The Marshall Plan is Canadian taxpayers' insurance policy against the insurance companies

To get some idea of how the insurance industry manipulates public opinion and public policy, just take a look at the fervor and nonsense that people in the States are saying in opposition to health care reform. Opposition to health care reform from the masses who are the ones who need it most?, how could that possibly have been made into a populist backlash? No doubt spreading lies and deception and fear mongering and people’s innate stupidity and/o gullibility is responsible for about 95% of that falsely fomented opposition to something so needed as health care.

Before you go thinking that stupidity and gullibility are the exclusive domain of Americans, I suggest you take a long hard look in the mirror and ask yourself, isn’t this income trusts issue just the same damn thing going on here? People falsely fomenting a bunch of unproven and nonsensical arguments to justify killing an investment product that Canadians had come to rely upon and embrace, called income trusts? Just as with Healthcare in the US, the shift in investor favour that saw Canadians retirement savings go into the more dsiciplined profit sharing form of investment involved HUGE commercial interests that were at play. Every outcome to society, bar none, of a shifty toward income trusts ad away from the abusive and tax avoidance model known as corporations is positive for Canada and Canadians. Bar none. I would be happy to debate this with anyone.

Meanwhile we know who was behind the false fomenting of opposition to US Healthcare reform. It was the insurance companies and groups like Humana and the like.

Here in Canada it was groups like Manulife, who true to their name of Manufacturers’ Life, manufactured and no doubt will continue to manufacture a litany of “the sky is falling” arguments to kill income trusts in order to kill the competition for their inferior investment products (their idea of leveling the playing field) like Income Plus (that incidentally and unknown to Thomas Mulcair, supposed Finance Critic for the NDP almost took the whole of Manufactured Products Incorporated, down to the ground). Apart from that policy outcome of the income trust policy, what’s not to like, apart from $35 billion nuking of Canadians’ life savings, the loss if investment choice, the rash of foreign takeovers that to date have taken false claims of $500 million of tax leakage and turned it into $1 billion of real tax leakage, soon to reach as high as $7 billion if Flahery (and the media) keep their heads buried in the sand, all so that, Manulife can manufacture products that people do not inherently favour and that Manulife fails to hedge, all with the intent of creating some fee stream for themselves? What a pathetic policy objective outcome that is. Its the very same self interested profit driven lobby driven outcome that people are seeking and which is preventing people from having health care reform in the US, as is driving policies in Canada whose sole purpose is to preclude Canadians from accessing the choices they most favour in providing themselves with retirement income.

Acccess to adequate Health care is no more or less important than access to adequate retirement income here in Canada. The insurance industry seems intent on blocking people’s access to both of these fundamental necessities of life, and are solely motivated to maxmize the fee streams to them. These people think they can act as gate keepers in allowing people access to the things they fundamentally need. These people’s shameless and intense lobbying and back room dealing and privileged access to decsions makers when people at large HAVE NONE is corrupting our democracy, in ways that usurp anything that might come from proroguing.

We know who pulled this stunt off, as the Globe and Mail was almost glowing with pride when they reported on the sabotage that had taken place where these people, charged with a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value were using the government to thwart what they knew their shareholder/owners wanted. These people, in the article below, should hang their heads in shame:

“High-profile directors and CEOs, meanwhile, had approached Mr. Flaherty personally to express their concerns: Many felt they were being pressed into trusts because of their duty to maximize shareholder value, despite their misgivings about the structure. Paul Desmarais Jr., the well-connected chairman of Power Corp. of Canada (owner of London Life and Great West Life, Investors Group, etc) even railed against trusts in a conversation with Prime Minister Stephen Harper during a trip to Mexico?”

And please don’t try to tell me these people were concerned about what was in Canada’s best interests or things like tax leakage, as that would be a total farce of an answer, made even more apparent by their subsequent actions when they denied they had anything to do with it:

February 1, 2007, as recorded in Hansard, from the Finance Committee Hearings on Income Trusts Mr. Dominic D’Alessandro: (CEO of Manulife) “The notion and the implication that somehow the government on this file is responding to initiatives that originated with corporations is not based on reality”

The notion and implication being that this gentlemen seems to have something to deny in his attempts to give cover to those, like Flahery, who did their exclusive bidding.

Meanwhile we were not even at the table. 2.5 million income trust investors were not even at the table? The 75% of Canadians who do not have pensions and who were losing an essential investment option were not even at the table? Whereas tehh 25% of Canadians who have got pensions were at the table and they got a carveout, that allows them to evade the 31.5% tax that WE HAVE TO PAY. The upshot of that is that Canada is reverting to a two tiered pensions system. Tommy Douglas would roll in his grave, knowing that Jack Layton, Judy Wasylycia-Leis and Thomas Mulcair participated in this outcome happening and their fraudulent arguments of tax leakage upon which it was done. The NDP have a lot of explaining to do and blacked out documents will do nothing to advance their empty case against trust and will reveal who has infiltrated the NDP more in their thinking, the Big Lifecos or the public pension funds. Neither answer will give them a reason to do what the NDP did, so they may as well save their breath.

Meanwhile, seldom in life, exists the opportunity to buy insurance against a situation where the damage has been done. Our original insurance policy of relying on the media and the opposition parties has failed us completely. They have been null and void in fulfilling their social responsibilities by protecting the innocent, namely the 2.5 million Canadians income trust taxpayers. Instead many of them, resorted to blaming the victims. Blaming the victims? Fortunately these victims are so pathetic as those in the press and have the intelligence and intiative to come up with solutions that deal with the mess that all others have made. We have come up with an insurance policy known as the Marshall Plan. Apart from resolving this shameful mess of the income trusts faisco on behalf of all Canadian taxpayers and future generations, it provides all of you wih a second chance to be that honest person, your parents brought you up to be, which require you to drop the crap arguments of the Manulfes of this world and stop telling Canadians what they want and don’t want on Manulfe’s behalf and using the falsehoods of this that or the other thing to cling onto your previous lame case that was bound together with that facile argument about tax leakage.

Failure on your part to embrace the Marshall Savings Plan solution will make you as credible as Flahety’s and Carney’s tax leakage claims proved in the end to be. A total patent liem whose intent was to mislead and achieve nefarious ulterior ends, for people, if you can believe this, sport Order of Canada pins on the lapels of their Gucci bespoked finery. Total jerks in my books. Jerks against whose actions we need the insurance policy known as the Marshall Plan. Good luck to those who oppose it. The fraud know as Tax Fairness is nearing its final death knell.