Author: kirbycairo

I find the idea that Jim Flaherty is pressuring financial institutions not to lower mortgage rates sadly amusing. I have always said that the conservatives don’t really believe in “free-markets.” Their real commitment is to well controlled markets manipulated in the interests of the rich. I guarantee that if mortgage rates were at 15 or 16

A few thoughts on a chilly March Monday. Only two days from spring yet we are expecting 20 to 30 meters of snow. So it goes. Today in the HuffPost we have an article in which Bill Gates tells us that capitalism has gone off its rails. Of course, billionaires like Gates,

I can predict the future. I am no psychic, just of a practical turn of mind, politically speaking. I predict that Justin Trudeau will be elected leader of the Liberal Party! Yes, I know, pretty bold of me eh? But wait, there’s more. I also predict that after his elected leader

If you had the misfortune of seeing Stockwell Day on Power and Politics this evening then you are probably as nauseated as I am. The so-called “Power Panel” predictably addressed the report by Howard Sapers from the Office of the Correctional Investigator concerning the relationship of Aboriginal Peoples to the

The life of Hugo Chavez reminds us of many of the difficulties facing the world in our generation.  Chavez was a man who saw that capitalism had led in Latin America to structural poverty for a large swarth of the population and though there was, in the latter half of

Among the interesting political events of the week is the leak of the BC Liberal Memo which outlines their very crass and opportunistic plan to win quick votes through the wooing of the so-called “ethnic vote.” What I find interesting about this event is similar to the sudden release by

It is becoming increasingly difficult for anyone to see the Prime Ministership of Stephen Harper and the history of the Conservative Government as anything but a spectacular failure at almost every level. Even judged by their own standards this government has really failed badly on almost all portfolios. The only

It seems to me that a growing number of Canadians are finally waking up to the fiscal incompetence of the Harper cabal. It doesn’t take the Economic education of Jim Stanford to understand that despite the CON-Artists continually self-congratulatory attitudes to their own supposed economic prowess, these guys really have

Though the right is, in many places, still riding high in the actual political struggle, if we talk about it honestly the right has, in fact, already lost the political debate at almost every level. At the social level, the right has consistently, albeit gradually, lost throughout history. But in the resurgence of

In the wake of Kathleen Wynne’s victory in the race to become the new leader of the Ontario Liberal Party, the inevitable, perennial questions are being asked; the “are the voters ready” questions that the media asks every time a potential leader who is not a Christian, white-man in a suit is

For the couple of people that expressed an interest in my painting process I thought I would post a little description with a few sequential photos to demonstrate how I do it. Below is a shot of my current shadow-box in process. As you can see it is much larger

You know, I began to look into it and discovered, much to my surprise, that apparently economic malfeasance is quite common in this country. Have you heard about this? In the 1990s the Federal Liberal Party, then in Government, shuffled tens of millions of dollars through government coffers into the hands of

The Sixth Estate does a great job today in exposing the hypocrisy nascent in the ongoing attitude toward Chief Spence in particular and the Native Governments in general. It amazes me how corrupt our present government is and yet it continues to have the gall to attempt to marginalize others with accusations

Given the visceral and sometimes racists attacks on the Idle No More movement and its supporters, I think it is important for me to continue to address, in a little more detail, the democratic issues that I touched upon in my previous post. First of all it is important to understand that,

Writers at (and supporters of) The National Post and The Globe and Mail (we know who they are) have mounted a rather pointed, and sometimes visceral  attack on Idle No More in general and Chief Spence in particular. These writers (though I hate to dignify them with that title) seem to

Stephen Harper is deeply afraid of Chief Spence – and he should be. He is not, of course, afraid of her as a woman and a mother. Rather, he is afraid of what she represents in the struggle of the Indigenous people for treaty justice. You see, the treaties that