Is it just me or does CBC Toronto get dumber and dumber by the day? I have tried to ignore their need to endlessly quote Fraser Institute studies and never once mention their extreme ideological bias. Yet when they interview a Somali chap with regard to the Ethiopian invasion the interviewer is adamant that the Somali is biased. No shit his country has just been invaded and Mogadishu is set to possibly be thrust once again back into chaos. I guess he is a little exercised and biased. WTF might biased mean in that context? Don’t interviewer’s have any obligation to research even the most basic facts with some historical sense of their subjects and objects?
The metro morning warriors then move on to some other item and the commentator reports that the Canadian media found Sweden a little pricey: three coffees and a danish they report cost 16$ to which the reporter responded “wow am I glad I live in Canada, Sweden is too expensive.” What a provincial idiot. Last time I checked Canada and Sweden had nearly identical GDP per capita levels when calculated on a PPP basis. Which means that if you are earning your living in Sweden goods and services will cost roughly the same in both countries. This would be a reasonable mistake for a teenager who had never left his native soil but not for a grown adult working at the national broadcaster.
Of course not being able to triangulate out of wet paper bag seems to be getting common place at the national broad-caster. I thought public radio was suppose to help make listeners smarter and not trade in simplisms and basic chauvinistic opinion which whithers in the most pale of light.
I appreciate these are but two small items but it is just two out of veritable litany of ignorance being broadcast by the Toronto CBC. What is the qualification for working at metro morning: the ability to set your alarm clock?
Ok Judge Cohen was right. The Christmas has no place in the halls of Justice. Now before you get your nickers in a knot hear me out. I am atheist but I love the venerable Christmas tree. Not because it is the least religiously symbolic of the Christmas aesthetic pantheon but because it is fun and it is beautiful. I get no end of joy buying or cutting a fresh tree as circumstances may warrant; stringing the lights and then decorating the tree. It is at its most beautiful when you turn out all the lights in the room save for those on the tree and look at all the beautiful colours and patterns cast on the walls and ceiling. It makes my heart light. Perhaps the best thing about the tree, and why I have no patience for those mono-coloured designer trees, is that for a least 30 days, the rather dour Anglo-Saxon colour pallet is banished by bright vibrant colour. So I am pro-tree down the line.
But here is the thing Judge Cohen was right: the Christmas tree venerable as it may be has no place in the halls of justice and here is why. The highest law of this land called Canada is the Constitution and part of the Constitution is the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And the Charter guarantees individuals will be free from discrimination in their dealings with the state. Indeed the Charter is a compact between the state and its citizens. And I dare say it is a more sacred compact in a secular society than the venerable Christmas tree. All citizen have the right to feel as likely as any other individual , particularly in matters of justice which is the providence of the state, to receive justice. Indeed this is the corner stone of the Rule of Law. Anything which might subvert this in substance or appearance must be repressed in order for the rule of law to have its full force of meaning. Judge Cohen rightly set the standard as high as practicably possible as she should have precisely because she takes the rule of law and the Charter with a dour seriousness and aw that not even the venerable Christmas tree can be allowed suspend even for thirty days.
The pith and substance of his post column was that it was unfair that Dion may be bullied into giving up his French citizenship and was forced to swear an oath of loyalty to Canada by a vile, bile filled viral campaign launched by the likes of Ezra. Ah gosh gee wizz Warren where do you think he learned those skills? Kettle pot…look in the mirror much? We call this hypocrisy where I come from. Perhaps Warren forgot to give his mea culpas before climbing on his high-horse. Well here is hoping 2007 will be different. Somehow I think it is going to be worse with an election in the air: I can just hear Kinsella sharpening his defamatory canines.
Well actually there are other worse ideological shills than Time Magazine in 2006 indeed they probably would not even make my top 50 list. Hell Warren Kinsella is so obscure he would not even make my top 1000 ideological shills. Although he probably would make my top ten self-absorbed list just behind Tony Blair. Alas back to the main point: top ideological shills of 2006.
So why does Time get my vote for Number One Ideological Shill of 2006 even though I say they do not make my top 100? Simple, Hugo Chavez won their on line poll for Person of the Year by a wide margin and who does Time give the person of the year to? All of us websters.
Leaving aside the fact that ‘person’ is singular and ‘we’ is plural (hey it is Time and it is written at a grade eight level so I suppose we can’t be too sticky on agreement) there is the question of WTF this could possibly mean except to say that ideologically Chavez was unpalatable and the times (pun intended) are so conservative that Time just could not fathom Chavez on the cover. So like Time Magazine I am giving my Top Ideological Shill of the award to a milk-toast nebulous entity with a grade eight reading and comprehension level.
Sometimes it is hard to put a quantitative measure to qualitative concepts like Stinking, Filthy and Dirty rich. As a useful approximation perhaps this story from AP will help bring some more rigour to these rather fuzzy concepts. And don’t bother placing a comment that reads: “they worked hard for it. ” Working hard ain’t got nothing to do with it. Indeed you will need a class anlysis to crack this chestnut.
Morgan Stanley CEO gets $40M 2006 bonus By JOE BEL
BRUNO, AP Business Writer
Fri Dec 15, 9:21 PM ET
NEW YORK – Morgan Stanley Inc., the second-largest
U.S. investment house, gave chief executive John Mack
$40 million in stock and options for 2006, reflecting
the largest bonus awarded to a Wall Street CEO.
Mack, 62, was awarded 461,821 stock units valued at
$36.2 million on December 12, according to a filing
with the Securities and Exchange Commission
late Thursday. He was also awarded 178,945 options to
buy Morgan Stanley shares, valued at about $4 million.
Morgan Stanley is expected to report its best year
ever on Tuesday, buoyed by a record run in the stock
market and an unprecedented level of takeover
activity. Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Bear Stearns Cos.
and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. turned in record
profit reports this week.
The record bonus comes 18 months since he rejoined
Morgan Stanley after an internal struggle over the
company’s lackluster performance caused the ouster of
CEO Philip Purcell. At the time, Mack pledged to
investors that he would turn around the company’s
sagging stock price and bolster profits.
He appears to be holding up his end of the bargain.
Since joining Morgan Stanley in June 2005, shares in
the company have risen about 62 percent – with some 40
percent of that coming in 2006.
Analysts project the company will report earnings of
$6.77 per share on $33.73 billion of revenue,
according to Thomson Financial. Most on Wall Street
expect Morgan Stanley will easily surpass these
projections.
Mack’s compensation eclipses the $38.3 million former
Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson received in 2005.
Earlier this week, Lehman Brothers disclosed that CEO
Richard Fuld received $10.9 million in stock for 2006.
Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, and Merrill Lynch & Co.
have yet to file regulatory reports detailing bonus
packages for their top executives. However, on
average, 2006 will go down as some of the highest
overall compensation numbers in Wall Street’s history.
Goldman Sachs said in its full-year earnings report
that overall compensation this year was about $16.4
billion, or an average of about $622,000 per employee.
Lehman said it would pay its employees an average of
$335,441 this year – paying 25,936 workers a total of
$7.7 billion in salary, bonuses and other benefits. At
Bear Stearns, staff would receive an average of
$321,740 in compensation.
Morgan Stanley also reported stock bonuses for seven
of its other top executive officers, according to
regulatory filings.
Among them was co-presidents’ Zoe Cruz, who received
$17 million in stock and $1.92 million in options, and
Robert Scully, was awarded $11.4 million in stock and
$1.28 million in options. Chief Financial Officer
David Sidwell was paid $7.98 million in stock and
$890,291 in options.
Shares of the company slipped 34 cents to close at
$79.26.
Homeland security was established to protect the US from Terrorists right? Nope it appears that they are simply unable to find any terrorists so they have turned the dogs loose on immigrant workers who ensure every white american has cheap steak to eat. That would be another check in the Left’s predictions about the US’s response to 9/11: a growing authoritarian Xenophobia matched by an overzealous and over-armed domestic security apparatus.
Union: DHS Raids Grabbed Legal Workers By Justin Rood – December 13, 2006, 9:14 AMUnion officials are outraged over a massive immigration sweep yesterday, which sent 1,000 Homeland Security Department agents — some in riot gear — to meatpacking plants in six states to round up immigrant workers suspected of using fake identification, but may have picked up legal workers in the process.
“Stormtroopers came in with machine guns, rounded [the workers] into the cafeterias, separated identified citizens from non-citizens, and then they took away all green cards and put non-citizens onto buses,” regardless of the immigrants’ legal status, Jill Cashen of the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UCFW) told me this morning.
Cashen said that reports from all six states confirmed that legal immigrants were among those taken away, and have not been returned. “We’re still trying to find out where the buses went,” she said. “Children have been left at church day cares. Nobody knows where these people are.”
Recently unsealed court documents show that DHS had identified 170 identity-fraud suspects it wished to apprehend, but that the agency wanted to round up as many as 5,000 other workers because it “further expect[ed] to apprehend persons who are engaged in large-scale identity theft[.]” Union officials say the total number of detained workers may be higher than 5,000. (Update: We’ve uploaded those court documents to our document collection here.)
Danny Hoch is quite brilliant he manages to convey the role manners and politeness can play in reinforcing relations of domination and subordination. His stand-up routine on his, ultimately failed, casting as character on the Seinfeld show is good illustration of the price one pays for not playing along. Those with power rarely hear those who don’t have power. Indeed deafness to subordinates and insistence on the moral rectitude of the status quo are key tools of domination. Outside of personal enrichment what would he have gained for going along to get along.
For those of you with a passing interest in what is going on in economics and economic analysis done by progressive economists we highly recommend PAER. Generally one does not need an advanced or even intermediate training in economics to be able follow the analysis and arguments that are made in the Review. That said, one does need to put in some mental effort into reading the Review. Two articles stand out in this issue. The first is a piece by John Schmitt and Ben Zipperer “Is the U.S. a Good Model for Reducing Social Exclusion in Europe? Although not all that subtle (a bit of a brute force hack) and a little under referenced it nonetheless provides a rough and ready refutation to all those who would argue the superiority of the American model.
Staying with the theme of superiority, the article by Alan Freeman and Andrew Kliman “Beyond Talking the Talk: towards a critical pluralist practice” takes up the issue of what a truly scientific approach to economics as a social science would require. It is good article which essentially argues for some academic honesty through enforced pluralism whereby the waring factions model of organization and publication of research is replaced by pluralism within organizations and scholarly journals.
We have decided to sell off Canadian Observer. We are willing to take raw cash or a paragraph about why you are the individual or individual’s to take over the blog. The blog is well established and has good potential for growth.
Interested parties can reach us in the comments section.
It is only fitting that in the wake of the death of Pinochet, Kirkpatrick, and uncle Milty that Chavez should be leading in Time Magazine’s poll for person of the Year. What better way to celebrate the passing of these small dead animals than to vote for Chavez? Vote for Chavez! http://www.time.com/time/personoftheyear/2006/walkup/
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