They'd Gut It If They Got the Chance. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

Yesterday my teeth were hurting on the left side. That sort of pain will often spread sympathetically to other teeth, two or three of them in this case. Today, I’ve got a full-blown toothache, which two or three Tylenol 3s barely seem to touch, and that’s with 30-mg of codeine per pill. It’s barely lunch time and that’s a lot of dope. (Washed down with beer. – ed.)

In the past we have noted that the Ontario Disability Support Program pension is really only about $13,800.00 per year for a single adult. In the interest of objectivity, the poverty line is roughly $22,000.00 per year here in Ontario, and this writer is presently paying 69.5 % of that pension in rent.

The landlord just sent a tax receipt and it’s like $9,800.00 per year. It’s nothing fancy, but it was nice and clean when I moved in and lately it’s even been quiet.

This is why we work part-time: so that we can eat something once in a while, something that didn’t come from a food bank, so we can have a car to go to work…an endless cycle, once you get into it, one with not very many good outcomes, or ‘miracles’, as people like to call them.

There’s more. Basically, I just picked up the phone and called my dentist. I’ve got an appointment for next week, and it will be covered by the ODSP Dental Benefit. All I have to do is to show the card. If the doc prescribes, same thing again. Just show the card at the pharmacy.

(All I have to do is to make it through the misery until next week.)

There’s even more to it than that. While a neighbour or a friend might also be getting a base pension of $13,800.00 per year, her medical needs are unique, and much different from my own. I basically didn’t go to the doctor’s for something like seven years before my conscience got on me. She’s in there every month, getting her meds, getting a monthly depot injection, and in her case, the social workers actually show up at her door once a day, to ensure she’s taking the pills. I looked up some of her meds and the cost is substantial. The social workers have to be paid as well as the doctors and the nurses.

Yet in terms of base pension, she’s still living thirty-five to forty percent below the poverty line, just as I am. Since our medical needs are unique, and being adequately covered, this seems fair enough to me. Insofar as that goes...we'll talk about the rates another time.

To put this in perspective, if someone working full time for minimum wage had to pay for this out of their own pocket, it’s an easy six hundred, maybe a thousand a month for all of the medications that she is required to take. This is why the Province of Ontario’s Pharmacare + program is so wonderful. It’s going to help a lot of people.

The fact is, most patients/workers wouldn’t be able to afford anything like it, and therefore, they really couldn’t afford to work. Certainly not at minimum wage. In some odd sense, people on ODSP and even Ontario Works, (welfare), are better off than the lowest-paid workers. The money is not quite so good, but the benefits are a lot better and you don’t have to put in forty hours a week for some scab employer just to survive—in pain, and in some shit-box substandard housing somewhere.

This, I think, is why they raised the minimum wage.

People simply couldn’t afford to work that cheap anymore.

Just for the record, it wasn’t a Progressive Conservative idea to bring this in. It was a Liberal idea—so far the bad guys aren’t saying too much about it.

But I reckon they’d gut it if they had even half a chance.

END

Thank you for reading.

Hey, check out my books and stories here on Kobo.

Why the Disabled Must Destroy the Government.

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.)