Tag Archives: Jobs

News

Quebec court orders Dunkin’ Donuts to pay $16.4 million to failed franchise owners

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Political map of Canada
Political map of Canada

ECM sent me this story about the most immoral and socialist province in Canada.

Excerpt:

Former Dunkin’ Donuts franchisees have been awarded a total of $16.4-million in damages from the company for losses suffered because of the “Tim Hortons phenomenon,” in which the donut shop saw almost all of its Quebec stores close in less than a decade as it lost market share, according to a superior court decision released Thursday.

The Quebec Superior Court ruled that Dunkin Donuts Canada Ltd. failed to protect and enhance its brand at the cost of the 21 franchisees and misled owners to get them to buy into a new strategy that ultimately failed.

“In this case, you have a very large franchisor with a successful chain and it’s facing a competitive threat by another large chain, i.e. Tim Hortons,” said Toronto-based franchise lawyer David Sterns of Sotos LLP. “And the judge’s view is that the franchisor couldn’t just cede the territory to the competitor, that it was incumbent on the franchisor to hold the ground for the system.”

There are currently 11 Dunkin’ Donuts stores left in Quebec, from a high of more than 200 in 1998.

In 2003 the franchisees launched the suit against Dunkin’ Brands — formerly Allied Domecq Retailing International Canada Ltd. — claiming they were induced under false pretenses to join a remodelling program that would boost sales by 15% in the first year and several subsequent years, which never happened.

The company also failed to live up to a promise to invest $40-million, half of which would come from franchise fees.

The lesson here for business owners and job creators is clear: never, ever start a business or expand a business in Quebec. They’re not just secular and anti-family, they’re socialist and anti-business.

Here’s an interesting post about Quebec’s fiscal situation:

Quebec’s austerity measures which include the raising of tuition fees for its post-secondary students have been headline news in Canada for the past month. In light of that, I thought that it was time to do a brief posting on Quebec’s financial situation.

Let’s start by looking at Quebec’s debt. Quebec is Canada’s second-most indebted province after Ontario and has the misfortune of having a bond credit rating that is in the lower middle of the pack, well below Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia, Manitoba and below New Brunswick and Ontario at A+ (Standard and Poor’s), the same rating as Nova Scotia. This poor rating makes it more expensive for Quebec to service its debt. Quebec’s total debt in fiscal 2011 – 2012 is estimated to be $170.9 billion; this compares to Ontario’s estimated debt of $237.6 billion. Quebec’s debt nearly twice the size of all other provinces combined (excluding Ontario).

Quebec’s debt-to-GDP is estimated to be 51.2 percent in 2011 – 2012, the highest in Canada by a very wide margin with Ontario coming in second place at 37.2 percent and Nova Scotia coming in third place at 35.2 percent.

[…]If the Harper government follows through with its plans to wean Canada’s have-not provinces from the federal teat, Quebec may find it impossible to meet its fiscal goals. As well, when interest rates return to normal levels, Quebec’s expenditures on debt interest payments will become an ever-increasing portion of its overall spending. Since Quebec is already Canada’s most highly taxed regime, if the province hopes to meet its targets, it has only one choice – cut spending now.

It’s a worthless, backwards province that exists only by stealing money from hard-working provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan. I hope Harper cuts them off – it’s not like they vote for him anyway. Let them eat grass and leaves for a few years.

News

$9 billion in green energy stimulus creates 910 direct jobs: $9.8 million per job

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From CNS News.

Excerpt:

The Obama administration distributed $9 billion in economic “stimulus” funds to solar and wind projects in 2009-11 that created, as the end result, 910 “direct” jobs — annual operation and maintenance positions — meaning that it cost about $9.8 million to establish each of those long-term jobs.

At the same time, those green energy projects also created, in the end, about 4,600 “indirect” jobs – positions indirectly supported by the annual operation and maintenance jobs — which means they cost about $1.9 million each ($9 billion divided by 4,600).

Combined (910 + 4,600 = 5,510), the direct and indirect jobs cost, on average, about $1.63 million each to produce.

As explained in a report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is part of the U.S. Department of Energy, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (“economic stimulus”) of 2009 included Section 1603, a grant program run through the Treasury Department.

The 1603 program offered “renewable energy project developers a one-time cash payment” to reduce the need for green energy companies “to secure tax equity partners” and also help them to achieve  “ ‘the near term goal of creating and retaining jobs’ in the renewable energy sector.”

The nice government gave away your taxpayer dollars to “green energy” firms in order to relieve them of the trouble of trying to justify their projects to profit-minded shareholders. Taxpayer money can be wasted without having to care what taxpayers think, you see. If these solar and wind companies are anything like Solyndra, then there is a Democrat fundraiser who is the beneficiary of this spending. That’s what stimulus spending means – paying off your campaign contributors so they will give you more money for your next campaign. This “green energy” is what gullible young people are taught to support in public school classrooms – and they are the ones who will be paying the bill.

Recall that the CBO recently calculated that the cost of each job created from Obama’s other stimulus spending was between $540,000 and $4.1 million.

According to the AEI, in 2015, consumers will be paying $3.2 billion more per year for electricity.

Commentary

Washington Post columnist bashes Obamacare

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The Washington Post is one of the most liberal newspapers, but not the worst. For example, further left there’s the New Republic and National Journal, which are basically Marxist. Well the article I’m looking at today was written by a columnist who has  worked for both National Journal and New Republic. He’s even work for Newsweek which is just Democrat propaganda. Surprisingly, his WaPo article is actually fairly accurate about the problems with Obamacare, although his opinions of what to do instead are still left-wing.

He lists 5 reasons why Obamacare is bad policy:

  1. It increases uncertainty and decreases confidence when recovery from the Great Recession requires more confidence and less uncertainty.
  2. The ACA discourages job creation by raising the price of hiring.
  3. Uncontrolled health spending is the U.S. system’s main problem — and the ACA makes it worse.
  4. Obama’s program also worsens the federal budget problem.
  5. The ACA discriminates against the young in favor of the old.

Here’s are the details on numbers 2,4 and 5:

(2) The ACA discourages job creation by raising the price of hiring. This is basic economics. If you increase the price of labor, companies will buy less of it. Requiring employers to buy health insurance for some workers makes them more expensive, at least in the short run. Particularly vulnerable are low-skilled workers, notes economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Manhattan Institute. Because the employer mandate exempts firms with fewer than 50 workers, there’s a huge incentive for firms to stop at 49, she says.

(4) Obama’s program also worsens the federal budget problem. Driven by Medicare and Medicaid, health care already exceeds one-fourth of the budget and is headed toward a third. It’s the crux of the problem. So Obama creates another huge health program. The administration’s retort: the program lowers the budget deficit. This is rhetorical hocus-pocus. Here’s what happens. From 2012 to 2022, the ACA raises federal spending by $1.762 trillion, estimates the Congressional Budget Office. However, all of this and a bit more is offset by tax increases and assumed cuts in Medicare. But these tax increases and cuts could have been used to shrink the huge budget deficits that pre-existed Obamacare. Now they can’t; moreover, the Medicare cuts might be repealed or reduced.

(5) The ACA discriminates against the young in favor of the old. Government policy already does this through payroll taxes that have young workers subsidizing Social Security and Medicare benefits. The ACA compounds the effect by forcing some young Americans to buy insurance at artificially high premiums that would pay for the care of a sicker, older population.

Higher unemployment, more debt and passing the costs on to the younger generation who can’t even find jobs with their worthless degrees in political correctness.

I think there are a lot of leftist nuts who are getting increasingly disengaged with Obama’s plan to “help the poor”. It’s not working because Obama has no idea how to help the poor. The way to help the poor is to give them jobs, and the way to give them jobs is to give more incentives to the private sector job creators, and the way to give incentives to the private sector job creators is to lower their taxes and decrease their regulatory burden. That’s what would actually work. Obama did the opposite, and nowhere is this more visible than in his Obamacare boondoogle.