Government subsidies are bad for poor people but good for big business

When you give money to poor people, it destroys their work ethic. When you give money to news corporations, it saves democracy.  That's my takeaway from the recent announcement that the Trudeau government will begin offering assorted goodies to the hard-pressed newspaper industry.

You have to love Postmaster Paul's reaction; "Everybody in journalism should be doing a victory lap around their building right now." Sorry, Paul, I don't think Postmedia has any buildings anymore. They've all been sold off to appease the insatiable demand for interest payments on the part of the US hedgies who bought Canwest debt out of bankruptcy for pennies on the dollar, rebranded the smoking ruins as "Postmedia," and have managed to collect full value on that debt ever since.

Brilliant business strategy! The real estate had to go, the printing plants had to go, hundreds upon hundreds of journalists had to go, all in the name of finding "efficiencies" so that the unearned cash can keep flowing to the hedge fund vultures who are laughing all the way to the bank. Now the taxpayer gets to step up to the plate to help keep the whole charade afloat.

Elsewhere in the magical world of capitalism, the Globe and Mail informs me that there are now 122,455 "idle" oil and gas wells in western Canada, an increase of over fifty thousand since 2005. What happens to these wells? Well, what's going to happen to most of them is the tax-payers are going to be gifted the cost to clean them up.

The excellent Globe investigative report ( in its very own stand-alone eight-page section) details how the big "responsible" players in the oil patch fob off their played-out wells to fly-by-night entrepreneurs with high hopes but little money, who have nothing to lose by walking away from them in the event that their pie-in-the-sky plans don't work out.


Capitalism at its finest!

Decisions this stupid can only be taken at the very top

I see where the SunPostMedia gang are gonna slice off another 90 journalism jobs for the sake of efficiency.

Because the paper-buying public will never notice that the Ottawa Citizen and the Ottawa Sun have merged newsrooms...

As the think-tank here at Falling Downs has been relentlessly pointing out for years now, the SunPostMedia conglomerate isn't about the news business anymore.

No.

Instead, it's about paying off a couple of hedgies who bought up CanWest debt at pennies on the dollar back in the day.

Yup, those dudes have been working miracles in Canadian journalism ever since!

What's really extra funny, just in case you haven't had enough yet, is that these assholes have the gall to sponsor those galling J-School promos designed to convince idealistic but gullible youth that the once-honourable profession of journalism has a future.

Top National Post columnist exposed as delusional by pot-addled blogger

The National Post is the flagship title in the Postmedia stable, a Canadian newspaper franchise that has been enjoying a death spiral for years.

Postmedia was a Lazarus play conjured up by a few money guys who bought the outstanding debt of Izzy Asper's crashed Canwest media empire for pennies on the dollar a few years ago. They stuck Paul Godfrey in the captains chair for a million a year, crossed their fingers, and hoped for the best.

Over these last few years Postmedia has tried all sorts of desperation strategies trying to stay afloat; they've sold off the corporate real estate, fired virtually everyone who gets a real paycheque, farmed out all their editing and production, and still they're haemorrhaging more red ink than the last wagon-builder in the age of the motorcar.

While rumour has it that virtually all copy across the Postmedia chain is now produced by a handful of unpaid interns working out of a Tim Hortons in Burlington, it looks like a few of the old stalwarts are still given real office space and actual column inches to carry forward the illusion of continuity in the pages of the crumbling media empire.

Which must be why we still get to read Jonathan Kay in the pages of the Post.

Jonathan's reactionary far-right opinions are often entertaining, and his fellowship with the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies gives you a heads-up on what to expect, but the sad truth of the matter is that Kay is far more often than not simply full of shit.

Here's a Kay editorial from over two years ago celebrating the imminent demise of Bashir al Assad. Not only was Assad a gonner, but he was going to take Hezbollah with him, and all these marvels were occurring "without the West firing a shot."

And here is yours truly calling the bullshit at the time.

So where should you go to get the no-shit truth on world affairs, the National Post or this pot-addled blogger?

Postmedia Networks and the forty foot pole

Back in 2010, when the late Izzy Asper's media empire was in its death throes, a wake of bond vultures got busy buying up Canwest debt at peanuts on the dollar. They installed seasoned political operative Paul Godfrey as their titular figurehead and before you knew it, Canada was rocking a brand spanking new media conglomerate under the PostMedia banner.

As an investment by the vultures, the new entity has thus far honoured at face value the obligations the vultures bought up for peanuts. As a newspaper chain, it has the most readership of any media conglomerate in Canada. As a viable investment for regular folks it's been dead in the water and circling the drain since the get-go.

That's why the news that somebody paid real money, albeit not a lot of it, for almost 20% of the company left me flabbergasted. Everything at the former Canwest that can be stripped, looted, or outsourced has been, ages ago. They're an industry leader in the exploitation of unpaid interns. Their real estate is long gone in sale-leasebacks. What's the attraction? There is no possible upside by standard investment metrics.

But I think I've got it figured out.

The 11 millions Ed Mule paid for his 20% share of Postmedia is pocket change. It got him a coast to coast newspaper network with big schlep in Ottawa and some of the provincial capitals. This isn't a financial investment; it's an investment in a bully pulpit.

If you want to guide Canadian public opinion to happy thoughts about trade agreements, pipelines, tar sludge, Iran... whatever, what better way to do it than with the nation's biggest newspaper network?

As a potential profit centre, Mule has vastly overpaid for his slice of Postmedia.

As a PR platform he practically got it for nothing.

Award-winning journalist unleashes cliches of doom on Harper's China visit

The Ottawa Citizen has been a newspaper longer than Canada has been a country. It went through various ownerships over the decades and eventually ended up a Conrad Black property. In spite of that, it's never been able to transform itself into the country's "newspaper of record."

No wonder.

In one of the shrewdest moves of his ill-fated career Conrad Black unloaded his newspaper empire on the hapless Izzy Asper for top dollar just as the internet was making ink and paper obsolete. Izzy's Canwest media empire floundered aimlessly for a few years before going tits up.

Then lo and behold, a crew of finance sharpies backed by Goldman Sachs bought control of Canwest from the reciever for pennies on the dollar, and set up a "new" company; Postmedia. As a titular figure-head they brought in Paul Godfrey to dignify the exercise. Godfrey had in an ealier life made himself wealthy by launching the Toronto Sun tabloid.

The exercise wasn't about saving newspapers; it was about breathing life back into all that Canwest corporate debt they bought for pennies on the dollar. Nevertheless, they have to keep flogging newspapers to make their financial dreams come true.

And nothing moves papers like a bit of controversy.

Which brings me to Terry Glavin's opinion piece in the Citizen today.

Glavin has written a series of articles about the China menace. Seems the wily commies are taking over the world. Today he continues to work readers into a froth about the upcoming  Harper visit to China, which after the obligatory bullshit about our concern for human rights, will be nothing more and nothing less than a full-on grovel to beg the Chinese to buy our dirty oil.

In Glavin's article China's state-owned oil company is both "absurdly corrupt" and a "ravenous behemoth."

Its president is "aggressive and ambitious." If that isn't bad enough, "Sinopec provides the sanctions-busting revenues to allow the delusional mass-murderer al-Assad to hang on in Damascus."

But wait a minute! Then it gets "really ugly". Turns out those commies are now Iran's number one customer for Iranian crude! OH. MY. GOD!!!!!

So that's the big fear, that Harper is keen on doing business with people who still do business with Iran?

That's not a big story, my friend. Israeli companies do as much business with Iran as they can get away with. (see for example Achieving Peace on Earth one embargo defying deal at a time right here on this blog.)

Glavin goes on to claim that China now co-authors Canada's foreign policy, at which point I think it's fair to say he's given up all claims to any measure of credibility.

A company whose president is aggressive and ambitious? God forbid!

A major oil company that is a ravenous behemoth? Huh? There's been one that wasn't?

As for absurdly corrupt, I think in China they still make a practice of hanging their white-collar criminals.

Here we applaud them when they buy media empires for pennies on the dollar and bail them out when they get too big to fail.