3000 Dead

The number of American soldiers killed in Iraq as of today. Which is why the troops are demoralized.

And this Times Union editorial hits it on the head....

It's closer to impossible to take note of the 3,000 casualties and not realize that's more than the Sept. 11 attacks, horrific events in their own right that President Bush cravenly and disingenuously tried to use as a rationale for invading Iraq almost four years ago. Some 95 percent of those deaths have come since the United States had supposedly won the war, but not the peace, barely a month after it invaded Iraq in early 2003.

And it's especially difficult to even try to absorb the larger meaning of 3,000 lost lives, of mostly very young soldiers, when Mr. Bush can't bring himself to dispell speculation that he wants to increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, from a current level of 140,000, before he goes about bringing them home.

See: Iraq


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Rachel Corrie Story Banned In Canda

The play about Rachel Corrie has been banned in Canada. Corrie was the American activist who was killed by an Israeli Defense Force Bulldozer. Compare and contrast these stories. The Canadian Israel Lobby again engages in censorship through the back door, as in the theatre's backers backed out.

Controversial Rachel Corrie play dropped in Canada

UPI

December 28, 2006

TORONTO -- The Canadian production of a play about an American human rights activist who died under the tracks of an Israeli bulldozer in 2003 has been canceled.

Daily Variety reported on December 23 that the production of My Name is Rachel Corrie has been pulled from the 2007-2008 line up in Canada's largest non-profit theater, CanStage. The play was originally produced last year at London's Royal Court Theatre.

A board member for CanStage said that in his view, "it would provoke a negative reaction in the Jewish community."

Variety said that philanthropist Bluma Appel, after whom CanStage's flagship theater is named, concurred. "I told them I would react very badly to a play that was offensive to Jews."

My Name is Rachel Corrie is based on the diaries and e-mails of Rachel Corrie, a member of the International Solidarity Movement who traveled as an activist to the Gaza Strip during the intifada. She was killed when she attempted to halt an Israel Defense Forces bulldozer from razing a house.

Rachel Corrie play nixed in Toronto
Cleveland Jewish News, OH - 28 Dec 2006

(JTA) - A Toronto-based theater removed from its upcoming season a controversial play about a pro-Palestinian activist's death.

Martin Bragg, artistic producer for the Canadian Stage Company or CanStage, said “My Name Is Rachel Corrie” was dropped from consideration because it was dramatically weak, not because of its political content. Bragg said he reached the decision after seeing a production of the play in New York that failed to engage the audience.

One blog claimed the play was pulled due to the influence of the American pro-Israel lobby. Corrie, an American activist with the Palestinian-led International Solidarity Movement, was accidentally run over and killed by an Israeli bulldozer as it tried to uncover arms tunnels in the Gaza Strip in 2003.

Rachel Corrie play: censored in Toronto

An echo of Nicola's fears north of the border occurred within the last couple of months in the Canadian Jewish News. Upon hearing of the possible staging in Toronto of My Name is Rachel Corrie, Alicia Richler, associate director of communications for the Canada-Israel Committee, according to CJC, "said that although everyone in Canada has the right to free speech, the timing of the news is poor, since an Israeli man was recently killed when a rocket launched from the northern Gaza Strip hit a factory in Sderot."

From the Toronto Star, Dec. 24: "The alternate version being told among CanStage insiders: Members of Bragg's board were alarmed by negative response from influential supporters of the theatre, especially in Toronto's Jewish community, who were canvassed for their opinion. Many were dismayed and openly critical when confronted with the prospect of the city's flagship not-for-profit theatre producing a play that could be construed as anti-Semitic propaganda, especially during a frightening period when Israel's existence is threatened by Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas."

CanStage loses interest in controversial Corrie play

VAL ROSS

Toronto -- News of CanStage's cancellation of its plans to stage a controversial play about a 23-year-old American protester who was crushed by an Israeli Defence Force bulldozer made the New York Times this week. No wonder: That city has had similar battles over My Name is Rachel Corrie, for its perceived anti-Israeli content.

The play, created by actor-director Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner from the diaries and e-mails of the young Palestinian-rights activist, won a best new play prize in this year's Theatregoers' Choice Awards in London. Some British reviewers reported that they found the play revealed Corrie to be obnoxious and foolish, but some North Americans who have seen the play (and some who haven't seen it) say they sense anti-Semitic bias in the script.

A planned production at the New York Theatre Workshop was postponed; the play eventually found an off-Broadway home at the Minetta Lane Theater. The New York production's problems were echoed in Toronto: The non-profit (and currently money-losing) CanStage company was told by at least two prominent benefactors that they would take it badly if CanStage did a play that could stir up feelings against Jews. Although artistic producer Martin Bragg publicly confessed that he'd been "reduced to tears" by the script, and planned to put Rachel Corrie into his 2007-8 season, he said he lost interest after seeing it at Minetta Lane.

I guess Martin Bragg was only crying crocodile tears.

Toronto theatre won't stage My Name is Rachel Corrie

Toronto's Canadian Stage Company has decided not to stage My Name is Rachel Corrie, the controversial play about an American peace activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer.

It was a decision based on the play's merits, rather than the political controversy that dogs it, CanStage artistic producer Martin Bragg said in an interview with CBC.ca.

"It was an artistic decision," said Bragg, who saw the play in New York. "It just didn't work on stage."

It didn't work on stage, eh. Yep I call that real artistic integrity.

'Rachel Corrie' to Close in London, December 17

The show was originally produced at London's Royal Court Theatre, where it opened in April 2005 and returned for an encore engagement in October 2005. In Spring 2006, it played for nine weeks at the Playhouse Theatre in London's West End.

The play also received the 2006 London Theatregoers' Choice Award for Best Play, Best Director and Best Actress; and was nominated for a Time Out Award (Best Actress), a South Bank Show Award (Best Production) and an Olivier Award (Outstanding Achievement).

And as this wag puts it clearly Martin Bragg claims to artistic integrity are so much bunkum.

I find it perfectly reasonable that a theater rejects a play because it's bad theater -- except why did they book it in the first place? Apparently they were greedily depending on its controversial reputation to sell tickets. In this case, it doesn't matter if the play is good or bad. They entered the arena for bucks. So to change their minds does, in fact, suggest pressure and political issues, not aesthetic ones. So the Toronto theater, it seems to me, is trying to save its ass and reputation here. If they book a play without deciding if it's good enough to do, well, what motives can they have other than greed? And something then happened to make them chicken out.

I don't see any tunnel here do you? But I do see the remains of a house.


Photos by an International Solidarity Movement eyewitness
show Rachel Corrie protesting earlier, and then later,
after she was hit by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza on Sunday.


Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice

Rachel Corrie ? Part 1
Rachel Corrie 23, was a young peace activist from Olympia Washington who was
tragically killed in Gaza by an Israeli Defense Forces Bulldozer in March 2003.
Her parents, Cindy and Craig Corrie now speak about their daughter’s legacy

See:

Israel

Palestine

Zionism

Theatre

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La versus Le

Its my excuse and mes excuses.

Yep the spelling of La Revue Gauche is wrong. Note it should be La not Le. As in La Revue Gauche.

Somehow in the transposition of using a translator I put ' e' in place of 'a', too late now though.

Thanks to all the Francophones who have commented or emailed me about the tragedy of my linguistic ignorance.

However since this blog has been online for two years, and you only noticed now, well I ain't changing it. Live with it.

Consider it a play on words. Perhaps I should have called it L'eh Revue Gauche to be truly Canadian. In your mind say La instead of Le and lets leave it at that. La, la, la.

You say potato, I say potato
Lets call the whole thing off


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Partisanship

When a defense of a socialist perspective is mounted against the Liberalblogosphere suddenly we are partisan. Such is the accusation going around about the current Minimum Wage debate. I have been accused of being an NDP partisan, as have others. Not once but on many ocassions in this debate. Such as this example which simply dismisses me outright;

"Other bloggers like Plawiuk are just spouting partisan rhetoric"

Of course much of the Cherniak debate also centred around the partisanship of those who confronted his right wing ideas about minimum wages. Which he is quickly backtracking on. Like most hardcore Liberals, not liberals or progressives but the party hacks, mistake their own partisanship for the Party with the passion of other bloggers who speak out.

Most of the debate has not focused specifically on the NDP motion in the Ontario Legislature, or its plan to implement a $10 an hour increase. In fact very few references were made by even hardcore Dippers, to the NDP motion. Rather the criticism leveled at Cherniak and his Liberal Party apologists is that they fail to understand the economics of poverty.

A genralized discussion, not a partisan one unless you use the broader definition which is socialist political economics versus capitalist apologetics. Which is what Cherniak engages in, apolgetics for capitalism.

The reality is that the Liberal Party Bloggers think they speak for liberals, progressives, etc. When in reality they are just a kinder gentler form of capitalism than their Tory counterparts. And some would even contest that. They pride themselves on a leader who owned a Steamship line that fought unionization, ran itself under flags of convinance, etc. A leader who slashed funding to provinces using the same neo-con excuses and formula that Klein and Harris did in their provinces.

Of course there are differences between the two parties of big business in Canada, the Liberals and Tories, but the fact is that they represent capitalism and its interests not the workers interests, not the interests of the majority of Canadians.

And that is far from being partisan, thats just the facts ma'am. Because I support the NDP I am accused of somehow speaking for them.

I also support the Communist Party because they successfully challenged the undemocratic attempt to eliminate third parties, to steal their funds, and declare them non existant under the elections act. That was the Liberal Party that did that.

To dismiss arguments you are not willing to challenge, by calling your opponents partisan, is politically dishonest and when Cherniak does it; disingenous.The whole point of Cherniaks politics, including in the case of the minimum wage debate, is partisan attack and defense. He hates the NDP he loathes it, he fears it, it takes progressives away from his party of the State.

He has made his pathological hatred of the NDP known in a variety of blog postings, including in his salacious and sleazy campaign last fall against NDP candidate DiNovo.

Cherniak is proud to be identified as a leading Liberal Party Hack, as he posts referential quotes to this effect on his blog.

But this debate is not about the NDP or Liberals, as parties, it is not about liberals, or progressives either, because that community is broader than Liberal Party hacks, it is about Cherniak, whose politics are right wing, just a little less so than the Blogging Tories, but right wing none the less.

Liberal Party bloggers are not automatically progressive, heck they may not even be liberal. And that was my original point about the Liberalblogs dominating the PB aggregator, and the distasteful self importance attributed to Liberalblogs by Cherniak and his gang who believe that the PB is theirs. The PB is a global community, composed of many different self proclaimed progressives. That does not mean they are Left Wing for that we have the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy aggregator.

Liberal Party Hacks who blog are partisan. Conservative Party hacks who blog are partisan. There are very few partisan Dippers. Heck there are more partisan Green bloggers than partisan Dippers.

I of course am a political blogger, if I am partisan, it is definetly not to a party but to an anarchist socialist ideology, which means I have a broader perspective of politics not limited to party politics. Unlike those who accuse me of being an NDP partisan.



See:

Minimum Wage


Jason Cherniak


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Saddamn

In the Middle East conspiracy theory is an undercurrent of mainstream politics, as it is here in North America. In the case of Saddams execution there are those who don't believe he really died since he had many stand ins and doubles.

My favorite theory though is this one; The wrong man was executed.

One of the more poupular post execution commentaries circulating internationally is this one, which exposes the authentic conspiracy around Saddams death, the Americans needed to shut him up.

Humiliation at the end of a rope

The spectacle of Saddam Hussein's execution, shown in pornographic detail to the whole world, was deeply shocking to those of us who respect propriety and human dignity. The vengeful Shiite mob that was allowed to taunt the man's last moments, and the vicious executioners who released the trapdoor while he was saying his prayers, turned this scene of so-called Iraqi justice into a public lynching.

One does not have to be any kind of Saddam sympathiser to be horrified that he should have been executed — and, so obscenely, on the dawn of Islam's holy feast of Eid al-Adha, which flagrantly defies religious practice and was an affront to the Islamic world.

What was the executioners' hurry? Why was Saddam condemned for one of his lesser crimes, ignoring the far larger ones for which many of his victims had sought retribution? In their unseemly haste to kill him, the judges ended up looking mean-minded, bloodthirsty and vengeful, while Saddam retained a dignity to the end that drew the reluctant admiration of many of his enemies.

It was always clear that Saddam's fate was sealed from the moment US forces "got 'im", in Paul Bremer's tasteless phrase. He was to be used as a trophy of a mindless and catastrophic war, to redeem America's dented image. But it was also essential to stop him revealing secrets about the West's past enthusiasm in supporting and arming his regime. Hence he was tried on the relatively minor charge of killing 148 people in the village of Dujail, after a plot to assassinate him. Far better to put him away safely for that rather than risk his exposing Western hypocrisy, treachery and double-dealing.

Of course had Saddam been given a fair trial in the ICC he would have exposed America as the handmaiden of his regime. Something the Americans did not want to happen despite their crocodile tears over his fast hanging.

What other surprises the trial of Hussein could have revealed is a major question.

For example, the media often write that on July 25, 1990, the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, April Glaspie , was summoned to the dictator's office for "comprehensive political discussions" before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2. Glaspie allegedly told Hussein: "We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait."

A Fateful moment: Glaspie
appears to give Saddam
the go-ahead in Kuwait.


--------------------------------

[Editor's Note: Glaspie was reported to have said in part, "We have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait. ... James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction. We hope you can solve this problem using any suitable methods ... All that we hope is that these issues are solved quickly].

But the "border disagreement" turned out into a full-scale aggression. For Saddam, this was the beginning of the end. In Washington, he became public enemy number one when in fact before the Kuwait campaign American-Iraqi relations seemed to be improving.

Several weeks before the war, a delegation of U.S. senators visited Baghdad to assure the Iraqi authorities of Washington's benevolence. Let us point out that this visit took place after the Dujail massacre and the use of chemical weapons against Kurds in Anfal. Or didn't Washington know about that?

From Aljazeerah we get these opinions, again focusing on Saddams links to the American Regime as the reason for his untimely death.

Was Saddam The Scapegoat Or The 'Sacrificed Sheep' Of The Bush Administration? By Ali Al-Hail

Saddam's execution is inhuman By Burhanuddin Qasmi

Saddam's execution repudiated all over the world By the Workers' Party of Belgium

Was Saddam put to death before the new US Congress can ask him for information By Ronald Douglas Kennedy

When Justice Becomes Personal Revenge By Syed B. Soharwardy

And this editorial was from Lebanon just prior to Saddams lynching.

Dar Al-Hayat, Lebanon
Saddam's Death Will
'Double the Pain'
Original Article (English)

See:

Saddam

Iraq

Capital Punishment

Conspiracy



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UFO News

The Truth Is Out There......2007 begins with a flurry of UFO reports.

UFO crashes in SA

2007-1-2 23:13

Pretoria - A UFO was sighted at Lephalale, where it was described as a strange object "on an orange cloud, singing like a million turbines" - hitting the earth with a bang at 04:33 on Saturday. That's according to Leonie Ras, the administrative manager of Lephalale (Ellisras) who witnessed the spectacle at her daughter's farm just east of the town on Saturday morning.


01-01-07 O'Hare Airport Denies UFO Reports-Employees Disagree

Published January 1, 2007-It sounds like a tired joke--but a group of airline employees insist they are in earnest, and they are upset that neither their bosses nor the government will take them seriously. A flying saucerlike object hovered low over O'Hare International Airport for several minutes before bolting through thick clouds with such intense energy that it left an eerie hole in overcast skies, said some United Airlines employees who observed the phenomenon.fnord

The French space agency plans to publish its archive of UFO sightings and other phenomena online but keep the names of those who reported them off the site to protect them from the pestering of space fanatics.

And while the North American media covered President Gerald Ford's funeral yesterday they did not mention this in their eulogies.

Michigan UFO Wave of 1966

"In the firm belief that the American public deserves a better explanation than that (swamp gas) thus far given by the Air Force, I strongly recommend that there be a committee investigation of the UFO phenomena. I think we owe it to the people to establish credibility regarding UFOs, and to produce the greatest possible enlightenment of the subject."- President Gerald Ford (during his years as a US Congressman). fnord

See:

Space Litter

Suffield Base Canada's Area 51

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Minmum Wage Blog Debate

Well the minimum wage debate rages in the pages of Progressive Bloggers, having said my piece here and here, I will simply add this link to the PB page where you can find the vast debate that is ongoing on this. Check out the posts and the comments. Comments have been extensive on my original post.

The Blogging Tories have not picked up on this issue, so I guess they have ceded the right wing position to Cherniak, on this.

And just to add another two bits into this debate I include excerpts from this interesting article from 1945.

Wages

Just as an average banker doesn’t understand money, the average wage worker does not understand wages. Most bankers know how to get money and how to keep it, but still they cannot explain its “mystery.” The worker may fight like a tiger to get an increase in wages, and he/she may know how to spend his income wisely, but the real nature of wages, as such, he/she generally does not comprehend, and may not even suspect.

It is quite impossible to understand the real character of wages without recognizing their connection with the working day. The proletarian, the modern wage worker, is a peculiar historical product. He/She differs from all other workers in history. He/She is not allowed certain days of the week to work for himself/herself and certain days to give to his/her master, as was the case with the feudal serf. In fact, on the average, he/she owns no tools of production and no place of his/her own in which to work. Nor is the proletarian the personal property of a master, with unrestricted control over his/her life and labor, as in the case of the slave.

The wage worker is in a different position. At the termination of a stipulated time, he/she carries home his/her pay envelope, what he/she now refers to as his/her “take-home wages” (withholding tax, etc., deducted) . We will assume that he/she has been working steady, engaged in production, not for himself/herself of course, but for the buyer of his/her labor-power, his/her employer. However, he/she is not doing that for his/her health, nor because he/she likes work, or loves his/her boss. His/Her purpose is to get enough pay to purchase food, shelter and clothing for himself/herself and those depending upon him/her. In other words he/she tries to obtain a standard of living as high as possible.

The Money Wage

The cash which the worker takes home, when he/she receives his/her pay, has been called the nominal wage, or wage in name, twenty dollars, forty dollars, or such. Let us call it the money wage. But the worker is too sane just to want money to look at. He/She earns it with the idea of spending it, and generally he/she is forced to do so. The cost of living for him/her and his/her family compels him/her to spend his money wage on the necessaries of life, plus some small luxuries.

The Real Wage

What, therefore, the modern worker toils for is not money, but what the money will buy. That which is thus obtained has been called the real wage. Without consideration of the cost of necessities, wages, as such, cannot be properly understood. A high money wage which would purchase but little, might be a very low real wage. If a worker receives, say, 20 per cent increase in his/her “money wage”, and, if in the meantime the “cost of living” had advanced 30 per cent, his/her real wage would actually have fallen. His/Her standard of living would be lowered.

g2: The “visible” ride to being-lessness

The battle to maintain, or increase, real wages, to maintain living standards (the main function of a labor union) is a constant and terrific struggle for the workers. It is a battle which the workers must carry on. They cannot afford to relax or be off-guard, no matter how well-organized or how “great” their temporary gains may be. This necessary, this unavoidable struggle, nevertheless, leaves labor at a disadvantage, in the long run, because of the nature of the present social set-up.

Under the present system of “private enterprise”, capitalism, the workers as a class cannot rise, but only sink, economically. The capitalist system works that way and it will not work any other way. Competition for jobs, especially over a long period, reduces the workers to a starvation minimum. For the workers, in the long run, the “natural” wage is the minimum wage.

The Relative Wage

While the worker's main concern is with what he/she is actually going to receive in return for his/her services, it is important for him to understand what has been called the relative wage, or in other words, the amount of actual value he/she receives in relation to the value he/she produces. If the worker produces new values to the amount of one hundred dollars, and he/she receives a wage whose value is twenty dollars, his/her relative wage then is but one-fifth of the value he/she has added by his/her labor.

This margin between the value the worker receives (his/her wages), and the value he produces, has been called surplus value. Under the wage system, the former (wages) represents that part of the working day which we previously mentioned, the necessary labor time, the latter, the surplus value, is that which is produced during the remainder of the working day, during the surplus labor time.

Unless all these simple facts, and some others besides, are taken into consideration, it is impossible to fully comprehend the nature of the wage system.


See:

Wages

Minimum Wage

Social Wage

Jason Cherniak


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The Company You Keep

So Big Blue Wave invited me to join her new Blog Aggregator, and while we clash over our opinions it is a good idea. Not unlike the Canadian Blog Exchange, where she posted this. And heck being a prairie boy I like to spread my opinion around like fertilizer.


Canadian Political Bloggers: Please Read This!
01-01-07, 11:57 pm @ Big Blue Wave I am launching a blog aggregator that will include bloggers from across the political spectrum.It's called Opinions Canada.If you're a member of the Blogging Tories, LibLogs, Blogging Dippers, GreenBlogs or the Non-Partisan Blogroll, you can apply.If you are not a member of these blogrolls, you can still apply.To apply, email me.

I want the aggregator to be about the exchange of ideas, not shock and schlock.

As for the kinds of opinions that are acceptable, it's wide open, except for the most extreme. I won't accept blogs that advocate for things like white supremacy, pedophilia, grossly racialist, ethnocentric, or xenophobic blogs, that sort of thing. It has to be really exteme and very present. I want to include as many as possible, without sacrificing a minimal sense of decency. Other than that, the sky's the limit. Conservatives, Liberals, Socialists, Social Democrats, Marxists, Libertarians, So-Cons, Neo-cons, Red Tories, Feminists, Masculinists, Environmentalists, Anarchists, Monarchists-- you're all invited.

See

Blogs

Internet

Blogging


blogs, blogging, Canadablogs, Canadianbloggers, WWW, Internet, homecomputer, ,

Minimum Wage Redux

Since I posted on the Minimum Wage controversy this morning some more matters have come to my attention. The usual canard that minimum wages only apply to students is far from the truth as Statistics Canada shows;

JUST OVER 1.3 million full-time employees aged 16 to 64 held low wage jobs (less than $10 dollars per hour) in 2004, representing one in every seven, or about 14% of all full-time employees.

This rate represented only a slight change from 16% in 1993. It peaked at just over 20% in 1996.

From 1993 to 2004, the proportion of women in low wage jobs remained roughly double that of men. Women are more likely to be in low paid occupations such as clerical, sales and service jobs.

Low wage work was also far more prevalent for those with lower levels of education.

The proportion of youngest workers aged 16 to 24 in low wage jobs was consistently three to four times that of older workers aged 25 to 64. This reflects the tendency of the labour market to reward experience and job tenure.

Those who were not their family's major income earner were not likely to live in a low income family. In 2004, only 3.5% of low wage workers who were not the family's major income earner lived in a low income family.

In contrast, the group of low wage workers who were their family's major or sole income earners (including people living on their own) was seven times more likely (almost 25%) to experience low income.

Among major income earners with a low wage, single people and lone parents experienced the highest rates of low income.

And the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives also makes this point in their paper on the need to increase the Minimum Wage in Nova Scotia.

Women, the minimum wage and poverty wages

A disproportionate percentage of minimum wage workers are women (63%)9. This is
confirmed by a Statistics Canada study that found that in 2003, across Canada “women
accounted for almost two-thirds of minimum wage earners, yet they make up just under
half of employees

The reality is that women continue to disproportionately make lower wages than men. In
2003, 25% of women earned less than $8.33, in contrast, 25% of men earned less than
$10.05. Leaving the minimum wage low puts a higher burden on women than on men.
Lower wages also leave many women dependent upon the male breadwinners in their
households Add to this the reality that women are also usually responsible for
maintaining their households and are the most vulnerable when it comes to getting laid
off and we get a picture of the gendered nature of poverty. We also get an indication of
the need for an increase in the minimum wage to support low income women and
households.

Minimum wage and part time work

Minimum wage workers are more likely to find themselves in part-time employment. In
2000, 57.2% of minimum wage workers worked part-time, while only 18.2% of the
overall workforce works part-time. While some workers may chose to work part-time,
others can only find part-time work, are often forced to work at more than one job to
make ends meet. Part-time employment not only tends to pay less but also does not
usually entitle workers to benefits. Another reason for increasing the minimum wage to
support part-time workers is that part-time work is often also short term and
unpredictable. Part-time workers need a minimum wage high enough to allow them not
only to live but to cover costs during the frequent breaks between jobs and during layoffs.

And the statistics show that those who rely on minimum wages, or just above, also rely on Food Banks more than they rely on shopping at Sobeys or Safeways.

Low-income earners are in a different position: Statistics Canada's 1998–99 National Population Health Survey reported that more than 10 percent of Canadians (an estimated 3 million people) were living in food-insecure households. In addition, the Institute for Research on Public Policy reports that food banks, which emerged in the 1980s in Canada, are growing quickly. Some 1800 new food banks opened between 1997 and 2002 (McIntyre 2003, 47). These developments suggest that, far from boosting restaurant and grocery store business, many low-income Canadians rely on charity for part of their food budget, or sometimes do without, as they are unable to fully participate in the market-based food retail sector.

It is this economic imbalance that shows we need not just minimum wages of $10 and hour but we need a social wage to replace the welfare system which is driving the working poor (women, single mothers, in particular) further into poverty.

The hidden faces of Canada's poor

Frances McNutt, a Scarborough mother with four young children under the age of 12, is struggling to get by on social assistance. But after the Ontario government claws back the National Child Benefit Supplement from her meagre payment and she pays her $990 rent, she is left with only $122 to feed and clothe her children and herself until the middle of each month when her $300 child-support cheque arrives.

After six years on welfare, McNutt is trying to get back on her feet by taking job training and doing volunteer work, but she admits it's hard.

McNutt is just one of the 5.3 million hidden faces of poverty in Canada. Tragically, the number of people living in poverty has grown – not dropped – in recent years despite economic boom times in many parts of this nation. Those good times, though, have bypassed many Canadians. Today, one in six Canadians, including 1.2 million children, live a miserable existence on incomes well below anyone's definition of poverty.

Which is why some insightful feminist bloggers blasted Cherniak over his post.

See:

Wages

Minimum Wage

Social Wage

Jason Cherniak


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Canadian CEO Blinks Earns $38,000

Top CEOs outearn average Canadians by January 2nd.

Hey that's today. It took less than 24 hours for Canada's fat cats to earn what you and I make in a year.

And the average worker has not made ANY real gain in wages for the past decade, which just adds insult to injury.

While the corporate elite got a 262% wage and bonus increase between 2005 and the end of 2006.

Perhaps we should declare January 2 the official Canadian Piggie Day for how much the boss class makes off our backs, while barely blinking an eye, or lifting a pen, or doing anything really productive besides lining their own pockets and those of their shareholders, who are all major pension funds, our pension funds in fact.

By the time the average Canadian grudgingly drags his or her still-hungover body into work Tuesday, swaps holiday tales with the stiff in the next cubicle, and hunkers down to work, the country's highest-paid CEOs will have already earned the worker's annual salary.

Minimum-wage workers would have barely rolled out of bed on New Year's Day by the time the country's top earners pocketed the $15,931 that will likely take the low-paid workers all of 2007 to make.

A study released Tuesday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says the 100 highest-paid private-sector executives will have earned an average Canadian's salary of $38,010 by 9:46 a.m. Tuesday.

That's not comforting news to the many Canadians whose primary motivation for heading back to work after the holidays is being able to start paying off their Christmas credit card bills.

"When you say that the average CEO made $9 million in 2005 and the average Canadian made ($38,000), the comparison between those things is so far into the stratosphere that I think people have trouble just coming to terms with what the comparison means," said Hugh Mackenzie, an economist with the independent research institute that focuses on issues of social and economic justice.

"Converting it into time sort of puts it into a frame that people can get their heads around."

Mackenzie crunched the numbers based on 2005 salary figures from Statistics Canada and Report on Business magazine's most recent listing of the 100 best-paid CEOs of Canadian publicly traded companies.

According to his figures, by the time Canadians flick on the 6 p.m. news Tuesday, the average CEO will have pocketed a staggering $70,000.

"I was kind of hoping it would get into the second week of January. As it turns out, it was not even close," Mackenzie quipped. "Once people get over how stunning the differentials are, I think it really raises a lot of questions in people's minds."

"How can somebody possibly be worth that amount in income and ... if those people are taking that much money out of the company or out of the economy, what does that mean for what's left for the rest of us?"

And don't forget these fat cats are a minority in Canada.

Wealth survey highlights include:

- The concentration of wealth at the high end continued to grow from
1999 to 2005.
- The wealthiest 20% families held 69.2% of the total net wealth in
Canada, up from 68.5% in 1999. That increase in share was entirely at
the expense of the middle 20%, whose share dropped from 8.8% to 8.4%.
- The net worth of the 20% of families at the bottom of the wealth
scale was negative again in 2005.
- Debt increased at a faster rate than net worth. More than 6.5% of
families literally operate under water -- with negative net worth.
- Between 1999 and 2005, the median debt load for families rose 38%,
from $32,300 in 1999 to $44,500 in 2005.

While the Fraser Institute declares Tax Freedom Day in June to show
how much government taxes us, the fact is that their prescription for tax cuts
have NOT benefited working class Canadians.

Canada is falling behind a number of OECD nations in a wide range of social and economic areas, and a study released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives points to tax cuts as the culprit.

The study, by Neil Brooks and Thaddeus Hwong, compares high-tax Nordic countries and low-tax Anglo-American countries on 50 social and economic measures and finds the high-tax Nordic countries score better in 42 categories.

According to the study, tax cuts are disastrous for the well-being of a nation’s citizens. For example, the high-tax Nordic countries have:

• lower rates of poverty, more equal income distribution, and more economic security for their workers;
• a higher GDP per capita;
• higher rates of household saving and net national saving;
• greater innovation, including a higher percentage of GDP spent on research and development;
• a higher ranking on their growth competitiveness by the World Economic Forum;
• higher rates of secondary school and university completion; and
• less drug use, more leisure time, and higher life satisfaction.

A tip o' the blog to Jacobs Super Patented Brain Thoughts

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