Brad Wall is certainly the best Premier to govern the province in my lifetime and may well be counted among the greatest in history — we’ll see that as he navigates us through the rising turmoils. He has a strongly competent cabinet with real depth — a rarity for any government these days. And he is more concerned about “doing the right thing” than “doing in the opposition.”

He reminds of a quote: “Doing things right is good management. Doing the right things is leadership.”

But I am genuinely non-partisan. I have no loyalties to organizations because organizations cannot accept or return loyalty. Only people can. Organizations have a nasty habit of biting you in the ass when you are most vulnerable. Just ask Stephen Dion.

For me politics is about people, principle and policy. The Saskatchewan Party happens to have among it those I consider to be great people. It rests on sound principles and is providing good public policy. What’s not to support?

Where there is controversy, such as in the labour relations portfolio I am not convinced of the dire consequences being predicted.

Where I suspect I differ in principle or policy I observe that I differ equally or more strongly with the alternatives. For example, I believe in aggressive public policy to promote competition in the market and ensure that those needed to facilitate a competitive market in fact exist. Things like price transparency and balanced sustained information flow between supply and demand sides of the market. But the truth is I have never discussed these things with Sask Party leaders so, who knows, maybe they’d be more open to the ideas than I suspect.

— the rest of this comment has been deleted for racist, sexist and hateful content. Whoever “mullah cimoc” is, he’s got a filthy mouth and an evil heart.

Volatility in stock markets is well documented in bear trends. The reason this happens is actually not at all complicated. Stocks do not represent single physical material goods. Instead they are by design “derivative” in the sense that they reflect expected profit performance by specific businesses operating in the real world. Bear markets reflect expectations that one or more economic sectors are going to perform negatively. At the same time no one knows exactly how negative the performance will be so there are investors who will see value once stocks fall below a given price. When they jump to make value buys, others frequently follow, until the next sneeze and the stocks tumble again.

Financial markets are even further removed from physical reality and hence are susceptible to the abuses now afflicting much of the world. I think it is ludicrous to blame such things on “American culture.” Trying to maximize self-interest is a normal aspect of human behaviour and psychology.

Commodities are not at all like stocks; and they are (or should be) entirely removed from financial derivatives. For a commodity like oil, there is in fact widespread recognition of what is called “the floor.” The floor is the price below which oil should not fall because the physical volume simply required to continue operations at last year’s status quo would require that minimum price. We are of course speaking of world wide operations that consume oil. Recent work has been done that suggests the floor price is significantly lower than the current volatile prices and is hypothesized by some as being around $70 per barrel. (Business News Network and U.S. Congressional hearings).

Commodities are real, physical substances required for a great variety of economic activity. Base minerals are thought to have no real base price because the majority of essential activity can occur absent new iron ore, for example. Economies will reduce demand for products that require iron and stretch existing iron products into ever longer service.

The idea that oil prices decline in response to sensible projections regarding the increase or decrease in the supply-demand balance of oil due to economic growth or recession is irrefutably established as fantasy.

No one. No one at all, projects the supply of oil to shrink by 25% in the near term, let alone on the long market. Similarly no one at all, no one, suggests it is reasonable to project a 25% increase in demand for oil, particularly not on the short market where these wild rides have been experienced.

So I do not believe your comments are on point.

I do not think it necessary to make discussion about regulation “partisan” when it is perfectly capable of a good exchange on its merits. I watched a former Treasury Secretary from the Clinton administration last night on CNN. He stated that the deregulation of the financial markets started under Clinton and were exacerbated under the Bushes. It is irrelevant what administration did what, if I am accurately understanding your purpose, to weigh the need for more or different kinds of regulation.

I happen to strongly believe that there is a pressing need for more regulation. Further, I make the case in my earlier three part series that regulation such as being discussed are not properly called “infringements” or “intrusions” on the competitive free market. Such regulations are required precisely to address the absence of competition.

“Free market” has never been put to mean an abstract freedom to do as one pleases. The term includes within it, body and soul, the entire concept of competition.

When a firm gets to the size that over 80% of all mortgages are under its insurance coverage (AIG), it is not even an oligopolistic market. It is by definition a monopoly.

Any time a firm “gets too big to fail” it is prima facie evidence of the existence of at least an oligopoly.

I unambiguously recognize competition as the highest ideal for economic growth and economic allocation of resources. The problem is that too many sectors of the world economy and certainly the Canadian economy, are not engaged in real competition. I advocate intervention to break up the oil industry the same way the telecommunications industry was broken up. I have a similar view regarding the massive oligopolies of the agriculture supply sector.

The clamour for ever larger and the fear of being too small have been songs reducing us to a single economic refrain. It’s a monotone.

We have become ingrained with secret deals and “confidential terms of sale” when the key priority for a free market is the free and transparent exchange of information. Price discovery is no longer the goal of commodities markets and we find entire sectors of economic production where price discovery of any kind is at best elusive. In financial markets today it is entirely impossible. No one knows what any of those derivatives are worth, much less what the mortgages they ultimately securitized are worth. We believe that vertical integration equals free marketeering when it has resulted in many examples of top-down monopolization and expropriation of resources that would be otherwise allocated in the presence of competition.

My belief is that diversity in our economy, just like diversity in biology, is the best and most successful road map to propagation (of wealth or life).

Finally, you bring home ownership into the equation with a hint of the moralist. I think it is absurd to believe that seven million American families woke up one day and decide to go buy houses they knew they would end up losing to foreclosure. There are a million of those families already put out their homes. They may have been uneducated, even stupid or foolish. But they do not make their livings measuring risk, balancing ability to pay and approving mortgages. Others have that job. To have walked millions of people through this process is criminal in every sense of the word.

I want to know who’s going to jail.

Somebody better.

Events of course have overtaken us and the appeals board has granted the day parole that should never have been denied.

The plain assertion that “This was first degree murder….malice…” and so on carries very little weight.

Who determines what is murder in your world? In mine, it is the court; the rule of law and not the rule of the mob.

The court found him guilty of manslaughter not murder.

My case has to do with the nature of the sentence rather than games with word definitions.

What sentence would have satisfied you? And would you then take that same sentence and apply to anyone convicted of murder, let alone manslaughter?

How in your mind does serving seven years in prison equal saying something is “OK”?

Do you seriously argue that parents or caretakers of severely disabled people are about to go on a killing spree, thinking “gee, I’ll only get seven years?”

Punishment must serve a purpose. None of the purposes it can serve were even remotely available in this case. If you want sentencing that constitutes revenge or that speaks the emotional outrage of particular points of view, you are asking for a justice system that I can confidently predict you would come to regret.

Let’s take at face value the idea that sentences should not express the outrage of society generally, but the outrage of some particular opinion group. In this case you would be happy because your own outrage would be served.

But what about when someone wants you sentenced for eating meat because they are outraged? Or do you honestly believe that only your own particular outrage will survive? After all, eating meat can hardly be compared to killing a person, can it? Ask the animal rights activists and they would tell you, “It’s murder, outrageous murder of an innocent life that cannot protect itself.”

Outrage is a fickle thing and entirely unreliable as a means for determining such grave matters as prison sentences.

Be careful what you wish for…

He murdered his own child ostensibly because she was in pain. By whose definition was she in pain - Latimer’s. This is not “mercy killing” this was an outrageous murder of an innocent child who could offer no defense for herself.

To give Latimer the status of political prisoner is to say first degree murder of a handicapped person is OK and as long as the killer feels there was no other option (e.g. acute care facilities or group homes which exist and are taxpayer supported in Canada) then murder is OK and you are forgiven.