You Don't Know What You've Got Till It's Gone

It's amusing (yes, I've decided that levity is the best way to view the current era) to read how the current occupant of the Oval Office, and his many supporters, feels the need to blame the ills of the world on the previous occupant.

The current occupant of the Oval Office many already be messing with government data

The White House's spokesperson can't seem to open her mouth without saying things that can only be described as lies.

The President has made many statements about deporting "illegals"and building a wall.  Has anyone making the decisions actually looked at the numbers?  Just one article here about how nutty reality would be for these projects.

A former State Governor who has sued the EPA and railed against it for years is now its administrator.

Dedicated anti-science lobbyists are still trying to discredit science in general and the science of climate change in particular.  

Battle lines have been drawn.  Even as Trump supporters start to question what they elected.

Trump bans a number of media outlets from press briefings.

And this is just the tip of a very large iceberg.

Despite all this, some have been heard to claim that "...they suffered for 8 years under Obama".  Huh.  As if.

More Neo-Liberal Smoke & Mirrors Policies in BC

On February 21st, the BC "Liberal" government brought forward its budget.

One "highlight" of the budget was a proposal to cut Medical Services Plan Premiums by 50%.

That would be nice, IF it was completely true.  There are a number of devils in the details.

I have some records here in the file cabinet.  They show that we had to pay $96 per month for health care coverage back in 2006.  It's now 2017 and it costs $150 per month for the two of us.

Roughly, that is a 50% increase in premiums in about 10 years.

Now the government is proposing to reduce this a bit, but not until after January 1st, 2018.  And you have to apply for this reduction by completing an on-line form.

I understand that BC is the last province to charge such health care premiums.  On the one hand, having to pay these premiums each month does serve to remind everyone what health care costs and that it isn't "free".  On the other hand, sending out invoices each month must be one of the more inefficient and costly ways of handling the whole issue.

Years ago, in Saskatchewan, where health care costs were handled directly by the province, we occasionally received a statement showing us what our use of the medical system cost each year, just to remind us what we were getting for our taxes.

My concern is that the government, having spent the past few years raising the fees and rates for most things while pretending taxes are low, is engaging in more smoke and mirrors.

Over the past decade or more, funding has been taken away from the public education system.  Following a recent court decision, money is being put back in.  I'm just not sure that the government should be bragging about it.

Word for the Day

 Agnotology: the study of deliberate propagation of ignorance.

Although the word is relatively new, the concept it describes is not.  As described in this article from the BBC.

Six Degrees - Our Future on a Hotter Planet

"By the end of this century, the planet will heat up between 1.4C and 5.8C, according to the IPCC.  Six degrees might not sound like much...."

That pretty much summarizes the main point of this book by Mark Lynas.  In each chapter, the author examines what our planet might be like as global temperatures increase, degree by degree.

Of course, predicting the future is difficult, but the author bases his predictions on what science knows about conditions on the planet during much earlier times, when CO2 levels were much higher.

A major concern understood by people following this issue is the rapidity with which these changes are happening.  Right now.  To explain the concern, the author notes the following about something called the Paleo Eocene Thermal Maximum:

• CO2 levels were greater than 1000 ppm (we are close to 400 ppm now).
• Rate of CO2 addition now could be 30x faster than then.
• The changes then took place over 10,000 years.
• We only have decades.

For anyone with a concern about what we need to prepare ourselves (and our children and grandchildren) for, it's a worthwhile read.  As you read, just remember that the book was written in 2007.  Evidence continues to come in pointing to a rapidly warming planet, melting sea ice, diminishing land ice, droughts, acidifying oceans, increasingly erratic weather systems.  

A Cultural Marxist Hellhole.... as if...

I was sent an article this morning:

This is the Cultural Marxist Hellhole that our Country has become.  What Now?

Not wanting to waste perfectly good opportunity for hyperbole, there was also a flag, of sorts....

Have to say, the article, and especially the title, kept me laughing for a good part of the morning.  I had to spend a couple of hours running the cross country ski groomer so it was good to have something to laugh about for a few hours.

Seriously.  What a pile of nonsense.

First, a quick reading of an explanation of Marxism (basically, I'm really not much interested in labels and know very little about such ideology) had me wondering if the author knew either.  As I understand it, Marxism is about a class struggle that develops as labour starts to realize that it is being taken advantage of by the few who own the means of production and who appropriate most of the benefits from that production.  Leaving everyone else in the dirt.

This didn't seem to be what the article's author was on about, though.

First, he devoted some space to ranting about the un-elected judiciary.  Sorry, that would be "so-called" judiciary, I guess.  I accept that judges can interpret laws in ways that can be seen as "liberal" or "conservative", but laws can be changed by legislatures and, as long as they don't violate the Constitution (or the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, if you're a Canadian), those legislatures can plot a different direction for a country.  Their actions will be evaluated by voters, still with the power to turf them out of office if enough don't like that direction.  I will point to the 2015 election in Canada as a single example.  No doubt it will happen again in the future, as it has in the past.

An independent judiciary is pretty much essential to a free, democratic country.  I got the distinct impression that the author would be fine with replacing the judiciary with puppets who would do whatever the current mob wanted.  Or at least a small mob that happened to have guns....

Second, the author clearly fell back on fundamentalist religious precepts as proof that his country is spiraling into the immoral, Marxist abyss.  "Our rights no longer come from God; they come from the courts."

Hmmm.  Actually, your rights DON'T come from God.  Neither the USA nor Canada is a theocracy.  Your rights come from from hard-fought battles to enforce the Constitution or the Charter.  Sorry if you don't agree with certain rights for "some people", but giving them rights doesn't take away from your rights.  Not unless you think it is your right to deny them theirs.

He ranted about red states (those would be Republican states, in a perplexing use of color that somehow makes sense in the USA) being "denuded the right to self-govern...".  How then, to explain the rampant gerrymandering that has clearly gone on in those very states just so the Republicans can maintain their death grip on power.  Blue states, on the other hand, can violate the Constitution wily-nilly.  He didn't provide examples.

A "Republican party that is every bit as socially liberal as the Democrats".  Frankly, I find this a bit of a stretch.  In fact, I think I'll call BS on that.  Not that I think the Democrats are all that "socially liberal", compared to the concept as it exists in so many other perfectly nice countries around the world.  But seriously.  It's very hard to use the phrase "socially liberal" and Republican in the same sentence and manage to keep a straight face.

Obamacare is "destroying the job market".  So that explains this:

What I see from this is that if Obama could have stayed in office for another 4 years, things could have been even better than they have been for the last 7 years of his term.  

There was lots more, but mostly in the same vein.  Basically, it seemed to center around the notion that since people are being called out for being racist, xenophobic, sexist pricks, somehow that is letting the country circle the drain.

In the USA, here's what we have now, according the "Alt-Facts" websites I've been able to find quickly:

• 48 million people (15%) are without medical insurance.
• Obamacare resulted in the uninsured rate dropping from 20% to about 15%
• The poverty rate (2015) was about 14% or 43 million people.
• Interestingly, that's about the same number of people who don't have health insurance.
• War on Poverty programs have since 1964 have reduced the rate from around 23% to between 11% to 15%.  War on Poverty programs = Federal programs supported by tax dollars <gasp>.
• The Incarceration Rate in the USA is higher than any other country in the world; this costs about $74B each year.
• The USA consistently does worse in world education rankings than other "Marxist hellholes" elsewhere in the world.  Notably Canuckistan and some Scandinavian countries.  Just sayin'
• The USA is # 11 in firearm-related deaths in the world, coming after a number of well-known violent places in Latin and South America and Africa.  Most countries with sensible gun ownership laws are far down on the list.

There are other comparisons to be made, but there is so much to do and so little time, just trying to keep Canada from slipping into the same hellhole America is slipping into.  I will just say, though, the hellhole sure as hell isn't a Marxist one.  Not by any definition.

Maybe Cuba, though.  I understand it is one of the last remaining socialist countries in the world that follows Marxist-Leninist ideology.  And for decades, Americans weren't allowed to visit Cuba.  If only that Obama guy hadn't changed the rules....