Inequality Is What America Is All About

Change you can believe in.

Yeah right.  There are some things that never change and one of them is the tendency for the rich to get richer at everyone else's expense, especially in America.

Since the onset of the Great Recession in 2008, 95% of the gains have gone to the top 1%, and during the same time period the median income has dropped.

It would appear that within this context the inequality of income should be the major concern of the political class.

No way.  Not in the US of A, where more than half of the members of the US Congress are millionaires.

Instead, as a close analysis of President Obama's State of the Union speech reveals, Americans should be more concerned about the equality of opportunity than the equality of incomes.

You can't get anymore American than that.

After all, America is a fundamentalist nation founded on the Protestant wealth ethic articulated by the 16th century French-born theologian, John Calvin.

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Calvin's universe was ruled by a petulant and vindictive deity, one who toyed with his followers by designating a select group of them to share in his divine bounty, only to leave them in the dark as to who these lucky chosen might be.

The faithful were, then, left to fret and worry whether they were in God's good graces and, more importantly, whether they would share the common and inescapable fate of eternal damnation that was the certain end of the non-elect.

How, then, was one to know if they were one of the elect?

The answer: material success.

If a businessman's coffers were fat and he was benefiting from what appeared to be a shrewd and effective business acumen, then surely it is evidence that the Almighty had smiled on him, welcoming him, perhaps, into the Divine's august company.

This, of course, is a ready-made philosophy for any self-flattering elite - no matter what the century - anxious to justify their good fortune as divinely mandated.

Moreover, it provides a justification, based upon a widely-held religious belief, why we should not increase the taxes upon the rich.  To do so, according to this fundamentlist Protestant mindset, would be against God's will.

Instead, we should have faith in the market, which left on its own, without the interference from government, will provide the opportunity for everyone to join God's Elect.

And that ladies and gentlemen is the essence of the American Dream because you have to be asleep at the wheel to fall for that bowl of malarky.

Equal opportunity in America? 

In a country where more than 47 million people live off of food stamps?  In a country where millions of students take on mountain loads of unforgiveable debt just to have the hope of some day making it?  In a country that has the largest number of incarcerated people in the world?

Get out of town! No way!

But that's what it takes to live in America.  You have to "live the lie", I mean "hold the faith" if you want to get by.

Otherwise, you might do something foolish like raise the taxes on the rich and that would most certainly "hurt" the economy.

And God would be really pissed off if that ever happened.

Who knows how he would react? He might even let catastrophic climate change to occur.

So, let's not piss him off and everything will be fine.                         









 

The Pathetic State of Politics in Quebec

The more we find out how corrupt the leading figures are in Quebec, the more it makes me want to move across the river in Ontario.  Where does it stop?  Nobody knows and I think the Charbonneau Commission is just scratching the surface.

With regard to politics, we have learned that the engineering and construction firms are the principle illegal funders of the two political parties that control the province.  As well, criminal charges have been laid against the Mayor of Laval and the interim Mayor of Montreal.  This week charges were also laid against the former director of the provincial police and three of his high-ranking subordinates for fraud, breach of trust, and theft.  Previously, we learned through the work of the Bastarache commission that judges lobbied political fundraisers in order to obtain a promotion.  Most recently, we discovered that the Premier's husband allegedly had a special deal with one of the largest unions in Quebec, the same one that has ties with organized crime, and that the former Premier of Quebec allegedly received a contribution to his political party in return for a contract.

Literally, the roadways are falling apart and it will take tens of billions of dollars that the province doesn't have to make the repairs.  Quebecers are already the highest taxed citizens in North America and it's only going to get worse.  During the market crash, the Quebec pension funds lost 25% of their value, in other words, 40 billion dollars.  Like the concept of a balanced budget, changes to the pension plans have also been put off.

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You would think that given this state of affairs, we're swimming in a cesspool of corruption while the credibility of our political class sinks further and further, we would see a political gesture aimed at restoring confidence in the political process.

Far from it.

Instead, we are treated to the theatre of the bizarre.  The minority PQ government is trying to sell the population of an odious Charter of Values that would discriminate against religious minorities in Quebec, a proposed law that even the province's human rights commission has denounced.

Playing to the nationalist xenophobia of its electoral base, this move is electoral politics at its best.  It diverts the population's attention from issues that really matter.

The said part of the story is that the population is effectively held captive.  Since the first-past-the-post electoral system provides an alternance of two governing parties, both unable to effectively govern the province, there is no way out of the mess we have gotten ourselves into.

Democracy you say.  Not here.  The only truly democratic gesture that remains for me is to vote with my feet and get the hell out of here.

Ditch the North American Diet and Climb Out of the Fat Trap

We are a fat folk, myself included.  One out of three of us are overweight and one out of five are obese.  And boy do we love to eat.  Trouble is we have no idea how to go about eating in a healthy manner.  We jam out gullets full with fat, sugar, and salt, while thinking about eating a balanced diet. Unfortunately, the balance is out of whack and the scale is telling us that we need to make a change.

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The typical North American diet is high in carbohydrate, fat, salt, and processed food.  Add in a sedentary lifestyle and we get a recipe for an obesity epidemic.

For years now, we've been told to decrease our fat intake and to make sure that we ate a diet rich in carbohydrates, especially the whole wheat variety.  During this time, however, the incidence of Type II diabetes tripled. 

From a public health perspective this turn of events is an unmitigated disaster.  As a result of lifestyle choices, millions of people have effectively had their lives shortened, and millions more will predictably fall into some form of dementia since those with Diabetes are twice as likely to fall prey to Alzheimer's disease.

As the population continues to age, the cost of health care will skyrocket.  So much so, it will throw into doubt America's capacity to take care of its enfeebled population while maintaining the world's largest and most expensive military machine.

The situation begs the question, how could the professional health care community in North America collectively make such a monumental error with regard to something as basic as providing sound advice on nutrition.  After all, the medical community is made up of people that are academically gifted, out best and brightest.

As we could expect, the mainstream medical community was bought off, either outright, as is the case with the American Heart Association and the American Diabetes Association that still recommend (I just checked their websites) that people eat cereal products as long as the products contain whole wheat, even though whole wheat bread, for example, has a higher glycemic rating than Skittles candy, or indirectly by way of the silence of those in the medical community who do not speak out against such dubious health advice, whose silence is perfectly aligned with the wishes of the food industry and Big Pharma.

Fortunately, the mounting evidence about the devastation brought on by a high carbohydrate diet has been revealed.  I highly recommend, if you haven't done so, to watch Dr. Robert Lustig's highly influential video (more than 4 million views),
Sugar: The Bitter Truth, and pick up a copy of the best selling books, Wheat Belly, by Dr. William Davis, and Grain Brain, by Dr. David Perlmutter.

In short, if you want to drop the pounds, drop starch and added sugar from your diet, prepare your meals from scratch, and over the course of the day, walk more than 10,000 steps.

I made these simple changes to my life about three months ago, and to date I have lost thirty pounds.

Let's face it, the food industry, Big Pharma, the mainstream medical community, and the US government conspired to turn America into one huge fat farm.  They were hugely (pardon the pun) successful, but the tide has turned as more and more people are cutting fast carbs from their diet for health reasons.

Join with me to say good-bye to your fat ass and let the slim you see the light of day.

Year in Review: Canadians No Longer Have Reason to Feel Smug

There was a time when Canadians could feel a quiet pride about their country: peacekeeping roles with the United Nations, generous social programs, young Canadians cavorting around Europe with Canadian flags stitched onto their backpacks.

We were the quieter, gentler version of America.

Well, this year all those notions got dumped.

Over the last twelve months, we witnessed an unprecedented number of political scandals: Senators bilking taxpayers, corruption left, right, and centre in Quebec, and then there was spectacle of the crack smoking mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford.

I think the reason his antics got so much media play around the world, especially in the US, was that the world experienced a great deal of schadenfreude seeing Canada embodied by such a crass individual, a long way from the Dudley Do Right image that we had cultivated over the years.

Indeed, it is difficult to maintain the holier-than-thou attitude when our past sins of the wide spread systemic abuse of First Nations children in our residential schools and our present disregard for the environmental consequences of extracting oil from the tar sands, a practice that has earned Canada the label of an environmental rogue nation in the world press, are repeatedly brought to mind.

Even our traditional practice of making ourselves feel better by comparing ourselves to the Americans brings little solace since third world conditions have taken hold, for example the bankrupt City of Detroit, and are continuing to spread amongst a beleaguered people.

WTF Canada, get your shit together, make some New Year resolutions, do something.

Let's not waste another year pretending that we are some how morally superior to our neighbours.

Just like everyone else we have our fair share of problems, and the first step in meeting these collective challenges is admitting that they exist and that they are there for everyone to see.

Merry Christmas America: You've Been Scrooged

As the holidays draw nearer, it appears that, judging from president Obama's speech on economic inequality last week, he finally gets it: America has been scrooged.

I think that this year enough people finally honed in on the fact that while many Americans stuffed themselves at the dinner table on Thanksgiving and then went on a spending binge the next day after, commonly known as Black Friday, there was something amiss.

Lo and behold, in all this glorious consumption, the people who had to work on the holiday in the retail sector as wage slaves, making it possible for those better off to gorge themselves on the savings, are not being paid enough so they to can partake in the spirit of giving thanks for the bounty of material wealth.

In fact, companies like WalMart, run by the richest family in America, have taken to organizing charity food drives for their workers who have difficulty putting a meal on the table for their families given their abysmal wages.

Scrooge would have approved, that is the Scrooge before he was visited by the ghosts of Christmas.

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Hopefully, families in need won't have to go without food at the end of December because they decided to put a turkey on the table with all the accompanying dishes, thereby using up all of their remaining food stamps which were recently reduced in number by a vote in the Grinch-like US Congress.

Looking at how firmly entrenched is the practice of scrooging the common folks in America, it would take a miraculous intervention by a benevolent spirit on a massive scale to remove the chains around the hearts of those who run things.

But lets stay real.  Nothing of the sort is going to happen.  Changes of heart like that only happen in the wonderful world of fiction.  In the real world, the monied folks in America will continue to shirk their social responsibilities and take comfort in the fabulous wealth that the Good Lord has arranged to have come their way.

Merry Christmas America.  I hope that someday the Spirit of Christmas will descend and remain upon you, from the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans.

God don't forsake America.

The top 1% already has.

Canada's Rob Ford Is Far Too Canadian

In other words, just dessert Canada for not taking care of your political institutions.

Take a look around: an out-dated voting system, scandal in the Senate, documented voter suppression through robo calls, rampant corruption in the province of Quebec, and a big, fat, crack smoking mayor of Canada's largest, world class (but not for the right reasons) city -- Toronto.

Yet Canadians are so nice.  How did they end up being led by such a pathetic lot?

They couldn't be bothered to do much if anything to change the status quo.

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Canada's Lamentable Lack of Imagination

Let's face it.  Most Canadians couldn't give a shit about the way they are governed.  As long as they can make the payments on their mortgage, cars, credit cards and make believe that hockey is their game, they'll let someone else to do the heavy lifting.

Inappropriate behavior brings about unpleasant consequences, and in the case of Rob Ford, Canada is looking at the consequences of neglecting the development of its political institutions. 

We still employ the same methods of governance that predate the harnessing of electricity, the commercialization of the internal combustion engine, and the rise of information and communications technology.

As a result, we are the joke.

Like it or not, Rob Ford is far too Canadian and the world has taken notice.

Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Play Football

That's it.  After forty years of watching NFL football, it's over.  I cannot in good conscience watch another game, especially knowing what I know about the league and the devastating effects playing the game can have long after the players have hung up their cleats.

I loved football and I loved to watch the show.  Following in my father's footsteps, I played the game from an early age until high school, when fortunately for me I decided to switch sports and took up rowing.

My father was not so lucky.  He went on to play professional football, suffered a number of concussions, one of which ended his career.  I had the unenviable task of watching him decline both physically and mentally, most probably suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a disease that attacks the brain to bring on memory lapses, personality disorders, and progressive dementia.  He died prematurely, like most professional football players, at the ripe old age of 56, some twenty years less than he could have otherwise expected to live.

Personal family tragedy aside, what has really turned me off the NFL is how it treats its players and how it exploits its fans.

Half of the owners of NFL teams are billionaires.  Together, they make over 8 billion a year from football operations, yet they are incredibly cheap bastards. I guess that's how they became billionaires.

Repeatedly, the owners hold their loyal fans hostage by threatening to move the team if taxpayers don't come up with the cash to build a new stadium at public expense.  Moreover, the league is exempt from anti-trust legislation and, get this, was determined to be a non-profit organization.  WTF?

When it comes to the players, it is a plantation mentality that rules, which is not surprising since 70% of the players are black.  Keep in mind there are no African Americans who own a NFL team.

Essentially, the players are cannon fodder.  The average career lasts three years.  Long enough to incur long-term debilitating injuries, but not long enough to qualify for disability insurance, which is only in effect up to five years after a player retires from the game, a detail that disadvantages the players since the long-term effects of playing the game tend to show up later.

In short, the owners transfer the health costs of treating the broken shells of former players to the taxpayers.  Having to deal with the pain and the disabilities, many former NFL veterans are unable to hold onto a job and fall into poverty, leaving the state to pick up their medial bills.

What's worse is the league has been in a state of denial over the long-term consequences of repeated head injuries associated with CTE and only recently settled out-of-court with the former players who had filed against a class action suit against the league.  The settlement, a paltry $750 million, which may seem like a lot but in reality is the revenue generated by only 8 televised Monday-night games. This works out to be only $150,000 per former player named in the suit, not nearly enough to cover the long-term care that many of the former players will need.

All in all, the players get screwd by the owners, the fans pay dearly for having the pleasure of watching the violence-ridden spectacle, and the owners are laughing all the way bank.

No wonder NFL football is by far the most popular professional sport.  The league is quintessentially American in the manner it conducts its affairs.

But count this boy out.  The air waves are glutted with sports programming, and I have decided to boycott the NFL and watch something else.

I encourage you to do the same.