Today is Canada's 41st federal election. Since the previous election in October 2008, Stephen Harper's Conservative Party has lead Parliament as a minority whose budgets have been supported mostly by a Liberal Party that has consistently ridden low in polling and has been afraid of causing a snap election. Jack Layton's New Democratic Party has honestly been the effective opposition to the Conservatives nearly the entire term, and was integral in the decision by the opposing parties to find Harper's government in contempt of parliament and spark a new election.
Since the English and French debates in the middle of April, Layton's NDP has shot up in popularity by some accounts in a two-fold gain, and now hovers somewhere around the 30 percent mark in polls, having surpassed the Liberal Party. Some pronounce one hundred seats going for the NDP in the 308 seat parliament, with 155 needed for a majority. I think this is a long shot. I point to polls in the United Kingdom last year that projected huge gains for the Liberal Democrats, who were/are also a third party juggernaut, but ended up with only one percent popular vote over the previous election and five seats less.
As much as I love the New Democrats and Mr. Layton, I'm going to play it safe and predict that these poll numbers translate into a tiny popular vote plurality for the NDP over the Liberals, with the Conservatives polling still higher than the other parties. I expect the Conservatives to win fewer seats than in 2008, with somewhere around 135 seats, and about 36 percent of the vote. The Liberals will poll even worse than their previous worst showing in 2008, and I'd put their popular vote around 24 percent and some 70 seats. The NDP will do better than they have ever done before, surpassing 18 percent in 2008 and their previous best of 20 percent back in 1988. Layton's party will garner about 26 percent and get maybe 60 seats. The Bloc is expected to do poorly - I'd wager about 7 percent with 40 seats and 5 percent for the Greens with no seats. Notice neither the popular vote nor seat totals add up to 100 percent respectively - this gives me my margin of error of 2 percent popularly and 3 by seats.
What's even more interesting is what might happen after this election. No party in the Commonwealth of Nations has ever been found in contempt of parliament, and Harper might be heading that same government in yet a third minority government with little chance of finding unity with the other parties on the issues. The parties on the left are rumored to be considering a coalition to keep the Conservatives from power. The question is now, what party would lead it as the majority partner and would it be Ignatieff of the Liberals or Layton of the NDP as Prime Minister? And will Layton and the NDP finally break through the decades of Liberal/Conservative rule and manage to become the official opposition or even be able to form the new government?
We'll begin to find out tonight.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
New Threats to Freedom Essay Contest
I ran across an essay contest based on the book New Threats to Freedom, whereby undergraduate and graduate students are able to respond to assertions made in the book and in video entries for a shot at a $5000 scholarship. The deadline is March 31 and the link is here for anyone thinking of entering.
I chose to respond to video entitled Max Borders on Regulation. In the video, commentator Max Borders tells a story of his frustration with the red tape surrounding his attempt to sell homemade barbecue sauce at the local market, and how this minor example is indicative of institutionalized regulation that stifles innovation. The text of my 482-word essay follows.
The Necessity of Regulation
In responding to Max Border's call for less regulation, we will begin with a story that started three decades ago. President Reagan's administration repealed many of the laws set in place after the Great Depression that prevented financial institutions from expanding and involving themselves in higher-yield but higher-risk ventures. Businesses like savings & loans were now free to engage in riskier investments with the promise of reimbursement if these investments failed which encouraged both poor investments and owner corruption, leading to the economic recession of the early nineties. In 1999 the Clinton administration allowed banks and insurance companies to form single entities. Add Wall Street corporate greed and it was only a matter of time before these attempts at generating more wealth through risky investments would come crashing down in September 2008. Now it is 2011 and millions of ordinary people's investments and jobs have disappeared while federal debt grows exponentially to repair the same corporations that helped start the whole mess.
Regulation ensures economic fairness and consumer safety. We can all agree that the sometimes-intrusive presence of government is probably better than the alternative of complete lawlessness. Government itself is a form of self-regulation – we need to be protected from those who might harm or swindle us, so we institute a system of laws and leaders who enforce the rules. Consumer regulation is a newer phenomenon which largely came about one hundred years ago during the Progressive Era. We decided the meatpacking industry should not make sausages out of the refuse of butcher shop floors, so the predecessor of the modern Food and Drug Administration was created. Standard Oil could artificially raise prices for its product simply because they had cornered the market until the Sherman Antitrust Act broke up the monopolies. Ralph Nader's publishing of the motor vehicles industry's knowledge of their unsafe products resulted in mandatory safety protocols like airbags in all cars.
Now let's return to Mr. Borders' failed hope to get a little income from selling his barbecue sauce at the farmer's market. The “red tape” that Mr. Border encountered that kept him from selling homemade barbeque sauce was put into place to protect consumers from possible health hazards, and not, as he says, to keep cottage industries from challenging large-scale companies. Millions of individuals create their own wares for sale in local and even national markets and are still able to abide by health regulations with a little money and effort. Safety standards are in place to prevent people from unknowingly or otherwise sell products that are harmful. If there happened to be salmonella bacteria on Mr. Borders' kitchen counter, then the “red tape” would not prevent him from unknowingly selling contaminated barbecue sauce at the farmers' market. Regulations are in place to keep the people protected and the producers accountable, and are therefore necessary in today's world of globalized finance and consumption.
I chose to respond to video entitled Max Borders on Regulation. In the video, commentator Max Borders tells a story of his frustration with the red tape surrounding his attempt to sell homemade barbecue sauce at the local market, and how this minor example is indicative of institutionalized regulation that stifles innovation. The text of my 482-word essay follows.
The Necessity of Regulation
In responding to Max Border's call for less regulation, we will begin with a story that started three decades ago. President Reagan's administration repealed many of the laws set in place after the Great Depression that prevented financial institutions from expanding and involving themselves in higher-yield but higher-risk ventures. Businesses like savings & loans were now free to engage in riskier investments with the promise of reimbursement if these investments failed which encouraged both poor investments and owner corruption, leading to the economic recession of the early nineties. In 1999 the Clinton administration allowed banks and insurance companies to form single entities. Add Wall Street corporate greed and it was only a matter of time before these attempts at generating more wealth through risky investments would come crashing down in September 2008. Now it is 2011 and millions of ordinary people's investments and jobs have disappeared while federal debt grows exponentially to repair the same corporations that helped start the whole mess.
Regulation ensures economic fairness and consumer safety. We can all agree that the sometimes-intrusive presence of government is probably better than the alternative of complete lawlessness. Government itself is a form of self-regulation – we need to be protected from those who might harm or swindle us, so we institute a system of laws and leaders who enforce the rules. Consumer regulation is a newer phenomenon which largely came about one hundred years ago during the Progressive Era. We decided the meatpacking industry should not make sausages out of the refuse of butcher shop floors, so the predecessor of the modern Food and Drug Administration was created. Standard Oil could artificially raise prices for its product simply because they had cornered the market until the Sherman Antitrust Act broke up the monopolies. Ralph Nader's publishing of the motor vehicles industry's knowledge of their unsafe products resulted in mandatory safety protocols like airbags in all cars.
Now let's return to Mr. Borders' failed hope to get a little income from selling his barbecue sauce at the farmer's market. The “red tape” that Mr. Border encountered that kept him from selling homemade barbeque sauce was put into place to protect consumers from possible health hazards, and not, as he says, to keep cottage industries from challenging large-scale companies. Millions of individuals create their own wares for sale in local and even national markets and are still able to abide by health regulations with a little money and effort. Safety standards are in place to prevent people from unknowingly or otherwise sell products that are harmful. If there happened to be salmonella bacteria on Mr. Borders' kitchen counter, then the “red tape” would not prevent him from unknowingly selling contaminated barbecue sauce at the farmers' market. Regulations are in place to keep the people protected and the producers accountable, and are therefore necessary in today's world of globalized finance and consumption.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Return and Revamp
It has been about nine months since my last blog entry, and now I feel it is time to make a return. 2010 was certainly a year of worldwide elections, but reporting on only these with each post made me weary enough to quit the blog for too long. I've decided to revamp the basis and purpose of my postings - I am not fivethirtyeight, nor even a pale copy of it, nor should I try to be. Instead, I'll discuss what's happening in our world and why it matters. That seems reasonable enough.
As a personal update, I completed my year in Colombia teaching fourth grade and returned to the States in early December. Since then my primary focus has been on applying for graduate schools, for funding from graduate schools, for jobs in the cities where the graduate schools are located, and finally for jobs in my own area. I have so far been accepted into Master of Public Policy programs at George Washington University and American University in Washington, DC, at the University of Maryland in College Park, and at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. The deadlines are coming soon and I'll be making my final decision within a month's time.
The first issue I want to tackle is the bill to cut federal funding for content on National Public Radio. I simple cannot fathom why this makes any kind of significant budgetary sense. The proposed cut, which passed the House of Representatives on March 17, 228 to 192, with only Republican Party support, eliminates the $22 million in Treasury funds that go toward everything but operating costs for NPR member stations. Consider now the 2010 budget for the Department of Defense, which stands at $533.8 BILLION, the $130 billion for "overseas contingency operations," and the extra $319 billion (at least) for defense-related operations outside the DoD. The grand total for all defense spending in the United States for fiscal year 2010 was at lowest estimates a $1.01 TRILLION dollar affair. Twenty-two million dollars, by comparison, is but a fraction of a fraction of one percent of defense spending.
Clearly, the motivation behind this bill is not budgetary at all, and is instead a philosophical aversion to NPR's purposes, the first of which is to "provide an identifiable daily product which is consistent and reflects the highest standards of broadcast journalism." With a fall 2008 record of 27.5 million listeners per week and a 2005 Harris poll indicating that NPR and PBS are the most trusted news sources at 61%. I cannot abide the thought of losing my own most trusted news source of NPR and having to rely on the blatant commercialism of our modern-day yellow journalists at the worst of the worst, Fox News and MSNBC.
It comes as relief to hear reports that the funding cut measure will fail in the Senate before it reaches the president's desk as a fully-formed bill.
I've included a poll from October to illustrate the general public's feelings on the matter.
As a personal update, I completed my year in Colombia teaching fourth grade and returned to the States in early December. Since then my primary focus has been on applying for graduate schools, for funding from graduate schools, for jobs in the cities where the graduate schools are located, and finally for jobs in my own area. I have so far been accepted into Master of Public Policy programs at George Washington University and American University in Washington, DC, at the University of Maryland in College Park, and at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. The deadlines are coming soon and I'll be making my final decision within a month's time.
The first issue I want to tackle is the bill to cut federal funding for content on National Public Radio. I simple cannot fathom why this makes any kind of significant budgetary sense. The proposed cut, which passed the House of Representatives on March 17, 228 to 192, with only Republican Party support, eliminates the $22 million in Treasury funds that go toward everything but operating costs for NPR member stations. Consider now the 2010 budget for the Department of Defense, which stands at $533.8 BILLION, the $130 billion for "overseas contingency operations," and the extra $319 billion (at least) for defense-related operations outside the DoD. The grand total for all defense spending in the United States for fiscal year 2010 was at lowest estimates a $1.01 TRILLION dollar affair. Twenty-two million dollars, by comparison, is but a fraction of a fraction of one percent of defense spending.
Clearly, the motivation behind this bill is not budgetary at all, and is instead a philosophical aversion to NPR's purposes, the first of which is to "provide an identifiable daily product which is consistent and reflects the highest standards of broadcast journalism." With a fall 2008 record of 27.5 million listeners per week and a 2005 Harris poll indicating that NPR and PBS are the most trusted news sources at 61%. I cannot abide the thought of losing my own most trusted news source of NPR and having to rely on the blatant commercialism of our modern-day yellow journalists at the worst of the worst, Fox News and MSNBC.
It comes as relief to hear reports that the funding cut measure will fail in the Senate before it reaches the president's desk as a fully-formed bill.
I've included a poll from October to illustrate the general public's feelings on the matter.
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