The Pessimist

The Canadian government is being roundly criticized over its stand on Kyoto and the current Bali round of negotiations by environmentalists, opposition parties and other Kyoto signatories. I find myself in the rather strange and uncomfortable position of being in agreement with Stephen Harper, John Baird and the Conservative government.

On December 1 2007 The Globe and Mail published an article called "Canada cited for poor greenhouse gas record" by HEATHER SCOFFIELD. (The article is, unfortunately, a pay per view. Parts of the article can be found cached. I can't seem to find the graph that accompanied the article, but here is my reproduction of it from the numbers provided in the article.

The graph shows the per capita CO2 produced, by country, in 2004 and 1990. The US is the world's worst at 20.6 tonnes, followed closely by Canada at 20.0 tonnes. The rest of the developed world takes the next 3 spots. The developing world stats look positively benign in comparison.

Am I ashamed of the Canadian record? Yes I am. Our emissions have increased by one-third since Kyoto was signed. Do I think something should be done about it? You bet I do. I am inclined to believe that we are fast approching the point of no return; where the planet will become uninhabitable or at least devolve into a Mad-Max form of existence.

But do I think crippling our current ecomony and life-style is something we should agree to? Well, if I thought it might change the bleak future, maybe I would. Nothing we do alone, however, is going to have anywhere near enough impact to make a difference. We produce 5 times as much greenhouse gas per person as the Chineese do. Problem is, there are over 40 times as many of them. And they've increased their per capita output by 80% in the same time that we've increased ours 33%. They haven't agreed to any binding changes.

Likewise the U.S is 10 times our size, and they haven't agreed to make any changes either.

The table below shows the numbers from the Globe article, combined with population numbers to come up with total emissions per country. (I couldn't find population numbers for 1990 for some of the countries, so for those cases I haven't shown the 1990 total emission. The developing country increases would look worse, since their populations are increasing much faster than ours.)

Now lets take another look at the graphic. See where the problem lies?

I agree with the Conservative government position at Bali. Canada should not agree to binding emission targets unless the US, China and India do too. We're playing a game of chicken with the planet. But unless the big guys blink, we're all doomed. And ThePessimist doesn't see why he should give up his comfort if no one else is going to.

It's been quite a while since my last post. A few posts ago I mentioned that my father was in the hospital, probably dying. Well, there was no probably about it ... he died a few days later in September.

So, my life has been quite disrupted for quite some time. With his falling ill and 6 week stay in the hospital, followed by the funeral and clearing up his household, I've been very busy. All of this happened 4 hours away from where I live, meaning lots of travel. So I've had no energy to spare for this column.

And it's been killing me too, not to have this outlet. In the mere 2 months since my last post:

• The Ontario election and referendum came and went. I must say that I am fairly happy with the way that turned out.
• More Canadians have been killed in Afghanistan
• Pakistan has fallen under marshall law.
• The religion of peace has continued to issue suicide-bombers and road side bombs with ever greater deadliness.
• Little muslim girls continue to want to wear religious costumes while playing soccer or competing in tai kwon do tournaments. Meanwhile, their mothers are bringing actions against their employers for being required to wear immodest uniforms instead of burka-like costumes.
• The RCMP is lazily killing people with tasers, instead of using more time-consuming police methods like talking
• And Canada's most hated prime minister comes back from the dead to fling his feces around at his party and other dead prime ministers

The news brings me silliness in all forms on a daily basis that cries out for me to express my uninformed opinion. And sadly thepessimist just hasn't had time.

On Wednesday, Ontario goes to the polls and in addition to voting for our MPP, we'll also be voting in a referendum on election reform.

This is fairly novel -- unlike Quebec, we haven't seen a referendum question in 84 years. The question, however, hasn't received the attention it deserves, what with all the confusion caused by John Tory shooting his party's chances in the foot over the funding of religious schools. After his recent flip-flop on what he called "a matter of principle", it is no longer clear who the biggest promise-breaker is. But I digress.

The question before the voters is "should we replace the current 'first past the post' (FPP) system with a 'mixed member proportional' (MMP) system. The details on exactly what that new system will be is not, obviously, on the ballot but is something we need to read about before hand. There have been a number of flyers slipped under my door giving some sketchy out-line of how the new system works, and how it is an improvement on the existing system.

I was inclined to vote in favour of the new system, until I recently found out more.

Per the flyers:

1. FPP tends to exaggerate the power of the winning party. The winner of the seat is the one with the most votes, but because of multiple parties running the winner seldom achieves an actual majority.
2. small parties almost never win a seat, though if they run in most ridings they often receive a not insignificant share of the popular vote.

In the last election, the results were like this:

Note the obvious problems. The Liberals get way more seats than their share of the popular vote; the PCs and NDP less; and the Green none.

The suggested fix is to decrease the number of ridings to 91 (by making them geographically bigger). And to add 39 'List' seats. These list seats would be proportional to the popular vote. Each voter would get two votes: one for their riding candidate, and one for a provincial party.

This sounded like fun. It would allow for strategic voting:
- you could vote for your candidate if you liked him, but for a different party to send your party a message.
- you could vote against your candidate because you don't like him, but still vote for your party provincially.
I was for it. I thought it would work like this (assuming the same popular vote):

This would soften the worst attributes of FFP. The minor parties would have more representation. But this, unfortunately is not how the new system would work.

The new system as proposed would actually use the list candidates to balance the total seats to the popular vote. Sounds ok? Well using the same popular vote as above this is how the results would work:

This is not something I want to vote for. The reasoning behind the allocation of the list seats is the following: The winner has 47% of the popular vote and 64 riding seats. 64 seats is already 50% of the total seats available, so they get no list seats. The result has the following unappetizing outcome:

1. The winner gets only riding seats. The opposition gets all of the list seats.
2. Minority government is virtually guaranteed.
3. The opposition gets a huge portion of their representation in list seats rather than riding seats. This makes most of them unaccountable directly to the people.
4. And the new system increases the size of government by 25%. More members; more cost; more chaos.

Back to the drawing board Citizen's Committee. I won't vote for this.

I've been spending a lot of time in and around hospitals lately. First, over the last 6 months, my mother-in-law had a life threatening organ attack (liver, I think), then she had a knee replaced, then she broke her leg (opposite the replaced knee). Then my father had a heart attack. They are concurrently in hospital, have been for a month, and will be for another month. My father is likely dying.

So last weekend, having spent way too much time in hospital, I was entering the hospital yet again when this occurred ...

Coming down the escalator as I was going up was a man and his two little daughters. They were all very happy. I assume they were coming from the "happy-wing" of the hospital -- the maternity ward. He was about my age and he was dressed not unlike me. His daughters were maybe 6 and 10 and they were dressed in colourful long dresses and bright matching coloured hijabs. The small one was skipping and giggling like little girls do.

First down the escalator was the 6 year-old. She smiled at me, but I did not smile at her.
Then came her father. He smiled at me, but I did not smile at him.
Then came the 10 year-old. I glared at her, and she glared at me.

This brief encounter has bothered me ever since. I do not like the hijab, though I don't find it as reprehensible as the burqa or the niqab. I do not know why girls this young would be wearing these costumes, as my understanding of Islam is that head coverings are not required until puberty.

So I was in a foul mood; my emotional reserve was at a very low ebb. When confronted with these two hijabs I viewed them with contempt. The older girl had obviously become aware of being on the receiving end of the long stare, and was none too happy about it. Whether her displeasure was directed at her father for making her wear the get-up in public, or at me for being a jerk infidel, I can not say.

What good does it do for me to hate these little girls. These little girls were cute, and nice. But with a look, I am separating them. And by separating them, am I driving them into the hands of terrorist ideologies?
I didn't hate these two particular little girls. But I do hate the outward symbolism of separation from society that they were making, or their father was making them make.

This is the very definition of Cognitive dissonance:

the uncomfortable tension that results from having two conflicting thoughts at the same time

I felt it that day. I didn't like it. I didn't like myself.

Corporate robber baron Robert "Big-Bobby" Nardelli, has managed to land himself a new job.

You may remember our friend, who was in the news earlier this year after being uncerimoniously fired from his $10 million a year C.E.O. job at Home Depot. During his 5 year tenure: the share price fell 8% the company did less well than their main competitor - Lowe's -, who's CEO was paid less. sales did not significantly increase, which was the primary objective in hiring Nardelli in the first place

Dispite this abysmal performance, the board gave Nardelli a $210 million severance package.

Martha Graybow, Reuters
Mr. Nardelli's exit package -- which includes US$20-million cash severance as well as a pension, deferred stock awards and stock options -- equals the annual incomes of about 10,000 retail stock clerks making an average US$21,000 a year.

Looked at from a few different angles:

• Nardelli's severance was equal to 2 weeks wages for the entire 350,000 Home Depot workforce. ie. they could have fired everybody in the company with two weeks severance for what they paid to get rid of Nardelli. (Of course, they wouldn't give the average employee any severance, except in jurisdictions requiring two weeks notice.)
• Divided by his annual salary and bonus, his servance equals 21 years of his own not inconsequential pay package.
• Divided by just his salary, he received the equivalent of 100 years

Julie Creswell, The New York Times
Even last year, when Home Depot's stock was unchanged, the board raised his salary 8 percent, to $2.164 million, and increased his bonus 22 percent, to $7 million.

Anyway, now Nardelli is going to save Chrysler for its new owners (the three headed dog Cerberus). Chrysler is no longer a publicly traded company, Cerberus having bought an 80% share from DaimlerChrysler. As a private company, they are under no obligation to disclose executive salaries so we can only speculate. The opening lie being told is that his salary is $1. (Seriously, no word "million" follows that dollar figure.)

DEE-ANN DURBIN Associated Press
Nardelli said Monday his compensation at Chrysler would be based on the company's performance, but he wouldn't give any more details. A company official familiar with his agreement said Nardelli would make $1 a year with further compensation based on performance. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because Nardelli's agreement isn't public.

But what is he going to do to earn that $1? For starters, he's going to carry out the existing cost cutting plan of eliminating 13,000 workers. After that, I imagine he will turn his sights on the remaining 80,000 North American employees. Do you think he will give everybody he lets go a nice package like he got from Home Depot, or like the one he has no doubt already agreed to with Cerberus? Or if he fails to turn around Chrysler's fortunes, do you think the three headed dog will rip him to pieces. Unlike previous board of directors he has stolen from, this time it is actually their money he is playing with.

ThePessimist would like to see the latter. But I'm afraid most of the blood will come from the work force.

Funniest line today ... "Nardelli said he hopes his Home Depot pay package doesn't become an issue [in the up-coming negotiations with the UAW]". Good luck with that.

I finally succumbed to a Rogers pitch for digital cable TV. They've been pitching it for a couple of years in various forms: better bundles, personal TV, etc. But the pitch that finally worked appealed to the accountant in me: for just 50 cents a month you get all this stuff.

So I now have a digital cable box, a super fancy universal remote and channels numbered from 000 to 999. I have foreign language channels, music channels, movie channels, on-demand channels, time-shift channels, and who knows what else. Woo hoo!

After the first week, I was ready to send it back. The digital signal was unreliable (jumpy and pixelated, like a bad satellite link); the remote control wouldn't talk to the TV (which is an RCA, the "default" TV); and just watching and programming the VCR was an exercise in rocket-science.

The first problem was solved with a service call. At the store they tell you "just attach it to the existing cable outlet". But the existing cable outlet was a series of splitter boxes and 4 lengths of cable, none of which were compatible with the newer cable specifications. To their credit, the installer upgraded all of the cable, no charge.

The second problem has not been/cannot be solved. Even though the instruction manual clearly indicates that the channel selector on the remote can be "unlocked", neither the telephone tech help nor the installer could get it to do so. [More on that in the next post.]

As for the VCR, after trying several of the possible configuration arrangements, I got one that worked more or less to my satisfaction. But setting up to record a show requires two remotes and an incantation of at least 20 key-presses.

But have all of these channels increased my viewing pleasure? Not really. I still watch mostly from the 60 channels I had before. Thank god Rogers had the good sense to not renumber the channels. The main difference is that watching TV is now less convenient.

There are 1000 channel numbers. I don't know how many are actually used; more than 500 I guess. But I don't have all of the channels; the VIP bundle includes lots of channels, but there are still a lot more. The kicker is that the only way to tell I don't get a channel is to tune to it and be told "you don't subscribe to this channel. To subscribe to the channel phone 888-blah blah blah". But all of the channels appear on the guide.

All 3 of my TVs, even my oldest, a 25 year old RCA, have a feature for deselecting channels you don't want. In the basic cable world with 60 channels, I'd usually deselect 25 channels I never watch: the french language channels, the sports channels (speed, golf, etc), the Nashville network, CSPAN, etc. But in Rogers digital cable land, you cannot even deselect the channels you don't get, let alone those you don't watch.

Rogers provides a feature on the guide to search for programs by title. It lists every show for the entire day in alphabetical order. You can enter the list at any first letter. It is theoretically useful for finding time-shift shows. [I recently tried to find NBC Dateline, which I missed at 7:00. The guide said it was showing again at 10:00. Alas, I don't have that channel included in my bundle.] However, this feature is nearly useless. Pick any letter, say 'D'. You'd think 'Dateline' would be early on the list. You'd be right, except that you can only see 5 shows at a time on the guide, and Dateline was over 30 screens into the list. God help you if you want to find 'Donahue'. [It is even worse than that ... the list is case sensitive. Shows listed in upper case come before shows listed in mixed case.]

Rogers may think they have addressed this problem with two other features: Personal TV and favourites. Each is a user selectable list of 5 channels. This feature is sort of useful, but not really. 5 is too few; 500 is too many.

So, this is an open appeal to Rogers: Please change your system. At least add an option to the guide to suppress channels I don't subscribe to. And if you can devise some easy way to let me drop channels I don't watch, even better. But the latter may be challenging. Dropping 15 channels in a 60 channel universe is pretty easy; dropping 250 in a 500 channel universe, not so much.

Tory would expand religious school funding Kerry Gillespie
Queen's Park Bureau
Faith-based schools should have access to taxpayer funding just like public and Roman Catholic schools do, opposition leader John Tory says.

The pandering to extremist religious minorities and immigrants has started. The Ontario election is nigh. John Tory wants to use public funds to support religious schools. Well, you might expect such an orthodox idea from a leader of the Tory party named John Tory.

But this must never be allowed to happen.

Dalton McGuinty took the brave opposite stance when he smacked down the idea of allowing religious arbitration. Muslims demanded to be allowed to use religious Imams acting under Sharia law to settle family law disputes (divorce, child custody, etc.), because Jews and Catholics had this right already. But instead of giving power to nonCanadian law, (law that says a woman's testimony is equal to one half of that of a man's), McGuinty took away the arbitration powers of Catholic and Jewish religious 'courts'.

If the Progressive Conservatives are elected in October, they will appoint former premier Bill Davis to lead a commission to figure out the best way to bring religious schools into the public system, Tory said today.

Davis — who grappled with the issue of fully funding Catholic schools before making it law in the 1980s — is the perfect person to figure out how to bring such students into the public fold, Tory said.

Tory claims that it is unfair that religious schools are not funded, when Catholic Schools are funded. Catholic schools are funded in Ontario under some sort of weird constitutional compromise (public schools in Quebec [Lower Canada] are Catholic, in Ontario [Upper Canada] they are not; funded private schools are the opposite [not Catholic in Quebec, Catholic in Ontario). The 1980 debate was not about funding Catholic private schools, but extending their funding beyond grade 10 to grade 13.

Full disclosure I went to Catholic school. I remember being in grade 10 in 1970 and going to a rally in Toronto to support the debate on the extension of funding. I came face to face with Bill Davis, and I cheered encouragingly. My memory is a bit fuzzy: I recalled the decision being made then, but apparently the decision didn't actually happen until 1984; I guess I must have paid for my grade 11-13 education, or, at least my dad did, so who cares. I guess what I'm remembering is helping to get Bill Davis elected. Religion can influence elections. But anyway, by the time I graduated from the Ontario Catholic high school system, I was a committed atheist.

The correct approach to the fairness of funding religious schools is not to extend funding to other religions, but to withdraw funding from the Catholic schools system. It is a waste of resources anyway to have 4 school boards (Catholic/Public French/English). Make them all one.

To be fair to the education I was provided by the Catholic system, though, I don't feel that I received any indoctrination. The curriculum was the same as the public school system, except for one hour of religious studies a week. [Which, as noted above had the opposite of the desired affect on me.] And the student body contained many nonCatholics. Probably 15% (including a large contingent from China) who thought the school was better value than the free public system. Most of the teachers were lay people [which didn't have the double entendre that it does today].

But what do the Muslims want? They want Imam's teaching rote learning of the Koran in Arabic. (The children don't need to speak Arabic, just phonetically parrot the words.) They want boys segregated from girls, with girls getting second rate educations, if any at all. They want total separation from the infidels, so they can be taught to hate them.

What do the Jews want? They want to teach their children how to drain the blood from babies and drink it. No, wait, that's what the Muslims and Catholics say the Jew do. Why do the Jews want to be separate, so that assinine things like that can be said about them?

Public school forges Canadians. Everybody is the same, and everybody is equal. Sure they may have to scrap a bit for respect, but if a muslim and a jew sit at adjacent desks and get a boring Canadian history lesson from a female teacher with a Jamaican accent, maybe they'll learn something about being Canadian.

Intemperant comment following; stop reading if easily offended
Multiculturalism means ethnic dancing and ethnic food. It means respect for the differences of others. It doesn't mean pogroms; it doesn't mean ancient ethnic hatreds. Send your kids to public school if you want them to become Canadians. They'll mix with all races, religions, genders. They'll learn English/French. They'll learn respect. If you want your kids to be just like you (little mini-me's with all your baggage, hatred and insularity), get the fuck out of Canada; go back to where you came from. There are plenty of backward educational opportunities awaiting them back in the old-country.

It is hard for me to sort out my feelings on this one:

Michelle Shephard The Star

Omar Khadr's Canadian lawyer says a three-day visit to Guantanamo Bay included harassment by U.S. customs agents and a search of his private notes at the military prison.

Who do I hate more? Lawyers or the Khadr family?
On the on hand -- lawyers are a very low life form, able to take either side of an argument, and present it with equal commitment. "Your honour, it is clearly night." "Objection, your honour, my client has clearly mistaken day for night."
On the other hand -- the Khadrs -- Canada's first family of terror. They sponge off of our welfare state while hating everything we stand for and trying to kill us.

It's close; perhaps I hate the Khadrs slightly more.

But, the United States used to have a system of justice, with a clear set of rules.

Dennis Edney was on his way home Saturday from a visit with Khadr at the U.S. detention centre in Cuba when his military flight stopped at a small Fort Pierce, Fla., airport to refuel.

U.S. customs agents ordered him to retrieve his bags from the plane and hand over his notes and reveal any material on his laptop relating to Khadr,

"I'm indignant because it's an invasion on my solicitor-client privilege. It wasn't a random search of some guy who you're thinking is going to be bringing in drugs. This was a direct search into all matters pertaining to my client. That's a violation. That's harassment," Edney charged yesterday.

Before Edney was permitted to meet with Khadr on Friday, Guantanamo guards also searched his notes.

"They're not just thumbing through, they're reading the documents," said Khadr's military lawyer Lt. Commander William Kuebler.

For national security reasons, the U.S. has created this legal limbo, where people can be held for years, without being charged, and without access to lawyers or courts, except military kangaroo courts. After many years, the situation seemed to be inching toward normalcy, with at least a few of the detainees being given access to lawyers. But the lawyers have had their attorney-client privilege stomped on, not just in Guantanamo, but right in the continental U.S in Florida. (But, maybe this is somewhat understandable, as that state wasn't even able to count election ballots.)

So, will that be two evils, or three?

Six Canadian soldiers killed in a single incident in Afghanistan. This is a terrible event and I want to express my sincerest condolences to the families of these brave soldiers. This single-day tragedy increases Canada's death toll by a full 10%, from 60 to 66. The work they are doing there is very important. They are trying to bring a backward country out of the middle ages, so that its retarded people cannot be used as weapons against civilization. Canada must support our troops with every needed resource. Obviously road-side bombs have become an effective weapon of the cowardly Taliban slime-balls. Our soldiers need a method to counter this threat. Surely some sort of unmanned bomb sniffer can be acquired and put to use clearing trails for convoys. If they cost millions each, then they are worth it, because our soldier's lives are worth so much more.

Our soldiers also need our unconditional support. No second guessing when Afghan civilians die 'needlessly' in skirmishes with the Taliban. The Taliban must be killed at any cost. The life of an Afghan peasant is worth only a tiny fraction of the life of a Canadian soldier. The calculus is clear. If Afghan civilians are too stupid to flee a war zone, or worse, support the Taliban combatants, then their deaths may be regrettable, but cannot be considered in how the war is conducted.

We avoid directly targeting civilians -- unlike the Taliban who make no distinction when meting out random violence.

The "Religion of Peace" has once again sunk to a new low. Islam has shown its power to corrupt anyone.

The latest terrorist bombers are (allegedly) doctors. Who is the last person you would expect to turn to violence/terrorism to make a political point? A doctor. A person highly educated, well paid, intimately familiar with human suffering. And who have, as part of their profession, taken the hippocratic oath, or some such equivalent, to alleviate human suffering and to work towards the betterment of the health of mankind.

Yet here is a group of 'doctors', who loaded up ordinary passenger vehicles with gas and propane tanks and nails (for added shrapnel) and tried to blow them up amongst random innocents.

We can understand that desperate people (desperately poor, stupid and weak) can be swayed to suicide/terrorism by unscrupulous manipulators. And the uninformed westerner (like me) usually believes in the goodness of people, and that the majority of Islamic followers are not suicidal maniacs.

But these latest terror attacks in London and Glasgow were (allegedly) carried out by practicing doctors employed by the UK national health service. Not students, or medical wanna-be's, but actual doctors. This is inconceivable. If a group of medical doctors (not a single psychotic individual, but a group of at least 8 professionals) can have a rational discussion and come to the conclusion that killing random individuals is a desirable course of action, then what are we to think? Islam is obviously toxic, and the acceptable maximum dosage is not well understood. Islam is contraindicated with civilization, and should not be tolerated in any quantity.

Seems the Afghan people are a bit upset about the civilian casualties they are suffering in the war against the Taliban.
Hamid Karazai has asked NATO troops to please be careful and stop accidentally killing innocent Afghanis.

He may have a point; but then, maybe it's just the point on the top of his head.

Seems the Taliban has a tactic whereby they take a few pot shots at NATO positions, then run into some poor farmers home to continue the fight. The results are then fairly obvious.

Here is a message to the Afghani villagers: When a platoon of heavily armed foreigners (because the Taliban fighters are mostly foreigners) rush into your home and start setting up gun emplacements in the windows ... run out of your house as fast as you can. Maybe the Taliban will try to kill you as you flee; but rest assured, when the 155mm shell flattens your home minutes later, you're going to be dead anyway.

Blaming NATO troops for civilian casualties of this type, is like blaming the bus company when a suicide bomber blows himself up on a city bus.

It's the TERRORISTs fault, stupid.

Our local paper recently ran a Canadian Press article on the huge markup that the Federal government is charging for medical marijuana. (Here is a slightly longer version of that article: Link.)

The crux of the article is that the government is charging patients 15 times what they are paying their supplier. The info was gathered using the freedom of information act. Here are a few sample statements from the article:

Health Canada pays $328.75 for each kilogram of bulk medical marijuana produced by Prairie Plant Systems Inc.
Health Canada, in turn, sells the marijuana to a small group of authorized users for $150 – plus GST – for each 30-gram bag of ground-up flowering tops. That works out to $5,000 for each kilogram, or a markup of more than 1,500 per cent.
Contract records show Health Canada also pays the supplier a packaging fee of $9.06 for each 30-gram package, to cover labour and materials, as well as courier fees that are dependent on shipping volumes.
Street prices for marijuana are about $10 a gram for small quantities, or about twice Health Canada's price, though bulk street purchases with few middlemen can match or better the government price. Compassion clubs charge as low as $5 a gram, the same price as government dope.

That's a lot of numbers, and is rather difficult to digest because all of the units are so odd: 1 kilogram, 150 grams, 30 grams, 1 gram. Let's lay out all those prices and costs using one standard size of 100 grams.

The article make a big deal out of the government's 1500% markup ($500 / 32.87), but they haven't even got their arithmetic right. They should be including the shipping and handling in the cost, because they still have to pay Canada Post to get it to the patient. So the mark up is only 800% ($500 / 63.07).

What should be seen as remarkable is the market price for marijuana vs the price of a comparable commodity,like tea. Tea is an agricultural product; it is a dried leaf or flower; and it is sold for use in small quantities. Tea is sold in convenient little bags (humourously called 'sachettes' on the french labeling). I can get a box with 20 sachettes of tea, totalling 35 grams, for about $3.

Why does tea sell for $16 and marijuana sell for $500 to $1000? Prohibition -- pure and simple.

The governments cost is actually excessive because their supplier's costs are excessive. The government MJ is grown deep in a mine in Flin Flon Manitoba, under heavy security behind bomb-proof bunker doors. All lighting is, obviously, artificial and all dirt,water and manpower has to be delivered by elevator.

If the MJ were grown using common agricultural techniques (sunshine, rain), grown in large quantities and harvested by machine, the cost of production would easily drop from the unnatural $32.87 to something resembling the cost of producing tea $3.00.

But costs in the public realm are unreasonably high. Because the cost of production includes organized crime premiums, loss of crops through interdiction, growing in smaller quantities, hiding crops on the land of others, illegal grow ops, the potential for serious jail time, etc., etc.

This product should be legalized. Not just decriminalized but turned into a full scale participant in the legal economy. Prices could stay in the range of $500 without dampening demand, and the cost, including shipping and handling would probably be around $10. That $490 profit would flow into the hands of the legal economy: producers, distributors and, lest we forget - the government through sales, income and sin taxes. It would also save extraneous society costs like wasted police and court time. This would be far preferable to the current situation where the full profit flows to criminals and organized crime.

Why haven't we taken this logical step? Because the Americans have their heads so far up their asses that they think society needs to be protected from reefer madness (though cigarettes and alcohol are just fine, thank you very much).

Well, for the second time in a month, I'm doing the unusual -- I'm posting something personal on this site. Have you ever been disinherited? It is the atom-bomb of family relations. It is cruel, final and undo-able. You can't ask the question "why did you do this?" You can't complain. The prick is dead and he's not talking. You can only wonder why and curse into the ether. And that's how we find ourselves here. Cursing him out on the internet is the best I can do.

Angelo 1924 - 2005

Elsie 1920 - 2006

Angelo is the only rich relative I had; He's not even my relative really; he's an uncle-in-law. But he left my wife nothing, despite he and his wife being very close to her for over 40 years, just to spite me.

What horrible thing did I do to him to deserve this treatment? Here's the story. I did his tax return for a few years. I noticed that his investment income was rather low, because he had all of his money invested in 30 day bank notes, in his savings account and in his matress. I suggested that he could earn more with different investments. I wasn't suggesting commodities futures, or high growth equities, or anything risky like that. I suggested he could at least double his investment income if he put his money into 5-year GICs. He didn't want to. I suggested he really should. He didn't want to, though he couldn't/wouldn't tell me why. I insisted that he should. He told me he didn't want to talk to me anymore.

That was my sin. He couldn't deal with locking in his money. I suggested doing 5 years, with one fifth of his money maturing each year. He wouldn't hear of it. I guess he didn't trust the banks (the "Jews"). Or, he kept saying "What if I need my money in a hurry?". Like why, I said, in case you need to leave the country at a moment's notice, like if a world war broke out again and he had to flee? As best as I could figure, this was his rational for wanting to earn 1.5% on his entire life savings.

Also, he didn't want to pay taxes on the extra income. I hear this argument from old people from time to time. They seem immune to the logic that tax is a percent of the income. If you earn an extra dollar and pay 40 cents taxes, you still have 60 cent more than if you didn't earn the extra dollar. He couldn't be convinced. The man was a moron.

If he had followed my advice, he would have had an estate one third larger than he did. (That's the power of compound interest over 10 years. It could have been his for the cost of a phone call.) But instead, he gets mad at me and fucks over my wife.

But dear Angelo didn't just have a hate on for me. He and his wife Elsie spent decades of their life dropping relatives in and out of favour (mostly out). Angelo could hold a grudge like an Arab. Half of the family did something at some time to to get on their "never speak to again" list. I was never sure if Elsie was a moderating influence on these hate cycles, or if she was a corrosive catalyst that magnified these perceived slights and helped carry the grudges over the decades. Elsie spent the last 5 years of her life in a vegetative state, so her contribution can't really be known.

But Angelo was a total freak in so many ways. He was paranoid to a level that certainly constituted a mental illness. He was certain people were tapping his phone, sneaking into his apartment, following him when he moved around. He mistrusted all strangers -- particularly the ziki-boos (dark skinned people) and the Jews.

But for the half of the family that he (they?) hated, he used their wills for the final punishment. They had no children of their own, so they used their money to bludgeon the extended family:
- on the German side of the family: 4 relatives 1 inherited 3 did not.
- on the Italian side of the family: 7 brothers/sisters, dozens of nieces/nephews, about 1 third received something, but the distribution seemed designed for hurt.
Of my wife's siblings, 2 brothers received, 2 did not.
This seems designed to sew dissent to the survivors. Jealousy, guilt. How monstrous.

My mother-in-law (Angelo's sister-in-law) received nothing. My M-i-L fed that man several meals a week; during his wife's 5 year mental absence, she fed him 2 meals a day. He never bought groceries, never reciprocated in any way. "Inez, I'll take care of you" he'd say. It was easy to say: he was rich, she was poor. But in the end, he left her nothing.
For that, I hope that he and Elsie are receiving Satan's barbed penis up their asses every hour for all eternity.

Millions of Muslims heaved a giant sigh of relief today as the identity of the Virginia Tech mass murderer was announced. He was a Korean bastard -- a country with no Muslim population. So, Muslim extremists were not involved in this latest tragedy. Phew!

Of course, there shouldn't have been much worry. Muslim extremists aren't known for close quarters combat, unless the victim is their wife, or daughter or other female relative. Or perhaps a hog-tied hostage being decapitated. No, Muslim extremists are happiest when sowing death with roadside bombs, or suicide belts or RPGs.

The Virginia tragedy was very sad. I won't be mentioning gun control at this time. Everybody knows the U.S has none and wants none. Periodic travesties like this one can't budge their consitutional right to quick and easy access to deadly assault weapons. But with everyone so heavily armed in the States, what are the odds that nobody on the scene was packing heat and willing/able to take out this freak.

I do wonder how one person can kill 30. One can, of course, never know how one might react in a situation like this. I'm certainly just as likely to have voided my bladder and my bowels and dived under my desk too. But, you'd think that when a gunman enters a (class)room filled with people and opens fire, that somebody, or preferably several somebodies, would have jumped the bastard. Yes, you might get shot, or you might die. But, you're trapped in a room and are quite likely be shot or die anyway.

Before 9/11, it was conventional wisdom to sit on your hands and keep your eyes down during a hijacking and hope everything turns out ok. I don't think that would happen now. With the number of school shootings in the recent past, shouldn't the fight back approach be tried now. It is now police protocol in Ontario (and perhaps elsewhere), to charge in and kill the gunman, rather than cordon of the area and wait for the gunman to kill themselves, as was done in Columbine.

I wonder what The Worst Case Scenario would recommend?

KABUL (Apr 14, 2007)

U.S.-led coalition and Afghan troops backed by aircraft clashed with suspected Taliban insurgents in volatile southern Afghanistan, leaving more than 35 rebels dead, the coalition said yesterday.

Well, isn't that good news. Just two days after I wished to 100 Taliban dead, the U.S provides 35. That's a very good start.

Two more Canadians were killed by roadside bombs, the day after 6 were killed by a huge bomb in a single incident the day before - the worst one day loss for Canadians since the Korean war.

Is this the forewarned Taliban spring offensive? or as the Canadian brass claims just a desperate last gasp at relevance?

I feel I need to clarify some of the statements in my prior post, where I indicated that I'd be happy if 100 Taliban could be killed. I'd still be happy. But I'm not referring to any sort of Nazi tactics. It was typical for the Nazis to respond to a killing of one of their soldiers by the Resistance by entering a town, rounding up a few dozen civilians and executing them.

I'd like to see the Taliban mowed down in a stand-up fight. But the Taliban scum cowards aren't likely to try that approach because they are so out-gunned. But they might, and if they do, I would be ecstatic to see them die in large numbers. A toast to the brave Canadians fighting a war against barbarism.

If a few civilian human-shields get killed in the process there must be no hand-wringing or second guessing. If a vehicle runs a check point and gets it occupants killed, well that's tough. They should know better and the Canadians must protect themselves.

If the troops want to strap a mullah to the undercarriage of their LAV, well I'm all in favour of that too. Perhaps then the Islamo-fascists might then rethink their preaching incitement and hatred.

I was greatly saddened today to hear about 6 Canadian soldier being killed in Afghanistan by a road side bomb. I extend my deepest condolences to their family and friends, and those who serve with them.

This is an extreme tragedy and it serves to underline the reason that the Taliban needs to be routed. They should not be negotiated with; they should not be allowed to hide in and operate from Pakistan.

Do not tie our soldiers hands; give them all the tools they need to do the job. Maximum force should be used to ensure their safety at all times. If 600 Taliban can be killed in response to this attack, then I support that action 100 per cent. If a bunker-buster bomb lands on a Taliban encampment in Pakistan, then our good ally Musharaf should follow up by bayonetting the survivors. Supporters of the Taliban should be imprisoned or killed with impunity.

Our soldiers are doing a good job in Afghanistan. These losses are a sad day.

I don't normally do personal stuff here, but this morning I woke to find Mr. Hide -- a yellow tang -- lying on the bottom of his tank with x's over his eyes.

He was fine yesterday, but now he is gone. This fish was a survivor. He was my only fish for the last 10 years, after the great die-off of '95. People kept asking me "Is that fish still alive?!" and all agreeing "I didn't know fish lived that long."

But it looks like Mr. Hide was the first victim of global warming. I put my finger in the water and it felt warm. With the thermometer I confirmed that the water was a full 5 degrees c higher than it should have been. The heater, however, was still on -- heat source malfunction!

That's what killed him. The only question left is - was the heat increase caused by man, or was it a natural phenomenon? I was away earlier this week and there was a thunderstorm that knocked out the power. The fish-sitter reported to me that she was unable to get the tank light to come back on. Did she touch the thermostat by mistake? Or did the ancient heater just lose its ability to regulate itself? Could I have seen this coming? Oh, why oh why wasn't I more dilligent in checking the water temperature. Shouldn't I have invested in a temperature alarm?

Oh well. Get the shovel.

Mr. Hide - Rest in Peace

ThePessimist is a happy camper this week. On Wednesday I attended a lecture by Gwynne Dyer at the local university called Climate Wars. I didn't know it when I acquired the tickets, but this was his world premier "performance" of the topic.

If you don't know Dyer, then you should get to know him. He is described as a free-lance journalist, military historian and author. He writes a biweekly column syndicated in 200 newspapers around the world. But I've read him for years and have seen him speak once before, and in my opinion he is one of the biggest thinkers in the world. He travels widely and speaks with a who's who of scientists, politicians, dissidents, military personnel and think-tanks. He can speak in surprising depth about any topic, and takes a broad view that interconnects all diverse facets of any issue.

So, anyway, that was my fan letter. I'm so happy because his talk confirmed things that I believe and have been saying here for some time.

A couple months ago, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report confirming that scientists have reached a consensus that global warming is directly related to human activities. However, despite taking their 15 minutes on the world stage, they diluted everything they were saying by stating that by the end of the century global warming could cost one million lives. The world then shrugged and took their SUV to the shopping mall.

When I heard this statement, I was certain that they had their estimates off by at least an order of magnitude, if not two.

Dyer spoke for 90 minutes, and I'm sure a book will follow shortly. I of course can't do it justice, but here is the match-book version of his talk:

While global warming will cause consequences such as melting polar ice caps, rising sea levels and more severe weather events, these are not the most important considerations. The most serious impact of global warming will be on agriculture - food production.

Food crises have been predicted for centuries, but food production has always kept ahead of population growth. But not this time. In the last 60 years, world population has tripled from 2 billion to 6 billion. But agricultural output has also tripled due to mechanization of farming methods, putting more land under the till, applying massive amounts of (oil based) fertilizer, and by genetic tinkering with crop yields. But there is nothing left in the bag of tricks to continue this massive expansion of food production. All viable land is already under cultivation, fertilizer has reached the point of diminishing returns (not to mention peak-oil being just around the corner, and most crops are already a mono-culture. There is no potential imminent for another 100% increase in world food production.

But the population has not stopped growing. Yes, birth rates are falling toward replacement levels (2 children per woman), but populations continue to grow because of longer life expectancies. So, the balance between food demand and food supply is very close right now. Enter global warming.

Predictions are of an average increase in temperature over the next century of between 2 and 5 degrees Celsius. Research done for the World Bank estimates that the affect of a 2 degree increase in temperature would be a 25% reduction in agricultural output.

Dyer took the example of India to illustrate. India has 1 billion people. India is self-sufficent in food - neither a net importer nor exporter of food. Much of India's "bread-basket" under a 2 degree change would move toward desertification, becoming nonproductive or less productive. A 25% reduction in food production will leave 250 million people without food.

Scary, eh? Will India import the needed shortfall? From where? China will have the same problem. And, to a lesser extent, so will the U.S and Russia.

One million may die? One hundred million sounds like a more reasonable estimate - two orders of magnitude greater than the UN's estimate last month. The UN has missed their opportunity to ring some alarm bells to call the world to action.

ThePessimist will be long dead before any of this comes to pass; but he pities your grandchildren.

OK, in case you hadn't noticed, I've succumbed to the advertizing world. Google Ads now have a place on this blog site. I saw others doing it, so I thought, what the heck, why not.

I bought their argument that advertizing can help pay for my presence here on the internet. Setting up the account and ad html was very easy. I noted in passing that they won't send me any money until my ad revenue exceeded $100. I knew it wouldn't pay much, but I was still thinking that, if I earned only $1 a month I wouldn't actually see any cash for 10 years.

God, that was wishful thinking. The ads have been on this site for exactly 10 days now, and I have earned exactly $0.00.

Still, the context sensitive ads amuse me. I've been ranting about hijabs lately, and one of the ads that has been appearing is for myfavoritehijabstore.com ! Isn't that a hoot? I don't imagine many people coming to this site are going to be in the market for a hijab, but then, you never know. The ad world is a great leveler and communicator.

So, I'm not actually allowed to suggest that you click on the ads on my site. But I will bring to your attention that the only way to get money out of google is for ads on sites to be clicked. They've got billions of dollars; I trust you to do the right thing.

Act now. Google ads will remain on this website only so long as they continue to amuse me.

(This is the 4th in a series of articles on Executive over compensation.)

The Canadian Government is investigating excessive bank fees on using ATMs (Automated Teller Machines, or ABMs Automated Banking Machines). This is a sure sign that there is an election in the offing, because politicians know that Canadians like nothing better than blaming the banks for excessive fees.

But, you know, I don't really care that much. ATMs are expensive pieces of machinery, that require lots of maintenance and they're on every street corner so they're mighty convenient. If the banks want to charge me $1 to use one, fine.

But why do they cost so much? Sure, they're basically vaults that give out money, and armed guards show up in armoured cars at least once a day to load the hoppers with $10s of thousands of dollars. That ain't cheap.

And where do ATMs come from? Turns out many (most?) of them are made by NCR (formerly known as National Cash Register) which had a large plant in my own home town. And in 2006, the CEO of NCR - William Nuti - took home a compensation package of US$7.4million !!

The guy must have had extraordinary performance to have earned these bonuses and stock options, right? Wrong.

• Earnings dropped from $529 million in 2005 to $382 million in 2006
• Sales increased from $6 billion in 2005 to $6.1 billion in 2006

That sales increase is a whopping 1.6%. Any sales manager would have been fired for a performance like that. And the earnings ... well, the 2005 number is apparently muddied by some $214 million one-time prior period adjustment related to taxes. (Don't think about that too hard. It just means the company found some way to avoid paying $200M in taxes !! Guess who's picking up the slack for that.)

So genius boy managed to increase earnings by $67M (21%). Pretty good, I guess, and I guess he's single handedly responsible for this increase since he decided to take $7m of the $67M for himself.

So, let's do a bit more math. The average salary in Canada is about $45k (the minimum wage was recently increased to $8 per hour or $16.6k per year). Mr. Nuti pays himself 165 times the average Canadian wage (445 times the minimum wage).

What does he do that makes him worth that? His big accomplishment this year was shutting down the home tome plant in Waterloo, Ontario, putting 450 people out of work. These people are his neighbours and mine. He didn't actually eliminate the jobs (as a company expense) ... he's moved these jobs to Mexico and Brazil.

ie. He's taken $20M out of the local annual economy, incurring god knows how much severance and other disruption costs, to save a few million by paying cheaper salaries in another country. If it takes two mexicans to do the work of one Canadian, and the average Mexican wage is one third that of a Canadian, then he has saved the company $7M a year. Which he took all for himself, leaving the company's net cost savings of zero.

If I were a stockholder of NCR, I'd be asking a few questions at the next AGM.

I really believe the folks in Hooterville, Quebec have it right. Immigrants need to do a better job of fitting in.

Little 11 year old Asmahan Mansour, from Ottawa, was ejected from a soccer tournament in Laval, Quebec because she was wearing a hijab. Her whole team left the field in support, and forfeited the game.

The ref cited a rule that prohibits non-regulation apparel as a safety concern. The league backed up the ref, indicating it is totally his call.

In my opinion, this ref really knows where his towel is. He can't be accused of prejudice because the ref himself is a muslim. I totally support this call. If the head costume obscures the player's peripheral vision, then the risk of collisions is greatly increased, threatening the safety of herself and other players. If we let her play with a hijab, what next? Burqas?

This little girl (and her parents, who no doubt put her up to this) needs to be grateful she lives in Canada where she can play soccer at all. If she were in Afghanistan under the Taliban, she wouldn't even be allowed outside without a male relative, let alone wearing scandalous shorts in front of the prying eyes of thousands of infidels.

This is as far as ThePessimist can bend: she can wear a bath cap (or a sports hijab - an oxymoron if there ever was one). That should satisfy her god and not endanger the safety of the game.

The town of Herouxville, Que., wants immigrants that fit in with its citizens and published a statement saying things like immigrants should expect to follow a few local rules like "No stoning women and women are allowed to drive cars". They also had a few things to say about wearing the veil ("don't"). This close minded bigotry managed to get the town onto the national news for a few days.

They seem to have over-stated their case for rolling back political correctness. There does seem to be too much special accomodation in dealing with multicultural populations. But, the criminal code already deals with out right offenses like honour killing, dowery murders, genital mutilation, punative rape, etc. Even general sexual equality resides in the Canadian Bill of Rights.

After some complaints and a bit of common sense, the town council has removed some of the more outrageous statements. But the core remains: fit in, or leave.

I've had my own diatribes on the burqa and cultural gender discrimination. I don't like the muslim headscarf. And there are a lot of other things that I don't like. But, not liking and not allowing are two different things. You don't use the cudgel of state power on things you don't like.

• Man boards jet at Heathrow wearing a niqab.
• British M.P. says veil is a barrier.

Here is my personal annoy-o-meter:

Things I don't like

• baseball caps worn backwards
• low riding baggy pants that show the elastic band on your underwear
• face piercings
• yarmulkes
• turbans
• hijabs
• straw hats and long grey beards

Things that make me uncomfortable:

• goth
• mohawk hair cuts (especially if combined with goth costumes)
• Marylin Manson
• extreme jewish get-ups (long beards, curls and really funny hats)

Things that I believe should be illegal in Canada:

• burqas
• niqabs
• baba kalsa giant yellow turbans with 2 foot swords and curly toed slippers
• flags that feature AK47s

The muslim headscarf should not be illegal. Nor should it be protected. If you can't get a job because you insist on dressing like a 14th century peasant, that's your problem. (Just like you shouldn't expect to get a job in an accountancy office if you're wearing 6 lip rings.)

According to the CBC survey, 68% of muslim women do not wear any head covering. They accept the Canadian assimilation model: first generation looks like an immigrant; second generation looks like a Canadian; third generation is a Canadian who takes pride in their heritage.

My Babusha and my wife's Nona were little old ladies from the old country who could not speak English and dressed in funny costumes. Their children spoke both old and new languages fluently and dressed in Canadian fashion. Their grandchildren (us, if you weren't following) don't speak the old language at all, but still like the pierogi's and fagioli.

If you want to wear your full ethnic costume and dance your traditional dances and eat your ethnic foods, that's great. But the place for that is your home, your church and the multi-cultural festival. I'll be there.

But I don't want to see you in court insisting that you should be able to go to work dressed that way. And if you are going to violate public safety by wearing a face covering disguise, then you should expect the police to take an interest in you.

Worst case scenario, global warming may cause one million deaths by the end of the century.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released it's latest report on Global warming. In it they conclude that it is 90% certain that human activities are causing global warming. This quote from out local paper caught my eye:

"It's not too late,'' said Australian scientist Nathaniel Bindoff, a co-author of the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report issued yesterday.

The worst can be prevented by acting quickly to curb greenhouse gas emissions, he said.

Another of the study's many co-authors, Kevin Trenberth, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, was more blunt:

The worst could mean more than one million dead and hundreds of billions of dollars in costs by 2100.

Now, I think the UN may be having an Austen Power's Dr. Evil moment. "One millliiion may die!"

A million? Don't they mean billion?

Hey, if the death toll from this Global warming thing can't be measured in the billions, who really cares? (Besides the polar bears.)

One million people die:

• of diarrhea every 6 months
• from smoking every 2 months
• every time there is a magnitude 7+ earthquake in a densely populated backwater area of Turkey or China
• of starvation every year in africa
• of genocide every time some african people look at their neighbours and decide they're being treated unfairly by them.

Don't we have more important things to worry about?

• Last century, 3 mass murderers directly or indirectly were each responsible for deaths in the 10's of millions (Mao, Stalin, Hitler). Many many others accounted for over one million each.
• Small pox killed 50 million North Americans (native peoples), the black death killed 75 million Europeans and Asians, influenza killed 25 million. The first two are ancient history, but the last one happened less than 100 years ago.
• A meteor could wipe out half to all of life on the planet.
• A well placed nuclear bomb could kill 20 million people in 1 second, any time now.

A million dead from Global warming. Who cares. Unless Mr. Trenberth mispoke or was misquoted, and really meant to say a billion, then I'm going to put on my shorts and enjoy the warmer weather.

I quote most of an article I tripped across while I was browsing grotesque salaries.

Severance packages By Eve Ggem

I read in The Union that Mr. Nardelli, CEO of Home Depot, resigned. However, he gets a $210 million severance package.

Yesterday, after seven years, my son was fired from his landscaper job with a big Grass Valley subdivision due to cutbacks. Severance package - zero.

For seven years he did backbreaking work, often in miserable weather with no paid holidays, vacation or benefits. In wet, winter months, his young family got by on a smaller paycheck.

Two years ago, after eight years working since age 15 for a local inn/motel in housekeeping then front desk clerk, his wife was fired because of "slow season." Severance package - zero.

...

Life isn't fair, heartbreakingly so - Wanna share your secret and your $210 million, Mr. Nardelli?

Eve Ggem, Nevada City

(I've copied most of the article here because TheUnion, a Nevada newspaper, may require you to register to read it.)

I thought the above was a fairly reasoned argument -- the rich play by different rules than everybody else. You'd think that that argument would receive fairly wide tacit support. But you'd be wrong.

There were 17 comments attached to the article. Here is a sampling of the first few:

• Don't forget, the government will take maybe $60 million of Nardeli's nest egg in taxes. With their cut, the Gov can pay some aerospace company to build one cruise missile to shoot at some rocks in the desert somewhere near some oil reserves.
• Ms. Ggem, severance pay is not the issue, and focusing on it in this case is a distraction from the real problem. Both your son and daughter-in-law need to develop more valuable skills so they can get better paying jobs
• Sometimes people have to make the tough choices and relocate to improve their personal finances.

Can you see the problem? I tried to post my own comment, even registering for the site, but the moderators would not post it. They wouldn't tell me why, but I'm guessing that you can't use the words "damn" and "Americans" in the same post. So, I'll post it here:

I wanted to comment and offer my sympathy and best wishes for your family. But in reading the comments that follow, I can clearly see the root of the problem: American hobbsian capitalism.
No American would restrict the avarice of their ruling class, because they all aspire to that same American dream. Fabulous wealth: the law, morality and the common good of "other" be damned.
ThePessimist

I did manage to post a reply to the first commentor; I repeat it here for completeness:

This is a unrelated right-wing argument.
If the CEO hadn't stolen the "severance" money, the corporations income would have been 210 million higher and the corporation would have paid the tax, or it would be paid out in dividends and the shareholders would have paid the tax. Or the company would have been worth $210M more, so the share price would be higher, and capital gains tax paid there on.
What the "government" does with the tax money isn't related to the issue at hand. Corporate CEO robber-barons and their Board member friends are stealing money in unearned severance and unjustifiable salaries; while common people, like Ms. Ggem's children get the shaft.

Americans won't control corporate greed, because they think it will limit their potential to achieve similar wealth. The CEO got the money because he "earned it" and the government should keep their corrupt noses out of it. Let capitalism take its natural course unfettered. But this dream is as unrealistic as the dream of all those black youths who avoid education, jobs or other responsibilities to play hoops. They think they're on their way to a multi-million dollar NBA contract. Well, their odds of making it to the NBA (or their white confreres becoming CEO of a Fortune 500 company) are less than the chance of being struck by lightning.

Anybody can grow up to be president (as George W has proven). But it helps if you come from money, get an ivy league education, and know the right people. No amount of education available to Ms Ggem's children would track them to the top. But that doesn't reduce the argument that severance from any job should be a requirement, not just for the Executive class.

My last posting was on the ridiculous ratio of CEO to average salary in Canada. The rant was inspired by a Jan 2 article by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. But I've been fuming about this issue for quite some time and I have a collection of quotes to prove it.
The following are from an article in a 2006 issue of CA Magazine by Gerard Berube entitled Grotesque Salaries:

• In 1982, US business leaders earned on average 42 times an employee's salary. This multiple shot up to 107 in 1990 and by 2000, it hit 525. The market correction narrowed the gap to 281 in 2002, but by 2004 it was back to 421. Are these gaps too wide?
• In 2004 the average salary of CEOs was $729,000, with an average bonus of $814,000, for a total base salary of $1.5 million. But, with stock options included, the average reached $5.5 million.
• A survey of large US institutional investors showed 90% believe executives are overpaid and that a company's success has little to do with the management team.
  A July 2003 survey by The Economist showed that only 23% had confidence in business leaders.
• John Hunkin, CEO of CIBC, was paid $50 million just before he resigned in June 2005, even though it was a deficit year when out-of-court settlements proliferated and the bank had to set aside a $2.83 billion Enron-related provision.
• John Roth, head of Nortel, received $125 million the year before the company's market meltdown.
• Michael Eisner, earned $800 million in the 13 years he ran Disney, a company whose shares yielded less than US Treasury bills during that time.
• Steve Jobs, Apple president, was paid $775 million when he was boasting of his $1 token salary.

How about the Wall Street Journal:

• Pfizer's "compensation committee" defended Pfizer CEO Hank McKinnell's windfall compensation of $168 million on grounds of market forces in executive pay -- which in this context appears to mean, "CEOs at other companies are picking shareholders' pockets, too." - Carol Hymowitz

Or how about from the pages of the paper this month:

• Bob Nardelli, former CEO of Home Depot, after 6 years on the job was fired and received a severance package of $210 million (US$). He basically achieved none of the objectives set out for him, the share price went down, yet he was given a diamond encrusted pink slip.

So, Ontario crown corporations pay their CEOs $1 to $2M. Corporate Canada CEOs earn $9M on average, and some a lot more. But American Fortune 500 companies pay their CEOs 10 times more than their Canadian counterparts. And none of them, it would seem, actually have to link their performance to their compensation. Even when they fail spectacularly, or are fired in disgrace, they typically walk away with more money than any of us mere mortals can even imagine.

Something has to be done about this.

The "honour system" isn't going to work. CEO compensation is determined by the board of directors. The Board is typically made up of CEOs of other companies. The more they pay the CEO -- the higher they can raise the bar -- the more they can demand from their day job.

As Dilbert's CEO says:

• How can the board justify my exhorbitant salary? Simple: They're all friends of mine, and it's not their money.

I'm afraid the goverment is going to have to step in. Some say our members of parliament are overpaid. But they make between $100 and $200 thousand dollars. Certainly they could earn their salary by passing laws to crack down on executive theft from shareholders.

Will they do it? I'm pessimistic.

Next

You can't look at a newspaper without being inundated by tales of corporate greed. And the problem bears little resemblance to the fears expressed about globalization, corporate malfeasance or psychotic behaviour towards all stakeholders except shareholders.

The problem is much more personal. The biggest theives are CEOs, and the people they are stealing from are their shareholders.

Let's take a couple of recent examples.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives issued a press release that ran in the papers January 2nd: No New Year’s hangover for top CEOs
Seems the average annual compensation of the CEOs of the 100 largest Canadian companies is $10million. That sounds like a lot, right? But how much is it? Most of us don't have a real perspective on numbers that large, as they usually only appear in our lottery fantasies. So, the CCPA stated it in another way that makes the number a little easier to grasp: The average CEO had already made more by January 2nd then the average Canadian employee is going to make in the whole year.

Hydro One
Then there was Tom Parkinson, CEO of Hydro One, who last month got caught by the Auditor General with his hand in the cookie jar -- he was using his secretary's expense account to put through his own unauthorized personal expenses to the tune of $45,000. Now, the guy made $1.5million a year, so it is hard to understand why he needed to steal chump change like $45k. And he wouldn't be so dumb anyway, as his immediate predecessor Eleanor Clitheroe was fired for padding her expense account. So, the guy gets fired, right? No! He resigns; and he is immediately paid his full 3-year contract - another $3million !!

Where can I get a contract like that? He resigns because he faces embarassing accusations and he gets paid anyway? He'd be crazy not to steal the lunch money, or fuck the secretary, or use the company helicopter to fly him to his cottage -- anything to be relieved of the obligation to show up at the office everyday. How tiresome -- so much better to get two years pay and only sit around at the cottage all day doing no work at all. Unfortunately, ThePessimist believes Parkinson is probably only days away from landing another cushy multi-million dollar job so he can start the process all over again. Why do these people keep getting jobs at all?

The inner-communist in me is running his tin cup along my rib cage. What makes these people worth 150, 250, 500 times the worth of their average employee? Does he do hundreds of times more work than I do? Is his work worth hundreds of times mine? Sure the CEO's worth more than the average employee, maybe he even does more, and he should be paid more. But not hundreds of times more. Prior to the 1980's, the average multiplier was 40 times (and some people then thought that that was high). But with executive salaries, stock options and bonuses going through the roof in the last 15 years, 40 times looks parsimonious.

It is time to start bringing these salaries back down into reasonable ranges, or a revolution of some sort is going to have to follow.

Next

I tripped across this quite by accident. I don't know if it is real or faked. Given the shit on the internet, it obviously could go either way.

But it looks real enough.

See Saddam being hanged, as recorded by a video phone: Bye bye

Like everybody else, I'm not sorry to see him go. One less despot has to be a good thing (Slobo, Pinochet, Saddam, my Christmas wish list is almost complete).

There's no doubting that Saddam deserved to die. It is just too bad that it had to be at the hands of such a kangaroo court. But you can't argue with the results.

Will it bring peace to Iraq? Kinda hard to see how. The Shiites and Sunnis will continue their bloody civil war. Perhaps they will get tired of killing each other first, or maybe they'll just keep killing each other until one or the other or both are gone. Either result would suit me fine, but it will likely take longer than we would like. We'll watch and see. ThePessimist expects that the more likely outcome will be the rise of a new strong-man (theocrat, thug or puppet) to restore order.