Jim Poling Sr.'s Blog, page 46

Smoking Challenges China's Prosperity

   Industrial smog isn’t the only health hazard threatening the future of China. Tobacco smoke is killing an estimated one million Chinese every year and smoking related disease is straining the country’s health care system.   There are 365 million tobacco smokers in China consuming close to 40 per cent of the world’s cigarettes. The Global Adult Tobacco Survey has shown that 52.9 per cent of Chinese men and 2.4 per cent of the women smoke.    Getting so many millions of people to quit smoking is a gargantuan task. Compounding the task is a sad fact: Chinese governments, like Canadian governments, are addicted to tobacco revenue. Revenues from tobacco taxes and tobacco production account for fifteen per cent of the Chinese central government’s annual revenue, says the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The annual budgets of Chinese cities in agricultural areas are hugely dependent on tobacco revenue.   There are millions of tobacco growers in China and the state-owned China National Tobacco Corp. produces two of every five cigarettes produced worldwide. So millions of Chinese are dependent on tobacco money.   Reducing smoking to save lives and reduce health costs means flirting with economic disaster. That’s why Chinese tobacco policies have been so contradictory.   Anti-tobacco crusaders outside China have suggested replacing tobacco crops with food crops. The idea is that as tobacco crops dwindle, the state tobacco company will have to pay higher prices to alternative tobacco sources. Paying more for tobacco leaf will mean having to raise consumer tobacco prices. Higher retail prices are touted as a means of getting people to quit smoking.   Canada has tried that. And, Canada has a continuing contraband tobacco problem.   Canada also tried crop replacement in 2008, forcing a majority of tobacco farmers out of business. However, since then the Canadian tobacco growing business is growing again with production up 140 per cent by some estimates. Smoke Shack in SOntario - Ron Poling   Much of that new growth has been in southern Ontario where Grand River Enterprises on the Six Nations Reserve has developed into a major cigarette producer. It has a contract to supply 12 million pounds of tobacco to China.
   Higher taxes and more law enforcement are not the most effective ways to reduce smoking rates. The most effective tool in getting people to stop smoking is education. It’s a long and slow and difficult process but it works. 
   The good news from China is that the country is making a start in that direction.

The Starving Writer Story

   Except for a small literary elite, Canadian writers are starving. More Canadians are being published than ever before, but very few are earning enough to keep themselves fed. Dozens of first-time authors appear daily because of the relative ease and small expense of self-publishing, but few even recover their costs.    Publishers Weekly reports the number of self-published titles in the U.S. jumped from 133,036 in 2010 to 211,269 in 2011. There are no provable figures for Canada.   Traditional book publishers continue to struggle meanwhile, with authors suffering smaller advances, smaller royalties and smaller promotional efforts. For most writers it is impossible to earn even a basic living writing books.    One place where it is easier is Norway. In that country of five million people the Arts Council of Norway buys 1,000 copies of every new book published and distributes them to libraries. The authors receive royalties on those copies. More than one-half of the Norwegian population aged nine to 79 uses a public library and the Norwegian literacy rate is said to be about 100 per cent.    Also helpful: books are not subject to Value Added Taxes and there generally is no charge for anyone to attend a public university. Norway, like some other European countries also bans deep discounting of books.    In Canada, books are subject to taxes, deep discounting is rampant and the Supreme Court has allowed educators to photocopy books without compensating the authors.    Hundreds of thousands of words could be written on how a combination of neglect and bad policy is killing the Canadian writer.    However, one fact taken from 2011 Statistics Canada data clearly illustrates the problem: There now are 4.1 public relations professionals for every journalist in Canada. So, the number of people being paid to tell you what their companies want you to hear is rising against a declining number of people who try to get you the unvarnished facts.   More and more people who set out to be writers are becoming public relations professionals because being a journalist or an independent writer has become a hard way to keep food on the table.

The Missing Middle Ground

   It is an increasingly polarized world in which we live. The search for middle ground through intelligent debate has gone missing. One example:    Dick Metcalf, one of North America’s best known gun journalists, has been shunned and banished. He was fired from Guns and Ammo magazine where he was the back page columnist. His TV show on firearms was cancelled.   Metcalf became a pariah in the sporting arms community because he wrote a column last December titled Let’s Talk Limits. It raised the argument that some gun regulation is not an infringement of the U.S. Second Amendment granting the right to bear arms.    “The fact is all constitutional rights are regulated, always have been, and need to be,” he wrote.   Guns and Ammo fired him after hearing from readers and a gun industry that  will not tolerate discussion of gun regulation. Metcalf received death threats.   He isn’t the first gun journalist banished for trying to broaden the discussion on regulating guns. Jim Zumbo, one of the more famous names in sport shooting and hunting, was banished after he posted in 2007 an Outdoor Life blog saying that military style weapons are terrorist weapons best avoided by hunters.    The Canadian gun control debate has followed the other extreme: regulate every aspect of guns in an effort to make all guns disappear. Fortunately, debate has been allowed and has resulted in some sanity being restored to gun control. The federal government has dismantled the stupidly bureaucratic and costly gun registry while maintaining licensing of gun owners and rules for training and safe storage.
   More changes are needed in Canada to create a system that is fairer for legitimate sporting arms owners while ensuring public safety. One change needed is to remove gun control decisions from the RCMP and give it to a competent civilian authority. 
    Meanwhile, how Americans deal with their gun issues is their business and they will work them out in their own way.  The shame is that any discussion of gun control is smothered even when it comes from gun enthusiasts and Second Amendment defenders like Metcalf and Zumbo.  

More Taxes, More Police but Still More Contraband

   The contraband cigarette circus continues with governments unwilling to try new ways to stop it despite so much evidence that increased taxes and enforcement have not been especially effective.   The federal government recently increased its tobacco taxes $4 a carton and has given the RCMP another $91 million for high-tech electronic surveillance along the Ontario-Quebec-U.S. borders. A carton of 200 taxed cigarettes now ranges from roughly $80 to $112  depending on local taxes. 'Baggies' of 200 untaxed cigarettes can be purchased for under $10. People who smoke like the idea of buying their cigarettes for a fraction of the retail store cost, even if they are illegal.   The federal government admits that the contraband problem is not improving. It says that 30 to 50 per cent of tobacco purchased in Canada is bought illegally. Contraband tobacco has been spreading steadily outward from Ontario-Quebec into the Atlantic and western provinces.    Governments won’t try different strategies against contraband tobacco for two reasons: They are addicted to tobacco tax revenue ($7.5 billion in 2011), and they fear backlash from powerful anti-smoking lobbyists such as the Canadian Cancer Society. I have nothing against the anti-smoking lobby. They are sincere and dedicated in their commitment to help people stop smoking. However, they are totally grounded to the argument that higher taxes are the best way to reduce smoking.    There is evidence that slashing tobacco taxes dramatically reduces contraband tobacco and does not significantly increase the number of people who smoke. Most governments and anti-smoking organizations around the world refuse to consider that argument.    The contraband tobacco issue is extremely complicated and needs fresh thinking. And, as noted in Smoke Signals: The Native Takeback of North America’s Tobacco Industry it cannot be fully resolved until Canadian governments get serious about resolving Native sovereignty issues.

Savouring the Sweetness of Entitlement

   “Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more.” The Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky expressed that greedy thought in his novel The Brothers Karamazov 125 years ago.    Dostoyevsky’s words have become a mantra for politicians and others who consider themselves important enough to suck up entitlements as thoroughly as a sewer vacuums. Examples of demanding more and taking more stretch from sea to shining sea, notably in government and politics.    There is the Canadian Senate expense account scandal, of course, and the outrage about Alberta Premier Aliston Redford’s air travel expenses. The Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police apologized and had to pay back the cost of using on-duty RCMP officers as an honour guard for his marriage to a senior Ottawa bureaucrat.   A fresh example is found at the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Its president Hubert Lacroix has apologized for claiming $30,000 in expenses to which he wasn’t entitled. He says it was a careless error. If you can’t figure out your expense account, what are you doing running the CBC?   Also, it’s been revealed that the CBC’s millionaire news reader Peter Mansbridge took big bucks to speak to petroleum producers. The Toronto Sun said the speaking fee was $28,000. In my journalistic world the only people you take money from are your employers. Mansbridge said it’s OK because all his paid speaking engagements are cleared by CBC senior management, which includes the president who can’t figure out his own expenses correctly.   We live in a country where the elite and people in power have become so blinded by entitlement that they have difficulty seeing the difference between right and wrong.

Loving the Smell of Cordite in the Morning

'Did you see that tank going by?'   Here’s a really bad idea for a world unbalanced by bad ideas:  A London, Ontario tank armour manufacturer wants to establish an explosion test site on the southern edge of Algonquin Park.   Armatec Survivabilty plans to buy 2,300 acres of bush country for an explosion obstacle course to test its armour. The land is across the road from Benoir Lake, one of many cottage lakes in the area. Cottagers have received notice from the Dysart et al Municipal Council that it plans to decide  in late March whether to allow the Armatec purchase.   Tanks weighing up to 50 tonnes would be run through the obstacle course and the company says there would be only one explosion a day on 30 days a year and explosive noise would be short. There also would be mobility tests in which tanks and armoured vehicles roar through the forest.    The company, anticipating someone might object to explosions and tank maneuvers on the border of Ontario’s most precious piece of outdoor heritage, has an FAQ site answering 42 questions about the plan. It can be found at:     http://www.armateconline.com/index.php/faq-page#Q4   One of the cards already being played in the testing range plan is: “This is all about saving the lives of our soldiers.” Please, let’s not do that. There are plenty of other places, plenty of other ways to do important testing that will help protect our soldiers.   The real issue here is that we live in a world in which pollution and noise are killing us, or driving us crazy. The Algonquin Park area is one place where people can go to find some solitude. That 2,300 acres should become an extension of the Park, not a war weapons testing range.

Behind the Philip Seymour Hoffman Drug Death

   It’s easy to shrug off the drug addiction death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman as just another privileged celebrity losing control and his life. When you dig behind Hoffman’s death you see a picture that should scare the hell out of society.   Addictions to prescription drugs, which had been soaring, are dropping somewhat because of cost and the tightening of availability. The drop, however, has brought a sharp rise in addiction to heroin, which is becoming cheaper and easier to get. So society is confronting two major drug battles.   The New York Times recently reported on the town of Hudson, Wisconsin, population 13,000, located not far from Minneapolis. It told the story of a 21-year-old woman who is believed to be the small town’s seventh heroin fatal overdose in eight months.   Meanwhile, reporters from the Gannett newspaper group surveyed Wisconsin county coroners and reported that fatal drug overdoses in the state rose 50 per cent in 2012 to 199 deaths. Between 2000 and 2007 the state averaged 29 such deaths a year.    Figures from the U.S. federal government show almost 20,000 opioid drug deaths nationally in 2010, roughly 3,000 from heroin and the rest from painkillers. A large percentage of the deaths are among the young. Heroin deaths of U.S. teenagers and young adults have tripled since the year 2000.
   Drug overdose deaths exceed motor vehicle traffic deaths in 29 U.S. states, says an October 2013 report done for the Trust for America’s Health organization. In West Virginia 29 people in every 100,000 die of drug overdoses.   The illicit drug epidemic also is in Canada, although Canadian agencies are not nearly as good at documenting it. Health Canada has reported that 22.9% of Canadians aged 15 years and older indicated in 2011 that they had used a psychoactive pharmaceutical in the past year.    And, 3.2% of these users said they abused illicit drugs. In Ontario, 23 per cent of school students surveyed said they were offered, sold or given an illicit drug in the past school year.
   Numbers. Numbers that roll in one ear and out the other. Between the 'in' ear and the 'out' ear they should be setting off some alarm bells.

Groundhog Day

The groundhog didn't come out at our place up north. I worried that he was buried under the snow so I went looking for him. I figured he might be at our bush lot.

There was some snow on the lot road so I decided to plough in. This little ATV wasn't up to the job, however. So I donned snowshoes and trooped in to the tractor shed to get more horsepower. A little bit of snow shovelling was needed to get into the tractor shed.
The shed was still shaking off the effects of a minus 37 Celsius morning, so I had to take the generator apart, and spray etherinto the cylinders to get it started. Then I plugged the Salamander in and unthawed the tractor. After a couple of hours, we were bucketing snow!


It takes longer than expected to bucket out three feet of snow along a half a kilometer of road, which was cleared three weeks ago.

So when dusk fell, it was back onto the snowshoes, leaving the rest of the snow clearing for another time. My wife was so happy to see me back that she took my picture.

Meanwhile, I never did find that groundhog. In fact it snowed so hard during the day I never got to see my own shadow.

Where Has All the Heat Gone?

   For many of us this has been the coldest, snowiest, nastiest winter in recent memory. It begs the too simple question: What happened to global warming?    The global warming debate started spinning following the El Nino of 1997-98 when winter in many winter places was shockingly warm and wet. The world was getting warmer, the Arctic would melt, oceans would rise and there would be catastrophic environmental changes.   Since that great El Nino, however, large parts of North America have been cooler. In my part of the world I can’t remember so many mornings when the thermometer occupied the minus 30 Celsius range. Snow at Shaman's Rock   Scientific reports show that there has been little overall increase in global warming in the past 15 years. This of course has led to much controversy about whether global warming is over hyped. The January 2014 issue of Nature magazine has a fairly good article of the global warming ‘hiatus.” It explores the theory that the missing heat has much to do with the Pacific Ocean and the likelihood that the warming trend will be back soon.   More current information on global warming will be available when the global Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/press/media_advisory_wg1_full_report_140124.pdf releases a new report January 30. This is a report by committee so expect the information to be hidden in a brain-twisting maze of bureaucratic gobbledygook. However, enterprising journalists will sort out what it all means and pass it along to the rest of us.   Hopefully the report will explain where the missing heat has gone and when we can expect it to return. Any time now would be much welcomed.
     

Who Are the Savages Now?

      There’s so much human hurt to follow in August: Osage County that some viewers might miss the thread of delicious irony that runs through it. 
   The extended Weston family has gathered at the Oklahoma plains family home to deal with a sad consequence of the patriarch’s (Sam Shepard) alcoholism and the matriarch’s (Meryl Streep) drug addiction. It’s a pathetically dysfunctional family tearing at each other like a snarling pack of plains coyotes.  Past hurts, intrigues, secrets and grudges have created a mean-spirited atmosphere.
   At the edge of the family chaos is a young woman named Johnna (Misty Upham), a Cheyenne who has been hired as a house servant. She says little but sees all as she cooks and cleans up the messes left by the family’s tantrums. Johnna is the calm, grounded, spiritual person among a group that is a psychologically crumbling mess. The only time she jumps out in front is to break up the near rape of the Weston’s fourteen-year-old granddaughter.i
   Osage County, until roughly one hundred years ago, was part of the flat desolation called Indian County. It is part of the territory where thousands of Indians, forced from their traditional homes in other parts of the United States, were moved because white society considered them savages impeding settlement progress.
  This movie leaves you wondering, once again, which society really had its head on straight.