Aptenobytes

Oh, Come on Supremes.

What the fucking hell is wrong with the Supremes?

Today's decision was a disgrace. Canada Customs has been out of control, and a bookseller that has been our 'point person' in fighting their homophobic and anti-freedom crap has been told that if they want to fight the Canadian government with it's bottomless pockets in court, they have to do it out of their own pockets.

Little Sisters during it's best year ever made a profit of 25,000$. A court case that goes to the Supreme Court can cost up to 2$ million.

Canada's New Government recently cut the program that once upon a time paid for challenges like this. The Court Challenges Program was a smart and useful idea. What killed it was the fact that it was based on a single ideology. Here's where I stop vilifying the Courts for a decision that was bad from a political point of view (I haven't read it, so it may be OK from a legal POV), and rip into the politics....

See, this is the problem with right wingers...

The coverage of the Toronto municipal election by the Western Standard includes this lovely line:


And that leaves the worst for last. David "I love marching in the Pride Parade" Miller.

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See, they have to be bigots. The fact that David Miller is a typical nanny statist who has never met a government program that can't be expanded, and who has mismanaged the City of Toronto in spectacular fashion is undeniable. Does the right deride him for his all too many real flaws? Yes, in passing, but they can't help themselves. They just have to go for the bigot angle to start.

Hehe, I'm loving watching the Liberals stumble along

As the gong show of the Liberals leadership campaign continues, I'm constantly amazed at how few stars have joined the campaign. Really. Iggy is for all intents and purposes, an American, and an asshole. Rae basically walked away from his party solely for a shot at power and is an asshole (he's on my top ten most hated living politicians list). Dion is a disaster in the making. Then there's Volpe, favourite of the Zombie Liberal Contingent. hee hee.

Now I happen to stumble across this post from Steve Janke's Angry in the Great White North, which, for those who don't know is one of the better known right wing blogs, so it does have some small amount of credibility (as opposed to some unknown wacko... this is a known right wing wacko ;).

Pity the poor Liberal Party. They passed legislation that disallowed Corporate donations... and forgot that they are the party that benefitted the most from Bay St., and being out of power, they aren't getting their usual stream of bribes donations from real people.

I'm going to be giggling for a while.

IRB judge offers refugee claimant visa for RAPE

CTV.ca | IRB judge offers refugee claimant visa for affair:

No CTV, being given a choice between deportation and sleeping with an immigration judge is not an affair. It's sexual assault. It's using power and fear to intimidate someone into a sexual act.

Sometimes I wonder about reporters...

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update... looks like this one's getting picked up by a few more blogs...

The Throne Speech

Colour me underwhelmed. Call me when the budget comes out.

No surprises good or bad, with the exception of a remarkable silence on the subject of the gun registry.

Election Night in Canada - 2006

Went and voted. I've been in desperate need of a drink ever since the better to wash the taste out of my mouth. I'll blog the election as it happens. In the meantime, don't even think about posting results in the comments section until 7:00PM PST, as it might land me in jail. No, Really!

Election 2006 second post

OK, so I haven't been posting much. Sue me. I'm a jeweller in December swallowed up in the busiest season of the year, combined with having to fight two simultaneous battles. The first battle I've already discussed, the handgun ban. The second is also a reason to want to see the Liberals go down in flames, but it's more business oriented.

On November 25th, Bill C-259 got royal assent. That means it became law of the land. The act was entitled "an Act to amend the Excise Tax Act (elimination of the excise tax on jewellery)". One would assume that such an act would actually eliminate the excise tax on jewellery. Just one teensy little problem. The Budget Act of 2005 amended the Excise Tax Act also. After Bill C-259 passed in the House of Commons, the Liberals passed the budget act, which then leapfrogged past Bill C-259. Bill C-259 then stalled in the Senate until it passed in the dying days of this parliamentary session.

The amendment from the budget act did was two things. The first was to set out a schedule to reduce the excise tax on jewellery by 2% a year for five years until it disappeared. The second thing it did, and the truly nasty bit was to renumber the sections that apply to jewelllery from Schedule 1, Section 5a through 5b to Section(s) 5 - 5.3.

What did this insidious change do? It allowed the bureaucrats in the Excise Tax department to claim that since Bill C-259 changed only Section 5 of Schedule 1 of the Excise Tax. Not Sections 5.1 - 5.3 that the net effect was that it raised the excise tax on clocks back up to 10$, and removed the tax only on watches. Not any other type of jewellery.

Will the interpretation of the CRA stand? No. Any judge will interpret the will of parliament clearly, but in the meantime it is a clear example of the Liberal bureaucracy at work, obstructing the will of the elected members of a minority parliament.

I am so fucking incensed at yet another example of a bureaucracy that is willing to say 'fuck you' to parliament, that I shake with anger every time I think about it.

This is typical of how the Liberal Party operates. They have appointed these bureaucrats over the last umpteen years, and they do the bidding of their political masters.

As repugnant as the Conservatives are, I'd like to see them shake up the entrenched bureaucracy a bit.

Another reason that I'm going to bite the bullet and vote for a party I hate. :(

Election 2006 first post.

Unlike many anarchists, I vote. I'm not proud of it, and I understand the many arguments to be made for refusing to vote, but I don't agree with them. The government has too much control over our lives to not use one of the few tools we have to affect them.

So, you might ask, who are you going to vote for this election. It pains me to admit, but this election I am going to vote for a politician I hate, in order to defeat a politician I truly detest. I am going to vote for Laurie Hawn in order to defeat Anne McLellan.

What's that? What the hell is an anarchist doing voting for a right winger? That's just fucked up.

Yes. It is.

I am voting against the Liberal Party. I am voting against the Annie "get your guns" McLellan. There is no more perfect example of the statist than Ms. McLellan. Our Minister for Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness is pretty comfortable not only banning handguns, but also instituting all sorts of intrusions into our daily lives, like Bill C-74. It's a difficult decision for me, but it was sealed when Paul Martin announced that he was planning to ban handguns.

I've posted previously about my stance on the right to bear arms.... What the end result of this intrusion into my right to own guns will be I don't know. I do know that it affects me in a very direct way, and it is so much at odds with what I believe about personal responsibility, justice, and all of my core beliefs, that it trumps all for this election. I know that Denise Savoie will win in the other riding I am eligible to vote in, so if I could only vote here, I'd probably vote Green, or spoil my ballot.

However, with a race as close as the one in Edmonton, I feel compelled to do my best to oust the nasty piece of work that is Anne McLellan.

Blech. I suspect that on January 23rd I'll need more than one drink before I go to vote. Trading a larger evil for a smaller one leaves a nasty taste in my mouth.

I may change my mind, but right now I am so mad about the handgun ban, that I am spitting tacks.

McGuinty, the deaths of thousands of innocent dogs will be on your hands.

CANOE -- CNEWS - Canada: McGuinty defends pit bull ban:


The second part of the ban means all pit bull puppies born from now on must be destroyed, given to a research facility, or shipped out of the province.




You bastard. You smug bastard. Words fail me.

Every so often it's worth working in the system.

Last Friday the Senate of Canada passed the first ever private members bill that eliminated a tax. The Excise Tax on Jewellery is gone.

Ten years work for me, and nearly a hundred years for the jewellery industry of Canada, was finally successful.

About bloody time.