I can't keep giving these ideas away for free

Or should I assume that my campaign consultant fee is in the mail? See end of third bullet point. What took you so long?

I'll try to find better pictures later, but for now, via @ShirleeEngle


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Mop & Pail spots emperor walking streets naked

That bastion of Marxism and vanguard of the glorious revolution of the proletariat, The Globe and Mail,  today brings us a story so shocking, a truth so revealing that it if absorbed by the general populace, will shake our economic and political firmament for years to come.

Corporate tax cuts don't spur growth, 

analysis reveals as election pledges fly

KAREN HOWLETT

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

Canadian companies have added tens of billions of dollars to their stockpiles of cash at a time when tax cuts are supposed to be encouraging them to plow more money into their businesses.

Well, suck me dry and call me "Dusty!" You mean to tell me that supply-side economics -  the notion that if you give tax breaks to rich people and corporations they will use it to create more wealth for all - is bullshit? That what really happens when you give rich people and corporations a tax break is that they pocket the money? No! That's, that's...unpossible!

Jim Flaherty, the Harper government’s Finance Minister, acknowledged in a telephone interview that corporate tax cuts are a tough sell when companies are still hoarding cash. But over the long term, he said, his “comfort zone” comes from the fact that business leaders and economists have widely endorsed tax cuts as a job creation tool.

“Most importantly,” he said, “it’s a confidence builder in Canada, and it’s a way of branding Canada.”

Ah yes, branding. You know, where they take a red hot piece of metal and burn the owner's mark into the hindquarters of a bull that has had its balls cut off and is being fattened for slaughter. So cutting taxes on the business sector simply results in the business sector having more money and the government having less to maintain roads, pay firefighters and fund education and health care. Well, I never. Will wonders never cease? Next thing you know some smart cookie is going to be telling us that boosting military spending and cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy somehow leads to higher deficits or some other crazy notion.



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Harper speaks!

Highminded and objective? Maybe not. Fair and accurate? You betcha!

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Virtually Speaking Sundays: Maple Syrup Edition

VIRTUALLY SPEAKING SUNDAY APRIL 3 A Counterpoint to the Sunday Morning Talking Heads @4pm pacific|7pm eastern - DAN ELLSBERG & GLENN GREENWALD: WikiLeaks, the abuse of Bradley Manning and the future of civil liberties in the U.S.  Listen here @5pm pacific|8pm eastern - Maple Syrup Edition with Kevin Wood aka RevPaperboy, Dr.Dawg and @OurManinAbiko on the coming General Election in Canada and #Quakebook, a Twitter spawned response to Japan post quake and tsunami. Listen live here Beginning Tuesday, listen to the Maple Syrup Edition here •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• VIRTUALLY SPEAKING SUSIE  with Susie Madrak MONDAY April 4 - 6pm pacific|9pm eastern The topic is Libya and the long haul. Susie's guest is writer, student, poet, musician, and political activist Rafael Noboa y Rivera. A decorated combat veteran of the Iraq War, Noboa y Rivera is currently completing studies in journalism at Ohio University’s Scripps School of Journalism. Recovering journalist and class warrior Susie Madrak explores the impact of current events on the daily lives of working class people. Listen here, live and later  ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• THURSDAY DOUBLE HEADER APRIL 7 - 5pm pacific | 8pm eastern to 7pm pacific|10pm eastern VIRTUALLY SPEAKING A-Z JAY ACKROYD and STUART ZECHMAN Ongoing conversation about U.S. movement liberalism (as opposed to 3rd Way or centrist liberalism) in both an historical and current context. Listen here @ 5 pm pacific Beginning April 8 Listen here  ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• @6pm slt - VIRTUALLY SPEAKING WITH JAY ACKROYD  and guest economist WARREN MOSLER:  Can Taxes and Bonds Finance Government Spending? Modern Monetary Theory says no. Listen here

Visit Virtually Speaking at: http://virtuallyspeaking.ning.com/?xg_source=msg_mes_network

 

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election notebook

Some random thoughts on the election:

• Stephen Harper, who not so long ago touted himself as the champion of "open and accountable" government, will only answer five questions a day on the campaign trail, and two of them have to be in French and one from "local" media. So the people from the Globe, the Star, CBC, NatPost, Sun, CTV, Global, CP, Ottawa Citizen, Calgary Herald, Vancouver Province et al have paid $10,000 to sit through spin session and Potempkin rallies and ask one or two questions for the whole campaign?  I have a question: Are you fucking kidding me? Dammit Janet has a great post on just how bad things have gotten and Dr. Dawg hands out the white feathers
• The great debate debate rolls on over who gets to be included in the big blather off and whether it is fair to leave the Green Party or NDP or Bloc Quebecois or Liberals out. Harper has no interest in a debate, there is no advantage to had for him in taking part unless Ignatieff suddenly snaps and starts gibbering in Russian at the podium. Strategically, I can understand him not wanting to risk the exposure to a zinger or risk the cameras catching him with a bit of baby meat stuck in his fangs. I do think he has a moral responsibility to publicly debate the other leaders since that is how democracy is supposed to work re: free marketplace of ideas and all that, but then this is guy whose government fell over his unwillingness to reveal basic information about government policy that he is required by law to share with Parliament, so living up to his moral responsibilities isn't exactly his strong suit.
• Further to the debate debate, the Liberals are really passing up a golden opportunity at the moment. Harper has dithered over whether he will debate Ignatieff one on one, or whether he will take part in a full leaders' with or without Liz May and was actually asked whether he was "chicken" in a press conference Sunday (kudos to CBC's Terry Milewski for using up one of the two or three questions he will get to ask, though after the "chicken" question, I suspect it will be a hot day in Iqaluit before he gets called on again. The Liberals should have someone in a chicken costume at every single public appearance Harper makes from now until a debate is held.
• In a bit of pure pandering to the Rob Ford suburban voters, Harper has promised to increase the government subsidy for kids to play minor hockey and little league aka the child fitness tax credit from $500 to $1000 and to add a further $500 tax credit for adult fitness, just as soon as the budget is balanced (in other words, never). I'm sure all those urban poor who can't afford to feed their families will be delighted to know that they can get money back on their taxes if they join the gym.
• As happy as I am to see Jack Layton do the right thing and finally bring down the government instead of   making a deal with the Conservatives to let them stay in power if they promise not to kick the poor, elderly and constitution too hard, I fear this may mean the NDP takes a shellacking as people vote strategically to dump Harper by backing the Liberals. Though, having said that, the NDP does stand to make some gains in Saskatchewan and in Edmonton where they ran second to the Conservatives due to strategic voting. 
• Does anyone outside of the hard-core Conserva-borg base really think coalition governments are a terrible thing? Let's face it, any minority government is a de facto coalition between the government and the opposition parties for as long as the government is willing to court the oppostion or as long as the opposition is willing to go along with the government. The only difference being that in an official coalition, the minority partner usually gets a place at the cabinet table. No one, except Harper, has ever proposed forming a coalition with the Bloc Quebecois.
• The latest Conservative canard about ending per-vote subsidies deserves to be broadly, publically debunked on the front page of every newspaper and on every radio and television show. It ought to be shouted from the rooftops that having the taxpayers foot the bill for election campaigns means that taxpayers call the shots, not the fatcats. Doing away with the subsidies and allowing bigger individual, corporate and union donations means that politicians will be for sale to the highest bidder, and the highest bidder is not going to be ordinary Canadians.
• For all those who have been paying attention to the ongoing nuclear disaster in Japan, keep in mind that Stephen Harper fired Linda Keene as the head of the Canadian nuclear regulatory agency because she was concerned that an emergency system to provide power to the reactor cooling system at the aging Chalk River reactor was not connected and was not operational. The problems in Japan all stem from the fact that the cooling systems did not have power after the earthquake because the emergency generators could not be used.
• I think I am becoming even more addicted to the razor-sharp Kady O'Malley than I was before the election, if that is possible. 

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Irony is not only dead, but its corpse had been desecrated

The young girl has a lovely voice, yes, but seeing Stephen Harper sing this song is like watching David Duke sing "We Shall Overcome." Someone who was disappointed we didn't get to play in the Iraq sandbox and is destroying our fiscal security to buy unnecessary stealth fighter jets should not be singing peace anthems. It is not merely distasteful,  it is hour-long-shower-scrub-with-a-wire-brush disgusting. Maybe this is his energy plan, to hook John Lennon's coffin up to a turbine and provide free electricity to the entire American continent from the resultant spinning.

He says he has his own lyrics for the song - I'll bet. Something along the lines of "Imagine there's no Liberals..." no doubt.

Personally, I'd have thought he'd be more into a different Lennon tune from a year or two earlier, though again he'd have his own lyrics... "You say you want a coalition..." or perhaps "Can't buy me Love."

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this week on Virtually Speaking

Coming up this week on Virtually Speaking:

• Stuart Zechman | Jay Ackroyd on VS A-Z. Ongoing rants and explorations of  liberalism. This week: the Disinformation Regime|Listen live here, on Thursday, March 31 @ 8pm edt|5pm pdt | Listen here after midnight Friday, April 1.

• Evolutionary Biologist PZ Myers on Virtually Speaking w/Jay Ackroyd:  Expect current developments in science, secular society and squids. Listen live here, beginning Thursday, March 31, March 31 @ 9pm edt|6pm pdt

Also, you may have missed these excellent programs live, but you can still get them as podcasts:

• Avedon Carol and Culture of Truth on VS Sundays: a counterpoint to the Sunday morning talking heads. (What they're really saying when they're saying what they're saying):   Listen here, on or after Sunday, March 27 @ 9pm edt|6pm pdt

• Caltech astrophysicist George Djorgovski, this week on VS Science with Cosmic Log's Alan Boyle and Space Studies Institute's Robin Snelson. They'll discuss topics ranging from black holes and dark energy to the use of Second Life for science, and the future of virtual worlds. Listen here, beginning Tuesday, March 29.

• PageOne blogger Mike Rogers comes to VS Susie to talk with Susie Madrak about closeted Republicans and why he outed them. Listen here, on or after Monday, March 28 @ 9pm edt|6pm pdt

And of course, stay tuned for the big show on Sunday as Virtually Speaking Sundays:Maple Syrup Edition returns with Kevin Wood and John Baglow aka Dr. Dawg getting down and dirty to talk about the Canadian election - we will be using all the dirty words: Coalition, contempt, separatist, tax increase, Senate reform, proportional representation, sweater vest festishes and all the other assorted perversions that accompany a good discussion of Canadian politics. There will also be a feature interview with Our Man in Abiko about the Japanese earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis and the Twitter-spawned publishing sensation that is #quakebook.

We will be on Sunday from 5 pm Pacific/8 pm Eastern but you might want to tune in a little early for the opening band - Glenn Greenwald (yes, that Glenn Greenwald) will be talking with Daniel Ellsberg  aka The Most Dangerous Man in America about Wikileaks and the torture of Bradley Manning beginning at 4 pm Pacific/7 pm Eastern. Listen to them Sunday night or later here.

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What if?

What if George Lucas had been a seven-year-old Japanese girl?

hat tip to Gaijin Hero

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You say impeachment, I say contempt of Parliament

Let's call the whole thing off!

Apparently there are those who interpret Parliamentary law as saying that Stephen Harper is now barred from holding office due to having been found in contempt of Parliament. I'm not sure this is the case since the confidence vote was held before acceptance of the committee report finding the government in contempt could be voted on by the House of Commons. Still, a such a finding even at the committee level is significant. Certainly, the report would have been confirmed by the House, although I suspect the Conservative-dominated Senate would have sent it back to the house.
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My old neighbourhood

by now, you have all seen plenty of footage of the worst hit areas of Japan in and around Sendai and the north east coast. Here are just a few images of my old neighbourhood in Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture in the Tokyo suburbs. Bear in mind that this is an area that was not hit by the tsunami and is roughly 300 km away from the epicentre of the quake near Sendai.

Watch the sidewalk move and the ground liquify.


The shifting earth dropped the street and shoved these manholes up very near the intersection where the video above was shot.

All the mud and water you see is a result of soil liquification due to the earthquake. As in the video at the top, it just sort of bubbles up through the surface in a matter of seconds.



More video here

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Lies, damn lies and statistics

You say you want election numbers? Look no further than the 308 for all the Canadian election polling you can stand.

And just for the record:

Current Parliament
Conservative Party of Canada: 143 seats
Liberal Party: 77 seats
Bloc Quebecois: 47 seats
New Democratic Party 36 seats

Poll projections from 308 as of March 25
Conservatives: 152 seats, popular vote 38.2%
Liberals: 72 seats, popular vote 27.4%
Bloc Quebecois: 51 seats, popular vote 9.9 %
NDP: 33 seats, popular vote 16.1%
Green Party: 7.1% popular vote


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coincidence?

Bouquets of Grey notes an interesting coincidence

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After all, they might spend the cash on pitchforks and torches

via Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars we learn that the northern wingnuts of Minnesota will not be outdone by the dairyland wingnuts of Wisconsin. Wis. Gov. Scott Walker is trying to crush unions and take away the constitutional right of working people to freely associate - hah! what a piker! a mere robber baron wannabe! Minnesota Republicans want to make it illegal for anyone on public assistance to have more than $20 cash!

On March 15, Angel Buechner of the Welfare Rights Committee testified in front of the House Health and Human Services Reform Committee on House File 171. Buechner told committee members, “We would like to address the provision that makes it illegal for MFIP [one of Minnesota’s welfare programs] families to withdraw cash from the cash portion of the MFIP grant - and in fact, appears to make it illegal for MFIP families to have any type of money at all in their pockets. How do you expect people to take care of business like paying bills such as lights, gas, water, trash and phone?”
House File 171 would make it so that families on MFIP - and disabled single adults on General Assistance and Minnesota Supplemental Aid - could not have their cash grants in cash or put into a checking account. Rather, they could only use a state-issued debit card at special terminals in certain businesses that are set up to accept the card.

Which is a actually a partial surrender to all those Cadillac-driving welfare queens in Minnesota - the original bill would have barred those on assistance from getting any cash at all.
Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?
But remember, trying to get millionaires to pay an extra 2% in income taxes is Marxist class warfare by jealous communist who hate successful people who pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps. You know, scrappy entrepreneurs like Paris Hilton and all those hedge fund managers on Wall Street who earn every cent of their million-dollar taxpayer-funded bonuses.
I'm guessing the next step will be Oklahoma bringing back indentured servitude and debtor's prisons or Missouri passing the "Modest Proposal Act" requiring all families on public assistance to sell their children to the nearest rendering plant or perhaps the kindly burghers of Indiana will finally pass the "Work will make you Free" Act to provide a final solution to the poverty problem.

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Gambatte Nippon!

Check out the ton of great tsunami related art at http://tsunami.cfsl.net/

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this week on Virtually Speaking

While this week would normally be my Sunday to host Virtually Speaking Sunday: Maple Syrup Edition, I've been otherwise occupied fretting myself half to death and besides, we had a terrific guest - Ambassador Joe Wilson - lined up for the other show, so it was decided to let them go a little long tonight.

Be part of the studio audience in Second Life. Join us at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Virtually%20Speaking/151/153/24

• Amb. Joe Wilson | Marcy Wheeler on VS Sundays:  Balancing security and transparency in a 21st century democracy  | Listen here, on or after Sunday, March 20 @ 9pm est|6pm pdt

• Susie Madrak | Scout Prime on VS Susie: Blogging Wisconsin |Listen here, on or after Monday, March 21 @ 9pm est|6pm pdt

• Stuart Zechman | Jay Ackroyd on VS A-Z: Exploring liberalism |Listen live here, on Thursday, March 24 @ 8pm est|5pm pdt | Listen here after midnight Friday, March 25.

• Brad DeLong | Jay Ackroyd on Virtually Speaking w/Jay Ackroyd:  How the great recession has exposed a rift among macro economists. And Ricardian Equivalence.|Listen here, on or after Thursday, March 24 @ 9pm est|6pm pdt

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Keep calm and carry on

When my smart phone chimed at 3 a.m. a week ago Friday in Ontario, bringing news of a massive eathquake in Japan, I woke Hiromi. She muttered something about calling her parents in Miyagi in the morning, and went back to sleep. We’d spoken to her dad via video Skype only a few hours ago. It could wait.

Morning came, and with TV images of cars washing under a bridge like ice floes on a spring river, fishing boats perched atop buildings, entire villages reduced to mud-covered rubble. We called and called to no avail.

We knew Oji-san would have been at home in Wakayanagi, far enough inland to be safe from the deadly waves, but Oba-san was supposed to go into Sendai to attend a lecture that afternoon.

The barrage of calls from family and friends began almost at once with my parents offering to cut short their southern vacation. No need, we told them, there’s nothing to be done but wait.

I went to work long enough to fill in my boss and was sent home to wait. Hour after hour, we watched the news channels hideous pageant of the damned, like rabbits on the highway at night, unable to look away from the oncoming headlights of doom. But for us that doom would never arrive, only constantly approach. All we could do was wait, chained by distance, helpless to act.

Dozens called and emailed to express concern, sympathy, horror and support. Was there anything they could do? Did we need anything? No, there was nothing. Only to wait.

Hours of anxiety stretched into days. The kids were fed at intervals and otherwise left in the care of Nintendo and Walt Disney. I cooked, monitored the news and answered the phone while Hiromi sat glued to NHK’s Internet feed and kept up the hourly ritual of dialing through to a recording in Japan telling us our call could not be put through. Appetitie and sleep became a distant memory. I’d give in to nervous exhaustion and medicinal vodka and doze fitfully for a few hours, rising to find her still maintaining her vigil the while the 24-hour cable news drumbeat of despair rolled on.

I stumbled through work, so preoccupied I could barely string a coherent sentence together. Wednesday came and went without contact, the constant worry and not-knowing like a trapped rat trying to gnaw its way out of your terrified soul. We did our best to stay composed, knowing that the least breach of the emotional dam would mean a flood of panic.

Returning from the office early Thurday, I sat down to try to work and noticed the cold grey lemon of my father-in-law’s Skype icon had turned to bright, friendly green. His computer was back online. They had electricity. I hollered to Hiromi and she dashed to the phone.

We called, and at long last, they answered.

The waiting was over.

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the PM, the conman, the blonde hooker and the Colonel

While I've been a bit distracted this week with personal matters , I have been paying some attention to the non-Japan related news. Really, there seems to be no depth to which Stephen Harper will not sink. With the revelation that one of his former close advisors did time for fraud and is currently involved in a dubious lobbying effort to enrich his 20-something escort fiance, and the looming likelihood that his government will be found in contempt of Parliament, Stephen Harper is feeling a bit cornered. It is  doubtful that he will win his precious majority if an election is called this spring and so he has tried telling voters that the disaster in Japan was sufficient reason to delay a vote.
When we didn't buy that, he stepped up his campaign of parliamentary obstructionism (dropping over 1,000 pages of documents 15 minutes before the committee session ended, for example) to try to avoid having his government and ministers found in contempt of Parliament. Tune in next week when he tells us that us that the government being found in contempt of Parliament is an example of how Michael Ignatieff hates democracy and is just some Johnny-come-lately who is playing games with the economy and is the son of Russian aristocrats not a "real immigrant"and besides LIBYA! FREEDOM! Democracy! Whisky! Sexy! We are at War! Don't switch horses in midstream! 
And if that doesn't work, expect him to try proroguing the house again, just to "save it from itself" and delay the budget so that he can "focus on the economy and the war."

Now, having said all that, let me clarify a few things: While Stephen Harper is a lying, power-grabbing, egomaniac and he may or may not be doing it for the wrong reasons, I think he is doing the right thing on Libya.
Yes, mark the day on the calendar -- I agree with Stephen Harper on something.
I think the moral choice with regards to Libya is at this stage is intervention by the international community. Libya is not Iraq, it is not Vietnam, it is not Bahrain. The closest comparison I can think of is Spain in the 1930s. There is a brutal, corrupt, autocratic ruler. There is a viable democratic opposition engaged in a popular revolution that has shown it has the hearts and minds of the population behind it. The regime in this case is being propped up by superior military firepower. The loyalists in the Libyan armed forces are mostly mercenaries and those who have profited from their affiliation with the regime. There have been numerous defections from the military by those troops and commanders who have refused to attack their own people.
As it would have been in Spain, the moral thing to do here is to side with the people against an autocrat that would crush them and murder those who dare to dissent.
The right thing to do is to freeze all of the Colonel's assets abroad, deny him jet fuel, artillery shells and other munitions.
The right thing to do is level the playing field by arming the people in Benghazi and Tobruk and elsewhere to allow them to defend themselves.
The right thing to do is to prevent the Colonel from bombing his own people or turning his tanks and artillery on the people who seek to be free from his corrupt and brutal regime.
It isn't a matter of sending troops into a quagmire, it isn't a matter of sticking our nose in where it isn't wanted.
It is a matter of dropping a few bombs and firing a few missiles to avoid a genocide and another generation of oppressive, autocratic rule in Libya, by a man who has supported terrorism in numerous forms (the Lockerbie bombing, arming the IRA, etc etc)
Just because Stephen Harper supports it doesn't make it a bad idea.

Good News!

Mrs.Paperboy spoke to one of the people running one of the evacuation centers in Wakayanagi again last night. Still no direct word about her parents, but apparently their part of town was not badly damaged and while there were a couple of hundred people injured, no fatalities have been reported in their area thus far. The guy she talked to said they still had no running water, gas, electricity or phone service (he was on an emergency satellite phone I assume) but that the electricity could be back on in some parts of town in the next day or two. The man at the evacuation centre said a lot of locals are spending the day at the centre - it has some heat and lights and some food and water is available- and then returning home to sleep. This is good news and is really helping us stay positive.


UPDATE!
Mrs. Paperboy is on the phone with her mother right now. Everyone is okay. Everyone go have a beer or six and celebrate, then send some money to the Red Cross. Thanks everyone for your concern and support through this difficult week.

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The Waiting

It has been, in the sense of the old Chinese curse, an interesting weekend.
The earthquake and tsunami that struck north-eastern Japan on Friday and the subsequent nuclear crisis are frightening events that hit very, very close to home for me and mine.
As many of you know, I spent many years in Japan and Mrs. Rev. Paperboy is a Japanese national. Furthermore, Sendai is pretty much her hometown and her parents live in a nearby village in Miyagi Prefecture, well inland from the city. Neither of us has had much sleep since Friday and we still have not received any word about her parents.
We are grateful for the outpouring of concern among friends and family and we thank you for your emails, phone calls, tweets, visits and other expressions of support. Pardon us if we don't respond swiftly or at all for the moment, we appreciate your kindness.
But we are still waiting.
At the moment there is still no electricity or telephone service in the affected area and we are still trying constantly to get through via telephone and email to our family there. Meanwhile, we are doing our best to keep calm and carry on.

The best thing you can do to help us right now is give money to the Red Cross (click the link or text the word ASIA to 30333 to make a one-time donation of $5) or go out and give blood.

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Showtime!

Just getting ready to host Virtually Speaking Sunday:Maple Syrup Edition by drinking a nice piping hot cup of maple syrup. Join Lindsay Stewart and I at 8 EST 5 Pacific


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