Jerry J. Fortin

Here in Alberta, some jerk raped a 15 year old girl, he was 24 at the time. His sentence was 2 and 1/2 years. What is wrong with this picture?

Steve wanted to be the P.M. He has been there and done that. Now he can go away and say he was the P.M. who cut taxes and funded the Armed Forces and bailed out GM and Chrysler to the tune of 2 million dollars a job. He can also say that the best he could do was get a minority government. Oh well, nice knowing you Steve, enjoy the summer working like crazy to hang onto that job of yours.

Argus all of these social programs that we now have were called social engineering in their planning stages way back whenever. The basic necessities keep changing with advancements in technology. Signs of the times really when you think about it. Improving the quality of life as you state, is the main focus of our current set of social programs. They are designed as a floor from which citizens can only fall so low before our society catches them. I do fully agree that the cost of doing these things is very high, especially when you take housing and utilities and food into consideration, but the point is that these things already exist and are incorporated into the system we fund with tax dollars. The system eats dollars for breakfast lunch and supper! There are damned few social programs that can be cut without horrific impact to citizens at the bottom of the pile. You know this. Look Argus, what we are now experiencing is a very nasty case of social engineering with these bailouts and stimulus packages. Only this time the money is going to private ventures, so while individual citizens may get jobs out of the deal, the government is providing profits for business at tax payer expense. That is different from anything we have tried before. It may work, and it may not, but the point is that terminological statements are taking on entirely new meanings. What something means today may mean something else tomorrow. I guess what I am getting at is that we really do need social engineering. However I do agree that such efforts must be well thought out and we need to be vigilant about the cost factor of doing them. The real question then becomes where do we go from here? Are the ills of society such that we can afford to live with them in a moral sense or are they such that we can afford to change them in a financial sense? Are the efforts worth the rewards, do the benefits outweigh the risks? To get back to the thread, I suggest that we need to restructure the judicial system in order to provide society with an enhanced sense of security REALIZED through modified sentencing for violent offenses.

BC is where the Liberals could actually gain a majority. Given the size of the nation and its multiple time zones and poll closures, for a change the west could be a very real deciding factor. The ground work in Atlantic Canada could be very key to how the rest of the nation votes. Of course it will be all over before any single group of numbers could have a potential impact but, if Atlantic Canada goes red, followed by the PC's losing what little they have in Quebec there is a distinct possibility for a Liberal majority. It will not be over till the polls close in BC, but those polls could very well be Harpers funeral song.

Saving money for your retirement is always a good idea. Enhancing pension plans can hardly be a bad idea.

The NDP knew well enough what was in the report, so did the Bloc. The Liberals are playing with optics and wanted time to take a fresh gauge of the public. We shall see later today what happens. I want to see the end of Harper, but that remains to be seen as well.

Middle east peace is a pipe dream. It will never happen until one side of the other is gone, period.

I never said that at all. You are spinning this where it does not need to go for no real purpose.

It was a good post! Yet flawed. It sounds good on the surface, but when you think about for a minute, there is a lot more to the problem that needs to be addressed.

It need not be that way. For the first time in human history the largest single demographic is a retired baby boomer. Never before have we had so many senior citizens. These people don't need to work for the most part, and are also reasonably well educated. Very soon, someone will figure this out and start to utilize these folks to start acting like "elders" and begin to spread a political word or two. They are ideal as door knockers, greeters, and can speak with the voice of experience. They are also able to give their time freely, which in most cases is available all year long. I will admit that will still live in a class based society, but the definitions have changed as you say. We need to use that little piece of knowledge to the benefit of all citizens.

I simply can't agree with this. All of those things you mention are a result of citizens deciding what services that they want and the government designing a way to make it happen. In other words these things were designed for our society by the people and its government. By definition, that is social engineering. They were designed and implemented. These things improved the human condition and provide the standard of living that we now enjoy. You can take this a step further and state that politics is the tool that social engineering utilizes in the improvement of the human condition. Yet there is more that society can and should do. Higher education should be at public expense for citizens, and non-citizens should be charged for this service. Education is a key to success and the heart and soul of an improved human condition. Employment is another key to improving the human condition, it provides the means for citizens to do for themselves and avoid the need of the government to look after them. Production is the foundation of any viable economy and must be considered to be of paramount importance. Knowing this, we can begin to understand the scope of the statement "improving the human condition". These three factors in the equation; education, employment and production are not the only factors in the equation of a society yet they are of significant importance. They also represent a problematic situation for governments. To a certain extent these factors are regularly addressed in government, yet never to the degree required to actually solve and of societies problems. Even Marx knew and understood these things so many decades ago. Between him and Engel, they managed to come up with a system that they believed would serve to improve the human condition. They were wrong and the failed attempt at social engineering caused much pain and suffering, the state cannot and should not be considered to be the answer to all things. Yet, the state must responsible for all things, or at least accountable. Capitalism provides most of the economic answers, but what many refuse to believe is that communism provides many of the social answers. It is apparent that a merger of the two ideologies would provide a better solution. To return to the point, politics and governments in fact "experiment" with social engineering all the time.

Ask Mulroney how it is done.......

Been there and done that too! The thing is you can't expect to campaign from the left and win a government. Most folks are getting by and they pay their taxes and want their services, but they sure as hell hate paying the government their hard earned money. To campaign a platform of handing out more tax dollars has two very distinct consequences, one is bigger deficits and increased debt, the other is higher levels of taxation to cover the increased expenditures. The fools wants more service and is unwilling to pay for them, the wiser citizen understands that the two are linked. A vast majority of Canadians work for someone else for a living and they make out okay. There is the functional demographic, the vast majority of working citizens. Of all of these folks there are of course a large pile of partisans who split votes six ways from Sunday to give us minority governments, yet there is an even larger pile of citizens, with the one caveat, they simply don't vote. This is where our answers can be found! This group COULD HAVE CONTROL, if they got off their collective asses and showed up at the polls. Soon or later somebody in politics will finally figure this out and do something about it. To actually get these citizens to break down and participate in democracy they will require a carrot, so to speak. They will want to know what is in it for them. Well before anybody starts counting chickens, they need a hen that will lay eggs. They need a political platform that will serve THEIR needs. The only thing that will serve these people is an increase in their disposable income. Give them more money to spend on things they want and you will have them supporting you. This usually done in the old tried and true technique of buying votes with government programs and services. The partisan politicians regularly drag out plans that specifically target this group or that group to capture a larger market share of potential voters. The right wing serves the upper middle class, the left wing serves the labour groups, and the Liberals reach for the centre and want everybody's vote. They all have agendas that compell governments and politicians to provide an never ending string of programs and services. None of these groups advocates anything more than spending tax dollars and that means less money for the citizens and more money for the government. There is no question as to why there are so many bureaucrats, they are needed to handle all of the programs and services that politicians have convinced the public they need. Don't get me wrong, some of these programs are useful and needed, in fact most of the programs and services we now have are needed because the government has made it that way. To return to the point, the best way to increase individual disposable income is to reduce the tax load on the citizen. Do that and citizens will support you. Cutting programs and services does the opposite, so it is a difficult line to walk. Thankfully, there is a lot of fat in bureaucracy, and huge savings could be realized through trimming it. The down side to this is the number of bureaucrats, because of the size of this demographic most politicians run and hide. Even so, the administrative costs can be rationalized to a large degree by attrition and amalgamation of working groups. There is definitely a way to do it properly, it just takes guts and a political will.

Isn't progress wonderful!

Of course! If I was an elected politician my website would have every bill before the Commons on it along with my party position( if I was a partisan) and my personal position. I would have all the registered voters in my riding as a focus group and register them for access to a voting system. I would leave them to vote right up to the last day before the bill is read for each reading. My vote would be based on one single factor, the desires of the constituents.

Web forums are a growing medium o communication. They would serve well as advice to elected representatives of the people.

This guy, our Finance Minister, hasn't been right yet. The pundit hasn't been wrong, now who do you want to listen to?

I will have to concede the fact that if someone really wants to "opt" out of CPP, that it is possible. The only sticker is that you will have to work even harder than you already do.

No matter which way you slice it, partisans defend their parties. Right or wrong they still carry the party line.

The government is playing with bad optics in this one.

There is good legislation being handled by bad bureaucrats.

It "sexy" !!!!

Gee, is it any wonder the government will start carving off little pieces of AECL now?

The government even lobbies itself in the interest of pork for their own corner of the world. The "special interests" have political donations to hand out in trade for even minimum interest in their behalf. The troubles are many in what voices to listem to for the government. The problem is that they seldom seem to listen to the citizens.

Building prisons would be a great idea if the designs were a lot less resort like.