Election Day minus 18 - Ominous signs

Day 20 - Busy day, the radio interview didn't happen, but I was contacted by a producer from 102.1FM The Edge. My interview is Friday morning between 7:30 and 8 am, and it is already being promoted as: "Libertarian candidate Allen Small will tell you why his party wants to legalize your pot." As if we are a single issue party, like the Greens for example. But that is a good message for that particular demographic, who knows it may attract some listeners.

What did happen is my two minute-talk-to-tape for the cable channel went reasonably well and I got my signs, the prototype is on the left. Mostly the day was spent driving to one or the other of those things. Friday I have a helper and we will post some signs around town.

The war of words continues online, there are so few of us running: 26 out of a possible 308 spots, and we are so spread out that the web etc. is the only way we can "meet."

At one of the "meetings" this morning Jim McIntosh our Provincial CFO, my official agent and the agent of several others sent these "policy" notes around just to give candidates ammunition for the coming debates. I thought I'd share these, because they really get to the heart of who and what we are in Canada:

Topics covered: Taxation, Aging Demographic, Economic Development, Accountability, Family Doctor Shortage.

Re Taxation

Question - How many of you have got YOUR taxes done? Why do you call it "YOUR" taxes? Isn't it really THEIR taxes [referring to the Liberal, Conservative and NDP candidates]? This is money you earned that they are prepared to come and take from you, at the point of a gun if necessary, so that THEY can spend it as THEY see fit. So they can give money to corporations with big unions, or build stadiums for wealthy team owners, or provide government contracts to their friends. We work for almost six months of the year to support all levels of government. Do you have any choice? Doesn't that make you a slave for half of your life?

Re Doctor shortage (this is really a provincial issue - but things are so confused)

Question - If government provided bread for free, do you think we might run out of bread pretty damn quick? Lots of people would go without bread. It's the same with doctors. Government provides them for free to people. So lots of people go without doctors. Hey - you aren't paying for it, how can you complain? [sarcasm] But of course, doctors are not free of cost. The more doctors there are, the more it will cost the government. So several years ago, the government decided one way to control health care costs was to limit the number of

doctors graduating from our universities. And the number of nurses and hospital beds. Thank you Liberals and Conservatives. And Thank You NDP for persuading them to make a monopoly out of Health Care in the first place. Government-run monopolies are the problem. Competition is the solution. For more choice in health care, choose the Party of Choice, Libertarian.

Re Accountability

"You want accountability? Let's start with your MP (fill in the blank here). Did s/he tell you about the dozens of bills s/he was going to vote for before s/he was elected. Did s/he tell you he was going to ban incandescent light bulbs (thats a provincial issue, but you get the point) and force you to buy those twisty lights with mercury in them? Did he tell you he was prepared to give lots of your money to car companies so they could build more of the cars you didn't want in the first place? Did he tell you about all the other laws to restrict our activities that his party was going to pass in the last three years? Is there any way for us voters to say, "NO, repeal that law?" Of course not. Politicians don't want you interfering in their plans. They won't even give you the right to vote for "None of the Above". But that's why I'm running; If you vote Libertarian they will know you don't want any more of their programs.  (good one)

Re Aging demographics

Why is this a problem? Is it because people are living longer? Isn't that a good thing? Is it because families are having fewer children? Why is that a bad thing? Maybe it's because we have fewer people earning money that can be taken by the government to pay Canada Pension Plan, Old Age Security, and Guaranteed Income Security to more and more old folks. And all the health care that old people need. Maybe the government didn't expect people to live very long after retirement when they introduced all these programs. Now they've taken your money, thereby limiting your choices to prepare for your own 'golden years' and turned them into the 'rust years'. Government is not the solution, it is the problem. If you don't want to become a ward of the state in your old age, vote Libertarian.

Re Economic Development

What industry has experienced the greatest economic development in the last couple of decades? Isn't it technology, like computers and communications? [Hold up your cell phone.] How much 'stimulus' money did we provide this industry as taxpayers? Not nearly as much as we freely chose to spend on products and services provided in a highly competitive market. Who needs government to provide "economic development?" Companies that can't provide what we want at a price we are willing to pay, and politicians who hope to

get a cushy job when they are voted out of office. Some of you more mature folks may remember when Bell had a government-granted monopoly phone services. When they removed that privilege, look at the economic development that followed. We will have much more economic development if the government gets out of the way. Government is the problem, not the solution.

Now I have to go do their taxes. :-(

Regards;

Jim

Election Day minus 20 and 19 - Repetitiveness

Day 18 and 19: The "English" debate was last night, the only one that I understand. Tonight is the French debate, welcome to Canada.

That picture is of the three main party leaders who have representatives in Parliament from across the country, the fourth guy on the far right is the leader of the Bloc, a separatist party whose purpose at this debate is beyond me. Every time he opened his mouth it was to whine about one thing or another and how his province Quebec should be a nation - separate from Canada. Yet there he was, most of us are not able to vote for him, or against him, because he belongs to the archetypical single interest party - one Province. But that is an indication of the kind of liberal democracy Canada is, imagine such a debate in the United States, I can't imagine it.

The debate itself was uneventful, no knockout blows, but as you might expect everyone tried to gang up on Mr. Harper the government leader. His counter, was to be calm and repetitive, over and over he mouthed the mantra of his Conservative Platform, and I guess he succeeded in fending of his opponents. They eventually seemed to tire.

Fiscally, Harper sounds acceptable to me, but I don't trust him on his record or on the record of previous Conservative governments. The Liberals have in the past, been more prudent fiscally than the Conservatives, as counterintuitive as that may seem.

In my own little campaign, not much to report, no election signs yet, and not much campaigning this week. I've been busy writing speeches and answering emails from just about everyone. Tomorrow I have my first two public appearances, a radio show at 9 am, and a TV taping at 12 noon. So I need to look that over right now.  

Yuri's Night 50th

That picture (left) is ostensibly a fuzzy black and white TV image of Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in Vostok 1 (mission patch above) during his one orbit space flight around the planet on this day 50 years ago, and I remember it too. Pretty exciting day, but it must have been terrifying for Gagarin, he was the first person to orbit the earth and thus the first to spend an extended period in space - one orbit. Much of the time in orbit Gagarin was not in contact with controllers in Moscow and his capsule automatically fired retros about one hour into the flight. Gagarin parachuted from his capsule 7 km above the earth when the capsule door blew off and he landed in South Western Russia. While dragging his chute along the ground in a field, Gagarin met a farmer and his daughter and asked for a phone to call Moscow.

Ironically Gagarin died during a routine training flight in March 1968.

The video below is an interesting tribute. 

Election Day minus 21 - Futility?

Day 17 - The close of nominations - a warm and windy day, "April is the cruelest month," that is Eliot, a poet not a weatherman. Tomorrow will be cool, I always thought April was cruel because it teased. I also had my snow tires swapped today (so did everyone else from the size of the crowd at the shop). It could still snow, that would be cruel.

All my papers are in, so now the real hard sell begins. The problem for Libertarians is we have nothing to sell but freedom, and people think they already have that, and are unaware that they lose it in dribs and drabs every time some blowhard politician declares a new program to help this group or that. The good news is, I can still insult the Prime Minister, even in a public debate, and few will think anything of it, thats freedom. Try doing that to the POTUS in the States, call Obama a name in public, even FOX NEWS will defend him.

This morning's National Post had an OpEd piece from a friend (the Party V.P.). In 750 words John Shaw, tried to encapsulate the essence of the Libertarian Platform for Post readers, a daunting task. The second paragraph in my link above gets to the heart of libertarianism, and I'm sure most readers will think they are in control of their lives, so they will dismiss it but conveniently forget that as much as 50% of their income is taxed away and spent by some level of government or other, 50%. The federal government takes a good chunk of that. Is it wisely spent? Well, each time there is a spending scandal (who can keep up) that is a clue the money is not wisely spent, as if we really had a choice in how it is to be spent. Of course thats what we are about. Libertarians are all about choice.

On the topic of choice, a new movie opens this week, I hope at a theatre near you. You should choose to see it. It is possibly a foreshadowing of things to come, or just a commentary on things as they are; whatever it is I can relate now, as I could when I first read the book. Have a peak: