The Gods of the Copybook Headings

Love For Sale

Old love / new love / anything but true love....

The two most marketable ministers are Charles Sousa, the minister of finance, and Eric Hoskins, who helms the province’s $52-billion health care budget. Both are expected to bring in as much as $500,000 a year, well-placed sources have confirmed.

Sousa’s control of the provincial treasury, tax policy and auto insurance makes him a prime target for lobbyists in the banking and insurance industries. But Hoskins is also in high demand because of his regulatory authority over drug companies and nursing home conglomerates.

That’s why Hoskins was the big draw for the Ontario Long Term Care Association at an event organized with the Liberal Fund last year, which offered “an unprecedented opportunity only for OLTCA members” where they could “discuss the sector with the minister, up close and personal.”

Hoskins defends his interactions with such interest groups, describing it as “an important way, I think for Ontarians to participate in the democratic process.” Asked directly about his annual target assigned by the party, Hoskins chose his words carefully: “I do my best to contribute to the party — I think that’s what I’m prepared to say about it.”

There are Hamilton mobsters with a greater subtlety of manner. There are also few gangsters quite so cynical as to use the phrase "participate in the democratic process" about something so inherently undemocratic. The Liberal Party treats the English language in much the same way a drunken sailor treats a Marseilles whore. I would describe this sort of behaviour as influence peddling, however actual influence peddlers aren't so fantastically brazen.

So long as there have been governments there have been people trying to manipulate those who administer the functions of the state. Most sensible political leaders understand that this behaviour - while often unavoidable - is incredibly unjust and a veil of discretion is necessary. By definition governments screw over ordinary people. Thing is that the clever governments try to make it seem as if they're not screwing over the ordinary man or woman. That tiny pretense has been entirely dropped by the Ontario Liberals. They are so arrogantly corrupt they no longer care who knows it. 

The above article isn't taken from the National Post - which does little investigative journalism anymore - or the Toronto Sun, but the Toronto Star. When a Liberal government comes under fire from the Red Star you know things have past a certain point. In a healthy democracy the Wynnesters would be on their way out. But this is Ontario and very sadly it's 2016.

Even back when Leslie Frost was running the province - in that dark epoch known as the 1950s - it was understood that many of his ministers were a tad corrupt. Nothing on the scale of the McGuinty-Wynne Liberals, the provincial government hadn't grown to its current Leviathan proportions in those days. Yet the voters of Ontario returned Mr Frost three times with a majority, the only Premier to have accomplished such a feat since the days of Oliver Mowatt. The electorate then understood that most politicians are crooks, but if the guy at the top was basically honest and competent he'd keep his fellow crooks in line. That logic collapses before the withered visage of Kathleen Wynne. Here is a leader so corrupt she urges her subordinates to ever greater heights of blatant corruption. 

Holding a corrupt government to account is easy enough: Throw the Bums Out. This is a time honoured tradition in Canada. Even John A was tossed out of power because the voters thought he was a bum after the Pacific Scandal. Having a cat's wits and nine lives the drunken wizard of Kingston had returned to the voters good graces by the time of the next election. Thing is that the voters of modern Ontario have lost the instinct to punish corrupt governments. There was more than enough evidence in 2007 that the McGuinty Liberals were rotten to the core. Yet they won. And then again in 2011 and 2014. The last time around the stench was so obvious other parts of the country were beginning to notice. It didn't matter.

A key component of effective democratic governments is the idea that the people are more honest than those who govern them. I don't think that holds any longer in Ontario. A critical mass of the electorate is at least as corrupt as the Liberals. They are fine with voting in corrupt bastards because they're convince they'll personally benefit from such corruption. This is why recent polls indicating that Kathleen Wynne has only a 20% approval rating are meaningless. Come 2018 the Wicked Witch of Queen's Park will make her usual pitch: The Tories are rich racists who'll take away all your free stuff. The barely sentient mannequin the Tories will be running in 2018 - John Hudak Brown I believe is his name - will effortless fall into the various traps laid by the Liberals and lose pathetically for the fifth time in a row. 

Mencken observed that people get the governments they deserve. The people of Ontario are about to get it good and hard. 

 

 

The Burkini Comes to Britain

Venerable British retailer Marks & Spencer surrenders to Islamism:

It is the Islamic swimwear range with a little extra “magic and sparkle”.

In a sign of the growing diversity of Britain’s shoppers, Marks and Spencer has put the burkini on shelves in England.

The burkini - designed to adhere to strict modesty standards - made headlines when donned by Nigella Lawson on a beach holiday five years ago as protection from sunburn.

The M&S version, which promises to cover the whole body “without compromising on style”, has already proved popular in branches in Dubai and Libya, where it has been on sale for three years.

Never in British history has subjugation been so fashionable.

Nigella Lawson - daughter of former Thatcher-era cabinet minister Nigel Lawson - wore a burkini in Australia a few years ago in order to avoid getting a tan. She had purchased the garment at a small London-based firm. The stocking of the burkini by Marks & Spencer - a major retailer roughly comparable to the Hudson's Bay Company in Canada - is an altogether more ominous sign. It seems very unlikely that M&S is targeting the burkini at sun-shy British TV presenters of a certain age. This 130 year old symbol of British retailing - in some parts of the world synonymous with Britishness itself - has seen the future of British fashion and that future is Islamist.  

If a dystopian novel had been written a decade ago - perhaps by some brave, politically incorrect writer - predicting the rise of an Islamist threat to Europe he might very well have used the above story as a plot point. The very idea would have been scoffed at by knowing reviewers. A burkini at Marks & Spencer! Pure fear mongering on the part of a racist writer afraid of a little healthy diversity! Yet this too has come to pass...

The burqa and its various iterations have nothing to do with race and little to do with religion. As First and Second Wave feminists understood very well - though their alleged intellectual successors fail to grasp - there is nothing that terrifies the authoritarian mind so much as a liberated woman. The burqa is not some cultural eccentricity, it is the manifestation of a dictatorial mindset that is antithetical to the culture of a free society. It has all the subtlety and charm of a bundle of fasces being paraded down the street by black shirted men, with the notable contrast that Mussolini's thugs were never as misogynistic as modern day Islamists.   

 

Please Don't Think I'm Racist...

Patrick Brown surrenders to the Laurentian Elites:

“(It’s) important to have this pause and understand where mistakes have been made so we can go into the future with a sense of conviction that we’re on the right path. My sense, showing up to probably about 1,000 cultural events in the last year in the GTA, is that if we do not defend minority communities of every religion, of every race, then every other cultural group will say: are we next?” he told the crowd.

“I think we lost our way when we did not say that unequivocally. I think there were mistakes made, and I think we have to learn from that.”

As both his and Jason Kenney’s persistent outreach to different ethnic communities have proved, Brown added, many ethnic minorities share Conservative values. But the party went “too far” with its niqab rhetoric during the federal election campaign.

Which begs an obvious question: What is "too far" in the mind of the Ontario Tory leader? 

The decision of the federal Conservatives to bring up the issue of the niqab - very late in the campaign as they were trailing the Liberals - was deeply opportunistic. As late as October 6th, Stephen Harper was musing about banning the niqab in the public service. Whatever the merits of such a policy it's hard to imagine the Prime Minister wasn't more than a little desperate to energize his base ahead the Tories' impending defeat. 

The question of the niqab goes far beyond a single election and the fate of a single prime minister. Governments come and go. We have had 42 Parliaments in the history of Canada. This passing political parade is dust in the balance. What matters is the culture of the nation. What matters is whether those who live in the country we call Canada believe in the broad civic values upon which the nation was built. The question is indeed one of tolerance. Unfortunately the word tolerance has lost its meaning down the generations.

One of the Canada's national character traits is tolerance. Other nations define themselves along narrowly religious, ethnic or nationalistic lines. Canada could never have defined itself in such a way. Even in 1867 we were a polyglot nation, a composite of English, French, Scottish, Irish, Welch and the various aboriginal cultures. Our particular belief in tolerance - the tolerance what would have been understood by John A Macdonald, Wilfrid Laurier and John Diefenbaker - was a tolerance for differences of race, language and religion. It was an ideal we didn't always adhere to. Nevertheless it was our ideal. It was the ideal that motivated Robert Baldwin and Hippolyte Lafontaine to fight for responsible government in defiance of their different ethnic and religious backgrounds. It was an ideal recited almost as a catechism in the government broadcasts and newspaper editorials during both world wars. It was an ideal that our modern Laurentian Elite have comprehensively abandoned.

While Canada has tolerated differences of cultural identity, it has until quite recently never tolerated differences of fundamental values. More pavilions at Folkfest were a welcome addition to the sights, sounds and perspectives of being Canadian. It was also understood implicitly that whatever the ethnic dance or foreign tongue, your loyalty was to Canada. The Canada to which they pledged allegiance was a parliamentary democracy "with a Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom." It was nation in which freedom was our nationality, a freedom understood to rest upon the natural rights of the individual and a market based economy. It was nation to which freedom of speech, the right to bear arms and the right to due process upon traditional British lines was taken for granted. A nation that was the direct product of a thousand years of more or less peaceful constitutional development.

This was a history, these were the values imparted in school rooms across the country for more than a century. Yes that Canada was a more bigoted place than the Canada of today. So was every other place on earth. In the dark annals of racial discrimination Canada merits at worst a passing mention. Today in much of the developing world crimes far greater in extent and severity are committed daily than ever occurred in the whole of Canadian history. Those who seek to discredit our past by selective recollection of our sins are ignoring the authentic identity of Canada. 

This bring us back to the niqab. I don't believe that it is proper function of the government to dictate the dress and peaceful conduct of private citizens. I do believe that citizens of a free nation have a right to denounce threats to our freedom, whether they be from an overweening government or from a pernicious systems of belief. The niqab is not a charming cultural custom, a manner of dress little different in substance from a Ukrainian vyshyvanka or Indian sari. It is a statement of values. To tolerate the niqab is not to express tolerance for a comparatively trivial difference of custom, it is to tolerate a profound rejection of the values of a free society. It is a cultural declaration of war on the dignity and integrity of the individual that rests at the heart of Canadian identity. 

The federal Conservatives didn't go "too far" in the last election. Instead they failed utterly to identify the essential issue posed by the niqab. Patrick Brown would remedy their failure by grovelling toward the gods of the political correctness. Appeasing your enemies is a poor way to win an election. It's an excellent way to surrender a national culture. 

  

And All Must Have Subsidies

Trudeaupia 2.0 is putting the crony back into capitalism:

If the federal government bails out Quebec-based aerospace giant Bombardier with a financial aid package, Manitobans will expect financial help for more than 400 workers who were laid off by aircraft maintenance company Aveos in Winnipeg in 2012, say Manitoba Liberal MPs.

“There’s a strong group of Liberal MPs who will fight for our aerospace industry, and that means whether it’s Air Canada, Bombardier, or even local companies here in Winnipeg, that we believe need to be given attention,” Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux (Winnipeg North, Man.) said in an interview with The Hill Times last week.

Where does it stop? The answer is never. If Quebec must be bribed to keep it's white elephant from drowning, then Manitoba must get help for its failing industries too. It won't be very long until Kathleen Wynne demands subsidies for the province's struggling manufacturers, the ones that her high energy prices have helped drive to the brink. If the Wicked Witch of Queen's Park gets her way the circle will be complete. Her policies cause certain industries to fail, those industries then seek a bail out, to pay for the bailout taxes must be raised from the productive sectors of the economy. Those sectors - now burdened with heavier taxes - will soon enough be driven to the wall. In time they too will need to be bailed out. It will be like Britain in the late 1970s. Perhaps Warren Kinsella can play London Calling as what's left of the Canadian economy sinks into oblivion. 

The Kiss of Mitt

Mitt Romney endorses Ted Cruz:

Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney will vote for Texas Senator Ted Cruz, saying he is "repulsed" by Republican front-runner Donald Trump.

Mr Romney said in a Facebook post that the only way to nominate a Republican is to have an open convention, in which party officials choose the nominee.

He campaigned with Governor John Kasich in Ohio but said voting for Mr Cruz is the only way to stop "Trumpism".

He joins other Republican leaders coalescing around Mr Cruz.

The former governor of Massachusetts has a remarkable reverse midas touch: Everything he touches turns to fail. He endorsed Marco Rubio and within days the Florida Senator was heading for the showers. He debated Barack Obama and failed to land all but the most glancing of blows. He vowed to solve the health care crisis in Massachusetts and instead provided the template for Obamacare. For a man so successful in his private sector career, Mitt Romney is remarkably tone deaf when it comes to politics. Given so unpromising a track record Ted Cruz might be better off if he declined Romney's endorsement. 

Six months ago I was marvelling at the bench strength of the Republican primary candidates. Sure the Donald was there - lurking - but he's been lurking at the edge of American politics for thirty years. Typically his Presidential campaigns were publicity stunts that would last a few weeks and then fade. Then the world's worst coiffed billionaire made some off hand remarks about illegal immigration and jumped into the polling double digits. That was enough to get some serious media attention. Being a genius of media manipulation - as well as the Western world's greatest attention whore - he provided brilliant and irresistible copy. For nearly a year now the media has been gifting one of the richest men in America an untold fortune in free publicity.

There is little point rehashing that Donald Trump is no more a conservative than I am Marie Antionette. There is even less point reminding voters that he is an amoral high grade conman with the instincts and rhetorical skills of a schoolyard bully. His electoral success is one of those head scratching moments of life that defy rational explanation. Since everyone and his uncle has tried to explain Trumpism - in much the same way Russian historians have tried to explain the influence of Rasputin on the royal court - it behooves me as an unpaid and largely ignored pundit to offer my unsolicited opinion.

Whatever Donald Trump is he is most definitely real, real in a way in which his Republican rivals fundamentally are not. His rawness is his power. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz likely decided upon the Presidency sometime between junior and senior kindergarten. Their public utterances and movements are guided by an incessant internal monologue that repeats: Stay on Message. They both worship the memory of Ronald Reagan, yet they utterly lack the great man's most effective political weapon: A natural and easy charm. 

In contrast to senators Rubio and Cruz, New York's most famous - though hardly most powerful - real estate mogul is chasing after the presidency the way most rich men chase after a better golf handicap, a pleasant hobby with little real world consequences. The Donald doesn't seem to really, really care if he loses. If he doesn't win the White House, he'll conjure up one of his impressive bits of self-rationalization and get back to building gaudy casinos and seducing women a third his age. 

That sheer insouciance is incredibly energizing to many. Forget the facts for a moment, think of it in emotional terms: Donald Trump doesn't give a damn. Thoreau famously said that the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. A man like Trump - utterly free in his thoughts and actions - is like water in the desert to such men. Like a ball capped action hero Donald Trump is doing what they've always dreamed of doing: Turing to the world and uttering a loud and unprintable profanity. 

No matter how absurd, no matter how wild and utterly irrational, Donald Trump is selling emotional release. There is no single thing that he is promising release from exactly:  Unemployment, despair, relative poverty, the intellectual straight jacket of political correctness or simply the boredom of living in the modern world. Yet there is something strangely intoxicating about a liberating yell. Gestalt therapy for the repressed modern male soul. 

You cannot reason with this kind of passion. It's a fever that must run its course and the patient nursed back to health afterwards. How long the fever lasts is unknowable. The mechanics of American politics being what they are Donald Trump is almost certainly the next Republican nominee. Mitt Romney's endorsement - a man who wouldn't know a liberating yell if it blasted out an ear drum - is the kiss of electoral death for Ted Cruz. Marco Rubio would have made - and perhaps will make - a fine President. I would have loved to see Ted Cruz break some furniture in the White House, just as he has in the Senate. These things are not in the cards this cycle.

Get your ear plugs my friends. The next few months are going to be very, very loud. 

 

Major Reservations

Guess who's still alive?

This June, the UK will vote upon whether to leave or remain in the EU. This vote will be momentous. It will decide Britain’s place in the world for generations to come.
There are many positive reasons for membership.

When we joined the EU we were the “sick man” of Europe: today, as a result of our domestic reforms and membership of the European Single Market, we have the best performing economy in Europe.

The above was written by no less a figure than former British Prime Minister John Major. Some of you may remember him as the guy between Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. Don't blame yourself if you don't. Even astute observers of British politics occasionally forget about the self-effacing interregnum that was the Major years. Sandwiched between two of the most charismatic politicians of the late 20th century, Major was a minor player in world events, a place holder while the Tories and Labour grappled with the consequences of Thatcherism.

That the former PM is pro-Europe is hardly a surprise. His leadership of the Conservatives was threatened on various occasions by rebellious eurosceptic backbenchers. At one point his majority was effectively destroyed by a large dissent block that - within months - had brought No. 10 to its knees. One has to reach back into the depths of Victorian politics to find comparable precedents. Even Edwina Currie - with whom Major had a lengthly affair - described him as a nice man though essentially unfit to serve as First Lord of the Treasury. 

With all this in mind even our more generous readers will be inclined to heavily discount Mr Major's opinions on anything, excepting of course cricket. Yet his article in the Sunday Telegraph provides an excellent summation of the flawed case against Brexit. My own views on Britain ditching the EU are quite simple: I would be delighted if Britain rejected the transnational rent seeking con game that is the European Union. Free trade deals are all well and good, failed quasi-federal states are something else entirely. If the Germans, Belgians and Italians wish to tax, welfare and regulate themselves into geriatric oblivion, please be my guest. Britain should do business with everyone but trust only its true allies: The Anglosphere. The British taught the world the virtues of capitalism. Let them return to those virtues and demonstrate their efficacy again to all those willing to learn.

This isn't to say that those who oppose Brexit are cowardly traitors who deserve to be flogged through the streets of Dover. I'm not that ruthless. There is a reasonable and pragmatic case to be made against leaving the EU. John Major gives about as good a defence as possible. That said his arguments are primarily couched in nostalgia and misassumption. Contemporary British defenders of the EU recall those hardly souls in the post-war era who murmured wistfully about the Raj and the Fall of Singapore. One Empire collapsed - mostly a tragedy - and another empire is about to collapse - mostly a comedy. 

In an uncertain world the UK, as part of the EU, is better able to face up to the aggressive policies of hostile nations. We are safer, because the EU has brought together former enemies to face common perils. In the last thousand years of history, no previous generation has been so fortunate.

It would be sheer folly to put this all at risk.

Of all the pro-EU chestnuts this is the most venerable: The EU saved Europe from another World War. The argument has a passing plausibility, so long as you forget the presence on the European continent of large numbers of heavily armed American and Soviet troops for more than forty years. How exactly was Germany going to invade anyone again when it was covered with foreign military bases and divided in two? Europeans stopped fighting because non-Europeans - Russia is neither European or Asiatic but a unique Christian culture - made sure they stopped fighting. It requires a serious leap of the imagination to believe that Brussels bureaucrats are all that stand between peace and the armies of the Fourth Reich making their way through the Ardennes. 

Consider this: as a Member State, the UK can (and does) influence European policies – often to our advantage, and sometimes simply to minimise damage to our own domestic interests. Outside, we would not be able to influence them at all. And yet, if – as a non-Member – we wish to retain access to the Single Market, we will be compelled to follow EU rules, over which we would have no influence at all. This is not only demeaning, it is a recipe for economic self-harm.

Signing any free trade deal with another country requires at least a partial surrender of sovereignty. The meshing of different labour and environmental standards; the general haggling that goes on in a modern mixed economy. Yet oddly Switzerland, Canada and other nations have struck workable and beneficial deals with Brussels. London has far more heft in Europe that either Canada or Switzerland. The EU needs the City of London desperately. Much of the continent's hi-tech innovations come from Britain. Despite being a nation of only 62 million the UK has several key advantages which - if properly wielded - will allow it negotiate a better deal out of the EU than in.

The simple fact of the EU is that the vast majority of the member states - and all the key members - are essentially statist in their economic and social outlook. Britain is significantly - if not sufficiently - market oriented by comparison. Placing a capitalist economy at the mercy of envious and bankrupt socialists is not a workable long-term strategy. For much of the continent the EU is a choke chain to restrain the horrors of "Anglo-Saxon Capitalism." 

As a result of a UK exit, the political influence of the EU would be diminished – especially when considered against the power of the United States or China. Without the UK, Europe – the cradle of modern civilisation – would fall to a lower significance. I cannot believe that any sensible Briton wishes to divide Europe, and thus divide the West: only our enemies could gain from that, as Senator [John] McCain has made clear in recent days. No doubt the “leave” campaign will accuse him of “scaremongering” too.  

Certainly the EU will be weakened by Brexit. That's part of the point. The EU is an irredeemably corrupt and contemptible organization. Smashing it to bits and rebuilding a loose trade federation - the single market without socialism - would be an enormous benefit to the peoples of Europe. Only the British have the money, strength and gumption to kick the blasted thing to the ground. The defenders of the EU often confuse it with Europe. While Prime Minister John Major said he wanted Britain to be at the heart of Europe. So do I. But the EU has long ceased to be the heart of Europe. On the contrary it is cancer upon the productive energies and talents of an entire continent. In seeing what the EU is today - and will likely become in the future - we must come to understand that being pro-Europe means being anti-EU. 

Repeatedly over the last three centuries Britain has saved Europe from it's own statist madness: Absolute monarchs, militaristic emperors, racial supremacists and communist mass murders. Having belatedly rejected the more pernicious forms of collectivism and statism they eventually opted for a genial and bureaucratic vision of an all encompassing state: The Phantasm of Brussels. While the bloodshed has been kept to a minimum this time round the utopian circus, the long-term consequences are likely to be far more pernicious. Surviving two world wars is one thing, surviving terminal demographic and economic decline is rather less feasible. 

Europe has one last chance to save itself. That chance - as has happened so often in the past - comes courtesy of a British ballot box. 

 

Besieged Beeb

The head of the BBC admits partial defeat:

The success of high-end dramas, despite the flat budget at the BBC, comes as a new generation of international competitors – the online platforms Netflix and Amazon - ramp up their activities in Britain, attracted by generous new tax breaks. The development means that the BBC must look beyond its traditional competitors of ITV and Sky as it seeks new audiences.

Lord Hall describes it as a “flight to quality”, and says that the corporation cannot hope to match the spending of an organisation such as Netflix, which plans to spend $5 billion (£3.5 billion) on original commissions this year.

“We can’t win against a Netflix or an Amazon, because their budgets are just so much bigger,” he says. “They can concentrate their firepower on one or two or three things a year, whereas we’re delivering a service 24 hours a day.”

Likening the battle to the fight against the Spanish Armada, famously won by Sir Francis Drake’s nimbler, smaller vessels, Lord Hall said: “We have to think differently. We have to think like Drake’s ships. We’ve got to think lighter, simpler.”

Other way around really. Twenty years ago no one had heard of Amazon or Netflix, today they're cleaning the clock of a 90 year old government colossus that has - unlike virtually every other broadcaster in the world - the power to tax people who own television sets. Until quite recently the BBC was the broadcasting world's closest approximation to Imperial Spain under Philip II. Netflix and Amazon were Sir Francis Drake at the Battle of Gravelines. If their roles have reversed in recent years it's a testament to the power of markets over government. A lesson that one would hope - likely in vain - that the Tory government of David Cameron would heed. If the British want to seriously compete with American firms like Amazon and Netflix, they should scrap the license fee and let the remarkable talent, skill and energy of British drama productions compete freely. 

At The Feet of the Boy King

How bad is American politics? This bad:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's recent trip to the U.S. appears to have made quite an impression on our American friends — perhaps too good an impression, judging by these videos of two New York men literally begging him to run for president.

Trudeau was approached with the request on Thursday during his trip to New York City, according to journalist Marie-Joëlle Parent, who shared a video of the encounter.

As the article goes onto explain the two men were likely pranksters. Failing that mental illness would also be a reasonable explanation for such undignified behaviour. The grovelling duo weren't the only ones paying their respects to Canada's newly anointed leader:

Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sought to reassure Wall Street investors he’ll remain cautious on spending as he prepares to push the nation deeper into deficit, distancing himself from another deficit-spending leader: his father Pierre.

Trudeau says his new Liberal government isn’t looking to flood the economy with money now beyond what was promised in last year’s election campaign, saying he needs to be responsible and keep the budget gap under control.

[...]

The prime minister was careful Thursday to distance himself from his father’s record of soaring debts and deficits during the oil and inflation crisis of the 1970s. The senior Trudeau ran up C$187 billion in total deficits, averaging 3.7 percent of gross domestic product between 1968 and 1984, unprecedented levels at that time in a non-war era. That’s more than twice as high as Canada’s projected deficit for this fiscal year.

How bad a reputation does the Trudeau name have on Wall Street? His father left office more than thirty years ago and he still felt the need to explain to foreigners that he isn't a spendthrift socialist like Papa. When Brian Mulroney was touring the canyons of lower Manhattan after assuming office - attempting to shore up the country's credit rating - he never felt the need to distance himself from any of John Diefenbaker's fiscal or monetary foibles. That is how epically bad Pierre Trudeau was at managing Canada's finances, even Americans remember how bad he was. 

 

In the Beginning...

...there was a speech:

Federal budget day began as a simple affair on a Saturday afternoon in 1867, when finance minister John Rose read a modest speech in the House of Commons to set out the government's first-ever spending plan of just $5.3 million.

Almost a century and a half later, budgets have become elaborate productions – with about a half-million taxpayer dollars already spent before Finance Minister Bill Morneau rises in the Commons to set out his own fiscal blueprint on March 22.

To which I ask a simple question: Why? If John Rose - our first Minister of Finance - could explain the nation's finances with little fuss and bother, why must his modern successors make such a damn show of it? The cited article goes onto provide a fascinating glimpse into the history of budget making and budget delivery. From an informal affair conducted with a certain subdued gravitas, it has devolved into a spectacle of state power. A long and slow decline from the small and very limited government which John A presided over, to the sprawling and insatiable Leviathan that the younger Trudeau now heads. Unlike fine wine the Canadian federal government has not gotten better with age.

The article treats us to such tidbits as:

In the 1970s and 1980s, before the age of the internet, military cargo planes would transport hundreds of copies of the printed budget to major Canadian cities days before the big event.

And to think people actually lived in such a primitive era. 

Near the end of the article we are treated to a quintessentially Trudeaupian moment. Back in 1983 then Minister of Finance Marc Lalonde - who had previously been charged with destroying the Alberta economy as Energy Minister - was video taped with an open copy of the draft budget. In a rare moment of conservatism, minister Lalonde was forced to honour the Parliamentary tradition that budget information could not be released before being announced in the Commons. Being a senior Trudeau henchman he naturally honoured that traditional by screwing the taxpayers. The astute camera man had caught a page describing how a particular government program was budgeted at so many hundreds of millions. When the budget was finally delivered that figure had gone up by $200 million. Through this extravagance Lalonde could claim that the budget had not been leaked as the figures shown on TV were not final.

So for those keeping tracking at home: Marc Lalonde blew $200 million in order to avoid resigning. If there was a moment that summed up the venality of Pierre Trudeau's last term, that was it. We shouldn't expect much better from his son and the government he now heads. 

  

Ban the Beard

The NDP's very own sexy socialist librarian hedges her bets:

Niki Ashton, holding a news conference in Ottawa about the employment challenges facing young Canadians, was asked repeatedly if she endorsed [Thomas] Mulcair as leader, but refused to give a straight answer.

"This is not about a person or a personality," she said. "Those processes are in place and will take their course. It is about ideas and I'm proud to be putting forward an idea or call to action that is critical."

Ashton ran against Mulcair in the leadership contest on March 24, 2012.

Her news conference comes as 37 Quebec-based activists, riding association presidents, organizers and former MPs issued an open letter in Le Devoir newspaper calling for "renewal" in the party.

So far a very Canadian coup.  Lots of superficial politeness masking a deep seated passive aggressiveness that will - eventually - explode into blatant rudeness. This being Canada we don't actually assassinate our leaders, D'Arcy McGee being the famous exception. Reformed Irish terrorists notwithstanding we prefer gentle shoves out the door. Still the spectacle of leadership fights can be deeply unsettling. John Diefenbaker wandering forlorn through Maple Leaf Gardens in 1967 with Dalton Camp's knife wounds still bleeding. Joe Clark gamely trying to explain why he was perfectly comfortable serving in Brian Mulroney's cabinet. Paul Martin learning he'd been turfed as Minister of Finance while listening to the CBC. 

Tom Mulcair's essential problem is that he is leading the wrong political party. He's a Liberal playing at being a Dipper. The socialist dead-enders in the NDP caucus get this instinctively. In their deepest and dark hearts they would be delighted to see his decapitated head paraded on a pike through the ganja shops of Vancouver. They were never terribly comfortable even with Jack Layton, who was just a touch too populist for their taste.

The NDP attracts a particular sort of member, a type of perpetually embittered idealist. To such political animals a whiff of electoral success is a suggestion of treason. Having spent eight decades railing against an amorphously defined thing they call capitalism, the NDP is the natural party of protest. On the rare occasions on which they have stumbled into power the consequences have been disastrous, their bumbling equally attributable to bad ideas and gross unprofessionalism. British Columbia in the 1970s. Ontario in the 1990s. Contemporary Alberta. Where the Orange Wave hits it leaves little standing in its aftermath, including the NDP itself which is often decimated after its brief taste of government.

When failure happens blame must be apportioned. The human mind seems incapable of accepting the vagaries of luck alone, instead it must find explanations. Grand theories being too intellectually demanding the blame game quickly becomes personal. In the grand sweep of Dipper History 2015 was actually a pretty good. David Lewis would have killed for 44 seats and 20% of the vote. Rather than seeing 2011 as one hell of a fluke - a rare combination of a strong NDP leader and a very weak Liberal leader - the party must interpret their "defeat" in 2015 as the fault of some devilish force. The devil they have alighted upon is Tom Mulcair.

Let us be honest - if only because the NDP never will be with itself - had the Archangel Gabriel been leading the NDP in 2015 they would have lost. There was no way the party of protest could have formed even a shaky minority government. Weird things happen in politics - see Notley, Rachel - but short of both the Grits and Tories committing mass electoral suicide the best the NDP could have done last October was hold the Tories to a minority. Given the party's shallow roots in Quebec - based almost entirely on Jack Layton's charisma - the chances of another charismatic politician - Justin Trudeau - sweeping in and stealing those votes was very high. What few predicated was that the GTA would have fallen for Justin's well coiffed charms. Certainly I didn't see it coming.

It's easy enough to demand the downfall of the King. It's harder to figure out who should replace him. Our orange clad friends have an important question to ask themselves in 2016: If not Tom Mulcair then who? The likely answer will be far worse than Angry Tom. 

 

Celebrate Canada!

By bribing people to celebrate Canada:

The federal government is spending $17.5 million on community events and a "national musical celebration" to honour Canada's 150th birthday in 2017.

Canadian Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly made the announcement in front of a string band at Toronto's Daniels Spectrum Theatre Monday morning.

The federal government is chipping in $10 million to the Community Foundations of Canada for its community fund project, which will give small grants to put on events in communities across the country.

We may love our country but - damn it -we expect to get paid for loving it. In other eras it was understood that the nation might call upon its citizens to make the ultimate sacrifice on the battlefield. That was a very long time ago. Now expecting ordinary Canadians to pay for some balloons and an amateur band warbling O Canada is a sacrifice too far.

This is not a partisan complaint. During the bicentennial of the War of 1812 we were treated to similar examples of ersatz subsidized patriotism. Liberal CanCon is admittedly more grating than its Conservative counterpart, though the difference is marginal. The working assumption behind CanCon - whatever party colour is espousing it - is that ordinary Canadians are too stupid to appreciate their own country, therefore the kindly bureaucrat will remind us of how lucky we are to live in Justin Trudeau's Dominion. Or to put it another way: Canada is too important an idea to be left in the hands of actual Canadians. 

This was - at least officially - the premise behind Adscam. In the wake of the 1995 referendum near miss the Chretien Liberals marched through out Quebec proclaiming the greatness - or at least the adequateness - of a united Canada. Handing out free flags, cheesy ads and the occasional op-ed piece was more than a gigantic waste of money. Nor was it merely a corrupt waste of money. It was something far, far worse: A blatant insult to the intelligence of the ordinary Quebecker. Either Papa Jean believed that that the Sponsorship Programs were an elaborate vote buying exercise, or he thought his fellow Francophones were stupid enough to be persuade by such childish tactics. 

This isn't confined to one province and one Prime Minister. If only. CanCon in all its forms is a sign of arrogance and contempt. Federally approved and financed national celebrations are proof of how little the government thinks of the governed. 

 

Sins of the Fatherland

The New York Times brings out the branding irons:

In the current tussle for the future of Germany, Frauke Petry is what you might call the anti-Angela Merkel.

Where Ms. Merkel, the chancellor, has welcomed refugees, Ms. Petry, a rising far-right leader, has said border guards might need to turn guns on anyone crossing a frontier illegally.

Where Ms. Merkel has urged tolerance, Ms. Petry has embraced the angry populism now running through Europe and the United States.

“The preachers of hatred” was how the news weekly Der Spiegel characterized the new German right on its cover last month, emblazoned with a portrait of the petite Ms. Petry.

Call a Canadian politician "far-right" and visions of corporate tax cuts float into view. Call a German "far-right" and more terrifying images come to mind. So yes Ms Petry is being compared to the Nazis. For those who might have forgotten the Nazis were people who invaded other countries in large numbers in order to impose their cultural values. By point of contrast Ms Petry is trying to prevent large numbers of people from invading her country and imposing their cultural values. This is a difference wide enough to be obvious to anyone not working for The New York Times.

In 2015, 1.1 million migrants were allowed into Germany, a country with a population of 80 million. For an economy that has been treading water for years - and whose demographic structure is heading toward terminal decline - these are inherently unsustainable numbers. The question which Germany faces has nothing to do with prudent and well considered policies of immigration and integration. Those flooding into Germany are not properly vetted immigrants, many lack basic identification and a non-trivial number have questionable ideological allegiances. Germany is also not a nation of immigrants, it has little of the psychological attitudes and cultural institutions that expedite immigrant integration into a host society. 

The question of mass migration - whether legal or not - is clouded in sentimentality. For North Americans the immigrant lives in the collective memory as a sepia steeped peasant holding onto the handrail of an ocean liner. No doubt among the large numbers crowding into Germany today we have some who fit that ancient image. Yet once the misty eyed memories subside we are left with numbers and history. The immigrant of a century ago was joining a culturally confident, fast growing society that could inhale millions of immigrants and - within a generation or so - turn them into productive patriots. The sclerotic and decadent societies of western Europe simply do not have the economic or cultural capacity to absorb so many people so quickly. 

Modern Germany is one of the most highly advanced societies in the world. Virtually all non-menial entry level positions require a level of training that far surpassed what most of these migrants possess or are likely to gain into the near future. As in most of continental Europe, German private sector job growth has been microscopic for decades. Germany is therefore not importing young, skilled workers to take the place of their greying Teutonic counterparts. Instead Angela Merkel has admitted a vast new dependent class that will wreck the country's once formidable economic strength. 

To grasp the extent of this madness keep two facts in mind: There are currently 3 million Turks in Germany. The first Turkish immigrants arrived in Germany in 1961. In more than half a century Germany has failed to properly integrate 3 million people from a comparatively advanced and relatively civilized country. What hope is there to integrate a million people from a hellish backwater in a radically abbreviated timeframe? 

Shortly after the first Turks arrived in Germany the British politician Enoch Powell delivered his notorious Rivers of Blood speech. In it he prophesied that most of the newly arrived immigrants to Britain from the Caribbean and India would fail to integrate, leading to tensions and eventually open warfare in the streets. With the hindsight of nearly half a century we can say that he was mostly wrong. The vast majority of West Indian and South Asian immigrants have integrated well into British society. Where problems persist it has not been a matter of culture or race but of religion. A combination of weak willed multiculturalist politicians and Islamist rabble rousers has kept a portion of the country's Muslim population ghettoized and radicalized. Yet even with these caveats most immigrants to Britain have been successful. 

Merkel's Migrants do not have the same prospects. If the history of the Turks in Germany or the Algerians in France is any guide we will soon see the Rhine foaming with much blood. Why commit so insane an act? When disasters of this scale happen there is an inevitable a mixture of interests both profane and sacred. The profane aspect is easy enough to grasp. If you're a German bureaucrat the creation of a massive new class of perpetual dependents is job security for life. Continental Europeans are notorious for their overly generous welfare states. The corollary of a generous welfare state is a massive administrative state to support it. Each new migrant arriving in Germany means a certain number of bureaucrats must be hired in response. For German officialdom this is a money making opportunity. 

The sacred aspect of this German passion play is more emotionally fraught. The central fact of modern German history is the period between 1933-1945. Little in modern Germany makes sense without reference to the Nazis and moral reaction against their crimes. In the quest for "never again" a system of beliefs and institutions emerged after the war. They range from grand policies like NATO and the EU down to the micro-level of laws banning Nazi paraphernalia. This cultural immune system is now more than three generations old. It has acquired its own dogmas, petty prejudices and vested interests. A nation not so riven by guilt complexes would have been far less ready to martyr themselves on the altar of mass migration. As if in a final altruistic act of national suicide the people of Germany will have at last atoned for the sins of their great-grandfathers. 

German history stretches back centuries. It encompasses Luther, Gauss, Goethe, Schiller, Planck, Heisenberg and Bonhoeffer. To reduce one of the national pillars of western civilization to a dozen years and a few dozen mass murdering criminals is a gross injustice. If Germany does commit suicide it will not have atoned for the crimes of Hitler, it will have instead deprived the world of a unique and immensely beneficial nation. 

 

Nudge Me In the Morning and I'll Understand

Your government in action:

When Ontario wanted to get more people to become organ donors, the province did something simple: it made the signup process easier. Ontarians no longer had to wait in line and then receive a form while renewing driver’s licences – instead, they got a (much shorter) form first to fill out as they waited.

Only in the public sector is this considered a revelation. Up next is a comprehensive discussion of why snowplowing expenditures increase in the winter...

Public servants are learning about experiments – such as the one above – at a two-day conference in behavioural economics that ends in Ottawa today. The goal is to get those who work in government to think about applying basic lessons of economics and psychology to “nudge” citizens to take better advantage of government services.

[...]

Mr. Soman says a big topic of conversation among public servants at the conference has been “evidence-based” policy making.

Which presupposes that most public policy decisions are not made on the basis of evidence. This in turns begs the obvious questions: If analyzing empirical data isn't at the core of what you're doing then what is? Do deputy ministers throw darts at a white board filled with position papers? Does the minister flip a quarter to decide whether or not to fund a major infrastructure project? Or has Mr Soman let slip out the dirty secret of Big Government: That the purpose of the welfare-regulatory state isn't to make Canada a better place, but instead the whole apparatus is little more than a highly rationalized vote buying exercise for our parasitic elite.

While the article doesn't take us down entire rabbit hole of "nudging" the idea itself is quite unsettling. For much of the twentieth century the state - even comparatively benign states like those of Canada - thought nudging was for wimps. They simply pointed a gun and directed you to leave your wallet with the receptionist. As the bloodiest epoch in human history drew to a close with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the state assumed a more cuddly disposition. Bill Clinton proclaimed that the era of big government was over, a lie so transparent even he had trouble not smirking while he was delivering it. Yet it was an important shift in image making. Government had wielded an unsheathed iron fist for decades, now they would ask politely before you were stripped of your natural rights. 

Nudging is a perfectly twenty-first century concept. We live in an age of coddling and euphemism. The English language is dying through exquisitely slow torture. What previous generations would have honestly called propaganda or outright manipulation we instead describe as "nudging" or the "politics of persuasion." When anyone questions these subtle attacks upon the freedom of the individual we are told that "it's 2015." Ask a sensible question and get a stupid answer.  What begins with easier to complete paperwork, or gentle reminders of deadlines, will soon enough become more direct attempts at control. Having failed to whip, imprison and terrorize people to adhere to the statist project, our elected masters will seek to nag us into subservience. Given the pathetically weak willed lot that comprises the modern world they'll likely succeed. 

 

Greed Is Not Good

The NDP reminds us that it's still the party of economic illiterates:

NDP health critic Don Davies is leading a call for the federal government to shut down a for-profit blood donation clinic that recently opened in Saskatoon, Sask.
Canadian Plasma Resources, which opened its doors on Feb. 18, pays donors a small amount of money for making plasma donations.

In recent weeks, several groups have spoken out against the clinic, including the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, and the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour.

Speaking from Ottawa on Monday morning, Davies called on federal Health Minister Jane Philpott to cancel the licence that was granted to the clinic by Health Canada.
"This kind of blood collection endangers the safety and sustainability of Canada's life-saving blood supply," Davies said.

There is method in their madness. Though it is - of course - its own special kind of madness:

Concern over the Saskatoon clinic stems from the possibility that it may attract vulnerable donors, who may not be totally honest when they are interviewed and screened before donation, Davies said.

"When you start introducing a profit motive, coupled with placing the blood donor clinic near vulnerable populations, like low-income areas, methadone clinics, detox centres, now you introduce the possibility that that person may be a little less forthright, because they may need the money," he said.

Strangely that same logic doesn't apply when screening applicants for welfare or other social services. Now follow the NDP bouncing ball: People will lie to get a few dollars once in awhile for donating blood to a private organization, but won't lie to get a few hundred dollars each month from the government. Apparently "vulnerable" populations have strong scruples about abusing public resources. 

Let's assume that Mr Davies is raising a valid point, that paying for donations will introduce a less ethical group of donors into the blood system. The logical response would be to increase screening of the expanded blood supply to offset the perceived risk. This is a response so blindly obvious that only an NDP front bencher could miss it so completely. Just to underscore the point Saskatchewan's Minister of Health responded to Davies' criticisms by pointing out that 80% of Canada's blood plasma comes from paid donors, most of which is imported from the United States or Europe.

Mr Davies job is to know factoids like that. So either he is incompetent - and remember who he works for - or he is willfully misrepresenting the facts to fit his statist ideological agenda. Place your bets at the counter. The minister's 80% truth bomb not only utterly obliterates Davies' original point it also completely destroys the logic underpinning the Canadian system of unpaid blood donations. By the admission of the man who runs a provincial health system - in the cradle of Medicare no less - the unpaid system has so comprehensively failed that we must import the vast majority of our plasma from outside of the country. Even the Soviets weren't that inept.

 

The Law Con

From NYT:

Nearly a decade has passed since an aspiring young lawyer in California, Anna Alaburda, graduated in the top tier of her class, passed the state bar exam and set out to use the law degree she had spent about $150,000 to acquire.

But on Monday, in a San Diego courtroom, she will tell a story that has become all too familiar among law students in the United States: Since graduating from the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in 2008, she has yet to find a full-time salaried job as a lawyer.

From there, though, her story has taken an unusual twist: Ms. Alaburda, 37, is the first former law student whose case against a law school, charging that it inflated the employment data for its graduates as a way to lure students to enroll, will go to trial.

Other disgruntled students have tried to do the same. In the last several years, 15 lawsuits have sought to hold various law schools accountable for publicly listing information critics say was used to pump up alumni job numbers by counting part-time waitress and other similar, full-time jobs as employment. Only one suit besides Ms. Alaburda’s remains active.

I wish Ms Alaburda the best of luck in her litigious efforts. Much of the education system of North America is a confidence trick played on the unsuspecting young. Finally the educrates are being brought to account. Going after fourth tier law schools is - however - far too modest an effort. Law students are - at least theoretically - adults capable of making rational decisions. What about children? Millions of innocent children are dragooned through the public school system each year. They exit lacking literacy and numeracy skills that would have been taken for granted even twenty years ago. If there exists legal merit to sue the law schools of American, the K-12 system deserves a class action to make the ones that took down the tobacco companies look like a joke. The notion of a "public education" is the biggest con game in modern North American history.