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Pros, in politics
Re High-Profile Figures Mull Bids To Head BC Liberals (July 31): That potential candidates to succeed BC Liberal leader Christy Clark would want to consider their chances before jumping into the contest is understandable.
But could they please spare us the self-serving clichés about "taking time to reflect" and "making a decision as a family"?
As for one possible candidate's claim that "people don't want professional politicians," I would suggest that the example of Donald Trump's reign of error is a clarion call for more professionalism in politics – not less.
Michael Kaczorowski, Ottawa
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August was once a gentler time: Everyone on vacation, no one paying attention, editors grasping for stories (Another Trump Of A Week, editorial, July 29). To the venerable Allan Fotheringham, it was the journalist's silly season.
Oh, that it could be so. This year, there won't be a holiday in the White House, just more chaos, more corrosiveness, and more provocations on Twitter. August is set to be the season of absurdity.
James Schaefer, Peterborough, Ont.
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Data deluge
Re Insert Your Microchips, Humans. The Future Is Now (July 29): Elizabeth Renzetti neatly sums up her column about the dark side of the future by quoting Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari from his latest book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow: "The world is changing faster than ever before and we are flooded by impossible amounts of data, of ideas, of promises and of threats. Humans are relinquishing authority to the free market, to crowd wisdom and to external algorithms partly because we cannot deal with the deluge of data."
But another Israeli, a psychologist, nailed it 34 years ago. In The Undoing Project, Michael Lewis's latest book, he tells the fascinating story of two brilliant Israeli psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who 40 years ago wrote "a series of breathtaking original studies undoing our assumptions about the decision-making process and proved that people make irrational decisions much of the time, and not just in the field of economics."
Mr. Lewis writes that in 1983, when Miles Shore, a psychiatry professor at a teaching hospital for Harvard Medical School, was interviewing Amos Tversky for a book he was writing on Prof. Tversky's collaboration with Daniel Kahneman, Dr. Shore asked Prof. Tversky if the work fed into the new and growing field of artificial intelligence.
Prof. Tversky's reply: "You know, not really. We study natural stupidity instead of artificial intelligence."
David Honigsberg, Toronto
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Naive. Or cynical?
Re Review Ordered Of Saudis' Use Of Gurkhas (July 29): What a shocker! Critics from the human rights community and the NDP told the Liberal government not to trust the Saudi leadership with armoured vehicles, that they would use them against their own citizens. The Liberals permitted the sale anyway. Now, what did the Saudi authorities do? Use them against their own citizens!
One has to ask whether the Liberals were naive or cynical.
I lean to the latter.
Edward Rice, Winnipeg
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Strange things …
Re Canada Strips Ex-Nazi Of Citizenship For Fourth Time (July 29): Helmut Oberlander, the former Nazi death camp translator, is having a hard time retaining his Canadian citizenship.
Strange things do happen.
Years ago, I went to a northern European festival in Toronto with some northern European friends. One introduced me to an honorary guest, "SS Lieutenant General …" The man extended his hand. I looked at it, and at my friends, and, badly shaken, walked away.
I did not shake his hand.
Later, I was too shaken by the title to recall the name. We had all read about various people who had been accepted in the U.S. and Canada, and at that time I supposed that he was connected to a fighting force rather than a camp, but still … How on earth did he come to be there?
Strange things do happen.
Mary Lazier Corbett, Picton, Ont.
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Bombardier's aim
Re Building Prince Vladimir (Report on Business, July 29): Compared to Bombardier's management, the gang that couldn't shoot straight looks like a team of expert marksmen.
Bombardier's latest shot in the foot involves a dodgy investment in a Russian railway enterprise, connected to Vladimir Putin, that may be subject to Canadian government sanctions. But how could we forget the delayed and over budget C series aircraft that's struggling to get sales? Or the Toronto phantom streetcars, so late in delivery that the city is seeking alternate suppliers?
Our tax dollars reward this nonsense, most recently with a $372-million "loan" to a family business that seems to delight in scuttling from one pratfall to the next.
David Beattie, Chelsea, Que.
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Greed … et al.
What happened with Sears seems to me to be all about greed and its co-conspirator, immorality (How A Focus On The Short Term Drove Sears Into The Ground, Report on Business, July 31).
How Sears's pension funding situation went from a $220-million surplus in 2008 to a $110-million shortfall in 2016 boils down to immoral behaviour on the part of greedy, bonus-reaping executives obsessed with maximizing shareholder returns while simultaneously lining their executive pockets, including Eddie Lampert's, the CEO of Sears's U.S. parent company.
How many millions were he and other senior executives paid while thousands of hard-working, low-paid retail clerks – the backbone of such companies – were robbed of their very modest pension benefits? It's sickening.
Government intervention is urgently needed, as author Cole Eisen so clearly points out.
This isn't a call for meddling in corporate affairs, it's a call for moderating greed while supporting a robust economy that benefits us all, not just a few corporate elites. Prime Minister?
Diane Sewell, Stratford, Ont.
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At this rate …
Would it be inopportune to suggest that Donald Trump install a revolving door in the White House? (As Setbacks Pile Up, Trump's Tax Plans Could Also Be In Jeopardy, July 31).
Job Kuijt, Victoria
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Donald Trump campaigned on repealing Obamacare, the construction of a wall between the United States and Mexico, halting Muslim immigration and "draining the Washington swamp."
With the failure to repeal Obamacare, Mr. Trump's record rivals that of the Maple Leafs during their decades of misery.
John Ferguson, Orleans, Ont.