We Are Sinking
We are crawling back into the sludge from whence science tells us we originally escaped.
I am thinking about the recent municipal elections and the current Cirque De Oy Vay in Ottawa.
I understand people's reluctance to vote. I vigorously don't agree with this decision, but I understand it. The price of democracy is ever steady vigilance and that includes casting a vote for the worse of numerous evils and dunderheads. It's the act of voting that counts first.
In the case of the civic elections, try to use the fingers of more than one hand to add up the candidates, let alone the elected, who were worthy of public service. In Vancouver, for example, Suzanne Anton, NPA, David Cadman, Independent, and Raymond Louie, Vision, come to mind as serious, well-informed councillors who have a contribution to make. There may be others; that's up to you to decide.
But what a paucity of leadership. What a vacuum of inspiration or excitement.
Neither of the two leading mayoral candidates could qualify as a political high-jumper. Good fellows, dull as last week's sports page, and without any real muscular argument.
Where are the Walter Hardwicks, Harry Rankins, Jonathan Bakers or even George Puils? Where are the vigorous hearts and minds of men and women who really know the territory and who have a clear point of view and some sense of what the City ought to be?
At the federal level, we are now saddled with the most unseemly mess I can remember in a long, long time.
Do you really believe that Stephen Harper, Stephane Dion, Jack Layton or Gilles Duceppe cares a whit for your welfare at this time? Did they ever?
This is a transparent and ugly case of children fighting in the sandbox about who has the biggest toy truck.
Which might all be mildly amusing were it not for the fact that, given a world economy in disaster mode, we have rarely needed more a non-partisan effort of clear and focused minds on the task in front of us.
There are some among you that believe that Canada is curiously inoculated against the tides of bad news flowing daily from every index in the world. You are wrong.
We need leadership. We need people who can look ahead and make decisions today about the auto industry, about health, about defense, about crumbling infrastructure in our cities.
What we have instead is an abomination of self-aggrandizing cupidity.
Will we ever again have real political candidates and leaders?
The Four Fools do not qualify.
7 comments:
The reason intelligent people don't run for politics, is that they provide intelligent debate and answers to todays questions.
Bureaucrats hate intelligent people as most civil servants get to their positions via the "Peter Principal" were bureaucrats rise to their level of incompetence.
The Peter Principle is the principle that "In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence." It holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Sooner or later they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their "level of incompetence"), and there they remain. Peter's Corollary states that "in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out his duties" and adds that "work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence".
Does this sound familiar? It should, as it is how every civil servant is employed.
Intelligent politicians tend to cut through the BS to find solutions. Incompetent politicians just call for a 'review' or 'study' on the problem. The voters are left with none but incompetent politicos.
There are similarities to 1979.
Joe Clark was Prime Minister of a minority Conservative government.
Pierre Trudeau led the Liberals, but he was quitting and a new Liberal leader was to be chosen in the following year.
The Conservatives brought in a new budget which included a hated 18 cent per gallon gas tax.
The opposition defeated the budget and an election was called.
Trudeau was asked to stay on as leader of the Liberals and won the election in 1980.
The following years saw double digit inflation, a housing bubble followed by a crash, a recession in 1982, double digit unemployment,
mortgage rates around 14%, a new constitution that took away my right to vote, and a $42 billion defecit in 1984 when Brian Mulroney's Conservatives took leadership.
David,
Is it possible that Mr. Harper, having failed to gain a majority after breaking his own election rule, is devious enough to have set up the opposition to over-react to his election funding proposal?
I think it's quite possible that he has cleverly baited, and sprung, a trap. The public furore may be just what he wanted. If I'm right, Harper would gladly entice the collective opposition into a non-confidence vote which would surely lead to their further demise in an unwanted ensuing election.
The Canadian public will want to punish someone for this debacle, but are we being stampeded towards a cliff? My suggestion to the opposition would be to let Harper et al stay in limited power where they will ultimately do themselves in with their neocon beliefs. In the meantime, start the search for an Obama clone.
Numbers from another post:
GRN 940,747
NDP 2,517,075
LIB 3,629,990
---------
7,087,812
CON 5,205,334
And this doesn't include the BQ, tell me again Mr. Harper what the democratic will of the people is?
Sorry, David, Harper created this mess with his arrogant nonsense last week. What we need is immediate action for the unemployed (in BC forestry workers are about to lost UI benefits), demands from the auto, aerospace and forestry industries for rescue proposals which will be expedited by Parliament. Ignoring these problems until late January indicates a lack of concern for ordinary Canadians that is truly pathetic.
Then there are those abandoned Canadians in Thailand and no one in government is ordering a military plane to rescue them? Is everyone asleep in Ottawa? Do we not have any planes left?
A pox on Harper and his entire cabal.
"There are some among you that believe that Canada is curiously inoculated against the tides of bad news flowing daily from every index in the world. You are wrong."
Canada's banking system is highly regulated unlike many and the exposure to bad derivatives is minimal.
As for "every index in the world" the markets are all up again Friday.
Show where you're right rather than simply stating those you disagree with are "wrong" and you might have some cred.
Are you now a financial expert too?
as I write this on Monday 0951h, "every index in the world" is down , especially Toronto which has lost 733 points or about 8 per cent.
Now who is the financial expert?
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