It turns out that besides the joy of being a waiter in his past life, like Kleins Brain Rod Love, Harpers nominee for the Supreme Court Mr. Justice Marshall Rothstein, is a corporate shill.
In particular he takes a conservative view in favour of corporate rights in Intellectual Property Law, in particular he has supported the patenting of life. Which means those opposed to further development of corporatized food, like Monsanto's GMO's should be afraid, very afraid.
As technological law expert Michael Geist writes in todays Toronto Star;
In recent years Rothstein has emerged as a prominent jurist on intellectual property cases at the Federal Court of Appeal. His best-known decision is the Harvard mouse case, which addressed the question of whether higher life forms, in this case the "oncomouse," could be patented. Rothstein ruled that it could, concluding that there was nothing in the definition of "invention" under the Patent Act to preclude such patents. Rothstein has also presided over leading copyright and trademark cases. He wrote a concurring opinion in Law Society of Upper Canada v. CCH Canadian, a copyright case that focused on the photocopying of legal decisions. He sided with the majority in a high-profile trademark battle between Lego and Montreal-based Mega Blocks.
All of a sudden this 'new' political screening process for Supreme Court Justice nominees that will take only three hours looks far less threatening than some imagined. Despite being on TV this public preview suddenly looks tame despite initial fears it would end up looking like the American circus around their judicial appointments. In fact it is less threatening than the fact the PMO still maintains the power to appoint and veto Supreme Court appointees.
Canadians, however, should not have unrealistic expectations for Judge Rothstein's television premiere. The time allotted to each of the 12 MPs who will question him - 15 minutes - does not facilitate deep and probing conversations.
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Monday, February 27, 2006
Keir Hardie in Canada
One of founding fathers of the British Labour Party and the Social Democratic movement in England the last century spent time in Canada as this interesting article reveals. It influenced him in moving the party from narrow apologism for English Imperialism to internationalism.
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Postcards from the left
BRIAN WILSON
DEAR Jamie, had a great meeting here tonight, which passed off all right. I am now halfway across Canada. It is a wonderful country. Am keeping fairly well, tho' whiles weary. Daddie."
That inscription, on the back of a postcard sent from a globetrotting father to his teenage son back home, would in most circumstances be entirely unremarkable. In this case, however, the brief message is worth closer analysis. The year was 1907, the city was Winnipeg and the man who wrote the postcard was James Keir Hardie, founder and first leader of the Scottish Labour party.
From humble beginnings, the illegitimate son of a servant rose to become an international statesman of the left; an extraordinary role for a man of his background in an age when travel (at least with a return ticket) was largely the preserve of the wealthy. The postcards he sent back to his wife and family in the Ayrshire town of Cumnock from all over the globe give a snapshot of his travels and their influence on his life and beliefs.
His parliamentary leadership had been fraught with difficulties and it was not a role he revelled in. While wholly genuine, his health problems created a convenient reason for him to take a break - albeit in the daunting form of a world tour, financed in part by the Salvation Army, at the time a powerful force for temperance and social reform.Even if its provenance was rooted in his poor health and despair with internal squabbling, the tour of 1907-8 (from which much of this postcard collection is drawn) was probably the high point of Hardie's extensive international travels. It was good for the Scotsman to escape the hothouse of Labour politics, even more fractious then than now, but it was also good for Labour to have its most prominent figure immersed in international affairs.
Early Labour without Hardie would have had very little of an internationalist dimension. His travels made him an authority on the ethical and political issues that flowed from Britain's role as the world's greatest imperial power. Support for empire was as strong in the working classes as any other, and it took political courage to argue otherwise. The fact that Labour came to identify with the aspirations of colonial peoples, from Ireland to India, was largely due to Hardie, his travels and the lessons he drew from them.
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A Convenient Accident
Officer who shot George dies
Toronto Star -
Kenneth Deane, the elite Ontario Provincial Police paramilitary officer convicted of fatally shooting Indian activist Anthony (Dudley) George, was killed on the weekend in a traffic accident on Highway 401 in eastern Ontario
Now if I was a conspiracy theorist I would say that this was way too convenient an 'accident'.
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Toronto Star -
Kenneth Deane, the elite Ontario Provincial Police paramilitary officer convicted of fatally shooting Indian activist Anthony (Dudley) George, was killed on the weekend in a traffic accident on Highway 401 in eastern Ontario
Now if I was a conspiracy theorist I would say that this was way too convenient an 'accident'.
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Mormonism Cult of the Political Right
White patriarch with multiple wives, survivalist stocking the cellar for the second coming, armed to the teeth, ascending to heaven to become gods on their own planets. This is the cult of Mormonism, a rip off of Masonic fraternal secrets, with some pseudo Egyptology occult symbols cobbled together by a former table rapper and spirituralist named Joseph Smith.
There are thousands of Mormons in Canada, the majority of them live in Southern Alberta.
The Alberta PC's (Party of Calgary) and their government are riddled with them. They make up the right wing rump in cabinet and the back benches.
I went to the University of Lethbridge and during my time there the Moromons on campus along with other right wing nuts that populate this most Americanized section of the province, organized a petition to make mandatory student union fees, taxes as they called them, voluntary. Can you imagine if these guys had gotten into power in Ottawa, wait they have. Anyways they bankrupted the SU for a couple of years.
The Mormons base in Canada is Southern Alberta, it was their second home after the persecution and attacks on them in Utah. Like most of Southern Alberta it is home to many American based religious pioneers who moved north, such as the Christian Reformed Church. It is also a strong base for reactionary and conspiracy minded right wing fascists.
But Mormons disproportionately make up the right wing in North American politics. Which is ironic as this article explains.
Oh did I mention their connection to the CIA or their taking over of Howard Hughes estate, or the fact that their sacred texts don't exist. And did I mention that they believe that when they die the elect men, not women, become the Gods, plural, in heaven.
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There are thousands of Mormons in Canada, the majority of them live in Southern Alberta.
| Cardston |
| own (1991 pop. 3,480), SW Alta., Canada, near the U.S. boundary. It was founded in 1887 by Mormons from Utah under the leadership of Charles Ora Card, son-in-law of Brigham Young. The chief Mormon temple of Canada is in the town. It is a ranch and irrigation agriculture center. Nearby is the Blood Reserve, the largest reserve for Native Americans in Canada. |
The Alberta PC's (Party of Calgary) and their government are riddled with them. They make up the right wing rump in cabinet and the back benches.
I went to the University of Lethbridge and during my time there the Moromons on campus along with other right wing nuts that populate this most Americanized section of the province, organized a petition to make mandatory student union fees, taxes as they called them, voluntary. Can you imagine if these guys had gotten into power in Ottawa, wait they have. Anyways they bankrupted the SU for a couple of years.
The Mormons base in Canada is Southern Alberta, it was their second home after the persecution and attacks on them in Utah. Like most of Southern Alberta it is home to many American based religious pioneers who moved north, such as the Christian Reformed Church. It is also a strong base for reactionary and conspiracy minded right wing fascists.
But Mormons disproportionately make up the right wing in North American politics. Which is ironic as this article explains.
The Latter-day Saints are on the rise in the US, and a Republican named Mitt Romney has hopes of becoming the first Mormon president. But the church has one serious image problem: polygamy. Which is why HBO's new drama, about a man with three wives, is stirring up controversy. By Julian Borger
KINGDOM COME
SALT LAKE CITY WAS JUST FOR STARTERS
The Mormons' True Great Trek Has Been To Social Acceptance
And A $30 Billion Church Empire
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Anti-Semitism Redux
In this weeks Guardian Weekly this essay was published that addresses some of the issues I have raised here and here
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Israel's policies are feeding the cancer of anti-semitism
It is a lie that to reject Zionism as it is practised today is to be the inheritor of Hitler's racism
I say this as the child of a German Jewish-born father who escaped in time. His mother did not. I say it as a half-Jewish German child chased around a British playground in the second world war and taunted with "he's not just a German, he's a Jew". A double insult. But I say this too as a Christian priest who shares the historic guilt of all the churches. All Christians share a bloody inheritance.If I feel all that in my guts and know it in my head, I cannot stand by and watch the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - one of the world's most dangerous outbreaks of collective hatred - as a dispassionate onlooker. I cannot listen calmly when an Iranian president talks of wiping out Israel. Jewish fears go deep. They are not irrational. But I cannot listen calmly either when a great many citizens of Israel think and speak of Palestinians in the way a great many Germans thought and spoke about Jews when I was one of them and had to flee.
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Sunday, February 26, 2006
Darren McGavin RIP
This gives new meaning to child star.
McGavin was born in Spokane, Wash. and described himself as a runaway from the age of 10, living in warehouses, dodging the police and welfare workers. During the 1940s, he landed in Los Angeles, washing dishes and painting sets for Columbia Pictures. Tough guy actor Darren McGavin dies
Remember that when folks talk about child runaways and imply some nefarious conspiracy of abuse. Kids have been running away from home for years, whether to the circus, as in Under the Big Tent, or to go to Hollywood. Tough Guy, gee when was he a tough guy? Certainly not as Kolchak our favorite investigative reporter.
Airs: Friday 8:00 PM on ABC (60 mins)
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McGavin was born in Spokane, Wash. and described himself as a runaway from the age of 10, living in warehouses, dodging the police and welfare workers. During the 1940s, he landed in Los Angeles, washing dishes and painting sets for Columbia Pictures. Tough guy actor Darren McGavin dies
Remember that when folks talk about child runaways and imply some nefarious conspiracy of abuse. Kids have been running away from home for years, whether to the circus, as in Under the Big Tent, or to go to Hollywood. Tough Guy, gee when was he a tough guy? Certainly not as Kolchak our favorite investigative reporter.
Airs: Friday 8:00 PM on ABC (60 mins)
Kolchak was originally two made-for-TV movies that aired in the early 70's, and featured the adventures of Carl Kolchak, a down-on-the heels reporter who ran afoul of a vampire in Las Vegas and an alchemist in Seattle. These movies proved popular enough that they were spun off into a series, which placed Kolchak in Chicago with the Independent News Service. Each week for 20 weeks he investigated various supernatural and supranatural creatures, ranging from aliens to vampires to Aztec sacrificial cults.
Although it only lasted one season on ABC, Kolchak has remained a cult favorite and been kept alive through the efforts of creator Jeffrey Grant Rice, Mark Dawidziak, and the folks at Moonstone Comics, who have two Kolchak comics going (see Links). There's an anthology of Kolchak stories coming out this year and discussion of a new Night Stalker (2005) series produced by The X-Files's Frank Spotnitz for ABC.
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GST Computer Opps
Forget about the Firearms Registry, here comes yet another computer based screw up by the Federal Government. Once again rigging together a computer system under incompetent supervision. Not the first time of course, and the same problem that plagues the contracting out of computer operations like the Firearms Registry, is that the Deputy Ministers in charge don't supervise.
RTF's are poorly planned, and basically the bureaucracy resists change and sabotages any computerizing of government services, by omission or commission. Mind you the DM in charge are clueless when it comes to computer systems and rely on being sold by salesman. Don't take this person with you to buy a car.
But the irony of this screw up is well delicious. It's the Conservatives own Gouge and Screw Tax that has been running on the same jerry rigged computer system since they were last in power. Maybe Brian Mulroney knows how to fix it.
A newly released audit, however, says even this number is too low. Additional testing, training and compensation to Quebec, which must upgrade its own GST computers in tandem, will push the total cost to about $200 million, more than double original projections.
The auditors, in a December 2005 report obtained by The Canadian Press, give mixed reviews to the new project. Some aspects were well-managed, they found, and some cost overruns were unavoidable.
But high-level supervision of this major government project was inadequate, the report says.
"It was evident that there was a lack of skill sets in certain business areas," says the document. "Formal senior level oversight . . . on a regular basis . . . was not evident."
Project teams "did not have a clear understanding" of aspects of the system, and there were no detailed plans for training or testing, which have helped drive up costs.
Supervisors also failed to deal properly with the problem of corrupt data, which has to be repaired before it can be inputted into the new system. An estimated 740,000 to two million records will require electronic fixes.
The federal government has a badly tarnished record when it comes to implementing new computer systems:
-In 2003, National Defence discovered it had been defrauded of $146 million through bogus invoices related to computer systems.
-A 2003 audit found the Canadian Coast Guard had mismanaged a project to link its ships and shore stations by computer. The original budget of $7.9 million soared to $13.3 million and would likely climb even higher, the audit said.
-An internal audit last year of the military's MASIS computer project, designed to track inventory, estimated the true cost at about $325 million - far in excess of the $147 million planned in 1997.
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RTF's are poorly planned, and basically the bureaucracy resists change and sabotages any computerizing of government services, by omission or commission. Mind you the DM in charge are clueless when it comes to computer systems and rely on being sold by salesman. Don't take this person with you to buy a car.
But the irony of this screw up is well delicious. It's the Conservatives own Gouge and Screw Tax that has been running on the same jerry rigged computer system since they were last in power. Maybe Brian Mulroney knows how to fix it.
Tories inherit troubled GST computer project just as they plan to cut the tax
The replacement was to cost $98.5 million and be running by 2004. But costs have soared and schedules have slipped: the latest official estimate is $145 million, with a new start date of next October.A newly released audit, however, says even this number is too low. Additional testing, training and compensation to Quebec, which must upgrade its own GST computers in tandem, will push the total cost to about $200 million, more than double original projections.
The auditors, in a December 2005 report obtained by The Canadian Press, give mixed reviews to the new project. Some aspects were well-managed, they found, and some cost overruns were unavoidable.
But high-level supervision of this major government project was inadequate, the report says.
"It was evident that there was a lack of skill sets in certain business areas," says the document. "Formal senior level oversight . . . on a regular basis . . . was not evident."
Project teams "did not have a clear understanding" of aspects of the system, and there were no detailed plans for training or testing, which have helped drive up costs.
Supervisors also failed to deal properly with the problem of corrupt data, which has to be repaired before it can be inputted into the new system. An estimated 740,000 to two million records will require electronic fixes.
The federal government has a badly tarnished record when it comes to implementing new computer systems:
-In 2003, National Defence discovered it had been defrauded of $146 million through bogus invoices related to computer systems.
-A 2003 audit found the Canadian Coast Guard had mismanaged a project to link its ships and shore stations by computer. The original budget of $7.9 million soared to $13.3 million and would likely climb even higher, the audit said.
-An internal audit last year of the military's MASIS computer project, designed to track inventory, estimated the true cost at about $325 million - far in excess of the $147 million planned in 1997.
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Olympic Medal Count
We're number Three ! We're number Three! I know it's a silly cheer until you realise we had the best showing ever in any Olympics. And we are number one with women getting the most medals in any Olympics. We're #1 We're #1. See there are Olympics even if Team Canada lost. And Don Cherry sulked.
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Winnipeg's Cindy Klassen achieved unprecedented results, capturing five medals to give her six overall, both Canadian records. It also marked the highest total by a female speed skater, surpassing the four gold medals won by Lidiya Skoblikova of Russia at the 1964 Innsbruck Winter Games.
"To see Cindy Klassen win five medals, she was definitely the woman of the Games," Rogge said.
"Led by Cindy...(these) Games have been a huge step forward for high-performance sport in our country," said Canada's chef de mission Shane Pearsall.
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William F.Buckley 'Get Out Of Iraq Now'
The elder voice of the Conservative right in the United States opines that the U.S. efforts in Iraq have been a colossal failure and the best bet is to get out now.
Bad enough the Prez is facing a united front of Democrats and Republicans over the whole Dubai owns our Ports issue, and united front calling for his impeachment over illegal wiretapping, now Bill Buckley slaps him upside the head over Iraq.
Not a good week for King George II.
A tip o' the blog to Bitch/Lab for this.
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Bad enough the Prez is facing a united front of Democrats and Republicans over the whole Dubai owns our Ports issue, and united front calling for his impeachment over illegal wiretapping, now Bill Buckley slaps him upside the head over Iraq.
Not a good week for King George II.
By William F. Buckley Jr.Fri Feb 24, 9:05 PM ET
“I can tell you the main reason behind all our woes — it is America.” The New York Times reporter is quoting the complaint of a clothing merchant in a Sunni stronghold in Iraq. “Everything that is going on between Sunnis and Shiites, the troublemaker in the middle is America.”
Mr. Bush has a very difficult internal problem here because to make the kind of concession that is strategically appropriate requires a mitigation of policies he has several times affirmed in high-flown pronouncements. His challenge is to persuade himself that he can submit to a historical reality without forswearing basic commitments in foreign policy.He will certainly face the current development as military leaders are expected to do: They are called upon to acknowledge a tactical setback, but to insist on the survival of strategic policies.
Yes, but within their own counsels, different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat.
A tip o' the blog to Bitch/Lab for this.
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Kids Are Commodities
So says Steve Janke over at Angry in the Great White North. No kidding, pardon the pun. He says raising rug rats is the way we pay for our pensions and future caretaking. By demanding that we return to the bad old days before the Welfare State. Steve says Children have no value
What he means is that they are no longer commodities as producers, they remain commodities as consumers of course. So they cost him lots of money, and he wails about having to spend more on them through his taxes. That is he is opposed to day care, cause well the little woman should work at home only and raise the kids. For free of course, no pension, no wages for housework, its a payless career that should bring its own satisfaction. Why child raising is a joy. Which is why in the sixties before the discovery of post pardum depression, psychiatrists made valium the solution for the bored, stressed out housewives of North America.
Love these conservatives their solution is always Forward To The Past or Backwards Into The Future. No really he says that socialized pensions are horrible, poor deluded youngster born post depression in the wonder days of Trudeaumania and Keynes. He can live in his conservative fantasyland because we have social programs. Programs his parents and grandparents demanded, fought and voted for.
Unlike his parents and grandparents who lived through the dirty thirties when Janke's conservatism ruled, no pensions, no old age security, no Unemployment Insurance err pardon me I mean, Employment Insurance (that wonderful Orwellian turn of phrase), no Medicare and damn it No Damn Welfare. Relief was a dollar a week and you had to be married, if not, off to the concentration camps you go.
Better yet he blames them tax and spend Liberals for all this nasty stuff. And then he goes one step better and claims that taxes are the reason for declining birth rates. Ahem the lengths these guys go to blame taxes for everything is well, just exasperating.
Having lots of children wasn't and never has been a glorious prospect. The reality is that having lots of children for the peasant or farming family and later the artisans family was to have workers. Survival rates of children in feudalism as in modern Third World countries was low due to disease. Which is why in earlier societies before the advent of industrialization and capitalism and in modern developing countries the motto was and is it takes a village to raise a child, opps sorry not in Steves mythical world. In his world the family is the bourgeois family of the 19th century. Sometimes called the nuclear family, mom, dad, two kids and a dog.
Unless you are Catholic which is a religion of go forth and multiply and is peasant based from its power in the feudal period to its dying power today in the peasant based economies of the Developing World.
This 'modern' model of the nuclear family evolved under capitalism, as the bourgeoisie values of housework and homework and the management of the home, became a science for the upperclass women and their middle class followers. In the 19th Century Domestication, the ideal of the house wife as manger evolved through the writing of books on home management and etiquette. All this home management was not done by the middle class or upper class woman, but her maids and nannies, predominately Irish working girls. Who then went home to raise their own families after spending their days in indentured servitude to their bourgeois owners. That is the model of the nuclear family.
The reality is that daycare is the modern form of the nanny culture. Irish maids and servants were not unknown amongst the wealthier craftsman in Canada at the turn of last century. There is no inherent value in one parent staying home with the children after infancy. In fact amongst the bourgeois of the 19th century nursemaids were also employed, so that the upperclasses didn't have to suffer the physicality of touching their own children.
Of course that is not what day care or child care offers today. It is about early childhood education. The right wing now goes aghast and agog about this, in much the same way their ancestors were opposed to public education. Well some of their ancestors, others of these dinosaurs , the nativists approved of public education, especially in the United States, where it was seen as Americanizing papists and immigrants.
So think what these folks like Janke are saying, they don't want public day care, so they don't want public education nor public pensions. What the heck do they want? Some strange never existing ideal of a so called free market, one they have read about in books but has never existed.
But at least Janke is honest, he believes in child labour, from cradle to the grave, he says you have kids so they can work for you. Yep if you lived on the farm in 1930 that would be true. Today well he like the rest of the right wing whiners want to wish themselves back to those glory days. But capitalism won't let them go back.
Capitalism needs social services, pensions, benefits, day care, healthcare, etc. despite the Conservative contention that the mythical market should provide these services, it is the Capitalist State that is expected to relieve that burdern off business. These benefits should not be paid for out of its surplus value/profit but paid for by its State through taxes on workers.
After all capitalists never call for the end of individual income taxes, only corporate taxes. That way they can retrieve more of their profits back from what they grudgingly pay us every two weeks.
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What he means is that they are no longer commodities as producers, they remain commodities as consumers of course. So they cost him lots of money, and he wails about having to spend more on them through his taxes. That is he is opposed to day care, cause well the little woman should work at home only and raise the kids. For free of course, no pension, no wages for housework, its a payless career that should bring its own satisfaction. Why child raising is a joy. Which is why in the sixties before the discovery of post pardum depression, psychiatrists made valium the solution for the bored, stressed out housewives of North America.
Love these conservatives their solution is always Forward To The Past or Backwards Into The Future. No really he says that socialized pensions are horrible, poor deluded youngster born post depression in the wonder days of Trudeaumania and Keynes. He can live in his conservative fantasyland because we have social programs. Programs his parents and grandparents demanded, fought and voted for.
Unlike his parents and grandparents who lived through the dirty thirties when Janke's conservatism ruled, no pensions, no old age security, no Unemployment Insurance err pardon me I mean, Employment Insurance (that wonderful Orwellian turn of phrase), no Medicare and damn it No Damn Welfare. Relief was a dollar a week and you had to be married, if not, off to the concentration camps you go.
Better yet he blames them tax and spend Liberals for all this nasty stuff. And then he goes one step better and claims that taxes are the reason for declining birth rates. Ahem the lengths these guys go to blame taxes for everything is well, just exasperating.
Hello stupid, one of the greatest functions of capitalism has been to destroy the bourgeois family along with the peasant family. It is not taxation or the state demanding these developments its capitalism. Capitalism reduces the need for large families in the developed world, literacy, education, a flexible workforce all that 'stuff' that's good for industry is what causes increased security and economic development. Having an advanced capitalist economy results in lower childbirth rates as women become liberated from child rearing in order to go into the work force.But people had even larger families before. Why? Because as much as children cost money when they are young, they have monetary value when they are older. That value is realized when you retire and the children take on the responsibility of taking care of you.
In the old days, people didn't have pensions and RRSPs. They had children.
But someone came up with the idea of socialized pensions. Everyone pays higher taxes, and that money goes into a pool, managed by the government, invested by bureaucrats (usually in government bonds, surprise), and eventually doled back out to you when you retire. In fact, all they did was take over the intra-generational redistribution of wealth that was taking place when children took care of their parents.
But now you've got higher taxes. You have to pay for that. What expense can you cut back on? What is there that you can you do less with, now that your discretionary income has been curtailed?
Of course, kids. I mean, they aren't actually worth anything now, right? And so you see a crash in the birthrate. Of course, what did you think would happen?
Modern capitalism has allowed the birth of the independent woman who is no longer economically dependent on her husband.
Having lots of children wasn't and never has been a glorious prospect. The reality is that having lots of children for the peasant or farming family and later the artisans family was to have workers. Survival rates of children in feudalism as in modern Third World countries was low due to disease. Which is why in earlier societies before the advent of industrialization and capitalism and in modern developing countries the motto was and is it takes a village to raise a child, opps sorry not in Steves mythical world. In his world the family is the bourgeois family of the 19th century. Sometimes called the nuclear family, mom, dad, two kids and a dog.
Unless you are Catholic which is a religion of go forth and multiply and is peasant based from its power in the feudal period to its dying power today in the peasant based economies of the Developing World.
This 'modern' model of the nuclear family evolved under capitalism, as the bourgeoisie values of housework and homework and the management of the home, became a science for the upperclass women and their middle class followers. In the 19th Century Domestication, the ideal of the house wife as manger evolved through the writing of books on home management and etiquette. All this home management was not done by the middle class or upper class woman, but her maids and nannies, predominately Irish working girls. Who then went home to raise their own families after spending their days in indentured servitude to their bourgeois owners. That is the model of the nuclear family.
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors", and has left no other nexus between people than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment". It has drowned out the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of Philistine sentimentality, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom -- Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation into a mere money relation.
The Communist Manifesto. Bourgeois and Proletarians
The reality is that daycare is the modern form of the nanny culture. Irish maids and servants were not unknown amongst the wealthier craftsman in Canada at the turn of last century. There is no inherent value in one parent staying home with the children after infancy. In fact amongst the bourgeois of the 19th century nursemaids were also employed, so that the upperclasses didn't have to suffer the physicality of touching their own children.
Of course that is not what day care or child care offers today. It is about early childhood education. The right wing now goes aghast and agog about this, in much the same way their ancestors were opposed to public education. Well some of their ancestors, others of these dinosaurs , the nativists approved of public education, especially in the United States, where it was seen as Americanizing papists and immigrants.
So think what these folks like Janke are saying, they don't want public day care, so they don't want public education nor public pensions. What the heck do they want? Some strange never existing ideal of a so called free market, one they have read about in books but has never existed.
But at least Janke is honest, he believes in child labour, from cradle to the grave, he says you have kids so they can work for you. Yep if you lived on the farm in 1930 that would be true. Today well he like the rest of the right wing whiners want to wish themselves back to those glory days. But capitalism won't let them go back.
Capitalism needs social services, pensions, benefits, day care, healthcare, etc. despite the Conservative contention that the mythical market should provide these services, it is the Capitalist State that is expected to relieve that burdern off business. These benefits should not be paid for out of its surplus value/profit but paid for by its State through taxes on workers.
After all capitalists never call for the end of individual income taxes, only corporate taxes. That way they can retrieve more of their profits back from what they grudgingly pay us every two weeks.
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