two sentences in the platform on the gai.

but, what we've seen from the ndp is better encapsulated in the following part of the platform:

"The focus of the social assistance system should be helping people overcome barriers, get out of poverty and participate in society. "

that is what you're going to actually get from them. and, as such, i don't really trust them to follow through on a ubi; it's not really consistent with their ideological positions.

the tendency of "progressive" parties to push producerist policy is just typical calvinist bullshit: what they support is using the government's resources to send people to work, which in the end is just a process of trying to maximize profit for investors. it's this idea that the government is a human resources department for capital, and that, ultimately, it is work that sets us free. perfectly backwards. perfectly orwellian. you might naively point to religion as some kind of force of purity, but it was marx himself that made the point that religion is the tool that capital uses to brainwash workers with, and this is the analysis that any leftist would utilize - but progressives have never been leftists, they've always been conservatives.

i happen to seek freedom from labour, i don't need or want the government to help me to find a job, i want to abolish wage slavery. as the liberals are a bourgeois party, the focus on calvinism or producerism is less, and so they do seem to appeal more to the interests of artists.

i flipped through this, and my immediate take is that most of this just isn't going to happen, or is being presented sort of bizarrely. for example, they do state in the platform that their pharmacare plan only covers 125 drugs, but then they repeatedly refer to it as "universal pharmacare", which isn't really true. the liberal plan covers less people, but offers coverage for thousands of drugs for the people it's covering.

i sent my ndp mpp an email about getting estrogen covered under odsp once and he didn't reply. it's nice to see the promise, but i wouldn't bet on it. and, i'd be better off with the gai, if i have to choose.

i also don't think their claim that the liberals have pushed through deep cuts to health care is factually accurate; they actually brought in a special health tax. i spend a lot of time in the health system, and my only complaint is that the doctors seem to be too socially conservative. i've never faced unreasonable delays or experienced any of the things that the ndp are talking about.

at the end of the day, these are specific changes that will benefit specific people, so it's less about whether one health care plan is better than the other, and more about whether you're in a specific target group. if you're in the group that the liberals are targetting, you're obviously better off with a drug plan that covers thousands of medications; if you're not, the very limited coverage being offered by the ndp is better than nothing. it's something similar with the child care. so, it's a weird election on that level - there isn't really an objectively correct choice, not even over traditionally determined demographic groups.

nobody is offering universal plans, so it comes down to who you're being targeted by. and, that's a prescription to split the vote....

i don't get the same kind of personal commitment from horwath that i get from wynne; this is almost the exact opposite of what she told us four years ago, so it's feeling like she's just making shit up to get elected. it comes off as shady, slimy & opportunistic. i'm more inclined to believe that the 2014 version was the real andrea horwath, and so i'm left to conclude that you should be expecting her to govern on her right. at least the liberals have a record you can consult to understand where they sit: horwath just tells you what she thinks you want to hear, and changes her views as quickly as she realizes it isn't.

again: i don't want a change of government right now, and i'm uneasy about believing what the ndp is telling me. i don't think that voting ndp right now is a good idea. and, i think you should read this a bit more carefully, and compare it carefully to the 2014 platform, if you're convinced that it is.

https://www.ontariondp.ca/sites/default/files/Change-for-the-better.pdf

the liberals need to be defending their own record, and putting forth their own proposals, not playing gotcha politics over trivialities.

i actually want to vote for what the liberals have put in motion. the ndp doesn't care about the environment, and it's stuck in a producerist attitude towards labour. the ndp haven't said anything about the gai, from what i can tell. but, these constant absurd meltdowns are making it almost impossible to hold to their own vision, which they're not even trying to project any more - they're just taking ideas from the ndp and watering them down, then selling it back as ndp-lite....and then criticizing them over trivial nonsense. who the fuck thought that would work?

it's almost like they're trying to lose this election.

it just exposes that the liberals have kind of lost the plot on their own governing proposals; it's a triviality, and about the only people that are going to give it a second thought are in the conservative party base. so, are they trying to stop conservatives from voting for the ndp?

it's just tactically incoherent.

why aren't they defending their decision to fund the programs that the ndp are planning on cutting?

and, why aren't they hammering the ndp for slashing programs?

the liberal attack on the ndp's accounting error is desperate and cynical.

nobody cares.

it's one thing to sit and stop to think for a moment about how the elite sent us off to die for no reason and resolve to never let them do that to us ever again.

it's another to uphold a load of bullshit propaganda about it.

during world war one, in the british empire, only people that owned property could vote. the mass of dead conscripted soldiers lacked the most basic concepts of freedom, as we understand them today - they were impoverished cannon fodder with almost no rights, that were sent to die for no discernible reason at all.

the poppy was meant to commemorate the senselessness of this slaughter by reminding us of how so many young men became fertilizer for these flowers that grow in the cemeteries of belgium, not uphold this revisionist nonsense that anybody "died for your freedom".

the poppy thing is complicated.

it's not supposed to be a glorification of war; it's supposed to be a symbol of mourning. but, in practice it's absolutely a glorification of war.  so, i find myself largely in agreement with the statement, with the caveat that the thing has been badly co-opted.

i don't wear them, and i strenuously avoid the people handing them out.

i don't care about the deficit, and don't want smaller government.

i'm just saying.

if you care about the deficit and want smaller government, you should vote for the ndp, not the conservatives.

this tired old media narrative from the 1970s is coming back up: that the ndp are "fiscally irresponsible". that's propaganda from like three generations ago...

the facts in canada are that the ndp tends to be the party with the strongest fiscal discipline, as demonstrated by it's strong endorsement from the fraser institute (for roy romanow). bob rae is famous for his "rae days", which were a straight out attack on workers to try and cut the deficit.

on the other hand, the conservatives are known for running the largest deficits, due to their insistence on tax cuts that create structural deficits. they get into office by bribing people with tax cuts, but then they realize nothing can be cut after all, so they just let the deficits pile up.

these are just the facts: the ndp balances budgets by cutting programs, and the conservatives run huge deficits by decreasing taxes.

the liberals tend to exist in the middle, which is really the worst if you're an ideological small-c conservative: they run deficits, because they don't cut programs. they tend to privatize, instead, when they ought to raise corporate taxes, or ask the feds to print more money.

but, the narrative the media is going to present - that the conservatives are fiscally responsible and the ndp are not - is simply a fantasy reality. it may have been true before you were born, granted. but, it hasn't been true in forty years. in the modern era, it's the exact opposite: the conservatives run the biggest deficits, and the ndp run the smallest ones.

that's just the facts. just empirical observation.

listen: i have no british heritage.

none.

a little irish, but not british.

so, i don't fucking care.

at all.

and, of course.

victoria day is, of course, about queen victoria, the previous long-lived queen, who resided over the decay of british society into rigid, puritanical absurdity. it's not exactly her fault, but she seems to have been on board with it - as weird and hypocritical as the period was. a lot of the social norms we take for granted - and that leftists have been fighting so hard to destroy - come out of this period of resurgent conservatism.

we'd be better off forgetting about it than upholding it - and, by co-opting the weekend for feats of drinking bombast, perhaps we are on the path there.

i'd be happy to see the name of the holiday changed.

speaking of which, i had to sleep most of the day. i was home around 9:30, but didn't really get to sleep until about 17:00. i am going to spend monday rebuilding, and then get back to looking on tuesday.

https://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/8614108-don-t-let-ontario-s-party-leaders-conspire-against-a-minority-government/

i spend a lot of time in detroit, and you can get booze in the corner stores, there. they're called "party stores", rather than convenience stores - there's a specific market for it. i kid you not. given the way i transit through detroit, this is useful to me. if i get out of a concert at 12:15 and want to get to a late night destination that's a 20-30 minute bike ride away, it makes sense to grab a drink for the ride.

i know that a lot of people will frown on this, and i ended that paragraph where i did to produce a shocked reaction, but i haven't lost any limbs yet and don't intend to any time soon. my example isn't exactly widely emulated.

that said, let's address the actual point here, which is the hours that the stores are open. the reason people get frustrated is that they have to go to a bar to get a drink if they can't get to the store before 22:00, or if they just happen to run out early. is 22:00 really a reasonable closing time in 2018? could it not be extended until 2:00?

but, this is just another example of where these parties are on the spectrum: the conservatives are promising to extend the hours available for purchase, while the socialists are in favour of continuing restricted access. then, they wonder why their bases are upside down - why the socialists do better with lawyers, and the conservatives do better with workers.

i don't personally find the status quo to be particularly restrictive, because i just buy more than i need ahead of time and then drink too much.

https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2018/05/19/andrea-horwath-says-ndp-would-not-allow-beer-wine-sales-at-corner-stores.html

toronto probably needs emergency shelter to house it's native-born homeless population, anyways.

if this is an excuse to get more money into the system, that's great. and, shame on everybody for needing a refugee crisis to do it.

i mean, john tory wasn't somewhere i was expecting to find an inversion of naomi klein's logic on disaster capitalism, but ill take it: let's take advantage of this crisis to get the funds flowing where they should have been flowing years ago.

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/05/18/toronto-may-need-emergency-centres-to-house-refugees-says-mayor-tory.html

again: i've been pointing out for a long time that i don't want to have these arguments. i have better things to do.

really.

it would be easier if practising muslims stayed in muslim countries, and we just focused on admitting apostates and atheists by screening them for high educational standards.

but, the reality is that this has been thrust upon us, and we have no choice but to fight this out in court - because i'm not about to let my rights be trampled over out of some bullshit appeal to relativism.

this is the future. it was predictable. and, only fools couldn't see it coming.

"but, that's my belief...."

your beliefs are incorrect.

what we need to do is shift the narrative.

currently, we take this position that religious diversity should be respected,and we're all entitled to our beliefs. this is often confused for a liberal perspective, but is in truth incredibly right-wing.

what we need to shift the narrative to is the idea that it is in fact true that religion often teaches discrimination, and when it does so then the specific religion is wrong to do it. that is an actual liberal perspective on the topic: it seeks out an empirical truth, and interprets it relative to egalitarian principles.

we don't have an obligation to tolerate intolerance. when religion is intolerant, it needs to be called out for it. and, when religious beliefs lead people to break the law, they need to be held accountable for it, too.

it is ok to tell somebody that their religion is wrong.

the correct answer is that islam is an inherently discriminatory system of thought, and muslims need to be held accountable for it when they follow through with it.

it's just that, in this case, a fine is a more appropriate remedy than a payout.

when you're being accused of discrimination, and your response is "but, religion.", you're not actually presenting a defence - you're just explaining why you're guilty of discrimination.

and, i consequently think the correct thing for a judge to do is be explicit about it, in identifying the religion as the source of discrimination, and causally deducing the reality of discrimination from the religious principle, itself; if the judge wanted to really do this right, it would find the precise place that the discrimination is written into the muslim scriptures, and begin the argument from that point.

the correct answer is that islam is an inherently discriminatory system of thought, and muslims need to be held accountable for it when they follow through with it.

i've been clear about this: i think that s. 2a of the charter was a mistake. it's not going to be easy to strike it out. but, for right now, anyways, judges have a responsibility to ensure that it isn't used a tool to circumvent the charter, altogether - which is what a judge would be doing in ruling that muslims have the right to discriminate against trans people, via conscience of religion. i just can't accept that argument; it's the religion that needs to be put on trial here, not the complainant.

if i was the judge, i may consider it more reasonable to force the business owner to pay a smaller fine $5000 or $10000 to the state, or perhaps donate it to a relevant transgendered-related cause.

this sounds like a complicated case, and the facts are also in dispute. it's not going to be clear what the right answer is until the facts come out in a trial. but, my understanding of the general legal question is this:

is waxing a "general service" or a "specific service"? it might seem like it's a specific service, but there's some ambiguity if it's a general package.

a general service is something like picking something off of a menu. so, if you go into a restaurant and order the #2 special, denial of service on enumerated and analogous grounds would be a rights violation. but, if you order a #2 special with a list of specific modifications, that is a specialized service, and the owner has the right to refuse.

if the facts in the end demonstrate that this woman walked in and requested a wax job off of a menu, i would uphold the idea that this is discrimination - and i would not take the religious defense seriously. i don't think that citing religious observance is an excuse to deny service that is advertised; religion is the reason we have human rights in the first place. if the owner wins this case by citing "religious freedom", then that is just some kind of orwellian destruction of the concept of human rights - that would be upholding the right to discriminate, which is upholding the right to ignore human rights.

but, given that waxing services are widespread, i have a hard time understanding the claim to a $50,000 payment as a consequence of that discrimination. i would think that the complainant would have to demonstrate more concrete fiscal costs to be awarded a claim of this sort, or tie it to some kind of lost revenue. she's basically asking for $50,000 because somebody hurt her feelings.

it's going to come down to a bias in the judicial process, as these things generally do. but, even if she wins the argument, i don't think she wins the claims. and, it's consequently one of those weird scenarios where the judge would be justified in granting her the point - but forcing her to pay costs, anyways.

https://windsor.ctvnews.ca/human-rights-application-launched-against-windsor-body-waxing-business-by-transgender-woman-1.3925911