As It Happens had an interview with Richard Shapiro this week. He's the man would wrote a letter to the judge about being "economically raped" by Bernard Madoff. I should like to ask Mr. Shapiro his views on gun control, abortion, Medicare and taxation.
While it's unfortunate that Mr. Shapiro lost millions in Mr. Madoff's grand scheme, I found it difficult to listen to most of Mr. Shapiro's rant on As It Happens. Apparently, it's all the government's fault. The government shouldn't have allowed Mr. Madoff to run his little scheme. The government should have tracked it down earlier. The government should have stopped it. The government should find a way to compensate Mr. Shapiro. While I would have no problems with the government seizing money and property from anyone even distantly related to Mr. Madoff to pay back people who lost their money, I wonder what else Mr. Shapiro thinks the government should and shouldn't do. Should they track down anyone who turned a profit under Madoff's pyramid scheme and take that money back too?
If he's lobbying for the government to do this much for him, I can only assume he's at the front of the fight for gun control, Medicare and the like. Mr. Madoff destroyed his life. A gun can take a life. The government should ban all guns. People can get sick through no fault of their own and privately run hospitals can destroy the savings of any uninsured person. The government should set up universal healthcare. An unwanted teenage pregnancy can ruin the hopes and dreams of two young people who must drop out of school and work menial jobs for the rest of their lives. The government should provide abortions to anyone who wants one. Abortions end the life of a potential person so governments should ban abortion.
It's too bad that one country living beyond its means and with few real laws for the elite has affected the rest of us so much. Rampant Capitalism, unbridled Consumerism and overzealous speculation drove the boom which created this bust. How much has really changed while oil went from $140/barrel to $40/barrel? Why am I now on the hook to bail out companies that didn't plan ahead. Here's my only real Capitalist leaning. I don't agree with stimulus packages. I pay my taxes, pay my mortgage, live within my means and have collected a small savings. I was happy while the Liberals had surpluses and paid down the country's debt. Now, a few unscrupulous businessmen swindled masses of people and GM, Ford and Chrysler stuck their heads in the sand while George Bush told them Global Warming doesn't exist so I have to watch Stephen Harper spend the country $64 billion further into debt to rescue banks which we're turning billions of dollars of profits every quarter and ensure we can burn every last drop of oil around in our hybrid Escalades.
It's amazing that we don't have enough money to staff hospitals so that emergency room wait times are less than three hours. We cannot afford to send students to university without many of them emerging with crippling student loans. Luckily, the government can pile up a huge debt to ensure a big company doesn't fail after it paid its CEO hundred of thousands of dollars each year to run it into the ground and had to pull the multi-million dollar golden parachute.
