Private Insurance Is Off The Rails

Private Insurance, such as what we have in Alberta, has clearly lost its way. As a result of killing a brain dead law that punished accident victims to protect the financial interests of big insurance companies.

Well, today's announcement of a minimum 5% hike in automotive premiums across the board in Alberta tells us a great deal about how greed driven this industry really is:

During public hearings held in June, the Insurance Bureau of Canada asked the board to hike premiums by 37 per cent, which would have meant a jump of up to $200 a year for the average driver.

Insurance companies said the marketplace is unstable right now in the wake of a court ruling earlier this year when a judge struck down Alberta's $4,000 cap on non-pecuniary damages for some soft tissue injuries.

The market is "unstable"? What the heck does that mean? With over 3 million inhabitants, a good proportion of which drive, it's hard to imagine how there's an instability in the market in any way. There might be an uncertainty, even that strikes me a something of a crock in the first place, since Alberta is hardly the only jurisdiction in Canada with similar legal issues.

The fact that the industry asked for 37% hikes, is a sign of pure greed. Insurance companies have become more about skimming the margin on the investments they make with premiums instead of about the 'shared risk' model that was the original intent of the business model. These days, an accident tends to result in a jump in premiums which mysteriously is awfully close to the cost of borrowing the money to effect repairs directly - in essence the insurance companies are no longer in the managed risk game, but are in the money lending business.

When the Kleinosaurs decided not to regulate the insurance industry, but rather to regulate the victims of accidents instead, it signalled to the industry that Alberta's politicians were no longer going to represent the interests of Albertans, favoring instead the monetary interests of big money.

Harper Still Hasn't Got The Concept

[Update:]
And Harper makes my point for me by ignoring his own accountability rules. Can you say 'double standard'?
[/Update]

Apparently nobody bothered to tell PMSH in 2006 that winning an election means he should start acting like a leader, and not like a Bush league thug that takes his orders from Karl Rove.

His challenge – “Mr. Dion must decide to fish or cut bait” – came as the Conservatives faced head-on the growing economic concerns of Canadians; in particular, rising fuel costs. Keenly aware of concerns from constituents, MPs have suggested a series of potential tax measures aimed at reducing housekeeping budgets, but Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said the economic health of the country did not currently allow for “big new tax reductions.”

I think, Mr. Harper, that the man who has to 'fish or cut bait' is you. It's time to quit acting like you are still in opposition and start taking responsibility for your actions as a government.

But, the real non-sequitur is here:

The Prime Minister reiterated his consistent position that Canada's fundamental economic indicators remain strong, though he too allowed, in his speech Wednesday night to the party faithful, that there is “global economic uncertainty” and that “no economy in the world is immune from what is happening, especially in the United States.”

The fundamentals are strong, but apparently they're shaky too. Right. Got that one. Next time I'm looking for an earthquake forecast, I know exactly where to go - Harper's campaign office.

On hard specifics, Mr. Harper promised not to increase taxes at this point, while Mr. Flaherty's earlier comments suggested that, in this “time of economic slowdown,” the government is limited in what it can do to help Canadians cope with rising gas and heating costs.

I don't know about that - I can think of lots of things we could do about that. Of course, none of them would ever be approved by Harper's masters in the GOP...

“A carbon tax, especially when it is explained by Mr. Dion, can seem complicated, even incomprehensible,” Mr. Harper said. “In fact, this tax invented by the Liberals will touch everyone and everything, without exception.”

Why yes, it will. But the real genius of Dion's carbon tax is that it rebalances the tax burden, and ultimately offloads the middle class taxpayer considerably - who has become the primary carrier of the tax burden while large corporate interests have gradually lobbied themselves into a position where they pay minimal or no taxes at all - and so often leave the taxpayers to clean up the mess when they move on.

Of course "Public Safety Minister" Day had to open his yap:

Mr. Day said his government is also looking to improve security in prisons, including getting rid of rules that prevent the government from forcing inmates to work or that hinder proper searches for drugs in prisons.

While I have no objection whatsoever to making it harder for inmates to engage in illegal activities such as drug dealing while incarcerated, I have major problems with forced labour. We incarcerate people as punishment. Incarceration is not an automatic condemnation to what amounts to slavery or indentured servitude to the government's whims.

The Gender Police and the Olympics

I see that in spite of transsexual athletes being approved to compete in the Olympics, China is going to subject female athletes to a 'gender test'.

The New York Times article points out, quite correctly, that "gender tests" tend to find people who are actually intersex to some degree or another:

The tests never unmasked a man posing as a woman, but they did turn up several athletes who were born with genetic defects that made them appear — according to lab results, at least — to be men. In 1967, the Polish sprinter Ewa Klobukowska was barred from the sport because she failed the chromosomal test, even though she had passed the nude test a year earlier. In the 1980s, the Spanish hurdler Maria José Martínez Patino was disqualified because the test revealed, to her surprise, that she was born with a Y chromosome. Her eligibility was reinstated in 1988.

So, basically, the Bejing games are going to subject female athletes to invasive testing (both in a physical, but also in an emotional sense) simply because they are afraid that someone who isn't a "real woman" isn't competing.

While I can certainly understand that a man posing as a woman is problematic, that's fairly easy to check - without invasive testing. Also, the IOC standards set out in 2004 are quite significant:

The committee said transgender athletes could compete in the Olympics if they met certain requirements, such as completing genital reconstructive surgery and at least two years of hormonal therapy. The IOC also requires that "legal recognition of their assigned sex has been conferred by the appropriate official authorities," such as by a nation's courts.

Sex hormones - especially estrogen and testosterone have pronounced effects on the body. A male to female transsexual will not have a significant advantage over a genetic female in most events - the male skeleton is heavier than the female skeleton, and the muscle mass and power will be reduced to female normal. At most, there might be a mild advantage in some events due to slightly longer limbs, but even that's not likely to be significant at the elite levels of Olympic calibre athletes.

It is a shame that in today's world, there are still those who believe that there is some absolute definition of gender that can be applied.

The Blogging of the Boggled

Apparently, in the fetid imagination of at least one nutcase, feminism is engaging not just in equivalent, but the same, practices as Nazi Germany.

In all these Progressive social engineering projects, and many others, women have been leading proponents. They're against drinking because drunk men are violent. They're against smoking because cigarettes and cigars resemble male penises, a source of male violence. They're against guns because they see guns as symbols of male violence.

Then, of course there's reality:

- MADD is opposed to people driving drunk. Period. Why? Because drunk drivers tend to end up killing people.

- Smoking - well, sorry it's not the Freudian symbology Frank thinks it is - it's because tobacco smoke is lethal.

- Guns - well - about all I'll say there is that it does seem to disproportionately be young males who use guns to commit crimes. But the issue of gun control has more to do with being able to walk the streets relatively safely - and streets where a gunfight breaks out are not safe.

But our writer's insanity doesn't end there - no, he goes on to try and describe the very normal dating dance between men and women in these same terms:

The fact is that women today continue to marry men they feel have the power and beauty to make beautiful children. They add up the physical and financial advantages of a particular mate and make their choice. Once married, and pregnant, they have ultrasound and other tests to determine if the fetus, is healthy. If not, an abortion is performed. Where the poor are breeding, the modern female is very much in favour of abortion clinics to keep the underclasses in check.

What is the difference between this and the Nazi notion of breeding a better Aryan race? Boys are selected for strength, girls for beauty and the gypsies and darker races are given abortions or sterilization.

The leaps of illogic here are amazing. Not only has our intrepid author managed to link maternal (and fetal) health monitoring during pregnancy to "social engineering", but at the same time, he claims that abortion clinics are about "keeping the underclasses in check". If groups of "underclass" women were being rounded up and herded to the abortion clinic, he might have a point. But that isn't what is happening. I suspect that the author is one of those clods who figures that once a woman is pregnant she essentially gives up any right to decide her own destiny.

Abortion clinics, along with contraception and other bits and pieces are ultimately about a woman's right to control her life, and in particular her reproductive life. No more, no less. To infer anything else is plain stupid.

Is that why the Liberal Party and its large female support base is in favour of native Canadians getting a third order of government, one that will create an almost perfect Canadian copy of apartheid? That would certainly appeal to the Nazis; separation of peoples on racial lines and legal enclosures for them to live in.

Uh? How do you get to here from there? Whatever. Apparently Frank hasn't heard of the concept of addressing past wrongs. Somehow, equating native self-government to eugenics is just a little bit of a stretch. Especially given the ugly history that has led Canada's indigenous peoples to the place they find themselves in now.

Is there a Canadian woman anywhere who will admit to these repulsive facts?

No, Frank - there isn't - mostly because they aren't facts. At best they are inferences that you've made that make no sense to people who are actually thinking rationally.

p.s. You might want to take a remedial course on feminism at some point. It's pretty clear you have no idea what you are ranting about.

H/T: Lulu @ Canadian Cynic

You Keep Using That Word 'Effective'

So, under PMSH, Ottawa's advertising budget doubled ... in the first full year of the Harper government.

The Liberals said the increased spending on advertising shows the Conservative government is misguided in its priorities, and should stop using advertising to improve its image in the eyes of Canadians.

There's a couple of points here - in Alberta, where the HarperCon$ figure they're pretty safe, I haven't seen much of anything in the way of government advertising aside from military recruiting posters. Which means that the HarperCon$ are spending public dollars on propaganda campaigns where they hope to pick up seats.

The HarperCon$ spin?

A source said the problem is that advertising expenses are generated by a number of departments and agencies, and that there is a lack of centralized supervision of the activities. “The advertising budget doubled without anyone taking notice,” the source said.

Which translates to 'we were so focused on spinning our BS that we didn't pay attention to the books'. Given how the HarperCon$ have been misusing the MP communication budgets in Ottawa, I don't suppose this is a surprise. (Come to think of it, I haven't seen a thing out of my local MP since last election - fascinating)

So much for being open, honest or accountable - much less effective.

Winning Their Hearts and Minds

So, a questionable bit of field judgment and an unfortunate bullet trajectory killed a couple of Afghani children today.

This is NOT how you bring the people of an occupied land to your side. If anything, it drives them into the arms of the already present adversary:

Shopkeeper Din Mohammad said foreign soldiers had better stop accidentally killing civilians or they will suffer the same bitter fate as the defeated Soviets.

"They must stop this," said Mr. Mohammed, who was visiting his son at Mirwais hospital when he saw the children's lifeless bodies carried in.

"Otherwise the day will come when everybody will stand up against the foreigners in a holy war – a jihad."

"It's happened once before [with the Soviets]. If things continue like this, history will repeat itself."

Anybody with their head screwed on will have figured out that this was likely to be the reaction - the occupying forces cannot afford to make a single slip - one incident like this will be remembered by thousands for a long time - much longer than a few "rebuilding" exercises will be - especially if more of those projects turn out to be prisons.

It really doesn't matter what kind of idiotic sophistry Mr. Mackay wants to use to spin things here in Canada:

"Look, soldiers do everything they can to make proper judgment. They exercise professionalism, they follow rules of engagement, but they're human and they're living in a very tense environment with these suicide bombs that have occurred in the past," the Defence Minister said.

"With these approaches, soldiers have sometimes a split second to make a decision on protecting their fellow soldiers and protecting themselves, protecting fellow civilians that are in the area."

That is quite irrelevant to the impact of these events on the ground in Afghanistan. What has happened in this incident has handed the Taliban (and other groups) a propaganda tool - one that is incredibly easy to exploit.

No matter how well-meaning Canadians convince themselves that our presence in Afghanistan may be, we cannot forget that a society that does not want to be occupied will ultimately win out - and Afghanistan's history is that of a society unwilling to be occupied.

Remember The Concept of Innocent Until Proven Guilty?

Apparently, Peter Worthington thinks it doesn't apply in cases like Omar Khadr - after all look what happened with Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

I'm afraid that Mr. Worthington has fallen into the same trap as Nigel Hannaford over at the Calgary Herald - he's spouting talking points without even really thinking things through.

Okay, Worthington doesn't like the Khadr family - fair enough. But that doesn't mean that we can simply convict Omar Khadr of anything on that basis - except perhaps, having the misfortune to be born to parents with questionable judgment. Claiming that he's going to be another al-Bashir is to convict him of someone else's actions, which he might mirror in some future. (Kind of an evil combination of Orwellian thought-crime and Minority Report-esque conviction in advance of crime)

Canada, as a nation, needs to consider whether the pseudo trial that Bush is inflicting upon detainees at Guantanamo Bay is in fact representative of the concept of 'due process', or whether it is a political ploy that is ultimately in violation of both US and International legal standards.

The second thing Canadians need to do is consider whether the Canadian government has lived up to what we expect of it when a Canadian citizen is held by a foreign government. Has Canada, under the Stephen Harper Party, provided any kind of support or backing to Mr. Khadr? Should it?

I claim that the Stephen Harper Party has been grossly negligent in its handling of Canadians held abroad - assuming that they "deserve" whatever is inflicted upon them - until the public outrage reaches a boiling point. This is unacceptable negligence on the part of the Harper government.