Why are the levels of income inequality continuing to rise when Canada is one of the wealthiest nations in the world?
By Andrew Chernoff https://andrewchernoff.wordpress.com/
First it was Jordan Bateman of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation with his article, “The pay of government workers is way out of line” published July 31, 2013 in The Province, to which I made my feelings known about on August 3, 2013 in my commentary, “Bateman Advocates A Race To The Floor For Minimum Wage…You First, I’ll Give Ya A Push”.
Just like a bad smell you can’t get rid of, or a bad itch you just can’t seem to scratch, another proponent of the drive to lower wages——–using a corrosive and mean-spirited abuse of the privilege of free speech for hateful, venomous and spiteful unsupported comments with the intent to rile, incite anger and get an antagonistic reaction——comes forward.
Ms. Margaret Wente, a so-called journalist for the The Globe and Mail, woke up recently seemingly during that bitchy time of the month (the only way I can explain it), and decided to lambaste, insult and take undignified shots at Canada’s firefighters—all of the “Nations” firefighters—-without exception.
In her article on August 8, 2013, “A Nation of $100,000 Firefighters”, Wente charges, “municipalities do not love firefighters.”
Further, she claims to speak and know the feelings of our municipalities and regions, proclaiming, “ Across Canada, towns and cities are getting hosed by the skyrocketing costs of their fire departments.”, of which firefighters, she suggests, are the main reason for those increased costs because, municipalities, “simply match the settlements that everybody else got, including police. So the costs spiral ever upward,”
She continues, by adding insult to injury when she claims, “Thanks to arbitration settlements, your firefighters are the best paid (and possibly the most underworked) guys in town.”
Really?? Possibly the most underworked in MY town? Hmmm….she’s been in my town??….I think not!
She claims to have nothing against fire fighters. “I have nothing against firefighters, personally. But times have changed. We can’t go on like this. I could write the same column about the police. You guys are supposed to protect us. But we can’t afford you any more.”
But she does say, “They look good on calendars.” A sexist comment I dare say. And dare I do.
So nobody is safe. The police make too much. School teachers? Bus drivers? Janitors? Airline pilots? Ambulance drivers? Paramedics? Who is not a target for Ms. Wente?
She obviously has a lustful crush for Stephen Harper and his Canadian Austerity plan. In her desire to drive down wages, she is a true Harperite, spreading propaganda for that race to the floor for minimum wage, to increase that disparity between those that have, and those that don’t—between the 1% and the 99%.
According to Wente, our firefighters have barely anything to do, “Working conditions are pretty sweet too. Thanks to modern safety standards, there are very few fires left to fight. These days, most fire department calls are medical. To prove that they’re still needed, fire departments have been adding defibrillators and Jaws of Life, and frantically expanding their repertoires to respond to even minor non-fire emergencies. Still, there’s an awful lot of what we shall euphemistically call “down time,” which firemen fill by preparing meals, sleeping, watching television, polishing the trucks and rewinding the hoses.”
She claims that the costs and salaries for Canadian firefighters are for smaller cities, “typically the largest item in the budget. It accounts for upward of a quarter of their costs.” And that firefighters and their unions are so insensitive, greedy in the community and regions they live in, that “the costs spiral ever upward, and towns are forced to cut back on libraries and roads.”
This is one woman who has one hell of a bitchy time of the month; so much so, that a grizzly bear would be no match for her spite and hate.
“But the really crass way that the rich have of driving down wages is by subtly and not so subtly feeding people’s envy and greed…making us worry that someone else might be getting ahead, might be doing better than us. We aren’t talking about getting us riled over the wages of bankers, brokers and sports stars; we profile them in the fashion and shopping pages of the papers.”, OperationMaple writes in its reaction to Wente’s column, titled, “Let Us Count The Ways of Driving Down Wages”.
I continue with the following quote from OperationMaple’s article referred to above:
“The Rich and their Media Mavens saved the corrosive power of envy and greed for school teachers, fireman, bus drivers…all the folks that live next door and shop at the same stores we do. Let’s get agitated and angry with Joe down the street and Alice around the corner for having a job with a union, a negotiated wage and benefits and let’s try and pull them down to our situation…part time work and no benefits and lousy pay. Because when their economic situation is as desperate as ours, then everything will be ok.
They get paid too much and work too little and couldn’t we all get by with a volunteer firefighting force? Just because they are the ones who run into burning buildings when the rest of us are running from burning buildings, in Wente’s view, doesn’t justify the wage they get.
It used to be the case that when people got decent wages and benefits through collective action we’d all cheer them on and try to copy their efforts, create our own unions and seek our own collective success. Not anymore. Now we just want to tear down those folks lucky enough to have a union. The drive to lower wages by making all of us envious of our neighbours is succeeding. That’s why the 1% and their media allies, their media employees go after Employment Insurance and Firefighter wages…because it works and it distracts us from the folks that are truly criminally over-paid: bankers and brokers.”
I conclude with the following remarks.
The drive to lower wages may be succeeding in some minds, but it has not succeeded everywhere and with everybody. Are you going to let it happen to you? Will you start fighting back now, and let yourself be heard? Will you stand up? Will you get involved in civil disobedience and fight the good fight?
The drive to lower wages is nothing but a race to the floor of minimum wage. We are expected to give up more, so the rich can get richer? I think not.
The richest 300 people in the world are more wealthy than the poorest 3 billion combined, and every year rich countries take over 10 times more money from poor countries than they give in aid, according to therules.org. Find out more by visiting http://www.therules.org
Don’t let yourself succumb to the race to the floor of minimum wage.
From: http://operationmaple.ca
Fukushima: the site of the worst nuclear power plant disaster since Chernobyl along with a hotbed of corporate cover-ups and state-led lies.
Problems at Fukushima-Daiichi began as early as 1990, when the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission warned TEPCO (The Tokyo Electric Power Company) that the plant’s location – so close to seismic activity – could lead to a potential calamity. But TEPCO ignored this; and then came the March 2011 tsunami and the nuclear meltdowns.
Overnight, 160,000 people were tossed out of their home. Without compensation. Fukushima cleanup workers paid the equivalent of $10/hr were contaminated with the radioactive spray. But there was worse news to come – except this other news was kept from us, until this past week when Masayuki Ono (the head of TEPCO) was forced to admit that radioactive groundwater leakage to a tune of 300 tons has been rushing everyday into the Pacific Ocean.
Suzuki-san, a former foreman at Fukushima and 12-year TEPCO employee, believes the contamination has been occurring since the 2011 accident, but that TEPCO “didn’t want to cause an outcry” and so stayed mum. But the people themselves had a good sense of what was going on. More than a thousand fishermen in the area could not, in good conscience, fish and sell the infected fish to an unsuspecting public. So they stopped fishing, while TEPCO kept lying to the public.
The Fukushima disaster is a classic example of a corporation that will do anything for profits. It will lie, cause innumerable deaths to people, to fish and animal life, to the entire eco system, it doesn’t matter. And it will admit this only when it is absolutely forced or embarrassed into it. By 2012, this disaster had already cost the people of Japan over a billion US. And although the fault rests squarely with TEPCO, it is the people of Japan who are being asked once again to foot the bill. A cost that will go into the hundreds of billions. (Fisherman Kazuo Niitsuma, seen in photo, has been unable to work since the 2011 meltdown. Photograph: Justin McCurry for the Guardian)
No, corporations are no different in Canada. The Sydney Tar Ponds, known as one of the most toxic sites in North America, was abandoned by Sydney Steel and the Coke Ovens. Cost of the cleanup will be in the hundreds of millions and paid for by Canadian taxpayers. All over the Maritimes the picture is the same: fish packing plants, pulp and paper plants, gypsum plants, all left there for taxpayers to pay for cleanup. It is the same for the rest of Canada – driven through Hamilton, lately? Plant after manufacturing plant closed, left there to rot; waiting for years to pass when taxpayers will look after the cleanup costs. Why did these plants shut their doors in the first place? To go to areas with cheaper labour. Hundreds upon hundreds of millions lost but that could go for our healthcare. Schools. Nursing homes.
How do we change this? Corporations don’t care about our schools, healthcare and nursing homes. They care for profits, nothing else. Our government? Those politicians we elect every now and again to work for us, the people? Seriously, now, would Canada have such a world-wide anti-environmental reputation if our politicians worked for us? So who’s left?
We are. The people. The 99%. There is no one else.
Andrew Phillip Chernoff 