Sunday, March 04, 2012

Mysterious Stuff, or Why Does Anyone Believe These Things?

There are days, many days,  when I can't understand Americans. There are also days when I can't understand my fellow Canadians.
Because Super Tuesday is very close, let me first talk about the American mysteries.  To date, there are  only four GOP candidates for the presidency of the U.S.A. who may have a shot at winning.  Why would a person with any sense of how the real world operates want to vote for any of them? 

If any one of the four is chosen to run or, worse yet, if any one of them actually becomes the president, the average American will suffer.  Corporations will gain even more power than the overwhelming amount they have now. The rich will inevitably grow fatter and the poor, well they can just shuffle off into further obscurity and eventually the type of poverty the third world knows well.  The poor and uninsured needn't look for  pregnancy contraception, or for choice afterward and that is only the beginning. They have been told over and over again that all government roles are bad and  low, low, lower, lowest taxes and smaller government (hah!)  will benefit everyone. 

Why do they believe the lie that all taxes are evil? And, where do they think the money to support  services provided by the government will come from? 
Why are so many people persuaded that the government should get out of the business of providing any social programs? 

Americans are generous, but charities can't be expected to deal with every social problem. Will there be a return to the Victorian concept of work houses?
Why do Americans, and Canadians too, believe that anyone can advise them on what the stock market will do? No one knows, let me repeat that, no one knows. Most trading is done by advanced computer programs. Numbers are god in that game.

The Canadian federal government is currently CRAP   (Conservative Reform Alliance Party).
And because they are c r a p, they are bringing in legislation that has already proved to be a) useless, or b) harmful, or c) both.  A couple of examples: super prisons, mandatory sentences. 

Why did even a minority of Canadians believe electing Harper would be a good idea?

Why do some Canadians believe that further belt tightening will somehow stimulate the economy and that we will all benefit from the trickle down effect of lower corporate taxes? 

That has been proven to be wicked nonsense.

Maybe we have fallen down the tunnel into wonderland.

Till next time.



1 comment:

Falcata Times said...

Hey Diane,
The major problem is that all governments don't have the foggiest as to what they're doing at the minute. IN the UK we've got a party alliance (Conservatives and Liberal Democrats) which ironically when you put the letters from how they appear is (Con Dem) which I think is fairly appropriate.

We've had major cuts to "help us in our national debt." This serves no one but the rich. The poor get poorer, the rich get richer. (Funny that our country is run by a millionaire isn't it.)

In addition to this, a lot of the cuts were made to avoid hitting the trillion pound debt limit but whats happened, yep you guessed it we've lost out to go further in debt. Jobs get fewer, the people on benefits are being treated worse than criminals. (They're now having to do jobs for thier benefit money for the same hours as someone is employed for less money.)

I fully expect the UK government to introduce the "unemployed chain gang" which in essence will mean that they do the jobs no one wants for neglible money which in turn will end up creating a void that the government fills. IE they do the gardening, litter pick up, perhaps work on emptying the bins etc, and then what. They decide that they can utilise this work force to save money on services and jobs and then put more people out of work as they can get cheaper labour.

Like you said I expect the workhouse to be back at some point and in addition to this we're giving money away to other countries to show our generosity. My own opinion? Charity begins at home. Sort us out before we give the money away. But no, that feels like too much common sense. I really worry about how things are going.