Friday, December 14, 2012

No Extreme Capitalism Please ...

If you've ever watched the Lang & O'Leary Exchange on CBC it is obvious that Kevin O'Leary is a zealous right wing capitalist.

First as an aside, hats off to the CBC which is accused of being left wing of having such a staunch right wing character on an insightful program.

Now on to business.

Kevin O'Leary is living in a half fictitious world predicated on an ideology that needs to be very closely scrutinized and examined.

Capitalism has failed to live up to it's expectations.

The extreme capitalists would have us believe that unfettered free markets guided by the invisible hand of greed is good will provide everyone with a nice sized house in the suburbs with a white picket fence and two SUVs in the drive way.

OK, so I'm stretching it a bit right? After all, why would a janitor get paid as much as a neurosurgeon?

That has to do with how the free market, and by extension 'we', value labour. But that's another blog post entirely.

Capitalism has failed because it treats everything and everyone like private property.

Enclosing resources like water or wood in a free market vein is lunacy because we are slowly but surely eating ourselves out of house and home.  The market only values short term profits with no foresight into how we will survive in the future.

This mentality is on top of corporations desire to pursue profits relentlessly and has led to a shrinking of wages/salaries for the middle class and poor. Yeah, I'm looking at you Caterpillar! We ought to wring those corporate tax cuts from the CEO of Caterpillar's neck!

I'm calling out Kevin O'Leary specifically because in a very recent episode of the Lang & O'Leary Exchange, O'Leary more or less stated that human activity isn't having ANY impact on the environment.

At least three times he asserted that we shouldn't mess with mother nature while contending as a species  we are not having an impact on the very environment that sustains us.

O'Leary directly contradicted himself in respect to an episode of the Lang & O'Leary exchange from a year or so ago where he was in a tiff with Amanda Lang about the future of the electrical car and asserted that putting more electrical cars on the road would cause more carbon and 'that's just dumb' to paraphrase.

Well O'Leary, given your recent assertions about us having NO impact on the environment what does it matter if we go electrical in the car route and release more carbon?

Cuz the carbon ain't causing any problems right?

A word to wise O'Leary, be aware of what you say one day because you are rife with little contradictions and I and others will call you on it.

I'm not done with this by a long shot.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Lazy Politicians ...

Omnibus Budget Bill = Lazy Politicians

It's lazy because Bill C-45 is not all about the budget and has 60 different changes to legislation in it.

I don't know where the Conservatives get off thinking this is acceptable.

It should be noted that if the Liberals were in power we might very well be seeing the same thing happening. When a party is majority territory, it can basically pass anything it wants without much of a fight unless there is something really amiss, while the official opposition clamors you can't do that and would most likely do more of the same if they are in control.

So methinks that when the next federal election is held I will press every candidate that comes to my door or I run into if they are willing to pass legislation banning omnibus bills.

Canadians need to send a clear message to Ottawa that politicians are elected to preserve democracy by having open debates on reasonable pieces of legislation rather than a ramshackle all-in-one approach.

Democracy and our taxpayer dollars demand it!