July 8, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

The Town of Bruderheim has a telephone answering service.  The answering service, accessible 24/7, is staffed by two involuntary volunteers and provides redirection to intended clients for the Town Office, cheerfully and always ready to serve.

The Bruderheim Town Office is aware of that going on, and has been aware for quite some time, but so far have offered no solution to what is truly an imposition on the involuntary volunteers saddled with the task of providing service to prospective Town Office clients who ask for all sort of things, such as whether we can provide “contact details for Bruce Trucking” or whether we “still operate the bulk-water-terminal.”

The more bizarre such information requests appear to be, the more likely it is that a given party making it is simply looking for the Bruderheim Town Office.

How can it possibly be that our telephone number became the tool whereby Town Office clients find their way to constructive and accurate information offered by office staff paid to provide it, whereas we, my wife and I, get paid sweet tweet, for being always cheerful and eager to provide friendly service to all sort of calls that number anywhere between one and up to five or more a day?  Our telephone number is not even remotely similar to the telephone number used by the Bruderheim Town Office (whose number is 780.796.3731).

For many years, the website of the Town of Bruderheim seriously ailed. It contained, for example, links that ostensibly were to lead to information on current town council members but led instead to a welcoming message by a now former mayor, even long after that mayor had become history for more than a year.  On the other hand, the promised information about the composition of the Bruderheim Town Council remained successfully hidden from all comers.

Still, anyone sufficiently astute in using Internet searches for specific websites and willing to spend the time required to find information on the Town Council’s composition could find it, but relatively few people are that astute.

The Town Office has been aware for years that the glaring deficiencies of its website existed.  Their solution was to hire someone to redesign their website, while the redesigning did nothing to address those deficiencies.

Even after the much-advertised redesigning of their website, the website still showed, for example, a member of the Town Council who years ago had left the Council because he had intended to move away, Marcel Mann.  That was until about half a year ago.

About half a year ago or earlier, the Town Office deigned to announce the launching of another revamping of their website.  They got everyone’s attention by removing all of their web pages and replacing them with a web page that states:

Town of Bruderheim

This site is down for maintenance. Please check back again soon.

That is where things remain as of now.  What you see there is all that remains of the consequences of the last major redesign of the website of the Town of Bruderheim. Of course, the creation of absence of useful information is an unsatisfactory problem solution.  As you can see from the full text of that web page, the information provided there is useless for anyone trying to glean something as simple as instructions on how the Bruderheim Town Office can be contacted either by e-mail, snail-mail or telephone.

The reason why we have been forced into providing answering services for the Town Office is that prospective clients keep on searching for better information than that offered by the Bruderheim Town Office.  All who succeed in that effort are then rewarded by reaching the best possible alternative, the website of About Bruderheim, where they can obtain our telephone number, call us and get helpful advice, such as to call 780.796.3731 during standard government-bureaucracy operating hours from 9 a.m to 4 p.m.

When we paid our increased property taxes last June, we suggested to the Town Office staff that it would be a practical solution to add contact information to their cryptic message at their website, but other than that they verified that such information was absent from their website and that they told us that we would probably be very interested in “the roll-out of the newly redesigned Town Office website at their next Town Council meeting,” absolutely nothing was done to improve the quality of the service they provide to their clients.  They persist in hiding their identity and location, even though the required update of their website would not require more than a few seconds of work.

Sorry people, but that is not good enough, not for as long as Town Office staff feel that a “roll-out” is as or more important than a practical and useful update of the Town Office website and to put it online for all to see and use.  The general public and your constituents expect nothing less!

Posted in Town of Bruderheim, Taxes, Organizational News, Community & Industry | Print | 3 Comments »

July 3, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

The following graph shows sulphur-price trends over time.

People asked me a few times during the past few weeks about what is happening with the feared construction of the HAZCO sulphur-storage, -forming and -shipping facility that HAZCO so eagerly and urgently wanted to build not quite two miles east of Bruderheim, at the junction of Highway 45 and RR 202.

Well, the NRCB hearing last year decided to give HAZCO the go-ahead on that; against the wishes of many opponents.

It seems that HAZCO’s sense of urgency that drove their application evaporated in consequence of the collapse of the sulphur-price-bubble that had emerged in 2007 and popped by the end of 2008.

For most of 2009 plant-gate sulphur prices were below $0.00/LT and even as as low as -$29.52/LT.  That means that sulphur sources would have paid as much as $28.52/LT to selected “purchasers” just to have excess sulphur taken off their hands.

In other words, for as long as sulphur requires a subsidy to be leaving plant gates, to which then still the cost of forming and shipping the sulphur to Vancouver must be added before it can be injected into the saturated world market, it is not likely that producers or HAZCO will make a profit on selling, forming and shipping of sulphur.

It seems that common sense in standard business practices applies.  For now the sulphur business that HAZCO wanted to engage in at a profit is a bust and will not generate the revenues required for the cost of constructing the HAZCO sulphur facility, aside from the cost of forming and shipping of sulphur.

However, I am not the expert.  Perhaps it is possible to obtain better information from HAZCO or from the Lamont county planners who are busy having the infra-structure built from our tax money with which they hope to attract industries that will pay back what they invest.

Mind you, losses are not a great concern for the county planners or for the NRCB.  Whatever losses they cause will be paid for by the taxpayers.  It’s a no-risk business for planners and for the NRCB, although the taxpayers will lose a great deal even if the HAZCO facility will not be built.

The whole deal is not worth it to me to spend more time on.  I am through worrying about bubbles, and it likely that another bubble will not pop up for quite some years.  The last bubble we had pop up in the same place, before this one, popped up about 40 years ago.  Perhaps it will now be another 40 years before the next one pops up and then bursts.

Posted in Taxes, Town of Bruderheim, Community & Industry, World Sulphur Glut, Sulphur Logistics, Sulphur-Related Construction Costs | Print | No Comments »

June 30, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

Three new categories have been added to this blog:

deficit: ….1 a (1) : deficiency in amount or quality <a deficit in rainfall> (2) : a lack or impairment in a functional capacity <cognitive deficits> <a hearing deficit> b : disadvantage <scored two runs to overcome a 2–1 deficit>
2 a : an excess of expenditure over revenue b : a loss in business operations

debt: ….1 : sin, trespass
2 : something owed : obligation <unable to pay off his debts>
3 : a state of owing <deeply in debt>
4 : the common-law action for the recovery of money held to be due

propaganda: ….1 capitalized : a congregation of the Roman curia having jurisdiction over missionary territories and related institutions
2 : the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person
3 : ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing cause; also : a public action having such an effect

(The preceding definitions are quoted from Merriam Webster ONLINE.)

Over the years I made a good number of comments on this blog but I never once wrote anything about the term deficit.  A search for “debt” produced just two entries, one on the surprising tendency of  large number of instances of expensive “absolutely essential” new stadiums to turn into “old stadiums” that need to be disposed off and even demolished after relatively short intervals of service.  The other comment that had mentioned “debt” pertained to the Dec. 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit, in which developing nations clamored that the developed nations had to atone for their climate debts through transfer of wealth from the latter to the former; as Carl Marx and his followers put it, “From those who have to those in need.”

Having followed the progress of the Toronto G-20 Summit, it became obvious that apparently nothing was said (at least not publically) by any of the G-20 leaders debating the health crisis of the world’s economy about the major cause of the financial crisis, namely the massive and escalating debt-financing that most of the world’s nations have become accustomed and addicted to.  The domestic and international mainstream media failed to pay any attention to that or, if otherwise, remained silent.

The riotous orgy of vandalism that we all saw much of and read much about had the (perhaps) desired effect.  Whether the effect was intentional or not, it diverted attention from what mattered, the absence of any discussion on what must be done to effectively cure the critically-sick world economy.

Things still did not quite crystallize in my mind in relation to that, but then something jogged me.  That was the recurring and all-pervasive assertion in the media that Stephen Harper hosted the Toronto G-20 Summit! That assertion, at least for me, is the key to understanding what is going on.

Was Stephen Harper not just the master of ceremonies, wasn’t it Canada (more correctly, its taxpayers) that was the host?  Wasn’t it Stephen Harper who was the organizer responsible for the fiasco that causes the Canadian taxpayers to shell out more than a billion dollars for the security measures that failed to prevent the calamitous consequences of the conjunction of rioters and plate glass windows in Canada’s largest metropolis?

A fraction of the cost of the inadequate security measures would have been more than sufficient to house the G-20 leaders and their media retinue in luxurious comfort in the far less expensive and far more effective security of one of many of Canada’s more appropriate and smaller localities.  Not only would it have required only a tiny fraction of the cost of the security fiasco in Toronto, but the facilities that would have been constructed in a much smaller location could have excluded some of the kitschy frills that were used to spice the mix, such as the construction of the fake lake.

Moreover, the facilities in a more suitable location could have been a permanent asset that could have been used time and again for any number of G-20 Summits slated to be held in Canada.

Rather than focusing on the failure of the Toronto G-20 Summit and the true cause of the economic crisis, the riots served as well as any well-planned propaganda action would.  The media gorged on the riots and largely ignored the failure of the Summit. The real problems with the economy remain largely unnoticed.  No plan at all to address them emerged.

How could that happen?  It was clear in my mind that the focus on “deficits” misses the point, that excessive debt-financing is the more important and primary issue that must be addressed, but why was and is that being overlooked? The assertions that Harper was the host of the Summit clinched it for me.  Propaganda is the unnoticed but essential component in the mix that caused the obvious lack of attention.

It has been quite a few years since I last tried determine the extent of Canada’s government debt.  The federal deficit was then at about $600 billion, but the total debt (by all three levels of government) was about $3.5 trillion dollars. It would surprise me if that debt load had decreased to less than $3 trillion dollars by now.  It would not surprise me if the figure would be the same or even a bit higher than $3.5 trillion.  After all, the demand on the Canada Pension plan, for example, has increased substantially from the time a few years ago.

The media’s take on all of that is that Canada needs to be commended for having a deficit of only $59 billion.  That is like ignoring the elephant in the china store.

Things are no better in the U.S.  A few years ago, the total U.S. national debt, including inter-state transfer payments, had reached $46 trillion.  Correct me if I am wrong, but I recall that just in his first few months in office Barack Obama added about $11 trillion to that pile of debt.  So what is the use of drawing attention to the fact that the U.S. annual federal deficit now regularly exceeds $1 trillion and to suggest that it would be a good idea to cut that in half by about three years from now?  That doesn’t even feed more than just a few peanuts to the much bigger elephant that is being ignored.

However, that is an example of what effective propaganda can achieve.  It diverts attention from important, vital and essential issues.

My wife relishes an anecdote that shows how even very young children know how to apply propaganda tactics.  More than 30 years ago she babysat a little girl who had committed a fairly serious transgression over which the girl’s father was trying to take her to task.  The girl’s reaction was to divert her father’s attention by pointing at the kitchen window and to exclaim, “Daddy! Daddy, look at the bird!”

Our “leaders” and their media retinue who glorify our leaders’ soft, weak and considerably meaningless promises do something similar by saying, “Oh, look at the deficit!”

A budget is a plan for how much we will pay on our financial obligations.  The objective of a budget is that the amount of money paid out over the budget period will be equal to what was budgeted for.  If we fail to budget properly, or if we pay little attention to what the budget requires, we will have a deficit or a surplus at the end of the budget period.  However, all that means is that we either planned correctly and paid according to plan, or, if there is a deficit at the end of the budget period, that we did not live up to what we promised to ourselves and to others about our financial performance.  If money is left over at the end of the budget period, we either paid little attention to what the budget required, or we did a lousy job of budgeting. In any case, it says nothing about whether our debtors will be forced to call in their loans and foreclose on us.

It remains to be seen whether the next G-20 Summit in November will produce something more concrete than non-binding promises to cut deficits.  No-one should get their hopes up that it will, but a few things are certain.  The media will glory in a propagandist orgy and assure everyone that the outcome will be good.  The taxpayers, as always, will foot the bill for the November Summit and its consequences, while we all accelerate our slide down to Hell in a hand-basket.

–Walter Schneider

Posted in Deficits and Debts, Taxes, Propaganda debunked | Print | No Comments »