February 2008
You are currently browsing the articles from Jay Currie written in the month of February 2008.
Not a terrifically interesting budget.
Nice to see the CPC promising to pay 10 billion against the National debt. However, program spending still increases - though the bogus Program Spending to GDP measure shows it declining. (This because the GDP is growing faster than the increase in Program Spending.)
The big news in the Budget is the Tax Free Savings Account proposal. This will not kick in until 2009 but it is a good and, in principle, cheap idea. However, it will be fascinating to see what wheezes clever accountants come up with to shovel low priced assets pregnant with capital gains into these accounts. We’ll have to wait for the regulations. The arm’s length rules are supposed to keep the sillier transactions at bay but tax accountants are frustrated artists and the prospect of putting an asset notionally valued at $5000.00 but actually worth 50,000.00 into the Tax Free Savings Account will be mighty appealing.
And even more appealing as, on the face of it, the TFSAs are evergreen, you can just keep rolling assets through.
I have no problem at all with this because I don’t believe capital gains should be taxed at all; in fact I suspect that the economic effects of the Tax Free Savings Accounts will be positive for the Canadian economy as a whole. And, yes, it might even provide a small benefit for the average tax payer.
Written by jay on February 27th, 2008 with no comments.
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I’ve been tagged. As I like “Small Dead Animals” I’ll play along…
The Meme: Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
1) I like really, really long novels - five to 12 volumes.
2) I carry a knife at all times - Ok it is a Swiss Army knife but it is a terrific tool.
3) I play inselkampf.co.uk.
4) I am slowly becoming a fairly decent portrait photographer - amateur class.
5) I “knock on wood” at least a couple of times a day.
6) I had a 4 digit Compuserve account.
Tags:
GenX at 40
the flea
the zerb
Dr. Dawg (when he is back)
Edward Michael George (who is away as well)
The Ambler
Written by jay on February 26th, 2008 with 1 comment.
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One of the most basic defenses against a libel action is the ability to prove that what you have said is true.
In his libel notice letter Lucy Warman’s (and the liar Kinsella’s) lawyer spends a good deal of time suggesting that Lucy never wrote anything about Sen. Cools and that anyone who suggested such a thing was defaming Lucy.
Up until now Lucy has been pretty confident no one could prove he wrote the impugned comments because, it emerged at yet another of the hearings surrounding Warman, that the Rogers records for the period in question could not be produced because they had been lost/destroyed/routinely erased.
According to a poster at FD who apparently spoke to Mark LeMire here is the Warman take on the absence of records,
The main testimony in the Marc Lemire hearing took 20 days to complete. Richard Warman attended every day up to Day 8, the day the Lemire team was to present the Rogers evidence. At this time Richard Warman did not know that the records for the timeframe were missing.
At some point on Day 8 Lemire’s lawyer presented the tribunal with copies of the result of the Rogers subpoena. While they were being passed around and read the proceedings continued on to another matter. Marc Lemire chose to watch Richard Warman while he read the findings. When Warman got to the part where he learned there were no records his face lit up and (according to Lemire) he said in an elated and relieved voice, “There are no records!” free dominion
Now, just for fun, can you think of any way of establishing that Warman did in fact use the IP from which the nasty screed on Anne Cools would have been posted? For example, is it possible that Lucy sent some emails from that IP on the days in question? And is it possible that he might have used such emails as evidence in other proceedings?
Now, if, through other means, Lucy can be proven to have been at the relevant IP at the relevant date is the libel notice entirely true?
Update: As it happens Mike Brock has found just such an email…which he helpfully annotates.
Written by jay on February 26th, 2008 with 10 comments.
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Ezra Levant reports receiving a libel notice from Lucy Warman’s lawyer. Who just happens to be the liar Kinsella’s lawyer of choice.
Well worth reading the letter - which Ezra characterizes as a “letter to the editor” - as it suggests that Lucy Warman is prepared to fight on the “90sareover” comments vis a vis Senator Cools. Ezra doesn’t think much of Warman’s willingness to fight on the issue, “I’ll bet you a dollar this subject doesn’t find its way into any suit against me, either.”
We’ll see when the pleadings are filed. As I have said before, the pleadings will frame the discovery and the discovery may very well be the end of the CHRC in any form. Nbob has rightly pointed out that discovery is confidential unless the material is used in Court…which will make for a very interesting trial.
It will be particularly interesting to learn more about Lucy’s activities during the time he worked for the Commission, who supervised those activities and the basis upon which he left the Commission.
Written by jay on February 25th, 2008 with 3 comments.
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Yo, Warren,
These are alarming developments which require some explanation. Some of it has to do with the resilience of anti-Semitism, to the way in which it is able to mutate, to take different forms and shapes over time, to adapt to changing circumstances by integrating new elements (such as a grossly disproportionate anti-Zionism, in which Israel and the Jews who support it, however critically, are singled out for special opprobrium) into an existing stock of “ideas” and rearticulating them in a new combination. Part of the problem here is the denial of many on the left that this is or indeed can be the case. Rather they insist that there is no connection at all between different bouts of anti-Semitism over time, as if each instance appears from nowhere and can only be explained as a product of specific factors at a particular moment. Philip J Spencer engage journal
Go read Spencer and then check out who your allies are. The Left’s anti Zionism fell over the edge into antisemitism a long time ago. Your real friends are over here on the free speech right. You won’t see any righties sponsoring Israel Apartheid weeks at te U of T. An event you seemed to have missed on your blog.
Written by jay on February 25th, 2008 with 6 comments.
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Far from being “collateral damage” — that is, women and children killed by accident in the attempt to kill an armed fighter — women and children within Palestinian society can and will become the targets to be murdered by other members of their society. Recall the three little children — Palestinian children, not those “worthy of death” Jewish children –who were gunned down on their way to school as a message to their father:
Balousheh’s three children — 3-year-old Salam, 6-year-old Ahmed and 9-year-old Osama — were in the family car on their way to school when gunmen opened fire from two vehicles. The three were killed along with their driver. Doctors said one of the boys was hit by 10 bullets to the head. Dr. Yael Kaynan, PJ media
Quite a message. Gaza is tragic; it is also redeemable if its inhabitants are willing to forsake the gunmen.
Written by jay on February 25th, 2008 with no comments.
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“Oscar is 80 this year, which makes him now automatically the front-runner for the Republican nomination.” _ Jon Stewart. newsweek
And we now have the official line on McCain this year.
Written by jay on February 25th, 2008 with no comments.
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Fresh from his triumphant outing of Boys Room Nazis, the lair Kinsella saddles up and rides to the rescue in Edmonton:
In the brave new Canada favoured by the National Post, PEN Canada, the Canadian Association of Journalists and Steyn’s Crusaders, no one really gives a sweet damn.
Suck it up, Pakistani community! It may make you feel like dirt, but that’s the way it is, now, in the New and Improved Canada!
I don’t think the National Post, PEN Canada or anyone else on the free speech side has suggested that vandalism - racist or otherwise - should be protected speech.
Back in the glory days of Kinsella’s washroom photography I wrote:
Hanging s. 13 on a bit of nasty graffiti shows just how intellectually bankrupt its defenders are. They want to justify its existence as a prophylactic against the one sort of speech it almost certainly cannot control. To give up free expression to better suppress graffiti is a bargain most of us will not make…*
Signs are defaced and ripped and knocked over in political campaigns. Some pretty nasty things are written on signs. S.13 and its provincial counterparts will do nothing whatsoever to to prevent that. Enforcement of the vandalism laws might.
Time to find another strawman, Warren.
Written by jay on February 25th, 2008 with 9 comments.
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Publius writes at The Gods of the Copybook Headings:
I have, as far back as I can remember, opposed the ideas of multiculturalism. The notion that all cultures - and therefore all ideas and values - are equal is appalling. It is at best moral equivalence and at worst plain racism under an “enlightened” guise. I also don’t remember inviting any Muslims into Canada, I have invited some Portuguese relatives - any country could always do with more Portuguese people, especially Portugal which seems to have gone all Belgian in the last twenty years.
As for inviting Muslims, I wouldn’t mind doing that at all. In doing so I’d just remind them that they are living in Canada now, and if they’d like to stay they must be loyal to ours laws, our values and our Queen. There are over 200 countries in the world, we are objectively one of the best. If you are honest enough to understand and admit this, act accordingly. Like the old British official who promised to hang widow killers, we should stand ready to do the same. the gods of the copybook headings
When I wrote below of the need for an open, no holds barred, immigration debate in Canada this is exactly the sort of position I was hoping to hear. It is not my position as I am increasingly inclined to believe that sorting Muslims from Islamists is near impossible and that the perversion of Islam preached and practiced by Islamists is entirely incompatible with liberal, secular democracy; but Publius’ suggestion had the merit of presuming nothing.
Now, whether Canadian society can shuck off thirty or forty years of the multicultural delusion is a whole other story. But it is a story which needs to be openly debated.
h/t the flea who has a long and interesting post on one of my all time favorite Frank Herbert novels
Written by jay on February 24th, 2008 with 7 comments.
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Jonathan Kay has a first rate piece up at the National Post’s Full Comment on how the Jewish community in Canada has dealt with free speech and hate speech. Go read it. But, before you do, a couple of thoughts.
The chilling effects of the Canadian and provincial Human Rights Code’s attempts to regulate speech go well beyond speech dealing with Jews or Muslims. In essence, they give the “offended” the right to take the conversation right off the table.
As my socon readers know to their pain, I am a huge supporter of same sex marriage and have been right from the go. But that does not for an instant mean that I think people should be prevented from criticizing SSM or homosexuality in general. And, realistically, that is one of the chilling effects of s.13 and its provincial cousins.
I also believe very strongly that we need to have a serious debate about immigration in Canada. Is it a good idea in general? Should the current system be restructured? Does it make sense to import people from third world nations which share few if any Canadian values? How do we avoid the “no-go” problems of England, the rioting “youths” of Denmark and France? Should we ever allow Islamists entry?
But there is a problem with such a debate: under the current law suggesting, for example, a moratorium on immigration from Islamic nations or Jamaica might get the writer hauled before a HRC.
Indeed, any suggestion that a particular minority is anything other than the greatest thing since sliced falafal runs the risk of attracting a s.13 complaint.
A few weeks ago, Mike Brock, made the very intelligent observation “Democracy is not a means by which to provide for free speech. Free speech is a means by which to provide for democracy.”
Where a law is on the books which restricts free speech the essential conversations of democracy are stilted or silenced. Now, the price for free speech is that the haters and the loonies and even the people at Rabble get to speak too. Happily, genuinely free speech will expose the bankruptcy of their ideas.
Update: Welcome Markists! You’ll be delighted to know you have arrived at the site of a man whom the liar Kinsella refers to as a Steyn Saladin. I am, of course, thrilled by the invective but wonder if I really have to rule “Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Hejaz, and Yemen” and reconquer Jerusalem from the Crusaders in the name of Steyn. Kinsella’s idea of an insult sounds more like very hard work to me.
Written by jay on February 24th, 2008 with 17 comments.
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