In my National Post column that appeared in print today, I draw on a new Fraser Institute study to underline that unless we put firm restraints on it, government will indulge its ever-growing appetite including for pay and perks far larger than those left to us in the private sector. For more on how to restrain government, see our documentary True, Strong and Free on fixing Canada's Constitution.
The idea for our latest project, our True, Strong and Free documentary on how to fix the Constitution, originally came from an article I wrote for C2C Journal two years ago. You can read the original article here.
Great news! Our latest documentary, on how to fix our Constitution, is now available to the public and is free to watch on YouTube. The high-resolution digital version is also available for purchase, for only $5. DVDs (standard) are available for pre-order and we will have a blu-ray version in the next little while. For more information about the project, and to help us make the changes we propose, please visit www.fixtheconstitution.ca. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQHH_KIjTsc
Here's the kind of story that inspires a mixture of rage and bewilderment. NBC reports that while Hillary Clinton has been lambasting "for-profit schools" including Trump University, "Over five years, former president Bill Clinton earned $17.6 million from the world's largest for-profit education company, Laureate Education, Inc. In his role as "honorary chancellor," Clinton has traveled the world on Laureate's behalf, extolling the virtues of the school." And doing very well indeed. We should be so, uh, lucky. Now look. I know a lot of people like Bill Clinton, focusing more on the charming than the rogue in his makeup. I am not among them. But a lot of people do.
I also realize that Bill Clinton is a champion schmoozer and makes good connections. He pulls in huge sums for the Clinton Foundation and by no means all of them were people hoping for favours from one H. Clinton when she was Secretary of State. But $17.6 million over five years is over $3.5 million a year. That's over $9,600 a day, even in a leap year. And it wasn't the only thing he was doing nor, indeed, the only thing he was doing that brought in vast sums. (For instance The Washington Post says he made $104.9 million giving 542 speeches between 2001 and 2013, an average of $193,542.44 per. And that he was paid $3.13 million in "consulting fees" in 2009 and 2010 by an investment firm whose boss's charity has given the Clinton Foundation millions more and who did at least try to contact Hillary Clinton for a favor when she was Secretary of State.)
What can anyone do for you on a part-time basis that's worth nearly $10,000 a day? Per customer? And what has he got to say that's worth 200 grand a pop, 45 times a year, for over a decade? I mean, we're out there asking people to support our documentaries and commentaries and other work like the "Ask the Professor" feature with, say, $5 a month, which is about 17 cents a day. That's less than one fifty-six-thousandth of Clinton's haul from Laureate Education alone. I'd need 3,226 people to answer that call to make as much in a year as Clinton does for an average speech of the sort he was giving nearly once a week.
I'm not saying I'm in the wrong business. But I am saying if this news bugs you as much as it bugs me, and if you think it's important to keep the voices that matter to you audible, please do try to find that 17 cents a day for us, and for other groups like Ezra Levant's The Rebel, Dave Reesor's Let's Do It Ourselves, Danny Hozack's Economic Education Association of Alberta (and yes, I'm professionally involved with two of them) and other similar outfits like the Fraser Institute, the Canadian Constitution Foundation and the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (who helped us enormously with our Fix the Constitution documentary project).
Unlike the Clintons, we're never going to get rich doing what we do. But that's kind of the point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNJ6LIjbu3Y
Our new project is now a third of the way to its goal. Thanks to the early-bird backers! Please keep sharing.
Here is a teaser clip from our upcoming True, Strong and Free documentary. https://youtu.be/l4E0TBNJ-VQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JfQb-P-CPA July 1, 2016 marks the 100th anniversary of the start of the notorious World War I Somme offensive. But this battle deserves a second look. Long a byword for futile slaughter, for callous unimaginative generals sending a generation to their pointless deaths, it was in fact a necessary operation to relieve pressure on the desperate French at Verdun. And it succeeded.
It did not merely prevent the Germans from breaking through on the Western Front and winning the war in the fall of 1916. It so battered the Kaiser’s army that the Germans withdrew into the Hindenburg Line and launched the unrestricted submarine warfare that brought the United States into the conflict and assured Allied victory.
The conditions were appalling and the cost horrific. But neither the generals nor the politicians had a choice, other than surrender to an aggressive regime that had begun the war by attacking its neighbours and occupying much of their territory.
So yes, we must recall the cost. But also the victory it bought, tactically in 1916 and strategically in 1918.