How to create farming jobs by spending more of your money.

Or else.....

"If every one of our families were to spend $10 more every week on Ontario foods, that would have a $2.4 billion impact on the economy and create 10,000 jobs." That sort of brilliant reasoning can only come from the mind of an overbearing politician. Most elected politicians have the view that YOUR money is theirs to spend anyway. And they justify that position because this is how they can create jobs.

The quote above comes from the Premier of Ontario Dalton McGuinty, but the rest of what he said is more ominous:

"So we've got a new bill that we will shortly be introducing, the Local Food Act....We're buying the food anyway right now, for example, in our public institutions. It's just a matter of ensuring that we're using our purchasing power to support local agriculture."

You don't have to be a mathematician to realize that $10 more per week adds over $500 to the annual family budget, which would be fine if it were your choice to do that or not. There is nothing wrong with supporting local industry if you think it helps the economy. Typically it does not, and the extra money spent often means that other parts of the economy will suffer. The ominous part is that a Local Food Act, prepared with the help of a lobby group, to "encourage" people to buy locally, well, that sounds like a tax of sorts. It's the kind of thing that hurts the poor the most, because any additional cost subtracts from their meagre discretionary income the most. There are almost 5 million family households in Ontario, and at $500 a family, you can see where McGuinty gets his figures in the first paragraph. 

In Canada we already have a system that forces citizens to buy locally grown produce at additional costs for eggs, poultry and dairy products, its called supply management. I've already discussed this here and here. 

You might wonder how Canadians feel about paying more for local produce, wonder no longer. Despite  the "politically correct" comments that you may hear from your neighbours, the fact is Canadians are voting with their feet in greater and greater numbers to avoid uncompetitive food prices. Check out this article from Jesse Kline in the National Post.

The bad news is this type of legislation is likely to pass because of the composition of the legislature, there is no good news.   

Authoritarianism evolves suppressing internet freedom

Traditionally the "soapbox" was the tool used to promulgate radical socialist ideas in societies that were not socialist. The physical box acted as a raised platform for the individual activist to be heard above the crowd ranting revolutionary thoughts in places like London's Hyde Park.

Things have changed. The new and improved soapbox is the internet, and the rants of activists of all stripes can now potentially reach all corners of the world. That is a problem for local governments that wish to control the flow of information to their citizens.

Immediately places like North Korea or Cuba may come to mind as jurisdictions that wish to control the flow of information to their citizens. The poverty of those people is likely the most effective filter. China is another place where information is filtered, but the burgeoning middle-class there is becoming an issue for the authorities and they are evolving to deal with it.

How safe are we from arbitrary filtering of information? Maybe not as safe as you might like. A new book about that is discussed on ReasonTV.

A memorial to other people's money...

Tomorrow is Sept. 11, understandably a traumatic day for all New Yorkers and all the relatives of those who died in 2001.

But when comments in the New York Times are critical of the gross overspending by various levels of government to rebuild the World Trade Center and honour the dead, well, you know it must be bad.

Here is ReasonTV's take on the matter:

Election by stealth

One of the biggest lies that elected politicians foist on citizens is their call to vote during an election. When they say "go vote," they really mean "only if you are a supporter." The fact is, they do everything in their power to minimize the turnout of the opposing side while maximizing their own support. That is understandable of course, but it makes their appeal to voters totally disingenuous.

This week, elections in Quebec and Ontario demonstrated just how duplicitous elected politicians can be and still almost succeed.

In Quebec a general election was called in the dog-days of August and set for September 4th, the day after Labour Day. In Ontario two important by-elections were called within a fews days of the Quebec call, and set for September 6th. In both cases the idea was to sneak the election past the electorate, and it almost worked.

The Liberal government in Quebec has been under public scrutiny for charges of corruption, protests from hordes of disaffected students, and for being a bit long-in-the-tooth for a Quebec government. You would think they would be solidly trounced as the pollsters and pundits had predicted. But that's not what happened. The actual difference between the elected PQ and the ousted Liberals was just 0.7% of the popular vote, not exactly a rout, and that's the point.

Similar events happened in Ontario. The Liberal government here (where I live), was in a minority situation according to the Westminster rules, just one seat short of an effective majority government and thereby in jeopardy of losing a vote of confidence at any time.

In the spring of 2012, the government Leader, Dalton McGuinty, offered a plum job to a sitting member of the opposition. She accepted the offer, resigned her seat and that necessitated a by-election to replace the member. That was delayed for months, until a representative of the government conveniently resigned his seat in early August. Just days later, two by-elections were announced to fill the vacancies. As in Quebec, the campaigns occurred in the depths of summer and the actual voting took place during one of the busiest weeks of the year, the first week of school and work after the summer. One could imagine that few voters would be interested or involved, and few would be voting. That's exactly what happened in Ontario. In the riding (Kitchener-Waterloo) where the sitting member was bribed out of her seat, there was some anger that translated to a staggering 47% voter turnout, down a bit from 50.5% just six months earlier in the general election. The anger resulted in a socialist, or should I say 'more socialist than the others' being elected. In the riding where the government member resigned (Vaughan) there was total apathy; just 26% of eligible voters bothered to vote, down from 41.1% in October 2011, likely because everyone thought the government would hold the seat, and it did.

That didn't happen in Quebec, voter turnout was significantly higher (nearly 75%) than in previous elections. But Quebecer's wear their politics like a badge, and in this country they come closest to exemplifying Frederic Bastiat's famous line: "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else." Quebec has the highest tax rates, gets the most in equalization transfer payments, and in many ways they have the most repressive laws of any province in the country. They certainly are distinct, but not in a good way.

Now both the Ontario and Quebec governments are in minority positions, more elections will follow, maybe soon. What was accomplished by these elections? Even more cynicism. How is freedom or democracy served by manipulating the timing of important events like elections? They are not.