I drive roughly 140 kilometres a day to work round-trip. I also have a car that’s entering 15 years of service. Needless to say it isn’t great on the fuel efficiency, which means I’m forced to go to the gas station frequently, sometimes on concurrent days. I don’t enjoy spending hundreds on gasoline every month, but it’s a reality which I’ve come to accept.

While I’m driving these 140 kilometres every day I have a great deal of time to listen to the radio. Most of the time it’s music, but inbetween songs there are the ads. I tune most of these out, but one in particular got my attention the other day. It went something like this: If you’re in the market for a luxury hybrid SUV at z price that’s more than reasonable, we’ve got vehicles starting from as low as $38,000.

A luxury hybrid SUV. What the hell does that even mean? What’s the point of having a hybrid SUV? So you can be at once selfish and selfless? So your car can be one those sight-obstructing eyesores on the highway, but not at the expense of mother nature? So you can sit on heated leather seats while you save the planet?

After all the political gobbledegook about global warming and the crying and shrieking about excess and waste and the need for better fuel efficiency and a change of our lifestyles from consumption to sustainability, the best they can come up with is a carbon tax on my fuel purchases and a hybrid no working man can afford. Thanks, guys. Nice work. Why don’t you offer home energy retrofits for $110,000 to save 40 cents a week on electricity while you’re at it. Oh, you already are? Carry on then.

After all the blustering and blubbering from the environmental movement, where is the working man’s affordable hybrid? The bare bones, stripped down, basic, no-frills version I can afford so I, too, can feel smug about my contribution to the planet’s well-being? Does it start at the ultra-low price of half my annual salary?

The thing is that I think we all know the charade is over. Nobody cares about energy efficiency beyond how it relates to the bottom dollar. Not unless you can afford to care about it. But it isn’t as though there’s some kind of magic fuel source or alternative mode of transportation sitting there, waiting for schleps like me to take advantage. No, we’re basically being incentivized against using gasoline without a viable alternative. I’m not going to bicycle 140 kilometres to work, and I’m certainly not going to be able to afford that more than reasonable luxury hybrid SUV. Which means I’ll continue to fork over hundreds in gasoline expenses every month, of which the government gets their public transportation and carbon taxes.

People don’t want your bare bones, stripped down, basic economy car hybrid anyway. That much is clear by the return of the market demand for F150s and SUVs again. So, without a free market demand for small cars equipped with hybrid technology, the car companies are smearing lipstick on their oversized SUVs and calling them environmentally friendly. Despite all the hemming and hawing about needing to change people’s habits by pushing them to buy more fuel efficient cars, all that’s really been done is some minor tweaking and catering to the mainstream.

If the governments of the day were really serious about radically changing the automotive industry overnight, they’d incentivize hybrids to the working class by offering subsidies on the economy models. But we all know how that turned out south of the border. It didn’t, because there wasn’t any demand for it. Government interference in the market resulted in a push for people to buy something nobody wanted to buy. So instead you wound up with dealers selling electric powered golf carts under the subsidization program and getting away with it.

Look, I don’t care if I can’t afford a hybrid, and I’ll even stop whining about the commercials. Just so long as we drop all the pretenses about wanting to save the environment and scrap the carbon tax. Scrap these bogus and half-hearted efforts to make the appearance of caring, and just make gasoline as affordable as possible for people like me who wince when we pull into a gas station.

If and when a cheaper, alternative fuel source and car comes along for the masses, then you can start taxing gasoline into oblivion.

If China were some irrelevant Middle Eastern country we use solely to jump into Afghanistan we might have a few choice words for the kind of human rights abuses and wanton subversion of democracy and liberty that marks a regular day in the communist country. But it isn’t, and we don’t. For the most part we shut up and thank them for stamping out our plastic trinkets and tell them to keep up the good work.

It’s a sham. Or as Terry Glavin puts it, “It’s a rigged game. Canada is an open society, with an open economy. China is neither.”

Fully half of China’s billion citizens subsist on sub-Saharan incomes of less than $2 a day, and they’re growing increasingly impatient with the corruption, oppression and persecution that has accompanied the stuffing of Beijing’s foreign-reserves treasury.
[...]
Last January, Beijing’s state-controlled China Investment Corporation rewarded Ottawa’s obsequiousness by choosing Toronto for its first overseas office. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty was so happy he nearly wet his trousers.
[...]
It’s gotten to the point that not a single politician in Ottawa will muster the impudence to wonder aloud whether, just maybe, this charade has gone on long enough.

The problem is that the global economy is largely dependent on continuing this charade for as long as possible, for while the eurozone remains Ground Zero in the debt crisis, China’s economic slowdown spells certain recession for the world in 2012.

So, we’ll have to hold our indignation just a while longer. Meanwhile, the United States will have to hope China doesn’t call in all that debt it’s been buying up over the past few years.

Brett Beadle/Globe and Mail

So, the rough draft of demands for the Occupy Vancouver homeless campers has been delivered to the CBC and it is among the most amusing and ridiculous list I think we’ve seen since Al-Qaeda released their last video tape. Not only do they seem to desire a collapse to the entire economy, it seems pretty clear to me that they shoehorned every socialistic wish since the 60s. The only thing that seems to be missing is a call to arrest George W Bush and repatriate Omar Khadr.

The funny thing is that the first sentence of their first demand isn’t so unreasonable:

We demand that the wealthiest 1% pay their fair share by the closing of tax loopholes such as dark pools of liquidity and employer-side payroll taxes. Progressive taxation principles must prevail, income from capital must be taxed at the same level as wage income.

But it soon descends into darkness and lunacy. They demand the banks being nationalized and the board of directors crammed with union lackeys. They demand that all income tax be eliminated for those earning below a “living wage”, then fail to explain what that wage might be. They demand we pull out of NAFTA, which pretty much comprises 85 per cent of our trade, and enact protectionism. I wonder what the people who don’t earn a “living wage” are going to do when their household commodities suddenly balloon in cost under union-activated inflation.

Those are just the economic demands, proving that nobody in the Occupy Vancouver movement has ever attended an economics course. But then they move on to the political demands. And they are nothing if not ridiculous. The adoption of “Swiss-style direct democracy” and “Nunavut-style consensus decision-making” is just the beginning.

The occupiers demand we pull out of not just Afghanistan, but repudiate each and every ally we have in NATO. Then they want to strip the military of its entire budget and hand it over to health, education and housing. Which they’ll definitely need to do, given the fact they’re going to destroy the tax base by crushing the economy.

There’s specific mentions to the most popular of leftwing principles, such as ensuring the CBC remain a perpetual drain on taxpayers, reinstating the long-form census, and ensuring that climate change science is accepted as being settled. To make it even more farcical, the occupiers demand we begin an independent investigation of 9/11 with the specific intent of finding out that the U.S. government was behind the false flag event.

The eye-rolling nonsense continues:

28. We demand massage, dental and eye care be covered under the health care system.

At this point you have to wonder whether people in the developing world just think we’re assholes. Not only do have an extremely high standard of living, health and life expectancy, but goddamit, we want free massages, too. As I said before, the 99 percenters are sounding more and more like the top one per cent.

That’s not all. The occupiers also demand an end to drug control laws and that people be allowed to grow their marijuana more freely. They also want all harmless criminals let out of prison (which sort of contradicts their earlier demands that they want white collar criminals in banks arrested and jailed). And after the drugs are free and legal, they want the prostitutes legal, too (but not necessarily free).

And finally, there are significant environmental demands. They demand the oil sands be shut down without suggesting where the $6 billion shortfall to the federal treasury would come from. They demand we magically shift all energy sources from fossil fuels and nuclear power to wind, sun and ethanol.

In all, there are 59 very specific demands without a single coherent explanation of how any of this is affordable other than taxing the wealthy. In short, they’re asking for large-scale nationalization and collectivization, withdrawal from trade agreements and partnerships, withdrawal from military and economic alliances, alienation from our largest trading partner, a dismantling of our national defence forces, and adherence to conspiratorial theories about 9/11.

Any credibility the Occupy movement may have had before, is now as soiled as the grass in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery.

UPDATE

The Occupy Vancouver twitter account has proclaimed that the above list of demands was only made by a small group of their membership and that it doesn’t speak for the masses. Which could be true. But it does go to show what sort of company they’re attracting and keeping.

Photo: Reuters/Stefan Wermuth

I’ve been reading about London’s week-long riots with sideways interest for a number of reasons. First, because, like Vancouver, they seem to have manifested on a flimsy pretext with no real unifying reason or cause. Second, because it seems to me a portent of things to come among this, the latest me generation of self-entitled youth.

The reason nobody can find a reason for the violence in London is simple: there isn’t one. Or at least nothing that would satisfy the question that the media has tried and failed miserably to answer. Oh certainly, there’s all the usual suspects: unemployment, capitalism, racism, police brutality, etc. The list is by no means a short one.

But there’s no real reason why the iPhone-wielding teenagers who have laid waste to London are breaking the law. They have no political or moral compass guiding them. On the contrary, it is a complete lack of either that seems to answer the best for their cretinous activities.

That’s not to say there is an absence of certain obvious socio-political symptoms behind the sickness afflicting the country. It, like most western countries over the past several decades, is realizing the consequences of nurturing and pandering to a social convention that nobody has to take personal responsibility for anything. It’s always somebody else’s fault: capitalism, racism, colonialism.

There’s also the obvious tensions from a people who feel they’ve lost their cultural identity — and I don’t just mean the Britons — thanks in large part to the Labour Party’s utterly reckless, yet deliberate plan to foist multiculturalism on the country through a veritable tsunami of immigration that, let’s face it, the economy nor the social order could safely absorb.

The racial tension in this post-racial black-president world is also evident, though it’s a little disturbing some people feel that black thugs exploiting the chaos by robbing thin-muscled white kids of their clothing is a redistribution of inherent wealth disparity. That’s the same numbskull mentality that has led to the present situation: blaming individual acts on historical injustices.

No, the riots in London have a much more banal explanation based on a mundane existence. It isn’t as though these people are like Afghans, Iranians or Syrians, people with real problems in countries beset by real political malfeasance. They’re just, for lack of a better term, bored.

Faced with an increasingly competitive job market, diminishing opportunities for employment with only a high school education, and the requirement to actually reach for and achieve something better in life, many of London’s young people have chosen instead to believe in a retrograde philosophy reserved for reprobates. Anarchy.

Anarchism is a philosophy that requires no core definition of principles, morality or responsibility. By this standard, a person looting a store, robbing a weaker teen of his Adidas, or hurling a brick through a glass window, can be deemed a political act and passed off as such to a media unaccustomed to scrutinizing motive.

Why would an otherwise ordinary, moderately well-educated and literate middle class British youth hurl a brick at a window in order to steal a pair of jeans inside? Is it the economy, the policies of government, or a social reflex to an unjust society? No to all.

Almost all philosophers accept that man is inherently good, and is the basis for liberal philosophy and civilization. But within each man exists the heart of darkness, the duality of nature that brings good and evil. Perhaps the most disturbing realization about evil is that much of it is banal and sterile and ordinary.

As William Golding’s Lord of the Flies demonstrates, evil does not exist on the surface, but lying ever underneath is the wretched opportunism of the ruthless. It takes but one brief lapse in the protection of social order before that exploitation is realized.

Although a majority of British Columbians are quixotic enough to want to revert back to the PST and “extinguish” the HST, fortunately there are enough people so misinformed that they might actually vote to keep the HST by mistake. According to the Province:

Fifty-five per cent of respondents said they are confused by the wording of the referendum question, which asks: “Are you in favour of extinguishing the HST and reinstating the PST in conjunction with the GST?”

When shown the question, most respondents correctly understood “yes” to mean removing the HST, and “no” to mean keeping it. But eight per cent misinterpreted “yes” and “no,” and a further seven per cent said they did not know how to interpret the question.

The poll also showed that voters opposed to the HST are more likely to understand the question than those who support the tax.

Although we all agree at this point that the government brought in the HST in the worst possible way, going back to the PST at this juncture has no precedent anywhere in the world. The HST is good for business, good for the economy, and eventually will be good for consumers. In fact, B.C. even has the second-lowest rate of inflation in Canada.

My second and third parts of my three-piece expose on the HST are finished, and in it I include some important information about the fact that B.C. residents are the second-lowest taxed Canadians in the country.

British Columbians are also much better off than they were in 2000, when marginal income tax rates were 8.4 per cent on the first $30,004, 12.4 per cent on the next $30,005 and 14.35 per cent above and beyond that. Which means in the past decade, taxes have been cut 40 per cent, 38 per cent and between 27 per cent and 14 per cent, respectively (income earners above $100,787 actually pay two per cent more now).

When the provincial portion of the HST is cut to six per cent in 2012, B.C. will have the second lowest sales tax in Canada (except Alberta) and when it’s cut to five per cent in 2014 it will be tied with Saskatchewan for the lowest.

Reverting back to the HST now will cause three distinct problems immediately:

1. We’ll owe $1.6 billion to Ottawa for the transitional payment, for breaching the terms of the MOA between the province and the feds on the HST
2. We’ll lose $820 million of revenue in the first year alone, on top of a projected $1 billion deficit for fiscal 2011-12.
3. We’ll have to reinstate PST offices at a taxpayer cost of $35 million a year, which will cost $200 million to set up again.

B.C.’s economy will also grow more slowly as businesses lose the advantages of remitting the tax on business inputs, which will either lead to layoffs or stagnation.

Quick show of hands. Who agrees with the CRTC that “market forces are working just fine for consumers” of internet service?

Yeah, I didn’t think so. The internet service provider market is a dog’s breakfast, mainly because the CRTC likes the competition nice and collusive. Why, you have the choice of spending $60 a month on internet from at least two corporate giants whose idea of competition is offering a bundle service with phone and cable.

This is the same CRTC that required direct government intervention to allow more competition in the the extremely expensive cell phone market to green-light Wind mobile. That didn’t last long, however, because our Canadian-content overlords decided Wind mobile was too Egyptian for its tastes.

Can’t have any scary foreign ownership in Canada. Best to simply shut up and pay our expensive cell phone bills. The CRTC is now looking at ignoring political pressure on their decision to allow so-called usage-based billing.

Which would be fine in an ideal world where some ridiculous antiquated regulator wasn’t making decisions against the best interests of Canadians. The concept of usage-based billing in a genuine free market economy would be fine. But we don’t live in a free market economy. Far from it.

As for why Canadians pay thousands of dollars more for the same service Chinese grocery vendors in Shanghai get, the CRTC doesn’t care about that either.

“The CRTC will not be expanding the scope, as requested by several parties, to include the billing practices for retail Internet services,” the commission said. “There is no evidence that market forces are not working properly in this unregulated market.”

What flatulent nonsense. No evidence that market forces are not working properly? Um, take a look at Japan for a moment (current tsunami devastation notwithstanding). (The updated 2010 report ranks Canada 22 out of 30 OECD countries for overall Internet access, based on penetration, speed and price).

Canada’s internet provider market is an oligopoly, and the CRTC seems to be the gatekeeper to that status quo.

James Surowiecki of New Yorker magazine writes that in the heart of the Great Depression, millions of American workers joined a union, remaking the economy like never before.

And though businesses saw this as “grim news”, the general public’s appetite for worker protections was whetted substantially enough to support the movement, regardless of which side of the workforce they sat on. A Gallup poll from 1937 indicates as many as 70 per cent of Americans favoured unions, writes Surowiecki.

My, but times have changed. The recent recession that saw bailouts of the automotive unionized workforce was extremely unpopular on both sides of the border. Indeed, hostility toward labour unions is at a historic high, even during a time when it would seemingly be counter to their self-interests.

As pointed out in the article, part of this is due to the perception of the unionized public sector as overpaid bureaucrats, with fully indexed pensions and benefits that are choking our budgets. People in North America have an all-time low opinion of the the kind of organizations that negotiate annual pay raises for teachers, garbage collectors and city workers.

I think this reflects the ongoing collapse of the socialist economic model, which rose to prominence in the early part of the last century, at which time it competed with other ideologies for supremacy. The lingering effects of that model are so repudiated that the insinuations of President Obama’s policies as being inherently socialist are seen as negative, even by those who self-identify with the “left”.

There is also, as Surowiecki observes, the perception that unions too greedily lapped up power and have been reluctant to relinquish it back to the people whom they purport to represent. The very workers who, in part, pay the salaries of the public sector, see their own employment undermined by the constant demands of the unionized force.

Unions have also provided an inorganic inflationary rate in the economy, demanding cost of living increases even during economic stagnation or when the tax base is unable to afford such demands. The recent negotiations across Canada with unionized teacher federations have demonstrated their inflexibility with such economic realities.

As far back as Stats Canada recorded unionization, 16 per cent of non-agricultural workers in 1921, it shows a steady growth, surpassing 20 per cent in 1942. The rate of unionization continued to expand, particularly in the public sector, reaching 30.3 by 1948, and holding steady until the 70′s. By 1975 the rate was as high as 36.8.

Union ranks rose from 2.8 million in 1977 to just over 4 million by 2003. This 43 per cent growth, however, has not kept pace with the increase to the workforce itself, meaning that unionization membership as a percentage of the workforce has declined. After rising from 32.6 per cent in 1977 to 34.2 per cent in 1987, the rate levelled off.

Membership was at 34.6 per cent in 1997. The most recent statistics (2009) shows it has dropped below 30 per cent for the first time in decades. This graph accurately depicts the fall, even through the most recent recession.

It’s also bad news for unions when you break down the demographics. In 2009 the percent of unionized workers for those aged 55-64 was 38.2. That dropped to 34 per cent for those in the 25-54 workforce, and as low as 16.4 per cent for those aged 15-24. As the younger non-unionized workers become the mainstream tax base, those levels should continue to decline. Of interest, 2009 marked the first time in history that more female workers in Canada were unionized than male workers.

How this bodes for Canada’s most well-known labour party, the NDP, remains to be seen. Though membership continues to grow, their presence as a portion in the workforce will decline, and in turn should minimize the power they hold in both the economy and Canadian politics.

[Note — this piece also appears in the National Post]

I suppose I haven’t really spent any time to sit down and write what I’ve been doing for the past couple of months, although casual and regular readers will probably know I’m in journalism school.

I finished my first term back in early December, and since then I’ve been interning at the Langley Advance and Coquitlam Now newspapers. This hasn’t given me a lot of time to really write or respond to comments.

I also visited Afghanistan in late September, early October, and I never got a chance to really share more than a few thoughts and impressions of the trip. I did want to take this opportunity to thank those who helped me with that experience. I don’t want to embarrass anybody by calling out their full name, but I’m sure you’ll recognize yours when you see it.

Dave, thanks for helping me when you heard about my opportunity. Tony, I appreciate your ongoing attention to the mission in Afghanistan and supporting my visit there. John, you’ve helped me to get through some of the self-doubt and fears about tackling this new occupation. And thanks to Mark for the assistance and the phone call before leaving to Afghanistan. I also appreciated the advice from those who had already been there.

Finally, thanks to Roy and Fred who really stepped up and made the trip possible.

Anyway, back to the headline of this blog entry, my newest National Post article is rather related to the Afghan story.

While Canadians were concerned about jobs, health care and the lagging economy, the opposition parties were busy pressing the federal government on the subject of Afghan detainee documents, according to an Ottawa Citizen analysis of question period transcripts from 2010.

The analysis shows the opposition asked more about Afghanistan, specifically about detainees, than any other subject in 2010. Although the Liberals also hounded the Tories on questions about the G8 and G20 summits and Rahim Jaffer, the NDP and Bloc Quebecois were absolutely overflowing with questions about Afghanistan.

This flies in the face of what public opinion polls say are the true concerns of Canadians, which relate mainly to the economy. Read More »

…

It’s always fun to play soothsayer, and then look back and see how utterly wrong you were. I thought I’d compile a list of predictions for the new year, in no particular order, and see what comes of it.

1. MSM Election-Watch
Rife with endless speculation, but I don’t see the opposition parties pulling the trigger in 2011, which means the Harper government goes four years. Whenever the Liberals begin softening their stance, the NDP start voting against the government, and vice versa. Even if both begin voting against the government, the Bloc Quebecois will probably vote with the Conservatives just to keep the ball in their court.

2. Ignatieff stays as Liberal leader
We can expect the same-old same-old from the federal polling scene, as Michael Ignatieff continues to struggle as Liberal leader, and his party remains between three and five points back of the Conservative Party. I do believe Ignatieff will be ousted, however, following an election loss in 2012.

3. Detainees and dithering in Afghanistan
At some point the detainees spinning wheel will overshadow the mission in Afghanistan again, and will dominate the news even as the countdown to the end of our military mission there reaches zero. When Canada is left struggling to find a post-combat training mission in the country, the opposition will point their fingers at the government, even as they distracted it with the detainee bloviating.

4. Julian Assange self-aggrandizes, media lionizes
In desperation to keep in the spotlight, Assange releases files that slightly embarrass the United States. Meanwhile, public opinion shifts away from the self-promoter as the more neutral Open Leaks launches. Assange martyrs himself again by getting arrested.

5. More global cooling, blamed on global warming
Hurricanes, floods, droughts and fires will all be blamed on global warming, even as the temperatures dip for the third year and record cold and snow sweep across Europe. Desperate alarmists blame it on the “ice cube” effect, whereby they argue the world is temporarily cooling because the polar ice caps have melted large chunks of ice into the oceans, cooling the waters.

6. More dhimmitude, even after another large terrorist attack
A dramatic terrorist attack will take place outside of North America, but will be given only peripheral attention by the western liberals, who will continue to blame the problem on foreign occupation and a few bad apples.

7. Israel ups the ante against Iranian Nukes
With intelligence reports that Iran is on the verge of a breakthrough, Israel is forced to act covertly against Iran, sparking international condemnation for the preemptive strike. Hamas and Hezbollah respond by launching terrorist attacks on Israel, and the responding force is also condemned. A Canadian flotilla to Gaza is turned aside, but not boarded, by the IDF.

8. Pakistan gets worse
It becomes clear that Pakistan is now more deadly than Afghanistan or Iraq, as insurgents launch more terrorist attacks than anywhere else in the world. The Pakistani Army is forced to take action, resulting in insurgents fleeing across the border to hide in Afghanistan. Extremists gain a stronger foothold in surrounding “stans”.

9. United States economy rebounds, but nearly bankrupt
Obama’s $150-billion monthly deficits continue, sending public debt over $14 trillion. The economy rebounds but unemployment gets higher as there’s no money left to pay people to “stimulate”. The United States is forced to contend with an overextended military in multiple conflicts that have drained the treasury. Austerity requires unpopular measures that drive Obama’s approval rating below that of George W Bush’s low water mark. Expect protectionism and more insular policies.

10. The rise of Sarah Palin
The soccer mom populist poises herself to lead the Republicans to a shot at becoming the first female President, riding a cusp of Tea Partyism and anti-Obama sentiment. Liberal heads explode the world over.

11. The European Union cracks
As the European Union invites more Euro-value-dragging partners in from the former Eastern Bloc, this time the Balkan states, a large country (like Germany) throws in the towel and leaves the Euro to save itself.

12. The BC NDP blow it
With Gordon Campbell gone, the Liberals rebound and the BC NDP are unable to find a charismatic leader to take the reigns. Infighting results in fracturing the party among the baker’s dozen dissidents and the James loyalists. The HST survives the referendum.

I’ll have a longer article on this in the National Post online tomorrow, but for now let’s compare notes:

September 2, 2010

“HST benefits will take some time”

Finance Minister Colin Hansen is playing down a study that suggests the HST will take five to ten years to benefit BC’s economy, with a negative effect on jobs and take-home-pay in the meantime.

The study by the CD Howe Institute was published in 2008, and Hansen says “flexibility” on the part of Ottawa has reduced the negative impacts of the tax, “The seven percent Provincial portion does not apply to motor fuels, it does not apply to home energy costs. The fact that we’ve been able to carve out those exemptions are important. And also, I think the fact that the Province is going to be 1.6 billion dollars better off because of the transition dollars.”

July 1, 2010

“HST, THE RIGHT MOVE AT THE RIGHT TIME”

DELTA – The Harmonized Sales Tax will improve British Columbia’s economy, build productivity and competitiveness and provide the foundation for more jobs, Finance Minister Colin Hansen announced today.

“A strong economy is necessary to create the jobs we need to provide revenue for essential public services like health and education. The vast majority of businesses can recover the HST they pay and remove the hidden taxes that get passed on to and paid by consumers. These savings will keep prices competitive, spur investment, create new jobs and boost our province’s economy” said Hansen.

The right move at the right time to create jobs coming out of a recession? Or the wrong move at the wrong time to create tax breaks for business associates?