Insurance companies such as WellPoint and Humana will receive $5.5 billion in bailouts in 2015 to help cover the losses they claim they will face because of Obamacare. The reason… Insurance companies claim that government must help to lessen the “risk” they take through Obamacare mandates.

(Watch more Truth In Media on Ben Swann)

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By Andrew Coyne
National Post: March 5, 2014

I think we should give the chairman of Chrysler the benefit of the doubt. I think he is entitled to the presumption that, when the company demanded $700-million in government grants and loans to retool its Windsor and Brampton, Ont., plants, it was acting in good faith; that when he warned without such assistance, the company might take its investments elsewhere — the periodic payment of such enormous subsidies to gigantic multinational auto manufacturers being essential to maintaining Canada as “a globally competitive jurisdiction” in the competition to subsidize gigantic multinational auto manufacturers — he was being perfectly sincere, in the sense he sincerely wanted the money.

That is, I think we should assume, when Chrysler asked for the $700-million in January, it had no plans to renounce it in March: or in other words, it was not just completely jerking us around.

But then if, as the company has now revealed, the money was never actually needed — if it will go ahead with the investment even without the government lolly or, as a company press release boldly announced, “fund out of its own resources whatever capital requirements the Canadian operations require” — then why did it ask for it in the first place?

Leave aside, for the moment, whether there is any economic rationale for taking from every other company and industry, the ones that can compete without subsidy, to give to a company that, by its own account, can’t. What Chrysler is now saying is there isn’t even a business case for it. The project is not, as claimed, dependent on it, either in an absolute (we can’t afford it) or even contingent (others will pay us more for it) sense. It was all a bluff.

Which being the case, we must reluctantly confront the possibility the only reason Chrysler asked for the money was … because it was there. To be fair, that’s more or less what Chrysler’s chairman was telling us, between the lines. In his celebrated op-ed piece for the Globe & Mail (“Why I’m asking taxpayers for money to invest”), Sergio Marchionne never actually came out and said “we can’t be bothered to raise the capital ourselves” or “this investment cannot be justified on its merits,” or even “nice assembly plants you got there, pity if anything should happen to them.”

Rather, all was coy ambiguity, heavily suggestive, yet free of anything the company could be held to account for. Chrysler was “committed” to Canada — and yet “our ability as a country to retain and attract manufacturing investments is severely challenged.” We “remain forever grateful” for the $2.9-billion bailout the company received from Canadian taxpayers not five years ago — and has not fully paid back — and yet not so grateful as to prevent us from coming back for more. But the key line was this: “in light of the federal government’s and the Ontario government’s past practices of providing support,” he wrote, “Chrysler Canada approached the governments to assess their level of interest in the investment.”

So: the reason we asked for the money now is because they gave us the money before. Or in other words, because it’s there. Whaddya expect us to do, he seemed to say, turn it down?

But if the money was not needed in this event, chances are it was not needed on all those previous occasions. If it will not accept this handout, perhaps it ought to give back the ones it accepted before — and its fellow automakers likewise. The company complains the issue has become a “political football” — Ontario Conservative leader Tim Hudak, among others, has urged rejection of its demand — but perhaps it should have become one long ago. For as inexplicable as the industry’s willingness to take money it does not need is the willingness of successive governments to press more upon it.

(Read the full article at: National Post)

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Shipbuilding memo shows more delays, cost overruns

By Terry Milewski
CBC News: March 7, 2014

An internal government memo obtained by CBC News shows that all four parts of the government’s huge shipbuilding program are either over budget, behind schedule, or both.

Written Oct. 7 last year by the deputy minister of national defence, Richard Fadden, the memo shows that three of those four programs also face “major challenges” of a technical nature, as well as difficulties lining up skilled manpower to get the ships built at all.

The memo, released to the CBC following an Access to Information request, leaves little doubt that Canada’s crippled supply ship, HMCS Protecteur, won’t be replaced before the year 2020.

The spectacle of the 46-year-old Protecteur, Canada’s only supply ship in the Pacific, being towed into Honolulu after an engine-room fire has thrown the lack of a replacement into sharp focus. Although there’s a plan to build two new supply ships, there’s no sign the work will even begin until late 2016. That means a new one won’t enter service until the end of the decade.
Yellow alert

The Fadden memo was intended to assure Defence Minister Rob Nicholson that there are “many success stories” in the procurement saga that has dogged the government for years.

But the attached details show no major program without problems.

A chart summarizing the state of the shipbuilding effort uses green and yellow squares to indicate where those problems are — the green meaning, on track, and yellow meaning, trouble — and there’s a lot of yellow.

For the Joint Support Ships — that’s the pair of supply ships — the chart shows trouble with both the schedule and the price. The memo explains that this means the program is up to 20 per cent behind schedule and up to 10 per cent over budget.

For the Arctic Patrol Ships, the chart shows yellow for three measures: the cost, “HR” — meaning Human Resources, or skilled workers — and technical issues. The memo describes these as “major challenges in finding solutions; significant scope changes may be required.” That suggests the ships may need to be redesigned in order to fix the technical problems.

All of those same issues — cost, manpower and technical — also dog the plan to upgrade Canada’s Halifax-class frigates.

But for the biggest program of all — the $38-billion project to build 15 new warships known as “Surface Combatants” — there is trouble cited on four measures: the schedule, the technical and manpower issues and the procurement strategy itself. It doesn’t say how any of those can be fixed, but it does say they are fixable.

In response to a request for comment, Defence Minister Rob Nicholson’s office said in a statement the auditor general had concluded the acquisition of the ships was being managed “in a timely and affordable manner that will support the shipbuilding industry for years to come.”
$100B may not be enough

The cost of the government shipbuilding strategy was already known to be enormous: roughly $105 billion to build and operate all the ships over their expected lifetimes. The capital cost of the two supply ships is officially estimated at $2.6 billion for the pair — although the Parliamentary Budget Officer said a year ago that it would really be over $4 billion. The government also plans to spend $3.2 billion on an unknown number of Arctic Patrol Ships — but experts doubt it will get more than half of the “6-to-8” ships that were promised.

Fadden’s memo, however, does not make any judgment on the amount of money budgeted — only whether the project is staying within it or not. That leaves unasked the question of whether the budget is too high or too low for the task at hand.

Take the supply ships. “Yellow” suggests they’re over budget, but doesn’t indicate what the budget should be. But comparisons with Canada’s allies could raise eyebrows even further.
Five times the price … for smaller ships

Britain, for example, opted to build its four new naval supply ships much more cheaply, at the Daewoo shipyard in South Korea. The contract is for roughly $1.1 billion Cdn. That’s for all four. By contrast, Canada plans to build just two ships, in Vancouver, for $1.3 billion each. So Canada’s ships will be roughly five times more costly than the British ones.

But there’s a twist. Canada’s supply ships will also carry less fuel and other supplies, because they’ll be smaller — about 20,000 tonnes. The U.K. ships are nearly twice as big — 37,000 tonnes. Canadians will lay out a lot more cash for a lot less ship.

(Read the full article at: CBC)

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FBI investigates private prison company’s oversight of Idaho’s ‘Gladiator School’

RT: March 8, 2014

The FBI has begun an investigation of Corrections Corporation of America for the private prison company’s maintenance of Idaho’s largest prison. The company was found to have severely understaffed the violent prison dubbed “Gladiator School.”

Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) acknowledged last year that it had violated its $29 million contract with the state by understaffing the Idaho Correctional Center by thousands of hours. An external audit showed CCA fell short of full staffing at the prison by 26,000 hours in 2012 alone. CCA admitted after an AP investigation that employees falsified staffing reports, sometimes claiming guards worked for 48 straight hours.

Reversing his earlier position, Idaho Republican Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter finally ordered last month that Idaho State Police investigate CCA, though Democratic lawmakers requested the FBI take the case.

Idaho Department of Corrections spokesman Jeff Ray confirmed to AP on Friday that the FBI informed department director Brent Reinke on Thursday that the federal agency was investigating CCA.

Idaho State Police spokeswoman Teresa Baker said state police were no longer involved in a CCA probe.

“They [the FBI] have other cases that are tied to this one so it worked out better for them to handle it from here,” Baker said.

(Read the full article at: RT)

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