🧵1/8 Engagement
I engage on controversial subjects, often enraging a horde of fundamentalists on a wide variety of subjects.

I don't enjoy the vile personal attacks and name calling that form a significant part of the responses. So, why do it?

Awareness of opposition.
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Every topic has a collection of passionate angry fundamentalists ready to unload on moderate opinions.

Frankly, loud is why right wing, libertarians and religious fundamentalists gain traction.

People who agree often present support weakly.
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🧵1/6 Living Wage Adjustment

Corporations that don't pay a living wage in the geographic areas where they employ people create poverty and personal financial problems requiring government support.

Minimum wage laws have little effect.

I want responsible corporations.
../2 🧵2/6 Living Wage Adjustment

My proposal to ensure responsible employment:

A) Maintain a Federal Database of calculated Hourly Living Wage by Postal Code.

B) For each worker, in each pay period, using gross pay and hours worked, calculate the effective hourly wage.

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🧵1/10 Kickstarting non-US Snowbirding

I posted some details on a reservation we made for 2026 in Portugal as we transition from US Snowbirds to European Snowbirds.

It's approaching 400K views, so there's apparently an appetite for this discussion.

Here's a few tips.
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Start with a bucket list of places you might want to visit for a long stay. Ours included Portugal, France, Spain, the Caribbean and a few others.

We are not heat and sun worshippers, we want a temperate walking climate without snow.
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🧵1/9 Canada’s Aluminum
The US once produced most of the aluminum they needed, but over time they stopped investing in new technology and power.

Canada, predominantly Quebec, invested heavily in modernized aluminum production in the early 1980’s. It was a logical move with
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Quebec’s abundant investment into Hydro Electric. This made Canada’s aluminum not only efficient, but also quite green, a double win for Canada.

As a market driven commodity, when new capacity comes on stream, the older technology can’t compete.
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1/n
I returned to Canada, Quebec in 1976 from the US where I had spent 20 of my first 24 years.

I was the last of my family to return. I left because the US was divided and angry during the Vietnamese era and I saw little honesty and peace ahead.

Canada was optimistic
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and kind, hopeful and progressive by comparison.

I fell in love with Canada, fell in love, built a business, a family, a great life with hard work.

In the times that life wasn’t great, I always found compassion around us.
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🧵We're bored with progress 1/n
@JustinTrudeau must go, according to the opposition, media and bespoke small sample polling demanding change.

Of course, the @CPC_HQ has a lot at stake having lost three consecutive elections with three different leaders. A fourth defeat
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of the CPC will devastate the Reformed-Alliance movement that masquerades as Conservatism without the slightest pretense of Progressive.

The reality of the last nine years has proven that Canada has a great solid foundation for Progression.
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🧵1/n Trudeau is Offensive to Right

If you're a Right Wing Thinker, the IDU or a foreign Authoritarian, @JustinTrudeau is, as thrice elected nine year leader of a very successful Progressive Democracy, philosophically and politically your enemy.

Canada has changed nicely.
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Canada weathered the Covid Pandemic with significantly lower than average loss of human life. But we also used that period to expand our experience with Progressive Publicly Funded Social Support and suffered less social damage as well.
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🧵1/n Progressive Conservatism

Canada once had a Progressive Conservative Party, but no more since the Conservative brand was acquired by the Reform Alliance Party.

There are profound differences that make a Conservative Party Progressive, the major is how we address
../2 🧵2/n Progressive Conservatism
the imbalances of opportunity for the weakest and most disadvantaged segments of society. This is where the bulk of social program spending happens.

Conservatives resent and resist social program spending, Progressive Conservatives see it
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🧵1/n
Why is privatizing healthcare a Conservative imperative?

Universal access comprehensive publicly funded healthcare is a worldwide target for Conservative and further right politicians, and Canada is no exception.

Healthcare costs are a significant part of economies
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everywhere. As the science of healthcare improves, populations are aging, and the economic impact of healthcare costs is growing.

Publicly managed and funded healthcare denies Capitalists the ability to profit from the delivery of healthcare.
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1/n How heat pumps work

Electrical heating is 100% efficient, so 1K of electrical power you put into a resistance heater makes 1K of heat.

Heat pumps use electricity to reversibly transfer (pump) heat from inside to outside or outside to inside. Your refrigerator does this.
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Heat pumps capture heat from cold air by circulating even colder refrigerant thru a coil and fin heat exchanger in the outdoor unit. The colder than cold air refrigerant is warmed as it passes thru, picking up heat energy that heads indoors.

Then the magic happens inside
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It is too simplistic to blame the Canadian Housing crunch on one man, one political party, or any one thing, but that’s the tactic of the CPC.

There are many factors and facets in this conundrum, but high on the list is personal overconfidence in ongoing historic low
../2 ./1
Interest rates which began during the end phase of the last failed CPC government.

Low interest rates to save the economy from a world economic meltdown caused primarily by bad mortgage debt aggressively marketed by investment bankers.

We saved the economy, but we were
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The CPC concept that somebody, one person, is to blame for the pressures and required responses to global disasters is immature and disingenuous.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did not cause Covid, he did not invade Ukraine, and he did not sign mortgages for people who ../2 ./1
In hindsight, overspent on homes and drove the market up to new levels, at a time when interest rates had to rise from historic lows.

Is this our new Canada? Everything that happens is one man’s fault and Canadians and the world around us bear no responsibility?
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We are backed into a corner here.

If Ford's Green Belt Development plan is stopped, some significant speculative land speculators might default on hundreds of millions of dollars of high interest bank loans.

Legal challenges will delay projects funded at credit card rates

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We'll be told we can't let that happen because:

We need more housing, and bankrupt or borrowing limited developers can't build as many homes.

We'll be told that we're expecting too much when we expect development to be environmentally responsible.

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In 2023 I will be reactivating my blogging efforts on UBI and other subjects.

I believe that UBI as the potential to completely shift Canada towards many great future accomplishments.

But, I believe that UBI would completely change politics.
../2 ./1
UBI would largely eliminate non-universal targeted spending that is currently overused to attract votes. It would return politics to the bigger picture, the grand plan, and fundamentals.

Problem: today's low engagement in political action, including low voter turnouts.
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Ford's Bill 23 is a destructive shift in power, control, and financial responsibilities.

It will hurt the finances of cities and towns, raise future costs for all, owners and renters alike, except for developers who will profit more faster and take the money and run.

../2 ./1
Bill 23 is a developer's wet dream, it has no doubt been written by developers.

Bill 23 is the nightmare of mayors everywhere who will need to pillage their own citizens to fund this Ford vision of a very different future.

These are just the financial implications.
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Long thread on Long Term Care Ontario fair fix, vs unfair fix currently proposed.

The main issue in Ontario LTC right now is a lack of availability in the publicly funded beds locally available, and the private "for profit" beds that are available are unafFORDable to most

../2 ./1
The government has failed to ensure that sufficient publicly funded beds are available to serve the growing demand for LTC.

This has resulted in patients discharged from hospital without a local LTC bed available. This is not the patient's fault, it is the government's.
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Accused of 'education shaming" for asking that cabinet ministers have relevant education: know that I am a University drop-out who started my own business in a highly technical field, ran it for 39 years, creating >250 person years of skilled technical employment in Canada
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I am deeply sensitive about ensuring the competence of government. In 2005 we lost of the 20 y/o son to a firefighter training accident that was, upon investigation, directly related to failures of the municipal government,

Bad governments cost lives. It triggers me.

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If your agenda is to privatize a universal government service to benefit corporations and shareholders, the simplest path is to cripple the delivery of services and make that service inefficient at delivery.

This has been happening for decade in Canada's healthcare.

../2 ./1
Very little happens in healthcare without nurses and support staff, so to tear it down this is where you make your cuts and drive your wedges.

Private healthcare will need nurses, so those that are driven from the public system will help staff the private facilities.
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I have been trying to say something about the Toronto father who killed himself, whose 3 children were killed in 2015, who was tasered by police, taken to hospital and released.

This long thread is tough to write, tougher to read. Run from it now if you're not up to it.

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First, we need to understand that the loss of a child is something that we heal around but never lose. The pain remains, we learn life with pain and struggle to appear normal, because that's what lets us back into society and life.

This creates a need for ongoing care.
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When I mention Universal Basic Income I often hear the objection: "I don't believe in giving someone something for doing nothing, it will make people lazy"

Poor Canadians are not lazy, they often work long hours at several jobs and continue to be poor.

../2 ./1
UBI is not meant to make anyone rich, it is meant to ensure that everyone has at least the minimum basic income that can fund the necessities of basic life.

UBI is not a hand-out, think of it as a dividend that is granted to every adult Canadian who resides in Canada.
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Fathers Day, Mothers Day, celebrations that are challenging for those parent who have children who have died.

I fight to avoid saying that we have "lost" children, because we will remain parents of that child until we one day die.

What should you say or do?

../2 ./1
Saying or doing something is far preferable to doing or saying nothing.

Friends, true friends do not fear the fearful parts of your life. They acknowledge your loss, share kind words and celebrate the life of your child with memories and kind words.

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