You can vote your way into socialism, but you’ll have to fight your way out: Member of Scottish Parliament announces “era of unrestrained private car use is well & truly over”
“They’re Power Hungry and Malicious”
Two sides of the same coin
Whatever it is that Doug Ford has in store for socialized medicine, it is certainly not privatization. It would be more accurate to term it a variation on the same centrally planned model that is currently in its death throes. Unless a direct, financial relationship can be established between patient and health care provider, the current system will continue to flounder its way to the seafloor.
Many health services in Ontario, such as blood tests and ultrasounds, are already often performed in for-profit facilities. And both Ms. Jones and Premier Doug Ford have repeatedly said whatever changes to the system they make would still see Ontarians use their health cards – not their credit cards – for needed care.
Naturally, the “fixed pie” economy clown show never misses an opportunity to chime in:
Health system experts have also warned that expanding private clinics could exacerbate the staffing crisis in hospitals, as more nurses or other staff could be lured to work outside the public system.
Ve Ave Vays
One of the many cults within the cult.
Andrew Lawton- Everyone at the World Economic Forum annual meeting — including journalists and participants — has to take a PCR test upon arrival. If you don’t take a test, the chip in your ID badge is deactivated. If you test positive for Covid the badge is also deactivated.
Think of it as a “purity test”.
You’ll Own Nothing, Go Nowhere And Be Happy
The problem here isn’t “small town mayor”, it’s big time elite entitlement: Buttigieg refused meetings with Democrats and Republicans during paternity leave
Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg is facing tough questions about how he handles crises facing his department. The latest crisis, the grounding of every plane in America for the first since 9/11/01, shines a light on what exactly it is that Buttigieg does on the job. […]
Now, as questions about his performance in office are asked, Pete rather defensively declares that everyone knows that in a job such as his, he must be available 24/7. You’d think everyone would know that. But does Pete? It turns out that it looks like Pete was turning down requests for calls and zoom meetings with both Democrat and Republican lawmakers while he was home with his new little family. He was, in fact, not available 24/7. On Thursday, government watchdog Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) released information showing that inconvenient truth.
Not only was Pete not available when his assistance was needed, he failed to issue a formal delegation of authority, causing some chaos as important decisions still needed to be made during his leave. Hmm. So, who was in charge when Pete was out of the office? That seems like an important question.
I detect a pattern:
Transport Minister Omar Alghabra defended his choice not to personally contact airlines and airports while they grappled with holiday travel upheaval that left thousands of Canadians stranded and airports a maze of unclaimed luggage and frustrated travellers. […]
Committee member Conservative MP Mark Strahl pointed to testimony earlier in the day from airport officials, who said they never heard from Alghabra, and from executives of Sunwing Airlines, who said they didn’t talk to Alghabra until Jan. 5, “more than two weeks after the catastrophic failure of that airline, and people sleeping in hotel lobbies in a foreign country.”
Strahl accused the minister of waiting until the crisis had passed before he “even did the basic thing to pick up the phone.”
It’s not incompetence and it’s not indifference — it’s population retraining. The Trudeau government is delivering electric shocks to the rats so they’ll learn not to want the nice things.
Grabbing a spinning knife
David Rosenberg has a bit of advice for investors who think that the burgeoning recession is already over and its nothing but sunny ways ahead.
In the equity market, silly season is back with prices rising sharply even as earnings and earnings estimates decline. Anyone notice how U.S. homebuilder KB Home missed both its earnings and revenue targets? The forward P/E multiple has widened to 17.3x from 16.7x at the start of the year, which is a 5.7-per-cent yield and simply not enough to justify it over the level of risk-free rates, let alone what you can garner in the corporate bond market.
Such a pullback in economic-sensitive stocks amidst a Fed tightening that inverted the yield curve this much for this long has generated a recession a year later fully 100 per cent of the time in the past. Why fight those odds? And why on earth fight the Fed? Weren’t we told to not fight the Fed in the 2020-2021 doubling of the stock market by all the bulls, who somehow have turned silent on this strategy in recent months? I wonder why.
We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Cars
As a miner for 40 years I have worked in various mines around the world. Gold, platinum, copper, coal, lead, zinc, oil and salt. I’m going to tell you something, and here it is. We will destroy the earth in the name of “Green Energy” Follow along and I will explain.
Open Thread
On the price of eggs and anything else that’s going through the roof right now.
Egg Dealers are making bank!
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) January 13, 2023
Discovering reality
For anyone who thinks that our Canadian recession is going to be mild or a “soft landing”, they might want to consider what impact a $185,000 loss on a house sale is going to have on the personal finances of a growing number of people.
It’s Probably Nothing
Pace of restaurant closings in Canada accelerated in 2022, according to Restaurants Canada.
Openings/Closures ratio by Region (2022):
ATL: 148/314, 43%
QC: 585/1577, 37%
ON: 1526/3246, 47%
PR: 625/1178, 53%
BC: 544/1119, 48%— The Food Professor (@FoodProfessor) January 12, 2023
Rationing Will Continue
As long as government keeps running health care.
The Telegraph- NHS trust cancels all routine operations for three weeks
Ms Burden said: “Due to the overwhelming demand across general practice and the need to prioritise same-day emergency care to support the wider system, we are asking GP practices to move to only seeing urgent and emergency care patients only.”
She said this would allow practices to focus on urgent care, palliative care, screening programmes, out-of-hours services and care for those with complex care needs.
It’s a feature, not a bug.
Ban All The Things
@RealAndyLeeShow – This “bombshell” study on the possible harms of gas stoves was funded by the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) – a WEF partner that makes money off of consulting on low-carbon solutions and pushing green energy transitions.
Statistical magic
One can reasonably expect that government statisticians on both sides of the border are using the same methods to determine job creation numbers and employment levels, so it would be wise not to buy into the Canadian numbers either.
Specifically, full-time employees dropped by 1,000 workers while part-time workers rose by 679,000 (month-over-month). The total gain in all workers for the period was 717,000. Moreover, the overall trend since 2021 is one in which growth in full-time work in general is falling—and turning negative in some months—while part-time employment represents most of the growth.
But why is it that we keep hearing about how there is so much job growth? Those “good” numbers are based mostly on a separate job survey which looks only at the number of jobs created, as opposed to the number of employed persons. This means a large number of part-time jobs could be created, with few new employed persons, and this could be reported as robust job growth.
Milquetoast
Why was Diane Francis ever hired to write for a supposedly conservative newspaper in the first place? Note that skyrocketing borrowing is not mentioned as the main problem here, but rather Republican efforts to use Debt Ceiling legislation as leverage to restrain spending.
If you don’t feel alarmed yet, just look at the horrors that Diane Francis lists. Horrors, I tell you, horrors!
Some of the Republicans are isolationists and want to use their newfound leverage to slash financial support for the Pentagon and cut military aid for Ukraine.
Legislative control seems prudent, but some Republicans are threatening not to increase the debt limit unless severe cuts are made to Social Security and Medicare.
In a liberal nutshell, debt ceiling legislation is just fine….provided that you unquestioningly raise the debt ceiling limit in perpetuity.
Ron’s predictions
In a word, it’s looking bleak out there. Ron Butler is quick out of the gate with his outlook for the Canadian real estate market in the first five minutes of the interview.
“…it would appear that the December numbers that will roll off in Ontario,…in terms of house sales, will fall to the incredibly low point of the height of Covid….We’re talking about catastrophic levels of volume reduction in terms of house sales.”
He goes on to talk about interest rate trends and the economy in general. He believes that rates won’t go much higher, but they won’t go down for at least a year either. Variable rate holders and HELOC users are in for a world of hurt.
Ban All The Things
A federal agency says a ban on gas stoves is on the table amid rising concern about harmful indoor air pollutants emitted by the appliances.
The US Consumer Product Safety Commission plans to take action to address the pollution, which can cause health and respiratory problems.
“This is a hidden hazard,” Richard Trumka Jr., an agency commissioner, said in an interview. “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”
Rwanda-style Chaos
Victor Davis Hanson writes about tribalism in America. Trudeau and his cult followers, are guilty of the same thing in Canada.
Temporarily Unexpected
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is embarking on one of its biggest round of job cuts ever as it locks in on a plan to eliminate about 3,200 positions this week, with the bank’s leadership going deeper than rivals to shed jobs.
The firm is expected to start the process mid-week and the total number of people affected will not exceed 3,200, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. More than a third of those will likely be from within its core trading and banking units, indicating the broad nature of the cuts. The firm is also poised to unveil financials tied to a new unit that houses its credit card and installment-lending business, which will record more than $2 billion in pretax losses, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private information.
A spokesperson for the New York-based company declined to comment. The cuts in its investment bank are elevated by the inclusion of the non front-office roles that were added to divisional headcount in recent years. The bank still has plans to continue hiring, including inducting the regular analyst class later this year
@PeterSchiff – #Gold is strong again tonight, hitting a new 7-month high. The dollar is also trading lower against other currencies. This is likely the beginning of a huge run, as markets start pricing in the reality the U.S. #inflation rate won’t return to 2% for the remainder of this decade.
Spot the Fallacies
As an intellectual exercise for a Sunday afternoon, try listing all the fallacies contained in this random Facebook post pertaining to pandemic policy. There could be enough to fill a small library. Whoever this person is, she’s not alone in promoting the fallacy that consensus is the measure of truth, and that dominant paradigms are only ever opposed by “a couple of discredited doctors” anyway.
The inevitable result of a philosophy that enshrines intellectual helplessness is a society in which nearly everyone unthinkingly accepts the ideas of the dominant authority figures no matter where they lead.
Potemkin Border
More: Crisis? What crisis?