"Cowardice asks the question...is it safe? Expediency asks the question...is it politic? Vanity asks the question...is it popular? But conscience asks the question...is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because it is right." ~Dr. Martin Luther King

Tuesday 17 May 2016

HUFF AND PUFF AND BLOW THE HOUSE DOWN

CBC just reported  rebuilding Fort McMurray will add $I.38 billion to Alberta 's economy nt t year. 

it will not be complete in that year. It will ramp up in 2017,18,19. 

Loss of production from the oil sands is considerably less. Almost negligible in the national GDP.

Oil sands productivity will also ramp up quickly when the fire burns out which it shows no signs of doing. 

In the current crisis only two industries are discussed. Oil sands production and  primarily the building industry. 

I don't expect it to mean much to Aurora Councillors and  Nimby friends, bound and determined to force the Province to re- grant  municipalities authority they are not willing to exercise.  

I only mention it to stress the importance of the building industry in any provincial economy. 

As well, nothing read in the "Summit" discussion to date hints awareness of the role in the business operation of an urban municipality.  The current Council obviously thinks it's all about fun and games. 

The latest issue  is a proposal to reduce traffic lanes to one in the block downtown to allow for 
patios where people can eat and drink and stare into the eyes of  drivers and passengers sitting alongside in stalled traffic. Maybe share a bite or two. Or throw buns at each other across the street. 

In the middle of the night,on Sunday, PBS aired an hour long conversation with Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein ,hosted by an international reporter of the day when Richard Nixon was President. The event was in a press institute in Washington. 

Forty years later, Woodward and Bernstein  are still in shock and awe of what they heard on the Nixon tapes.

Vituperation, harm to political adversaries, the Vietnam war, the Watergate break-in.Throughout all, nary a word about what was good for the country. 

Nothing...Nil ...Nada ...Zilch...Zero ...not a squeak. 

Not from the President ,nor the men around him, was the good of the country ever a concern.

Decisions to keep the war going in Vietnam caused the deaths of twenty-four thousand American soldiers and untold numbers of Vietnamese men,women and children. 

It seems deaths of men, women and children of "the enemy" are not worth a head count. 

"Democracy is the worst system except for all the rest" is a quote attributed to Winston Churchill.

Or put another way, Democracy is little better than the rest.

Or another still, Democracy is only as good as individuals chosen in a given election. 

Populist is touted in the current presidential nomination race. As if it's valid.

All It means is repeating what the uneducated and uninformed, beloved if the belligerent billionaire, are thinking.  Or easier still in these modern times, reading social media comments  and bouncing them back like ping-pong balls. 

God help us...It's the millennium, another new word in the lexicon.

 "We want what we want. We will yell and scream and shout you down with obscenity and profanity and throw chairs at the podium,if we don't get it" 

It's hard to say which self-styled revolutionary, Sanders or Bully Boy Billionaire is taking lessons from which. 

It  certainly has nothing at all  to do with trust...security....or a justice for all. 

It  bears no resemblance to civility. 

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sanders' folk were throwing chairs and they now boo whenever the Democratic Party is mentioned. He seems to have lost control completely. A really rough ride ahead for everyone.

Anonymous said...


You've covered a lot of topics. Let me stick with the first. The CBC has screwed up its own numbers for decades so I'm going to ignore any that it proposes. "Ignorance is bliss" - especially when paid for by Canadian taxpayers.

Some reports state that lost oil production is costing the Canadian economy up to $70,000,000 per day. That's over $2 billion per month. That is not exactly negligible to the Canadian economy. And what about the cost of providing accommodation, food and essential services to the Fort McMurray evacuees? And on and on and on. This is an economic catastrophe and it's not over yet as fires continue to burn and spread north and south-east and the atmospheric smoke makes the Fort uninhabitable at the moment.

What very few have said is that climate change is at the root of these fires and as time goes by and the environment becomes warmer and in some areas drier this sort of event will come to be expected and they are not preventable.

I'm no longer interested in our town as its council appears to be mentally bankrupt, as someday will be the downtown core's commercial enterprises when they wonder why a new sidewalk didn't save them.

Anonymous said...

Another of Trumph's delegates has been picked up by the FBI.
This one for having a machine gun and child porn.
Fox and CNN are not mentioning it at all.

Anonymous said...

Sanders is reminiscent of Eugene McCarthy. He was the darling of the one hugely vocal pack of Democrats that ushered in Richard Nixon.
Ba very afraid,