• 264 Posts
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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Sure let the courts decide. At the same time, the other thing that makes us a democracy is that we also get to call that money hoarder an asshole if we think she acts like one.

    EDIT:

    The Grassy Mountain project, which Rinehart purchased from Riversdale Resources in 2019 for $740 million, proposed to dig up 4.5 million tonnes of metallurgical coal a year over a 23-year period in a critical watershed of the Oldman River in southern Alberta near the Crowsnest Pass. That major prairie river provides water for communities and farm irrigation downstream. Due to water concerns, a broad public coalition of ranchers, farmers, First Nations and conservationists strongly opposed the project as well as related mining developments in the Rocky Mountains by largely Australian coal interests. In 2021 a joint review panel firmly recommended after an extensive public hearing that the Grassy Mountain project was not in the public interest for economic and environmental reasons, including selenium pollution. It also raised issues about the quality of coal Northback proposed to mine.

    Yea, fuck that asshole and fuck whoever thought this was a good idea in the first place.










  • That’s what’s funny. We both agree that joining the EU is losing control.

    You want that control to stay in Canada because you want to keep people out and you think the EU will force us to let them in.

    I want that control to stay in Canada because I want to bring people in and I think the EU will force us to keep them out.

    We arrive at the same position (Canada must retain control) from precisely inverse paths.

    So we agree on what Canada’s EU policy should be. And we are in diametric disagreement about what Canada’s immigration policy should be.


  • Huh, my take is the exact inverse. The EU is structurally averse to external immigration in almost all its aspects, whereas we are a constitutionally multicultural settler society with a long term structural reliance on immigration.

    The recent course-correction to lower immigration levels is just that, a correction to a larger more long term direction without changing the fundamentals of that direction. We need to be able to have immigration policies that are much more open than what the Europeans can tolerate.


  • I don’t understand where I lost you. What I meant is: what’s important here is not the amount of money. If the guy was connected to billionaires, he could have raised all that money from like 3 people. The impressive thing about the Lewis campaign is that because of the lower average donation, the overall amount is an indication of a much broader appeal. So it’s not the amount that’s impressive, it’s the broad appeal of the candidate to the NDP member base. This is compounded by the higher average donation of his opponents, which means that they appeal to fewer, more well-off donors, and still didn’t manage to out-fundraise him.


  • Elections Canada interim campaign returns show Lewis has taken the lead in fundraising, having brought in $1.2 million from more than 10,400 contributors. Elections Canada data shows MacPherson has raised $560,000 from more than 3,800 contributors, while labour leader Rob Ashton has raised nearly $360,000 in contributions from more than 2,000 supporters. McQuail has raised more than $112,000 from over 800 contributors. Elections Canada has yet to publish Johnston’s fundraising numbers.

    Lewis’ average donation comes to 115$ per donor

    McPherson’s comes to 147$ per donor

    Ashton’s is 180$ per donor

    Mcquail’s is 140$ per donor

    So in fact the person who has raised the most, has done it for as smaller average donation per donor. That tells you something about his appeal to the electors.

    It’s not about more money, it’s about more commitment from more people.











  • My understanding (and I’m no economist) is that (a) some of the productivity metrics are weird, because they compare with the US which counts their idiotic for-profit healthcare sector in productivity, (b) part of the low investment is caused exactly because our capital is tied in real estate, and (c ) low investment is also a result of our god-damned oligopolies in so many key sectors of the economy. High taxes is not the only tool of course. What we need is a very aggressive policy against the wealthy. That can take the form of taxes, of improving social mobility via the welfare state, and of breaking up their cartels, i.e., their stranglehold on the economy.