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OK, I'll admit the "dumbass" comment was missplaced. Shouldn't have said that.
You don't hire a fireman who can't carry a firehose (unless you are the City of Chicago, but I digress) why would you hire someone to oversee legislation who can't read it? It's a matter of qualification to do the job, and that's the embarassing part. Our Prime Minister has selected someone to perform the specific task of reading and commenting on legislation destined to become law, without the aforementioned abilities.
Now you could certainly take many other appointments to task over their qualifications to perform the task, but I don't think any are as clear cut as Mr. Demers deficiencies in that regard.
If he has brought light to illiteracy, and perhaps encouraged people to learn to read, fantastic, if he himself is learning, that's great too, but don't for a second take that to mean he's an adequate choice for his appointment.
I never learned French, I can't hold a civil service job in Ottawa, should I argue that I can perform the task as an anglophone despite the job requiring me to read, converse and understand French? No, I can't do the job because I can't do the job.
All that aside, I feel we're quickly derailing an otherwise insightful discussion... Anyone have views on any of the other appointees or in general the process itself? I'm all for senate reform, but not an outright election guy... these are supposed to be the sober second thought of enlightened, intelligent, and insightful people and I'm not qualified for that job, I also doubt an elected Senate could be described as the sober second thought either (is an appointed one at that?).
I figured this was the real reasoning and I'll refer you back to the point that illiteracy is not a function of a person's unwillingness to read. You're attributing illiteracy to being the person's own fault as opposed to a failing in the education system and ignoring the social aspects surrounding the issue, in favour of blaming the individual.
Dictation, text-to-speech, also exist for people who can't read.
As an anglophone? No, considering French is not your innate language you grew up in that your education system and social apparatus should have been providing for you at birth. As a francophone you can't read French? Yes, you should argue you can perform the task just as well as a person who can read French.
I'm glad I never said that then, wouldn't you agree?
well the Lincoln assassination had this whole conspiracy angle to have the co-conspirators kill the Vice President and Secretary of State, but people mostly forget those bits
Literally the worst PM ever
Hey, at least he's being consistent. Have to give him that.
Just, err, ignore the bit about reforming the Senate.
The concept of an elected senate was an idiotic idea and constitutionally unenforceable, and apparently even Harper can see that. The only difference is that he can get away with blatantly stuffing it with unqualified cronies because people continue to be blinded by their simplistic, idiotic rhetoric about ending corruption by blindly copying American political structures into systems they have no place in.
I'm horribly judgemental, but I'm working on it.
Blaming society for all my personal failures is a great way to absolve all guilt from myself but does not reflect the reality of the situation... Far too often we as a society say "hey, the system screwed him, give him a break" sure, maybe the system did screw him, but he hasn't made the effort (as far as I know) to overcome that failure.
*edit* Whoa, page 99... someone come up with an awesomely witty new thread, we all know I can't.
The conservative push for a "triple-e" senate is blindly copying the American political structure.
The actual senate as it exists now is modeled on the westminster system, yes.
A social/institutional failure that persists with an attached social stigma can't simply be dismissed with 'oh, you should just try harder' nor is it a result of a lack of effort. This pushes the blame back onto the individual to just 'man up'. Inequality and innate discrimination raise the barriers for a person to actually rectify their issues beyond what someone not subject to said inequalities would have to work at to achieve. If this wasn't the case, we wouldn't have our current problems with Aboriginals not attaining the same level of education and employment as the rest of the province here in Ontario, but I doubt anyone is going to suggest that they simply aren't putting in the effort to fix their situations.
This might just result in a deadlock in new senatorial appointments if it's that difficult to get the required numbers to go along. Especially considering the current Senate's makeup is horribly tilted in favour of particular interests that may simply vote in block.
I mean, honestly, people get annoyed at Québec's "repetitive referendums on sovereignty", and we had two in 15 years. If the election speculation in the fall is true, it's going to be our fourth election in five years.
Which would require compromise. It would also punish a party that just tried to stonewall the proceedings. You could always throw up a provision that if the house gets the lesser majority thrice (50% +1) and the GG feels that the obstructing party is not operating in good faith, then she may allow the appointment to pass.
That's exactly what your saying. "Not being able to read should be no bar to public office".
It sure as fuck should be. How are they gonna read legislation when they can't read?
That one can't be held against Harper tough; it's the opposition who wants an election. Altough thankfully the Liberals seems to be having second toughts.
and to the guy who said Demers is like Palin : no, just no. He's a lot more down to earth than she ever will be. I think he should stick to hockey tough, but he's not an idiot like Palin.
The Liberals seem to have reasonable grounds for an election, the conservatives have basically waffled away the stimulus, the number of disgraceful foreign affairs bungles that have hit the news in the past few months, zero improvements on EI, and a big giant FUCK YOU to the province of ontario in the form of the billion dollar special investment dispensing group to be based out of the London area (NO SIREE WE DONT ONLY REWARD CONSERVATIVE VOTERS NOPE)
I mean that last one just fucking bugs me. It's a gigantic FUCK YOU to the biggest province in the nation, it's purpose is to block funds from going into Toronto and other "liberal strongholds", and it shows how Harper will not work with anyone.
I'm surprised he hasn't set up shadow provincial governments to allocate provincial funds at this point.
Ex-illiterate, ex-hocky coach. (Currently a sportscaster!)
You still missed the point though. This nomination is a smokescreen for all the cronyism displayed with his other nominations. I'm not defending him, but I'm happy to point out that this guy isn't a threat. It's the other senators who a) know what they're doing and b) are fiercely loyal to the Conservative party that are the real threat.
And speaking as an Albertan whose job was moved to Ontario to take advantage of the lower taxes provided by the stimulas, its been a clusterfuck all around.
No, he already gave his reasons for stuffing the senate. He doesn't want the NDP or Liberals to fill those positions if they form a coalition, so he's just stuffing the seats with partisan hacks
because actually giving the appointments serious thought is too much to ask.
The whole reason he held off filling the seats for the last 3/4 years though was because he wanted to put through the Senate reform first... so I find it hard to blame him for filling the seats now when the waiting game has failed so far, and has a greater than zero chance of coming to an end soon.
And if you dont like PMs stuffing the senate seats, feel free to lobby your representative for some senate reform to prevent that
In the 12 years that I've been looking at Senate Reform, I've never seen a reason why appointed for life by PM is a better system than an elected position with fixed terms. Also, I never understood why both chambers need to be balanced by population.
And if reform cannot be done under the current rules, I dont see why we cant change the rules. Other countries in Europe draft new constitutions when flaws in their old ones make things unworkable.
And the Senate isn't balanced by population per say, it's balanced by regions. The fact there is a population imbalance between the regions makes it look like balance by population.
People don't want to open another constitutional debate because the defeat of the Meech Lake Accord still tastes bitter in people's mouths.
EDIT:
Oh and the CPC isn't the only group to have put forward a serious proposal for Senate reform. Québec proposed to make it into a "House of Provinces", with fixed representatives for each province, and each province having the freedom to appoint its senators however it chooses. Makes way more sense than the elected senate Harper wants, as far as I'm concerned.
This is what I'd like to see.
Harper did appoint the senators Alberta elected, which was nice, though.
Any proposal which involves dividing the Senate up into equally measures, like Harper's 10 per province, is nothing more than a mechanism to give the far right minority elements in the prairie provinces (where the far right rural vote already exerts an over-sized amount of power due to grossly unequal riding distributions) an undue amount of influence in national politics.
Any proposal which involves both electing the Senate and giving the Senate any real power is a disaster in the making, as it gives Senators who currently have little incentive to do anything and thus are essentially a mostly-harmless relic and safety net to maybe catch the odd bit of extremist legislation, incentive to do little if anything other than pander to their constituents by becoming far more activist, radically reshaping the power politics in Canada in essentially unpredictable ways. I do not believe that the system is nearly so broken that it merits risking this "fix".
Combine both moves, the so-called "triple-e" senate, and you have the ultimate recipe for fucking lunacy. Powerful prairie voting blocks will continually dominate the Senate's business, making the minority western right bigot vote one of the most influential in the country.
Good bye sane country, hello Conservative back-bencher's wet dream.
Edit: I mean, honestly. The oh-so-broken current Senate system saved us from an Abortion ban in '91. There's a reason that conservatives got really hot for Senate reform after that. Every reform measure they float is a thinly veiled power grab for the western conservative power-base. The next time they're in a position to push through their regressive social horseshit, they don't want the house of sober-second though giving their actions a second thought.
So instead of being appointed by the PM, they would be appointed by the premiers. I really dont see how the fuck that would be a plus for democracy.
Personally I'd just absolish the Senate anyway. Waste of time and money.
It's pretty obvious than that's the intent. Demers is the last coach to have won the Stanley Cup with the Habs and is thus well liked among the general population. I dont know a single person who doesnt like him personally.