I have only seen claims that Nuclear power is Safer (read: not 100% safe) than the alternatives, which it is.
All power generation on the scale we need is dangerous. What seems to be the huge problem is that people would rather get killed by power generation they can understand (read: burning shit) than things they don't.
Should I even bother mentioning again that I'm not making comparisons, but rather commenting on the portrayal of nuclear power as being "totally safe" being a sham?
I mean, I think the Green Party's election platform is rather impractical. That doesn't mean I want to vote Conservative. Facts are facts, regardless of whether one fact is more or less unpleasant than another.
It's not a sham though. One single plant is having issues. An aging, aparently badly run one. That was hit by the 4th biggest earthquake in history and then by a fucking tsunami. Meanwhile, the oil refinery turned into a giant firball at the drop of a hat. Also, you can't not make comparisons. You need to get power from somewhere. It's always a matter of safer, not safe.
There's always, no matter the industry, going to be issues with people not following rules and cutting corners and that bullshit. Just look up dam disasters on google or something and you can learn about how "terribly unsafe" hydro power is. This is not some crazy scourge unique to nuclear power. And hell, nuclear power is often safer because of how seriously they take safety.
Seriously, in the time nuclear power has existed, pretty much all other major sources of power have had more and worse disasters.
Except if you go all the way back to the last thread, I was poopooing some LFTR/Gen IV reactors being perfectly safe nonsense. And please don't tell me that there aren't people who advocate nuclear power as being perfectly safe:
To this anthropologist, then, the lesson of Fukushima is not that we now know what we need to know to design the perfectly safe reactor, but that the perfectly safe reactor is always just around the corner. It is technoscientific hubris to think otherwise.
In fact, I believe one of the LFTR videos that were spliced into the one linked in the previous thread expressly described LFTR as perfectly safe. shryke just prefers to treat me as a "We shouldn't use nuclear power because it's gonna melt down and kill us all" radical rather than someone with an actually nuanced position and is actually rather undecided about the use of nuclear power in general. (Although I've learned more now about Smart grids and peaker plants and such in the past couple of weeks. There are some interesting problems with ramping up our nuclear power production past a certain percentage due to our current electrical usage patterns.)
Nuclear reactors are safe as long as you don't build them next to a huge fault in the ground.
One catastrophe doesn't invalidate a whole method of generating power. The greater catastrophe is how coal power plants are contributing to changing our climate.
Except if you go all the way back to the last thread, I was poopooing some LFTR/Gen IV reactors being perfectly safe nonsense. And please don't tell me that there aren't people who advocate nuclear power as being perfectly safe:
To this anthropologist, then, the lesson of Fukushima is not that we now know what we need to know to design the perfectly safe reactor, but that the perfectly safe reactor is always just around the corner. It is technoscientific hubris to think otherwise.
In fact, I believe one of the LFTR videos that were spliced into the one linked in the previous thread expressly described LFTR as perfectly safe. shryke just prefers to treat me as a "We shouldn't use nuclear power because it's gonna melt down and kill us all" radical rather than someone with an actually nuanced position and is actually rather undecided about the use of nuclear power in general. (Although I've learned more now about Smart grids and peaker plants and such in the past couple of weeks. There are some interesting problems with ramping up our nuclear power production past a certain percentage due to our current electrical usage patterns.)
Interest in thorium has intensified so much that a previously esoteric website called Energy From Thorium ( http://energyfromthorium.com/) has been crashing. Its host and creator, Kirk Sorenson, an Alabama-based NASA veteran, nuclear technologist and aerospace engineer, has had to apologize to his growing number of Facebook followers for server crashes.
So besieged is he with requests for interviews about thorium — whose cult-like following says one tonne of it produces as much energy as 200 tonnes of uranium or 3,500,000 tonnes of coal — that he emails his regrets to the Toronto Star that he can’t talk before this story’s deadline.
But he does tell the forward-looking U.S. magazine Fast Company that, had Japan built LFTRs or molten salt reactors (MSRs) with thorium instead of the more common and conventional uranium-based light water reactors (LWRs), nobody would be looking at their Japanese-sourced foodstuffs suspiciously today.
“A major problem at Fukushima was that the tsunami knocked out the emergency power system that was supposed to pump water through the plant to keep it cool,” Sorensen said.
He says LFTR designs automatically shut themselves down, even if emergency power is lost. What’s more, they probably never would have reached a dangerous melting point — at least 1,400 degrees Celsius — to begin with.
Explains Ottawa-based physicist David Leblanc, whose company Ottawa Valley Research Associates is developing a new generation of MSRs: “We have nothing to push the radioactive material out. We’ve got nothing that explodes. We’ve got no pressure. We’ve got no steam. We’ve got no water that could turn into hydrogen that could then explode.
“It is partly in my view this per-vote subsidy – this enormous cheque that keeps piling into political parties every month, whether they raise any money or not – that means we’re constantly having campaigns,” the Conservative Leader told a campaign stop near Moncton.
“The war chests are always full for another campaign. You lose one; immediately in come the cheques and you are ready for another one even if you didn’t raise a dime.”
Man it must be hard to be Harper, to have to campaign for a month every 3-4 years, and to be held accountable for being in contempt of parliament. If this doesn't cause a sizable drop in the Conservative polling in this nation, I don't even know what to say.
There is literally no way you can support this unless you're of the opinion that an effective opposition is a bad thing.
But after so much of Harper's bullshit just sliding, half of me feels that Harper could sacrifice a baby on an altar to the Sun God on national television and still get a minority government.
But after so much of Harper's bullshit just sliding, half of me feels that Harper could sacrifice a baby on an altar to the Sun God on national television and still get a minority government.
Spoken like someone who supports a liberal baby-saving coalition supported by socialists and separatists. Harper is sacrificing babies for Canada.
Richy on
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AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
edited April 2011
It's a neat attempt at continuing to play to the general public's ill-knowledge regarding how our political system works and the benefits that the public subsidy gives to parties, particularly smaller ones. Which is to say that it's depressing as heck.
Meanwhile, Harper's continuing to reverse at full speed from the thought of debating 1v1 with Ignatieff. I'm not entirely sure who in Harper's campaign thought that raising such a possibility was a good idea, as considering Harper's disdain of anything not-scripted and Ignatieff's history in academia, a traditional debate would seem to be a giant "YES PLEASE" for the Liberals.
The public reacted pretty poorly to the idea of eliminating the voter subsidy last time around, but Dion was a total flop as the leader.
It's like someone at the conservative HQ is actually terrified of the notion of a CPC supermajority (senate and house) so they're doing as much as they can to tank Harper's campaign
That's an awesome post, dude. Thanks for that. I've found that the national English media is really quite shit at covering what is happening politically on the ground anywhere outside of Ontario or maybe Alberta. I imagine it's as bad for Newfoundland as it is here in B.C.
I struggled with whether I should post that or not, as it was clearly lacking in brevity. It's also heavily influenced by my own opinions and biases, but I feel I probably have a good idea of what's going on here. Thanks for the kind comment though... I too tire of federal politics being so centrally focused.
In any case, what really got me interested in laying it out was the shrimp quota thing. That's going to be a big deal in rural Newfoundland, and if you intersect that with the Conservatives insistence on calling the government the 'Harper Government', the DFO decision on the shrimp quotas could really hurt them. I've not had a chance to really listen to the news today, but I'm hoping the other parties are hammering them on it... and if they aren't, they need to start doing so with haste.
The important thing to remember though, is that two seats are in play here. If they pick up either or both, the Conservatives have effectively achieved what they want... broaden their support, cutting out the importance of seats in Quebec, and creeping closer to that majority point. I don't think they'll get to that point, and remember, they are also disadvantaged by having to pick a Speaker from their own ranks. Either way, Newfoundland could be a good early indicator for the rest of the country and how the election will go.
Anyway, if nothing else, I've proven that brevity is not my strong suit and that I don't always go flying off the handle with my opinions...
I'm starting to think Harper's straight-out-of-the-GWB-campaign-manual style might backfire on him.
The media seemed rather pissed about the bullshit of his lastnight.
? You mean his decision to only take 5 questions per day?
Rob Ford's pretty pissed at the media too, trying to require them to sign in and be accompanied near councilors' offices and accusing them of stalking his mother.
It's true. [strike]Girls[/strike] Voters really do like dickbags.
This election feels fucking anemic because most of us don't live in the immigrant suburban communities that the Tories are trying to take for their majority. The real genius of this strategy is that it puts the other parties on the defensive, and forces them to fight the same ground battle (since these immigrant communities have less "traditional" media exposure).
I mean what has Harper done? He's popped up and made some sweeping promises, and then gone back to going after the immigrant vote. What we're seeing here is what the Globe was warning us about earlier - that the immigration minister has been using his office as an advance campaign to push for a Tory majority by taking the immigrant voters away from the Liberal party.
And since we as a nation were so complacent about this news when it broke literally months ago, it just might work.
I'm starting to think Harper's straight-out-of-the-GWB-campaign-manual style might backfire on him.
The media seemed rather pissed about the bullshit of his lastnight.
? You mean his decision to only take 5 questions per day?
Rob Ford's pretty pissed at the media too, trying to require them to sign in and be accompanied near councilors' offices and accusing them of stalking his mother.
It's true. [strike]Girls[/strike] Voters really do like dickbags.
Ford's offences against the public are largely unremarkable right now because there is no "official opposition" in the Toronto city council (though considering they wield more clout then most provincial governments, there really should be).
Harper on the other hand, truly has made an enemy of the media. But he doesn't care. Like the article I linked shows, the only metric the Tories care about is the number of seats they win. If their national average drops 5% but their seat count remains unchanged, they don't care.
JeanHeartbroken papa bearGatineau, QuébecRegistered Userregular
edited April 2011
Eh, the election feels anemic to me too even tough I live in a swing riding. Maybe it's because the candidates are promising a new bridge to Ottawa, same old thing than what's been promised for 20+ years now.. yet no actual bridge has been built. So yeah, why should we believe them when they say it's really gonna happen this time??
Jean on
"You won't destroy us, You won't destroy our democracy. We are a small but proud nation. No one can bomb us to silence. No one can scare us from being Norway. This evening and tonight, we'll take care of each other. That's what we do best when attacked'' - Jens Stoltenberg
Bad timing and all, but Rick Salutin's been writing an excellent series of columns regarding public education for the Toronto Star. It's a little weak on the harder details, but it's an excellent backgrounder for educational theory and praxis, and the spate of problems confronting the public education system:
This could be Harper's Dean Scream if the media keep playing this up. Who wants someone who makes boastful challenges and then backs away shamefully to lead their country?
This could be Harper's Dean Scream if the media keep playing this up.
CanCon standards require that you change this analogy to "Robert Stanfield fumbling a football".
:^:
saggio on
3DS: 0232-9436-6893
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JeanHeartbroken papa bearGatineau, QuébecRegistered Userregular
edited April 2011
I hate to sound ignorant but I'll ask this question in behalf of all francohphones : Who's Rick Mercer?
I'm not trolling, I just honestly don't know. I never listen to english canadian media.
Jean on
"You won't destroy us, You won't destroy our democracy. We are a small but proud nation. No one can bomb us to silence. No one can scare us from being Norway. This evening and tonight, we'll take care of each other. That's what we do best when attacked'' - Jens Stoltenberg
I always forget how disconnected the English and French media are. Rick Mercer's a political comedian. He got famous through This Hour Has 22 Minutes on CBC, and since then he's been doing Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert pastiches.
Newfoundlander as well, where most of the good Canadian comedians come from...
But he lived outside of Newfoundland for a while. So by the same standard Harper applies to say Ignatieff is not really Canadian, Mercer is not really a Newfoundlander anymore.
I've been reading Ignatieff's book Blood & Belonging, and he says something in the Introduction that actually preempts those Harper accusations by a good seventeen years: "If anyone has a claim to being a cosmopolitan, it must be me. I wish I spoke more languages than I do, I wish I had lived in more nations than I have, and I wish that more people understood that expatriation is not exile: it is merely the belonging of those who choose their home rather than inherit it."
I've been reading Ignatieff's book Blood & Belonging, and he says something in the Introduction that actually preempts those Harper accusations by a good seventeen years: "If anyone has a claim to being a cosmopolitan, it must be me. I wish I spoke more languages than I do, I wish I had lived in more nations than I have, and I wish that more people understood that expatriation is not exile: it is merely the belonging of those who choose their home rather than inherit it."
That would be a good quote for Ignatieff to use in the leaders' debate, to kill off those retarded Harper accusations on live TV in one fatal shot. The Harper campaign would not have time to adjust afterwards.
Would anyone here like to help me work on a "Divide the Right" campaign?
My goal is to get all the Red Tories to switch over to the Green Party and cause a new political realignment.
My platform:
Vote Oram: I know how the economy works. And I can make it work for you.
https://twitter.com/#!/GreenRyanOram
I care about Northwestern Ontario. And I will *fight* for Northwestern Ontario. Because it's where I'm from. And it deserves better.
If elected, I will stand up for Northwestern Ontario and negotiate for solutions to OUR issues in exchange for my vote on bills.
Education should be paid fully by the government by mining and selling our uranium. I want Canada to be the Nuclear Saudi Arabia (with as many safety and environmental protections as humanly possible).
Seed the world with our CANDU plants and spread our spice to power them.
I know what's like to be discriminated against and to struggle. And no one should have to go what I went through to get where I am today.
It doesn't feel good to owe $4,000 in credit card balances and $30,000 in OSAP loans, just because you wanted to eat and learn.
I'm tired of being a slave to the banks because I wasn't lucky enough to be born into money.
Oil feeds and educates the Kuwaitis. Uranium should feed and educate Canadians.
My view on NAFTA: NAFTA should be repealed. The Americans should have ZERO say in how we run the Canadian Economy.
Thunder Bay citizens can't pay off their debt. We are slaves to the bankers on King Street. It's time to demand change and break the cycle.
It's time for our pay cheques to go to more than just interest payments.
I'm in support of both the progressive tax and supply-side taxes. I feel that the GST/HST should be repealed and replaced with a supply-side tax.
The neo-conservatives pushed the sales tax from the rich onto the poor. It's time to reverse the damage they have done to our country.
Money isn't beer. It shouldn't froth. It should be invested to allow others to make more. Angel investing and venture capitalism should be mandated for the rich.
As an alternative, we could always just tax any liquid asset income above $5 mil.
I suggest a system like the tax-free savings accounts where if you have more than $5 mil total in all your bank accounts (including overseas), it gets completely taxed away.
Invest it or lose it.
I think our economy should rely less on loans and more on cold hard cash.
Note: If you want a ~5% interest rate, use a line of credit. Some even let you use them like a chequing account, allow you to maintain a positive balance, have a debit card with unlimited free transactions, and give you free cheques.
My policies and positions will be posted on a wiki where every voter in my riding (verified by postal code) can discuss the issues and influence my local platform.
I will also set up a IdeaTorrent page where voters in my riding can suggest policy proposals and vote on them.
We've made our classes private to serve the banks because it's our fault we're poor and we want to avoid the stigma and the blame.
Instead of a name, now you have a number. Is that really all that much better?
Co-signers and credit ratings are now what define you as a person. It may be objective but it sure as hell isn't right.
Free trade is not for the poor. It's for the rich.
It allows them to spread and hide their money from the government without anyone looking. Free trade is a tool of corporate tax evasion.
NAFTA should be repealed. The Americans should have ZERO say in how we run the Canadian Economy.
I will support no free trade agreement unless it fixes those issues. My father lost his job due to the Softwood-Lumber Dispute. My father lost his job due to NAFTA!
NAFTA has created ZERO jobs in Northwestern Onatrio and has caused it to lose hundreds. Until free trade supports the Northwestern Ontario economy instead of depriving it, I can not faithfully support free trade.
The first step to Northwestern Ontario's economic recovery is re-nationalizing our natural resources to fund our workers' education. In order to do that, NAFTA must be repealed.
I suggest a system where if you have more than $5 mil total in all your bank accounts (including overseas), it gets completely taxed away.
Invest it or lose it.
Reason: My system would basically eliminate the need for bank loans and would eliminate the economic middle-man waste that is their interest.
Instead, exchanges would serve as a direct negotiating table between investors/venture capitalists and businesses.
The current bank system is an anchor on the economy. Having the investors basically directly negotiate with the recipients of their investments would push each dollar further as a lot less would be leaked out as interest.
Lesson: What's the need for credit if you can just negotiate with an investor directly via an exchange?
debitor --- table --- investor
Why does the bank need to be where the table is? Couldn't the table be something like PayPal but for investments?
To offset any risk, the debitor could directly offer collateral to the investor as part of the negotiation.
Summary: Basically, banks are inefficient when we have the technology to enable direct exchanges. It's time to dump them.
You know, I've never bought into the shit that Harper and the Cons have tried to throw at Ignatieff, but it does obviously have a hand in framing how one thinks about him. The more I see Iggy on the campaign trail, the more impressed I am by him. He's intelligent, articulate, and personable... and the 'snobby other' narrative that was put upon him is more clearly well off the mark.
I think you're going the wrong way. We need a new Conservative/Reform split. Build some ill-will in the Western provinces against Harper, which shouldn't be too hard given his growing focus on Ontario, Québec and minority groups in his goal-justifies-the-means quest to get a majority. Get the far-right to split away and form their own party again. Bloc Alberta will siphon votes away from the Conservatives, and force Harper to give up the centre to go reclaim the far-right. Two things will happen:
1. The Liberals will be able to reclaim the abandoned centre and retake power.
2. With their far-right support bleeding away, Harper and his Reform cronies will lose their grip on party power, allowing actual conservatives to retake the party.
Posts
All power generation on the scale we need is dangerous. What seems to be the huge problem is that people would rather get killed by power generation they can understand (read: burning shit) than things they don't.
It's not a sham though. One single plant is having issues. An aging, aparently badly run one. That was hit by the 4th biggest earthquake in history and then by a fucking tsunami. Meanwhile, the oil refinery turned into a giant firball at the drop of a hat. Also, you can't not make comparisons. You need to get power from somewhere. It's always a matter of safer, not safe.
There's always, no matter the industry, going to be issues with people not following rules and cutting corners and that bullshit. Just look up dam disasters on google or something and you can learn about how "terribly unsafe" hydro power is. This is not some crazy scourge unique to nuclear power. And hell, nuclear power is often safer because of how seriously they take safety.
Seriously, in the time nuclear power has existed, pretty much all other major sources of power have had more and worse disasters.
Except if you go all the way back to the last thread, I was poopooing some LFTR/Gen IV reactors being perfectly safe nonsense. And please don't tell me that there aren't people who advocate nuclear power as being perfectly safe:
The lessons of Fukushima, from The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists:
In fact, I believe one of the LFTR videos that were spliced into the one linked in the previous thread expressly described LFTR as perfectly safe. shryke just prefers to treat me as a "We shouldn't use nuclear power because it's gonna melt down and kill us all" radical rather than someone with an actually nuanced position and is actually rather undecided about the use of nuclear power in general. (Although I've learned more now about Smart grids and peaker plants and such in the past couple of weeks. There are some interesting problems with ramping up our nuclear power production past a certain percentage due to our current electrical usage patterns.)
One catastrophe doesn't invalidate a whole method of generating power. The greater catastrophe is how coal power plants are contributing to changing our climate.
If you have the time Hippofant, watch this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F0tUDJ35So
This article may be helpful as well:
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/960564--thorium-touted-as-the-answer-to-our-energy-needs
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/tired-of-constant-campaigns-harper-says-hell-scrap-per-vote-subsidy/article1966951/
Man it must be hard to be Harper, to have to campaign for a month every 3-4 years, and to be held accountable for being in contempt of parliament. If this doesn't cause a sizable drop in the Conservative polling in this nation, I don't even know what to say.
There is literally no way you can support this unless you're of the opinion that an effective opposition is a bad thing.
But after so much of Harper's bullshit just sliding, half of me feels that Harper could sacrifice a baby on an altar to the Sun God on national television and still get a minority government.
Meanwhile, Harper's continuing to reverse at full speed from the thought of debating 1v1 with Ignatieff. I'm not entirely sure who in Harper's campaign thought that raising such a possibility was a good idea, as considering Harper's disdain of anything not-scripted and Ignatieff's history in academia, a traditional debate would seem to be a giant "YES PLEASE" for the Liberals.
Currently DMing: None
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It's like someone at the conservative HQ is actually terrified of the notion of a CPC supermajority (senate and house) so they're doing as much as they can to tank Harper's campaign
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/965969--day-of-defections-takes-candidates-parties-by-surprise?bn=1
http://www.thestar.com/news/article/967164--new-democrat-hopeful-quits-to-support-harper?bn=1#article
I struggled with whether I should post that or not, as it was clearly lacking in brevity. It's also heavily influenced by my own opinions and biases, but I feel I probably have a good idea of what's going on here. Thanks for the kind comment though... I too tire of federal politics being so centrally focused.
In any case, what really got me interested in laying it out was the shrimp quota thing. That's going to be a big deal in rural Newfoundland, and if you intersect that with the Conservatives insistence on calling the government the 'Harper Government', the DFO decision on the shrimp quotas could really hurt them. I've not had a chance to really listen to the news today, but I'm hoping the other parties are hammering them on it... and if they aren't, they need to start doing so with haste.
The important thing to remember though, is that two seats are in play here. If they pick up either or both, the Conservatives have effectively achieved what they want... broaden their support, cutting out the importance of seats in Quebec, and creeping closer to that majority point. I don't think they'll get to that point, and remember, they are also disadvantaged by having to pick a Speaker from their own ranks. Either way, Newfoundland could be a good early indicator for the rest of the country and how the election will go.
Anyway, if nothing else, I've proven that brevity is not my strong suit and that I don't always go flying off the handle with my opinions...
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/04/01/steve-paikin-to-reprise-role-as-moderator-for-leaders-english-language-debate/
Edit: Good lord, don't read the comments in the article though. That's a lot of stupid.
The media seemed rather pissed about the bullshit of his lastnight.
? You mean his decision to only take 5 questions per day?
Rob Ford's pretty pissed at the media too, trying to require them to sign in and be accompanied near councilors' offices and accusing them of stalking his mother.
It's true. [strike]Girls[/strike] Voters really do like dickbags.
The man with the epic chin. I approve.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/second-reading/andrew-steele/tory-strategy-ensures-there-is-no-national-election/article1968068/
This election feels fucking anemic because most of us don't live in the immigrant suburban communities that the Tories are trying to take for their majority. The real genius of this strategy is that it puts the other parties on the defensive, and forces them to fight the same ground battle (since these immigrant communities have less "traditional" media exposure).
I mean what has Harper done? He's popped up and made some sweeping promises, and then gone back to going after the immigrant vote. What we're seeing here is what the Globe was warning us about earlier - that the immigration minister has been using his office as an advance campaign to push for a Tory majority by taking the immigrant voters away from the Liberal party.
And since we as a nation were so complacent about this news when it broke literally months ago, it just might work.
Ford's offences against the public are largely unremarkable right now because there is no "official opposition" in the Toronto city council (though considering they wield more clout then most provincial governments, there really should be).
Harper on the other hand, truly has made an enemy of the media. But he doesn't care. Like the article I linked shows, the only metric the Tories care about is the number of seats they win. If their national average drops 5% but their seat count remains unchanged, they don't care.
Saving public education: Why teachers matter
Saving public education: Too many choices
Standard tests: More questions than answers
And Ignatieff has accepted.
This is pretty awesome, even though I know Harper probably won't agree to it.
ANd if he does, he'll only respond to five points.
:^:
I'm not trolling, I just honestly don't know. I never listen to english canadian media.
My goal is to get all the Red Tories to switch over to the Green Party and cause a new political realignment.
My platform:
https://twitter.com/#!/GreenRyanOram
I care about Northwestern Ontario. And I will *fight* for Northwestern Ontario. Because it's where I'm from. And it deserves better.
If elected, I will stand up for Northwestern Ontario and negotiate for solutions to OUR issues in exchange for my vote on bills.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-election/andrew-wilkie-supports-labor-20100902-14qyq.html
In 2011, discrimination is unacceptable, anywhere. The social barriers that create Native Apartheid must be torn down.
No one should have to move to the Corridor to avoid discrimination.
http://www.tbnewswatch.com/news/Default.aspx?cid=138066
Thunder Bay may be cold, but it's a community. It's time its politics reflected this. We need to work together instead of against each other.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TrB8t8TNBY
A possible Red Tory-Liberal-Green coalition. Now that's worth voting for. Let's boot the neo-cons back to Calgary Southwest!
Government governed by consensus, discussion, and debate is what Ontario needs. Not more polarization and division.
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My plan for free post-secondary education (with federal co-operation): Re-nationalize Cameco
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameco
Education should be paid fully by the government by mining and selling our uranium. I want Canada to be the Nuclear Saudi Arabia (with as many safety and environmental protections as humanly possible).
Seed the world with our CANDU plants and spread our spice to power them.
I know what's like to be discriminated against and to struggle. And no one should have to go what I went through to get where I am today.
It doesn't feel good to owe $4,000 in credit card balances and $30,000 in OSAP loans, just because you wanted to eat and learn.
I'm tired of being a slave to the banks because I wasn't lucky enough to be born into money.
Oil feeds and educates the Kuwaitis. Uranium should feed and educate Canadians.
My view on NAFTA: NAFTA should be repealed. The Americans should have ZERO say in how we run the Canadian Economy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fight_for_Canada:_Four_Centuries_of_Resistance_to_American_Expansionism
=====
Thunder Bay citizens can't pay off their debt. We are slaves to the bankers on King Street. It's time to demand change and break the cycle.
It's time for our pay cheques to go to more than just interest payments.
I'm in support of both the progressive tax and supply-side taxes. I feel that the GST/HST should be repealed and replaced with a supply-side tax.
The neo-conservatives pushed the sales tax from the rich onto the poor. It's time to reverse the damage they have done to our country.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_tax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goods_and_Services_Tax_(Canada)
Any liquid assets over $5 mil should be required to be invested in the economy (while maintaining onwership).
Money isn't beer. It shouldn't froth. It should be invested to allow others to make more. Angel investing and venture capitalism should be mandated for the rich.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_capital
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_investor
As an alternative, we could always just tax any liquid asset income above $5 mil.
I suggest a system like the tax-free savings accounts where if you have more than $5 mil total in all your bank accounts (including overseas), it gets completely taxed away.
Invest it or lose it.
I think our economy should rely less on loans and more on cold hard cash.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis
Credit card interest rates should be mandated to be pegged to the prime rate. With "Prime + 10%" made the max.
Note: If you want a ~5% interest rate, use a line of credit. Some even let you use them like a chequing account, allow you to maintain a positive balance, have a debit card with unlimited free transactions, and give you free cheques.
Such as the TD line of credit:
http://www.tdcanadatrust.com/lending/lineofcredit.jsp
http://forums.redflagdeals.com/archive/index.php/t-294172.html
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My policies and positions will be posted on a wiki where every voter in my riding (verified by postal code) can discuss the issues and influence my local platform.
I will also set up a IdeaTorrent page where voters in my riding can suggest policy proposals and vote on them.
Example: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/
I want your voices to be heard!
I can't even get a decent line of credit. Because my dad can't co-sign due to his debt. That's classism folks!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_discrimination
We've made our classes private to serve the banks because it's our fault we're poor and we want to avoid the stigma and the blame.
Instead of a name, now you have a number. Is that really all that much better?
Co-signers and credit ratings are now what define you as a person. It may be objective but it sure as hell isn't right.
Free trade is not for the poor. It's for the rich.
It allows them to spread and hide their money from the government without anyone looking. Free trade is a tool of corporate tax evasion.
NAFTA should be repealed. The Americans should have ZERO say in how we run the Canadian Economy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fight_for_Canada:_Four_Centuries_of_Resistance_to_American_Expansionism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement#Criticism_and_controversies
I will support no free trade agreement unless it fixes those issues. My father lost his job due to the Softwood-Lumber Dispute. My father lost his job due to NAFTA!
NAFTA has created ZERO jobs in Northwestern Onatrio and has caused it to lose hundreds. Until free trade supports the Northwestern Ontario economy instead of depriving it, I can not faithfully support free trade.
The first step to Northwestern Ontario's economic recovery is re-nationalizing our natural resources to fund our workers' education. In order to do that, NAFTA must be repealed.
Invest it or lose it.
Reason: My system would basically eliminate the need for bank loans and would eliminate the economic middle-man waste that is their interest.
Instead, exchanges would serve as a direct negotiating table between investors/venture capitalists and businesses.
The current bank system is an anchor on the economy. Having the investors basically directly negotiate with the recipients of their investments would push each dollar further as a lot less would be leaked out as interest.
Lesson: What's the need for credit if you can just negotiate with an investor directly via an exchange?
debitor --- table --- investor
Why does the bank need to be where the table is? Couldn't the table be something like PayPal but for investments?
To offset any risk, the debitor could directly offer collateral to the investor as part of the negotiation.
Summary: Basically, banks are inefficient when we have the technology to enable direct exchanges. It's time to dump them.
It's time for an economic revolution!
PS This is basically the Western version of Islamic Banking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_banking
1. The Liberals will be able to reclaim the abandoned centre and retake power.
2. With their far-right support bleeding away, Harper and his Reform cronies will lose their grip on party power, allowing actual conservatives to retake the party.