Communist Party Of Canada Fallen On Hard Times

What a sad day. The Communist Party of Canada has been reduced to just 19 candidates out of 308 ridings in the 2011 election. By comparison the Marxist-Leninist Party is running almost as many candidates as the Bloc Quebecois. The heady days of top-down authoritarian socialism appear to be over in favour of a more bottoms-up populist approach. The times they are a changing. The Commies are actually one of our oldest active parties, born in 1924, 30 years older than the NDP. It would make perfect logical sense for the Commies, Marxists, and Dippers to merge into a socialist super party. This vote splitting on the far far far left is dragging them all down.

Currency Wars

Do you think that trade with China is fair? I ask because there seems to be the rising probability of a currency war with the Chinese, who make it their policy to devalue their currency to maximize exports. China is the #1 exporter of cheap manufactured goods, but the catch is that they buy almost no manufactured goods from other countries. They have the largest labour force on the planet which they are able to manipulate. It is a capitalist version of communism with almost no regard for human rights. I have met a whole lot of Asian people in my life, and I have a strong respect for them. Most people that I have talked to in Greater Vancouver who have lived in China hate the Chinese government. Otherwise, they would still be living in China. One of my best friends fled from Hong Kong in 1999.

I remember when Prime Minister Stephen Harper boycotted the Chinese Olympics in the summer of 2008.  In the election of the fall of 2008, the Chinese-Canadian vote shifted strongly Conservative. Just look at Richmond BC. I remember when Harper was critical of the Chinese regime the Liberals slammed him, and yet Asian-Canadians strongly agreed with the Prime Minister. You don't have to play nice with the Chinese government to win Chinese votes in Canada. It is like, should I support Robert Mugabe to win the support of Zimbabwean refugees? Not at all, if they liked Mugabe and the state of their country, they never would have left.

Brazil Elects Marxist Guerilla President

On Halloween Brazil elected a former Marxist guerrilla to become their new President. For a country that has been experiencing very rapid economic growth over the past 20 years, I would expect the good times to soon be at an end. I don't know if she has renounced Marxism, but earlier in her life she decided it prudent to become a militant communist. Once a Marxist, always a Marxist, right? If she decides to do to Brazil what Hugo Chavez has been doing to Venezuela, the end result is high unemployment and currency devaluation. Private enterprise gets strangled, and business stops investing in the economy.

And yes, I realize that the outgoing President was a wildly popular leftist who was not allowed by the constitution to run for another term. I suppose the left can claim some credit for the economic success that Brazil has enjoyed recently, but trust me, you can get too much of a "good thing"...

Cuban Communist Utopia: Up In Smoke

Today the government of Cuba announced that they will be cutting 10% of their government work force because "our state cannot and should not continue maintaining companies, productive entities, services and budgeted sectors with bloated payroll losses that hurt the economy". This cannot be a good day for Michael Moore or Hugo Chavez, who have long praised Cuba as a socialist utopia that should be a shinning example of heaven on earth for the rest of the world. Well guess what, communism doesn't work. I wonder how Fidel Castro feels about his brother's move towards free market capitalism? Raul took over from his brother in 2008, so it is unclear if Fidel approves of any of these reforms; which includes issuing more private business licenses, transfering more workers from the public sector to private sector, diminishing the state's roll in the Cuban economy.

“We have to erase forever the notion that Cuba is the only country in the world in which people can live without working” - Raul Castro

Meanwhile you have Hugo Chavez trying to turn Venezuela into Cuba, so this new Cuban revolution can only hurt his mojo. Will these reforms ripple throughout the socialists movements across Latin America, or will Raul Castro be vilified? Regardless, these have to be very somber revelations for communists and socialists everywhere. Michael Moore has to be crying in his Coco Puffs.

If you want to watch an interesting movie on the Cuban revolution, I recommend Lost City with Andy Garcia.

Hugo Chavez Says The Darndest Things

Now that we have a politician running to become leader of Canada who likes to rip lines from Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, perhaps we should pay a little more attention to some of his quotes. I'm talking about Hugo's quotes that we could very well here pop out of Ignatieff's mouth on his summer wheels off the bus tour. What Hugoism will Iggy Pop borrow next? Perhaps:

"Capitalism leads us straight to hell."

"I hereby accuse the North American empire of being the biggest menace to our planet." (last time I checked, Canada was part of North America)

"No part of the human community can live entirely on its own planet"

"Socialism builds and capitalism destroys."

"There is no turning back."

"Families go and begin to disguise their children as witches."

NDP's Great Leap Forward

I see in the newspaper that the NDP would like us to adopt a national food policy where Canadians shift their diets to locally produced foods. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, as it isn't the first time Lucky Jack has borrowed policy from Chairman Mao. I'm waiting for the next announcement that land should be seized from wealthy farmers and redistributed to urban peasants for the greater good of collectivization. Private farming should be deemed counter-revolutionary and a criminal offense.

With the imminent merger of the NDP and Liberals, I gotta say that I look forward to more industrial announcements by the socialists and I encourage them to keep talking. I wonder if Jack had to get Iggy to approve?

The NDP To Renounce Socialism?

According to Warren Kinsella's merger affidavit, the terms of the NDP-Liberal merger demands the NDP renounce socialism and accept Ignatieff as their leader. So now the NDP is going to renounce socialism? Good luck with that guys. There are a number of NDP policy positions that are unpalatable to the mainstream that will have to be dropped in order to campaign on common coalition policy that I sincerely doubt the NDP will ever drop. Their core constituency are labour unions and people who want a bigger handout from government. Most Canadians have jobs and want lower taxes that are only possible with less socialism. There is a fine line between a social safety net and a spider web, and the NDP are on the other side of it.

Will the NDP ever renounce socialism? I sincerely doubt it. I'm sure some of their union members who make good money don't like subsidizing welfare for lazy people, but with so many in their base being the lazy people who want handouts, they risk splitting in two if they drop the socialism. Meanwhile I haven't heard anything from Elizabeth May in the past few days on this merger subject, but she has to be chomping at the bit to absorb the disaffected socialists who would abandon the NDP if they merged with Liberals.

Socialist Fundamentalists

On Friday Evan Soloman decided to dedicate half of his show to the day's burning question; do you think religious fundamentalists have too much influence in setting government policy? Ergo, have the scary religious people usurped the Conservative Party? 75% of Evan's audience thinks so. It is kind of like me asking do you think socialist fundamentalists have too much influence in setting Liberal policy? Therefore if this is what qualifies as professional journalism in Canada, I may as well ask the Tory equivalent.

Bob Rae and Ujjal Dosangh have risen for up the ranks of the Liberal caucus. The former NDP Premiers are now trusted in high profile portfolios, while one of them is considered the sure fire successor to the sitting leader. I think it is valid to ask if the Bolsheviks have usurped the Liberal Party. If Evan wants to do an hour on national television on religious fundamentalists, the least I can do is dedicate 2 paragraphs on a blog post to socialist fundamentalists. It seems only fair. Personally I'd rather live next door to a religious person than a radical atheist.

These poll questions by the way are authored by politics producer Ryan Hicks.

Liberal Fascism

For those out searching for Christmas gifts for politically minded individuals, I strongly recommend the book Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg. The book shines a light on the secret history of the American Left, from Mussolini to the politics of change. It is funny because we just did our Christmas gift exchange here in the "Ice Palace" because I am here now and will not be home for Christmas; my dad listened to an interview with Jonah Goldberg on the Laura Ingraham show and bought a copy of the book for me, and I heard an interview with him on the Dennis Miller show and bought a copy for him! What are the odds? We had a good laugh. This author is that insightful that we both went out and bought a copy of the book for each other. I am now reading Arguing With Idiots and Liberal Fascism simultaneously. I have selected an excerpt from the introductory chapter for your viewing pleasure.

"Bill Maher to the contrary, fascism is not "when corporations become government." Ironically, however, George Carlin's conclusion is right, though not his reasoning. If fascism does come to America, it will indeed take the form of "smiley-face fascism" - nice fascism. In fact, in many respects fascism not only is here but has been here for nearly a century. For what we call liberalism - the refurbished edifice of American Progressivism - is in fact a descendant and manifestation of fascism. This doesn't mean that it is the same thing as Nazism. Nor is it the twin of Italian fascism. But Progressivism was a sister movement of fascism, and today's liberalism is the daughter of Progressivism. One could strain the comparison and say that today's liberalism is the well intentioned niece of European Fascism. She is hardly identical to her uglier relations, but she nonetheless carries an embarrassing family resemblance that few will admit to recognizing.

There is no word in the English language that gets thrown around more freely by people who don't know what it means than "fascism." Indeed, the more someone uses the word "fascist" in everyday conversation, the less likely it is that he knows what he's talking about."

Buy the book.

I Remember the Rape of Nanking

I would like to take a moment to remember the fallen victims of the Japanese invasion and subjugation of the Chinese city of Nanking in December of 1937. After capturing the city, the Japanese sought to pacify hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians by killing them. They were not shipped off secretly to forced labour camps, although I am sure some were. The majority of the victims were shot dead in the streets or on the shore of the Yangtze river. While the Germans took mass genocide to a new level of efficiency, the Japanese did their genocide with swords and bullets. Thousands of women were raped in what can only be described as one of the most horrifying episodes that any major city has ever experienced.

In University I read the book the Rape of Nanking. Reading a book like that is disturbing, but at the same time it does serve to remind you that there are evil people in the world, and that sometimes it is necessary to send our brave soldiers into war to fight them. It is just a shame that Mao usurped power so soon after the end of the war and embarked on several missions to expand Chinese Communist influence into South Asia, Tibet, and Korea.

To Chinese-Canadians who had relatives die in the Rape of Nanking, I remember.

I Remember Red October

I would like to take a moment to remember the victims of Communism. I remember the October Bolshevik revolution of 1917 in Russia. By virtue of the complete incompetence of the Czar and his staff, the first significant opportunity for the disciples of Marx to capture a country was successful. When the Czar administration pathetically ceded the reigns of power to the Communists and the USSR was born, it was a dark day for liberty. That revolution would curse Eastern Europe worst of all, states that were violently subjugated into strict communist membership. The powerful communist state on China's northern frontier undoubtedly benefited Mao's movement with money, weapons, and man power.

How many victims of communism are there throughout the world and throughout time? Ultimate responsibility for that darkness rests at the feet of the Czar and the people who ran his government. As Joey Stalin once said, "a single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic."

I don't hold a grudge against all people with a genealogy from this aristocracy, just the people who write books bragging about the magnificence of their ancestors who worked for the Czar and had to flee during Red October. The incompetence of your ancestors brought the world communist statehood, how in the name of Christ can you justify writing a book about how great your family tree is when they gave us Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong??? Christ, the people of North Korea are still suffering to this day!

For context, read True Patriot Abandonment...

I Remember Dien Bien Phu

I would like to take a moment to remember the fallen from one of the most disastrous military decisions of modern history. After WWII France set out to ambitiously reassert control of its former colonies, among them Vietnam. Their leadership determined that it would be tactically advantageous to disrupt enemy supply lines into French friendly Laos, by landing thousands of French troops into a remote airfield deep in the Vietnamese jungle surrounded by mountains. The objective was to seize the airfield base, and secure it indefinitely. What could possibly go wrong?

The French commanders were not aware that the Vietcong had both artillery and anti-aircraft guns and could drag them through difficult terrain. The French seized the airfield and set up a base and defensive perimeter with approximately 16,000 troops. General Vo Nguyen Giap began his counter offensive almost immediately after the French landed, and re-directed all Vietcong military force at his disposal to engulf the French position. The French dug trenches in the Valley, with the Vietcong bearing down from the mountains.

Once the artillery reached Dien Bien Phu, this combat operation quickly descended into catastrophe. It became impossible to even land a plane on the airfield, let alone engage in an orderly retreat should that order come. By the time it was apparent that the force would be completely overrun, retreat was impossible. Virtually the entire force of 16,000 French were either killed or taken to a Vietnamese POW camp (like the one in Rambo II). Vietnamese prison camps could be considered a fate worse than death. Gitmo is like a tropical paradise compared to Vietnamese prison camps. 11,000 Frenchmen were taken prisoner when the position was overrun. Only 3,000 of those men would survive the next four months.

This tragedy soured French foreign policy for the next 50 years.

To my countrymen who had relatives massacred at Dien Bien Phu, I remember.

A Somber Day For Mike Moore

While Germany is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, today has to be a somber day for communist romantics like Mike Moore. Moore's love story with the Iron Curtain is no secret, how he romanticizes the travails of communism and advocates a return to a simpler time. A time when you could impose communism on the innocent masses and force them to do everything the government tells them to do, and if they did not they'd get shot. When people in Poland had to stand in line for days on the slim hope of maybe possibly acquiring a stale loaf of government issued bread. A time when you could just roll your tanks into Budapest to subdue those pesky revolutions. Mike Moore's true love story is with that Animal Farm known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Mike must have been crying tears of blood into his fruit loops this morning.

Sly Stallone tore down the Berlin Wall

I have been reading my National Post today, and there are a selection of articles about the fall of the Berlin wall. Historically Ronny Reagan gets the most credit for "Mr Gorbachev, tear down that wall", while many historians completely overlook one of the most powerful forces contributing to the collapse of the Iron Curtain; and that is Sylvester Stallone. This theory was first introduced to me by my favourite sports pundit ESPN'S Bill Simmons. Like the "Oracle of ESPN" one of my favourite movies of all time is Rocky 4. I watched as Rocky Balboa single handedly sparked the fire that collapsed the Soviet Union. That speech, "if I can change...and you can change...everybody can change!!!" That inspiring, tear jerking melody by Prophet Stallone personified the first crack in the Berlin Wall. Do you believe for a second that they did not watch Rocky IV at the Kremlin? I bet they had group screenings of it! Within a month of the release of Rocky IV, a panicked Gorbachev appointed the revolutionary Boris Yeltsin to a powerful post in the Politburo, and so the seeds of demise were planted.

"There are cheers now for Rocky Balboa! Suddenly Moscow is pro-Rocky!"

The pressure from that force of nature was too much for the Iron Curtain to bear.

If the cheers for Rocky Balboa were not enough, the death blow to international communism was Rambo III; where Rambo single handedly takes on an entire Soviet combat battalion in Afghanistan. The Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan began literally the exact same month as the theatrical release of Rambo III! Seriously, Rocky 4 leads the big promotion of Boris Yeltsin, and then Rambo III coincides with the exact month of the Soviet withdrawal? Two independent extreme coincidences are rarely a coincidence. It points to evidence of cause and effect.

I want to personally thank Sly for liberating Eastern Europe from the iron grip of communism.

Don't pay to see Moore's "Capitalism Sucks", instead rent An American Carol

When Mike Moore's new Capitalism sucks documentary is released, I strongly recommend all right minded individuals go to their local video store and rent "An American Carol". There are several outstanding moments in the film, some silliness, but this is what people should spend their money to see. If nobody goes to watch Moore's crap, theatres won't release it, investors will stop paying to promote this shit, and the man can just go away! Is the Corus Radio network so desperate for money that they need to sell ads to Mike Moore? I turn off my radio when I hear that man's voice. I'm not going to listen to a 30 second plug of "Capitalism sucks: a hate story". Who is fronting the money to promote this film? Please, lets nobody go see it so that fat bastard can stop appearing on my television.

Karl Marx was wrong. Get that through your thick skull Mike! If Cuba were such a utopian paradise, why do thousands of people risk their lives to swim across miles of shark infested ocean in an inner tube to escape it? The opening scene in American Carol addresses Sicko, which the *bleeping* CBC is paying to play. Who at the CBC made that brilliant decision, and can he get a pink slip?

The Evolution of Michael Moore

The evolution of Michael Moore has been illuminating. From what he once was to what he is now has revealed what was really there all along. I was dragged to Fahrenheit 911 by my left wing University roommate, and I walked out of the theatre pissed off that I had spent money to see that. In that moment I made a promise to myself never to pay money for anything with Michael Moore. I had watched Bowling for Columbine some months earlier, and actually liked that movie. The part where he takes the school kids who were shot back to the Wal-Mart that sold the bullets asking for a refund was clever. I have never seen Roger and Me, but they talked about it extensively in one of those “Exposing Michael Moore” documentaries. He was pissed that General Motors left Flynt Michigan, and he wanted to take them down. And where he gloats about the failure of GM (as if to take credit) being failure of management (which contributed), in reality the biggest drain on GM were the fat contracts that the workers union had extorted in collective bargaining. Remember the unions Michael, are they not supposed to be under your tent?

Fahrenheit 911 was really his peak of influence when his work was getting a lot of run time in the theatres. But he really believed that his film would cost Bush re-election, and it did not. Bush won, and Moore withered into his foxhole. Then he did Sicko which bombed, and now theatres don’t want to play his shit. It is not a corporate conspiracy, people just don’t want to spend their money too see that "America sucks" crap anymore. Then he had his “slacker uprising” that had to be released on the internet, and low and behold the slackers didn’t really care. Then Barak Obama wins the election after the sudden collapse of Wall Street, and Michael shows up on Larry King declaring the end of Capitalism and the dawn of a new era of Marxism. He kind of disappeared for a few months, likely to shoot some “revolutionary” new webumentary on the death of capitalism, and now he is back on TV doing some kind of promotional tour that will likely be followed by a movie release. He’ll try to get it in theatres if any will have him, but we are probably looking at a straight to DVD if he can get a company to distribute them, or another internet release depending on the metrics of slacker uprising.

We now have Michael Moore now running around the country openly promoting a “capitalism is dead” agenda to sell a product which is going to support his argument. The problem for Michael is that the markets are bouncing back and it appears increasingly likely that what we just experienced was markets purging bad investments. The dot com crash was not the end of capitalism; neither will the real estate crash signal the demise of conventional economics. Bottom line is the banks loaned too much money to people who could not pay it back, both mortgages and credit cards, then turned around and leveraged those bad bets into some complicated “asset funds” that were severely overvalued because they were built on top of bad bets.

So Michael, one could easily make the case that the collapse of the banks was as much the product of the rather socialist ideal of putting low income people in nice houses as it was cooperate greed. It was a critical mass of debt that brought down the banks. President Obama has to be careful how much money he spends on some of these ambitious projects, because the bubble can hit critical mass again and potentially collapse the dollar. It is uncertain how the financial world would change if the greenback collapsed on foreign exchange markets.

I have always maintained that a small moderate amount of socialism can benefit a society, a Nash equilibrium if you will. But the extreme forms of it have failed miserably pretty much everywhere they have ever been tried. We can discuss the success or failure of Cuba and Venezuela, but I see them as economic failures in progress. When you fight success and reward failure, your productivity and sustainability suffer. One person’s greed is another person’s ambition. The desire to acquire material goods is what propels us forward. Look at the post WWII era, the golden age of capitalism. Look at how far technology has evolved in such a short period of time, thanks to global competition. The amount of computer power in an IPod would fill several football fields’ worth of vacuum tubes from the 60s. That didn’t come from Marxism. Score one for capitalism. Reaching the moon, capitalism. It is quite a long list.

Let Michael Moore run around and have his fun, but I won’t be paying attention. I know what he is; I disagree with his core beliefs, end of story. He has marginalized himself and I doubt that anyone is paying attention anymore mister Moore.

"Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff"

-Frank Zappa

Where Environmentalism Ends and Marxism Begins...

Once upon a time in its infancy, the modern environmental movement led by Greenpeace engaged in more noble pursuits than activists of today. They sought to end the practice of dumping toxic chemicals in our lakes and oceans, they strived to prevent the extinction of endangered species, slow the rapid destruction of the rainforests, and so on and so forth. These were noble, practical endeavors that made sense on a pragmatic level. But as time progressed, the ranks of the environmental movement became increasingly occupied by zealous socialists. I’m not certain where the tipping point came, but I listened to a recent interview with a former President and founding father of Greenpeace who explained that he withdrew his membership in the organization he helped to create because it had been subjugated by socialists.

I am reluctant to speculate how or why this took place, but I suspect that after the fall of the Soviet Union and the fantastical failures of the policies of Chairman Mao (which climaxed at Tiananmen Square); the dream of creating a classless utopia, heaven on earth, was dramatically diminished. The Marxists had lost their mojo, and needed to evolve in order to survive. Whether the environmental movement was targeted because of overlapping ideologies or the righteousness of protecting the planet, I can’t say for certain. What is certain is that during the 90s the message of the enviro movement began to change its tone to “global warming” then to “climate change” and now to “climate crisis”. A remarkably convenient crisis of cause and effect that is simple to explain, impossible to prove, and challenging to refute. The cause: humans burn fossil fuels. The effect: catastrophic climate Armageddon.

If you had access to the time travelling phone booth from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, it would be fascinating to retrieve Adam Smith (the Scottish grandfather of modern economics) and Karl Marx (the anti Christ) for a live televised debate. One of their most significant points of contention would be on consumption. Marx regarded it as the root of all evil, while Smith recognized it as the root of all progress. To Marx, the desire to consume and acquire material goods is a corrupting influence and the indulgence of consumptive behavior leads to competition and inevitable conflict among the populace. Smith regarded consumption as an almost divine rite that is the driving force behind production. Consumption is responsible for virtually all economic activity and therefore drives employment, growth, innovation, prosperity, and ultimately happiness.

It is unfortunate that the lines between environmentalist and Marxist have been blurred. I don’t want to paint all enviro activists with a broad brush because there are voices in the movement that I respect, such as Bjorn Lumborg; but at least those moderates are pragmatic enough to become skeptical of Al Gore when they find out that the world hasn’t “warmed” since 1998. Gore on the other hand goes “all in” and insists that the crisis is as dire as ever. When the world starts to cycle into a cooling trend and you hear activists turn up the volume on CO2 induced warming, alarm bells should start ringing in your head.

Where the theory of CO2 warming is convenient for the modern Marxist is that it allows them to attack consumption in a much more discrete manner. The desire to consume is a natural human instinct that is programmed into our DNA by virtue of a million years of evolution. Trying to convince people that they should not covet material goods which they clearly desire, or that they should not yearn for that tropical cruise that they would obviously enjoy; is a losing battle. You cannot convince people to reduce consumption at the individual level. It is something that must be forced upon them, and instituting mandatory caps on consumption would be political suicide in a democratic country. Therefore if you are a political entity seeking to inhibit consumption as a matter of public policy in a democracy, your only feasible option is to make it more expensive.

The overwhelming majority of consumption is directly facilitated by energy, be it by electricity or fossil fuels. A significant proportion of electricity is also generated by burning fossil fuels. Manufacturing consumer goods and distributing them to retail outlets is dependent on energy. Increasing the cost of fuel is passed on the consumer in the form of higher retail prices. As goods and services become more expensive people are forced to consume less. Therefore a carbon tax or a strict cap and trade help to accomplish a key tenant of Marxism.

I am all in favour of developing alternatives to fossil fuels, which as a finite resource will inevitably happen eventually. The market will be able to accomplish this transition without government intervention. As the supply of fossil fuels decreases and price increases, a substitute becomes more profitable and thus the private sector will invest more in research and development. The big question is how quickly this adjustment will become necessary. There seems to be conflicting estimates of the size of the remaining supply. Regardless of the long term sustainability of oil based propulsion and production it is clear that the political left is shifting demand to electricity without significantly increasing our capacity to produce it. Like lemmings marching towards a cliff, they are trying to steer us in a specific direction without providing us adequate means to get there.

How many nuclear power plants are being built in North America right now? When you do the math, nuclear power is the best means of producing electricity given the current level of technology. Though I suppose even uranium is a finite resource. It will be interesting to watch how the environmental Marxists adapt their platforms if and when we shift our energy consumption to an emmissionless renewable means. That will force them to shift their war on consumption to a new front. Granted this transition is unlikely to happen in my lifetime; or perhaps their proposal to replace fossil fuels with wind turbines and solar panels is a feigned offensive because they know that you can never build enough wind farms to produce as much energy as oil and coal do today. They could be sending us on a fool’s errand. Shifting demand while leaving supply stagnant will have the same price effect as reducing supply.

Before Michael Moore comes at me proclaiming that the recent market downturn is proof that capitalism doesn’t work and that Adam Smith was wrong, I say find me the chapter in The Wealth of Nations where Smith advocates the necessity of subprime mortgages! The recent downturn in the market is a result of the financial sector over-extending credit to too many people and businesses that would never be able to pay them back. The market will eventually correct itself. Banks will learn to be more prudent with their loans and credit cards. The notion that we need to regress into Marxism because banks made bad loans is absurd. Be advised that when you hear an activist railing on the evils of consumption, you are likely listening to a Marxist whether they admit it or not. Personally I believe that socialism is best in small doses. There exists a Nash Equilibrium where a modest safety net contributes to the greater good of society. But if you swing the redistribution of wealth too far to the left, that net transforms into a magnet and guides us towards economic catastrophe by means of moral hazard. That’s why I am so passionate in my opposition to the NDP. God forbid they ever get even a hand on the steering wheel…

“Communism doesn’t work because people like to own stuff”

-Frank Zappa

Anit Poverty Committee

I feel as though I should clarify my position on what I described as the “affordable housing lobby” in my previous Blog post. First, there is a distinct difference between the meaning of affordable housing in Canada and in the United States. In the US, the chief proponent of affordable housing is the Democratic Party, and the vehicle by which they endeavor to make housing affordable is through the federally subsidized mortgage providers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

In Canada, affordable housing is more of a provincial issue than a federal issue, and the organizations that are lobbying for it are not asking for cheap mortgages to buy homes at market prices; but rather they are demanding that the government build them houses and give them away either for free or for cheap. There is no official lobby group whose sole purpose is affordable housing (at least that I could find with a simple Google search). In British Columbia, the two loudest organizations are the Anti Poverty Committee and the Downtown Eastside Residents Association (commonly referred to as the APC and DERA). These are the clowns who trash office buildings and engage in combative civil disobedience with the Vancouver Police. As the APC proudly lists on its website “The Anti-Poverty Committee is an organization of poor and working people, who fight for poor people, their rights and an end to poverty by any means necessary” with an emphasis on “any means necessary”.

In terms of the political parties in Canada who support the agenda of the APC and DERA, or at least the outcome of social housing without the means of civil disobedience, not even the Liberal Party of Canada is on board. They are at least fiscally responsible enough to realize that legislating the banking industry to provide absurd mortgages to people who can’t afford them is folly. Granted, Stephan Dion was a vocal supporter of “Social Justice”, which is the European code term for Marxism. The new Leader of the Liberals does not have any policy at all so it is impossible to say what he supports or does not support. I visited their website, and they offer no policy what so ever, not even the lofty unattainable platitudes of the NDP. The NDP is the only federal party stupid enough to support the goals of the APC, as “affordable housing” is prominently displayed in their policy subsection.

In 2007 after invading and trashing the office of a VANOC executive, the head of the APC David Cunningham was interviewed on a local radio talk show, and I tip my hat to Pratt and Taylor. At first the clown complains that he can only get a job with 2 shifts a week for DERA, and when pressed on the issue, he admits that he is happy working his 2 shifts per week and doesn’t want a better job. Aside from being lazy, it is safe to assume that a major reason that this individual does not want a fulltime job is because at that point he would no longer qualify for subsidized housing and welfare. I strongly recommend listening to the interview, for a clear insight into the mind of the head of the Anti Poverty Committee in British Columbia, the most vocal proponent of “affordable housing”.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4RyjtdNzII&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qs3xDDs6Hek

Affordable Housing

One of the big issues for the NDP in British Columbia, and the left wing of the political spectrum everywhere is the availability of "affordable housing" for low income people. It was the whole purpose behind the creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to use government subsidies to put people in houses that they could not otherwise afford, and the sub prime housing bubble was born. As the banks, pressured by government to grant these mortgages in the United States, greatly increased the amount of debt it was issuing relative to the capital it held in reserves then the value of real estate sky rocketed as more people were in the market to buy houses. To make matters worse, investment bankers began to buy up these mortgages at companies like Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers; then bundle them into extremely complicated equities for sale on the open market. The promise was that at some point in the future, they would begin to pay higher returns. I suppose nobody thought to mention that these high returns were supposed to come from low income people who would see a sudden spike in their mortgage payments.

I do not believe that the theory of a sub prime mortgage was based in evil. I hear it all the time with the "affordable housing lobby" in Vancouver that all you need for a successful career is to live in a house; that once they own a home, they will transition from a low income job to a high income job. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and that the egg came before chicken. As it turns out, living in a house versus living in an apartment has no appreciable affect on income, and that it only serves to increase debt burden leading to a bursting bubble. The idea of a sub prime mortgage was to be the vehicle to deliver houses to low income people. Give them a low interest rate, no money down loan to start, and once they had turned that home ownership into a successful new career they would then be able to make up the difference. Had Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and other mortgage providers been legislated to offer a fixed rate at market value to people of low income, the loan would have been unaffordable from the beginning.

Which political persuasion in the United States forced this absurd policy on the free market? Liberals. Conservatives should have done more to prevent the bubble from getting so big while they had control of the legislature and the Oval Office from 2000 – 2006, but they still were not the ones who created the problem. So now, the Democrats have a monopoly on the legislative and executive branches of government, and they are saying that they need more intervention and oversight. Meanwhile they were the very people calling the shots at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but that oversight did not stop those two mortgage providers from collapsing. Infact, the policy of the Democratic Party was what was responsible for the collapse! But ask Jon Stewart who is to blame for this crisis, and he blames CNBC for not reporting on the problem, not the Democratic Party who CREATED the problem.

As the band Nine Inch Nails once sung in a song, “He sewed his eyes shut, because he is afraid to see”

War and Democracy

I recently had a political conversation with a colleague who subscribes to the peacenik argument that corporations create wars, and that if we all just put down the guns and hold hands around a camp fire singing koombaya, the world will be a better place. It was a friendly debate, and his argument did hint of Karl Marx and the theory that if you eliminate class you eliminate war because all war is bred from class struggle. The poor/oppressed are justified in terrorism or armed insurgency because they are revolting against the evil deeds of those who have acquired wealth. To a limit, I agree that war is a byproduct of the desire of man to acquire things. Be it land, food, wealth, whatever.

Having said that, do I believe that socialism is the magic wand that can eliminate violence in the world? Not for a minute. I believe that the need in man to acquire resources and power is a basic animal instinct that you can never eliminate by drawing up a clever idea on a chalk board. We are animals. Look at the entire history of Homo Sapiens, and civilization is just the little blip at the end of the timeline. What one thing is constant in the recorded history of what we call civilization? War as a means of acquiring resources. I'm not saying that is a good thing, I'm simply pointing out that Halliburton did not convince Alexander the Great to conquer Persia.

I want to live in a world without war. While I may concede that under certain circumstances war is the best course of action, that doesn't mean that I jerk off watching bombs exploding and people dying on television. What I believe is that the megalomania, kill anyone and everyone to accomplish preconceived goals is advantageous from an evolutionary perspective in many regions throughout the world. In the Congo, Sudan, Myanmar, Somalia, the Middle East, being fucking crazy and ruthless is more likely to attain regional power than being a philanthropic pacifist. Have all the ideals you want in Rwanda, but it was the faction that had the best weapons who attained power.

We endeavor to rise above that in the "civilized world", but how do we deal with the people who revert relentlessly to their animal instincts and engage in the least civilized behaviors? Sanctions? Those tend to hurt the most the people they are intended to help. Get a United Nations consensus? Well modern history has proven that the League of Nations can rarely agree on what to do, and when they do it is more likely to fail than succeed. Remember those elections they held recently in the Congo at a cost of several billion dollars? Yeah, how did that work out?

In the Western Democratic model, we have something which is reasonably functional. There are flaws in the financial system and society in general, as we struggle to suppress the morally compromised gene. I suppose when you break it down to basic human instinct in a Game Theory matrix, it requires less effort with a greater reward to be a Bernie Madoff, and steal from hard working people than it is to do the leg work and succeed in such a way that does not take advantage of other people. Like Warlords in the third world, it is easier to raid the village next door and steal everything they have and rape their women than it is to work the land, raise crops, run businesses, and try to get laid with modern chivalry.

In our civilized society, the overwhelming majority of people are deterred from scrupulous business practices because even the small probability of incarceration prevents us from breaking the law to attain wealth. The best we can do is set up checks and balances to catch the criminals, as we can't completely eliminate crime. The notion that socialism will eliminate crime is a dream, as the act of punishing success and rewarding failure shrinks the size of the pie of which we are all competing for pieces. In the uncivilized world, there does not exist the consequences to reduce criminal behavior, and yet we endeavor to live in a world where evil does not exist and we all abide by a basic level of humanity. What NATO did in Bosnia perhaps provides us with a construct for how to deal with insane tyrants.

Many of us can likely agree that political stability is a precondition to economic prosperity. Such that if you want to eliminate ethnic cleansing in Darfur, is the solution to slap them on the wrist and impose sanctions? Or is the solution to use military force to replace the government? There is always a downside to using military force to impose Democracy, but what other means exist to force a corrupt, arguably evil regime to change their ways? Say what you will about Republicans and what they did in Iraq, it got to a point where the hope and change candidate won the next election, and now the new Obama regime is in power. If a regime in say Myanmar, the Sudan, the Congo, Somalia, or a number of others attained power by brute force, can anything other than brute force either set them straight or replace them from power? Or would we rather not engage in conflict and just allow those millions of innocent civilians to suffer under maniacal rule?

It is a slippery slope to be sure, and at this moment in time nation building is very unpopular. Though, Iraq recently had peaceful and successful elections, which the media seems content to ignore. Will that government be functional in the long term? Only time will tell. What I do know is that we are programmed with animal instincts, and the least civilized nations personify that. I see similarities to chimpanzees on the discovery channel. You have two "tribes" of chimps adjacent to one another. Every so often, a group of male chimps muster a raiding force and invade their neighboring territory. They set out to raid whatever food their neighbor has, kill the babies, rape the females, illustrating the same animal behavior of our human brethren in the Congo.

As I see it, one of the greatest advances we made in the Western world is women's rights. It has added nurture to our nature, and has thus reduced our predisposition to warfare. How can we aid the advancement of feminism in Africa, in the Middle East, and in other countries where alpha male behavior inhibits their prosperity and peacefulness? I say kick the shit out of them, but please, if you have a better idea, I'm all ears! Regardless of the Third World, if we eliminate nuclear weapons, disband armies in the West in an attempt to make the world a more peaceful place; that simply reduces the consequences of the next Adolf Hitler from acquiring the resources of his neighbors by force if he decides to do so. To me that is like saying that eliminating the RCMP would reduce crime in Canada. If we did so, I believe the opposite would happen.