Conservative Theory that Trudeau is Going for the Stoner Vote

I began to read this opinion piece online from the "Star Phoenix", and before the first paragraph was done, I was already getting that "right wing nutjob" vibe from the author, Les MacPherson.

I didn't know this until I checked the internet, but yes, the Saskatoon Star Phoenix is owned by the same group as the right wing National Post.  So there is a good chance this is purposeful conservative propaganda.

Breaking down the article to its basic arguments and assumptions:

- Justin Trudeau (Liberal Leader) is promising to legalize pot in order to capture the all important stoner vote.

- Stoners will hate legalization, (if it happens) as government meddling will make pot more expensive and less appealing.

- Dealers will hate legalization, as they will be put out of business by excessive government regulation and taxing.

- Trudeau will not legalize marijuana anyway, he is only lying.  Hypocritical liberal governments do more marijuana busts than conservative governments.

- Conclusion: Trudeau should wait until the US legalizes marijuana before doing anything.

- Recommendation (implied): Don't vote for Trudeau, as he is a hypocrite and a Socialist, (if that is not too redundant)


Seems like an inoffensive article, but there are some underlying right-wing assumptions that I do not accept.

- The negative stereotyping and use of the pejorative name stoner.  Why are conservatives always stereotyping people????  OOOPS now I'm stereotyping.  Anyway, it's true.

- The assumption that all the people who want marijuana legalized are stoners, and only stoners want marijuana legalized.  That is not true, as many "non-stoners" believe that decriminalizing marijuana will boost our economy.  (a non-stoner is the opposite of what a stoner is supposed to be in this article, I have no other definition for it).

- The assumption that if the government gets involved in the marijuana business, things will fall apart.  This is dumb, even from a conservative free market point of view.  OK, we need a short lesson in right wing free enterprise.  ILLEGAL activities are not free enterprise.  LEGAL activities are not automatically "government run". By Les MacPherson's logic, black market gasoline would be cheaper and more potent than legal pump gas. I don't think so.

- Les's conclusion is typical of your basic Canadian Conservative:  Wait until the US does it, on the assumption that, except for Obama, the US is always right.

The Royal Bank Foreign Worker Project Goes Too Far

There is a story creating some concern in Canada, about our biggest bank, the Royal Bank of Canada, hiring foreign workers to replace Canadian workers.  All by itself, this would not be enough to cause outrage, as we have been doing this for years. But now there is a combination of circumstances that could make this "the straw that broke the camel's back".

- Canadians are aware that good jobs have been shipped overseas for many years: Computer jobs, phone answering jobs, manufacturing jobs. I don't know how many jobs have gone overseas, but I am aware of many local industries and offices that have simply closed down.  I think it is widespread enough to harm our economy, if not now, sometime in the future.  We know jobs pay a lot lower wages overseas than in Canada, and I guess we understand why.

- Canadians may not be aware that many jobs even in Canada are filled by foreign workers on temporary visas.  Over 100,000 in 2001 growing to over 300,000 in 2012.  It used to make sense, because these are mostly jobs we don't care for such as fruit picking.  They are supposed to pay Canadian wages, though really it's not, because Canadians apparently cannot afford to work for those wages any more.

- There are also high tech jobs, or skilled jobs that not enough Canadians are trained for.  I personally know at least one person who was recruited overseas to work in Canada in such a job.  I think there is a need for a limited amount of this type of recruiting.  These jobs are also supposed to pay Canadian wages.

But this is just too much: Unskilled foreign workers on temporary visas, replacing Canadian workers, at a lower salary, in Canada, recruited to do a job that some Canadians have invested their own time and money at University and college to qualify for.  I don't care if it's a mistake, or a loophole, or an accident, or any other excuse. If this continues, even the CEO's job may be outsourced.  After all, it would improve the corporation profits by $10,000,000 per year (the CEO salary, minus whatever we have to pay the replacement on a temporary CEO work visa).  The resulting executive decisions couldn't be any more short sighted.

I am somewhat at fault myself, as a shareholder in the Royal Bank.  And so the only decent thing to do is begin divesting shares in favour of some company that does not outsource its jobs, if there are any left.

Already, we have a case in Canada going before the court, where Chinese temporary workers were hired by a Chinese mining company to work in a mine in Canada.  Once again, it was a combination of circumstances.  As I understand it, the Chinese company bought mining rights in Canada.  The Canadian government assumed that there would be jobs for Canadians in the deal.  The Chinese company put out help wanted ads, but no Canadian miners qualified, so they were forced to bring in Chinese workers on "temporary" work visas.  Is appears that one of the requirements listed for the job was fluency in speaking Mandarin.

I looked up some of the facts in the Globe and Mail article here:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/jobs/ottawa-pushes-for-answers-as-uproar-over-rbc-outsourcing-gains-volume/article10870961/

Picture: From a foreign worker application support website
http://www.routleylaw.com/immigration-legal-services-overview/

Nero Fiddled, but Did He Pay His Taxes?

Recently I watched an argument on Fox news about whether the rich should pay more taxes. In the shouting match, several key points were raised.

Patriotic Millionaire Eric Schoenberg leaves Fox Business host Stuart Varney speechless at 3:51 of this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdgQnl2tbhs

Stuart Varney belongs to "Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength", and was facing a panel on Fox news.

To summarize the existing situation:  The USA is in a fiscal crisis with high debt levels, and President Obama has noted that during the last 50 or so years, tax rates have declined, especially on the rich.  Obama campaigned on the argument that the rich should pay their fair share of taxes.

On the other side of the coin, the rich (represented by Fox News), argue that "it is not a sin to make money" and "making the rich pay will not solve America's debt crisis", and "Jobs are created by the rich, but not if they are taxed too much".

One point that was raised on this program happened when the host Stuart Varney told Eric that if he wanted to pay more taxes, to take out his chequebook and make a payment to the USA government.  And let the other rich people keep their hard earned money.  Stuart explained first, that taxes are not a charitable contribution where you pay whatever you want.  And secondly, if people did pay taxes voluntarily, then those who refuse to pay should not get free government services.  Eric mentioned a list of services including police protection, fire protection, and good roads.

When he brought up the subject of fire protection, one of the Fox Panel jumped in with the fact that there are more fires in slums where people don't even pay taxes.  Apparently rich people's houses don't burn down as frequently, and so do not use up resources from the fire department.  Logically I guess that means that poor people living in slums should pay more for fire services etc.

But wait a minute here.  I am not aware of any study that has determined that poor people living in slums use up more of the government services than rich people. (I'm not talking just about fire services, but police services too.  And roads and infrastructure such as drainage, water, electricity.)  I think it's the opposite, with rich neighbourhoods getting the best support.  I'm not arguing that that is right or wrong, but I cannot tolerate pure bullsh*t that says fire department funding goes mainly to slum dwellers.

Let's get into fire protection, then.  One of the hardest fires to fight, and the most dangerous, are forest fires that can ravage wealthy neighbourhoods as easily as the slums. Wealthy people have a tendency to place their homes in open forested areas, where they are very hard to protect from forest fires.  Poor people cannot afford these expensive home sites because of the cost of land.

A little research on the internet comes up with these facts.

Richard Branson's "cottage" burns to the ground. (Richard Branson is rich)

http://www.businessinsider.com/richard-branson-necker-island-fire-photos-2011-8?op=1

Firefighter lured to their deaths in ambush. This did not take place in a slum, but I'm guessing the gunman was not a millionaire either.  On the other hand, he could easily have been a Fox News watcher.  And Fox does support making guns more available.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/12/25/rochester-firefighters-ambush-condition.html

The Cerro Grande fire, New Mexico, 2000.  400 homes lost.  Also, the Los Alamos National Laboratory was damaged, which brings up the situation where fire fighters are fighting to save Government infrastructure, not just the private dwellings of taxpayers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerro_Grande_Fire

Historically, inner city fires are a boon for the very rich, as slums can be cleared more easily when they are in smoking ruins, and somebody has to redevelop the now-valuable property.  Check out this story about Rome under Emperor Nero.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_Rome

Picture: Detroit home target for fire.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2012971/From-Motown-Ghost-town-How-mighty-Detroit-heading-long-slow-road-ruin.html

Who Does the Rest of the World Vote For?

Canadians cannot vote in US elections.  But US elections affect not only the US, but Canada, and also the whole world.  I think that if the US election was open to the whole world, only two countries would support Romney.  They would be Israel and Pakistan.  My impression is that both those countries have more than enough religious fanatics. (so does the USA, by the way, as a recent survey says more Americans believe in Demonic possession than believe in Global Warming.)

So I am going to try to explain this mysterious tendency for Canadians to favour Obama over Mitt Romney. To do that, I will use only one question, which I think is the most important. Was four years enough time for Obama to turn the US (and World) economy around?

I have heard some Republicans say that Obama could blame Bush for the deficit for the first six months in office, but after that, Obama takes the blame.  I'm not sure I agree, because my understanding of debt is that it does not expire magically after 6 months.  If I personally were to get saddled with a million dollar debt for something I didn't do, I know that I would have to pay it, no matter how long it took. Even if I did pay it off somehow, there were plenty of other things I could have done with a million dollars.  I will resent that unfair bill forever.

Sometimes a debt can have a silver lining. For example, if it was a mortgage to a house with a good market value, and if the debt came with the ownership of the house.  Then I could sell the house, or possibly even keep the house if I needed it.  But in some cases, that one million dollar debt may have no silver lining, for example if it was paid to a lawyer to fight a legal case that I didn't win, or it paid for a house that has been flattened by a hurricane without insurance.  In political terms, if the deficit handed to Obama was because money was spent for new infrastructure (such as a new road system or electric grid), then Obama could leverage the value of those items to help improve the economy.  So that kind of  deficit would not be all bad.  But if the deficit was created by two lost wars and trillions of dollars lost in financial shenanigans, then none of that money can be recovered. There is no silver lining. Not only that but four years later, the negative repercussions of the wars and the financial meltdown are still hampering economic recovery.  I guess you could argue that the deficit's only silver lining was that some lessons were learned about what NOT to do next time, and I admit it's worth something that Saddam Hussein is gone.  But the problem is that smart people would not have needed to waste trillions of dollars learning this, so all this money proved only that Republican neo-con ideology was wrong about militant go-it-alone foreign policy and about economic deregulation and laissez faire theory.

I suppose that if the only net benefit from Bush's legacy was to learn that the Republicans were wrong, that might be worth going trillions of dollars in debt over, but has the lesson actually been learned?  Actually, no, not by the American voters anyway.  Sure they voted for Obama in 2008, and may again in 2012.  But from what I can see it's a toss-up and it's all about the wrong things.  Don't vote for Obama because he's black, or because he "looks presidential".  Vote for Obama because the US is not in a major depression today.

In my mind, the question is not so much about "Was 4 years enough time to get the economy moving again?" It should be "Was four years out of office, enough time for the Republicans to figure out where they went wrong?"  You would think they could learn by watching how Obama is finessing foreign policy.  They could compare Obama's taking care of Osama Bin Laden and Mohammar Gaddafi's in four years, and then think about how Bush took care of Saddam Hussein in seven years. They could observe Obama's investments in rebuilding the US economy, compared to investing in war.  But when when you hear that the Republicans are still talking about deregulating the banks, and next bombing Iran, well, what more incentive do you need to vote for Obama?

The Book "Your Money or Your Life" is now Twenty Years Old

"Twenty years after publication of "Your Money or Your Life" by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez, it is featured as one of USA Weekend’s 5 Personal Finance Books for 2012 you can bank on."

I read the book "Your Money or Your Life" about twenty years ago when it first came out. It might have transformed my life, if it did not restate a lot of ideas that I already believed in or gave instructions on how to do things I was already doing. I figure there are really not that many different ways to get control of your financial affairs, so it makes sense that the book's basic methods were very similar to mine.

But there was one significant area that my ideas differed from the book. As I recall, the original edition of the book advised against using a computer to track your expenses. The authors seemed to think that using a computer would be a distraction, and instead they gave detailed instructions as to how to track finances with a manual paper system. But I had started developing my own system, which was very similar to theirs (remember there are only so many ways to accurately keep track of expenses) and I had converted my system over to a computer about six years before I read the book.

Now, twenty years later, one of the authors seems to have softened the anti-computer stance, saying a computer "may be useful" but

"A computer is not essential as both authors achieved Financial Independence without using computers."

In my opinion, people who enjoy using spreadsheets, or can write basic programs, or at least have a spouse who likes programming or using computers, will do better using a computer. I'm not the only one who likes writing programs that serve some good use - and achieving financial independence is one of the all-time best uses of a computer in my opinion.

The problem with using a computer to achieve financial independence, is that you must have a clear idea of what the computer can do and must do to help you, and the computer must not get in your way by either requiring you to do all the work, or making you do extra meaningless work, and in the end not providing the results you really need.

For example, if you check the Internet for home financial spreadsheet templates, you will find that most of them are "budget setting" spreadsheets. You input your monthly total expenses for each category, and the spreadsheet will compare the totals against pre-set budget limits, and highlight the ones you have gone over budget, and calculate what percent you have gone over budget. While this idea may actually appeal to you, I would point out that the computer leaves you to do all the hard work on your own: namely inputting the monthly totals per category of expense. The only benefit the computer provides is telling you how far over or under you are compared to your budget - which is basically a pointless exercise because (a) you set those budget items arbitrarily in the first place (b) you are wasting a lot of time doing something you don't need to do, and (c) provides no real extra insight in your financial affairs.

The remaining spreadsheet templates are of the "Checkbook balancing" variety, where you input all your bank transactions and checks, and the spreadsheet helps you see if any checks have not yet been cashed, or if any checks have been cashed that you didn't write. In this age of instant withdrawal debit cards, I don't see much use in writing checks let alone balancing them.

Here is what I see as the basic requirements of an expense tracking system. The computer must download your bank statements (or credit card accounts) into a series of similarly formatted worksheets. With today's technology. the computer must leave you the task of going through the transactions to identify a category you want each transaction to be included in. (forty years from now, the computer may have enough intelligence to do this for you, or at least to argue intelligently with you about which categories should be assigned, but this is not possible today). Then, once you have had a chance to adjust the data as it suits you, the computer can take care of the job of summarizing the whole thing on a final year-end summary. The final summary is best presented in a classical spreadsheet format: one column for each month, a row for each category. This is fundamentally what needs to happen in an expense tracking system, no more and no less. Any other functions would only be needed for for ease of setup, ease of making ongoing changes, tracking errors, backing things up etc.

In the nearly forty years of tracking expenses, I have progressed from adding things in my head, to electronic calculator, to using a computer and writing my own programs to handle these functions. My latest version consists of some spreadsheet templates in "LibreCalc" the free spreadsheet program in the free operating system of Ubuntu 11.10. And I have written three Libre-BASIC macros that I will put on the Internet as open source, in keeping with the spirit of Linux. Who knows, maybe one day someone will enhance these programs, make them even better, (for example by importing from banks other than CIBC or TD) and I can in turn benefit from their work.

The files are here:
http://www.microverse.on.ca/cd175/Readme.txt
http://www.microverse.on.ca/cd175/LoonieLogger_Sum.bas
http://www.microverse.on.ca/cd175/LoonieLogger_Import.bas
http://www.microverse.on.ca/cd175/LoonieLogger_Details.bas
http://www.microverse.on.ca/cd175/LoonieEmptyTestFile.ods

Here are some quotes from a quick summary of the book "Your Money or Your Life" from the official website

http://ymoyl.wordpress.com/summary-of-your-money-or-your-life/

"B: Keep track of every cent that comes into or out of your life.

So far we have established that money equals life energy, and we have learned to compute just how many hours of life energy we exchange for each dollar. Now we need to become conscious of the movement of that form of energy called money in every moment of our lives — we need to keep track of our income by keeping a Daily Money Log.


How:

Devise a record-keeping system that works for you (such as a pocket sized memo book). Record daily expenditures accurately. Record all income.

Step 3: Where Is It All Going? (The Monthly Tabulation)

Don’t worry. Relax. This program is not about budgeting. Budgets, like diets, don’t work. They don’t work because they deal with the symptoms and not the cause. The cause of fat is not really the calories in the food, its the desires in our mind.

Every month create a table of all income and all expenses within categories generated by your own unique spending pattern.

How:

Simple arithmetic. A computer home accounting program may be useful.

(A computer is not essential as both authors achieved Financial Independence without using computers.) "

A link to a review of this book as a life changing event
http://www.passionsaving.com/your-money-or-your-life.html

Picture: from this blog http://blog.icysedgwick.com/2011/07/friday-flash-your-money-or-your-life.html
"The highwayman in the image that accompanies this flash is the dashing David Marshall, tour guide with Alone in the Dark Entertainment. They're about to start running a new ghost walk around Washington in the north east of England"

The Truth About Standard and Poor's and the AAA Rating

What is the real problem with the US economy and the downgraded US debt rating?

We are being told that a highly trusted debt rating agency has judged the US government to be not as good a risk as it used to be. The reason given is that the US government can't get its spending under control, and that the politicians are always getting deadlocked.

Standard and Poor's is the credit rating agency that made the downgrade.

To me there are a great many red flags indicating this is all pure BS.

To the Lost Motorcyclist, the biggest problem is that the markets started to slide before the news was announced. This indicates a leak, where some well connected people had advanced notice of S&P's earth shattering decision. Many people could have profited illegally from advanced knowledge this downgrade, and thus the downgrade itself is suspect.

Next, was the decision even justified? Two other equally respected debt ratings agencies made no change to the AAA rating. The White House pointed out a two trillion dollar accounting error in the S&P numbers, which should at least lead to some recalculations.

Why did S&P not point to the real reason why you might downgrade the US government? In my mind, that would be the government's unwillingness to eliminate tax breaks granted in a time of surplus. My understanding of government debt is that it is highly rated because of the government's ability to raise taxes to pay off debts, not because their expenses are low. That's why a rich country like Canada has a higher rating than a poor country like Sierra Leone. If we used S&P logic, Sierra Leone, with almost no government expenses, would be rated AAA while Canada with huge expenses would be B-. No, it does not work according to expenses, credit depends on the ability to raise money through taxation - that's where Canada gets a AAA credit rating and Sierra Leone does not. And that's why any reasonable person may doubt the US ability to repay debts, because the US is apparently unable to raise taxes on the richest citizens. However, in their recent decision, S&P did not clearly highlight this weakness of the US economy.

And why would we be trusting the ratings agencies anyway? Almost ten years ago, there was a market crash caused by an auditing firm that could not be trusted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Andersen

S&P itself was partly responsible for the market crash of 2008, by failing to downgrade the profitable mortgage backed securities.

So the truth is that an unreliable company, S&P, has destabilized the world economy with a questionable decision about US debt. And furthermore, probably leaked the decision to some well placed people ahead of time, resulting in huge profits for them at the expense of ordinary investors. Finally, even the reason for the downgrade was a thinly disguised and politically motivated right wing statement rather than a discussion of the real social, political and economic reasons for the weakness of US credit.

In my opinion, the greatest disappointment is that one more trusted institution in our world economy has become dysfunctional. Not the US government (although there is a real worry there), it is one of the well respected debt ratings agencies.

Does a Rising Tide Really Lift All Boats?

If the rich get richer, a theory called "Trickle Down Economics" says that they will invest money in new businesses and create jobs. And even if they don't, sooner or later they will spend their money, which will also create jobs (for example yacht and mansion building jobs, or jobs as chauffeurs and butlers). Either way, we are told, trickle down economics works. It can be summed up by the simple and powerfully persuasive analogy "A rising tide lifts all boats". Or the mysterious "invisible hand of the free market", which is at work to guide us to prosperity and freedom.

Choosing an economic system has effects on our well being. So before we choose one, we should at least try to understand what could go wrong, and not blindly repeat slogans like "a rising tide lifts all boats". It is important to at least consider ways the system could fail. It's not hard to think of three or four hypothetical situations that would break this system.

Ways that Trickle Down Economics would fail? If the rich don't invest their money, but stuff it in mattresses. Or use their money to bribe politicians who then tax the poor, and give breaks to the rich. Another example: the rich use their money to brainwash the poor into surrendering their hard earned savings voluntarily to the rich.

I'm not arguing that any of this is being done, only that if it could be done, it would cancel out the essential idea of Trickle Down Economics.

Here are some other things that the rich could spend their money on that would result in a different kind of tide that lifts the yachts but swamps the canoes.

• Hiding their money in offshore bank accounts
• Closing down local factories and sending them overseas
• hiring illegal migrant workers and paying them pittance
• busting unions who try to expose illegal sweat shops
• Spending their money offshore
• Supporting politicians who favour deregulation
• Buying up the media so as to broadcast only their point of view
• Acquiring monopoly status in order to eliminate competition and maximize profits
• Hiring expensive lawyers to avoid being convicted for crimes they deserve to be punished for.

Are there signs that Trickle Down economics is working today? Well, the middle class are all driving Hummers (and probably multiple cars/trucks), they have the most massive TV's ever imagined, they can eat until they are so fat they actually need a Hummer, their houses are mansions, their kids all go to the finest school system in the world, they have the best health care in the world. They have electronic gadgets that make it possible to surf the Internet for porn while driving, and of course they have that Hummer to keep them safe in case they hit a little Toyota (driven by an illegal migrant), and even if they hit another Hummer they have air bags. All this costs money, so the middle class must be getting richer.

But in spite of all this conspicuous wealth, are there also clues that this rising tide is not lifting all boats? When I walk downtown people keep begging me for spare change, many people are over their heads in debt, or living off unemployment insurance, the country is sinking deeper in debt nationally, many people are out of work, both mom and dad need to work just to get by, and jobs are going offshore.

Does it make sense that the government seems intent on reducing taxes on the rich? Or that bank executives raise their pay into the tens of millions per year, after their banks fail and they get government bailouts? Or that conservative TV and radio stations, newspapers and websites are multiplying, spreading the word that a "rising tide is floating your boat" and telling us that taxes on the rich are like theft? These same conservative outlets tell us that our main worries should be (A) Terrorism (B) Gay Marriage (C) Abortion.

So is Trickle Down economics working, or should we go back to taxing the rich the way we used to in the fifties and sixties? And does a rising tide really lift all boats?

Picture: http://images.nationalgeographic.com

Two More Pet Peeves with the Media

Some of my most frequent pet peeves are people in the media "explaining" an issue in a completely ass-backwards way. So part of the fun of writing a blog is to put out my own take on an issue that has been poorly explained to the public by the TV and newspaper media. Two such stories come to mind today.

First is Canada's new rules for mortgages, tightening up the requirements for obtaining and keeping a mortgage. I didn't keep track of which news person said this, but I'll bet she was not alone. She was talking to an expert, and asked "This probably means that the average home buyer will have to be paying more for their house. How much more will we have to pay?". If you spotted the error already, good for you! The error is this: By tightening up the credit rules, home buyers will pay LESS for their homes, not more. You heard that right. Most people buy homes on credit, that's what a mortgage is all about. They usually buy the most expensive house that they can afford. The person who tells them what they can afford is the banker who approves the mortgage, and the bankers do the calculation according to set rules, based on the buyer's financial position. When you tighten up the rules, you are effectively saying "You cannot afford this $500,000 house, therefore we reject your mortgage request. However, we would be able to approve of a mortgage for $350,000". The numbers here are just an example, but it gives you the idea that people will be spending less. Even for people who buy a smaller house than their limit, they will pay less because they will not be extended as much credit, therefore less interest to pay.

My second complaint was stirred up by a comment by one or more meteorologists, that they are better able to predict global warming than climatologists. (March 29, 2010 New York Times). I know this story is almost a month old, but I'm actually focusing on a problem with the entire meteorological business, that has been going on for a while. The weathermen and women on TV keep pounding us with the message that "warm is good" and "sunshine is good". It sounds something like this "We have some good news for the weekend, sunny and warm with no chance of rain." Listen to the weather forecasts yourself, and in about 99% of them, the meteorologist attaches the words "good news" to any report of sunny and warm, and some variation of "bad news" to any rain, snow or cold.

The one exception is when a forest fire is destroying million dollar homes in California. Then they switch around the good to bad.

This attitude is not scientific, which confirms my opinion that most of these weather girls and men are more announcers than scientists. But for heaven's sake, do not make your pretty faces even redder by claiming to have greater scientific knowledge of climate change than climatologists. Meteorologists have a hard time predicting 5 days ahead, and have been totally brainwashed into thinking warmer is better. These are not the people to be deciding if it is good or bad that the climate gets 5 degrees warmer in the next hundred years.

Picture: It looks like a Spanish language station, so just to be clear, I didn't choose the picture because their forecasts are worse, but because their forecasters are better looking.

Quem Deus Vult Perdere, Dementat Prius

 The title of this blog is in Latin, I don't know Latin, except the last word which is "Prius". The full phrase in English is "Whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad enough to drive a Prius".

Just kidding of course. The phrase actually comes from a play called "Medea" by Euripides. In this play, Medea is fully aware of her descent into madness, but cannot stop it, as she kills her own children to hurt her ex-lover.

I'm not sure how aware an individual might be of his or her own madness, normally. But there is another kind of madness called group madness. When an entire country goes mad, there are usually a lot of people left scratching their heads, wondering why people around them are going nuts, but unable to do anything about it. Think of the case of Nazi Germany, where it would seem almost the entire country went crazy and resulted in the destruction not only of themselves, but much of Europe. I'm sure there were lots of German people living through it who must have thought the whole thing was a bad dream, but every time they spoke out they were shouted down by Nazi fanatics.

We have a book titled "Collapse" by Jared Diamond, about collapsing civilizations. The New Yorker review by Malcolm Gladwell is here. A quote from Malcolm:

"The lesson of “Collapse” is that societies, as often as not, aren’t murdered. They commit suicide: they slit their wrists and then, in the course of many decades, stand by passively and watch themselves bleed to death"

The idea of madness preceding destruction makes a lot of sense whether or not you believe that the Gods caused the madness. For example, take a character like Osama Bin Laden. He is a smart person, and he knows that he does not have the firepower to take down the USA. So he used a tactic that was not designed to fight the USA straight up, but to drive them to madness, after which they could destroy themselves without his help. And so far it is working like a charm, with the US economy crumbling, and Republicans talking of breaking up the country rather than submit to Obama's tyranny.

While talk of secession is clearly the result of madness, it is not so obvious that the crumbling economy is also a result of madness. What mixture of greed, laziness and arrogance could make us think that sending all our jobs to China would make our economy stronger? How did we come to believe that banks drive the economy? And craziest of all, the very bankers who destroyed the economy while paying themselves multi-million dollar bonuses, are still being paid multi-million dollar bonuses. If this was China (a place where the economy is actually growing) those people would have been lined up and executed by firing squad.

A spokesman for the craziness is Kevin O'Leary on CBC TV who thinks it is a bad idea to regulated the banks because "They are greedy, and greed is good", and "They are the only ones making money". And while he is crying out for someone to stop Obama from destroying America, he also makes this interesting remark. That he likes to invest in China, because of their management incentive program. "If a manager doesn't perform, they kill him". Hey, Kevin, be consistent. You should be in favour of  killing the American financial CEO's , not paying out staggering bonuses.

Growing up in a remote paper mill town teaches some lessons in economic theory that are not accessible to people who live in "normal" places like Kevin. Not one person in our remote one-industry town would have ever thought that if the paper mill closed, we could continue to thrive by all going to work for the bank. And once in the bank, by paying ourselves million dollar bonuses. That's because we were not crazy. In case you didn't grow up in a paper mill town: The bank gets money from the paper company to cash the paycheques. The bank also loans money to mill workers to buy houses, and those loans are repaid only if the paper mill stays in business. It's really not that hard to understand, even when scaled up to a national economy.

There is a lot of evidence to support the idea that the Gods are trying to destroy the USA and Canada through madness. Here we are trying to fight a war to bring freedom and democracy to Afghanistan. I see crazy bumper stickers in the mall parking lot "If you won't get behind the troops, get in front of them!" Why should Canadian citizens be shot for expressing their opinion? Meanwhile our Canadian Prime Minister has suspended Parliament.  Afghans should come to Canada and help us win back our freedom of speech and democracy from the crazy people over here.

The next form of madness is actually not so important, but still pretty funny. It is "Toyota Madness". For the first time in my life, when people say "you're going to kill yourself on that bloody thing" they are talking about my Toyota Matrix, and not my Kawasaki motorcycle. Why do I call that madness? Because in the last ten years, 300,000 people have died in vehicular accidents, of which 19 were blamed on Toyota's unintended acceleration. It is a form of madness if Toyota's have become death traps that everybody is scared to drive.

Are these the only cases of descent into madness? Of course not. Christian missionaries running child trafficking rings. Torture, wiretapping, teabag parties, Obama bowing to the Japanese Emperor, motorcycles not allowed on the road in Quebec in winter, wind turbines, healthy care, pro-war Jesus, Islamics taking over the world, evolution, global warming, Haitian earthquake caused by a pact with the Devil. All these subjects have more than a whiff of madness about them. I'll leave it to you to decide which side of each issue is actually mad, but whichever side you choose, the other one is surely mad.

The real translation of the title is "Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad", and a good place to print it is right on our money.
Picture:  Thor, the god most likely to destroy us, as we have not been worshipping Him a lot.