Michael Moore and the Canada Elections Act.
Canada Election Act.
282. No person shall, outside Canada,
(a) by intimidation or duress, compel a person to vote or refrain from voting or vote or refrain from voting for a particular candidate at an election under this Part; or
(b) by any pretence or contrivance, including by representing that the ballot or the manner of voting at an election is not secret, induce a person to vote or refrain from voting or vote or refrain from voting for a particular candidate at an election under this Part.
Michael Moore, I'm a BIG blob
quoted from his website.
"Oh, Canada -- you're not really going to elect a Conservative majority on Monday, are you? That's a joke, right? I know you have a great sense of humor, and certainly a well-developed sense of irony, but this is no longer funny."
"These are no ordinary times, and as you go to the polls on Monday, you do so while a man running the nation to the south of you is hoping you can lend him a hand by picking Stephen Harper because he's a man who shares his world view. Do you want to help George Bush by turning Canada into his latest conquest?"
Seems like Michael Moore doesn't give a damn about Canada and it's election law. Sounds like he broke rule 282, section a.
Check the Michael Moore photo. Who is the real loser? Is it Michael Moore or perhaps even Canada when we allow some fat bastard(could there be a relation to Austin Powers, fat bastard) to tell us how to vote.
posted by Fighting for Democracy at 11:36 PM
8 Comments:
You might want to look up intimidation and duress in a dictionary. I you aren't sure what that is, you could ask for one at the library. If your not sure where that is, you copuld ask your mom. A sarcastic commentary does not equal duress or intimidation.
When you try to scare Canadians by saying "George Bush will turn Canada into his lastest conquest"... it sounds like intimidation to me.
Since when is Michael Moore sarcastic. I thought you lefties always believed he was the keeper of the truth.
If we can agree he is a lying moron; then I concede your point of it being sarcastic.
I appologize for my own sarcasm. I got a little carried away by the tone of your blog. I don't think it is particularly valuable to inflame political discussion through mockery or name calling. Yes indeed, MM at times makes moronic statements and yes at times he filters the truth. I'm not sure I've ever seen evidence of outright lying. Michael Moore may be biased, truth altering and smug, but at least he is not a person of this caliber running the most powerful country in the world as his counterpart on the right is. I agree the statement you quote is not sarcastic, it is more a case of hyperbole, but it is certainly not intimidation. I am not a liberal or a Liberal, not really even a lefty. In fact, I see some merit in Libertarianism, I also see a lot of holes in Neocon logic, particularly when it tries to embrace both social and economic conservativism which make very poor bedfellows. Jessie Helmes does not support a free market unless it is Christian and Ayne Rand would not have cared less if I or anyone else was atheist (or worse liberal), smoked dope, slept with people of the same sex or whatever, as long as I didn't interfere with her ability to make money and speak her mind. In my use of the term Neocon here, I'm not meaning to label you or anyone else in particular. Nor am I trying to create the kind of "straw man" which so many of the postings on this page utilize in characterizing "liberalism". I simply use the term Neocon to refer to the kind political philosophy which Bush et al. appear to espouse.
Yes,
I can agree I am characterizing "liberalism". But as you can see from my blog entries that I find the Liberal Party's brand of liberalism damaging to this country and will never support it.
Canada is very polarized on many issues and no matter how logically people want to debate it; views and opinions will never change.
I think everyone can agree that the Liberal election ads were meant to scare and intimidate voters away from the Conservative party. It is within reason that Michael Moore was trying to do the same.
You are entitled to your views and so am I. Isn't Canada great!
I repeat, scaring is not intimidating. MM is not threatening, he is simply pointing out what he thinks might happen. He may be wrong, but so may be his detractors. Are christians intimidating me when they tell me I am going to burn in hell? As to your other point, what I read you as saying is that there is no point using logic if it doesn't support your opinion? So much for democracy. Canada is great, the U.S. is not in my opinion. Others do not share my opinion, but Canada is what it is, for better or worse, a largely social democratic country. For those who believe the U.S. system is superior, why stay in Canada? Why try to change Canada to be more like the U.S., when you can simply move there? Wouldn't everyone be better served by living in the existing country which best projects their own belief system? For that matter, I don't understand why MM doesn't move here :)
There has never been a truly right-wing government in Canada, at least one which would admit to it. Even Steven Harper, soft peddled his most conservative views (social and economic) to get elected. I don't think even his handlers would argue otherwise. If the silent majority of Canadians truly buy conservative (not Conservative) values, as we are so often told by the ranting right, why doesn't anyone run a campaign on them? It is pretty easy to follow Ayn Rand's philospohy, she's no Kant, but she scares (not intimidates) the crap out of most people.
Bruce
(sorry, I just realized I was not leaving my name)
The concern that most people should have is not to turn the country of Canada into another Amsterdam. I did not advocate turning it into the US either. Canada was great until all this me too attitude took control of the country. It has caused divisions across the country. I blame this leftist socialism as the disease that is tearing this country apart. Our morality has gone down the toilet with lackluster laws.
People should earn a living. They shouldn't be entitled to it. Why should 15% of the people pay 75% of the taxes. If we have a person that earns 100,000; he probably pays $40,000 in taxes. If we have 4 other people earning $25,000; they probably pay a combined $30,000 in taxes. So here we have 1 person paying more into social programs that 4 other people. Yet, socialists want the guy earning 100,000 to pay more taxes and the other 4 to pay zero. Sounds really fair.
Just because some Joe Shmoo wants to smoke weed, everyone should smoke weed. Just because Joe Shmoo wants to screw a prostitute, it should be legal. Just because someone like Svend Robinson thinks it should be okay to have sex with 13yr old boys, it should be legal for everyone. Yeah... this is a hell of a vision for Canada.
I can just as easily say these so called visionaries should move to Amsterdam, so we Conservatives can turn this country into a great nation again.
Just so there is no misunderstanding, or the assumption that I make these arguments purely out of self interest, I am one of the 15%. I presume you are as well. We don't make this money in a vaccum, we make it in a context created by, and resources partly owned by, the other 85%. In paying more taxes, we are paying for the disproportionate amount of the nation's (world's) resources that we use to make our money. Have you heard of the tragedy of the commons? Since conservatives are always keen to draw analogies between running a family and running a country, lets use one. Did your parents come home from work (or their broker) and throw all their earnings onto the table, so that whoever grabbed the most got to spend it? Did they keep it all for themselves, because it was their "hard work" which earned it? What if they won some money in say a lottery (read whatever province or territory you want into this), did they keep the money to themselves because they earned it or deserved due to previous hardship (again this applies to certain regions of Canada). I'm guessing that they assumed that everyone in the family contributed in some way (often impossible to measure - how much is a kiss in the morning worth? - how much is choosing to follow laws when no one is around worth?) to the earning of that money and therefore each person gets a share, if not in money, at least in the resources purchased from that money. Did you, as a child, pay as much into the pot as your working parent(s) did? Did the parent who stayed home pay in as much as the one who went out to work? Did the parent who stayed home have to provide an exact account of what they did during the day in order to qualify for their share or otherwise be called "lazy bum" and be told to "get a job"? Did the person who brought home the money get to decide arbitrarily what each family member's contribution was worth (private charity). The earth has finite resources, no matter how you slice it and everything we make or use has to utilize those resources in some way. Everyone who lives in a country or whatever territory you want to divide the world into, owns a share of those resources by right. Every individual, no mattter how you wish to judge them plays some role in making that country and the opportunities it presents for others to make money and whoever uses the resources or operates out of the territory owes something back. That is what progressive taxation is about.
If your argument is distilled down, then greed ("I deserve what I have and I don't have to share it") should be our only guiding principle in forming government. That is, I will grant you, a very pure principle, and I am all for purity but I'm not willing to go there.
We are driven by more than greed, even if greed often takes the fore. Greed is part of our consitution, but so is empathy. When we are stressed, we often revert to greed as a survival tactic, but when given the opportunity we can often be motivated by empathy. If you build a world based on survival of the fittest, certainly you will see only greed. Conservativism is therefore a self-fullfilling prophecy. Cut social programs, the poor suffer and the wealthy fear for their status (note the ever taller fences around neighborhoods in the U.S.), greed takes over. As greed takes over, the wealthy refuse to pay taxes and the poor denmand more. As the wealthy wield political clout, taxes and programs get cut further and the poor get angrier. As the poor get angrier, the rich get more fearful and the whole cycle becomes self perpetuating.
Yes socialism and it's program spending can go too far, but at least those excesses can be reversed. It is relatively easy to point out to people that the deficit is out of hand and must be cut. On the other hand, the shift the other way is vey hard to stop, as witness most of the Southern hemisphere (and southern states for that matter). You will never convince the poor in these places to trust the rich or vice-versa fear overides compassion.
You know, with the amount I am writing here, I gotta just start my own blog...
Agreed, blogging is fun and a great way to express one's thoughts.
Progressive taxation does provide some fairness to distinguish the differences between the rich and the poor. But taxing the higher tax bracket unfairly in relation to the other tax brackets will cause these high earners to lessen the their resolve to earn more since they will see no benefit from it.
Alas, the same can be seen in the lowest tax bracket. By continually lowering their tax bracket or removing it, do these low earners aspire to higher wages since they will have more money in their pocket because of the lowering tax bracket.
We all know that the higher wage earners are the ones that typically are spending the most into the economy. Yes, the very resources you are talking about are being used by these high wage earners. They are the ones that drive the economy because if they didn't spend it, the jobs that are created to bring the goods to market wouldn't exist.
By unfairly taxing one bracket, you reduce the demand and therefore the supply dwindles.
Economics is not my strong suit. Social policy is a tough subject. We've have seen the effects of socialism that gives way too much to enrich the lives of the less fortunate. They feel they are entitled to receive social payments forever and lose the ability to pursue goals.
There is not an easy solution within a democracy to stop the divisions between rich and poor, east and west, Christianity and Islam.
Maybe it's time for the Communists to take over the world and absorb us all into the same working class. :) Everybody earns the same wages, lives in a similar house and follows the same rules. No one will aspire to be better because everything is controlled by the state. There will be no reason to work harder because there can't be a reward that no one else can earn. It would be unfair otherwise.
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