February 27, 2008 Vol. 33 No. 30

Column -

Winning an election is numbers game

By Sheelagh Matthews
Contributor

There are many ways to gamble in Alberta, from lottery tickets and 50/50 draws to horse racing and blackjack. Every few years, Albertans get to play in a different kind of game, one with the highest stakes of all. It’s called voting.
Every time we mark (or don’t mark) our X on an election ballot, we are, in effect, telling the world how we want our future to look. Usually our X’s are a reflection of our likes or dislikes of the political process, campaign promises, or party members. But when we vote “strategically,” or worse, don’t vote at all, we are gambling on our future, not to mention election results.
Looking at these voting strategies a little closer, they just don’t add up. Voting, after all, is a numbers game: the person or party with the most votes wins. Why, then, do so many of us willingly give up our votes for what we truly want?
Generally, a spoiled ballot or not voting at all is associated with a belief that there is no party or person worth voting for, or that nobody cares about or is listening to the voter’s concerns. This first issue could be solved with a selection, “None of the Above,” being added to every ballot. As for not feeling heard or cared about, the remedy is simple. It’s called voting for something, instead of voting against.
It’s a subtle, but important distinction. Voting “strategically,” a contradiction in terms if you were to ask me, can be done in different ways, but all result in making it harder to predict winners and losers. But, I think the real loser in strategic voting is the voter. When we swallow a bitter pill and vote for someone or something we dislike in hopes of gaining or splitting election odds, what kind of message will the winner ultimately take away? One that is muddied, muddled and a mess. Clearly, the winner can’t possibly know what voters wanted if they didn’t vote for it.
What is really scary is how much is at stake when people don’t vote at all. For youth who don’t show up to the polls in protest, think again. The numbers never lie. Not voting plays right into the hand of The Man, or, as some might say, The Establishment. How, you ask? By making it easier for them to win.
It works like this. When 100 per cent of the voters turn out for an election in a two-way race, 51 per cent of the votes are needed to win. But, if only 50 per cent of voters show up at the polls, only 26 per cent of the votes are needed to win. If you were competing, what odds would you prefer? Exactly.
This March 3 make that extra effort to get out to the polls and mark an X beside the future that you want. Sending a clear message to the government no matter who wins or loses — that’s in our best interest.

Internet tax for music sounds bad

BY DON PATTERSON
STAFF REPORTER

A Pennsylvania record storeowner recently put his music collection on eBay for US $3 million. The collection, which is more like a library of music from the last 50 years, includes one million albums, about one and a half million singles on vinyl. It includes an untitled Rolling Stones album and 15 copies of the first edition of Elvis’ Christmas album.
I’m jealous; it makes my 400 plus collection of CDs, tapes and a couple 8-tracks seem tiny in comparison.
It’s a fitting time for a sale to occur.
Since the mid-90s, record sales have been in a steady decline and music labels have done their best to prop up the traditional market and fight illegal downloading. The Songwriters Association of Canada is the latest group to enter the debate over illegal downloading with a proposal that $5 be added to every Canadian Internet user’s bill to allow for unlimited downloading. The Internet has turned the music industry upside down as websites such as Napster and Kazaa emerged giving people a new way to access music from their favourite artists.
Who needs CDs, 8-tracks, LPs or even 45s, now it’s all about MP3s or iTunes.
There have been a few recent proposals to address the issue, but the $5 proposal is one of the worst.
For one thing, not all Internet users download music and a lot of people already pay for music on the Internet.
Two other questions that haven’t been answered include: Who is going to administer this new program? And how will funds be split up amongst recording artists, songwriters and music labels?
It may be a bad idea, but the proposal does keep the discussion regarding illegal downloads open.
Illegal downloads cost the music industry millions and don’t respect the work of songwriters, musicians or anyone else who relies on their creative efforts to make a living.
People have been sharing and copying music for decades. How many of you 30-somethings ever made or received a mix-tape? When I was in Grade 10, my friend loaned me a tape that introduced me to a few up and coming bands like Green Day and Pearl Jam. Thanks to that tape, I eventually went on to start building my own small music library.
I no longer discover my new music on mixed tapes and am slowly dragging my collection into the digital era. I don’t download, but I’m usually introduced to new bands on the Internet. If I like them enough, I’ll search out their CD. I know I’m in the minority — a lot of people will simply download music for free. Yet, there are others like myself who will sacrifice $20 for a CD, but would also be willing to pay for a good product on-line. With the exception of sites like iTunes and the new Napster, the music industry has been slow to take advantage of the opportunities the Internet offers for music sales.
A $3 million price tag may be a bargain for nearly three million classic albums, especially compared to what it would cost to put together such a collection. With modern technology, a person can amass a million song collection on a hard drive for free.
If I had the money to spare, I’d buy the collection in a heartbeat. Sure I could get the music for free. But, clicking a mouse just isn’t the same as dropping the needle, sitting back to read the liner notes and just listen.

Letters to the Editor -

Local improvement tax setting a poor precedent

Rescue needs town support

Dear Editor,
As Okotoks continues to grow, so does the overwhelming need for a community animal shelter.
For many years now Gabrielle Barrie has been the heart and soul behind Pound Rescue here in town. Her dedication and passion for lost and abandoned animals has been amazing.
Soon our town offices will be moving into their new location leaving behind a building in the industrial compound. Fisher Street would be a perfect fit and I’m sure it will please everyone in that neighbours would not be bothered by occasional barking or odour. What would we do without Pound Rescue? Who would you call regarding an animal in distress? We need to talk to our council members and support this organization. 
 Kim Goodkey
Okotoks

Dam could solve our water issues Last week the Okotoks and District Chamber of Commerce hosted a presentation by the Calgary Regional Partnership. This group includes communities around Calgary from Crossfield in the north to Banff in the west, Nanton to the south and Strathmore to the east. Over the next 50 years it is believed the City of Calgary will more than double in size and this surrounding area will grow by approximately 1.2 million people. All in, a heck of a population explosion. Okotoks may remain sustainable, but it will be an island with this tremendous growth all around its borders. Where will all these new homes get their sewer and water? Unless someone comes up with a way to artificially produce water there is only one solution that I can think of and that is to manage the resource to the best of our ability. Today we are all learning to become wiser in conserving water. We are watering our lawns less, fixing leaking faucets and planting shrubs that need less water. The number one question remains. What do we do when we have conserved all the water possible and still need more? Take a deep breath and read on for the only tested long-term solution. Most of the water we see in Southern Alberta comes from the mountains in the west. In the spring and during heavy rains it screams past us never to return. Sometimes doing severe damage as it floods out homes from the mountains to Manitoba. Many years ago I lived in the Porcupine Hills west of Claresholm and we were grazing some cattle in a field that often did not have water. There was a trickle of a stream that ran part of the year. We built a dam and hoped to retain some water for the cattle. Well in no time we had plenty of water and the stream moved on leaving us with all the water we needed to water the herd. Years ago I suggested to an environmentalist with the town that we build a dam on the Sheep to control the spring flooding and manage the capacity year round. Similar with what they have done with Chain Lakes, Pine Coulee and the dam on the Oldman. In each case these reservoirs add to the recreation aspect of the area and help communities to the east with their water concerns. I was told it would upset the balance of the Sheep River basin. The person who told me that hogwash has moved on. Our only opportunity for the future is to examine this concept now and begin planning for the future. If we learn to manage the water coming past us in a positive manner we will be blessed with unlimited growth for at least the next century and beyond. Anyone got a better idea? We could have regional water and sewer facilities that would eliminate any worries and control costs moving forward. It will be expensive in the beginning, but 25 years down the road we will look back and say, “That was brilliant thinking.” Man, if I was this smart I may be dangerous. Have fun ripping this theory apart.

Life after Iraq

I knew the U.S. presidential race was over last week when my son preemptively announced that he had lost his bet with me: Hillary Clinton was not going to be the Democratic candidate. The question of whether Barack Obama can beat John McCain is still open, according to the opinion polls, but it probably won’t stay open long once the two men go head-to-head.
McCain has many attractive qualities, but he is 71 and Obama is 46.
McCain is also a Republican in a year when the U.S. is heading into a recession after eight years of a Republican administration. Even more importantly, he is committed to continuing a war in Iraq that most Americans just want to leave behind. Curiously, this means that the two men with the greatest potential influence on McCain’s political future are Osama bin Laden and Moqtada al-Sadr.
The one thing that could swing the 2008 election in favour of the Republicans is another large-scale terrorist attack on the United States.
If al-Qaeda has any ability to provide that attack, it will certainly do so, for Osama bin Laden is well aware that his greatest recruiting tool in the Arab world is the American military presence in Iraq. But it is unlikely that al-Qaeda has any significant presence within the United States.
Moqtada al-Sadr is a more interesting case. He is the leader of the Mahdi army, the biggest Shia militia in Iraq, and he has just extended his unilateral ceasefire against American troops and rival militias for another six months. His two main objectives in life are to evict the U.S. from Iraq and to gain control of the Iraqi government, and the first is a necessary preliminary to the second.
So long as the U.S. presidential election promises to result in an administration pledged to withdraw from Iraq, he doesn’t have to lift a finger. But if by August it looks like McCain has a chance of winning, then Moqtada al-Sadr has every incentive to end his ceasefire and launch a mini-Tet offensive against U.S. troops. The point would not be to win. It would be to remind American voters that Iraq is a quagmire that they should leave really soon.
So one way or another, Barack Obama is almost certain to be the president of the United States by January of next year. He has hedged his commitment to withdraw American troops from Iraq in various ways from time-to-time, but there is little doubt in most people’s minds that he really intends to do it. What will the Middle East look like after the Americans are gone?
Not just gone from Iraq, either. There are currently U.S. military bases of one sort or another in almost every country along the southwestern (Arab) side of the Gulf, but with Iran emerging as the new great power of the region, many of the host countries will soon be asking the Americans to leave. They don’t fear invasion by Iran; they fear internal destabilization if Iran incites their own Shia minorities against them. So keep Tehran happy by sending the Americans home.
Iraq, contrary to all the predictions of disaster, will probably be all right after the withdrawal of U.S. troops. It will never again be the secular, female-friendly society of the past, and it will take at least a decade to recover from the economic devastation of the embargo, the invasion and the occupation, but it won’t break up.
Most of the smaller ethnic and religious minorities have fled from Iraq or been killed, and the larger groups — Sunni Arabs, Shia Arabs, Kurds —have mostly retreated into homogeneous districts and neighbourhoods, so there’s not much left to fight about except along the boundary between Arab Iraq and Kurdistan. It’s even possible that the more or less democratic system imposed by the U.S. occupation will survive the departure of the Americans.
Iran will indeed emerge as the new paramount power of the Gulf, but its actual influence, even over predominantly Shia Iraq, will be quite limited. Farther afield, the notion of a dangerously radical “Shia crescent” running through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon is sheer nonsense: Shias are a minority in Lebanon, and a very small minority in Syria. It is mainly the U.S. State Department that promotes this fantasy, with the aim of scaring Sunni Arab states into a new, U.S.-dominated alliance against Iran.
The real fall-out from the U.S. invasion of Iraq is the greatly heightened prestige of Islamist revolutionaries throughout the Arab world.
Whether this will ever result in a successful Islamist revolution in a major Arab country remains to be seen — they have been trying and failing for 30 years now — but the odds have probably shifted somewhat in that direction.
And the big loser of this decade’s events is Israel, which must now deal with a strengthened Iran, a Gaza Strip under Islamist control, and a United States in retreat from the Middle East. It still faces no serious military threat from its neighbours, but its political options are significantly narrower than they were.
It’s not much of a headline: “Small, Nasty War in Iraq Ends; Middle East Largely Unaffected.” But then, history often works like that. The equivalent headline in 1975 would have read: “U.S. Defeated in Vietnam; No Wider Consequences.”

Letters to the Editor -

Traffic circle over lights a better solution

Dear Editor,
So another traffic light has appeared on Northridge Dr., this time at 338th Avenue (sigh). 
While I appreciate the safety improvement of this, there is a much better way to deal with increasing traffic at this intersection. It’s called a roundabout, or traffic circle. Those who have used the new traffic circle at Highway 8 and Highway 22 near Bragg Creek can readily appreciate how much easier and safer that intersection is.  In fact, traffic circles have been proven to be a far safer alternative than light controls: no head-on or T-bone collisions or bad rear-enders like the multiple fatality on Macleod Trail and 194th Avenue in Calgary. And a further benefit is that the traffic is kept moving. No more wasted gas and useless pollution due to idling at a light while hardly any traffic crosses through, which is the typical situation on Northridge and Southridge. Further, a traffic circle takes no electricity to operate, unlike traffic lights.
If you’re skeptical, don’t take my word for it: just search for “traffic circle” articles on the Internet. You’ll be amazed at how convincing the statistics are.
If the Town of Okotoks is truly committed to making an environmental impact, and make safety improvements as well, we should seriously look at putting in traffic circles wherever we can. And please don’t use the argument that, “it’s not what we’re used to” — let’s give ourselves more credit than that. Most drivers have good enough driving skills to easily adapt to traffic circles after a few times through. And once you become used to it, you’ll wonder why we ever put in all these ridiculous traffic lights in the first place.
Dave Rempel
Okotoks