Category: Politics

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Let’s start from the very beginning

I read a funny piece in Maclean’s about the lack of humour in Canadian politics, citing the need for a new party that could laugh at itself.  I love laughing at myself, better yet making others laugh, yes, even at, but hopefully a bit with, me.

But a frivolous political party – at least one that is really serious about it! – in the interest of fully exploiting the humourous ironic potential of the situation, ought to have some really strait-laced, straight-faced constitutional underpinnings upon which the comedy is then built.  The cognitive dissonance will drive people crazy.

I propose therefore, a set of principles from which policy for the Another Party shall be derived.  I’ll leave it to others to make good fun of it all.

Continue reading “Let’s start from the very beginning”

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Should we be worried? Let’s keep tabs.

The following article projecting Canadian Federal debt and deficits as a fraction of GDP appeared in Feb 2010 here.  I want to keep tabs, remember the forecasts, so that we might check their math later.

The implicit assumption is a non-correlation of government fiscal policy and GDP growth (or contraction).  Another is that the maximum error they could have in their projections is +/- 1% of GDP growth.  Boy, they must be good!  Bow to the economic masters of the universe!  Can you tell I am skeptical?

So, let’s just keep score, shall we?  We’ll revisit this page in a year or two.  Here comes QE2 down south….

Continue reading “Should we be worried? Let’s keep tabs.”

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Vote Today October 25th, 2010

McGuinty’s Men – Voter Beware

In two of the most prominent Ontario cities, Toronto and Ottawa, the McGuinty Liberals are trying to get their men in.  In Ottawa it looks like a done deal for Jim Watson, a testimony to the short memories and fiscal imprudence of Ottawa voters. In Toronto, it is a tight race, with Ontario Minister of Health, George Smitherman battling it out with business man Rob Ford.  Grab hold of your wallets, Ontarians, we are in deep trouble.  Smitherman has overseen a flurry of scandals in the Minstry of Health, at a time when patients, not bureaucrats, could really have used the money.  Instead it is gone – gone to consultants and used to pay ludicrous severances.  Let us hope that at least in Toronto the McGuinty’s are foiled.  Cities in debt, the province in debt, all that money is going to come out of our pockets eventually.  Thank goodness provincial governments can’t print money.

Vote Today – even if you cannot prevent a Watson Mayoral victory, you can send a message.  If you don’t vote, you lose your voice.

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American Liberalism Wakens Sleeping Conservatism

Ramesh Ponnuru & Rich Lowry have written a brilliant account of current American politics in National Review Online.  Here is but a sample:

The liberal journalist Peter Beinart noted that for decades Democratic leaders had treated the American public’s latent conservatism as a sleeping bear: The chief imperative was to avoid sudden moves that would rouse it. But the Reagan era was now over, and Democrats no longer needed to live in fear. That’s what Obama’s “yes we can” slogan meant to liberals: Yes we can move past both conservatism and Clintonian triangulation. Liberalism was living in its favored political tense: the future perfect.

The full article can be found here.

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The Mouse That Roared

Our dog Mouse (our last was Wolf, son of Bear, dog of RedBeard) frequently gets walked at the Bruce Pit dog park in Ottawa.  If you have a dog, you should know that they (and you!) are much happier and balanced when well-exercised.   No-one reinforces this message in the public eye more and better than Cesar Millan, the “Dog Whisperer”, who will shortly be coming to Canada, and to Ottawa in particular.  We would all do well to listen to Cesar’s messages of balance and humility, and to think more about what it all means in the grander context of humans who are in turn subservient to our “masters”, that is, our governments and their public institutions. Continue reading “The Mouse That Roared”

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Lolife vs Lyle Rossiter, Thomas Sowell, and me

I often can’t properly remember how or why I arrive at any particular site on the web, but I also don’t often forget when I see something interesting, particularly if I feel strongly enough to comment on someone else’s blog.   Back in 2008, after Tropic Networks was acquired by Alcatel-Lucent, I found myself in a very foreign environment, and asking, which is crazy, this place or me?  I re-read Thomas Sowell’s A Conflict of Visions, amongst other works, to at least ensure that if crazy, I was in good company.  Some improbable series of events must have occurred to land me on “lolife’s” site, but once there, I decided to comment, as I had already written up an odd experience, one that demonstrated the conflict of visions in action, in the specific area of employment equity.  I was a blog-virgin up until that point, only ever before having posted comments to a few stock message boards on yahoo.

I clipped much of the discussion and place it below (sorry the format is a bit weird), but the original discussion can be found here. On our blog we will not resort to name calling, and expletives, but keep things civil.  The discussion below relates to Lyle Rossiter’s assertion that liberalism/leftism (whatever that might mean) is a form of insanity.  The bait looked just too tasty, so I bit.  Enjoy.

Continue reading “Lolife vs Lyle Rossiter, Thomas Sowell, and me”

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WHO Striving for Fairness, not Good Health

There has long been much suspicion about the value of many international organizations, particularly those with three letter acronyms.  The IMF and the World Bank have arguably done much more harm than good, saddling the Third World with unmanageable debts, while their tyrants drive golden Rolls Royce’s.  So it comes as no surprise, though it still horrified me, to read the WHO’s Director-General, Margaret Chan, musings on H1N1 and the future health of the planet.

She is quoted in the National Post, speaking to the Regional Committee for Europe (I assume some sub-branch of WHO): “Gaps in health outcomes will be reduced and health systems will strive for fairness only when equity is an explicit policy objective,  also in sectors well beyond health…. [We need] changes in the functioning of the global economy.”

Now, I don’t know about you, but I assumed the WHO was hoping not so much to  “reduce gaps in health outcomes” but to improve health outcomes in general.  At least, when I go to the doctor, I am concerned about improving my health outcome, not in seeing it approaching that of my neighbour.  Perhaps that explains her initial enthusiasm for H1N1: “It is all of humanity that is under threat.”  At least that virus attempted to be fair, targeting all, not just the poor.

Continue reading “WHO Striving for Fairness, not Good Health”