Archive for September, 2008
John McCain Suspends Presidential Campaign
I have to say, I was pretty shocked when I read that Senator McCain has suspended his campaign for President amid the financial crisis and called on Obama to do the same. McCain would like for him and Obama to sit down the with President and Congressional leaders to work out a bailout that works for everyone.
He also doesn’t want to run for President while this is happening. Polls show trustworthiness on the economy is an issue where Obama leads significantly. Daily tracking polls have Obama in the lead. There are roughly 40 days until the vote. This a big deal. McCain also wants the debate cancelled on Friday so that he and Obama can join this leadership pow-wow with everyone.
John McCain is running for President. He is not President. The same goes for Obama. The Republicans asked McCain to carry their banner into the general election. Laying it down in what is clearly a desperate game of playing politics is unprecedented and pretty obviously motivated by how badly the last couple of weeks have been going.
Obama’s campaign should not join McCain in this bailout gambit. The United States is going to bankrupt the United States government attempting to solve this mess. Bush’s mismanagement of the economy has left the US with a 9 Trillion, yes trillion dollar debt. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have a combined 5 trillion dollars worth of liability and the US has taken those firms over. That puts the US debt liability at 14 trillion, and now Bush wants to throw another $700 billion on the table. This is not going to help the families who are facing foreclosure, but will bailout the firms on Wall street.
Obama and McCain need to keep on running for President. Bush and Congress need to figure out what they want to do, and the two candidates can certainly speak about it on Friday night when they debate. I know I’ll be watching. The next President is ultimately going to have to solve the long term aspects of this on their own after January 21st 2009.
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Poverty Slipping on the Provincial Agenda? – What?
This really bothers me. How can you make such a big, public deal about poverty reduction and then just sort of drift away from it?
If the McGuinty government backs away from poverty alleviation at this point in the game, it will demonstrate probably the single largest set back for poverty reduction since 1995. At least until now, Liberals have talked a good game. But when it was time for action to begin, or at least get close to beginning, suddenly we’re not so sure. I can already tell this post is going to make me unpopular with some of my friends. I say this as a Liberal, and as someone who understands the negative impact poverty has on a community and the hopelessness living in poverty causes people to feel.
I can appreciate that there is a downturn in the economy, and that presents challenges to the government by way of balancing the books. I generally do not support running deficits to cover operating costs, but when it comes to poverty alleviation, I don’t think it is as easy as saying ‘no can do’ and moving on.
“In government, we have to act responsibly in the same way that our families do. If finances get tight in our homes, families make adjustments, and they focus on their priorities,” - Dalton McGuinty
Sure, governments like families have to act responsibly. The difference is for people in poverty, things are so tight it is strangling them. And unlike government they do not have access to additional money, however dire the situation is. Someone in poverty cannot go and sell bonds, often times they are unable to access non-predatory credit and are in poverty because even while just focusing on their priorities they are unable to get by.
Forty-one percent of children in my part of Scarborough (Ward 43) live in poverty. One in five families lives more than 50% under the low income cut off – the poverty line. These people face impossible situations on a daily basis when it comes to providing simply the basics. I am sure most of the children who live in poverty throughout our province would forgive the Premier for mortaging their future, if he were to provide them with a fighting chance to succeed later in life.
It is also important to note that the solution to poverty does not need to be a grand public program. It can be a patchwork of a number of different things. I will leave out things like affordable housing, as admittedly building housing is expensive and my point here is to demonstrate some other ways the government can approach poverty reduction.
I personally believe that anyone who is able and willing to work should be able to find an income that will allow them to work their way out of poverty. So make a pact with Ontarians. If you can and will work full time, you’ll at be able to earn your way out of poverty.
The 2006 low income cut off was about $ 22 000. For someone to earn that before tax on an annual basis they would need an hourly income of $11. The Premier should continue to scheduled minimum wage increases until the minimum wage eclipses the poverty line, so that any Ontarian working full time can help themselves step out of poverty. If inflation stays around two percent and the government continued to increase the minimum wage by $ 0.75 a year, the minimum wage would meet or eclipse the poverty line in 2014 and then could simply be adjusted for inflation.
That’s only part of the problem, but would then allow for a greater focus on people who are on long term disability and let the government develop a better plan for child care and the other supports a single parent requires to re-enter the workforce.
I want to explain why I am angry that the Premier appears to be backing away, so it can be understood. So many people believed and hoped that finally the government was going to address poverty in Ontario. It showed a real turning of the page, but loose language around actually implementing anything before the government even releases it’s targets for poverty reduction demonstrates a cooling off, on something extremely important. What is worse, is people living in poverty have been given hope that things might actually get better, and now it appears they are in for more of the same.
Incidentally, when speaking to people who are living in poverty about political participation – being continually let down by government is the single largest reason cited. Maybe there is something to their point.
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Now that I have figured out how to embed videos from You Tube into WordPress, I thought I would share the few videos I posted to Youtube before but did not really speak about in any length.
I took an amazing walk to the Guild Inn at the end of August and was really touched by the work the East Scarborough Boys and Girls did on the site. I’ve talked about it before, so I won’t re-hash it here again. But here is the video.
Guild Inn Video
The next number of videos are from my walk on the beach below Morningside avenue in Guildwood. Kathy and I ran into Roy who is a local resident and he was able to share with us the plan for the beach down there. It has been a place I’ve spent a lot of time and seeing it look more like a construction site than a beach really worried me. I share the sentiment, while not condoning the actions of those who spray painted “give us back our beach” on some of the heavy equipment down there. Take a look at these videos too.
Video one of three – the plan for the site
Video two of three – I get in the water, sort of. - That is a dead fish you see.
Video three of three – Metal and stuff
Finally, the last one – Ward 43 Councillor Paul Ainslie’s first speech to Toronto City Council. One that haunted him and forced him to lie repeatedly, although it did not cost him election or a “return” to Council as he put it. I post this one because it dominated the last months of my campaign for City Council and frankly, I have contempt for lying politicians and Councillor Ainslie has certainly demonstrated himself to be one. In my mind there is nothing worse in politics than a lie. There are a couple of moments where the irony is too much.
Paul Ainslie’s first speech Toronto City Council.
