Reap What You Sow

So the attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords really has the shit hitting the fan and it has certain people ducking for cover, the more prominent being former vice presidential candidate and half-term governor Sarah Palin.  The MSM is doing everything they can to make sure that her name is not mentioned at all, even though she is the face behind the eliminationist movement against those who do not measure to some idiotic purity test established by the Tea Party movement. 

So now the media is in on trying to suppress Sarah Palin's name from this, despite the fact that she it was her own poorly chosen words that inspired these actions. Perhaps putting this tragedy on her lap will not prevent the repetition of these acts, but if she wants to make herself out to be this great leader of a puritanical movement, she has to own this or she will be wearing it.

We don't need our own words to bring her down.  She doing a terrific job of doing herself in.  And her cognitive dissonance is going to bring her further down since she has shown herself to be incapable of taking responsibility for her actions.  She will deny it.

Sarah Palin used words to incite violence against those who are in opposition to her ideology.  She used these words not only to put herself over and show that she could be president someday, but to energize her base.  The sad reality is that it seems to take words of violence to energize their base, knowing full well that words of violence can also incite (are you ready for this?) VIOLENCE.  Big surprise, eh?

So this is simply a case of the conservatives reaping what they have sown.  While I do not condone the elimination of diversity among ideologies, those that use words of violence be it metaphorically or otherwise should have no place in the discourse of any country seeking to maintain a healthy democracy.  They do not stimulate democracy, but they sure hurt it.

So once again, Sarah Palin, acknowledge your part in this, repudiate it and disassociate yourself from the Tea Party movement.  If you do not own this, you will have to wear it.  Reap what you have sown, Ms. Palin.

The Best and Worst of 2010

As we approach the end of the year, we take the time to reflect on what was, what wasn't and what could have been.  So here goes!

What was good:

• Vancouver 2010 - the folks in Vancouver put on a great show to the world and they should be proud of what they accomplished.
• First gold on home turf!  Where were you when Alexandre Bilodeau won gold on the moguls?  Didn't happen in Montreal in 1976 and Calgary in 1988!
• Sidney Crosby and the OT goal heard around the world!
• Who Dat?  The Saints win the Super Bowl!
• BCS Buster!  TCU goes to Pasadena, but will they be smelling like Roses on New Year's Day?
• Mayor Bob Bratina - not the best possible outcome in the 14 candidate mayoral race, but in a race that became one between Eisenberger and DiIanni, he was probably the right choice.

What was bad:

• The Stadium Debate - it pitted neighbour against neighbour, urban renewal against urban sprawl, and lower city again upper city.  It also had ex-Mayor Fred Eisenberger punished for deciding to gamble and losing for it.  And even worse, Chad Collins got away with removing Confederation Park from the short list, the only thing that could have brought Eisenberger's mayoralty back from the dead.  Get ready for a long four years, Chad.
• Raise the Hammer - They say that the road to hell was paved with good intentions.  Ryan McGreal's website is the epitome of these noble intentions gone wrong.  Dissenting comments are suppressed, not because of the tone of the argument, but the direction the argument goes.  Sorry, but if you want a proper debate, you need proper facts even if they go against your ideology.  Urban renewal is something people should buy into, but at the same time, a stadium is not a catalyst for such renewal.  You can't make the downtown core a great place to live until you can make it a great place to work.  With insane office vacancy levels in the downtown core, combined with the continuing neglect of buildings, and a prevailing lack of imagination on the part of city hall, downtown will not be a great place to live unless the city can bring more businesses into the downtown core and be a more active player in its development.  I don't hear them saying anything about that.
• Prorogation - No matter what my brother in law says, the prorogation of parliament by Prime Minister Stephen Harper was an evasive and diversionary tactic to avoid being in contempt of parliament.  Using the Olympics as an excuse, he thought he could get some gains in the polls from it.  No dice.  People still see through him and he will continue to maintain his minority government into the new year, but for how much longer?
• Stacking the senate - While we're discussing Mr. Harper, he has begun using his appointments to the Senate as his latest tools of obstruction.  So any bill that makes its way into Senate, against the Prime Minister's wishes, will be stopped.  Let the outrage begin.
• Tim Hudak - While he's busy complaining about the cost of electricity, a problem that his predecessor's have created and one that the hypocrite would not dare touch, he is also complaining about the HST, a problem created by his federal counterparts.  But he's still getting free passes from the media, something that Dalton McGuinty would never have got if the roles were ever reversed.  If there really is such a thing as a journalist, why aren't there any challenging him on this and if there has been such a challenge, why the lack of reporting on this?
• The rise of corporatism/fascism - Obama was right.  Allowing corporations, who have more responsibilities than individuals, the same rights as individual citizens is a dangerous precedent and allowing their money to muddy the waters of discourse is even more dangerous.  With Pax Americana on the way out, combined with multinational corporations transcending international boundaries and regulations, a return to the age of the robber baron has begun.  Democracy and with it the national discourse are drowning in corporate money.

As for what should have been:

• Confederation Park Stadium - Confederation Park could have been a great site for a stadium.  It has a great position and is one of a few options for GO Transit.
• The Media - Facts have some level of bias, but since when do we need to hear spin from talking heads about current events?  The news media needs to stop putting spin to facts and just start reporting them.
• An End to Tax Cuts for the Rich - I don't mind people making money, but they make it on the backs of others and for that reason should be taking some responsibility for that.  They can afford it and should stop bitching and moaning about it.  How much is it worth to you to have the police ready to serve, the fire department ready to assist and the ambulance to stabilize your condition if you need the help?  Taxes are the charges paid for civilization.  And the governments should not be giving them money either.
• A Democratic House Majority - The Republicans have not been punished enough for their sins, having plunged our countries into a deep recession.  But we know how they took the power and democracy will be further damaged should these authoritarians be allowed to run roughshod over their country.  And speaking of that lost Democratic majority...
• The Death of the Tea Party - a inappropriately named movement, under the guise of  bigotry, stoked by affluent interests and corporate money, their disgustingly overexposed display of ignorance is the embodiment of the religious right's vision of austerity and their apparent need to set mankind back centuries.  The world is moving forward, yet they'd rather go backwards.  Didn't anybody ever tell these neo-conservatives that you can't turn back the clock?

All in all, 2010 was a step back, although it began positively, the so-called recovery stalled and unless something is done, we're on the way back down.  Our economy and national discourse is hopelessly mired in muck and the Conservatives are the last people on Earth that we should count on to resuscitate democracy, let alone the economy, because they are incapable of saving both.

Thanks for nothing, Westjet!

It's hard to believe that 10 years ago, Westjet began operating from Hamilton, making the Munro International Airport the eastern hub for the discount airline.  Two years later, the airline became a success, but they longed for something bigger.  It seemed that Hamilton wasn't enough for them.

Forget that Hamilton had the fastest turnaround time among the airports and forget that operating from Hamilton saved money.  Hamilton was an airport on the cusp of becoming more than just a cargo hub to UPS, Purolator, Cargojet and DHL.  The city had big plans for the airport and Westjet was on the forefront.

Westjet was great, until they smelled blood coming from Toronto.  It seemed that they were tipped off that Air Canada and Canadian were going down the tubes and what better way would there be to take advantage of such a situation than to move their primary operations to Toronto?  So off to ol'YYZ they went, leaving an awful void, which was filled by Canjet, for about a year, until Air Canada announced that they were offering Jazz service to Ottawa and Montreal.

So here we are now.  Westjet pulled all but just a handful of flights throughout the week starting earlier this month and now Hamilton Airport is back where it started.  It seems that the Toronto mentality that has plagued Hamilton, since its inception is taking hold, because no other airline since FlyGlobeSpan left has come to the city.

So now Westjet wants to offer more flights to Orlando from Hamilton.  They've already ran away and people have accepted that Westjet has betrayed Hamilton and now Westjet wants to offer more flights.

How do people choose an airline to deal with?  They base it on not just the experience during the flight, but the experience before takeoff and after landing.  Loyalty as easy as it is to build, is difficult to rebuild when you've betrayed your customers.

Westjet betrayed Hamilton and destroyed its loyalty base to score cheap points against an already struggling airline.  People in Burlington and Oakville would like to have an alternative to the already chaotic Pearson International Airport and people in the Hamilton/Brantford/Niagara area would like to have an airline they can use, which is reasonable, with less hassle and offers a solid alternative to Buffalo and Toronto.

So now that Westjet has destroyed what little goodwill remains, perhaps another airline would like to come to Hamilton and finally give Westjet a taste of its own medicine.

A Glaring Lack of Discipline

How else can you explain the season ending meltdown that the Tiger-Cats experienced over the last three weeks filled with losses and what-could-have-beens?  From stupid penalties (failure to control emotion) to bone-headed plays (two fumbled punt returns), the Tiger-Cats let themselves down and the fans with them.

So yes, our team made the playoffs.  So how about winning a playoff game next year?

Begging for a Playoff System!

As we begin to reflect on our Tiger Cats suffering another heart-breaking elimination from the CFL playoffs, our attention turns to NCAA football, the most unpredictable, intense, exciting and entertaining football of its kind.  The NFL for all the flawlessness they show can't be as entertaining and riveting as College football and this season has become probably the most exciting in a long time, as two non-AQ schools and a certain PAC-10 team are all redefining conventional wisdom.

Right from the get-go, the BCS system of ranking and seeding is still taking a hit and with good reason.  There is no objective method to rank teams other than having a playoff system in place to actually give it legitimacy.  The problem with the BCS system lies in its inability to truly gauge how one team would truly play the other on a neutral field.  Furthermore, there are conferences that get a free pass to the bigger bowl games, and also get a bigger chunk of the money, regardless of the outcome.  And in the end the BCS system is more about the money than it is about finding the undisputed champion. 

It's an exclusive club, which unlike March Madness, has a well-defined criteria.  The seeding system for the national tournament is performance based and not subscriber/conference based.  After all, the bowl game is the game that determines not just the victor, but who gets the pie and how much of it.  It's the moment that assess your program and the bigger the bowl, the bigger the payout.  Once again, it's the money.

There really is only one way to determine which is the better team.  Put them on the field and see what happens.  There is no alternative and no system of speculative statistics will be able to substitute that.

The BCS is really a poor attempt at hiding the most prevalent weakness with the college football system itself.  There are so many teams and such diverse levels and forms of play and even worse, not enough time to truly find the champion.  There are leagues that have a defined championship format in which conference finalists and champions are crowned, advancing to represent their conferences all the way to the final.  Of course I won't be completely disingenuous, dismissing the fact that there are more than 20 conferences, each having a certain level of play.  The only solution to this problem is to promote and relegate teams to higher and lower level conferences, which means having a affiliation system.

In the end, there should be at least 16 or 32 teams to start the playoffs and they are the ones who should be guaranteed a berth in a bowl game.  The conference championship game is played starting in December and from that point, we have a ladder.  The defeated teams go to the smaller bowl games and the winning teams advance to the bigger bowl games.  And in the end, there should be a draw to determine what role the respective bowl games will play.  So the Citrus, Orange, Fiesta, Sugar, Cotton and Rose Bowls would be used to host the four quarterfinals and two semi-finals, leading up to the National Championship.

So what will this mean?  For one thing, it means that a certain college that thinks they're too good to be in a conference should start considering joining one, especially one that espouses the level of play they delude themselves to believe they can perform.  It means a lot of work in putting the colleges into conferences they belong in.  It could even bring up a level of intensity that people have been crying out for.  It is more likely that it will start with 32 conference finalists, leading to regional playoffs, to have one undisputed East champion and one undisputed West champion facing each other for the national championship.  It may not be perfect, but it will certainly be better than the monopolistic, exclusive and subjective system already in place.

The Tea Party Hangover - What Happened?

So now it's sunk in... 

The astroturf "Tea Party" movement has taken the House of Representatives and luckily the Senate majority remains intact for the Democrats.  And we're back where we started from 1994.  So what will happen next?

Why don't we start with what happened first?  So yes, the Republicans took control over the House of Representatives and will continue to do Wall Street's bidding and a lot more Republicans will go unpunished, including Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Sam Alito, both of whom lied to congress during their confirmation process and were determined to allow corporate money to be used to fund election campaigns, paving the way to this.  And we could also go into how people appointed by GWB were parachuted into positions within government agencies, with intent on sabotaging the Obama presidency.  Nobody discussed that.  Then we could even go into how news has been replaced with spin and facts have been replaced with opinion.  And we could go into how television stations played 25 minute commercials on election day to compel people to vote against their own interests, which will never be fulfilled by the GOP, let alone a con man.

One thing is for sure.  The natives are restless.  They are angry and they don't know who to direct their anger to.  They conveniently forgot that two years ago, the bottom fell out of the economy, banks fell and people lost their retirement savings.  They forgot who made this all possible.  They even forgot how this started and now we know that it may never end if the Republicans have their way with all three branches.  And when one channel continuously broadcasts propoganda favouring one partisan ideology over another and reports the news with that same partisan slant, ensuring that any news that could reveal flaws in that ideology of choice is supressed, what is the populace to do?  When you are told what and how to think, what are you to do?

Yes, Obama didn't make many friends, but unlike his predecessor, he tried to get both parties on board.  His opposition didn't do anything constructive, but block anything that came from the Democrats.  They became the party of No.  They didn't share their ideas on how healthcare could be reformed there.  They brought out snazzy labels like "Socialized Medicine" and even characterized the president to be a Nazi.  They began spreading lies about "death panels" and anything else to ensure that the Democrats lose the midterms. 

The Democrats were once criticized for being a party of No without providing alternatives on how they would do things.  The Republicans got a free pass from the media this time around.  And this is what bothers a lot of us the most here.  Democrats are now continuously scrutinized and even shunned, while Republicans keep coming back.  It was the Republicans who ran their country into the ground and the Democrats who had to clean up their mess.  And so the Republicans have been granted another opportunity to destroy the country even more.

I suppose the question is how much longer will it be before the American people wake up, especially when it is taxpayers money going into the banks' coffers, rather than the taxpayers.  Our neighbour to the south is inching closer to a fascist plutocracy, under the guise of a populist movement, orchestrated by the wealthy and affluent and the corporate money flowing into the Republican coffers is the confirmation.  Unless something is done, we could be seeing the beginning of the end of the American Empire.

What is the Chamber's Purpose Anyway?

It's been on my mind for a long time now...

As some of you know already, I've been a member of the Chamber of Commerce since 2003, as the prinicpal owner of the IT consulting and personnel firm, RGX Systems.  I've always had some concerns about the Chamber as a whole.  And a lot of it starting to be well founded.

My biggest concern about the Chamber of Commerce is simply the thought that the organization is turning into a one-trick pony, constantly complaining about corporate taxes and any form of tax.  The Chamber has continuously avoided opportunity after opportunity to take the lead in advising their members to invest their profits into continuous improvement. 

What's their cure for the need to update production equipment and improve productivity?  They don't encourage investment in R&D.  They don't encourage companies to use their profits to buy new equipment.  They don't encourage them to retrain their employees to improve productivity.  They don't do any of this.  They simply lobby the feds for more tax cuts.  This is hardly a sustainable solution and only plays into the neo-con hands in their anarchistic vision of every man for himself, an antithesis to their phony espousing of Christian values.

The Globe and Mail declares that this apparently is our time to lead, but how does one lead without taking action or even taking risks.  You can't lead from behind and we certainly can't wait for others to act if we are to take the lead in anything.  And you certainly can't lead without taking some risks.  It's all about doing something different, unheard of.  It's about finding a greater challenge and overcoming it despite the odds.  By nature, Canadians have an aversion to risk, making it difficult to show the way, because nobody wants to assume the risks associated with taking a new direction.

Which brings to the question that has been on my mind for a long long time:  When will the Chamber start looking beyond taxation and start inspiring so-called business leaders to actually lead for a change?  Taxes are only part of it.  We need to have an adult discussion on the need to take some risks, to invest in us for a change and we need to start talking about how we can stop just doing it and start learning to do it better.
I would hate to think that the Chamber is a one-trick pony.  But in the end, when they do speak to the public, this is all we hear.