Jump to content

lenwick

Member
  • Posts

    26
  • Joined

  • Last visited

About lenwick

  • Birthday 01/15/1935

Contact Methods

Profile Information

  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Norfolk Ont.

lenwick's Achievements

Explorer

Explorer (4/14)

  • First Post
  • Collaborator
  • Conversation Starter
  • Week One Done
  • One Month Later

Recent Badges

0

Reputation

  1. I cant believe some of the posts Khadr was only 15 yrs old a child.We dont treat children's of 15 like adults in Canada.Blame his father hes was the bad guy
  2. My Grandfather was killed at 26 in the battle.I have the same name so i never forget
  3. Harper says he'll respect Kyoto bill, but adds it's meaningless
  4. The Gap Between the Rich and the Poor Poor bashing and scapegoating poor people is behaviour that reveals a feature of society in Canada that is becoming a more serious problem every year. Canada has become a place where there are a few extraordinarily wealthy people and a growing number of very poor people, and each year the very few wealthy people control an increasing amount of the country's wealth. In 1984, the poorest 20% of Canadians owned –0.3 % of the total private wealth of Canada (assets that can be used to generate income). The second 20% owned 2.4 % of Canada's wealth. The third 20% owned 9.4%. The fourth 20% owned 19.8%, and the richest 20% of Canadians owned 68.8% of Canada's wealth. Since the 1980s the situation has become worse. From 1981 to 1991, the wealthiest 20% of families in Canada increased their share of family income by $6.2 billion, at the expense of middle- and low-income families. In 1991, the average poor household was $1,029 further below the poverty line than it was in 1981. In 1991, the bottom 60% of Canadian families had a smaller share of market income than in 1973. If you think of Canada's total wealth as one dollar, and you divide it among 100 people, the bottom 40 people would receive 2.1 cents (2.4 – 0.3). The top ten people would receive 51.3 cents. Now imagine wealth distribution as a one-hour parade in which everyone in Canada marches, and everyone's size is proportional to his/her individual wealth. A person of average wealth will be represented by a person of average height. For about the first twelve minutes of this parade we would see nothing because the marchers would be underground (bottom 20% of Canadians own -0.3% of wealth). Then we would begin to see tiny people, but it is only at half past the hour when we would see dwarfs six inches high, people whose wealth is furniture, a car, maybe some savings. At about fifteen minutes before the hour, we would begin to see people of average height, for about three quarters of our population have fewer assets than the average. In the last few minutes of the parade, we would see giants fifteen to twenty feet tall. In the last minute we would see wealthy giants as tall as the CN Tower in Toronto, and in the last second we would see some of Canada's most powerful businessmen with assets of more than $100 million and ranging into the billions. Conrad Black, the newspaper robber baron; Paul Desmarais, a Montreal entrepreneur known as "Le Patron" in Quebec; Galen Weston, head of the Weston food empire; Charles Bronfman, head of a massive corporate structure; and Kenneth Thomson, head of the Thomson papers and the richest man in Canada, would be miles high. Another image you can create is with strings. Let one inch equal one percentage point of wealth. Now cut a piece of string representing the wealth of the bottom 20%, or six million Canadians. You will find this task difficult to do. A string representing the wealth of the second 20% would be 2.4 inches long, and a string representing the wealth of the richest 20% of Canadians would be 68.8 inches long. Can we have economic prosperity and a just society at the same time, or can we only expect to live in a country with so much economic inequality, so many poor and so few rich? Robert Kuttner, in his thoughtful book, The Economic Illusion —False Choices Between Prosperity and Social Justice, points out that the most egalitarian societies often turn out to be the most productive ones with the lowest unemployment rate. He reminds us that during World War Two, tax rates and tax collections were at record high levels, as was the rate of economic growth. In his conclusion, Kuttner stresses the importance of full employment and a more egalitarian distribution of wage income to a healthy economy. He observes that the choices that can guide us toward both economic prosperity and social justice are political choices, not economic ones. We don't have to have this misery of unemployment and poverty and so much inequality. There are in fact countries in the world that have avoided economic inequality and the poverty and unemployment that goes with it. Norway is an excellent example. In Norway, inflation is below 2%, and the unemployment rate is the lowest in Europe. There are many social programs that are not a safety net, but part of the vision of a just society. Norway's health minister, Gudmund Hernes, said that his country's investment in health, education, and financial security paid large economic dividends, and he criticized those who wished to break up trade unions and downsize government by laying off government workers. "They are producing such dissatisfaction and enormous strains on society," he said. "That will come back to haunt you."
  5. GAGETOWN, N.B. (CP) - Five soldiers at a New Brunswick army base have been charged with drug trafficking. ADVERTISEMENT Corporals Brian Stevens, William Venator, Garry Kettle, Harold Robinson and Pte. Allan Hogan are all serving at CFB Gagetown, near Fredericton. They are accused of trafficking in cocaine, ecstasy and marijuana. The five were charged following a seven-month undercover investigation by the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service.
  6. When the NDP had Ontario we had the worst recession since the 1930tys Bob Rea saved jobs with the days off.Harris was Lucky things got a lot better in the economy
  7. The last thing we want is a election Harper has a lot that needed doing the other party's will support him for a while.Its up to Harper how he plays the game and when he pulls the plug
  8. :angry: Charles AdlerSat, December 31, 2005 Rotten is the only verdict for Paul By CHARLES ADLER Breaking News: We have before us a political murder-suicide story, the likes of which we have never witnessed in Canada. Paul Martin is murdering the Liberal government of which he is the boss, while at the same time killing his chances of becoming anything more than a footnote in Canadian history. He is now only weeks away from becoming another John Turner, a man who barely had time to run a series of downs before the final gun sounded. While it may be impolite to put a person on trial before the victim has expired, this ain't court. It's a column. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the name of the accused is Paul Martin. We used to call him Paul Martin Junior, in the days when his dad, a generation ago, was a senior cabinet minister with elegance and eloquence. The accused is an apple that has fallen very far from the tree. At this moment, he cannot even see the tree without accessing nuclear-powered binoculars. Permit yourself to think of his graceful, respected late father as Apple Tree and the accused as Rotten Apple. Apple Tree surrounded himself by staffers who had great taste and dignity. They knew that the senior minister who always aspired to the highest standards of public service, demanded the same of the people closest to him. But Rotten Apple had different preferences. For nearly a decade, he played on a team led by the linguistically rancid Jean Chretien. But nobody close to Chretien would ever make the mistake of calling Rotten Apple a team player. They were aware that Rotten was frequently using his worms to crawl into the computers and cellphones and, most recently, the Blackberries of key media soldiers. For years the soldiers, on the assumption that some day Rotten would be king, accommodated his proclivities and fetishes. They were prepared to be treated like toadies in return for access to the secrets of power once Rotten replaced Rancid. But who would have thunk that by the time the changing of the guard had taken place there would be so much sewer gas in the house called Liberal, that all Rotten could do was distance himself from Rancid? He invited one of the good old Gomers of the Quebec bench to run interference for him. Gomer hired a crony of former prime minister Brian Mulroney's to prosecute the Chretien crowd. Gomer was the dutiful gopher that Rotten wanted him to be. He tied a noose around Rancid and then being the dutiful gopher that he was born to be, delivered unto Rotten the Holy Grail of legal innocence -- personal exoneration. Having been personally exonerated, Rotten's gang decided that they now had what they needed to scorch the immoral earth that their opponent Stephen Harper walked on. Of great assistance to the artificially enthusiastic Rotten was the contrast of an opponent, Harper, whose personality temperature was colder than that of the average cadaver. Rotten was preparing to smite Cadaver with a series of TV ads crafted to convey the impression to innocent citizens that if Cadaver ever ruled the dominion, Canada would morph into Alabama. But Rotten's Christmas of 2005 ended abruptly with a Boxing Day Bang when a certain headline became quickly seared into the minds of the innocents: RCMP criminal investigation. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury: On Jan. 23, you are being asked to return a verdict of Rotten in the First Degree. The Liberals don't deserve to win we heard all the promises 10 yrs ago they never keep them
  9. What part dont you understand Still one comment this week made me howl with disbelief: Stephen Harper saying Canadians would not tolerate a "Liberal opposition" that would not co-operate with a Conservative minority government. Hello? Like we wanted to tolerate a Conservative party that did not co-operate with a minority Liberal government? Like we wanted an election before the holidays? Like any of the opposing parties are running on anything other than a thirst for power?
  10. Harper: The new height of hypocrisy editorial cartoons By Dianne Rinehart The Hamilton Spectator More articles by this columnist (Dec 24, 2005) * The reason why the Conservative Party is unable to budge the polls may be quite simply found in the electorate's distrust of its leader When politicians call an election that nobody wanted and that no one really expects will change things, it isn't too surprising that hypocrisy reigns supreme. Still one comment this week made me howl with disbelief: Stephen Harper saying Canadians would not tolerate a "Liberal opposition" that would not co-operate with a Conservative minority government. Hello? Like we wanted to tolerate a Conservative party that did not co-operate with a minority Liberal government? Like we wanted an election before the holidays? Like any of the opposing parties are running on anything other than a thirst for power? Pl-e-e-ease! Nobody gave the electorate a choice, but the Conservatives surely had one. And that was to make Parliament work hard for Canadians -- not for the Tory party. Or Harper. Call me naive but Harper's hypocrisy left me outraged. Here is a man who cosied up to the Bloc Quebecois to bring down the government, but says a Conservative minority government would not join forces with the Bloc Quebecois to maintain power. "It's simply unworkable to work with a party that isn't committed to the fundamental institutional structures of the unity and the same basic kind of core values as other federalists," he told The Globe and Mail. Interesting. Who else would he be joining forces with to maintain power in a minority House? Certainly not the NDP, whose natural coalition partners are the Liberals. So how disingenuous of him is it to suggest he wouldn't be counting on Bloc votes for support? And how would that coalition play in the rest of the country? "Joining with the Bloc to defeat the government is one thing," notes political scientist and McMaster University professor Henry Jacek. "Holding power with the Bloc is another." No wonder Harper is in denial. His ploys with the Bloc are already costing him votes in B.C., says Jacek. And what would a Conservative-Bloc coalition achieve for Canada? Decentralization, notes Jacek, power to Quebec which the Conservatives would then have to offer the other provinces -- along with a share of the federal surplus. But it would never be enough for a sovereigntist party, he notes. To maintain power: "They're then going to have to keep offering the Bloc more." Decentralization is putting it mildly. Harper offered Quebec it's own separate voice on world bodies, such as UNESCO, this week. Think it doesn't matter that Canada's voice on the world stage might be weakened? Imagine, then, a world where Quebec representatives voice different views than their Canadian counterparts at human rights and economic conferences. For example, would Quebec , perhaps looking out for its own economic interests, have sided with Britain against former Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney's insistence of a Commonwealth-wide economic boycott of South Africa during the apartheid era, a stand that helped defeat that former evil empire? No, it's important that Canadians speak as one to the world. How far is Harper willing to go to woo Quebec? How about his sinister suggestion that Prime Minister Paul Martin would rather see the Parti Quebecois win power in Quebec so the Liberals can stand up for Canada. Does a comment, as Jacek points out "totally lacking in credibility", help Canadian unity? So why go there? He's desperate, says Jacek. "They started out with a game plan (daily policy announcements) and it didn't work. ... Now they're really unhinged and unfocused because they're so frustrated." John Wright, a senior vice-president with the polling firm Ipsos-Reid, says Harper's negative affect on Conservative party fortunes is astonishing and suggests the Conservative's only electoral hope is to reinforce the notion that Harper could be reined in by Parliament in a minority government situation. Dianne Rinehart is a former magazine editor and news correspondent in Ottawa, Vancouver, Toronto and Moscow.
  11. Not for the people who lose their jobs. Huh?From article above: <{POST_SNAPBACK}> 3600 jobs in Ontario
  12. Here's how the latest Decima numbers break down. First, the horse race: Liberals 33 per cent, Conservatives 26, NDP 22, and Bloc Quebecois 13. The survey of 1,028 Canadians from Nov. 11-14 left Liberal support unchanged from a week earlier, but the Tories were down four percentage points. NDP support has edged up in four of the last five weeks. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 per cent, 19 times out of 20. Decima also asked respondents how election timing would influence their voting behaviour. Under a January-February election scenario, Liberal support actually rose a point to 34 per cent, the Conservatives remained static at 26 and the New Democrats fell two points to 20 per cent. Some 58 per cent overall said they'd prefer an election in late March or early April - Prime Minister Paul Martin's preferred timetable. Just 28 per cent said they wanted a January or February date. http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/stor...?hub=TopStories
  13. Do you ever wonder why Bilderberg is never in the news look it up
  14. by Charles Overbeck Matrix Editor [email protected] The date is May 14, 1998. The attendees -- 120 representatives of the Western political, financial and corporate elite -- cruise through the untamed Scottish countryside in black limousines on their way to the swank Turnberry Hotel in Ayrshire. The discussions they will engage in, and the consensus they reach, will influence the course of Western civilization and the future of the entire planet. This meeting will take place behind closed doors in total secrecy, protected by a phalanx of armed guards. The Bilderberg is about to get busy once again. According to a Bilderberg Society press release, the 46th Bilderberg meeting was an informal discussion "to discuss the Atlantic relationship in a time of change. Among others the Conference will discuss NATO, Asian Crisis, EMU, Growing Military Disparity, Japan, Multilateral Organizations, Europe's social model, Turkey, EU/US Market Place [sic]." Those who attend Bilderberg meetings do so in a private rather than official capacity. From former CIA director John Deutch to New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, each guest attendee is hand-picked by the Bilderberg's organizing committee to join in secret deliberations about the propagation of Western hegemony in the New World Order. All Bilderberg discussions are conducted in absolute secrecy. To guarantee solitude, the Group customarily books an entire hotel in a secluded location. The hotel is protected by a tight security grid of heavily armed guards from the U.S. Secret Service, various European secret service agencies and the local police. Although some reporters and many media owners are present at these meetings, you will hear nothing about the Bilderberg in the news. According to the Bilderberg's press release, "Participants have agreed not to give interviews to the press during the meeting. In contacts with the news media after the conference it is an established rule that no attribution should be made to individual participants of what was discussed during the meeting." A source close to the Turnberry conference told The Scotsman: "I cannot comment officially on whether this is a conference of the Bilderberg group... This is a strictly private non-governmental conference, one of a series of such meetings. Their purpose is the discuss most informally and confidentially topics of current concern to the democracies of Europe and America." Bilderberg proponents argue that this cloak of secrecy is vital to ensuring an honest and vigorous debate. "Some of the delegates are politicians, but everyone is here privately," the Turnberry conference source told The Scotsman. "It inspires frothing at the mouth of conspiracy theories, but the purpose of the privacy is to allow delegates to have a frank and constructive debate and get to the heart of things knowing that they are not going to be reported." Of course, this secrecy also guarantees that the vast majority of the world's citizenry is kept completely in the dark regarding Bilderberg deliberations, even though the consensus of the Group may affect national and international government and commerce. The extremes to which the Bilderberg goes to achieve this level of secrecy raises serious suspicions about the Group's motives in the minds of many. Critics of the Bilderberg say: The Group perceives itself as being supra-governmental. Indeed, Bilderberg founder Prince Bernhard himself once said, "It is difficult to re-educate people who have been brought up on nationalism to the idea of relinquishing part of their sovereignty to a supra-national body." (Alden Hatch, H. R. H. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands: An Authorized Biography, G. G. Harrap & Co. [London], 1962.) The Group coercively manipulates global finances and establishes rigid and binding monetary rates around the world. The Group selects political figures whom the Bilderberg determines should become rulers, and targets those whom it wants removed from power. Rather than pursuing an agenda which would work to solve global health, energy, environmental and agricultural problems, the Group pursues an agenda which guarantees the propagation of its own power and the enrichment of its members, at the expense of human rights and environmental degradation worldwide. As Bilderberg critic Tony Gosling wrote, "One cannot help but be a little suspicious when priorities for the future of mankind are being considered, by those who have real influence over that future, in total secret."
  15. Undermined by private sector values PAUL NESBITT-LARKING It is not about the federal Liberal party. It is not about Jean Chrétien or Paul Martin and all the petulant hostilities that have dragged on between their acolytes. It is not about the bureaucratic centre of the federal state and it is not about the heartland of small-town Quebec. It is not even about sponsorship or advertising. Justice John Gomery 's report is, ultimately, about failure. The report represents an opportunity to step back and assess our collective failure to learn from the past and our failure to take full ethical responsibility for those actions and inactions that take place in our orbit. Gomery speaks to a deep moral failure that is summarized in his expression "the culture of entitlement." In the end, it is a failure to adequately socialize the communitarian principles of public service among key decision-makers at the apex of the political process that should concern us most. The blame and the shame are much broader in scope than any one party, any one order of government or set of institutions. We have already begun to witness the name-calling and the self-righteous posturing of politicians and partisans on all sides, eager to convert their rhetorical tirades into votes in the next election. They should be ignored. Three decades of neo-liberal approaches to public management have contributed to the pervasive failures of public bureaucracies. The much-vaunted reforms associated with the public service, downsizing, flatlining, outsourcing, deregulation, and public-private partnerships were heralded as advancements. The promise of those who "reinvented" government was that citizens would be treated as consumers who could demand "best practices" from public officials retrained in the efficient ways of the private sector. There would be transparency and "shareholder-style" accountability. Public servants and public bureaucracies have, indeed, adapted to the ways of the private sector. But they have done so in ways that were unanticipated and seriously flawed. Increasingly tolerant of personal gain and advantage, unconcerned with unprecedented levels of socio-economic inequality , willing to turn a blind eye to wrongdoing, and unwilling to insist that the good of the community must trump private advantage, the culture of entitlement has become more than a marginal subculture among a few bad apples. It is now widespread throughout systems of public bureaucracy. Despite these current trends in public management, there remain excellent public servants and political leaders of profound personal integrity. Working heroically to sustain an adequate public service, these men and women understand that transparency is no good when key political actors can readily shift the frame through which citizens scrutinize the political system. They realize that accountability is too often a matter of limited damage control after the fact and that what is really needed is a personal sense of responsibility toward the public. Transparency and accountability are no good in a system that systematically rewards personal advantage, cost-cutting and superficial models of efficiency. Nearly a century ago, sociologist Max Weber spelled out the basics of those practical criteria that were necessary to establish a rational and responsive public bureaucracy. For too many public bureaucracies in Canada, the United States, and beyond, there has been a failure even to apply the basics. In the spirit of Gomery himself, we can summarize Weber's main arguments regarding the public bureaucracy in plain language: Public servants should only exert their authority over areas specifically assigned to their regulatory reach under the law. There should be clear chains of command and hierarchies of authority, with adequate reporting systems and no opportunity for those lower in the chain of command to act beyond their specified authority. There should be no confusion whatsoever between the public roles of the civil servant and any private roles they might have. There should under no circumstances be any usage of public authority for private gain. Any position or contract with the public bureaucracy should be open to free and equal competition. Appointments, promotions and contracts should be based upon demonstrable merit and qualification. Looking back from the early 21st century, we need to add some further sense of purpose and drive to Weber's model and speak perhaps of a renewed idealism of public service. Untrammelled by references to the world of private transaction, this renewed vision of civic responsibility, duty, quiet efficiency and loyalty would be grounded in a simple acknowledgement of the public as the political people and nothing more nor less than that.
×
×
  • Create New...