Harmonized Means Putting on the Rubber Gloves

The British Columbia provincial government, soon to be followed by Ontario, will harmonize the GST with its provincial sales tax.

That means in BC, consumers will pay 7%PST, plus 5% GST on ALL purchases. That word ALL is important because, previously a number of purchases were exempt from either GST or PST.

Now everything will be subjected to the 12% tax. Some examples:

A new house lists for $400,000. GST of about 5% or $20,000 is applied, but there is an adjustment bringing the GST down to about $8,000. Previously there was no PST. Not any more! Now a combined GST and PST of 12% will apply. That is $48,000 before the GST credit!!

Last year you bought a used car from your neighbor for $10,000. You had to pay the 7% PST, but the sale of a car from a private owner to another was not considered a commercial transaction, so you didn't pay GST. Not any more! Now, you get to pay GST! But is the odd thing. Your neighbor bought the car 5 years for $20,000 from a dealer and paid $1,000 in GST. Since your neighbor is NOT the final consumer of the car, and has sold it to you for $10,000 then why does your neighbor not get the $1,000 he paid, returned as a GST input tax credit!!!

From my perspective the harmonized GST and PST will decimate the restaurant business here in BC. If an item on the menu reads $20.00, you will be paying near $30.00 by the time taxes and tip are included. A $6.50 drink actually sells for $10.00. There is simply, no value in eating out.

There are a number of professional fees that will now have to charge PST. Accounting, real estate etc.

Will taxpayers get some benefit from the additional taxation. Absolutely not. The new taxes will simply pay for improved pension plans, more sick days and fewer hours working for B.C. public servants. The harmonized tax is simply a way to use legislation to extort money from main street.

Would You Pay to Watch CTV?

CTV and Global Canwest are promoting the concept that cable and satellite subscribers should pay a mandatory fee to receive local television stations (read CTV and Global).

You can read more about this concept at: http://savelocal.ctv.ca/

CTV and Global are trying to make the cable and satellite subscribers appear to be the bad guy because they receive "free" signals from CTV and Global stations and then charge their own subscribers to receive the signal.

At first glance it seems the argument to save-local-tv makes some sense. But only if one assumes, the final user - the viewer - has the chance to accept the CTV/Global station and pay the fee, or decline the station and thus the fee. However, save-local-TV says that the subscriber must pay the fee, EVEN IF THEY NEVER TUNE IN TO THE CTV OR GLOBAL STATION.

CTV and especially Global have a business model predicated on one CRTC rule. That rule is that any show, originating from outside Canada on such networks as ABC, CBS or NBC, must have its commercials over-ridden with Canadian commercials even if the viewer is tuned to the American station. That business model failed with the advent of satellite TV. CTV and Global failed to produce any relevant programming except for local news, and even that is horrid outside of Toronto and sometimes Montreal. Now, with network viewing way down, the CTV and Global business model is failing.

The irony of the CTV argument is that the save-local-TV campaign is now necessary because of the success of the old CTV model which favoured repeats and streaming of US shows rather than production of valuable Canadian content.

CTV would have us think that unless they can get more of our money, they can't keep showing repeats all day long, and we won't get local news. In fact, in a typical one-hour CTV news program, nearly half the "news" is commercials, including the so-called entertainment and fashion news, which are simply commercials packaged up like news. In addition, far too much "local" programming is about events outside Canada which will likely NEVER impact on Canadians. Do Canadians really care about the Koreans setting off a nuclear test underground, a war in Sri Lanka, whales being beached in Africa, a fire in Tasmania etc. etc?

I have 59 TV channels available to me. I have only ever watched about 15 of them. Just 12 stations represent 100% of what now I watch. They are CBC & Newsworld, ABC, CBS, NBC, City-TV, The Weather Network, FOX-Seattle, TSN, CNN, SportsNet, ESPN, and ROB-TV. I know that CTV, Shaw, Global and Rogers do not want to read this but no-one watches the 500 channel universe. In fact, once a person has about 20 channel to select from, they no longer increase the hours they view TV.

This may surprise CTV and Global but I do not need to watch Friends, Seinfeld and the Simpsons, 10 times a day, 7 days a week. I could care less about Hindu TV, don't care about Parsi news, do not need to see local programming from Hull, Quebec, am not interested in the talking heads at Shaw proclaiming the need for or against needle exchange programs, etc. etc.

Let us pay for what we watch, but only for what we watch, not for what is made available.

GM Still Doesn't Get It

For decades, GM has held a rather bizarre business model. Deceive the customer and the shareholder, while pleading disability to various levels of government in order to qualify for incentives and interest free loans. And too many governments said "yes", not realizing their acquiescence simply delayed the inevitable death of GM and worse, took money away from valuable pursuits.

GM had gotten so dependent on hoodwinking governments that when it came to their own investor base, they figured they could hoodwink them as well. So yesterday, GM offered its bondholders the chance to swap debt for GM stock. It was a hollow and illusory offer, just like GM's "negotiations" for bailouts. The problem for GM is that the bondholders saw through it in 5 seconds and simply said "no". Here is why they turned down the offer.

Yesterday, GM's debt was worth about 10 cents for every $1.00 held. So GM came up with a plan to exchange $1.00 in debt for about 48 cents worth of shares. It was a sham. Within 5 minutes the investment community had calculated the true offer which was $1.00 in debt for 5 cents in shares. Since the debt was already worth 10 cents per share, why would anyone in their right mind agree to the exchange? The same question could have been asked to the government regarding the bailout. But here is the difference: the government is playing with other people's money, the investors are responsible for their own money. "No deal," said the investors, a foregone conclusion for everyone except GM management, the employees and the union LOL.

GM's death is just a few weeks away. The deadlines imposed by the financial markets are unlike the collective bargaining deadlines GM is used to. In collective bargaining, a deadline of Friday, midnight is imposed; bargaining occurs "round the clock" and out comes the midnight oil. The deadline passes with no settlement in site, so the deadline is simply reset, a new supply of midnight oil comes out and the bargaining continues. GM is now up against a financial markets deadline. In June, GM will run out of cash. GM has no access to money. So GM will stop paying its employees, and stop paying everything else. Midnight oil does not grease the wheels of the financial markets.

Embrace Change - Don't Grab Hold of the Temporary

This post is about change in the business world, but it also about life and death. The collapse of a business is similar to transition in life and the need to accept that sometimes things and people pass on. We can find solace in the passing, take a break and then prepare for something new. Bad news is something that stops us for a while, but we eventually recover and move on. Hope, where the outcome is inevitable, is paralyzing. It prevents us from going forward.



The North American auto industry is taking its last gasps of breath. The reasons are legion and there is no reason to repeat them. Whatever life that is left is temporary and is a massive drain on resources that could be best to use elsewhere. There is hope, but the result is inevitable.



There are two ways to approach the death of the auto industry. One is to extend it a lifeline, in the form of billion dollar bailouts. That will work, just like putting a terminally ill 95-year-old cancer patient on life-support will work. There is always hope right! But it is temporary. Death is inevitable. The money should be spent elsewhere.



The Canadian government is spending $6 billion to bail out GM which now, as it turns out, produces only 15% of its cars in Canada. GM employees about 12,000 people in Canada.



The bailout works out to $500,000 per employee!!



As an alternative, perhaps every employee could get 3 years re-training paid for by the government (paid for with a loan), plus the first 2 years of the re-training, employees would be paid $50,000 each. That works out to $1.2 billion, a fraction of the bailout, which will be temporary and will be followed by the death of GM within a year anyway. In addition, $3.8 billion would be saved which could then be used elsewhere.

Everything in life is temporary. Eventually everything ends. Holding on to the temporary because of hope is not the right way to go. Faith in yourself to move on is the best approach.

Roads are Not for Parking Nor Pedistrians

The City of Toronto is considering restricting traffic on one of its most important north-south roads, Jarvis Street, to make more room for cyclists and pedestrians.

The project, which is estimated at $6.5 million and will take a year to complete (as we well know, it will cost $19 million and take 4 years), is clothed in irony. You see, the additional space on Jarvis already exists. It is filled with parked vehicles, cars making left hand turns where no left hand turn lane exists and double parked delivery vehicles. The pedestrian space also exists. It is called a sidewalk, but admittedly it is difficult to navigate, full as it is of sign boards, parking meters and gigantic recycling bins.

So it should be obvious that, to solve the problem, just get rid of the parked vehicles and prohibit left hand turns and then we have the space for cyclists. And remove the signboards and the parking meters and we have room for the pedestrians. It will cost $300 and take one day.

However, there is another agenda at play. If there is no parking, then there are no parking meters and no parking tolls for the city. There are also no parking tickets. That means fewer people working for the Toronto Parking Authority and fewer meter readers. If there are no signboards, then there are fewer people working for the city department that regulates such things. If there is no grand project to rework the street, the politicians have nothing to hang their hat on at election time. The planners have nothing to plan.

Roads are for the movement of vehicles including bicycles, not for storing same. Sidewalks, by their very name, run beside roads and are used for walking. Seems so simple doesn't it.

New and Used Available for Sale

I understand that a number of new and used Ak 47 assault rifles as per the above image are now available for sale.

These rifles apparently will make excellent tools for the UAW as they attempt to "negotiate" pension plan protection from the Ontario government. Former US post office employees might have an interest.

These items are being re-possessed by a number of "lenders" from the Tamil Tigers. Just climb the Toronto Gardiner expressway later in the week and look for the red flags. Cash, gold or diamonds can be used to pay the bill.

Do Motorists Really Drive Poorly?

The Toronto Star ran an article today that suggests that people are morons on the road http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/635489

It isn't that people are poor drivers. Its that the driving process, the way it is presently conducted, is designed to create misfortune and poor driving.

Simply put, people get the keys to a powerful tool - the car, and from that second going forward, society creates as many obstacles as possible for the tool to function as it is designed.

First, we have a test to use the tool. Its a test which ignores 90% of the capabilities of the tool or the environment the tool will be used and that is by intent. For instance, driving tests are always conducted during the day, despite that 40% of driving is done at night. Driving tests do not include children in the back seat, nor loud passengers. Driving tests are not done on ice or snow. Driving tests do not test the capability to install a child seat. I could go on.

Second, for most drivers their objective is to get from point A to point B. Once they are buckled into their car, and the music is right and the mirrors are right, they will shift into drive. Fine. Now, what is likely the first thing they will do after they have accelerated. That's right. They will brake. And the second thing they will do is come to a stop. I cannot think of ANY other tool that humans use, for which the default setting after turning it on is for the human using it to place it into a complete stop. That type of process is called conflict.

Third, once the car is in motion, the driver will be overwhelmed with information, almost all of it road signage that has nothing to do with driving the car forward as per its intended use! Think about it: you drive the car down the road and this is what you see:

Click on the above image and make it bigger and you will see the conflict associated with all these signs. These are all real road signs and virtually none of them actually pertain to driving a car forward to its destination! Imagine how well a plane could be flown if the pilot has deal with so many messages from OUTSIDE the plane. These signs do not include traffic lights which themselves often have a plethora of signs affixed to them.

As for traffic lights, what does a flashing green light mean? In Ontario it means an advanced left turn, in Mexico it means the light is about to turn amber, and in British Columbia it means that traffic could pull out from either the left or right side at any time. For heaven's sakes, there are only 3 colours of lights. Couldn't we agree on the same meaning for them on the same continent after 100 years of driving!

And we haven't even covered all the advertising and other sorts of commercial messages bombarding our driver from outside the car, as well as inside the car.

Lets assume our driver has managed to get the car going, accelerate and is ignoring the signs. What comes next? Ahh...our driver gets to dodge cyclists using the road, and pedestrians that walk off the sidewalk without looking. Even wild animals usually know better than to walk or run in front of a train. But apparently humans don't know this rule.

Well what might our driver face next? How about the public utility truck, parked dead-smack in the middle of the road, installing cable to bring the 500 channel universe to our homes. Or a beer truck unloading. Or a Shred-It truck......shredding, or the Canada Post picking up the mail. Would Roger Bannister have broken the 4 minute mile if, on his last lap, he had to run through a javelin pitch?

OK, so our driver is finally on the way. He seems to have overcome the obstacles. As he is driving along at 80km/hr he realizes that there is just one thing worrisome. Other drivers are doing exactly the same thing he is, but in the opposite direction, closer to him than the glove compartment of his own car. He is always 1 second from death.

Given the driving environment, I would say drivers are, for the most part, nearly divine :-)

Ceylon, Tigers and Other Things From Afar *(Which Should Stay There)

With respect to the recent "protests" by Tamils in Toronto, I quote from today's Globe and Mail:

"Many Torontonians have long been puzzled by how, without any public discussion they remember, let alone any consensus, their city has become home to so many folks from around the world who periodically hold the rest of the place hostage while they make their voices heard about the very issues or crises that drove them here in the first place."

...and I add...

...and for which the rest of us could care less and know we can do nothing about. There is no Problems of the World Department at Toronto City Hall, at last check.

I am also puzzled by the fact that nearly every day I read what great progress India has made and how it is now a superpower. So why doesn't India, a nation a few kilometers from Sri Lanka with a near identical culture and language, have some responsibility for Sri Lanka.

Oh...yes....White Man's Burden.

Supporting Tamilians

U.N.C.L.E offices in Toronto were stormed today by angry Ceylonese-Sri Lankin refugees and their pet tigers who were demanding an end to civil war in Ceylon, sometimes called Sri Lanka, and often mistaken as Pakistan.

Fueled by anger, these "hot" Tamales had displaced the ubiquitous orange cones and "Road Under Construction" signs on Toronto freeways before making their way to Ontario Legislature where they brought the daily water cooler gossip to a standstill and invaded the gay cruising at Queen's Park.

We listened to their impassioned pleas, and U.N.C.L.E. is proud to announce the following:

1. U.N.C.L.E. will submit a strongly-worded, verbal request, in Latin, that the United Nations, consider, as part of its preliminary planning for the creation of its 2011 Strategic Vision Statement, a possible review of events in Sri Lanka.

2. U.N.C.L.E. will consider making an informal, verbal request, to the governments of Gabon and Madagascar, that they mobilize their forces and equip them with machetes and torches in order to train for a possible war game that would include the existing ruling party of Sri Lanka.

3. U.N.C.L.E. will review its funding priorities to determine if funds exist to build a bridge over the River of Tears that these Sri Lankans are crying.

We remain disappointed the both Toronto Mayor, David "What Me do Something" Miller, and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuilty remain entrenched in their positions. They have started that only City of Toronto public works employees, and the Province of Ontario Ministry of Transportation, have the authority to unnecessarily disrupt traffic. We encourage both the City of Toronto and the Province of Ontario to organize Human Rights Conferences to "flesh out" solutions and invite delegates such as long-haired, crackpot, University types who are experts on Sri Lanka, but have never been there.

Warranties, Guarantees and Swampland in Florida

The government bailout of the auto makers requires that a trust be established and funded to the amount of 125% of the dollar amount of warranty work expected to be done on vehicles sold during the restructuring process.

If you have purchased a GM vehicle, which is still covered by warranty or are thinking of purchasing a GM vehicle, then your warranty is good...... right! Sorry but the answer is NO, your warranty is practically worthless.

Today I received a nice postcard from Ross Foss, a Toronto-area "family" of dealerships advising that they are closing their Saturn Saab store. They are no longer covering or performing any warranty work on vehicles, new or used, sold out of the Saturn Saab store. Its not like Roy Foss doesn't have the capacity to do the work. Roy's GM dealership, which sits beside the Saturn store, is one of the largest in the world. Roy also has several other dealerships within 500 metres of the Saturn store.

Now, it is possible to get warranty work done. You simply call GM and ask for the Saturn/Saab dealer closest to you. And you beg them to do the work. In Toronto, there are a number of such dealerships. But what if you live in a smaller town that has just one GM dealership and one Saturn dealership? Once the Saturn dealership is closed, you thought the GM dealership would cover the warranty since GM owns Saturn and Saab. Sorry, you are out of luck. There is no "store" left to perform the work. And the same thing will happen when that GM dealership closes. And GM is closing thousands of those in the next year. So, you might well have a warranty guarantee but no dealership to honour the warranty :-). And remember folks, even if you have a Buick with a warranty, and the dealership that is left in town sells Chevy, Cadillac and GMC, then the Buick warranty is worthless.

Funny how the auto makers and dealers neglected to explain this nuance when they asked for the bail out money.

Guess Who Ain't Making Loan Payments

Some months back, on my sister blog, I quoted from a friend who asked, about the government loans to the auto industry, "if the banks know they are not getting their money back from the car makers, why does the government think they are getting their money back."

Both the government and the car makers claimed loud and clear that the money would be used to stave off bankruptcy and that the government would be repaid. Well, last week Chrysler went bankrupt, and this week Chrysler and its government lenders admitted nothing will ever get paid back.

Oh my, que una suprisa!

What was that loan money used for? Hmmm...might it have been paid out as bonuses to executives, used to prop up health care plans so the union guys could get their Viagara. Might some of it been paid to the lobbyists who lobbied the government for loans, maybe paid in cash to those lobbyists who then maybe, just maybe, treated their government contacts to a trip to say.....Brazil. Nah...or ...well...what da ya think? Is there a chance, a snowball's chance in hell, that is was used for retraining, or paying suppliers that had 90 day invoices outstanding?

The little fiasco known as Chrysler will soon be repeated at GM. And you Ontario taxpayers best get your pockets sewn up tightly right now. 'Cause when GM and its union gets through fleecing the Ontario taxpayer your chequebook is going to be a whole lot lighter.

The good news is that, hopefully, when these two dinosaurs are restructured, we won't have to put up with their shenanigans any longer. But who knows, sometimes things in life have a habit of being resurrected in some other surreptitious form and eventually rise to bite us in the ass.

Issue is Closed

After long months of silence, the Ontario government has now stated that it will not cover any shortfall in the pension plans for GM and Chrysler when they go bankrupt.

Both companies and especially GM have committed a form of fraud over the past generation, underfunding their pension plan while, at the same time claiming they were too big to fail and did not need to pay money in the trust fund maintained by the Ontario government to protect employees in the event a company goes bankrupt.

Many stakeholders, including U.N.C.L.E., made it clear that the Ontario taxpayer is not responsible for covering a private pension plan for which the taxpayer could not benefit from if it was over funded, and was never invited to the bargaining table.

The UAW and GM employees, especially, are livid with the decision. After decades of fleecing the car buyer and the taxpayer, the people in this industry formed a culture of entitlement which was not sustainable. When organizations like U.N.C.L.E. called for restructuring and change, we were told where to go.

We sympathize with the employees, many of them who put their trust in an incompetent union negotiators and equally dumb GM management. However, this is not a new issue. For at least 20 years, all industry stakeholders except for the union and management warned of the way the pension deficit was ballooning.

While the taxpayer is not required to foot the bill for the unfunded pension, the government should still act. Senior GM management as well as UAW management should be held under criminal arrest until it is determined whether a crime has been committed. All vehicle inventory plus factories need to be seized by the government and auctioned off to compensate the pension plan.

Pot Calling the Kettle Black

Canadian university professors are complaining that their first year students in Ontario are lazy, relying on Wikipedia to collect information for assignments rather than doing work.

Maybe assignments should be based on something more than simply gathering information, maybe analysis might matter LOL.

After living in Latin America for three years, I was astonished to see the university program highlights in B.C. that were outright lies about life in Latin America. You see, the professors who design these programs have NEVER been to Latin America. They design the programs based on elitist academic views which have no relationship to the on-the-ground truth. For example, here in B.C. there are programs that discuss how NAFTA has been to the disadvantage of Mexicans. But, in Mexico, the VAST majority of people think NAFTA has made them equal to Americans and Canadians.

The hubris of the typical North American professor-type is offensive.

And the qualifications of many of the high school "leaders" who are responsible for graduating some of these students are suspect. Tonight on CBC, they interviewed a typical high school principal in Ontario. His name is Tom Shultz. I know Tom, very well. He was a phys-ed teacher at Merivale High School when I attended there in 1975-1980. At risk of being sued for slander, I won't say much more about Shultzie.

The White Man's Burden

It started as Imperialism, when the British ruled the world. But its beginnings started in Rome a couple of thousand years previous.

It is really just hubris after all; the belief that one is superior to another and can provide advice and counsel. And run the shop better than the shop owner.

Once the twentieth century arrived, Imperialism had a bad name. Sadly, it was replaced by other isms which have fared much worse. Fascism and communism are examples. Then, once we white folks were blamed for all the ills of the world by the very people who benefited from such ills (a.ka. fully tenured university professors), we decided to go about fixing those problems. Give us your starving children, your dying grandparents, your drunk Indians etc. etc. and we will nurse them back to life.

Along came the Red Cross and Oxfam, and the like.

This institutionalized, and almost, Jungian, unconscious guilt over the perceived mis-deeds of long-dead Caucasian generations has caused many Western nations along with their living, Caucasian, male leaders to do some of the darned things.

When Afghanistan, a nation of nothing more than a bunch of heroine exporting, ignorant dumb assess who live mainly in huts, herding goats, decided that it would harbour the Taliban and Al Queada, some of us decided we needed to fix the place. So we invested billions of dollars. Only to find out that some guy wearing a Shriner's hat has decided that its ok to rape women, and actually codified it into law. Wouldn't we have been better off to just close our borders to anyone holding an Afghan passport, or even anyone who had visited the place in the past 10 years?

I don't suffer from White Man's Burden. I don't blame myself nor my ancestors for the fact that people in Afghanistan just don't get it. My accountability and responsibility in life goes no further than my backyard. And my offer to help those who can't help themselves doesn't extend outside my neighborhood.

Its not that I am selfish or lazy, qualities which every human being shares, whether in Canada or Afghanistan. It's that I am not lost in my own hubris. I am no better than anyone else. I am just a simple fellow who knows I cannot help someone who doesn't realize that I have help to give.

So its time to exist Afghanistan quick as a fart in the wind. By staying there, we perpetuate the culture of guilt which takes resources away from the people who really need it - the people in our house, our backyard and our neighborhood.

Eliteism and French Immersion

Today I read that some Toronto parents are concerned that their children are being denied the opportunity to be placed in French immersion classes because their children are not "gifted".

The two biggest lies, and there are lots of lies in this field, in education, is that only gifted students belong in French immersion along with the lie that students must score well in math to take computer science courses.

Learning a langauge has absolutely nothing to do with being gifted. It is based on need. I know many people who speak multiple languages who have never graduated from high school. I have a friend who is fluent in Vietnamese, Mandarin, English and French, who never took a course other than English in his life.

French immersion is a sham. A total farce. Students are held up as some sort of model of special education when many of them can barely order a meal at the St. Hubert in Montreal. A supposed French immersion teacher I know ordered a meal, in French, from a deli in Montreal and the waitress did not understand one word he said. A French immersion graduate I know, now lives in California where she wishes, every day, that she had learned some basic Spanish.

Various Canadian governments spend 100s of millions of dollars to teach people French, while far more Canadian youth learn Mandarin and Cantonese over the dinner table at home.

Speaking French in Canada is completely irrelevant except to people working in the Quebec provincial or municipal civil service.

The entire program in Canada to teach anglophones French is completely useless. I took 10 years of French education in school, but learned more Spanish by living in Mexico for 4 months LOL.

Learning a second or third language is important. It does not require secondary school immersion programs.

Ditch the French immersion and teach the kids how to communicate effectively, independent of English or French.

Should Animals Be Doing More For Animal Rights?

U.N.C.L.E. believes that animals, particularly wild animals, should play a more active role in the fight for their rights by participating in marches or organizing boycotts.

For several milinea, too many animals have been chasing each other around, and often eating each other. They need to put aside their differences and come to the table together to demand their rights. They need to raise up their paws, or talons or whatever.

Animals need to take control of their own future and organize themselves. With the pending end of the United Auto Workers (UAW), perhaps the union officials can be put to work organizing animal rights from the ground up to the tips of the trees.

Animals have a right to be heard. Most animals anyhow. We don't include those bad animals such as that skunk-type animal from China that causes SARS, and we exclude those really ugly animals like hyenas.

I, for one, am looking forward to seeing the first 1 million animal march on Washington. And also watching the animals have their own Pride celebration where the damned ugliest ones walk down the road with no clothes on, and the big, fat female animals like a hippo bounce those big mammaries of theirs up and down as they wave placards demanding equality.

Animals should also boycott events. Bears, for instance, should refuse to attend the bear hunt. Lemmings should stop at the end of the cliff, not jump off it.

Nuff said.

Excessive Exit Packages

Judy Rogers was the city manager in Vancouver. She also sits on the board of the organizing committee for the Olympic games (VANOC).

In December, after the new mayor took over, Rogers resigned. It cost the city almost $600,000 to pay off Rogers. That payoff represented 2 years salary.

Its an unconscionable amount of money to pay someone not to work. The cash payment is only part of what Roger's receives. She still qualifies for a pension well in excess of $60,000 per year. In addition, she is not required to pay anything back should she find another job. She does not give up her role with VANOC and she receives job counseling.

Rogers is not the problem here. She was a perfectly competent city manager, but no friend of the unions who new city mayor Gregor Robertson relies on for support.

The problem is that the payoff to Rogers establishes a precedent for the next person in line. Its a culture of largess where politicians pay off established staff in order to put their own hand-picked people in place, often brown-nosed, ass kissers, who then go on to recommend projects the politician wants, despite the absence of any merit to the project.

Rogers' payment is actually not out of line. In Toronto, several senior bureaucrats were dismissed for cause including Wanda Lysiak, Treasurer, and were paid out. Lysiak was paid in excess of $400,000 despite being fired for cause and investigated for potential criminal malfeasance. However, nothing compared to one Toronto city manager, fired for cause and paid $500,000, who started work 3 days later at a 6-figure salary for the University of Toronto!

Of course public sector payouts don't compare to the private sector. Robert Nardelli was fired as CEO of Home Depot and paid $200 million!!

You Aren't Covered for That - Sorry

The Business Model for Insurance Companies

You walk out of your home one morning and discover a vandal has broken into your car, parked on the street, by smashing a window and breaking the side mirror. You call your insurance company and they ask you to send: a copy of your driver's licence, the original police report, a copy of the city permit allowing you to park on the street, your lease proving you live on the street, a copy of the ownership, photos before and after, and an affidavit that the damage to your car occurred on the street.

After you send all the information to your insurance company, a month goes by and they now ask for: the original of the city permit allowing you to park on the street and the negatives from the photos.

Another month goes by and a letter arrives: you need to provide proof you have paid the lease and provide something like a utility bill which proves you live under the lease agreement.

Two months go by and another letter arrives: please provide proof that the side view mirror was standard with the car when you purchased it, not an aftermarket upgrade.

A month later you receive another letter advising that "you are not covered for the damage because you have an underground parking spot in your apartment which you did not use. You failed to document the reasons for parking on the street. We would be happy to answer any questions you have. Please call us at 1-800-555-1212"

You call the insurance company's call center 18 times over the next month. 10 times the line is busy, 3 times you go into an endless loop of voicemail and no-one answers the phone, and 5 times you leave a message but never get a call back. On the 19th time you get a "customer service associate" in Mumbai who you cannot understand. He keeps asking you over and over, "did you pay the deductible, did you pay the deductible." It seems that the script on his computer is stuck.

When the same insurance company - AIG, is taken over by the government, a number of executives take $$millions in bonuses, without ever once making a written request and without documenting any of the payments. No deductible was applied to the payments. 11 of the executives agree to stay on to work the company out of its problems, but all resign on the day they receive their bonuses.

Oddly, the CEO of AIG doesn't think there is anything wrong with their business model. The next day, the CEO finds the hood of his car spray painted with AIG - Arrogance, Incompetence and Greed. Do you think he knows better than to call his insurance company?

Race Related Crime Statistics

Asian gangs. Latino thugs. Blacks in drive-by shootings. South Asian drug criminals.

We see them all the time on TV. We read about them in the newspapers.

The politically correct would say that there should be no race related crime statistics kept.

The odd thing is that the debate about race related crime statistics seems to ignore something.

In 2002, Fortune Magazine published a story about white collar crime and named all the individuals involved. Recently the article has been updated by a new author. He identified 118 white collar criminals dated back about one generation. Astonishingly, 24 of them are self-identified as Jewish.

In fact, of 11 recent most serious financial scandals, an astonishing 40-50% of the participants can be identified as Jewish including Hank Greenberg from AIG, Bernie Madoff from his own company, Andrew Fastow from Enron, Samuel Waskel from ImClone, Gary Winnick from Global Crossing and Mark Swartz of Tyco. I will be easy on Greenberg because an argument can be made that, although a participant, there was no malfeasance on his behalf.

What is most interesting to me is that Jews have often claimed that they are poorly represented in the financial arena. Hmmmm....

The high percentage of Jews in the area of financial scandal represents the same high percentage of people of Jewish descent that have significant positive achievements in such areas as real estate, science and health.

Which leads me to suggest that if we do keep race related crime statistics, then we need to similarly keep track of race related positive achievements.

Or should we?

Frankly, I do not know.

All I know is that if we keep race related statistics for crime, we should include all races, and all crimes.

Protests in Pakistan

Today, the lead story in the Toronto Star is about protests in Pakistan and the potential for a revolution there.

Who fucking cares?

I am busy taking care of my life here in the Lower Mainland of BC. Why do we waste valuable front page space on a story that should not impact even one person in Canada?

Automotive Repairs

In August, 2008, I had to get a $350 repair done to my truck. In November, the repair was done again. Then in February, again re-done.

This week I returned to the shop to be told the problem in August was mis-diagnosed. Another repair is in order. This one will cost me $800. The first repair was not necessary and I asked for a credit but was turned down.

How was that $800 determined? No, not by an estimating system.

It was determined by inputting all the information about me and my vehicle into an on-line service provider who combines that information with a database about my vehicle and the repair history for like vehicles to determine how much the shop can expect to charge me before I say no and take my car elsewhere. The system tells the shop manager how much he needs to charge to break even on the repair, and how much he can gross up the cost and still get me to say yes.

In a way it is a real time, bid and supply system. It is a good tool.

My concern though is that the service provider and the shop do not disclose to the customer that this is how the estimate is arrived at. I was able to figure out that something was odd when the estimate for how many hours it would take to fix my truck changed, when my status went from being employed to being self employed (it dropped $100). I wondered how my employment status impacted on the estimate. The manager at one shop disclosed how the system works, but the manager at another place was evasive.

Ever wonder why dealers charge so much more than independent places? Its because the dealer has so much more information about the vehicle owner that they can push up rates. That is why the guy at the computer needs so much information about you and the car when you drive in, even if all you are doing is replacing a headlight bulb. It is true that information has value!

The way that car repair estimates are arrived at should be disclosed.

Car Repairs

I own one of the socially-hated SUVs.

Mine is nothing fancy. In fact, its a first generation SUV and built on a truck platform.

I have had no problems with the SUV until I reached 100,000km. The problem is minor, but getting it fixed properly at the shop is an ongoing travesty.

The transmission had a fluid leak. Not a big deal. All that was required as a new seal. The shop replaced the seal in August, 2008. But in November, the leak returned. So I took it back and this time the shop sealed the leak with silicone. Seems the replacement seal was inserted so tightly it cracked. Problem with silicone is that it is oil based and will eventually erode from the transmission fluid, which it did. So back to the shop for a 3rd time in late January.

On the third visit, I was informed that a new seal was ordered and the old one replaced. But, I had to leave the truck there from Saturday to Thursday in order to wait for the part to arrive.

I would say I had been VERY patient, waiting almost a week for the 3rd time fix.

Guess what^ Six weeks later, the leak is back. No new seal was installed. More silicone was added, in the hope that I will give up on this shop and they will not have to make good on their warranty.

Seems like I will have to call in my counterpart from the Intelligence, Operations and Enforcement division here at U.N.C.L.E.

GM, The CAW and Pensions

Both GM Canada and the CAW are of the mind that if GM goes bankrupt, then "the government" will have to bail the employees out of an unfunded pension plan.

In Canada, a pension plan can be registered either federally or provincially. Fortunately for those of us Canadians outside of Ontario, GM registered its pension plan in Ontario.

Unfortunately for Ontario taxpayers, the provincial government is actually entertaining funding of the GM pension plan in the event GM goes bankrupt.

There actually is a fund in Ontario to cover exactly the issue of unfunded pension plans. The problem is that GM and the union, asked for, and were given, a permanent holiday from ever contributing to the fund because "GM was to big to ever go bankrupt."

GM and its unions now want access to the fund. Some of the contributors to this fund have said "hands off", using fairly strong words. One contributor made it clear his organization would consider an attempt by GM to access the fund "extortion" and they would look to criminally prosecute GM and the CAW.

While we agree, in principle, with that link between GM, the CAW and the legal concept of extortion, U.N.C.L.E is officially issuing the following statement, which we believe focuses on the business issue and establishes clear assignment of accountability:

"The issue of the GM pension plan is a private, commercial agreement between GM management, its employees and the CAW. The taxpayers of Ontario were not at the table for any wage, benefit and pension negotiations between the employer and the employee. The terms of the agreement are not in the public domain, nor were they subject to democratic, public governance and oversight. The taxpayer cannot be bound to the agreement morally nor legally. The taxpayers of Ontario neither have a claim to any benefits from the pension plan, nor do they have liability for any unfunded portion of the plan."

March 6, 2009

Hazen S. Colbert
Vice Chair
Policy, Intelligence & Communications
U.N.C.L.E.

They Just Don't Get It

"We do not see any reason to reduce salaries and benefits"

CAW, March 5, 2009


In response to yesterday's news that Chrysler is cutting 1,200 jobs in Windsor, and to today's news that the bankruptcy of GM is imminent without drastic cost cutting and another $30 billion capital injection from government, the CAW just does not get it.

Frankly, I don't care what the CAW says. It is a dinosaur.

What I cannot figure out is why, in response to the CAW, various levels of government are trying to figure out how to bail out the industry.

Its bizarre really. If I was having trouble making my mortgage payment, and told the bank I had no intention of cutting costs, then they would simply call the mortgage and sell the house. That is what we should do with GM, Chrysler and Ford assets in Canada. Put them into bankruptcy and sell off the assets. There are lots of finished cars sitting on lots across Canada that would likely have buyers available, especially with a 30% discount from list.

The End of GM Occured a Few Months Ago

http://www.wheels.ca/reviews/article/514447

If GM's sales units drop by as much in 2o10 over 2009, as they have in 2009 over 2008, GM will sell no cars in Canada within 10 months. That is even a faster collapse than I, as arguably the biggest detractor of this industry in Canada, had predicted.

GM isn't just toast, its crumbs.

One of my friends suggested the government not bother to bail out GM, but just guarantee warranties. Sorry, too late. By the end of the 2010, there will be no GM dealers left to do the warranty work.

This is tragic. But I, along with many others, first predicted this some 25 years ago, and the smug GM stakeholders told us we were "talking through our hats."

Those "hats" are keeping me mighty warm!!

This is the headline tonight:

"Bell Canada buys 750 The Source stores"

Could we please introduce drug testing for CEOs and board members.

Stick to the Knitting

In February both CTV and Canwest Global reported massive financial write downs. They joined Rogers Cable as money losers. Rogers shocked the markets by losing over $100 million in just one quarter. CTV expects to lose $100 million this year. Canwest is losing $28 million per quarter.

The CBC is also reporting a deficit for the year at $30 million, but it is a fraction of what the private broadcasters have reported.

Over the past 10 years, CTV, Canwest Global and Rogers have embarked on an ambitious national expansion, buying what they call "properties" for inflated prices, and then trying to integrate these "properties" into unrelated businesses. Instead of sticking to the fundamentals of their TV business, they have been building newspaper businesses, radio station business, Internet, satellite TV and telephone business.

Do all these businesses actually have enough in common to be managed together? Have they converged as the experts suggested they would?

No they haven't. With the single exception that one piece of wire can bring telephone and television and the Internet into the same home, there is no convergence. Radio for instance is a highly fragmented, local business, for which all revenues come solely from local advertising and with the exception of talk stations, all content is imported from other sources. The technology of radio hasn't changed much in 80 years. Newspapers are also local businesses. Network television is national in scope. And mobile telephony is unrelated to local and long distance land-based telephone.

A cell phone that can browse the Internet, send e-mails and take photos is sexy, especially when the bill is being paid by the employer or the bank of mom & dad. However the number of people using devices such as an iPhone and that are paying their own bill are negligible.

The really big stumble is the attempt of regional companies to remake themselves as national organizations by cobbling together vastly different businesses and cultures. The Canwest Global network, for instance, is a bizarre combination of completely unrelated local channels.

So how are these companies proposing to cover their losses. They want the regulator, the CRTC, to require the countries 4 cable operators to charge their clients fees to receive Canadian network television. The problem is that, with the exception of news and sports, nearly 100% of the content carried by CTV and Global are simply simulcasts of US television programming, for which we are already paying the cable company to receive.

Why would I pay an additional $10 per month to watch US shows on Canadian networks?

With respect to the Canadian networks, I watch absolutely nothing on CTV and Global except for US shows which I am also paying to receive on cable.

Please don't get me started on Rogers. I started off as a Rogers cable subscriber in 1985, paying $18 per month for cable TV and pay channels that did not carry commercials. Exactly the same service now costs $55 per month, and the pay channels carry commercials!!

What would I do?

1. Merge Global and CTV and require them to produce local content while divesting themselves of radio and newspaper assets

2. Regulate mobile telephony

3. Treat Rogers cable and other cable companies as utilities, with a business solely devoted on carrying signals, but producing content, not producing services.

By the way, in some places in Canada, nothing needs to be done. Shaw Communications, for instance, is in solid financial shape. Shaw's approach is simple. Its focus is on carrying content, not selling phones, nor producing television content, nor running radio and newspaper. Videotron in Quebec is also in solid financial shape.

U.N.C.L.E. - The Spin Stops Here

Welcome to the Universal Network for Common Sense, Legality and Empowerment.

U.N.C.L.E has been established to empower individuals to take responsibility for their own life, and to insist on the application of the principals of common sense and legal accountability on other individuals and organizations in their environment.

The focus of U.N.C.L.E. is on the individual. Remember there is an "I" in win.

U.N.C.L.E. will provide insightful opinion on events, organizations and individuals who refuse to take responsibility for themselves, instead, expecting to be "bailed out" by others, who have a misplaced sense of entitlements or have no accountability to their stakeholders.

At U.N.C.L.E. we believe in saying "NO" when told we must adopt technology that doesn't work, bail out dysfunctional organizations, are told to take responsibility for people and things for which we have no responsibility and are told to look the other way when people accountable to us commit malfeasance.

To put it simply, we are an island of sanity, in a river of the absurdities of life and we will defend our shoreline.