Red Herring

Re: Unions made world a better place MR Times April 18/2013

Paddy you are right on the money, Mr. Robson claims that “Unions could soon bankrupt BC”, god what a crock, it is unions that have given Canadian workers all the benefit's union and non-union workers take for granted, or to be more correct what we used to take for granted, the unions were even responsible for all the highly skilled apprentice and journeyman trades people Canada used to be blessed with, unlike the present situation where they have to bring in foreign workers because we supposedly do not have qualified people to do them, yes unions fought for those benefits and skills and a living wage but everyone ended up benefiting from and getting them in the end, now that the unions have been systematically busted and marginalized by the Federal and Provincial governments those hard fought benefits and wages are rapidly disappearing. 

Unions are a necessary advocate or lobby if you will, for the worker’s, the very entity that attempts to ensure labour gets it’s fair share of the GDP or meaningful employment, they quite simply make Capitalism work for the workers. 

But enough about something that unless you live in a cave thousands of miles from civilization everybody should already know, the reality as Mr. Robson well knows is it is not the unions bringing the world including BC to it’s knees it is to big to fail corporations, bank’s and CEO’s who make more by lunch on January 1 than most workers make all year, the insatiable greed of the one percent who are literally sucking the well dry, killing the golden goose. 

The citizens of BC now pay more for just MSP than all the corporations that use our infrastructure, roads, bridges all the services and utilities our taxes pay for, for literally nothing, not to mention the depletion of our rich renewable and non-renuable resources they get for a pittance, well below world market prices. 

Canadian's then get to watch these robber baron companies bring cheap wage foreign national workers in to even do the labour to extract these precious resources or simply outsource those Canadian jobs, they then take their ill gotten tax free gains and put them in a offshore tax shelter out of reach of Canadians never to be seen again, therefore also depriving Canada of any multiplier affect from the exploitation of our valuable resources, and of course the wages are all sent home to China. 

After the resources are all gone what will Canadians and their children have to show for this obscene orgy of destructive exploitation, nothing but a environmental nightmare a Canada stripped of it’s natural resources and an environmental nightmare that we will have to clean up at our expense or more likely just try to live amongst the toxic devastation this insanity has produced and our children will wonder what were we thinking, and how did we let it go so wrong. 

The powers that be have refined the exploitation process to the point that they have even figured out how to take the trickle out of the mythical trickle down affect.

If Mr. Robson and the rest of the chosen few get their way Canada and the whole rest of the world will be nothing more than a giant third world with the chosen few filthy rich and the filthy poor with no middle class to speak of,

Mr. Robson’s Brave New World really does not look so much new but more 18th century.

Quote We must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labor that is available from the natives of the colonies. The colonies would also provide a dumping ground for the surplus goods produced in our factories. 

Cecil Rhodes 

Slippery slope

So Mr. Kamp and his master once again is riding to the rescue of the Canadian people and protecting our hard earned savings. He claims Canadian banks are the strongest in the world, which from what I have witnessed over the last few years is not saying a hell of a lot even if it were true, hard to tell what is true with this crowd. Canadians were told that Canadian banks were not bailed out in 2008-9 but it would seem CMHC which last time I looked was a government funded entity had bought $114 billion of Canadian banks tainted if not toxic mortgage debt which translates to $3,400 for every Canadian man, woman, child, but apparently is not a bailout. 

The Conservatives unashamedly take credit for Canadian banks not taking as big a hit as other world banks but the fact is that even as a minority government Harper pressed mostly unsuccessfully to deregulate Canadian banks but after getting their majority, succeeded in deregulating much of banking, in his first budget Harper’s finance minister, Jim Flaherty invited NEW PLAYER'S that is, U.S. financial corporations (unregulated) into Canada’s mortgage insurance market and doubled the amount of government money available to back up private insurers from $100 billion to $200 billion. Harper has also asked that companies be given WTO enforceable right to trade in derivatives or what Warren Buffet called “financial weapons of mass destruction”. The CONservatives are fervent champions of “financial innovation" and those are two words that according to Paul Krugman "should henceforth strike terror into the hearts of investors". 
In spite of the obvious direction these disastrous polices were taking America and the rest of the world Harper doggedly continued to push the envelope on deregulation both domestically and internationally, despite the catastrophic cautionary tales that were unfolding around the world.

Once again Mr. Kamps apparent argument is, I know that you believe you understand what you think you read but I’m not sure you realize that what you read is not what we mean. 

The fact is that at the very least this legislation will mean that the banks shall if the same ongoing gambling habit that caused the 2008 and Cypress crashes causes yet another banking crisis, Canadian bank’s will be legally able to turn your precious saving, bonds, stocks, whatever into what are basically bank shares or what amount to worthless derivatives or bank shares with no apparent assets other than your confiscated moneys.

Maybe it would be a good idea to stop this destructive ride down this slippery slope to financial ruin, instead of the further enabling of a bad behaviour due to bad policy.

Medical Conundrum

I just received an E-mail from Mr. Doug Bing the BC Liberal candidate for Maple Ridge Pitt Meadows that claims, Quote “ you don’t know what you are talking about, we have one of the best health care systems in the entire world” unquote, well Mr. Bing either you are a victim of actually believing the multi-millions of dollars of lies and propaganda we are bombarded with everyday paid for by our hard earned tax money by your BC Liberal comrades or your idea of what we should be receiving from our MSP and health care dollars is a lot different than mine.

Did you ever wonder how the BC Medical system arrived at this present sorry state, for example I have waited for 76 weeks for a hernia operation, many people wait up to 3 years, how is this possible don’t we pay enough for adequate heath care in BC the figures say otherwise Canadians pay $3895 for MSP coverage and according to the World Health Organization Canada is ranked #30th in the world as far as quality of health care, France pays $3601and has literally no wait times for surgery and is ranked # one in the world, how is that possible the average age of the French is 39.4 years old to Canada’s 39.9 which is comparable but even though Canadian's pay more for heath care France has 3.5 doctors per 1000 people compared to Canada’s 2.1 per 1000, which put’s France at #25 in the world as per doctors per 1000 people compared to Canada at #58. 

As far as I don’t know what I am talking about  the fact is most hospitals in BC have at least one aspect of care in the critical category. 
The Liberals have overseen the squandering of multi-millions of precious health care dollars, everything from the poorly conceived, ill fated NEW ERA, to the disastrous and illegal union and contract busting of public sector health care workers which inevitably led to nothing more than costly spinning of wheels to deadly ideological mistakes such as privatizing hospital cleaning that has been the direct cause of at least 84 deaths and counting, doctors refusing to operate because of unsanitary O.R. conditions and much anger and frustration with the nurses and other health care professionals.
The senseless shutting down of hospitals such as St Mary’s that has put extreme pressure on other facilities, the fact is BC has 4 out of the 8 worst hospitals in Canada with the lowest or D rating and our Maple Ridge Hospital is one of them, and not one BC hospital rated A+ the highest grade, and it is something to brag about by Mr. Bing and his BC Liberal colleges. 
MSP and the Maximus fiasco is a whole other medical and security nightmare but overall I think it goes to say that everyone is entitled to an opinion but not his own facts. 

Canada is using one of the most expensive un-inclusive health care system systems in the world as it’s model, Americas privatized system which is a dismal #38th in the world and still doesn’t cover everyone. 
Why would Canada copy an inferior system, other than to please some very big US corporations?

Well if we look back to where it all seems to have all gone wrong BC surgery wait times doubled from the late 1990s to 2006 and the BC Liberal's doubled MSP premiums from 2001 to 2006. BC and Alberta are the only provinces in Canada that have this regressive tax that you and I pay the same as a multi-millionaire. You might also wonder where this money goes, you would expect it would go to pay for health care right, wrong it goes into general revenue to pay for the government advertising propaganda you see every minute of every day telling us what a great job they are doing and of course their raises and let’s not forget India film festivals and other BC Liberal high priority expenses.  

Some of the obvious reasons for these obscene wait times defy explanation doctors are only allowed one day a week in the O.R. and they can not operate after 3:30 and if the last operation at say 2:30 will take more than an hour it is canceled which happened to me just last month, is it any wonder there are extensive waiting lists. 

You might ask yourself why the medical system has deteriorated so rapidly under the BC Liberal's, it really doesn’t make any sense unless you bring the whole underlying BC Liberal ideology into this sad picture their whole purpose so far has been to privatize everything they touch whether it make sense or is cost effective or not, and if they can stress the health care system to the breaking point they think we will let them privatize it out of desperation.

The answer to this problem is to throw this disaster of a  government that not only doesn’t believe in government at all, but it’s only vision for BC is privatizing all profits and socializing all costs, they are only interested in breaking every government function and bankrupting Crown corporations so they can justify selling it off to their friends for pennies on the dollar, do the people of BC really want BC Hydro privatized, or the BC Liquor, or how about the Public medical system, etc etc.

The obvious solution to this disastrous race to the bottom is to throw these radical incompetents out of power while we still have public health care and what is left of the legacy of our mothers and fathers built and let a government like the NDP that actually believes in government fix a severely crippled public health care system as well as other stressed government functions into something we can once again count on and be proud of.  

Let them Fail

Once again the 99 percent are being forced to pay for the illegal predatory banking practices of yet another one of the British banking cartel countries, Cypress which is one part of a group of completely unregulated banks that have been at the epicentre of all of the big bank trading disasters that come out of London and it’s satellite partners in corruption   ( Cypress, Gibraltar, etc ) that flourishes by the rule “we won’t steal your money, but we won’t make a fuss if you steal other people’s". 
These banks are used by the so called hot money people, third world dictators, corrupt stock market executives, oil sheiks, drug lords pumping billions of clean, questionable, dirty money, blood money into what as we have just witnessed illegal drug money being laundered by these outlaw bankers. (drug money $800 million, no charges, no jail, small fine, just the cost of doing business) in the ultimate tax and legal haven, the square mile in London which is in principal just like the Vatican in Italy, they pay up to $214 million for a residence there, where they have their own laws and regulations or more to the point no laws or regulations, which puts them above the law and makes them pretty well untouchable and as in America, Cypress, Greece, Iceland, etc etc when their scams go bad as they often do they come to the 99 percent to bail them out. 

The whole premise of too big to fail is a flawed, failed economic policy which I am sure has Adam Smith rolling over in his grave, back when America was at it's strongest the opposite was true when companies got to big they were considered a threat to free enterprise, a monopoly if you will, companies like Standard oil or ATT were broken up into half a dozen smaller companies which created competition as well as a strong dynamic economy and as it turned out each of those companies and their employees grew and prospered.

The sooner these criminal “To Big To Fail Banks" are put out of business the sooner the worlds economy will stabilize, they are not to big to fail, they are to corrupt and disruptive for us to tolerate their existence.

Hypocrite of the highest order

WOW talk about cognitive dissonance, does Steven Harper even know what democracy means, he insults Hugo Chavez for being a dictator  when the reality is the man won four elections fairly with as much as 80 percent of the vote which is certainly a lot more than Harper can claim, then he trashes Venezuela for being a socialist country, WOW can you say hypocrisy, this is a man that is joining Canada at the hip for at least the next 30 years with a brutal communist dictatorship. 

Just when you think Harper couldn’t possibly embarrass Canada any more than he has already has Harper manages to pull something even more bizarre out of the dark recesses of his mind to trump his last public relations nightmare, not to mention the fact that it is just plain embarrassing for me personally, but most Canadians. 

Maximum Incompetance

BC auditor general John Doyle say’s that the outsourcing administration of the MSP and PharmaCare to a U.S. based company Maximus has failed to bring expected benefits. 

From my experience with MSP I would say that is an major understatement, back in April I transferred my wifes and my MSP account from my pension account to my wife's account, at the end of the month I received a two page letter telling me that my account was overdue and if I didn’t pay the outstanding debt it would be turned over to a collection agency for collection, I phoned my wife's company to see if they were paying our MSP payments and they assured me they were, I then attempted to contact MSP and when I finally was able to talk to someone and explained that the money was now coming from my wife's account I was yelled at and told I had to pay and what credit card would I put the outstanding amount on, I told her that there was no way I would pay double. Every month I got new threats and demands of the alleged accumulating debt, I tried two more times to communicate with MSP employees with nothing more than shit and abuse for my efforts, here it was October and the threatening letters just kept coming so finally I phoned my wife's pension administers just to make sure our bill was being paid and was assured that they were making payments, the lady also explained that MSP was normally 5-6 months behind and there was two companies involved neither one of which had a clue what the other was doing, I told her I was going to get my MLA involved as my account had been turned over to a collection agency and I had had it with this wasteful stupidity. The lady asked me to give her a chance to clear this mess up and sure enough she phoned and said it was all fixed up, not to worry at least till the end of the month when guess what showed up in my mail box again another threatening letter, I went over to my MLA Michael Sather and showed him what was happening, this is what it took to solve this seemingly simple problem that one simple phone call back in April should have done the trick, but instead it took 7 months and a phone call from my MLA Mr. Sather to the Minister of Finance, and the letters finally stopped. 

What a waste I don’t know what this boondoggle cost in office costs and peoples time, not to mention bad feelings and outright anger but it is hard to imagine a more incompetent system in this day and age, no wonder MSP costs continually keep escalating and service keeps deteriorating.

The Security problem alone is enough to get out of this absolute inappropriate bad deal on every level, as far as I can tell the American Patriate act insures that all American law enforcement and intelligence agencies have access to all BC citizens health records which is to  me totally unacceptable.

You might say Maximus is the poster child for incompetence and inappropriate failed privatization.

INSANITY

There is a wind of change in the world today the voice of the one percent has started to change it’s tune, for instance one of the main villains in climate denial and architect of many ecologically destructive polices in the world, the International Monetary Funds managing director Christine Lagarde just described climate change as quote “the greatest economic challenge of the 21st century” she also said Quote "unless we take action on climate change, future generations will be roasted, toasted, fried and grilled”. 
This is not Greenpeace or Al Gore speaking but the head of the International Monetary Fund probably one of the most conservative organizations in the world. 

Then you have Jim Yong Kim new President of the World Bank also urging urgent climate action stating Quote "what are we waiting for? We need to get serious fast. The planet our home can’t wait.” you can add to that list past U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu and outgoing U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and the Bretton Woods Institution have all lined up behind the U.S. President to demand climate action.

On the flip side our Conservative Prime Minister Harper sees thing a lot different he ignores a report from the Pembna Institute that says Canada is falling behind the rest of the world in green climate technology and the report estimates that Canada has the potential to build a $60 billion clean tech sector by 2020 and a warning that failure to act could condemn us to an unliveable world.

The Dear Leader Harper has committed Canada’s whole future on the peddling of dirty oil without any thought to the consequences of that path for Canada and Canadians and ultimately the world, the damage to Canada’s environment, the health of it’s people and the majority of Canada’s economy that most of us depend on for our livelihoods, not to mention the dangerous position this action put’s Canada in as far as the rest of the world is concerned, not only that but setting in stone Canada’s direction for at least the next three decades no matter the consequences of this narrow vision. 

Can you envision the rest of the world in the next decade never mind 3 decades cracking down and getting serious about global warming, I can see world boycotts on Canadian products and resources, maybe even sanctions, it is not that hard to see, we are already feeling the heat, our politicians not welcome on the world stage or at the table as far as global warming and our politicians not even welcome at global affairs, we don’t even rate a seat on the U.N. anymore.

Harper doesn’t seem capable or willing to rethink Canada’s direction in light of this reality, I suppose you have to expect that when you elect a provincial government (Alberta) to be a Federal government, sort of like electing the PQ party to be the Federal government of Canada, no doubt a recipe for failure for all of Canada.