Obama-rama

Sorry for the long run between posts. I've started three--on the housing collapse in the U.S., increased food prices, and Obama's "bitter" comment--and abandoned each of them halfway through when research showed others had covered all three topics quite well.

Okay, well, I can use the third one as a springboard, then.

I really must add to Lisa Van Dusen's already cogent synopsis of why "Bittergate" just might kill Obama's chances. I'm not so sure "bitter" is the problem. Here's the offending quote in all its glory:

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not."
"And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Those remarks were addressed to a bunch of San Franciscans--"elitists" if John McCain ever saw one--and, to me at least, they are refreshingly honest. They also seek to explain a population that many people on the Left Coast find almost alien...and what could be controversial about that?
No, the real problem isn't "bitter". Most voters are "bitter", precisely in the defeatist way Van Dusen asserts is un-American. How many times have you heard a neighbor (or a neighbour, if you're in Canada) say something like "what's the point of voting? They're all crooks, liars, and weasels." Tell me that's not bitter.
The key word in that quote that's giving Obama nightmares is "cling". He could get away with that remark in Canada: the notion of "clinging" is embedded in our social and literary consciousness in this dark and inhospitable land. (Wait: southern Canada, where most of us live, is no more dark and inhospitable than, say, Minnesota...but the vast Northern arctic tundra wasteland presses on us almost subliminally. You'd cling, too.)
But America is the land of the individual above all else. Americans don't like to be told they're "clinging" to anything...much less God and guns. Embracing, sure. Clinging, no way.

God and guns: two things most Canadians just don't get about the nation to our south.
Oh, we have God up here, don't get me wrong. I'm related to God-fearing folk (aside: why fear Someone Who's supposed to love you unconditionally?); we even have multiple Bible Belts to rival anything in the U.S. Midwest. (We have a concentration of Mennonites all around us, and just north of that you get into a much more strident area, complete with roadside billboards: CHOOSE LIFE, YOUR MOTHER DID and SMILE, GOD LOVES YOU.)
But for the most part, faith in Canada is a private thing: many become uncomfortable when matters of faith are thrust into the public sphere. Exactly the opposite attitude prevails in the United States. According to author Dan Simmons,

"...the polls [show] that a gay-lesbian black Jewish pedophile ex-convict terrorist with Wal-Mart stock who's been caught in front of CNN and Fox News cameras buggering a martyred civil right leader's pre-teen son or daughter at high noon while carrying a Fuck America! banner has a BETTER chance of being elected to high office than any atheist"

Think he's exaggerating? Ask an American atheist.

The Canadian attitude towards guns is more subtly different. We've got guns up here, too. In rural areas, they're used to hunt, just like down there. In the cities, they're used to kill people...same as down there. The difference being that only a very small minority of Canadians--we call them "gang-bangers"--feel constitutionally entitled to kill people with a gun. As of right now, our Constitution doesn't agree with them. (Oh, come on...do you really think the American Founding Fathers believed in the right to bear arms, but not to use them?...well, actually, there's quite a bit of confusion as to what the Founding Fathers actually meant...

Bringing this back to Obama. What he said could probably have been worded better. It certainly would have been if he had said it in Pennsylvania instead of California. But isn't it true that people in small towns, from which all the high-paying jobs have vanished and for which governments are forever making and breaking promises...isn't it true these people grow bitter, and indeed cling to whatever can sustain them? Check out this website: it seems some Americans agree.
The Hillary-pillory was as disgusting as it was predictable. Truly, that woman repulses me, and I say that as a man who would love to see a female President. Every time I figure she's stopped as low as she can, she stoops lower. I do hope people see through her various disguises to the vote-grubber beneath.
What puzzled me was McCain's "elitist" barb. Not that it happened: Republicans have been tarring Democrats with "elitism" forever--but that McCain chose those particular words of Obama's to tar.
Barack Obama doesn't strike me as elitist at all. Hillary Clinton certainly does, but not Obama. Nevertheless I can just see McCain dismissing Obama's entire campaign as "so many words, most of 'em long words". Whereas McCain himself is a man of action, see.

And that just might stick. I'm starting to think that what I viewed as impossible a year ago is in fact inevitable: the Republicans will almost certainly keep the White House. I so hope I'm wrong.

The Election "Race"

Once again we're confronted with the most prescient and cutting remark ever uttered (or at least reported) during an election campaign.
The election I'm talking about is the 1993 Canadian federal election. Oh, my, how to place this in context for my American readership? Okay, I'll give it a go. Take Clinton (Bill, not Hillary)'s slickness, add Reagan's politics (and bear in mind that much of Canada is bluer than your bluest blue state), and add a generous helping of Dubya's obstinacy. Shake it all together and you get an approximation of Brian Mulroney: initially elected in a landslide, actually re-elected (and no, he didn't steal it)...but his popularity plummeted in his second term until it was practically zero. He retired from politics two and a half months before the election, leaving Kim Campbell in charge.
Kim Campbell...our first and only female PM...albeit never elected. She had the chance to resurrect her party's fortunes--we went through an orgy of self-congratulations that a female should hold our highest office...but then her inner Hillary started to show during the campaign. She was seen as condescending and aloof, and before long the chants came: "Kim, Kim, you're just like him!"
Condescending she was: she was also honest. Several times she noted--publicly, out loud--that there were things over which she had, and would have, little or no control. Most notably, she said that 47 days (then the length of our electoral campaigns--hey, America, take note) was not enough time to discuss the overhaul of social policy Ms. Campbell believed necessary. Unfortunately for Kim, a reporter took that and pithified it to "an election is no time to discuss serious issues".
That pseudo-quote sent shockwaves throughout the land. If you can't discuss serious issues during an election, went the thinking, just when the hell are you supposed to discuss them?

Kim's honesty alone didn't doom her, but it certainly helped. Campbell's party entered that election with 151 out of 295 seats...a thin majority. After the dust of the PC implosion settled, they found themselves with...get this...two seats. Yup, two.

Since then, nearly every election federal or provincial, I find myself musing over Campbell's infamous statement, as it was reported (and never corrected). And every time I re-confirm it.


I've been digesting Barack Obama's race speech, as if it was a meal. And I confess, at this late date, to some stomach upset.
Not a lot of it, mind you. Just a little. But given how overawed I was the first time I heard/read his words, "a little" is a little more than I had expected. And it's not what Obama said so much as that he said it at all.

The most controversial part of the speech concerned Rev. Jeremiah Wright...and I have no problem with the way Obama handled this. Indeed, my admiration for him skyrocketed after he disavowed his friend's remarks while standing by his friend. As he noted, the "politically expedient" thing to do would have been to cut and run. Perhaps it's some last remnant of "love the sinner but hate the sin" resonating in me, but I'm glad he didn't.

Obama's bitterest enemies will readily concede the man can weave webs of words. I'm a pretty fair public speaker myself, but my ability pales into utter insignificance put up against his. This speech, to my mind, is not Churchillian nor Lincolnesque, but only because today's rhetorical standards have slid a great deal. Placed in today's sound-bite-obsessed, instant-isn't-fast-enough culture, Obama's slow, deliberate, look-Ma-no-notes delivery is almost spellbinding. And the content of his oratory doesn't hurt, either.
Except.
Except an election is no time to discuss serious issues. And in American domestic policy today, there is no issue more serious than race.
Oh, it's not as if we're going to see another "Black Day In July" this year. But it seems as if everything down there is viewed through a racial prism. De facto segregation still exists; there is a wide disparity in income between white and black families, and a disturbing minority of predominantly black teens have embraced nihilism and the gangster...well, they call it a lifestyle. Deathstyle, more like.

Some, Obama among them, directly link this state of affairs with slavery--abolished in 1865, its last legal vestige was wiped off the books exactly a century later. Perhaps the ghost of Jim Crow still rides.
Many Republicans say this is bull, and anyone (black or white) living in poverty has a responsibility to lift themselves out, to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps", as it were.

I used to agree with this latter sentiment until it occurred to me that many of these people can't afford boots. That said, there was a time when black children mostly knew their fathers. Now many of them don't. And believe me, that's not 'cause Daddy's off being somebody's slave.

The arguments are raging, pro and con, and like every other political argument these days, the sides are polarizing. It's ironic that Obama, who has built his whole campaign upon unity, should be falling victim in the polls to a speech that, while all about unity, has proven so divisive.

I like Obama, and think he would be good for America. I just wish he could have talked to Kim Campbell before he started campaigning. Try as Obama might, he can't avoid the question of race..and it's killing his hopes.

Spitzer Quits 'er

It really should be between him and his wife, you know.

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has been caught spritzing where he shouldn't and has been forced to resign. It was either that or be impeached.
The sex really shouldn't be a big deal--if you're not Silda Spitzer, his wife, that is. The money for the sex might be an issue--they're investigating "suspicious money transfers", which begs all sorts of questions--but the focus seems to be on the sex and just the sex. Having ties to a "prostitution ring" can get you charged in the U.S...the same country that has legal brothels in a select few locations.

I'm not condoning what Spitzer is accused of having done. Cheating on a spouse is wrong, wrong, wrong, and I think it's safe to assume Silda Spitzer feels that sex with high-end call girls constitutes cheating, no matter what Eliot might say about his lack of romantic feeling for any of them. But...

What does this have to do with his job?

I refer you to one Bill Clinton. Everybody knows about Bill's exploits: they tried to impeach him, too. Those who felt Clinton was doing a good job as President were likely to forgive him his private transgressions; those who hated him seized on Monica et al as a vindication of their hatred. There were, as I recall, quite a few people on both sides.

Interestingly, last I looked, Bill's still married, too.

Much the same thing seems to be happening with Spitzer. According to the article linked above, 70% of citizens polled in New York State want the governor gone...the exact same percentage as initally voted for him. I suspect people aren't very happy with his tenure, and have used this as an excuse to sweep him out.

I gave my views on prostitution here. I've never been with a sex worker and can't imagine a circumstance where I would be...but I have absolutely no problem with the sex trade provided it's (a) regulated and (b) confined to certain non-residential areas. My view is quite simple, really: stop fighting battles you have no hope of winning. It ain't called "the world's oldest profession" for nothing.

Blame Spitzer if you must for spending thousands of taxpayer dollars getting his jollies off...but I ask you, what's the FBI doing, spending thousands of taxpayer dollars investigating this stuff for?

CadScam?

I admit it: I've given Stephen Harper and his Conservatives something of a free ride.

It's not that I'm "Steve"'s biggest fan. It's just that I have this severe allergic reaction any time I'm told what to think, and over the past few years there's been no shortage of Liberallissimos trying to convince me that Stephen Joseph Harper is the walking, talking Antichrist. Or at least "Antichrist Lite"--Big Daddy being, of course, one George "Dubya" Bush.

Whatever. I don't like George W. Bush at all, but I'd stop well short of suggesting he's evil: merely misguided, in my opinion. And Harper is nobody's "little Bushie". If he was, we'd probably be in Iraq instead of Afghanistan and our economy would be in a tailspin.

I've been neutral tending towards positive on Harper's government. After eleven years of Chretien's government by inaction and almost three years of Paul Martin trying to do everything at once and spinning like a top, Harper's steady, measured approach has been more than welcome...especially since he's had to balance getting stuff done with keeping in power. And stuff has been getting done. There are areas where Harper and I disagree...I'd like to see him craft some real environmental initiatives, and his drug policy is, quite simply, insane. But overall...not bad.
And I might as well admit to a little racism, or whatever it is: it sure is nice to have a PM who can speak English coherently. Note to American readers: if you think Bush's malapropisms are bad, get a load of this:



I haven't been alone in giving Harper a free pass. The blogosphere lit up over the Chalk River incident, but the mainstream media virtually ignored the story, and it didn't affect Harper's polling numbers.

Nothing does seem to affect Harper's polling numbers, for better or worse. Maybe it has something to do with the results of this Nanos Research/Sun Media study, suggesting that Liberal supporters tend to vote by rote regardless of leader, while Conservative voters tend to value policy, regardless of leader.
I can state that in my case, at least, this holds true. I've voted Conservative my whole life, up until the last provincial election...not because I like words that begin with "C", or because Mommy always voted that way (I don't even know if that's true; politics has always been a private subject in my family). No, I voted Conservative because, on balance, I liked their policies on the same three things Greg Weston cited: taxes, crime, and defense. Also because I have this libertarian streak in me that says those are among the very few things government should concern itself with in the first place, whereas Liberal supporters tend to want government to be everywhere all the time. Yecch.

If neither side cares particularly who the leader is, then Stephen Harper's unrelenting emphasis on himself isn't just arrogant, it's pointless.

Getting back on track: Harper's Conservatives have been largely scandal-free; the few things that have flared up have been mostly political, not at all the sordid mess that did in Martin's Liberals.

Until yesterday. And by God, it's as if Harper's making up for lost time. L'affaire Cadman has the makings of a government-killer.

The story is here. In a nutshell, it appears as if (a) money was offered to a dying Independant MP (Cadman) in exchange for his vote on a matter of confidence and that (b) Harper knew about it, condoned it and possibly authorized it. That money may have been in the form of a million-dollar life insurance policy, as Cadman's widow alleges, or not: no matter, it's illegal and unethical.

Cadman did not vote the way he was allegedly bribed to, which proves either there was no bribe or he couldn't be bought.

I do feel compelled to mention, for whatever it's worth, that Chuck Cadman had terminal cancer. There is no way an insurance company would issue a million-dollar policy on someone in his condition. Also that Cadman himself appeared on national television shortly after this offer is supposed to have taken place and denied any offer had been made. However, it certainly appears as if some sort of money was on the table. Even if this can be explained away, the rank stench will linger.

At this point--and I'm avidly watching this story develop--I have just one question:

Why now? This would have had maximum bombshell effect sometime in mid-December, 2005...in the middle of the election campaign. Had this story broken then, we could well have a different government in power right now. Not to mention if I'm Dona Cadman, I'd be outraged somebody was trying to buy my husband's support, and so crassly: I'm running to the media the second I find out about this alleged life insurance policy. That would have been May, 2005...almost three years ago. Why sit on this information this long? To what purpose?

In the meantime, my image of Stephen Harper as a man of no small integrity is taking a serious beating.

It Don't Matter if you're Barack or White

I'll revisit this topic at least twice over the next year...but I'd be remiss if I didn't comment now that the 2008 American presidential election is (sort of) underway.

Caveat lector: I am a deeply, deeply confused individual when it comes to this election. That'll change come November, when the multitudes are winnowed out and I'll have had time to examine the two remaining candidates and present an endorsement, hopefully a more ringing endorsement than last time. But as of now, all I can say is wow, I'm glad I don't have a vote in this thing.
There are a multitude of quizzes out there (Google "who should I vote for") that attempt to align you with a particular candidate. Great idea, for people whose politics are certain. Mine aren't. Depending on my mood on any given day, I'll be matched up with anyone from Dennis Kucinich to Ron Paul. Trust me, those two are worlds apart. Good thing neither of them has a snowball's chance.

Watching this 50-ring circus unfold from up here in Canuckistan, I confess myself fascinated. For one thing, there's the ungodly length of the campaign. The primaries alone run six months. In reality, of course, this thing's been going on for about a year now, and it won't stop 'til we've all had (more than) enough. Come November 4th, win or lose, I think just about everyone will be relieved the whole mess is over.

I like some aspects of the electoral method down there. Having the party leaders directly elected is a step I'd like to see taken in Canada: it sure beats our current system, in which only card-carrying Party members have a say. Although I find it well-nigh incredible that every last governmental position is so politicized in America. Everybody is affiliated with a political party, from the mayors to the dogcatchers. You just don't see that here.

Can one of my American readers enlighten me as to why the primaries drag out so long? Couldn't they all be held on the same day, say, in May sometime? The internecine warfare in these things is appalling. It's like a Liberal leadership convention weekend spread out over half a year.

Then there's the candidates. As with Canadian elections, the people overshadow the policy, and Exhibits #1 and #1A for that argument this time around rest in the persons of one Hillary Rodham Clinton and one Barack Hussein Obama. (Gee, I wonder why you never hear his middle name...)

The media are going nuts with these two. As Ezra Levant observed recently of Obama,"[h]e has a policy platform, but in the eyes of many media commentators being black is his platform."
>The same goes for Hillary Clinton's gender. Politicians are loath to bring up race or gender, of course, lest they be perceived as racist or sexist...and yet the media bring up both every chance they get. Michael Moore laments Clinton's unwavering support for the Iraq war and speculates

Hillary knows the sexist country we still live in and that one of the reasons the public, in the past, would never consider a woman as president is because she would also be commander in chief. The majority of Americans were concerned that a woman would not be as likely to go to war as a man (horror of horrors!). So, in order to placate that mindset, perhaps she believed she had to be as "tough" as a man, she had to be willing to push The Button if necessary, and give the generals whatever they wanted.

Maybe Hillary just plain supports the war in Iraq, and it has nothing to do with her being a woman. It's not a popular position, but it can be defended. It's entirely possible she voted for war (as many who have since recanted did), and continued to vote for war not because she liked the direction the war was heading but because she felt that withdrawing would lead to even greater troubles in that part of the world. If that's the case, I'd actually applaud her...because that's the sort of nuanced thinking that goes over the heads of most of America (and Canada)'s chattering class.

I'd love to see a President who is female. In my wildest dreams, I'd actually like to...hear me out...disenfranchise men for a century or so and see where that might lead. Somewhere better than here, likely. Here I go indulging in gender stereotypes, but anyone who's observed men and women for any length of time would probably agree: women are more likely to take a longer view of the world (particularly if they are mothers); their first recourse to any problem likely won't be to call in the troops, much less toss a nuke somewhere.
Men often say that women do nothing but yack. Have you seen Question Period? A bunch of mostly white males yacking endlessly. It's a miracle anything in government ever gets done. Let's give women the reins...if my wife and my mother are any indication at all, women will talk with the express goal of getting problems solved, not scoring political points.
And of course I'd bar men from voting until I could be certain they weren't going to vote for the woman with the biggest bust.

All that said...

I personally don't like Hillary Clinton. I never have. Maybe to be a powerful woman in politics, you've got to triple-armor-plate your ass and assume a bitchly manner everywhere you go...and maybe I'm Michael Moore. I'd respond a whole hell of a lot differently to Clinton if she were more authentic. You get the sense with Hillary that every word, every thought, is calculated for maximum political gain, that nothing of the real Hillary Clinton must ever be seen. I don't like that in a person.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, seems to radiate authenticity...which is also suspicious. I mean, when's the last time you met a genuine, sincere politician? They don't exist and never have...right?
A black president would be a great thing for America, if only because maybe, just maybe, after a year or three, people will actually forget he's black. Social change is like that: just look at gay marriage. The mere prospect of Jack and Gill tying the knot caused furrowed brows and anguished, angered cries all over Canada. Now that Jack and Gill have climbed that hill, the issue's all but dead. People saw gays getting married and their own marriages didn't magically dissolve. With Barack in charge, people would first see a black President...and then just a President. And that's as it should be.

I'll delve into policy as events unfold, and I should note there are still many races yet to be run before either Hillary or Barack can claim the Democratic nomination. Possibly neither of them will. We'll have a much better idea on my birthday, February 6. The day before, nearly half the States in the Union will have voted.

One further note: I've ignored the Republicans here, and hope to continue to ignore them right through November. With one exception: if Mike Huckabee is nominated, and somehow becomes President, I'm migrating off-planet, and anyone not interested in Armaggeddon would be wise to follow me.

Good luck, America. You're gonna need it.

Throne Speech 2007

What a shock: the federal NDP and BQ don't support the throne speech. The Liberals. as usual, are waiting for the polls to tell them how to think, but Ignatieff called it "disappointing".
It would be funny if it wasn't so pointless...both Layton and Duceppe said they wouldn't support the government well before they heard a word of last night's Speech from the Throne. I don't need to hear it to know I'll hate it.
This is the latest example of something I positively loathe about politics: opposition for the sake of opposition. At least wait until after the damned thing before you pass judgement on it. According to CBC News, "some political observers believe that the Liberal front bench — Dion and his shadow cabinet — will vote against the throne speech and that the backbenchers will either abstain or not show up, which would allow the throne speech to pass." That's cheap.
Dion, if this speech is really so bad, grow a pair and call the government on it, okay?

All that aside, I agree with something else Michael Ignatieff said. He called the speech "studied ambiguity." Well, of course it was. This wasn't a budget document and it wasn't a back-dated Hansard transcript. All Speeches from the Throne are full of studied ambiguity. I think Dion or even Layton could have written well over 75% of last night's speech and had it come out exactly the same. There was a whole lot of silliness about various anniversaries (did you know Quebec City was founded 450 years ago? Do you care?) and self-congratulatory twaddle (even if I support a given initiative, the smug back-slapping rubs me the wrong way). But everybody's speech from the throne tends to read as if it comes from an entirely different sort of throne and should perhaps be flushed forthwith.

Okay, so what's in here that has the Opposition's knickers in a twist? Well, let's start with the two obvious things: Afghanistan and the environment.
The speech as read by Michaelle Jean had a fairly lengthy section on Canada's commitment in Afghanistan. There were two basic thrusts: one, that the government would hold a vote on whether to extend the mission past February 2009 and abide by its outcome; two, that, in the opinion of the government, we should stay involved in that country until at least 2011.

Predictably, the first bit was lost in the outrage. Ignatieff called it "a shell game", saying it wasn't clear whether the proposed extension of the mission would be focussed on military or civilian matters.
Oh, it was clear enough to me. Ignatieff can't blame a language barrier, either: the line "Canadians recognize there can be no peace without security" was delivered in English. The government stated it doesn't feel the Afghan military and police force would be up to the job by 2009, but should be by 2011. Regardless, Harper's appointed a commission (in a brilliant move, it's headed by John Manley, maybe the only Liberal who gets why we're in Afghanistan) to advise it on the mission, and there will be a free vote on the matter in the House.

For what it's worth, I'm still torn on Afghanistan. The casualties we're taking have no effect on my thinking: without diminishing the grief of soldiers' families and friends, the sum total of those killed in action in Afghanistan would have represented an unusually quiet day in World War Two. I still believe that, while everyone's entitled to an opinion, only the opinions of soldiers and their families should carry any real weight. And it can't be denied we're doing a hell of a lot of good over there. Then again, I'm not sure the war can be won, at least not with the half-measures we're using. Does that mean we should withdraw? I'm not sure. But a vote in the House seems fair, and the government's recommendations that the outcome of that vote should honour the sacrifice of our fallen--while politically self-serving--also seems fair to me.
Not to Jack Layton, though. I think he honestly believes there's no need for a Canadian military at all. Not only does he favour negotiation with the Taliban (on what, exactly? how many schools they'll burn down this week?), he also seems to think Uncle Sam will protect us from any harm that does come a-callin'. Especially if we insult Uncle Sam at every opportunity. Oh, sure, that makes sense.

Moving right along: the environment. Dion railed against the government for claiming our Kyoto Protocol targets are impossible to meet. I'd like to see him try. No, seriously: we've got seventy-seven days before the benchmark period begins to do what I believe I proved was impossible two years ago. (It's a widely held misconception that the Kyoto deadline to reduce green house gas emssions is 2012. Actually, the average of our green house gas emissions in the years 2008-2012 is supposed to be six percent below 1990 levels.)
As far as I can see, the only way we can achieve these targets at this late date is a mass die-off, and we better be quick about it.
I for one wish the Conservatives were more committed to the environment. But the Kyoto Protocol is so fatally flawed that I can't believe we signed it in the first place. Any agreement exempting the world's two biggest emitters isn't worth the paper it's printed on.

What else was in this worm-can? The closest thing to a "poison pill" in here is the government's stated intent to "immediately" re-introduce an omnibus bill composed of several of the anti-crime measures either defeated in the last session or killed when it ended. The bill will include provisions for raising the age of sexual consent; stricter bail conditions; stronger punishments for impaired driving, and mandatory prison sentences for gun crimes. This bill will be a matter of confidence, meaning if it does not pass, the government would fall and an election would be called.
As I said, none of this passed before. (Why not, I can't fathom.) I'd love to see the Opposition plunge us into an election on crime. I just can't imagine how they'd contort themselves into supporting criminals without, you know, supporting criminals.

Also, apparently the promise to cut the GST another percentage point will be fulfilled this fall, two years early. How much do you want to bet freshly re-elected Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty will raise the PST in response?

As usual, it'll be an interesting year in Ottawa.

Election Follies (III)

Congratulations and condolences are both in order this morning.

Congratulations… to re-elected Premier Dalton McGuinty. Granted, your chief rival pretty much handed you the victory, but still…there are skeletons aplenty in your political closet, and your campaign did an admirable job of keeping that closet door firmly shut. A question for you, though: can we believe a single syllable of anything you’ve said over the past month?

Condolences…to the majority of people who did not vote for Dalton McGuinty and his Liberals. Under our present system, the Liberals have received (I can’t very well say “earned”) a comfortable majority, reported this morning as 71 out of 107 seats, with just 42% of the popular vote. It is common to hear, in the fallout from any election campaign, that voters get the government they deserve. In most cases, including this one, it can be argued that voters get a government they neither deserve nor want.

Congratulations and condolences both…to Howard Hampton, leader of the provincial NDP. Sir, you ran an impassioned and reasonably effective campaign, strongly impressing this voter, at least. You alone among the leaders deserved a much better showing than you got last night. It really is too bad Bob Rae left your party unelectable in Ontario for a generation.

Condolences to John Tory, leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives and widely expected, at the outset of the campaign, to give McGuinty a run. I trust the person who decided to put the words “faith-based school funding” into your platform has been given the heave-ho? Strange, isn’t it, how in a 52 page platform, one third of one page can pack such an unexpected wallop?
I really do feel bad for Tory: it’s obvious he has more principle than many of his ilk. He chose to run in a Toronto seat, on principle, despite there being a bunch of much safer ridings he could have picked. And he lost. He stood behind the faith-based school initiative like a sitting duck, far longer than he should have, because he genuinely believed it to be the right thing to do. And he lost. Friends and foes alike praise his integrity. We need more people like him, from all political stripes.

Congratulations to the people behind a supremely effective Liberal spin machine. You took that one third of one page of Tory’s voluminous platform, distorted it to your own ends, and blew a comparatively trivial issue up into a dealbreaker for your rival. At no point did Tory suggest, as your commercials had it, that he would take money out of the public system to fund faith-based schools. When your opponents retorted that your leader is himself a product of a faith-based school, not to mention his wife teaches in one, you somehow managed to shrug your shoulders and change the subject. It’s obvious you relied on the electorate not to bother with a close read of each party’s platform. Good call.

Condolences to Frank deJong, leader of the Greens. Shut out of the televised debate again, you nevertheless hoped to elect at least one member last night. It didn’t happen, although your party was leading for quite a while in one riding, and did manage to finish third in a few. If it’s any consolation, you poll higher and higher each electoral cycle. It’s only a matter of time before you break through.

Congratulations to the voters of Ontario. I was worried about most of you: for the longest time it seemed as if you were blissfully unaware you were being given a chance to examine and perhaps change the entire electoral system. At nearly the last minute, you engaged. In the days leading up to the election, I heard chatter about the referendum everywhere I went. You could tell that people were turning to friends who were, perhaps, a little more politically aware and demanding an explanation. Eavesdropping on conversations in stores and restaurants, I heard many points both in favour and against the Mixed Member Proportional system we were being asked to consider. My father came up with one point against I hadn’t thought of: under MMP, rural and remote ridings would have even less representation than they do at present—unless some conscious effort was made to recruit list members from those areas, which would be unlikely.

In any event, MMP failed: 63% voted against it. To my mind, this suggests that many Ontarians recognize the need for reform, but believe there may be better alternatives than MMP. And 37% is not a number to ignore, for that matter. I hope this isn’t the last we hear.

Four more years. If Canadian political history holds true, McGuinty will let this endorsement go to his head and his party will become more and more corrupt, eventually resulting in a crushing defeat in 2011.

But I won't make any promises.

Election follies (II): MMP for MPPs?

First, a confession: I did not watch the political "debate" last night.
I don't think I've ever missed one, provincial or federal, but honestly. My interest in seeing these things rests comfortably to the left of zero these days. The day they stop screaming at each other and start talking rationally, I might reconsider.
Remember Mike Harris? He turned in the best performance I ever saw at one of these shindigs, by virtually ignoring his two opponents and simply, directly stating his platform to the electorate. He was rewarded with a huge majority--and even those many who hate the man recognize he followed through on most of that platform. Would that all politicians, of all stripes, exhibited that sort of candour. Instead, they bob and weave, rarely even speaking to the issue at hand, unless it's to blame the other guy. No thanks.
I did, however, pick up copies of both the Sun and Star this morning, to make sure I got both sides. Both papers, predictably, pandered to their biases. The Sun's headline shouted "Dalton Loses It"--they would have chosen that headline even if McGuinty had blown Tory and Hampton right offstage, for its dual meaning. In fact, their official editorial position is that McGuinty won that debate, because his message about John Tory's faith-based schools initiative has stuck and continues to dog Tory at every turn. Another Sun columnist says you could make an argument for each candidate having won (except Frank deJong of the Greens, who wasn't allowed to play--sorry to harp on this, but that really pisses me off.)

The Star, just as predictably, championed their Liberal hero. I swear, if Dalton McGuinty had eaten a kitten on stage last night, the Food section of the Star would be replete with kitten recipes today. Reading between the lines, though, it's clear they feel McGuinty didn't so much win the debate as the other two lost it (by not being Liberal) -- ack! Sorry! My fingers just get twitchy every time I deign to read a Toronto Star.

Onward.

What I really want to talk about is MMP: the Mixed Member Proportional electoral system we're being asked to embrace or reject in the referendum accompanying this election.

The media coverage on this is weird. On the one hand, I don't think there's enough of it. You see the occasional editorial and that's about it; on television, there are commercials for the website yourbigdecision.ca but newscasts are strangely silent.
On the other hand, what coverage there is, is hysterical, especially on the anti- side. According to some people who really should keep their knees from jerking while they're writing, MMP would result in everything from religious dictatorship to disenfranchisement of large numbers of people.

One thing to keep in mind: you still vote for your local representative, exactly as you do now. For a country as supposedly inclusive as Canada, it continues to astound me how many people have such black/white views of things. We've merely extended marriage to gay couples, but some people act as if we outlawed straight marriage. John Tory wants to extend funding to non-Catholic faith-based schools (which I disagree with). He doesn't propose to cut funding from the public system. Likewise, MPP still allows you local representation. It does not mean your vote has no meaning. In fact, any vote should be more meaningful.

You'd vote for your MPP, just as you do now, but then you'd also vote for a political party. That party may or may not be the same party your chosen candidate represents. This second vote determines the number of "list members"--candidates chosen by their parties, not by you--who get to sit in the House.
The idea of appointed politicians really gets under some people's skin. Odd how they forget that in Canada, both the Prime Minister and the provincial Premiers are appointed, not elected. It's true. You don't vote for Stephane Dion or Stephen Harper, you vote for your local representative of their party, and that local representative gets to vote for their party leader, but you don't get a say. And it's been that way since Confederation, and you don't hear people yapping about it, do you?
The chief argument against MMP seems to be that appointed "list members" have no constituents and are therefore beholden to no one but their own parties. The cynic in me suggests that politicians often act this way now. That aside, having voted for a party, you get what you vote for. It's highly unlikely the list members in the NDP are a bunch of neoconservatives.
As for accountability: List members might not be accountable to any one subset of Ontarians, but they are accountable to Ontario as a whole. I think there's something to be said for members who are able to take a wider pan-provinicial view of things.

John Snobelen, high school dropout and ex-minister of education (and doesn't that pairing just blow your mind), wrote a column in the Sun last week attacking MMP as a system that rewards parties for losing elections. Pshaw. I think MMP rewards everyday people for voting...especially if you intend to vote for a smaller party (such as, ahem, the Greens). If this current Ontario election were held under MMP, the Green Party would win several seats. Under our current system, I don't think they have a prayer at even one. Polls I've seen place their support at anywhere from 6 to 12%: not huge, but not all that far behind the NDP, either. (The NDP would also benefit from MMP). If your party polls that high, don't you deserve at least some representation in Parliament?

It is probably true that MMP would make majority governments exceedingly rare. But many would argue that's a good thing. Look what happens to majority governments over time, the most recent example being those infamous Libranos of Adscam fame. Look too at the large number of folks who seem to be okay with Mr. Harper...so long as he never gets a majority and ruins the country. Under MMP, you'd see more coalitions. Some people see that is sleazy backroom wheelie-dealie stuff. I prefer to think of it as "building consensus". And what could be more Canadian than that?

This is all a moot point, since I can state with some degree of certainty that MMP will not pass. They've set the bar very high: 60% of voters, in a majority of ridings, must choose MPP for it to supercede what we have now. I don't think you can get that many Canadians to agree the sky is blue. Ironically, that may be the best argument for MMP there is.

Election follies (I)

The Ontario election campaign is in full riot mode all around me. I know negative campaign ads work, but boy, I wish they didn't. McGuinty's getting hammered left and right (on the right, it's a literal hammer: every Conservative commercial features at least three panes of glass breaking, each symbolizing a broken promise).
The thing is, I knew long ago that I wouldn't be voting for Dalton McGuinty. I almost voted for him last time. He seemed so sincere when he said "I won't raise your taxes, but I won't cut them either. Our schools and hospitals need every penny of that money." Wow, I thought. That sounds so honest! In an election campaign! That's probably the first honest statement I've heard since Kim Campbell's infamous "An election is no time to discuss serious issues."

(Incidentally, the same John Tory that's currently running for the Premiership of Ontario ran that campaign for Campbell. He was behind possibly the most notorious attack ad in Canadian political history, making fun of Chretien's facial disfigurement. That alone probably cost Campbell the election: as it was, she ran the Conservatives into the ground.)

As I was saying, I won't, can't, vote for McGuinty. To do so would be to ignore countless broken promises, not the least of which was the biggest tax hike in this province's history, enacted almost immediately. I could almost hear the guy laughing. Suckers. That'll teach ya to listen to politicians!

There are (or at least I'd like to think there are) a few million more like me out here. And all of us would like to know where to park our vote. We don't need to be reminded that Norman Bates (he really does look like Norman Bates) lied with nearly every word. What we, the electorate, need is a reason to vote for somebody.

I, personally, will not vote NDP. Probably ever. While I agree with their outlook on many social issues, I'd honestly like to keep my job. You want a reason not to vote New Democrat? Toronto's city council is run by a bunch of dips, er, Dippers. The city's nearly bankrupt and all they can do is whine and moan about all the money they're not getting from other levels of government. God forbid they'd ever look at trimming the obscene amount of fat clogging their administrative arteries.

Normally, I'd vote for Tory's Tories, but the only plank of their platform the media's seen fit to show me amidst all the McGuinty bashing concerns funding for faith-based schools. Separation of church and state, anyone? I don't even think the Catholic school board ought to be publicly funded. At least one Catholic agrees with me: there was a letter to the editor of the Kitchener-Waterloo Record the other day basically stating that parents shouldn't be expecting schools to teach religion...that's what parents and churches are for. How many kids attending Catholic school go with their parents to a Catholic church every Sunday? Not a whole hell of a lot.

Does Tory have more to offer? Probably. But where is it? I want to see his mug on my TV telling me what he'll do for the province, not what McGuinty failed to do. (Then again, given that Dalton laid out some two hundred promises, then did his damnedest to break every one of them (hell, he broke his promise to close our coal-fired electricity generation stations, what, twice? Three times?--maybe it's not a good idea to promise anything at all.)

Anyway, since the media have been rather remiss at letting me know where everybody stands, I've had to go a-hunting. Behold, the fruits of my labour:

Liberal Party platform


Conservative Party platform

The NDP platform does not seem to be out yet. For reference, their site is here.

Finally, the Green Party.

As I've said before, I'm pretty sure I'll be voting Green. It's admittedly a wasted vote, as they have no hope of forming a government, but I like much of what I've seen from Frank DeJong. His campaign vehicles are a bicycle, a Prius, and public transit. That may smack of gimmickry to you. To me, it says this guy puts his money where his mouth is. I would urge everyone, even if you have no intention of voting for this party, to at least go look at what you're rejecting. Because unlike the other two parties running against McGuinty's Liberals, the Green Party has next to no budget and is again being shut out of the televised debates. This last is criminal, as far as I'm concerned...and I'd say that even if it was the Communist Party of Ontario that was garnering ten percent of the vote each election. Trust me, the day this party's allowed to play with the big boys, their popularity will spike.

--------------------------------

We're not just having an election here in Ontario, we're having a referendum on how future elections will be conducted. Details, for those who care, are here.

In brief, we're being asked to consider whether we should stick with our first-past-the-post system or move to something called Mixed-Member Proportional. This would give you two votes in any election: one for an MPP, conducted exactly as it is now, and the other for a political party. This second vote would basically ensure that each party's percentage of the seats more or less lines up with their percentage of the vote, something that never happens now.
One reason I like this system is that it allows me to elect a local member whom I feel is doing (or would do) a good job...and vote for a party which may not be the same party my local member represents.

Anyway, I know all this stuff is fantastically boring to non political junkies. And completely irrelevant to those of my readers outside this province. Please forgive me, folks. I promise to write on something more universal next time out. And unlike a certain Liberal premier, I keep my promises.

Tory, that idea stinks.

.

I'm a lifelong Conservative. Raised in the Reform school, I've been getting progressively more, well, progressive the older I get. I almost voted for Dalton McGuinty and his Liberals last provincial election.

Almost. His platform looked pretty good, if I could get past that icky Liberal thing. What really impressed me was the (now infamous) quote "I won't cut your taxes. But I won't raise them either."

I can't tell you how shocked I was to be impressed by such a thing. I jerked my political knee right out of its socket a long time ago repeatedly calling (screaming, whining) for lower taxes. Now here was a politician actually announcing he had no intention of cutting taxes (at all! at all!) and I'm thinking of voting for him? That's like a quintessentially straight guy suddenly contemplating a gay lover.

In the end, I voted Conservative, but not out of any great love for Ernie Eves: I was really casting my vote in favour of my MPP, Elizabeth Witmer, who had done what I considered to be a commendable job. But to this day I remember my hesitation in the voting booth.

You see, McGuinty seemed so honest...

Cue guffaws of laughter. Has there ever been a politician less honest than Dalton McGuinty? He's broken practically every promise he made in that campaign. Some of them he's broken repeatedly. Every year, the date to close Ontario's filthy coal-fired electricity plants gets shoved back eighteen months, for instance. It'd be one thing if there was a plan, any kind of plan at all, to replace that power. Then Dalton could announce "there's been some delays in the construction of the new nuclear facilities: we'll have to rely on our coal plants until they're up and runnning." But there are no new nukes. Instead, we will make up that shortfall in power by purchasing from the U.S...from coal plants considerably dirtier than our own. Oh, yeah, that makes sense.

The list of broken promises goes on and on. He was going to roll back tolls on Highway 407--they've gone up six or seven times. Highway 407 has simply got to be the most expensive toll road in North America. You can travel the entire Ohio Turnpike for less than the cost of traversing Toronto.

(High tolls may be a good thing, although gas taxes are supposed to serve that function. No matter: the promise was made.)

They promised balanced budgets, then promptly ran a deficit. They promised ministers would take a pay cut for running a deficit. Never happened. You name a promise, they shattered it. The biggie, of course, was that new health tax they brought in almost immediately, while simultaneously delisting (privatizing) several medical services--two broken promises in one!



But see, says McGuinty, that wasn't a tax, it was a "premium". I don't know, Dalton...whether you call it an anus or a rectum, it's still an asshole.



There's another provincial election FINALLY coming up in October. Ever since that first big promise turned out to be a lie, I've been counting the days until I could boot McGuinty in his metaphorical ass (rectum, anus). My wife feels even worse: she did vote for him in 2003. Between the two of us, we wish we could cast about thirty million ballots.



But what always happens to me politically is happening again. I really wish that just once, just once, I could unreservedly vote for someone, rather than having to vote against somebody every frigging election. I voted for Harper, despite some serious misgivings, because I just couldn't bring myself to reward Martin's Liberals for AdScam. (Actually, I can't believe anybody could convince themselves to trust that gang of thieves, but lo and behold many did.)

Now it's happening again. I'm not sure I like John Tory much.

Oh, he would have made a great mayor of Toronto, I think. Certain much better than his Blondness, union shill David Miller. But Premier of Ontario? I don't know.



Consider his latest: he wants to divert funds out of the public education system to fund faith-based schools.

This is wrong on so many levels it's hard to know where to begin. What I find most amazing is that Tory's actually lauding this as an inclusive policy. How's that again? We already have one too many religious school systems in this province. How does further segregation bring people together?
Parents who send their children to faith-based schools think this is great news, of course. They've been arguing for years that they're subsidizing, through their taxes, an educational system they're not using, and that they shouldn't have to pay twice. Which sounds fair--until you stop and think about it for, oh, half a second.
Nobody forced these parents to enroll their kids in religious schools: it was something they freely chose to do, knowing full well the costs involved. Having moved next to an international airport, do you complain to the media about all those noisy planes? Having accepted a job that pays a certain wage, do you turn around and strike for a higher wage?
(Wait a second. Don't answer that.)

My view, for what it's worth, is that in a country which claims to support the separation of Church and State, the State has no business propagating the claims of any particular Church, particularly not to its children who are too young to understand what they're being taught.

In other words: one public system.

This has nothing to do with my (admitted) disdain for organized religion. Religious faith ought to be a private matter between a person and his/her god(dess)(es). By all means, teach children about religion--it has been, and continues to be, one of the most important influences on society. But teaching one particular religion over another denies a child the opportunity to choose for herself what to believe. It also goes a long way towards preventing interaction between children of different faiths...surely not something a multicultural society ought to encourage.

It's sort of like politics, now that I come to think of it. Would you send your kid to Republican school? Hell, even if I was an ardent Republican, I wouldn't do that.

I believe the appeal of faith-based schools is rooted in fear...fear that your child might grow up to stand for something different than you. So long as that child has come to her beliefs honestly, why should that matter? I submit it doesn't...and I certainly don't think money should be stolen out of the public education system just because some parents disagree with me.

Excuse me...haven't you got anything better to do?

Okay, the topics on the docket today have been discussed in both the blogosphere and in what said blogosphere derisively refers to as the "mainstream media". (Which is, by the way, an increasingly odd appellation in these days when anyone who is anyone has a blog...) At any rate, I have nothing new to add on either topic, but both are just so...damned...annoying that I feel compelled to write out some frustration.

Both topics, needless to say, are political.

1) DOAN GO THERE...

(or...Everyone's A Little Bit Racist...except Captain Canada...

Boy, you really gotta hand it to Parliament.

How many problems are facing this country right now? Let's start a little list. Here's mine:

--Of course, the environment's going to hell.
--Perhaps worse, nobody knows exactly what to do about the environment going to hell.
--Our troops are at war in Afghanistan.
--Our dollar's approaching parity with the Yankee greenback, meaning our manufacturers are facing the horrors of competing with Americans on a nearly level playing field. Yikes.
--Our relationship with the Chinese, soon to be the dominant economy on the planet, is not exactly favourable.
--The American economy is overdue for a serious correction, accompanied by a housing crash the likes of which has never been seen. If you don't think that's a Canadian problem, you'll learn otherwise when it hits.
--Our birth rate is well below replacement and falling...presenting a whole host of problems from the erosion of Canadian culture to the eventual inability to fund cherished social programs. Worse, very few seem to notice or care.

I suppose I could go on. Many people would suggest spiking fuel prices are a problem. For some, perhaps: long-haul truckers, for instance. Then again, the higher gas prices get, the more likely we are to make meaningful changes to our lifestyle. Maybe people will move closer to where they work, for example.
I could talk about crime--the rate for which, Statistics Canada insists, is dropping (although there's a rise in trifling little things like murder, attempted murder, assaults and robbery. You know, the kinds of crime where the judge pats the accused on the back and sends him out to offend again.)

In short, I could talk about a whole lot of things. So could you, I'm sure. And none of us would rank Shane Doan anywhere on any of our lists. Shame on us all.

Shane Doan, for you non-hockey fan, non-political types, is an NHL player for Wayne Gretzky's Phoenix Coyotes. He's also, at least for now, the Captain of Team Canada, presently competing and undefeated at the World Hockey Championships. But, see, Doan supposedly said something racist two years ago, and, well, he was cleared of any wrongdoing by the NHL, but since the NHL itself is racist...or something...oh, hell, I don't know. He'd better be stripped of his captaincy, or perhaps kicked off the team altogether. This, by the way, is coming from a Quebec Liberal...of the Quebec Liberals...from a province so racist it won't even allow English signs.

Doan's been cleared, as I said. The non-incident launched two lawsuits, proving once and for all that Canadians are just as frivolously litigious as their American cousins. If I was to sue everybody who ever called me a name, I'd have to retain a regiment of lawyers.

What concerns me most is that this is taking up time and money in Parliament. Wouldn't it be nice if our Parliament ran like a reality television show? (I know, it does, it does.) But really, we could all phone in every day and kick people out.

Speaking of politicians acting crazy...

2) STOP HIM! HE'S NOT SPENDING TAXPAYER DOLLARS!

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
--P. J. O'Rourke, Parliament of Whores

Be grateful you don't live in Toronto. Or if you do, now's about the time to GET THE HELL OUT.

After four years of socialist government, Canada's largest city totters on the edge of bankruptcy. It has robbed its reserve funds on numerous occasions in order to balance its budgets, keeping yearly tax increases at merely three times the rate of inflation. The mayor, David Miller, graduated magna cum laude in Economics from Harvard, has evidently forgotten everything he ever learned there, as his chief fiscal strategy revolves around begging other levels of government for more money. Given the way it's impossible to walk three blocks in downtown Toronto without being accosted (not always by people who are genuinely down on their luck, either), I guess Miller fits right in.
Here's a city run by unionists, where "contracting out" is about the worst epithet you can possibly imagine. (Why pay one person $12 an hour when you can pay four $24 an hour to do the same job?) It's bloated beyond belief--somehow, despite having amalgated six cities into one, there are thousands more employees now than before.

In addition to their overinflated salaries, Toronto city councillors have an office budget of $53,100 per annum. Some councillors--many, actually--seem togo out of their way to spend as much of that as they possibly can. George Mammolitti, for example, spent $49,795 last year...and he wasn't even the most profigate. Meanwhile, we have Doug Holyday, who spent $1471, and Rob Ford, who spent...zero.

At my work (and at a lot of other places besides, I suspect), we have something called Peer-to-Peer Action Plans. The idea is to take similar stores, of similar square footage and projected sales, and compare them against each other on dozens of criteria. If you find you lag in some areas compared to your peers--and everyone does, somewhere--you talk to each other and figure out what they're doing right and how you can improve. This seems like endless busywork, but done properly it makes all of our stores better.

It's no surprise to learn that Toronto city council's got something similar in place. Council has singled out the two tightwads above and placed them under investigation. Not so as to rein in other councillors' expenses, mind you. No, Rob Ford and Doug Holyday are not spending enough.

The horror.

Look, I don't like Rob Ford's politics--read his Wikipedia entry (which makes no mention of his frugality, at least as of this writing) and you get a picture of a not-particularly-nice man with issues. But I applaud his stinginess with taxpayer dollars. The same goes for his colleague, Doug Holyday, whose views I'm more in tune with. In a city with self-inflicted money wounds, these two ought to be cloned, not castigated.

There. I think I feel better.

Natives, again

I'm sorry, Peter. You're not going to like this one.

As I write, over a hundred Caledonia (Ontario) residents, together with their mayor and some of their town council, are engaged in a "rolling blockade" of the Queen Elizabeth Way, en route from their town to Toronto, where they hope to get the attention of the provincial minister for aboriginal affairs.
Caledonia residents have been under siege for fifteen months now, by what can only be termed terrorists. The fact these terrorists are natives of Canada (even if they say they aren't) is irrelevant...or at least it should be. But because these terrorists are in fact Natives (the capitalization is important), two levels of government and the Ontario Provincial Police seem powerless to intervene in any meaningful way.
Natives have illegally occupied disputed land in Caledonia for over a year, now. They say that land was stolen from them two centuries ago, and they want it back.
Two centuries ago, eh? Wow, but those Natives do have some impressive lifespans. Why, some of them still look to be in their twenties. With sole access to that kind of eternal youth, I really must question why they aren't all billionaires by now.
That this group is so concerned over events of their great-great-great-great grandparents' time is merely silly. That they are willing to hold a town hostage, to cut its power, to block railways and highways for weeks, to pelt residents and peace officers with rocks and beer bottles, and to threaten escalation besides...that, by federal law, makes them terrorists.
There was a railway "blockade" mounted by another group of Natives a couple of weeks ago, midway between Toronto and Montreal on Canada's busiest rail line. They parked a decrepit school bus astraddle the tracks for thirty hours. This, too, is illegal, and it goes without saying that if I tried something like that my ass would be in jail before I could say "two-tier justice system". The town police negotiated with these criminals and they begrudgingly moved their bus at the thirty hour mark. Their claim was not settled, of course, and they threatened further actions, of course, and the government breathed a sigh of relief and pretended the crisis was over. Of course.

That's not how I would have handled it.

In a contest between a CN freight train moving at 120 km/h and an old stationary bus, my money's on the train every time. And if that bus was loaded with people (it wasn't)? I'd bet they'd get off in an almighty hurry!

Of course, this would further enrage our Native population...but since they're already enraged and we haven't done a damned thing to deserve it (whatever our distant ancestors did), I figure the least we can do is earn some of that anger. It's kind of like the faithful husband whose wife constantly accuses him of adultery. Sooner or later he's bound to decide if he's going to be labelled, he might as well gain the benefits of the label.

All that said, I do think Native land claims ought to be settled. Our government needs to determine what these people want, and decide if it's in their power to grant it. This should be a high priority for our government, ranking just behind the protection of its citizens. In other words, deal with the transgressors to the fullest extent of the law, make it clear that any future criminal acts will be treated as such (our anti-terrorist act really does define what these people have been doing rather well)...and then, and only then, can negotiations begin.

Meanwhile, we have this "rolling blockade" of Caledonians. I generally don't support such things, but I will say that at least their protest is moving. It's a shame they probably won't get anywhere, as the minister they seek has already said he won't meet with them for lack of a formal appointment...and besides, "it's a federal responsibility". This kind of political buck passing is the biggest reason I feel we have too much damned government in this country. You say it's a federal responsibility? Fine. As provincial Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, what's your job description, Mr. Ramsay?

(One of these days I'm going to actually sit down and write up a proposal for a completely different form of government for Canada. It would involve the dissolution of all provincial governments, for a start. And yes, I'm sure that's unconstitutional. I don't care.)

Did you know you need a quarter to put air in your tires?

Or, the high cost of inflation

I've blown the budget on budget blogs for this week, but let me address one point out of Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's final (I hope), NDP-ish budget: the raising of the minimum wage in Ontario to $10.25/hr (in three years). I had a wee change of brain on this one a couple of weeks ago, as a result of something I read in the Toronto Star.

Digression: the price of prejudice is constant mantenance, the checking of your cherished truisms against invading facts. Whenever one of mine gets overturned, I feel momentarily naked and unsure of myself. I'm like a baby who's had his security blankie snatched away. Far from feeling liberated, I actually feel a tad threatened. I've betrayed myself: there will be reprisals, yes? Never mind the good reasons, they aren't that good at all, you're thinking like them, stop that!
Thus do prejudices re-assert and perpetuate themselves.

I used to side with practically every economist in the world in saying that raising the minimum wage is reckless, irresponsible, and just plain wrongheaded. The general consensus seems to be that employers will simply refuse to pay people a decent living wage, even if mandated by law, and will eliminate jobs wherever possible. So government would be hurting the people it's trying to help.
There may be some validity to this argument. All you have to do is think back to the dawn of office computerization. Remember all those naive fools who predicted a four day work week and undreamed amounts of leisure time? Yeah, like that happened, right? Instead, companies quickly figured out how to do more with less, eliminating jobs galore. Hey, the thinking went. If right now we're forcing one guy to do the work of two, and a computer can do the work of ten, well, then, now one guy can do the work of twenty. Or something like that. There is no God but Greed, and Dollar is His Profit.
What's to say that companies, mandated by law to pay their employees a reasonable minimum wage, won't find new and brilliantly creative ways to beat the system? And never mind that "enlightened self-interest" crap.
The answer is simple, really: they need their minimum wage workers. More often than not, they are the face of your company, the front line to your bottom line, as it were. You can't eliminate your grocery cashier, your burger flipper, or your telemarketer (although wouldn't that be nice?)
Almost seventy percent of those earning minimum wage work for companies with more than 500 employees. Surely they can afford to dole out a little of their CEOs' obscene salary packages to the people who really drive their business?
Sorry, thinking like a socialist, there. No, wait a second. Never mind the minimum wage: I wish somebody would enact a maximum wage. Make it, say, ten times the minimum. Nice metric figures. You could call it a remuneration rating, or RR for short. If the minimum wage is $10.25 an hour--call it RR 1--then the maximum would be $102.50 an hour...RR 10. If there's anybody out there reading this blog who currently makes more than $102.50 an hour, I would please invite you to (a) justify your wage and (b) explain why you require more than that to live your life.

There. Socialist to outright communist in one paragraph. And they call me a Conservative. Ha. But all that money above and beyond $102.50/hr that lots of people make, but I contend nobody really needs--can you imagine the positive impact that would have, loosed upon the world?

What really got me in line with the idea of a minimum wage increase was a single sentence in one Toronto Star column. (I wish I could attribute it better than that: I feel a sense of gratitude for having been Shown The Light.) The Light read thusly:

If, in 1972, the minimum wage had been tied to inflation, today it would be $10.25/hr.

I actually felt the impact of that sentence in my head. It reverberated around my skull: rrrrrrrrrippppppp! as my blankie was torn away.

I've never felt it at all fair that your buying power could stagnate and decline as a result of economic factors completely out of your control. Life's not fair, goes the parental voice in my head, but come on, that's just barbarous. It's possible for your salary to have doubled or even tripled over your career, while your take home pay remains the same or even falls, in terms of what it can buy. This is acceptable? I think not.

As far as I'm concerned, ALL wages, including welfare rates, should be fully indexed to inflation. Companies can't even say they'd be losing money, since the buying power of their profits is also tied to inflation. I'll admit I'm nobody's economist, but doesn't this make sense?

Budget Thoughts (II)

After yesterday's media sampling, I've been reading the forums at the Globe, the Star, and CBC.ca to get an inkling of what average Canadians thought of the budget.
Not that I needed to. I could have told you the whining would be deafening. Still, the shrill, high-pitched scream ("MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!") eventually caused me to bolt away in horror.
I'm a single man in my fifties. Where's my tax break?
I walk to work and support the environment by caring for my pets. Perhaps I should get a tax break.
Quebec cries, Ottawa shovels. (Oh, yeah, and where's my tax break?)
Why I am supporting other people's kids?
These are all comments I saw. If the four or five hundred responses I read are representative, this has got to be the most selfish, uncaring, entitled country on the face of the earth.
Harper scattered his tax breaks around, but most of them were loosely targeted at suburbanites with children: the same group he courted last year. In CPC terminology, they're Tim Horton's people, not Starbucks people. They, or rather their children, are also the future of the country, such as it is: unless our birthrate jumps dramatically, Canada will look increasingly different in coming decades. (Google "world demographics" if you don't believe me.)
We don't have kids. It was not our decision. But we have no problem subsidizing the future of the country. I for one can't understand the mindset of people who do: it's like they have a deathwish, or something.
Yes, we'd all like a tax break. These days, I'm happy when my taxes don't go up. But I don't hold with the idea that reducing everybody's taxes by some huge amount will have any positive consequence. It would drive the economy. Yeah, the economy seems to be driving itself pretty well right now, and besides, there's more to life than accumulating a bunch of crap. And tax cuts cost money. What services do you want to see cut? If you're anything like the Canadians whose comments I've been perusing, you want to see MORE services. Universal childcare--so you can be relieved of the burden of raising those kids you inflicted upon yourself. Free, of course. More money to health care...hell, why not just put all the money in health care? Free tuition. Hey, as a university dropout disgusted with the high cost of education, I like this one...on the surface. But we should maybe pay professors something, not to mention the costs of running our institutions of higher learning. You get what you pay for.

The more environmentally-minded people seem to want greenhouse gasses cut dramatically, which would have the first order effect of putting most of us on welfare. Quick question for the Suzuki school among us: what do you propose would run our post-industrial society? I've yet to see so much as a single factory that runs on solar or wind, or gamma rays, or whatever other imaginary panacea is de rigueur of late...let alone a whole industrial park. And there's a big difference between reducing consumption (which I'm all for) and eliminating it. As Spider Robinson once said, there's a word for things that don't consume. That word is dead.

As for Quebec, hey, rail against it all you want. I do too. But it's how politics works in this country. It didn't take long for the Bloc-heads to announce that all that "fiscal imbalance" money Harper threw it would go to funding programs in an independent Quebec. Until a Canadian PM has the cojones to force the Bloc out of Parliament (easily done, too: all it would require would be a rule that poltical parties must run a candidate in every riding, coast to coast), we're stuck with this model. Besides, what Quebec does isn't any different than what Ontario does. Or Newfoundland. Or British Columbia. Every one of those provincial governments looks to the feds to bail them out. Every one of the cities in every one of our provinces looks to the provinces and the feds to bail them out. It has always been thus, and always will be, until we do something really sensible and abolish the provincial governments.

No, I am not an enthusiastic supporter of this budget. But neither am I a knee-jerk dissenter. The Harper/Flaherty budget is nothing if not pragmatic. Could there have been other priorities? Of course. But no matter what they were, they wouldn't have reduced the bitching one iota.

The lifelong Canadian search for the Free Lunch continues...

Budget Thoughts

There's nothing like a federal budget to bring out my schizophrenia.
Scratch that: there's nothing like this federal budget to bring out my schizophrenia.

Anyone who's been poking around this here Breadbin for any length of time knows I was raised conservative, if not Conservative, and have become more and more progressive is many (but not all) respects. Such an animal as I, when confronted with Harper's conundrum of a budget, is apt to twirl himself into a tizzy.

ITEM: TAX CUTS

Last year I railed against the Liberals' infamous proclamation that parents would blow Harper's child care allowance on "beer and popcorn". I still believe that parents are much better qualified to raise their children than a government could ever be, but at least now I understand where that comment was coming from.
I used to parrot the right-wing mantra that taxes are my money, damnit: give it back. Indeed, some days I'm still apt to say that out loud, usually when I see some egregious example of government waste and incompetence I've come to realize that we pay taxes for a reason: to fund all those things we're loath to pay for on our own. There are a lot of things that fall into that category...left to our own devices, it's a good bet we'd blow our dough on trivialities and items that, sadly, "enrich" ourselves without enriching society. Accordingly, I have no trouble paying taxes, so long as that money's doing something useful.
I think that in this one way I'm actually becoming more and more like an average Canadian. Certainly the majority of Canadians are happier with broad-based spending rather than broad-based tax cuts.
The Toronto SUN seems to hate this budget, hurling the worst epithet in their arsenal: "Liberal, Tory, same old story." By this they mean they are incensed that Harper's increased spending by some nine percent and neglected to cut taxes by any "meaningful" amount. But they concede that politically, this budget is "brilliant".
The Toronto Star's Thomas Walkom, examining the budget from the sinister side of the political spectrum (my inner neocon loves Latin, in this instance) also seems to hate this budget (while calling it "politically clever") and he proves that you can find secret agendas everywhere if you're absolutely wedded to them.
The Kitchener-Waterloo RECORD, owned by the Star and usually at least as left-wing, surprised me with their editorial, entitled "Smart budget, brilliant politics". The first paragraph reads as follows:

"The hidden agenda of Stephen Harper is finally out in the open for everyone to see: After 14 months in power, after Canadians coast to coast have worried, whispered and speculated what he is really about, the Prime Minister has dropped his mask and revealed in every paragraph and page of the latest federal government (sic) the deepest desire of his Conservative party. And that desire is nothing more nor less than re-election."

The plaudits continue: "serious, sensible"..."positive benefits are considerable"..."deserves to pass". I just know that's going to provoke a flood of letters to the editor from people who didn't pay any attention to the budget beyond the fact the evil Conservatives authored it. Of course it's all about re-election, they'll say. He gets elected with a majority and he'll destroy the country. Mark my words, somebody's going to say that.

But then I get to thinking. What are the so-called good points here? For one thing, the document purports to solve the much-ballyhooed "fiscal imblalance". That's government code for taxes are my money, damnit: give it back. See, here's where my inner right-winger makes an appearance--and where I wish Harper's inner right-winger had. There is too much government in this country, too much by half, and it really gets my goat when one level of government bleats to another about a lack of funds. Who cares who does what? Just get it done, already! And live within your means while you're doing it!

On the plus side, there is a new gas-guzzler levy of up to $4,000 on SUVs, while you can get a rebate on an energy-efficient vehicle of up to $2,000. That's the way to go. Things like this ought to be expanded. Of course, anybody that can afford a Hummer isn't going to balk at an additional $4,000, but I'm Grit-picking here.

The almost-unanimous consensus is that Harper's budget is designed to appeal to middle-class parents and Quebecers. I say "almost unanimous" because, as expected, Stephane Dion (a Quebecer) has a different take. I watched him on Global National last night repeatedly say there was "almost nothing" in this budget: "almost nothing" for cities, "almost nothing" for families, "almost nothing" for the middle class, and so and on so forth. Gee, Stephane, $233000000000.00 is a whole hell of a lot of "almost nothing".

The Bloc has said it will support Harper, so his government won't fall just yet. In crafting a budget almost indistinguishable from one a Liberal Minister of Finance might table, Harper has made it very difficult for the Opposition to criticize substantively.

And that, of course, was his intent all along. I think I find myself once again in the camp of most Canadians, unsure about where Harper's going but willing to concede he's doing an okay job.