The Daily WTF has a commendable explanation of the effects of SOPA and the potential dismantling of the domain name system;

You see, back in the day, if you wanted to get online and access electronically-stored information like digitized photographs, electronic bulletin boards, and informational databanks, there was only one thing you needed: a telephone number. You’d simply fire up your favorite telecommunications program (mine was Telix), have it dial that phone number, and after a refreshing symphony of beeps and hisses, you were online.

Each phone number transported you to a quaint, peaceful community that was almost entirely self-sufficient. There was no “hyperlinking” between systems: you simply wrote down the phone number, signed-off of the current system, and then dialed into the new system. And let me tell you, there are few experiences in life that can parallel the utter bliss of discovering a new phone number and a new electronic resource.

...

SOPA and PROTECT-IP offer hope in returning to the golden age of telecommunications, and to the days before the Information Superhighway polluted the online culture with this domain name nonsense. Let the Domain Name System a natural death and prepare yourself for the Internet Protocol Number (IPN) renaissance. All you need to do is start a notebook that lists electronic resource names and their corresponding IPN. And let the first entry in your notebook be

     The Daily WTF     74.50.110.120

We can only hope that our legislators introduce common sense guidelines to ban HTTP (and HTML/JavaScript) as well so we can all return to the more sensible GOPHER standard.

As a translation for non-technical users; If the Americans decide to implement the extremely nearsighted SOPA legislation, it would set the Internet back by over twenty years.

Five years ago, I found a small backwater of the Canadian Revenue Agency online called the Charities Directorate. The Charities Directorate publishes the informational returns that each registered Canadian charity is required to complete each year. I blogged a bit about it here, but the site was so difficult to use and counter-intuitive that it was of little value.

Fast forward to just over a month ago, and I had an idea. If the government does a poor job presenting this public information, why don't I just create a better site myself?

In the following weeks I contacted the Charities Directorate, requested a copy of their information, and started building a website around it.

OpenCharity.ca is my attempt at making information on Canadian charities accessible, understandable, and intuitive. I've reformatted the information and made it easier to explore the links between different charities. The entire site is also being indexed by Google, so when you search for a charity you should also get OpenCharity as a search result.

Anyway, enough of me rambling on about this. Go over a give it a look for yourself. Some interesting charities you might want to start at are:

• The Asper Foundation
• Fort Garry Mennonite Fellowship
• Springs of Living Water
• United Way of Winnipeg
• Winnipeg Folk Festival

I'm pleased to see that one of Winnipeg's favourite subjects for small talk, the Jets, has made its appearance in the highest levels of government. Need to fill a few seconds on the clock? Bring up the Jets!

Mr. Rob Altemeyer (Wolseley): ...That type of experience, Mr. Speaker, I can assure you, makes it very, very easy for me to wake up in the morning with fire in the belly and looking forward to working at the community level with individuals and with my remarkable colleagues here at the Manitoba Legislature. So I will close off my comments there, and we can resume this remarkable presentation in a little while.

Someone’s telling me I have to keep talking so–how about–how about them Jets, Mr. Speaker? You know, it’s kind of nice to be able to say that. We couldn’t walk downtown and ask that question not too many years ago either.

I’ve had the privilege of attending a Jets game. It was their first victory at home–

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Order.

The honourable member for Wolseley will have 22 minutes remaining.

And the time being 5 p.m., the House is adjourned and stands adjourned until Tuesday at 1:30 p.m.

And yes, I'm a nerd who reads the Hansard looking for cheap laughs like this.

Mike Lofgren retired on June 17 after 28 years as a Congressional staffer. He served 16 years as a professional staff member on the Republican side of both the House and Senate Budget Committees. After watching the politics of the past few years play out, he decided to resign and like Kai Nagata, he wrote a barn burner of an essay when he left.

While some of the points are a bit stretched, they paint a very dismal picture of the Republican party. He believes that beyond the window dressing, the party only has three main tenets:

1. Caring solely and exclusively about its rich contributors
2. Maintaining a high level of militarism
3. Pandering to fundamentalist Christianity

Here is an excerpt from his essay; however, I recommend reading it in its entirety:

Undermining Americans' belief in their own institutions of self-government remains a prime GOP electoral strategy. But if this technique falls short of producing Karl Rove's dream of 30 years of unchallengeable one-party rule (as all such techniques always fall short of achieving the angry and embittered true believer's New Jerusalem), there are other even less savory techniques upon which to fall back. Ever since Republicans captured the majority in a number of state legislatures last November, they have systematically attempted to make it more difficult to vote: by onerous voter ID requirements (in Wisconsin, Republicans have legislated photo IDs while simultaneously shutting Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) offices in Democratic constituencies while at the same time lengthening the hours of operation of DMV offices in GOP constituencies); by narrowing registration periods; and by residency requirements that may disenfranchise university students.

This legislative assault is moving in a diametrically opposed direction to 200 years of American history, when the arrow of progress pointed toward more political participation by more citizens. Republicans are among the most shrill in self-righteously lecturing other countries about the wonders of democracy; exporting democracy (albeit at the barrel of a gun) to the Middle East was a signature policy of the Bush administration. But domestically, they don't want those people voting.

Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult - Mike Lofgren

Seeing as today is the 40th Manitoba provincial election, I would like to encourage everyone to get out and vote.

Now you may be curious why I haven't so much as mentioned this election on my website until now. The reason can be summarized in two words: profound disappointment.

In Manitoba we have two forerunners and two underdogs running in this election. Sadly the two forerunners have done absolutely nothing to distinguish themselves, which does nothing to inspire the voting public.

One party throws money at crime, the other party throws money at crime. One party promises improvements to health care, the other party promises improvements to health care. One party jumps off a bridge, the other party jumps off a cliff.

You see where I am going here right? While the exact delivery method of campaign promises differs, at a high level the overall effect is a wash. No one wants to take a radical position which could bring about significant change. Sigh.

So to conclude my first and last post on this provincial election, I leave you with Winnipeg Cat; which is pretty much the best election commentary money can't buy:

The United States is fairly well known for their use of capital punishment. Worldwide they executed the fifth most prisoners of any country in 2010. Now let's take a look at a list of the other countries in the top 10:

1. China
2. Iran
3. North Korea
4. Yemen
5. United States
6. Saudi Arabia
7. Libya
8. Syria
9. Bangladesh
10. Somalia

Is this really the sort of company that one wants to keep?

So depending on which blogs you read, or conspiracy theories you subscribe to; the agenda advanced by some right-wing politicians in America is to eliminate social services provided by the government. One interesting question to come out of this is how do Christians respond to talk of cuts in social services?

Well one response is to claim that all social services should be the churches responsibility:

A hundred years ago, the safety net, the social safety net in the country was provided by the church.

If you didn't have a job, you'd go to your local church and ask the pastor if he know somebody that could hire him. If you were hungry, you went to the local church and told them, "I can't feed my family." And the church would help you. And that's not being done.

But the government took that. And took it away from the church. And they had more money to give and more programs to give, and pretty soon, the churches just backed off.

-Franklin Graham

It appears that Franklin is suggesting that there is a binary relationship for social programs, either the state or church can provide them but not both.

Besides being utter lunacy, it's brilliant in a way. It manages to satisfy the demands of the small-government conservatives while providing fuel for evangelical Christan empire building. Win win for everyone right?

No so much. The church is an excellent vehicle to administer social programs to church-goers, but this argument completely ignores the needs of those from different faiths. Is the Christian church going to provide jobs for Jews, housing for Hindus, and meals for Muslims?

The problem with this strategy is that when Christians do provide social services for non-Christians there tend to be some strings attached. "Sure, we can feed you, but listen to this sermon first." The great thing about governments providing social services is that they rarely have an ulterior motive. Jobs are just jobs, housing is just housing, and meals are just meals.

That having been said, everyone has a moral obligation to help the less fortunate. You can't abdicate your responsibility just because someone else is helping now. Churches need to work to complement the services being offer by the government by finding areas which aren't being addressed and filling in the gaps.

The CBC had an exclusive interview with Steven Harper recently where he claimed that 'Islamicism' [sic] is still the largest terrorist threat to Canada. This statement was made in support of re-establishing controversial anti-terrorism legislation originally implemented in 2001 and later scrapped by the Liberals in 2007.

According to the CBC, the legislation has two main clauses which are the subject of controversy:

• The police may arrest suspects without a warrant and detain them for three days if they suspect terrorist activity.
• Judges may compel witnesses to testify about past or present activities or associations with a penalty of jail time for non-compliance.

The CBC also added that these two clauses have never been used. The fact that these clauses have never been used stands in contrast to the interview, where Steven stated:

We think those measures are necessary. We think they've been useful, and as you know … they're applied rarely, but there are times where they're needed.

So today's questions are:

• Is something still useful if it is never used?
• Does 'applied rarely' carry the same meaning as 'never used'?
• Can we not find a better term than 'Islamicism'?

The Star has an interesting piece on what they call "Apocalyptic Crisis Budgeting".

During the Reagan era, a friend and former colleague, a professor of American history, was invited to the deliberations of a Washington think-tank that provided policy direction for the Republican Party. As they discussed growing the debt and increasing the deficit, he was flabbergasted: "Are you not the party of balanced budgets and debt elimination?" The reply was unequivocal, "Our goal is to grow the deficit as much as possible in order to create political space to eliminate government-funded programming. Until then, we want high deficits while lobbying for a balanced budget — and promoting social program cuts as the only solution."

It's truly disappointing that signs of a similar mentality are beginning to surface here in Canada too.

Lately the Conservatives have been pushing their agenda of federal income tax reform. The stated objective is to reduce the number of income tax categories (marginal rates). Finance Minister Jim Flaherty explained this move with the following:

With multiple categories, what you do is you discourage some people from working harder and earning more money [which would end up] pushing themselves into a higher tax bracket,

- Jim Flaherty

This puzzles me to no end and gives me the worrying impression that Flaherty fails to understand how the Canadian tax system works.

How the Canadian Tax System Doesn't Work

A very common misconception about the Canadian tax system, which Flaherty appears to be using, is that as you earn more money the tax rate on your total income rises.

Here is an example: Larry earns $40,000 and pays 15% tax so his income after tax is $34,000. The following year Larry gets a raise and earns $42,000, this pushes him into a higher tax bracket so his tax rate is 22% and his income after tax is $32,760.

Following this logic, it is understandable that some people near a tax bracket threshold may not want to earn more since it would decrease their after tax income. The problem with this logic is this isn't how our tax system is structured.

How the Canadian Tax System Works

Canadian income tax is based on marginal tax rates. The word marginal here means that the tax rate applies to the next dollar you earn. So you would pay 15% on the first $41,544 of income, 22% on the next $41,544 of income, 26% on the next $45,712 of income, and 29% on any income after that.

Time for another example: Alice earns $40,000 and pays 15% tax so her income after tax is $34,000. The following year Alice gets a raise and earns $42,000, so her marginal tax rate moves up to 22% on any income beyond $41,544. Her total income after tax for the year is $35,669.

Notice how moving into the next tax bracket does not cause a reduction in income using this system. There is always motivation to earn more money since at no point can moving into a new tax bracket cause an overall reduction in income.

A Pleasant Graph

For you visual learners out there, here is a graph. The green line is income before tax, the blue line is the after tax income under our current system, and the red line is the popular misconception of how tax rates affect after tax income.

Notice that in the real world (the blue line), moving into a higher tax bracket doesn't cause a decrease in your income.

So What is Flaherty Thinking?

Back to the important question, what on earth was Flaherty talking about? Personally, I fail to see how paying an extra 7 cents on a dollar is going to discourage people from attempting to earn more money. Even if you move into the next tax bracket you are still earning more money than before.

Since any change in the tax brackets will require some changes in the tax rates, if anything, the quote above sounds like a flimsy excuse to make some large changes to the tax system. The next great mystery is what are those changes going to be, and who do they favour?