Election Day minus 32 The beauty of competition...almost

Day 6: Yesterday I mentioned that Elizabeth May (Greens) has been shut out of the leaders debate by a consortium of TV networks. This morning Channel Zero (formerly CHCH TV) offered a full debate with May on their SuperStation. That's the beauty of competition, options and alternatives, I thought. So far no one is biting, May has filed a court challenge so we'll see.

Meanwhile the CBC is getting flak over their Compass questions (see earlier this week). Many are saying its skewed to favour Liberals, no kidding. What about libertarians, we're not even on the chart, as I pointed out on Monday (Day 3).

I keep saying its still cold out, well, this morning there was a dusting of snow around here, so much for global warming. We are one day before opening day for the Blue Jays. On the first opening day 34 years ago it snowed before and during the game, see below. Really not unusual for these parts, but we have a Dome now so it will be shirtsleeves no matter what.

The graph above is from ThreeHundredEight, a blog devoted to tracking polls. Notice the interesting upturn for the redline, the Liberals. Must mean their promises are better. Is Harper in trouble early? We can only hope.

Play ball! :-)

Sensible Political Debate

Who says politics is incomprehensible?
The two below are getting at the naked truth in a one-on-one kitchen debate, and each one is claiming that the other one's diapers is full of you know what.
Keep them away from the cutlery!

Election Day minus 33- Good to Go!

Day 5 - A consortium of TV networks has decided Green Party leader Elizabeth May will not take part in the leaders debate next month. Reason? She has no members in the House even though she has candidates running in every riding across the country and got about 7% of the popular vote last time. Of course the leader of the Block Quebecois will be at the debate even though he is running in just ONE province, Quebec. He also wants to split the country up, details, details. Personally, I would let the Green leader debate and disallow the Quebecer, but thats just me.

I have my nominations papers printed and a cheque and papers ready for the local Returning Officer. Now all I need is 100 signatures and I'm good to go. I've spent much of the last two days working on a trifold brochure, the first page is posted, now I just need to print it.
It was warmer today, spring is coming, the Blue Jays opener is Friday and its sold out.

Election Day minus 34 - Apathy and Choice

Day 4 - Still cold out, and the promises are flying thick and fast. So I recalled a line from William Gairdner's new book The Trouble with Canada.......Still : "No government can confer a benefit upon one person or group without penalizing another."

I must be watching the CBC too much, yesterday I thought they actually asked the right question but came up with the wrong answer. The question: What causes voter apathy? They did street interviews and got good answers, like: "I'd vote if I thought it would make a difference."

Exactly right, I thought while watching. People do vote if they think there is an issue, as happened in 1988 - the "free trade" election.

Year	1988	1993	1997	2000	2004	2006
Voter Turnout Rates*	75.3%	69.6%	67.0%	61.2%	60.5%	64.7%

*http://www.mapleleafweb.com/features/voter-turnout-canada

In 2008 the turnout was just 59.1%, the lowest EVER.  You don't need to be a statistician to see the steady decline since 1988. Why bother voting if you don't think it will make a difference? By that I mean, does it matter to you if the guy that beats on you is wearing a blue hat, a red hat, an orange hat or a green hat? You are still being beaten! They are ALL the same, no wonder people are apathetic, I would be too, if I wasn't running.

Unfortunately the reporter doing the piece did not say that, he came up with some other poor excuse, but good try.

Here is a more complete list of voter turnout - as government got bigger turnout got smaller, in general.

Voter turnout since 1958:

• March 31, 1958: 79.4%

• June 18, 1962: 79%

• April 8, 1963: 79.2%

• Nov. 8 1965: 74.8%

• June 25, 1968: 75.7%

• Oct. 30, 1972: 76.7%

• July 8, 1974: 71%

• May 22, 1979: 75.7%

• Feb. 18, 1980: 69.3%

• Sept. 4, 1984: 75.3%

• Nov. 21, 1988: 75.3%

• Oct. 26, 1993: 69.64%

• June 2, 1997: 67%

• Nov. 27, 2000: 61.25%

• June 28, 2004: 60.9%

• Jan. 23, 2006: 64.7%

• Oct. 14, 2008: 59.1%

(Source: Elections Canada) 

Election Day minus 35 - Broken compass

Day 3 - Still too cold to get out and knock on doors, saw the first lawn signs (all Conservative - do you think they knew?), and I'm getting sick of the word "coalition" used by the media.

Do you ever feel as though no political party represents you? Our government funded People's Network - CBC TV, can now help you prove it. They have this interactive Q & A thing called Compass on their website. It looks and feels like a version of the Nolan Chart except they leave out libertarians and totalitarians. So when I tried it, it did not exactly give me a definitive answer except that I seem to be conservative with socially liberal tendencies. The box below is a pictorial view of my score - the circle with the check mark is me, doesn't really work for people like me, but the Nolan Chart as calculated on The world's smallest political quiz suits me fine. You should try both, if you are a Canadian taxpayer, hey you helped pay for the CBC thing whether you wanted to or not. Thats how coercion works.

Election Day minus 36 - Breaking through

Day 2
It's still freezing cold outside, a bit too early for door knocking, but that will be necessary shortly.
The mainline parties have made it difficult to topple them any time soon. Using their legislative clout over the years, the main parties that are already comfortably seated in the House of Commons Ottawa, have created several roadblocks to prevent a proliferation of frivolous contenders.
In each riding across the country, every prospective candidate or his/her representative must put up $1000.00 in order to run for office. That's not a problem for the larger parties, flush with donations from expectant supporters. But for the smaller parties like us, it is a roadblock. The money is refundable however, if each candidate or representative completes the required paperwork and follows the rules, but few libertarians like those kinds of rules.
That's not all, each candidate or his/her representative must obtain the signatures of 100 eligible citizens within the riding in order to stand for election. Again, for the main parties not a problem, they do it at their nomination meeting by passing around the form. For the little guys, well, we have some door knocking and a bit of cajoling coming up, I hope some warm weather arrives this week.
Meanwhile a friend to the west has produced (with a bit of help from me) a promo YouTube video that tries to differentiate Libertarians from the Statist parties (the rest of them). Here it is, I love it:

  

What if China suffers an economic collapse?

A Facebook friend posted a link to an Australian website the other day that carried a story called "China's Ghost cities." It's the kind of story that would make anyone who knows anything about Austrian economics cringe. I know a bit, so I cringed when I saw it, but it wasn't a surprise to me, I knew the story already.
I have written about China before, here and again more recently here. An excellent article in Canadian Business Magazine (issue cover is pictured) by Jason Kirby (who has some Austrian economics credentials) called China's Coming Collapse, outlines what he believes will be the eventual demise of the economic miracle that seems to be happening in China.
This is a perfect example of how central planning in an economy creates massive distortions that eventually need to be rectified. The distortions cannot continue for long, and the scary part is, what will happen to countries like Canada that supply commodities to places like China? When, not if this collapse happens is the only thing I think that is questionable. Have a look at the video link on ghost cities above, its quite stunning.  

Election Day minus 37 - Lies from the Conservative elite

May 2, just 37 days from today has been set as election day in Canada, the fourth election in just seven years.
Aside from the government defeat for contempt of Parliament yesterday, the most interesting line for me, came from the leader of the separatist party when he pointed out in French: "The Minister of State for Science and Technology (Gary Goodyear) is a creationist and believes that dinosaurs walked the earth with humans. He thinks that The Flintstones was a documentary and Dino was the star." Thats right "science," the guy is a chiropractor, so that should tell you something about the Harper Conservatives. Science and Technology is a department that to my way of thinking a Libertarian government would eliminate completely even though I'm not sure what they do. What I do know is that they likely contribute to overspending, and that private interests would do a better job.
Speaking about overspending, I almost choked on my morning coffee reading David Frum's column in the National Post (the Conservative newspaper). David Frum was once a speech writer for the POTUS George W. Bush, and is alleged to have authored the famous phrase "axis of evil" in a Bush speech. Today Mr. Frum suggests that the question in this election is "Who should be trusted to manage the economic recovery - the people who want government to spend more or the people who want government to tax less?" The implication being that Conservatives spend less, which is not quite true.
Last week that same newspaper showed that Conservatives have actually spent more historically, and increased our debt-load more, than did the Liberals.
The graph from that Post article shows Conservative governments in blue and Liberals in pink. During the Mulroney government from the 1984 to 1993, debt rose dramatically in terms of inflation-adjusted dollars or as a percent of GDP. The Chretien-Martin years (1993-2006) at first showed an increase then a dramatic decrease as government actually shrank. The Harper Conservatives at first benefitted from the Liberal surplus, then began spending recklessly themselves so that they are now in worse shape than when they took office.   
Mr. Frum points out that we have had a bit of a financial crisis world-wide, as if the Harper Economic Action Plan made a difference to our recovery. Mostly it just increased our debt, as you can see on the graph. Mr. Frum also asks voters to give Harper a majority, because as he states "minority governments are vulnerable to blackmail." If that was true then what was Mulroney's excuse in 1984 with the largest ever majority in Canadian history? Look at the jump in debt on the graph. Who was blackmailing Mulroney to spend? Lies are lies.  

Forget Earth Hour, its Human Achievement Hour! HAH2011

Annoyed with the TV/radio media people encouraging you to sit in a dark room for one hour tonight? I am.
I have twice written about Earth Hour, 2009, 2010. But this year I am encouraged that the green revolution is losing support. I hope people are starting to get it, electricity is not evil, and using it is not evil, and in fact if you live where I live, in the Great White North, it was minus 10 Celsius this morning with a windchill around minus 17C. For those of the US persuasion, that is about 12 degrees F but feeling like zero. Electricity is survival, it's not a luxury, just ask those poor people in quake ravaged northeastern Japan today.
If you want to spend some time celebrating human achievement rather than darkness tonight, fire up your computer and join the party by visiting visit this website at 8:30 pm local time (actually starts at 8pm EST).
If you need some more convincing, then read this eloquent "Dissent" from one of our local economics professors, Ross McKitrick who "likes visiting nature," but doesn't want to live there.  

To American readers, we have a spring election in Canada!

I know most Americans don't pay much attention to their cousins north of the border, but our federal government has just been accused of contempt of parliament (first time ever - and about time too), and it has been defeated on a confidence vote and forced to call an election (probably by May 2). One of the blessings of the Westminster System (Canada) is short election campaigns, or ones that go on forever depending on your point-of-view. We have had a minority government here for years, a bit unstable you might think, but this is Canada after all, land of peace, order and good government (I dispute the last bit), so not unstable at all. In fact markets are calm, not much changes really except that printers will have lots more revenue, as lawn signs sprout like dandelions and propaganda pamphlets flutter in the breeze.
  
As a result, I'll be taking a bit of a break from my usual rants for the next five weeks or so, possibly focussing less on the world and being a little more partisan and inward looking in my posts than I have been. I'm planning to run for parliament in my riding (electoral district) like I did in 2008.
I'll miss the rest of the world. Things are still bad in Japan, Fukushima Number 3 has likely had a core breach, but not-to-worry it won't be worse than Chernobyl, at least according to the pundits and they have been right all along so far ;-).
The Arab Spring has been spreading, now to Syria and Jordan, and who knows where that is going to lead. NATO has taken over in Libya - more Canadian content there.
Tomorrow is earth hour (again), a celebration of darkness and stupidity. But I will be busy, the lights will be on.
I might keep a daily record of my drive to certain defeat during this campaign, I will keep you posted. The bad news is I plan to run in a Provincial(State) election in October. That one is planned, which is a bit strange for Canadian elections because they tend to be spontaneous. I'll be back. 

How capitalism will save the world from climate change.

In the picture are watermelons, green on the outside, but red on the inside. That serves as a clumsy metaphor for many environmentalists today: socialists with a superficial cover. If you expected me to blurt out the explanation behind that headline title, alas I'm not that smart, but George Reisman is. So I will yield to his wisdom. The excerpt below is from the conclusion of an article that does supply a brilliant explanation for my headline.
 
"Marxian “scientific socialism” was collectivism in its boisterous, arrogant youth. Environmentalism is collectivism in its demented old age. It will be much easier to overcome than was Marxism. Marxism, however falsely and dishonestly, at least promised major positives: the unlocking of human potential and the achievement of future material prosperity. Environmentalism is reduced to trying to find terrified people with less than the mentality of children, to whom it can offer the prospect of avoiding wind and rain. It is the intellectual death rattle of collectivism. When it has been overcome, a world-embracing capitalist economy will be able to come into existence and be capable in fact of achieving unprecedented economic progress and prosperity across the entire globe."


If you want to read the full explanation, go here, you will not regret that you did.

Nuclear Power - Seen and Unseen - Part 2

Smoke rising from Reactor 3 Fukushima

The massive clean-up in North-Eastern Japan is just beginning. It is one thing to have a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that are both natural and unpredictable events, but that disaster was compounded by a man-made event, that might have been preventable; the nuclear disaster at Fukushima. There is lots of blame to go around, but it is too early to start.

The after quake clean-up is literally happening under a (radioactive) cloud. No one is liable for the natural events, they come with the territory, with Japan, but who is responsible for the nuclear mess? Is it TEPCO, are they responsible? Of course they are. But they already have huge debt, minimal insurance coverage, and they may be responsible for paying off farmers in the area around the plant. They may also default and not meet any of their obligations. Ultimately like in every other country that has nuclear power plants, the government (taxpayers) hold the greatest liability.

Thus it is the nature of nuclear power that makes it very unlikely to exist in totally free markets. Who would insure a nuclear power station? How long would the contract last? What happens to nuclear reactors when their useful lifespan is over, still insured? Who would be liable for the waste generated by the plants, waste products that have half-lives of tens-of-thousands-of-years? These are real problems that would make contracts, voluntary agreements among free-trading individuals and corporations, unrealistic. 

If you think nuclear power is a good idea, safe and economical, then you are deluded. You must believe governments have the right to force people and their children and their children's children and so on, to accept the liability for these things forever, or tens-of-thousands of years, whichever comes first. What choice do those future generations have? None! Don't believe me? If you are Canadian go look at the "Nuclear Liability Act," which limits power plants to $75 million of liability for any one incident (see Section 31 of the Act). Imagine a class-action suit on behalf of 5 million people exposed to radiation, that would bring a whopping $15 each! Who pays for the rest? Taxpayers do. Of course that is the unseen and unseemly part of nuclear power, there were no voluntary agreements entered in to, it is simple coercion. In whose interests has this law been written? Does it protect the rights of Canadians like laws are supposed to?

If you are American, check out the Price-Anderson Act, same idea different country. In fact such laws exist in all countries where nuclear liability is a concern.

Think about this next time you switch on the lights, and realize that there are other options that may not be acceptable by the standards of present day green environmentalists, but the other options are better than freezing in the dark.

Below is a video where Stefan Molyneux brings you True News about nuclear power.

Nuclear Power - Seen and Unseen - Part 1

Each red dot above represents a nuclear power station usually with several reactors.

If I were a believer in conspiracy theories (I'm not), I might suggest that the entire global warming crisis was concocted to revive a moribund nuclear industry. Why would I say that? The nuclear power industry received body blows a generation ago after Three-Mile-Island and Chernobyl. The fear associated with those events justifiably curtailed the building of nuclear power stations worldwide. That fear has since been replaced by the fear of global warming consequences, and of course nuclear power stations don't produce greenhouse gases. Unfortunately we have been reminded that nuclear power stations do produce something besides electricity.
 As I write this, a radiation cloud is still wafting over Fukushima Prefecture and surrounding regions in Japan and out to sea. The population of Northeastern Japan has endured a magnitude 9.0 earthquake followed by a very destructive Tsunami, followed by a nuclear accident. "Accident" does not seem adequate, this was an accident that was waiting to happen, it was just a matter of time. The event was almost as predictable as earthquakes in Japan; they happen, they happen often, and in a country that has 55 commercial nuclear reactors (third largest number on earth) an earthquake related nuclear disaster was almost predestined - Murphy's Law.
In the radiation cloud are radioisotopes like Xenon and Iodine each with a relatively short half-life, and Caesium, with a half-life of just over 30 years. The dispersion of this cloud may be visualized on this website.

For those of us who live in Eastern North America, where there are many, many nuclear reactors (see the map above), you may feel safe that magnitude 9.0 earthquakes and tsunamis are very unlikely. The simple truth about the Fukushima disaster is that the partial core-meltdowns (or worse, it's not over yet) were caused by an interruption in the cooling of these reactors. The cooling pumps stopped because of a power outage and an inability to restart the pumps due to the tsunami etc. The back-up systems had failed, first the generators then the batteries, the power station was in a blackout, which continues on 4 of the 6 reactors at this writing.

Can blackouts happen here? Absolutely! On the afternoon of Aug. 14th, 2003 a major blackout caused the automatic rapid shutdown of 9 US reactors and 7 reactors in Ontario (see Chapter 8, pg. 111 in that report), all of them operating at high power levels because of the heatwave in the region on that day. Fortunately for us, the cooling systems of these reactors were maintained, but the reactors in the Toronto area were offline until sometime between Aug. 22 and 25, more than a week later. This had significant economic consequences to Ontario and the region. Tragically the situation in Japan is offering us a glimpse, a lesson, at possible futures.
    
My purpose here, is not to scare anyone, the levels of radiation in Japan are relatively low, and you may do your own assessment of that using this radiation dose chart online from this blogpost. My purpose is to continue a discussion on the use of nuclear energy. There are at least 104 commercial nuclear reactors on 64 sites in the United States, with an additional 34 research reactors at Universities across the US, and an estimated 272 military reactors. In Canada there are at least 23 commercial reactors (plus two are planned), and 19 research reactors at research centres and Universities across Canada. 

Since 1952, when the first nuclear reactor came online, their have been at least 100 significant nuclear accidents around the world. While fatalities have been low, that real number is difficult to calculate given the slow rate at which radiation-related health problems occur. Look at the map of nuclear power stations above again. Do you live near one of those red dots? Probably, even if you don't, a radiation cloud from an accident can be carried quite a distance. If you live in Ontario where prevailing winds from the west and southwest are common, well, you can see what I mean? So what kind of pollution would you prefer, the radioactive kind, or just plain old air pollution and carbon dioxide (which is not a pollutant really)? I know what I prefer.
See part 2 soon.

Global warming and energy production

Anyone who has read this blog knows that I am a global warming skeptic. Not so much that I don't believe warming is happening, I just don't believe efforts in Canada, the United States or Europe will make any difference to mitigating warming (and why would we want too?). I don't believe that forcing people to alter their lifestyles by having them pay huge price penalties for carbon dioxide production is moral, regardless of the supposed noble cause (saving the planet!?). I also don't believe that the models presented by the United Nations or any other group could possibly be accurate (given what we don't know) or that there is any risk in just doing nothing (my preference).
Lately I have been involved in researching electric power generation because of its implications for the next election in Ontario. Our current provincial government has already set Ontario on a course that is supposed to reduce our "carbon footprint" but at great expense to  the population, and to Ontario's competitive position among its neighbours. Two-thirds of Ontario's future electricity production is forecast to be nuclear or non-conventional (wind, solar).
Well, nuclear power has been in the news of late, and I will have much more to say about it soon, but I found it refreshing to watch the video below from a global warming believer who is actually trying to get the science right. Richard A. Muller, a retired physics teacher from UC.Berkeley speaks about:

> why our efforts to reduce our CO2 emissions may be futile because of developing nations 
> the exaggerated rhetoric used by the IPCC and other warmists
> the exaggerated data about ice cap melting, glacier melting, sea level rising, hurricanes etc.
> the "Climategate" scandal and the facts about the fraud committed by scientists

Prof. Muller injects a degree of uncertainty about the warmists' data that has been sadly lacking. He admits that there is uncertainty, unlike the Gores and Suzukis of the world that claim the science is settled. I disagree with Prof. Muller on the moral issue of coercing joint global effort to reduce warming, and I also disagree with him on China. He assumes that China will continue to grow into the future as it has in the past 20 years (10% per year). I find that difficult to believe as I've indicated before. A recent article in Canadian Business Magazine titled China's Coming Collapse (by Jason Kirby) details why China's apparent success may be just a mirage, much the same as the Japanese bubble of the 1980's that resulted in Japan's lost decade. Mr. Kirby can be heard on a podcast discussing this article if you prefer.
So here is Richard A. Muller, from UC.Berkeley speaking about Global Warming -- The Current Status: The Science, the Scandal etc:

   

Unbearable bullying

Amidst all the gloom in the news, more bad news, Knut the polar bear is dead, and he died young, aged only four. That is young for a polar bear, 20 to 50 years is typical in the wild. But zoos often don't agree with animals, as much as they try to mimic habitat, they frequently fail. Even animals prefer complete liberty, something quite rare now for humans in our society.
Fortunately Knut was not as cute at death, as he was when he first made news being rejected by his mother at the Berlin Zoological Garden.
While the cause of death is not yet known, PETA is speculating that his death could have been avoided and"that Knut was being “terrorized” by three female polar bears — including his own mother!" Bullying in bears too! Must be a sign of the times.