In Canada...............

 Is conservatism really on the rise in Canada?

(wrong headline btw, should really be asking is extreme rightwing politics on the rise in Canada?)

Make no mistake, New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs lost big on Monday night. The province’s voters delivered a forceful rebuke of Higgs’ Progressive Conservatives similar to the 1995 election, when the party won only six seats against Frank McKenna’s Liberals.

(but that is just one province, yeah but, read on...........)

Historically, the Liberals have had inefficient support that’s been concentrated in safe francophone ridings. This time, they made inroads with anglophones beyond Moncton.

Higgs, among Canada’s most socially conservative premiers, lost his own safe seat of Quispamsis, which was the province’s most Conservative riding in the 2020 election.

Since gaining power in 2018, Higgs embraced a neoconservative social agenda.

Most notably, he triggered a national conversation on trans children’s recognition in schools. Using the language of “parental rights,” Higgs introduced parent consent restrictions for name and pronoun changes for children under 16.

Over time, Higgs supported anti-trans and anti-sex education protesters, even as many advocates, parents and educators raised concerns about the safety and mental well-being of LGBTQ+ youth.

It didn’t end there. Higgs erroneously suggested an Indigenous nation sought to claim most of the province from property owners. In 2021, his government discouraged land acknowledgements by provincial employees. Higgs also argued that Indigenous people had already ceded their land.

Higgs was successful in uniting the right. As a former leadership contender of the linguistic segregationist Confederation of Regions party, Higgs welcomed far-right People’s Alliance representatives to his party.

(now, this is where the rubber meets the road. unlike those south of the border, this kind of conservatism met with backlash - from conservatives)

On the province’s Policy 713, also called the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity policy, six PCs voted with an opposition motion against the proposed changes. Four were cabinet ministers.

Several ministers resigned from cabinet with letters blasting Higgs’ leadership.

Almost half of PC riding associations sought a leadership review. They fell just short of the minimum needed to trigger a review.

(conclusions?)

But his loss is more than a personal rejection. It also seems a rejection of a grievance politics that favours anger over substance.

After repeatedly focusing on social issues over matters like housing, the grievances lost their allure. Even for the most steadfast Conservative voters, Higgs’ targeting of minorities came across as bullying.

While Higgs may be the worst offender, he is not the only practitioner of grievance conservatism. Federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith play the same tune. Will their political fates be any different?

https://theconversation.com/is-conservatism-really-on-the-rise-in-canada-blaine-higgs-big-loss-in-new-brunswick-suggests-not-241971

Attacks on anti-corruption laws continue to intensify: The attack on qui tam

Context

Qui tam lawsuit: A qui tam lawsuit is a legal action that allows private individuals, known as whistleblowers or relators, to file lawsuits on behalf of the government against entities that have committed fraud against the government. Qui tam lawsuits are primarily brought under the False Claims Act, a federal law that aims to recover funds lost to fraud against the government. Many states also have similar laws allowing qui tam actions for state-level fraud.

A whistleblower, often an employee or someone with inside knowledge, discovers fraud against the government. The whistleblower hires an attorney to file a qui tam lawsuit on behalf of the government. The lawsuit is filed "under seal," meaning it remains confidential initially. The government investigates the allegations and decides whether to intervene in the case. If successful, the fraudster may have to pay up to three times the government's losses plus penalties.

Qui tam lawsuits have existed in the United States legal system for over 240 years. The concept of qui tam lawsuits was first introduced in the United States during the Revolutionary War era. In 1778, the Continental Congress passed the first whistleblower law that included qui tam provisions.

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The LA Times reports:

Column: A Trump judge just overturned the government’s most effective 

anti-fraud tool, which has stood for 160 years

Since 1986, whistleblowers have been in the forefront of the government’s war on fraud, accounting for $53 billion, or more than 70%, of the $75 billion recovered from swindlers on defense contracts, from Medicare and from other federal programs.

There’s no debate over what’s driving this record: It’s a 1986 federal law that awards whistleblowers up to 30% of the recovery. For the federal government, this is a bargain. Without the law, the government might never even know about most of the $75 billion in fraud that was unearthed.

That makes the law “one of the government’s top fraud-fighting tools,” says James King, a spokesman for the Anti-Fraud Coalition, a Washington watchdog group.

So perhaps it’s unsurprising that a Trump-appointed judge in Florida has just declared a key provision of the law unconstitutional. The provision concerns so-called qui tam actions, in which private litigants bring lawsuits on behalf of the government as well as themselves. (The Latin term came to us via old English law.)

The ruling came from federal Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, whom Trump named to the bench in 2020 despite her having been labeled “not qualified” by the American Bar Assn. due to her “lack of meaningful trial experience.” She did, however, boast a sterling right-wing legal pedigree, including service as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

A good example concerned the drug company Biogen, which paid $900 million to the federal and state governments in 2022 to settle a qui tam lawsuit in which a former employee alleged that the company had paid kickbacks to doctors to entice them to prescribe its multiple sclerosis drugs. (The company didn’t admit guilt in the settlement.)

The government had declined to intervene in the lawsuit but praised the relator for having “diligently pursued this matter on behalf of the United States” over a decade. The whistleblower collected about $250 million, or roughly 30% of the federal government’s share of the settlement.

I offer this as more evidence in addition to the already large amount of evidence from federal court decisions that America's authoritarian radical right wealth and power movement is deeply corrupt and openly hostile to anti-corruption laws.  

Whether this decision will be appealed to the USSC and upheld isn't clear to me. Clarence Thomas very likely would vote to uphold it. The other five Repubs on the bench are open questions. The USSC recently legalized bribery in government by requiring payoffs to come only after a judge or politician gets a "gratuity" or "reward", not a bribe, for doing something the donor likes. Given that level of support for legalized corruption, it seems reasonable to think the USSC would be inclined to uphold this decision. But if the egregiousness of tossing out qui tam lawsuits is more than even the six Repub radicals could stomach, maybe they will reverse this blatantly pro-corruption decision. 

Thinking about endorsements and breaking norms

SciAm breaks the norm of silence

A spate of controversy about newspapers endorsing or not endorsing Harris or Trump is making the rounds. Corey Doctorow writing for Medium comments:

Scientific American endorses Harris

“Conservatism never fails, it is only failed.”

If Trump’s norm-breaking is a threat to democracy (and it is), what should Democrats do? Will breaking norms to defeat norms only accelerate the collapse of norms, or do we fight fire with fire, breaking norms to resist the slide into tyranny?

Writing for The American Prospect, Rick Perlstein writes how “every time the forces of democracy broke a reactionary deadlock, they did it by breaking some norm that stood in the way.”

The tactic of bringing a norm to a gun-fight has been a disaster for democracy. Trump wasn’t the first norm-shattering Republican — think of GWB and his pals stealing the 2000 election, or Mitch McConnell stealing a Supreme Court seat for Gorsuch — but Trump’s assault on norms is constant, brazen and unapologetic. Progressives need to do more than weep on the sidelines and demand that Republicans play fair.

Luckily, some institutions are getting over their discomfort with norm-breaking and standing up for democracy. Scientific American the 179 year-old bedrock of American scientific publication, has endorsed Harris for President, only the second such endorsement in its long history.

Predictably, this has provoked howls of outrage from Republicans and a debate within the scientific community. Science is supposed to be apolitical, right?

Wrong. The conservative viewpoint, grounded in discomfort with ambiguity (“there are only two genders,” etc.) is antithetical to the scientific viewpoint. Remember the early stages of the covid pandemic, when science’s understanding of the virus changed from moment to moment? Major, urgent recommendations (not masking, disinfecting groceries) were swiftly overturned. This is how science is supposed to work: a hypothesis can only be grounded in the evidence you have in hand, and as new evidence comes in that changes the picture, you should also change your mind.

Conservatives hated this. They claimed that scientists were “flip-flopping” and therefore “didn’t know anything.” Many concluded that the whole covid thing was a stitch-up, a bid to control us by keeping us off-balance with ever-changing advice and therefore afraid and vulnerable.

This intolerance for following the evidence is a fixture in conservative science denialism. How many times have you heard your racist Facebook uncle grouse about how “scientists used to say the world was getting colder, now they say it’s getting hotter, what the hell do they know?” 

Sometimes, science can triumph over conservativism. But it’s far more common for conservativism to trump science. The most common form of this is “eisegesis,” where someone looks at a “pile of data in order to find confirmation in it of what they already ‘know’ to be true.” Think of those anti-mask weirdos who cling to three studies that “prove” masks don’t work. Or the climate deniers who have 350 studies “proving” climate change isn’t real.

Respecting norms is a good rule of thumb, but it’s a lousy rule. The politicization of science starts with the right’s intolerance for ambiguity — not Scientific American’s Harris endorsement. (emphases in original)

Can fighting norm-breaking fire with norm-breaking return fire be done in principled, good faith, pro-democracy ways? I don't see why not. In the midst of America's authoritarian radical right war on democracy and inconvenient facts and truths, sometimes one needs to do what is needed to mount a good defense. Norm breaking is not necessarily law breaking. 

After all, radical right authoritarians are openly attacking science they dislike. Is SciAm supposed to keep quiet in the name of allegedly apolitical science?  

But at this point in the war, what norms other than a few endorsements are left that can be broken to be meaningfully helpful in defending democracy? Is science supposed to be apolitical as the authoritarian radicals hypocritically claim? American's radical right authoritarian wealth and power movement politicized inconvenient science by weaponizing “bad” science, i.e., science contrary to radical authoritarian ideology. 

Overthinking...

 

What does "overthinking something" mean?  How would you define it?

Webster:

How does overthinking apply to politics?  Can that be done, and if so, how?  Explain it like I’m a 5-year-old.

(by PrimalSoup)

WaPo columnists respond to Bezos' tacit endorsement of Trump

Tens of thousands of people are angry at Jeff Bezos' decision to not endorse Harris. A group of 17 WaPo columnists published their response:

The Washington Post’s decision not to make an endorsement in the presidential campaign is a terrible mistake. It represents an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love. This is a moment for the institution to be making clear its commitment to democratic values, the rule of law and international alliances, and the threat that Donald Trump poses to them — the precise points The Post made in endorsing Trump’s opponents in 2016 and 2020. There is no contradiction between The Post’s important role as an independent newspaper and its practice of making political endorsements, both as a matter of guidance to readers and as a statement of core beliefs. That has never been more true than in the current campaign. An independent newspaper might someday choose to back away from making presidential endorsements. But this isn’t the right moment, when one candidate is advocating positions that directly threaten freedom of the press and the values of the Constitution.

That is the entire response. Some comments that readers are making to the non-endorsement decision:

There is a larger picture here. American democracy is in serious, serious jeopardy. This isn't a slow-running coup any longer and it isn't just for Trump's benefit either. The world's oligarchs are all in now on this fascist takeover now. If America falls to these people, the rest of the world will soon follow. Our defense begins with defeating Trump and all Republicans soundly. But, this is a world-wide movement by the very, very rich. Removing Trump is just a start. Buckle up.

I just canceled my subscription. I never thought I would see the day when WaPo would be intimidated by the far right and not have the guts to endorse the candidate they know is best. I'm done. I will never read this paper again.

Don't care how you try to justify it. During a 'normal' election, the stakes wouldn't be so high, the danger to our country so plain to see. How there can be any question of neutrality when one of the candidates is so patently unfit? You coward, Bezos! Subscription already canceled.

I live in Los Angeles where we were stunned and angered by the decision of the LA Times not to endorse in this critical election and I come here as a longtime reader and subscriber of WaPo similarly stunned and angered by this paper's decision to do the same. Returning to your "origins"? How stupid do you think we are? As a wise friend of mine said when she heard about this, that's exactly how fascism works. ....

If you can't make a considered and thoughtful decision between these two candidates and then tell us your answer, why would we listen to anything else you have to say? Goodbye WaPo

I have been reading the Washington Post for over 60 years, even after moving to Canada over two decades ago. No more. The Bezos-imposed decision to not endorse a candidate in this consequential presidential election is a total abdication of journalistic and editorial responsibility in a democracy. I have canceled my subscription, effective immediately. Dr. Tommie Sue Montgomery, Oshawa, Ontario, Canada

 

There are tens of thousands of comments like that. People are really angry.

The 2024 election: A true rock and hard place for some voters

Some voters are really unhappy. The New Republic reports:

“Extreme Danger”: Harris Earns a Stunning Endorsement Over Trump

More than 100 Arizona Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and progressive Democrats and community leaders have signed a letter making the case for those reluctant to support Kamala Harris against Donald Trump.

“We know that many in our communities are resistant to vote for Kamala Harris because of the Biden administration’s complicity in the genocide,” the letter, published Thursday night, reads.

“Some of us have lost many family members in Gaza and Lebanon. We respect those who feel they simply can’t vote for a member of the administration that sent the bombs that may have killed their loved ones,” the letter continued. “As we consider the full situation carefully, however, we conclude that voting for Kamala Harris is the best option for the Palestinian cause and all of our communities.”

The letter describes an “awful situation where only flawed choices are available.”

“In our view, it is crystal clear that allowing the fascist Donald Trump to become President again would be the worst possible outcome for the Palestinian people. A Trump win would be an extreme danger to Muslims in our country, all immigrants, and the American pro-Palestine movement,” the letter states.

As if it was teed up and on-cue, various sources report this kind of context for the unhappiness:

Trump signals support in call with Netanyahu: ‘Do what you have to do’

Trump told Benjamin Netanyahu in one call this month, “Do what you have to do,” according to six people familiar with the conversation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive and confidential information. Trump has said publicly that the two have spoken at least twice in October, with one call as recently as Oct. 19.

“He didn’t tell him what to do militarily, but he expressed that he was impressed by the pagers,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), who was on a call this month with Trump and Netanyahu, referring to the Israeli operation that killed Hezbollah leaders with explosive batteries inside pagers. “He expressed his awe for their military operations and what they have done.”

Well, we all know that "do you have to do" means slaughtering Palestinians with even less restraint than before, which wasn't much. That is what scares the Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims in Arizona into endorsing Harris, much as they hate the US role in what they see as an ongoing genocide.

Q1: Are the ongoing wars/military conflicts in the Middle East going to blow up into WW3 or military conflict somewhat close to it?

Q2: How much blame does Harris get of the current bloody, tragic state of affairs in the Middle East, none, low, moderate, most, nearly all, or all? Same question for the immigration mess at the US border, which could be (probably will be) a necessary factor for DJT to win the election?