An Even Worse Better Deal!

Woohoo, the bill passed!

Yesterday, I gave you two posts for the price of one, if you ignore the fact that posts don't have a well-defined price. Well, today I'm lowering the bar upping the ante: three posts for the price of two!

The U.S. and Canadian Election Debates
This post is really about the Canadian election, so it doesn't count as a U.S. election post, and I haven't broken my promise to only write about the U.S. election once, unlike our Prime Minister who broke his fixed election date promise (to reference Dr. Horrible, "[Stephen Harper] corporate tool.")

The first debate I watched was the Obama-McCain debate, which was pretty funny, but only because we had to take a sip of beer every time someone said something stupid, and I drank four beers over the course of the debate. The second debate I watched was Biden-Palin, which was interesting at first, but soured pretty quickly. The last debate, which I finished watching at 1:30 AM, was the Canadian English Language Debate. For those who are not Canadian, you may know that we have two official languages, and therefore two debates. We also run our elections in 6 weeks, unlike the two-year-long put-me-in-a-come-till-it's-over-I-can't-TAKE-IT-ANYMORE marathon of hot air, posturing, and electioneering that the U.S. has.

There is really a stark contrast between the U.S. debates and the Canadian ones. For one thing, you only have two parties, so it's more adversarial and rhetorical in nature. We have five parties, so although it's confrontational, the targets keep shifting, and policies play a larger role. Watching the ObCain debates, I was laughing at the ridiculous things each side was saying, with McCain saying most of them ("I'm a maverick! A maverick, y'hear! And don't forget it!"), but watching the BidPal debates left my pessimistic and jaded. Obama and McCain liked to throw out soundbites and attack each other, but they at least paid lip service to ides about competing policies, but Biden and Palin left policy at the door. They were both constantly posturing, pretending to respect their opponents while misrepresenting and attacking them, and it was sad to behold.

I'll admit that I'm a little biased in that I'm proud of our Canadian government when compared with the U.S. one. Compared to Bush, Harper looks like another Lincoln or FDR. But I honestly believe that democracy is considerably stronger in Canada than in the States. There was rhetoric and there were lies, but the focus was on policy and competence, not on photogenics. I was actually interested while watching it because I got to see each party present and defend their policy, and although a lot of it is campaign promises, the policies were generally good.

I'm going to discuss the policies that were mentioned, so if you're not interested in Canadian politics, you probably don't want to read further. (Which leaves me with Sherwood and Isabel, maybe.) I'm going to tackle the issues party by party, starting with the one I thought did the best and ending with my least favourite.

1st - The Green Party of Canada, led by Elizabeth May: obviously, they're Canada's environmentalist party, and although they argue that they're not on the left/right spectrum but are rather advocates for the environment, they're pretty solidly progressive. I agree wholeheartedly with a great many of their policies, but am rather put off by their economic policy. Although there's an environmental argument to focus on producing locally, they take things to far and seem to be advocating protectionism. Now, I'm not a zealous free-tradist, as I think protectionism in the developing world is often justified, especially in capital markets, but protectionism in the developed world for populist reasons is simply inexcusable. All in all, I don't think the Green's economic policies are all that great, but they're the most likely to confront global issues like poverty and the environment, so they'd get my vote in theory. It's not very likely, but I really hope the Greens win a seat and start to play a larger role in government.

2nd - The New Democratic Party, led by Jack Layton: he was pretty amusing in the debate, as he had the best jabs and argued more passionately than others. The NDP is Canada's leftist party, (although if you consider environmentalism leftist, then it's more complicated), and they're the party that brough nationalized healthcare to Canada, which we generally consider a Good Move. And indeed, their social and economic policies have the greatest appeal to me, although I don't universally approve of them. For one thing, although both the Liberals and Greens have a green tax-shifting policy, the NDP does not, and generally isn't as concerned about the environment as social problems. However, I quite like their social justice problems, and was impressed that Layton brought up the social problems of the Natives. It's a close call between the Greens and NDP, but I'm not voting for either so the call is pretty arbitrary (shock horror! Not voting for my favourite party? Don't worry, all will be explained below.)

3rd - The Liberal Party, led by Stephane Dion: If you'd asked me a few months ago what I thought of the Liberal party, I'd probably have ranked them barely above the Conservatives (spoiler: they're at the bottom by a lot), and yet they're pretty close to the Greens and NDP. The Liberals are Canada's left-of-centre party, so as a fairly progressive person, there's a lot about the Liberals that I find objectionable. I wasn't really paying attention at the time, but I found the Liberal government under Paul Martin pretty lacklustre and incompetent. Under the Conservative government, I was really frustrated by their willingness to tacitly cooperate with the Conservatives, as Stephane Dion instructed his MPs not to vote on key issues. So far as I was concerned, the sooner the Conservatives were brought down, the better. On the other hand, it's possible that if they pulled down the minority government, voters would have been angry and voted in a Conservative majority, in which case I'd probably move to the States (not really.)

My opinion of them started to change when I read a pamphlet about "The Green Shift." It's a pretty clever plan to reduce carbon emissions by taxing fossil fuels, especially diesel and coal but not gasoline, which is already taxed, while simultaneously cutting income and corporate taxes. I'd prefer if corporations weren't getting a tax cut, but the policy is supposed to benefit low and middle-income families and small businesses much more than the rich and corporations. A key part of the plan is that it will be completely revenue-neutral, which will be enforced by Canada's Auditor General, an independent position with oversight over government spending. Their other policies are generally good, but too centrist for my liking.

However, I will be voting for the Liberal candidate in my riding. Obviously, this isn't my ideal choice, but there are other considerations that change my vote. I have a fairly low opinion of the Liberal candidate, who sold out the environment when she was Ministry of [the Environment] (it's actually Land, Water, and Air or something) in B.C. to corporate interests. But Oliver!?[2] you're an environmentalist! How could you contemplate such a thing as voting for her? I'm not voting for her, I'm voting for the Liberal Party and against the Conservatives. Honestly, I'd be happier if the Conservative candidate were running for the Liberals, as she's a UBC professor of business, so probably pretty smart. I like the Green Shift plan, and voting for the Liberals is the only way to have it enacted, and I strongly dislike the Conservatives (I reserve my hate for certain Republicans), and I would despair if the Conservatives earned a majority. The riding I'm in is pretty contested (the Liberal candidate won it by 153 votes in the last election), so ultimately I've decided to vote against the Conservatives.

4th: the Bloc Quebecois, led by Gilles Duceppe: the Bloc Quebecois are a federalist party representing Quebec's interests in government, but their relevance in recent years has declined since the heyday of Quebecois separatism. Duceppe himself acknowledges he won't be Prime Minister, and he's only there to represent the Quebecois.

5th: the Conservatives: I'm getting really tired of writing by now. I generally dislike the Conservatives' social and economic policies, and I find they tend to have less scruples than other parties (ironic considering how much they emphasize 'values.'), but at least their policies have a principle behind them that I can sort of respect. I have no respect what-so-fucking-ever for their environmental or corporate policies, and I think they're fucking Canada over, so fuck 'em. Worst case scenario: Conservative government and another ~4 years of bullshit, inaction, and screwing over Nature.

Two for the Price of One!

Updated to reflect the fact that the bailout plan passed. Woohoo!

1: A Note on the Financial Crisis
I've been paying some attention to the financial crisis in the U.S., and have tried to understand it somewhat. Here's a quick summary of my understanding:

The crisis started when the housing bubble started to deflate. The bubble was fed by subprime mortgages, which were offered to less-creditworthy people on the expectation that they could pay so long as housing prices kept increasing. When they stopped increasing, rates went up, and people were unable to pay, so they foreclosed. These debts have cut off all the lender's capital (i.e. operational money), so although the vast majority of loans are good, they don't have money to get from day to day, and financial institutions are collapsing. According to the (liberal) economists I've read, the best strategy for the government would be to nationalize financial groups, restructure and recapitalize them, and then privatise them once they're stable.

Unfortunately, nationalism is seen as an expletive by half the population of the U.S., so the government's ability to handle the crisis is reduced. Up until now, all they can do is save individual institutions: for instance, they brokered a deal where JP Morgan Chase bought WaMu after its collapse by taking on some of the risk of the purchase. However, the bailout plan that just passed allows the government to play a more active role, but less active than outright nationalism. Basically, the Treasury can buy the bad debt off of struggling institutions, freeing up capital flows and allowing the system to continue. The legislation doesn't fix the problems that led to the crisis in the first place, but it will keep the system stable until the next admnistration can fix some of the underlying problems.

II: A Superficial (and Crude) Examination of Gender Relations

Isabel often tells me that girls are all bitches, and I think that a lot of guys are assholes. Now, I don't believe girls are bitches, and I think Isabel is likely to be a lot less judgemental about most guys. This raises the interesting question of why we view our own gender negatively, and the other gender positively. Obviously, I'm going to be speaking in generalities, as not all girls are bitches or guys assholes, and in fact there are male bitches and female assholes.

Looking back, most of the friends I've had have been girls. When it comes to my closest friends, it's about even, but probably favoring guys. Now, I'm not a macho guy: I dislike violence and completely reject the "Fight Club" mentality, and I appreciate 'feminine' qualities like cooperation and sensitivity more than domination and guardedness. However, when it comes to good people who don't have stupid ideas and principles, I tend to relate more to guys due to our common understanding.

If you take an arbitrary person, I'm much more likely to like them if they[1] are a guy or a girl. For one thing, I'm heterosexual, and therefore attracted to girls, but I'm also a lot more tolerant of girls than guys. Part of it is the rejection of machismo I mentioned earlier, but the other part is that I tend to be more tolerant of what I don't understand as well. If I don't know why a girl is acting bitchy, then I won't assume the worst, but if I know why a guy is acting like an asshole, then I'll think he's an asshole.

One consequence of this is that I'm much more judgemental of left-brained people than right-brained people. Obviously, factors like "is this person an asshole" come up before "is this person more logical and linear, i.e. left-brained?", but assuming they're nice, I tend to like right-brained people more. For one thing, none of my friends claim to be rational, although some of them are better at math and logic. I tend to see the flaws in someone like my roommate in first year pretty quickly, Himanshu, who had very different principles and claimed to be hyper-rational, but basically ignored his irrationality. We got along alright, and it was interesting to meet someone with such different principles, but I couldn't really be friends with him.[2]

I should probably say that I consider myself more rational than many people. That's not to say that I'm a rational person: I have principles and traits that aren't based on reason at all. But I tend to question and justify my principles, examine how they frame my worldview, and generally analyze myself more than most people do. At a later point, I'll actually reveal the model I've developed of me.

To get back to the matter at hand and wrap things up: I reject machismo, find girls attractive, and forgive their flaws more readily, so I prefer girls to guys. I'm assuming that Isabel sees things the other way round: she understands girls, dislikes their "bitchy" attributes, but is attracted to guys and isn't as bothered by their flaws. She thinks guys are dumb though, and I don't think girls are, so I guess girls come off better in my view than guys do in hers. She should probably speak for herself, though- this is just what I'm speculating.

[1] - there is nothing wrong with using 'they' as the pronoun for an arbitrary single person. The idea that 'they' has to be a plural pronoun was decided by some jerk a couple of centuries ago, and has since made English even more confusing. So please, use 'they' for the singular.
[2] - I doubt Himanshu will read this, but just in case: I hope you don't view this as unfairly critical. It's basically what I think, but rather simplified.