The Canadian Press: Income gap widens between Canada's rich and poor, OECD study says

Byoliveridley

The gap between the rich and poor in Canada widened significantly in a recent 10-year period partly because Ottawa spent less on cash benefits than many other developed countries, the OECD says.

It was a reversal of the trend in the two previous decades when the gap was narrowing, the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development said in a report.
via The Canadian Press: Income gap widens between Canada’s rich and poor, OECD study says

Just like our southern neighbour, of course. This is no liberal-conservative divide issue, but a consequence of the neoliberal deregulation and tax-cutting policies so popular since the mid ’90s. Inequality deepens divisions within a country and creates a ruling class that is increasingly vested in keeping the inequality going as it benefits them.

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    The LA Times and the American Chemistry Council

    Byoliveridley

    Giving the American Chemistry Council a forum to sing paeans to its chemical du jour is kinda like giving Donald Trump an Op-Ed column on the harmlessness of gambling. The ACC is a trade association that gets all its funding from the chemical industry and is the reliable source on producing just about enough fudge to create “reasonable doubt” about chemicals. The ACC is notorious for its various astroturf websites including the Phthalate information center, the Plastic Resource, dioxin facts (seeing a pattern here?), and many other websites that propagate biased industry funded research, outright misinformation, and unrestrained cheerleading. They also spend vast amounts of money lobbying congress. Bora, and other Open Access advocates, note the similarities in the arguments used in the above websites to some recent attacks on Open Access, the imprint of Nicholas-Dezenhall is all over the ACC’s strategies!

  • Hold Your Heads Up – A defence of American Liberals

    Byoliveridley

    Civil rights? Women’s rights? Liberals went to the mat for them time and again against ugly, vicious and sometimes murderous opposition. They should be forever proud.The liberals who didn’t have a clue gave us Social Security and unemployment insurance, both of which were contained in the original Social Security Act. Most conservatives despised the very idea of this assistance to struggling Americans. Republicans hated Social Security, but most were afraid to give full throat to their opposition in public at the height of the Depression.

    Op-Ed Columnist – Hold Your Heads Up – Op-Ed – NYTimes.com

    Bob Herbert is one of the few major US columnists giving voice to the dispossessed and the less than lucky. He writes a very eloquent post about liberal achievements over the years. Good stuff…

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    Chemical Warfare

    Byoliveridley

    This story from a local Chicago TV station does an excellent job of documenting the chemical weapons dropped on Vietnam by the United States in the 1960s, the effects they still have on Vietnam, and the Americans who handled these so called “defoliants”.

    cbs2chicago.com – Agent Orange: A View From Vietnam

    During the eight years of the Vietnam War that the U.S. Military dusted the Vietnamese landscape with Agent Orange, it was only intended to kill vegetation. It was a combination of two herbicides 2,4D and 2,4,5T mixed together into the most potent plant killer ever made. It was spread over 3 1/2 million acres of forests and crops to kill the trees and vegetation so the United States troops could see the enemy. The Armed Forces were told it was harmless. But in March 1978, Bill Kurtis broke the story on CBS 2 that American veterans of Vietnam who had been exposed to Agent Orange were complaining of illnesses, birth defects among their children, skin rashes, cancer, nervous problems and respiratory problems.

    orange3_small.jpgPeople tend to blame dioxins for all the health effects. But 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T, constituents of Agent Orange, are no spring chickens. Exposure during spraying, especially of the grossly excessive amounts that rained down upon Vietnam, can cause various health effects as well, not to mention long-term devastation of entire ecosystems.

    Side note: New Zealand, in 2004, apologized to New Zealand’s “veterans” for their exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam war. Not a word to the Vietnamese, of course.

    Side note 2: A US Federal court, in 2005, dismissed the first claims brought by Vietnamese plaintiffs against Dow Chemicals and Monsanto, here was the government’s  reasoning:

    In a brief filed in January, it said opening the courts to cases brought by former enemies would be a dangerous threat to presidential powers to wage war.

    Translation: We reserve the right to drop chemical weapons on our “enemies”, and doing anything to abrogate this right is “dangerous”.

    Image courtesy of Reuters shows a Vietnamese child, one of many with birth defects associated with Agent Orange exposure.

  • Vice President Piyush (Bobby) Jindal?

    Byoliveridley

    On Feb. 8, a caller to The Rush Limbaugh Show asked the conservative host if there were any chance of McCain adding Newt Gingrich to the presidential ticket. Sighing audibly, Limbaugh regretfully described it as unlikely before rattling off the usual list of names of potential VPs. One stood out. “Bobby Jindal,” the host declared, pausing for effect. “I did an interview with Bobby Jindal. He is the next Ronald Reagan, if he doesn’t change. Bobby Jindal, the new governor of Louisiana, is the next Ronald Reagan.”

    Vice President Bobby Jindal? | The American Prospect

    Piyush Jindal was an unnaturally precocious kid who picked up his name bobby at the age of four from watching the Brady Bunch. Did he know then that Bobby Jindal would be Rush Limbaugh’s choice for Vice President, whereas Piyush Jindal would be earning millions in a law firm somewhere? As a South Asian, I guess I am expected to feel good about this guy who won political office multiple times in the state of Louisiana, no less. He’s only 36 years old! When has the presidential candidate been twice as old as his running mate?

    Obviously, he’s something special, someone so smart and charismatic that he’s reached achieved great power and fame in politics at an age when most people are just starting out. One note of caution on his achievements, they’ve all been in the state of Louisiana, a state so mismanaged and corrupt that the application of a technocratic approach would yield such immediate and obvious benefits.

    During his tenure, Jindal turned a $400 million deficit into a budget surplus by cutting per-beneficiary Medicaid spending  and reducing the work force by 1000 employees,

    Low hanging fruit, eh! (maybe not, he’s a smart guy who knows how to get things done!)

    His religious and social beliefs?

    On social issues, Jindal has a record only James Dobson could love. He strongly and openly opposes abortion (without exception, even in cases of rape and incest), supports teaching intelligent design in public schools, has proposed bans on both stem-cell research and flag burning, and voted for a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman. McCain, on the other hand, has flip-flopped on all these issues except flag burning.

    On McCain’s biggest problem with the conservative base, immigration, Jindal would be an effective counterbalance: He has consistently been an outspoken opponent of illegal immigration, and voted in favor of building a border fence. His economic record is a bit less dogmatic. He tends to vote against free trade agreements like CAFTA but consistently sides with energy interests over environmentalists. For example, he favored a motion to lift the moratorium on offshore gas drilling, one of many votes that led the League of Conservation Voters to give him a rating of just 7 percent.

    There you have it, full on religious fanatic anti-environment far-right conservative! Here’s a guy who would force a 12 year old girl to give birth to a child that was the product of her father raping her. Hate to get graphic, but that’s what Mr Jindal supports, plain and simple.

    It would be very interesting to get into Mr Jindal’s head. What made this kid in high school convert to Christianity? This article tries to shed some light. However, its only source is a letter written by Bobby himself. Like with most human beings, that whole post-event rationalization is on full tilt!

    His combination of skills and ideas is hardly rare in South Asian circles. South Asians of a certain upbringing tend to be well educated, competent, technocratic (can’t get that word out of my head, that’s what he is, Bobby “the technocrat” Jindal), while simultaneously being very socially conservative. I can understand the abortion ideas, or the anti-gay ideas,  and the further anti-evolution and anti-environment pandering. He seems to have made a quick study of every conservative virtue and has decided to make them all his own, no straying for Bobby “the conformist” Jindal! he even has one token non-conformist “anti free-trade” position, Cho Chweet!!

    But no, if I had a vote, I would never vote for him, even if we may share an ethnicity. His ideas about government, church-state separation, evolution, war, abortion and the environment are abhorrent to me. But, he will make a fairly formidable candidate. This is probably not his time, I would give him a few more years.

    FWIW, McCain’s probably going to pick Huckabee as his VP to reel in the religious right, but Jindal’s not going anywhere yet.

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    Sri Lankan Government registers all Tamils

    Byoliveridley

    The Americans put all citizens of Japanese origin into camps for the duration of the World War. Did you know that?’She did not say anything.‘What if we place all Tamil citizens in camps for a period of one year,’ I asked. ‘We’d use that year to flush out and kill all the rebels hiding in the Wanni. You can’t blow up our cities when your bombers are not allowed free access to economic and civilian targets, pretending to be innocents.’‘That idea is barbaric. It is only a short step from there to the gas chambers,’ she said furiously and then brightened. ‘But I like the idea. When you start on it, the whole world will condemn you…. It will help our cause in other ways as well. We’ll have plenty of new recruits and funding from our expatriate community will increase immediately.’‘Oh, I understand that the idea is impractical but we don’t have many options.’”So goes the dialogue between Captain Wasantha Ratnayaka, the Sinhalese officer in the Sri Lanka Army, and Kamala Velaithan, a female cadre of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who pretends to be an informer of the diabolical plans of the Tigers, in the much-acclaimed novel of the late Nihal de Silva titled The Road from Elephant Pass.On September 21, the Sri Lankan government almost made real this surreal scenario with its diktat that all citizens from the five districts of the LTTE-dominated North who have been living in and around Colombo (Western Province) for the past five years “re-register” themselves with the police.The professed logic of the government, or to be precise the Defence Ministry, was almost on the lines narrated by Captain Ratnayaka in the novel but with a twist. While the officer-character portrayed in the novel concurs with the illogic of its logic, the collective wisdom of the Sri Lankan establishment did not betray signs of any such reasoning. Even assuming it did, the drumbeats of war have numbed its senses to such an extent that Colombo has stopped bothering about the repercussions of its actions.The latest move by the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime is astonishing to say the least as just over a year ago the government was condemned from within and without for a similar action. Besides, it comes at a juncture when the armed forces have driven the LTTE into wilderness in its own heartland and the entire world is lined up behind the government in its war.

    Profiling problem

    More on the Sri Lankan government’s astonishingly appalling treatment of Tamils. Clearly, they do not view Tamils as equal citizens of Sri Lanka. The Sinhalese state bears equal responsibility for Sri Lanka’s problems. I do not know what this sudden increase in pressure from India will do. There is some indication that the Sri Lankan government is paying attention.

    A day after India officially communicated to Colombo the need for a peacefully negotiated political settlement to the Tamil issue in Sri Lanka, President Mahinda Rajapaksa telephoned Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday to give an assurance that all necessary measures were being taken to ensure the safety and welfare of Tamils in the island nation.

    Very empty and meaningless words. My question is, who will speak for the Tamils in a negotiated settlement. Are there any credible voices for peace on either side of the conflict?

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    Diacetyl Media Coverage Rant

    Byoliveridley

    06Sep07Capture.jpgFeel free to disregard if you don’t like rants, but the NY Times story of one man’s at-home exposure to diacetyl and the resulting case of bronchiolitis obliterans has made the most emailed list as of 06-Sep-07, and propelled diacetyl into the big time. Now, anyone who keeps half an eye on occupational health issues (or reads the pump handle) would have known that at least 5 workers in the flavoring industry had died of this disease, and many many more were afflicted by bronchiolitis obliterans. Yet, the press completely ignored this issue. As soon as one person had the same problem at home, it suddenly became a frontpage issue, causing all kinds of backpedalling by Conagra and big popcorn (gotta love that phrase!!).

    There is a casual and systemic disregard for blue collar worker’s rights in this country, starting from an institutional distaste for unions, lack of health coverage, job security, pensions, playing one set of workers against the other, using selectively and arbitrarily enforced immigration laws to keep workers pliant, putting industry executives and lobbyists in charge of agencies that are supposed to keep workers’ welfare in mind, stressing “voluntary” regulation. failing to react to new information, I could go on and on, but you know the deal.

    Why is it that the US national press can identify so much easier with one isolated case of popcorn lung while having ignored all the other occupational exposure cases? I am just a scientist, no sociologist/economist/anthropologist, but it seems to me that the press here is way too white collar and just cannot relate to the average agricultural/industrial worker. The average journalist is a white man with a journalism major from a reputable school who cut his chops doing unpaid work for the school paper. These kinds of educational and apprenticeship requirements filter the journalist worker pool to a rather homogeneous white, middle class tepidity. Because the average journalist can’t identify with issues faced by blue collar America, there’s this unstated assumption that somehow, their lives are hard and fraught with danger and uncertainty, but they don’t really deserve much better, it’s their lot in life. It’s probably because they did not study hard enough or were smart enough.

    As usual, there are no easy answers. I would say Agitate, Agitate, Agitate!! But what do I know about blue collar America? People are working so hard to make ends meet without a safety net or anyone looking out for them that they have just about enough energy to get through the day and face the next one.