Daily Musings Jan 31st.

So the word is out -- even RollingStone thought Marx had some good ideas. . .
It lays out 5 ways Marx was right -- I will not repeat them here but I will repeat the final paragraph:

Marx's moral critique of capitalism and his keen insights into its inner workings and historical context are still worth paying attention to. As Robert L. Heilbroner writes, "We turn to Marx, therefore, not because he is infallible, but because he is inescapable." Today, in a world of both unheard-of wealth and abject poverty, where the richest 85 people have more wealth than the poorest 3 billion, the famous cry, "Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains," has yet to lose its potency.

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It is a frightening expose of our modern world and a story about how far we have fallen and what kind of things make it to the realm of #firstworldproblems. . .   Babies ill from never eating anything except take out food and fast food,  According to this BBC documentary.    It comes from not having time to cook, to sit down and have family meals together.   I mean who has time?   With poverty wages becoming the norm, and people having to have two and three jobs to get by -- they also have to get poorer by not making food at home cause there is no time -- I only watched the intro to a bunch of families in this video and I suspect that they just blame the families,  but "the problem" I think  is a sign of what we have created.  Individuals are not solely (or maybe at all) responsible for the breakdown of families -- capitalism, as well as driving globalization, monopoly, low wages and unemployment, also atomized families ('cause individuals buy more) made us alienated and we are nuclear families or individuals and help is hard to come by. . .

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I have been carefully following and trying to support Canada Post and dis the Harper Gov't changes.   In this blog on Rabble,  David Bush writes about the way that we can support the postal workers and how we can help maintain Canada Post as a viable PUBLIC SERVICE -- 60% OF Canadians currently have home mail delivery and they want to keep it! 

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I am quoting here -   Kris McGrath - my FB friend from Saint John, NB who,  on posting the news release  about the fact that the the faculty at UNB had a tentative agreement,  posted the following,  and I thought it was worth repeating. 

Congratulations on a successful round of negotiations, restoration of balance and positive steps forward for all concerned. While we await a ratification vote, there will be well-deserved celebrations in many quarters, and activities in many classrooms!

Yet as happy as I am for AUNBT and all the folks at UNB, I'm reminded of an old Labour saying: *There are no victories, just new battles*. While AUNBT will be back to work, MAFA (Mount Allison Faculty Association) continues to walk the line, the Saint John 7 (CMG- Radio Free Saint John) remain embattled in an interminable action, and Workers at Labatts in St John's (NAPE- Support NL Labatts Workers on strike) continue their fight. Today CUPW workers across the country face an uncertain future, veterans and workers from veteran's affairs continue to struggle with government decisions to close office, and workers rights across this country remain under siege by government bills aimed at torpedoing collective bargaining. AUNBT has a tentative agreement and I couldn't be happier for them, but brothers and sisters- there is still so much for us to do!!!

“Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.”

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And Ken Georgetti - head of the Canadian Labour Congress -  wrote this article about the effect of corporate tax cuts in Canada.   In it, he details what those cuts were supposed to achieve and what has happened in the last twenty years.  Are we better off?  More employment?  More research and development?  More innovation?  increasing full time or living wage jobs?  The answer is no. The article gives you the numbers, I am just repeating the conclusions.

A Canadian Labour Congress research report shows that, due to lavish tax breaks, the largest of Canada's non-financial corporations had paid their entire share of taxes to all levels of government in 2012 by the end of January. We call that Corporate Tax Freedom Day. 

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 Good, family-supporting jobs are the key to Canada's economic success and corporate tax cuts aren't delivering. In fact, corporate tax cuts have delivered nothing, except windfall profits that haven't benefited the ordinary Canadians who paid for them.

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Corporate tax giveaways mean that the federal government has foregone billions of dollars in revenues. To pay for the tax breaks, Ottawa has borrowed billions of dollars and driven up the national debt. Now, the government has chosen to make big cuts to public services essential to Canadians in order to pay the bill for its tax giveaways.

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The Nova Scotia Barristers Society is holding a public consultation on the application from Trinity Western University to open a law school.  I think (though still investigating) that all provinces would have to agree to register their graduates or at least let them write the bar exams.  IN an effort to ensure fairness to all we need to ensure that law is not taught in an environment which by their own missions, values, and procedures isists athat all courses be taught keeping the bible as their highest authority and that Christian Values would over rule all others.  They call themselves fundamentalist Christians at that school and part of the statement of faith and Christian Covenant that they have to sign in order to enter the school says that they believe (and will act as if) marriage is only between a man and a woman and that they will not have sex outside of marriage -- therefore banning all gay marriage and in fact I understand that they are quite intolerant of "gays and lesbians" believing them to be outside of god's will and intent for humans.

The same thing happened when they opened a teacher's college and the supreme court said that they had to be allowed to do so.   So this may be all for naught - but they perhaps can stopped by having the NS bar refuse to register them if we put pressure on them.

Musings on Valentines Day but not about it.

Have a number of unrelated things to talk about but feeling like a blog post anyway. . .

First the Federal Cons who have today tabled  Investigating and Preventing Criminal Electronic Communications Act and to amend theCriminal Code and other Acts that will let the police (and maybe the government and/or its agencies) get information about your web identity and data about you WITHOUT A WARRANT.  What the hell is this?  As an excuse they are suggesting that if you have nothing to hide it won't affect you (where have I heard this before?   And in addition, yesterday the Minister Vic Toews suggested that if you oppose this act you must be some sort of pedophile/pornographer.   Sheesh . . .  Stand for Civil Liberties and stand  accused of heinous crimes.  Good article in the Globe and mail -- "Stand with Us or with the child Pornographers".

Or this article by John Ibbitson that asks - why  do the Cons supporters want the Long From Census and the Gun registry gone because they are such an invasion of privacy but want to allow such invasive surveillance of citizens on the internet?

You can sign a petition to oppose this bill and "stop online spying"  at: http://openmedia.ca/mp

Then of course we have the so-called "omnibus crime bill" - coming soon to a court near you.  We have a few mandatory sentences already though the new bill expands that -- so judges are bristling about losing their discretion based on the facts of the case, and one has refused to impose a minimum sentence. 

"An Ontario Superior Court judge has refused to impose a mandatory three-year sentence on a man caught with a loaded handgun, putting the courts on a collision course with the federal government’s belief in fixed sentences that provide judges with little discretion."

And from an article by Armine Yalnizyan -- CCPA Senior Economist -- in the Globe & Mail -- comes an analysis of corporate taxes and the issues it raises, along with the list of workers being attacked and asked to take less across the country:

Newly aggressive demands that workers give up income join the decades-old demands that governments give up revenue. The implicit deal is that lower taxes create more investment and competitive cost structures create more demand. Both supposedly create more (good-paying) jobs. Lower taxes, check. Lower payroll costs, check. More good-paying jobs here at home: Insert sound of crickets chirping.

In case that's not clear - the government reduces taxes for corporations so that they will invest in Canada and "create jobs" .  They also attack workers and collective agreements, and support private firms doing so,  so that there is a better "business climate" so that the companies will invest in Canada and "create jobs" but no matter how low the taxes, how educated and reliable and productive the workforce, even how profitable the company -- waddya' know - no jobs - just increasing shareholder profits - and in Canada lots of money flowing to parent corporations in the U.S. and other countries.

If new economic and political realities are not enough to bum you out on this Valentines Day , then think of the planet (not sure why I want you to be bummed out - just finding it hard to be optimistic myself this morning)  graphically - a reprise of the 1972 Big Blue marble photo was taken in January and NASA says:

It was also a good day because of the striking way it could demonstrate to us just how much the planet has changed in 40 years. As Jeff Masters, the web's most widely read meteorologist, explains, "The US and Canada are virtually snow-free and cloud-free, which is extremely rare for a January day. The lack of snow in the mountains of the Western US is particularly unusual. I doubt one could find a January day this cloud-free with so little snow on the ground throughout the entire satellite record, going back to the early 1960s."

We are in deep doo-doo. . . Lots of extreme weather data in the article on Al Jazeera quoted above and then this:

In the face of such data - statistics that you can duplicate for almost every region of the planet - you'd think we'd already be in an all-out effort to do something about climate change. Instead, we're witnessing an all-out effort to... deny there's a problem.

And so it goes. . . Have a great day.