Friday, May 29, 2009

Downtown dream Helpful ideas needed, gets closer to reality not political hysteria - Brantford Expositor - Ontario, CA

Downtown dream Helpful ideas needed, gets closer to reality not political hysteria - Brantford Expositor - Ontario, CA: "Downtown dream Helpful ideas needed, gets closer to reality not political hysteria
n point ofview"



worth reading PR

Friday, May 15, 2009

City staff told they can't delay - Brantford Expositor - Ontario, CA

City staff told they can't delay - Brantford Expositor - Ontario, CA: "City staff told they can't delay
Posted By MICHAEL-ALLAN MARION
Posted 2 hours ago


A city council group overseeing redevelopment on the decrepit south side of Colborne Street wants a plan ready to relocate tenants and demolish all buildings as soon as a $10.5-million bid to expropriate a stretch of 41 properties gets final approval.
The South Side of Colborne Task Force authorized a senior staff team on Thursday to prepare a step-by-step procedure for expropriation. The task force wants direction for administrators and council on how various departments are supposed to assist in the relocation of businesses and tenants living in the mostly rundown buildings. And it wants a detailed plan ready to carry out the demolition."


"A action plan would be a good thing in this massive undertaking" Pr

It is time to stop the chaos on council

It is time to stop the chaos on council


Who really spammed the Brantford taxpayers this week ? Levac/Charest where not allowed to speak due to righteous council decorum.


So is Brantford open for business or not?


You would think that if our senior public representative ie  MPP Levac- a channel of our funds at Queens park and a developer /major taxpayer of major land holdings wish to present something to council in public (not behind closed doors) that the councillors would give them the courtesy to be heard? What reality or world are they, our councillors,  living in ? It should be about creating real jobs, a viable new tax base   not talking about it,studying it - or spending more of our tax money in behind closed door pet schemes or paying more money to their friends,or people that they are supposed to lead, control or direct.


They could not spare 20 minutes to listen to a future big picture solution. Why not? - Well the integrity report and the juicy Carpenter Callahan soap opera was more interesting of course. Even then councillors could not listen and follow the basic recommendations of the independent commissioner. Could penalizing their own council members for bad or inappropriate conduct set a terrible potential accountability precedent ? Is contempt of impartial independent commissioner findings   permitted? Stay tuned to find out as the drama with our "righteous council " unfolds.  Sad -thankfully  an election is coming soon . Maybe some professionalism , public ward representation not special interest representation ,common sense and financial sanity can then be re-established

S.Holle
--

Back to Eden communities
Sunridge -261 Oakhill Drive, Brantford
New Beginnings -23 Richards Ridgetown

backtoeden.ontario@gmail.com
www.backtoeden.bravehost.com
"Building elder peer communities that are cozy,caring and comfortable" -quality 24/7 care

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Summary or lessons learned from Gladwell's David beats Goliath by S Holle

Gladwell's David beats Goliath is a excellent review of a winning strategy for the underdogs or the David's of the world. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/11/090511fa_fact_gladwell?

My summary and key lessons learned are as follows

Leadership stance and deportment is important. "He would speak calmly and softly, and convince the players of the wisdom of his approach with appeals to reason and common sense".

Winning is not about egos and playing conventionally were the opponent has all advantages. Why, then, did weak teams play in a way that made it easy for good teams to do the very things that made them so good?

  • When underdogs choose not to play by Goliath’s rules, they win,Arreguín-Toft concluded, “even when everything we think we know about power says they shouldn’t.

The political scientist Ivan Arreguín-Toft recently looked at every war fought in the past two hundred years between strong and weak combatants. The Goliaths, he found, won in 71.5 per cent of the cases. That is a remarkable fact.

Arreguín-Toft was analyzing conflicts in which one side was at least ten times as powerful—in terms of armed might and population—as its opponent, and even in those lopsided contests the underdog won almost a third of the time.

When an underdog fought like David, he usually won. But most of the time underdogs didn’t fight like David. Of the two hundred and two lopsided conflicts in Arreguín-Toft’s database, the underdog chose to go toe to toe with Goliath the conventional way a hundred and fifty-two times—and lost a hundred and nineteen times. In 1809, the Peruvians fought the Spanish straight up and lost; in 1816, the Georgians fought the Russians straight up and lost; in 1817, the Pindaris fought the British straight up and lost; in the Kandyan rebellion of 1817, the Sri Lankans fought the British straight up and lost; in 1823, the Burmese chose to fight the British straight up and lost. The list of failures was endless. In the nineteen-forties, the Communist insurgency in Vietnam bedevilled the French until, in 1951,the Viet Minh strategist Vo Nguyen Giap switched to conventionalwarfare—and promptly suffered a series of defeats. George Washington did the same in the American Revolution, abandoning the guerrilla tactics that had served the colonists so well in the conflict’s early stages. “As quickly as he could,”William Polk writes in “Violent Politics,” a history of unconventional warfare, Washington “devoted his energies to creating a British-type army, the Continental Line. As a result, he was defeated time after time and almost lost the war.”

Winning Strategy,tactics and tips for the underdogs, change agents or idea insurgents

DAVIDS

Play the whole field and use the rules unconventionally to your advantage , “he should wage war over the broadest territory possible”. Lawrence of Arabia

  • Attack the Turks (Goliaths} where they were or are weak

  • Understand your resources and peopleOur cards were speed and time, not hitting power,” Lawrence wrote. “Our largest available resources were the tribesmen, men quite unused to formal warfare, whose assets were movement, endurance, individual intelligence, knowledge of the country, courage.

  • Effort wins over skill. We tell ourselves that skill is the precious resource and effort is the commodity. It’s the other way around. “Effort can trump ability—legs, in Saxe’s formulation, can overpower arms—because relentless effort is in fact something rarer than the ability to engage in some finely tuned act of motor coordination.”

  • Try harderright attitude teach them skills in that short period of time, and so all we did was make sure they were fit and had some basic understanding of the game.

  • That’s why attitude plays such a big role in this, because you’re going to get tired.” He turned to Craig. “What was our cheer again?”The two men thought for a moment, then shouted out happily, in unison, “One, two, three, ATTITUDE!”

  • Operate in real time not lag time and win through endurance

    Insurgents,though, operate in real time. Lawrence hit the Turks, in that stretch in the spring of 1917, nearly every day, because he knew that the more he accelerated the pace of combat the more the war became a battle of endurance—and endurance battles favors the insurgent. “And it happened as the Philistine arose and was drawing near David that David hastened and ran out from the lines toward the Philistine,” the Bible says. “And he reached his hand into the pouch and took from there a stone and slung it and struck the Philistine in his forehead.” The second sentence—the slingshot part—is what made David famous. But the first sentence matters just as much. David broke the rhythm of the encounter. He speeded it up. “The sudden astonishment when David sprints forward must have frozen Goliath, making him a better target,”

    Goliaths

    Know their weakness and power and use it to your advantage

    • Staying power-The prospect of playing by David’s rules was too daunting. They would rather lose.

    • Contempt and arrogance -The price that the outsider pays for being so heedless of custom is, of course, the disapproval of the insider.Goliath does not simply dwarf David. He brings the full force of social convention against him; he has contempt for David.

    • Power levers and time -They will change the rules so that they can win.”It’s wrong to sink your own ships, they believed. And they were right. But let’s remember who made that rule: Goliath. And let’s remember why Goliath made that rule: when the world has to play on Goliath’s terms, Goliath wins.”

    • Poor mobility to act independently- Time lag, the batch universe with multi lines of authority and approvals means poor response times.

    • Engagement rules. They are regimented by their own insider rules. The other gamers were people steeped in military strategy and history.They were the sort who could tell you how Wellington had outfoxed Napoleon at Waterloo, or what exactly happened at Antietam. They had been raised on Dungeons and Dragons. They were insiders. Eurisko, on the other hand, knew nothing but the rule book. It had no common sense.”

    • Decision Lag Effect
      “Such people are powerfully invested in the notion of the Fed as a Solomonic body: that pause of five or eight weeks between economic adjustments seems central to the process of deliberation. This“deliberation”just prettifies the difficulties created by lag.

      How to win- that becomes the pivotal question?

      Historically David’s win through effort and when they follow their own rules of engagement , out do, overwhelm or overpower their opposition in unconventional ways. They have the mobility of action, staying power,and advantage in real time scenarios and can use Goliath weaknesses to their advantage.

      David can more then equalize and win in the playing field against Goliath if he plays by his own winning rules.


      S.Holle -a Goliath turned David through necessity


      Your comments, input and examples please. Sieg Holle


  • Carpenter should resign

    So what ? Having a loose cannon on council who is a proven divesive and unprincipled element reduces the effectiveness of council. Carpenter should resign . He has no integrity and that is now a proven fact. We need leaders not children handling our public affairs - PR

    Carpenter broke code, so what?
    Posted By MICHAEL-ALLAN MARION

    City Coun. James Calnan says he will "carry on and hope for the best" after colleagues declined to punish his wardmate for violations of the code of conduct identified in an integrity commissioners' report.

    "From my point of view all I ever asked for was an apology," Calnan said in an interview Monday after council voted to receive a report by commissioner Aida Gatfield.

    The London-based lawyer was appointed integrity commissioner to investigate a complaint by Calnan six months ago concerning an alleged pattern of behaviour by Carpenter toward him last year.

    In her report, Gatfield found that "on the balance of the probabilities" Carpenter violated sections of the city's municipal Code of Conduct with a series of coments concerning Calnan. The code prohibits "patronizing or condescending behaviour, written or verbal abuse or threats."

    She said council could formally reprimand Carpenter or suspend his council pay for up to 90 days, but she made no recommendation.

    Councillors chose to do neither. With almost no discussion, they voted to receive the report and release it to the public.


    They quickly adjourned the meeting and all, including Carpenter, left the room with only Calnan remaining with reporters.

    "In the absence of an apology from my wardmate, I'll just have to carry on and hope for the best," he told reporters.

    "It's very clear that I have had had a less than cordial relationship with my wardmate," Calnan p>He noted that he filed his complaint against Carpenter "as a last resort."

    Although no action is being taken, "we now have a report that has resulted in a change of behaviour," Calnan added.

    Carpenter declined to comment on the report or council's decision.

    Gatfield investigated a series of incidents and comments dating back to 1996. At the time, Calnan wasn't on council but he said the incidents displayed a pattern of unprofessional behaviour by Carpenter.

    In an interview with Gatfield, Calnan presented news clippings from an incident in 1996 in which it is alleged that Carpenter attacked a fellow councillor. She ruled that incident was so long ago that she considered it staledated.

    She also dismissed another incident during the 2003 election campaign involving a dispute over signage between Carpenter, then an incumbent, and Calnan as a candidate.

    But Gatfield ruled that more recent incidents in 2008 constituted breaches in sections of the code.

    During a Nov. 3 closed-door meeting about how council should deal with challenges from a Six Nations Confederacy organization called the Haudenosaunee Development Institute, Calnan said he advised his colleagues to refrain from engaging in divisive behaviour.

    He claimed Carpenter stated: "You are the divisive element on council," and added: "You shouldn't even be on this council."

    In his interview, Carpenter denied having called Calnan "divisive," or saying that his wardmate shouldn't be on council.

    But Gatfield cited testimony from some other councillors who recalled Carpenter making comments to Calnan about his fitness to sit on council.

    Carpenter did agree that he did call Calnan a "backstabber" in the press. That was when Calnan began breaking publicly from council's position on the native land claims dispute, and its policy to have Mayor Mike Hancock serve as the sole spokesman on such issues.

    Gatfield wrote that Carpenter agreed his comment was emotional and not respectful.

    The report cites testimony from other councilors, who stated that Carpenter treats them in the same manner, making personal attacks.

    In her conclusion, Gatfield said Carpenter's comments toward his wardmate were not justified, but found the context in which the comments were made to be a mitigating factor.

    "The First nations issue is an emotionally charged matter," she wrote. "Council had unanimously agreed to a course of action, which the complainant subsequently publicly rejected without prior notification to council."

    Although council appears to have put the complaint against Carpenter to bed, it is due to consider again in two weeks another report identifying Calnan as an information leak regarding an in-camera discussion about a document important to progress on the native land claims dispute.

    In an interview, Calnan noted that his complaint took six months to investigate, while the investigation into the leak began later and took less than half the time.

    He said he is still consulting legal counsel on his response.

    Reel life situation makes waves - Brantford Expositor - Ontario, CA

    Reel life situation makes waves - Brantford Expositor - Ontario, CA: "Reel life situation makes waves
    Posted By GREG WESTON

    Today's tour of federal absurdity takes us to Canada's rivers, streams and other rich fish habitats where the biggest environmental threat to aquatic life may well be the government agencies protecting it.
    In a damning report released yesterday, Canada's environmental watchdog chews out the federal fisheries department for all but leaving the nation's freshwater ecosystems up a creek without a protector.
    Environment Commissioner Scott Vaughan reported bluntly: 'We found that efforts to protect fish habitat have been inadequate.'"

    "A worthwhile assessment of the federal fisheries department, with a burn rate of 70 million , what does this department do other then fill its own pockets - who cares about our fish. Accountability is a joke here . PR"

    Monday, May 11, 2009

    know your rights -do your homework -useful resources


    Free Online Legal Advice That You Can Trust... In Plain English, Too

    Albin Renauer, JD
    LegalConsumer.com

    Many law-related Web sites offer little guidance beyond "call a lawyer" -- often because they actually are marketing tools for law firms. Others are written in hard-to-understand legalese. But a few sites do provide reliable, understandable legal information for laypeople. Top sites now...

    GENERAL LEGAL TOPICS

    Lawyers.com. From the publishers of the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory, this site offers solid legal guidance on a wide range of topics, including civil rights, consumer protection, criminal law, employment, family law, immigration, malpractice, personal injury, real estate and Social Security. You can post specific legal questions on the site's message board, and they will be answered by practicing lawyers. You also can search for a lawyer in your area.

    Other sites that provide solid information in plain English on a wide range of legal topics...

    Public.FindLaw.com. The most heavily visited legal-information Web site, FindLaw covers matters ranging from accidents and divorce to real estate and taxes.

    Nolo.com. Nolo is the nation's leading publisher of plain-English law books, and it offers information online for free.

    STATE LAWS

    If you need to learn about a law specific to your state, check your state government's Web site. Most can be found at "www." followed by the state's postal abbreviation, then ".gov." Example: www.ny.gov for New York. Or type your state's name followed by "government Web site" into an Internet search engine, such as Google.

    Most state sites have a section related to law, the courts or the judiciary.

    If you can't find what you need, try typing your state's name and "laws" or "attorney general" into a search engine -- many attorneys general provide information for consumers online.

    You also can enter the state's name plus key words related to the specific topic, such as "small-claims court" or "consumer protection."

    DEBTOR'S RIGHTS AND BANKRUPTCY LAW

    Bankruptcy in Brief. This Web site, developed by Moran Law Group based in Mountain View, California, provides a road map for the bankruptcy process. www.moranlaw.net.

    LegalConsumer.com. My site offers information on bankruptcy -- how to file, links to federal forms, state bankruptcy exemption laws and a free "means-test" calculator to determine eligibility.

    ELDER LAW AND ESTATE PLANNING

    The American Bar Association site has a section on wills, probate and trusts that offers a good, if somewhat lawyerly, outline of estate-planning law. www.abanet.org/rppt/public/home.html.

    ElderLawAnswers.com. Information about legal issues facing seniors, including Medicare, long-term-care insurance, Social Security, disability planning and more, provided by a nationwide network of elder-law attorneys.

    The Estate Planning Links Web site has links to articles and Web sites related to estate planning. www.estateplanninglinks.com.

    MSN MoneyCentral's Retirement and Wills page offers hundreds of articles related to estate planning. moneycentral.msn.com/retire/home.asp.


    Have a good day, be well and take care

    a simple natural lifestyle and a chuckle a day keeps the doctor away'

    - additional interactive resources are at our Back to Eden site-







    Internet Explorer 8 makes surfing easier. Get it now!

    Friday, May 08, 2009

    Child Care Choice for Mother's Day - Frontier Online

    "Choice is always the perfect gift" pr


    The Perfect Gift for Mother's Day: Child Care Choice

    Provincial child care policies vary widely across the Prairies. In particular, Saskatchewan and Manitoba actively discourage for-profit child care centres by denying them access to government subsidies and grants. Alberta treats both for-profit and non-profit centres equally. Because of these policies, Saskatchewan has just one commercial daycare in the entire province. Only five percent of the child care centres in Manitoba are for-profit. Alberta has a majority of for-profit centres. Saskatchewan also has the lowest level of child care coverage in the country. Manitoba and Alberta are both near the national average. Evidence suggests that Alberta has been better able to meet rising demand for new child care spaces than either Saskatchewan or Manitoba. Further evidence suggests that Alberta is more efficient in turning government funding into new daycare spaces. Alberta is able to create twice as many spots per $1,000 in government expenditure than Manitoba, and three-times as many spots as Saskatchewan.

    Media Release for Little Crèche on the Prairies - a new Policy Series Paper by Research Associate Peter Shawn Taylor

    Wednesday, May 06, 2009

    Fwd: Food for thought - see the Austrian model on government intervention



    Can you spend your way out of a depression ? Is the new deal (Government pump priming) really a bad deal? This is a provocative and apparent politically incorrect view of lessons that could or should be learned from the past   Sieg

    If Keynesian and monetarist theories cannot cope with the historical evidence, does the Austrian theory fare better? In the Austrian view, depressions come about because expansion of bank credit results in malinvestments. Because these need to be liquidated, the government should follow a "do nothing" policy that allows the market to return to normal conditions. When this policy was followed, recovery from depression took no more than a few years, in the 1873 depression, in contrast to the total failure to recover during the New Deal. The results were even better in the 1920–1921 depression, when both Wilson and Harding slashed government spending: "the 1920–1921 depression was so short-lived that most Americans today are unaware of its existence." (p. 71)

    Did FDR Make the Depression Great?

    Mises Daily by | Posted on 5/5/2009 12:00:00 AM

    [The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal. By Robert P. Murphy. Regnery, 2009. 199 pages.]

    Robert Murphy demonstrates in this excellent book a penetrating ability to explain the essence of fallacious economic doctrines. As he notes, three theories offer competing explanations of the Great Depression: the Keynesian account, which stresses a lack of aggregate demand; Milton Friedman's monetarism, which ascribes the severity of the early years of the Depression to a drastic cut in the money supply by the Fed; and, of course, the Austrian theory that Murphy himself favors.

    Herbert Hoover, though not under Keynes's influence, defended a version of the first theory. If wages were not kept high, purchasing power would be insufficient to restore prosperity. Accordingly, Hoover encouraged businesses to refrain from wage cuts.

    Murphy quickly exposes the fallacy of this view:

    High wages do not cause prosperity, they are rather an indication of prosperity. Ultimately, it doesn't matter how many green pieces of paper employers hand out to workers. Unless workers first physically produced the goods (and services), there will be nothing on the store shelves for them to buy when they attempt to spend their big fat paychecks. (p. 35, emphasis in original)

    But, it may be countered, is not the level of production and employment determined by aggregate demand? Granted that prosperity requires real goods, will not businessmen decide how much to produce based on what they think they will be able to sell? If so, is not the problem in a depression that, forecasting that future demand will be low, they cut back production?

    Murphy once more locates the fundamental fallacy. The problem in a depression is not that production is in general too low; it is rather that resources have not been put to their best uses and need to be shifted:

    By focusing on aggregate monetary conditions such as "total wage payments," Hoover completely overlooked the fact that real, physical resources had to be rearranged in order to correct the imbalances in the economy. It wasn't that "business" was producing too much, but rather that some sectors were producing too much, while other sectors were producing too little, in light of the economy's supplies of resources, the skills and desires of its workers, and the tastes of its consumers. (p. 37)

    Once more, Murphy holds that we need to concentrate on the physical goods rather than on total monetary demand.

    The only way to rectify the situation — to transform the economy into a sustainable configuration — was to shuffle workers and resources. Some enterprises had to be shut down immediately, releasing their workers and freeing up the raw materials they would have consumed had they remained in business… But in a market economy, workers are free to choose their occupations, and the owners of raw materials can sell their property to whomever they desire. Yet with that freedom comes the unfortunate necessity of prolonged spells of unemployment and "idle resources," when the workers and raw materials are searching for a new home in the complex economy. (pp. 37–8)

    Murphy dispatches the monetarist view with similar directness and ease. Here, if anything, his remarks are of even more vital significance, since Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke firmly embraces the monetarist account of the Great Depression.

    He finds a simple way to illustrate the fallacy of the mainstream analysis of deflation. According to this view, if people anticipate falling prices, they will refrain from spending. Because they expect prices to fall, they think that that will do better to consume later. But this drop in consumption causes a further price fall, and the whole cycle repeats. Prices may spiral uncontrollably downward.

    Murphy responds in this way:

    One could construct an analogous argument for the computer industry, in which the government passes regulation to slow down improvements in operating systems and processing speed. After all, how can computer manufacturers possibly remain viable if consumers are always waiting for a faster model to become available? … The solution to this paradox, of course, is that consumers do decide to bite the bullet and buy a computer, knowing full well that they would be able to buy the same performance for less money, if they were willing to wait… (There's no point in holding out for lower prices but never actually buying!) (pp. 68–9)

    Murphy's ingenious response can also be applied to combat George Akerlof's famous lemons model of the used-car market. Akerlof argued that because of asymmetric information, owners of good used cars would tend to be driven from the market. But, contrary to what his model suggests, good used cars do get sold. In like fashion to Murphy, one can say that just because owners of good cars may not be able to obtain as high a price as they would like, it does not follow that they will refuse to sell at all.

    It might be helpful to add the "real balance effect" to Murphy's account. As prices fall, the value of money rises. People's demand to hold money can then be satisfied with less money. This in part explains why people will eventually spend, even when they expect prices to continue to fall.

    Keynesians will object that even if spending does eventually revive, the process takes too long. People cannot be expected to wait until the market rights itself. But this is to ignore Murphy's vital point. The process of adjustment is just what is needed: a depression is exactly a situation in which bad investments are liquidated and resources moved elsewhere.

    Murphy uncovers another flaw in the conventional assault on deflation. Money that is not spent need not be hoarded, as the opponents of deflation implicitly assume:

    Many analysts who are terrified of deflation stress that in an environment of falling prices, cash stuffed under the mattress earns a positive return. This observation is certainly true, but nonetheless cash lent out earns an even greater return. Falling prices, then, encourage consumers to devote more of their income to savings, which in turn lowers interest rates and allows businesses to borrow and invest more. (p. 69)

    As the author abundantly shows, historical evidence strikes decisive blows against both the Keynesian and monetarist theories. On the Keynesian account, increased spending, by reviving aggregate demand, will restore good times. If so, why did Hoover and Roosevelt's massive spending leave America mired in depression? To call Hoover a big spender may surprise many readers, but Murphy notes that there is no room for doubt:

    Hoover's response to the stock market crash was an enormous increase in government spending, with the budget exploding by 42 percent over his first two years … it is true that Hoover blinked and tried to tame the unprecedented (at the time) peacetime deficits. But this was only after the "stimulus" approach failed horribly. (p. 48)

    Keynesians will reply that government spending should have been even greater; but this is to add an epicycle to shore up a failed theory.

    Murphy turns the tables on Milton Friedman, who emphasized statistical evidence, by showing that monetarism fails to explain the data.

    So we see that immediately following the stock market crash, the Fed began flooding the market with liquidity and in fact brought its rates down to record lows…. If the ostensible cause of the Great Depression — the one factor that set it apart from all previous depressions — was the Fed's unwillingness to provide sufficient liquidity, then how could it possibly be that the Fed's record rate cuts proved inadequate to solve "the problem?" (pp. 76–7)

    Even if this is true, though, could not Friedman still say that the massive decline in the money supply in the early 1930s exacerbated the severity of the depression? Murphy, following Murray Rothbard, denies this:

    Between 1839 and 1843 the money supply fell by 34 percent and wholesale prices fell by 42 percent. If the monetarists are right, and it was the Fed's refusal to counteract the falling money supply in the early 1930s that gave us the Great Depression, then the 1839–1843 period should have been devastating. Yet Murray Rothbard (relying on Peter Temin's historical research) reports otherwise. (p. 71)

    If Keynesian and monetarist theories cannot cope with the historical evidence, does the Austrian theory fare better? In the Austrian view, depressions come about because expansion of bank credit results in malinvestments. Because these need to be liquidated, the government should follow a "do nothing" policy that allows the market to return to normal conditions. When this policy was followed, recovery from depression took no more than a few years, in the 1873 depression, in contrast to the total failure to recover during the New Deal. The results were even better in the 1920–1921 depression, when both Wilson and Harding slashed government spending: "the 1920–1921 depression was so short-lived that most Americans today are unaware of its existence." (p. 71)

    Murphy treats in thorough fashion the multifarious New Deal measures and their manifest failures. I shall confine myself to noting his searing condemnation of Roosevelt's gold policy.

    Ordering the public to turn over its gold — under penalty of a $10,000 fine and up to ten years in prison — was a clear-cut robbery.… Yet insidious as the explicit confiscation was, the cancellation of gold clauses in contracts was in a way a more fundamental violation of property rights … the private sector had no choice but to use unbacked green pieces of paper as the foundations of its transactions. Americans were now entirely at the mercy of those controlling the printing press. (pp. 128–29)

    Murphy carries forward his discussion to the World War II period. Here he has been greatly influenced by Robert Higgs's challenge to the conventional view that the war ended the Depression. (He also makes excellent use of Higgs's "regime uncertainty" in his account of New Deal failure.) He contends that the follies of central planning extend to the conduct of war. Private enterprise could have handled production of military goods better than controls actually did.

    It is a simple fact of engineering that the enormous production of tanks, airplanes, and other wartime goods in the 1940s necessitated a sharp curtailment in civilian consumption. Even so, the government did not need to impose direct rationing and other controls on the home front. Instead, the government could have simply raised taxes and issued new bonds in order to purchase its desired products from military contractors and other firms… Individual businesses, seeking only to maximize profit, would have been led by an Invisible Hand to retool away from civilian production and cater instead to the overall war effort. (pp. 158–59).

    Murphy's argument recalls Mises's suggestion that the French would have fared much better in the war had they relied on private firms to procure armaments.[1]

    In these days of massive government bailouts and intervention, the lessons of the Great Depression and New Deal have much more than historical significance. Murphy concludes on a melancholy note:

    President Obama's stimulus package and other "remedies" will not cure our economic woes any more than the New Deal cured the Great Depression. The real question is whether Barack Obama's New Deal, building on the old one, will finally sink the American economy into the sands. (p. 177).

    If enough people read Murphy's hard-hitting book, we can strangle in its cradle Obama's prescription for economic disaster.

    David Gordon covers new books in economics, politics, philosophy, and law for The Mises Review, the quarterly review of literature in the social sciences, published since 1995 by the Mises Institute. He is author of The Essential Rothbard, available in the Mises Store. Send him mail. See his article archives. Comment on the blog.

    You can subscribe to future articles by this author via this RSS feed.


    --


    backtoeden.ontario@gmail.com
    www.backtoeden.bravehost.com
    "Building elder peer communities that are cozy,caring and comfortable" -quality 24/7 care

    "Building elder peer communities that are cozy,caring and comfortable" -quality 24/7 care

    land claims and just more Bull


    What a unprofessional waste of resources - score 0 for the taxpayers, 0 for the Indians, and millions for the lawyers running this charade PR

    "It's a witch hunt" Calnan says he did not leak confidential information
    Posted By Michael-Allan Marion Expositor Staff Posted 8 hours ago


    City Coun. James Calnan says those branding him as an information leaker are part of a "witch hunt" to make him a scapegoat for a failed strategy to deal with the fallout of unresolved native land claim issues.

    "It's a witch hunt. You decide who the witch is and burn him," Calnan, accompanied by peace advocate Jan Vandersteldt, said Tuesday in a hastily called news conference at the foot of the monument to Joseph Brant in Victoria Park.

    He said opponents who are after him would rather attack him with an investigation into an alleged leak from a closed-door council meeting more than two months ago than admit that an expensive legal fight by the city to obtain an injunction against Six Nations activists is doomed to failure.

    In the news conference, Calnan related his anger over attacks against him from council colleagues and others as the dispute over land claims and native protests drags on.

    "I've been taking kicks on this for the last year," he said of his opposition to the "collective idiocy" behind the city's confrontational position and its marginalization of him.

    "I'm tired of this bullshit."

    Monday, May 04, 2009

    Ontario's New tax hike

    Nothing is as it seems -doing something about it counts -enough is enough   
    pass it on- awareness is the beginning of real accountability 

      You are about to become the victim of the largest tax hike in our 
            history. How will this affect you? Let?s start with just a few things
            that are to be charged the extra 8% and see if it will affect you or
            your family.


    -----
     Ontario's new tax hike


            As a concerned taxpayer I feel it is important to have you all
            understand what the new HST or "blended tax?"means to Ontarians. It
            amazes me that this announcement has slipped by without a ripple, and
            yet when I tell people about the impact to them they are all shocked.

            The intended purpose is to blend the GST and the PST into one tax.This
            will cut down the paperwork burden for Ontario businesses and, in
            theory, lessen staff by merging both departments. This could be a noble
            attempt to cut costs. There is just one problem. Rather than just
            blending the products and services that now charge both taxes, the
            provincial government has decided that it will apply this new tax to
            almost all goods and services that you do not pay PST on now!

            You are about to become the victim of the largest tax hike in our 
            history. How will this affect you? Let?s start with just a few things
            that are to be charged the extra 8% and see if it will affect you or
            your family.

            Gasoline
            Home heating fuel
            Water
            Hydro
            Used cars
            Government and city services
            Any service you now use for your home or business such as repairs,
            professional services of any kind, construction materials etc.
            
            These are just a few.

            See this article about how the 1000.00 BRIBE they are offering will not
            even cover ½ of the increased cost to the average family. This tax hits
            Ontarians hard, but ESPECIALLY the low income ones! They will have an 8%
            increase in everyday life, and yet you will not see their benefits or
            salaries rise.

            http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/269917


            Actually almost everything currently without PST in your life except
            children's clothing, prescriptions, diapers, and feminine hygiene
            products will now cost you 8% more. Oh and here is a kicker. The fuel
            tax will slide with the increasing cost of that fuel.

            Our premier is counting on taxpayers to do what they always do when a
            new tax is added. Nothing! It is very important that you start to
            research and discuss this with your friends and family. It is not too
            late to stop this if you are willing to do something as send an email to
            the premier asking him either to a) stop the tax grab all together or b)
            do what was originally intended and blend the tax on the products that
            now have both taxes and not to extend the new tax to everything else. If
            you just sit there remember you lose the right to complain about taxes
            ever again. Get UP and start telling everyone about this injustice and
            we can stop this today. Don't think your email will not count. Most MP's
            get 10 emails, they consider it a catastrophe!

            Send your objection to:


            www.premier.gov.on.ca/feedback/feedback.asp
            <http://www.premier.gov.on.ca/feedback/feedback.asp


    Today, smack dab in the middle of a tsunami of horrible economic news, the Ontario provincial Liberal government has introduced what many will see as a massive tax grab, just when we all can least afford it.
    On Canada Day, July 1st, 2010, Ontarians can not only celebrate the birth of their nation, they can also celebrate a new harmonized sales tax system that will pump up the coffers of our provincial government and empty out the pockets of taxpayers. 

    But don't worry people ... we have elected a compassionate and magnanimous crew down at Queen's Park. They've announced that over a two year period, you'll be receiving three rebate cheques that will total $1,000 as a hand up from your elected officials to help offset the costs you "might" incur due to the sales tax harmonization. 

    What, pray tell, might those extra costs that you "might" incur be on? That KFC Wrapper you pick up for lunch; your morning cup 'o joe at Timmy's; that newspaper you read; that vet bill you willingly pay for your beloved pet; your prescription drugs; the gas you put in your car; the oil or gas you have delivered to your home to keep you and your family warm; etc. etc. 

    $166 a year to drink coffee and eat snacks at work; 
    $156 a year to drive your car; 
    $72 a year extra to heat your home; 
    $55 a year to get your hair cut, go out and see a movie and send your clothes to the cleaners; 
    $33 a year to read The Star; 
    $50 a year to to prevent pregnancy (The Pill); 

    These are but a few that I've worked out as a starting point. As you can see, in year 1, we're already over $500 (remember the bribe the Liberals are giving us, that $1,000 rebate cheque spread over two years). As I said, this is only just a starting point and I've used very conservative figures like $20 a month for haircuts, $20 a month for dry cleaning and $10 a month for movies. 

    Thinking about selling your home? Add about $2,000 to your closing costs. 

    Thinking about buying a new one? In 2008, the Toronto Real Estate Board said that the average house price was about $404,000. If you were thinking about buying a newly built home for about that much (by the way, best of luck finding one for that price!) you would pay an additional $8,000 in taxes. If you had the gall to up the ante and buy a brand spanking new home for $500,000, instead of it costing you $500K that brand new home would cost you $540,000. In other words, you'd have to pay the full 8% PST, or an additional $40,000. 

    So tell me, why aren't you bowing down and scrapping your forehead off the floor at the feet of Dalton McGuinty et al thanking them so much for that extra $1,000 rebate cheque (which, by the way also is only for the first two years after implementation, after that its all gravy for the government)? I know my forehead will be clean, and come Oct. 2011 when the next provincial government election happens, I will remember this and remind as many other Ontario voters as I can, thank you very much.


    This opinion article was written by an independent writer. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not necessarily intended to reflect those of DigitalJournal.com
    :

    Friday, May 01, 2009

    Councillors zero in on '10 budget

    CITY HALL: Cap on spending, salary hikes proposed
    Posted By MICHAEL-ALLAN MARION, EXPOSITOR STAFF

    City councillors say they must act now to protect taxpayers through a deepening recession by ordering staff to bring in a 2010 budget with no tax increase.

    They are also giving administrators marching orders to win collective agreements from unions that carry no wage increases throughout the life of any contract.

    Union leaders have been told that negotiations about to begin have been postponed until council has its strategy in place.

    Councillors agreed on those directives Thursday evening while they huddled with senior staff in a special finance committee session in the public library, and plotted a strategy to combat recessionary pressures on next year's budget.

    As they alternated between open and closed-door sessions, several councillors said they are under no illusions that it will be tough to keep the lid on a cauldron of public demands that normally increase budgets.

    They also conceded they have an enormous task on their hands to persuade public sector unions to fall in line on salaries.

    "This should not be seen as a punitive measure," said Mayor Mike Hancock, anticipating an early angry response from the unions to council's strategy.

    Good start to the process lets help them with their resolve Pr