A Tale of Two Links

Read this.

Now read this.

Anyone else noticing a disconnect between what the Band claims about its community to the Government and what it says about it on the web?

Famine? Pestilence? In 1877 maybe, but if there is famine and pestilence then how come Edmonton, Calgary, Wetaskiwin, Leduc and Red Deer aren't suffering?

Oil, Gas, farmland? These freaking people should be buying Alberta, not begging for more money from the Government teat.

Cut them off, now... Freedom in our Time

So Many Names For Evil

Pogey, UI, Employment Insurance, Welfare…

I was talking to a friend of mine today. We’ll call him Lloyd.

Lloyd lives in Nova Scotia and after years of faithful service to the Canadian Forces he has moved on, and moved on in a big way.

He owns land (as much as you can in a country without property rights), trains horses, makes tack & saddles, grows blueberries and is a volunteer firefighter. Lloyd’s somewhat schizophrenic industriousness has led him to the point where he needs help. Hired help…

And in a province with an unemployment rate of 7.2%, 1.1% higher than the Canadian average guess what… he can’t find any.

No, it’s not that there is no one who “needs the work”, just that there are no workers. There are wastrels aplenty sitting in Timmies complaining about the government and a “lack of good jobs”, but mention a good, easy job packing blueberries in an air conditioned building for over minimum wage and heads drop, silence reigns and coffee cups seem to have taken on a deeper meaning.

Lloyd, and I are of like mind as to the reason why. It’s the system. The euphemistically named Employment Insurance system, it makes sloth a profitable condition and work a bad word.

The chronic users of the system are little more than junkies, hooked on our tax money, getting high on a life where they only work sporadically, when they must to get their next EI fix, and laziness is its own reward.

We, the people who do work 5/7 (or more) for whatever wage we can, call them the unemployed or if we are particularly dismayed, welfare bums. Lloyd calls them BFI, which stands for Bone Fucking Idle… Lloyd was never given over to the niceties; he’d rather a name a spade than use verbal potpourri to hide the odour of his displeasure.

So, since Lloyd is one of my kind of people, I’m going to make a campaign like promise here in Anti Politics (cuz that’s what I’ve learned from watching those other people, you promise things to the people you like and hope that there are enough of them at the end of the day to get you THE JOB)… I’m going to scrap the whole messy thing.

No pogey, no EI, no UI, no Dole, no free rides.

***HIJACK*** Hmmm… Government free rides. This is an anti-concept. Free for whom? What about it is free? Why do we have the distinct impression that the Government is giving us something? Are they?

No, of course not. Every time you work, the government takes some of your money for EI and innumerable other things that they think are good for you. The only thing that’s free about any of them is that your money is ‘freed’ from your possession and use of it… Oh goodie! ***/HIJACK***

I’m going to scrap it all. Now the socialists peeking out from under their rocks begin screaming on cue;

“What happens when someone looses their job!!!”

Well, had they been paying attention they would see that I’ve said I’ll scrap it all. That means that none of us would be paying into the elaborate shell/con game of EI, and that means that all the money the government would have taken to ensure EI earnings for the person who had lost his job would have been his and his alone…

I suggest then that if he did not use his money effectively and if he did not save for a rainy day, as my mom used to caution, then quite frankly that problem is (as it always should have been) his. It’s a little thing called self-reliance and just like work, it isn’t a dirty word, and we need people willing to use and do a little more of each in their own best interest these days.

Scrap it all… for freedom in our time!

A Short History of the Future

Not SF, but a series of predictions based on what I am seeing today:

Regardless of who is elected President, the United States will undergo internal turbulence which will cause them to take their eyes off the ball. If Senator Obama wins, expect a "tax whiplash" and a real economic meltdown, while if Senator McCain wins, expect paralysis as an obdurate Congress to obstruct him every step of the way. The looming financial difficulties faced by the United States (particularly Social Security and the runaway growth of "entitlements") cannot be addressed by the platforms advocated by either candidate.

Russia and China will move rapidly to fill the power vacuum. Expect them to use a combination of economic muscle and diplomatic hijacking of international fora like the UN and WTO to impose rules to their liking. (Imagine them coming to collect the bill for "Carbon Credits" from Kyoto, for example). Plundering Western treasuries through the guise of "cost sharing measures" for "International projects" is another possibility. They may also cooperate to a greater or lesser degree against the growth of Radical Islam in Central Asia, although their goals will diverge to a certain extent. The EU may well throw in with Russia in order to secure energy supplies and also to deal with unassimilated Islamic populations within Europe (i.e. by providing diplomatic cover and military muscle while the Europeans throw the immigrants out). China will work to secure energy supplies and resources from Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East. Russia and China will have no qualms about imposing a "Roman" peace if that suits their aims.

Longer term, China will have demographic difficulties due to the one child policy (probably starting @ 2020) as large numbers of single men become the biggest demographic. The Chinese are notorious racists, so the idea of Han men intermarrying with other ethnic groups (even non Han Chinese) could be a big issue internally. Mark Styen points out one possible solution; "China could become the first gay superpower since Sparta". More likely a great deal of social and economic turbulance will occur.

Beyond that, Russia will cease to be a "Great Power" in the 2030's, as their demographic crash cuts the population of ethnic Russians in half. The EU will be suffering from the same problem (and so will Canada and Japan, but these are second and third tier powers in the big picture)

So look for a decade of artificially imposed stability by the "Big Two" (or possibly "Big Three" if the EU gets a Mussolini in charge; the set up is a jumbo sized version of the "Fascist Corporate State" and a little ruthless organization might actually make the trains run on time...), followed by turmoil as the demographic rugs get pulled out from under them.

What is less clear is how the United States will fare during this period. It is quite clear they will pull in their horns for part of the time, and the Big Two/Three will certainly see international relations and organizations are tilted to the disadvantage of the Americans. On the other hand, the Americans are very clever and resiliant (from a cultural perspective. The DC Beltway seems to mark a cultural boundary line inside of which the opposite applies), and no doubt the appeal of America will continue as a destination for the clever and ambitious people of the world. As well, the United States does not have either of the demographic issues their competitors have. They also have the unique strength of being an Oceanic power, capable of projecting trade and force on a global scale, something that the other powers lack. India is a potential Oceanic power in the Indian Ocean basin, linkage with the United States should be encouraged and exploited in all areas.

This is hardly the future envisioned by Fukyama in "The End of History", nor the "Road Warrior" future Robert Kaplan portrayed in "The Coming Anarchy".....

I'm not liking this future........

Yes to Politics

Politics, as defined in organizational theory, is a process to allocate limited resources. This definition goes a long way to explaining the huge levels of effort expended by politicians and their lobby groups supporters to gain and maintain hold of the reigns of power; the rewards are the armed power of the State itself to seize, channel and direct wealth and resources towards you and your supporters.

Unless a true revolution like the technological Singularity comes along and relieves us of the need to find or allocate resources, politics will be a part of our lives for the foreseeable future.

Politicians are keen to keep the game under their control, however. The use of electoral "gag laws" to eliminate outside participation or debate in election campaigns comes to mind, as well as the implicit alliance between the MSM and "progressive" political parties to ignore or downplay certain stories.

Given these constraints, it is difficult to imagine that people like you and I can have any influence on events. I would like to suggest otherwise. The first level of government and the one that has the most impact on your day to day lives is the Municipal government, and groups are springing up to take on local politicians and hold them to account. In Ontario, some of the groups include:

The Toronto Party

Eye on Ottawa 

Forest City Institute

Winsdsor Association of Concerned Taxpayers

While most of these groups are small, the fact that we as a people are now able to harness the power of the Internet to find like minded citizens, do research, and spread our message through both old and new media suggests that the rules of the game are indeed changing, and changing to the advantage of the citizen. The true breakthrough will occur when these groups (ant their counterparts across Canada and around the world) achieve enough critical mass to actively influence the debate on issues. (I happen to know this is true, since the Forest City Institute made a submission to the Finance Committee an the Health Tax; a submission reported in the Globe and Mail,(behind firewall) but not the London Free Press, which is the home newspaper of the FCI.

For you, the reader, look for groups like this in your home town (or found one if none exists). Get involved in the political process, since it is your scarce resources that the political class seeks to allocate. Oh, and please let us know about these groups in your area. Send links through the comments section and share with everyone. A political revolution is possible by harnessing the power of the Internet and joining forces against the political class and their status quo. 

Get involved; say "Yes" to politics.

Cake Eaters

Let there be no question what this is all about. The reason this is an open letter is to encourage what I will call the Cake Eaters who wish to “have their cake and eat it too”.

The Cake Eaters are those appeasers who see no conflict between on one hand supporting the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and simultaneously call for us to abandon Afghans to a brutal theocratic dictatorship that executes women for being raped or stones homosexuals to death. Cake eaters are the useful idiots who though honestly saddened by our military losses call to bring the boys home, and blank out the reasons for the deployment and the end state of such a withdrawal, namely an Afghanistan ruled by terror and by terrorists. They are the 5^th columnists, media whores to whom the phrase “If it bleeds, it leads” is a mantra and the so called experts who, armed with a degree and some limited facts use this pedestrian knowledge to maximize their political power and capitalize with media face time.

This letter (an ultimatum to the weak) is specifically designed to extol the efforts of the cake eaters. With the Taliban facing a troop surge, and becoming less and less effective they have switched tactics like besieged politicians the world over and turned from taking action in war to waging war through the media.

The attack on aid workers was a three pronged attack. It was designed to terrorize the aid workers, to restrict the aid getting to the poor, thus allowing the Taliban to then claim that the West doesn’t care about Afghans and finally it was used to stir the cake eaters into a frenzy of horror, righteous indignation and useless pontification.

I will not go more into the reasons for the attack, the purpose of this post is to expose the Cake Eaters.

By the way, for those that would disagree that the Media cake eaters act as a 5^th column here in Canada I would draw your attention to the last paragraph of the article…

“It happened about two weeks after Canadian troops accidentally shot two children to death in the Panjwaii district of Kandahar, fearing the vehicle they were riding in was going to attack them.”

What does this tragedy have to do with the Taliban ultimatum? Nothing.

What is the parallel the writer wants to draw? That Taliban kill innocents but Canadians do to. (This isn’t a case of tit for tat, the Taliban are too weak and scared to attack soldiers that fight back, every time they do they DIE.)

What is the salient point that we are supposed to forget? That the Taliban TARGET innocents but that Canadians do their best, each and every time to avoid such accidents.

Cake Eaters… Watch out for them.

Freedom In Our Time

This series of posts is a direct response to not only the sad state of politics in Canada but also the sad state of the State of Canada. The sorry excuse for freedom in Canada stems (as all the problems of nations do) from the documents on which it is founded.

Therefore my first, and the most important step on the path to true freedom for all Canadians is the vivisection, destruction and abolition of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

First off, let’s look at the premises implicit in the name of that wrong headed document.

The "Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms"… Were the creators of this document trying to tell us that Rights and Freedoms are separate issues? Is it possible to have one without the other? Can one experience freedom without having rights or only having some rights? Or could rights somehow be respected by a tyrannical state in which freedom is restrained? The answer to each question is of course an emphatic NO.

When, as in the CCRF we talk of freedoms and equate them with rights we are buying into the modern liberal package-deal that says the freedoms we have and enjoy are of equal value to our rights. As a matter of fact if you look up “fundamental rights” you get a list of rights including such things as “the right to marry”, or “the right to procreate”. Obviously we (globally) have lost sight of what true rights are.

There are really only 3 universal human rights. They are the right to life, the right to liberty and the right to property.

You might notice that the right to pursue happiness is not listed, with all deference to the framers of the Constitution of the United States that is really not a right but a condition achievable only through the full and useful exercise of ones rights.

Similarly equality is not among the rights, not because it is not desirable with regard to equality of race and sex, but because these conditions too are implicit within the rights to life, liberty and property, and the elevation of equality to the status of a right leads to tyranny wherein all real rights are lost, for which 90 years of Russian Communism provides an excellent example.

So what do these rights mean…

Life is the unassailable right for each and every man to live, to take all the actions necessary to support, further and fulfil that life. Implicit within this right is the commandment that no man may initiate the use of force against another.

Liberty is the undeniable fact that all men are guaranteed unrestrained action to live their lives as they see fit. Before anyone raises the red herring of the possibility of a sadistic raping, murdering hedonist, I will direct you to reread the preceding paragraph on the right to life…

Property is the acknowledgement that a man owns, lock stock and barrel all the products of his mind, labour and any acquired property achieved through the efforts of his mind and labour.

These three rights make all of our freedoms possible. There can be no freedom to procreate without the right to life, no equality is possible without the right to liberty and no freedom of expression can be exercised without the right to property.

I encourage you to read the CCRF. Read it with the real rights in mind, read it with a puritanical zeal and tell me if any of thee fabricated pseudo-rights contained in the Charter are not implicit within the real rights.

Now look at the high-minded freedoms contained in the document, the question that comes to mind aught to be, well, why do we bother? Why do we bother to list a string of arbitrary freedoms when all freedom is explicitly contained in three small, concise rights.

Food for thought.

On the whole the CCRF is inconsistent, scatter brained and overworked. It has been misled by the progressive political philosophy that made it, but were it only for that, there might be reason and will to rebuild it, but that is not the case, for there are a couple of truly evil inclusions within it, snuck in under the guise of historical acts of contrition.

I draw your attention to the section entitled “Affirmative Action Programs” in regard to Equality rights which states…

“(2) Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.”

Subsection (1) reads…

“(1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.”

Think about it…

This deals with so called equality rights, which as I have illustrated earlier really pertains to the real right of Liberty. Subsection 2 of our right to equality (liberty) is a perversion of the entire concept of rights. Rights by their definition are not capricious; they can not be taken away, renounced or excepted. The millisecond someone, anyone dismisses a right you no longer have any rights.

There can be no valid reason for the dismissal of inalienable rights. The fact that Natives, the disabled, homosexuals, women, Jews, Japanese or geriatrics in this country were treated unfairly in our history is no excuse for totalitarianism.

My rights, everyone’s rights are permanent, unassailable and can not ever be mortgaged off to buy forgiveness for historical, ethnic, cultural, religious or sexual misdeeds occurring now, in history or in the future.

The abomination of manufactured rights, conflicting premises and illiberal progressive doctrine that is the CCRF must be abolished.

Not being one to just harp on a problem, I offer a solution…

The Canadian Charter of Rights.

Canada affirms the following fundamental rights;

• Right to Life – Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. No government shall deny, set down or offer implicit support to any means, method, or moral code by which any person may live, make or rule his own life.

• Right to Liberty – All men are guaranteed the freedom to take all the actions required for the support, the furtherance, the fulfilment and the enjoyment of his own life. The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any person, against his will, is to prevent the initiation of force against others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant for the use of force. Government shall not initiate force against the individual, and shall not use force against the individual except as prescribed by law in order to protect the rights of others against the initiation of force.

• Right to Property - The right of property is among the most important fundamental individual rights and the one which, united with that of personal liberty, has contributed more to the growth of civilization than any other institution established by the human race. Every man is the owner in deed and action of all the products of his mind and labour. Personal property once acquired can not be appropriated by force by any person or government except when said government seizes it according to law as punishment for violation of rights.

Here’s wishing us all… Freedom In Our Time

Sorry... I'm Not Sorry.

I’m not going to apologize for the ancient actions of long dead politicians or say I’m sorry on behalf of the nation for anything that our national ancestors did or didn’t do. Not now, not in a park, in the House of Commons or ever.

Canada is a country and its actions are a direct product of the beliefs, prejudices and insecurities held by the society and its norms at any single point in time. As times change so does the nation. One could easily draw a correlation between the death of a person and the death of societal ideals and norms. That is the substance of this issue.

The Canada that denied women suffrage, that attempted the cultural destruction of native peoples, that exercised discriminative immigration and naturalization, that imprisoned Japanese Canadians in their own country, that Canada is as dead as the people than approved, instituted, and carried out those chauvinistic, racist and xenophobic programs.

To all of those who for whatever reason want apologies, who want to see weak kneed historical hand wringing... grow up!

Get over your historical self-pity and insecurities and get on with your life in the here and now. Make use of every freedom and opportunity that Canada offers and live the kind of life that you want in this great country of ours.

Anti-politics

Well, I’ve decided to throw my hat into the ring…

I’m entering into politics.

No, I’m not actually going to run for office I’m going to participate in the next best thing as any Canadian can tell you… I’m going to bitch about it from the sidelines.

In the coming months I’m going to develop my platform, the same way as the other politicians do, through keeping a keen eye on the topics du jour, a savvy read of the countries mass media and of course by watching the opposition, namely him and him. After all who really cares about him and her anyway?

If you’re expecting apologies for historic mistakes, cow towing to dubious theories, vacillation on and befuddlement of the issues look elsewhere.

Welcome to Anti-politics.

Ezra Wins A Victory

Of sorts...

This more than anything exposes the Human "Rights" Commissions for the capricious, malicious and malevolent group of petty apparactchik that they really are.

Like a bully that's had his nose bloodied by one of the little guy's he's been picking on the HRC's have run away in fear, but now isn't the time for us "Freespeechers" to pick up our books. Now is the time to chase the bastards down and finish giving them the thrashing they so richly deserve.

Fire. Them. All.

Wisdom condensed to one line

Rather than a long meditation, here is a one liner which explains the mindset of our "progressive" friends and their dictatorial role models world-wide:

Free speech? Next thing you know everyone will want free will.

Who pays; who controls?

While some readers might have wondered about my long absence from Uncommon Sense, rest assured that I have been busy at work and on personal matters (like improving my house!). Things should be settled come the fall.

This post is based on the well known but interesting observation that the bulk of tax revenues are paid by a minority of the wealthiest citizens. While the data here is from the United States, similar results should be found in Canadian data.

If 52% of the electorate can effectively control the wealth of the remaining 48%, what possible incentive will they have to elect responsible representatives or support policies that encourage wealth creation, protect private property or even support the Rule of Law (being able to expropriate private property is a favorite practice of socialist city councils, and the Kelo descision has very far reaching implications)?

It was for a very good reason that Aristotle looked down on Democracy as mob rule, and the Founding Fathers of the United States also had the examples of the "Social Wars" that brought down the Res Publica Roma and the excess of the French revolution to guide them. It should be noted that the franchise in the infant United States was only granted to men of property (Timocacy) to prevent mob rule and protect the property rights of citizens.

How to reverse this situation today is not at all clear. People like the idea of getting something for free, without considering where the "free" came from. For those who do, Socialists of all stripes will invoke class warfare, suggesting the wealth is somehow stolen, and really belongs to the correct class, ethnic group, nationality etc.

The only fact in the article that provides a slim ray of hope is the ratio in the United States is still very close to the 50/50 mark, and a little economic tweaking might push the wealth generating fraction back into the majority. Even in the current situation, the greater powers of organization and initiative displayed by the wealth earning fraction of the population might still be enough to retain control of the machinery of government long enough to do the tweaking on their own.

Of course, the solution of last resort might simply be to go on strike, as eaders of "Atlas Shrugged" know...

SOTCA

And the Lord said "Let there be Octane!"
I'm going to skip the middleman and just pray that my car doesn't use the gasoline already in its tank.

What would they do if the Farmers went on strike?


I always thought that business led to employment, which led to stability, which led to less crime, which led to less violence. Meh, what do I know. Toronto City Council (the centre, of the centre of the uselessverse, um, er... I mean universe) obviously knows better. Because as we all know, the scumbag murderers responsible for this, shop and practise locally.

Blessed is Sarcasm, Yea Verily it Speaks Truth!

Wait till Buzz sees these, he'll have some of the boys blockade the Internet!

SOTCA

Never mind human rights violations, torture, executions, mass murder, extremist jihadists or totalitarianism... That little old lady in Windsor Castle is the real concern.

Eliminating freedom and prosperity, one industry at a time.

Filed under "credible source"; Seriously, anyone paying attention to our casualty rate in Afghanistan or to the effectiveness of the Taliban resistance knows that this is the Taliban begging for their lives from the bottoms of their little rat caves. The Mujahideen these losers are not.

Google Couillard, now tell me we'd still be paying attention to this crap if she looked like this.

"Mr. Poilievre also suggested aboriginals need to work harder rather than receive more money." The first casualty of politics is truth.

And Canada's status as a totalitarian banana munching state without free speech, castrated by corrupt star chambers, fed by pompous petty bureaucrats who have never really fought for a right in their lives grows... Fire. Them. All.

Fire. Them. All.

Thank you Ezra.

H/T SDA & No Libs

The National Post Gets It...

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

The article is one of those equivocation pieces the main stream media is so fond of, and in true style it paints a picture of modern (Canadian) man as a petty, selfish immoral brute that needs to be told what can and can not be said.

That mentality drags us all back to the darkest Dickinsonian days of the industrial revolution, where abuse, exploitation and racism abounded. But is that the kind of world we live in today? Are the majority of Canadians predisposed to racism and hatred? It’s a basic question, are we moral creatures or are we just animals with utensils?

I can tell you how some would like us to answer those questions, for it has long been the joy of traditional media to cast humanity in the worst light. To twist our society into a caricature where one is either an oppressor or a victim, with a dash of “Yes Veronica there is a Santa Claus” thrown in for stark contrast.

This perversion has been accepted over time by populations and governments. It has led us to the garden path we are on, strewn with fabricated rights like potted plants, for because we are so evil and so predisposed to harm, abuse and degrade other men we must be constrained against ourselves.

We can’t rely on human nature because human nature is weak and evil.

We can’t appeal to compassion because we are only animals incapable of caring.

In truth, it is possible to look at our society and see all of that, but the premise is incorrect.

The reason we see our society in decline is because of these potted plant rights. Because of them we can’t rely on hundreds of years of liberal thought and the few basic and true rights like liberty, equality and property because the fabricated rights we’ve created have weakened those inalienable rights and rendered them impotent.

With every new right, with every caveat included in our national laws we weaken our liberty. And those fabricated rights, incapable of sustaining themselves need to be watered and nurtured by fabricated bureaucracies who’s sole purpose is to ensure that the fabrication is given due consideration. And having precious little to do these bureaucracies seek to ensure their survival by perverting the weakness that they themselves have created in our society. Soon the garden path is a jungle, a jungle in need of a clear cutting.

There is not one, single solitary complaint brought to the CHRC that could not have been resolved with pre-existing law.

Ernst Zundel didn’t need to be tried in a kangaroo court, he needed to have the full weight of existing law rallied against him. Furthermore he needed to face the honest and righteous wrath of ordinary Canadians, he needed to be ostracized, to be loathed, and held up to contempt by every honourable, moral Canadian. And what is more is that we Canadians needed to do it. We needed to stand up as individuals and as a society to be counted, to counter the idea that we don’t care, that we are immoral and that we need to be prodded to act.

We don’t need the CHRC we need freedom of speech, freedom to speak in unvarnished, blunt and forthright language. We need to speak up and out for our society against racism, against intolerance against fanaticism and against all those who would seek to silence such speech.

As Ezra Levant has said time and again “Fire them all”

Connecting the Debt

The numbers from this old article are impressive.

"The accumulated surplus over that time has been more than $60 billion. The actual surplus's for the last seven years have been:

• 2003/04 $9.1B
• 2002/03 $7B
  
• 2001/02 $8.9B
  
• 2000/01 $18.1B
  
• 1999/00 $12.7B
  
• 1998/99 $3.1B
  
• 1997/98 $3.8B"
  

But what caused me to dredge it up was this article.

"A group of labour unions from Quebec, backed by the Canadian Labour Congress wants the high court to set things right by belatedly declaring the diversion unconstitutional - and ordering Ottawa to return $54 billion to the EI account.

The money represents the surplus accumulated by the EI program since 1986, when legislation brought in by Jean Chretien's government tightened the eligibility rules for jobless payments."

Some simple math exposes the suspicious thread my brain has traced, and puts the lie to Liberal debt reduction.

60 billion - 54 billion = 6 billion

In 7 years, while the Federal Liberal government claimed to have repaid that 60 billion, they had really just reallocated (stolen) 54 billion from the EI account.

Two things leap out at me.

1. If 54 billion can be taken out and the program can still function at full capacity we are obviously paying way too much in EI premiums.
2. That the government's unrestrained ability to steal our money in taxes, do with it whatever they please, and then lie to us about how it is used is a crock!

Shotgun

Because you just know you’re going to hit something…

If you won’t write it down, it isn’t worth the paper it’s not written on.

Nuclear Theft!

Because nothing says you’re sorry for something done before you were even born like 2.5 million in grants. Well at least it’s not a cheap vote buying scheme…

No honour among thieves, or socialists for that matter. Hey Dalton, keep right on spending and talk of Ontario as a have not province will be a self fulfilling prophecy. What a fricken doughhead…

Maybe if we weren’t sending the aid, maybe if the world ostracized the entire country, maybe if we made it abundantly clear that no one would get any help till the Junta stood down then the Burmese people would rise up en mass and kill their oppressors. Until then we are just feeding the regime.

So we can all stop watching the paint dry now? Thank you, thank you, than you…

Words of wisdom

"Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are those who want crops without plowing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. Power never concedes anything without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both."

Frederic Douglas

Wise words from one of the leaders of the Abolitionist movement leading up to the American Civil War. Canadians seem particularly prone to quietly submitting, to our great cost........

We'll either die free or we die trying.

A flat tax for Canada. It's your call

Canadians have once again undergone the ritual of sending in their tax returns, a yearly event greeted with all the enthusiasm of going to the dentist for a root canal. At least a root canal has some direct benefit to the patient, while it is often difficult to determine just what or how the various programs, credits and exemptions the government provides benefit the average taxpayer. The fact that a family which relies on employment income and has few or no investment vehicles needs to fill in a form with hundreds of lines of input is mind boggling in the extreme; if the average family is unable to fill in a tax return without professional help, how much more time and effort is needed by the self employed taxpayer, the small business owner or the person with somewhat above normal ambition who has small investments supposed to cope?

The direct costs to this madness are estimated to be about 3.9 billion dollars to the Canadian economy. Indirect costs from lost productivity and efforts to shelter income from taxation are impossible to calculate with any accuracy, but the reader can imagine it must be at least in the same ballpark. This almost 8 billion dollar hit to the economy in direct and indirect costs is the resources to create almost 160,000 full time jobs.

The Fraser Institute has commented on this for many years, the Toronto Sun recently published a piece, the Guelph Mercury and now the Montreal Gazette have also published interesting articles commenting on the issue. It is about time that you called, wrote or emailed your Member of Parliament and MPP about this issue as well. A simplified flat tax can collect the same amount of revenue as the current system with all its distortions and complexity, while freeing enough economic resources into the productive economy to employ an entire town's worth of Canadians. That is something worth fighting for.