Excited Delirium

Conservatives make poor public policy makers because they simply don’t believe in public policy.  Even Stephen Harper has gone on record saying that he doesn’t believe in taxes which would, of course, eliminate any funding for government.

We’re seeing how poor the Conservatives are with real genuine ‘what’s in the public interest’ public policy as we witness the rollout of the vaccination for the Swine Flu, or H1N1 virus.

Even this situation has been turned into political gamesmanship and it must end before Canadian lives are put at stake.

While Canadians have been whipped into a state of panic, the Conservatives are still spending buckets of our cash in their own ridings on roads, pipes and a few other tawdry infrastructure projects, all the while sending us ‘10-percenters’ from Jay Hill who are too obsessed with Michael Ignatieff living out of Canada than creating a real action plan to protect Canadians.

ASIDE:  As a brief reminder, all of these projects are funded by ALL levels of government.  Taking full credit for this activity is akin to taking credit for a functional minority government.  Oops.  They’re doing that too.

Anyways, with the H1N1 virus, Canadians were promised that there would be enough vaccine to inoculate 100% of the population, if they wanted it.

When Dr. Sheila Bennett accused the Conservatives of playing games with this situation, the Liberals ultimately backed down and were ridiculed in the House of Commons.  RIDICULED!

Now, yesterday, we heard from the Ontario Chief Medical Officer of Health that the rollout of the vaccine for the general population has been suspended.

By the time it does arrive, there will be no point taking it (assuming you still want it).

The flu season will be over.

I can’t help thinking there’s something very suspicious in all of this.  Why is it that we were promised one thing and we can’t deliver according to the demand?  Is Ontario getting hit the hardest?

Why are only TWO clinics open in the city of Toronto?  Why hasn’t the Rogers Centre been converted into a giant distribution centre for people that want the vaccination?

Why is the whole country not better prepared for this situation when we knew it would be a situation 6 months ago?  Where’s the ‘Pandemic Action Plan’?

The answer is simple:  Our leader and his supporters are incapable of doing things that are genuinely good for the public.  Worse off, it looks like they’re starting to play the ‘Teflon’ game by transferring all blame as issues deepen to provincial leaders (which is, admittedly, the jurisdiction of health in Canada).  This will prove to be the same disaster for Ontario Liberals as the HST has been.

I’m optimistic though.  This situation has exposed the cracks that exist in the road to a Conservative majority.  With any luck, they will turn into potholes and the Canadian public will finally understand that they need policy managers and not political mandarins running their government.

PS:  This review by the CBC is a great resource for people who have questions about the vaccination.  If you read the comments, you’ll see that most people will not get vaccinated, including me.  So … feel free to take our place in line!

Last week, I read about more Conservative plans to tighten up on crime.  Again.  This time, it’s white collar crime.

What is it with these guys?  Why are they so obsessed with crime?

Don’t get me wrong:  I’m OK with locking up someone who breaks the law repeatedly or even once if it’s a harsh crime, but there are more important political issues having an impact on our economy such as … the economy or the Flu virus or a thousand other concerns.

Why is it that crime always seems to trump other more important problems?

I also resent the idea that being opposed to a Conservative crime bill makes anyone ’soft on crime’.

For the record:  it doesn’t.  And it shouldn’t.

It just means you have better ideas about the causes of crime and how to handle issues related to crime, including poverty, class and wage issues and general social concerns.  Incarceration is NOT the only solution and the creation of a mega-complex of holding cells is ultimately a poor use of public funds.  This has been proven time and time again in the US, the world’s largest prison state.

What bothers me most about crime issues is that the numbers are never used correctly.

All we ever hear is that crime is out of control.

But let’s look at some of these assertions.

Here are some facts about crime:

• Crime rates are lower than they were 20 years ago.
• Violent crimes have been dropping and were lower in 2007 than at any time in two decades.  The same goes for property crimes:  the recent rate is nearly 40% below that reported in 1991.
• Violent crimes are an extremely small percent of all crimes.  The most common criminal charge (24%) is for breach of court order and probation conditions, followed by impaired driving (8.9%), common assault (7.9%), and theft (7.5%).  Charges for drug trafficking represented about 2.5% of the  total last year, sex offences just over 1% and homicide barely 0.04% of the total.
• More than 2 out of 3 crimes are committed by white Caucasians (67.5%), 60% of whom are either Catholic or Protestant.  African-Canadians represent about 6% and Muslims about 3%.  Unfortunately, these two groups tend to get singled out as the greatest perpetrators of crime in Canada.
• Critics claim that most crimes occur in urban areas, but the stats show that the West and North represent our ‘hot spots’ on a per-capita basis.  This is because there is no social infrastructure to support people.
• Threatening people with longer, more harsh sentences doesn’t work.  The US has used this approach for decades and all they have is a massive tax bill that pays for private management of criminal incarceration.

Given that the average annual cost of keeping someone in jail is about $93,000, throwing more people behind bars will simply add to our tax bills as well.

Instead of ‘getting tough on crime’, Canadian politicians should be looking for ways to ‘get tough on crime causes’:  unemployment, social and class issues, prohibition on ’soft’ drugs like marijuana, education, lack of opportunity, guns, low wages and child support.

Data Source:  London Free Press (with apologies, I couldn’t find the original article that outlined the original data and information.  If someone has a link, please post it in the comments and I’ll update the article).

Growing up, I hardly assumed that the word ‘Flu’ would become the ‘F’ word of the new millennium.

Of course, as crowds grow more irrational, driven by an unprecedented fear-mongering campaign from our beloved media, the word ‘flu’ will translate to other words:  ‘anti-social’, ‘quarantine’, ’stay away’ and ‘if you cough, get off’.

I read through the news and headlines and none have grabbed me more than that of Obama announcing that the US has entered a state of emergency because of the H1N1 virus.

Based on what?  I read through this article provided by Mercola and was astounded at the level of dis-information that’s being circulated in the media and by our governments.  It’s hit a point where people actually think that there are two strains of vaccine available and that the better ones are being reserved for government officials in a two-tier delivery plan.

The good news is that one story leaked through the tight grip of our national story tellers and I discovered that more than half the population will refuse to get the vaccination.  I no longer feel alone in my concern about the vaccine and my distrust of the hype surrounding the issue.

Where are your thoughts on this?  Do you think we’ve been whipped into a frenzy or is this important to the bigger potential health issues?  I know I won’t be shot, but are you going to change your mind when you hear about kids in the neighbourhood keeling over from what we’ll be told is H1N1?

Would your opinion about the flu vaccine be different if you knew that the pharma companies were going to provide the vaccine at no cost or at cost price to our governments, rather than spin this story into an unprecedented profit opportunity?

For the record:  I’m opposed to the massive wave of stimulus that’s been running across the planet.

1. It’s misdirected.
2. It’s poorly planned.
3. It fails to invest in the future.
4. It fails to invest in things that make sense.  Example:  we don’t need more roads, we need more geo-thermal infrastructure.
5. It fails to acknowledge that consumption is the problem and not the solution.
6. It’s elitist.  Most of the money is drifting straight up to the top (or the mob).

Our grand kids, assuming our planet is able to support life within the next 20 years or so, will look back at these times and wonder how we were able to tie our own shoes, let alone be stewards for the future of this planet.

Anyways, it’s not really the rant I wanted to get into, but I needed to set the tone for what follows.

I believe that these stimulus programs are only designed to do these things:  massively over-inflate our level of debt, ’socialize’ the cost of stupidity at the big banks and auto manufacturers and ultimately, push all public authorities into a position where they only have three options:

1. Drastically reduce spending
2. Massively increase the level of taxes
3. Declare bankruptcy.

It’s unlikely that option 3 is a real option, unless you live in California or Iceland.  The powers that be simply won’t let it happen.

And for nearly a decade (for some, much longer) we’ve all heard about the ‘evils’ of taxes and how, if it were up to some people like  Steve, we wouldn’t have taxes at all (meanwhile we’d be living in a state of anarchy with no roads, fire departments, police forces, judiciary or legal system, but those are a whole other discussion).

So … as a result of questionable book-keeping, even more questionable objectives with the various ‘Action Plans’ across Canada and the globe, we’ll all hear about the need to tighten belts in the very near term.

Expect cuts to come at a trickle at first.  Little things like arts programs and day care initiatives will be eliminated, but never in a way that would create a state of mass irritation.  It’ll be the death by 1000 cuts.

And then one day:  the big bath.  We’ll be sliced, hacked, chopped and cut to ribbons before we can say ‘mother’ and projects that were once full steam ahead will stop dead in their tracks as the Cons decide the gig is up.  That will likely fall shortly after they win a majority (which will probably be next spring).

All public utilities, institutions and corporations will hit the chopping block, raising millions when they’re worth billions.  Real estate will enter the market again, depressing our housing values and depressing what cities will tax in as property tax revenue.  All public services will be privatized or greatly modified to be ‘market friendly’, despite the fact that the market can be pretty cruel to most humans.

And for what?  Because we couldn’t see the forest for the trees.  We couldn’t decide on where to spend the money best, so we just bought a patchwork quilt of roads that will need repair again in 5 years.

So what are we to do?  I honestly don’t have the answers because I don’t think we should have let our deficit balloon the way it did.  Of course, what’s frustrating about that is that it leaves me (and millions of other Canadians, I’m sure) without someone to point the finger at.

We all seemed to want it, so sooner or later, we’re all going to have to pay the price.

I am exhausted with media hyperbole (and insanity) surrounding the Swine Flu or H1N1, as the pork industry would have us call it.

The hug is dead.  People no longer kiss (at least in public).  People that cough in public do so at the risk of being burned faster than Salem witches (or at least being kicked off buses).

In fact, I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m going to predict that Swine Flu is 2009’s Y2K.

As we all may remember a decade ago, we all heard about Y2K for months on end to the point where there was an obscene level of panic that swirled around the famous ‘resetting’ of clocks that would occur as we entered the new millennium, and what happened?

Jack shit.

Life went on.

Yes, there were probably a few glitches, but subways didn’t come to halting stops between stations.  Planes didn’t drop from the sky.  Computers didn’t eat up all of the world’s knowledge as they reverted back to the knowledge base of the BEGINNING OF TIME.  Professional programmers saved the day, assuming they had to.  Common sense also finally kicked in (maybe).

We’ll see the same thing with any flu (pneumonia, cold or other viral disease) that runs through our social fabric over the next few weeks and months:  professionals will treat the sick, send them home, let them recover and all should be well.  This would have happened, swine flu or not.

Now … I don’t want to appear insensitive to those families who have received their body bags and who will likely suffer disproportionately from this or other flu viruses simply because our government won’t arrange for running water.  I think you know who I’m talking about.

And I definitely don’t want to show callousnous towards people and their families who have actually been affected by deaths as a result of ’swine flu-like symptoms’.  However, every single time a story comes up on the radio or ‘net (I don’t watch TV) about spreading disease or concerned hosts ask listeners if they should stay at home from work if they’re coughing, I don’t just tune it out.  I shut it off.

I’m done.  I’m going to live my life obliviously ignorant of the ‘pandemic’ that I predict will not happen, either because it’s an over-inflated issue designed to sell Tamiflu or other untested vaccinations or because our professional, public medical community actually have things under control.

Once again, the CRTC has proven that it is a useless organization, stuck in the dark ages.

The CRTC announced today that it will not support Net Neutrality proponents and WILL allow companies like Bell and Rogers to throttle Internet traffic.

This is a dark day for Canada’s future as a leader in the digital space.

More from the CRTC site and an opinion update from Charlie Angus, Canada’s first Parliamentarian that supported Net Neutrality.

As an action item, consider signing up with this cause:  Dissolve The CRTC.

Thank you Jack, Gilles (and now Iggy instead of Dion) for letting Stephen Harper and the Conservatives create a $60 billion (and growing) ad campaign known as the Canadian Economic Action Plan.

It will pretty much guarantee that the Cons will win a majority when you finally decide to screw up again and yell ‘Election’ every time you walk into the House of Commons.

What am I talking about?

Last November, as we all painfully recall, Jim Flaherty was more than happy to announce that there was no such thing as a recession going on in Canada or around the world for that matter and his boss Steve was more than happy to support him with that astoundingly oblivious point of view, despite his academic prowess as an economist.

At that moment in time, we had a stellar opportunity for the Cons to prove just how ridiculously far up their own behinds their heads truly were and then what happens?

Dion, Jack and Gilles step in to save their day!

They demand that the Cons spend what the rest of the world is telling them to spend and that we bail the country out of recession.

Good plan!

They demand that the Cons create a stimulus plan that will return us to work, keep us spending and ensure that we’re all smiling as we open our wallets like the Cons have with the Treasury.

They threaten to form a coalition (something that it seems is only allowed for our leader and no one else) to bring down the Cons and the Cons acquiesce and give in to their demands to spend like there’s no tomorrow once they return from shamelessly shutting down our Parliamentary system for a couple of months.

Well, guess what?  The whole thing has been a massive bonus to the Cons, hasn’t it?

They’ve had a freakin’ field day!

They’re going around writing Reader’s Digest-like mock-up cheques, pork-barreling the pork industry, bailing out car companies that are only good at producing citrus and generally having the greatest spending party ever held in the history of Canada.  Steve’s even getting high with his friends, despite the introduction of the most draconian crime bills in our history.

These are people that truly understand the ‘opportunity’ part of the ‘opportunity/crisis’ symbol from China.

They’re taking the $60 billion deficit (or whatever it is, right Jim?) and turning into a massive, unprecedented ad campaign.  They’re indirectly bailing out the CTV and CanWest with massive TV campaigns.  They’re propping up the print industry (for all their cardboard) with Atlantean style.  Even the MOB is getting in on the action!

What’s next?  Maybe the ‘opposition’ will decide not to run in the next election, which technically should be taking place today (at least according to the law that Steve wrote and later broke)?

Here’s a brilliant quote from Chantal Hebert of the Toronto Star (I added the bold):

It is one thing for the government to cut bureaucratic corners to rush money out the door in the name of the war on the recession; it is another to shower Conservative ridings with public money at the collective expense of less government-friendly areas.

When all is said and done, it should be easy enough for the Prime Minister to quell the controversy related to the use and abuse of oversize cheques by some of his own members. It is high time to do away with a practice that dumbs down both the government’s message and the MPs who deliver it. (Many of them need no help on that score.)

But Harper can only hope the opposition focuses its attacks on his party’s tasteless affection for stupid props rather than on the money itself. While a picture may be worth a thousand words, the photo gallery assembled by the Liberal war room to showcase government MPs in partisan action is ultimately less disquieting than the emergence of a spending pattern that suggests the federal stimulus fund doubles as a Conservative war chest.

Until the government can substantiate its rebuttals on that latter front with factual information, it will seem like Harper has managed to find a way to elevate naked partisanship to a new level.

I can’t take any more of this.

I need people running the House of Commons like they actually want to make a difference and who don’t just want to bake in their seats for a few months so they can get a full pension and holiday in the Turks Caicos during the winter.

Like Alberta, Canadians need a new party.

Right or left … I don’t care.  Right would split the Cons.  Left might finally force all of the lefties/commies/greens/socialists/progressives that we’ve got 67% of the vote and we need to agree to meet in the middle so we can get rid of these folks.

Let’s get going.

——-

References:

Chantal Hebert, The Toronto Star.

Impolitical, various examples of slush fund bamboozles.

Ponziconomy, by Saskboy.

Apparently, the folks who aren’t big on manipulating our economy are OK with what might be the most manipulative credit in Canadian tax policy history.

Really?  The Home Renovation Tax Credit is bad?  How so?

Let’s take a deeper look:

1. It encourages spending, not saving.  The only way we’ll ever truly recover from our economic state is to re-learn how to respect our money and save it.
2. It favours a narrow class of citizens in this country.  Tax credits help those who have a substantial income from which to deduct these credits.  Hundreds of thousands of people are unemployed or barely getting by in Canada and a tax credit of this nature does nothing for them.
3. The $1350 maximum credit is similar to marketers who advertiser ‘get up to 60% off’.  You’ll be lucky if you see a fraction of that amount, regardless of what you spend on your house.
4. Most people will not be able to afford to put the full $10,000 into their homes and you just have to know there’s going to be a catch even at that level.
5. It encourages expenditure on a wide array of frivolous items (eg. swimming pools).  If we had not cut back on the GST, most of my arguments would be moot because we’d be making it back on our consumption tax (which I think should be higher, by the way).
6. It encourages the creation of debt for those who can’t afford to take advantage of the program, but who don’t want to pass up on a ‘great opportunity to get money back’ on their taxes.  This is horrendous economic policy because, as I said, we should be encouraging saving, not spending.
7. It favours home owners and home owners only.  People who rent – generally those who live in large urban areas – will not get ANY benefit from this program.
8. While I don’t have the numbers, because it favours owners over renters, it likely disproportionately benefits voters in rural areas – the power base of Con politics – as opposed to those in urban areas.  (I’d have to see numbers to make a statement on suburbs because I think there’s just as many renters as owners.)
9. It favours one industry and one industry only – home renovation.  For a group of people that regularly say that they don’t want to play favourites (ie. the Cons and their economic policy), this is a pretty odd way of sticking to your guns.  If you didn’t want to play favourites, you’d just have a one-time, no holds barred tax credit without conditions on where the money should be spent.
10. Because it favours an industry that is generally dominated by men, it’s sexist.  Most unemployed females will not benefit from demand generated by this tax credit, unless maybe they’re check out girls making minimum wage at the Home Depot.  Hardly what I would call economic stimulus.
11. It IS discretionary as to what investments are eligible.  Things like furniture – which generate oodles of jobs in Ontario – are not eligible, when they should be.  (I know … this is similar to #9).
12. It’s temporary.  After spring 2010, the program will turn to vapour, what will we do to stimulate the economy?  Where’s the long term plan?
13. Because it encourages overkill in one industry, we’ll see a pendulum-like swing in excess demand turning to excess supply.  This time next year, there will be a glut of unemployed contractors (believe it or not if you’ve ever tried to get a good one).  Also, for those who legitimately need to make changes with their houses (eg. a new furnace after the old one broke down), good luck getting a GOOD contractor in the next few months.
14. It encourages contractors who previously made cash to emerge from the underground economy.  This is actually a bad thing because I believe in the underground economy.  The less money that makes it to Ottawa, the less money that gets wasted on big blue cheques going to religious schools.
15. It’s not green.  I’m not saying everything should have a green spin to it, but it’s just good politics to offer green incentives when everyone wants them.

The core of the issue here is that this is bad economic policy.

We should be spending this money on green technology, Internet innovations and other ‘industries of the future’ and not just hammers and nails.

Our national broadcasters and media conglomerates really think we’re idiots, don’t they?

First, they launched savelocaltv.ca.  At ‘launch parties’ they had lots of local politicians making speeches and doing their best to get local air/face time.

Then, they launched LocalTVMatters.ca (with a theme song, nonetheless).  I think because it had a cute little ditty from Dave Carroll, many people I know dropped their sense of media savvy and said it was time to start supporting this campaign, including a lot of my friends in more left-leaning camps.  This is good propoganda that even Goebbels would admire!

Now, they have the StopTheTVTax.ca campaign trying to get us to petition the CRTC to end the fee for carriage charges supported by TV networks that will be levied against the cable and satellite subscribers.

Ugh.  Where to start?

How about with the CRTC petition.  I went to this page and posted this complaint to the CRTC:

I do not subscribe to cable, nor do I watch a lot of TV so I don’t care about the ‘TV Tax’.

In fact, it should be illegal for large broadcasters and cable companies in this country to use their air time to protest issues that go before the CRTC without giving fair voice to the other parties involved.

If you’re going to eliminate any ‘tax’ or additional fees on services, please reverse your recent decision to allow Bell, Rogers and other ISP companies to increase the cost of accessing the Internet.

If you can’t do that, reconsider your existence, because you’re proving to be very ineffective to average Canadians.

I suggest you do the same.  Use content from this post if you don’t like mine.

In fact, I suggest it’s time we Internet users start our own campaign called ‘Pull the Plug’ which would be committed to educating people that it’s OK to cut the cable cord and to use the Internet as your sole media outlet.  Such an effort could also be committed to finding ways to improve Internet service in Canada in lieu of expensive and bloated cable and satellite bills.

Next, I suggest you read this article from Clickz.com.  The author is exceptionally adept at explaining that producers of mass content have bypassed all of the traditional channels and that broadcasters, print producers and other traditional media companies are f**ked.  The term the author uses is ‘implode’.

In other words, it’s inevitable.  It’s like a big recession that our MA-in-Economics-holding PM didn’t see coming, but hey folks, we can see this one coming.  We’ve been suitably warned so throwing more resources after a dying industry is like spending billions of dollars on useless car companies (oops … we already did that, didn’t we?).

Social platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, Wordpress, Facebook and other networks are allowing citizens to produce, share and enjoy any kind of content, regardless of location, access points and without heavy subscriber fees like cable bills.  They also facilitate discussion, something we’ve never had with newspapers and TV shows.

Trying to defy this trend shows that these companies would rather bury their heads in the tax trough than push forward with innovative solutions that encourage everyone to participate with the creation of content.

Education and awareness are also central to understanding why the ‘LocalTVMatters’ campaign is a sham.  As an aside, to my knowledge, there are no independent media awareness organizations in Canada, but it’s time we had at least one.  Several would be better.

Central to this awareness effort would be the notion that Local content (and not TV) DOES matter, but not when it’s in the hands of our not-so-friendly media conglomerates.  The educational process might also look at how it was bad business strategy that got our broadcasters where they are (ie. broke), with CTV and CanWest gobbling up local stations for billions of dollars.  Such an organization could explore how their intended strategy of streamlining their content and force-feeding us with crap like ‘So You Think You Can Dance (Canada)’ all the while inundating us with Conservative propoganda about how well they’re spending our money has been a complete bust.

As another aside, there’s a critical issue to discuss here:  if broadcasters fail (and they will), the Con propoganda machine will fail as well, because all they know is broadcast.  They don’t know how to start conversations and they don’t want to because people will poke holes through their crummy economic facade in social forums.

Right now, the Cons are spending millions of dollars of taxpayer money on campaigns promoting the ‘Canadian Economic Action Plan’ as an indirect subsidy to these companies.  This must end.

We also have to be aware that it is bad business strategy to force local TV stations to convert to digital broadcast.  Analogue’s just fine, thank you very much.  In fact, analogue is essential to getting a broadcast out to local users who can’t afford cable or who simply don’t want it.

Now, if we really want to do something with local TV, we would demand that all broadcasters, cable and satellite companies and other mass-media outlets allow citizens to generate and promote their own content.

Oh yeah … that’s what YouTube (and Vimeo and other online video services) is for.

It looks like we don’t need TV after all.

The HST, or Harper Sales Tax (OK … Harmonized Sales Tax) will punish a lot of folks, but no group will be hurt more than the BC and Ontario Liberals.

On the surface, they’re being told it’s a good thing.  The Cons have given the veneer of entering discussions with the provincial leaders in good faith and on a non-partisan basis.  They’re even offering financial incentives to ease the transition.

I smell a plot.

I mean, when the Cons at the provincial level won’t touch this with a 100-foot pole, why should anyone?  If I were running the Ontario government (which, thank god, I’m not) I’d be running for the hills!

Let’s strip it down:

• Harper won his first whiff of power by promising two things:  an investigation into the Liberal Sponsorship Scandal (frighteningly similar to the eHealth scandal with McGuinty) and the reduction of the GST by 2 full points to 5% (with lots of grandstanding and promises of reduction in cost of living).
• Since then, Harper’s come through on his promise, but we all know he’d like to reduce taxes more, especially the cursed GST, given that he’s an anarchist and libertarian that doesn’t want any government at all in our lives.
• However, once you reduce it from 5% to a lower level, you might as well ditch it.
• Harper won’t do that because the corporate world wouldn’t be able to hide the decrease in unchanged prices (I mean, did anyone really enjoy the full benefits of saving $0.02 on an ice cream cone or other mundane daily purchases?).  They would actually have to decrease prices.
• Instead, he needs a bigger base to hack away at, which would ultimately be the HST.
• He’s now got 13% to play with instead of a mere 7.
• Ontario and BC will be hosed royally and will be told they’re out of luck once the transfer of sales tax power is surrendered.

I’m not going to deny that exporters need every iota of support they can get in today’s world, but this will not help the Ontario government support its infrastructure in the long run.  When they’re tax revenue is slashed by the Federal Cons, they will have no choice but to slash their budgets as well.

We will then get the Harris years by proxy.

What do you think?  Am I being a little too suspicious?  Do we have evidence that this will be done without harm to the politicians at the provincial level?