Category: Politics

That is disgusting. One of the worst examples of the cross-over between politics and branding. Kudos to Sen. Feingold (D-WI) for having the balls to vote against this affront to privacy and personal freedoms.

The U.S. Gov’t is so concerned with getting everyone’s approval, that they are making any attemps at dissent seem un-patriotic and unamerican. Appropriately, these such opinions could land you in big trouble under the anti-terrorism act. With its sickening title, anyone who opposes the act is almost by definition anti-patriotic (You’re anti-USA PAtrIOT? What are you, some kindof terrorist-loving commie?)

This after the ‘you’re with us or you’re against us’ speech by Dubya. (Speaking of, has anyone else noticed that since Sept. 11^th, no media outlets calls him Dubya anymore? It’s ‘The President’, or ‘President Bush’, etc… none of the playfulness continues. Just because America has launched attacks against another country doesn’t mean that he’s not still a simpleton.)

Of course, up in Canada we’re pushing through our own reactionary, draconian measures too. So basically it just sucks right now.

Man am I mad. Not so much at the acts themselves, but the branding and media-spin on all of this just infuriates me.

OilFreeCoast.org is a site set up to protest the govt’s plans to look at drilling etc, on our Pacific Coast. You can learn the hows and whys there.

Please read their site for information.

On a purely random note, they use WildCanada.Net’s email/fax action application, which I helped develop a while ago. No idea whether they’re still using that code, but it makes me feel good anyway.

An interesting article on oil and the current war in Afghanistan.

Smuggled out of Little Blue Thing by pro-Tannockian elves, at no small risk to their ears.

More funster news!

Media suppress the news that Bush lost election to Gore

From East/West

Sunera Thobani responds.

here’s an excerpt:

From the ever-affable Soapbox Girls.

Prince Phillip is one of the few Royals who seems to say somewhat intelligent things, on occasion. This is one of those gems:

There’s just soooo much wrong with this picture, I don’t know where to begin:

(from BC Federation of Labour).

This is now being kicked into effect apparently, as the gov’t plans to lower minimum wage for trainees – essentially, it means that a (youth) worker must work X number of hours before being paid minimum wage. How many hours? no one knows. Is it guaranteed? ie. If a ‘trainee’ finishes the trainined, is she guaranteed to get the job at minimum wage (which is a paltry $8.00/hour anyway)? What controls will be in place to stop a place of business from hiring say, 20 ‘trainees’, and replacing them with 20 new trainees once their trainee status ends?

On the plus side, this could make it more attractive for employers to give someone ‘their first chance’. It can be really hard, especially in times of high unemployment for workers to get their first job. Competing with someone with experience, the unexperienced will lose almost every time. This could change that, as someone experienced becomes more expensive to hire. But is this a good thing? I’m not so sure. Minimum wage is set to be a starting wage at any rate – a training wage if you will. Conservative economists argue that minimum wage sets the wage – ie. and employer is less likely to raise a wage if they must pay X amount, regardless of demand (and don’t get me started on the supply/demand thing in economics). I however, completely disagree. Admittedly, I’ve only ever worked one job where I started at minimum wage, but built in was a scaling factor based on previous experience, and job performance while there. I know that McDonalds has performance incentives for raises beyond minimum. By having a trainee wage, that a whole level of increase eliminated. Instead of an increase beyond minimum wage, it’ll be an increase to minimum wage, further delaying a possible icrease beyond that wage.

Er..this is reading less clear than it did in my head. But maybe I’ll continue on later. For now, it’s lunch time, and I’m going to Le Beau!

My thanks to Brishen for pointing this article out to me.

Translink is holding a semi-referendum on whether to a)Maintain current revenues and cut services or b)Increase revenues to maintain and eventually improve services. That there is even a question seems ridiculous to me – how could any modern city not want to continually improve it’s transit system. Especially as Translink is so much more than transit. It’s mandate includes roads, bridges, certain ferries, bike lanes, etc – all the things that keep a healthy city moving. Have a look at the information provided by Translink as to its sources of revenue and its expenditures. Compare these to the other cities it provides as examples. It doesn’t seem so much to me.

Perhaps most astonishing about all this, is that if funding is not increased, Translink won’t open the new SkyTrain line that they’ve been building for years at some ungodly cost, because they won’t be able to afford to operate it. And why? Because they operate at a loss. And why? Because they have virtually no government subsidy (Admittedly, this is better than the TTC in Toronto, which gets no government support at all). To me, affordable access to transit should be as basic as access to affordable healthcare and education. It is just as important – if one cannot travel from one’s place of residence to one’s place of employment affordably (particularly if you’re a minimum-wage earner), one cannot work. Which is plainly detrimental to a healthy society and economy.

So get out there and vote in support of Translink.

The crime rates and statistics for Vancouver and Seattle are virtually identical, with one glaring exception – the number of gun-related deaths. Admittedly, this is from a New England Journal of Medecine study done some 14 years ago now, but I would be surprised if things have changed that much.

America’s relationship with guns is far from healthy,and now it looks as if an advocate for gun control (his big push was to force trigger locks and safety training for gun owners – how radical!) may have paid for his views on gun control as he was shot in his home. Either that, or this is cruel irony.

I remember something my sister, who now lives in Seattle said – “here, when our kids want to go over to one of their friends’ houses to play, we’ll have to ask their parents if they have a gun in the house. If they say yes, I don’t know if I’ll let my kids go”. Which is not something that would have ever occured to her to ask in Canada, I’ll bet.