canadian vote

If you haven’t already heard, we had an election and ended up in pretty much the same spot. What is interesting is how poorly “first past the post” vote counts did in representing Canadians. Here’s an excerpt of a newsletter sent out by Fair Vote Canada this morning…

The chief victims of the October 14 federal election were:

Green Party: 940,000 voters supporting the Green Party sent no one to Parliament, setting a new record for the most votes cast for any party that gained no parliamentary representation. By comparison, 813,000 Conservative voters in Alberta alone were able to elect 27 MPs.

Prairie Liberals and New Democrats: In the prairie provinces, Conservatives received roughly twice the vote of the Liberals and NDP, but took seven times as many seats.

Urban Conservatives: Similar to the last election, a quarter-million Conservative voters in Toronto elected no one and neither did Conservative voters in Montreal.

New Democrats: The NDP attracted 1.1 million more votes than the Bloc, but the voting system gave the Bloc 50 seats, the NDP 37.

Had the votes on October 14 been cast under a fair and proportional voting system, Fair Vote Canada projected that the seats allocation would have been approximately as follows:

Conservatives - 38% of the popular vote: 117 seats (not 143)
Liberals - 26% of the popular vote: 81 seats (not 76)
NDP - 18% of the popular vote: 57 seats (not 37)
Bloc - 10% of the popular vote: 28 seats (not 50)
Greens - 7% of the popular vote: 23 seats (not 0)

It’s really a shame that we don’t have instant run-off elections or some amount of proportional representation. I realize that Ontario tried and failed on the proportional representation referendum but I think that was more an issue of a poorly promoted idea than the rejection of the idea by the public.

Canada posts C$9.6 bln budget surplus in 2007-08 | Reuters. Our debt is $550 billion. In contrast, the bailout package in the US is for $700 billion.

house rejects bailout


From this graph, I’ll let you guess when the U.S House of Representatives rejected the Wall Street bailout.

This American Life - The Audacity of Government. “Stories of the Bush Administration, its unique style of asserting presidential authority, and its quest to redefine the limits of presidential power.” via ram.

22-year old with history of domestic abuse reportedly was awarded $300m Pentagon contract to supply Afghan troops | guardian.co.uk “Efraim Diversoli, 22, supplied stock that was 40 years old and rotting packing material.” damn, what were you doing when you were 22?

The Wire’s War on the Drug War - TIME. watching the last 3 episodes of the wire was one of the first things i did after getting back from argentina.

NSA’s Domestic Spying Grows As Agency Sweeps Up Data - WSJ.com. well that’s terrifying. via ram.

Ten things that won’t change (no matter who gets elected) | FP Passport
Ethanol subsidies, defense spending, war on drugs, etc.

Senate Passes Bill to Expand U.S. Spying Powers - New York Times. this bill also gives telco’s immunity for breaking the law and essentially allows warrent-less wiretaps. way to go democrats!

TheStar.com | Ontario cuts transit red tape. that seems like a good idea for the most part. what transit project isn’t going to have at least one person complain and stall it? via amr.

The Raw Story | Bush ‘kills’ Freedom of Information Act compliance officer. bush, still fucking things up in ‘08.

Taxpayers would get checks under economic stimulus plan - CNN.com. so everyone is going to get a cheque for $600? that sounds more like a bribe than stimulus. kind of a “hey! look over there!” move.

The War on Drugs and scopolamine, the perfect drug (kottke.org). i highly recommend the rolling stone article. It points out a lot of the interesting facts about smugglers that I read about in the book Illicit and the failures of stopping meth mentioned in a related Frontline report.

Senate Approves Trimmed - Back Energy Bill - New York Times. requires fleet average of 35MPG by 2020. That’s easy for cars by todays standards, definitely not for SUVs and trucks.

supreme court on guantanamo

Anton just sent me an NPR write-up on yesterday’s Supreme Court oral arguments on the habeas rights of Guantanamo prisoners. In summary, it seems the court is divided 4-4 along party lines with Justice Kennedy, as usual, holding the swing vote. There’s one part from the end of the write-up that I found really interesting and very troubling. It’s a comment from the defense attorney…

To illustrate his point, Waxman pointed to a case in which he said a detainee was finally released after four years in detention because the detainee, a German man, had “what other detainees have not had — a lawyer.” And when the lawyer filed a habeas petition in the federal courts, and the government filed a reply with its evidence, the lawyer saw that the government claimed the detainee had associated with a named terrorist who had blown himself up.

“Within 24 hours, his counsel had affidavits not only from the German prosecuter, but from the supposedly deceased Mr. Bilgen, who is a resident of Dresden, never involved in terrorism, and fully getting on with his life,” Waxman said.

Ending Famine, Simply by Ignoring the Experts - New York Times. it’s amazing how badly we fuck over africa with farm subsidies.

zefrank.com: “privacy”. solid ze frank commentary.

A ‘penniless’ Canada?. yes, scrap the penny. we’d save $130 million a year plus all the effects of mining a shit ton of resources.

What happens when your bank shuts down and gets taken over by the FDIC. turns out things go quite smoothly. thank god Bush hasn’t got around to fucking up this government corporation.

bureaucrats have no sense of style

cope-parking-meters.jpg
A funny little story that I just got off Ram about the new store that Apple is opening in Montreal. Apple wanted to get rid of the parking meters in front of the store, I guess they were a blight, and offered the city $35K over five years to make up for the lost revenue. The city said no.

As the article mentions, the city would also be saving on maintenance and collection. I think this is a great testament to the insanity that is politics in Quebec. I’m sure there’s also some labor union out there which would go on strike if someone lost their god-given right to empty out the parking machines on that street.