Excited Delirium

Stories about Excited Delirium, the Shock Economy and a little fiction here and there.

Daily Archives: November 27, 2008

Proof that the Conservatives Hate Democracy

Years ago, the Liberals took the high road and made an important first step in institutionalizing democracy in Canada by creating a public subsidy of $1.95 per vote that every Canadian casts at the ballot box.

This simple move extended a financial life-line to all Federal political parties and has prevented the Conservatives from obtaining a majority in Canadian politics.  It also became a financial gesture and substitute for something more desparately needed:  proportional representation.

Today, Jim Flaherty will likely cut this off.

Today, the Conservatives will show their disdain for democracy and prove that they loathe discussion, dialogue and concessions with the rest of Canada.

Today, we will lose democracy in Canada.

Today, they will prove that they hate Canadians that do not vote Conservative.

Even the possibility or rumour of this threat is hard to stomach.  And yet, it’s there.

Now, if they want to save a mere $30 million, look around at where you’re forking out cash to your buddies.  In the last Federal budget (2007), Jim Flaherty and the Conservatives announced some of the following expenditures:

  • $60 million in wage increases to the Canadian Forces.
  • $300 million in funds to friends as a subsidy for an unproven drug for children (HPV virus).

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  Check out these increases:

  • $14.3 billion:  2004 Dept of Defence budget (6.8% of federal spending)
  • $14.6 billion:  2005-06
  • $18.9 billion:  2008-09
  • $15 billion in spending announced by Stephen Harper in June 2006 to be spread over several years, mainly for planes, trucks and other transportation
  • Government pledge to increase spending by 2% every year for the next 20 years

In other words, the annual Department of Defence budget will be tens of billions of dollars, while Canadian voters are getting shafted by not having their preferred politic parties get funding.  Our Defence budget will grow, on a per-capita basis, to one of the largest on the planet, and yet we won’t be able to get a few bucks to the opposition.

Nice.

THIS IS WRONG.  IT MUST STOP.

Join this group to remind the Conservatives that we ALL do not tolerate this trash:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=41244607422

I Support Public Campaign Financing

Please join this group on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=41244607422

The Conservative government is about to show its true disdain for Canadian democracy.

Let’s remind them that it’s not 1939 and this is not the Weimar Republic.

10 Worst Corporations of 2008

Do you work for a company on this list ?  Is so, are you re-evaluating your employment with them?  You should.

But … I could be wrong.  Maybe the truly awful are the ones who will continue to be rewarded in these upside-down times where banks are run by governments.

For those of you with ADD, here’s the short list:

  1. AIG
  2. Cargill
  3. Chevron
  4. Constellation Energy (Nuclear Power)
  5. Chinese National Petroleum Corportation (CNPC – fueling issues in Darfur)
  6. Dole
  7. GE
  8. Imperial Sugar
  9. Philip Morris International
  10. Roche

I’m sure there are others out there doing their worst to get on the list.

My feedback on ‘the defense of marketing’

I read this article and got very frustrated.

Here’s my response:

So … you want your cake and you want to eat it too?

I read this and realized you’re not really defending marketing.  You’re trying to justify giving my cash to someone else when they haven’t earned it.

As a taxpayer, the question is ‘why’.  Why did these companies get so far down into the abyss without doing a little self-inspection?

Why did the CEOs of the ‘big 3′ go to Washington, cap in hand, looking for taxpayer money, only to fly home in their Gulfstreams weeping about how badly they got screwed by being told they’d have to have a plan for the cash?

Why is it that we, as taxpayers, are being asked to pay for misuse of funds, corruption up the ying-yang and decadence beyond belief when people are in the streets starving?

Why are we told to manage our own budgets and keep our own houses in order when the ‘brightest’ and ‘best’ on the planet are completely incapable of balancing their books?

Why should we have a separate set of rules for them?

When delinquents are running these companies and grinding them into the ground, why should we be asked to lift them up?

Why should we save the ego of a bunch of macho morons who one day are the Masters of the Universe debt/derivatives traders and the next are whining about how they broke their machine and they need daddy (or Uncle Sam) to fix it?

That’s not capitalism:  it’s stupidity.

You’re damn right I should have a right to expect restrictions or conditions on loans.  These people aren’t leaders.  They’re like monkeys playing with dynamite.

This market isn’t free.  It never has been.  Our ‘business leaders’ have been so focused on lobbying, monopoly and the concentration of power that they forgot about the people that buy their products.  They’ve focused on making the 30-year fridge a 3-year fridge.  Who cares about the landfills?  Canada’s a big country.  They’ve concentrated on how to minimize the number of full-time jobs there are in the country.  They’ve told us that there’s nothing to see here when people starve because of killer GM seeds.  They’ve convinced us that the financial system needs fixing, but by the same people that have ruined Latin America and Africa.  They’ve turned Iraq and the rest of the Middle East into a cess pool all so that they can maximize their ‘disaster capitalist’ strategy.  More retirement money disappeared yesterday because they told us that Bell would sell for $42 and today it’s trading at $26 because of ‘some concerns’ about the accounting.  They told us that deficits were bad and now that they’re in power, deficits are inevitable.

I argue that we should save our money, stop the bailouts and let the whole lot of them fail and see how they like waiting in line at a soup kitchen behind someone who smells like a latrine.

Maybe they’ll finally learn a thing or two that their business schools clearly didn’t teach:  Ethics, morality and a genuine sense of social responsibility.

Putting a Face on Harper Economics

A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to a radio show and a woman called in to describe how she and her husband had lost a massive part of their personal savings because of the elimination of the benefits with income trusts when the Conservatives took power in 2006.

This family had to sell their house.  They are retired.  They are broke.  They are now living week-to-week, being fed from soup kitchens and all because a cold and heartless government didn’t pause long enough to consider the human face on laissez-faire policies.

She cried on air as she described her situation.  She was humiliated and I cried as well as I listened.

And today, the Conservatives stand poised, ready to make another economic statement, unwilling to do anything until next spring when the worst of the recession will be upon us.  No infrastructure announcements.  No mercy for Canadians who want a future.  No waiving of some of the tax cuts to the world’s largest corporations that can afford to pay taxes a little more than most people on the streets.

(Of course, the companies that ‘we’ gave tax cuts to are all going broke, so remind me:  what was the point of corporate tax cuts when none of them are making money?)

No.

Today, Canadians will get more heartless and cruel neo-con policies.  Federal spending across the country will be slashed, properties and assets of the Government of Canada will be sold off in the biggest fire-sale ever, and Canadians will be left out in the cold just as winter approaches.

Expect the worse.  Anything better will be a surprise and will be positioned as such.  They’ll have one or two statements where they’ll make peanut butter sandwiches sound like manna from heaven, as they distract us from the great gutting of Canada.

Oh … and by the way … none of this would be necessary if they zeroed in on the massive, bloated defence budget.