Excellent Climate Change Allegory

These past few weeks have involved long hours sitting at my computer trying to hammer out my thesis and ignore the uncomfortable sensation of sweat sticking me to my chair or trickling down my side. Thankfully, I do not suffer from hyperhidrosis, but it has simply been incredibly hot and humid.  In fact, this summer has brought on another record set of heat waves, which one can only hope will finally galvanize political environmental action.  Of course, this hope is likely in vain.  Media Matters published an excellent article on the coverage of the recent heat wave, which is worth reading:

In December 2008 the Washington Post reported that AT&T and DuPont planned to lay off a combined 14,500 employees. The lead of the story said: "Need more proof that the recession is real? An onslaught of grim unemployment and layoff reports yesterday should dispel any lingering doubts."

Was the recession the only force behind these job cuts? No. Other variables would be needed to explain why the layoffs were hitting these specific companies, at this time, and at this scale. But the recession was the obvious background condition, the broader context that could not go unmentioned in a proper news report on the layoffs, and there was no hand-wringing about drawing the connection. The article didn't caution that "No single bankruptcy or job cut can be definitively blamed on the recession." No one waited for a computer model to precisely sort the causes of these layoffs. No one tracked down a contrarian to point out that layoffs happened long before the recession and that, in fact, such-and-such a company somewhere is hiring.

Which brings me to the massive heat wave that we're now emerging from. Scientific observation and analysis have established that human-induced climate change makes extreme heat events more common. But when heat waves hit, many reporters hesitate to mention climate change without appending disclaimers of the sort that you don't see on other beats.

Go read the rest of the article.  As with all allegories, it is obviously not a perfect fit, but it does an excellent job of showcasing the frustrating manner in which environmental issues, particularly climate change, is treated by the media.

What does Stephen Harper think public scientists are for?

Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada have never provided a convincing illusion of being good for either science or the environment, but they nevertheless managed to wheedle enough support to squeeze out a majority government^*.  Somehow, a slim majority has put it into Harper's head that this now means that his party doesn't just lead the Government of Canada, but rather that they are the Government of Canada (or, rather, that the Government of Canada shall now henceforth be renamed the Harper Government).  Taking this
conflation and running with it, Harper has consistently taken the view that government scientists must get approval before speaking with the press.  The latest example of this policy is a letter sent to Parks Canada employees informing them that it is their "duty" to support the Harper government.  The bizarre logic behind this policy seems to be that Harper views Canadian scientists as employees of the government, and since he views the Government of Canada and the Harper Government as synonymous entities, all Canadian scientists (and all other civil servants, by the same logic) are now expected to toe the Conservative line.

Which leads me to conclude that Harper must not understand what public science is for.  After all, supporting party policy is the job of politicians and pundits, not scientists.  It is this fundamental misunderstanding, then, which leads to the short-sighted axing of huge swathes of Canadian science.  For example, the government claims that halting funding for the Experimental Lakes Area makes sense because it no longer fits with Ottawa's mandate.  Such a line of reasoning actually does make sense if one believes that the job of government scientists is to support government policy, since the current government doesn't actually care about fresh water preservation or protection.

Civil science in actuality is meant to service the people of the country, not the policy of the government.  Of course, this is an old struggle between scientist and politician, but I had honestly believed that a modern understanding had come to pass acknowledging the necessary degree of autonomy and impartiality relegated to scientific and regulatory bodies (like Parks Canada).  It is this fundamental perversion of the relationship between policy and empirical study which, to me, is the most disturbing aspect of Harper's leadership.


^{* For anyone who voted for the Conservatives because they were sick of a minority government leading to constant elections, that's a terrible argument.  Sometimes having a non-functional Parliament is better than having one which will toe the line for bad policy.}

Conscientious Objection

There is currently a political debate in the United States spurred on by Republican and Catholic histrionics regarding access to contraception. In an increasingly common marriage of convenience, Republicans and Catholics (along with several other misogynistic religious groups, but the Catholic influence here is particularly overt) have joined forces to try and prevent contraception from being provided as part of regular health coverage.

Along with the fight over whether or not access to contraception should be part of regular health care (short answer: it should) this debate has prompted the resurgence of the idea that health care workers, particularly those at religious health care institutions, should be allowed to refuse to provide contraceptive services to patients on the grounds of conscientious objection. This is just ludicrous, and I'm not sure how it keeps coming up.

1.) Refusing to provide contraception is not making a personal decision

The standard line in support of contraception is that the health care worker is personally against the use of contraception, and therefore cannot condone providing it. The thing is, this is not comparable to the conscientious objectors in wartime. The original conscientious objectors are refusing to physically go off to war, risk death, and shoot people themselves. No one is asking the health care worker to pop a pill or throw on a condom.

For the particularly thick-headed who cannot seem to understand this difference, try this: imagine going into a grocery store, waiting in one of those horrible cashier lines, and discovering once you finally get to the front that the cashier is a member of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness^* (more widely known as a Hare Krishnan). The cashier informs you that he cannot in good conscience sell you your meat, eggs, cola, tea, or coffee, as the consumption of those are against his religious beliefs, but he will be happy to ring your apples and lettuce through for you. If you want to buy the rest of your groceries, you'll have to wait in a different line. If he happens to be the only cashier on hand at the moment, you'll just have to put your groceries back and go to a different grocery store, or come back later when another cashier is on hand. Now imagine try and take that indignant response to call the manager and explain that the cashier can refrain from eating whatever the hell he wants, but he has no right to tell you what food you can buy, and imagine how much greater than indignation must be for something far more personal than what you are going to be eating for dinner that night.

2.) Not all contraception is about birth control or even sex

This is really simple: just because oral contraception can be used to drastically reduce the chances of pregnancy from unprotected sex does not mean that is the only reason for taking it. In fact, a report released this past November (link to the pdf) by Rachel K. Jones of the Guttmacher Institute claims that over 1.5 million women use birth control pills exclusively for non-contraceptive purposes. Even though it is not up to the health care worker to judge whether women should be having sex for non-reproductive purposes in the first place, refusing to provide contraceptive pills can put the health of women at risk for reasons entirely unrelated to sex.

3.) Health care has standards of practice

Health care workers are not like employees in all fields. Health care (and here I am referring to real health care, not alternative medicine nonsense) has standards of practice that are not optional for very good reasons based on an understanding of human health and physiology. The decisions for what constitutes standards of care can only reasonably be expected to be developed by health experts themselves, and legislating exceptions or specific procedures by an assembly largely made up by individuals ignorant of medical knowledge is nonsensical and potentially even dangerous.

^* Obviously this could work with a variety of religions and products.

Dirty Energy Money

The website Dirty Energy Money was recently brought to my attention. It attempts to track the flow of fossil fuel money through the United States Congress, a lofty goal in my books. The site is highly interactive, and they have gathered an impressive amount of campaign contribution information. Without a good deal of marketing or getting picked up by a major news outlet, however, I'm not sure the website will have the impact it is trying for.

The Crazy Check

Political advertisements are by their nature awkward, particularly for candidates that don't have the budget for a slick promotional team. If you are running for office, though, the one thing you should always ensure is that your ad doesn't make you look flat out insane.


(via Deus Ex Malcontent)

Book Review: Advice and Dissent

I finished reading the book Advice and Dissent: Scientists in the Political Arena, by Joel Primack and Frank von Hippel, a little over a month ago^*. It is probably the driest book I have ever found absolutely enthralling. Primack and Hippel are both respected physicists, and they shared the American Physical Society's Forum Award in 1977 for their work on Advice and Dissent (the book was published in 1974). What Primack and Hippel do is essentially analyze the role of scientific and technical advisors in the American government through a series of case studies. Although all the case studies surround issues from well before my time (for example: supersonic transport, antiballistic missile systems, and the banning of cyclamates), I found the analysis and power structures involved were still very much relevant today. Primack and Hippel, while they were clearly not neutral on the issues involved, presented their arguments lucidly and concisely with exhaustive lists of references.

As I said, the specific case studies are all fairly dated (although the details are nonetheless quite interesting. I think I would go so far as to say that Nixon was, in fact, something of a crook), but the issues that are discussed in their context translates well into our present age. While I highly recommend that anyone interested in technical and scientific expertise in the realm of public policy (and, considering that my friend Paul is starting a graduate program in public policy at MIT this September (congratulations, again!), I know of at least one person reading this who is) should pick up a copy of Advice and Dissent to get the authors' full discussion and contextual development, I thought I would at least reflect with my own thoughts on two of the most salient issues that were highlighted.

The first major issue is the unequal power structure between a science advisor and politician. The politician is in no way bound to listen to the advice of the advisor, while the advisor is bound by confidentiality in both implicit and explicit forms. Explicitly this takes the form of directly classifying all reports and experimental findings of the advisor as confidential. The politicians are then free to claim scientific support for their position, regardless of what the findings actually are. Implicit confidentiality arises from the fact that if the advisor endeavours to make their own opinion known publicly (in colloquial terms: kick up a stink) they often find themselves dismissed (see here for a modern example) or, in the case of consultants without official appointments to begin with, ignored in future calls for advisory panels^**. Although these points seem obvious in retrospect, I found the discussion nevertheless quite illuminating. I always assumed that much of the problems of modern policy decisions lay in a lack of scientific advisors or inadequately qualified appointees. Although I think an advisory lack remains an issue, the institutional power disparity is a much deeper problem and intrinsic to the current implementation of scientific advisory boards.

The second major issue was actually one which shook my preconceptions much harder. Whereas the institutional gagging of technical advisors did little to disrupt any preconceived notions of mine, the authors also presented numerous instances of regulatory failure by the institutions whose very existence is designed to protect citizens. Long-time readers (and those privy to personal political discussions with me) are aware of my general trust in bureaucratic institutions and regulatory boards (like the FDA). The FDA (and the HPFB in Canada) are mandated to protect the consumer from unsafe food and medical products. While I have previously noted major risks in consumer protection through restrictions of agency powers over certain classes of products (like the natural products debacle), I generally felt that agencies like the FDA, if adequately funded and left to their own devices, were generally competent and interested primarily in consumer protection. In the case of the construction of nuclear power generators, they even document how the task of ensuring generator safety was given over to the same entity in charge of building the plants in the first place (does that not sound familiar to the off-shore drilling situation we have now?).

Thus, while Primack and Hippel thankfully don't launch into any sort of nonsensical libertarian screeds about how regulatory agencies should be abolished and we should let the free market take control, they carefully outline and document numerous examples of institutional apathy, obstruction, and manipulative changes to regulations that confounded the mandates of protective agencies. Their analysis is nuanced and realistic, calling not for the abolishment of governmental regulatory agencies (after all, the resources of those institutions are usually necessary to carry out the appropriate safety tests and enforce regulations - something that we could easily invest even more money in), but for an increased openness to information and the necessity of what they call 'citizen scientists' to become involved and active in policy decisions. It is unrealistic to expect a cadre of citizen scientists looking out for the common good to spontaneously arise, however. One suggestion introduced in the book is the institutional backing of universities through local project courses. I think that is a fantastic idea, but one which would need greater systematic support, particularly when it comes to disseminating any findings.

In the end, Advice and Dissent helped me revise some of my own naive political views, and strongly argues in a manner largely free of ideological overtones (a refreshing attribute for political discourse) for the importance of open discourse between politicians and experts, and for independence on the part of advisors. Unfortunately, I cannot help but notice that this book is 36 years old and our society, in many ways, has actually regressed (the dependence of biochemical drug testers on the pharmaceutical companies themselves for funding is one such glaring example of systemic hamstringing of any sort of unbiased testing and regulation). In a complex world in which it is virtually impossible for anyone to have appropriate expertise (or even competence) in all areas of life, how we manage expert input in the realm of public policy is an extremely important aspect of political life that is rarely even acknowledged. Advice and Dissent thus stands out as a unique form of political analysis, and one I would highly recommend.


^* I usually prefer to get reviews written in a more timely fashion, as the book is therefore fresher in my mind. This book lent itself to more careful analysis, however, which meant I have gradually developed this review over the last month instead of just sitting down and writing it in one go.

^** As a side note, I thought I would also point out that the authors do also occasionally slip into somewhat dated narration, most notably on page 106 when it is noted in reference to this implicit gagging of advisors:

“This gives rise to the apparently common situation where an advisor conserves his effectiveness like a beautiful girl her virginity - until no one is interested anymore."

Although I imagine such a simile might elicit a wink and chuckle back in the days of the book's first publication, such a mysoginistic comparison is only humorous in the present day through the context of “I cannot believe they wrote and published that”.

I swear to think the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth

Lie detection and eye-witness testimony is a messy business. There are a myriad of issues that can arise, from outright lying to false memories created by after-the-fact suggestions and rationalizations. It is the latter effect that makes the proposed use of fMRI in a civil case so troublesome, because even if fMRI were a perfectly accurate technology for identifying lies and truths (which it is not) there would still be the problem of knowing whether the person telling the truth was telling an objective truth or a falsehood he believed to be true. Although the argument could be made that fMRI would function simply as a method for screening outright liars from sincere witnesses (at which point other evidence must be relied upon to determine the veracity of the sincere witnesses' statements), there remain two major problems:

1.) Outright liars can turn into sincere but misled witnesses given enough time and repetition. Since access to MRI scans is not always available in a timely fashion, this would likely be a major issue (for example, the scan in this case comes four years after the incident).

2.) fMRI scans look so damn impressive that any jury (and even most judges) are likely to give them far more weight than they deserve. Considering the degree to which neuroscience peer reviewers can be dazzled by the colourful pictures (and these are people who spend much of their careers dealing with the nuances and limitations of fMRI) it is hard to expect a judge and jury, no matter how intelligent, to give fMRI evidence the appropriate level of ambivalence.

While I am all for the the use of science and technology to improve the justice system, new techniques must be introduced very carefully. The ease with which people can be dazzled by fancy technical words and graphics must be acknowledged along with just what exactly an fMRI 'truth scan' is showing.

Edit: According to alexismadrigal on Twitter, the use of fMRI has been rejected by the court. I found that out about five minutes after posting this... oh the magic of Twitter.

The Myth of the Bipartisan Initiative

From a Globe and Mail article on Obama's decision to provide steadfast support rather than retreat over the issue of health-care reform:

But the price of victory was steep. His decision to follow Ms. Pelosi’s advice and press on with health-care reform in the face of Republican antipathy effectively killed any hope of negotiating bipartisan compromises on other issues.

Was that ever an actual hope in the first place, however? With the right-wing descending in outright lunacy between vitriolic ignorance, the heckling jeers of "Baby-killer", and "You lie!" reality-denying outbursts, one wonders just how bipartisan compromise could be expected in the first place.

There is more to say on this topic, but the current political discourse in our southern neighbours is highly stressful and disheartening, so I will just leave it there for now.

Congratulations

To all those south of the border, congratulations! This is, of course, only the first step on your long road to social justice (and socialism and fascism...). There is still the matter of actually providing medical care for all citizenry rather than having the IRS enforce the purchase of insurance from a private company, but at least some of the more unscrupulous aspects of the insurance companies (such as not covering previously existing conditions) should now be curtailed. Also, I sincerely hope that the collective hernia of all those horrified tea baggers doesn't overload your fledgling system.

American Congressional Reform

As we swing into an American Congressional election year, I cannot help but wonder if perhaps there is a better way to run things. Of course, as a Canadian civilian, my political clout in this matter is absolutely non-existent, but I thought I might field some ideas for the sake of it. There are two problems I would like to address; the most pressing one is that upon election House Representatives and, to a lesser extent, Senators must immediately begin devoting considerable time and resources to the project of re-election rather than focusing on their ostensible job of legislating in the interest of the people they represent. Secondly, election campaigns themselves tend to revolve around non-issues and are primarily decided by monetary input from special-interest lobbies and large corporations.

In order to try and minimize these problems, I thought that perhaps it would make sense to expand the judicial branch of the government in the following manner: create a body of judges and constitutional lawyers (hereafter simply referred to as judges) who are randomly assigned in sets of three or five to each Congressman two months (or some other appropriate time frame) before the election cycle is set to begin. The judges will be responsible for reviewing the Congressman's job performance, specifically with regard to whether the Congressman actually participated in the legislative process and whether or not there was evidence of some sort of justification and thought put into that Congressman's contribution, as well as whether any conflicts of interest from special-interest campaign contributors compromised the Congressman's votes and proposals. If the judges deem the Congressman's to have been adequate with minimal ethical issues, then the Congressman need not run for re-election. If there is a serious lack of engagement on the part of the Congressman or ethical breaches such as voting solely on the basis of campaign contributors' wishes, then the judges can call for an election in that district.

It is important that these judges be randomly assigned, as there should be no opportunity for the Congressman to use his legislative powers to further the agendas of any of the judges (thereby corrupting their votes). Likewise, in the same manner that the judicial branch is expected to function as ethically and impartially as possible, so too must these performance evaluations be done. The enquiries should be open, and any challenges to the impartiality of the judges should be evaluated by a judicial ethics board.

The point of all of this is to make Congressmen more accountable to their actual records in office, while also easing much of the burden of campaigning (thereby leaving them more time and resources to devote to their legislative tasks). When Congressmen are called for re-election, the election campaigns themselves should likewise be more focused on their actual performances since the judges will have performed the detailed scrutiny of their records that no voter could possibly have the time to compile (unless they happen to be independently wealthy, really into politics, and very well connected). Since the evaluations will be conducted in an open manner, any reasons for calling the election will immediately be at the forefront of the campaign and open for debate.

I'll go if you make him go too...

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a monumental jackass when it comes to environmental policy. The environment ministers he has appointed during his time in office have been inept at best, counterproductive and actively against environmental protection at worst. Harper's statements on the upcoming Copenhagen conference were no better than anyone should at this point expect, but they were still disappointing:

“I have always been clear, if there is a meeting of all major leaders involving climate change, I will of course attend,” Stephen Harper told the House of Commons Wednesday.

The "I'll go if he goes" argument didn't fly in elementary school, it shouldn't fly in the House of Commons. If an issue is important and there is an international conference (that over sixty foreign leaders are already slated to attend), you bloody well go. Dragging your feet and saying, "Well, I'll go if everyone else is going to be there, but until we know everyone is going to be there I'm too cool to show up," basically just says you don't care one bit about the issue. Which, for Stephen Harper on the environment, is pretty much the case.

Edit: Apparently, he has decided to go after all. Although I still have fairly low expectations, it is certainly a start.

Is More Information Always Better?

Regular readers know my opinion of the Fox News corporation. Over the past few weeks, Obama's administration and Fox News have gotten into a couple of real and contrived wars of words. One of the main talking points for the defenders of Fox is this (pulled fromRob's comment #34 from one of PZ Myer's posts as a representation of echoed sentiment elsewhere):

Freedom of the Press is important and the more we have of it the better. Its your freedom to choose which to regard as truth and which to regard as bias. If you have less to refer to, how will you know if you are making the right choices?

It is actually kind of amazing how closely this parallels the arguments espoused by "teach the controversy" advocates for intelligent design/creationism instruction the biology classes. Freedom of the press is important, but so is journalistic ethics. What freedom of the press means is that the government does not mandate what can and cannot be reported. There are already many issues with this in the United States, but the problem here is not that the White House team is trying to silence Fox News (because they are not), just that they are calling them on being biased and playing to an agenda. While I recognize that true journalistic neutrality is impossible to achieve, it is still what one must strive for to be a good journalist. Presenting incredibly biased or blatantly false claims does not help people "make the right choice". After all, how is one supposed to decide "which to regard as truth and which to regard as bias"? Based on which news network has the most attractive reporters or greatest emotional appeal to their rhetoric? When a news organization has no legal obligation to the truth and spends money and time organizing and fomenting the dissent that they plan to cover, it ceases to be a legitimate source of news and ceases to bring useful information into public discourse. At this point, Fox News is no better than the Discovery Institute. Likewise, Fox's emotionally charged defenders' false dichotomy of either treating Fox News uncritically or being against freedom of the press is no better than the "teach the controversy in the name of academic freedom" nonsense the Discovery Institute spouts.

Local Government Outreach

I found in my mail box yesterday Issue 2 of Our Toronto, a newspaper apparently published by the city. While I figure such unsolicited publications will, unfortunately, tend to simply end up in most peoples' waste baskets (as I'm sure our Issue 1 did), I found such civic outreach quite charming. As a member of the internet generation, though, I found that the most useful aspect of the paper was the pointing out of the municipal government's website. In particular, they have an online 'course' called civics101 outlining how the municipal government works. I have not gone through it yet, but I plan to over the next few days. The reason I plan to do so is because I have an embarrassingly poor grasp of what the municipal government does. Within the hierarchy of government, news and general public knowledge tends to focus almost exclusively on the federal level. The provincial (or state) and municipal levels, particularly in large cities, can have a great deal of impact as well on one's life. This, of course, is rather obvious, but it is still one of those things that I think often gets ignored. I recognize that a lot of my readers are not from Toronto, so I suggest going online and finding out if your municipal government has a website. You might be surprised at what you find.

Corruption of Journalism

Like many people my age, I sometimes catch myself thinking that we live in a singularly politically corrupt age. I usually follow such thoughts, however, with the conclusion that such an idea is likely untrue, and instead it is simply the difference of currently living through a time and paying attention to the politics as opposed to childhood memories or the veneer of the historical lens. After all, from my high school knowledge of American history (combined with modern revelations) I recall Nixon's notoriety as a horribly corrupt man. Going further back, I recall learning about Ulysses S. Grant's corrupt presidency, characterized by nepotism forgiven by the populace due to his popularity as a war hero.

One thing that I think is different, however, about our current state of affairs is the symbiotic relationship of the media, politics, and the economy at large. The major news networks are an unduly powerful political force, particularly now that a number of very disconcerting precedents have been quietly set (namely, the propagation of the idea that there is a difference between commentators and reporters in terms of ties to truth, followed by the more horrifying right to lie Fox News won in court). By straddling the line between mere entertainment and news, television news has entered into a state of phenomenal power (it is still viewed by the majority of the population as a reliable source of news), but is also largely defunct of journalistic ethics. As much as I love the Daily Show with John Stewart, I believe it is primarily a failing of television news networks rather than any sort of uncanny talent for weaving comedy with fact on John Stewart's part that results in Daily Show viewers typically scoring as well or better than viewers of traditional news networks in terms of current events knowledge.

In the same way that we have regulatory agencies designed to protect people from false advertising and ensuring the safety of foods and drugs, it is absolutely vital that our society begin to hold news agencies to a standard beyond simply entertainment bodies. Within the realm of information dissemination, the level of power and influence one currently has is largely not based upon the truth of one's information, but rather the depth of one's advertising budget. To a certain extent these sorts of regulatory boards do exist, such as Media Matters (who recently managed to bring to light a huge conflict of interest with one of CNN's contributors), but they wield no where near the clout of the cable news organizations.

I have no solutions, and I have no power to change things beyond the little network of influence occupied by this blog. The television and computer screen are immune to my snide heckling and indignant bellows, and news agencies will continue to shill for whoever has greased the right palms. As easy as it is to sink into apathy and cynicism, though, that is most certainly not the answer. If anyone has ideas, let me know. Journalistic ethics are important, and they are something worth fighting to restore.

Ongoing Goodyear Problems

Over the summer, I mentioned that the Canadian Science Minister Gary Goodyear had stuck his ignorant nose into an academic conference because he was worried that there would be some speakers who were anti-Israeli at the conference. As I pointed out at the time, when you have a conference on something as contentious as Middle Eastern politics, most likely you are going to have a variety of viewpoints which include both anti-Israeli sentiments and anti-Palestinian. After my initial reporting of the incident, though, I did not hear anything more. Science recently had an update article on the matter. While the information was rather scant in the article, it is at least nice to see that the matter is still being pursued (and, as I guessed, Goodyear appears to be throwing his weight behind things for ideological reasons... shocking, I know, for someone who thinks belief in evolution is a religious question).

I also thought it was kind of funny that the author of the article originally thought York University was in the United Kingdom... I suppose it must be kind of confusing, given that the vast majority of our universities in southern Ontario ripped off at least a couple names from British schools.

I am torn

An article I read in the Globe and Mail has me conflicted. I thought, therefore, that it might be a worthwhile weekend diversion to open the article up to my readership for discussion. Essentially, the article brings to light the fact that the Canadian government provides security for both former Presidents Clinton and Bush when they come to Canada on speech circuits, but the price of security for the two men varies massively (~$12,000 for Clinton and more than $100,000 for Bush). The reason I do not trust my own opinions on this are my massive disapproval of Bush, which makes me wildly indignant that my government is expected to provide such expensive security for a man who I would never want to hear speak. I find it particularly repugnant that he is earning massive amounts of money himself (as are, presumably, the people organizing the venues) without any sort of requirement to help cover the cost of his security. However, I also recognize that in Canada order is kept by our police force, and the high price of Bush's security is due to the heightened security costs of the large protests Bush garners. This just seems backward, though... the protesters do nothing to inhibit Bush's Canadian speech circuit, and instead increase the burden on the Canadian government.

Like I said, I am not really sure what to think about this, so I welcome any input.

I suppose sometimes that Canadian politics actually can be interesting

I just don't think this was the sort of interesting the government was going for...

Summarizing many of my thoughts on health care in the United States

This article by Neil Macdonald from the CBC summarizes many of my thoughts on the subject. Basically, the private health insurance providers do some unconscionably cruel and immoral things in the name of profit, and somehow people are more scared of the government than those corporations.

A Question for my American Readers

I have been relatively quiet recently on the topic of politics. That is largely due to the fact that I am on vacation and thus I am not being overly attentive to current events, but another large factor is simply the fact that I really don't know what to say. I remember my dejected incredulity when George W. Bush was elected for the second time in 2004, but even that doesn't compare to the absolute lunacy that seems to currently pervade a good portion of the United States. Has a significant chunk of your country honestly gone fervently insane? Between Glen Beck's public paranoia, the fact that there are still prominent politicians who deign not to laugh with incredulity at the birthers, contrived conniptions over the President of the United States addressing American school children to urge them to do well in school and thereby cultivating a "socialist-fascist cult of personality", the insane demonizing of actual attempts at humane health care reform, the bald-faced hypocrisy of the most popular news organization as it proceeds to rip baselessly into the President of the United States during a time of war with blatant disregard for the troops*, to this most recent heckling of the President of the United States in the middle of a policy speech by a member of Congress, I am left utterly bewildered. All of my previous posts agonizing over the philosophical role of evidence in policy decisions seem to now be an exercise akin to a man devoting himself to the careful selection of the correct type of drywall while his house collapses around him due to lack of a frame. Is it just me who thinks the level of crazy seems to be ramping up on overdrive?


* I in no way think that criticizing the President amounts to harm to American troops, but for seven years that is precisely what was insisted by the very same people who now most venomously launch tirades against Obama.

Passing the torch

My friend Cornucrapia was kind enough to take over where I left off concerning Canadian health care (as I haven't really had time to devote to the matter... plus Cornucrapia studies economics, so I figured he'd be a good guy to ask for input) by writing a general response to Freddy Boisseau's statement that he cannot accept Canadian health care could be as good as American health care. Cornucrapia's post gives a good overview of the general failings of the "free market fixes everything" mindset, so I think it is worth checking out. I doubt Freddy is still around, but on the off chance that he is, I hope he will follow the link and think on the matter.