Really well done here, Paul. For about the past 5 weeks or so I’ve noticed you’ve found a higher gear, and I’m thoroughly impressed. Certainly worth the price of admission. It’s not so much the subject matter as the tone and voice in your writing. We can all tell when you’re writing with passion and focus. Well done and keep up the great work!
This one's short. Just the obvious comment that the USA is 75% of our trade, all Europe+UK is barely 15%. If we have to anger Mr. Breton to placate Mr. Biden, then Breton is going under the electric bus.
What kind of "gadfly" holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and e-Commerce Law for 20 years? I'm reminded of the apocryphal admiral who said, "I don't buck the establishment. I am the establishment." Not a political scientist either; lawyer.
BC is right leaning— mixture of old SocCreds and wannabe Conservatives. Blind to advantages of social status and connections, believers in pulling up bootstraps. BC Liberals decimated social supports, engaged in selling off BC to overseas investors, hid corruption such as CP Rail, money laundering etc. Slashed healthcare and cancelled valuable programs for mental health— I watched it happen— at the source. What they profess to want to do in government (now) is precisely what they cancelled as soon as they took power. Must be hard to fathom from the outside.
Red Green - one of my favorites...was this part of the joke? I hope so..
I am not sure why the Green Party exists anyway - like the NDP, haven't the Liberals effectively stolen their agenda? Mike Shreiner seems more sellable than, say , Steven Guilbeault, who seems designed to cause maximum offense to Alberta and the oil business. Perhaps they hope to absorb the green votes as well as the policies.
I can see why the EC should be looking for allies against the resurgence of American protectionism, but responding in kind will get us nowhere. Americans will come to regret the waste of money and the general corrupting influence of all these subsidies.
Do we really want more cronyism, subsidies, supply side nonsense etc. ? We already have too much and are poorer for it (well I am at least, no doubt there are many doing fine on it....).
"Freeland’s Canada Growth Fund" is a sad joke, when the government is actively blocking the export of our most valuable resources. No-one needs to "lure potential investment away from Canada" - our current policies are doing a fantastic job in dis-incenting investment into Canada.
We all wish to live in that near-Utopia where a 'natural governing party' is nearly-always elected, because it runs well, needs little change, just tweaks at the tiller.
Then the sensible centrists' picks for the hands on the financial tiller crashed the whole world economic system, while lying about it all the way down - and those at the top went unpunished.
Paul Krugman's "Very Serious People" were exposed as incompetents, venal, or both. Comics were doing jokes in 2008 about every candidate, led by Obama, chanting "change, change, change".
And now, the pandemic again suggests reasons to change, change, change, and OMG, the 2020 journalism was all full of "unprecedented" and "historic" and, of course, "Great Reset", and we've got very little of any of that, but the appetite for it is still high.
People want "change", but nobody wants scary, stressful, i.e. radical, change, ever.
The change they don't think is radical, but the investor-class level does, is wealth tax. Paying for all our increased medical care and education needs with a wealth tax has something like 90% popularity:
...but "wealth tax" is just too radical for our political parties, so far, the way Warren and Sanders couldn't get arrested with the idea in the States.
Trudeau got people back to the Liberal party with a Change idea whose time had come: a majority had known for a decade that cannabis prohibition was insane, everybody was just afraid to be the first to say it. Harper thought it was still a time when you could run the "brain on drugs" frypan commercial, and bet very, very wrong.
I would suggest that "wealth tax" is that kind of idea, where everybody but a powerful few is all for it. The question is whether the NDP will make the jump first, or the Liberals.
Really well done here, Paul. For about the past 5 weeks or so I’ve noticed you’ve found a higher gear, and I’m thoroughly impressed. Certainly worth the price of admission. It’s not so much the subject matter as the tone and voice in your writing. We can all tell when you’re writing with passion and focus. Well done and keep up the great work!
Thanks so much. Greatly appreciated.
Highly entertaining and all true.
The BC Liberal Party is not liberal-- they are right leaning conservative mixture of business minded elitists.
Every federal Liberal I know in Vancouver, and I know quite a few, votes BC Liberal and often works on their campaigns.
I wrote a lengthy reply that disappeared
This one's short. Just the obvious comment that the USA is 75% of our trade, all Europe+UK is barely 15%. If we have to anger Mr. Breton to placate Mr. Biden, then Breton is going under the electric bus.
What kind of "gadfly" holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and e-Commerce Law for 20 years? I'm reminded of the apocryphal admiral who said, "I don't buck the establishment. I am the establishment." Not a political scientist either; lawyer.
"once prominent cottage life magazine". Right! I haven't renewed my subscription. I like Toronto Life, but I don't need a national version!
BC is right leaning— mixture of old SocCreds and wannabe Conservatives. Blind to advantages of social status and connections, believers in pulling up bootstraps. BC Liberals decimated social supports, engaged in selling off BC to overseas investors, hid corruption such as CP Rail, money laundering etc. Slashed healthcare and cancelled valuable programs for mental health— I watched it happen— at the source. What they profess to want to do in government (now) is precisely what they cancelled as soon as they took power. Must be hard to fathom from the outside.
Red Green - one of my favorites...was this part of the joke? I hope so..
I am not sure why the Green Party exists anyway - like the NDP, haven't the Liberals effectively stolen their agenda? Mike Shreiner seems more sellable than, say , Steven Guilbeault, who seems designed to cause maximum offense to Alberta and the oil business. Perhaps they hope to absorb the green votes as well as the policies.
I can see why the EC should be looking for allies against the resurgence of American protectionism, but responding in kind will get us nowhere. Americans will come to regret the waste of money and the general corrupting influence of all these subsidies.
Do we really want more cronyism, subsidies, supply side nonsense etc. ? We already have too much and are poorer for it (well I am at least, no doubt there are many doing fine on it....).
"Freeland’s Canada Growth Fund" is a sad joke, when the government is actively blocking the export of our most valuable resources. No-one needs to "lure potential investment away from Canada" - our current policies are doing a fantastic job in dis-incenting investment into Canada.
Cottage life magazine LOL
Revealing and thoughtful as always. So comforting to know there is still such intelligence in the media.
We all wish to live in that near-Utopia where a 'natural governing party' is nearly-always elected, because it runs well, needs little change, just tweaks at the tiller.
Then the sensible centrists' picks for the hands on the financial tiller crashed the whole world economic system, while lying about it all the way down - and those at the top went unpunished.
Paul Krugman's "Very Serious People" were exposed as incompetents, venal, or both. Comics were doing jokes in 2008 about every candidate, led by Obama, chanting "change, change, change".
And now, the pandemic again suggests reasons to change, change, change, and OMG, the 2020 journalism was all full of "unprecedented" and "historic" and, of course, "Great Reset", and we've got very little of any of that, but the appetite for it is still high.
People want "change", but nobody wants scary, stressful, i.e. radical, change, ever.
The change they don't think is radical, but the investor-class level does, is wealth tax. Paying for all our increased medical care and education needs with a wealth tax has something like 90% popularity:
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2021/08/05/canadians-want-a-wealth-tax-and-are-willing-to-vote-for-it.html
...but "wealth tax" is just too radical for our political parties, so far, the way Warren and Sanders couldn't get arrested with the idea in the States.
Trudeau got people back to the Liberal party with a Change idea whose time had come: a majority had known for a decade that cannabis prohibition was insane, everybody was just afraid to be the first to say it. Harper thought it was still a time when you could run the "brain on drugs" frypan commercial, and bet very, very wrong.
I would suggest that "wealth tax" is that kind of idea, where everybody but a powerful few is all for it. The question is whether the NDP will make the jump first, or the Liberals.