Black Market, Taxes, Politics, Elections

Our government has grown like a cancer.  There is an absolute need for bureaucrats just as there is an need for doctors, nurses, teachers, farmers, ranchers, miners and all manner of trades.  There is a need for lawyers as well.  Unfortunately the ‘administration class’ in the present burocracies has multiplied with no evidence that layer and layer of administration has in any way improved performance.
This is the fundamental flaw in socialistic/communistic governments.  The ancient feudal system involved a war lord getting in power and by brute force maintaining a relative slave class, serfs, ruled by him and his cronies.
Mr. Harper has made powerful enemies by trying to reduce the upper levels of this administrative class. He has attempted to maintain the front lines yet has been demanding evidence that layers and layers of bureaucratic cronyism are necessary.
Prior to the Conservative capitalist leaning government we were faced with years of increasing taxation and increasing layers of administration in government.  We had regulators regulating regulators.  Under Chretien and Mulroney we had the massive advertising scam with every aspect of government getting glossy photos and booklets that spawned more and more paper.  Recently we’ve had the internet with the necessary map upon map to navigate through the layers and layers of government administration.
“Keep it simple” is not a slogan developed in government.  The legal profession are masters at obfuscation.  The more words the more money the more confusion the more need for more judges and more court rooms.
On a farm I plant x amount of wheat and sell it and because of demand I plant more and sell more to a point where the ‘market’ is ‘saturated’.
There is ‘no saturation’ point in the ‘service’ market.
I worked on a Indian reserve where the nurses hired to serve a thousand individuals were expected by the Aboriginal “Sultan" Chief of the tribe to provide daily massages. Beautiful young women were providing him this service once sometimes twice a day because he ‘liked’ it.  I couldn’t get the nurses to provide respiratory care to child if it conflicted with the chiefs ’need’ for a soothing massage that day.  The division between need and want has never before been so obscure.
There has always been taxation.  But taxation was once related to providing roads and buildings and water and sewage disposal.  There was a collective agreement of the needs for the community at large.
The beauty of architecture and the grand churches of medieval time was that architecture was the ‘art of the people’ . Everyone enjoyed it and the pyramids, castles or cathedrals were of benefit to all. Taxation served public works and it served to maintain armies that provided defence.
Now we have an endless ‘imposed’ legal system with laws upon laws governing and controlling every aspect of life.  It’s Confuscean.
Maybe everyone would benefit from a massage.  But Mr. Harper and the Conservative government showed that taxpayer money going to the First Nations was bottlenecked at the level of so many chiefs who had palatial homes, off shore accounts and took millions of dollar salaries while the lowest people, the sick and old and marginal in the reserve communities went without running water and heat.  This was directly a consequence of poor monetary management of resources. Yet when the ‘transparency’ laws showed the tremendous nepotism through the north and in the Indian bands, the criticism of the government became focused where it truly belonged.  Mr. Harper and the Conservatives had dared to do what no one else before for fear of political fallout. He shone a very bright light on the Jenny Kwans and the Mike Duffies of the Aboriginal people showing who was stealing money and where the slush funds were.
He made powerful enemies.
The executive of the CBC and his cronies make hundreds of thousands of dollars, more than doctors and more than parliamentarians. These leftist ‘marxist flag carrying’ hypocrites have long given up on journalism and used their office not for the benefit of truth and the people but solely for their own protection. Not a News item for months has presented a sound piece of journalism when it comes to the upcoming election. Yet CBC can produce the best of radio with Tapestry and White coats Black art and other world renowned programming.  The News is worse than the worst of Pravda. It is pure disquised peckish retaliation against the gpvernment for questioning the administrations high salary and endless perks.
Mr. Harper and the Conservatives have made powerful enemies.  Majority governments always do.
He has stood firmly behind American trade policy.  We have a fighter plane deal with the US and countless NATO countries. The United States is our principal trade partner accounting for 80% of our exports.  They take natural resources, meat, farming products and manufacturing. Our greatest musicians are marketed by their powerful industry. Our actors rise to world fame with their industry. We make movies with them here and there.
I remember when we had a childish government that essentialyl told our biggest contributor to piss off and tried to make a sweet deal with France.  Yet France accounted for only a few percentage points of trade.  And their leader came to Canada and screamed “Vive le Quebec Libre! Meanwhile the present boy Troudeau’s father had declared martial law and brought tanks into the city of Montreal pointing artillery at all the people of Canada because one terrorist had kidnapped a bureaucrat.  Today Mr. Harper and the Conservatives are criticized by the pot smoking Liberals for ‘security’ concerns despite the fact that it was the son of a Tunisian Jihadist who shot the Engineering women en mass and recently a terrorist actually shot up people in our parliamentary buildings.
Meanwhile terrorism is on the rise around the world and is occurring in the very nations with the greatest gun restriction laws.  And when the son of the Tunisian jihadist shot up the Engineering women we never heard about his racism and moslem origins but instead the Liberals turned their attention on ‘disarming’ women and outlawing guns as if ‘guns’ were the problem.  All the while all the nations with the least guns in citizens hands have rising problems with terrorists.  Criminals are always armed and they are today better armed than our RCMP who were shot en mass by one terrorist in the maritimes.
Mrs. Campbell as Conservative PM brought in the toughest gun sales and licensing law. The Liberals at a promise of a million dollars instead spent 2 billion dollars creating a massive bureaucracy for Liberal cronies to essential spy on anyone who had seen a psychiatrist. What the general population was not told was that ex girlfriends and ex boyfriends and divorcees and psychiatrists were being canvassed by droves of police like bureaucrats treating anyone who owned a gun or wanted to buy a gun as a criminal and an insane one at that. All of this travesty of justice was perpetuated to protect people from ‘suicide’ whereas I as a psychiatrist knew that countries without guns had equal suicide stats to countries with guns. Worse I’d worked in countries where people jumped out of coconut trees to kill themselves.  These lies upon lies were perpetrated because people like the Liberal Mr. Ignatieff had never known a westerner or lived in the north or in rural regions to know that everyone owns a gun ,usually an old shot gun, or 22 simply because of animal pests.  The Liberals with their history of alcohol association and now their pot for votes have always appealed to the uptown city crowd and well heeled elite not the rural and northern parts of the country where the NDP and Conservatives are better represented.  The gun registry was just targeted taxation.
The taxation was the issue. Taxation gets jobs for party friends. It’s the horror of the senate at it’s worst but it’s seen in the courts upon courts and law school turning out masses of lawyers far beyond any societies need. In a civilized world they would be ‘philosophers’ and teach freely ‘enlightened thoughts’ but as lawyers they are another layer of social control. There’s the military that defends our borders and the police that maintain law and order within the borders. The courts no longer serve but have been wholly coopted as purely an instrument of taxation.
The pot legalization issue isn’t about health care but instead it’s purely about taxation, short term gain and long term loss. Taxation on cigarettes and alcohol has never recouped more than 10% of the cost to society that they have caused.  Yes, we will get tax money from marijuana sales. Whoopee. But the cost in accidents, health care, motivation, and loss of youth will cost 90% in long term loss.  The simple law of drugs of abuse, established in elegant research a quarter century ago at Harvard and always confirmed is that the more available, the more abuse.  There’s a saturation point.  10% of the population consume 80% of the alcohol.  10 % of people roughly have major problems with drugs or alcohol. The same holds true with gambling.
Gambling is a major form of government revenue today.  Canada is a casino, a booze hall and soon will be a drug haven.  Already we have ‘drug pubs’ paid for by tax dollars at a million a year. The Hells Angels sell junkies heroin and occasionally they shoot up in the classy facility with nurse waitresses.  It’s better than what Molsen’s provides their customers, only we pay for it.
Now all this leads to the Black Market.  Years ago McGill University did a study that showed that the higher the taxes the more Black Market. It didn’t surprise me. I’d read the history of Scottish Culloden.  I knew that the more the English demanded when they were rapacious war lords and killing my Scottish and Irish forebears, my greats took to hiding their potatoes.  The English didn’t care if the Scottish and Irish starved in the winter.  There will be no Truth and Reconciliation Commission for us.  The Maga Carta was only for the nobles.  It took the French and the Americans to free the word ‘equality’ from within the ranks only of those who were allowed to bear arms.  The peasant classes throughout medieval times could not.  Massacres occur en mass by the government when the citizens are disarmed.  Russia killed 60 million in a few winters.  China has killed a hundred million in recent past.  The Pol Pot wiped out half of Cambodia in the 5 years of killing fields and millions dead.  The United Nations has proposed Agenda 21.  Atheists are the greatest killers of all time. Statistically the chance of me being killed by a rampaging lone gun man is next to nil but historically the likelihood of government greed stealing, starving and killing is a sure bet.  Hence the American constitution.
Now in the US they take their constitution to mean that the local neighbourhood church and synagogue and temple can have howitzers and militias and the police there have tanks.  In Canada no one cared because the country people had a 12 gauge shot gun for hunting.  The vast majority of ammunition sales in Canada is for birdshot. Rural Canadians aren’t en mass waving AK47’s.  So when our government gets its knickers in a twist about boys with bb guns, smart people wonder what the hell is going on.  The answer is taxation.  Targeted taxation.
And overnight I learned that Aboriginals and rural folk were burying guns and very very anxious about the urban government’s agenda targetting them. Because a gun is a necessary ’tool’ in the north and rural Canada.  The 3 year old girl was killed 2 doors down from me by a cougar.  I chased a hungry bear away from my dog.  City activists love wolves but 4H country kids don’t like to see their calves killed by packs in their back yard so we all have guns.  The city with it’s parking lots and high rises is the centre of waste and cause of climate change.  The “hot air” problem is not just politicians but the density of people.  Dispersion is a solution but stupidity grows in proximity.
And criminality.
Right now the taxation is at a cancerous high and as McGill said, the more taxation, the more crime. It pays more to break the law than to be a good citizen.  All around me I know criminals who have broken the law.  In fact the Liberals marijuana laws has as a secondary goal ‘sanctification’.  All the drug dealers and growers overnight will become ‘right’ and all those who followed the law ‘wrong’.  All those who made fortunes from ill gotten means will be safe. All those who paid the taxes that made the criminal life so attractive with health care and good roads and schools will be the duped ones.
So that’s what it comes down to.  Taxes and the black market.  I’m frankly libertarian.  My friends are angry at me because I’m voting Conservative.  The Liberals and NDP literally promise more government, more taxes and more crime.  I don’t know who they’ll tax more. The government gets in by giving jobs to friends.  In the old days it was giving a job to the slow cousin.  Now we know that the health care system has 20 times the administration as Germany’s health care system.  So we’ll get more bureaucracy and less actual product.  I saw a very expensive advertising booklet and realized this was where the health care dollars went.  Nobody read this silly book but ti cost a million or so.  Meanwhile no one got to see doctors and nurses which is what health care was once about before the political spin turned it into something else.
My friends are all earth huggers and civil libertarians and ex hippies like me.  But I’m a self employed businessman. I know the actual cost of things. I’ve always spent a lot of time fighting corruption and deceit and people that kill people in government.  I’ve front line experience.  I’ve seen the corruption daily first hand.  I am burnt out and jaded.  I am voting conservative because I want less taxation and less government.  I know that whatever government does these days they do at premium cost.  It’s like the department of defence in the US where a wastepaper basket cost $700.  When government is going to pay for something the price goes up and the quality goes down. Yes some people benefit but I’m not one of them.  I don’t benefit from the Black Market.  I’m not on the government pay roll. I’m not in a union.  I just pay more and more taxes and see that more and more people are getting free government hand outs while working under the table tax free.
I don’t trust government with my money and I don’t trust them not to turn guns on their citizens.  I don’t trust that I won’t have to move north and live off the land as my friends told me they did in the last depression.  “I fed my family with venison with a 22 rifle.  Everyone else was starving.” he told me.  I’m old enough to remember the tales of my grandparents.  I think the young are naive and trusting.
Thankfully most people I know are good and good is mightier than bad.  So Canada survives despite government because most of the people in government and elsewhere in Canada are good people. It’s not that way in the black market. Our criminal population is as bad as any.  I know. I’ve worked in the jails.  I think our judges are more afraid of the criminals than they are of citizens.  I think judge cowardice these days explains why violent offenders have been repeatedly given light sentence.  Increasingly the risk of crime is from a ‘repeat offender’.
Most of my friends also have never changed their votes. My communist friends have been communist since teen agers. My socialist friends have been socialist since teen agers.  My liberal friends have always voted liberal. My NDP friends have always voted NDP.  Even my Conservative friends have always voted Conservative. I’ve voted Liberal NDP and Conservative. I actually was a staunch liberal for years until I saw the corruption in that party.  I felt deeply betrayed by the gun registry lies and the destruction of health care under the liberals.  I was most disturbed when Paul Martin said he’d not register his boats in Canada and wouldn’t hire Canadians.  I thought I’d like to be an elite Liberal. It’s what I heard when Troudeau was smoking pot and hanging with Mark Emory. I ‘m a doctor and I can’t do that.  Every doctor has a political party regulator called by the pseudonym College of Physicians but here is their boss smoking pot and no one is urine testing him.  Excuse me!!!!!
And Mulcair is a lawyer.  I’ve seen parliament stripped of it’s power year after year by the courts making laws. yes. making laws.  They call it ‘interpreting’ but the courts are making the law now in Canada and it’s principal function has been to serve them and increase taxation.  So Mulcair frightens me.  But if I was a union member I’d vote NDP because unions in Canada have become so strong.  Government unions and private unions are Big Unions.  They have clout. I envy them but I’m not in a union.  So nothing the NDP are offering helps me. I want less taxes and less government , not more.
Mostly I want less Black Market Economy and less crime.  The only way I can see moving in that direction is less governnment and less taxation. It’s a little twisted, I know, but government is a pretzel these days.

Story-alien

The alien looked down at the milky water globe she held loosely.
“The human killed the other humans”, she said to her colleague.
“They do that."
“But what are these other people doing. The ones searching the woods."
“They’re justice."
“What’s justice.'
“It’s a game they play.  Very self important."
“They don’t know, do they."
“No they don’t. They’re quite primitive really’.

Story - cops and forensics

“Recognise him?” the grey haired uniform asked.

“How could I not? “ said June.  June was the homicide detective assigned the case.

 Do we know who the girl is yet?”

“Doesn’t look like the pictures I’ve seen of his wife?”

“No, it doesn ‘t, does it?”

“Who found him?” she asked.

“A jogger. Said he likes to combine his visiting the cross with running.  Jogs up here every Sunday.  This morning said he saw the car in passing, happened to look in the busted window.. Got quite a fright.   Used his cell phone to call 911.”

“You the first here?” June asked

“Yea, I was just ending up my shift.  Rain pretty much washed everything away.  We’ll still waiting for forensics. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“Otherwise it’s just a shot through the window,” said June.

“That’s about it.”

“We’ll have to talk to the wife. Would be nice to know who the girl is.”

Forensics arrived then. June went back to her car to wait while photographs were being taken.  A couple of ambulances pulled up beside her.  In addition to the victims car,  three patrol cars, forensics, the ambulances and herself there wasn’t any more room on the hill.  Looking up, she saw the cross.

“Lieutenant Hallbrick, we’re ready to examine the body,” the tech told her through the crack in the car window.  She put her note pad back in her pocket, climbing out of the car to follow him.

“Time of death, Doc?”  June asked?

“Somewhere around midnight.

“Looks like shot to skull then shot to face.  That how you see it.”

“Looks that way. I’ll be more certain after I’ve examined all the evidence.”

“You’re right, Doc, just considering preliminaries.”

“Shooter may have been trying to get both with one shot actually. Trajectory just off by a little.”

“That might be important. Thanks Doc.”

“You know I’m not saying anything, just speculating.”

“I know, but thanks anyway.”

June poked her head in the door and glanced around some more before letting the ambulance attendants take the bodies.

Wayne arrived then parking his red mustang behind the last ambulance. 

“Glad you could join us,” said June

“Yea, yea,” said Wayne “What have we got?”

William Lashner

I've just finished "Falls the Shadow" by William Lashner. It's a brilliant mix of the finest of the classics of the detective genre brought into modern day parlance. A kind of Hitchcock remake by Steven Spielberg.  A horrid French chef in prison for murdering his wife has an old lover now wealthy from marital gold digging hire Derringer and Carl legal team to get him a retrial.  Derringer is a beautiful big hearted woman lawyer paired with the gumshoe skeptic Carl.  Through twists and turns of who dunnit and amazing characterization we follow the story of  the tragedy all the while the parallel pro bono case of child rescue entertwines with the main characters in the murder mystery thriller.  William Lashner (www.williamlashner.com) was himself a trial attorney in the criminal division of the United States Justice Department.  We never do learn where he got his very mixed feelings about dentists but it must indeed be a truly piercing story.  A gripping read.  I can only look forward to reading more by this Philadelphian New York Times best seller.