Did You Read This

Some important news items you may have missed

WHY EDGAR (aka EDDIE) WILL NEVER GET IT

Remember the canal debate and this statement by the Mayor:

• "While ignoring the canal project, council approved adding a $60-million item for a waterfront underground retention treatment basin to end sewage overflows into the Detroit River, an item for which the city was already in the process of seeking senior government funding.
  
  "Other cities are putting forward massive projects with vision. Today, here, instead of such vision, we have a receptor sewer project ... how does that diversify our economy," Francis said after the meeting."

Do you see what I mean, the nuts and bolts of running a City are of no interest to a Mayor who has mind's eye visions.

Here is what we learned recently and why that project was absolutely required:

• "Retention basin to stop sewage from entering river
  
  The city's engineering department and the university have announced details about the massive water retention basin that's expected to solve Windsor's long-standing sewage overflow problem.
  
  According to Greg St. Louis, a project administrator with the City of Windsor, the underground basin will be as large as a football field and located on the downtown riverfront...
  
  "This is the solution," St. Louis said. "It's very good for our environment and our city -- that's for sure."
  
  For years, environmental groups have criticized Windsor as one of the top polluters of the Great Lakes when it comes to raw sewage.
  
  According to the group Ecojustice, Windsor dumped 4.3 billion litres of untreated sewage and stormwater into the Detroit River from 2006 to 2007...
  
  St. Louis said overflows can happen up to 50 times a year. Asked how much of the effluent is untreated sewage, St. Louis said he doesn't have percentages, but the mixture does contain "whatever comes from someone's house."
  
  The project has a predicted cost of $60 million -- $40 million of which will be provided by the federal infrastructure stimulus plan...
  
  According to the environmental group Ecojustice, only two other Ontario communities scored worse than Windsor for polluting the Great Lakes with untreated sewage mixed with storm water."

Edgar just does not understand his role.

MORE GARBAGE

Actually, it is recyclables.

I heard that a study is being undertaken about the costs of collecting them. Presumably, the data is being collected to determine whether its collection should be outsourced.

I wonder if Council asked for this.

WILL THE DRIC ROAD BE DELAYED

If not now, it will be soon. Maybe Edgar will help out to stall off things with a nice judicial review lawsuit.

The reason for it...NO money to pay it off:

• "Yes, stimulus spending can and should help the ailing economy. But that doesn't mean it can't go hand-in-hand with prudent program spending and a commitment to long-term restraint. The alternative to this kind of careful fiscal planning is going to be larger than expected deficits -- and in Ontario, that's exactly what we are now seeing.
  
  Last week, the province announced that the deficit for the last fiscal year -- 2008-09 -- stands at $6.4 billion. That's $2.5 billion higher than originally predicted and a clear indicator of just how the recession has been eating away at revenues."

OTTAWA CITIZEN'S VIEW OF ITS ROLE

That paper is a sister one of the Windsor Star, being owned by Canwest.

Here is their view of their relationship with Government:

• "Newspapers are defenders of the public interest. Part of this role has traditionally involved taking adversarial relationship with government and the public sector. As journalists, we see ourselves as “speaking truth to power.”
  
  We believe that the newspaper plays a unique role in the media ecosystem in defending democracy, rooting out corruption, and looking out for the interests of the common man and woman."

I wonder if the Star's Publisher's Editorial group agrees with that perspective.

DOUBTING THOMAS ADDED TO STAR EDITORIAL BOARD

Speaking of that group, remember this:

• "The Windsor Star: The Windsor Star editorial opinions are developed and finalized in the Publisher’s Office. They are developed in a group setting by a group usually composed of Publisher Jim Venney, Editor-in-Chief Marty Beneteau, Editorial Page Editor John Coleman and Karen Hall."

Someone named Tom must have joined up recently. How else to explain this slam at Eddie's Cargo Village absurdity:

• "After reading the city-commissioned feasibility study into an air cargo development at Windsor International Airport, you can be forgiven for borrowing a line from an old Wendy's commercial by asking "Where's the beef?.."
  
  However, the report does not answer two obvious questions -- how many jobs could an air cargo development create and how much revenue could it generate for the local economy...
  
  There's no question that Windsor's economy -- hard hit by the slowdown in manufacturing -- is in dire need of diversification.
  
  And, there's no question that maximizing use of an underutilized airport could play an integral role in rejuvenating local economic prospects. However, substantially more key information is needed before more turning to taxpayers to cover the costs of yet, another consultant's report."

Can anyone else recall such an action? Was Eddie upset at this, at earning such a rebuke from the Messenger?

Was that a tear in Eddie's mind's eye or merely a grain of sand stuck there when he was looking at the vast and empty airport lands where the cargo village might go.

Never fear though, Tom will soon become "Thomas the Believer" after his colleagues have a long chat with him.

DRIC AS "IBG"

Now I understand how bureaucrats and politicians can support a gigantic, multi-billion dollar boondoggle known as DRIC that makes no sense. It is the IBG Phenominum. Here is how it is described in the world of finance. The principle is the same with DRIC except for the "sizable bonus" part:

• "Mr. Taleb warns that the system has grown riskier since last fall. The extensive government support that began after Lehman collapsed will lead investors to assume that governments will always prevent major banks from collapsing, he said.
  
  So investors will lend money to the financial industry on easy terms. In turn, financial institutions will use that cheap money to make risky loans and trades. The banks will keep the profits when their bets pay off, while taxpayers will swallow the losses when the bets go bad and threaten the system.
  
  Economists call the phenomenon moral hazard. Bankers have a different term: I.B.G. The phrase implies that by the time a deal goes sour, “I’ll be gone,” after having received a sizable bonus."
  
  A variation of this is IBG, YBG ("I'll be gone, you'll be gone").

WHERE ARE THEY NOW

What a nice condo apartment for sale in that big story in the Star a few weeks ago. Here is a better view of it in case you are interested http://tours.ilookabout.com/ToursV3/?ID=33491da2c5644ddc&Profile=1&Mode=TIV2

It has been marked down from $895,000.

Here's my problem though. Did you read the nice things they said about Windsor:

• "Retirement was the primary motive for the owners of this luxury condo to move to Windsor about five years ago. “Having lived in and around Toronto, Windsor offers a lot of big city amenities at a small-town price. It was and still is an undiscovered treasure,” the homeowner says.
  
  “I get to see more Blue Jays games and Maple Leafs games [because of Windsor’s proximity to Detroit] than I ever did in Toronto. My wife gets to enjoy the museums and high-end shopping in suburban Detroit. I think this will be even more attractive as the Canadian dollar continues to appreciate against the U.S. dollar. The availability of golfing and boating has just been the icing on the cake...
  
  “We were delighted because we finally found something that satisfied our needs. We were able to sell our home in Oakville at almost three times what we paid for our suite in The Glengarda and actually improved our lifestyle. In addition to high-end amenities common to Glengarda, the nearby attractions were a very important consideration for us,” the homeowner says."

If it is so perfect here, why are they selling? The story did not say.

More importantly, where are they going? That too was not mentioned. You know why don't you---if it was not another Windsor address, everyone else who was thinking of retiring might follow them to their new location instead of coming to Windsor.

A MONEY VOTE OF NON-CONFIDENCE IN A DRIC BRIDGE

Looks like an existing Windsor border crossing has the confidence of investors since it has an existing cash flow and does not depend on new business or cannibalizing the traffic of other crossings for success. And I do not mean the Tunnel.

Do you think Matty has not been terrorized by the Governments after all into selling cheaply and will build his new bridge regardless:

• "The private market generated an interesting mix of deals last month from a variety of sectors. Only two of the month’s nine deals came from the Energy & Utilities sector, a sector that has dominated the issuance landscape for most of the past year. In terms of geography, however, most of the deals came from domestic issuers, with only two coming from foreign issuers.
  
  Rounding out the month was a deal for Detroit International Bridge Co. via Citigroup. That deal was $200 million in size and saw interest from 20 investors."

The fact that the Company got this much money from shrewd investors at this time has to be a vote of non-confidence in a DRIC bridge ever being built from exactly the same people who would have to finance it.