Canadian Cincinnatus

Term limits anyone?

One of the issues that the conservative opposition rallied around in the 1994 November revolution was Congressional term limits. In fact, a constitutional amendment to enact term limits was proposed in Congress by Newt Gingrich. Unfortunately (but not unsurprisingly), it didn’t get the supermajority of votes required to proceed to the next step. It is curious, that with an even more intense anti-establishment passion sweeping through America today, the term limit issue has been strikingly absent. 

I thought about this when I read an obituary of Congressman - and legendary porker - Jack Murtha in early February. What struck me was how virtuous Murtha’s early life had been in contrast to his later career as a congressman. It was only the more recent part of his life that I knew. When he was younger, he was a Marine and a small businessman. He volunteered to go back to active duty so that he could fight in Vietnam, where he was wounded twice and served with distinction. He was the first Vietnam combat veteran elected to Congress. In the early 1980’s he was an anti-communist stalwart in Congress. But after 30 years in Congress he had become a caricature of a corrupt politician, whose chief bragging point - aside from groundlessly accusing US Marines of war crimes at Haditha – was how much federal bacon he could bring home (such as the airport to nowhere, in his riding). 

I noted the same moral trajectory when I read, by chance, a biographical sketch of Charlie Rangel, the black Congressman from Harlem, who is chiefly know these days for being the epicenter of scandals too numerous to mention. What I learned was that he too was a war hero. He volunteered for the Army when the Korean War was on. This is what it says about him in Wikipedia:

Rangel then enlisted in the United States Army, and served from 1948 to 1952. During the Korean War, he was a member of the all-black 503rd Field Artillery Battalion in the 2nd Infantry Division. In late November 1950, this unit was caught up in heavy fighting in North Korea as part of the U.N. forces retreat from the Yalu River. In the Battle of Kunu-ri, Rangel was part of a vehicle column that was trapped and attacked by the Chinese Army. In the subzero cold, Rangel was injured by shrapnel from a Chinese shell. Some U.S. soldiers were being taken prisoner, but others looked to Rangel, who though only a private first class had a reputation for leadership in the unit. Rangel led some 40 men from his unit, during three days of freezing weather, out of the Chinese encirclement; nearly half of the battalion was killed in the overall battle. Rangel was awarded a Purple Heart for his wounds and the Bronze Star with Valor for his actions in the face of death. He was also awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, the Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation, and three battle stars. In 2000, Rangel reflected with CBS News that "Since Kunu Ri – and I mean it with all my heart, I have never, never had a bad day."

After Korea he became a lawyer - back in the pre-affirmative action days, when an up-and-coming black man really did have to battle a headwind of discrimination.

Both men ended up being long-serving Congressmen. I think the lives of each man illustrates the moral lesson that too much time in Washington can corrupt anybody. In their youth, both were virtuous model-citizens. But, after spending half a lifetime in Congress, both had morphed into jabba-the-hut-like succubuses who were only interested in scamming tax dollars and advancing big government.

America needs more early Jack Murthas and Charlie Rangels and fewer of the latter incarnations. Both life stories are an argument for citizen legislators and term limits, and an argument against career politicians who never want to return home.

Bring on term limits!

The bitter harvest from having a weak man in the White House

The Russians unilaterally announce an arms Control agreement with the US – before final agreement with the US had been reached. Ralph Peters, over at the New York Post, relays the story:

Well aware that President Obama desperately wants to hold in his hand a piece of paper guaranteeing nuclear arms cuts in our time, Moscow has been stalling and brawling to force us to bend to its will.

With a few last sticking points in play (which the White House refuses to make public), the Russian government blindsided US negotiators by announcing that the deal was done and the signing was on the calendar.

Folks, this is diplomacy at a level we can't begin to touch. With their unilateral announcement, the Russians ensured that Obama will cave on the final points -- otherwise, it would look as though he scuttled the disarmament deal and undercut his own argument for anti-nuclear sanctions on Iran.

If this incident doesn’t personify diplomatic weakness (in the US, not Russia) I don’t know what does.

Is there any doubt that this unprecedented behaviour on the part of the Putinists would have not happened if the unilateralist cowboy were still inhabiting the White House? Or better yet, Ronald Reagan? - who was presented with a similar fait accompli agreement by Gorbachev at Rejkjavik. Reagan turned it down and it was Gorby who was forced to walk away empty handed. 

One thing is for sure, it will be a long 2 ½ years to November, 2012, and American allies will have to make do as best they can until then.

Violent treatment of Ann Coulter exposes the hidden intolerance in Canadians

Canadians like to think of themselves as tolerant peaceful people, even the world’s most tolerant people. We have official multiculturalism and, as Canadians love to boast, the most non-judgmental, accepting country in the world. This is common wisdom, fully accepted by the internet posters on Canadian news sites, when discussing the recently cancelled speech by popular American commentator Ann Coulter, at the University of Ottawa (due to excessive Canadian violence). There is no hesitation by pretty much all of our news media to label her as “extreme right wing”, without a thought to this being insulting in any way. Being a conservative American makes her fair game for whatever slurs that so called “journalists” want to throw at her in passing, all the while maintaining the tone of making a balanced report. This is all normal in Canada.

What is more disturbing is reading the comments being candidly and secretly posted on the usual post-column blogs. The sneering ridicule and hatred, being spouted by Canadians, verges on the absurd. I have never in my life read such unadulterated hatred, lies, nonsense and vitriol. You would think that Ann Coulter was a mass murderer, like Adolph Hitler or Joseph Stalin (no wait, we would probably be polite to them and let them express their opinions without judgment, as we Canadians ALWAYS do). Targeting an American conservative is expected of Canadians. It is a part of our schizophrenic expression of “self”. 

This leads me to the updated Canadian credo “We Canadians are the most tolerant people in the world. We unconditionally accept all sexes, races, nationalities, creeds, religions, beliefs, non-beliefs and cultures as if they were our own, except for those evil, hateful, racist, intolerant, Americans”.

Funny thing is, many Canadians will fail to see any irony in this.

 

WiseGuy

How to repeal Obamacare

Most bills are almost impossible to repeal once they have been enacted into law. The reason why is because most laws are written in such a way that they appeal to some principle that is popular with the electorate. Therefore, directly repealing a measure is - almost by definition - an unpopular thing to do, regardless of what it is. Only truly disastrous laws, like prohibition, can be directly removed. In other words, if the Republicans tried to repeal Obamacare in its entirety they would look like they are opposed to health care for poor people.

However, just because a bill is hard to repeal, it does not mean that it is hard to dismantle.

What’s the distinction?

What I mean is this: politics is not like particle physics, where only an anti-particle of the same type can cancel out the particle in question. In other words, a 2,700-page bill does not require the passage of a 2,700-page anti-bill for its repeal.

You get rid of a bad bill, not by revoking it, but by making illegal the core principles of the bill that you find objectionable, and leaving the rest of the details to rot on the vine. In the case of Obamacare, the principle is free choice for medical care. You present the following piece of legislation:

Nothing in Obamacare [substitute here whatever it is formally called] shall be construed to limit in any way the health care choices and health insurance choices available to Americans. Therefore, the US government is forbidden to enforce any provision of Obamacare that restricts in any way the health care choices of Americans, or mandates an insurance option or policy for Americans that they do not want to purchase. 

Short, sweet and to the point - and it guts Obamacare. Send that to the President. If Obama vetoes it, he announces to America that he is against personal choice with regard to their most intimate concerns.

Of course, this lesson applies to Alan Rock’s gun control bill, C-68, as well.

Obama Makes Right Space Decision for Wrong Reason

I heard the first whispers at the 2008 International Space Development Conference in Washington: one of the lead contenders in the fractious Democratic Party nominations, Barack Obama, wanted to cancel the new space program and transfer NASA's budget to education and global warming research.  The human crewed space program would end.  It was enough to make republican space enthusiasts hope that Hillary Clinton would win.

Sure enough, Obama's committee has come back and recommended canceling NASA's Constellation program, which would have returned humans to the moon by the end of the decade.  After the shuttle retires, there will be no crewed spacecraft in development in NASA's budget.  To my surprise, I agree with this decision but for totally different reasons from Obama.

The far-left have hated the space program for decades, even though they constantly point to Kennedy for proof that they love it.  They believe it's a waste of precious government resources that should go to the poor, ignoring that thousands of jobs and brilliant technical innovations have come from the space program, helping to make the United States rich.

But Obama could not use social justice as an excuse for canceling Constellation without huge middle-of-the-road political fallout.  Most Americans have grown up taking it for granted that they are way ahead in space travel.  If Obama just shrugged off that lead and handed it over to the Russians or the Chinese he would be a one term president.  It's the things voters take for granted that are most dangerous to mess with, regardless of what the pundits say.

Instead Obama is pretending there still is a space program by pointing to upstarts like SpaceX and promising that they will one day take Americans back into orbit.  A corporation rather than NASA will do the heavy lifting in developing the next generation of crewed space ships.  Amazingly, Obama has discovered capitalism and the free market.  I suspects he cares little whether they actually succeed, and if SpaceX fails he can say Americans would be in space except for free market failure--not his fault.

But SpaceX might surprise both skeptics and President Obama.

The biggest problem for SpaceX was that NASA's Constellation was a two part program: Ares 1, which would've carried crew to orbit, and Ares 5, which would have carried the lunar lander.  Ares 1 was also to replace the space shuttle and resupply the International Space Station,  exactly what SpaceX wants to do with the Falcon 9 space craft.  Thus, SpaceX was in competition with NASA for space station resupply--quite a conflict of interests.

NASA has so far reluctantly provided support to SpaceX, mostly because Bush made them with the COTS program, but with this little company doing the same thing NASA was going to do at a tiny fraction of the cost, well, it was embarrassing.  The air force has given SpaceX way more support as they seek cheaper flights for their spy satellites.

Also, the Ares 1 has come under fire even from NASA engineers as potentially shaking astronauts to death.  NASA says it can fix this problem and I'm sure they can, but how much will that complicated fix cost?

I believe private industry can and will take over supply to Low Earth Orbit.  NASA paved the way for this over 40 years ago, and so many companies and countries launch satellites now it's dizzying.  It's the next logical step for a private company to start taking people to orbit, and SpaceX's plan, if achieved, will take a lot of people to orbit, maybe even private citizens going to Bigelow's space hotels.

But the biggest problem with NASA's Constellation program is that it was essentially an Apollo re-dux--going where we'd been before with even less purpose.  No one was excited about it.  I'm not saying that humans should never go back to the moon, but I am saying that NASA should be going where no one else dares: Mars.

At that same conference where I heard the first whispers of Constellation's end, I also heard a talk given by Dr Neil deGrass Tyson, head of Hayden Planetarium in New York.  The thrust of his speech to a room mostly full of NASA lifers was to try and make them understand that NASA is not a self-funding organization.  It runs on tax dollars, and that flow relies on a supportive public.  Unfortunately, the public doesn't get excited about space telescopes and missions to Pluto.  They don't sit glued to their TVs for shuttle launches.  The public gets excited about boots on the ground in another world.  They get excited about history-making firsts.

Many geologists were thrilled to get rocks from the moon, but that science was an after thought that Kennedy never envisioned.  Science piggybacked on public excitement.

Of course Obama will never support a Mars mission no matter what he says.  That's a bait and switch meant for voter consumption.  Cancel the lunar program but give some nebulous promises about trips to asteroids or the moons of Mars in the distant future.

But the next government might be moved to send Americans to Mars when the Chinese start to succeed with their space exploration.  Public sentiment will shift quickly if America falls behind.  If I were head of NASA, I would take all the money meant for Constellation and get some smart people designing new and innovative ways to get to Mars.  Forget the Apollo redux and be part of an exciting future.

NASA can be the leader again, but it has to stop living in the past.

Mike Downtown

More good news from Russia (and bad news for Putin)

Today’s “Days of Anger” rallies in Russia are a success. According to Reuters, there were 50 separate rallies held across Russia that were inspired by a rally in Kaliningrad (former Königsberg), which drew 10,000 people.

“Opposition groups have been heartened by unusually large rallies in recent months.”

“At least 1,500 people turned out in the Pacific port of Vladivostok, raising their hands to support a motion to dismiss Putin's government. Around 1,000 rallied in Saint Petersburg and hundreds gathered in several other cities.

‘People have no work and they are fed up,’ said Ivan Fotodtov, 26, a Vladivostok web designer who braved snow to protest rising bills cutting into his stagnant wages.

Local elections last week showed support for Putin's United Russia party has fallen since the start of the economic crisis, which brought a sudden end to 10 years of growth and drove unemployment above 9 percent. Last year, gross domestic product fell by about 8 percent, Russia's worst performance since 1994.”

This Global Post article, written a week earlier by Miriam Elder, confirms that the shine is finally coming off the reign of Vladimir Putin. She says:

“Anti-government protests, a rare thing indeed, have begun to draw thousands of people across the country. And on Sunday, United Russia, the party created with the sole purpose of promoting Putin's agenda, fared far worse than it hoped in regional elections, losing a key mayoral seat and its majority in half of the regions where votes were held.

 

"Society is tired of United Russia, tired of its dominance, and tired of the dictatorship of bureaucracy," said Alexander Kynev, a political analyst.

The public mood has perceptively shifted.

 

Near daily scandals, many involving corrupt police and officials, have only heightened the anger of a people languishing under an economic crisis that shows few signs of easing. Official unemployment stands at 10 percent (independent observers think it is much higher) and a New Year's rise in utility payments, as part of a slow post-Soviet desubsidization, have hit Russia's poor particularly hard.”

 

“Despite widespread electoral violations - independent elections monitor Golos noted cases where United Russia officials handed out vodka and money, held voting in malls where free gifts were offered, and forced university students to vote - United Russia still failed to sweep the vote with the average 60 percent rate that it has long been used to. That's the result it got in regional elections held as recently as October.”

 

As I’ve said before, dictatorships look better on the surface than democracies do because authoritarian governments can paper over problems a lot easier, but the flip side is that they are also more brittle. When the problems finally do surface, it is usually when they are too big to ignore (and fix).  For instance, what has propped up Putin until now has been a big run up on commodity prices, which has allowed Putin to reward everybody from his inner circle to senior citizens (with higher pension cheques).

 

However, not being a capitalist, Putin does not understand the first rule of capitalism is capital reinvestment. You cannot reap what you do not sow. Unfortunately for Russia, Putin has failed to reap. There has been almost no investment in roads since 2000, which are today in terrible shape. And, as incredible as it sounds, there has been little investment the oil industry, thanks partially to the fact that the renationalization of the oil industry has scared off foreign investment in this regard while putting incompetent cronies in charge. In other words, the ruling class in Russia is so stupid that they don’t develop the one sector of their economy that brings them the most cash.

 

Still, as the article notes, Putin remains personally popular (though how much this is overstated by the propaganda organs of the state is hard to determine). Another fly in the ointment is how hard Putin will fight when he is faced with a serious challenger.

Pat Buchanan is wrong about protectionism and the manufacturing sector

A couple of days ago, Pat Buchanan wrote an article, which blamed free trade for the demise of the American manufacturing sector.

“Things that we once made in America – indeed, we made everything – we now buy from abroad with money that we borrow from abroad.

Over this Lost Decade, 5.8 million manufacturing jobs, one of every three we had in Y2K, disappeared. That unprecedented job loss was partly made up by adding 1.9 million government workers.

 

The last decade was the first in history where government employed more workers than manufacturing, a stunning development to those of us who remember an America where nearly one-third of the U.S. labor force was producing almost all of our goods and much of the world's, as well.

 

Not to worry, we hear, the foreign products we buy are toys and low-tech goods. We keep the high-tech jobs here in the USA.

 

Sorry. U.S. trade surpluses in advanced technology products ended in Bush's first term. The last three years we have run annual trade deficits in ATP of nearly $70 billion with China alone.”

 

“China accounts for 83 percent of the U.S. global trade deficit in manufactures and 84 percent of our global trade deficit in electronics and machinery.

 

Over the last decade, our total trade deficit with China in manufactured goods was $1.75 trillion, which explains why China, its cash reserves approaching $3 trillion, holds the mortgage on America.”

This is a pervasive argument, one I occasionally feel sympathy towards. It’s easy to feel this way, especially when we go to Wal-Mart or Home Depot and see the “Made in China” label everywhere. However, a couple of good articles (here and here) debunk the myth that the US is losing its manufacturing base. All the quotes that follow (except the ones from Buchanan) come from there.

 

One problem with protectionist arguments is that they never consider the negative consequences of trade barriers or the (often hidden) benefits of trade. For instance:

“The majority of the stuff we import is not consumer goods. The majority of what we import is stuff we use for manufacturing. As Daniel Ikenson reports, as recently as 2006, 55 percent of our imports were industrial components, i.e.  stuff that goes into our factories as inputs and comes out as products. Ikenson: ‘Meanwhile, U.S. factories remain the world's most prolific, accounting for more than 20 percent of the world's added manufacturing value. By comparison, Chinese plants account for about 8 percent. And manufacturing is thriving in large measure because of international trade. Manufacturing exports and imports hit records in 2006.’”

In other words, tariffs would punish American manufacturers. Another factor that I was previously unaware of:

“Finally, it is important to note that much of what is going on here is not ‘real’ in some sense, but definitional changes in job classifications. It used to be that big companies tended to do everything in-house, so people like janitors and accounts were classified as ‘manufacturing’ workers simply because they worked for manufacturing companies. Over the years, such companies discovered that it was more economical to contract out such work. That is why ‘business services’ is one of the fastest rising categories of employment in the United States.”

In fact:

“The United States remains a manufacturing powerhouse. As Bruce Bartlett helpfully points out, production of ‘real goods,’ i.e., manufacturing, accounts for a slightly larger share of GDP today [circa 2003] than it did in the allegedly golden days of the 1940s or 1950s. And that’s a larger share of a substantially bigger economy.”

But if things are so hunky dorey, why is it so easy to go along with Buchanan and believe that our factories are going to hell in a hand-basket? Part of the answer is because there have been significant and continuous job losses in the manufacturing sector, even though the manufacturing sector is producing more and more. This is what is happening: 

“The truth is that manufacturing is doing just fine in every way except employment. However, few economists would judge the health or sickness of any industry solely based on employment. By that standard, agriculture has been the sickest industry of all for decades.”

“Let's start with the bad news. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 14.6 million Americans employed in manufacturing in July [2003], down from 15.3 million a year earlier, 16.4 million the year before that (2001) and 17.3 million the year before that (2000) -- a decline of 16 percent in 3 years. The recent peak for manufacturing employment occurred in March 1998 at 17.6 million -- about the same as it had been for the previous 15 years.”

In other words, we have been able to produce more with fewer workers because today’s workers are more productive:

“In short, manufacturing output is very healthy. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that we are becoming a nation of ‘hamburger-flippers.’ We are producing more ‘things’ than we have in almost every year of our history for which we have data. The decline in employment is, in effect, a good thing, because it means that manufacturing productivity is very high. That is also a good thing, because it means that employers can afford to pay high wages to manufacturing workers while still competing with low-wage workers in places like Mexico and China.

Remember, what really matters for employers is not absolute wages, but unit labor costs -- how much the labor costs to manufacture a given product. If a U.S. worker is five times as productive as a Mexican worker making one-fifth as much, they are exactly equal from the point of view of a producer.”

Another reason for our negative perception is suggested by the bad timing in Buchanan’s statistics. Buchanan states: 

“From 2000 to 2009, industrial production declined here for the first time since the 1930s. Gross domestic product also fell, and we actually lost jobs.”

What happened in late 2008/early 2009? A big economic collapse, where whole sections of the manufacturing sector temporarily shut down production (like the auto industry). And that is a problem. But a short-term collapse is not the same thing as a long-term trend. If you compare manufacturing output from one date to the next when the first date is the top of the dot-com boom and the second date is the bottom of a deep recessionary trough, the comparison is going to be negative. 

At the same time, I believe there are many things that need to be done to help America’s (and Canada’s) currently ailing manufacturing sector, things that don’t involve raising tariffs. A better solution would include slashing corporate taxes (which in the US are among the highest among G7 nations), lowering capital gains taxes (Obama plans on raising them), eliminating taxes on reinvested profits, tort reform (because of the threat of lawsuits Cessna employs more lawyers than engineers) and deregulation (particularly on onerous environmental and safety rules). 

 

The police state marches onwards in David Miller’s Toronto

According to City News:

“You probably already know about the law in Ontario that mandates a working smoke detector on every floor of your home. But now Toronto Fire Services is going to make sure your home is protected by launching an inspection program to guarantee your detectors work - and that they're located where they're supposed to be.

Sometime starting over the next two weeks, they'll be going door-to-door in Toronto, entering your house to check on your smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.”

“What if you're not home when they call? You'll get a friendly card asking you to contact them at your convenience for a time when the inspection can be done.

What if you don't call back? A spokesman tells CityNews.ca that under the Fire Protection and Prevention Act, officials are allowed to come into your home and check the safety measure. And they don't intend to miss anyone.”

So now in the City of Toronto, not only do city officials have the power to enter places of residence without a search warrant but they will be doing so systematically on a regular basis to go on a fishing trip to hand out fines. Sheesh, what ever happened to, “a man’s home is his castle.”

To that argument, naïve Canadians often respond by asking what’s the problem if you have nothing to hide? The answer is, what if you DO have something to hide?

And you don’t have to be a criminal to find yourself in that position. That is the reason we have principles like ‘innocent until proven guilty’ and ‘everything is permitted unless it is expressly forbidden.’ Restrictions on what the government can do are what enable us to keep our freedoms.

And when those restrictions are not sufficient, mission creep sets in. The most famous example is our out-of-control Human Rights Commissions. Originally these tribunals were set out to prevent discrimination – things like, denying a person a job because they are black, or throwing a person out of their apartment because you found out they are Catholic – but, over time, these outfits have steadily expanded and morphed the human rights statutes out of all recognition, until we have arrived at the situation where HRCs can arbitrarily punish any speech they don’t like and impose any penalties they feel like, no matter how unusual they may be (such as a lifetime ban on expressing certain views even in private, in one case). If they aren’t the thought police, I don’t know what is.

For an example closer to the smoke detector issue, consider the case of private businesses on St. Clair West who expressed opposition to the streetcar right-of-way that David Miller was hell bent on building. My friend, who lives out that way, invited me to an anti-right-of-way demonstration. A few days before the event, all the businesses along St Clair West sported SOS (Save Our St. Clair) signs on their windows. But by the time the demonstration took place, all the businesses that serve or sell food had removed their SOS signs even though all the other stores along St. Clair had kept their posters. In other words, every business that is subject to health inspections by the city became curiously silent. 

Hmmmmm.

Why is Everyone Gunning for Toronto Mayoralty Candidate Rocco Rossi?

It started with George Smitherman stealing a couple of big planks from Rossi's platform by announcing that he'd consider a review of contracting out city services too.  The Toronto Star gave Smitherman a nice splash on their website for this, complete with a photograph of George in front of a streetcar, which speaks volumes about the Star's choice for mayor since they didn't give Rossi half as much space or a photo when he announced that platform two weeks earlier.

But don't be fooled by Smitherman: he said he'd CONSIDER a review about contracting out, and since he has union support I can guess how that review will go.  Rossi said he's going to contract out all the services he can, as well as selling off every non-essential city asset to pay down Miller's multi-billion dollar debt.

Last week came the second punch at Rossi from lame-duck Mayor David Miller.  He breathlessly called a news conference, hinting at a BIG announcement, and then declared that the city had a unexpected hugh surplus of $100 million dollars so that they would only have to raise property taxes just under 3% instead of the previously announced 4%

This boggles the mind because it's proof that all winter Miller was totally clueless as to the state of the city's finances, otherwise why would he have announced last month that the city could expect a 4% property tax hike and a slew of new service charges and program cuts?  All because of a predicted deficit in this year's budget.

But the press conference did give Miller an opportunity to jab at Rossi, stating that there was clearly no need now to sell off city assets or contract out.  The city's finances were just fine.  Joe Pantalone, Miller's deputy mayor and Rossi's competitor for Miller's job, stood close beside his boss for this announcement.

Miller's also very coy about how this money was found.  His budget chief talked about greater than expected revenues from the car tax and the land transfer tax.  The latter I could believe, because who can predict real estate, but cars--that's another thing.  I'm willing to bet that the Ministry of Transport can tell you exactly how many vehicles are registered in Ontario today.  It' not a big stretch to assume that most car owners will renew their registrations when they expire.  We're not exactly living in the dirty 30s here, despite the media hype.  So let's see: $60/car times the number of cars...why...my nine year old could give them that answer.  How could that be a surprise?

I've got a guess as to where some of that miraculous $100 million came from: Montreal just announced a $30 million saving on their snow removal budget this winter.  Toronto's snow removal budget was in the neighborhood of $65 million, and given this was the driest winter on record in the big smoke, I'm willing to bet they hardly spent a dime.  It would also explain why they didn't know for sure about this money last month but they do now.

It also means that Miller's promise that this surplus will continue into next year relies on global warming accelerating to temperatures only possible in Al Gore's  dreams.

But how Rossi really became a target of Miller's ire was his announcement that he would call a halt to Transit City--Miller's legacy, his car-blocking baby!  Rossi's concern is because the cost of St. Clair's streetcar Right-of-Way ballooned from the projected $30,000,000 to a stunning $115,000,000, and it's not finished.  It seems like a good indicator that the billions of dollars of streetcar Right-of-Way projects to block Sheppard, Don Mills, Eglinton and Lakeshore West on the drawing board right now will climb to the ten's of billions.

But the anti-car left at city hall desperately want those streetcar Right-of-Ways, and that's why Rossi's voice of reason has made him their main target.

Mike Downtown

Germany vs. Greece: the implosion of the European welfare state

What makes the financial crisis in Greece significant is that the causes underlying it are present in all modern welfare states. Demographic decline, a large cohort of baby boomers entering retirement age and generous middle class entitlements, that are politically almost impossible to remove except in extreme crisis, exist in Europe, North America and the Pacific rim. It just happened first in Greece because all of these causes are stronger there than elsewhere.

Which makes the current spat between Greece and Germany so entertaining. The Greek crisis is threatening the Euro, which Germany funds. But the German voters have had it up to here with Germany propping up other countries. As a result, a German newspaper Bild has told Greeks to get up earlier and work harder. And German MP’s are telling the Greeks to sell some of their islands. The best part is that all of this is not being said by some unilateralist Texas cowboy in Washington but by their fellow Euroweenies.

 All kidding aside, this is a positive development. Though the Germans have all the same vices – principally overly generous pensions and too few children to pay the bills when they come due – they nevertheless feel free to lecture the Greeks on austerity merely because the negative consequences of their vices haven’t become apparent yet. While this makes then hypocrites, it also means the Germans are taking pride in being more responsible and more frugal. By making these values German values, it will help them when the painful time arrives when Germans must tighten their belts, work longer and have more children.