cannuck

Sorry I missed that part. It is not dividends one needs to tax, it is speculative gain. Dividends are merely the distribution of profit to shareholders, but it is HOW the profit is made that matters. A speculative gain creates no wealth and should be taxed IMHO 99% on day one, 95% in year one, and decreasing 5% a year until at nominal tax rate of all earnings. Profits made from productive endeavor are what create wealth and what casino capitalism eschews. The world of finance owns the world of business, and the result is you have finance employees running companies for the purpose of making a gain on market value to cash in. THAT is why you get such poor quality product and service along with ridiculous price.

I did mean the economy of the country, but that may well extend to government as well. The culture of many Asian nations (certainly not all) is to work towards greater success and that extends into productivity. Singapore certainly fits that mold. In our culture of Casino Capitalism, we no longer honour productivity, but worship accumulation of money. Industrialists and entrepreneurship built the North American economy, but finance and speculation are destroying it. We now reward the least productive among us the most.

Dangling your johnson in the water and waiting for a lobster to grab it is a hell of a lot different from setting traps from a powerboat. The Limeys wrote these treaties to prevent aboriginal interference with their rape of the resources of the country - but to be fair, they wrote these treaties when the concept of ANY kind of resource management was never considered. Where Canadian law fall apart is establishing the priority of Federal domain over truly idiotic treaties written by a different country with a different agenda in a different century.

1. Russia IS such a threat. Putin needs to perfect his Joe Stalin profile by "making Russia great again". That inevitably means more of a military presence. Also, he uses same to keep export markets for Russian energy (pretty much what runs the economy) and foreign policy in the former buffer states. NATO is stunningly blind to this threat (or stunningly complicit out of pure ignorance). 2. The US could be a lot less broke if it stopped handing 1/2 of all sick care costs to lawyers, insurers and "prophylactic" medicine needed to establish LLL checkpoints (i.e. Legal Liability Lottery - one of the top problems of the US economy). Medicine is a social service, not a business. 3. Canada remains so due to a string of leaders with no balls, capped off the the current one who adds no brains to the list. 4. It has the rallying cry of the looney left and our stumbling attempt at nationalism for decades. Few countries now or in the past have had such close economic, defense and cultural relationships. Canada being the obvious minor partner should get a bit of a pass for whining a bit to try to preserve our identity. That and trying to keep from being screwed over in trade agreements.

Ah...I agree the "right wing" de facto is somewhat as you say. My argument is that the right side of the French Parliament - as well as Conservative/conservative parties in democracies around the world are anything but Pinochets or Putins. The track record of the Castros, Maduros, Putins, Lenins, Stalins, Mao, etc. is to use socialism as the platform to establish authoritarian socialism - all at the cost or freedom to the people. What the Western political looney left calls "right wing" believes in individual rights and freedoms in a more libertarian sense, not authoritarianism. The reason the Nazis had to privative is no different from why Saskatchewan and Manitoba did: socialism as a business model simply doesn't work. That does not change the FACT that the Nazi movement began with (and you will note Hitler INSISTED the programme was never to change) being a socialist worker's party. From the perspective of freedom and individual rights, it is not a "left / right" issue, but very much an authoritarian vs. democratic forms of government. You will note as well that it is our current Prime Mistake that is leading Canada away from democratic rule and towards authoritarianism granting special privilege to "Liberal friendly" companies and racially identified groups within to have many advantages and even live outside of the law that applies to the rest of us. It just so happens that such a dividing line fits the "left vs. right" narrative quite well.

It seems you read a history book and take away what you like or can spin and ignore the rest. The Workers National Socialist Party (however it translates) featured at its core things such as the nationalization of all companies - the basics of Marxist socialism (state owning the means of production, as was also written in the Regina Manifesto of your beloved NDP). It was exactly what it's name suggested - a socialist party. It was also run by a total fruitcake - much like pretty much EVERY socialist party - and when you take a whole range of freedoms (you know, those things the RIGHT WING supports) you get what you got. Courtesy of socialism.

If you can't obtain critical mass, you can't have an "explosion". That is the whole point.

Since the cause of environmental damage is mostly human activity, and the world population is what defines the level of damage that is susatinable - and we are obviously WAY past that level now - your proposal has merit. Eugenicists will also agree.

Before nukes can take their logical place as the prime source of electric power, two things have to happen: mass produced, sub-critical mass (pebble bed) reactors (gas cooled, ceramic encased fuel pellets) must be perfected, and/or well as thorium fuel designs (BTW: I think we are using thorium/uranium bundles now).

C19 (sounds like a US military cargo plane doesn't it?) is widely regarded as a respiratory infection, but in fact can have severe cardio, vascular, neurological and even renal consequences, The virus expresses itself by attaching to the ACE2 protein, and this presents the path for these other infections to establish anywhere ACE2 plays a significant role in the body. We just got a call from one of our largest/best customers to come down to our Chicago office for November and do some work. This year is the first time in my life I have ever turned down a contract, but this last call will add yet another to the list. I am glad to get on a stump and pound my chest here in the relative safety of SK, but I am not willing to risk the odds of working in a hotspot area. We can isolate on the job, no problem at all. It is food and accommodations that become the problem. That and my travel medical insurance that covers pretty much anything anywhere is no longer valid out of country for SARS Cov-2 events.

Seagrams is built upon criminal activity. Bronfmanns were notorious rum runners (as it happens sharing that attribute with Joe Kennedy). Bombardier has been so deep into the business of beneficiary of political influence, I think you could rack up a few hundred criminal charges without too much difficulty.

Liberals have been neck deep in patronage and affiliation with outright criminal organizations (Bombardier, SNC, Seargrams, etc.) for nearly a century. But the public just plain tolerates it out of sheer ignorance I suppose.

All I can say is the behind closed doors, it has been mentioned as something far over $2 Bn.

More than $2Bn cash to the media buys a LOT of teflon.

Scholl's airplanes were so heavily modified, they were referred to as "Super Chipmunks" (IIRC by Art himself). I think he personally held a bunch of STCs for those mods. I was inspired by a few aerobatic pilots, including one who revived the inverted ribbon cut (about 45 years ago) who was an aquaintance and work mate (actually, my boss's boss). Thus, my first airplane was an AA-1 that...well, I can't write any of that stuff in a public forum, but it was one strong and capable little airplane. 3NMs (Expediters) were actually fairly common in RCAF days, but sadly did not have the C45 cargo door. It was a very interesting airplane to own and fly, lived up to all of what it looked to be when I was 12. Have spent a lot of museum time with SR71, but sadly have never had the pleasure of seeing one fly. One co-worker was the RCAF acceptance test pilot for the F104 programme, and actually taught the X15 guys "how to fly" as he was the only person in history to successfully dead stick a 104...not once, but TWICE!!!!! As a result, he was asked to do that instructing in a tandem 104. Still fly with one of his squadron mates, who is now the highest time pilot in Canada (well over 47,000 hours and counting). I have heard an awful lot about 104s from these two guys, and only read about the 71 - but if there was ever a "normal" airplane that even begins to approach the magic of the Blackbird, it is the 104. BTW: if you ever doubt the sheer genius of Kelly Johnson and his band of skunks, take a look at the shape of the wing leading edge on a 71 and then Concorde (there are one of each on the carrier on the East River in NYC). You know which one came first by at lest a decade!

Mine was a 3NM. Funny, but when I was a wee kid, I was introduced to general aviation by the pilot and engineer that kept a D18S for local construction magnate. They would show a couple of 12 year old kids all over a huge hangar strewn with airplane bits (DHC-1s and 4 x P51Ds being assembled by a few yanks) and answer any question with patience and in great detail. Got me into the front seat of a J3 every weekend for the princely sum of 100 small coke bottles (which I cashed in at 2 cents each). Many years later when I was an actual student pilot, I was helping a C-130 crew chief build up a battery pack to boost their bird at yet another BCATP field - only to discover that he was one of the pilots of the P51s flown out that next spring ('62 IIRC). Didn't even think about that bright red D18 when I bought my 3NM, but the first time I walked up the the chromed pushrod tubes and polished prop dome it all came rushing back. About that time, I was swimming in Lake Ontario near The Outlet (Prince Edward County) and a USAF Albatross got stranded on a sand bar. The loaded the RATO bottles and blew it off the bar with sheer brute force. The sound, the sites, the experience will stay with me until my last breath. BTW as a result, my other boyhood R985 dream (that will probably go unrealized) is having a Goose of my own - dead stock.

Amazing how the fickle operation of Casino Capitalism works. With all of the hype and spin the looney left media puts on eco-nonsense and anti-carbon, those who have been playing the board and betting on a "sure thing" or two are getting walloped if they played Exxon: https://www.ft.com/content/39a70458-d4d1-4a6e-aca6-1d5670bade11 If "markets" reflect anything (other than the musings of the "analysts" who are used to jerk the prices around according to the flavour of the booze and drugs at their social interactions the night before) it sure as hell isn't related to reality. Yes, the demand for oil during Wuhan Virus times is dramatically down due to reduced travel, but the idea that a handfull of wind generators is going to replace the entire petroleum infrastructure in the foreseeable future is total nonsense. Sadly, Exxon is what I would consider a "blue chip" since price-to-book has remained very stable and "reasonable", so few trade it for speculative purposes, but hold it for the dividend (which, IMHO is what the entire equities market SHOUD be about). https://ycharts.com/companies/XOM/price_to_book_value NextEra is not really goofy, but much more of a speculative play https://ycharts.com/companies/NEE/price_to_book_value While NEE is at 3.71, have a look at a genuine speculative play and try to understand how playing at the casino has defunded real investment and hobbled our economies: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSLA/tesla/price-book#:~:text=The current price to book,October 02%2C 2020 is 36.07. Money going into bets on the future of Tesla should be used to invest in real business on Main Street, but with the promise of windfall profits from speculating, it is instead thrown at the roulette wheel of equity trades with about the same chances of beating the house as you will get in Vegas. Our failure to tax speculative gain, and our blind ignorance of the problems of corporate governance of publicly traded companies is disgusting. Here is a snapshot of how even a relatively small company can and DID behave at the expense of regular shareholders and great benefit to the officers, directors and their friends outside and inside: https://www.portandterminal.com/how-a-texas-shale-suppliers-founders-made-fortunes-as-the-firm-failed/

DOP: Thanks for the B-47 inspiration. I have largely forgotten this airplane, as I usually fixate on the B-36 (huge R-4360 fan since I used to own & fly a pair of R-985s). The amount of maintenance required for these airplanes (and generally ALL designs from the mid-30s into the late '60s) is phenomenal. Also, to be able to operate these things pilots had to be intimately familiar with the mechanical systems and fully in tune or they couldn't get anything near the performance, utility and safety out of them that was possible. That is why older pilots scoff at the 737 Max crashes where the total lack of airmanship displayed heavily contributed to the outcome in both Ethiopia and Indonesia.

Government can and does indeed control the economy. You have already pointed out one component: taxation (THE most powerful influence to human financial decisions), but far beyond that are interest rates and above all rules, regulations and enforcement. These are all and SHOULD be the realm of what government does - but not to try to BE the economy. That is where our model fails miserably. Simply put: the business of government should be to GOVERN (i.e. legislate, regulate and enforce) to provide a level playing field for capital to be employed. Where governments around the world have failed their citizens is allowing business to actually control things such as interest rates, policy and enforcement. We have all seen to total failure not of capitalism, but of what I prefer to call "Casino Capitalism" whereby Wall Street and Bay Street influence complete control over government to allow capital to be employed not for the creation of wealth (which IS capitalism) but for the re-distribution of wealth while adding no value (i.e. Casino Capitalism - trading equities, commodities and worst of all "synthetic instrumest" i.e. derivatives and the like). By allowing finance to control government we get the worst of both. This is why capitalism needs government - REPRESENTATIVE government - to protect its citizens and its economy. Instead, we have "Rule-by-special-interest" that rewards its free hand by staying hands off of the highly interventionist activities of government attempting to do social engineering, pick winners and losers in the economy and even participate directly in the economy.

Or could it be the fact that they are far more productive? In reality I suspect a combination of both.

Until the Yanks figure out that sick care is a social service and not a business, it really doesn't matter WHAT they do. As it stands: more than half of what they spend goes into the hands of insurance companies and lawyers, not to mention a lot of "profylactic care" that is solely to mitigate lawsuits.

I would like to see the whole world move sick care the hell out of politics, but since the media is so desperate for stories, they turn it into a stump for politicians, thus political flavouring of all response, policy, etc. Being a member of the 70+ club, what Canada does, but far more to the point what SK does has a direct effect upon me. Living in a place with a clear majority has freed up the SK government to just do what it sees makes sense, and as a result our numbers here are fairly impressive (as in impressively good). Worldwide, the Wuhan Virus is on track to have about the same level of fatalities as driving a car. I am by not likely to stop driving because of that (an activity that also has a risk factor directly related to age as it happens) but by the same token, I am not about to start driving drunk at high speed without a seatbelt either. While the national politics is of course important for us all to see and understand, it is the geo-political undertones that really make for some interesting observations and speculation. While we can politically "blame" China for this (and other) corona virus development - both "natural" and implied "man-made" - the political difference in how countries are organized and managed - just as we are seeing interprovincially on a smaller scale in Canada - clearly make for very different outcomes from the same pandemic. I bring this up because China has a vaccine that it is prepared to sell internationally. The politics and culture of China allow for heavy-handed, fast tracked management of the population, but also the economy and as it happens research and development. As a result, no surprise they are first past the post with a vaccine (not sure when this will be announced so I can't link to anything yet - but it is a done deal). Our "Trumpified" attitude about China (which I happen to endorse) will possibly put our government in the position of having to choose between a "made-in-Canada" or "trusted ally" developed and tested vaccine and one now (or very soon) available from the elephant our neighbours put in the corner of the room. Will the Little Tur...uh...er...TRUdeau be able to trade immediate response for Canadian lives to wiggle around in the corner Trump has put him in? Will we have to send Ms. Meng home to be able to GET such a vaccine? I will open my bag of popcorn twists (made in Canada...MB to be exact) and watch from our relatively safe (have one kid teaching and our grandchildren are hear every day - so a "high risk" status but with our provincial record of testing, contact tracing and general good behaviour, something I am comfortable to do) and watch this next issue unfold.

While it is very true that we have an expensive geo-political landscape to negotiate in order to provide wireless service, I seem to remember that there was once a direct line to the PMO through Chretien's son. I am sure that still exists and is being exercised regularly. From a partisan perspective: just remember who let Wind in without the CRTC BS and dramatically dropped cell phone costs across Canada - and that same massive drop in revenue did not seem to bankrupt a single provider.

Which is of course totally bullshit. A corporation does not exist without a human at its helm and its defacto embodiment is its board of directors. In the case of GG, it is the GG who is the mind, body and soul of the body corporate.

I put the blame for this squarely on Harper. He had adequate time and a mandate wherein he should have dismantled the communist broadcasting corp. Now, since MH is about to loose his cool, I de-capitalized the name. After all: it IS a state owned broadcast organization that spews endless BS on behalf of ONLY one brand of political ideology. The phrase is appropriately descriptive.