A Perfectly Cromulent Politics Blog
When procrastinating from law school, I write about politics, tech, or whatever else I'm interested in. Feel free to tweet me up (@devinjohnston).
When procrastinating from law school, I write about politics, tech, or whatever else I'm interested in. Feel free to tweet me up (@devinjohnston).
Posted by Devin Johnston on March 9th, 2010
bearded-faced lie noun. A statement that sounds like a lie, but is actually true. Ex.: Obama's claim that a public option will save money is a bearded-faced lie.
Antonyms: bare-faced lie, bald-faced lie, bold-faced lie.
Feel free to leave your own examples of bearded-faced lies in the comments.
Posted by Devin Johnston on March 6th, 2010
Continuing in his pattern of fiscally dubious moves, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has announced that the federal government will be looking to sell Crown assets as a means of deficit control. Setting aside the question of whether selling these assets is in the long-term social and financial interests of Canadians (and we can't answer that question until we know the details), it is worth noting that selling in a down market all but guarantees that taxpayers will realize the least possible value on their investment. If this government seriously cares about the long-term fiscal health of the country, it should be looking at this recession as an opportunity to expand public assets and Crown corporations at discounted prices. When the market regains strength, it might make sense to scale back those public assets (realizing a positive return for the public by selling the assets in a better climate). Instead, this government is trying to avoid the appearance of fiscal mismanagement by desperately liquidating whatever it can in an attempt to cover the spread of its structural deficit. In the short-term, this will reduce the deficit (but probably not very significantly). In the long-term, it will be disastrous for taxpayers.
Posted by Devin Johnston on February 27th, 2010
Politics is a blood sport. Every political party hires staffers to research their opponents to try to dig up dirt from the past. And whenever a politician slips up, either by a poor choice of words or through questionable conduct, her political opponents are ready to pounce. I get this, and I understand that it is related to the hyper-competitive nature of single-member constituency electoral politics.
Posted by Devin Johnston on February 24th, 2010
So... the Olympics are happening. That's... something to write about. Maybe?
In all seriousness, sorry for the lack of posts recently. I'm working on a series of posts about first principles of governmental legitimacy and also a few other longer-form entries. Hopefully I will post some of that material soon.
Posted by Devin Johnston on January 30th, 2010
Scott Tribe pointed out on his blog today that the CBC has implemented new copyright policies on its online news properties. As boingboing explains, the CBC has signed up with iCopyright, an American service which sells licences to digital content creators to allow them to re-post or re-publish CBC content for a monthly fee. Cory Doctorow points out that this is the same service that purports to sell readers of Associated Press content the ability to quote 5 or more words from AP stories.
