US Supremes — courage in upholding health care
Who would have thunk it? The Chief Justice of the United States, John G. Roberts — and not Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy — proved to be the swing vote in…
business
Opposing Supply Management & Economic Principles
While supply management is bad for our economy, the discussion around it has at least managed to supply how the majority who oppose it are intellectually dishonest. For the Conservatives,…
Start-ups Founded by Women on the Rise
The tech industry is filled with men and a near-machismo culture that can be intimidating to both men and women. Fortunately inroads have been made by women into the tech…
Business: IPO flop not the end of Facebook, but affects confidence in the markets and the capitalist system
I’ve always thought of Zuckeberg as a hack, a man that was well positioned to take advantage of an emerging trend, armed with a great idea, some money and a…
Parliament in Review – April 25, 2012
Wednesday, April 25 saw one of the more noteworthy economic debates we’ve seen in the current session of Parliament, as a former-PC-turned-Liberal raised the issue of income inequality to a…
Blast Furnace Canada Blog 2012-05-07 14:48:00
Today, David Frum in a column for CNN said the obvious, what most of us in the progressive movement have been saying — that Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican challenger…
Special treatment for Conrad?
So Conrad Black … um, Baron Conrad Black is out of jail. On the one hand it’s good to see his time in prison has mellowed His Lordship out somewhat…
Blast Furnace Canada Blog 2012-05-02 20:15:00
So today, a former exec at Ornge ™ was disputing the idea that her rapid rise from an ex-lifeguard to a top executive position there had nothing to do with…
Study exposes secret Canadian bank bailout
The Harper Conservatives are fond of touting Canadian banks as more stable than other countries’ big banks. They claim all the credit for Canada’s stability during the 2008-10 global financial…
The 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…
That’s a wrap? – Killing Saskatchewan’s film tax credit is economic nonsense
The cast from InSecurity. The TV show will no longer be produced in Saskatchewan. With the announcement of the axing of the Saskatchewan Film Employment Tax Credit, we are effectively…
More problems with Ornge
This week it was learned that there could be a nasty side effect (no pun intended) to the scandals that have plagued Ornge, the air ambulance service. Hamilton could lose…
The Politics of Conservatives is Big Business
Within two months Canada’s ruling Conservative Party rejected government intervention in one labour dispute and leapt at the chance to intervene in another. In January a manufacturing plant owned by…
Conservatives Don’t Hate Democracy, They Just Don’t Need It
In Canada our representatives are elected, our churches, charities, and businesses are not. Conservatives by their ideology believe that less power should be given to our democratically elected government and…
Naomi Klein Debunks “Ethical Oil” Fiction
As she delivers this brilliant rebuttal of the corporate-funded Ethical Oil fiction, Naomi Klein brands herself “an expert in corporate crap”. We don’t have ethical oil in Canada. We’ve tar…
What’s in YOUR drinking water? In Hamilton it could be Scotchgard ™
Several months ago, back in the spring of this year, Radio Canada ran an investigative report regarding the run-off of chemicals from John Munro International Airport at Mount Hope, the…
The Cain identity
Yesterday’s decision by Herman Cain to drop out of the GOP Presidential stakes (technically, suspending, a legal loophole that allows him to reallocate donations made to him to another candidate…
Déjà vu 2011 style
If this is déjà vu all over again, well it is. Fearing another crisis like the one in 2008, during the US election no less, those who control the supply…
A reply to my tar sands entries
In response to some of my recent posts about the tar sands, I got an e-mail the other day in reply that was quite compelling enough that I asked the…
Data Wars: A mini-case study of Southwest Airlines vs. TripIt and Orbitz
As a regular flyer, I’m an enormous fan of TripIt. It’s a simple service in which you forward almost any reservation – airline, hotel, car rental, etc… to plans@tripit.com and…