I'm Sure It Is All Very Innocent

 On the 'contradictory' relationship PP has with corporate lobbyists:

H/t trapdinawrpool.bsky.social

For Your Consideration

In a time when reflexive rather than reflective responses are elicited by some of our politicians, a little food for thought from Patrick Corrigan. Axe the tax, spike the hike, bring it home and other such mindless slogans may never be quite the same again.

The High Price Of Populism

In this age of economic deprivation for so many, it is understandable that people seek relief wherever they can find it. Some do without, some shop at discount stores, some take second jobs. Unfortunately, some embrace whomever seems to be offering a helping hand. 

Here in Ontario, that 'helping' hand comes from populist politicians, most notably our own Will Loman ("Be well-liked and you will never want"), Doug Ford. Like the salesman he was through his Deco Labels business, which he still owns, Ford has never lost his appetite for public approval. And that propensity is leading all of us down a very dark economic road.

The province's latest budget, unveiled the other day, projects a tripling of the deficit to $9.8 billion, piling on top of the current debt of almost $400 billion. The government argues that it necessary to keep spending in these economically challenging times and making life more affordable for people.

And therein lies the rub. While the deficit and debt continue to grow, our populist premier is surrendering huge sources of revenue via an extension of the gas tax reduction, the ongoing elimination of auto plate renewal charges, massive subsidies to keep the price of hydro lower, and having the public pick up the tab for developers' charges, at the same time giving below-inflation increases to vital services like health care, education, etc.

Not everyone is fooled by this fiscal sleight-of-hand. Certainly, Toronto Star readers are not. Here are two of their letters

Perhaps if the Doug Ford government hadn't been so enthusiastic about shredding long-term stable revenue streams it wouldn't be in the deficit position it now finds itself. Since 2018 the province has lost approximately $1 billion a year each from the cancellation of the greenhouse gas cap and trade program, the elimination of vehicle licensing fees and reductions in the provincial gasoline tax. To this has to be added the billions in provincial revenues that are now having to be diverted to municipalities to pay for infrastructure needed to support housing, making up for the development charge revenues that were lost through Bill 23 — the infamous Building More Homes Faster Act. Then there is the ongoing $7 billion annual diversion of revenues to artificially lower hydro rates and hide the actual costs of nuclear refurbishments. In the longer term the costs of financing the government's "get it done" megaprojects, many of which, like the Highway 413, the Bradford Bypass and Pickering B nuclear refurbishment, have been previously assessed as uneconomic, unnecessary and destructive, has to be considered as well, in a context of increased interest rates. Beyond the long-term environmental and climate consequences of these choices, different decisions would have left the province far better positioned to make needed investments in areas like education and health care.

Mark S. Winfield, Toronto

Gas tax cut diminished government revenues 

The Ford government could handily have trimmed its deficit in this latest budget by cancelling its gas tax cut. By the government’s own admission, this tax cut has diminished government revenues by $2.1 billion over the past two and a half years. Might not all that money have been more helpful providing affordable housing, supporting public transit, and fixing our overburdened health-care system?

Kenneth Oppel, Toronto

For people like Doug Ford, life and politics are but a shell game, one that fools far too many people far too often. But in the end, we all wind up paying a very steep price.

Donald Trump: Can I Get a Big Amen?

From the theatre of the absurd comes Donald Trump's latest scam. He will be getting royalties from this special edition Bible. Truly, we are in The End Times.

A Kevin O'Leary Takedown

John Stewart - love the guy. Kevin O'Leary - detest the guy. Blowhards have always rubbed me the wrong way. Happily, the two diametrically opposed personages are together in the following video. Spoiler alert: John Stewart wins as he exposes O'Leary's venality and hypocrisy, traits that seem endemic amongst "his kind."

The History American Politicians Try To Keep Hidden

I have done a great deal of reading in the past couple of years on The Civil War, slavery, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow laws that followed it,  Black Codes, and the mythology of The Lost Cause. An obvious and irrefutable conclusion to be drawn is that America is a racist country with a racist history, a history that many American states (most egregiously Florida) would deny both white and Black citizens access to.

Of course, not everyone has either the time or the inclination to study the atrocities that were the foundation of the American economy, atrocities that served well both the plantation owners and the industries in the North that utilized their chief crop, cotton. But as the saying goes, one picture is worth a thousand words, and a brief video many times that. The following offers an effective and moving depiction of the ugliness of racism.

If you would like to see an extended version of this report, please click here.

Mr. Mulroney's Legacy

Willy Loman - Death of A Salesman

Brian Mulroney - Late Canadian Salesman

In a previous post, I discussed what I considered to be one of the shortcomings of the late prime minister, Brian Mulroney: his essential shallowness. But it is the damage many say he did to this country thanks, in part, to his fawning admiration of America and American corporations, that he may be best remembered for.

Amidst the many encomiums that have followed Mulroney's demise, two columnists write critically about what his unseemly trait led to: the original free trade deal with our neighbours to the south. Our delusional Willy Loman surrogate, Brian Mulroney, thought of it as one of the highlights of his life, but those columnists beg to differ.

Reflecting on the praise heaped upon the late prime minister, Rick Salutin writes:

The result of his 1988 free trade deal with the U.S. was that good industrial jobs shifted to low wage nations while workers stayed put and rummaged for poorer jobs at home. As manufacturing ‘hollowed out,’ the economy got “financialized,” focusing on money manipulations like mergers among the wealthy players, while workers were marooned in areas like services, retail and eventually, precarious “gigging.” This in turn widened the gap between the rich and the rest, expanding poverty, while the middle classes diminished. The main source of wealth for the majority became their homes, not their jobs, a shakey situation that left the generation now entering the workforce with scant hope of even owning a home.

Mulroney initially opposed free trade when he ran for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party, but more powerful interests came to prevail:

The impetus came from corporate headquarters, mostly American, as conveyed through the Reagan administration. We were guinea pigs, as Mulroney went along enthusiastically. What’s strange is that we remain, almost alone, fervent free traders while most others, including the U.S., got off that train a while ago. 

Linda McQuaig has a similarly negative view of Mulroney's legacy, which compromised our values as a nation:

... Canada had a different (vis a vis the U.S.) political tradition, with government playing an important role advancing the public interest through crown corporations and universal social programs.

Canadian business leaders wanted that changed, even though they understood that most Canadians didn’t. In a paper released just before the 1984 election, the CEOs who made up the Business Council on National Issues acknowledged that Canada’s higher social spending reflected “the greater priority that Canadians put on social welfare.”

Canadians would just have to learn to make their social well-being less of a priority, the CEOs had decided.

They had the perfect stooge in Mulroney, the lover of all things American. 

.. Mulroney largely delivered for the business world, introducing far-reaching changes that transformed the Canadian political and economic landscape, partly through his free trade deal with the U.S. that weakened labour and enhanced the rights of business and investors.

Earlier Canadian governments had developed more than 60 crown corporations. Mulroney privatized or began privatizing some key ones, including a national railway, oil company and airline, and completed the privatization of Connaught Labs, a publicly-owned biomedical company that had become one of the world’s leading vaccine producers. 

Canada’s corporate world has thrived in recent decades, which explains much of the elite adulation for Brian Mulroney since his death last month. But the world he ushered in has left many Canadians feeling like the workers he left behind in the snowbanks.

In Death of A Salesman, protagonist Willy Loman preached the cult of personality, believing until almost the end that the man who is well-liked has the world as his oyster. I doubt that Brian Mulroney ever came to understand otherwise.

 

An Update On Stupidity

Just a brief post, but reading The Guardian today, I am reminded that Jesus said, "The poor will always be with you." He could just as easily have said the same about the stupid:

Trump pleads with supporters for cash to help pay soaring legal bills

Former president lashes out at New York attorney general in email urging loyalists to to ‘chip in and stop the witch-hunt’

Donald Trump on Thursday again asked loyal supporters for cash to help him meet mounting legal expenses and keep the “filthy hands” of the New York attorney general off Trump Tower and other properties.

Under the headline “Keep your filthy hands off Trump Tower!” a Trump fundraising email sent to supporters read: “Insane radical Democrat AG Letitia James wants to SEIZE my properties in New York. This includes the iconic Trump Tower.”

The twice-impeached Trump – currently the presumptive Republican presidential nominee – continued: “Democrats think that this will intimidate me. They think that if they take my cash to stifle my campaign, that I’ll GIVE UP!

“But worst of all? They think that YOU will abandon me, and that you will GIVE UP on our country. Here’s one thing they don’t know: WE WILL NEVER SURRENDER!”

On Thursday, on Truth Social, Trump also called Judge Arthur Engeron “crooked” and James, who is Black, “corrupt and racist”, alleging both were involved in “election interference”.

In his fundraising email lamenting the threat to Trump Tower, he said donations would help send “Biden’s corrupt regime … the message … that our patriotic movement CANNOT BE STOPPED!

“So before the day is over, I’m calling on ONE MILLION Pro-Trump patriots to chip in and say, STOP THE WITCH HUNT AGAINST PRESIDENT TRUMP!”

What stirring rhetoric. What an absolute buffoon. What idiots the MAGA cult members are if they swallow Trump's swill. 

Note To Mr. Weston

Please see my previous post for elaboration on Mr. Weston's dubious practices.

Is He In Hiding?

Given that he is never seen publicly anymore, I am beginning to wonder if Galen Weston Jr,  the president of Loblaw Companies Ltd., is in witness protection. If not, given the extortionate prices he has presided over in recent years, it might not be a bad idea. 

Not content with the record profits his company is accruing, he is helming a couple of more initiatives to squeeze even more money from his operations, while simultaneously inviting even more odium from both taxpayers and the consuming public.

The CBC reports one of theses avenues is via the Loblaw-owned Shoppers Drug Mart chain. Corporate pressure is being exerted to up profit-levels through medication reviews.

Medication reviews are meetings between a pharmacist and a patient to go over their prescriptions and ensure they're taking the right combination of medicines. Anyone who takes at least three medications for a chronic condition, is living in a licensed long-term care home, or is receiving treatment for diabetes is eligible for a medication review in Ontario under the province's MedsCheck program.

"The pressure was extremely intense," said Curtis, a pharmacist and former associate store owner whose franchise agreement was terminated in the last six months. 

"They were essentially monitoring performance records weekly and if you were not hitting your weekly billing numbers, you were requested to come up with business plans and somehow come through with those billing dollars at the end of the day."

Emails to pharmacists belie the denials issued by the company about this practice.

In a December 2023 email to associate owners in Ontario — where Shoppers has most of its stores — a vice president reiterated the company's ongoing plan to "accelerate the care we are providing" through medication reviews before the end of the year. The plan included adopting higher weekly targets (known internally as "run rates") to prepare owners to meet new targets set out for 2024. 

 "Over the next 48 hours, I will be reaching out to you directly to speak with you and understand your commitment to meeting this run rate and providing these services to your patient population, and what your plan is to meet the run rate by the end of this week," the email said.

Associate owners get a cut of the professional services billed by their pharmacies. Records show the company offered an incentive of 10 per cent on top of that cut for a period at the end of 2023 if owners exceeded their target plan. 

Is this a victimless 'crime'? Hardly, because here in Ontario, payment for the reviews would be through OHIP, meaning all taxpayers are on the hook for this abuse.

This February, Shoppers Drug Mart pharmacies across Ontario brought in a collective $1,869,300 in revenue for professional services in a single week, according to internal records. Medication reviews accounted for more than 75 per cent of that revenue — $1,423,900. 

This is not the only measure Loblaw is taking, however, as the following video explains. 

As my wife said, what if you only browse and don't buy anything? How do you get out of the store?

One can only suggest that Mr. Weston look to his own house before applying the label of "criminal suspect" to his customers. 

 

Stupidity: The Antidote

Owing to a rather sensitive gag reflex, I only watched about two minutes of Senator Katie Britt's 'response' to Joe Biden's State of The Union address in which I gather, she blamed the president for all the ills besetting America. (Sound familiar?) The conceit: that it actually was a response, not a carefully scripted effort made before Biden's speech. It has, however, provoked a great deal of ridicule, including a sendup from Scarlett Johansan on Saturday Night Live.

However, the best most measured rebuke to Ms. Britt came from this lady:

It is refreshing to see some facts and logic for a change, although, as suggested in my last two posts, it is unlikely to forge much lightning in certain quarters.

Stupidity: The Followup

And continuing with the theme of stupidity, here is an AI-generated video that speaks much truth.

WARNING: Do not watch if you are offended by crude language.

If you want more stupid, how about this?

In closing, here's a joke a friend of mine sent me, perhaps reflecting a unified theory of stupidity and ignorance?

A QAnon conspiracy theorist, a racist, and an anti-Semite walk into a bar.

Bartender says, "What'll you have, Congresswoman Greene?"

Stupidity: The Epidemic

 

For those who are congenitally stupid, I have much sympathy. For those who are stupid yet think they are the smartest person in the room, I have only disdain. And it is the latter that this post seeks to address.

Although I have written on this topic before, stupidity's myriad manifestations continue to hold me in a perhaps unhealthy grip. But I know that I am not the only one who is both fascinated and repelled by this subject. Last week, on one of my regular walks with a few of my retired colleagues, all of whom actually read and are aware of the world around them, the topic of stupidity as it relates to Trump's followers arose. As is always the case when we gather, we had a spirited discussion as to possibly explanations of the cult for whom the Chief Grifter can do no wrong.

Later that day, one of them sent me an article by a neuroscientist named Bobby Azarian who offers this interesting definition of stupidity:

Although the term "stupidity" may seem derogatory or insulting, it is actually a scientific concept that refers to a specific type of cognitive failure. It is important to realize that stupidity is not simply a lack of intelligence or knowledge, but rather a failure to use one's cognitive abilities effectively. This means that you can be “smart” while having a low IQ, or no expertise in anything. It is often said that “you can’t fix stupid,” but that is not exactly true. By becoming aware of the limitations of our natural intelligence or our ignorance, we can adjust our reasoning, behavior, and decision-making to account for our intellectual shortcomings.

Indeed, to add to the above, I would say that having some humility about our own limitations is part and parcel of being critical thinkers.  Thus, for example, I accept the scientific consensus on Covid vaccines, a topic that so many with no expertise claim to oppose because they read something contrary on the internet or in a chat group. It is a classic case of the Dunning-Kruger effect, whereby people think they are smarter than they are and know things that others don't. As Azarian says, they are ignorant of their own ignorance.

The problem is especially worrisome because such people tend to be attracted to confident, strong-man leaders.

For example, Donald Trump — despite not having any real understanding of what causes cancer — suggested that the noise from wind turbines is causing cancer (a claim that is not supported by any empirical studies). It is well documented that on topics ranging from pandemics to climate change, Trump routinely dismissed the opinions of the professionals who have dedicated their lives to understanding those phenomena, because he thought that he knew better. It’s bad enough that politicians like Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene don’t recognize their own ignorance and fail to exercise the appropriate amount of caution when making claims that can affect public health and safety — but what is really disturbing is that they are being celebrated for their over-confidence (i.e., stupidity).

I hope you will find an opportunity to read the entire article, but I shall close with one more excerpt from it:

This new theory of stupidity I have proposed here — that stupidity is not a lack of intelligence or knowledge, but a lack of awareness of the limits of one’s intelligence or knowledge — is more important right now than ever before, and I’ll tell you why. The same study by Anson mentioned above showed that when cues were given to make the participants “engage in partisan thought,” the Dunning-Kruger effect became more pronounced. In other words, if someone is reminded of the Republican-Democrat divide, they become even more overconfident in their uninformed positions. This finding suggests that in today’s unprecedently divided political climate, we are all more likely to have an inflated sense of confidence in our unsupported beliefs. What’s more, those who actually have the greatest ignorance will assume they have the least!

And in this American election year, that is very, very worrisome. 

 

Dare I 'Blaspheme'?

I dare.

Given the hagiography that has unfolded since the passing of Brian Mulroney, I now take a step into waters that his enthusiasts might deem sacrilegious, even blasphemous. Despite his achievements (which largely look good in contrast to those of  today's 'leaders'), the late prime minister, in my view, was a shallow man who lacked insight into his own soul.

You may recall that one of his proudest achievements was that he sang for the Colonel  (Colonel McCormick) when he was nine years old. So impressed was he by this American's investment in Baie Comeau that he developed a fawning, life-long love of all things American, culminating in his onstage  singing of When Irish Eyes Are Smiling with Ronald and Nancy Reagan in the eighties. It was a performance he reprised in 2017 for Donald Trump, another man he greatly admired, at Mar-a-Largo.

The Globe's Lawrence Martin, whether intentionally or not, reveals the true shallowness of the man. Regarding his bond with Trump, he writes

Their relationship, Mr. Mulroney told me in an interview last year, went back decades to when they saw each other a lot in New York. It continued in Palm Beach, Fla., where he had a residence close to Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, which Mr. Mulroney and his family visited frequently.

He and Mr. Trump were such friends that shortly after Mr. Trump’s inauguration in 2017, he sang When Irish Eyes Are Smiling for Mr. Trump at a Mar-a-Lago reception. He’d sung it with Ronald Reagan at the Shamrock Summit in Quebec City in 1985.

In fact, Mr. Mulroney believed Mr. Trump could be a highly successful president, just like the Gipper. 

Mulroney revealed to Martin that he thought Trump would be a good president, swept up in the majesty of office, and didn't see his right-wing populism coming. Those of us with both a pulse and critical thinking skills, I suspect, were not overtaken with the surprise Mulroney undoubtedly felt but never acknowledged when Trump turned out to be manifestly unfit for office.

During the interview, the late PM revealed he didn't blame the forces unleashed by Trump as responsible for America's current ills:

You have to look ... at “the capture of the Democratic Party by the extreme left-wing – The Squad and the unions. Joe Biden has been held hostage by the left wing of the party. And I know Joe well and I like him. But that’s what happened.”

He concurred that the U.S. democracy was in dire condition and the country brutally divided. “I understand all that, but that doesn’t change the reality that this is the greatest nation on Earth...

I submit that those dogmatic assertions would be met with less than universal assent.

For me, however, the greatest indication of Mulroney's lack of personal insight and reflective capacity is what he reveals about his ideas on free trade.

In our interview, Mr. Mulroney wanted to clear up a misconception: the idea that he was a johnny-come-lately to the idea of free trade. “Look, I had been president of the Iron Ore Company for nine years. And hell, the whole concept of the Iron Ore Company was trade. I was all over the world from Romania to China to Taiwan to Brazil, non-stop.”

While it’s true, he said, that in the 1983 Tory leadership campaign he stridently opposed free trade, it was because Canadians weren’t prepared to hear of it then and he couldn’t have won on it. “You have to remember the antipathy toward Reagan was horrific in Canada, disgraceful.”

What kind of man openly and shamelessly, even proudly, admits he lied both to his own party and the Canadian public?

The legacy of Brian Mulroney will, without doubt, be persistently promulgated and promoted in the days leading up to his state funeral. However, we do a grave disservice to critical thinkers everywhere not to challenge the elevation to secular sainthood many of his boosters clearly wish for him.

 

 

Take My Money. Please!

With even Britain's Labour Party avowing no new taxes on the wealthy, it is refreshing when one reads about people of means asking to be taxed more. In the United States, it is the billionaire Warren Buffett who clamours for fair taxation. His Buffett Rule came to prominence when he

publicly stated in early 2011 that he believed it was wrong that rich people, like himself, could pay less in federal taxes, as a portion of income, than the middle class, and voiced support for increased income taxes on the wealthy.

Regrettably, there is little such appetite in Canada, where that kind of talk is met with dire warnings of doom, the myth being that we are overtaxed. No one wants to impose penury on the wealthy, since they already do so much for us, eh? However, one individual is piercing the 'party line'. Claire Trottier writes:

Despite being part of the 1 per cent myself, ... we’re not addressing the underpinning factors that are accelerating the concentration of wealth and power into an ever shrinking percentage of individuals.

The solution is right in front of us: we need to tax me and people like me more and that means taxing wealth. 

She points out that the gap between the very rich and the rest of us is widening.

Canada’s roughly 50 billionaires have seen a 51 per cent increase in their wealth since the beginning of COVID and have more assets than the bottom 40 per cent of Canadian households combined. And it’s getting worse, as hugely disproportionate sums of wealth created in the last 10 years have gone to the top 1 per cent while the bottom 50 per cent have gotten practically nothing.

Given the crises in housing, food prices, general affordability and the climate, Trottier wants to see some changes. 

 I am one of over 250 millionaires who signed an open letter presented at the World Economic Forum at Davos saying that we would be proud to pay more tax in the form of a wealth tax. 

Polls show that a majority of Canadians support the idea of a wealth tax. 

All of society would benefit from a wealth tax. I’m not interested in being a rich person in a poor country. I want to live in a society where everyone can live a dignified life today and where we can mitigate the devastating impacts of climate change in the future.

Unfortunately, as I tried to point out in my previous post, the biggest impediment to fair taxation seems to be our government and the titans it chooses to fawn over and listen to. Until that changes, expect the gap between the rich and the poor, and its attendant policy failures, to continue apace.