Musings on Valentines Day but not about it.

Have a number of unrelated things to talk about but feeling like a blog post anyway. . .

First the Federal Cons who have today tabled  Investigating and Preventing Criminal Electronic Communications Act and to amend theCriminal Code and other Acts that will let the police (and maybe the government and/or its agencies) get information about your web identity and data about you WITHOUT A WARRANT.  What the hell is this?  As an excuse they are suggesting that if you have nothing to hide it won't affect you (where have I heard this before?   And in addition, yesterday the Minister Vic Toews suggested that if you oppose this act you must be some sort of pedophile/pornographer.   Sheesh . . .  Stand for Civil Liberties and stand  accused of heinous crimes.  Good article in the Globe and mail -- "Stand with Us or with the child Pornographers".

Or this article by John Ibbitson that asks - why  do the Cons supporters want the Long From Census and the Gun registry gone because they are such an invasion of privacy but want to allow such invasive surveillance of citizens on the internet?

You can sign a petition to oppose this bill and "stop online spying"  at: http://openmedia.ca/mp

Then of course we have the so-called "omnibus crime bill" - coming soon to a court near you.  We have a few mandatory sentences already though the new bill expands that -- so judges are bristling about losing their discretion based on the facts of the case, and one has refused to impose a minimum sentence. 

"An Ontario Superior Court judge has refused to impose a mandatory three-year sentence on a man caught with a loaded handgun, putting the courts on a collision course with the federal government’s belief in fixed sentences that provide judges with little discretion."

And from an article by Armine Yalnizyan -- CCPA Senior Economist -- in the Globe & Mail -- comes an analysis of corporate taxes and the issues it raises, along with the list of workers being attacked and asked to take less across the country:

Newly aggressive demands that workers give up income join the decades-old demands that governments give up revenue. The implicit deal is that lower taxes create more investment and competitive cost structures create more demand. Both supposedly create more (good-paying) jobs. Lower taxes, check. Lower payroll costs, check. More good-paying jobs here at home: Insert sound of crickets chirping.

In case that's not clear - the government reduces taxes for corporations so that they will invest in Canada and "create jobs" .  They also attack workers and collective agreements, and support private firms doing so,  so that there is a better "business climate" so that the companies will invest in Canada and "create jobs" but no matter how low the taxes, how educated and reliable and productive the workforce, even how profitable the company -- waddya' know - no jobs - just increasing shareholder profits - and in Canada lots of money flowing to parent corporations in the U.S. and other countries.

If new economic and political realities are not enough to bum you out on this Valentines Day , then think of the planet (not sure why I want you to be bummed out - just finding it hard to be optimistic myself this morning)  graphically - a reprise of the 1972 Big Blue marble photo was taken in January and NASA says:

It was also a good day because of the striking way it could demonstrate to us just how much the planet has changed in 40 years. As Jeff Masters, the web's most widely read meteorologist, explains, "The US and Canada are virtually snow-free and cloud-free, which is extremely rare for a January day. The lack of snow in the mountains of the Western US is particularly unusual. I doubt one could find a January day this cloud-free with so little snow on the ground throughout the entire satellite record, going back to the early 1960s."

We are in deep doo-doo. . . Lots of extreme weather data in the article on Al Jazeera quoted above and then this:

In the face of such data - statistics that you can duplicate for almost every region of the planet - you'd think we'd already be in an all-out effort to do something about climate change. Instead, we're witnessing an all-out effort to... deny there's a problem.

And so it goes. . . Have a great day.