With the marginal consumer now cutting back in sharp contrast to the heady days of the pandemic spending spree, we’re likely to see more of this in the future.
True Value, the hardware retailer based in Chicago, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and agreed to sell itself for $153 million to Do it Best Corp., the home improvement company based in Fort Wayne, Indiana, according to court filings.
Here’s a pretty good indicator of where our economy is heading. It’s not good.
An elderly school trustee who questioned trans ideology has been subjected to a legal witch-hunt.
Micheal Gayed of the Lead-Lag Report interviews Canada’s foremost real estate expert Ron Butler in a recent podcast. Well worth the listen as it covers all the main points about Canadian real estate. In a nutshell, the Canadian housing market might be where the US was in 2008, or maybe even worse.
As of this September, federal, state and local governments in this country employed a record total of 23,421,000 individuals, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In other words, government payrolls were populated by more people than lived in the state of Florida or in any of 47 other states. Only California and Texas had populations that exceeded the number of people who work for government in this country.
Why are the Tories split on this issue? Do some of them actually think that the supply mismanaged dairy and poultry sectors should be allowed to hold the rest of the economy hostage?
This week, farming groups and former trade negotiators took turns trying to convince the upper chamber to either support or reject the Bloc’s private member’s bill to protect supply management from future trade negotiations.
The government voted in favour of the legislation last year, as did most Liberal MPs, the Bloc, the NDP and the Greens. The Conservatives were split on the vote.
Until morale improves.
Blacklock’s- Feds Want 3% Irish Land Tax
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland yesterday said cabinet would like to adopt an Irish-style three percent annual federal tax on vacant lots.
“Such taxes would be intended to discourage speculative holding of land and making it more costly to keep land undeveloped,” the finance department wrote in a Consultation Paper. “Taxes could provide a source of revenue for various orders of government which could be used to fund the construction of more new homes,” it added.
One of the less well-known economists of the Austrian School was Professor Antal Fekete who died in 2020. Fekete arguably had a much better grasp of monetary issues than many of his contemporaries. His works are still available on his website, and one in particular details why debt must necessarily grow exponentially in a fiat currency system.
Every year monetary authorities must create at least as much new money as needed to service outstanding debt, in order to keep the game of musical chairs going.
Governments have lost not only their option to reduce indebtedness but, more ominously, the option to balance their budgets. There is a new item in the budget that is never named, that is well-hidden, but that is increasing by leaps and bounds year after year: that part of government borrowing that is needed to provide cover for the increase of the monetary base.
The utterances of politicians about their resolve to eliminate the budget deficit is disingenuous – it cannot be done under the prevailing monetary regime on a net basis.
Who would keep firetrucks away from fires?
Blacklock’s- Few Hear Of Pharmacare Act
Few Canadians know of cabinet’s pharmacare bill though cabinet has promoted it as groundbreaking, says in-house Privy Council Office polling.
“None were aware of any action from the federal government related to establishment of a national pharmacare program,” said the Privy Council report. Findings were drawn from focus groups nationwide. The Privy Council commissioned the questionnaires under an $814,741 contract with The Strategic Counsel, a Toronto pollster.
Daily Sceptic- The Politicisation of Plants
The first step concerns the word caffra. It is a common suffix in some plants, such as Erythrina caffra. From now on caffra will be replaced by affra, so that Erythrina caffra will be known as Erythrina affra. This is because caffra is a bad word, alluding to an Arabic word for ‘infidel’ (which at some point was adopted as a racial term in South Africa), while affra is a good word, alluding to Africa. If that was the first step, then the second step is that the nomenclature session also decided that a committee will be created to consider the names of plants associated with controversial figures from the past: though this will only apply to plants named after 2026, and therefore not reach as far as renaming plants which were originally named for slave traders or despots.
Globe and Mail- A look at Halifax’s climate property tax, ahead of a civic election that could determine its future
This is unique among larger Canadian cities – many of which have put little money toward climate change even as they declare it an emergency – and raises about $18-million in dedicated funds each year. But its prominence on the bill is a recurring worry to the city bureaucrat who helps dole out the money.
“Usually when things are called out on the tax bill, they’re at risk,” said Shannon Miedama, Halifax’s director of environment and climate change. “Every year I freak out that it’s going to get debated and pulled, and it hasn’t happened yet.”
Gateway Pundit- Controversial Support for Children’s Sex Education by Trudeau: How Far Can Indoctrination Go?
The book is aimed at children aged 8 to 10 and addresses highly explicit topics such as masturbation, oral sex, genital size, and various gender identities.
When a society accepts the premise that those with wealth deserve to have it strip mined, nothing is off limits.
Governments’ extraction of value from our homes has accelerated in recent years as they have became more desperate, both to raise revenue and to find scapegoats to deflect blame for their own starring role Canada’s housing shortage. As the byzantine extractions multiplied, our homes, once considered our main assets, have morphed for many into our main liabilities. Once upon a time, “safe as houses” was a no-brainer investment strategy. Anyone who now sees a house as a safe investment needs his head examined.
This will go great with a bowl full of bugs first thing in the morning.
Psy.org- Scientists release the recipe for lab-grown coffee to accelerate creation of new coffee ecosystem
Blacklock’s- Creeping Black Market
The underground economy now comprises a third of the Canadian trucking industry, the Commons finance committee was told yesterday.
Wood said a 2022 Department of Employment spot check on scofflaws in Ontario alone “found gross non-compliance with more than 60 percent of employers” in contravention of labour codes.
Audits by the Canada Revenue Agency also identified widespread tax evasion, said Wood.
Financial Post- Young nurses are leaving over working conditions, study says
For every 100 nurses trained in the country who started working in the field in 2022, there were 40 who left the profession before their 35th birthday, the report released on Sept. 25 reveals.
And nothing screams motherhood quite like a convulsing bald man in a bodystocking.
National Post- ‘How will I come back from this?’: Detransitioners abandoned by medical and trans communities
The National Post reached out to six detransitioners across the country. All were born female and suffered from gender dysphoria and mental health issues. Many experienced regret and felt they were too young and distressed to be allowed to consent to such life-altering interventions. Four agreed to tell their stories publicly.