I’m still trying to digest the fact that Karissa Boudreau’s mother killed her daughter in cold blood. And then tried to stage it, leaving her daughter’s body in an undignified position, so that suspicion would be turned away from the mother. How can that happen?

I’m sure that at home Karissa was no ray of sunshine. Who can blame her? She was taken from her home town, her school, her father and all of her friends to come with her mother and “new” boyfriend. But as a parent, you take the unwritten oath to protect your children no matter what. Tell that to the fifteen year old I was told about the other day. This “mother’s” child/infant was the IWK and was only released to her on the condition that the baby be kept inside and in isolation from others. Seems that the infants immune system was comprimised and the doctors needed her to keep the baby away from any sources of infection. Well, at the time the story was relayed to me the “father” was screaming that the “mother” was trying to kill his child, because they were not at home and nobody knew where she had taken the baby. Social workers were explaining that the “mother” being only fifteen, didn’t know any better. Great. There is a child that has a great future.

This is our fault. You and I. Society. When did it become acceptable for children to have children? Were there signs that Karissa was in trouble and nobody did or could do anything? And I am still amazed that in this world where everything is regulated, why isn’t there a license or at least some training for prospective parents? Would I have passed? I don’t know. We all make mistakes parenting. The difference is the level of maturity of the parent. We make mistakes, but we are mature enough to know that killing our daughter is not the best way to patch things up with our “boyfriend”.

While thinking about this I received this video in an email.

<a href=”http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=ofpYRITtLSg&feature=related”

If it doesn’t link, type it in. It’s sad to think that we can learn alot from these hero dogs. They treat each other better than we treat our children. I still have tears in my eyes.

Sorry Karissa.

Sour Kraut

Here we go:

Based in the last five days I have come up with an average price per gallon on the NYMEX of $1.17. The average Canadian dollar exchange rate for the last five days is $.81. So, that means using the governments formula the price for a litre of self serve gas in Region One tomorrow should be -

Eighty-six cents per litre.

You heard it here first. Lets see.

Sour Kraut

I got an exasperated email from a friend the other day. She was saying that she felt that the whole world was coming to an end environmentally speaking, and that she didn’t know what could be done.

Hold on I told her, things aren’t as bad as you may think. If we didn’t throw in the towel in the sixties, we surely shouldn’t do it now. In fact, compared to forty years ago, things are looking up. Due to the environmental efforts over the past four decades, air quality in most areas of North America have improved, water quality has improved, we have a treaty on acid rain and the Great Lakes, which were once considered dead, have made a comeback. We don’t hear of places like “Love Canal” anymore and we are cleaning up the dirty spots.

In addition, Western Governments and even China, are setting aside land as national parks and protected areas at a rate never before seen. Recycling programs are the norm rather than the oddity.

Is there more to be done? Sure. But, don’t assume that everything is in the toilet. Even George W. Bush contributed. God, I miss him already. Obama has been in office more than a week and he still has not pointed out the problems of an American household “trying to put food on their family.” Where did W come up with this stuff. W’s contribution was in creating the world’s largest marine sanctuaries. Honest. As long as Cheney and Rumsfeld didn’t get involved, ol’ George could actually do one or two things right. Over his term, W designated more than 335,000 square miles of Pacific Ocean as protected “Marine Monument” sites. Off limits to everything except research. Way to go George.

President Bush, the junior also had a pretty suprising and forward thinking program when it came to AIDS and Malaria in Africa. He probably had trouble finding the continent on a globe, but when he got there he really put the US’s money where his mouth was. Amazingly he will go down in history as the US President who did the most to curb the spread of these two debilitating diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa.

For all you global warming fans out there, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that global temperatures fell in 2008 to near average levels. This means that 1998 was still the warmest on record and with the 2008 result the trend is actually pointing toward cooler temperatures. Isn’t that an inconvenient truth!

So, don’t get down. Things aren’t as bad as they seem. That doesn’t mean that we can’t do more. Look at George. Here we thought that he was on vacation getting drunk during those more than 900 days away from the White House. Come to find out he was thinking of good things to do. Who knew?

I remain,

A Sour Kraut

So, I have a 45 minute break at home between the ten hockey games my children are playing in this wekend. And I am trying to sew patch in the leather thumb of a glove. (Hint: It is easier if the leather is still wet from sweat! Nice.)
The problem is these damn needles. Why are the companies making the eyelets so small? My arms aren’t long enough to hold the needle far enough away see to get the thread in the hole! I have to go and buy needles from a company that is not making the eyelets smaller.

Until then, I remain

A (aging rapidly) Sour Kraut

PS. As much as I didn’t want to hear it, my eye doctor did suggest bi-focals on my last visit. Damn him. I bet he has shares in the sewing needle industry.

I did a little more digging.

For your information, gas prices rose almost five cents at the pump last night, while the New York Harbour rate for gasoline fell yesterday by almost 8 cents per gallon. It is now trading in the $1.06 US per gallon range.

Secondly, I have found the most I am going to find on how the government determines gas prices. It is as follows:
- Price is determined on a five day average of the New York Harbour Spot rate.
- The government allows a 10 – 11.5 cent per liter marketing and whatever markup.
- It also allows a .3 – two cent transportation charge
- Federal Excise tax of 10 cents per litre is added
- Provincial tax of 15.5 cents per liter is added
- and the whole thing has HST of 13% tacked on the top
- Finally a four cent retailer margin is added.

Ta da! Seems simple enough. So lets work backward from the 85.4 cents posted today. If we back out the the four cents we are left with 81.4. Remove the HST and we are down to 72 cents per litre. Take off .3 cents to truck it to give 71.7. Take out the 25.5 cents in tax and we are at 46.2 cents. GOOD GOD that is exactly what the government posted last night. What happens when we remove the 10 – 11.5 cent markup (let’s use 11 cents)? We are at 35.2 cents. Interesting. That means almost 50 cents of the 85.4 cent per liter we pay has absolutely nothing to do with the price of gas. Kinda makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

But is all of this accurate? Does the 35.2 cents really reflect the price of gas on the open market? If we correct for the exchange using the average of the last week of an 80 cent dollar, the 35.2 cents Cdn converts to 28.16 cents US. Multiply by four to convert from litres to US gallons and you have a market price of $1.12 – $1.13 per gallon. As much as this pains me I have to say that it is not very far off my calculations.

So, it seems to be warranted this week.

However, if I look back to December and apply these same rules I can’t find any New York Harbour price that justified 69.9 cents. My calulations show a NY Harbour rate of 74 -75 cents per gallon to justify the pump rate. The lowest it ever went was 83 cents. I cannot believe that the government was giving us a deal, but that seems to be the case. Arrrrrrrgh!

I still have reservations about this system, but I can’t find a smoking gun. I think the bigger problem is that even with knowing system we have, there are still too many times that the numbers don’t make sense.

Now that I know, I’ll be watching and next Thursday I will post my predictions. See if I am right.

Until then, I remain,

A Sour Kraut

Okay, so all the pundits are predicting that gas prices are going to go up five cents tonight. Why? You might ask. I don’t know, I have to answer. As usual the workings of the gas regulatory mechanism are kept in a fog. Rather appropriate for government I’d say.

Here are the facts. In December we were paying 69.7 cents per liter as the low price in province. Gas inventories were high and demand was down. The NYMEX rate for a US gallon (equals four litres) was in the 89 to 95 US cent range. Corrected for the weakness in the Canadian dollar that changes to $1.11 to $1.19 cdn per US barrel of gas. Change that to litres and you have a December wholesale price per litre of 27 to 29.7 cents. Really! At its lowest that means we were paying forty to forty-two cents for taxes, transportation, profit and the administration cost of this system.

Once the Israelis got fed up with the rockets raining down on them, gas prices spiked in late December to reflect the market’s unease over the effects of this Gaza incursion. It was capped by a high price of $1.19 per US gallon on January 3,2009. That means that we were looking at a Canadian price per litre of 37 cents per litre. Okay, since that is almost a ten cent rise in prices, I can actually see the reasoning behind the rise in prices from the low in December to where they are today. However, we have to remember that all of these prices are for future delivery. The low prices in December were for February and March delivery. That is when the prices should have fallen. The price rises were alos on those Feb. and Mar. contracts. So right now we should be paying less for gas based on the cheap prices of late Nov. and Dec. However, the Provincial regulation seems to react immediately to any increase, no matter what the delivery date.

What I can’t figure out is why another increase in predicted. Since the high on January 3, 2009, gas prices have fallen to trade in the $1.06 to $1.16 range for the past two weeks. That should mean that prices come down a few pennies shouldn’t it? The Canadian dollar hasn’t taken any major hits so that is not an issue. The price of oil has gone up over the past week, but that was due in large part to the change from February to March contracts on the NYMEX so that shouldn’t be an issue. The oil companies can’t be controlling it, since even if they wanted to raise the price, gas inventories are so hihg right now the market could wait them out. Factor in the lack of storage capacity and that eliminates the producers ability to stockpile gas until the price goes up. Finally, as of January 9, 2009 US gas consumption was down 2.1% over the previous year. But we are in January 2009 and the gas consumption in January 2008 in the US was down 2% over the previous year. That means that gas consumption in the US is actually down almost 4% from 2007. Those numbers are staggering really. If you had looked at anyone in the oil industry in January 2007 and said “Hey I’ll bet that in two years time gas consumption will be lower by almost 4 percent” you would have been laughed out of the room. In round numbers that is almost 350,000 barrels less PER DAY. WOW. Talk about your greenhouse gas reductions.

If demand is down and supply is up, why are we paying more? Could it be speculators? We will only know when these contracts come due to see if there is a mad scramble by the speculators to try and fill the contracts.

A far as the government is concerned, I wish that this regulation was a two way street. However, the Provincial regulation seems to react immediately to any increase, no matter what the delivery date. On the down side we have to wait. I wish prices would go down with the same immediacy as they go up. Why they don’t I can’t tell you. I wish I could.

Until then, I remain,

A Sour Kraut

Hey loyal readers (reader?), anyone?

It is the time of “winter blahs”, rising gas prices with no clear rationale, emergency departments that can’t handle emergencies and dire predictions of mutli-year defecits. So we need a laugh and hopefully here is a good one.

I received an email today of actual newpaper headlines that have appeared across North Amercia over the past year, this one brought tears to my eyes ( no pun intended ):

ASTRONAUT TAKES BLAME FOR GAS IN SPACECRAFT

That’s what happens when you don’t have your dog to blame it on!

Have a good day,

A Sour Kraut

January 20, 2009. What a day! We have a new president of the United States of America who can do no wrong and he hasn’t done anything yet. We have Canadian children who wonder if our “President”, whoever he or she is, is as good as Obama. And we have the provinces main emergency department going into crisis mode over a number of elderly people suffering slips and falls due to icy conditions. What a historic day!

First to Barrack. Boy, do I feel sorry for you. A fantastic orator and a motivating personality, you do not deserve the pressure that is about to befall you from your adoring and expectant population. Heck, even people in Zimbabwe were waking up this morning expecting their lives to be better. Last week’s miracle of people walking on water on the Hudson river, only fueled the euphoria surrounding your inauguration. “Look, Dear, because of Obama people don’t even die in a plane crash.” I enjoy your speeches, even though they lack specifics, and I hope that you can implement the policies that are needed. I do respect the people you have placed around you, and that is a huge improvement over “W”‘s cronies.

I was, and still am, a big Hillary supporter. I can’t help but think that this “Historic Day” would have been somewhat less so if Hillary had been taking the Oath of Office yesterday. Historic is in the eye of the beholder I guess. In my mind Obama’s election doesn’t rate as high as an election win by a woman.

So Barrack, keep cool and shut your ears to those who are expecting too much and will never be satisfied with less. There is only so much you can do, and if you do that, it is all that I ask.

On the same day I overheard high school students refer to Canada’s “President”. Is anyone else shocked that our education system doesn’t teach the basics and that our youth are more interested in the politics of the United States than Canada?

Finally, you don’t want to be in Nova Scotia when something big happens. Dr. John Ross, head of the Emergency Department at the QEII Health Services Center, instituted a Code Orange yesterday to deal with the crisis in their emergency department. The department that handles all of the Provinces critical medical emergencies. Wonderfull. At 60 patients and waiting times of more than 24 hours in some cases the backbone of our emergency system broke. The Code Orange was needed to get the rest of the hospital in line to deal with the backlog. That means that for the preceding day, the rest of the hospital was giving the emergency department the finger and saying, “its your problem, deal with it”. What a system. I am terrified to think of what would happen in a real emergency. What if a plane crashes at the airport? Maybe a high-rise fire? How is that department going to cope if hundreds of victims arrive at their doorstep? Yesterday we were talking about some extra slip and falls and pneumonia patients and they had to call a Code Orange.

This is a result of the mismanagement of hospitals that I have witnessed over the past decades. I have been told previously, that when there are long waiting times in the ER, often the Doctors are in the back chatting. Why? Because they can’t get beds to move patients into. So, the people wait and the Doctors twiddle their thumbs. In addition, Dr. Ross stated that the Emergency Department handles the “overflow” for the hospital. What logic. If you are really busy you put all of the people in the entry point. That is kind of like saying to stadium manager, if you have too many people here, put the extras at all the entrances and exits. That will help people get out if there is a fire. This is insanity. Our medical care is being adversely affected by hospitals that are unable to get people into the system. The excuse is always the same. “We have too many beds being taken up by seniors that need to be moved to long term care facilities.” Well, MOVE THEM. You have wings of hospitals being closed down. Reopen them for long term care patients. Move them into hotels. You can probably get a pretty good rate in the middle of winter. Build more nursing homes – NOW. These are not technologically advanced structures. In six to eight months you could build a wack of them. Stop talking about the problem and solve it. Oh, I forgot, it is probably in some committee.

Not to promote another system, but I can tell you that in a for-profit health care system this would not happen. You would not wait in emergency, since the only way the hospital would make money is by getting you in for treatment as fast as possible. You can bet their emerg. departments are not the recipient of the overflow. Someone’s head would roll if it were. But, that’s not our system is it. People wait for hours and hours and the only people at blame is some 80 year old with dementia and bad kidneys.

Okay, Barrack. I’m expecting tomorrow to be better. Just kidding.

Until then, I remain,

A Sour Kraut.

Here’s a good one. I was talking to a friend the other day. He works for one of the five major banks as a credit supervisor.

I asked him how things were going with the current financial crunch and the government’s liquidity injection of tens of billions of dollars.

Not good, I was told. The banks have tightened their lending requirements. So, the only people who qualify are the people and business who don’t really need it I stated. Yup, was his reply. Okay then, if I was able to get a loan for whatever, what interest rate am I looking at I asked. We are charging five to six points over prime he said.

You could have picked me up off the floor. Here we have a Bank of Canada rate to the banks that is one of the lowest in history yet the banks are charging almost 10% on loans and lines of credit. I looked my friend in the eye and said “What a sweet deal. You get the money for almost nothing and lend it out for 10% on loans that have no risk.”

Yes, he replied.

What about the money the government gave you to give out loans? They are sitting on it to make their balance sheets look good I was told.

But it is the banks job to lend money to keep the economy going, I stated.

Yeah, but tell that to the guys up top. They don’t care if the economy goes or not. They just want to keep their shareholders happy.

So, here we have five charter banks that do nothing. By “Charter” I mean that the government, or you and I, have given the banks a monopoly to do business in Canada provided that they fulfill their obligations. One of those obligations is to lend money. They take our money in as savings, provide a safe haven for it, and they are supposed to lend it back to individuals and businesses at a higher rate or risk premium. That is where the banks use to make their money. Now they don’t want to lend. They would rather make their billion dollars per quarter through service charges. Great, that’s really going to jump start our economy again.

And what does our government do? Nothing. In fairness to Jim Flarherty, he has met with the bank heads to discuss their levels of lending, but aside from voicing his displeasure he has done nothing to force them to do anything. Well, Jim, how about revoking their charter. Open the doors to foreign competition and let others come in and lend the money business and individuals need.

Well, governement is not going to do that. Just as they are not going to try and reduce regualtions, tax burdens and red tape that strangle Canadian business.

Here is a thought. Long ago Canada abolished slavery. Trudeau brought in a Charter of Rights and Freedoms for the Canadian public. Why then does the Canadian Government still practice slavery? Yes, slavery. As a small business owner, the Canadian Government demands that I do their work for them without compensation. I, and every other business in Canada, am a tax collector for the Canadian Goverment. I have to collect HST, Canada Pension, EI and personal income tax. Yet I do not get paid for this and if I do it wrong or not on time I get penalized. Neat. As a small business this “duty” costs me thousands of dollars per year in hours and accounting fees. Yet I have to do it for free. If I make a miscalculation the Goverment charges me interest and penalties. In larger companies they have whole departments that do this. Imagine what that costs each business. I don’t think this is fair. Nobody at Canada Customs and Revenue works for free why should I? At least the old provincial tax system paid you a small commission on what you collected and remitted.

If there is anyone else out there that agrees with me I would like to hear from you.

Until then, I remain,

A Sour Kraut.

Okay, first things first. Gas prices are up again. Why? I am not sure, but let me inform you about one thing. Falling oil prices has not meant falling gas prices. While oil has fallen over the past week, gasoline prices have actually gone up. The futures contract for gasoline has gone up to $1.19 per gallon (US) from a low of $.83 on Dec. 20/08. This means that since the low the wholesale price per litre has risen nine cents. Factor in the exchange between US and the Canadian dollar and guess what, we are at the same increase that has appeared at the pumps.

Two things. I don’t know why gasoline has gone up in price. US inventories are very high and demand remains about two percent below average. So if the biggest gasoline market in the world is not pushing up gas prices, what is? Speculation maybe? No, can’t be. As we heard all last year, as oil prices soared to $144 per barrel, “Speculation does not account for the rise in prices.” Right.

Secondly, these prices on the NYMEX are futures contracts. FUTURES. That means that the prices you see today are for product deliveries at least one to two months from now. I can not explain why the government adjusts prices to allow gas companies to retail product that was purchased at a lower price months ago, at the higher prices of two months from now.

Here is a suggestion. Why doesn’t the government or this gas regulating body publish its calculations every week. Post them in the newspaper, or at least on line. Then all of us who are bitching about this system will be able to see what is happening behind the scenes. It should all make sense then and we can move on the complaining about something else. Seems simple enough.

Yesterday we were informed that our school system needs an additional $50 million per year to maintain the level of education for our students. Another $50 million per year for a student population that is falling by 3500 students per year. Eighty-five percent of the education budget goes for personnel. Is anyone else thinking that paying teachers more to teach fewer students is unsustainable? Our health care and education budgets eat up the vast majority of our tax dollars and both of them are growing beyond our ability to pay. Somewhere in the near future hard decisions are going to have to be made about both and we are not going to like it. But, as we are seeing in the global economic restructuring, you can only have your cake and eat it too, for so long.

Until then, I remain,

A Sour Kraut