Media, Technology and Society

Stupid Ekos Poll: Rogue or What?

So far the gist of the Canadian Electoral campaign so far is pretty well known:

The Conservatives have run by all accounts a very good campaign. The party has unveiled scores of new policy announcement every day, and has suffered little to no incidences of Conservative MPs spewing sexist or racist slurs. On occasion, the party leader, Stephen Harper, has failed to wear a tie (apparently, this is the equivalent of having him smile or otherwise not appearing to be a robot). Because the party has made the debate about issues, Harpers inhuman demeanour and alleged "hidden" socially conservative agenda has been yester-campaign's news. In other words, voters are seeing Stephen Harper as more of a regular politician with frequently-intriguing policy proposals, as opposed to the party leader that one could never vote for in good conscience.   

Meanwhile, the Martin Liberal campaign has suffered a slow attrition in public opinion, owing primarily to a balance of events such as the following:

-An RCMP investigation into Finance Minister Ralph Goodale office and an alleged leak of an income trust taxation decision prior to the official decision being made (resulting in an insider-trading esque spate of market purchasing of income trusts).

-A Liberal campaign official labelling the Conservative childcare plan involving lump sum cash dispursals to parents as "money for beer and popcorn." Whether true or not, the optics of this statement play too easily into Conservative depictions of the essential Liberal as one who preempts individual choice in favour of elite and paternalistic decisions "in the best interest of constituents." Sure enough, Harper played up parental responsibility and his lump-sum plan by describing parents as by-default experts in childcare spending. 

-A lacklustre round of French and English debates in which Martin failed to capture the imagination of voters (personally, I think the customer-service model of politician promises is at issue here - something all the leaders are guilty of. A politician with the Kennedy-esque guts to say that voters need to "ask not what my country can do for me, but what I can do for my country" is very much needed).

-A spate of highly publicized gun crimes over the holidays which have been seen to favour (to what extent is unknown) the Conservative (hardline aka mandatory minimum sentences) crime platform over the perceived Liberal "revolving door" criminal justice platform. Having said that, and as current-events show 'The Hour' George Strombolopolous noted, Harper's partisan political exploitation of the death of one young gun-victim in Toronto centre was particularly crass - something that might work against his crime & punishment image.

Ultimately, the problem for the Liberals is attempting to say something new and novel. The Liberal party has been very reactive thus far in the campaign. To succeed, they are going to have to take a page from the Harper campaign book: energize public perceptions of their party, attack particularly obvious conservative openings (e.g. lack of evidence from the US experience that mandatory minimums do anything other than cost lots of money and lock up the mules of the criminal underworld, or, on the corruption front, that many supposedly corrupt liberal MPs have been exonerated after-the-fact...Judy Sgro & David Dingwall anyone?).

What they should avoid however, is attacking the Conservative party in exactly the same manner that they did during the 2004 campaign. In other words, little to no derogation of Harper on social conservatism or gay marriage - if they're going to broach this issue, it has to be on the Liberal good record only - and to be especially careful of how they go after the conservatives on previous Tory governments penchant for deficits. These tactics can appear weak and reactionary if the Liberals aren't careful.

Impeach the President. Now.

I just finished reading through the so called "Downing Street" memo. I quickly glibbed over everything pretty quickly and didn't at first see anything particularly bad that I didn't already know about. So he invaded Iraq.

So terrorism (a la 911) had nothing to do with Saddam. Yawn. Then I re-read the memo again and a particular sentence jumped out at me.

"But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Now, this sentence is quite fun. The intelligence and facts were being fixed around policy? That doesn't sound particularly legitimate does it? Now that sentence and the previous one together..

"Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

That's bad. This isn't a matter of whether invading Iraq was the right decision or not. This is a matter of whether Bush made up his mind to invade and then sought to find the intelligence and facts to back up that decision. That's terrible and grounds for impeachment in my mind.

How can you make up your mind on an issue BEFORE the facts and evidence lead one to reasonably conclude that that decision is the correct one?

Add to that the disproven WMD claims, and a rather discomforting suspicion emerges in the reasonable thinking person's mind.

For the right, consider this: what's at issue is not (for a momen) whether invading Iraq was "the right thing to do," but rather, was the process behind that decision ethical? If the process is unethical, the decision making agent is unethical (although the ethics of the decision itself is not implicated here).

Thus, it is possible to approve of the Iraq war and demand that the president resign immediately.

It is simply unnaceptable for decisions to made of this magnitude and then instigate a policy of manufacturing the "facts" and "evidence" to back those decisions up. That kind of policy could well lead to trumped up non-evidence of the major plank in the international rationale for the invasion: nuclear weapons.

So is impeachment a bit of a strong reaction? No. Nixon was impeached for less.

In fact, Clinton is perhaps a better comparison. Clinton was disgraced and asked to step down, not because of his domestic affair, but because he lied about it publicly.

Its the same principle here. Whether or not having sex with an intern or invading Iraq is worth being impeached for (obviously, neither case in and of itself is sufficient), lying about that act, or making enormous decisions with the intention of "fixing" evidence and facts to support that decision, are grounds for impeachment. 

If this memo is an accurate reflection of what has already become a long standing suspicion, it is our duty and obligation as US citizens to demand better.

That doesn't necessarily have to mean "a Democratic president," but it certainly means we need a new man, or woman, in executive office - and perhaps an election to make that process a fair one, given that public opinion has already radically changed since October, 2004 (See the Economist for more on this).

As an aside, its never a good thing when a sitting president has cries for "impeachment" coinciding with a record-setting lack of public confidence (for a second term).

Fine Points:

With regard to the 'terrorism' claim, it is not true that Saddam was involved in 9/11 or has a proven history of instigating attacks against the US. Technically speaking, and according to the same convenient terrorist definition used by the US state department, a state agent such as Saddam cannot commit terrorism since he is not a non-governmental agent. Even a state that supports terrorism is not terrorist, using the US state department definition (in the same way that Israel has never committed terrorism since it is a state).

Thus, the only remaining justification for invading Iraq for those on the the right and centre in the US, is: invading Iraq was a morally correct thing to do (many Iraqi ex-patriots take this view, so this doesn't have to be a "left/right" issue). The view that Saddam was "terroristic" is while technically false according to US state department definitions, is nonetheless true if it is interpreted to mean "an agent who murders civilians."

I'll say this again however. Had the invasion been predicated on this sole premise: Iraq must be invaded for ethical reasons (in the same vein as interventionism in Rwanda would have been ethical, whether or not the circumstances merit such an analogy) from the very beginning, that would have been one thing. That's very far from the case however. Terrorism and weapons of mass destruction were the two main charges trumpeted by the Bush administration from the beginning of this conflict, and for that, they must suffer the political consequences.

Grewal: The Gift that Keeps on Giving...to the Liberals?

I really don't think Grewal will stay popular in the conservative party for long. Harper may now say that he "has to believe his MP" over Tim Murphy and Ujjal Dosanj, but for how long?

I have to laugh at the CCP's latest comment on the issue of the tape being spliced together and edited to alter meanings:

"Dosanjh suggested Thursday that the tapes had been tampered with and that parts of the conversation are missing.

On Thursday, two independent audio experts hired by the CBC and Canadian Press said they believed the tapes may have been altered.

Later Thursday, the Conservatives said they had difficulties when they transferred the recordings from the master tapes to CDs."

(From CBC News, June 3rd 2005)

They "had difficulties?" How laughable is that? They certainly had incredibly strategic difficulties... How long before Grewal and Nina are themselves thrown into disrepute by the ethics commissioner is anyone's guess, but my prediction is that its merely a matter of time.

But what of Murphy and Ujjal? Should Canadians take Andrew Coyne's thursday peice in the National Post seriously (e.g. that we should "expect better than non-criminal behaviour from our politicians") and demand that Martin himself resign over this?

My response is, let the full, unedited tapes be heard publicly, or better yet, transcribed and posted on the internet for all to dissect in detail. If inproprieties flowed both ways as most argue, then sanctions should similarly follow the same course.

But if this is as one way a transgression as I am suggesting it is, then it is (or should be) Grewal and Nina who ought to take the fall (and with them the hypocrisy that the CCP can deliver utterly "principled" and perfect government).

Both parties are composed of fallible members unfortunately.

The IHAC and the democratic process

By now, expectations of public process in governmental decision-making have become fairly clear. It usually involves an assortment of NGO’s claiming to represent specific stakeholders in the decision. Usually industry is also involved and quite rightly, since many of the eventual government decisions, especially in an area such as technology directly hinge on what they are allowed to do, and what the future of technology development means for them. However, as Andrew Clement et.al, argue in Debating Universal Access, these so called special interest groups or NGO’s have increasingly taken it upon themselves to ‘represent’ the interests of the public to the government. What of sort of citizenry pays tax dollars to fund the government that then requires NGO participation to make balanced decisions? Both the government and industry would likely agree that NGO participation in policy hearings and the like are unnecessary – even anti-democratic – gasp! They do after all threaten to over-represent their special interests and thus bypass the rightful democratic process wherein only elected officials represent the public interest. And yet, Clement and others point to a relative trend against the meaningful contribution and integration of NGO’s and public interest groups and towards an industry-only consultation process.

Perhaps the single most credible threat to democratic process in the planning and recommendation phase of Information Communication (IC) policy arose from John Manley’s creation of the Information Highway Advisory Council (IHAC). This policy-guiding body was mandated to create jobs through investment, reinforce Canadian culture and sovereignty and ensure universal access at reasonable cost. It is likely that had the council not been “dominated by representatives of the primary stakeholders in the broadcasting, cable and telecom industries”, it is likely the lack of direct public consultancy wouldn’t have been as much of an issue. As it was, the few public activists and civil groups that were aware of the proceedings (the proceedings received little media attention and thus garnered little public awareness) realized there was a deficit in public consultation which would be reflected in the IHAC’s recommendations. The recommendations left much to be desired from a public policy point of view. The IHAC and the CRTC (which was responsible to Manley’s Ministry of Industry) drafted similar propositions
“increased and sustainable competition is fundamental to the development of the information highway…in the commissions view, multiple suppliers, rather than monopolies, can best serve this diverse need” (Clement, 30)

Quite apparently, the inability of market systems to fulfill socially beneficial but financially unrewarding consumer demand areas, as well as its naturally monopolistic tendencies are not included in this classical, even archaic conception of market competition.
In the remainder of Debating Universal Access, Clement and others document a small but distinguished number of NGO’s and their fight to at least “…leave a public record of opposition to the lack of consultation and lack of attention to the important role of communications and information in a democratic society”.
With poorly funded but relentless pressure, the constituency of civil groups and NGO’s succeeded in influencing the recommendations of the second IHAC report in 1997, one of which was a motion to create a second advisory body, a National Access Advisory Committee. Importantly, the IHAC recommended that this body “include balanced representation from industry and the non-profit sector” (Clement, 38). In other words, this second committee would correct the severe pro-industry orientation of the first and avoid the glaring irony of a ‘government appointed pro-industry task force’.
Unfortunately, but predictably the motion to create a second, more publicly accountable recommendation body was turned down by senior Industry Canada officials due to a reluctance to commit funding to the project as well as submit themselves to industry criticisms of ‘bloated governance’. Clement concludes by lamenting the majority of government officials who pursue policies which empower industry representatives and objectives in policy making at the expense of public concerns.
Yet, more broadly, we should consider the difficult situation the government is in: they are forced to compromise between the industry and the public. The government itself cannot employ its citizenry, or provide the diversity of products and technologies needed to facilitate public access to information infrastructure. Although it is by no means forced to capitulate to industry objectives, the government has an even more limited regulatory capacity with regards to the internet and service providers than it has to such traditional arenas as broadcasting policy .