Wild Bill

I noted that you agree, BM! Didn't surprise me none. We seem to agree far more than we disagree, at least lately! Why the defensiveness? Probably because Tory supporters are so used to being called everything from Nazis to agents of George Bush all these years that they tend to become a bit thin-skinned.

Well BM, in the immortal words of Gomer Pyle: "Surprise, surprise, surprise!" The present day CPC is a clone of the old PC Party. As we Reformers used to say, "Liberal, Tory, same old story!" They are politicians first and foremost. Ideology comes a distant second. Only Reform was wedded to the idea of fiscal conservatism, or at least fiscal responsibility. All the other parties worry about achieving and retaining power before anything else. Harper is a smart political pragmatist. He is doing what he thinks will advance the interests of his party. Perhaps if he wins a majority we might see him start acting on principle. I wouldn't hold my breath, however. Once a politician turns to the Dark Side he rarely pulls a Vader and recants! People who quote Liberals like Paul Martin as fiscal conservatives should keep in mind that Martin acted that way when he had both the political power and the tools to do it. It also helped when Chretien first took power after Mulroney/Campbell that we were in a deep recession and the "international finance gnomes" were ready to pull our credit rating! So not only did he have little choice but he also had an easy ride to make it happen. To paraphrase JFK, true character is shown not when it's easy but when it's hard! I really don't see much difference between Harper's government today and that of those years of Chretien and Martin, except of course that Harper's tenure has been relatively free of scandal. No one has been caught stealing from us like with the Liberals! I really find it funny that this is bothering so many people, when the Liberals were always just the same! Harper had some good role models to study. Putting Harper down will not make the Liberals any more 'holy'. Those railing against Harper for not acting on principles (principles that THEY define and then use them as their yardstick against him, of course!) are making the mistake as seeing him as still a Reformer. He's NOT! Perhaps he never was. Whatever, today he's a political pragmatist, no different from any of the others. The CPC, as I keep repeating, is NOT the heir of Reform but rather of the old PC Party. If you need a model of his style to help make predictions for his actions, think Mulroney and not Manning and you'll end up more accurate!

Plan? I don't have any plans anymore, Jack. I used to but I came to realize that having a plan was rather unCanadian! Much more typical to just say no to virtually any and all plans that OTHER people dream up! Most people always have some reason to shoot someone else's plan down. Since they never offer one of their own that might work better the Canadian way is just to stumble along, never properly recognizing a problem, never actually doing anything positive about it. Look at our health care budgets, for example. Everyone knows they're a train wreck barreling down the fiscal track but every time some government tries to get a handle on costs all the nay-sayers shoot it down. If I really had to come up with something it would be along the lines of recognizing a problem for what it is and not some caricature of "the last war". Also, it would be long range, if necessary. As far as the economy I would have suggested we cut paper work burdens on business, eliminate all corporate welfare, and treat all citizens the same as far as EI (no 'special' regions and no subsidies for union workers unless private sector workers could get the same! The practice of giving layoffs to the guys with the MOST seniority as a freebie holiday would be outlawed!). I would suggest tax breaks for startup businesses for the first few years, to help them get rolling. I would lower the amount of allowed overtime, to encourage businesses to hire an extra worker or two instead of flogging their existing employees to death. I would not have governments involved in any way with collective bargaining, especially by banning any government bailout or subsidy! Unions would quickly learn not to "kill the golden goose". Those that do will prosper. Those that don't will be "Darwinized". If you prevent people from making mistakes then they will never learn from them. Besides, it's THEIR risk! Sometimes they may be right when you think they're wrong. I would have reviews of all our trade agreements with other countries, to examine if they have played fair and if we have seen the benefits we expected. I would institute mandatory "green tariffs", so that if one of our industries had to pay for some more "green" method of manufacturing or have to do or use something more expensive because we banned some ingredient then all IMPORTS would have to have had the exact same "green" costs or face a tariff equal to those costs. There's nothing wrong with showing leadership in being "green" but if it puts our companies at a competitive disadvantage while China or whoever dirties up the environment while stealing our business then that's just not fair! Our companies get penalized and lay off workers or even go bankrupt, while other countries just laugh at us! "Green" tariffs could go a long way to keeping jobs at home. Might even bring a few back! I might even take this idea on step further. If companies like France persist in huge agricultural subsidies for their farmers then we should have equivalent duties and tariffs on all their products entering our borders. If they don't like it then too bad! Let them eat seal meat! Finally, I would ban all hip hop and techo dance music! It rots the brains of our youth, making them into less capable workers.

That's a non sequitur. IOW, it does NOT logically follow! Unfortunately, I don't believe there is any possibility at all of ever making you understand that. So I won't even bother.

From the tone and content of your posts I would be very surprised if you have any technical background at all. Have you ever soldered an electronic circuit together? Have you even changed a plug on a lamp? You seem to be trying to use logic to offer technical solutions but your solutions are inappropriate to how the technology actually works. You sound like a teacher trying to teach how to fix an engine by reading the book to his students, when it is obvious he himself has never even lifted the hood of a car! There is no substitute for 'hands-on' learning. Logic is merely a mental exercise, a very useful tool but you can logically prove anything if you don't have any of the contradictory facts. "All cats have tails. Every cat has one tail more than no cat has. Therefore, all cats have nine tails!" Quite logical, except anyone who has actually seen a cat knows it's not true.

Did I not already answer that? The sheer numbers make it obvious that they DID vote for him! The main reason is that people respected him as someone who would keep his word! This is indeed a unique thing for any politician! People at the time also had a great deal of disrespect for the leadership of the other parties. There was a feeling that governments looked after themselves first and us a distant second. I have never believed that the province turned against Harris like his opponents have almost rabidly painted it since he stepped down. I can understand turning away from Ernie Ives. He was a very bland choice. Not much difference between him and McGuinty's Liberals. After Harris we've never had the choice of someone like him again so the premise has never been tested. You also have to understand that the provincial Tory party has always had a blue/red split. Many powerful Tory insiders never wanted Harris to be the leader. In fact, it was only because the party at the time was so far down in the polls that they didn't oppose it happening! When Harris won those massive majorities they were as surprised as anyone but NOT happy! Philosophically they were more of the 'Joe Clark/progressive conservative' stripe. So Harris went and the Tories went back to their 'pink Tory' ways. Look at how successful that was! I'm convinced that Hudak could win a majority if he was more like Harris in his appeal. I think voters are thoroughly sick of 'beige, brown suit and shoes' type candidates, fighting to edge each other out of the middle of the road. People are hungry for leadership and that's NOT it! Look at the type of person who historically has won large majorities. Trudeau, Mulroney, Harris, Klein...these were people that voters WANTED to vote for! The other choices we've had have frankly been rather boring! Compare the inspirational appeal of a Preston Manning with the 'accountant' personality of Stephan Harper. I truly believe that the 'progressive' element within the provincial Tory party has helped ensure that whether the Liberals or the Tories win in Ontario both choices will govern in a very similar, kinda left of centre manner. Voters are rarely given a choice like Harris. It's a specious argument to claim that voters don't want one when there seems to be so much effort expended to ensure such a choice will never be offered.

Not at all! I'm just NOT a fan of dumb and blind ways to try to fight it! Remember, I'm a 'Utilitarian'. If an idea won't work then it's just a useless pipedream.

Well, perhaps because I've never believed that they were " a party that would, if it could, delist their unions and cut their wages to world prices"! You're entitled to your beliefs Michael but when they are such an extreme caricature you really shouldn't expect everyone else to know what you're talking about! You sound like a leftwing Rush Limbaugh with that premise! My impression is that the Tories couldn't care less one way or the other about collective bargaining, except possibly with the closed shop laws, which any libertarian has deep moral misgivings about. Personally, if unions want to drive companies here into closures or even bankruptcy, sending all their jobs to countries like China, I say "Let them!" That's freedom! Sometimes we need to make mistakes in order to learn. Some lessons really have to be learned the hard way. Other companies will hopefully pick up the slack before our economy is hurt too badly.

The problem with your argument is that times HAVE changed! The times you describe were over 70 years ago! Workers could unionize because they were dealing with companies that faced no international competition. The world was essentially that of workers and a company in the same town. Today, a union can strike for higher wages and benefits but they are not dealing just with their local company. They are dealing with global competition. Most times, if they win too much from their company that company will not be able to compete against some Chinese outfit and all you are left with is a bankrupt business and no jobs. Worse yet, it often seems that the unions are still run by 1960's versions of Buzz Hargrove and don't even realize that the world has changed. When the company goes bankrupt these characters are actually surprised! Just another case of generals all ready to fight the LAST war, I guess!

You forget what a geezer I am, Michael! I'm talking back into the 60's, long before Harris! However, even in the Harris days there were lots of steel workers who supported him. Where did you think the votes came from? Harris had TWO of the biggest majorities Ontario had ever seen! No Liberal party has ever taken even close to the popular vote percentage of Harris'. Those numbers would have been impossible to achieve without there being many union votes in the mix. WHY? Because the big appeal of Harris was that he was perceived as a politician who would "do what he said and say what he'd do!" Working men respect that. Few other politicians have been perceived the same way. Certainly not McGuinty or Petersen! You also have to remember that steelworkers are NOT generally less educated or intelligent than other demographics! This is a dangerous and even patronizing stereotype! In the past few decades the average education has risen to levels never seen before in history. Also, lots of young guys didn't have the money, inclination or opportunity to go on to university. They were more than intelligent enough! They just wanted to start making some good money and start their lives. Many of them were more self-educated than you might have expected. Actually reading books seemed more popular back then. Certainly the breadth and depth of the typical magazine rack far outshone what we see today. As I said, these workers joined the union because it was part of getting the job. They had NO choice about it! Meanwhile, they came from as varied a background as any other demographic of society. It's not surprising that they were also just as varied in their political choices. Another factor is that more union workers than you might think are perfectly aware that their union cares ONLY about the union's interests! Sometimes the actual workers come second. The workers are often just as cynical about their leadership as they are to any other politician. Moreover, many workers are also objective enough to see that their union rarely gives a damn about their city, province or country. Unions tend to fixate solely and only on union interests. If a worker has different values about how his public governments should run then he is not going to listen to how his union tells him to vote. Did you really think that only those guys who grew up reading 'Das Kapital' worked in steel mills, Michael?

Same old Marxist crap with the same old Marxist contradictions. You are arguing from your heart and not your brain! The Universe runs on its own laws. Cause and Effect is one of them. These laws don't care how you feel about them. You are asking for a world where everyone will voluntarily comply with your vision. Unfortunately, that vision contradicts human nature. There will always be people who want to excel and expect to reap a reward for it. There will always be people who will take from the system but not bother to contribute. How about applying your vision to the old story of the "Little Red Hen"? What does your vision offer someone like her? I can accept that your intentions are good. It's just that your vision is an old one that just doesn't work. It is too simplistic to satisfy the details of human nature and unless a system satisfies those details it will never be practical. Also, resources AREN'T finite! Stop looking at your shoes and look up! There are INFINITE resources up there in Space! We already have the technology to go get them, if we choose to. It's no longer a matter of knowhow but just of will and if we get hungrier that will be a great motivator. Of course, given how the USA has decided to drop out of space development it appears that the countries that will grow wealthy and expand into space will be China and/or India. Thanks a lot, Obama! What vision you show! John F Kennedy must be rolling in his grave.

Exactly, Saipan! These easy categories are not pulled from a text book but from some comic book! Esq gave us nothing but low brow, shallow stereotypes. When I was active in Reform I was constantly meeting other members from both sides of the political spectrum and all points in between. Lots of "disenfranchised conservatives" who found Mulroney's party to be run by elitists (like all the others!). There were Liberals who didn't like the Liberal leadership and LOTS of NDP! There were even a smattering of enviromentalists - pre-Green, I guess. The biggest factor in common that bound them all together was the streak of populism in the Party. Most people understand basic economics - that you have to live within your means or you will go broke. You don't have to be a "corporatist" to grasp that concept. Ask any single mother who has to try to feed and clothe her kids on a welfare cheque. Working people understand that government services cost lots of money. They're the ones who are taxed most to pay for it! My father and many of my friends were steel workers. The popular stereotype was that they were all NDP, something the NDP always tried to pretend was true, even to this day. Every election the posters would go up in the factory washrooms saying "Your Union Supports the NDP and So Do You!" The stewards would try to chat up the men and sway them to the party line. It never worked and actually offended most of the members. The posters tended to grow mustaches and graffiti. The stewards learned quickly not to be too pushy or they could expect to get roughed up in a backlash. Union members were union members not because they all believed the same way but simply because the factories were closed shops. You had to join the union or you couldn't work there! Afterwards, the idea that the Union could expect you to toe the line and vote as you were told was a bit much for most rough and ready steelworkers to accept! They tended to be individualists who resented being told how to vote. People with common sense exist in all parties. They tend to support different political philosophies because they see one or another as a better agent of change to achieve their goals. Reform offered something never seen before or since - a party dedicated to more direct democracy, where Party platform was created by the grassroots and Party policy was dictated by the wishes of each Member's constituents and not the PMO. I thoroughly enjoyed talking with people who formerly supported different parties. I spent many happy hours in debate over a few beer and learned a LOT about how stereotypes are almost always WRONG! It was such a shame that Harper chose to put a stake through the Reform/Alliance idea of voter populism and bury it six feet down. I really think it would have been good for the country. Certainly it would have given many folks a reason to get active to the point where voting percentages would likely rise. More people would have felt that their vote actually meant something.

Star, I have some friends in B.C. that explained this very scenario to me. Apparently, switching back and forth between two parties is the west coast norm! The explanation they gave is that one spends the money and then the next party has to pay for it...

Back in the early Pleistocene Era, when I was a teenager, I remember watching Ed Sullivan, who was featuring Jefferson Airplane singing their song, 'We Can Be Together' and hearing them sing plain as day "Up against the wall, motherf*kers!" It was done so smoothly in vocal harmony that unless you were a young hippy familiar with the song the F word didn't stand out. It fitted in so smoothly that virtually all the 'straights' missed it! Now we have the example of this Dire Straights song. Some dweeb at the Council has successfully ensured that everybody in Canada now knows about that 'word' being in that song. The band will enjoy some last minute royalties as many folks rush out to buy a copy of what's causing all the fuss. Seems to me that many "do-gooders" trying to censor songs and books like those of Mark Twain are really just continually picking at sores to make sure they last forever!

Exactly! Most people in any society tend not to be all that political. To many Palestinians, Israeli society looks to have far more individual freedom and protection than that of most neighbouring Arab states. Once again, it boils down to access to blue jeans and rock and roll! Many people will not voluntarily choose to live in some fundamentalist Islamic police state.

You're exactly right, August! Although to be fair, look what it took to get the Alliance and the PCs to merge! No party wants to disappear. I think we should carry your point a step further, however. What's really going on is that all the opposition parties would dearly love to inherit the voters from the other parties but in any merger they would also want to end up as the head segment! That's the downside of any 'coalition' merger - that you might end up a minor, insignificant partner. No, we're never going to see such mergers as are being talked about today, for that strong and basic reason. Just being the biggest would be no guarantee, as the Liberals seem to understand. Look at the present CPC. At the time of the merger the Alliance totally swamped the PCs in numbers, yet I defy anyone to find much of anything left of the old Reform/Alliance planks in the present CPC platform. For all intents and purposes, the new CPC IS the old PC party! All the opposition parties witnessed this happen and know that as J-Roc rapped in Trailer Park Boys: "If it could happen to me it could happen to you!"

It sounds Morris like he feels he should have the freedom to make his neighbours pay for his ideas, even if they don't want to! This has ALWAYS been an extremely popular notion, along with being able to tell your neighbour what to do and how to live his life.

You know Scrib, I take this idea with a grain of salt. They're not stating the context behind all this increase in jobs and profits. I can see it if we're talking large scale manufacturing, such as steel or the auto industry. When you're dealing with billions a couple of percent adds up to significant dollars. However, much of our economy is small business. If you're a firm that employs maybe a dozen people or less you're not likely making millions of dollars in profit. You're probably lucky to have a few tens of thousands left over at the end of the year, after paying all the bills and the salaries, if that! A couple of percent decrease in your taxes is not going to give you enough to add even one more full-time employee! I wonder if the "powers that be" have factored this in with their predictions or if they are just using whatever sounds good to make people cheerful about Harper and the government of the moment. It would be so easy to do. Even if the formula tracked large business, we've seen so much of that business die off in the past decade or two that it's not nearly the percentage of our economy that it used to be. I know, I know. I'm just being cynical but I can't help it. I've lived a while and I've seen a lot.

You'd starve as a salesman! Calling people stupid for how they vote is NOT the best way to get them to change! It's human nature to just get pissed off, dig in your heels and become even more stubborn! You only help Harper when you make comments like that.

And there is the failing of logic! You can prove anything if you just restrict the factors to those that support your argument and ignore any that prove it wrong. Logic is a tool for reason but not in itself absolute proof. All taxation schemes require some perspective and sense of balance. Your premise of zero taxes negates itself, since there is no revenue to accrue for the government. What smart governments try to do is to set their taxes so that people do not perceive themselves as overly gouged. No one minds paying when it doesn't really hurt. With corporate taxes, you have another factor that you have to make your own territory competitive in attractiveness for business, otherwise they will relocate somewhere else. Lower them too much and your revenues suffer. Raise them too high and business just leaves. To make it more complicated, just when a government thinks they have things working fairly well some damn fool Arabs start a war and shoot the price of oil sky high! The economy tanks and you have to look again at all your tax rates. As for my claim that raising business taxes reduces revenue, what would you do if you ran a business and taxes went up too high to make an adequate profit? Would you re-locate your business to a better tax climate or would you just let it go bankrupt? If you let it go bankrupt, what do you think all those little old ladies who hold stock for their retirement portfolio would do to you? People can talk all they want but in business, money talks and BS walks! There are no other options.

Yet that's precisely the argument, Michael! Where do you think the pressures on the Catholic School Board are coming from? We can argue about whether or not there SHOULD be such pressures but if they didn't exist then how the hell did we wind up with this thread in the first place? These days gay rights seem to be far more universally accepted than these actions by a Catholic school would appear. My point is that in the days when the separate school system ran on its own money few folks ever challenged them on what standards and values they expoused. That's not the case today.

I've never denied that Rae's government faced challenges. That being said, the problem was that his approaches to solve the challenges all seemed totally loopy! Rae never expected to win! People voted for him to force a minority on Petersen, who had started to appear too arrogant. The problem was that too many voters had the same idea! Rae got in by a razor-thin percentage to get a majority. I remember laughing at the folks at my work who had all championed the idea of voting for Rae for a liberal minority. When Rae actually won not one of those people would admit that they had voted for him! When you don't expect to win you wind up very unprepared. Rae owed his support to all the fringe groups, who mostly didn't have very practical ideas, or even a realistic picture of how the world works. These were the people Rae had to draw on to form his cabinet and man his departments, to implement their screwy ideas. They thought business would always be there and was just something to gouge for their pet social projects. They used provincial departments like the Highways as an employment pool to hire temporary workers to give them enough weeks to file for EI. I had personal direct vision on what Rae did in this department. One of my best friends had worked there for years and saw it all happen. These temps were never even given what were thought to be obligatory safety training sessions! They were used to pour concrete on medians in the coldest part of the winter, when concrete freezes during pouring and dissolves into flakes come the warm weather. Those experienced with winter construction work promptly fell into 2 distinct camps, those that thought Rae's people were just loopy and ignorant and those who thought they were corrupt and didn't care. NOBODY praised them for hiring the temps and what they did with them, except the temps themselves, of course. Rae did one of the most simplistic and outright useless things to fight a recession. He thought he could buy his way out of it with government projects! That never works. Other parties long ago learned this. They always PROMISED to do such, since it always buys votes from citizens who don't know how an economy works anyway! They just don't waste too much money while they're doing it. Long on photo ops and short on actually paying for shovels. Rae added over $10 billion dollars to Ontario's deficit and ended up with nothing to show for it but higher interest payments on the debts. How much of Harper's stimulus money to fight this recession has actually been spent? How much new stuff have we seen built? Where are all the new businesses we expect to see? Yet there's always a big picture of him touring some RIM plant or whatever in the daily newspapers. It truly seemed that Rae's real goals were to use government money as just more welfare for those who had lost their jobs in the recession. This is a kind thing to do in the short term but it doesn't offer anything long-term and sustainable. Here in Stoney Creek my riding had a brand new NDP MPP, named Mark Morrow. Mark must have been surprised to win as he ran his campaign on a shoe string. He appeared to have maybe a half a dozen signs and perhaps his mother knocking on doors for him. Yet he rode the wave into power! Almost immediately after Rae was elected we had a conflict with his government. For 20 years we had been dithering over building the Red Hill Creek Expressway. Hamilton and its suburbs had desperately needed to improve its transportation routes. Rae's people had always drawn their support from those against the project, who painted it as "pavement as far as the eye could see, furry animals dying under the asphalt spreader as it lay the stuff down and hundreds of acres of sacred Indian sequoias chewed into matchsticks to make room for those cars owned by people who should have been forced at gun point to take public transit!" There may also have been something in there about saving unborn baby whales from drunk drivers and nuclear power plants. My memory isn't 100% for all the details. In actual fact the valley had long ago deteriorated into scrub maples, abandoned mattresses, garbage and the odd makeshift tent sheltering hobos who survived on a diet of pigeons, kites and limp balloons. The issue had been decided and all the contracts to start construction had been given out. Bulldozers and equipment had started working. What then happened was probably something like this: <ring> "Hello, Bob? This is the 'Save the Red Hill Valley' group down here in Hamilton. You have to do something! They're cutting down trees! You must put a stop to it!" "Well, I'm not really up on that particular file. Wouldn't that cause some political problems for us" "Hell no! The people in the city are all solidly behind us and will love you for it" "Well, ok I guess!" So Rae's people summarily cancelled the project and it all hit the fan! The opposition had never had many members and in fact the majority of Hamilton and area citizens had always felt "Just build the damn thing!" Because all the contracts had already been given out the cancellation fees added up into millions and millions and of course, were all passed on to Rae's government. To quell the public anger a community meeting was called at a local banquet centre. I was there and I'll never forget what went on. There at the head table was our new MPP Mark Morrow, who spent all his time talking to the woman beside him. I swear he never heard a word of the discussion! In the interests of being fair to both sides, they set up 2 microphones on either side of the room, where those wanting to be heard could queue up to speak. It turned out to be absurdly ridiculous. There must have been nearly 600 people in the room yet they could only scrounge up perhaps a dozen to speak in favour of what the NDP had done. The queue of angy people demanding the construction continue ran out into and down the halls! They allowed each side to alternate with a speaker but after they ran through their dozen supporters they were at a loss as to what to do next. So they kept running through the same 12 speakers! It was just so "Mickey Mouse"! Rae's government had been snookered by some of their own fringe group supporters into some political hot water. They tried to talk about alternatives but only embarrassed themselves, as it became obvious that Rae's people had no understanding of that area or its history. Alternatives had been talked out long ago. There weren't any! Yet even Rae's transport minister appeared on the local tv station and mentioned "Hwy 27" as a possible alternative. He only embarrassed himself as a 'Toronto boy', as anyone in Ontario knows that Hwy 27 is in Toronto. He should have said Hwy 20, which although already having been ruled out as an option would not have made him look so stupid. Anyhow, we Ontarioans could cite such examples all day long. The bad feelings for the NDP as a provincial ruling party will need generations of people growing old and dying before they will fade down to the point where the Ontario NDP have another chance at Queens Park. It may not be entirely fair but it is indeed the truth. It would be easier to get Mulroney elected again as PM than to see Ontario choose another NDP government.

They want to get member entry to make posts, Jack! 'Course, the posts will all be Spam ads for penis enlargers or some crap. I know spam must make someone money or it wouldn't be so ultra popular but I just don't get it! It only pisses me off and there's no way I will buy something from someone who has pissed me off...

That's NOT what I said, August! The State of course from time to time harbors discrimination. That is not relevant here. Before Bill Davis extended the funding Catholic school boards paid for their own secondary schools. They only hired catholic teachers and they set their cirriculum by their own catholic standards. He who pays the piper, in other words. After they began to receive public funds the pressures started to abide by what are considered by some to be mainstream public standards, like gay rights religious hiring biases being discriminatory. I might agree with you that public systems don't run on their own money. However, I was talking about the time when CATHOLIC SCHOOL SYSTEMS ran on their own money here in Ontario! As a matter of fact, are you sure that the Catholic School Board even HAD a union in those days? If they did, I seriously doubt if it was the same union as the public school board.

Close loopholes? Crack down? If a provincial government would rather choose to abandon the rule of law to an entire town, as with Caledonia, instead of using sufficient force to quell an illegal and violent protest by the natives, what on earth makes you think that they would do anything about the contraband tobacco? Do you think the natives would stand quietly by while the government cut off millions of dollars of their income? I agree with you that they SHOULD but I am nowhere near as naive as you to think that it would ever happen!