If you’re buying, I’m selling

This should not come as a shock to anyone brought up, like me, on Catholic guilt:

Here in the West, the so-called ‘war on global warming’ is reminiscent of medieval madness. You can now buy Indulgences to offset your carbon guilt. If you fly, you give an extra 10 quid to British Airways; BA hands it on to some non-profit carbon-offsetting company which sticks the money in its pocket and goes off for lunch. This kind of behaviour is demented.

The Value of Culture

“Politicians, generally, wish to distance themselves from the arts,” [John] Holden said. “The job of a politician is to minimize risk and uncertainty. One of the principle jobs in the arts is to maximize risk and uncertainty. Politicians don’t always want to stand up and justify expenditures on certain kinds of art. The arts are about individual, subjective responses while politics is about collective, mass responses.”

It’s a profound institutional contradiction. Tonight, Holden will address ways that artists, administrators, government officials and politicians can dismantle the old, dysfunctional alignments. After all, both artists and politicians serve the same master: citizens. Holden’s best-known study at Demos, the think-tank for “everyday democracy,” is called Cultural Value and the Crisis of Legitimacy: Why culture needs a democratic mandate.

Holden believes that “politicians in the U.K. are uncomfortable talking about the arts” but “they certainly understand their importance.” This might work well in a post-Thatcherite Britain, but in this part of the world, politicians are falling all over each other pledging their commitment to the arts, whether the commitment is concrete or ephemeral. Our own illustrious His Worship, Dave Bronconnier, fits that mold perfectly. Here’s a fellow who garnered the support of the city’s arts community despite the fact that he has yet to make any initiative toward establishing an art museum. But I digress.

The idea that there is a disconnect between politicians and artists is valid, and I certainly agree that the public must be more involved — informed, if you will — on how culture can enrich their society. Thus, Holden suggests that culture receive a democratic mandate through “intrinsic,” “instrumental” and “institutional” values. And rightly, it should.

Yet, what Holden advocates is not so much a democratic mandate as a mandate for a democratic government. In other words, he is calling for the state to continue or increase support for the arts, which has as much to do with democracy as it does to despotism. One does not need a democracy in order for great art to flourish; medieval Florence proves just as much. However, since we live in a democratic society, it is up to our democratic representatives to allow for taxpayer dollars to be used in cultural venues or for artistic purposes. In other words, like always, it is our elites — democratic or otherwise — who make the decisions on arts and culture in our society.

If we were to have a truly democratic mandate for the arts, then there would be an element of choice of the masses involved. People would pay for what they would want to experience, and that would be that. A way to do this would be to dramatically decrease taxes which would allow taxpayers to do whatever they want with their own money.

Of course, the very idea that an ordinary citizen can usurp politicians in deciding how they want to be entertained is ludicrous in this day and age, and I won’t pretend that this could ever happen anytime soon. As well, I do support the arts and am glad that there are facilities funded by our tax dollars which are open to the public arts. That said, I would rather our government and our leaders in the arts community be a little more accurate when describing their role in supporting culture in the community.

Congrats

… to Ezra Levant. Not only is he the toast of the libertarian/neo-con/free speechifier communities, he’s also a new father.

Way to go Ezra and Irina!

I suppose we should be flattered

The Calgary Herald is catching on, belatedly of course. With recent articles calling for turnstiles on the LRT and deregulating the taxi commission, our local media has finally taken interest in issues which were brought forth by former mayoral candidate Sandy Jenkins last October. During the next election, instead of continually publishing reports on week-old polling results which inform citizens of how uninterested they supposedly are, perhaps the Herald could focus their attention on issues being raised by political candidates for when it really matters — on election day.

The taxi deregulation issue is a particularly interesting one. Calgary has had essentially the same number of cabs on the street since 1986, save for an additional 100 meant for wheelchair-accessible vehicles. The reason for this slap in the face of the free market is because our civic leadership has their hands tied by the two major taxi companies in town, both of whom control the vast majority of plates in the city. The difficulty in purchasing a license is enhanced by the presence of plate brokerages which charge a substantial fee to prospective drivers.

This creates an artificial market which does not respond to public pressure. During busy periods, such as Stampede or Christmas party season, there is no response by the industry to the overwhelming number of customers who need a safe ride home. Because of the difficulties of getting a cab, far too many people take the chance of driving home under the influence, while many more simply do not go out to socialize to begin with.

I’ve heard anecdotal evidence from various cab drivers who claim that Mayor Dave Bronconnier had received between $100,000 and $300,000 from the owners of the two major cab companies, which explains the hesitation from city hall to do anything to alleviate the shortage. Hopefully, people like Karen Cameron, a former Calgary taxi regulator who quit her job as a result of this lack of action, will be able to raise enough of a ruckus that Calgarians get the taxi service they require.

No joke

Heath Ledger, who will be featured in the upcoming Batman flick, has been found dead today in a Soho, New York City, apartment owned by Mary-Kate Olsen.

Obviously, I cannot comment on this because the pertinent facts are still being investigated, and also because I don’t know the man or what affected his life. However, I do want to say that I thought he was a great actor, one of the few young talents in Hollywood who were actually worth the price of admission to the cineplex. I was looking forward to more but I’ll have to be satisfied with The Dark Knight instead.

A proactive approach to reaction

His Worship, the Mayor sure read all of his c.1990s business jargon manuals, judging by his appearance on QR77 radio this morning. It was “proactive” this and “proactive” that during his discussion about the problem of the public discussing problems about Calgary’s LRT line. Last Thursday, a woman was attacked and killed during an altercation at the Franklin C-Train station and this sparked two city aldermen to propose a security review of the city transit system:

In a unanimous vote, aldermen called for a citywide review that would break down crime statistics, the ability to respond to incidents and what the perception of safety is on public transportation.

But Dave Bronconnier, while backing the audit, cautioned his council colleagues about leaving commuters with the belief the system is flawed and riding the rails is a risky venture.

“Our transit system is very safe and it will remain that way, but we’re starting to see some behaviour that needs, quite candidly, to be modified very quickly,” he said.

“We have 550,000 boarding passengers every day on Calgary transit and by and large the majority of them are law-abiding citizens but there are a couple in there who need to be severely dealt with.”

You see, Bronconnier and his crew have already taken care of the problem. His Proactiveness tells us that he had already anticipated potential issues with the minuscule number of bad apples who just happen to get out of hand and, you know, kill passengers and stuff. This was accomplished by adding more security personnel and cameras at stations and LRT parkades.

The reason these initiatives were undertaken was because security has always been a problem on the trains and at stations, so I can’t understand why Bronco insists on claiming his proactivity whilst reacting to an existing problem. However, I do understand why the mayor is so tentative while still backing the security review: it is so he can be seen to be taking action at the same time as to ensure the senseless citizens that there is no real need to take action because he took action a year before.

In other words, there is no problem, but I’ll take care of the problem just to assuage your unfounded fears as well as to prevent any future violence and deaths under my watch.

In any case, if the city’s media and political leaders were truly proactive, they would seriously consider fast-tracking the downtown subway plan, as an underground LRT would become a much less attractive launching point for vagrants and other ne’er-do-wells to get on the trains to points outbound.

But I don’t expect them to understand that.

Which is why we still have the mayor we do.

Taxing my patience

Andrew Coyne has got it right:

At some point in the not too distant future, one or another of this country’s party leaders is going to campaign for office waving . . . a postcard. “This,” he or she will proclaim, “is what your tax return will look like under my tax plan. As you can see, it’s only got 10 lines on it. You can fill it out in about five minutes. No receipts to keep, no complicated forms to fill out, no need to hire an accountant. And the rate? Just 15 per cent.”

That candidate, I predict, will be swept to power. It won’t even be close. Tax reform bores like me tend to drone on about incentives and revenue neutrality and marginal rates of snzzzzz. But what will light a fire under the average taxpayer, even more than the promise of lower rates, is that postcard.

Well, he’s right about the postcard idea, not the bit about the political leader being swept to power. Still, the Fraser Institute’s idea about submitting a single-page tax return — and one which entails a single rate of tax to boot — is a fantastic savings of our bureaucratic resources as well as our own individual fiscal health.

Imagine: No more worry over RRSPs, no tax write-offs for the wealthy, no double taxation between corporations and individuals, no favoritism for the government’s cause du jour. In fact, no more accountants!

It’s the song John Lennon should have penned.

Call off the search

Bobby Fischer, dead at 64.

Good Political Ideology for the Soul

Both socialism and environmentalism also share an unshakeable belief in their own infallibility, which further ramps up their attractiveness. Both dismiss their opponents as either ignorant (‘falsely conscious’) or in bad faith, and they are both reluctant to allow counter-arguments, evidence, or logic to deflect them from the urgent pursuit of their proffered solutions. Although they both ground their claims in ‘science,’ their appeal is as much emotional as rational, and both take themselves so seriously that they lose any sense of irony. Rockstars fly around the world in private jets to perform at sellout stadium concerts demanding action on global warming, and indignant youths coordinate anti-globalisation protests using global communication networks.

Boring capitalism cannot hope to compete with all this moral certainty, self-righteous anger, and sheer bloody excitement. Where is the adrenalin in getting up every day, earning a living, raising a family, creating a home, and saving for the future? Where is the moral crusade in buying and selling, borrowing and lending, producing and consuming? The Encyclopædia Britannica describes ‘soul music’ as ‘characterised by intensity of feeling and earthiness.’ It is in this sense that capitalism is soulless, for although it fills people’s bellies, it struggles to engage their emotions.

Via Arts & Letters Daily.

Better than Ezra

I’m a bit late on commenting on this, and most people might already know my own position on the matter, but I’d like to register my support for Ezra Levant and his fight in the Alberta Human Rights Commission. His new website clearly enunciates the case against him, and he makes a plain and clear argument that the charges are not only baloney, but the entire process is a violation of the supposedly inviolable universal human right of freedom of political expression.

He has my full-blown support in this matter and, despite your own personal opinion on Ezra or his arguments, you ought to feel the same about his predicament.