Tories

Harper’s Crime Bill according to Texas

/ ginny200 / Leave a comment

Texas conservatives reject Harper’s crime plan – Canada – CBC News.

If you missed this article on the CBC news website, have a look. According to the Texans who have “been there, done that,” incarceration on the scale Mr. Harper is planning will cost billions of dollars and won’t work. That’s right. No decrease in crime. No decrease in drug use. What works? Treatment of drug addicts, outside of the prison system.

I don’t want to pay huge amounts to build new prisons, incarcerate countless young people and have nothing to show for it at the end but regret as expressed by these Texans, Republican to the core.

“Marc Levin, a lawyer with an anti-tax group called Right on Crime, argues that building more prisons is a waste of taxpayers’ money.

“We’ve see a double-digit decline in the last few years in Texas, both in our prison incarceration rate and, most importantly in our crime rate,” says Levin.

“And the way we’ve done it is by strengthening some of the alternatives to prison.””

I just don’t get it. I can understand the Tories not being swayed by the sociological, psychological and moral arguments, but thought they would accept the economic one. I thought they were supposed to be pragmatic, bottom line guys. Just ideologues, the bunch of them.

Why do we have to go down this well-worn path to failure?

Another big lie?

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“allowed the party to exceed the campaign spending limits and allowed candidates to claim rebates on expenses that weren’t actually incurred, the agency said.”

via Campaign financing ruling goes against Tories – Canada – CBC News.

So all the time the Tories were running those nasty attack ads, they were fudging the books. Why do people keep voting for these people. They’re contemptuous of Parliament; take the low road whenever possible, and apparently thinks it’s okay to use taxpayer money to exceed the spending limits. That’s called stealing in the Ottawa Valley where I was raised.

Long-form census

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datalibre.ca · Uses of Census Long-form data – Question Justification.

http://kempton.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/voluntary-census-long-form-questionnaire-wasting-35-years-worth-of-canadians-census-effort/

Harper’s census push months in the making – The Globe and Mail.

The controversy re the long form census continues. The link from datalibra details the various uses for the information in the long form. Kempton, in his blog laments the waste of all the previous censuses. The next point in the graph will be missing, he says.

The Globe and Mail reporter Michael Valpy interviews Harper’s thesis advisor, and he suggests the decision is ideologically driven by a “libertarian philosophy.”

Jane Tabor in the Ottawa Citizen says if you want libertarians, look to the seniors and they are angry over the decision and have no trouble with the privacy issue. The link to her column follows: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/retirees-wary-of-tory-census-move/article1651910/

A CARP conducted poll show the Tories slipping an amazing 10 points among their members, who are among the usually stalwart Tory voters.

I recall that my mother, who lived to almost 85, had trouble with the census in any form, not because of the questions, or the government having the information, but because it was a neighbour acting as census taker. She objected to someone in the community knowing her business. That doesn’t seem to be an issue for CARP members.

In medicine, samples have to be representative of the population being studied. If too many drop out, the study is invalid. I think we need the mandatory count so we can be sure of our information, and decisions based on it. Facts, not philosophy.