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Colorado Springs: City of fools?

In Colorado Springs, every third streetlight is dark. Buses no longer run at night or on weekends. City pools will soon be dry, trash bins have disappeared and the verdant grass in the city's famed parks will soon grow long, turn brown and die.

The city no longer offers basic services that people expect from their local government.

A budget crisis caused by the recession left Colorado's second-largest city with a US$28-million shortfall in its US$212-million general budget. Residents -- largely conservative, anti-tax and suspicious of their elected leaders -- resoundingly voted against a proposal to triple property taxes and keep the city humming. Mayor Lionel Rivera said the city has no choice but to cut fundamental services.

via www.nationalpost.com

The people of Colorado Springs voted against the much-needed tax increase by a 65% majority. Now, the city goes dark, and public transit shuts down in the evenings and on weekends. With so many unlit spots in the city, and people forced to walk considerable distances, muggings will surely soar to new highs.

Government should be limited, no doubt, and taxes should be kept to a minimum, but when the functioning of an entire city is at stake, taxes become an absolute necessity. Such matters should not be made contingent on a vote. As this example demonstrates, people clearly have no clue about what’s good for them and what’s necessary, with the result being that 65% of the residents deprived the remaining 35% of public transit and street lighting. It may be “democratic”, but it’s anything but fair or equitable – or commonsensical for that matter.

Walter Russell Mead: Global warming is dead

In my February 1 post on The Death of Global Warming, I said that the movement had been killed by two things: bad science and bad politics.  The Guardian hopes that the parrot isn’t dead yet, but it seems to agree with my basic diagnosis: “It is bad science and bad politics to counter scepticism with righteous indignation. In the long run, public confidence will be inspired more by frankness about what science cannot explain,” write the editors.

via blogs.the-american-interest.com

Indeed, “global warming” is dead. It never was alive, so to speak. It started as a front for extreme left-wing, wealth-redistributionist ideology, and now (thanks to Climategate) the world is finally beginning to see the real truth.

Let’s protect the environment; lets conserve our finite resources and be good stewards of Mother Nature. But, please, don’t anyone try telling us that climate change, the likes of which our planet has gone through for billions of years — long before humans ever arrived — is “man-made” and that we must place ourselves back in the Stone Age to “survive”.

Margaret Wente agrees:

By exaggerating the certainties, papering over the gaps, demonizing the skeptics and peddling tales of imminent catastrophe, they’ve discredited the entire climate-change movement. The political damage will be severe. As Mr. Mead succinctly puts it: “Skeptics up, Obama down, cap-and-trade dead.” That also goes for Canada, whose climate policies are inevitably tied to those of the United States.

“Man-made global warming” hoax … rest in pieces, er, peace.

Alberta Tories spying on Danielle Smith?

The leader of Alberta’s upstart Wildrose Alliance party has accused the office Premier Ed Stelmach of spying on her.

Danielle Smith said the charge is linked to conversation that took place in Alberta’s legislature rotunda after Thursday’s throne speech.

“There were people who contacted my (executive assistant) and said they were asked why they were talking to me,” Smith said. “I think the fact that there’s this game of intimidation going on is one of the reasons why people are leaving the (Progressive Conservative) party and looking to ours.”

via www.calgaryherald.com

Danielle Smith should take that as a compliment. For the Tories to send their spies after her, that proves that she’s become a formidable opponent who is not to be taken lightly.

Smith has also shown excellent skills in building her party and establishing it as Albertans’ top choice for the “Great Alberta Renewal”.

Here’s some advice for Danielle Smith and the Wildrose Alliance:

• Don’t ever get too confident. That’s when slip-ups occur.
• Thanks to Alberta’s dysfunctional system, people can be members of all provincial parties at the same time. New members, therefore, should be vetted in some way to make sure they’re not spies for one or the other party, especially those who volunteer for some official position or capacity within the party.
• Next time someone crosses the floor from the governing party to your side, insist on having a by-election – if for no other reason than to build up goodwill and supply proof that you are, indeed, committed to a healthy democracy in Alberta.
• Above all, let Albertans know that you hear their concerns.

Big Money and democracy

This week on the JOURNAL, Bill Moyers spoke with libertarian journalist Nick Gillespie and progressive legal scholar Lawrence Lessig about the impact of last month’s controversial Supreme Court ruling allowing corporations and unions to spend unlimited funds from their general treasuries on political communications in periods shortly before elections and primaries.

While many have argued that the Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission affirms free speech and the First Amendment, others have expressed grave concern that the ruling may open the floodgates of corporate money into America’s elections and undermine the voices and trust of ordinary citizens.

via www.pbs.org

Canada banned corporate (including labour-union) donations to political parties several years ago, and there’s a good reason for it. Voters are people, natural persons, not legal entities. Only those who can actively participate in the electoral and democratic process should be allowed to shape, direct or even “manipulate” public opinion.

Nick Gillespie is a libertarian firebrand who tends to go overboard on his political leanings. He sees no problem with Big Money flooding into the political process and then calls it “freedom of speech”. Sorry, but freedom of speech is a human right, not a corporate right.

The US Supreme Court was clearly wrong to allow companies and, above all, unions to engage in “political communications”. Nothing opens the door to special interests, and the pressure they can exert, more so than this decision, and democracy will be worse for it.

Wilfrid Laurier's values for a more powerful West

Consider just one example from our history. In his 1894 campaign swing through Winnipeg, then Liberal opposition leader Wilfrid Laurier attacked the protectionist policies of the Conservative government. Laurier emphasized appreciation for an individual's room to move -- for freedom, on a variety of levels. "The good Saxon word, freedom; freedom in every sense of the term, freedom of speech, freedom of action, freedom in religious life and civil life and last but not least, freedom in commercial life," said Laurier.

via www.calgaryherald.com

Mark Milke has written a very interesting column on “Western Canadian” values and how they dovetail perfectly with – lo and behold – a former Liberal prime minister.

Laurier represented the old style of liberalism, or classical liberalism, which the federal Liberal Party no longer reflects. More disgracefully, however, even Alberta’s own “Tories” are far removed from those liberal ideals.

Time for a re-think. Alberta’s politicians could certainly do worse than take a few pointers from a classical liberal.

Alberta Tories get failing grades

A small-c conservatives meeting in Edmonton on the weekend to brainstorm about the province's political future gave Alberta's performance in a number of critical areas a resounding thumbs-down.

About 100 people took up Reform party founder Preston Manning's challenge to evaluate Alberta, and came up with a report card containing D's and an F on issues such as fiscal responsibility (D), health care (F), environment (D), and democratic participation (D).

"There was a fairly low rating on our performance, or put it the other way, that we could do better," Manning said, noting participants were nonetheless pleased by the province's record in education and economic development.

via www.calgaryherald.com

The failing grades handed out to Ed Stelmach’s government by this conference organized by the Manning Centre don’t come as a surprise or shock. It’s about time that a respectable institution made it official.

Linda Duncan, a federal NDP MP, who was at the conference, complained that the focus was solely on the Tories and the Wildrose Alliance. Well, since according to all polls recently only the Tories and Wildrose are in the running for the top job in the province, it would have been a waste of time debating the “merits” of the Alberta Liberals or NDP.

Harper has been vindicated

Two months before the last federal election, Stephen Harper sat down with CBC’s Peter Mansbridge and uttered a line that he’d quickly regret: “I think there’s probably some great buying opportunities emerging in the stock market.” Many Canadians didn’t want to hear it; jumping into the TSX in October 2008, in the midst of the worst recession in decades, seemed ridiculous, to say the least. But it turns out Harper was right. The market has shot up 17.55% since then, and it has grown nearly every month since April.

via www.canadianbusiness.com

Harper was ridiculed for his comment on CBC. The opposition parties quickly denounced him as heartless and callous, but time has proved him right. His observation that there were “great buying opportunities” was a matter-of-fact statement based on logical and reasonable conclusions.

Firefox to battle online privacy issues

The organization behind Firefox, the world's second most popular Web browser, has embarked on an ambitious project to change this. Instead of forcing people concerned about privacy to scroll through pages of "notwithstanding anything to the contrary," the Mozilla Foundation is designing a standard set of colored icons to reveal how data-protective--or how intrusive--Web sites are.

via news.cnet.com

I think this whole privacy issue is overblown. There’s been a lot of noise about Facebook and its privacy settings, but frankly I don’t see what the fuss is all about.

Users should learn to be more responsible. If they leave their personal information, e.g., on Facebook, wide open, it’s their own fault. If they visit websites that aren’t safe for some reason, it’s their fault, particularly if they don’t use firewall and anti-virus software. I’m always shocked when I hear how many people actually don’t use any of those protections.

As for Firefox, I’m worried that labelling websites in this manner will cause loading speeds to become much slower. Again, this is an example of taking responsibility away from the individual, thus increasing the number of irresponsible people. It’s this “nanny-state” mentality that has made people more and more irresponsible (and dysfunctional) in every aspect of their lives. We need to force, yes, force, people to stand on their own two feet again, even if they get hurt in the process.

French in Calgary

French in Calgary, by the numbers

595 Speak French only
84,085 Speak both English and French
109,180 Claim French as their ethnic origin
16,310 Language by mother tongue

Source: Calgary Census Metropolitan Area, Statistics Canada 2006

via www.calgaryherald.com

Not bad for a city of approx. 1.2 million people. Hence, the relatively large number of French-style restaurants and shops and a successful bookstore (link).

V Tele (formerly: TQS) now available in Calgary

via vtele.ca

The French TV channel “V” (no, it has nothing to do with the US hit show V, although it may strike some people as “alien”) is now available in Calgary on Shaw Cable on channel 899. Formerly known as TQS, V is now home to former ADQ leader Mario Dumont’s political talk show (every weekday at 3pm Calgary time).

Francophone TV viewers may be interested to know that V is the station to carry the Winter Olympic Games in French.