Canadian government to limit environmentalist obstruction of energy development

From Fox Business: the Canadians embrace federalism.

Excerpt:

The Canadian government released details Tuesday of its plan to dramatically streamline reviews for big energy and mining projects, capping the timeline for federal reviews and ceding more regulatory oversight to the country’s provinces.

The Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said for months it would move to speed up the regulatory review of big energy, mining and infrastructure projects. It has expressed frustration at the sometimes-lengthy review timelines for big projects.

Mr. Harper’s government said in its annual budget announcement last month that it would cap federal reviews. Resources Minister Joe Oliver released details Tuesday, saying that federally-led hearings would be applied only to major initiatives that risk some environmental harm.

Further, the government said it was prepared to hand over more responsibility for the review to Canadian provinces, so long as their regulations meet or exceed federal standards. Canadian provinces already enjoy considerable regulatory oversight.

“It is counterproductive to have the federal and provincial governments completing separate reviews of the same project,” Oliver said in a speech in Toronto.

[...]The government had previewed in its budget last month that reviews for major projects would be limited to 24 months. Meanwhile, regular inter-provincial pipeline reviews, as conducted by the National Energy Board, would be limited to 18 months.

Oliver said Tuesday that Enbridge Inc.’s (ENB) proposed Northern Gateway pipeline – which envisions shipping oil from Alberta to Canada’s West Coast — would benefit from the quicker review. The line has been mired in stiff opposition from native groups in British Columbia, and the government has accused foreign-funded environmental groups of tying up the project in regulatory hearings. Government officials said the new rules would also limit who could participate as intervenors in the review process.

[...]In Toronto, Oliver said the current process is unworkable, with over 40 federal departments involved in reviews. He said he would pare that back to only three federal agencies: the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency; the National Energy Board; and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

The Canadian process, as it stands, forces investors to go “through hoops and hurdles as far as the eye can see,” Oliver said. “We simply have to turn that around.”

Canadians don’t want to scare businesses away from Canada – they want the jobs to come to Canada. That’s the exact opposite of what Obama’s socialist “Environmental Protection Agency” does – they regulate energy development, in order to block it or slow it down.

And Canada lowered corporate taxes to 15% compared to our 35% – and their revenues held steady.

Canada: Corporate tax cuts, not stimulus spending

They cut their corporate tax rate, but then businesses saw the lower rate and just kept on expanding in order to make more money. As businesses grow, they pay more in taxes. So government revenues from taxes haven’t dropped at all, even with the lower corporate tax rates! More businesses moved in to Canada to capitalize on the lower tax rates, generating revenue for the government. More workers moved off of unemployment and welfare as demand for labor grew, and they started paying income taxes and sales taxes, generating even more revenue for the government. Do you know what makes consumers more confident, so that they spend more? Having a job.  Not being dependent on government.

Look at their unemployment rate:

Canada and US unemployment rates

When we embraced “stimulus” spending, they went for the corporate tax cuts. Our unemployment rate used to be LOWER than theirs, before Pelosi and Reid took over Congress in January 2007. Now we are HIGHER than they are. That’s not rhetoric – that’s data. Even though Canada’s economy is linked to ours, and has suffered as a result of that, they have been signing free trade deals left, right and center. They did this in order to decouple themselves from our collapsing economy, massive debt and devalued currency. Barack Obama, of course, opposes free trade. He has to – he’s in the back pocket of the socialist labor unions.

Free trade empire: (click for larger image)

Canada: Free Trade Empire

What a contrast Canada’s energy policy makes with Obama’s politicized “Cash for Cronies” energy policy. But then again, Canada hired a conservative right-wing capitalist economist to run their country. We could have just done the same and put in economists like Thomas Sowell or Walter Williams to run our economy, but we put in an unqualified community organizer instead.

Filed under: News, Business, Canada, Capitalism, Conservative Party, Corporate Taxes, CPC, Economics, Economy, Energy, Environmentalism, Federal, Federalism, Free Trade, Global Warming, Ideology, Jobs, Joe Oliver, Protectionism, Provinces, Reality, Regulation, Socialism, Stephen Harper

Do pro-lifers care about people who are already born?

From Ruth Blog – a post to answer the objection that pro-lifers don’t care about babies after they are born.

Here’s the challenge:

One of the most frequently repeated truisms of the abortion debate is that pro-lifers really don’t care about life. As much as they talk about protecting the unborn, we are told, pro-lifers do nothing to support mothers and infants who are already in the world. Liberal writers such as Matthew Yglesias are given to observing that pro-lifers believe that “life begins at conception and ends at birth.” At Commonweal, David Gibson, a journalist who frequently covers the abortion debate, asks how much pro-lifers do for mothers: “I just want to know what realistic steps they are proposing or backing. I’m not sure I’d expect to hear anything from pro-life groups now since there’s really been nothing for years.”

And an excerpt from the response:

In the United States there are some 2,300 affiliates of the three largest pregnancy resource center umbrella groups, Heartbeat International, CareNet, and the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA). Over 1.9 million American women take advantage of these services each year. Many stay at one of the 350 residential facilities for women and children operated by pro-life groups. In New York City alone, there are twenty-two centers serving 12,000 women a year. These centers provide services including pre-natal care, STI testing, STI treatment, ultrasound, childbirth classes, labor coaching, midwife services, lactation consultation, nutrition consulting, social work, abstinence education, parenting classes, material assistance, and post-abortion counseling.

[...]The Catholic Church–perhaps the single most influential pro-life institution in the United States–makes the largest financial, institutional and personnel commitments to charitable causes of any private source in the United States. These include AIDS ministry, health care, education, housing services, and care for the elderly, disabled, and immigrants. In 2004 alone, 562 Catholic hospitals treated over 85 million patients; Catholic elementary and high schools educated over 2 million students; Catholic colleges educated nearly 800,000 students; Catholic Charities served over eight-and-a-half million different individuals. In 2007, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development awarded nine million dollars in grants to reduce poverty. And in 2009, the Catholic Legal Immigration Network spent nearly five million dollars in services for impoverished immigrants.

The Catholic Church is far from the only pro-life religious group that assists the needy. At the Manhattan Bible Church, a pro-life church in New York since 1973, Pastor Bill Devlin and his congregation run a soup kitchen that has served over a million people and a K-8 school that has educated 90,000 needy students. Pastor Devlin and other church families have adopted scores of babies, and taken in scores of pregnant women, including some who were both drug-addicted and HIV positive. The church runs a one-hundred-and-fifty bed residential drug rehabilitation center and a prison ministry at Rikers Island. All told, the church runs some forty ministries, and all without a government dime.

[....]If pro-life Americans provide so many (often free) services to the poor and vulnerable–work easily discovered by any researcher or journalist with an Internet connection–why are they sometimes accused of caring only for life inside the womb? Quite possibly, it is the conviction of abortion advocates that “caring for the born” translates first and always into advocacy for government programs and funds. In other words, abortion advocates appear to conflate charitable works and civil society with government action. The pro-life movement does not. Rather, it takes up the work of assisting women and children and families, one fundraiser and hotline and billboard at a time.

People think that abortion providers do a lot for women’s health, but Planned Parenthood doesn’t provide mammograms.

You may be interested in this post by Neil Simpson, who volunteers at a crisis pregnancy center.

Excerpt:

The “Pro-lifers don’t care about kids after they are born” line is one of my favorite arguments to rebut.  I teach people how to do it in pro-life training sessions in a two-step approach.  The tone of the conversation is important.  These arguments are powerful and quite effective if they are laid out in a calm, reasoned approach.  You probably won’t convert the rabid pro-choicers, but most of the middle-grounders will get the point.

First, show that pointing out a moral wrong does not obligate you to take responsibility for the situation.

If your neighbor is beating his wife, you call the police.  The police don’t say, “Hey, buddy, unless you are willing to marry her yourself then we aren’t going to stop him from beating her.”  You can use child or animal abuse as examples as well.  Most people get the point pretty quickly.

Or ask the pro-choicer what they would do if the government decided to reduce the number of homeless people by killing them.  Could he protest that without having to house and feed them all himself?

[...]Second, explain that while we aren’t morally obligated to help after the babies are born to be able to speak out against abortion, Christians do many things with their time and money anyway – orphanages, Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs), food pantries, etc.

When I’m teaching CPC volunteers I remind them of all that they and the center do: Pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, food, clothes, diapers, life skill training, parenting training, post-abortion counseling and more – all for free!  And, of course, we share the Gospel with the clients if they are interested (Saving lives now and for eternity!).

The workers are mostly volunteers and the leaders make below-market wages because they believe in the cause.  Most centers receive no government funding, so all the money comes from donations.  There are far more Crisis Pregnancy Centers than there are abortion clinics.

On a completely different topic, I posted an article by Helen Alvare a while back. She is one of the authors of this article. There was a pretty good dispute with a single mother who disagreed her comments to that article.

Related posts

• Does sex education reduce teen pregnancies and sexually-transmitted infections?
• 91% of Planned Parenthood clinics help hide statutory rapists
• What is Planned Parenthood and why do Democrats support them?
• Does Planned Parenthood really use taxpayer money to provide mammograms?
• Feminists push liberal sexual agenda at United Nations
• Planned Parenthood stung three more times by Live Action
• Planned Parenthood caught helping pimp to run underage sex-trafficking ring
• Planned Parenthood releases annual report – 324,008 babies aborted
• Undercover video of Planned Parenthood selling abortion with misinformation
• Susan G. Komen for the Cure charity funds Planned Parenthood
• Is Planned Parenthood overbilling state and local governments?
• Planned Parenthood conceals rape and breaks the law
• Undercover video of Planned Parenthood selling abortion with misinformation
• How much money does Planned Parenthood receive from taxpayers?
• How much profit does the non-profit Planned Parenthood make?
• Is Planned Parenthood overbilling state and local governments?
• Planned Parenthood conceals rape and breaks the law

Filed under: News, Abortion, Charity, CPC, Crisis Pregnancy Center, Democrat Party, Feminism, Health-care, Mammogram, Planned Parenthood, Pregnancy, Pregnancy Resource Center, Pro-Abortion, Pro-Life, Social Programs, Taxes, Taxpayer, Unborn, Unplanned Pregnancy, Women

How to take an incremental approach to the abortion problem

Story here at SoCon or Bust. (H/T Miss Marprelate)

Topics:

1) Gendercide Abortions – Sex-selection abortions, where an abortion is procured for the sole reason of eliminating the unborn child based on the sex of the child.

2) Parental Consent – Laws which require parental notification or consent before a minor obtains an abortion.

3) Informed Consent – Informed consent is also a very reasonable and palatable restriction on abortion.

4) Forced/Coerced Abortion – Many abortions are done so through coercion of boyfriends, husbands and other family members.

5) Unborn Victims of Crime - When an aggressor becomes violent resulting in the death or harm to both the mother and unborn child.

6) Decapitation Abortions – Restricting the crueler methods of abortion, like partial-birth abortion.

7) Fetal Pain – Unborn children do indeed feel intense pain during an abortion. (This worked in Nebraska!)

8 ) Tax Payer Funding – Prevent taxpayers from funding abortions – could draw some traditional-minded libertarians to the cause.

9) Freedom – The western world today is undergoing a massive depopulation which is threatening the fundamental values of western civilization, as Islamic expansionism overruns Europe and, in the future, North America.

10) Economic Collapse -  The reports concerning the economic collapse of the West are also linked to a shrinking population.

Incrementalism is the way to do it! One thing I don’t like about social conservatives, although I am one, is the way that they do not link fiscal conservatism to their social conservatism. But SoCon’s list does link to the fiscal issues.

I’d like to see more ultrasound machines bought by rank-and-file pro-lifers for crisis pregnancy centers. That should be added to the list.

UPDATE: A mysterious e-mailer sends word that federalism would also be a good thing to encourage, as an incremental measure. Allow states more autonomy to restrict abortion as they see fit. Some states like South Dakota and Oklahoma would pass some excellent measures, for sure. The original list is from a Canadian, so that may explain why it is not on the list. They typically favor a strong central government.

My previous post on abortion is here.

Oh, by the way, here’s the Marprelate:

It bites when it's angry! And it likes to wear hats!

I am pretty sure we can summon the Marprelate by posting its picture. Or by clicking this link repeatedly, which I am sure you will all do.

Filed under: Commentary, Abortion, Abortion Methods, America Alone, Coerced Abortion, CPC, Demographics, Fetal Pain, Fiscal Conservative, Forced abortion, Freedom, Funding, Informed Consent, Islam, Liberty, Muslim, Parental Consent, Partial Birth Abortion, Pro-Life, Sex-Selection, Social Conservative, Tax-Payer, Taxpayer, Ultrasound, Unborn, Unborn Victims of Crime, Unborn Victims of Violence, Western Civilization

George W. Bush raises money for Indiana crisis pregnancy centers

The most pro-life President ever

Story here from Life Site News.

Excerpt:

Former President George W. Bush on Thursday gave the keynote address for a fundraiser for Life Centers, a Christian organization that helps women facing unplanned pregnancies in central Indiana, and encouraged the group to continue with its life-saving work.

Cameras and media were not permitted inside Conseco Fieldhouse, where the fundraiser took place at 7 PM.  Roughly 4,000 people attended the event, which Life Center leaders said would be the largest-ever fundraiser for the nonprofit organization.

“He wants to encourage us to continue doing what we’re doing and helping those girls in our city who really need to seek our services and don’t have places to go,” said Julie Rupprecht of Life Centers of Bush’s message, according to local news station WTHR 13.

[...]Life Centers President Brian Boone had called the event a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to celebrate life – with a keynote address from a public servant who made the sanctity of human life a priority.”

During his term as president, Bush signed into law several protections for the unborn, including the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, and the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. He also appointed pro-life justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court, and reinstated the Mexico City Policy, which required all non-governmental organizations receiving federal funding to refrain from performing or promoting abortions in other countries.

In January Legatus, a membership organization for Catholic business leaders, presented Mr. Bush with its prestigious Cardinal John J. O’Connor Pro-Life Award in recognition of his work advancing the rights of the unborn.

Obama is the most pro-abortion president we’ve ever had, and he’s no friend of traditional marriage or stay-at-home parents, either. Bush was the most pro-life. Everyone hated him because he was a Christian, but for people like me who actually cared about life issues and traditional marriage, he was the best president ever. We will never get pro-life judges like the kind that Bush nominated, (e.g. – John Roberts and Sam Alito) under Obama. Obama is nominating pro-abortion radicals to the bench. Elections matter.

Filed under: News, Abortion, Barack Obama, Bioethics, Born Alive Infants Act, Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, CPC, Crisis, Democrat, Fundraiser, George Bush, George W. Bush, Indiana, John Roberts, Life, Mexico City Policy, Partial Birth Abortion, Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, POTUS, President, Pro-Abortion President, Pro-Life, Pro-Life President, Republican, Samuel Alito, Unborn, Unborn Victims of Violence, Unborn Victims of Violence Act