Sounds familiar. I asked for an alternative to tax records when determining who would be affected by tax changes because Tim didn't think CRA's books were good enough. He still hasn't provided that alternative.
I don't want to change the subject of this thread and you know I agree with you on the climate issue, but with due respect, have you ever tried to get an explanation out of the CRA how they determine their assessments? With due respect the CRA is a nightmare. They have an open ended warrant to do whatever they want to you or I and they do. Why you would trust them or any government bureaucracy I do not know but its naïve.
I have dealt as a lawyer with numerous errors and mistakes by government bureaucrats. The extent of their waste and incompetence is not to be under-stated and I think Tim G's point is that and its not a right or left wing issue. Distrust or suspicion of the size of government and its functions is a non partisan issue and will always exist if for no other reason, the inherent nature of any institution that gets too big and is not accountable and gets too complex to understand or be able to talk to sparks this distrust and so it should. Unaccountable power corrupts.
Now relating that to Trump and the US crisis, the US has always had a "crisis". All societies do and we will always have them. They don't suddenly appear. They are continuations of unresolved past issues that morph into new ones. If we properly examine their historical context we can get a more accurate understanding where these issues arose from and therefore how to resolve them.
Sor for example, the election of Trump was a response to Obama. The pendelum swung from one direction for Obama, to the other direction for Trump and that pendelum will continue to swing back and forth no different than market corrections on the stock market or say with medical issues where we take a drug to deal with one issue but then create another from the side effect.
Of course the US has a collective distrust of authority. It started with its founders rebelling against King George. That lack of trust over government and taxes has never ended. Its an inherent feature of its identity and we Canadians don't get that because our country was founded on welcoming and being loyal to the same King.
People like Trump exploit fear of authoritty and other fears. They mirror the collective fears of the day to get themselves empowered and elected. The thing is that is not hard to do. People like Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, showed its not that hard to do. You don't need any intelligence, just brutal force and hatred.
Leaders like say Ghandi, MLK, RFK, die, precisely because their messages are threatening to people who can't deal with possibilities and instead need to dwell in the here and now material world of immediate needs.
Spirtual messages from politicians is not a part of Western traditiional politics-appealing to material (anti-spiritual) values like jobs, wealth, lack of taxesr is.
Spiritual messages don't get you elected. Appealing to you being over taxed or not having a job does. People want immediate needs addressed.A guy like Trump knows he can't address those needs so he distracts his followers by delivering them here and now attacks against perceived enemies.
It provides the illusion Trump is in control when he's not, and simply serves as a smoke screen... a distraction.... a circus act....a cover to deflect attention away from the actual networks of power who do their thing without any attention brought to them by the media.
Trump is just a puppet bafoon on a string like most politicians. The problem is when people like Putin and Trump go off script and become a liability to their handlers is hard to read.
You would think by now Trump had burned any support for himself but he seems to chug along just fine. He's a Teflon man. Then again there was a Teflon Don in New York City and he eventually got it.
All these puppets go down sooner or later. Obama seems to have played it shrewdly. and survived....but was that him who did it or was it the powers that be allowing it. ....who knows. I don't get too conspiratorial about who is behind the scenes pulling the strings so whether you want to call it the Zionist Mason Illuminati Satan worshippings hape shifting Lizard cannibal eater cabal, or anything else, be my guest...but come on... does anyone really think Trump could do what he does if it was not enabled? Think about it. Sure there is chaos, corruption, sheer mismanagement, wh ich I believe is inherent in all institutions......but someone in that mess is manipulating it as well. Some if its planned, some of it totally accidental and therein lies the problem, trying to decipher the difference between intelligently planned policies or organized interest grous or sheer chaos and greedy people simply exploiting that chaos in any given moment is hard to decipher and differentiate because its all inter-linked.
Do we have a war with China? Well people said there was gong to be one with Russia and North Korea but Trump's head I s for far up both Kim's and Putin's buttockses that is hard to see happening. If he were to pull his head out at this point Putin would seriously hemmorage.
So China? Please. You think China and the US can afford to have a military war or need one? Come on. All China or anyone has to do is detonate a now radiation bomb in the skies over their enemy and it will shut down the energy and internet grid. Why shoot a missile to cripple a nation when a cybr attack can do that without immediate blood?
Nuclear weapons my ass. An idiot shows every day all you need is a virus in a tube, an assault rifle, a dirty bomb, to cause mass havoc.
Conventional war has gone the way of the do do bird. Today's wars are about contained war zones with non uniformed abstract terrorist enemies being supposedly attacked. China, Russia, the US, we all pick and choose one of the pit-bills in the ring and cheer it on.