BLOG, MARCH 26, 2008
It would have been nice if Terrence Corcoran had pointed out in response to the polemic of Michael Bliss that the 1930’s Great Depression was proven by Milton Friedman to have been the result of governments. The Federal Reserve did not pump enough liquidity into the markets quick enough to stop the Depression from turning into what it did turn into, a massive economic turn-down the like of which we won’t see in the next few years. We’re not even close to the numbers that the Great Depression saw. Milton Friedman won a Nobel Prize for Economics proving that the Great Depression and the worst excesses of the Great Depression were the result of government stupidity and not the free markets.
No matter how much trouble free markets are having right now, it would change the fact that they are still essentially the best system. They may be bad in many ways, but they’re the best of the worst. Much like democracy is the best of the worst form of government as Churchill put it. Those realities won’t be changed by this panic, nay, titter.
*****
The Eight Flags speech is one that is delivered when you’re in really bad trouble over patriotic issues. Look at what’s behind the speaking on the stage.
The Napoleon Complex is the tendency of the left wing to idolize thug dictators who propose or perpetrate or achieve things that are liberal or progressive or socialist.
*****
Reynolds must have been drinking the Tories’ free whiskey in opposing the Dan McTeague amendment on the basis of Royal Recommendation. Neil Reynolds has bought into the Kool-Ade of the linear economic enthusiasts who think that every time there is a tax cut, which is what a deduction is, that we lose money. Well, how do we know we’re going to lose money. Maybe there will be universities or schools out there that will get more money than they would have if it wasn’t for the deduction. After all, someone has to pay for that tuition. Often it is subsidized. Maybe the result in the long term for more children being college-educated will be beneficial for the country. We know that almost certainly everyone who studies this says it’s true. The money not spent on education goes somewhere else like investments, savings, a car for the kid to take to university, who know? Those things, too, are a benefit to the economy. Therefore, that money comes back to the government in the form of revenues from other activities. I thought Neil Reynolds knew this.
Then there’s the travesty of comparing a bunch of ward-heeling Upper Canada Family Compact politicians passing personal laws for the own benefit, as Lord Durham noted in 1839, by spending money on their own friends and not using Royal Recommendation, to trying to bring in a law to make it less expensive for people to send their kids to college. How disgraceful to compare those two things. Reynolds has also bought into the idea that government should always dominate the agenda. When is this system going to be changed? The finger of suspicion now points against at the Liberals who not only cooperate in the rough of the Tories whenever they get the chance, even to subvert their own MP’s proposal, but clearly along with the rest of the parties (except for the Bloc, who could never form a government) who would like to have the rules closure and government domination of the agenda and exclusion of private members’ efforts that have been developed since Trudeau came into office for themselves when they finally back to power, which will come one day. It’s just sad.
I thought as a Conservative it was an important idea that a Member of Parliament should have freedom, be able to talk and propose and vote freely rather than being dominated by government. Do you want to go back to the day of the Chrétien/Martin majorities? Is that what we really want? I’m bewildered that he thinks that stopping the McTeague bill is defending our constitutional conventions. It’s absurd. Private members are acting on Royal Recommendation as well as anyone else in the House. They all act for the Queen. I wonder what Difenbaker would think of Mr. Reynolds Trudeaupian concept that MPs are nobodies and that Parliament is a place where government proposes and disposes regardless of what the MPs want. Should it be that when the MPs have the temerity to say no, even when the government’s in a minorty, that that government can threaten an election? Mr. Harper has abused that constitution convention. Something has to be done to change that so it becomes a matter of constitutional edict that cannot be changed by anything less than a Charter-like amendment that an MP should be able to propose amendments and changes without the threat of an election. In any case, I thought when a government brings in a budget we have a committee for all sorts of amendments to be hashed out on all sorts of aspects of the budget. Almost never does the Royal Recommendation come out of Parliament looking exactly the same way it did when it went in. Except in the most whipped majority times, which also included Diefenbaker and Mulroney’s governments. This is a truly Canadian problem that Mr. Reynolds has identified in a way that I don’t think he udnerstood.
As for those who think that Royal Recommendation protected and defended us from the vicissitudes of political corruption and banality, remember that nearly every major scandal in Canadian history took place after Royal Recommendation was reinstituted.
I know another tradition of Parliament. It’s called oversight. That’s what Parliament is supposed to do. Will Mr. Reynolds campaigns vigorously for the reinstitution of that power?
*****
The more green you have, the greener you are. Time for us all to get a grip. Denis Arcand thinks we’re heading into a new Dark Age and yet every statistic, economic production up, wealth up, starvation low, poverty low, trade up and freer, epidemics down, mortality going down… Things are better than they have ever been in this history of the world. I doubt people before the last Dark Age saw it coming.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Good Ideas Need Not Apply
When Jim Flaherty says that the $900 million a year (out of $250 billion planned budget) to bring in an RESP deduction will the fiscal plans of the government, it sounds like he’s more like a finance ministry bureaucrat than a democratically elected representative anymore. He’s more concerned about what a mid-level bean counter cares about rather than what the average people who pay for this budget care about. That disturbs me a little.
One wonder if that is the same bumph that he was fed over capital gains. It’s interesting how the language is very similar. We can’t see how it might not result in extraordinary loss because of how it could be expanded and so on and so forth. This is what these bureaucrats have gotten him to think, even though, as we know, the capital gains tax has only been around for 40 or 50 years. Somehow we managed to pull along before that. We won two world wars and beat the Depression without it.
The contrary can be said about the capital gains tax. It may have robbed generations of real and sustained economic growth built on ever more cutting edge and high technological advances that make life easier for us all and give us ever better products and services at far less cost and without inflation.
This is what the Conservatives got elected for. They got elected to make people’s lives easier, less tax-burdened, make their standard of living better and perhaps see a future generation have a better chance next time for college education, for instance.
That’s what I think this RESP provision can do and frankly I think that Dan McTeague deserves congratulations and we should be finding a way to accommodate this. What would be a great way of sending a bi-partisan message that it can be done. Maybe we could start today.
Why not reduce the payment on the debt? To me, $900 million now that would make it easier for people to go to university is more important than $900 million now on the debt. The return on the long run for us all would be far greater than simply paying down a cold slab of debt.
And comes the ridiculous fact that the NDP was one of the three parties who supported Mr. McTeague’s private member bill on RESP’s, even now as their finance critic says that making RESP contributions tax deductible would mainly benefit upper income Canadians. Mr. Mulcaire would have by far preferred to see some "real action" to help families. He’s right. On the face of it, it’s people who have money to put into these programs that are going to actually benefit from them. It’s better than nothing, but it would not have been his first choice. Hmm. Oh well. I guess that explains it. Fascinating. Unfortunately, the NDP support, as well as the Bloc’s, does make this seem less sincere. I have no doubt, though, that Dan McTeague is sincere and I really think that some of our MPs should be thinking twice about this. Except we know that under our Constitution, it’s now impossible for MPs to think for themselves. Constitutional conventions don’t allow them to actually think. My mistake.
*****
Electric pickle juice. The comeback of George Herbert Walker Bush in golf with Millie as his caddy. At one point, he’s so dedicated to getting the right shot, he strips naked from the waist down to get into a water hazard. Very wrinkled buns. I have a truly wild dream life.
What about celebrity rugs? Rugs that have your favourite sports star or logo or such on it. I’m sure someone’s thought of it already.
I dream in colour too.
*****
Soledad O’Brien v. Geraldine Ferraro. What part does race have in this election? It should seem to me that when you get 61% of the vote and you’re a black American in a state like Mississippi, even if the black population is heavy in the Democractic party there, it’s a remarkable statement of non-racial preference and success amongst the white population of Mr. Obama. Geraldine Ferraro was trying to sincerely point this out, even though she is a Clinton supporter.
Ms. O’Brien, however, started her discussion of exit polls in the state and saying it was all about race. Why isn’t she facing discipline from CNN? Why aren’t Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson picketing CNN Headquarters? Oops! They haven’t said anything about Ferraro either. She has been put on the rack by every commentator around for saying something I thought was far more understandable and explicable than Ms. O’Brien.
Not that I’m that said about Ms. Ferraro leaving the Clinton campaign.
*****
One of the most hillarious graphic names I’ve seen in a while comes from Janet Whitman’s article in the National Post about the Spitzer scandal. One of the first to blog about the scandal after the NYT broke the news on its website was Henry Blodgett, a former internet stock analyst who lost his job at Merrill Lynch after Spitzer’s research probe uncovered that he emailed critical comments about the stocks of companies he was researching. A blogger named Blodgett.
As for the seven social sins, yes they are not quite as radical and socialist as some people were trying to make out, but no, they don’t add to the value of the original deadly sins. Those were quite good enough for the last 2000 years. We didn’t need an addition or an annex. This schedule, in particular, is ephemeral. We don’t expect the ephemeral from the eternal. It’s unbalanced and confusing and subjective and will lead to false controversy. Not a good step for the Catholic church, but not fatal to my faith in it.
Whatever happened to the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule? They were good enough too. Put them with the Seven Deadly Sins, the Seven Virtues, the Three Graces and plain old-fashioned generosity and it was all good enough.
One wonder if that is the same bumph that he was fed over capital gains. It’s interesting how the language is very similar. We can’t see how it might not result in extraordinary loss because of how it could be expanded and so on and so forth. This is what these bureaucrats have gotten him to think, even though, as we know, the capital gains tax has only been around for 40 or 50 years. Somehow we managed to pull along before that. We won two world wars and beat the Depression without it.
The contrary can be said about the capital gains tax. It may have robbed generations of real and sustained economic growth built on ever more cutting edge and high technological advances that make life easier for us all and give us ever better products and services at far less cost and without inflation.
This is what the Conservatives got elected for. They got elected to make people’s lives easier, less tax-burdened, make their standard of living better and perhaps see a future generation have a better chance next time for college education, for instance.
That’s what I think this RESP provision can do and frankly I think that Dan McTeague deserves congratulations and we should be finding a way to accommodate this. What would be a great way of sending a bi-partisan message that it can be done. Maybe we could start today.
Why not reduce the payment on the debt? To me, $900 million now that would make it easier for people to go to university is more important than $900 million now on the debt. The return on the long run for us all would be far greater than simply paying down a cold slab of debt.
And comes the ridiculous fact that the NDP was one of the three parties who supported Mr. McTeague’s private member bill on RESP’s, even now as their finance critic says that making RESP contributions tax deductible would mainly benefit upper income Canadians. Mr. Mulcaire would have by far preferred to see some "real action" to help families. He’s right. On the face of it, it’s people who have money to put into these programs that are going to actually benefit from them. It’s better than nothing, but it would not have been his first choice. Hmm. Oh well. I guess that explains it. Fascinating. Unfortunately, the NDP support, as well as the Bloc’s, does make this seem less sincere. I have no doubt, though, that Dan McTeague is sincere and I really think that some of our MPs should be thinking twice about this. Except we know that under our Constitution, it’s now impossible for MPs to think for themselves. Constitutional conventions don’t allow them to actually think. My mistake.
*****
Electric pickle juice. The comeback of George Herbert Walker Bush in golf with Millie as his caddy. At one point, he’s so dedicated to getting the right shot, he strips naked from the waist down to get into a water hazard. Very wrinkled buns. I have a truly wild dream life.
What about celebrity rugs? Rugs that have your favourite sports star or logo or such on it. I’m sure someone’s thought of it already.
I dream in colour too.
*****
Soledad O’Brien v. Geraldine Ferraro. What part does race have in this election? It should seem to me that when you get 61% of the vote and you’re a black American in a state like Mississippi, even if the black population is heavy in the Democractic party there, it’s a remarkable statement of non-racial preference and success amongst the white population of Mr. Obama. Geraldine Ferraro was trying to sincerely point this out, even though she is a Clinton supporter.
Ms. O’Brien, however, started her discussion of exit polls in the state and saying it was all about race. Why isn’t she facing discipline from CNN? Why aren’t Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson picketing CNN Headquarters? Oops! They haven’t said anything about Ferraro either. She has been put on the rack by every commentator around for saying something I thought was far more understandable and explicable than Ms. O’Brien.
Not that I’m that said about Ms. Ferraro leaving the Clinton campaign.
*****
One of the most hillarious graphic names I’ve seen in a while comes from Janet Whitman’s article in the National Post about the Spitzer scandal. One of the first to blog about the scandal after the NYT broke the news on its website was Henry Blodgett, a former internet stock analyst who lost his job at Merrill Lynch after Spitzer’s research probe uncovered that he emailed critical comments about the stocks of companies he was researching. A blogger named Blodgett.
As for the seven social sins, yes they are not quite as radical and socialist as some people were trying to make out, but no, they don’t add to the value of the original deadly sins. Those were quite good enough for the last 2000 years. We didn’t need an addition or an annex. This schedule, in particular, is ephemeral. We don’t expect the ephemeral from the eternal. It’s unbalanced and confusing and subjective and will lead to false controversy. Not a good step for the Catholic church, but not fatal to my faith in it.
Whatever happened to the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule? They were good enough too. Put them with the Seven Deadly Sins, the Seven Virtues, the Three Graces and plain old-fashioned generosity and it was all good enough.
Fun times in politics land
BLOG, MARCH 19, 2008
Why do they try to sell things to people with people who don’t look like people?
*****
I got a kick out of one of the journalists, apparently a liberal, talking about how the right wing attack machine was about to go after Barack Obama. I thought, Bob Johnson, Bob Kerry, Geraldine Ferraro and Bill Clinton? Is that the right wing attack machine we’re talking about?
*****
The China Institute man referred to how China’s got the gears to deal with the riots and protests in Tibet and immediately I had this image of people being fed to the cogs of a big machine, the teeth of those cogs grinding them so that they become the grease for the wheels of the Chinese corporate machine. A very unfortunate image indeed.
*****
I guess you can say we talk about politics the way a lot of people talk about sports or their hobbies.
*****
We find out today that Obama has passed perhaps the most important test you can pass as a human being seeking office, and not just that of president. He won’t do anything, he won’t say anything to become president.
Barack Obama seems to have found the new matrix I was looking for when he talked about how the middle class and the working class whites resent set-asides for blacks to pay for crimes or sins that they had not committed themselves. Perhaps that is the beginning of a discussion along the lines of Texas and Houston and George Bush’s proposal that from now on, affirmative action and other quota systems be applied according to socio-economic status rather than racial status so that the poorer you get, the more benefit you get from the government and more preference. Otherwise, no other standard or system should be used. If Obama was to put that in tandem with the mentor program, he really would turn quite a few heads, both conservative and liberal. I don’t know if, though, those few comments he made and the famous grand-mother quote are enough to show that he is headed in that direction.
*****
I got me a computer monkey. The latest in a long line of generational computer monkeys that have made the British Empire what it is today.
*****
My problem with people who call for bi-partisanship is that usually they don’t have bi-partisanship in mind.
*****
I think that the Pats 2007 season motto should be "so close and so far".
*****
It now turns out after the Mississippi returns that may Clintonites don’t see Mr. Obama as being a vice-presidential running-mate. It’s no wonder. Even though Mrs. Clinton lately decided she wanted him to be on the ticket, she had been saying for months he was unfit. She even said that a Republican, McCain, was more fit than Obama to be president. I’ve never heard of a Democrat saying such a thing ever. Now it’s coming home to roost and Mrs. Clinton may have irreparably damaged Obama’s campaign if he gets nominated. Selfish strategy.
Mississippi for the first time since 1976 has a role in the election and it’s given me to think about small states and big states, especially with Mrs. Clinton claiming that she is winning all the big states and Obama winning all the small states and that it means she has a better campaign and therefore should be the candidate. As someone pointed out, if the Democrats had been more concerned about some small states in 2000 and 2004, there would have been no Bush presidency. Some of the small states that Obama is taking now would have helped in 2000 and 2004.
What is this about vote or election fraud? How would it have been just, for instance, if John Kerry had won the election because he took Ohio when he lost the overall popular vote by 3 million votes? The Civil War General Hancock ran for president in 1880 against Garfield and actually lost the election but won the popular vote by a fairly large margin. He went home quietly. No one makes a big deal out of that.
Why do they try to sell things to people with people who don’t look like people?
*****
I got a kick out of one of the journalists, apparently a liberal, talking about how the right wing attack machine was about to go after Barack Obama. I thought, Bob Johnson, Bob Kerry, Geraldine Ferraro and Bill Clinton? Is that the right wing attack machine we’re talking about?
*****
The China Institute man referred to how China’s got the gears to deal with the riots and protests in Tibet and immediately I had this image of people being fed to the cogs of a big machine, the teeth of those cogs grinding them so that they become the grease for the wheels of the Chinese corporate machine. A very unfortunate image indeed.
*****
I guess you can say we talk about politics the way a lot of people talk about sports or their hobbies.
*****
We find out today that Obama has passed perhaps the most important test you can pass as a human being seeking office, and not just that of president. He won’t do anything, he won’t say anything to become president.
Barack Obama seems to have found the new matrix I was looking for when he talked about how the middle class and the working class whites resent set-asides for blacks to pay for crimes or sins that they had not committed themselves. Perhaps that is the beginning of a discussion along the lines of Texas and Houston and George Bush’s proposal that from now on, affirmative action and other quota systems be applied according to socio-economic status rather than racial status so that the poorer you get, the more benefit you get from the government and more preference. Otherwise, no other standard or system should be used. If Obama was to put that in tandem with the mentor program, he really would turn quite a few heads, both conservative and liberal. I don’t know if, though, those few comments he made and the famous grand-mother quote are enough to show that he is headed in that direction.
*****
I got me a computer monkey. The latest in a long line of generational computer monkeys that have made the British Empire what it is today.
*****
My problem with people who call for bi-partisanship is that usually they don’t have bi-partisanship in mind.
*****
I think that the Pats 2007 season motto should be "so close and so far".
*****
It now turns out after the Mississippi returns that may Clintonites don’t see Mr. Obama as being a vice-presidential running-mate. It’s no wonder. Even though Mrs. Clinton lately decided she wanted him to be on the ticket, she had been saying for months he was unfit. She even said that a Republican, McCain, was more fit than Obama to be president. I’ve never heard of a Democrat saying such a thing ever. Now it’s coming home to roost and Mrs. Clinton may have irreparably damaged Obama’s campaign if he gets nominated. Selfish strategy.
Mississippi for the first time since 1976 has a role in the election and it’s given me to think about small states and big states, especially with Mrs. Clinton claiming that she is winning all the big states and Obama winning all the small states and that it means she has a better campaign and therefore should be the candidate. As someone pointed out, if the Democrats had been more concerned about some small states in 2000 and 2004, there would have been no Bush presidency. Some of the small states that Obama is taking now would have helped in 2000 and 2004.
What is this about vote or election fraud? How would it have been just, for instance, if John Kerry had won the election because he took Ohio when he lost the overall popular vote by 3 million votes? The Civil War General Hancock ran for president in 1880 against Garfield and actually lost the election but won the popular vote by a fairly large margin. He went home quietly. No one makes a big deal out of that.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Home School This
Maybe it’s too much to call it the Holy Grail of Conservative economics, but returning to a form of gold standard for world currency may indeed be the grail that is made of gold. Judy Shelv in the March 6, 2008, National Post, article which was take from the Wall Street Journal, wrote about this and Robert Mundell, the Nobel Prize winning economist who is considered the intellectual father of the Euro who is advising McCain on issues like this. Paul Volker also seems to be in favour of the idea of a global currency and a possible return to the gold standard. This may be an approach that would be an excellent global fiscal approach and the final triumph for capitalism or classical conservative economics.
*****
The real problem with the argument over offensiveness in allocating arts film funding to programming in Canada is not morality or decency or standards of community obscenity, it is viability. If a project is commercial, it should not get funding from the government. A simple, objective, cold standard is required to apply and this is it. No one can then seriously raise human rights objections to it. The problem is that it raises other disturbing questions about why the likes of Bombardier or large corporate farmers should get subsidies when clearly what they do is extremely lucrative and profitable. In the end, we are going to have to question a Canadian disease that exists at all levels of government and that is the practice of choosing industrial and corporate champions and giving money to them when they decidedly don’t need it. This is money from taxpayers, the very people that are getting the money. How circular.
If we could combat that and get rid of that completely, then there would be no reason for argument or complaint. After all, fostering the arts should never, in my opinion, be about fostering profits. Yes, a lot of artistic work can be very profitable, but it doesn’t need fostering funds from taxpayers by definition for it to grow. Get rid of the offensiveness standard and put in place instead a commerciality standard and do it for all industries and then we rid ourselves of yet another self-defeating silly discussion about community morals and standards. The real problem so many critics of ideas like this have, is the very concept of a free market. It comes down to a much more important discussion as to whether we really want a free economy or one that distorts and twists so that the very people we are trying to help are actually less competitive than they were, less viable than they should have been and so that many other small competitors are crushed underneath the weight of government’s favouritism.
*****
Can you have wrinkles in you soul? This is question raised by TheGreatCanadianOutdoors.com host of a commercial in which he says that the Great Canadian Outdoors can take the wrinkles out of your soul. Does that mean that there is a cosmic iron or metaphysical botox injection out there that can take the wrinkles out of your soul? Just how bad is it to have a rumpled soul? It is connected to my other idea of a new and improved brain?
What about a pedicure for the soul? What about knocking the stuffing out of your soul? Put the hair back on your soul? Knock the ear wax out of your soul? What the hell?
*****
I could not believe the bigotry of the two legal experts on CNN who were talking about home schooling. One of them openly admitted he did not get the idea and both said the courts were being reasonable in calling for the credentialling of home schooling and that there was no constitutional right to home school one’s child. However legally correct those principles may be, what was the disease of the Commonwealth, the injuriae, the terrible threat to the body politic posed by home schooling? Was there any evidence to show that as it stands now, home schooling results in poor schooling for children? I don’t think so. In fact, the evidence is the other way around. Home schooled children, for instance, have won the Spelling Bee here four times in a row. There is certainly no evidence put forward to show that home schooled children are not achieving at the level of public school children. In fact, I am sure it was the other way around. Any evidence that they did submit was anecdotal.
Does it mean that there could be irresponsible home schooled parents? Of course there could be. But overwhelmingly, this is about bigotry and about monopoly for the state and the teachers’ unions and the other educational groups at the formal governmental and public levels who suspect any effort to impinge on their turf. As we know at this point, home schooling is a thin minority of people, exactly those who should be given constitutional protection, especially when there is no reason to bring in this system. The cost of oversight to the public would far outweigh the benefits. This is simply another example of family life being impinged upon by the government. This is a sad development in the continuing effort by some elements of this country to make sure that we have control over almost nothing in our lives in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
*****
The real problem with the argument over offensiveness in allocating arts film funding to programming in Canada is not morality or decency or standards of community obscenity, it is viability. If a project is commercial, it should not get funding from the government. A simple, objective, cold standard is required to apply and this is it. No one can then seriously raise human rights objections to it. The problem is that it raises other disturbing questions about why the likes of Bombardier or large corporate farmers should get subsidies when clearly what they do is extremely lucrative and profitable. In the end, we are going to have to question a Canadian disease that exists at all levels of government and that is the practice of choosing industrial and corporate champions and giving money to them when they decidedly don’t need it. This is money from taxpayers, the very people that are getting the money. How circular.
If we could combat that and get rid of that completely, then there would be no reason for argument or complaint. After all, fostering the arts should never, in my opinion, be about fostering profits. Yes, a lot of artistic work can be very profitable, but it doesn’t need fostering funds from taxpayers by definition for it to grow. Get rid of the offensiveness standard and put in place instead a commerciality standard and do it for all industries and then we rid ourselves of yet another self-defeating silly discussion about community morals and standards. The real problem so many critics of ideas like this have, is the very concept of a free market. It comes down to a much more important discussion as to whether we really want a free economy or one that distorts and twists so that the very people we are trying to help are actually less competitive than they were, less viable than they should have been and so that many other small competitors are crushed underneath the weight of government’s favouritism.
*****
Can you have wrinkles in you soul? This is question raised by TheGreatCanadianOutdoors.com host of a commercial in which he says that the Great Canadian Outdoors can take the wrinkles out of your soul. Does that mean that there is a cosmic iron or metaphysical botox injection out there that can take the wrinkles out of your soul? Just how bad is it to have a rumpled soul? It is connected to my other idea of a new and improved brain?
What about a pedicure for the soul? What about knocking the stuffing out of your soul? Put the hair back on your soul? Knock the ear wax out of your soul? What the hell?
*****
I could not believe the bigotry of the two legal experts on CNN who were talking about home schooling. One of them openly admitted he did not get the idea and both said the courts were being reasonable in calling for the credentialling of home schooling and that there was no constitutional right to home school one’s child. However legally correct those principles may be, what was the disease of the Commonwealth, the injuriae, the terrible threat to the body politic posed by home schooling? Was there any evidence to show that as it stands now, home schooling results in poor schooling for children? I don’t think so. In fact, the evidence is the other way around. Home schooled children, for instance, have won the Spelling Bee here four times in a row. There is certainly no evidence put forward to show that home schooled children are not achieving at the level of public school children. In fact, I am sure it was the other way around. Any evidence that they did submit was anecdotal.
Does it mean that there could be irresponsible home schooled parents? Of course there could be. But overwhelmingly, this is about bigotry and about monopoly for the state and the teachers’ unions and the other educational groups at the formal governmental and public levels who suspect any effort to impinge on their turf. As we know at this point, home schooling is a thin minority of people, exactly those who should be given constitutional protection, especially when there is no reason to bring in this system. The cost of oversight to the public would far outweigh the benefits. This is simply another example of family life being impinged upon by the government. This is a sad development in the continuing effort by some elements of this country to make sure that we have control over almost nothing in our lives in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Green Wishes
Here’s a question I wish my Conservative government would ask: does Canada really need 250,000 bureaucrats to run her?
* * * * *
Soylent Green is about as good a movie as ever to watch while you’re talking about a plan for saving the earth from overconsumption and resources depletion while at the same time as exploding the economies of the world so that they will produce as much as everyone needs and more and in fact leave us with a higher standard of living and a higher level of wealth and prosperity than we had before. Even if we have more people than we had before.
I think we should start with Canada. We can start with the grand bargain. This is an idea that originated with the Tory proposal in Great Britain and also the BC Liberal budget handed down by Carol Taylor, the finance minister, in which she proposed a gas tax of about 4 cents a litre for BC which would collect about $600 million a year for three years for a total of $1.8 billion. I believe this could be the solution for the narrowing surpluses that the slowing economy is providing the federal government while at the same time is unleashing the animal forces of capitalism to give us ever more wealth and prosperity and standard of living.
I believe that we should propose a similar gas tax at the federal level which, if the figures were proportionately the same, could raise as much as $6 billion a year for the federal treasury. The extra revenue from the carbon tax that would be put in place would be enough to eliminate the capital gains tax at the federal level and probably eliminate several other taxes on savings and investment and interest so as to unleash economic growth, the kind of which we have not seen since before WWI. I don’t think of it as a magic bullet, but it seems like an obvious approach that we could use where we would be revenue neutral but we would be reducing the taxes on the productive forces that give us wealth and growth. The main point that Carol Taylor’s budget made that twigged me on to this was the idea of the revenue neutrality. She promises that all dollars raised by carbon taxes would be replaced dollar for dollar by tax cuts on income and business and would make the country a beacon for investment from around the world.
At the same time, the carbon taxes would help us to manage and eliminate excessive carbon emissions and also release the technological drive and invention that would be needed for technologies like carbon capture and sequestration and other methods that would allow us to explore new energy and extract it without carbon emissions exacerbating the global warming or greenhouse situation.
Where I’m going to China on this is in admitting that carbon emissions, greenhouse gases and global warming are important enough priorities to bring in such taxes. It should be done in the context of a carbon trading system which would also make us a beacon for the world in controlling carbon emissions. We would attract many more monies for investment in those strategies. The great idea about this approach is that it doesn’t cost the treasury anything and net it doesn’t cost the economy anything. It takes the pressure off the very activities that will not only make the economy just as strong but stronger yet.
Such an approach would have to be married with a major effort to deregulate and demonopolize the economy at all phases, whether it is foreign ownership of banks, open skies for airlines, the elimination of marketing and other supply management systems for agriculture, the elimination of subsidies and a new unilateral drive for free trade around the world, particularly with emerging and poor nations and especially the agricultural sector. The revenue that we would raise from this, not only from the carbon taxes but also from the new economic activity caused by the creation of many thousands of more jobs with a high value and lucrative businesses, would give the government the ability to provide new resources for the most important government functions, particularly the defence, foreign relations and, above all, infrastructure. They should also be supported by an initiative to find new ways to deliver government services, either through private-public partnership or through outright private in other competitive methods or systems. Infrastructure in particular like road or sewage plants could be delivered in the fashion through mortgages, tolls and other alternative financing options. It would provide new sources of capital. Bonds could finance such projects with very little cost to the government. It would also in the end probably delivery everything from electricity to water on a cheaper, more efficient basis, and create thousand more stockholders in hundreds of new companies that would be involved in industries privately that previously were completely controlled by the public sector. Here we would have the virtuous circle, not only economically in which there is full employment, growth, low interest rates and low inflation because there is no new government money having to be flushed into the economy in an inflationary way, but also in that we would have economic growth. A cleaner environment. Less emissions. More ability to deal with real pollution problems.
If David Suzuki can praise such an approach, then we see finally the signs that something new is happening.
The Toronto Commission, hired by David Miller to look into the city’s functions, also demonstrated some of this thinking. There we saw that, we were richer than we thought, to coin a slogan. It takes an ability to think outside the box, but such a program, if adopted by any party, would lead to a sweeping win in all parts of the country. It would show everyone from Quebec to Alberta and beyond that we were not only serious about the environment but also serious about the free enterprise system. It would prove that we believe in capitalism and it is not only good but that it can bring greater benefits to us all and to the public interest.
If Flaherty had proposed such a budget, it would not have been a matter of us waiting to see if we could make the Liberals approve it and let it pass, but we would be the ones going off to the Governor-General calling for an election.
The party that adopts a strategy like this is the one I support. I feel if we were the ones to do it, we would wrong-foot all of the opposition and after having already defused the law and order and Afghan issues, we will have defused the fiscal, economic and environment issues in a thrice.
I realize the largest political obstacle to this is Alberta and the fact that almost 30 seats in our caucus come from that province. But I believe we would be able to show that this could be good for Alberta as well. If anything, it celebrates the virtues of imagination, creativity and free enterprise that have made Alberta what it is today. It is the great quid pro quo that a country that has been built nearly every province in Confederation on such a bargain (a railroad, a bridge…). We can do it again. We can lead the world. Probably, most of the structural and economic reforms that we require, including deregulation and demonopolization and desubsidization would have to occur once we had a majority. The starting point is the grand bargan. I think it’s probably irresistible.
Stéphane Dion built his whole leadership campaign on green and even dressed his worker in that colour. His chief economic advisors and consultants have spoken the gospel of productivity, cutting taxes and denouncing the lowering of the GST. Now it’s time to marry that idea with Mr. Dion’s sincere belief in green.
But I hope that the Conservatives think of it first. I hope it’s not too late. Perhaps, after a decent interval from the tinkering budget, we can stride ahead and make this the proposal to secure the future for Canadians for generations to come. Or not. But let’s hope the other parties don’t too.
* * * * *
Soylent Green is about as good a movie as ever to watch while you’re talking about a plan for saving the earth from overconsumption and resources depletion while at the same time as exploding the economies of the world so that they will produce as much as everyone needs and more and in fact leave us with a higher standard of living and a higher level of wealth and prosperity than we had before. Even if we have more people than we had before.
I think we should start with Canada. We can start with the grand bargain. This is an idea that originated with the Tory proposal in Great Britain and also the BC Liberal budget handed down by Carol Taylor, the finance minister, in which she proposed a gas tax of about 4 cents a litre for BC which would collect about $600 million a year for three years for a total of $1.8 billion. I believe this could be the solution for the narrowing surpluses that the slowing economy is providing the federal government while at the same time is unleashing the animal forces of capitalism to give us ever more wealth and prosperity and standard of living.
I believe that we should propose a similar gas tax at the federal level which, if the figures were proportionately the same, could raise as much as $6 billion a year for the federal treasury. The extra revenue from the carbon tax that would be put in place would be enough to eliminate the capital gains tax at the federal level and probably eliminate several other taxes on savings and investment and interest so as to unleash economic growth, the kind of which we have not seen since before WWI. I don’t think of it as a magic bullet, but it seems like an obvious approach that we could use where we would be revenue neutral but we would be reducing the taxes on the productive forces that give us wealth and growth. The main point that Carol Taylor’s budget made that twigged me on to this was the idea of the revenue neutrality. She promises that all dollars raised by carbon taxes would be replaced dollar for dollar by tax cuts on income and business and would make the country a beacon for investment from around the world.
At the same time, the carbon taxes would help us to manage and eliminate excessive carbon emissions and also release the technological drive and invention that would be needed for technologies like carbon capture and sequestration and other methods that would allow us to explore new energy and extract it without carbon emissions exacerbating the global warming or greenhouse situation.
Where I’m going to China on this is in admitting that carbon emissions, greenhouse gases and global warming are important enough priorities to bring in such taxes. It should be done in the context of a carbon trading system which would also make us a beacon for the world in controlling carbon emissions. We would attract many more monies for investment in those strategies. The great idea about this approach is that it doesn’t cost the treasury anything and net it doesn’t cost the economy anything. It takes the pressure off the very activities that will not only make the economy just as strong but stronger yet.
Such an approach would have to be married with a major effort to deregulate and demonopolize the economy at all phases, whether it is foreign ownership of banks, open skies for airlines, the elimination of marketing and other supply management systems for agriculture, the elimination of subsidies and a new unilateral drive for free trade around the world, particularly with emerging and poor nations and especially the agricultural sector. The revenue that we would raise from this, not only from the carbon taxes but also from the new economic activity caused by the creation of many thousands of more jobs with a high value and lucrative businesses, would give the government the ability to provide new resources for the most important government functions, particularly the defence, foreign relations and, above all, infrastructure. They should also be supported by an initiative to find new ways to deliver government services, either through private-public partnership or through outright private in other competitive methods or systems. Infrastructure in particular like road or sewage plants could be delivered in the fashion through mortgages, tolls and other alternative financing options. It would provide new sources of capital. Bonds could finance such projects with very little cost to the government. It would also in the end probably delivery everything from electricity to water on a cheaper, more efficient basis, and create thousand more stockholders in hundreds of new companies that would be involved in industries privately that previously were completely controlled by the public sector. Here we would have the virtuous circle, not only economically in which there is full employment, growth, low interest rates and low inflation because there is no new government money having to be flushed into the economy in an inflationary way, but also in that we would have economic growth. A cleaner environment. Less emissions. More ability to deal with real pollution problems.
If David Suzuki can praise such an approach, then we see finally the signs that something new is happening.
The Toronto Commission, hired by David Miller to look into the city’s functions, also demonstrated some of this thinking. There we saw that, we were richer than we thought, to coin a slogan. It takes an ability to think outside the box, but such a program, if adopted by any party, would lead to a sweeping win in all parts of the country. It would show everyone from Quebec to Alberta and beyond that we were not only serious about the environment but also serious about the free enterprise system. It would prove that we believe in capitalism and it is not only good but that it can bring greater benefits to us all and to the public interest.
If Flaherty had proposed such a budget, it would not have been a matter of us waiting to see if we could make the Liberals approve it and let it pass, but we would be the ones going off to the Governor-General calling for an election.
The party that adopts a strategy like this is the one I support. I feel if we were the ones to do it, we would wrong-foot all of the opposition and after having already defused the law and order and Afghan issues, we will have defused the fiscal, economic and environment issues in a thrice.
I realize the largest political obstacle to this is Alberta and the fact that almost 30 seats in our caucus come from that province. But I believe we would be able to show that this could be good for Alberta as well. If anything, it celebrates the virtues of imagination, creativity and free enterprise that have made Alberta what it is today. It is the great quid pro quo that a country that has been built nearly every province in Confederation on such a bargain (a railroad, a bridge…). We can do it again. We can lead the world. Probably, most of the structural and economic reforms that we require, including deregulation and demonopolization and desubsidization would have to occur once we had a majority. The starting point is the grand bargan. I think it’s probably irresistible.
Stéphane Dion built his whole leadership campaign on green and even dressed his worker in that colour. His chief economic advisors and consultants have spoken the gospel of productivity, cutting taxes and denouncing the lowering of the GST. Now it’s time to marry that idea with Mr. Dion’s sincere belief in green.
But I hope that the Conservatives think of it first. I hope it’s not too late. Perhaps, after a decent interval from the tinkering budget, we can stride ahead and make this the proposal to secure the future for Canadians for generations to come. Or not. But let’s hope the other parties don’t too.
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