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The Citizen, 1991-08-28, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28,1991. PAGE 5. Cows take the blame for pollution Old MacDonald had a farm EEyiii Eeeeyiii Ooooooooo I always used to envy old Macdonald and his perfect farm. There I'd be, trapped in some sweatshop of an office downtown, telephones ringing, editors ranting, doors slamming, tyepwriters yammering like Gatling guns ... and I would imagine Old MacDonald, a shaft of wheat between his two front teeth, standing on his front porch and hitching at his overall straps as he surveyed his agrarian Kingdom. Wiz/i a moo moo here and a moo moo there, Here a moo, there a moo ... Cows were what made me really envy Old MacDonald. Chickens were okay. Sheep and goats weren’t bad. I could even stand pigs if the wind was right, but cows — ahhhh, cows. What more could a man ask from life than the task of looking after a herd of cows? Milk 'em again as the sun settles down for the night. It's a rhythm as old as the tides and as peaceful and non-violent as life gets on Tax revolts nothing new BY RAYMOND CANON I was rather intrigued by the decision of the town of Ridgetown to stage their version of a one-day tax revolt. They did so by declaring the town to be an independent nation for one day and doing away with both the Provincial Sales Tax and the hated General Sales Tax; according to all reports the town did as much if not more than on any one day during the Christmas shopping period. Not surprisingly there have been imitators with the first off the mark, at least to my knowledge, being the village of Sparta, southwest of St. Thomas. The Spartans have decided to go one better; they plan to continue the no-tax period for an indefinite period. Whether they change their mind or not is problematical since they will likely follow the Ridgetown example and pay the required taxes out of revenue. Tax revolts are not a new thing. They have taken place in a number of nations with one of the most recent and certainly most famous being in the Slate of California. The Californians, who have a penchant for doing things somewhat differently than anybody else, voted to put a cap on the amount of taxes that could be generated in certain fields and then sat back to enjoy their new-found power. The enjoyment proved to be somewhat ephemeral in that the same voters conveniently forgot one thing. While there may be many claims of waste in government, when push comes to shove, it turns out that there are few places where you can cut taxc or even put a cap on them without one segment of the economy suffering. The Californians are now coming .o grips with the fact that you cannot have governments providing all the services that are demanded of them without the necessary tax money. When a great doal of money is his planet. Yep, Old MacDonald sure had it soft. Or so I thought. Truth is, times have changed for Old MacDonald and his herd of Jerseys. For one thing, it’s hard to find a Jersey cow anymore. Most farmers -- sorry, most "milk producers" raise Holsteins now. The milk's not as tasty but there's more of it, and when she’s finally milked out, the Holstein gives you more meal than the Jersey. Mind you, the meat department of Old MacDonald's operation has changed too. Trendy consumers are turning up their noses at 'red meat’ now -- too high in fat and cholesterol. They’re opting for turkey, halibut and other biological exotica that never spent a day in Old MacDonald's barnyard. Then there's the Rainforest Syndrome. Somehow, poor old Bossy has been fingered as the culprit responsible for the disappearing Amozonian rainforest. The argument (and a tortured one it is) goes that greedy Brazilians cut down the rainforest to create pastureland to graze cattle to turn into hamburger patties to sell to greedy North American customers lined up in front of that other, more modem Macdonalds — the one with the Golden Eyebrows. Beats me how the hapless cow turns out to be the bad guy in that equation. Seems to me she's the fall girl, if anything. Some environmentalists are claiming that bovine ecological irresponsibility extends required for social welfare programs and the cost of these programs is increasing more rapidly than revenues, something has to give. While we may be complaining and even revolting a la Ridgetown and Sparta, the fact remains that our tax levels are more realistic than those in the United States when it comes to paying for what we expect from our governments. It would be my guess that at least half of the States in the U.S. are in serious financial shape and have no hope of providing the services that citizens want without raising taxes. Furthermore the federal government in Washington is also looking at large deficits and this without even providing the same level of social welfare programs that we in Canada take for granted. I would, therefore, hazard a guess that in the next few years the tax levels in the U.S. are going to have to come far closer to most that we have in Canada. Cheap shopping in the Slates may be on its way out as soon as the Americans realize that they have a serious financial problem on their hands. In this respect I am intrigued by the recent statement made by David Stockman, who was the director of the budget under Writers say theatre seats cramp their pleasure THE EDITOR, On Saturday afternoon and evening (Aug. 17) four of us had the agonizing experience of sitting in the made-over seals at the Blyth Memorial Hall. The seats have been put closer together and the space between the rows has been reduced. The seats are now a torture to sit in, and my husband and I have decided that we beyond the mere planet. According to these alarmists, Old MacDonald's cows — those, sweet-natured, wouldn't-harm-a-fly, cud­ chewing, tail-twitching cows — are in fact tooting out enough methane gas to punch huge ragged holes in the earth's precious ozone layer. And to add insult to injury, cows face yet another attack from a wholly unexpected quarter. Would you believe Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? There's a booklet put out by Random House called ABC's for a Better Planet in which those psychotic terrapins Michaelangelo, Raphael et al., dispense environmental advice to kiddies. They tell the kids, among other things, that our cattle are injected with cancer-causing hormones and that they eat grain that could be fed to starving people. Bizarre news indeed from a quartet of chemically imbalanced mutants who gorge exclusively on pizza. Not surprisingly, Old MacDonald's descendants, which is to say the cattle producers of Canada, are a little upset over the anti-beef propaganda from the Heroes on the Half Shell. I think they're taking the whole thing too seriously. I recommend the cattlemen adopt another cartoon character and his philosophy on life. I refer of course to Bart Simpson and his Immortal maxim. "Don't have a cow, man!" President Carter. It was, said Mr. Stockman, a race between the United States and the Soviet Union to see who could go bankrupt first and the Russians won by a nose. Now that Moscow is no longer the threat that it was, Washington can concentrate on putting its financial house in order. The Germans are finding that the cost of reunification is astoundingly high and the screams dipped in umlauts that you may soon hear are German taxpayers who have been given the bad tax news. Already you may be surprised to learn that they pay a 14 per cent VAT tax which is their equivalent of the General Sales Tax. 14 percent by the way, is average in Europe. The Germans, the Americans, obviously the Canadians and taxpayers just about anywhere have difficulty keeping one important fact in mind. It is one thing to cut taxes; it is quite another thing to accept the fact that there have to be cuts in services somewhere along the line. To cite one important example, countries all over the western world are trying to cope with increased health costs al the same time that taxpayers are demanding lower taxes, Far too often emotion lakes over when logic should be the key element. will not return to the theatre festival until we know for sure that the seats have been readjusted so that normal sized adults can fit in them. It is really a tragedy that the modem vice of greed should result in an otherwise healthy enterprise losing its long-standing customers. D. B and F. A. Verschaeve Mississauga. Would we pay the price? By Keith Roulston It was wonderful last week to sec the happy ending to the coup attempt in the Soviet Union: to see the people lake to the streets to seize back the freedoms they had gained from the hardline plotters who would have imposed repression again. There will still be many tough limes ahead for Soviet citizens but I almost envied them last week as they celebrated their victory. They had a sense of purpose we lack in our country because we've never had to face real danger and hardship in a half- century. Hardship for most Canadians is having to pay 20 per cent more for a new stereo than you would in Port Huron. But these were people who knew what they had won. They had existed through repression, had suddenly lasted the sweetness of having the freedom to congregate in the streets, to criticize the government, to have a free press, and they refused to allow those gains to be lost. I wondered, watching those huge crowds, if Canadians would be willing to stand up and be counted to save freedom. Like the East Germans, the Hungarians, the Czechs, Poles and Rumanians before them, these people put their lives on the line for what they believed. They succeeded because so many people were willing to lake the risk that the army realized it couldn't kill everybody and backed down from the confrontation. If army troops and KGB officers had been as ruthless as the coup leaders, things might have ended differently. Remember the massacre of freedom demonstrators in Beijing? Despite the success of the fight for freedom, some people did die. It means tragedy for their individual families but those victims won a heady victory and probably saved the lives of many more people by being willing to stand in the front lines, battling to keep the tanks away from the Russian parliament buildings and the resistance leaders under Boris Yeltsin. Terror and repression have been used in the past to keep the Soviet people in check but this lime it didn't work. Freedom had gone loo far. Yeltsin and the leaders of most of the republics provided the kind of leadership that was needed to give the people hope. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets but would they have taken the chance if they didn't have leaders who gave them hope. Leadership is something that is missing in Canada today. There is so much cynicism that people don't trust the motives of any politician. Unlike the Soviet freedom fighters, we don't have a sense of what we want out of life. They want freedom and full store shelves. We've got both and can only wish for freedom from any responsibility at all, and cheaper prices for the things that are on our store shelves so we can buy more gadgets that we vainly hope will make us as happy as we think we should be. Materially, right now, the Soviets could envy our plenty. Spiritually, we could envy them their sense of purpose. Like the person who can never truly appreciate the taste of food because he has never gone hungry, Canadians (particularly those bom after World War II but also those with a short memory) can never really appreciate the freedom they have because they've never suffered a lack of freedom. They can never appreciate their good life because they have never done without. We lake it for granted there will always be food on the table so we don’t value the role of the food producers. We take it democracy for granted to the point we can just sit around and gripe about politicians. We feel no needed to get personally involved, the join a party or run for office. Frankly, we've got everything... but we don't know what we're missing.