Icebound

The Senate is necessary. Senate reform is necessary. The first phase of Senate reform is simple, ... can be done without any permission from the provinces, and can be accomplished by September. Senators can continue to be appointed as they now are... in fact it is preferable to appoint rather than having partisan elections. The quality of the appointments, of course, are part of the sitting government's record, and can affect their electability come the next election. Phase One of Senate reform goes like this: 1. No senator may have an affiliation with any political party, no matter who appointed the senator. If the appointee has or had an affiliation, he must formally renounce his party membership and be struck off the party's membership list. That means....no fundraising, no public policy statements, (other than in-house debates), no cabinet posts, no formal public appearances with sitting Members of Parliament. End of Phase One of Senate Reform. If you implement Phase 1 properly, further reform may not be necessary. ....

LOL I am a pragmatic Canadian. You know..... science, statistics, facts.... I want to be able to own a gun, but live in a society where I don't need one. and yes... governments are installed at YOUR behest. You (and all of the rest of us) install governments and remove them. We OWN the government and are responsible for its successes and its failures. Oh.... and that government should be acting in the interests of ALL the population, not just some select subsets..., You know: of the people, for the people, BY the people.... that would be you. It is our job to pick the best possible people for the job. If we fail to do so, we get what we deserve. ...

The next few decades will be interesting for cities. Detroit is but the first. How will cities get the money to replace their crumbling infrastructures? (The short answer is that somebody is not paying for their free ride) And if cities don't get the money, they will become unliveable. And if they become unliveable, what will happen to the people? Is it far-fetched to foresee riots in the (potholed) streets?

That is the whole point.... your view ... how to put this politely... is myopic. The "government" is there at YOUR behest. YOU installed then, you gave them power to look after your interests. Politician are simply the caretakers of your money. They spend it to solve YOUR problems. If you don't like how they are doing it, you have to a) let them know, ... come up with better ideas, ... c) install someone else, even yourself. Because there are more than 30 million of us, some of us are bound to be disappointed. That is just tough... But it doesn't alter the fact that government is YOU... And the minute that YOU decide that you are not part of the government, the whole concept of democracy breaks down.

You might want to check out some history. People recognized thousands of years ago, that if you tried to "live and die alone", you were amongst the first to be enslaved. So they gave up some of their individual freedoms in order to become part of something greater... a manor, a city-state, a "nation". You cannot operate these entities by "individuals", because individuals fight amongst themselves and destroy the entity from within. So you have to govern it as a collective, with assigned tasks... somebody protects the internal peace, somebody protects the perimeter, somebody grows the food, somebody directs policy so that food-production and transport (and other activities) proceed in an orderly and timely manner... So what do you get for agreeing to give up some freedoms? In a "democracy", you get a chance to BE one of those leaders. At the very least you get a say as to who BECOMES those leaders. In other words, friend.... "government" is you. And if your minions do good, your state is prosperous. And if they screw up....well, since you put them there, they are your responsibility, and you get to pay. If you don't like the minions which you put there, use better judgement in choosing them next time. ...

Well gee.... here is a woman who did "resort to her gun" to defend herself against an abusive husband.... and she didn't even hurt anyone.... And guess what? ...she is going to spend 20 years mandatory in jail. Oh, what else?... Well, she is black, but that has nothing to do with it, correct? , http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57433184/fla-mom-gets-20-years-for-firing-warning-shots/

removed

.... except that in this particular war, Mutually Assured Destruction is not a deterrent, the way it was in the Cold War. And so I expect that MAD will actually occur. Or at least: mutually severe damage.

Of course. The Senate is supposed to be the Chamber for sober second thought on legislation. Based on the idiotic stuff our parliament puts forward, the Senate is totally necessary. However, to do sober second thought, Senators actually have to read, study, and think about the legislation. Based on the time taken for Duffy's political activities, Wallin's corporate activities, and both of their creative accounting activities.... have either of them actually READ a piece of legislation, let alone give it sober reflection?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/chinese-hackers-compromise-us-missile-systems-jets-ships-report/article12185265/ Also, this old document: http://www.internetsociety.org/articles/security-protocol-failures Hostile regimes gain access to defense plans. In our rush to make life "easier" through computerization, we have created a society where theft has become exponentially easier. Scammers collect millions of dollars in a few hours. Private information is routinely stolen and misused. . And on and on... The bank and the credit card companies keep assuring me that they have the utmost security. Yet it has become easier than ever to steal chip information off my card. Not to mention that they lose billions, themselves. Even your car's electronic key can be read and duplicated easier and quicker than a real key.... Now we are moving to mandatory paperless reporting. Unsecure email is being used for purposes for which it was never intended. Especially since I cannot take my email address with me, when I change providers... And millions of "accounts" out there which go dormant when people die... (What DOES happen to them?) .. Can we survive this death by a thousand cuts??? Will there be the one big failure which will make the 2008 financial meltdown seem like a mere hiccup? ..

... http://metronews.ca/news/toronto/686827/mayor-rob-ford-aides-talk-of-tape-sparked-police-probe/ So Towhey went to the police. Wonder what that was about? ...

Our justice system has evolved into a lumbering dinosaur where "legal" proof in many cases is impossible. Witness the number of people who have gone to jail as a result of the 2008 financial mis-doings... very few. The number of charges in the Senate frauds? zero. So the public will be forgiven for accepting something less that full "proof". Especially when there is a pattern. Especially when the lips say "No, I do not...", and the body language says something else. Today, Doug rushed over to CP24 to defend against those Globe and Mail charges of selling hash. The interview was basically one question "did you do it?"... The answer was: "No", followed by a rant about the evil people at the Globe and the Star, and the horrors of family scrutiny, and the litany of charitable works the family has done, and on like that.... Punctuated occasionally with "...30 years ago. Is that all they got?" Now, he might have helped himself a lot more with his own version of history for that time... with whom he hung out, what church choirs he belonged to, which restaurants he frequented. But he did not replace the Globe's story with a believable alternative history, and that makes it very difficult. To you and me, the believability of these stories may boil down to "he said, she said".... but I wonder if: for a lot of people a little closer to the action, these stories are starting to connect a few dots.

Well, yes, the GST thingy was one of those issues where reality does not meet ideology. Governments of every stripe, and Harper included, soon learn that a country of 30+ million does require "programs", and those programs have to be paid for. One can argue about which programs are necessary and which are not..... but no matter what, they still have to paid for, and for that you need revenue. Liberals may not have been the best financial managers But to blindly say, against economists' advice: "I don't need revenue", does not suggest of "good" financial managment, either. On the lowest level... the programs themselves.... is it "good" financial management to pull 14 million off Tourism promotion, whch affects 600,000 jobs, and stick it into EAP promotion...which does exactly what???? ... ...

.. Oh, that's ok. It's not like it's NEW money. Its just money recylced from the "savings" which we stole from the TOURISM advertising budget. The number of tourists is down 4 million per year from 10 years ago, but hey... that only affects 600,000 workers or so... Who cares? Maybe we will get new tourists coming in to tour environmentally-freindly shale fracking facilities, instead of museums and historic buildings..?? ....

... I am very surprised that all the press is focussed almost exclusively on the $90,000 repayment. Yeah, it smells, but you can write it off as a buddy helping a buddy and making a large error of judgement in doing so. But the other bit... where he is alleged to have charged taxpayers per-diem on the very same days that he ALSO charged the Conservative party per-diem when campaigning for them.... THAT bit would be outright fraud. ...

If the report is correct, that he double-dipped the Conservative party and the taxpayers by charging BOTH of them for the days on which he helped campaign..... then his $90,000 repayment problem will be very small potatoes in comparison.

You may get only one vote every 4 years, but you get to rant about the CBC 24/7, and that, too, is a "vote". You get to rant to other media, in forums such as this, and guess what... even on the CBC forums themselves. You have lots of opportunity to "vote" your opinion about the CBC and anything else.... and those opinions help drive political direction. Debate at the Federal level happens because people such as you and I are debating it in the coffee shop. In the internet age, you may be getting your information from zillions of sources, but few of us have the time to distill the news from the noise. In today's bottom-line mentality, news services are dropping their investigative services... all the more imperative than ever, to have someone without bottom-line pressures, who can do so. And anyway, the internet age does not automatically mean that you are going to get your news.... do you have a guarantee that your government or your provider or your search engine will never filter? .A very popular Canadian website, primarily catering to a particular profession, had a very good political forum... until recently. But one day the owner of the website woke up and decided that he did not like the tone of the debates, and simply shut down the political thread. Wouldn't you rather have a place to vent that is free from such interference? Much more difficult for publicly-funded operations to do stuff like that, or you will be on their doorstep screaming, along with millions of others.. Speaking of which... how much of THIS site is publicly funded?

Imagine if in 2020, all your news comes from networks owned by Bell, Rogers, and Shaw... (maybe Sun, too, of course, although I doubt it). And taxing me about $150 a MONTH or more, for the privilege of receiving all this "high tech" information. I think I would rather have news sources accountable to their "shareholders", in terms of content and veracity.... as opposed to being accountable to their shareholders only in terms of financial bottom line. ...

Yes. Exaggeration... A lot of pundits do that.... They exaggerate quite a bit. Perhaps that is why they are not getting their 3 hours a week on the the CBC

What's this? Government spending $300 million of our tax dollars on a program to actually HELP people? Shouldn't they cut taxes by $300 million and let them find their own jobs?

The CBC HAS given Levant a platform: for example: http://www.cbc.ca/player/Shows/Shows/More+Shows/ideacity/ID/2246138133/?page=2 ... and even today, their "books" site has description of his book and links to his website. The problem here is that the Levant-CBC fight has turned personal. Sun has turned almost their ENTIRE mandate... into destruction of the CBC. As a result, almost their entire audience IS the CBC, defending itself. I am not particularly fond of Lacroix, but Management, commentators, reporters, staff will all change. The institution remains and will remain. If they want Sun to thrive, they have to take the same attitude, and build the institution. People might be forgive for believing that what they ARE building, is just a platform for a personal vendetta.

The CBC has been sympathetic to Steyn http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2008/06/13/f-rfa-macdonald.html

Yes, but that is because you have a sufficient income to be paying a large tax bill anyway. But "tax reductions" mean nothing to working poor who have minimal income. Had you continued the pay that $3,000., maybe it could have gone to some program that helps schools, daycare, anti-gang youth programs, whatever... programs that these people could actually use. ... ...

Yes, except that what you cite is "good" news only for seniors.. For the most part, Seniors have it good in Canada (and I AM one)... we have deferred our taxes via RRSPs, reduced them via pension splits, get a good portion of our medications paid for, etc. (As soon as I can convince them that Scotch is medication, too, then we will be all set) But what we really need in the country is programs for the working poor, youth, children, etc. (Oh yeah... are there any?) Seniors have largely come out of poverty in Canada.... (6.7 percent and lowering) Children have not ( 15 percent and rising ) ....(Conference Board of Canada figures) I appreciate Bryan's take on "promoting confidence" in the economy I suppose something so badly broken DOES need special promotion... sort of like trying to sell a used car that was soaked in the Hurricane Sandy floods. .

I think the current structure is actually quite genius. They have enough public funding to allow some freedom to experiment, but not so much that they can be totally foolhardy. They need enough private income so as to require them to "compete" effectively with the private broadcasters. And isn't competition supposed to be a GOOD thing, forcing both the CBC and the privates to get "better"? Is the CBC a detriment to private broadcasting.... or DID IT, in fact, kick-start the creation and flourishing of (good) private broadcasters?