How To Spend The Surplus

Gee after all these tax cuts announced by Diamond Jim the Minister of Finance the Government still has an embarrassment of riches. And how do they intend to spend it?

The government will still have $10-billion in surplus cash to apply to the national debt.

Instead of wasting it on the national debt they should use it to fulfill their promise of increasing actual daycare spaces. This is not just a broken promise, but as predicted by the opposition, one that has fallen flat on it's face.

Few companies keen to provide daycare

The Tories thought tax credits would spur employers and community groups to open 125,000 spaces over five years. Cross-country consultations have poured cold water on the election promise

An analysis of the possibility of getting Alberta employers to create child-care spots says: "Discussions with employers, businesses in Alberta, were mainly reflective of what we heard across Canada in terms of child care not being their line of business, shared concern that it would be too costly and complex for small business to consider."

As for the idea of tax credits, those performing the analysis said: "shareholders are skeptical that a tax credit will create an adequate incentive for employers to create new child care spaces and are concerned it unfairly favours large enterprises." Nor would tax credits work for non-profit organizations, they say.

Many stakeholders said long-term funding to sustain the spaces was needed as well as the start-up financing that the government had offered. And there was a general consensus that the money should flow to the provinces and territories for distribution rather than from Ottawa to child-care providers directly in the form of tax credits.

By the time the 2007-08 budget was released last March, Ms. Finley's successor, Monte Solberg, decided that, like the Liberals, he would give $250-million annually directly to the provinces - something Ms. Finley had vowed never to do. He also offered a 25-per-cent investment tax credit to businesses that create child-care spaces in their facilities, but, as the consultations predicted, there would appear to have been little uptake on that incentive.

Mr. Solberg, who repeatedly declined to be interviewed for this article, conceded to The Canadian Press last month that the creation of 125,000 spaces might not be doable and said "we have to be realistic" when asked whether the election promise could be kept.

He cited plans for about 10,000 spaces to be created across the country - far short of the number required to meet the election goal.

SEE

The ABC's of Privatizing Daycare

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Aliens Invade United States

Listening to Tom Allen on CBC Radio 2 he was playing excerpts from Orson Welles Mercury Radio Theatre broadcast of the War of the Worlds.

It was brilliant subversive theatre posing as radio news, that created widespread panic in the U.S. The reality of the broadcast, interspersed as it was between musical numbers, as if it was a real news broadcast created the illusion of 'reality' for the listener.

• The War of the Worlds (October 30, 1938)
  Real Audio • MP3 • Checksums

We often overlook the importance of radio which dominated 20th century culture for over fifty years.

Such subversions could not occur today of course.....wait a minute... some folks still don't believe we landed on the moon, and of course then there are all those conspiracy theories around 9/11.

On Oct. 30, 1938, a radio reporter went on the air with a terrifying broadcast: A meteor had slammed into a farm in Mercer County. Thick, poisonous gas seeped through the air. Martians had descended on the nation, martial law was declared and scores of people were dead.

None of it was true. But hundreds of listeners tuning in to "War of the Worlds" had missed the introduction explaining that the program was fiction. They panicked, sending waves of hysteria and confusion across New Jersey and the country.

The program began as the Halloween episode of director Orson Welles' radio program, adapting H.G. Wells' novel "War of the Worlds" for the airwaves -- and plunking the alien invasion in Grovers Mill, New Jersey. The broadcast unfolded in a series of news bulletins that whipped listeners into a frenzy.

Calls poured in to police, newspapers and radio stations from fearful citizens. In Newark, more than 20 families rushed from their homes on Heddon Terrace, covering their faces with wet rags as they fled the "gas attack." National Guard armories in Sussex and Essex counties took calls from confused soldiers who heard on the radio that they were mobilized against the invasion.

At one point in the night, the New Jersey State Police issued a teletype they hoped would halt some of the panic -- which later earned both criticism and praise as an infamous moment in radio history. "Note to all receivers," the police message said. "WABC broadcast as drama re this section being attacked by residents of Mars. Imaginary affair."

Orson Welles extends his hands in embarrassment after listeners mistook his 1938 national radio broadcast of ''War of the Worlds' as actual news that Martians had invaded New Jersey.

Click to play the original recording of "War of the Worlds."

In writing "The War of the Worlds" in 1898, Herbert George Wells was inspired by Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli who reported seeing "canali" on Mars, which had been positioned close to the Earth in 1894. "Canali" meant channels but was mistranslated as canals, leading to much speculation about life on the red planet.

"The War of the Worlds" was written in response to several historical events, said teacher Paul Brian in his "The War of the Worlds" on-line study guide created for his students at Washington State University. "The most important was the unification and militarization of Germany, which led to a series of novels predicting war in Europe, beginning with George Chesney's 'The Battle of Dorking' (1871).

"Most of these were written in a semi-documentary fashion; and Wells borrowed their technique to tie his interplanetary war tale to specific places in England familiar to his readers. This attempt at hyper-realism helped to inspire Orson Welles when the latter created his famed 1938 radio broadcast based on the novel."

War Of The Worlds invasion: The complete War Of The Worlds website

The War of the Worlds

E-text of The War of the Worlds by HG Wells.

SEE:

Aliens and American Politics

Telus About UFO's

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Making Lemonade Aid

It seems that I was correct about Canadian Blue Lemon. Despite comments to the contrary. When you find yourself attacked by your fellow Blogging Tories for making disparaging comments about the Harpocrites and their Calgary School pals you end up self censoring.

Brian Lemon has done just that on his website Canadian Blue Lemon. He has eliminated his 'offending' post criticizing Flanagan and Finley and the old Reform leadership he claimed has taken over the Conservative party. He has reposted this bit of historical revisionism. After the fact and post-dated.

Of course this is natural for conservatives and right wingers they love to revise history to fit their ideology. And when they are caught they whine they were misquoted.

So much for the principles of free speech on the right. The echo chamber that is the Blogging Tories have their own principles of Political Correctness and clearly Lemon violated those and suffered the consequences.

Lemon not only censored himself, shame, shame, but by posting his revised article and eliminating his original post, he has engaged in the old Stalin School of Falsification. Ironic that. Giving into peer pressure from his pals on the right Lemon is not only lacking in principles but gutless as well. No matter how he spins it.

"And note to all readers and Mssrs Flanagan and Finley who seem to lay claim to Tory Blogs. I am an independent observer of the political scene in Canada that has an allegiance to conservatism in its best form and to the Conservative Party as its manifestation. But I do not receive and would not welcome any direction of my content by any party official. I will criticize our party without losing faith in the importance of our party leading the Canadian political agenda."

Blah, blah, blah. LOL. Stop it you are killing me.

Leon Trotsky. Now you see him. Now you don't. After he ran afoul of the Communist Party, Trotsky was eliminated from photos where he mingled with other officials. In other manipulated photos, the Soviets painted in the gaps for added realism.

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Another Capitalist Myth

Another myth about competition lowering costs to consumers bites the dust. Give business a break and they will take it, while still screwing you and me.

And while our prices are cheaper than in the U.S. you and I are in effect subsidizing generic drug manufacturers in Canada.

Oh yes and don't forget that the largest increase in health care costs is drugs.

The benefits of strong competition in Canada's generic drug sector are not finding their way into consumers' pocketbooks, Canada's Competition Bureau said in a report released on Monday.

The report found that one of the reasons generic drugs are more expensive in Canada than other countries is the existence of a rebate system that discourages pharmacies from passing along savings to customers.

In most of Canada's provinces, drug manufacturers compete with each other by offering pharmacies rebates of an average 40 percent off the invoice price as an incentive for the retailers to choose their products, the bureau said.

But the rebates are typically not reflected in the prices that consumers pay for drugs.

"They're giving (pharmacies) a break," Commissioner of Competition Sheridan Scott said in response to reporters' questions at a press conference. "That's a normal thing. The question is, why is the money staying at the pharmacy level."

The study found that the rebate system gives manufacturers little incentive to compete through lower prices.

And these are the same guys who whine about unfair competition from the Big Pharma establishment. They are as much a part of Big Pharma as the established drug companies. Horse of a different colour.

SEE:

Merck Tax Rip Off

Big Pharma Rip Off

The Mulroney Legacy

Profits Up Jobs Cut

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Poll Spin

I would spin this poll as the NDP gain in popular support, rather than how the MSM spin it. And clearly the NDP's principled stand over the Throne speech has resonated with Canadians.

Canada's ruling Conservatives have slipped slightly in public support but are still well ahead of the opposition Liberals, according to a new poll.

The Ipsos-Reid survey put the Conservatives on 39 percent, down one point from a poll done by the same firm a week before. The Liberals were steady at 27 percent while support for the left-leaning New Democrats rose three points to 17 percent.

SEE:

Jack Layton PM?

Facebook Politicians

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The ABC's of Privatizing Daycare

Coming to a city near you, sooner than you think; state subsidized Big Box Day Care. Not public non-profit daycare but private for profit daycare.

- A multinational chain that some day-care advocates warn will bring a big-box concept to Alberta child care has started shopping for day-care centres in the province.

Now will our 'pals for child care choice' be outraged? Somehow I doubt it.

Edmund Groves is CEO of Australia-based ABC Learning Centres, which has aggressively expanded into jurisdictions where governments provide generous payouts to offset child-care costs. Tens of millions of those public dollars have contributed to ABC profits.

In a 2006 report by the Australian Institute, a respected Australian think-tank, researchers said poor food quality and cost-cutting have compromised quality even as ABC has amassed a fortune from public child care subsidies given to parents.

The report was based on a survey of employees at daycares across Australia. The report singled out ABC, saying that despite an estimated $172 million in government subsidies, the daycare giant fell short in most areas of quality care when compared to community based, non-profit centres.

The report said the chain did not always serve nutritious food (one staffer interviewed called the food "atrocious"); did not always provide enough quality toys and equipment (toys often have to be purchased from an ABC-owned company); and hired only the minimum number of staff required by law. It notes daycare teachers "are required to do all the cleaning themselves as well as care for the children."

In Alberta clearly the Tired Old Tories don't care.

Jody Korchinski, spokeswoman for Alberta Children's Services, said foreign and chain ownership (of daycares) are not concerns of the government.

In Alberta the government has always favoured private operators, baba sitting, anything but publicly funded, public day care.

With 65% of day care provided by private owners in Alberta why would the government care about corporate Big Box Day Cares making a profit off of parents and taxpayers. The government has one of the worst records for enforcement of regulations of private operators who have faced scandals over the past number of years.

But this big box operator from Australia is not pursuing the small private daycares, it is after the publicly funded not for profit sector. One entrenched it will then eliminate by sheer size the small operators not unlike the capitalist model it is built on; Wal-Mart.

And after all it's just another form of the Tired Old Tories beloved P3's .

Of course it is inevitable that if a corporate monopoly like Australia's ABC takes over in Alberta it will wipe out both private and public daycares. It fulfills the dictum of the market; capitalism exists to concentrate capital through monopoly.

It isn't known exactly how many operators are selling their facilities, but day-care operators say they have heard nine centres in Edmonton and even more in Calgary are being sold to 123 Busy Beavers Learning Centres, which is affiliated with the Australian-based day-care giant ABC Learning Centres.

In Edmonton, officials with the Garneau/University Child Care Centre received a letter from Adroit Investments LLC of North Carolina informing them that "we might have an interest in purchasing your child-care centre."

The letter says that if they are interested in selling, they should contact Adroit, and if the centre meets its criteria "we will make you an offer that may be of interest to you ...

"We represent a financial group buying child-care centres in Alberta. We have been contacting and purchasing child-care centres in Alberta since January of this year.

"If we have spoken over the phone over the past six months, please take this time to really think about what you want out of your business."

Meanwhile, a Calgary jobs website has listed postings for child-care workers on behalf of 123 Busy Beavers. Calls to a toll-free number on the Busy Beavers website were not returned.

Mark Davis, a representative of Adroit in Charlotte, N.C., wouldn't say who his company represents.

But an e-mail from Adroit to a B.C. child-care centre refers to websites for 123 Busy Beavers and for ABC's parent company, 123-Global.

The message also contained an Australian fax number.

Child-care advocates are sounding the alarm since learning an investment firm called Adroit Investments LLC has contacted local child-care operators in a bid to buy them out.

The Coalition of Child Care Advocates of B.C. traced the company back to 123-Global and A.B.C. Learning Centres, a private Australian child-care corporation that's gotten flak in several countries for monopolizing child-care and providing minimal services to cut costs.

Meanwhile, some child-care providers approached by Adroit wonder if they will be able to compete.

"We've known about them for years," said Susan Harney, operator of Country Grove Children's Centre in Langley. "They build up what they call critical mass and put other programs out of business."

Harney has already rejected Adroit's advances and wants others to do the same. "Our child-care system is not for sale," she said. "The focus needs to be on providing good service, not making a profit."

The Groves daycare empire has grown with remarkable speed in the past few years.

Recent purchasing raids into the U.S. and U.K. have made Groves's kiddie care empire the largest in the world with some 2,400 daycares in its stable and a ticker tape value of more than $2.5 billion.

Corporate records show three ABC-related companies – ABC Acquisitions, 123 Global and 123 Busy Beavers – share a director named Donald Jones.

ABC Acquisitions and 123 Global, two companies that scout out international growth opportunities for ABC, share the same Brisbane address where Groves's ABC Learning Centres was also headquartered until recently.

A report by Citigroup analysts last year reported a close corporate lineage between Groves's ABC Learning and Jones's ABC Acquisitions.

It says the acquisitions arm finds daycares appropriate for international expansion and then sells the properties to ABC.

"We believe the purpose of the `arm's length' arrangement is to enable the (daycare) licence to be categorized as an asset in (ABC's) balance sheet," the report concludes. "Once a decision is made to proceed on a centre, (ABC) are committed to acquiring the centre."

The report also says ABC's development team is looking to expand into Canada.

Corporate records also show other signs of Groves's interest in Canada.

In August, Groves and several other ABC executives incorporated a company called ABC Canadian Holdings in Brisbane, which lists ABC Learning Centres as the sole shareholder.

A Groves spokesperson said ABC Canadian Holdings "is a dormant company with no assets and no trading."

In practical life we find not only competition, monopoly and the antagonism between them, but also the synthesis of the two, which is not a formula, but a movement. Monopoly produces competition, competition produces monopoly. Monopolists are made from competition; competitors become monopolists. If the monopolists restrict their mutual competition by means of partial associations, competition increases among the workers; and the more the mass of the proletarians grows as against the monopolists of one nation, the more desperate competition becomes between the monopolists of different nations. The synthesis is of such a character that monopoly can only maintain itself by continually entering into the struggle of competition.

Karl Marx
The Poverty of Philosophy
Chapter Two: The Metaphysics of Political Economy

SEE

Mrs. PM Stay At Home Mom

Thank the Conservatives

Just The Facts Ma'am

Correction Child Care For Seniors

Feminizing the Proletariat

Whose Family Values?

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Stelmach's Royalty Give Away

As I said here Stelmach's Royalty announcement is a sell out.

Alberta's bid to wring more cash from the oil sands with a controversial royalty hike wound up as little more than "smoke and mirrors", one of the province's advisers said on Monday, as it backed away from key elements of a review panel's recommendations.

Pedro van Meurs, who has consulted on royalty regimes in 70 jurisdictions, said the Alberta government left cash on the table when it announced a new royalty scheme last week.

But van Meurs said the changes are at best a minor increase and the province's has lost a once-in-a-generation chance to get what he considers a fair share of the burgeoning sector's revenues.

"It's pretty disastrous," van Meurs told Reuters. "Instead of having a simple tax, what we are now going to see is very complicated system that is more smoke and mirrors than reality."

Van Meurs was a consultant for the review panel that recommended higher rates and a per-barrel tax on oil sands production.

"It's absolutely a minor increase," he said. "The most idiotic thing is that Alberta already had 25 percent."

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Made In Calgary Homeless Plan

No rent controls. A bungled boondoggle of subsidies to renters. And now a corporate committee to deal with homelessness in Alberta sometime in the next decade.

Alberta's government has announced it's forming the Alberta Secretariat for Action on Homelessness to help end the problem over the next 10 years.

Premier Ed Stelmach says in a release that while that may be an ambitious goal, it's one that the government needs to strive for to help those in need.

The secretariat, which will include representation from across the province, is expected to be working by April.

It will be headed by Yvonne Fritz, the government's associate minister of affordable housing and urban development.

The government says issues such as a budget and membership will be worked out over the next few months.

Last January, a committee that includes some of Canada's biggest corporate leaders formed with the aim to wipe out Calgary's homelessness problem over the next decade.

Calling any announcement on the issue a good one, Calgary Homeless Foundation president and CEO Wayne Stewart said he's hoping Stelmach will focus on long-term sustainability.

Stewart said his group has been working on a 10-year plan to eliminate homelessness in Calgary and expects to release its preliminary findings in January.

This is not a solution to the problem of affordable housing it is just another Tired Old Tory form of the old poor laws updated for the 21st century. Where the old poor laws produced workhouses run by the Church, we now have corporate philanthropists coming up with housing solutions, but no cheap housing while the condo conversions boom and tent cities for the homeless spread across the province.

Premier Ed Stelmach unveiled an initiative Monday to build 11,000 new affordable homes in Alberta over the next five years.

Eleven thousand homes is a drop in the bucket. What we need is the end to condo conversions, rent control and the creation of mass public housing NOW; town houses, row housing and apartments subsidized by the provincial and federal governments.

About 2,600 people in Edmonton and 3,400 in Calgary don't have a place to live, according to the last count of the homeless population in 2006.

Both major cities have seen an increase of at least 20 per cent in their homeless populations since 2004.

Add to that the fact that Syncrude alone is looking to hire 5000 workers to live in Fort McMurray a 11,000 homes across the province is a joke.

Not only is the oil boom in Alberta causing a labour shortage, but Syncrude faces a host of retirements, with an attrition rate of eight to nine per cent, he said.

"We're trying to get up to 5,000 employees," said House, adding the company now employs some 4,600 people.

Exciting as all this might sound, he was finding few takers at the CASTLE event.

"Housing cost is the number one deterrent," said House.

In labour-starved Fort McMurray, he said, "you can work at a Burger King and make $15 an hour.

"But in order to afford the housing, you'd better work a lot of hours," he added. "A person making $15 could not survive alone."

SEE:

This Is Better Than Rent Controls?

Stelmach's Robber Barons

And New York Has Rent Controls

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The Honorary Canadian

Before the U.S. gave the Dalai Lama a medal Canada made him an honorary citizen.

The Dalai Lama first visited Canada in 1980, meeting with the Governor-General. In 1990, he visited again and was greeted by the government minister for multiculturalism. In 1993, he met the external affairs minister. Paul Martin was the first prime minister to meet him, in 2004, and last year he was granted honorary citizenship.

In a move likely to further aggravate Canada's relations with China, Prime Minister Stephen Harper will use his office on Parliament Hill to host a meeting and photo session with the Dalai Lama on Monday afternoon.

Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean also plans to receive the 72-year-old monk at her official residence, Rideau Hall, and Opposition leaders are scheduled to meet him at the Lord Elgin Hotel Tuesday morning.

On Iraq

On the U.S. presence in Iraq, the Dalai Lama then told an Ottawa audience on Sunday that the intention was "not necessarily" bad, but the practical result was that the problem is only getting worse.

"No matter what the intentions, methods become unrealistic. So instead of solving the problem (they) increase the problem," he said to the audience of about 5,000 people.

As a person, he said Bush was very likable.

"I love him, really, as a human being. Very nice man, very simple, straightforward, no formality," he said, to laughter from the audience.

He criticized U.S. policy in Iraq, diagnosing the cause of policy blunders as a "lack of awareness about reality."

This lack of realistic perception, he said, causes "the whole policy or method [to] become unrealistic," and therefore unpragmatic and ineffective.

As a result, he said, U.S. policy in Iraq, "is not solving the problem, but increasing the problem."

So I wonder what he will tell Steve about Afghanistan?

"First inner disarmament, then outer disarmament."

But will he listen?

And despite being an Honorary Canadian the Harpocrites are two faced when it comes to the real politics behind trade relations with China. It seems our taxpayer funded State Capitalist companies in Quebec are eager to play footsie with the Chinese state in Tibet, while the PM blusters on about human rights.

Although His Holiness says Canada has been and continues to be a good friend in his struggle for autonomy -- he says Mr. Harper "seems very concerned about human rights" -- it has been at times a shallow friendship. There are, for example, the helicopter engines built in Quebec by Pratt & Whitney Canada, a subsidiary of a U.S. firm, that have ended up in Chinese anti-tank attack helicopters, prompting an investigation by the U.S. State Department. And there is the railway from China into Tibet, completed last year by Canadian companies Bombardier, Power Corp. and Nortel, which the Dalai Lama says could be "really dangerous" for his people.

SEE:

No Reincarnation Without Permission

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The Death of Quality TV

In a discussion of the decline of quality Sci-Fi TV programing, in this case Battlestar Galactica, in the niche market of cable channels like the Sci-Fi network, Space in Canada, James Bow concludes;

Clearly what has happened is that the vaunted 500-channel universe has not delivered the democratization of programming that was promised twenty years ago. We used to believe that any niche program could find itself an audience here, but we forgot the other side of the demand/supply equation: television costs money to produce, and sometimes good television costs a lot of money to produce.

Well actually we didn't forget that good TV costs money to produce. What some folks forgot was that the bottom line always was the basis for all commercial TV production. Which is why we have the rise of reality TV programs, including whole channels devoted to reality TV like the Food Network, Home and Garden channel etc. All this costs far less to produce than a regular network show which of course has real writers (unionized), directors (unionized), actors (unionized), techies (unionized).

In other words the 500 channel universe did not democratize TV nor did cable. What has happened is that the business tycoons who own the studios and production companies have expanded into a variety of other entertainment and amusement businesses and are using TV to support these endeavours. In doing so they are looking to create cheap productions and that has resulted in a plethora of union busting bottom line programming hence reality TV. The sound you hear is the owners cashing in.

Look at the Sci Fi programming on mainstream channels; ABC, NBC, CBS that were launched last year and were canceled; Surface, which was excellent and had potential, Threshold, and Invasion. Gone. In some cases they barely lasted one season. While the networks cash in on them by issuing them on DVD.

Just as the Sci-Fi network did in killing Babalon 5 and later Farscape. They still profit by issuing them as DVD's and with mini series tie ins.

Quality TV programing especially science fiction and drama is now too costly to produce, not because it is, thanks to the advances in CGI technology, but because the bottom line is so low in production costs that anything that is quality is priced out of the market. Thus reality TV is the thin wedge of union busting in TV land.

Nor has the 500 channel universe opened itself to DIY programming, in fact it has closed off access. It is still controlled by the same corporate interests the owners of production and cable companies.

While fears that the 500 channel universe would be the Deathstar to commercial mainstream TV such has not been the case. Instead mainstream TV and its cable, movie, news, DVD rivals are the New Empire; resulting from interlocking corporate ownership .

The sucking sound you hear is not Darth Vader, it's the decline in quality TV production as the Empire expands in the inevitable mediocrity of the bottom line.

SEE:

Blade Runner

Dr. Who Curse

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