Category: Cronies

Nothingburger trials

Cronies Mischief Is Important More Money Than Brains Surveillance State 44 Comments

It’s not actually the case that bail violation charges against Tamara Lich were dropped, but rather that they were stayed, so that the prosecution could “focus” on the current trial. For a charge of mischief, it’s seems that Lich and Barber were charged based on the hope that enough evidence to convict them would magically appear afterward. So far, the fishing expedition seems to be reeling in very little.

The trial was originally scheduled to be finished on Oct. 13 but it has been stalled by delays related to the disclosure of evidence and legal arguments about the admissibility of testimony and social media posts.

The Crown is expected to call more witnesses before it completes its case. Justice Heather Perkins-McVey has said she expects the legal arguments in the case will be lengthy and complex.

The lawyers have struggled to set time to continue the trial because of conflicting schedules and scarce court time.

You can take that to the bank!

Basic Dictatorship Cronies nannystate 17 Comments

Now that the Liberals are all done with the task of lowering grocery prices, they’re going to make sure that Canadians get better, more cost-effective service when they deal with a bank. I’m certain that a government which has zero interest in balancing a budget is well-suited to micromanaging your bank. What could possibly go wrong?

Freeland says she has instructed the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada to work on making more no-fee and low-cost bank accounts available to Canadians.

Finance Canada is also being tasked with taking a look at reducing bank fees, such as charges when a check bounces back.

 

Milking consumers

Alternative Subsidy Cronies entitlement generation nannystate 35 Comments

I suggest we go one step further: simply close down supply mismanagement and end the marketing boards altogether.

Confirmation bias

Cronies Media Science 43 Comments

Liberal water carrier Frank Graves has released a new “poll” which purports to show that conservative voters overwhelmingly buy into “disinformation”. Not surprisingly, his definition of disinformation is tailor-made to get the polling results he wanted. If you differ with his view on any of these questions, well, you are simply disinformed:

-Canada’s economic growth lags well behind the G7 average;

-Vaccine-related deaths are being concealed from the public;

-The right to bear arms is guaranteed in Canada’s constitution;

-Climate change is caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

 

The Milquetoast Party

Cronies nannystate 56 Comments

In Weimar Germany there was a political party, the Democrats, whose motto was “Nothing will sway us from the middle road”. By creating a party based on the non-concept of “moderation”, however, they wound up helping to build a society that embraced outright statism. It seems that history is rhyming again in Canada. Hopefully, voters won’t fall for it.

Canadian Future is the brainchild of Centre Ice Canadians, formerly known as Centre Ice Conservatives. It was founded in April 2022 when it became clear that Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre had a huge lead in the Conservative leadership race. They preposterously claimed the party was moving too far to the right, and desired a supposedly more moderate political alternative.

Radical centrists are more naturally at home with the Liberals, NDP, Greens and others on the political left. How do they expect to gain support in an even more crowded political field? With ex-Conservatives at the helm, and policies on trade, democracy, the environment and health care that wouldn’t sway many left-leaning Canadians, I have no earthly idea.

We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Cars

Alternative Subsidy Cronies Democrats 13 Comments

The wheels of the Clown Bus go bump, bump, bump;

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on Thursday addressed her now-infamous electric vehicle charging fiasco, saying her “young” staffers showed “poor judgment” when they used a gas-powered car to hoard a spot for Granholm at a crowded public station. …

Granholm’s charging fiasco occurred during the energy secretary’s June 27 drive from South Carolina to Athens, Ga., which included a stop at a public station outside Augusta to recharge Granholm’s electric vehicle fleet. But before Granholm’s arrival, the energy secretary’s advance staff determined the station would not be able to accommodate the caravan, as one charger was broken and others were in use. A Granholm staffer subsequently used a gas-powered car to hoard the station’s only available charger until Granholm’s arrival, prompting one angry family to call the police.

The ethics of emergencies

Alternative Subsidy Cronies It's Probably Nothing nannystate Subsidy Fraud Boy 10 Comments

The misappropriation of millions of dollars is a feature, not a bug, of systems guided by short-term, “emergency” thinking. Or rather, a complete lack of thinking.

Rai led a “fraudulent scheme” targeting the hotel and PHAC officials, according to the statement of claim, telling the other owners the government was taking over the entire hotel but only paying for 100 rooms — when he had actually negotiated government payment for all 247 rooms.

It’s alleged he misappropriated the revenue difference of those 147 rooms: at least $15.7 million.

The sky is falling! This time we mean it!

Cronies Insufferable Twits Media nannystate 19 Comments

Friends of Canadian Socialism….oh, wait, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, says that Canadians ought to boycott Instagram and Facebook essentially for complying with the edicts of the Trudeau government. The first thing that popped into my mind when I read this is, “Are these dinosaurs still around?” I remember their frantic assertions in the early 1980s that Canadian TV would soon be destroyed by cable TV due to the boogeyman of “audience fragmentation”. That was, of course, prior to satellite TV and long before streaming services even existed.

The Friends of Canadian Broadcasting group is asking people to stop posting content on Meta’s platforms on Aug. 23 and 24.

The group says the move is meant to show that Canadians won’t be pushed around by Meta, which decided to pull news from Canadian publishers from its platforms in response to legislation that recently passed.

Y2Kyoto: Screw The Whales

Alternative Subsidy Climate Cult Cronies Y2Kyoto 15 Comments

The poster fish of the environmental movement have outlived their usefulness.

Wind energy companies and their foundations have donated nearly $4.7 million to at least three dozen donations to major environmental organizations. Linowes has made public a report and a database documenting the conflicts-of-interest she discovered. — The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, a granting organization, took up to $1 million from wind energy companies Avangrid and Shell, and then distributed it to other environmental groups. In August 2020, the National Audubon Society received a $200,000 grant from the New England Forest and Rivers Fund. — The same year, the Nature Conservancy received a $165,218 grant from the New England Forest and Rivers Fund. The Nature Conservancy has supported offshore wind since at least 2021. — NJ Audubon has partnered with wind farm developer Atlantic Shores, a joint venture between Shell Oil and EDF Renewables. Ocean Wind, another wind energy developer, has sponsored NJ Audubon’s World Series of Birding event multiple times. The wind industry has also made hefty donations to scientific organizations.

The central bank casino

Cronies entitlement generation Great Moments In Socialism 4 Comments

It’s not news that many of the industries of the Western world have gone overseas since the late 1970’s, thus creating the “rust belt”. What’s largely missing is a proper understanding of why this happened and how that trend is accelerating, with so many companies now involved in what can be accurately termed as “financialization”. With central banks pricing capital at an absurdly low cost and governments happy to cover any and all losses, what could possibly go wrong?

At the heart of the issue is government intervention designed to provide the investor class with greater gains and fewer losses.

Yet the prevailing “wisdom” among policymakers and central bankers is that ever greater amounts of financialization—propped up by repeated government interventions — are somehow just a natural and inescapable feature of the market economy. With each new bubble and each new crisis, the central banks become ever more willing to try risky and “nontraditional” interventions, whether it’s negative interest rates, the abolition of physical cash, or ever larger purchases of near-worthless assets. Thanks to decades of government-fueled financialization, the stakes climb ever higher.

Unexpected headlines

Cronies nannystate There Goes The Narrative 14 Comments

Did someone replace all the staff at CTV news recently? That seems to be the only logical explanation for the presence of such a story on their website. A number of water carriers for the current regime appear to have failed in their duty.

According to the report, Canada’s economic output per person (real GDP per capita) has actually been decreasing for many years.

Back in the 1980s, the report points out, Canada was doing better than the average of advanced economies by about US$4,000 per person. Over time, however, the advantage faded, and the U.S. jumped to US$8,000 a person, according to TD.

Before anyone gets too excited however, it’s obvious that the report is careful not to dig too deep when it comes to reasons for the trend. That might invite criticism of our burgeoning welfare state and the exploding debt levels that go along with it.

Elephant On The Riverbank

Cronies Protected Class The Arts 45 Comments

The Arts: A system in which taxpayers help rich people hang pictures for their friends

The revelation this spring that [Remai Modern] final cost tops $111 million, more than twice the original estimate from when it was first proposed, will resonate for most taxpayers, as will the $6 million a year in city funding.

But the art gallery’s worth should be measured beyond its price tag — its value to Saskatoon is more relevant.

Five years ago the gallery earned Saskatoon a spot in the New York Times’ top tourist destinations in the world. USA Today followed suit the following year by recommending its readers visit the Paris of the Prairies chiefly because of the gallery.

So you can argue all day that the money spent on building the art gallery will never be worth it, but you cannot reasonably claim that no value was derived from it in terms of recognition for the city.

The “cannot reasonably claim” value: two American travel writer mentions at the low, low entry price of $55,500,000.00 apiece.

And then, there’s the nepotism. And the fact that it’s ugly. And the millions to maintain it ain’t ever going away…

Get the hell out of Saskatoon while you still can, my friends.

From the comments: I guess nothing quite “says” Saskatoon like a good stack of double-wides.

Ice cream proletarians

Climate Cult Cronies 19 Comments

I’ve never had a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream treat yet, and after seeing the Canadian branch’s deep dive into Marxism-Leninism and various other woke causes, I won’t be doing so any time soon. Have these guys not learned anything from the Bud Light experience?

Mining, drilling, and logging corporations have been exploiting Indigenous communities for generations. Enabled by the government and unjust laws, they steal land, extract resources, and leave behind polluted water, ruined landscapes, and scarred communities.

When Indigenous activists and community leaders stand up and protest, companies regularly bring in police to silence them and even force them from their own land. In fact, a secretive special unit of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) was created in British Columbia with the sole purpose of suppressing protests.

 

Shocked, I tell you! Shocked!

Alternative Subsidy Cronies Great Moments In Socialism 36 Comments

If Rodriquez literally could not see this coming, he’s not fit to fill the role of municipal dogcatcher, much less a federal cabinet post. Either that, or this was the desired outcome and he’s feigning indignation.

“Well, Meta, I always said it was complicated; Google we still have conversations as recent as this morning,” Rodriguez told CTV’s Power Play Thursday afternoon. “I’m a bit surprised by Google’s reaction.”

What’s more surprising about this mainstream news item is that, for once, it solicited comments that were actually critical of the government:

“The government made a big bet, seemingly just based on the notion that somehow this was all just a big bluff; I don’t think it read the room,” he said. “I don’t think it fully appreciated the current circumstances and it put a fundamental principle of the internet – the notion of free flow of information through linking – at risk.”

We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Cars

Alternative Subsidy Cronies Roadkill Uncategorized 12 Comments

David Harsanyi;

The left likes to treat skeptics of electrical cars as if they were Luddites. Truth is, making an existing product less efficient but more expensive doesn’t really meet the definition of innovation.

Even the purported amenities and technological advances EV-makers like to brag about in their ads have been a regular feature of gas-powered vehicles going back generations. At best, EVs, if they fulfill their promise, are a lateral technology.

Which is why there is no real “emerging market” for EVs in the United States as much as there’s an industrial policy in place that props up EVs with government purchases, propaganda, endless state subsidies, cronyism, taxpayer-backed loans, and edicts. The green “revolution” is an elite-driven, top-down technocratic project.

And it’s increasingly clear that the only reason giant rent-seeking carmakers are so heavily invested in EV development is that government is promising to artificially limit the production of gas-powered cars.[…]

In today’s real-world economy, though, Ford announced this week that it was firing at least 1,000 employees — many of them white-collar workers on the EV side. Ford projects it’s going to lose $3 billion on electric vehicles in 2023, bringing its EV losses to $5.1 billion over two years. In 2021, Ford reportedly lost $34,000 on every EV it made. This year it was losing more than $58,000 on every EV. In a normal world, Ford would be dramatically scaling back EV production, not expanding it. Remember that next time we need to bail out Detroit.

Then again, we’re already bailing them out, I suppose. Last week, the U.S. Energy Department lent Ford — again, a company that loses tens of thousands of dollars on every EV it sells — another $9.2 billion in taxpayer dollars for a South Korean battery project. One imagines no sane bank would do it. The cost of EV batteries has gone up, not down, over the past few years.

Hitting the ditch

Climate Cult Cronies It's Probably Nothing 40 Comments

As anyone who has purchased a vehicle lately will tell you, it’s little wonder that automakers are now in cost-cutting mode. At these prices, the marginal consumer is simply saying no. My local dealer informs me that production schedules for some models are so backed up that the buyer must either pony up more dough for next year’s model or forfeit the sale.

Ford Motor Co (F.N) said on Tuesday it will begin layoffs this week, impacting mostly engineering jobs in the U.S. and Canada, as part of the Detroit automaker’s move to exit unprofitable locations and cut headcount.

The development comes after the company said in May it expects to take up restructuring charges between $1.5 billion and $2 billion in 2023.

Buried in the story is this little note about EV production:

Ford CEO Jim Farley has previously said the automaker had too many people and that not enough of its workforce had the skills required as the auto industry shifts to electric vehicles and digital services.

Scapegoating as a national sport

Cronies Great Moments In Socialism nannystate 20 Comments

Sometimes one has to wonder why any investor would bother to park his money in Canada these days. In the case of a particular parliamentary committee looking at food prices, the solution being offered to rising prices is to hit competitors with higher taxes. I’m sure that will make food prices go down, right?

If Canada’s Competition Bureau finds that grocery store giants are profiting excessively from food inflation, the federal government should consider slapping a windfall tax on those excess profits.

Rather than condemn such a ludicrous idea, the  milquetoasts at the Retail Council of Canada had this to say:

“While we welcome the collaborative tone of the report, we would caution against increased government intervention in the operational aspects of the retail food business.”

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