Driving While Conservative.

A $500 fine. That's the penalty in Ontario for driving at almost twice the speed limit, over the legal blood/alcohol limit while in possession of cocaine. Well, at least it is if you're former Conservative M.P. Rahim Jaffer.

The circumstances and substances that resulted in Mr. Jaffer's arrest and detention were well reported. As were the charges. He somehow bargained those down to a plea of careless driving. Why the crown dropped (or agreed to do so) the more serious charges of drug possession and DUI we'll likely never know. Even the judge said he caught a break.

That the judge made that clear is reason enough to wonder if Mr. Jaffer was not the beneficiary of unduly favourable treatment. To be fair, he is a gainfully-employed, non-aggressive, non-drug-trafficking, first-offender. However, would anyone of similar circumstances have fared as well as Jaffer? If so, great. If not, did Mr. Jaffer benefit merely from a judge's discretion?

That last bit is important. Because it is that very discretion that could go bye-bye if mandatory sentencing and tougher drug legislation currently tabled by the minority government pass without amendment. Unfortunately, the Jaffer business makes existing legislation look like it doesn't apply to 'them'. Further, it makes the trumpeting and dog-whistling about their proposed criminal legislation seem incredibly hypocritical. The Conservatives look to be tough on crime. Except of course when one o' their own is the subject of charges.

The Jaffer business raises legitimate questions. One need not be a rabid partisan to ask them. However, dismissing them is another matter entirely. Justice may have been served, but it was not seen to be done.

Update

Despite recent revelations that Mr. Jaffer sought deep info on Canadian Satellite thing-a-ma-jiggys, it seems all that tough-on-crime-ness still only goes so far:

http://albertadiary.ca/2010/03/canadians-deserve-explanation-of-why.html

Success!

True Patriot Fondness

Well, it worked, didn't it? Something like 15 words inserted into the Throne Speech got the nation not talking about the, er, Throne Speech. Not to mention the whimsical 3-month suspension of our parliament.

The subject of those 15 words was, of course, the National Anthem. And the swapping out of the words "In all our son's command" for "Thou dost must needs a merkin". Or something. But, as of Friday afternoon, the issue is dead. No changes to our hallowed patriot dirge. Where the anthem is concerned, we stand on guard. "The people have spoken". The government wasted no time asserting that they had heard the vox populi.

Interestingly, some of the most vociferous in opposing said changes were the government benches. Though it sounded as if they were barking in - possibly - hastily scripted outrage. And when the reversal was fully, completely done, others twittered in admiration.

So we have a dead news cycle for 48 hours and nobody is talking about the budget - an adobe castle built on sand in an earthquake zone - or the infantile, symbol laden throne speech.

The whole thing was a brilliant, calculated set-up. A distraction to get the wide-eyed populace blabbing about something, anything, other than the indefensible emptiness, gimmicks and hollow rhetoric that marked the sitting minority government's reluctant return to the parliament they seem to loathe.

That they floated it after the waxen, miraculously-coiffed Prime Minister of our one-man democracy was seen mouthing the existing, hallowed lyrics countless times over the course of Swaggerfest - er, the Winter Olympics - is the height of irony. Recalibrating, indeed.

This, of course was followed by the unseemly presentation by our finance minister - a former car crash and slip n' fall (Personal Injury) kinda litigator - of a grab bag of fantasy arithmetic that borders on innumeracy at best, bald-faced and disingenuous optimism at worst.

Meanwhile, the justice minister - who in Canada is also in charge of policing himself - seems to have taken a one-way ticket out of reality. He has punted other worrisome bothers into the able hands of an esteemed and able ex-jurist. Not that he's going to make a ruling or anything. It is, after all, a review. Justice Iacobucci will render an opinion that has all the legal force of a ton of feathers in the wind. If the government does not favour it, they'll likely kick the nettlesome issue of parliamentary supremacy into the Supreme Court. A very troublesome development that would be. But at least it will get them through the next election (Unless, in light of recent reports, that contempt motion is tabled).

In the background, the ample Minister of Citizenship and Immigration is caught red-handed in an act of what one can only assume is self-loathing and projection. Huzzah! History is now revised! Any reference to the hard-won rights of gays has been effectively scrubbed from a citizenship guide. A guide for the new, presumably homophobic, Canadians whose hearts he hopes to win. When confronted by the prying press, he flees, skittering out on his tiny trotters.

And, of course, there was that incident involving the Minister of State for the Status of Women in the shit-hole she calls PEI. Shoes were thrown. Fits were hissied. Hapless airline staff harangued. You'd think she was forced to go through one of John Baird's Strip-o-Matic full body scanners.

All of this, while the ideological purification of Rights and Democracy proceeds apace with the appointment to the helm of an erstwhile party hack. As Elvis Costello once wrote, "I used to be disgusted, but now I'm just amused."

This truly may appear like the gang that can't shoot straight unless the target is their own feet. The anthem thing was, well, the motives are perhaps entirely obscure. However, it is not beyond the realm of the plausible that it was floated as a too-clever-by-half distraction aimed squarely aimed at the 'jes' folks' jawing crullers at Timmies.

It was - almost - a cunning coax to look not at the substance of this government's performance or lack thereof, but at the shiny thing over there. Oooh, it sparkles.

Ah, chess!

The Google Ruling

Recent events raise a number of troubling questions for the future of web freedom in general and social media in particular.

The background: In September of 2006, a truly disturbing piece of video was posted on Google Italy. It showed a group of boys tormenting a another boy. The victim had Down's Syndrome. It stayed up for two months and went on to become the most viewed clip in Italy.

As a result, three Google executives were convicted this week of breaking privacy laws. This is a bad thing. In fact, one British M.P. went so far as to say it represents the "biggest threat to Internet freedom we have seen." Google concurs and will appeal.

Let's be clear. Google is not above the law. The question is, what exactly is Google, and where does the responsibility lie? Why punish the railroad tracks for the act of the villain who tied the maiden down?

The ruling brings up a number of questions: Is Google just providing rails for content and is, therefore, 'infrastructure'? Or is it no different from any other service provider and therefore bearing the responsibilities of such an entity? What does this mean for YouTube? Whose responsibility is the content which is uploaded to Google, or other video sites? The producer/uploader, or host? And, if this ruling stands and is precedential in other jurisdictions, what might result?

One scenario may well be that all content will need to be pre-screened. Who will do that? Do we really want the Google Ministry of Content going over every 'dog on a skateboard' video in order to find and censor - even if reluctantly - the one or two repulsive things that sick individuals feel worthy of inflicting upon the web?

The most populist creative outpost the world has ever known will be neutered.

And what about Facebook? Six Pixels notes that it recently overtook Yahoo as thesecond most popular website in the U.S. Will that amazing achievement be accompanied by more rigorous scrutiny of content as a result of the Italian ruling? And what kind of content?

Recently, we in Canada saw the rapid growth of a citizen-engagement, protest-oriented Facebook group. And despite administrators' best efforts to 'keep it nice', some of the content posted by members is over the top in its vitriol. Could such a situation raise the ire of state authorities such that pressure was brought to beear on Facebook itself?

Probably not. Yet, still, should the Italian conviction obtained against Google stand, it may have broad and severe implications for the way we access - and contribute to - the vast body of content on the web.

And we thought the efforts against Net Neutrality were bad.

The Ballot Question

As of right now, should an "election that nobody wants" become a reality, the 'ballot question', ought to be:

"Do you want a leader/government who asks the tough questions and looks to the future? Or one that evades tough questions and runs and hides from their past?"

It's a telling question for the leaders of both federal parties in Canada.

All Together Now

The Desperation in Haiti needs no further commentary, especially from an ingnoramus like this scribbler.

One observation though: The fact that POTUS Obama tapped both Clinton and Bush 43 to get the charity effort mobilized was one of the best happenstances to emerge from the otherwise bleak parade of destruction and suffering which dominated the week's news.

It says a lot about the scope of this thing. And it happened the same week odious bloviator Rush Limbaugh somehow managed to racialize the horrific crisis and ridicule the President for responding so quickly. The same week as an increasingly dotty Pat Robertson managed to neatly trace the roots of this disaster back to a deal with the devil. One supposes he's seen the paperwork.

The foul stench of partisanship and ideology, mostly from the American Right, it has to be said, was stark and stupid when juxtaposed against the unimaginable suffering in Haiti.

Yet, watching and listening to the three Presidents exhort their fellow citizens to roll out the aid dough showed America at its best. The one that all too often seems mistily long-ago and mythical.

It just kind of gives one heart that, when it gets right down to it, when it really, really matters, there are actual grown-ups running the U.S.A.

The Razor's Edge.

Basically, Occam's Razor is the principle that given the choice between a simple explanation and a complex one, go with simple. It's usually right.

So, it's kind of surprising that, in the wake of a rapid succession of gloomy poll numbers for the CPC, some still posit that there's even the teeniest possibility that PM Harper knew exactly what he was doing with this latest prorogation of parliament.

"This is no mistake by the Conservatives", they say, nodding authoritatively.

They go on to tell you that Harper wants an election and gave the Liberals something they can rally around. When the opposition forces an election, this issue will quickly lose it legs and the polls will revert back to their pre-prorogation levels. Then they tap their nose like Patrick McNee in 'The Avengers'.

Wow that's some pretty awesome 4-dimensional chess being attributed to Harper:

"In the dead of a quiet holiday week, I shall prorogue parliament. Knowing Canadians do care, I shall yet steadfastly maintain that they don't. The outrage generated shall be further stoked by coming up with not one, but many, often contradictory, explanations for this prorogation.

Then, the furor will only grow, and as it spreads through social media and sternly worded letters to the editor from academics and such, I shall send my deftest ministers forth to denounce the backlash as mere utterances from that evil cabal, "The Chattering Classes."

Then those effete liberals will rally 'round. And when they step into my honey-trap to force an election, my calculations indicate that the issues will lose their legs and the numbers will rise to pre-prorogation levels.

Bwaa-ha-ha-ha."

Seriously. That seems to be pretty much what's being suggested by the 'Chess Master' theoreticians.

Sorry. Occam's Razor.

The man made a gross miscalculation.

What A Load.

Well, the Prime Minister was on BNN yesterday. Over the course of the interview he managed to convey the impression that a) He indeed cannot walk and chew gum at the same time. b) The markets trump parliamentary democracy, c) Parliamentary democracy just gets in the way of the really, really important stuff.

Oh, and won't it be great when the trains run on time?

Even Dr. Frankenstein himself, Tom Flanagan, was aghast as he watched his creation run amok.

It's Party Time!

This is my favourite quote from a CPC MP on the current progation of Canadian Parliament:

""Democracy and Parliament are not being sidestepped — they are only being suspended."

Well, gosh, doesn't that make you feel better? Me neither.

But that's what St. Albert M.P. Brent Rathgeber said in response to queries from his local paper.

Whether this maneuver has any lasting effect on the electoral fortunes of the current minority government remains to be seen. But it does seem to have struck a chord (hit a nerve?) with a whole bunch of jes' folks out there. The Facebook Group 'Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament' swells daily by 10s of thousands of joiners. I'm not very Facebook-y, but this seems pretty impressive.

And 'The Economist', which is not exactly 'The Socialist Worker' has deigned to raise an eyebrow Canada's way. It, too, is less than impressed.

John Ibbitson of the Globe initially touted the fact that Parliament and Democracy were 'only being suspended' as a 'Travesty, yet clever'. Today, however, he seems in a less admirable frame of mind.

It would also seem that a good many Canadians are taking a dim view of these shenanigans, judging by a couple of polls regarding prorogation taken in the last week. Something the PollCos probably didn't ask, but should have is:

1) Do you think the Government takes you for a complacent fool?

2) If yes, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being somewhat and 10 being completely daft, how much of a fool do they take you for?

And,

3) Can you tell us what 'recalibrate' means. Seriously. Because we here at PollCo haven't the foggiest idea.

All of this is accompanied by the usual slew of Conservative talking points:

"Members can spend more time in their constituencies'. Gosh, I though they were elected to go to Ottawa to provide representation for those constituencies.

"Chretien did it!" Indeed, three or four times. But only when the legislative slate was clean. Not once did he prorogue to run and hide, er, 'recalibrate'.

And, my, favourites, the one-two sucker punch of 'It's a perfectly legal and normal part of parliamentary democracy' combined with 'The media is biased'.

These assertion might carry a little more heft if they weren't so awesomely hypocritical.

Isn't a coalition, for example, 'democratic and legal'. And, in that case, was not every possible negative angle poked, prodded and examined by the biased jackals in the fourth estate?

Doubtless, the coalition move was odious to many. But that was in part due to equally inflammatory headlines parroting the government line about 'coups' and 'assaults on democracy' and whatnot.

Either all the tools of a parliamentary democracy are open to all parties, or they're not. It's willfully inconsistent to defend one while sanctimoniously whinging about another.

This sets a very dangerous precedent wherein the Government can prorogue strategically when the slogging gets tough for them. Double-plus un-good.

Baird Naked Ladies

It's an horrid pun, I know. But it's an equally horrid move on the part of our currently and conveniently-prorogued government-in-absence.

I'm talking about rushing 44 full body scanners into the nation's major airports at 250k per. All without having to dilly-dally with that trivial pack of jackals called 'Parliament'. A massive, $11 Million intrusion into our trousers all because of The Adventures of Captain Underpants on Christmas Day.

This is overreaction in the extreme. Captain Underpants, aka Junior Jihadi, was obviously a singularly screwed up individual with apocalyptic delusions of grandeur. The fact that he even imagined that the materiel he was transporting wouldn't be compromised by his own foul taint-sweat over the course of a five-hour flight is itself laughable.

Yet, the 'Free World' now has its knickers in a knot. So we're collectively ready to wade through former head of U.S. Homeland Security - now lobbyist/security consultant - Michael Chertoff's clients' 'radio-wave' technology because it's supposed to make us all feel a little bit better? I wonder how 'pliant and servile' looks in one of those things.

This seems like a shoddy, ill-thought out, purely reactionary move by the gov't in absence, i.e., 'We need to be seen to be doing Something. Anything'.

Would that it were. In fact, it would be more reassuring if it were. Unfortunately, from what news reports suggest, it seems like this has been in the works for a while. Cap'n Underpants is a just a convenient entree to the New New Reality.

The brutal totalitarians in the East used to keep people cowered with fear of the all-pervasive state. Our Pols just use the fear of dusky-hued dweebs with powder in their gonch. In other words, whoever 'ran' Cap'n Underpants won.

It's pathetic. This culture has to (apologies for the gender bias, but it's just an expression) 'man-up'

Kinda like those pro-active folks who took out Underpants on that plane did.

...

Body scanners amount to little more than 'security theater'. Terrorists will always find a way around our futile gestures. Wanna beat the metal detector? Go to Staples and buy a few utility knives (had anyone heard the term 'box-cutter' prior to 9/11?) If they're on to those, move to shoes. Now that you have everyone taking their Crocs off prior to departure, move to something even more innocuous - Water.

And now, underwear bombs.

You're far more likely to perish in an aviation related disaster from mechanical causes. The odds of dying in a car crash are far, far, far greater than dying in a terrorist attack. Hey, with 75,000 people dying every year in North America from falls, maybe we can declare a War on Gravity.

It would be more effective than the absurdity that is airport security. And now that lines snake for miles around our terminals, one can just imagine determined terrorists hitting those, and foregoing the increasingly impossible burden of air travel altogether.

Who knows, maybe some intrepid legalist will mount a charter challenge to these Rube Goldberg devices. The case may go nowhere, but at least the government will have to explain why they made this little maneuver while Parliament was dark.

Until then, the government wants to look at your junk.

The Oz Decade, Pt. 2 - Money, Money , Money

In mid-2000, the share price of Enron hit $90. By November 2001, it was worth less than a buck. It was a castle built on something less than sand. Then, poof, it was gone. And the debacle it caused presaged the whole loopy, loony world of finance, markets and money in the 0z Decade.

WorldCom, the telecommunications monster frankensteined from MCI, LDDS, UUnet and others (including, almost, Sprint) went mams up in '03. A partial reason may have been that CEO Bernie Ebbers couldn't make the margin calls on his own company's stock. Fearful that he may have to dump stock and further drive down its price, his board loaned him a bridge. Whoops.

Read about either of these disasters and inevitably the same words, phrases and adjectives occur: 'hidden', 'masked', 'opacity', 'false picture of financial growth' to name but a few. Such expressions frame perfectly the world of finance, both low and high during the 0z Decade.

It was ten years of derivatives and dodgy debt, hedge funds and financial instruments, frothiness and full-fledged bubbles. It was peak oil, it was falling oil, it was record profits for oil amidst the $1.50 cost of a litre of gas.

And ultimately, it became about the NINJA. Not the shadowy, Japanese warrior/assassin caste so beloved by Tarantino, though the metaphor of a hooded, masked and unseen force is apt. Rather, it was 'No Income, No Job or Assets? No Problem?'. It was a perfectly crazy deal where someone with All Those Qualifications could get a mortgage Just For Them.

Then, that crappy debt was 'securitized' - whatever that has come to mean. Said 'securities' were then packaged and sent of into the world by both establishment banks and - wait for it - the shadow banking system.

All kinds of nifty new concepts - like ABCPs, SIVs CDOs or CDS appeared. And they all had cool initial-type names to make them seem more shadowy and spy-like which, one supposes, made them irresistible to investors, big and small: "Hey, I don't understand this shit! It must be good." The rating agencies gave the big thumbs up. The big pensions funds screamed, 'We want in'.

Sadly, anyone who dared peek behind the curtain saw it for what it was: A bunch of really smart math geeks creating computer models of theoretically never-ending profit. Their employers could only rub their hands with glee as the money tsunami-ed in. And any economist, journalist, academic who dared question or report what he or she saw was ridiculed and shouted down by the bullish bullies who continued to profit mightily from the house of cards they had created.

Of course, they shorted everything. Just in case.

And then, Bear Stearns - Bang!, Lehmans - Biff!, WaMu - Kerassh!, Northern Rock - Pow! Like villains taking a good whuppin' from Batman they all went down.

In 2009, the last year of the 0z decade, approximately 140 banks weren't 'too big to fail'.

So, if you're sitting here in the first days of the second decade of the new millenium, wondering where your pension, your retirement, your future went, the answer's somewhere in the twisted financial entrails of the ten years just passed.

Not very reassuring, to be certain. But, hey, it could have been way worse and weirder. At one point the Bush administration was pushing mightily to put one of America's most cherished entitlement programs - Social Security - into the very hands of the gong show performers who ultimately ruined the market. And McCain could have won and dredged up the ghost of Herbert Hoover, while Palin shook her pom-poms.

And it could get better. There's talk in the U.S. of re-instating the parts of the Glass-Steagall act whose repeal is widely blamed for kick-starting the mess we're in. This would return some much needed regulation - not to mention sanity - to the American financial industry. Plus, if you have investments they've likely risen to the tune of almost 40% over the last 18 months. If you got out and dove back in early enough, congratulations! You pretty much made a killing. But, then, you were probably never fooled by these shenanigans in the first place.

So, let's all hope, as we head out of 0z, we're in a 'V', or a 'U' at least. Anything but the dreaded 'W".