---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sign the Petition requesting The Honble Minister of State for Environment
and Forests (I/C) to maintain the moratorium on issuing further
environmental clearances for mining activities in Goa
http://goanvoice.org.uk/miningpetition.php
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posting this because of the current debate ensuing on Goa-Net.
Has nothing to do with Goa.
Some of you my know that Canadian (and now also American) David Frum was one of
George W. Bush's speech writers.
A solid Republican. He was fired from his position of resident scholar at the
AEI because of his criticism of the Republican Party over the Health Care
debate - ironically losing all his health benefits.
You might be interested in this article from:
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/786175--david-frum-a-republican-pariah-in-health-care-debate
Note the last para.
"The Canadian system is like the bumblebee – it shouldn't be able to fly when
you look at the diagrams. But because everyone behaves better than the system
invites them to behave, it works.
"But that's also a reason why it is not a model for export – Americans might
not behave that way," Frum says.
==================================
David Frum a Republican pariah in health-care debate
WASHINGTON–It wasn't the first time David Frum suggested his own kind have lost
the plot.
But this week, when Frum branded America's health-care breakthrough a defeat
for Republicans akin to Waterloo, the Toronto-born political commentator felt
the fury of the far right as never before.
"We went for all the marbles, we ended with none," Frum lamented in a blog
posting that sparked a system-crashing torrent of traffic at his web portal,
www.frumforum.com.
By obsessing on the humiliation of U.S. President Barack Obama above all else,
Frum wrote, the Republican strategy of "no negotiations, no compromise,
nothing" consigned American conservatives to their "most crushing legislative
defeat since the 1960s." And the wound was entirely self-inflicted.
Frum's solution: Republican leaders now must show the courage of their
convictions, abandon the frothing yet futureless extremes of the right and
instead stake out sober, reasoned middle-ground where most Americans live.
On cue, many stateside conservatives went straight for the messenger, finding
new ways to shred the former speech writer to George W. Bush. The cacophony of
Frum-bashing appeared to reach a zenith on Thursday, when the conservative
American Enterprise Institute confirmed it was terminating Frum's position as a
resident scholar. Though AEI insists the dismissal was coincidental – relating
to money rather than politics – it came with one especially stinging irony:
Frum and family will lose their health-care benefits.
None of this is a laughing matter if you are David Frum. But when the Toronto
Star caught up with him at his Washington home, Frum couldn't help but chuckle
at some of the invective. Especially the attacks suggesting his greatest sin of
all was to be Canadian.
"Calling someone a Canadian is not an insult that has a lot of bite in the
United States," said Frum, who in fact added American citizenship to his
repertoire in 2007.
What Frum wants to make abundantly clear at the outside is this: love it or
hate it, he remains as conservative as ever. He opposed Obamacare. But unlike
the Republican leadership, he saw it as inevitable. With control of both the
House and Senate and a solid presidential mandate, Democrats were simply not
going to miss the opportunity to "pass the one thing they wanted for half a
century.
"If the Democrats failed on heath-care reform, it would be like an Olympic
athlete inadvertently tying his shoelaces together and losing the race because
he fell face forward into the dirt," Frum said.
"If they failed, the country would have turned on them, saying, `They can't
govern.' Well, now they've governed. The country will decide if it likes it or
not.
"That is the key mistake of the (Republican) obstructionists – they failed to
accept this reality. And now the bill is forever. This is a generational
change, like Medicare in the 1960s. Once you achieve these things they are
permanent," he told the Star.
The 49-year-old son of late, great CBC broadcaster Barbara Frum and Toronto
developer Murray Frum, says he's still proud to bear the "Canadian" insult.
His sister, Linda, is now a senator in Ottawa, his eldest daughter attends
University of Toronto and his summertime centre of gravity remains Ontario's
Prince Edward County – where he and his wife, journalist Danielle Crittenden,
are "finally getting around to building our own house" after 20 years at the
vacation retreat of his father-in-law, Toronto Sun columnist Peter Worthington.
Though he has spent much of his adult life stateside – first Yale, then Harvard
Law School, and later, opinion-shaping gigs at the Wall Street Journal and
Forbes magazine before jumping to the White House to craft such phrases as
"Axis of Evil" for George W. Bush – Frum says his Canadian eyes help him see
American conservatism more clearly.
"Canadian conservatives really have seen the bottom of the well – they know
what happens if you put your own partisan imperatives ahead of responsibility
to governance. It led to the series of catastrophes between 1993 and the
election of Stephen Harper and that sort of thing really can shape your
thinking.
"Lessons are being taught in Canada – and Britain, too – that are not being
learned in the United States. And that's why American conservatism seems to be
heading deeper into trouble rather than emerging from it. Eventually they will
take these lessons. Because people do learn."
In the meantime, Frum reckons the American right will be "trapped" by the
firebrand fulminations of the conservative media until Republican leaders
"exert leadership" and recognize that neither the Tea Party movement nor the
audience of talk-radio icon Rush Limbaugh represents enough votes to win
re-election.
"There are 122 million eligible voters in presidential elections – you need 50
to 60 million people to vote for you," said Frum. "That's a lot bigger than
Rush, a lot bigger than the Tea Party. It is true that hundreds of thousands of
Americans believe that free preventive care is socialism. But there are
hundreds of millions who don't."
Watching Canada's health-care system get smacked around like a political pinata
during the year-long U.S. debate left Frum with mixed feelings.
On one hand he views Canadian health care as "way too rigid, way too
centralized."
But he also observes the Canadian system "works better than it has any reason
to work" – partly because of outstanding doctors who ignore opportunities to
earn more money in the U.S., and partly because Canadians are "socially
responsible patients" who don't use all the heath care they could.
"The Canadian system is like the bumblebee – it shouldn't be able to fly when
you look at the diagrams. But because everyone behaves better than the system
invites them to behave, it works.
"But that's also a reason why it is not a model for export – Americans might
not behave that way," Frum says.
_________________________________________________________________
Take your contacts everywhere
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9712959
