The push for taxes on "carbon"

Progressives have been ramping up the rhetoric for a "tax on carbon" or, euphemistically, "pricing carbon".  The usual suspects  have been doing so for some time and more recently it came from a less predicable quarter, Preston Manning.

It's worth reminding ourselves of the reasons to push back:

Finance Minister Joe Oliver: the "multibillion-dollar tax on everything"
Lorne Gunter: "Heaven help us ..."

BC, the first jurisdiction in North America to impose such a tax, is frequently held up by carbon tax pushers as a shining success.  Aldyen Donnelly points out why that and related claims are a myth:

... BC Ministry of Finance budget documents show, clearly, that total demand for the B.C. carbon-taxed products grew faster after the carbon-tax was introduced than over almost every other similar timeframe between 1992 and 2008.

Useless "enforcers" of the law

Lorne Gunter describes a bizarre case in which a Calgary woman's property has been taken over by a "Freeman-on-the land":

If the facts of the case are as reported, Andreas Pirelli is surely as guilty of stealing Rebekah Caverhill’s property (one half of a duplex) as he would be had he been able to stuff it in a duffle bag and run off with it.

... In return for three months’ free rent, Pirelli agreed to do some reno work on the unit. Instead, according to Caverhill, Pirelli declared himself a Freeman-on-the-Land, essentially a sovereign citizen to whom Canadian laws and taxes do not apply.

Pirelli allegedly gutted much of Caverhill’s duplex, painted his bedroom black (all of it: walls, floors and ceiling) and then declared it an embassy for his sovereign state of ... well, his sovereign state of himself.... 

... What is especially frustrating is police are timid about helping Caverhill regain her property. They have told her her complaint is a civil matter, not a criminal one, so they cannot help. ...

They sometimes say that "the law is an ass". In this case, if it is as the crown and police claim, they "cannot help", the law is a complete MORON. But I don't really believe that. The so-called "Freeman" is a fraudster and vandal who, by his own admission, has effectively stolen Ms Caverhill's property - illegally removed it from her possession and control.

In another less "complicated" day in the not so distant past, this vandal, fraudster and thief would have simply been removed, charged, jailed and tried in court. Today, the "authorities" overthink the situation and decide to do nothing. This is more evidence that our well-paid so-called "enforcers" of the law are becoming useless, politically correct idiots.

Justin Trudeau cashing in at taxpayers' expense

Ezra's now had a look at the complete list of Justin Trudeau's speaking engagements and finds he's been skipping parliament to cash in (at between $10K and $20K a pop).



There's something very odious about parliamentarians collecting speaking fees.  Justin Trudeau, in particular, is a wet-behind-the-ears dilettante with nothing useful to offer by way of advice to anyone, not even students.  Why would any serious organization or corporation pay a substantial fee to hear him speak?  What's in it for them?  Access for legislative favors? 

This seems to be is a recipe for corruption.  If there aren't rules against it, there ought to be.

Updates: More, from Brian Lilley:



and Lorne Gunter:

... This strikes a lot of people as unethical. And in a moral sense I agree, particularly since Trudeau took most of that money from school boards, library associations, youth groups and charities. 

But the golden boy of Canada’s Liberal party has broken no Parliamentary rules. Those who have criticized Trudeau’s actions – including many MPs – need to work to change House of Commons’ regulations ...

Lorne hits on a very important question.  Why the hell are schoolboards and others, who ought to know better, wasting significant cash, especially taxpayers' cash, to hear Justin freaking Trudeau?

... the first question I asked myself when the details of Trudeau’s speaking credits became public on Thursday was: Who would pay to hear him talk in the first place? The man is a vapid tangle of feel-good platitudes about youth, potential, concern, caring and the future. His stump speeches on the leadership campaign trail these last few months have been almost entirely content-free....

Back to ethics:

There are three problems I have with the ethics of Trudeau’s paid speeches, though.
First, he often missed sitting days and votes in the Commons to be away giving talks, which means he put his own ambition and enrichment ahead of his duty to his constituents.

Second, while he claims not to have promoted himself as an MP to get more gigs, his average fee for the 63 speeches he gave before being elected was $10,936. For the 17 after he took office, it has been $16,323 – a bonus of nearly 50%.

And, finally, it is far too easy for organizations seeking influence in Ottawa to slip a prominent MP a few thousand for a half hour of pontificating. So the practice should be abolished.

More reasons to dump the U.N.

Lorne Gunter:

If ever there was an institution that deserved to be called feckless and useless, it is the United Nations.

... Mauritania, the last nation on earth to ban slavery (1981) — where an estimated 800,000 souls are still treated as chattel — has a place on the UN’s human rights council.

... This week and throughout the year, Western nations and culture will be denounced over and over again at the UN while real crimes against humanity elsewhere will be tiptoed around. ...

Roots of the global debt crisis - Kay vs Gunter

The National Post’s resident leftist amateur social psychologist and editorial page editor, Jonathan Kay, has recently been treating us to his pet theories (eg. here and here) on how the US has come to the brink of insolvency and who is most to blame. The Tea Party figures large as a culprit [we mighta’ known]:

... the Tea Party ... is the product of an America that never really got over the fear and anxiety produced by 9/11, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and the real estate crash.

... all societies instinctively revert to romantic, backward-looking notions. ... This is why at Tea Party events, there is such a strong correlation between religious Christianity and fiscal conservatism...

... keeping taxes low isn't just smart policy: It's become the central dogma in what can only be described as a quasi-spiritual policy cult.

The noisiest tribe these days is the Tea Party, which embraces the cult-like mantra that cutting taxes can solve all of America's problems. The quasi-theological mentality was captured nicely by Tim Pawlenty ...[“noisiest tribe”? When ninety-plus percent of the media outlets, led by the New York Times, are bent on non-stop demonizing of the Tea Party?]

Kay’s presumed claim to balance is covered by a mild critique of the far left and conflicted views on Keynes and Hayek:

... The less noisy, but equally magically inclined, tribe is the Democratic left ...

... Keynes or Hayek? I'd prefer not to put all my money on one or the other. The U.S. fiscal meltdown shows what happens when economic advocacy gets turned into sloganeering. [Actually, politics always results in “sloganeering”. This is no different.]

All in all, Kay’s effort amounts to useless, left-leaning pedantry - a complete waste of time.
Better to read Lorne Gunter’s much more clear-headed take:

What do Obamacare, the London riots and a possible French debt crisis have in common? They are all proof that Western governments have grown beyond all reasonable, sensible limits.

...So to with the French debt crisis (and the Greek, Irish, Icelandic, Spanish and Italian debt crises - even the American one). In each case, the culprit is a state grown so large it has over-promised benefits, oversold citizens on what they have a "right" to but can no longer expect.

Unless and until we get over our belief that government can and should try to solve every social ill, and tax away productive money to pay for its experiments, the debt crises and riots and failed social programs will continue to pile up.

In short - Lorne Gunter’s views are very close to the Tea Party’s.

Obama's blame and scare tactics

President Obama addressed the nation yesterday on the US debt crisis. Two main themes were "Hope and change".  Nope, sorry, that's wrong! They were:

1) Finger pointing: (a) Bush did it! (b) Republicans are intransigent, and;
2) Scare-mongering: Raise the debt ceiling (on my terms) or granny’s gonna die

Even Lorne Gunter today buys into at least part of the Obama scare rhetoric. He seems to believe it's possible that the government could default:

...Yet if U.S. political gamesmanship leads to a credit downgrade on U.S. debt, or even a default, the consequences could be serious....

"Hardly" says former Clinton adviser, Dick Morris:

“There’s no way the United States is going to default on it’s debt. There’s no way we’re going to miss 5 minutes of payments.”

Attention Canadian Boat to Gaza!

Contrary to the claims of the Canadian Boat to Gaza (Ship of Useful Idiots) supporting the vile, genocidal Hamas:

... We aim to challenge the illegal Israeli actions

Gunter says: Wrong! A blockade is not illegal:

... blockades on the high seas have been perfectly acceptable for centuries, because once a threat enters your nation’s territorial waters, it’s already too late.

...  the Gazans, prior to the blockade being set up in 2006, routinely used the sea to smuggle in the weapons they deployed against Israel,

... there is no question of Israel's right to interdict Gaza-bound ships in international waters and ensure their cargo is food and supplies, rather than guns, bombs and rockets.

... The [Turkel] commission concluded that, "The naval blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip -in view of the security circumstances and Israel's efforts to comply with its humanitarian obligations - was legal pursuant to the rules of international law."

Here's wishing the Israelis a swift and successful blockade.

Religion of Peace vs Pastor Jones and free speech

Lorne Gunter's take on Afghans' Islamo-murderous reaction to Pastor Terry Jones' Koran burning:

... Jones should be ignored. ... Politicians should denounce him, and editors and producers should deprive him of the oxygen (media coverage) that stokes his demented brain. But those who suggest Jones is a bigger villain than the rioters who have taken lives over a book burning – any book burning – are looking at this issue through the wrong end of the telescope.

I agree with much of  Gunter's column.  But that last part (Jones should be ignored, etc ...), good advice though it may be, is somewhat weakened by having spent his first three paragraphs publicly denouncing Jones.

Meanwhile, others see Jones' actions as a free speech issue and take Republican Senator Lindsay Graham to task for saying of Jones:

"I wish we could find some way to hold people accountable."

From the comments: "Jones is an idiot and Graham is competing with him for the title."

Mark Steyn weighs in:

"... Lindsey Graham is unfit for office. The good news is there’s no need for the excitable lads of Mazar e-Sharif to chop his head off because he’s already walking around with nothing up there. ..."

... A society led by such “men” cannot survive, and does not deserve to.

And again to Graham's "embarassing" response to the above criticism:

... The guy “putting the troops at risk” here is Senator Graham, and General Petraeus and the other advocates of the one-way multiculti danse macabre. They’re telling our enemies the more you tread on our toes the more we’ll pretend not to notice and try to waltz you gaily round the floor one more time.

Pre-emptive capitulation only invites more and more provocations. Like the Arabs say, a falling camel attracts many knives.

Cancun was a bust

Lorne Gunter:

...there was no overall emissions target set, no worldwide quota on how much CO2 humans can pump into the atmosphere. Each country will be allowed to set its own limit and there will be no determination of whether or not any country’s emission targets are adequate to stop climate change. All talk of legally binding limits was punted until at least next year’s summit in South Africa....

...The new focus all but abandons any meaningful effort to restrict human activity in the name of saving the planet. So it surprises me that enviro activists seem to have bought into the new approach with such joyous satisfaction. But I guess it lets them keep jetting around the world to lavish conferences, so it’s all good.

Danny Williams’ (non) confidence in CanuckCare

Newfoundland Premier Danny (Big Mouth) Williams decided to go to the USA for his heart surgery. This recent story out of Victoria documents an example that illustrates the likely reason he did so:

... Jo Danielson is living on the edge with an abdominal aneurysm, a dangerous bulge in her aorta ...

... doctors have recommended ... endovascular aneurysm repair, in which a device called a "stent" is inserted into the diseased aorta...

... But she will have to wait until April ... The health authority has placed a cost-saving, yearly cap on the stent procedure because of the extra cost ...

... "We've literally had the rug pulled out from under our patients," said Dr. Jim Dooner, head of vascular surgery for VIHA.

... It's a form of accounting that Dooner says is "absolute lunacy and it is wrong."

In other words CanuckCare involves bureaucratic rationing based on the calculations of government bean-counters. [Note also how government health agencies like to call themselves "Authorities" rather than, say, "Services". They want to make sure the peons clearly understand where they fit in the pecking order.]

In the USA there is no government forced waiting (at least until ObamaCare comes along). So Williams’ decision to go to the USA was the wisest move he could make from a personal medical standpoint. However, Lorne Gunter makes an excellent point. Professional politicians like Danny Williams and his ilk are responsible for shoving a government health monopoly down Canadians’ throats and denying ordinary folks the level of care they insist on for themselves.

From the comments in Gunter's piece:


As Kate McMillan often says - "Tommy Douglas: Not Dead Enough".

Updates:
Here's Ezra Levant, and;
Rex Murphy goes easy on his fellow Newf. Murphy makes the point that we're operating in a "vacuum of fact". There's some truth to that, and I can believe that Newfoundland may not have the treatment he needs. However, it's unlikely, whatever Williams' precise problem, that treatment is unavailable anywhere in Canada. If it is available here, then he's hypocritically jumped the entire Canadian queue by going south.

Obama SC nominee Sotomayor - Part III

Confirmation hearings on Sonia ["wise Latina"] Sotomayor’s US Supreme Court nomination continue apace with, unlike SC appointments in Canuckistan, lots and lots of commentary from all quarters.

Why should Canadians care? Lorne Gunter:

... two reasons: First, American judicial trends -- especially the liberal ones -- have a way of creeping into our own legal system. An activist U. S. high court would encourage our own judges to be even more activist than they already are.

... mostly I think we should be fascinated with her confirmation for the insight it is providing into liberal legalthink [in particular liberal double standards] ... If Sonia Sotomayor were a conservative white male, she likely would not be confirmed as a justice on the U. S. Supreme Court ...

A liberal law professor:

I was completely disgusted by Judge Sotomayor's testimony today. If she was not perjuring herself, she is intellectually unqualified to be on the Supreme Court. If she was perjuring herself, she is morally unqualified.

Barack Obama’s email [Yes, I get email from POTUS]:

It's important for these hearings to be about Judge Sotomayor's own record and her capacity for the job — not any political back and forth that some in Washington may use to distract you.
[Translation: "Don’t listen to the critics." Actually, the nomination hearings involving "political back and forth" is the essence of the process, an intensely political one - hardly a mere "distraction".]

Update: Thomas Sowell.

Muzzling AGW skeptics

Al Gore’s invocation of the Nazi comparison (previous post) in describing the AGW hysterics’ struggle to save the planet is one more example of an attempt to silence dissent. As Lubos Motl said, it’s Gore and his fellow climate alarmists who are looking like Nazis.

Lorne Gunter picks up on the same theme in his column today:

If you visit drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures-- the site of a scientist who, for 30 years, has used satellites to monitor global temperature -- you will see that as of the end of June, the Earth is no warmer than it was in 1979.

.... And while there have been more warm years than cool ones in the past decade-and-a-half, the trend, since at least 2003, has been downward.

... since Al Gore released his movie An Inconvenient Truth in October 2006, the Earth's temperature has lost 0.74F, almost exactly the amount the UN's climate panel claims was gained in the entire 20th century.

... Still, if anything, the rhetoric of global warming and climate change has become even more frenzied since 2006, not less, even to the point where scientists skeptical of the warming theory are being gagged by the Obama administration and the UN.

... when evidence arose last week that the EPA had killed an internal report claiming that much had changed in the past year and that a reassessment of climate predictions was needed, ... EPA climate analyst Alan Carlin was told his conclusions would have "a very negative impact on our office."

... Similarly, UN scientists gathering in Copenhagen this week to discuss what must be done to save polar bears, have excluded Canadian researcher Mitch Taylor, perhaps the world's foremost polar bear expert, because (according to a memo to Dr. Taylor obtained by London's Daily Telegraph) of "the position you've taken on global warming." According the hosts of the conference, Dr. Taylor's views doubting man-made warming "are extremely unhelpful."

"Very negative impact", "extremely unhelpful" - for one thing to governments' ability to sell a carbon tax which Obama needs to fund his socialist universal healthcare plan.

Kill the CBC

The National Post has recently run a number of opinion columns debating the state of the CBC. Conrad Black thinks it has a valuable role to play but isn’t fulfilling it. Today, Robert Cushman boosts the ‘CEEB’ and Lorne Gunter, in about half as many words, much more convincingly demolishes it.
Cushman, having been weaned under the influence of the BEEB, has a fondness for government subsidized broadcasting and, amazingly, doesn’t see the CBC’s ideological bias, referring to:

... the supposed "liberal bias" of the CBC.

Lorne Gunter, on the other hand, has no difficulty detecting the CBC’s pronounced leftward list and what to do about it:

The CBC will never be able to exorcize its left-wing missionary zeal -- for global warming, for Islam, for big government, Barack Obama, multiculturalism, public health care, human rights commissions and so on.
... If the left-right "balance" at the CBC were as close as 10-1, I would be surprised.
... the CBC Web site no better represents a diversity of opinion than the workers' central committee at Karl Marx Widget Factory #6.
... So the only thing to do with Mother Corp is to pull down its office buildings and stations and pour salt in their foundations.

Lorne Gunter is absolutely correct. It’s why I no longer tune into CBC TV or radio. My blood pressure is already too high.
I have only one point to add to Mr. Gunter’s. Governments should not be permitted to subsidize ANY enterprise that competes directly with private enterprise; or in other words, private enterprise should not be required to subsidize its competition.

Tolerance: putting up with other people’s crap

Yesterday Blazing Cat Fur highlighted an article by a prickly anti-Christian academic intolerantly belly-aching about having to put up with all the symbols of Christmas.

Today Lorne Gunter addresses the phenomenon:

Every year at about this time, there is a new batch of news stories detailing how the forces of political correctness and atheism are attempting to stamp out all public references to Christmas.

... The culprits are most often anti-Christians -- people of little or no faith who have grown tired of all the jollity and goodwill this time of year.

... A lot of modern rights advocates have convinced themselves that tolerance means agreement and affirmation, not merely acceptance.

... Tolerance means exactly putting up with all the Christmas crap and Hanukkah crap and Kwanza crap and even atheist crap, so that others will put up with whatever crap is your crap, too.

... The notion that these campaigns are altruistic efforts to shelter sensitive non-Christians from the theological imperialism of the dominant culture around them is just the latest excuse the intolerant minority is using to impose its own secular theology on the rest of us.

The rest.

What global warming?

Lawrence Solomon believes environmentalism is on the wane:

Stock market indexes have plummeted from their inflated peaks. Oil and other commodities have likewise plummeted. The next commodity to tumble from unsustainable peak levels: environmentalism.

Three reasons:

... For the same reason that clothes go out of fashion after the masses embrace them, mass-marketed environmentalism will come to be disdained. That won’t sell for long.

... Much of [environmentalism] is misguided, based on misunderstanding and vacuity. Global warming is by far the biggest such example.

... A third reason for my prediction that environmentalism has peaked is the instinct for self-preservation among the political leadership.

And Lorne Gunter’s column amplifies the global warming case:

"It may be that more global warming doubters are surfacing because there
just isn't any global warming." Eg:

... Don Easterbrook, a geologist at Western Washington University, says, "It's practically a slam dunk that we are in for about 30 years of global cooling," as the sun enters a particularly inactive phase. His examination of warming and cooling trends over the past four centuries shows an "almost exact correlation" between climate fluctuations and solar energy received on Earth, while showing almost "no correlation at all with CO2."

... An analytical chemist who works in spectroscopy and atmospheric sensing, Michael J. Myers of Hilton Head, S. C., declared, "Man-made global warming
is junk science," explaining that worldwide manmade CO2 emission each year "equals about 0.0168% of the atmosphere's CO2 concentration ? This results in a 0.00064% increase in the absorption of the sun's radiation. This is an insignificantly small number."

... Professor Christy has been in charge of NASA's eight weather satellites that take more than 300,000 temperature readings daily around the globe. In a paper co-written with Dr. Douglass, he concludes that while manmade emissions may be having a slight impact, "variations in global temperatures since 1978 ? cannot be attributed to carbon dioxide."

The neo-liberal mind

Lorne Gunter examines, again, the futility of banning guns. In doing so he reiterates some basic insights into the neo-liberal mindset:

So why do liberal-left politicians expend so much energy trying to restrict gun ownership or even ban guns outright?

The principal reason, of course, is that modern liberalism is the victory of symbolism over substance. A public policy or law is seldom designed mostly to solve an identified problem. Its primary purpose is to reflect well on the good intentions of the person or group proposing it.

So what if laws and social programs produce no tangible benefits? They remain on the statute books and retain full funding -- complete with massive bureaucracies -- because they enable liberals to convince themselves something is being done. Activity is confused with achievement.

The right values action based on principle and practical results. The left values action based on emotion and narcissistic feel-goodism.

Humourless utopian evangelists

PR supporters, says Lorne Gunter, remind him of:

... Dennis, the muck-tilling peasant from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
[...]
...Dennis [played by Andrew Coyne] is such a pinched, humourless evangelist for his utopian ideals that by the end of the scene you find yourself rooting for Arthur to repress him.
[...]
Proportional representation, including MMP, appeals to the sort of solemn soul who sees him-or herself as slightly smarter than the rest of us and above anything so crass as partisan politics.
[...]
... Marxism, too, looked good on paper until every attempt to implement it in the real world led to a disparity between rich and poor (party members and non-members) that would have made John D. Rockefeller blush, as well as a level of state violence against the citizenry comparable to the worst of fascism.

PR causes bigger problems than it purports to solve:

... PR tends to correct one problem-- too many seats for the big parties --
with another-- too much power for little ones.

Just what we need - excessive emphasis on single issue flakery.
So, Ontario, be careful what you vote for tomorrow!

Lorne Gunter on lousy Tory polling numbers

You couldn’t ask for a much stronger supporter of conservatism than Lorne Gunter. Sadly, I have to agree with his analysis in this column today.

Many conservatives are willing to cut Canada’s ‘new’ government some slack in the current minority situation. But at this rate we’re in for a lot more minority government. And there’s not much slack left to cut.