Category Archives: The Economy

Finances, Politics, Provincial, The Economy

No Surprise, Just Politics as Usual.

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The Province posed an e-street Question:

“What has surprised you most about the current provincial election campaign?”

Nothing.

Devoid of ideas, ideals and desperate to avoid addressing the important issues and their painful realities, the Liberals are employing the time tested strategy employed by politicians and parties in that position – frighten the voters. BC’s Liberals choosing to go with the 1990’s and NDP spending as the boogeyman with which to frighten voters.

If you can find no reasons for voters to vote FOR you, find frightening reasons to scare voters into voting AGAINST your opponents and for the lesser evil.

Of course they still are voting for evil, lesser or not.

Devoid of ideas, ideals and desperate to avoid addressing the important issues and their painful realities, the NDP are travelling around the province making spending promises using the imaginary extra $1.5 billion the NDP’s phantasm budget raises.

Of course, had the NDP put the welfare of citizens ahead of the welfare of the NDP there would be 1.5 billion real, not imaginary, dollars to build hospitals.

Instead political expediency and the opportunity to count coup on the Liberals had Adrian Dix and the NDP campaigning for (and convincing) voters to return the $1.5 billion HST bribe to Ottawa rather than use it to address the need for major hospital spending on St. Paul’s, Royal Inland, Haida Gwaii and other projects.

As usual the media is careful to tell British Columbians only what they want to hear; shunning the communication of any information to British Columbians they have a need to know, but don’t want to know/hear about.

‘All the news you want to hear and none of the news you need to know but don’t want to hear or think about.’  

Focusing on the street theatre aspects of the election and, as carefully as the politicians, ignoring the true issues facing BC – the painful nitty gritty reality voters do not want to hear or think about.

Politics as usual in BC.

Although……. I am hoping to be surprised on Election Day by the election of two independent MLAs to represent Abbotsford East and Abbotsford West.

Media, The Economy

To Omit Information is to Misinform

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I caught a flashy ad promoting Shaw’s 5:30 PM Global National program. The ad had clips from a story about an Ontario woman being denied medical treatment by the Ontario government, telling viewers to tune into Global National for the full story.

The ad really didn’t provide me any incentive to tune into Global National since anyone familiar with today’s media knows the probable form and content of the story. More importantly, they know what type of information the story needs to include but won’t include.

From the ad it was clear the subject of the story has a terminal illness; a terminal illness with a high probably of being among those illnesses classified as a ‘rare disease’; meaning treatment will be new (perhaps still in the experimental stage or in clinical trials) and extremely expensive.

With evident grief family and friends will speak of what a wonderful person she is, how terrible her loss would be, how sad/devastating the thought of her death is to them and how outraged they are the villains, the Ontario Government, refuses to pay for the treatment.

If there are children, there will be film of her great relationship with her children; of her looking ill and limited by the disease while the children look concerned and upset. There will be testimony of what a great and loving mother she is. She will speak of how she wants to live so she can “see her children grow-up”. The children will speak of how much they love their mother and how they do not want the villainous government people to make her die.

If the family has a dog (pet) there will be pictures of the woman and dog enjoying a wonderful relationship and testimony as to how it will devastate the dog is she dies.

The report will provide the name of the disease, how it slowly sucks away the life of the person with the disease and how there is a cure (or an on occasion successful treatment) but the government will not cover the cost – a cost the family cannot afford to pay itself.

There will be interviews with the villains, the Ontario Government officials who state that the Ontario government does not cover (pay for) experimental treatments.

The tone of the piece may evoke enough of a negative response that the Ontario Government, because it is all about politics, is forced to pay for the treatment.

Should the government be forced to pay for the non-covered experimental treatment, the tone of the report will be self congratulatory.

The information the report won’t include is who died or went without treatment because Global National caused the life of the woman in the story to be deemed more important than the lives of other Ontario citizens.

Healthcare is a zero sum game. When money is spent on something/someone not in the budget (the woman’s treatment) the money to pay for the unbudgeted spending is taken from somewhere/something/someone that money was budgeted for. The reallocation of the money to pay for the unbudgeted healthcare expense means someone does not receive the services that were originally (before reallocation) going to be received.

The same political reasons/pressures that result in money being ‘reallocated’, make the powerless, the unpopular, those unable to speak for themselves those most like to lose services.

Reallocation of resources has left the psych ward at Abbotsford Hospital overwhelmed. I knew someone who was on the waiting list to get into treatment for his substance abuse. As a result of this ongoing struggle his head was in a black and dangerous space. Recognizing how dark and dangerous his head space was we spoke of his need to go to the hospital if it worsened.

It did, he went to the overtaxed, overwhelmed hospital and was turned away. Upon leaving the hospital he killed himself.

Cutting healthcare does not require (or mean) cutting the dollars spent on healthcare. Healthcare costs continue to rise and unless the percentage increase in the budget matches the percentage increase in the cost to buy the same healthcare services as last year – you cannot buy the same health services as last year. Meaning health services have been cut.

As a consequence any ‘NEW’ services come at the expense of existing services – cutbacks or eliminations of those existing services providing the $$$$ to pay for the ‘NEW’ services.

I am not sure whether it is a result of ‘burying your head in the sand’ or ‘wilful denial’ or ‘refusing to think’ but people act as though they can have unlimited healthcare – without paying for it. Using “The government can find the money – if they want to” mantra. Ignoring that common sense and basic mathematics require  the government have an orchard of money trees behind the legislature or Rumpelstiltskin in the basement of the legislature (parliament) spinning straw into gold to pay for all the healthcare people want but refuse to pay for.

Politicians – the government – are not villains for imposing limits on health care that have negative consequences, up to and including death, for citizens. Their villainy lies in protecting their jobs (re-election) and gold-plated retirement benefits at the expense of citizen’s healthcare and standard of living by refusing to tell voters something voters do not want to hear.

Refusing to address the issues voters don’t want to hear about does not mean the issues won’t be addressed at some point. It merely postpones the very painful consequences until government and citizens are forced, in the same manner as was Greece, to deal with the issues arising from economic and financial realities.

Telling ourselves that ‘Canada is not Greece’ will not stop the consequences of our spend, spend, spend, pay only a portion, borrow, borrow, sell the future of Canadian children – from coming home to roost or change how painful the correction of personal, corporate and government financial mismanagement will be

In running around broadcasting reports about the need for new hospitals, more healthcare, more education, more of this more, more of that……… without asking how we pay for those items; fostering the impression that the financial and economic issues looming over the future of citizens are the fault of government and have nothing to do with unreasonable demands from the public for services they refuse to pay for; not asking either Mr. Vander Zalm or Mr. Dix why they thought sending $1.5 billion back to Ottawa was a better idea than spending at least a billion dollars of that amount on hospital infrastructure; completely ignoring the financial and economic challenges facing governments………

……media has become villains in this drama, a significant part of the problem, a major impediment to addressing the issues and a threat to Canadians standard of living.

The motto of the media has changed from “all the news you need to know” to today’s “only the news you want to hear, and nothing you don’t want to hear.”

Media is all about selling the sizzle and ignoring the fact the meat is full of salmonella and/or e-coli.

Federal, Finances, Provincial, The Economy

UP 16% ??? That’s……

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I considered myself lucky when I filled up for $111.9 a litre at the Safeway station on Lougheed Hwy in Mission on Tuesday, rather than the $119.9 a litre everywhere else in Mission and  Abbotsford.

Really lucky upon suffering the shock of seeing gas in Abbotsford jump to $129.9 a litre. overnight.

$9.90 saved by deciding to check the cost of gas in Mission because I was there.

18 cents a litre, $9.90 a tank !!

Monsoon float a refinery away? Tornado relocate a refinery to Kansas? Terrorists blow up an oil field? Pipeline? Refinery? Tanker? Pipeline leak millions of litres of oil into a pristine watershed?

No, No, No, No, No, No and No.

Oh wait, it is winter and there have been some unusually chilly days around. Price went up because of all the extra oil needed for heating………although, wouldn’t that mean the price should go down because of all the unseasonably warm days such as those that had Torontonians at the beach in shorts in January?

The price of oil, no doubt to the chagrin of those blackguards at Big Oil, has been languishing under $100. At one point struggling to avoid slipping below $90 a barrel and when the cost of a barrel began to leap upwards looking like it was going to gush over the $100 a barrel mark……..the ‘gusher’ petered out several dollars shy of the $100 mark.

What could cause this precipitous price jump?

Well, thanks to our Big Business profit protecting, consumer forsaking, Conservative federal government Big Businesses – wireless, banks, cable, gas, internet, et al – feel free to bleed Canadians for every last cent they can. Secure in the knowledge their political donation dollars ensure the Conservative government in Ottawa will protect them from competition and, claiming “it’s capitalism” [doesn’t capitalism favour competition and open markets?] ignore unreasonable, unjustified pricing and price increases.

Shaw sells Rogers, the dominant company in wireless, the advanced wireless spectrum Shaw had purchased in 2008 to enter the wireless market. The spectrum covers areas of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and northern Ontario.

Meanwhile Rogers announced  it will seek regulatory approval for the transfer of wireless licences after September 2014 to respect Ottawa’s probation on the sale of new entrant licences to incumbents.

Respect? No. Scorn? Yes. Arrogance? Yes? Contempt? Yes. An iota of Respect? No.

If the Conservative government acted with, or had, a crumb of the concern it lavishes on Big Business on behalf of ordinary Canadians……Shaw’s spectrum would be going to enhance and encourage competition in the wireless market instead of being snuck into the back pocket of one of those proscribed from purchasing it originally – an incumbent wireless provider.

And if the Conservative government in Ottawa had any concern for the ordinary Canadians who make up the majority of the Canadian population and who are the citizens who bear an inequitable proportion of the ever increasing cost (financial and declining standard of living) for politicians mismanagement of Canada’s resources there would be no talk of a Rogers/Shaw merger.

But then If any concern for the ordinary Canadians existed, Shaw would not have been allowed to monopolize ownership of media in Canada by purchasing Global. The existence of any concern for the ordinary Canadians would mean wrongs of that magnitude to, and the negative consequences for, the Canadian consumer/taxpayer would NOT be allowed.

Any government concerned with the welfare and standard of living of ALL Canadians, rather than wholly the welfare of Big Business, the privileged and favoured few, would not be permitting so many sectors to become oligopolies or duopolies that not only function in monopolistic fashion – but give disturbing evidence of becoming monopolies, or effective monopolies.

Evidence foreshadowing Canada’s continued evolution (devolution?) into more and more of an economy of corporate socialism; an evolution encouraged, aided and abided by the Conservative government in particular, and by the entrenched behaviours of the traditional political parties and by ‘politics as usual’.

The victims of surging gas prices, wireless prices twice the cost of elsewhere in the world, restricted competition, creeping corporate socialism, and the promotion, embedding of GREED as THE Canadian Ethos these victims are ordinary Canadians..

Canadians who can continue to say baaaaa to politicians, big business, the wealthy and the privileged…………

…………OR can tell politicians they are tired of politicians arrogant abuse of privileges and of being forced to fund the poloticians unmerited golden retirements; we can say enough to corporate executives ridiculous, UNEARNED salaries and bonuses; say no to corporate oligarchies, monopolistic, actions to circumvent laws and regulations.

We can demand opening markets to competition; we can tell the wealthy that their wealth is based on the hard work of Canadians and it is time they contributed their fair share; and when they inevitably threaten to sulk and take their money elsewhere, we can tell that is their right as Canadians.

Canada is a great place to live and do business, if the wealthy want to leave there are innumerable entrepreneurs around the world who would seize the opportunity to become Canadian, do business in Canada and contribute to the well being of Canada and Canadians.

It is time for Canadians to stand up and tell the existing political parties and politicians GOODBYE, you have had your opportunity and you all have demonstrated a level of incompetence and self-interest that threatens the liveability of Canada and promises a continued decline in the standard of living for Canadians who are not among the few that benefit from our current political parties and Politics and Business ‘as usual’.

 

Tell the Conservative government, Stephen Harper and his cronies (all his cronies, not just Conservative politicians) that:

  1. ignoring the needs of Canadians favour Big Business and others with wealth who enrich the Conservative Party coffers and bank accounts
  2. facilitating the downward mobility of substantial numbers of Canadians;
  3. not simply permitting but enabling wage levels to fall to levels below that at which a wage earner can live – frugally – on;
  4. enabling, through legislation, Big Business to reduce wage levels not simply below the level of poverty, but below the level of survivability:
  5. enabling, promoting changes that reduce Canadian wages to ‘slave’ wage levels that deny Canadians the ability not just to thrive, but to survive;
  6.  that campaigning for office using fear to obscure the issues;
  7.  The gross misrepresentation of the Conservatives ability to manage Canada’s economy, society and future and not (as they have and continue to do) undermine the future of Canadians, their standard of living, and what it is to be Canadian by creating the economic conditions of a growing sink hole that threatens to plunge Canadians into a deep black pit – by ignoring or wilful denial of the increasing prevalence and power of the trickle up economy is:

 

Canadians cannot afford politics or behaviour ‘as usual’ if they want to stop the downward spiral so many Canadians, a number that continues to grow, are trapped in.

The fathers of the American Revolution – Franklin, Jefferson, George Washington, John Adams, Hamilton, Paine, Burr……felt that the preservation of democracy and government for the benefit of all citizens, not just the privileged few and the special interests, required a revolution every few generations. Not necessarily violent revolution, but revolution at the ballot box by throwing out all the current crop of politicians (all, not just those in power) and replacing them with fresh individuals free of any ties to special interests or others benefitting from government largesse.

The health and wealth of a country and its citizens needs eyes and minds that are not mired in Newspeak, AcceptableThink, CorrectThink, PoliticalThink, BusinessThink or bound up with special interests.

Re-invigorating Canada, governmens in Canada, the standard of living and the future of Canadians requires effort by Canadian voters to seek out members of their communities who are engaged in issues at a municipal, provincial and federal level; whose ideas, thoughts and positions on issues exist in the public domain – accessible for examination and consideration; and have established community involvement, ability, ethics and being trustworthy.

Canadians stand at a spot where they can continue their wilful denial of the issues and realities facing Canada and Canadians, opting to continue to wear their rose coloured glasses and to take the easy – and ill-fated – way out by voting for one of the ‘politics, business as usual’ traditional parties.

OR, Canadians who feel that Canada needs new priorities, needs to remember what it is to BE Canadian (not wana-be Americans) and needs to strike out in a new direction……..

……… those Canadians  need to forsake “there is nobody to vote for” and “I am forced to hold my nose and vote for the least bad choice” (you are still voting for a bad choice) and adopt “the choices I am offered are not only unpalatable, but totally unacceptable and I WILL DO whatever is required, to find someone who cares for all the community (not just the special interests etc), is engaged with the issues, has demonstrated integrity and is willing to lose the next election rather than telling him/herself that it is more important that they get re-elected, rather than behave with integrity and risk defeat, because the good of the voters is best served by doing whatever it takes for them to get re-elected.

As much as politicians, media and special interests have worked to impair, confuse and defeat the public’s ability to think about the issues and discern truth among the gobbledegook, political speak and doublespeak – politicians, media and special interests have not so far managed to make it illegal for Canadians to Think. Nor, as much as politicians, media and special interests may want to have, have they been able to take away the right to seek out and vote for whoever voters trust to represent their interests and the interests of community, province and country as a whole. At least not yet.

We do not have to take the path of least resistance, we have the ability, the right, to say enough is enough, leave the ‘business as usual path’ and boldly strike off blazing a path to Our goals; not the goals of politicians, corporations, special interests…….

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”   Ralph Waldo Emerson

All that is required is the Will……

“Again and again, the impossible problem is solved when we see that the problem is only a tough decision waiting to be made.”

To assert our Will and send politicians, media and special interests packing……

“Revolution manifests when those defined as the problem, achieve the power and influence to redefine the problem.”  Tao of James

It is time to tell Politicians, Big Business, The Wealthy, The Privileged, Special Interests et al they have been……..