Torture to Listen To

It was, of course, too good to last. But for two shining, hopeful minutes on Thursday, Michael Hlinka almost made sense.

Karen Mare must have been embarrassed to have to let this guy on her program. Her being the one who has actually travelled to Africa and talked to farmers who all had an intimate knowledge of how the World Bank operates, and him being just some twerp who as far as I can tell isn't even a working economist.

Hlinka is taking the classic American right wing line that because there are problems in some institution that was meant to serve some public good that clearly the whole idea was a mistake in the first place and it should be scrapped. Funny, though, that the Enron scandal didn't cause him and others like him to call for the end of corporate-friendly capitalism.

And yeah, I'm as familiar as any sheltered first-worlder can be expected to be with how rotten the World Bank and IMF are and how their policies are to the detriment of the countries they are meant to be helping. However, if Mr. Hlinka were to -- God forbid -- get on a plane and go talk to an African farmer about it, and suggest that the ideal solution would be to completely pull out and wait for private banks to roll in and start doing business there, the farmer would simply laugh in his pasty little face. Private Western economic interests already tell the World Bank what to do, letting them have at their victims directly is not any kind of solution.

Labels: CBC, Economics, Stupidity

The Mystery of Michael Hlinka

Dear CBC,

I'd like you to clear something up for me. Is Michael Hlinka a brilliant Swiftian satire of self-righteous college Republican idiocy, or is he actually as stupid as his radio column would suggest?

The net result of his diatribe this morning attacking the NDP's proposal to curtail exhorbidant ATM fees charged by banks as being "against freedom" is this:

1) I hadn't heard of this idea, now I have, and

2) I think it's fantastic. Go NDP.

The language he used was notably dimwitted. His 'gotcha' moment was when he said that you wouldn't pass a law preventing pizza places from charging a delivery fee because there'd be no more pizza places. There are two notable problems with this:

1) If ATMs didn't charge fees for withdrawals over $20 like pizza places offer free delivery for orders over $20 he might have a better analogy, and

2) If I could call up the Royal Bank and say "hey, send a guy over with $200 in cash, k'thanks" I would absolutely pay a delivery fee for this service. Banks don't do this. Michael Hlinkka is an idiot.

My other real problem with this radio column was that it was written specifically to attack, in blatant terms, a proposal by one political party. One line, and I'm quoting, is "and speaking of losers, that's a nice segue back to Jack Layton, Judy Wasylycia-Leis and the Canadian people". Hurling insults at a political party on free air time provided by Canada's public broadcaster is grounds for a CRTC complaint.

Which CBC VP felt that our morning show needed this childish form of balance, anyway? Who exactly was it that thought that the road to success in broadcasting in canada was to emulate John Stossel and his crusade to protect entrenched corporate power?

Labels: CBC, Economics, Michael Hlinka, Stupidity