Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Politics: Canada: Quebec shaken by Mario's ADQ gains

Quebec's electorate kicked out the provincial Liberal Party leader; he retained his pants but he lost his seat in the National Assembly (as Quebec's provincial parliament calls itself, eschewing the French-originated word "parliament" but hot instead for the semiotically- and emotionally-laden French term "national"). Not only did Lib leader Jean Charest get tossed in his own riding, his party floundered along with him. Quebec's Libs remain the party with the most votes and will form the new government (a minority govt, of course), having lost 24 seats out of 125 total, descending from 72 to only 48 seats. There are many holes in the pants of the prov Lib body politics in la belle province.

Where did these votes go? Largely, they flocked to the shepherd of a unique r+twing party, Action democratique de Quebec (ADQ), led by Mario Dumont who, in this his third campaign saw the party he founded rise from only 5 seats now to 41. That's a 36-seat gain. "Officially, Jean Charest is still premier. But starting today, the real boss is Mario Dumont," wrote columnist Vincent Marissal in the La Presse daily (via Reuters Canada), saying the ADQ's inexperienced team of legislators would have time to learn the ropes before the next election. Minority governments in Canada usually last about 18 months."

In this sudden and breath-taking rise, Mario (as he's called--only two other Quebec political leaders were referred to by their first names, Rene (Levesque) and Lucien (Bouchard), both of them separatists. Mario on the other hand, is no separatist, but neverthrless a strong "autonomist" both for Quebec firmly within Canada, and for the regions within Quebec, as in town-and-country areas citizens don't want to be ruled by the political elite that has held Quebec City, nor by the cultural elite that rules the flow of ideas in the French-language, from Montreal.

Reuters Canada reports on Dumont's achievement, short-changing it by calling it a mere "protest vote," but actually it is a basic reorientation of Quebec and particularly its francophone voters across the province.

Dumont and the ADQ tapped into growing public dissatisfaction with old-style politics, which for the last 30 years has seen power [merely] switch from the centrist Liberals to the left-leaning separatist Parti Quebecois (PQ), and back.

"Faced with two parties, each as crippled as the other, he will be the master," wrote Michel David in the daily Le Devoir.

Dumont has promised to cut taxes, reduce the province's C$122 billion in debt and trim government bureaucracy.

Liberal legislators who had won their seats by several thousand votes in the 2003 election were brushed aside by the ADQ, which came very close to taking power.
The PQ, the separatist provincial party, also lost votes to Dumont. It's results were saw its number of seats drastically trimmed, dropping the PQ to "third place with only 36 seats (previously 46) and just 28 percent of the vote ... its worst showing since 1973." The PQ defeat was engineered by its leader Andre Boisclair. A homo, he tried to make this a political asset, flaunting rather than proving himself fastidiously circumspect in all other regards. Many homos took their votes elsewhere, humiliated by Boisclair's antics. Among those were the revelation that while a Minister of a previous PQ govt, Boisclair had indulged in cocaining. His ultra-avantgarde in the PQ imposed a glam boy on the hapless broader stretches of separatists loyalists; these people took just about as much as they could bear. Both the PQ's Boisclar and the Lib's Charest should resign.

Monday, March 26, 2007

Economics: USA: Bernanke-led Fed Reserve signal 'clear as mud,' says MarketWatch

Weekly Roundup of MarketWatch's email newsletter (Mar23,2k7) underscores a semantic battle that has broken out among close monitors of Federal Reserve statements, especially now that the dean of previous FR chairmen, Alan Greenspan is officially out of the picture, and statements come from a board thru FR's present chairman Ben S. Bernanke, Federal Open Market Committee. Says MarketWatch's weekend roundup,

As expected, the Federal Reserve left official U.S. interest rates unchanged at the end of its policy-setting meeting Wednesday. While the Fed left rates alone, it tweaked the statement released with its decision [,] to suggest to some that it was giving up on future rate hikes. That interpretation drove stocks to big gains shortly after the statement was issued. By Thursday, the enthusiasm had cooled, as analysts and investors reassessed what the central bank had meant to say.
Note MR's own misleading phraseology: "released with its decision to suggest to some." Lacking commas, the sentence itself, written by some careless journalist suggests the FR statement intended its thawt to be interpreted one way by some, another way by others. Duplicity is thus inadvertantly, I presume, attributed to the FR/FOMC statement. Sloppy is closer to the truth in regard to the journalist's write-up. The Fed didn't "suggest to some." Rather, some wanted somethng more (or less) than FOMC had in its collective mind. The analysts resisted nuance, they wanted clear marching-orders type of clarity now. The Fed didn't choose to give them any. It didn't tell them whether to buy or sell, but to take a nuanced look at a changing, even sometimes volatile, economic situation.

What is the semantic quarrel now going-on among stock-market analysts and political economists? Economic Times (India) "Bernanke's policy befuddles Wall St economists" (Mar27,2k7) perhaps sums it up best:
NEW YORK: Wall Street is finding that Federal Reserve chairman Ben S Bernanke’s effort to be transparent doesn’t translate into clarity [but, again, of a certain sort-P].

Treasuries rallied on March 21 after the Fed in its latest policy statement deleted language perceived as biased toward higher interest rates. The gains proved fleeting the following day when no consensus view emerged and, instead, Wall Street’s biggest securities firms disagreed over whether the Fed will lower rates as Merrill Lynch predicted, or raise them as Bear Stearns warned its customers.
Another key analysis came earlier last week from Capitol Reports by MR's Rex Nutting, "Did the Fed change anything?--Analysis: Did Bernanke move to neutral, or just flub his communications?" (Mar21,2k7)
U.S. stock markets rallied late Wednesday after the Federal Open Market Committee released its policy statement, with [some] strategists pointing to a change in one sentence in the statement as a signal that the Fed is no longer predisposed to raising rates.
But the rally didn't hold steady over the next several days. In the meantime, another interpretation of the Bernanke / FR / FOMC gathered more strength.
And it's only a slight leap of the imagination to go from a Fed that's completely neutral about where rates are likely to go next to a Fed that's aggressively cutting rates. Nothing would please investors more than lower rates.

But did the Fed actually signal a change in its policy? Is the Fed now neutral about where interest rates are going? Opinions are "mixed," as the Fed likes to say.

Some analysts said that, in response to the weakening of the economy and specifically to the meltdown in the subprime mortgage market, the Fed had effectively removed its "bias" toward tightening monetary policy. The Fed intended to send a signal that help is on the way, and the markets rallied.
Nutting goes on to supply the obvious correction to the over-optimistic and total-neutrality interpretations, quoting Neal Soss, chief U.S. economist for Credit Suisse, then he shifts over to end-up blaming the Bernanke team for "bad communication."
"It's not a totally neutral posture," Soss continued, "It's 'bias lite' [in favour of acting foremost against inflation]."

But others say the committee flubbed its communication. In this view, FOMC is still fixated on inflation as the main risk, even as it acknowledged that risks of a severe slowdown are growing. Some members of the committee had argued in the past for a more neutral statement, one that mentioned the possibility of rate cuts as well as rate hikes, so this could just be a bone thrown to a small minority on the committee. If that's so, then the Fed got too cute in its wording, and markets misinterpreted the changes as a sign of a significant switch in policy.

"The new statement certainly marks a baby step toward the easing that so many market participants expect later this year, but we would view it as a modest concession to doves that is unlikely to mean much going forward," wrote Stephen Stanley, chief economist for RBS Greenwich Capital.
It seems to me that Bernanke and FOMC said exactly what they meant and that the analysts on both sides of the semantic quarrel are projecting onto the statement what they would like or would not like to hear.

In short, the immediately foremost problem continues to be inflation, but not such that it requires a raise in interest rates at the moment; rather, the economy is slowing down every so slowly, to the extent that raising rates would contribute to the slowly-already-occurring slowdown. To head-off that eventuality, it may be necessary soon enuff to lower interest rates and allow easier loaning. It was the cheap, easy, and unwarranted loans on mortgages by lenders all too ready to foreclose on hapless home-owners not able to meet their obligations, that made the US markets vulnerable to the Shanghai Flu. But that's another story.

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Juridics: USA: Reorientation of Supreme Court on racial ratios in schools

USA Today has published an opinion piece by Laura Vanderkam, "Message to high court: 'Get out'" (Mar20,2k7). Vanderkam brings together some descriptive accounts of American school systems that have built up traditions of complying with past Supreme Court decisions, thus opening the way for racial ratios to govern the composition of the student bodies of its schools (and likewise presumably the teaching staffs). The quota-compliance traditions are held in place by democratic votes, most notably in the key instance of the Louisville, Kentucky area's public schools. There, school boards are regularly elected over the years, which support maintaining the 15%-50% quota for black students in every school in the system, so that racial integration is engineered for all schools under that board's jurisdiction (and, incidentally, there are, as a result, no longer any all-black student bodies in Louisville).

Vanderkam claims it works. It works in part because of a broader but more distinctly educational-philosophical position of the school system that structures the studernt learning process around a division-of-labour arrangement among the several schools. Each school offers a different set of course and curriculum options, making each distinct on a basis other than neiborhood location or the specific racial demographic configuration of that neibourhood. The whole arrangement is built around the concept of "magnet schools." Thus, each school has a reason for bringing into its student body (on the basis of each student's chosen interests) numerous students not from its immediate neibourhood, yet of course all from within the one system loaded with distinctive magnet schools.

But this more recently has created an apparent reorientation among jurists, and apparently also among the Justices of the Supreme Court of the USA (SCOTUS, as the court is nicknamed). "Judicial restraint has been a guiding conservative principle. ‘Activist judges,’ after all, are rooted in the liberal camp. But an upcoming Supreme Court decision on school desegregation might turn conservative jurisprudence on its head." Vanderkam suggests the possiblity that "conservative jurisprudence" may become activist in order to counter the democratic tradition of imposing the 15%-50% black student ratio in all schools (of course, I'm citing the Louisville case as a kind of model here; a related case from the Seattle, Wasington schools will have other particulars regarding ratios). That means, of course, no school can be all black; nor any all white (leaving aside for this discussion the very probable presence in the system and its schools of students of yet other races -- Asian, American Indian ...).

Bussing of students simply to achieve "racial balance," including the determination of quotas and ratios, has always had its problems. And continues to do so. Not least of all because it makes all-black schools illegal, as well as all-white schools. But Louisville has obviated the severity of the race-balancing bussing problem in that a superiour and more strictly curricular educational motive has become the priority for the assignment of students to schools outside their immediate neighbourhoods. This means there's a clearly educational motive related to each student's choice of learning goals (the magnet-school concept), and not just the single educational objective of teaching-by-doing inter-racial socialization. The latter easily becomes contestable conceptually because many people (of both the races focussed upon here) disown the value of socialiZation (specifically inter-racial socialization) as a valid objective of schooling as such, especially when prescribed by government schools--tho independent schools necessarily would be free to determine the educational value of inter-racial socialization, or for that matter of inter-gender socialization). Outr+t segregationism would remain illegal in regard to races, but not in regard to genders.

My view is that because Louisville has an explicitly educational motive thru its magnet-schools concept, the racial ratios, democratically continued by the school board's electorate from vote to vote over the years, become far less problematic in constitutional terms (even for a conservative jurisprudence of judicial restraint). The Louisville schools make it possible for black students to opt for their own choice/s among the wide range of curricula available in the school-system as a whole, thus helping to fulfill the chief objective of a school system predicated upon the obviously educational value of curricular diversity, choice, widened horizons--all thru magnet schools.

However, this may not be the case in regard to the Seattle school system. Whether or not "race-mixing" or "inter-racial balancing" or racial quotas/ratios or bussing for the purpose of inter-racial socialization obtains in both Seattle and Louisville, I think SCOTUS should be free, on the prime juridical principle of sphere sovereignty, to approve the Louisville Educational Philosophy (in regard to the points at issue), while at the same time possibly outlawing whatever prevails under the Seattle arrangement (I'm speaking only hypothetically here, assuming that Seattle's schools are not sufficiently organized around the magnet concept with all the implications for diversity of curricula from school to school that flows from it).

Were Seattle relying solely on inter-racial socialization as an educational objective sufficient in itself to justify bussing from neibourhood to neighborhood on the basis of racial quotas/ratios, then that conceivably non-educational motive or, let us say, that policy questionable in regard to its educationality as a prime task of schools, would suffer by comparison with the Louisville Educational Philosophy. Moreover, my hypothetical Seattle approach would certainly be unconstitutional in making an all-black school illegal under the Seattle boar (it would fail also in making an all-white school illegal). Of course, I am not arguing for schools that disqualify the admission of any student based on her or his race. Location of residence may, however, be a legitmate reason for non-admission to a given school, and result in a defacto all black or white or Asian or Native American school--or nearly so, in each case.

A sensitivity to the juridical principle of sphere sovereignty would enable a SCOTUS Justice or an Appeals Court Judge to distinguish among factors like a location-rule and a racial-quota rule, on the one hand, and an explicitly and hardcore educational-philosophical concept like a diverse-curricula objective such as that of a concept of a citywide sytem of magnet schools. At the same time, if a school system does not develop a prevailing magnet system, then the role of location-rules become more apropos, and the role of racial quotas/ratios become less apropos. One thing further, I don't see why in a magnet-school system there could not be room for a school specailly structured in its curriclum to feature black studies, Africa studies, African languages, and to celebrate Black cultural holidays, if the interest is present for such a specialized magnet school within the city's population. Rural school systems may have a smaller capacity in achieving a wide diversity of magnet schools reachable by students day by day.





LOUISVILLE — Here in Jefferson County, Ky., thousands of students recently learned which magnet schools they'll attend next year. With different schools offering everything from Chinese to pre-dentistry, the application process always gets kids excited.


Some of Jefferson County's schools take mostly neighborhood kids. Some look at grades. Some also look at the student's race — a fact that could have ramifications far beyond Louisville. After a long history of court-ordered desegregation, the elected school board has decided, voluntarily, that most schools' enrollments should be 15%-50% black.

Most students get their first choice. Some don't. A few years ago, a mom named Crystal Meredith wanted to transfer her son to a different school. Because this would have left his first school with too few white students, the district denied the request. After much back and forth, Meredith's son wound up in his desired school. The problem seemed to go away. Nevertheless, Meredith has sued the schools for considering race at all, and last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear the case (bundled with a Seattle one). A ruling is expected this spring, leaving a question mark over this year's enrollment process.

Shifting principles?

After oral arguments, many observers believe that the court's new conservative majority is poised to overturn Louisville's solution to the tough issues of race and education. That wouldn't be a victory for democracy or local control — things that judges favoring "judicial restraint" cherish. Though conservatives have fought for years to fill the Supreme Court with restrained judges, the Meredith case could undermine the philosophy in one blow.

Like many cities, Louisville greeted Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court ruling that declared segregation unconstitutional, with fear. Unlike many cities, though, Louisville tried to comply.

Superintendent Omer Carmichael had been drawing up plans and by fall 1956, 55 of the city's 75 schools had mixed student bodies. This happened peacefully, which led Carmichael to write a book, The Louisville Story, about this "triumph — of man's ability to solve some of his most vexing problems with reason and goodwill."

The problem, however, did not stay solved. A generous transfer policy and segregated neighborhoods meant that by 1957, only 5,630 of Louisville's 12,010 black students attended schools with any white children. White flight to the county schools increased tensions.

In 1975, Kentucky ordered the merger of the Louisville schools with Jefferson County's schools, and a judge ordered a desegregation plan. Students would be bussed based on the first letters of their last names.

It was a harsh solution, and that fall, Louisville boiled. Eventually, the protests ended. But white families kept leaving. So in the '80s and '90s, the school board moved to a system of magnet schools and managed choice to lure people back. DuPont Manual High School, for instance, decided to offer dozens of Advanced Placement classes.

In 2000, a judge ruled that the district could be released from previous court orders. But the school board, reading community sentiment that diversity had become a good thing, decided to keep most schools 15%-50% black. They read right. School board members who support the 15%-50% target keep getting re-elected.

In other words, after a long struggle, Louisville has a school system that parents vote for at the polls and by enrolling their kids.

Usually, conservatives think that local, democratic solutions beat court-ordered ones. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a 1992 Supreme Court abortion case, Justice Antonin Scalia penned a dissent praising this judicial restraint.

'We have no right'

"By foreclosing all democratic outlets for the deep passions this issue arouses...the Court merely prolongs and intensifies the anguish," he wrote. "We should get out of this area, where we have no right to be, and where we do neither ourselves nor the country any good by remaining."

In December 2005, when Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was still on the Supreme Court, the justices gave their support for democratic solutions by declining to hear a case from Lynn, Mass., like Meredith's. With the addition of President Bush's new justices, though, the court changed course. Scalia scoffed in oral arguments at statistics showing local support. "Nobody is going to say 'give me a lily-white school,' " he said.

In other words, when it comes to race, judicial restraint goes out the window.

Some conservatives offer explanations. Abortion isn't mentioned in the Constitution; race is. But schools aren't mentioned at all. Louisville allows appeals; no one is denied due process. The constitutional reasoning for forbidding the use of race in enrollment is unclear. That's why local elections, where "deep passions" can be released, minimize the anguish.

But many conservatives, politically, don't like racial balancing programs. Because they sometimes lose, politically, on this issue, they've taken to the courts — precisely what proponents of judicial restraint complain that liberals do. Some conservative voices put principle over politics.

In the Seattle case that accompanied the Louisville one, Reagan-appointee Alex Kozinski of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals noted that "there is much to be said for returning primacy on matters of educational policy to local officials." School systems have already endured much when it comes to liberal court meddling; conservatives have fought too long to rein in activist courts to abandon that philosophy for one political win.

"This community is trying to do the right thing," says Carol Haddad, a school board member in Louisville. "That ought to say a lot to the Supreme Court."

Namely, as Scalia once said, that there is virtue in choosing to "get out."
It's a knotty set of problems, but I think the sphere sovereignty of a school for the purpose of educating the young should prevail as the over-ruling principle. Louisville seems to have done something wonderful and unique, in an imperfect world, where a priority has to be achieved as to what are the driving and guiding factors that colour the entire institution. It all depends on how a citywide school system answers the question What is a school?

UN: Iran: UN's Security Council votes unanimously to impose the complete set of sanctions on Iran

CNN reports in breaking news (Mar24,2k7 posted EDT 4:00pm) the final outcome for Iran on its nuclear project:

UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Saturday to impose new sanctions on Iran because of its refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment program.

Western nations, including the United States, contend Iran is using the project to develop nuclear weapons, but Iran says the program will only be for civilian use.

The new measures follow a resolution adopted December 23 that prohibited trade with Iran in nuclear materials and ballistic missiles. It also froze assets of individuals and institutions involved in Tehran's nuclear programs.
Friday, just before the day of the vote, Iran's Revolutionary Guard Navy intercepted 2 British swiftboats with their 15 Brit sailors and marines who had boarded an auto smuggling ship in a disputed location, either in Iraqi wars or Iranian. Today, following the unanimous UN SC vote, Iran is claiming that the Brit military personnel have confessed to trespassing.

Regarding the Revolutionary Guard element, the reports, to my mind, suggest that perhaps a rogue faction or the dominant party in the RG has used the Brit anti-smuggling operation as an excuse to make its own statement regarding the UN's then-only-proposed-now-enacte4 sanctions against top commanders of the RG, among others similarly sanctioned. refWrite earlier this month (May16,2k7) carried the stunning report by Mohsen Sazegara, a co-founder of the Guard, as to its expansion and thirst for power within and outside Iran. (After a time in prison in Iran, this scholar escaped the country and now is a researcher at Harvard.)
The sanctions, agreed on last week by the six Security Council countries with veto powers, would ban Iranian arms exports and freeze the assets of 28 additional individuals and organizations involved in Iran's nuclear and missile programs. About a third of those are linked to the Revolutionary Guard, an elite military corps.

The resolution also calls for a voluntary travel embargo on Iranian officials and Revolutionary Guard commanders.
That both Russia and China joined in making the new sanctions unanimous, however, makes them less than fully credible. Especially in the case of China. Perhaps that is the clue to disciphering the obscure terminology of "a voluntary travel embargo." For now, I take that to mean each nati8on must decide for itself whether or not to impose the travel embargo, those who do bother to impose it now at least are not violating the "spirit of the sanctions." And Western diplomacy can work on bringing more and more countries to titen the travel embargo, which is expected to cramp the style of many of the Iranian leaders on the list.

As a matter of abstract principle, I don't think Iran should be denied the use of peaceful nuclear power, any more than any other nation. However, the Security Council with this second round of sanctions has made it clear that Iran is not trusted to restrict itself to peaceful uses. Further, the shadow of a nuclear-armed Iran would have a crippling effect on the independence of the Gulf States, who would continue only on the sufferance of the Persian Menace. For the Gulf States, there is for the most part also a sectarian differential between their Sunni heritage and the now-aggressive Shia heritage of Iran. The Gulf States don't want to be bullied by a nuclear-armed neibour dominated by Persian (Farsi) -speaking Shia.

Friday, March 23, 2007

Economics: Canada: Ontario budget 2007, some thawts

While both Toronto Mayor David Miller and Ontario's Premier Dalton McGuinty registered their vexations with the new Canadian Federal Budget (which apparently will be passed into law due to the support of its sponsoring party the minority-govt Conservatives plus one of the opposition parties--namely, the separatist Bloc Quebecois (because the Budget is good for Quebec)--nevertheless, McGuinty's Finance Minister Frank Sobara welcomed what Ontario could get and this week introduced a new provincial budget. Kate Howlett reports, "Property tax reform underlined in Ontario budget--Sorbara lays out $91.2-billion fiscal plan with heavy focus on child poverty" (Mar22,2k7).

TORONTO — Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's government released a campaign-style budget yesterday that targets homeowner anger over skyrocketing property taxes and child poverty, while reining in spending on most other programs in an effort to inject a dose of prudence into the province's books.

The centrepiece of the Liberal government's fourth and final budget before the Oct. 10 provincial election is new social program spending aimed at giving the 1.3 million children growing up in low-income families a better start in life. The new child benefit program will see $2.1-billion flow to disadvantaged families over the first five years, with the lion's share of the funding earmarked for 2009 and beyond. The program would allow parents to move off welfare rolls without losing financial support for their children.

It's very much worth reading the Howlett article in full. A more critical view is offered by Toronto's Miller. Mayor Miller "... slams Ontario budget--Province refusing to pay its bills and 'upload' social services, mayor says" by Jeff Gray (Mar23,2k7) Globe&Mail.

But, in contrast to the Mayor, I'm isolating the new child benefit program, while noting that the "New Ontario Child Benefit for low-income families [is] worth up to $250 a child this year...." Together with the Fed Budget's provision for each child income-tax-paying parents (middle-class), we see that aggregately families with kids are being helped, small increment by small increment. The Ontario Libs have presented a plan they want written into law with approval of the budget (they have grand majority in the provinicail Legislative Assembly) that would keep adding increatements over 5 years--all so that parents will receive "$1,100 by 2011."

Taken together, the Conservs Fed child-benefits added to Ontario's (and, of course, to child-benefits further enacted by the 10 other provinces) indicates a new demographic awareness: Canada's mainly white population will be having more babies and less abortions due to this promised added support for more kids, which means that future care-givers of the burgeoning, mainly-white, aging population will not experience as extreme a differential in the racial composition of the care-giving workforce. This is important to avoid the extremities of a generalized societal picture where the hugest number of the aged belong to one racial-colour configuration, while the care-givers belong quite visibly to another. I do think that people of other racial/ethnic/colour configurations will also be having more babies and fewer abortions than otherwise would be the case were there no increment at all in the Federal/Ontario model. Of course, I am extending hypothetically that model to the entire country. As the Ontario figure w0uld climb over the next five years to $1,100 a child, so by extension would the Canada-born birthrate climb both in the middleclass and among the poor.

Now, it must be quite aside from the overall demographic implications of the Ontario Lib plan, and also aside from the earlier child-benefit announced by the Conserv govt and targetted to the middleclass in order to compensate for their heavier taxation to pay down the Fed debt, that contrastingly the Ontario Libs have no plan to pay down the provincial debt. A year-old Ontario webpage on fiscal management says. "The province’s total debt is projected to be $154.7 billion as of March 31, 2006. " That debt feature of the Ontario budget 2k7-2k8 does neither Ontario's present kid population nor those to be born under the increased 5-year plan of Child Benefits, any good.

Finally today, there's the quintessential complexity of Canadian political economy centered around tax-revenue-sharing by the Fed govt with the provinces, a mechanism often used by the Feds (Libs especially when in office) to control the terms of various programs actually conducted (in accord with the Fed Constitution) by the various prov govts. These days, the whole question of tax-revenues re-distributed by the Fed treasury to the provinces but unequally (what criterion for provincial "equality"? a province's raw population number?), has come to travel under the term "Fiscal Imbalance." The Conserve budget made an effort to start rectifying the imbalance, but leaders in every province I've heard about this past week, have screamed "not enuff."

Nevertheless, Ontario's Libs had become hugely well-positioned (just days after the Conserv Fed Budget) to use the recent Fed allocations to Ontario as a factor enabling the Lib prov budget with its initial $250 per child plus a 5-yr plan, again, to bring the numbers up to "$1,100 by 2011." The Fed Conservs get some credit for this prov Lib move, as do the Libs of course.

More on the two budgets, later.

Economics: Canada: Analyzing features of the Federal Budget in relation to paying down the debt

Taking up the responsiblities that refWrite's general editor, Owlb, has shouldered hitherto, may I introduce myself as the new reporter-commentator for economics and business concerns here.

Owlb has instructed both Politicarp (on politics) and myself (EconoMix on economics) to keep analyzing the current fed Canadian govt's budget, each from our own particular specialities; and, additionally now, also the new budget brawt down by the majority Liberal got of Ontario. The two budgets have some similarities, tho in the first case a pre-election budget introduced by the fed Conserve minority govt and in the second case another pre-election budget that will figure in the October election called by the Lib govt of the province of Ontario.

Both budgets have provisions for Child Benefits, an issue regarding which the reformational-founded now ecumenical Christian lobby group in Canada, Citizens for Public Justice, has campaigned for nearly two decades. CPJ's valuable analysis provides these thawts:

The past two budgets [Conservative] have reintroduced unnecessary complexity to Canada’s child benefit system. Budget 2006 created the Universal Child Care Benefit, a flat-rate taxable benefit for families with children under the age of seven. Budget 2007 creates a non-refundable credit that helps middle and higher income families but excludes those still struggling to pay the rent and put food on the table.

On the positive side, this new tax credit builds within the tax system greater recognition of the cost of parenting for all families. However, the same goal could be reached by creating a universal flat-rate child benefit that is non-taxable. A straight $310 refundable credit for all children under 18 could achieve tax recognition of the cost of parenting in a way that includes all parents. It would also help low income families get closer to exiting poverty. It is an unfortunate that the credit proposed in Budget 2007 excludes poor families. In that respect, it is a step backwards in Canadian social policy.

I won't quote further what the Christian lobby group goes on to treat in its Fed budget analysis under "Child Care," because that section introduces presuppositions and policy that bear a longer discussion--as it now adopts the vast expensive institutionalization that many people see CPJ/s stance as a programmatic ideological takeover of child care by other than parents. It seems to me that one must make a distinction between Quebec's child-care system which is motivated by exposing even the youngest kids to the French language, and more pluralistic systems where majaority-language-perservation is not a provincial motive of the utmost priority. While there is language differentiation, as far as I know there is no room for faith and values differentiation as these mite be freely chosen by different segments of the population--if they had a choice. But that takes us away from the Fed Budget 2007.

What I missed in CPJ's analysis and appreciation of the Budget-as-is centers on a feature that affects the ability of any future govt to improve child-care for all in a non-uniformitarian way, a feature that affects families now and in future generations (including future immigrant families who are not even yet members of our Canadian society): the Conservs made the move in this budget to pay down a significant portion of the Federal Debt of Cdn$ 619,701 millions. This is the Gross Federal Debt figure; I haven't found the Net figure, but I did find this passage on the peak of the

The federal debt
See also...
Inflation
The Consumer Price Index
The Canadian dollar
The federal debt

By 1995, the federal government had been spending more than it collected in revenues for 25 consecutive years. The deficit (the amount by which government spending exceeds revenues in any given year) was $37.5 billion on a public accounts basis. As a result of persistent deficit financing, Canada's total debt load (the accumulation of all past deficits and surpluses since Confederation) had grown from $20 billion in 1971 to over $545 billion in 1995. By 1994/95, covering the interest costs alone was costing Canadians $42 billion—more than the annual deficit and some 26% of the entire federal budget. By March 1997, the net federal debt reached an all time high of $588 billion.

While CPJ offers many valuable thawts and horizons in its Budget analysis, it doesn't even notice that a chunk of debt has been paid down that benefits everyone. Now, this money for debt-reduction in the Budget doesn't come from the poor, those on Disability and Welfare, who don't work and don't pay Income Taxes (altho if they do file, they usually do get small refunds). And the poor do pay GST and PST sales taxes. But, again, not Income Taxes.

Rather, this money toward debt-reduction comes precisley from the middle-class. That's why the middle-class is selected out for certain family rebates on their Income Taxes, this round. Why can't CPJ graciously acknowledge this instead of pitting income-classes against one another in its analysis?

Now, Fed Debt-reduction does benefit the poor longterm, it does benefit children and youth who will have less national debt on their shoulders when they become adult income-earners of the middle-class and responsible for the accounts of the body body politic, and it does benefit both immigrants and families immigrating to Canada in the future.
Fed Debt-reduction helps those currently in poverty now, only obliquely, because many of them may never join the middle-class, become wage-earners, and thus shoulder the debt thru Income Taxes. But many of them will climb the ladder some, and enter the middle-class. Upon doing so, those poor-become-middle-level income-earners will then shoulder whatever Fed-Debt remains. But as long as they remain poor, they don't pay down thru Income Taxes, only a bit thru GST (sales tax) part of which is reduced thru rebates from the very Income Tax system to which they don't pay.

An economy of care must care about the poor, the middle class, and the paying down of the debt.
Surpluses both achieved and anticipated have allowed the government to direct more money toward paying off the accumulated debt. As a result, the cost of paying interest on the debt has dropped from a high of 33 cents of every dollar of revenue collected by the federal government in 1995/96 to 19 cents in 2001/02. Another promising sign is the decrease in the debt-to-GDP ratio, which gives a picture of the size of a nation's debt in relation to the size of its economy. Though still high by historical and international standards, Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio had fallen from 69% in 1995/1996 to 46% in 2001/02.
CPJ's analysis of the Conservative minority govt's budget 2008 has at least one major serious blindspot, a blindspot that leads to a skewered analysis and an unfortunate level of incoherence in the analysis that then is attributed to the budget itself. This projection of its own incoherence onto the budget is lamentable.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Politics: Military USA: Iraq War quite necessary, well justified, not ignoble, not a ruse

Evangelical Outpost. Joe Carter's stimulating and intelligent blog tackles "10 things we've forgotten about the Iraq War" (Mar20,2k7). This is a must read; there are some 80 replies from all over the poiitical spectrum, and more than enuff material to launch your own historiographical expedition into many facets of the origins and conduct of the War. But Joe's account is not in line with the doctrinaire voices of the anti-war Lefties, to be sure.

1. Most people have forgotten--or never knew--all the reasons we went to war. -- H.J.RES.114 is the Congressional resolution that authorized the President to use force to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein. Most Americans--probably including the 136 Congressional Representatives and 16 Senators who co-sponsored the resolution--have never bothered to read the text and instead parrot nonsense about "why we really went to war." This law, however, provides the complete list of justifications for why we went to war with Iraq. This law establishes the criteria that the American people--through their elected representatives--agreed were sufficient reasons for using force in Iraq. The list includes:
Continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability (false); actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability (true); supporting and harboring terrorist organizations (true); continuing to engage in brutal repression of its civilian population (true); refusing to release, repatriate, or account for non-Iraqi citizens wrongfully detained by Iraq (true); failing to return property wrongfully seized by Iraq from Kuwait (true); demonstrated its capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against other nations and its own people (true); attempting in 1993 to assassinate former President Bush (true); firing on many thousands of occasions on United States and Coalition Armed Forces (true); harbored members of al-Qaeda (true); continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations (true).
Critics of the war who deny or downplay these reasons for going to war are either ignorant or dishonest. They are either unaware of the real reasons provided to the American people by their legislature or do know and are intentionally being deceptive.
The above is verbatim the 1st of Joe's ten reasons why we've forgotten. I urge refWrite readers to click-up and engage with Joe's thinking in regard to the further 9 of his reasons. His blog-entry is a veritable manual for a thawtful beginner's education on why the USA continued the conflict in Iraq, that never stopped after what is now called the Gulf War I. The US in the north and the British in the south flew war planes over Iraq (except for the central section where Baghdad is situationed, and those planes were shot at almost daily by Saddam's defeated army on the ground (it couldn't get its own planes up). Bush, after 9/11, only escalated the armed conflict. The legalities of the Allies war against the genocidal regim of Iraq are impeccable. That factoid by no means resolves every issue, but it is important in any overall evaluation.

Politics: Canada: Libs expel former Cabinet Member from party, will sit as Independent in House of Commons

Today, CBC carried the news that Stephan Dion, Liberal Party leader in Canada's House of Commons has expelled a longtime member of the Lib Party caucus. Joe Comuzzi announced his intention to vote in favour of the Conservative govt's 2007 Budget.

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion has expelled former cabinet minister Joe Comuzzi from the party's caucus because he plans to support the Conservative government's budget.

"He's not anymore part of the caucus," Dion said Wednesday after a caucus meeting. He said he had spoken with the Thunder Bay, Ont., MP who confirmed he would vote for the budget.

Dion said it was parliamentary tradition for MPs to follow party line on confidence votes such as budgets.

"A vote on the budget, like a vote on a throne speech, is a vote of confidence. You cannot vote against the caucus on it."

"He's well aware, after 19 years in the House, of the consequences of what he's doing," Dion said.
Comuzzi had already demonstrated how much a person and legislator of principle is, in opposing his party when he was a Lib cabinet member, yet voted against the govt on its proposal to redefine "marrriage," to introduce gmarriage (generic marriage) to afford Lesbian intimate unions and male-to-male intimate unions not their own recognitions as distinctive kinds of intimate unions, but to dismantle the distincitiveness in law of the trad definition of marriage entirely. Because the Lib Party insisted that all Cabinet Ministers opposed to the brain-dead legislation, had to leave cabinet, Comuzzi had to resign from his position as Minister of State. He had continued in the Liberal Parlimanetary caucus.

Regarding his whithdrawal from the Lib causus today, Comuzzi explained that the new Conserv budget specifies "funding for a molecular cancer research centre that employs 300 people in his riding." The riding contains the city of Thunder Bay, in the otherwise rural and tourism riding of the same name, in northern Ontario. The riding has been subject to Lib indifference in recent times. The Conservs' explicit provision of funds for the facility was probably the tipping factor among several that seem to have left Comuzzi more and more disillusioned with the direction of his former Party; the new budget of Finance Minister, Flaherty, and Prime Minister, Stephen Harper allows Comuzzi to explain himself with great clarity to his own constituents. Being an Independent now, Comuzzi is not obligated to support the Conservative Party govt in all respects, if any. At the same time, he could at some point join in the Opposition to bringd down the govt on some other issue. Conceivably, this could lead to his reinstatement in the Lib caucus, were he to be elected.

Monday, March 19, 2007

Economics: Canada: Fed Budget provides Child Benefits for each of a family's kids, help low-income workers, seniors

"This budget's going to be a very easy sell in Canada," says a Global TV news commentator.

I'm looking at the Conservative's "easy sell" budget briefly here, looking at it from the standpoint of how it affects individuals. In fact, it affects individuals differently, not across the board. For most single wage-earners, no major change. But for families and the very-low-income working poor, including single wage-earners who are sole parent, there's a $310 sum alloted for the benefit of each child. The child benefit is perhaps the key provision for most families, and the preponderance of these will be members of the middle-class, including both those where one parent stays home and those with two parents who work.

As mentioned, aside from the mainly-middleclass families, there are special provisions to l+ten the load for working persons who are in the lowest-income category, where they would lose money working for low wages compared to going on the public purse altogether. This provision applies to lowest-income couples where both are working, and to singles in the same income category. They get this provision plus the $310 for each child.

Also, there's some relief for seniors (this provision would affect me directly).

All told, this budget is, from a family's perspective, a progressive conservative and mainstream budget with govt spending to give help for the poorest, the aged, and the middle-class. There's an emphasis on families with children.

Also of great relevance to family finances in relation to the goverment's overall ecological program is the govt's move to reduce air-pollutants by discouraging the buying of dirty-fuelled cars (there's a penalty of up $4,000 on the purchase of these, due to this budget) and at the same time by encouraging the purchase of cleaner-fuelled hybrid cars (yes, there's a $2,000 tax-break for going green when buying a new car).

Further, there's a matter of value to many families in the budget's relief for university students, to help reduce their debt load--a hefty sum which many begin to repay immediately upon entering their first job after graduation.

I'll update this post with specific figures over the next few days.

Tomorrow, however, Politicarp will hopefully provide a political analysis of the Budget.

Politics: Canada: Cheri Au calls Elizabeth May (Greens) 'gutsy,' but Jane Taber asks May, 'Are you crazy?'

Mainsonneuve the email newsletter that often annoys me, carries an item by Ceri Au, about Elizabeth May's notorious move, "May bets the House as Harper counts his chips" (Mar19,2k7).

...On the federal political stage, both the biggest player in the game, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and the newest kid on the block, Green Party leader Elizabeth May, are constantly flexing their strategic political muscles, ensuring they are ready to take their parties to the next level. ...[Conservative] election preparedness is a smoke-and-mirrors action plan to stall the drop of the writ until polling numbers can [better] predict a Harper majority with more certainty.

On the flip side of cautious calculation is the gutsy decision by Green Party leader Elizabeth May to challenge Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay in the Tory stronghold riding of Central Nova. “Are you crazy?” Jane Taber inquired, after May acknowledged yesterday on CTV’s lunch time political program Question Period her intentions to run against the cabinet minister. Dismissing lunacy as a driving force behind her decision, May let out a hearty chuckle and insisted she looks forward to the immense challenge ahead. “I think that Peter MacKay is, no question, a popular local constituency MP. He’s a very nice guy. I’m fond of him but he represents Harper government policies.” Nonetheless, for many political observers, challenging MacKay is not seemingly the quickest path to Parliament, especially for the leader of a party still hungry for their first seat in the Commons. Yet, as David Akin on CTV News reported, for Green party members who have seen their political stock rise in recent years (4.5 percent of the vote in 2006), there is only one credo of worth: “In Elizabeth we trust.” May recognizes the uphill battle she faces in what promises to be one of the most-watched races in the country in the next election...."

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Politics: Canada: Green leader to challenge Conserv's Foreign Minister Peter MacKay

Snappy li'l rotund and self-r+teous Green leader, American-born Elizabeth May, has announced her plan to run against Peter MacKay. He is tall, athletic, and old-stock Canadian. Unlike May, Mackay has held political office, also having himself been a party leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada (which merged with Steven Harper's former party, the Canadian Alliance, to launch the new Conservative Party which now constitutes the official minority federal govt). MacKay presently serves as Minister of Foreign Affairs. MacKay and his father before him have represented the Central Nova (Nova Scotia) riding well; Peter MacKay for ten years, following his father's twenty years. So, it's doubtful May will, or even can, win.

But she wisely chose a target upon whose coat-tails she can command a lot of national publicity (a Saul Alinsky tactic, like the tactics guiding Hillary Clinton in targetting Sen Barak Obama in the USA). Additionally, May has a "non-arrangement" arrangement with the federal Liberal Party. Both sides deny it according to Canadian Press via CJAD radio from Antonish, Nova Scotia. Strangely, the report doesn't mention at all the New Democrats in Central Nova riding where May is inserting herself. No mention either regarding the most recent past vote there which put Mackay in Parliament again, nor any mention of the NDP Central Nova warm-up in the current pre-election flood of press statements.

Antigonish, Nova Scotia (CP) - Green Leader Elizabeth May hopes to take down a heavyweight [wrong metaphor--May is fat like me, MacKay is lean--P] of the Harper cabinet in the next federal election by running against him in his Nova Scotia riding.

May announced plans Sunday to seek the Green party nomination in Central Nova -- the seat held for a decade by Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay.
Unlike the CJAD version, the Toronto Star version includes this CP factoid: "May placed second with 26 per cent support in a federal by-election last fall in the Ontario riding of London North-Centre. After losing to Liberal Glen Pearson, she said she would run in a Cape Breton riding in the next general election. Central Nova is in mainland Nova Scotia next to Cape Breton." Unfortunately, like CJAD, TS's wording does not star either; in this case, the problem is precise wording of the geographic relation, wording that is misleading: Cape Breton is not in mainland Nova Scotia. But TS Makes more clear that Mdme. May broke her word to the Cape Breton electorate and, presumably, did so because she figured out that she couldn't win there in her home riding. So, now she indulges in outr+t carpet-bagging, info that CJAD nearly excised from the CP syndicated dispatch, an excision replaced by a less-disclosive sentence, resulting in a massaged re-write which demonstrates subtly an ideological bias that corrupts CJAD's journalism. We'll meet that sentence further along in the text.
She said that out of respect for the party grassroots she will hold an open nomination vote at a meeting in the riding on April 10.

"It's going to be a very, very interesting race," May told supporters at an Antigonish cafe.

"I'm committed in this election to changing Canadian politics, to winning a seat for the Green Party of Canada." [A h+ly dubious remark. And certainly, we may conclude, she does not actually plan to win a seat for herself, but meanwhile she does plan to inflict as much damage upon MacKay and his party as she possibly can by hurloing epithets (the Alinskian practice of "demonization"). What she clearly can't and won't even try to do is win for herself the seat in Parliament that represents her own riding in Cape Breton.--P]

May conceded the riding won't be the easiest for her to win. [So, winning a seat, any old seat that is as close to a sure thing as she can manage for the Greens--that is not her priority. Just as keeping her word to Cape Bretonians is not her priority.--P]

MacKay held the riding by a margin of 3,300 votes in the last federal election and his father, Elmer, held it from the early 1970s to the early '90s.

But May, who lived in nearby Cape Breton after moving from Connecticut with her family as a teenager, said she has strong roots in the area [but does not have strong roots in the specific riding where she's set herself to smearing MacKay by out-hollering the indigenous NDP and Liberal candidates already lining up against him, thus lessening their propspects in Central Nova too. So, May's use of the term "the area" is quite disingenuous.--P], unlike B.C. or Ontario where poll numbers suggest she'd have a better chance. [Or, Cape Breton--would she have a better chance there?, if not as good a chance as she mite have somewhere in Ontario or BC.--P.]

May made a strong showing - finishing second with 26 per cent of the vote - in a byelection last November in the Ontario riding of London North Centre.

Even more important than her own roots, she added, is a chance to take on a high-profile member of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government. [Here she let's the cat out of her carpetbag--P]

"In any of the other ridings I was considering, I wasn't running against a member of Mr. Harper's cabinet," May said in an interview following her announcement.

"The policies of the Harper Conservatives represent a particularly anti-environmental, socially regressive kind of politics [here's the demonization, entirely malapropos because the Conservs are actively in transition regarding their environmental package--which will be revealed further in Monday's Budget Speech, and more fully in the new Environment Minister's legislation package sometime afterward-P] that I think is going to be a theme in our campaign."

May's party, which doesn't hold a seat in Parliament, has been bolstered by recent polls that have suggested its support is tied with, or just slightly behind, the New Democrats.

After her byelection defeat, May said she would run in a Cape Breton riding in the next federal election, although Central Nova sits on mainland Nova Scotia. [Here's the trimmed sentence, referred to earlier by me; nevertheless, it's a more geographically-explantory sentence than what we found in the TS version. Still, looking at a map will help readers outside Atlantic Canada to understand what the sentence actually signifies. -- P]

Political insiders suggest the Liberals -- who would be all too happy to see MacKay unseated -- might stand aside and avoid challenging May too stringently in the riding.

Liberal Leader Stephane Dion denied a deal with the Green party leader but was full of praise for her.

"I have a lot of admiration for Madame May. Canada needs to be more sustainable, and she has a lot to offer," he said.

"But we Liberals intend to win an election, if an election is coming. . . . There is no decision made of this kind."

May also denied a deal with the Liberals, and said she would be upfront if a formal arrangement was reached.

She said she has talked informally with local Liberals who seem eager to help.

"Some of the Liberals who attended my press conference said, 'Our main goal is to unseat Peter MacKay,'" said May. "And if they think I'm the best way to do that, they could well be supportive."

There has been speculation a campaign could begin soon after Monday's federal budget, though it remains unclear whether the Conservative government or the opposition parties would be willing to force an election.

In the January 2006 election, the Greens picked up 4.5 per cent of popular support, giving the party valuable federal funding.

May, a longtime environmental activist, was elected leader of the Green party last August, with more than 65 per cent [of delegates'] support. The party was launched in 1983 and has run full slates in the past two federal elections.
As stated many times before on refWrite, I do think the Greens should be represented in Parliament; but under a proportional system of representation. At the same time, the goal of denying the rest of Canada a Foreign Minister of the calibre of MacKay, should the electorate re-elect the Conservs to power, either as a minority or majority govt, is quite duplicitous on the part of May's personal campaign plan, in my view. Carpet-bagging from riding to riding, election by election, seems to be the only option Mdme. May considers--but she could run in the riding in which she actually lives, but doesn't seem much to want to do so. We can only suspect that she would expect to lose in Cape Breton, and not even pick up the press coverage she clearly covets, by bitching against MacKay as her main "theme." And the law allows her to take on the role of the Mother of All Carpetbaggers. Shame!

Politics: France: Sarkozy makes important tactical win, but will it backfire?

France will have an election for President on April 22, and with recent developments that vote will be the first round involving what at the moment appears to include 12 candidates. Instead of knocking one out of three candidates from the list, now 10 will be deleted for the second-round vote on May6,2k7. The wider range of choice for the first round will make a large difference to the outcome of the second, apparently.

The foregoing important news regarding the upcoming French election is reported by Belfast Telegraph's John Lichfield, "Twelve to contest French presidential race" (Mar17,2k7). Most significantly, the leading candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, presently France's Minister of the Interior, would stand to hold the votes of his own supporters, placing him first in their preferences for President. These are, by and large, members of his party, Union for a Popular Movement (UMP, using the French word order) which is described as "center r+t."

But if there were only three parties' candidates on the ballot, both the far left and the far r+t would be unable to participate in the election (a real source of greivance and resentment in itself), but also Sarkozy's opponent for the second round could possibly be the winner, particularly the woman representing the Socialists, Mdme. Segolene Royal. The scenario painted to explain that potential eventuality is one in which all the far left particles call their supporters to back her, while the far r+t voters simply fail to participate in the vote of the second round.

Lichfield doesn't indulge in the speculation I tried to summarize, but he gives the factual backround for it.

French electors voting on 22 April will have a choice between 12 presidential candidates, including three "mainstream" figures, two representatives of the far right, one green, an "official" Communist and three Trotskyists.

Few countries in the world offer their electors such a wide range of candidates, especially so many marginally differing flavours of the far left. When the deadline for submitting formal applications expired last night, a dozen candidates - eight men and four women - appeared to have met the formal entry requirements. A final list will be announced next week.

Three or possibly four of the candidates have a serious hope of qualifying for the second round. Only the two leading vote-winners in the first round go forward to a run-off on 6 May.

To reach the ballot paper, a candidate must produce 500 endorsements from elected local or national politicians - a hurdle which has proved harder to jump this year. In the last presidential election in 2002, there were 16 candidates in the first round. Large parties have made a concerted effort to fence out the smaller candidates this time.

Only two weeks ago, the far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen raised doubts about his ability to produce 500 signed endorsement forms. He made it on Wednesday, two days early, with some help from the candidate of the centre-right governing party, Nicolas Sarkozy.

Last week, M. Sarkozy urged non-affiliated village and small-town mayors of the centre right to endorse M. Le Pen - as well as far-left candidates - to prove that the system was "open and democratic".

M. Sarkozy, who leads in the opinion polls, also had tactical considerations.

If M. Le Pen had been absent from the ballot, his vote - 12 to 13 per cent according to the opinion polls, but probably higher - might have been denied to M. Sarkozy in the second round. The other candidate of the far " nationalist" right, Philippe de Villiers, assembled his 500 signatures easily but is given, at most, 2 per cent of the national vote.

The crowd of candidates on the far left reflects tribal divisions, ideological nuances and personal hatreds, more than genuine electoral support. One of the mysteries of the opinion polls this year is the apparent "collapse" of the potential vote of the wider left. Even the candidate of the once-powerful French Communist Party, Marie-George Buffet, is forecast to take only about 2 per cent of the national vote. The veteran Trotskyist candidate, Arlette Laguiller (of Lutte Ouvriere), on her sixth and final campaign, is given only just over 2 per cent in most polls.

Olivier Besancenot, the young postman representing the other main Trotskyist faction, Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire, has about the same level of support. The third Trotskyist, Gérard Schivardi of the Workers Party, is likely to score less than 1 per cent. Efforts to agree a single candidate of the far left fell apart months ago.

The quest for the top two places in the run-off has developed into a three-way race between M. Sarkozy (with 27-29 per cent in the latest polls), the Socialist candidate, Ségolène Royal (with 23-25 per cent) and the surging centrist candidate, François Bayrou (with 21-23 per cent).

But pollsters warn M. Le Pen, who shocked France and the world by reaching the second round in 2002, should not be discounted.
A fourway 1st round could possibly produce, as "Sarko"'s solo opponent either the centrist Union for French Democracy (UDF)'s canddidate Francois Bayrou. Or the far r+t, anti-immigrant National Front's Le Pen. Neither the combined far and near Left, it is assumed, would allow Sarko go down to the Far R+t, but the Left could shift massively to support Bayrou against Sarko. Add to that a certain margin of the Le Pen vote who conceivably would support a centrist just to give Sarko and the UMP a good whack, and voila!, Bayrou's the new President of France. But who would Bayrou appoint as Prime Minister to form a cabinet? Sego? Sarko?

Friday, March 16, 2007

Politics: Military: Iran's Revolutionary Guard

In a lengthy article in the Jewish magazine Forward, Mohsen Sazegara, a co-founder and former official of the Revolutionary Guard in Iran, writes a historical summary on "What was once a Revolutionary Guard is now a mafia" (Mar16,2k67). This excerpt focuses elsewhere than on the article's overall point about the Mafia-likeness itself, of RG). I selected the more-than-analogical reference to the Nazi Brownshirts (Gen. Rohm's SocialWorkers Army) and the succeeding passage that explains RG's cells thru-out much of the Arab MidEast. refWrite readers are urged to read the entire article.

" During the Iran-Iraq War, the Revolutionary Guard’s commander, Rezai, stated that the Revolutionary Guard must develop units specifically tasked with confronting opposition to the regime. I met shortly afterward with the head of Iran’s Judiciary Branch and asked him not to pursue Rezai’s plan. The only possible outcome from such an act, I warned, would be the creation of a force very much resembling the Nazi Brownshirts.

The head of the Judiciary Branch laughingly disregarded my suggestion. I should not bad-mouth the Nazis, he told me; at least they had some educated people among them. In the end, Rezai had his way, and so were created the “White Shirts” and other civilian groups entrusted with the task of intimidating and brutalizing any hint of opposition, a practice that still takes place today.

The Revolutionary Guard was no longer a people’s army, just another coercive force at the service of the ruling establishment. To solidify their hold on power, the same clique that has been running the Revolutionary Guard all these years prematurely removed a number of senior and able commanders, among them Davoud Karimi, the commander in Tehran.

The Revolutionary Guard also expanded beyond the air, ground and naval components approved by Khomeini in 1985. The Basij force, which had been created as a volunteer militia to help fight the war with Iraq, was transformed into a unit with paid elements who were tasked with confronting domestic opposition. And in order to carry out the Revolutionary Guard’s bidding in areas outside the country — Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen, Egypt, Sudan and, most importantly, Iraq — the Quds Force was created.

I once heard Hassan Abbasi, who was a member of the Revolutionary Guard’s strategic planning department, boast to students at Khajeh Nasir University that the Revolutionary Guard was making good use of the Hezbollah cells it had created in Lebanon and elsewhere. And the current president of the Islamic Republic, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, served with the Ramazan Unit of the Quds Force, participating in Iraq-related operations during the during the Iran-Iraq War. There should be no doubt about the Quds Force’s role in what transpired last summer in Lebanon, or in what is happening on a daily basis between Shias and Sunnis in Iraq."

More Info on Iran--Latest Developments:

World's major powers agree on Iran sanctions package

Iran Is Playing a Growing Role in Iraq Economy

UN: Ahmadinejad can speak before nations' sanctions vote

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Politics: UK: Basic stats on Northern Ireland election results

The Mar7,2k7 election results for Stormont (the parliament of Northern Ireland), I found a bit difficult to track down. Also, some snaggle may be continuing, as I haven't heard in the press to which I had resort that Dr Ian Paisley has become chief minister, which would follow logically from the results. With the intent of checking out more particulars, nevertheless I hurry (a week later) to supply refWriters readers with the most important stats. Here they are:

Party.........Seats.......Vote share........Full name of the parties

DUP...........36.....30.1%......Democratic Unionist Party
UUP...........18.....14.9%......Ulster Unionist Party
Alliance.......7.......5.2%......Alliance Party
Others.........3.......8.0%
SDLP..........16.....15.2%......Social Democratic Labour Party
Sinn Fein.....28.....26.2%......Related to Irish Republican Army

Northern Ireland Mar7,2k7 election

Europe > UK > Northern Ireland

Regarding the vote, UK newspaper Guardian says in an article on Tony Blair's and Ian Paisley's Christian religious dialogue with one another,

The charm offensive appeared to be paying off yesterday. Mr Blair's new ally gave his most positive statement yet that a power-sharing deal might be achieved with Sinn Féin.

"I'm not confident until it's done," Mr Paisley said. "I think we have made a bit of progress. I think we are getting down to the real issues at last. The rest was shadow-boxing."

Mr Paisley added that his success in last week's assembly elections - the DUP won 36 of the 108 seats - had given him room to manoeuvre. "I can afford now to go a bit further because I am confident the people are with me.
NI election map Mar7,2k7

*The chart and map are from Elections: Northern Ireland Elections website.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Politics: MidEast: End the Incitement of Palestinian kids against Israel, a Kirschen cartoon

End the Incitement (Mar14,2k7)

"End the Incitement" is an original cartoon by Yaakov Kirschner(c)March 14, 2007
Digitally republished with the permission of the artist.
,

Enviro: UK: Govt's new draft bill seeks transition to low-carbon economy

The Left-Anarchist Christian news source, Ekklesia reports on important developments in the United Kingdom regarding the environment. Recent govt initiatives, coming a month after the evangelical missionary organization, Christian Aid published a full-scale environmental report for the UK, will be accompanied by separate legislative proposals by the UK Conservatives and also the UK Liberal Democrats. Meanwhile. all British proposals suffer the same Achilles Heel as do the current and earlier Canadian ones: the UK and Canada are both signatories to the Kyoto Protocols on the environment which treaty gives Communist China a carte blanche on accelerating carbon emmissions to the extent of immediately eating up and surpassing the planned British restraints, considered from a global perspective.

[UK]'s Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, David Miliband’s draft Climate Change Bill, published on 12 March, which aims to enforce a 60 per cent cut in UK CO2 emissions by 2050, is a significant step in the right direction – but will require many amendments as it goes through consultation and Parliament, Christian Aid said today.

Christian Aid’s senior climate policy officer, Andrew Pendleton, acknowledged that the very act of publishing the bill makes the UK the first country to bring forward a legal framework for a transition to a low-carbon economy. "Mr Miliband is to be congratulated for publishing the bill and he is right to be proud of it – he and the government are an example to the rest of the G8," Mr Pendleton said.

"But if the final legislation is not significantly stronger, the process would represent a massive lost opportunity. It is the first step on a long journey rather than the destination itself."

Christian Aid is campaigning for a climate change bill that includes cuts of at least 80 per cent by 2050 with annual carbon budgeting ‘milestones’ rather than five year budgets – there is too much flexibility and wriggle room in a five-year cycle.

It also wants mandatory reporting of CO2 emissions by companies trading in the UK according to DEFRA’s own, currently voluntary standards.

Campaigners say that the world’s poorest people are already suffering the impact of climate change and stand to lose livelihoods and lives if the situation deteriorates.
But, of course, the situation is deteriorating, as China's emissions have already reached and are rapidly surpassing those of the entire European Union, to the effect that rapid depeening of the worldwide crisis from that source (on the same environmental reasoning) ensures that "the world's poorest people ... stand to lose livellihoods and lives" because "the situation is" indeed "deteriorating."
Even a two degree rise is likely to have massive, negative consequences; anything exceeding this would be an unmitigated disaster.

The Bill has four main pillars: it will set a UK carbon budget every five years; it will set up a committee of experts on climate change to advise the government on the economic impact of carbon; it will set up a system of annual reporting to Parliament on government progress towards each budget and will include enabling powers to set up carbon trading schemes through secondary legislation – which may even eventually mean individuals will have their own carbon budgets.

Mr Pendleton said: "A UK cut of 60 per cent of CO2 emissions is not enough. The ambition at the heart of this bill must be to cut CO2 emissions by at least 80 per cent by 2050, with as steep a decline as possible as soon as possible, which means 40 per cent cuts by 2020. With the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats both developing proposals of their own there’ll be everything to play for as this bill passes through Parliament.
We should congratulate UK and EU for these efforts (whatever flaws they may yet habour), and we should urge Canada and US to move forward with the best they/we have got to date. But a united diplomatic effort, using all the powers of trade and world propaganda, is called for, especially as the 2008 Olympic Games in China draw closer. Else China will definitely secure for itself by then the Lead Prize as the world's worst polluter.

The struggle for a better and less carbon-incresive environment in Europe, UK, Canada, and USA will involve each responsible person politically and personally; but a united international front to curb China's pollution, while yet encouraging its industrial development and raising the standard of living of its population, is mandated by world conditions today. May the Lord have mercy on us all for the damage done to the good Creation.

Politics: USA: Bush's Latin American diplomacy becomes platform for his last campaign--a guestworker program + shutting out illiegal immigrants

Associated Press' Deb Riechmann reports from Merida, Mexico "Bush seeks better ties in Latin America" (Mar14,2k7) via Houston Chronicle. Riechmann stresses that the US President's tour of diplomacy to Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico would climax in the Yucatan Penninsula. There, Bush also sent a related message to the American Congress.

President Bush sent a long-distance message to Congress from the southeast tip of Mexico: The future of U.S. relations south of the border hinges on immigration reform.

"I'm going to keep repeating it while I'm here in Mexico — that I know our country must have comprehensive immigration reform," said Bush, who returns to Washington on Wednesday after a second day of meetings with Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

Bush is to speak on the Yucatan Peninsula to the Mexican people and the newly elected Calderon before leaving, but he hopes his words will be heard 1,400 miles away on Capitol Hill where his immigration proposal has been blocked. ...

The president could not promise Mexico that Congress will pass his guest worker program. He could only promise to work hard to make it law.

"President Calderon holds deep convictions on the matter of migration, and so do I," Bush said Tuesday night in a toast to Calderon on the breezy verandah of a manicured hacienda where the two dined on fresh shrimp ceviche and duck.

"Our nations share a 2,000-mile border, and that should be a source of unity, not division," Bush said. "So we're working together to keep both sides of the border open to tourism and trade, and closed to criminals and drug dealers and smugglers and terrorists and gun runners."

With those words, Bush closed a warm, sunny day of meetings, hacienda hopping and sightseeing at Mayan ruins with Calderon, who heralded the meeting as a "new stage in bilateral relations."

Just before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Bush stressed the importance of the U.S. relationship with Mexico. The war in Iraq, which Mexico did not support, and Afghanistan shifted Bush's focus to the Middle East and Mexicans felt neglected. ...

Bush worked to allay their concerns, saying the barrier and stepped up enforcement along the border were only the first steps in a comprehensive immigration law overhaul that he hoped would include a guest worker program. ...

Besides shoring up relations in Latin America, Bush's trip could help reach Hispanics, who make up the fastest-growing minority group in the United States. And it helps Bush, who has waning political clout, push his immigration agenda through Congress.

Mexico, which for years has been urging changes in U.S. immigration policy, plans to begin an aggressive lobbying effort to get a deal. With the clock ticking on Bush's presidency, Bush said he hoped legislation would be completed by August.

Bush's proposed a guest worker program, which Congress has not embraced, would allow Mexicans to seek temporary work visas to work in the United States. ...
I'm hopeful but doubtful that Bush's plan for a strong border with a close-off of most illiegal migration plus a guest worker process for illegals presently in the USA, will succeed. I don't see anything else around that is more workable. Neither on the R+t, nor the Left.

Politics: Canada: Leader of Quebec's smallest party outshines the two main parties in election debate

In a free translation by refWrite's publisher Albert Gedraitis, Quebec daily Le Soleil in a French-language report by Jean-François Cliche says the audience at the Leaders Debate in the up-coming provincial election preferred Mario Dumont over the leaders of the two dominant parties.

The Leader of Democratic Action of Quebec, Mario Dumont, offered the best performance during the debate last nite, if one judges by the results of a poll by [three Quebec news organizations] CROP—La Presse—Le Soleil taken at the end of the evening.

In effect, 42% of those polled said the performance of Dumont was "excellent" or "very good," compared to 29% for the outgoinjg Prime Minister, Jewan Charest, and 27% for the Leader of the separatist Parti Quebecois. Andre Boisclair.
One francophone voice that always impresses me, disagrees with the polls. The blogger Jacques Hamel gives his analysis and concludes that the leader of the Liberal Party of Quebec, Jean Charest, the present Prime Minister, won the debate.

Somewhere in my reading today I came upon the estimate that 50% of the ADQ members are separatists who don't want to vote for the separatist Parti Quebecois (PQ) in its present incarnation; and that the other 50% are federalists with many conservative tendencies.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Juridics: Fed Canada: Canadian Judicial Council pouts its way to acceptance of reforms in Judicial Advisory Committees

The effort of the Conservative minority govt of Canada to reform the existing Judicial Advisory Committees has been poutingly accepted by the main national body of Federal judges, the Canadian Judicial Council. At least, as I read CJC's rather arch Overview of the judicial appointment process (released Feb20,2k7), the CJC has now accepted the reforms suggested by the government.

The Canadian Judicial Council accepts, despite these changes to the Advisory Committees, that judges can continue to participate in the deliberations of the Advisory Committees,...
The remainder of the sentence continues the whining quality of the document's overall tone, crystallizing it into an unabashed full pout:
...but only if the principle of judicial independence is respected and judicial candidates are recommended strictly on the basis of merit.
Of course, this is a signal that the CJC still doesn't want to face the consequences of the reform, which seeks to protect the judiciary from the kind of stacking hitherto practised by Canada's Liberal govts of the last 40 years. In part, we may expect that in this latter subordinate clause the CJC is trying to position itself for future quarrels it hopes to provoke and to lay a basis for obstruction.

The two buzzwords that the CJC constantly invokes are "independence" and "merit." Both these terms need a law-philosophical analysis in conjunction with the fact that different definitions prevail from law philosophy to law philosophy. Nowhere is it mentioned that a plurality of las philosophies must be represented in the judiciary, since no single law philosophy can give us judicial independence. The monoculture of a single law philosophy would make the judiciary dependent on that sole philosophy, without the benifit of other philosophies competent to call its fiats into question, to open other avenues of deliberation, to ensure an indepth dialogue among the law phliosophies in order to reach judgements and render sentences that are more fair, and hence more meritorious. Is "merit" a matter of formal degrees from the "best" law schools, as ranked by the graduates of those very over-represented schools? Is "merit" itself an absolutely neutral concept? A technical concept only?

I find the CJC's statement to be very shallow from the standpoint of legal philosophy, and very astute politically from the standpoint of keeping a closed guild closed.

The full text of CJC"s Overview follows below, with the above key passage in bold.
Canada's system of government comprises three branches: the Legislative Branch (Parliament), the Executive Branch (the government) and the Judicial Branch (the judiciary). Under Canada's Constitution, each Branch has important responsibilities that are distinct from one another.

Superior Court judges are appointed by the federal government. Under Canada's constitution, and established law, the status of judges is recognized as fully independent. Once appointed, a judge can serve until age 75 and cannot be removed from office except by joint address of both Houses of Parliament.

Judicial independence is of fundamental importance in a democracy. Those who interpret the laws must do so without fear or favour, and without regard to whether their decisions are popular. This is a cornerstone of the rule of law.

In that context, the most important goal in appointing a judge is that only those of highest merit and legal qualifications are selected, independent of any political or ideological considerations.

Creation of the Judicial Advisory Committees

The Judicial Advisory Committees (JACs) were created in 1988 following recommendations of the legal community, and others, that an independent process should be followed to assess the qualifications of candidates for appointment to the Bench. The model adopted by the government was the result of more than two years of consultations and enquiries with Canadians, including judges, lawyers and scholars. The key element in the adopted model was the creation of advisory committees independent of the appointing government. These committees were intended to screen all candidates for competence, to ensure that merit would govern the selection process.

At the time, the Honourable Ray Hnatyshyn, Minister of Justice, wrote "The concept of merit is central to the new appointments process. I firmly believe that no government can afford to approach the issue of appointments to the bench without a commitment to selecting the best person available, determined by objective criteria. The stakes for our Canadian society are too high to settle for anything less."

Since then, successive governments have adopted this independent advisory committee model, making occasional changes. Each time, the legal community was fully involved in consultations regarding proposed changes. In late 2006 however, the government unilaterally announced changes to the composition of the committees and the manner of their deliberations.

Composition and functioning of the Advisory Committees until 2006

Judicial Advisory Committees, since they were created, maintained their independence of the appointing government, while including representation from the federal government, the provincial government, the provincial law society, the Canadian Bar Association and the judiciary.

At their creation in 1988, committees were asked to assess if candidates were "qualified" or "not qualified." In 1991, further to a government review of the process, the committees were asked to use new categories: "recommended," "highly recommended" or "unable to recommend." The change was made in recognition of the fact that some candidates are much more qualified than others.

The size of the committees was increased from five to seven members in 1994, giving the federal government three members, instead of just one who represented the Minister. The two additional members were to be a lawyer and a lay person. The Minister of Justice at the time said that the new structure would "facilitate the appointment of committees that more fully reflect the diversity of society in each jurisdiction and, in the case of lawyer members, of the legal community." At the same time, it was understood that the majority of members would not be appointed by the government.

Recent changes to the Advisory Committees

One change recently made to the functioning of the Advisory Committees is to eliminate the distinction between "recommended" and "highly recommended" for the assessment of candidates. This raises questions about whether the most qualified individuals will continue to be identified for appointment.

The qualifications needed to be a judge are extensive. In addition to a number of personal qualities and competencies, candidates for judges must demonstrate proficiency in various areas of the law.

This is particularly important because Canada's Superior Courts hear cases in many areas that affect Canadians in their day to day lives: family law, commercial law, torts and liability law, administrative law and criminal law. Most cases heard by Canada's Superior Courts have nothing to do with criminal law. Many non-criminal cases also involve disputes between citizens and their government.

Another change made was in the number of members who serve on the Advisory Committees. The government is now appointing a fourth member to serve on each Committee. A related change is to remove the right to vote for the representative of the judiciary, except in the event of a tie. This means that there are seven members who are ordinarily entitled to vote, with four chosen by the Minister of Justice.

Because the majority of voting members are now appointed by the Minister, the advisory committees may neither be, nor seen to be, fully independent of the government. This puts in peril the concept of an independent body that advises the government on who is best qualified to be a judge. Judicial independence is not the private right of judges but the foundation of judicial impartiality and a constitutional right of all Canadians [footnote 1]. As the Supreme Court of Canada has stated, "Litigants who engage our judicial system should be in no doubt that they are before a judge who is demonstrably independent and is motivated only by a search for a just and principled result. [2]"

The Canadian Judicial Council accepts, despite these changes to the Advisory Committees, that judges can continue to participate in the deliberations of the Advisory Committees, but only if the principle of judicial independence is respected and judicial candidates are recommended strictly on the basis of merit.

Choosing the best judges for Canadians

The responsibility of appointing Superior Court judges rests with the Governor-in-Council. It is the government that has the authority and mandate to select and appoint judges.

That responsibility, however, must be exercised with due regard to the responsibilities and authority of the other two branches of government. The fundamental importance of appointing only the most meritorious candidates, irrespective of political or ideological conviction, should guide all three branches of government in working together to serve the interests of all Canadians.

The Canadian Judicial Council will continue to work toward the fundamental goal of maintaining an independent judiciary in Canada.

-----------

1 Canadian Judicial Council, Ethical Principles for Judges.

2 Provincial Court Judges' Assn. of New Brunswick v. New Brunswick (Minister of Justice); Ontario Judges' Assn. v. Ontario (Management Board); Bodner v. Alberta; Conférence des juges du Québec v. Quebec (Attorney General); Minc v. Quebec (Attorney General), [2005] 2 S.C.R 286, 2005 SCC 44.
The reform of the Canadian judicial mind and the jurisprudence it begets can only be in its infancy, but the Conservative minority govt will not and can not be more than a fine-tuner of existing arrangements. The real work belongs to the field of scholarship in legal philosophy. And that will require at least a generation of work by gifted and civically-minded persons who see thru the Liberal facade that can not see beyond its own limited philosophical horizons--where it has stacked not only the judges of the courts but words like "equality," "independence," and "merit."

Juridics: USA: Law prof Bainbridge muses on what's behind "the US Attorney mess" that has Dems calling for ousting of Attorney General Gonzales

Prof. Stephen Bainbridge's blog entry for Mar13,2k7 reflects on what's being called "the mess," an apparent fiasco which elicited an apology from the head of the US Department of Justice, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales today. Now Hillary Clinton has joined the fray, calling for the resignation of the Bush Administrations' Attorney General; she was foiled in her duplicitous effort by the re-emergence of her own involvement of the Clinton Admin's firing of all 93 Federal Prosecutors in 1994.

[Clinton's Attorney General, Janet] Reno suddenly fired all 93 U.S. attorneys. She said the decision had been made in conjunction with the White House. Translation: The President ordered it. Just as the best place to hide a body is on a battlefield, the best way to be rid of one potentially troublesome attorney is to fire all of them. The U.S. attorney in Little Rock was replaced by a Clinton protege. The long-running Waco emergency that culminated in the deaths of eighty Branch Davidian men, women, and children again proved that Janet Reno was not in charge in the Justice Department. Webster Hubbell, Hillary's former law partner in Little Rock and Bill's man at Justice, coordinated tactics with the White House. The President did not even talk to his attorney general throughout the crisis. -- "Justice denied: as President Clinton has time after time made a mockery of his oath of office, his attorney general has followed suit - Janet Reno," by Robert Bork (Sep1,1998) National Review,
On the apology, Tony Czuczka reports on the M&C (Mar 13, 2k7):
Washington - Faced with allegations that the Bush administration fired US federal prosecutors for political reasons, the top US justice official Tuesday acknowledged that 'mistakes were made' but rejected opposition calls for him to resign.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales sought to portray last year's dismissal of eight prosecutors as driven by the White House and his own former chief of staff Kyle Sampson, who resigned Monday.

'I acknowledge that mistakes were made here. I accept that responsibility,' Gonzales told reporters.

But he insisted he was not informed of all details of the process. 'I was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on,' he said.
But Bainbridges' remarks, while they do not render the former chief of staff innocent, they do supply space for questioning why the staffer and the White House may have wanted to get rid of the Attorney. Easily, in this speculative realm, the Attorneys may have been pursuing their own agendas, setting their own priorities, politically-motivated contrary to the directions set by Gonzales. Here's Bainbridge:
...[T]here is big difference between putting political constraints on a prosecutor's general exercise of his or her prosecutorial discretion and allowing political calculations to factor into specific decisions. For example, I think it is perfectly appropriate for the President and Attorney General to set law enforcement priorities. Say, the Attorney General says pornography is a priority. US Attorneys who fail to enforce that priority appropriately can be fired. Contra what some in the blogosphere seem to believe, US Attorney's serve at the pleasure of the President and may be terminated either with our without cause at any time.

In contrast, investigations and prosecutions aimed at furthering a prosecutor's own career or those that are aimed at individuals or entities because of their political status are improper. Robert H. Jackson warned about the dangers that political considerations posed to the reputation of federal prosecutors as "dispassionate, reasonable and just." Accordingly, both the ABA's Standards Relating to the Administration of Criminal Justice and the Department of Justice's United States Attorneys' Manual declare that political considerations are inappropriate factors in a decision to investigate and charge a specific person. If the US Attorneys in question were fired because they refused to bring voter fraud cases against Democrats or because they tried to bring voter fraud cases against Republicans, for example, we have a serious problem.
Two things for sure: neither the fired attorneys nor the Dems are to be trusted. This looks very much like the pattern already established to bring the present Administration absolutely to its knees.