How to Combat Global Warming

Vincent J. Curtis

9 June 2016

The Spectator editorial of today admitted that British Columbia's effort to reduce carbon dioxide output, by means of a tax on carbon, has failed.  And it squandered the revenue. It lamented that Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne's cap-and-trade proposal, made in agreement with Quebec and California (of all places), is going to get a rough political ride.

The editorial challenged those who would fight cap-and-trade to come up with an alternative that would combat climate change.

Tax a different element!  That’s the better idea.

Instead of taxing carbon, tax oxygen consumption instead.   After all, it takes oxygen to make carbon dioxide; the parties of science may have condemned the wrong element.

Tax the O 16 and leave the C 12 alone!  It has a progressive ring to it, don’t you think?

Not everyone is fooled by talk of climate change or agree that climate control can, or should be, a goal of government.  King Canute had good advice about the latter.

The proper focus of the debate is anthropogenic global warming – the warming of the planet due to the activity of man – and the hockey stick graph that purports to show it.  The climate is always changing; nobody is fooled by the bait and switch.  Global warming theories have been debunked by the satellite temperature data, which shows no change in global temperature since 1998.  The hockey stick graph was debunked well over a decade ago by Ross McKitrick.  Mark Steyn has done yeoman service in exposing the hockey stick graph and Michael Mann as frauds.  None of this is addressed by the climate change talking heads because the possibility of doubt undermines their policy goals.  Actual facts and truth in science don’t fall within their policy goals.

If you don’t believe in the fraud of “climate change,” there is no reason to offer better alternatives to economically destructive policies in support of the god of progressivism.  Nevertheless, in honor of Baal, I offer the proposal to tax a different element.

Tax oxygen instead of carbon.

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Educating an Ontario Progressive

Vincent J. Curtis

9 June 2016

A letter writer to the Hamilton Spectator held that the Separate School System of Ontario should be abolished because of the future expected conflict between progressive values and Catholic teaching.  Fish was fully conversant with the constitutional position of Separate Schools in the Constitution Act 1867 and in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and didn't care!

It’s obvious which school system Tyler Fish attended.  The Catholic Church’s teachings don’t conform with something thought of last week, and so the constitutionally guaranteed Separate School system should be destroyed.

Doesn’t sound to me like the product of scholastic education.

Tyler Fish believes that progressivism is the path to greater tolerance and to a better society.  Nothing could be more at odds with the facts.  The mark of progressivism is its use of fascist methods to obtain conformity.  The characteristic of progressivism is the lack of courage to face facts squarely.  Reality has a way of imposing its views, and the progressive responds with greater severity upon people to hold to conformity.  (Like abolishing the Separate School System because its values don't conform to last week's progressivist ideals!)

Whatever secular humanism and its bastard children have, they owe to the philosophical theology developed in the Christian Church during the 12^th and 13^th centuries.  Whatever they lack are evils of their own.

Ontario needs a school system that resists bending with the latest gust of wind.  Too bad the public system can’t be the second one.

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Ted McMeekin Resigns for 'Gender-Equal' Cabinet

Vincent J. Curtis

6 June 2016

Ted McMeekin belonged to a government that last month declared gender identity was a matter of subjective opinion and was not based upon biological reality.  The rationale for why transgenderism is okay.  He is resigning from cabinet, he says, to make room for gender equality in the next make-over of Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government of Ontario.

What gender equality in cabinet could possibly mean - given the official government position that gender identity is a subjective psychological construct - is unclear.

Ted McMeekin says that he has “never been afraid to call myself a feminist.”  Again, what 'being a feminist' means to him, given that the female gender is a subjective psychological construct and not based upon biological facts, is anyone’s guess.

However, if he does ardently consider himself a feminist, then perhaps Premier Wynne will recall him to cabinet to balance out all those of a male-ist psychological construct in her cabinet.

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In his resignation statement, Ted McMeekin said that he was resigning to make room for.....  One detects a bit of patronizing sexism here.  McMeekin seems to imply that the young woman named to replace him would not have had the merit to replace him had he not withdrawn his superb male self. It's hard these days to take the sexism out of men above a certain age, no matter how good their avuncular intentions are.  Of course, he could just be an old guy looking to retire and wants to save himself the embarrassment of being dropped outright from cabinet in the next shuffle.  

Mixed Member Proportional Representation

MEECH LIVES!

The Proposed New Mixed-Member Proportional System

Vincent J. Curtis                                                                          19 September 2007

            The impulse that led to the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords is not dead.  The elites are tinkering with the constitution, again.  In the upcoming provincial election, Ontarians will be asked to approve a new method for selecting members to the provincial legislature that is claimed to be more representative, but is less so and creates more politicians besides.  Meech lives!

            Presently, Ontarians select a person to represent them in the provincial legislature by a process that has been perfected over eight hundred years.  The person standing for office with the most votes wins the election.  But for the elites, this is unfair.

This method, so common-sensible that it has no name, is derided by the elites as the “first past the post system.”  They deride method of choosing a representative as unrepresentative because the winner sometimes gets a plurality of less than half the total number of votes.  As if we didn’t know that already.

              To make the system more to their taste, it has to be made fairer.  To the political parties.  To achieve this fairness, the new system, if enacted, will enable the party bosses to appoint people to the legislature in proportion to the number of votes the party gets at the election.  They think political parties are “entitled” (their words) to representation in the legislature also.  If you are an independent, forget it.

            Here’s how its going to work.  If enacted, mixed-proportional representation will reduce the number of members of the legislature that are elected directly by the people from 107 to 90.  An additional 39 members will be added to the legislature from lists provided by the political parties.  Each party will be granted a proportion of those 39 seats in the legislature based on the proportion of the total vote the party got province-wide.  These party-based members of the legislature represent no riding, and are members of the legislature due to their standing within the party that listed them.

            Thus there will be two classes of members of the Ontario legislature: those that represent the people, and those that represent the party.  Since the political elites are all wedded to one party or another, they think that’s fair.  The fact that the legislature seems to function well enough as it is, and does not require parties at all, only a steering committee that has the confidence of the majority of members, doesn’t matter.  Political parties demand fairness!

            Except elections are not about them.  Elections are about us, the people.  We decide who is going to represent us, and it is only our representatives who have the historic, moral, and the constitutional right to tax us.  The power of the purse lay in the hands of the common folk, even 800 years ago, because even in feudal times, a man’s money belonged to him.  The common folk had to consent to giving their money to the executive government, the King.  The King had to persuade the people’s representatives that the money would be spent for the benefit of the kingdom as a whole.  Because running the government got so expensive, that the power of the purse eventually wrested the real power of executive government from the king personally, and from the aristocracy.

Mixed proportional representation proposes to imbed a new kind of aristocracy - within the people’s house.  Party appointees are going to put into the house that has the power to tax.

Each party can be nearly certain that the top seven people on their list will be guaranteed membership in the legislature, a security to those stalwarts nearly as good as a Senate appointment.

            We know proportional representation makes for bad government.  Israel has a legislature chosen entirely by proportional representation from party lists.  This practically guarantees that no party has a majority in the Knesset, and quivering coalitions constantly shift about.  This method of selection is certainly fair to the parties, but what does that matter compared to the quality of government for the people and country as a whole?

            The British-Canadian constitutional practice by which the people select their representatives to parliament has been perfected over 800 years.  We know it works, we understand how it works, and we think it’s fair, except when the elite tell us we’re wrong.  This new method, which will add representatives beholding to the party elites to the people’s house, confuses constitutional principles in a way no one has thought about: can an appointee “cross the floor,” what happens upon the death of an appointed member, can an appointed member step aside for someone else, like a party leader?  No one has thought these matters through.

            If the elites really want to add a party voice to Ontario’s parliament, they should propose a second chamber, similar to a Senate, to which the parties could appoint members.  That way it is clear that there are two classes of members: those that represent the people and are elected, and those that are appointed and represent the political parties they are beholden to.

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Vincent J. Curtis is a freelance writer and wrote on the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords.

This piece was published in the Hamilton Spectator in the run up to the provincial election of that year.  This article started the ball rolling against the elites, and the MMPR proposition went down to defeat 60 % to 40 %.  The MMPR supporters wanted to win by 60 % to demonstrate the depth of support for the proposal, but instead it went down to defeat by that margin.

Shamelessly, the Ontario Liberals in 2016 foisted ranked balloting on Ontario and the Federal Liberals are now actively trying to sneak in proportional representation by party in the House of Commons.  There isn't anything safe from progressivist meddling.

Richard Shields Fails to Deliver

Vincent J. Curtis

2 June 2016

Richard Shields, PhD, teaches at the Faculty of Theology of St. Michael's College in Toronto.  He wrote an article for the Hamilton Spectator, published this day, headlined: "Catholic values and good education policy: An oxymoron?"  The article concerned the decision - so far - of the Halton Catholic School Board not to include specific protection against bullying in Board policy for 'LGBTTIQ' persons, in Shields' formulation.  After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing he comes down as critical of the Halton Board on the grounds that what is being asked really doesn't matter, and it is more important to be seen well in progressivist lights than to stand up for some 'obscure' Catholic teaching or other.

As an attack from the Catholic perspective of the Halton Catholic School Board, the article written by theologian Dr. Richard Shields was a shocking failure.  As a professional theologian, one would have expected clarity and cogency in argument, but instead we got soft-soap, a fog of verbiage, and downright error.

The outstanding example of error is found in his statement that, “Policies rooted in generosity, rather than obscure Church teachings, bring Catholic practice closer to the light of truth.”  From the Catholic perspective, Church teachings, however obscure, are the light of truth, and policies rooted in generosity that bring practice away from that teaching go the way of error, not towards the truth.

The anti-bullying business could have been handled incisively starting with the teaching of “Love thy neighbour as thyself.”  That teaching covers bullying not just against the LBGTQWERTY flavors of the month, but against any individual.  An ethic founded on chop-logic, as secular humanism is, needs regular updates to keep in fashion with the times, whereas an ethic founded upon a principle does not.  Bullying per se is forbidden in Catholic teaching, not just bullying against members of a certain group.

Dr. Shields fails to observe the distinction between empty words on paper and actual practice.  Laws against criminal assault and murder do not prevent criminal assault and murder, and words against bullying will not prevent bullying either.  It is the conscience that must be changed - in Catholic schools by Catholic teaching, something he seems to deprecate, holding it is “inviolate.”

Dr. Shields fails to understand that the God of Catholics is both a God of Love and a God of Truth, and that no amount of Love can change the Truth.  The anti-bullying business is just another brick in the wall of normalizing LGBTQWERTY behavior.  No amount of Love can change the Truth that behavior characteristic of LBGTQWERTY is not normalizable in the scholastic sense.  Dr. Shields argues that somehow Catholic institutions should dream their way past this Truth by thinking only of Love.

I would have expected from a theologian a clear and incisive attack upon, or a cogent defense of, the action of the Halton Board.  We got neither.  We got error.

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The Parties of Science

Vincent J. Curtis

1 June 2016

RE: Law change will recognize same-sex parents.  (CP) written by Keith Leslie

RE: Feds need to improve planning, tracking for severe weather events.  (CP) written by Bruce Cheadle.

The first story is about Premier Kathleen Wynne announcing that the definition of parents in Ontario will change from a man and a woman.  Cheri DiNovo had introduced a private member's bill to this effect, and it is supposed to be superseded by a government bill.  The story notes that the Attorney-General says that draft legislation needs to be worked on "because it seems to like it's going to be negative towards other families."  Ya think?

The second story concerns an audit of expenditures in the federal environmental department.  Apparently money intended to be spent on 'climate mitigation' isn't being accessed by the target audience, and the technocrats try to explain why.  Julie Gelfand's remarks inadvertently reveal her assumptions, and through them her utter failure to understand the subject matter before her. 

It is highly amusing to watch members of the parties of science struggle and stumble over basic facts of science.  You would think that science should be like water in their mouths, and yet they handle scientific facts like Homer Simpson handles radioactive material.

Premier Kathleen Wynne and provincial New Democrat Cheri DiNovo are cases in point.  Premier Wynne wonders why same-sex couples have to adopt their own children.  Cheri DiNovo agrees, saying “It’s not right that parents should have to adopt their own children….It’s not rocket science.”

DiNovo is right; it’s not rocket science.  In fact, it isn’t science at all.  It is a fact of biology that if a same-sex couple have a child, one of them for sure is not a parent.  Why the non-parent in a same-sex relationship should have to adopt the child is for the same reason that a step-father or step-mother has to adopt: because the child is not theirs by nature, and to make the child theirs by law requires an act of law, i.e. adoption.

Julie Gelfand, federal commissioner of the environment and sustainable development, was all thumbs when it came to handling the consequences of climate change.  She says that extreme weather is currently at the top of her mind.  She quoted scientists forecasting floods, droughts, and forest fires becoming more frequent.  The story cited the fire around Fort McMurray as just one of a series of recent, large-scale natural disasters.

Ms Gelfand got confused over the difference between climate and weather.  She failed to understand that the consequences of climate change won’t be evident until the end of this century.  The United States has not experienced a major hurricane in a decade, which shows that weather events are highly variable.  Consequently, one can draw no conclusions about climate change on the basis of weather events.  But she did anyway.

The scientific conclusion to be drawn from this is that those who rule over us are not as smart as they think, or as we hope.  The contention of progressivism is that we should be ruled by technical experts.  All the people mentioned here would proudly describe themselves as progressives.  Given their evident lack of expertise, isn't it incumbent upon them to resign their posts and yield them to people who really are expert?

Somehow, I doubt they will.

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