American Dream

I used to see you on every T.V.
Your smiling face looked back at me.
I used to see you on every T.V.
Your smiling face looked back at me.

Then they caught you with the girl next door,
People’s money piled on the floor,
Accusations that you try to deny,
Revelations and rumors begin to fly.

Now you think about reaching out
Maybe get some help from above.
Now you think about reaching out
Maybe get some help from above.

Reporters crowd around your house.
Going through your garbage like a pack of hounds,
Speculating what they may find out,
It don’t matter now, you’re all washed up.

You wake up in the middle of the night.
Your sheets are wet and your face is white,
You tried to make a good thing last,
How could something so good, go bad, so fast?

American dream, American dream
American dream, American dream.
Don’t know when things went wrong,
Might have been when you were young and strong.
Don’t know when things went wrong,
Might have been when you were young and strong.

Reporters crowd around your house.
Going through your garbage like a pack of hounds,
Speculating what they may find out,
It don’t matter now, you’re all washed up.

Don’t know when things went wrong,
Might have been when you were young and strong.
American dream, American dream.

Don’t know when things went wrong,
Might have been when you were young and strong.
American dream, American dream.

Neil Young

A Vote for Canada

I agree with any politician that says Canadians deserves better because we desperately do.

The manner and deportment of Mr. Harper and his government has been undeniably child-like, arrogant and at times simply illegal, yet too many Canadians seem willing to give Mr. Harper and his government a free pass on character and integrity for the mistaken belief that these behaviours can be overlooked during the trying economic times and while our economy is apparently still too fragile for a responsible, accountable and trustworthy government.

I ask you all, what would you do if your children were to act like Mr. Harper and his government have acted in the past few years? Well? You can keep right on deluding yourselves that a tiny bit of mythic good outweighs the enormous bad or you can face up to the fact that Mr. Harper and his party simple do not care beyond votes about Canadian families or their futures.

So much of what Mr. Harper claims in his reality is simply not true and he uses verbal slight of hand and misdirection to continue to put forward his false claims of progress and good while fear mongering to push rational discussion aside as unnecessary in his “troubled” economic times. He makes dangerously untrue statements about the legality of coalition governments while exploiting them to remain in power. He himself called for a coalition government when his party sat in opposition but of course Mr. Harper would have you believe he was trying to unite the right and save his precious Canada. Again, more of Harper’s verbal slight of hand.

Mr. Harper’s long train wreck of pork barrel spending simple boggles the mind when you watch the Conservatives current attacks ads that use Iggy’s G.S.T. statements from four year past to suggest that the Liberals are all about raising taxes while his own government bribed the Premiers of Ontario and British Columbia to implement his H.S.T. that resulted in a Harper supported tax increase for those of you who are already jumping up and down to blame your respective provincial governments. More Tory slight of hand.

Every Canadian recognizes the need to support and fund our treasured quality of life. Much of that support comes in the form of taxes and while it is true that some taxes will go up, they should. I am of course referring to the lottery-sized, tax relief Canadian corporations have enjoyed and would continue to enjoy in ever increasing amounts should Mr. Harper ever gain control over our Parliament. It’s time for Canada’s most profitable corporations to share the tax burden that every single Canadian continues to shoulder regardless of their economic status while the corporations spread billion$ in profits around to their shareholders while having unmitigated gall to claim they’re creating jobs with their new found Tory tax windfall. More of Stephen Harper’s verbal slight of hand.

The Conservative tax policy is a virtual mirror of the disastrous tax policies that have all but crippled the United States of America and threaten to plunge it and many other countries with similar unsustainable policies into unimaginably deep cuts in every single aspect of government and social services that do not involve corporate interests. The sad truth is that we have become an incredibly selfish and petty people, more concerned about large screen TVs, new vehicles every three years, smart phones and our daily doses on Timmy’s rather than the failing state of our social safety net or the disastrous future we’re imposing on our children because of our selfish and irresponsible lifestyles.

The plain and simply truth is that Conservative governments have historically and habitually saddled generations of Canadians with huge deficits, followed by years of slow and painful recovery. Unfortunately for most Canadians this endless cycle of Tory deficits followed by slow and painful recovery has taken it’s toll and with the ever-increasing and more massive deficits combined with the shrinking take-home pay of Canadians, our ability as a nation to recovery becomes infinitely more difficult with every cycle of boom and bust. Nothing! Absolutely nothing has changed in the Conservative’s one-off policies or recent budget to address the massive structural deficits that they have created. If anything, the Tory’s continued practice of hit and miss policy decisions coupled with the continuation of corporate socialism make deep program cuts all but inevitable and add substantially more misery to a slow and painful recovery they fail to acknowledge even exists.

Make no mistake about it, Mr. Harper has no desire to increase the federal governments support for health care, education or anything for that matter that resembles the kind of corporate socialism he and virtually all right-wing governments around the world so boisterously defend as necessary in order to keep our fragile economies a float. What Mr. Harper fails to tell Canadians is that without the kind of responsible regulations and government oversight of previous Liberal governments he claims shackle the hounds of prosperity, Canada would be in very similar and equally desperate situation as the United States of America find themselves in today.

I can only hope with all my heart that Canadians of all political stripes see and understand the profound failure of Mr. Harper and his government to govern with the integrity, transparency and honesty that he so passionately railed about during his previous election campaigns. For the future of our country, our sovereignty and our children I urge you all think long and hard about the consequences of a Conservative majority government lead by Stephen Harper.

Crisis? What Crisis?

Socialism

The next time you here someone proclaiming the evils of socialism please share the above quote
to remind where they received the ability to achieve “their” wealth or opportunities and
please share this amazing essay written by Albert Einstein in May 1947.

Where Free Unions and Collective Bargaining is Forbidden Freedom is Lost.

 

So I guess free union and collective bargaining are ok to lift workers and their families out from under oppressive regimes and poverty. But once they are no longer “poor” unions and collective bargaining are not ok to maintain that standard of living? (: Fuck you Gov. Walker!

Canada’s Broadcasters Cry Radio Wolf! Again.

Funny how Canada’s Broadcasters have launched a public “information” campaign that makes a number of astoundingly false claims about Canada’a proposed copyright bill C-32 that is currently making it’s way through the legislative process.

Big fat lies:

• Local Radio at risk without Bill C-32
  – Remember CTV’s Save Local TV campaign? Same billshit, only thicker
• Claims millions of dollars will leave Canada robbing Canadian artists of their fair share
  – Since when did Canadian broadcasters give a shit about Canadian artists. They’ve sent millions lobbying the government for even more ways to screw Canadian artists out of royalties. In 2009 they claimed to have paid Canadian music artists $51 millions dollars on $1.5 BILLION in revenue!
  
• Canadian Broadcasters generously shared only 3.4% of their revenue with artists that contributor virtually 100% to their programming!
• UPDATE:  The Canadian Broadcasters are actually supporting one aspect of C-32 – the elimination of the Broadcast Mechanical Royalty which has been a source of income for Canadian Artists for a decade. The broadcasters FALSE claims that the money goes into the pockets of “Big Recording companies outside of Canada” since up until late 09 there was no such tariff being paid to Master owners. This has been a steady stream of income to artists on Indie and major labels alike.

Check this slice of utter bullshit from the CBA’s website. The graph below is trying to compare the cost of music and “social growth” – whatever the hell that is – to declining radio revenue. I think the decline radio revenue is linked more to shitty programming and the rise of the Internet. To some how try and link radio’s decline to bad copyright laws is pure and simple hokum! And even despite the decline, Canadian radio broadcasters enjoyed revenues over $1.5 BILLION in 2009! Pretty tough slogging eh!

Local radio is in it’s death throws

Anyone who listens to “local” radio which is now mostly owned and by Canadians largest broadcasters or cable companies knows just how desperate they’ve become. Like Canadian television their programming is stuffed to over following with nauseating self promotions and incredibly bad local advertising. Local operations in most markets have become regionalized with only skeleton crews remaining in most markets. But hey, according to the CBA local communities would shrivel and die without local radio!

Canada needs balanced and fair copyright laws that DO NOT allow for vendors to lock down the products we PURCHASE with DRM (Digital Rights Management) locks that Bill C-32 will make ilegal for you to unlock, despite having purchased the product.

I strongly urge every interested Canadian to visit Dr. Michael Geist’s website. Here’s his brief bio from his blog:

Dr. Michael Geist is a law professor at the University of Ottawa where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law. He has obtained a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) degree from Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, Master of Laws (LL.M.) degrees from Cambridge University in the UK and Columbia Law School in New York, and a Doctorate in Law (J.S.D.) from Columbia Law School. Dr. Geist has written numerous academic articles and government reports on the Internet and law and was a member of Canada’s National Task Force on Spam. He is an internationally syndicated columnist on technology law issues with his regular column appearing in the Toronto Star and the Ottawa Citizen. Dr. Geist is the editor of In the Public Interest: The Future of Canadian Copyright Law, published in 2005 by Irwin Law, the editor of several monthly technology law publications, and the author of a popular blog on Internet and intellectual property law issues. Dr. Geist serves on the Privacy Commissioner of Canada’s Expert Advisory Board, on the Canadian Digital Information Strategy’s Review Panel, and on the Information Program Sub-Board of the Open Society Institute. He has received numerous awards for his work including the Les Fowlie Award for Intellectual Freedom from the Ontario Library Association in 2009, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer Award in 2008, Canarie’s IWAY Public Leadership Award for his contribution to the development of the Internet in Canada and he was named one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 in 2003.

First They Came…

First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

– Pastor Martin Niemoller

This famous statement attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group.

Obama Continues to Support Tyranny with Lies and U.S. Munitions

“This isn’t a choice between the government and the people of Egypt,” Gibbs said. “This is not about taking sides.” – White House spokesman Robert Gibbs

The Great American Tapeworm Economy

Catherine Austin Fitts explains how the financial terrorists have deliberately imploded the US economy and transferred gargantuan amounts of wealth offshore.

She also warns about the coming global take over of food supplies and creation of a global currency.

Oh and by the way, she was the Commissioner at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development under George H. W. Bush!

 

US Set To Unleash Final Weapons of Economic Mass Distruction.

As Toronto Star National Affairs Columnist, Thomas Walkom outlines in his article on November 13, 2010 the United States government has failed to solve it’s massive financial problems and is about to throw their final desperate financial hail Mary in hopes of avoid the seemingly inevitable economic collapse that looms for it’s citizens.

Here’s a really brief recap of his comments:

1. Global trade imbalance: China makes and exports too much  and the US makes too little and imports too much.
2. Unmanageable US debt: US losing the ability to borrow from the global markets to fund two long wars and massive taxes cuts.
3. Political paralysis in the US virtually assures no real solutions are on the political horizon.
4. Currency war: With all options exhausted the US will begin printing money and flooding Capital markets with devalued US dollars – so-called quantitative easing. But countries that historically supported the US are running away from the US dollar faster than the Fed can print them.