from the Canadian Press
The Canadian Press reports in The Province that the BC government is withdrawing proposed changes to the Forest Act that would have given private companies effective ownership rights over Crown land. The forests minister's call for public consultations this summer will be preceded by the May election.
from Solidarity
Dianne Feeley, writing for Solidarity, reports on the sweeping powers offered to Kevyn Orr, appointed Emergency Manager of Detroit by Michigan Governor Rich Snyder. Detroit has long-term liabilities of about $15 billion. Orr is mandated to be sole negotiator with unions, to reject or change existing contracts, eliminate city departments, contract out services, and, with state approval, sell off assets. High unemployment, declining services, mortgages and taxes out of line with house market values are just some of the problems facing Detroit residents. Orr's authority, Feeley writes, is unlikely to ease conditions for householders already facing the dire side of the poverty line.
The federal government is “blackmailing” First Nations into supporting its policies through revised funding contribution agreements and telling them to “take it or leave it,” say First Nations chiefs.
“The government through its contribution agreements is trying to get First Nations to sign onto [their policies] or else be cut from their funding,” said Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation in Alberta.
Mr. Adam, who was in Ottawa last week with a group of Canadian and U.S. First Nations chiefs to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline going through their lands, told The Hill Times that the ACFN has refused to sign its contribution agreement worth more than $1-million because it doesn’t agree with the federal government’s omnibus budget implementation legislation and bills such as C-27, the Financial Accountability and Transparency of First Nations Bill….
See original story in The Hill Times
By Mark Milke, The Fraser Institute
If there was a theme in the recent federal budget, it was how chock full it was with new corporate welfare. The underlying refrain was how big government will help big business with your tax dollars.
For example, early on in Budget 2013, it is clear that crony capitalism is scattered throughout the budget.
On page six, Ottawa promises $1-billion to the aerospace sector over five years through the Strategic Aerospace and Defence Initiative; that’s the main government program for disbursing taxpayer cash to the aerospace sector.
In addition, the federal government promises a new program for aerospace companies with an initial cost to taxpayers of $110 million over four years and then $55-million every year after that.
So, over the next five years, Canada’s aerospace sector will receive almost $1.2 billion in new corporate welfare money.
That’s only the start of the corporate welfare list. Ottawa will deposit $920 million into the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario, a corporate welfare slush fund, and spend $92 million on forestry businesses (page seven)….
from the Huffington Post
from YouTube
from Common Dreams
Paul Buchelt, writing for Common Dreams, offers five chilling consequences of putting the common good up for auction.
from Policy Note
from the Australia Broadcasting Network
Jim McIlroy, an activist from the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network, interviewed by ABC TV News, on March 8, 2013
March 10, 2013 — Following the tragic death of Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez from cancer after 14 years in office, the world's big-business media has gone into overdrive to dishonestly describe Chavez's record as being "authoritarian", "dictatorial" and having made the Venezuelan economy a "basket case", as was rudely interjected by an Australian Broadcasting Corporation "journalist" in the video above. Such media lies have been refuted by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting , VenezuelAnalysis and the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
by Chris Hedges
If, as Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote, “the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons,” then we [the US] are a nation of barbarians. Our vast network of federal and state prisons, with some 2.3 million inmates, rivals the gulags of totalitarian states.
