A Senate committee wants drinkers to pony up a nickel a beer to help fund an ambitious, 10-year, $5-billion fund aimed at reforming mental health treatment in Canada.
In a sweeping report released yesterday, the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology calls for a new excise tax on beer, wine and alcohol to pay for a transition fund to get mentally ill people out of hospitals and jails and back into the community.
cnews
There is not the slightest chance of this being implemented; but why another tax on booze? Why not gas or disposable diapers or a sumptuary tax on shoes costing more than $100.00 or anything with a brand logo on it?
And, hey, we have lots and lots of mentally ill people in the community. Tragically, they are often homeless and occassionally a danger to themselves or others. Before we start trying to get more of the mentally ill into our communities we might want to make sure that the people already there have the support and backup they need to get off the streets or, better still, never end up homeless in the first place.
Written by jay on May 11th, 2006 with 2 comments.
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Here’s the bottom line, though: Jack! hasn’t got the balls to try it. Behind the inflammatory rhetoric and the porn-star moustache, he’s too addicted to sniping consequence-free from the sidelines to throw himself into action. Layton understands with a second-generation politician’s instinct that bleating costs him nothing, whereas going over the top of his political trenches yelling “Follow me!” carries significant risk to his reputation and electoral future.
babbling brooks
Brooks need to be read in his entirety; but the bottom line is that I don’t think any of the Opposition parties is going to a) bring down the government, b) attempt to pass legislation.
Smilin’ Jack - who does not approve of violence in Afghanistan or Iraq but is cool with it in Darfur - can introduce legislation or resolutions or votes of confidence. He can hold the Tory feet to the fire. We know he’ll get lots of coverage from a sympathetic media. But he won’t for exactly the reason Brooks cites: no balls.
If the NDP had anyone who looked the least bit like a leader there would be rumblings at Layton’s continuation at the head of the Party. But now that Bob Rae has decided he’s a Liberal who could bell the cat?
Written by jay on May 11th, 2006 with 2 comments.
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While I am not a fan of the word “Christianists” as a parallel for Islamists it does serve a purpose as Andrew Sullivan points out:
In all of this, the Christianists do not represent most Christians, although they have made great strides in the Vatican and in the fundamentalist leadership. I should stress: these people have every right to their views. They certainly have developed an arsenal of arguments and a body of thought to back them up. But this agenda, whatever else it is, cannot be described as mainstream Christianity. Its extremism, its enmeshment with partisan political power, its contempt for individual liberty, its certainty and arrogance and intolerance, demand that some other name be given to it. They have gotten away with too much for too long. It’s time for mainstream Christians, in both parties, to fight back. And we are.
andrew sullivan
It is critically important that we distinguish between the fundamentalists within the Chrisitan world and the rest of that world.
I’ve written previously about how annoying it is to have fundamentalist Christians suggest that their particular brand of often hateful and almost always ignorant Christianity trumps mine. The happy clapping, gay hating, “family friendly” fundies are willing to use the State to enforce their moral vision. I am not. But I am willing to use the State to seek create as broad a secular space in human affairs as possible.
For the Islamists the Koran cannot be interpreted as leaving room for expressly non-religious conduct. It is an essentially totalitarian document and, within its terms, it makes perfectly good sense to have, to take V.S. Naipaul’s example, a Ministry for Islamic Urban Design. Unreformed and unenlighted, Islam can continue to support the idea that it is wrong, un-Islamic, to have a seperation between Church and State.
Chrsitianity, from the moment Jesus proclaimed, “Render unto. Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God that which is God’s ”(Luke 20:19-26) has been able to recognize the critical distinction between religion and the state. It has not always done so; but the capacity has been there.
Attempts to use the State to further explicitly religious moral agendas need to be fought by secularists and Christians alike. It does not matter if the issue is the impostion of shira law or the demand that selected portions of the Old Testament be embodied in the law, the push to use the state to further religious causes must be rigorously opposed.
Written by jay on May 11th, 2006 with no comments.
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