Speech from the Throne 11/22/11

Doesn't that sound highfalutin? Well, in a Westminster style Democracy, like Canada's, it's not. It is what routinely happens at the start of every new sitting of Parliament, Federally or Provincially. Today it was Ontario's turn, the 40th Session of Parliament, and the speech was delivered by the Queen's Representative (hence Throne) here in Ontario, the Lieutenant Governor.
The speech itself is written by the governing party, in this instance the McGuinty Liberals. They probably consider themselves middle-of-the-road politically. Of course in every Western Democracy, that means statist, that is, the state is the beginning, the end, and the middle of all problems and solutions. That unfortunately is the way they think and so do many of our citizens.
I take my new role as Leader of the Ontario Libertarians, seriously enough to respond to any major Ontario Government announcements, and a Throne speech sets the tone and the goals of the new Parliament, so, it is important.
Below is a heavily edited version (under 5 minutes) of the speech, written highlights can be seen here. But give a listen, then read my response underneath.

In the Throne speech delivered today, while the McGuinty Liberals are acknowledging the global financial crisis, their actions are woefully inadequate as a means of averting the same fate. As if totally disconnected from the market turmoil in all of the Western democracies, the McGuinty government’s plan pretends that Ontario is immune to such problems. In Europe and in America, governments have grown to the point where they are outspending the productive abilities of their own citizenry. The excessive deficits and accumulating debts are now jeopardizing the credit ratings of these countries while impacting the wealth and well being of their citizens.

Unfortunately for Ontario, it is following in the same path. Since McGuinty has taken power in 2003, Ontario's government has grown much faster than its economy. Government spending has doubled and so has the provincial debt, resulting in Ontario becoming a “have not” province. Those facts are intimately linked - cause and effect.

In a recent speech, Dalton McGuinty suggested that Ontario would weather the economic storm with a strong stable plan; this was repeated in the speech from the Throne today. It’s as if the government now realizes that the provincial payroll has ballooned out of their control, so they now intend to reduce the Ontario public service by five per cent by March 2012, and a further two per cent by 2014. Add to that another $200-million in workforce reductions at the 630 government agencies, and they claim this will be sufficient to attack the massive $250-billion debt. That is pathetic, and does not even begin to address the problem.

Despite the newfound appreciation for budget restraint, the government is forging ahead with the expensive and unnecessary introduction of full day kindergarten and a reduction of college and university tuition by 30 per cent for families earning less than $160,000 per year. This amounts to a subsidy and job security for the teacher’s unions. Supporting the education sector is moreover highly questionable, given the teacher’s union’s active support during this past election campaign.

In the Speech from the Throne, the government insists that it will find improved efficiencies to encourage greater productivity without ever explaining how this can be done. In fact, the government undermines any possibility of this happening by treating the government monopolies of Healthcare and Education as sacrosanct, and never to be touched by the evil practices of competition, so widely and profitably used in every other sector of our economy.

No, the McGuinty Liberals have co-opted the wealth of hard working families and transferred it to government because think they know better how to spend the money of those families. Certainly, those families may prefer to make their own decisions about how best to spend their wealth if they had a choice.


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Atlas Shrugged Part One: a review....

"The film is magnificent," according to Stefan Molyneux as seen in his latest blog post here. I can't think of a better endorsement, so I bought it. I bought in good faith with the hope that this production group finishes the three parts.

The DVD is available at Amazon.ca or here.

Here is Stefan's review:

Getting to the real source of the problem...

Civic officials are attempting to close down "Occupy" movement sites in cities all over North America. In Canada and northern US cities, winter is closing in. The occupiers will be faced with serious challenges from nature AND civic officials very soon.
For me, the problem with the OWS movement is its ambiguity. I can't wholeheartedly support a movement that really has not defined itself. If OWS "leaders" (are there any?) actually came out and said they want the link between crony capitalists and big government broken, well I might listen. If they actually pointed to big government, union-government monopolies, government-business monopolies, and unsustainable entitlement programs as problems, then I might listen. But they don't. Their message is muddled and could be capsulized as "We don't know what we want, and we won't leave until we get it." That was a suggestion on a talk radio show I was listening to, unfortunately it works for this protest.

If the OWS movement is unable to pinpoint the problem or articulate a solution, that does not mean it hasn't been done. In fact it has been done several times over the years, but without much fanfare and none of the drama that roving bands of protestors offer to the media.
The video below is an example, and shows Russell D. Roberts, Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. In October of 2009, in the midst of the TARP and financial crisis, Roberts gave testimony to a US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The testimony was articulate, pointed and for me and others, hit the nail squarely on the head. The testimony was also promptly ignored.
Professor Roberts has blogs here and here. His testimony is what OWS should be using as its mantra and its reason for being. Instead, OWS organizers brainwash their followers by having them repeat inanities in a way reminiscent of cult behaviour. Superimposing the "Hive mind" over the individual thinker. That sort of collective action makes me suspicious, always.
If you have not heard Prof. Robert's testimony you are in for a treat, if you have, its a treat to hear it again. Its needs to be shared widely.

COP 17 or cop out.

Last August there was news that an old theory had been resurrected to explain global warming. You will remember the story out of CERN, that cosmic rays may have an effect on warming, greater than the dreaded CO2, such was the evidence presented.
That posting, plus others, frequently prompt comments from other bloggers, and readers informing me of my heretical position in view of the scientific consensus. No one is more righteous, or more fervent in their belief, than a religious zealot. So I feel comfortable in comparing AGW belief and religion, and that does not even include the question of evidence in either case.
Of course not all who believe that global warming has occurred, and is occurring, are religious zealots. I agree that warming has and is occurring (I'm not a zealot, just a skeptic), I also agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas (so are H2O and methane). I just don't believe its an issue we can or should try to control, nor do I think it will ever be a problem, at least not in the Al Gore doom and gloom scenario. As I have stated before, the scientists are gung-ho for AGW research and grants, because they need the money, plain and simple, and governments want the power and control.
In the last few months their have been some interesting developments on the AGW front. The Koch Brothers, rich American libertarians (of all people), funded a study called BEST (Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature), which discovered that the earth has been warming, shocking I know, and the continental glaciers around my house have retreated, too! The warmists are thrilled, because this BEST project, could mean the end of climate change skepticism or as they prefer, denial. I don't think so. In fact there are many questions that remain unanswered and the whole thing has been questioned.
Then there was the case of the delinquent teenager, or rather the new book that compares delinquent teenagers to "climate experts." This book by the Canadian journalist Donna Laframboise, adds gasoline to the firestorm created by "climategate." Imagine having the power to affect multi-billion dollar government programs based on "peer-reviewed" data compiled by activist graduate students. That is part of the claim in Ms. Laframboise' book as explained here.
At the end of November, the IPCC meets again to save the world, this time in Durban South Africa. Will it be another Cancun, I hope?  Will people realize that climate science resembles pseudoscience in its ability to predict doom, or as Matt Ridley eloquently stated: "we may be putting a tourniquet round our necks to stop a nosebleed." Who is Matt Ridley? He is a zoologist who recently delivered a lecture for the Angus Millar Lecture 2011, on Scientific Heresy. The lecture dissects the difference between science and pseudoscience (well worth the read). Ridley provides six lessons which he uses to attack the establishment view on AGW. He concludes: "I’ve spent a lot of time on climate, but it could have been dietary fat, or nature and nurture. My argument is that like religion, science as an institution is and always has been plagued by the temptations of confirmation bias. With alarming ease it morphs into pseudoscience even – perhaps especially – in the hands of elite experts and especially when predicting the future and when there’s lavish funding at stake." I couldn't agree more, as for COP17, we should cop out.