(From the internet: From Helium: Where Knowledge Rules)
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By B. Smith
Barack wants to what?
Capitalism or Socialism which do you prefer?
Please allow me to define the terms before we go any further. According to www.dictionary.com, capitalism and socialism are defined as follows:
Capitalism noun
an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, esp. as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.
Now compare that to socialism:
Socialism noun
1. A theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
2. Procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.
3. (In Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.
4. An economic system based on state ownership of capital.
If someone were to come to you and ask you for 15% of your 401k or 15% of your pension fund, what would you say? If you are like me you would probably tell them to go take a long walk off of a short plank. If someone were to tell you that the government wants to take ALL of your retirement funds and convert them to social security so as to ensure your future retirement, what would you say? I would tell them that it is my money and that they need to keep their noses out of my business.
But what is happening?
1. We have democrats in the world of academia and in the halls of elected office calling for major changes in the 401k and pension retirement plans. The ideas range from the government taking a "one-time" (anyone believe it will be just once?) confiscation of 15% of your funds all the way to the entire take-over of your retirement plans. You know what these are, right? These are the plans where you invested your money into your future. It is the money that you earned and set aside for your future. It is the money for your kids and grandkids. It is YOUR money. The people that are coming to power want to take it. They have done nothing to earn it but they want to take it. Here is one article for your perusal:
http://www.investmentnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/articl e?AID=/20081007/REG/810079894
2. Are you so naive that you think it won't happen? You honestly think that your retirement money is safe, right? Look at Argentina. It has just happened! According to Time Almanac, 2008, both America and Argentina have a Federal Republic with two legislative houses. Argentina is not, nor are we, a socialist country. But we are both headed that way. Look at definition number three for socialism. When over fifty percent of the electorate believes it is okay to plunder the so called rich to meet their own desires, we have major problems.
Look here: http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article /WRAPUP-2-Argentinas-pension-takeover-plan-scares- g-KNTA7?OpenDocument
3. We have a Presidential elect that has openly called for bankrupting the coal industry. The use of coal provides OVER 50% of our electricity. What would happen if it becomes bankrupt as Barack has suggested? Would this be good? I would suggest that if it goes bankrupt then the government would step in and take over. Compare this to the definition and one might easily see where the government might be "taking over" the coal industry and this can be viewed as socialism. Watch it for yourself at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdi4onAQBWQ
If their country is doing it then what is to say that ours won't be next. Their government has just taken everything that their citizens have been working for and confiscated it. Can it happen here? Sure it can! Look around you. We have citizens that believe it is okay to take from those who go out and work their rear ends off and give their earnings to people that don't.
Please consider the definition number four for socialism. Simply put, capital, in the business world, equals money. Are we not seeing this today? We have the government giving bailouts to the banking world. Now what? The auto industry wants one; the student loan organizations are pondering the question along with the credit card companies. Couple this with the ideas of the government taking over your retirement funds and bankrupting the coal industry, et al. it is clear that we have taken the beginning steps towards socialism.
Does anyone believe we can tax our way to prosperity? How is that possible? The government takes our monies and gives it to those who don't have and this is the road to prosperity? Has it ever worked anywhere? No, it has not and it never will.
Too often the argument comes down to wealth envy. Socialism is supposed to even the field while capitalism allows people to become rich, or so some may say. This may all be true. But when push comes to shove, who are you more concerned for: You and your family? Or your fellow citizen? Me? I guess I can be accused of being selfish because I will take care of "me and mine" first, then everyone else.
I finish with this quote by the great capitalist, Adam Smith, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."
I prefer Capitalism! (From the internet: from Helium: Where Knowledge Rules)
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Mr. or Ms. B. Smith,
Look, I like Adam Smith probably just about as much as you do. And I like Capitalism probably just about as much as you do. But Capitalism needs some serious ethical and legal regulations -- otherwise it will take us all to 'Hell in a handbag'.
Any concept, theory, or philosophy -- if extended to the outer limits of its principles and assumptions -- will collapse under the weight of these same principles and assumptions. This Hegelian principle of 'self-contradiction' applies equally well to all of Capitalism, Socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Communism...Each extreme philosophy -- when unbalanced by the principles of its opposite -- will create a pathological, destructive, self-destructive 'Pandora's Box'. The homeostatic, dialectic-democratic balance lies in 'creatively working and/or playing both opposing philosphical extremes towards a much healthier and harmonious middle.
In this respect, Capitalism will crash, destruct, and self-destruct under the weight of Adam Smith's famous concept of 'self-interest' -- which when unbridled can and will easily turn to 'Narcissistic Greed Gone Wild': 'survival of the fittest', 'Lord of The Flies' -- 'Everybody, just feel totally free to cheat, gouge, manipulate, exploit your employee, your employer, your customer, your contractor, your retailer, your manufacturer, your husband, your wife, your friends...Just call it 'self-interest'.
Government -- as well as privately controlled -- pension funds are a huge, national concern both in America and here in Canada.
I don't want to lose my hard-earned pension money -- not that I have much, if I will have any, other than what the government is going to give me when I retire -- anymore than anyone else likely does.
Here in Canada, the Canadian Pension Plan has been the subject of much alleged government abuse. When there is no transparency in this plan and no accountability for 'missing money' -- it becomes a 'money paradise' for any government official who has the power to 'move this money to wherever he or she wants to send it'. And whether the money ever comes back again to the people of Canada -- or not -- is again a huge potential and/or real problem for suspecting or unsuspecting Canadians who have no way of telling what is happening with their crucial source of government pension money that has come off their own work cheques.
If a private pension fund holder were to do what the Government of Canada has done or not done in terms of being accountable for the people's pension money -- specifically, taking it out of the CPP and either investing it and/or using it for 'loans' and/or for other areas of goverment spending (if not worse) -- the private sector people owning and/or managing a private pension fund in this manner would be all in jail. Look at what happened to Alan Eagleson through the 1960s, 70s, and 80s when he used hockey players pension money for his own personal gain. His bad ethical and legal choices came back to ruin his honour, his career, and finally land him in jail.
One of the biggest legal questions remains: Who is legally entitled to the 'profits' of good investments. If you have a situation where managers of a pension fund feel entitled to the profits on pension investments on the one hand -- but will gladly give back the 'investment and/or loan losses' to the people whose pension money they are overseeing -- then obviously, this is not right.
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Alan Eagleson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Robert Alan Eagleson (born April 24, 1933 in St. Catharines, Ontario) is a disbarred Canadian lawyer, convicted felon in two countries, former politician, hockey agent and promoter. He is known for his role in promoting the 1972 Summit Series between Canada and the Soviet Union, the Canada Cup (now the World Cup of Hockey), and his representation of famous hockey players such as Bobby Orr. He was also the first executive director of the NHL Players Association (NHLPA). Although initially lauded for improving the lot of NHL players, his reputation was destroyed after it was revealed that he had abused his position for many years by defrauding his clients.
Contents
1 The Blue and White Group
2 A hockey power
3 Political career
4 Disgrace
4.1 Conway investigates
4.2 Charged by RCMP, extradited to U.S.
4.3 Surrenders honours
5 Notes
6 References
7 Further reading
The Blue and White Group
Eagleson graduated in law from the University of Toronto and soon became a prominent lawyer in Toronto. He first became involved with hockey as an advisor to Bob Pulford, a player with the Toronto Maple Leafs. It was quickly realized that any attempt to create a union would be easier to achieve with Leafs' players as his base of power. [1] That led to other members of the Leafs becoming clients, most notably defenceman Carl Brewer, who hired Eagleson as his agent.
Eagleson would form the Blue and White Group, a group of friends he had known from the Maple Leafs, including Brewer, Pulford, Bobby Baun and Billy Harris, along with a car dealer, a jeweller, and three other lawyers. [2] Eagleson's motive was to educate these players about investments, and use their funds more intelligently. Pulford, Brewer and Harris would earn university degrees after their playing careers. Two members of the Blue and White Group, Pulford and Baun, would be the first two presidents of the NHLPA.
The Leafs' acquisition of Andy Bathgate would prove advantageous to Eagleson. A friendship was forged into Toronto which would follow Bathgate to Detroit, where Eagleson would start to talk to Red Wings players about the concept of a union.
A hockey power
Three events would occur that would help Eagleson form the NHLPA. The first event would be the insistence that Eagleson would negotiate Bobby Orr's first pro contract with the Boston Bruins. This would lead to the beginnings of "agents" in hockey. Secondly, Carl Brewer fought to have his amateur status reinstated. Lastly, Eagleson would be involved in representing the Springfield Indians during their negotiations with owner Eddie Shore over players rights. [3] These events would solidify Eagleson's reputation, and he would become the catalyst for the NHLPA.
When the NHLPA was formed in 1967, Eagleson was appointed its first executive director, a position he held for 25 years. He was also active in promoting the sport, helping to organize the historic 1972 Summit Series—the first time Canadian and Soviet pros had ever competed against each other on the ice. Notably, Eagleson was responsible for the decision to exclude many WHA stars from the Summit Series, including Bobby Hull, Gerry Cheevers and Derek Sanderson. Four years later, he organized the first Canada Cup.
During one of the Summit Series games in Moscow, Eagleson garnered international attention by attempting to confront off-ice officials after the goal judge had failed to light the goal lamp when a Canadian player scored, at which point he was seized by soldiers of the Red Army. The Canadian players and the few Canadian fans rallied to his defence to prevent him from being arrested, providing one of the most memorable off-ice moments of the series. As they walked back across the ice Eagleson shook his fist at the crowd, but never used his middle finger as was widely reported.
Within a decade, he was one of the most powerful men in hockey, and by some accounts, the most powerful man in the sport. He was even elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1989 as a builder--the only known instance where a union official has been elected to the hall of fame in a major team sport. The same year, he was named an Officer of the Order of Canada for his work in promoting the sport.
Over the years, Eagleson developed a very close relationship with league president John Ziegler. For all intents and purposes, the NHL of the 1980s was ruled by a triumvirate of Ziegler, Eagleson and Chicago Blackhawks owner Bill Wirtz.
Political career
Eagleson was also active in politics for many years. In the 1963 federal election, he ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the Canadian House of Commons for the Progressive Conservatives in the Toronto riding of York West. He was defeated by hockey player Red Kelly who ran for the Liberals. Later that year, he was elected to the Ontario Legislative Assembly as the Progressive Conservative Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) for the Toronto riding of Lakeshore, serving there until 1967. He was a major PC fundraiser and, in the late 1960s, president of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario. He was a member of the Big Blue Machine that dominated Ontario politics for much of the 1970s and 1980s. At one point, his name was considered as a potential candidate for prime minister.
Disgrace
As Eagleson's power grew, concern was raised about his multiple roles as union chief, player agent and hockey promoter. Suspicions also rose that he was reaping a substantial windfall from the Canada Cup and other arrangements unknown to the players. However, until 1989 he was considered a national hero in Canada and an icon in the NHL. In addition, many local Canadian journalists owed favours or access to Eagleson.
In 1989, however, player agents Ritch Winter and Ron Salcer teamed up with former National Football League union official Ed Garvey to author a devastating review of the NHLPA's operations. Winter and Salcer had been critical of Eagleson's stewardship for many years, and felt he wasn't giving them the support they needed to adequately represent their clients. The report, presented at a union meeting in West Palm Beach, revealed that Eagleson's travel expenses were not subject to any form of review by the union. Winter and Salcer also charged that Eagleson was skimming off money from advertising on the dasher boards, and had lent pension money to friends. Eagleson was able to weather this storm because the union's executive committee was stacked with longtime cronies. However, he was forced to announce that he would be stepping down as executive director in 1992.
Conway investigates
In 1990, Russ Conway, sports editor of The Eagle-Tribune, began an investigation of Eagleson's performance in office. Conway had heard rumours for some time that something was seriously amiss about the inner workings of the NHL -- specifically serious discrepancies in pension payments. Despite the devastating 1989 report by Winter and Salcer, most Canadian journalists refused to look into the rumours. Over the course of a year, Conway interviewed more than 200 NHL personalities, including former and active players and NHL officials.
In September 1991, he published the first of many installments in a series called Cracking the Ice: Intrigue and Conflict in the World of Big-Time Hockey. The series revealed evidence that Eagleson had engaged in a staggering litany of unethical and criminal conduct over many years.
The series alleged that Eagleson had embezzled player pension funds for many years, principally from the 1972 Summit Series. He was also accused of colluding with teams whose management he favoured, such as the Chicago Blackhawks, to hold down salaries, even if it meant working contrary to the interests of his clients. For example, after Orr's contract with Boston ran out, Eagleson told Bobby Orr that the Blackhawks had a deal on the table that Orr couldn't refuse. It later emerged that the Bruins offered Orr one of the most lucrative contracts in sports history, including an 18 percent stake in the team; however, Eagleson falsely claimed the Blackhawks had a better offer. Wirtz was never charged with wrongdoing, largely because the Bruins' offer was widely known in league circles, and even reported in the Toronto Star. No other NHL owner was ever charged in the affair. Orr was once one of Eagleson's strongest supporters, but later denounced him after suspecting that he was being cheated. Orr, whose career ended in 1978 because of serious knee injuries, learned he was almost bankrupt, despite having earned high salaries while being represented by Eagleson.
However, the series' most shocking revelation concerned Eagleson's actions regarding disability claims by former players. Eagleson was accused of taking large payments from insurance claims before the players filing them received their share, telling the players that he earned the "fee" while fighting against the insurance companies to get the claims paid. In fact, many players later learned that the insurance companies had already agreed to pay the claims and there was no "fight". In other cases where a "fight" with the insurance companies truly was required, several players ran into bureaucratic dead ends and no support from Eagleson while they tried to move forward on insurance and pension claims to support their families. Conway later turned his series into the basis of a book, Game Misconduct: Alan Eagleson and the Corruption of Hockey.
Conway published several other stories over the next nine years about Eagleson's crimes. For instance, he'd been reimbursed more than $62,000 for personal expenses from 1987 to 1989. He also revealed that the NHLPA had unknowingly footed the bill for expensive clothing, theater tickets and a luxury apartment in London. Many players had been led to believe that they were playing in the Canada Cup for free because all the money was going to their pensions. Eagleson had also refused to visit the family of a second-line defenceman, Ed Kea, whose career was ended by a devastating head injury that required major brain surgery.
Conway worked very closely with Carl Brewer, one of Eagleson's early clients. Brewer had by this time had become the leader of a group of former players who felt Eagleson had lied to them. Brewer's longtime companion, Susan Foster, provided a large amount of material to Conway.
Although Eagleson had been based in Toronto, most Canadian media organizations had avoided detailed investigation of his dealings until Conway's material was published. That changed when The Globe and Mail began its own examination of Eagleson's career in early 1993, and published a series of stories with further revelations. Two Globe sports writers, William Houston and David Shoalts, expanded that material, Conway's work, and the latest developments into their own book, entitled Eagleson: The Fall of a Hockey Czar, which was published later in 1993.
Charged by RCMP, extradited to U.S.
In 1996, after a politically delayed three-year investigation, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police finally was forced, by Conway's publications, to charge Eagleson with eight counts of fraud and theft. He'd already been charged with 34 counts of racketeering, obstruction of justice, embezzlement and fraud in the United States in 1994. However, he still had enough political clout from his days as an MPP and a power broker with the Tories that he was able to fight off extradition to the United States until 1997.
On January 6, 1998, Eagleson pleaded guilty to three counts of mail fraud in Boston, and was fined $700,000. Later that year, he pleaded guilty in Toronto to three more counts of fraud and embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars of Canada Cup proceeds in 1984, 1987 and 1991. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison, of which he served six months at the Mimico Correctional Centre in Toronto. The conviction resulted in his automatic disbarment from the practice of law by the Law Society of Upper Canada, which regulates the profession in Ontario.
Since being released, he has largely remained out of the limelight, although he was interviewed on television after Canada's loss to Russia in the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Turin, Italy.
Surrenders honours
Soon after his guilty plea, Eagleson was removed from the Order of Canada (though he continued to wear his lapel pin during the court proceedings prior to his sentence). He also resigned from the Hockey Hall of Fame after the Hall's board informally voted to expel him (a formal vote, which was almost certain to pass, was due within a few weeks). The Hall had tried to stay out of the controversy, but was forced to act after 19 Hall of Fame players -- including Bobby Orr, Andy Bathgate, Bobby Hull, Gordie Howe, Jean Beliveau, Mike Bossy, Johnny Bucyk, Ted Lindsay, Henri Richard, Brad Park, Johnny Bower and Dickie Moore -- threatened to resign from the Hall if Eagleson was allowed to remain.
Defenders of Eagleson pointed out that during his tenure as executive director of the NHLPA, both salaries and pension benefits increased exponentially, offering real security to players that had not existed prior to that time. During the criminal proceedings against him, several players whom he had defrauded were amongst his biggest supporters. Moreover, prior to Eagleson's involvement, Canadian professionals had never participated in international hockey, an involvement that later grew into involvement in the World Hockey Championship, the World Cup of Hockey, and the Winter Olympic Games. Furthermore, his maximum salary as director of NHLPA was one-tenth of that of his successor, Bob Goodenow. Many of his most ardent supporters during and after his trial were famous and prominent clients who had benefited from his activities, including high profile hockey personalities such as Bobby Clarke and Marcel Dionne.
[edit] Notes
^ 67: The Maple Leafs, Their Sensational Victory, and the End of an Empire, p. 143, Damien Cox and Gord Stellick, ISBN number: 0-470-83400-5, Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
^ 67: The Maple Leafs, Their Sensational Victory, and the End of an Empire, p. 148, Damien Cox and Gord Stellick, ISBN number: 0-470-83400-5, Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
^ 67: The Maple Leafs, Their Sensational Victory, and the End of an Empire, p. 151, Damien Cox and Gord Stellick, ISBN number: 0-470-83400-5, Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
References
The New York Times N.H.L.; Eagleson Pleads Guilty January 7, 1998
The New York Times PLUS: SPORTS BUSINESS; Eagleson Is Out Of Canadian Hall February 18, 1998
Lawrence Eagle-Tribune Embattled hockey czar quits Hall of Fame March 26, 1998
Further reading
Net Worth, by David Cruise and Alison Griffiths.
Game Misconduct: Alan Eagleson and the Corruption of Hockey, by Russ Conway.
Eagleson: The Fall of a Hockey Czar, by William Houston and David Shoalts.
67: The Maple Leafs, their Sensational Victory, and the End of an Empire, by Damien Cox and Gord Stellick, John Wiley and Sons publishers.
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When you have no transparency and no legal and/or ethical accountability imposed upon a public and/or private official who has the power to withdraw and deposit money out of, and into, a public or private pension fund, this is the recipe for a disaster waiting to happen -- and, indeed, one that probably has happened many, many times, over many, many years, in many different pension funds. Because as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, inevitably more money will be taken out of the fund than will be put back into it -- unless its on the backs of the people who keep putting more and more money into this pension fund. Why? Because there is no serious policing being done -- until a Class Action Lawsuit is initiated -- to let individual pension fund holders know how much money is in their pension accounts, whether it is really there or not, and how much, if any, goes missing...
In the past -- say the 70s, 80s, 90s -- the 'problem' if you want to call it that was 'huge pension surpluses' in which Canadians to this day have no real idea of how much money disappeared from these government accounts. Reports in the newspapers in the 90s if i remember correctly pointed to at least 'millions of dollars' gone missing without anyone in government being accountable for this missing money. 'I don't know what happened to it' is the government statement I remember hearing at the time.
Then there was the RCMP pension fund scandal. I don't know what happened in that case -- and/or whether it is still going.
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Commons committee shocked by details of RCMP pension plan allegations
Kathryn May, CanWest News Service; Ottawa Citizen
Published: Thursday, March 29, 2007
OTTAWA - Five RCMP officers and a whistleblower who lost her job accused the force's senior management, led by former RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli, of corruption, coverup, cronyism and deliberately derailing an investigation into the misappropriation of funds from the Mounties pension plan.
MPs on the Commons public accounts committee sat stunned as witnesses played a recording of telephone calls and described investigations that were delayed, meddled into and eventually stopped as allegations got too close to the force's own senior management. They heard allegations of executives using their power to override rules to tap into the pension fund, delays, obstruction, investigators who were punished, whistleblowers sidelined, evidence buried and wrongdoers rewarded with fraudulent payouts.
"Let me say how shocked I am to hear the statements by senior members of the RCMP who have come forward and condemned their own organization for corruption, fraud, mismanagement, incompetence and the list goes on," said Conservative MP John Williams.
Fraser MacAuley appears at the Public accounts committee meeting regarding the Chapter 9, Pension and Insurance Administration - Royal Canadian Mounted Police of the November 2006 Report of the Auditor General of Canada.
Ottawa Citizen
The hearing emerged out of an auditor general report, released last November, that concluded the administration of the pension fund was wracked with spending abuses, nepotism and money was improperly diverted from the find to pay for costs that should have been covered by the force's budget.
"This is an icon of Canadian culture, a beacon around the world and there looks to be something seriously wrong at the core of the organization that shocks me, I'm sure shocks Parliament and if we don't get to the bottom of this, we have to be part of the process that does," Williams said.
Five Mounties were called as witnesses following disturbing allegations that management wanted to derail investigations that could throw a spotlight on mishandling pension and insurance funds. Opposition on the committee led the charge for Wednesday's hearings, which was strongly opposed by Conservative MPs who argued the committee shouldn't be sticking its nose into a closed criminal investigation.
All committee members, however, agreed the allegations raiseworrisome questions about the integrity of the national force's senior ranks.
Several alleged anyone who stuck their neck out with complaints or raised concerns about abuseswas quietly shuffled aside or moved. Denise Revine, the original whistleblowerwho first stumbled on irregularities in the pension plan's books, took her concerns to her boss, Chief Supt. Fraser Macaulay. Revine lost her job, and Macaulay was reassigned to National Defence.
"I came out from working the streets and... people look into headquarters for us to be pillars and protectors of their issues and that is the stuff that hurt, when we realized the people who were answering the calls in the middle of the nights weren't getting the defence here they needed," Macaulay said.
The affair has caused a rift within RCMP ranks, with some officers lobbying MPs behind thescenes for months to step in and ensure such an alleged foul-up doesn't happen again. They alleged the investigation was dogged by deliberate foot-dragging and obstruction at the most senior levels -including Zaccardelli. They argue the case is a textbook example of why the RCMP's top brass shouldn't investigate themselves and need an outside body to handle investigations into complaints of wrongdoing against senior management.
"It is painfully clear the RCMP could have nipped this in the bud back in 2001, however, management override of our processes had led us to your door and has tarnished the reputation of the RCMP," said retired Staff-Sgt. Ron Lewis, who initiated several of the complaints.
Deputy Commissioner of Human Resources Barbara George resigned from her position Wednesday. As well, it appeared likely that the committee will likely call Zaccardelli to testify, and may also call for a judicial inquiry to probe the allegations that emerged Wednesday.
Lewis made several allegations, saying "a culture was created by several senior executives where it became very dangerous for employees to report wrongdoings. The risk to their career and financial well-being was high. On the other hand, wrongdoers were protected by these senior executives and supported by commissioner Zaccardelli.
This culture exists to this day since some of these senior executives are still in place. I wish to emphasize, the RCMP is not rotten to the core. The rot exists only within a small group of senior executives. Some are gone, while some remain. The good employees are still suffering emotionally, financially and career-wise, while the wrongdoers are back on the job reaping benefits."
The complaints about the mismanagement of the pension fund go back to May 2003, when the RCMP first launched its own investigations. Zaccardelli cancelled that investigation a couple days later and an internal audit. The internal audit led to the Ottawa police investigation and the resignations of the chief human resource officer and a director of the National Compensation Policy Centre.
Fraser and her audit team picked up the case on the heels of an internal audit and the 15-month Ottawa police investigation, which uncovered spending abuses, nepotism, waste, inflated bills and management overriding controls in the running of the force's pension and insurance plans. Her report questioned the independence of the Ottawa police investigation, which was stacked with RCMP officers and led by an investigator who reported to an assistant RCMP commissioner. Charges weren't laid because Crown attorneys concluded in June 2005 there was no "reasonable prospect of conviction."
Several Mounties were targeted for internal discipline, but the force had to abandon that course because the one-year time limit for action had lapsed.
Her audit found sweeping management abuses when the RCMP's human resources branch tried to modernize the $12.3-billion pension plan and turn over the administration of the $30-million insurance fund to a private contractor. She found the RCMP responded "adequately" to findings of the audit and criminal investigation, but concluded the Mounties needed a new policy for external investigation into allegations involving the force to ensure they are independent and unbiased.
Ottawa Citizen
© CanWest News Service 2007
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As easy it is for all of us to point fingers this way or that way relative to this financial disaster or that one, in the end, we are all responsible for being more aware of what is going on around us, and if necessary, doing something about it either privately and/or publicly.
This is well stated in the article below...
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Kelly McParland: Us fools and our money are soon parted
Posted: December 27, 2008, 1:45 PM by Kelly McParland
Full Comment, Kelly McParland
Like almost everyone else who had any money in any kind of investment this year, I'm down a lot. I can't tell you how much, because I haven't looked at a statement in months. It does no good to know how much poorer you are -- it's too late to change the situation, and the knowledge just adds to the gloom of a gloomy time of year.
While I share the general condition, unlike most people I read about in the papers, I don't blame it on anyone else. Maybe I should; maybe I'm just out of step, which wouldn't be the first time. The papers for most of the past two months have been one general exercise in fault-finding: The investment industry for being stupid, greedy and careless about the fact it wasn't their money they were risking. Regulators for failing to regulate a damn thing. Governments for paying little or no attention to the signs that a crisis was building, and for being clueless about how to deal with it when it broke. Everyone who should have known, for either not knowing, or not sharing their knowledge. And somebody -- exactly who isn't clear -- for not warning us. The fact that it's always someone else's fault has become a given of our culture. The airline industry has been told it has to provide two seats to overweight passengers, because it's not their fault that they're fat. An Ottawa cop is demanding his job back after stealing crack cocaine; his lawyer says it's "the duty of a police force to accommodate officers who suffer from the 'disability of drug addiction.'" The entire basis of the divorce industry rests on the assumption that neither party can ever be blamed, no matter how egregious their actions (though one party still generally suffers far more than the other).
So it's natural that people who hand over their money for investing purposes would presume they're transferring responsibility at the same time. You give your money to an "investment advisor" who is supposed to be an expert, and you naturally assume expertise -- and the money you are paying them -- confers a degree of security in the handling of your savings.
It doesn't. The advisor is expected to do the best they can, but it's your money and the final decisions are yours. If you're sloppy about them, too bad. What's always amazing is how many people make little or no effort to figure out where their money is going or what the risks are, or put minimal time into understanding their finances. Elsewhere on this site Robert Fulford writes about Stephen Greenspan, an author and psychologist who wrote a book on "Why We Get Duped and How to Avoid It" -- and then lost his money by putting it into funds managed by Bernard Madoff, the epic swindler. To salvage a bit of his credibility, Greenspan issued an explanation, relating that he was visiting his sister and met someone who was putting money into Madoff funds; he trusted the guy and discovered others had made good money out of the funds, so he dumped his cash in as well, even after another knowledgeable friend warned him against it. A fool and his money, as they say. But Greenspan is more the rule than the exception. People act like fools with their money -- they treat it as an infinite resource, take minimal actions to protect it, then get upset when it's gone. That's a disaster in waiting in a society like ours, where endless consumption is not only a right but a duty, and in which most vehicles for safe, sensible saving have either been eliminated or taxed to the point of pointlessness. You can't get a decent pension any more unless you work for the government in one form or another, so anyone trying to build a nest egg has little choice but to take a risk on the markets. So few of them know what they're doing, and are willing to blindly put their faith in others, that calamity is pretty much inevitable at some point in the cycle.
The truth is that there were lots of warnings of what was to come. Markets collapse on a regular basis -- there was a collapse after 9/11; a collapse when the tech bubble burst in 2000; a long downturn in the early 1990s; a collapse in 1987; another one in 1973-74. It's untrue that there was not enough warning of this one -- there were lots of signs, and lots of people pointing to them, although few foresaw the extent of the disaster. The real problem is that people with little knowledge are pressed by circumstances into entering a game they are ill suited for. The solution would be for governments to remove the penalties from safer alternatives. If people had greater leeway to invest in low-risk products without having the gains taxed away, there would be less pressure to take a gamble on higher-risk adventures. Some small moves have been made in this direction with the government's new tax-free savings accounts, but the accounts are still very limited in the amounts they can contain. It's not enough. Eventually the markets will recover and people will jump back in, without checking how deep the water is or what lies beneath the surface.
National Post
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In the end, you can read as much Adam Smith and/or Ayn Rand as you want to, but Capitalism -- particularly unregulated Capitalism -- does not wear a halo around its head. 'Self-interest' -- of the 'unbridled' type -- can be a big problem.
It is worth reading Marx's and Fromm's criticisms of Capitalism. I like some of Marx's early work on humanism and alienation. I like all of Fromm's work that I have read.
But when Marx started/starts to talk about 'armed worker rebellion' -- I quickly leave Marx -- that is certainly not what DGBN Philosophy is about. In contrast, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao tse Tung didn't leave Marx when it came to talk about 'armed rebellion' and 'violence' -- and you can see where it took them. We will talk about each and everyone of these famous/infamous persons at a different time.
DGBN Philosophy is always looking for that 'homeostatic, dialectic-democratic balance somewhere in the middle' that is most likely to create the greatest union and harmony between people of different philosophical viewpoints. Where both -- or all -- polar philosophical viewpoints have their partial influence on the final integrative philosophical and/or political product and process.
And DGBN Philosophy does not like to be 'duped'.
'Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.'
-- DGBN, January 18th, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...are still in process...
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