Rocco Rossi is Wrong

The notion that the Spanish "socialist" government spent "well beyond its means" is silly. http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/full-comment/blog.html?b=fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/06/07/rocco-rossi-the-human-cost-of-the-eurozone-crisis The Spanish were running surpluses prior to the down turn. Indeed, Zapatero's government ran a surplus in his first 3 years in office and in 2007 a surplus of 23.2 billion Euro was the biggest in the Euro zone. Spain's debt to GDP ratio was not a problem either. Spain's gross debt to GDP ratio was almost half of what it was in Canada in 2007. Spending did increase under Zapatero, but at a rate no more than under the previous regime. Government spending as percentage of GDP remained unchanged between 1999 and 2008. As for government spending as percentage of GDP, it was far less than any other major European nation and slightly less than it was in Canada.

Spain's deficit problem was not the cause of the crisis there. It was consequence of it. Spain had a massive real estate bubble and in 2008 it burst. This created the perfect storm. Hundreds of thounsands quickly lost their jobs and began collecting unemployment insurance (800,000 Spanish lost their jobs in first three months of 2009), government revenues collapsed and most important of all Spain's banks began to fail. Mountains of private debt was transferred onto the public balance sheet. In fact, Spain's 4th largest bank is nothing but bad private debts backed by the government. To add insult to injury much of Spain's growth in the boom years was fueled by huge influx of foreign capital from the center of Europe. Spain, like all of the so called PIIGS, ran a massive capital accounts deficit. When things began to go south and Spanish credit markets began to seize, that capital was repatriated.

Now, when the economy is in a crapper there are a number of things governments can do with respect to monetary policy. Most notably they can reduce interest rates, devalue their currency and they can print more money (so called quantitative easing). None of these things is open to the Spanish government. They surrendered their monetary sovereignty to the ECB and the ECB has done a terrible job managing the crisis. The ECB was slow to lower interest rates, even tried to rise them last spring and they have only allowed one round of quantitative easing. It should be noted that since the downturn deficits and or debt have proved to be a lousy predictor of bond yeilds. For example, both the US and Britian have deficit to GDP numbers that are as equally high or higher than in Spain, both have debt to GDP ratios that are far higher, but both can borrow at record low rates and well below the rate of inflation. Bank capitalization, unemployment and a lack of monetary sovereignty have proved to be far better predictors.

Given Germany's unwillingness to let inflation in the Euro Zone and Germany in particular to rise above 2%, the only option open to Spain is to try to deflate its way to competitiveness. This is not likley to work. Spanish workers already earn far less than German and French workers as it is. Spain needs to develop a more educated workforce and improve its capital stock to truly compete with Germany. This is not likely to happen in the current environment. Deflation also makes the debt crisis worse much worse.

It is thus not a surprise that Spanish yields are rising and that it can not afford a further 60 to 90 billion Euros to recapitalize its banks. The ECB is asleep at the wheel and more than anything else investors are worried that Spain is going to decide that things are so bad it might as well leave the Euro. This in turn would surely mean defaulting on its debts.

Liberals need to embrace change least they share the fate of the Progressive Conservative party

The center of Canadian politics is not so much a place as a pose. How something is said is often more important than the substance of what is said. Indeed, while Canada might have the most educated population on earth, the vast majority of Canadians are as woefully uninformed as voters elsewhere. As the New Yorker's Louis Menand exclaimed, Plato had it wrong. More than a half century of work on voting behavior shows that the vast majority of voters do not a have a clue. Humankind is the unpolitical animal. What matters is striking a tone that resonates with most voters. That means sounding pragmatic, conciliatory, measured and above all temperamentally conservative well all the while saying next to nothing. Given the public's profound ignorance, there can not be really said to be an ideological center to appeal to.

Of course, the Liberals have long been masters of sounding centrist. However, what the Liberals have failed to realize is it also matters who is saying it. Striking the right pose is not enough. How centrist a party is deemed depends in no small measure on the party's chances of electoral success. In other words, the center often turns out to be no more than who is at the center of Canadian politics. What happened in 1993 with the Reform Party is great case in point. In 1992 the NDP was riding high in the polls, but as supporters of the Charlottetown Accord, the party was ill positioned to capitalize on voter discontent with the Accord, especially in Western Canada. The fledgling Bloc and Reform parties, on the other hand, were so positioned and in 1993 they turned out to be the protest vehicles de jour. The notion that the Canadian public shifted dramatically rightward in 1993 is simply inconsistent with what actually happened during the lead up to the election and during the election itself, viz., legions of PC supporters in Quebec moved to the socially democratic Bloc and legions of voters in the West moved to from the NDP to the far right Reform party. The Canadian public did not shift radically to the right just prior to the 1993 election and in so doing lay the ground work for the rise of the Reform party. No, the public was spectacularly angry with Mulroney's failed constitutional gambit and so voted in the Reform party in the West and the Bloc in Quebec to register their displeasure. In the process they set the stage for Canadian politics to shift radically to the right. Specifically, the election of a large number of Reform MPs gave the radical right a share of the microphone it had not enjoyed in Canada before. Unfortunately they have never relinquished the microphone and worse have mastered the centrist pose.

Defined as such the Liberals have no hope of occupying the center. The party is no longer at the center of Canadian politics; the NDP and Conservatives occupy that spot.

So what do the Liberals to do? For starters the Liberals must accept just how dire their situation. Namely, the party will be lucky to survive the next election yet alone win it. Thomas Mulcair poses an existential threat to the party. Mulcair will hold onto Quebec and in so doing will recreate the same conditions that saw the Liberals wiped out in Ontario in 2011. With no prospect of the Liberals winning anything out West or in Quebec, suburban Toronto will again break for the Tories, and urban Toronto for the NDP. Only this time the situation will be worse. The same thing could happen in Montreal and into the Maritimes. If the 2011 election proved anything, it was that the Canadian population feels no loyalty to the "natural governing party" whatsoever.

The only chance the Liberals have of avoiding the fate of the Progressive Conservative party is not as Andrew Coyne has said being "more Conservative than the Conservatives on some issues, more NDP than the NDP on others." No, the party must aim to blow up the status quo. It must strike a revolutionary pose and not a "centrist" one. Let the bleeding hearts bleed. It should no longer concern itself with what is politically possible, constitutionally possible or what the Americans might say. Let the chips fall where they may. Sacred cows need to be slayed. Only then will stand a chance of grabbing people's attention. Once they have grabbed the public's attention they can go after a portion of the electorate that the other parties will leave untapped. There is always going to be a portion of the electorate that is turned off by centrist language, who wants more substantive policy discussion and who has a clue. This is who the Liberals need to go after. It is pretty easy to sound smart when the other parties are doing their darnest not to say anything at all. Only then will the party stand the chance of attracting enough loyal followers to fight further elections.

I suggest that Bob Rae is not the man for the job. There is simply not enough space separating the NDP and Liberals with Rae as leader. You will have a former provincial Liberal leading the Federal NDP and former provincial NDP premier leading the Federal Liberal party. To make matters worse, Charlottetown Bob is just as willing as Thomas Mulcair is to play footsies with Quebec nationalists.

Even the posture the Liberals are striking with Bob Rae is all wrong for the task ahead. The Liberals are still trying to be all things to all people and so end up being nothing to everyone. They are still trying to be "centrist". Yes Rae can be cutting and quick witted and yes the Liberals claim to be the party of science, fact and evidence. However, the party continues to confuse compromise with nuance and being opinionated with being ideological. As for Rae, he wants to be liked. He is in no way an iconoclast the way Pierre Trudeau was and an iconoclast is exactly what the Liberals need right now.

After the 1993 election, the PC acted as if nothing much had changed. If the Liberals do not want to end up like the PC party, they should acknowledge that everything has changed and act accordingly.

Debates matter and playing to an audience that is not there is daft

Invariably I end up changing the channel whenever representatives of the major political parties sit down to discuss something. There is no ebb and flow of debate. It is almost always people repeating the same talking point over and over. If you heard their opening salvo, most of the time you have heard everything there is to hear.

Now I get it. The various parties hope that some sound bite is picked up and replayed for a larger audience and by saying the same thing over and over again the party representative assures that it is the point that the party wants to get across and not something else. However, such a strategy is the anti-thesis of the old adage that a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush. The parties act as if the people who are not watching are far more important than the people that do watch. After all, no one with half a brain or any manners is impressed by someone repeating the same point ad nauseum and ignoring everything else that is said.

Of course, the Liberals carried such a strategy to absurd lengths during last year's English language debate. After having watched Ignatieff give a new stump speech at every campaign stop, the Liberals picked the debate, of all times, to have Ignatieff endlessly repeat the same talking points. In doing so, Ignatieff endeared himself to no one who actually watched the debate and 3.8 million Canadians watched the debate. The problems with the Liberal debate strategy did not stop there. Having Ignatieff endlessly repeat common Liberal talking points all but eliminated the chances of Ignatieff delivering a knockout blow. It is easy to defend what you know is coming. When attacking, the element of surprise is important.

The post modern notion that somehow what really matters is who wins the spin wars in days after the debate suffered a fatal blow during last years debate. If you look back at the debate coverage, Harper was anointed the winner by the pundits and pollsters alike. The Conservatives won the spin war if you will. However, anyone watching the debate knew that it was Layton who landed the knock out blow. The NDP were handsomely rewarded. After the debate, the NDP surged in polls and Liberal vote collapsed. When you are in a debate the best strategy is to debate and not count on your party's spin doctors being able to convince people who did not bother to watch that you won.

This is how I summed up last year's debate two days after the debate took place.

http://themaplethree.blogspot.ca/2011/04/english-lanuage-debate-liberal-strategy.html

Debate highlights

The key to shutting down an opponent's attack is a quick fact laden response. Silences, pauses, stumbling starts and long drawn out explanations are all deadly. Stephen Harper was particularly successful in fending off attacks and is generally pretty good in this regard albeit not because his responses are substantive but because his delievery is polished. However, the best example of a defensive action on the night was by Duceppe. It was both polished and substantive. Harper mounted a formidable attack on the gun registry and Duceppe torn the talking point to shreds.

Stephen Harper: But what farmers and hunters keep asking is why every time there's a crime problem in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, there's suddenly more rules slapped on and more registrations slapped onto them in rural Canada. That has not been an effective measure to control crime. Every single elected police officer in the House of Commons has voted against the long gun registry, we need to focus on crime and on gun control that works and cost effective.

Duceppe: I would say that most of the Bloc members are in rural sectors. And the question between rural sectors and the city. Calgary is not a rural sector and you are against that eh? So when I look at the results that say 80% of people elected in Quebec support the gun registry, 62% of people elected in the rest of Canada want to abolish the gun registry. The real division was between Canada and Quebec that day.

Mounting an attack is different. You want to slow things down and you clearly lay out the issue. If you successfully wound your opponent, let him flounder. However, if your opponent is about to finish or is simply trying to run out the clock, do not be afraid to quickly interject. You want to draw out his answer as much as possible. Layton's attack on Ignatieff's attendance record was easily the best executed attack of the night. It was text book.

Layton: I have to pick up on something Mr. Ignatieff said, he said before you have to walk the walk and be a strong leader, and respect parliament, I've got to ask you then, why do you have the worst attendance record of any member of the house of Parliament? If you want to be Prime Minister, you've got to learn how to be a member of the House of Commons first. You know most Canadians, if they don't show up for work, they don't get a promotion.

Ignatieff: Mr. Layton, I don't surrender to anybody in respect for the institution of parliament and my obligation to the people that put me there. So don't give me lessons on respect for democracy (Layton interjecting) don't give me lessons

Layton: Where were you, where were you when I was standing up to Mr. Harper and voting against his policies, and you weren't in the chamber? You missed 70 percent of the votes, I think you need to understand a little more about how our democracy works that's my only point.

Easily the dumbest comment of the night was by Jack Layton. He said to Stephen Harper

"you used to care about the environment".

Marijuana Legalization Talking Points

A call to legalize marijuana will be met with a series of predictable responses. Here is how the Liberals should respond to each.

Potent Pot

Potent pot is more myth than reality. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_minute/2002/11/the_myth_of_potent_pot.html

However, even if one assumes that potent pot is a reality it is certainly nothing to be concerned about. Indeed, saying that potent pot is reason for keeping marijuana illegal is akin to saying that alcohol should be banned because gin has higher alcohol content than beer. It makes no sense. The pharmacological affects of consuming 1 "chemically supercharged" joint, as various US attorneys like to say, versus x number of "dad's joints" would be no different if the amount of THC consumed is the same. As for consumption, just as people do not drink the same volume of gin as beer, the higher the THC level in pot the less people consume. Hence, ironically more potent pot may be a welcome development. After all, one of the most prominent health effect related to marijuana, if not the most, is that it is usually smoked. The more potent the pot, the less people have to smoke to achieve the same high. Lester Grinspoon of Harvard Medical School concurs, so does Mitch Earleywine of the University of Southern California and so does UCLA's Mark Kleiman.

That said, if potency is the concern, then it should be legalized. After all, the only way to regulate the potency of pot is to legalize it.

Finally, the attempt to scare parents that have grown up on marijuana by distinguishing between potent pot and “your dad's marijuana” is too clever by half. After all, it begs the following question. If today's marijuana is truly different in kind from "dads marijuana", would it be ok to legalize "dad's marijuana", i.e., low potency pot?

Talking Points

1) Saying that potent pot is reason for keeping marijuana illegal is akin to saying that alcohol should be banned because gin has higher alcohol content than beer. It makes no sense.

2) If today's marijuana is truly different in kind from "dads marijuana", would it be ok to legalize "dad's marijuana", i.e., low potency pot?

Gateway Drug

Researchers have rightly noted that people who have try marijuana are statistically more likely try other illicit drugs. This gave raise to the theory that there was something about marijuana that encouraged drug experimentation. Marijuana, it was alleged, is a gateway drug. This, in turn, was given as one more reason to keep the drug illegal. However, the gateway drug theory has until recently fallen on hard times for lack of an intelligible mechanism. The problem was that there was no coherent explanation for why marijuana would lead people to experiment with other drugs. Without this explanation doubt was cast relationship being more than mere correlation. That said, in recent years researchers have breathed new life into the theory, albeit with a sociological twist. According to the new version, it is not marijuana's pharmacological properties that serve as a gateway, but rather marijuana's illegal status. Specifically in the process of illegally procuring marijuana, users are introduced to the criminal elements with access to other illicit drugs and hence it is the forged blackmarket relationship between dealer and buyer that serves as gateway.

In this context it should be noted that when the Dutch partially legalized the sale of marijuana, heroin and cocaine use went down despite an initial increase in marijuana use. Dutch use of hard drugs remains well below the European average.

Talking Point

Every time someone goes to buy marijuana they come into contact with criminal elements with access to other hard drugs. This is your gateway. When Holland decriminalized consumption and made it available in coffee shops, heroin and cocaine use went down.

Schizophrenia and Marijuana

Epidemiological studies have consistently failed to show any kind of positive correlation between marijuana use and schizophrenia. Despite a massive increase in the number of Australians consuming the drug since the 1960s, Wayne Hall of the University of Queensland found no increase in the number of cases of schizophrenia in Australia. Mitch Earleywine of the University of Southern California similarly found the same with regard to the US population and Oxford's Leslie Iversen found the same regard to the population in the UK. According to Columbia's Alan Brown, "If anything, the studies seem to show a possible decline in schizophrenia from the '40s and the ‘ 50,"

Talking Point

There has been an astronomical increase in the number of pot smokers since the 1950s and no increase in the rate of schizophrenia whatsoever.

The gangs will simply move on to other drugs

The market for marijuana positively dwarfs the market for all other drugs combined and marijuana is far and away gangs' biggest money maker. The notion that the gangs would simply shift focus and thereby maintain the same levels of profitability is absurd. Comparable demand for other kinds of drugs is simply not there. Moreover, such an argument rests upon a mistaken assumption. Namely, it assumes that the sure size and scope of the marijuana industry is limiting the distribution of other kinds of drugs. The reverse is true. Marijuana profits and sometimes even marijuana itself are providing the seed capital the gangs need to diversify operations (e.g., cocaine, heroin, human trafficking and guns) and to expand those other operations. This is one of the main reasons why we need to nip this in the bud.

Talking Point

It is not like the gangs have access to capital markets. Marijuana profits and sometimes even marijuana itself are providing the seed capital the gangs need to diversify operations (e.g., cocaine, heroin, human trafficking and guns) and to expand those other operations. This is one of the main reasons why we need to nip this, pardon the pun, in the bud.

The Black Market will live on

It is one thing to illegally sell a legally produced product and make a profit, e.g., black market cigarettes. It is quite another thing to illegally produce and sell a product (e.g., moonshine) in market where there is legal competitors. The reason is simple. The illegality of the product means that your production and distribution costs are significantly higher. Also demand for your product is always going to be less. People want to know what they buying and consuming. So when given the choice of buying an illegally produced product versus a legally produced product they are going to go with the later. (There is one notable exception and that is when an illegally produced product is successfully passed off as a legal one, e.g., fake brand name goods). That is why no matter how much Canadians drank during the time of American prohibition, I am sure that it never crossed the RCMP’s mind that American moonshine might become a competitor of Molson’s.

Talking point

Molson executives do not worry about moonshine eating into market share. Demand for illegal products is not what it is for legal ones.

The US will Never Let it happen

Canadians understand that the US, despite prohibition's crumbling foundation there, would not be pleased about legalization. As such, Harper's musings about legalizing marijuana causing trouble at the border seem reasonable enough. The problem is this does not make marijuana prohibition any more legitimate. Indeed, it is one thing to remain silent, for example, on American foreign policy for fear of damaging trade relations; it is quite another to send someone to jail for violating a law Canadians no longer think just in order to placate the US. Any perception that Canada is enforcing laws to met with illegitimate demands of a bullying third party, whoever that may be, is simply poisonous to the health of a functioning democracy.

Talking Points

1) We do not pass laws or keep others in place in order placate foreign governments. This goes especially for laws that would result in Canadians languishing in jail.

2) The US introduced Prohibition in 1919. Are you saying that Canada was wrong not to follow suit? Well then ..

Appeals to Strategic voting work when there are rats on a Sinking Ship

Brain Topp

For many years, Liberals have been eager advocates of “strategic voting” – the idea that it makes sense to vote for a party you don't support in order to avoid the election of a party your don't support even more.

A pitch to this effect has been part of the closing argument of every federal Liberal campaign since at least 1993.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/second-reading/brian-topp/liberals-across-canada-are-being-hoist-with-their-own-petard/article2417189/ That might be true. However, there is little evidence that strategic voting played a role in 1997, 2000, and 2008 elections. 1993 and 2011 are a different matter. As the PC vote began to collapse in 1993, many traditional PC voters went in search of a new home and no doubt strategic considerations, certainly region ones, played a role for many. In Western Canada most followed the lead of the NDP voters, who had migrated over to the Reform party prior to the writ being dropped. (The NDP vote collapsed before the PC vote did in 1993. The PCs were tied with Libs going into the 1993 election. That was in marked constrast to the NDP. Going into the 1993 election the NDP were at 8% in the polls. They finished with 7% of the vote. In other words, the notion that NDP voters moved over to the Libs to block the Reform party is not there in 1993. As for 1997 and 2000, the regional makeup of Canadian politics, the unpopularlity of NDP governments in Ontario and BC and NDP support for the Charlottetown accord explain why the NDP vote did not return to normal until 2004. Strategic voting had nothing to do with it.) However, a sizable chunk of PC voters in Western Canada moved over to the Liberals. Most PC voters migrated to the Reform party in Ontario and in the Maritimes the PC vote moved over to the Liberals in NFLD and PEI and to the Reform party to lesser extent in NS and NB. Finally, in Quebec the PC vote moved over the Bloc.

Something similar happened in Ontario in 2011. As the NDP began to surge in Quebec, the Liberal vote in and around Toronto collapsed. Suburban Liberal voters moved in droves to the Conservatives and urban Liberal voters moved in droves to the NDP.

As for the 2004 election, two important things happened. One Ontario voters returned to the NDP after an 11 year hiatus. Between 1965 and 1993 the NDP vote in Ontario never diped below 19% and never topped 22%. The party's share of the vote was very predictable. However in 1993 the NDP took only 6% of the the vote and their share of the vote stayed low for the next two elections. They took 10% in 1997 and 8% in 2000. Then in 2004 they went up to 18%. They took 19.5 in 2006 and 18% in 2008. Something similar happened in BC. Two, the Conservative party vote in 2004 was 6 points lower than the combined PC and Reform vote in each of the three subsequent elections and 7 points lower than than PC vote share in 1988 and 1984 election. In 2006 the conservative vote returned to a historically normal level.

In sum, voters think about voting strategically, but as a rule thumb only when their preferred party's election fortunes collapse mid election. The party's core will go down with the ship, but a sizable number of other supporters, like rats on a sinking ship, will seek refuge with other parties.

Walkom: Ottawa’s low-wage immigration policy threatens turmoil

The Toronto Star's Thomas Walkom is one of Canada's best columnists. He is well informed, provides some good arguments and above all else tackles issues the rest of the media ignores. In yesterday's column he tackled something that has long irked me, viz., the huge numbers of temporary foreign workers that the Conservatives have allowed in. This is an issue the Liberals and NDP should be all over.

There is an implicit bargain in Canada regarding immigration. Canadians agree to welcome newcomers. In return, the government agrees not to use immigrants to drive down the wages of those already living here..

While never formally acknowledged, it’s a bargain that’s been in place since at least World War II, one that has prevented the kind of anti-immigrant agitation now roiling Europe..

And it is a bargain that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are deliberately setting out to break..

Human Resources Minister Diane Finley made the break specific this week when she announced that Ottawa will now let employers pay temporary foreign workers less than Canadians..

The Conservatives talk a good game on immigration. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney speaks of rationalizing the complex system used to decide who comes to Canada and of bringing it in line with what he calls the needs of the economy..

In last month’s federal budget, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said employers would have to make every effort to hire unemployed Canadians before they’d be allowed to bring in temporary foreign workers..

But in reality, the federal Conservative government’s entire immigration policy is geared to just one goal: lowering wages. ...

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1169568--walkom-ottawa-s-low-wage-immigration-policy-threatens-turmoil

Mike Gillis did a Terrible job in 2011-12: He should be Fired

First some back ground. The season before Gillis had sent a a first round pick, Steve Bernier and Michael Grabner to Flordia for Keith Ballard, a player whose salary the Panthers were desperate to shed. The move left the Canucks with no cap space to sign Ehrhoff. Ehrhoff left for Buffalo in the off season. To pacify the faithful Gillis signed a washed up Marco Strum. In order to make room for Strum, Torres was not resigned.

To the surprise of no one, save Gillis, the Strum signing did not pan out. So Gillis traded Samuelsson and Strum to Florida for David Booth, a player whose salary the Panthers were desperate to shed. If you are sensing a trend, you are not alone. Go to capgeek.com and hit Panthers. This will allow you to see what players the Panthers might want to trade for salary cap reasons. They are sure to be on the Canucks wish list. Anyway, Samulesson finished with more points in fewer games than Booth. Booth meanwhile proved to be better at slowing down Kesler than any opposing center.

To the surprise of everyone Gillis traded Hodgson and Sulzer for guy with 7 NHL career points and a career minor league D man who was a healthy scratch for last 6 games in Buffalo. Gillis amazingly claimed that Kassian would give the Canucks back the toughness they lost when Torres signed with Phoenix and in so doing put the Canucks over the top. Gillis had equally high hopes for Steve Bernier a few years back and Kassian is dead ringer for Bernier. So it appears that the old Marxian maximum applies to hockey. Misguided trades for power forwards occur "so to speak, twice. ... the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." Kassian finished with 3 points in 17 games with the Canucks and Gragnani added 3 in 14. After being benched in 3rd period of both game 3 and game 4 of the playoffs, Kassian was not dressed for game 5. He went pointless in the 4 games he played. Meanwhile Gragnani never saw the ice. Hodgson added 8 points in 20 games for Sabres and Sulzer 8 in 15.

The season is now over and the Canucks biggest decision is what to do with Robert Luongo. There are enough teams in the market for a good goalie and Luongo is still that. However, the rub is this. Gillis signed him to a ridiculous long term contract with a no trade clause. So the Canucks will have their work cut out.

Now, I do not know about you, but I think it would be a bad idea to let the man who traded for Ballard rather than resigning Ehrhoff, who signed Strum instead of resigning Torres and who traded Hodgson for Steve Bernier's doppelganger try to peddle an albatross of a contract that he signed. Gillis should be Fired.

By the way, this is how the numbers breakdown

Torres 15 goals 11 helpers

Grabner 20 goals 12 helpers

Hodgson 19 goals 22 helpers

Samulesson 14 goals 18 helpers

Sulzer 3 goals and 6 helprs

Ehrhoff 5 goals 27 helpers

David Booth 16 goals and 14 helpers and 4.25 million a season for another 3 years

Ballard 1 goal 6 helpers and 4.2 million for another 3 years

Kassian 4 goals 6 helpers

Gragnani 2 goals and 13 helpers

Luongo (age 33) 10 more years at a cap hit of $5.33 million

LEGALIZATION and DECRIMINALIZATION are different: The Liberals can not afford to Confuse the two

The Liberals passed a motion back in January that said marijuana should be LEGALIZED. Rae stated that he did not support the motion -- but accepts it. Not much more has been said since.

Enter Hedy Fry. She means well and I have no doubt that she supported the motion. However, she would not be my spokesperson of choice. Throughout the segment she used legalization and decriminalization interchangeably. http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/04/20/pol-mulcair-position-on-marijuana-decriminalization.html There is a world of difference between the two. It is unforgivably sloppy to for any Liberal to confuse the two at this point in time. The Liberals support LEGALIZATION. The NDP supports DECRIMINALIZATION of possession. Get it right.

Two more points. One, keep the subject on marijuana and marijuana alone. Insite has nothing to do with wanting to legalize marijuana. Two, the Liberals need to change tactics. It is not enough to simply reference studies. The Liberals have to draw some conclusions and make arguments of their own. After all, take any subject you please; if there is a significant body of research about it, then it is stupidly easy to dig up dissenting opinion. It is asking way too much of your average to Canadian to have them dig up all the relevant body of work so that they can judge whether there is any consensus amongst the learned. They neither have the time or inclination.

The opponents of legalization have trotted out same lame arguments for years. Stomp on them. Do not leave it the experts to do so. The Liberals are entirely capable of makings such arguments and the public is entirely capable of understanding them. Liberals let me get you started. Here are some nice short sound bites.

Potent Point

1) Saying that potent pot is reason for keeping marijuana illegal is akin to saying that alcohol should be banned because gin has higher alcohol content than beer. It makes no sense.

2) If today's marijuana is truly different in kind from "dads marijuana", would it be ok to legalize "dad's marijuana", i.e., low potency pot?

Schizophrenia

There is no causation without correlation. There has been an astronomical increase in the number of pot smokers since the 1950s and no increase in the rate of schizophrenia whatsoever.

Gateway drug

Every time someone goes to buy marijuana they come into contact with criminal elements with access to other hard drugs. This is your gateway. When Holland legalized consumption and made it available in stores, heroin and cocaine use went down.

Mulcair and Marijuana

Steve V has a good post on how Muclair's call for a Royal Commission on marijuana is so 1969 and really only a thinly veiled attempt to push the issue out of the political spotlight. http://farnwide.blogspot.ca/2012/04/mulcair-exhales-hot-air-on-pot.html I should add that a call for such a commission is also extermely dishonest. He is calling for the wrong kind of commission. The years of debating the dangers of marijuana consumption both real and imagined have long since passed. The question before us now is how to go about legalizing it.

After all, it is not a matter of if marijuana will be legalized but when. I am betting that it will happen sooner rather than later. In a few short years, Latin America has gone from having former politicians musing about legalization to sitting presidents all but putting it onto the political agenda. Calderon is about to loose the Mexican election because of his hard line stance. This is turning out to be the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back. In Latin America not only is the war on drugs a disaster from a policy viewpoint it is looking like it is becoming a political loser and politicians throughout the region are taking notice.

At the summit of Americas recently, Latin American leaders all but told Obama -- and Harper -- that the situation is so dire that years of the US being able to force Latin America into line through carrot and stick is rapidly coming to end. Their firm tone explains Harper's remarkable -- albeit momentary -- climbdown. "I think what everybody believes and agrees with, and to be frank myself, is that the current approach is not working, but it is not clear what we should do.”

In North America, a prohibitionist stance, is, of course, still a viable political stance. However, the legal legitimacy of those laws is rapidly being called into question in Canada. This is especially so in BC where the entire political establishment is quickly getting on board with legalization. Stateside, the success a referendum question coupled with the mushrooming industry connected to "medical" marijuana is sure to spell an end to prohibitionist era in the States.

However things rap up, the position of the NDP and Conservatives, insure that Canada will be woefully unprepared when it does happen.

The Liberals at Death's Door

Prior to the 2008 election, the Liberal party was relatively competitive in every Western riding outside of Alberta. That began to change in 2008. Now, the Liberal party is completely irrelevant in great swaths of all four western provinces. (see examples below) What is true of the West is also true of Quebec. Where Quebec differs is that the phenomena first appeared in 2006. By 2011 the trend was so pronounced that the Liberal party is now completely irrelevant in most ridings outside of Montreal. Given current trends, we should start seeing the same phenomena appear in a large number of Ontario seats. The Liberal party is all is but dead. So, the question facing Liberals now is this. What path should the party take. These are the options.

1) Allow itself to swallowed by the NDP

2) Go out with a whimper in 2015

3) Justify its existence to a country all too ready to divide into two political camps by radically differentiating itself from both the NDP and Conservatives.

If three, I suggest that Bob Rae is not the man for the job. With the NDP headed right on economic and environmental issues there will simply be enough not space separating the NDP and Liberals. You will have a former provincial Liberal leading the Federal NDP and former provincial NDP premier leading the Federal Liberal party. To make matters worse, Charlottetown Bob is just as willing as Thomas Mulcair is to play footsies with Quebec nationalists.

Even the posture the Liberals are striking with Bob Rae is all wrong for the task ahead. The Liberals are still trying to be all things to all people and so end up being nothing everyone. They are still trying to be "centrist". Yes Rae can be cutting and quick witted and yes the Liberals claim to be the party of science, fact and evidence. However, the party continues to confuse compromise with nuance and being opinionated with being ideological. As for Rae, he wants to be liked. He is in no way an iconoclast the way Pierre Trudeau was and an iconoclast is exactly what the Liberals need right now.

BC

Pitt Meadows Maple Ridge Mission

2006 20.25%

2008 6.63%

2011 5.17%

KAMLOOPS--THOMPSON--CARIBOO

2006 25.22%

2008 9.84 %

2011 5.33%

CARIBOO--PRINCE GEORGE

2006 24.07%

2008 10.54%

2011 5.06%

Sask

PALLISER

2006 20.20%

2008 17.10%

2011 5.33%

PRINCE ALBERT

2006 19.38%

2008 7.99%

2011 3.46%

REGINA--QU'APPELLE

2006 23.05%

2008 10.35%

2011 4.71%

Manitoba

KILDONAN--ST. PAUL

2006 33.47%

2008 8.14%

2011 8.21%

BRANDON--SOURIS

2006 18.00%

2008 8.27%

2011 5.36%

PROVENCHER

2006 15.84%

2008 12.57%

2011 6.71%

Quebec

CHICOUTIMI--LE FJORD

2004 43. 43%

2006 29.19%

2008 13.45%

2011 5.60%

JONQUIÈRE--ALMA

2004 29.12%

2006 2.96%

2008 5.15%

2011 1.98%

ABITIBI--TÉMISCAMINGUE

2004 30. 98%

2006 13.81%

2008 20.73%

2011 5.91%

Matt Gurney Dead Wrong about the Marc Emery Case

Matt Gurney is a pretty good columnist, but he simply wrong about the Marc Emery case. http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/04/19/matt-gurney-on-marc-emery-if-you-break-the-law-you-go-to-jail-this-isnt-hard/

Matt Gurney says that if you openly flaunt a controversial law expect the law to come crashing down. Thankfully this is not always the case. The police will not be arresting the tens of thousands of people smoking up for 4:20 tomorrow. Allowing for people to flaunt particular laws, if only temporally, is part of what it means to live in free society.

That being said, the problem with Marc Emery was not that the law came down on him when it should not have. It was that for 7 long years the police refused to arrest Marc Emery for repeatedly flaunting Canadian law and then all of sudden arrested him on behest of the American government to face charges. Now, under the terms of the extradition treaty, one can not be extradited if one is facing the same charge in one’s country of residence and one was arrested there. So, a BC marijuana activist tried to save Emery from being sent to the States by asking the crown to at long last charge Emery under Canadian law. His efforts were unsuccessful. Despite a mountain of evidence against him, Canadian authorities were unwilling to charge Emery under Canadian law. So, Emery is serving 5 years for a crime he was fined $200 for in Canada and which for 7 years was not been applied.

Time to Bring an End to Equity

"Liberal Party to face up to the fact that neo-liberalism was an abject failure." Agreed. However, the party's left flank needs to shoulder much of the blame. In the face of Martin's cost cutting, they were far too willing given up the principle of universality for the sake of means tested social programs and are still very much of that mindset. By turning every social program on offer into a form of welfare, the ability of the Liberals to offer anything other than tax cuts during elections is very limited. Means tested social programs do not win elections; the populace is not going to get excited about paying for a service that only a small percentage of the public can use. On the flip side of things, the public does not get exercised about cutting back on the services only a small percentage of the public can use. That said, even on the tax cutting front the Liberals have failed to understand why a cut to a universal consumption tax might prove more popular targeted income tax cuts.

Of course, a turn to means tested social programs to the exclusion of universal ones was part of larger trend within liberalism itself away from universal to the particular. The Liberals have increasing focused increasingly on affirmative action policies under the rubric of equity. This has proved to be a disaster for the working class. Equity sows division within Canadian society and is an anachronism given Canada's rapidly changing demographic profile. The last 6 words from the following criminal code sub clause are a great case in point. "All available sanctions other than imprisonment that are reasonable in the circumstances should be considered, with particular attention for aboriginal offenders." They formed the center piece of the wildly unpopular Gladue decision. Also, as it does nothing to address underlying causes of inequality, equity does little to advance equality. It only nibbles around the edges. A National daycare care system, for example, would do far more in a year for women's wage equality than 25 years of the Employment Equity Act has. The former addresses the underlying causes of the wage gap. The later hurts the cause of young white males because 50 something white males earn more than than their 50 something female colleges and it destroys the liberal ideal of a government built around merit. Hiring the "best" person for the job is a far cry from using the government as a counterpoint to perceived or actual deficiencies in the private sector employment. Worst of all, the focus on equity has meant that instead of trying to move the case of all workers forward, something that is desperately needed, liberals and progressives of all stripes have instead devoted virtually all their energies to shuffling the deck. Calls for a bigger share of the pie has been abandoned for sake of each of the ever smaller pieces having an equal amount of fruit.

Finally, the notion that the state should again adopt a paternalistic pose with regard to certain groups after a century of progressives seeking to reveal the oppressive nature of state sanctioned paternalism is indeed ironic. Residential schools and separate but equal may be part of an inglorious past, but "Afro-centric" schools are what is needed.

The center is not what the Liberals think it to be

The center of Canadian politics is not so much a place as a pose. How something is said is often more important than the substance of what is said. What the Liberals have failed realize is it also matters who is saying it. Striking the right pose is not enough. How centrist a party is deemed depends in no small measure on the party's chances of electoral success. In other words, the center often turns out to be no more than who is at the center of Canadian politics. The fact that millions more Canadians than ever before voted NDP confirmed for Canadians that the NDP has moved to the center. As with the Reform party after 1993, in the beginning the deed. Defined as such the Liberals have no hope of occupying the center. The party is no longer at the center of Canadian politics; the NDP and Conservatives occupy that spot.

So what do the Liberals to do? For starters the Liberals must accept just how dire their situation. Namely, the party will be lucky to survive the next election yet alone win it. Thomas Mulcair poses an existential threat to the party. Mulcair will hold onto Quebec and in so doing will recreate the same conditions that saw the Liberals wiped out in Ontario in 2011. With no prospect of the Liberals winning anything out West or in Quebec, suburban Toronto will again break for the Tories, and urban Toronto for the NDP. Only this time the situation will be worse. The same thing could happen in Montreal and into the Maritimes. If the 2011 election proved anything, it was that the Canadian population feels no loyalty to the "natural governing party" whatsoever.

The only chance the Liberals have avoiding the fate of the Progressive Conservative party is not as Andrew Coyne has said being "more Conservative than the Conservatives on some issues, more NDP than the NDP on others." http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/04/18/andrew-coyne-liberals-fail-to-grasp-direness-of-their-situation-nearly-a-year-after-collapse/ No, the party must aim to blow up the status quo. It must strike a revolutionary pose and not a "centrist" one. The party must seek out confrontation not consensus. Let the bleeding hearts bleed. It should no longer concern itself with what is politically possible, constitutionally possible or what the Americans might say. Let the chips fall where they may. Sacred cows need to be slayed. Only then will the party stand the chance of attracting enough loyal followers to fight further elections.

Needless to say, Charlottetown Bob is not the man for the job.

Constitution Act of 1982 bad for Canada worse for the Liberal Party

Save section 25 and few subsections, we are better off for having the Charter. However, the Charter's benefits have been vastly overstated and pale in comparison to the damage done by the rest of the Constitution Act. Section 35 comes first to mind, but the damage does not stop there. For all his talk of a strong central government, Trudeau did far more to weaken its powers than any other prime minister. Most notably, the Act gave over to the provinces complete control over natural resources. One reason he has escaped criticism on this score is that Meech Lake and Charlottetown were several magnitudes worse and Trudeau came out solidly against both. (It is hard to fathom the provinces collecting less royalties. This is especially so, as report after report has pointed out, of the oil industry. Canada produces 3.3 million barrels of crude a day, most of it in Alberta. Norway produces 2.8 million a day. The Norwegians started a sovereign wealth fund in 1990 that was valued at $600 billion last year. Meanwhile, Albertans are divided over weather a $300 stipend to each Albertan is too lucrative.)

Of course, however bad the Constitution Act has been for the country it has been even worse for the Liberal party. A provincial government headed by René Lévesque and dedicated to the break up of the country was never going to negotiate in good in faith to secure Quebec's place within Canada. Yet Trudeau decided to plow ahead anyway. In a stroke Trudeau dealt his party a blow they have never truly recovered from. The reason the Liberal party came to be known as the natural governing party of Canada was because of the party's dominance in Quebec. The Kitchen Accord brought an end to that dominance. Until now the magnitude of that injury has been masked by what happened in the wake of the failure of Mulroney's unfathomably stupid Charlottetown Accord. The death of its historic foe made the Liberals appear far more vigorous than they actually were. If the 2015 election proves to be the Liberal party's swan song, no post mortem will be complete without the authors of such a document spending a long time in the Kitchen.

Native Rights need to Abolished and Reserves Privatized

The long and troubled relationship between First Nation peoples and the Crown has blinded many to patent absurdity of the current situation. It has blinded them to the fact that Attawapiskat is a natural consequence of an economic and legal relationship built around Native rights, the reserve system, the Indian Act and Native Self government. In any other context this would be self evident. Indeed, imagine if the government happened to, oh, legally define what it means to be Chinese, created a department of Chinese affairs, created Chinese rights, reserved land for Chinese so defined and exempted Chinese living on reserve land from paying property taxes and sales taxes and in some cases taxes of any kind. No one would doubt that is a recipe for disastrous social relations. So, why would anyone doubt the same about Native Affairs, native rights and native reserves?

Of course the situation is even worse than just described. Not only has Canada set up hundreds of tax havens for Status Indians to take advantage of, it also provides incentives for Status Indians to stay on them or move to them. Specifically, the feds hold out the promise of free housing, a promise to pay for upkeep and the promise of never imposing not only no property tax or sales tax, but also in some cases no income tax. The federal government will pay for any needed infrastructure. Realizing, the patent absurdity of its ironclad guarantee, the government drags its feet, provides the bare minimum level of funding for housing, upkeep and infrastructure and to, add insult to injury, proceeds in less than timely matter. In other words, the government has every reason to create living conditions that repel even as its moronic promises attract.

In practice government foot dragging does not always work so well. Some of these tax havens are so isolated and so utterly economically unviable that the government is dammed no matter what it does. If it builds up these communities too much it runs the risk of attracting more people to them. However if it does too little, the very scarcity of jobs in these places ties people living there to land all the more. The less assets, work experience and education a person has the more attractive the prospect of obtaining free housing, however squalid, becomes. There is a long waiting list of people wanting housing in Attawapiskat. A bird in the hand is better than two in bush as it were; a dilapidated house in the hand is better than the dim prospects of a better house elsewhere.

The only possible way out this mess, viz., abolishing native rights, abolishing the Indian Act and privatizing reserve lands, has been forever blocked by section 35 of the Constitution -- a decision, by the way, that renders Trudeau's time in office an abject failure. The best the government can do is to amend the Indian Act to allow for the creation of fee simple lands, thereby switching the financial burden of maintaining and upgrading housing from the federal government to individual home owners, and empowering bands to impose property taxes. This will give the people living in Attawapiskat and like communities additional economic incentives to leave. Namely, either property taxes and the cost of upkeep will drive people away in the absence of a job, or the prospect of using the capital from the sale of one's house and land will.

That said, introducing fee simple opens a whole host of other problems. For example, as the idiocy of native self government is maintained in all cases, non natives purchasing native lands would have no right to take part in band elections. There would be taxation but no representation. Such a situation would greatly depress real estate values on reserves -- especially on remote reserves. Band councils must be transformed into municipal councils. The notion of a government built around a legally defined race is not only economically problematic, it is ideologically putrid. Moving to a fee simple model also does not eliminate such lands as tax havens.

The reserve system, premised as it is on the notion of native rights, is a bureaucratic, fiscal, jurisdictional, legal, intellectual and sociological abortion that does nothing save waste mountains of money, breed corruption, black marketeering and poverty, encourage tax evasion (e.g., cigarettes), instill in the native community a vile sense of identity based on “blood” and breed racism in the Canadian society at large. If politicians and the media want to accept this as Canada's historical cross to bear, so be it. However, it is high time both acknowledge that the problem is intractable so long as the only possible solution, viz., the abolition of native rights and Indian Act and privatization of reserve lands, remains legally untenable.

Mulcair poses an existential threat to the Liberals: what needs to be done

Bob Rae is a good debater, charismatic, well spoken, and funny. Hence, a common lament is that if not for his record as premier of Ontario, he would make a great leader.

This is not an opinion I share. I do not like him for other reasons. Philosophically Bob Rae and I are worlds apart. I do not believe in collective rights. Rae does. I do not believe in affirmative action. Rae does. I do not believe in asymmetrical federalism. Rae does. I generally do not believe in means tested social policy. Rae does. Rae remains a strong backer of the Charlottetown Accord; I believe that any remaining copies should be used as toilet paper. Rae is a status quo Liberal. I am not. I believe that the Liberal party's problems run far deeper than leadership and an absurdly decentralized organizational structure. The party needs to redefine itself in ways it has not done since Trudeau was leader. Rae is not going to do that.


Although it has not become apparent yet the NDP's selection of Thomas Mulcair as leader poises an existential threat to the Liberals -- and all but guarantees the disappearance of the Bloc. Mulcair will hold onto Quebec and in so doing will recreate the same conditions that saw the Liberals wiped out in Ontario in 2011. With no prospect of the Liberals winning anything out West or in Quebec, suburban Toronto will again break for the Tories, and urban Toronto for the NDP. Only this time the situation will be worse. The same thing could happen in Montreal.


The only thing that will forestall such a collapse is if the Liberals are able to recreate an attractive political brand. If the 2011 election proved anything, it was that the Canadian population feels no loyalty to the "natural governing party" whatsoever. After years of trying to convince the public that there was only ever two real choices, it is increasingly looking like the Canadian public agrees; either one votes NDP or one votes Conservative. In large chunks of the country the Liberals are fighting it out with the Greens for 4th spot.


The first step in recreating a successful Liberal brand is to recognize that what made it so successful under Pearson and Trudeau was the Liberals commitment to universality . The creation of Universal health Care, CPP and a commitment to universal rights embedded in the charter of rights and freedoms have been the backbone of the Liberal party for the last 50 years. Unfortunately under Martin and Chretien the Liberals abandoned universality in favor of means tested programs. This pleased Stephen Harper. "Universality has been severely reduced: it is virtually dead as a concept in most areas of public policy… These achievements are due in part to the Reform Party" Dion and Ignatieff continued in this vein and Bob Rae also does. By turning every social program on offer into a form of welfare, the ability of the Liberals to offer anything other than tax cuts is very limited. It goes without saying that means tested social programs do not win elections; the populace is not going to get excited about paying for a service that only a small percentage of the public can use. Without returning to the concept of the universality the Liberals are destined to become virtually indistinguishable from the Conservatives on all but social issues and Ignatieff was hell bent on changing that last election. The Liberals need to again embrace universality.


Of course, a turn to means tested social programs to the exclusion of universal ones was part of trend within liberalism itself away from universal to the particular. The Liberals also adopted affirmative action policies under the rubric of equity. This proved to been a disaster for the working class. Equity sows division within Canadian society and is an anachronism given Canada's rapidly changing demographic profile. Also, as it does nothing to address underlying causes of inequality, equity does little to advance equality. A National daycare care system, for example, would do far more in a year for women's wage equality than 25 years of the putrid Employment Equity Act has. The former addresses the underlying causes of the wage gap, the later hurts the cause of young white males because 50 something white males earn more than than their 50 something female colleges. Worst of all, the focus on equity has meant that instead of trying to move the case of all workers forward, something that is desperately needed, liberals and progressives of all stripes have instead devoted virtually all their energies to shuffling the deck. Calls for a bigger share of the pie has been abandoned for sake of each of the ever smaller pieces having an equal amount of fruit.


Support for equity has also proved to be mistake politically. For starters, a commitment to equity destroyed the liberal ideal of a government built around merit. Hiring the "best" person for the job is a far cry from using the government as a counterpoint to perceived or actual deficiencies in the private sector employment. Government can not be seen or indeed be an affirmative action program. Government exists to further the public good and it furthers the public good not by who it hires but by what functions it carries out. So long as the philosophy of equity rules, Canadians will not have any faith that government is actually committed to that end and conservatives will have an easy time claiming that government hurts, as little more than a make work project for disadvantaged groups, more than it helps.


Luckily for the Liberals they were not the only ones to fall for the equity swan song. The NDP's support for these principles have long rankled many traditional working class voters. Most moved to the Reform party in 1990s and stayed on with the Conservatives, but others have slowly started to migrate back to the NDP. The Liberals need to rip open those scabs. They need to attack NDP's right flank by abandoning their support for equity and coming out against it.


Next the Liberals need to fully absorb what happened to Liberal level of support in Western Canada following the 1974 election. Some blamed the NEP and others have even claimed the gun registry played a part. The latter claim is ridiculous. The gun registry had no impact on the Liberals share of the popular vote or their seat totals. Most important of all it was passed 16 years after the Liberals first showed a significant decline in their level of support. As for the former, the chronology is also wrong. It was the fact that the Liberal vote collapsed in Western Canada in 1979 that paved the way for the NEP politically and not the other way around. The NEP was introduced after the 1980 election. The Liberals took 1 seat in the three most western provinces in 1979 election and 0 in 1980.

The source of the collapse was the more emphasis Trudeau placed on individual rights and a commitment to linguistic equality the more the rest of the country, particularly the West, resented the Liberals' inability to put a stop to bill 178 and and 101 and its willingness to make special accommodations for Quebec. Quebec's Official Language Act spelled doom for the Liberals in Western Canada from the mid 70s until collapse of the Progressive Conservatives in 1993. Ironically, it was the Mulroney's willingness to go even further in pandering to Quebec, particularly the Charlottetown Accord, that gave the Liberals some life again. 60.2% Albertans voted against the Charlottetown Accord, and 68.3% of British Colombians did. The later figure was by far the highest in country and the voter turn out in BC was second only to Quebec. Subsequently, the Torries went from 54 seats West of Ontario, Western Canada being their traditional base of support, in 1984 to 0 in the 1993 election.

Let the "coalition" be a warning to the Liberals; these feelings are still deeply felt in "Western" Canada. For the good of the party and the country, the Liberals need to learn from history and stay clear asymmetrical federalism and collective rights.


Finally, the Liberals need to drive a wedge between libertarians and theo cons by championing social liberalism in way that the Liberal party has not done since Trudeau introduced his omnibus bill. At least the media will support them if they do.

It is time for Mike Gillis to Go

In the summer of 2008 Mike Gillis offered Sundin 20 million for two seasons. It was good thing that Sundin said no and only agreed to a half a year deal in the second half season. The Canucks would have had to blow up their team in order to get under the salary cap had he signed on for two.

Yesterday Gillis did something just as rash. Gillis traded away one of the finalists for rookie of the year for a guy that has done nothing at the NHL level and a D man who has been a healthy scratch for last 6 games. To say this is strange move for a team looking to win this year would be an understatement. The notion that guy with 7 nhl points in 28 NHL games is somehow going to put them over the top is ridiculous. Equally silly is the notion that Paulson can somehow fill Hodgson's shoes. Pahlsson is well past it. With the deal, the Canucks went from having 3 solid lines to having 2. Any line centred by any one of Pahlsson, Malhotra, and Lapierre is going to be limited offensively.

Yes, Gillis has made some good moves. Samuelsson and Hamhuis signing were good moves and Ehrhoff trade was a stroke of genius. He has also did well to lock up Kelser, Sedin and Burrows for what could said be less than market value. However, the Canucks are in large measure a team built by Nonis and Burke and whatever positives Gillis has done need to be weighed against the stupidity of the Sundin offer, the Ballard trade, the Luongo contract and now the Hodgson trade. It time for Gillis to go.

Social Conservatives have a choice: Contraception or Abortion

The evidence is overwhelming. By far the most effective way of reducing the number of abortions is provide women with contraception.


http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/Sedgh-Lancet-2012-01.pdf

"Life Affirming Weed": How not to distance oneself

There are ways of distancing oneself from the live affirming weed crowd. For example, some within the pro legalization movement haved tried to strike a more serious note right off the bat by conceding that marijuana can dangerous, but argue that it is only by legalizing the drug that many of negative effects of marijuana can be minimized. This seems to be the tone the former Vancouver majors struck in their letter.

I do not find such an approach terribly helpful. First of all, it is associated with a rather dubious argument. The proponents of such an approach almost always argue that marijuana's illegal status make it easy for teenagers to get a hold of pot and if marijuana was legalized "young people" would only have limited access to the drug. The problem is this. Yes there are far more strangers willing to sell "young people" marijuana than there are strangers willing to sell them alcohol and no doubt legalizing marijuana would close that gap. However, far more "young people" drink than smoke marijuana for one very good reason. They know people who have legally bought the former and they get it off them. They steal alcohol from their parents' liquor cabinet. They ask their older brother to pick up a 6 pack for them etc etc. There are simply not that many teenagers brave enough to go buy illegal drugs. This fact limits the number of teens trying marijuana and it certainly limits the amounts consumed. If marijuana was legalized, they might find it harder to obtain on the street, but it is bound to be more readily available at home.

A more fruitful line of attack would be to say that legalization of marijuana could reduce the use of hard drugs among "young people". As researchers have long noted, people who have try marijuana are statistically more likely try other illicit drugs. This gave raise to the theory that there was something about marijuana that encouraged drug experimentation. Marijuana, it was alleged, is a gateway drug. This, in turn, was given as one more reason to keep the drug illegal. However, the gateway drug theory has until recently fallen on hard times for lack of an intelligible mechanism. The problem was that there was no coherent explanation for why marijuana would lead people to experiment with other drugs. Without this explanation doubt was cast relationship being more than mere correlation. That said, in recent years researchers have breathed new life into the theory, albeit with a sociological twist. According to the new version, it is not marijuana's pharmacological properties that serve as a gateway, but rather marijuana's illegal status. Specifically in the process of illegally procuring marijuana, users are introduced to the criminal elements with access to other illicit drugs and hence it is the forged black market relationship between dealer and buyer that serves as gateway. In this context it should be noted that when the Dutch partially legalized the sale of marijuana, heroin and cocaine use went down despite an initial increase in marijuana use. Dutch use of hard drugs remains well below the European average.

Reduced to bite sized talking point the above reads as follows: Every time someone goes to buy marijuana they come into contact with criminal elements with access to other hard drugs. This is your gateway. When Holland legalized consumption and made it available in stores, heroin and cocaine use went down.

Another problem with such an approach is that it concedes far too much ground. Marijuana when stacked up against alochol is simply not that dangerous. To remain silent on the main refer madness myths is to lend them a legitimacy that they simply do not have. They will also remain an elephant in the living room until they addressed. The debate about the dangerous of marijuana have been raging for decades. One can not hope to restart the debate a new. The notion that marijuana causes schizophrenia must be attacked head on. Same hold true for supposed dangerous of potent pot.

This is actually easy enough. After all, epidemiological studies have consistently failed to show a positive correlation between marijuana use and schizophrenia and there is no causation without correlation. Specifically, should there be a causal link between marijuana and schizophrenia, there should be a positive correlation between marijuana consumption and schizophrenia, but such a correlation is conspicuous by its absence. Despite a massive increase in the number of Australians consuming the drug since the 1960s, Wayne Hall of the University of Queensland found no increase in the number of cases of schizophrenia in Australia. Mitch Earleywine of the University of Southern California similarly found the same with regard to the US population and Oxford's Leslie Iversen found the same regard to the population in the UK. According to Dr. Alan Brown, a professor of psychiatry and epidemiology at Columbia University, "If anything, the studies seem to show a possible decline in schizophrenia from the '40s and the ‘ 50".

As for potent pot, saying that potent pot is reason for keeping marijuana illegal is akin to saying that alcohol should be banned because gin has higher alcohol content than beer. It makes no sense. The pharmacological affects of consuming 1 "chemically supercharged" joint, as Bush administration liked to say, versus x number of "dad's joints" would be no different if the amount of THC consumed is the same. As for consumption, just as people do not drink the same volume of gin as beer, the higher the THC level in pot the less people consume. Hence, ironically more potent pot may be a welcome development. After all, one of the most prominent health effect related to marijuana, if not the most, is that it is usually smoked. The more potent the pot, the less people have to smoke to achieve the same high.

The attempt to scare parents that have grown up on marijuana by distinguishing between potent pot and “your dad's marijuana” is also too clever by half. After all, it begs the following question. If today's marijuana is truly different in kind from "dads marijuana", would it be ok to legalize "dad's marijuana", i.e., low potency pot?

Both can be reduced nicely to bit sized talking points too. To wit:

1) There is no causation without correlation. There has been an astronomical increase in the number of pot smokers since the 1950s and no increase in the rate of schizophrenia whatsoever.

2 a) Saying that potent pot is reason for keeping marijuana illegal is akin to saying that alcohol should be banned because gin has higher alcohol content than beer. It makes no sense.

2 b) If today's marijuana is truly different in kind from "dads marijuana", would it be ok to legalize "dad's marijuana", i.e., low potency pot?

Are Stoners a barrier to Marijuana Legalization?

For many, the biggest political barrier to legalization is not the Americans. Ironically, it is some of the most ardent proponents of pot legalization. Stoners are a political liability. The narrated video of Dana Larson's driving a car while on LSD arguably set the legalization movement back some years and it certainly scared the bejesus out of legalization proponents inside the NDP.


The problem, however, is not as intractable as it might first seem. The SSM debate offers a way of rethinking the issue. Not that any one would dry admit, but it was not so long ago that prospect of same sex marriage being put on the political agenda was weighed down by concerns about how images of drag queens, dikes on bikes and even images of same sex couples kissing might weigh down a political party. However, once SSM was put on the political agenda the ability of opposition groups to use such images effectively quickly evaporated. Now, granted there was a human element to same sex marriage that is simply lacking with regard to pot. Nevertheless the same thing is likely to happen. The moment marijuana legalization is put on the political agenda all the voices that have held their powder for a lack of a proper forum are all of sudden going to have an opportunity to speak and I can assure you that the public will have far more interest in what they have to say than they will in hearing about another stoner.