Fuschi’s Canadian Forum

 The editor of the National Post received a letter from a woman who was amazed at the scorn shown by her liberal friends towards conservative ideas. I sent this piece to add my own experiences and possibly shed some light on this phenomenon:

The title represents  a shopping list for the youthful Toronto criminal career aspirant. Pressed by the territorial kingpin, for greater returns, the ambitious scofflaw will insist on these raw materials with which to nurture a productive neighbourhood.

Guns and money are the obvious tools of his trade and require no further elaboration. Equally important, yet often overlooked by us straits, is a steady supply of officious idiots. These are vital to the success of any criminal enterprise for their part in ensuring the diversion of great financial, legal, and law-enforcement resources, down bottomless black holes, and safely away from legitimate criminal activity.

For the definition of idiots to be complete, in this context, you should find illustrations of the parents of the mother of all black-hole resource diversions – the gun registry. But, to be current, room should dedicated to Toronto mayor Miller, for his notably misguided campaign to attack the city’s gun crime by agitating for a federal gun ban.

First let’s admit that the idea is not unpopular. But it is so because of the indiscriminating gullibility which sucks so many Canadians into an intellectual void when they hear the word gun. Everyone who supports Miller’s movement should test that support with honest answers to these questions:

• Which is the more serious crime, murder, or contravening a gun ban?
• Will those who consider murder as part of their job, give a fig about the gun ban?
• Then, who is this new law going to deter?

 The answers – murder, no, and no one – are obvious. Then, it is equally obvious that even if the law were passed and enforced vigorously, nothing would change. Those who use guns as tools of the trade, will rightfully split their spleens at the tremendous wasted  resources being diverted away from them. Which leads us to the, “What can it possibly hurt to take guns away from society,” crowd? The registry should have been a vivid illustration of the tremendous waste of manpower and money, and the consequential hobbling effects it had on real law enforcement, which was ordered to squander their time pursuing the wrong people. 

If Miller thinks this is going to get him votes, he is correct. I see every two-bit Toronto hood motivating their troops to vote for him, probably for the first time in their life. But that’s what this is all about, isn’t it? In the successful tradition of Jean Chretien, make a great deal of fuss over a policy that will achieve nothing, but which will dupe the gullible into believing that all the noise means action.

If Miller was truly concerned about the object of this enterprise, he could follow a clear example currently unfolding in the federal persecution of Tamil Tiger assets. First, identify the enemy and declare their status. Second, arm the law-enforcement agencies with the tools to move against this enemy. Last, go after them.

On the other hand, there is Miller’s approach. Fire the police chief (Fantino) for getting too vocal on the identity of the perpetrators. Saddle the law-enforcement agencies with impossible rules of engagement. And last, go after the wrong people. Toronto’s gangsta community need not fear that the supply of idiots will dry up any time soon.

The Law of Unintended Consequences reserves a special degree of scorn for the stupid and well-meaning. It seems that too often, the two go hand in hand, as if those who wear their altruism on their sleeve, feel no complementary need to arm it with knowledge. How often is this not the failure of the political left? To mean well absolves the activist from the responsibility of understanding the consequences of his good intentions.

An illustration of this phenomenon resulted from my March 29 post (Our New Icon, the Hermit Kingdom). The piece was linked to the blog of an avowed leftist, who paraded it and others, as exhibits against the “deniers”. I inferred in the post, that the greatest price to be paid for the folly of standing in the dark for an hour, was the lost opportunity value of all that would not occur. To this, a particularly air-headed example of what populates the environmental cult, replied derisively that nothing happens on Saturday night, anyway, except theatres and bars. To this person all the world’s progress through research and scientific endeavour, comes to a halt, along with her brain, on bar night.

This is entirely representative of the sort of mental vacuum that gets caught in the global warming doomsday net – people whose group hugging is a response to fear and the continuing ululation about the harm to our children, and is accompanied by insufficient knowledge to correctly spell environmentalism.

Even now, the Law of Unintended Consequences is rushing in to fill the intellectual void created by pressure from the cult. I began to read warnings several years ago, of potential consequences of pursuing the bio-fuel alternative. They warned that it was not energy efficient and thereby solved nothing, and that it would drive up the prices of food. Furthermore, it was being pursued for purely political purposes; as a sop to the bleatings of the Kyoto crowd, and as a sop to farmers who needed the new market and higher prices.

The Unintended Consequences of this “show” solution are now impacting billions of poor people throughout the world, in skyrocketing grain prices. This is only the beginning. BC and Quebec have recently established a toe in the door of carbon tax lunacy, citing good intentions for raising the price of fuels. If the near 100% increase in the demand-driven price of fuels, in the past couple of years, has not accomplished the sort of energy restraint, carbon taxes claim to foster, who are these people trying to kid? The answer is obvious – the vacuous, earth-saving taxpayer who will willingly walk to the edge of the cliff.

The bio-fuel debacle is only the first warning that saving the earth is not a job for the intellectually uninvolved. We had best start discriminating between inconvenient truths and convenient falsehoods before we start amputating parts of a patient that is not ill.

It used to be fashionably derogatory to call Italians, Wops, but that word is seldom heard, now. We have matured as a society, and Italian-born Canadians, like myself, find it easy to ignore the pathetic examples that still use the word. When we do hear it, we do not initiate a movement to banish the perpetrator to Siberia for social rehabilitation. This desire would effectively eradicate, not the deed itself, but its history, which has taught us what was wrong with the deed in the first place.

The current hue and cry, by all the obvious suspects, to banish MP Tom Lukiwski, is a perfect example of such a mistake. Mr. Lukiwski said something in the past which, for good or bad, reflected values of the time. Society has matured and censored those who repeat such phrases today. Our justice system has evolved to reflect the new societal norms. Squashing the MP with all the firepower being advised by opposition MPs, and gay rights advocates, is nothing more than an attempt to rewrite history. It is an attempt to silence every past source of unacceptable behaviour, and, having thus whitewashed history, an invitation to repeat history’s mistakes.

It is something else, as well. It is a further example of the cheapened value of the word scandal. The number of “scandals” which have recently mired the wheels of parliament, is scandalous. Were it not for Mr. Harper’s ability to ensnare the Liberals in their own web of mendacity, and force needed legislation past their ineffective bleatings, parliament would have become a legislative version of the National Enquirer.

The opposition is so incapable of contributing anything of value to the lives of Canadians, that the search for another Conservative scandal has completely derailed any pretense at alternative policies, or visible principle. What passes for opposition at this time, amounts to a mugging of the Canadian taxpayer. Another parliamentary inquest on the subject, is parallel to striking a debate at the ship’s bridge, and leaving the helm to fend for itself.

The NDP who outed Mr. Lukiwski and now sit on the sidelines with feigned impartiality must reap the reward that a snitch deserves. Their shallowness contends amongst the infamous with the likes of Judas. Where was their outrage when they supported the rancid Liberal government in the depths of adscam? What more can be said about them except that never has the constituent been so poorly served?

The Lukiwski affair, has no place in parliament and should be subject solely to the judgement of Canadians at large. The sensitivities of gays (Is that still an acceptable word, or am I ready for rehab?) have the full force of current societal norms to bolster them. The sight of jackboots to the throat of a closet homophobe, and the fear of language chill, does nothing to further the cause of gays in a progressive society. If we all must feel this fear, for fear of what we may have once thought or said, gays will only reap backlash. The battle is won, and a great victor is a gracious one.

It is said that if you Google Earth and watch through the eye of our satellites, at night, you will eventually do a fly-over of North Korea. At that point, you will see a land that stands out amongst those around it, for the desolation of darkness that shrouds its. Perhaps then, North Korea should be the inspirational icon for the WWF (The World Wrestling Federation should sue.) and its full-time cadre of environmental Cassandras.

Those are the people who have brought us “Stand in the Dark Day”. (Sorry, but I have not sufficient respect for this idiocy to get the name right.) That’s today, the day when we are going to surrender to fear and shadows in order to save the world. The day when bleeding the patient may be re-legitimized. The day when the ignorance induced of political constipation, has so blinded these noisy minimalists, that they can no longer see the light. Make no mistake, their battle is not with the wastrels amongst us, but with the electron. They have no wish to conserve, as conservationists might, but to eliminate, as environmentalists will. Their goal is to fight for the world, not for man, who is no more than an intrusive organism on the body of the planet.

I will posit that if any real effort is made to be part of this farce, the lost opportunity value of all the things that did not occur while we were standing in the dark, will far outweigh the elusive results of the effort. I believe, furthermore that mankind’s general direction has been for the better throughout its stay on this planet. We have displayed plenty of warts in that time, but that is the nature of our imperfection. Our free wills may require another millennium to make all the necessary mistakes that will ensure we do not repeat them. But without a doubt our improvement of the lot of our fellow man, has been positive. The gift of the electron was one of those signposts in the advance of mankind that we can be proud of, and its use will continue to advance our lives in a myriad ways. Its increased use will eventually help solve whatever problems the WWF hopes to solve by cowering in the dark.

So count me out. I suggest instead, that at the prescribed hour, you embrace the electron. Pick one of those songs that is especially inspitrational for you. You know, the kind that sends tingles up your spine and actually makes you think positive thoughts about the animal (us) that created it. (My humble suggestion is Andrea Boccelli’s, “Time to Say Good-bye”.) Get into the music, and put on whatever lights or light show will comfort you in the battle against the darkness and ignorance lurking outside the door. Let the world shine with man-made brilliance and lets celebrate this wonderful gift, rather than mimicking the dark ages of the Hermit Kingdom. Then say good-bye to the WWF.

Boil the McGuinty-Flaherty feud to its essence and what remains is the divide between governance styles. While Flaherty is making most of the noise the Liberals have much at stake because under no economic circumstances are they ever ready to alter their tried and true, bribe and conquer approach.

It is being argued that this is strictly political, that it is a recycled feud and so on. It is all of those, but most of all it is about clinging to your core modus operandi. The harder job is Flaherty’s and that’s why he is being aggressive. The federal government will get blamed for possible economic retraction, and they have been caught with their defenses down. The economic turmoil is unfolding faster than anyone had anticipated. With a currency that is making us uncompetitive, limited maneuvering room in interest rates, and no additional spending room, there is only one way to stanch the bleeding – lower business costs. But Flaherty knows this cannot be a one man job. Ontario is too big and important to be allowed to play its own game.

In today’s Ontario budget (this was written before its release) we will hear the other side of the story. Be prepared to hear many invocations about investments. Investments are Liberal speak for bribes. They will be seen to be doing socially conscious things (meals for school kids) which are good for votes. They will claim that it is not possible to allot some money to the decrease of business taxes,without throwing all those kids out of school. In the next breath, they will allot similar amounts to make geographically specific handouts to manufacturers. These are good for votes.

Windsorites have always been big on these, but do they work? Well, what about the fifty million Ontario gave to a local car manufacturer to upgrade their paint facilities. Shortly after the bombast and photo ops and claims of job security had wafted to the ground, 1000 people were trimmed from the operations of that assembly. It’s a mug’s game, and neither McGuinty nor Dwight Duncan have shown the acumen required to pick a winner. (Look around you if you doubt it.) Why is one firm’s need greater than another, anyway?

There is a disclaimer being voiced, that lower corporate taxes can only help profitable firms, and that all those wanting to leave are not profitable, so tax cuts are useless. But a World Bank (part of the IMF) study recently rated 178 countries, by assessing all of their business tax costs, including employment taxes, property and transportation and other taxes such as GST and PST. Canada placed 99th and Ontario, if rated would have been about 139. Does this matter to the companies already in trouble? No, the changes should have been made sooner. But to companies thinking of locating here (?) it matters plenty. They are not planning to set up shop here in order to reap losses, and they certainly can’t wait for McGuinty to decide if they are winners, or green enough, or in a prized Liberal riding.

None of the above information would matter to McGuinty if it was delivered in tablets from on high. This is simply not the way Liberals do business. Tax cuts are just too indiscriminate and might fall into the wrong, ungrateful hands.

The McGuinty government is like a mouse in a maze. It is driven to follow its nose down each corridor, pursuing a vague instinct that at some point there is a goal waiting for it, but uncertain of what it may look like when it gets there. Hence it is easily diverted by every corridor of opportunity, and sniffs at each dead end as though uncertain that it has not reached what it set out to find.

The latest diversion to occupy them in their search for who-knows-what, is the search for villains smoking in cars. This, hard on the heels of their previous diversion to start eradicating the Lord’s prayer. Is it just me that sees these obsessions as useless, meddlesome, policy fillers, or has this government so wiped clean the slate of concerns in the minds of Ontario’s citizens, that there is nothing left to pursue but corridors that go nowhere? If the effort to dupe Ontario by faking activity leads it to flail uselessly in such directions, why don’t they at least connect a generator to their arms, and produce some useable energy. That would be as close as they have come to addressing our encroaching hydro crisis, and certainly makes more sense then their idiot-meters.

If I sound just a little sarcastic at their latest con job, is it that I see something wrong with it? What can possibly be wrong with further stifling smokers? What’s wrong with protecting children from their demented smoking parents? Can it be so much to ask police to become enforcers of political correctness? Don’t they have enough to do? You know…like enforcing the law in Caledonia. Or, stifling the mafia-like activities of native “protection committees”.

Oops! Wait, it looks like there is trouble in paradise after all. We did not fix the Caledonia deal yet. Maybe McGuinty is sniffing down a side corridor as we speak, looking for a solution none of us can see. Just like Dwight Duncan is sniffing down the corridor labeled “manufacturing dead end”, trying to find a reason - other than taxes – why we are becoming a manufacturing wasteland. (Well, Duncan, why not outlaw bad weather, maybe that’s it?) And, is that Pupatello following her nose on the Windsor-Detroit border crossing solution? The answer, after seven long years of premasticating the problem, is happening as we speak. Soon there will be fewer trucks needing a new crossing, just like there will be no factories left to deliver to.

It appears that this government has plenty of real work to do instead of pursuing its politically correct hands into our back pockets. It could open its eyes, see the farce and destruction its intestinal vacuum has created in Caledonia and act on it, like they were hired to do. It could grow a spine and take real measures to address the vital issues of an embattled economy, instead of pursuing the Liberal solution of pointing fingers.

But aside from the invertebrate nature of the McGuinty government, there is another pressing reason why chasing people into their cars to stamp out their cigarettes, is the wrong thing to do. Read Ben Franklin’s words below my page header, and burn them into your brain. Then remember, when the smoking storm troopers have come into your car, and then your house, and smoking is finally defeated, they will still be here, and they’ll find something else to enforce. For giving them more power, this government is not only incompetent, but dangerous.

It is characteristic of the function of the Liberal brain, that some MPs actually believe that the parliamentary farce they are currently inducing is payback for adscam. That belief displays logical deficiencies. First, because the barrage of accusations they have made against the Conservative government, are all designed to create smoke and blind the watcher, rather than fire. Secondly, because adscam was a real and criminal affront to the trust of Canadian taxpayers, for which they have yet to atone. The persecution of Guite and the false-front ad agency scammers, was an exercise in scapegoating, and the real government kingpins have yet to pay the piper.

If the media were not so obviously flaccid in their duty to demand some rigor of the Liberal accusers, we would not be subject to the smoke coming from these fabrications.

Was Mr. Cadman bribed? If he was, he was in good company. (E tu Belinda?) Furthermore, such attempts to overcome the faltering Martin government were a valuable service to Canadians everywhere. After twelve years of abuse at the hands of Chretien, we were being served by a dithering, directionless Liberal caucus which would have sold their mothers to stay in power. That Mr. Cadman – God bless his memory - found the advances of the Conservatives more offensive than the utter immorality of the Liberals, is the real shame in this entire chapter.

What about the RESP development? Hey, it’s a tax cut. Bad thing for the Conservatives to oppose. Embrace it and cut the legs off some Liberal turkeys to pay for it. (Remember, that idiotic Liberal spawn, the gun registry, is still alive and well.) Blame the fallout on them.

The Obama-NAFTA incident is a true indicator of the Liberals’ moral turpitude. The man was lying and deserves to be exposed, but the Liberals don’t see it that way, because they did precisely the same thing. The lie about aborting our trade agreements with the US, was instrumental in giving us twelve years of the Chretien dark ages. And although NAFTA survives to this day, the Liberals have never apologized to Canadians, nor explained their actions. As for their claim that the Conservative government is interfering with the US electoral process, have they conveniently forgotten the Chretien administration’s (again) public endorsement of Gore over Bush?

Stir all this together and you get what passes for service to the taxpayer by the Natural Opposing Party. But that should not come as a surprise, they were an abject failure as stewards of the Canadian trust, and now they are spectacular failures in opposition. They have as yet, no policy alternatives with which to justify their obstruction to Conservative measures, nor do they represent a functional alternative to the Harper government. Their every effort is dedicated to the generation of negative opinion. This is their singular claim to the reigns of power, and only a diehard, brain dead partisan can possibly support what they see there.

The TRW strike, in Windsor, which shut down the Chrysler minivan assembly operation, looks like a case of the tail wagging the dog. While the striking workers may get some sympathy over their $11.00/hr. pay, more sober heads are being shaken at the sight of the remaining automotive assembler in this city being brought to its knees by a relatively small supplier. More importantly, this is happening at a time when the city is the unemployment capital of the country.

A great deal of airtime is being expended by many to argue in support of the workers. They have children to raise and homes to pay for; costs these days are too high to bear with such paltry wages; they deserve a decent living, and so on.

Let’s ignore for the moment that it takes a person of real courage or very poor luck, to tackle family and mortgage challenges at those wages. Let’s ignore the fact that the 150 or so, workers, can’t all be in that position. Let’s, in fact assume that they do deserve more. Will that be enough reason for them to get more?

I believe that this is no mere David and Goliath duster, and that these people are being used as pawns in a game of much higher stakes. Today’s National Post pointed out that Chrysler minivan sales are reacting to the worsening downturn in the US and are down fifty percent in the last month. They can afford a stoppage at this time, especially if it means making gains for the future. Furthermore, a rumour is being circulated by the CAW which represents both Chrysler and TRW workers, that the company will refuse to pay idled minivan assemblers, on the grounds that the stoppage is a CAW labour dispute. Hence, the company has little to lose, and much to gain.

But what are they trying to gain?

New UAW contracts in the US give the auto manufacturers very favourable wage settlements compared to Canadian wages. CAW boss, Hargrove, has stated publicly, and loudly, that he will not accept the same terms at the approaching contract talks. What if this little showdown is in fact a toe in the water for both sides? The company wants to know how far the CAW will go in a game of chicken, under the current circumstances. And, the union wants to know if they can use leverage against the most important product in the Chrysler line, to extract higher wages for TRW and then other suppliers. This way they can soften the company for a contract showdown.

If the union wins, it will come at considerable immediate cost to everyone that is idled. (This includes not only minivan assemblers, but also all the other local suppliers.) An extended battle will devastate the city further. Furthermore, and much more ominously, it may give the company precisely what it wants - an excuse to leave. If it gets the lower wages it wants, it will continue the present operations and hope, like everyone else, for better economic conditions. But if it loses the battle, it can comfortably house all the minivan capacity it requires in the St. Louis plant, which is larger and more modern. And, it can raise the ante by beginning to shift that production now. This way it can get the lower US wages, and quietly play its hand while appearing to have been forced by an intransigent union.

The CAW is playing a very dangerous game, with most of the possible outcomes not in its favour.

Today’s reports of large declines in wholesale transactions, punctuate the growing turbulence in Canada’s economy. For Ontario, where most of the suffering continues to unfold, it is a confirmation of a growing crisis. All levels of government have in some way, contributed to the decline, but none have aspired to top spot like the McGuinty administration.

Recent emissions from the Ontario Liberals indicate that they are in a pile of defecation, and they know it. It will become increasingly difficult to avoid blame, so they are scapegoating the federal government at every opportunity. The headline says, “Manufacturing sector reeling”, and the content is a whiny lecture by McGuinty about what federal priorities should be, and how they should be addressed. Had this lecture come from someone sitting atop the most prosperous province in the land, it might be digestible. Coming from someone standing in s__t up to his ankles, it gags the reader.

Sources repeatedly highlight the loss of manufacturing jobs in Ontario - some 200,000 since 2002. At this point someone should tell McGuinty that his caucus has presided over the mismanagement of Ontario since almost that time, while the Conservatives have been at the country’s helm since only 2006. Who does he blame before that? A TD bank study projected another 250,000 loss in the next five years, while in the same newspaper, Dalton was dreaming out loud about the pressing necessity of changing the Lord’s prayer.

His lecture to prime minister Harper consisted of fatherly advice about the beauty of subsidies, and the sage revelation that “We need to get beyond tax cuts…” The implication being that Mc’Guinty’s gang knows how to pick the winner of a handout, and that this method is more useful than nuisance tax cuts. Well, nobody was too surprised that he felt this way. His administration got beyond tax cuts immediately, having gouged Ontario with the biggest tax increase in history, practically on the eve of his inauguration.

So the man who wants to ditch the Lord but fancies himself a great judge of winners, has been giving money away for five years now. Since that method is better than tax cuts, we should be living large by now, right? Wrong! Mr. McGuinty should read the CD Howe reports on Ontario’s uncompetitive business taxation, and should look at a little Irish economic history. What we really need is to get beyond his government’s economic incompetence. There is no evidence that it has a clue of where to effectively put the money.

We knew at the start of his reign that manufacturers were unanimously insisting on a speedy infrastructure solution to the choked Windsor-Detroit gateway. Five years later, nothing has been done in spite of Windsor’s two cabinet ministers. The litigious part looms on the horizon, and manufacturers have bailed out in droves.

We knew then that Ontario’s total business taxation put it near the bottom among industrial countries, as a place to do business. Since then we have had the health tax, and a halt on promised business tax reduction.

We knew that power generation in Ontario would remain iffy without major structural innovation. Nothing has changed, rates continue upward and lights continue to brown out.

What’s worse, the higher taxation, and uncertain border crossing have played nicely into the hands of US interests which wanted to repatriate industrial jobs. On top of this, the meteoric rise of our dollar has produced further incentive to leave. The icing on the cake, will be spread when auto manufacturers come with requests that the CAW match the decreased wages of US contracts.

This need not have been a perfect storm. The prompt building of a new bridge would be an immediate stimulus. The hacking of corporate taxes rather than lecturing the feds, is the only possible counter to our inflated currency. All other avenues are dead ends for the immediate future. (We cannot suppress our currency, and we cannot defy US auto contracts.) To do what is possible requires us to keep the Lord and ditch McGuinty.