Going to the dark side

In spirit, I am in solidarity with the website blackout -- but I don't know how to change my website colours, and if I did figure it out, then I likely wouldn't know how to change them back, so consider this to be my way of joining the protest against the omnibus budget bill:

Rally against 'Black Mark Budget'

Over 30 cities set to rally against 'Black Mark Budget' this Saturday

Outrage fatigue

Ever since the grotesque budget bill came down, we've been going through the Stages of Outrage -- denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.
Every time I read another story about the Harper Con's budget bill -- AKA The End Of Canada As We Know It -- I get more and more upset about what they think they're doing, what gives them the right, how dare they...
Well, I guess they think they were elected to dismantle everything that any of the Conservative voters ever complained about, and they're going to do it just as fast as they can, as far under the radar as they can get, without consulting anyone or even telling anyone what they're doing, and they think they have the right because 40 per cent of Canadians voted for them.  So they're changing Old Age Security and employment Insurance, breaking federal unions, silencing agencies and charities that say or do things they don't like, throwing out 300,000 immigration applications, and emasculating environmental assessment, while also giving government ministers (read: the Prime Minister's Office) the authority to do all sorts of things in secret that used to be done openly, like decide whether charities can issue tax receipts, or determine who gets to enter the country.
The latest news is that the budget bill also abolishes the requirement that federal contractors pay "fair wages" -- ie, equivalent to what unionized trades would receive.  So we can also wave goodbye to the construction trade unions.
I have reached Outrage Fatigue zombie level six.
The good news is, our parliamentarians are getting more polite -- now that's real progress, isn't it?

Collective bullying

I don't know why any unionized, federally-regulated employer would bother to negotiate in good faith with their unions anymore -- if anybody goes on strike, the Harper Conservatives just legislate them back to work, to "protect the economy."  Well, somehow the economy managed to survive before these guys came along.  Now, not so much...



source

The funniest story you will read this week

Doctor Grumpy in the House: Memories...
Takeaway line: "You have to wonder what he's like in bed!"

Prom shots

Check out The Best Of Prom 2012 -- here's the one that would be truly unforgettable:

What they don't understand about EI

Here's what the Harper Conservatives don't understand about many EI frequent flyers:
It's not the workers that EI is subsidizing.
Its the industry they work in.
Activities like commercial fishing, vegetable and fruit growers, small-scale manufacturing, mining -- they all have grown to depend on EI to keep an experienced workforce nearby and available throughout the year.  The industry doesn't have to try to pay these workers during annual down-times, because EI will.
Here's what some of these employers are saying about the new EI rules:

. . . farmers are not looking forward to being the staging ground for Ottawa’s new social experiment, they say. They worry that years spent moulding unwilling neighbours into farmers — more a coaching gig than a business model — will put them in the red and even shut them down.
. . .  One Valley workforce available in the summer is winter lobster boat crew members who work in the Bay of Fundy. . . . About 95 per cent of the association’s roughly 520 members use EI seasonally, Hudson said. The spread between the seasons is too long for them to live off savings, and there are about seven weeks of work needed each off-season to prepare boats and equipment for the next year.
. . . Webster [fruit grower] started using seasonal migrant labour in 2010 and brought in 16 Mexican workers last year. . . . Webster, whose core employees go on EI for about four months of the year, said he’s afraid his business will pay the biggest price in next year’s dry run.

UPDATE: This also raises the larger question -- do the Harper Conservatives actually understand the Canadian economy they are trying to manage? There's a lot of talk about "not picking winners and losers" and "standing on our own feet" but the Canadian economy, in many sectors, is never going to be competitive on an international scale -- nobody here can beat the California growers, with their two or three vegetable crops a year and their easy access to thousands of migrant workers. Nobody here can beat the Florida and Louisiana fishing industries, with the whole gulf coast to harvest all year long. Nobody here can beat the mega-farms of the American mid-west, with plenty of transport options to large ports that are open year-round. The Liberals understood this -- they instituted all sorts of under-the-radar measures which subsidized our smaller-scale and less competitive Canadian industrial and agricultural producers.
Who then turned around and voted Conservative because they were successful businessmen who didn't need any gol-durned government handouts, no siree bob!  
Canada under the Harper Cons will be a bleaker and ultimately less productive place.

Montreal protest map

According to Twitter, here's the route map that protesting students gave to Montreal police:

Elements of Style Rap

Move Your Story Right Along: The Elements of Style Rap | Brain Pickings:

I expect a clusterf*ck

Does anyone want to bet me that when the Harper Cons finally get around to announcing the new Employment Insurance rules, they won't be a total clusterf*ck?
This is the gang who can't shoot straight. They've already messed up the census, Old Age Security, Parks Canada, Aboriginal organizations, arts funding, gay pride parades, etc etc.
After several years of underfunding the EI bureaucracy to the point that hundreds of thousands of people already can't get their claims processed and can't even get a phone call answered, they're going to expect overworked EI staff to implement some poorly-written, punative and inequitable new rules that haven't gone through any review or vetting process to make sure they make sense, and for which the computer programming isn't going to be completed either.
It's going to be chaos across the nation.
 Food banks and the Sally Ann better gear up.  Landlords and banks had better get ready for thousands of people not able to pay their rent or their loans or their credit card bills because their EI cheques aren't arriving.  
Oh, and I have to ask once again -- whatever happened to the $57 billion EI surplus that we accumulated when Paul Martin was prime minister?

Some fun now

So Conrad Black's delicate fee-fees are hurt because Thomas Mulcair referred to him as a "British criminal".
I guess the truth hurts, doesn't it.
See, I told you this would be fun.

G20 Justice

OK, here's how it should be.
Those 30 police officers who apparently are going to be charged for the police riot that was the G20? First, kick them in the face.

Then scoop them up off the street and bus them to a wire cage in a warehouse, ziptied,  and let them sit there for a day without much water or food.  Laugh at them and ignore any of their requests for help.
Then, take half of them and drive them to Scarborough and abandon them there in the middle of the night without any money to make their own way home somehow.
Then, for the other half, keep them in jail.  After a few weeks, take them to court one by one, for bail hearings. But don't let them actually see a judge. No, let their continued detention be decided by a Justice of the Peace who apparently will believe everything said by the prosecutors about how awful they are.
Then, if they do get bail, make sure it is it very restrictive house arrest, and don't allow them to talk to any of the other officers involved, and make sure other police are hanging around outside their houses all the time to "monitor" everything they are doing, just as if they were some kind of terrorists.
Then, after a year or so of this, let them have their trial.
And, after two years, release a report on how they were treated.
Now, that would be G20 justice.

Oops, sorry

Canadian Press has "corrected" its bullsh*t story about how Paul Martin's government was more secretive than Harper's is:

"The story's claim that Commons committees during Martin's majority of February to May 2004 spent the most time meeting in camera is thus erroneous, as are other rankings in the story."

Gee, don't drown us in detail, CP!
This retraction will, I'm sure, make the same headline news across Canada as the original story did.

Shorter

Shorter Jim Flaherty:

Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?

Too many secrets

When I read this story about how Paul Martin's Liberals supposedly had "more" secret meetings than the Harper Cons I thought, "this is probably bullsh*t" but I didn't know how to prove it.
Thanks, Kady

Thus far, I've not heard a single Conservative MP make the claim that the Liberal government was just as heavy-handed when it came to squelching debate during the days when they held the majority at committee. Given the increasing criticism that this government has faced for doing so, you'd think that at least one veteran from the Reform/Canadian Alliance/pre-2004 Conservative days might have thought to mention it.
As for the New Democrats, while no formal survey has been undertaken, those who have experienced opposition life under past majorities have made it clear that the current practice -- wherein government members automatically move to clear the room when an opposition member attempts to put forward a motion for debate -- is, as far as they can recall, unprecedented.