Category: nannystate

Athletes for Totalitarianism!

CFL nannystate Surveillance State 48 Comments

It’s hard to say. Maybe he missed the football once or twice and kicked himself in the head. Even if he didn’t, he ought to be aware that one of the few things putting a barrier between this country and a dictatorship is the free exchange of ideas over the internet. Take down that barrier and we’re essentially done like dinner.

Stating the obvious

Great Moments In Socialism Let Them Eat Taser nannystate 39 Comments

When you see media articles puzzling over how the pandemic seems to have made society less civil, you just have to wonder how brain dead someone must be not to have seen this coming.

A lot has happened in the time since March 2020, and some Canadians feel that one of the characteristics the country used to be known for – kindness – may no longer be an accurate stereotype.

They’ve turned to social media to ask whether anyone else has noticed society being “increasingly unkind” and “disrespectful” since the pandemic.

CTV is soliciting opinions in regard to this problem, but it’s unlikely anyone who strays from the narrative is going to see their thoughts publicized.

Voting for dollars

entitlement generation nannystate Tommy Douglas: Not Dead Enough 34 Comments

Any predictions out there as to who is going to triumph in the Manitoba provincial election being held on October 3rd?

Here’s mine: The tax and spend party is going to win out over the borrow and spend party.

Here’s why: voters are upset that seven years of rule by the borrow and spend party have not fixed socialized medicine. As happens in every election cycle, each party takes a stab at trying to make this centrally planned system function. It’s now the NDP’s turn to engage in a vain effort to accomplish the impossible. No one dares challenge the single payer model since that would result in electoral defeat.

Wab Kinew’s plan to reopen the ERs closed by the Tories is only going to happen by shifting staff from other areas, since extra staff are largely unobtainable. If you really want to determine the proper number of ERs that Manitoba needs, you would have to allow free interaction between health care practitioners and consumers in the context of a system with actual price signals. Since we have neither, good luck to Wab.

No profits for you!

entitlement generation Great Moments In Socialism nannystate 19 Comments

One really has to wonder why any investor would ever sink a dime into France.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday the government would ask the fuel industry to sell at cost price and would grant 100 euros ($106.52) in aid to the poorest workers who drive to work, to stem the impact of inflation on households.

“The Prime Minister will bring together all the players in the sector this week and we will ask them to sell at cost price, that is to say that no one makes a margin,” Macron said in an interview with France’s TF1 and France 2 television stations.

 

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.

Soviet food systems

Alternative Subsidy Democrats nannystate 14 Comments

With rampant crime infesting so many inner cities in North America, is it really any wonder that large retailers are exiting those environs? Responding with a proposal for state-owned food stores is about as far from a solution as you could possibly get, but these days it seems to be par for the course.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said he wants to open city-owned grocery stores to serve neighborhoods that have become “food deserts” after four Walmart stores and a Whole Foods closed.

Johnson announced last week that his administration would partner with the nonprofit advocacy group Economic Security Project to put stores in underserved areas of the city — a proposal Republicans called something out of “Soviet-style central planning.“

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.

Don’t make me come up there!

Alternative Subsidy entitlement generation nannystate 27 Comments

There’s two ways to comply with Canada’s recent legislation regarding online news: either pay every time a user on your social media platform links to said news, or block the link and pay nothing. Meta has chosen the latter option.

The federal government’s response: We demand that you make a different choice! If you don’t, well, …. we’ll complain a lot because what else can you do when you’ve painted yourself into a corner.

The Canadian government on Friday demanded that Meta lift a “reckless” ban on domestic news from its platforms to allow people to share information about wildfires in the west of the country.

Chris Bittle, a legislator for the ruling Liberal Party, complained on Thursday that “Meta’s actions to block news are reckless and irresponsible.”

A zero percent interest miracle

DigitalCurrency entitlement generation nannystate 13 Comments

The fact that the idea of parking interest rates permanently at zero gets any academic attention at all, is in itself worrisome. It’s no secret that this was an idea embraced by none other than John Maynard Keynes, who thought it would be the key to effortless financing of whatever projects a central planner might dream up.

If the interest rate were permanently zero, the government’s fiscal levers of taxation and spending would be the alternative means of controlling inflation.

Naturally, this nonsense goes hand in hand with direct central bank control of individual spending decisions:

Also worth mentioning is the current push by the Bank of England towards central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), in which buyers and sellers would transfer money directly without having to use the banking system. This could enable central banks to encourage or discourage certain spending in more targeted ways, for example by restricting what can be spent by people in certain areas or income brackets. If inflation was controlled using only fiscal levers, CBDCs could be used to reinforce this policy.

Socialisme pour les Quebecois

Alternative Subsidy Great Moments In Socialism nannystate Protected Class 14 Comments

Central planning is like a washing machine cycle that never ends:

Step 1: Subsidize production.

Step 2: When production exceeds consumer demand, subsidize the losses.

Step 3: When the losses become terminal, pay producers to exit the industry.

Step 4: When prices rise, go back to Step 1.

The first stage of the production-cut program is voluntary. Those that agree to participate must leave the industry for a minimum of five years. Two-thirds of the cost will be covered by Farm Income Stabilization Insurance, a taxpayer-funded provincial program that, when market prices are low, covers the costs of production. One-third will be paid by Les Éleveurs de porcs du Québec.

This will mean that every producer who remains in the sector must pay $2.86 to the union for every hog they sell, to cover producers’ share of the expense, according to reporting by La Presse. The pool of cash will be used to pay producers who leave.

“We understand we need the taxpayer helping us‚ but at the same time we bring lots of money, too,” Mr. Roy said.

Drunken policy

entitlement generation nannystate 15 Comments

My advice for any company investing in Quebec? Get out, while you still can.

A Quebec trucking company has been ordered to reinstate a driver who was fired after she drank at least nine beers before she lost control of her truck on a Pennsylvania highway.

Labour arbitrator Huguette April says the driver’s drinking was from alcoholism — a disability — and that trucking company Groupe Robert should have made a reasonable accommodation for her.

Surplus value

nannystate Safe and Effective Tommy Douglas: Not Dead Enough 33 Comments

If you are wondering what factors have contributed to economic dislocations, business failures and rising prices since the Covid pandemic began, part of the answer lies in governments splurging on items for which there is little, if any, consumer demand. That splurging eats up capital that cannot be deployed for production of goods that consumers actually have a use for.

The federal government is sitting on a stockpile of 39 million extra rapid tests for COVID-19 and is struggling to get rid of them without chucking them in the trash, an internal Health Canada memo shows.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Canada has spent roughly $5 billion on rapid tests.

 

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.

Canadian “exceptionalism”

nannystate Tommy Douglas: Not Dead Enough 12 Comments

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that Canada’s stubborn obsession with single payer health care is taking a massive toll on the budgets of governments and the health of Canadians, but that won’t stop Medicare’s supporters from continuing to insist that government payments to a few select private clinics constitutes “privatization”.

You’re seeing a lot of controversy about the introduction of “private health care” into the Canadian system. But you can all relax, because it’s not actually private health care. It’s still public health care, but just the worst possible version of it.

In Canada, it’s illegal to buy insurance for anything covered under the public system. Nobody else does this. In The Netherlands, New Zealand, Japan, the U.K. you can pony up a few thousand dollars each year in private insurance and — if you need stitches — you can either go to the public hospital or use your insurance to get it done privately at an entirely different health care system over here.

That’s private health care.

No speech for you!

Freespeechers nannystate Quackery 10 Comments

Some foolish ideas just refuse to die. Ideas like the claim that laws against murder are an infringement on freedom, but a very acceptable and necessary infringement. It never takes long for someone to take that preposterous argument to the next level, and before you know it there’s no freedom for anyone.

You will see throughout our constitution, yes you have rights, but they are restricted for the common good. Everything needs to be balanced.

“If your views on other people’s identities go to make their lives unsafe, insecure and cause them such deep discomfort that they cannot live in peace then I believe that it is our job, as legislators, to restrict those freedoms, for the common good,” Ms O’Reilly added.

Unfortunately, the Irish Green Party’s views on the nature of freedom would be right at home here in Canada. Our entire constitution is based on the idea that every individual has freedom…until a majority of the tribe decides that you don’t.

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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