A strange juxtaposition of stories on the front page of today’s National Post. One alleges “a growing outcry over ‘sexualized’ dress codes in the workplace” led by government apparatchiks talking to journalists interviewing sociology professors. The burning human rights issue is women wearing skirts and men wearing pants while working in restaurants. And the solution is men wearing skirts. No. Just kidding about the last part. The solution is of course women wearing pants because men are the template for human beings and “Why can’t a women be more like a man?” is the battle cry of feminism. On the same page we read that Justin Trudeau is… hold me, I’m dizzy… visiting Washington where he will host a reception to which someone has invited the “Grammy-winning Toronto artist” The Weeknd whose “morose blend of profanity, sexism and proscribed behaviour will add to the impression that Canada has changed; that this is not the boring little brother in the attic bedroom Americans have grown complacent living alongside.” So suddenly profanity, sexism and proscribed behaviour make you cool instead of a threat to social justice?

Apparently so. If a woman wears a skirt it’s traumatic, patriarchal and oppressive. But when you sing about… OK. This is awkward. In order to explain the problem here I actually have to quote some of the incredibly obscene, disgusting lyrics that have made this person a star and secured him an invitation to meet with Canada’s Prime Minister. I’d rather not, and if you’re willing to take my word for it don’t read on. But the weirdness, even horror of the juxtaposition of the two stories is precisely that the usual suspects are having PC conniptions about skirts. Yet when this guy sings about… you are warned and here we go… “f**ing b**ches” and “she ride it like a f**ing pony” and “We don't need no protection” and “Let me see that ***/ Look at all this cash/ And I emptied out my cards too/ Now I'm f**king leaning on that/ Bring your love baby I could bring my shame/ Bring the drugs baby I could bring my pain” (do not see the site http://www.azlyrics.com/w/weeknd.html for these and more, without the asterisks, if you have anything resembling good taste) he’s proof that Canada is cool and gets to hang with PM Selfie instead of facing the Ontario Human Rights Commission complaint that might loom if you said dresses look elegant on women but silly on men.

Oh well. I guess it’s all this progress we’ve been having lately.

In my latest National Post commentary I urge Liberal Finance Minister Bill Morneau to have his Advisory Council on Economic Growth to concentrate on removing government barriers to growth.

In my latest National Post commentary I explain why Greg Selinger should not be reelected in Manitoba even if as a rule you support his NDP.

Here’s an intriguing opening for common sense to invade politics. Billionaire Charles Koch, a major bogeyman of the left, has just written a thoughtful Washington Post piece on how he agrees with Bernie Sanders, fast-rising bogeyman of the right, that tax loopholes for the rich are bad. Can I just say I’ve been making the same point for years? In this country the political left and right seem equally devoted to these backdoor handouts and it’s time they both got smart like Koch and Sanders.

It might seem odd to hear this major financier of right-wing Republicans endorse the criticism of that socialist about “a political and economic system that is often rigged to help the privileged few at the expense of everyone else, particularly the least advantaged” and agree with Sanders that “we have a two-tiered society that increasingly dooms millions of our fellow citizens to lives of poverty and hopelessness” in which “many corporations seek and benefit from corporate welfare while ordinary citizens are denied opportunities and a level playing field.”

But Koch goes further.

“Democrats and Republicans have too often favored policies and regulations that pick winners and losers,” he writes. “This helps perpetuate a cycle of control, dependency, cronyism and poverty in the United States.” And furthermore, “it’s not enough to say that government alone is to blame. Large portions of the business community have actively pushed for these policies.”

Exactly. If you build it they will come. A state in the business of handing out sums of money that boggle the mind, including by Koch’s reckoning “$1.5 trillion in exemptions and special-interest carve-outs” in the tax code alone, may mantle itself in rhetoric about compassion and the less fortunate. But it’s the well-connected, confidently alert to opportunities and accustomed to privileged treatment, who will know how to cash in, including quietly persuading lawmakers to create new handouts for them and their buddies.

I strongly urge you to read this eyebrow-raising piece, in which Koch even says that his own businesses do not ask prospective employees about prior criminal convictions because of the unfair way drug laws burden the poor and marginalized. Because as he says, Koch is no socialist. Rather, he firmly opposes Sanders’ desire for more government, saying “This is what built so many barriers to opportunity in the first place.” But he’s not looking for a fight.

Instead he’s hoping that if left and right can see eye to eye on the loophole issue, perhaps it’s one area where a major injustice can be corrected in a genuinely constructive way.

I know, it’s a long shot. But it’s worth a try. Even here in Canada, where not a sparrow flutters by without someone offering it a subsidy.

In my latest National Post commentary I urge the federal Liberals to recognize that deficits are bad for the economy and for government finances and to reject the Harper legacy of running them to “stimulate” the economy. (NB “While deficit spending may have a beneficial short-term impact” was an editorial insertion and I do not agree that it is a possibility.)

In my latest National Post commentary I warn the federal Liberals not to mishandle the problems of Alberta and Bombardier respectively in ways that remind us of Brian Mulroney’s disastrous 1986 decision to shift the CF-18 maintenance contract from Winnipeg to Montreal.

In my latest National Post commentary, I say New Brunswick's latest budget is dangerously ordinary.

In my latest National Post commentary, I criticize the federal Liberals’ sweet-sounding lack of stand on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. To govern is to choose, and since they did win the election they better figure it out pronto.