Hating Harper - Canada's Prime Minister

The Public Service Alliance of Canada has started a campaign called “Harper Hates Us”. As a former marketing guy, I thought it was quite clever.. They’ve had little badges made up for union members to wear to work and even hired a small plane to fly around the nation’s capital with a big Harper Hates Us sign behind it. Of course, the RCMP took a dim view of that for some reason and ordered the plane down.

That’s annoying. Canada is a country that knows that Stephen Harper is the root cause of all of our problems and we should have the right to express our angst and displeasure.

It’s not for nothing that Canada’s Prime Minister has been one of the most unpopular politicians in recent memory, or at least, one of the most vilified. Almost from the day he first tossed his hat into the ring for the leadership of the Conservative Party, Stephen Harper has been the object of justifiable ridicule, rancor and demonization.

It’s not difficult to understand why.

It started right after he was first elected. Thank God for the unbiased Canadian media who were quick to point out what a cold fish the man is. They devoted more than a few days to commenting on how he was so cold, he actually shook hands with his son when the PM dropped him off on the fist day of school. Thanks to the media, we weren't fooled by the story that it was his son who asked the PM not to hug or kiss him goodbye in front of the media cameras.

Unlike his predecessor, Paul Martin who slashed health care transfer payments to the provinces, Stephen Harper not only reversed those cuts, he had the unmitigated gall to provide stable funding increases for the next eight years. Can you believe the temerity of the man? It was clearly a blatant ploy to get votes and obviously a reckless thing to do during these times of global economic uncertainty but fortunately, the provincial premiers weren't fooled. They were quick to condemn the Prime Minister, no doubt out of nostalgia for the good old days under Paul Martin's cuts during the strong global economy of the 90s.

In his first term in office, despite having only a minority government, Prime Minister Harper kept the five major promises he made during the election campaign. Unbelievable! Canada is a country that is used to its politicians lying to them. We depend on it now. It’s small wonder so many were outraged by this redneck from Alberta showing some integrity. If you can’t count on your politicians to be consistently dishonest, how can you decide where to cast your next ballot?

He was the first prime minister in Canada to introduce and have passed, a motion recognizing Quebec not only as a distinct society but as a nation within a nation. The Quebec electorate rightly refused to be taken in by his action which they had been demanding for decades and refused to vote for his party in the subsequent election. Good for them! They stood on principle and voted against Harper because he cut some funding to the arts in the rest of Canada during the global economic meltdown in 2008. Quebecers weren’t going to be fooled by silly things like reality or economic responsibility. They voted for the NDP, who presented them with candidates almost nobody, including the NDP had ever heard of (please excuse the dangling preposition but this has all just really upset me).

During the 2006 Election, the Liberals accused Stephen Harper of wanting to impose martial law and put troops on the streets of Canadian cities if elected. Being the only party that actually ever did impose marital law, you could trust that the Liberals knew what they were talking about but, once again, Prime Minister Harper failed to deliver.

He didn’t put troops in the streets, he didn’t declare martial law; he didn’t even get all that wound up about the Occupy movement. No wonder he is so unpopular. He can’t even get oppression right. It's enough to make you wonder how he can continue to pretend he's the fascist that Canadians know  he dying to be.

Fortunately we got to blame him for the police actions during the G8/G20 meetings in Toronto even though it was actually the Liberal Premier of Ontario who enacted emergency police powers legislation and it was the municipal and provincial police who were involved in all of the allegations of police brutality.

Thank God the Prime Minister has done some things which confirm our beliefs. He prorogued Parliament which even though it is perfectly legal and constitutional, was seen for what it was; a deliberate attempt to prevent the opposition parties from defeating the government and forcing an election. Of course, the prime minister had already announced he would introduce his new budget in 60 days and that would give the opposition ample opportunity to kill the government but it was very undemocratic to use a legal process to delay the non-confidence vote until after the budget was actually introduced.

We are used to the back room deals and dirty tricks that usually allow minority governments to avoid being defeated. We're seeing some of that in Ontario today thanks to more cheap moves by Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty, a premier you can count on to be consistent with what we expect from our politicians.

Ultimately the government was defeated and an election called. It didn't work out quite the way the opposition promised, Mr. Harper was reelected and this time with a majority government. Now we are stuck with this guy for at least three more years. It’s very distressing that so many Canadians have been taken in by this guy and voted him a majority. It's even more annoying that he is the first prime minister n decades to have seats in every province and territory in Canada. Clearly there are a lot of people out there who need to give their heads a shake.

What were they thinking?

Oh sure, Canada now has the strongest economy in the G-7 but so what!

He has opened up trade with China and is in negotiations with Europe to expand free trade with the European Union. He leaves provincial matters to the provinces and does not interfere. The idiot actually believes in the Canadian Constitution as it is written and not as the premiers and former prime ministers wish it had been written. Ho hum!

He gave western farmers back the right to sell their wheat to whomever they want by abolishing the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly and has restored the Canadian military after decades of government neglect and budget cuts. Along the way he completed what everyone agrees was the most efficient and fair procurement process for the building of new ships that this country has ever seen. He even reached out to the family of the late Jack Layton, former leader of the New Democratic Party and offered them a state funeral for Mr. Layton, something totally out of the ordinary. Big deal!

None of that is important.

What is important is that he is very mean-spirited. He runs terrible ads against his political opponents (as opposed to the satirical ads they run about him) although he hasn’t quite reached the stage of former provincial NDP Leader Steven Lewis who used his eulogy at the state funeral for Jack Layton to publicly castigate the prime minister for his policies.

Clearly Prime Minister Harper lacks the class of the NDP.

He has been accused of various unethical breaches but once again isn’t very good at it. He lacks the skill of the Liberal Party who in the past 14 months have seen one of their senators sentenced to prison for misuse of government funds and had to fire a senior staffer for misuse of government resources to release personal information about a sitting cabinet minister. Recently they are are being unfairly attacked for  yet more political cheap tricks by taking advantage of one of their own senators who has dementia and who was declared mentally incompetent six months ago. Fortunately the mainstream media tend to downplay or rationalize this stuff so that they can keep the country properly focused on the nefarious intentions of Stephen Harper. No point in criticizing what is, we need to stay focused on criticizing what we want to believe may happen.

Unfortunately, Harper isn't cooperating (big surprise) because he isn't very good at being nefarious or even small-town cheap. As we all know, it takes Liberals to get that right.

He certainly can’t keep up with the NDP who used the death of their leader Jack Layton as a fund raising gimmick before he had even been buried (and for which they were rapped on the knuckles by Canada Revenue Agency for misuse of their political party tax status). The NDP were nailed last month for improper fundraising from the unions for which they were fined more than $300,000. Now that is beahviour we understand and can trust because we have seen it so often before.

Harper just doesn't get it. He is just too stubborn to actually stop and think about the possible shortcuts and ethical corners he should be cutting which only proves that he isn't a team player.

He has, for example, only managed to get into a wrangle with Elections Canada over the moving of campaign funds between the national and local election campaigns. It was called In and Out. One court found for Elections Canada, one for the Conservatives.

How typical! Harper’s biggest scandal was a question of interpretation of legislation on which even the courts couldn't agree. Instead of doing the proper Canadian political thing and fighting it all the way to the Supreme Court at taxpayer expense, he instructed his party to reach a settlement on the case and move on.

The bastard undercut months of opportunity for journalists and opposition politicians to rail and condemn. He really is insensitive to the needs of others.

There was still hope with Robocall, the scandal that would publicly prove once and for all that Stephen Harper and his party were dishonest, corrupt and unethical. Well, damn it! Elections Canada has gone and completely botched that investigation too. Not only were they unable to find any evidence of wrong doing by the Prime Minister or his party, they’ve had to admit that their lead investigator actually got some of his initial claims incorrect. That's just bloody annoying.

In the end, only one charge has been laid in Robocall and it was against the Liberals. It isn’t fair, I tell you. Stephen Harper is the enemy not the Liberals. He should have been charged even if he didn’t do anything wrong, not the Liberals even though they did once again.

We are a liberal country that is not happy unless we are unhappy. For decades we have been led by politicians that misled us, stole taxpayer money (Adscam), cut social program spending and balanced budgets by downloading expenses onto the provinces. We’ve had politicians that made promises like scrapping the GST only to continue it after being elected and which make grandiose gestures like signing the Kyoto Accord but who only showed up for the photo op but didn't bother following through on its implementation.

We have been led for decades by politicians who have consistently caved to the petulant demands of Quebec and other special interest at the expense of taxpayers and the undermining of basic and fundamental rights of some citizens. It was politics on which we could depend because it was so much easier to vote for someone with nice hair because there was nothing else to differentiate between them. They were all unethical but Harper’s gone and screwed that all up.

He is a prime minister who keeps his election promises, has piloted Canada through one of the worst economic crisis in decades and who has reduced unemployment. It’s small wonder he is so disliked.

If you can’t count on your politicians to lie to you and cheat the system like the Liberals have for years and the NDP are learning quickly to do who can you count on?

I have no difficulty understanding why the Prime Minister is so often trashed. He’s has turned Canadian politics upside down by actually believing he was supposed to do what he promised to do during the election.

What a moron!

The sooner we can get back to political leaders we can trust to lie to us, the happier most of us will be.

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

In The Shadow Of The Blade

In July 1789, the people of Paris rose up and stormed the Bastille, Paris’ notorious prison and symbol of autocratic rule and oppression. They grabbed the warden, beat the crap out of him until he was dead and then cut off his head, stuck it on a pole and marched it around the city. It was probably a bit over the top considering that he was merely a bureaucratic functionary doing his job but the people corrected themselves later by going after the monarch and aristocrats. 

Things really started rolling then, especially heads.

Unfortunately, the revolutionary government became even more oppressive than the monarchy it replaced. It ruled by tyranny in the name of democracy and used terror as a political instrument. Eventually, the people who had started and led the revolution, turned on each other and themselves became victims of the same blood-thirsty tyranny imposed by the Revolutionary Council.

Robespierre and St. Juste used corruption charges to remove Camille Desmoulins and Geroges-Jacques Danton (two of the revolution’s founders), among others, from their positions and had them executed. Shortly thereafter, it was time for St. Juste and Robespierre to feel the sharp edge of the revolution on the back of their necks.

It was tyranny dressed up as a democratic republic but as so often happens, it was all dressed up but had nowhere to go. It became known as the Reign of Terror and it was intentional and chaotic. Eventually order was restored and Napoleon crowned himself emperor, embarked France on European wars that eventually led to his downfall and that, my friends, led to the restoration of the monarchy. Events had come full circle and a lot of people had lost their heads to achieve pretty much nothing up to that point.

France did eventually become a democratic republic which continues to thrive to this day but it was a violent and circuitous route to get here.

So what has that got to do with today?

Democracy! "Everybody Knows The Good Guys Lost"

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking,
everybody knows that the captain lied 

Everybody got this broken feeling, 
like their father or their dog just died 

-Leonard Cohen

Merriam-Webster’s defines democracy as:

a) Government by the people

b) a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections

The Oxford Dictionary defines democracy as:

a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives

I see more posts, tweets and commentary on democracy than any other single topic. Everyone talks about it including politicians, the media, academics and every day people. Democracy is not a homogenous thing and it takes many forms. In fact, there are almost three dozen different forms of democracy currently in existence.

Some democracies use a first-past-the-post system of allocating representation. Canada and the United States are examples of this approach. Others, like Italy, Israel and Germany have representative democracies and allocate seats based on the percentage of votes received by each political party.

Some democracies, like Canada and Sweden, are constitutional monarchies while others like the United States and France are republics. Some democracies are actually totalitarian and a few are outright dictatorships which seems incongruous to our basic concept of democracy but which is true nonetheless.

One thing they all share in common, however, is that they are too easily corrupted by those who run for office.

My Quebec Does Not Include The Bigotry Of The PQ

"Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another."

– Nelson Mandela

"We must, therefore, insist. . . not only on the need to respect human rights worldwide, but also on the definition of these rights . . . for it is the inherent nature of all human beings to yearn for freedom, equality and dignity, and they have an equal right to achieve that." 

-The Dalai Lama

My post yesterday about the discriminatory nature of the PQ platform in the Quebec Election stirred up a bit of controversy. I’m not surprised. It has been my experience that those with the weakest opinions are the most likely to shout the loudest.

Most of the criticism I received was because I compared Pauline Marois, leader of the PQ, to Adolf Hitler and others of his ilk. They clearly didn’t read beyond their emotions. My statement was that the attitude of both her and of her supporters has much in common with the attitudes of Hitler and the others I mentioned. Like them, Mme Marois promotes a singular version of society that is only fully open to those that she and her supporters deem worthy. The rights of others are treated with disrespect and restricted or taken away.

Her vision is an intolerant, nickle and dime perversion of democracy.

Only The White Hoods Are Missing In Pauline Marois' PQ

Pauline Marois continues her attack on the language
and religious rights of non-francophone/Christians

Sometimes I think we have become so jaded that in our rush to pick over the minutia of political campaigns we overlook and ignore the real threats. We are quick to condemn the other side and even more quick to forgive and embrace the sins on ours. We are particularly forgiving when the mea culpa is accompanied by a few handouts and entitlements.

There is an election campaign in Quebec right now and along with the usual promises to clean up government and hand out more cash, there is a disturbing undercurrent that has more in common with the darker side of human history than with a modern society like Canada.

History is littered with the remains of oppressive regimes led by those who rose to power through oppression and there were always excuses for suppressing the rights of others; racial purity, defending religion, protecting the rights of natural-born citizens and the list goes on. Inevitably, these regimes failed because they were built on intolerance, bigotry and fear.

Truth Or Dare?

The Great Debate
"You're going to kill medicare." "No I won't, you will. "No you
will""No you will" "Liar" "Your mother wears army boots"

It’s election campaign time in the United States, as well as, in the province of Quebec up here in the land of beavers and dreamers. Last year, we muddled through a federal election in Canada and a provincial election in Ontario. It seems that just about every year now, somewhere, some group of fast-talkers is out there telling us that they can lead us to the Promised Land.

We never get there, of course, no matter whom we elect and I’ve begun to believe that the last person who kept a promise about leading people to the Promised Land was Moses and even he took his own sweet time getting there. 

It’s not for lack of promises, of course. We’ve had lots of those. In fact, we keep getting the same promises every election and pretty much from everyone, regardless of political stripe.

You can almost do them by rote, can’t you?

The Paradox

The world is changing and the pace of change is accelerating but for all that change, we have failed to make the world a better place. Instead we are building a bigger and bigger paradox, one that may eventually be too big for us to ever overcome.

We have more security all around us but are less safe and feel less secure. Violence is increasingly more random and less targeted.

We have more government but less satisfaction with how our nations are governed; increasingly higher taxes but more government debt and fewer government services.

We have more expensive and sophisticated educational opportunities but only teach students what, not how, to think.

We provide better clothes, more gadgets and expensive education  for our children because we love them but we spend less time with them. Instead, we fill their free time with play dates, organized sports, dance classes and other activities to replace the time we don't have for them.

We have more channels on television than ever before but less and less that is worth watching or remembering.

We have more opportunities to become informed but prefer simply to be entertained.

We have more mainstream news coverage but less actual news reporting. Truth is biased, controlled, edited, scripted, manipulated, massaged, distorted and often just ignored.

Yup! I've Had Enough

`Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past

three decades, has been a history

of replacing what worked with what sounded good.

-Thomas Sowell

I’ve been watching the American Presidential race with a sort of detached interest. It doesn’t directly affect me, I live in Canada but I do have a lot of American friends and it affects them and that concerns me. 

Politics in Canada is a blood sport that is only mitigated by the fact that we still have a line called “too far” that politicians cross at their peril. Apparently that line doesn’t exist in the United States.

The rhetoric and campaign advertising for this presidential race is beyond the pale. It is not just personal and vicious; it has become dishonest with flat out lies. How a candidate for the highest office in the nation could possibly believe that they will be respected upon election after their degrading performance during the election completely escapes me and I still can’t figure out how “the people” are served by this.

This isn’t leadership; it is like watching pigs fight in the mud over slop. It is disgusting and demeans the office to which both candidates aspire.

The Threat

I’m somewhat bemused by my blog posts lately. I didn’t start this blog to comment primarily on government and politics. What got me started was just the general stupidity and hypocrisy I kept stumbling over pretty much wherever I went.

Most of it was simply the result of carelessness or the lack of thinking and effort that went into providing services and almost all of it was easily preventable. 

I encountered it in retail stores, banks, technology, the mainstream media and even in trying to figure out why the instructions to assemble a barbeque had to be so complicated. 

But I have discovered over the past few months that increasingly I am writing about politics and government and I’ve come to realize that it is because politicians specifically, and governments in general, have elevated stupidity and hypocrisy to a level that takes my breath away.

 I honestly believe that there is more hypocrisy and sheer stupidity in politics and government these days that in all other areas of society combined. In fact, I have come to consider our own democratic governments to be a greater threat to our well-being and security, if not our sanity, than terrorism, war and economic collapse. I believe that it is our own governments who are primarily responsible for these things.

Terrorism has been with us for a long time, it isn’t something new.

Britain was under constant attack by the IRA for decades. People were shot. Bombs were exploded in public venues and thousands died.  Japan experienced a horrifying attack in their subway system from a terrorist group who released seron gas and countries like Germany, France, Israel and even staid, old Canada experienced a terrorist attack, that resulted in the imposition of marital law, long before 9/11. 

Terrorism is not new and it is not the sole purview of Islamic extremists.

Terrorist organizations like the IRA, The Badher-Meinfhof Gang, The Red Brigade, The Weather Underground, Black September and the FLQ maimed and murdered thousands over the years. The shooting last year in Norway was not by an Islamic terrorist but by a Norwegian striking out with the same bizarre rationale it seems that is used by all terrorists and it resulted in the shooting of more than 70 young people.

Terrorists have attacked at the Olympics, airplanes, buildings, markets and a thousand other venues in countries on every major continent. Each terrorist group lays claim to some extreme political grievance but their actions always includes the random targeting and killing of innocents. Terrorists are cowards and fanatics who strike from the shadows and their objective is to create fear through viscious violent acts. Nations that succumb to that fear lose to the terrorists by giving them exactly what they set out to achieve.

Fighting terrorism is a difficult challenge but our governments have never figured out the root causes of it or how to combat it effectively despite having more intelligence, financial and military resources at their disposal than all of the terrorist cells combined.

I blame terrorists for the bloodshed and our governments for their inability to come together in a common cause against this threat. I blame our governments for implementing international policies that have raped natural resources of other nations and supported oppressive regimes in exchange for a stable supply of oil. In the end this has only provided fertile ground for extremists to capitalize on the suppression of the rights of people living within those regimes to justify their actions and to recruit new members.

Our governments still don’t get it and the best they can offer is bluster, military adventures and laws to strip away the rights of their own citizens in their fight to curb terrorism. I would suggest that the solution to terrorism does not lie in making everyone, citizen and terrorist alike, a prisoner of oppressive government control. It lies in not allowing terrorism to cause a nation to violate its own way of life, laws and constitution out of fear. When that happens, we not only lose some of our freedom we also enable and encourage terrorists to continue their bloody acts.

We have reached a stage where our governments have clearly sent a message to terrorists that we are afraid and that the actions of a few can successfully cause even great nations to tremble and subsequently undermine its laws and values.

It’s the same with the economy. For decades, governments have used national economies as personal checkbooks to ensure re-election and as bottomless wells from which they could draw whatever they needed whenever they wished.  There was never concern for the future or even for ensuring that all core services, like infrastructure maintenance,  were adequately funded.

They have treated taxpayers as nothing more than a conduit to get elected and as an endless source for more tax revenue. They have raised funds for their political parties and their election campaigns by pandering to special interest with taxpayer money. This included entitlements, and tax breaks to various sectors of society including both unions and corporations.

There was never enough money to end child abuse or eradicate poverty but always enough money to buy a few more votes.

Government has brought a level of complexity to things like the tax system which is not only expensive but just plain absurd. If we were starting from scratch, nobody in their right mind would design government the way it operates today.

And all of that has successfully brought our global economy to its knees. 

National priorities change more often than the score at a basketball game and teenage girls on their smart phones have longer attention spans than most of what passes for political leadership these days. There is no continuity, no vision, no long-term strategy. There is only continual bickering, arguing, pandering and squandering with the odd G8 or G20 meeting thrown in to give the current political leadership the opportunity to at least appear as if it knows what it is doing. 

In the end the faces may change from time to time but the downward spiral continues.

And then there is war.

What confuses me is the take-no-prisoners attitude politicians bring to political campaigns and the tepid way they engage us in wars. They often creep into conflict backwards and usually for every reason except doing what is moral, what is right and without clear defined objectives. 

Once they have embroiled us in a war, they spend money like Bill Gates was personally prepared to underwrite the cost and make decisions that inevitably turn out to be non-decisions that only increase the cost in terms of money and human suffering.

Desert Storm was a brilliant military campaign that politicians stopped short of allowing the military to overthrow the Iraqi regime. The result was ten more years of bloodshed and tyranny in Iraq, including the use of chemical weapons by the defeated Hussein regime that killed more than 10,000 Kurds and the arrest, torture and murder of hundreds of innocent Iraqis. This contributed to the rise of radical Islamist and a second war in Iraq, and is part of the reason for the ongoing terrorism and political instability we’re now experiencing.

Western democracies rushed into Libya to protect the innocent and have stood by impotently as more than 20,000 Syrian men, women and children have been slaughtered in a brutal civil war and there seems to still be no end in sight for the Afghanistan conflict.

Our politicians recognize that the United Nations has become a waste of time and has been overrun by oppressive regimes that are a threat to global peace and security and yet, they continue to support this cumbersome, hypocritical and pointless organization as if it there was still some merit in doing so.

It has come to a point where there is a widening disconnect between what the people in democracies believe their countries stand for and what their governments are actually doing. Democratically elected governments have run up obscene levels of debt, curtailed the rights of their own citizens and have violated their nations’ laws and constitutions in the bizarre belief that it will protect the very principles upon which they were founded.

I believe that it is this that is the single biggest threat to democracy and that the demand by special interest for continuing but unaffordable entitlements and privilege that is the second.

Integrity was one of the first casualties of democratic governments. Politicians mislead, waffle and sometimes just outright lie. Government has developed a language so arcane and confusing nobody understands what they’re talking about including the bureaucracy itself at times.

Greed, pandering  and expediency have replaced vision, courage and leadership.

Elections have become absurdly expensive but ultimately meaningless exercises.  Politicians talk the talk during election campaigns but do not walk the talk once they are in office. There is little difference between the foreign and security policies of George Bush and Barrack Obama. It was a Republican president that opened Guantanamo and it was a Democratic president who kept it open after campaigning on closing it. 

It is the same in other democracies. Talk is cheap and makes for good news stories during the election campaign but once the election is over, it is increasingly difficult to tell the new government from the previous one. In Canada, the Liberal government entered into an agreement to purchase F-35 jets and the Conservatives in opposition criticized the decision. Once elected, the new Conservative government continues the procurement of the F-35 and the Liberals, now in opposition criticize the decision.

My three year old grandson has more common sense.

It isn’t governing, it’s a game. It isn’t about what is best for the people of a nation, it’s about what is best for politicians and for those who help get or keep them elected. Governing is incidental. Winning and holding on to power is everything.

In the end, we all lose. We lose our security, our economic freedom, our rights are curtailed and our constitutions and laws undermined. It is our own governments that are undermining our way of life, not the threat of terrorism or economic recession. Those are the result of inefficient and even corrupt government and they become the excuses politicians use to justify their inability to govern effectively.

Corporations start to fail as the result of greed and stupidity, no problem. Politicians throw tax payer money and tax breaks at them. Union jobs are threatened, no problem Politicians throw some tax revenue to the companies that hire union workers to save their jobs. Farmers who didn't buy crop insurance and who are facing a drought or other natural disaster look to government for help. No problem, there is still some taxpayer money to toss their way.

In the end, it is clear to me that increasingly, our governments have lost sight of the fact that democracy is government by the people for the people and that those in government not only represent us, they work for us. They are not there to rule us, manipulate us, dictate how we should live our lives or protect us from the choices we make. Their job pure and simple is to manage our common resources, administer our system of laws, maintain our infrastructure and to ensure that we have a robust national defense in case of external threat. 

They are failing in every area. The economic blunders are painfully obvious, the misuse of taxpayer money so blatant even store window dummies roll their eyes and the finger pointing and excuse making is as much a part of the political jargon now as it is pointless. 

It is not up to government to decide how we should live our lives. Their role is not to govern us but to govern ‘for’ us. We are quite capable of living our own lives without supervision….well….most of us anyway. We don’t need nanny states with governments acting as surrogate parents or guardians.

It serves little useful purpose to throw off the chains of monarchies, dictatorships and theocracies in favour of government by the people for the people if those we eventually elect only end up acting in the same manner as the leaders of totalitarian regimes.

In the end, even in a democracy there is no such thing as benign government. 

The more government there is, the more it meddles, it interferes and it corrupts. Government does not create jobs, the private sector creates jobs. It does not manage the economy, it is a drain on the economy and it does not provide more freedom, it curtails freedoms with rules and laws and taxes and a constant barrage of regulations that intrude on the rights of citizens to live their lives as they see fit.

It isn’t difficult to understand how this happens in a democracy. There is no standard or qualification required for politics beyond the ability to raise money and get elected. Politicians come from all walks of life and almost none have the prerequisite experience to manage something on the scale of a nation. Apple wouldn’t consider for a moment turning over the running of its corporation to a handful of recently elected former teachers, lawyers and farmers but we do it when we elect our governments and what we turn over to them is much larger and more complex than most corporations.

We demand nothing from them other than charisma, a few promises we know in our hearts they won't keep and the right words to reassure us that everything will be just fine. We care less about what a politician stands for than what bad things they say the other guy stands for. We don't evaluate a political leader on their record, we cling to ideology like a hungry fat kid clings to Twinkie.

In that regard, we are the author’s of our own misfortune and are as much responsible for the mess we now endure. 

It occurs to me at times that we put more thought into selecting our new car than we do into choosing which politicians or political party should be entrusted with the fate of our nations. But then, these days most cars seem to be far more efficient than any government or political party.

The real tragedy is that these days it is easier to find an honest used car salesperson than an honest politician. 

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

The Real Choice In This American Presidential Election

"The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it."

"It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."

"It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed."

Consider these three political quotes. Each speaks to the idea of government by fear both of its external enemies and of its own people. Who spoke these words is revealed at the end of the post.

There was a time when the United States was the strongest and freest democracy in the world. It was criticized, mocked and even accused but nobody doubted its commitment to freedom and the triumph of the rights of the individual over the power of government.  Even its critics gave grudging admiration for the fierce independence of individual Americans and how quick they were to resist attempts by government to undermine their rights and freedoms. Perhaps no nation on earth held its constitution in such high regard as the United States. 

It is, quite frankly, what set it apart from other nations, including most other democracies.  As a result, it was the first and only choice of millions fleeing oppressive regimes and impoverished nations around the world. 

America has changed.

Canada's Council Of Fools

Canada's Council of the Federation

The provincial premiers of Canada met this past week in what they have come to call the Council of The Federation. These semi-regular get togethers used to be called First Ministers’ Meetings but that appellation was no longer grand enough for a group of political hacks who see themselves as leaders and statesmen.

A better name for the meeting would be The Council of Fools because that is precisely what they are, a group of cynical, self-serving politicians with little to no vision and just enough authority to be dangerous to the nation's prosperity and future.

For decades, this group of provincial premiers gathered regularly to condemn the federal government while at the same time begging for more federal money. They met, had nice lunches and dinners, provided quick sound bites for the television news shows, posed for photographs and then trundled off home after agreeing to study their latest 'agreements in principle'. It was then, as it is now, all talk which accomplished nothing.

The Official Opposition To Reality

Queen Elizabeth II, Canada's
head of state and a grand and
noble lady.

Canada is a parliamentary democracy. In fact, it is actually a constitutional monarchy but the Queen is tied up with the Olympics right now so we’ll just deal with the parliamentary part of it.

Unlike the republican form of government in the United States, Canada does not have an executive branch. Our government is comprised of the House of Commons (the legislative branch), the Supreme Court of Canada, (the judicial branch) and the Senate (where former political hacks and bag men go to retire in taxpayer funded comfort before dying). Only our House of Commons can pass legislation that has been introduced either by the Commons or by the Senate. Typically it is the governing party that introduces legislation but individual members can also prepare and introduce legislation but these bills seldom get passed.

Our system is a first-past-the-post electoral system. Like the United States, we have political parties because like Americans, we haven’t figured out how to get rid of them yet.  The party that gains the most seats in an election forms the government. If the total number of government seats outnumbers the total number of opposition party seats, it is called a majority government. If the opposition outnumbers the government, it’s called a minority government. (They actually have government committees who come up with the official labels for things like this)

We do not have a president who is elected separately by the people. The prime minister is just one more member of parliament who represents an electoral riding like the other members. He or she becomes prime minister because they also happen to be leader of their political party. 

I know that’s all a big yawn and I apologize but it was necessary to lay it out so that we could get to this point.
The party in parliament with the second highest number of members is called the Official Opposition. Currently, the New Democratic Party is the Official Opposition which provides them with a few extra perks over the other opposition parties; the Liberals, Bloc Quebecois and the Green Party who who get no perks beyond their six figure salary and gold-plated pension.

If you find all of that a little confusing, you should try living under that system for awhile.

When Fear Reigns

Hitler, the politician campaigning
for power

One of the ways you can always tell when someone has run out of facts to support their argument is when they trot out some comparative reference to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime of the 1930’s and 40’s. 

Even though most of us didn’t personally live through that evil hell, we are well-enough acquainted with what took place to recognize it for what it was; a regime of single-minded brutality and oppression that resulted in the deaths of more than 13 million people including the outright senseless, systematic slaughter of more than 6 million Jews.

Two students being humiliated by
fellow German students simply because
they were Jewish.

One would think that any comparison to Nazi Germany and anyone today would pretty much be reserved for the likes of the Syrian or North Korean regimes or that of the former Iraqi dictator Salaam Hussein. Typically it isn’t.

Small Dreams: The Decline Of Democracy

2012 U. S. presidential candidates
Mitt Romney and Barrack Obama

As the world watches the United States spend its way through another presidential election campaign, I look at what is being offered for so much expense and scratch my head.

Billions are being spent in a war of words between a Democrat and a Republican, a barrage of rhetoric that is so meaningless that it is little more than adolescent schoolyard bickering.

This isn’t leadership. There is no higher morality or vision being offered, no quiet dignity and sense of connection to the people. It is politics at it most cynical, policies made on the fly in response to polls and the opponent’s mistakes and weaknesses.

Canadian Prime Minister
Stephen Harper

It is not peculiar to the United States.

Canada hasn’t produced a true leader in decades or maybe even longer. The current crop of political hacks is bereft of new ideas and little more than different faces in the same tired suits and ideas of the guys that came and went before them. It is a sad commentary that the best one can say about our current Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is that he is merely a little more competent than most. There is no inspiration or vision, just a narrow-minded management of the day-to-day activities of government as if the country was not much more than a large accounting firm.

Germany's Angela Merkel, Italy's former
PM Belusconi and France's former
President Sarkozy

In recent years, Europe hasn’t offered up much in the way of leadership either. Whether it was Italy’s over-sexed clown Berlusconi, France’s Sarkozy or the crowd of inept and faceless politicians that contributed to sink Greece, Europe has elevated mediocre political leadership to an art form. Even the hapless Angela Merkel of Germany has floundered around trying to buy Europe out of a debt crisis not of Germany’s making and without much hope of success. She just doesn’t really know what else to do.

In the end, none of them really know what to do so they spend more money; money we don’t have and can’t afford. 

There is no dignity, no vision and no ability to inspire and unite a nation. It is all about polls, photo ops and the next election. More strategic planning goes into organizing a G-20 meeting than most politicians put into planning the governing of their countries.

South Africa's Nelson Mandela,
an inspiring and uniting leader
with great integrity and quiet dignity

There are no Nelson Mandelas or Mahatma Ghandis leading our nations now, only those who thirst for power for its own sake. They are aided by those who lack the ability to obtain that power for themselves and so content themselves with being a part of the great person’s entourage and war room.  They flutter around the politicians like moths around a porch light and contribute even less. There is no sense of common purpose to unite a people and lead them forward. There is only more of the same senseless dithering and pandering that has become the mainstream of politics in modern democracies.

Is all of this working? Are our democracies becoming stronger and more successful? I would suggest it is not working and that most democratic nations are floundering as a result of a lack true leadership.  

Our nations are divided and the people polarized, angry and frustrated. We are overwhelmed by a level of global debt that is staggering and our infrastructures continue to crumble as politicians dither, squandering money on failed but trendy ideas like wind farms and solar energy companies.  They talk about fiscal responsiblity while throwing more money at special interest and election campaigns. They raise taxes only to squander the additional money on corrupt ideas, poor fiscal management and outright incompetence.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
President of Iran

The world is less safe today than it was twenty years ago and our political leadership has failed to understand why or how to address the threats.  Democratic governments are inconsistent. They intervene in Libya but stand back and watch the slaughter in Syria. Our leadership is so poor it is unable to effectively address the threat of terrorism and so impose oppressive security measures on their own citizens while failing to deal with the root causes of terrorism at its source.

Our democracies have been so poorly led, that it has undermined whatever moral authority they once held in the world and our enemies no longer fear or respect us. Today, our democracies are seen as weak, confused and self-indulgent by those who would do us harm.

For its part, the United Nations has been overrun by repressive regimes to a point of stasis and the leaders of our democracies stand back unable to do anything beyond talk and watch it happen.

Our governments violate our constitutions and break our laws and the greatest threat to our freedom comes from the lack of moral integrity that fuels the political leadership today.  Where once we were led by those who tried to do what was right, we are now led by those who lead based on what is politically expedient regardless of the legality, the morality or the economics of those decisions.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder

In the United States, the Attorney General the nation’s chief protector of law, is found in contempt of Congress. In Canada, it is the Prime Minister and his government that are found in contempt of Parliament.

The current Canadian government is in court defending itself from allegations of election fraud while they're point man on ethics is himself under investigation for possible violation of the elections act. A previous Liberal government just flat out stole more than $1 million from taxpayers and handed it out in brown paper bags to its supporters in Quebec and a Liberal senator was convicted of corruption in 2011 and sent to prison.

In every major democracy in the world, politicians have been charged with and convicted of corruption or some other illegal betrayal of the people’s trust. It is not the left or the right that lack the moral authority to lead with integrity, it is parties on all sides that have violated the oath of office and the laws and constitutions they were sworn to protect.

These are not small issues. When the political leadership is in contempt of the very institutions they lead and are sworn to uphold, it is an indication of a moral vacuum at the heart of our government institutions. When the people take sides to support those who lie to them or steal from them, it underscores that adherence to blind ideology has replaced morality, integrity and even common sense. Together, they are a sign of the erosion of the principles and values upon which all democracies were founded

If a Prime Minister or a President will not defend the constitution and laws of their own nations, who will? If the people of a nation will not stand up and demand their leaders, regardless of political affiliation, uphold the law rather than pervert it for their own purposes, who will?

We are not being defeated by Islamic extremist countries, terrorist groups and other nations that hate us, we are being defeated by politicians that lack the focus of those who threaten our security and our way of life; politicians who place obtaining power far above using that power for the greater good. Our enemies have a strong sense of purpose and are focused. Our governments are unfocused and bloated bureaucracies led by politicians who place obtaining and holding on to power ahead of using that power for the greater benefit of their nations.

We are nations thirsting for inspired leadership. Where once our nations were led by people who dared to dream big dreams, we are now led by politicians who lack the courage and the ability to dream at all.

We perpetuate the erosion of our democracies by supporting those who bring that cynicism and lack of leadership to governing our nations. We enable those politicians who lack the morality and the sense of purpose to lead effectively by allowing them to buy us with borrowed money and with lies and half-truths. 

We are willfully blind and it is that blindness that will ultimately be our undoing. We are, ‘we the people’. It falls to us to decide whether we will continue to participate in the decline of democracy by giving our support to political leaders who betray the very principles upon which our nations were founded or whether we will take off the blinders of ideology, unite as one people and demand something better.

RELATED

Violating The Oath Of Office

http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/06/violating-oath-of-office.html

What Ever Happened To Integrity?

http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/04/what-ever-happened-to-integrity.html

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

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Slaughter Of The Innocent

In the space of five days, Canada and the United States each  experienced terrible mass shootings rampages of senseless violence that are virtually impossible to comprehend.

In Toronto, Canada twenty-one people, including a three-month old baby, were shot at a barbeque in an inner-city neighbourhood. Two people were killed. In 1989, Marc Lepine entered École Polytechnique in Montreal and shot twenty-four people, killing fourteen women.

Yesterday, seventy-one people were shot in a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado; twelve were killed and memories of Columbine and Virginia Tech rush back with all their weight of needless death and horror.

These are moments that go beyond mere tragedy. They are horrific events that tear the hearts out of survivors and the families of those who were wounded or killed. Nobody touched by these moments of callous violence will ever be the same again nor will our societies.

Sharpen Up The Blade Boys, We Have Some Banking To Take Care Of

Mickey Mouse is pretty much the perfect logo
for the way banks do business these days!

I am so angry right now I could spit!

I just got off the phone after speaking to my bank branch about the post-dated check fiasco from last Friday. My concern was not about reversing the transaction, Maggie and I covered it. My concern was that clearly someone had made an error that could have put the money in our bank accounts at risk if that kind of error was allowed to happen randomly.

It wasn’t an error, or at least, my bank doesn’t feel it made an error. Any mistake made was by the bank that deposited the check. My bank feels it has absolutely no obligation to confirm details on a check that has been deposited by another bank before it releases the funds.

This, apparently is the how the Canadian (and I presume the international) bank to bank system works.

It’s all very cozy, isn’t it? The rules they impose on you and I do not apply to them and the reason given is that it would be inconvenient, requiring additional work at some expense. I actually had the manager at my bank say that to me.

 Unbelievable!

Fast & Furious - CNN's Soledad O'Brien Rides Again

On the eve of an historic vote by a congressional committee that could find the Attorney General of the United States in contempt of congress, a Fortune Magazine article has been published that challenges the entire narrative of the what has come to be called Fast & Furious.

It is alleged that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) engaged in a series of ‘gunwalking’ sting operations during the period 2006-2011. The program, was intended to reduce the flow of illegal weapons into Mexico and the hands of the drug cartels by by allowing some weapons to be moved (or walked) by gun runners. It is alleged that the ATF allowed gun runners and straw buyers to purchase weapons and traffic them across the border. This is called gunwalking.

Who Really Has The Hidden Agenda - The Left or The Right?

Canadian Prime Minister
Stephen Harper

For a very long time, the left in Canada has accused the current prime minister and the Conservative Party of having a secret, hidden agenda that they would implement  to the detriment of society and life as we know it once they were elected. He has been in office for six years now and aside from the usual careless mistakes, bouts of mean-spirited political campaigning and the odd bit of sheer stupidity that all parties seem to bring to office with them, it's all been fairly stable in the Great White North and pretty much been business as (except for the odd riot here and there of course).

It's hard to understand where this fear of a secret agenda came from until I read something posted on a friend's Facebook page this morning. For some reason, it reminded me of something my mother used to tell me. "Those with something to hide tend to be the ones who are quickest to accuse others of the same thing" or to put it a little differently,

"The thing we fear in others is the thing we most fear in ourselves."

I won't accuse anyone of having a secret agenda, I'll let the words below speak for themselves and you can decide for yourself what they mean to you.

The words are from “ The Naked Communist” and are part of the United States Congressional Record--Appendix, pp. A34-A35 January 10, 1963.

Honourable Members

Have you ever heard something said that was just so patently stupid you were convinced you hadn’t heard correctly? I heard something like that last week and after I realized that there was nothing wrong with my hearing and I had heard it correctly, I thought my head was going to explode.

The Right Honourable Prime Minister of Canada stood up in Parliament and chided the leader of the Official Opposition for not supporting the war against Hitler.

Where does stupidity like that come from? This is the leader of our government. The Leader of the Opposition wasn’t even born until six years after WWII, the party he leads wasn’t formed until 1961 and didn’t exist during the war and, of course, the war has  been over for more than 60 years.

We Are Drowning In Stupidity

There are two kinds of people in the world; stupid people and the rest of us and I think the rest of us are slowly being outnumbered.

One of my most-read posts is the satire I wrote on what government would do if it legalized marijuana. The article did not take a position on whether legalization was good or a bad thing, in fact it really wasn’t about marijuana at all. It was about how government bureaucracies overwhelm things with rules, regulations, taxes and fees until it all becomes so complicated and expensive, it’s hardly worth engaging in anymore.