The Americans Had Their Wells Fargo Scandal ....

Now we have our own, thanks to TD Canada Trust's duplicitous practices:

Another Pending Betrayal

As we become increasingly disillusioned about the growing disparity between the Trudeau promise and its reality, another betrayal of that promise is pending. Like his neoliberal soul sister in Ontario, Kathleen Wynne, who insists that selling off 60% of the provincial crown jewel known as Hydro One is a no-brainer, Mr. Trudeau apparently thinks it is a keen idea to consider delivering our national airports over to profiteers, a.k.a. the private sector, to raise money for his 'national vision.' The upcoming federal budget looks to begin the process:

The budget is expected to signal the government’s interest in finding a way to tap the value of airports with a process, perhaps led by Transport Minister Marc Garneau, to more formally explore selling them off, the Star has learned.

The potential benefit for Ottawa is huge. One study done by the Vancouver airport authority estimated that the federal government could reap between $8.7 billion and $40.1 billion by selling off the country’s eight largest airports, including Toronto’s Pearson International Airport.

That may be good news for a government with a burgeoning deficit, but bad news for the rest of us:

Yet the privatization scheme is ringing alarm bells among airlines, airport operators and some municipalities who warn that handing over Canada’s airports to owners with a profit motive sets the stage for rising fees that will force travellers to pay more.

Vancouver airport has teamed with those in Ottawa and Calgary on a public information campaign to oppose privatization.

“We think it’s a bad idea,” Craig Richmond, the chief executive officer of the Vancouver Airport Authority, told the Star.

“This idea of a one-time payment, that’s like selling the family jewels and then regretting it forever,” he said in an interview.

The consequences of such a sale will be far-reaching and costly for those who fly:

... the authority concludes that privatization would add “hundreds of millions of extra costs” that would have to be recovered through cost-cutting, increased fees and reduced investment in airport infrastructure.

“It would be too costly for a for-profit buyer to acquire an airport such as YVR without reducing services and passing these costs on to airport users through higher fees and charges,” the report states.

So while the private sector may salivate over the prospect of windfall profits, as is the norm in the neoloiberal vision embraced by people like Trudeau and his fellow travellers, the rest of us, the mere peons in this 'grand' vision, will be left to pay the price.

How Must It Feel?

Since the installation of Donald Trump in the White House, I have wondered how it must feel to the average American who is neither unhinged nor incapable of critical thought to have a man so obviously deranged leading their country. This latest episode of Trump's paranoid demagoguery surely must be a source of deep consternation to such people:

A Stellar Analysis: Kellyanne Conway's Interview Tricks, Explained

Vox offers this deconstruction of the slippery and morally repugnant Kellyanne Conway.

A Coward, Pure And Simple

When I was young, we had a term for certain individuals. We called them "gutless wonders." It still seems like the most apt term today. Watch this video and you'll see why:

UPDATED: A Deluded Woman

That very strange lady, CPC leadership candidate Kellie Leitch, insists that the widespread 'popularity' of her online video is proof of the popularity of her platform against immigrants, She ignores the fact that the basis for its viral spread is mockery, not admiration, over its bizarre production values and patent insincerity. If you haven't yet seen it, the above link will take you to it.

Meanwhile, CTV's Don Martin has this incisive assessment of her efforts:



And as to her claim that her immigration stance is resonating with the public, well, Star readers have a different view, and are especially pained that her pandering to the extreme right has led her to advertise on Breitbart, about which I recently posted:

Re: Conservative MP Leitch runs ads on Breitbart site, Feb. 25

When conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch runs ads on the U.S. Breitbart News website, it is time to screen Leitch for her “Canadian values.”

The ultra-conservative and white supremacist views expressed and promoted by the Breitbart News organization bear no relation to and are not synonymous with “Canadian values.” Since “Canadian values” is what Leitch is claiming to protect, it is only fair — and possibly urgent — that her views be scrutinized, i.e. “screened.”

Peter Krysmanski, Oakville

I am so disgusted to see that Kellie Leitch has bought advertising on Breitbart News. What Canadian values does that organization represent? Absolutely none.

The alt-right is not my Canada and obviously does not represent the majority of Canadians given support for Justin Trudeau. Kellie has no place in my Canada.

Tom Byers, Cambridge, Ont.

The soul of a nation is not something to be trifled with, a fact that Kellie Leitch seems wholly incapable of appreciating.

UPDATE: Mark Critch of This Hour Has 22 Minutes clearly has Ms Leitch's number:

A Dangerous VOICE

First, please watch the following very brief video from The Independent. (If you have trouble playing it, simply click on the above link):



The Star's Daniel Dale, our Canadian journalist expert on all things Trump, writes today that the creation of VOICE is an alarming escalation in the Trump war against immigrants.

Claudia Koonz, a historian at Duke University, wrote a book about how the Nazis prepared Germans to accept genocide.

One of their tactics was portraying average Jews, who were overwhelmingly law-abiding, as a menace to society. In the 1930s, for example, a Nazi newspaper published a weekly list of Jews’ alleged crimes.

In January, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered his government to publish a weekly list of crimes committed by illegal immigrants, who are overwhelmingly law-abiding, in most of the country’s biggest cities.

Trump’s order also established a government office solely dedicated to helping victims of crimes committed by undocumented people. On Tuesday, he promoted the office — VOICE, for Victims Of Immigration Crime Engagement — in a prime-time address to Congress.

Even though crime statistics show that illegal immigrants are less likely to engage in crime than legal residents, both the inflammatory rhetoric favoured by Trump and the above decisions serve to effectively demonize 'the other' and essentially institutionalize the Orange Ogre's racism.

Ruben G. Rumbaut, a sociologist at the University of California, Irvine, says,

“The function of this program will be, one, to further scapegoat immigrants and portray them as deadly threats, and, two, to use the perception of threat to rally and rile the ‘base’ for political gain, relying now the power and prestige of the presidency."

And as reported by The independent, the publication of a weekly list of crimes by 'aliens' echoes a prominent feature of Breitbart News, which has a section called

"black crime" ... which publishe[s] a list of offences committed by African-Americans.

Given the increasing incidents of hate crimes, including what appears to be the racially-motivated shooting last week in Kansas, I think we can all see where this is going. The question is, are there enough people of goodwill, both inside and outside of politics, to fight this rapidly escalating madness?