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| It's not easy oppressing the disabled. But somehow they manage. Canadian Film Centre. |
Louis Shalako
If you are a
disabled person living in Ontario, you have probably asked yourself the following
question.
“How
am I ever going to destroy the government of this formerly-fine province?”
The question is a pretty rational one. After all,
they plan on destroying you. They’ve been chipping away at you since the
day they took office, and the fact is the Conservatives were worse.
Much
worse.
Right?
And if you have even half a brain, (and I sure know
I do,) then you must also have asked yourself what would happen if you, or
better yet, we, succeeded in this
fine and noble goal.
The problem is a simple one. If the disabled manage
to defeat the Liberals, the Progressive Conservatives seem the most likely
winners. The NDP would form the opposition and the Liberals would go back to
their natural state, i.e. a rump.
There are reasons for this. Not the least of which
is that disabled people alone can’t determine the result of the provincial
election, which must be held by Oct. 1/2014. There aren’t quite enough of us,
although we get plenty of new recruits every day. Our numbers are growing,
ladies and gentlemen. The Star is hinting at a spring
election, a bit of a no-brainer for a party which has little
going for it except empty rhetoric and a long list of broken promises and
failed initiatives. Oh, sorry—they do have a few scandals.
When they warn of a minority government, that’s
scare tactics—they’re holding the Conservatives
over your heads.
In order to do that, the Liberals first had to stand
on your throats.
Don’t forget that part.
The facts are simple and undeniable.
We need the help of other Ontario residents to do
it. They have their own concerns, but this writer has never doubted that they sympathize.
Let’s hope they’re mad enough to consider some
healthy alternatives.
One of the challenges faced by the New
Democratic Party is the reputation, a rather unfair one
as it turns out, of Mister Robert
Rae,
former Premier of Ontario during the years 1990-95. Robert and the NDP swept to
power, as things generally go. They were young, and brash, (which I have always
admired in a man,) and inexperienced.
They were riding a wave of popularity and a general optimism all across the
vast province that we lived in once but now we merely endure.
The NDP does have a social agenda. It’s a much more
positive one than is popular these days. It’s much more optimistic.
Understandably enough, in the early1990s, the
provincial NDP government set out to change the world. I have to give them a
lot of credit for that, but of course they never foresaw the big recession that
hit shortly thereafter. It’s a funny thing about global recessions. The
experts, the economists, the irrational
monetary theorists of the world, never see them coming. It is only in the
hindsight of revelation that we realize they somehow made out like bandits, while all of the rest of us were
suffering…struggling to keep a roof over the heads and food in the bellies of
our children.
But I digress,
ladies and gentlemen.
I say the reputation is a bit unfair because Robert
had a sweeping vision for social change. At least at that time. Such things
indeed cost money, and the media, some of which is owned by former Conservative
Prime Minister Brian Mulroney,
(Sun Media, etc.) has taken some time and trouble to smear him over the last
twenty-five years as a ‘tax-and-spend’ Premier. It doesn’t cost a Conservative
much to slam a former NDP Premier, (he probably enjoys it, both men in fact) and
in fact we all know Mr. Rae joined the federal Liberals as a leadership
hopeful.
If nothing else, the gentleman has leadership
qualities.
I’ll talk later on, about why I think the Federal
HST, 13 % on most purchases here in Canada, is inflationary.
The provincial Liberals have taken a provincial
budget that was $68 billion or so annually, and bloated it, so that it has now
almost doubled over their tenure. It’s a relatively short period of time to
wield such magic, but then they are special, aren’t they? They’ve also
managed to run up quite the deficit.
The former Premier and two of his top aides,
narrowly avoiding criminal charges, at least so far, have been thoroughly discredited. No one wants to forget
them more than the surviving Liberals themselves.
I would suggest that you remember their names, they
are Dalton
‘Snake’ McGuinty, Dwight
‘The Doughnut’ Duncan
and
then of course there’s that other Fat Bastard.
There are 700,000 known disabled in the province of
Ontario. If you are disabled, or if you know someone who is disabled and
eligible to vote, it is incumbent upon you to get registered to vote; or help
them to get registered to vote. It is important to be proactive.
Don’t wait for them to come to you. I haven’t been
enumerated in years. The buzzer doesn’t work on this building, and I’ve moved
five times in the few years. They don’t really care if we show up
or not. In fact, they hope that we
won’t.
They
sure as hell ain’t gonna come lookin’ for me.
That’s because they know we have exactly zero reasons to vote for either the
Liberals or the Conservatives.
Who can forget Mike
Harris, Ernie
Eves,
and oh, yes, Mister Jim Flaherty, presently
federal Minister of Finance, the man who continually lied about the bank
bailout and the true state of this nation’s economy.
In fact the man is still
doing it. Take a look at that face, ladies and gentlemen.
 |
| Either a liar or mistaken much of the time. (Joshua Sherurcij. Wiki.) |
This is your enemy.
But he is only one of the enemies of the disabled.
What we need to do, in our inclusive little
alliance, is to make damned sure we all vote the same way.
Pick one. But only one.
Let’s vote NDP. I have no idea of what their
platform ultimately will be. But then, I don’t much care, either.
I guess you could call it a measure of my
desperation—and I still don’t really care.
We might call this attitude one of political nihilism.
What that means is if we can keep the Liberals and
the Conservatives out, after that, I don’t much care what happens.
That’s because both the Liberals and the
Conservatives have made our lives a lot more miserable than they really had to
be.
And I’m real tired of being punished by people who morally aren’t particularly all that
well suited to pick up dog turds in the backyards of their own mansions. (Not
that aforesaid individuals don’t pay servants to walk aforesaid dogs in public
parks. After all, it saves on the landscaping, and lush green lawns say it all,
don’t they.)
I say, we, the people of Ontario, have no choice
whatsoever, but to pitch the Liberals out, and for all intents and purposes,
chuck the damned Conservatives out too. And keep them out.
We know who they are.
For some reason we are not welcome in their little society.
***
Let’s take a chance. The Conservatives are little
too vicious for our liking, the Liberals a little too expensive and shifty-eyed.
There’s not much point in voting for the Green
Party. Their economic platform looks like Sarah Palin got
together with Kim-Dumb-Son and Fox News
and put a few speaking points together for an audience of (barely) tame
chimpanzees.
There are critics who say the NDP are ‘socialists.’
It’s absolutely true.
Socialism is all of us, working together for the common
good.
Democracy is the most benevolent and least invasive
form of socialism that has ever been tried.
That’s why they called it ‘democracy.’
Some people see that as a negative point, but I kind
of like it, myself.
One of the really great things about the NDP is that
they actually have a chance of winning, unlike the Green Party, who won’t poll
one percent of the popular vote. The fact they are currently listed at six
percent shows just how accurate polling really is.
The NDP can win this one.
But even more importantly, the interest groups, the
pressure groups, lobby the NDP much less than the government, and of course the
Tories are the biggest lobbyists of all. It’s what they do when they need to
moonlight and make a few extra million bucks.
Of course the insurance industry, the chemical
industry, the power generation industry, they lobby those who they think will
first and foremost win, and those who
will be amenable to suggestion,
ladies and gentlemen.
They are of course looking for like-minded
individuals, whoever is leaving the biggest
slime trail, no matter to them, if those individuals are good for nothing
and hard on food.
***
Here is an unpalatable truth.
The government can’t raise the ODSP subsistence
rates. Do you know why?
Because then Ontario’s disabled would actually have
a better lifestyle than someone working forty hours a week, for the $10.25
minimum wage. That’s because wage earners pay taxes. They pay OHIP and WSIB
contributions, they get deductions for Canada Pension—did you know Kathleen
Wynne wants to bring in a provincial pension plan? She’s got an eleven-buck an
hour minimum wage?
Do you think she knows exactly where the poverty
line actually is?
Sure she does. She wants to keep them minimum-wage
earners hungry—otherwise they’d be
tempted to book off and take the kid to the dentist.
The disabled have medical, drug and eyeglasses, the
most basic dental care benefits. Imagine making eleven bucks an hour,
part-time, and your kid gets a toothache. That’s going to cost you.
What if the kid needs glasses?
You will always be struggling. And most minimum-wage
workers don’t even get forty hours a
week.
***
Yeah, but what are the odds the Liberals could ever
keep their hands off of a provincial pension plan?
Especially if there was any
kind of surplus. What are the odds that if the Conservatives came to power,
they would scrap it, and, keep all the money? It’s not like they
could ever give it back. They would be claiming to pay down the debt or
something and, oh, how fast it would all evaporate, eh? Imagine the tax breaks
they could cut their buddies. That would dissipate quick, wouldn’t it? They
wouldn’t even have the grace to use smoke and mirrors. With them it’s all justification, nothing more. It’s all ideology with them guys. They’ve never
had an actual, original thought, in their entire lives.
Who knows, maybe some Conservative cronies would
find themselves in the rather enviable position of being paid a couple of
hundred million for a power plant they didn’t actually have to build.
Alas, so far, it’s only been the Liberal cronies doing
that. And of course the disabled get to pay for it with their grubby little hides,
which come remarkably cheap to this government.
My spin on this is that we need to boot these highly-esteemed,
good-for-nothing-individuals out, have done with it, and at last, finally,
have a chance to move on with our lives.
I, for one, would like to take my life in a slightly
different direction than the good old ODSP’s rather limited vision.
‘Cause
we all know how that works out in practice.
The NDP would have a growing economy to look forward
to in their early years of power, for surely Mister Flaherty is optimistic
about the future.
You remember, he’s a federal Conservative.
The sort of people who make hay out of other folks’
catastrophes.
***
Okay, I know you’re all asking, so Louis?
Why
is the 13 % HST inflationary?
When guys like the beetle-browed, semi-economist,
the Right Honourable, Jim Flaherty, Minister of Finance, would hotly deny it.
Because if it was removed, what would happen?
Canadians would have thirteen percent more money to
spend on food, shelter, clothing, transportation, fuel, rent…mortgage payments...lots
of good things, really.
Your dollar would be worth that much more in an
instant. That would be, in classic economic terms, ‘deflation.’ And the
opposite of deflation, is…wait for it…inflation.
To artificially jack the price of goods for no real reason, surely this is the worst kind of inflation.
I say that
because they’ve never really managed
to pay down that nasty old deficit,
have they?
It only gets bigger. And Mr. Harper is harping on
rearmament. I guess we can thank Putin, a slightly more extreme case of
conservatism, for that.
It’s only a matter of degree, separating the two men, ideologically,
ladies and gentlemen. One is a little
more extreme than the other, that’s all.
Putin is the arch-conservative, so much so the Tea
Party in the U.S. sort of idolizes him
***
Inflation
wipes out corporate debt, destroys the life savings of the middle class—who are
now on the hook for paying off all of that corporate debt for them, and of
course it makes the lives of the poor
intolerable.
That’s
why they do it, ladies and gentlemen.
Even Paul Krugman, the noted (Nobel Prize-winning)
economist has called for a sustained period of ‘moderate’ inflation. What that
does is make all pensions and fixed incomes smaller.
Every year, your disability pension is worth less
and less. The government knows that very well.
How much longer do you figure you can stand it?
***
Inflation is when it takes more dollars to buy the
same thing.
It goes like this: what once cost $1.00 now costs
$1.13.
That is inflation, ladies and gentlemen, and that is
also all of our time for today.
Oh, poo, I almost forgot—that is also
the sound of the good old Minister of Finance being caught out in another mistake,
Mister
Flaherty.
‘Cause
if it’s not a mistake then it must be a lie.
You read it here first, ladies and gentlemen.
END
Note.
I
was a bit surprised to see the poverty line pegged at something over $23,000
U.S. in one of the supporting links in this Mother
Jones article, where some of the most common myths
about poverty are explored and de-bunked. A single person on ODSP here in
Ontario is living on about $12,600 a year CDN.
And there are people out there
in the world who can justify that. Kathleen Wynne is just one of them.
Here’s the recent poop on party desertion, the humbling but necessary support of the
NDP for this government and its budget to survive, and some other neat stuff. (The Toronto Star.)
