past 50 years.” (Scandal in a modern democracy’: Mulcair turns up Senate rhetoric as PM looks to poke holes in NDP plan, by National Post Staff and Postmedia News | 13/03/06 | Last Updated: 13/03/06 5:08 PM ET)

The reason for this approach, he says is simple: “We’re going to stop trying to find excuses for keeping a bunch of party hacks, bagmen, political operatives and defeated candidates sitting in appeal of the duly elected members of the House of Commons,” Mr. Mulcair told reporters on Wednesday. (NDP’s Mulcair takes aim at Senate abolition, by GLORIA GALLOWAY, The Globe and Mail, May. 22 2013, 1:00 PM) For in his words, “It’s a shame that a band of unelected people can overturn the decisions of the elected representatives”. He often refers to the last session of Parliament where a climate change bill, sponsored by the NDP, failed to get the consent of the Senate.

However in saying that, he fails to recognize that our Supreme Court is unelected. Nor does Mr. Mulcair recognize the history and valuable contributions of the Senate. It was the Senate, and not the House of Commons, that tried to defeat the politically unpopular GST. It was the Senate which defeated Prime Minister Mulroney’s attempt to pass abortion legalization. It was the Senate which forced the Liberal Government of Jean Chretien to add a sunset clause to many of the additional powers awarded to the Crown after September 11th. In fact, from what we can tell, Conservative Senators have frustrated the reform plans of the Harper Government because Provincial Governments, most of the “Constitutional Academic world” and some Senators have indicated that what the Government –and the Conservative Majority – has proposed would likely be unconstitutional. (Stephen Harper wants Supreme Court’s opinion on Senate reform, by Tonda MacCharles, Toronto Star, Feb 01 2013; Harper to seek top court’s blessing in bid for Senate overhaul, by Daniel LeBlanc, The Globe and Mail, Sep. 17 2012.) So the Senate – whether controlled by Conservatives or Liberals – for the most part has been the progressive legislative body. Since its founding, it has been a body which recognizes the excesses of the House of Commons and corrects for it.

Because we have seen what happens in the Provinces when there is not a check on Governments. Provincial Governments, like that of Mike Harris in Ontario, tend to steam roll over every other point of view. Anyone who lived in Ontario in the late nineties can attest to the power of a Canadian Premier. If they have a majority in the House, even if elected by a minority of the population, they are virtually unstoppable. For the only check on the Legislature is the Legislature itself. Unless Backbench MPs stand up against the Government, huge changes can be made. Given that the Federal Parliament controls the Military, the Security Services, the RCMP, the Border Patrol, the Canadian Revenue Agency and a number of other powerful departments, Objectivity would indicate that having a second set of eyes’ – to review potential legislation – is a good thing.

In other words, while the Supreme Court might be able to offer or render legal opinions on the Constitutionality of Laws, the Senate is the only body in our system that can render a political review of legislation. Mulroney’s abortion legislation did not meet that test. While, Jean Chretien’s terror legislation only met that test after changes. Therefore, there is a reason and a purpose for the Red Chamber.

With that being said, the recent Harper appointments have proven one thing: that the good work that the Senate does can be blemished, tainted and ruined much too easily. Consequently, reform is necessary to preserve the Red Chamber’s relevance and legitimacy. The question is what does reform look like.

The answer, I think, is a four “A” Senate. The term comes from some work done by the Rahim Sajan Nomination Campaign in the 2012 By-Election for the Calgary Centre seat. While he was unsuccessful, as a member of the Policy Development Team, we had long conversations on what Senate Reform should look like. So we talked about whether a future Canadian Senate should apportion its seats through the principle of Equality of Regions or Equality of Provinces. We talked about whether the Senate should be partisan or not. We talked about whether Senators should be appointed or elected. In having these conversations, we felt that Senate Reform should be based on four principles. They are as follows:

1. Achievability
2. Acknowledge the Public’s Will
3. Accessibility
4. Appropriateness.

Achievability is the first and most important principle. If one remembers the failure of both the Meech Lake Accord and the Charlottetown Accord, one will quickly come to the understanding that any changes should be based on what is possible and not what is ideal. For example, Abolition of the Senate is not achievable. While there are many reasons for this opinion, let us consider the idea of unanimous consent.
Among academics and many constitutional lawyers, based on present law, it is felt that the Provinces and the Federal Government would have to agree to abolish the Upper Chamber and that will not happen. PEI, for example, would not likely agree because they would lose a vital constitutional protection. Section 51A of the Constitution Act (1867) says that “a province shall always be entitled to a number of members in the House of Commons not less than the number of senators representing such province.” Without that protection, Prince Edward Island would lose three of their Seats.

Continuing on this trend one can see that other provinces might be equality interested in keeping the Senate to guarantee their numbers in the House of Commons. Consider New Brunswick. The province has 10 Senate Seats and 10 Members in the House of Commons. However, the average number of citizens in a New Brunswick seat is about 73,000. This is more than 30,000 fewer citizens than the median number of seats in the average federal seat (i.e. 113,308). More telling is that the average seat in Ontario has 114,720 citizens, while the average number of citizens in BC and Alberta are 114,264 and 117,513, respectively. Given that only three provinces – Ontario, BC and Alberta – do not depend on special clauses in the Constitution to achieve their House of Commons Seat Numbers, one can expect that few provinces will push towards abolition of the Senate.

However in saying that, one can see that small changes could be achieved in seat totals. One can see that reorienting the seat numbers could reflect the relative strengthening of Western Provinces and Ontario since 1867. At present, the Canadian Senate is divided into Four Regions. The Western Region (i.e. BC, Alta, Sask. And Manitoba) have 24 seats. Ontario and Quebec are considered to be two separate regions and accordingly have 24 seats each. The Maritime Provinces (i.e. Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and PEI) share 24 seats and Newfoundland has six additional seats.

Now, I will not get into the history of why the seats were apportioned, for it is long and complex. However, today we could achieve a small change. We could ensure that we have the Equality of Regions. Through a Constitutional Amendment, we could have a situation where Nova Scotia and New Brunswick lose four seats each and PEI gains 2. Such a change would increase the relative strength of most provinces and establish a better rationale for the way that the seats are divided. At present, the four Atlantic Provinces have approximately 6.9% of Canada’s population and control 30 (28.57%) seats in the Senate. After the changes suggested, the four Atlantic Provinces would control 24 seats (24.24%). Today, Ontario and Quebec with 60% of the country’s population control 45.71% of the seats. After the change, those two provinces would control 48.48% of the Seats. Additionally, Western Provinces with 30% of the population would move from having 22.86% of the seats to 24.24%. Thus, this small change will allow us to get on track.

Our second aim was to “Acknowledge the Public’s Will”. Now, there are a couple of ways to do this. Firstly, we could have an appointment process with some form of review. That review could happen after five years or ten years. If a Senator did not live up to his expected behaviour – as judged by a blue ribbon panel, a jury, a citizens’ convention or a Parliamentary Institution – one could expect that that Senator could be forced out of his seat.

In conversations, though, the members of the Rahim Sajan’s team wanted to go a different route. We wanted a Senate that was non-partisan, bold and reflective of popular sentiment. However, that same Senate needed to be a deliberative body that enhances the governing experience for all stakeholders. This meant that the Senate needed to hear from the Government and Opposition MPs. It needed to hear from MLAs’, MNAs’ and MPPs’. The Senate had to hear the opinions of mayors, shareholders, debtholders and debtors. The Senate had to be able to give voice to those who the House of Commons would not listen to and sometimes stop the House of Commons from acting rashly. In short, the Senate had to be the one that the Founders of our Country envisaged.

To get us to this path, we proposed a difficult system. Senators, in our system, would not be nominated by political parties. Like our Founders imagined, Senators would have to build coalitions of people based on their influence, history and networks. Consequently, to update the system, we proposed that Senators would have to be nominated by 15 to 20% of the voting citizens of a particular province. Therefore, to be nominated as being a Senator, the potential nominee would have to campaign for it. Presumably, only a few people in a province could generate the supported required to get 15 to 20% of the voting citizens to sign a petition. Given the high level of support necessary, political parties would not be able to get involved. If you don’t believe me, just look at Ontario and PEI.

Based on the 2011 census, Ontario has just over 12.8 million people. Our system would require more than 1.3 million people to nominate an individual to become a Senator. Or put differently, given that the Liberal Party of Canada – through the recent Leadership Contest – was only able to generate about two-tenths of that result, on a national basis; one could say that Senators in this new system would likely be quite non-partisan. Consequently, if such a person were elected or acclaimed, he would likely be a non-Partisan Senator. Furthermore, with such a processes behind him/her, Senators would likely be able to question the actions of the House of Commons, the Federal Government of the Day or many other issues.

Such a system would guarantee our third Value: Accessibility. To maintain support Senators would have to talk to local, domestic and foreign interests. Senators would want to encourage bankers to come to Canada to do business because their own provinces would gain. Senators would want to investigate foreign governments because they would want to prevent wars. Senators would also want to speak to NGOs and clerics, executives and Labour Unions because if they wanted their seat they would need support from a large swath of society. Furthermore, the level of the work would encourage turn over after an 8 to 10 year term.

This leaves me with my last value: Appropriateness. In my head, there are many issues that Appropriateness covers. They include term limits, the level of work and the amount of power. However, as noted earlier, the nature of the post – I think – would solve many of those issues. The one which I am stuck with though is simple: Is it appropriate, for example, to have an elected Canadian Senate that can override the elected House of Commons? To answer this question, I turn to Australia and Iceland. In the last fifty years, they both have had to ask that question. In Iceland, the President used his veto to override a bill of Parliament. In their system, this meant that a referendum had to be called. The result was interesting: the people confirmed that the President was right. While Parliament found itself in turmoil, the people had the ability to speak between elections.

In Australia, the same thing has happened a few times under their Double Dissolution resolution system. For under their Constitution, disagreements between the House of Representatives and the Senate are solved through a process of “conversations”. If the Senate holds up Legislation, the Government can ask the Governor General to dissolve both Houses. This extreme step dissolves the four year cycle of the House of Representatives and the six year cycle of the Senate. All Members of Parliament are forced to go back to the people and talk about why all of Parliamentarians – the House and the Senate alike – are looking to be re-elected.
Should this not resolve the situation, and Parliament is still deadlocked, one final vote occurs. It is a joint session and this is the final voice on the matter. This series of conversations in the Australia Parliament means that contentious legislation can be reviewed and improved but that there is a way of ending the conversation. As every conversation has a beginning and an end, so can Parliament. This is why a Senate needs to exist.

In my head, there is the potential for abuse. The Senate might get carried away; and therefore, I would recommend that this form of elected Parliament would learn from the Australians and have a “Double Dissolution resolution system” of our own. However, the chances of that our low. Icelandic, Canadian and Australian histories teach us this. Therefore the Federal Liberals should argue for a reform. Our concept of objectivity provides us a model: the 4 “A” model. For this model of Senate reform provides “the greatest benefit to the greatest number”. By allowing for choice, this proposal balances the needs of society with the needs of individuals and minorities so that we all may benefit. This is why are argue that Liberals should argue for Senate Reform and not the status quo or the abolishment of the Senate.

RUSH: Late yesterday afternoon I was sitting in the library at home, and I was just swamped. It seemed like every 90 seconds somebody needed something, or somebody had a question or somebody had a comment, requiring my response. It was during the period of time that I generally devote to reading my tech blogs, you know, where I abandon all of this and get away from it and start spending time on, quote, unquote, my hobby.

But it was one of those days. I’m sure you have them. They may happen every day, but if I had been watching a TV show I would have hit the pause button every minute to deal with something. It would have taken me two hours yesterday to watch a 40 minute program. So in the midst of all of this, I hear about Prism. Not the NSA sweep of telephone records. In fact, let me start before I heard about Prism. Even before I heard about Prism, I am hearing from the intelligentsia in Washington that there’s nothing to be really concerned about here with what we had learned, the NSA demanding and getting every phone record from Verizon. And, by the way, we now know T-Mobile and AT&T have been added to it.

But the intelligent people were saying, “Nothing to see here. The reaction is way overblown.” Those of us who think there’s something worrisome here are overreacting and we’re too oriented in politics. And the mature thinkers that weighed in and sound reason and levelheadedness assured us that there was nothing to fear here because this was just metadata, and in fact this is something we should all be thankful that the government is able to do.

Read more here

The Money Masters- This is an older documentary about the Federal Reserve System.  This is a must see documentary.  It is long and it is not the best made film, but its one that will awaken a lot of people to what is really going on.

Loose Change – Documentary that questions the government explanations of the 9/11 attacks.

Fall Of The Republic – Documentary that details how the financial collapse and 9/11 were false flag operations designed to eventually implement a police state.

Invisible Empire A New World Order Defined -  Goes into detail about the plans to implement a global government.