The PenOpticon

I’m not a smoker, though my brother and I grew up with parents who smoked. We both remember bouncing around in the back of  Buicks and Oldsmobiles — with the windows rolled up — while our folks puffed away to their heart’s content. The smoke billowed around us like cumulus clouds, but we didn’t care. Sometimes we’d ask Dad to blow smoke rings (such things were endlessly fascinating to pre-internet kids). When Mom bought a cigarette maker, I remember watching her crank ‘em out by the dozen. I think I may even have helped a few times. This is what I remember anyhow, though my memory is a little clouded by a blue-gray haze.

In any case, I was not pro or anti smoking. Smoking was just a fact of life until that fateful day when Smoking Sam and Smoking Sue showed up at school. These were self-contained,  motorized smoking machines that oozed black and brown tars into a test tube to graphically show how smoking poisons the lungs. I’m not sure if they still use these devices to scare the tar out of grade-school kids, but it worked like a charm on me.

Mostly worked, anyhow.  I confess I smoked a few cigarettes in high school — for love I suppose — but after a week or so, the smokes didn;t agree with me and I’m certain I didn’t agree with her. Although I used to put up with co-workers who smoked at work, my tolerance for second-hand smoke has dwindled over the years. Now I dread passing through the gauntlet of smokers that gather outside every entrance to every building where I work. Those of us who do not smoke grimly hold our noses and do our best to stay up wind, well away from the poison. It sounds self-righteous, but really it’s just self-preservation.

 The government has tried taxing the things out of existence, but to no avail. This is primarily because sin taxes create an artificial price differential between jurisdictions with different tax rates. It’s always possible to buy low in one region and sell high in another. Worse, billions of counterfeit cigarettes are now manufactured in China and elsewhere and are smuggled into Europe and North America and sold at rock bottom prices. According to a recent Toronto Star expose, upwards of 25% of all cigarettes sold are illegal and bypass regulation and taxation.

Since the cost of health care for smokers is, on average, 25% greater than for non-smokers, and since smokers are more than willing to purchase illegal smokes, it may be time to use the health care system to discourage the habit and ensure smokers pay their far share of taxes. This could easily be done by charging an extra health premium to anyone who continues to smoke past an arbitrary cut-off date — say one year after the smoking health surtax becomes law. If the surtax is set high enough, it may even be desirable to remove or reduce current cigarette taxes. Lowering the price would bring the cost of legal smokes in line with the street price of the illegal stuff and (hopefully) make life more difficult for counterfeiters and smugglers.  In Canada, we already saw this in the mid 90’s when the Federal and Ontario governments cut taxes on cigarettes to "compete" with illegal smokes.

Now, in the US, more and more employers are using financial penalties and rewards to discourage smoking.  Some employer-sponsored health plans now require smokers to cough up an additional $20 to $50 a month for the privilege of lighting up. If such a policy were adopted by Canada’s provincially-run health care systems, it would change the financial landscape of Canada’s health care system.  Turning a "sin" tax into a high-risk health tax will give millions of smokers a good reason to quit. At the same time, it will encourage die-hard smokers to choose to purchase legal cigarettes over illegal and counterfeit smokes.

With luck, within a few years, we’ll all breath a little easier.

N.B. The use of the Monks "Bad Habits" album cover is used here by chance. A friend happened to play a few tunes from this album and the cover just seemed to fit the headline. I have no idea what the Monks think about smoking, but regardless, this was a pretty good album.

Rants

It’s business as usual at Hydro One Inc, Ontario’s largest electricity distribution company. Senior executives and their secretaries are making frequent use of corporate credit cards to purchase "gifts" and God knows what else. According to Jim McCarter, Ontario’s Auditor General, some $127 million was billed last year with almost no receipts to show where and how this money was spent. Meanwhile, us dopey Ontarians fork over extra money every month to retire Ontario Hydro’s infinitely large debt. McCarter also took school boards, hospitals and many other nooks and crannies of the public sector to task for waste and iffy accountability. You can read the gory details yourself if you dare. Much of this abuse stems from the widespread use of purchasing cards — PCards — which have been used to buy DVD’s, eyeglasses, Christmas lights, leather jackets, gift certificates, candy, chocolate, household supplies and a bajillion other items at our expense. And yet, this government has the gall to worry that a few homeless bottle pickers might "cash in" on the newly-announced 20-cent wine bottle deposit program by hoarding older bottles and returning them when the program starts.

The Hydro One accounting anomalies are reminiscent of the furor over Eleanor Clitheroe when she presided as CEO from 2000 to 2002. Those were heady days when the utility was poised to go public. As Canada’s highest paid civil servant, Clitheroe pulled down 2.3 million a year, made use of corporate limos for her children and nanny — and apparently even for her cat. Clitheroe argued that such perks were provided in lieu of her taking maternity leave. There were other allegations involving home renovations that were billed to the corporation and along with personal country club memberships, etc. But, the nuclear waste hit the fan when we learned of a golden handshake deal that would let Clitheroe walk away with a multi-million dollar pension and three years salary for her trouble. Since getting the corporate boot, Clitheroe went on to become an Anglican priest, though she is still suing the Ontario government over her severance package and pension.

There is little point in rehashing any of this, except that last month’s Canadian Business features this gem of an article by Thomas Watson: An Apology for Eleanor Clitheroe. According to Watson, "Reverend Ellie" was actually a victim in the whole affair. Seems she was double-crossed by Ernie Eves and his Conservatives when they sacrificed her in order to try to save themselves. Well, that sounds about right, doesn’t it? But a victim!!!!? After all, Clitheroe was a willing participant in the whole affair and stood to gain considerable personal wealth from the privatization of Hydro One.

Oh well, I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised by the Canadian Business view of the world, but it is sad to see how the media can sometimes be co-opted to defend this kind of rot. It might make the job of cleaning it up (if that is even possible) all that much harder. Ya think?

Canadian Politics, Rants

When I started writing this blog some ten months ago, I told myself this is just a practice area — a place away from work to play with words and ideas. I was not trying to solve the world’s problems. I was not trying to right all wrongs, though I did hope to praise the just and satirize the guilty. I expected to have few readers and sadly that expectation has been exceeded.

But I lied. O how i lied. Like Ralph Philips, a minor Looney Toons character from the fifties, I daydreamed myself into dozens of blogging adventures — ranting about Afghanistan, raving about nuclear power and roaring about the Green Party. But it turns out I have not simply been playing — I care deeply about these things and want to make the world right. Typing away in front of this computer screen, with a cup of fair trade coffee at my side, I’ve had a few Walter Mitty-like moments where I thought I was making a difference. But we all know that’s load of bull cookies (as the venerable Colonel Sherman T. Potter used to say).

The problem with world problems is that there are so damn many of them. Even if young Ralph Philips could keep the world safe, he’d spend the rest of his days playing global Whack-a-Mole, battling insurgents here, terrorists there and global warming everywhere. Even when I push the blog cart down the aisles and toss fresh issues into the basket, they often go bad on me before I have a chance to fully cook ‘em. And so I’ve ended up with a growing list of half-baked blog entries:

• Beware of Run and Cut Politicians
• The Past and Future of the David Dunlap Observatory
• Harper replaces Kyoto promises with false premises
• Afghanistan: You’ve Never Seen Everything
• The Perils of Expanding the Canadian Forces
• How the “Will of God” Cheapens Human Life
• The Nuclear Greening of Ontario?

The obvious truth is that I have neither the time nor the skill nor the patience to type the world’s problems away. But damn it, Jim — that’s what I wanna do. Type the world’s problems away. It could be worse. I grew up watching Looney Tunes and always had a soft spot for little Ralph Philips. The kid gets grounded by his mom but quickly escapes via his overactive imagination to save the world from aliens in a most spectacular way. But the reality of Ralph, according to Toonpedia is that he “never appeared in comic books, on lunch boxes, or in any other venue. He’s such a minor character, he wasn’t even with the rest of the Warner Bros. toons in Space Jam“. Hmmm… sounds a lot like me!

Ok, it could be a lot worse. In recent months another Ralph Phillips made the headlines. Ralph “Buck” Phillips escaped from prison last April and played a deadly game of Whack-a-Mole with with upstate New Yorkers by popping up in dozens of towns, hiding out in state forests and shooting three New York state troopers (one fatally). He was finally caught on Sept 8th, 2006. This Ralph was 44, old enough to have watched the same fictional Ralph Phillips that many of us grew up with. Now that Ralph “Buck” Phillips is back in prison (aka grounded), I want to know how he will escape in his dreams. Or maybe I don’t. I’ll just keep typing along my own merry, deluded path.

Comm Ralph to General Staff. Comm Ralph to General Staff. Routine report. Martians captured. World Safe. Over

Rants, Writing/Blogging

Last night a CNN Mideast expert confessed that the term “Mideast expert” is an oxymoron. If so, then it’s no wonder people like me are baffled by the shifting ironies and contradictions in this conflict. Consider: the Israeli army has a large number of Russian-born soldiers using American-made weapons to attack and occupy southern Lebanon in order to defend Israel. So far they have managed to kill a large number of civilians (a 10-story apartment building in Tyre was demolished last night). They have killed foreign tourists (including 8 Canadians). They have killed UNIFIL peacekeepers (including another Canadian).

All of this killing is supposed to be an act of “defense” against Hezbollah, who (stupidly) stirred up this mess by capturing 2 Israeli soldiers. I watched a British BBC correspondent tour the carnage in Beirut, while bloodied women screamed out the names of missing children. Then I watched a British-born Israeli soldier explain how the bombing was done with pinpoint accuracy — just surgical strikes. In another report we see Israeli intelligence analysts sporting 3D visors as they explain how they use a system akin to Google Earth to virtually “fly” through Lebanese streets to define targets. Maybe their data points are just a few metres to the left of pinpoint accurate?

Then we have the world’s only remaining superpower pretending to feel “concern” for the Lebanese people, while declaring that conditions are not yet “conducive” for a ceasefire. In order to prove that conditions are not yet right, the U.S. agrees to expedite a shipment of bunker buster bombs. Can someone help me out here? According to the rules of geopolitical etiquette, when a country ships weapons to Israel and humanitarian aid to Lebanon, is it OK to ship everything on the same airplane?

To further confuse the issue, Israel announces they will not seek to “expand the offensive” (I thought this was defense?) but that they are calling up an additional 30,000 troops.

I can not imagine the political machinations that must be taking place in Washington (while my country’s dopey PM tags along as best he can). Does they Bush administration seriously think all of this death will do anything but guarantee another decade of terrorism? Are they trying to divert attention from Iraq? By hammering Hezbollah do they think they are somehow fighting Iran by proxy?

At the same time, Hamas and Hezbollah would do better to disarm and put their resources into a coordinated publicity campaign to raise awareness of Israel’s border incursions and shameful treatment of Palestinians as others are already doing. Of course, such a campaign could only work if Hamas and Hezbollah refrained from suicide bombings and other terror activities. Oh yes — and they would have to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Or why not just keep on fighting. Keep pouring more money, weapons and blood into the region so that U.S. arms makers can keep their stockholders happy. War hasn’t solved anything in the past and the only thing certain in the region is war not solve any problems in the future. But that is no reason to stop fighting, is it? Not in an area of the world where conditions are not conducive to reason.

Rants, War

This weekend, a group of young Christians converged on Parliament Hill to pray for Canadian politicians. This “Prayer Siege” was the brainchild of Faytene Kryskow and her group, 4 My Canada. Kryskow is a Vancouver-based minister, missionary, writer, public speaker, singer/songwriter, visual artist and “evangelical activist”. Her group is fighting for “traditional values” — banning gay marriage, outlawing abortion and raising the age of consent to sixteen. Kryskow’s group is no stranger to Ottawa — they held their first Siege in 2005 and have met with many Conservative MPs to voice their views. They were introduced to the House of Commons in October 2005 by Myron Thompson, (Wildrose CPC) and given a standing ovation when Thomson declared:

“They are not representing a denomination or special interest group. Their mission is to engage with leaders to let them know they exist and what their heart is for our nation as well as to motivate and mobilize young Canadians so they too will become leaders themselves one day.”

Huh? This group seems to have some extremely “special” interests. In addition to actively campaigning for “pro morality” Candidates, 4 My Canada hopes to directly influence Canadian politicians by encouraging young Christians to apply for MP staff positions. After the last election, Kryskow blogged:

“We have just heard word that many MPs on the Hill are scrambling to fill needed job positions for their offices and for various posts on the Hill. We wanted to encourage those of you who can, and who feel the call, to submit your resumes for consideration. We want to see TONS of Jesus lovers get jobs on the Hill!!”

It’s hard to imagine what this group will do with a pro-morality guy like Stephen Harper. After the last election, Kryskow noted: “I pray for Prime Minister Harper and his new team and look forward to meeting with them in the very near future to see how we can walk together.” But, now that Harper has (once again) blindly followed Bush’s broken moral compass by supporting Israel’s “right” to bomb Lebanon, exactly what will this group be praying for? Their supplications are already too late for the 7 Canadians and 130 Lebanese civilians that have been killed by Israeli bombs over the past few days.

Ah well, perhaps 4 My Canada is really just a well-meaning, harmless group of young people. I don’t know if the group brings in enough money from their art, CD and DVD sales — and donations — to be profitable, but they seem to be highly organized and single-minded in their goal to create a Christian Canada. Who knows? Perhaps Faytene Kryskow will become the next Aimee Semper McPherson.

Whatever Kryskow really wants for Canada, she seems to be in it for the long haul. Her aspirations are very different from the more temporal goals of Rev. Beatrice Williams. In May, Williams and eight other Christian leaders spent the day in Hollywood California praying for lower gas prices. “These high gas prices, Lord, bring them down, oh Father.”

I can almost hear Janis Joplin growling in her grave: “O Lord woncha buy me a full tank of gas. My friends all drive Humvees, I must make it last.”

Canadian Politics, Rants