whatever the pros or cons of the thing, "the wall is a waste of money" is a dumb argument, and you sound stupid making it.

you will get a bigger multiplier effect by building a wall than you will by increasing the foreign aid budget. if you're concerned strictly about the economy, a wall is a better idea.

see, you can't win a humanistic debate by appeals to fiscal conservatism, which is usually wrong in the best of situations.

i really want to hear people that are opposing the wall to stop talking about how it's a waste of money - because anybody halfways literate in economics knows that this is the kind of thing where the economic benefits increase exponentially with the amount that is spent. it would be anything but a waste of money. even if it doesn't keep a single person out, it would still be worth it in spin-off jobs. this "the wall is a waste of money" spiel is just making people sound like complete economic illiterates.

what would be better than building a wall would be digging a ditch, and filling it back in, and then building a wall over it, and then tearing it down, and then building it again. think about the revenue. brilliant. and, the taller, the better.

so, i don't want to hear this - it's deflating. i'm not a conservative, and i'm not going to support a policy rooted in the premise of fiscal conservatism, and the rejection of keynesian infrastructure spending. it's a backwards argument.

what i'd like to hear somebody say is that they're going to build the wall because it's good for the economy and address the actual issues surrounding unwanted migration - because i both support keynesian infrastructure spending, and i want to get to the root causes of the issue.

don't tell me to support a conservative backlash, and then temper it with some lip service to tepid humanitarianism. i'm not going to bite into that. give me a humanistic solution to a humanistic debate, and then approach the economics of the wall from the right side of the spectrum - and concede it's a solid job creation strategy.

ok.

so, sdi - star wars, whatever - is something that i am unambiguously, unapologetically opposed to. i can fight this one straight on.

but, is nancy pelosi opposed to it?

i just can't align can i? because i'm disenfranchised, and i've been aware of it for a long time. maybe, in some sense, what i'm trying to get across is the depth of it, in the hopes that somebody takes note - because i maintain that i'm not all that obscure, over all...that i'm representative of an increasingly ignored swing demographic that is getting badly squeezed out of the discourse.

so, yes - i am willing to aggressively attack sdi. but, are the democrats?

so, i'm going to get back to organizing that email.

what it says is "press 4 for transcripts".

but, then you press 4 and it says "that option is invalid".

it wasn't invalid last month....

i've got lots of time, still.

the phone system is still not set up.

and, you know what?

i'll call them on monday.

the argument that these people want to use - and have had some success with - is that opening up market access will improve access to resources, which is essentially an article of faith in the market - it has no empirical support, whatsoever. it's really so ridiculous on it's face, that you have to treat it as disingenuous.

the one province that has seen a "liberalizing" in market health care is quebec, and delivery has collapsed since it happened. if the argument was that it would reduce wait times, that has proven to be a horrible failure - wait times have shot through the roof.

well, wait times for the rich have decreased. but, wait times for everybody else have increased exponentially. see, and this is the truth that everybody knows, and that the advocates of a two-tier system are really pushing for - that allowing for private care directs resources away from the general population in favour of luxury access for the rich. you end up with healthcare on demand if you can pay for it, and are stuck waiting so long that you'll die first if you can't.

to an extent, i'd like to see theses issues clarified by the supreme court, who has been kind of vague about it. the right case could allow the court to explicitly declare a right to health care, which is what we really need to abolish this perennial threat of privatization. but, the system has walked this kind of fine line that has prevented it from explicitly doing so, although it's come close.

the continuity on the court is that it has consistently wanted to order the legislature to increase spending, but it can't do that. so, it has come up with these convoluted rulings that have often been badly applied. if you force the court to act on a s.7, in a situation where a poor person can't get access to something offered in a private clinic, you could get as close to a positive right to health care as we have to abortion. that case hasn't happened yet.

doug ford is a level of corrupt that is unusual in canada, and unheard of ontario. we're normally able to sniff this kind of thing out. but, he has demonstrated the unusual quality of being able to sweep immigrant communities, and has essentially played into their naivete. one would think that if they wanted private health care they would have opted for the united states - that the social systems in canada were a draw. and, you'll excuse me for being a little pissed off at the premise of foreigners moving here and dismantling the health care system.

these are things we haven't seen before, and we've got a problem on our hands.

but, his challenges may, in the end, make the system stronger - if we react appropriately.

gordon campbell is a pariah in bc, and a national embarrassment.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2018/09/26/fears-grow-of-more-private-health-care-under-doug-ford.html

we're going to have to drag him through court.

and i wouldn't take support from the trudeau government for granted, either.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2019/01/14/ford-flirts-with-private-health-care-at-his-peril.html

the regulatory health bodies in ontario need more funding to meet their targets, not to abandon the targets to increase profits under some kind of transparent excuse about "taxpayer money".

so, if a regulatory body fails in meeting it's targets, the solution is to abandon the targets.

the ford government does not care about health care, it cares about profits for health care providers - and this is a step towards a privatization process that will lead to worse results across the spectrum.

nobody in ontario voted for private health care. but, they don't care. they never did.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/lhin-ontario-doug-ford-local-health-integration-networks-1.4980509

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Neighbor_policy

the activist left should be figuring out a way to get these people to stay where they are and organize for local change, not come to america to work slave labour under the table, undercutting organized labour.

and i don't mean that abstractly. american unions should have people on the ground, helping them organize their own society.

they say there's no opportunities; what that means is that they don't have access to education.

a wall is a bandaid, but in the face of this kind of population movement, some kind of barrier is necessary. when people talk about open borders, they mean a two way exchange of goods and people - not a one-way movement of slave labour. if you don't try and reverse this, the inevitable long term consequence is that you end up with this bizarre kind of voluntary slave economy in the united states, and increasingly in canada, too, that is going to decrease everybody's quality of living, for the benefit of a small elite at the top.

it's obvious that american policy in the region is largely to blame for this, but nobody wants to talk about a good neighbour policy - the republicans just want to double down, and the democrats just want the slaves.

the labour movement needs to get people on the ground. yes - it's dangerous. but the consequences of ignoring this, one way or the other, are going to be severe.

this is how empires fall.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/16/migrant-caravan-honduras-march-trump-wall