US unemployment shows stimulus is working.....not!

See the graph? The blue line is the projected rate of unemployment as calculated by the Obama administration given the amount of "stimulus" that has been added to the economy in the US. The little dot points? Well, thats reality, and reality bites.
The graph came from Dan Mitchell's (CATO Inst.) blog. Have a look here, then come back and see the video below.

Now this is Green!

If ever a picture could convey a thousand words this one does. Is this the future of solar power? Forget future, it's the present in Germany. This blog from an American engineer living in northern Germany, an AGW skeptic, reveals much about what happens when a government goes nuts trying to pander to environmental lobby groups. Of course this should concern all of us in Ontario, where the Liberals have bought into AGW hook-line-and-sinker. Check out the blog and let this guy know he is not alone.

Limited Government

In Canada, the US and much of the world, the concept of limited government is as foreign as Martian soil. Ask someone on the street or a friend what is meant by limited government, and you will get contorted faces, quizzical looks and maybe a response like "does it mean they have limited liability." Sadly, no! Governments today somehow believe they are liable, that is, responsible for everything, everything.
That fellow in the picture, Wilfrid Laurier, may have been Canada's last Prime Minister who understood the meaning of limited government.
The video below is my attempt to capture the essence of the Ontario state, its size and scope in under two minutes.

Ideology? What ideology?

From the excellent parody website: http://thepeoplescube.com/

One of my pet peeves, and there aren't that many, occurs when members of the statist media, or Statists themselves refer to libertarian friendly comments as "ideological." So when Canadian P.M. Stephen Harper, no libertarian he, advocated the removal of the mandatory long form 2011 Census, or the removal of the per voter government subsidy to federal political parties, he was reviled for being ideological. This was coming from statists who somehow felt THEY were not being ideological. Of course not, they were just repeating the media bullshit (we call that the CBC here) and supporting the dominant paradigm.
What is that dominant paradigm? Essentially its one or other form of collectivism, socialist, communist, fascist, Liberal, Conservative, it doesn't matter they are the pretty much all the same expect in degree.
So here is another election ad, this one about windmills and the ideology of environmentalism. It fits in with other forms of collectivism only its green on the outside and kinda red inside.
Happy Fourth, to my American readers!

Dying to see the doctor in Ontario

Notwithstanding high taxes, enormous expenditures, and many promises, the standard of health care services provided by successive Ontario governments has continued to deteriorate.  Medicare cannot be continued without changes from the current form of unrestrained demand for “free” services coupled with central bureaucratic planning and government mandated supply restrictions.  Growing private sector involvement will help, but competitively priced, widely accessible, high quality health care will only be available for everyone to the extent state involvement is eliminated.  Since this cannot be accomplished overnight without some short term hardship, transition measures will be needed.  However, ultimately everyone will be personally responsible for their own health care in a libertarian free market system.

Happy Canada Day!

Royal Rejoicing

John Ivison has an appropriate and funny column in the National Post today. He is covering the "Royal" visit of two young people from London (in the picture) and his comments will make anyone smile.
The news media will be all over the Royal honeymooners and Gay Pride week here in the centre of the Canadian universe during our National holiday weekend.
I can't think of how to relate these two events. Yes, there are queens involved, not royal. There will be Royal parades and Pride parades, pomp and pageantry at both and ass-less chaps and mounted horsemen (I'm not going to touch that one).
The Royals aren't coming to Toronto, too bad. Maybe it had to do with Pride Week, competition you know. But missing Toronto is a bit like trying to get the flavour of France without going to Paris. Why choose the Calgary Stampede over Pride week? Why piss off the animal lovers AND the LGBT community?
The big media story here this entire week, has been the failure of the newly installed Mayor of Toronto (Rob Ford) to acknowledge the Pride events in his city. Maybe we should be pissed off at the Royals too?     

Krugman in Canada

Want to see how the "pen is mightier than the sword?"
Paul Krugman is in town today, speaking to the Economic Club of Canada, and he wasn't very optimistic about the future, but not for the reasons you might think. Krugman thinks that governments are not doing enough to stimulate their economies. Really? Yup, “We’re living in a time in which, for the time being, virtue is vice, prudence is folly.”  What does he mean? Spend more dammit! Sigh.....
As I was saying about the pen and sword, read Peter Foster today in the Financial Post, he splays Krugman open and the insides aren't pretty. 

Without economic freedom, there is no freedom.

Click your mouse on that map. Only New Zealand and Switzerland are shaded bluish indicating they have greatest degree of economic freedom according to the Fraser Institute in 2008.
The map is part of a List of Freedom Indices that someone created for Wikipedia, and it is a wonderful resource for anyone on the planet to compare their country on issues of political, civil and economic freedoms.
The Freedom Indices are mentioned in a great column in today's Financial Post written by Karen Selick the litigation director for the Canadian Constitution Foundation. Ms. Selick's column "Pursuit of one's trade," argues that without economic freedom all other freedoms are jeopardized.
Of course the reality is, liberty cannot be rationed into press freedoms, civil liberties, and economic liberties. True freedom requires all of them, not two out of three. Just as life requires air, water, and food, the rationing of any one impinges on life, period.

Bonus addition:

     

Bubble Bubble toil and trouble....

My apologies to William Shakespeare, but is the Canadian housing market in a bubble? There is some concern that the events in the United States that led to the Great Recession, namely their artificially low interest rates over the past decade could be happening here. The Federal government is concerned as well, earlier this year the "rules" for getting a government backed mortgage were tightened. Thats right the government has rules for getting a mortgage, why that should be a function of government is beyond me. You would think that our vaunted bankers would be clever enough to make their own rules about mortgagees and mortgagors.

An excellent column in the Financial Post by Lawrence Solomon this week, outlines how the government may be stoking the fires of a mortgage crisis not unlike the mess created by Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac that led to the 2008 housing collapse in the States. The effects of that collapse are still being felt in America and around the world. Solomon points to CMHC as one of the chief culprits, but more than that he outlines some of the myriad other housing enticements that encourage demand and inflate the housing market. He thinks it's not too late to "fix" the problem.

My friends at Ludwig von Mises Institute of Canada had a more in depth examination of the Canadian housing market last week in this posting: The Canadian Moral Hazard Corporation (CMHC) and the author suggests it is already too late. 

Blue is the new Red?

Is this clever marketing or should you protect your children from a blue scourge during the Saturday morning cartoons?

A French writer and sociologist, Antoine Bueno claims in "The Little Blue Book," that the Smurfs are, "the embodiment of a totalitarian utopia, steeped in Stalinism and Nazism".


You could say that explains the Socialist NDP surge in Quebec and elsewhere during the most recent Canadian federal election. All those voters were subliminally affected by the Smurfs in their childhood, now they are just a practicing what was preached to them. Its all a giant plot designed to turn the world into a Statist Utopia (see oxymoron). Who knew?
Or, this could be clever capitalist marketing in advance of the Smurfs' new movie where they resurrect the career of Jonathan Winters, 85, - yes, he's still alive and he is the voice of Papa Smurf in the new movie The Smurfs in 3D opening July 29, 2011. 
Yes, the Statist Smurfs arrive in New York City the Capitalist capital, and proclaim "where the smurf are we?" Statist Europe is already deeply involved, with blue villages popping up all over.
Here is Antoine in his own words, after the promo:   

The Price System

Why are prices important? Prof. Daniel J. Smith of Troy University describes the role that prices play in generating, gathering, and transmitting information throughout the economy.

The Pencil

Milton Friedman in his own words:

The power to declare war

In some way the International Energy Agency (IEA) announcement to release 60 million barrels of strategic oil reserves over a month is a tacit admission that the bombing of Libya is all about oil, and not much about protecting Libyan civilians as was stated originally in the Canadian House of Commons: "that the House deplores the ongoing use of violence by the Libyan regime against the Libyan people; acknowledges the demonstrable need, regional support and clear legal basis for urgent action to protect the people of Libya".

Canada has been involved in Libya since March 2011 and it recently extended the mission. Canada should not be involved, but at least the House of Commons was asked. Contrast that with what happened in the US care of Cato@Liberty:

Need a dose of freedom?

This looks promising, maybe.

Gerry Nicholls has announced "a new website......to promote and protect conservative values.....called www.freedomforum.ca ."  He writes: "I want freedomforum.ca to provide a principled, non-partisan voice for the conservative ideals of smaller government, free markets and individual liberty. My hope is this site will help win the war of ideas and mobilize Canadian conservatives to push our political parties in the right direction."

On the website the 'About us' says:

 "A strictly non-partisan site, Freedomforum.ca is dedicated to promoting, defending and celebrating our economic, political and individual freedoms. Its aim is to offset the anti-market bias so prevalent among the mainstream media, political parties and special interest groups and to raise awareness about the moral underpinnings and principles of democratic capitalism and individual liberty. In short, this site is for Canadians who believe our country needs less government and more freedom."

Sounds good right? Here is my problem: since when are smaller government, free markets and individual liberty conservative values?

The word "conservative" is liberally sprinkled all over this website, over and over again. I did a word search for "libertarian" and three articles came up, but none of them actually used the word libertarian, none. So what's up with that? Does strictly non-partisan mean strictly not libertarian, but conservative is OK? Don't words mean anything anymore? Does this new site advocate keeping the status quo? Isn't that what the non-partisan word 'conservative' means?

The dictionary definition of the adjective conservative as in the phrase "conservative values" where conservative modifies values is: conservative (adjective) - disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change. OK, maybe "restore traditional" values, that works, but who is there in Canada that remembers those values?  By the way the libertarian movement is all about limiting government not limiting change as conservative implies.

Yes, this website looks interesting, even promising. My advice to Gerry and any other writers on this site is that the word libertarian as an adjective actually means "advocating liberty or conforming to principles of liberty." Isn't that closer to the ideals of smaller government, free markets and individual liberty? I think so. Use the damn word!