{"id":532,"date":"2015-04-24T11:11:53","date_gmt":"2015-04-24T15:11:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/?p=532"},"modified":"2015-04-27T10:42:26","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T14:42:26","slug":"budget-woes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/?p=532","title":{"rendered":"Budget Woes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"budget\"<\/a>I have always disliked governmental budgets.\u00a0 Not because they are budgets, mind you, for it is a good thing to be careful with other people\u2019s money, and ensure you spend it wisely, should they ever entrust with such a task.\u00a0 No, the problem is that governments around our globe, and particularly here in Canada, use the budget to appear as though they are being generous to you for giving you back some of your own money and, what is worse, they use this largesse of cash to buy votes and keep themselves in power.<\/p>\n

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Budgets also give us a glimpse into the priorities of government, and the mindset of our political leaders. \u00a0I would recommend you take a few moments to glance over the two budgets tabled in the past few days, one for Canada<\/a>, and the other for Ontario<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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I will just mention a few here: \u00a0Now, I don\u2019t want to be too cynical, but I cannot help but ask what guides our parliamentarians in their choice of what to throw money at?\u00a0 At least the Federal Conservatives have some vague family policy, which does help:\u00a0 Allowing more savings in TFSA\u2019s (tax-free savings accounts), allowing caregivers to use EI to stay at home at care for sick relatives (although this does save on health costs) and, of course, their recent income-splitting initiative, which allows one parent (one hopes the mother) to stay at home, and declare a portion of the other spouse\u2019s income, so the latter pays tax in a lower bracket.\u00a0 \u00a0The policy is not perfect (there are other<\/a> ways to split income that may be more beneficial), but is a step in the right direction, to allow a parent to stay at home and raise the children, even home-school, should they so desire.\u00a0 Any policy that supports the family unit should, in general, be praised.<\/p>\n

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However, what the government refuses to do is to think philosophically about any issue, to get at the root causes.\u00a0 Perhaps this is because many of them are lawyers, businessmen, and life-long government bureaucrats without a metahphysical or religious basis, who think in terms of \u2018results\u2019 and \u2018practical benefits\u2019 with that annoying slogan \u2018moving forward…\u2019 \u00a0To use an historical analogy, modern Cromwells (historically, a thuggish, materialistic, opportunistic brute who, not surprisingly, is being whitewashed in a popular series of books recently turned into a television miniseries<\/a>).<\/p>\n

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Hence we have the usual insane and ill-advised boondoggle in both budgets, thinking that more money will solve problems that are not about money:\u00a0 More cash thrown down the bottomless abyss of native reserves for education (\u2018$200 million over five years\u2019) and \u2018mental-wellness\u2019 ($2 million per year), when the real problem is a state of welfare dependency and malaise caused by the whole notion of the \u2018reserve system\u2019 itself.\u00a0 Adult human beings are not made nor meant to be \u2018taken care of\u2019 by a government agency, but to make their own way in the world, to be provident and independent.\u00a0 No wonder the natives are restless and depressed, but no one wants to address the cause.\u00a0 For who but a member of our poor benighted Senate would want to be taken care of by the government forever?<\/p>\n

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At the provincial level, we have this canard actually written by supposedly rational human beings in an official Provincial budget, that is, promulgated by our own government:<\/p>\n

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Confronting climate change and protecting our environment will help ensure Ontario continues to be a great place to live. These actions will also help ensure that we have a strong economy. The environmental, social and economic challenges of climate change are global issues. Ontario has been hit hard by the effects of climate change, including recent extreme weather events such as ice storms, severe thunderstorms and flash flooding. These events have caused unprecedented damage to the places Ontarians live, work and play, costing the government, businesses and families hundreds of millions of dollars. In the years to come, such damages and costs will likely be greater if current trends are left unchecked.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Does the government really predict that it can control the weather with a few tweaks in carbon emissions, easily offset by the burp of one volcano?\u00a0 Do they really think that, until 2015, we did not have \u2018extreme weather events\u2019?\u00a0 And the ice storm was a one-time occurrence that happened while I was living in Toronto in 1998.\u00a0 That was 17 years ago. \u00a0We live in Canada. \u00a0 \u00a0There is ice. \u00a0In fact, we have whole lakes, rivers even glaciers of ice, and ice, yes, sometimes falls from the sky in what we call ‘pellets’ and covers things in ice. \u00a0Have people gone insane?<\/p>\n

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\"Kathleen<\/a>When the Finance Minister, Charles de Souza, who with his Premier Ms. Wynne are icons of much of what is wrong with modern Canada, mentioned in his speech that some people actually still dispute anthropogenic climate change (\\I don’t think he did not use the big word, but you get the point); and there was Kathleen Wynne seated by his side, shaking her head, looking around wide-eyed and gasping in unbelief, \u2018No, no\u2019…say it ain\u2019t so, Charlie.<\/p>\n

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So the Liberals are moving forward with an economically disastrous \u2018cap and trade\u2019 system for \u2018carbon credits\u2019, basically an economically punitive measure to stop us emitting so much carbon (that is, doing much of anything at all).\u00a0 The only other two failed-states to promulgate this measure are Quebec and California, which gives you some idea of Ontario\u2019s new level of insanity.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Here is a summary<\/a> of the cap and trade, which gives you some inkling of how easily this will lead to totalitarian control and abuse:<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s a system where the government caps the total amount of carbon emissions allowed. The government then issues permits to companies, specifying exactly how much carbon that company can burn. If a company wants to burn more than its share of carbon, it must buy extra permits from other companies that have burned less.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The laws of supply and demand govern exactly what the price of a carbon permit ends up being. Over time, the government gradually lowers the cap, cutting the number of permits it issues and driving up their price.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The idea is that some companies will cut their carbon emissions in order to make money by selling their extra permits, while other companies will cut emissions to avoid having to pay the price to buy more permits<\/em><\/p>\n

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Paying the government to emit carbon?\u00a0 Really?\u00a0 And this won\u2019t be abused and add yet-more bureacracy to our behemothic government?<\/p>\n

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These are the people in charge of indoctrinating your children, most of whom with religious fervour believe this anti-science, and see nothing wrong with this level of governmental control.\u00a0 And this is not the least of the indoctrination. They have a graphic flow chart of a mythical example student \u2018Dylan\u2019 (who in the image is apparently wearing a dress, but I suppose, prescinding from Bob Dylan, itself a pseudonym, it is a sort of ambiguous name), as he\/she moves forward in her\/his\/its education basically from soon out of the womb until mid-adulthood.<\/p>\n

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I could go on, and probably will at some point once I digest more, for the problems do not end here, so please do peruse the budgets yourself, particularly the Ontario version, which is far the worse.\u00a0 As I have written, Ontario is well over $300 billion in debt, half\u00a0 of all of Canada, and this current imprudent financial plan, greeted with applause from the trained seals around the Ministers, only adds to that burden, and increases yet-again government\u2019s intrusion into our lives.\u00a0 We are not far from outright tyranny here in Canada, \u2018our land glorious and free\u2019, as we sing in our anthem.\u00a0 Well, it is still a glorious land, but only free if we are willing to stand up and fight to keep it so.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

April 24 2015<\/p>\n

Saint Fidelis of Sigmaringen<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have always disliked governmental budgets.\u00a0 Not because they are budgets, mind you, for it is a good thing to be careful with other people\u2019s money, and ensure you spend it wisely, should they ever entrust with such a task.\u00a0 No, the problem is that governments around our globe, and particularly here in Canada, use […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=532"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":542,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532\/revisions\/542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}