Bruce Guenter's Thoughts

Economic Ills and So-called Austerity

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 12:34:23 GMT

In the article, "Economic Ills" (SP Feb 4, 2012*), the argument is presented that austerity budgeting in Britain in particular has made their economic situation much more painful and enduring. I am curious however how Paul Krugman, and by proxy the Star Phoenix editorial board, can justify the claim that Britain has pursued any kind of austerity budget.

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Democratic Right to Mob Rule

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 12:04:00 GMT

Recently both the CWB ("Wheat board takes federal 'bullies' to court", Winnipeg Free Press, Oct 26 *, and "Wheat board sues federal government" CBC Oct 26 *) and its supporters ("Shameful move", SP Oct 27*) have claimed that abolishing the CWB's monopoly on grain sales goes against our democratic rights.

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Kingly Dreams

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 12:31:43 GMT

It has been frequently asserted, as Russell Lahti has done ("Peasant dreams"*, SP Oct 26) that "the standard of living for most of us has been declining". Indeed, if you compare the incomes of the richest households to the incomes to the poorest households, there is a growing division, but that's a very misleading statistic to look at. Yes, the rich are getting richer (and this is both good and bad), but the rest of us are hardly in decline.

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Cuban Health Propaganda Takes In Another Believer

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 12:30:41 GMT

Letter to the Saskatoon StarPhoenix:

It appears Mark Lemstra (Cuba's health results better at fraction of cost, SP Sept 29*) has fallen for the public statistics the Cuban ministry of health puts out and hasn't dug any deeper into the reality of Cuban misery.

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Das Kapital and Exchange Values

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 12:39:57 GMT

I've been slowly reading Das Kapital (yes, that* one, by Marx, or at least an English translation*) much to the astonishment of my wife and no doubt others. It seems to me that this kind of book can only be read slowly, as the text is quite dense (and occasionally convoluted, though not so bad as Keynes from what I've heard). I expect to have several more posts on this topic as I go through.

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Exxon villainized again

Tue, 24 May 2011 00:11:20 GMT

Letter to the Star Phoenix.

Update: Published as Oil profit sharing. Too bad they didn't correct the (admittedly small) typo in the industry average figure after I told them about it.

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Oil Company Profit Hypocrisy

Fri, 13 May 2011 00:50:45 GMT

The unnamed Star Phoenix writers have opined, quite correctly, that there is nothing politicians can do about gas prices. There are indeed many factors driving gas prices up, all of which politicians can either do nothing about or only make worse. Unfortunately, the writers also chose to repeat the myth that profits made by oil companies are "skyrocketing".

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Right Invasion

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 00:07:30 GMT

For many years, many on the right (or at least those rallying behind the Republicans) have echoed behind the often quoted words of Ronald Reagan¹:

The nine most dangerous words in the English language are "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."

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Disturbed Hyprocrites

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:31:52 GMT

I usually listen to the radio when I drive around by myself. Recently I heard a remake of the Genesis classic "Land of Confusion" by a metal band. I was curious, so I looked it up online.

The remake is done by the band Disturbed. While the remake is not particularly notable -- it sounds pretty much like what you'd expect for a metal remake -- it is well done and I enjoyed listening to it. However, where it gets interesting is in the music video.

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"Anti-government" and biased reporting

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 12:38:14 GMT

While listening to CBC radio today, there was a report about the anti-government protesters in Yemen. The implication is that the people are protesting against being governed. In reality, they are demanding simply a change in government, not an absence of it.

This raises an interesting bit of media political bias, though.

Search for "yemen anti-government protests": 2,930,000 hits. Search for "yemen protests": 5,890,000 hits (all counts from Google). So, roughly 50% of the hits on the Yemen protests mention "anti-government".

However, substitute "Wisconsin" for "Yemen" and the situation changes: 2,150,000 out of 10,700,000 hits mention "anti-government", a rate of only 20%

Clearly, the people in Wisconsin are protesting against the current government, and would be happier with different governance (ie pro-union support). So why are the protests in Yemen (and Egypt, and Libya) reported as more anti-government than the protests in Wisconsin?