Tuesday June 21, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday June 21, 2022

Freeland defends budget after Scotiabank accuses feds of ‘doing nothing’ on inflation

A cut in planned government spending could help tame rampant inflation and reduce pressure on the Bank of Canada to hike interest rates, according to a report from Scotiabank.

June 17, 2022

The report from the bank’s chief economist Jean-Francois Perrault and modelling director René Lalonde claims that Canadian fiscal policymakers are “doing nothing of any significance to slow inflation at the moment.”

The authors argue that cutting government spending will take some of the burden to cool inflation off of the Bank of Canada and the private sector.

Scotiabank’s analysis came as Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland is met with the head of the U.S. Treasury Janet Yellen in Toronto on Monday to discuss cooperation between the nations and the global inflation concerns.

January 27, 2022

The report cites the Bank of Canada’s renewed mandate from December of last year, which said tackling inflation is a “joint responsibility” between the feds and the central bank.

While the war in Ukraine and ongoing supply chain pains tied to the COVID-19 recovery have been cited as major causes of higher-than-expected inflation so far in 2022, Perrault told Global News in an interview Monday that prices were on the rise before Russia’s invasion.

That was tied to stimulating fiscal policies from governments around the world, which sought to protect households from the pandemic’s downturns, he said.

Though he said efforts to trim the government’s deficit in the spring’s federal budget were “going in the right direction,” Perrault said the latest Liberal spending plan is still contributing to the economy and fuelling demand.

May 10, 2022

“In normal circumstances, that’s fine. The challenge in the current circumstance is we have inflation that is a huge issue from the perspective of Canadians. It’s well outside what the Bank of Canada wants. It’s exceptional, there’s no question about it,” he said.

In this context, he said he believes the Bank of Canada “could benefit from a little help” in the form of cooling government spending.

Scotiabank projects that if the feds plan to increase their spending 2.5 per cent by the end of 2024, instead of today’s planned 4.8 per cent increase, the Bank of Canada could top out its interest rate hike cycle at 2.25 per cent, 75 basis points lower than where Scotiabank forecasts rates will hit by the end of this year.

But Freeland, speaking alongside Yellen on Monday afternoon, said she felt the feds’ latest budget does go far enough to limit government spending.

She said the rate of fiscal consolidation — the rate at which Canada is paying down its debts — is tied for the fastest in the G7, on par with the United States.

While Freeland reiterated that tamping down inflation is “chiefly the job” of the Bank of Canada, she said her 2022 spending plan was already a “very fiscally responsible budget.” (Global News) 

June 14, 2022

Meanwhile, Mr. Poilievre made headlines when he praised the controversial digital-money system. It was the answer for Canadians who wanted to “opt out of inflation,” he claimed. After all, he was a bitcoin investor himself.

The presumptive favourite to win the CPC leadership has been much quieter about cryptocurrency these days.

Perhaps it’s because the crypto world is imploding, just as Warren Buffett and his partner, Charlie Munger, had suggested it might. Two of the history’s greatest and most profitable investors have been down on bitcoin and the cryptocurrency industry almost from its inception. Mr. Buffett famously said he wouldn’t pay US$25 for all the bitcoin in the world. Mr. Munger was even more condemning, saying that in his life he tried to avoid doing anything that was evil, stupid and made him look bad in comparison to others: “Bitcoin does all three,” he said. (Continued: The Globe & Mail) 

 

Saturday June 18, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday June 18, 2022

Hence, Mike Pence

The fate of a sycophant is never a happy one.

July 21, 2020

At first, you think that fawning over the boss is a good way to move forward. But when you are dealing with a narcissist — and narcissists are the ones who like to be surrounded by sycophants — you can never be unctuous enough.

Narcissists are Grand Canyons of need. The more they are flattered, the more their appetite for flattery grows.

That is the hard, almost fatal, lesson Pence learned on Jan. 6, when he finally stood up to Donald Trump after Trump asked for one teensy favor: Help destroy American democracy and all we stand for.

Two new photos shown at a hearing of the House committee investigating Jan. 6 tell a shocking story — one of the most incredible in our nation’s history.

August 15, 2017

In one, Karen Pence is protectively pulling a gold-fringed curtain shut in the vice president’s ceremonial office in the Capitol, off the Senate floor, as Pence — sitting beneath a large gilt mirror — stares off into space, probably wondering where it all went wrong.

We learned this week that when the vice president fled down the stairs, followed by an Air Force officer carrying the nuclear launch codes, the marauding mob was a few feet from him.

In a second picture, taken after Pence was brought to a secure location in an underground garage, his daughter Charlotte is anxiously watching him. He is holding a phone to his ear as he stares at another phone showing a video of Trump professing love for the crowd, which included some who carried baseball bats and zip ties and chanted “Hang Mike Pence!”

July 18, 2016

In the early afternoon, as the crowd tore down barricades and fought police, White House staffers worried things were “getting out of hand,” as Sarah Matthews, a Trump aide, testified.

They thought that the president needed to tweet something immediately. At 2:24 p.m., they got a notification that the president had indeed tweeted. But it was not the calming tweet they had hoped for; it was one designed to drive the rioters into a frenzy.

“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify,” Trump tweeted. “USA demands the truth!”

As Matthews recalled in her deposition, “The situation was already bad, and so it felt like he was pouring gasoline on the fire by tweeting that.”

Trump was still steaming from the contentious morning phone call when he failed to persuade the vice president to reject some of the states’ electors so they could be replaced with fake electors who supported Trump. He had railed at Pence with emasculating epithets.

January 20, 2017

As Trump recalled in a speech on Friday in Nashville, “I said to Mike, ‘If you do this, you can be Thomas Jefferson.’ And then, after it all went down, I looked at him one day and said, ‘I hate to say this, but you’re no Thomas Jefferson.’”

In the same speech, Trump had another line that was strikingly delusional, even for him. “For the radical left,” he said, “politics has become their religion. It has warped their sense of right and wrong. They don’t have a sense of right and wrong, true and false, good and evil.”

February 8, 2022

Trump sparked the mob to seek vengeance against Pence the same way Henry II sparked a crew to murder Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury, in 1170. According to legend, after Becket defied Henry by excommunicating bishops supportive of the king, Henry muttered something to the effect of, “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?” Four knights immediately rode to Canterbury Cathedral and sliced up Becket.

The line became a famous example of directing loyalists with indirection, cloaking an order as a wish. Who will rid me of this meddlesome vice president?

A Times video, showing how the Proud Boys breached the Capitol, underscored that within the confederacy of dunces, there was an actual organized conspiracy. The group began plotting even before the election to take up arms for Trump. When Trump barked “Stand back and stand by” about the Proud Boys during his debate with Joe Biden, the Proud Boys felt as though they had received a directive, like Henry’s knights.

The Bengal Levee, by James Gillray | The Marquess Cornwallis (1738-1803) was made British Governor-General of India in 1786 and a Marquess in 1792. He held a weekly levee at Government House, making a point of speaking to all those who attended. Here Cornwallis is standing in the inner room on the right, his right hand on his breast and his left in the pocket of his breeches, awaiting chat time with a following of sycophants. Not far off from the current parade of Republicans who gather for meet and greets at Mar-a-Lago.

With each hearing, it becomes clearer that Trump has no plausible deniability. He put the lives of the vice president and his family at risk, as well as the lives of lawmakers, by sending a crowd, stewing in lies, into a frenzy.

Pence did not have the power to do what Trump wanted, and it’s good that he resisted the insane, illegal and unconstitutional plan of the narcissist in the Oval. But Pence still wants it both ways. He has steered clear of the committee. He wants to become president by staying on the good side of Trump supporters, but they’re never going to forgive him.

At the end of the day of infamy, John Eastman, the nutty lawyer trying to help Trump overturn the election, sent an email imploring Pence to adjourn the congressional certification so sympathetic state legislators could help with Trump’s fairy tale of a rigged election.

When Greg Jacob, Pence’s counsel, showed the email to the vice president, Pence said, “That’s rubber room stuff.”

The fate of a sycophant is never a happy one. (Maureen Dowd – The New York Times) 

Letter to the Editor, The Hamilton Spectator, Thursday June 23, 2022 

Pence did well

Letter to the editor

I really do appreciate Mr. MacKay’s daily offerings filled with wit, insight and hilarious satire, whether I agree with his message or not. I do however take exception with the depiction of Vice President Mike Pence as subservient lap dog to a delusional, narcissistic sociopath, his boss. Mike Pence displayed real courage, honour and dignity in the face of unpredictable violent behaviour and refused to comply with that megalomaniac’s demand to circumvent the peaceful transition of power. Whether you agree with his politics or not, when offered an escape from danger, Mike Pence refused, checking on the safety of staff instead, during perhaps one of the most dangerous moments in American history.

To quote the great Rudyard Kipling, “ if you can keep your head while all about you are loosing theirs and blaming it on you … yours is the world and all that’s in it And, which is more, you’ll be a man my son.” You did good Mike.

Claudio D’Amato, Stoney Creek

 

 

 

Friday June 17, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday June 17, 2022

Chrystia Freeland can do more to fight inflation

Canada’s annual inflation rate currently stands at 6.8 per cent — the highest since January 1991. This means the loonies in your pocket are losing nearly seven per cent of their purchasing power every 12 months.

May 10, 2022

With each passing day, it seems more like Canada has slipped out of the COVID-19 fire only to tumble into an inflationary frying pan. And with each passing day, millions of Canadians who were shepherded through the worst health crisis in a century by a responsive federal government are increasingly looking to the same government to spare them from economic disaster.

Those people received some, but only some, reassurance this is happening from federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland on Thursday. In a speech to Toronto’s Empire Club, the deputy prime minister revealed how the federal Liberals intend to collar, if not slay, the inflationary dragon. Considering this was Freeland’s first economic update since April’s budget and considering the costs of food, gasoline and a host of other consumer goods have only soared higher since then, her speech was both timely and necessary. But considering the almost total absence of new measures directly aimed at fighting inflation in her presentation, what Freeland said should represent her government’s starting point, not its finishing line. We’ve heard the words. We need more action.

Canada’s annual inflation rate currently stands at 6.8 per cent — the highest since January 1991. This means the loonies in your pocket are losing nearly seven per cent of their purchasing power every 12 months. It means a Canadian earning a median income of $55,700 a year potentially faces an annual inflationary loss of $3,787.60. Thankfully, for many low-income Canadians, some help is coming.

April 8, 2022

As Freeland explained, Ottawa has earmarked $8.9 billion to boost supports for people receiving Old Age Security, the Canada Child Benefit, the Canada Workers Benefit as well as the Canada Housing Benefit. That money will definitely make life more affordable for many people currently struggling to pay their bills and put food on the table. But it’s not indexed to match future increases in inflation. And virtually all of that money was committed in the last two federal budgets. It’s not new ammunition aimed at inflation.

On that front, Freeland offered precious little. The big guns in this fight are being fired by the Bank of Canada. The interest hikes it has introduced so far this year as well as the ones on the way will rein some of the demand driving inflation by making borrowing more expensive. It is a crude, blunt weapon. But it works, as evidenced by the recent cooling of the country’s overheated housing market. Freeland has vowed to respect the Bank of Canada’s efforts and not interfere with it with her government’s fiscal policy.

On that count, she’s correct. At its heart, inflation is a problem of too much money chasing too few goods. The Liberals can’t spend Canada out of inflation. Pumping new money into the economy, putting more money into everyone’s wallets today will drive the inflation rate higher tomorrow — to the point it is eventually uncontrollable and living standards plummet. That’s why the government is right to reject the demands of some federal Conservatives to cut the Goods and Service Tax or carbon tax.

April 1, 2022

To be fair to Freeland, inflation is for the most part a widespread, complex global problem — not one unique to Canada. For more than two years, the pandemic has repeatedly snarled supply chains and made it harder for consumers and businesses everywhere to buy what they needed. Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine further exacerbated the situation by disrupting shipments of oil, natural gas and, most frighteningly of all, food. Freeland can try to shield Canada in some ways from these storms; she can’t stop them.

But rehashing old budgetary commitments or trying to take credit for previously announced plans to train more workers aren’t the specific answers we need for the inflation conundrum. The government should use its considerable leverage to clear some of those supply chain hurdles. One suggestion we haven’t heard but deserves consideration would be to reduce the interprovincial trade barriers that continue to be a drag on our economy. If successful, such an initiative could offer relief to consumers and businesses without driving up the inflation rate. In addition, the Liberals should continue to hold the line on new spending and, if it is deemed necessary, confine it to a targeted segment of the population — those most vulnerable and in greatest need. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

Thursday June 16, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday June 16, 2022

Putin has weaponized food. The global death toll could be staggering

Ukraine has long forged a reputation as the planet’s bread basket.

May 14, 2022

Before being invaded by Russia in February, it exported 4.5 million tonnes of agricultural produce through its ports each month, including 12 per cent of the world’s wheat, 15 per cent of its corn and 50 per cent of its sunflower oil. It’s capable of feeding 400 million people every year, not including its own population.

Not long ago, Ukraine exported up to six million tonnes of grain per month. Today, that figure is only 1.5 million.

The reason: Russia’s naval blockade of Black Sea ports makes it impossible for Ukraine to sell its agricultural products abroad. Meantime, vast swaths of farmland have either been taken over by Russian occupiers or been littered with mines, rendering the land useless. Ukrainian officials now estimate there are 25 million tonnes of grain stuck in storehouses. By September, it’s estimated that tens of millions of tonnes of grain will be entombed inside Ukraine and will likely rot.

“For people around the world, the war, together with the other crises, is threatening to unleash an unprecedented wave of hunger and destitution, leaving social and economic chaos in its wake,” says United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

April 12, 2022

The UN estimates that the war could move nearly 50 million people in several countries across Africa, Asia and the Middle East into famine or famine-like conditions because of its horrific impact on supply and prices.

And this is all a very calculated act by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Mr. Putin has weaponized food and is now blackmailing the world with it. He has said he would end the Black Sea blockade if the West drops its sanctions. Of course, even as he says this he knows it’s a non-starter. Dropping those sanctions would only help fill Russia’s financial coffers and allow it to move even more aggressively into Ukraine.

Timothy Snyder, a history professor at Yale University, believes Mr. Putin is banking on food shortages to ignite riots in many countries. It could lead to an exodus of starving refugees in the direction of Europe, creating instability and chaos.

This will put even more pressure on the West to drop the sanctions and broker a ceasefire agreement in the name of world peace. At this point, Mr. Putin would likely take whatever territorial gains he’s made in Ukraine and call it a day.

It’s pure evil, but hardly original.

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin manufactured a famine in Ukraine in 1932, in an attempt, some believe, to stamp out a nascent independence movement. Upwards of five million Ukrainians starved to death in an event remembered today as Holodomor, or the Terror Famine. In Ukraine, it is considered a genocide. Adolf Hitler, meantime, had plans to redirect Ukrainian grain for the Soviet Union to Germany in the hopes of starving millions of Soviet citizens. (Continued: The Globe & Mail) 

 

Wednesday June 15, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday June 15, 2022

Rudy Giuliani, drunk on conspiracy theories

President Donald Trump, his former aides testified, faced a fateful choice on election night 2020: Heed the best advice of his top political and legal advisers? Or go with the erratic drunk guy?

January 6, 2022

Trump chose Option No. 2.

“President Trump rejected the advice of his campaign experts on election night,” Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) alleged at the start of Monday’s hearing of the House committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, “and instead followed the course recommended by an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani to just claim he won and insist that the vote counting stop, to falsely claim everything was fraudulent.”

A video of Jason Miller, a senior Trump campaign adviser, flashed on the screen above the dais in the Cannon Caucus Room. “The mayor was definitely intoxicated,” Miller testified, but “I do not know his level of intoxication when he spoke with the president.”

What, he wasn’t carrying a Breathalyzer?

July 20, 2021

Whatever his blood alcohol level, Giuliani’s nonsense quotient was over the limit. He was saying, “We won it, they’re stealing it from us,” Miller recounted. And “anyone who didn’t agree with that position was being weak.”

So Trump did as Giuliani instructed: He cried fraud and declared victory.

Giuliani, once America’s Mayor and Time’s Person of the Year, long ago became a national punchline, with his melting hair dye and his post-election news conference at Philadelphia’s Four Seasons Total Landscaping. But thanks to the select committee, we now know that people inside the Trump administration and campaign also thought him preposterous — with one key exception: Trump.

The committee relived some of Giuliani’s most ludicrous claims, sometimes accompanied by footage of his wild-eyed TV appearances. Votes “in garbage cans” and in “shopping baskets” being wheeled in for counting under orders from Frankfurt, Germany. Eight thousand dead people voting in Pennsylvania. A suitcase full of ballots pulled from under a table in Georgia. Votes manipulated via Italy, the Philippines and a deceased communist dictator in Venezuela.

February 26, 2021

In depositions screened by the committee, a veritable parade of Trump advisers testified that they told the president what they thought of such ideas: “Bull—t.” “Completely bogus.” “Silly.” “Completely nuts.” “Crazy.” “Incorrect.” “Debunked.” “Idiotic.”

White House lawyer Eric Herschmann, in his videotaped deposition, wondered aloud whether Giuliani, “at this stage of his life,” had “the same ability to manage things at this level or not.”

Trump campaign lawyer Matt Morgan, in his deposition, spoke about his conversations with outside counsel: “The general consensus was that law firms were not comfortable making the arguments that Rudy Giuliani was making.”

But Trump still sided with Giuliani’s lunacies — which “demoralized” the attorney general, Bill Barr. “I thought, ‘Boy, if he really believes this stuff, he has … become detached from reality.’”

January 8, 2021

Barr worked for Trump for two years before this occurred to him?

Even Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, no profile in courage, testified that he disagreed with Crazy Rudy. Asked in his deposition whether he ever shared with Trump his “perspective” on Giuliani, Kushner paused 10 seconds as he searched for a reply: “Um … I, I guess … [Sigh] … Yes.” Finally, Kushner said he told Trump it was “basically, not the approach I would take if I was you.”

The committee played the deposition of Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign manager, in which he testified that he disassociated himself from Trump’s bogus election-fraud claims. “There were two groups,” he said, “my team and Rudy’s team.” Stepien’s was, he said, “Team Normal.”

But Trump disbanded Team Normal the second week after the election. Instead, he arranged for “Mayor Giuliani to be moved in as the person in charge of the legal side of the campaign, and, for all intents and purposes, the campaign.”

May 14, 2021

A Republican-appointed U.S. attorney from Georgia explained how he chased down the Giuliani allegation that a “black suitcase” stuffed with ballots was the “smoking gun”: It was “actually an official ballot box,” handled correctly.

A former Republican official from Pennsylvania testified about investigating Giuliani’s claim to the state legislature that 8,000 dead people voted. “Not only was there not evidence of 8,000 dead voters voting in Pennsylvania, there wasn’t evidence of eight.”

A supposed 68 percent error rate of Michigan voting machines? Trump Justice Department official Richard Donoghue’s deposition said the actual error rate was 0.0063 percent.

But the debunking of each zany conspiracy theory (“whack-a-mole” was Barr’s description) would only cause Trump to “move to another allegation,” Donoghue testified.

January 31, 2008

And so the “big lie” was born — of no evidence but limitless repetition. Even now, Giuliani is, well, drunk on the idea.

“If you gave me the paper ballots, I could probably turn around each one of these states,” he said to the Jan. 6 committee in his own deposition. “I’d pull out enough that were fraudulent that it would shake the hell out of the country.”

Thanks, Rudy. But Team Abnormal has already done damage enough. (The Washington Post)