Nullius in Verba

Now that it looks like the Liberals have a chance…

Stephane Dion states that “Stephen Harper squandered the surplus on.” Then he goes on to insert either tax cuts, innovation spending, the GST or whatever is appropriate for the moment. This leaves me to ask, what exactly would Dion do with the surplus’ which, if I may remind him, come from you and I, and not some magic place. There is no macro economic plan I know of which proposes government keep surpluses accruing over years. Wait, actually there is a plan, its’ one where a dictator puts all that money in his Swiss Bank Account, but I digress. Even companies will invest profits or provide dividends while keeping a small amount to use as a contingency plan - something Paul Martin borrowed from the business world. So what did Harper do with the cash? Three billion spent on the military, which even the outgoing Liberals were planning on doing to refurbish a dying Canadian institution. Four billion spent on Health Care, on which has actually resulted in a reduction in waiting lists according to surgeons I have spoken with (we’ll see the big numbers). Six billion was used to lower the GST, while not the favorite of Economists, Harper was correct in stating that this is a regressive tax which harms the poor more than the rich - something every Economist knows, but the media won’t report (Harper has done more for the poor than the Liberals in 10 years so far).

So what would the Liberals have done? Probably nearly the same thing if in that situation. Or do they suggest not spending on Health Care or the desperate military, which was launched into Afghanistan by the Liberals in the first place?

What depresses me the most is not that Dion can say these things, in fact its what every opposition member would do. It is that the Mainstream Media isn’t all over Dion about this every time he opens his pie hole. Why don’t they ask about the Health Care spending, like “Hey Dion would you not have spent on Health Care, old boy?” There is a bias.

I think it is time to review these articles on the Green Shift, and how it will not reduce emissions but is likely to increase emissions, and moreover how even Jack Mintz, the Economist who helped write the plan, thinks it isn’t necessarily going to work.

Secondly let’s consider the NDP’s plan to increase corporate taxes. During a time when it is even more necessary to reduce taxes to make us more competitive against other leading countries (Stephen Harper plans to reduce our corporate taxes to the lowest in the G-7), Jack Layton wants to raise them. The OECD summarized the findings of the harmful effects of corporate taxes which I describe briefly in this article. In an open economy, Layton will only succeed in helping the blue collar workers lose their jobs. Right now Canada is rated to lead the G-7 in growth, albeit slow growth.

Yes, many economists describe a Keynsian style system of government spending through recessions, but Harper is correct in saying that once you go down that path it is hard to come back. Keynsianism is easy to understand, and lefties like that, but Robert Lucas and Milton Freidman have rightly critisized it and many have pointed out its failures. As both an economist and a politician I think he has good insight into the problems of Keynsian economics, what do you fund? Who gets funding? Are you picking winners and losers? Once a subsidy is given, it is not easy to take it away. Are you pouring money down the drain? Will the public go for it? It is easy as an economist to describe the best methods of targeted subsidies, but the public is as likely not to agree! You are constrained by public foolishness and corporate greed or seeking legalized monopoly establishment. Soon I will describe the critical paper that demonstrated government action extended the Great Depression.

Its not really useful if you read these, get your lefty friends to read the evidence. Or let them know the evidence. They believe in fairy tales.

The English language is one of connotation, and some words like “stupid” should be applied carefully, but when warranted, applied definitively. What Dan Gardner tries to imply in this recent article is that Stephen Harper is stupid, even though he has a degree in Economics, by flogging him with an interview with the renouned Economist, Dr. Greg Mankiw.

Stupid is defined by Websters as acting in an unintelligent or careless manner, or lacking intelligence or reason.

As the old adage suggests, “While leaving the house to call someone stupid, be sure you don’t bang your head into a mirror along the way.”

The MSM is as Stupid as it is Vain

I’m sure no one in this country has missed out on the Liberal Party’s proposed carbon tax, the Green Shift™. While Stephane Dion has been unable to even pronounce it in English, let alone explain it, the mainstream media has done a bang on job of praising this thing whenever or however it can. Still I have yet to hear on the news a basic Economics discussion of the subject, and I have yet to hear from any published peer reviewed literature as well. So when the mainstream media fails us, like it usually does it is time to turn to the blogosphere. And so we being The Green Shift - The Economics Lesson - in Basic for Dan Gardner™. Oh and we’ll include some peer reviewed journal articles as well.

The basic principle of the Green Shift is that by increasing a tax one artificially increases the cost of carbon producing substances or greenhouse gas substances (GGS) so that people consider purchasing substitute goods instead thus lowering the release of greenhouse gasses. Moreover by reducing people’s income taxes by replacing it with the increased tax revenue from GGS one avoids harming people along the way, or causing the much dreaded stagflation. It is worth pausing here, for those of you unfamiliar with economics, in order to read the wikipedia definition of stagflation and note in particular that :

First, stagflation can result when an economy is slowed by an unfavorable supply shock, such as an increase in the price of oil in an oil importing country, which tends to raise prices at the same time that it slows the economy by making production less profitable.^[5][6][7] This type of stagflation presents a policy dilemma because most actions to assist with fighting inflation worsen economic stagnation and vice versa. Second, both stagnation and inflation can result from inappropriate macroeconomic policies. For example, central banks can cause inflation by permitting excessive growth of the money supply,^[8] and the government can cause stagnation by excessive regulation of goods markets and labor markets.

Yep.

Anyway so let us set up a basic economics argument for the Green part of the plan as follows. Here is a supply and demand curve with price (P) increasing to (P’) as we increase or shift the cost or supply curve (S) of gasoline by adding a tax (S’). As you will see the quantity of gasoline demanded decreases from (Q) to (Q’) and the ticker tape ticks, the adding machines add, and all is well in economic pre Christmas land. (D is the demand for gasoline curve)

Ok now let us add the “Shift” into the plan. We’ll give back Canadians this extra revenue in the form of an income tax reduction. So without going into a lot of detail, suffice to state that when one increases the income of a group of people one also shifts up the aggregate demand curve. This is generally because as one has more money in one’s budget one is less constrained by costs. In other words, if we all get an extra $2000 a year in income tax rebates, some of us are going to drive to New York for the weekend like we always wanted to do.

Let’s see the curves shifting.

Whoops! As the demand curve shifts up from (D) to (D’) the quantity of gas consumed increases from (Q’) to (Q). We’re right back where we started! What we have done is simply artificially raised the price of things, but not done a thing to reduce consumption of gasoline or GGS for that matter.

What’s worse is that one has no real idea how these supply and demand curves are going to shift. They could in fact shift in a worse direction than one intended. For example as seen in this graph one could seen the consumption of GGS increase to (Q”) instead. More GGS consumed than before one played God-onomics.

The question comes down to the shape of the real demand curve for GGS. If the demand curve is “inelastic” it is a vertical curve, and this would mean no matter how much you increased the tax, the quantity consumed of GGS will not change as seen below.

Inelastic demand curves are seen when a good has no substitute goods, that is no readily available good with the same function that you can purchase in it’s place. Gasoline is a likely inelastic good as there really is no substitute for your Honda Civic you just bought. It cost $20,000, and unless you are Bill Gates, replacing it with a fusion powered vehicle isn’t going to happen anytime in the near future. Also as North American electricity generation is primarily from GGS, changing to non GGS generation will be a costly step with no immediate realistic substitutes other than Nuclear and Hydro power.

So what does the scientific peer reviewed literature demonstrate in regards to the elasticity of gasoline, the number one GGS? Hughes et. al state that:

We find the short run price elasticity of gasoline demand is significantly more inelastic today than in previous decades.

and

consumers have not significantly altered their gasoline consumption in response to higher gasoline prices.

interestingly

at lower income levels, the amount of travel has already been reduced to the minimum leaving little room for adjustment to higher prices.

In other words the evidence suggests that we’re pretty much locked into buying the gas we need. West et. al suggest that the cross-price elasticity between gasoline and leisure (the optimal tax rate on gasoline without causing external damage) is 35%. This happens to be the current tax rate on gasoline in Canada in most cities already, therefore taxing it more will cause significant burden.

And just how effective is the tax on gasoline at reducing air pollution? Sipes and Mendelsohn demonstrate that:

Our results indicate that if an environmental surcharge is added to gasoline taxes, then the additional tax will decrease gasoline consumption only slightly and, therefore, will have little effect on air pollution.

and more drastically

The results suggest that people with twice the income buy only 10–20% more gasoline. Of course, governments could use the revenues from gas taxes to address equity issues by lowering taxes on poor people or subsidizing services for them. However, in practice, it is not clear that current subsidies for transport actually benefit poor people more than others. Even if the income elasticity estimates in this paper are low, a tax on gasoline would most likely fall most heavily on the poor.

When it is all said and done, the people likely to suffer from the Green Shift are the poor themselves.

Dr. Mankiw is a proponent of the Pigovian Tax, that is a tax on things like GGS which have externalities such as pollution which are proposed to not be included in the price of the good itself. Dan Gardner seems to think that externalities are simply basic economics. They are not. In fact the theory of externalities is extremely complicated, and made more complicated by the question of whether externalities really exist.

At the end of the day, Stephen Harper has to decide a course to take. He doesn’t have the luxury of sitting in an Ivory Tower playing tiddly winks or black board what if’s. We have this Green Shift theory which sounds interesting, but what we don’t have at our finger-tips is the shapes of those curves I drew above. We also don’t really know how much they will shift and where they will equilibriate. The only way to know for sure is to experiment, and the most prudent way would be to experiment slowly, because we really have no idea how things will change - contrary to the apparent thoughts of Dion who thinks we need to act fast to save the planet.

Stephane Dion Uses Sign Language to Describe His Knowledge of Economics

We could easily make greenhouse gas output worse, we could have no effect at all. We could cause a depression, we could cause the worst outcome possible: stagflation. Many of the Canadian banks suggest that Canada is on the brink of a recession, recessions tend to mostly harm the poor, and the journal articles suggest the poor will bear the brunt of a Green Shift.

Therefore seems it would be stupid, Dan, to manipulate the Canadian economy so drastically at this time, that is when one considers the peer reviewed Economic evidence.

(Update: Read part II of the Green Shift)

* The Green Shift plan has no immediate consumer gasoline taxes. However if the plan is to actually reduce GGS it will have to target gasoline in some manner. Gasoline is the number one and major contributor to Canadian GGS. For now they will target producers, who will have to pass some of these taxes onto the consumer, some will be taken out of profits, and some will be taken from the employees of the firms. Once again there are graphs to explain all that, of which we have no idea the slopes etc. In the end gasoline prices will rise, anyone who thinks they won’t is selling you a bridge to nowheresville. 

** It is likely that the effect of Anthropogenic Global Warming caused by GGS on global climate change is low or non-existant as no definitive proof exists, and many peer reviewed articles state there is no evidence.  Moreover it is likely that the current land based data is corrupt.

*** While many economists including myself support a pure consumption tax rather than income tax, all taxes do have harmful effects on the economy and the poor specifically. Consumption taxes have their own side effects and have not been entirely studied.

Update: Guess who was right, Danny and the media or the economist and me? And notice how the media ignores the whole issue when Harper looks like he’s right again. 

Now back to our regular programming:

Watching the recent frenzy over the Climate Conference in Bali I am very happy that we finally have a Prime Minister who is able to blow the cold air of reality into the environmental maelstrom of something that looks like a big-hot-back-slapping doldrum. Canada’s position, Japan’s, (and Australia’s, no thanks to the brainwashing organization, CBC, everyone thinks that the position in Oz has changed because of the new Labour government, but really it hasn’t) and the position of the United States is that there is no point in setting restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) when the world’s largest emittor won’t join in, and I refer to China. India’s emissions are projected to overtake the United States as well. The emissions from the US are going down each year under GW Bush, and not due to a recession either as the United States economy is better than ever, while Chinese emissions are increasing rapidly. If you’re one of those people who believes that anthropogenic GHG emissions (AGHG) is causing a disaster then by AlGlorey, why aren’t you concerned? It’s not going to matter one iota how much Canada does or even the United States for that matter, when the fat kids on the teeter-totter are all sitting on one end. Why isn’t this a bigger concern?

It’s comparable to a disarmament treaty during the Cold War that restricts the United States from building missiles but mandates the Soviet Union to build even more.

But does the media care? They’d rather follow the likes of Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio. After all, it should concern us greatly when the dogs of Hollywood fly in on Lear Jets led by Al-Goreacle, and start yapping that perhaps things are getting blown way out of proportion.

Recently a new journal article* published in 2007 by a Canadian climate researcher and external IPCC reviewer, Dr. Ross McKitrik, in the Journal of Geophysical Research has demonstrated that the increase in surface temperature is in large part due to non-GHG anthropogenic reasons, ie: urbanization - in layman’s terms our cities are warm and temperature stations near cities are recording that. Moreover the methodology used by current science to screen out this background effect isn’t doing an effective job. His work reveals that the increase in temperature is half of that which the current United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is estimating, thereby reducing their estimates even lower than their own reduction in estimates from the latest report. 

A group of Dutch scientists have independently confirmed McKitrik’s work. Dr. Jos DeLaat and Dr. A.N. Maurellis at the Royal Netherlands Meterological Institute and National Institute for Space Research Netherlands respectively showed something very interesting indeed in two recent papers. Their latest in the International Journal of Climatology, 2006, states:

Our analysis of climate model simulations of GHG warming confirms our earlier results, namely, that they do not show any kind of CO2 emission–temperature trend correlation. In fact, the modeled temperature trends are quite insensitive to the magnitude of the industrial CO2 emissions. It is possible that the response of the climate system to enhanced GHG radiative forcing is much more localized than expected in that it occurs only in specific regions and mainly in the lower troposphere, although this runs contrary to the current understanding of GHG-related processes (cf Hansen et al., 1997; IPCC, 2001; Hansen et al., 2005; Santer et al., 2005).

This confirms an earlier work of theirs in 2004 that points out that surface stations situated in regions of low economic output show relatively little change in mean surface temperatures compared to surface stations in areas of high economic output as seen in this graph:

(star = high CO2 area, cross = low CO2 area)

In other words, AGHG is not causing global climate change, only a local effect is seen.

Although the exact mechanisms have yet to be determined our findings show that a significant part of the observed surface warming is related to processes other than enhanced greenhouse warming.

Its interesting to see other scientists dispute the current mainstream thinking just for the sake of a challenge. Stephen McIntyre just cannot leave the Dr. Michael Mann et. al. famous hockey stick graph alone, and for good reason. With its projection heavily weighted by the Graybill tree ring data, McIntyre spends some time in the same Sheep Mountain woods doing core sampling to update the data and demonstrates that according to the forest, the planet has been getting colder lately.

And this brings me to my main point. I’m really concerned when science gets manipulated by politicians. Take for instance hurricane researcher and IPCC member Dr. Chris Landsea who points that fact out as he resigns from the IPCC. There is also no doubt that certain countries eye Kyoto as the holy grail of economic subsidies, a diversion of money to their coffers. It is now currently the world’s largest welfare scam. Kyoto has not much to do with saving the planet from AGHG because it’s reductions are meaningless. Kyoto is all about transplanting more factories to China and India.

(In 1614 Galileo challenged mainstream thinking about the sun revolving around the earth leading to an Inquisition where he was soundly chastized)

It disturbs me as a scientist to see things get so manipulated by certain people with certain agendas. Like for instance what happened with Dr. Paul Reiter, a leading expert on malaria and other diseases carried by the mosquito vector. His testamony in front of the British House of Parliament reveals how the lead writers of the IPCC report on the Impact on Human Health are chosen. It is worth reading the whole thing. After not being chosen as a lead author in IPCC 4, largely due to his suspicion that he is not alarmist enough because he states the research doesn’t support an increase in malaria due to Global Warming, he retorts that the people chosen are basically laymen with agendas chosen by politicians:

34.   I replied with a question about the two Lead Authors that had been selected: “It is often stated that the IPCC represents the worlds top scientists. I copy to you the bibliographies of (the two lead authors), as downloaded from MEDLINE. You will observe that (the first) has never written a single article, and (the second) has only authored five articles. Can these two really be considered “Lead authors” with experience, representative of the world’s top scientists and specialists in human health?”

  35.   I also pointed out that one Lead Author is a “hygienist”, the other is a specialist in fossil faeces, and both have been co-authors on publications by environmental activists.

Imagine that, the lead authors of part of a document that is due to set world policy and massive interference by governments at all levels was written by a group of people with no scientific publications at all. 

The list of climate scientists disillusioned with the political manipulation of the IPCC grows longer, however when they try and make their voices heard they are soundly run out of town. That’s partly the fierce nature of the whole argument which involves scientific blows from both sides, however this fight is now one sided because the media, the politicians, and the hollywood hound-dogs have chosen the side they like - the socialist side that says global warming is cause by us bad humans but we should feel sorry for China and let them emit GHG because they’re poor. So in essence lets do nothing but feel good about it. Modern Liberal policy in progress, something Jean Chretien who did nothing about Canada’s GHG emissions over the last 10 years would have been proud of.

* Note: McKitrik’s work is sponsored by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, not industry.

I’ve spoken time and time again about how the media are completely biased in this country and indeed influence what happens on the political scene. They don’t necessarily work for a politcal party per say, but they do work for specific people: for example there is no doubt that they killed Paul Martin for Chretien’s benefit. In fact Chretien through friends and friend’s marriages had the media quite sown up. As I’ve said before they failed to truly explain Chretien’s complicity in involving Canada in Iraq. Lately in Ontario John Tory’s Progressive Conservatives were defeated simply because the media reported only one issue and did a fifth grader job of describing the complete issue as well: I refer to the Private School funding. Yesterday I heard that the global idiot Al Goreacle won the Nobel Peace Prize at a time when there are people who actually deserve this award.

There are wild dogs, wild hogs, and then there’s the mainsteam media.

Today all you hear on CBC is their jeering tone describing Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez’s speech attacking the Bush Administration at the Military Reporters and Editors’ conference.

Now they have made mistakes in Iraq, but lately under General Petraeus’ leadership a lot of things have gone right and I have described some of them here in this blog as reported by independent journalists. I have no doubts that people involved in real real research into military and development of third world countries savaged by civil war will examine many of his methods.

The fact is that Sanchez was a failure. He was unable to interact with other members of his team and colleagues. He kicks Bush where it deservedly hurts, but fails to examine his own personal ineptitudes. Not only that but Sanchez was hung out to dry during the Abu Ghaib disaster and he’s one bitter man.

The media forgot to look in the mirror today, because Sanchez said something else. Something more significant and something you’ll never hear.

Because Sanchez spent much of his speech slamming the media’s horrible coverage of Iraq. This is something we can learn from in this country as well as the media does an abysmal job of covering Afghanistan. Some people try and blame the current government for not spreading a good message but I think the failure lies with a media doped up on the intoxication of mass death and explosions rather than boring works of human endeavor or improvement.

In Sanchez’s words:

GIVEN THE NEAR INSTANTANEOUS ABILITY TO REPORT ACTIONS ON THE GROUND, THE RESPONSIBILITY TO ACCURATELY AND TRUTHFULLY REPORT TAKES ON AN UNPRECEDENTED IMPORTANCE. THE SPECULATIVE AND OFTEN UNINFORMED INITIAL REPORTING THAT CHARACTERIZES OUR MEDIA APPEARS TO BE RAPIDLY BECOMING THE STANDARD OF THE INDUSTRY. AN ARAB PROVERB STATES - “Four things come not back: the spoken word, the spent arrow, the past, the neglected opportunity.” ONCE REPORTED, YOUR ASSESSMENTS BECOME CONVENTIONAL WISDOM AND NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE TO CHANGE. OTHER MAJOR CHALLENGES ARE YOUR WILLINGNESS TO BE MANIPULATED BY “HIGH LEVEL OFFICIALS” WHO LEAK STORIES AND BY LAWYERS WHO USE HYPERBOLE TO STRENGHTEN THEIR ARGUMENTS. YOUR UNWILLINGNESS TO ACCURATELY AND PROMINENTLY CORRECT YOUR MISTAKES AND YOUR AGENDA DRIVEN BIASES CONTRIBUTE TO THIS CORROSIVE ENVIRONMENT. ALL OF THESE CHALLENGES COMBINED CREATE A MEDIA ENVIRONMENT THAT DOES A TREMENDOUS DISSERVICE TO AMERICA.

Never were truer words spoken.

Such things remind me of how society as reflected by the mainstream media at it’s worst finds people to use as a scapegoat to sacrifice to the god of distractions. Late last week as an example that naive fraud Wei Chen agreed heartedly on CBC radio Ontario that “we’ll see how the economists like it when they are laid off as the world unites to have one main Bank to set monetary policy.” - in reference to an economist explaining the grim realities of cheap foreign labor when yet another Windsor Ontario car plant laid off people.

“The Republic has no need of geniuses,” stated a self-important and wholly ignorant judge during the sentencing and death of the scientist Antoine Lavoisier, at a time in France when genius’ and good men were needed more than ever.

The starknesss that society doesn’t need people pointing out the truth as much as it may hurt is plainly laid before us. What they really want and need is someone to blame… and quickly.

(Truth is Naked)

I firmly believe that both the mainstream media (MSM) especially CBC, as well as most socialists would rather see Iraq (and Afghanistan) a destroyed smoking heap than for the Americans to have any success there. That’s how selfish they are.

(The twisted irony is that Socialists more than any other group of people seem to have all the traits of the Seven Deadly Sins)

Whether the invasion was right or wrong, at this moment in life it is what it is.

The real question is now what? Leave when people are most vulnerable and your job is half done?

More news from yet another independent journalist Michael Totten, that you will never hear from the biased MSM. Ramadi in Anbar province was one of the worst places in Iraq and possibly on the planet. Literally the people of the entire city were terrorised and blown to bits by Al Quaeda simply for the benefit of the cameras of the Mainstream Media. Now that the surge is working and the city has been intelligently turned and the people are on the side of sanity things have cleaned up. No attacks in 81 days. The city is boring and the MSM is nowhere to be found.

Violence has declined so sharply in Ramadi that few journalists bother to visit these days. It’s “boring,” most say, and it’s hard to get a story out there – especially for daily news reporters who need fresh scoops every day. Unlike most journalists, I am not a slave to the daily news grind and took the time to embed with the Army and Marines in late summer.

…

“We have one Iraqi lieutenant here who speaks pretty good English,” Marine Lieutenant Jonathan Welch told me. “You should talk to him. He has a sarcastic sense of humor and a really interesting point of view.”

“That would be terrific,” I said. “Can you introduce me to him?”

He went to find the lieutenant, but came back with bad news.

“He won’t talk to you,” he said. “Apparently some reporters recently spent a few days with him and his men. They wrote an agenda-driven story with a few quotes yanked out of context. He said the story was a total lie and that he refuses to have anything to do with the media.”

I heard complaints of that sort about the media every day from American Soldiers and Marines, but this was the first time I had heard it, albeit indirectly, from an Arab Iraqi.

Totten’s report is worth reading. Unbiased reporting is hard to find and thanks to the internet, the power of blogs, and the power of individual private donation we have real reporting.

I was greeted by friendly Iraqis in the streets of Baghdad every day, but the atmosphere in Ramadi was different. I am not exaggerating in the least when I describe their attitude toward Americans as euphoric.

Grown Iraqi men hugged American Soldiers and Marines.

…

Ramadi has changed so drastically from the terrorist-infested pit that it was as recently as April 2007 that I could hardly believe what I saw was real. The sheer joy on the faces of these Iraqis was unmistakable. They weren’t sullen in the least, and it was pretty obvious that they were not just pretending to be friendly or going through the hospitality motions.

…

The Iraqis of Anbar Province turned against Al Qaeda and sided with the Americans in large part because Al Qaeda proved to be far more vicious than advertised. But it’s also because sustained contact with the American military – even in an explosively violent combat zone –convinced these Iraqis that Americans are very different people from what they had been led to believe. They finally figured out that the Americans truly want to help and are not there to oppress them or steal from them. And the Americans slowly learned how Iraqi culture works and how to blend in rather than barge in.

Finally this exerpt I found especially profound:

“We’re learning to use local conflict resolution strategies,” said Colonel John Charlton. “Living with Iraqis every day helps us understand local culture. We’ve actually become attached to these people on a personal level. We feel responsible for their safety. We’re concerned about what will happen to our Iraqi friends if we don’t succeed in this country.”

I heard quite a number of Soldiers and Marines express the same sentiment. Whether it’s true or it isn’t, and whether it’s supposed to be this way or not, sometimes I sensed they feel like they’re fighting for Iraqis more than they feel they are fighting for Americans.  

When one considers exactly how little most of the socialists on campus at either of my universities actually contributed to the lives of others, it is a tiny list indeed. In fact out of all the folks on this planet I meet, socialist are the most selfish people of all. I’ll say it out loud but many people feel the same way.

(This is how socialists truly feel. Greed Jealousy…)

(As Promised, Monthly Blog Update) 

When it comes to the market place the Government is like a fat kid on a teeter-totter. One knows which end is coming down, and its sure to be as balanced as an elephant on ice. But how do governments in a democracy become corrupted? Surely with the voting public and the vociferous media hounding them there is no way for the fat evil merchants of capitalism to stroll in and take things from the collective?

If you have a moment, I’ll tell you how it happens.

It comes from our own best intentions gone wrong.

The latest squawking to come from the Liberals is the revival of the Income Trusts issue. For those of you unaware of what the big deal about income trusts is, I’ll explain briefly. Income trusts are a method corporations use to avoid income taxes. Plain and simple, and while some people will deny this, mature corporations wouldn’t be doing it if it weren’t advantageous to them. As any accountant knows deep down inside, the more convoluted a tax system is, the more loopholes there are. It’s called Langmann’s Law which states: l=n/5, where l is number of loopholes, and n is the number of tax legislative sections or something.

And seriously though, as economist James R. Hines points out, the more government attempts to fix tax loopholes, the more they actually encourage the implementation of new loopholes. This is one of the main reasons the old Reform Party of Canada proposed a flat personal and corporate income tax with your only deduction being your children and the basic personal exemption.

Anyhow, in case anyone didn’t notice, the Conservative government did the unthinkable late last year by taxing Income Trusts and thus slamming the lid down on this particular avoidance strategy. They did this against the promise of not doing this, which is a clear violation and a shameful act. I personally am not completely against governments changing their promises based upon new evidence as long as they were sincere in their previous promise, that the new evidence is decisive,  that keeping a promise will result in a catastrophe, and that their decision isn’t for simple political gain. We must also bear in mind that a government which makes mistaken promises should be taken to the crucible for ineffectively analysing the data. This all being said there is nothing worse than the old Liberal strategy of promising action, not doing anything, and still promising action, ie: Kyoto.

Angry in the Great White North writes about slim shady Garth Turner (a man I mistakenly used to believe was a straight shooter even while he was burning the Conservatives from within) and his grand Canada tour railing against the Conservative actions on income trusts and how the great Liberal party will do all in its power if it gets elected to make everything better for the holders of income trusts and the corporations who created them. Angry points out several interesting flaws in Garth’s argument that the taxing of income trusts hurt seniors and instead points out that income trusts were in some cases preying on ignorant seniors.

However lets look deeper into what is going on. Garth is a member of the Canadian Parliament and within the Liberal Party of Canada’s caucus. Garth is going on a trans-Canada tour who’s theme is how the Conservatives ripped off the poor senior citizens and that we should instead vote Liberal so they can fix this tragety. The sponsor of Garth’s little anti-government tour is an organization called CAITI which is in fact made up on a number of organizations that sell income trusts. Basically what we have here is the direct efforts of a series of corporations to have a government elected that will give them a market advantage simply by setting up legislation. Your vote cast for the Liberals because you feel bad for the poor ripped off seniors is how they get you to vote for their personal advantage.

That is, folks, how corruption happens.

(The Boston Tea Party - A government granted monopoly to the British East India Company culminated to this famous riot, provided evidence for the new liberal philosophy of the proper role of government and created the U.S.A. under a constitution which was supposed to protect people from the government itself)

Milton Friedman used to use the Interstate Commerce Commission as an example of how the government tries to act in the best interests and protect citizens by setting up regulatory bodies but those same bodies end up becoming a direct method corporations use to lobby governments into giving them specific entitlements to markets.

In economics this is known as regulatory capture. In Canada we have several such groups, the Canadian Wheat Board is one currently in the news as the Conservatives try and end that bloated travesty.

How does one prevent regulatory capture of a market? Simple. Define property rights and then stay out of a market no matter how tempting it is. In the case of taxes, a simple flat tax is the best way to prevent loopholes and provide equality.

Update:

I few times I have hinted at ways to responsibly help out other people while not relying on either government ineptitude and/or corporate foundations that steal most of your donated money to pay for employees, computers, or glossy pamphlets. I’d like to point your attention to a non-profit organization I think appears to be doing the kind of giving a libertarian can only dream of.

Kiva.org is a website at which you can set up private loans to other people in third world countries who are trying to better their lives by working and being entrepreneurs. All of your donated money goes directly to the borrower. You can also make a small donation to Kiva to keep them running but its not compulsory. The money gets transferred to a private bank in the borrower’s country. They then pay you back over a period of set time.

So far this looks to be on the up and up. Recently they have been covered by bloggers and media. I have tried it out and I’ll see how it goes. Let’s hope this works out.

Why is Kiva responsible giving? Because you are helping someone become self sufficient and they are paying you back. You’re also watching the borrower’s report to make sure that your investment is being used for what it was meant for. The worst kind of subsidy is one that never gets paid back.

There are some potentially valid reasons to buy a Prius or some other hybrid, but saving the world from the hordes of evil CO2 isn’t one of them. But hey, most of the educated people out there aren’t suprised.

Once again yet another group has come out with a study showing that the vaunted Prius uses more energy over it’s lifetime than the gas guzzling Hummer. CNW Marketing Research has produced a “dust to dust” study demonstrating that overall the Prius has an energy-cost average of $3.25 per lifetime mile vs. the Hummer with one of $1.95. Mostly the added environmental damage is from the production of the Prius’ batteries and transport of said product. The other thing that CNW noticed is that people aren’t using the Prius that long before it’s thrown out, hence a lot of fossil fuels has gone into the production of a vehicle that isn’t being well used.

(For those of you who think that the only good carbon is dead carbon, the only thing that will bog a Hummer down is taxes.)

Now, like any economist or other scientist, I can state this as a certainty because I’ve done computer modelling: almost any conclusion can be reached by the construction of a model. (Tell that to the global warming gang). All one has to do is make sure that one adds the variables that will in theory support one’s hypothesis and make up excuses why to leave out the variables that will not. The debate on whether the hybrid is an environmental benefit or boondoggle will rage on and on.

My real suspicion is that if the Hummer and Prius are fairly close on the environmental scale of damage, and one can argue back and forth on this, the fuel efficient and economical cars like the Corolla and Civic must be much better than a Prius.

(Update) Looking at more evidence I’m likely still better off buying the conventional car for quite a while. Lave and MacLean conclude that the benefit from the Prius over the Corolla is negligible especially when considering the costs of production. Lave’s previous work has agreed with he CNW that indeed the production of hybrids results in higher environmental stress than conventional cars, and indeed have only tiny effects on ozone production and yet have increased environmental effects due to battery materials.

Of course Al Goreacle and the Suzuki will continue to push the hybrid on us, regardless, but won’t actually use them to get to their big-expensive speaking engagements.

Anyhow why am I going on about some old news? It only took our friendly Globe and Mail writer Neil Reynolds about two lines to twist this story into yet another anti-Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) story where of course it’s all Stephen Harper, Jim Flaherty, and probably George W Bush’s fault too if you look hard enough. (This is yet another one of those times where Dick “The Dick” Cheney may or may not be at fault, but let me remind you that the Laffer curve we discussed in this post earlier was his fault.) 

Now Neil Reynolds has a very interesting biography, been everything from an NDPer to a Libertarian, has run a variety of newspapers and is very vociferous on his outlook that small government, low taxes, and person freedom are the best way to go and on that I couldn’t agree more. However as he once said about working at the Toronto Star that he isn’t above going with the accepted way of things:

People know all newspapers have biases. Some people read us because they don’t agree with our bias. They get a provocative charge out of being told they’re wrong … I worked at the Toronto Star for eight years, and they were the biggest spinners of all. They had a written policy that ‘everything [Liberal finance minister] Walter Gordon does is front page news.’ I didn’t agree with Gordon, but I followed the policy anyways, with a clear conscience. Everyone knew it was a left-wing rag, and we called it PRAVDA, affectionately. But it was a great crusader, and the best-selling daily in the country.

And the way of things is CPC bashing. In his column he writes that Jim Flaherty was mistaken in giving tax breaks for fuel efficient cars and increased taxes on fuel guzzlers.

In his March budget, Mr. Flaherty made fuel efficiency - gas mileage alone - the sole basis for the environmental rating of new cars. He will reward high-mileage cars (with rebates from $1,000 to $2,000) and punish low-mileage cars (with surcharges from $1,000 to $4,000). The program could well be a phenomenal waste of energy. Junk it, Mr. Flaherty. It’s not fit for the road.

Now before all you socialist huggers out there get too excited and start waving placards about yet another frothing trashing of the CPC, lets not forget that Reynolds has a way of being facetious which doesn’t necessarily mean he’s on your side. In fact who really knows what he means, one of his previous suggestions has been to cut the GST on any new car since they are in general more fuel efficient. Probably because he reached the same conclusions I did.

However if there is one thing Reynolds admits to knowing is which way the bandwagon is headed and how to get on. So it’s likely his editors at the G&M were ecstatic with his implications regarding the CPC because the media will continue to lap up anything that windbags with no credibility like the Suzuki and Al Gore will say and yet neglect to do any real research of their own. 

For example, Stephane Dion can recycle some old wine glasses and to the media he’s the greenest guy since Kermit the Frog, yet Flaherty can implement some Suzuki Foundation suggestion and he’s the Genghis Khan of the Greenhouse Gas Horde.

Anyhow the real reason the Hybrid may be better for us all really has nothing to do with CO2. Instead it may, and this is a may, help reduce smog in cities that has been linked to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases in suseptible people as well as cancers. Even the evidence for this is still in some ways weak, but its out there and probably a lot more reliable and relevant than the media-hyped science on CO2. Yet can we get a peep out of them on this? When the CPC announced they were targeting smog as a health issue, the media was speechless. It was like watching an episode of the Simpsons when Homer is told the implications of something and he just blinks a couple times with a blank look on his face. Yet say the word Global Warming and they’ll lead the charge to Jerusalem.

(The War on Greenhouse Gasses is the New Crusade and Global Warming is the New Religion)

So if you’re going to drive a hybrid, it should be because you’re trying to save lil’ Johnny from yet another asthma episode and subsequently another visit to me. If you think you’re any better than the dude in the Hummer that just passed you, think again. You, my friend, are the one making the planet hotter.

Maybe.

Today’s Three points:

1) The fuel efficient cars are likely your best bet if you want to save the world.

2) No matter what the CPC does, according to the media it will always be wrong.

3) The Prius and other hybrids are a good idea in theory because they may reduce the harmful local effects of combustion engine emissions on lung and heart disease, not because they reduce CO2.

Some more good news below which you won’t hear on CBC but first I must rant.

Imagine if you told your friend you’d help him fix his car, took apart his car, and then buggered off to the beach leaving the bits of car lying around the yard because you got tired. 

I am generally not in favor of going into other countries and trying to fix things since in the long run its probably a waste of money, may not be wanted by the people themselves, in the long run may lead to dependency (Africa?), and there may be some legitimacy in the argument of where does an intervention begin or end?

Take up the White Man’s burden–
The savage wars of peace–
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

-Rudyard Kipling

That being said we have a moral obligation to Afghanistan now that we went in and took it apart. The same way our cousins to the south have an obligation to Iraq.

(Occasionally some people take a moral stand regardless of the risk of death and make things better for everyone, like Martin Luther here. This event at the Diet of Worms produced woodcuts for rapid duplication and distribution of the “Here I Stand” message on a primitive press by the forebearers of our current media [I discuss them previously here]. Even back then the media sensationalizes as the “Here I Stand” quote was simply a reduction of Luther’s speech and never actually stated.)

The media have done a bang up job of correctly counting the number of poor individuals who have died or been seriously injured during our time in Afghanistan. What they haven’t done is do a decent jop of speaking about how things have changed. But really what do you expect when the leading story is a helicopter crash between two news-copters following a mundane car chase? 

Personally I cannot remember the last time I watched CTV or CBC for news on Afghanistan or Iraq, its a big waste of my time. All they report is the big explosions, and the terrorists/criminals know this and it encourages them to try and outdo their previous body counts. Luckily the people in Iraq and Afghanistan appear to be turning on criminal groups like Al Queda (Bin Laden was first and foremost a drug smuggler making up to billions selling opium). Intelligent people predicted that the citizens and militia would turn on Al Queda and other criminal elements because most sane people don’t like seeing their friends and children getting blown to tiny bits every day. Moreover it appears good rule of law applied equally and unbiased is something third world people appreciated which is why they come to tribe America or Canada vs their own corrupt or ineffective police when they have a problem. In fact according to Michael Yon, an indie who was the first to report that there was a civil war brewing in Iraq, the “Surge” is actually working.

The number of other people in North America who feel this way about the media is likely increasing as well, since the popularity of and viability through private donation to independent journalists seems to be increasing. I routinely check the sites of several, and have donated to them as well. What makes these independents interesting and credible is that they are devoted to telling a detailed and comprehensive story by embedding themselves for up to months or even years in the actual event they are covering instead of the fly-by-night reporting of, say, Associated Press. For those who aren’t familiar with some of these independent journalists (indie) I’ll list some of my favorites, and I invite you to check them out:

• Michael Yon (I linked some of my favorite recent threads above.)
• Bill Roggio
• Michael J. Totten
• Omar and Mohammed

Anyhow I got this tid-bit in my email bin today, some people may enjoy hearing some more good news. Either way, its evident that if Jack Layton were leading Canada instead of Stephen Harper this good new wouldn’t be happening.

Substantial Improvements Achieved in Afghanistan’s Health Sector

Results from assessments conducted by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Indian Institute of Health Management Research show substantial improvements in the health status of the people of Afghanistan after decades of conflict. From 2004 to 2006, the health system has shown improvement for many key measures in a majority of provinces. These results demonstrate that improvements in health service delivery have been achieved across the country in a short period of time, according to the researchers. The results from the assessments were presented to the Ministry of Public Health in June.

“The delivery of public health service is improving steadily in Afghanistan as the Ministry of Public Health makes progress towards meeting its goals,” said principal investigator Gilbert Burnham, MD, professor of international health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health and director of the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response. “Despite these gains, health facilities in Afghanistan have room for improvement in several areas.”

The researchers utilized the Balanced Scorecard—a tool designed to rapidly measure key components of basic health services—to measure and manage public health services countrywide.

For 2006, the Afghanistan Health Sector Balanced Scorecard showed continued performance improvements in health facilities across the country. Driving these advances were increased availability of essential drugs and family planning supplies, improved quality of patient care, increased provision of antenatal care to pregnant women, upgraded skills among health workers, increases in the number of female health workers providing care throughout the country and relatively high levels of patient satisfaction.

According to the 2006 assessment, more female patients than male patients used outpatient services, and the poor were more likely to use public sector services than the non-poor, which is in line with the Ministry of Public Health’s stated goal for equitable health care. Additionally, household surveys implemented by researchers from Johns Hopkins and the Indian Institute of Health Management Research in late 2006 estimated that of every 1,000 children born in Afghanistan, on average 129 die in the first year of life (infant mortality rate) and 191 die before reaching the age of five years (under 5 mortality rate). The surveys covered more than 8,200 households in rural areas in 29 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. Previous estimates from UNICEF for the year 2000 place the infant mortality rate in Afghanistan at 165 per one thousand live births and the under 5 mortality rate at 257 per one thousand live births.

The percentage of women in rural Afghanistan receiving antenatal care during pregnancy from a skilled provider increased from an estimated 4.6 in 2003 to 32.2 in 2006. Over the same time period, the percentage of women in rural Afghanistan who had a doctor, nurse or midwife assist with their last delivery increased from 6.0 to 18.9.

More children are receiving vital childhood immunizations, according to the assessments. The percentage of children 12-23 months of age in rural Afghanistan who received the BCG vaccine to protect against tuberculosis increased from an estimated 56.5 in 2003 to 70.2 in 2006. The percentage of children 12-23 months of age in rural Afghanistan who received the full dosage of oral polio vaccine increased to 69.7 in 2006, from 29.9 in 2003.

The researchers found improvement was needed in the management of tuberculosis treatment, laboratory services, reaching women for care during pregnancy and delivery, and health workers spending a sufficient amount of time with each patient.

“While deaths of infants and children under age five in Afghanistan remain high and the level of coverage of health services is still below the ideal, these results indicate that substantial progress has been made in improving the health of the people of Afghanistan since 2003,” said Burnham.

The assessments were funded by the Ministry of Public Health through grants from the World Bank.

Public Affairs media contacts for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of
Public Health: Tim Parsons or Kenna Lowe at 410-955-6878 or paffairs@jhsph.edu.

Sounds like its the perfect time to cut and run right?

(For SDA visitors the video link is here) 

When the tragety at Virginia Tech broke out, so to did the hypocrites in their rush to politicize what is really a rare event. An event all first world countries have faced from Sweden to Italy, Canada to the USA.

Guns, they tell us, should be banned.

The problem is that there is no proof that banning guns accomplishes anything (other than possibly harming people). Studies have examined  rates of gun associated crimes between US States that allow carry and conceal vs. States that have strict gun control and find, on average, no difference. There are some criminologists who demonstrate that indeed the carry and conceal States have lower violent crime rates due presumeably to the deterrent of an armed woman while other criminologists argue that the evidence concludes otherwise. In the end my examination of the studies leaves me with the conclusion that there is no proof either way.

Liberals have lost their way on the route of classical liberalism, the philosophy that founded the USA, argueably the most inspirational nation for those great minds who in the 18th to 20th century deemed human rights the moral pursuit of humanity. The tyranny of the state has instead ambushed this moral journey and the old philosophy once mandated by the very people liberals sought to supplant still reigns. The state knows better than the individual.

(Its been a long time since politicians like these were bred.)

Recently self serving frauds like Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and Toronto Mayor David Miller have started calling for handgun bans. Outright bans that is. To possess a legal handgun in Canada is an intense process of which I will not delve into here, but one can easily find information on the procedure. In essense the process is as next to a ban as one can get. McGuinty and Miller are adept at diverting the issue from the real problem: criminality, for which they lack all vision and direction. What is worse, for a politician to say, “I have no solutions for this issue” or to construct a diversion? The media should be all over that type of behaviour - but they aren’t.

What simpler political process is there than to find a rather defenseless scapegoat and legislate a maze of bureaucratic laws for which to point to at the end of the day when you have to explain to the numb public all the work you and your politico hacks have been doing. Nothing looks better than a thick pile of laws to these guys. And it is simply too easy for the media to find numerous ivory tower think-heads to put on TV to repeat the government’s enlightened thinking.

Which brings us to today’s point, the Media and its Hypocrisy. From the days of the first printing press, which enabled commen men to cheaply  print and widely broadcast their own philosophy to a large audience, the founders of journalism have never been said to be unbiased. The opposite, in fact, was expected. Many political parties in the blossoming democracies of Britain, France and the United States long had ties with particular pamphleteers and newspapers for which they could expect favourable exhaltations.

�
(The Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf whereinto England is like to be Swallowed by another French Marriage. 1579. This pamphlet published by John Stubbs cost him his writing hand by decree of Elizabeth I. However it can be said that in the days of the all powerful monarch, the ability to sway large numbers of the public with cheap pamphlets lead to the spread of the ideals of democracy. One writing hand at a time.)

In the 20th century the new schools of journalism started to establish ethical guidelines for integrity in journalism. These involved the lofty ideals of unbiased reporting, covering all sides of an issue, facts based reporting and facts validation, refraining from personal opinion, and refraining from ambush style tactics. Remarkeably like most intelligent ideas, these caught on without requiring any silly laws from the government.

So it is with chagrin, but with no degree of suprise that I see the current mainstream media in Canada, such as CBC and CTV, attempt to “instruct” the rest of us with their “progressive” ideas - ideas garnered from the ivory tower of universities where people with degrees in ecology and biochemistry seem to know more about economic theory, and foreign relations than they do about their own subjects of study*. Sadly, it seems, the mainstream media will even stoop to lying in order to spread their ideas.  In fact they become quite savage when their progressive leftist ideas are challenged.

You see time and time again you’ll hear them on CBC and CTV moan on about how same sex marriage is nobody else’s business (I agree) and that we shouldn’t be telling others how to behave or what to do, ie: abortion. Yet the hypocrites, with one sniff of someone wanting to collect handguns or big trucks will suddenly fly into a self-righteous rage. The same kind of rage they mock when it comes from a Catholic right winger railing against abortion or cloning.

Because when it comes down to it CBC and CTV know best what’s good for the rest of us. Sadly I’ve seen the media ramp up its efforts in this direction in regards to almost any political issue. There is no integrity anymore. One of the worst transgressors is Jane Taber of CTV (#24 of the 101 people who are ruining Canada) who regularly inserts her own opinion when moderating a political panel on Question Period. Still the number of schlocks that are not experts who make it onto the newswaves such as Bono, Gore, or Suzuki (all true hypocrites, check out Suzuki’s stink here) compared to the people who may actually know what they are talking about amazes me.

Stockwell Day must have rued the moment he tried to out-media the media and instead got avalanched like a brontosaurus in a mud-slide. It appeared that the only direction Day was going was extinction, his memory simply another fossil in the evolution of Canadian politics. The media hates Day, because he represents the very opposite of what they self-righteously pat themselves on the back all day for. He is against abortion and cloning, he believes in creation, he calls terrorists: “terrorists” instead of “militants”, and Stock thinks the Firearms Registry is a waste of money. Incredibly Day has turned out to be a very competent minister.

(Hey is that thing burning those mythical fossils? Look at the Greenhouse Gasses this guy wastes.)

So when asked once again by McGuinty and Miller to “ban handguns”, Day correctly points out that the increased control of firearms in Britain has not lead to a decrease in criminality and gun crime. In fact other than one sole year, gun crime has increased. Day is pounded in the media for this statement. The Toronto Star states, “Day’s statements, however, don’t appear to match with the facts.” Unfortunately for the Star, Day’s facts garnered from the UK Home Office are correct and it appears that the Toronto Star just decided to not read the full report. Instead they prefer to insert their own bias into the story, and an evident bias it truly is. Day proves that even though he is a Jesus loving Texas North freak, he still can read his letters better than any Toronto Yankee.

However nothing is worse than this pathetic media harrassment of a young Asian man in Virginia called Wayne Chiang who happens to have some resemblence to the psychopath that did the Virginia Tech massacre. The only resemblence I can find is that the two men were both “Asian”** and they both have guns. Basically this guy gets harrassed and stalked by a bunch of internet warriors because they mistake him for the Virginia shooter. Geraldo picks up the story and ambushes him on air. Soon like the second class stepchild that they are, CTV runs the story and Paula Todd makes a complete fool of herself on air by mocking Mr. Chiang. 

In particular, CTV makes a mistake and accidently broadcasts the off-air discussion between Todd and her crew where she calls Mr. Chiang a “freak”. Her moral superiority just stinks, but it affirms what I originally thought when I saw the interview for the first time: she was mocking Mr. Chiang on air and attempting to make him look stupid and even dangerous. In particular two questions she asks sum up the mentality of the ivory tower today.

“What is your most {…} efficient weapon?” She asks. What does she mean here I wondered? The most efficient for killing people or perhaps she’s wondering which one produces the least Greenhouse Gas output.

and

“Do you know as many people in your age group with as many weapons as you have?” She wonders. Mr. Chiang does know many, probably because he is a member of a gun club and a collector.

Paula Todd simply appears to want Mr. Chiang to apologize for owning guns. It appears the intelligent young man even picks up on her subtleties in the interview. Overall Mr. Chiang presents himself in the interview as an articulate, intelligent, and law-abiding human being. He is no more a freak than anyone else with a hobby. Are his interests worth less than mine or yours? I wonder.

Todd presents herself as an arrogant elitist. In fact when she gets off-air with Breslin her fawning college-girl behaviour is absurd. She perfectly fits the stereotype of the ignorant anchorperson. Something which should be beneath her considering her education. She should be interested in facts.

Mr. Chiang’s story is best described by himself on his own blog, here.

The worst part of this whole debacle is when CTV airs a slideshow of the Virginia Tech shooter which includes pictures of Mr. Chiang amongst those of the murderer. Talk about a smear.

Now watch the three videos (you’ll have to download them because of bandwidth issues):

The Interview where Mr. Chiang gets ambushed

The off air discussion where Paula Todd calls Mr. Chiang a freak

The Slideshow

(Please note the off-air discussion has been banned from YouTube by CTV. I found a link to the file.)

So what other confabulations have the mainstream media been responsible for? What agenda are they pushing? The regretable part of this story is that most people come home from work tired and dump themselves in front of the TV and ask no questions as they absorb the slop from the dirty trough.

And perhaps it will be the internet that saves us from tyranny much like the pamphleteers of old with their cheap media were able to usurp Kings, sway public policy, and teach others to question the implied truth and seek the undeniable facts.

(Is this Grail the Truth or a Legend?)

* If I had a dollar for every time I heard a flower child studing the mating habits of Polar Bears tell me the intricate details behind labour theory and cost accounting and the effects of globalization on market share I’d be a rich man and wouldn’t need to join the Canadian union of old economists who became doctors.

**Whatever Asian really is, is a mystery to me because they’re all as different as a Pole is from a Scot when it comes down to it but still the equalization bean counters like to put them in that slot if they come from somewhere east of Russia and West of the USA.