Excited Delirium

It’s a big day for Slippery Steve.

He’s dodged a bullet on responsibility for Omar Khadr.

He’s now stacked the Senate with fellow Cons.

Now, thank Jeebus, the Cons can get on with some serious work with the draconian crime bills that they’ve been trying to ram through the Senate.

Oh yeah.  They can’t.  They were all cancelled when the BS factory went into high gear and Slippery Steve put the locks on Canadian democracy and an inquiry into Afghan detainee issues.

What’s next?  Blowing up Parliament for Steve’s new castle?

This is getting ridiculous …

My suggestion:  the opposition MPs start earning their pay, get their damn act together (NOW!) and have legislation ready for March 3 that has two components:

1. Abolition of the Senate
2. Introduction of Porportional Representation

Never again, Canada.  Never again.

We’re into Day 3 now of no government in Canada, even though folks like Tony Clement are negotiating horrendously draconian pieces of legislation related to communications and ACTA, and I wanted to wonder about what we (namely the 200,000+ interested citizens that joined the no prorogue Facebook page) should do next.

A lot of ideas are jumping into my head like popcorn, but I have an immediate suggestion:  we use the CAPP No Prorogue Facebook Page to push users to a “Legal Defence Fund for Richard Colvin (and other public whistleblowers)” page.  Slippery Steve needs to face up to the law of the land, even if he thinks he can alter it under our noses.

Richard Colvin has been left out in the cold by his government, but his people should not neglect him.

From there, I suggest we start to really actively manage our own democracy and send all 308 MPs a strong message that we’ve had enough of this bullshit.  This has to be a non-partisan act of solidarity to get rid of the Conservative Party of Canada.  Forever.

As Canadians, we should be very aware and concerned about the implications of Harmid Karzai’s recent statement about the Taliban:

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/286259 (full story printed below).

As someone who’s been opposed to this war from the beginning, you don’t know how much a statement or suggestion like Karzai’s really throws me into a loop – and should throw every citizen of this planet into a loop as well.

As we all know, the ‘war on terror’ escalated to new levels after 9/11 following the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.  After spending what I can only describe ‘hundreds of billions of dollars’ (given the level of secrecy concerning actually spend levels) and hundreds of thousands of lives gone to waste, this kind of a statement makes me wonder at the futility of the entire exercise.

Back here in Canada, citizens are talked down to when asked how much the war in Afghanistan is costing Canadian taxpayers.  The guess-timate is again probably about $25 billion per year, or about $200 BILLION dollars wasted on this effort since 2001.  Again, I’m forced to guess because the Cons treat this money like it’s their own and have decided we don’t have a right to know what we’re REALLY wasting on this effort.

Now that Karzai wants to spend money on ‘employing’ Taliban soldiers, it throws this mess into an even deeper chasm of insanity because if that’s all they’re after, we should have either (a) done this in the first place or (b) understood that they’re ALL crooks and walked away from the table because as soon as you pay them once, they’ll be back again with either their palms open asking for more or fists clenched, wanting to exact revenge.

The best thing to do will be to remove ourselves from this NATO action and if the UN wants to be involved with this corrupt cesspool, we should offer services through the UN Peace Keeping Forces, UNICEF and other international bodies that are focused on setting things straight.

Original text of story:

Cui bono?

I was going to laugh but then realized that this article posted by Montreal Simon (Are the Cons an Apocalyptic Cult?) was pretty damn serious.  And right on the money.

Well done.  As a blogger, I don’t really aspire to be an investigative journalist, but if I want to use quality questioning as a model, Montreal Simon wins the award and I’ll do my best to emulate it.

Admittedly, a lot of the post refers to other articles, but that’s what we’re supposed to do in order to ‘make our case’, right?  I found the summary and consolidation of the thoughts from a number of sources boosted the credibility of the argument and lead me to the same conclusion:  once Canadians realize that Harper and the Cons are a bunch of theocrats, the future of the Cons will be doomed.

Who was David Kelly?  He’s the UN weapons inspector who questioned the legitimacy of the claims about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.  He questioned the machine.  The level of rage and indignation with the article (540 comments in total) tell the picture of a frustrated and annoyed populace.

David Kelly post mortem to be kept secret for 70 years as doctors accuse Lord Hutton of concealing vital information

Vital evidence which could solve the mystery of the death of Government weapons inspector Dr David Kelly will be kept under wraps for up to 70 years.

In a draconian – and highly unusual – order, Lord Hutton, the peer who chaired the controversial inquiry into the Dr Kelly scandal, has secretly barred the release of all medical records, including the results of the post mortem, and unpublished evidence.

The move, which will stoke fresh speculation about the true circumstances of Dr Kelly’s death, comes just days before Tony Blair appears before the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War.

It is also bound to revive claims of an establishment cover-up and fresh questions about the verdict that Dr Kelly killed himself.

Tonight, Dr Michael Powers QC, a doctor campaigning to overturn the Hutton findings, said: ‘What is it about David Kelly’s death which is so secret as to justify these reports being kept out of the public domain for 70 years?’

Campaigning Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker, who has also questioned the verdict that Dr Kelly committed suicide, said: ‘It is astonishing this is the first we’ve known about this decision by Lord Hutton and even more astonishing he should have seen fit to hide this material away.’

The body of former United Nations weapons inspector Dr Kelly was found in July 2003 in woods close to his Oxfordshire home, shortly after he was exposed as the source of a BBC news report questioning the Government’s claims that

Saddam Hussein had an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, which could be deployed within 45 minutes.

Lord Hutton’s 2004 report, commissioned by Mr Blair, concluded that Dr Kelly killed himself by cutting his wrist with a blunt gardening knife.

It was dismissed by many experts as a whitewash for clearing the Government of any culpability, despite evidence that it had leaked Dr Kelly’s name in an attempt to smear him.

Only now has it emerged that a year after his inquiry was completed, Lord Hutton took unprecedented action to ensure that the vital evidence remains a state secret for so long.

A letter, leaked to The Mail on Sunday, revealed that a 30-year ban was placed on ‘records provided [which were] not produced in evidence’. This is thought to refer to witness statements given to the inquiry which were not disclosed at the time.

In addition, it has now been established that Lord Hutton ordered all medical reports – including the post-mortem findings by pathologist Dr Nicholas Hunt and photographs of Dr Kelly’s body – to remain classified information for 70 years.

The normal rules on post-mortems allow close relatives and ‘properly interested persons’ to apply to see a copy of the report and to ‘inspect’ other documents.

Lord Hutton’s measure has overridden these rules, so the files will not be opened until all such people are likely to be dead.

Last night, the Ministry of Justice was unable to explain the legal basis for Lord Hutton’s order.

The restrictions came to light in a letter from the legal team of Oxfordshire County Council to a group of doctors who are challenging the Hutton verdict.

Last year, a group of doctors, including Dr Powers, compiled a medical dossier as part of their legal challenge to the Hutton verdict.

They argue that Hutton’s conclusion that Dr Kelly killed himself by severing the ulnar artery in his left wrist after taking an overdose of prescription painkillers is untenable because the artery is small and difficult to access, and severing it could not have caused death.

In their 12-page opinion, they concluded: ‘The bleeding from Dr Kelly’s ulnar artery is highly unlikely to have been so voluminous and rapid that it was the cause of death. We advise the instructing solicitors to obtain the autopsy reports so that the concerns of a group of properly interested medical specialists can be answered.’

Tonight, Dr Powers, a former assistant coroner, added: ‘Supposedly all evidence relevant to the cause of death has been heard in public at the time of Lord Hutton’s inquiry. If these secret reports support the suicide finding, what could they contain that could be so sensitive?’

The letter disclosing the 70-year restriction was written by Nick Graham, assistant head of legal and democratic services at Oxfordshire Council.

It states: ‘Lord Hutton made a request for the records provided to the inquiry, not produced in evidence, to be closed for 30 years, and that medical (including post-mortem) reports and photographs be closed for 70 years.’

Nicholas Gardiner, the Chief Coroner for Oxfordshire, confirmed that he had seen the letter.

Speaking to The Mail on Sunday today, he said: ‘I know that Lord Hutton made that recommendation. Someone told me at the time. Anybody concerned will be dead by then, and that is quite clearly Lord Hutton’s intention.’

Asked what was in the records that made it necessary for them to be embargoed, Mr Gardiner said: ‘They’re Lord Hutton’s records not mine. You’d have to ask him.’

He added that in his opinion Lord Hutton had embargoed the records to protect Dr Kelly’s children.

The inquest into Dr Kelly’s death was suspended before it could begin by the then Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer. He used the Coroners Act to designate the Hutton Inquiry as ‘fulfilling the function of an inquest’.

News that the records will be kept secret comes just days before Mr Blair gives evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry on Friday.

To date, Dr Kelly’s name has scarcely been mentioned at the inquiry. One source who held a private meeting with Sir John Chilcot before the proceedings began said that Sir John had admitted he ‘did not want to touch the Kelly issue’ .

A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice said: ‘Any decision made by Lord Hutton at the time of his inquiry was entirely a matter for him.’

A spokesman for Thames Valley Police said yesterday that it would not be possible to search their records during the weekend.

The Mail on Sunday was unable to contact Lord Hutton.

David Olive of the Toronto Star wrote this past Sunday about the Chicago School of Economics.

It’s about time the rest of the world is starting to wake up to the near-criminal reality that these people have thrust upon the population of the world.  Milton Friedman performed all kinds of horrible experiments on the people of Chile, with the support of a dictator, in order to try to prove his theories right.

Despite the massive failure, he continued to perpetuate his ideology through other institutions like the IMF and the World Bank, only to consistently expose that the Chicago School of Economics is a fraud and a failure.

And others are still joyfully following in his footsteps.

To quote:

Robert Lucas, one of the Chicago School’s many Nobel laureates, ascribes mass unemployment to workers refusing to accept low-paying jobs and preferring to remain out of work, making government job creating stimulus futile.

Never mind that Obama’s February stimulus had the US economy growing again by the summer.  (The pure Keynesianism was replicated in Beijing, Berlin and Ottawa (albeit reluctantly – my addition) and it’s working).

The plain fact is that millions of Canadians and Americans laid off from full-time employment have promptly taken part-time, low-paying jobs to keep bread on the table.

And those still in full-time employment have accepted pay and benefit cuts to retain their jobs.  Such a slur on the working class, coming from tenured Chicago professors suffering not a day of job insecurity, is a bit rich, to say the least.

David Olive’s article refers mainly to work done by one John Cassidy of the New Yorker magazine, who’s research and analysis are available here (unfortunately, the main content is not available in a readable, non-subscribed format).

What Olive fails to do (or Cassidy, for that matter) is refer to a substantial amount of work and research done by Canadian Naomi Klein.  She has created several works (Shock Doctrine, No Logo) that expose detail after detail of inhumane economic experimentation on unsuspecting and unwilling victims.  In fact, I would argue that Klein’s review of the Chicago School has exponentially more substance, given the depth and breadth of coverage.

The conclusion to be had from Klein’s work is this:  disaster capitalism is good for those in control.  It’s bad for those that are at the bottom of the rung.  A good example:  the US is now the greatest casualty of Friedman’s philosophies and it’s inevitable that the US will be brought down, either in terms of standard of living, exchange rates and inflation passed on to the rest of the world, or exceptionally onerous requirements to repay its insurmountable levels of debt.  All the while, corporate CEOs are collecting unprecedented levels of payout and bonuses, all subsidized by the general public.

Is this a fair trade?

Canadians should have much to fear because there are many ‘Friedmanists’ (including Harper and Flaherty) who are guaranteed to run around saying that the sky is falling because of how they’ve grossly mismanaged our economy and the federal budget.

This kind of disaster capitalism is the bastard of people that don’t know what they’re doing.  It’s like letting monkeys play with dynamite.  Sure, deregulate.  We’ll make oodles of cash and pass off the cost to a frenzied populace in the form of some spin about how the Liberals did it.  No one will be the wiser.

Well, we’re catching up to the crooks and once people find out how much they’ve been fleeced by Chicago School fanatics, they ain’t gonna be happy!

OMG!!  Hell HAS frozen over.

I’m watching this today and I’m stunned to hear Tom Flanagan, Stephen Harper’s mentor, is busy Harpooning his minion on Evan Solomon’s ‘Power Panel’.

In fact, I’m delighted to see that Stephen Harper’s bullshit factory is finally crashing and burning, with key personnel jumping ship, including Flanagan.  By describing the failure of democracy in Canada as ‘games’, and by being fixated on the economy and distracting Canadians from the criminal possibilities being posed by the Afghan detainee situation, Harper is finally the guy who blinked.

Joined by Tony Clement as describing Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament Facebook members as elitists (I’m glad to hear that I’m a member of the elite), we’ve definitely entered an age of ‘bizarro-world’ where the Cons are proving that every time they open their mouths they prove the adage that ‘better to remain silent than the open your mouth and remove all doubt’.  Yes, Tony Clement has proven that’s he’s incapable of holding office, along with his boss.

Meanwhile, Stooge Number 3 is busy announcing that he doesn’t care if Parliament’s out.  He’ll start slashing and burning anyways.

Talk about a massive SNAFU.

It’s time to throw them out!!

The only problem:  Iggy has already conceded and Layton is nowhere to be seen .

What the f**k is wrong with these people?

WHO Knew?

Research Credit:  Global Research.

The European Union Parliament will open an investigation into the influence of pharmaceutical companies on decision makers, particularly the World Health Organization (WHO).

Full translation from this source:

The Council of Europe member states will launch an inquiry in January 2010 on the influence of the pharmaceutical companies on the global swine flu campaign, focusing especially on extent of the pharma‘s industry’s influence on WHO. The Health Committee of the EU Parliament has unanimously passed a resolution calling for the inquiry. The step is a long-overdue move to public transparency of a “Golden Triangle” of drug corruption between WHO, the pharma industry and academic scientists that has permanently damaged the lives of millions and even caused death.

The parliament motion was introduced by Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, former SPD Member of the German Bundestag and now chairman of the Health Committee of PACE (Parliamentary Assembly of the Council  of Europe). Wodarg is a medical doctor and epidemiologist, a specialist in lung disease and environmental medicine, who considers the current “pandemic” Swine Flu campaign of the WHO to be “one of the greatest medicine scandals of the Century.”[1]

The text of the resolution just passed by a sufficient number in the Council of Europe Parliament says among other things, “In order to promote their patented drugs and vaccines against flu, pharmaceutical companies influenced scientists and official agencies, responsible for public health standards to alarm governments worldwide and make them squander tight health resources for inefficient vaccine strategies and needlessly expose millions of healthy people to the risk of an unknown amount of side-effects of insufficiently tested vaccines. The “bird-flu”-campaign (2005/06) combined with the “swine-flu”-campaign seem to have caused a great deal of damage not only to some vaccinated patients and to public health-budgets, but to the credibility and accountability of important international health-agencies.”[2]

The Parliamentary inquiry will look into the issue of „falsified pandemic“ that was declared by WHO in June 2009 on the advice of its group of academic experts, SAGE, many of whose members have been documented to have intense financial ties to the same pharmaceutical giants such as GlaxoSmithKline, Roche, Novartis, who benefit from the production of drugs and untested H1N1 vaccines. They will investigate the influence of the pharma industry in creation of a worldwide campaign against the so-called H5N1 “Avian Flu”  and H1N1 Swine Flu. The inquiry will be given “urgent” priority in the general assembly of the parliament.

In his official statement to the Committee, Wodarg criticized the influence of the pharma industry on scientists and officials of WHO, stating that it has led to the situation where “unnecessarily millions of healthy people are exposed to the risk of poorly tested vaccines,” and that, for a flu strain that is “vastly less harmful” than all previous flu epidemics.

Wodarg says the role of the WHO and its the pandemic emergency declaration in June needs to be the special focus of the European Parliamentary inquiry. For the first time, the WHO criteria for a pandemic was changed in April 2009 as the first Mexico cases were reported, to make not the actual risk of a disease but the number of cases of the disease basis to declare “Pandemic.” By classifying the swine flu as pandemic, nations were compelled to implement pandemic plans and also the purchase swine flu vaccines. Because WHO is not subject to any parliamentary control, Wodarg argues it is necessary for governments to insist on accountability. The inquiry will also to look at the role of the two critical agencies in Germany issuing guidelines on the pandemic, the Paul-Ehrlich and the Robert-Koch Institute.

It’s good to know that 80% of our ‘Canadian Economic Action Plan’ dollars are potentially going to the mob.

Here’s some background research:

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/742791–building-a-case-against-quebec-firms

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/711770–mob-linked-to-road-contracts

In 2010, my hope is that the Conservatives will have to face yet another inquiry, this one into the proportion of infrastructure spend that goes to the mob.

NOTE:  Thanks to some feedback, I was told that two of the links are no longer functioning.  I’m not about to speculate on what happened there, but here’s the story from the first link to the Toronto Star:

MONTREAL–Was this the start of a historic corruption scandal that is about to rock Canada – or was it simply a few isolated incidents that made headlines in 2009?

For much of the year Quebec was bombarded by allegations of scams, involving construction companies, politicians and the Mafia, to suck down taxpayer cash.

With Ottawa now showering billions on the biggest infrastructure spending spree in Canadian history, there’s potential the scandal might go federal in 2010.

Some whistleblowers came forward this year to say some Quebec construction companies have formed a cartel to set shockingly high prices for infrastructure projects.

Companies are supposedly threatened if they refuse to play along and, according to one groundbreaking investigative report, some of the profits are shared with the mob and political parties.

But others in the industry counter that the problem is being overblown – that it is the handiwork of a small but powerful group of contractors who break the rules, but that it’s not an industry-wide problem.

The chorus of demands for a public inquiry has been unrelenting since the barrage of allegations began. They read like something out of a Hollywood script, wild tales of intimidation, bid-rigging, inflated contracts and organized crime involvement.

The controversy has already exacted some political damage. Premier Jean Charest’s Liberals have seen their popularity drop, and their refusal to call an inquiry is seen as the only reason for a dip in their once-lofty poll numbers.

Since the federal government is contributing heavily to Quebec’s more than $40 billion in stimulus spending – and billions more in other provinces – Ottawa could be dragged into the scandal if investigators find irregularities with federally funded projects.

“We don’t know exactly what’s there, but what’s being discussed in the media is very troubling,” said Bertrand St-Arnaud, the Parti Québécois public security critic.

“A public inquiry will get to the bottom of all this and we feel that we have the support of the population, too.”

A recent poll suggested nearly 80 per cent of Quebecers favoured some sort of public inquiry. But the Liberals have held off.

Instead, they spent nearly $27 million on “Operation Hammer,” an anti-corruption task force mandated to investigate and clean up the construction industry.

But one construction executive is among the many proponents who say an inquiry is the only way to go.

Paul Sauvé, president of Montreal masonry company LM Sauvé, says he’s experienced the wild tales first-hand. He came forward this year to tell his story of how the Hells Angels managed to finagle their way into his family business during a time when he needed quick capital to finish a major project. They proceeded to try taking over his company and Sauvé became the victim of an alleged extortion attempt. After a series of threats, he went to the police.

“I had taken some serious hits – cars rammed, trucks burning, being told there wouldn’t be a trial because there wouldn’t be a body,” Sauvé said. “But the day the threats came against my 10-year-old daughter I said, `That’s enough’”

On Radio-Canada’s investigative news program Enquete, Sauvé described a group of contractors others have dubbed “The Fabulous 14.”

The group controls most of the bids in Montreal and, allegedly, its 14-odd member companies take turns “winning” bids in a conspiracy to keep rates high. Nobody else dares to submit a lower bid.

As a result of that scam road construction costs are nearly 35 per cent higher in Quebec than anywhere else in Canada, reported Radio-Canada. In that same report, a former provincial transport department engineer described how firms spoke in a special code in phone conversations to avoid being caught. They would use golf terms to discuss whose turn it was to win a public-tendering contract, and set the minimum price for that company’s winning bid.

Such talk of tees and foursomes was supposedly designed to make sure police never caught on to their plan – which, allegedly, was to make sure no company ever wound up underbidding them.

“It’s Vietnam and it’s right here in this city,” Sauvé said.

Months after Sauvé’s claims, Quebec provincial police announced they’d arrested people over an alleged Hells Angels attempt to bully its way into the bricklaying business and use the province’s masonry industry for money-laundering.

The ring – which allegedly included a real-estate agent, accountants and a union representative – was headed by the reputed boss of the Hells Angels’ Trois-Rivières chapter, Marvin (Casper) Ouimet, who remains on the lam.

Ouimet was the same man Sauvé entered into business with.

The other day, someone I know was being told about the Tax Free Savings Accounts (an invention of the Conservatives) and they finally said “Why would someone ever vote Liberal with that kind of program in place?”

I didn’t really find myself asking the same question because I abhor Conservative politics (and they don’t really have policies, per se), but I did start thinking about how the Conservatives play the game and tried to put myself into the shoes of ‘the average voter’.

The epiphany came to me.  They don’t win on policy.  They win on what I now call pocket-book politics.

What exactly are ‘pocket-book politics’?

For starters, they capture the hearts of Canadians not by pushing an agenda based on hope or change or grand visions of the future.  No, these politics are based on a much simpler notion:  greed.

Pocket-book politics occurs when you vote for the Cons because you think you’re getting 2 cents savings on the GST, a tax brought on by the Mulroney Conservatives because they actually understood economics and weren’t as concerned about the political expediency of bringing in a consumption tax.

A 2 cent tax cut that has already cost our government at least $60 billion in lost revenues and counting.

Greedy voters decide that a 2 cent tax cut means something to them, so they vote for Conservatives.  However, they fail to see a difference when they buy their Timmies or their newspaper.  That’s because the greed has been transferred to the corporations that run this country.

Pocket-book politics is when you vote for the Cons because you can put money into the Tax-Free Savings Account, something that very Canadians can actually do because they either have a mortgage, can barely pay rent, might want to contribute to an RRSP or an RESP, or simply want to pay off some credit card debt.

Greedy people would want to find ways to minimize every single penny that they pay to the coffers of the government, all the while enjoying one of the best (but declining) health care systems in the world.  Greedy people look at the parts, but fail to appreciate the whole.

Pocket-book politics is when you vote for the Cons because you think $100 per month for your child will make a difference when it comes to proper day care and early education.  Greedy people simply keep breeding, not accepting the fact that every new mouth and consumer that we bring to the planet is destroying it at the same time.  Greedy people don’t even let their wives vote because ‘they belong in the kitchen’.

Pocket-book politics is systemic failure.  Ayn Rand wrote about self-interest (greed) as being the only valuable principle that everyone should have, and since the beginning of the 20th century, people on the Right have mimicked her ideology and converted it to Conservatism.

‘Me first, I don’t care about you’.

However, Ayn Rand and other Conservative intellectuals fail to account for three basic notions:  net present value, externalities and what I call the ‘Newtonian Physics of Politics’.  One could argue that they’re all related, but here are my thoughts on the specifics:

1. Net present value simply tells us that the cost of our actions vastly exceed the value obtained.  Our consumer-driven madness is going to destroy us.  Soon.  This is the long-tail of real-cost or true value pricing.
2. ‘Externalities’ are a concept used by economists and Conservatives to brush off the true current cost of doing business.  If we used ‘true cost pricing’ to account for the real cost of what we do, gas would be $5 per liter, using the train would be free and most consumer goods wouldn’t exist.  This is the short-tail of real-cost pricing.
3. The Newtonian Physics of Politics is this:  for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.  When we kill social funding, we put people on the street.  We depreciate the value of life itself and we indirectly invite them to bring their victimization to us, whether we like it or not.  Crime rises, thefts increase and the cost of keeping this world at bay becomes one of a security environment instead of a caring society.

In 2008, Barack Obama pulled the hearts and minds of American voters away from pocket-book politics and offered something much more ethereal:  change & hope.  Since then, we’ve again learned the adage ‘meet the new boss, same as the old boss’ rarely goes off course.

So despite what I’ve said, I have my doubts that all Canadians think in terms of real-cost pricing, ‘the bigger picture’ or what will happen to this planet when each of us dies.  If we all did, none of us would vote Conservative.

And despite the negative things that I’ve said about appealing to greed as a corner-stone of most Canadian voting decisions, it’s an unfortunate reality.

With that in mind, Canadian politicians in the progressive camps (although one should wonder if the Liberals are liberal any more after supporting the Cons for so long?) would be wise to develop a few simple tactics and pocket-book policies that affect all Canadians in a positive way.

Stephen Harper got massive press out of the GST cuts and I believe this was how he got elected two times running.  This simple measure gained his party enormous currency.

It should be easy for us (readers with Progressive Bloggers, others that like my blog) to come up with one or two ‘bullet proof’ concepts that can be put into action by either the Liberals or NDP to pull greedy voters away from the Conservatives.

Suggestions:

• No tax on interest income.  This is a little different from the TSFAs because it has a more basic sound bite and will appeal to all Boomer voters that are entering their retirement years and will have a disproportionate amount of their savings in interest-bearing certificates.
• Deductible credit card interest to a maximum of $1000 per year per taxpayer (conditions would apply.  Example:  only available for people that make less than $25,000 per year).  While this is not a personal favourite (I prefer tools that discourage consumption), millions would vote for it.
• Deductibility of public transit.  My favourite.
• You will be paid to vote.  And you will be penalized when you don’t vote.  The intent is simple, based on a break-even promise and encourages all of those fatalists who sit on the sidelines to get their act together and vote out the Cons.

Another word of advice:  keep counter-measures in your back pocket, but be ready for a very basic response that can go unchallenged.  Cons will always push you for ways to pay for these kinds of promises (something the Liberals and NDP failed miserably at in the last elections when the Cons were making similar promises).