New Liblogs Format

The new liblogs format is not great. The greatest salience is not the summaries of the blogs, but the surrounding material. The salience mis-focus is due to a number of factors:

1. The width of the column containing the summaries being small compared to the sidebars. Even if I widen my browser (safari) window, the centre column does not change width. Extra browser width should be occupied by the centre column.

2. The heavy colours and bold features outside the centre column, which draw focus away from the blog summaries.

3. The (sometimes) animated ads, which draw focus away from the blog summaries.

Maybe Jack wants more MPs to miss votes

Fines don't always make people obey the rules. In fact, the fine could result in more MPs missing votes, as paying the fine absolves the MPs of their guilty consciences.

Just ask the Freakonomic authors

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/books/chapters/0515-1st-levitt.html

What does Stephen Harper really want?

Harper thinks the coalition is evil, unstable, dangerous. Notice he hasn't said a Liberal government would be bad.

The Liberal Soul

Robert Fowler said the Liberal Party is in danger of losing its soul, but that we are making an effort to get it back. An opportunity has presented itself. The Conservatives have created a crisis to justify a mean spirited reform of Canada’s pardon system. By removing a sense of forgiveness from our justice system, we will become a more mean spirited country.

Can the Liberal party help this country find its way through compassion to forgiveness? Can we defend, even if it’s unpopular, the idea that people deserve a second chance? If we don’t do these things, and instead sell out Liberal ideals for votes, I think we really will have lost our soul.

Citizens not just Taxpayers

At the Kitchener-Waterloo gathering of Canada at 150, Dr. David Docherty proposed a swear jar be established into which money is deposited by politicians who refer to people as taxpayers instead of citizens. He claims that the idea of citizenship goes beyond simply paying taxes to having a civic responsibility to the country and fellow citizens.

I think he has a point.

I realize there is a semantic game that could be played here, that not all taxpayers are citizens, but I don't want to get into that.

Citizens are an integral part of the country, not just a source of money for pet government projects. Citizens are part of the government. Citizens contribute to the life of the country and the lives of fellow citizens. They can also contribute to the wider global community, individually and through the government.

So, the next political debate you go to, carry a swear jar to collect from everyone who implies that citizens are just taxpayers, sheep to be fleeced.

What's a Liberal?

What does it mean to be a Liberal?

As a recovering Tory and new Liberal I haven’t really found an answer to this question, at least one that fits in to 21st century Canada. I think answering this might be important to justify my relatively new membership in the Liberal party after a couple years wandering the political wilderness following Peter MacKay’s ascension to PC party leadership. I have to admit joining the Liberal party was a decision of last resort; I didn’t fit in anywhere else. I also respect the history of the Liberal party, but I'm not so sure what the party is in the present.

Yes, in my darker days I was a supporter of the Progressive Conservative party, provincial and federal. Mike Harris, a time in my life I somewhat regret. Brian Mulroney, Jean Charest, Joe Clark, a time I don’t regret so much. To my credit I have not spent one second supporting the Reform-Conservative Party. I suppose in some sense I’m still a red tory, though I haven’t ever nailed down exactly what that means.

So here I ask what it means to be a capital-L Liberal in this country. I suspect such soul searching would also be good for the party too as it doesn’t seem anyone up there in the upper echelons of the party really knows what Liberal means either. If they do, they’re doing a lousy job at articulating it.

My new blog

Just what we need...a new liberal blog....