Jerry J. Fortin

China like all the other nations on this planet have much to offer, and we can learn from them.

Religious groups are merely another "special interest" group. They are no better and no worse than the rest of these groups. Partisan factions prey on these interest groups. It is time we realize that.

I think the government is out to lunch.

I have stayed out of this thread until now. I have mixed feelings on the issue, but I can now say that I have taken a stand against the actions of the government. I don't think the government should be allowed to remove the children of parents for any reason short of imminent danger. Should the children be in harms way due to the illegal actions of parents, then I will suggest the government should act in the safest interests of children. Safety is the only cause in my mind that would justify such an action as having the state remove the children.

Not that it really matters, but..... Our government is structured in a manner that provide the illusion of democracy. It has served us fairly well, and we have much to be thankful for, but there is a darker side to the equation. Governments ought to be in control of their economies to a certain extent. They ought to be in control of their monetary policies. They ought to be in control of their finances. Sadly these things are not true, and in order to begin to fix the problems we have with government we need to do some democratic surgery. Governments live on money, but where does that money come from?

I stand corrected.

Lets just take the next step in this thread and cut to the chase. The problem that concerns us is in fact a lack of viable regulation which does need to be handled. However once you go there and do that, which is regulating that industry, is not the next step to look at the centralized banking consortium and the fractional reserve system? The entire issue of securities does find itself rooted in the financial industry. That will open a big can of worms. When looking into the financial system you are going to have to look into the monetary system whether you like it or not. Once you get to this point certain things become apparent. Most nations don't really have control of their own currencies, so their monetary policies are actually useless. Central banks are privately owned and are out of the control of governments. The fractional reserve system has allowed banks to generate huge profits, while avoiding taxation to a large degree. The real cause of income taxes is the result of arrangements to secure payments for government debt to foreign controlled banking interests. These subjects are a can of worms most politicians really don't want to pick up.

The beast is the people? You think that we need to be treated as beasts, but the non-living corporate entity known as the government should be the master and we the beasts. There is the embodiment of all things truly evil in society today. The government, a created servant of the public, is better able to tell us how to live than we are to tell it how to live. This is why we tax and spend like drunken sailors. This is why we allow criminals to roam the streets. This is why we spend more money on foreign aid to countries where the average temperature is 65 F year round than here in Canada for our own homeless citizens who regularly freeze to death overnight in the winter. This is why we hand out billions of dollars a year in business subsidies and give not a dime to food banks. The government IS the servant of the people. The government WILL obey the people. All government structure, its programs and services, appointed and elected officials, its employees, all serve at the pleasure of the people who can and will determine a course of action that compels them to act in a manner conversant with the desires of the public, period. Even so, the public shall not be held accountable for the actions of government.

Asking the beast not to feed itself as it sits at a buffet of tax dollars in an exercise in futility. It will gorge itself every time it sits down. The beast is the government and its bureaucracy which grows every election and every year. More programs allow for for more patronage appointments, and you just know there is a lot of payback going on. The beast needs taming.

Nonsense, utter drivel.

Is it a case of not paying enough taxes, or because we spend more than we take in? I for one certainly don't want to pay more tax. I say it is both a spending problem, and a revenue stream problem.

I don't advocate abandoning the cities at all. I did say it would be cheaper to build new ones. We are talking about fed money here, and transfers going to cities. How much is the fed transfered to rural area? Not a single dime. We don't get subsidized for anything. If your well dries up, you drill an new one. If your septic field collapses you build a new one. The governments don't give us a dime to deal with water and sewage. The existing cities have issues. It is the responsibility of those cities and the tax burden of those residents of the cities to deal with not the residents of other locations. This kind of crap is what got us to where we are now. Everybody wants the feds to do something about their problems. That is why we just spent 2.5 million dollars per job to keep 4400 jobs with GM Canada. Where on earth does this end.

The reason people want those public sector jobs is that they are deemed safe from the ravages of the free market economy.

I am all for social services, don't get me wrong. My issue is the funding side of the equation. Income taxes are not the right way to deal with the problem because it provides an unfettered expense account for government. The individual has responsibility, that cannot be ignored. We need to devise a means of utilizing the available systems, and ones not yet invented, in a more efficient manner. Everything costs money, that is a given. The more things you want, the more money you need. It all boils down to money. The way to get things done is with money. The way to get money is to produce something at a profit. So production yielding profit generates money, and that is what is needed by government to pay for its programs and services. Now either government undertakes production to generate its own revenue stream, or it levies a tax on production to acquire the money it needs. Those are the two available options, no more and no less. Produce or tax. A communistic system chooses production, a capitalistic one chooses taxes. Since we are not communists, we are left with taxes. Since there are two components to production, resources and labour, there are at least two ways to levy a tax on production. There are alternatives to taxing production as well, such as sales taxes or consumption taxes. Now since we know that the government needs a revenue stream, and the only way to get it is through taxation we come to the crux of the problem. How do you levy a tax to provide the required government revenue stream in an equitable manner? Do you tax the resource, the labour, the sale, or the profit? The current system levies a tax on each level, but provides for deductions which has created a huge bureaucracy and a score of side business just to secure the revenue stream. Just the act of collecting the taxes costs an incredible amount of money, please remember that the reality is that in the end the consumer covers all costs to business of taxation and the citizen tax payer covers a lions share of the tax levy. Add to this concern the harsh reality that the rich can't be squeezed enough to cover the costs because there simply isn't enough of them. The poor use more services and programs than they pay in taxes, so that leaves the middle class funding about 87% of the revenue stream needed for government with taxes on their incomes. It gets even more scary when you consider that the vast majority of citizens make an average of 50K or less. Those citizens are that demographic that funds the governments revenue stream. The average citizen. To increase taxes, that is where you get the biggest bang for the buck, because that is where they all are. If you wanted to increase the governments revenue stream you would have to do it on the average citizens back, there isn't anyway around that with income taxes. However, if you eliminated income taxes, and replaced them with consumption taxes the average citizen would save thousands of dollars per year. Now lets return to your remarks about monetary policy for a minute. You stated yourself that this government manipulation hasn't worked this time. The reason for that is the governments don't really have a monetary policy anymore. We live in a free market economy based on fiat currencies that have no real value. The vast majority of the money supply on this planet is not in the form of hard currency at all, which is the place where government monetary policy is applied, but instead it is brought into being as interest being debt or credit. So now we come to the current problem, it is a credit crisis, and a banking problem, nothing to do with monetary policy at all. Therefore nothing to do with the government. Yet the government response was to transfer public wealth in private hands as a stimulus package. It has and will stimulate nothing, besides the profit margins of private enterprise.

You are exactly right! My point was that we can begin to fix the system from the outside as well as the inside. You are headed down the right path in political activism. That is what will make things happen. This web forum is only a beginning, write your MLA's and your MP's, make yourself be heard.

Lets review that thought of yours. I have listened for literally decades about cities and their infrastructure problems. Even though they have a right to levy taxes as they see fit, they somehow failed to raise sufficient funds to deal with their problems. These cities have sought assistance form their provinces and from the federal government and until just recently they saw very little relief. Yet they had the means to do so through taxation. It was obviously their intent to have someone else pony up with the money. So the rural folks, who have damned few of the services available in the cities are compelled to fund what is needed in the cities. Now if that is so, why pour the billions of tax dollars into infrastructure at all? I will suggest that those rose colored glasses of yours prevent you from seeing the reality of the situation.

That has worked well so far hasn't it? Three levels of government haven't managed to avoid the current infrastructure problems. We are at the point now where it is becoming cheaper to build new cities than to repair and maintain the old ones.

The bar needs to be raised in terms of labour legislation. Things like the cost of living and inflation need to be discussed.

Sadly all true. I think that all of the stimulus and bailout dollars should have gone into the construction of a new city in Canada. It should be the home of all nationally sponsored amateur sporting efforts, and a nationally sponsored secondary education facility. It could be designed and built as a showcase for Canadian technological expertise. Design it as a self sustaining micro-environment featuring green and other advanced technologies.

PR is a puzzle to solve, in its current proposed form it will never be accepted by the majority of citizens. Keeping in mind that majority is based on the voting public. The non-voting public have no voice in the matter because they choose not to. Should they decide to speak, who knows what would happen? Provide a functional means of dealing with apathy if you really want to have the citizens heard. There is only one way to do that, take the Aussie way out. Voting is mandatory, thats right, it is illegal not to vote there. Yet that is only a part of the problem, and it does not address the partisan issue you speak about. PR is actually an anti-democratic means of appointing representatives. The voting results are nullified at the end of a general election and the popular vote is dissected to provide the proportional representation that is mandated. All the formulas under the sun do not discount the reality of candidates facing the possibility of winning in their constituency, then having that result overturned in favour of evening out the vote spread. That is simply wrong, and should be prevented from happening. Instead of concerning yourself with overturning democratic selection, consider direct democracy. The issue there of course is a public that is less than ideally informed of the issues in debate within the halls of government, or so the argument goes. I would suggest that the role of the elected representative is to inform those being represented of the matters they were elected to address. Using a means of public consultation, the expressed will of the constituents could then be represented in the House of Commons by the elected representative. Should a representative choose not to vote in a manner that is dictated by the majority of constituents, the recorded vote could then be used to hold the elected representative to account at the earliest opportunity. I will further suggest that the only viable place for PR is in the Senate, after the results of a general election, popular votes could determine the makeup of the appointed Senate.

The RGC is a very old and esteemed private club. They take care of their own the best they can. Like any other organization the applied for and received benefits at tax payer expense. The question that should have been asked and wasn't, was who determines how much goes to who?

Borg, you should know that resistance is futile. We exist in the nanny state of Canada , a nation designed to provide cradle to grave benefits that are paid for by the working citizens. Those citizens that don't work simply don't pay. Don't stop at abolishing the GST, bring out the axe for income taxes. That is the only way the government can increase disposable income, which is the only viable means available to stimulate the economy. We all know that the government requires a revenue stream to fund its operations, and the bottom line is that those operations come at a cost that must be paid for by some means. I maintain that the way to create that revenue stream is through a consumption tax. Spread the expense across the board and literally have everyone pay for it.

Unions are here until they choose to leave, period. Their existence is sanctioned by law. Get over it! There is a way to deal with unions, just like everybody else, treat them with respect. Employee relations is an exercise in politics and economics. That is the problem that management, whether it be private or public sector has to deal with. Unions are not the problem, they are an answer to bad administration. The down side is that usually once they get in the door, they don't leave, just like a bad house guest. They function to protect the employees, the same employees that made a democratic decision to organize and elect representatives to deal with management. If people would simply wake up and realize that unions are partisan factions just like a political party, then the size and scope of the problem would become apparent to them. Its not that complicated when you take the time to actually think it through. Unions are small scale politics, dealing with a small scale specific group of individuals. The scale depends on the size of the employers, and the scope is limited to the workplace. Of course there are mitigating circumstance with implications that can have impact outside of the scope of the unions, but that is not the purview of the unions. They can only focus on their own little corner of the world. It is management that has to deal with the consequences of their business and operation. Holding the workers responsible for how management does its job is exactly what folks on this forum are talking about. They are putting the cart before the horse. Once again, unions were and are a response to employee relations. A organization that treats its employees well will likely not organize a union, one that treats its employees badly probably will. All the spin in the world cannot change that fact. Blaming unions or claiming they are holding anyone to ransom is simply foolish.

Move to Alberta then, it will be a different country!

You might as well cheer for Layton in Alberta! To be truthful, Iggy may get a couple of seats if Harper screws up any more.