jason-kenney-Derek-Fildebrandt-alberta-ucp

Strathmore MLA Derek Fildebrandt Claims Jason Kenney Told Him He Cannot Run Against a Women

jason-kenney-Derek-Fildebrandt-alberta-ucpThe video below shows Derek Fildebrandt at the Strathmore on Monday April 23rd, claiming that UCP leader Jason Kenney told him he could not run against a female UCP member:

…What Jason (Kenney) said to me. It’s not about me challenging other incumbents. It was only about me challenging female incumbents… And he said I could run against any other men…  I don’t think it serves women well to have effectively affirmative action in politics…

It should be noted that Mr. Fildebrandt is accused of many politically unsettling problems including:

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Does Alberta Have Both The Legal Authority & The Gumption To Block Oil Shipments To BC?

In a word, yes.

1 – Does Alberta Have the Legal Authority To Block Oil Shipments to British Columbia?

As explained in the video below,  ALL oil and gas products in Alberta used to be COMPLETELY controlled by the Alberta Petroleum Marketing Commission (APMC) which still exists today.  There has been no legal impediments to that process put in place since the APMC was formed in 1973, so yes the Province of Alberta can legally block petroleum shipments to BC.

2 – Would Albertans and Alberta Companies Support Blocking Oil Shipments to British Columbia?

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kinder-morgan-trans-mountain-pipeline-map

Twinning the Kinder-Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline Is Now Too Big To Fail

Should the Province of Alberta buy the Trans Mountain Pipeline from Kinder-Morgan if they want to walk away from the project?  That question was posed to Alberta Premier Rachel Notley today and she responded with an emphatic ‘Yes!’.

It has become abundantly clear, whether you are for or opposed to this particular pipeline or not, that having the relatively simple twinning of the existing Trans Mountain pipeline fail to be built would signify the end of even medium scale infrastructure projects in Canada.

kinder-morgan-trans-mountain-pipeline-mapThere will always be interest groups and affected people that have some legitimate claim against a large project.  The standard for projects should not be keeping everyone happy.  The standard for infrastructure projects MUST be if they are in the national interest.  That national interest contains a giant list important factors including:

  • environmental concerns
  • affected citizens needs and wants
  • global competitiveness concerns
  • financial concerns
  • public safety

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sad-mark-zuckerberg-facebook

Facebook’s Problems Just Keep Getting Bigger

Below is a list of current serious Facebook legal issues:

  1. sad-mark-zuckerberg-facebookThe Canadian Federal Government and the Province of BC agreed to join the separate investigations into Facebook user data being sent to AggegateIQ (part of the Cambridge Analytica scandal)
  2. Facebook just admitted they did know about the Russian meddling in the 2016 US Presidential election, in 2016
  3. Facebook has temporarily walked away from a major project to use their data in Hospitals to improve patient outcomes
  4. Facebook has just shut down AggegateIQ ‘s account for improving receiving data from Cambridge Analytica
  5. Facebook apologized to a notable Myanmar group because Mark Zuckerberg’s claims of how Facebook is effectively responding to hate speech and used Myanmar as an example.  The groups involve claim that Facebook was actually quite slow to respond and that they cleaned up their own mess.
  6. Brazil fined Facebook $33M for not turning over WhatsApp data (that Facebook is almost certainly unable to turn over because the information is encrypted)
  7. The US Government is requiring Mark Zuckerberg to appear in front of the
    1. US House of Representatives Committee on April 11th
    2. US Senate Committee on April 10th

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dutch-prison-refugees-temporary-housing

The Dutch Have Reduced Prison Populations 50% AND Crime 39% in a Decade

In the last decade the Dutch have reduced prison inmate populations by 50% and those sentences average to about 90 days in jail.  Many people expected this drastic reduction of inmates to lead to a notable increase in crime because:dutch-prison-refugees-temporary-housing

  1. Dangerous, proven criminals are being quickly released back onto the street
  2. There is virtually no deterrent effect to being jailed in the Netherlands

Contrary to this expectation the fact is that Dutch system has also reduced crime by nearly 40%.

As you can see in the image to the right, the Dutch now use their old prisons as temporary housing for some refugees.

How can that be?  In simple terms, it turns out that after thousands of years of trying different forms of incarceration and punishment that Europeans have figured out:

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five-levels-of-vehicle-automony

Why Self Driving Vehicles Will Not Hit Full Level 5 Autonomy For Many Years

Unless you live under a rock, you have heard of Self Driving Autonomous Vehicles (Uber, Waymo, GM Cruise…) and Governments around the world are scrambling to:

  1. Modify existing legislation to allow self driving vehicles
  2. Be the first in their region to allow self driving cars, because of the amount of R&D money / jobs involved
  3. Consider new legislation to curb some the top level autonomy (level 5), where the vehicle is 100% responsible for the driving and it does not even offer a steering wheel or break peddle

five-levels-of-vehicle-automonyThose are all important things to do, but Level 5 full autonomy is much further away than the public and many pendants think.  Many people have already figured out that the algorithms used to drive on:

  1. Snow covered roads
  2. Poorly painted roads
  3. Temporary construction zones

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Facebook Cambridge Analytica Scandal Is a Crisis For All Online Companies

There is a crisis at Facebook because of the constant negative media coverage of the Cambridge Analytica scandal causing users to question staying on the product and that has caused Facebook stock drop a truly staggering $70B in value in 11 days.  It’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, owns 28.2% of the company so he has lost $20B personally.facebook-scandal-stock-price-drop-70b-zukerberg$20b-11-days

There is a also crisis being experienced by some Facebook users that have finally realized Facebook and nearly all other ‘free’ online services are harvesting personal data to allow others to micro-target advertising at them.  WHO DIDN’T KNOW THIS ALREADY?  Apparently millions of people thought Facebook was some benevolent do-gooder, that provided a complex service for free because they were nice people.

The saying in the industry holds as true today as it did in the 1999 when it was coined: “You are not the customer; you are the product“.

The only ethically questionable behavior by Facebook in this current crisis, was corrected way back in the spring of 2015.  That issue was the ability of users to share not only their own information, but that of their friends (if those friends had not changed default privacy settings).

Facebook made USD$40B in 2017 and that was another record amount for them.  They did this by monitoring you, figuring out what you might be interested in and then allowing advertisers to target you personally, just like they said they would.

The along came Cambridge Analytica who used a large set of Facebook user data and figured out patterns they could use to apply to other Facebook users.  Cambridge Analytica organized the social media efforts for the Donald Trump Presidential campaign and now it is a political crisis too.

It is important to note that:

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timeline-of-gun-sales-in-america-2000-2017

Bankruptcy of Gun Maker Remington Signifies Nothing For the Anti-Gun Lobby

remington-firearmsToday the United States oldest gun maker Remington Outdoor Company Inc, which owns Remington Arms, filed for Bankruptcy protection.  The anti-gun lobby has taken this as a sign that the guns and gun companies are finally starting to decline.  Unfortunately, Remington’s collapse is only a sign of bad management and will do nothing to stem the tide of easy to find, cheap guns.

Remington expanded production several in the Obama era, especially after Sandy Hook, as Americans feared their misunderstood second amendment rights were going to be taken away, resulting in spiking gun sales.  Then after the flip flopping sometimes NRA supporter Donald Trump became President, all gun manufacturers including Remington found that sales declined because there was little fear of new gun restrictions.

In 2007 high profile private equity firm Cerberus bought Remington and started loading up the debt.  In the end Remington took on nearly 1 Billion (yes, that is a “B”) in debt and was stuck with huge inventories they could not sell to service that debt.

timeline-of-gun-sales-in-america-2000-2017

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comparison-of-fuel-prices-between-electric-vs-gasoline-vehicles-2018

Are Electric Cars Really Less Expensive To Own & Operate?

If you are interested in fully electric cars or plug-in hybrids there is a myriad of misleading information to wade through.  One of the big questions is, ‘Is it is cheaper to run own and operate an electric car vs a gasoline powered car?’.

Before we get into the numbers, you need to be aware of two things:

  1. Most electric vehicles are plugged in at work during the day at no additional cost to the employee
  2. The price of electricity varies from city to city, so it is difficult to say definitively one way or the other

The most accurate, generalized, answer is to say electrified and gasoline vehicles are very competitive with each other and one does not (yet) have a major cost advantage over the other.

I drive a Cadillac ELR with a 60KM+ range (average of 55KM in winter and 65KM range in summer) before my gasoline engine generator kicks in.  Because I used to track my expenses and my kilometers, I can say with certainty that the ELR save me:

  1. about $1700/year in fuel costs. Like many, I seldom plug it in at home and on the rare occasion that I do my solar panels provide about 50% of electricity.  I do 95% of my car charging at work, at no extra cost.
  2. Nearly all electric vehicles have ‘regenerative braking’ which uses the electric motor to slow the car.  The physical brakes are seldom used and I expect that the factory set of brakes will last the life of the car.  That saves a few hundred dollars.
  3. Because the gasoline engine generator in my plug-in hybrid Cadillac ELR is seldom used I will only get an oil change every 18 months or so.  If the car was fully electric, I would never get an oil change.  This saves both money and time… which to me is more money.
  4. For the reasons above, I expect the exhaust system and other consumables (spark plugs, air filters…) will last dramatically longer than a regular car.  All of this saving money.

We have two interesting sets of numbers for you to review.  From the new for 2018 book ThePriceOfCarbon.com comes an interesting info-graphic:

comparison-of-fuel-prices-between-electric-vs-gasoline-vehicles-2018

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How We Know The Trump Campaign Did Not Criminally Collude With the Russian Government

Let me start with the obligatory, I do not particularly like Donald Trump, believe much of what he says or think his campaign was shinny clean.  That being said I do like to listen to both facts and common sense, so let’s go:

How We Know Trump’s Campaign Did Not Collude With the Russian Government:

There are a few key points to consider when thinking about the claims that the Trump Campaign for President of the United States in 2016 was seriously aided by the Russian Government:

  1. It has firmly been established that almost no-one in the 2016 Trump Campaign, including Donald J Trump himself, thought that he had any serious shot at winning until a few days before the election (if then!).  Why would anyone intentionally collude with a foreign power unless they thought they were close to a victory?  The upside is questionable and downside is massive.
    .
  2. Most people assume that large scale ‘attacks’ need co-ordination.  This is false,  From Al Qaeda to political operatives, all that is needed for an effective campaign is a general direction.  Individuals and organizations know what do without centralized organization.  For example, in the US, the Koch brothers do not need to talk to the Trump or Bush campaigns to know their job is to bang on the Democrats and promote the Republicans.  Russia based organizations do not need direction from the Kremlin to know what to do.
    .
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Will The New Canadian National Projects Review Mechanisms, Resolve Provincial & Municipal Disputes

At the heart of the Canadian Federal Governments announcement today about fixing the process that determines if a large scale project is in the best interest of Canada or not, is a desire to limit ability Provincial, Municipal and interest groups (like ‘First Nations’) to stall approved projects.  The idea is to:

  1. increase consultation so everyone’s voice is heard
  2. set firm and visible rules for industry so that “goal posts” are not being moved after the fact
  3. determine what is in Canada’s best interest, when that interest is at odds with local interest

These are clearly admirable goals.  To achieve those goals there are now going to be three structures that industry must pass through to get Federal Government support:

  1. A new ‘Impact Assessment Agency of Canada‘ will do the preliminary investigation to determine the environmental effects of a project
  2. The existing ‘National Energy Board’ is demoted and renamed ‘Canadian Energy Regulator‘ but still be responsible for determining the technicalities of a project
  3. The ‘Federal Minister of the Environment‘ will have the final say  if a project is viable and in Canada’s interest

So now the questions are, will these changes allow:

  1. Industry to decide that spending many millions of dollars to go through an elongated approval process that will have a definitive outcome be worth while?
  2. Provincial, Municipal and interest groups (like ‘First Nations’) to be heard and listened to?

There has been much debate over the process and all agree something big had to change:

  1. When industry works on large scale projects deemed to be in the Canadian national interest after years of consultation and vetting that are still blocked by local and regional interests, there is a big problem.
  2. When interest groups (i.e. some ‘First Nations’, Municipal governments (i.e. Vancouver) local and Provincial governments (i.e. BC) feel empowered to block large scale projects that adversely affect the rest of the country, there is an even bigger problem.

Dennis McConaghy, a former senior executive at Trans Canada Pipelines thinks these changes will not achieve the desired goals:

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