The Devolution of Democracy
B.C. politics seems to demonstrate dramatically the diminishing of the word ‘Democracy’ in our modern world. How could you perceive a system of Government easily defined as ‘Government to the People, by the Ruling party, for the Ruling party’, to be Democracy? The ancient Greek inventors of the word must roll restlessly on their clouds and rattle their ethereal fists vigourously at the slight.
In B.C., our Government pretends to act for the benefit of the citizens, while simultaneously imposing the anti-stimuli of a tax increase, which it calls a necessary economic stimulus, and tries to snowball us all as if we were devoid of common sense or intelligence of any kind. I keep hearing how business will benefit because there will be no PST payable on its inputs. Well, I don’t quite know where this argument comes from, as businesses have never paid PST on inputs. PST has only ever applied to the domestic consumer.
A few months back this Government was selling how much stimulus it would inject into our economy in this worst-ever-since financial reality, in order to maintain our strong and happy Provincial demeanour. Immediately upon election, this Government has installed vision blinkers to keep its view riveted to a four-year horizon, implementing strategies to create the right posture for itself prior to the next election.
1.6 billion dollars from the Federal Government must be pretty tempting at any time, much less in a period of deficit. That won’t hurt the balance sheet. And if we just bump the taxes this little tiny bit, we’ll be looking good in four years. Would the Feds not offer their conversion money again in a few years time? Perhaps when the economy is working and expanding again?
Couldn’t our Government find a truly revenue neutral position by reducing the rate of the HST (Hated Sales Tax), so as not to take extra money out of the economic engines and the pockets of our citizens during these stretched economic times? They would rather pretend this is revenue neutral, and a necessary helpmate to the citizenry.
This entire agenda makes me wonder, what would happen in a real Democracy? Perhaps a truly Democratic Government would analyze the books, develop possible scenarios for the long-range plan, and then it would, heaven forbid, ask the citizens, by referendum vote, which option the Government should choose and implement. They wouldn’t make everyone happy, but they could at least attempt to make the majority happy, which is supposed to be their job.
Just how impossible is this scenario, in our current reality, of transforming Governance back to real and direct Democracy? Just so totally! Our elected Governments are hopelessly insulated by their power. They live in a soft cocoon of increasing pay and perks, impose a wage freeze on the working man, and, if we remember back to another time, also just after being elected, even illegally shred worker contracts and never ever restore the stolen pay those real working people lost.
How could Government maintain, in a real Democracy, the million and half-million dollar salaries of people who probably work fewer hours than the real working stiffs of our world (I’m excluding the lavish free lunch and free dinner sessions from the calculation). In a true Democracy, one would ideally be working towards an equal pay for everyone reality. In our current system, the reality fosters more of a ‘take what you can get, while you can get it, and then get out’ mentality. Never fair to the workers who can’t reward themselves directly.
I’ll bet the taxpayers, if consulted, would request this HST change be delayed until the tough times are done, or, if the need is so dramatically urgent, that the rate be reduced to a create a neutral take from the pocketbooks of the people.
Getting on to real Democracy will be a difficult road, but it must happen. The status quo keeps returning us to this ‘Government by Imposition’ situation; more accurately defined, perhaps, as ‘Government by Elected Dictatorship’. I’m beginning to hear rumblings of a hunger for individual say in Governance, perhaps reminiscent of the forces and realities that created ‘Democracy’ in the first place. People are beginning to realize they can have more active involvement in Governance than is afforded by one scrawny little ‘x’ applied to a scrap of paper every four years.
We have the technology, once again, to facilitate a direct and ongoing polling of the people. It should be done daily, weekly, monthly, constantly, in order to Govern by the people, which was the original intention. Governments should be the protectors and implementers of the will of the people, period. So ask us what we want, or listen when we've already told you.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
My Scrawny Little X - 2009 May
My Scrawny Little X
Having now exercised the full might of my individual democratic power…I am left to ponder for four more years the full extent of individual involvement in the supposed democratic decision-making process.
All that is left to me now is to wait a full four years before I can scrawl my next scrawny little X. I feel powerful, don’t you?
Merriam-Webster defines democracy as: ‘government by the people; especially: rule of the majority.
Couldn’t we have a ten question referendum?…Or ten questions a week?…Or ten questions a day?…How else could a government know the will of the people?…
Couldn’t we allow democracy to actually occur in our modern world?…Collect the votes and enable, directly, policies that the people endorse?…Heaven forbid we should stop leaving all decision-making to a handful of hands-tied representatives who decide everything according to the whims of the temporary king.
Having now exercised the full might of my individual democratic power…I am left to ponder for four more years the full extent of individual involvement in the supposed democratic decision-making process.
All that is left to me now is to wait a full four years before I can scrawl my next scrawny little X. I feel powerful, don’t you?
Merriam-Webster defines democracy as: ‘government by the people; especially: rule of the majority.
Couldn’t we have a ten question referendum?…Or ten questions a week?…Or ten questions a day?…How else could a government know the will of the people?…
Couldn’t we allow democracy to actually occur in our modern world?…Collect the votes and enable, directly, policies that the people endorse?…Heaven forbid we should stop leaving all decision-making to a handful of hands-tied representatives who decide everything according to the whims of the temporary king.
Fixing Democracy - 2009 May
Fixing Democracy
I am somewhat bemused by the misguided current attempts to fix democracy by adjusting the method of selecting individuals to form our governments. Something needs to be fixed all right, but the method of choosing representatives is not the problem.
What’s wrong with democracy in its present form, and given our highly interconnected world, is the disenfranchisement of every individual, outside of the elected few.
While suggesting the STV (Single Transferable Vote) as the fix for our system, proponents are missing the real issue, which is the disconnection of all our individual peoples from the decisions made by our governments.
Democracy was invented to foster government as a vessel for implementation of the public will. Democracy has devolved to a pinnacle system that serves to impose the will and the agenda of temporary kings on the masses.
What we need, is for government to re-engage the individuals of our world in the processes of decision-making. Our citizens are informed, intelligent, and have opinions on every issue. All they need is a return to a methodology of direct say in decision-making.
We have the technology. All we need is for someone, with enough democratic will, to begin the implementation of a system of direct public voting on issues. We can certainly continue to elect individuals to visibly debate the issues for public consideration. But democracy involves the people casting their votes, directly, to implement, or defeat, policy initiatives.
What a scary thought to our current political parties. Give up the power to dictate to the masses whatever agenda is harboured deep within the mind and heart of an individual leader.
Let me just point out a few things that would be different in such a direct voting democracy. Firstly, a provincial government would not illegally tear up labour agreements of long-term employees, lose the legal challenge, but then impose a gag rule in the new contract of those abused workers, who will never recover the legal pay stolen from them, and are not even permitted to complain about the injustice of it all.
The public, with a direct say, would not permit the closing of well-loved seniors facilities contrary to the public will.
The public voting directly would not permit scandalous pay scales for department managers, official handmaids, and friends of the elected. Better that pay be directed to those who actually work in our society.
I’m not even so sure we would be faced with an imposed sewage treatment system, which seems to simply transfer dumping concerns from the ocean onto the land. By all means, we should screen and clean everything chemical out of our discharge, but what’s so wrong about letting nature break down the effluent out there at the bottom of the sea. Scientists seem to think the whole expensive process is for political optics only, and the populace might refuse the entire initiative, given a say.
Most recently, I think it would be a pretty safe bet that we would not have reduced our park availabilities and resources, regardless of purported economic justification. Our citizens realize we need our affordable local parks more than ever when times are tough.
STV, purporting to fix our system, will actually further dis-engage the population, as local representation will be tossed out the window, and representation will become more anonymous and distant.
Majorities will still be created, or not, and the will of the elected will still be imposed on the populace, contrary to the core principles of democracy.
Many will argue that we need, for the sake of political expediency, an elected bunch to make decisions for us. I will disagree. If this system works so well, why are we so desperate to change it. We are always in turmoil over the latest government imposition. The populace does have the collective intelligence to run our world successfully. The Greeks proved it all those years ago when individuals were first permitted to place their votes in a jar.
Please fix democracy, but fix what’s really wrong with democracy. We all want a say in the deciding of things, that’s what we really want. Individual citizens are completely disconnected and meaningless in our perverted form of democracy. The disconnection, and voicelessness of our young people, I believe, is what currently manifests itself in all forms of acting-out.
I will vote every morning, if you will, in a democracy re-evolved to implement the actual, not imagined, will of the people.
I am somewhat bemused by the misguided current attempts to fix democracy by adjusting the method of selecting individuals to form our governments. Something needs to be fixed all right, but the method of choosing representatives is not the problem.
What’s wrong with democracy in its present form, and given our highly interconnected world, is the disenfranchisement of every individual, outside of the elected few.
While suggesting the STV (Single Transferable Vote) as the fix for our system, proponents are missing the real issue, which is the disconnection of all our individual peoples from the decisions made by our governments.
Democracy was invented to foster government as a vessel for implementation of the public will. Democracy has devolved to a pinnacle system that serves to impose the will and the agenda of temporary kings on the masses.
What we need, is for government to re-engage the individuals of our world in the processes of decision-making. Our citizens are informed, intelligent, and have opinions on every issue. All they need is a return to a methodology of direct say in decision-making.
We have the technology. All we need is for someone, with enough democratic will, to begin the implementation of a system of direct public voting on issues. We can certainly continue to elect individuals to visibly debate the issues for public consideration. But democracy involves the people casting their votes, directly, to implement, or defeat, policy initiatives.
What a scary thought to our current political parties. Give up the power to dictate to the masses whatever agenda is harboured deep within the mind and heart of an individual leader.
Let me just point out a few things that would be different in such a direct voting democracy. Firstly, a provincial government would not illegally tear up labour agreements of long-term employees, lose the legal challenge, but then impose a gag rule in the new contract of those abused workers, who will never recover the legal pay stolen from them, and are not even permitted to complain about the injustice of it all.
The public, with a direct say, would not permit the closing of well-loved seniors facilities contrary to the public will.
The public voting directly would not permit scandalous pay scales for department managers, official handmaids, and friends of the elected. Better that pay be directed to those who actually work in our society.
I’m not even so sure we would be faced with an imposed sewage treatment system, which seems to simply transfer dumping concerns from the ocean onto the land. By all means, we should screen and clean everything chemical out of our discharge, but what’s so wrong about letting nature break down the effluent out there at the bottom of the sea. Scientists seem to think the whole expensive process is for political optics only, and the populace might refuse the entire initiative, given a say.
Most recently, I think it would be a pretty safe bet that we would not have reduced our park availabilities and resources, regardless of purported economic justification. Our citizens realize we need our affordable local parks more than ever when times are tough.
STV, purporting to fix our system, will actually further dis-engage the population, as local representation will be tossed out the window, and representation will become more anonymous and distant.
Majorities will still be created, or not, and the will of the elected will still be imposed on the populace, contrary to the core principles of democracy.
Many will argue that we need, for the sake of political expediency, an elected bunch to make decisions for us. I will disagree. If this system works so well, why are we so desperate to change it. We are always in turmoil over the latest government imposition. The populace does have the collective intelligence to run our world successfully. The Greeks proved it all those years ago when individuals were first permitted to place their votes in a jar.
Please fix democracy, but fix what’s really wrong with democracy. We all want a say in the deciding of things, that’s what we really want. Individual citizens are completely disconnected and meaningless in our perverted form of democracy. The disconnection, and voicelessness of our young people, I believe, is what currently manifests itself in all forms of acting-out.
I will vote every morning, if you will, in a democracy re-evolved to implement the actual, not imagined, will of the people.
What's Wrong with Democracy?? - 2008
What’s Wrong With Democracy??
We could call it pinnacle politics. That would be a good descriptive for the current practice, in the supposed free world, of electing a temporary King to make all decisions for us. In theory, we elect a group of regional representatives to collectively make decisions for the common good. But the observant will note that one person, with perhaps a handful of helpmates, drives a highly personalized agenda, and generally obligates the elected representatives to speak and vote the party line.
So why are we electing all these individually muzzled representatives? Generally, I believe, to simply maintain the illusion that we are participating in a democratic system. Those who know their history will note that the Greeks invented a system where the masses gathered to actually individually cast votes on the issues of the day. The voting jar was counted and the will of the majority implemented.
Somehow, over the passage of time and the evolution of political process, the reality has become that individuals cast their votes only to elect regional representatives, supposedly to study the issues, and cast their votes on behalf of the masses. If one person ostensibly drives the decision mechanisms, however, we might as well call that elected leader our temporary King or Queen and save the expense of all those invisible representatives.
Much has been made of low voter turnouts in recent elections. This is symptomatic, I believe, of a growing malaise within our current practice of democracy, manifest in the general disenfranchisement of the individual. Technology has returned us to the possibility of true democracy, which would permit the individual to cast a vote directly on the questions of the day. Such a question might be, ‘Should Canada support the U.S. in its colonial invasions of middle eastern countries?’
I’m sure the question might be framed in more accommodating language, but the result of such a vote would probably have kept Canada out of the U.S. folly over there. And saved us the expense and the body counts, both of our own and of the many more of theirs. Such a vote in the U.S. might have also saved the U.S. itself from that misguided and never-ending folly. And our planet might have maintained some of the free world characteristics now hopelessly lost in the iron-fisted strategies adopted to supposedly cure terrorism. Anything short of the real cure, which is to stop killing people and messing about in the internal politics of other places.
In our modern world, with instant information at the fingertips of everyone, it is a hard argument to make that an elected individual has more knowledge than the electorate on any issue. The internet, or the telephone even, would allow us all to vote very easily and directly on important policy decisions.
I’m reminded of the recent illegal actions of a certain provincial government, which shredded the legal contracts of hospital employees, reduced their pay, and, some years later, was summarily chastised by the courts for those illegal actions. Such an action to abuse those employees would never have been voted through on the will of the people.
And, at the risk of digressing, I must mention that those hospital employees, whose legal contracts were shredded, and whose pay was reduced, have not had those wage levels re-instated at all. Meaning that the abuses of that illegal activity were allowed to stand as a local testament to the imperial powers of our temporary King. The people would not allow it.
Oh, and did I mention that the King more recently decreed massive wage increases for his court, again not subject to a vote, or the will of the people. A quarter of a million in annual salary still not quite enough, while the ordinary worker sinks to poverty. The people would not have allowed it, if given the opportunity to have their say.
That brings us to another deeply engrained affliction of the pinnacle political process, in its masquerade as democracy, which serves to discourage intelligent individuals from even seeking office. And this is where the current system is really failing us. We used to cast votes for the intellectual cream of our society. Now we seem to have only a choice of the lesser of evils.
The reason is, I believe, that we all of us know, consciously or subconsciously, that this system of pushing a few individuals to the top of a pyramid, and giving them absolute power, is fatally flawed. And knowing this, we subtly resent their ascension to power, and extravagant efforts are made to discredit them and eventually remove them from their pompous place.
A phenomenon I call ‘assassination by the media’ commences the very minute the current King or Queen is anointed. Intelligent individuals, who might even be able to make this system work for the common good, realize they will be assassinated in minor to major degree, depending on their visibility, and, being intelligent, refuse to subject themselves. The result being that this sham of a democracy is now most commonly attracting only second flight intellects and the hopelessly egomaniacal. Evidence the recently outgone U.S. president.
The population generally grumbles but remains powerless and hopelessly disenfranchised. We are all of us, I believe, subconsciously pushing toward a system that will re-enfranchise us. The youth of our day are hopelessly disenchanted with their lack of voice. It is this malaise that manifests negatively and pervasively in our world.
I want to vote. Not for a representative. I want to directly vote on the issues. That is democracy. We can keep the representatives, as they can debate the issues preliminary to a direct vote of the people. Like they do now? But we shouldn’t pay them like royalty, which they are not. I’m reminded of a catchy phrase, ‘We the people’, which implies a little more equality in our reality.
The very sad news is, of course, that no change generally occurs in our world without a champion to initiate the concept, marshal support, and direct the transition. And just who, in our established political networks, will rise to champion this cause, ostensibly at the loss of the established individual power that said person presently possesses?
We could call it pinnacle politics. That would be a good descriptive for the current practice, in the supposed free world, of electing a temporary King to make all decisions for us. In theory, we elect a group of regional representatives to collectively make decisions for the common good. But the observant will note that one person, with perhaps a handful of helpmates, drives a highly personalized agenda, and generally obligates the elected representatives to speak and vote the party line.
So why are we electing all these individually muzzled representatives? Generally, I believe, to simply maintain the illusion that we are participating in a democratic system. Those who know their history will note that the Greeks invented a system where the masses gathered to actually individually cast votes on the issues of the day. The voting jar was counted and the will of the majority implemented.
Somehow, over the passage of time and the evolution of political process, the reality has become that individuals cast their votes only to elect regional representatives, supposedly to study the issues, and cast their votes on behalf of the masses. If one person ostensibly drives the decision mechanisms, however, we might as well call that elected leader our temporary King or Queen and save the expense of all those invisible representatives.
Much has been made of low voter turnouts in recent elections. This is symptomatic, I believe, of a growing malaise within our current practice of democracy, manifest in the general disenfranchisement of the individual. Technology has returned us to the possibility of true democracy, which would permit the individual to cast a vote directly on the questions of the day. Such a question might be, ‘Should Canada support the U.S. in its colonial invasions of middle eastern countries?’
I’m sure the question might be framed in more accommodating language, but the result of such a vote would probably have kept Canada out of the U.S. folly over there. And saved us the expense and the body counts, both of our own and of the many more of theirs. Such a vote in the U.S. might have also saved the U.S. itself from that misguided and never-ending folly. And our planet might have maintained some of the free world characteristics now hopelessly lost in the iron-fisted strategies adopted to supposedly cure terrorism. Anything short of the real cure, which is to stop killing people and messing about in the internal politics of other places.
In our modern world, with instant information at the fingertips of everyone, it is a hard argument to make that an elected individual has more knowledge than the electorate on any issue. The internet, or the telephone even, would allow us all to vote very easily and directly on important policy decisions.
I’m reminded of the recent illegal actions of a certain provincial government, which shredded the legal contracts of hospital employees, reduced their pay, and, some years later, was summarily chastised by the courts for those illegal actions. Such an action to abuse those employees would never have been voted through on the will of the people.
And, at the risk of digressing, I must mention that those hospital employees, whose legal contracts were shredded, and whose pay was reduced, have not had those wage levels re-instated at all. Meaning that the abuses of that illegal activity were allowed to stand as a local testament to the imperial powers of our temporary King. The people would not allow it.
Oh, and did I mention that the King more recently decreed massive wage increases for his court, again not subject to a vote, or the will of the people. A quarter of a million in annual salary still not quite enough, while the ordinary worker sinks to poverty. The people would not have allowed it, if given the opportunity to have their say.
That brings us to another deeply engrained affliction of the pinnacle political process, in its masquerade as democracy, which serves to discourage intelligent individuals from even seeking office. And this is where the current system is really failing us. We used to cast votes for the intellectual cream of our society. Now we seem to have only a choice of the lesser of evils.
The reason is, I believe, that we all of us know, consciously or subconsciously, that this system of pushing a few individuals to the top of a pyramid, and giving them absolute power, is fatally flawed. And knowing this, we subtly resent their ascension to power, and extravagant efforts are made to discredit them and eventually remove them from their pompous place.
A phenomenon I call ‘assassination by the media’ commences the very minute the current King or Queen is anointed. Intelligent individuals, who might even be able to make this system work for the common good, realize they will be assassinated in minor to major degree, depending on their visibility, and, being intelligent, refuse to subject themselves. The result being that this sham of a democracy is now most commonly attracting only second flight intellects and the hopelessly egomaniacal. Evidence the recently outgone U.S. president.
The population generally grumbles but remains powerless and hopelessly disenfranchised. We are all of us, I believe, subconsciously pushing toward a system that will re-enfranchise us. The youth of our day are hopelessly disenchanted with their lack of voice. It is this malaise that manifests negatively and pervasively in our world.
I want to vote. Not for a representative. I want to directly vote on the issues. That is democracy. We can keep the representatives, as they can debate the issues preliminary to a direct vote of the people. Like they do now? But we shouldn’t pay them like royalty, which they are not. I’m reminded of a catchy phrase, ‘We the people’, which implies a little more equality in our reality.
The very sad news is, of course, that no change generally occurs in our world without a champion to initiate the concept, marshal support, and direct the transition. And just who, in our established political networks, will rise to champion this cause, ostensibly at the loss of the established individual power that said person presently possesses?
Bush Dangerous? - 2006
Bush Dangerous?
Should we beware the little guy is incidentally transforming America into the evil empire? War is the only answer for Bush, it seems, and torture and human debasement are now o.k. parts of the deal, and tools of the trade. What a great fall from the lofty aspirations of a Christian.
If George’s answer, for America, is to kill people in foreign lands, for any purpose, how could the result be anything other than people from those foreign lands coming to American soil to show reciprocal disrespect for America’s own collateral damage? That’s what 9/11 was all about, a demonstration of the causative effect of an American foreign policy that displays a diminished respect for individual life in foreign lands.
Pretend doesn’t cut it in the real world, George, America’s got to stop killing people anywhere, for any purpose. Police the world, please. But bear each human life, in each country of the world, as equal to that of an American life. Protect foreign lives as if they were all Americans lives. That would be equality.
One can’t even imagine the response, in America, to an American military taking out terrorist cells, in America cities, with air missile strikes, bombs, and tanks? American collateral lives would always be too precious for that, wouldn’t they? Why would this be acceptable anywhere else?
We believe that George means well, and truly believes he can, personally, physically wrestle any Middle Eastern country into democratic submission, but is he really achieving that? Or is he simply creating and inspiring generations of future freedom fighters to continue a campaign of deadly demonstrations as ongoing invitation, to America, to just go home?
That brings us to oil, which is really why America is busy creating democracy in the particular country of Iraq. George wants, and apparently needs pretty bad, on America’s behalf, many points of secure physical access to Middle Eastern oil. Atrocities, of staggering human damage, multiplied by ridiculous factors in comparison to Saddam’s influence, continue elsewhere in the world, in areas where no oil can be found, and none have inspired an American intervention invasion in the slightest.
George seems to feel an American need to install democracy, and incidental American air force bases, in oil rich countries, and wherever possible, in order to surreptitiously secure guaranteed future supplies of oil, for America. That ongoing need for secure access to oil is the real inspiration for the entire Saddam campaign, and is why George has undertaken, to his perceived American advantage, to liberate Iraq. America can be proud it has an oil man at the helm, steering America to a secure future.
Secure, that would be, foreseeing any more abdications, such as that of Iran, which reversed its friendship with America and the Shah was forced to flee when fundamentalist freedom fighters (yes, freedom from America) succeeded in kicking American influence out of their country.
Rhetoric emanating from Iran these days may be dramatically senseless, but the underlying sentiment and unspoken ideology should be clear. Iran and its people don’t want an American presence in Iran, or in their area of the world. Yes, that was in their country. And yes, it is their world, too.
One can see that the whole nuclear thing is not really going to work out very well for Iran, though. All George really needs is a good excuse to liberate another oil country, especially one that’s already slipped away for a while. Iran’s loud and vociferous ‘death to Israel’ chant is just going to accelerate the liberation process. No wonder Iraq’s leaders want some nukes, and fast.
Meanwhile, the mess gets messier every day over there, judging by the body count, and America is just not getting the message. Air installations and the military are digging in deep, while more demonstrations of defiance occur daily. Funny how officials can spew empty words of success in the field, when the body counts grow daily in these liberated countries.
Somehow, individual life in the Middle East, and everywhere else in the world, must be elevated in importance to equal that of individual American life. Until America’s boss can grasp that concept, and defend individual importance globally, trouble will continue. America is not more equal than others. Waging war on foreign soil, with acceptable collateral damage, will only invite war to America, with collateral damage acceptable to someone else. Foreign individuals, even many that America may believe to be friendly, will continue to demonstrate, in their incendiary ways, a desire for freedom from America.
America needs a new dialogue, and a new global vision of true individual equality everywhere in the world. The world is desperate for America to find a real global leader, with planetary vision, to champion true peace, in a world extending beyond America. Someone to surrender, for the world’s sake, America’s global military presence and policing duties to an empowered and supported United Nations. Working for peace, and a freedom from bombs, for everyone in the world. Leading a new equality in the world, and inspiring global discourse for planet-wide benefit.
Of course, America might have to lift its hands off some of that oil over there, where it doesn’t have claim, and where America’s military muscle is, quite obviously, not that welcome. Money presently spent on the American military complex should be re-directed to the accelerated development of fuel sources beyond those of the dinosaur age, for America, and for all of us on the planet. Then America wouldn’t need all that oil.
Reducing the size of the military complex might reduce the need for war, as well. Military might is somewhat a fulfilling prophecy, isn’t it?
As it is, America would have been better off to turn the other Christian cheek, as a response to terrorism, and thereby retain global support, than kill so many innocents in supposed campaigns of liberation on foreign soils, and become despised for blatant self-interest. Great presidents of the past must be turning in their graves as America’s golden image of global leadership melts to tar from all the false purpose of these times.
By responding militarily, as perpetrators of great death and destruction, the white wings of America have begun to look pretty grey with the massive accumulation dusts of the dead. Creating the circumstances in Iraq that now enable a civil war must ultimately magnify America’s responsibility as the instigator of the killing there. Would this be America’s Christian example to the world?
Pity all the support nations, dragged into complicity as America’s friends, and mandated to sponge up the mess for America. Forced to brag of growing victories in order to appease the worried folks back home, even as the deadly acts of defiance and opposition increase in frequency and magnitude. Will these friends stay over there for twenty years, or for two hundred years? Will there ever be peace while these foreign lands are under the guns of America and friends?
The most glaring consequence of America's military aggressions abroad would be the general disintegration of peace of mind on the planet. No safety, or security remains anywhere in the world. Toothpaste and shampoo are now considered weapons of mass destruction. And we're fast approaching mandatory full body cavity searches for travel of any kind to anywhere else. Paranoia and fear are epidemic in the new world by George.
A profound sadness, I believe, is also growing deeply within all thinking humans from all the endless and senseless killing. Killing which inspires only more killing, and then back again in retaliation. Mindless killing that never ends. Killing for what purpose? Oil Access? Democracy? Killing is too expensive a price for anything.
Other nations, following the glittering example of America, are making their own punitive military statements to those less equal than themselves. Israel demonstrates a measured response to the kidnapping of two of its soldiers, with something like a total blitzkrieg of military obliteration, leaving Lebanon completely smashed and broken, but all done in self-defence. The deaths inflicted were all acceptable collateral damage to those inflicting.
If America, the supposed leader nation of the free world, can bomb and kill indiscriminately and claim some aloof privilege to do so, why wouldn't others act in similar opportunistic fashion? Sadly, they are. America cannot expect that the world will follow its example only when it shows morality and good judgement.
George can continue to spread his self-righteous message of liberation and democracy till his little head spins. Those foreign freedom fighters will continue to prove him a liar. America did not have the right, or a believable reason, to invade foreign lands, killing indiscriminately. Oil is not an excuse, or a reason.
Nothing could be more important, for the people of any country, than freedom from foreign domination. An American should know that.
How long will they fight over there for their freedom from America? I suspect a long time. They’ve only been fighting foreign occupations now for the past few thousand years.
Will they carry their message to American shores? They already have.
Is George dangerous? You tell me.
Should we beware the little guy is incidentally transforming America into the evil empire? War is the only answer for Bush, it seems, and torture and human debasement are now o.k. parts of the deal, and tools of the trade. What a great fall from the lofty aspirations of a Christian.
If George’s answer, for America, is to kill people in foreign lands, for any purpose, how could the result be anything other than people from those foreign lands coming to American soil to show reciprocal disrespect for America’s own collateral damage? That’s what 9/11 was all about, a demonstration of the causative effect of an American foreign policy that displays a diminished respect for individual life in foreign lands.
Pretend doesn’t cut it in the real world, George, America’s got to stop killing people anywhere, for any purpose. Police the world, please. But bear each human life, in each country of the world, as equal to that of an American life. Protect foreign lives as if they were all Americans lives. That would be equality.
One can’t even imagine the response, in America, to an American military taking out terrorist cells, in America cities, with air missile strikes, bombs, and tanks? American collateral lives would always be too precious for that, wouldn’t they? Why would this be acceptable anywhere else?
We believe that George means well, and truly believes he can, personally, physically wrestle any Middle Eastern country into democratic submission, but is he really achieving that? Or is he simply creating and inspiring generations of future freedom fighters to continue a campaign of deadly demonstrations as ongoing invitation, to America, to just go home?
That brings us to oil, which is really why America is busy creating democracy in the particular country of Iraq. George wants, and apparently needs pretty bad, on America’s behalf, many points of secure physical access to Middle Eastern oil. Atrocities, of staggering human damage, multiplied by ridiculous factors in comparison to Saddam’s influence, continue elsewhere in the world, in areas where no oil can be found, and none have inspired an American intervention invasion in the slightest.
George seems to feel an American need to install democracy, and incidental American air force bases, in oil rich countries, and wherever possible, in order to surreptitiously secure guaranteed future supplies of oil, for America. That ongoing need for secure access to oil is the real inspiration for the entire Saddam campaign, and is why George has undertaken, to his perceived American advantage, to liberate Iraq. America can be proud it has an oil man at the helm, steering America to a secure future.
Secure, that would be, foreseeing any more abdications, such as that of Iran, which reversed its friendship with America and the Shah was forced to flee when fundamentalist freedom fighters (yes, freedom from America) succeeded in kicking American influence out of their country.
Rhetoric emanating from Iran these days may be dramatically senseless, but the underlying sentiment and unspoken ideology should be clear. Iran and its people don’t want an American presence in Iran, or in their area of the world. Yes, that was in their country. And yes, it is their world, too.
One can see that the whole nuclear thing is not really going to work out very well for Iran, though. All George really needs is a good excuse to liberate another oil country, especially one that’s already slipped away for a while. Iran’s loud and vociferous ‘death to Israel’ chant is just going to accelerate the liberation process. No wonder Iraq’s leaders want some nukes, and fast.
Meanwhile, the mess gets messier every day over there, judging by the body count, and America is just not getting the message. Air installations and the military are digging in deep, while more demonstrations of defiance occur daily. Funny how officials can spew empty words of success in the field, when the body counts grow daily in these liberated countries.
Somehow, individual life in the Middle East, and everywhere else in the world, must be elevated in importance to equal that of individual American life. Until America’s boss can grasp that concept, and defend individual importance globally, trouble will continue. America is not more equal than others. Waging war on foreign soil, with acceptable collateral damage, will only invite war to America, with collateral damage acceptable to someone else. Foreign individuals, even many that America may believe to be friendly, will continue to demonstrate, in their incendiary ways, a desire for freedom from America.
America needs a new dialogue, and a new global vision of true individual equality everywhere in the world. The world is desperate for America to find a real global leader, with planetary vision, to champion true peace, in a world extending beyond America. Someone to surrender, for the world’s sake, America’s global military presence and policing duties to an empowered and supported United Nations. Working for peace, and a freedom from bombs, for everyone in the world. Leading a new equality in the world, and inspiring global discourse for planet-wide benefit.
Of course, America might have to lift its hands off some of that oil over there, where it doesn’t have claim, and where America’s military muscle is, quite obviously, not that welcome. Money presently spent on the American military complex should be re-directed to the accelerated development of fuel sources beyond those of the dinosaur age, for America, and for all of us on the planet. Then America wouldn’t need all that oil.
Reducing the size of the military complex might reduce the need for war, as well. Military might is somewhat a fulfilling prophecy, isn’t it?
As it is, America would have been better off to turn the other Christian cheek, as a response to terrorism, and thereby retain global support, than kill so many innocents in supposed campaigns of liberation on foreign soils, and become despised for blatant self-interest. Great presidents of the past must be turning in their graves as America’s golden image of global leadership melts to tar from all the false purpose of these times.
By responding militarily, as perpetrators of great death and destruction, the white wings of America have begun to look pretty grey with the massive accumulation dusts of the dead. Creating the circumstances in Iraq that now enable a civil war must ultimately magnify America’s responsibility as the instigator of the killing there. Would this be America’s Christian example to the world?
Pity all the support nations, dragged into complicity as America’s friends, and mandated to sponge up the mess for America. Forced to brag of growing victories in order to appease the worried folks back home, even as the deadly acts of defiance and opposition increase in frequency and magnitude. Will these friends stay over there for twenty years, or for two hundred years? Will there ever be peace while these foreign lands are under the guns of America and friends?
The most glaring consequence of America's military aggressions abroad would be the general disintegration of peace of mind on the planet. No safety, or security remains anywhere in the world. Toothpaste and shampoo are now considered weapons of mass destruction. And we're fast approaching mandatory full body cavity searches for travel of any kind to anywhere else. Paranoia and fear are epidemic in the new world by George.
A profound sadness, I believe, is also growing deeply within all thinking humans from all the endless and senseless killing. Killing which inspires only more killing, and then back again in retaliation. Mindless killing that never ends. Killing for what purpose? Oil Access? Democracy? Killing is too expensive a price for anything.
Other nations, following the glittering example of America, are making their own punitive military statements to those less equal than themselves. Israel demonstrates a measured response to the kidnapping of two of its soldiers, with something like a total blitzkrieg of military obliteration, leaving Lebanon completely smashed and broken, but all done in self-defence. The deaths inflicted were all acceptable collateral damage to those inflicting.
If America, the supposed leader nation of the free world, can bomb and kill indiscriminately and claim some aloof privilege to do so, why wouldn't others act in similar opportunistic fashion? Sadly, they are. America cannot expect that the world will follow its example only when it shows morality and good judgement.
George can continue to spread his self-righteous message of liberation and democracy till his little head spins. Those foreign freedom fighters will continue to prove him a liar. America did not have the right, or a believable reason, to invade foreign lands, killing indiscriminately. Oil is not an excuse, or a reason.
Nothing could be more important, for the people of any country, than freedom from foreign domination. An American should know that.
How long will they fight over there for their freedom from America? I suspect a long time. They’ve only been fighting foreign occupations now for the past few thousand years.
Will they carry their message to American shores? They already have.
Is George dangerous? You tell me.
Democracy - 2004
Democracy
Once upon a time, a bunch of Greeks were thinking. They did that a lot in the day. And so these bunch were thinking, and they thought, “Suppose everybody got to have a say in solving all the questions of the day.” Wouldn’t that be good?? They decided it would.
And so was born the little democratic seed that began as a simple gathering of citizens to drop their votes into a Greek jar. Questions were put, and citizens would jar their preferences. Math majors got to count the votes, and policy within the society was based on the majority call.
Somewhere, through the passing morphisms of society, democracy has now obtained a somewhat different definition. Democracy, as now practiced, is really an abdication of say, by the individual, to an elected representative who acts, supposedly at least, to represent the wishes of the people.
But somewhere in the collective gathering of regional representatives, and their alignment into teams competing for the power to make policy, democracy morphed into a system which enacts the will of the ruling Prime Minister, or President, or Cabinet.
Democracy, as originally defined, is ‘Government of the People, for the People, by the People’. As currently practiced, democracy might now be more aptly described as ‘Government to the People, by the Elected Few, for the Elected Few’.
The vote afforded to the people, in this modern democracy, is restricted to the appointment of representatives. And the representatives, in order to remain members-in-good-standing-of-the-ruling-team, actually abdicate their individual say to the captain of the team, or to some cliquish group of stars on the team.
So democracy is now simply the will of those few, irrespective of the will of the masses. Populations have no real say in the questions of passing days, and policies are established with indifference to the collective preference.
How did we slip from the original democratic ideal of simply letting the people decide, collectively, what to do?
It all got too complicated, and impossible, to collect the collective will, if you will, of the increasing population.
So the idea was born to have representatives, who could use their best judgment in casting a say for the collective mass.
And this worked fine, in the early days, for the representatives battled for the will of their individual collective masses.
But, through the passage of time, the role of the individual representative morphed and eventually became nothing more than that of an important digit holding space. All the little individual digits are now added up to determine the winning team, the leader of which gets to decide everything.
But this is no longer democracy. The people don’t get to decide anything, and have no personal power at all.
We are fortunate, now, in that technology has given us a way to return to a true form of democracy. As a system of communication and interaction, the internet now provides an infinite capacity. The counting of votes within this revolutionary new medium is a simple digital exercise.
We are now able to return to the democratic ideal. We are able, again, and in the face of our exploded mass of peoples, to permit direct collective decisions by citizens, about everything. We have the means, all we need is the collective will.
But alas, our system is now deeply rooted in the manifest power of a few teams of people, who, one or the other, have absolute dominion over us.
The elected team players are all privy to comfortable chairs and good pay, for simply keeping their digits in place. Policy is manifest from on high, and dissension is not recommended. Change, from within this system, is not particularly likely.
Until some brave individual citizens champion the ideals of real democracy, and fight to establish government-by-absolute-consensus-of-the-people, we’ll be stuck with, and will remain subjected to, the will of the leader of the elected few.
Once upon a time, a bunch of Greeks were thinking. They did that a lot in the day. And so these bunch were thinking, and they thought, “Suppose everybody got to have a say in solving all the questions of the day.” Wouldn’t that be good?? They decided it would.
And so was born the little democratic seed that began as a simple gathering of citizens to drop their votes into a Greek jar. Questions were put, and citizens would jar their preferences. Math majors got to count the votes, and policy within the society was based on the majority call.
Somewhere, through the passing morphisms of society, democracy has now obtained a somewhat different definition. Democracy, as now practiced, is really an abdication of say, by the individual, to an elected representative who acts, supposedly at least, to represent the wishes of the people.
But somewhere in the collective gathering of regional representatives, and their alignment into teams competing for the power to make policy, democracy morphed into a system which enacts the will of the ruling Prime Minister, or President, or Cabinet.
Democracy, as originally defined, is ‘Government of the People, for the People, by the People’. As currently practiced, democracy might now be more aptly described as ‘Government to the People, by the Elected Few, for the Elected Few’.
The vote afforded to the people, in this modern democracy, is restricted to the appointment of representatives. And the representatives, in order to remain members-in-good-standing-of-the-ruling-team, actually abdicate their individual say to the captain of the team, or to some cliquish group of stars on the team.
So democracy is now simply the will of those few, irrespective of the will of the masses. Populations have no real say in the questions of passing days, and policies are established with indifference to the collective preference.
How did we slip from the original democratic ideal of simply letting the people decide, collectively, what to do?
It all got too complicated, and impossible, to collect the collective will, if you will, of the increasing population.
So the idea was born to have representatives, who could use their best judgment in casting a say for the collective mass.
And this worked fine, in the early days, for the representatives battled for the will of their individual collective masses.
But, through the passage of time, the role of the individual representative morphed and eventually became nothing more than that of an important digit holding space. All the little individual digits are now added up to determine the winning team, the leader of which gets to decide everything.
But this is no longer democracy. The people don’t get to decide anything, and have no personal power at all.
We are fortunate, now, in that technology has given us a way to return to a true form of democracy. As a system of communication and interaction, the internet now provides an infinite capacity. The counting of votes within this revolutionary new medium is a simple digital exercise.
We are now able to return to the democratic ideal. We are able, again, and in the face of our exploded mass of peoples, to permit direct collective decisions by citizens, about everything. We have the means, all we need is the collective will.
But alas, our system is now deeply rooted in the manifest power of a few teams of people, who, one or the other, have absolute dominion over us.
The elected team players are all privy to comfortable chairs and good pay, for simply keeping their digits in place. Policy is manifest from on high, and dissension is not recommended. Change, from within this system, is not particularly likely.
Until some brave individual citizens champion the ideals of real democracy, and fight to establish government-by-absolute-consensus-of-the-people, we’ll be stuck with, and will remain subjected to, the will of the leader of the elected few.
Democracy or Elected Dictatorship - 2003
Democracy or Elected Dictatorship?
What kind of political system are we really wearing? Local folk are becoming way too keenly aware of the local answer. No one really elected the B.C. Liberals to slash and burn our society in a style most reminiscent of conquering barbarians. Whatever this new bunch is up to, none of it’s about kind and gentle care of and for the people.
Harshness and cold hardness seem to typify the new math. We do have to admit, however, that our new master of cold hardness has suddenly adopted a new humility about himself. Unfortunately for him, he’s hung out a huge drunk and sloppy personal question mark for all to see.
He’s been forced, by the easily foreseeable and preventable ‘faux pas’, into a new era of at least pretending humaneness. In demonstrated fact, however, his government remains coldly mobilized in an agenda about decimal points only.
Not totally inhumane, however. He’s seen to the affairs of his own. His family will not suffer financially. His public paid pension is well assured. Equally comfortable are his fellow comrades in correction. Absolute job security is assured, for all of them.
Pity the poor hospital care worker, who, far from getting a piece of the nursing salary windfall, is instead receiving governmental rudeness in the form of a pink slip. Not immediately though. First they all get to watch this elected man tear up their legal contracts and dismiss them as mere casualties of the war on deficit.
Pity that our public can’t more easily tear up his own contract, and send him packing without pay. Who’s really overpaid, anyway? Once elected in good faith by well-intentioned voters, who believed what they were told, what recourse now to remove the ‘distruther’.
Is there some measure of hope left to the betrayed masses? Recall may yet teach the lesson not otherwise learned. The people want a say in what is decided. They at least don’t want the opposite, or some completely inhumane aberration, of what they voted for.
Recall is way too slow and cumbersome to create any real panic in the house of power. But if enough of it happens, this bunch might just have to re-think what they thought was their mandate.
We need a little reflection and self-evaluation to decide what our priorities really are. We’ve been tossed back and forth by our governments, with random impunity, for scores of years. We toss out one bunch, only to get another bunch we need to toss out just as badly.
One bunch puts our money in a big pile and burns it. The new bunch promptly installs a giant vacuum machine, sucking money out of every corner of our lives.
Our parks, our last true monument to a people-over-profit philosophy of life, are now gone to the moneychangers. Never again will we have that sigh of appreciation for a great benevolent sharing. We have to pay now, for everything, always.
This is not really good government. Not good democracy, anyway. Democracy, by definition is ‘Of the People, For the People, By the People’. Our present state of government is more a form of ‘Dictatorcracy’, where-in the elected one makes all the decisions, and dissensions be damned. We now have a government ‘Of the Privileged Few, To the People, By the Privileged Few’.
Not since the old days of coalition governments, has their been a real accountability. Present era governments, arrogant and unfettered, have had an almost absolute power.
What we need is the real democracy. We need the people to decide. We all have opinions, about every topic, every day. Individuals need to regain a say in all the everyday decisions affecting their common lives.
The people need more than a window of opportunity every four years to try once again for a responsible and representative government. The people need to communally decide whether to tear up contracts, or not. Communal conscience would not have allowed us to treat all those hard working individuals so callously and carelessly.
Tearing up legal contracts should have been a breach of good faith, and is an insult to all those workers. Collectively, we would not have wanted to do that, and we would not have done it. Our regal bunch even said they wouldn’t do that, and then they did it anyway. Too powerful to care that they lied.
We need the power of decision to be with the people. War should be for all to decide, not just the elite few, protected, and always kept very far from the horrors of their own choices. We must decide together, directly, whether participation in war is good or not.
The people should make the call on paying for parks, and on whether to have toll roads, and on whether to ship raw logs or not.
I am convinced we will not have good government, truly, until the people are re-enfranchised. We don’t really want to pick some dubious politician, from a list of similars, to make our decisions for us. We want to pick the prickly path ourselves. We want a direct say in the actual decisions made.
We know enough, collectively, to make the right choices. And if the people make a bad decision, the people can repair and repeal the offense with the same voting process. The people should be living under their own direction, in a world shaped by the collective will.
The people should vote on every significant issue. The people should make the budget allocation decisions. The people should decide the path, and intensity of, restraint. The people should decide the priorities of our lives. The government should lay out the options. The people should decide for themselves.
The people are smart enough to do all this. They can ‘be the government’. They know enough to have a say, and to bring that say out of the dark catacombs and into the light of every individual’s day.
Technology will now permit us, after centuries of waiting, to once again effectively drop our votes into the jar of decision. We have the technology, but not the political will. The political will, of course, is decided by the elected few, who don’t really want to lose their power. They like a world where everyone is truly equal, except they, who are a little more equal than the others.
I am convinced we are soon going back to real democracy. It is inevitable. Watching the marching millions should demonstrate the will of the people, all over the world, to have their say. I believe it will come.
People will eventually stand up to the tyranny of government by the few, and will force a rebirth of the pure form of democracy. Someday, the people will, once again, directly be the government.
In the meanwhile, we pick from the similars and hope they’ll have compassion, or brains, or heart, and that they’ll make right decisions. So sad that we, the people, remain so sorely disappointed, time after time.
What kind of political system are we really wearing? Local folk are becoming way too keenly aware of the local answer. No one really elected the B.C. Liberals to slash and burn our society in a style most reminiscent of conquering barbarians. Whatever this new bunch is up to, none of it’s about kind and gentle care of and for the people.
Harshness and cold hardness seem to typify the new math. We do have to admit, however, that our new master of cold hardness has suddenly adopted a new humility about himself. Unfortunately for him, he’s hung out a huge drunk and sloppy personal question mark for all to see.
He’s been forced, by the easily foreseeable and preventable ‘faux pas’, into a new era of at least pretending humaneness. In demonstrated fact, however, his government remains coldly mobilized in an agenda about decimal points only.
Not totally inhumane, however. He’s seen to the affairs of his own. His family will not suffer financially. His public paid pension is well assured. Equally comfortable are his fellow comrades in correction. Absolute job security is assured, for all of them.
Pity the poor hospital care worker, who, far from getting a piece of the nursing salary windfall, is instead receiving governmental rudeness in the form of a pink slip. Not immediately though. First they all get to watch this elected man tear up their legal contracts and dismiss them as mere casualties of the war on deficit.
Pity that our public can’t more easily tear up his own contract, and send him packing without pay. Who’s really overpaid, anyway? Once elected in good faith by well-intentioned voters, who believed what they were told, what recourse now to remove the ‘distruther’.
Is there some measure of hope left to the betrayed masses? Recall may yet teach the lesson not otherwise learned. The people want a say in what is decided. They at least don’t want the opposite, or some completely inhumane aberration, of what they voted for.
Recall is way too slow and cumbersome to create any real panic in the house of power. But if enough of it happens, this bunch might just have to re-think what they thought was their mandate.
We need a little reflection and self-evaluation to decide what our priorities really are. We’ve been tossed back and forth by our governments, with random impunity, for scores of years. We toss out one bunch, only to get another bunch we need to toss out just as badly.
One bunch puts our money in a big pile and burns it. The new bunch promptly installs a giant vacuum machine, sucking money out of every corner of our lives.
Our parks, our last true monument to a people-over-profit philosophy of life, are now gone to the moneychangers. Never again will we have that sigh of appreciation for a great benevolent sharing. We have to pay now, for everything, always.
This is not really good government. Not good democracy, anyway. Democracy, by definition is ‘Of the People, For the People, By the People’. Our present state of government is more a form of ‘Dictatorcracy’, where-in the elected one makes all the decisions, and dissensions be damned. We now have a government ‘Of the Privileged Few, To the People, By the Privileged Few’.
Not since the old days of coalition governments, has their been a real accountability. Present era governments, arrogant and unfettered, have had an almost absolute power.
What we need is the real democracy. We need the people to decide. We all have opinions, about every topic, every day. Individuals need to regain a say in all the everyday decisions affecting their common lives.
The people need more than a window of opportunity every four years to try once again for a responsible and representative government. The people need to communally decide whether to tear up contracts, or not. Communal conscience would not have allowed us to treat all those hard working individuals so callously and carelessly.
Tearing up legal contracts should have been a breach of good faith, and is an insult to all those workers. Collectively, we would not have wanted to do that, and we would not have done it. Our regal bunch even said they wouldn’t do that, and then they did it anyway. Too powerful to care that they lied.
We need the power of decision to be with the people. War should be for all to decide, not just the elite few, protected, and always kept very far from the horrors of their own choices. We must decide together, directly, whether participation in war is good or not.
The people should make the call on paying for parks, and on whether to have toll roads, and on whether to ship raw logs or not.
I am convinced we will not have good government, truly, until the people are re-enfranchised. We don’t really want to pick some dubious politician, from a list of similars, to make our decisions for us. We want to pick the prickly path ourselves. We want a direct say in the actual decisions made.
We know enough, collectively, to make the right choices. And if the people make a bad decision, the people can repair and repeal the offense with the same voting process. The people should be living under their own direction, in a world shaped by the collective will.
The people should vote on every significant issue. The people should make the budget allocation decisions. The people should decide the path, and intensity of, restraint. The people should decide the priorities of our lives. The government should lay out the options. The people should decide for themselves.
The people are smart enough to do all this. They can ‘be the government’. They know enough to have a say, and to bring that say out of the dark catacombs and into the light of every individual’s day.
Technology will now permit us, after centuries of waiting, to once again effectively drop our votes into the jar of decision. We have the technology, but not the political will. The political will, of course, is decided by the elected few, who don’t really want to lose their power. They like a world where everyone is truly equal, except they, who are a little more equal than the others.
I am convinced we are soon going back to real democracy. It is inevitable. Watching the marching millions should demonstrate the will of the people, all over the world, to have their say. I believe it will come.
People will eventually stand up to the tyranny of government by the few, and will force a rebirth of the pure form of democracy. Someday, the people will, once again, directly be the government.
In the meanwhile, we pick from the similars and hope they’ll have compassion, or brains, or heart, and that they’ll make right decisions. So sad that we, the people, remain so sorely disappointed, time after time.
Nurse's Pay - 2001
Nurses and Their Pay
Please tell me sanity will return to our world sometime soon. Nurses in British Columbia are currently demanding a 60% pay raise. What planet are they from? Every other union on earth has been crawling along at 0, 1, or 2% annual increments of increase.
We’ve all survived an extended period of slow economic activity. Sure enough, the first glimmer of perhaps better economic times, and the unions, or some of them at least, go insane.
I cannot fathom the logics of those demanding 60% pay increases. Are these practitioners going to engage in 60% more working activity? Will they be working 1.6 times as hard as they have been working?
They would have us believe that this increase is all to the common good. Nurses are, after all, essential to the success of our health care system.
No one will deny the value of our nurses. But if we pay all existing nurses 1.6 times as much, how will operating budgets, which are squeezed to the point of collapse on all sides by demands for more money, make this work.
Let’s see—we don’t have enough money to fund our health care system properly now. So we’ll add a 60% cost increase on the nurses pay portion of the budget and that will make our health care system more fiscally operational? I can’t quite get the math on this.
Do they want us to reduce the number of nurses, so that we can fit their pay demands within the operating budget? Or do they want for us to take funds from new equipment, or beds, or improvements, in order to make ends meet?
Or do they think government coffers are really bottomless wells from which to draw any amount of remuneration demanded? Methinks they forget where government money comes from.
I would have thought that the real need is in acquiring more nurses to make the loads lighter for those in toil. The demand for mega pay increases doesn’t appear to leave any room for expansion in the number of nurses sharing an increasing load.
Unless, of course, you believe that the government really is a bottomless well of gold coins and that any number of employees can successfully demand any amount of money they want. Magically, the gold will appear and all the existing nurses, and all the new nurses will all enjoy the new mega pay scales. And there will be money left for expansion, and new equipment, and more support staff. What a dream world someone is living in.
I suppose also that one public service union achieving such a gain wouldn’t impact any other demands within the system. All the other unions would just acknowledge the great deeds of the nursing profession and admit that nurses, only, deserve such gigantic increases. More lucid dreaming required.
I find it hard to perceive that the motives of this union rise any higher than a cash grab at an opportune time. The nursing shortage has been widely reported. Nurses are leaving for better pay in other places. Nurses are obviously overworked for these reasons. What better time to demand the big bucks. We’ll have no choice. We’ll have to pay them. Why is it that all this union power always boils down to something that looks like extortion made legal?
If our nurses really wanted to make their lives easier, I would think they might settle for more modest and reasonable increases along with a firm commitment from government to provide more nurses to ease the load.
But is it really an easier working day they’re after, or a bunch of fat and happy bank accounts? Makes you wonder.
Please tell me sanity will return to our world sometime soon. Nurses in British Columbia are currently demanding a 60% pay raise. What planet are they from? Every other union on earth has been crawling along at 0, 1, or 2% annual increments of increase.
We’ve all survived an extended period of slow economic activity. Sure enough, the first glimmer of perhaps better economic times, and the unions, or some of them at least, go insane.
I cannot fathom the logics of those demanding 60% pay increases. Are these practitioners going to engage in 60% more working activity? Will they be working 1.6 times as hard as they have been working?
They would have us believe that this increase is all to the common good. Nurses are, after all, essential to the success of our health care system.
No one will deny the value of our nurses. But if we pay all existing nurses 1.6 times as much, how will operating budgets, which are squeezed to the point of collapse on all sides by demands for more money, make this work.
Let’s see—we don’t have enough money to fund our health care system properly now. So we’ll add a 60% cost increase on the nurses pay portion of the budget and that will make our health care system more fiscally operational? I can’t quite get the math on this.
Do they want us to reduce the number of nurses, so that we can fit their pay demands within the operating budget? Or do they want for us to take funds from new equipment, or beds, or improvements, in order to make ends meet?
Or do they think government coffers are really bottomless wells from which to draw any amount of remuneration demanded? Methinks they forget where government money comes from.
I would have thought that the real need is in acquiring more nurses to make the loads lighter for those in toil. The demand for mega pay increases doesn’t appear to leave any room for expansion in the number of nurses sharing an increasing load.
Unless, of course, you believe that the government really is a bottomless well of gold coins and that any number of employees can successfully demand any amount of money they want. Magically, the gold will appear and all the existing nurses, and all the new nurses will all enjoy the new mega pay scales. And there will be money left for expansion, and new equipment, and more support staff. What a dream world someone is living in.
I suppose also that one public service union achieving such a gain wouldn’t impact any other demands within the system. All the other unions would just acknowledge the great deeds of the nursing profession and admit that nurses, only, deserve such gigantic increases. More lucid dreaming required.
I find it hard to perceive that the motives of this union rise any higher than a cash grab at an opportune time. The nursing shortage has been widely reported. Nurses are leaving for better pay in other places. Nurses are obviously overworked for these reasons. What better time to demand the big bucks. We’ll have no choice. We’ll have to pay them. Why is it that all this union power always boils down to something that looks like extortion made legal?
If our nurses really wanted to make their lives easier, I would think they might settle for more modest and reasonable increases along with a firm commitment from government to provide more nurses to ease the load.
But is it really an easier working day they’re after, or a bunch of fat and happy bank accounts? Makes you wonder.
Introduction
Hi folks...my name is Dave Vogelgesang...I am a third generation Canadian...living in Victoria, B.C.
I've always been a writer...and remember painfully the disappointment, as a child, when a teacher's offered impressions diminished my excitement at my perceived abilities.
Happy to say, I ignored those impressions offered...and have gone on in my life...to enjoy...most intently...the art of composition and the willful manipulation of the English language to my own purpose.
I would like to write flowing romantic adventures...and perhaps will do so in my old age. I have also written a fair volume of rhymes and poetry...mostly inspired by the post teenage angst of my young life...and the 'peace and love' idealisms once manifest in our lands.
I will be creating a separate blog for those idyllic passions.
But my most passionate inspirations are forced upon me by stupidities encountered in our world...I react with outrage to all things stupid...and admit that would more correctly mean 'all things that I consider stupid'...
I reserve the right to decree stupidity according to my individual 'writer's license'...
I will begin with a cronological posting of historical articles written and submitted with reference to the inspiration then current...
I've always been a writer...and remember painfully the disappointment, as a child, when a teacher's offered impressions diminished my excitement at my perceived abilities.
Happy to say, I ignored those impressions offered...and have gone on in my life...to enjoy...most intently...the art of composition and the willful manipulation of the English language to my own purpose.
I would like to write flowing romantic adventures...and perhaps will do so in my old age. I have also written a fair volume of rhymes and poetry...mostly inspired by the post teenage angst of my young life...and the 'peace and love' idealisms once manifest in our lands.
I will be creating a separate blog for those idyllic passions.
But my most passionate inspirations are forced upon me by stupidities encountered in our world...I react with outrage to all things stupid...and admit that would more correctly mean 'all things that I consider stupid'...
I reserve the right to decree stupidity according to my individual 'writer's license'...
I will begin with a cronological posting of historical articles written and submitted with reference to the inspiration then current...
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