The Bastille has fallen. The Reign of Terror will soon begin. The tumbrils will roll in Washington. President Obama will keep that stiff upper lip as the patricians of politics are dispatched. Donald Trump will not be the first incompetent in the White House. He is just the most dangerous.
Continue readingAuthor: Peter Lowry
Babel-on-the-Bay: Lament for the late United States of America.
The unease set in early. While Americans were voting on Tuesday afternoon, we were sifting through public opinion polls trying to analyze what was wrong. Donald Trump was acting unusual. We assumed it was either the stress of the campaign or heavy doses of Valium. After all, how much experience
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: It is Premier Wynne who should resign.
Anyone with an understanding of the political situation at Queen’s Park must know that the chances of anyone being convicted over the possible bribery in the Sudbury bye-election is unlikely. It is obvious that the Ontario Provincial Police are wary of charging the real perpetrator. And the people charged are
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: When a tax is a better answer.
Canadians have not really joined the dispute between carbon tax and ‘Cap and Trade’ yet. It is of increasing importance that they do. And while nobody really wants to choose taxes over industrial deals, there are good reasons for us to choose carbon taxes. The primary reason why a carbon
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: We might be wrong about Donald Trump.
Watching Donald Trump over the past year has been fascinating. Our first struggle was with our own preconceptions about politicians and political races. What we had to resolve in our own mind is that Trump is neither a politician nor running a political campaign. It was in coming to this
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Those who forget the past…
Those who forget the past are going to screw up our future. Those are not the exact words of the old cliché but they certainly fit. This occurred to us the other day when Transport Minister Marc Garneau announced the Trudeau government’s solution to cheaper air travel—let foreigners own a
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Public-Private Partnerships revisited.
Canadians have had limited experience in public-private partnerships over the years and while one government can launch a public-private project it only takes the next government to destroy the value achieved. The two projects (other than the Canadian Pacific Railway) that immediately came to mind listening to Finance Minister Bill
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Revisiting electoral reform.
As the special commons committee on electoral reform finishes hearings and prepares to enter into its deliberations, there is a sense of deja vu. Canadians in six provinces have already had a variety of commissions and citizens’ forums study different voting reforms. British Columbia, Ontario and Prince Edward Island have
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Donald Trump: Parsing the Phenomenon.
You can hardly be a political maven and not want to delve deeply into the political phenomenon of Donald Trump. He challenges the experience and intellect while he corrupts the political scene. We have written so much about him over the past months that some readers have been referring to
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The drip torture by the Wynne government.
Maybe they think they are too classy for simple water torture or boarding. The Ontario Liberals are inflicting an alcohol torture on the poor consumer. First, you have to find out which super grocery stores have just beer and cider or wine and beer or just a kiosk for plonk.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Clinton needs to fire the FBI guy first.
Donald Trump has found his roar back. It is the brass ring of political campaigns for losers. His mantra of “Corrupt Hillary” has been brainwashing his supporters for months. With the inept help of the Director of the FBI, he is now putting legs on the mantra. When you read
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The silence of Trudeau’s lambs.
You wonder what a writer such as Thomas Harris (The Silence of the Lambs) would make of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s most recent elitist appointments to the Senate of Canada. What is really different in this circumstance is that these people are reported to have actually applied to be appointed.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: You get the best C.R.A.P. from the Trump team.
Some readers who have followed our commentaries for several years will have fond memories of the Crappie Awards. We do not give out these awards frivolously. They are reserved for particularly egregious political pronouncements to the media—mainly in the category of Consolidated Reports on Approved Policies (CRAP). But today’s Crappie
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The losers are lurking.
It must be Halloween in the air. Losers from the last federal election are gathering. There will be a provincial election in 2018 and the Conservative losers from the last federal election are jockeying for nominations in provincial electoral districts. The first of these Conservative nominations was for the upcoming
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Rethinking political communication.
Read something the other day that said young people ignore political pamphlets. What was new about this puzzled us. If it looks like a political pamphlet, it deserves to be ignored. We have been redesigning and creating new forms of communication for politicians for many years. Communications have to be
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Enquiring Canadian minds want to know.
As a youngster in public relations, we used to reassure clients that people would read anything by pointing out that a million Americans bought the supermarket tabloid National Enquirer each week. Today that trashy publication is down to about half that circulation but it is finding a new digital life
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: What goes around, comes around Mr. Brown.
The social conservatives in the Niagara Peninsula had a surprise the other day for Ontario Conservative Leader Patrick Brown. It was not the surprise he wanted. He expected his pal party president Rick Dykstra to easily win the nomination in the provincial electoral district of Niagara West-Glanbrook. Dykstra was defeated.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: CETA: The devil is in the details.
Tried the other day to reread the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) and finally gave up in disgust. Maybe this deal between Canada and the European Union is just too comprehensive for this non-trade expert to comprehend. And when you find the mainly French-speaking Wallonia area of Belgium is the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Trudeau tests veto on vote reform.
This scenario has taken place before. He does it in Quebec thinking nobody in the rest of Canada is going to hear about it. Justin Trudeau is hardly the first politician to test the waters before diving into the deep end of the pool. In this case the prime minister
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Go figure new municipal voting.
It has been so much fun observing the current political zoo in the United States that we tend to forget what is going on in our own backyard. Sure, we knew about the move by the Ontario government to allow municipalities in the province to move to ranked balloting but
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