Author: Kate

CWB Monitor

The [Canadian Wheat Board’s] passive system of “inventory management” makes the whole system – for all crops – dysfunctional. Whether they are manipulated, managed or free, markets provide signals and incentives to both buyers and sellers. In western Canada, since they get the same price regardless of when they deliver, farmers have the incentive to deliver wheat early in the crop year (instead of holding it for later delivery); yet they can’t deliver any more than the CWB allows. On the other hand, the canola market gives incentives (signals) to sell for delivery later in the year; yet many can’t as they need the cash now, not later.
When the CWB states it doesn’t distort markets, it’s wrong. Among others, it distorts the markets for all the non-CWB crops grown in western Canada. And it’s not to the benefit of the farmer.

And this;

Good stuff, by John De Pape.

The Tolerant Left

Juan Williams has been fired by NPR.

Cable news blogger Johnny Dollar red-flagged NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik’s Twitter feed, which announced tonight that liberal NPR analyst/Fox News contributor Juan Williams’ contract was terminated — over comments Williams made about Muslims on The O’Reilly Factor. He gave his honest opinion: “[W]hen I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”
Guess who stirred up the pot to get Williams fired?

More: NPR – where the “P” stands for “Plantation”.


At Instapundit:

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Dale Beihoffer writes: “According to the NYT story on Juan Williams, ombudswoman Alicia C. Shepard said that Juan was a ‘lightning rod’ for NPR, noting that ’she had received 378 listener e-mails in 2008 listing complaints and frustrations about Mr. Williams.’ Your readers should be able to do much better than 378 emails to her!”

Just 378? Heck, I think we can manage that many ourselves. Click here to complain that Ombudsman Alicia C. Shepard should be fired for her illiberal position on the Juan Williams controversy.

Those Moderate Courts!

“An Assault on Canada.” A first rate rant by Charles Adler.

Shariah law, the kind practiced in Iran received more than just lip service in a Canadian courtroom in recent days. It got room service from a unanimous decision by the Ontario Appeals Court that said a Muslim woman in the witness box has a right to wear a veil over her head. They – in a unanimous decision – overruled a lower court judge to insist that she abide by Canadian custom and remove her veil so that she could look the accused sexual abusers in the eye and look Canadian justice in the eye. The Ontario Appeals Court and that’s sky high up in the Canadian Judicial food chain – these are the men and women who get a serious shot at Supreme Court Status – the Appeals Bench was unanimous in giving the lower court judge the back of the hand for making a Canadian decision, one that wasn’t driven by the diversity agenda, the tolerance agenda, the agenda that says every tradition in the world is more worthy of more respect than our own tradition. The appeals court told the judge that not enough sensitivity was being shown to the woman’s religious belief and that a compromise should have been sought, a compromise like perhaps agreeing if she takes her veil off to clear the courtroom of all men even if the judge is a man? Even if the prosecutor is a man?

Y2Kyoto: We Don’t Need No Stinking Twisty Bulbs

Heh!

Siegfried Rotthaeuser and his brother-in-law have come up with a legal way of importing and distributing 75 and 100 watt light bulbs — by producing them in China, importing them as “small heating devices” and selling them as “heatballs.”
To improve energy efficiency, the EU has banned the sale of bulbs of over 60 watts — to the annoyance of the mechanical engineer from the western city of Essen.
Rotthaeuser studied EU legislation and realized that because the inefficient old bulbs produce more warmth than light — he calculated heat makes up 95 percent of their output, and light just 5 percent — they could be sold legally as heaters.

Just in time for winter…

“They can’t survive without the fraud.”

Your must-read of the week. Particularly if you own property in the US, whether it’s mortgaged or not.

Wells Fargo wanted to foreclose on a condo unit which had multiple mortgages attached to it. Wells Fargo also owned one of those second mortgages. So Wells Fargo spent money to hire a law firm and file suit against the irresponsible lenders at Wells Fargo. Then, Wells Fargo spent money to hire a different law firm in an understandable effort to defend Wells Fargo from the vicious legal attack coming from Wells Fargo. The second law firm even prepared a legal statement for Wells Fargo which called into question the dubious claims being made by Wells Fargo. Sadly, Wells Fargo won the case, crushing the hopes of Wells Fargo.
As business reporter Al Lewis wrote at the time, “You can’t expect a bank that is dumb enough to sue itself to know why it is suing itself.” So goes the unprecedented wave of foreclosures that has swept across the country since the housing bubble popped. Mortgages have been bought, sold, and repackaged so many times through such an opaque process that banks have no idea who owns what. When they foreclose, they simply guess, making up the documents and information necessary to do so.

It gets worse.
h/t Melinda Romanoff

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