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PTBC J-Log

A conservative OPINION blog --with bite. OPINION by Joel Johannesen.

Saturday, May 29, 2004

Gary Sinise, Iraq, America, Initiative, Children, Freedom, Love

Good News ^from  Iraq

“I have seen their smiling faces and their attempts to say ‘I love you’  in broken English… I saw hope in their eyes and gratitude in their hearts for what was done for them.”

—Gary Sinise, actor

Hands up all those who have had it up to here with the bad news being shown (repeatedly, over and over and over again) about Iraq, by a media intent on making sure it looks like there’s nothing good going on there?

You’d think absolutely nothing was going right there. Actually, tons of things are going right and I am among the millions who are not at all surprised.

One of the things that are going right are the kids. The children of Iraq now have an actual future. The chances of them being raped and tortured sporadically throughout their lives has dropped considerably. Chances are, they will also not be taught, under threat of severe punishment or death, that “death to America” is what life is all about. (I would hang my hat on that justification alone for the war).

Gary Sinise is another thing that’s going right, here on our continent and over there.  My wife Jo-Anne and I were really very moved last night when we were getting our daily dose of the Dennis Miller Show on CNBC and Gary Sinise was a guest. Multiple award-winning actor Gary Sinise, star of huge smash hits Forrest Gump  (he got an Academy Award nomination for his role), Truman (he won a Golden Globe Award) and Apollo 13 (Sinise was part of the ensemble that won a Screen Actors’ Guilde Award); along with his friend author Laura Hillenbrand who wrote Seabiscuit: An American Legend (a favorite movie of mine—I highly suggest you rent it), launched Operation Iraqi Children or “OiC”, a program that is already  enabling Americans to send “School Supply Kits” to Iraqi children.

This is a beautiful example of private citizens acting on their own and taking an initiative to make an absolutely wonderful difference in peoples’ lives. 

Here’s how it started:
During and after Operation Iraqi Freedom, American soldiers passing through Iraqi villages were horrified at the squalor of Iraqi schools, which had been severely neglected under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. Corralled in sweltering one-room buildings without air conditioning, fans, windows, solid floors, or even toilets, Iraqi students lack even the rudimentary supplies that American and Canadian children take for granted. Libraries and books are almost nonexistent. 

Moved by the plight of these children, many American soldiers have taken it upon themselves to help. Working in small groups on their days off, soldiers gather supplies sent by family members and church groups back home and take them to villages,  sometimes coming under fire as they work to reconstruct the schools and deliver learning tools to Iraqi kids.

Their efforts have met with immense gratitude from local Iraqis and their children,  who now have access to the basic tools of education for the first time in their lives. “I have seen Iraqi kids climbing on our soldiers and hugging them and kissing them,” remembers Sinise, who recently accompanied Army soldiers to a dilapidated school they were rebuilding. “I have seen their smiling faces and their attempts to say ‘I love you’ in broken English.  The folks I saw had hope in their eyes and gratitude in their hearts for what was done for them.”

Unfortunately, the need for help is so great and widespread, encompassing some 1,500 schools, that the soldiers’ efforts cannot possibly answer the entire problem. The situation is critical. “The future of Iraq lies in the education of its children,” says Hillenbrand. “We owe it to them, and to the hundreds of American men and women who gave their lives to bring them freedom, to give these children the basic tools of learning.” 

Their Answer:
Inspired by their conversations with Operation Iraqi Freedom soldiers as well as Sinise’s recent tour of the region, Sinise and Hillenbrand founded Operation Iraqi Children, a grass roots program to provide concerned Americans with a means to reach out to Iraqi kids and help support the soldiers’ efforts to assist the Iraqi people.

Through the School Supply Kit Program, people like you and me, church groups,  offices or other work places, beer-drinking buddies from the bar, and more sober organizations can help Iraqis by gathering school supplies in super-easy local drives, assembling them in kits according to the instructions below, then sending them to Heart to Heart International’s warehouse (an organization helping OiC) in Kansas City, Kansas, for transport to Iraq (provided free by FedEx who will fly in to Iraq at great risk from Kansas City),  where soldiers will take them to Iraqi villages.

Gary Sinise and Laura Hillenbrand write:

 

“As hopeful as we were, we never could have anticipated the outpouring of generosity that we have encountered. From the day that we launched the program, we have been inundated with correspondence from people across the nation who wanted to pitch in. We have heard from children as young as seven who kicked off school supply drives in their elementary schools;  retirees who scoured their attics for supplies that might help an Iraqi child learn; youth groups who have held bake sales to raise money to ship supplies;  high schools who have designated the program as an avenue for student community service. Major organizations like Federal Express and the Atlanta Hawks have offered to help in any way they can, while radio stations have raised the call for public support. Even Clay Aiken’s fan club has joined us, working to gather enough supplies to fill an 18-wheeler. Our email boxes have been flooded with myriad innovative ideas and suggestions that can make our program more effective.

“Because of your generosity, a generation of forgotten children will have the tools they need to learn, grow, and pursue futures of limitless possibility. Iraqi classrooms, once barren and squalid, will be joyful, bountiful places of learning. The American soldiers who will bring these gifts to them will win the Iraqi people’s goodwill, admiration and trust.  Over and over again, they will hear the words like those that one Iraqi parent spoke to a soldier as his child opened a box of supplies from America: “We will never forget this day.” “

We can do actually something positive to help Iraq?!
Answer: Yes but don’t bother telling the media!  I have a hunch that people like those who frequent this web site might just be able to help,  unlike those who don’t frequent this site who sanctimoniously whine and complain and shout at America almost as if freeing children and giving people hope is something they should officially be against as part of the anti-American campaign effort of the liberal left.

So I’m personally emploring you to answer this appeal. Proceed over to this next page to see how simple and really kind of fun it is to help.

From Gary Sinise

Thank you Joel,

I am glad that you saw the show last night and are going to help spread the word that OIC is a way to channel our energies into something positive.

I am so happy that word is getting out there. I have been trying my best to get on radio and TV to promote this effort because I really believe that it is a great way to help our troops help the people there and to promote positive relations. Just take a look at those pictures of the kids and the soldiers and you get a good idea of what the program can do.

Whatever you can do to pass our website around would be appreciated. Thanks for putting us on your website.

Thanks to you and all our Canadian friends.

Gary Sinise

[ Next page - How they suggest you help -> ]

Tuesday, May 25, 2004

Health Care in Canada:  What You Need To Know

Canada is only one of 27 countries with universal health care.

Yes, twenty-seven (27!) countries in the free world have universal health care.  Here’s a list of countries that have universal health care:

Iceland, Switzerland, Australia, Germany, Korea, New Zealand, Netherlands, France, Denmark, Portugal, Greece, Belgium, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Czech, Republic, Austria, Italy, United Kingdom, Poland, Japan, Finland, Slovak Republic, Spain, Hungary, Luxembourg. 

Other nations have universal health care but I only listed the democratic free-market countries of the world—members of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development or OECD.

Well at least Canada’s is the best in the world, right? 
Wrong.

The World Health Organisation ranked Canada’s Health care system 30th best in the world in terms of efficiency in delivering health care to its citizens.

The best research available to date reports that Canada, while spending more on health care than any other universal-access,  industrialized country in the OECD, ranks 14th in the percentage of total life expectancy that will be lived disability-free, ranks 16th in infant mortality and 12th in perinatal mortality, ranks 8th in mortality amenable to health care, ranks 9th in potential years of life lost due to disease, and ranks 6th in the incidence of breast cancer mortality.

Canada ranks first in only one of seven health care outcome categories and does not rank first in any of access to care, supply of technologies, or supply of physicians. 

In a recent survey conducted by Harvard University for the Commonwealth Fund, Canadian respondents were more likely than any other universal-access country in the world to wait more than one month for non-emergency surgery.  Some have to wait many months, and many have to wait years.  Some give up entirely.

Changing Canada’s health system means “American Style Health Care”.
No, wrong. (Not that there’d be anything wrong with that.)

Twenty-seven free nations have universal health care and all of them spend less money than Canada and provide better health care to their citizens in terms of health outcomes and timely availability of services.  Only Canada outlaws a parallel private health care system.  Again, Canada is the only nation that outlaws private alternatives.

As the study reports:

The comparative evidence is that the Canadian health care model is inferior to others in place in the OECD [which does not include the U.S. or Mexico since they are the only two without universal access].  It produces inferior access to physicians and technology, produces longer waiting times, is less successful in preventing death from preventable causes, and costs more than any of the other systems that have comparable objectives.  The models that produce superior results and cost less than Canada’s monopolistic, single-insurer, single-provider system have user fees; alternative, comprehensive, private insurance; and private hospitals.  Canada should follow the example of these superior health care models.

Clearly there are abundant alternatives.  But Canada could look to nearly any free nation on earth to find that to get better health care, Canada has to invite private enterprise into the system and embrace what has actually proven to work.  There is a heck of a lot Canada can learn from the U.S. but also from any of the 26 other countries in the OECD with universal access—all of whom are doing better than Canada.  Change could well mean a “Norwegian-style health care system”—and that would be a vast improvement over Canada’s current system.  The left (Liberals; and the extreme left, the socialist NDP) want to fix health care. Wrong. Liberals (and of course the socialist NDP) like to rally Canadians to their anti-American cause by dismissing the very idea of changing Canada’s horrible health care system and “warning” Canadians that it would mean “American-Style Health Care”.  Just how it is that American-style health care is “bad” is difficult to comprehend inasmuch as Americans are about the healthiest, wealthiest people on earth, and America comes up with the vast majority of new life-saving drugs, surgical techniques, and technological equipment; their hospitals are modern and brimming with the best equipment; and Americans don’t have to wait for access like Canadians do.  While it’s not perfect (there’s too many uninsured for example), in the U.S. neither liberal nor conservative governments (Democrats or Republicans) have changed their system to anything like Canada’s, as we know.  In fact, few in the world would look to Canada for answers—except on “what to avoid”.  In the United States, people on both sides of the aisle warn of the dangers of a “Canadian-style health care system” because Americans want to remain healthy—economically and physically. Canada’s left-wing hates America, and are playing that card hoping that Canadians will jump on their anti-American bandwagon.  They think that being Liberal or being NDP means being Canadian, and that, in turn, means being anti-American.  Well that’s stupid.  And they’re playing Canadians for fools. The left are actually in fear of allowing private citizens and companies to fix health care in Canada because it exposes them and their social-program agenda as the failure that it is. If private citizens—private enterprise—were allowed to enter the system, they’d fix Canada’s monopolized, socialized health system as they’ve done in nearly every other country in the world.  But then what use would there be for the Liberals and the NDP and their political philosophy which is entirely based on Canada’s current health care system and creating various other government social programs?  Their very reason for being would be exposed as the sham that it is.  So of course they desperately fight to maintain political control, saying whatever they think might sucker voters. The left would have us believe that Canada’s health system is ideal the way it is, and yet somehow, apparently, Canada as a nation need to spend billions upon billions more taxpayer dollars to fix all this ideal-ness, as evidenced by recent Liberal election promises.  This despite the fact that Canada already spends more than any other country with a universal system and achieves worse results.  A Martian would think Canada were a nation of morons.  Actually I don’t doubt that many Earthlings believe that too. Simply to accomplish the left’s political ideological end-game, Canada is the only country in the free world that bans (outlaws!) private alternatives to the 100% government monopolistic system.  Canada is the only country that doesn’t allow, by law, private citizens to spend their own money on their own basic health care as they see fit.  And all Canadians pay the price for this in terms of inferior health care. Inferior health!  Canadians are not getting the best that life has to offer.  That’s the cost of voting Liberal or NDP. There are two other countries that do the same as Canada in banning private alternatives—it’s just that they aren’t members of OECD so I didn’t mention them before.  The two other countries are:  Cuba and North Korea. The Liberals and NDP are promoting Cuban-style health care.  Or North Korean-style health care.  Conservatives aren’t.  That’s another reason I’m a conservative.

Friday, May 21, 2004

Liberals: Shooting For The Stars

Canadians often point to the fact that in Canada there isn’t the kind of whacky gun ownership that there is in the United States.

In actual fact, gun ownership is high in Canada with per capita gun ownership at about one gun for every four to five Canadians.  Of course that doesn’t include the arsenal in “Canada’s military”, which if you add that, or at least the ones that still work, amounts to… well OK roughly the same.

Nonetheless, Canada has enjoyed a low gun violence statistic, unlike the Bad, Bad Evil Americans

(â„ ¢LIBERAL PARTY OF CANADA)

.  Every Canadian knows that, and even American Michael Moore knows that. He made millions off a film which compared the two countries that way, and proved that Canada has a low gun violence statistic.  Every liberal in the United States went to the movie and all agreed.  No gun violence in Canada.  Moore’s flick won an Academy Award for best “documentary” (clearly it wasn’t a documentary by any interpretation of the Academy’s rules, but Hollywood is a very liberal institution so naturally they made an exception since it was so deliciously anti-conservative and anti-American).

So, obviously, the Liberal government in Canada saw fit to introduced a government program to clamp down on the low gun violence. 

Liberal governments introduce government programs on the basis of whether or not one currently exists.  If one doesn’t exist, they get into high gear.  That way, another government program can fail down the road, which they always do, and then they can add more taxpayer money to the budget to fix that program, and when the “fix” fails, which it always will, they add another program to fix the old program which was set up to address… entirely nothing. 

That way, Canadian citizens will always vote for the Liberals, because they increasingly need government programs just to sort out which government program gets them to work, or not, that day.  The plan is working just as the Liberals would have it.

The Canadian Liberal government’s now infamous gun registration program, initiated in 1995 when all the gun violence was not and never was happening, is still not yet completed even though the entire population of Canada is approximately three or four times bigger than New York City in which gun violence has been going down in the absence of gun control. In fact the United States has witnessed a dramatic drop in criminal violence over the past decade. For example, the homicide rate in the US has fallen 42 percent since 1991.

It was budgeted to cost taxpayers a net total of about $2 million to set up after taking into consideration the fees that gun owners would pay to register their firearms which they never used (one wonders why the government would purposely budget it so it would still cost all taxpayers millions of dollars instead of raising the gun registration fees by 45 cents.  Then suddenly one stops wondering because one remembers it is the Liberals—the government—who set this up).

When costs crossed the $2 million mark soon after starting, alarm bells went off in Liberal headquarters in Ottawa.  By “alarm bells” I mean, of course, that they introduced a new omelette in the Parliamentary cafeteria. 

It seems that the program would cost at least $2.3 million.  That’s a 15 percent budget overrun.  A 10 percent cost overrun would be acceptable, but this was starting to exceed 15 percent.

When the cost reached $10 million, it started looking worse than usual for the Liberals.  A several-hundred percent cost overrun looks funky, even to Liberals.

After the budget edged up to $29 million, it was really starting to look stupid, or in the words of the Liberals, “je ne sais quois”, shrug.  Apparently the Liberal’s Finance Minister and now Prime Minister Paul Martin called in his own crack team of number-crunchers at this point.

But it was when it hit $56 million that they finally said, “geewhizzackers”.

That set the stage for the Liberal accountants to officially step in and finally get this baby under control. 

To Liberals, “under control” means letting the budget sneak up to $86 million.

When the Liberal math wizards allowed it to then nudge the $100 million dollar mark without all of Canada’s guns even remotely close to being registered yet, people started wondering how the cost went beyond the $2 million budget.  Gun registration, after all, is a matter of drawing up a form upon which gun owners could write their name and address.  I could see a government program which involves creating a paper form and then photocopying it costing $90 million, but $100 million?

Some in the Liberal Party wondered allowed if the budget wasn’t supposed to read $102 million, rather than the $2 million that was originally presented to the Canadian people.  They checked and apparently, no, $2 million was right.

That thorough audit completed, they admitted that they’d actually spent $149 million.  Soon, the fair and balanced CBC news team would be forced to report on it. .. unless they could find just one dead person in Iraq—preferable a woman—to report on…

But surely after reflecting back on the days when they’d only spent 70 times more than the budget, it came as an embarrassment when costs reached 125 times more than the budget, or $250 million of taxpayers’ hard-earned cash.

Embarrassed Liberals took action.  By December 2001, the cost rose to $527 million.

Clearly it was group hug time. Liberals always hug when things get tough, unless it’s past 3:45 when they have to get home.

The original $2 million budget seemed to be getting away from them a tad, according to their own official mathematics reports.  Soon, the Liberals would rein it in. 

Or not.  The cost is now figured at about a BILLION DOLLARS.  It cost 500 times more than planned to fix this problem of low gun violence.  But at least it has started making a difference.

A recent report suggests that after all the gun registrations, violent crime is finally on the increase in Canada and on the decrease in the United States.  Voilà  .  Now they can really lay on the government programs.

The yearly administration of the gun registry which cost taxpayers a billion dollars, is estimated to cost over $100 million.  Per year.  But the Liberals promise they will cap it at $25 million.  Per year. 

Liberals even today in this 2004 election year still portray themselves as astute managers of money and the rightful governors of all the land.  Their news conference yesterday confirms that they will crack down on the now rising violent crimes.  The minister responsible, Anne McLellan, said the government will spend an extra $10 million a year for each of the next five years in a new program to help police track illegal guns and fight gun smuggling. 

And it appears likely that the Liberals will win this 2004 election.  No I’m serious.

The Liberal’s campaign strategy?  Reg Alcock, the Liberal’s Treasury Board whiz, acknowledged the concerns about this cost overrun using positive political spin to express what would obviously be a very contrite and embarrassed and apologetic Liberal government:

“This thing got away from us,” he said. “We tried to rein it in and we were not successful.”

By saying things like that, Liberals always remind me of Bill Clinton’s penis.

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

“Democratic socialists”, snicker.

Background for Americans:  “NDP” stands for “New Democratic Party”, Canada’s extreme left-wing party.  A socialist party.

 

Union members can all decide to join the NDP individually.  That’s one thing they’re allowed, by their union, to do on their own.  Other things are prohibited.  You know, like “thinking”.  That, they must do in unison.  Apparently singing and chanting are also to be done in unison, such as: “Sol,id-ar-it-y fo-rev,ver…” and other Marxist-Chic songs. 

Now naturally, it is “suggested” by some unions that their members do make sure they join the NDP, completely on their own initiative, mmmbut a stack o’ membership cards is available at the union hall.

And like the union itself, members are encouraged to be sure to send in their donation too, completely on their own volition.  After all, they voted for it in a non-secret ballot 80 years ago. 

That way, when the Elections Canada stats are shown every year depicting from whence support is coming for all the parties, it will appear as though “unions” aren’t necessarily supporting the NDP but rather that “individuals” are the true supporters of the NDP.  The NDP love to appear not just as the party that supports grass, but as a grass roots party.  It’s all about the grass.

Unions themselves can also be members of the NDP—I don’t mean union members can be members, I mean the union itself.  The NDP suddenly calls unions “affiliates”, though, not “unions” in this case, not that they’re trying to hide anything of course.  And at conventions, the unions ....err umm “affiliates”.... can vote on resolutions and on the leadership of the Party. 

But they don’t get one vote, in fact labor unions ....err umm “affiliates”.... are guaranteed 25 percent of the vote.  In effect, that means unions ....err umm “affiliates”.... get many times more votes than individual members—like ten times more.

In “democratic socialism”, snicker, some votes are more worthy than other votes.  I’m not sure but I think at NDP conventions, if you’re rich (you’re non-union and earned over $28 thou) and happen to have joined the NDP, and you vote on something at the convention, your vote is thrown out and you get kicked in the backside by a giant lumberjack who earns $100 thou.  But at least you got to vote.

Individual union members can all go to the NDP leadership convention and vote for their choice of leader too. All members can vote—not just local official delegates, thus guaranteeing a real full, popular looking NDP convention for the CBC TV cameras, of which there are 953 pointed every which way.

Most of the “affiliate” votes are reserved for Canada’s largest unions based on their financial contributions to the NDP over the past four years.  This includes CUPE and other public-sector unions, which work for governments and the many government departments, institutions, and enterprises.

The “affiliates” thus control a huge block of votes—oh who are we kidding they own the Party.

They can literally set the tone of the whole convention and set the policy direction of the Party—both before, during, and after the convention.  And before, during, and after general elections in Canada or in the provinces or territories if and when they win elections as they have in British Columbia and Ontario.  They currently govern Saskatchewan and Manitoba.  Well not so much “govern” as “pay back” I would think.

What happens after an NDP victory at the polls? How does an NDP Premier of British Columbia deal with public sector unions like the BC Government Employees Union when their contract expires?  Well, what did they agree to at the big convention?  How much did they contribute financially and otherwise?  How many votes did they wield?

How isn’t it an inherent conflict of interest to directly deal in any honest way with your direct financial and campaign supporters who are absolutely responsible for bringing you to power? 

How about the British Columbia teachers’ union which isn’t an NDP “affiliate” but shows their modest support instead by embarking on a massive multi-million-dollar media campaign against the current government and one in which, at the direction of the union, the teachers even have the audacity to campaign in schools during parent-teacher conferences by bad-mouthing the government; and using school bulletin boards to spread anti-government rhetoric;  and by holding militant “political protests” (strikes) which barricade student and even uncooperative teachers from entry in their campaign to bring down the government and get an NDP government elected?  How would an NDP government deal with these public employees?  Wouldn’t it be the very definition of a conflict of interest?

Of course it is.

The NDP (“democratic socialists”, snicker) will argue that with a Conservative Party in power, they would be in a conflict because they’d be dealing with companies and enterprises all the time.  There’s a slight difference:  We live in a capitalist society.  The vast majority of people either own or work for private companies (even the union members do).  It’s the nature of our lives.  Even unions are involved in it.  Union pension plans are among the largest—if not the largest—investor groups in the nation in real estate devlopment and private corporations. Union members’ very pensions depend, in large part, on the success of corporations.  (The irony isn’t lost on me but is apparently in the NDP Politburo).

The unions would have us believe that unions aren’t an interest group—it’s everyone else who is an interest group!  They’re the normal ones—we’re crazy! 

This “rest-of-the-world interest group”, which us crazies belong to, believes in a capitalist society by and large.  Since the NDP stands for the overthrow of capitalism and the creation of a global socialist utopia, the only “conflict of interest” involved in governments dealing with corporations is a conflict with the political interests of the NDP and their socialist ideology. 

The NDP pretend this “affiliate” nonsense isn’t going on and that they aren’t owned by the unions.  But many even within the NDP are aghast and embarrassed by this obvious conflict of interest and undemocratic policy that the (“democratic socialists”, snicker) NDP has had in place.  They remain very quiet about it. 

I think that’s because it is a hellacious scandal comparable only to the current Liberal Party corruption scandal, and an inherent abuse of power by both a political party and a special interest group, both of which stand to profit at the huge expense of the general taxpaying public.

So yes it seems like the NDP is in an untenable conflict of interest by being affiliated with unions.  If you search hard enough you can find some discussion of it.

The left-wing web site “NDProgress” beats around the bush as follows, regarding public-sector unions and the conflict of interest with the NDP:

· The party is in an untenable conflict of interest by being affiliated with public service unions.

· When the party was formed, public sector unions did not exist and the idea that it would today be in a conflict of interest was never conceived of.

And that’s a left-wing, pro-NDP web site.  Imagine how it really is without all that positive spin.

Paul Ramsey, a former BC NDP cabinet minister and supporter of Nils Jensen’s failed bid for leadership of the BC NDP (he failed to get union support, duh) in last year’s leadership convention wrote on Jensen’s campaign web site:

The perception of undo influence concerns Nils Jensen. His solution is to end “affiliate memberships” and move to a “one member, one vote” method of choosing leaders. Only individual members would have the right to vote, and only individual members would attend conventions and set policy.

At any convention “affiliate delegates” make up 20-30% of voting attendees. They rarely vote as a bloc, but they certainly have a significant influence on Party proceedings.

The perception of undo influence concerns Nils Jensen. His solution is to end “affiliate memberships” and have move to a “one member, one vote” method of choosing leaders. Only individual members would have the right to vote, and only individual members would attend conventions and set policy.

Perhaps stating the obvious, he coyly added:

Some New Democrats are unhappy that Mr. Jensen has chosen to discuss publicly what they regard as internal Party matters.

Don’t worry, I’ll be happy to discuss it publicly.

Here’s the opening salvo:  “Democratic socialists”? No but seriously…

Tuesday, May 18, 2004

South-Left Re-Alignment Alert

Some Canadian political perspective:

Canadians pride themselves on… oh hang on.  Oh OK on being profoundly, solidly, proudly, really a lot, without any doubt, mediocre in every which way. 

Success in Canada as a nation is measured by studying the amount by which Canadians have affected no positive change at all whatsoever in a generation, either inside the country or outside.  Well, except that Canadians increasingly not doing what the Americans do, in the face of the silly Americans being increasingly the healthiest, most educated, wealthiest, most powerful, most innovative, most industrious, and freest people on earth—is somehow seen as being positively “Canadian”. Proudly, yet.

The way-more-liberal than the U.S. Democratic Party Liberal Party of Canada, which perpetually gets elected because they are good and mediocre and they ensure that nothing positive gets done, is deemed by the liberal media as the “center”, politically, rather than “left” as they really are.  “Good ‘n Mediocre” could well work as a campaign slogan for the Liberals in the upcoming elections. But they will probably just go with “Politically Correct eh!/Politiquement Correct non?”. 

After more sophisticated people in North America stop laughing at the liberals calling themselves “center”, they find that in Canada the liberal Canadian media and even the NDP (NDP stands for New Democratic Party) supporters themselves call the NDP “left-leaning”, or “left of center”, notwithstanding that the NDP is a full-out socialist party. In Canada, the media would call the Communist Party simply “left”.  The CBC would call it “Nirvana”.

It’s in this way that Canadians got the reputation for being so darn funny.

The Conservatives in Canada, since they are not liberal and not left-wing, are obviously called “extreme far right-wing nutjob lunatics”. Like I needed to tell you. 

In the Canadian media, particularly on the state-run CBC, “Conservative” is said with a roll of the eyes, and the implication that the Conservatives are, in fact, obviously, as we all know, retards.  Consult the CBC manual for other approved methods of saying “Conservative” (for example, adding the word “scary” is optional and suggested!)

Since I’m just about the only one in Canada who is aware that the New Democratic Party (the NDP) in Canada is an extreme left-wing and all-out socialist party, I thought I’d outline what the socialists—the NDP—actually stand for, as per their official NDP Constitution, just to help re-align Canadians as to where they are, which is south of politically sophisticated. 

The official NDP Constitution’s preamble, in which it outlines the basic premise of the party, states quite willingly: 

“The principles of democratic socialism can be defined briefly as follows:

and then it includes the following three items apparently written directly by their Politburo, and being officially bilingual I understand “Politburo” and other extreme left-wing dialects (not union contracts though). So I’ll translate. 

“

a) the production and distribution of goods and services shall be directed to meeting the social and individual needs of people and not for profit,

”

TRANSLATION: The current NDP constitution speaks to the need to end capitalism.  End the private ownership of business for profit.  You know, like Cuba and North Korea did with such astounding success. 

In fact, in an NDP “manifesto” (yes it was actually called a “manifesto”) endorsed several years ago by many NDP leaders who are still active in politics today, such as former federal Member of Parliament (and former Premier of British Columbia) Dave Barrett and many others, it outlines this: “Capitalism must be replaced by socialism, by national planning of investment and by the public ownership of the means of production in the interests of the Canadian people as a whole.” 

Those studious ones who are asking themselves, “Isn’t that what the Communists stand for?” are astute.  Almost identical wording can be found on the Communist Party of Canada’s web site in describing their goals of “...offering a clear and consistent vision of a socialist Canada, where the priority is people’s needs, not corporate greed.”

Here’s another quote from the aforementioned Manifesto:  “Central to the creation of an independent socialist Canada is the strength and tradition of the Canadian working class and the trade union movement.”

Now here’s a quote from Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler: “Hence the movement must adopt a positive attitude towards the trade-unionist idea. But it must go further than this. For the enormous number of members and followers of the trade-unionist movement it must provide a practical education which will meet the exigencies of the coming National Socialist State.”

“

b) the modification and control of the operations of monopolistic productive and distributive organizations through economic and social planning, towards these ends, and

”

TRANSLATION: The current NDP constitution speaks to the need for control of the dominant industries and institutions by the government (i.e., ownership). 

The aforementioned Manifesto reads: “Relevant instruments for bringing the Canadian economy under Canadian ownership and control and for altering the priorities established by corporate capitalism are to hand. They include extensive public control over investment and nationalization of the commanding heights of the economy, such as the key resource industries, finance and credit, and industries strategic to planning our economy.”

Again, similar wording can be found on the Communist Party web site:  “The people’s program would also involve reversing privatization, and moving to nationalize and put under democratic popular control the existing monopolies in vital sectors of the economy, especially in the financial sector (banks and financial institutions), in the energy and natural resources sector (extraction, production, etc.), and in transportation and communication. Measures would also be necessary to gain public democratic control over foreign trade, and to extricate Canada from NAFTA, the Free Trade Area of the Americas, the WTO and other unfair, pro-corporate investment agreements and trading blocs.”

“

c) where necessary, the extension of the principle of social ownership.

”

TRANSLATION: The current NDP constitution sees state ownership of “things deemed necessary”, which, ostensibly, is or could be everything.  Without boring you, yes, that’s exactly the same as the Communist Party.

Furthermore, the Communist Party says:  “The Communist Party of Canada is ... based on the principles of Marxism-Leninism whose ultimate goal is the creation of a Canadian socialist society ... As it develops, socialism will provide the real basis for communism ... The aim of the Communist Party of Canada is to establish a socialist and, ultimately, a communist society in Canada. The party stands for the victory of socialism throughout the world.”

When you look up Communist Party of Canada in the Wikipedia online encyclopedia, they illustrate why it’s sometimes hard to distinguish between the Communists and the NDP, and the not-as-extreme-left Liberals:

“Nikita Khrushchev’s 1956 Secret Speech exposing the crimes of Josef Stalin as well as that year’s Soviet invasion of Hungary, shook the faith of many Communists around the world and resulted in many, perhaps most, members of the Canadian party leaving including a number of prominent party members. Many ex-Communists joined the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and its successor the NDP and even the Liberals. The USSR’s 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia caused more people to leave the Canadian Communist Party.”

I imagine people keep leaving the Communist Party still today since socialism/communism has been such a smashing success in other countries.

In the past year in Canada the two Canadian right-wing parties (the Canadian Alliance party and the Progressive Conservative Party) came together to form one united right-wing party called the Conservative Party. 

I keep waiting for the Communist Party of Canada and the NDP to join hands once and for all, and form what the Canadian media will call a “leftish” party.

Monday, May 17, 2004

Stephen Harper, Conservative, Would Cut Taxes, Raise Sanity

In coming up with common sense answers to nagging sustained problems created by Liberals in Canada over many years in power which in the process has turned Canada into a laughing stock for Americans, Conservative Party of Canada leader Stephen Harper’s election platform is shaping up as one which would be sure to steer Canada in a more sensible direction.

This is seen as an affront to Liberals in government and the media and schools because steering Canada in the right direction is contrary to Liberal philosophy—the main problem being that under a Conservative government, Canadian citizens would be legally allowed to go wild with their crazy “getting on with their lives” and money-investing ways and building and saving Canada—without official government programs and social-engineering plans which caused the problems in the first place.  The gall.

Liberals rely on victims (that’s you!), and to freely create government policies to save all the victims, and that requires government programs, and when those programs fail which they always do, they fix them by doling out more taxpayer funding to fix the problem programs, and when even that fails which they do, they add fresh new programs to fix other ones.  Meanwhile, Canadians vote for them because of all the victimness and all the saving themselves from victimhood that they need.  Plus there’s all those juicy promises of more spending on more programs to fix new problems you didn’t know you were going to have but they’ll make sure you do… and then save you.  Again.

Of course Canada can’t even remotely defend its own borders in the meantime, but the Liberals are open to dialogue with Osama bin Laden about just leaving us alone.  Despite that whole Afghanistan thing in which Canada helped crush Osama bin Laden’s Taliban regime, Canada, they will tell him, is all about that whole “We Hate America” thing.  Hating America is the strategy Liberals hang their hat on in lieu of fighter jets.  The backroom boys already have nice touristy pots of maple syrup ready to gift Osama and all his diplomats in beaucoup quantities!  Thank God they’ll have bilingual labels.

At the root of the Liberal’s new problem is a Conservative promise of an $18 billion tax cut, but that’s just the beginning of the broad-ranging common-sense plans.  No wonder the Liberals are having a hard time understanding it—it’s not in one of the official languages (“left-wing”, or “or-so-very-left-wing”).

Other plans:

Roll back taxes by 25 percent for middle-income earners.  This would mean a 16 percent income tax for those earning under $70,000.  That’s an excellent start.  Still not enough to grow Canada by selling Canadian citizenship abroad and overcome what apparently only current Canadian residents see as the pleasant frozen tundra-like qualities of living in the great white north, as compared to the ten times more popular U.S.A.

Invest $1.2 billion more per year in “Canada’s military”.  Double that and I’d be happy, but I’ll take it.  Could mean I’d be able to remove the quotes from the phrase “Canada’s military”, some day.

Reduce capital gains taxes. I still don’t even remotely understand the concept of keeping a tax which penalizes risk-taking by Canadians and successful investment in Canada by Canadians.  I’m sure they’re simply appeasing the liberals of Canada who act as though they don’t want me to invest in Canada and get in the way of their doing it for me with my money.

An innovative new Canadian savings plan.  Perhaps as a back door to a capital gains-free investment vehicle, this “Registered Lifetime Savings Plan” (RLSP) would allow Canadians to invest as much as $5000 per year of (already taxed) money that they earned, without being taxed even when that investment is sold.  This is on top of the existing personal retirement accounts (RRSPs) that most Canadians already have in which money is taxed as it is withdrawn (after it has grown substantially in most cases, adding to government coffers at old folk’s expense.  When I was a stock broker, we used to call this the “kick the old fogies in the nuts before they die, tax”).

Fixed Election Dates. Real grownup democracy could come to Canada with the stroke of a pen.  No wonder the Liberals never thought of it. Would this be just too American for the Liberals? Borrowing from their anti-American pro-socialist health care rhetoric handbook, Liberals will soon be calling this “American-style free elections and democracy as if we’re free people or something”.

Elected Senate. See above.  Add: Has simply been too difficult for the Liberals to figure out a way of keeping it “All-Liberal, All The Time”, like all of Canada’s political institutions and crown corporations.

Scrap the gun registry. So far, it has cost over $1 billion dollars to register guns in Canada.  The budget was a few million.  They should have spent a billion dollars arming Canada against terrorists, but I’m sure they’ll think of that immediately after several hundred or thousand Torontonians get a whiff of some of the gas that Saddam didn’t account for and which remains unaccounted for according to the Liberals’ beloved United Nations.

Eliminate the capital tax. An effort to make Canada a little less like communist countries.  It just might.  Make it “a little less like…”, I mean.

Tougher law and order. Just solid law and order would be an improvement.

Stronger ties with the United States. Gee.  Ya think?  After the Liberals have darn-near ruined a relationship with a nation Canada totally relies on to buy Canada’s goods and save it from third-world status, oh and defend us in the event of an invasion, yeah, I for one think.

Ban all union and corporate political donations.  Fine.  Also, change the system of election finance by registering party affiliation on tax forms to specify your preference for funding.  A fantastic move.  This is so obviously needed in light of the hideous method used now, which only Liberals could have thought of, and then only if they were drunk.  The Liberal plan? Provide government funding to parties based on the percentage of vote they won in the previous election.  How quintessentially Liberal it is to think backwards instead of forward.

The Conservatives seem open to changes in health care, but haven’t spelled this out in any detail yet.  Their official platform hasn’t been released yet. But watch for the Liberals to immediately (no matter what the platform is) start using their favorite scary warning technique, the complete and utter nonsense bumper-sticker slogans:  “American-style health care = Bad!!” and “Two-tier system = Scary!!”.

The more we make them repeat those lines and make total fools of themselves, the better.

More on this all later when there’s more to go on.

Posted by Joel Johannesen on Monday, May 17, 2004 at 05:50 AM
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Friday, May 14, 2004

Politicizing the Classroom

Written by Joel Johannesen on Friday May 14 2004 at 03:11 PM

Those who are concerned about the separation of church and state, prayer in schools, and renaming “Christmas holidays” to “seasonal holidays” for the kids in schools, should consider the poisonous mix of militant far left-wing teachers’ unions, and teaching our kids.  Teaching them about, among other things, politics no less.  It’s a dangerous and rather negative elixir that exists in many places in North America.

But I doubt many could compare to British Columbia, Canada, where the militant and flagrantly far-left-wing teachers’ union, the B.C. Teachers’ Federation, is celebrating an arbitrator’s ruling against local school boards. 

Several school boards had put their collective feet down in 2002 and ordered teachers, who were under orders from their union, to stop their organized campaign of politically bad-mouthing the provincial government and the school boards they fund, during parent-teacher interviews and through postings on school bulletin boards. “Our goal”, said a school board representative, “was not to limit that [freedom of expression] right, but rather to limit the undue politicization of the classroom”.

It seems so basic—so obvious. 

But as a result of this ruling, the teachers will be allowed to do just that—thrust their political agenda on students and parents, in the schools—once again.

Oh thank goodness!  What would a school day be like without the B.C. teachers feeding their left-wing political rhetoric to the kiddies and parents?  I’m still trying to shake all the socialism off myself from my school days, and back then they at least pretended to be neutral.  One can only imagine what a basic economics or politics class might be like these days in B.C. schools.

I wonder about the teachers’ openness to politics in the schools:  Can we use this as a standard going forward?  I mean if some person or group wanted to advance their right-wing political agenda at school to the students and parents, the teachers would be fine with that, right?  Because I’m thinking it wouldn’t kill the little devils in school to hear about foreign concepts like: “self-sufficient”, “initiative”, “profit”, “innovation”, “smaller government”, “lower taxes”, “private”, “efficient”, or “personal responsibility”.

The radical left-wing B.C. teachers’ union had decided back in 2002 to start a concerted effort to bring down this current Liberal government (yes, Liberal, so you can imagine how left-wing the teachers are), which “forced” a handsome 7.5 percent wage increase on them in 2001 and ordered them back to work when they refused to end their strike. They remain committed to bringing down the provincial government in the next election on May 15 2005, and judging from comments made by the embarrassingly radical teachers’ union boss, Neil Warboys, it wouldn’t shock me if they were also found to be working behind the scenes to conjure up some sort of a coup to speed things along. 

In addition to the typical union bullying tactics and bad-mouthing campaign in schools and at parent-teacher conferences, they hand out “report cards” criticizing the government, pin those report cards to school bulletin boards, and have placed huge ads in newspapers condemning the government as well as several extremely derogatory radio and TV ads.

And to think some of us idiots simply “vote” during free elections held every four years in British Columbia on May 15.

One day in January of 2002, the union closed all the schools in the province to protest the forced raise that they got, which even at 7.5 percent, was 15 percent less than they’d asked for (in addition to class-size reductions and countless other goodies to make their lives easier… while somehow also benefiting the kids, of course). 

One teacher, Charlene Manning, decided that since it wasn’t a strike, per se, but rather a political protest of some sort, she’d just as soon go to work and do her job that day.  I guess we used to call people like her and Bill Gates “suckholes”.

The union fired off an official letter to her questioning why she attended school that day instead of joining the political protest.  (Imagine getting a letter demanding to know why you did attend school!)  She was expected to be there with all her brothers and sisters at the big protest rally instead of being in school, the letter sternly stated.  The union letter went on to suggest that she actually give up her day’s pay and hand it over to the union, which would donate it to a local charity.  My guess is that the charity would have been “the Communist Party”.

Manning, no stranger to bullies in her school playgrounds, was no doubt a little taken aback at the bullying she received from her union, simply for doing her job. 

In British Columbia today, one rarely hears how the kids are doing in school.  One hears far more about what unions, including the teachers’ union, think of the provincial government and their supposed cutbacks. “Cutbacks” being a relative term—in B.C., where public spending on everything including education has risen every year without fail (to no avail), apparently in the case of the teachers it simply means getting “only” a 7.5 percent raise when they demanded a 22.5 percent raise.

In much the same way, the weather man predicted a warm 75 degree day, but it only hit 72.  So the temperature was -3 degrees.

One hears nary a word on whether students have yet figured out where to put apostrophes, nor how to type using actual full words.  From what I can tell they haven’t learned those things. 

Recently, several teachers and the B.C. Teachers Union itself bullied a teacher— lo and behold, that very same Charlene Manning—for non-compliance with its official union political agenda.  This time the naughty Manning crossed a picket line set up at her school by the teachers’ union in “political support” of the Hospital Employees Union whose members were out on an illegal strike… mmmm against hospitals, not schools. 

Manning rightly claimed she had not just a right but a duty to cross that picket line since the hospital employees were on an illegal strike, and the teachers union had set up a “political protest” line at her school—it had nothing to do with teachers and students and certainly didn’t have anything to do with her “political” beliefs. She thought she would just do her job and teach her students.  What a nut, huh?

Again, the Teachers’ Union has been threatening union “discipline” against Manning for not joining an anti-government protest during school hours.

The day after the “political protest support strike thingamajig”, the teachers’ union sent out a letter congratulating all members—except one.  “Only one member in the entire district” had crossed the picket line, the letter said.  The letter went on exclaiming how the protest helped in the fight against “a bully government”.

Apparently the union misses the whole “bully” irony.

Asked whether union members should be forced by the union to abide by their political beliefs and join protests against their own political beliefs, the head of the teachers’ union, Neil Worboys replied:  “I don’t know.  Good question.  We would say that because they are part of the developing of it ... it’s the will of the majority that that action carries on.”

First of all, huh?

...but there’s so much obvious hypocrisy contained therein that I won’t even bore you by going over it.

Charlene Manning politely describes the political agenda of the B.C. teachers’ union as “radical-left-NDP politics”.  (“NDP” stands for New Democratic Party, which, beyond being simply “left-wing”, is a socialist party in Canada).  She says plenty of teachers within the union are simply afraid to speak up against the union.  I would guess they’re in fear of, well, “discipline” of some sort, from that powerful multi-million-dollar teachers’ union and their bullies.

Manning has filed a human rights complaint against the farce that is the B.C. Teachers’ Federation.  Anyone who hasn’t been educated by one of their members can figure out that they are a well-funded radical left-wing political party by any other name.  And one can only hope for a successful outcome for that teacher, Charlene Manning, and other such successful outcomes—like those that actually benefit the kids as Ms. Manning would have it if only she could just get on with her job.

Posted by Joel Johannesen on Friday, May 14, 2004 at 03:11 PM
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Wednesday, May 12, 2004

“Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts”

Written by Joel Johannesen on Wednesday May 12 2004 at 02:46 PM

“Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts”
(Quote by U.S. Senator D. Patrick Moynihan.)

The comparatively high cost of living in Vancouver and much of British Columbia, especially as pertains to housing, is often cited by labor unions in B.C. during negotiations as a reason that they should be paid more than workers in other provinces.  More, presumably, than workers in other provinces other than the workers in Ontario where the cost of living is also higher.  This line of reasoning may get confusing for us non-“working-family” types, but try to stay with me.

In a huge leap from their socialist/unionist everyone should get paid the same philosophy, union leaders and members seem to apply certain special criterion to allow some workers to get paid more than others.  It is the aforementioned it costs more to live here nonsense.  It costs more to live here, therefore we’re entitled to more pay, they reason.

Just the other day, self-described “flaky” radio talk-show host David Berner, who has a knack for understated self-deprecation, nearly went ballistic when his guest, the far-too-sensible-for-Berner Sara MacIntyre, B.C. Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, argued that the Hospital Employees Union members in B.C. were being paid 20 to 40 percent more (by taxpayers) than workers in the same jobs in other provinces; And even after their 15 percent pay cut, they were, obviously, still getting paid significantly more than workers in other provinces. (Do the math).

Berner indignantly interrupted her saying that he’s sick and tired of everybody bringing that up, since what “everybody” seems to fail to understand, in Berner’s mind, is that it costs more to live here. 

How on earth did idiots like us miss that? 

“How many times are we going to hear this mythology…everybody uses the same phrase, 20-40 percent higher… our property is 80 percent higher than property in Winnipeg or Halifax.”, whined Berner with his characteristic penchant for misconstruing the facts entirely.

Mr. Real Estate misses the very point of his living here, perhaps.  And I wonder if he gets paid 80 percent—or even 40 percent—more than similar talk-show hosts in Winnipeg or Halifax.  One could argue that you ought to get paid more to live in some unpopular places, not less.  Anyone who has done any travel in Canada, especially in the winter, knows exactly what I mean.

The fact is that it does cost more to live here.  Not just real estate but lots of things cost more here.  People apparently think that real estate and other things are worth it here, and they are willingly paying more for it than they are in other parts of Canada.  There are clear reasons for people believing it’s worth it:  better weather than elsewhere in Canada, gorgeous scenery, great recreational opportunities, lots of open space, ocean, mountains, beaches, and countless other great reasons too numerous to mention.  Everybody knows all this.  Vancouver is repeatedly ranked number one or at worst number 4 or 5 in their rankings of the best cities in the world in which to live, by various bodies that judge such things.

This despite the fact that you forfeit more of your income to live here.  It’s part of the deal, and everyone here gets that.

For those who are bereft of common sense or whose names rhyme with Learner, the not-so-mythological deal is this:  You pay more, and you get more.  By “get more” I mean more of the much sought-after lifestyle for yourself and your family.  In the Vancouver area in particular, not coincidentally, it costs more to live than the rest of B.C.—it is where most people in B.C. live. Nearly half of British Columbia’s people who choose to live in a province bigger than France and Germany combined—live in and around Vancouver.

People are already getting the value they expect from the higher cost—they are getting the lifestyle—the reason for those higher costs—in exchange for the higher cost.  People happily live here, pay more to do so, and they happily get the benefits of living here in return.  It’s value for money.  You get what you pay for.  It’s an even trade—or if you don’t feel it is, it’s a more-or-less free-ish country—you could move to a cheaper location. 

But if hospital workers in B.C. were to get extra financial reimbursement for the extra financial cost of living here, then they’d be getting the better lifestyle for free—they’d be getting double-reimbursed in effect, where the rest of the people here aren’t—the rest of us would be paying the higher cost and not getting reimbursed twice. 

And how could that possibly be fair for the hospital workers who live in some of the many frozen or otherwise not-so-nice parts of Canada?  Not only would the people living here get the added benefits of living here, but they’d be getting reimbursed for the extra cost.  Nice arrangement!

Silly argument to the vast majority of us, or “everybody”, as David Berner like to call us, but anyway, they’re apparently sticking to that argument. 

I recently wrote a few words regarding the following letter to the editor a Hospital Employees Union member wrote to a local paper:

Vancouver Province newspaper letter to the editor, May 9 2004

...And I love my job and I deserve my wage.  I have swallowed my 14 per cent wage reduction, and so has my husband.  Sorry if I sounded bitter, but that’s almost a 30 per cent wage reduction for my family.

As I said in my comments about it: Wow. That’s the funkiest math I’ve seen in a long time. 

I suggest David Berner does as Sara MacIntyre did:  put the mythology aside and put factual information out there for everybody to judge. 

Now if only there were a way to pay talk-show hosts according to how much sense they had.

Copyright 2004 Joel Johannesen

Posted by Joel Johannesen on Wednesday, May 12, 2004 at 02:46 PM
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Monday, May 10, 2004

Union-Math Is… Different!

Written by Joel Johannesen on Monday May 10 2004 at 04:11 AM

You’ve heard of “new math”?  Bet you’ve never heard of “union-math” as calculated on those newfangled “working family” calculator thingamajigs (made in Cuba!).

Vancouver Province newspaper letter to the editor, May 9 2004

...And I love my job and I deserve my wage.  I have swallowed my 14 per cent wage reduction, and so has my husband.  Sorry if I sounded bitter, but that’s almost a 30 per cent wage reduction for my family.

Wow. The good news is that this woman doesn’t work for a bank or a pharmaceutical company.  The bad news is that she’s a Hospital Employees Union member, and works at a hospital in British Columbia, Canada.  Let’s hope she doesn’t work in the proctology department.

This union-math is really different than the other kind of math—you know, the kind that’s right.  But alas, this explains the appeal of the left, and why union negotiations drag on for so long and the union members are so ticked-off all the time.

And what union do newspaper editors belong to… or do they just have a sense of humor?  Oh well at least they do a spell-check.

Let’s sit in on union-math class for a bit: 

OK class, now if your family consisted of 5 people, and each one got a 20 percent cut in pay, then your family income would drop by 100 percent.  You’d be making zero dollars as a family.  This is what you call “the man really stickin’ it to ya”.  If you each got a 25 percent cut in pay, then instead of paychecks, you’d be getting a bill to pay your employer.  That’s why they invented the strike.  Let’s say it together:  Strike.

And let’s not forget yesterday’s lessons: Yale and Harvard graduate and President of the United States George Bush is a moron.  Again:  moron.

Posted by Joel Johannesen on Monday, May 10, 2004 at 04:11 AM
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Wednesday, May 05, 2004

L.U.N.C. = Liberals Unions NDP Communists

Written by Joel Johannesen on Wednesday May 05 2004 at 12:39 PM

At a business people’s conference or seminar, or at a trade show at your city’s local convention center, or at an art gallery or annual craft fair or even at the shopping mall, you’re unlikely to see a huge Communist Party banner right up against a “40% Off Sale” banner.  If you do see one, you would likely see some people giggle and point and ask “what the hell is that about?!”—perhaps thinking it was some kind of joke.  Others would express outright disgust and anger, since Communists throughout the world are responsible for the death of millions of people through genocide, starvation, and wars.

But in Canada at a New Democratic Party or labor union protest rally (sometimes they are one and the same), nobody blinks an eye when they see the Communists out in force with their banners and membership registration cards.  In the city of Vancouver, when a left-wing candidate named Tim Lewis (he ran for C.O.P.E. or Committee Of Progressive Electors) won his seat on council he showed-up at the victory party wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt and nobody thought anything of it.  Apparently at mass left-wing gatherings, communists fit right in and are welcomed—even celebrated—and the banner-holders obviously find a favorable climate in which they can sign up new members. Otherwise they certainly wouldn’t bother being there, what with all the freedom to get paid by the state to lay about and smoke pot all day and protest Iraqi freedom.

And yet I still get angry emails from readers who take exception to my calling NDP members and some extreme left-wing liberals “socialists”.  It seems many NDP members are a little taken aback when they are educated as to what they are and to the nature of the party with which they have taken sides—or at least the party that their mommies in the union told them to side with.  Some are aghast that I would be so “rude” or “ignorant” as to call them “socialists”.

Surprisingly, they didn’t realize that the NDP stands for socialism.  But they’re entirely sure about everything else they yell on their megaphones, like: “End Privatization!”, “End Welfare Poverty!”, “Tax The Rich!”, “Peoples’ rights!”,  Workers’ Rights!”,  “Rights of Workers!”. 

Any kind of rights, apparently, as long as it doesn’t include “The Right for Citizens to Spend their Own Money on their Own Basic Health Care and That of their Family!”, nor to be able to “Watch Fox News Channel (or any ‘non-left-wing’ media which citizens want to watch but are forbidden by liberal regulators)!”, nor the basic fundamental right to spend one’s money as one pleases to “Buy Legal Consumer Goods like a Bottle of Wine at the Supermarket!” or “Allow Citizens to Buy Basic Car Insurance from Whomever They Choose!”, or to “Be Allowed To Work Even Though I’m Not In a Union!”, nor the “Right to Live in a Country Whose Borders are Defended!”, nor, obviously, a country which would bother to “Bravely Fight against Murderous Dictators Slaughtering its Citizens, Harboring Terrorists, Promoting Terrorism, and Threatening Free People Throughout the World!”.

The federal NDP leader, Jack Layton, said in a recent interview on a left-wing web site that he is proud and pleased to call himself a socialist—it’s just that he doesn’t talk about it a lot because it might confuse the younger people.  What it might actually do is wake up the younger people, which is contrary to official NDP policy inasmuch as it would render the collapse of the NDP, and besides, NDP policy dictates that the young people are entitled to sleep as long as they damn well please—the longer the better. 

No wonder the NDP comes out in favor of liberalizing pot-smoking and Jack Layton called it “a wonderful drug”, and said that he “would go further than decriminalizing cannabis, and legalize it with provisions for home use, cafes and personal grows-ops”, in an interview on “Meet The Press”.  Oh, sorry, no it was an interview on the “pot-tv.net” web site.  I keep getting those two confused!

Apparently the NDP’s official policy platform includes:  “Get ‘em high and they’ll always vote for more!”  So maybe there is a method to the madness!  Now if only they were sober enough to realize what it was they were actually fighting for.

What he said regarding socialism, specifically, was: “Socialist? I’m proud to call myself a socialist. I prefer it by far to democratic socialist”.  Never mind all the stupid democracy.

Others on the left such as Liberal Party members at least play ball with stupid democracy, even if they literally play with it.  Liberal Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin toys with it as a little boy would a GameBoy.  Currently he’s not telling us when he might let us play with the voting machines by allowing us to have a democratic election, and is just as giddy as a little boy with the power to call an election whenever he damn well pleases. Just keep guessing you stupid buffoons!  It’s fun to play with funky Canadian rights, freedom and democracy, to Liberals and the left.

I keep comparing the NDP socialists with socialism in the former Soviet Union, and people keep emailing me and calling me an “extreme right wing nut”.  I wonder if they have the slightest clue what “conservatives” stand for if they don’t even know what they themselves stand for.

“Russia and the U.S.S.R. was Communist!”, the brilliant ones angrily tell me in emails, as if apparently uneducated people (”who built this country”) feel they need to educate me (who, as I understand it, not being a “working person”, “don’t do nuthin’”, or if I do, it’s “on the backs of” the likes of them.  People like me just can’t win!).  They have no clue that the letters “U.S.S.R.” stand for Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, but they’re sure they know what they stand for which is whatever their union or their mommy the NDP says they stand for; and whatever that is, it involves lots of words like: “working people”, “unions”, “struggles”, “rights”, “victim” (as in “you, me and every darn one of us are victims of sumthin’, damn it”), “strike”, “protest rally”, and so on;  but never includes the likes of: “self-sufficient”, “initiative”, “profit”, “innovation”, “smaller government”, “lower taxes”, “private”, “efficient”, or “personal responsibility”.

The NDP are so cute.  They love to sound like they stand for you. 

Here are some official policy quotes I found off the web:

“We remain in the forefront of the people’s struggles : for labour rights, social justice and the environment; defending the rights of minorities, women, gays and lesbians; fighting for youth and students.” 

“The struggle of the Canadian people for democracy, sovereignty, peace and social advance is essentially a political struggle against big business and its control of the Canadian State. The interests of the vast majority of Canadians are in conflict with the anti-democratic, neoliberal policies of the transnationals and the banks.”

“...offering a clear and consistent vision of a socialist Canada, where the priority is people’s needs, not corporate greed”

Actually I should have mentioned that I got those quotes from the official policies platform of the Communists Party on the Communist Party of Canada website, not the NDP’s web site.  Oops. 

Lest you think I’m being one-sided about the socialists, here’s a last quote from Mein Kampf, as written by the ever-so-Hussein-like Adolf Hitler, since “Hitler” or “Nazi” is what many lefties (liberals and NDP) love to call conservatives, moments after they realize that we’re making sense.

“Hence the movement must adopt a positive attitude towards the trade-unionist idea. But it must go further than this. For the enormous number of members and followers of the trade-unionist movement it must provide a practical education which will meet the exigencies of the coming National Socialist State.”

And yet I’m a nefarious “extreme right winger”—I’m the danger.  Oh yeah, and of course “Saddam Hussein was not a threat”.

The photo below (copyright Vancouver Sun) was taken over the weekend (Sunday May 2, 2004) when the overpaid members of the Hospital Employees Union in British Columbia broke the law and refused to go back to work as they were required to do by law, and most every union and their political supporters in the NDP and other such parties decided to come out in full support of them breaking the law, and surprisingly they brought along their banners and placards which all blended together such that you hardly even notice. 

Posted by Joel Johannesen on Wednesday, May 05, 2004 at 12:39 PM
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