Unpublished letter sent to the Toronto Star

Re: Ontario reduces electricity rates during daytime hours, March 25, 2020

I the pandemonium of the COVID-19 pandemic the silence from the corporate sector and the staggeringly wealthy is not surprising. These two groups always slink into their luxurious backgrounds when disaster hits to protect their money and get out of the public eye. Corporations spend like drunken sailors in the good times and then cry in their beer when the pandemic hits hoping for some free bailout money from taxpayers. Maybe they should have saved up for this rainy day like everyone else has then they would have money to carry them through this crisis. The government should mandate a rainy day fund for all businesses going forward. Other than paying some of the salaries of shut-in employees in selected cases the majority of big corporations and the rich have been big on hand-holding and platitudes but short on real help.

In this time of extreme need with millions of short-term contract workers idled without pensions, healthcare or any other kind of supports to assist them there are many tangible things that corporations and the wealthy could be doing that would really help, like the banks who make billions every quarter rather than magnanimously deferring mortgage payments giving everyone a free mortgage payment or corporate landlords giving renters a free month’s rent? Why don’t car makers give people a free car payment or grocery stores like Loblaws allowing free shopping for seniors and healthcare workers in addition to opening the stores early for an hour which costs them nothing,. Public transit should be free for a month and the oil companies could give people a free gas for a month  without blinking an eye. With the trillions in profits the oil companies have earned this would be a small way to give back for once. The Beer Store could give out a complimentary six-pack of beer with any purchase or the LCBO a complimentary bottle of wine. Hydro 1 could give people reducd electricity at their cost rather than the taxpayers paying for it. And most particularly, banks could and should reduce credit card rates to 10%. The banks have been profit gouging for 10 years since the 2008 financial crisis. It’s about time that stopped. A cut in credit card interest would immediately assist every Canadian. All these measures and more would be a way of saying thank you to the millions of people who run our society and for once thanking them in a tangible way rather than meaningless public gestures that amount to nothing. People are getting tired of being patronized by the “take-all-the-money-and-run” capitalism that never thinks of the people who deliver that money to corporations and the rich each and every day. We need to rethink our entire profit based economic motivational system and revise it to incentivize the working stiffs first not shareholders and to stop demonizing public sector

 Unpublished letter sent to the Toronto Star

Re: Ottawa unveils $1B fund to battle pandemic. March 12, 2020.

While the COVID-19 pandemic spreads worldwide causing irreparable damage to the economy and society there have been no reports in the media about the cause or assigning blame  for this global disaster. This pandemic was not an accident, it was entirely avoidable and preventable.

Chinese authorities are the perpetrators in this case not the victims. While China has a long and glorious history of advancement and innovation, the fault rests directly on China’s slow contemporary modernization of their ancient cultural practices in their rush to advance technologically in the shift from communism to capitalism.

This general attitude has led to a society that appears modern and highly advanced militarily but where most of the country is still destitute and possessing limited education. This has led to slow cultural advancement that still allows cruel, unregulated live animal street markets that will slaughter any animal you request on the spot mixing blood and human food together. These barbaric practices were the source of the COVID-19 outbreak that has placed the world in a serious dilemma. This is not about racism or cultural discrimination, it is about acknowledging that certain cultural practices are out of step with the modern world and should be banned. Every society has these cultural deficits that require their attention. While China has made huge advances as a nation there are still many areas of their country’s practices that need to be abandoned. The controlling Chinese leadership and their restrictive and authoritarian socialist culture that wants to manage every aspect of people’s lives to the point of shutting down the revelation of this new disease exacerbated the problem. China’s leadership should invest more time and money into developing modern cultural practices and educating their people instead of simply building a bigger military and better cities.

This pandemic is actually rooted in authoritarian narrow-mindedness and cultural deficits, not in some random accident of nature. We are all paying the price.

China needs to be held to account. Everyone affected needs to send the bill to China.

Unpublished letter submitted to the Toronto Star

Re: Days of whine and $15 billion in bonuses for our bankers, December 19, 2019.

Linda McQuaig’s article paints a bleak picture. In these dystopian media times with wealth and opportunity apparently everywhere vast inequities, ridiculous unfairness and scurrilous behaviour have become the accepted norm. As banks give out $15 billion in bonuses making a staggering $46.6 billion in profits, 2600 GM workers are idled by the multi-billion dollar gargantuan General Motors brought back from the dead by a $650 million bailout from Ontario and SNC Lavalin pleads guilty to what amounts to a financial slap on the wrist of $280 million dollars for bribery the bitter and bitingly arrogant realities of capitalism are on full display. And no one seems to care. 2019 looks more like 1819.

In sharp contrast, the contemporary working poor (and I include the middle and even the upper class given the ballooning relativity of corporate profits) are saddled with an 8% tax increase by Toronto Council to pay for critically needed infrastructure updates, affordable housing and transit to name only a few at a cost of a mere $10-15 billion. This is chump change for the banks who take no responsibility for the society they live in. The banks’ bonuses could fund the full cost without batting an eye. And that’s only the banks. But capitalism doesn’t allow this.  Clearly we need profit controls.

Corporate Canada daily cozies up to government and makes billions in profits and benefits while paying miniscule taxes. Amazon pays negative tax in the U.S. The working poor  on the other hand get a languishing standard of living, unstable work, wage stagnation, crushing taxes relatively and a snarly response from government when they ask like Oliver Twist ‘Please sir, can I have some more.’  Corporate taxes have plummeted over the past fifty years while profits skyrocketed and work was stripped to the bone. Corporations also divested pensions, healthcare, full-time work and benefits. The losses and degradation of middle and lower class incomes is staggering as are the continually rising enormous profits. Taxes pay for the civil society that we live in but everyone is not taxed equally. The private sector takes all the profits, the public bears all the costs. The 99% support the 1%.

What is most concerning about this is how willingly society at all levels passively accepts this corrupt system of capitalism and free markets, the private sector, government and society without question. This is the real tragedy of modern society. Like the indigenous people long ago we’re being tricked with a few techno baubles.

The corruption of corporate Canada, Canadian politics and Canadian society is complete. Beware of bigots in suits with smiles on their faces.

Unpublished letter submitted to The Toronto Star

Re: The Goldilocks MAYOR, December 7, 2019.

Mayor John Tory’s realization that the conservative pipe dream of low taxes while the population grows, inflation eats away at our value and transit, affordable housing costs, infrastructure and social costs are beckoning constantly is only that. His tax proposal makes sense but it does not go far enough to create equity between the private sector and the tax-paying public with the corporate sector getting off Scot-free. It is an ongoing source of frustration for taxpayers that they are the  only target of tax increases and service cuts by eager government and municipal employees while corporations like BMO that recently made just over a billion dollars in their recent quarter and cut 300 jobs are allowed a free pass. The anger is not about paying taxes, it is the blatant inequity between the private sector taxation rate and the tax-paying public’s. The former are responsible for collecting huge profits while leaving the social costs for the public to deal with.

This revelation by Mayor Tory should be accompanied by a similar one on the need to re-inflate corporate taxes. Corporate tax cuts are a dismal failure. The real wealth is in the private sector and Tory should tax it. There should be a 10% Social Safety Surtax placed on all corporations annually for the building of infrastructure, affordable housing, transit, healthcare and policing all of which they benefit from greatly. For most large corporations this is a pittance compared to their after-tax profits per year. We should all remember that corporations depend on all these public services to get their employees to and from their jobs safely and easily and they should be expected to share the cost with the tax-paying public whom they serve.

The public is sick and tired of hearing that the wolves are at the door for corporations and the wealthy when the banks alone all make billions each year in after-tax profits while paying negligible property taxes on their glass and steel towers. Faceless shareholders hidden in obscurity do not build social wealth or social welfare. Big corporations create their minimum wage McJobs and nothing more. Taxation is the only way to balance the scale.

In this dystopian one-way universe we of capitalist democracy everything is wonderful but in a terms of a real democracy there is little evidence that this is actually true. Governments have become the handmaidens of the private sector not the servants of the people. In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king.

Unpublished letter submitted to the Toronto STar

Re: Clock is ticking for a new NAFTA deal. October 31, 2019.

The new NAFTA is a great deal for Canadians and Canadian workers according to the Justin Trudeau. Workers should be very wary of what is inside this Trojan Horse.  NAFTA was originally heralded as a breakthrough for free trade in North America with Canada, Mexico and the U.S. participating but the reality turned out to be a cruel joke. People expected it to equalize prices and promote employment. As we came to find out it was nothing more than a great deal for U.S. business and a terrible deal for Canadian and Mexican workers. The bulk of Canadian auto jobs went to Mexico because of significantly cheaper labour. It was the first of many similar experiences with globalization. The latter meant much cheaper labour costs at the cost of North American jobs.

In the last thirty years since NAFTA’s inception Canadians have seen the retail landscape remain exactly the same with a significant divide in prices at the border despite a significant lowering of costs. Canadians pay much more for everything than their U.S. counterparts from gas to tires, beef, housing and automobiles. We are saddled with a Third World dollar pegged at 75 cents out of deference to the U.S. that places a 25% tax on all U.S. goods bought by Canadians so that a few Canadian businesses can compete with U.S. firms. In Mexico the country is still a poverty-stricken backwater economy governed by corruption, elitism and drug lords and the population continues to toil for peasant wages in U.S. owned factories. Even in the U.S., the main beneficiary of the original NAFTA agreement, the general population has seen little impact on their lives or jobs despite the lowest unemployment rate in fifty years. The upturn in the economy has simply put millions more McJobs into the system not improved people’s lives significantly. The only people doing extremely well are the multi-national corporations who are making stupendous profits from NAFTA while constantly crying poor. The wealth and poverty gaps around the world are staggering.

So Justin Trudeau can spare Canadians his political carny show talk about the benefits of the new NAFTA being better for workers. The new NAFTA is the same as the old NAFTA – a private sector agreement to enrich corporations, CEOs and shareholders and impoverish workers who slave away in the democratic gulag.

Unpublished letter submitted to the Toronto Star

Re: Jane Philpott on losing re-election and being ‘disappointed’ at the message voters sent Trudeau on the SNC-Lavalin affair, October 25, 2019

Canadians have once again decided to elect the status quo. Responding to the fear of a Conservative government that would be even more right-wing than the Liberals, the electorate opted for Justin Trudeau’s scandal plagued party in the time-honoured tradition of the two-party, elitist, British first-past-the-post system of electoral politics. With 40% of the people in Canada not voting, this means that a scathing 20% of Canadians elected this majority government – and no one seems to care. No government has shown any interest in surveying non-voters to find out why they don’t vote and to change it. Jagmeet Singh, who should clearly have been the PM in waiting based on his leadership style and his party’s policies was left out in the cold again and has been abandoned by his traditional labour allies and even immigrants. His party needs to be torn down and rebuilt as a real left alternative or merged with the Liberals to eradicate the Conservative right if they ever hope to be more than also-rans.

So hard-working, blue-collar Canadians voted willingly for their own oppression – more corporate criminality, corruption, welfare and control of government, more token tax cuts for the wealthy and business all of which increases the burden on everyday people.  It’s like living in Alice in Wonderland. The declining fortunes for the middle class and those below them (the other 99%) who over the past thirty years have willingly given away their pensions, healthcare, job security and wages to exist in a globalized contracted-out wasteland of short-term money-for-work at minimum wage and not much else while massively profitable corporations cry poor. We have voted for more platitudes about indigenous reconciliation and climate change but little action. We passively accept having a Third-World dollar that is a 25% direct tax on every Canadian so a few rich businesses can be more competitive and we allow credit card companies to extraordinarily over-charge for interest rates. Cutting interest rates on credit cards and allowng the dollar to return to parity with the U.S. would immediately save Canadians thousands of dollars instead of hundreds. We have endorsed no oversight of the private sector by government. Their only concern is Mcjobs. They can do what they please when they please otherwise.  It is inexplicable that we have all let this happen while doing nothing to change governmental practice or electoral politics for the better. We have elected government for the private sector, not for the Canadian public.  We are slaves in the gulag.

Canadians are left with a tenuous minority propped up by the NDP and a divided country with the resurgence of the Bloc. They cannot seem to free themselves from their attachment to the corrupt two-party system of Liberals and Conservatives no matter have bad it is. We have been socialized to hate socialists and socially democratic parties by the greedy capitalists despite the fact that the democratic socialists have excellent ideas much like the Scandinavian countries who are some of the most successful and progressive societies in the world.

All so that Canadians can go on living in their twisted little dream of living in a capitalist democracy.

Unpublished letter submitted to the Toronto Star

Re: It’s time to end  mistreatment of sled dogs. July 28, 2019.

On a road trip about five years ago looking for a cottage property we chanced upon a dog-sled gualag just outside Sunridge, Ontario. We were shocked and disgusted by what we saw. The property was surrounded by a tall wire fence and the gates were locked. There was apparently no one there other than about fifty emaciated dogs each hooked to about a six foot chain outside an orange barrel laid on its side with the end cut out for a door. Each barrel was elevated with three steps up. We could see water dishes, many that had been kicked over and in the 30 degree heat many of the animals were suffering. As we walked up to the gate a clamour started as all th dogs began to bark and become excited at possible human contact.

The dogs were obviously starved during the summer months and then fattened up for the winter racing season. We assumed the dogs were chained throughout the summer. What really surprised and saddened me was that when I called the animal control officer he did not seem too concerned and informed us was that sled dogs were exempt from animal cruelty legislation. There was little he could do.

The way we treat our sled dogs is a metaphor for how we treat humanity in a capitalist society. Plenty of surface show and token attention but beneath this thin veneer of civility is hidden an ugly underbelly of mistreatment, exploitation and marginalization for profits that is presented as necessary to be successful for the private sector and that governments generally ignore. Its all a big ruse. Everything for profit, nothing for society. The sled dogs know it – when will we get on to the game.

Re: What a time of aspiration. Editorial, July 13, 2019.

Unpublished letter submitted to the Toronto Star

Am I the only person who views it as complete and utter lunacy to go to the moon (or into space) when there are so many pressing human problems here on earth.  Obscene expenditures on the military, the space program and arms manufacturing to name only a few are irresponsible and unconscionable but not surprising in a heavily patriarchal capitalist society. It is an utter waste of money just as it was when Apollo 11 completed its highly controversial mission fifty years ago amidst the same kind of social turmoil noted in the Star’s editorial. Continue reading →

Re: Party time. Front Page, June 17, 2019.

Unpublished letter submitted to the Toronto Star

The recent Raptor’s rapture over the NBA championship speaks volumes about how our social values have changed in the past fifty years under capitalism.  Continue reading →

Unpublished letter submitted to the Toronto Star

Re: Who will foot the bill for $28.5B transit plan? April 11, 2019.

Corporations have tunnel vision, only seeing responsibility in terms of one-way profits. All other costs are not on their radar screens. They fail to understand their broader social  and financial responsibility. Public expenses should be born by those who directly benefit from the services and use them. Continue reading →