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Trump looking at several candidates for chief of staff
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is weighing at least four people to serve as his next chief of staff, after plans for an orderly succession for departing John Kelly fell through.
The high-profile hiring search comes at a pivotal time as the president looks to prepare his White House for the twin challenges of securing his re-election and fending off inquiries once Democrats gain control of the House next year.
Trump’s top pick for the job, Nick Ayers, is out of the running and Trump is now soliciting input on at least four individuals, including Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney and Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., the chair of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.
Ayers, who is chief of staff to
Ayers confirmed the decision in a tweet Sunday, thanking Trump and Pence for giving him the opportunity to work in the White House. “I will be departing at the end of the year but will work with the #MAGA team to advance the cause,” he said.
Trump offered his own take on the development: “I am in the process of interviewing some really great people for the position of White House Chief of Staff. Fake News has been saying with certainty it was Nick Ayers, a spectacular person who will always be with our #MAGA agenda. I will be making a decision soon!”
Even senior White House officials were caught off guard Sunday, most having believed the Ayers move was a done deal. No obvious successor to Kelly was in sight and there was some fretting that Trump may not be able to fill the job by the time Kelly leaves.
Ayers and Trump had discussed the job for months, making the breakdown Sunday all the more surprising. Trump said Saturday that he expected to announce a replacement for Kelly in a day or two. But with Ayers no longer waiting in the wings, Trump may now take until the end of the year, according to a person familiar with the president’s thinking.
Mulvaney was not interested in becoming chief of staff, according to a person close to him who spoke on condition of anonymity. Mulvaney has been saying for almost two months now that he would be more interested in becoming commerce or treasury secretary if that would be helpful to the president, the person said.
Also among those thought to be in the mix were Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, who said in a CBS interview that he hadn’t spoken to anyone at the White House about the job and was “entirely focused” on his position. A person familiar with Mnuchin’s thinking said he, too, was happy with his work at Treasury and had not sought the job of chief of staff.
Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker and Trump’s former deputy campaign manager, David Bossie, were also among the names being floated by some close to the White House.
Trump’s administration has set records for staff turnover, and he has often struggled to attract experienced political professionals, a challenge that has grown more difficult by the upcoming threat of costly Democratic oversight investigations and an uncertain political environment.
In any administration, the role of White House chief of staff is split between the responsibilities of supervising the White House and managing the man sitting in the Oval Office. Striking that balance in the turbulent times of Trump has bedeviled both Kelly and his predecessor, Reince Priebus, and will be the defining challenge for whomever is selected next.
Kelly, whose last day on the job is set to be Jan. 2, had been credited with imposing order on a chaotic West Wing after his arrival in June 2017 from his post as homeland security secretary. But his iron fist also alienated some longtime Trump allies, and over time he grew increasingly isolated.
Trump wants his next chief of staff to hold the job through the 2020 election, the officials said. Ayers, who has young triplets, had long planned to leave the administration at the end of the year and had only agreed to serve in an interim basis through next spring.
Ayers had earned the backing of the president’s influential daughter and son-in-law, White House advisers Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, but was viewed warily by other aides.
Ayers will run a pro-Trump super PAC, according to a person familiar with his plans who was not authorized to discuss them by name.
Pence’s deputy chief of staff, Jarrod Agen, is expected to assume Ayers’ role for the
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Zeke Miller, Jill Colvin And Catherine Lucey, The Associated Press
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What is ‘productivity’ and how can we improve it
From the Fraser Institute
Earlier this year, a senior Bank of Canada official caused a stir by describing Canada’s pattern of declining productivity as an “emergency,” confirming that the issue of productivity is now in the spotlight. That’s encouraging. Boosting productivity is the only way to improve living standards, particularly in the long term. Today, Canada ranks 18th globally on the most common measure of productivity, with our position dropping steadily over the last several years.
Productivity is the amount of gross domestic product (GDP) or “output” the economy produces using a given quantity and mix of “inputs.” Labour is a key input in the production process, and most discussions of productivity focus on labour productivity. Productivity can be estimated for the entire economy or for individual industries.
In 2023, labour productivity in Canada was $63.60 per hour (in 2017 dollars). Industries with above average productivity include mining, oil and gas, pipelines, utilities, most parts of manufacturing, and telecommunications. Those with comparatively low productivity levels include accommodation and food services, construction, retail trade, personal and household services, and much of the government sector. Due to the lack of market-determined prices, it’s difficult to gauge productivity in the government and non-profit sectors. Instead, analysts often estimate productivity in these parts of the economy by valuing the inputs they use, of which labour is the most important one.
Within the private sector, there’s a positive linkage between productivity and employee wages and benefits. The most productive industries (on average) pay their workers more. As noted in a February 2024 RBC Economics report, productivity growth is “essentially the only way that business profits and worker wages can sustainably rise at the same time.”
Since the early 2000s, Canada has been losing ground vis-à-vis the United States and other advanced economies on productivity. By 2022, our labour productivity stood at just 70 per cent of the U.S. benchmark. What does this mean for Canadians?
Chronically lagging productivity acts as a drag on the growth of inflation-adjusted wages and incomes. According to a recent study, after adjusting for differences in the purchasing power of a dollar of income in the two countries, GDP per person (an indicator of incomes and living standards) in Canada was only 72 per cent of the U.S. level in 2022, down from 80 per cent a decade earlier. Our performance has continued to deteriorate since 2022. Mainly because of the widening cross-border productivity gap, GDP per person in the U.S. is now $22,000 higher than in Canada.
Addressing Canada’s “productivity crisis” should be a top priority for policymakers and business leaders. While there’s no short-term fix, the following steps can help to put the country on a better productivity growth path.
- Increase business investment in productive assets and activities. Canada scores poorly compared to peer economies in investment in machinery, equipment, advanced technology products and intellectual property. We also must invest more in trade-enabling infrastructure such as ports, highways and other transportation assets that link Canada with global markets and facilitate the movement of goods and services within the country.
- Overhaul federal and provincial tax policies to strengthen incentives for capital formation, innovation, entrepreneurship and business growth.
- Streamline and reduce the cost and complexity of government regulation affecting all sectors of the economy.
- Foster greater competition in local markets and scale back government monopolies and government-sanctioned oligopolies.
- Eliminate interprovincial barriers to trade, investment and labour mobility to bolster Canada’s common market.
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COP29 was a waste of time
From Canadians For Affordable Energy
The twenty-ninth edition of the U.N. Climate Change Committee’s annual “Conference of the Parties,” also known as COP29, wrapped up recently, and I must say, it seemed a much gloomier affair than the previous twenty-eight. It’s hard to imagine a more downcast gathering of elitists and activists. You almost felt sorry for them.
Oh, there was all the usual nutty Net-Zero-by-2050 proposals, which would make life harder and more expensive in developed countries, and be absolutely disastrous for developing countries, if they were even partially implemented. But a lot of the roughly 65,000 attendees seemed to realize they were just spewing hot air.
Why were they so down? It couldn’t be that they were feeling guilty about their own hypocrisy, since they had flown in, many aboard private jets, to the Middle Eastern petrostate of Azerbaijan, where fossil fuels count for two-thirds of national GDP and 90% of export revenues, to lecture the world on the evils of flying in planes and prospering from the extraction of oil and natural gas. Afterall, they did the same last year in Dubai and there was no noticeable pang of guilt there.
It’s likely that Donald Trump’s recent reelection had a lot to do with it. Living as they do in a media bubble, our governing class was completely blindsided by the American people’s decision to return their 45th president to the White House. And the fact that he won the popular vote this time made it harder to deny his legitimacy. (Note that they’ve never questioned the legitimacy of Justin Trudeau, even though his party has lost the popular vote in the past two federal elections. What’s the saying about the modern Left? “If they didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all.”)
Come January, Trump is committed to (once again) pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accords, to rolling back the Biden Administration’s anti-fracking and pro-EV regulations, and to giving oil companies the green light to extract as much “liquid gold” (his phrase) as possible, with an eye towards making energy more affordable for American consumers and businesses alike. The chance that they’ll be able to leech billions in taxpayer dollars from the U.S. Treasury while he’s running the show is basically zero.
But it wasn’t just the return of Trump which has gotten the climate brigade down. After a few years on top, environmentalists have been having one setback after another. Green parties saw a huge drop off in support in the E.U. parliament’s elections this past June, losing one-third of their seats in Brussels.
And wherever they’ve actually been in government, in Germany and Ireland for instance, the Greens have dragged down the popularity of the coalitions they were part of. That’s largely because their policies have been like an arrow to the heart of those nations’ economies – see the former industrial titan Germany, where major companies like Volkswagen, Siemens, and the chemical giant BASF are frantically shifting production to China and the U.S. to escape high energy costs.
But while voters around the world are kicking climate ideologues to the curb, there are still a few places where they’re managing to cling to power for dear life.
Here in Canada, for instance, Justin Trudeau and Steven Guilbeault steadfastly refuse to consider revisiting their ruinous Net Zero policies, from their ever-increasing Carbon Tax, to their huge investments in Electric Vehicles and the mandates which will force all of us to buy pricey, unreliable EVs in just over a decade, and to the emissions caps which seek to strangle the natural resource sector on which our economy depends.
Minister Guilbeault was all-in on COP29, heading the Canadian delegation, which “hosted 65 events showcasing Canada’s leadership on climate action, nature-based solutions, sustainable finance, and Canadian clean technologies—while discussing gender equality, youth perspectives, and the critical role of Indigenous knowledge and climate leadership” and stood up for Canadian values such as “2SLGBTQI+” and “gender inclusivity.” Once again, in Azerbaijan, which has been denounced for its human rights abuses.
And no word yet on the cost of all of this – for last year’s COP28 the government – or should I say the taxpayers – spent $1.4M on travel and accommodations alone for the 633 member delegation. That number, not counting the above mentioned events, are sure to be higher, as Azerbaijan is much less of a travel destination than Dubai, and so has fewer flights in and available hotel rooms.
At the same time all of this was going on, Trudeau was 12,000 kms away in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, telling an audience that carbon taxation is a “moral obligation” which is more important than the cost of living: “It’s really, really easy when you’re in a short-term survive, [to say] I gotta be able to pay the rent this month, I’ve gotta be able to buy groceries for my kids, to say, OK, let’s put climate change as a slightly lower priority.”
This is madness, and it underscores how tone-deaf the prime minister is, and also why current polling looks so good for the Conservatives that Pierre Poilievre might as well start measuring the drapes at the PMO.
He has the Trudeau Liberals’ obsessive pursuit of Net Zero policies in large part to thank for that.
The world is waking up to the true cost of the Net Zero ideology, and leaving it behind. That doesn’t mean the fight is over – the activists and their allies in government are going to squeeze as many tax dollars out of this as they possibly can. But the writing is on the wall, and their window is rapidly closing.
Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.
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