Quotulatiousness

January 1, 2025

Mark Steyn – “This is not a healthy development in world affairs”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Government, India, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Mark comments on the ongoing political punch-up over the US government’s H1B visa program for foreign workers:

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as the figureheads of D.O.G.E.

As you’ll have noticed, the world’s most uniquely unique peaceful transition of power turned suddenly violent over Christmas with various of America’s super-brainy Indians beating up on each other: Nikki Haley, the Boeing board’s token Sikh, lit up Hindu monotheist Vivek Ramaswamy’s tweet like Air Canada overhead baggage in objection to Vivek’s remarks on US “mediocrity”. The offending Ramaswamy tweet was in response to MAGA objections to Trump’s appointment of Madras techie and open-borders fanatic Sriram Krishnan as his AI advisor. This was a very 2025 brouhaha: while you knuckle-draggers down in flyover country were arguing about sub-minimum-wage Hispanics turning down the sheets at Motel Six, the Hindu billionaires have been busy taking over the country.

Is everyone in this all-American punch-up an Indian? Well, no, eventually a South African weighed in. The Boers don’t like the Hindus, do they? I think I got that from Gandhi. Ah, but in this case Elon agrees with Sriram and Vivek.

A couple of very general observations:

1) The MAGA base intuits that H1B visas are a racket. Why wouldn’t they be? Everything else the federal government touches is — from presidential pardons to West Point to Jan 6 justice. America is the third largest nation on earth — a third-of-a-billion people, officially (rather more in actual reality). Why does it need to hire entry-level workers from the first and second largest nations? Yes, yes, too many Americans graduate in non-binary studies rather than any serious academic discipline but simply because you’ve bollocksed up your entire education system is no reason to (as my former National Review colleague John Derbyshire puts it) “import an overclass“.

The MAGA objections to mass immigration (ie, not just illegal immigration) are primarily cultural. They didn’t like it eight years ago when Trump would add to his wall-building promises the line about “and that wall will have a big beautiful door”, and he should have got that by now. Besides, to address the counter-argument more seriously than it merits, a nation of a third-of-a-billion that “needs” to import entry-level accountants is so structurally dysfunctional that no amount of immigration can save it. How about entry-level lawyers? Do we need more of those?

As an aside to that, for all you Constitution fetishists, I’m increasingly sceptical that a Constitution designed for an homogeneous population of two-and-a-half million people can be applied to a third-of-a-billion with a cratering fertility rate of 1.6. The only two more populous nations — China and India — are both more or less conventional ethnostates. Which is a great advantage. America is the only large-scale polity founded on a proposition — that, simply by setting foot on US soil, one becomes American. Immigration on the present transformative scale will nullify the Constitution. So the Dance of the Constitution Fetishists will get even sadder.

The Constitution is increasingly for judges rather than citizens. May be time to import more Supreme Court justices.

2) Besides, H1B is what the government calls, correctly, a “nonimmigrant” visa. One of Rupert Murdoch’s minions offered me an H1B thirty years ago. I looked up the terms and declined to sign on to indentured servitude. You’re not importing “the best and brightest”. You’re assisting well-connected corporations in advantaging themselves at the cost of the citizenry among whom they nominally live. [NR: Emphasis mine.]

3) Have you noticed that almost everyone involved in this spat is a billionaire? Today’s rich are not just rich in the old Scott Fitzgerald they-are-different sense. They approximate more to the condition articulated by Lord Palmerston in his observation that England had no eternal friends or enemies, only eternal interests. For a billionaire, friends and enemies come and go, but, like any medium-sized nation-state, he has his interests.

To most Americans, Elon was largely unknown until he started weighing in on and then buying social media; Vivek was entirely unknown until he ran for president; Sriram is still unknown. But they are far above not just the schlubs who lost their jobs to cheaper H1B types but also to the more famous political class whose poll numbers in Iowa so obsess the hamster-wheel media but which are increasingly irrelevant to anything that matters. Among Sriram Krishnan’s minor claims to “fame” is that he’s the guy who introduced Boris Johnson (remember him?) to Elon Musk — and you can bet that was after desperate wheedling and pleading from the Shagger, not because Elon had any desire for dating tips.

This is not a healthy development in world affairs.

4) Vivek Ramaswamy’s sweeping paean to American “mediocrity” as manifested by everything from prom queens to sitcoms was probably ill-advised but it was certainly entirely sincere — and would be widely shared by his fellow members of the Hindu overclass. The Indian tycoon (and David Cameron advisor) Ratan Tata, who died in October, is best remembered in the UK for his 2011 Vivek-like attack on the natives’ “work ethic“. As Sir Ratan marvelled after buying Jaguar-Land Rover:

    I feel if you have come from Bombay to have a meeting and the meeting goes till 6pm, I would expect that you won’t, at 5 o’clock, say, ‘Sorry, I have my train to catch. I have to go home.’

    Friday, from 3.30pm, you can’t find anybody in the office.

That may well be true, as Vivek’s musings re Urkel and football jocks may be true. On the other hand, as a rather precocious lad, I observed to my mum that, five years after the Gambia’s independence, nothing seemed to work as well as it did under colonial rule. True, conceded my mother, then added: “But in the end people want to be themselves, as themselves. At least it’s their chaos.”

December 31, 2024

No matter what Poilievre does, it’s still Trudeau’s decision to stay or go

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has been doing a masterful job of staying on top of the Canadian news cycle even through the normally dormant holiday period, but he does not have a way to eject Justin Trudeau ahead of the inauguration of US President Donald Trump or for many weeks afterwards:

During a time of year when Canadian politics typically descend into a semi-coma, the Conservatives are leading an all-out drive to bring down the Liberal government before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has a chance to save it.

Whatever they do, though, Trudeau continues to hold all the cards. The Tories can shame him, they can rally the opposition against him and they can call for the intervention of the Governor General. But – as per every available constitutional precedent – this only ends when Trudeau says it does.

Just before Christmas, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre called on Governor General Mary Simon to recall Parliament before New Year’s Eve in order to hold a vote of non-confidence in the Liberal government.

When that didn’t work, the Conservatives announced an early recall of the Public Accounts Committee. It’s one of the more influential House of Commons committees headed by a Conservative, New Brunswick MP John Williamson, and it’s thus one of the only organs of state that the Conservatives can order back to work.

The committee obviously has no power to decide the Liberal government’s future, but the idea is to have them draft a shovel-ready non-confidence motion that can be fast-tracked to the House of Commons when it reconvenes on Jan. 27.

This campaign all makes political sense: Just as NDP leader Jagmeet Singh is finally signalling a willingness to bring down the Trudeau government, the Conservatives are hammering on him to actually make good on the pledge.

“Conservatives are now presenting the NDP with this first opportunity to bring down the Liberal Government and force an election,” reads a Friday statement outlining the Conservatives’ Public Accounts Committee plan.

But whatever else the Tories do between now and Jan. 27, Trudeau’s ability to head them off is virtually absolute.

There was never any realistic chance of Governor General Mary Simon calling Parliament back to work. And if Trudeau ultimately decides to prorogue Parliament past Jan. 27 to prevent a confidence vote, it’s extremely unlikely that she or any other occupant of Rideau Hall would stop him.

December 30, 2024

RIP Jimmy Carter, “The Great Deregulator”, 1924-2024

Filed under: Economics, Government, History, Liberty, Politics, Railways, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

ReasonTV
Published 29 Dec 2024

Nobel-Winning Economist Vernon Smith says the 39th president radically improved air travel, freight rail, and trucking in ways that still benefit us immensely.
______

Jimmy Carter was perhaps the most successful ex-president in American history, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his work promoting human rights and economic and social development.

But his single term as president (1977–1981) is largely remembered as a series of failures and missteps, sometimes literally. Gas lines, a record-high combination of unemployment and inflation on the “misery index”, and Americans being held hostage by Iranian revolutionaries for over a year all fueled the perception that Carter was a weak and ineffective leader. When he collapsed during a six-mile run, it personified for many the exhaustion of the country under his leadership.

But there was at least one way in which Carter excelled as president. He was, in the words of 2002 Nobel–winning economist Vernon Smith, the great deregulator. Carter forced the airline industry, along with interstate trucking and freight rail, to compete for business, with powerful and positive effects that continue to this day.

I talked to Smith about Carter, whom he met at a White House event for American Nobel Prize winners, and what it was like to fly in the days when the government controlled air travel.

December 23, 2024

Trump’s second term – “The counterrevolution begins now”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

A few weeks back in City Journal, Christopher Rufo provided a blueprint for President-elect Donald Trump’s second term with emphasis on “dewokification” of the executive branch:

The second election of Donald Trump, along with Republican victories in both houses of Congress, sets the stage in the United States for a confrontation between democracy, which depends on representative institutions to form a government, and the rule of unelected elites, which relies on claims of expertise to control the state.

Already, internal opposition to Trump is organizing within the federal agencies. CNN reports that Pentagon officials are discussing disobeying official policy. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has declared that he would refuse if Trump asked for his resignation. Some would like to see a reprise of the orchestrated counteractions against Trump, from the Russia collusion hoax to the Hunter Biden laptop censorship to the political prosecutions that led to his arrest and felony convictions.

The coming political confrontation is unusual because the specific antagonist is hard to identify. Trump is not contending against Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, or even the Democratic minority in Congress. Instead, the president-elect’s post-electoral opposition comes from inside the executive branch itself, in defiance of Article II of the Constitution, which opens with the unqualified statement: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America”.

In recent years, phrases like “the deep state” have arisen in American political discourse to describe this phenomenon, in which administrators, bureaucrats, and unelected officials seem to wield a kind of power that we still lack appropriate language to describe. Part of the motivation is self-interest — bureaucrats want to protect their positions — but another is ideological: the federal government is steeped in left-wing race and gender ideology, and its adherents see Trump as an existential threat.

By rights, he should be. The incoming president has, under the Constitution, every right to bend the administration to his vision, which is contrary to the tenets of left-wing racialism. But those ideologies, which the Biden administration has entrenched through its “whole-of-government” diversity agenda, have long ruled the agencies that control the details of federal policymaking. Hence, the conflict: the president, who has formal authority, versus the ideological bureaucracy, which has real power.

At the end of his first term, Trump attempted to correct this problem through actions such as an executive order banning critical race theory in the federal government. The second Trump administration must go further and dedicate itself to a process that Vice President–elect J. D. Vance has described as “dewokeification”. This is the most urgent policy problem facing the administration, because without representative institutions and a restoration of constitutional authority, it is not possible to govern America.

The Trump administration has a unique opportunity to take decisive action on Day One, through executive orders that can serve as the opening salvo in a counterrevolution. The basic premise: the U.S. should strip left-wing racialism from the federal government and recommit the country to the principle of color-blind equality. Through an aggressive campaign, Trump and his cabinet can put an end to forms of discrimination disguised under the name of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) and make government work again.

The process of ideological capture has taken decades. But the counterrevolution can, and must, quickly retake those institutions in the name of the people and reorient them toward the enduring principles of liberty and equality. Bureaucrats abusing the public trust to advance their own ideologies should be put on notice: they will be shut down, their departments abolished, and their employment terminated. The administration will work to rid America of this ideological corruption before it further rots our institutions, demoralizes our citizens, and renders the government totally incompetent.

The counterrevolution begins now.

December 18, 2024

Justin Trudeau at bay

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

However much you may dislike the man — and there’s just so much to dislike — it’s impossible to write him off no matter how bad the situation may look. In The Free Press, Rupa Subramanya explains to non-Canadian audiences what has been going on in the Deranged Dominion lately:

Justin Trudeau’s government could be at the point of collapse. And a social media post from Donald Trump about tariffs may have set off the latest in a chain of dominoes for Canada’s prime minister.

On November 25, Trump posted on his platform Truth Social that, as one of his first executive orders, he would “sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada a 25% Tariff on ALL products coming into the United States, and its ridiculous Open Borders”. Four days later, Trudeau flew to Mar-a-Lago to meet Trump for dinner. Although the content of their discussion has not been made public, Trump’s tariff threat may have landed a death blow to Trudeau’s cabinet.

On Monday morning, Trudeau’s most important ally — his number two, finance minister Chrystia Freeland — resigned in a fiery letter directed at her boss, which she posted on X.

“Our country today faces a grave challenge,” she wrote. “The incoming administration in the United States is pursuing a policy of aggressive economic nationalism, including a threat of 25 percent tariffs. We need to take that threat extremely seriously.” She continued: “That means pushing back against ‘America First’ economic nationalism with a determined effort to fight for capital and investment and the jobs they bring”.

The same morning, Trudeau’s housing minister Sean Fraser also announced his departure, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family. This brings the total number of cabinet members who’ve resigned under Trudeau in 2024 to nine. But a walkout from Freeland, his most trusted lieutenant, who was expected to release her fall economic statement Monday, is by far the biggest. That such a loyal servant who has worked for Trudeau since 2015 would resign so publicly shows just how deep the rot is these days. Freeland stood by the prime minister as his popularity began to tank in February 2022 when Canadian truckers protested his harsh Covid vaccine mandates. She even authorized the debanking of those protesters, freezing their bank accounts as a means of punishment [NR: with no legal authority, it must be noted].

Now, her resignation is feeding feverish speculation that the longtime progressive darling could finally be on his way out, amid his sinking popularity and the country’s economic slump. By Monday night, a prominent member of Trudeau’s Liberal Party, Anthony Housefather, went on TV to say the prime minister is “past his shelf life“.

December 17, 2024

The rejection-in-advance of Bovaer as a “climate-friendly” “solution” to the “problem” of climate change

Filed under: Business, Environment, Europe, Government, Health, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

At Watts Up With That?, Charles Rotter documents yet another imposed-from-above bright idea that consumers are already eager to reject:

When global elites and bureaucrats decide they must “fix” the world, the results often speak for themselves. Take the latest technocratic debacle: Bovaer, a feed additive designed to reduce methane emissions from cows, marketed as a “climate-friendly” solution. It’s now being shelved by Norwegian dairy producer Q-Meieriene after consumers flatly rejected its so-called “climate milk”.

This is more than a simple story of market rejection. It’s a cautionary tale of what happens when governments, corporations, and globalists push policies and products that tamper with the food supply to address a problem that may not even exist.

The Quest to Solve a “Crisis”

Bovaer, developed by DSM-Firmenich, has been touted as a game-changer in the fight against methane emissions — a major target of climate policies. The additive is said to suppress a key enzyme in the cow’s digestive process, reducing methane emissions by up to 30%. Regulatory bodies in over 68 countries, including the EU, Australia, and the U.S., have approved its use.

But let’s step back for a moment. Why are we targeting cow burps and farts in the first place? Methane is indeed a greenhouse gas, but it’s also a short-lived one that breaks down in the atmosphere within about a decade. Moreover, cows and bison have been emitting methane for millennia without triggering apocalyptic climate shifts. Yet suddenly, livestock emissions are treated as a planetary emergency demanding immediate action.

This myopic focus on cow methane is a prime example of how climate zealotry warps priorities. Rather than addressing real and immediate issues — like the energy crises their own policies create — governments and globalists have decided to micromanage how your milk is produced, all to reduce emissions by an imperceptible fraction of a percentage point.

Consumer Rebellion

The backlash against Bovaer has been swift and fierce. In Norway, Q-Meieriene began using the additive in 2023, branding the resulting product as “climate milk”. The response? Consumers overwhelmingly rejected it, leaving supermarket shelves stocked with unsold cartons while Bovaer-free milk flew off the shelves.

Facing dismal sales, Q-Meieriene recently announced it would discontinue the use of Bovaer, stating:

This is not merely a marketing failure. It reflects a broader consumer revolt against the technocratic imposition of “solutions” no one asked for. People are increasingly skeptical of being told that their daily choices — what they eat, how they travel, how they heat their homes — must be sacrificed on the altar of climate orthodoxy.

Canada’s deputy prime minister heads for the exits

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

After being informed by Justin Trudeau that he no longer wanted her to be the finance minister on Friday, but still apparently expecting her to present the fall economic statement on Monday, Chrystia Freeland instead submitted her resignation from cabinet:

In the National Post, John Ivison calls it her “gangster move” against Trudeau:

Who saw Chrystia Freeland pulling a gun, after Justin Trudeau unsheathed a knife?

The finance minister is an unlikely champion of the Chicago Way, but she has just pulled off a coup that may end up toppling this government.

Just hours before she was due to give her fall economic statement, she quit.

Despite the widespread media speculation about a falling out between Freeland and Trudeau, it’s a good bet that no one was more surprised at the finance minister’s gangster move than the prime minister.

Her resignation letter was savage. She said that on Friday, Trudeau had told her he no longer wanted her as finance minister and offered her another job in cabinet.

She said that she concluded she had no option but to resign because she had lost the prime minister’s confidence.

The casus belli was the multi-billion-dollar affordability package that included a two-month GST holiday and mailing $250 cheques to nearly 19 million working Canadians.

As the National Post reported late Sunday, Freeland had already reversed the government’s position on the rebate cheques that would have cost an estimated $4.68 billion. One person with knowledge of the plans said that the measure will not be in the fiscal update but the government hopes to take another look in the new year, if it can find another party to support it.

Oh, and the financial update Freeland was still expected to deliver after being underbussed by Trudeau? It apparently did get released:

You can always count on the Babylon Bee to find the most accurate and tasteful way to present the news:

December 14, 2024

Tulsi Gabbard as the Director of National Intelligence

Filed under: Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

To the left, Gabbard is widely criticized as some sort of Russian pawn, while to many on the right she’s unacceptable as a former Democrat and “girlboss”. Despite this, J.D. Tuccille says President-elect Donald Trump seems quite confident that she’s the right person for the job:

Tulsi Gabbard speaks at the “People’s Rally” in Washington DC on 17 November, 2016.
Photo by Lorie Shaull via Wikimedia Commons.

United States President-elect Donald Trump is standing behind Tulsi Gabbard, his pick to be director of national intelligence. Like several of Trump’s nominees, former Democratic congresswoman Gabbard is controversial in D.C.-insider circles, and understandably so; she’s skeptical of the political establishment, often criticizes foreign policy and was apparently subject to surveillance and put on a terrorist watch list because of her dissident ways. In other words, she’s a rather promising nominee for an incoming administration that wants to completely revamp government institutions that desperately need reform.

Asked this week by NBC’s Kristen Welker if he has confidence in Gabbard despite objections raised in certain circles to her past actions and positions, Trump responded, “I do. I mean, she’s a very respected person.”

Trump was specifically asked about two meetings Gabbard had in 2017 with then-Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Now in exile, al-Assad and his relationships with American politicians shouldn’t be much of a worry anymore, but he plays a part in the official panic over Gabbard’s views on foreign policy.

In 2019, former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton famously called Gabbard a “Russian asset“. Gabbard, a veteran of the Iraq war, aroused Clinton’s ire with her anti-interventionism in foreign policy matters and criticism of the political establishment and its hawkishness during the course of a short-lived campaign for her party’s presidential nomination.

“There are brutal dictators in the world. Assad of Syria is one of them. That does not mean the U.S. should be waging regime-change wars around the world,” Gabbard told CNN in early 2019. Her long-standing fears of Islamist extremism led her to consider al-Assad a less-bad alternative to a potential fundamentalist regime.

Gabbard returned Clinton’s slight by calling her “the queen of warmongers” and the “embodiment of corruption”. It’s unsurprising that the two no longer share a political party.

Gabbard’s dissent from establishment orthodoxy doesn’t stop at military matters. In 2020, she joined with libertarian-leaning Republican Thomas Massie, from Kentucky, to call on the U.S. government to cease its persecution of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Assange ran afoul of the U.S. government when he published leaked documents revealing embarrassing details about official misconduct in Iraq and elsewhere.

December 11, 2024

Canada’s current situation, as viewed by Fortissax

Filed under: Cancon, China, Economics, Government, India, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Fortissax recently spoke to an audience in Toronto. This is part of the transcript of his speech:

No doubt, many of you already have an idea.

The fact of the matter is this: 25% of the people in this country are, or soon will be, foreigners. Most of them are not the children of immigrants but fresh-off-the-boat migrants.

The economy? It’s in the dumps. Canada has the lowest upward mobility in the OECD for young people. One of the lowest fertility rates in the Western world. And the fastest-changing demographics in the Western world — as I’m sure you’ve all noticed here in the streets of Toronto, the old capital of Anglo-Canadians.

Think about this: approximately 4.9 million foreigners are classified as “temporary migrants.” Combine that with permanent residents, refugees, and immigrants, and that number swells to 6.2 million in just four years.

And it doesn’t stop there.

Crime is reportedly the highest it’s ever been. We have no military. The Canadian Armed Forces has faced retention issues for two decades. And what is command preoccupied with? Men’s bathrooms stocked with tampons and servicemen being “radicalized” by wearing extremist clothing like MAGA hats.

Let’s not forget foreign influence.

The Chinese Communist Party exploited the Hong Kong handover in the 1990s to infiltrate Canada, using British Columbia as their foothold. As Sam Cooper exposes in Claws of the Panda and Willful Blindness, they established a stronghold in Metro Vancouver, taking over the business community.

This “Vancouver Model”, as we Canadians ironically call it, normalizes our capitulation to foreign hostiles. Triads, working hand-in-glove with the Chinese communists, built a global drug empire. Fentanyl, mass-produced in football field-sized factories in China, is shipped to Vancouver and distributed across the entire Western Hemisphere.

Let this sink in: more Canadians have died from this economic warfare than all our soldiers lost in the Second World War.

And now, there’s India.

Intelligence agencies from the Republic of India have demonstrated their ability to conduct assassinations on Canadian soil. Recently, a Khalistani nationalist and separatist was killed — a figure I’ll leave to your sympathies or judgments. Regardless, this marks a disturbing shift.

India weaponizes its diaspora against the international community. In exchange for non-alignment with China, the West — particularly the Anglosphere — uses Indian migrants as wage-slave labor to suppress costs.

The result? A disaster.

In Canada, Australia, the U.K., and increasingly the United States, we see Indians climbing the ladders of power, pursuing their own interests — often brazenly. In Brampton, part of Greater Toronto, a 50-foot statue of the Hindu god Hanuman looms.

And let’s not forget the Punjabi Sikh population. They openly support an independent Khalistan — or remain at best indifferent to the cause. They have infiltrated Canada’s state apparatus, even reaching the Ministry of National Defense, where Harjit Sajjan prioritized rescuing Afghan Sikhs during Kabul operations over broader Canadian interests.

In Surrey, British Columbia, the trucking industry is effectively controlled by Sikhs. In online spaces, Sikh nationalists demand Brampton be recognized as a province, seemingly aware that their homeland exists more abroad than in Punjab itself. The leader of the NDP, Jagmeet Singh, serves as yet another example — barred from entering India due to his sympathies for separatism.

But foreign influence is only half the story. Among our own lies another problem: disintegration.

Decades of Western alienation and economic parasitism by the federal government are fueling separatist movements in places like Alberta and Saskatchewan. In Quebec, the Parti Québécois is polling higher than the ruling CAQ, openly advocating for secession from Confederation.

Meanwhile, the federal Conservatives court immigrant voters, alienating native Canadians and abandoning their base.

And then there’s the economic misery.

The average Canadian home costs $700,000. The median income? Just $48,000. Upward mobility is nonexistent. The managerial regime hoards wealth and power, gatekeeping opportunity through credentialism, exorbitant tuition, and crushing taxes.

55% of Canadians have post-secondary education, and yet most have nothing to show for it. The regime is not run by titans of intelligence or visionaries. It’s run by ideologues — loyal to their cause, not to competence or merit.

The final insult: demographics.

Over the next six years, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba will become majority non-Canadian. The 50% threshold will be breached, with profound consequences for local politics.

Ontario will hover just above 50%, while Quebec and the Maritime provinces will remain over 70% and 80% Canadian, respectively. This is not a death sentence, but it is a profound transformation for Western Canada, which has historically been more propositional and less identitarian than the East.

This is where we are.

Our sovereignty is compromised. Our identity is eroded. But we are not yet defeated. What happens next depends entirely on us.

Norway finds the perfect tool to drive away those pesky entrepreneurs

Filed under: Business, Europe, Government, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Don’t you just hate having all these bothersome start-up companies in your country, creating new jobs and new investment opportunities? Norway sure does, but good news: they’ve found an almost perfect way to not only deter existing entrepreneurs but to punish those who try to leave after they’ve been successful:

Norway is a fantastically beautiful country, but lately they’ve decided they want as few new companies as possible.
“Norway” by Nouhailler is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 .

Norway’s entrepreneurs are disappearing. In the past two years alone, 100 of Norway’s top 400 taxpayers, representing about 50 percent of that group’s wealth, have fled the country to protect their businesses.

In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand paints a vivid picture of a dystopian society where government overreach and socialist policies kill innovation and demonize entrepreneurs. Present-day Norway mirrors this scenario in unsettling ways. The Nordic countries have long operated on an egalitarian ideal—citizens pay high tax rates for a generous safety net and effective public services. But Norway has taken the ideal to destructive and bizarre extremes.

Norway spends 45 percent more than Sweden on healthcare per capita with approximately the same health outcomes. Norway spends 50 percent more than Finland on primary and secondary school with worse results. And it splurges on green virtue-signaling with, for example, a $3.2 billion offshore wind project that industry experts believe is financially unworkable. That $3.2 billion, by the way, is roughly equivalent to the total revenue raised by the wealth tax.

To socialist politicians in Norway, entrepreneurs are mere piggy banks to be raided for ever more spending. When confronted with the reality that you can’t pay taxes with money you don’t have, the response is a vague moralism like “those with the broadest shoulders must bear the heaviest burdens.” Any dissent is waved away, deemed invalid because. . . free healthcare.

Earlier this year, instead of scaling back the tax blowout, the government doubled down, not only increasing the wealth tax but adding a vise grip on business owners in the form of an “exit tax” on unrealized gains as well. That means if you move from Norway, you’re immediately liable to pay 38 percent of the market value of your assets. It doesn’t matter if you have no cash on hand, if your assets are risky and could plummet in value, or even if your company fails after you leave—you still owe the tax. (Luckily for me, I left before this tax became law.)

The intent is to corral entrepreneurs inside Norway, impeding them from heading for the exits. The inevitable result: They’ll leave even before starting their businesses. After shooting itself in one foot, the government is now aiming a bazooka at the other one.

December 8, 2024

The potential for retribution in a second Trump presidency

Filed under: Government, History, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Francis Christian meditates on whether or how President-elect Donald Trump will indulge in eye-for-an-eye revenge against the individuals most clearly involved in the lawfare and other attempts to derail his re-election:

It was the English poet Alexander Pope who admonished us in the manner of the New Testament that “to err is human; to forgive, divine” — Errare humanum est, ignoscere divino.

The Old Testament in contrast, has the equally familiar and perhaps far more popular, “eye for an eye“, and in one of the most revolutionary statements ever uttered, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount talked about us “having heard that it was said, ‘an eye for an eye’ — but I say unto you, love your enemies“.

To wish to take revenge upon one’s enemies is therefore human, but Jesus is asking mankind to rise above this basic instinct and instead, to forgive and love one’s enemies. This was all of course part of His Mission on earth — to change by His Life, His Cross and the Resurrection, the destiny of human beings from being bound to basic instincts and death — to being bound for eternal life, a different destiny and a new creation.

The mavens of Hollywood of course march to a different and more ancient tune (which has been handed down unchanged to them) and generations of movie goers and consumers of media have been brought up on the idea that revenge of the most explosively visceral kind is a good thing, even a noble thing.

My readers will undoubtedly have their own sincerely held beliefs about Jesus’ command to love our enemies and to do good to those who hate us and once again, I do not wish this essay to turn out to be a sermon! What I wish to address instead, is to ask the question: what is the place for retribution, vengeance and revenge in the conduct of statecraft?

In other words, when President elect Trump said in a recently widely publicized interview that he was, “not looking for retribution, grandstanding or to destroy people who treated me very unfairly“, was he declaring a principle of statecraft that makes for a fulfilling and productive Presidency? And is this also a principle of statecraft that will “make American great again?”

In typical, inimitable and endearing Trumpian fashion, the President-elect also added the tongue in cheek comment: “I am always looking to give a second and even third chance, but never willing to give a fourth chance — that is where I hold the line!”

It could be argued from the life of no less a colossal figure than Julius Caesar that decisive and devastating revenge upon one’s enemies makes for a strong and respected ruler and nation. Whilst still a private citizen, Julius Caesar was captured by pirates on the way to the Greek island of Rhodes (to which he was travelling in order to learn oratory from the famous professor Molon). Caesar raised his own ransom — then raised a naval force, captured his pirate captors and had them all crucified.

The later assassination of Caesar and the subsequent civil wars that rocked and roiled Rome is the subject of Shakespeare’s magnificent, Tragedy of Julius Caesar. The subsequent rule of Augustus Caesar was marked by stability, expansion of the empire, the building of roads and bridges (via which the Gospel was to travel), the making of sea and land routes safe for travellers (again, to the advantage of the early Christians taking the Gospel to Asia and Europe) the consolidation of Roman power — and the rule of (Roman) law. It was also during the reign of this austere, learned emperor that Jesus was born in a manger, in the Roman province of Palestine.

H/T to Brian Peckford for the link.

President Hindenburg dissolves the Reichstag – Rise of Hitler 07, July 1930

Filed under: Germany, Government, History — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 7 Dec 2024

July 1930 sees the Weimar Republic facing unprecedented turmoil. From Brüning’s budget crisis and the Reichstag‘s dissolution to Nazi and Communist clashes with state governments, Germany braces for a pivotal election in September. This episode unpacks the month’s chaos, political maneuvers, and the rising tensions tearing the Republic apart.
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December 7, 2024

Rediscovering the legacy of “Silent Cal”

Filed under: Economics, Government, History, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Jacob M. Farley recently discovered the history of Calvin Coolidge’s presidency and the economic policies he pursued to such good effect in the 1920s (although Herbert Hoover’s energetic turn as Commerce Secretary for Harding and Coolidge strongly indicated that the benign laissez faire approach would be changed once Coolidge left the Oval Office):

Calvin Coolidge, Governor of Massachusetts, 1919.
Photo by Notman Studio, Boston, restored by Adam Cuerden via Wikimedia Commons.

In the pantheon of American presidents, Calvin Coolidge, or “Silent Cal”, often plays the role of the overlooked extra in the corner of history’s grand narrative. I can attest to this, as my first real exposure to him occurred recently during a visit to a museum whilst travelling in the US. Having spent some time since then reading up on everything Cal-related, I’ve become increasingly convinced that there’s a compelling case to be made that Coolidge’s approach to governance, particularly his economic policies, should be dusted off and revisited, not just for historical curiosity but as a lodestar for free marketeers far and wide.

Before I go any further, let’s set the scene of Coolidge’s era. The 1920s is often remembered for jazz, flappers, and the stock market’s dizzying heights. But beneath the cultural tumult, Coolidge was busy orchestrating what can quite fairly be called a symphony of minimalistic governance. His philosophy was profoundly simple: government should do less, not more.

Whilst this may seem extraordinarily mundane to you, consider that this wasn’t simply cheap talk on the campaign trail designed to get a nod of approval from over-50s. His ideas weren’t born out of laziness or disinterest but from a profound belief in the efficacy of the market’s invisible hand over the visible, often clumsy, hand of government intervention.

Coolidge’s administration slashed taxes like a bootlegger cuts whiskey – to make the good times flow more freely, notably through the Revenue Acts of 1924 and 1926. This wasn’t just about giving the rich a break; it was about stimulating economic activity by leaving more money in the pockets of Americans. By leaving more money in the pockets of Americans, he was essentially saying, “Here’s your allowance, now go make some noise at the stock market”.

The result? A crescendo of consumer spending, industrial growth, and a stock market that seemed to reach for the stars.

Coolidge believed in setting the rules of the game and then letting the players play. This isn’t to say there was no regulation, but rather, it was about not over-regulating, about allowing businesses to innovate, expand, and yes, even fail, without the government always having its finger on the scale. Imagine if the conductor only pointed out the tempo and let the musicians interpret it – that was Coolidge’s regulatory approach.

Under Coolidge, the U.S. economy boomed. Unemployment dipped to levels we can only dream of today, and real GDP growth was robust. If the economy were a piece of music, it was hitting all the right notes. But here’s where the narrative often shifts to a sombre tone – the Great Depression. While Coolidge left office before the market crashed, the seeds of economic disaster were arguably sown in the very success of the 1920s, exacerbated by policies that followed his term, particularly those of the Federal Reserve.

This is where the story of Coolidge’s economic policy gets nuanced. The Federal Reserve, relatively new on the scene, played its own tune by the late 1920s. Its policies, intended to stabilise the economy, are often critiqued for contributing to the eventual bust. Coolidge’s hands-off approach might have been a wise nod to market self-correction, but the Fed’s actions, flooding the number of dollars in circulation to stimulate the market’s trajectory in a way they deemed desirable, led to an artificially manufactured drunkenness, leading to a nasty hangover – The Great Depression.

After Coolidge, the economy didn’t just crash; it was like the Charleston dancer tripped over its own feet.

There had been a brief, nasty recession following the end of the First World War, but Harding and Coolidge responded not by muscular government action but by letting the market sort things out. Hoover, as Coolidge’s successor, was not cut from that cloth. Hoover was a believer in the progressive big-government approach to just about everything and his attempts to respond after the 1929 crash absolutely made things much, much worse. Later historians have chosen to forget Hoover’s actual policies and pretend that he followed Coolidge’s lead (most historians over the next couple of generations were pro-Roosevelt, so portraying Hoover as a conservative non-interventionist allowed them to contrast that with Roosevelt’s even more centralizing, interventionist policies).

The FBI’s future – fix it or abolish it? Decisions, decisions …

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At Racket News, Matt Taibbi provides some background information on FBI failures leading up to the 9/11 terrorist attacks:

On August 13, 2001, 33-year-old French citizen Zacarias Moussaoui paid $6,800 in $100 bills to train on a 747 simulator at the Pan-Am International Flight Academy in Eagan, Minnesota. A retired Northwest Airlines pilot named Clarence “Clancy” Prevost thought Moussaoui’s behavior was odd for someone with no pilot’s license and told his bosses as much. When they said Moussaoui had paid and they didn’t care, Prevost said, “We’ll care when there’s a hijacking and the lawsuits come in”.

The company went to the FBI and on August 16, in what should have been one of the biggest arrests in the history of federal law enforcement, Moussaoui was picked up on an immigration violation. Agents on the case wanted permission to search Moussaoui’s belongings, with one asking superiors as many as 70 times for help in obtaining a warrant. The situation grew more urgent when the French Intelligence Service sent information that Moussaoui was connected to Islamic radicals with ties both to Osama bin Laden and the Chechen warlord Khattab, and that even within this crowd, Moussaoui was nicknamed “the dangerous one”.

Coleen Rowley, the Chief Division Counsel for the Minneapolis Field Office, absorbed agents’ concerns quickly and was aggressive in asking superiors to seek a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to investigate further. One of the goals was a look at Moussaoui’s computer, as agents believed he’d signaled he had “something to hide” in there. But unlike the former Northwest pilot Prevost, whose superiors trusted his judgment and escalated his concerns, Rowley and the Minneapolis field office were denied by senior lawyers at FBI Headquarters. The Bureau was sitting on the means to stop 9/11 when the planes hit the towers.

This story is actually worse than described, as Rowley made clear in what became a famous letter she wrote to then-Director Robert Mueller the following May. “Even after the attacks had begun,” she wrote, “the [Supervisory Special Agent] in question was still attempting to block the search of Moussaoui’s computer, characterizing the World Trade Center attacks as a mere coincidence with Misseapolis’ prior suspicions about Moussaoui.”

While the Bureau blamed 9/11 on a lack of investigatory authority, the actions of the Minnesota office showed otherwise. Rowley’s decision to confront Mueller with a laundry list of unnecessary bureaucratic failures made her perhaps the FBI’s most famous whistleblower. Her letter excoriated the Bureau’s Washington officeholders for failing to appreciate agents in the field, and for implicitly immunizing themselves against culpability.

December 6, 2024

Hegseth is clearly unfit to be Secretary of Defense because LOOK! A SQUIRREL!

Filed under: Government, Media, Military, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

I don’t recall having heard Pete Hegseth’s name before Trump nominated him to be the next Secretary of Defense, but Chris Bray clearly thinks the accusations are purely partisan:

Pete Hegseth is being Kavanaughed. And the only people dumb enough to fall for it are Republican senators.

I was willing to hear arguments that Hegseth wasn’t the best choice for Secretary of Defense. In his 40s, he’s on his third marriage, and while the rape allegation from his visit to a conservative conference in Monterey is clearly false, I was wide open to the argument that his actions demonstrated poor judgment. I was prepared to hear an argument. Like many combat veterans, Hegseth had some post-war chaos in his life. Discussion was merited.

But the more these arguments have been made, the dumber they’ve become. We’ve seen this play, and we know the third act: more heat, less light, the descent into completely irrational ranting.

Let’s pretend to take this number at face value, for the sake of argument, though Warren is egregiously misrepresenting the estimate about unreported assaults. Let’s just look at the structure of the claim: In 2023, while Lloyd Austin was the Secretary of Defense, 29,000 troops were sexually assaulted. Therefore, Pete Hegseth must never become the Secretary of Defense.

This is the kind of argument people make when they’re piling on, in an atmosphere of hysteria. It has no logic or order to it, and it does the opposite of the thing it’s intended to do: It depicts current leadership as failures, while arguing against a course correction. Bob punched me in the face, which proves that John is very bad. This is currently the logical structure of half the “news”.

In another Martha-do-you-hear-yourself moment, Lloyd Austin himself recently attacked Hegseth for arguing that women shouldn’t serve in the combat arms:

But read this carefully, and look for the own-goal:

Women serving in combat are facing more danger than men, Austin said.

Therefore, women should serve in combat. Explain the logic, Lloyd. Amazingly, the journalist who reported Austin’s comments missed the implications, mindlessly typing up the claim that women in combat are in more danger than men, then — next paragraph! — framing that statement as a rebuke to someone who warned that the service of women in combat “made fighting more complicated.” We’re not discussing; we’re ritually lining up behind our teams.

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