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Are Canadian Think Tanks Trustworthy?
The Fraser Institute A family member recently told me that if I want to have her read my articles, I’d have to make them shorter. That was good feedback. I’ve been targeting 2000 to 3000 words for my essays, and based on the feedback received, I’ll see if I can cut it down a bit.…
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Remodeling Health Care
My last little fulmination was directed at fixing our health care systems in Canada. After all was said and done, I suppose I made only three significant points. The first was that Health Care needs fixing. The second was that it is the responsibility of the Provincial governments to fix it, and they should stop…
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Health Care – A Sick Situation
Two women died in Nova Scotia recently despite having presented themselves at hospital emergency rooms for treatment. One woman – only 37 years old – waited six hours for treatment at a hospital in Amherst Nova Scotia. She was in such extreme pain that she was unable to sit in a wheelchair and wound up…
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How Blogging Has Changed Me
I started writing a blog a little over a year ago. I would see something on the news that would turn my crank and I would respond by commenting on Facebook (because I just HAD to vent somewhere). But that process was unsatisfactory. Facebook comments are short and shallow, and I needed a platform to…
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The Dark Money Conspiracy
Leading into the US mid-term elections, I wrote an article about the incredible spending levels associated with elections on the United States. I recall finding some spending estimates and doing a little math which showed that political parties and outside interests were going to spend approximately $8000 US per vote cast in the election. If…
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Why Seemingly Intelligent People Believe Stupid Stuff
I am often bemused by the prevalence of conspiracy theories. There are so many of them out there. QAnon, the Illuminati, the Jews, the Masons, aliens, the US government, the UN, the oil industry, the automobile industry, climate change deniers, climate change alarmists…the lists go on and on. The number of groups secretly conspiring against…
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What Limits Our Right to Protest?
(Image from the Ottawa Citizen) I’ve been following, (sporadically and with some limits on how much I can take before I’m either bored to tears or frustrated beyond belief) the inquiry into the government’s invocation of the Emergency Act. Certain impressions come to mind. I was pleasantly surprised by the presence of mind and demeanour…
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US Election Spending Threatens Democracy.
It may already be too late for the United States. The world-wide decline in democracies has no greater threat than the attack on democracy within the United States of America. Let’s be quite clear – a second term for Donald Trump could easily mark the end of democracy in America. There are two scenarios that…
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Surviving on a Hostile Planet
I watched a bit of the CBC news today. This is the 14th day after Hurricane Fiona (piss on that “post-tropical storm” designation) ripped into the Maritime provinces, dropping trees, destroying electrical power systems, ripping out roads and bridges, and dramatically altering the natural environment. Approximately 15% of the Maritime Electric customers on PEI are still…
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Monarchy, Justice, and Dictators
I find that it’s challenging to continue to have major new topics to talk about, and that there is a temptation to simply re-write what I’ve have written before. Today’s offering for your news and entertainment is a combination of smaller scale new items and updates on old ones. The Monarchy: Some of my friends…
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Unrestricted Gambling is a Bad Bet
I recently watched a baseball game and kept a count of the number of sports betting ads that I saw. It was fourteen such ads by the 7th inning. In short, if you watch sports these days, you are inundated with messages urging you to be cool and bet on sports. I’m a curmudgeonly old fart,…
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I’n Not a Racist, But…
When I was a Hydroid, I took a training course which included a video by a very fast-talking psychologist with a strong Texan accent. The video was entitled, if memory serves me correctly, “Who You Are Is Where You Were When”. The premise of the video was that your gut level reactions to things are…
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Keeping Ukraine in Mind
I’ve not been writing as much lately, probably due to the starting of the Blue Jays 2022 season coupled with the Stanley Cup Playoffs. And there is much to write about. I should explore gun violence in America and consider how we prevent the American mental disease on guns from infecting Canada. Or is it…
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Putting an End to the War On Drugs
(Picture from The Economist) I saw a story on TV about a district attorney in San Francisco who is being accused of failing to prosecute criminals in general and drug users and traffickers in particular. That set me to musing about the American tendency to incarcerate people at the drop of the proverbial hat, which…
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Yes – Tax the Billionaires!
Heather Cox Richardson is a professor of history at Boston College and is also the author of a very popular “Letters From An American” nightly newsletter. I have found her discourses informative. She is profoundly concerned about the direction of the Republican party in the US, and might be considered a biased source by some,…
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Expanding the Social Safety Net
(Image courtesy of John Fewings Cartoons) The Minister of Finance tabled the budget for Canada on April 7th, and it included some $300M to start a dental care program. CTV News reports that “The new program will be restricted to families with an income of less than $90,000, with no co-pays for those who make…
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The Perils of Populism
On April 3rd, Viktor Orban, a “populist” leader, once again won election as the Prime Minister of Hungary. Orban, described as the most dangerous man in the European Union, is a supporter of Vlad the invader. In the flush of victory following his election he identified Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelinsky, who has been critical of…
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In Praise of Secularism
I made a brief and bitter comment on Facebook recently about the endorsement of the Russian invasion of Ukraine by Kiril, Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. At the time of his ascension to power in Russia, Vladimir Putin’s power base sprang from his promise to re-vitalize the Russian economy, and to bring prosperity to…
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Reversing the Global Economy
At the end of December, I wrote an article (Preparing for the Apocalypse) in which I mused about the state of the world and the implications for Canada looking into 2022 and beyond. I characterized the world as a dangerously turbulent place, given the pandemic, the gloomy outlook for climate change, and the increasingly aggressive…
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The Future of Economic War
How the heck did we get to this place, where we’re standing by, wringing our hands, as we watch decent people get slaughtered? When Ukraine became an independent state in 1991, it had the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world. They bought into disarmament. In 1994, according to Arms Control Association (armscontrol.org) they “committed…