Labels
Posted by

Lost Lake Tribune Section 2


Conservatives Pass Their Omnibus Bill Amid 
Minor Opposition and Taunting

  
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
NDP leader Tom Mulcair rises to vote on the budget bill C38 Thursday June 14 2012.


OTTAWA — “Deux mille quinze! Deux mille quinze!”
The French chant “2015” started in the upper reaches of the NDP backbench and soon cascaded into a common, desk-thumping chorus just before midnight Thursday in the House of Commons.
The tone from the official Opposition was oddly celebratory, given that they’d just faced 22-plus hours of consecutive spankings by a Conservative majority government voting to protect its omnibus budget bill from hundreds of amendments.
Bill C-38, the sprawling Jobs, Growth and Long-Term Prosperity Act, survived the ordeal untouched and now goes to third and final reading in the Commons on Monday. 
The bill — and the literally dozens of significant statutes it comprises on everything from environmental assessments to old age security, employment insurance rules, government contracting and cross-border policing — should clear the Conservative-dominated Senate by the end of next week.
The government was clearly unamused by the proceedings.
“The New Democratic Party is quite radical and has a very different view of the economic future of our country,” a haggard-looking Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said as he emerged from the chamber with his budget bill intact.
“We have our view and our view is supported by the mandate we got from the people of Canada last year, so we’re carrying out the mandate that we have — which is about jobs and growth and economic prosperity.”
But NDP House leader Nathan Cullen said his party is looking to the next mandate, the one Canadian voters will be awarding in 2015.
Cullen called his party’s vote-ending chant “a confirmation of purpose.” He insisted it was spontaneous. “While we fight these guys day by day, we are also looking to the future. Canadians will have a say in this and that say will come at the ballot box in a few years. That’s 2015.”

Sean Kilpatrick / The Canadian Press
Government MPs and cabinet ministers are also expressing private concerns they’ll come out of the showdown over Bill C-38 having exhausted some of their political capital as well.
The opposition believes the marathon voting session and procedural battle, the first of its kind in the Commons in at least a decade, will prove a watershed moment in the life of the Harper government.
The budget implementation bill contains measures not even hinted at in the Conservatives’ 2011 election platform, such as gradually raising the age of eligibility for OAS to 67 from 65, remodelling EI, and reducing oversight at the domestic spy agency.
Liberal interim Leader Bob Rae groused that the legislation “had everything in it but the kitchen sink.”
The 425-page bill is an extended version of the kinds of Liberal omnibus bills Stephen Harper once railed against as a young Reform party MP, but his government now says the shotgun approach is needed to recalibrate the Canadian economy.
Harper was front and centre through the home stretch Thursday evening as the last of 157 votes were recorded. His caucus gave him a roaring cheer each time he stood, and the prime minister repeatedly turned to acknowledge the salute.
“We have potential and strengths in resources, in human capital, in research and development, we have a very strong fiscal position,” Peter Van Loan, the government House leader, told reporters very early Friday morning.“How do we ensure that those things remain strong for both the near term and in the long term? That was the focus of this bill and this budget.”

REUTERS/Chris Wattie
Interim Liberal leader Bob Rae (3rd R) stands to vote with members of his caucus in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill last night.
As for legitimacy, Van Loan observed that the elected House of Commons “quite resoundingly, about 157 times” had just endorsed the Conservative blueprint.
Green party leader Elizabeth May was the author of hundreds of the substantive amendments shot down Thursday and one of about a half dozen MPs who didn’t miss a single vote. She said it was far more than “theatrics or … a waste of time.” 
“This was democracy,” said May, still feisty and coherent after 22 hours of voting. “This was parliamentarians stepping up to our obligation and our duty to Canada, to parliament, to the people who sent us here from our constituencies, to behave like parliamentarians.” “It was a sign that democracy in Canada has a spark of life,” said May. “We found the pulse.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is applauded as he is recognized at the end of voting for Bill C38 in the House of Commons Thursday night.

What do you call that new skyscraper in New York?

By DEEPTI HAJELA | Associated Press 

NEW YORK (AP) — When President Barack Obama came to New York City this week, his first stop was at that tall building under construction at the corner of West and Vesey streets.

You know, One World Trade Center. Or perhaps you might know it as the Freedom Tower. Or ground zero.

More than a decade after 9/11, no one's quite sure what to call the spot that was once a smoldering graveyard but is now the site of the fast-rising, 1,776-foot skyscraper that will replace the twin towers.

Sarah Barber, a preschool teacher from Stewartsville, N.J., says that no matter how much construction is done, no matter how many buildings go up, "it will always be ground zero to me." "You can't forget what happened here," she said on a visit the same day as Obama's. "It's still raw because it happened in our lifetime."

But Julie Menin, chairwoman of the community board representing the neighborhood, says: "The majority of the people in lower Manhattan are calling it the World Trade Center site."

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who accompanied Obama on Thursday, also says the site should be known as the World Trade Center. In a speech around the 10-year anniversary of the attacks, he said while people would never forget ground zero, so much progress had been made that it was time to call it something else.

The White House apparently agrees. Official guidance on Obama's visit referred to the site as the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's One World Trade Center.

Obama toured the 22nd floor and later signed a beam, painted with the words "One World Trade Center," that will be used in the construction.

The skyscraper, expected to be completed in 2014, was initially named Freedom Tower in 2003 by then-Gov. George Pataki. To many, the name conveyed resilience, even defiance. But others found it too provocative and worried that it could make the tower an even more tempting target for terrorists.

The name was abandoned in 2009 in favor of One World Trade Center in what the Port Authority portrayed as an effort to help the agency market the building to commercial tenants. The agency's chairman said at the time that "World Trade Center" is "easiest for people to identify with, and frankly, we've gotten a very interested and warm reception to it."

Some people, like first-time visitor Laurie Roley of Wenatchee, Wash., find themselves a little unsure of how to refer to the site. "We've heard different things about what to call it, so we're confused," she says.

Ground zero originated at the end of World War II as a military term for the detonation site of atomic bombs, then came to be used more broadly to mean a center of activity, according to linguist Ben Zimmer, who has written on the subject. News organizations began using the term for the destroyed World Trade Center within just hours of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack. "It served as a very useful label in the same way that '9/11' became a shorthand," Zimmer says.

But "as the building has risen, using that term ground zero seems inappropriate because it is the site of construction and not destruction," he says. "If you're going to work in that building, you wouldn't say you work at ground zero. That wouldn't make any sense at all."

He says ground zero could remain common usage in discussing such things as illnesses suffered by those who cleaned up the site, since "that's specifically anchored to that time and place, what they experienced."

Visitor Dana Blood of Pine Prairie, La., still calls the area ground zero out of habit but figures she will refer to it as the World Trade Center site by the time it's all done. "It's not ground zero to me, then," she says. "The site of the devastation — it's not that anymore."

Information copied from: http://news.yahoo.com/call-skyscraper-york-180217215.html

Michigan State Rep. Lisa Brown Banned from Speaking After Opposing Abortion Law


By Lylah M. Alphonse, Senior Editor, Yahoo! Shine | Healthy Living 

Michigan state Rep. Lisa Brown, D-West Bloomfield, talks with staffer Katie Carey, leftThis week, Michigan approved one of the mostrestrictive abortion laws in the country -- and House Republicans banned two female Democratic representatives from speaking on the House floor after they opposed the bill. 

State Representatives Lisa Brown and Barb Byrum, both Democrats, were not officially told why the ban was put in place or how long it will be enforced, Brown said in a statement on Thursday.

"Both Representative Byrum and I were gaveled down without cause yesterday while voicing our opposition to the Republican's war on women here in Michigan," Brown said. "Regardless of their reasoning, this is a violation of my First Amendment rights and directly impedes my ability to serve the people who elected me into office."  

The bill (HB5711 link), which passed 70 to 39 with one representative abstaining, would severely restrict women's access to non-abortion health care services by imposing difficult-to-meet regulations that could ultimately force most clinics in the state to close. Another bill, which would criminalize abortions performed after 20 weeks gestation for any reason, was tabled for now.

"I have not asked you to adopt and adhere to my religious beliefs. Why are you asking me to adopt yours?"  "And finally, Mr. Speaker, I'm flattered that you're all so interested in my [expletive], but 'no' means 'no'." Brown Said

"I was either banned for being Jewish and rightfully pointing out that House Bill 5711 was forcing contradictory religious beliefs upon me and any other religion," Brown said in a statement. "Or it is because I said the word [expletive] which is an anatomically, medically correct term. If they are going to legislate my anatomy, I see no reason why I cannot mention it."

According to Ari Adler, a spokesman for the Republican majority, Republican Speaker Pro Tem John Walsh called Brown out of order, not for saying [expletive] but for saying "no means no," something which he says suggested that Brown was comparing the abortion legislation to rape.

"What she said was offensive," Republican representative Mike Callton told the Detroit News. "It was so offensive, I don't even want to say it in front of women. I would not say that in mixed company."

Regardless of where you stand on the abortion debate, what does it mean when elected officials are prohibited from speaking while bills that affect them are being discussed? 

Information Gained from: http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/michigan-state-rep-lisa-brown-banned-speaking-opposing-203200889.html

Editor's Comment: It means that abortion is murder and it should legislated as such in every state, city, and county in the USA. If you do not think that abortion is murder and you publish that view then you are an accomplice to murder and should be taken to court. Your opinion does not matter when it is wrong. The Michigan Republican had every right to silence  Lisa Brown and should silence all opposition to this excellent law. 
Email Post
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts