Roundup
This approach seems too close Larry King's random thoughts in USA Today, so I hope it doesn't become a habit fo me.
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Kudos to Liberal MP John Comuzzi for stepping down from his cabinet post over same-sex marriage. It is somewhat refreshing to see a Grit show some principle.
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The recent news about failed social engineering at the RCMP is not surprising. I've been hearing firsthand stories for years about how the Mounties' front lines have been watered down by lower standards for visible minorities, native Canadians in particular. Picture this: there are law enforcement officers that not only made it in under lower standards, but if what I'm told by certain sources is true, there are those in the ranks that made it in despite failing tests and their supervisors cannot discipline them for chronic insubordination. To add insult to injury, these problem Mounties take home more pay than their superior officers because members of the First Nations are tax-exempt.
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There is talk that the Tories will make same-sex marriage an election issue, despite the bill C-38 passing third reading this evening. My first reaction is that this is not a good idea, but I can understand why they may try to capitalize on it. There really hasn't been a proper debate on the matter and the mainstream electorate hasn't been sold on it. First, it wasn't a real election issue the last time around and it wasn't that long ago that a sitting majority Liberal government voted to uphold the traditional definition of marriage. The Liberals took the coward's route and sent draft legislation to the Supreme Court in hope that it would force its passage on constitutional grounds. Contrary to Paul Martin's repeated claims, the Supreme Court did not do this, instead refusing to comment. Finally, the Liberals invoked closure this week on the debate.
How many social liberal and libertarian votes will be sacrificed for the the social conservative vote? How will the Tories go about the marriage issue now that the bill is on the way up to the Senate? My hope is that if they choose to act, they do something bold, novel and--most of all--right: don't just promise to repeal C-38, go one step further and get government out of the marriage business altogether. Recognize civil unions for common law purposes, whether conventional or homosexual (this is already judicial law anyway), but pronounce that marriage is solely the domain of whatever religion two people choose to get married under. If that religion recognizes same-sex marriages, more power to them. It shouldn't be government making that call in the first place.
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A political scientist friend of mine made an observation recently that is starting to resonate in light of China being in the news for it spying, military build-up and surging nationalism. He noted that we westerners overlook an aspect of Chinese nationalism that was evident even back in 1989 at Tiananmen Square: a significant number of pro-democracy demonstrators were calling for change not so that China could become an isolationist democracy, but rather because history has shown that democracies have the most successful armies. Victor Davis Hanson can't argue with that line of thinking, but as China makes the step from communism to Nazi-like fascism, it is troubling.
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Ghost of A Flea has a post on the apparent short-term similarities between tax cuts and government subsidies. Wickens already has a comment on this and I can't be arsed to dig up the Typekey login and password I got for Flea's comments page, so I'll just say something here. I suppose Flea has a point in terms of net debits and credits in the short term, but that isn't asking the right question. If there is enough money for subsidies, then too much revenue is being collected. Assuming there really is a valid policy reason for collecting taxes to be paid out as subsidies, for subsidies to be effective one must assume that government, a lone decision-maker, does a better job at redistributing wealth than the individual taxpayers do making decisions about how to spend their own money. That's a big leap in my book; I'd rather take the result of thousands of individual decisions being made than putting all my eggs in the government basket.
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Kudos to Liberal MP John Comuzzi for stepping down from his cabinet post over same-sex marriage. It is somewhat refreshing to see a Grit show some principle.
---
The recent news about failed social engineering at the RCMP is not surprising. I've been hearing firsthand stories for years about how the Mounties' front lines have been watered down by lower standards for visible minorities, native Canadians in particular. Picture this: there are law enforcement officers that not only made it in under lower standards, but if what I'm told by certain sources is true, there are those in the ranks that made it in despite failing tests and their supervisors cannot discipline them for chronic insubordination. To add insult to injury, these problem Mounties take home more pay than their superior officers because members of the First Nations are tax-exempt.
---
There is talk that the Tories will make same-sex marriage an election issue, despite the bill C-38 passing third reading this evening. My first reaction is that this is not a good idea, but I can understand why they may try to capitalize on it. There really hasn't been a proper debate on the matter and the mainstream electorate hasn't been sold on it. First, it wasn't a real election issue the last time around and it wasn't that long ago that a sitting majority Liberal government voted to uphold the traditional definition of marriage. The Liberals took the coward's route and sent draft legislation to the Supreme Court in hope that it would force its passage on constitutional grounds. Contrary to Paul Martin's repeated claims, the Supreme Court did not do this, instead refusing to comment. Finally, the Liberals invoked closure this week on the debate.
How many social liberal and libertarian votes will be sacrificed for the the social conservative vote? How will the Tories go about the marriage issue now that the bill is on the way up to the Senate? My hope is that if they choose to act, they do something bold, novel and--most of all--right: don't just promise to repeal C-38, go one step further and get government out of the marriage business altogether. Recognize civil unions for common law purposes, whether conventional or homosexual (this is already judicial law anyway), but pronounce that marriage is solely the domain of whatever religion two people choose to get married under. If that religion recognizes same-sex marriages, more power to them. It shouldn't be government making that call in the first place.
---
A political scientist friend of mine made an observation recently that is starting to resonate in light of China being in the news for it spying, military build-up and surging nationalism. He noted that we westerners overlook an aspect of Chinese nationalism that was evident even back in 1989 at Tiananmen Square: a significant number of pro-democracy demonstrators were calling for change not so that China could become an isolationist democracy, but rather because history has shown that democracies have the most successful armies. Victor Davis Hanson can't argue with that line of thinking, but as China makes the step from communism to Nazi-like fascism, it is troubling.
---
Ghost of A Flea has a post on the apparent short-term similarities between tax cuts and government subsidies. Wickens already has a comment on this and I can't be arsed to dig up the Typekey login and password I got for Flea's comments page, so I'll just say something here. I suppose Flea has a point in terms of net debits and credits in the short term, but that isn't asking the right question. If there is enough money for subsidies, then too much revenue is being collected. Assuming there really is a valid policy reason for collecting taxes to be paid out as subsidies, for subsidies to be effective one must assume that government, a lone decision-maker, does a better job at redistributing wealth than the individual taxpayers do making decisions about how to spend their own money. That's a big leap in my book; I'd rather take the result of thousands of individual decisions being made than putting all my eggs in the government basket.
posted by Tiberius at 10:38 PM
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