Before I jump in, a few housekeeping items. I have a new landing page for my blog at political-potshots.com. I will be looking add more functionality soon. I would also like to announce that I have joined the family at Progressive Bloggers! I have long admired this website, and it
Continue readingTag: The Economy
A BCer in Toronto: Ignore the shiny Senate distraction: It really is the economy, and Harper things you’re stupid
The National Post‘s John Ivison makes a good living floating trial balloons and framing announcements on behalf of The Harper Government, so his offering Thursday night certainly got the attention of official Ottawa: Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall are expected to appear together Friday to call
Continue readingA BCer in Ottawa: Ignore the shiny Senate distraction: It really is the economy, and Harper things you’re stupid
The National Post’s John Ivison makes a good living floating trial balloons and framing announcements on behalf of The Harper Government, so his offering Thursday night certainly got the attention of official Ottawa:Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Sa…
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Advice for Tom Mulcair and Justin Trudeau: Hammer Stephen Harper on the economy
The neoliberal Harper economy at work: a Toronto street scene, last week. Below: Thomas Mulcair, Justin Trudeau, Stephen Harper and Margaret Thatcher. Here’s some free advice for a couple of would-be Canadian prime ministers who are both in the news these days, the NDP’s Tom Mulcair and the Liberals’ Justin
Continue readingEclectic Lip: Steven Chu’s “Time to Fix the Wiring” at four years
Former US Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s recent resignation — his farewell letter is here — is no doubt celebrated in the fuel cell quarters as passionately (or more so) than it is mourned in the rest of cleantech. Early in his term, Chu infamously argued (infamously, at least, to fuel
Continue readingEclectic Lip: The world (of investing) according to Dante
(originally written Oct 21, 2011. Part of Great Upload of 2013.) It seems like the financial markets will have an “upwards bias” for the next few months, despite the circling-the-drain quality of the macroeconomic picture, which inspired this magazine cover from the Oct 1 issue of The Economist magazine. If
Continue readingEclectic Lip: From housing to plumbing
(originally written Mar 4, 2012. Part of Great Upload of 2013.) Readers (regular and irregular both) may know that about six years ago, I was quoted in MacLean’s saying Canadian housing was in a bubble. So after six long years of looking very wrong, I was delighted to see the
Continue readingEclectic Lip: Homer (not Simpson) and the Kaopectate Kid
The doctor diagnosed young son Leo recently with the stomach flu — which is colloquial shorthand for a condition which isn’t the flu, per se. (The most recent editor of the relevant article on the almighty Wiki agrees!) The Kaopectate Kid Our medical professional then suggested we give Leo some
Continue readingEclectic Lip: Newsflash: Canadian PM’s American Idol supports Stephane Dion-esque carbon tax shift
Note: for non-Canadian readers (or, indeed for Canadian readers who don’t follow politics) Stephane Dion was the milquetoast who led the Liberal Party of Canada to its then-worst-ever federal election result in 2008. He ran on a campaign of a carbon tax shift (“The Green Shift“), for which the Conservative Party mocked and savaged him. We’ll […]
Continue readingEclectic Lip: How Libertarians brought America Big Religion and Bigger Lawsuits…
(originally written Nov 2010; uploaded Aug 21, 2012 as part of my Great Upload of Musings… for balance, I’ll soon post the follow-up which praises some portions of libertarian philosophy which are very dear to my progressive heart. Politics makes for strange bedfellows, and I’m not above shacking up with
Continue readingGreedy embezzler costs 200 employees their jobs
A former employee at a government funded organization has recently been charged with embezzlement. The name of the organization and the person involved is not what is important, so I am keeping that out. Her story is just an example though. I am not a hard writing journalist, just a
Continue readingThe minimum wage ad that’s full of B.S.
I’ve recently stumbled on an online video ad while waiting for one of my YouTube videos to load and decided to post it on this blog and criticize it a bit. First, the ad attempts to explain how setting a minimum wage is actually detrimental to the least employable workers (the workers that
Continue readingHey kids in your 20′s – Think you’re getting screwed? You are!
These days you see so many young adults living at home, “mooching” of their parents. There are comments like “when I was their age I was married with kids and had a good stable job.” There is this whole idea that people in their 20′s are prolonging their teenage years
Continue readingNo, you can’t achieve anything you set your mind to
We all remember when we were kids or even adolescents how our parents used to tell us that we can accomplish anything we set our minds to, that we can conquer any obstacle society puts in front of us, that our achievements would only be limited by the amount of enthusiasm and
Continue readingDebt follows young U.S. student to the grave and how the system sets you up for failure
There were two articles in the Huffington Post this week that were related to student debt and personal loans for tuition expenses in the United States. The first recounted the story of a young Christopher Bryski, a Rutgers University student who tragically died from a brain injury in 2006, but whom after
Continue readingThe extremely illogical logic behind your credit rating and debt repayment
This is what I find excruciatingly bizarre about the way banks conduct their business on loans, credit cards, personal lines of credit and other lending vehicles: That you may have paid back your entire loan to them, but because you haven’t made the payments on time your credit rating suffers. Although
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