We Can't Blame Mother Nature For Fannie And Freddy...

Guess What Town

Snap election bad for pensions
Weston: At least 83 reasons why the next campaign will have to wait. While the town that baloney built is all abuzz with crazy talk of a snap election before summer, there are at least 83 good reasons to be optimistic we won't be dragged.. MORE...

It Will Put Food On The Tablentil Things Turn Around

Want a Job? Ask a Billionaire
Billionaire-Owned Companies Are Growing and Hiring
By ERIN GELL Forbes.com
March 29, 2009—
For 30 years Gloria Jean Craven was an employee of Pillowtex, the nation's third-largest home textile manufacturer. When the plant abruptly filed for bankruptcy protection and closed its doors in 2003, she and more than 8,000 workers lost their jobs, plunging the blue-collar community of Kannapolis, N.C., into a state of economic flux that lingers nearly six years later.
"I used to think I was middle class. But now we are living at the poverty level," the 56-year-old mother of two said in a speech at the Democratic National Convention last summer.
Click here for more on billionaires hiring at our partner site, Forbes.com.
One billionaire is hoping to help revive Craven's community and create thousands of jobs along the way. Three years ago, David Murdock, who made a fortune in Dole produce and Hawaiian real estate, broke ground on a new $1.5 billion (total investment) biotechnology research center on the old Pillowtex mill site.
The North Carolina Research Campus is partnering with Rowan Cabarrus Community College's R3 Center, a training ground for local displaced and underemployed workers. This August, the college will introduce two associate degree programs in biotechnology, aimed at targeting the needs of NCRC. Right now the campus is advertising for lab assistants, researchers and plant managers at David H. Murdock Research Institute and NCRC-affiliated state universities. Analysts project NCRC will create 30,000 direct and indirect new jobs by 2027.
Over the years, billionaires like Murdock have been responsible for creating thousands of jobs. They started some of the country's biggest employers, including companies like Wal-Mart, Microsoft and Dell, to name a few. In 2002, Home Depot--founded by billionaires Bernard Marcus and Arthur Blank--partnered with the U.S. Department of Labor to hire 40,000 associates a year. In 2006, Microsoft added 10,081 worldwide hires, the most in its history.
This year, these businesses, like the moguls who founded them, are feeling the economic pinch: In January, Microsoft announced an 18-month plan to eliminate 5,000 jobs across its research and development, marketing, sales, finance, legal, human resources and information technology departments. Home Depot slashed 7,000 positions. While the Walton family's Wal-Mart just announced it was giving a reported $2 billion to its hourly employees, the nation's largest retailer said in February that it was laying off 700 employees at its Bentonville, Ark., headquarters and another 1,200 Canadian employees.
Bucking the layoff trend are a handful of billionaire businesses ranging from Google to trendy fashion retailer Hennes & Mauritz that are hanging up "Help Wanted" signs even in this dismal economy.
Just around the corner from Murdock's biotech center in Kannapolis, in Cary, N.C., is SAS, the world's largest privately owned software company, run by billionaires John Sall and James Goodnight. The company enjoyed record sales of $2.3 billion last year and increased its number of employees by 3.5%. It is now looking to fill a few dozen slots at its U.S. headquarters; the jobs will focus on R&D and sales for new ventures in Latin America and Malaysia.
Dallas tycoon H. Ross Perot's eponymous Perot Systems is also adding jobs. "Perot Systems continues to pursue our global growth strategy of expanding in every geography, which currently includes 25 countries," says Chief Executive Peter Altabef.
It is opening a new Chennai, India, facility expected to generate 1,000 jobs by year's end and is also looking to add staff in Romania. Back in the U.S., construction is under way for a 150,000 square foot facility in Lincoln, Neb., that will create an additional 150 positions.
The recession's blight on the automotive industry has frugal drivers eschewing new cars and opting instead to tinker with what they've got. That bodes well for American billionaire Edward Lampert and possibly for some unemployed auto workers; the stock of auto parts chain AutoZone, in which Lampert has a large stake, is up 45% in the last 12 months and its second-quarter 2009 profit rose 9%, thrashing Wall Street's expectations. During the first quarter of 2009, AutoZone opened 20 new U.S. stores (and closed just one) and eight in Mexico. The company says that hiring and retraining employees is a major focus of 2009.
The economic downturn has actually helped boost several billionaire businesses and spurred them to add jobs. The discount-shopping sector, for instance, is red hot right now as savvy "recessionistas" hunt for all sorts of bargains.
German billionaire Karl Albrecht's discount supermarket chain, Aldi, is planning 80 new stores in 29 U.S. states, including its first in New York City. It is holding a series of recruiting events for district managers and trainees this month in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia. H&M, headed by Swedish billionaire Stefan Persson, is opening 225 stores this year, a plan that will reportedly create 7,000 new jobs.
So if you are unemployed, consider trying to get a job working for one of these billionaire-owned businesses. It almost certainly won't make you as rich as the founders but perhaps the post will offer a bit more job security than a lot of companies out there.
Copyright © 2009 ABC News Internet Ventures

Want To Become An Expert On AIG?

Look beyond the bogus bonus smokescreen
By Michelle Malkin • March 20, 2009 10:56 AM

Frank wants FANNIE, FREDDIE bonuses halted...

AIG, AIG, AIG........

The Kabuki Theater of AIG Outrage
By Michelle Malkin • March 18, 2009 05:02 AM

AIG, AIG, AIG........

The Kabuki Theater of AIG Outrage
By Michelle Malkin • March 18, 2009 05:02 AM

Better A Big Fish In Little Pond Than......

The socialist dream, spoiled
Jack Layton must rue the day he left Toronto city politics, now that the city is firmly in the grasp of a council intent on imposing a ruinous utopian ideal without him

Poor Jack Layton. Someone is ruining Toronto without him.
Friday, March 13, 2009 Jack Layton must kick himself every time he picks up a newspaper and reads about the great time they’re having back at Toronto city hall...


Layton warns of 'brown and polluted' recovery340
NDP Leader says Harper government is fighting downturn at the expense of the environment

This Is Rush......

Rush Limbaugh: Democrats' Enemy No. 1

Popular conservative radio show host targeted for seeking Obama’s 'failure'; Democrats hope to convince public the GOP is in the grip of...

Friends (and foes) of Rush sound off

Will Walmart Be Going For A Bailout?

Not bloody likely. They have a business plan and no second party, except possibly their customers, will have a say on how they run their business.......

Retail space soon to be available
Quebec unions are nothing if not persistent. Just months after Wal-Mart shut down a unionized tire shop in Gatineau rather than attempt to run a high cost operation, a union has been certified at a Wal-Mart store nearby in Hull. By now Quebec unions really should understand that Wal-Mart is serious about only operating stores if they can be successfully managed according to their business mode
small dead animals | more from this author | 9 hours ago

Welcome to Leslieville

Free Enterprise Succeeds In Face Of Political Posturing

Theo Caldwell: You CAN fight city hall — Just ask Porter Airlines

Posted: June 04, 2008, 6:18 PM by Marni Soupcoff
Filed under: Theo Caldwell

Bob Deluce, president and CEO of Porter Airlines, the regional airline based in Toronto, is living proof that you can fight city hall.

Citizens of Toronto will recall that, in his successful run for mayor in 2003, David Miller made cancellation of a bridge to the city’s Island Airport (officially called Toronto City Centre Airport — TCCA), the hub for Deluce’s nascent airline, the centrepiece of his campaign. It was thought that the lack of a bridge to TCCA would present an extraordinary obstacle for Porter.

Instead, to the benefit of Toronto travelers and the chagrin of the misguided Mayor, Porter has thrived at its water-bound location (though you need to take a ferry to cross the 100-metre gap to TCCA) and stands as testament to the effectiveness of private enterprise.

Today, as Miller and his leftist city council grapple with a problem — tourism in Toronto is in sharp decline — that surprised no one but them, it can and should be said that Bob Deluce and Porter Airlines have done more to help bring tourists and businesspeople to Canada’s largest city than the Mayor and his entire socialist cabal combined.

For tourism to thrive in any community, at least three things are required: There must be some draw to entice folks to come to town; Getting to and from the community must be reasonably economical and convenient; and it must be a safe and easy place in which to get around.

As to the first prerequisite, Toronto remains one of the top theatre and sports centres in North America. Pertinent to the second, Porter offers regular, inexpensive flights from Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City, Halifax and New York.

As for the third requirement — the only one that is squarely the responsibility of City Hall — it is nowhere near being met.

Sadly and eternally, politicians have a funny way of deciding what is, and what is not, their responsibility. So as sports teams and artists keep Toronto in the mainstream, and a fellow like Deluce competes against much larger airlines to provide convenient, inexpensive transportation to and from the city, Miller demurs at his professional obligation to keep streets safe, clean and moving. Instead, when he is not campaigning against private businesses like Porter, the Mayor empanels one group after another to offer taxpayer-funded contemplation of the tourism problem.

It would not cost Miller one thin dime to pass anti-panhandling legislation, as 12 other Canadian cities have done, so tourists would not be accosted by the ubiquitous and aggressive beggars who are perhaps Toronto’s best ambassadors for going someplace else. But from the $4-million “Toronto Unlimited” branding initiative to this month’s 230-page, taxpayer-funded study on what should be done to reverse the tourism decline, Miller’s costly tic is to seek out the most expensive and least effective option.

Deluce, meanwhile, goes quietly about his business. For a fellow who has been proved utterly correct over the last five years, he is surprisingly unwilling to gloat.

His smile is confident and calm as he talks about the airline’s early years and bright future. As to the bridge that caused such a kerfuffle when Miller first aspired to high office, Deluce shrugs and says he would be happy to have one, but Porter has adapted to life without it.

David Miller became Mayor of Toronto largely by crusading against the business plan of Porter Airlines. Now that the airline is a success, and as Miller scrambles to bolster a sector to which Porter is essential, citizens of Toronto can see for themselves who truly serves their needs. For the city to thrive, it needs fewer politicians and more entrepreneurs like Bob Deluce.

theojpcaldwell@yahoo.com

Photo: Peter J. Thompson/National Post

Too Simple An Idea Henry...It Won't Fly At Silly Hall

Henry you have to understand something.....Silly Hall doesn't spend money to solve problems but rather to stimulate cottage industries where their social in-activist buddies get a priority place at the public trough.

Spend that $5 million on city's panhandlers TheStar.com - comment - Spend that $5 million on city's panhandlers

May 11, 2008

Re:Housing is only partial

answer to panhandling

Column, May 8

According to Royson James, the city is going to hire 48 new social workers at $5 million per year to help stop street begging. What exactly are they going to do for about $105,000 each per year?

I wasn't aware that social work paid that well.

Perhaps we would be farther ahead if we simply gave that money directly to the street people. They would not have to beg and they would have disposable income to spend as they wish.

After all, as I read it, this money is not going to them. It will be going to another group of highly paid people, who in turn will be directed to try and get these people to stop begging.

As I said in the first place, why not simply distribute this same $5 million to them in the first place?

It would stimulate the economy because the homeless would simply spend it. And isn't that what the economists are all advocating?

Henry Basskin, Toronto

Another Small Business Under Attack

Bye lap dance, hello laptop
Brett Popplewell Apr. 28, 2008 When Madeline began working in strip clubs four years ago, she earned between $600 and $1,000 a night.

Licences issued by the City of Toronto to burlesque dancers:
STRIPPING DOWN

2834
in 1998

2447
in 2003

1254
last year

Waiting, Waiting, Waiting.........

The cake hasn't arrived yet...................

The Reality Of The Loonie At Par

Who Is Too Blame

The company's side:

GM confirms 1,200 jobs to be cut at Ontario plant

Updated Thu. Aug. 30 2007 1:51 PM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

General Motors of Canada Ltd. has confirmed that it is cutting 1,200 jobs this January at a truck plant in Oshawa due to slumping pickup sales.

The company will axe one shift of production of the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup trucks.

GM Canada spokesman Stew Low said the layoffs were part of the company's plan to keep its inventory in line with production.

"The Oshawa plant is the only one that's currently running on three shifts, and given that we want to tightly control inventories to market demand and we want to ensure that all plants are running at or near 100 per cent capacity, that's the rationale behind removing the third shift at Oshawa,'' Low told The Canadian Press Thursday.

According to the CAW, about 10,000 jobs in the auto assembly industry have been lost in the auto manufacturing sector since the industry's peak in the late 1990s, with 13,000 more job cuts in the auto parts industry since 2001. The union estimates $100-million of annual family income in the region will be lost as a result of the layoffs, which could have a punishing effect on the local economy.

The Unions side:

According to the CAW, about 10,000 jobs in the auto assembly industry have been lost in the auto manufacturing sector since the industry's peak in the late 1990s, with 13,000 more job cuts in the auto parts industry since 2001. The union estimates $100-million of annual family income in the region will be lost as a result of the layoffs, which could have a punishing effect on the local economy.

The Consumer's Side:

Terry Quinn from Canada writes: Two things... Flatulent Flaherty has spoken. That means another lie is in play.

Buzzie the union thug has spoken, once again, about the nonsense of governments doing him and his overpaid workers more favors.

Hey, Buzzie how about reducing the $1500 per car it takes to keep the pension plans and health packages going. And how about simply letting the market place determine the wages your members should get instead of using the strong arm tactics you are so familiar with.

alex just a canadian from montreal, Canada writes: when an auto working on the assembly line screwing in a bolt and is getting twice as much as teachers and nurses who just happened to be overworked. Sorry i don't feel any simpathy for the lost jobs. Its time we as a nation grow up and put our tax dollars where they are most needed, and the assembly line is not it. Sorry buzz but you blew it with your greed.

Garrett Deyne from mississauga, Canada writes: Shut up Buzz. The industry is fine it's your union thats in trouble. Toyota is opening a plant next year that will employ 2000 people but of course you don't care because there not part of your union. Real surprise that union shops are closing as non-union shops expand. Keep trying to blame someone else everyone else can see whats going on.

dean spence from bright old city, ontario, Canada writes: Just heard plenty of analysts state the "auto industry" is doing just fine in Canada with toyota and honda expanding; it's brain dead buzz's pals that are having trouble. Flaherty doesn't have to defend anything; there's nothing he should be doing.
BTW, why the heck does hargrove think the Asian markets want to buy GM if north america doesn't? Or is he even stupider than i think he is? And is he liberal or ndp this week?

....more

It Took A Greedy Self Serving Capitalist Entrepreneur

Not a union, not a group of social in-activists, not a group of masked anarchists, not the government, not bleeding heart left wingers but a Canadian immigrant who wanted to give back to the community some of the rewards his hard work generated.
Congratulations Frank!

SHELTER AFTER THE STORM

Residents Of The Village Frank Stronach Built For Katrina Victims Are Forging A Future As Farmers

Sheldon Alberts

CanWest News Service

Monday, August 27, 2007

It has been described as a peculiar social experiment, dismissed as a tax write-off for a wealthy Canadian businessman and even been likened -- albeit jokingly -- to a modern-day plantation.

But for Joe Bramlett, a former New Orleans shipyard worker who was evacuated by helicopter out of the Lower Ninth Ward following Hurricane Katrina, the modular home park known as Canadaville has been nothing short of a blessing.

"I don't have to worry about hearing gunshots in the night. I don't have to worry about nobody coming in my trailer. I can leave my door open and unlocked -- don't have to worry," says Mr. Bramlett. "That's what I like."

If Canadaville was a typical real estate venture, Mr. Bramlett's endorsement might appear on promotional brochures handed out to young families looking to escape the stress of inner-city life.

But this compact 49-home community -- shaded by mature pecan trees on the edge of a vast sugar cane field -- is the product of a bolder imagination.

Canadian entrepreneur Frank Stronach, chairman of auto parts giant Magna International, built the village after being moved by the plight of New Orleanians who fled their homes when Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005.

Mr. Stronach's plan was to create a community where Katrina's victims could be given a chance to rebuild their lives away from the trifecta of dangers that makes starting over so difficult in New Orleans -- poverty, crime and Mother Nature.

He purchased 365 hectares outside the corporate limits of Simmesport, a town of 2,300 that hugs the banks of the Atchafalaya River, about 240 kilometres north of New Orleans. The community opened in early December, 2005, just 10 weeks after the hurricane.

An Insight Into The North American Physce

Heather Mallick is right on the money but unforetunately the solution would mean that many in the middle class; especially union members, would have to take a slight cut in their lifestyle to regain some of the jobs lost but this would probably give those at the bottom of the economy would see increases in their wages so it is a win/win situation.

Worshipping at the altar of Cheap

by Heather Mallick
August 20, 2007

Made in China. It used to be the logo of globalization, but it's almost a stamp of danger now.

Yet it's self-deceptive at best, and racist at worst, to sneer at Chinese manufacturers when there are so many other better targets. Product recalls happen frequently. Isn't it odd that China is singled out just as its military and economic might soars?

Yes, low manufacturing standards in China meant that American corporations sold poisoned pet food, and lead paint on 19 million Chinese-made children's toys led to a massive recall and an apology from Mattel.

But surely the real news is that companies didn't inspect the imported goods they sold.

North American companies buy Chinese-made goods and shoppers haul them home for a reason. They're cheap, so eye-poppingly cheap that we wonder how such a thing can be possible. It's because tens of millions of workers are earning low wages in Chinese factories under appalling conditions. Admittedly, they may be marginally better off there than in the villages they recently escaped.

Trying to make Mattel feel guilty about buying such goods is madness. These plastic toys, from the Batman Magna Battle Armor Figure to the Polly Pocket Totally Polly Tiki Diner Set, are so horrendously tacky that even if they weren't dripping in poisonous lead, they'd still be criminal. (I would of course have killed to have them when I was a child.) And trying to make Canadians feel guilty about buying the stuff is a hackneyed approach, long ago proved pointless.

Hail the god of Cheap

Canadian shoppers aren't cruel. But I do think that many of them are stingy. Not cheese-paring, not careful with their money, but tight-fisted, miserly even. I remember cheering when Edina in the BBC comedy Absolutely Fabulous drunkenly screamed to a roomful of advertisers, “I don't want more choice! I want nicer things!”

Canadians don't agree, apparently. We are drowning in cheap things when we should head straight for a small number of well-made things. They last longer.

And if there's one thing we love more than “cheap,” it's “free.” The great American columnist Mark Morford hates what he calls his “product-drunk,” “junktastic” culture. “Free plane ticket! Free iPod! Free colonoscopy! Free extra set of cheap useless knives when you buy the two other sets of cheap useless knives! Free supersizing of your Coke! All we ask in return: countless endless chunks of your time, your intelligence, your health, your soul,” he wrote in a recent piece.

Think of McDonald’s Happy Meal toys. The bane of parental existence, they clog family life until you can secretly bag them on garbage day as the children sleep.

We should buy goods as sturdy as we can afford, but fewer of them. Instead, middle-class homes are packed with plastic toys made in China, brightly painted and without aesthetic charm, not that kids care. Kids are pulled around in wagons that look like plastic turquoise dugongs. Wooden wagons with red metal trim have real style. But they are more expensive. The fact that they are beautiful, will last longer and can be handed on to other children and to those sensible and praiseworthy secondhand toy shops does not matter. You chose the plastic blob. You worship the god of Cheap.

Chickens and such

Free-range chicken doesn't resemble battery chicken. It has flavour, its skin is yellow and the flesh has tones that make you suspect the bird walked about a bit, pecked at things, did that head-jerking thing that makes chickens such annoying pets. A battery hen is as pale as Karl Rove's fat, slappy face cheeks and tastes like bathtub caulking. But ersatz fowl are one of the god of Cheap's angels.

What about people living on next-to-nothing, single mothers on a minimal income, I know you're asking.

If you're poor, buy cheap, by all means. But why are you poor in the first place? What conditions determined your fate? Manufacturing jobs were lost in Canada because they were sent to China, or handed to Toyota in Japan because Ford and GM were run into the ground by incompetent managers.

When your Ford job vanishes or you lose your IT job because Bangalore, India, can do it cheaper, all dominos fall, victim of the god of Cheap. When goods are cheap, people become cheap. Paying $1.99 for a dozen tube socks is supposed to comfort you. In fact, it's what ruined your life.

In Canada's cities, homeowners passively enriched by exploding house prices still go to Costco and Wal-Mart for bulk goods while complaining about property tax increases. They impoverish the lives of others, destroy local shops and live with housefuls of shoddy goods because they are worshipping that Canadian idol, the Cheap god.

And by the way, the problem isn't plastic bags. The problem is that plastic bags are free. If they cost $5 each, trust me, people would pull them out of tree branches and hoick them out of the mouths of poor strangling fish already marinated in mercury. They'd probably frame them.

Books before potato chips

I recently read a pompous essay by a little-known Canadian novelist saying the federal government should give tax breaks to writers because novels take years to write and writers should be paid for their time, particularly the slow ones, I guess.

This is debatable. Governments are already very kind to writers with their home-business tax breaks. Writers have a bigger problem: Canadians are too cheap to buy books. I've seen it with my own eyes: Neighbours go through my blue bin for free books and magazines but Pamplona bulls wouldn't scare them into Book City or Chapters.

I rabidly buy books—which I think of as permanent, like furniture—the way normal people buy things as impermanent as bulk Lay's Ripple Chips. People who know this will actually ask me for free books, even free copies of my own books. I wouldn't dream of asking them for a bag of chips, I think sullenly. Potato chips they'll buy. Books not. I know I'm being self-serving here, but it's hard not to be taken aback.

Lately, Americans have been complaining that oil extracted from the Alberta tar sands is far too expensive. They blame the high wages of Canadian workers who live in extraordinarily difficult conditions to get that oil out. It's not labour's fault that Alberta's land and air are being poisoned and its precious water being sucked away. It's a structural, political fault. I praise those workers. If corporations could find a way to fly the tar sands to China, those roughnecks would be out of work.

With oil, we aren't given the option of worshipping the god of Cheap. Oil is expensive and will become knifingly so.

Good. Maybe we'll cherish it more.

It Was A Given When Government Raises Sin Taxes

That the private sector will find ways to benefit from this action. The last figures I heard that the government has lost something like $1.6 billion in taxes. Ask yourself who are the individuals benefitting.........The underground products -- mostly coming from native reserves in the United States or Ontario -- rob the legitimate industry and government of revenue, shrink the high prices that are considered a key deterrent to potential smokers and allegedly fuel organized crime.

Ottawa To Mark Tobacco
The federal government is ordering high-security tax stamps for cigarette packages and planning stepped-up audits of tobacco factories and farms in a new campaign against the increasing number of contraband cigarettes flooding the Canadian market.

Well Deserved Recognition

Drew Carey Signs 75-Year Contract To Host The Price Is Right

He Certainly Isn't His Dad

And that is true of many of the offspring of successful and wealthy people. David is no Trump........

Harry Stinson's nightmare TheStar.com - Columnist - Harry Stinson's nightmare

His patience expired, David Mirvish goes to court to get his millions back

August 08, 2007

Jennifer Wells
Business columnist

"Unfortunately, I have lost a great deal of money, and I have lost all confidence in Mr. Stinson as a person with whom to do business. Unfortunately, he is not competent to run the businesses operated by SHI and Club Corp."

–Affidavit of David Mirvish

David Mirvish is calling on his cell. The reception isn't great, but then, Mirvish would prefer to say little at this juncture.

At the end of last week, just as the city was downing tools for a summer's long weekend, Mirvish filed a notice of motion in Superior Court seeking to have Harry Stinson removed from the operations at 1 King West.

Seeking to have a receiver step in and supplant Stinson Hospitality Inc., which manages the hotel component at 1 King.

Seeking to have certain properties within the development, including the club facilities, turned over to K One Holding Inc., a.k.a. David Mirvish.

Seeking, not to put too fine a point on it, to see the end of Harry Stinson.