Why do women miss so many easy opportunities to learn from male experience?

Lori Gottlieb wrote an “Atlantic” magazine article a couple of years ago titled, “Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough”.

According to an update she did last month, the gist of it was that women should look for the important qualities in a partner, and let go of the stuff that won’t matter five, 10, or 20 years down the line”.

She admits the word “settle” mislead quite a few people. She said a survey revealed that women felt that getting 80 percent of what they desired in a mate was settling. Men felt that getting 80 percent of what they wanted was a real catch.

The article led to a lot of controversy about the idea of having it all, not really needing a mate at all, the limitations brought about by commitment, children, loneliness, and all the variations of human needs, comforts and desires.

To the extent that there was a conclusion, it seemed to be that there comes a point in a woman’s life when she wants to settle down with a companion and, perhaps, have some help raising a child. She realizes, at that point, the things that are actually important to her.

If we were talking about men, we might say that guys like to sow their wild oats but eventually want to settle down with the girl next door and be part of a family.

The difference is that, in men, we call that maturity. In women, apparently, it is settling.

Decent guys resent that women flock to the studs for excitement and danger and then turn to them for long-term support. What guys learn from this is that the secret to success with women is to lie to them. That is why few men are totally decent.

Never having been of the female persuasion, I can only speculate that women may resent that young men flock to the vixens for excitement and danger and then want to have children with the girl-next-door whose children, they trust, will be theirs. That is why, I suspect, quite a few girls next door are wearing a bit of a disguise over some vixenish experimentation.

A column, a couple of years ago, by Maureen Dowd of the “New York Times,” discussed the difficulty highlevel women executives have finding and keeping mates. It went on at length about men who are intimidated by powerful, intelligent, wealthy, women and the stress of trying to maintain a relationship while keeping up with the demands of business or professional life.

What, they wondered, are they to do?

Well, it is impossible to know what would work for all of them but it is fairly easy to see the range of things that will happen.

Some of them will be matched up in a way that will, somehow, work. Some will have affairs with equals, superiors, or underlings. Some will engage in serial monogamy. Some will abandon their mates for someone who is a better match to the person they have, for better or worse, evolved to be. Some will wind up detached and living either sexless or serviced by accommodating amateurs or professionals. Some will discover that their neglected partner has taken up with the tennis pro (male or female) and is absconding with half the family assets. Some will have two lives like mafia bosses, European politicans or certain golfers, who have a church and society sanctioned mate and family at home and a mistress or string of bimbos on the side.

The simple fact of the matter is that, as women gain their political, financial and sexual independence or empowerment, they will encounter all the same challenges men have for thousands of years.

Women have had, at least, one historic advantage over men in relationships. Women always knew their children were theirs. Men, until recently, did not.

Willa Cather said that there are only two or three stories in human existence but we keep on living them as if they were happening for the very first time.

I suppose I should not be surprised that bright women cannot learn from the eternal lessons lying there under their noses.

Men never have either.

On we go!                                          DAC

From time to time, people who know us, press our buttons to watch us go nuclear. If we are lucky, we sometimes are able to learn to see it coming and have a good laugh instead of exploding.

I have decided to treat the reaction to the Canadian Women’s Hockey gold medal celebration as the funniest thing of these Olympics.

After the crowd had left the rink, some of the women went back out onto the ice with beer, Champagne and cigars and celebrated on the ice for awhile. One of them was Marie Philip Poulin, the 18-year-old, whose Billy-the-kid gunslinger shots scored both Canada’s goals. Marie Philip is a month short of 19.

The next day, the celebration, alcohol and tobacco were a bit of an international incident. The “New York Times” had an opinion piece on it. The piece did point out that it was not as bad as when the US men trashed their floor of their hotel when they were eliminated in Turin. Yeah, I’d say.

At first my ears turned red and blue flame shot from my eyes. Then the hilarity of it all cracked me up and left me falling on the floor laughing my ass off.

I am a light year away from being a qualified hockey analyst but even I know I saw a magnificent performance.

If I had been part of something like that, I would have been trying to figure out how to take that ice home with me. It seems to me the most natural thing is for them to NEED to celebrate with their sisters on the site of their figurative and literal Olympian triumph. I am surprised they did not all explode with the joy, excitement and release of having shouldered and delivered on the enormous burden of the passionate expectations of our entire nation.

That night and that ice will be a huge highlight in the entire lives of those women. No sane person would leave it without taking some time to burn it into their memory banks in the highest possible resolution. It is clearly visible in the pictures of the players spreadeagled on the ice. They are soaking the experience into their bones.

Hell, if they had decided to roast a pig at centre ice, I would have thought that quite appropriate and been honoured to tend to the coals, basting and carving.

For a victory to be truly Olympian, in the figurative sense, a giant opponent is an absolute necessity. The American women were all of that. It was a classic battle.

It was the essence of hockey on several levels. Canada’s Gillian Apps and American Angela Ruggiero banged away at each other like heavyweight contenders.

Shannon Szabados’s cat reflexes and steady calm, were the very picture of the qualities of a hockey goaltender. The team did everything we look for in, and love about, hockey.

I was pleased that the Canadian players and officials did not cover themselves in rue at the tsk, tsks of Olympic committee spokesfolk.

Our officials had, of course, to be polite and political. I don’t. Sometimes profanity is a precise and required element of communication.

Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.           DAC

I wish there were a better solution to New Brunswick’s NB Power problem than to sell it to Hydro Quebec. I wish Quebec would sell Hydro Quebec to private sector owners. I wish there was not so much corruption in politics, bureaucracy and corporations. I wish there were some way New Brunswick could be a self-sufficient entity and not a chronic welfare case. I wish the Maritimes were one province with a larger voice in a competitive world.

All or none of those things might be possible but only a manic, chemically enhanced optimist would foresee any of them occurring in any forseeable future.

One of the problems that contributed to NB Power’s frailty is that both parties that take turns governing New Brunswick have used it as a giant pork barrel. A Member of the New Brunswick Legislative Assembly told me recently that both parties refer to NB Power as “The Upper Chamber,” a joking reference to the idea that it is the equivalent of the Senate of Canada as a reward for cronies. We all know so many people who got their jobs with NB Power via political favouritism that we must wonder if there is anyone there who did not. Hydro Quebec has a similar reputation.

However, Quebecers and their industries have had lower power rates than New Brunswickers for years. It is difficult to know how many companies failed, left New Brunswick or never came because of that but certainly thousands of jobs were involved. It seems odd that so many New Brunswickers resent the idea that business and industry would benefit from lower rates.

How many people realize that there is no one to pay any tax or cost of business except the final consumer, you and me? Does anyone think taxes or costs businesses pay can be recovered from anyone else? Oh, yes, sometimes we can pass a share of it off to a neighbour or guest as, for example, other provinces do with highway tolls. New Brunswickers chose not to do even that. Sometimes we can mooch a larger share from our neighbours via the federal government. Still, most of us know that living with our parents is not the life we want.

In fact, the lower the costs and taxes New Brunswick businesses pay, the more competitive they can be here and away. The more competitive they are here, the less we pay for goods and services. The more competitive they are outside our province, the more revenues they bring back here and the more of us they employ.

Another factor that may not be significant but should not be ignored is the future of major power grids. Power transmission is very inefficient and grids are vulnerable to natural and terrorist acts. There is a great deal of research taking place right now to develop alternate and local forms of electricity generation. Hydrogen fuel cells, for example, could be very small and local if the cost barrier could be cracked.

Not so long ago, telephone companies were huge monopolies. Even more recently, the pulp and paper industry dominated the value-added forest industry in, not just New Brunswick, but Canada. Aren’t we glad New Brunswick does not own those industries now? Generally speaking, governments never do well owning business or industries unless they can force a monopoly like the NB Liquor Corporation to gouge us mercilessly.

“Politics,” as US President Lyndon Johnson, is supposed to have said, “is the art of the possible”. I am sure Premier Shawn Graham would prefer many different choices than are politically possible in New Brunswick. Unfortunately, the right thing is not always the popular or politically possible thing. We all know, for example, that linguistic dualism is destructive to our prosperity and unity. No party can oppose it and form a government.

However, Premier Graham is leading an effort akin to Louis Robichaud’s to improve the standard of living and self-sufficiency of New Brunswickers. He has bent but not broken, compromised but not surrendered. He has put his government and his legacy on the line hoping that enough New Brunswickers have faith in a progressive future to support him.

Here’s hoping we do.                                               DAC

I have been engaged in a vigorous exchange of views with an American, Walker Chandler, of Georgia, who calls himself a Libertarian. He says that Libertarianism is, essentially, the golden rule. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. He believes mankind, left to its own choices, will engage in a type of voluntary co-operation and self-interested sharing of intelligence and group survival activities.

That is his philosophical position. His life position is that an armed person is  a citizen while an unarmed person is a subject. A retired lawyer, he bemoaned the fact that he could not join the military and serve in Iraq.

I subscribe to Lord Acton’s dictum that “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

My sense of Libertarianism is that it inevitably leads to piracy.

The purpose of democracy is to protect the rights of the individual.

Normally I do not bother to argue with people whose minds I know will not change. I have been going toe to toe with this guy for three reasons.

One is that he said that Liberals have no arguments other than to claim their ideas represent what is fair. That offended and irritated me. I am determined to show him otherwise.

Another is that I wanted to try to learn how someone can come to so dearly and firmly hold ideas that are such anathema to me.

Finally, I wanted to take my beliefs into a hostile ring and test them against his in a vigourous contest.

The experience has not only solidified my beliefs, it has, I think, given me an even more pragmatic basis for them.

He believes that people need to be armed so that their government will not subjugate them by force. That led me to the conclusion that the Christmas wish, “Peace on earth. Goodwill toward men,” is not simply a warm, pleasant wish, it is the essence of investment in good government.

At the same time as I was taking the gloves off with Walker, I was enjoying Skype happy hours and online chats with Mihaela Dascalu. She is a Romanian we met in Greece where she was living and teaching at the time. She speaks five languages and has a Master’s degree in education. She is currently teaching English as a second language in a girl’s school in Abu Dhabi. She grew up under the Ceausescu dictatorship that ended 20 years ago this Christmas with the summary execution of Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Ilena.

This autum, Mihaela was excited to be casting her absentee ballot in the democratic elections in Romania. Those of us who have never lived under a violently repressive regime cannot truly appreciate what a treasure a free vote is.

Walker strongly feels that the citizenry has to be armed to prevent its government from forcing its will on the people. This seems to me an odd belief in a man who believes a Libertarian society would practice the golden rule.

He sent me a video of a woman testifying before a legislative committee in a state that had restricted her right to carry a handgun.

She was, on the one hand, livid with rage that the gun restriction had prevented her from shooting a lunatic who shot up a fast food restaurant with an automatic weapon and killed her parents.

At the very same time, she was livid at the idea that the legislators might restrict the ownership of automatic weapons like the one used to kille her parents and others. She said she was furious when people said you do not need an AK-47 to kill a deer.

“The second amendment was never about killing deer,” she said. “It is about our right to defend ourselves against (with a sweeping gesture of her hand at the legislators) YOU!”

Walker and his fellow gun rights advocates see nothing incongruous in this.

I pointed out to him that, in Canada, we do not fear that our government will use weapons to summarily suppress or arrest us. I pointed out that, just as in the U.S., the government IS us. Our politicians are not gun violent people and would not dream of using guns to bend us to their will.

All of us have laws with which we do not agree but we know there is a consensus for them or, at least, that penalties for violating them that fall far short of violence and torture.

In Canada, in 1849, there were riots in Montreal protesting the passage of a “Rebellion Losses Bill”. The Baldwin-LaFontaine government let the riots run their course and dealt with them in the courts instead of calling in the army to crush them. That set a precedent of not using the military against civilians that is the norm in Canada to this day.

Let’s get back to Mihaela Dascalu and the Romanian Revolution 20 years ago. What finally toppled the Ceausescus? During a public protest in Timisoara, the army followed orders to fire on the crowd and many were killed. A significant result of that was that the military turned against Ceausescu and refused to fire on the citizens again.

It turned out the officers and soldiers were citizens too and were not willing to shoot their unarmed brethren.

It would seem, therefore that the practice of peace and goodwill should produce governments and armies that do not want to use arms against their citizens.

In Canada, we live in a fairy tale bubble of peace, order and good government. Mihaela lived under the Ceausescus. Her mother, as an 11-year-old girl, with her own eyes, saw the Nazis execute 50 Jews in a public square in Romania.

Canadians are far too casual about our votes. If we do not take the trouble to become politically aware and to cast our votes diligently, we risk losing our rare and precious peace and freedom.

We also have to be extremely diligent to ensure that our politicians and military leaders never get the idea that we approve of or will tolerate human rights abuses against even our worst enemies. We all know that a person who will abuse an animal will abuse a human. We must remember that a politician or soldier who will tolerate the abuse or torture of a Taliban fighter is starting down a road that can lead to our doors.

We cannot afford the lazy populism that can so easily corrode the foundations of our precious freedom from fear of our government.

When we say “Lest we forget,” on Remembrance Day, perhaps we need to remember not only that so many died for our freedom but why they had to.

Let’s pay attention.                                     DAC

Someone once wrote that a person who is honest because he believes honesty is the best policy is no more pious than is a thief. If so, I sit on the same bench as the thief. I believe that honesty and facing up to the music when you screw up is, in the long run, just the sensible thing to do.

A friend once marveled at how my father and I always knew what the positions of our newspapers should be while he often had to spend hours agonizing over what he should do. I couldn’t take any credit for it. My parents had raised me with a firm understanding of what our family would do and what it would not do. I explained to my friend that it is as if there is a pipe that runs down through the centre of the universe. In the midst of the darkest storm, we can just close our eyes and hang on to that pipe. The pipe is what is right.

He had, properly I think, rejected the repressive religion of his youth. When faced with a moral issue, he had nothing to rely on but situational ethics. He needed a set of good principles.

One practical benefit of a good set of principles is that they save time. You do not have a lot of variables to consider and weigh.

Another benefit is that you do not need a photographic memory. If you do and say whatever is convenient at the time, you have to remember what that was. What was right, is right so you don’t have to remember.

My father had many great ideas. He noted that “Time” magazine had an economic panel that produced regular report cards on the economic performance of primarily the U.S. He thought it would be a good idea for “Time” and “Maclean’s” to have morality panels that would produce report cards on our moral progress.

Although popular opinion may be to the contrary, incidentally, I believe morality is improving. I am a little concerned that selfishness may be on the increase but I am quite convinced that tolerance and fairness continue to improve.

Part of moral behaviour is facing up to the music.  Like delaying gratification, by saving instead of borrowing, it can pay big dividends. A personal example came when I was caught driving impaired in a city away from home. My lawyer  suggested I could plead guilty and be sentenced there and no one would know. He said I could probably even continue to drive without being caught.

At the time, my newspapers had recently stopped publishing the names of drivers convicted of impaired driving because the justice system conspired to make it possible for big shots and friends of certain lawyers, prosecutors, judges and clerks to hide, bury or lose some proceedings and records.

However, for years I had published the names of hundreds of people convicted. Often those people or their families complained bitterly that I would never do to a member of my own family what I had done to them.

All of that made my decision as to what to do about my own case quite easy. Obviously the right thing to do was to publish it. Obviously, too, if I did not, it would always be lurking there in the dark background waiting to jump out and bite me on my hypocritic ass at some inconvenient time.

I arranged to have the case moved to my hometown and scheduled for a day when we had a paper coming out so no one could break the news before we did. It went on our front page.

I had an explanation, not an excuse, but an explanation, as to why I had been driving impaired. I intended to print that in my column. Then it occurred to me that everyone convicted of impaired driving had some extenuating story he would like to tell. It would not have been fair for me to use my column in a way they could not.

Promptly putting the story on the front page took away the legitimacy of any complaint that we would apply different rules to ourselves than to others. It also provoked some compliments and comments about increasing our credibility. Most importantly, it prevented anyone from ever using that event to expose me as a hypocrite.

I have no way to know but I don’t think it made any of the people who did not like me, like me less.

There was comical side effect of the story. A publisher friend in Nova Scotia saw it, cut it out and put a note “front page” on it to take home to show his wife. He wanted her to see how I had dealt with it. A member of his staff picked up a pile of copy from his desk and the clipping with it. The notation ensured it got on the front page of the “Liverpool Advance”.

My decision to publish was morally right but, in my opinion, it was also simply the most practical thing to do. I cannot take any credit for significant morality or courage in what was essentially in my own best interests.

On the other hand, is there any reason to think that morality should not be sensible? Is there any reason a moral guide should not be a practical guide?

In the short term, maybe. Thievery and cruelty may produce a short, medium or even a long term benefit but does it ever produce real happiness, love and self-esteem? Money and happiness can, I believe, go together if they are accompanied by a good heart.

I may know a few sanctimonious people who believe they are, if not perfect, at least considerably better than most of us. My mother used to say that, of all the jobs God has to do, the one people are most willing to help with is the judging.

Truly good people, however, know they are imperfect and are constantly trying to be better. As with anything, it is the effort that counts. As with anything that really matters, there is not just one winner. We can all have the victory, the rewards, of attempting to live a decent life.

The proof is in the obituary columns of every paper. How else can so many people be absolutely convinced that their parents and grand parents were the best ever?

And don’t we notice that, when someone talks about how loving, kind, generous and inspiring a parent or grandparent or friend was, we clearly see those same qualities in the speaker?

Doing the right thing is such a good long term investment that it continues to pay dividends long after you are gone.

DAC

People and serious media are engaging in debate and self-examination regarding all the hype about Tiger Woods’s fall from grace. Woods has admitted to infidelities and is in deep trouble with his wife and his sponsors.

Many people and many serious reporters feel that Tiger and his family ought to be left to sort out this crisis privately. As is so often the case, they are missing the point.

The actual point is that you cannot have it both ways. A star athlete or performer can have the tens of millions in annual income that come from marketing himself and courting the hype. You cannot have that without also having the hype and attention that accompanies a serious misstep.

Does the name Gary Trudeau ring a bell? Trudeau has been drawing the brilliantly perceptive political cartoon strip “Doonesbury,” since 1970, during the Vietnam war. He has won dozens of signficant awards including a Pulitzer, the highest US award in journalism, when he was 25. His alma mater, Yale awarded him an honorary doctorate when he was 27 and the strip was just six years old.

What is yet more astonishing is that one of his fictional characters, Joanie Caucus, received an honoray degree from the University of California at Berkely. Caucus was an early feminist in the strip.

I think it is likely more people know the name Doonesbury than know the name Garry Trudeau. Incidentally, he was born to Canadian parents and is distantly related to Pierre.

Trudeau has gone out of his way to avoid the limelight. He earns his living purely from his work. The cultivation of personality has not contributed to his annual income.

Tiger, on the other hand, earns perhaps 10% of his annual income from his performance on the golf course. His total income has been running about $100 million per year. There are millions of people who know Tiger’s face and have seen pictures of his yacht who have never set foot on a golf course or watched a game on TV.

If Garry Trudeau’s marriage blew up in some scandalous fashion, I think people and the media would, and should, let the family work it out more or less in private. There is no world-wide fairy tale about his life.

Trudeau once said that the US is the only country in which a person would be criticized, as he had been, for not engaging in the cultivation of personality.

You may remember widespread criticism of Pete Samprass, the dominant tennis player in the world for several years, for the same thing. He just played and won. He did not engage in screaming fits at umpires, clubbing with starlets or stupendous luxuries. The media and marketing world much preferred the more colourful John McEnroe who behaved like a two-year old on the court and off.

Tiger took the $90 million per from the celebrity media spotlight which his agents carefully developed and marketed. He, nor anyone else, can now complain that that same media and audience won’t instantly disappear.  He is such a famous person. His crash has been so spectacular that even people who never gave him a thought are intrigued.

It is like learning that Mother Teresa ran brothels on the side.

Live by the hype, die by the hype.

To conclude, we are all saddened when the media brings us the news that destroys our heroes. I maintain that the media has a responsibility to reveal the true character of false heroes.

It has a corresponding responsibility to discover and tell us about the real heroes among us. I saw a police cruiser camera clip last week showing three teenagers ganging up on and beating a policeman. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a VERY pregnant woman barreled in and tackled the teens. Her interference shocked and distracted the boys enough that the officer was able to regain his feet and the boys fled.

None of us know her name but I am grateful to the TV and print media that told us about her heroism.

DAC

The Canadian government operates an income program that is so simple and efficient I think even I can explain it. It is the Old Age Security plan.

Also known as the old age pension, OAS is paid to every Canadian citizen who has spent his or her adult life here. We do not make direct contributions to it. It is financed from general revenues.

It is not a huge amount of money. This year it is $516.96 per month, $6,203.52 per year. The odd numbers come from the fact that it is indexed to the cost of living. At one time, every citizen over 65 got it and kept all of it. When Canada was battling runaway deficits, government decided to claw some of it back from the richest citizens.

This is accomplished very simply. When the recipient’s net taxable income exceeds $66,335, the Canadian Revenue Agency collects 15% of the excess via the annual tax return. If, for example, one’s net income, after all deductions, is $67,335, the amount subject to clawback is $1,000. 15% of that is $150.

When one’s net taxable income reaches $107,692, the clawback is 15% of the $41,357 excess over $66,335. 15% of $41,357 is $6,203.55. That is three cents more than the pension paid.

How many government programs do you know that can be explained that succinctly? How many government programs do you know that work so smoothly and efficiently to get money where it is intended to go?

I would like to propose a simple change to the program. Please don’t call 911 and summon the loon wranglers for me until you read it to the end.

I would like to suggest that every Canadian citizen be put on Old Age Security at birth. I think it would be a good investment.

It probably would not cost any more than all the programs we have now and would be a lot simpler to administer.

The best thing about it is that it would also allow a great many people out of the welfare trap. Over the years I have known a great many young mothers with a child or two and a year or so short of a university degree. I have known people who would like to get into the work force but dare not give up the steady welfare income for a part time or seasonal job. The real killer is the fact that people who come off welfare lose the supplemental health care benefits for prescription drugs, dental work and glasses for themselves and their children.

As far as I can see, that makes welfare a trap.

I think that if families knew they had $517 per month coming in for each member, some men and women would go back to school. Some would put their children in daycare and go to work. Given that Canadians know we must be better and better educated to succeed in the modern world, that would seem to be a good investment.

A lot of working people would put the extra income to work by investing in homes, home improvements, golf and curling memberships and any number of additional economic stimulators.

People with income, of course, pay taxes. People who consume, send money back up the line via every store and business. Stores and businesses pay property taxes, collect HST, and pay income taxes of their own.

Giving money to people ought to be economic stimulus at least as effective as as grants to irrigate golf courses, build curling clubs or finance more startups for  grantrepreneurs. I like the idea of the people having the money and businesses having the opportunity to earn and compete for it. You can count on people to spend money for food, shelter and clothing.

Another thing you can generally count on is that people who get some money generally develop an appetite for more. Many of them would be eager to get into the work force.

Consider this too. Over the past couple of years, I have had opportunities to get government financial help to make energy conservation improvements to my home and to take tax credits for home improvements.

Meanwhile, I hear stories of welfare moms using hair dryers to thaw door entrance hardware to open their doors on winter mornings.

Would it not be at least as good an investment to give her the same opportunity as me to pay for more energy efficient accommodation? If she could, could we not depend on landlords to provide such accommodation?

It could also make all of us feel better to know fewer children would wake up cold and hungry every day with little hope to ever escape the line of welfare generations.

If I am a dreamer, am I the only one?

DAC

The massacre of 14 women at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, 20 years ago on December 6, 1989, had an especially horrifying effect on the Miramichi. For Miramichiers, already in shock, it was one more of a rapid sequence of three disgusting, heartbreaking, reminders of violence against women.

Within a period of three weeks, Allan Legere, Jason Black and Marc Lepine were in the headlines.

Legere was finally captured after a series of murders and assaults against the Flam sisters, The Daughney sisters and Fr. James Smith, an elderly priest.

The community was still feeling the conflicting emotions of our relief that Legere had been captured and our remembrance of the horror of his monstrosities. Then, Miramichiers awoke, on another wintry morning, to the news that Rhonda Lynch and her mother Sara had been found murdered in their home.

When the Daughney sisters were murdered there had been rumours and a composite sketch circulated of a possible Legere accomplice. Miramichiers were again grief stricken with the news that two more innocents had had their lives taken and wondered if the terror was to continue.

I remember receiving a call at home from a woman in a panic. She had written a letter to my newspaper expressing her revulsion for Legere. She was desperate for reassurance the letter could be withdrawn fearing possible retribution.

Shortly after that, Jason Black was apprehended, charged, and eventually convicted, for the Lynch murders.

Around that same time, Danny Esson assaulted two young women, killing Tara Prokosh. Another young man viciously attacked and slashed Rita Martin as she walked at French Fort Cove.

So it was that Miramichiers, in a traditionally dark and dreary month, were already hurt, angry, fearful, and deeply depressed when news broke of the Marc Lepine massacre of 14 young women and the wounding of 13 more, at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal.

It is difficult to express the feeling all this inspired in some men. It was a shameful reminder that our sex has tendencies to be dangerous, especially to women. A breed of dog with our record of violence and lack of self-control would not be allowed out of doors without restraints. It was not a good feeling.

Some men felt a need to take more responsibility to emphasize to men and women and government that violence against women is never deserved, normal, acceptable or tolerable. A group came together and decided to organize a march of Men Against Violence Against Women.

Oddly enough, the group’s attempts to encourage support from other community groups ran into unexpected resistance. Some churches had to be careful to ensure they were not being lured into endorsing a group with more of an agenda than opposition to domestic abuse. Somehow, for some reason, some people started and encouraged a rumour that only men who were violent would join the march.

Fortunately, with a bit of work, the group was able to defuse most of these concerns. Joe O’Neill, a forest industry executive, with excellent connections in the labour community, helped get significant participation from men in hard hats. Several hundred men took part in the march from Northumberland Square to St. Samuel Roman Catholic Church in Douglastown where various community service groups had tables with information relating to domestic services and safety.

Progress in the subsequent 20 years has not been spectacular. There has not been, however, another such brief span of time when Miramichiers were so overwhelmed by a tsunami of violence against women.

That storm did, in fact, stimulate improvements in justice, social welfare, education and societal expecations to improve the rate of progress.

It remains true that almost all violence begins with violence in the home. We learn what we see. All of us benefit from every improvement in the safety of women and children.

On we go. DAC

A couple of odd worms have infected capitalism as it is today. These worms are responsible for the explosive growth of huge industries and congomerates. They are also the drug that drives these firms to desperate, sometimes fatal, decisions.

You may be surprised to learn that the parent worm is quite possibly you. If you have a job, you contribute to the Canada Pension Plan, perhaps a company or government plan, and perhaps a Registered Retired Savings Plan. Perhaps you purchase life insurance, or take advantage of any of the other tax sheltering saving and investment programs set up by government to encourage you to save for a house or your childrens’ education.

All of these investment vehicles have created huge pools of investment capital owned by people like you and me. What most of us have in common is that we have no interest or expertise in the buying, selling and administration of stock and bond potfoliso. It is a bit of a socialist model when you think about it, isn’t it?

The natural result is that hundreds of firms have sprung up to manage our holdings for us. The Ontario Teachers Pension Fund is one of the largest investors in Canada. The Canada Pension Plan has a huge investment arm that recently attempted to buy New Zealand’s Aukland Airport. All of the banks and insurance companies have investment arms.

You may remember a recent bit of controversy with the Province of New Brunswick employee pension fund. The province is suing tobacco companies for contributing to health care costs. At the same time, the provincial pension fund invests in tobacco company shares.

These investment boards, banks or companies, representing you, search for the best investments to earn the management fees they charge you.

Their analysts study and monitor quarterly results from publicly held companies. Those analysts aim to exceed, or at least match, the results of analysts in all the other firms in order to keep your plan buying their services. If a company’s sales and profits trend up, they bid up the share price. If earnings per share are down, or even not up as much as expected, they abandon or reduce their holdings in that company, driving the share price down.

The pressure from analysts makes company management desperate to produce a steady stream of quarterly reports that show smooth and significant growth in sales and profits. It is almost impossible to do that, for any great length of time, by managing the company well. Not everyone can have a brilliant new idea for a product or service or a new technology quarter after quarter, year after year.

One thing management can do is pressure its bean counters to cut costs. The danger there is that it is easy for them to mistake meat for fat and cut so deeply that they kill the beast. Their expertise is numbers. They are no more capable than politicians, civil servants, you or me, to see what makes a business valuable.

The other management technique that can keep sales and profits rising is to make the company bigger by buying another company. This has the added appeal to management of justifying more money and perks for management. We are all most interested in our own welfare, aren’t we?

Competition is good but, taken to extremes, it can destroy value. There is cheap pizza and there is good pizza. There are newspapers with good content and there are newspapers with cheap content. There are good automobiles and there are cheap automobiles.

The result of all this is dramatic rises and falls in the fortunes of companies and industries. Sometimes the swings are based on reason. Often they are purely emotional like the dot.com frenzy and the sub-prime mortgage bubble.

The victims include the investors who didn’t get out in time and, dramatically, employees who lose their jobs, health plans, and, sometimes, pensions.

Meanwhile, privately held companies, like the Irving and McCain groups, avoid the short-term desperation. Their business plans can be for one, five, 10 or 100 years depending on how they see the value and potential over various times. If it is a good time to buy for growth, they do. If it is a good time to reduce holdings and hunker down, they can.

Yes, they have to compete for sales, so they work hard to control costs, inovate and market their services. Yes, they make mistakes, have to change direction, back away and eat losses. They do not, however, have to satisfy the market analysts who have to satisfy the investment funds who have to satisfy you four times each and every year.

I wish I had some wise solution to suggest to this tendency of your capitalism to attempt to eat its own tail. I don’t.

While pools of investment capital you own create some harm and desperate behaviour, it is impossible to see how progress could exist without them.

What invidual or family could and would afford to gamble, all alone, on the development of an inovation like Google, a communications satellite or a hybrid automobile? The only way these things are possible is if someone can get millions of us to bet a dollar rather than trying to get one of us to bet a billion dollars.

Progress has always killed some things we like. Fast food chains put some of our favourite burger and pizza joints out of business. We used to be able to call the telephone company and someone would answer the phone. Still, even though the population of the Miramichi has not grown for years, the products and services locally available to us now, are amazingly greater than they used to be.

It is, however, frustrating to watch valuable goods and services disappear because of the blindness of packs of desperate money hounds. I can clearly see what the newspaper industry did and did not do that led to its serious decline. Unfortunately, all newspapers suffer from the mistakes of the majority.

“Pogo,” Walt Kelly’s cartoon strip possum character once said, “We have met the enemy and it is us.”

Joni Mitchell, a supernatural human being wrote, “Don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone?”

Let us hope that social capitalism will rediscover and rebuild the best elements of traditional goods and services it has discarded. Where there is a need, someone usually finds a way to meet it.

DAC

There is a school of political and economic thought called the “trickle down theory”. The idea is that it is good to have many rich people getting richer. When they invest and spend their wealth, the money trickles down to the people at the bottom of the economic scale.

In fact, I agree with that idea but I think its proponents view it from the wrong end. Before it can trickle down, it has to flow up. I believe it flows up much more inexorably and faster than it trickles down. I believe that money is the only element on the planet that flows uphill.

Want to perform an experiment? Give the 1,000 poorest and the 1,000 richest people in your county $1,000 each tomorrow morning. See where most of it is by tomorrow midnight. You already know, don’t you? You can be certain the 1,000 poorest people will spend their windfall on necessities they have lacked or owe for and a few treats they rarely, if ever, get.

As they spend, the money begins its climb back to the top with grocery stores, food processors, manufacturers, farmers, service firms like newspapers and all their employees getting a slice as it goes by. Those slices, in turn, join the climb.

When it gets back to the top, sure enough, much of it gets invested in equipment and economic developments of one kind and another. Much gets spent on homes, cars, jewelry and toys which provide employment for workers. Much goes for taxes to local, provincial and federal governments.

Those taxes, far from being the worst thing for the rich are the best.

When government takes money off the top and shoves it in again at the bottom, the process picks up speed. Those slices the rest of us get as it rockets up grow, not in thickness but in total size.

Who benefits most? Why the people at the very top, of course.

If you wonder if this theory actually works, consider the Province of New Brunswick in 1960. The first Acadian premier, Louis Robichaud, became premier of a province where many coastal people lived in tarpaper shacks, had no access to hight schools and little access to hospitals. Because those local services were municipal and county responsibilities, the areas with very little property of any value did not produce enough revenue to provide such services.

To cut a long, fascinating, story short, Louis and his field general, Ed Byrne, effected a dramatic change. They had the province take over responsibility for education, hospitals and property assessment. They levied a standard provincial property tax to pay for provincial services. Municipalities set their rates for municipal services.

They allotted provincial revenues for education on a per student basis so the same money was available in the poorest parts of the province as the richest.

Soon schools and buses were available to students all over the province. There were jobs for teachers, bus drivers, administration, janitorial services and so on. There were opportunities for the newly educated in hospitals.

The opposition to the “rob Peter to pay Paul” program was horrendous. Byrne was physically driven from the province with death threats and vandalism. Citizens of the richer parts of the province hated having some of their tax money go to the poor area schools.

Big business and industry had fits, partially for the same reason and partially because they lost the ability to play one municipality off against another for tax breaks and holidays. Before assessment was a provincial responsibility and authority, industries had been able to negotiate up to 50-year tax holidays for choosing to build in one town over another.

However, with education and jobs, citizens in the formerly destitute communities could build homes, buy cars and clothe their children.

The Irving empire, with dominant holdings in energy, forestry, media and many other industrial and commercial enterprises certainly sold a lot more to those folks after Equal Opportunity than before.

My economic theory for government therefore is that government should take money off the top and shove it in as close to the bottom as possible to best boost the economy and welfare of its citizens and taxpayers.

Done skilfully, that approach will make everyone better off including, even especially, the rich. Bill Gates dedication of billions of dollars to world education demonstrates, I think, the logic. Microsoft makes no money from illiterate, poor people with no electricty or computers.

Shoving it in at the bottom should be carefully weighted between direct and indirect benefits.

It is important to put cash in the hands of individuals and let them make their own decisions and create and support their own markets.

Next it is important to provide services to the less well off in terms of, for example, local transit systems, access to decent, efficient shelter and, of course, as much education as they can absorb.

I read somewhere that the game Monopoly was invented, during the Great Depression, to demonstrate this same idea. We tend to think that, when the game ends because one player has all the money, he, or she, is the winner.

What the game was intended to show is that the one with all the money is just as stopped as the others. He owns Boardwalk with a hotel but has no guests. No one takes a ride of the Reading.

We have to continue to make sure there is money going in at the bottom.

Besides additional personal wealth, there is another excellent reason for all of us, especially, again, the rich, to support this approach.

I call that the “Unless we are all safe, none of us is safe,” philosophy. That will be the subject of the next essay. Because of the top down mechanics of a blog, I will have to post that first to make it follow this. Blogs don’t trickle down well either, I guess.

DAC