You Americans have no Idea...

I don't pretend to know a lot about American politics and readily confess that most of my news on that subject comes from John Stewart.  But here is what I think I know.  The Democrats are like our Liberals here in Canada, and hold the middle-left ground.  The Republicans are like our Conservatives, and hold the middle-right ground.  The Tea Party is a faction within the Republicans holding the far-right ground and are analogous to what Liberal supporters here in Canada THINK the Conservatives stand for.

There is a newspaper clipping that keeps floating to the top of my Facebook feed that claims that many Canadians would love to have President Obama north of the border.  A lot of people seem to think that this was penned by a bona fide journalist, when in fact it is a simple letter to the editor.  There are a great number of points in the first paragraph that show just how good things are in the US because of president Obama.  But this is just a letter from an average citizen.  There's no guarantee of fact-checking.

So I thought I'd look at them point by point.

~ corporate profits are at record highs

Corporate America as a whole always makes a profit, even in the deepest recession.  And these profits continually grow year after year.  So it is not surprising that profits are at a record high.  Unless the country is in a recession, corporate profits will almost always be at record highs.  During the Bush administration (which started just before a small recession), corporate profits grew from $495 billion to $1.409 trillion -- or 185%.  Obama started his administration in the depths of a major recession and corporate profits have grown from a low of $671 billion to $1.842 trillion -- or 174%.  If you discount the ground lost during the recession, profits have only grown by 31% under Obama.

~ country is adding 200,000 jobs per month

This is true.  On average, the US recently has been adding 200,000 new jobs per month.  What this statistic doesn't tell you is that an almost equal number of new workers join the workforce each month.  In June 2014 191,000 new jobs were added, but 194,000 new workers were also added.  The majority of those jobs were part time or minimum wage food service and retail jobs.  Over the course of Bush's administration there were 130,000 jobs per month created.  Over the course of Obama's administration (excluding the 2009 recession year) there have been 131,000 jobs per month created.  Pretty much tells you right there that the president doesn't have much of an impact on job creation.

~ unemployment is below 6%

This is also true.  The current unemployment rate is 5.8%, down from 10% at the height of the recession but still above the 5.3% average unemployment rate that Bush enjoyed throughout his administration.  But wait.  If the number of new workers each month is outnumbering the number of jobs created, why is the unemployment rate still dropping?  Well, that's because the number of people not looking for any work has jumped sharply.  There are .8% more students, 2.9% more people on disability, and 2.6% more people are 'discouraged' workers.  This means they aren't looking for work because they don't believe there is any work for them.  Additionally, the number of people on non-veteran assistance has grown 13%.

~ gasoline prices are falling

True.  Gas prices have fallen from a high of 5.27 US$/gal back in June to 4.39 US$/gal today (November 13, 2014).  But that is still well above its 2.79 US$/gal mark at the beginning of Obama's administration.  The price of gasoline is directly tied to the world price of oil and is not something a government or president controls.

~ US GNP growth is best of OECD countries

This is blatantly false.  For one thing the OECD no longer tracks GNP but instead tracks Gross National Income (GNI) in accordance with SNA93.  The US government also does not track GNP and has used GDP as its primary measure of production since 1991.  US GDP growth is projected to be 3.4% for 2014.  This is behind Canada (3.5%), China (7.1%) and India (6.8%).  The US real GDP rate for 2013 was 4.6%, which ranked them 65th in the world.

~ dollar is at its strongest levels in years

No point in arguing this one.  It's true.  The US Dollar Index is at its highest point in nearly 5 years.

~ stock market is near record highs

In fact, the stock market as of my writing has posted 5 straight days of record highs.

~ there's no inflation

US inflation for the last 12 months has been around 1.7%.  It was as high as 3.0% in 2011 and has not been zero or negative since Oct 2009.  It has not been above 5% since 1990.

~ interest rates are the lowest in 30 years

Interest rates have risen a full point since as recently as 2012.  They were also lower at the beginning of the recession in 2008 and again in 2002.  The strengthening dollar and stock market mentioned above will likely lead to a rise in interest rates with some forecasts seeing it reaching 4.5% by the end of 2015.

~ US oil imports are declining

Indeed, the United State's dependency on foreign oil may drop below 6 million barrels a day by 2016.  This is because domestic oil production is increasing and there is a virtual ban on oil export.

~ US oil production is rapidly increasing

Oil production in the US is definitely on the rise and may hit 9 million barrels a day before the end of the year.  This is thanks almost entirely to newly accessible oil deposits through fracking.  Congratulations.

~ deficit is rapidly declining

The deficit has fallen sharply in the past few years and is expected to fall again next year.  However, later in the coming decade, if current laws on federal taxes and spending remain unchanged, revenues will grow only slightly while spending would increase more rapidly.  Trillion dollar deficits could be back by 2024.

~ the wealthy are still making astonishing amounts of money

I thought liberals tended to frown on this.

~ Obama brought soldiers home from Iraq

A little too early it seems.

~ and killed Osama bin Laden

He did, did he?  It wasn't the years of work by the CIA or the daring raid by Navy SEALs?

NDP 2.0: Nicer, more humane... It's now our policy!

The NDP released their priority resolutions this week.  These are the items that will be discussed and voted on at the policy convention next weekend in Montreal.

There are several resolutions that are non-priority and may not even make it to debate:

• 2 resolutions supporting cooperation with other parties when running candidates in certain ridings
• 1 resolution opposing the same
• 1 resolution calling on Canada to withdraw from a slew of free trade agreements
• 1 resolution supporting assisted suicide
• reduce the Canadian work week to 32 hours without loss of pay
• raise minimum wage to $17.00
• nationalize big oil, the auto industry, and banks and insurance companies

Some of the priority resolutions are real eye-openers though:

• renaming the title of the party's National Director back to Federal Secretary

Because when you're pandering to separatists in Quebec you never want to use the word 'nation' unless it is immediately followed by the words 'of du Québec'.

• Legislation requiring unions to publicly disclose their finances should be repealed.

Because, hey, unions are their bread and butter.  And even though 4.3 million Canadians are forced to give money to labour unions doesn't mean they should know how that money is spent.

• the NDP support the adoption of a 'Robin Hood Tax', levying a 0.05% tax on all financial transactions

Doesn't sound like much (1/20th of 1%).  But look at your bank statement at the end of the month.  Mine usually says that $4,000 to $5,000 came in every month, and the same amount went out.  That's $8,000 to $10,000 in 'transactions', or $4.00 to $5.00 an NDP government would grab from you every month.

• The party should adopt a code of conduct to guarantee "equitable and humane" treatment of campaign volunteers by party staff.

Apparently, there is some confusion among NDP federal staff "over whether being nice to volunteers is a job requirement".  What kind of people does the NDP attract?  Who doesn't understand that you should be nice to your fellow human beings?  Who has to be told via an official party policy that volunteers should be treated equitably and humanely?

Bets on which of these resolutions become policy?

The Myth of the Public Sector Wage Gap

In 2008 the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) published a study claiming that federal public employees enjoyed a wage advantage over private sector counterparts of 17.3% -- and as much as 41.7% with benefits included.

The study was widely distributed and commented upon by the media, who published the CFIB's talking points without doing any research into the methodology of the study.

The fact that Treasury Board never once used the study as an argument for wage reduction during contract negotiation should pretty much tell you that the claims are ridiculous.  However, the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) asked an independent economist from the University of Guelph to review the CFIB's study.

His conclusions?  The study's methodology "would not be accepted in a second-year university economics course." Not only that, but "Some of the equations used in the 2008 Wage Watch report,... are simply mathematically incorrect."

In late 2011 the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) published their own study.  Their study used a sample set of over 4 million full-time, full-year employees in both public and private sector positions covering 520 different occupations.

Their results?

The public sector enjoys a premium of 0.5% over the private sector on average salary.  That's about $248.  When you factor in pension and benefits, the gap increases to 4.6%.

However, there are some really interesting numbers that came out of the study.  Women in the public service are paid 4.5% more than in the private sector.  Men in the public sector are actually paid less (-5.3%) on average than men employed in similar occupations in the private sector.  Women are paid more in the public sector because of much stronger pay equity legislation.

When considering average wages by occupation, it becomes apparent that there is greater equality of wages in the public sector.  Average earnings are consistently lower for the higher paid occupations, and consistently higher for the lower paid occupations.  Light duty cleaners make 15.6% more in the public sector than in the private sector, while computer programmers make 9.6% less in the public sector than in the private sector.

The Phantom Menace

According to the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada -- the union that represents the more than 57,000 professionals and scientists in the public service -- 139 employees of Environment Canada have received 'affected' notices.

The union represents 41 different knowledge-based groups, from auditors to museum staff, from health professionals to engineers, from air traffic controllers to (the largest group) IT professionals.

So, of those 139 Environment Canada employees represented by PIPSC (the union of professionals and scientists), how many are actually scientists?  They aren't saying.

But, how many of those 139 employees have been fired to date?  Zero.  That's right, none.

There's your war on environmental science.

NBA to enforce sportsmanship and fair play. How dare they?!

The NBA announced on Wednesday that there is a new rule on the books to prevent flopping.

“Flopping” will be defined as any physical act that appears to have been intended to cause the referees to call a foul on another player.

 The penalty will not be a trip to the foul line for the other team.  It will be far worse.  Well, the first violation will just result in a warning from the league head office.  The second through fifth offenses though will incur penalties ranging from $5K to $30K.  More than 6 violations could result in an increased fine and/or suspension.

So, I think after the first day of regular season NBA games, we'll see warnings for every player in the league (except Kobe, who says "flopping is a chump move").  Then, the office pools will start.  Who will get the first $60K game?  Who will get the first suspension?  How long does Kobe last before getting fined?

But wait!

The NBA players' union said it would file a grievance with the league and an unfair labour practice charge with the US National Labor Relations Board.

Raptor's guard John Lucas III explained it this way: "Any given day, some guy grabs my jersey I’ll sell it like they grabbed my spine outta my body...  You learn (flopping) as a child, and now it’s taken away, so it kind of makes you take away part of your game,"

Sorry John, if you think flopping is part of your 'game', then you aren't an athlete, you're a con artist.

How many of those emails are about penis enlargement?

Shared Services Canada, the agency created last year to tame the federal government's chaotic IT infrastructure, has been given its first marching orders.  Simplify the email!

It is a daunting task!  There are 43 departments under the umbrella of Shared Services Canada.  Between them they use 21 different email systems installed on over 1700 servers.  There are over 640,000 email accounts holding over 950 Terabytes of data!

Wait, how much is that?

Well, if you consider a simple magazine with, say, 5000 characters per page, then just 1 terabyte would be the equivalent of a magazine about 220 million pages thick.  The federal government -- well no, just the 43 departments in the project -- are currently storing 21 trillion pages of email.  That's three times more than all the web data captured to date by the US Library of Congress.

80,000 Job Cuts

That's the number that is being thrown around -- usually in indignant tweets and facebook posts claiming that the Conservatives will cut 80,000 public service jobs.  Even the MSM is quoting this figure as if it is a fait accompli.


The reality is that the number is taken from a quote by Stephen Harper on April 8th, 2011 during the unveiling of the Conservative platform.  He said

"We've got 80,000 public servants retiring over the next few years, we don't need to replace all of them"

That's it.  That's all he said.  The budget tabled by the Conservatives before the election forecast a deficit of $300 million for 2014-2015 without any savings in government spending.  Assuming an average salary of $50,000 (these are people at the end of their careers, so the figures would actually be higher in most cases), that is 6000 jobs.  2% of Canada's 283,000 public servants and we have a balanced budget.  Surely we can manage that without the system going to hell.


The thing that upsets me most (as usual) is the way the MSM is reporting this figure!  TheStar.com published an article last Friday with the following misleading information:

The savings can be achieved through “modest” cuts in government operations and by allowing the federal public service to be reduced by one-third through attrition, Harper said.

Notice there are no quotes around this supposed quote?  This is just a gross paraphrasing of Harper's April 8th statement.


In another part of the article it says:

He says the Conservatives can eliminate Ottawa’s $40-billion annual budget deficit by 2014 rather than 2015 as forecast by Flaherty in March. 

This $40-billion dollar figure has been out of date for almost a year.  It is the estimated deficit from last year's budget.  By the time Flaherty tabled this year's budget, the number was already down to $34-billion, and mid-way through the campaign the government was on target for a $28-billion deficit.  The inflated figure was used in the article to make it seem less likely that the Conservatives could pull off balancing the budget by 2014 without slashing the public service.