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A water treatment pond at the McKay River Suncor oil sands in-situ operations near Fort McMurray, Alberta, as seen in 2014.
Canada takes a swing at cutting oil and gas carbon emissions
Canada’s oil and gas industry is the country’s top pollution emitter, and critics, including Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault, say it’s not doing enough to reduce emissions.
The draft regulations are a step forward in the fight against climate change – and fighting words. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who leads a province dominated by the oil and gas industry, said she was “pissed” about the proposed regulations and vowed to challenge them in court. She also claimed Guilbealt “has a deranged vendetta against Alberta.” Predictably, the oil and gas industry also opposes the rules.
The Liberals are staking their claim on the climate file ahead of the 2025 election, which is due by October 2025. Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, who is up in the polls by about 20 points, says he’ll scrap the regulations, which means the Liberal plan faces long odds against seeing the light of day.
Warren Buffett recently made positive comments about investing in Canada.
Buffett's blessing: Praise of Canada sparks economic hope. Should it?
Comedian Jim Gaffigan recalls seeing the ubiquitous Canadian Tim Hortons coffee and donuts shops in America. “I always have the same thought: ‘Don’t force your culture on us’,” he quipped.
The joke gets a big laugh with Canadian audiences, wary about American influence seeping into their country. Lately, though, a bigger concern is that Canada is in danger of being ignored, particularly by US investors.
That is why comments made by Warren Buffett last weekend were welcomed so enthusiastically by Justin Trudeau’s unpopular Liberal government.
At the annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway, the Oracle of Omaha said he was looking at new investments in Canada, adding that he has no hesitation about “putting big money” in the country.
“We do not feel uncomfortable in any way, shape or form, putting our money into Canada,” Buffett said, “... it’s terrific when you’ve got a major economy – not the size of the US, but a major economy that you absolutely, you feel confident about operating there.”
Greg Abel, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Energy and vice-chair of the company’s non-insurance operations, is a Canadian and widely viewed as Buffett’s successor. He said the company is always looking to make incremental investments in Canada “because it’s an environment we’re very comfortable with.”
François-Philippe Champagne, Trudeau's industry minister, tweeted Buffett’s statement, calling it a “vote of confidence” – and the Liberals sure could use that.
Critics have accused Trudeau of lax fiscal and tight environmental policies, and of presiding over “the slow bleeding of Canada.” The worry is that jobs, capital, and head office functions have leaked south of the border for lower corporate and personal tax rates.
In recent years, investors have complained that Trudeau is more interested in taxing than generating wealth – that he’s a leader who believes the private sector is a golden goose that cannot be killed.
The chorus of criticism reached a crescendo in the aftermath of last month’s federal budget that increased spending and raised the capital gains tax on corporations and the wealthy.
David Dodge, a highly respected former Bank of Canada governor, said the tax rise would make Canada a less attractive place to invest, particularly for start-ups that rely on paying people in shares.
Another former Bank governor, Mark Carney (also an ex-Bank of England governor), said the budget did not focus enough on economic growth. “Governments that spend too much and invest too little will eventually pay a heavy price. The countries that nurture, welcome, and celebrate risk-takers will thrive,” said Carney, widely viewed as a potential and more centrist successor to the left-of-center Trudeau.
The prime minister reinforced his social activist credentials, telling VOX that when everything is going well “the wealthy will find lots of ways to make money off a prosperous and successful middle class.”
“I’m not worried about innovation and creativity. I’m worried about people being able to pay their rent and eventually buy a home,” Trudeau said.
Americans often don’t pay much attention to Canada. But if there is an impression after Trudeau’s eight and half years in charge, it is probably that the Great White North has veered toward quasi-socialism – or that its citizenry is even more reliant than ever on welfare.
That might be a bigger disincentive to investment were the Biden administration not even more addicted to taxing and spending. Canada has a slightly higher corporate tax rate at 26.21%, compared to America’s 25.77%, but President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address proposed to raise the US level to 28% and to increase the top individual income and capital gains tax rates. The Trudeau government has been criticized for a budgetary deficit that is 1.4% of GDP – small potatoes compared to the US’s 6.3% shortfall.
So, despite criticisms and the perception that it is antagonistic toward business, the Canadian government has been remarkably successful at luring inward investment in recent years. Foreign direct investment is at healthy levels, and Canada has established itself as a key player in the global electric vehicle end-to-end battery supply chain, announcing multi-billion-dollar manufacturing and assembly plants by Honda, Stellantis/LG, and Volkswagen, among others, in recent months.
Thanks to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, the effort has cost Canada dearly in terms of subsidies – the terms of the Stellantis and Volkswagen deals stipulated that Ottawa match incentives offered to battery makers in the US under the IRA.
Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Office has estimated that the federal government will take 20 years to break even.
But as Tyler Meredith, a former economic adviser to Trudeau, said, Canada’s auto industry is “an amazing story of industrial renaissance.”
During the financial crisis of 2009, it looked like Canada’s auto sector might go the way of Australia and lose domestic production altogether. It has not only maintained production, but it is building the next generation of electric vehicles. “It is super attractive because it has the natural resources, talent, and subsidies,” Meredith said.
The area that even the government’s strongest supporters like Meredith concede there is work to do is the decline in the capital investment base in the resource sector. In 2014, the year before Trudeau became prime minister, it was around $73 billion; today it is around half of that.
The collapse of commodity prices is largely responsible, but the price crash was
compounded by the new government introducing a more rigorous environmental assessment process that increased political risk and lengthened timelines for project reviews. Since then, the oil and gas sector has seen a 43% drop in investment value (in 2015 dollars). Critics contend that a Liberal government hostile to fossil fuels put hurdles in the way of future development and hoped the US shale revolution would price Canada out of the oil market.
But it is not only the oil and gas sector that has seen investment dip. The clean tech industry has also seen a 27% drop since 2017, and even the critical minerals sector, on which so many of the government’s EV hopes are resting, has atrophied, with nickel, cobalt, lithium, uranium, zinc, lead, and platinum all recording double-digit declines, according to a new report by the Macdonald Laurier Institute think-tank.
Contrary to the claims of the opposition Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, Canada is not “broken.” It continues to rank highly (though not as highly as it used to) in the World Competitive Index in the 15th spot. It has a well-educated workforce, modern infrastructure, an abundance of energy, and a strong banking sector – and it is relatively easy to start a business.
Meredith says that while people associate Trudeau with poverty and emissions reduction, “he also has an enviable economic investment record” – including the newly completed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, EV plants, and AI clusters in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. “All those things happened because of intentional government decisions and will serve Canada well over the long term,” he said.
But if the business environment is not as bad as the opposition claims, neither is it an investment Babylon.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland admitted as much when she hired another former Bank of Canada governor, Stephen Poloz, to figure out ways to convince Canada’s pension funds to invest more locally, rather than transferring four-fifths of their wealth overseas.
But, as David Dodge pointed out, the job of a pension fund is to raise money to pay pensioners so they invest where they get the highest returns. They are making long-term bets in places privatizing airports and ports, and building toll roads, which suggests that Canada is not as attractive as an investment destination as the government, or even Warren Buffett, thinks.
Dem bias in Ottawa has Trudeau targeting Trump
The most intense debate in the Canadian House of Commons of late has been about a humdrum trade deal update between Canada and Ukraine. It is being disputed by the opposition Conservatives because it contains reference to a carbon tax.
Since Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has made “axing the tax” in Canada his number one priority, he has removed his party’s support from the deal, even though Ukraine has had a carbon tax since 2011.
But the governing Liberals say they detect an ulterior motive: the rise of right-wing, MAGA-style conservatism in Canada that has undermined the Conservative Party’s support for Ukraine.
Trudeau’s camp takes aim at MAGA bull's-eye
The Liberals ran an online ad on Monday, ahead of a Canada-Ukraine free trade deal vote in the House, that featured a photo of Justin Trudeau shaking hands with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky while claiming Poilievre’s party is “importing far-right, American-style politics and refusing to stand with our ally in their time of need.”
Conservatives say they support Ukraine and have just called on Ottawa to send surplus weapons – specifically 83,000 CRV7 rockets slated for disposal – to Kyiv. But the Liberals need to disrupt Poilievre’s momentum and seem convinced that comparing him to Donald Trump might do it.
After the former president won the New Hampshire primary in January, the Liberals made a direct comparison between the two men in an online ad, which said that Trump was one step closer to the White House and that Poilievre was ripping a page from his playbook. The ad noted that both men referenced “corrupt media,” their countries being “broken” and used the slogan “bring it home.”
Trump’s eye-for-an-eye approach
This is a dangerous game, given Trump is ahead in most polls and is an Old Testament-style politician, more inclined to take an eye for an eye than to turn the other cheek.
Why would Trudeau risk baiting the man who could be in the White House this time next year, where he would wield the power to enervate the Canadian economy?
The prime minister knows Trump takes note of every slight and pays everyone back with interest. After the G7 meeting in Charlevoix, Quebec, in 2018, Trudeau gave a closing press conference in which he said Canada would not be pushed around in trade negotiations by the US. According to Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, in his book “The Room Where It Happened,” the president raged against Trudeau, calling the prime minister a “behind your back guy” and ordering his aides to bad mouth Trudeau on the Sunday talk shows.
But Trudeau’s Liberals are trailing the Conservatives by up to 16 percentage points in every public opinion poll, and this tactic may work.
An Abacus data poll from Jan. 28 suggested there is some evidence to suggest that associating Poilievre and Trump correlates with voting intentions, with those who feel that the two men are different more likely to vote Conservative. Tying the two men together in a pejorative fashion is good for the electoral fortunes of the Liberal Party, so the thinking seems to go.
That remains to be seen. Attacking a political rival is always a challenge when the target is held in more esteem than the source of the attack, which is the case here, according to another Abacus poll that found Poilievre much more liked than Trudeau.
Canada’s former man in Washington says to hold fire
The risk is amplified in that the Canadian public may well see through such a transparent tactic and decide that Trudeau is putting his party’s interests ahead of the country’s.
That was the warning issued at the weekend by David MacNaughton, whom Trudeau once appointed as Canada’s ambassador in Washington. He told the Toronto Star that Trudeau is taking a risk by taking indirect shots at Trump.
Doing so will make it harder to fight Trump’s promised 10% tariffs on US imports if he comes to power, he said.
“We used to be seen by the Americans as a trusted friend, ally, and partner, and right now, I don’t think that feeling is as strong as it used to be,” he said.
That MacNaughton has been forced to say this in public suggests he is being ignored in private.
Trudeau revives Team Canada
Trudeau has revived the Team Canada approach to relations with the US that served his government well during the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement that yielded the U.S.-Mexico-Canada deal in 2018.
The new effort will be led by Kirsten Hillman, Canada’s current ambassador in Washington, Francois-Philippe Champagne, the industry minister, and Mary Ng, the trade minister (notably not Mélanie Joly, the foreign minister, or Chrystia Freeland, the deputy prime minister who fell foul of Trump during the USMCA negotiations. “We don’t like their representative,” Trump said at the time).
Municipal mayors, provincial politicians, and business leaders will all be urged to reach out to their contacts to sell the message that the two economies are more integrated than ever. Trade statistics based on the first three years of the new USMCA show that total US trade with Canada and Mexico totaled $1.78 trillion in 2022, a 27% increase over 2019 levels.
When not criticizing “ideologically driven MAGA Conservatives” in Parliament, Trudeau has tried to sound civil.
But as professional diplomats who have worked with Republicans in the US point out, “no amount of Team Canada can overcome those ill-advised MAGA statements.”
Libs and GOP on different planets
Another problem is that the two are on different political planets.
The Liberal government is not keen on engaging with Republican politicians and officials, in part because of an aversion that dates back to the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the US Capitol.
The lack of readiness evokes memories of November 2016, when Trump was elected and the Canadian government was caught completely off-guard. The professional bureaucrats who are meant to advise governments had provided no contingency plan for a Trump administration and Trudeau had even invited the sitting Democratic vice president, Joe Biden, to Ottawa for a state dinner the following month. “They were so excited at the prospect of Hillary (Clinton), even better than Obama because she was a woman. They couldn’t wait for the transition,” said one person involved in the planning process. After Trump was elected, the Canadian government couldn’t even reach him to arrange a congratulatory call.
Louise Blais, a former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations, was consul general in the southeast US at the time – MAGA land – and had built up an array of contacts among Republicans that proved invaluable. Among other things, she secured a phone number for the president-elect.
As she wrote in the Globe and Mail last weekend, even the most conservative Republicans are friendly towards Canada, realizing the relationship is a net positive for them. But they value a rapport built up over the years, not arranged in a panic, and they cherish mutual respect.
Blais recalled how former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told her in 2016 that Republicans were hearing what Canada was saying about then-candidate Trump. “Be careful because you are picking sides,” he said.
Trade deal no protection against Trump’s tariffs
The long-standing Democratic bias at the official level is a luxury Canada can ill afford. Ottawa has a free-trade agreement with the US, but if the new president wants to impose a double-digit tariff on everything that crosses into America, Canada would be dragged into an expensive, retaliatory trade war.
Veteran Conservative MP Randy Hoback wrote on his Substack that the Canada-U.S. relationship is too critical to be jeopardized by domestic political concerns. “Trudeau’s actions are hazardous to our economy and national security,” he said.
Trudeau’s current emissaries don’t speak the same language as Trump’s party. A real Team Canada needs to include some people, like Hoback, who can speak Republican.
Can Donald Trump rescue Trudeau?
The struggling government of Justin Trudeau tried Tuesday to cast itself as the group to handle the vital relationship with the United States — announcing a "Team Canada engagement strategy” at the end of a cabinet retreat — but observers are dubious about the government’s ability to pivot its way out of trouble by invoking the specter of Donald Trump.
Trudeau, who has been trailing his Conservative rival Pierre Poilievre in the polls by double digits since August, reminded voters that his government did a good job salvaging the trade relationship the last time Trump was in the White House, when Trump threatened to tear up NAFTA, and Trudeau managed to save the furniture and negotiate USMCA.
“We made it through the challenges represented by the Trump administration seven years ago, for four years, where we put forward the fact that Canada and the US do best when we do it together,” he said. “Obviously, Mr. Trump represents a certain amount of unpredictability.”
As they did last time, the Liberals are putting together a new Team Canada — drawing on representatives of other levels of government, business, labor, and academia. The team will be led by Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne, International Trade Minister Mary Ng, and Kirsten Hillman, Canada's ambassador to the U.S., who gave a presentation at the cabinet retreat.
Who best to handle Trump?
This is a good move, says Christopher Sands, director of the Wilson Center’s Canada Institute. “Team Canada works when it puts Canadians on a focused, common message as was the case during the USMCA negotiations. Champagne, Ng, and Hillman are a good group to have as the face of the effort.”
But the government should be thinking about practical and serious steps to improve the relationship. “If Canada has no plan to increase defense spending, support the EV transition, export food and natural gas to allies in Asia and Europe, then all the feel-good rhetoric Canada can muster won't be enough,” says Sands.
Trudeau’s team signaled at the summit that the Liberals will try to connect Poilievre to Trump in the minds of voters, and get them thinking about who would be better off dealing with Trump.
It is not clear to Sands that this issue will give Trudeau the political boost he is looking for. Trump, after all, did not get along with Trudeau. “All that water under the bridge is going to be clouding Trudeau's relationship with Trump if he gets elected.”
When Canada hosts the G7 in 2025, would it really be good to have a replay of the 2018 G7 meeting in rural Quebec, which ended with Trump denouncing Trudeau from Air Force One as he left for North Korea?
“If it's Trudeau hosting Trump back for a second time, I just couldn't imagine what the sherpa will have to go through to be preparing that one,” says Sands.
Liberals look desperate
Graeme Thompson, a senior analyst with Eurasia Group's Global Macro-Geopolitics practice, doesn’t think this will work: “It does suggest that the government is somewhat desperate,” he says. Conservatives can argue that since Trump and Trudeau don’t get on, they might be better placed to manage the relationship, and what if Trump isn’t elected? “If Biden wins, that argument is dead.”
And Biden has better electoral prospects than Trudeau, according to pollster David Coletto, who concluded this week that Trudeau has little chance of winning another election. Trudeau seems out of touch with the top-of-mind concern of Canadian voters: the high cost of living. His firm, Abacus Data, recently found that the rising cost of fuel and food is the most important issue for three out of four Canadians — an unusually dominant concern.
Biden looks better
The bad news for Trudeau is that only one in four Canadians believe he “understands what life is like for people like you,” while two in four believe Poilievre does.
Inflation is brutal for incumbent governments — in the United Kingdom, United States and France the leaders are all facing stiff headwinds — but Coletto thinks Trudeau’s brand leaves him ill-suited to respond to a public dealing with scarcity.
Biden, on the other hand, could still pull off a win. “Biden is, I still think, better than 50-50. The odds are still in his favor, although not greatly. I think Trudeau has got a 10% chance of winning the next election.” Polling agrees. The horse race numbers for Trump-Biden show a tight race, while Trudeau has been far behind of his opponent for six months.
On Wednesday, a backbench MP in Trudeau’s party called for a leadership review, saying “there’s almost a hatred out there right now for [him].”
Unlike Trudeau, Biden has put an economic plan at the heart of his presidency, and the economy may be turning around. The Dow Jones and S&P 500 both hit record highs on Monday, and consumer confidence reached its highest point since 1991. Economists who study the relationship between the economy and politics think the signs augur well for Biden.
Trudeau does not look poised to benefit in the same way, says Coletto.
“At some point voters just say, ‘I'm done with you.’”
Canadian Liberals cry “Trump”… at their peril
Less than a year out from the US presidential election, concerns about Donald Trump’s potential return to the White House now include warnings of a possible slip into dictatorship. Last weekend, in the Washington Post, Robert Kagan wrote of a “clear path to dictatorship in the United States,” one that is “getting shorter every day.” Liz Cheney, a former Republican member of Congress and potential 2024 third-party presidential contender, echoed the concern, warning that the country is “sleepwalking into dictatorship.”
Meanwhile, north of the border, a desperate Liberal Party and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, way down in the polls, are doing their best to paint their main rival, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, as a MAGA North incarnation of Trump, with everything that implies. As Politico reports, Trump’s influence over Canadian politics is significant, a potential “wild card” for Trudeau and a force that will shape the country’s next election, which is due by the fall of 2025 – but could come sooner.
MAGA-fying Poilievre
The Liberals have been working to tie Poilievre to Trump for months. They tested online attack ads ahead of an anti-Poilievre campaign back in November, and Trudeau claimed Poilievre was following Trump’s lead in abandoning Ukraine.
The logic of a Trump-Poilievre connection is simple. Trump is viewed poorly in Canada. The Liberals are drawing on Poilievre’s conservatism and faux-populism to cast him as a norm-busting, phony anti-elite politician hellbent on waging culture wars, demeaning the press, and attacking the country’s core institutions, such as the Bank of Canada and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
So far, efforts to MAGA-fy Poilievre appear to be failing. The Conservatives are comfortably ahead in the polls by double digits, including two recent surveys – one by Abacus Data and one by Nanos Research – that found them ahead by nearly 20 points.
The Liberals are more than eight years into government and showing their age. And while they managed to come back from polling deficits ahead of the 2019 and 2021 elections – and retain government, despite winning fewer votes than the Conservatives – so far Poilievre has proven a stronger leader than either Andrew Scheer or Erin O’Toole, who led the Conservatives in the last two outings. Poilievre has better control over his caucus than his predecessors. His messaging and focus is on economic issues, particularly the housing crisis, and that resonates with Canadians.
Trump vs. Trudeau, Take Two
Americans worried about Trump 2.0 believe they are staring down a real threat to the republic. As CNN’s Stephen Collinson wrote earlier this week, Trump’s “increasingly unapologetic anti-democratic rhetoric” seems likely to foreshadow a threat to the country’s constitution and its checks and balances. There are fears he will stack appointments with cronies and ignore limits on presidential powers while finding willing accomplices in Congress and state legislatures. Will the man who refused to accept the 2020 election outcome accept 2024’s results if he loses? And, if he wins, will he leave quietly in 2028?
If Trump wins, the US might not be the only country in trouble. Trudeau may face Trump’s wrath – especially after being used as a punching bag ahead of the Canadian election. In 2020, John Bolton detailed how much Trump dislikes Trudeau, an account that rings true in light of how rocky the relationship between the two leaders was. Those years included awkward bilateral meetings, summit showdowns, rebukes over policy decisions including Canadian military spending, and an acrimonious renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. There is little chance the relationship will improve if Trump wins in 2024, and voters are taking note.
An October poll by Abacus Data found that Canadians believe Poilievre would better manage Trump than Trudeau – 37% to 28%. The polling firm’s CEO David Colletto explained to the Toronto Star that a Trump win would not necessarily boost Trudeau’s reelection chances, as Liberals seem to believe. He noted that respondents see Poilievre and Trump as sharing certain conservative affinities and perspectives. In this way, at least, Poilievre’s alleged proximity to Trump for them is seen as a potential asset.
What’s next?
Americans must consider what a Trump 2024 win would mean. Graeme Thompson, senior analyst at Eurasia Group, warns that observers may be discounting the possibility of it hurting US democracy.
“I think people are underestimating – as they did in 2016 – the odds that Trump wins the next election and the potentially dire consequences for the US republic that could entail,” he says. “The campaign itself is going to be brutal, and there’s a good chance that the losing side rejects the outcome, regardless of who wins.”
Canada must also prepare for a Trump win, and the Liberals will be doing so while trying to use the former president and the MAGA crowd as an anti-Poilievre cudgel – a strategy that may not even work. While Thompson reminds us that Canada is great at managing its relationship with its southern neighbor, “it will need that skill more than ever if it faces a second Trump presidency.” Moreover, the governing party might wish to rethink its strategy.
“If the Liberals are still in power,” he says “they would be smart to de-personalize the relationship as much as possible – that’s to say, make it transactional and interest-based, especially given the bad vibes between Trump and Trudeau.”
Unless something changes, given the current polling data, the Liberals, despite their best efforts, might not be around long enough to take that advice.
Canada's Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre speaks in the House of Commons.
Poilievre is polling well despite crying "terror"
The political exchange was sparked when a 56-year-old New York man set out to attend a Kiss concert, but instead ended up driving his Bentley at high speed into a barrier at the border crossing, going airborne and exploding on impact, killing him and his wife.
Fox News was quick to report that it was believed to be a terrorist attack, and Republicans were quick to link it to Biden’s border policies. On Twitter, Ted Cruz called it a terrorist attack, as did GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who has called for a wall along the northern border.
In Canada’s House of Commons, before the facts were established, Poilievre asked about reports that the incident was linked to terrorism. After it became clear it had nothing to do with terrorists, the Liberals accused him of jumping to conclusions. When he was asked about it, Poilievre berated the reporter who posed the question, which commentators, including this writer, thought went too far. He also came under harsh criticism for voting against a Canada-Ukraine free trade deal and delivering a misleading explanation for the vote.
Both incidents gave Liberals the opportunity to attack him as dishonest, mean, and a Trumpy northerner, perhaps hoping for make a comeback in the polls. So far, that has not happened. The most recent poll from Nanos shows the Liberals so far behind that they are tied with the NDP, which could put pressure on the smaller party to force an early election. Seat projections show that the NDP would pick up seats if there was an election today, but that’s no guarantee since their voters might not like to see the NDP bring down Trudeau, opening a path to a Poilievre government.
On Dr. Seuss and cancel culture
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:
Hey everybody. Ian Bremmer here. Welcome to your week, life looking better every day in the United States, coronavirus land. But I thought I'd talk about, this week, all of this cancel culture that everyone's talking about right now. If you're on the wrong political side, your opponents are trying to shut you down and you take massive umbrage. I see this everywhere, and it's starting to annoy.
Last week, maybe, the biggest story was about Dr. Seuss and the fact that a few books were taken down, no longer being published by the Seuss Foundation, the publisher of those books, because of ethnic and racial stereotypes that were promoted in those books from decades and decades ago. Publishers in the private sector have the right to publish whatever they do and don't want that they have intellectual property control over. One thing that seemed silly on the back of it was all of these people then deciding to spend massive amounts of money, pushing Dr. Seuss to the top of the charts, for a whole bunch of books that were not getting canceled, that were still being published, money of which would be going to the same publisher that had decided to cancel the few books in the first place.
So very bizarre, and maybe makes everybody happy or everybody unhappy at the same time. But of course, the big story is that you had, then, this huge fodder for people on the left and right to come after each other. If you're on the left, of course, these books are horrible and need to be removed from the public dialogue. That of course also means that you're smearing Dr. Seuss as a whole, who, from many of our perspectives, were children's books that we grew up on and were just fine.
Then on the conservative side, you have people saying, "This is an outrage. Can you believe that they're trying to burn books and ban books? It's the beginning of authoritarianism and we're being canceled." Kevin McCarthy doing a reading of Green Eggs and Ham, which is perfectly fine, and you can still buy... A lot of people like to stand up and read perfectly innocuous Dr. Seuss books, but now there's strong politics behind it.
The problem is that any political issue, at a period of time that the United States is more politically divided, more politically dysfunctional, where political opponents are not just political opponents but are considered to be bad, fundamentally evil, means any issue that can be made into tribal warfare inside politics in the United States becomes precisely that. It drives people kind of batshit, right? We saw that with the Muppets, too. Those of you that know me know that I am a big fan of the Muppets, both as a show and puppets as a concept, so much so that it's like Hair Club For Men. I decided to become an owner.
Now, because done it back in the '70s, a lot of the skits that were done are now considered insensitive. So, Disney has decided to put a warning label on all of the Muppet shows from back then, warning of negative depictions and or mistreatment of people and cultures. To be fair, this is like the warning symbol that you see on your McDonald's apple pie that contents are indeed hot and could hurt you. It's because the United States is an incredibly litigious society and overly litigious society. This is corporate speak for, please don't sue us. We've done what we needed to do," but anybody that wants to watch the Muppets can still watch the Muppets.
It should not be a big deal, but of course you see Donald Trump Jr. coming out and saying, "They're banning the Muppets," and all of these other folks on the right saying, "How dare they. How can they possibly be banning the Muppets?" Which, of course, no one is actually doing. So, you see how we have a lot of folks' partisan ship on the right going crazy about cancel culture.
But what about on the left? Yeah, it's happening on the left, too. I saw this last week when Governor Abbott in Texas came out and said he's opening everything. So, 100% businesses are being open and no more mask mandate, which struck me as... I understand the business opening because there is an economic tradeoff between opening businesses and having quarantines, and when people are getting vaccinated, there's a much greater move in favor of economic openings. But saying you're ending the mask mandate is stupid and just playing politics. So, I was annoyed about that.
But then I saw people with millions of followers from the left on social media, like Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann, who were so angry with Abbott that they said, "This is Texas, and you see what they're like in Texas. If that's the way you feel well, then we shouldn't be sending Texas any vaccines." Who the hell is we? We're Americans. First of all, Texas is a diverse state that has both Democrats and Republicans. It's increasingly purple. It's not red or blue. Even if it was red, everybody needs vaccines. The entire country is rolling vaccines out and it's really important for us to do that in the US and do it around the world.
But there is such incredible dysfunction psychologically in this us versus them, bad versus good, black versus white, that you have partisans that have just lost their minds, that have lost their humanity in the spirit of being on the same team. The one that bothered me from the left the most in the last week was about CPAC. Some of you may have seen that when the CPAC Conference occurred down in Orlando, Florida at the Hyatt hotel, there was a stage and the design of the stage looked like, design-wise, a rune. They're not the swastika, but a rune that was worn by some Nazi officers.
Of course, everybody on the left goes crazy. Not everybody. A lot of people on the left go crazy, that it must've been intentional, this is a dog whistle for white nationalists and white supremacists. So, you have people with significant followings on the internet intranet saying that this is a Nazi support, and that you should be banning the GOP and banning Hyatt, which was hosting all of us. Alyssa Milano, with well over three million followers on Twitter, saying, "Hyatt is totally fine hosting Nazis. Boycott Hyatt."
Of course, anyone could understand that this was vastly overdone. This is conspiracy thinking that no one is doing research into figuring out what the actual stage looks like and this obscure rune from the Nazi-era Germany. Then we find out, we get the actual facts, which is it was a design, an event design company, that came up with the stage design for a fairly awkward space to do something that large. Company was called Design Foundry based in Maryland. Small company, 98%, more than 98%, of their political donations from their employees in the last year went to Democrats, not Republicans. They were the ones that came up with the design and they apologized.
The GOP said they're not going to use them for further events and all of that. Well, you would think on the back of that that, of course, Alyssa and others are going to take down their posts and they're going to say, "We got it wrong," and apologize. No, no. As of today, that post is still up there with thousands and thousands of retweets saying to boycott Hyatt, and Hyatt losing money on the back of this.
A small piece of advice if anyone sees this, post this out for Alyssa. Alyssa, do them a favor. Go stay at a Hyatt and take a post of yourself at the Hyatt and tell your fans the next time they're going to a hotel, they should stay at a Hyatt. Why? Because you caused economic damage out of political lunacy. It was completely wrong. It was completely without merit. They did nothing wrong. This is hurtful. It's hurtful to the country. It's hurtful to the corporation, but most importantly, it's hurtful to us. It's hurtful to the people who are no longer looking at each other as human beings, but instead as political sport, as scoring a point.
It doesn't matter if more of this is being done by one side or the other. What matters is that it's lunacy. It's fake news. It's not facts. It's conspiracy thinking. It's really going to cause much more damage to our polity, something that, I think, deeply, we all still want to believe in, and we want to make better.
So that is my little rant for today, for Monday, for kicking off the week. I hope everyone does well, and increasingly we aren't going to need to avoid people. Just a little bit longer. Looking forward to that. Take it easy. Be good.