Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Time is now to end Corporations and Unions in Government

Now, I have always felt government has no place for either corporations or unions, instead as governments are taxpayer paid institutions, they should be run by the people, for the people and of the people, in other words, bureaucratic not democratic governmental entities that make the unelected decisions for those who had been elected to make them. Yet, we have instances of both with public private partnerships like the crown corporation PPP Canada and its Department of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities and Infrastructure Canada's Canada Strategic Infrastructure Fund, Infrastructure Canada Program and Building Canada or through its Public Private Partnerships Fund and its Ontario Ministry of Public Infrastructure Renewal and Infrastructure Ontario's Ontario Superbuild Corporation using the alternative financing and procurement model and public service commissions like the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Public Service Alliance of Canada, National Union of Provincial Government Employees, Ontario Provincial Government Employees Union and its Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System. But today we have even more proof as to why both entities have no place in the people's government.

Watching essential public services the majority of the people need become private has been quite disheartening, when those in the business of privitization could just as well compete with the government status quo system on their own initiative without taking out the public marketplace, especially when government and their ministries outsources to business outside its own jurisdiction. Such actions make their own taxpayers wonder aloud, why their government they pay taxes for should continue to get their patronage when their own governments do not buy from their own companies that pay the taxes they run on, hurting the chances that company owner employer and worker employee will be playing more, or even any, taxes to that government in years future. However wrong that may be, so is watching a Canadian and Ontarian public service unionized worker, paid to work for the same government and its ministries yet now striking, trash literally these privite citizens' efforts to clean up their city, by openly and freely dumping a bag of garbage onto a recently cleaned green field because they felt the child in question was threatening threatening job security for the unionized public servant. Have we all become so obsessed with our individual selves that we forgot about the greater collective good, did we stop caring about the community around us and when did government stop believing in the mantra for the use, benefit and enjoyment of the people. Also, just to point, for those people who use the old left and right political labels will see there in the example above just how the inside politics of the New Democrats economic labour and Green environmental stewardship ideals clash, which is why both entities can not agree political, nor will they ever merge electorally.

Our governmental system needs to be run by government, which in turn needs to be run by the people, if we continue this unelected, unaccountable and undemocratic way of living governmentally, we should expect what all of us get every day in every way. My proposals to solve both problems, in so far as corporations are concerned, shut down all P3 initiatives to be replaced by more stable funding and foundation of current crown corporations that have been deemed essential services by the majority of the population, overseen by a non partisan randomly selected group of eligible citizens and the Management Board of Cabinet or the Department or Ministry of Government Services, in so far as unions are concerned, shut down all PS/GE agreements to be replaced by a government strengthened and merged Civil Service Commission and Public Service Grievance Board to settle grievances, commission and pay through negotiation, mediation and arbitration towards a square fair deal, again overseen by a non partisan randomly selected group of eligible citizens and the Management Board of Cabinet or the Department or Ministry of Government Services. That being said, I think having corporations and unions fighting it out in the private realm and marjet is great, thus we still need them and there is a place for both, just not in our public government of the people.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Paging James Marshall

A Democratic Liberal may be the brand new occupant of the real Air Force One, but another, the Canadian Grit federal party leader Michael Ignatieff, reminds me of the past occupant in the fake one. With quotes such as "If you mess with me, I will mess with you until I'm done." towards current Tory Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in response to his Conservative "spite and spin" attack television advertisements, or "The prime minister of Canada has only one job, and that is to unite Canadians and never divide them, and that, Mr. Harper does not understand.", Ignatieff almost is a rhetorical spitting image of the fictional President James Marshall, played by actor Harrison Ford in 1997's Air Force One. Will Igor Korshunov in this case be Gilles Duceppe with Iggy telling him to "Get off my plane!", or will upon becoming Prime Minister state in a major international speech, "'The dead remember our indifference. The dead remember our silence.' I came here tonight to be congratulated. But today when I visited the Red Cross camps, overwhelmed by the flood of refugees fleeing from the horror of Kazakhstan, I realized I don't deserve to be congratulated. None of us do. Let's speak the truth. And the truth is, we acted too late. Only when our own national security was threatened did we act. General Ivan Radek's regime murdered over 200,000 men, women and children and we watched it on TV. We let it happen. People were being slaughtered for over a year and we issued economical sanctions and hid behind a rhetoric of diplomacy. How dare we? The dead remember. Real peace is not just the absence of conflict, it's the presence of justice. And tonight, I come to you with a pledge to change America's policy. Never again will I allow our political self-interests to deter us from doing what we know to be morally right. Atrocity and terror are not political weapons and to those who would use them: Your day is over. We will never negotiate. We will no longer tolerate and we will no longer be afraid. It's your turn to be afraid.", I just wonder.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Facebook and Myspace socially networking the World but culturally retarding its Humans

Being in three people's profile picture has forced me to weigh in on these social network communities, something others at Redeemer have been wrestling on for awhile, as it seems to go against their Protestant puritanist work ethic, Christian creational stewardship responsibilities and inner harmonic sensibilities. Personally, I think anyway that anyone can ever communicate with others, that in of itself truly is a good thing. Though I do agree we need to push for more face to face not interface to inteface, we must recognize that society has pressed inhuman burdens upon all of us that we must therefore we must improvise, adapt then overcome this problem that has become technology over humanity, if we do not then we risk turning the natural human in humanity into an industrial machine as in machinery.

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Brett Favre was always going to be a Minnesota Viking

From his Favre Pack to Brett the Jet, we all knew he was going to be in the Triple H Metrodome wearing the famous purple brainbucket with the warrior horns painted on each side, eventually. Neither Tarvaris Jackson nor Sage Rosenfels were going to get the franchise call in 2009, obviously because Vikings head coach Brad Childress is waiting for a Pack axe grinding Number Four to come out and score once more, therefore one expects Favre to be tossing out to Percy Harvin come September. Unless he rereretires, after his unretirement for personal reasons, the bet on Brett is on that he is Minneapolis and Saint Paul bound.