Oh, How The Wind Blows

Remember that really windy day we had last week (November 24th)? What a great day that must have been for wind energy huh? Yeah, about that... it wasn't.

Last Monday was one of the windiest days in recent memory and oh boy were Ontario's wind turbines moving. The problem was, they were producing way more power than was needed. This over excess of power ended up costing Ontario taxpayers $10 Million for just that one day.

According to Wind Concerns Ontario, the province generated over 45,000 megawatt hours of electricity that day. Because we didn't need that electricity, we ended up exporting 20,000 of that it to Quebec, Michigan and New York state. But we sold it off at a LOSS, just over $11 per megawatt hour. To put that in perspective, all that wind produced power is worth, $135/MWh... that's a boatload of money lost.

The problem with wind power is the wind blows mainly at night, but a majority of energy demand is during the day. So, power is being produced at a time when it's not needed. Because of this, power is sold off to neighbouring provinces or even nearby american states at bargain bin prices. To make up for this loss, prices during the day are artificially high. So, we are paying extra high electricity prices during the day, to make up for the power we're not using at night.

Once power is on the grid, it has to go somewhere. As of now, it's very difficult to store power for use later. The only method I'm aware of involves large tanks of compressed air underground. This of course is not cheap and sounds very unsafe. Talk about a disaster waiting to happen.

The wind is certainly blowing with Green energy. A report in the Globe and Mail this week suggested that Green energy jobs have eclipsed jobs in the oil industry. Do you know one person working in the green energy industry?... I don't. It's easy to proclaim something a success when it's subsidized at the expense of everyone else. The green energy industry only exists because of millions in government bailouts handed out every year.

The Political Paradox Podcast!

That's right, this blog now has an extra dimension to it. We've launched our very own Podcast. We'll be on every other Tuesday talking about current news stories from Canada and around the world.

As of now, we have two episodes for you to chew on.Just click the podcast link on the top menu bar and enjoy.

We've just submitted our show to iTunes. Within a few days, we should be listed under "News & Politics"

To learn how to subscribe, click HERE.

To listen to past shows click HERE.

Ewwww, Look At What School Kids Are Eating For Lunch

It's currently one of the hottest trends on twitter. The #ThanksMichelleObama hashtag chronicles some of the interesting and at times, disgusting lunches kids are getting in their school cafeteria's.

It's part of the USDA's (US Department of Agriculture) new healthy eating guidelines headed by the first lady who has made it her mission to tackle obesity in children.

A USDA spokesperson told buzzfeed the students tweets"do not fully reflect the full range of choices students are provided."

Alas, here are some of our favourites:

This is supposed to be a grill cheese sandwich:

Yummy school lunch grilled cheese #ThanksMichelleObama pic.twitter.com/zliTnsPSMS
— lakota™ (@lakotatbh) November 24, 2014

This is just wrong:

"@HouseCracka: This should be a crime. Its a school lunch! #ThanksMichelleObama pic.twitter.com/BXw4VidvgP" 😂😂😂😂
— Ethel's Grandson (@Poppa_Diop) November 24, 2014

This cheese has mold on it:

Moldy food #thanksmichelleobama pic.twitter.com/QcDMO8zb6B
— Genevieve Galligan (@genniegalligan) November 24, 2014

I have no idea what this is supposed to be:

Students post gross school lunch pictures using #ThanksMichelleObama hashtag http://t.co/g5LZQTGEdX pic.twitter.com/D26AoIEOJs
— FOX 29 (@FOX29philly) November 24, 2014

Sadly, This one looks to be the most appetizing so far:

This was lunch today at my sons grade school. Shoppy Joe, green beans, jello w/3 oranges & milk #ThanksMichelleObama pic.twitter.com/ZH5ImNPo3U
— Lori Ann Dicks-Head (@Oldsmobilelady) September 17, 2014

Heard of "where's the beef"? This one has me asking, "Where's the tuna"? I had to look twice before I saw it:

#ThanksMichelleObama for this mystery meat in school lunches #MysteryTunaTuesday @PhatMatt28 @jared_raley_ pic.twitter.com/uk9jemw8ry
— ⚾KyleGrabill⚾ (@KG_2) April 8, 2014

And finally, can someone tell me what this is please?

my school lunch today #ThanksMichelleObama pic.twitter.com/2jeYlJF0wu
— josh russell (@josh_emerson) November 21, 2014

Infamous Catcalling Video Meets Its Match

You must have been living under a rock NOT to have seen (or at least heard about) the infamous catcalling video from a few weeks back that everyone was talking about. In this video, a woman apparently filmed herself walking around New York city for 10 hours. Over that time period, she was "Cat Called" over 100 times.  The video from a group called Hollaback sparked some controversy. I won't go into all of it here but you can check out a great critique of what's wrong with the video HERE.

The video has sparked many spoofs and re-makes. Recently a woman in Mumbai, India attempted to replicate this experiment. The population of Mumbai is almost double that of New York city so you'd think that there would be almost twice the number of cat calls... nope. Apparently, she was not cat called... not even once.

Now, I say 'apparently' because there could be manipulation in both videos. When you only release 2 minutes of what is supposedly 10 hours of footage. It leaves the viewer wondering about what has been edited out. Be very skeptical. Organizations often have a political point to make and will only show you things that prove their political agenda.

But... I wish this Mumbai video had received more news coverage. This was released over a week ago and no mainstream news outlet has run the story as of yet. This could be proof that there is a political agenda in the media too. Or maybe it's because nothing happened. If there's no story to tell, that not very exciting.

A Closer Look At Tomorrow's Municipal Election

A Libertarian friend of mine has an online radio show. He has just done done a special episode looking at tomorrow's municipal election as it relates to Waterloo region.

Some good journalism being done here about how many of our currant candidates vying for your vote seem to have changed their tune on certain issues or have conflicts of interest on the LRT issue. Unfortunately the LRT is pretty much a done deal and will be very difficult to stop.

Among the facts he dug up:

•  At Least 4 regional Councillors who voted for a 12.9% tax increase for the LRT project, live in townships that are exempt from the tax increase.
  
  
• Councillor Sean Strickland was quoted in 2010 saying a 9% tax increase for the LRT project was too high only later to vote for the 12.9% increase.
  
  
• Waterloo mayoral candidate Dave MacDonald has said during election debates that as Mayor he would be very transparent and have an open door policy. However he has ignored virtually every media interview request during the campaign.

... And much more. If you live in Waterloo Region, I highly suggest you take a listen to this 37 minute commentary before you vote tomorrow.

Link: http://fauxcapitalist.com/2014/10/26/jason-erbs-informative-and-candid-take-on-the-october-27-2014-waterloo-region-election/

The RCMP Has Some Explaining To Do...

Obviously, yesterdays shooting in Ottawa is a tragic event and all types of questions are being asked. But leave it to the mainstream news media to ask questions EXCEPT the one question that everyone is wondering... How did a gunman get so far into the main parliament building in the first place?

I've been thinking about this Kevin Vickers situation. Mr. Vickers is the one who successfully brought down the gunman at parliament hill yesterday. And today is being hailed as a hero. By taking down the shooter he definitely stooped a terrible tragedy from getting worse and that's of course is a good thing. However... let's not forget that this guy is the head of all security at parliament hill and he should be put on the hot seat about how a gunman was able to advance that far into parliament hill and come within feet of being able to kill mass amounts of people at once.

It's my understanding that the two security guards at the main entrance are unarmed. This seems to be irresponsible to me. Supposedly, the main duty of these officers is to check ID. A little further inside the hill are armed officers in civilian clothes. But even this failed yesterday as one of these undercover officers was shot in the leg while trying to grab the shooters riffle. The shooter continued down the hall getting within feet of where parliamentary meetings were going on. At this point, Mr. Vickers heard the chaos in the hall and grabbed his gun from his desk drawer (which also seems a bit odd to me) and shot the gunman in the hallway.

Government security failed us big time yesterday. If I were the prime minister, there is no way I would trust my well being and security to a government agency. I would hire a private security firm who has a vested interest in making sure I'm safe. Otherwise, they wouldn't have a job. The problem with many Government agencies is they rarely have to answer when they mess up and are rarely held accountable for their actions.  

How much heat is the RCMP going to take for "Being Caught Off Guard"? Government never goes out of business, they just keep on rolling along. If this were a private security company, guaranteed... there would be a different company looking after parliament hill starting today.

Kevin Vickers. Hero?... Maybe. Completely innocent? He'll have to be put on the hot seat to know for sure.

Dirty Politics...

Big story in the Ontario Municipal elections from Kitchener, Ontario. Follow me here, it gets a bit confusing.

A Candidate in Kitchener's Ward 2 (Wasai Rahimi) posted a screenshot last night of an e-mail he recently received from one of Kitchener's mayoral candidates (Dan Glenn-Graham). This e-mail, supposedly written by Glenn-Graham asked Rahimi to step down and declare support for another ward 2 candidate (Dan Graham). I know this is confusing because two of the people named above have very similar names.

In short, a candidate for mayor asked a ward candidate to withdraw from his campaign and endorse one of his competitors. This e-mail claimed that this candidate was "Close to Winning", and that a win for Rahimi is "unlikely". Of course this is a fact that that is virtually impossible to know.

In multiple media interviews this morning, Dan Glenn-Graham claimed that it was in fact a member of his campaign team who sent the e-mail and this team member is no longer with the Glenn-Graham campaign.

And in perhaps the strangest twist of this story, this e-mail was apparently sent on the same day that another candidate for mayor (James Rhodes) mysteriously dropped out of the race without any real explanation. And on his way out the door, who did Rhodes endorse?... Dan Glenn-Graham.

This is supposedly a coincidence, but in the dirty world of politics... anything is possible.

This is one of the main reasons people are disgruntled with politics, lies and dirty games... anything to get elected. And of course, once you are elected, you'll spend most of your time trying to win re-election. Regardless of who sent this e-mail and why, it centrally looks bad on Dan Glenn-Graham. If you can't manage your campaign, how will you be able to manage the 10th largest city in Canada?

I live in Kitchener's Ward 2 and up until today, I was going to leave that section on my ballot blank as I wasn't overly impressed with any of the candidates in my ward, and I won't stand to vote for the lesser of 6 evils. But I may now consider voting for Wasai Rahimi, If he is the anti Dan Glenn-Graham... I'm in.

Red Light Cameras... Raising a Red Flag

Let me put this out there... I don't like red light cameras. In fact, I doubt there are many who do. Well there is one group who does, local governments who love the revenue they generate.

I have many reasons for my opposition to these cameras. Mainly, I have a problem with a computer convicting me. If I get an actual ticket written by an actual police officer, I can challenge it in court. If the police officer doesn't show up (which half the time they don't) the charge and fine get thrown out. If I challenge a red light camera... who represents the camera? The government doesn't trust me when I say I'm innocent but YOU want ME to trust that your camera is calibrated correctly?

To my delight, there was a report on ABC World News last night proving my point. As it turns out, some traffic cameras in Baltimore are not set properly. There are reports that people going 10 miles under the speed limit are getting tickets for going 10 miles OVER. And in one case, a car got photographed sitting properly at a red light not moving!

Then there is the issue of whether or not local governments are intentionally rigging the system to catch more people. In a some US cities, local governments have been found guilty of speeding up the light cycle. In other words, the time it takes a signal to go from Green to Yellow to Red and back to Green again has been sped up slightly. Thus, clouding drivers judgement as to how much time they have to safely make it through a changing intersection.

The argument when putting in these cameras is that they reduce collisions. Although head on and T-Bone collisions may be down, the evidence has clearly shown that the number of overall collisions are up. Why? In fear of getting photographed, people slam on the breaks resulting in being hit from behind. This is exactly what happened to me a couple weeks ago. No real damage to either of our vehicles. The icy, slippery conditions certainly contributed to the incident, but had it not been a red light camera, I wouldn't have second guessed my decision to safely continue through the intersection. If the original purpose for these cameras is not being met,then they must go. Otherwise, it's simply a tax grab.

The REAL Reason Behind The Light Bulb Ban

I really should put Reason Magazine on my browser bookmarks. I almost missed this article about the controversial Light bulb ban.

On January 1st, the Canadian and US governments put into place a ban on 75 and 100 watt traditional light bulbs (the 40 and 60 watt bulbs will be phased out at the end of this year). At first it looked like this was a push by environmental groups to ban traditional light bulbs which were less energy efficient. But now, the secret is out. This light bulb ban has nothing to do with Environmentalism. It was crony Capitalism.

We are now finding out that some of the biggest light bulb manufactures like Philips, Sylvania and General Electric lobbied the government for this. In particular, Phillips paid environmental groups (like the national resources defence council) to pressure the government into banning traditional light bulbs.

Now, why would Philips, Sylvania and GE be in favour of a Light Bulb ban? Because traditional light bulbs don’t have very big profit margins. The Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFL’s) are more expensive and most of the time, are made in china. They can make a bigger profit off the CFL’s.

Libertarians are pro business. There is nothing wrong with starting a business, becoming successful and maybe opening up a bunch of locations.  However, when these companies become so large that they have an influence over government policy, that’s when it becomes a problem. Contrary to popular belief, large companies often lobby the government to change regulations to give them an advantage. Regulations that their competitors won’t be able to keep up with or will prevent a new competitor from even starting up in the first place. This is not capitalism, this is crony capitalism. In the case of this bulb ban, Philips and GE were worried about an upstart competitor getting a huge contract with Wal-mart.

This was not about saving energy, saving the planet or sensible environmental policy winning out. Philips and GE knew that people wouldn’t buy the more expensive bulbs so they successfully got them banned. The CFL’s aren’t really that environmentally friendly either. It’s too bad we aren’t free to buy the light bulbs that we want. One of my basic fundamental beliefs is: You should be able to buy whatever you want from whoever wants to sell it to you. Now excuse me… I have to update my browser bookmarks.

Gift Card Fiasco A Lesson For Other Government Areas

Is anybody really surprised that the Ontario Government’s “Free” food gift card program turned into a fiasco? Of course, nothing from the government is every truly “Free”, I wish more people would realize that.

After the Ontario ice storm a couple weeks ago, many people were left without power for days or even over a week for some. I was pretty lucky, my power was only out for about 7 hours. To assist those who had food spoil in their fridge because the long power outage, The Ontario government is distributing $50 and $100 grocery gift cards to those affected 

Maybe I’m insensitive for asking this question: Why didn’t these people put their food outside?? The whole country is a giant freezer right now. As I’m writing this, the wind chill temperature is -36 outside my door. The counter argument to putting food outside is the wild animals are going to get at it. These people could take measures to protect their food like putting it in a cooler or maybe some sealable Tupperware containers. Or even put your recycling box upside down over your food. Plus, how many wild animals are really out at this time of year anyway?

Enter stage right… the Wynne Liberal government who’s plan to assist these people backfired last week. First Kathleen Wynne was filmed personally delivering boxes of food to affected residents. Kathleen Wynne never turns down the opportunity for a photo op does she? And what a coindence, this was in a Toronto riding which is expected to be a very close contest in the provincial election which we all know is right around the corner. Unless she hand delivered packages to everybody in the neighborhood (and you can guarantee she didn't), then this was clearly a photo op.

Then, there weren’t enough gift cards… or so it seemed. How many of the people lining up for these cards were truly in need? There were stories of people getting more than one gift card. And CTV news filmed two women in Toronto getting out of a $50,000 BMW SUV who tried to get cards... luckily they were too late. When things are given away for free, the opportunity is bound to be taken advantage of.

We can apply this gift card fiasco to other areas as well. What about healthcare? Yes, it’s nice going to the emergency room and not worrying about how much the bill is but how many of those people are truly in an emergency situation? Some people go to the emergency room for minor ailments. No wonder the waiting times are so long, there are people who shouldn’t really be there… just like this gift card situation.

Now the government is rolling out the gift card program for other areas of the province. No word yet on exactly how this is going to work. But a news story yesterday suggested that residents will have to have been without power for 48 hours and are in financial need of assistance. I’m not sure how they are going to prove that second point. We’ll have to wait and see I guess.

The Liberal government was really in a "No Wynne" situation. People would have been upset if nothing was done too... damned if you do and damned if you don't. Call Wynne's efforts distasteful, shameless, pandering for votes whatever you want. But the unfortunate reality is any of the big main political party leaders would have done the exact same thing.