Politics, Re-Spun

Poor Bashers Tend to Be Hypocrites

I’ve now received this thing for the third time this month. It makes me vomit. Why? Read on…

This was written by a construction worker in Fort MacMurray …he sure makes a lot of sense!

Read on…

I work, they pay me.

I pay my taxes and the government distributes my taxes as it sees fit.

In order to earn that pay cheque, I work on a rig site for a Fort Mac construction project. I am required to pass a random urine test, with which I have no problem.

What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my taxes to people who don’t have to pass a urine test.

Shouldn’t one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare cheque because I have to pass one to earn it for them?

Please understand – I have no problem with helping people get back on their feet. I do on the other hand have a problem with helping someone sit on their arse drinking beer and smoking dope.

Could you imagine how much money the provinces would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a public assistance cheque?

Jean Swanson is one of my heros. She works in Vancouver’s poorest neighbourhood and wrote Poor Bashing: The Politics of Exclusion, a book that challenges everyone’s assumptions about the poor, assumptions that usually justify why we won’t re-organize society to keep from continually kicking them.

The below response to the above depressingly common attitude is inspired by her exploration of the same issue in her book.

I’m just quite tired of the “don’t get me wrong, I really think we should help the poor, except if they…”

Another good [if not far better] point is that there are hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in tax cuts that go every year to people in the top 20-40% of income earners in our society who can afford and write off RRSPs, stocks, and capital investments.

We don’t ask them to present their urine or a blood sample or prove they aren’t wife/child beaters, embezzlers, speeders, j-walkers, theists, atheists, supporters of gun control or capital punishment, regular voters, hockey fans, cokeheads, neglectors of children, gamblers, pot smokers, contributors to political parties, beer/wine/spirits drinkers or various social miscreants.

We give value-free tax cuts to the well-off [like me] as long as they meet the legal requirements to get tax refunds.

I too can sure imagine how much we’d save if we did similar morality testing on those earning over $57k, double the Canadian average annual income.

Who Pulls John McCain’s Strings?

My Commentary is in fire engine red!

McCain Plans to Almost Double U.S. Nuclear Reactors

Lorraine Woellert Thu Jun 19, 9:23 AM ET

June 19 (Bloomberg) — Republican presidential candidate John McCain will push to almost double the number of nuclear reactors in the U.S. as part of a broad plan to address the nation’s energy woes.

OK, #1 appears to be the nucular lobby, assuming they still pronounce it that way now that w.Caesar is a lame duck.

On the second day of a two-week tour to promote his energy security proposal, McCain told an audience in Springfield, Missouri, yesterday that he would increase research in so-called clean-coal technology and push to add 100 new nuclear reactors, almost double the 104 nuclear plants now in use.

And #2 seems to be McCain having swallowed the clean-coal Kool-Aid.

“I will set this nation on a course to building 45 new reactors by the year 2030, with the ultimate goal of 100 new plants to power the homes and factories and cities of America,” McCain said. “This task will be as difficult as it is necessary. We will need to recover all the knowledge and skills that have been lost over three stagnant decades in a highly technical field.”

McCain’s remarks build on a speech in Houston on June 17 in which he laid out the elements of his energy plan. Central to that plan is expansion of offshore drilling for oil and natural gas, a proposal that is under fire from his Democratic rival, Illinois Senator Barack Obama, and environmental groups.

And strike 3 would be big oil [is there small oil anymore?]

“One obstacle to expanding our nuclear-powered electricity is the mindset of those who prefer to buy time and hope that our energy problems will somehow solve themselves,” McCain said, noting that Obama’s home state of Illinois has more nuclear reactors than any other.

Oh yes, and Obama is personally responsible for all the nukes in Illinois. Right.

Clean-Burning Coal

McCain, an Arizona senator, also vowed to spend $2 billion on research into clean-burning coal.

“This single achievement will open vast amounts of our oldest and most abundant resource,” McCain, 71, said. “It will deliver not only electricity but jobs to some of the areas hardest hit by our economic troubles.”

And GHGs that I don’t want to even begin to calculate.

McCain’s energy plan also includes spending on renewable resources such as wind and solar power.

Right. Probably not to the tune of $2b that clean coal will get.

McCain was joined at the forum by Michael Chesser, chairman and CEO of Kansas City, Missouri-based Great Plains Energy, and Greg Boyce, chairman and CEO of St. Louis-based Peabody Coal, the largest U.S. coal producer, who said a patchwork of state and federal regulations are hampering their ability to build new power generators.

“We need to have a regulatory compact in place,” Chesser said. “There are definitely things you could do as president to facilitate that environment.”

McCain also touted his environmental bona fides at a fundraiser in Chicago last night. In a 10-minute film preceding his appearance at the Drake Hotel, McCain made an appeal to outdoorsmen.

“Our ability to hunt and fish and enjoy the great national treasures of America is something I’d like to preserve,” McCain said in the film. “I’m committed to preserving the enjoyment of the great national treasures of the most beautiful nation in the world.”

Why is he talking about Canada now? :)

Recipe for Assassinating the CBC

1. Start with an ideology that opposes communitarianism and public ownership and worships the market’s capacity to create “the good” even if the market is far from freely competitive. The federal Liberals and Conservatives have well demonstrated this.
2. Choke its funding.
3. Appoint corporate leaders who wouldn’t dare come up with an original idea to guide CBC as a core part of the ever morphing Canadian culture.
4. Fail several years ago to come up with the cash necessary to secure continued rights from the NHL to broadcast Hockey Night in Canada, the core brand of MotherCorp and the closest thing we have to a central icon of Canadiana.
5. Cancel shows like This is Wonderland just as they receive a plethora of award nominations.
6. Murder the CBC orchestra.
7. Intentionally bungle securing the rights to the theme song to Hockey Night in Canada.
8. Let bake for several years at 43,500 degrees.
9. Don’t turn off the oven so that the whole concoction burns to a crisp: strangled of cash, free of its flagship show and cultural icons.
10. Turn off the oven after it’s too late, take out the burnt carcass and say it can’t compete with CTV, TSN, Global and the Americans; put a bullet in its head.
11. Toss it in the garbage and instead of auctioning, give away at fire sale prices the broadcast frequencies that MotherCorp held for generations to the strongest of corporations in a bizarre corporate welfare pitch in an arena where Big Media wants to take away a nation-wide network of frequencies that up until a few years from now were owned by the (fucking) people.
12. Pretend you don’t know what oligopoly means.
13. Worship Rupert Murdoch and Leonard Asper.