Storm.

The Profit Motive

As soon as you allow government to immerse itself in the provision of services for which people are normally paid, or in which businesses or individuals have a vested interest then you have a recipe for corruption, nepotism and cronyism.

A case in point.

The thing is, the only reason that the hiring of these companies was a crime, the only reason why there has to be this air of transparency is because the Government is involved.

Why this is a problem is because the Government forces you to pay and since it steals your money it wants to assure you through the tendering of contracts or some other mechanism that it isn't going to their friends... at least the ones that don't deserve it. It's all done to assure you that your money isn't being stolen twice.

The reason why I say this is the only reason, is because if you voluntarily called a private company providing the same service, as long as you received those services you wouldn't care if the Doctor or Nurse advising you was related to the company owner would you?

I'm sure that there will be an inquiry into this affair. I'm sure it will cost us (you and I, the taxpayers) a lot of money and I'm equally sure there will be recommendations and reports and news stories and on and on and on and on.

You know what else I'm sure about, that Telehealth Ontario is a pitiful attempt by the government to provide "healthcare".

As costs soar our collective dollars are worth less and less so our level of healthcare is reduced. They take our money and try to pass off a 1-800 number as an innovation in healthcare while people wait months for knee and hip surgery. "Don't go to the emergency room, don't go to the clinic, call this 1-800 number and get medical advice over the phone!" Sounds like a really good idea... Riiiiiiiight..

I'm also sure that if there was such a thing as market competition in the medical field in Canada our costs would be going down... Competition does that, and you know what else, if there was market competition and someone wanted to set up a "Telehealth Business" we wouldn't be left paying for a "commission of inquiry" every time the Owner contracted his buddy to work as a consultant.

Business and Government...

Separate them NOW!

Obama's Smackdown

Thank you Anne Wortham.

H/T mpt's Web Site

Perpetual Peasants

We Canadian peasants aren't saving enough for our retirement according to this article. Okay, this is news. The people should know and be warned, perhaps they will strive to put more money away.

Yeah... You know that is not the way the author or the talking heads are going to react on this though.

What is the first conclusion our 'White Knights' in government suggest? Is it that Canadians should be warned that they have to do more or they will not have sufficient funds to carry them through retirement? Um, no.

Is it a call to personal action and personal responsibility? Don't be ridiculous.

"Stand back Peasants!"
"I, Government the Good will do all the hard work for you..."

“More and more people are going to start realizing they don't have enough savings,” Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan predicted.

He and his provincial counterparts joined federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty last week in launching a sweeping reappraisal of retirement savings – one that's set to spark a heated debate about whether to expand the Canada Pension Plan or create some other supplemental scheme."

Yup. The first action of government, any government in Canada these days seems to be to say "Look, we can't trust people to take care of this themselves. They are just too stupid or apathetic or poor... so the Government /sigh/ will have to do it for them. We will have to save them from themselves."

Alright... the /sigh/ was there for dramatic effect. The truth is they aren't sighing they are rubbing their hands together in gluttonous glee, because they are going to get to expand their precious governmental toy. They will get more of your money, they will have more freedom to act on your behalf, they will have more control of you and you will have less.

This automatic and reflexive jump to governmental control or expansion every time a "bad thing" is occurring or might happen is government's secret weapon.

It makes us what the government wants us to be... Perpetual peasants looking to them for answers, solutions and salvation.

The government points at a negative outcome (any negative outcome) and offers to leap to our rescue like a knight in shining armour, and we, sit like peasants cowering in the dirt marveling at their power and the shininess of that armour.

The problem is that most of us poor peasants never realize that the government has the shiny armour because we peasants paid for it, and if they didn't take so much from us we would probably be able to stand up for ourselves, to do for ourselves in whatever way makes sense and fits with how we want to live our lives.

Enviro-pocalypse - 39 Years Later... Still Wrong

• “...civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind,” biologist George Wald, Harvard University, April 19, 1970.

• By 1995, “...somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.” Sen. Gaylord Nelson, quoting Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, Look magazine, April 1970.

• Because of increased dust, cloud cover and water vapor “...the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born,” Newsweek magazine, January 26, 1970.

• The world will be “...eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age,” Kenneth Watt, speaking at Swarthmore University, April 19, 1970.

• “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” biologist Barry Commoner, University of Washington, writing in the journal Environment, April 1970.

• “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from the intolerable deteriorations and possible extinction,” The New York Times editorial, April 20, 1970.

• “By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half...” Life magazine, January 1970.

• “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970.

• “...air pollution...is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone,” Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970.

• Ehrlich also predicted that in 1973, 200,000 Americans would die from air pollution, and that by 1980 the life expectancy of Americans would be 42 years.

• “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” Earth Day organizer Denis Hayes, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970.

• “By the year 2000...the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America and Australia, will be in famine,” Peter Gunter, North Texas State University, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970.

Source...

NEWSFLASH!!!

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A RIGHT TO A JOB!

People whine and bitch about the contractually assured bonuses of CEO's and the government eggs them on... then there's this.

From the article:

“What makes me glum about it all is that it's extremely difficult to get around the political necessity of subsidizing employment at an extraordinarily high cost per job..."

WTF is there to 'get around'? How about the concept that government is not, was not, and was never intended to ensure anyone, at any time, for any reason, was employed! It's not their job!

I'll say it again... There is no such thing as a right to a job! The only thing government should be ensuring is individual rights and that isn't on the list.

$1.5 million per job holy freaking deficits Batman! We would actually save money by just giving each and every GM employee a million dollars!

This isn't capitalism, this isn't conservatism, this isn't even rational.

Tax And Gouge Liberal

In this time of economic uncertainty the McGinty government wants to impose another set of taxes on the people of Ontario. First it was the announcement in the 2009 Ontario Budget that his government would harmonize the PST adding 8% tax onto every single good and service that is currently PST exempt.

This is a cash grab of unprecedented proportions from the guy that said he wouldn't increase taxes!

Then McTaxation decides he wants to go ahead with a Cap and Trade system for Carbon emissions. The speculation that increased costs for industry "could be passed on to taxpayers" is laughable. What on earth is speculative about it!!! Do the mental midgets in Queens Park believe for one second that a businessman is not going to pass this increased costs onto the consumer?!?!?

"A cap-and-trade system places a ceiling on greenhouse gases and lets participants buy and sell emissions permits within that cap. Those who don't meet the emissions targets can buy credits from others with a surplus instead of lowering their emissions."

This is nothing more than a wealth distribution scheme. Which is to say distributing your wealth into the government's coffers. I am willing to bet that every single one of these transactions will be subject to the new HST... How much money will this net the Tax-drunk Liberal Government of Ontario.

I'm going to don my soothsayer hat for a moment...

When... WHEN (not if) Ontario business' pass this new carbon/production penalty onto consumers I expect the McTaxation Government to lambaste them for "taking advantage of the consumer" or/and for "forcing the innocent consumer to pay for their waste and polution"... Crank up the spin machine... It's going to be a doozy!

Now for an examination of the Win, WIN, WIN, WIN situation these new taxes represent.

• Company A (a logging firm) is assessed as being in violation of its Carbon cap. So that business buys Carbon credits from CompanyB (some "carbon nutral" business)... Cha-Ching! McTaxation gathers his carbon cap loot... Win
  

• Company A having been forced to pay for Carbon raises the price of his lumber which he sells to Comapny C (the building supply company)... Cha-Ching! McTaxation gathers HST loot... WIN
  

• Company C having been forced to pay more for the lumber passes that cost on to Company D (the home builder)... Cha-Ching! McTaxation continues his taxation-extraviganza gathering in more HST... WIN *note that this would happen with almost every product that goes into a house or other product.
  

• Company D having been forced to pay more for the materials used to build the house passes that increased cost onto the consumer... CHA-CHING!!! McTaxation gathers the biggest payoff yet because not only does he get more taxes because the house costs more but this is actually a brand new taxation stream for his Tax-adicted government... New construction used to be PST exempt!!! WIN

NB* Even with the market in a downturn the median price of a home in Ontario is $275,000. That represents a tax-gouge of $22,000 for every new home sold in Ontario. Last month in the GTA alone 1880 new homes were sold.* That would mean a grand total of $41,360,000 dollars from ONE city, ripped out of this provinces economy (your pocket) and stuffed into the McTaxation government's greedy cake-hole.

McGinty is about to castrate this province's economy worse than Bob Rae's NDP did.

Make Them Say IT

Out Loud!


The good Dr. is quickly becoming one of my favorites...

Betsy to Bistro: How the EU Saved the Seal and Ate the Veal

*

"They said they use guns or harpoons, and can't understand why their industry is considered less humane than cattle farming."

When will these people ever learn. It's not about how it is done, its about what it is being done to.

99.9% of people living south of the treeline could not imagine snuggling up to a live cow, but replace the bovine with a seal and the ooh's, ahh's and coo, cooing are enough to move Charles Manson to tears.

Even this article, which one assumes is supposed to be a supportive piece describes the act in such intentionally gory detail as...

"she had the heart pulled out of its furry, flabby carcass"

"she swallowed a slice of the mammal's dripping organ."

"wiped the blood of a freshly slaughtered seal off her crimson-spattered fingertips."

I mean for the love of reason, the author should go back to his day job which is apparently writing bad horror novels.

The comparison of seal to cow is an apt one. Seals have been harvested by the Inuit and Eskimo for at least four thousand years. Even the modern seal hunt off Newfoundland has been going on for more than four hundred years. Talk about a sustainable industry!!!

The reason for the EU's opposition is because the seal is cute, nothing more nothing less. The whole EU parliament should be corralled into a slaughterhouse to watch how their Veal Cordon Bleu makes the transformation from Betsy to Brussels Bistro.

Hell, I'll even pay for the barf bags.

The Regulation Game

This story is a prime example of the slipshod manner and lackluster performance of government mandated, controlled and administered regulation.

Tell me what is the point of instituting new regulations when there are not enough inspectors to carry them out? What is the point of having government oversight when there are not enough inspectors to provide it? What benefit is government regulation at all if the system can not perform the function it is supposed to?

Shhhhhhhhhhhhh, go back to sleep...

It's not really about regulation. It's not that government is any more trustworthy, any more competent that the industry itself. It's a method of control.

Now before you affix your tinfoil beanie too tightly let me explain. For almost as long as there have been businessmen there has been the (wrong) impression that a businessman is the sort of person who would sell out his own mother for the right price (or market advantage). Business, government says is incapable of regulating itself. Business has only one interest, not public safety, its greedy, money-hungry bottom line. Business is dog-eat-dog and could care less about people.

Government on the other hand is, to borrow a line from the US constitution, of the people, by the people, for the people. Government will and can force business' into compliance. So don't worry citizens, we (government) will institute the standards, we will hire the inspectors, and ensure compliance with and adherence to said standards... Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, go back to sleep.

So what is the result? Well most of the time the government sets up some sort of agency, provides offices and administration for the bureaucracy which follows. The Agency studies the problem and sets the standards and most of the time these standards are adequate to ensure safety. Then they hire inspectors and begin to provide their service.

But soon enough the government is dealing with its own bottom line. Our society expands and as it does the demand for inspections grows... It costs too much to hire new inspectors, so the ones that do exist are overworked and can not provide the superlative oversight that was promised by government in the first place.

** How many times have you heard some government talking head refer to some new system of compliance or regulation as cutting edge, or world class? How long do you think that remains the case when government is constantly trimming old programs for new in the race to meet the panic or flavour du jour?

But wait a second, the government promised compliance and regulations were in place... If there was a mistake, an act of non-compliance or something the government would have us believe that it would be taken care of by their agency and inspectors. So we're covered... right?

No.

The inevitable result is that something does happen, as was the case with the listeriosis outbreak last year.

The company rightfully, takes it on the chin, they are after all the first line defence and the real guardian of the public welfare where it's products are concerned.

The government and inspectors get off light, in spite of having failed to provide the "safest system", as was promised. They are in the days afterward mollifyingly humble, and disapear behind closed doors or into the mind numbing duldrums of a public or royal commission to "discover" what went wrong.

When they emerge some time later they are bold and forcefull, touting a new "world class, cutting edge, industry leading, ideal standard" to be implemented immediately...

The fine print, were there to be such a thing would point out that there will be no increase in inspectors, inspections or funds to ensure compliance...

So you have it, an ever increasing set of guidelines and best practices all carefully designed to lull us into a false sense of security but which really never ensure anything other than the increase in size of government bureaucracy and controll over business.

So what if there were no government inspectors? Taking for example the lysteriosis tragedy of last year.

Well... Government inspectors didn't stop the outbreak. I believe it was Doctors that traced the disease back to processed meats and therefore eventually pointed a finger at Maple Leaf Foods. The company owned up to it's mistake and one would assume will pay compensation to those who were affected... The company will also be the one to try to rebuild the consumer's confidence in its own standards (over and above those mandated ones), so really what would the difference be?

I'm a realist. I know mistakes are going to happen, but I know that they are going to happen with or without government regulations, and that being the case... Why bother?

The business that is free to thrive must keep it's customers happy, healthy and safe in order to do so. No government assistance is required.

Stupid Statement Of The Day

From the American Medical Association on dealing with the swine flu:

"In the event that quarantine and isolation measures are needed, physicians should ensure that the least restrictive measures are employed in a manner that does not discriminate against particular socioeconomic, racial or ethnic groups."

Don't want to be "disadvantaging" any infectious people... Priorities people, priorities!!!

H/T to Paula Hall @ Noodlefood

The American debt road trip

Driving down the road at 174 MPH?

Escalating Crime

I'm not going to get into the rights and wrongs of this... in that I mean I am not going to chastise the cop for doing his duty by enforcing what is apparently a law in Laval. My question is this... How the hell did something as stupid as this get to be a law?

When did it become the purview of government (at whatever level) to protect us from something as pedestrian (pardon the pun) as falling down?

I think I see the rationale behind this and it is a direct result of government involvement in what aught to be a private concern - the provision of public transportation.

Picture this. A man is on an escalator and not holding onto the handrail. the escalator breaks down and stops suddenly. The man, not holding on falls down and is injured.

Being that the escalator's unexpected stop is the reason for his fall and the owner of the elevator is the city the man sues the city for causing his injuries.

The city looses the case for whatever reason, perhaps the escalator was not properly maintained. Having lost the case the city is forced to pay compensation for injuries (and in today's day and age probably pays for the man's "mental anguish" and "post traumatic stress injury" as well) and looks to ensure that this sort of incident will never happen again.

Now because the city has the legislated power of government in it's jurisdiction it solves the problem by making not holding onto the handrail of a public escalator a crime.

Enter our young woman and the cop... the result is almost predictable.

How would that scenario have played out in a laissez faire capitalist nation in which the government does not control business and has no responsibility aside from providing funding for the police, military and courts?

First of all the subway would have been privately owned... step #1 in ensuring freedom. So the owner of the subway may have been sued (as in the first instance) and the result may have been the same. This would lead to the business owner making his own policy.

That policy would probably consist of a sign telling patrons to hold the handrail and absolving the owner of any responsibility for injuries occurring as a result of a person not complying with the policy. So when the young woman reached for something in her purse she was not covered against injury should she fall.

She would not have been fined, she would not have been arrested. The resources of the state would not be wasted prosecuting a nonsensical bureaucratic edict and the police officer could have been out patrolling the streets, stopping or investigating real crimes.

Rand was correct (as she so often is) when she wrote...

"The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."

Politics Without Philosophy

I don't give a rats ass about Michael Ignatieff being out of Canada for 34 years, what I care about is his ideas on running the country. And seriously, to call a person an intellectual and to mean that as a slur, well you might as well be praising a village idiot for his ability to drool on himself.

Why is our government spending 13 million dollars to prosecute a Prime Ministerial has been like Brian Mulroney? Over what? An admitted payment of $225,000? Only in political circles could a negative return of 57,777% be considered worthwhile.

All of the major parties in Canada are bankrupt in ideas, ideals and ideology. None of them is looking out for you, they are all just looking to screw their opponents. Leading the nation is an afterthought at best.

If we as citizens elect our public officials to govern our nation only to have them spend more of their time trying to discredit the opposition or dream up new ways of spending our money on their interests then I say democracy is dead.

And what killed it? Politics without philosophy.

ALL levels of government have too much power. Government in Canada is not constrained in any shape or form. From provincial governments banning pesticides on lawns* because it's not safe for "the environment" (yet allowing the same pesticides to be used on our food). To the Federal Government stealing our tax money to prop up companies that should have been allowed to fail in the 1970's (do they seriously believe that ANYONE with more than two brain cells to rub together is going to buy a car from a company that is only being kept afloat by stolen taxes?). We, the taxpayers, the rubes that elect these dolts are paying the price.

Our governments are completely out of control. They have lost sight of the reason they were elected (to govern, not to smear) and all of them hold to the idea that they are entitled to decide how to divide up your money.

What this country needs is a properly limited government, and to achieve that we need a political party built on philosophical principals, which is not the same thing as having a political philosophy.

Politics is only one branch of philosophy and is as useless as a screen door on a submarine without the more important branches of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.

The reason our political parties are so driven by partisanship is because they have no underlying rational philosophy. The reason they flip and flop is because the only thing of importance to them is getting elected, all positions, policies and proposals are pragmatic easily discarded lies the day after the election.

Ask a liberal, socialist or a conservative where he stands on the concept of rights and they will give you an equivocal answer. Give them more information and their position will change.

The rights to life, liberty and property are constrained at whim by the liberal acting for the "just society", by the socialist seeking the "greater good" or the conservative imposing standards of "morality".

This is where politics leads without philosophy to ground it.

Lies My Government Told Me

A Comparison of socialized and Free Mixed Market Healthcare

"An answer in the negative is suggested by a comparison of the British National Health Service and California’s Kaiser Permanente found that Kaiser provided more comprehensive and convenient primary care and more rapid access to specialists for roughly the same cost."

"In 2002-2004, dialysis patients waited 16 days for permanent blood vessel access in the US, 20 days in Europe, and 62 days in Canada."

"Comparing cancer outcomes, the largest international study to date found that the five-year survival rate for all types of cancer among both men and women was higher in the US than in Europe."

Read it all.

It is interesting that this essay addresses the fact that pure cash for cash comparisons are skewed due to the way government accounts for the services rendered.

It's almost like they don't want us to know what it really costs...

NB, this is a comparison between Mixed Market and fully Socialized Healthcare. Too bad there isn't a completely Free Market alternative to compare both of the current choices to.

Where is Galt's gulch?

This blogger has some interesting thoughts about getting away from it all, although the more I think about it the more convinced I am that setting up "Galt's Gulch" in any physical location will be very difficult to impossible to do in any practical manner, at least not if you like living in a high energy civilization with hot and cold running water....http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2009/05/04/libertarian-democraphobia/

I still haven't quite figured out the details, but I can see a combination of survivalist mentality (being physically secure and self sufficient to whatever extent possible, ranging from living in the back 40 to building an urban greenhouse in your balcony), secure VPN and anonymizer software to communicate without the busybodies finding you easily, and some sort of virtual economy where you can interact and trade value with other people in the "Distributed Republic". Your virtual currency would be based on and backed by "free banking" (i.e. only the issuer can control the supply of credit, but anyone can set up a bank and issue currency), although how this money would interact with the real world is less clear (you can pay real money to to other gamers to buy virtual stuff on "World of Warcraft", for example, but how do you use your "World of John Galt" money to buy real groceries or machine tools?).

Like real pioneers hacking a new society out of an uncompromising wilderness, virtual pioneers will have to experiment with a large number of ideas, and be prepared to defend them against hostile people and elements determined to close off the frontiers to settlement and exploitation by determined and free people who refuse to remain as serfs.

The roughneck was watching them from above, listening with curiosity. She glanced up at him, he looked like a truck driver, so she asked, "What were you outside? A professor of comparative philology, I suppose?"

"No, ma’am," he answered. "I was a truck driver."

He added, "But that’s not what I wanted to remain."

Good.

This is a good news story. The only way it could be better is if it would lead automatically to personal responsibility, but I fear that isn't going to be.

"Status matters, because all our funding is tied to how many status Indians we have in our nation," said Beaver, 69, whose 1,000-member community expects to see its last status Indians born in 2032.

Do these people hear themselves when they talk? When the rest of Canada is worried about industries and companies going out of business, and keeping their jobs. When the concern of rural communities is their children moving away to find work in the bigger cities these people are worried about being cut off from the federal teat.

When the majority of Canadians are worried about being able to work for what they need these people are worried about having to work for what they need.

We don't need status Indians, or status anyone else for that matter. We need all individuals in this country treated exactly the same regardless of birth, race, creed or colour.

JUST THINKING: By the way Chief, if you want to keep the land your band currently squats on let your people buy property and have property rights.

The government of Canada recognizes property rights in principal if not explicitly (see the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms) and would certainly allow you to own the land you occupy... Of course you'd have to join the rest of the country and pay taxes for it.

Visualizing $100 million in budget cuts

We need more visual thinkers like this:

It Makes So Much Sense Now...

Jack Layton, as one of the redshirts.

As you will recall the first guy to die in a Star Trek episode was always a redshirt.

With the fall of Jack's salivation encrusted coalition, the rise of Lord Iggy of Liberal Trudopia and Gilles the energizer separatist having survived a leadership review... he may well be.

Redshirt! Haha, the connotation in conjunction with Canada's version of Marx takes on a whole new meaning.

Frugal Government

"A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned." ~ Thomas Jefferson

I like that, "frugal government", and Tom meant frugal not just in the monetary sense but in the governmental sense as well.

That is the proper thing... Governments should tread lightly in the affairs of citizens not stomp around like Gulliver in Lilliput.