Posts Tagged ‘protestor’

“Step back and think for a minute before rushing and panicking” is the message coming from Texas Congressman Ron Paul who has warned that the swine flu scare will once again be used as a precedent for big government intrusion.

History suggests a new pandemic is long overdue, but has been delayed by accidental discoveries of anti-biotics. Politicians can ignore it, like they are effectively doing concerning the economic crises, but eventually it comes around full force, hitting victims devastatingly hard. The three pandemics of the 20th century were all linked to birds, but the new emerging viral disease has spread to humans, pigs, and other species; effectively crossing species gaps. The worry here is that viruses and bacteria have been quickly adapting to conventional medicine’s arsenal of anti-biotics and anti-virals, respectively. However, it appears that much of the worry and anxiety associated with anticipated pandemics might be just hype.

Repeat of 1976 fearmongering campaign in full swing

[ad#coinsrndm468ad1]

“It makes me think back to 1976, the first year I served in the Congress,” Paul has said in a video update. “We had a vote on the swine flu. Back then there was panic, they said it was going to sweep the nation and they rapidly came up with some flu shots and the government was going to inoculate everybody and save the world from this disaster.”

“It turned out that our instincts were correct.” the Congressman, also a medical physician, commented. “Not only did we think that the government should be involved in making medical decisions… but the flu came, the flu went and one person died, except for those individuals that died from getting the flu vaccine.”

Earlier this week we reported on the events of 1976, highlighting the fact that this last significant outbreak of swine flu in the U.S. originated at the army base at Fort Dix, New Jersey.
[ad#fsbo468ad1]
President Gerald Ford and then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (a man who has long standing intimate ties with the big pharma companies that have and will reap millions in profits from these scares) instituted a mass nationwide vaccination program. More than 40 million people were vaccinated. However, the program was stopped short after over 500 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a severe paralyzing nerve disease, were reported. Officially 30 people died as a direct result of the vaccinations, though the real figure is generally thought to have been much higher.

At the time Congressman Ron Paul was one of only two representatives to vote down the vaccination program. His comments were recorded in the book Swine Flu Expose, by Eleanora I. McBean, Ph.D., N.D.

Paul described the move as “a shocking misuse of funds …and an evil political maneuver”, “blatant advertising efforts to panic the people into taking Swine Flu shots will fail.” Paul said.

Some of the fearmongering advertisement campaigns from 1976 are featured in the following video:

[ad#ehlth468ad1]

“Here we are once again, swine flu coming up and everybody is panicking.” Ron Paul says in his latest update.

“This is not to downplay the seriousness of it. Some people have died, some people might die, yet we’ve had no deaths in this country, there’s seven or eight cases up in New York, but none have even been hospitalised and yet it’s practically like we’ve been attacked by nuclear weapons.”

The Congressman put the current panic in perspective by pointing out that last year alone there were 13,000 cases of tuberculosis with the number of annual deaths last recorded in the hundreds.

Paul then opined on how the scare will once again be pounced upon to bolster and further empower big government. He referred to Janet Napolitano’s announcement Sunday that the Department of Homeland Security had started “passive surveillance protocols to screen people coming into the country.”

“How did the Department of Homeland Security get into the medical business? It’s just totally out of control,” Paul said, describing the situation as an open door invitation to allow the federal government to deal with medical problems.

The big question is ‘Does a bigger government always solve these problems?’ No, they usually make things much worse.

[ad#yhoolstor468ad1]

Steve Watson, Infowars.net, Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Universities in Ontario are not the place to be to receive quality education, research shows. Indeed, Ontario is the most under funded, most understaffed, and has the most amount of students per teacher ratio in all of Canada. According to a Statistics Canada report released a day after the 1998 “students’ budget,” students are paying more than ever for their university education. After inflation, tuition fees have leapt 62 per cent since the beginning of the decade, while family incomes have dropped by 5 per cent.

Comment from “A born and rised here taxpayer”
Thu, Apr 24, 08 at 09:13 AM
There are no jobs in Canada now for people born and raised here. It is just another example of how our government takes from tax paying Canadians that were born and raised here and gives it to these people that should not be here in the first place. We need to take care of the people here first. I am sick of these people coming over here for a free ride on taxpayers’ money and taking everything from us. I feel sorry for the younger people this country has been taken over by them and has gone to hell!

In 2008, students are expected to shoulder, on average, a 28,000 dollar debt after graduating from a Canadian University. The problem is that Canadian Universities are not available to Canadians because of the Foreign Students from China, and that Canadian Universities are using our tax dollars to fund education in China. This is called “brain drain,” where students come to Canada to take advantage of tax payer subsidized education, and leave to their home countries, often flipping the bill and not paying a cent.

Scholarships: Unfair or a helping hand? By Monica Wolfson. Windsor Star. Friday, April 06, 2007.

The University of Windsor is coming under fire for luring first-year students to campus with lucrative scholarships that administrators know students will forfeit within the first year because they can’t make the grades.

Almost eight in 10 first-year students who received academic entrance scholarships in September lost them by December because they were unable to get an A- average. Three years ago, U of W administrators designed a program to boost enrolment by offering financial incentives to high school graduates.

That’s done, even though officials knew few students would get the money beyond the first four months, according to data and a report obtained by The Windsor Star through the Freedom of Information Act.

“I would characterize this as nothing short of false advertising because the institutions know full well how few students will maintain this scholarship,” said Jesse Greener, Ontario chairwoman of the Canadian Federation of Students. “It’s kind of like getting kids smoking. You need to get them in the door and it’s a captured market after that. People are committed to getting a degree because you have to in this market. The opportunities to reconsider another school after the loss of a scholarship aren’t there” (Windsor Star, 2007).

HENDERSON: A strike of mutual destruction

Asked what steps he would take to turn the university around if he were in charge, the prof said both the faculty and administration would feel the heat.
[ad#esyedg468ad1]
For starters, he said, accountability to the students, the reason the university exists, would be foremost. “If you’re not pulling your weight, you are fired. So what if you have tenure? Sorry. You are out.” In reality, said the prof, it’s almost impossible to get fired at U of W. “You probably have to kill somebody.”

He said it’s appalling that the university churns out graduates, weaned on multiple-choice exams marked by computers, who can’t compose a sentence or “think their way out of a wet paper bag.”

Meanwhile, said the prof, the bloated administration could easily be cut by 50 per cent, freeing up large amounts of money. He said it’s ridiculous that some faculties, which used to have a dean and one secretary for 2,000 students, now have as many as a dozen computer-equipped staff supporting a lesser number of students (Windsor Star, 2008).

EDUCATION SERVES ITS PURPOSE

As you’ve gathered by now, education is not intended to uplift and empower. The world is run by a secretive interlocking cartel that controls the education system. Its goal, in the words of one of its founders Cecil Rhodes, is to “gradually absorb the wealth of the world.” Naturally it wishes to obscure the truth. It wants students to be confused and stupid. Professors who don’t play this game are fired.

Ironically most Great Men were bad students or didn’t attend university at all. “If I had my way I’d burn every one of them to the ground,” George Bernard Shaw said. “They stereotype the mind” (Henry Makow, 2003).

Education: Reality 101 in Canadian Universities

Like university presidents across the country, Szathmáry is learning some hard lessons in a highly demanding subject. Some might call it Reality 101. Its prerequisites are a tough skin and a keen eye for the bottom line. Its required assignments are to predict and play the marketplace of ideas, divest the enterprise of weak divisions, and maximize returns to nervous investors. Its instructors? Hard-nosed governments and a student body that has transformed itself from Generation X into Generation Y. Why can’t professors spend more time ensuring that courses are professionally relevant? Why is the focus on expanding the intellect rather than expanding marketable skills? Why don’t four years of hard work and high bills lead more directly to a good career? “It’s pretty simple,” says Trevor Lines, president of the University of Manitoba Students’ Union. “The university has got to learn some priorities. It has to zero in on what it does well, what it doesn’t, and what exactly its tuition-paying clients need to survive in the outside world.”
[ad#esyedg468ad1]
In fact, both students and governments are becoming downright dictatorial in their quest to turn the ivory tower into a sleek and efficient employment machine. Slashing budgets, politicians are taking a firm hand in the division of the spoils: diverting scarce resources to vocational training, pressing universities to work more closely with local colleges, dispensing seed money to private-sector educators, and setting aside special funds for universities that produce job-ready graduates or that replace traditional classrooms with high-tech, on-line learning. “There are some who think this will all go away,” says UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN president George Ivany. “That’s bullshit. We are witnessing a fundamental reorientation of how we operate, what we offer and who we are” (MacLean’s Magazine, 1996).

Where is the accountability?

In the Ontarian schooling system (in Canada), the Universities, colleges, and post-secondary institutions are empowered under an enabling act and are bound by provisions of different provincial statutes (ie. The Expropriation Act). In addition, because these institutions receive public funds directly in trust (by way of endowments), there are therefore restricted by the rules of accountability. This essentially means they are accountable to the public for demonstrating where the public funds were spent for the goals intended, and to see that it is spent in an efficient and economical manner. However, as all pundits of economics know, and what the economic and historic models show, is that government is not capable of being effective when power is taken away from individuals.

This means that University administrations are supposed to be responsible for the management of the public funds they receive for collective purposes (very broadly for education and research), but who watches the watchers? Supposedly the board of governors serve this function, but the reality of the situation is that this board is largely a controlled aspect of University Chief Executive Officers’ preferences with no real stated process for reporting their effectiveness to taxpayers. Indeed, the MUSH sector (Municipal, Universities, Schools, and Hospitals) does not guarantee public accountability of funds with regards to University effectiveness (or lack thereof). This fact is so credible that even the Ombudsman of Ontario admitted it:

“Ontario has fallen behind in oversight of non-governmental organizations providing critical public services referred to as the “MUSH” sector – municipalities (except for the ability to investigate complaints about closed meetings in some cases), universities, school boards, hospitals, nursing homes and long-term care facilities, police, and children’s aid societies (Ombudsman, Ontario, 2008)

[ad#carcstcdn468ad1]

House prices are falling and too many homeowners are discovering that
the value of their home is less than the amount owing on the mortgage. Unemployment numbers are going up and estimates are that the rates for 2009 will spike beyond 8%.

Personal and business bankruptcies are surging with approximately
88,000 bankruptcies in Canada in 2008 and many more expected in 2009. Too many fellow-Canadians are experiencing serious financial troubles because of the downturn in the manufacturing and financial sectors of our economy. Why??

As we ponder the ?why? answer, it is worthy of note that the number
one cause of these critical and depressing financial troubles facing
individuals, families and small to medium-sized businesses is the
growth of credit card debt due to the malfunction of usury. All
debtors/borrowers are servants to creditors/lenders and are therefore
victims of the modern tyranny of usury-banking practices.

Usurers commonly reduce oppressed borrowers (individuals, businesses,
governments) to beggars. And for lack of knowledge, and because they too, are saddled with usury-bearing debts our fellow-citizens – the police, lawyers, judges and court staff – enforce the usury contracts and unknowingly become servants to their masters – the same greedy usurers.

Is the vice of greed a factor in what is currently happening in our
orthodox financial system of usury-based, debt money? Is the virtue of
giving a factor in the growth and expansion of the usuryfree community currency movement? And is usuryfree living not only a possibility but a real probability in this 21st Century? Let’s explore some facts as we seek answers to these timely questions.
[ad#lflck468ad1]
To understand the difference between living with usury and
usuryfree living, one must first be re-educated on a couple of key
definitions. Let’s start with the word – interest. Interest ought
to be correctly defined as usury and this definition can be
confirmed by many significant supporting statements from all of the
Holy Books.

For example, the Bible has many verses that absolutely forbid the
charging/exacting of usury on money. In summary, meticulous research
reveals that any percentage of interest on money above zero percent
is correclty defined as usury. Likewise, the Koran has similar
verses regarding the forbidding the curse of usury.

Additional support for the correct definition of interest is offered
by any of those few pioneering Socreds who are still alive in this
21st Century. One elder Socred is rumoured to have made these two wise statements about interest otherwise known to him as usury – (a)
Interest or usury is theft. and (b) Remember this, money cannot
have babies.

My observation is that debtors are enslaved financially because they
are paying usury to their creditors – who are knowingly or
unknowingly motivated by the vice of greed. To live without paying
usury is noteworthy, BUT usuryfree living cannot be fully experienced
until all of us are freed from usury – that means that we neither pay
no usury nor do we receive any usury from our so-called savings.

Usuryfree creatives is another phrase that requires a definition.
Usuryfree creatives are often considered to be a sub-group in the
larger, well known group known as cultural creatives. Any search
engine will provide sources for a detailed explanation of cultural
creatives.

Usuryfree creatives who are fully aware of the truth about modern
money creation seek to experience the reality of usuryfree living and
commonly enage in barter/trade using one or more of the growing number of usuryfree community currencies. Usuryfree creatives have learned that they can create and spend their own community currency which is free of interest or usury.

Usuryfree creatives commonly use these usuryfree community currencies as a complement with diminishing amounts of usury-based debt money which exists as computer blips on credit cards or debit cards or in cheques or paper notes of federal cash. Does anyone else sense an agenda by the PTB’s (Powers That Be) to take away these paper notes of federal cash so that every negotiated exchange is tracked by Big Brother’s invasive computer system?

Research reveals that the vice of greed is directly associated with
the design flaw of usury in our orthodox system of debt-based money.
Indeed, there is much evidence of an abundance of greed in the
conventional, but floundering financial marketplace.

My observation is that this ugly vice of greed is driven by the
constant and ever-present shortage of money which is direclty caused
by the element of usury. Close examination suggests that both
currently and historically, usury is the direct and/or indirect cause
violence, wars, poverty, scarcity and lack – locally, nationally and
internationally.

The unnatural and man-made function of usury is not only a design flaw in our orthodox system of debt money, but also an evil and immoral element that feeds this vice of greed while legally permitting
creditors (bankers) to steal wealth (money and property) from enslaved debtors who for lack of knowledge keep signing impossible loan and mortgage contracts created by the greedy creditors.

To eliminate usury and experience the reality of usuryfree living is
an honoured goal pursued by usuryfree creatives as we progress into
this 21st Century. Usuryfree creatives are likely to practice the
virtue of giving or gifting as they experience peace, abundace and
prosperity as a by-product of usuryfree living. Evidence suggests that
there is a shift in the thinking of those usuryfree creatives who
grasp the simple detail that there is no need to hoard any currency
that bears no usury – so they willingly share their abundance with
those who lack.

As this current economic crisis deepens to a Grand-daddy Depression
that will make the 1929 Economic Crash look like a Sunday picnic, the
teaching and practice of usuryfree living is being promoted by
usuryfree creatives not only as a likely possibility, but also as a
distinct probablity.
[ad#symym468ad1]
Most creditors (usurers) are not likely to be fully aware that they
can directly and/or indirectly referred to as practitioners of the
vice of greed. Neither are debtors aware of how they are victims in
this modern but cruel world of usury-based, debt finance (money). This
lack of knowledge by both creditors and debtors can be attributed to
the failings of formal education as well as the mainstream print and
electronic media. Whether this malfuntion in our formal education
system is by design or by accident is left for the reader to decide.

During the latter years of the 20th Century when the internet was in
its birthing process, many diligent ands meticulous researchers began
to effectively network their knowledge through email, news groups,
blogs and websites. As the design flaw of usury is being exposed for
the killer machine that it is, more and more re-educated individuals
are proudly defining themselves as usuryfree creatives.

[ad#yhoolstor468ad1]

Usuryfree creatives organized the first UsuryFree Day (November 13th)
and UsuryFree Week (November 13th to 19th) in 2004 to celebrate and
foster the concept of usuryfree living. Each year, during UsuryFree
Week seminars and workshops are held in living rooms, community
centres, church basements, school auditoriums, hotel rooms etc.

During UsuryFree Week participants learn the difference between
living with usury and usuryfree living. Currently, events are
being planned to celebrate the Fifth Annual UsuryFree Day/Week from
November 13th to 19th, 2009.

Brought to you by EconoChristian.com but written by Tom Kennedy. You can read the rest of the article here.

Given the fact that manufacturing jobs and industries account for only one fifth (1/5th) of economic output of countries in the OECD, it is important to realize potential impacts this shift from tangible output driven economies to a more service oriented one, and the pundits’ chants that it is an advantageous phenomenon. Some questions to consider are: is the contraction of manufacturing in developed economies a result of so called maturity in economies or is it that the forced of globalization, speerheaded by government trumping corporations in search of cheap labor?

---

Working & Middle Classes to be extinct in 10 years

8th November 2004

News article filed by Lee Barnes, LLB (Hons)

Within ten years the entire unskilled working class workforce of Britain will be made redundant by cheap foreign labour and the middle class will be decimated as their jobs are off-shored. Digby Jones, the director-general of the CBI the body for big business in Britain, will tell the annual CBI conference in Birmingham: “There will not be any work in Britain for unskilled people . . . within one scholastic generation.” He will say the 3.5 million people who are functionally illiterate in the UK will find it impossible to get work within 10 years.
[ad#fsbo468ad1]

In a survey of 150 British companies, which employ 750,000 people between them, 51 per cent said cheaper foreign labour costs meant they are considering moving their jobs abroad. So much for the patriotism of the British capitalist elite! From Doc Martens Boots to Dyson’s Vacuums- the entire British economy is being shipped abroad.

Entire middle class extinction

The CBI says the phenomenon of moving jobs abroad has become so easy and profitable for business that it has spread from the largely unskilled manufacturing sector in Britain through to financial services and IT. The entire middle class of Britain from office secretaries, architects, accountants, computer specialists to middle managers will become extinct within ten years.

Ian McCafferty, the CBI’s chief economist, says call centres – the most significant example of outsourcing – accounted for only 14 per cent of jobs moved abroad. “That is well behind other services.” India and China remain the most popular places for exporting jobs, with Eastern European countries becoming increasingly attractive. In other words all the jobs in Britain that can be done by sending data down the internet to India or China will be finished in Britain in less than a generation.
[ad#cfe4lss468ad1]
Catalogue of betrayal

“I have formed the view that if ever there was a country made for globalisation, it is Britain. It is in our DNA,” Mr Jones will say in a trite mixed metaphor. Mr.Digby seems to think that making money for a tiny percentage of global capitalists, and not protecting the social interests of our own people, should be the primary goal of the British economy. What he is suggesting is that because the British state has under-invested in educating its own indigenous workforce for generations (which is why we have so many cheap foreign nurses in the country) that the destruction of British industry is something to be applauded.

He is the voice of the ‘Cheap Labour’ greed driven capitalists that first imported millions of cheap immigrant labour into Britain and he is member of the global capitalist elite which fund groups like Searchlight and Unite Against Fascism to lie to the British people to ensure the BNP does not come to power as a party of national liberation. They call the BNP ‘racists’ for standing up for the economic and social interests of the indigenous British people whilst at the same time selling out the immigrant workforce that they once imported into the country by exporting jobs back to their homelands! One thing is for sure the plans of the British capitalist elite should ensure that many of the immigrants that came to Britain in search of work will now be considering returning to their own countries as no work will be left for anyone in this country in the future.

Protectionism condemned

“Protectionist voices who think they can stop this – that’s cloud cuckoo land,” he will tell the conference, which will be attended by Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, and Peter Mandelson, the European Trade Commissioner – both willing participants in the prolonged ritual slaughter of the British workforce as a sacrifice to Mammon. They will both be clapping effeminately as the murder of the British working class is celebrated by the British ‘ globalist plutocratic elite ‘.

“Ensuring people have the skills remains our problem. You have nothing to fear if you skill yourself “- he intends to say. Well we say to the pompous Mr. Digby Jones that self advancement, of course, depends upon having a government that wants to educate its own workforce to a sufficient level of skill. The globalist agenda of the Labour government and the billions of pounds it is pouring into the War in Iraq means this investment in education will not, and cannot, occur.

At no time in history have the British people faced so many dangers at the same time. From the treason of its business leaders selling them out for Dollars, Rupees and Yen to the Global economy and our Labour government waging illegal wars for the American – Zionist elite of Bush and the Neo-Conservatives. Everywhere the age of degeneration and destruction manifests itself.
[ad#trdkng468ad1]

Clear and simple choice

The British people have a clear and simple choice. You either become one of the globalised masses with your children sold as slaves to the ‘ Global Plutocratic Elite ‘ or you wake up and fight to take back your own country and your children’s future. Unless you wake up you will never be free again – simply remaining a commodity to be exploited. Unless you wake up your children will have no future – only an existence as perpetual wage slaves. You will have betrayed your ancestors with your silence and apathy.

[ad#yhoolstor468ad1]

When the fall of this Globalist system occurs we will be prepared for the challenge. But we say this, right here and right now, that those that stand against us now will be judged by us when the time comes. Either stand with us or stand aside. The masses are too mired in their own greed and stupidity to care either way. This is a battle of wills between the forces of renaissance and renewal represented by the BNP and the forces of decay and entropy represented by the current Globalist political and economic elite. Our will is the noble determination of our ancestors that stood fast at Trafalgar , Waterloo, the Somme and through the Blitz – the will of our enemies is the lust of the parasite to drain the lifeblood of nations to enrich themselves.

They will fail – we will triumph.

It looks terribly bad for the US dollar as the hegemon of the world financial system these days as five countries plan to ditch the dollar in favor of more stable choices. As we’ve all seen in the last few years, the US dollar has been more unstable than a Christian drunk on one too many alcoholic beverages. God commands Christians to avoid drunkenness (Ephesians 5:18). The Bible also condemns drunkenness and its effects (Proverbs 23:29-35). Christians are also commanded to not allow their bodies to be “mastered” by anything (1 Corinthians 6:12; 2 Peter 2:19). It is obvious the world has become addicted to cheap oi, and since we know the US dollar is traded in oil, such a relationship can not be sustained for such a long time with countries like Iraq, Iran, and China wanting to trade oil in other currencies from other superblocks like the Eurozone’s “Euro” currency released in 1999.
[ad#prcln468ad1]
The numerous wars the US has racked up in the last decade have cost its debt burden tremendous amounts (not to mention the tremendous government expansion and subsequent cost of such). As we’ve seen, the price of oil has gone from a high of approximately $155 per barrel all the way back down to approximately $20 per barrel. We certainly do not live in stable times.

CHINA

What? A global “supercurrency” to supplant the dollar

The details: Last month, the governor of China’s central bank, Zhou Xiaochuan, sent shock waves through the political and financial worlds by suggesting the world’s largest foreign holder of U.S. dollars supported the creation of a new global reserve currency.

In an essay published in both Chinese and English, Zhou, without ever mentioning the greenback, articulated concerns about the “inherent vulnerabilities and systemic risks in the existing international monetary system.” The world needs a reserve currency “disconnected from individual nations and … able to remain stable in the long run, thus removing the inherent deficiencies caused by using credit-based national currencies,” the essay went on to state.

Zhou recommended building on an existing asset and exchange system, a kind of synthetic currency that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) created in 1969. In the special drawing rights (SDR) program, the 185 IMF member states fund a pool of money that the IMF distributes in shares, or SDRs. This currency could be used for government finance, trade transactions, pricing commodities, and international accounting. G-20 leaders expanded the SDR pool by $250 billion at their recent meeting.

The suggestion comes as the Chinese government attempts to push the renminbi, whose principal unit is the yuan, as a reserve currency in Asia. In past months, China has completed currency swaps with Argentina, Belarus, Indonesia, Malaysia, and South Korea, among others; these allow China’s trading partners to buy Chinese goods with the renminbi, rather than the dollar. Soon, some economists predict, the renminbi may become the de facto pan-Asian reserve currency and a much bigger global player.

RUSSIA

What? A global “supercurrency” similar to the Chinese proposal

The details: Speaking in Moscow last month, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev put his support for supplanting the dollar in stark terms: “Many of our partners maintain the point of view that everything is fine in this area, that all that is needed is a slight strengthening of major worldwide currencies, including the dollar. We hold another point of view.” He strongly reiterated this idea at the G-20 conference.

Medvedev seconded China’s support for expanding the IMF’s special drawing rights program. He said the ruble, renminbi, and gold should join the dollar, euro, and pound — the primary reserve currencies for the past 50 years — in a multicurrency basket pricing the SDR.

The inclusion of gold bullion in the currency basket caused a press kerfuffle; numerous articles described Medvedev and Arkady Dvorkovich, the Russian government’s chief economic advisor, as supporting a gold standard. In fairness, John Maynard Keynes and Franklin D. Roosevelt themselves recommended basing global reserve values on the price of gold and other commodities.

VENEZUELA

What? The “sucre,” a South American bloc currency

The details: At a regional summit last November, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez called for the creation of an EU-type monetary zone and adoption of the “sucre,” a regional currency, to reduce dependence on the dollar. Chávez addressed leaders from the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) trade bloc, which includes Venezuela, along with Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Honduras, and Nicaragua.
[ad#prcln468ad1]
The proposal came with a heaping dose of criticism for the United States and other G-20 countries, which Chávez accused of purposely suppressing developing economies. He also recommended that South American countries abandon the IMF, “an imperialist hand to dominate us.”
[ad#trdkng468ad1]
“We’re not going to wait here with our arms crossed for the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund to come and solve the problems that this great threat [the United States] unleashed on the world,” he said. “The hegemony of the dollar must end,” he added.

ALBA members seem to be in favor, agreeing in principle to developing the sucre within two or three years.

IRAN

What? A common currency for Central Asia

The details: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad suggested in March that the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) trade bloc — Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan — take up a common currency when it debuts its planned free trade zone in 2015. “The process of obtaining one single currency in the trade and exchanges among members, and in the next stages with other countries and neighbors, should be designed,” he said.

“After the collapse of the closed socialist economy, the capitalist economy is also on the verge of collapse,” Ahmadinejad said, railing against the hegemony of the dollar in foreign trade.
[ad#ewv468ad1]
Were the ECO bloc to take up a common currency, it would rival the euro in its scope; the countries together have about 420 million people. Representatives from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan seemed to support the general idea, and the topic will be taken up again at the ECO’s next convention, in 2010.

[ad#prcln468ad1]

KAZAKHSTAN

What? The “acmetal,” a global currency

The details: In March, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, speaking from the capital city of Astana, called for the creation of a world currency called the “acmetal,” a word coined from “acme” and “capital.”

“There is no other choice available to us, if we really intend to utilize effectively this unique opportunity of overcoming the shortcomings of the Old World and building up a New one,” the strongman opined in a pre-translated report. It went on to state, “It so happened that the whole of our world has somehow unexpectedly and imperceptibly got into the tunnel of global crisis from where nobody is able to see where is the ‘exit’.”

The Kazakh leader described how the G-8 or G-20 countries could band together to create a transitional currency, the “transital,” before full global adoption of the “acmetal.” He also described a putative new world order brought on by the currency scheme: “acmetalism.”
[ad#ewv468ad1]
Proposing new currencies is something of a hobby for Nazarbayev, who has advocated a Central Asian regional currency plan since 2003. He has called for the adoption of the “altyn” or “yevraz” in the Eurasian Economic Community (EEC), which includes Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan. Moscow takes these suggestions as a slight, though. It has proposed that the EEC states band together and adopt the Russian ruble.

By Annie Lowrey
ForeignPolicy.com
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009
Source

Here is an interesting piece I ran across which I thought I’d share with you instead of proving my own analysis of the economic situation. Of course, I will add that this economic crisis has been in planning for decades especially since the US was brought off the gold standard and since the World Trade Organization and other unconstitutional “agreements” were signed both in the US and Canada.

What this article really doesn’t touch upon is how banks were pretty much forced to loan billions and billions of dollars to fund mortgages for minorities and other “marginalized” groups who couldn’t afford a home otherwise. Why couldn’t they afford a home like anybody else? Officials will tell you it’s because of their skin color or some other hogwash. Yes, there are discriminatory practices all over the world. If you are white trying to get a mortgage in South Korea, for instance, you will probably be turned down faster than a Korean with money because you are white. Yes, there is racism there much more than in the West.

“My own understanding, however, is that the cause can be traced to pressures of “political correctness” in America: Financial institutions, habitually reluctant to take the risks involved in lending to minorities – particular black and Hispanics – were charged with racial discrimination. They came under pressure to prove their enlightened credentials by lending to minorities on equal terms. Gradually succumbing to such pressure, they upgraded the creditworthiness of minorities, Soon hundreds of thousands of houses were being built as mortgage lenders became emboldened to lend 90 per cent or more of the purc hase price of houses sold to minorities, whose employment prospects were uncertain and whose incomes were relatively low.” E.J Mishan For The Straits Times – Tuesday 17 March, 2009.

[ad#trdkng468ad1]

These people (the U.S. government) need to be stopped. Every time we get ourselves into an economic mess, there’s usually some milestone idiocy we can point back to as the government action that made the meltdown inevitable.

Take the current housing crisis that has now spread to the financial markets in general. The cause was too-easy credit that fueled a massive increase in housing prices as people bought houses they couldn’t afford with mortgages they weren’t able to pay off.

In 1999 there was roughly $5 trillion in total U.S. mortgage debt. That number ballooned to $12 trillion by 2007, and we know what happened from there (data is from the U.S. Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight). To put this into perspective, total U.S. GDP is about $11 trillion annually, and U.S. government debt is around $9 trillion. If the housing market really falls apart (meaning more than conservative estimates of a 20% drop), there’s no way the government can simply cover these losses.

Why did it happen? Let’s go back to 1999, when Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, was under pressure by the Clinton administration to find a way to get more loans to “borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans.” A pilot program was launched, which soon became general policy. Money flowed to people who couldn’t afford to pay it back.

These new policies came on top of previous changes in the 90’s that let consumers get zero-down payment loans.

In a 1999 article that now looks absolutely insane, the New York Times reported on the easing of credit terms. Fannie Mae Chairman Franklin Raines, who’s quoted in the article, was all sunshine and roses as he threw away the financial future of millions of Americans. But at least one person. Peter Wallison, had a good idea of how this would all play out:

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980’s.
[ad#trdkng468ad1]
”From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,” said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ”If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.”

Too bad nobody listened to that guy. (TechCrunch, 2009).

What Jesus Said About the Crisis
What Jesus says about the Wall Street crisis:

Revelation 18 1 After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was made bright with his glory. 2 And he called out with a mighty voice, Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!
She has become a dwelling place for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird, a haunt for every unclean and detestable beast.

3 For all nations have drunk the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality, and the kings of the earth have committed immorality with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from the power of her luxurious living.

4 Then I heard another voice from heaven saying, Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues;
5 for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities.

6 Pay her back as she herself has paid back others, and repay her double for her deeds; mix a double portion for her in the cup she mixed.

7 As she glorified herself and lived in luxury, so give her a like measure of torment and mourning, since in her heart she says, I sit as a queen,
I am no widow, and mourning I shall never see.8 For this reason her plagues will come in a single day, death and mourning and famine,
and she will be burned up with fire; for mighty is the Lord God who has judged her.

9 And the kings of the earth, who committed sexual immorality and lived in luxury with her, will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning. 10 They will stand far off, in fear of her torment, and say, Alas! Alas! You great city,you mighty city, Babylon!
For in a single hour your judgment has come.

11 And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo anymore, 12 cargo of gold, silver, jewels, pearls, fine linen, purple cloth, silk, scarlet cloth, all kinds of scented wood, all kinds of articles of ivory, all kinds of articles of costly wood, bronze, iron and marble, 13 cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, rankincense, wine, oil, fine flour, wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, and slaves, that is, human souls. 14 The fruit for which your soul longed has gone from you, and all your delicacies and your splendors are lost to you, never to be found again!

15 The merchants of these wares, who gained wealth from her, will stand far off, in fear of her torment, weeping and mourning aloud,
16 Alas, alas, for the great city that was clothed in fine linen,
in purple and scarlet, adorned with gold,with jewels, and with pearls!
17 For in a single hour all this wealth has been laid waste.

And all shipmasters and seafaring men, sailors and all whose trade is on the sea, stood far off 18 and cried out as they saw the smoke of her burning, What city was like the great city?

19 And they threw dust on their heads as they wept and mourned, crying out, Alas, alas, for the great city where all who had ships at sea
grew rich by her wealth! For in a single hour she has been laid waste.
20 Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets, for God has given judgment for you against her!

21 Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, So will Babylon the great city be thrown down with violence, and will be found no more; 22 and the sound of harpists and musicians, of flute players and trumpeters, will be heard in you no more, and a craftsman of any craft will be found in you no more, and the sound of the mill will be heard in you no more, 23 and the light of a lamp will shine in you no more, and the voice of bridegroom and bride will be heard in you no more, for your merchants were the great ones of the earth, and all nations were deceived by your sorcery. 24 And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all who have been slain on earth

It seems politicians are lying or being glib on their knowledge of economics: Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff told a gathering of southern Ontario business leaders on Tuesday (April 14, 2009) that taxes would have to be raised to combat a growing national debt, local media reported. According to The Record, he responded by saying that to rein in the country’s $480 billion debt, a tax hike might be necessary in the future (Windsor Star, 2009).

Canada Tax Facts:

Taxes already confiscate 45 per cent of Canadian income. The government never point out that average working people pay even more. Smokers and drinkers probably lose 75 per cent of their earnings to taxes. CTF, 2009

According to the OECD, total government revenues for 2004–federal, provincial, and municipal–will be 41.3% of GDP, down from a peak of 44.5% of GDP in 1997 and 1998. This means that Tax Freedom Day is May 30 (since 41.3% of 366 is 151 days into the year.)

What do Canadian Taxes Pay for?

There’s a summary of all government spending for 2003 on the Statistics Canada website, broken down into categories.

To try to make them more comprehensible, I’ve translated them into per-capita numbers, based on a population of 31,629,700 in 2003. A billion dollars is about $30 per capita.

Roughly speaking, out of $15,000 in total spending per capita, there’s $5000 for social services, $5000 for health and education, and $5000 for everything else, including $1500 for interest on the debt and $1200 for protection of persons and property (meaning military, police, legal system, firefighting). Here’s the detailed breakdown.

[ad#trdkng468ad1]

Given all of this, if you want to create jobs in an economy, dumping huge amounts of tax-payer cash benefits no one because it is just shifting dollars from one area to another without creating wealth. The “trickle-down” idea only applies to real economics like manufacturing and building; something Canada has had little of these past 30 years, but the end does not justify the means. Remember, however, that manufacturing was still doing well in 2000 and 2001. Since 2003, however, the decline in Canadian manufacturing employment has been the second worst of our peers (the U.K. has experienced more job losses) (PE, 2009).

The myth that governments’ using taxpayer funds is one of the only ways to stimulate private economic growth is rubbish. It was the ineffective hand of government (in collaboration with mega-business) that started the mess with the credit, automobile, wars, and just about any other crisis you can think of. Indeed, when the Conservatives were elected, they promised to do business differently. No more cronyism, no more backroom deals with party hacks. They were going to clean up Ottawa.When the federal government was patting itself on the back last month on the anniversary of the passage of the Federal Accountability Act, it failed to mention that two key components – the appointments commission and the lobbying provisions – have not been implemented.

“The lack of a public appointments commission seriously undermines any credibility that Mr. Harper is serious about cleaning up how business is done in Ottawa,” said New Democrat MPP Charlie Angus (Timmins-James Bay) (TheStar.com, 2008).

However, critics say Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government has appointed hundreds of people with Conservative ties – the kind of cronyism the Conservatives and their predecessors used to howl about.

Where does the money come from?

The government sees that for every dollar injected into the economy it must first be taxed or borrowed out of the economy. Thus, government spending only redistributes already-existing money which otherwise could have been created by a healthy manfacturing sector. Under President Obama’s “stimulus” plan, jobs will be created to weatherize buildings, construct schools and wind turbines, and repair roads and bridges. But outside the market process, there is no way to know whether those are better uses of scarce capital than whatever would have been produced had it been left in the private economy. Since government services are paid for through the compulsion of taxes, they have no market price. But without market prices, we have no way of knowing the importance that free people would place on those services versus other things they want (Creator’s Syndicate, 2009).

We need to invest in green industry, but the problem we face is unfair competition allowed under the auspices of the WTO; so the hope of making Windsor a green corridor is a pipe dream until countries like China and Korea open their markets. Only then can we have a real green revolution.

When are people going to do their homework and take a stand?

EconoChristian.com

The Canadian government has passed new legislation which extends the foreign worker visa program from one (1) to three (3) years in the past 6 months. On December 15, 2008, professionals seeking to work temporarily in Canada under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) can now receive work permits for up to three years, the Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, announced today. Previously, NAFTA workers were required to renew their work permit every 12 months.

Below is a letter written by an EconoChristian.com writer who is dismayed with the Canadian government’s repeated attempts to displace and reduce the middle working class of citizen in that country. Indeed, it has already undermined middle class workers by its unfettered immigration policy which allows some 400,000 new immigrants into the country. Proponents argue that increasing immigration increases economic prospertiy, while critics argue it actually limits economic opportunity because a majority of immigrants granted citizenship are sponsors of highly skilled immigrants.

Skilled immigrants are what Canada needs, not the former type of person. Indeed, the reason so many immigrants are admitted is because a majority of them are sponsored into the country (often family members), but also because of humanitarian reasons. Essentially Canada is a dumping ground for all kinds of people who do not contribute anything substantial to the economy.

If one were to look at other countries such as Japan and other Asian countries, one will quickly discover that their economies are prosperous not because of increased immigration, but because of an export-oriented economy and a high savings rate that the Japanese have been known for and is ingrained in their cultural consciousness. Canadians, on the other hand, and Americans, have extremely low savings rates and are actually borrowing money from places like China. Take a look at the growing trade deficits and the US dollar holdings of treasuries the Chinese have because of these deficits.
[ad#coinsrndm468ad1]
OUR GOVERNMENT’S OWN RESEARCH CONTRADICTS WHAT IT IS DOING

The federal government’s own research has told it that with regards to Canada’s economy, immigration consumes 99% of the economic benefits it produces. With regard to population decline, in 1990, when Canada had a population of 26+ million, Health and Welfare Canada’s demographic research told the federal government that Canada’s population would continue growing until 2026 with half (130,000) the immigration we have today, so population decline should not have been an issue to be looked at in 1990. The same Health and Welfare study concluded that Made-In-Canada alternatives (such as making use of 45+ year old unemployed males and encouraging more females to enter the workforce) are superior to immigration in dealing with a larger number of older people in Canada.

In other words, the federal government’s research contradicts what it is doing. (See highlights of the major federally-sponsored studies entitled “Charting Canada’s Future” and New Faces In the Crowd” in the “Research” section of this web site) (Canadian Immigration Watch, 2009).

---

Dear Readers,

I am writing to protest my dismay to the changes in the Federal government’s immigration rules which now allow foreign workers to remain in Canada for three (3) years instead of one (1) year. I am writing you to halt your destruction of the labor force of our country, as well as undercutting the permanent residents of Canada by importing cheap labor from other countries.

The United States has taken similar steps to fill supposedly vacant positions for which employers “can not find applicants” for, particularly in the engineering, scientific, and information technology fields, by instituting the H1B Visa program. Much evidence, particulary from government studies, institutes, and numerous other think-tanks have found that there is indeed no such labor shortage (1) and that the only reason the government has instituted such “temporary” guest worker programs is to undercut the American working class.

There is strong evidence [2,3,4] from numerous think-tanks and institutions showing that a similar situation in Canada is developing, and that the real reason we are changing our immigration rules to allow more supposedly highly-skilled immigrants and foreign workers is just to undercut permanent Canadian resident citizens’ earnings. An example is the skills and labour shortage in the Eastern Canada region (2), where top University professors dubbed Nova Scotia a “low wage ghetto” due to the increase in productivity in the past 15 years, but an overall reduction in wages.

Why would someone stay in a Province that continually reduces wages, does not allow workers to easily unionize, or has an employer which does not participate in training and/or profit-sharing programs?
[ad#coinsrndm468ad1]
I severely question why our elected representatives and those whom we pay taxes to continually try to undermine our way of life by importing cheaper labor from other countries instead of providing incentives to corporations/companies to train existing employees in “higher skilled labor” or paying them sufficient wages to perform “jobs that regular Canadians do not want to do.”

I am also very, very disappointed that you, our elected representatives, do not invest public funds or provide tax incentives for companies to train permanent resident Canadians in the the areas of the economy that need these workers.

Indeed, this kind of practice was largely shown to have been extremely detrimental to other countries in the past who have practiced completely open borders, such as the Corn Laws of Great Britain; the bracero program of 1942-1964 that is so often touted by immigration enthusiasts as the example of how well such things work; as well as a study in 1991 by the Economic Council of Canada found that periods of immigration were not directly linked to periods of high growth [6].
[ad#ewv468ad1]
A study by the C. D. Howe Institute, a conservative think tank, suggests that immigration cannot keep Canada’s population young and could possibly contribute to population ageing in the near term.[3] Employment statistics also bring into question whether skilled worker immigrants, with a 34% unemployment rate,[4] are successfully meeting existing labour market needs in Canada. Many developed nations have much lower fertility rates than Canada but have not embraced immigration (Japan, Korea, etc).

In conclusion, I am writing to you to do your duty and lobby the Federal government to limit the amount of immigrants we admit each year, as well as reduce the amount of time temporary workers from other countries stay in our country; taking our positions when a fully-qualified or potentially fully-qualified Canadian could already take the job. I am very tired of paying taxes to our government when it does nothing to attract and retain quality companies to provide spending power to permanent Canadian residents.

[ad#yhoolstor468ad1]

Canadians are not fooled by the government Public Relations material which is released to the media for consumption of the public. We do our home-work and experience these events daily and we do not agree with the increases in immigration or the need for longer-staying foreign workers when permanent resident Canadians could be trained to fill these jobs.

Sincerely,

Author

Windsor, Ontario

References:

(1) A study by the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University also found that there is no shortage of U.S. engineers. Eighty percent of respondents to a Pratt survey say U.S. engineering jobs are filled within four months, and 88 percent didn’t offer signing bonuses.

(2) Larry Haiven, a professor at Saint Mary’s University, said the report he wrote for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives shows while productivity has increased over the past 20 years, Nova Scotia’s wages are lagging far behind.

(3)No Elixir of Youth: Immigration Cannot Keep Canada Young, Backgrounder, C. D. Howe Institute, Number 96, September 2006, URL accessed 29 November 2006

Why are politicians, media and businesspeople hyping the credit and financial crisis as if it were something they didn’t see coming? It has been in the making for decades, made worse since Canada signed away its economic sovereignty to the unelected World Trade Organization and NAFTA. For these reasons, Canada should be holding its own “Boston Tea Party” that the citizens of the United States are currently planning on implementing to protest massive government intervention in every facet of their economy.

This pipe dream of stabilizing Canada’s economy is not solved by shipping our manufacturing base, already less than a quarter of our economic activity, to countries where they utilize slave labour and manipulate their currency. Taxation is not the solution when the money really comes from our childrens’ futures in the form of tremendous debt. Indeed, this has been the staple of government policy since the early start of the 20th century; that is, Keynesian economics and government intervention.

No one should be opposed to fair trade, but it’s time to recognize “free trade” is fiction because every trading relationship is managed in some way. This is true because Canada and the United States have become the world’s dumping ground for cheap, slave-labor goods produced in places where there are low or no labor standards or social safety nets like the Western world has.
[ad#ewv468ad1]
Our major trading partners manage their economies to benefit their citizens, so why can’t we? Get our jobs back, put money in our wallets, let us spend it as we see fit and watch the economy grow again. Taxing does nothing but impede spending and discourages people from making proper investments and encourages outrageous financial scandals. The World Trade Organization was never voted on or discussed with the general working man or woman on “main street,” so who’s benefitting from job losses and the so called “knowledge based economy” which is really just a euphemism for unstable industries based solely on services which is nothing more than redistributing wealth rather than creating it.

You can’t spend your way out of a recession. You have to save and produce your way out of it.

What about this “Tea Party?”

The Boston Tea Party was a direct action protest by colonists in Boston, a town in the British colony of Massachusetts, against the British government. On December 16, 1773, after officials in Boston refused to return three shiploads of taxed tea to Britain, a group of colonists boarded the ships and destroyed the tea by throwing it into Boston Harbor. The incident remains an iconic event of American history, and has often been referenced in other political protests.

They’re calling themselves the “Tea Party Tax Protesters” and already dozens of them have held events across the USA. The protesters say they’re fed up with excessive state and federal tax increases and they’re rallying to express their outrage and demand change (KKTV, 2009).

More than $2 trillion has been spent on bailouts and stimulus packages in the last year. In the $800 billion spending package, members of Congress had a few hours to read 1,000 pages of bill text. No one in Congress noticed that it authorized bonuses to AIG executives, which the House later voted to tax at 90 percent. Congress imposed a penalty on payments that it authorized! That should have been a sure sign that Congress was trying to spend too much money too quickly (Kansas City, 2009).

Written by EconoChristian.com with outside sources.

Governments are no longer suited for the role of definers, defenders, or supporters of the public good (nor have they ever been). Low voter turnout, democratic deficit, and increasing anomie and apathy of the public at large are stark examples of how the voting electorate have lost trust in their Government and the way in which elected representatives are made as purveyors and definers of the public good. Election after election, the polls show steady declines of the public exercising their fundamental right to appoint representatives into Parliament. Indeed, according to statistics from Elections Canada, voting turnout in the 2000 elections was the second-lowest ever, at 61.5 per cent (CBC, 2004). How then, would the Government, as many people claim to be the ideal choice as definers of the public good, be justified in defining and governing a country full of rightly-so cynical voters? In order to answer this kind of question, one must examine the methods in which society has traditionally allocated resources.

The economic market bears the most resemblance to the ways in which traditional societies allocated and distributed resources. Here the basic tenets of economic theory were displayed to function in a systematic manner; there was supply, and then there was demand. Soon came Government into the picture, as best depicted in the post World War 2 era when Keynesian economics came into play where it contested that Government intervention in the free market was needed to serve as the balancer of supply and demand because it was thought that the free market wasn’t able to control itself. While this may be true, many authors have speculated that Government also had the possibility of failing.
[ad#cntntad2elrn]
A theory developed by James Buchanan, who won a Nobel Prize for his contribution to economic theory and thinking became the founding basis of the term public choice theory. It also led to the development of the Center of Study for Public Choice at Mason University where it remains the most popular source for this theory. The premise behind this theory is that the same principles that economists use to predict peoples’ actions in the traditional market-place and melding them with peoples’ actions in collective decision-making. Essentially it means that people are self- interested in how they spend their money.

The chief advantage to public choice theory fits neatly as a panacea with the current situation due to the rational ignorance of voters. That is, each voter is faced with a small possibility that their suffrage will change the outcome of an election; therefore the logical choice for the voter is to be generally ignorant of politics. This could be called government failure, akin to the market failure that the government is supposedly there to protect against. Where is the economic efficiency in having low voter turnout and a politically apathetic populace, and how would the government be able to determine the public good? The answer is very simple: the government is not in the ideal position to define the public good.

The first argument in this debate is that of corporate campaign contributions to political parties and patronage appointments of party- friendly businessmen and lawyers to government-office by in-power political actors. History is replete with examples of major political actors and public representatives rewarding their major campaign contributors with rewarding posts in office. In a democracy where the government exists as a pure public good for the mass of voters, there exists interest groups, or conglomerates of concentrated interests, which seek to influence Government policy (which include their definitions of public good) to implement economically-inefficient policies that would benefit not the whole public but just their slim minority.

Political appointments, often in the form of careers in the public service, have stood to be the most common type of rewards given to political party-friendly businessmen (and women). Affirming this claim is a report by Ward (2006) where Justice Gomery stated that “… numerous political appointments to Crown corporations that have been made over the years have been a smudge on the integrity of the appointments process and have often stood in contradiction to the merit principle” (Ward, 2006).

A prominent example of government corruption includes the sponsorship scandal, which started in 1995 to give the Federal Government more visibility in the eyes of the people of Quebec. Chiasson, Gail, Wentz, and Laurel (2005) reported that Justice Gomery, in his account, concluded that between 1996 and 2002, $282 million was spent on this program where 44% of the money going mainly to Quebec advertising agencies that over-billed their claimed amounts (Chiasson, Gail, Wentz, and Laurel, 2005 ). This case clearly demonstrates the arrogance and contempt that elected politicians, accountable to the public, clearly have for the democratic system. This case further solidifies the idea that government irresponsibility runs rampant throughout government; leads the public into disillusionment with their elected representatives; and further driving up the democratic deficit, which in turn provides less legitimacy for government to determine the ‘public good.’
[ad#cntntad2elrn]
On another vein, we see that corporate campaign contributions have always been a determining factor in election outcomes in Canada. It is common sense that political parties with the most funds are able to muster a much larger political campaign than those with less. The traditional “big three” parties of Canada have been recipients of large sums of money from special interest groups which included business and corporate donations. Further examples of patronage, large influence from corporate donations, and otherwise ‘unethical’ behaviour abound. The orgy [patronage appointments in the 1984 campaign] confirmed what many Canadians already suspected: Liberals were pretty much a piece, greedy, smug, more concerned with their own interest rather than with the national interest, oblivious to outrage, deaf to dissent (Simpson, 1988).

Indeed, according to Michael Pinto-Duschinsky (2002), “In addition to being a source of scandal and corruption,” he writes, “the ways in which political activity is [are] financed may lead to severe inequalities. If the costs of campaigning are prohibitive, citizens without private wealth may be prevented from running for public office” (Duschinsky, 2002, p. 69). Here he adds weight to the claim that corporate funding of political parties is prohibitive to citizens without private wealth, which would allow them the public good and right to run for office.

Download the full report in this PDF file
[ad#contentad1]