I could talk more about how stupid it is to accuse me of elitism for condemning the shit-heads who voted for the stammering gas-bag, Rob Ford, for mayor of Toronto. Sorry darlings, but I've had to put up with your shit-head political decisions for some time now (mike harris, stephen harper, dalton mcguinty, paul martin) and I don't feel the need to play nice and I don't see what would be accomplished by being nice. (I believe, in fact, that being nice would be a form of ENABLING such stupid behaviour.)
"Duh, McGuinty's a creep! Duh! I know!!! I'll vote for this Tim Hudak fellow! Says he'll cut my taxes! Duh! Stammer! Moan!"
But today, I'm just gonna link to two articles. The first one is from rabble.ca: "Harper politicizes healthcare. It is bad for Canada, bad for the world" by "Dr. J." Read it. Read the whole damned thing. Read it and grasp what an absolute monster harper is. Only the dullest and most ignorant could support such a creature.
The second article is actually a link from the first one. It's from the National Union of Public & General Employees (NUPGE) and it's called "harper must cancel irresponsible corporate tax cuts." Check it out:
Cuts to public spending will lead to even slower economic growth and will mean less support for struggling families at a time when quality public services are needed more than ever.FORTY-SEVEN FUCKING BILLION DOLLARS OVER FOUR FUCKING YEARS!!!! Remember how harper was so excited about the $2.5 billion over five years that he was going to spend on women's health around the world that he spent over $1 billion over two days to announce it in Toronto last summer? Do you suppose harper will invite the world's leaders to Montreal or Vancouver or Calgary this year and have a gala $23 billion dollar party to celebrate these tax cuts?
Harper could make a different choice. He could cancel the irresponsible corporate tax cuts that will cost the federal treasury a whopping $47 billion over the next four years. (emphasis added)
So tell me, any right-wing shit-heads who might be passing by, what's wrong here? Obviously, NUPGE is a greedy union, out only to get big raises from hard-pressed taxpayers, all to benefit their fat, slothful, selfish membership., so their analysis has to be taken with a grain of salt. But $47 billion? A lot of it being saved by the oil and financial sectors which are already super-profitable?
You see, right-wing shit-heads, being a leftist, I think that public services that are available to everyone benefit the majority. Call me crazy. And I think that if it takes tax dollars to pay for them, so be it. I also happen to believe that profits come from the difference between what it costs to produce something and the higher selling price, which is to say that profits come from consumers the same way that government programs come from taxes which come from tax dollars which come from taxpayers.
At a certain point (and I think oil and finance passed it long ago) profit goes beyond being an incentive towards being ill-gotten booty, obtained from gouging consumers. And I think that if these rich mother-fuckers have this kind of money that they're obliged to give it back. Especially if this can be done via taxation which then pays for public services that benefit the majority in areas such as healthcare.
So, what's wrong with my analysis? Come on, right-wing Jim Flaherty fans! Explain to me your dogmatic fixation on tax cuts that will shrink government revenues and therefore its ability to finance necessary public services, and which will allow the financial sector to, um, ... pay people to come up with new "modest" fees to charge their customers? Explain why you stupid fucks with your dumb-ass wars, your pants soiled from your involuntary defecations during your panicked "war on terror," your religious delusions, your contemptible homophobia and your economic illiteracy, are supposed to be taken seriously? Explain why you are taken seriously?
It's because we live in wretched, fatally flawed political-economic system which has created a debased political culture.
That's why.
9 comments:
47 billion!!!
So the remaining 8 billion in deficit went to meet all other federal programs including ramped up military expenditures (lion's share I imagine).
And how many jobs were created by these corporations over the past 4 years?
Ugh, people are so stupid.
And that's just projected revenue losses for the NEXT four years.
Just imagine all the swag that went to the corporations and the wealthiest ten percent since Chretien brought "the good times" back in 1993 and Paul Martin delivered his tax cuts "come hell or high water."
Just imagine the hundreds of billions of dollars that have been hoovered from the real economy and given to the wealthiest where they basically went to dot-com and real estate bubbles.
And I'm STILL supposed to take a shit-head like Rob Ford screeching about "waste" seriously???
Actually, I think you are making a mistake when you conflate your political opinions with your intelligence. My opinions used to be similar to yours at one time, however, I don't see myself as being less intelligent because I would have agreed with you on more issues at an earlier point in time. Maybe you won't win over any right-wing converts if you are nice. But what about alienating people who might be sympathetic to one or more of your particular pet causes?
My intelligence is something quite separate from my political opinions. I'm intelligent because I've got the math and Excel skills (and hell, I might just do it for giggles later) to take the numbers that a Robert Ford or a Stephen Harper throw out, crunch them in Excel, and decide for myself whether or not the numbers add up. Maybe you can do that too, but I've never seen you do so on your blog.
All you do is assert that other people are stupid and contemptible. You never actually show the math. I'm for gay marriage, but it has nothing to do with the outreach performed by people like yourself. Dan Savage, the gay sex advice columnist, has pointed out that homosexuals make up 3% (For Americans, that would mean, off the top of my head, a population of roughly 10 million or so homosexuals in a general population of 330 million Americans) of the population and tend to "clump" in more urban areas, giving them a higher demographic profile than they actually had. I believe that the biology - and the math - dictate that it's pointless to deny homosexuals the right to marry. It's as arbitrary and pointless as denying Jewish people (5% of the population) the right to marry. The chances of some gay - or Jewish - couple getting married in rural Utah, well, I think whoever hands out the marriage licenses can suck it up. The chances are that they'll never be approached in the first place to issue that license, or at worst, maybe have to issue such a license once or twice during their career.
And if you could argue like that, thwap, I'd probably be residing in Canada with a paid up Walrus subscription, and not living in the US with a reason subscription.
Mark,
With all due respect, there are plenty of polite lefties crunching the numbers.
In the days of prime minister Paul Martin, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives year-after-year, published economic forecasts and government revenue projections that were bang-on accurate, whereas the Martin finance department, year-after-year, published "restrained" revenue projections, forecasting only modest surpluses and then discovered "surprise" surpluses of sometimes over $10 billion.
Conveniently, it was too late in the year to include this found revenue in the budget, so these "surprise" surpluses would be forgotten, say between September when they were found and February when it was budget time again.
This happened year-in, year-out, and each year, the media went along as if nothing had happened last year, mentioned the current CCPA forecasts on page A31 and announced the "surprise" surpluses again in the back pages of the business section.
Being right, having the facts, presenting them respectfully has had ZERO impact because the system isn't honest. It's a propaganda system designed to preserve established power and privilege.
I have neither the patience, nor the inclination to smother my anger at the state of our politics, either in Canada or the USA.
I notice that you are lately writing as if the sheer stupidity of US-American politics is "normal." I've got news for you. It isn't normal. It's deranged.
Case-in-point, the argument that the security of the USA would be grievously compromised should the Guantanamo inmates be transferred to maximum-security prisons in the USA (where the reach of the law would be unquestioned).
That both parties were taking this ludicrous assertion seriously, that your political and media elites, in the most powerful country in the world, were to be genuinely pissing their collective pants in fear of less than 100 tortured individuals (most of whom are probably innocent of anything) being held in some super-max facility in the USA, is utterly insane.
If you follow my blog, you know that I disagree with the whole smug notions that "Americans are stupid." It isn't the US-American people, it's their capitalist political culture. And the infection of capitalism is degrading Canada's own culture enormously.
Polite or rude, something just doesn't add up with left wing math. It looks good, I know I certainly bought it while living in Canada but after living in two other countries with varying degrees of private and public healthcare I think the typical Canadian line on healthcare is bunk.
After living on $35k a year in one of the most expensive cities in the world, and paying out of pocket for some medical expense after a couple of accidents and illnesses, well, I don't think much of a country that goes into a tizzy at the suggestion of a lousy $5 user fee, let alone a $50 private co-pay with an insurer.
I like it in the USA. Stephen Harper could hire Ron Paul, Gary Johnson, and the ghosts Barry Goldwater and Milton Friedman to run Canada, and I still wouldn't move back. Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter: I don't care who is in charge down here, as far as I'm concerned, any of these guys is better than what Canada has to offer.
If zombie Adolf Hitler ran for office with the cyrogenically preserved head of Richard Nixon grafted on his neck, I'd definitely have to re-evaluate my loyalties, but until then...
Mark,
Your problem is that you're extrapolating from your own individual experience. It's called anecdotal evidence.
The reason we don't like user fees is because they're stupid and needless. Besides, people with two kids trying to live on $11/hour don't need to pay an extra five bucks so that their kids can see the doctor.
The problems of your own healthcare system are well documented. The problems of Canada's health care system are mainly caused by deliberate under-funding from governments inspired by the same snake-oil that you've swallowed.
The international comparisons for what US-Americans spend on healthcare and the results they get for it compared with other countries, like Canada, are also in the public domain and the USA's stats come out poorly. This isn't a big secret and aside from deliberate liars, isn't really questioned by sane people within the USA either.
I've also written about how the system works for the majority of people in the USA and Canada. But the point is that even on its own terms it could work better, and who'd be opposed to that 'eh?
But the bigger reality is that its ecologically unsustainable, and, as we've seen with the latest financial collapse and long-term recession, increasingly prone to crisis.
I know my evidence is "anecdotal", but in the end who am I supposed to believe: you or my lying eyes? Most of my experience with a mix of private and public insurance comes from a substantial amount of time spent living and working in Japan. Same queues as Canada for the Doctor, but damn, those lines moved fast. User fees were in place and private insurance and other options were readily available.
The one time I was able to see a doctor immediately in Canada? My medical exam for my US visa wasn't covered by Manitoba Health, and I had to pony up $165. Best money I ever spent.
Co-relation may not be causation, but I couldn't help noticing filthy lucre was involved. Sure, the sob story about the family of six living on $11 an hour tugs at the heartstrings, I've heard it a gazillion times, ad nauseum, but if it's unfair to charge them a user fee, why is it fair to make them queue (and myself) queue up if I'm happy to pony up the cash for my own health care?
Mark,
The queue is caused by deliberate under-funding. I'll only repeat myself once: the US-American healthcare system provides inferior service at a higher cost. Your eyes aren't deceiving you as to your own personal experiences. Your brain is deceiving you by making you base your own benign experiences as a relatively healthy, middle-income professional, as the norm for everybody else.
Again, it's not just me saying this. But if you choose to hide from reality, there's no argument that can convince you.
Please note that in my earlier responses, I was referencing my experience with the Japanese system, as a lower middle income professional, and not the "US American system" as a middle income professional, as you put it.
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