WE'RE ANOTHER WORLD - RIGHT NEXT DOOR.

Why does this country languish behind so badly in tourism? We have a current travel deficit of over $12 billion, nearly ten times what it was just eight years ago. Is it because we are forever perceived as very polite and very dull? Is it because we are perceived as the frozen north under ice ten months of the year? Is it because we think hockey is the most important sport? Is it because it is expensive and not worth the price?

All of the above.

Maybe it’s time we stopped apologizing. Maybe it’s time Canadians stopped feeling left out. Maybe it’s time we took hold of our tourism business and stopped living in a world of beautiful mountains; of a world that perceived us as beautiful Vancouver and foreign slightly exotic Quebec City. I believe our tourism promoters have done a bad job. Not a bad job of publicizing the country and its virtues scenic, creative, and artistic, but because they have not persuaded Canadian attractions to put themselves on sale.

A recent article about our sagging tourism began with the all-too-familiar plaint:
“Despite a post-Olympic surge of overseas visitors, Canada is still lagging as a tourist attraction.” I could sum it all up with: “Visiting Canada just isn’t sexy.” “Visiting Canada doesn’t make your blood run hot and your psyche explode.” No matter how hard we try we simply have not become a destination. And I blame our own people as much as anyone.

Explanation. I am a home exchanger. Through as company called” Home Link” I advertise my Toronto home asking people from other countries to exchange with me. I am almost a one-man band trumpeting the virtues of the country and of my city. I solicit exchanges. People who live in New York or Paris don’t have to. They just list their home and the offers pour in. We will never rival Paris which is hands-down the world’s most popular tourist destination, More than two billion visitors a year! Why? Certainly not because Paris is a bargain? Certainly not because all the French are smilingly welcoming. But even Paris suffers from the classic tourism problem: there are too many short-stay visitors. They “do” the city in two days, rushing from the Eiffel Tower to the Arc de Triomphe taking pictures and then getting back on the bus. They don’t really “visit.” I have been to Venice three times. Each times I stayed for at least two weeks. What is the biggest problem Venice has? Most of the visitors are day-trippers. Thousands arrive by bus, visit St, Mark’s, feed the pigeons, throw trash in the lagoon, and get back on the bus. The other classic day-trippers come off a cruise ship that will disgorge several thousand ravening picture-takers who spend the day rushing from sight to sight.

Therein I think, lies the biggest problem with tourism: the absence of the long stay. Of course, the other kind of tourism, the R&R lying on a beach enjoying a one week package that includes palm trees, rum drinks, and snorkeling – but not much more – dominates so much of tourism. The “package” where you get it all: air fare, hotel, meals, and protection from having to mingle with the local population, that’s a huge winner.

So here I go again: blaming the tourists for tourism. It’s totally unproductive. What works best is boosterism – our own belief that where we live its worth visiting. (A sober reflection: when I tell people I am exchanging with – say – someone in Paris – they comment with a sneer” Who wants to visit Toronto?”) Believe me, the visitors I have persuaded to exchange with me have loved the city, the nearby attractions and the people. I walk them to the awesome Calatrava atrium in Brookfield centre. I walk them to the magnificence of the Frank Gehry designed Art Gallery of Ontario. One California visitor was awestruck. She said: “Art lovers in other places like New York and L.A. should discover the wonderful Canadian art. It’s too well-kept a secret.”
Another visitor from Mexico, exulted in a trip to nearby St. Jacob’s where art and artisans are everywhere.

I become exhausted being a booster. Somehow our tourism people are not breathlessly exuberant enough. And we have never, that I know of, every created a Canada “package.”

I can’t stop winter-weary Canadians from hitting the palm-fringed beaches. They will always flee the winter. But sometimes. what we consider a liability visitors might consider a virtue. If only we’d stop and think about it.

HE CAN;T BE SERIOUS!

This is a panic-postscript to today's blog.

I opened with a comment about the plan to rip up the streetcar routes and replace them with buses, a plan that would include billions to build more subways.

I am incensed at what I just heard on TV News. Mayor-elect Ford seems to be waffling (if you believe his brother) over his plans to replace streetcars. Ford himself, with that cocky grin he always shows, says he is going to talk to the Premier!

Worst yet - if I understood correctly - did Mr. McGuinty actually say that in the matter of the transit system for Toronto that "the people have spoken!?

Do I hear our Premier saying that he's open to the inane Ford plan to build expensive subways, to repudiate the deal already made for a whole revised transit system, and to embark on a prohibitively expensive subway program?

If I am hearing right - what do we have to do to stop the madness?

I can believe that people fell for bis "Respect for Taxpayers" slogan, but how many really voted to uproot the streetcar system and replace it with buses? Noisy, polluting buses? Buses that carry a fraction of the passenger load of streetcars?

Have we fallen into some kind of fairy-tale hole? Can I expect the March Hare and the Mad Hatter to show up.

We can't let this happen.

WELCOME TO WHERE THE CAR IS KING

The bad thing about sour grapes is that they not only taste bad but they cast you as a sore loser. That’s me all over. If Toronto wants Mayor Ford, as Phil Givens used to say: “People don’t get what they want, they get what’s coming to them.” I’m prepared to wait and see.

I can’t believer though, in spite of my insistence that I resign myself to reality, that the “issues” Rob Ford paraded were so compelling that more people voted for him than the other two guys combined. I still don’t believe there are enough angry car drivers in Toronto who believe tit would be a good idea to tear up streetcar tracks and replace the street cars with buses. That’s a complete non-starter. First of all, congestion doesn’t happen because the roads are too restricted. It happens because there are too many cars. Parkinson’s Law says that “use expands to fit the space available.” Roads made wider or more accessible almost immediately become clogged as they attract more cars. I’m not making that up. It’s a statistical fact.

The idea may have resonated with grid-locked car slaves, but we are too far along, including funding from two other levels of government, with our new transportation plans, to reverse it.

(I am also puzzled by two conflicting “facts:” that people are angry at City Hall, but that, according to surveys, if David Miller had run again, he would have won. Perhaps the reality is that Ford is not that good, but the other guys are even worse.)


Perhaps the larger issue was the inspired slogan (hark! – do I hear Mike Harris redux?) “Fairness for Taxpayers.”. People who pay taxes always complain that they pay too much. I have yet to have it proved that our taxation has directly led anyone into bankruptcy. To use issues like a $14,000 farewell party for Kyle Rae as evidence of “waste” is pure rubbish. It is a small amount, less than most people spend on a wedding. Kyle deserved a decent send-off and parsimonious nonsense just doesn’t make sense. But that’s Rob. And nearly 50 percent of the people who voted (nearly half stayed home) love him. Like they loved Mel Lastman.

Taxpayers in Toronto get value for their money. Toronto is one of the most vibrant cities on the continent because we invest in ourselves. I simply don’t know what he’s talking about.

We are so tax-averse that, at every opportunity, many of us will break the law. When was the last time some businessman said: “pay me in cash and I won’t charge you HST? The government is cheated out of billions every year but otherwise law-abiding “folks” who protest taxation by being scofflaws. Maybe Rob Ford, who loves law and order should set up a department of “finks” who would lure contractors and others into offering a no-tax cash deals and then clap the handcuffs on them. That would be law and order. But Mayor Ford’s idea is to put more cops on the street and prosecute graffiti vandals.

Front page of the Toronto Star is a picture of Mayor Rob and a statement that if you want to talk to him, just phone. He is well-intentioned, but he is a headline grabbing populist and demagogue. He has no use for reality. He makes it up as he goes along.

I am hoping that he will be confronted with a gridlocked council that will not let him have his foolish ways.

By the way, in all the talk about new subways, he is committing the poor taxpayers to billions of dollars to build those relics. Most people, and Ford knows it, don’t know that dedicated surface transit with an underground component in busy traffic areas, is a fact of life. It is the way of the future. Even Paris, where people ride on the best subway system in the world, is now turning to surface trolley trains to ease their traffic problems.

So if you voted for lower taxes and an end to “lavish” spending on parties for outgoing councilors; for putting the car back into its proper place; for stopping “waste” you may be sorry you asked for it. I don’t think he can do it.

I’m sorriest about one thing: that Toronto voters have succumbed to the rhetoric I thought belonged only to the Tea Party movement: blind, mindless, angry protest.

LOOTING THE BATTLEFIELD

Tragedy has two faces: the person who is undergoing the tragedy and the benefactor of the tragedy. Just watch a little TV and you’ll meet them both.

No one who watched Sixty Minutes on Sunday could fail to shed a tear over the hard-working, well-educated, formerly-prosperous Americans who are losing their homes and have no prospects for future employment. In some cases they beg for shelter from friends. In many cases they and their family live in a car or at a homeless shelter. American schools are full of children who have no address. That is the face of tragedy.

The other face is the bright young couple with the whole word ahead of them, the kids you see on HGTV's "House Hunters” They are looking to buy their first home. Agents take them to foreclosures where the listed price is low and where both the owner and the mortgage-holding bank will have to agree on the sale. In many cases the bank will accept a sale price that is actually below the amount of money that is still owed on the mortgage. The good sense of that is that the bank has already collected on the defaulted mortgage and can absorb a little loss in order to put the “lucky;” new homeowners’ names on the new mortgage. It is a disgusting business.

I am not sure that I would like to be the buyer of something that has been taken in default from someone else. Like the treasure on “Antiques Road Show,” an exquisite elaborate vase worth thousands that was traded by an American visitor to German in the years after the war. The price: two cartons of cigarettes. I simply can’t deal with that kind of hardship. But millions do.

Here is the opening paragraph of a popular house-hunting website called “Foreclosure Homes for Sale:“Smart shoppers never pay full price, why should you? Foreclosures are the best way to buy the property you want for up to 50% less than current market prices. And you've just found the premiere spot to locate great deals on "foreclosed homes for sale" of all types, including single family homes, duplexes, fourplexes, town homes, condos, and even apartment buildings. Whatever your real estate needs are, you won't find better deals and more comprehensive listings foreclosure houses anywhere else.”

One and a half million homes are up for foreclosure in America. One and a half million families are losing their homes. Yes, some of them were caught up by the lure of the sub prime mortgage and encouraged to buy far beyond the means by unscrupulous agents who told them the price of houses had nowhere to go but up. As long as that kept going the value of their heavily indebted house would go up. But we know what happened. Perhaps just as many of the foreclosures have nothing to do with the sub-prime seduction. Professional families found themselves unemployed. In the heart of San Jose, California’s Silicon Valley, there are hundreds of home that once belonged to successful information technology people. Many of them have not worked for two years. Many have run out of unemployment insurance. There is no tomorrow for them.

I just wonder how they must feel, if they are watching TV, to see the home where they tied up all their hopes, being sold to a bright-eyed young couple who seem either not to know, or certainly to care, that the people whose dream they have tried to buy, had it collapse.

The only thing it reminds me of is how, in bygone days, soldiers, camp followers, and other scavengers would swarm over a battlefield to search for valuable hidden in the uniforms of the dead. Pretty grisly stuff!

P.S. Banks are in the business of lending money to people who want to buy houses. Imagine if all those people decided to rent and the houses were owned by someone who had bought it for cash. They bank would go begging. They are not authors of the chaos, but they are benefactors.

I STILL CAN;T WAIT FOR TOMORROW

Just one line in a recent Globe and Mail story stabbed at me: “The future could come as early as 2025.” I can hardly wait!

It’s a story about a co-operative effort between Boeing and Air China to experiment with biofuel made from – are you ready? – Jatropha! It seems that China is already growing this oil-producing bush in southern areas. Remember, the plant grows in hot, semi arid areas and produces more than four times the quantity of oil than soybean.

But the real virtue of the miracle product is that it does not compete for space on land that will grow food. In fact, the article says: “Boeing envisions a future where the entire global aviation industry would be supplied with plant-based biofuels that don’t compete with food for land and water, so that adoption of biofuels by the aviation industry doesn’t drive up food prices.

Bingo! Why do you suppose we have lagged in development of this marvelous oil-producing plant? For those who enjoy conspiracy theory, we have a lot more to go on than our imaginations. Protectionism is rampant in many man-grown resources. Does anyone not believe that petroleum companies will lobby hard to keep their firm hold on their fuel-consuming markets? Does it say something that America levies a huge tax on Brazilian ethanol made from sugar because it competes with ethanol made (at much higher cost with much lower yields) than corn. Historically trade has been restrained to protect existing producers. For many years the sugar beet industry was protected from competition from lower cost sugar cane. Louisiana produces rice. Texas produces cotton. Both of them could be bought for less in other countries. The irony is that when out-sourcing is profitable for the companies involved, there are very few barriers.

Add to this lethal mix of protectionism the legendary destruction of mass transit to make room for super highways and more cars.

I still do believe that within the market-driver system there are benefits. Competition can drive prices down and improve research and development. However, when any company or any sector has a stranglehold on the market for their products, they will move heaven and earth to keep the competition at bay.

In the case of biofuel made from Jatropha, the critics are already claiming that biofuels won’t work in jet engines because at high altitude the fuel will freeze. Another stalling tactic.

Meanwhile it seems that 2025 – 15 years away – is too lung for some of us to wait.

FOLLOW THE MONEY

When they asked the famous and colourful bank robber Willie Sutton why he robbed banks, his answer was: "Because that’s where the money is.” In the movie “Jerry McGuire, with Tom Cruise, one of his clients, a big-time football player played by Cuba Gooding, kept saying: “Show me the money.” That admonition has become part of today’s industrial, commercial and marketplace ethos. Everything is about profit.

One of the greatest tragedies of our dog-eat-dog society is the constant reminder to students that “You have to have an education to get a job” and “ a University deduction will get you a better job.” The philosophy is not new. In my student days if anyone decided to enroll in sociology or philosophy or Fine Arts, the parental question was always” What kind of a job can you get with a degree in….?” The result: we have bred a culture not of scholarship but of money-hunger.

Don’t misunderstand. I am enough of a realist to recognize that have money is a necessity. You can’t feed your family, house them or even educate them on scholarship alone. The irony is of course that you “educate” them toward vocational success. Universities are full of anxious, or better still anxiety-ridden kids, who are far more interested in a piece of paper that says “M.A. or B.A. or PhD” than in real learning. The degree is their key to a share in the good things supplied by the marketplace.

I was dismayed by the awful truth in an article by Gwynn Morgan in the Globe and Mail’s “Report on Business.” He is the founder of the resources giant Encana. He has done well in this resource-rich country, where “Value added” has been replaced by “sell those commodities.” That’s another story.

His plaint is not uncommon. It is heard often from the business community:“you are not graduating people we can use in our industry.” The comment has a kind of slave-market mentality to it because the slaves who sold well were best equipped to pick cotton. Today’s cotton-picking is a world of high tech commerce, competitive marketing, engineering prowess, and other marketable skills. In fact Morgan actually says that there are too many people studying things with low job prospects like visual and performing arts.

He goes on to blame academicians for their closed attitudes. Put in my words: “There are too many of you damned eggheads trying to tell kids what to do. What’s more you have all these indentured professors teaching rubbish like History and Archaeology.” My words – not his.

There was a brief period in our business-oriented culture, when employers were looking for “generalists,” suggesting that people with a broad set of education values were more desireable than specialists who knew nothing outside their chosen field.

He may be right. In a world that puts value on trade we need healthy slaves to pick the cotton of industrial and scientific competition. Who needs more serious musicians, poets, teachers, actors, singers, philosophers, seekers after larger truths? Remember Harry Brock, the illiterate scrap metal tycoon in “Born Yesterday” declaring that he could hire all the brains he needed?

If everything is now decided by the focus on, not just vocational success, but in profitable vocational success, then yes – we do need more engineers and scientists, and doctors. It is interesting to me, and maybe it means nothing, but why are so many doctors also interested in music and can perform capably?

Scholarship has no value. Work skills are everything. Welcome to Philistia.

P.S. Bingo! The Chinese are investing in jatropha. More on that soon.

"FLIGHTS" OF FANCY

It’s a “boy’ thing. lke millions of other boys, I grew up fascinated by airplanes. My first flight was at age 8 when my father took me to Barker Field on Dufferin street in Toronto (there’s a big car dealership there now) sat me on his lap and took me for a flight in an open cockpit Tiger Moth. He too was hooked on flying and made many almost pioneering trips by air when airlines were in their infancy.
During the war, my friend Bernie and I made endless little models of warplanes and hung them from the ceiling.

I didn’t learn to fly until 1960, when I took advantage of the Commonwealth Air Training program with subsidized flying lessons. We learned to fly so that in the event of war, we older guys could fly non-essential flights and the real pilots to take to the air in combat. Or we would ferry aircraft. Stuff like that. You had to be under 35. I was approaching that age so I went flying. I didn’t really enjoy it that much, but logged many hours in a Cessna 172 flying week-end traffic for CHUM Radio. Yes, I was the guy who flew over the 401 and the 400. Those were the days before daily airborne traffic reports. We did it for the cottage-bound on weekends.

Still today, having abandoned my flying career, I am fascinated by flight. I read every article about the heavy competition with Airbus back promoting their single aisle planes and Bombardier getting into the mid-range competition. The big move is toward lighter materials and improved engine performance, both for economy reasons.

A few years ago I sent an Email to Northrop (now Grumman Northrop) to ask “what ever happened to the flying wing?” Northrop flew a prototype in 1940. The flying wing has no fuselage. With my sparse knowledge of aerodynamics (you had to know about “lift” and “drag” as part of your flight training) I wondered why we were still producing conventional aircraft i.e. wing, tail, fuselage. The fuselage is where the planes carry people and cargo. But the fuselage is not aerodynamically useful. It provides no lift. It is all drag. Why, I asked are we not going back to the flying wing? No fuselage means much less drag. The flying wing is lighter, far more economical, and has good carrying capacity. (In fact, the “Stealth” bomber looks like a flying wing.)

I asked, in my Email to Northrop, why the wing was not being promoted. I have never received an answer. I have reached a few of my own conclusions. The principal one being that passengers would not feel comfortable with no windows to look out and survey – what? The endless sky. They would feel claustrophobic, trapped in the middle of a wing. But, if the aircraft manufacturers could solve the problems of stability, it is the way to go.

There are other ideas that most air travelers would not be comfortable with. With forward-facing seats the passengers will fruitlessly go into a tuck position in the event of an accident. The truth is that that approach is useless. On impact the seat will come loose. The only sensible answer is to have the seats facing backward, with the passengers looking at the stern of the aircraft. That simply won’t fly, not because it is a bad idea, but because of our discomfort.

My flight of fancy is to ride in a flying wing. Perhaps they could install cameras so we could see outside and be able to watch our takeoff and landing.

I had to write this piece. I am still a kid fascinated with airplanes. I may go back to model making.. Does anyone still have a plan for the Republic Thunderbird?

PRIDE GOETH BEFORE....

Next to having children or getting married, owning a home may still be the biggest and brightest hope you can have. HGTV abounds with programs about loving young couples buying a house they could call their own. The myth of home ownership has come to characterize safety, security, and success. What a myth!

Perhaps I am moved to write this because of the chaos in the American marketplace; chaos that originated with the deeply embedded urge to “own” - a hallmark of stability and pride. Say all you want about the creative bookkeeping of an Enron, or the unshakeable belief in the marketplace being self-regulating, the fact is that Americans, and Canadians, are convinced that home ownership is the start of real stability.

I believed it once. Even during the years when my career took a slide we clung to our home. My bank manager told me, when I discussed the burden of the mortgage, that keeping a house was not just a matter of economic reality, it was a question of “did you want to own your home? Did it give you comfort? The answer used to be yes. It was the wrong answer. I had been trapped by the myth of home ownership. Only transients rented. Real people owned. Stable for the kids. A good investment. All that stuff.

It was that primitive urge, more than any other financial move that led to the collapse of the banking system and the near death of the American economy. On one side were the people who believed devoutly that owning a home was the ne plus ultra. And there were the money-lenders who were all too eager to indulge that passion for home ownership. President Bush babbled about the “ownership society.” Billions of dollars, trillions perhaps, were risked in the home-buying market. Greedy “investors” snapped up securities that were bundles of bad mortgages. The country was awash in debt and went to its near demise believing that home prices could only go up.

Now even more chickens have come home to roost as the greedy seem to have done even more harm to the gullible. America continues to be proud of its banking system while that infallible system puts the freeze on foreclosures. Thousands of homeowners may have been improperly booted out of their homes.

The real story is not the greedy versus the gullible. It is not the blind faith in a system that threatens to destroy itself. It is with the myth of ownership. The American Dream insists on owning a home, even if it is a cookie-cutter box at the end of many miles of four lane super highway. The truth is that bankers and developers thrive on the myth. The only person who does not come out ahead is the gullible home buyer.

Because of the economic crisis there are now millions of Americans, excluding those who have become homeless, who are renting their homes. At last, a tragic crisis has made people see the light. Why for heaven’s sake, do you mortgage your future for home ownership? For those who say “I’m tired of paying rent and having nothing to show for it,” I have this advice. Stop pursuing that dream. Rent. If you think owning makes economic sense you are kidding yourself. The mortgage you assume is a debt that must be paid. Instead of renting a house you are renting the money to buy a house. And you are tying up most of your capital. You are “mortgage-poor.”

I was one of you. We owned only one house and lived in it for forty-one years. Our children grew up there. We lived on a street with other similarly smugly self-satisfied home owners.

We sold. We invested the proceeds. (The only conundrum is the unanswerable: would we have been farther ahead financially if we had rented and invested the money in another kind of security?) We now rent. We care for the property as if it were our own. If the roof leaks or the air conditioning goes on the fritz, we make a phone call, not to a roofer or an air-conditioning expert, but to our landlord.

There is simply too much capital tied up in an immovable resource. It makes no sense. But the myth will persist.

SHOCKING NEWS - BUT WHO ARE THE GUILTY ONES?

I am shocked, dismayed, worried, and furious. Except that our anguish should be over our continuing failure to change the attitudes of millions of people, and by some aberrant kind of social acceptance, often backed by the “credibility” of religious belief, we validate the grotesque attitudes of homophobia..

Most of us are upset over the latest homophobic attack in New York. Millions of Americans are horrified that this could happen in their country. Politicians and public figures are quick to show their anger and dismay. But the threat to the homosexual is constant, continuing, and in spite of the expressions of horror, all too prevalent. I will not accuse anyone of crocodile tears, because I believe they are sincere. However, they are also naïve.

The suspects are being charged with hate crimes. America, waving the flags of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (most Americans can't distinguish between the two) are reluctant to brand ethnic or sexual hatred as a crime, since there is a Constitutional Amendment that guarantees freedom of speech. Seems not to consider “freedom” even it is a threat to someone else’s life and limb, and a clarion call for others to join the hatred.

I used to feel the same way when Trudeau patriated our Constitution and we added the Charter of Right and Freedoms. My concern then, and it still is, that judgements have been taken out of common law and the courts and put into indelible statutes.

But beyond the quibbling about “rights” guaranteed by any form of legislation, is the awful truth: homophobia is alive and well in America, and to perhaps the same extent in Canada supposedly a more tolerant country. Americans should not allow their naiveté to intrude on reality. The evangelicals almost unanimously militate against homosexuality sometimes piously claiming to “love” these poor “lost souls.” The Catholic Church damns it. The Armed Forces cling to “don’t ask, don't tell.” And hundred of fine citizens are picketing armed forces funerals with signs protesting against the lifting of the “don’t ask don’t tell” provision.

I am not at all certain that there are many of those homophobes who would not, they say, countenance violence, who quietly cheered for the suspects in the New York beatings.

I remember in my Open Line radio days having conversations with people who would say: “I don’t believe in homosexuality.” Believe it or not my friend, you have no say in the matter. It is a fact in our society and the sooner we stop kidding ourselves, the sooner there will be acceptance. And perhaps the teenage guys who think they are being macho will stop using the word faggot. I’m waiting. Hey – we can’t even get them to stop smoking!

WHAT REALLY MATTERS/

Millions of viewers, me included, were carried away by the interview on 60 Minutes with Melinda Gates. Her husband Bill is the richest man in the world. I will not be surprised to see him become the first trillionaire in history. They have led the way in generosity. Their philanthropies are a signal to all billionaires to start caring about people. In fact, number two world’s richest, Warren Buffet, the sage of Omaha, has joined Gates to start giving away his fortune. According to Melinda, their aim is to give away 90% of their fortune. Not meaning any cynicism but that would still leave them several billions to maintain their lifestyle, and in spite of their protestation that their children re not going to be the big beneficiaries, will still find those kids sitting pretty.

I am not poor-mouthing them. Far from it. If more people with money would open their purse strings, there might be a lot less misery, both at home, and in Third World countries.

I have however, just one teeny-tiny little caveat; just one little concern about “charity’ just a bit of fear that the kind of charity we talk about are really (although the scope is far greater and the effect more far reaching) alms for the poor.

What Melinda is doing in the poorest province of India to combat infant mortality it incredible. What they are doing to make drugs available for diseases the big drug companies no longer care about i.e. malaria, is prodigious.

But I do have the very same feeling about their generosity as I do about the myth of Mother Theresa, who will be elevated to sainthood on the basis of a very flawed example of a “miracle.”

Like Mother Theresa, who quite openly said she is only there to comfort the poor and sick, but she is not there to help change the social conditions that make poverty inevitable. The poorest people in India can’t feed the children they have. They have nothing. The Gates Foundation will not, as nearly as I can see, change anything about the underlying social, political, and economic conditions that make suffering inevitable. They are not social changers. They are charity-givers.

Yes, they spend billions to help educate forgotten children in America, but do they exert the kind of social and political pressure that makes real social change possible? Why would they?

I don’t question their generosity. I certainly do not question their sincerity. But haven’t we had enough of very rich people putting money into help that is not really help?

Are the Bates any better than Andrew Carnegie, who sweated his workers and built .libraries? Or his henchman Frick who did all the strike breaking head busting dirty work and built a magnificent art galley in New York. Or Harry Oakes who discovered gold in Kirkland Lake then took all his money to Nassau and his idea of public giving was to create a magnificent part at the side of Niagara Falls. While the streets of Kirkland Lake subside into the holes he dug for gold.

I am not against good deeds. I am against the underlying evil that gets papered over with good intentions.

SCALPING THE NEWS FOR GOLD

Where would all true liberals go for fodder if there were no New York Times, or The Nation, or the Washington Post? Like TV news rooms that start in the morning by scalping every newspaper for today's "features" - "stories we are working on" and other newsroom myths, I am stimulated to think by the Times. Which I could not say for the Toronto Sun or the Washington Times or Glen Beck.

So this morning, front page NY Times: "Companies keep saving the money they’ve borrowed at low rates as they wait for the economy to improve, but it is unlikely to improve if they keep saving," gets my juices going. Why should I worry that it will be a variation on my usual rant? The Times and the Post both rant about the same stuff. Frank Rich can be counted on to do an OpEd hatchet piece on the Tea Party. Why should I be any less predictable?

I can sometimes write what the Times won't, the exception being Paul Krugman. They are hot-wired to their otherwise thinking brains, to believe that all you have to do is "tweak" the perfect system and it gets more perfect. So they still preach the values of the free market system. All it needs is a little help. So fruitlessly, the Fed and Ben Bernanke continue to "stimulate" the economy with monetary action.
But, even to some of the opaque writers at the Times, it should be eminently clear that business can not, will not, and perhaps should not, lead the country out of despair. So we have the continuing story of low demand, low production and the eternal question:" why should any company spend money to chase a diminishing number of willing consumers. So the consumer waits until jobs become more secure before spending money, while the big companies wait for that suddenly frugal consumer to start spending. It is a classic "Mexican stand-off."

If governments in power were not so frightened of the voters' economic illiteracy, they would do what has to be done. First, they would have to abandon the worn-out orthodoxy that deficits are by definition - bad. What is "bad" is that the very governments that created the deficits with meaningless wars and foolish tax cuts, refuse to turn it all around. I continue to be appalled. I even hear myself echoing my least favourite President, Ronald Reagan, who said "there is no such thing as a free ride." After which of course he sent America into a future economic tailspin with the biggest spending spree in history to that point.

"Ah me" I sigh, as I shout my screed into a bottomless well of indifference. The well is so deep there are not even any echoes.

It is too late of course, for the administration to fly in the face of public opinion, no matter how warped by the incessant pounding of free market lobbyists,
and actually take charge of the economy. Isn't it obvious that monetary tweaking by the well-intentioned Bernanke is not making it happen. Only stimulus, and to hell with the deficit, can force the issue. Joint ventures between government and private money could turn the economy around.

But wait - all those companies who are hoarding the money they borrowed at zero interest are waiting for a takeover opportunity. The economy is swollen with cash, but it is in the wrong hands. The freakos of the Tea Party think the government should turn all their money back to the people. Funny - they never ask for private business to do that. Amusing!!

WHY DO THEY MAKE EVERYTHING SO BIG?

You may accuse me of another anti-American rant – but the quote is from a TV commercial, made by Americans for Americans. (Canadians get to see it only because most American advertisers can’t or won’t bother to make a TV commercial specially for us.)

The opening line is spoken by an Englishman presumably at a cricket match” Why do Americans make everything so big?” He shows his buddy a huge stuffed burrito. In the next frame someone in another country makes the same comment, then another holds the burrito to his chest like a baby being burped. The commercial is fun. No slurs are intended, although you and I both know Americans who will be offended by a Canadian making the observation.

There are really two issues: the first is probably the celebrated “bigness” of America. The second is more practical: the direction the highly competitive fast food market its taking.

It has been a few years since the publication of “Fest Food Nation,” which examined just about every element of the American food delivery systems from portion size to potato monopolies.

In “Fast Food Nation” the author documented the growth in portion sizes, using the typical order of fries from McDonald’s. I won’t bother to quote the figures, but the essence of it is that from 1950 to 1990 the price remained the same but the portion sizes grew, and grew, and grew. Competition in fast foods has two dimensions: low price points, but more – increased portion sizes. So Taco Bell, the originator of the “so big” TV commercial, features a stuffed burrito with twice the amount of meat.

The war continues. Everyone steps up to the plate – literally – and fills it with more product. The obvious comment has to be made, although it is superfluous, that Americans (Canadians not far behind) are leading the world in obesity and one cause is the mammoth food portions.

On my recent three month stay in Paris I was a little startled to see that the Parisians (unless it's all for tourists) are losing their reputation for small portions and are filling the plates. So far. I have not seen any results, judging from the continuing slimness of Parisians. But they can't be far behind.

Is the size of the portion a synonym for the American Dream vision of “plenty?” Or is the consumer being swept along by companies operating in down market times and mounting competition. Something has to give. Will it be the purveyors of fast food who simply can’t absorb the added food costs? Will it be the manufacturers who will be caught in the competitive crossfire? Or will it be the prime producers who always seem to get the dirty (I mean another word) end of the stick>

In a free market economy, it is all about competition. Because a free market economy is also a “demand” (as opposed to command) economy, he who advertises best will get the customers. Add to the mix that sale of Burger King for billions of dollars, and you have a fast food company operating with a lot of debt, the debt incurred by the takeover.

Does it all make sense? Will the competition kill the competition? Will the customer come out on top? That scenario seldom works, because ultimately the consumer will have to pay. Remember, the only source of revenue is the guy who buys the burrito.