DRIVE LESS - BREATHE BETTER

Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York will convene a meeting of the world’s 40 biggest cities.

Cities produce 70% of the climate-changing gases. Bloomberg will be joined by Bill Clinton. Together, they will do what their own country has so far failed to do, and what Canada has also, in lockstep with our neighbours, also failed to do – reduce pollution and create measures that will help improve the environment – the air we breathe and the water we drink.


There are many elements to the program – from white roofs which provide better insulation to LED lights which reduce energy consumption.

What looms, if they can get the project off the ground is probably what our mayor would call “a war on cars.” Since Toronto is not among the world’s 40 largest cities (we are fifth in North America) I presume Rob Ford will not be invited to offer his Neanderthal approach to urban transportation.

Six years ago the first meeting was put together to discuss ways that cities could reduce pollution. That meeting was put together by Bill Clinton and Ken Livingstone, then mayor of London,

I can just picture a meeting between Livingstone and Ford. For our mayor the car is still king and he wants to build subways because, to paraphrase his words: “roads are meant for cars.” Ken Livingstone is the man who declared that London could no longer tolerate its gridlocked traffic which made life miserable in the city and produced enormous quantities of pollution. It is now very difficult, if not almost impossible to drive a car in to the centre of London. If you dare to drive it will cost you.

It was and still is an idea whose time has come. If I have occasion to be out and about in my car, using it only because the place I have to reach is seriously inconvenient by public transit. (I take the subway everywhere otherwise) I am always startled by the number of patient commuters who sit, one car-one driver, in traffic waiting to get home. In London they simply wouldn’t be driving downtown.

One of the points about the Bloomberg plan, and he made it plain in a TV interview, is that you can’t simply “give people what they want.” You have to try to explain to them why drastic moves have to be made. You have to have a dialogue that illuminates the problem of urban pollution. You have to persuade by conversion. Once people start to understand that in the long run it will be better, will cost less, and give us clean air and decent water. Bloomberg is evangelical about the responsibility of cities.

Contrast it with the mess we are in my city. Contrast a Bloomberg with a Ford. Go ahead. See who comes out on top.

HERES TO THE END OF "SACRED COWS."

I define a “sacred cow” as an idea, or an institution, or any long-held “truth.” And with the infinite design of “truth” – not to be tampered with. In other words, we learn to live with what is wrong. (For those who may not put two and two together, it derives from Hindu respect for the cow.)

My Sunday Morning “enlightenment” often begins watching some of the best public service items on TV. This morning I watched Republican House leader Eric Cantor defend the Republican makeover of Medicare. (This whole issue has its counterparts here in the tax-cutting platform of Tim Hudak and the less-government-lower-taxes of the Harper government.) In the U.S. the Republican claim that Medicare is headed for bankruptcy and so the next generation of Medicare user i.e. anyone under the age of 55 now, will have access to medical care through a voucher system. The government will issue vouchers and the seniors who receive them are free to “shop” for the best deal from health insurance providers. Sounds like a great idea, an idea that enshrines at least one sacred cow: the ability of the marketplace to solve all our problems. In this instance, the sacred cow is the insurance industry. The folly of suggesting that private insurance companies will actually “compete” is at the heart of the problem. Witness what happened in California. When “Obama-care” became law, Blue Cross Blue Shield of California raised rates by 40%!

There are other sacred cows that hold back progress in the name, ironically, of progress.

Hudak in Ontario, Harper in Ottawa, and the Republicans of America, are one in their belief that tax cuts improve the economy. The truth is that tax cuts are vote- getters, sadly, among those most critically affected by the failure to raise taxes in the wealthy and big corporations. More sacred cows.

The other pervasive sacred cow continues to be the deficit. In all the “belt-tightening” that is part of deficit reduction; it is the ones who are most vulnerable who are asked to tighten their belts. Paul Martin became our economic saviour when, as Minister of Finance under Chretien, he did enough belt-tightening to eliminate the deficit (but not the national debt) with a series of almost Draconian cuts to services. Martin is still a hero and is a consultant to countries who want to learn about his deficit-reducing magic.

The final sacred cow is of course the tax increase. Republicans literally dine out on their hatred of tax increases. The 2% of the wealthiest Americans will not be hurt by having to pay more. The likes of multi-billionaire Warren Buffet has supported tax increases for the super-rich. Part of that sacred cow is the “assault” on small business.

Resistance to keeping the 35% corporate tax rate is based on the harm it will do to small business. That’s gospel. Except that most small businesses never approached the point where they pay high corporate taxes. In fact, at least in the U.S., many of those so-called small businesses are companies like hedge funds.

But finally, a politician whose summons of obedience to the sacred cows will win, supported by the uninformed who still have the right to vote.

There is hope. In Western New York, a Democrat defeated a Republican in a Congressional election. The “wedge” issue was Medicare. Enough voters woke up and the former Republican stronghold went to the Democrats. While it’s hardly a revolution, it may mean that the light is dawning.

In this country, it is hopeless, at least for now. To pretend the same thing will happen. Perhaps the issue of that sacred cow is what suddenly transport of the NDP from a minor third party to the official opposition. Only time will tell.

MURDER WILL OUT

On TV news I saw it. I shuddered. Nothing seems to change. “If you have nothing to hide,” said the police officer, “you have nothing to fear.” It was all about collecting voluntary DNA samples from people who might have been involved in the murder of an Orangeville woman, nurse Sonia Varaschin.

That is classic police doggerel. It is an excuse for every kind of surveillance, from phone tapping to opening mail. The police, at least this one, just don’t get it. I would presume that if the police have a reasonable suspicion that someone has committed a crime, they can get a court order which literally suspends someone’s civil liberties in order to pursue a case against him. That’s harsh. But it’s fair.

At the risk of being branded “soft on crime” (I have another blog coming on that one) I have to stand up for civil liberties. We do live in a civil society. We do believe not only in the rule of law, but in the profoundly held doctrine of innocent until proven guilty.

When you ask someone to take a test to prove innocence, you run counter to that profoundly held belief. There are some jurisdictions in some other parts of the world where some accused bear the burden of proving innocence. We do it the other way around. Even though I have heard police officers say “we rarely arrest anyone who is not guilty” I still believe, and they are bound by law to believe that presumed innocence is n absolute right.

If I had somehow been living in the area or had been known as someone who knew the unfortunate victim, I might be approached by the authorities to give them a DNA sample. I would refuse. I do not believe I have an obligation to help the authorities judge my guilt or innocence. Even as an accused, the protection is still there. In a vengeful, sometimes bloodthirsty society, there is a craving for bloody justice. Lynching used to be popular for that very reason. And if I refused the police would consider me a prime suspect. "What does he have to hide," they will ask?

But we no longer lynch. We have courts that will make judgements based on information. An accused has the right not to implicate himself. In America that right is enshrined in the 5th amendment. I know. I know. It all sounds just too bleeding-heart permissive. Do the crime, do the time and all that stuff.

As imperfect as it may be, it is still an obligation we have. Summary conviction or Star Chamber courts are not allowed in a democracy.

If a police officer has a reasonable suspicion that can be backed up with information, he is entitled to ask a court to give him permission to demand evidence.

I am no lawyer. I do resent the now-familiar “lawyering up” accusation that follows someone being charged or even under suspicion. The expression says that the minute you call for legal help you must be guilty. An innocent person would not “lawyer up.” That’s what too many people believe.

The law has limits and justice (as the sculptural renditions show) is blind. Even the most rabid lock-em-up advocate has to realize what the blindfold on the statue of justice means.

Of course I hope, as does everyone else, that the police will find the murderer. Doing it the hard way is difficult, but in a democracy, it is essential.

A LITTLE SPRING FEVER

“She was walking without a coat and she looked very solid and strong and her belly was flat, like a boy's, under her skirt, and her hips swung boldly because she was a dancer and also because she knew Michael was looking at her.” From “Girls In Their Summer Dresses.”

Perhaps the best thing I have ever read about girl-watching, that short story by Irwin Shaw. In the story, Michael is walking in New York with his wife. She becomes irritated at how he is constantly watching women as they pass in the street. The story is “Girls in Their Summer Dresses.” I love more than the story, and if I can be forgiven for a sexist moment, a throwback to the “male chauvinist” of the 60s – I like nothing better than a well turned out woman. And for the woman, nothing suits her more than that airy cotton spring dress – the style that seemed to arrive about the same time as the first crocus. There is no more compelling sign of spring. (The Shaw story actually is set in November.)

Today, I nearly did to my wife, what Michael was doing to his wife. We were leaving our apartment and crossing the little plaza in front of the building I noticed a pretty 30-something woman sitting next to the fountain. She was wearing a dress! I wanted to go over to her, risking perhaps a charge of sexual harassment, and compliment her. I would have said something like: “How wonderful of you to be wearing a dress in honour of spring.” How wonderful because when spring arrives and with it the sense of spring “fever” – I am always disappointed that so many women have forsaken femininity for feminism. They are almost all wearing slacks or jeans. They do not want to be on display. They do not want to be objectified. I sympathize.

But do they realize that they have deprived people like me of one of the great joys of spring. The summer dress should be as important as the first robin or a bed of tulips or a gentle breeze that is the harbinger of sultry days to come.

Because spring is my favourite season, I want to luxuriate in all its aspects. I don’t think I objectify women. I think I like looking at them, especially well-turned out and fresh and not always eye-popping beauties.

I wonder if she would have had the grace to dimple up, turn a little red, and thank me for the compliment. Or would she call for the cops.

I know this – my wife would not have tolerated it. I am her sole source of male attention. Or else.

P.S. We were on our way to see the movie “Bridesmaids.” It was superb. It was all about women. Don’t miss it.

THE "CON" IN PRO AND CON

The silly season is back. Americans are being bombarded with political advertising. This morning, watching my favourite “CBS Sunday Morning” – I stopped counting after about half a dozen of these commercials. The Republicans were accusing the Democrat candidates of the usual tax and spend. The Democrats were accusing the Republicans of catering to the interests of Big Business. The same old same old.

But setting aside actual political considerations: who will win and who will lose and why – I come to the main point: “The Con.” I don’t mean “con” as the opposite of “pro” – I mean “con” in the context of using devious means to persuade, e.g. “conning.”

The biggest political con in America, and to some extent here, is that taxes of any kind of fundamentally bad. Anyone who votes for tax increases is the devil incarnate. Heading the “con” list is the totally meaningless statement: “Job-killing tax increases.” There is utterly no logic to the belief that tax increases lead to job losses, but it reads well to people whose attention span is at bumper-sticker level. It makes a good slogan and it plays to the uninformed prejudices of the voter, or as our mayor would say: “The rights of the taxpayer,” whatever that means.

There is the fantasy, and then there are the facts. The fact is, in America at any rate, tax “increases” are leveled at the top one percent of the population who make more than $250,000 a year – and more likely into multi-millions a year. To “penalize” the rich by taking more money from them simply does not cause unemployment. All the extra money the rich save on taxes is not money that would be spent providing jobs. In fact, most of the excess i.e. the difference between what you earn and what it costs you to live is simply stashed away, sometimes in offshore accounts where it can escape the evil eye of the tax collector. There is absolutely no evidence to connect higher taxes for the super-rich to unemployment. We have the same issues here that American corporations have: corporate taxes. Mr. Harper plans to reduce those taxes to attract business. All the evidence so far, and the Globe published this story many months ago, is that corporate tax savings do not find their way into expenditure on either capital goods or hiring more employees. The money is stashed away in the company treasury.

Because it has taken me more than a paragraph to explain the simple realities of taxes and the relationship to jobs, that is far too much to ask some people to absorb. It exceeds bumper sticker length. It probably exceeds the verbiage allowed on Twitter.

The only case that can be made for job loss associated to tax increase is that companies will always, if they can, move their operations to lower tax jurisdictions and with that moving upset the job market in their original home. That’s quite true. But it is also true that those jurisdictions with lower taxes and actually borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, One part of the country suffers, another part seems to prosper. Except that with that lower tax haven, the governments will have less to spend on silly things like education, social services, and health care. If you look at the low tax places you will find that their levels of social services are substantially lower and that their own citizens suffer most from the love affair with lower taxes.

In fact, when the epithet “tax and spend” is used (as it was here during our recent federal election), there is a fatal flaw that few of us seem to notice. It is the “spend” part. If tax revenues are spent much of it goes to pay salaries for people in essential jobs. But America, and to some extent Canada, does not connect the dots. You object to paying taxes but you also object to your neighbour having his home foreclosed on after he loses his job. Sometimes, and I am being excessively cynical. only because it lowers the value of the neighbourhood and with it your own home

You can’t have it both ways. Taxation is part of democracy. Democracy believes that it is obliged to provide services to its citizens, not to protect the rights of the wealthy to bolster their portfolios.

ANOTHER SPRING - ANOTHER HOPE

Not meaning to sound mawkish I took a deep emotional breath of my favourite season. It did not disappoint. The first leaves have a kind of emerald hue not unlike the colour of the grass in New Zealand. Spring revives me. My senses awaken. I muse about how many more springs I will live to see.

There is an awakening that is difficult to explain. Shirley must have felt it. “Let’s go to the AGO today.” She tends not to lead but this time she did. I’m glad.

I worry about our Art Gallery, made into a world-class destination by the work of Frank Gehry. People have been staying away. But we go, not for the “big name” shows, like the coming Chagall, but for the pure joy of the art. We were lucky. On the fifth floor, where Frank designed very high-ceilinged rooms to accommodate modern (and often large) art pieces, there was an exhibit by the Montreal artist Patterson Ewen. It went through his development from representational “pictures” to Impressionism, and to abstract. If it hadn’t been for the school groups, we were nearly the only people there. It made me sad.

I was lifted a little when we went down a few floors to the breathtaking print and illustrating of David Blackwood. His Newfoundland bristles with vigour and shape. His film about Labrador is warm. My spirits rose a little because there were more people there, perhaps only more school groups.

My mind did strange things. I wondered how often Mayor Ford or Don Cherry visit the gallery. I had just read the startling piece in the Star about Cherry and how his “patriotism” affected Canadians, especially hockey fans. I put the word in brackets, not because I mistrust Cherry (which I do but not about this) but because it is so rah-rah, so jingoistic and to me – fraudulent. But I often feel that way about Canadians who bluster and boom a lot about “our gallant troops in Afghanistan.” It’s almost as if there is a patriotic bandwagon going and they want to be part of it. My own feelings are that we probably shouldn’t be there in the first place, but I salute the bravery of the troops who, given no choice, go and do their duty, sometimes with a fatal outcome.

I wonder where Canadian values really are. I wonder how many people, in their personal rush toward “success” felt the same giving of grace I felt looking at this year’s crop of green leaves. I couldn’t help wondering, as I walked by the paintings, if in fact Don Cherry felt the same was about Canadian art as he does about Canadian military. Or would he disdain it, leaving it to his enemies, the left-wing pinkos.

Alas, we seem to be worlds apart. I think it is because in the rock-em sock-em world there is room only for physical prowess. I fear that we have, at least in the person of Cherry and Ford, entered a world of anti-intellectualism and mistrust of anything that can’t be put on a bumper sticker.

P.S. The day after my visit I had dinner with a friend who is a docent at the AGO. She said the next day was crowded. I hope so.

DON'T DRINK THE WATER

This whole tirade came from watching one of my favourite chefs on the Food Network. More later.

It was the usual warning when you traveled to say – Mexico – where one drink of their tap water would give you the Aztec Two Step. Mexico got a bad deal probably. I remember Istanbul where tourists fled to bottled water served to them at the desk of their hotel. You were advised not to drink from that bottle if the seal had been broken because of course some clever water-entrepreneur had refilled it from the fetid Istanbul tap water.

I can see that precaution being legitimate in much of the developing world, where potable water is not always available. But here? In this country? And in the United States? Consumption of bottled water has become epidemic. I am always amused seeing a chic 20-something drinking her “pure” bottled water with one hand, while the other hand held a lit cigarette.

I have always loved the water that comes out of the tap in Toronto. Statistically it is a lot more pure than much of the water that is sold bottled.

The other side of the bottled water phenomenon, in fact there are actually two sides: one being that fresh water is being drained away for commercial shipment and the hundreds of thousands of empty non-biodegradable plastic water bottles are coming a close second to decomposable diapers in the landfill sites.

My beef is not with the waste of resources. It is with the fear and anxiety that has propelled millions into not trusting perfectly good tap water. It’s the same fear and anxiety that has been godfather to the development a fear-based food economy.
My favourite sad memory is words spoken by by someone from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture who complained wistfully to me: “You can’t fight CBS AND Meryl Streep.”

He was referring to a victory by the food fascists who are determined to tell us all what we must not eat. He was talking about Alar, a product that allowed apples to stay on the trees longer so they could ripen fully. It was discovered that Alar was a suspected carcinogen (almost anything can e carcinogenic if you take enough of it)
And between Sixty Minutes and the appeals of Meryl Streep (she didn’t want her children to grow up eating poison) the product, a boon to apple orchards, was taken off the market. It was a win for the forces of darkness that have, in my view, turned the food industry into a platform for their own agenda.

I am no scientist, but I see the entire organic, no-additives, no-chemicals crowd as not only misguided, but hysterical and worse, convincing millions of people that processed food and additives are killing the human race.

They are aided by well-meaning people like big-name chefs who make their culinary delights using only the best – e.g. organically grown food. (I’ll never win this one, except that agronomists at major universities have blind-tested people with regular food and organic food side by side. They have not been able to tell the difference. The other day, watching my favourite food show, "French Cooking At Home" with Laura Calder. She was breaking eggs with coloured shells. There is quite mysteriously, some notion that they are better than whiter-shelled eggs. She also made a delightful concoction that included carrots. She did not peel the carrots because she said, they were organic. Such rubbish, and from a real food person. You peel the carrots not because of some mysterious infection of chemicals and fertilizers and insecticides, but because the outer skin is tough and sometimes dirty. (I know, the dirt is clean because it is organic. Tell that to the people who got sick on organic spinach that was Ecoli infected. From “pure” fertilizer I guess. Pure in this case from the feces of organically fed, non-hormone-treated cattle.)

I remember an agronomist commenting about chemical fertilizer being used on vegetables. He said: “The cabbage doesn’t know the difference. It uses the fertilizer to give us a better vegetable.”

One of my other bugbears is the comment, when I confront one of these people with the point about: chemicals, suggesting that there is no harm - the response is “but we don’t know what the long-term effect will be.” That’s always a convenient dodge.

I’ve had it up to here with free range this and organist that and “real” food, not the genetically altered variety which will help feed a world that is slowly running out of the capacity to grow enough to feed everyone,.

My last shit is reserved for the opponent of “irradiated” food. The word is one of those loaded words that connotes death by radiation poisoning; Irradiation has been around for a long time. It inhibits the growth of food-rotting bacteria and makes the shelf life longer – so once again – we can feed more people.

I am indignant. In my last blog I suggested I would by kinder and more mellow. Come to my place for dinner and I’ll be mellow. You’ll be eating food that may not pass all your critical tests. I promise you – it won’t kill you. It might even taste good..

FLASHBACK TO A BETTER (?) TIME

It’s been a while. I’m still not back to full energy. I spend a lot of time between brooding about not having written anything and wishing the fatigue would come to an end.

I nearly wrote a piece about “productivity.” A piece I read in the Globe and Mail last week set me off. “Productivity” usually means that you have to sweat your workers. But I am more and more coming to realize that everything seems to “set me off.”

Then I walked by an enlargement hanging on the wall in my office. I seldom look at it, but today I did. It made me wonder about myself. It made me wonder, as I did many years ago, about why I seem to thrive on being angry. Nothing wrong with being a critic, but I find myself carping, often about the same things. The election didn’t help. Rob Ford doesn’t help. Trash in the streets doesn’t help.

The photograph is one of a series of painted billboards I paid for in, I think, 1969. I mentioned it in passing in “The Day I Invented Sex,” the story of my fall from grace, In November 1970.

I had turned 40. I was doing a look at myself and at the reputation I had built (a profitable one) by being radio’s reigning curmudgeon. It was not dramatic enough to be an epiphany. It was simply my sense that I might enjoy things more if I reduced the amount of vinegar and replaced it with honey. I was realizing that I had been rude and unyielding to thousands of phone callers for the preceding nearly ten years.

The idea surfaced when I realized that I had become part of the “every-man-for-himself” society. Don’t give an inch. Push and elbow your way to what you believe to be your “place.”

I did a series of programs talking about being “nice.” Nothing was very profound or difficult. You are in line to get on a streetcar so you crowd in to grab your place in line. I said that perhaps we should try stepping back and allowing someone else to go by a welcoming wave of the hand. It cost nothing. I went to easy things like driving in traffic and seeing someone trying to enter the flow from a side street. Slow down and wave them in. I also tried a little more please and thank you. Nothing was very profound, but people started phoning about caring behaviour. The phone lines were full of people who wanted to show some humanity. Who wanted to talk about their own venture into “being nice.”

What came from all this was a campaign. I used my own money. The station did not pay and the call letters of CHUM never appeared. All that appeared were these large painted billboards, yellow with upper case black type “DO SOMETHING NICE"’ and underneath was my signature. I drove around and felt good.

The station then undertook to pay for simple “Do Something Nice” stickers that could be placed in the rear widows of cars. The day I announced it, hundreds of cars drove to the station for their little stickers. Cars all over Toronto were saying “Do Something Nice.”

It was not a total turnaround for me. I enjoyed it but then reality came flooding back and I reverted, at least partially, to my old self.

People were saying: “Larry – you’ve mellowed.” Maybe I did. It sure didn’t stick.
Maybe I ought to revisit it. Maybe I have.

P.S. Several years ago someone wrote about the campaign and attributed it to “some deejay somewhere in the States.” Sic transit gloria mundi.

FITTING END?

I put this down only minutes after reading that Mr. Ignatieff has resigned. By the time it reaches you that will be old news. Is it right that one man take the blame for the ignominious defeat of his party? Unfortunately, someone has to take the fall.

I’ll try not to make this too politically partisan. He blamed the negative ads for the disaster. Ignatieff was gracious in defeat, as most politicians are. I remember one exception: an American congressman was defeated. In his concession speech he said: “The people have spoken. And they are wrong.”

The blame may be Mr. Ignatieff’s. But for me the blame lies with the Liberal “stalwarts” – the ones who, when they say that Ignatieff was going down in flames, switched to the Conservatives and elected the very man their fallen leader had promised to unseat. I find it duplicitous and downright wrong. As they say – "you leave with the guy what brung you.”

It was a strange twist on strategic voting – where you abandon your favourite because the biggest challenge is to defeat someone else. In this case it is obvious. The centre-right Liberals could not bring themselves, if they were going to move their votes, to do everything they could to keep Harper from winning absolute power, and to take their votes to the N.D.P. The question is: do the entrenched of this country really want the change they keep claimed they do? Or do they simply want to re-arrange things so their party can have its legitimate place in the sun? Like dogs in the manger, they said: “If we can’t win, we’re not going to let them (the N.D.P. ) win. They have sold themselves out. They have revealed themselves to be what Ignatieff would not call them. I won’t bother with the language I thing would be appropriate.

I am sorry that we will be saying goodbye to the likes of Ken Dryden, an honest, stalwart man. I am sorry that the Liberals could not find the kind of leader with the charisma to attract the voters. Iggy is, if I am to believe people who know him, an honest, sincere, caring person. Apparently he is no politician. Because to be a politician, you have to know how to win. He simply did not.

But the saddest part of it is that the people, who stood behind him while he campaigned, deserted him the minute the shadows started appearing. I also feel a little sorry for Jack Layton. Yes, he raised the N.D.P. to a level never seen before, but he will spend the next four years in frustrated impotence as the majority government does what it must do.

My belief is however, that in our traditionally liberal democracy, no one party can upset the country. I don’t Mr. Harper will try to. I’m waiting to see if his in-power budget will be the same as his minority-government budget – conciliatory and socially conscious.