A Democracy of Trivial Pursuit

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent

about things that matter." 

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Some days it is difficult to believe that thousands of men and women have given their lives to protect the freedoms and rights we have. Day after day during various election campaigns, I watch pointless polarized arguments over trivial minutia rather than serious debate about the real issues that we face and that are of concern to us all.

The mainstream and social media become aflame with opinion, most of which is unencumbered by something as inconvenient as facts or analytical thinking. It is noise and buzz and chatter that is passed along as if it actually meant something.

It doesn’t!

The presidential election in the United States will cost upwards of $10 billion and has already consumed the better part of a year. It is an obscene expenditure and parody of democracy and for all that time and expense, what have we really learned?

Not much. People have lined up to support the President or the challenger with mindless partisan rhetoric they parrot endlessly. When confronted with real facts, they spin, dodge and weave with more dexterity than an NBA point guard.

For months, for example, the left has been whining about Mitt Romney’s tax returns and they were finally released; more than 550 pages of them in fact. The documents even included returns for the past few years which was over-kill but nonetheless, it didn’t stop the hyperbole or even slow it down. Instead, people now criticize how much Mr. Romney actually paid or talk about his off-shore accounts or, if you’re a Democratic U.S. Senator, accuse Mr. Romney of falsifying his returns.

It’s almost as if people can’t think for themselves any more. They’re just ventriloquist dummies with a political party’s hand up their ass making their mouths work.

Even sheep think more independently.

I had a comment left on my blog yesterday that referred to Mitt Romney’s tax rate as a joke. I’ll tell you what's a joke. It’s people who can’t think beyond their bias, people so bereft of the ability to think critically and so unwilling to examine facts objectively, they’d rather sink with the ship than let go of whatever opinion they cling to so desperately.

Let’s look at the facts, not the spin from either side, just the facts of Mitt Romney’s tax returns.

Mitt Romney’s income is primarily investment income which is taxed differently than salaried income. There is a reason for this. Investment income has already been taxed once. Consequently, just as all Americans who earn investment income, Mr. Romney received a rate reduction under the tax code because of the nature of his income. Barrack Obama, by contrast, earned most of his income in the form of salary which is taxed differently but in the end, it all amounts to the same thing. 

Both men followed the tax code as it is written into law. Because of his sizable donation to charity, Mr. Romney earned a very large tax deduction which reduced his tax rate to 14%. That charitable tax deduction is available to every American citizen and is in place to encourage people to contribute to their communities through charity.

It should be noted that Mr. Romney did not take the full allowable charitable donation tax deduction even though he was fully entitled to do so.

In 2011, Mitt Romney earned $42 million. He paid $6.2 million in taxes, donated $7 million to charity and another $4.1 million to his church. In other words, far from being the greedy, evil 1% money-grubber that the Democrats were desperate to paint him, Mitt Romney paid taxes and made donations  equivalent to 41% of his income. 

The national average for charitable donations is approximately 3% of income. Mitt Romney donated slightly more than 26% of his income.

Those are simple facts but it won’t stop the left from accusing him of not paying his fair share. They will whine that he should have paid more in taxes rather than give to his church and to charity. Don’t try to make sense of that attitude. I’ve wasted too much time trying to figure it out and the logic escapes me.

So how does the evil capitalist stack up against others with a dog in this race? Let’s take a look at some of his critics and supporters.

In 2011, Joe Biden and his wife donated $995 to charity on income of just over $300,000. At 0.3%, that doesn’t come close to the national average even though it is a significant increase for the Biden’s over previous years when they donated less than 0.1%. It doesn’t, however, measure up to former Vice-president Al Gore who, along with his wife, donated 7% of their income to charity during his last two years in office.

To their credit, President Obama and his wife have increased their charitable donations as their income increased. In 2011, the President donated 5.7% of their income to charity and the President took 100% of the allowable tax deduction as is his right under the tax code. Senator John McCain, another right-wing capitalist pig, donated 25% of his income. Newt Gingrich donated less than 3%.

How much a politician, or anyone for that matter, contributes to charity is a personal decision and has nothing to do with whether or not they are capable of governing and leading the country. But look at all the time that has been wasted and that will continue to be wasted on this non-issue. There was no smoking gun in the Romney tax returns but consider how much time and energy were squandered over it to the point that it was like watching a dog worrying a bone. There was no meat left but that dog just kept on gnawing anyway.

There are people across America right now and, indeed, around the world asking a far more serious question than how much tax did Mitt Romney pay. The question many are asking is:

What in the hell happened to the United States and to Americans?

The United States used to be a nation that applauded success. It celebrated initiative and achievement. Much of the world's great industrial and technological advancement came from Americans like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Henry Ford and countless others. Along the way, they created hundreds of thousands of jobs and provided significant prosperity for people across the country and around the world.

It was called The American Dream; a nation where anyone could rise up from nothing and become successful.

Americans were an innovative, creative and positive people. Now it’s all whining and accusation; a negativity that borders on manic depression. Success is vilified and accomplishing wealth has become an evil thing. It’s sometimes seems like America’s best days are behind it and the country we once knew and admired no longer exists.

Even the President demeaned the idea of individual accomplishment and success with his “you didn’t build this” comment. That statement is so unlike the attitude that built the United States, that it is astonishing that any American politician would actually think it let alone say it out loud.

It wasn’t so long ago that America was the strongest nation in the world and the president was considered the world's most powerful leader. It wasn't strong simply because it had a large standing army and enough nuclear weapons to destroy the solar system. It was attitude and character that made America strong. There was a national pride and confidence that is long gone.

If other nations didn’t always agree with U.S. foreign policy, they respected the focus and strength of American resolve and determination. Now, teenagers and thugs with guns, rocks and homemade bombs attack American consulates and terrorists kill its diplomatic staff without reprisal.

Where once America stood strong against those that threatened it's security, it now apologizes for having offended those that attack it.

The nation’s economy is in the toilet, unemployment is a disgrace, poverty is on the rise, random violence is breaking out in cities across the country, the country’s foreign policy is a confused mess and through it all, Americans are arguing about a candidate’s tax returns or the president’s birth certificate, the latest Romney foot in the mouth gaff or how often the President has played golf.

Give me a break!

While I grant you it would be a wonderful thing for a nation to only have to worry about trivia like that, the simple reality is that they are not only unimportant, they are inane in context of the state of the union and the world today.

There are 23 million Americans unemployed and more than 26 million who go to bed at night not knowing from where their next meal will come. Half of those people, 13 million, are children. The true unemployment rate is over 10%, the national deficit has jumped from $10 trillion to $16 trillion in just four years and neither Congress nor the White House showed enough leadership to have come together and successfully passed a budget during this administration.

Despite that, those who support the President are more focused on accusing anyone who doesn't of being a racist.

Despite a fast approaching deadline that will see program spending slashed by $1 trillion and taxes increased by as much as 5% unless Congress and The White House arrive at a solution, Congress has adjourned until after the election season and the President was too busy chatting on The View and David Letterman to attempt to negotiate a deal. This despite the fact that the bond rating agencies have issued a strong warning that the United States is facing another downgrading of its credit rating. That will result in even higher interest payments on the national debt, further depriving the government of much needed money to fund its operations.

America has lost its influence in the world. Despite entreaties from the President to not attend, 127 countries attended a conference in Iran this past week. So little influence does the U.S. now have, even the Secretary General of the U.N attended despite a request from the President that he not.

Two men are running for president. It is probably the most serious responsibility in the developed world but very few, including the candidates themselves have offered serious and informed debate on the real issues. It’s all attack, spin and counter spin. Anyone who believes that approach to selecting a world leader will provide a future guarantee of prosperity and security for the nation is seriously deluded. It is a circus of misinformed, polarized opinion and nothing more and which will accomplish even less.

I have always liked and respected the United States and I particularly like Americans. I have always found them a friendly, compassionate and dynamic people. If they were sometimes arrogant and opinionated, they were also fiercely loyal and invariably the first to arrive with aid at the scene of a natural disaster somewhere in the world. We could always count on America and Americans to be among the first to offer a helping hand to those who needed it.

We now live in a era when it is more important than ever before to know who your friends are and upon whom you can depend. It wasn't so long ago, we all knew we could depend on the United States as trading partner, friend and ally. Today nobody, including some of America's closest allies like Canada and Israel, really know where they stand with the United States. If your closest allies are scratching their heads in wonderment, you can only imagine what those, who didn't like you to begin with, are thinking. 

It makes me wonder what happened to this great nation and I’m not alone. People around the world, including many Americans are asking the same question.

And that, my friends, is a far better question to ponder than Mitt Romney’s tax returns or all the other trivial nonsense being screamed across the mainstream and social media these days. If Americans want to regain the country they once had, they need to examine both the record of this President and the campaign platform of his challenger with an objective and critical eye before making a decision when they go to cast their ballot.

The simple truth is that in this new and very dangerous world, Americans can no longer afford the luxury of mindless partisanship and ill-informed debate.

None of us can.

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

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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

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Aliens Walk Among Us - They Are Called Bureaucrats

After many years of thought, I have come to the conclusion that government is only good at two things; regulation and collecting money. I know some of you are thinking they’re really good at spending money too but I think they spend money poorly but boy do they know how to find more of it and how to extract it from even the most reluctant of us.

Government has figured out how to tax everything and when all that tax money proved to be insufficient for what they were spending it on, they invented user fees for things our taxes had already bought and paid for. They created fees for permits, licenses and the documents they require us to have and they have built a bureaucracy to control it all.

Canada’s GDP is estimated at $1.74 trillion annually. User fees, income and capital gains taxes alone take more than $299 billion out of the economy (source: Canada Revenue Agency and Stats Canada). Add to that consumption taxes which include the federal Goods and Services Tax, provincial sales taxes, excise taxes, school taxes, municipal property taxes, provincial income taxes and my particular favourite, the Welcome Tax in Quebec. (Home buyers pay what is referred to as a welcome tax on the purchase of a home as a way of making them feel welcome in their new community.

Overall, all levels of government combined take approximately 50% of the income earned by Canadians in the form of taxes or user fees and that, my friends, is greed at a level that would make the guys from Enron drool and Bernie Madoff positively slap his forehead and ask himself, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

They use that money to provide services, many of which we never hear of or see. Why? Because they turn the money over to the bureaucracy and the bureaucracy is quite simply a world of its own. In fact, I actually believe that government bureaucrats are the direct descendants of a race of aliens who came to earth eons ago after their home planet became so weighted down by red tape and regulation, it imploded.

I also believe that politicians are the descendants of the cross breeding between the ancestors of those bureaucrats from another planet and human beings.

They look like us. They walk like us but they don’t think, talk or live like us. They have no soul. That is how we know that they are not from around here. They are like ants living in a colony. They each have assigned tasks and go about those tasks like robots and because of that single-minded focus they now control everything.

Bureaucrats exist to regulate and control Politicians exist to spend money. That is their only purpose in life. They were bred  by bureaucrats to feed the bureaucracy. Without the politicians, bureaucrats would have nothing to do and all that money they collect so industriously would sit in a big room somewhere collecting dust. They are like bees who collect pollen every day, it has to be used or sooner or later the hive drowns in it.

Initially, politicians weren’t very good at spending money. Some, in fact, were downright frugal which really tended to gum up the works so bureaucrats had to come up with additional ways to spend money and they did. They invented regulations and they found that it was good. This had the advantage of not only increasing cost but it also helped to teach their political offspring new ways to spend money. This allowed bureaucrats to find new ways to target the collection of money.

They have become so good at imposing regulation that nothing escapes them; nothing is too small or insignificant for some form of government control. They regulate everything.

They regulate traffic with signs instructing us to follow the rules: stop, no parking, no stopping, no turns, right turn only, left turn only, do not enter, no left turn, no right turn, yield, merge and my favourite, proceed with caution.

If it moves, they license it including; boats, cars, bikes, dogs, motorcycles and aircraft.  If it’s fun they require a permit be purchased. Bureaucrats are suspicious of fun and so charge citizens to hold parades, community sports events, festivals, outdoor concerts and to make a few bucks as buskers on our streets.

If it is stationary, they tax it and have developed property taxes, agricultural taxes and marketing boards, parking fees and fines for non compliance.

They have effectively squeezed the mob out of the distribution and control of cigarettes, booze and gambling and soon will have pushed them out of illegal drugs. The bureaucracy and their political offspring is considering ways to legalize drugs which will lead to a whole new group of regulations, fees and taxes. Soon, the mob will be reduced to holding garage and bake sales and no one, not even Francis Ford Coppola will want to make movies about them anymore.

If you buy it, you pay a consumption tax. If you sell it you pay income tax on the money you made over a certain amount. If you die, they tax the pennies on your eyes.

They regulate safety, health, transportation, communications, education, the environment, infrastructure development, hunting, fishing, professional and amateur sports and business. In fact, they regulate everything except credit card interest rates and gas prices. 

They impose costs on manufacturers with ridiculous labeling restrictions and delay new product development with endless assessments, reviews and licensing processes. The bureaucracy lives for process. It is their oxygen.

The list is endless and even as I write this, somewhere in Canada….perhaps in many somewheres….there are government bureaucrats developing, refining and considering new regulations and planning the number of new bureaucrats it will require to monitor and enforce those regulations.

The simple fact is that the single biggest industry in Canada now is government. When you add all governments together, government employees more people than any other industry. It touches more lives than any other industry including technology. In fact, government touches pretty much every Canadian’s life from birth to death and then, of course, they don’t want anything to do with you although in some jurisdictions you are still permitted to vote after you die .

And that, my friends is the real problem. Government is not an industry. It produces nothing and creates no wealth. It erodes it. Government takes wealth from its citizens and the more wealth it takes the more it threatens the prosperity of every individual and the nation as a whole.

I believe we should all contribute our fair share to provide the common services we need as a society. I even believe in a responsible social safety net but when government is taking half of the wealth generated by a people, it’s starting to cross over into Marie Antoinette territory and that creates unrest that didn’t end well for anybody, especially Marie and many of her friends.

In the United States, the situation is not much better as exemplified by the 22,000 income tax regulations that country's bureaucracy has developed and by the current presidential election campaign. Both candidates are offering government in one form or another as the solution to the problems our American friends are facing but just as it is in Canada, and every other country in the world, democratic and totalitarian alike; government is the problem.

How do I know this?

I ran this post by someone who works for government at a fairly high level and he told me that he agreed and wanted to work towards bringing about real change to government…….and he was prepared to hire as many people as necessary to make that happen. 

I could almost hear the mechanical voice inside his head  whispering over and over and over again , “this does not compute”.

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

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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

Government Has Discovered The Organic ATM Machine.- We're Screwed!

I stumbled over an interesting tidbit yesterday. The Parliamentary Budget Officer released a report that shows the federal government is now raking in some $10 billion in user fees. It was a striking number that made me ask a simple question. 

For what?

Aren’t government user fees sort of the same things as having your own employees charge you for using the facilities and services for which you already paid and own? Where’s that money gone for Pete’s sake? It’s like having your kids charge you for the hug you want to give them and thought the new iPhones you bought them last week had earned you.

It was mildly annoying but I thought I’d let it go because I’m feeling pretty magnanimous this week and decided to cut the government a break but…..I couldn’t let it go and ended up doing a little research.

Guess what?

User fees have become a major windfall for governments at all levels. In fact, the combined amount of user fees charged by all levels of government in Canada is more than $60 billion. I will repeat that for you, my fellow gentle, organic ATM machines. Our governments are charging us $60 billion to use the services and facilities we paid for out of our tax money.

Municipal governments charge user fees to use ‘our’ sports facilities even though we paid to have them built and pay the salaries of those who operate them. They charge for permits that they require us to have and that’s an excellent racket if I ever saw one. Make it mandatory to get a permit and then charge to supply it. Only two organizatons could come up with an idea like that; the government and the mob.

They even charge to park in our parking lot at City Hall when we go down to interact with our municipal government. I’m thinking of requiring them to come to my home where I can park for free the next time they want to interact with me.

Provincial governments also charge user fees for things like parking at hospitals and provincial offices and copies of our records like birth certificates. They charge user fees to use the parks we paid to build and pay to maintain. Many schools now charge users fees for extracurricular activities that were once free and for specialized courses like French, art and music. Imagine that; charging a user fee to learn one of Canada’s official languages in a school.

In Quebec, where I live, the government actually charges a $2.50 fee if you show up at the license bureau to pay your registration in person rather than mailing in a check. Unbelievable; a user fee for the privilege of paying another user fee in person. I'm thinking that next year, I'll bury the money for my registration in the front yard and sent them an email treasure map where to find it.

Government, of course, justifies this by telling us that we must pay these fees if we want to benefit from and continue to enjoy these services and facilities. I think, however, that what we need is some fresh blood in government because I tend to believe that government has lost its sense of perspective at best and its collective mind at worst.

Let’s back up just a bit. We agreed to pay income tax, property tax and school tax to provide certain fundamental common services. We’ve even, reluctantly at times, agreed to increases in those taxes to offset the rise in the cost of living. Government, for its part, took that money and spent it. To be fair, some of it was used for its intended purposes but much of it went to bloated bureaucracies, extravagant facilities we didn’t need or ask for and, of course, entitlements that are very handy things to offer at election time.

Government further compounded the situation by managing to find the most complex and expensive method of doing anything while at the same time reducing the pool of tax payers by handing out tax breaks to political parties, charities, non-profit foundations and unions which pay no tax at all on the membership income they take in and use to support their political campaigning and activism.

This meant that government didn’t have enough money to do everything it was supposed to do so it introduced other taxes including: consumption taxes like the GST and provincial sales taxes, health taxes, excise taxes and capital gains tax among others. Of course, once that money started to flow, government came up with new things to spend it on.

The bureaucracies grew, the entitlements expanded and public sector compensation packages became a thing of beauty.

More money was needed, so after raising the taxes on sin products like cigarettes and booze, the government took over the mob’s old rackets and got into the Numbers Game with lotteries of all shapes and sizes. Of course, that necessitated even more administration so some governments expanded again and opened up casinos. 

In Quebec, where I live, there is a lavish casino that makes about 10% profits. Imagine, a casino that only made a gross profit of 10%. How is that possible when you are the only casino in the region? It’s possible because government knows as much about running a casino as it does about managing health care services in an efficient manner.

Now governments are charging us user fees for the very things all that tax money paid for and continues to pay to maintain. Somehow, this makes sense to government but it doesn’t to me. They seem to believe that we are nothing but organic ATM machines and to be very blunt, I don't much like where they insert their debit cards in order to make withdrawal. 

I think we’ve reached a stage where we should just send all of our money to government and live for free. Government can buy our food, pay our mortgages, and give us weekly spending allowances to use for clothes, gifts and entertainment. We will pay for nothing. Government will pay for it all. When we need a new car, we’ll just call the car department of the government, give them the style and colour we want and they will send one right over.

It will be less expensive than what we’re living with now. At least we won’t need all those bureaucrats and tax departments who collect the taxes, user fees and other income now. Of course, now that I think of it I realize that they won’t actually get laid off. They’ll just get transferred to new departments in the bureaucracies so maybe that idea won’t work either.

Perhaps we should just bend over and kiss our asses goodbye or in the alternative bend over a little farther stick our heads up our asses until we can’t breathe and just suffocate ourselves to death so that we don’t have to live with this inanity any longer.

Of course, government will probably have a user fee for that too.

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

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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 Day After The Quebec Election

We were up and at ‘em this morning. Maggie had an early meeting and after I dropped her off at the big government office, I headed over to Reno Depot to pick up a some things I need for couple of small projects on which I’m working.

Reno Depot is a box store much in the same vein as Home Depot and Lowes. It carries pretty much all the same kind of stuff from tools to lumber, hardware and electrical to gardening supplies, paint, tile and plumbing fixtures and materials. It is Quebec-based and coincidentally a perfect symbol for Quebec.

Reno Depot takes great pride in promoting its custom project service, a service in which they will plan and implement renovation projects for your home or office. The first thing you notice when you walk into the store (which is huge) is that there are a series of large white plastic buckets strewn along the main aisle in front of the cashiers. They are there to catch the water dripping down from the leaks in the ceiling.

Apparently they can handle any project, large or small, for you but are unable to repair their own ceiling. It tends to undermine confidence a wee bit.

Recently Lowes made an offer to buy Reno Depot and the Quebec government immediately responded to indicate that it would move to protect Quebec companies from foreign investment or take over. Almost simultaneously during the recent election, that same government announced it would facilitate Quebec companies investing in or outright purchasing foreign companies in other countries.

And that is the perfect definition of Quebec, a society in serious need of renovations and repairs with a schizophrenic approach to business and investment. It is at the same time protectionist and expansive which means it is pretty much running in circles.

For decades the predominant focus of Quebec politics has been on two things. The first is language and sovereignty (separation from Canada) and the second is lavish entitlements that the province cannot actually afford. While various Quebec governments and special interest have focused on these two primary areas, some serious things have been happening that have gone unattended.

Quebec has the lowest rate of applicants for post secondary education in the country and the highest college/university dropout rate. It has the lowest median income in Canada and the highest debt to GDP ratio. It’s worse even than that of Ontario and you really have to work at it to put yourself in a worse position than what nine years of  Ontario Liberal government has done to what was once Canada’s economic powerhouse.

Per capita provincial debt in Quebec is higher than that of Greece and we all know how well that’s been working out for our Mediterranean friends. The only reason Quebec isn’t suffering the way Greece is suffering is because Quebec receives in excess of $17 billion in equalization, health care and other social transfer payments from the federal government. Without that annual infusion from Ottawa, Quebec would make a banana republic look prosperous.

On top of this, Quebec is the highest taxed jurisdiction in North America and the new government is already talking about tax increases.

I don’t say this with any rancor or satisfaction. I live in Quebec and I love living here. The people, for the most part, are a generous and happy people. They are creative and have a joie du vivre you won’t find in places like Toronto.

The French culture has a rich heritage and it is celebrated by French and English alike, when they aren’t squabbling over the size of different languages on signs. I believe Quebec has everything it needs to be one of the world’s great cosmopolitan societies but is being prevented from achieving that opportunity by a small percentage of narrow-minded bigots who focus on restricting the lives and rights of others instead of expanding the society’s potential through the diversity of its people.

The great contradiction of Quebec, however, is not language or culture; it is entitlement. At precisely the same time that governments, particularly former PQ governments have demanded more political independence for Quebec, they have made the province economically dependent on Canada. Many of the social programs, including $7/day day care and the second lowest university tuition in the country would not be possible without the money Quebec receives from Ottawa.

Quebec is not failing because of its people; it is failing because of the weakness of its political leadership.

That was abundantly clear during this last election which should have been about the economy and political corruption but wasn’t. Once again, language and demanding powers from Ottawa became a central theme and once again, the people of Quebec said they are not interested in those issues although they do want change. Once again they refused to give the separatist party a mandate to pursue separation from Canada and once again, the politicians refused to listen.

The rest of Canada, of course, simply dismisses all of Quebec as being the problem but it isn’t. It’s the 30% of the population that are hardcore separatists who cannot accept that their day has come and gone. Most Quebecers have moved on and believe that Quebec belongs to all Quebecers, not just the pur laine French and that the future prosperity and success of the province lies in uniting Quebecers rather than dividing them or suppressing the rights of some over others.

The new government is already talking about demanding more powers from Ottawa when it should be focusing on its debt, corruption and expanding economic opportunity by encouraging investment in Quebec. It has been like this for a very long time. Promise much, demand more from Ottawa and then mislead the people that this is the road to a strong and independent society while blaming the rest of Canada for your own political mistakes.

But there is hope even if one day after the election not much has really changed.

One government has been traded for another which at the end of the day will do pretty much what the former government did, the media will continue their absurd post-election commentary on unity but the people of Quebec have shown they are not fooled by any of it. They voted and they voted as Canadians primarily. They voted for change and if they don’t like the change they are about to get, they voted in a minority government to give themselves an opportunity to vote for change again…….and sooner rather than later……if need be.

It’s time for the politicians to catch up to the people instead of continuing to pretend they are leading them. It's time for politicians in Quebec to stop sowing the seeds of discord and start focusing on the real job for which they were elected. It's time for real political leadership and not this ongoing and destructive nonsense that has been part of our society for too long. (and while we're at it, perhaps the media could start actually covering the real issues instead of droning on and on about a crisis that only exists in their minds.)

The people have spoken!

© 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

I Am Racist!

I know I’m racist because I’ve been told so. I’ve been told I’m racist because I don’t believe Barack Obama has been a very good president. Even though I could care less about the colour of his skin, I’m a racist because I believe he is the ultimate triumph of glib rhetoric over real accomplishment. I’m a racist because I believe his record as president illustrates his lack of commitment to his stated values and demonstrates little more than a love of the spotlight and a lust for power.

The American economy is in tatters. Unemployment is consistently over 8% and this president has ignored not only the spirit of the constitution but the letter of it. It is his Attorney General who stands in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over documents that were subpoenaed in the Fast & Furious scandal. It is this president who supported him in his disdain for the people’s representatives.

For And Against

There was a time when the debate on issues was not only civil, it was quite rich in content. It wasn’t so much an argument as an exploration of different ideas with both the left and the right bringing passion and conviction to an honest discussion of how best to resolve something. 

Today, there is none of that richness in the debate, no exploration of different ideas or the building of mutual understanding. Today it has come down to only two positions; you’re either for something or against it. Increasingly, the left which likes to call itself progressive and liberal is the ‘anti’ side of the argument and that is one of the major obstacles to our nations moving forward.

To be sure, the left is in favour of certain things but inevitably those things are at the expense of others financially or in terms of rights and/or individual freedom. They are threatened by the success of the individual claiming it comes at the expense of others. 

The left favours more government regulation on just about everything from the environment to healthcare. God alone understands why. If nothing else, government has demonstrated a remarkable inability to do anything cost-effectively, efficiently or in a timely manner.