Corporate B.S.

Re: FIPA gives businesses confidence MR Times Nov 15 2012

Like their American Counterpart Mitt Romney and company the Conservatives still don’t get it, it was deregulation that brought  the American house of cards down and as every other country in the world knows Deregulation of the environment is economic as well as environmental suicide and is against all known scientific as well as just good old common sense. 

I have been writing for at least a decade that Canada should not put all it’s eggs in one basket and reach out to the Pacific rim countries to reduce Canada’s reliance on America almost exclusively for trade, but times were good and who is it hurting was the wisdom of the day, now we are seeing the results of that shortsightedness as our main trading partner is sick and consequently we have put ourselves in a vulnerable position, but 

I certainly do not think we have to turn over the keys to our country as well as 
Canada’s sovereignty to secure mutually beneficial trade agreements with any country let alone a Communist dictatorship. Canada has what the rest of the world needs and we don’t have to give up anything to get fair trade for our resources, the oil isn’t going anywhere, in fact it can only become more valuable in the future. 

Randy Kamp makes it quite clear that the Conservative serve the corporations and the Canadian people are little more than an inconvenience, how much confidence does business want they already have been given the lowest corporate taxes in the G7 15 percent or less than half what American business taxes are and that isn’t enough, how about all Canadians pledge a vow of fealty to ask no more for our labour than is acceptable to our masters. 

Good god how much do these Neanderthals want, when is enough enough. I will tell you when enough is enough, when Canadians are working for the same wages as the Chinese or any other third world country, and Canada for all intents and purposes is a third word country, joining all those other unfortunate resource poor countries of the world, but Canadians will still be paying $350,192 for a home, what does that tell you, your children will never own a home.

Great world vision the 1 percent with everything and all the rest of the world living in poverty.

While Corporations pay less and less and contribute less Canadians get less and less and at the same time I am paying thousands of dollars more in taxes (HST) for one, new taxes and user fees, green taxes, electronics taxes, gas taxes, environmental taxes, etc etc and at the same time they are destroying the environment, ever since the Conservatives and the BC Liberals came to power. I now pay $1,392.00 a year for MSP I pay around $50.00 dollars a month for bridge tolls (taxes) and I get to wait 76 weeks on a hospital waiting list for an operation. The unemployment rate in BC is 7.5 and our BC government let’s 70,000 illegal foreign workers earning substandard wages do Canadian jobs.  

So just who is getting all this windfall money Canada is making by selling off all our precious renewable and nonrenewable natural resources, it is a telling fact that the middle class and seniors contrary to all the propaganda are much worse off since Conservatives got power, I have to wonder where is the upside for the Canadian people.

PS

Fascism should more properly be called corporatism since it is the merger of state and corporate power.  Benito Mussolini

Big Oil = Responsible business Practices = Oxymoron

Re: Pipelines key to our economy MRNEWS Nov 14 / 2012

I would agree that pipelines could be a key to Canada's future, the question is whether this is a positive or negative part of the economy in particular BCs economy. Mr. Reicher claims that considering the large volume of product being transported the industry safety record is extremely good I guess a leak every 5.5 days is extremely good to people with vested interests and rose colour glasses, the fact is that even if you accept Mr. Reichers figure of 99.9985 the actual leakage will still be three or four times the present amount just by the increased volume. 

Mr. Reacher acknowledges the fact that Canada and Steven Harper could do more to become less dependent on fossil fuels unfortunately the sad reality is as long as we have Harper the proud recipient of the Colossal Fossil award 5 years running this situation shall only get worse, it is also clear that if it was up to oil companies we would never make that move to clean energy. 

I had to chuckle at Mr. Reichers use of Alberta Innovates - Technology Futures (AITF) an Alberta marketing corporation to legitimize his claim about how dilbit is no different than crude oil and causes no more pipeline breaks than conventional oil  (AITF) was established on January 1, 2010 to LEVERAGE Alberta's established strengths in research innovation, I am sure they could come up with any “FACTS” you required of them but, the reality is dilbit is a corrosive toxic acidic slurry with 5-10 times more sulphur and more chloride salts most resembling grinding compound than oil which literally sandblasts pipe interiors and it’s inconsistency is prone to developing bubbles and subsequently pressure fluctuations it’s very nature requires higher pressures and heat to get it to move at all, which I believe is what caused the Kalamazoo pipeline break, a million gallons of dilbit ($800 million and counting ). 

The fact is Mr. Reicher you do not think about anything but money, the spills, pollution and subsequent environmental damage and the costs that you are sometimes forced to pay are just the cost of doing business and are just passed on to the customer. The utopian statement that pipeline operators would never jeopardize their safety record and reputation must have really made your nose grow, oil companies are in it for the money and they have shown repeatedly all over the world their indifference to the damage they do from Alaska, Brazil, Ecuador, Kalamazoo, Nigeria to Gulf of Mexico and BP who just paid multi-billions in fines,14 criminal charges 11 felony counts, even charges of manslaughter, does this sound like people that care about the consequences of their actions, the environment or the people that work for them or the victims that because of big oils criminal negligence literally destroys peoples livelihood or poisons their children, I don’t think so.

Let the brainwashing begin

For those of you out there that love those long nasty two year election cycles we see in America you are in for a real treat, but it is going to be even worse and just as nasty in Canada, the next Canadian Federal election is Oct 19/2015 and the lies and nasty attack ads have already started, the American election we just witnessed boiled down to, can you actually buy the presidency with Karl Rove and the one-percenters spending billions plugging a man most decent people would not buy a used car from, the gratuitous advertising blitz did nothing more than insure another 4 years of gridlock. 

It appears like the Conservatives are going to try the same tactic in Canada, we are to be bombarded relentlessly with lies and Conservative propaganda for the next three years. I just heard an advertisement that the Conservatives tell Canadians that the NDP platform is to impose carbon taxes and lot’s more tax’s on Canadians, which is a barefaced lie, the NDP have proposed a cap and trade system which was actually campaigned on by Harper in 2008, but no carbon tax. 

I find this most disingenuous coming from a Conservative seeing that I am not a corporation I have seen my taxes and user fees double go up thousands with the Conservatives in power (HST, MSP, passport fees, a vast array of new taxes etc etc) they even tried to make me pay tax on a transit pass that I received from BC Transit when I took my medical severance, they even tried to backdate the tax grab 3 years but the courts did not let them get away with it. 

I find it cynical that the Conservatives claim to know what the NDP platform will be but they don’t seem to have or at least won’t tell the Canadian public what their platform is for the next election, I don’t know about you but I don’t remember the Conservatives telling anyone about C-30 or CISPA the Cyber intelligence sharing and protection act which means the end of Canadian privacy which is a grotesque intrusion into Canadians lives and will turn your cell phone into “electronic prisoners bracelet" or how about C-38 and the radical trashing of environmental regulations or about putting democracy on hold or all-inclusive Omnibus bills or turning Canada’s sovereignty over to a brutal Communist dictatorship exposing Canada to multi billion dollar fines if we do not let China do as they please for 3 plus decades, or making decades long agreements with one of the most corrupt governments in the world India, and all this with no debate no scrutiny, all done in secret dark rooms with other dictators. The one thing I do remember is Steven Harper promising abortion would not be an issue that would be revisited under his administration, so much for Conservative promises.

I intend to complain to the CRTC about this obvious false advertising wherever I see or hear it, and if this is the tone for the next three years Canadians will be either totally brainwashed or totally disgusted by this American stye sleaze electioneering, unfortunately this negative tactic works on a certain segment of the population.

Science versus Stupidity

Commissioner Bruce Cohen’s scathing report castigating the Conservatives for the collapse of the Fraser river sockeye salmon run and the subsequent omnibus C-38 which can only make environmental conditions much worse. Mr Cohen has a big disadvantage, despite 3 years 26 million dollars 3 million documents 100 days of evidence listening to almost 900 public submissions, his 1000 page report is after all only science and we all know how much credence Conservatives have in science, for them it is simply, what does the Bible say about any issue and if it is not covered then it can not be a problem because GOD would have put it in the Bible if there were a problem. 

These people live in a bubble that sees nothing they do not want to see or want you to see, and Canada will be ever the worst for that dangerous simplistic naive view of the world. Everything they do has the same naive simplistic ignorance stamped on it and Canada will pay dearly for this regressive government for decades possibly forever. 

Even if you take just a simple monetary measuring stick such as shutting down an important scientific study like the Experimental Lakes Area, a collection of 58 lakes near Kenora which is considered a scientific “jewel” in northern Ontario that has put Canada at the forefront of global freshwater lake research. 

The project costs 2 million dollars a year and employes 17 scientists and is considered a very important study by the rest of the more enlightened governments of the world, but in their wisdom the Conservatives have decided that it is a waste of money so at a cost of 50 million dollars they are shutting it down, I guess that makes sense  to our economist Prime Minister at least using 

Conservative math. 

The reason no doubt has a more sinister reason such as the fresh water scientists not being able to tell Canadians how much damage Canadian pipe lines, super tankers and oil extraction is damaging the Canadian environment.

If all the economists were laid end to end, they'd never reach a conclusion.  ~George Bernard Shaw

The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on weather forecasters.  ~Jean-Paul Kauffmann