Rebecca Walberg

Much of the debate about climate change, emissions, and what steps should be taken focuses on what does or does not cause climate change, what policies can make a difference, and how far we must shift to be “green.”  Left off the table is any honest appraisal of how good environmental intentions hurt the poor.  Skyrocketing fuel costs, combined with higher grocery prices as farmers sell to biofuel companies as well as food manufacturers, are trivial to limousine liberals, a burden upon the middle class, and devastating to the poor.  Here’s an excerpt from my column on this for the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix:

Escalating fuel costs harm the poor disproportionately, acting as a de facto regressive tax. Thus, American families at the median income level pay five per cent of each household dollar for energy and those with lower incomes spend 20 per cent on energy, while households under the poverty line see fully half of their budget spent on gas, heating, and other fuel costs.

As in the U.S., certain minorities in Canada are disproportionately poor. To artificially inflate fuel costs therefore is not only an issue about class and wealth, but about race, and the disparate impact of carbon taxes and related policies must be acknowledged.

The full article is here.

A “wish list” for meaningful healthcare reform, at Canadian webzine c2cjournal.ca, is here.

And a column that I wrote two weeks ago, giving the outline of the election’s events and priorities for an American readership, is online here, at the website for The American, the magazine put out by the very influential American Enterprise Institute.  If I were writing it today, I’m not sure I’d be as optimistic.

One of the more distressing aspects of the culture war is the way in which consumerism, mass media and the popular culture in general seem to conspire against parents’ best efforts to raise sane, healthy, happy kids. An interesting new book, So Sexy So Soon, takes on this theme from a liberal perspective, and it is refreshing to see that proponents of healthy childhood from across the spectrum can agree on the importance of letting kids be kids, and not tiny, sexualized and commercialized adults, for as long as possible. I reviewed this book for the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, and the full review is posted here.

This weekend, Brian Sinclair, a 45-year-old Winnipeg man with a complicated medical history, died in the waiting room at Winnipeg’s major teaching hospital after waiting for 34 hours. He was referred to the ER after being seen at a clinic four blocks away. Nobody at the clinic saw fit to help him get to the hospital, beyond putting him in a taxi, despite the fact that he was (obviously) hours from death. The ER has stated that it is the responsibility of the patient to get in touch with the triage desk, and claims that Sinclair failed to do so. Since then, it has been disclosed that Sinclair died of complications from a bladder infection, and that a catheter change and antibiotics would almost certainly have saved his life.

Already, the great responsibility shuffle has taken place, with spokesmen for the clinic and hospital tacitly or explicitly blaming the victim, the system, and anyone but themselves. While the medical inquest, which will be overseen by a doctor who isn’t afraid to point fingers, may identify individuals who are at fault, there can be no question that poor management of ERs is largely culpable for this death. My editorial on the topic, published in the Winnipeg Free Press today, is here.

On Tuesday, Stephane Dion spoke to a packed hall in Winnipeg South Centre, a riding that is expected to be fiercely contested in the next election. Instead of demonstrating strength and vision, the Leader of the Opposition exposed his weaknesses and the fragility of his platform.

The topic of the meeting was Dion’s Green Shift plan. Despite promoting this tax on carbon production, Dion conceded that a market-based cap and trade system would likely be in the works under a Liberal government. He spent as much time slamming Harper’s policies as he did explaining his own, and in the process revealed a fundamental lack of understanding of economics and government.

His major criticism of the government’s approach to limiting pollution was that it would make emissions more expensive without benefiting the environment. The fundamental purpose of any incentive program, though, is to decrease pollution, and raising the cost of carbon production would intrinsically encourage industry and consumers to look for carbon-neutral alternatives, thereby benefiting the environment.

Dion’s grasp of economics seemed even shakier when he excoriated the government for ending the days of budgetary surpluses. A surplus results when the government has collected more taxes from Canadians than it needs, money that Canadians could be saving or spending themselves. Eliminating surpluses by cutting taxes is therefore an excellent sign, indicating that the government has learned how to get by with less, and is leaving more money in the pockets of Canadians.

The reality of a carbon tax is that it would raise the price of necessities. Most Canadians eat food that has been transported some distance, which would cost significantly more under a carbon tax scheme than it does now. Heating a home is not a luxury, nor is it cheap even today. Few cities provide public transportation adequate to truly replace driving. For everyone but condo-dwellers in the downtowns of big cities, Dion’s carbon tax would dramatically raise the cost of living.

In Winnipeg, Dion argued that this would balance out. The carbon tax, he claims, would be used to finance income tax cuts, including refundable tax credits for households too poor to pay much tax. This may or may not work on paper. In reality, though, there is very little precedent for governments eliminating taxes. The major exception in Canadian politics has been the Harper Conservatives, who followed through on their promise to cut the GST. Dion, on the other hand, pledged to renew efforts to create a national daycare program, and increase subsidies for home renovations. Plans like that don’t come cheap, and make it less likely that a carbon tax would be the basis for a revenue neutral tax reform, rather than simply a massive tax hike.

The standing room only audience cheered enthusiastically whenever Dion slammed Harper, but couldn’t summon up much energy for the man himself. Dion came across in Winnipeg as the stereotypical academic that he used to be: brainy but disconnected from the people he hopes to lead, uncomfortable speaking off the cuff, and more suited to lengthy discussions about theory than to implementing solutions.

A platform can’t be built entirely on the environment when Canadians are dealing with healthcare waits, increasing costs of living, and an incipient economic slowdown. Unless Dion and the Liberals figure this out and add some substance to their campaign, the Conservatives could well win a majority this time.

Bill Murray (not that Bill Murray) was 57 years old when the province of Alberta refused to pay for his hip resurfacing, which would restore his mobility and greatly reduce joint pain, because he was too old to benefit from it. This is going to happen increasingly often to the Boomers, as they enter their peak medical care consumption years. Single payer, universal healthcare means that the market does not guide supply or demand. This means that bureaucrats do. Inevitably, this means that somebody other than you is going to decide what medical care you are entitled to. This should frighten all of us, and nobody more so than the entitled, wealthy and aging Baby Boom generation. Pajamas Media has my column on the Murray case, and others in which life, not just quality of life, was at stake, here.

Obama is a fascinating and perplexing character.  He seems to function as a screen onto which people can project whatever they want or need to see in a candidate: a post-racial messiah, a lacklustre Gen-Xer, a hard lefty, and so on.  Here is a well-written and intriguing assessment of Obama as Flake (not Fake, although a column could be written about that, too.)  My only quibble is that I don’t think it’s an accident that Obama didn’t publish a thing in Law Review and voted present so often; he was deliberately avoiding doing anything that might commit him to something that might cost him votes, whenever possible.  (Although this still makes the Trinity issue incomprehensible. I have yet to find a rational explanation for Trinity anywhere, although the “Wright as Authentic Black Father Figure” seems the most plausible.)

Summer is not conducive to voluminous writing.  Here are reviews of some thought-provoking books.  Fareed Zakaria, whom I reviewed here in the Winnipeg Free Press, is always worth a read.  Although his Post-American World isn’t 100% on the mark - he still subscribes to the “Iraq as eternal quagmire” meme, despite a rather dramatic turnaround in 2008 - it’s well worth reading.  Save the Males, also reviewed in the WFP, is a bit disappointing, since the topic is a rich one, and the writer is talented; all in all I expected better, although her treatment of the Jessica Lynch affair is provocative and thoughtful.  Much better, on the gender wars front, is Dr. Meg Meeker’s Boys Should be Boys, which I discussed here for the Institute of Marriage and Family, Canada.  Meeker’s earlier book on the medical perils of teen promiscuity was very valuable, and her thoughts on parenting boys are a useful addition to the burgeoning parenting section of the bookstore.

A Saskatchewan rabbi criticizes a Catholic bishop who is protesting Morgentaler’s Order of Canada medal.  Here is the full text of the news article:

Saskatoon’s Roman Catholic bishop is calling on followers to protest the awarding of the Order of Canada to abortion-rights crusader Dr. Henry Morgentaler earlier this month. However, Bishop Albert LeGatt’s initiative is being criticized by a rabbi who says Dr. Morgentaler has done more for women’s rights than the Catholic Church. Saskatoon Rabbi emeritus Roger Pavey of the liberal congregation Agudas Israel said Bishop LeGatt was misguided, adding that even Orthodox Judaism considered abortion acceptable in some cases.

First, it is facile and offensive to suggest that Morgentaler has done more for women’s rights than the Catholic Church.  It reflects naked hostility to Catholicism that is unbecoming in a senior clergyman, profound bias, or ignorance of recent history, or most likely some blend of the three.  I’ll simply point out that given what we know about abortion and depression, breast cancer, and problems with subsequent pregnancies, Morgentaler has caused direct harm to many women quite apart from the actual damage women sustain when choosing to terminate a pregnancy.  The Catholic Church, like all massive and long-lived institutions, is imperfect, but in recognizing the sanctity of motherhood and encouraging women and men to form lifelong marriages, among others, it has certainly added to the net happiness of women in the world.

Next point: Rabbi Pavey points out that “even Orthodox Judaism” permits abortion in some circumstances.  This is absolutely true.  Rabbi Pavey assuredly knows, though, that those circumstances are very narrow, and in fact bear no resemblance to the circumstances in which Morgentaler has performed abortions.  Jewish law permits (and in some cases requires) abortion if continuing a pregnancy would kill the mother.  Note, please, that this is a vanishingly rare situation in 21st century Canada.  It is also noteworthy that there is no “mental health” exemption, which has been used to such mischief in some jurisdictions; since depression during and after pregnancy is largely treatable, the vast majority of Jewish legal authorities do not consider mental distress at an unwanted pregnancy to be a reason to abort.

There are also abundant sources in Jewish law indicating that, as a developing life, a fetus has great value and sanctity - but not quite as much as an existing life, so that when there is a mortal conflict between the life of the fetus and the life of the mother, we must choose the mother.  By the time either the head or the majority of the body has emerged from the womb, though, the baby has equal status as the mother, and it is forbidden to choose between them - no partial birth abortions permitted, in other words.  Also significant is that the conflict between the life of the fetus and an existing life applies only to the mother, ie the life that would be directly threatened if the pregnancy continued; destroying a fetus to save a third life, or many other lives, is also forbidden.

Here we get to the real intellectual dishonesty of Rabbi Pavey’s words.  Pavey is the Rabbi Emeritus of a Conservative congregation in Saskatoon.  Conservative Judaism, like Orthodox Judaism, believes in the binding and eternal nature of the covenant between God and the Jews.  Unlike Orthodox Judaism, which believes (to reduce a complicated issue to one phrase) that Jewish law is fixed, and can be applied to new situations but must not be adapted, Conservative Judaism believes that the component of the law that is subject to human interpretation can and must evolve as the understanding, wisdom and knowledge of humans evolve.  Nonetheless, Conservative Judaism recognizes that not all abortions are permitted by Jewish law.  The official position of Conservative Judaism on the politics of abortion is to oppose any law that might prevent abortions in the (extremely narrow set of) circumstances in which it is permitted by Jewish law.

Abortion to save the life of the mother has been permitted in Canada throughout Morgentaler’s career.  The slightly more lax circumstances in which Conservative Jewish law finds abortion acceptable (abortion to prevent serious injury to the mother, or severe mental anguish) have also been accommodated in practice in Canada throughout Morgentaler’s career.  Abortions that are permitted within Jewish law, in other words, already were permitted within Canadian law, and this has nothing to do with Morgentaler.  On the contrary, the very essence of Morgentaler was to shatter this status quo in favour of abortion at any time, for any woman, for any reason, and ideally at the taxpayer’s expense.  And he was most successful.

To discard a human life in a cavalier manner is profoundly contrary to the Jewish tradition, law and ethos.  To oppose laws that restrict abortion on the grounds that such laws might infringe upon the (incredibly rare) situations in which Jewish law permits abortion - the official position of Conservative Judaism - strikes me as extreme, unnuanced, but logically coherent.  To celebrate a man who devoted his life to making life disposable - the most sacred earthly thing in Judaism, such that we are permitted to break almost any other law in order to save a life - is reprehensible, and deeply unJewish.

Rabbi Pavey undoubtedly knows the position of his own movement on abortion.  He almost certainly knows that Orthodox Judaism (and until this century all of Judaism) sees abortion as a last resort, a tragic measure to be taken only to save the life of the mother.  I don’t know what he is trying to gain by this statement, but he has managed to fit contempt for women, Jewish law and tradition, both Orthodox and Conservative, and Catholicism, all into a couple of sentences.  There are better ways he could be using his time - teaching Jews and non-Jews alike that our religion holds all life to be sacred, even a developing life in the womb, for instance.

Cross-posted at PWPL.

The question of when to fight to keep a patient alive and when to let nature take its course is very difficult, and it’s one that we will all have to face as the Boomers age and enter their peak healthcare-consumption years.  Usually, patients, their families and their doctors can arrive at a mutually acceptable solution, and the majority of elderly patients on their deathbeds are under no illusions about the possible benefits of heroic medical interventions.  When patients can’t express their own wishes, though, or when doctors wish to disregard the wishes of patients or their advocates, the problem gets very ugly.

Another deeply disturbing trend, seen in the Schiavo and Golubchuk cases, is the description of removing a feeding tube as “withdrawing care.”  This may be technically accurate, if the hospital considers the provision of the necessities of life to be “care”, but most people who agree that they don’t want extra measures to be taken to prolong their life in extreme cases probably don’t understand that they may be consenting to be starved to death.

Here’s the conclusion of a column I wrote for the Edmonton Journal about the more troubling aspects of the Golubchuk case and the issues it should raise in the minds of all Canadians:

The role of doctors is to provide advice and expertise. Administrators are charged with organizing and regulating health care.  Whether a given person’s life is not worth living is not a medical decision, much less an administrative one.  It is a moral decision, and a deeply personal one, and any attempt to put this decision in the hands of doctors, bureaucrats or judges, instead of individuals and their families, must be very closely scrutinized.

Read the whole thing here.