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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1999-05-19, Page 5Arthur Black Jocks in office Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the general public Methinks the old three-ring huckster P.T. Barnum, was bang on the money when he made the above observation. Of course, Mr. B. lived in a less sophisticated era, when credulous rubes would pay good money to see obvious frauds like The Piltdown Man, Genuine Mermaids and other assorted circus geeks. More gullible times, right? Don’t kid yourself. We may be more scientifically advanced than the naive yokels who made P.T. Bamum rich, but our brain pans are still the same size. After all, we elect sports stars to public. office, don't we? Sure. We took Red Kelly (a man who’s main accomplishment was standing at a blue line and knocking down anybody wearing the wrong colour hockey sweater) and sent him to Ottawa as a Member of Parliament. We even made a cabinet minister out of Otto Jelinek, a man who skated like an angel and thought like Attila the Hun. And we’re still doing it. Earlier this year, our Prime Minister exhumed the Big M — Frank Mahovlich - and summoned him to International Scene■ I Poverty A reoccurring theme is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. That is true in Canada, the States and in Europe. Following that statement, are demands that something should be done about it; poverty, it is argued, should be abolished. I have been challenged by one of my readers to suggest how I would go about doing this and I must admit he is handing me a tough assignment. Whole books have been written on the subject and I have to cram my ideas into one short article. First of all, poverty is something of a generic word and it means different things to different people and in different countries. The first task, therefore, is to determine what it is that you are actually planning to abolish. Two people earning the same amount of money, and whose income is deemed to be below an arbitrary poverty level, may be experiencing two different lifestyles. The first may be debt free and able to live quite adequately; the second may be up to his or her proverbial eyeballs in debt and unable to do anything more but exist. Poverty is frequently associated with unemployment. Some people not only do not have basic work skills; they literally do not know how to apply for a job or even to hold \ \ Ottawa. Mind you, we may be getting a little smarter — Chretien stuck the Big M in the Senate, where he can’t do too much damage. The Americans suffer from the same disease, but naturally, they do it on a grander scale. Last year, they handed over the keys to the Governor’s Mansion in Minnesota - to an ex-WWF wrestler. Yep, Jesse “The Body” Ventura is now governor of that state. This is a man who shaves his skull, packs a handgun, used to wear feather boas in the ring and thinks college athletes shouldn’t have to attend classes so that they could concentrate on their cross-checks and body slams. And how do Minnesotans feel about it? Well, it’s early days and Ventura hasn’t had time to screw up really bad. Besides, he’s still pretty popular as a novelty. But there’s one Minnesotan who’s not too pleased: Mister Garrison Keillor - the “unofficial” governor of Minnesota. Keillor is a humourist and the host of a U.S. radio phenomenon called A Prairie Home Companion - a profoundly corny weekly radio show that tickles the funnybones of more than 2 million radio listeners each week. Keillor writes the show and the humour he produces is gentle and touching - except when he refers to Minnesota’s new governor. “A great, big, honking, bullet-headed, By Raymond Canon one. Short of throwing a lot of money their way, they have little if any chance of getting out of the poverty trap. Other people not only insist on making the same mistakes over again but they seem to pass them on to their children so that some families have been living in poverty for generations. There is no doubt that the tax system can be used to improve the situation. While throwing large sums of money at poverty has been shown not to work by itself, there is no doubt that a better use of public finances can reduce the poverty level. I am surprised at what low level of income the tax system kicks in and while it does not take a lot of tax, any tax is too much. So, first of all. we have to start with a change in the curent tax system. In this respect a look at what is usually called a negative income tax might be in order at this point. Secondly, all over the western world young people and those with low-education levels are the most likely to be in the poverty trap and much more can be done to bring education levels up in those groups. In this respect, a lot of interest from abroad has been shown in Ontario’s recent move to get young single mothers back into the school system. That is certainly a step in the right direction. Britain and several states south of the border are trying similar programs and it will be nice shovel-faced mutha who talks in a steroid growl,” is one of Keillor’s more charitable assessments. Keillor has also suggested that Minnesota’s leader “has the IQ of a salad bar” and that if Governor Ventura “ was any dumber, we’d have to water him.” Ventura is smart enough to know that in a battle of wits, he’d be defenceless, so he’s retailiated in a more sinister way. He’s threatened to withhold state funds from Minnesota Public Radio. He’s also intimated that he’ll encourage the IRS to peek at Keillor’s income tax returns. Keillor’s a pretty funny-looking guy himself - well over six feet tall, given to wearing geeky coke bottle horn rims, white suits, and flame-red socks. But he’s not goofing around in his antipathy to the Governor. “The governor has said that he owns Jet Skis and loves to get out on them on a quiet Sunday afternoon and ride the hell out of them,” says Keillor. “I’m the person sitting on the porch of a cabin on the shore, quietly wishing the person making that infernal buzzing noise would hit a dock and break a leg.” Jet Skis, huh? That’s good enough for me. I’m rooting for Keillor on this one, but I want to be fair about it, so I’ll throw some support the governor’s way too. In fact, I’ll bless him with that great old show biz benediction: Break a leg, Jesse. to compare notes in a few years as to their relative success. The really hard part is to educate people to rid themselves of the mechanisms that are either putting them into the poverty trap or else preventing them climbing out of it. Being poor is as much a poor state of mind as a lack of finances. One frequently goes hand in hand with the other. While poverty stricken people can be victims of a certain set of circumstances, I cannot go along with people who argue this is the main cause; teaching people that they must take on the responsibility to improve their lot in life needs to be emphasized more than it has been. But, as I said at the beginning of the above paragraph, this is the really hard part and will never be completely overcome. For this reason the best we can do is reduce the level of poverty, not eradicate it. Sensational newspaper stories about one person’s or one family’s descent into poverty are not much help. They remind us of the plight but they all too often do not zero in on the causes. It is too simplistic to blame government stinginess or the like. A Final Thought There are no gains without pains. Benjamin Franklin THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, MAY 19, 1999. PAGE 5. The Short of it By Bonnie Gropp Calling for back up You know you're getting old when... It was just one of those conversations, no particular reason for the mind to meander the direction it did. My daughter, noting our pup’s growth spurt, remarked that it hadn’t been that long ago you could hold her in the palm of your hand. I countered that it hadn’t been that long ago when I could hold my daughter almost in the palm of my hand. Her rejoinder was that it took her longer to get this big, to which I responded Ani doesn’t have as long. “Yet,” I said, “if she lives to Buffy’s (her predecessor) age, Dad will be a senior citizen.” Yikes! I often have the same reaction to age as I do to heights; looking from whence I came doesn’t bother me, it’s realizing how close I’m getting to the heavens. Therefore thinking about the life I’ve had, things that have happened, never makes me feel older. That is until the other day. During a discussion at work, where the water cooler would be if we had one, I happened to have an opportunity to show off my long-term memory. I can’t help bragging about it. I occasionally even surprise myself with some of the significant and inconsequential things I recall. Don’t ask me what happened yesterday, but the birthday of an elementary school mate is no pain to name. Don’t ask me the name of the person I just spoke with on the phone, but I can recite those of the children of an old family friend without a moment’s hesitation, despite the fact I’ve never even seen them. And speaking of phones, I told my colleagues, I remember most of the numbers belonging to the people I called before dial came to town Ours was 939, my best friend’s was 570W, my dad’s shop was 356, and Aunt Peggy’s was 460, I recited before suddenly noting the looks of bemusement on my listeners’ faces. “What are you talking about?” I reminded them what it was like before dial phones, how we used to speak directly to an operator, gave her the number, for which she politely thanked us, then put us through. Unfortunately none of them knew what I meant. Now, I didn’t exactly live in the boonies. My hometown was about four times the size of Brussels or Blyth and is within an hour’s drive from the city. Thus, their united conviction that what I was describing was not in their experience, had me wondering if senility had hit — me, not them. I am not that much older than the co­ workers involved but I certainly began to feel it. My memories of an archaic phone system, lessened in no way by one of the women noting her mother recalled this method of communication when she was a girl some 20 years before me, indeed had me doubting. I might have said I was being Twilight Zone-d, but I didn’t want to date myself any further. I know I’m getting older, but confident in a memory that’s never let me down I’m holding firm that sometime after 1954 there were still phones without a dial tone. I would, though, love to hear from anyone who can back me up.