Gentle Readers:

 Politicians talk a pretty good talk when it comes to climate change and last year they made a pretty good fact sheet dealing with climate change. This year, 2015, they are meeting for a state dinner tonight and there should be interesting conversation around the dinner table considering Hilary Clinton's statement negating the XL oil pipe-line. I suggest China invest heavily in a vehicle that combines small amounts of Hydrogen with a fuel cell and Electric Batteries for clean long distance travel.

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

November 11, 2014

FACT SHEET: U.S.-China Joint Announcement on Climate Change and Clean Energy Cooperation

President Obama Announces Ambitious 2025 Target to Cut U.S. Climate Pollution by 26-28 Percent from 2005 Levels

Building on strong progress during the first six years of the Administration, today President Obama announced a new target to cut net greenhouse gas emissions 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.  At the same time, President Xi Jinping of China announced targets to peak CO2 emissions around 2030, with the intention to try to peak early, and to increase the non-fossil fuel share of all energy to around 20 percent by 2030. 

Together, the U.S. and China account for over one third of global greenhouse gas emissions.  Today’s joint announcement, the culmination of months of bilateral dialogue, highlights the critical role the two countries must play in addressing climate change.  The actions they announced are part of the longer range effort to achieve the deep decarbonization of the global economy over time.  These actions will also inject momentum into the global climate negotiations on the road to reaching a successful new climate agreement next year in Paris.

The new U.S. goal will double the pace of carbon pollution reduction from 1.2 percent per year on average during the 2005-2020 period to 2.3-2.8 percent per year on average between 2020 and 2025.  This ambitious target is grounded in intensive analysis of cost-effective carbon pollution reductions achievable under existing law and will keep the United States on the right trajectory to achieve deep economy-wide reductions on the order of 80 percent by 2050.

The Administration’s steady efforts to reduce emissions will deliver ever-larger carbon pollution reductions, public health improvements and consumer savings over time and provide a firm foundation to meet the new U.S. target. 

The United States will submit its 2025 target to the Framework Convention on Climate Change as an “Intended Nationally Determined Contribution” no later than the first quarter of 2015.

The joint announcement marks the first time China has agreed to peak its CO2 emissions. The United States expects that China will succeed in peaking its emissions before 2030 based on its broad economic reform program, plans to address air pollution, and implementation of President Xi’s call for an energy revolution.

China’s target to expand total energy consumption coming from zero-emission sources to around 20 percent by 2030 is notable. It will require China to deploy an additional 800-1,000 gigawatts of nuclear, wind, solar and other zero emission generation capacity by 2030 – more than all the coal-fired power plants that exist in China today and close to total current electricity generation capacity in the United States.   

Building on Progress

In 2009, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions were projected to continue increasing indefinitely, but President Obama set an ambitious goal to cut emissions in the range of 17 percent below 2005 levels in 2020.  Throughout the first term, the Administration took strong actions to cut carbon pollution, including investing more than $80 billion in clean energy technologies under the recovery program, establishing historic fuel economy standards, doubling solar and wind electricity, and implementing ambitious energy efficiency measures. 

Early in his second term, President Obama launched an ambitious Climate Action Plan focused on cutting carbon pollution, preparing the nation for climate impacts, and leading internationally.  In addition to bolstering first-term efforts to ramp up renewable energy and efficiency, the Plan is cutting carbon pollution through new measures, including:

• Clean Power Plan: EPA proposed guidelines for existing power plants in June 2014 that would reduce power sector emissions 30% below 2005 levels by 2030 while delivering $55-93 billion in net benefits from improved public health and reduced carbon pollution.
• Standards for Heavy-Duty Engines and Vehicles: In February 2014, President Obama directed EPA and the Department of Transportation to issue the next phase of fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas standards for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles by March 2016. These will build on the first-ever standards for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles (model years 2014 through 2018), proposed and finalized by this Administration.
• Energy Efficiency Standards: The Department of Energy set a goal of reducing carbon pollution by 3 billion metric tons cumulatively by 2030 through energy conservation standards issued during this Administration. These measures will also cut consumers' annual electricity bills by billions of dollars. 
• Economy-wide Measures to reduce other Greenhouse Gases: The Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies are taking actions to cut methane emissions from landfills, coal mining, agriculture, and oil and gas systems through cost-effective voluntary actions and common-sense standards.  At the same time, the State Department is working to slash global emissions of potent industrial greenhouse gases called HFCs through an amendment to the Montreal Protocol; the Environmental Protection Agency is cutting domestic HFC emissions through its Significant New Alternatives Policy (SNAP) program; and, the private sector has stepped up with commitments to cut global HFC emissions equivalent to 700 million metric tons through 2025.

Expanding U.S. and China Climate & Clean Energy Cooperation

To further support the achievement of the ambitious climate goals announced today, the United States and China have pledged to strengthen cooperation on climate and clean energy. The two countries are expanding their ongoing and robust program of cooperation through policy dialogue and technical work on clean energy and low greenhouse gas emissions technologies. 

The United States and China agreed to:

• Expand Joint Clean Energy Research and Development: A renewed and expanded commitment to the U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center (CERC).  This will include:
  • Extending the CERC mandate for an additional five years from 2016-2020;
  • Renewing funding for the three existing tracks: building efficiency, clean vehicles, and advanced coal technologies with carbon capture, use and sequestration (CCUS); and
  • Launching a new track on the interaction of energy and water (the energy/water ‘nexus’).
• Advance Major Carbon Capture, Use and Storage Demonstrations: Expanding our work under the Climate Change Working Group (CCWG) and under the CERC, and partnering with the private sector, the United States and China will undertake a major carbon capture and storage project in China that supports a long term, detailed assessment of full-scale sequestration in a suitable, secure underground geologic reservoir.  The United States and China will make equal funding commitments to the project and will seek additional funding commitments from other countries and the private sector.  In addition, both sides will work to manage climate change by demonstrating a new frontier for CO2 use through a carbon capture, use, and sequestration (CCUS) project that will capture and store CO2 while producing fresh water, thus demonstrating power generation as a net producer of water instead of a water consumer.  This CCUS project with Enhanced Water Recovery will eventually inject about 1 million tons of CO2 and create approximately 1.4 million cubic meters of freshwater per year. 
• Enhance Cooperation on Hydroflurocarbons (HFCs): Building on the historic Sunnylands agreement between President Xi and President Obama regarding HFCs, the United States and China will enhance bilateral cooperation to begin phasing down the use of high global warming potential HFCs, including through technical cooperation on domestic measures to promote HFC alternatives and to transition government procurement toward climate-friendly refrigerants.
• Launch a Climate-Smart/Low-Carbon Cities Initiative: Urbanization is a major trend in the 21st century, and cities worldwide account for a significant percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.  In response, the United States and China are establishing a new initiative on Climate-Smart/Low-Carbon Cities under the U.S.-China Climate Change Working Group.  Under the initiative, the two countries will share city-level experiences with planning, policies, and use of technologies for sustainable, resilient, low-carbon growth.  This initiative will eventually include demonstrations of new technologies for smart infrastructure for urbanization.  As a first step, the United States and China will convene a Climate-Smart/Low-Carbon Cities “Summit” where leading cities from both countries will share best practices, set new goals, and celebrate city-level leadership.
• Promote Trade in Green Goods: The United States announced that Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz will lead a Smart Cities/Smart Growth Business Development Mission to China April 12-17, 2015, focused on green infrastructure, energy efficiency and environmental trade sectors.  The mission will highlight the benefits of sustainable urbanization, technologies to support China’s air pollution and climate goals, and green buildings opportunities.  In addition, USTDA will conduct three reverse trade missions to bring Chinese delegations to see environmental, smart grid, and CCUS technologies in the United States over the next year.  
• Demonstrate Clean Energy on the Ground: U.S. DOE, State, and USTDA will undertake a number of additional pilot programs, feasibility studies, and other collaborative efforts to promote China’s energy efficiency and renewable energy goals.  These will include expansion of our cooperation on “smart grids” that enable efficient and cost-effective integration of renewable energy technology, as well as the implementation through a U.S. and Chinese private sector commercial agreement of a first-of-its-kind 380 MW concentrating solar plant in China.

Heading into the unknown… Almost everything we know about living in space ends at six months. Now that I am at the midpoint of my mission, heading into the second half of one year in space aboard the International Space Station, I am looking forward to exploring the science of this uncharted territory and stepping into the unknown. My Russian colleague Mikhail Kornienko and I are living in space for one year to push the edge of our scientific understanding. To add in another dynamic, researchers are conducting “twin studies” to compare the subtle effects and changes in spaceflight as compared to Earth by studying my twin brother and I, two individuals who have almost identical genetics, but are in different environments for one year. We hope that the knowledge gained on this mission will benefit the Earth and that the data collected will help send humans to new destinations, supporting the next generation of space exploration. Whether it is living in low Earth orbit for one year or a two-year mission to the Red Planet, I have learned that human potential is limitless and we should never stop pushing the boundaries of exploration. Thank you for supporting me and joining me on this mission. I am posting on social media with the hope that I can bring all of you on Earth along for the ride. I want to inspire you to reach further for your dreams and know that anything is possible. The people who make International Space Station operations possible, the flight controllers watching over our ship 24-7-365, and the researchers analyzing the data we get back have invested their careers and lives to this mission to serve the United States and inspire the next generation. I have traveled 72 million miles around Earth in the past 171 days -- flying at 17,500mph -- and have had the opportunity to experience our home planet from an incredible perspective. When I come home in March, I will have orbited the Earth 5,472 times traveling 141.7 million statute miles and spent more time in space than any U.S. astronaut in history. Please join me for the next six months of my mission -- as I reach these milestones and continue NASA’s work off the Earth, for the Earth. NASA astronaut Scott Kelly takes a selfie with the Bahamas from 250 miles above Earth aboard the International Space Station. Please continue to follow the mission at www.nasa.gov/station and on social media at @StationCDRKelly on Twitter and Instagram, NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly on Facebook and using #YearInSpace. Sincerely, Scott Scott Kelly NASA Astronaut

This email was sent to human4us@bell.net. Unsubscribe | Privacy Policy Please do not reply to this email. Contact the White House The White House • 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW • Washington, DC 20500 • 202-456-1111

Who would Jesus Christ vote for in Canada?

Who would Jesus Christ vote for?

 Canada is having a federal election and the question is who would Jesus Christ vote for if he were a Canadian citizen?

 What if Jesus Christ lived in Canada today and decided to vote for a political leader who best represented his personal values?. Which particular leader would Jesus choose to run Canada? Would it be Stephen Harper or Thomas Mulcair or Justin Trudeau?

To answer that question we need to understand what social values Jesus Christ cherished most and respond accordingly. For example, Jesus was absolutely a man for peace and it stands to reason Jesus would vote for a leader advocating world peace. Jesus would never go to war and would not vote for a politician who has given millions of Canadian tax dollars to the military. Our present day leader, Stephen Harper, continues to align himself and Canada's military, to a U.S. military war effort originally delegated to protect Oil fields here and around the world.

 Here is another value based question. Would Jesus and his representative, Pope John, vote for a Canadian federal politician who advocated polluting the planet with Oil and close his eyes to the destruction of our natural environment; all for the sake of maintaining in power and in profit a one percent economic elite of our human population? I believe not! I believe that Jesus was a nature lover and a populist and if alive today, would advocate protecting the environment. I also believe his advocate, Pope John, believes in the same values. If you want to find and ask the Pope himself, his site has mysteriously unlinked from my index. It used to be: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father

 Now here is another question you might appreciate pertaining to our Canadian federal election. Who would the Dalai Lama vote for if he were a Canadian citizen? Do his values correlate with economic profit and Oil pollution? Why not ask him yourself? Here is his Web site:  http://www.dalailama.com

 Another value based question would be who best represents our basic values as Canadians and also as citizens of the world? Who would support a United Nations international police action to identify and arrest greedy and cruel psychopathic politicians before they created humanitarian disasters involving thousands of refugees? Which Canadian leaders are motivated by democratic humanitarian values?

From New York's Columbia University Data Science Institute.

New Support For Converging Black Holes

Crash Expected in 100,000 Years – Far Sooner than Previously Predicted, Says Study

Columbia researchers predict that a pair of converging supermassive black holes in the Virgo constellation will collide sooner than expected. Above, an artist’s conception of a merger. (P. Marenfeld/NOAO/AURA/NSF)

Earlier this year, astronomers discovered what appeared to be a pair of supermassive black holes circling toward a collision so powerful it would send a burst of gravitational waves surging through the fabric of space-time itself.

Now, in a new study in the journal Nature, astronomers at Columbia University provide additional evidence that a pair of closely orbiting black holes is causing the rhythmic flashes of light coming from quasar PG 1302-102.

Based on calculations of the pair’s mass—together, and relative to each other—the researchers go on to predict a smashup 100,000 years from now, an impossibly long time to humans but the blink of an eye to a star or black hole.Spiraling together 3.5 billion light-years away, deep in the Virgo constellation, the pair is separated by a mere light-week. By contrast, the closest previously confirmed black hole pair is separated by 20 light-years.

“This is the closest we’ve come to observing two black holes on their way to a massive collision,” said the study’s senior author, Zoltan Haiman, an astronomer at Columbia. “Watching this process reach its culmination can tell us whether black holes and galaxies grow at the same rate, and ultimately test a fundamental property of space-time: its ability to carry vibrations called gravitational waves, produced in the last, most violent, stage of the merger.”

At the center of most giant galaxies, including our own Milky Way, lies a supermassive black hole so dense that not even light can escape. Over time, black holes grow bigger—millions to billions times more massive than the sun--by gobbling up stars, galaxies and even other black holes.

In this simulation of a merger, a smaller, brighter, faster-moving black hole captures in-falling gas from its surroundings, starving its heavier, nearly stationary, counterpart at the center. Thus, the heavier black hole appears dimmer. (Adapted from Brian Farris et al. 2014)

A supermassive black hole about to cannibalize its own can be detected by the mysterious flickering of a quasar—the beacon of light produced by black holes as they burn through gas and dust swirling around them. Normally, quasars brighten and dim randomly, but when two black holes are on the verge of uniting, the quasar appears to flicker at regular intervals, like a light bulb on timer.

Recently, a team led by Matthew Graham, a computational astronomer at the California Institute of Technology, designed an algorithm to pick out repeating light signals from 247,000 quasars monitored by telescopes in Arizona and Australia. Of the 20 pairs of black hole candidates discovered, they focused on the most compelling brightquasar-- PG 1302-102. In a January study in Nature, they showed that PG 1302-102 appeared to brighten by 14 percent every five years, indicating the pair was less than a tenth of a light-year apart.

Intrigued, Haiman and his colleagues wondered if they could build a theoretical model to explain the repeating signal. If the black holes were as close as predicted, one had to be circling a much larger counterpart at nearly a tenth ofthe speed of light, they hypothesized. At that speed, the smaller black hole would appear to brighten as it approached Earth’s line of sight under the relativistic Doppler beaming effect.

If correct, they predicted they would find a five-year cycle in the quasar’s ultraviolet emissions—only two-and-a-half times more variable in its intensity. Analyzing UV observations collected by NASA’s Hubble and GALEX space telescopes they found exactly that.

Previous explanations for the repeating signal include a warp in the debris disks orbiting the black holes, a wobble in the axis of one black hole and a lopsided debris disk formed as one black hole draws material off the other--all creating the impression of a periodic flicker from Earth.  

A black hole merger is expected to release the gravitational waves predicted by Einstein, but not yet detected. Above, an artist’s conception of waves rippling through space-time.(NASA)

The new study also offers a new technique for investigating other converging black holes, the researchers said. By estimating the combined and relative mass of PG 1302-102’s black holes, they narrow down the pair’s predicted crash time to between 20,000 and 350,000 years from now with a best estimate of 100,000 years. (The predicted crash time by Graham’s team was 10,000 to several million years from now with a best estimate of 250,000 years).

“We can start to put numbers on the rates that black holes come together and build up into larger black holes, and use what we’re learning to search for more black hole pairs,” said study coauthor David Schiminovich, an astronomer at Columbia.

An uptick in the number of black hole binary discoveries has made astronomers hopeful that a collision could be detected in the next decade. This summer, Graham and his colleagues reported another 90 candidates, while astronomers at Columbia expect to soon unveil discoveries of their own from data collected at California’s Palomar Observatory

With more black holes to watch, the chance of witnessing a crash and the gravitational waves predicted, but not yet detected, by Einstein’s general theory of relativity, grows. 

“The detection of gravitational waves lets us probe the secrets of gravity and test Einstein’s theory in the most extreme environment in our universe—black holes,” said the study’s lead author, Daniel D’Orazio, a graduate student at Columbia.  “Getting there is a holy grail of our field.”

— Kim Martineau

Posted: 

 Sep 16 2015

The President Introduces Free Community College.

I spent more than half of 2005 in Iraq.

I was four years into my service in the Marine Corps, and as is the case with most of our young enlisted military members, I had enormous responsibilities for a twenty-two year-old. Grateful for the opportunity to serve, and thankful for the experiences the Marine Corps gave to me, I left active duty in 2006, excited at the prospect of new cities, new jobs, and the chance to go to college.

The Marine Corps gave me excellent job skills, world-class leadership training, and a ton of willpower and ambition. Still, academia was somewhat intimidating. Trading a base for a campus, and military leaders for professors felt like a huge step. To make the transition a bit easier I moved back to my home state of Florida, and found Valencia Community College -- where I was able to use my GI Bill education benefits to attend for free.

I found diverse classrooms full of people with varying backgrounds and experiences -- from kids straight out of high school to seasoned professionals pursuing a career change. I fit right in. Community colleges were made for people like me; they're designed to take persons from all walks of life and help them embark on their next adventure. People like Dr. Brooks and Professor Zuromski made me love learning and sparked a hunger for knowledge I didn’t know I had.

More Americans should have this opportunity. Today, the President is announcing a campaign called “Heads Up,” and the idea is simple: Let’s make two years of community college free for anyone willing to work for it.

Watch the President announce it -- and ask Americans to join the movement.

At Valencia, I wasn’t just in the classroom -- I was leading fellow students in groups like Model UN, where I studied diplomacy and foreign affairs. I was an editor for The Phoenix, Valencia’s annual literary magazine, where I honed my writing skills and learned the value of creative expression. While I was there I also earned my place in the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society. It was all a valuable part of my academic, personal, and professional growth.

Valencia Community College also prepared me to tackle classes at one of America’s oldest and most rigorous academic institutions -- Columbia University, where I finished my undergraduate degree. I majored in philosophy, a discipline I wasn’t exposed to until I took Professor Wallman’s amazing Intro to Philosophy class at Valencia. Not only did community college make Columbia possible for me, it gave me the tools to experience it to its fullest measure.

Today I work at The White House as an Associate Director in the Office of Public Engagement. I have the privilege of being the President’s liaison to military service members, veterans, and their families. I can’t express in one message how grateful I am to have been given this opportunity, and how fulfilling it is to work with, and for, a group as deserving as they are.

It’s hard for me to fully grasp the incredible things that have happened in my life in the eight years since I first stepped foot on a community college campus, but I feel confident that taking that step made it all possible.

More people should have that chance. That’s what the President thinks, and I agree.

Watch him launch a new campaign to make community college free for anyone willing to work for it, and call on Americans to join the movement.

Up until now I’ve shared my story with a largely military and veteran audience, encouraging those with the ambition to take advantage of their education benefits because you never know where it’s going to lead. I’m sharing my story with you now because we have the chance to make sure that everyone has the opportunity I did. We should do what we can to ensure everyone in America who wishes, has the chance to go to community college for free.

Thanks for listening.

Sincerely,

Ryan Robinson
Associate Director of Public Affairs
The White House

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THE CASE AGAINST STEPHEN HARPER.

" Until recently, Canada’s upcoming election seemed headed for a three-way tie, with potential for constitutional turmoil if Prime Minister Stephen Harper tried to stay in power. Harper’s Conservatives, Opposition Leader Tom Mulcair’s New Democrats, and Justin Trudeau’s Liberals each hovered around 30 percent in the polls ahead of the October 19 vote.

Then the body of three-year-old Alan Kurdi washed ashore on a Turkish beach, and initial reports suggested relatives had been trying to bring the Syrian boy and his family to Canada, only to be rebuffed under new, Harper-imposed rules that have slowed the admission of Syrian refugees to a trickle. The real story turned out to be more complicated. Canadian immigration officials had actually rejected a refugee application from Alan’s uncle’s family, although Alan’s aunt in Vancouver said the application had been part of a two-stage plan to eventually resettle the entire extended family in Canada.

RELATED STORY

The Delusions of the Canadian Mind

From his hermetically sealed campaign tour, where Harper permits only a handful of press questions daily, the prime ministerreacted to the outcry over Canada’s asylum policies grudgingly, insisting Syrian refugees had to be carefully vetted lest they pose security threats. The real solution, he said, lay in the continued bombing of the Islamic State, a military campaign in which Canada has a minor role. Under aggressive questioning by a CBC reporter, Immigration Minister Chris Alexander refused to say how many Syrians had been admitted to Canada—apparently because the number is so embarrassingly small.

The response seemed stubborn and mean-spirited—a far cry from the days when Canada sent transport planes and squads of immigration officers to speedily admit Vietnamese refugees. A survey released amid the controversy showed the Conservatives slipping into third place in the polls.

The episode only served to underscore the intense animosity Harper inspires among voters who believe he has diminished national attributes they cherish and the rest of the world admires: Canada’s time-honored posture of friendly (and occasionally not-so-friendly) independence from U.S. foreign policy, replaced by feckless, me-too saber-rattling; its once-proud role as lead supplier of UN peacekeepers, already hollowed out under previous Liberal governments, nowreplaced by frugal financial contributions to support troop deployments by poorer countries; a reputation among its leaders for courtesy and compromise, replaced by a disagreeable, winner-take-all attitude. Previous governments thrashed out major domestic issues at annual conferences featuring the prime minister and provincial premiers, but Harper has refused to attend any. Instead, he has picked unseemly fights with premiers who challenge his policies, once reportedly telling Danny Williams, who was premier of Newfoundland and Labrador at the time, “You’re not going to fuck with my country.”

Harper’s acolytes have taken to mocking the indignation the Canadian leader inspires as Harper Derangement Syndrome: “an ideological hatred of Prime Minister Stephen Harper that is so acute its sufferers’ ability to reason logically is impaired.”

Given Harper’s offenses to the country’s tradition of political and social liberalism, it’s hard to believe Frum’s mystification is sincere.

Recently, readers of The Atlantic got a genteel version of this trope when the magazine’s Toronto-reared senior editor, David Frum, posted a rebuttal to a heated New York Times op-ed by the Toronto-based novelist and social commentator Stephen Marche excoriating Harper’s tenure.

 Marche’s column hit many highlights of the case against Harper: repeatedscandals involving election fraud; a perversely titled “Fair Elections Act” thatdefanged the independent agency responsible for administering elections and barred it from promoting voting among underrepresented groups; tightened voter-ID rules that target young and aboriginal citizens not prone to voting for the Conservative Party; defunded medical and scientific research; the muzzlingof government scientists; a bizarre, almost universally decried debasement of Canada’s census; a prison-building spree that coincides with plummeting crime rates; a preoccupation with promoting dirty Tar Sands oil production to the detriment of the rest of the economy.

Frum, a sometime advisor to the Conservative Party, expresses befuddlement at Marche’s failure to appreciate Harper’s calming grip on the Canadian tiller. Given Harper’s many offenses to the country’s long tradition of political and social liberalism, it’s hard to believe Frum’s mystification is sincere. He zeros in on minor examples of grievances against the prime minister as if they were the totality of the argument, then ridicules them as “micro-transgressions” unworthy of more than mild reproach—certainly not “how Francisco Franco got his start.”

No serious commentator thinks Harper is a nascent Franco, but two aspects of his behavior are especially troubling: his casual disregard for parliamentary norms, and his seemingly willful suppression of information that might conflict with his ideology-driven policies.

Harper’s government is the first in the history of the Commonwealth to be found in contempt of Parliament.

The Atlantic’s James Fallows has written about the importance of traditional norms, as opposed to written rules, for the proper functioning of Congress and international diplomacy. Norms are even more important in parliamentary systems, many aspects of which are guided solely by convention. The prime minister is the most powerful actor in the Canadian government, but Canada’s written constitution mentions the position only in passing. Caucus whips enforce party-line voting on almost every vote in Canada’s House of Commons, so prime ministers of majority governments face few obstacles to passing whatever measures they want. Voluntary restraint on the part of the government is the main check on this exceptional power, and a key area where many voters feel Harper has come up short.

When he was in the political opposition, Harper spoke eloquently against the Liberal government’s use of an omnibus bill to cobble unrelated measures involving several government departments into a single package. That bill ran to 21 pages. And yet as prime minister, Harper has made Brobdingnagian bills the default method for implementing his agenda, starting with an 880-page monstrosity in 2010. Two omnibus bills that passed in 2012 ran to a combined 900 pages and amended 135 unrelated laws.

 As Harper pointed out before rising to power, omnibus bills “go to only one committee of the House, a committee that will inevitably lack the breadth of expertise required for consideration of a bill of this scope.” They limit debate and force legislators to cast a single up-or-down vote on disparate policies they may support, oppose, or think worthy of amendment.

The Supreme Court of Canada has frequently overturned sections of lawspassed in this manner. When the Court found a Harper appointee ineligible for one of its three Quebec seats, Harper and Justice Minister Peter MacKay responded with an unseemly broadside against the chief justice, falsely accusing her of an improper attempt to interfere with the appointment. This drew a sharp rebuke from former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, a Progressive Conservative who now supports the Conservative Party, and demands for an apology from the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists. No apology came.

When a career foreign service officer warned that Canadian troops were turning Afghan prisoners over to the Afghan Army to be tortured, MacKay, then serving as Harper’s defense minister, attacked the officer in the House of Commons as apatsy for the Taliban.

After Parliament’s veterans’ ombudsman criticized the government for replacing injured soldiers’ disability benefits with inadequate lump-sum payments, his appointment was not renewed                                                                            Equally troubling are Harper’s efforts to control and suppress government

information, especially that which could run counter to his political agenda.                    

 A year after scrapping Canada’s mandatory long-form census, 

Harper’s government became the first in the history of the 

British Commonwealth to be found in contempt of Parliament, 

for failing to provide documentation on several budget items. 

The independent parliamentary budget officer grew so frustrated with his

 inability to access

 the government’s financial records that hesued for them. 

Like the veterans’ ombudsman, 

he was not reappointed.

The only “difficulty of explaining Harper’s horribleness” involves deciding which of his retrograde policies and postures to leave off an ever-lengthening list of grievances.

The Prime Minister’s Office and its adjunct, the Privy Council Office, micromanage government activities in the farthest-flung outposts. Responses to the most minor media inquiries are subject to intense vetting that blurs the line between partisan political operations and the traditionally nonpartisan civil service.

Micromanagement has been especially intense during the election campaign. This encompasses not merely, as Frum dismissively describes it, a few rules to make press conferences “less rowdy.” Local Conservative candidates have reportedly been discouraged from taking part in debates or giving interviews. Rigidly enforced media arrangements at Harper campaign stops seem designed not only to keep reporters away from the prime minister, but also to keep them from his carefully vetted supporters and anyone who shows up to protest. This in a country where informal interactions between politicians and the public have long been commonplace. As a former New Democratic staffer now working as a lobbyist wrote in August:

Stephen Harper may become Canada’s first political leader to have conducted an entire national election without once meeting an unvetted, non-partisan ordinary voter; nor encountered a national reporter who had not paid for his seat and the promise of an occasional question. (And only if your question has been vetted and approved and you behave yourself, mind.)

The approach isn’t working. Too many Canadians are embarrassed at having theworst record on climate change in the industrialized world. They recoil at the Harper government’s decision to remove environmental-assessment requirements from the development of most of the country’s waterways. They shake their heads at the corruption trial of a buffoonish Harper-appointed senator (charged with accepting a bribe from Harper’s former top aide, who was inexplicably not charged with proffering the bribe). Even after a lone wannabe jihadist shot a Canadian soldier dead and invaded Parliament to terrorize lawmakers before dying in a shootout, many Canadians object to Harper’s latestanti-terror legislation, which increases domestic surveillance and imposes preventative detention.

Frum has it backwards. The only “difficulty of explaining Harper’s horribleness” involves deciding which of his retrograde policies and postures to leave off an ever-lengthening list of grievances. Somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of the electorate want his government sacked. At the moment, they are evenly divided between two competing center-left parties. In October, voters may choose the one most likely to bring Harper’s nine-year reign to a close, or the Liberals and New Democrats may face pressure to cooperate in forming a new government—a government, let us hope, that is far more respectful of the norms and values that have long made Canada the country that it is."