Obama's health care overhaul

I support the passage in the United States of the recent health care overhaul. Of course I believe it doesn’t go nearly far enough. But it was hard enough to pass the bill as it was. They had to get every single Democratic Senator to vote for it. One notable Democrat, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, would not vote for a health care bill that had a public option. Independent Democrat Joe Lieberman also refused to support a public option. I fully support the public option concept and found it unfortunate that it wouldn’t have taken effect until 2013. Universal public health care is always the ideal. Republicans rail against government takeover of health care. Yet that’s a concept I support, and even the American population supports that concept to some extent. As much as Republicans claim that Americans oppose “government takeover” of health care many polls have shown a majority of Americans support the public option, something that Republicans would indeed classify as a “government takeover.” In my view individual states that have Democratic legislatures ought to pass a single payer system for their own state and go beyond the new federal law. California is attempting to do just that right now. However California has a Republican governor, famous actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has promised to veto a single payer bill. Democrats do not have the votes to override a veto. Also passing budgets and budget related items is so difficult under California’s constitution that the single payer bill would actually need voter approval in a referendum. Voter passage in a referendum is no guarantee when the anti-single payer groups would inundate the state with misinformation in an attempt to defeat a single payer system. There is also no guarantee that a single payer system could be passed into law next year. The open California governor’s race is an exact dead heat between the leading Republican and Democratic candidates at the moment and if a Republican wins, they too would surely veto a single payer bill. As for New York, although New York has a Democratic governor, this Democratic governor is badly embattled and is not running for re-election. New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo is expected to seek the Democratic nomination for governor but has yet to announce his candidacy. But even if Cuomo becomes governor, a single payer bill is unlikely to pass unless the Democrats majority in the Senate is expanded. At the moment there is a very narrow Democratic majority in the Senate in which the balance of power is held by socially conservative Democrats. With this narrow majority, it is not clear to me whether a single payer bill could pass. Sadly it also seems difficult for states to implement a single payer system with the constant thorn of budget deficits that is affecting every single jurisdiction in both Canada and the United States. Nevertheless in my view this federal health care bill in the US is only the beginning of the long fight to ensure that the under privileged have complete and total health care coverage in all of the USA.

Brantford

On Sunday, I went to church in the city of Brantford. Complex story. Guess what I’m going to do now? You guessed it. Talk about Brantford politics. Municipally Brantford uses a ward system but elects two councilors per ward. I personally prefer the single-member ward system for municipal politics. I personally find an electoral system whereby a district elects more than one member to be strange because it involves voting for more than one candidate at the same time, and this often makes it unclear just how popular any given elected candidate is. This muddiness increases the more candidates are to be elected. For example, the City of Niagara Falls (Ontario) elects 8 councilors at large. In 2006, 8 people were elected out of a total of 26. The top vote getter received only 9 percent of the vote. This really makes it unclear how popular each of the candidates is which is why I don’t like this method of electing councilors, especially when it gets to such ridiculous numbers as 8 candidates, 8 different people electors vote for at once. Interestingly, the adjacent City of Niagara Falls, New York also uses an at large multiple councilor system of elections except there they have party primaries. Another difference in Niagara Falls New York is that every 4 years 3 councilors are elected at large for a 4 year term. Two years later, two other councilors are elected at large for a 4 year term. Thus Niagara Falls, New York has a staggered election system similar to the federal U.S. Senate electoral system.

At least when it’s two candidates per ward, as it is in Brantford, you can have some idea of how popular a candidate is. For example, in 2006 two Brantford councilors were elected with over 40% of the vote, with the second place (yet still elected) candidate in both cases in the 20s. In a two councilor per ward system, this is a symbol of great popularity.

At the provincial level and federal level Brantford is in the Brant electoral district. Provincially this electoral district is represented by popular Liberal MPP Dave Levac. Federally Brant is represented by Liberal MP Lloyd St. Amand. Sadly St. Amand doesn’t have the same personal popularity as his provincial counterpart, given that St. Amand was twice elected by only narrow margins. If the much more personally popular Jane Stewart were still around, I’d expect Brant to be a much safer Liberal seat. As it is, St Amand only has a plurality of around 500 votes over the Tory candidate. This is because the NDP candidate split the vote and almost cost the Liberals the seat. In the next election former Hamilton Mountain MP Ian Deans is going to run in Brant. My advice to the Brant voters thinking of voting NDP is to instead vote for St. Amand unless they want a Tory MP elected in Brant (who would be the first Tory MP elected in Brantford since the 1958 federal election).


The City of Brantford has made the proposal to annex small areas just outside the city that are in Brant County so that they can be developed. While Brantford Mayor Mike Hancock and Brant County Mayor Ron Eddy support this proposal, I strongly oppose it. Firstly, this proposal has met stiff opposition from the Six Nations in Brant County and the two mayors are refusing to listen properly to their concerns. Secondly, it leaves a problem of political representation. The mayors want this to take effect on January 1, 2008. This is not good because this is outside the timeline of a municipal election. They will likely redraw Brantford wards to include the new electors from Brant County. This is undemocratic because this gives these electors elected representatives who they had no opportunity to vote for or against. If they insist on going through with this thoughtless annexation plan, the least they could do would be to make it take effect in December 2010 when a new council is elected in both Brantford and Brant County. This plan also requires provincial approval and I would advise to the province not to approve this plan. There have been threats of Caledonia-style First Nations protests if this plan goes through. That alone should allow this plan to be burned.

Affected residents may also object to becoming residents of the City of Brantford. This proposal will also phase in Brantford’s higher property taxes. This is wrong. Brant County residents like their low property taxes, and should not be forced to live in much higher taxing jurisdiction of Brantford. There is no reason why development of land (if First Nations have no claim to it) cannot occur within the jurisdiction of Brant County. I want an end to this foolhardy proposal as soon as possible.

HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Help! The Interstate 35W in Minnesota has collapsed and killed numerous innocent bystanders. Help! I have gone across that bridge many times. Granted I do not remember it, because I was less than a year old. At that time my parents and I lived there for a few months. Tragic events happen in Minnesota just as anywhere else, but Minnesota is great. When my parents and I lived there, we loved it. We lived in Bloomington which is a suburb of Minneapolis. Up until this bridge collapsed, Minneapolis-St. Paul was a great place to live. They built the biggest mall in America, aptly called Mall of America, only AFTER we had moved away from Bloomington. But even back then when we lived there in 1984 there were excellent shopping opportunities. And that is what makes Minneapolis-St. Paul so great. It is actually quite odd. Minneapolis-St. Paul is a large, burgeoning metropolis, and yet it still only has enough of a population to be given 10 Presidential Electoral Votes. So in light of what has happened, I thought I’d discuss Minnesota politics.

Democrats have long had a slight edge in Minnesota politics. This is enough so that Minnesota has voted for the Democratic nominee for President continuously in every election since 1976. It even voted for Walter Mondale’s beleaguered campaign. For the record my four favourite states in the American union are Minnesota (lived there!), New York (lived there for a good 7 years!), Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. All of these states voted for losing Presidential Democratic nominees John Kerry, Al Gore, and Michael Dukakis. These 4 are also 4 of the 8 American states that have never voted either for George W. Bush or for his father in presidential elections (we are not counting the times George H.W. Bush was on the Vice-Presidential ticket with Ronald Reagan). The other 4 states in this category are Washington State, Oregon, Wisconsin, and Hawaii. In Minnesota some people thought the state was shifting to a being a Republican state after conservative Republican Norm Coleman beat former Vice-President Walter Mondale in the 2002 federal Senate election. But this ignores the fact that Minnesota has had Republican Senators before, including during it’s glory days of being very liberal Democrat. It also ignores the fact that this election was under peculiar circumstances with the recent death of the incumbent Senator Paul Wellstone in a tragic plane crash in October 2002. But since the Coleman victory Democrats won the 2004 Presidential Election in Minnesota. In 2006, Democratic victories in Minnesota were even more resounding. The Democrats regained control of the State House. Democrat Amy Klobuchar resoundingly won the federal Senate election against incumbent federal Representative Mark Kennedy (who at one time was considered to have a chance at winning). Democrats sent a 5-3 majority House delegation to Washington, and gained control of all statewide positions except Governor and Lieutenant Governor (actually beating the incumbent Republican state Auditor by a solid 10 percentage points!). So at the moment Minnesota is a fairly Democratic state. Now Minnesota has one conservative Republican Senator, and one liberal Democrat Senator. Norm Coleman has the advantage to be re-elected in 2008, but only because he is the incumbent. If he were not running, it would be a surefire Democratic pickup.

But I don’t know what to do about the bridge collapse, the dead innocent bystanders, and the economic damage this bridge collapse is going to cause.