Frank Deford on Golf: Politically-Correct Enviro-Nonsense Infecting the World of Sports

The man generally known as the wise old genius of American sportswriting has joined the team - the politically-correct enviro-nonsense smear machine. Exposing himself as a self-hating liberal, Frank Deford’s latest NPR commentary, “Thirsty Golf Courses Need to Go Green“, explains that, because of global warming, golf courses are going to have to allow themselves to turn brown and ugly.

There’s nothing new here - it’s a rehash of left-wing tripe that would have us believe that such lies as “of course, we don’t have enough water anymore for all the people on the earth.” But what is truly annoying, as a lifelong sports fan, is that Deford insists on infecting the most innocent and American of all journalistic areas with this downer crap. And, he demonstrates how liberalism spreads its poison virally through venues like sportswriting and hollywood films. Here’s how the column concludes:

Golf Digest points out, for example, that an incredible 41 percent of golfers polled believe that global warming is a myth.

But among the 59 percent of the enlightened golfers, the problem is being addressed. Perhaps as many as 1,000 courses are using recycled or reclaimed water, and the United States Golf Association has made that mandatory for some areas of the Southwest. New grasses are being developed that require less moisture to thrive. Overseeding is being frowned upon. Courses are being returned more to their natural state, so grass will often have to lose some of its sheen.

You see, at the end of the day, for golf to go green and accommodate itself to the real world, it’s simply going to have to be much more brown.

So here’s the message to the average sports reader who is generally disengaged from political and scientific discourse: if you don’t accept the slippery, ever-shifting force-fed fear-mongering that the world is headed to catastrophe because of your selfish American bourgeoise ways, you are unenlightened. And you don’t live in the real world if you think golf courses should remain lush, green, and clean.

Say what you want about golf and golfers. I, for one, can’t understand where people get the time to take it up as a serious hobby. But there’s no proof that the world is running out of water, let alone being drained of it by golf courses. There’s also no proof that fresh water supplies are in peril in any way. But there is proof that self-hating liberals will eventually turn on everything beautiful, enjoyable, American, and middle-class.

So stop calling me unenlightened, kooks. Stop dismissing my skepticism of your hysteria as being outside the “real world”. And believe me when I tell you: this will be the most mocked and derided magazine cover in the history of sports when all is said and done, and you will feel very stupid for having taken it seriously:

Principal Shimon Waronker of The Bronx - Judaism at its best

Courageous, humble, God-fearing, standard-setting, military-trained family man…this is Judaism at its best! If you don’t love this guy, there may be something wrong with you.

Click here to view “A man’s passion to be principal” - NBC Today Show Clip

(Note the impact of student uniforms. To those who say “let kids express their individuality through what they wear,” I say, “let kids express their individuality through what they think and create.” Really - if you need the contrivance of clever clothing to express your personality, you may not have one.)

The Stanley Cup of the Canadian Blogosphere: Mohammed Elmasry vs. Maclean’s

As I watch Stanley Cup Game 5 work its way through double-overtime, I thought I’d help spread the word about the Stanley Cup Finals of the Canadian blogosphere, so to speak - this week’s BC Human Rights Tribunal hearing in the case of Mohammed Elmasry vs. Maclean’s magazine. An update, in a nutshell, for the previously uninformed:

• Maclean’s Magazine, Canada’s Time, prints an excerpt from columnist Mark Steyn’s New York Times #1 best-seller, America Alone, in October 2006.
• The head of the Canadian Islamic Congress, Mohammed “Every Israeli Jew is a Target” Elmasry, decides that Maclean’s must be dhimmified. Three “sock puppet” law students with ties to Elmasry and his lawyer, Faisal Joseph, try to shake down Maclean’s publisher for both an unedited “response”, and for financial donations to Muslim groups. Maclean’s shows the students the door, probably too politely for my taste.
• Elmasry’s sock puppet students take their case to the media, and shop it to Canada’s kangaroo court alternative (in)justice system - the Human Rights tribunals. Cases are filed in Ontario (the province where the magazine, and the complainants, are located), British Columbia (a province many thousands of kilometres away, that has no connection to the individals involved, but has the country’s most notoriously far-left-activist human rights tribunal), and at the federal level (the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal). The Ontario complaint was thrown out due to jurisdictional issues, but not without a most outrageous “you’re guilty anyway” press release accompanying the dismissal.
• At least one of the sock puppets, Khurrum Awan, magically gets a lawyerin’ job at Mr. Kutty’s firm.
• Dozens of bloggers, interested citizens, and journalists from around North America, have decended on a tiny windowless room in Vancouver this week to hear a panel of three non-judges, freed from the rules of evidence, procedure, fairness, and common sense, expose themselves and their fellow star chamber wizards as the banal faces of fascist evil that Hannah Arendt so famously warned us about.

Live-blogging the proceedings on their blackberries are Maclean’s Andrew Coyne and the great Ezra Levant. All the info you’d ever want (and more) can be found linked at Free Mark Steyn. Look for other great commentary at Steyn’s own blog, my friend Blazing Catfur’s blog, and at Kathy Shaidle’s Five Feet of Fury, which was unexpectedly dragged into the opening day of the farcical proceedings.

Why is this so important? Because it so neatly shines light on two of the biggest issues facing Canada in the current epoch: the unrelenting attack on Western values by Islamic jihadists, and the unrelenting attack on freedom of expression by arrogant leftist university-trained activist grievance mongerers throughout a country that generally rejects concepts like freedom of speech and checks-and-balances for no other reason than “they’re American.” Put them together, and what do you get? One of my favorite topics, the Islamist-Leftist Alliance. And no matter what you think of the issues - it’s damn fine theatre (of the absurd)!

(Good news - the Conservative government is starting to exercise some conservative muscle. Led by St. Catharines MP Rick Dykstra, Delta-Richmond East MP John Cummins, and Minister of Justice Rob Nicholson, a Parliamentary review of the entire Human Rights Commission structure is in the works.)

Czech President Vaclav Klaus on reason, freedom, and the climate alarmists

The world leader with an underlying political philosophy closest to that of Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper is Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic. Both men are trained economists, influenced deeply by free market principles as articulated by Adam Smith, Friedrich von Hayek, Milton Freeman, and others who understood that individual freedom cannot be sustained in a command-control economy.

Only one of these men has stood firm against the hysteria of the global warming/climate change enviro-extremists, and their champions of the left who tell us that the only solution is more national and international control over economies - and it ‘aint Harper. Vaclav Klaus never misses an opportunity to expose the Al Gore-led international-socialists-posing-as-green-activists for what they are, and summarized it brilliantly last week in his appearance at Washington’s National Press Club. You’ll find the full text of his remarks here on his web site. Some excerpts :

My thinking today is substantially influenced by the fact that I spent most of my life under the communist regime which ignored and brutally violated human freedom and wanted to command not only the people but also the nature. To command “wind and rain” is one of the famous slogans I remember since my childhood. This experience taught me that freedom and rational dealing with the environment are indivisible. It formed my relatively very sharp views on the fragility and vulnerability of free society and gave me a special sensitivity to all kinds of factors which may endanger it.

I do not, however, live in the past and do not see the future threats to free society coming from the old and old-fashioned communist ideology. The name of the new danger will undoubtedly be different, but its substance will be very similar. There will be the same attractive, to a great extent pathetic and at first sight quasi-noble idea that transcends the individual in the name of something above him, (of something greater than his poor self), supplemented by enormous self-confidence on the side of those who stand behind it. Like their predecessors, they will be certain that they have the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their idea reality. In the past it was in the name of the masses (or of the Proletariat), this time in the name of the Planet. Structurally, it is very similar.

…

My deep frustration has been exponentially growing in recent years by witnessing the fact that almost everything has already been said, that all rational arguments have been used and that global warming alarmism is still marching on. It could be even true that “We are now at the stage where mere facts, reason, and truth are powerless in the face of the global warming propaganda” (R. McKittrick, private correspondence).

…

The basic questions of the current climate change debate are sufficiently known and well-structured:

1) Do we live in an era of a statistically significant, non-accidental and noncyclical climate change?

2) If so, is it dominantly man-made?

3) If so, should such a moderate temperature increase bother us more than many other pressing problems we face and should it receive our extraordinary attention?

4) If we want to change the climate, can it be done? Are current attempts to do so the best allocation of our scarce resources?

My answer to all these questions is NO, but with a difference in emphasis. I don’t aspire to measure the global temperature, nor to estimate the importance of factors which make it. This is not the area of my comparative advantages. But to argue, as it’s done by many contemporary environmentalists, that these questions have already been answered with a consensual “yes” and that there is an unchallenged scientific consensus about this is unjustified. It is also morally and intellectually deceptive.

 

Maclean’s Muslim Law Students Learn: Nothing Comes Without a Price

A fascinating nugget came out of TVO’s Steve Paikin’s appearance on Dennis Miller’s radio show the other day. It seems that the three Osgoode Hall Law School students fronting radical Islamist Mohammed Elmasry’s Human Rights Commission complaints against Maclean’s magazine - Khurram Awan, Naseem Mithoowani, and Muneeza Sheikh - confided to Paikin after their appearance on his show, that they are having trouble finding articling jobs, because they are being seen as anti-freedom-of-speech. Listen to the fine 8-minute interview from Miller’s show here.

When they signed up to be the media-friendly faces of Elmasry’s Canadian Islamic Congress in its assault on our centuries-old tradition of freedom of expression, perhaps they never considered that there may be consequences to their fun little adventure. What they ended up with was a very expensive learning experience, one that has already hurt their careers before their careers have even begun. Tough for them. Meanwhile, Mr. “every Israeli citizen is a legitimate terrorist target” Elmasry should be ashamed of himself, for exploiting impressionable young people to further his own agenda. Then again, he can’t help himself - that’s just what his ilk do.

UPDATE 2008-06-02 - Despite protestations to the contrary from an anonymous commenter below, it seems that Mr. Khurram Awan did indeed have trouble finding a legitimate articling job coming out of law school. Why else would he be in the employ of Mr. Faisal Kutty, the lead “prosecutor” in the BC Human Rights “trial” going on this week? (See 12:10pm entry from Andrew Coyne’s liveblog of Day 1 of the hearing). Say, isn’t it a conflict of interest for Kutty to be examining his own employee in the “trial”? Just asking…

The Toronto Star’s Demonization of Israel Continues: Linda McQuaig on Stephen Harper

The dishonesty and Jew-hatred, of the Toronto Star continues - as usual, under the guise of “balance”. Linda McQuaig, the Naomi Klein wanna-be columnist, laments Stephen Harper’s unwavering support for Israel with this deceitful screed of nonsense. Let the Fisking begin:

A loss of balance on Israel TheStar.com - comment - A loss of balance on Israel

May 20, 2008

Linda McQuaig
Canada has a long history of supporting Israel. But the nature of that support, particularly under the Harper government, is almost unrecognizable from its earlier form.

Shocked by the horrors of the Holocaust, Canada played an important role in United Nations decisions that led to the establishment of Israel in 1948. But what Canada supported was a package deal in which Palestine would be partitioned into two states, one Jewish and one Arab.

Oh, you mean the package deal that Israel accepted, and the Arab world rejected? The one that Israel would have been proud to accept in return for peace on multiple occasions in the last 60 years, only to be responded to with war and terrorism? Yeah, that’s the one. 

Whatever the flaws of that model, one thing is clear. No Canadian official ever advocated what has become the reality today: that a Jewish state would be created, while the much larger Arab population in Palestine would be left stateless six decades later, and in fact living under Israeli military occupation.

WHAT? The Arab population of Israel is about 1/3 the size of the Jewish population. They are stateless only because they keep rejecting their opportunities, and because neighbouring Jordan, Syria, and Egypt refuse to accept permanent resettlement of any of the Arabs who lived in the borders of Britain’s Palestinian Mandate. And now that there’s no occupation of Gaza…the Gazan Arabs are living under their very own Islamist occupation.

That Canadian attempt at even-handedness has utterly disappeared under Stephen Harper, who lavishly celebrated Israel’s 60th anniversary with promises of Canada’s “unshakeable” support, while utterly ignoring the fact that this is also an anniversary – although a very different one – for the Palestinians.

Israel’s founding 60 years ago last week is also the 60th anniversary of what Palestinians call the naqba, or catastrophe, when some 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled in the face of violence by militants determined to establish a Jewish state. Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, speaking recently in Toronto, described this as “ethnic cleansing.”

Oh, Ilan Pappe, “Israeli Historian”! That is RICH! By all accounts, Pappe is a disgrace. Copius details can be found here in The New Republic in a review of Pappe’s fabrication-filled work by a true Israeli historian, fellow leftist Benny Morris. In a nutshell: Pappe’s a demented self-hating communist extremist who was recently expelled from his position at the University of Haifa. If Ilan Pappe says there was an ethnic cleansing, you can be certain there was none. Yet this is the latest “big lie” the extreme left is pushing on the world about Israel.

This bloody history has been largely banished from discussion in the mainstream North American media in recent years.

WHAT? Do you read your own paper?

But at the time, violence by Jewish militants was widely acknowledged. Menachem Begin, a militant who later became Israel’s prime minister, unabashedly pointed out in his memoirs that in the late 1940s British newspapers and politicians branded him “Terrorist Number One.”

If you’re not reading carefully, or you’re reading with bias, you might think, “oh, Begin was proud of being a terrorist.” Read again: Begin said that BRITISH NEWSPAPERS AND POLITICIANS called him a terrorist! He most certainly was not one, by any standard. Of course, this is part of the demonization: draw moral equivalence between a hero (Begin) and the worst scum on earth (Hamas, Al Qaeda, etc.)

Members of the Canadian UN delegation that voted 60 years ago in support of partition did so partly to avoid more Jewish violence in the region. R.G. Riddell, a member of that delegation, described the partition plan as “dangerous and provocative” but he argued that failure to adopt it would “play into the hands of Jewish extremists who are said to be prepared to seize the whole of Palestine by force.”

Another member of the delegation, Elizabeth MacCallum, a Middle East expert from the external affairs department, questioned Canada’s support for a partition plan that would “turn over 65 per cent of the territory to the Jews, who now own only 6 per cent of the land.”

Canada’s justice minister, James Ilsely, expressed concern that partition didn’t sufficiently answer “the very strong moral and political claims” of Palestine’s Arab community.

So three old historically-insignificant Liberals of the era said some things that are quite inoccuous. There’s nothing in any of these quotes, either, that rules out full support for Israel - particularly after 60 years of watching the two sides in the conflict. Your point is, Linda?

To celebrate the founding of Israel without at least acknowledging the flip side of this occasion – the beginning of the Palestinian diaspora – is to deny that there are two sides to this story. With this denial, Harper – in line with the Bush administration – has become an obstacle to reaching a Middle East peace.

Ah, when all else fails, bring out the Bush card. And please, explain, how could Canada, a nation with a standing in the region comparable to, say, Denmark, or Argentina, have anything but the most negligible impact on reaching Middle East Peace?

To continue to portray Israel as uniquely vulnerable stretches credulity. Yes, crude Palestinian rockets can reach into Israel. But Israel’s existence is well-established. It is one of the world’s best-armed countries, with a massive nuclear arsenal and unwavering U.S. support.

What, it’s OK to have rockets land in your living room, killing your mother, because your country has a strong military? Canada has a decent army, but that doesn’t mean we should be a target for a single random foreign terror missile landing in suburban Toronto.

Meanwhile the Palestinians – in refugee camps, under military occupation in the West Bank and under siege in Gaza – barely eke out an existence.

“under siege in Gaza” - THEY EVACUATED GAZA THREE YEARS AGO!!!!! And if they’re barely ekeing out an existence, where do those billions of dollars a year in foreign aid go to?

If Harper isn’t willing to be even a tiny bit even-handed, it would be helpful if he’d at least stop trying to play a role in the Middle East tinderbox.

“Harper, if you don’t agree with me, then shut up.” What a juvenile ending.

Linda McQuaig’s column appears every other week. lmcquaig@sympatico.ca

A shame…

The Same-Sex Marriage Catastrophe: Dennis Prager on California’s Supreme Court Decision

It’s a very, very difficult thing to win an argument against same-sex marriage pushers - particularly when so many conservatives have thrown up the white flag and completely turtled on the issue (yes, that includes you, Hon. Stephen Harper). But no one is going to convince me that it is simply “progress” that must be accepted. As I’ve said on the issue for years: why do we so rashly overturn an institution that has served our society so well for thousands of years, and why can’t we have a mature conversation about it without accusations of “homophobia” being tossed in as a debate-stopping grenade?

In the wake of the California Supreme Court’s 4-3 split decision last week overturning the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, Dennis Prager, perhaps the most clear-thinking, articulate social conservative in America today, dedicated his column this week to the topic, giving an eloquent but sharp explanation as to why the concept is simply wrong, and why it still needs to be fought. Worth a complete read; particularly if you are one of those “aw, it’s no big deal” types. Some excerpts:

Since the secular age began, the notion that one should look to religion — or to any past wisdom — for one’s values has died. Thus, the modern attempts to undo the Judeo-Christian value system as the basis of America’s values, and to disparage the Founders as essentially morally flawed individuals (They allowed slavery, didn’t they?). The modern secular liberal knows that he is not only morally superior to conservatives; he is morally superior to virtually everyone who ever lived before him.

…

The sexual confusion that same-sex marriage will create among young people is not fully measurable. Suffice it to say that, contrary to the sexual know-nothings who believe that sexual orientation is fixed from birth and permanent, the fact is that sexual orientation is more of a continuum that ranges from exclusive heterosexuality to exclusive homosexuality. Much of humanity — especially females — can enjoy homosexual sex. It is up to society to channel polymorphous human sexuality into an exclusively heterosexual direction — until now, accomplished through marriage. But that of course is “heterosexism,” a bigoted preference for man-woman erotic love, and therefore to be extirpated from society.

Any advocacy of man-woman marriage alone will be regarded morally as hate speech, and shortly thereafter it will be deemed so in law.

…

We have entered something beyond Huxley’s “Brave New World.” All thanks to the hubris of four individuals. But such hubris never goes unanswered. Our children and their children will pay the price.

Anticipating reactions to this column — as to all defenses of man-woman marriage — that it or its author are “homophobic,” i.e., bigoted and unworthy of respectful rejoinder, it is important to reaffirm that nothing written here is implicitly, let alone explicitly, anti-gay. I take it as axiomatic that a gay man or woman is created in God’s image and as precious as any other human being. And I readily acknowledge that it is unfair when an adult is not allowed to marry the love of his or her choice. But social policy cannot be made solely on the basis of eradicating all of life’s unfairness. Thus, we must love the gay person — and his and or her partner as well. But we must never change the definition of marriage. The price to society and succeeding generations will be too great.

And don’t forget the law of unintended consequences - no one knows the full scope of the problems that will be unleashed. And don’t tell me that “the sky didn’t fall in” here in Ontario; it’s only been a couple of years. Get back to me when a generation has been raised in a same-sex environment.

The Narcissism of the Left: Barack Obama and Appeasement

Barack Obama and his surrogates in the Democratic Party have proven, once again, that being on the left means being an extreme narcissist. President Bush goes to Israel, gives a beautiful speech to the Knesset that includes a warning against appeasement (a point that speaks directly to the era of the founding of the State of Israel) - and Obama, back home at some Legion Hall in Oregon or Kentucky, proclaims “HE’S TALKING ABOUT ME! HE’S TALKING ABOUT ME!”

Mark Steyn describes it well in National Review:

Honestly. What a bunch of self-absorbed ninnies. Here’s what the president said: “Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

It says something for Democrat touchiness that the minute a guy makes a generalized observation about folks who appease terrorists and dictators the Dems assume: Hey, they’re talking about me. Actually, he wasn’t — or, to be more precise, he wasn’t talking only about you. Yes, there are plenty of Democrats who are in favor of negotiating with our enemies, and a few Republicans, too — President Bush’s pal James Baker, whose Iraq Study Group was full of proposals to barter with Iran and Syria and everybody else. But that general line is also taken by at least three of Tony Blair’s former cabinet ministers and his senior policy adviser, and by the leader of Canada’s New Democratic party, and by a whole bunch of bigshot Europeans. It’s not a Democrat-election policy, it’s an entire worldview. Even Barack Obama can’t be so vain as to think his fly-me-to-[insert name of enemy here] concept is an original idea.

John Podoretz breaks it down perfectly in Commentary:

An “unprecedented attack on foreign soil”? That is completely deranged. Not only did Bush not mention Obama by name, it is doubtful he or his people were thinking about Obama. The argument that negotiating with terrorists is appeasement akin to Europe’s appeasement of Hitler is a standard view among hawks on the Right — decades old, dating back even before Barry Obama found the audacity to hope in the pews of Jeremiah Wright’s church. It is exactly the sort of thing a man with Bush’s politics would say in a speech before the Knesset, whether Obama had run for president or not.

…

I’m not sure what this all says about Obama. Is this smart politics, getting his base riled up on his behalf? Is he trying to use Bush as a wedge to make the case to the Jewish community in the United States that the bad man in the White House is mischaracterizing him and therefore Jews should like him more? Is he trying, for the millionth time, to rule any criticism of himself out of reasonable bounds by complaining about something that isn’t even criticism of him?

Or is this just another example of Obama’s thin-skinned-ness?

“Sucker Nation”: Diane Francis exposes the Fat Cats, Expats, and Passport-Collectors who bleed Canada dry

Diane Francis, the grande dame of Canadian business journalism, is now deep into her “Sucker Nation” series of columns in the Financial Post, exposing the outrageous ways that Canadian taxpayers get ripped off by amoral fat cats, expats, and passport-collecting jet-setters. Highly recommended reading, as it’s important to know what loopholes (and outright frauds) people exploit to stick someone else with the country’s bills. It’s a good character check to ask yourself: would I do what these people do, if presented with the opportunity?

Read each installment, with some great reader comments and e-mails following, on the National Post’s Full Comment blog:

Sucker Nation, Part I:

“I read your column and just couldn’t resist commenting on the abuse and fraud on the medical health care system I see and hear about every day.
“My husband and I moved to X [Latin America] to retire 3.5 years ago. We buy comprehensive insurance, to the tune of C$3,200 each and are glad to do so. However, many of the Canadians who have moved here, and spend at least ten months a year outside of Canada, are delighted to tell us that they have full access to the Canadian medical system. (Obviously, they think we are dumb to have insurance.)
“One such couple just flew back to Canada because the man had heart palpitations. He is currently undergoing bypass surgery and will soon have a pacemaker and defibrillator installed. They have lived in Europe for the last three years and this year spent all their time, other than Christmas, here. This particular couple have taken all of their investments offshore and the only income they pay tax on is the Old Age pensions. They tell everyone this.

Sucker Nation, Part II

(Quoting a tax accountant who wrote to her “…as an example, we have many Asians who have obtained Canadian passports and are working in Hong Kong and other areas earning substantial amounts of money. I’m not for taxing this compensation earned in other countries if the Canadian passport holder declares himself to be residing in those areas and is a taxpayer in those jurisdictions.”
“However, I feel very strongly that they should not be allowed to dance at two weddings at the same time. Why should these people be entitled to return to Canada at any time and take advantage of our health, social and educational services?”
“Once they have lived outside of Canada for one year, they should be obligated to pay a so-called `reentry fee’ for the services we provide.”
“In the first year this fee could be as low as $2,500 plus the maximum health tax plus an additional amount if they have school aged children. I would have this `reentry fee’ as a cumulative amount so that if they were away for five years and wanted to return for medical help or send their children to Canadian schools they would have to pay five times the amount, or seven times the amounts if they have been absent for seven years. This would compensate all Canadians who have been footing the bill over this period of time.”

Amen to that! Pay to play, people.

Sucker Nation, Part III:

“Extremely rich people from corrupt countries apply for permanent residency at their local embassy and it is my guess that their certain `special influence’ is exerted so they can get themselves and members of the family into Canada as immigrants.”
    “They visit Canada for a few weeks, get bank accounts, buy a condo then hit the road and leave Canada, letting the clock tick until they qualify for Canadian citizenship.”
    “Once they have a passport the party begins and they can come back and forth to use our services at will without contributing to taxes.”
    “These people are rich beyond our wildest dreams. A spare condo in Toronto [or Vancouver] is chump change if one looks upon it as [free entitlements like health care], needed `insurance’ against a collapse at home or a change in government.”

Canadian Tax Dodgers, Part I:

Thousands of fabulously wealthy Canadians sit on yachts in tax havens without paying any taxes on wealth made in Canada. Some, like the Irvings of New Brunswick, accumulate a king’s ransom because their Canadian empire’s ownership was transferred by the founder in the early 1970s to a series of Bermudian trusts.
It’s outrageous. The Americans do not allow this. Americans are taxed on the basis of their citizenship irrespective of residency.
Canada allows its wealthy to go offshore, pay a one-time departure tax on their wealth of 25% capital gains tax and never have to pay tax again on their nest egg as it accumulates in Barbados, Bermuda, Bahamas or any number of tax havens like the Channel Islands or Ireland.

Canadian Tax Dodgers, Part II:

Canada also allows people to leave “permanently” for tax purposes, then come back without penalty. That’s why it is not unusual for old expatriates, or those with serious illnesses, to return in order to poach off Canadians for health care because they are medically uninsurable abroad.
“Fortunately, for every one of these guys there are ten of us who don’t do this,” said Seymour Schulich. “My family’s here, my grandchildren are here and I made my money here. Say what you want, I think you owe allegiance to the place which gave you the opportunities. I would say to these guys who leave ‘it’s okay to take your money and run, but don’t ever come back.’”

The Nightmare of Socialist Medicine: Sex Changes Now! Cancer, Autism, Brain Surgery Later

Ontario’s Minister of Health proudly announces Thursday: Sex Change surgery will once again be covered by the province’s socialist health care monopoly.

Amazing! The province must be swimming in funds! All problems in the health care system must have been solved, if we can now provide the resources for sadly pathetic, psychologically disturbed adults to have their bananas turned to peaches.

Perhaps we should call Sylvia de Vries, who would be dead by now if not for the good fortune of living across the river from Detroit’s Henry Ford Hospital, and tell her the good news. And while we’re at it, call Stephan Marinoiu, nearing bankruptcy to pay for his son’s autism therapy, to let him know. Hey, see if Lindsay McCreith wants in on the celebration:

(An aside: for an idea of the state of conservatism in Ontario today, here’s the Tory PC’s reaction to the story: “The Progressive Conservatives declined to comment on the issue, saying they wanted to wait and hear something more from the government than Smitherman’s musings to reporters.”