Some Conservative MPs feel potash is a strategic resource that must be kept in Canadian hands, but they can’t see overwhelming opposition to a deal. “This, frankly, isn’t a great commercial deal,” the senior Tory MP said. “There’s a lot of people who say, ‘I’m not sure I’d stop this deal, but I am not sure I am a big fan of it.’Brad Wall has made a big deal about how important he thinks it is for Saskatchewan to get along well with Stephen Harper, and in the past Wall's willingness to go along with what Harper wants has cost Saskatchewan a lot of money. Now I wonder whether this Spike-and-Chester relationship will cost Saskatchewan its potash?
“Unless there's something else in the works [another deal], it’s kind of hard to see Ottawa saying no. I think a lot of people in government would like to see Canadian champions, but there don’t seem to be many Canadian players willing to step forward,” the former official said.
The real cause of the Great Recession is the fact that workers, consumers and the middle class are simply too broke to buy the goods necessary to stimulate the global economy and get people back to work. They no longer earn enough disposable income and are swimming in too much debt to accomplish this.This articulates a feeling I have had that people in our society who complain about their unionized friends and neighbours and relatives getting paid "too much" just haven't realized where their own best interests really lie -- nobody buys a house or a car or sends their kids to university or builds their community on minimum wage.
. . . it's easy to call for creative destruction from the sidelines but the people who have to actually make these decisions have a very weighty responsibility. As a matter of justice and political survival, they should absolutely start putting some people in prison. But as for how they should clean up this mess so that it both fixes the problem and doesn't cause another wave of mass unemployment? Well, hell if I know. . . . we need a financial services industry to keep credit flowing and, therefore, keep the economy growing. Lazy snark about 'extend and pretend' might feel good, but the gravity of the problem is large and the potential consequences so grave, that calls to lance the wound and take the pain all at once are far too smug.
In the big picture, the moratorium is small potatoes. The real issue is how the document trail issue is resolved. If it is resolved in a way that forces the banks to eat their shitpile in one sudden burst, and there is no will to bail them out again, then we're back September 2008. But, this time, the ship goes down to the bottom of the sea. So, I guess what I am saying is, be careful what you wish for and don't be so quick to judge the people who are responsible for keeping us out of a true Depression.
Anti-tax zealots are the Harlem Globetrotters of politics. Having mastered the arts of deception and loaded their repertoire with all kinds of sleight-of-hand tricks, they can magically turn any argument about taxes into a series of bewildering hypotheticals that collapse under the slightest hint of scrutiny.Emphasis mine.
According to a release by his allies, if he were to have accepted bail yesterday, Hundert would have been faced with "additional conditions of non association with Harsha Walia, Dan Kellar, AW@L, SOAR, NOII, no planning/participating/planning public meetings or marches, and no expressing political views including in the media, amongst others."Rabble reporter Krystalline Kraus has more.
But regardless of his ongoing incarceration, Hundert insists that his supporters need to continue organizing, and not focus on his plight.
"Too much attention has been paid to a small number of cases of repression, particularly my own, when people need to be focused on and fighting back against broader patterns of oppression that flow from the racist capitalist system propagated by the G20 states, their corporations, their militaries, and their police," he told an ally in a phone call from jail on October 11.
That's real censorship. That's the state, in this case the province of Ontario, forbidding someone from publicly expressing political opinion. It doesn't sound like it's any particular opinion that concerns them. It's obviously not hate speech that they're worried about because they wouldn't have to include that in bail conditions. This is the state telling a citizen who hasn't yet been found guilty of a crime that his views are already regarded as illegitimate before he's even expressed them.
There's a man with some serious emotional problems. Cutting your defence minister, agricultural minister and international trade minister out of negotiations with an Arab country that, for nine years, has allowed you to use their territory for a vital forward base? Captain Queeg to the bridge. Captain Queeg to the bridge.Emphasis mine.
In the final days of Tuesday's bid, Canada wined and dined diplomats, offering them gifts of Canadian beer and maple syrup.I'm just, like, totally surprised the UN didn't think Canada would be a serious contributor.
Canada even had a Mountie in red serge as a prop flown in so the 192 foreign diplomats who were casting ballots could get a photo with him.
