This is surprising.  Seems we are revolting.  Who knew?

In his poorly titled book, f**k you and goodbye, Author Matt Potter states (and makes a good argument for) quitting, resigning, withdrawing (or whatever form your personal exit takes), is a form of revolt.  In fact, he implies it is the only form of revolt that any one person (who is civil and sane) has available in such a modern and interdependent world.

Those who quit are saying more than just, “I quit this job!”.  They are often also saying they are quitting the larger system.  They are quitting the normal way of things.  They are rejecting the status quo.  They are opting for change BIG TIME but at a personal level.  By the time the average person gets around to resigning from their job, they are ‘mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.’

And, in that context, NOT voting is just another way of revolting but it is a form of revolting nevertheless.  “I am not playing that game of smoke, lies and mirrors.”  In other words: all those Canadians NOT voting are saying something.

It’s all a personal choice, of course, but to vote or not is not the subject of today’s blog. Revolution is.  I can think of a million reasons for revolting against what passes for modern life these days; in fact, I am demonstrating a few of them to a small extent simply by living OTG.  That’s a revolutionary step for this little man and woman, one small part, perhaps, of a larger movement. Maybe.

I didn’t like the system.  We didn’t like what we were doing.  So, we left.  We quit.  We revolted in some tiny and ineffective but good-for-us kind of way.

But – another more relevant example – all the refugees are also revolutionaries. They are revolting with their feet and hearts. They are saying, “We want out and we are prepared to risk our lives to get out!”

It is interesting to note that 99.99% of those refugees did not opt to risk any lives but their own (and family) in conducting their exit-revolution.  The thousands of Syrians, for instance, are peacefully and desperately protesting their nation’s civil hell with their feet but not AK47’s.  There is, it seems, a much larger component to revolution than just shooting the uniforms of the establishment or wearing berets.

Maybe we all revolt in some small way.  Maybe we just play ‘whack-a-mole’ revolution, picking and choosing what we play at and what we reject all the while keeping our comfort and survival paramount.  Maybe even ‘working for the man’ can be undertaken that way.  I don’t know.  I see consumerism and passive entertainment as a palliative-salve for the underlying discontent of modern rat-race living.  It is used to mollify and induce coma. Keeps us working.   And it works for most of the people most of the time.  But not all of the people or all of the time .

Refugees don’t even have that.

I seem to be seeing more and more revolutionary action being taken all the time – if I look. I admit that I didn’t look that closely before but with new definitions like Paul Hawken’s and Matt Potter’s, I see mini-revolts all over.

The biggest one?  Social media.  The governing-by-petition era is upon us.  It is phenomenal.  It is awe inspiring even if it is largely un-influential at this point.  But it will only get bigger.  People will ‘vote’ and ‘exert power’ with their smartphones rather than guns. The world is undergoing a revolution of sorts and we tend to just see it as just more technology and products.  I am not so sure.  It may be more than that.  Arab Spring suggested that it might be more than that and now I think that it was.

You have doubts?  “Dave, they are only phones!” Open your eyes.  Watch the massive tsunami of migration moving north. If your definition of revolution does NOT require the presence of guns, those people are revolting not only against African/Arab/Mexican society, totalitarian government but also status quo western standards.  They are about to be the change that we keep talking about.

The ol’ Pudding is leaving me!

It is only for a few days as she and the book club go a’venturing up north to visit Echo Bay (Salmon Research Station) and the stomping grounds of Alex Morton the whale and salmon champion.  But heaven will become hell for me.  Three days without light.  Three days without warmth.  Three days with only myself for company.  Pure Hell.    

My biggest fear is starving to death, of course.  One can only go for so long on bananas and scotch, you know.  Especially if you only have a couple of bananas (I try to always have plenty of scotch). Mind you, I occasionally supplement that post-apocalyptic diet with toasted peanut-butter and jam sandwiches when I have to so I’ll be OK.  I guess.

I will probably have to make my own tea, tho. Unmitigated hell.  I would request care packages but mail is intermittent and so, don’t worry too much about me.  No, really!  Try not to worry.  I’ll just go to the garden and eat worms if I have to.  

Did I mention that we can’t seem to keep worms?  They just keep bugging out on us.

Did I mention the woe?  

Book club is a marvel.  It really is.  Fifteen or so women (some accompanied by men, presumably their spouses) will traipse up island and go by water taxi to some remote island (fanatics, eh?) and visit salmon and talk books. “Hey, Pudding!  We have salmon. We have books.  We are on a remote island.  Why not stay home and make tea?” 

“No research station.”

“What about Google?  Not research-y enough for ya?”

“I get to pound across Queen Charlotte Sound in a water taxi for a few hours.  Maybe get forced by weather to stay over.  Maybe have to fight through storms and stuff, eat hardscrabble and stay warm by dressing in all my clothes around a survival fire.  Wouldn’t wanna miss that.”

“With fourteen other women?”

“And a few cute guys.”

‘Hell!’, I am saying.  Absolute HELL.     

Another in the Anti-Harper chronicles.  Can October 19th come fast enough?  Still, so much work to do.  This blog topic, however, causes even me to blink.  The following is a link to the very credible and also hard researching journalist, Andrew Nikiforuk.   He has written about Harper a lot and several times about Harper’s religion.  Here is the link to his latest and I confess it is a bit disturbing.

Read: http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/09/14/Covert-Evangelism-Stephen-Harper/utm_source=nationalweekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=140915.

Bottom line: Harper is a closet fundamentalist.

Normally, I would keep my comments on the state separate from that of the church.  That is the modern political protocol, anyway.  All democracies claim to separate church and state and, even though I have wondered how one type of indoctrination can be completely ignored while undertaking a high profile, high responsibility public service job, I have always just accepted that the politicians try their best to do just that.  After reading Nikiforuk, I don’t think Harper does.

In fact, after reading about Harper’s church, so many petty, nasty aspects of Harper made sense.  That women with the niqab, for instance.  Harper’s insistence on it and the government appealing the court’s decision – for what?  They have SEEN her face in another part of the process!  What does violating her religious beliefs have to do with anything?  Unless, of course, you hate Muslims because your church urges you to.

Harper, it seems, is a TheoCon in the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church.  He is a type of fundamentalist Christian who believes in dominating the earth (because God gave it to us to do just that with) and thus explaining his climate change denial stance and his pro-tar sands agenda.

It also explains his extremely strong pro-Israeli position because of the belief that the Second Coming and the End of Days requires Israel to exist for that to happen.  Christ can’t return if Israel is not there to receive him.

And so it goes.  Belief.  Very specific fundamental beliefs that are, in my opinion anyway, quite anti-Christianity despite the holy rhetoric surrounding it all.  His church condemns rather than forgives.  His church encourages disparity and creates poverty rather than shares and helps.  His church aligns with BIG OIL and BIG Business which would be quite contrary to the teachings of Christ, I should think.  And his church, supported in spirit by Sarah Palin, GW Bush and the weirded-out Right conspire in secrecy to ‘run the world’ in a mind-set fitting of a Robert Ludlum conspiracy theory.

If Andrew hadn’t written it, I wouldn’t have believed it.  In fact, I still have some difficulty with the idea that a Canadian Prime Minister would act on the principles of his freakin’ church before acting on the principles of our constitution and our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And, where they might conflict, the church he attends in secret, prevails!!?? Does that even sound sane?  Is that not a plot for a cheap B spy movie or maybe an early James Bond?

Could we really be ruled by such an extreme character and seriously consider letting it happen again?

I will not continue to inflict Howard’s point of view on you when you prefer my ignorant rants (because they are short) but it only seemed fair to let him finish.  Here is part ll.  

The Harper Government as Poor Economic Managers by Howard Adelman

In Part II of this morning’s blog I want to continue the focus on Harper’s economic policies, but less from the perspective of macro-economics and more with a focus on specific economic policies. A reputation for good economic management is Harper’s strongest suit. That reputation is undeserved. This morning I will make my case by reference to his specific economic policies. 

I already mentioned the issue of pensions. Harper has been a vocal critic of the Ontario government’s new pension plan, one that imitates in many ways the Quebec plan. He calls it a new tax, as if a tax were a disease. Yet in any economic measure, pension contributions are not a tax. They are forced savings, savings which can be invested in stocks and in bonds. Instead, Harper has proposed or delivered a series of induced savings.

One example was the increase in the tax free saving allowance (TFSA) to $10,000 from $5,500, even though there is a majority consensus among economists that this will only benefit the upper income group because the members of that group will be the only ones with enough discretionary income to put into savings accounts of this type. At the same time, the Canada Revenue Agency has demonstrated that one-fifth of Canadian taxpayers have already maxed out their TFSA. Upping the limit may have been justified; the increase in the annual contribution was not. The cost to the treasury will be enormous, but only the rich few will benefit. Increasing the annual amount of tax free savings not only benefits a small percentage of Canadians who are rich, but in the long run, according to the parliamentary budget office, the doubling of the TFSA will cut out $40 billion in revenue for both federal and provincial governments by the year 2080. Talk about taking benefits for the present generation and imposing a burden on future generations.

There is another whopper of an error – the introduction of income splitting. The Conservative Party allowed couples with minor children to split incomes up to $50,000 of income. Income splitting does both benefit and encourage spouses (overwhelmingly women) to stay home rather than go out to work while raising a family. So those who espouse traditional family values with the feminine member of the household staying home, benefit. Only 15% of the population, all upper income earners, show a gain. Two-earner families end up paying relatively more tax than one-earner families. Permitting income splitting encourages an increase in one-income families  – certainly the better off where only one parent with a significant income will benefit. In fact, as the conservative think tank, the C.D. Howe Institute has shown, “The gains would be highly concentrated among high-income one-earner couples: 40 percent of total benefits would go to families with incomes above $125,000.” Since gains could reach $6,500 in federal tax savings and almost $6,000 in provincial tax revenues, the cost to the Treasury is huge, $2.7 billion in lost revenue at the federal level and $1.7 billion at the provincial level.  The marginal effective tax rate for most lower-earning spouses would be raised significantly. In effect, the measure is a tax subsidy to those who leave the labour market, largely an educated and trained group that are needed in the economy.

Along the same line, the Conservatives have increased what used to be called the baby bonus and is now called the Universal Child Care Benefit (UCCB) just in time for the election instead of increasing the Canada Child Tax Benefit (CCTB). This, along with income splitting meant a $3 billion cost to the Canadian budget. Yet the CCTB has proven to be the better route to assist families with children.  

What about the reduction of business taxes for small businesses from 11% to 9% gradually over the next four years in response to the lobbying of the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses (CFIB)? Harper had already reduced those taxes to 11% in 2008.  Canada has already one of the lowest business tax rates in the world with a large business tax of 15%. The incentive to decrease corporate taxes arose with globalization and the race to keep large businesses in one’s own country. Harper has provided $60 billion dollars in tax relief to corporate Canada. Yet there is little evidence that job creation increased in proportion to tax decreases. In fact, the rate of job creation has slowed. What was needed was tax incentives for companies that created new jobs.

Admittedly, most economic challenges – the drastic drop in oil prices in particular – have not been in control of the government. But the glut in oil was foreseeable as shale techniques expanded and the USA became self-sufficient in oil production, and as new sources of fossil fuels were discovered. Betting on the oil patch at this time was clearly a mistake.

Job growth has been the weakest under Harper compared to previous governments. Harper fumbled the negotiations for Canada to enter the Pacific free trade agreement. One way to increase jobs is to increase exports, particularly exports of professional services which constitute 70% of the economy and the source of 80% of the new jobs. Where are the incentives to encourage our architects and engineers, our accountants and statisticians, our graphic artists and our medical specialists to export their skills? Instead, the government crippled Statistics Canada which did sell its services abroad and used to be recognized as the best set of statistical services in the world.

The biggest effort the Harper made was to lower the sales tax from 15% to 13%, a very popular measure which the Liberals and NDP have promised not to touch even though shifting taxes from income to consumption is generally seen as beneficial provided lower income groups are protected so that their proportion in paying taxes is not harmed.  No one likes to raise such a visible tax, but since it was reduced, this can be viewed as the major reason the country has been in deficit since 2008.

The largest problem, however, has not been the relative harm versus good of all these individual measures. It is the absence of an economic vision and plan for Canada. If the accumulation of policies to tweak the economy, but really attract more votes, has failed to increase the rate of new job creation, has failed the underemployed young who no longer have the prospect of earning a middle class income and purchasing their own home,  if the largest section of our growing youth populations consists of aboriginal youth yet their disadvantages have been increased, if the government will not even invest or encourage investment in one of the fastest sectors for growing the economy, the environment, even for the economic benefits even if the government continues its mindblindedness to the issue of climate change,  then where are the hopes and dreams of young Canadians?

There are alternatives, admittedly none of them terribly inspiring. The Green Party’s is the weakest. Their advocacy of free higher education runs against the studies that show that the best investment in education is at the pre-school level and not the upper end. The NDP does have some interesting and less discriminatory programs to boost the safety social net and particularly child care programs. The Liberals are the only ones planning to increase taxes – on the rich – and its plan to build new infrastructure with a low deficit/GDP ratio is attractive. All the Tories offer is slow growth and poor prospects for creating new jobs.

The Harper Conservatives as good stewards of the economy! It is a joke.

Howard is an old friend.  Smartest man I ever met.  Intellectual/learned/academic beyond comprehension. More doctorate degrees than a hospital.  Published more papers than the pentagon.  Probably the only person I shut up around.  He seems to know chapter and verse about everything all with footnotes to back it up.  

That does not mean I always agree with him – just that I keep mute.  I usually agree with him but I keep mute about that, too.  What’s there to say to someone who already knows?

Anyway, as you also know, I don’t like Harper.  And I have good foundations for that.  But my foundation is paper mache.  Howard’s is solid granite.  Here (with his permission) is HIS blog on Harper and his ‘supposed’ $1.9B surplus.  Warning: it’s long

Last night I came home and listened to the late night news. The big news: the Harper government had posted a surplus, the first in Harper’s eight years running the government. I had become used to the government playing games with refugee figures – announcing in 2013 that the government would take in 1,300 Syrian refugees in the next 12 months and then taking 20 months to do so. Further, most were privately sponsored refugees. When Canada announced it would take 10,000 Syrian refugees over three years, this really meant that Canada would take in 1,300 government-assisted refugees per year and private sponsors would be allowed to bring in just over 2,000 per year. After the election campaign started, Harper announced that Canada would take an additional 10,000 Iraqi and Syrian refugees and take them in over four years. That meant a total intake of 2,500 additional refugees per year, or 1,250 additional Syrian refugees. Of these, the number of government-assisted Syrian refugees would be about 500. Clearly a pittance. The spin is how to make 500 sound like 10,000 and almost 2,000 sound like 20,000. The basic figures are accurate; the spin given to those figures is misleading.

Was the government doing the same with the budget? According to figures released by the finance department yesterday, after seven years of running deficits, the federal government had a $1.9 billion surplus in the 2014-2015 fiscal year. Canada had produced a surplus one year ahead of Jim Flaherty’s prediction. The original prediction for 2014-2015 had been a $2 billion deficit rather than a $1.9 billion surplus. Further, the April, June and July figures reinforced the picture of the trend towards surpluses.

There is an old saying: figures don’t lie; politicians do. I think this is a misrepresentation. Spin is not lying. But to understand spin you have to unpack the figures. There are a number of ways to produce a surplus. First, you can budget less than the previous year; in effect, cut a department’s budget. Second, you can download expenditures onto the provinces. Third, you can spend less than you even projected in your budget. The options are many.

Let me offer an example. In the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, the projected expenditures for 2014-2015 on primary and secondary education for aboriginal youth was $1,445 billion. In 2015-2016, the projected expenditures were set at $1,431 billion. How could the expenditures possibly go down when the rate of increase of the aboriginal population was much higher than that of the rest of Canada?

When you read the hundreds of pages of documents just in that one department, one policy stands out. There is the noble intention begun in 2014 of bringing success rates of aboriginal children up to those of the rest of the population. How is this to be done? You get bands to vote to join regional school boards so that now the province bears the burden of the costs, not the federal government, and the expenditure on aboriginal children’s education is immediately boosted by about a quarter. This “push” in this direction is helped when you recognize not only that aboriginal children receive at least 20% less support than the equivalent cohort in the provincial school system, but that over the last eight years, the educational support deficit has grown so that the differential is moving towards 30%.

The message to band leaders: you want better education for your children, vote to become part of the provincial educational system, thereby relieving the federal government from the obligation to pay for the education of aboriginal children and teens.

Look at a number of departments where the Harper government was determined to cut. In northern economic development, the main estimates were $53,442,608 in 2013-14; in 2014-15, they were $30,945,766, an enormous cut. In 2012-2013, expenditures for the chief electoral office were 119,580,193. In the 2014-15 estimates, they had dropped to $97,110,432. It is any wonder that we have increased our democratic deficit. In the department that I know best, Citizenship and Immigration, budgeted expenditures dropped from $1,655,418,818 in 2013-2014 to $1,385,441,063 in 2014-15, a 17% cut. No wonder Canada lacks the visa officers on the ground to process Syrian refugee applications to come to Canada.

Monies for the Library and Archives of Canada were reduced from $118,923,232 2013-14 to $95,864,788 in 2014-15. In the arts and research field, the National Film Board, National Museum of Science and Technology and the Natural Sciences and Research Council suffered cuts. Statistics Canada, once upon a time the pride and joy of Canada for the rest of the world – we provided a paradigm for other nations to imitate – expenditures dropped from $519,891,309 in 2012-13 to $379,555,524 in 2014-15. The cuts were so drastic, not only effecting the long form census that was made voluntary, and, therefore, useless for research, but the whole basis for economic and social research in Canada was decimated.

This is a government that is not interested in the knowledge base on which prudent planning depends. The library in the Department of Immigration and Citizenship was packed up and sent to a warehouse in Quebec. The policy unit was eliminated. Harper reduces expenditures through micro-management, requiring the smallest expenditures be approved by his office – except when it comes to his Senate appointees. This government has saved money by running the civil service into the ground in many areas.

I am not saying that some areas should not have been cut or that all expenditures have been sacrosanct. However, the Tories cannot even bring in more refugees if they wanted to; they are unwilling to spend the money even though, in the long run, such expenditures are a tremendous investment in human resources, especially when the population intake consists of skilled tradesmen and professionals who can contribute to economic growth.

When you add to these policies the practice of not even spending the money allocated, it is not that hard to produce a surplus. In 2014-15, actual expenditures were $800 million lower than projected. Some of the costs have little to do with Canadian policy, however important prudent fiscal policies are. Carrying charges on debt are at record lows so that actual expenditures on debt were $100 million lower than projected. But there are other ways to produce a surplus. Focus on the revenue side.

In June, for example, the government brought in $1.1 billion more than it spent following the May/June surplus of $3.9 billion. And this was when we were officially in a recession. One way to increase revenues is to sell off assets. So the Canadian government sold its last block of 73 million shares in General Motors in April, increasing the government coffers by $2.7 billion. So if we sell off assets to increase revenues, and since surpluses are seasonal and the surplus in June dropped from $1.6 billion in the previous year to $1.1 billion, the optimism for this year has to be muted somewhat. 

Don’t get me wrong. I am a fiscal conservative. I believe, in normal circumstances, we should stay within our budget. But I also believe that some savings, such as cutting our repairs to infrastructure, is indeed penny wise and pound foolish. Cutting programs that provide valuable service is an imprudent way to balance the budget. Further, there are times, as David Dodge has said, when interest rates are low that it is imprudent not to borrow and invest in infrastructure – roads, sewers, public transit. Spending $125 billion in this area over ten years may be the height of prudence.

Pensions are a case in which taxes and investments get confused. Harper decried the Ontario pension plan for increasing taxes. But these were not tax increases. These were increases in forced savings that in turn could be invested in economic growth. Whereas the Conservatives began their term of office by cutting the sales tax by two points, the government has not reduced the taxes for the employment insurance fund. The employment insurance fund is now in surplus and normally premiums should be reduced. They have not been, providing an important source for ensuring that income exceeds expenditures. An employment insurance cut would benefit both individual workers and businesses, especially small businesses.  

So has the Harper government been a prudent manager of our economy? In some ways it has. Some cuts were warranted. But so were increased expenditures in other areas – aboriginal education for example. By cutting two points from the sales tax, government funds for needed areas, such as infrastructure or aboriginal education, were unavailable.  The cuts were imprudent.  So were many of the cuts in various department budgets.

There is another area where the Harper government has been prudent. Canada’s debt-to-GDP ratio is 40.4 per cent, including the debts of local, provincial and territorial governments, the lowest among G7 nations where the average is 86.8%. This is commendable. However, flying higher and taking a longer overview, Canada really escaped going into recession in the economic shock of 2008 because the Harper government inherited a government with financial surpluses, $13.6 billion in 2006 and $9.6 billion in 2007. It took on an enormous deficit in 2009 of $61.27 billion. Simply cutting expenditures and micro-managing the government is a way to save money, but also to cripple services that Canadians need – especially veterans.  Areas requiring investment also suffer.

I do not know why the Harper government has a reputation as a prudent manager of the economy. It has not been. It has operated the government as if tax revenues were like money dropped in a piggy bank and your job was to ensure that you not spend anymore than had been dropped through the slot. The real economic job of a government is to spend and invest money wisely and prudently and allow future generations to inherit a better and better Canada.

The Harper government has been more imprudent than prudent on this scale of measurement.

Almost every political news story that condemns Harper is simply too feather-light to be effective.  They score as points-against but they are not doing any real damage. Especially to the committed Con who doesn’t listen to or read the mainstream media anyway.  No knockout punches are being thrown.  No foundations being rocked. So what if one of his candidates pees in a cup?  Or that he is damned with faint praise for an announcement of a paltry sum.  Duffy walks past a camera into court is barely a reminder of Harper’s other incompetencies.  He blathers on about the economy but no one else seems to have a good rejoinder.  Big whoop!

Harper may NOT be winning but he is definitely NOT losing.

Like the blog of last week, this is one to note the blandness, the ineffectual sparring, the boring photo-op poses and the utter lack of real fight in the political ring.  At a time when our very identity as a nation, a society, a quasi-culture is being redefined by that dickhead, the baby-effort to defeat him is impotent and weak.  Where is the resistance?  The revolution? Where is the new champion?  Who is the new hero? Which dickhead are we to follow next?

Woe is me.

The economy is the issue that concerns most people.  I personally think that is the wrong priority (it’s the environment and our society’s values that are most important to me) but let us admit the facts: “It’s the economy, stupid!” So, fine.

To be fair, Trudeau promised major infrastructure funding and that is a pretty good idea, actually. Urbanites need that.  But the power in that statement is in the examples, the vision, the nuts and bolts of the plan.  There was none of that.  So, what does he mean? More pipes for poop? More bridges for trucks and cars?  Or does he have a vision of the future? Bullet trains, maybe?  Electric cars, perhaps?  What!?  Without the vision, that economic plan just lays there like the empty words it is.

Mulcair is going to give you day-care or some other social nicety/necessity but, really, what will he do to strongly revitalize Canada in a global marketplace?  What vision does Mulcair have?  How can any of these people lead us into the the 21st century when we are already 15 years late and they were present during the lethargy?

As I have said before: these people don’t understand the economy, they have no vision, they have no courage and none of them could lead a group of addicts to a coke party. That is very disheartening.  I find it difficult to even follow their pathetic campaign trails.  It’s like watching paint dry or worse, the Canucks play hockey.

One thing you should KNOW.  There ain’t gonna be a revolution.  Not this time.  Maybe never.  Every revolution in history required one thing that we don’t seem to have and may never have: the police have to change sides.  Right now, they seem to be mostly George Wallace-type right-wingers.  Bully boys.  Taser ’em types.  You could have 30 million poor people demonstrating on the lawn of the parliament everyday and the strong arm of the law, if still committed to the leaders of the day, will continue the status quo.  It is only when the police will NOT shoot on the protesters, NOT jail them, NOT beat them, NOT taser them that the revolution stands a chance.  And, for that to happen, good people have to convince the police and the army that the leaders are no longer good.

Therefore I implore you to think.  That’s right…YOU!  Think up good ideas and pass them on.  Share them.  Tell your MP. Tell your MLA.  Even tell a cop (we can hope, can’t we?). Tell anyone who will listen.  We need to get new ideas out there.

My rationale is simple: there is a dearth of good ideas out there and our leaders sure as hell don’t have any and do not lead anyway, they follow.  So, give ’em all something to work with.  If you don’t, they won’t and we’ll have more of the same ol, same ‘ol.

This is NOT a new idea.  LeadNow, SumOfUs, Change.org and other ‘petition’ movements do this kind of thing all the time by way of their social media campaigns.  And it seems to be working somewhat.

Maybe the revolution starts with us?

At first glance, Harper’s pledge to match donations to help Syrian refugees to a maximum of one hundred million dollars says that ‘we are doing something!’.  For a moment of time, it seems that he has ‘come around’ and Canada can be Canadian again.  It almost seems good.

It is not.  In fact, it is evil incarnate.  It is the epitome of ugly.  It is sick.  It is perverse.  And it is incredibly revealing of the cynicism and mental dysfunction of the man and the society he thinks we are.   This guy is sicker than sick.

Think about it – he won’t take any Syrians, actual people, (for security reasons) but he’ll pay to make the problem go away.  In fact, he won’t even pay fully (because it is our money he is using, after all) and he is only paying what ‘we‘ match.  In effect he is saying, “Well, you gave me $50M in tax dollars and, if you give me $50M more, I’ll spend $100M on your pet cause.”

But it says even more than that ugly cynicism – “We don’t want to help those people but we are happy to feed the ‘refugee machine’ (like Halliburton) and NGOs, especially Canadian NGO’s, because we can then tax the salaries of the workers and get some of the money back.  And all this while looking good and doing nothing.”   It also says, to Harper, everything is money.

Tragically, he is not alone.  In fact, most people think in terms of money-first and then what-can-my-money-do’.  Money, money, money.  When I was helping Vietnamese refugees back in the 70’s, I was very impressed with the Mennonites.  They have their own refugee and immigration system and they stepped up and did what needed to be done as human beings.  They followed the law, of course, but it was not an effort dependent on government and it was not an effort depending on money.  It was – as much as possible in a modern world – people helping people with hands on energy and caring.

Many religious groups at the time stepped up.  But none more so that than the Mennonite Central Committee.  They simply did the right thing.  Period.  Money had little or nothing to do with it.

Harper?  For him, money is the answer to everything.

Steve, the best things in life are free!

Love, friendship, family, loyalty, integrity, truth, joy, learning, health, nature….the list goes on and on.  He doesn’t get that.  And that is why he doesn’t ‘get’ the environment.  Harper doesn’t even really ‘get’ people.  Harper doesn’t ‘get’ that Canadians want to help real people in real ways and that money is not necessarily part of that.

In fact, Stephen Harper does not even really ‘GET’ the economy simply because the economy is nothing more than just a numerical metric of human behaviour.  It is a measure of our feelings and our emotions, our strengths, our fears, our values and our appreciations of life.  But money is only the measurement.  It is NOT the actual humanity.

Money is NOT who we are.  It is no more who we are as a country or a people than a tape measure is to a house being built.  A tape measure is just a tool.  It is not even a part of the eventual house.  Harper doesn’t ‘get that’.  He values only the measure.  He values the numbers. He values the money. And, because of that, he is missing the real picture – humanity.

THAT is why Harper has to go.  He doesn’t represent us.  And he never will.

Fiddich died last night.  He was only eight.  At 3:30 pm he was fine and playing afternoon fetch.  At 4:30, he was not. The vet (we phoned) thought mushroom poisoning.  We really do not know.Fid tended to eat anything at least once.  Some things awful he tried a few times.  Old prawn bait always found its way in and out of him.  We expected he’d throw up whatever this was and carry on.  He didn’t.  He fell asleep at 9:00-ish and Sal checked him again at 3:00 in the morning.  He died sometime between then and dawn.  In his sleep.

Fid was the best dog I ever knew.  He will be missed.

Many readers met Fid and would remember him.  Especially the Chinese kids from Hong Kong.  To them he was a ‘wild animal’ they came to know and love in a very short time. He was about 75 pounds (big for a Portuguese Water Dog) and ‘ginger’ in colour. Tons of energy.   He was pretty much loved by all except big men wearing hats…they tended to get a cooler reception and maybe a little nip in the pants just to establish the pecking order – no blood drawn but more than a few guys leaped high in the air around him.

The most remarkable thing about Fid, tho, was his overall good manners.  He was obedient and did what was expected of him.  Always.  Best dog ever.  Absolutely NO complaints from me. None.

Well, I do wish he had stayed with us a bit longer………………

Some doofus peed in a coffee cup while doing some plumbing for a client (some time ago) and gets caught on video.  He later became a Con candidate but then, after the reveal, was booted.  Some other Con candidate was caught making politically incorrect and mildly immoral prank calls for reasons likely egotistical and he was caught and jettisoned, too.

Oooh, those Cons are ‘tough on crime’, eh?

Mind you, they still pay Duffy, Wallin and the gang of petty thieves they call senators.  And the flock of sheep-MPs that do as Harper tells them to also dip deep into the trough all too regularly. The really bad behaviour is still going on.  But what about Ryan Leef?

C’mon…what is wrong with that guy and why is he still fondly embraced by Harper?

Wikipedia: He has overseen prisoners as an assistant superintendent at Whitehorse Correctional Centre which was his most recent employment prior to politics. Ryan Leef is also a former member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a Wildlife Officer and an investigator for (the) Yukon Department of Justice. Ryan Leef has also fought in the cage as a Mixed Martial Arts fighter. Ryan Leef was noted in national media when he claimed that the polar bear population had increased dramatically. His position was refuted by polar bear researchers and according to one scientist was based on a report prepared by “professional climate change deniers.”  (GET THIS:) Ryan Leef was appointed to the Standing Committee for Fisheries and Oceans and the Standing Committee for Natural Resources.  

But this is the absolutely whacked part that I think is worse than peeing in a cup or saying stupid things that do not break anyone’s bones…this may be worse than stating polar bears are all good when he obviously knows squat about the subject but sits on DFO/Natural Resource committees.  This seems to be the real Ryan Leef and he seems kinda nutty to me:

Dressed in camouflage, carrying a motion detector and hiding in the bushes with his commando-buddy, Ryan Leef, Conservative party parliamentarian, laid in wait at almost midnight in the rain last week to pounce on and arrest the vandal that had defaced some of his campaign signs.  Carrie Boles was the delinquent and she weighs 110 pounds.  When she attempted to deface some more signs, Ryan jumped her, threw her to the ground, twisted her arm behind her back and, screaming “CITIZEN’S ARREST!”, handcuffed her.

The mixed martial arts guy and his buddy forceably took down the 110 pound woman and hand-cuffed her.

Now don’t get me wrong, I support standing up for yourself.  I especially support a sitting, trough-feeding MP actually DOING SOMETHING.  ANYTHING!   I really do.  In fact, I applaud him and his buddy for tracking and finding the perpetrators of vandalism.  God bless their law-and-order little hearts.  Really.  I wish Ryan all the best in finding and rooting out crime.   ‘Go to Ottawa and get the bad girls, Ryan’.

Bad girl, bad girl!  Whacha gonna do when they come for you, bad girl, bad girl?

But doesn’t the camo and the ninja-clad buddy and the hiding and the hand-cuffs seem a smidge extreme?  And, what about jumping on her and twisting her arm and hand-cuffing her while screaming CITIZEN’S ARREST.  Isn’t that a bit nutty?  Is it just me?

I mean…I might lie in wait for the perp myself.  I really would.  The de-facing of my signs would have to be pretty epidemic for that effort but, if it was that bad, I might resort to confrontation.  I would.  I doubt that I would ask my neighbour to go all-out Ninja for me (I have Sal for back-up, anyway), and I doubt very much that I would dress up in camo and hide in the bushes but I would certainly confront the evil-doer and take a picture with my camera so as to enforce my intentions.  But would I carry hand-cuffs?  Would I scream such madness?  Would I physically throw a lone, young, slight woman to the ground and twist her arm? I don’t think so.  I think that is just plain psycho.

And yet there we have another Harper Con ‘acting out’ his true self (Dirty Harry type vigilante) and one that is an incumbent in parliament. Seriously…?  Peeing in a cup…? Throwing women around and handcuffing them?  I dunno…..seems odd……depends on your perspective, I suppose.

What exactly do you think the Con perspective really is?

I am feeling a bit reluctant these days to continuing my writing campaign against Harper.  It is not that my feelings about him and his party have changed one iota –  the guy is a total dickhead – but simply because the others have now spoken and, sadly, none of the contenders are inspiring me at all.  Not a bit.  Once again, I feel as most Canadians usually feel at election time, helpless, disappointed and somehow defeated-in-advance of the outcome.

They are all dickheads!

To be fair, Mulcair sees himself as the one to beat and he doesn’t want to defeat himself so he is saying as little as possible.  (A tactic Christy Clark is following: hiding until called upon for a photo op).  Trudeau is stretching a bit but he is still coming across as a little boy in his father’s clothing.  And all of them are keeping their topics and their content to the mundane, picayune and stupid.  I.e. Harper pledging $7 million to fish research (the price of an old house in West Vancouver) after having eviscerated science and DFO over the last decade.  Trudeau going for legalization of Marijuana (while Vancouver opens storefronts every ten blocks) and Mulcair touting childcare once again.  Oh MY GOD! How is any of that leadership?  Where is the vision? Where is the inspiration?

Hell, where is the motivation to even vote?

It’s worse than a beauty contest without the bathing suit competition.  It’s like race-walking or synchronized swimming.  Not even as good as rhythmic gymnastics.  I’m sorry.  Dull. NO interest.  None.

If only Elizabeth May would start drinking heavily.

Is it too much to ask for some ‘real talk’, some real vision, some real leadership?  Do they all have to speak baby-talk to us?  Do none of these people have new ideas?  Are they all bereft of any semblance of courage?  Harper also lacks heart. Trudeau lacks brains and Mulcair looks like an ad for Cialis before taking the pill.  Only E. May says much of anything but, given her chances, she would look silly saying too much. She won’t be able to do any of it so what’s the point of making promises?  But even she could shout some bold philosophies, some creative solutions, some new ideas.

Again – to be fair – campaigning is a sham, a farce, and an insult to the voting public.  That which passes for politics never sees the light of election day or even gets revealed on the campaign trail.  Campaigning is waving the flag, showing the colours and looking good while trying to make sound-bites.  And most people know this.  We are really supposed to get our political opinions as the government performs over the years.

But, of course, how does the opposition get any exposure in that kind of forum?  Who listens to the opposition for four years?  We listen to the incumbent, agree or disagree and then, if we disagree, and as a last resort, look around at the opposition to see if we agree with them.  Truly, the opposition gets ‘left-overs’ and then has to make a more palatable dish at election time while the incumbents get to BUY fresh and present fancy.

Hard to dislodge the incumbents that way.  The government pretty much has to blow their own feet off.  The opposition can’t seem to do it.

The good news: Like always, the Conservatives have blown their feet off.  The bad news: the opposition can’t seem to get walking either.  No one is really running and isn’t that what campaigning is supposed to be all about?