$$Magic Money$$

I find my eyeballs spinning at times when trying to talk or understand the economic theories of the RIGHT out to lunch. I tried to have a rational dialog with a man that votes Conservative the other day and he keeps bringing up Greece about how socialism ruined Greece and how screwed they are but when I pointed out that his champion America actually has a bigger debt per capita than Greece he informed me that that didn't matter because America can just print more money and Greece can't, so to him it is problem solved, end of story. Then I am watching Bill Maher and they are having a discussion about the inequity of the rich and the other 99 percent, talking about the 99 percent getting their share of the pie, the champion of the one percent informed them there was no pie the money supply is infinate. The right does not seem to even grasp the nature or value of mediums of exchange (money) it is magic mystical like some Genie just waves his magic wand and legal tender just appears out of thin air. Is it any wonder the banks, money markets, stock markets are in the sad state they are at this time in history. I remember hearing one of the architects of the banking collapse talk about it and he made the statement that it was like trading air they didn't even see it as money, they lost sight of the fact that they were playing games with peoples pensions, life savings lively hoods, homes, businesses,and their stupid games inevitably cost the American people 40 percent of their assets.

The really sad part is they are still playing the same games with their depositors money Morgan Stanley just stole another 5 billion dollars of their clients money, absolutely nothing has changed, they have not even learned a thing and no one is making them change with  strict legislation.
In my opinion they should all be doing hard time and have everything they own including all their offshore accounts put towards paying back the people whose money they stole.

Wild Ride

Every once in a while you have to stir up your blood, in other words do something crazy so you don’t have to pinch yourself to see whether you are really alive or this world is just one big dream. The other day I decided to do just that, do something I have been wanting to do for 50 years, so I phoned up Pacific skydiving and made an appointment to cross another wish off my bucket list. 

The common wisdom is that it is crazy to jump out of a perfectly good aircraft, but I am here to tell you that is just wrong, it’s totally awesome. I have done a few awesome things in my life but doing a one minute free-fall is beyond most anything I have experienced. I can’t describe the moment you leave that aircraft and you plummet to the earth at 200 KM an hour and then your parachute opens and you glide and soar in an unbelievable 6 minute drop to earth that is easily the most intense, exhilarating experience ever. It is an experience my son and I will never forget, everything about it was first class from our jump masters Sam and Shawn to the unparalleled beauty of our super natural BC that when you jump out that airplane door looks more like an awesome abstract painting until you finally get close enough to earth that the water becomes water, green becomes trees and the little specks become people. It truly is indescribable and should be on every persons bucket list, if for no other reason than to see the incredible beauty that we are lucky enough to call home. 

Unfortunately my perfect day turned out to have a political side also, Pacific skydiving a well run company that has been providing excellent service to the people of Pitt Meadow and Greater Vancouver for 23 years are being shut down by the Pitt Meadow airport authority. Because of that senseless action not only will 28 people lose good jobs but also many support workers that work with and supply this vibrant company will also be put in jeopardy, not to mention putting a hole in Pitt Meadows commercial tax base. 

This is the kind of thoughtless actions that angers me, governments are so willing to bend for the big corporations but here a successful small but labour intensive company like Pacific Skydiving is just shut down over a couple acres of grass and a proposed runway expansion, apparently there will be jet planes flying over some very expensive real-estate, homes that have been there forever, this is inevitably a political shit-storm, this defiantly seems to me to be an issue that should be of concern not only to the Pitt Meadows council but the taxpayers of Pitt Meadows as well. I have to wonder even if the runway is extended why the two enterprises can't co-exist. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.

Time for a DO-OVER

Here is what listening to the failed economic policies of the trickle down pie in the sky rhetoric of the one percent has gotten us. America, Canada and most European economys are in crisis and the working man and middle class are fighting for their financial lives, most barely able to keep their heads above water. 

The power elite have convinced the majority that the only way we can stave off a depression and global catastrophe was to bail out the banking and wall street criminals that have brought the whole world to it’s knees, and not only let them keep all the money they stole but reward themselves even further with public funds, while forcing tens of millions out of their homes, losing millions of jobs, all in all managing to wipe out 40 percent of ordinary Americans assets, and causing the failure of untold small businesses to boot. So much for conventional financial wisdom. In other words carry on as usual.

It seems Iceland had a novel idea contrary to popular practice, they charged the Prime Minister and all the CEOs of the big banks with over two hundred separate criminal offences, and put them in jail. They even went further away from conventional wisdom and instead of punishing the homeowners that suffered from these criminal actions, instead they forgave any debt over 110 percent of the value of a home mortgage debt. About now you are probably thinking how stupid can they be you can’t do that and get away with it, well you would be wrong not only has it worked but after the total economic collapse in Iceland in 2008, 2009 needless to say was a disaster with a 6.7 decrease in growth but in a very short time 2010 they had a 2.9 percent increase and 2011 2.4 increase and are now one of the healthiest countrys economically in the world, I know now you are going to say Ya but it is just a small country it wouldn’t work here, but the truth is they had a much higher debt per capita than America or Greece. 

The final inevitable argument as always when someone else has a system or idea different or should I say better than America, oh that is just an anomaly it would never work here, no I guess as long as rewarding criminals and hanging on to failed tired old economic theories and the bought and paid for politicians that perpetuate these failed polices, we are doomed to relive the inevitable booms and crashes, and the middle class and workers of the world will pay the price as always. 

Fitch Ratings had this to say about Iceland “ Unorthodox crisis policy response has succeeded.

 “Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” ― Albert Einstein

You have to be Kidding

Re: Letters don’t enhance eco-system The times July 10/2012

Just keeps getting stranger and stranger, Mr. Kamp claims that if Mr. Lawrence MacAulay wants to change environmental policy he stop writting letters and instead should partner with Harper and the rest of the clones and just do what Da Fuhrer dictates. This could even be amusing if the Canadian people had not just witnessed the undemocratic farce they call the debate over C-38 where even the Conservatives that questioned the bill voted 100 percent for the bill and likewise against a single one of the hundreds of amendments proposed by the opposition. 

Harper and cohorts do not listen to scientists, parties with special knowledge such as ex-fisherys ministers, thousands of Canadians protesting all over this country including the scientists unprecedented march in the "Death of Evidence" protest yesterday, threatening and slandering environmental experts and other environmental groups and activists even going to the extent of labelling them radicals and terrorists. 

Mr. Kamp claims that the so called budget received a significant amount of scrutiny and debate, excuse me don’t both those words mean critical observation, compromise and revision based on that observation. I have to wonder if in that month Mr. Kamp also had time to scrutinize and debate the 70 other laws that this all in one corporate wish list affects. Isn’t it a little like putting the cart before the horse to launch consultations to receive 

feedback on your new, old approach to fisheries protection, I can only imagine who you are consulting with Mr. Kamp, Enbridge, Cermag group and of course how can you have a good consolation without KinderMorgan. 

“The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity” Quote Tennessee Williams

It is no surprise to me that Cons do not respect scientific facts as many of them believe the world is 6000 years old and Jesus rode around on dinosaurs, so much for science. 

Just as John Diefenbaker destroyed Canada’s Avro Arrow the most advanced fighter aircraft in the world at the time and by doing so set the Canadian aerospace industry back decades, Harper is doing the same thing to all of Canadian science at a time when we should be putting even more money into scientific research and development, to be the first to find the scientific break throughs of the future that hold the promise to bring Canada and the rest of the world out of this financial downward spiral.  

Harper has shown the Canadian people what happens when you put the Fox in charge of the henhouse.

INSANITY

I remember vividly back when I was a young man my family visited friends that lived just off the Barnet Rd, we went down to Burrard inlet just around the corner from Port Moody and it looked normal enough on the surface but I was told to pick up a stone off the beach and was amazed to find the whole underside of the rock was covered with oil, I was told that was a result of an oil spill in the area 20 years before in the late 1930s, I don’t know how big or little the oil spill was as I have tried to find records of the spill and could not, I guess in those days things like that were not even reported. 

The Saskatchewan Minister of the Environment Nancy Heapner has stated that just one litre of oil can pollute up to one million litres of water, 
can you imagine what catastrophic environmental damage 230,000 litres of oil spilled by Enbridge on June 20th can do to the fresh water supply of any area. 

Enbridge alone is responsible for over 800 oil spills, hardly a day goes by that there is not a spill of one kind or other, is this really the legacy that the people of Canada want to leave their children and grand children. 

The much touted jobs the pipeline will bring will for the most part be done by offshore work gangs brought in for substandard wages thanks to bill C-38 and that money will be spent in some other country and the real job potential of this project, the actual refining jobs or adding the value if you will, will be done once again by foreign workers to this precious Canadian un-renewable resource.

The sad legacy the Canadian people will undoubtedly be stuck with will be untold devastation to our land, waterways and all the rest of our economy that provides the vast majority of Canadians with their daily bread and butter, fishing, lumber, mining, tourism etc. etc.. 

All this just to make a few foreign Billionaires into Trillionaires.

Dark Ages

The Conservative quest to remake Canada in their own image, bill C-38 legislation reminds me of the bible story of Abrahams futile search for one righteous person among the Sodomites, in the contemporary version the Canadian people valiantly failed at trying to find 13 righteous Conservative MPs to help defeat this latest regressive, draconian legislation, but sadly duplicating Abraham's experience we couldn’t even find one good or righteous RepubliCon. 
I for one am not surprised as they are without a doubt the worst group of Federal MPs Canadians have ever had the misfortune to not represent them. 
Mr. Kamp claims the sky is not falling the Cons have everything under control. The sad reality is the evidence shows that this government and groups like Enbridge are not only not on the same page as far as the environment is concerned, but are hardly in the same universe, I guess Mr. Kamp never got the memo. 


I feel safer already knowing MPs like Mr. Kamp are all that’s between the environment and big oil. 

Steven Harper Rules with an iron fist and there is not a one of them with the courage to stand up to him.   

Canada is now a dictatorship in every sense of the word with Da Fuhrer Harper firmly in charge of the destiny of Canada, it’s people and the environment. 
Unless something exceptional happens such as the courts declaring the government illegitimate or the Governor General finally doing his job and dissolving parliment, or we can manage to get a general strike across Canada to turf these Neanderthals, Canadians have 3 more years of Harpers drive to turn Canada into a sad ravaged clone of George W. Bushes America, copying every one of Bushes failed, disastrous policys.

I predict that most of Canadian provinces will be NDP by the next Federal election as Canadians try to balance an ultra-rightwing Federal dictatorship with centre left Provincial governments ( with the obvious exception of Alberta of course). 

I also predict that in the next Federal election the Reform-Alliance RepublicCons will suffer the same fate as the people of Sodom and be totally wiped out by an angry, vengeful, rejuvenated, empowered electorate, and Reform-Alliance  will slither back into the wilderness whence they came, with their big fat pensions, never to be heard from again. 

Just have Faith

RE: Changes focus on protection June 14/2012   

It is clear why Mr. Kamp is fine with C-38 and any other legislation Mr. Harper tells him to like, he quite literally sees what he wants to see. No where in my letter did I say more government is better, what I did say is the governments position of less is more is nothing but spin for the politically challenged.

The dictionary definition of budget is “An estimate of income and expenditures for a set period of time” it seems a lot of smarter people than I claim that there are 70 changes to everything from environmental laws, fish habitat, public safety issues, and Canadian employment standards to name a few. 

Maybe Mr. Kamp could explain to me how shutting down environment Canada’s oil spill response staff in BC while at the same time Enbridge plans to move 225 super tankers through 240 Km of the 4th most dangerous waterway in the world, Kinder Morgan also plans to use much larger super tankers at 5 times the present volume almost 1 a day right into beautiful Vancouver harbour and Burrard inlet. 
You don’t have to be a member of Mensa to see that this is irrational, stupid, and extremely dangerous for not only the environment of BC and Canada but the whole economy and well being of BC, and the obvious consequences of this one issue alone is obviously going to cost more not less no matter how you spin it. 

It seems to me that a budget should ultimately be about income and expenditures and according to smarter people than me there is very little of that in this sham legislation, I guess we are just expected to have faith that Steven Harper will all of a sudden become a benevolent Dictator once they pass their ominous legislation.

Sadly seeing the obvious direction the Harper government of Canada has been moving lately with the demonizing and threatening of charities and good Canadian scientists like David Suzuki and anyone else that challenges that direction, even going so far as calling them terrorists.

Mr. Harper's vision of Canada so far looks to be nothing less than the modern version of the Dark Ages for Canadians and their Democracy, the environment and of course the economy as Canada is on the cutting edge of becoming resource poor, where having natural resources becomes a curse instead of a blessing .