Saskatchewan Finances

Well, what can you say about this? To wit:

GRF revenues totalled $12.33 billion, nearly $3 billion or 31.6 per cent higher than the 2008-09 Budget estimate, primarily due to higher resource revenues, as well as higher sales tax revenue:

• Potash $1.36 billion (up $1.01 billion)
• Crown land sales $928.25 million (up $735.75 million)
• Oil $1.62 billion (up $561.47 million)
• Sales tax revenue $1.11 billion (up $190.63 million)

GRF expenses totalled $10.36 billion, a 13.6 per cent increase over the 2008-09 Budget estimate, largely due to accelerated spending for infrastructure projects across Saskatchewan.

"Our good fortune last year allowed the government to address the priorities of Saskatchewan people through infrastructure spending, debt reduction and significant tax relief," Gantefoer said.

The government lowered income tax by over $300 million dollars last year and committed an unprecedented $1.5 billion to construction of infrastructure projects.

Seeing as how this information will go down the memory hole on the left-o-sphere, people can click the link and find the report. The revenues exceeded projections even though the prices of the exported goods was lower than expected.

Stuff like this is why the population will not get into a tizzy about much. The economy is good. We are weathering the global recession. It's a good time to be here.

The Green Party Is Unhinged

A lack of critical thinking skills is not exclusive to the right. This malaise infects the left, as well. I'm talking about the great Saskatchewan Nuclear Debate. More specifically, the Saskatchewan Green Party's stance. Look, I get that they don't like stuff that actually functions and has a stellar track record. They don't have to make stuff up, though.

"People are very concerned," she (Larissa Shasko, Green Party Leader) said. "I think that people definitely have an obligation to get informed on this issue and I urge everyone to please get informed on the issue of nuclear power." (bolding mine)

You first. Here's a place to start, The World Nuclear Association. More specifically, the safety of modern reactors. The criticism from environmentalists will be what it always is "It's a website for a group with an agenda, therefore nothing of value is to be had!" This criticism only applies to websites of industry, and not to websites of environmentalists.

Safety relative to other energy sources

Many occupational accident statistics have been generated over the last 40 years of nuclear reactor operations in the US and UK. These can be compared with those from coal-fired power generation. All show that nuclear is a distinctly safer way to produce electricity. Two simple sets of figures are quoted in the Table below and that in the appendix. A major reason for coal's unfavourable showing is the huge amount which must be mined and transported to supply even a single large power station. Mining and multiple handling of so much material of any kind involves hazards, and these are reflected in the statistics.

Comparison of accident statistics in primary energy production.

(Electricity generation accounts for about 40% of total primary energy)

Fuel	Immediate fatalities 1970-92	Who?	Normalised to deaths per TWy* electricity
Coal	6400	workers	342
Natural gas	1200	workers & public	85
Hydro	4000	public	883
Nuclear	31	workers	8

* Basis: per million MWe operating for one year, not including plant construction, based on historic data which is unlikely to represent current safety levels in any of the industries concerned.
Source: Ball, Roberts & Simpson, Research Report #20, Centre for Environmental & Risk Management, University of East Anglia, 1994; Hirschberg et al, Paul Scherrer Institut, 1996; in: IAEA, Sustainable Development and Nuclear Power, 1997; Severe Accidents in the Energy Sector, Paul Scherrer Institut, 2001).

This is specifically in response to the most idiotic thing I heard yesterday from the "esteemed" Saskatchewan Green Party leader, paraphrased: 'no one really knows the effects of nuclear power!' What complete and utter garbage. It's not some new technology. This method of generating electricity has been used by the public for over 50 years.

Who's being conservative now? 50 years of data isn't enough to make a rational decision on the viability of nuclear power? Since when? If 20 years of problematic data is enough to demand that our electrical infrastructure and economy take crippling hits in order to stave off Global Warming, then the debate on nuclear energy should be over. It isn't about viability, it's about agenda.

This idiocy doesn't stop with demands we be informed, or that no one really knows anything about nuclear power. Oh no, it gets better.

The Green Party leader also spoke to concerns about the possible export of nuclear power to Alberta and the United States and the theoretical provision of weapons-grade plutonium to the latter country. She also accused the government of rushing the decision-making process, only providing information that supports one side of the issue, failing to fund renewable energy and energy conservation research, and not immediately providing answers to questions raised by the public in the UDP consultations.

It's not nuclear power, it's electrical power. Why should we be concerned if Alberta or anyone else purchases our energy? We already export all manner of stuff to the states, including uranium. None of Canada's reactors actually make weapons grade anything. However, it's up to the general public to get educated. I think they have that backwards.

If anyone needed to be further convinced that these people, holding the environmentalist banner high, are slightly nuts, it's this:

"It's very scary to think about Lingenfelter winning," she said. "It is the worst thing that could happen for the policy goals of the Green Party of Saskatchewan, (but) it would be incredible for growing our membership and helping us form government in the next election."

If they are that divorced from reality in the political sphere, it leads me to the conclusion that everything else they say is equally suspect. The Green Party will never form government on any level in the foreseeable future. Also, Lingenfelter is hardly scary.

There isn't a debate for them. If the consultation process takes 1 year or 10, it will have been rushed. Their decades of propaganda have, ultimately, failed. We, in this province, were supposed to choose "renewable" resources. Nuclear was supposed to be off the table. Once it became clear that they were losing, they became more shrill.

Rebuilding Conservatism: Introduction

The decision to write this, or something similar, wasn't easy. It came about because I realized that while I couldn't label myself a modern conservative, there was no way I could suddenly become a left leaning liberal. At any rate, I thought it might be a good idea to spell out what conservatism, in my mind, should be. When that's done, it should be fairly clear that whatever the current trends, they aren't very conservative.

In Part One, I will present a guideline for fiscal conservatism. The idea that governments shouldn't spend more than they take in has been lost. Included in that will be a breakdown of why the current tax system is flawed and how it can be fixed.

Part Two will encapsulate another conservative mantra: efficient government. Useless duplication of services and strange spending hurt efficiency. Guidelines must be established for how much is spent, what it is spent on and who gets to spend it.

The third part will be my take on what conservative foreign policy should be. In a nutshell, it amounts to a well staffed, well prepared military. There are NATO commitments we are unable to meet.

A focus on trade with both democracies and emerging democracies. If we must trade with places like China, then there should be strings attached. They need our resources and we don't need much from them.

The fourth essay will be the place of social conservatives in the rebuilding process. The Canadian example is a fairly good one and the US example is exactly what should be avoided.

In the end, I hope to show that what's going on now and how things end up aren't that far apart. This series, hopefully, will serve to remind conservatives that resistance to change doesn't mean all change is bad. It's a gradualist movement, after all.

Instead of immediate change, I prefer a measured and slow response. What I know is this: when the government is allowed to do something, it's loathe to revert back. Incremental change works best unless I have evidence that a quick change isn't very disruptive. What doesn't help anyone is demanding that things don't change at all or that everything changes tomorrow.

The Dangerous Feedback Loop

As I stated elsewhere, I was pretty much done with the US version of conservatism. It seems to be getting worse and I don't want this rot reappearing up here (I'm looking at you, 1980's WCC Party). A couple of links before I begin my larger rant, just for background. Once again, fair warning: these are links to American liberals.

An American Nazi And The Rhetoric That Welcomed Him

I'd like to tell you a story about that — about how a handful of Google searches and something like "Citizen Journalism" pointed up the tacit complicity of the soi-disant liberal media in the creation of and reporting on an American Nazi, and how their toleration, inattention or cowardice creates a national discourse that increasingly imports militant fringe rhetoric that demonizes millions of Americans.

Rush, Newspeak and Fascism

In terms of his breadth of reach as a political propagandist, he has no real parallel in American history. The closest might be the Rev. Charles E. Coughlin, known to his radio audience of the 1920s and ‘30s as "Father Coughlin." Coughlin started out as an anti-communist firebrand, and by 1930, his weekly broadcasts reached an audience estimated at 45 million. (Limbaugh claims a weekly audience of 20 million.) He was a major supporter of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, but turned on FDR shortly afterward and became a severe critic of the administration through most of its tenure.

I link to these articles for a number of reasons, the first being that you cannot live in an echo chamber. There is nothing wrong with vehemently disagreeing with an opinion (in these cases, I do not disagree with either link or the content therein) but there is something inherently wrong with dismissing counterarguments out of hand.

The two links above address the problem of normalizing the fringe. Both blogs do go deeper into it, but normalizing the fringe is a bad thing regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum. Recently, the American right (and to a lesser extent the Canadian right) has been doing just that.

HotAir, a blog I occasionally post comments on, there is some strangeness going on involving the shooting at the Holocaust Memorial. Ed Morrissey, (aka Captain Ed, aka the guy who did Canada an invaluable service by breaking the publication ban during the Sponsorship Inquiry), uses some pretzel logic attempting to show how silly the DHS report actually was. Why? Well, let's let Ed explain:

To that, I’d respond that our criticism was that the DHS report didn’t focus on known, specific threats, instead making generalized threats about abortion opponents and other vague and broad generalizations about conservative issues.

We'll just leave that out there for you to savour that pretzel.

At any rate, to Ed's credit, he tacitly acknowledges that von Brunn is actually a right wing extremist. The comments section doesn't. And that's part of the problem of normalizing the fringe. The logic goes, and I swear I'm not making this up, because Nazism is actually National Socialism, and socialism is a left wing political idea, that Nazis are socialists and therefore left wing. Oh, transitive property, how grand are you? We don't need to spend time looking at what the Nazis did or said, we just need a simplistic way of disassociating that from the right.

Now, this concept has been popularized by Jonah Goldberg's book 'Liberal Fascism' which is, from all accounts from serious scholars, an utter joke. Oddly, because of the closed system that far too many conservatives inhabit, it's a scholarly work for the right. The lie perpetuates and grows until it gets to the point where you can take an avowed Neo-Nazi and claim, with a straight face, he is a liberal. One wonders if the lack of gay marriage in the States is what put him over the edge...

The right isn't in disarray down south, it has gone completely insane. Refusal to learn new concepts and jettison the tired ones whilst ignoring core principles will spell the end. The rebuilding process will be painful, simply because the base is what has to go.

The 60 Year Old Swede and the Nuclear Debate

It's a pretty good government sponsored commercial for physical fitness



The problem with it? Not true. The underlying message was good, though. Canadians are getting fat so we have to get in shape. This is especially important because the state runs the Health Care system and preventative care is really the best way to keep costs down. The problem is that this Public Service Announcement is a sign of a deeper problem that is seen on both sides of the political spectrum: The End Justifies the Means. Who cares if the premise is crap as long as the end result is what we want?

Right now, our province is gearing up for a nuclear debate. The end of said debate is already foregone. We will have expanded uranium mining and we will have nuclear power. Nuclear power has plenty of detractors, and that's all well and good. Their arguments haven't changed in 50 years even though the technology has. The problem I'm having right now is the schizophrenic arguments I'm hearing from the environmental movement in general.

For instance, if you want to reduce greenhouse gasses, because the greatest threat to mankind is AGW, then you want a society that runs on nuclear power. After all, we only have 10 years to fix the problem. No price is too large to pay to ensure that the emissions of C02 are at some optimal level last seen in the 90's. And no, these aren't Straw Man arguments. They've been used for well over a decade (which amuses me to no end).

Wind and solar are not an actual replacements for coal fired plants, they are supplementary sources of power. One might as well posit that our economy change from fossil fuels to a new power supply that runs on ground unicorn horns and fairy dust. In other words, if we replace coal, we need something else. Something else that isn't at the mercy of the weather. Something else that isn't based on fantasies of unrepentant hippies.

They spent the better part of a decade preparing us for the inevitable doom unless "something" was done. The end was supposed to be unreliable power sources and the means was hysterics. I don't understand the fixation on wind and solar, but that's what they wanted. It doesn't look like they are going to get it.

I have a hunch that they don't really want to have a power source that may or may not be there whenever they want. I do suspect that they wanted the appearance of doing the nebulous "something" whilst getting nothing concrete accomplished. Talks and meetings and Royal commissions was the desired end. The means were unfair demonization of a viable alternatives to fossil fuel.

Should be an interesting couple of months. I'm hoping for as much unhinged behaviour as possible from the anti-nuke crowd. The shriller they are, the less relevant they become.

Save Our Saskatchewan Crowns?

Sigh.

So, last night we learned that a public interest group called 'Save Our Saskatchewan Crowns' which was, supposedly, a group of concerned citizens who came together with a common purpose. The purpose, naturally, was to keep the Sask Party from selling the Crown corporations right out from under us in a stealthy manner. The reason you've never heard about it, fellow citizens is because it was stealthy. The left in this country loves this type of circular argument. (See "Conservative Secret Agenda" for reference)

The spokesperson for the group is a CEP Vice President. So, really, this isn't some coalition of diverse interests standing up to the evil government. It's simply a union front, and nothing more. Every statement made by this group should be filtered accordingly.

The Sask Party isn't sellling the Crowns and weren't going to. Any political party in this province knows that it's political suicide to even hint at it. A political party would have to change the mindset of the electorate over the course of a generation to pull it off, not a single term.

The worst nightmare of the unions is coming true: Brad Wall is not incompetent. The screechier the unions get, the less relevant they become (See "American Conservative Movement").

Rule Three

Ideally, Reaganite Conservatism amounts to three things:

1. Smaller, more efficient government
2. Lower taxes
3. Maximum individual liberty

The first two are open for debate. What parts of the government can be eliminated and what is the standard for efficiency? Lower taxes, but for whom? What type of tax system is the best? Debatable items and those items should be debated. Number three, though, really has no wiggle room.

If I'm not harming you with my actions, then my actions are not your concern. Pretty sure that such a statement will not raise any hackles. Conservatives say such things all the time. A strange thing happens to a segment of the conservative body politic when certain issues are brought up that do not violate rule three.

Gay marriage does not infringe on anyone's right to do anything, for instance. However, social conservatives go absolutely insane at the thought of same sex marriage. The arguments against same sex marriage invariably come down to an archaic religious belief. Sure, some revisionist history regarding the special place marriage has always had in western civilization will come out, but it will always boil down to making God mad. Not a valid argument, and therefore can be dismissed.

Creationism is making a comeback under the guise of Intelligent Design. We'll just hop over the fact that Intelligent Design isn't now, nor will it ever be, a science and instead touch on the violation of Rule Three. You can teach your kids whatever you want. Once you use the public purse, you violate Rule Three. Teaching that Goddidit for the stuff not yet understood instead of teaching the scientific method stunts the intellectual growth of children. It's a social conservative position, as well. Is this a trend?

One can also apply this to the War on Drugs. Social conservatives are "for" it. Social conservatives are, traditionally, against maximum personal freedom. They also seem to long for a past that never existed. So, why is it that I've been told I'm not a real conservative on more than one occasion because I don't appreciate government intrusion into my personal life or the personal lives of others?

Ah, the answer is quite simple. I am a conservative and those that wish to increase the scope of government are the antithesis of conservatism. There are three rules, and they will happily violate two of them. What they don't seem to understand is this: increasing the scope of government to interfere in the private lives of others means the government needs more money.

Conservatism wasn't against progress. It used to be a long term outlook. What's happened, though, is that there is no looking ahead, just to an idealized past. It's a past that forgets a whole bunch of important things, like how the various trusts in the USA were a modern version of feudalism. They forgot that the 50's were a time of paranoia and racism. They forgot that without Darwin, there is no modern biology. They intentionally forgot that Fascism is a right wing ideology.

Social conservatives hold sway down south and we should remain vigilant that they do not attempt to assert control up here. They are dangerous because they choose ignorance. Rule Three isn't about maxium possible freedom only for you (and those who are like minded) at the expense of others, it's about maximum possible freedom for all people.