Extra Credits
Published on 14 May 2019What makes 1984 still relevant to modern readers is that it serves as a warning against fascism in all its possible forms. George Orwell’s service fighting in the Spanish Civil War led him to see that the heart of totalitarianism is about xenophobia and nationalism no matter which kind of government it came from.
The idea that Orwell presents us in 1984 is that people subtle enough and brutal enough can take the undirected dissatisfaction and anger of a society and point it at whatever they will, using us to damn ourselves.
May 15, 2019
1984 – Dystopias and Apocalypses – Extra Sci Fi
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May 13, 2019
The political persecution of Vice-Admiral Norman
Conrad Black on the recently stayed prosecution of the former Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff, Vice-Admiral Mark Norman:
The RCMP, the same Palooka force that brought us the ghastly fiasco of the trial and resounding acquittal of Senator Mike Duffy, alleged that Vice Adm. Norman was the source of press leaks, and searched his house with a warrant in January 2017, a fact that was also mysteriously leaked to the press. He was suspended with full pay, and finally, in March of 2018, he was charged with a criminal breach of trust. The government barred him from the benefit of the loan of money for legal fees to accused government employees pending judgment, a capricious attempt to starve him into surrender.
Neither the media, usually pretty quick to jump on the back of any defendant, nor any other serious observers, believed the defendant, who started in the navy as a diesel mechanic and rose for 33 years to commander of the fleet and then serve as vice-chief of the defence staff, would do such a thing, or that the RCMP had any real evidence. It didn’t, inciting the suspicion that the Mounties, if they can’t raise their game, should stick to musical rides and selling ginger ale, and reinforcing the view that the Armed Forces should be funded properly, and not just in phony announcements every few years of naval construction and army and air force procurement programs that don’t happen. And It is, in any case unacceptable that police corporals get warrants to search the home of the second highest military officer in the country on grounds that are eventually shown to be unfounded.
It appears to be clear that exculpatory evidence was withheld by the prosecutors, deliberately or otherwise. Outgoing Liberal MP and parliamentary secretary Lt. Gen. (Rt.) Andrew Leslie (a grandson of two former defence ministers, Gen. Andrew McNaughton and Brooke Claxton), had announced he would testify on behalf of Vice Adm. Norman. The prime minister ducked out of question period for two days as this contemptible abuse of prosecution collapsed. Instead, he should, if conscientiously possible, have blamed it on the former attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould. That would have been believable, given some of her other antics in that office.
If he can’t do that, then this rotten egg falls on him and could be a politically mortal blow. The SNC-Lavalin affair was an attempt to save jobs in Canada and avoid over-penalization of a successful international company where there is a legal right for the justice department to choose between a fine and criminal prosecution. It was bungled, a ludicrous amateur hour that brought down senior civil servants and led to expulsions of ex-cabinet ministers as Liberal MPs, but it was not a show-stopper unless the prime minister lied to Parliament.
This appears to be a malicious and illegal prosecution of a blameless senior serving officer, who fought his corner as a brave man must. If that is what it is, heads should roll, not of scapegoats, token juniors, or fall-guys, but of those responsible for this outrage.
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May 5, 2019
Theresa May’s awful “Withdrawal” Agreement
Hector Drummond relays a Spectator article that lists 40 problems with Prime Minister May’s agreement with the EU:
Just in case readers don’t have the time to go through the lengthly document themselves, Steerpike has compiled a list of the top 40 horrors lurking in the small print of Theresa May’s Brexit deal.
[…]
In summary: The supposed “transition period” could last indefinitely or, more specifically, to an undefined date sometime this century (“up to 31 December 20XX”, Art. 132). So while this Agreement covers what the government is calling Brexit, what we in fact get is: “transition” + extension indefinitely (by however many years we are willing to pay for) + all of those extra years from the “plus 8 years” articles.
Should it end within two years, as May hopes, the UK will still be signed up to clauses keeping us under certain rules (like VAT and ECJ supervision) for a further eight years. Some clauses have, quite literally, a “lifetime” duration (Art.39). If the UK defaults on transition, we go in to the backstop with the Customs Union and, realistically, the single market. We can only leave the transition positively with a deal. But we sign away the money. So the EU has no need to give us a deal, and certainly no incentive to make the one they offered “better” than the backstop. The European Court of Justice remains sovereign, as repeatedly stipulated. Perhaps most damagingly of all, we agree to sign away the rights we would have, under international law, to unilaterally walk away. Again, what follows relates (in most part) for the “transition” period. But the language is consistent with the E.U. imagining that this will be the final deal.
The top 40 horrors:
- From the offset, we should note that this is an EU text, not a UK or international text. This has one source. The Brexit agreement is written in Brussels.
- May says her deal means the UK leaves the EU next March. The Withdrawal Agreement makes a mockery of this. “All references to Member States and competent authorities of Member States…shall be read as including the United Kingdom.” (Art 6). Not quite what most people understand by Brexit. It goes on to spell out that the UK will be in the EU but without any MEPs, a commissioner or ECJ judges. We are effectively a Member State, but we are excused – or, more accurately, excluded – from attending summits. (Article 7)
- The European Court of Justice is decreed to be our highest court, governing the entire Agreement – Art. 4. stipulates that both citizens and resident companies can use it. Art 4.2 orders our courts to recognise this. “If the European Commission considers that the United Kingdom has failed to fulfil an obligation under the Treaties or under Part Four of this Agreement before the end of the transition period, the European Commission may, within 4 years after the end of the transition period, bring the matter before the Court of Justice of the European Union”. (Art. 87)
- The jurisdiction of the ECJ will last until eight years after the end of the transition period. (Article 158).
- The UK will still be bound by any future changes to EU law in which it will have no say, not to mention having to comply with current law. (Article 6(2))
And on for another 35 awful items.
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May 3, 2019
The rarely used US Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA)
Ron Paul wonders why Russian national Maria Butina got a harsher sentence under the Foreign Agent Registration Act than an actual foreign agent who was paid millions of dollars by the Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein:
Russian gun rights activist and graduate exchange student Maria Butina was sentenced to 18 months in prison last week for “conspiracy to act as a foreign agent without registering.” Her “crime” was to work to make connections among American gun rights activists in hopes of building up her organization, the Right to Bear Arms, when she returned to Russia.
She was not employed by the Russian government nor was she a lobbyist on Putin’s behalf. In fact the Putin Administration is hostile to Russian gun rights groups. Nevertheless the US mainstream media and Trump’s Justice Department are treating her as public enemy number one in a case that will no doubt set the dangerous precedent of criminalizing person-to-person diplomacy in the United States.
The Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) was passed in 1938 under pressure from the FDR Administration partly to silence opposition to the US entry into World War II. While a handful of cases were prosecuted during the war, between 1966 and 2015 the Justice Department only brought seven FARA cases for prosecution.
Though very few cases have been brought on FARA violations, one of them was against Samir Vincent, who was paid millions of dollars by Saddam Hussein to lobby for sanctions relief without registering. He got off with a fine and “community service.”
Millions of dollars in unregistered payments from Saddam Hussein gets no jail time, while Butina gets 18 months in prison for privately promoting a cause most Americans support! How is this justice?
The US Justice Department is not even as tough on illegals who commit capital crimes in the US!
Unfortunately Maria Butina was in the wrong place at the wrong time. With the rise of the “Russiagate” hysteria, Butina’s case was seen as a useful tool by Democrats to push the idea that President Trump was put into office by the Russians. Plus, many of them are also hostile to our Second Amendment and to the National Rifle Association. So it was a perfect storm for Butina.
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May 1, 2019
Feds impose media ban on companies taking part in “the largest single outlay of tax dollars in Canadian history”
Ted Campbell understands that governments need to keep some information secret (like the capability of weapon systems or details of naval radar implementations), but that our current federal government is going far beyond any reasonable definition of secrecy:
Type 26 Global Combat Ship — selected as the Canadian Surface Combatant program’s design winner.
(BAE Systems, via Flickr)
But, that sort of really SECRET stuff aside, we, citizens, do have a right to know how the government is spending our money and that, in my opinion, includes understanding “details about the industrial benefits and jobs supposedly to be created by the surface combatant project.” After all, it was our government, the Harper Conservative government to be clear, that selected, in that case, Irving Shipbuilding (Halifax) to be the supplier of new destroyer-frigate type warships, and they did so after what was described in a 2010 press release by then Public Works and Government Services Minister Rona Ambrose as developing a
Strategy [that] promotes the regional distribution of work and opportunities to shipyards across the country. Shipyards that are selected to build the combat and non-combat packages will have to subcontract vast amounts of work to the broader marine industry and suppliers of this industry. Subcontracting in any of the three streams encompassed by the Strategy will be of notable benefit small and medium enterprises … [and] … The Government of Canada is committed to getting the best value for Canadian taxpayers. Under the Strategy, shipbuilding projects that are similar in nature will be grouped together to reduce production costs. This type of strategic sourcing will create the conditions for the effective and efficient delivery and support of the federal fleet over the long term.
That’s all pretty good stuff and I’m pretty sure that most Liberal ministers are still toeing that same line today. They promised industrial benefits and jobs; we, taxpayers, have a right to know if they are delivering.
But, in an article in the National Post, defence correspondent David Pugliese tells us that
The Liberal government has brought in yet another media ban, this time affecting companies seeking work on a warship project that involves the largest single outlay of tax dollars in Canadian history … [in this case] … In a new directive, firms interested in maintenance work on the $60 billion Canadian Surface Combatant program have been told they can’t talk to journalists and instead must refer all inquiries to Public Services and Procurement Canada … [and] … At the same time, a public interest researcher who is seeking details about the industrial benefits and jobs supposedly to be created by the surface combatant project has been informed by government it will take at least three and a half years to get any such documents under the Access to Information law.
Mr Pugliese says, and these are two very worrying points, that:
- The media ban imposed by Procurement Canada on firms interested in maintenance work on that fleet is the fifth such order in the last year involving the purchase of military equipment or ships, according to documents compiled by Postmedia; and
- Industry representatives have sent the news organization the documents, warning about the growing secrecy at Procurement Canada. The records include a ban on firms talking to journalists about the Canadian Surface Combatants, the purchase of next generation fighter jets, a light icebreaker, a Defence department satellite, as well as a military pilot training contract. Industry executives point out the secrecy is not based on security concerns but on worries the news media will be able to use the information to keep close tabs on the problem-plagued military procurement system.
The Trudeau regime seems obsessed with secrecy and wants to bend all factual information to suit its narrative that it is spending our money as we might wish … which is, of course exactly what the Trudeau campaign said about Prime Minister Stephen Harper
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April 24, 2019
QotD: The Utopia of Damned Fools
The money began to pour out on November 16, 1933, to the tune of a deafening hullabaloo. By December 1 more than 1,000,000 were on the CWA [Civil Works Administration] pay roll; by January, 1934, the number reached 4,100,000. Press agents in eight-hour shifts worked day and night to tell a panting country what it was all about. The Depression, it was explained, was being given a series of adroit and fatal blows, above, below and athwart the belt. In six months there would be no more unemployment, the wheels of industry would be spinning, and the More Abundant Life would be on us. Brains had at last conquered the fear of fear.
What actually happened belongs to history. By the opening of Spring [Harry] Hopkins had got rid of his billion, and the whole thing had blown up with a bang. More people were out of work than ever before. The wheels of industry resolutely refused to spin. The More Abundant Life continued to linger over the sky line. There ensued a pause for taking breath, and then another stupendous assault was launched upon the taxpayer. This time the amount demanded was $4,880,000,000. It is now in hand, and plans are under way to lay it out where it will do the most good in next year’s campaign.
Go back to the clippings and read them again. Consider well what they say. Four preposterous nonentities, all of them professional uplifters, returning from a junket at the taxpayer’s expense, sit in a smoking car munching peanuts and talking shop. Their sole business in life is spending other people’s money. In the past they have always had to put in four-fifths of their time cadging it, but now the New Deal has admitted them to the vaults of the public treasury, and just beyond the public treasury, shackled in a gigantic lemon-squeezer worked by steam, groans the taxpayer. They feel their oats, and are busting with ideals. For them, at least, the More Abundant Life has surely come.
Suddenly one of them, biting down hard on a peanut, has an inspiration. He leapt to his feet exultant, palpitating like a crusader shinning up the walls of Antioch. How, now, comrade, have you bitten into a worm? Nay, gents, I have thought of a good one, a swell one, the damndest you will ever heard tell of. Why not put everyone to work? Why not shovel it out in a really Large Way. Why higgle and temporize? We won’t be here forever, and when we are gone we’ll be gone a long while.
But the Leader? Wasn’t he babbling again, only the other day, of balancing the budget? Isn’t it a fact that he shows some sign of wobbling of late – that the flop of the NRA [National Recovery Administration] has given him to think? Well, we can only try. We have fetched him before, and maybe we can fetch him again. So the train reaches Washington, the porter gets his tip from the taxpayer’s pocket, and the next day the four brethren meet to figure out the details. But they never get further than a few scratches, for The Leader is in one of his intuitive moods, and his Christian Science smile is in high gear. Say no more, Harry, it is done! The next morning the money begins to gush and billow out of the Treasury. Six months later a billion is gone, and plans are under way to collar five times as much more.
Such is government by the Brain Trust. Such is the fate of the taxpayer under a Planned Economy. Such is the Utopia of Damned Fools.
H.L. Mencken, “The New Deal”, The Mencken Chrestomathy, 1982 (article originally published 1935-05).
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April 23, 2019
QotD: Cities and the Laffer Curve
… government finances are ultimately constrained by the much-maligned Laffer Curve. There is some point, however high the percentage, beyond which raising the tax rate not only doesn’t bring in more revenue, but actually lowers government income. And the smaller the level of government, the lower the tax rate at which Laffer effects kick in. If your block had the ability to levy a 25 percent tax on your income, and actually did so, you’d sell your house pretty quick. It’s much harder to pick up and move to another country. We also have to factor in the fact that, in a democracy, voters can go to the polls and say “no more,” which is a sort of secondary Laffer point that people planning in decades have to reckon with.
Cities tend to declare bankruptcy precisely because they’re near one of those points, through some combination of financial mismanagement and local economic decline. When they have exhausted their ability to borrow, or wheedle bailouts out of some larger government entity, they end up with an unpalatable choice between cutting municipal services or failing their creditors …
Megan McArdle, Bloomberg View, 2017-04-11.
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April 21, 2019
QotD: High Modern city design as a tool to control the populace
Scott notes that although citizens generally didn’t have a problem with earlier cities, governments did:
Historically, the relative illegibility to outsiders of some urban neighborhoods has provided a vital margin of political safety from control by outside elites. A simple way of determining whether this margin exists is to ask if an outsider would have needed a local guide in order to find her way successfully. If the answer is yes, then the community or terrain in question enjoys at least a small measure of insulation from outside intrusion. Coupled with patterns of local solidarity, this insulation has proven politically valuable in such disparate contexts as eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century urban riots over bread prices in Europe, the Front de Liberation Nationale’s tenacious resistance to the French in the Casbah of Algiers, and the politics of the bazaar that helped to bring down the Shah of Iran. Illegibility, then, has been and remains a reliable resource for political autonomy
This was a particular problem in Paris, which was famous for a series of urban insurrections in the 19th century (think Les Miserables, but about once every ten years or so). Although these generally failed, they were hard to suppress because locals knew the “terrain” and the streets were narrow enough to barricade. Slums full of poor people gathered together formed tight communities where revolutionary ideas could easily spread. The late 19th-century redesign of Paris had the explicit design of destroying these areas and splitting up poor people somewhere far away from the city center where they couldn’t do any harm.
Scott ties this into another High Modernist creation: the collective farms of the Soviet Union. This was a terrible idea and responsible for the famines that killed millions (tens of millions?) during Stalin’s administration. The government went ahead with them because the non-collectivized farmers were too powerful and independent a political bloc. They lived in tight-knit little villages that did their own thing, the Party officials who went to these villages to keep order often ended up “going native”, and the Soviets had no way of knowing how much food the farmers were producing and whether they were giving enough of it to the Motherland.
The collectivized farms couldn’t grow much, but people were thrown together in artificial towns designed to make it impossible to build any kind of community: there was nowhere to be except in bed asleep, working in the fields, or at the public school receiving your daily dose of state propaganda. The towns were identical concrete buildings on a grid, which left the locals maximally disoriented (because there are no learnable visual cues) and the officials maximally oriented (because even a foreigner could go to the intersection of Street D and Street 7). All fields were perfectly rectangular and produced Standardized Food Product, so it was (theoretically) easy to calculate how much they should be producing and whether people were meeting that target. And everyone was in the same place, so if there were some sort of problem it was much easier to bring in the army or secret police than if they were split up among a million tiny villages in the middle of nowhere.
Confronting a tumultuous, footloose, and “headless” rural society which was hard to control and which had few political assets, the Bolsheviks, like the scientific foresters, set about redesigning their environment with a few simple goals in mind. They created, in place of what they had inherited, a new landscape of large, hierarchical, state-managed farms whose cropping patterns and procurement quotas were centrally mandated and whose population was, by law, immobile. The system thus devised served for nearly sixty years as a mechanism for procurement and control at a massive cost in stagnation, waste, demoralization, and ecological failure.
Scott Alexander, “Book Review: Seeing Like a State”, Slate Star Codex, 2017-03-16.
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April 18, 2019
QotD: Roadblocks to deregulating the US healthcare market
One problem America has is simply that our government administration isn’t very good. That’s not true across the board — our government statistics are, IMHO, the finest in the world. But there’s stuff that other countries can do that we can’t, either because our government is more decentralized, or because our civil service just isn’t as prestigious (and therefore as full of competent, motivated people) as those in other countries. And our regulatory approach — rules rather than principles based, and highly adversarial — is also suboptimal, and hard to change.
Given how much the government now interferes in health care, that’s a big problem. Given our lack of administrative competency, our first step should be pulling back where we can — trying to push more ordinary expenses onto consumers, for example, who can manage those the same way they manage their aspirin and antacid purchases now. And eliminating the tax deduction for employer sponsored health care would be major. But I fear, politically impossible.
Megan McArdle, “Ask Me Anything”, Reddit, 2017-04-10.
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April 17, 2019
Lee Carbine: Gunmaking is not for the Faint of Heart
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 16 Apr 2019This rifle is lot #13868 at Morphy’s April 2019 auction:
https://www.forgottenweapons.com/lee-…James Paris Lee is known today as the inventor of the detachable box magazine, and the “Lee” in the “Lee Enfield” rifle system – a very significant contributor to firearms development. His first foray into the business of gun design and manufacture, however, was a rather ignominious failure.
Lee patented a single shot swinging barrel system in 1862, and hoped to win an Army contract for it. In February of 1864 he submitted a rifle version to the Army, and was promptly rejected – the Army was not interested in breechloading rifles. Lee came right back in April 1864 with a carbine pattern, and this was accepted for testing – the Army was indeed looking for breechloading cavalry carbines. It took a full year, but in April 1865 the Army came back and gave Lee a contract for 1,000 carbines at $18 each. Lee rounded up investors and capital, and created the Lee Fire Arms Company in Milwaukee to produce the guns. His first two samples were delivered in January 1866 – in .42 rimfire caliber.
At this point, there is some disagreement. Lee claims that his sample guns in .42 caliber were accepted, and thus his followup delivery of .42 caliber carbines should have been accepted. The government said that the contract specified .44 rimfire caliber, and his delivery of .42 caliber guns was unacceptable, and thus rejected. A court case would ensue, but with the rejection of the first 250 guns and the cancellation of their contract, the company had to look hard and fast for a backup plan. In March 1867 newspaper ads were placed in Milwaukee for sporting rifles and carbines from the Lee company. The parts planned for military production were used instead for civilian guns in a variety of configurations – carbines, light rifles, and heavy rifles in several barrel lengths and several calibers. By 1868 all production had ceased, and the Lee Fire Arms Company dissolved.
James Lee returned to his former profession of watchmaking, but this experience with gun manufacturing would not keep him deterred for long. By 1872 he was back working with Remington, and would go on the produce the designs that we know him for today. The lessons of this rifle? Firearms manufacturing is a risky business, not for the faint of heart. And also, sometimes you can learn from a difficult experience to do better the second time.
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Theresa May has been brilliantly successful in achieving her (true) aims
Theodore Dalrymple admits having misjudged Mrs. May as a failure, when in fact her plans have been coming brilliantly to fruition:
Like almost everyone else, I regarded [Theresa May] as a pygmy in courage and a giant in incompetence, but it is time for a re-assessment, especially with regard to her efforts to Britain’s exit from the European Union. After the Union granted a further delay to Britain’s departure, the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, said that it was his secret dream to prevent Britain from leaving. It is pleasing to know that Mr Tusk’s secret dreams so entirely coincide with those of the British political class, including (I surmise) those of Mrs May. At last we have a basis for full and final agreement.
Like the great majority of the British political class, Mrs May was always in favour of remaining in the Union. This class was so confident of its ability to persuade the population that it was right that it agreed with practically no demur to a referendum which would pronounce the winner as the side which obtained 50 per cent plus one of the votes cast. Thus the matter of British membership, it thought, would be settled once and for all.
The problem for the political class was now to find a method of overriding the result of the referendum without doing so in too blatant a fashion. And here, in Mrs May, it found a perfect leader.
Needless to say, Mrs May, having been selected as Prime Minister, could not just put forward her conviction that Britain should remain in the Union and say outright that she had no intention of carrying out the will of the majority. At that stage, such a disavowal of the result would have been politically impossible and might even have caused unrest. Instead, she went through a brilliantly elaborate charade of negotiating withdrawal, in such a way that the result would not be accepted by Parliament. Her agreement would be withdrawal without withdrawal, the worst of all possible outcomes, all complication and difficulty, and no benefit.
She knew perfectly well that the European Union, having drafted this agreement unacceptable to Parliament, would not renegotiate it. Why should it, since it knew that Parliament had no intention of demanding a real and total withdrawal, since it did not want to withdraw at all? She also knew that Parliament would never agree to a withdrawal without an agreement with the Union, as Parliament has repeatedly made clear.
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April 13, 2019
QotD: School vouchers
I am still a supporter of school vouchers. I don’t think they’ve lived up to the hopes that I (and a bunch of other folks) had for them. But that said, the best opponents can say is that they don’t do all that much better than the public schools on academic measures. Parents like them, kids like them, and they cost less. I just don’t see a good argument against them.
I think it’s telling that of the folks I know who oppose vouchers, not one of them has voluntarily kept their kids in a failing urban school. When they move, they choose a house in a good school district. I don’t see how you can morally do that and then tell some other, poorer parent that they need to lean into the strike zone and take one for the team.
That said, maybe there’s an argument for restricting them to kids in failing schools, or below a certain income. I don’t see any need for the government to subsidize Exeter. But for the kids who are trapped, I think they should get the same chance middle class kids do, even if it’s not the panacea we once hoped.
Megan McArdle, “Ask Me Anything”, Reddit, 2017-04-10.
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April 12, 2019
Premier Ford “could go down in history as the premier who landed downtown Torontonians their white whale subway”
Chris Selley finds himself surprised at how sane Doug Ford’s GTA subway-and-light-rail expansion plans sound:
Click map to embiggenate
I’ll say this much at least about Premier Doug Ford’s big $28.5 billion transit announcement on Wednesday morning ($11.2 billion if you only count provincial money): I never thought I would see him so enthusiastically tout a much-needed transit line to and through enemy territory in downtown Toronto. Faint praise, perhaps, but when Ford said he wanted to upload Toronto’s subways to the province, I never imagined a plan even half this superficially sane.
Crowding on the Yonge line at Bloor Street presents “a clear health and safety problem,” Ford told reporters in Etobicoke, “and without action it is only going to get worse.” Thus his number-one transit priority is the same as everyone else’s: the Downtown Relief Line, which the PC government has wisely redubbed the Ontario Line.
The most basic and essential piece of that line, which Toronto city staff are already working on, would connect City Hall with Pape station on Danforth. Passengers who live in the east end and work downtown could thus avoid the bottleneck at Yonge and Bloor, relieving the alarming rush hour situation on platforms there and — assuming new TTC signalling technology works as promised — freeing up southbound capacity for folks from York Region: Ford vows to extend the Yonge line to Richmond Hill (cost: $5.6 billion).
The order here matters more than the timeline (2027, supposedly). It is undisputed that the DRL has to happen before the extension. That’s basic knowledge. But Ford is capable of ignoring or fouling up very basic knowledge when stumping for subways. This is a man who nearly promised Pickering one. On Wednesday, he sounded remarkably well briefed.
Ford’s Ontario Line wouldn’t stop at Danforth and City Hall, either. In the east it would head north across the Don Valley, through Thorncliffe Park and up to Eglinton. This idea is nearly as old as the DRL itself. And it would jog southwest from downtown to Ontario Place — a novelty, but again, not crazy. Total cost for the line: an at least semi-plausible $11.2 billion.
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April 11, 2019
Ontario government unveils massive subway and light rail expansion for the GTA
Doug Ford has always been a fan of subways, but now that he’s the Premier of Ontario, he’s getting to indulge his subway fetish in a vast expansion to heavy and light rail transit in and around Toronto:
Click map to embiggenate
The plans include:
- An expanded downtown relief line, now to be called the Ontario line, running from Ontario Place on the lakeshore through downtown along Queen Street then crossing the Bloor-Danforth subway line at Pape station and running north to the Ontario Science Centre on the Eglinton Crosstown LRT line. This line is optimistically to be ready for opening by 2027.
- The existing Sheppard Line will be extended east from Don Mills to McCowan, where it will intersect with the planned Scarborough subway extension (now to include three stops, not just the one originally announced, and to be completed by 2030).
- The Yonge-University line will be extended north from current terminus at Finch to the Richmond Hill Centre with a hoped-for completion date soon after the Ontario line.
- The Eglinton Crosstown line will be extended west to Pearson airport, with a target completion date of 2031.
- New light rail lines will be created between Finch West on the Yonge-University subway to Humber College, and along Hurontario Street in Mississauga from Port Credit on the lakeshore to Steeles Avenue in Brampton.
To accomplish all of this will require financial contributions from the City of Toronto, York Region, and the federal government, as the province is only funding just over one third ($11.2 billion) of the estimated $28 billion price tag.
Of course, it’s a Doug Ford plan, so none of the usual suspects in Toronto are happy about any of it.
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April 10, 2019
QotD: UBI and the “end of work”
I’m sort of skeptically agnostic about the end of work. Yes, this has been predicted before, and never arrived. On the other hand, history is full of stuff that was predicted and didn’t arrive, until suddenly it did. So maybe this time is really different.
And what do we do if it is? I don’t know. I don’t think UBI [Universal Basic Income] is the answer. We have a fair amount of data about what places look like where large numbers of people are subsidized not to work. The answer is “like nowhere you’d want to live”. The predicted flowering of artistic and community endeavor does not arrive; people are depressed, less social, and spend a great deal of time on activities like watching television.
To this, UBI advocates rejoinder “But what about trust fund babies and old-style aristocrats! Everyone admires their lives of leisure!” To which my answer is “Heck no, I don’t”. The lives of the idle rich are better upholstered than the out-of-work poor, but suffer the same absence of meaning and community. They are not a model to which anyone should aspire.
Megan McArdle, “Ask Me Anything”, Reddit, 2017-04-10.
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