Keep the Gun Crazies out of Canada

Walter, thank you for this thoughtful, as always, reply.  I concur with all of it.

I do not own any guns; I do not want to own any guns.  As you point out, this gun stuff is toxic to tourism.  The other more potent threat, however, is the recruiting of former special forces alumni into private mercenary groups like Blackwater.  They are the highly-armed, disciplined, experienced shock troops, or Praetorian Guards, to support the corporate power structure if and when push comes to shoves.  Compared with Blackwater, the NRA are amateurs, and if the NRA gets in the way, Blackwater will crush them. It is disgusting; more and more we are reluctant to venture into public places, e.g. movie houses.  Online education will get a boost from this spreading terrorism, call it what it is; online shopping, too, will benefit from this growing fear of public places because of the gun nuts out there.  It has reached the point that one of my online students, a doctoral student, in Texas, tells me teachers there now lock their classroom doors out of fear!  Thank God you live where you do; do not let the rot, cancer of gun mania poison Canada.  This includes taking a swift severe line with the mutants who shoot up places like Toronto.  Stop it now, good and hard.  It is bed time now.  Paul

Federation of the Great Lakes

Marshall, this is first-class, thoughtful, thorough, and of obvious practical value.  Your humble servant here more and more embraces the concept of "economic domains" instead of political boundaries.  For instance, Dubuque, Iowa, on the Mississippi River forms a natural tri-state economic domain with SW Wisconsin and NW Illinois.  Folks there are starting to realize this and act on it.  Great!  What happens in Madison, WI, Springfield, IL, and Des Moines, IA - except for taxing and regulations - has little if anything to do with the economic health of this tri-state interface.  Yes, economic domains, not political boundaries are the future engines.  The consul general of Canada from Chicago told an audience last year, where this writer was in attendance, that the Great Lakes states, Ontario and Quebec could easily form an economic domain without the baggage of the rest of the political structures to east, west, and south.  He said such an economic domain would create the 7th largest economy in the world - and 14th largest population concentration!  We are, yes, edging toward understanding and applying the insights of "economic domains" in the future.