Everyone wants to be Irish today,
If we have to, we’ll say they may.
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Comment for today.
Mr. Obama and America fight for democracy,
But not against an oil-rich Gadhafi or Saudi.
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A simple error in arithmetic.
We all make them. Maybe we should all be more forgiving about math errors. Just recently Prime Minister Harper told us that the temporary command centre in Babel last summer cost just $14 million, not the $27 million that others estimated. Now the politicians are quibbling over the 65 F-35 fighters that his government ordered without an open tendering process. Will they cost Canadians a total of $16 billion or $29 billion? It is not as though the guy is a working economist. As Prime Minister, he has to pick a figure that he thinks the voters might buy.
The one thing for sure is that he and his defence minister know nothing about Canada’s national defence needs. Of what use is a fighter aircraft that cannot carry enough fuel (along with any armament) to patrol our arctic? And why would Canadians want a stealth aircraft? Who are we going to attack? The only use Canada could have for this aircraft would be for a surprise attack on the northern United States. And that would certainly annoy the Americans. (They might not be quite as annoyed if we attacked the southern U.S. but then they would need to use their tanker aircraft to refuel most of our planes for us—we do not have enough refuelling aircraft.)
Not since Mr. Harper last prorogued parliament has he shown us the colossal arrogance of his government. The surprise announcement that we have already bought this deal makes the definitive statement on why this government must be defeated. It makes you wonder what school of economics teaches students to send good money after bad. We had already given the Americans hundreds of millions for them to develop the F-35. Now that we know what it is, why we are spending billions more?
When you consider the life cycle of a fighter aircraft such as the F-35, $29 billion would be a bargain. Then, you have to assume that there will be at least a six to ten year lag between knowing the F-35 is outdated and selecting a replacement at maybe $50 billion. You never win at that game.
Another game that we will never win will be Michael Ignatieff’s election promise to cancel the order for these F-35s. He will not be able to do that. We are too locked in to the U.S. procurement cycle. Maybe we can end up with a few dozen of the much more suitable F-22s though—if he plays his cards right.
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Comment for today.
He wants to cut down on Babel’s New Year count down,
Headliners are expensive said Mr. Williams with a frown
“We can save 50 thou and promote local talent instead.”
With advice like that some locals might call for his head.
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Warming up for a federal election.
Can we please hurry spring. We would like some nice weather for an election campaign. And do not look surprised. For months, readers of this blog have known there will be an election called before the end of March. It has to be true. MP Dan McTeague told us so. If he can get the gas prices right, who would question his election call?
While the news media have tried to promote the NDP’s Jack Layton as a spoiler in the possible election, this strategy seems to have fallen through. Despite his recent health problems, Jack is his old and spunky self and spoiling to get into the election fray.
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff is certainly ready to take on all comers and there is ammunition aplenty for him to lambaste Prime Minister Stephen Harper. In turn, Harper is desperately looking for some high ground above the quagmire his party has created for him. Between, lying and error prone ministers and telling people that things cost half of what is later revealed, Harper is going to have trouble staying on script for the election as the best manager of our tax money.
A particularly interesting local fight might just be the one here in Babel. The incumbent will have a hard time keeping his seat. As a big spender of our money, sending myriad mailers promoting his re-election, the incumbent has accomplished nothing in Ottawa for the voters in his riding. He missed an ideal opportunity last year to create a permanent national command centre in the riding for emergency operations. He has been so busy trying to ensure his re-election that he has no understanding of how Ottawa works.
Political people in the riding are suddenly realizing that the guy they considered a sacrificial lamb for the federal Liberals in the election is the likely winner. They are re-evaluating the support they have shown him.
Luckily the naysayers on the board of the federal Liberal association had already quit the board leaving the candidate with his key supporters in control. That is going to make things easier for the campaign team. The Liberal candidate is going to surprise people.
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Comment for today.
Parliament keeps suggesting ways to help the poor,
But Mr. Harper isn’t inclined to help, he’s very sure
By helping the rich getter richer, poverty’ll be beat,
Leavings from their tables are what the poor’ll eat.
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Babel council gives no quarter.
It is not that they really want to appear cheap and mean but Babel council came close last Monday. They were meeting as general committee and after a series of confusing amendments to a staff report, they voted down an amount of $100,000 in the budget for distribution to charities that could meet some criteria set by staff.
Staff had gotten involved in this question because, God forbid, some councillors claimed, these should be political decisions. Maybe they were worried that they might be confused with M.P. Brown who has never met a charity that he did not want to use for self promotion. All in all, it makes Brown look crude and city council look silly.
The council position was explained under the cliché that if the citizens of Barrie were not willing to pay for something a charity needs, what right has city council to use their taxes to pay for it. There is a very simple answer to that: Because there are things that council can do on behalf of the taxpayers that council can do better. There are many examples of this opportunity.
An obvious aspect of what the city can do is to provide charities with assistance in using city services. This includes many services where recipients are charged by the city for the service. In serving their purpose, there are charities, for example, that use transit services, both regular buses and accessible services. The city is best able to make sure that charities in need of this service are looked after. That means that citizens know that that service is properly looked after by the city. That is the city’s job, is it not?
There are charities that really need access to community facilities such as swimming pools. Why should they pay full rate for the citizens who are really most in need of these facilities? And these citizens are happy to use the facility when it is least used.
Whether our Member of Parliament needs free access to the Molson Centre to promote himself and his party on the back of a charity is an entirely different matter.
The point is that the criteria the city needs to use is whether the city can make sure its facilities and services are used effectively to serve those citizens in the greatest need for them. Our city councillors need to better understand their job.
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Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]
Comment for today.
The Speaker of the House told the Tory gang,
I sure don’t like the song that Bev Oda sang,
You’ve dissed the House, you told many a lie,
Let’s have an election, see if voters let you by.
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Political thoughts for a winter day.
It has always been an axiom that good writing starts with good research. It was when we ran across some research we had done on Italy of the late 1920s that a chilling thought came to mind. By no stretch of the imagination would we want to suggest that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a fascist but we found some aspects of fascism with which he might agree.
Mind you, saying that Stephen Harper is not a fascist is not entirely good news. It just makes him harder to understand. As a neo-con, he is a little of this and a little of that. He flies somewhere out there on the extreme right of the political spectrum. From that position, as an economist, he could embarrass the late Milton Friedman.
A reputable academic, Friedman would never buy into a sham such as the Fraser Institute that is so basic to Harper’s western support system. Friedman would have had difficulty tolerating the dishonesty of the institute’s positions. It hires academics to support its preconceptions, not to do any of the necessary research. Harper and the Fraser Institute share some difficulties with letting people know the truth.
Harper would be intrigued with the corporations that were the unique aspect of Italian fascism of the 1920s and 1930s. These corporations were part of the Italian government. It was like giving the tar sands exploitation companies the government portfolio for the environment. And while under Mussolini, Italian trains did run on time, the Italians were not all that happy with the cost.
One of the interesting aspects of giving corporations control of the Italian economy through the 1920s and 1930s was that they proved themselves more corrupt, venal, inefficient and incompetent in that role than any civil servants could have been. It is like the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission giving control of CTV to Bell Canada. That is some propaganda arm to give Harper’s friends at Bell.
That is one of the many differences between Stephen Harper and the late Pierre Trudeau. When Prime Minister, Trudeau used to despise the shallowness of the news media and he would tell them what he thought of them. Harper has decided they might be useful to him and looks for ways to ingratiate himself.
Harper is no Mussolini but he seems to agree with the Italian leader that parliaments are a noisy inconvenience. Mussolini was much more thorough about proroguing them than Harper has been.
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