An Assortment

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6IPHmJWmDk

a link to the 1st part of an 8 part series made by the BBC (all 8 parts are on youtube), making the case for global warming skepticism. The video's been tossed around all the Tory blogs to an extent, but I want to save it for future reference. It's the antithesis to An Inconvenient Truth, and makes just as compelling and convincing an argument as Gore did, even moreso in my opinion, because the side of skepticism is usually the one I favour. But watch it, even if you're a terribly concerned environmentalist, because the "truth" has little meaning if you're not exposed to both sides of an argument.

I'm glad to see all this attention paid to Zimbabwe. Mugabe made a big mistake when he started beating down his opposition, in a rather visible matter, rather than keeping his genocide quiet. I'm still of the opinion that it'll take Mugabe's natural death for any reforms or changes to come about(much like Castro in Cuba), but increased awareness is always swell.

5-minute social engineering for the win:

-raise the minimum wage for corporations
-slash corporate taxes
-slash the welfare system

You help the working poor out of the cycle of poverty with the min. wage, you off-set the increased wages with lower taxes, so that prices aren't increased, and you can try to attract more capital and job-creation in Canada, much like Ireland, while not hurting small business. Yea...

This whole business with General Pace, on the Joint Chiefs, talking about how homosexuality is "immoral" is another large black-eye for the White House. Not because of his views, but because he expressed them while in uniform, breaking a number of army regulations. This is one of the top officers breaking regulations that are there to ensure a secular and non-political military. So glad to see the "conservative" Republican government continue to blur the line between church and state that their founding fathers layed out.

http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/0112roberts.html

A very interesting editorial on the myth of the wage gap, i.e. the '70 cents to a dollar!' argument that's always thrown around as proof of how the job market is inherently discriminatory and sexist. Now, I'm not saying there isn't any sexism, because I'm sure there are a number of misogynistic examples (and against men, in the Public Sector), and those are, of course, a entirely negative thing. However, this sexism isn't an institutionalized aspect of the job market. If every single job was 50/50 men and women, sure, it'd be institutionalized and there'd be a wage gap, but since most jobs are predominantly gender biased in terms of numbers, the article shows that men and women are generally paid equally for equal work, with a number of examples:

-men work 3 hours per week, on average, more than women. As well, they're twice as likely to work at least 50 hours a week.
-men gravitate towards higher-paying, if less socially "rewarding" jobs, such as engineering, tax law, and computer programming. Teaching, nursing, and social work all pay less, and are predominantly made up of female workers.
-The worst jobs are largely held by males, and they're paid more for it. Not a tonne of little girls who grow up wanting to be lumberjacks or ironworkers.
-Men represent 92% of all occupational deaths, because men largely work the most dangerous jobs (mining, construction, etc), and are paid more for it.

Interesting stuff

Now, to electoral nerdiness! Canada is, of course, fundamentally flawed. It has a dinosaur of a bi-cameral house, with an appointed senate, and a parliament where large disparities occur between the popular vote and the parliamentary representation. As well, several provinces (BC, AB, Ontario) are largely screwed in the proverbial electoral ass, as a vote in PEI is worth four times that of a vote in urban Vancouver. Urban areas and the fast growing West have votes that count for little in comparison to the Maritimes and rural areas. You can thank the nature of First-Past-The-Post for all this, as regional parties such as the Bloc have far more power in parliament than national parties such as the NDP, or the old PC. And you get ridings such as Gulf Islands-Saanich, where the riding is predominantly left-wing, but the leftist parties split the vote, allowing a Conservative minister (Gary Lunn) to sneak in, where he represents the viewpoint of a fraction of his riding's vote. That's FPTP for ya.

I've always liked Australia's government and electoral system. It has a PR Triple-E Senate, styled after the American one, and a IRV Lower House, with ridings that are close in average size. The only downside is that plain IRV tends to elect more partisan leaders, and hurts centrist candidates. A reform such as the Borda Count (ranking the candidates, and they get a numerical value (i.e. 1st gets 40, 2nd gets 20, 3rd gets 10) would make it even better, however, Borda has only been tried in Slovenia (IIRC), so there's not a lot of good examples of how practical an awesome electoral system it is. I'm also a fan of MPP, which is far better than PR or FPTP, and it's also more likely to be possibly implemented in Canada than IRV is, being a variation on our existing system. I just don't want constant minority governments and expensive elections every year, as the trend seems to be going with a resurgent CPC, because then there's no real point winning. Parties spend their time politicking, which is fine and all, but not when you're trying to run a government. IRV, like the American system, ensures at least 4 years of actual governing for the best interests of the country.

However, I'm absolutely goddamn sick of the constant Scandanavian comparisons that are brought up for Canada. The constant "why can't we be more like Sweden!" attempts to justify a welfare state/democratic socialist state. The problem is that Canada isn't Sweden. A much more viable comparison is Sweden and Ontario. Canada is much, much larger than Sweden in terms of size, population, and regional difference. Sweden doesn't have a Quebec hanging over it, messing around every election because a majority can only be bought through pandering to Quebec, it doesn't have an aboriginal problem to deal with, it doesn't have many primary industries and a commuter lifestyle. The best comparison for modelling the future of Canada is Australia (both in terms of size, scale, current problems, similarities, shared history, and other aspects), and the Aussies best us in every area. You can thank a long-standing populist Conservative PM (go go John Howard!) for all that.

Now, the fundamental problem with Canadian governing is our fucked up federalism. It clouds every aspect of governing, making everything ten times more difficult. It basically boils down to how the Premiers have far too much power, and too little responsibility. They ignore their constitutional responsibilities (health care, education, etc) because it's much easier to whine to the feds for money than raise provincial taxes to pay for things, and then use blackmail because Premiers can easily rally support in a province against the feds. This leads to the Feds having to spend tax dollars on provincial responsibilities, messing around with their Federal responsibilities, and having to concern themselves with imaginary "fiscal imbalances." Imaginary because the provinces have the same damn tax base the Feds do for their population's health care and education, it's just MUCH easier to whine to the Feds for money than raise provincial taxes to pay for provincial measures, and thus be really accountable to the population that elected them. This situation has denegrated to the extent that Albertans and Ontarians end up paying for Quebec's failing welfare state with their federal tax dollars. Then again, 25% of our population isn't even signed on to our modern, patriated constitution, so....we've got a few problems here.

The next week is like Christmas for political nerds. A budget, a possible election (still placing money against a spring election), and a Quebec election?! It's all rather magical.