Quotulatiousness

October 26, 2010

Toronto’s elite appalled: the barbarians have stormed City Hall

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:24

I guess a lot of people were misleading the pollsters, as what looked like a dead heat only a few days before the election turned into a 12 point lead, just missing an actual majority for Rob Ford:

Right-wing juggernaut Rob Ford will take the top job in Canada’s most populous city, defeating former deputy premier George Smitherman in a bitter, 10-month race to become Toronto’s next mayor.

With 99 per cent of Toronto polls reporting Monday night, Ford took 47 per cent of the vote, compared to Smitherman’s 35 per cent and deputy mayor Joe Pantalone’s 12 per cent.

Smitherman was considered an early favourite to win, but couldn’t compete against Ford, a scrappy city councillor who tapped into a potent well of voter fury with his promises to cut taxes and kill big spending at city hall.

“This victory is a clear call from the taxpayers, enough is enough,” Ford told cheering supporters.

“The party with taxpayers’ money is over. We will respect the taxpayers again, and yes ladies and gentlemen we will stop the gravy train once and for all.”

The polarizing Toronto race was marred by ugly incidents, including homophobic ads targeting the openly gay Smitherman, and a newspaper article — later pulled from the Globe and Mail website — that took a shot at Ford’s weight.

His win is likely to send shockwaves all the way to Premier Dalton McGuinty’s office. Many experts have predicted that a Ford victory could herald a Conservative sweep in next fall’s Ontario election.

Ford is perhaps the least likely candidate to win in Toronto for decades, and is most certainly not the kind of mayor most progressives expected to see. He’s not particularly polished or smooth-talking or dignified, and has had a series of mis-steps that the media (and Toronto’s Liberal elite) expected to keep him from being more than a slight bump in the smooth road to Smitherman’s coronation. I expect this election result will be portrayed in the media, at least in the short term, as the suburbs “sticking it” to downtown (even though some polls showed Ford’s support to be nearly as strong in downtown wards as in the benighted suburbs).

Update: Chris Selley thinks that this is a wake-up call for politicians across the province:

One can only imagine the horror in certain quarters. Uncouth, uncultured, suburban, journalist-chasing, drunk driving, marijuana-possessing Air Canada Centre ejectee and lone wolf former city councillor Rob Ford is mayor-elect of Toronto — and not just by a little. Mayor David Miller congratulated him last night and so should everyone else. It sure won’t help not to.

Whatever happens over the next four years, this election sent a hugely important message to Canadian politicians: Ignore voter anger at your peril. If you think voters shouldn’t be angry, make your case early and sincerely. Don’t just blame a senior level of government for your problems.

Cost overruns are typical, but this is excessive

Filed under: Architecture, Cancon, Government, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:12

Canada’s parliament buildings have been sporadically under repair since 1992. The original estimate for all required work was $460 million. It has, of course, gone well past that budget:

The cost of renovating Parliament Hill is expected to hit $5 billion by the time the 25-year project wraps up, CBC reported Monday.

According to documents released by the Department of Public Works, the repairs to almost every building on Parliament Hill, originally pegged to be $460 million in 1992, will have ballooned to more than 10 times that amount upon completion.

Renovations started on the aging buildings in 1992, when builders began renewing Parliament’s West Block. The project was shelved in 1998, then restarted in 2005, with an estimated budget of $769 million. That total has since risen to more than $1 billion, according to CBC.

As Ezra Levant points out, “Burj Dubai, world’s tallest building, only cost $4.1B”.

Update: Ezra also pointed out that the “Bank of China tower in Hong Kong was $1.66B. Taipei 101 was $2B. “.

October 25, 2010

Voting for the right candidates

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 15:37

I just got back from exercising my right to vote for municipal representation. It was a case of trying to find candidates who didn’t copy one another’s homework (and campaign promises).

In municipal elections in Ontario, party affiliations aren’t shown on the ballot, but given the claims I saw in most of the pamphlets and local newspaper articles, almost all of our local candidates are fully paid-up members of the Green party. I don’t know why our school trustees need to be so concerned with things well outside the municipal level of responsibility, but I’d kinda prefer they concentrated on, y’know, the fricking schools in the region, rather than deforestation in the tropics, CO2 emissions, and banning plastic bags.

I ended up not using all my votes, as I couldn’t find candidates for some of the positions who didn’t seem to want to spend all their time stuffing envelopes for Greenpeace rather than running the town and regional governments.

Oh, and a protip for future candidates, especially if you’re late entering the race: not having a website means I can’t look up your positions on anything, and I’m not going to vote for you just on the basis of you having an interesting name.

Amity Schlaes’ (condensed) The Forgotten Man

Filed under: Books, Economics, History, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:07

An article encapsulating some of the key points of Amity Schlaes’ The Forgotten Man in PDF form:

We all know the traditional narrative of that event: The stock market crash generated an economic Katrina. One in four was unemployed in the first few years. It resulted from a combination of monetary, banking, credit, international, and consumer confidence factors. The terrible thing about it was the duration of a high level of unemployment, which averaged in the mid teens for the entire decade.

The second thing we usually learn is that the Depression was mysterious — a problem that only experts with doctorates could solve. That is why FDR’s floating advisory group — Felix Frankfurter, Frances Perkins, George Warren, Marriner Eccles and Adolf Berle, among others — was sometimes known as a Brain Trust. The mystery had something to do with a shortage of money, we are told, and in the end, only a Brain Trust’s tinkering with the money supply saved us. The corollary to this view is that the government knows more than American business does about economics.

Another common presumption is that cleaning up Wall Street and getting rid of white-collar criminals helped the nation recover. A second is that property rights may still have mattered during the 1930s, but that they mattered less than government-created jobs, shoring up home-owners, and getting the money supply right. A third is that American democracy was threatened by the rise of a potential plutocracy, and that the Wagner Act of 1935 — which lent federal support to labor unions — was thus necessary and proper. Fourth and finally, the traditional view of the 1930s is that action by the government was good, whereas inaction would have been fatal. The economic crisis mandated any kind of action, no matter how far removed it might be from sound monetary policy. Along these lines the humorist Will Rogers wrote in 1933 that if Franklin Roosevelt had “burned down the capital, we would cheer and say, ‘Well at least we got a fire started, anyhow.’”

To put this official version of the 1930s in terms of the Monopoly board: The American economy was failing because there were too many top hats lording it about on the board, trying to establish a plutocracy, and because there was no bank to hand out money. Under FDR, the federal government became the bank and pulled America back to economic health.

When you go to research the 1930s, however, you find a different story. It is of course true that the early part of the Depression — the years upon which most economists have focused — was an economic Katrina. And a number of New
Deal measures provided lasting benefits for the economy. These include the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the push for free trade led by Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and the establishment of the modern mortgage format. But the remaining evidence contradicts the official narrative. Overall, it
can be said, government prevented recovery. Herbert Hoover was too active, not too passive — as the old stereotypes suggest — while Roosevelt and his New Deal policies impeded recovery as well, especially during the latter half of the decade.

H/T to Monty for the link.

October 23, 2010

“How Many Australian Politicians Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb?”

Filed under: Australia, Bureaucracy, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:13

None:

The (tangential) Free-Range issue here is this: Why are we increasingly subject to rules and regs that have nothing to do with REAL safety and everything to do with litigation, worst-case-scenario-fantasizing and good ol’ CYA? It’s a time, money and morale-waster, with the added benefit of turning competent people into incompetent cowards. Just like so many rules and regs are implementing with kids: No, children, you CANNOT ride your bikes to school. No, children, you CANNOT do your own chemistry experiments. No, children, you CANNOT babysit/whittle/get a paper route/smile at a stranger. It is all TOO DANGEROUS.

And someday we will wonder why no one in the world (except, perhaps, electricians) can do anything.

H/T to Walter Olson.

October 21, 2010

I still think they should call it the “milliVolt”

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:06

The much-less-than-promised Chevy Volt goes on sale next month. If it had been a private company delivering so few of their promises, lawsuits or regulatory sanctions would be forthcoming. Because it’s a product of Government Motors, we’re being told that the “Electric Edsel” is not fraud, it’s fantastic:

Government Motors’ all-electric car isn’t all-electric and doesn’t get near the touted hundreds of miles per gallon. Like “shovel-ready” jobs, maybe there’s no such thing as “plug-ready” cars either.

The Chevy Volt, hailed by the Obama administration as the electric savior of the auto industry and the planet, makes its debut in showrooms next month, but it’s already being rolled out for test drives by journalists. It appears we’re all being taken for a ride.

[. . .]

So it’s not an all-electric car, but rather a pricey $41,000 hybrid that requires a taxpayer-funded $7,500 subsidy to get car shoppers to look at it. But gee, even despite the false advertising about the powertrain, isn’t a car that gets 230 miles per gallon of gas worth it?

We heard GM’s then-CEO Fritz Henderson claim the Volt would get 230 miles per gallon in city conditions. Popular Mechanics found the Volt to get about 37.5 mpg in city driving, and Motor Trend reports: “Without any plugging in, (a weeklong trip to Grandma’s house) should return fuel economy in the high 30s to low 40s.”

Car and Driver reported that “getting on the nearest highway and commuting with the 80-mph flow of traffic — basically the worst-case scenario — yielded 26 miles; a fairly spirited backroad loop netted 31; and a carefully modulated cruise below 60 mph pushed the figure into the upper 30s.”

As I said in an earlier post:

I’m very much in favour of an economical electric car: the Volt doesn’t meet that definition. It’s been rushed to market for political, not for economic reasons. It’ll be kept in the market regardless of sales figures for the same reason: it allows Barack Obama and senate leaders to point at the Volt as tangible proof that they care about the environment and reducing American dependence on foreign oil.

Biodiversity the new “climate change”?

Filed under: Environment, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:50

James Delingpole points to the successor to global warming/climate change as the cause of the decade:

And so it begins. With all the shamelessness of a Goldman Sachser trading in his middle-aged wife for a hot, pouting twentysomething called Ivanka, the green movement is ditching “Climate Change”. The newer, younger, sexier model’s name? Biodiversity.

When I say shameless, I’m talking so amoral it makes the Whore of Babylon look like Mother Theresa; so flagrant it makes Al Gore’s, ahem, alleged drunken “Love poodle” assault on the Portland Masseuse look like an especially delicate passage from Andreas Capellanus’s The Art of Courtly Love.

[. . .]

Suddenly it becomes clear why they kept Pachauri on at the IPCC. Because the IPCC simply doesn’t matter any more. Sure it will go on, churning out Assessment Report after Assessment Report, bringing pots of money to the usual gang of bent scientists prepared to act as lead authors. But the world’s mainstream media — especially all those environment correspondents who so lovingly transcribe the press releases of Greenpeace and the WWF as if they were holy writ — will have moved on, according to the dictates of the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) fashionable crise du jour.

“Never mind ‘Climate Change’,” they’ll say to themselves. “Our readers and viewers aren’t really so into that now all the winters seem to have got so very cold. Biodiversity, that’s the thing.”

October 20, 2010

British defence cuts will impact the troops in Afghanistan

Filed under: Britain, Military, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:16

Lewis Page comes close to calling Britain’s prime minister a liar over the speech he made the other day:

Mr Cameron and other Coalition politicians have repeatedly assured us that in fact all their decisions are aimed at support of our heroic troops fighting and dying in Afghanistan — but in fact, in one hugely important respect, they are slashing support for our boys and girls.

Last Christmas, regular Reg readers may remember, in a freak outburst of common sense Labour defence ministers announced plans to buy no less than 22 more desperately-needed Chinook helicopters. The powerful Chinook, only helicopter able to really overcome the tough hot-and-high conditions of Afghanistan, is the single greatest desire of our hard-pressed troops in Helmand. Lack of Chinooks is the worst handicap their commanders face. Say what you like about Labour, but in their last months they did the right thing and ordered a good big number of these vital machines. They planned to pay for them, sensibly, by cutting some Tornado bombers among other things.

Good old Mr Cameron, though — the soldier’s friend — has cut this order to 12, almost halving it. He received massive cheers yesterday from ignorant MPs yesterday, saying:

There is no cut whatsoever in the support for our forces in Afghanistan … we have been and will be providing more for our brave forces in Afghanistan [including] crucially, at last, the right level of helicopter capability.

That is perilously close to being an outright lie, we’d suggest. No matter what you think of the rest of his plans, Mr Cameron’s decision to cut the Chinook order (to preserve Tornado bombers, too!) is an unforgivable betrayal of our fighting men and women at war right now — and then he has the gall to try and pretend that he’s actually decided to order some helicopters rather than cutting an existing order!

October 18, 2010

Gaining votes by insulting the voters?

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 13:53

President Barack Obama has an odd way of campaigning for his party:

President Barack Obama said Americans’ “fear and frustration” is to blame for an intense midterm election cycle that threatens to derail the Democratic agenda.

“Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we’re hardwired not to always think clearly when we’re scared,” Obama said Saturday evening in remarks at a small Democratic fundraiser Saturday evening. “And the country’s scared.”

Obama told the several dozen donors that he was offering them his “view from the Oval Office.” He faulted the economic downturn for Americans’ inability to “think clearly” and said the burden is on Democrats “to break through the fear and the frustration people are feeling.”

Blaming the voters for their economic worries isn’t quite the tone I’d expect him to set while trying to drum up support for his party’s candidates in the upcoming election. Perhaps Americans respond better to being insulted than Canadians would?

L. Neil Smith finds some new hope

Filed under: Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:06

Taken from a speech for delivery at a Hollywood convention:

Once again we find ourselves standing at the brink. In just a few more days, our neighbors will choose — for themselves, and, to an unfortunate degree, for us — whether they want to live brave and free or would rather cower with the boot-heel of collectivism on their necks.

As individuals, we can vote, too, which may or may not be a futile effort — it’s been a subject of debate within our movement for three decades. However that may be, we libertarians, as a movement, have little or no power to change the course of events — a virtual river of blood — flowing violently all around us. The best we can do is to plan for what will come afterward, no matter what that may turn out to be.

[. . .]

And then, as I said, something happened, something that many of you may sneer at, but something, I believed (and still do) will prove to have been of unprecedented historical importance. Even more than that, it made politics exciting and fun all over again — I found myself laughing at the political situation for the first time in months.

John McCain had accepted Sarah Palin as his personal savior.

It didn’t work, of course, not for McCain. He was beyond saving. But Sarah spiced up the American political scene again, rendered it refreshingly unpredictable, and managed to make an ass of Barack Obama and all his works. Sure, she’s a Republican — although plenty of Republicans despise her, and she despises plenty of them. She’s even put a few of them in jail. In that respect, she’s Barry Goldwater’s revenge.

She’s a church-lady, war-supporter, anti-abortionist, and I, atheist and anarchist that I am, count myself as none of those things. But she’s solidly, provenly, for limited government and unafraid to be photographed with a sport-utility rifle in her hands, and empty cases in the air overhead. She hunts animals bigger than she is, and she’s cute.

Get over it.

October 17, 2010

P.J. O’Rourke interview

Filed under: Economics, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:01

Parts 2 and 3 are at Liberty Pundits.

October 16, 2010

Court makes a mockery of “freedom of speech” in bail conditions

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:30

I’m not particularly fond of the organizers of the G20 protests (see the general tone of my posts during the G20 meetings for proof), but this court decision is obscene:

Alex Hundert’s words will not appear in this story.

Unlike other Canadians, he’s not allowed to speak to the press.

At least that’s how a court interpreted the new bail conditions placed on Hundert, an accused ringleader of violence during the G20 summit in June.

“It’s staggering in its breadth,” said John Norris, Hundert’s lawyer. “I’ve never heard of anything as broad as that.”

Hundert, 30, faces three counts of conspiracy pertaining to G20 activities, and was released in July on $100,000 bail with about 20 terms, including not participating in any public demonstration.

Shortly after his release, the Crown filed an appeal to revoke his bail. Superior Court Justice Todd Ducharme ruled against that appeal.

On Sept. 17, shortly after Ducharme’s decision, Hundert was arrested for participating in a panel discussion at Ryerson University — which police deemed to be a public demonstration.

On Wednesday Hundert agreed to the new, more stringent, bail conditions.

They include a clarification of the no-demonstration rule, to include a restriction on planning, participating in, or attending any public event that expresses views on a political issue.

This is just wrong. No government or court should have this power: he’s an accused criminal, but he has not been convicted of a crime. This is an unjustifiable restriction of his freedom and should never have been imposed.

H/T to Darian Worden for the link.

October 14, 2010

Little Bobby Tables must speak Swedish

Filed under: Europe, Humour, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 13:19

By way of Bruce Schneier an opportunity to show another xkcd comic:

Exploits of a Mom

So, what’s the Swedish tie-in?

As you may have heard, we’ve had a very close election here in Sweden. Today the Swedish Election Authority published the hand written votes. While scanning through them I happened to notice

R;13;Hallands län;80;Halmstad;01;Halmstads västra valkrets;0904;Söndrum 4;pwn DROP TABLE VALJ;1

The second to last field is the actual text on the ballot. Could it be that Little Bobby Tables is all grown up and has migrated to Sweden? Well, it’s probably just a joke but even so it brings questions since an SQL-injection on election data would be very serious.

British government takes chainsaw to Quango jungle

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Government, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:30

To my surprise, the British government appears to be quite serious about reducing the number of quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations (Quangos):

The government has announced that 192 quangos are to be scrapped.

Some will be abolished altogether others will see their functions carried out by government or other bodies, the Cabinet Office says.

A further 118 will be merged. Some are still under consideration but 380 will be retained, according to the list.

Minister Francis Maude said they did not know how many jobs would go. Labour’s Liam Byrne said the cull could end up costing more than it saved.

Quangos — “quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations” — are arm’s-length bodies funded by Whitehall departments but not run by them.

Sounds like a worthwhile effort. I rather expected the study would “discover” that almost all of the Quangos were performing “essential services” and therefore would be continued. I’m delighted to find that I was being too cynical.

October 13, 2010

Bernier calls for an end to transfer payments

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:24

If there’s one member of the federal Conservatives that can be said to both have ideas and be willing to express them publicly, it would have to be Maxime Bernier:

Maxime Bernier is carving out a pronounced niche for himself as the one-man Libertarian wing of the Conservative Party.

He appears also to have made a conscious decision to say what he thinks, and risk the consequences. Having been kicked out of Cabinet and survived, he may have discovered a way to turn lemons into lemonade. The most that can happen to him now is that he gets ejected from caucus as well, but given his stature as a high-profile MP in a prized riding in Quebec, would the Tory high command risk anything so self-defeating?

So what does our one-man Libertarian wing call for now?

Mr. Bernier wants Ottawa to get out of the business of subsidizing provincial programs that aren’t federal responsibility. Rather than send $40 billion a year to the provinces to pay for health and social programs, Ottawa should just chop its taxes and let the provinces take up the slack, paying for their own programs.

Yeah, I somehow don’t see Messrs. Harper, Ignatieff, or Layton coming on board with this notion. Give up taxing power to the provinces who are constitutionally responsible for the services? What do you think we are, some sort of confederation?

Other interesting snippets from his speech to the Albany Club in Toronto:

Wilfrid Laurier was another of our greatest prime ministers. He was a classical liberal, not a liberal in the modern sense. He was a supporter of individual freedom, free trade and free markets. I think if he were alive today, he would probably be a Conservative!

Yes, except he’d be in the same outsider/pariah position as Mr. Bernier finds himself in the Harper version of Conservatism.

In a speech before the Quebec Legislative Assembly in 1871, Laurier said:

“If the federal system is to avoid becoming a hollow concept, if it is to produce the results called for, the legislatures must be independent, not just in the law, but also in fact. The local legislature must especially be completely sheltered from control by the federal legislature.

If in any way the federal legislature exercises the slightest control over the local legislature, then the reality is no longer a federal union, but rather a legislative union in federal form.”

Now, it’s obvious that what Laurier feared has unfortunately come true. Ottawa exercises a lot more than “the slightest control” over local legislatures. The federal government today intervenes massively in provincial jurisdictions, and in particular in health and education, two areas where it has no constitutional legitimacy whatsoever.

As I’ve said before, I don’t know how long Bernier will be tolerated in the tightly controlled and PMO-stage-managed Conservative party, but I do enjoy the spectacle of someone actually pushing these ideas. I hope he continues to do so.

Update: Don Martin also seems to think that “Mad Max” is a breath of fresh air:

They share a party label, but Deficit Jim and Mad Max sit in polar opposite corners of the big blue tent.

The day after Finance Minister Jim Flaherty released an update which would make a left-lurching Liberal blush at the historic high tide in a red fiscal sea, Maxime Bernier delivered a jolt of hard-right policy to remind true blue Conservatives they have at least one voice on the government’s backbenches.

Flaherty is my local MP. He ran for parliament with the Conservatives, but appears to be operating in office as a Liberal.

Maverick Max went rogue again in a Toronto speech on Wednesday by advocating Ottawa get out of transfer payments to provinces while giving legislatures more tax room to finance the health, social welfare and education services they are constitutionally obliged to deliver.

For Jim Flaherty, who rolled out a blueprint on Tuesday showing continued growth in the social transfer envelope well into the next government’s mandate, the notion of surrendering $40 billion worth of fiscal clout over the provinces is a severely alien concept.

Martin has a nice article here, even if he incorrectly refers to Laurier as our first Liberal PM . . . unless he means our first (and only) “classic liberal” PM. Perhaps Bernier will be our second?

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress