The second amendment means I am my own chief executive and commander in chief of my own military. I authorize my own act of self-defense in response to a hostile entity making […]
Norm Farrell
Gwen and I raised three adult children in North Vancouver. Each lives in this community, as do our seven grandchildren. Before retirement, I worked in accounting and small business management. Since 2009, I have published commentary about public issues at IN-SIGHTS.CA.
Murder most foul
A few days ago, fifty-year-old Brian Thompson was gunned down on a street in midtown Manhattan. Thompson was not an unimportant man. He was a senior executive of United Health Group, a company valued by the stock market at about three-quarters of a trillion Canadian dollars. The company expects profits of almost C$40 billion in 2024.
Price-gouging, policy-corrupting ripoff machines
More and more of the Canadian economy is dominated by a handful of huge companies that control what we buy, how we work, and which other businesses can or can’t thrive. Beyond the obvious examples of airlines, telcos, grocery chains, and banks, The Big Fix: How Companies Capture Markets and Harm Canadians shows how corporate concentration is growing across many industries, leading to higher prices for consumers, lower worker’s wages, more inequality, fewer startups, less innovation, and lower growth and productivity.
Invitation declined
A candidate for the People’s Party of Canada asked if I would join his podcast for a discussion of government functions. Having no interest in promoting or assisting that party, I declined. So, who are the people who support the People’s Party?
Language may change, but…
According to Oxfam International, the richest 1 percent have amassed $42 trillion in new wealth over the past decade, nearly 34 times more than the entire bottom 50 percent of the world’s population. Oxfam has calculated that for every $1 raised in tax in G20 countries, less than 8 cents comes from taxes on wealth.
Planet Earth in need of palliative care?
A knowledgeable friend believes that we have passed a threshold, beyond which our world will suffer irreversible changes in the climate system. He says Planet Earth now needs palliative care…
Healthcare in BC
After more than seven years of responsibility for the sector, Adrian Dix is blamed for healthcare inadequacies. Indeed, real challenges abound. Yet solutions to apparent problems can take much time and the four Liberal Health Ministers that served during Christy Clark’s six years are not blameless…
DeBriefed
DeBriefed is a weekly newsletter from Carbon Brief, a UK based website that publishes the work of journalists and academics. The focus is on the effects of climate change and the science that ought to dictate energy policies. Each edition of DeBriefed provides information that ought to concern all of us, particularly since climate change deniers are soon to control the American and Canadian governments…
A Damien Gillis event worth our attention
In the early days of IN-SIGHTS, I was influenced by the late Rafe Mair and his Common Sense Canadian partner Damien Gillis. November 16, a film directed by Mr. Gillis is featured at the Rio Theatre as part of Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival (VIMFF).
Democracy, taken for granted and less valued
While BC voters moved to the right in October, the voting pattern was not substantially different than in earlier times. The same cannot be said for the USA. More than half of American voters supported a misogynist, racist, criminal for President. The simplest explanations for the November result are a disdain for democracy and a willingness to embrace totalitarianism. Canada is experiencing its own shift to the far-right…
Recent readings
About poetry and essays from the November 2024 issue of Scientific American, the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States. The publication is useful for people at all levels of learning. Occasionally, it can make us smile.
Geothermal: unlimited, affordable, on-demand renewable energy
A decade ago, the Union of Concerned Scientists published a paper “How Geothermal Energy Works.” It reported that the heat within 10,000 meters of the Earth’s surface offers 50,000 times more energy than all the world’s oil and natural gas resources. The problem is making that energy available. There has been little commitment to geothermal energy but one Canadian company intends to change that…
Accountability requires accurate and timely disclosures of BC’s finances
Years ago, Premier W.A.C. Bennett said the NDP “couldn’t run a peanut stand.” The BC Auditor General’s report on the province’s 2023-24 financial statements may reinforce that opinion. The Auditor General qualified his opinion of the province’s financial statements for the seventh time in the last seven annual Public Accounts released by the NDP…
Fascinate fools, muzzle the intelligent
More than 100 years ago, American labor activist Eugene Debs said, “Every robber or oppressor in history has wrapped himself in a cloak of patriotism or religion, or both.” Today, authoritarians seek control of goverrnments in North America. It is not someone else’s problem.
Capturing fog
Not everything is doom and gloom at IN-SIGHTS. A story from The New Yorker’s Brave New World Department is about Pavels Hedström, a Swedish architect based in Denmark. In architecture school, Hedström was drawn to Japanese principles of design and how they applied to a world—and a profession—increasingly troubled by the climate crisis. Hedström believes that design often separates people from nature. His Fog-X is a design that aims to strengthen the human connection to nature by offering help to communities affected by the scarcity of safe drinking water…
Don’t axe the tax; fix the tax
In theory, governments use carbon taxes to shift the costs of climate degradation from the public to those responsible for greenhouse gas emissions. However, contaminators can avoid paying carbon tax. Many economists say carbon pricing is critical to scaling up climate action, so it should be effectively applied. There can be serious flaws in how carbon taxes are imposed, and how the revenue is disbursed…
Science denial, evil or stupid?
Sophisticated weaponry used in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and several other regions is causing acute suffering, death, and destruction. Some of the killing technologies are directly controlled by humans, and others […]
Massive gap between rhetoric and reality
According to the latest UN’s Emissions Gap Report, global greenhouse gas emissions in 2023 reached a level unprecedented in modern times, rising 1.3 percent above the preceding year. The increase is above […]
Collectibles that may no longer be collectible
Possessions we once thought valuable and worth preserving sometimes end up in boxes that are ignored for years. I tell my wife that our kids will probably use a giant dumpster when we’re gone. Where else to put a leather-bound Encyclopedia Brittanica from the 1970s? A couple of stored boxes recently had my attention.
Financialization of housing
New analysis from Popular Democracy and the Institute for Policy Studies reveals how billionaire investors have become a major driver of the nationwide housing crisis – and several common-sense measures to help expand permanently and deeply affordable housing stock…
in-sights.ca 
Millions of US, Americans support Trump! He is not an aberration! When Trump is gone there are many more to…