- Thomas Walkom puts the Cons' anti-environmental hysteria in perspective by noting how our cabinet ministers are going out of their way to sound like the most fringy of lunatic Tea Partiers:
America’s Exxon Mobil, Britain’s BP, France’s Total E&P, China’s SinoCanada Petroleum Corp. and Japan Canada Oil Sands Ltd. have all asked for intervenor status at the hearings. So has the South Korean conglomerate Daewoo.- Elizabeth Thompson points out that several Lib riding associations are facing deregistration or failing to submit annual returns. But it's worth taking a closer look at which ones are affected: it isn't only longtime dead zones for the Libs that are seeing a complete organizational breakdown, but ridings like the Yukon and Laval—Les Îles which the Libs held until last year's election, or Oakville which they held until 2008. In fact, of the 9 ridings which are deregistered or haven't yet filed a 2010 return, 6 were held by a Liberal MP at least once since the Libs last took power under Jean Chretien in 1993.
But foreigners who support the pipeline aren’t the outsiders that Prime Minister Stephen Harper claims to be worried about. As Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver explained to CBC television on Monday, these are the good foreign interests.
The bad foreign interests are the ones who help fund environmental critics of the pipeline. Oliver calls these bad elements “billionaire socialists … people like George Soros.”
If this weren’t a cabinet minister talking, it might be amusing. The Internet is filled with conspiracy theorists who view Soros, a self-made Hungarian-American tycoon, as evil incarnate.
The biggest rap against him seems to be that he openly opposed former U.S. president George W. Bush.
In Tea Party circles, this might count as socialism. But when a Canadian cabinet minister uses the term, he sounds — well — nuts.
- Of course, it's fair to say things have changed since the 1990s. But that also serves as reason to be skeptical of the Libs' preening in Toronto-Danforth: the riding has always been one where the NDP has easily outperformed its general Ontario support levels, and so the fact that Dennis Mills held it when the party support numbers were radically different doesn't look like much of an indicator of future performance when the NDP is holding its own in province-wide numbers.
- Sixth Estate reminds us that if we go out of our way to attack the pension security of our elected officials, that will only increase their tendency to use political power to try to set themselves up to make money elsewhere.
- Finally, Frances Russell points out what may be a more important change than the raw numbers involved in the Cons' health-care diktat to the provinces, as they've also imposed a new per-capita formula designed to make sure that money doesn't flow where it's needed most. And it's worth noting that Brad Wall for one is pushing to make matters worse.
[Edit: fixed numbers in count of ridings.]
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