Ranting and Roaring

Just in case you think that the US is going to enter a glorious phase of civil rights reformation if the Democrats get elected next year, check it out:

Today’s Inside Higher Ed reports on the effort by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada to require colleges to take more direct action in fighting “campus based digital theft” of movies and music. File sharing, popular even when I was in college in the late 1990s, is by all reports going on in epic proportions on today’s campus. The speed and unfiltered nature of campus computer networks is largely responsible for making this possible, and the fact that so many young adults are connected in one place makes it part of the culture on campus. Simply put, it’s easy to trade music, or even whole, fairly high-definition movies and TV shows, with your friends on campus and beyond.

I think Black got a bad deal from a court system that is in serious need of revisiting its roots (my arguments are here).  I don’t think it’s the greatest miscarriage of justice in the history of the universe, or anything like that, but I’m a little bit sad for him and most suspicions I’ve had about the reporting profession have been confirmed.

Anyhoo, Steve at ESR, Zolf and others saying the Canada should give Black back his citizenship. Sorry and respectfully dudes, I disagree. I’ve long been a proponent that citizenship should “mean something”, and that being true, dropping that citizenship likewise should mean something. No matter how vindictively that sorry little prick Chretien acted, Black made his own bed.

Some lawyer guy with a suspicious last name:

I was immensely cheered yesterday to see that the Conservatives have made no meaningful headway in the polls.

This is a remarkable feat of political incompetence. The Conservatives face a fractured opposition led by a leader whose English is shaky and is still gaining his feet as a national leader. While Monsieur Dion may in time prove himself as a competent (or who knows, even imspirational) leader that time has not yet arrived. Moreover, Stephen Harper has a hotel sized buffet of issues from which to chose around which he could rally the troops, mobilize his core and shift the necessary number of votes in the margin. On top of that, the Liberals are trebly burdened with a sizable debt (both at the party and individual leader levels), a non-functional fundraising apparatus and new fund raising limitations imposed as a farewell legacy gift from Jean Chretin. Why has Harper therefore failed to build a steamroller of support that will carrry him to the next election?

I for think that the answer has to lie in his failure to communicate and then stand behind any vision. While Paul Martin was wilting under the heat of Gomery and Harper was rolling toward victory, I for one was living in dread of the victory of the Conservatives. I expected a range of actions on matters near and dear to my heart — be it social issues like same sex marriage or constitutional issues like limiting federal power in favour of the provinces or creating a triple-E senate — that would fundamentally alter the political, legal or social structure of Canada creating a meaner, more conservative, less functional and less cohesive nation.

I’m fairly certain I won’t be voting for the CPC in the next election, though my reasons will be different from Robert’s, his “remarkable feat…” bit pretty well sums it up.

As a parting shot though, I’ll have to note the triviality of the items which fills him (and his peers, no doubt) with dread, which could roughly be summed up as “rolling the clock back to the nightmare years of 1998″.

This is kind of neat — the game of Checkers has been solved; mathematically, if you play correctly, you cannot loose. I.e. you’re basically now playing tic-tac-toe with a bigger board. Jonathan Schaeffer, the lead author, is now working on Poker, aka “never need to apply for a grant again”.

David Miller’s right hand transit boy Adam Giambrone is threatening to smash up his trains and go home because the ungrateful slobs in Toronto don’t know what’s good for them, quit their whinging and take their tax medicine. The source of all this angst and teeth gnashing is something to do with a 350 million some-odd dollar “shortfall” in the latest and greatest 7.8 billion budget, which the clever kids at city hall were going make up a series of taxes and fees aimed at maximizing the pain on non-Mayor Quimby voters.

Why does Toronto need a 7.8 billion dollar budget, given that city basically stopped growing in the last decade? God only knows — here’s a little Excel chart I whipped up showing the Toronto operating budgets, constant dollar adjustments (assuming 2% inflation) and a per-pop breakdown where I could do it:

Since amalgamation, our budget has gone up a billion and change with no substantial population growth.

BTW, Mike Harris has been gone from power since 2002, so you can stop blaming him for downloading. It’s been implicitly endorsed by his successors, neither named Mike or Harris.

Sources:

• Toronto Budgets
• Toronto population information, noting Toronto’s anemic growth

Update — here’s everything you need to know about how to run a city the progressive way:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44P1qzkRKKI