MAD SOY DISEASE

MAD SOY DISEASE is attacking soybeans in Brazil, causing yield losses of up to 40 percent, most notably in the states of Mato Grosso, Tocantins and Goias. Speaking of which, MAD AMERICAN DISEASE is attacking Randy Quaid, the most prominent being Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Mel Gibson. Apparently, what the soybeans and Randy Quaid have in common is that they have both been genetically modified.

CANADA AGOG AGAIN!

This week's headline is CANADA AGOG AGAIN!

This time it's the billion plus being spent to host the G8 and G20 summits. It has ever been thus, of course, and not without cause. Half of these people are jokers and all of them are rich enough to pay their own way if they want to see Toronto and its cottage country. On top of that, it seems they are bringing roughly 1000 others each for the ride. It's typically Canadian, of course. Honor us with your visit, PLEASE. I'm sure you'll like us once you meet us. We'll even pay your way. (As well as that of 1000 of your closest friends.)

A billion will be spent on security alone, this compared to the $381 million spent by the Japanese, the $110 million spent by the Scots, the $30 million spent by the English, and - get this - the $18 million (yes, that's right, roughly 1/50,000,000th of Canada's amount) spent by the Americans on their G8 and G20 summits. And, as if that weren't enough, several million will be spent on fake lakes (as if we were Dubai), gazebos, concrete block outhouses and the like. And for what? Apparently the fake lake is to showcase the lakes in Ontario's cottage country, no doubt in the same way that the pyramid in Las Vegas showcases the pyramids of Egypt. The gazebo cost $100,000.00 and is in a vacant lot. It is a 74 kilometer walk from the Deerhurst Resort, site of the summit. On the other hand, the outhouse is only a 20 kilometer walk from the resort, in the off chance that one of the leaders requires an emergency evacuation. Personally, I think the Harper government has the outhouse in Hoping, Alberta in mind. Hoping is long gone, and the only reminder that Hoping even existed is the outhouse. The thinking probably went as follows: in a century or two Toronto and the Deerhurst Resort will be long gone, and the only reminder will be the $274,000.00 Official Prime Minister Harper Outhouse.

In my opinion the money I send every year to Ottawa would be better spent renting the USS Arizona. For one thing, it's already been built. For another, it would be reminiscent of the HMS Prince of Wales, the British battleship on which Churchill and Roosevelt, the leader of the world's premier declining power and the leader of the world's premier rising power respectively, met to plan their strategy against the Axis powers. The HMS Prince of Wales sank that very year, making the USS Arizona even more reminiscent. Of course, there would be much harrumphing, the USS Arizona being sunk in America instead of Canada. But Canada does not now nor has it ever had a battleship, and even if it did it wouldn't have sunk, so a HMCS Right Honourable Stephen Harper would not be a proper metaphor for the sinking world economy.

Actually, when I stop to think about it, perhaps the USS Arizona isn't the best metaphor after all. Perhaps, in keeping with the cheap times we live in, we should build a cardboard - and shrunk - copy of the HMS Prince of Wales. Harper could captain - or admiral - it on his fake lake and invite the world's leaders to sail on it. The 3,000 reporters and the 8,000 hangers-on could pull up their Muskoka chairs to watch their leaders being paddled back and forth by canoe. Of course, the cardboard would have to be waterproofed to keep the replica afloat for the duration of the meeting. Perhaps Harper's ministers could be lowered by rope for the purpose. All in all, you'd have to agree, it would be taxpayers' money well spent.

And keeping with the theme of frugality, this week's "below the fold" story is Uruguay's new president. Apparently he "may be one of the world's poorest sitting leaders." (Which begs the question as to which leaders are sitting and which are standing, but that will have to wait for a future post.) His entire wealth is his 23 year old VW valued at $1,900.00. Now, he's someone I would be willing - in fact, I would be proud - as a Canadian taxpayer to invite to both the G8 and G20 summits.

Alas, Uruguayan President Jose Mujica has yet to be invited.

Treadmill Paradise

This fresh off the wire:
"At one farm in Northern Ireland, cows are giving up green grass in favor of green power. In order to decrease his reliance on fossil fuels for electricity, farmer William Taylor created the Livestock Power Mill, a treadmill that generates power as cows walk on it. It may seem like a kooky idea, but Taylor could really be onto something: According to his calculations, if the world’s 1.3 billion cattle used treadmills for eight hours a day, they could produce six percent of the world’s power."

The mind boggles. Yet again.

For example, there are an estimated 119 million horses in the world. What if they used treadmills for eight hours a day? That would be 0.5 percent of the world's power give or take. And there are an estimated 200 million cats. That would be roughly 0.04 percent. An estimated 2.5 billion dogs would be 0.1 percent. So, starting with Taylor's calculations, domesticated animals could contribute to seven percent of the world's power.

Then, of course, there are human beings. There are an estimated 6.8 billion people in the world. Human beings alone would be more than three percent of the world's power.

People 6.8 billion
Dogs - 2.5 billion
Cows - 1.3 billion
Cats - 200 million
Horses - 119 million

Now, admittedly, these calculations are rough, but - roughly - if we put all the world's people, all the world's cats and dogs, all the world's cows and horses on treadmills we would cut our energy consumption by 10%! Surely that would save us a Gulf of Mexico oil spill or two.

And, of course, that's not all.

What aren't the people of the world doing if they're on treadmills eight hours a day? Well, for one thing, they're not driving, are they? Driving accounts for roughly 30% of the world's energy use. Now, it's true that if 8 hours a day are taken up on the treadmill, 8 hours a day on sleeping and let's say 3 hours a day eating, that still leaves 5 hours a day, but surely, if present day trends are any indication, most if not all of that 5 hours a day would be spent on some sort of sitting and watching exercise, which means that the 10% drop in energy use would be supplemented by an even bigger 28 or 29% thanks to the precipitous drop in driving. In fact, to conserve mental energy, let's just round that out to 30% for a grand total of 40%. I can just see the Gulf of Mexico turning into its former under-polluted self.

And what else would a world of humans on 8 hour a day treadmills entail?

Give up? Well, less shopping. In fact, a lot less shopping. People, after their 8 hours are up, will be lucky to make it home without collapsing in one or another gutter. The LAST thing they'll be thinking about is buying anything that isn't food or water. So all that energy that is used up digging up raw materials for consumer goods, all that energy used to transport those raw materials, all that energy used to transform those raw materials into products, all that energy used to transport those products to the showroom floors and shelves - it will no longer be necessary.

And what else would a world of humans on 8 hour a day treadmills entail?

Well, fewer babies. In fact, a lot fewer babies. At the risk of repeating myself, after their 8 hours a day are up, the LAST thing - well, maybe the next to LAST thing - they'll be thinking about is making another baby. The phrase "I'm too tired" will become a cliche. And what will that mean? A precipitous drop not only in driving but in the number of people even dreaming of driving. Or consuming any form of energy, for that matter.

In fact...

Remember that 10% of the world's power that all the world's humans, cats and dogs, cows and horses can produce just by using a treadmill for 8 hours each day? Well, that may actually be all the power that today's human beings - and cats and dogs, and cows and horses, of course - may need.

In other words, we will have created for ourselves a treadmill paradise. No more peak oil problems; most of the rest of our non-renewable resources can be left in the ground. No more financial system problems; who's going to need to go into debt once their treadmills are bought and paid for? No more global warming problems; how many hydrocarbons are being pumped into the air by walking on a treadmill or by walking home to collapse in bed? Not only will we have ourselves a treadmill paradise; we will have ourselves a sustainable treadmill paradise.

And all because of farmer William Taylor of Northern Ireland.

Are Enron, WorldCom, Madoff, Goldman Sachs and McAllen, Texas Apps on Our Cellphones?

Are Enron, WorldCom, Madoff and Goldman Sachs apps on our cellphones? The answer might surprise you.

Remember Enron? Fortune named Enron "America's Most Innovative Company" for 6 consecutive years, from 1996 to 2001. The 7th consecutive year was not to be, because before "America's Most Innovative Company" had a chance at another year, it was revealed that its financial rise was due in large part to institutionalized, systematic, and creatively planned fraud. Kenneth Lay, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Enron, was touted as a possible Secretary of the Treasury in the Bush administration, but, again unfortunately, before he had a chance to be confirmed he was found guilty of 6 counts of conspiracy and fraud. Fortunately, he died. Jeffrey Skilling, the Chief Operating Officer of Enron, was found guilty of 19 counts of conspiracy, insider trading, making false statements to auditors and fraud. Unfortunately, he lived and went to prison.

Then there was WorldCom. Unfortunately, WorldCom was not named "America's Most Innovative Company" - that spot had already been taken - but its Chief Executive Officer, Bernie Ebbers, was inducted into the Mississippi Business Hall of Fame. Unfortunately, he was subsequently found guilty of fraud, conspiracy and filing false documents; Scott Sullivan, WorldCom's Chief Financial Officer, was found guilty of securities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and filing false statements; David Myers, WorldCom's Controller, was found guilty of securities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and filing false statements; Buford Yates, WorldCom's Accounting Director, was found guilty of conspiracy and fraud charges; and Betty Vinson and Troy Noramnd, accounting managers, were found guilty of conspiracy and securities fraud. Remember them?

So what, you ask? Well, consider this: 3G cellphones started in the 2000s; the Enron and WorldCom scandals broke in the same decade. Do you think that was mere coincidence? More recently, but in the same decade, Bernie Madoff was found guilty of 11 counts of securities fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering, making false statements, perjury, theft from an employee benefit plan, and making false filings with the SEC. And this week Goldman Sachs was indicted on one count of fraud. In other words, just as fraud has exploded, so has the popularity of cellphones.

And least anyone fantasize that Enron, WorldCom, Madoff and Goldman Sachs were just "one off" apps, let me quote William Black, the head of prosecution during the S&L crisis. (Remember the S&L crisis? Which was coincident with 2G cellphones?) Black says the recent financial crisis was caused by massive fraud.

Quote: "Let’s start with the repos. We have known since Enron in 2001 that this is a common scam, in which every major bank that was approached by Enron agreed to help them deceive creditors and investors by doing these kind of transactions. And so what happened? There was a proposal in 2004 to stop it. And the regulatory heads — there was an inter-agency effort — killed it. They came out with something pathetic in 2006, and stalled its implication until 2007, but it’s meaningless. We have known for decades that these are frauds. We have known for a decade how to stop them. All of the major regulatory agencies were complicit in that statement, in destroying it. We have a self-fulfilling policy of regulatory failure. We have the Fed, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, finding that this is three card monty. Well what would you do, as a regulator, if you knew that one of the largest enterprises in the world, when the nation is on the brink of economic collapse, is engaged in fraud, three card monty? Would you continue business as usual? That’s what was done." Unquote.

If you want another, non-financial-crisis example of the fraud, read Atul Gawande's article in The New Yorker, The Cost Conundrum. It profiles McAllen, Texas, which is a border town in Hidalgo County. It has two claims to fame:
1.) It has the lowest household income in the country, and
2.) It has the most expensive health care in the country, except for Miami.

Why, you may ask. It turns out the reason is as simple as the reason for Enron, WorldCom, Madoff and Goldman Sachs. Fraud. Most doctors in McAllen, Texas, according to The New Yorker article, are out to game the system. They are not all that interested in medicine, even less in their patients; they are interested in profit. And they order many more tests and procedures than are necessary to give themselves the profit to which they have become accustomed.

So take your pick: Enron, WorldCom, Madoff, Goldman Sachs, the health care system in America, no doubt many other examples of gaming the system. Yes, you may be outraged. Outrage away! Write your politicians! Storm the Federal Reserve! It won't do you one bit of good, it turns out. (Much to my own surprise.) Why? Again, the answer turns out to be incredibly simple.

IT'S OUR CELLPHONES!

Yes, that's right, our cellphones. (Well, your cellphones, to be exact. I don't have one.) A recent study out of M.I.T. shows that people's moral judgment is adversely affected by the use of cellphones. That's because the part of our brain that deals with moral judgments turns out to be right behind our ear.

In other words, the solution to all this massive fraud, which started in the 1980s with Reagan and Thatcher and 1G cellphones, and which has been gathering strength until this very day with Obama and Harper and 3G cellphones, is:

JUST BAN THE BLOODY CELLPHONES!

Or, to paraphrase the Clinton campaign's James Carville:

IT'S THE BLOODY CELLPHONES, STUPID!

Poor Canada, So Close to P. T. Barnum

Just got back from the hospital, where I went for a tuneup, including two operations. A good time was had by all. A friend of mine says that the hospital is manned by doctors and nurses from a 70s psychiatric hospital in Montreal, similar, apparently, to the kind the Soviets used to house dissidents. Perhaps. Though almost all of the nurses looked as if they were in their 20s and 30s instead of their 50s and 60s. Maybe that was part of the treatment, some kind of hallucinogen cleverly disguised as an anti-biotic.

Anyway, before I was rushed in for my emergency - and perhaps psychiatric - tuneup, I was going to write about Harper and the Conservatives. Unfortunately, the U.S. health care debate was going on at the time, pitting the Forces of Good against the Forces of Evil. It was as if Harper was juggling one ball with less than total success in the centre ring of a three ring circus when Miss America suddenly arrived in one of the side rings dressed in a red, white and blue bikini and juggling 50 fireworks in the process of exploding, 14 live grenades, one sub machine gun in the process of firing and a partridge in a pear tree, all flawlessly and with a smile full of her own teeth.

Speaking of the Forces of Good and Evil, did you know that a recent Harris Poll found that 24% of Republicans believe that Obama is or might be the Anti-Christ? Now I ask you, how can Harper and the Conservatives - or anyone else, for that matter - compete with that? I suppose it's possible that 24% of Liberals believe that Harper is or might be the Anti-Christ - and maybe Environics should do a poll just to make sure - but, somehow, I doubt it.

Which, incidentally, brings me to my latest, and so far the best, solution to the U.S. debt crisis. America can spend another trillion or save another trillion on health care if it wants, it can withdraw its forces from the rest of the world, or not, it doesn't really matter, since it has the payment of all its debts within its grasp. To wit, there is no other country on this good earth that provides the entertainment value of the United States. It just needs to start charging for it.

Tracy

Apparently the town of Tracy, California is now charging $300 for every 911 emergency call. I know many, maybe most, jurisdictions in the States are border-line bankrupt, but charging $300 for every 911 call seems a bit drastic. Perhaps not quite as drastic as another solution I've heard bandied about: taking a page from 18th and 19th Century Britain and dropping American debtors onto Australia by parachute. Imagine if the two solutions were combined. American families without $300 to their name would gather around the kitchen table discussing whether Grandma, who is having a heart attack in the corner by the refrigerator, should be sent to the hospital at the risk of the rest of the family being dropped on a kangaroo or a cane toad. The mind boggles.

If I may be so bold as to suggest other, less drastic solutions. Such as throwing the existing American health care system into the trash bin of history. Not tinkering with it, as Obama has suggested - at a cost of nearly an ADDITIONAL TRILLION dollars - but getting rid of it. And not because it isn't the best health care system on the planet either, but because the United States can no longer afford it. When you're close to bankruptcy, you have to start cutting your expenses. At the very least, the U.S. should adopt one of the second most expensive health care systems on the planet - either France's, Germany's or Canada's - all of which are roughly 5/8ths the cost. That would be almost a TRILLION dollars a year in savings! To paraphrase a long dead Illinois Senator: A trillion here and a trillion there and pretty soon you're talking about real money!

Better yet, why not outsource the U.S. medical system to Cuba?

Another suggestion, and I feel I have to say this in a whisper since the United States is a bought-and-paid-for democracy, why not tax the better off? I understand they're going through a rough patch, but still... Shouldn't they contribute just a bit, if only in a token way, as an example to the rest of hard-working, tax-paying America? Maybe go no further than to reinstate the taxes Bush lifted from the shoulders of the wealthy. That alone would mean almost another TRILLION dollars in added revenue, apparently!

And, speaking of Iraq and Afghanistan, may I be so bold as to make another suggestion: learn to say no. When countries like Iraq and Afghanistan come to Washington asking, begging to be invaded, just say no, to paraphrase a former First Lady. Say sorry, we can't afford to invade ANYBODY anymore, I don't care how many of your women have to wear burkas or how many of your boys have to attend Islamic religious schools. And, guess what, that would be another TRILLION dollars in savings!

So there you are, THREE TRILLION dollars in savings in just three paragraphs! That's a lot of $300 911 phone calls! Money that could be used to save the Grandmas of America, pave the streets in front of their houses and pay off - well, help pay off - the national debt.

Again, the mind boggles. For the Grandmas of America - and Australia - the future could be so bright they'd have to wear shades.

Sarah Palin, Queen of Canada

First of all, I want to thank my good friend Stephanie White. She is the one who persuaded me to write this blog. Although I am sceptical - in fact, more than sceptical - I thought I would give it a go.

When Stephanie's in town, which isn't all that often these days, we go for coffee, usually once a week, and talk. This week we talked about Sarah Palin, the ex-Governor of Alaska. Stephanie had read an article about her in the Globe & Mail and had come to the conclusion that Palin would run for President in 2012, either running as an independent, splitting the vote like Ross Perot in 1992 and handing the election to Barak Obama, or running as the Republican and winning the Presidency. President Palin, I thought, is it anything more than alliterative? But what about the Democrats, Independents and even some Republicans who don't think she's qualified to be President, I asked. Various opinions were batted back and forth, but in the end nothing was decided (it never is), and Stephanie went back to British Columbia.

But that didn't stop me from thinking (it never does). I thought of Palin's famous observation that she could see Russia from her back yard, which has been taken as proof that she isn't qualified to be President. But surely that's just a matter of her coming down from her back yard and seeing an optometrist. And there's the fact that she doesn't think the answer to having borrowed too much money is to borrow even more money (the Michael Jackson School of Economics, I call it). Surely that observation alone means that her eyesight can't be all that bad. Ditto the fact that she doesn't think the answer to Wall Street dragging down 99.9% of the taxpaying public is for that taxpaying public to make good Wall Street's bad bets and consign their own children and grandchildren to penury. Maybe she doesn't believe in robbing the rich to feed the poor, but surely she doesn't go so far as to believe in robbing the poor to guarantee the rich the lifestyle to which they've become accustomed.

Not that I'm all that crazy about Sarah, of course. For one thing, she charges a queen's ransom for people to hear her speak. (Here in Calgary she's demanding $210 a seat. That's close to I-have-a-Mercedes-Benz-and-you-don't territory.) If she really were a person of the people, she would charge little enough so that "real" (instead of pretend) people could attend. (In fact, now that I think about it, maybe $210 a seat is a kind of Alaskan version of robbing the poor to guarantee the rich the lifestyle to which they've become accustomed.)

Anyway, I digress.

After Stephanie left I found myself asking the question: What if Sarah Palin were to become Queen of Canada? I'm not sure why. As a thought experiment, I suppose. Also, as a distinct possibility should Sarah Palin tire of being President of the United States, just as she tired of being Governor of Alaska. In my mind I began two columns: the advantages of Sarah Palin becoming the Queen of Canada, and the disadvantages.

First of all, I thought, she'd put Canada on the map. At least, as far as the United States is concerned. No longer would I be asked: "Alberta? What state is that?" Instead, people - American people, that is - would squeal with delight: "Canada! Why that's the part of America where Sarah Palin is Queen!"

She'd make Ottawa in general and Rideau Hall in particular one of the most popular destinations in North America, after Las Vegas but before Disney World. Both our balance of trade problems and our debt problems would be lanced with one prick. Fans would gather in front of her residence, and every once in a while Sarah would oblige them by going out and giving them speeches.

But what's in it for Sarah Palin, you may ask. Besides receiving twenty-one gun salutes and being pictured on self-adhesive stamps. One word. Moose. Sarah Palin loves moose. And surely Canada has more moose than America's largest state. As Queen of Canada she could call up a helicopter and go kill any number of moose any time she wanted. Rideau Hall would be wall-to-wall moose heads before the first year of her reign was out!

But that might be a problem. Not the moose heads but the speeches. If she's true to form, wouldn't she insist on charging money for every speech she gave? Say, $210 a seat (assuming there were seats to be had in front of Rideau Hall)? Our present Queen may be a foreigner as well, but at least she doesn't charge us money for her walk-abouts. Can you imagine? "Thank you so much for coming out to see me and my hubby. That will be $10.00."

So perhaps Sarah Palin's Queenliness wouldn't travel across the border all that well after all, although I admit the image of Sarah in one of her red dresses surrounded by red-dressed Mounties makes any image of our present Queen pale in comparison. Ditto Sarah's soap opera family. Were either one of our present Princes born out of wedlock, for example?

And that's another thing, now that I think about it. I'm not sure about the "Ditto the fact that she doesn't think the answer to Wall Street dragging down 99.9% of the taxpaying public is for that taxpaying public to make good Wall Street's bad debts and consign their own children and grandchildren to penury." I'd like to believe that, which is why I wrote it, but then I wanted to believe in Barak Obama's "Change You Can Believe In" too. It turned out there was change, but only in the fine print. And Sarah Palin as well as Barack Obama supported the Wall Street bailout, after all.

Maybe Sarah Palin is just another example of political compromise. She gets to say anything she wants as long as Wall Street and other powers-that-be get to DO anything they want. And before Canadians become too true-north-strong-and-free-ish, it seems to me that Canada is following the same path, albeit - like our present Queen's hubby - a full two paces behind the United States. Only in a typically Canadian way. Our politicians don't really say anything, at least anything of note, in case they might offend a voter. But they do dress (fortunately), so our politicians get to dress anyway they want as long as our own powers-that-be get to do anything they want.

In the case of our Prime Minister, he gets to wear sweaters. And, every once in a while, a smile.