More Taxes, More Police but Still More Contraband

   The contraband cigarette circus continues with governments unwilling to try new ways to stop it despite so much evidence that increased taxes and enforcement have not been especially effective.

   The federal government recently increased its tobacco taxes $4 a carton and has given the RCMP another $91 million for high-tech electronic surveillance along the Ontario-Quebec-U.S. borders. A carton of 200 taxed cigarettes now ranges from roughly $80 to $112  depending on local taxes. 'Baggies' of 200 untaxed cigarettes can be purchased for under $10. People who smoke like the idea of buying their cigarettes for a fraction of the retail store cost, even if they are illegal.

   The federal government admits that the contraband problem is not improving. It says that 30 to 50 per cent of tobacco purchased in Canada is bought illegally. Contraband tobacco has been spreading steadily outward from Ontario-Quebec into the Atlantic and western provinces. 

   Governments won’t try different strategies against contraband tobacco for two reasons: They are addicted to tobacco tax revenue ($7.5 billion in 2011), and they fear backlash from powerful anti-smoking lobbyists such as the Canadian Cancer Society. I have nothing against the anti-smoking lobby. They are sincere and dedicated in their commitment to help people stop smoking. However, they are totally grounded to the argument that higher taxes are the best way to reduce smoking.

   There is evidence that slashing tobacco taxes dramatically reduces contraband tobacco and does not significantly increase the number of people who smoke. Most governments and anti-smoking organizations around the world refuse to consider that argument. 

   The contraband tobacco issue is extremely complicated and needs fresh thinking. And, as noted in Smoke Signals: The Native Takeback of North America’s Tobacco Industry it cannot be fully resolved until Canadian governments get serious about resolving Native sovereignty issues.

Savouring the Sweetness of Entitlement

   “Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more.”

The Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky expressed that greedy thought in his novel The Brothers Karamazov 125 years ago.

   Dostoyevsky’s words have become a mantra for politicians and others who consider themselves important enough to suck up entitlements as thoroughly as a sewer vacuums. Examples of demanding more and taking more stretch from sea to shining sea, notably in government and politics.

   There is the Canadian Senate expense account scandal, of course, and the outrage about Alberta Premier Aliston Redford’s air travel expenses. The Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police apologized and had to pay back the cost of using on-duty RCMP officers as an honour guard for his marriage to a senior Ottawa bureaucrat.

   A fresh example is found at the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Its president Hubert Lacroix has apologized for claiming $30,000 in expenses to which he wasn’t entitled. He says it was a careless error. If you can’t figure out your expense account, what are you doing running the CBC?

   Also, it’s been revealed that the CBC’s millionaire news reader Peter Mansbridge took big bucks to speak to petroleum producers. The Toronto Sun said the speaking fee was $28,000. In my journalistic world the only people you take money from are your employers. Mansbridge said it’s OK because all his paid speaking engagements are cleared by CBC senior management, which includes the president who can’t figure out his own expenses correctly.

   We live in a country where the elite and people in power have become so blinded by entitlement that they have difficulty seeing the difference between right and wrong.

Loving the Smell of Cordite in the Morning

'Did you see that tank going by?'

   Here’s a really bad idea for a world unbalanced by bad ideas:  A London, Ontario tank armour manufacturer wants to establish an explosion test site on the southern edge of Algonquin Park.

   Armatec Survivabilty plans to buy 2,300 acres of bush country for an explosion obstacle course to test its armour. The land is across the road from Benoir Lake, one of many cottage lakes in the area. Cottagers have received notice from the Dysart et al Municipal Council that it plans to decide  in late March whether to allow the Armatec purchase.

   Tanks weighing up to 50 tonnes would be run through the obstacle course and the company says there would be only one explosion a day on 30 days a year and explosive noise would be short. There also would be mobility tests in which tanks and armoured vehicles roar through the forest.

   The company, anticipating someone might object to explosions and tank maneuvers on the border of Ontario’s most precious piece of outdoor heritage, has an FAQ site answering 42 questions about the plan. It can be found at:     http://www.armateconline.com/index.php/faq-page#Q4

   One of the cards already being played in the testing range plan is: “This is all about saving the lives of our soldiers.” Please, let’s not do that. There are plenty of other places, plenty of other ways to do important testing that will help protect our soldiers.

   The real issue here is that we live in a world in which pollution and noise are killing us, or driving us crazy. The Algonquin Park area is one place where people can go to find some solitude. That 2,300 acres should become an extension of the Park, not a war weapons testing range.

Behind the Philip Seymour Hoffman Drug Death

   It’s easy to shrug off the drug addiction death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman as just another privileged celebrity losing control and his life. When you dig behind Hoffman’s death you see a picture that should scare the hell out of society.

   Addictions to prescription drugs, which had been soaring, are dropping somewhat because of cost and the tightening of availability. The drop, however, has brought a sharp rise in addiction to heroin, which is becoming cheaper and easier to get. So society is confronting two major drug battles.

   The New York Times recently reported on the town of Hudson, Wisconsin, population 13,000, located not far from Minneapolis. It told the story of a 21-year-old woman who is believed to be the small town’s seventh heroin fatal overdose in eight months.

   Meanwhile, reporters from the Gannett newspaper group surveyed Wisconsin county coroners and reported that fatal drug overdoses in the state rose 50 per cent in 2012 to 199 deaths. Between 2000 and 2007 the state averaged 29 such deaths a year.

   Figures from the U.S. federal government show almost 20,000 opioid drug deaths nationally in 2010, roughly 3,000 from heroin and the rest from painkillers. A large percentage of the deaths are among the young. Heroin deaths of U.S. teenagers and young adults have tripled since the year 2000.

   Drug overdose deaths exceed motor vehicle traffic deaths in 29 U.S. states, says an October 2013 report done for the Trust for America’s Health organization. In West Virginia 29 people in every 100,000 die of drug overdoses.

   The illicit drug epidemic also is in Canada, although Canadian agencies are not nearly as good at documenting it. Health Canada has reported that 22.9% of Canadians aged 15 years and older indicated in 2011 that they had used a psychoactive pharmaceutical in the past year.    And, 3.2% of these users said they abused illicit drugs. In Ontario, 23 per cent of school students surveyed said they were offered, sold or given an illicit drug in the past school year.

   Numbers. Numbers that roll in one ear and out the other. Between the 'in' ear and the 'out' ear they should be setting off some alarm bells.

Groundhog Day

The groundhog didn't come out at our place up north. I worried that he was buried under the snow so I went looking for him. I figured he might be at our bush lot.

There was some snow on the lot road so I decided to plough in. This little ATV wasn't up to the job, however. So I donned snowshoes and trooped in to the tractor shed to get more horsepower.

A little bit of snow shovelling was needed to get into the tractor shed.

The shed was still shaking off the effects of a minus 37 Celsius morning, so I had to take the generator apart, and spray ether

into the cylinders to get it started. Then I plugged the Salamander in and unthawed the tractor. After a couple of hours, we were bucketing snow!

It takes longer than expected to bucket out three feet of snow along a half a kilometer of road, which was cleared three weeks ago.

So when dusk fell, it was back onto the snowshoes, leaving the rest of the snow clearing for another time. My wife was so happy to see me back that she took my picture.

Meanwhile, I never did find that groundhog. In fact it snowed so hard during the day I never got to see my own shadow.

Where Has All the Heat Gone?

   For many of us this has been the coldest, snowiest, nastiest winter in recent memory. It begs the too simple question: What happened to global warming?

   The global warming debate started spinning following the El Nino of 1997-98 when winter in many winter places was shockingly warm and wet. The world was getting warmer, the Arctic would melt, oceans would rise and there would be catastrophic environmental changes.

   Since that great El Nino, however, large parts of North America have been cooler. In my part of the world I can’t remember so many mornings when the thermometer occupied the minus 30 Celsius range.

Snow at Shaman's Rock

   Scientific reports show that there has been little overall increase in global warming in the past 15 years. This of course has led to much controversy about whether global warming is over hyped. The January 2014 issue of Nature magazine has a fairly good article of the global warming ‘hiatus.” It explores the theory that the missing heat has much to do with the Pacific Ocean and the likelihood that the warming trend will be back soon.

   More current information on global warming will be available when the global Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/press/media_advisory_wg1_full_report_140124.pdf releases a new report January 30. This is a report by committee so expect the information to be hidden in a brain-twisting maze of bureaucratic gobbledygook. However, enterprising journalists will sort out what it all means and pass it along to the rest of us.

   Hopefully the report will explain where the missing heat has gone and when we can expect it to return. Any time now would be much welcomed.

     

Who Are the Savages Now?

      There’s so much human hurt to follow in August: Osage County that some viewers might miss the thread of delicious irony that runs through it. 
   The extended Weston family has gathered at the Oklahoma plains family home to deal with a sad consequence of the patriarch’s (Sam Shepard) alcoholism and the matriarch’s (Meryl Streep) drug addiction. It’s a pathetically dysfunctional family tearing at each other like a snarling pack of plains coyotes.  Past hurts, intrigues, secrets and grudges have created a mean-spirited atmosphere.

Roberts and Streep

   At the edge of the family chaos is a young woman named Johnna (Misty Upham), a Cheyenne who has been hired as a house servant. She says little but sees all as she cooks and cleans up the messes left by the family’s tantrums. Johnna is the calm, grounded, spiritual person among a group that is a psychologically crumbling mess. The only time she jumps out in front is to break up the near rape of the Weston’s fourteen-year-old granddaughter.i
   Osage County, until roughly one hundred years ago, was part of the flat desolation called Indian County. It is part of the territory where thousands of Indians, forced from their traditional homes in other parts of the United States, were moved because white society considered them savages impeding settlement progress.
  This movie leaves you wondering, once again, which society really had its head on straight.