Political parties putting on the hard sell

Is it just me, or do politicians seem like televangelists these days?

I'm starting to regret subscribing to the websites of various parties. Everyday my Inbox has more appeals for donations.

Auto donation

Chretien had the perfect idea: automatic donations. This meant $2 of your yearly taxes would go to the political party you voted for — not a tax burden by any stretch of the imagination.

But currently taxpayers are forced to subsidize other people's political donations to the tune of 75%. That means for every dollar the Cons spend on disgusting, slanderous attack ads, Canadians are forking over three.

Harper

Is it any surprise Harper killed the auto-donation, absurdly claiming the $2 donation was an abuse of taxpayer dollars? Yet he thinks the 75% subsidy — which forces you to fund someone else's choice — is perfectly fine.

A more democratic solution would be to kill the 75% subsidy and double the auto-donation.

We could also upgrade our voting system — like 91% of developed countries — to prevent corrupt politicians from gerrymandering the donation system.

Harper to balance books on the backs of provinces

The Harper Government was pleased with a recent report from the PBO stating long term federal finances were “sustainable” with “substantial fiscal room.”

But Harper didn't seem to mind that the report also said this long-term fiscal health was to be achieved by “downloading billions of dollars of health-care costs on the provinces”:

“The federal fiscal structure has been transformed … to sustainable — with substantial fiscal room — largely through spending restraint and reform of the Canada Health Transfer Escalator. However, the federal fiscal room created by the change in the CHT escalator has transferred the fiscal burden to provinces and territories.”

Creative Accounting

Harper is using an accounting trick to bleed the provinces dry, incrementally.

He is tying the growth of healthcare transfers to nominal GDP growth which is projected to be lower than the expected 4.9% annual growth of health care costs.

According to the National Post, this will “gut nearly $36 billion in funding to the provinces over the 10-year deal and will erode public health services to all Canadians.“

Even right-wing pundits like Andrew Coyne and Kelly McParland say the provinces are getting a raw deal.

Conclusion

In order to stop this corrupt neo-con “starve the beast” agenda, we must implement voting reform when opposition parties oust Harper in 2015.

The fact is three-way center-left vote splitting weakens opposition parties allowing the Cons to win most elections, even though the vast majority is opposed to them.

Justin Trudeau's simple reform of ranked ballot voting will ensure that Canadians — not neo-cons — determine our country's future.

Climate science denial reloaded

Break out the Champaign and gas-guzzling SUVs ’cause global warming is officially over! Now we can now burn up all the dirty tarsands oil we want and frack to our hearts’ content.

An apparent lull in rising temperatures over the past decade proves there is no global warming!

Well that, at least, is the narrative spun by con cranks like Margaret Wente of the Globe and Mail and Lawrence Solomon of the National Post.

But the science tells a different story.

Can’t bank on short term trends

Climate science deniers employ an agenda-driven interpretation of the data. Skeptical Science shows how they use short time frames to distort reality:

Above, time frames are cherry picked to support the absurd premise that temperatures are flat and global warming has stopped.

But an honest interpretation of the data shows a troubling long-term warming trend:

What happens if an actual cooling period comes?

The Earth has a very complex climate. It’s possible a real cooling period could come our way. In fact, that’s exactly what happened from about 1945 to 1975. Then temperatures were on a slight downward trend:

But by 1990, global warming sprang back with a vengeance. It was as if the cooling period never happened:

Over the past 20 years, global warming has actually sped up.

So clearly a lull in warming is, by no means, an indication the phenomenon has — by some unexplainable process — come to a stop.

Conclusion

According to the science, the planet is warming due to a continuous rise of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, which are higher now than they’ve been in millions of years.

We mustn’t allow ourselves to be fooled by neo-cons with a corrupt anti-regulation economic agenda. Their misanthropic philosophy of unfettered greed and self-interest will be the downfall of civilization if we allow it.

Germany shows proportional representation not perfect

One of the main selling points of PR is the idea that a party must get 50% of the vote to get majority power. This number is about 39% under FPP; around 44% under PV ranked ballot.

Sunday's election in Germany shows that even with PR, a minority party can wind up with all the power. Angela Merkel's CDU/CSU party garnered 49.5% of the power on 42% of the vote. If she had got 43%, she would've won an “absolute majority.”

How?

Germany uses Mixed-Member Proportional voting. People vote for a candidate and for a party. Seats are awarded to winning candidates; party-list seats top up a party's total seats so they are the same percent as the vote.

Merkel almost won an “absolute majority” on 42% of the vote. Not exactly proportional…

But there's a catch. A party must get 5% of the vote before getting party-list seats.

Minor parties that didn't make the 5% cut on Sunday totaled 9.8% of the vote. These seats were distributed among parties that did make the threshold.

Is a 5% threshold a good idea?

Definitely. During the 2007 MMP referendum in Ontario, PR opponents zeroed in on the low 3% threshold. They claimed it would fill the legislature with dangerous fringe parties.

So MMP supporters must push a 5% threshold to limit the amount of fear mongering plutocrats will throw at them. (Worry about lowering it later.)

PV majority threshold

If we had PV ranked ballot in 2011, Harper would've got only 46% of the seats on 40% of the vote (instead of 54%.) That's a 15% gain from proportional (instead of 35%.) One can use this number to extrapolate the percentage of the vote needed to get a majority — 155 of 308 seats, or 50.32%. The PV majority threshold is about 44% — or 5 points higher than FPP.

Conclusion

Since both PV and PR stop vote splitting, this will result in the formation of more parties that better represent voters. Not only that, elections will tend to produce multi-party majority governments, putting a stop to single-party dictatorships. That, in turn, will foster open, transparent and accountable government which represents an actual majority of voters.

Democracy Week flop

Today officially marks the end of “Democracy Week.” If you missed it, don’t feel bad. The commemoration received virtually no coverage in the corporate media.

Our Chief Electoral Officer marked “Democracy Day,” however, with a column saying we need to get young people more involved.

Of course, he ignored the elephant in the room: our primitive voting system that doles out unfettered power to minority parties shutting the vast majority out of government. (The literal opposite of democracy.)

I guess it’s not his place to point out the voting system he oversees is a painfully obvious farce.

This is NOT the launch of Fair Vote’s “Make Every Vote Count” campaign…

Fair Vote flop

In the same vain, Fair Vote Canada launched it’s Make Every Vote Count campaign on Parliament Hill. It was also ignored by the press. Perhaps they should’ve inflated a giant Mike Duffy balloon to grab more attention.

They could, of course, reach out to a much wider audience by promoting ranked ballot voting reform along with proportional representation. You know, let Canadians decide which kind of voting reform is best?

But why put the democracy in democratic reform when you can participate in a farce?

If we had ranked ballot in 2011, Harper would be gone

Many Canadians are unaware of how ridiculous our voting system is. We award seats to minority candidates and unfettered power to minority parties. This often saddles voters with the opposite of what they voted for.

The 2011 federal election is a prime example. Sixty percent of voters were dead set against Harper getting absolute corrupt power — the vast majority. But he got it in any case.

Is it really a surprise 91% of developed countries have upgraded their voting systems?

Liberal solution

Justin Trudeau offers Canadians a simple but effective solution which will stop the absurd winner-take-all results: PV ranked ballot.

This fixes our existing system by making MPs earn their seats with a majority. Voters rank candidates, instead of selecting one. This gives voters alternative choices and allows for Anyone But Conservative voting.

2011 election

Compare the election results under FPP and PV ranked ballot (according to the Globe and Mail):

2011 Federal election

Party	Vote	FPP	FPP	PV	PV
(Majority: 155 seats of 308)
CPC	40%	166	54%	142	46%
NDP	31%	103	33%	118	38%
LPC	19%	34	11%	46	15%
BQ	6%	4	1.3%	1	0.3%
GPC	4%	1	0.3%	1	0.3%

Under FPP, vote splitting allowed Harper to win dozens of center-left seats. With 40% of the vote, he won 54% of the seats and 100% of the power — all of which ended up in his hands.

Under PV, an NDP/Liberal government would've formed with 50% of the vote and 53% of the seats. Neither party or party leader would have absolute corrupt power. In fact, multi-party majority governments are the norm in the rest of the developed world.

Conclusion

It is imperative that we get PV legislated when Harper is replaced in 2015. Although PR may be ideal, it's too big of a change to accomplish in one fell swoop (as 4 failed provincial referendums can attest to.)

Let's put out the fire first. Then worry about interior decorating.

Action Plans ads just as corrupt as you thought

Harper has spent over $100M of taxpayers' money on “Economic Action Plan” advertising. These ubiquitous ads promote scaled-back spending, non-existing programs and a stimulus package that ended 3 years ago. They also assure Canadians the Government of Canada Harper Government is making the economy a top priority.

Many believe Harper has been freeloading campaign advertising all along. A recent $30,000 internal poll — on the effectiveness of Action Plan ads — confirms this is the actual agenda:

The Harris-Decima survey found 38 per cent were happy with the Conservative government’s performance, the lowest level among the 10 such polls conducted since April 2009, when the first wave of action plan ads was released.

Big Jim is serious about the economy (either that or he needs more bran in his diet…) Unfortunately, managing the economy requires more than image consultants and confidence schemes.

Clearly there’s no reason to poll the government’s perceived economic performance in a survey measuring the efficacy of a public service announcement. That is, unless the real purpose of the ads is to promote the Cons as good economic managers.

Harper pal chimes in

Gerry Nicholls, former vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition (while Harper was president,) does not mince words:

I don’t think the Conservatives are losing sleep that no one is visiting the website. I think the message behind the Economic Action Plan was primarily political, that is, to show Canadians that the government is doing a good job with the economy. [They are supposed] to work at a more subconscious level: Conservatives-economy-good.

Voting reform perspective

The source of this corruption is really our primitive voting system, FPP, which doles out 4-year dictatorships to minority parties. When the Cons won a “majority” on 40% of the vote in 2011, Harper ended up with 100% of the power.

This kind of nonsense does not happen in the rest of the developed world. There, multi-party majority governments are the norm. No single party — or leader — winds up with absolute corrupt power.