Celebrating the vultures

No, I'm not celebrating the vultures like Eddie Lampert and Bill Ackman, vultures who swooped into Canada to destroy the lives and livelihoods of tens of thousands of working class Canadians. They've been amply celebrated in the pages of Canadian buisiness press already. The vultures I want to celebrate are the turkey vultures. I think we got a clan of them roosting in the barn. Like everything else at Falling Downs, the barn is falling down. It's an old-school homesteader era barn, and it's a shame to watch her go. At the same time, farming isn't done the way they used to do it when that barn was built. You had a large hay-mow up top, and usually a granary, and down below, you had space for cattle. Today the hay is stored in those massive plastic-wrapped sausages that festoon the countryside. Apparently it's way more nutritious if you wrap it in plastic than if you store it in a barn. The main reason for restoring an old barn today would be to use it as a wedding venue. I've thought of that. Rent out the barn for ten grand a night instead of fifteen hundred for the year. Alas, I'd have to sink in half a million I don't have in order to turn that falling down barn into a wedding venue. But I can enjoy the vultures without doing a damn thing! They are a beautiful bird to watch soaring. Where there's one there's usually an entire crew not far away. They float through the thermals and are one of the most graceful birds you'd ever want to see. They get a bad rap because they eat road-kill, but that's a great public service too. What a blessing it is to appreciate the beauty that surrounds me!

How is underwear not "essential?"

Great news from the front lines of the pandemic! I was heading into town to pick up my blood pressure meds, and the CBC news was on the radio. New covid cases at their lowest since last September! The presenter sounded almost euphoric.

Shoppers Drug Mart has been open for the duration. That makes sense. People need their meds. While you're in the store you can pick up a few things that may not be quite as life-or-death as your meds. Essentials like lip gloss, eyeliner, nail polish. That makes sense too. After all, you're blowing your germs around the place anyway, so what difference could it possibly make?

With so much good covid news I thought I'd swing by Giant Tiger to see if they were still curbside pickup. Since that a-hole hedge-fund manager in Florida killed Sears Canada, Giant Tiger's been my go-to spot for socks and underwear. That last three-pack of Fruit of the Looms I bought before covid are beyond threadbare, to the point where, even if they were fresh out of the wash, their disgraceful appearance would shame the family name for years to come were I to suffer an unexpected trip to the hospital.

There's people going in and out! Alrighty! New undies at last!

I mask up and head in with a bounce in my step... and you wouldn't friggin' believe it; they've blocked off the entire store with yellow caution tape except half a dozen food aisles at the back. 

To my way of thinking, undershorts are every bit as essential as eyeliner and nail-polish. In fact, reasonable people will agree underpants are every bit  as important as shoes. Just like shoes keep dogshit off your feet, shorts keep skid-marks off your Levis. You're already in the store. If you grab some tinned tuna and a box of cereal, how will anyone be put at increased risk if you pick up a three-pack of Fruit of the Looms on your way out?

The shoe stores have been closed too!

Strikes me as ridiculous. But, I'm not an expert, so what do I know...

Speaking of experts, I guess now that our numbers are at record lows those of us who've spent the past year denigrating them owe them an apology.

I'm sorry, experts.

But I do wonder about one thing. This record low number of new cases once again happens to happily coincide with a record low number of tests. In January daily testing peaked at over 75,000 daily. Yesterday Ontario did barely 15,000.

Gee, who would've expected case numbers to go down when you do 80% less testing?

Save the Greedbags!

Here's a telling headline from the front page of today's Globe and Mail, "Wall Street hits back, limiting trades on stocks pushed skyward by amateur online investors."

The gist of the story is that within two weeks of an online mob of Reddit nerds inflicting a little pain on some hedge-fund greedbags, the "professional investors" have circled the wagons and are hoping to make sure this doesn't happen again.

Two weeks! 

Where was the outrage when hedge fund manager Bill Ackman destroyed 6,000 great jobs for regular folks at CP Rail?

Where was the outcry when hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert systematically looted Sears Canada, driving it into bankruptcy and destroying the pensions of 16,000 Canadian workers?

Needless to say, there's never howls of indignation in the business press when billionaire hedge fund managers are busy destroying lives and livelihoods. It's what they do, after all... it's their job!

What we're talking about when we talk about "rule of law"

As every good Canuck knows, nobody does rule of law rulier or lawier than we do. Look up "rule of law" in the encyclopedia and there's a picture of a little beaver waving the Maple Leaf.

That's us!

"Rule of law" has become a get-out-of-jail-free card for those who make our laws and rules.

Wanna slap Meng Wanzhou in the slammer for a couple years to disabuse the Yellow Peril of their fantasies about 5G dominance? Rule of law! We had no choice!

A jerk-off US hedge-fund titan loots Sears Canada for billions and leaves 16,000 Canadian pensioners in the lurch? Rule of law! We had no choice!

Another US hedge-fund titan adds billions to the value of CP Rail by killing over five thousand excellent Canadian working class jobs. We are so grateful we thank Bill Ackman for making this Canadian icon more efficient, and gift him a couple of billions as a token of our gratitude.

We had no choice... rule of law!

But nothing throws into relief our attachment to rule of law quite like the Wet'suwet'en debacle. At least we've cleared up one of the great mysteries of this rule-of-law juggernaut.

When we talk about rule of law, we talk about the rule of White Man's Law.

Yup, all of Justin's vacuous twaddle about reconciliation and mutual respect and nation-to-nation dialogue is going down the shitter even as I type these words.

Now he's asking  our FN neighbours, living with the legacy of 400 years of betrayal and broken promises, to be patient. At least he's being even-handed; that's also what he's asking of the non-natives who have been inconvenienced by the rail blockade for a couple weeks.

We are, after all, a fair and just nation, governed by the rule of law...

Corporate rule

Here's a question; why has our government worked so hard to make a "deferred prosecution agreement" (DPA) available to SNC-Lavalin?

Here's another one; why has no mainstream media outlet ever investigated how hedge fund sharpie Gerald Schwartz was able to more than double the value of Husky Injection Molding in less than four years?

And another; why was Hunter Harrison universally lauded as a hero in our mainstream Canadian media for eliminating over 5,000 excellent working class jobs at CPR?

Here are some tentative answers.

The purpose of a DPA is to allow corporate entities that engage in bribery, bid-rigging, and other nefarious business practices to get off by paying a fine instead of being charged with a crime. Corporations love it! Paying the fine becomes just another cost of doing business, just like the original bribe. The Trudeau government's rationale for having slipped a DPA provision into law last year, in the back pages of an omnibus budget bill, is that Canada needs to have a level playing field vis-a-vis our competitors. Ergo, if the UK and US go easy on corporate crooks, we must too, or we won't be competitive.

Husky was the life's passion of Robert Schad, a German immigrant who started out with a little machine shop in the mid 50's. He famously made Husky one of the most desirable workplaces in Canada by providing not only good wages, but unprecedented employee perks, from free meals to free day-care to on site gyms. Getting on in years, he sold his baby to Gerald Schwartz's Onex in 2007 for just under a billion dollars.

Less than four years later, Schwartz sold Husky on to another hedge fund for two billion. How did Schwartz add a billion dollars in value to the company that Robert Schad had spent a lifetime building up? He ripped out all that feel-good stuff that detracts from the bottom line, that's how. That's what "building value" looks like in the world of hedge fund operators. 

That's appalling, disgusting, scandalous... but Gerald Schwartz is a Very Big Deal who just donated $100,000,000 to the University of Toronto. No newspaper publisher, let alone reporter, is going to touch that story with a fifty foot pole, because it would be their last story.

Canadian news media lapped up every drop of mendacious idiocy that dripped from Hunter Harrison's lips as Harrison and his hedge fund boss Bill Ackman destroyed more than 5,000 working class jobs at the iconic railroad. Harrison was "the new sheriff in town," don't you know. He was going to "change the culture" at CPR.

And he did. He replaced a culture of collegiality with a culture of fear, and he and Ackman walked away with a cool two billion for their troubles. For that, they are regarded as business geniuses by our business press.

That's what corporate rule looks like. There are innumerable case studies to choose from. Eddie Lampert looted Sears Canada to the tune of billions, leaving 16,000 pensioners in the lurch, but our media claim the company failed because of changing consumer tastes and inept management. The same corporate media still proclaim NAFTA a resounding success, even as all evidence shows it decimated Canada's manufacturing sector.

Which brings us to our current Prime Minister. He serves as an invaluable cover for the greedbags who call the shots behind the scenes. All the talk about feminism and diversity and human rights is designed to take our eye off the fact that he's 100% committed to corporate rule.

Here's a bold prediction. SNC-Lavalin will yet get their DPA. Our media, both corporate and the state broadcaster, will keep hammering away at the credibility of JWR and the (completely bogus) claim that 9,000 jobs are at risk.


Corporate rule will prevail.

Why the old order is doomed

The "American Dream" is dead.

And it's not just dead in America. Thanks to the ubiquity of US pop culture and its usurpation of native cultures around the world, the death of the American Dream has global repercussions.

Hard work and making sure your kids get a decent education, so that they'll make an even better go of things, well, that might still work today, if you're lucky.

But in all probability, it will not.

Hard work don't mean shit if the place you worked for thirty years gets bought and stripped bare by the hedgies. That happens over and over again, and it's just considered business as usual. Look at what happened to Sears Canada once that asshole in Florida got his hands on it.

Goodbye pensions! Goodbye jobs!

As for getting an education, good luck with that.

The recent Ivy League admissions scandal is just a step beyond what always goes on. Certain schools have a more prestigious degree than others, and that can make all the difference in a career. The stupid children of the rich are far more likely to get into those schools than the smart children of the poor.

Not that all rich kids are stupid, and of course poor folks have lots of stupid kids too. But unless you've got the right credentials from the right place, that university degree you owe $40,000 in student loans on is gonna take a big bite out of your paycheck as a barista or an Uber driver.


And, horror of horrors, the kids are figuring this out.