"Singin' The White Boy Blues"

The life I have now is not the life I have always lived nor did it come to  me easily. I’ve travelled some dark roads in my life. I’ve been successful and I’ve been so broke I was homeless for awhile. I’ve achieved a few things and failed at others. Each brought its own lessons about life and about who I an as a person and each brought me closer to the life I now live.

It wasn't easy getting here but it was worth the journey and for all the difficulties and challenges I have encountered along the way, I consider myself blessed. 

I mention this because someone who doesn’t like the things I write about, or the opinions I hold, tweeted that I was consistently wrong about everything and that my opinions were shallow. It didn’t offend me. I’ve had dialogue with this particular individual before and found him remarkably under-informed. He is less than half my age, hasn’t lived the life I’ve lived nor experienced the things I’ve experienced. His juvenile evaluation of me almost made me laugh and would have except that it saddens me that there are so many coming up through the current generation who just don’t get it. They remind me of a lyric from a Jude Cole song.

“There are people dyin’ on the streets

sure don’t make the news,

while others are livin’ up on the hill

singin’ the white boy blues.” 

It never ceases to amaze me how many people today, especially young people see themselves as victims when they live a pretty privileged lifestyle compared to more than half the world’s population. There are hundreds of millions living in poverty and circumstances so destitute that starvation is almost an improvement for them. Others face terrible political oppression. They are imprisoned, tortured and slaughtered while university students in Quebec, Canada protest and riot in the streets over the equivalent of a seventy cent a day increase in their already heavily-subsidized tuition. It's like fighting over the cost of a cup of coffee a day.

They demand it as an entitlement. They condemn those already providing more than 80% of the cost of university for them because they think it's hard to attend school while working to pay for their share. Of course it's hard and it was no less difficult for the generations who went before and maybe even harder because our tuition was not subsidized.

Most of the folks in Occupy cry poor mouth while texting each other on their $500 smart phones They demand respect even as they show no respect for the rights or the property of others and that, my friends, is not the political statement of well-informed and thoughtful gjroup. It is a temper tantrum caused by spoiled, self-absorbed and adolescent thinking.

Unfortunately, it’s the kind of thinking that too many are bringing to the serious issues we face in society today. We’re in debt beyond our ability to pay comfortably but people demand more entitlements even as we are forced to borrow money just to pay the interest on the debt we already have.

Standing in solidarity against austerity, as so many did on May 1st,  is like being on the Titanic and standing in solidarity against icebergs.  When the ship goes down, all that protest will have achieved nothing because simply blaming the people who owned the ship isn’t going to save anyone. 

But that’s what we do now. We blame others, especially the rich; they are after all nothing but greedy, dishonest crooks who are the author of all of our misfortunes. Students, Occupy, Unions and countless other groups demand that the rich pay their fair share without a moment's consideration for the less than 'fair' share they pay or the more than 'fair' share they already take. In the United States, the zero income tax club is made up of more low and low middle class incomes than millionaires and the bottom 20% of income earners receive back $8.00 in government largesse while the top 20% receive less than $1.00 in taxpayer benefits for every dollar they each pay.

In Canada, the average Canadian pays over $40,000 per year in cumulative taxes from all levels of government and including all forms of taxation. Considering that the average income in Canada is only $41,000, it's pretty clear that the bulk of that tax is being paid by higher income earners.

There are some in the 1% who definitely need a good slap on the side of the head, there is no question about it but they aren’t the majority. Many who are wealthy came from nothing and what they have, they earned. Bill Gates didn’t even finish college while Steve Jobs came from a broken, lower middle-class family.  Their circumstance didn’t prevent them from building two of the most successful corporations in the world or from becoming wealthy. It also didn’t provide them with the opportunity to avoid taxation.

Like most of the wealthy, they do pay income tax along with, capital gains taxes, property taxes, surtaxes, sales taxes and corporate taxes. They also donate a significant amount of money to charity which does reduce their income tax burden but which would you rather they pay.........the government who will squander it or charities who will put it to direct good use in the community? Either way, they give the money to someone.

Those who have been successful have achieved their riches because they took risks. They invested their own money, their talent and their ideas. In the process, they created jobs for the rest of us and just like the students in Quebec, we show our appreciation by blaming them for their success and what that success brought most of us. I suppose we'll blame them when they get fed up, leave the country and take their companies and their jobs with them.

It doesn't get much more stupid than attacking the very people and companies that many students will depend on for jobs when they graduate.

Even the President of the United States worked to get where he is. He borrowed the money to go university, eventually became a senator and eventually the world’s most powerful politician. In a speech about a week ago, he admitted to having only repaid his student loans eight years ago which means he was still carrying some of those loans when he was first elected to the senate.

There are countless examples of people like this, people who started with nothing or very little but who succeeded as the result of hard work and perseverance.  You’ll find them in professional sports, entertainment, the professions, finance, technology and pretty much every other field you can think of. You’ll find even more people who failed and blamed others for their circumstance as a result.

The simple truth is that some people aren’t poor because others are wealthy and the irony is that so many who blame the rich are themselves striving to achieve the same thing.

The Internet is littered with web sites offering easy ways to make money on line and most of them are doing a booming business. There are wealth seminars and get rich quick schemes in real estate, the stock market and a myriad of products nobody ever heard of. 

Some think that poker or some other form of gambling is the road to easy wealth while others, too lazy to figure out the intricacies of the strategies in those casino games simply purchase lottery tickets week after week. The lotteries are making a killing and very few casinos go broke.

Everybody wants more but the difference today is that fewer people today are prepared to earn it. They are impatient or see themselves as victims and have an unwarranted sense of entitlement as a result. That leads to expectation that someone else is responsible; someone or something else should pay. They don’t care who gives it to them; it can be government, the rich or a windfall from a lucky lottery ticket. Easy money is the goal, entitlement is the driver.

But the simple reality is that most successful countries were built by people who wanted to achieve on their merit. Most failed countries are the result of too many demanding too much that they hadn’t earned. We’ve all seen more than a few examples of that. 

At the end of the day we all have a choice to make. We can either continue to see ourselves as victims who demand that others owe us a living or we can take responsibility for our own individual lives.

Take a crack at guessing which provides not only the most opportunity in the long run but the most self-respect and satisfaction. If you guessed seeing yourself as a victim who is owed some of what others earned simply because you find your life difficult, you might want to take a trip to Greece before you lock in your final answer. It was that thinking that led to where they are now.

RELATED


Greed!
http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/04/greed.html

Entitlement Addiction
http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/04/entitlement-addiction.html

Sun Media: Quebec's rebels without a clue
http://www.ottawasun.com/2012/05/02/quebecs-rebels-without-a-clue

© 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

Honourable Members

Have you ever heard something said that was just so patently stupid you were convinced you hadn’t heard correctly? I heard something like that last week and after I realized that there was nothing wrong with my hearing and I had heard it correctly, I thought my head was going to explode.

The Right Honourable Prime Minister of Canada stood up in Parliament and chided the leader of the Official Opposition for not supporting the war against Hitler.

Where does stupidity like that come from? This is the leader of our government. The Leader of the Opposition wasn’t even born until six years after WWII, the party he leads wasn’t formed until 1961 and didn’t exist during the war and, of course, the war has  been over for more than 60 years.

The Prime Minister’s comments received the usual huzzahs and rah rah’s from the honourable members on his side of the House and boos and derision from the opposition benches.

Personally, I’m surprised that he didn’t hold them responsible for trying to delay construction of the Trans Canada Highway, which finally opened in 1962, with endless environmental assessments. Perhaps that is coming.

While it was the Prime Minister and his trained pit bull, the Minister For Foreign Affairs, this time; the simple fact is that no party in parliament deserves to have its members called 'honourable. Justin Trudeau recently referred to the Minister of Foreign Affairs as a 'piece of shit' in The House while his colleagues cheered him on. 

The opposition parties ask ridiculous questions that are designed less to get answers than to try and embarrass the government while the government trots out responses that ignore the question. In the end, nothing of value is said, nothing of value is accomplished and our honourable members refer to this as representative democracy.

I wasn't so sure about that because it doesn't represent what I believe in so I asked Scottish comedian Danny Bhoy to give us his perspective on how the honourable members in some European parliaments conduct themselves.

Hmmm. It seems thinks aren't any better in Europe and maybe even a little worse in some countries but surely somewhere in the world, honourable members are cognizant of the fact that they represent the people. Surely somewhere, there are politicians who show the proper respect for the people's parliament.

I went further east in my research, all the way to Taiwan to see if I could find honourable members who understood and respected that they were in the people's house, representing the people.

While honourable members in Canada and parts of Europe have devolved parliamentary language and decorum down to an adolescent level, honourable members in Taiwan have dispensed with language all together.

Considering the manner in which most members of parliaments seem to conduct themselves, it kind of makes you wonder how they ever came up with the term 'honourable' members doesn't it?

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Can The Government Do More? Yes - But Pray It Doesn't!
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Warning - This Is What Will Happen If Marijuana Is Legalized
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© 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

We Are Drowning In Stupidity

There are two kinds of people in the world; stupid people and the rest of us and I think the rest of us are slowly being outnumbered.

One of my most-read posts is the satire I wrote on what government would do if it legalized marijuana. The article did not take a position on whether legalization was good or a bad thing, in fact it really wasn’t about marijuana at all. It was about how government bureaucracies overwhelm things with rules, regulations, taxes and fees until it all becomes so complicated and expensive, it’s hardly worth engaging in anymore.

Most people got it and enjoyed the humor behind it. Some didn’t. They either agreed with me that marijuana is a gateway drug even though I didn’t state that is what I believe or they attacked me for being against legalization which is also not a position taken in the article. Some contacted me with an opinion based on having only read the first couple of paragraphs which is kind of like deciding whether or not you agree with the values articulated in the Bible after having only read the first page of Genesis.

 It’s not surprising considering that these days many people actually tend to get their news and information from Twitter or something posted on their wall on Facebook. 

It’s not easy to encapsulate complex ideas in 140 characters but that doesn’t prevent many from basing their opinions on those quick and dirty notes.

But stupidity isn’t reserved for the Twitterverse; government is awash in it and it never ceases to amaze me that so many who are elected to public office can utter such complete absurdities with a straight face. Some think it is because they lack respect for the people the electorate and there is a fair degree of both a lack of respect for the electorate and for themselves but it goes beyond that. The stupidity of government, particularly politicians, is palpable.

Nancy Pelosi

This week, for example, Nancy Pelosi led the congressional democrats in hysterical accusations that Republicans were at war with women. Why? It is because the Republicans, who actually supported the Democratic motion to freeze interest rates on student loans had the temerity to vote the funds to pay for this out of the Preventative Health Care budget. Apparently, despite the $15 trillion dollar debt, the Democrats have not caught up to the fact that the money has to come from somewhere other than more borrowing.

What made this attack all the more ridiculous is that only two tenths of one percent of this budget has anything to do exclusively with women  and both Ms Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic caucus voted to take funds from the same budget in January to maintain the freeze on the payroll tax.

Nonetheless the ladies went with straight face and bent ethics before the cameras to tell the world about the Republican perfidity. We see the same thing up here in the Great White North.

Former Prime Minister
Paul Martin

The Liberal Government put Canada into Afghanistan and were criticized for it by the Conservatives. When the Conservatives were elected to form the government, the Liberals immediately began criticizing the Conservatives for being involved in the war and demanding the government bring home the troops that the Liberals originally sent there. The Conservatives, for their part, defended the war initiated by the Liberals. 

Eventually, bowing to public and parliamentary pressure,  PM Harper announced a firm withdrawal date which caused the Liberals to immediately support staying in Afghanistan until the mission was completed.

Don’t try and understand it, just pretend you do and let's move on. 

Prime Minister Stephen Harper
and the F-35. For $25 million
each, I thought they would
be bigger.

Lately the arguing has been over the acquisition of F-35 fighter jets. This was a development procurement process started by the Liberals who signed the original agreement with a consortium of democratic nations. Once the Conservatives, who had been critical of the acquisition, were elected, both parties switched positions. The Liberals now attack the acquisition of the jets while the Conservatives now defend it.

I used to think politicians were hypocritical because of things like this but even hypocrites would be embarrassed to act this stupidly so I now believe that it is nothing but short attention spans and a complete lack of anything remotely resembling common sense. Only the intellectually lazy or challenged can stand up and publicly state something so completely opposite to what they said previously without embarrassment or the realization of just how stupid they are!

This week the prime minister stood in the House Of Commons and actually accused the Official Opposition of refusing to support the war against Hitler. Aside from the fact that WWII has been over for 60 odd years, the simple fact is that the opposition NDP party did not support the war because they didn’t exist. The party was formed in 1961. Clearly the PM needs better script writers because his ability to ad lib is sadly lacking.

Vic Toews, the Minister of Public Safety, went on a national news program where he berated the opposition for not reading his proposed bill to regulate the Internet. Later, the Right Honourable Vic Toews was forced to admit that he hadn’t actually read the bill either. It makes you wonder who in the hell actually drafted the proposed legislation.

Stupidity is everywhere folks. 

Whether it’s the guy in the car beside you picking his nose because he thinks you can’t see him through the window of his car or the woman trying to put on her makeup while she’s driving, stupidity abounds.

In Canada, where unions do not pay taxes on their membership or investment income, they demand that corporations and the wealthy pay their ‘fair’ share. Their understanding of the word fair seems somewhat limited.

Students protesting tuition increases
in Montreal, Quebec

University students in Quebec riot in the streets to protest an increase in tuition spread out over five years which will see their tuition in 2017 still subsidized by the government to the tune of 83%. Apparently math is not taught to those with self-absorbed adolescent values.

Occupy stands in solidarity with inmates at San Quentin, vandalizes cities, demands free public transportation as a human right and decries any kind of leadership and then wonders why its movement fell out of favour so quickly. With all the time they spend planning their next failed enterprise, it’s a wonder they had the ability to even notice.

Anonymous hacks government and financial computers, steals credit cards, posts anti-Semitic and racist hate material while the enlightened online applaud them as heroes.

All across the web people expose themselves to fraud, the theft of their private data, bullying and being manipulated by the very web sites they use but they protest their government’s attempts to bring some sense of order and protection to the web. These will be the same people who will demand the government do something once they have been victimized.

A provincial government takes the most economically powerful province in the country from a have to a have-not province in just eight years, hires one of the nation’s most respected economists to examine and make recommendations on how to fix things but after publicly thanking him for his efforts and cutting him a handsome check, they promptly shelved his report and ignored its findings.

Ontario Premier McGuinty
leading his province to bankruptcy

Instead they introduced an ‘austerity’ budget designed to bring the province’s finances under control by freezing social assistance payments, public sector salaries and cutting doctors’ incomes. They cut equipment budgets for computers in the classrooms while budgeting $1.5 billion for full-day pre-kindergarten. 

And when all was said and done and the figures added up, spending in the austerity budget will actually increase over last year. The budget has a deficit of $15 billion including $10 billion for interest on the debt they created. The government will be forced to borrow money to pay that interest. Only people so bereft of any level of intelligence could come before the public and call this fiscal prudence with a straight face.

I think I have come to the realization that stupidity is founded more on an unwillingness to become informed more than anything else. How else can you explain the absurd opinions shrieked across social media these days? There is an incredible refusal to consider anyone else’s opinion but their own and it is too often predicated on the fact that people don’t listen to anyone but those who agree with them. I’ve heard so many respond adamantly to something that wasn’t actually said that it makes you sit back and wonder with whom they are actually arguing.

It reminds me of something an old boss of mine told me once in reference to a client that rejected a better deal than the one he originally wanted. “Some people just don’t have the brains to know when to say yes.”

And that too is its own form of stupidity. So many are so busy expressing their point of view, they don’t actually hear those who may have a valid point worth considering or who might even be agreeing with them.

I think what offends me most is that these days though is that too many stupid people have their hands on the levers of power and they treat us like we are as stupid as they are. They’re wrong and I miss the days when stupid people were not able to do so much damage to anyone else but themselves.

RELATED

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Just When You Thought It Couldn't Get More Stupid
http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/03/just-when-you-thought-it-couldnt-get.html

Layin' Pipe - President Obama Expedites "Part" Of Keystone
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For Outstanding Achievement In Government Waste & Stupidity - The 2011 Teddy Awards
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© 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

With Their Pants Around Their Ankles

What is it with government officials and sex? Is there something in the water or are there aphrodisiacs in the food they serve in government cafeterias? It seems like there is always some politician or official diddling someone somewhere.

Quite honestly, I’m surprised they have time for it considering how much time both politicians and bureaucrats spend screwing their respective countries but somehow they do find the time……and apparently the stamina as well.

It was revealed today that there is yet another alleged incident involving Secret Service Agents and a few hand-picked ladies of the boulevard. 

According to Janet Napolitano, this is not indicative of a systemic problem but then, isn’t it politicians and their appointees who also believe that a $15 trillion deficit isn’t a sign of poor economic management either?

Politicians, bureaucrats and other officials all agree that the behaviour isn't acceptable and want to assure us that they are taking this situation seriously....hopefully more seriously than they take the budget deficit. They all would like us to believe that this kind of thing is an isolated incident but I wasn't so sure.

I decided that there was a need to dig deeper into the situation and took it upon myself to do a little research on government and sexual peccadilloes.I don't mind admitting that I wasn't overly enthusiastic about it. It's raining today and I'm feeling kind of lethargic but fortunately, it didn’t take much research to find some information which leads me to believe that I may not be the only one who has noticed government’s propensity for illicit dalliance.

It isn’t something new either. Apparently there is something in being sworn-in to office that is quite arousing because the sexual misadventures date as far back as 1796. I won’t list them here although I have provided a link to the list at the bottom of the page for those of you with more salacious curiosity.

Julie Couillard and Maxine Bernier

It isn’t just our American friends who are led and served by randy government rakes, Canada has had its share of racy moments in politics as well. My particular favourite was Cabinet Minister Maxine Bernier showing up at his swearing-in with his girlfriend, Julie Couillard, in a dress so low cut, it almost received a standing ovation from the RCMP in attendance.

Fortunately there were no American Secret Service agents present or who knows what  might have happened.

John Edwards

Unfortunately, Ms Couillard, had been associated with organized crime figures and a Quebec biker gang something Mr. Bernier overlooked in his race to remove his trousers. He also forgot his briefcase full of classified documents, leaving them at her home after he got dressed. Considering that it cost him his cabinet post, Mr. Bernier might have done better to forget his briefs but remember his brief case.

England, France, and of course, Italy, indeed, most major democracies have all had their share of uh oh incidents. In fact, it seems to be almost de rigour for some politicians and those associated with them. John Edwards is now on trial as the result of a sex scandal involving alleged misuse of campaign funds to cover up a sexual misadventure and, of course, Italy’s former Prime Minister Berlusconi was such a randy fellow that he could have taught the Secret Service how to really party with hookers.

Former Italian PM Berlusconi and one
of his many colleagues

And that is the problem when many of these folks get caught with their pants down. They often end up doing things that are even more inappropriate, often unethical and sometimes illegal in order to try and cover up the original slap and tickle moment.

That only results in damage to the reputation and credibility of the service, the government and the nation. You can't be taken seriously when people are either offended by your lack of professional character or are laughing at you or both.

I’m no prude and quite frankly don’t care what goes on between consenting adults but to be honest, I get tired of being lectured by politicians and government officials who say one thing but do another. There is very much a “do as I say, not as I do” attitude and while I don’t think sexual misconduct is all that serious, it is indicative of the same attitude they bring to everything else.

They see themselves as separate and apart from the rest of us and I believe it is because they become intoxicated by their own self-importance. It causes them to believe that the rules don’t actually apply to them.

They’re wrong. The rules do apply and they are set out in simple but extremely profound documents called constitutions. 

Most nations have one, even Canada now and they all say pretty much the same thing, ‘government by the people, for the people’. What they don’t say is “government by ‘us’ for you guys.”

Being elected or appointed to government office isn’t an opportunity to live above the law or to gain added privilege. It is a responsibility to respect the principles set out in the oaths that were taken and the constitutions those offices are meant to serve.

People who cannot rise to that responsibility should definitely seek a career path adjustment. We are not well-served by those who lack both the morality and the integrity to lead by example.

When your pants and your thinking are around your ankles it is fairly difficult to protect a president but as Bill Clinton and Silvio Berlusconi discovered, it is impossible to reflect the dignity of a nation.

RELATED

List of federal political sex scandals in the United States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_political_sex_scandals_in_the_United_States

Canada's sex scandals, such as they are

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/cdngovernment/sex-scandals.html

What Ever Happened To Integrity?

http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/04/what-ever-happened-to-integrity.html

Government Takes Over Where The Mob Left Off

http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/03/government-vs-mob.html

© 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

Greed!

There is a lot of talk about greed these days. It’s all over social media and in our streets. Typically the fingers are always pointed at two main culprits: the wealthy and corporations. To be sure, there is greed in those high-flying realms but is it unique to them alone? I don’t believe so. In fact, I believe that greed is far more universal than we want to admit and it comes in many shapes and sizes.

Since starting this blog, I’ve devoted a fair amount of time to trying to learn about things like Search Engine Optimization (SEO), HTML, online advertising and promotion. I have managed to learn a few things but it’s tough sledding sometimes and made all the more difficult by the overwhelming number of people out there offering to teach people like me how to turn my web site in to a mega-cash generator.

Forget email scams, the Great Cloud is littered with a proliferation of sites offering instant financial wealth, immediate cash, overwhelming traffic and site visitors, daily payouts and free money all for no effort, no knowledge or experience. They all share one thing in common. They all offer something for nothing in their attempt to make money for themselves.

I’ve actually seen promotions offering to increase your traffic, and thereby your sales income, and you don’t even have to have a web site. Just stretch out on the couch with your Dell notebook or iPad, start clicking and the money will roll in faster than you can count it.

These offers do make money….for the people behind them.....because the world is full of people looking for something for nothing or next to nothing.  It is the secret behind the success of those email scams from Nigeria.

“Free money? You betcha, where do I sign up?”

Some sites have the secret to winning the lottery and they will share it with you for only a small one-time fee. It never seems to occur to the people who pay for the instant-riches system that if the system really worked, the seller wouldn’t be online offering it for sale. He or she would be too busy cashing in winning lottery tickets. Why would anyone who had a ‘secret’ system that consistently won money in the lottery want to share it?

But many people buy-in because they want to make easy money, lots of money and that is its own form of greed.

You encounter it everywhere now. Students are demanding others subsidize or even pay for their university education because they don’t feel it’s fair that they should have to shoulder the burden of earning the degree they are pursuing. Expecting others to pay your way is just another form of greed.

Hundreds of thousands audition for programs like American Idol, not so that they can advance their art but to feed a form of greed to be famous, to become a celebrity.

Unions have priced some jobs right out of the country with their continuous demands for higher wages and more benefits for their workers. Corporate executives demand and receive obscene levels of income and kids who can develop a social media web site become billionaires and start playing Monopoly with real money.

Black Friday is the ultimate expression of greed as hundreds of thousands of consumers line up and then push  and shove each other out of the way to grab 'deals'. This past year, one woman went so far as to pepper spray other shoppers in her greed to get what she wanted while another woman was robbed of her purchases before she made it to her car.

Even politicians are willing to sacrifice principle and integrity to get what they want as we have just seen in Ontario, where the premier reversed his election promise not to add a surtax on the rich to avoid having his government defeated. In the United States, President Obama has all but turned class warfare into an election strategy.

It is just another form of greed where power is the currency rather than cash.

Some blame capitalism but I believe they’re wrong. Capitalism is merely a system of free enterprise which is based on the assumption that hard work will bring its own rewards and that everyone should be free to experience that opportunity.

What interferes with successful capitalism is the all too frequent greed in human nature. Too many feel they don't have the opportunity so they either attack the freedom of capitalism or pursue countless get-rich quick schemes that seldom work for anyone but the people selling them.

Greed drives people looking for an edge and who are willing to bend or break the rules as we saw recently with the Wal-mart bribery scandal in Mexico. It drives others who are only too willing to nickel and dime even the poor as we saw in the recent Ontario budget that froze social assistance payments in order to reduce the deficit rather than cut discretionary and unnecessary program spending. It was interesting to me that that the minority NDP which held the balance of power and which could have defeated the government by voting against the budget, chose not to speak up for the poor.

Instead they demanded, and got, a surtax on those making more than $500,000 (one of their convenient and favourite targets) and they left the poor to fend for themselves. Making the reversal of the social assistance freeze a non-negotiable demand they knew was something to which  the Liberals would never have agreed and that would have triggered an election; an election the NDP cannot afford or win.

Putting your own self-interest ahead of what’s right in order to protect or gain something is yet another form of greed.

Small business, big corporations, online get rich quick schemes, students, unions, politicians, email scams, Ponzi schemes, continuous tax increases, ludicrous credit card rates and ridiculous fees for everything from receiving bank statements to using your debit card are all driven by greed.

I have no issue with people earning a living. In fact, I have no issue with people becoming fabulously wealthy. Power to you if you can pull it off! It gives the rest of us hope that it is possible. But when that success, great or modest, comes at the expense of others, then it is immoral and nothing less than the worst side of human nature. It is profiteering and that is nothing but greed.

Contrary to what Gordon Gheko preached, greed is not good. It blurs the lines between right and wrong, moral and immoral. It undermines the success of many for the benefit of a few and it weakens the productivity and creativity of societies.

Greed is not the same as the pursuit of success which is based on a desire to achieve nor is greed the sole province of the so-called 1%. It is a human trait that cuts across all strata of society and not one of which we should be proud. It is a desire, even a need to get something for nothing regardless of the cost to others. It is self-serving even selfish and a part of human nature to which none of us are immune.

RELATED

I'm Tired Of Student Hissy-Fits Over Tuition And The Greed Behind Them!
http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/04/there-is-greed-in-more-places-than-just.html

Taxed
http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/04/taxed.html

Entitlement Addiction
http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/04/entitlement-addiction.html


© 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

Bev Oda or Roy Orbison? You Be The Judge

"Come on baby let the good times roll - roll all night long." 

- Roy Orbison

Bev Oda, Canada’s Minister For International Aid has once again come under fire for livin’ high on the taxpayers’ dime.....well.....dollars actually. Diamond Bev is no piker when it comes to spending other people’s money.

Cabinet Minister, Diamond Bev Oda - makes you proud
to be Canadian doesn't it?
Photograph by: Screengrab , Google Image

She was in London last year to attend a conference on Vaccines for Developing countries, Diamond Bev cancelled reservations made for her at the five-star Grange St. Paul's Hotel. Instead she had staff book her into the swanky-danky Savoy, you know that hotel where royalty and folks like that enjoy paying $16.00 for a glass of orange juice.  Of course, not staying at the St. Paul where the conference was being held meant that Bev had to rent limousines at an additional cost of $1,000 a day or so, but who’s counting? Clearly not Diamond Bev.

She has, after it was brought to light, reimbursed taxpayers for the orange juice and the difference between what a room at the St. Paul costs versus a room at the Savoy palace. A grateful nation is picking up the tab for the unnecessary limousines.

This isn’t the first time Diamond Bev has been criticized for her lavish lifestyle at taxpayer expense. There was a bit of an uproar after she dropped a few thousand to attend the Juno Awards in Halifax and that’s when it hit me.

I believe Bev Oda is actually Roy Orbison. 

Which is Bev and which is Roy...or are they
the same person?

Now I understand all those limousines and swanky hotels. It’s the rock star lifestyle. Compare the two pictures. Clearly they are the same person. They both have died black hair, wear heavily tinted sunglasses and are never more comfortable than when they are being driven around in a limousine.

I know you're thinking, "Wait a minute, Roy Orbison has been dead for many years", but if you think about it, you never saw Diamond Bev and Roy Orbison together at the same time when he was still performing. Coincidence? How do we know that he didn't actually give up his rock and roll celebrity to become a politician in Canada?

The  plot thickens!

I could never understand why Prime Minister Stephen Harper kept Diamond Bev around after all the mistakes she’s made and the money she’s squandered on her expense account. For all his faults, Stephen Harper is personally squeaky clean and usually that kind of stuff really upsets him. It only took the inference of impropriety for him to all but have former cabinet Minister Helena Geurges publicly flogged and then executed on Parliament Hill right after the changing of the guard ceremony.

PM Harper performing at NAC
photo: Canadian Press

But I get it now.

Our prime  minister has a soft spot for classic rock. He even showed up, unannounced at the National Arts Centre during one benefit to do an impromptu version of The Beatles, “With A Little Help From My Friends.”

And that is what keeps saving Diamond Bev. Stephen Harper, like me, thinks she's Roy Orbison and for that, Stephen Harper can forgive anything. 

Rock on Bev...errr I mean Roy. We haven’t quite run out of taxpayer money yet, despite your best efforts.

Song and video by "ethanjacobs" on YouTube

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© 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

The Ends Do Not Justify The Means

'Political language....is designed to make lies sound truthful.....and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.'

George Orwell

I’ve been writing daily and posting what I’ve written for almost six months now and you know what? I’ve come to the realization that what is behind most of what I have written is that I am simply tired of being lied to.

Whatever happened to integrity anyway?

Look at climate change as an example. It is now established that there was all kinds of fraudulent science and misinformation behind much of the data that was released in support of hysterical claims of global warming. In some quarters, those claims persist even as it is also now established that the warming period seems to have peaked and the earth has been cooling over the past decade.

Consider the claim that the wealthy don’t pay enough in taxes? What a hoot that one is. Even President Obama jumped on that opportunity with his ‘Buffet Rule’ even as he took full advantage of the tax system to reduce his personal tax liability. The myth is thrown around quite freely but  according to the IRS, it just isn’t true. Figures published on the IRS web site show that the top 5% wage earners actually paid 58% of all income tax collected by the IRS. More significantly, the bottom 20% of income earners received $8.00 in direct and indirect  benefits for every dollar they paid in tax while the top 20% income earners received less than $1.00 for every dollar of tax they paid.

The tax system is overly complex, expensive to manage and incredibly unfair to all tax payers but rather than address that, politicians and special interest groups who benefit from that complexity continue to put forward the myth that it is the rich who are not paying their fair share.  They are an easy and popular target and it is that mythology that special interest uses to protect its entitlements or rationalize new ones and one of the lies some politicians use to get themselves reelected. 

Simplifying the tax code and making it equitable for everyone would force special interest groups to start earning their own way like the rest of us, while politicians would have to depend on merit as the key reason for getting elected rather than bribing us with our own money.

That, my friends, isn’t going to happen any time soon, so don’t hold your breath.

News has become entertainment

Even the media lies to us as we saw recently with the hysterical and over-the-top biased coverage of the Trayvon Martin shooting. What an absolute disgrace that coverage turned out to be. Honest, accurate journalism and objective analysis has been replaced by treating news like entertainment and by commentary that is little more than a personal soapbox from which to give vent to all manner of prejudice and misinformation.

The fallout from that, of course, is a loss of trust in the integrity of what the media report on anything.

In fact, that’s the fallout from all of the self-serving lies and misinformation being put out by one group or another in support of their particular ideology or cause.

Can you tell which are conservative or liberal?

Here are some simple truths.

The left is not comprised solely of socialist beggars looking for free handouts. To be sure there are some but most people who vote the liberal agenda are decent, hard-working folks who believe in social justice and want a better society for their families and neighbours.

Likewise, the right is not solely comprised of fascist extremists or religious fanatics who only believe in God, guns and keeping the poor….poor. Most who vote the conservative agenda are decent folks who simply believe in self-responsibility and enjoying the results of their labour without interference from government. While many on the left don’t like to admit it, many on the right are also very supportive of social safety nets for the disadvantaged and other issues that many on the left also support.

Not all students are whining, self-absorbed, spoiled brats looking for a free ride. Many are responsible, hard-working individuals who have assumed full responsibility for the challenges of financing and completing their university education. I admire them.

And, as hard as it is for most of us to accept, there are even some in the Occupy Movement who are sincere and honest people with jobs and who are non-violent. They are simply trying to call attention to their cause, as poorly defined and focused as most of us may believe that cause may be.

All of these folks have one thing in common. You can talk to them. You might not come to agreement on how to resolve certain issues but you can discuss the issues and debate them without all the hysterical, accusatory rhetoric that is the sole weapon in the arsenal of those who know they aren’t being honest with you.

I have many friends and colleagues who think I’m wrong on some of the issues, as hard as that is for you and I  to believe. We get along extremely well nonetheless because we are honest with each other and respect each other’s opinions. We also feel free to laugh together at our own foibles and laughter is even more unifying than sex…………….and almost as much fun.

You can’t laugh with liars for very long, if at all, and their sex is only self-serving. They’re out to screw you and that’s that! Most of them won‘t even kiss you before they take advantage of you.

We have too many like that in our society today.

Too many politicians, academics, union leaders, activists, religious fanatics and just plain, uniformed people who hide behind half-truths and outright lies to achieve their objectives, get their hands on money they haven’t earned or to advance some failed cause or other.

They tend to be driven by vested self-interest, by emotion rather than thoughts and ideas or by what is expedient rather than what is right and it is fairly easy to spot them. 

They tend to be divisive rather than unifying. Polarization works in their favour by keeping people running on feelings rather than facts. Politicians and activists are particularly fond of this tactic, as are most labour unions.

They are people who prefer to blame others for their problems rather than working with others who hold differing opinions to find real solutions.. They are the ones most likely to confuse what the believe for what they actually know and who are among the first to shout down your opinions, and deny your right to express them, while demanding you respect their right to express theirs. These are the most self-righteous and you'll find most extreme activist groups out there on the outer edges of the right and the left..

They’re beliefs tend to be among the most fragile because deep down inside they instinctively know that they don’t have much to support what they want to believe or are demanding from others. They yell, they bully and they bluster in the hope that neither you nor they themselves see the truth. In other words, these are the people who usually lie to themselves before they lie to everyone else.

Some are just flat out crooks who are only interested in taking your money and will say and do pretty much anything to get it.

But the easiest way to spot them is by how quickly they are prepared to rationalize illegal or immoral behaviour to justify their actions. These are people who believe that the rule of law only applies when it supports their cause or is expedient.

Justice is always one of the first casualties of people who believe that the ends justify the means.

I’m tired of it all to be honest. I believe it is impossible to build a successful society on values that lack integrity and by people who put expediency ahead of the truth. If a person’s beliefs are so fragile that they can only be supported by distorted half-truths and outright lies, then those are beliefs that aren’t worth having let alone following.

Our democracies are led by such people and by many who either have no consistent values or who work overtime to ignore the values they were taught.  

It is not serving us well in government, business, labour or academia. Even some in our court systems have lost sight of the true meaning of the word justice.

This was driven home to me recently by the jailing of a 17 year old rape victim who was incarcerated in order to compel her to testify against her assailant.  Despite the fact that she had been brutally victimized by her rapist, the prosecutor was able to justify victimizing this young girl a second time because he believed the ends justified the means. There is nothing honest or decent about that and we are all demeaned by it and should feel shamed that such a thing could happen in a free society.

In the end, the only hope we have is that lies are more fragile than truth simply because lies have no substance and can be exposed and defeated by the truth. The truth is substantive because it based on fact. It requires nothing but itself to exist. It remains the truth regardless of the lies that are put forward to try and obscure it.

Truth cannot be changed simply by lying about it. It may be overlooked, it may be ignored but unlike lies which have to be constantly reinforced by more lies, the truth stands on its own merit.

In the end, the old adage is true. The truth shall set you free and all of those who claim to want to build a better society with freedom, justice and equality for all would do well to remember that.

Trying to create a better life for the world on a foundation of lies and half-truths is like building your house on a foundation of sand. Sooner or later, that house will sink and be lost.

Nothing real can be built out of anything that doesn't actually exist and lies are merely words that blow on angry winds. In the end, they just blow away and leave nothing of value behind.

"Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."

- George Orwell

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© 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

Can The Government Do More? Yes - But Pray It Doesn't!

I am always confused by those who demand the government provide more services. We hear it all the time. There is a demand for more health care, more environmental protection policies and demands that the government impose stricter regulations on the banks and big corporations.

I’m not suggesting that some of those things aren’t important or even necessary; some probably are but expecting government to take care of it is like expecting ….well…there isn’t anything quite as stupid as expecting government to take care of things in an effective and efficient manner.

Honestly! When was the last time government did much of anything that could be considered truly efficient? They can’t even collect taxes, let alone spend the money they collect efficiently.

I know it’s not a popular topic. I hate taxes too but we all need to throw some cash into the pot to take care of a few common essentials like roads and highways, national defense, justice and so on. So, taxes in some form or another are a necessary evil and we elected government to take care of that for us.

It’s a simple concept really. All government is required to do is collect a specific percentage of our incomes and then use that money to provide the services to which we’ve agreed. Government, however, lives in an alternate universe and they have turned that simple concept into a bizarre, overly complex and expensive process that is both inequitable and expensive.

In the United States, for example, government spends approximately $1.5 trillion…..let me repeat that for you in case you missed it the first time….$1.5 trillion collecting taxes. In Canada, the Canada Revenue Agency has almost as many employees as the Canadian armed forces. How is that possible?

It happens because bureaucracies are the same the world over. In Canada, a gun registry was budgeted to cost $200 million. It ended up costing $2 billion making it the most expensive data base ever created. In Germany, the bureaucracy and politicians invested billions in solar and wind power but are now dismantling the entire program and purchasing much of their power from the Czech Republic at a fraction of the cost already incurred.

Billions, even trillions, of dollars are spent on bureaucratic processes and systems that do nothing other than to slow down economies, overly complicate the function of government and drive sane people into therapy.

The procurement process is just one more example. Governments spend billions on everything from office furniture to military equipment each and every year. Do they do it well I’ll let you judge. Personally I don’t believe that paying more than $100 apiece for hammers that a Defense Department audit revealed a few years back would support any claim to either efficiency or even common sense. You and I can pick one up at Home Depot for less than twenty bucks. Maybe we should be doing procurement for the government,

Despite the incredible amount of bureaucratic process that goes into government procurement, somehow we still end up seeing an incredible amount of over-spending for things that most of us could pick up at a box store for a fraction of the price.

Government is very good at imposing restrictions on itself to protect our interests; they just aren’t very good at operating within those restrictions as is now being discovered in the ongoing GSA scandal in the United States.  Wouldn’t we all like a job where our employer picks up the tab for a vacation in Las Vegas complete with hot tubs and free meals? I think it would actually be better if the government cut most of these departments and let us keep more of our income so that we could pay for our own trips rather than applying for a government job just get away now and then.

It isn’t just the incredible wastage of real cash that is bothersome though, it’s the way government works that squanders billions in daily nickel and dime activities.

I was recently told about a very senior bureaucrat who was to present an award at a ceremony. It wasn’t a big ceremony and there were no media or politicians present, nor was the public involved. It was an employee awards presentation and this particular bureaucrat was asked to make a five minute presentation speech to present one of the awards.

He earns in excess of a quarter of a million a year but was incapable of winging that speech nor was he capable of jotting a few notes down on a piece of paper as he was being driven across town to make the presentation. Apparently his personal staff wasn’t capable either. Instead, they requested that a particular department write the speech for him. 

This speech took the better part of an afternoon to craft and involved a deputy-minister, assistant deputy minister, a director general and no less than two directors. The five minute, “Congratulations, here’s your award’ speech was emailed back and forth between these executives for approximately four to five hours as they painstakingly poured over every syllable. The cost? I’m glad you asked. The deputy minister makes close to $250,000/yr, the adm makes somewhere in the area of $180,000, the director general $150,000 and the two directors each earn approximately $110,000. 

In other words, government required the services of a team of people with annual salaries totaling $800,000+ / year just to craft a brief presentation speech that you and I could have ad-libbed.

That’s how government approaches everything. If the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, government will never be able to successfully connect those two points. Instead they will form committees to discuss alternate routes between the two points, conduct feasibility studies to examine which of the alternate routes is the most environmentally friendly or has the least potential for political repercussions, call for tenders which they will subsequently ignore and then scrap the entire project because all of this took so long, the original requirement is now redundant.

Canadians are issued a social insurance number and a shiny plastic card with that number on it. My card eventually fell apart and I needed a new one. I thought it would be a simple matter of showing up at Service Canada (a somewhat outstanding oxymoron), producing some ID and then filling out a form. I was wrong.

I needed my birth certificate but I no longer had my birth certificate because it was printed on flimsy paper and had become so worn out, it simply decayed. Government, for reasons known only to itself won’t permit you to plasticize your paper birth certificate. So, I dutifully drove to Toronto, prepared to produce all kinds of ID to get a new birth certificate. I didn’t need ID, I merely had to fill out the form, pay a fee and we were done. Three days later, my birth certificate arrived by mail.

Now understand what happened here. I was originally applying for a new SIN card, arguably the most important document a Canadian has. The federal government would not accept any government issued photo ID to verify who I was. I was required to produce my birth certificate (remember, I was already in their data base). I didn’t need photo ID to replace my birth certificate which means that the federal government relied on a document any idiot can obtain without any verification of who they are.

Only a bureaucracy could be that abjectly stupid.

There are many good and professional people who work for governments. They do the very best they can but they are constrained by a system and process so antiquated and byzantine that I’m surprised more of them haven’t attempted suicide out of frustration.

I’ve brought this up because so many continue to pressure, petition and lobby the government for more services. Why? Were they not here for the last billion dollar boondoggle? Are they masochists who enjoy seeing things done in the most ineffective manner possible or are they so naïve that they cling to faint hope like a fat kid clings to a chocolate bar. Government doesn’t make our lives easier or better. It interferes and undermines what otherwise would be a pretty good lifestyle. 

Do we never learn? Just how many $100 hammers can we afford?

Personally, I think the time has come to reduce government to as small a size as possible. They clearly have too much time on their hands and the world is full of real problems looking for real and expeditious solutions. We don’t have the time or the money anymore to wait for politicians and bureaucrats to figure out the worst way of accomplishing something,

We’re better off muddling along on our own for most things. For those who think government should handle everything remember this simple truism.  

The less government touches, the less they can screw up!

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© 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