The American ‘left’ to cut spending?

Again, showing that neo-cons have no economic knowledge, Obama has announced that to try to afford these giant bailouts, he will be instituting a series of spending cuts across the board.

Want something that doesn’t really need funding in the USA?

The White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives eats a whopping $2 billion for prostylization of the disadvantaged.

It’s not on the order of the $1 trillion dollar deficit he’s faced with, but every little bit counts.

Actually, my serious hope is that research, education, and health care don’t feel any pressure in the USA (except perhaps the school voucher scam). It’s not easy to inherit the worst economic situation the US has seen in decades, but hopefully the right action is taken.

Conservative FAIL

Perhaps Harper needs to go back to school and learn some more economics. Lowering taxes and raising spending, while entering a recession, is not the best time to promise that you won’t go into a deficit.

For some reason, people still think neo-cons know something about economics. They don’t. They know about giving money to big business and big religion.

From the Globe and Mail (emphasis added):
Continue reading Conservative FAIL

Obligatory US election post

So if you go back, the only thing I have mentioned about the US election is to Vote No on Prop 8 in California (so that gay marriage can remain legal).

Obviously I’m happy Obama has beaten McCain/Palin. But let’s not assume that the US is suddenly socialist utopia. It’s not.

Depending how the results turn in, up to 49% of Americans still voted for McCain/Palin. Granted, many would vote for a Libertarian candidate, if the two big parties hadn’t strangleholded democracy years ago and declared a vote for a third party is a wasted vote (they’ve even convinced the third parties that it is), but that’s till a lot of right-wingers.

Let’s look at some of the other things being decided today.

Many states are having ballot propositions on gay marriage (including state constitutional amendments) and abortion rights. Here’s some preliminary results:
Continue reading Obligatory US election post

They want you to pay to use your own money

I like using debit. I like it a lot.

Rather than carry around cash, or quickly become a victim of fraud via cheques, I can use my card and PIN.

Now, I have had my card # and PIN stolen, but PC Financial was diligent enough to clear it up and cancel the charges against me without any hassle.

But now Interac wants to become a for-profit competitive company.

Interac, the debit system in Canada, charges a flat fee averaging about six cents per transaction. However, Interac applied to the competition bureau to change its fee structure, leading to fears the restructuring will result in fees based on a percentage of the sale.

In addition to this is a concern that Visa and MasterCard will bring their debit cards to Canada with an interchange fee, rather than the flat fee now paid with Interac.

Consider this: if I spend $1 on debit, it’s equivalent in the fraction of a penny charge as spending $1000. But now they want to potentially move to a percentage charge. So to make a $1000 purchase, I would have to pay a few dollars, or the merchant would.

At a time when people are needed to spend money to keep our tanking economy going, threatening to enact new charges is not the way to go.

For Kevin Hunter, the Communist

I can respect a man like Kevin Hunter. He’s running for the Marxist-Leninists in Alberta, and that takes galls.

I’m not sure he’s out there to win, but dammit if he wants to get his message across.

The heart of his message: we are in a dire democratic deficit (hey alliteration nuts), and our wealth needs to be controlled by us, the people.

At the first forum, he talked a bit too much about monopolies and the “big business parties,” but at the Garneau United Church forum he was more eloquent and focussed on building a stronger democracy.

I should also point out, King’s University College was arrogant enough to not invite him to their forum. I urge you to email King’s at [email protected] and complain about their attempted silencing of democracy.

So, to help him and his often under-heard message, I have pledged to repost their pretty slick ad (quicktime mov, click if video doesn’t appear), which gets very minimal and abysmally late air times from the CRTC.

Continue reading For Kevin Hunter, the Communist

Communism is dead

After getting barely a bit into the Communist Manifesto, you start to realize that it hasn’t aged well at 160.

I just finished the epoch by Marx and Engels, although that word is deceiving because all-in-all it comes in at a mere 42 pages. My opinion: things have changed a lot since they wrote this manifesto.

The first major problem I encountered was that they assume this diametrically opposed class war. It’s the “us versus them” mentality that has led to many conflicts throughout time. The communists (I’ll use this word to denote the position taken by the manifesto) argue that the only way for the working class to ever gain anything is to destroy the current system. It’s a hugely false dichotomy now, however, may have rung truer in another time.

Today (in Western culture), there is no proletariat-bourgeoisie class rivalry. There is essentially a spectrum of wealth from the homeless to the worlds richest – and most are above the poverty line today.
Continue reading Communism is dead

Calgary gives middle finger to Earth Hour

Saturday evening was Earth Hour (I’ll admit now that I knew it was coming but didn’t realize until Sunday when it was), and saw many people across Earth turning off their lights from 8-9pm local time.  Many Canadian cities saw drops of up to 9% consumption, and some smaller towns went completely dark!

However, in the heart of fossil-fuel burning Alberta, Calgary saw an increase in power consumption:

Calgary is the only known city in Canada where energy consumption actually went up during Earth Hour, a trend organizers pinned on colder weather and a late start locally in promoting the global event.

The “late start” I think refers to people not being organized in Calgary, unless people only started turning off around 8:30 or 8:45 and had only a little time.  One other reason given is that there was a Flames vs. Oilers game (Oilers won 2-1) that evening as well.

This is the province in which I live, it’s pretty sad.

Drug company one step closer to pure evil

It seems Johnson and Johnson, the pharmaceutical company, is suing the American Red Cross over use of the red cross.

The Red Cross said many of the products in question were part of health and safety kits, and that profits from the sales — totaling less than $10 million — went to boost Red Cross disaster-response efforts.

I’m almost speechless from this.