If you're sniffing the money, do it quietly

So here we go again, where business freedom, religious values and equality laws clash. At "The Way the Ball Bounces" Richard recounts two cases, one in the UK and one in PEI, of devoutly Christian accommodation owners running into the wrath of Stonewall - a gay advocacy group - and the HRC. 

We cherish business freedom as a foundation of the free market, and our own freedom to do as we please as the bedrock of democracy. When these appear to conflict with the law of the land, we are quick to cry foul and demand legislative change. Is this rage always justified?

"Money doesn't stink" - Adam Smith would say if he were explaining the market to an ignoramus as me. Picky owners of businesses that provide a service to the public (a.k.a. all businesses) sniff the money before taking it. Should they have the right to? Definitely, but it's not smart.

Denying an advertised service based on nothing but personal belief flaunts the law, and advocate of personal freedom as I may be, I recognize the supremacy of the statute book. Business owners have a duty to know the letter of the law of the jurisdiction they operate in. Would you argue in favour of a Christian who is being done in Iran for selling alcohol? Or a Muslim shopkeeper who refuses entry to women not wearing a headscarf? I wouldn't.

There isn't a law that can't be circumvented. The B&B owners who want to discriminate should simply make their services by invitation only. Have prospective bookers fill out a form online asking several questions and waive their right to appeal if the invitation is denied. Denying services to people who misrepresented themselves is perfectly legal, or at least gives you more of a case. After all, you're still pushing the envelope without a cost justification.

If you can't prove a cost, comply.

Establishments have no-pets policies because of the added clean-up, no-children policies because of potential insurance issues and over-occupancy policies because of perceived fire hazards, to say. 

Washing sheets that have been bonked on will cost the same, whoever soiled them.

A prosecutor who takes no crap

Recently, the Telegraph ran a profile of Ilda Boccassini, a firebrand public prosecutor in Italy who hounds organized crime in all its forms and manifestations. She haunts Berlusconi's nightmares.

Today I appreciated the full extent of her chutzpah. Never a softie - her mentor was Giovanni Falcone - she today ordered an uncooperative victim of mob usury into the slammer. The fight against Italian mobs is plagued by the omerta' - zipped mouths and no cooperation. It's the equivalent of saying you saw nothing when a person was shot in front of you, or that you fell down the stairs rather than your debt shark beat you up.

Adding insult to injury, the guy was advising another victim against giving evidence to the point of threatening repercussions against the witness' family.

He will now go to trial for aiding and abetting his tormentors, and this kind of no-sh*t approach is the correct way to stomp the mob out of its newly-found turfs. Carrots can work and fear can be a justification for not being cooperative. But lying and choosing the mob over the State should carry an exemplary penalty, for it is treason.

Boy, I hope her bodyguards are good!

Is it such a revolutionary concept?

Minimize expenses and maximize returns, also known as don't let debt eat your earnings. I was raised in a debt-averse family and society, where saving and parsimony weren't dirty words or concepts that made one "uncool". The whole concept of the credit crisis hits me as something both rational and yet astonishingly idiotic.

So reading the common sense in the National Post fills me with admiration for a newspaper that aims to educate the masses about the mathematics of personal finance. The bitter aftertaste comes when I realize there's a need for such an article, hence its printing.

My comprehension of the money world stops at the surface, for want of a financial education. My wallet, nevertheless, compels me to look at interest rates, taxes and opportunities to make sure my money doesn't burn on the inflation bonfire. If I can do a simple compound interest calculation, how hard can it be to know  you're flogging a dead horse? 

Taking control of your finances rarely goes beyond having a basic knowledge of Excel and where your money is. Do it!

Johnston as Governor-General

A strong candidate for the job and a welcome diversion from the quirks of the Jean-Lafond couple, despite Her Excellency's wise tenure.

A law-educated federalist with a good financial focus, he is our best insurance against the nationalising and over-regulating left should the Opposition resurrect a Coalition and oust the Tories.

As an official figure, he would be almost unable to influence the political debate. But in the private meetings with both PM's and Leaders of the Opposition he would be a fountain of knowledge.

Considering the latest business-bashing frenzies across the border and across the pond, Johnston is the right GG for the times. He's an all-out Canadian, and that is good.

Free markets, air conditioning, physics and the Internet

Now here's an article to link them all.

Humid heat makes me slightly irascible and it is therefore a blessing that me and my girlfriend have bought a portable AC. Facts speak louder than words, and it says a lot about the current weather that 27 degrees feels like heaven compared to the living room. 

As it is no intention of mine to plug the Pinguino De Longhi brand (italian, funny name and a classic advertising campaign in the 90's), I'll address the issue of common sense, so dear to me.

See, the free market operates well when both buyers and sellers operate rationally and true information is available. Which means capitalism won't work when people think (or write) with their backside. And boy, does one see that in action while navigating the ocean of junk consumer reviews that litter the interwebs.

Let's begin with an easy one. Middle school physics and chemistry teaches us that nothing can be created and nothing is destroyed, including energy. Cooling your room means the heat has to go somewhere, usually in the form of the scalding hot air from the compressor being sent packing. As inevitable as our tax bill and our ultimate demise, comes the zero-star review proclaiming "dude, this portable AC has a huge exhaust hose! No-one ever mentioned it! Do not buy!". Oh man, your science teacher is proud!

Another gem can be found in the noise department. Usual complaints about the cheaper portable ACs include the fact that they're noisy buggers. I give, this is a very fair comment, particularly on hearing it soon after having started it up. Yet we're talking online reviews here rather than first impressions. As per previous constatation that the compressor is incorporated into the unit, how can one review a cheaper portable AC expecting the firm to fit a mother-of-expensive silent compressor into it?

Classic but subtler, the criticism of the AC requiring extra air from outside (ergo, hotter) to work properly. Well, thinking about it rationally, if there's a big fan blowing air from your room onto a hot heatsink and out through a big hose into the street, where does one expect the replacement air to come from? The trick, naturally, is that the massive temperature difference between the exhaust and replacement air results in a net loss of heat from the room. Ergo, it cools.

Among the crassest, an Italian's review on ciao.it. The customer in question, after consulting with his cousin who used a 7000 BTU through-the-wall unit to cool his bedroom, proceeded to purchase a 6000 BTU portable AC to cool off his 600-odd square foot living room. The obvious result is no cooling, a negative review and a distortion of the AC's rating on the site. Now can someone please tell me how I am supposed to make an informed choice when given such garbage?

Which brings me to my final point, though there would be many others. I am pretty satisfied with being spared the risk of snapping at people for no reason but the heat. However, while trying to filter out the junk and idiocy from the various AC units' reviews, I altogether forgot to contemplate, or ask about, the presence or not of an inverter.

So I am presently stuck doing research as to whether letting the compressor trip into action three times an hour at a setting of 27 degrees is a wise choice for the welfare of my wallet. Given that lower settings are expensive, higher settings are uncomfortable and an inverter-endowed AC unit would have set us back far more than this one, I reckon I shouldn't be complaining. Those 9000 BTUs are surely very appreciated.

I wonder what Jefferson thought

Well, I'll be darned: the founding fathers were indeed human, and did change their minds from time to time. An already-known edit in a draft of the Declaration of Independence shows Jefferson's careful erasure of the word "subjects" and its replacement with "citizens".

I haven't much to add to the CSM's commentary, except for an important deduction.

Semantics count!

McPolitics

 

(C) Daily Telegraph

This image of Barack Obama and Dmitrij Medvedev may conjure in many minds visions of incompetence, scarce grasp of protocol, unprofessionality, bad taste or all of the above. For all the faults we attribute to the current US President, I wouldn't hold burger diplomacy against him.

Escaping the tedium of official diplomatic protocol is a welcome diversion from the early 20th century top-hat summits and, in certain circumstances, is a useful reminder of one's irrelevance in the greater scheme of things. And I am not talking about Obama's.

See, in the States the title of President is transitory, its holder hooked to a timer counting down until the next election cycle. Such volatility is bound to bake a lot of humble pie and I believe Obama realizes this fully. Not so many of his counterparts.

Presidents and Prime Ministers in many tin-pot countries don't just hold their titles, but imagine themselves being the title's embodiment. The Oxford Dictionary entry's earthly incarnation so to speak. There is hardly a developing country where office holders don't see the Constitution as their plaything and the country's GDP as their legitimate purse.

Just watch the gold and marble palaces springing up amid rampant destitution, private Presidential jets in countries with hardly one paved runway, let alone an airline. Kim Jong-Il's Hennessy crates obliterated, one hopes at least temporarily, his knowledge of running a befamined sinkhole of statehood. 

I now want you to picture the contrast with the most powerful man in the world, running the world's military superpower and richest economy... having a burger. In a globalized world entering the information age, this message is more powerful than years of propaganda.

"I am the President and I don't need to prove it" the burger is saying. To a Westerner, this may be cheap. To the subjects of ostentatious thieves in countries where image is everything, it is a poignant message to see their own "El Presidente" brought down a notch from lavish state dinners in golden halls.

I certainly don't advocate such an approach to all foreign relations (treating Queen Elizabeth so would be an undeserved insult, unless she asked). Yet taking some would-be gods to a burger joint is a polite way of reminding them that for all their gold, medals and titles they're worth squat without legitimacy and good government.

It could always be bad taste, but I'd rather credit Mr Obama with more smarts than many allow him.

When in doubt, wear a muzzle!

There was a time when people knew when to speak and when to stay put. In the area of state service it seems the "all about me" mentality is making inroads into the top echelons of taxpayer-funded institutions. This is dangerous. Trust breakdown between the public and the government can be healed through an election cleansing. When intra-government trust goes down the drain, the consequences linger and simmer until we're left with a dysfunctional institutional jumble.

We've seen examples of this egocentrism in General McChrystal and, I'm sad to say, CSIS Director Richard Fadden.

In both cases we saw a powerful personality (and no doubt an ambitious one) use the media as tools to gain attention and, as some Russians would aptly say, "perform without a muzzle".

Between a private citizen expressing an opinion and a public figure criticising the government lies an ocean we call alternatively "public duty" and "institutional credibility". McChrystal's outburst against the White House was as much an opinion as an open insubordination, and he had to be removed. Mr Fadden's worrisome insinuations were completely out of place on CBC's National.

Would you, as an employer, tolerate your subordinates calling you a moron to your clients' faces, or suggesting at the water cooler without evidence that you were having an affair?

When in any kind of service, whether public or private, one needs to know one's limits. You can either stay silent, talk privately to the management, blow the whistle full-scale or resign. That's the choice.

If McChrystal has concerns, he should either voice them to his chiefs of staff and Mr Obama or resign. Mr Fadden's suggestions of foreign infiltration should have been passed to the RCMP rather than paraded (and unsubstantiated) on national television.

Why is it so bloody difficult to realize one's not the omnipotent and untouchable centre of the universe? How hard can it be to stop and think "am I doing the right thing?".

Render unto Caesar and all that.

Whenever education, children, religion and public money mix, you know there's an explosive cocktail brewing. A Quebec court has allowed a Jesuit school to teach its children about world religions however it wishes, rather than by governmental diktat. On the surface, this ruling is a welcome break from government intrusion into private education. On the other, Pauline Marois welcomes it as well, which promptly rings all alarm bells in my head.

Is it really a school's duty to teach religion in any way? Indeed, religious scholarship is so subjective as to be twistable into many shapes. If sociology and economics - those banes of the unflexible mind -  have axioms, shouldn't academically taught religion be expected to conform to the same standard? No sir, not a chance.

Rather than persevere in the vain attempt to reconcile religious parents, private schools and an intrusive secular government Quebec should at least try to transcend religion altogether.

There hardly is a single ethical teaching in any religion that does not contribute to making a good citizen. Charity, temperance, humility, fortitude, you name it. Who needs religion when these citizenly virtues can be taught as part of an all-encompassing civic education course?

Leave religion to the history courses, where children learn more than just the tenets. When studying a religion, one has to know HOW it emerged, WHERE and WHY. Otherwise it's just empty faffle. Classrooms should educate good citizens, and leave the forging of good Christians to the church pews.

Killing the hen that lays golden eggs

The spiralling vultures over BP do little to hide their motives.

President Obama, having realized he indeed can NOT walk on water, is desperate to kick some butt to show he can still do something besides waiting for a drubbing.

Across the Bering strait, Russia's Medvedev sees lucrative opportunities for the state's pet company Gazprom should BP be felled.

Not to be outdone, the rating agencies are desperate to prove to no-one in particular that they will not peddle garbage as Triple-A gold by, well, calling Triple-A gold garbage.

The onslaught against a perfectly healthy company is breathtakingly short-sighted. Though the billions extorted from BP's coffers will eventually trickle down into bureaucrats' pockets on the South Coast, the eventual clean-up costs will be much higher. How, please tell, are Obama & friends going to get any extra money out of a company they rendered unable to raise funds in the market through their empty rhetoric?

When BP bonds become junk, 29,000 Americans will be out of a job, millions of Brits will be out of a pension and thousands of Louisiana residents will be out of compensation.

This is what Obama wants. Anything for the prospect of saving face in time for November.

Update: and I boarded the same train of thought as a letter writer to the Daily Telegraph. No plagiarism, I swear.