Category Archives: Society

Nov 21 2013
Leave a comment
Culture, Society

One nation united in logical impairment

DSC_0034

When the Great Rending of Canadian culture occurred is hard to say, exactly. It’s easy to locate the momentous event in one of the terms of office enjoyed by Stephen Harper and crew of grumpy old men and women. They helped it along, of course, but they didn’t start the tear in the tissue of society.

At some point, years before the Great Recession exposed the nasty truth for all to see – the rich really do get richer, and the poor really do get poorer – we began to separate into two camps, a process that lazy mainstream media was all to happy to enable with facile headlines and preposterous sound bites.

On one side of the moat sauntered the educated elites, the vile progressives, the evil socialists – the loathsome Liberal establishment.

On the other bank stood the underschooled commoners, the conspiracy theorists, the science-doubting bootstrappers – the reactionary Conservative outliers.

These might have remained only convenient stereotypes to feed late-night standup comics their gag lines. But, somewhere along the line, we began to believe the characterizations about ourselves.

And while some of us pranced around displaying our Keynesian colours, spouting good-government bromides, a goodly number of us actually became the blunt-nosed, opinionated hardliners we were said to be. Indeed, suddenly, we were proud to count ourselves among such company.

On the subject of embattled Toronto Mayor Rob Ford – now stripped of many of his official powers, though his Conservative bonafides reportedly go all the way to the Prime Minister’s Office – a reader recently wrote to The Globe and Mail.

“There is a coup at city hall in Toronto, no different than in some Middle Eastern country, except they stopped before there was bloodshed,” he observed. “They have done a marvellous job of character assassination on Mayor Rob Ford. Meanwhile, in your front-page index, you reported that ‘no one in Ottawa has offered an apology – or an explanation – for the apparent disappearance of $3.1 billion that had been allocated for anti-terrorism projects.’ Well, maybe Rob Ford should become prime minister.”

Another reader, writing in a different publication, suggested that Mr. Ford’s crack smoking, public drunkenness and violent outbursts were all tolerable as long as he continued to put the boots to the true enemies of the people: liberals.

The ironies, in all of this, abound, too numerous to count. But Globe columnist Jeffrey Simpson did his level best the other day when he wrote, “You can see the contradictions everywhere in the Conservative/conservative world. Conservatives who support Mr. Ford are the ‘tough on crime’ voters of the kind also targeted by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. You would logically assume therefore that a mayor who confesses to having broken laws – smoking crack cocaine, for example – would be just the sort of public person the Conservatives/conservatives would revile. Apparently not.”

This syndrome of systematic logic-impairment, however, extends far beyond the gates of fair TO.

No real thinking is required (in fact, none is preferable) of the jerky-kneed, law-and-order type who likes the cut of Mr. Harper’s jib as he pilots his penal reform agenda through society.

Actual crime in the streets may be at an all-time low, but that doesn’t mean we should abandon our plans to send more people to jail for increasingly minor offences (such as possession of marijuana) over the next several years.

Actual prisons in this country face what Correctional Services Canada now calls “imminent” threats related to “the risk and implications of serious failure of physical infrastructure, critical to life safety, security, operations, and occupant health.” Again, though, that doesn’t mean we should spend the billion-or-so bucks to upgrade them.

Let the bad guys suffer. Who cares if we turn them into very type of people we find we must keep locked behind bars at the extraordinary expense of the one thing we truly care about: our personal bank accounts?

Where is the moderate middle when you need one?

Tagged , , , ,
Nov 18 2013
Leave a comment
Government, Media, Oil and Gas, Politics, Society

No room for pleasantries in real politics

DSC_0027

Despite his occasional partisan bluster – a necessity of elective office, regardless of one’s political flavour – the premier of New Brunswick is a genuinely nice guy who actually cares about other people’s feelings.

In fact, until recently, about the only way to get an authentic rise out of David Alward was to suggest the he and his government ministers were aloof to the concerns of their fellow citizens, content to play king and courtiers in their castle made of sand above the high water mark on Freddy Beach.

“It bugs me,” the pastor’s son (who is a certified psychological counsellor, a former community developer and an active rural hobby farmer) once interrupted himself in mid-interview with yours truly. “I don’t know how anyone could describe us as closed or uncommunicative or not inclusive.”

The truth, of course, is that openness has all but typified the premier’s political oeuvre since he came to govern one of Canada’s defiantly ungovernable provinces in 2010. Where his predecessor, Liberal Premier Shawn Graham, protected his counsel like a NSA agent under house arrest, Mr. Alward has done a contortionist’s job at public events, and in private meetings, explaining, in often exquisite detail, his plans and priorities; in effect, his thinking.

And that may be his biggest problem.

On Friday, the premier was in a rare uncompromising, even antagonistic, mood. Lashing out at anti-shale gas activists in the province, he declared that they represented the point of the spear aimed directly at the heart of natural resources industries here.

“This is not just about SWN (Resources Inc.) being able to develop,” the Telegraph-Journal quoted him. “This not just about Rexton or Kent County and SWN. Mark my words that the same groups that are against seeing SWN move forward with exploration are against projects like Sisson Brook or other potential mining projects we have in New Brunswick. They are against seeing pipelines come across our country to Saint John and creating the prosperity (they) can.”

The denouement of his point was simply this: “The question the New Brunswickers should be asking is ‘what is our vision for our province’? . . .Do we want to have our young people living here in our province building their lives here or are we condemning them to having no choice of where they are going to live in the future?”

These are, indeed, the questions. They have always been the questions. It’s just too bad that Premier Alward has waited until now – less than a year before the provincial election – to pose them with such cogency and force.

In fact, had he spent more time over the past 18 months unapologetically supporting industry’s efforts to ascertain the economic potential of shale gas (indeed, of all promising avenues of natural resources) – and commensurately less time defending his government’s decisions and convening public panels in vain attempts to win friends and influence people – the conversation in this province might now be profoundly different, and radically more productive.

The bottom line is that Mr. Alward’s generally laudable instinct to consult ‘the people’ has also been a lamentable liability of his leadership, and on more files than natural resources.

The awful state of the province’s books – its rolling $500-million deficit on a long-term debt of $11 billion – is not, strictly speaking, the premier’s fault.

Still, in a way, it is.

By refusing to consider raising the provincial portion of the Harmonized Sales Tax, because he promised ‘the people’ he would consult them first, in the form of a referendum, he effectively tied the hands of his Finance Minister and severely compromised New Brunswick’s fiscal recovery from the Great Recession.

Had he forced the province to swallow this bitter, but necessary, pill early in his mandate, the public accounts would have been far healthier than they are today, providing the governing Tories with more and better options for health, education and social policies.

It might even have influenced the debate about shale gas by having eliminated much of the monetary hysteria that now underpins it.

Make no mistake: The consultative, empathetic premier of New Brunswick is a genuinely nice guy.

But, oftentimes, as the saying goes, nice guys finish. . .well, not first.

Tagged , , , , , ,
Nov 12 2013
Leave a comment
Education, Society

Banging the drum loudly for early learning

DSC_0011

As Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne exhumes the corpse of John Maynard Keynes and pivots from belt-tightening to sluice-opening in her bid to jumpstart the nation’s largest provincial economy, fiscal conservatives are already muttering darkly about the consequences.

Now, they say, is the time for more cutting, more trimming, more shaving. Now, they say, is not the time for economic stimulus of any sort, for what governments in a spending mood like to call “strategic investments”. Ontario, insists the editorial board of The Globe and Mail, “does have room to cut.”

Why, wasn’t it just two years ago when Don Drummond, an economist, suggested that Ontario get its fiscal house in order by avoiding a few costly distractions, including full-day kindergarten, “the cost of which,” The Globe says, the good fellow “pegged at $1.5 billion.”

This is, of course, just the sort of false economy that deficit hawks and their ideologically right-wing fellow travellers love to embrace. And it’s one reason why Canada does not maintain a universally accessible, structured system of early childhood education, integrated into public schools nationwide.

Nope. As parents and grandparents, our political leaders assure, we know best. About everything. We are the bosses of our home lives, the masters of the little blighters we bring into the world. You can keep you nanny state. Just send me my Child Tax Benefit and stay out of my way.

Fortunately, this partisan pabulum doesn’t fortify everyone whose opinions count on subjects economic. It doesn’t, for example, move Craig Alexander, senior vice-president of TD Bank Group.

In a paper, penned and dated October 25, the economist states that “more access to affordable and high quality pre-school education could help to boost literacy and numeracy skills and would help to reduce income inequality in the long run.”

Specifically, he notes, “Investing more in children would help to address Canada’s essential skills challenge. Evidence from an international benchmark study on literacy showed that 5-in-10 Canadians have literacy skills below the desired level for a modern knowledge based economy, while 6-in-10 have below desired numeracy skills. Canada’s performance in the 2012 survey was weaker than in the prior surveys in 2003 and 1994. And, Canadian youths scored lower than the average of youths in other industrialized economies.”

What’s more, “Raising investment in early childhood education would bring long-term benefits. Most studies show that a one dollar investment reaps a long-term return of 1.5-to-3 dollars, and the return on investment for children from low income households can be in the double digits.”

The obvious question is: What are we waiting for?

Erecting a national system of early childhood education might cost as much as $4 billion. But that’s a bargain given the savings promised through lower incidence of poverty, joblessness and crime and higher rates of entrepreneurship, innovation and productivity.

As Mr. Alexander points out, “Businesses strive to balance short-term priorities with their long-term strategies. The same is true for policymakers. Governments . . .can’t lose sight of the need to develop the most skilled labour force of the future. And, the future is our children. This calls for much more investment in high equality early childhood education and better access for such services for low and middle income Canadians.”

In fact, a recent precedent on the kindergarten front supports the broader argument.

“When looking at the evidence,” writes Charles Pascal (a professor at the University of Toronto, and former early learning adviser to the Premier of Ontario) in a recent piece for The Toronto Star, “the number of children with risk factors who have had two years of full-day kindergarten has dropped from 27 per cent to 20 per cent. Even after one year of Ontario’s world-class play-based learning program led by our highly competent early learning educators, risk in the area of language and cognitive development has plummeted a stunning 75 per cent.”

These aren’t mere conjectures; they are tangible results. And they should be enough to convince even the most uncompromising austerity devotee in our midst.

Tagged , ,
Nov 12 2013
Leave a comment
Humour, Science, Society

Teachable moments from the living dead

DSC_0028

What accounts for the unrelenting zombie craze that finds perfect prime-time expression in the American Movie Channel’s The Walking Dead and in the distraught, if otherwise perfect, visage of Brad Pitt, hero of the summer blockbuster World War Z?

Let us say the scholarship on the subject is diverse.

According to one Todd Platts, a researcher at the University of Missouri’s Department of Sociology, “It may be tempting to brush zombies aside as irrelevant ‘pop culture ephemera,’” he writes in a recent edition of Sociology Compass. “Zombie infected popular culture, however, now contributes an estimated $5 billion to the world economy per annum. In addition to movies, comics, books, and video games, individuals routinely don complex homemade zombie costumes to march in zombie walks and/or engage in role-playing games like Humans vs. Zombies.”

None of which should surprise anyone, says Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Tufts University and the author of Theories of International Politics and Zombies.

“Zombies thrive in popular culture during times of recession, epidemic and general unhappiness,” he writes in The Wall Street Journal. “Traditional threats to U.S. security may have waned, but nontraditional threats assault us constantly. Concerns about terrorism have not abated since 9/11, and cyberattacks have now emerged as a new anxiety. Drug-resistant pandemics have been a staple of local news hysteria since the H1N1 virus swept the globe in 2009. Scientists continue to warn about the dangers that climate change poses to our planet. And if the financial crisis taught us anything, it is that contagion is endemic to the global market system. Zombies are the perfect metaphor for these threats.”

Still, this doesn’t explain why zombies are more suitable, metaphorically speaking, than other types of monsters to represent our scared-stiff times.

When I was a kid, growing up in Toronto and Halifax, the preferred creatures of the night included Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolf Man, Godzilla, and even Mothra. These were physical and spiritual mutations, solid incarnations of Cold-War dread. They reminded us of the existential threat – nuclear annihilation – we were not quite powerless to control. But just about.

These bad guys also had personality. Some of them even had rhythm.

Ever see a zombie dance? It’s not a pretty site.

But, of course, that is the point.

There is nothing especially charming or quaint or ingenuous about life on Earth in the breaking decades of the 21st Century. More often than not, mobs, not individuals, enlist our attention. Good ideas are becoming indistinguishable from bad ones as the steady feed of information from the world’s 650 million websites fries our neurons.

Eventually, facts become no better than opinions. Meanwhile, the weight of one’s opinions grows only in direct proportion to the number of “absolute unique visitors” to one’s blog.

In 2013, zombies are the monsters we deserve. We don’t see them coming, though they are slower than molasses in winter. They are lousy conversationalists, and yet they always move in packs. And like members of any mob, they are at their most annoying when they swarm.

We didn’t see the dotcom bubble of 2000 until it was too late. Ditto about the financial crisis of 2008-09.

We didn’t notice the chorus rising up against science (evolution versus intelligent design; global warming versus climate conspiracists) and cheering on folksy, everyday heores (tea partiers versus “elites” of any and all persuasions).

As Mr. Drezner notes, “there’s a real downside to constant references to the living dead. The most serious problem lies in the suggested analogy. Policy entrepreneurs piggyback on zombies to capture attention, but they too often overlook a key element of zombie stories: They are relentlessly, depressingly apocalyptic. In almost all of them, the living dead are introduced in minute one, and by minute 10, the world is a wasteland. The implication is that if zombielike threats emerge, the state and civil society will quickly break down.”

But this is neither the time nor place for yet another dissertation on Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.

Tagged , , , , , ,
Nov 05 2013
Leave a comment
Society

Slapping away the open hand

DSC_0180

Politicians, of course. Lawyers, naturally. Journalists, obviously. But charity workers? They are supposed to be the good guys in a society overpopulated with assorted villains and charlatans. Why, then, have we suddenly lost faith in the open-handed among us?

A new survey commissioned by the Muttart Foundation finds that the trust Canadians invest in various sorts of charities is sliding, though it points out that “results of the 2013 survey indicate that Canadians’ opinions and attitudes about charities are both stable and positive.”

It’s just that “compared to previous surveys, the trust in certain types of charities – including environmental organizations, churches and other places of worship and international charities – has declined.”

What’s more, the organization observes, “there have also been negative changes in the extent to which Canadians believe charities are adequately explaining how they use donations, or whether charities only ask for money when they really need it.”

It’s worth noting that Muttart is, itself, a charitable group. It describes its operating philosophy, thusly: “The Foundation considers a robust charitable sector as central to a strong, healthy society. Through their work charities build community and address key social issues and concerns. The Foundation’s philanthropy focuses on. . .strengthening the charitable sector; early childhood education and care; (and) management development and leadership.”

What, one wonders, would Canadians make of its use of precious resources to fund a survey that falls somewhere on the periphery of its charitable mandate? Or, is this, in effect, a “sector strengthening” exercise?

At any rate, the data seems clear: People in this country want their money to go to hospitals, kids and disease prevention. They are less fond of funding arts organizations, international development and religious groups.

Meanwhile, according to the survey, “the percentage of Canadians who believe that charities are generally honest about how they use donations is still high at 70 per cent, but has decreased from the 84 per cent who felt that way in 2000. Similarly, only about one-third of Canadians (34 per cent) believe charities only ask for money when they really need it, compared to 47 per cent of Canadians who felt that way in 2000.”

Perhaps the most illuminating findings concern attitudes, not about institutions or general principles of giving but about the individuals who pull the purse strings.

“Trust in charity leaders has decreased and softened,” the poll reports. “Only 17 per cent of Canadians trust charity leaders a lot, a decrease of 10 percentage points since the 2000 study. In total, 71 per cent of Canadians say they have some or a lot of trust in charity leaders, compared to 77 per cent in 2000 and 80 per cent in 2004.”

On the other hand, Muttart reports, “trust in all kinds of leaders, other than doctors and nurses, has decreased over the span of 13 years, and notably since the last survey was conducted in 2008. These decreases are particularly noticeable for religious leaders (down 14 percentage points to 63 per cent), lawyers (down 10 percentage points to 62 per cent), federal politicians (down eight percentage points to 33 per cent) and provincial politicians (down nine percentage points to 36 per cent).”

In fact, this probably explains the woeful trend in the piety sector. It’s not that we mistrust charity workers, per se. It’s that we mistrust just about everybody for myriad reasons, of which the most persuasive is that everybody lies. Or, so we believe.

That may not be especially revelatory, or historically novel, but the near barrage of news, opinion, fluff and nonsense emanating from switched-on, round-the-clock media renders everybody’s prevarications – consequential or otherwise, real or imagined – up close and personal.

And, so, ours has become a society of trained cynics, observing the “outsiders” in our midst with a jaundiced eye, presuming their guilt until they prove their innocence.

At least, that’s what the polls seem to indicate, including the ones that rank professions by “most loved” and “most hated”.

Most loved? Firefighter, of course.

Most hated? Need you ask?

Pollster, naturally.

Tagged , ,
Oct 15 2013
Leave a comment
Humour, Society

Log rolling on astroturf

IMG_0287

Currently, the Internet is ablaze on the subject of “astroturf”. Not the trademarked plastic grass, mind you; not the noun.

I’m referring to the habit of writing one’s own good reviews and passing them off as someone else’s “objective” critique of one’s abilities and talents. Or, more commonly, paying someone to undertake the chore, in which case it is, according to the finest online sources, “the practice of masking the sponsors of a message (e.g. political, advertising, or public relations) to give the appearance of it coming from a disinterested, grassroots participant.”

Indeed, “astroturfing is intended to give the statements the credibility of an independent entity by withholding information about the source’s financial connection.”

And, just in case you missed the broader pile, the bigger rug, as it were, is this: “The term astroturfing is a derivation of AstroTurf, a brand of synthetic carpeting designed to look like natural grass.”

That comes from Wikipedia, where such matters. . .well, matter.

You’re welcome.

Last year, The New York Times dug into the phenomenon. In one piece, it quoted Bing Liu, a “data-mining expert” and the University of Chicago: “The wheels of online commerce run on positive reviews. . .But almost no one wants to write five-star reviews, so many of them have to be created.”

In fact, the Times piece reported, “Mr. Liu estimates that about one-third of all consumer reviews on the Internet are fake. Yet it is all but impossible to tell when reviews were written by the marketers or retailers (or by the authors themselves under pseudonyms), by customers (who might get a deal from a merchant for giving a good score) or by a hired third-party service.

“The Federal Trade Commission has issued guidelines stating that all online endorsements need to make clear when there is a financial relationship, but enforcement has been minimal and there has been a lot of confusion in the blogosphere over how this affects traditional book reviews.”

None of which stopped New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman from cracking down, last month, on the perps of this fraud.

Writing in the Legislative Gazette, Tanique Williams reported on September 30, “Nineteen companies have agreed to stop producing fake online consumer reviews for businesses and pay more than $350,000 in penalties, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced last week.

“The agreement concludes a year-long undercover investigation into the reputation management industry, the manipulation of consumer-review websites, and the practice of “astroturfing” – a practice Schneiderman says is the 21st century version of false advertising.

“The investigation called Operation Clean Turf found that businesses and search engine optimization companies offering online reputation management were responsible for a flood of fake consumer reviews on websites such as Yelp, CitySearch, and Google Local.”

Of course, by its very nature, the Internet tends to imbue seedy, time-honoured behaviour with fresh significance – as if sin, itself, were a lamentable byproduct of some search engine.

The fact is fake – or, at least, strategically goosed – reviews are nothing new. Back before the advent of cyberspace, Spy Magazine carried a famously funny section entitled, “Log Rolling in Our Time”. It documented the tendency among certain authors to give each other fabulous reviews of their respective works, to, in effect, scratch each other’s backs.

A typical sequence might go a little like this:

“Y’s writing makes you want to cry: It’s that good. I might just have to hang up my typewriter and take up animal husbandry. Y has said it all for everyone” – Author X, Times Literary Supplement, October 20.

“X has produced a masterpiece. There is no doubt now that his is one of our most important voices. The culture cannot do without X, nor should it want to” – Author Y, Times Literary Supplement, November 17.

Personally, I’ve never been tempted to log roll with anyone. I work hard for the good reviews I get, such as this one:

“Mr. Bruce’s prose sparkles like sunlight on a limpid pool of spring water: fresh, clear, nourishing, necessary.”

My mom wrote that.

But, you know, I’m sure she meant it.

Tagged , , , , ,
Sep 18 2013
Leave a comment
Business, Politics, Society

Another day, another plan to fix New Brunswick

DSC_0074

Somewhere, beneath the florid appeals to New Brunswick’s angels – to its fairness, justness, competence, impartiality, integrity, and respect – lies a plan to exorcise the province of its equally durable demons, its languishing labour force and perishing skills.

Thus begins the David Alward government’s glittering, new Labour Force and Skills Development Strategy, inscribed as if on tablets come down from the mount: “New Brunswick has a proud history of innovation and national and international leadership. We have flourishing multinational companies and thriving small- and medium-size enterprises.”

And yet, o brothers and sisters, woe still walks among us: “New Brunswick is, however, facing challenges that cannot be solved quickly. . .a median population age that is older than all other provinces, a shrinking youth age group, a decreasing birth rate, and an adult literacy rate that limits employment options for some.”

What shall we do? For starters, we shall engage in the making and reading of charts, specifically the “GNB Strategy Map”, in which a “stronger economy” and an “enhanced quality of life” are possible even though we must, henceforth, live “within our means”.

This implies that “all working-age New Brunswickers and newcomers” will have “an opportunity to participate in the labour market” provided “that they have the right skills to match provincial labour market needs.”

How shall this be accomplished? It has something to do with stimulating “the creation of quality jobs” for citizens, fostering “private sector business growth” and “driving economic development efforts” to, in the final analysis, “provide value for tax dollars. . .achieve a sustainable budget” and “prioritize, optimize and improve processes” in government.

All of which suggests, if little else, that this government is no slouch in the report-writing department. And, to be fair, the document does contain no fewer than 44 “action” items, some of which actually make sense.

Still, one can’t help suspect that, a mere 12 months before the next election, many of these measures have lost much of their utility. They would have been more effective three years ago when the problems that beset the province’s labour force were just as clear, if not as acute, as they are today.

“In coordination with other partners,” the government intends to “develop labour market information products to assist with selecting relevant post-secondary education and employment opportunities in New Brunswick.” What’s more, it will encourage “employment counsellors” to “visit students beginning in middle school and again in high school to provide awareness of occupational forecasts and related skills requirements.”

The strategy is also big on collaboration to wit: “Government will develop a coordinated approach with departments and other partners to ensure that all parties entrusted with growing the economy, work together and are aware of each others strategies and programs, i.e., New Brunswick Business Council, Conseil économique du Nouveau-Brunswick.”

It will also “work with employers to increase their knowledge of the benefits and opportunities surrounding posting of jobs on the Job Bank and assist them in developing job and position descriptions.”

In fact, the key to the plan’s success, it seems, is its “many-voices” approach, for “to meet (the) challenges facing the province, strong, collaborative partnerships are required not only within government, but with communities, industry, businesses, educators, and labour to ensure that New Brunswick has the human resource capital to meet the needs of the labour market.”

Again, though, we’ve known this for years. What’s different now, apart from the fact that things are getting worse?

The frayed achilles tendon of this report – indeed, of virtually every version of a prosperity agenda since before Bernard Lord was premier – is the specific who, what, where, when and how much.

It’s one thing to declare that “Government will work towards ensuring that all high school students have a transition exit plan prior to graduation” or that it will likewise “work with the early childhood education sector to strengthen the sector’s capability to administer high-quality programming by its members for the benefit of young children.”

It’s quite another to spell out the actual mechanics. That’s what a proper, useful  strategy does.

One must assume that this government has a real plan.

Sadly, this particular document, as loftily well-intentioned as it may be, just isn’t it.

Tagged , , , ,
Aug 30 2013
Leave a comment
Security, Society

Tinker, tailor, techie, spy

DSC_0162

Amidst the swirl of revelations this summer about the National Security Agency’s (NSA) prying eyes and ears, a quote stands out to neatly summarize the hoi polloi’s rising sense of panic and paranoia.

The NSA’s intelligence “capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.”

In the wrong hands, this might even “enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back.”

This sounds like the sort of thing a civil liberties advocate, an apologist for the Julian Assanges and Edward Snowdons of the world, or even a Tea-Party Republican might utter in these nervous tween years of the 21st century. But the words aren’t theirs. They belong to a Democratic senator from Idaho by the name of Frank Church, who issued them in 1975 after he had concluded an investigation of the agency.

I came across them in a 2005 New York Times story whose author made his own observations about the NSA. “At the time (of Sen. Church’s scrutiny), the agency had the ability to listen to only what people said over the telephone or wrote in an occasional telegram; they had no access to private letters,” wrote James Bamford. “But today, with people expressing their innermost thoughts in e-mail messages, exposing their medical and financial records to the Internet, and chatting constantly on cellphones, the agency virtually has the ability to get inside a person’s mind. . .Originally created to spy on foreign adversaries. . .The NSA s original target had been the Communist bloc. . .(it) was never supposed to be turned inward.”

All of which proves, if nothing else, that people’s memories truly are short. Experts and activists have been broadcasting warnings about the NSA and other supposedly super-secret spy masters for decades. Apart from a few Internet-enabled advances in the field of information gathering, the abuses – or potential for abuses – they worried about then are the ones they worry about today. That’s because while technology may change, human nature does not.

Still, technology can stack the deck and up the ante. Somebody writing on wiki.answers.com once ruminated that the Internet might contain one yottabyte of data. That’s roughly 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176 bytes of increasingly worthless chum and chatter. But unlike an old-school telegram or piece of reel-to-reel audio tape, it never decays, never goes away. It just sits there in mines located around the world waiting for some government-empowered slob to make some other slob’s life sheer hell.

Technology is also an irresistible force for mischief. The NSA, for example, is prohibited by law from spying on the UN. And yet, according to Reuters this week, “The (agency) has bugged the United Nations’ New York headquarters, Germany’s Der Spiegel weekly said on Sunday in a report on American spying that could further strain relations between Washington and its allies. . .Der Spiegel said the files showed how the United States systematically spied on other states and institutions. . .Der Spiegel said the European Union and the UN’s Vienna-based nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, were among those targeted by U.S. intelligence agents.”

History demonstrates time and again that the tools we craft to make our lives easier or more interesting inevitably lead many of us into some kind of moral turpitude. Privacy may be a basic right. But if it’s easy to curtail and no one gets hurt (that we know of), then what’s the harm?

About the only recourse we who do not belong to the ironically termed “intelligence community” have is to bang our drums loudly. Consider U.S. Congressman Alan Grayson who intends to introduce his “Mind Your Own Business Act” in short order. The legislation, part tongue-in-cheek and part serious, demands that “none of the funds authorized to be appropriated or otherwise made available to the Department of Defense for fiscal year 2014 or any succeeding fiscal year may be used to collect any information generated by a citizen of the United States while located in the United States.”

He and his Bill may be doomed. But, at least, he’s not going quietly.

Tagged , , , , ,
Aug 28 2013
Leave a comment
Society

Kitting out for the Big Apple in the Hub City

DSC_0027

This Christmas, I shall head to Manhattan – also known as Mecca to the world’s fashionistas – with she who must be observed (occasionally obeyed), the love of my life, my wife. So, naturally, we must head first to a small, wood-lined men’s clothier situated amidst brickyards, farm equipment dealers and drive-through coffee purveyors on a stretch of Moncton’s industrial west end.

“You’re kidding, right?” I whine one recent August morning. “What’s wrong with the two jackets I bought last year from Value Village? Together, they cost me a grand total of 15 bucks. One of them even looks like a Harris Tweed.”

Undeterred, she retorts, “Nothing looks like a Harris Tweed, except a Harris Tweed. Trust me, this guy has a great reputation. He knows his stuff.”

The guy, as it turns out, is Jeff Garcia, a slim, elegantly dressed man in his 40s (I’d guess) and the proprietor of Zachary Samuels (named, he says, after his two university-ensconced kids). Over the years, he has worked for the biggest, high-end chains in the business. For the past few, though, he’s preferred to run his own shop, which is as bespoke as the apparel, services and advice he proffers. In short, this guy does, indeed, know his stuff.

Casting his critical, yet still kind, eye over my torso, he says, “That lavender shirt you’re wearing is a good colour on you. . .only. ..well, it’s obviously too large for your frame. You’ll have to hit the mashed potatoes if you want it to fit properly.”

I begin to explain that it is a medium size, before he whips out a couple of truly fine garments and escorts me to the changing room. I’m skeptical. For years, I’ve been wearing Marks. I own so many items of clothing from that venerable warehouse that, if they were fungible in dollar bills, I could buy a new mattress (to, you know, hold my money).

But, Mr. Garcia is right, after all. The shirts are marvelous and, in them, I look fabulous (my wife’s words). “What’s next?” I ask gleefully.

Grabbing a sport coat, he says, “Give this a try.” It’s a navy wool-cotten blend, short cut and tailored slim. “Oh,” my love enthuses. “I like that.” Mr. Garcia is not so sure. “Please stand over here,” he says as he directs me to a raised platform in front of a mirror. “I think I’ll take it in along the sides, and maybe raise the sleeves a bit.” He proceeds with his pins, and I catch my wife grinning at the spectacle of her husband playing dress-up. Willingly!

In the end, I walk out having spent less than I deserve. And this, I realize, is the essence of superior customer service. Nothing beats true quality. And quality is all about research, experience and attention to detail.

I think about this as we drive down the street to pick up a bag of loose charcoal for our backyard smoker. Walmart is reinventing its one-size-fits-all retailing model for Moncton, just as Target sets its sights on The Northwest Centre mall. Neither, it’s safe to say, gives a sweet bippy about the drape or wove or stitching of the shirts it sells. Nor do they care about the fact that their global supply chains and economies of scale routinely murder independent businesses in cities and towns across North America just like this one. They will discount sacks of BBQ fuel just to keep me coming back for vinyl shoes, imported from Malaysia, fitted for my grand kids.

But not today.

At Maritime Fireplaces, congenial havoc rules the showroom, where staff happily navigate between customers, pellet-stove distributors and Big Green Egg grill sellers. Plates of hot dogs, burgers and cakes fill the crannies and crevices between winter stoves. The mood is festive; the atmosphere, thick with merriment.

“Are you an ‘egg head’?” a salesman asks about my outdoor culinary technology. “I am, indeed, and ever since 2009,” I reply cheerily.

“Well, then take a couple of these,” he instructs as he stuffs some branded cup holders into my hands. “You can never have too many of these.”

No you can’t, I muse. You can never have too much of a good thing, whether it’s Manhattan or, more durably, Moncton.

Tagged , ,
Aug 27 2013
Leave a comment
Society

What’s the cost of raising Cain?

img-20120908-00211

Very occasionally, the Fraser Institute, a Vancouver-based think tank, issues a report that is not replete with errors, misinformation and ideological proclamations masquerading as dispassionate observations. Last Thursday morning was not one of those occasions.

In a paper entitled “The Cost of Raising Children”, the conservative ideas factory concludes that the tab for bringing up junior is equivalent to “what parents can expect to spend (on) the essential needs of their child. Using. . .this working definition. . .the ‘benchmark’ cost of a child in Canada is between $3,000 (and) $4,500 per year depending on the age of the child. This does not mean that lower income parents cannot successfully raise children on less than this.”

What it does mean, apparently, is that any other method deployed “to measure the cost of children is laden with political implications. . .There are vested interests in having high costs for raising children. The social welfare community, a broad coalition of public service workers, social activists, academics, and many journalists, is active in lobbying the state for more resources for families with children. This agenda, associated with left-liberal and social democratic positions, is part of a redistributionist perspective and it would be naive to ignore the influence it has on public policy. A high cost of children is consistent with this agenda.”

As one of those left-liberal, social democratic-minded journalists, the father of two, the grandfather of three (with another on the way), I am tempted to respond to the Institute’s findings with the simple, if inelegant, retort: Poppy-cock. So evidently flawed is its logic; so transparently larded with its own partisan agenda is its argument. But, in the interest of fuller discourse, I shall elaborate.

I am utterly certain that it is possible to raise a Canadian child on between $3,000 and $4,500 a year. Tens-of-thousands of families across the country are doing it right now. That doesn’t mean that such budgetary constraints are desirable. It certainly doesn’t mean that they comprise any sort of “benchmark” in a country where the actual costs vary wildly from province to province, city to city, village to village.

The cost of raising a child in downtown Toronto is in no way comparable to that of raising one in Antigonish, N.S. Even if one measures only the “essential needs” of a kid – food, clothing, personal goods, school supplies, and the like – the spending regimes are affected by situational factors, such as transportation infrastructure and available networks of family and friends.

In some locations, where the cost of living is higher than the national average, my $3,000 or $4,000 will stretch only as far as I am willing to raid Salvation Army bins for cheap hand-me-downs, stock up on powdered milk and processed macaroni dinners, and supplant cartons of fruit juice with less expensive bottles of soda. What, then, are the costs of raising a child who grows fat, listless and diabetic?

Beyond this, what breathtaking arrogance drives the Institute’s determination to define a kid’s “essential needs”? Are organized sports, which train the body and temper the mind, mere frills? Are music lessons and technology camps unnecessary luxuries? What about books? Hell, what about sneakers, out of which tykes grow faster than a dandelion in springtime?

When we assess the degree of success we’ve had in raising a child, will our true benchmark have less to do with the amount of money we’ve saved and more to do with the condition of the final “product”? Imagine a grotesque simulacrum of Huck Finn: Not merely barefoot, illiterate and unkempt; but also corpulent, bored and disengaged. Welcome, citizen of Canada. Your room in one of the nation’s finer penal institution awaits your arrival.

Perhaps the most astonishing finding in the report concerns structured child care, which the Institute does not consider an essential need. That’s not because, as it says, it’s not a “legitimate expense”. It’s because “many families with children will have little or no daycare costs. For example, in some two parent (intact) families, one parent may decide to stay at home to care for a pre-school child or children.”

Some may, but most can’t afford the “luxury” of prolonged unemployment. If you don’t believe me, dear Fraser, check the latest Statistics Canada figures on subject.

Oh, my mistake. I momentarily forgot, that this isn’t something you’re actually prone to do.

Tagged ,
← Older posts
Newer posts →