Wild Bill

Be fair, Star! You're choosing the very next year, which is too short a time frame to see strong effects from tax level changes. You're also choosing a year of deep recession. A few percent cut from the corporate tax rate was hardly going to save many businesses fighting a global depression! You really should give it a bit of time. Maybe pick a year of more ordinary circumstances, too.

Not asking for perfection, August. I'd be happy if the Liberal Party showed even a tiny effort to live up to the classical definition! I see little or no trace of it with the Liberals today. Or for the past 40 some odd years, for that matter.

I suspect you're right that in both countries the government will eventually get its own way. However, it does seem that it's a lot easier for that to happen here in Canada than in the USA. The Right to Property was left out of our Charter deliberately, you know. It was a bone thrown to Ed Broadbent to get him onside with the Agreement. If such a Right doesn't matter, why was it so important to Ed in the first place?

They are saying exactly what they appear to be saying! These incidents were inevitable the day Bill Davis extended public funding to the separate school system. When you run on your own money you enjoy a reasonable measure of autonomy. Now they're on the public teat and that means subject to the same rules, laws and expectations as anything else in the public sector. We've seen challenges over favouring Catholic teachers in hiring for separate schools. Now we have issues over gay rights and how they contradict some Catholic Church beliefs. Comes with the territory, I say! The Catholic School system has no right to expect public funding while retaining total control over how they run their system. That simply isn't fair to all the non-catholic taxpayers who are contributing to their system. Gays pay taxes too!

Dr. G, Rae DID drive business and their jobs out of Ontario! After he was gone and the business taxes were lowered, much business did come back. Seems to me it's only fair to use Rae as an example of the point in discussion, when Rae fits the bill so perfectly. Is it wrong to EVER use a politician's deeds as an example? Or only the ones you personally don't like?

No argument from me, good Dr. Dre! I was a Reformer! To me, the old Progressive Conservative Party were never conservatives but just a weaker version than the Liberals. Now, somehow the tiny rump of the old PC party has taken over the merged CPC and in my view turned it into a clone of Mulroney's Party. That also explains why Harper, once he became PM, immediately abandoned all his former antipathy towards Mulroney and started a 'makeover' to present him as some kind of conservative hero. The fact that Mulroney's scandals promptly wrecked that effort was the height of irony! Besides, I've said many times, my choice would be a truly classic liberal party, with laissez-faire approach to government and a champion of individual rights. NONE of the top 4 fit that definition! Especially the CPC! Again, as I've said MANY times, I support the CPC only because they smell less to me than the others!

I don't mean to pick apart your model instead of your point, August but are you sure your 'good' examples truly fall into that category? Millions of Canadians avoid paying the GST every day! The underground economy ballooned practically from the first day Mulroney inplemented his tax. The GST is certainly one of the taxes most avoided. Liquour, gasoline or cigarettes? How much booze is smuggled and bootlegged every day? How many gas stations went out of business in border towns, from people buying their gas on the other side of the border? You don't need an expensive survey. Just go to any border town and try to find a gas station! There aren't nearly as many as in other towns. The only reason people buy domestic gas is if they live too far from the border. Cigarettes? The OFFICIAL estimate here in Ontario is that over half of the cigarettes consumed are contraband from native factories and smuggling operations! Apparently, the government garners their stats by having people pick up butts from outside buildings and analyzing them to determine their source. The two biggest offenders? Schools and government buildings! If the government admits to 50% the real number is likely much higher. Seems to me you couldn't find a better example of avoiding a tax. Again, this doesn't change your point, just your examples.

Well BM, the trouble is that yes, there is a bit of truth to the idea. You can't blame Harper's bunch for doing something wrong when they don't act like conservatives. So far the excuse has been that in a minority government they CAN'T act like true Conservatives! They'd end up having their government fall. That may or may not be true but that doesn't mean that the CPC WILL act like conservatives if they get a majority! That remains to be seen and until and unless that happens the idea is just a possibility and not a fact. I've never really thought of the present CPC as a true conservative party but then, I tend to use the dictionary for my definitions. There are many posters on this board who seem to think that anyone not a liberal or NDP supporter must be a conservative so by those lights I must be all wet. However, as long as they don't steal from us like the Liberals did I guess I'm stuck with them, for lack of a better choice. Give me a better choice and I'll drop them in an instant!

It's quite simple, Topaz. If you cut corporate taxes, they tend to grow larger and do more business, which is still taxable. Also, more businesses are formed and they pay taxes too! So your tax revenue goes UP! If you keep raising taxes, you tend to choke off businesses. They do less business so there is less to tax. Also, many people don't bother forming new businesses, thinking that by the time they pay all the taxes it's just not worth it. People also forget that even if a big corporation has enough deductions and loopholes to pay NO corporate taxes, they still pay a huge amount from personal income taxes on every employee's pay cheque. Jobs and that tax money comes from businesses. Public sector and welfare/pension cheques usually have income tax taken off of them but this is really kind of silly. They're taking off taxes from a cheque that came from taxes! ALL money, taxes or otherwise, comes from the private sector! If that weren't true we could have a healthy growing economy by just drafting everyone into the post office and have us all deliver letters to each other.

Then he falls into the category of my OTHER totally anecdotal, unsupported generalization. He's a politician! Either way, he's an "idea" man with no idea of how to actually MAKE IT WORK! BTW, I'm not disparaging those who aren't "utilitarians". We need a balance of both types to make the best society. Most of our problems today come from poor support for the "detail" way of thinking. When you go for a job today, they ask if you have a certificate, NOT if you know how to do the job! The two things are not the same. A Utilitarian can build you a bridge that works great but may be a bit ugly. Socialists and academics will build you a thing of beauty but you're often risking your life by driving across it...

Maybe, Dr. Dre. Still, there are other possibilities. One common factor I have noticed about socialists in my life is that almost invariably they are NOT practical people! They are "big picture" people that tend to take the details for granted. Teachers would be a good example. Most truly believe that they know all about something because they have taught it from a book, despite having little or no hands on experience. As a generalization, they usually are not technicians, engineers or basically just the type of personality I dub "utilitarian", or "always looking for what actually WORKS". At the same time, I've also noticed that politicians, especially Liberal ones, tend to be lawyers or academics. There are a few exceptions but one would be hard pressed to "name three!" Even those exceptions would not likely fall into my "utilitarian" category. Now that I have a nice glowing bed of coals for the inevitable flames, let me give my actual premise: Obama and his type of policicians do NOT intend to transfer wealth from ordinary folks to wicked corporations! That's just the consequence of their actions because they are totally inept with the details! They always have a noble goal. They just always have a loopy, stupid and poorly thought out and implemented system to try to accomplish the goal! In this case, they give money to big corporations but they assume that those corporations will use the money to stay in the USA, providing all those jobs for the "little guy". We see of course what actually happens. Many of those recipient corporations either just pocket the money or worse yet, use it to move production to other countries, taking the jobs with them! A noble goal implemented by a "big picture", academic style approach that just doesn't work. If you want something to work you need people familiar with the details and who have the right sort of "utilitarian" personality to get all the inevitable "bugs" out BEFORE you start your system, rather than experiencing all the pain and expense involved with trying to fix those bugs afterwards, if ever! It's worse with politicians, because a working solution is rarely their actual goal! They're much more interested in APPEARING to deliver something than actually doing it! As FireSign Theatre paraphrased Richard Nixon, "You can fool most of the people most of the time, and that's enough!" Please note that I'm not disagreeing with you about the EFFECTS of Obama's stimulus approach. I'm making the claim that he is not evil, just not practical. I believe the man has a good heart. It's unfortunate that it has grown so big it's pushed up his neck and squeezed out his brain! "Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity."

To be fair, the same could be said of any other party! If anything, in terms of popular vote each opposition party has the backing of even fewer Canadians.

In theory I would agree with you, Topaz. However, sometimes people do push the envelope to the point where it becomes aggravating. Most people post a few at a time. This is a case where someone seems to be making it a full-time job! What's more, most of the posts are really a stretch, to the point where they are just plain silly! It's almost as if some folks from "rubble.com" have a plan to slowly drive this board crazy. After all, MLW is known as a bit rightwing. To "rubble.com" folks, that makes MLW evil incarnate and a fair target for mischief. They do tend to be insufferably rude, profane and snotty people on that board, as I know from personal experience. How do we balance freedom with aggravation? I'm not sure. We all have the freedom to ignore certain posts and certain posters. Or, if they spark our interest, we can choose to engage them in debate. Like always, if we feed the trolls we can't complain that they come around. Maybe if we all ignored more such posters they would go away.

Here is the only reply I can think of appropriate to anything that links to "rubble.com": " WOMAN: Who are the Britons? ARTHUR: Well, we all are. we're all Britons and I am your king. WOMAN: I didn't know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous collective. DENNIS: You're fooling yourself. We're living in a dictatorship. A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes-- WOMAN: Oh there you go, bringing class into it again. DENNIS: That's what it's all about if only people would-- ARTHUR: Please, please good people. I am in haste. Who lives in that castle? WOMAN: No one live there. ARTHUR: Then who is your lord? WOMAN: We don't have a lord. ARTHUR: What? DENNIS: I told you. We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week. ARTHUR: Yes. DENNIS: But all the decision of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting. ARTHUR: Yes, I see. DENNIS: By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs,-- ARTHUR: Be quiet! DENNIS: --but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more-- ARTHUR: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet! WOMAN: Order, eh -- who does he think he is? ARTHUR: I am your king! WOMAN: Well, I didn't vote for you. ARTHUR: You don't vote for kings. WOMAN: Well, 'ow did you become king then? ARTHUR: The Lady of the Lake, [angels sing] her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. [singing stops] That is why I am your king! DENNIS: Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. ARTHUR: Be quiet! DENNIS: Well you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you! ARTHUR: Shut up! DENNIS: I mean, if I went around sayin' I was an empereror just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me they'd put me away! ARTHUR: Shut up! Will you shut up! DENNIS: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system. ARTHUR: Shut up! DENNIS: Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! HELP! HELP! I'm being repressed! ARTHUR: Bloody peasant! DENNIS: Oh, what a give away. Did you here that, did you here that, eh? That's what I'm on about -- did you see him repressing me, you saw it didn't you? "

What kind of links are you digging up, Mr. Ashley? The first is NOT an independent scientific study group at all! It's an ACTIVIST group! Could you find a more biased source? It's just a bunch of activists who already believe that cell phones are killers and are taking time off from saving the whales to do the same for the bees. The second link doesn't even mention cellular radio emissions at all! It talks about 'brain plasticity' with insects and how body size correlates with brain size. Could it be that this entire thread is just a mammoth trolling operation?

Of course, Dr. Dre! It's most people because it's human nature to resist admitting they might have been wrong! This inability is perhaps the greatest obstacle to learning. Essentially, it means that with most people once they've formed an idea it had better be right, 'cuz there's no way they're willing to change it! How often right here on MLW have you seen someone admit they were wrong? Even when argued into a corner most folks just won't admit their premise just doesn't stand up. Agreed, most things we discuss here are more about opinions than facts, so that many premises are thus impossible to disprove. Still, with the sheer number of them you would expect some capitulation once in a while. I don't know exactly why we humans are this way. It may be that we think an admission of wrong means somehow we are stupid or flawed. To a true scientist or an engineer that idea is flat out crazy! You have to make all the errors before you eventually stumble onto what works! I don't claim to be any better than anyone else but some members might remember that I have admitted wrong or apologized on several occasions. I don't remember seeing anyone else do it. Someone may have but it's obviously not very common. Which only proves your premise!

Natural and man-made radio waves are exactly the same, except for information content. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the Universe can tell the difference. Yes, Colony Collapse Disorder exists! Yes, it is a scary thing. How scary it is has nothing to do with what's causing it. There is far more evidence for other factors than for electromagnetic radiation. Yes, some frequencies can affect moods. Also, some frequencies can cause heating in living tissues. That's how hospital diathermy machines work, which have been around longer than likely any of us have been alive. What the layman usually doesn't understand is that to cause these effects requires very close proximity to the emitter and very high power levels. That's because radio waves are subject to the Inverse Square Law. Every time you double the distance from the emitter the amount of power drops by the square root. This means that if you have 256 watts of power at the emitter you might have 16 watts a foot away. At 2 feet you have only 4 watts. At 3 feet it drops to 2 watts, and so on. We have volts of signal leaving an antenna but when your radio picks it up it only gets microvolts, or MILLIONTHS of a volt! A bee might get hot feet landing directly on a cellular tower antenna but a few feet away would be enough for it to not notice a damn thing! I think people have included cellular towers in their list of fears simply because they know little or nothing about them and are just making up a 'grab bag' of pretty well anything. Certainly Mr. Ashley's links are REALLY light about anything definite as regards radio waves! They list it almost as an afterthought, couching the idea with lots of "perhaps we should do some research on this as well". They may be very good botanists who have set up those sites but they appear to not know enough about electricity to change a plug on a lamp! Obviously, it's outside their field and they are trying to apply logic without having enough basic knowledge to use it appropriately. The confusion also comes from the fact that we humans hold cell phones smack against the sides of our heads! While the Inverse Square Law shows us that the levels are 'mice nuts' at any distance from the source, having the source pasted to your skull is a different story! There may indeed be some negative effects from this practice but it is not supported by physics to try to draw similarities with having a cellular tower in the same field as a bee colony.

Ok, that is what the Defense Minister said. Now, again I ask: What is your position? Do you deny the shelling and rockets? Are you saying that Israel should ignore them and not respond? Are you saying that Israel should return land even though in the past when they tried that the land was used as more convenient launch sites against them? I've haven't heard anything from you that doesn't sound unilaterally in favour of the Palestinians. I'm just trying to pin you down to a clear position that I can understand.

I wouldn't mind seeing some stats! MADD is a political animal formed around a motherhood issue, like the Liberal gun registry after Marc Lepine's whacko murders in Quebec. Motherhood issues tend to have a very poor record of actually addressing a problem, in real and concrete ways and numbers. Politicians tend to use them to garner votes. Addressing a problem in a 'real world ' way is considered secondary at best. A friend of mine got busted and had to attend one of those education sessions. He said it was a total joke! He had a friend drive him to the particular location, where a bored woman fed a tape into a VCR for them to view. They were treated to lots of graphic clips of people smashed up and killed by drunks and then they were free to go home. He said what struck him was that several of the other attendees drove themselves to the viewing! One of them smelled of booze and was clearly not sober. No one said or bothered to do a thing. Everyone just went through the motions. Another anecdote I know, but typical of how the 'system' tends to operate in reality. If someone has made the claim that MADD has had great success then it is up to them to defend the point. Clearly, the only real measure of success is in a reduction of the percentage of accidents caused by intoxicated drivers, although that stat is skewed a little bit. If you are impaired you are considered at fault, yet often the other driver may have actually caused the mishap. Before the inevitable ad hominem accusation comes my way, my total alcohol intake is about a 6 pack of beer and a couple of shots of expensive Scotch, PER YEAR!

I didn't realize that a liver or an armpit cell had such discriminating taste it could tell the difference between a natural and a man-made signal! Sorry! It's still sheer balderdash! Please note, I'm not disputing the problems with bees. I'm just saying that there are likely many factors involved but radio waves just cannot be one of them. Still, it's an amusing mental picture to think of a hive of bees, all wearing cute little tinfoil hats!

I happen to have quite a bit of experience and education with radio frequency fields. These links of yours appear to have come from the National Inquirer! Have you ever heard of the inverse square law? Do you have any idea of the power output of the average cell phone? What kind of test is it to put a cell phone near a bee hive? There could be dozens of reasons why the bees did not return! Maybe they just didn't like the smell of it! Even if we turned off EVERY radio transmitter on the planet the "soup" of radio emmissions we live in would not decrease by any measurable amount. Why? Because the Sun generates so much electro-magnetic radiation of its own that it swamps out everything generated by man. The Sun has been doing this as long as it has been there. Earth's entire eco-system has evolved within it, including the bees. This whole idea is thinner than the evidence given by the Flat Earth Society.

If I want abuse I'll pay for it! Another one for the ignore list! It's not what you say, it's how you say it! I would prefer to fry in a global warming scenario rather than engage in a vitriolic debate with YOU!

Well, first of all, we aren't talking contamination. We're talking permeability and LOSING CO2 out of the bubbles through the ice, thus lowering the readings. Second, changing the magnitude is the very point! The entire premise of using these trapped bubbles is to get measurements of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere way back then and compared to today! To say that the magnitude is irrelevant shows a total ignorance of what is being discussed! Third, some of us don't comment because we're interested in the whole forest and not spending our lives as anal-obsessives over nit-picking at all the shrubs. I swear that if we were in a lifeboat that had a hole in it some of us would be trying to fix it and others would be arguing about the size and shape of the hole, accusing others of exaggerating the rate of flow of seawater into the boat. Frankly Waldo, you remind me of a cranky version of the Sheldon character in the "Big Bang" show. No one disputes his raw intelligence but Man! He can drive you crazy obsessing with the trivial!

Perhaps there's a simpler explanation, Michael. Someone with an agenda makes a claim based on those numbers that things are warming up. A layman looks at those numbers and to him the differences are to small to appear to be significant. There are two possible explanations. One is that the scientist has a technical argument that proves the differences ARE significant! The other is that the differences ARE trivial, and the technical argument is just technobabble to try to fool the ignorant! Don't totally lose faith in your own abilities. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar! Sometimes even the most respected scientist is full of crap! They are human beings subject to mistakes and errors, just like the rest of us. The only difference is that their mistakes tend to be more spectacular.

Perhaps we should go one step further and encourage mothers to let their babies hear Domenic Troiano guitar playing while still in the womb. That might help inoculate them against hiphop. If it affects them genetically so that the inoculation is passed on then so much the better!