I’d love to predict a year in which the United Nations actually are. Unfortunately, mankind, for whatever reason, is clearly devolving along cultural and civilizational lines.

“Democracy” in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya will be the tipping point. Popular opinion there supports more religion and less business. Their economies, already bleeding cash, are going to crash. The unemployed will react angrily as they now realize the futility and go afield. Closest place: Europe.

The old Gal Europa ain’t what she used to be. The short work weeks, long paid vacations, perk filled, anything goes lifestyle that once was glamorized can’t pay for itself anymore, never mind feed and house tsunamis of migrants from even more failed states just across the water. Fewer workers will have to work harder to pay for other people’s benefits. The already unsustainable welfare state model simply has no hope of paying entitlements for even its own citizens.

We can see this happening here too. The recent sale of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Jays and Raptors by the Teacher’s Pension Fund shows how having 1.5 workers paying retirement benefits to each retiree cannot work. Our Canada Pension Plan needs topping off because it’s headed in the same direction. We now have, in many places around the world, people getting more from the state than they’re producing for it. The majority will democratically vote for more of the same but it’ll be a matter of the mind writing cheques that the body can’t cash.

Revolutions don’t happen because of high ideals like fairness and justice, but because of economic privation. Because economies are collapsing, humans will fight and it will be ugly. 2012 will be an interesting and bloody year. Have a good one while you can.

Canada’s unique in that it’s a country where the national police force is a symbol of pride and supposed professionalism. Cop cadets around the world thrive on often true tales of lone Mounties on dogsleds, always getting their man. The Musical Ride spectacle and Stetson hat represent justice and fair treatment, or used to.

This bucolic image has taken a beating in the past few years. Never mind that in Trudeau’s day the mounties burned down barns and tried to pin the blame on Quebec separatists. Or that an on duty constable was caught red handed, incredibly on camera, last summer kicking a man on his hands and knees in the head. His punishment: suspension with full pay while the stuff hit the fan. What does one have to do to get suspended without pay in our new RCMP? Even my mother was livid at this travesty.

In the past weeks we’ve been assailed by reports that several female officers are seeking lottery-sized payouts after having to endure years of harassment by their male counterparts. They’re still on the payroll, one of them for over four years now, for stress leave. What these crybabies should get through their heads is that being an RCMP member entails some toughness, and that being subject to off-colour jokes absolutely doesn’t justify sitting on one’s butt collecting pay for some nebulous accusations. If the allegations are serious, physical injury, for instance, fair enough. Sorry ladies, in Copland, as in the real world, hurt feelings don’t justify oodles of cash.

We, in Sun Peaks, have witnessed a series of break-ins lately. By the time the rural constabulary get here, the deed’s done and the culprits have vanished. Policing has been one of the issues in the past civic campaign here, but the cost of $150,000 for one officer is too much for us to afford. Could it be that the force is paying people to sit around while denying us basic service? We’d all love to have a police presence here, but the economics are lousy.

Staying on the topic of sex and power, it appears that the same politically correct idiocy that infects the RCMP is also alive and well in the U.S. presidential campaign sphere. Four women now allege that Herman Cain made unwanted advances towards them up to 14 years ago. No charges were ever brought forward, but his campaign’s now doomed because of his awkward answers and evasive behaviour.

This isn’t an entirely bad thing because his profound cluelessness on economics and basic geography deem him too dumb to be President anyway. Like Rick Perry before him, one must be reasonably cognizant of world events and have ready, realistic answers or suffer the inevitable pointed questions about his preparedness. Ask Sarah Palin how this feels. To her credit, she had the balls to take the heat without lawyering up.

Political Point of View

It’s no wonder, given the faux war on drugs, the amateur war on terror and the successful war on poverty in the Western world, that the laughingly ineffective war on Wall Street is going to be a mere footnote shortly. Even the left in our brave new world are incompetent.

Witness the spectacle of urban youth setting up shop in city spaces with space age tents and port-a-potties, complaining about how lousy and unfair life is. I’ve got news for them: the facts of life are conservative. Hockey players on the way to their next five star hotel, in their exquisitely tailored suits, surely shouldn’t be given all that adulation and money, but I don’t hear anyone complaining about them.

When people make lots of money we need to feel those dollars were earned, only then can we grant those rich folks respect. To receive a multimillion dollar severance package while running a bank into the ground is unethical. To get a bonus while polluting the Gulf of Mexico doesn’t do BP stockholders a whit of good, and rightly so. Average Joe can see that. But, the Occupy Wall Street crowd doesn’t complain about someone like the late multi-billionaire Steve Jobs’ wealth because they deem his stuff worthy.
As part of a generation saddled with huge debt caused by unrealistic programs that assumed one can get something for nothing, I too am angry at other’s excesses. Like everyone else in the real world, I’m going to fume at this year’s Wall Street bonuses. Given that many of the banks had to be backstopped by us, the lowly proletariat, I feel rightly betrayed by the sheer injustice of it all.

I’m quietly proud that in Canada our big banks and large corporations are quite profitable. If they want to squander money by over-paying their top people, it’s their prerogative. As a group, we could boycott one company or another, but at the same time one person is withdrawing his account from one bank to another, he’ll meet a person doing the same going the other way. I suppose we could put our money under the mattress so a big-shot banker won’t be able to rip us off, but I don’t think any one of us will make much of a statement that way.

The real question is, if capitalism is so blatantly unfair, why isn’t there another system that even remotely rivals it for material abundance and a lifestyle unthinkable not so long ago? I don’t see a flood of people getting on boats to go to the “Arab Spring” countries; there’s no mass exodus of Mexicans leaving the “Unkind States of America” to their supposedly heartfelt homeland. The asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants leaving their countries seem to be on a one-way street into our money oriented, fake happiness, and consume-all-you-can culture.

Maybe we should put up a sign at our borders that says, “Warning: Capitalism at work,—may be offensive to some.”

Political Point of View

“Can’t anyone here play this game?” — Casey Stengel explaining his 120 game losing 1962 New York Mets.

October seems to be the time of year when financial news headlines are at their goriest. The Great Depression of 1929 started in that month; the biggest one day drop in the Dow was in Oct., 1987 and the most recent Lehman Bros. et al collapse happened this time of year too. The 2011 version is ominously on track with fears of the Eurozone meltdown leading to “worldwide financial contagion” whereby banks and governments will renege on their obligations. This spark will lead other banks to announce that, because of their stakes in each other’s assets, if one starts going down, they’ll domino and you and I will pay for these misdeeds through increased service charges, zero interest on savings and new fees on everything.

It doesn’t help that there are rogue traders making billion dollar losing bets at UBS, former executives pocketing multimillion dollar severances and bonuses, huge insurance and federal disaster relief costs due to wild weather and people building where mother nature is saying, “No, don’t.” Congress had to authorize another borrowing increase for storm damage and it almost shut down the U.S. government.

Borrowing money is the culprit in this scenario. In order to keep the Europeans partying like there’s no tomorrow, the Americans throwing trillions into playing war, and the Chinese building shoddy railways, the sums involved are mind-boggling. C. D. Howe, the famous Canadian finance minister once stated, “What’s a million?” Now President Obama can talk about a mild stimulus of $44.5 billion and nobody except the talking heads on TV pay much attention because we all know how effective the previous stimulus was or wasn’t. Apparently, as a nation we owe more money, per capita, than ever before and yet we’re not alone.

REM’s recent retirement gave their song, “It’s the end of the world as we know it,” lots of airtime, and rightly so, given that it’s the precise anthem for our particular zeitgeist. Politicians and financiers talk of numbers no one can really understand. The whole world has so many IOU’s outstanding it seems logical to go back to square one and start over. The U.S. has no hope of paying off upwards of $14.5 trillion federally, never mind many times that much when you add up household debt. Europe is in trouble because the Germans won’t pick up the tab for other countries because it’s facing internal pressures of its own. China has a fake banking system prone to inflation and Japan is falling off the cliff due to an aging, expensive population. Russia even with its Canadian-style resources can’t make a go of it, and is losing population because people feel there really is no tomorrow and won’t reproduce because it’s too expensive.

It’s a good thing ski season is starting soon because we need a distraction. So, when you’re trying to keep your skis together in the powder, banish from your mind how others are ringing up a tab at your expense.

Political Point of View

“Politics makes for strange bedfellows.” Charles Warner twisting Shakespeare’s “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.”

Eyeing the possible merger talks between the Liberals and the New Democratic Party is going to be like watching a Discovery Channel program about the mating habits of black widow spiders. You know there’s a good chance that the lusty little male (usually half the size of the female) is going to have to strum the web upon which she sits in order to seduce her into languorous lassitude whereby he will then seize his chance to scramble close, connect his naughty bits, and get the heck out of there before she injects him with liquefying venom. His last thoughts are probably hopes that a new batch of young ‘uns will have made it all worth it.

Human political antics are not much prettier. Remember when the Reform Party came along, took over the Progressive Conservatives and, much like lions in Africa, eliminated the hierarchy and put their own stamp upon the species. Since the NDP and Liberals only used to be differentiated by their electability anyway, this transition will probably take a little time, produce a few minor convulsions and result in no great changes to the Canadian political cosmos.

That big change happened long ago under Trudeau. Whereas he said that the government has no right to interfere in the bedrooms of the nation, he did make it his business to interfere in the pocketbooks of the populace. Under him, peacetime deficit spending became entrenched in the body politic until sovereign deficits leading to debt became facts of life. To be fair, other countries’ governments also believed that borrowing to finance programs rather than reducing spending was the best way to get re-elected. Sticking the unborn with massive debt was never a good idea except for those who won’t be around when the stuff hits the fan.

The recent drama in the U.S., where both parties have no clue how to rein in spending, reveals that the time has now come. Downgraded debt, expensive borrowing costs and reduced basic services are the immediate consequences. The public sector unions are tossing aside basic civility to protect what they claim is rightly theirs. When Scott Walker of Wisconsin made his state employees pay 12 per cent of their pension rather than 5.6 per cent, the unions stated that this was a full frontal assault upon all working people. They all went on strike, illegally occupied the legislature and then realized after a few days that the rest of the state got along fine without them. Pundits like me who wondered why the workers didn’t pay 100 per cent of their pension were ignored for being out of touch.

When governments routinely consume 50 per cent of GDP in order to “redistribute” to themselves, the prevailing mantra becomes “get what you can while you can”. The results will be like the riots in London and Vancouver—people will go feral.

Political Point of View

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” —Ben Franklin, popularizing Daniel Defoe’s original comment.

Jack Layton is only the latest politician having to juggle the demands of a fickle public with the remorseless sands of Father Time. Hugo Chavez is battling pancreatic cancer; Hosni Mubarak is on his deathbed in a cage inside a Cairo courtroom, the Castro brothers both look as doddering as the Cuban economy; Kim Jong Il is struggling with both a stroke and the impossibility of raising his doltish son to demigod status while Bashir al-Assad of Syria wisely stays out of camera range as he blithely murders his own people.

The current favourite in this grisly drama has to be Col. Muammar Gaddafi a.k.a. Kaddafi Duck of Libya. It’s now been two months since we’ve seen this man’s ugly mug on the tube. It seems his appearance hasn’t reduced his ability to hold off the vaunted British, American, French and Canadian Air Forces as they try not to do anything sensible; like perhaps hit the real target, namely him. You’ve got to give the old goat credit for hanging on.

The point of all this, and I do have one, is that the inevitability of the end is universal. No one gets out of here alive. The time honoured way to ease our meeting with the Grim Reaper was to have lots of kids who could support us while the clock ticks down. Things have changed.

In the brave new world of the Nanny State, we’re supposedly giving money to the government for them to invest properly in pension plans that we could access in our golden year. It sounds good but turned out to be exactly like the fox guarding the hen house theory. The money isn’t there and the fox doesn’t know what could possibly have happened to it.

While a greying President Obama struggles with an impossible deficit by getting his credit limit raised to meet Social Security and Medicaid demands, the ghastly reality for most people is that the government there is broke and will renege on its obligations. Other countries especially in Europe and the supposedly adept Japanese are in even worse shape. They’ve made promises that they cannot possibly keep. The Greeks were actually the smart ones. Just before they knew their economy was unsustainable, they wisely maxed out their credit with the introduction of the Euro and are now sticking Germany with the bill. We should all be so adroit!

It’s a fact that most Canadians are ill prepared for retirement. Only those with defined (usually government) pensions and the wealthy will ride off into the sunset with money in the bank. The rest of us will have to get by with what we put under the mattress. No wonder they call economics “the dismal science”.

Political Point of View

“I have become comfortably numb.” Pink Floyd.

Canadian troops are slated to leave Afghanistan by the end of July and the other foreigners are soon heading for the exit as well. Only the Americans seem to think it’s a good idea to hang around for more wasted years, money and lives. Then the Afghanis can again claim “Mission Accomplished” as they’ve done before against the Soviet Union, Great Britain et al all the way back to Alexander the Great. The country has been, and always will be, a graveyard of wasted ambitions. How and why we sent even one soldier there is a mystery to anyone with even half a brain.

It’s probably the farthest place on earth from here. The locals are hostile, the women untouchable, there’s no beer and worst of all no return for our investment. To think that some Stone Age tribesmen who glorify fighting amongst each other would welcome us with anything other than bullets and booby traps is delusional at best and moronic at worst. When the last Western invader leaves the place, the joy we feel as our boys come home will be offset by the sadness over there that the money tree and easy targets are gone. And it will be some time before some other foreign power decides to squander itself in a place where they’re not welcome.

It’s like a Seinfeld episode; it was about nothing. It was supposed to help our security but it made things worse. We were sending well-trained and intentioned troops to dig water wells and build schools. Huh? Aren’t soldiers for killing bad guys? In the Great War, it was for “King and Country”; Canadians went to Europe in 1915 and by 1916 were dying by the thousands to help Mother Country England because they cared that much.

Nowadays, most Canadians can’t find Afghanistan on a map, and to ask what the strategic value of the place is provokes a blank stare.

In a real war, there’s gas rationing, crappy food and a draft. And until fairly recently, you could be shot for not wanting to participate in your country’s battles. Now there’s no wonder that the media seem to be more concerned about a royal visit than some poor kid who got his legs blown off by a roadside bomb in an insignificant place far away.

People in our own country have got their own concerns. Remember how aggravated we were only a month ago by gas prices at $1.30 a litre? Isn’t there a housing frenzy in Vancouver while the Interior economy is sluggish at best? There’s an increased carbon tax on gas and nobody cares because why get into a dither when the world seems to run unhappily on until we are all unhappy. This summer might just be a good time to tune out of the political cycle because most of it is bad, maddening or just plain irrelevant.

Welcome our troops home and thank them for trying in an impossible mission. They didn’t complain.

Political Point of View

“My country, ‘tis of thee.”—Samuel Francis Smith.

With many Canadians rooting for the American team (which does have more Canadians on it) than the Canucks during the Stanley Cup Finals, it shows that national unity is not just questioned along linguistic lines.

The productive parts of the country have been conditioned into accepting that they must indulge the East as an adult indulges someone less mature or responsible. The Have/Have-Not federal policy redistributes taxpayer dollars according to how Ottawa sees fit—supposedly equally. When it must bribe B.C. and Quebec in order to “harmonize” another rip-off tax, a sane person would wonder how we went from having self-reliance and a pioneering spirit to relying on nanny Ottawa to grab money from some to give to others—with nobody being happy at the end.

This is but one example of numerous government programs that keep growing like Topsy, as does Ottawa’s reach into our lives. We all know about Tax Freedom Day being somewhere in the middle of the year. This means we only get to directly spend 50 per cent of what we earn. The other half is allocated into programs, many of which offer little or no benefit to anyone except the people getting or granting the largesse.

It’s very difficult not to get cynical about applying for government money, regardless if one is a large corporation with revenue in the billions or one of the truly needy that the original programs were meant to serve. After all, if there’s money to be redistributed, why not get in line, apply for it and see what transpires? It’s like a taxpayer funded lottery whereby anyone can apply if one has the know-how or the ability.

We pay $500 million each year for a Privacy Commissioner—who does what, again? China, despite having nuclear weapons, a brand new state of the art aircraft carrier and trillions in reserves, still gets foreign aid from us. Is there something in the water over in Ottawa that allows them to run a deficit when most Canadians during the past years have had to budget for an uncertain future?

There’s actually a good rationale here. It’s explained by the attitude of young people here, the Greeks living in Europe and the Americans. They all have no savings, put expenses on credit and in the case of the sovereign nations, have no intention of ever paying off the bills. The Greeks know the Germans and Dutch will bail them out. The Americans know that when they finally can’t re-up their debt ceiling, the Chinese, who are owed money, will write it off or down. Life will go on, not necessarily without great geopolitical upheaval, major loss of face and some real belt tightening.

Of course, that happens to anyone going bankrupt. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. It’s all happened before.

Political Point of View

“Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” — Children’s ditty

Do you remember that cheesy horse race game from the arcade where you had to wobble a handle to get your particular steed to go faster, but all that really went on was the little pony herky-jerked along at its own pace until finally one of the things crossed the finish line in victory? Our recent federal election seemed no different. No matter which discussion took place, whatever issue rose up, or whoever said what didn’t matter—the race went on by itself. It was even worth the $10 each Canadian paid for this exercise in its sheer entertainment value on election night. The NHL playoffs should be this exciting.

The mainstream media is all agog at the prospect of the NDP forming Her Majesty’s Official Opposition for the first time, but the real news for those on the left is that being the opposition in a Conservative majority government actually reduces their clout. No matter how long they hold their breath and fear-monger about some mysterious right-wing agenda led by the supposedly scary Stephen Harper, the plain fact is that their parliamentary numbers don’t add up. Jack Layton will need to come to his senses, ditch most of the pie-in-the-sky policy goals of his party and get set to deal with the adult world of helping to keep one of the more sensible countries in the world going pretty well the way it’s been going.

This, of course, will drive the socialist policy wonks bonkers. Rather than sensibly undertake genuine bipartisanship for the good of most Canadians who voted for these two parties, the Nutty Democratic Party will soon fracture, as it always does into a suicidal internal debate between the social and the labour wings. A unionized oil sand worker making $100,000 a year in the Northern Alberta muskeg isn’t likely all that interested in worrying about the homeless issue in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver and will wonder why his party is so worked up about it too.

Having the treasonous Bloc Quebecois and the lacklustre Liberals go down hard is finally some just dessert for the vacuousness of their platforms, ineptness of their campaign managers and plain lack of charisma of their leaders. These guys don’t belong in the big league.

Who knew that in a supposed time of war, the gloves are off; we’ll play hardball if we want to win, much like the Tories did when they went after Ignatieff directly with those attack ads.

If you’re depressed after reading all this political stuff, don’t be; just think what a fabulous wedding that was over at Westminster.

Political Point of View

“The same as it ever was, the same as it ever was.”—Talking Heads

If you think the election pseudodrama taking place in Canada now is boring, stupid, useless and expensive from our hinterland of southern B.C., you won’t feel gratified by learning that from here in Switzerland (I’m here as part of the Canadian Speed Skiing Team) the whole process is a matter of profound uninterest. Here, they’ve recently hosted the World Extreme Ski finals, Freeride Competitions and now the fastest non-motorised speed freaks from 16 countries hucking themselves off a 51 degree slope in another attempt to ramp up their personal bests. A federal election in Canada is taking first place in the Snoozemeisterspiel. Here in Europe, there are lots of long unwieldy words which make one think the chaotic English language occasionally makes sense.

The English and French language debates only confirmed that all party leaders are dorkmeisters. They have the unfortunate and expensive responsibility over a multibillion dollar federal budget which, for the abjectly poor excuse of providing a democratic voice to the public, will reward the loser class and punish those who actually produce taxes for a living. However, the public can’t take their eyes off the playoffs long enough to vote against the same old semi-competent Mr. Harper who will return to power again.

Buying voters with their own money has been, and forevermore will be, a favoured gambit by power crazed members of Parliament eager to impart their own particularly bizarre version of the way the world should work, as is evidenced by the Liberals and the NDP with their green schemes, income equality, sustainability nonsense.

All the Conservatives need to do, which they are barely capable of, is not trip over their own feet and admit that parliamentary culpability is akin to nuclear physics to most. Only the media is concerned about some non-disclosure thing or other some months back. Joe the Public doesn’t and will not care.

The good news for those of us in the The Great White North is that, compared to most of the world, we have the comparative luxury of a reasonably benign rulership by Diktat class, a not quite kleptomaniacal civil service and a superb resource base of industrious folks like you and me who go about our jobs doing, well, whatever it is we’re supposed to be doing. It seems odd that sometimes good things happen even while Ottawa people deem we need an idiotic election to show that they can effortlessly waste $300 million.

Given whatever feelings there are to whichever mutt you want to waste your $10 per person national expenditure upon, please remember that once they’re in office, they should offer respect if they represent you to Ottawa and not simply take marching orders from Ottawa to you.

The voter’s manifesto includes balancing the budget, giving up this equalization payment shell game from haves to have-not regions, and returning to by, for and of the people government.