Too Logical For California

The state of California, in the throes of bankruptcy and being strangled by a crushing $26.3 billion deficit, has a way to save $640 million per year. A group of Calfornia voters is considering a campaign to cut welfare payments off for U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants. Currently, children of illegal immigrants are eligible for welfare because they are, technically, U.S. citizens. By ridding them from the rolls through a state law, they could make a small dent in that massive deficit:

California has roughly 2.7 million illegal residents, according to an April 2009 report from the authoritative Pew Hispanic Center. That accounts for about 7 percent of the state’s population.

State officials estimate that they add between $4 billion and $6 billion in costs, primarily for prisons and jails, schools and emergency rooms.

Beyond those services, the illegal population adds to the overall cost of other things ranging from police and fire protection to highway maintenance and libraries.

Another choice, perhaps too logical to make, would be to deport these illegal aliens, thereby savings upwards of a third of the current deficit shortfall the state faces. Another $180 million could be currently saved by taking the estimated 19,000 illegal inmates incarcerated in California, and transfer them to federal custody for deportation.

California has a massive illegal alien problem, and has even received three extra seats in the House of Representatives it would not have received otherwise because the U.S. census apportions representation based on population, not legal residence.

Conservatives Abandon Final Fiscal Scruple?

Photo: Globe and Mail

If there is any truth to the term “incrementalism” pertaining to the theory of the Conservatives gaining voter trust and respect in order to earn a majority mandate, it is in their incremental abandonment of principle for expediency. In last year’s October election, the incumbent Conservative government ran on a rather ill-defined platform which, nevertheless, insisted it would not alter it’s fiscal agenda to maintain Canada’s reputation as one of balanced budgets. In September of 2008, Stephen Harper is quoted as saying:

“If you look at the tens of billions of dollars of announcements they are making, the only way these can be financed are not simply through big increases in taxes that they’re already promising — carbon taxes, GST — but it would mean deficits and large deficits, big deficits.”

Then as close to the election as October 13, one day before the election, the Prime Minister was unequivocal about staying true to fiscal conservatism:

“Let me perfectly clear. A Conservative government will not be raising taxes… we will not cancel planned tax reductions for business. We will not be running a deficit. We will be keeping spending within our means,” he declared in a campaign speech in Toronto.

“There’s no way the prime minister should start panicking during a stock market fall, or should start making up a new economic policy in the middle of a campaign.”

Incredibly, less than a month after the election run on a premise that it was the Conservative Party of Canada that was the only candidate that would not run on a deficit, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty had changed his tone considerably. On November 22, the first devastating shock, as Mr.Harper announced at APEC that a budget deficit was now “essential” if economic stimulus would be required for the downturn. This was followed up shortly after with the infamous economic update that led to a constitutional crisis and the prorogation of Parliament.

Then, in the new year Parliament reconvened, with the Conservatives officially committing to budget deficits of a “temporary” nature. In a stimulus budget that promised deficits of $86 billion over five years, John Ivison of the National Post wrote a comparison of Stephen Harper to former deficit Premier of Ontario Bob Rae, with Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page at the time suggesting there was a “significant risk” the federal budget would not return to surplus in 2013-14.

Fast-forward to July of 2009, and we’re at a new threshold of fiscal uncertainty based on the statements of the current government. The Prime Minister acknowledged while at the G8 summit in Italy that deficits run by the government could extend beyond the “temporary” five years if the recession is prolonged, or our recovery is weaker than expected. When pressed on whether he would take any action to correct the fiscal deficits, he iterated in what can only be described as an abandonment of all fiscal principle, that he would not either raise taxes or cut spending, but stay the course:

“Let me be very clear on this: we will allow the deficit to persist if necessary,” he said. “We will not, in order to meet some timetable, start raising taxes and cutting programs. That’s a very dumb policy.”

What we have here is an admission by our Prime Minister that he will do nothing to rock the boat, to make the difficult decisions necessary to arrive at a balanced budget, to either cut the exorbitant and wasteful spending of this government, or face the risk of another election for his choices. The theory of incrementalism has been exposed as being nothing more than supplanting the Liberal party with the Conservatives as the big spending, big government party of Canada. Even as Canadians witness yet another flip-flop on fiscally conservative principle, perhaps the last one, they have lost confidence that this government can meet the expectations put forth in their own prognostications. Canadians say they want the government to cut spending in order to meet budget commitments, but this is a government that will not risk the grasp they have on whatever ineffective and useless mandate they have in Ottawa. As our Prime Minister has so tactfully put it, “we don’t believe there’s any need to do a systemic cutting of programs.”

“That’s a very dumb policy.”

BNP Nick Griffin Is A Symptom, Not The Disease

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For many people, the election of British National Party leader Nick Griffin to European Parliament, signifies a frightening reemergence of white supremacist and nationalist policies which many say are reminiscent of the rise of fascism in the early parts of the last century. But that doesn’t necessarily ring true, and even those political parties in Europe that are recognized as the “far right” have had to be pragmatic in order to gain fringe appeal in the mainstream vote. Nick Griffin says that a white United Kingdom isn’t possible, nor desirable, but that it should be protecting it’s values and culture from the “terribly unstable multicultural experiment”.

Nick Griffin and the BNP party, as with Vlaams Belang in Holland, is a symptom of a larger problem than some kind of rising tide of racism and white supremacism. Such movements do exist, but the reason these parties have found votes can be found in direct proportion to the backlash against failed multicultural policies that has seen ancient cultures in Europe rapidly changed by immigration. If we look at Nationalist parties as a positive aspect of democracy, rather than a threat to it, it’s possible to take action to circumvent the need for these parties to grow in strength and popularity. These parties exist because nothing is being done in Europe to contain the problem of illegal immigration, and the domestic liberal policies that allow for the “ghettoized” neighbourhoods of ethnic enclaves, such as the North African Muslims in Great Britain and France.

Before it becomes necessary to “sink boats” of illegal immigrants trying to reach the shores of Europe, policies should be created in Europe that make it almost impossible to stay there illegally. This would make it more of an incentive to stay in North Africa, knowing that they wouldn’t be able to stay in Europe undetected, without being rounded up and deported. It isn’t a question of whether these kinds of policies should be enacted, but when, if Europe wants to avoid the inevitable backswing to Nationalist parties. Suppressing and ignoring these groups is to ignore a symptom of the problem that exists.

The ethnic tensions between Muslims and the host culture in many European nations has led to the kind of people like Nick Griffin, who says that there is “no place in Europe for Islam”. He disturbingly refers to Islam as a cancer that needs to be removed from Europe by chemotherapy, an analogy borrowed from Vlaams Belang, which has since disowned the comment. When asked in an interview about what “chemotherapy” entailed, Mr.Griffin was decidedly vague. Rather than explain exactly how the cleansing would take place, he reiterated the problem facing Britain with Islam.

If there’s a reason that Nationalist parties have been compared to the fascists of the previous century, it is due to comments like these. When fascism became popular in Northwestern Europe in the twenties and thirties, it was owing to the blame of immigrant groups and the Jews, and while the specifics on how this problem could be ameliorated was always vague, the consequences of those beliefs are a matter of tragic history. The path to mitigating the growth of the BNP and other groups of their nature is in adopting policies that recognize the underlying truths of their movements: that multiculturalism is a failed experiment borne out of the social policies of liberals in the latter part of the twentieth century, and that citizens in Europe are feeling increasingly threatened by what they see as invasive cultural elements that are changing not only their nation, but how they identify themselves as a people.

Canadian David Brings Goliath Down With Viral Video

Sometimes you just have to crack a smile when you hear about the little guy winning for once, and Dave Carroll’s small victory over United Airlines is just such an occasion. The Eastern Canadian singer had his Taylor-made guitar damaged by tarmac baggage handlers, but the airline refused him compensation for the 9 months that he pursued it. He even tried to compromise in the end, asking for airline vouchers for the $1,200 cost of repairs to his instrument, but they again refused. It then prompted Dave to write and produce a “revenge” song on United Airlines, which has proven fantastically successful by being released on YouTube.

His goal was to get one million viewers in one year, but instead managed that feat in around two days. Since it was posted up on July 6, less than a week ago, it’s been seen by 2.3 million people and garnered 12,600 comments, mainly from people getting a chance to vent on the airline. United responded quickly to the bad publicity, proving that the little guy has a little more power in the modern electronic era, by offering to “make things right” with Dave. But that isn’t stopping him from releasing his second of three promised videos that he said he would create if the airline gave him a final “no” on compensation.

Dave Carroll is being nothing if not good-natured about it all. The publicity has brought some needed attention to his band, Sons of Maxwell, and the little ditty he wrote about United is pretty catchy, for a country tune. In a typical Canadian “aw shucks” kind of way, he said that he’s no longer looking for compensation from United, but will consider allowing the company to contribute a donation to a charity of their choice, provided they tell him what it is. Not only a humble Canadian, but magnanimous to boot.

As for mom, she’s proud of him: “He’s becoming quite the star but he deserves it. When I heard this one, I sat there and my toe was tapping. I said to him, `This one is a goody.’” Dave originally hails from Timmins, Ontario.