“The NDP Boxing Day sale ends in just a few hours. But you must act now. Donate to Canada’s New Democrats before midnight tonight – and get up to 75% back on your 2011 taxes.”
Email from the federal NDP December 31, 2011. (The point being that even they know incentives matter... except when designing policy proposals.)
In my latest Epoch Times column I say the Ontario NDP proposal to bring all mental health care into our crumbling public system reflects a broad, nonpartisan, goofy belief that government is the main and best creator of wealth in a society.
“Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.”
Thomas Edison’s “much quoted statement” quoted by his son Charles in William Bennett The Book of Virtues
In my latest National Post column I say that given how horrified we are at the foolish things politicians do, including on defence procurement, we should pay more attention to the foolish way they think.
In my latest Epoch Times column I say the Caisse de dépôt plunging into the urban light rail quagmire in a desperate hunt for profits is an ominous sign of the real state of Canadian public pensions.
In my latest National Post column I say what should be solid in Canadian government, like our Charter rights, is generally blown away while what is vapid, like the Liberal-NDP deal, lands with a thud.
“Of all political ideals, that of making people happy is perhaps the most dangerous one. It leads invariably to the attempt to impose our scale of ‘higher’ values upon others, in order to make them realize what seems to us of greatest importance for their happiness; in order, as it were, to save their souls.”
Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. 2
“Idleness… is the holiday of fools.”
From a fortune cookie I got c. 1993 - the Internet says it’s actually from Philip Dormer Shanhope, Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773). I originally had it without the elision but while that version circulates, I’m credibly informed that the proper full quotation is “Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds, and the holiday of fools.” (Source: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/299455-idleness-is-only-the-refuge-of-weak-minds-and-the)