Certainly it seems logical that in a democracy, the upper house of the democratic body ought to be democratically elected, but elections open up the senate to all manner of tinkering, by lobbyists, government and police interests, the far right and so forth. Some of you are probably pointing out that appointments give an unfair ideological advantage to whoever is doing the appointing, as in the US with judicial appointments or even Canada today when that bugger Harper appointed 18 senators, all of them conservative (so much for an open, free and non-partisan senate), and you’re right. Sort of.

What we forget though, is that with an election one must keep on the side of those with the money (people are stupid enough to be told what to believe nine times out of ten, so it is the lobbies that matter and not individuals doing the voting), whereas in the case of the Senate, while one probably did “good work” for whoever appointed oneself, afterwards one has no further obligations. Indeed, traditionally the Senate has been very good to Canadians — it is the lower house and the cabinet, the psuedodemocratic bodies, which tend to fail us. Examples, you scream? Alright. Two spring to mind, interestingly — Mulroney’s GST and marijuana legislation.

The Senate refused to permit Mulroney’s GST to go through originally, and it is only through an obscure act of law that Mulroney was able to skew the appointments to allow that piece of legislation to go through. As to marijuana, most people do not know that the Senate was asked to form a committee to review drug laws, prohibition and policy in Canada and abroad, and issue an opinion piece for the use of the government — this is alot of what the Senate does, and it is infact alot of work despite the lies of the conservatives.

As a sidebar, this is another problem: while technically a senator only needs to attend 40-70 days a year and is well paid for it — and some senators do infact do this — many senators do absurd amounts of work by working in committees, which are frequently formed by the government and by the Senate itself. This is a good thing — if the government refuses to address a “hot button” issue that the people want addressed (as it often does), the Senate can form a committee to look into it and the government has no means of bringing pressure upon the body. This is a good thing!

Back to the marijuana example: most people do not know that the Senate was asked to form a committee to review drug laws, prohibition and policy in Canada and abroad, and issue an opinion piece for the use of the government. And work they did. The Senate summoned people from all over Canada, spoke to DEA representatives (they have offices here, alas), and talked to people in countries that actually have successful anti-drug programmes, such as Switz (successfully got rid of cocaine abuse for the most part) and Holland (massively reduced all forms of drug addiction and disproved gateway theory), read huge bodies of scholarly research and spoke to professionals, from police to government to activists, the world over. Their “findings” were published in a 500+ page, 2-volume set, and you know what they reccommended? Legalize marijuana, initiate massive harm reduction, increase penalties for more severe drugs, follow European models for substance abuse, and rewrite existing legislation to be able to deal with drug problems. In other words, exactly what should be done, and exactly what people (and police unions/lobbies, and pharmaceutical unions/lobbies, and the US government) didn’t want to hear. So the rest of the government — the democratic government — ignored the report. It’s available online if you want to look for it.

Some food for thought before you clamber for a democratic Senate. As people’s opinions change, when they owe no one further patronage, when democratic boots need not be licked, unpopular and righteous opinions can be voiced. And in a democracy, is having an opposing voice which has the ability to, betimes, float above the corruption of the indirect democratic process not a good thing?

This is intended for them: You see, the value of money depreciates over time. So does spending and earning power. An example of this would be the salary of someone working thirty or forty or fifty years ago. $5 forty years ago could buy you, well…
A movie with popcorn was 50 cents. But lets say it was actually a dollar. An hour’s work earned you 8 movies. Or coke. Coke was 5-10 cents. Let’s say 10. An hour’s work was 50 cokes. It got you one to two full tanks of gas. And these are the big car days — 60L, 15GAL tanks. These two examples should suffice. Now move forward to today. The minimum wage is eight dollars. “Three dollars more an hour!” scream the rednecks. Right, but what does that get you? Well, a movie at the local theatre is $11. You’ve earned less than a movie an hour. Coke? Well, $8 could get you 24 cokes on sale, but let’s be generous and say you got a 3-case deal, 36 cans. Gas? Well, a 60L tank at $1.45 a liter is…$87. A tenth of a tank of gas.

Now even an idiot should be able to see that this means your hour’s work — your dollar’s earning power — has dropped by anywhere from 20-90%. Right, so drop taxes. Brilliant. Make people poorer. Can’t give them cheap medicine (that’s Communism!). Can’t give them welfare. Can’t make schools better – that would all require tax increases. So what do they do? They commit crimes.

And what do Americans do with criminals? Try to reform them? No. Put them to useful, productive work for the state? Not really. Mississippi uses chain-gangs and some prisons have farms, but those hardly help the poor, decent, hard-working American families one paycheque away from being on the street. They do help the bottom line of the companies that partially own the prisons though. In some states a federal prison inmate can do slave labour (assembly line stuff) for seven cents an hour too, again for corporate benefits. But what do you do with criminals? You punish them. A very nice 17th century puritan worldview. As God does in hell so it is given to the Americans to do on earth. So you take the poor SOB who…turned to drugs…knocked someone up…stole something…in prison for a few years. That will teach him. But while he’s in prison, he will need to be fed and clothed and given medical care. To the tune of some hundred thousand dollars per year.

The US has the biggest prison population on earth, and it has been growing exponentially for over 30 years (the War on Drugs started the economic chain reaction that caused this, along with hyperinflation), and those prisoners each require tax dollars. Then the poor son of a bitch gets let out; he needs to be monitored — by officers paid out of tax dollars — and when he does something wrong because his record wont let him get a decent job or an education (a drug charge in the US is sufficient to permanently stop you from being elligible for government student loans, so no college for even simple marijuana possession) you’ll need police officers to catch him.

So what does the government do? Well it privatizes, and talks about crime going up. (And of course the poor vote republican because the crime affects them more than the rich because theyre among it. So the Republicans have created a self-perpetuating supply of votes from the very idiots they’re exploiting and incarcerating.) And they move taxes from schooling. Those companies they give things to when they privatize? They get tax breaks. And people make up for corporate tax breaks. Since they can’t raise taxes, they take from social programs…

War is also important to the Americans. And every part of war needs taxes. Weapons development? Taxes. Deployment? Taxes. They also need soldiers, but that’s the only choice alot of poor people have (and how did they get to that low point? Hmm..) so they’re not a problem, until they’re injured. Now the US government treats its veterans like utter crap (especially when they didnt fight in a popular war), but they still get medicaid and a salary, which again is from funds collected in part by the levying of taxes.

So what do the Americans need to realize? YOU NEED TAXES FOR SERVICES. And since money’s value goes down, the amount of money required for things to stay the same must be INCREASED.