Except for Quebec university students, Canadians are being remarkably quiescent about the recent federal budget. It just may be possible that the PM’s majority government adequately represents the wishes of the electorate. It’s a rare achievement given the usual rough and tumble of parliamentary democracy.

The (supposedly) big news is that the federal government is trying to bring the deficit, and thereby the federal debt, under control. Nothing could be further from the truth. The year to year shortfall is set to decline but the debt is inexorably growing like a malignancy. For a country that’s supposedly one of the world’s best in regard to disciplined spending, this is a disgrace. Successive governments, be they Liberal or Conservative, aren’t going to change. They’ll continue the expensive expanse of intrusive bureaucracy that will continue to be determined to micromanage people’s lives with more and more silly rules.

The four levels of government (federal, territorial, provincial and municipal) are hooked, as is a cancer cell, on growth for growth’s sake. When the mainstream media speaks of “cuts” it’s saying that the rate of expansion may slow, but the government’s take is always increasing. Loan sharks should have it this good.

Sure, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, International Development Agency, Border Services Agency, the Armed Forces and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) are seeing some reductions in their size, but so what? They’re all useless and/or incompetent. My food doesn’t need an inspector. Foreign aid simply takes my hard earned dollars to waste on some ingrates. The military didn’t exactly win the Afghan war—where was the victory parade? Border services leaks like a sieve and the CBC, for all its highbrow programming, depends upon a subsidy instead of listenership.

Provincially, the teachers want more money for their illiterate and innumerate students who, in Grade 12, read, write and figure at a rate common to Grade 6 students of my generation.

Translink bureaucrats feel they deserve a fat bonus for running a bus company; how hard can that be?
In Kamloops, we’re supposed to feel grateful that the taxes are only going up two per cent instead of six per cent. Why are they going up at all? You don’t suppose that it’s for the benefit of the people working there, since $100,000 salaries are becoming the norm rather than the exception.

I have no doubt that civil servants are decent people and all, but one could remove half of the jobs and no one would really notice. Fisheries and Oceans botched both seacoasts; Indian Affairs is a chronic disaster; the Privacy Commissioner’s a waste; the Military doesn’t need F-35’s; the Ministry of the Environment’s a drain on productivity; most universities teach useless non-technical courses; Interior Health’s famous for lousy results; the courts still have only convicted one (count’em) Stanley Cup rioter in a year; etc., etc. ad nauseam.

While lots of morons like to hate capitalism, the inescapable fact remains that if you don’t like your new Walmart toaster, you can return it for a refund. Too bad we can’t ever get the same accountability from our politicians and bureaucrats.

When a political junkie like me is feeling overwhelmed by the news, I can’t help but think that those who are generally unaware or unconcerned about the interesting world beyond their daily reach might be on to something. After all, most of the words, TV clips and videos repeat one hard luck story after another interposed by ads urging us to improve life by using a particular shampoo or non-street (officially) drug.

What you may be thinking is, “Why doesn’t he get off the net, change the radio to music and unplug the tube?”

To quote Mark Twain about tobacco, “Quitting is easy, I’ve done it hundreds of times.” Somehow, for whatever oddball reason, we’ve all become so wired that without recurrent information input, most people get antsy. It’s becoming hard to remember the last time I rode the chairlift without someone tweeting, texting or talking into a gadget. We’d be screwed if there were no such thing as electricity any more. Just wait for the upcoming BC Hydro rate increases that are going to be announced. The political firestorm will bring down the Christy Clark Liberals if they aren’t very careful, which of course they won’t be. Things will soon get interesting provincially, given high priced teachers and nurses wailing for more of whatever never satisfies them.

Was I on politics again? Oops. In that case, let’s Google Earth over to Syria where, who knows how many, women, children and Korans have been shredded today. Russia and China have successfully pleaded their case for arms sales and have effectively stuck their finger into the West’s nose by betting that the civil war will go on. Good news—they can have Syria. Obama, for a change, is smart enough to stay out of this mess.

Moving eastward into Iran via Streetview, one can easily discern that the folks there aren’t really too interested in the peaceful uses of the atom; otherwise there’d be transmission towers being erected for the electrification of the countryside and labs being readied to accept medical isotope manufacturing. Iran, if it wants to be a nuclear nation, needs to tone down the rhetoric and grow up diplomatically.

While we’re on the topic of fossil fuels or not, one may or may not like the methods of extraction or
transportation, but really who amongst us doesn’t take the car whenever we feel like it? Our fruits and vegetables travel by diesel but none of the expert nutritionists recommend cabbage and carrots only this winter for proper anti-oxidant qualities to ensure (or is it insure?—wait, I’ll look it up) a gentler global footprint.

But where have I been, the tickertape thing just rattled the latest—robo-call mini scandal. “What, me worry?” Alfred E. Neuman (the gap-toothed David Letterman looking guy from MAD magazine) would say. Let’s see, some machine calls and interrupts you, blathers stupidly about no brainer dumb stuff and, if you don’t have the lowest percentile brain function possible to hang up, Parliament will spring into action.

How have we come to this?

“Where do we go now?” —Guns and Roses

In a rare moment of maudlin sentimentality I could almost feel sorry for politicians. Given their bovine ignorance and universal incompetence, that moment of empathy has thankfully evaporated under the glare of objective reality.

No matter where one turns presidents, prime ministers, premiers and governors exhibit few, if any, signs that they have any grasp upon what Will Rogers once remarked isn’t so common, i.e., sense.

Let’s start with Europe. Any man on the street without a highfalutin education can see that there really is no crisis caused by Greece. It’s a mere pimple lucky enough to have surfaced on real economies by “intelligentsia” who couldn’t see from their ivory towers that combining the good credit ratings and borrowing powers of Northern Europe with the non-productive economies in the south would water down the whole zone. If you mix dog feces half and half with ice cream, it would be no surprise to most of us proletariat that you end up with something that tastes more like one than the other. The solution is also earthily similar; lance the pustule by allowing the Greeks to riot themselves into complete irrelevance. The Euro will take a small wobble and then rise because it’ll be better off less one welfare case. The other troubled countries will see that their days of living high off of others’ productivity are numbered.

The next basket case has to be Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. By threatening to choke off the Strait of Hormuz, he’ll strangle his Gulf neighbour states’ income as well as his own country’s. That won’t help anyone and will really turn his people against him. Look what happened when he reduced gasoline subsidies, they were un-reduced after about a day. Besides, there’s more than just the U.S. Navy in the area; the Chinese and Indians depend upon Middle East oil too and with their resurgent sea power they’ll not allow some local bozo to sabotage their ambitions.

Closer to home, it appears that Obama’s understanding of capitalism matches that of Fidel Castro. Gas prices in the States are up 82 per cent since he took over, unemployment is up 40 per cent, housing prices are down 40 per cent, national debt is up 50 per cent and so forth, ad nauseum. Even wind power, solar farms and high speed rail haven’t seemed to help, given their dependence upon subsidies. Preventing pipelines and aircraft factories from opening seems to be the only thing this former boy-wonder is able to accomplish. His hair is getting greyer every month because he’s in over his head, and after three years in power, blaming Bush for everything is getting stale. It’s a good thing for him the Republicans can’t get their act together, otherwise, B.H.O. would be destined to be a one-termer for sure.

Oh, did I mention Christy Clark’s wheels falling off, Ontario’s Dalton McGuinty presiding over a former “have” province, Jerry Brown’s California losing people, David Cameron getting told by India to keep his foreign aid (good idea, actually), Premier Hu Jintao of China watching rich people leave his environmental disaster of a country . . . ? You get the idea.

Political Point of View

The hysterically negative reaction by environmental groups opposed to both the Keystone and the Northern Gateway pipelines is typical of their short-sighted ignorance of economic reality. Whether they like it or not, Canada remains a resource based economy.

In an idyllically green world we wouldn’t need awful things like fossil fuels, but that era’s a long way off. We’re a wealthy country due to commodities that need to be wrenched from the ground. This wealth allows some the right to bitch about those companies and, in the case of Alberta, those provinces that really have no choice but to use the natural bounty upon which they sit.

Hollywood has-beens like Robert Redford and Susan Sarandon complain about pipelines spilling oil, but they’d be well advised to check on their own country first. America is criss-crossed by hundreds of thousands of miles of generally older pipelines that are corroding, posing much more danger of spills than the state-of-the-art installations we may be using. Perhaps Bob and Sue can explain how some Panamanian tanker bringing dirty or unethical oil from despotic Saudi Arabia or corrupt Nigeria is somehow better than from a friendly, stable, North American neighbour? Celebrity complaints are a bit dubious; these pious people use more fuel in their Learjets in a week than most of us use driving in a year.

Stephen Harper is actually right; we will sell oil, it’s a no brainer. If President Obama hasn’t got the brains to see that the Keystone XL line will deliver thousands of union jobs using American made heavy equipment from a friendly country, depending instead on the enviro vote rather than his other traditional base, he deserves to lose the election. It’s not as if Sierra Club members are going to vote Republican anyway. It’s not just lefty Canadians and ignorant Americans who seem determined to reduce their countries into campground economies where people sing “Kumbaya” all day long. German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, with widespread public support, has promised to wean Germany off nuclear energy by 2020. This will please France greatly since it’ll be supplying Germany’s energy needs.

We in North America are cleaner and greener than anywhere else. It perturbs me to go to other countries and see the locals use their homelands as a garbage dump. We have a fair and just society where people, should they be really aggravated about income disparities, are quite free to leave for better places; where people can complain and be heard, (as they were during the public pipeline debate).

At the end of the day, people who are against energy and mineral extraction really need to clear their woolly heads and get used to the cold hard fact that their pampered lifestyles and clean green spaces are due to oil, gas, uranium, dams, power lines, industrial farming, mega corporations and animal killers who get their hands dirty for filthy lucre. That’s what I call a social program.

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”.