The great Charlie Pierce made the above comment in response to the news that Senator Ted Cruz has formally renounced his Canadian citizenship, and he follows up with this:
Now, if they don’t build our old friend the Keystone XL pipeline, America will be completely free of noxious imports from Alberta.
Rofl!
Case in point, Canada and South Korea, who signed a free trade agreement without an all encompassing over-broad IP regime:
Canada and South Korea announced agreement on a comprehensive trade agreement earlier today. The focus is understandably on tariff issues, but the agreement also contains a full chapter on intellectual property (note that the governments have only released summaries of the agreement, not the full text, which is still being drafted). The IP chapter is significant for what it does not include. Unlike many other trade deals – particularly those involving the U.S., European Union, and Australia – the Canada-South Korea deal is content to leave domestic intellectual property rules largely untouched. The approach is to reaffirm the importance of intellectual property and ensure that both countries meet their international obligations, but not to use trade agreements as a backdoor mechanism to increase IP protections.
Yesterday I noted that Canada might be asked to increase the term of copyright protection given that South Korea had agreed to longer copyright terms in its recent agreements with the European Union, Australia, and the U.S. In fact, the U.S. agreement contains extensive additional side letters on Internet provider liability, enforcement, and online piracy. The Canada – South Korea deal rejects that approach with copyright, trademark, patent, and enforcement rules that are all consistent with current Canadian law (plus the coming border measures provisions in Bill C-8).
On copyright, the summary states the agreement:
- reflects Canada’s regime as updated by the 2012 Copyright Modernization Act, which brought Canada into compliance with the World Intellectual Property Organization’s two Internet treaties;
- reiterates existing aspects of Canada’s regime, including the protection of technological protection measures (technology designed to protect copyrighted material), protection of rights management information, and special measures against copyright infringers on the Internet (no change to Canada’s notice and notice regime, which defines the responsibility of Internet service providers in respect of copyrighted material on their networks).
The specific reference to notice-and-notice is important since it confirms no takedown requirements nor three-strikes rules. The specific measures against copyright infringers may be interpreted as Canada’s enabler provision that targets websites that facilitate infringement. Moreover, the references to reflecting Canada’s regime indicates that there is no copyright term extension or other substantive changes.
No copyright erxtensions. No requirement that the other countries accept evergreening of drugs.
IP sanity. What a concept.
H/t Slashdot.
No, seriously, the government of British Columbia just denied a permit to build a tar sands pipeline to a company that refused to offer remediation plans for a potential spill”
Oil spill cleanup concerns have led the British Columbia Government to reject a proposed multi-billion dollar tar sands oil pipeline that the Canadian company Enbridge wants to construct across the province.
In its final submission Friday to the federally-appointed Northern Gateway Pipeline Joint Review Panel, the province states that it cannot support the Enbridge Northern Gateway project because the company “has been unable to address British Columbians’ environmental concerns.”
Environment Minister Terry Lake said, “British Columbia thoroughly reviewed all of the evidence and submissions made to the panel and asked substantive questions about the project including its route, spill response capacity and financial structure to handle any incidents. Our questions were not satisfactorily answered during these hearings.”
“Northern Gateway has said that they would provide effective spill response in all cases. However, they have presented little evidence as to how they will respond,” Lake said. “For that reason, our government cannot support the issuance of a certificate for the pipeline as it was presented to the Joint Review Panel.”
………
“It shows that Northern Gateway would have comprehensive oil spill response plans for all Project components and would substantially improve existing emergency response on Canada’s pacific coast – something unprecedented for a pipeline project. It shows that the Project has been developed with a comprehensive public and Aboriginal engagement program that would continue throughout Project construction and operation,” the company said in its submission.
But the B.C. government’s submission points out that the company’s proposal indicates that “doing nothing is a possible response to a spill.”
(Emphasis mine)
<snark> Are they Communists in Canada or something? Don’t they know this is supposed to work?
Silly Rabbit, the profits go to the energy companies, and the taxpayer pays for the cleanup! </snark>
H/t Americablog
Kris Warner compares union penetration of the labor market in the United States, and compares it to that of Canada, and rather observes that there are some real reasons for this, and that they exist because labor rights have been under legislative assault in the United States since the passage of Taft-Hartley:
Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its annual summary of unionization in the U.S. It reports that in 2012, the union-membership rate of wage and salary workers was 11.3 percent, compared with 11.8 percent in 2011. The trend has been downward for some time: Fifty years ago, the figure was almost 30 percent.
It’s conventional wisdom that the post-industrial workforce doesn’t want to be unionized. But survey data show that workers’ desire to join unions has been growing since the 1980s, and a majority of nonunion workers would now vote for union representation if given the opportunity. So if workers want unions, why is unionization falling?
Commentators have also blamed the decline on everything from globalization to technological advances to the hollowing-out of American manufacturing. But those factors are only part of the story.
Canada’s experience offers another answer. Canada has gone through many of the same economic and social changes as the U.S. since the middle of the 20th century, yet it hasn’t seen the same precipitous decline in unionization. The unionization rate in the U.S. and Canada followed fairly similar paths from 1920 to the mid-1960s, at which point they began to diverge drastically.
Differences in labor law and public policy are at the root of this disparity.
No so-called “right to work” laws in Canada, card check, or elections that are conducted in 1-3 weeks, instead of months, or possibly years, the right to first contract arbitration, so that employers cannot simply stonewall negotiations to a new union for years.
I want us to be more like Canada.
And I have to preface this by, “No, this is not The Onion.”
It appears that Quebec police have foiled a massive theft from the Canadian Strategic Maple Syrup Reserves:
It was a culinary whodunit involving a daring heist, a golden bounty, and now, some allegedly sticky-fingered suspects.
Police in Quebec announced the arrest of three men in the theft of 6 million lbs. of maple syrup from a provincial warehouse, a haul estimated at $18-million and enough to smother a Himalayan mountain of waffles and pancakes.
The arrests mark a badly-needed break in a case that circled the globe and pulled in law-enforcement agents operating in two countries and three provinces, all deployed in the retrieval of one of Canada’s most cherished resources.
The theft was discovered in August at a depôt rented by the Quebec Federation of Maple Syrup Producers, in what police believe was an inside job. Some 10,000 barrels of stockpiled syrup, part of the federation’s carefully guarded “International Strategic Reserve,” had gone missing. The Fort Knox-style controls reflect the fact that Quebec dominates the world market in maple syrup and carefully controls the commodity’s price and supply.
(emphasis mine)
Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve? Seriously?
Something is seriously weird here.
Also: If they have a International Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve T-shirt, or a baseball cap, I want one.
The news that Canada has decided to cancel its purchase of 65 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters is a stunner.
It’s the first cancellation, and Canada is more than a customer, it is also one of the original 9 nations that formed the JSF consortium:
The F-35 jet fighter purchase, the most persistent thorn in the federal government’s side and the subject of a devastating auditor-general’s report last spring, is dead.
Faced with the imminent release of an audit by accountants KPMG that will push the total projected life-cycle costs of the aircraft above $30 billion, the operations committee of the federal Cabinet decided to scrap the controversial sole-source program and go back to the drawing board, a source familiar with the decision said.
This occurred after Chief of the Defence Staff Thomas Lawson, while en route overseas, was called back urgently to appear before the committee, the source said.
The decision is sure to have ripple effects around the world, as any reduction in the number of aircraft on order causes the price to go up for all the other buyers. Canada is one of nine F-35 consortium members, including the United States.
………
Last spring, Ferguson ignited a political firestorm when he reported that the top-line cost cited by the Conservatives in the 2011 election campaign — $9 billion for 65 planes, or $15 billion including maintenance and other life-cycle costs — was $10-billion below the Defence Department’s internal estimate.
Even the internal figure of $25.1 billion was suspect, critics said, because it assumed a 20-year life cycle. The longevity of the Lockheed-Martin-built aircraft, according to the Pentagon, is 36 years.
KPMG’s audit, due out next week, has confirmed the contention, long made by critics such as former assistant deputy minister (materiel) Alan Williams, that the F-35 program’s real cost would be much higher than any previously stated government estimate, sources say.
H/t Christina Mackenzie at the Ares blog.
Understand also that the KPMG analysis almost certainly ignored the elephant in the room, the fact that for any nation operating the F-35, they will be opening themselves up to potentially extortionate charges for support from from the prime contractor over the life of the program, because of the highly integrated, and completely closed, architecture of the aircraft:
It is not often that governments are afforded the luxury of looking into the future before they irrevocably commit to a course of action that will have momentous long-term consequences.
Yet, this is just what the debate about the future of Britain’s fleet of Apache attack helicopters provides, not just to its own government, but also to other European governments as they prepare to order, at great cost, the US-made F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
Britain’s problem is that it operates the AH-64D Longbow version of Apache, while the US Army is upgrading to the AH-64E Block III version. This means that “essential technical support for the British Apache fleet will be withdrawn from 2017,” as the Daily Telegraph reported Dec. 5, leaving Britain with the choice of either upgrading all or part of its Apaches to the new version, or retiring them after 2017 as they drift into early obsolescence.
………
Whether they realize it or not when they buy a US-made weapon, that is how the system works: US forces only support the weapons they operate, so it’s either keep up or drop out, and in this case either scrap your weapons or see them fade away into technical and operational irrelevance.
The other side of the coin, obviously, is that buyers of US weapons are always assured of having access to the very latest versions, improvements and upgrades decided by the US military.
………
Each time the US military decides a modification or upgrade to its F-35s, foreign customers will have to follow suit, at whatever cost Lockheed and the Pentagon decide, or else see their aircraft become obsolete as US technical support shifts to the newer version.
In fact, the situation will be infinitely more serious in the case of the F-35, as export customers will not have access to the aircraft’s source codes, nor to its more advanced maintenance methods and equipment, because all but the most basic maintenance will be carried out by Lockheed Martin in its own facilities in the United States.
Foreign operators of the F-35 will have to pay to play. But it is probable that European governments do not fully understand this consequence of buying into a major US program.
European buyers of the F-16 in the 1970s – which now all intend to buy the F-35 – were not faced with a similar situation because they had assembled their F-16s in Europe; because software source codes were not an issue at the time; and because the United States had a vested interest in keeping allies’ fighters as effective as possible during the Cold War, when profits took a back seat. None of these circumstances exist today.
Unlike the case of the UK’s AH-64Ds, the architecture of the JSF is such that if you opt out of the upgrade, and Lockheed will stops supporting that model of the aircraft, you won’t simply have an aircraft that is obsolete or obsolescent, you will have an aircraft which cannot fly, because the customer will not be allowed to have tools to maintain it.
Your $100 million dollar aircraft has become a door stop.
As an aside, one wonders whether there is will be an “off switch” on export models of the F-35.
Certainly, if I were directing foreign military sales at the Pentagon, I would demand such a feature, at least for those aircraft shipped to non NATO allies.
Let me say that, since he was kicked out of his think thank job at AEI, David Frum has been a source of remarkably honest and thoughtful analysis.
A case in point is his comparison of Lyndon Johnson and Barack Obama in reviewing Robert Caro’s bio of Johnson:
It’s hard not to detect in these pages an unspoken critique of Barack Obama. Yes, certainly, Obama shares Lyndon Johnson’s gift for driving opponents crazy, if it is a gift. But the use of power Caro so vividly describes is not something that comes naturally to our current president. The constant searching for opportunities; the shameless love-bombing of opponents; the endless wooing of supporters; the deft deployment of inducements and threats—these are the low arts that led to Johnson’s high success. You can see why a high-minded leader like Barack Obama would recoil from the Johnson style and embrace Kennedyesque rhetorical grandeur instead. Such presidents contribute great phrases to quotation books, but they tend not to add lasting laws to the statute books—or enduring change to the history books.
It appears that there are are no thinking conservatives in America, so we have to export them to Canada.
last ‘graph
So the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure has sort of backed down:
The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation announced Friday that it would revise a new policy that barred the organization from funding Planned Parenthood, a move that had thrust the breast cancer foundation into a national controversy.
Komen apologized “to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.”
The foundation said that Planned Parenthood would now be eligible to apply for grants. It did not, however, address other reasons Komen has cited for why it might choose not to approve such grants.
“Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation,” a Friday statement said. “We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.”
“We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities,” the statement continues.
What they are saying that they aren’t cancelling current grants, which they never said they would, and Planned Parenthood can apply for grants next year, but there are “no promises”.
There may be grants to Planned Parenthood next year, but they will eventually cut them off, assuming that these folks aren’t (hopefully) a dead corporatist charity walking.
Btw, in the, “It sucks when an angel pees down the barrel of your rifle,” department, a documentary, called “Pink Ribbons, Inc.,” is hitting theaters in Canada, and film festivals in the United States as I am typing this.
The film alleges that Komen is “Pink Washing” companies that are suspected of exposing the population to carcinogens that might cause breast cancer, among other things.
Simply because The Smew is giving its American counterpart a run for its money:
Flush With Oil From Alberta, Canada Prepares For Inevitable U.S. Invasion
OTTAWA, ON—It’s a subject the Canadian military high command doesn’t like to discuss, but one that’s taken on an increasing sense of urgency since the discovery of massive oil reserves in the Alberta tar sands: how to defend Canada from imminent U.S. invasion.
A highly-placed military source in the Harper government, speaking off the record, confirmed that Canada is actively preparing for an American attack. “Look, we can all see the pattern here: if a country has significant oil reserves, the United States will find a pretext to invade. Iraq, Libya—frankly, it’s either us or Iran next,” he said.
Brilliant!
I’m voting for Canada.
I’m, so glad that I don’t live in a swing state, because don’t have to hold my nose and choose between voting for Gordon Gecko (Mitt Romney), and a Gordon Gecko fanboi (Obama/Geithner).
Obama is in election mode.
He’s criticizing Republicans and trying for a new jobs program.
And now the State Department as delayed a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline until after the election.
They want a study on another route, one that might be a bit less likely to contaminate the Ogallala aquifer.
This is not a policy change. This is an cynical exercise in electioneering, and once Obama doesn’t need the environmentalists, he will once again go out of his way to sh%$ all over them once again.
And it was a doozy:
The Conservatives now have an outright majority in Parliament, posting a 24 seat gain to end up with 167 seats, which was not a big surprise, but the rest of the results were a shocker.
The left leaning New Democratic Party (NDP) picked up 66 seats, and now has 102, making it the official opposition for the first time ……… ever, while the Liberals, who have run Canada for most of the past 100 years, lost 43 seats, dropping to 34, and their party leader, the contemptible Iraq war cheerleader Michael Ignatieff, lost his seat.
Even more surprising is that the secessionist Bloc Québécois also lost 43 seats, dropping to just 4 seat, which means that they lost official party status,and their party leader lost his reelection bid too.
Hopefully, this means that the BQ will have to take their time away from genteel ethnic cleansing* to rebuild their party.
Both Lib Leader Michael Ignatieff and BQ Leader Gilles Duceppe resigned their party positions as well.
The Tories did not get anywhere near a majority of the vote, they got less than 40%, but they got them in the right places, and with the NDP surging, largely because the Liberals had been folding like a bunch of broccoli ever since Ignatieff took control, and people choose something, particularly a something which gave them their world class healthcare system, over nothing, they went to the NDP.
The downside is that Conservative leader Stephen Harper, after 2 terms running a minority government, probably feels entitled to do what he really wants, which is tax cuts for the wealthy, cuts in social services, and more prisons and fighter jets.
I fully expect a stealth assault on socialized medicine.
On the bright side (if you are an optimist):
Then again, I am a bit of an optimist.
*It’s why the largest Jewish community in Canada is now in Toronto.
The idea that Canada would buy anything but a US aircraft, particularly with a significant long shot, but the fact that both companies are pitching their aircraft as an alternative to the F-35 JSF:
Representatives from the German-based Eurofighter Typhoon and Sweden’s Saab Gripen appeared at committee and told members their planes can meet Canada’s air force demands, and are far cheaper than the fifth-generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter stealth jet the government agreed to buy in July.
Canada intends to buy 65 F-35s for $9 billion — plus maintenance costs — to replace the aging fleet of CF-18s, with delivery expected to start in 2016.
Antony Ogilvie with Saab said they could supply Canada with 65 upgraded Gripens, with 40 years of maintenance costs included, for under $6 billion.
I am unsure of the maintenance costs of the F-35, but it is safe to say that the life cycle costs for the F-35 are at least twice as much as the diminutive Swedish fighter.
If the Gripen ever reaches sales critical mass, it could be the F-5 of this era. It’s half the life cycle cost and size of its competitors while offering decent performance by the standards of the day.
Truth be told, it’s likely that the Eurofighter will probably be cheaper over its lifetime than the JSF as well, and while not offering the all aspect stealth (or stealthish if you listen to the critics) of the JSF, it does offer a known price and operating cost, a wider array of munitions, greater agility, supercruise, and higher ceiling, with the advantage of known operational and purchase price and a 2nd engines for safer operations over the largely uninhabited, and rather inhospitable, areas in northern Canada.
The lede has to be the ADP report showing that private employers cut 10,000 jobs in August.
Obviously, we will get the official numbers from the Feds on Friday.
On the other hand, manufacturing grew more than expected in August.
It’s kind of a mixed bag news day, with consumer spending increasing, but real incomes fell for the first time in over 6 months and the Conference Board’s consumer confidence beat estimates.
I’m not sure exactly what they are spending money on though, because car sales had the weakest August in 27 years, which would imply an aversion to big ticket purchases.
In real estate, the Case-Shiller home price index rose in June, though that’s probably more a result of the now-expired tax credit than anything else, mortgage applications rose slightly, though, unsurprisingly, more so for refinance than it did for home purchases, and construction spending was significantly lower than estimates.
In the “these are real lives that are being f%$#ed with” category, bankruptcy filings fell in August, though they still remain at a near 5 years high.
Finally, Canada’s economy slowed significantly in the 2nd quarter.
When you’ve lost Stephen Harper on the war, you’ve lost the war:
Canada is sticking to a 2011 end date for its combat mission in Afghanistan even as the United States prepares to significantly boost its military presence in the war-torn country.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, speaking at the conclusion of a Commonwealth leaders’ summit in Trinidad, said he doesn’t see any enthusiasm among Canada’s 308 MPs for prolonging or expanding this deployment.
This is a guy who was literally George W. Bush’s best bud in this hemisphere, and was right behind Tony Blair in the competition for best poodle in show, and disappointed about finishing 2nd.
This won’t change the White House’s position on Afghanistan, which is all about Barack Obama attempting to defuse attacks from the right that he is a peacenik, so he is better positioned to run for reelection in 2012, which, of course worked so f$#@ing well for LBJ in 1965.
So, it’s wrong on pragmatic political level, where Vietnam kneecapped Johnson’s Great Society and the Democratic for years, and it’s wrong on the moral level, where feeding new bodies to what Eric Palmer calls “Operation Useless Dirt” simply to inoculate one’s self from right wing attacks that will happen anyway.
*Yeah, I can’t believe that I said that either.
So the liberals wimp out, and Michael Ignatieff, showing all the moral courage and intellect he showed when he supported the invasion of Iraq gives Stephen Harper’s merry bunch of radicals a “Get out of Jail Free” card, as New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton so ably noted.
What did he get? It appears that he got a statement from the Canadian finance minister that he was, “open to opposition suggestions.”
Ignatieff does not get it, but he just sold the country down the river, and the coalition cannot be reformed in the foreseeable future, so the Conservatives get to continue their goal of making Canada just like Texas.
It now appears that the other contenders have bowed out of the running and Michael Ignatieff will be the new party leader.
In statements following this, he promptly showed that Steven Harper has his balls in a jar somewhere:
Ignatieff has cautioned against automatically trying to topple the minority Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a strategy that the party had contemplated only last week. Even so, a new Liberal leader is expected to move quickly in a drive to rebuild the party into a credible alternative to Harper’s Conservatives.
It appears that the fact that the Conservatives are on every media outlet in Canada screaming like scalded babies has made Mr. Ignatieff concerned that they might say something bad about him.
To paraphrase Josh Marshall, why would the voters believe that you can fight for them if you cannot fight for yourself.
Stephen Harper put out an austerity budget in the middle of a recession because he’s a lunatic. He tried to gut public campaign finance because he is a lunatic without scruples.
If you won’t work with this man, you will be his bitch.
We already knew that Japan was in a recession, but the updated data is worse than the initial data. The preliminary number was 0.1%, the prediction was 0.2%, and it came in at 0.5%.
Barry Ritholtz notes that the 4 Week T-Bill was paying 0%, down from 0.4%, and notes that the only reason to do this is if you expect that the next 4 week T-Bill will have a negative interest rate, i.e. that you pay the government money for the honor of lending them your money.
Turns out that he was a a little bit premature, because the 3 month T-Bills actually traded at negative interest rates, “If you invested $1 million in three-month bills at today’s negative discount rate of 0.01 percent, for a price of 100.002556, at maturity you would receive the par value for a loss of $25.56.”
If you want to feel concerned note that this is the Lowest Rate Since 1929…1929….That year sounds familiar.
In the meantime, the Bank of Canada cut its key rate by 75 basis points to a 50-year low, because they are in recession too.
In real estate, the Pending Home Sales index fell, though not by much, and listing prices for homes have continued to fall.
Calculated Risk has a summary of the commercial real estate market, and it ain’t pretty.
In energy, oil is down a bit, likely spooked by the complications on a bailout deal.
The dollar was mixed today, up a bit vs the Pound and Euro, and down a bit vs. the Yen.
I’ve never been entirely sure why, but Fridays tend to be OMFG kinds of days, and this one is a doozy.
We have the jobs report out, and it is unbelievably grim, with 533,000 job losses, and the unemployment rate going from 6.5% to 6.7%.
By way of perspective, the so-called experts has predicted job losses of “only” 335,000.
It’s the worst monthly job losses since 1974.
The numbers are actually worse, since this does not count the 422,000 people who just stopped looking for work.
BTW, the unemployment number quoted, the U3 is considered, by me at least, to be over restrictive and understate unemployment. The broader U6, it hits 12.5%:
The U-6 rate only has comparable history back to 1994, but November’s rate is by far the highest since then and the swift rise to that elevated level also far surpasses similar moves during the recessions in 2001 and 1990-91. Previously, the Labor Dept. kept a similar gauge with history back to 1970, showing a high of 14% unemployment during the deep recession in 1982.
The U-6 rate rose sharply in November, from 11.8% in October, and is markedly higher now than the 8.4% recorded in November 2007.
It sucks north of the border too, where Canada Lost 70,600 jobs, which is more on a per capita basis…but Steven Harper wants to try Hoovernomics for a few months to see if it will fix things, which is why the hereditary enemies Liberal, NDP, and BQ parties are trying to desperately form a coalition government to kick his ass to the curb.
Given these numbers, it’s no surprise that a record number of Americans are on food stamps.
Meanwhile, in real estate, delinquencies and foreclosures hit record highs, loans in foreclosure are now at 2.97%, and delinquencies rose to 6.99%.
Meanwhile, it’s clear that the central banks are pushing on a string, and the Bank of England is looking at finding new ways to give away money, because rate cuts are not working:
The Bank of England is working on radical plans to inject cash directly into the British economy as a last resort to reverse a slide into recession, a newspaper reported on Friday.
…
The Daily Telegraph said the Bank was “working on radical plans to inject cash directly into the economy — the nuclear option to be used only when interest rates approach zero.” The report said the Bank was considering engaging in “quantitative easing” — printing more money to reflate the economy.
“Measures under consideration include direct purchases of assets, such as government debt or commercial investments, by the Bank or the Treasury, as well as expanding the Bank’s balance sheet, a means of pumping extra cash into the banking sector,” the newspaper said.
This is end of days economics…..They are literally considering throwing money out the window.
Meanwhile, the markets behaved in ways that make no sense to me, once again indicating that anything beyond simple index funds is not a good investment option for me:
because….Honestly, I have no clue as to why.
In the meantime, oil fell to $40.81/bbl, the lowest since December 10, 2004, and Gasoline?: $1.773/gallon retail.