Lord Strathcona – He drove the CPR’s last spike – Venture Capitalist Extraordinaire

Amazon’s founder’s wife just cashed out of the marriage game and pocketed $37 Billion. But she’ll give 1/2 away (she gets to decide who to). The  poor still won’t inherit the earth – she’ll keep the other half!!!!!

I bet there’s better things to do with $37 Billion. Many kids don’t get enough to eat. Pharmaceuticals and college cost a mint. Many kids are poorly educated. There’s still potholes and beggars all over the streets of Canada. Etc. … etc. …

And should rich kids get to inherit their parents gotten and ill-gotten games? Couldn’t wealth be kept inside the enterprises that created it and not dumped out to the so-called “owners” of the enterprises or their estranged spouses?

“What can’t a $Billion buy?” ask the Vlog Brothers and Bill Gates. Bill’s giving away 1/2 too (maybe more) but to whom he chooses. He gets the pontificating rights and to keep what’s left over.

Sam – Bartender at Bard and Banker, Victoria, B.C.

Last Friday, amidst the sound and fury of the inquiry into goings on at the B.C. Legislature, a reader wrote the Victoria Times Colonist:

“Lost in the conversation is the role of the press in this saga. James worked at the legislative assembly for decades. Was the culture of entitlement and lack of accountability a new phenomenon? Was the fact that the Legislative Assembly Management Committee never met not news?”

We notice too that pontificating from the pages of the Times Colonist and knowing everything about everything is Gwyn Morgan the Prince of Hear No Evil/See No Evil Right-Wing economics. Morgan was Chairman of the Board of SNC Lavalin when the company played footsie with Muammar Gaddafi and Dr. Arthur Porter. Despite being the one-time poster boy for Canada’s Horatio Alger set, Morgan didn’t know nothin’ about nothin’ in SNC’s  Corruption Department. He lives retired in the most expensive home on Vancouver Island.

WestJet copied the successful business model of Southwest Airlines. But Gucci shoe clad airline executives hated the model. Southwest flies only one airplane – the Boeing 737. It isn’t big and it isn’t sexy. But only one plane means only one set of parts and one training program for air and ground crews. WestJet shareholders fought off the Guccis for some years. And WestJetgrew and grew. Then the Guccis took over. Big airliners. Expensive ground facilities. And it’s shown. The profit shareholders make from Southwest is almost twice as high as what shareholders make from WestJet (a price/earnings ratio of 12.12 versus 22.49). West Jet should be worth 5 Billion Dollars – a hedge fund is picking it up for only 3.5 Billion.

Vulture Kapiitalsm – Bay Street  hedge fund – AKA “Private Equity Firm” –   wants to buy Calgary’s battered WestJet – worth $5 Billion  for only $3.5 Billion  – West Jet Board  wants to sell!!! … The Toronto Wheeler Dealer behind West Jet takeover

Lord Strathcona — He drove the last spike

Moderate Joe Biden

Liberal/Progressive Elizabeth Warren

The Hill – a Washington, D.C. webpage and newspaper  says that – before last November’s election: 

• 44% of American voters were Moderate
• 24 % were Liberal
• 32% were Conservative

And 62% of Independent Voters were Moderate.

Obviously the Democratic Party would be foolish not to select a Moderate. But 24% of voters who are Liberal (“progressive”) believe that America is broken and needs to be fixed and a Moderate like Joe Biden won’t do it. America needed fixing in 1932 too. But master politician Franklin Delano Roosevelt did that by pretending to be a Moderate – running for the presidency by, for example, promising to balance the budget but – after being elected – turning on a dime and bringing in the truly radical, budget-deficiting New Deal that saved America from collapse and made America the World’s greatest nation.

Elizabeth Warren wants the U.S. to adopt Canadian-style health care and to purge or destroy Wall Street. Both need doing but both are not Moderate proposals. Joe Biden is 76. Warren is only seven years younger but might be tempted to gamble on Biden not surviving eight years in office.

Is a Biden/Warren ticket possible? One Washington State Democrat we know says that Biden is tarnished by his many years as a Delaware politician – Delaware is the home of many a U.S. corporation and big bank – and Warren may not want to bed down with Biden. Some of Biden’s corporate friends might abhor the thought. CNN thinks their bad blood runs deep. But politics finds strange bed-fellows. 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt