Rahim Jiwani

Tapping the sign and looking into the camera

Americans love banging on about the War of Independence. They’re quieter on the War of 1812. Here’s why. In 1812, America declared war on Britain. The plan was to march into Canada and annex it. Thomas Jefferson said it would be “a mere matter of marching.” It wasn’t. The Canadians sent them packing. Two years later, the British sailed up the Potomac. American forces collapsed at Bladensburg in what’s still called “the Bladensburg Races” because of how fast they ran. President Madison had already fled to Maryland. The British walked into Washington unopposed. They sat down in the White House, ate the dinner Dolley Madison had laid out for forty guests, used the President’s silver, then set fire to the building. Then they burned the Capitol, the Treasury and the Navy Yard. A freak thunderstorm put the fires out the next day. The British left when they were ready. It’s still the only time a foreign army has captured the US capital. You can see why it doesn’t come up much.

Caroline Elliott explains why she's running to lead the BC Conservatives: "We need someone who understands the ideology that underlies all the bad decision-making we've seen by the NDP."

The mic cut out during O Canada but the crowd in Buffalo had her back

If we want better debate, better scrutiny, and better policy decisions, giving MLAs a basic grounding in economics and public finance is a good place to start. Not ideology, just numeracy. I brought a motion to the legislature to do just that.

The most hilarious John Garrett video that will never not be funny

We’re in an economic crisis. We have a record-busting deficit. We just lost 40,000 jobs in 2 months. This morning I tabled a motion to provide mandatory economic literacy training to MLAs. The NDP’s response was to try to amend it into a culture war debate.

New @WSJopinion editorial on my paper analyzing the California wealth tax's implications for ongoing tax revenue:

The NDP rot runs deep. This province—with its pantheon of explorers, builders, and heroes—deserves far better. If you want to know what the BC NDP truly thinks of our province and country, read their "British Columbia Newcomers’ Guide." Take a look at the "History" section on pages 4 to 7. According to the NDP, BC’s timeline began with the Indian Act, and nothing else of note occurred until the implementation of UNDRIP. I am being serious—there is absolutely nothing else there. Not even a mention of Terry Fox. As David Eby has suggested, BC’s origins were a "colonial mistake," and his government is determined to drill that lie into the minds of everyone who moves here. Do not believe them when they claim to be "proud" of British Columbia. Recognize that this is why the culture war is worth fighting. welcomebc.ca/getmedia/44d82…

My friend Brian Kelcey, who has departed Twitter, has what he calls the Kelcey Rule — before a government tries to solve a problem, it should first make sure it's not already subsidizing the problem. I wonder how many of our investment problems are entirely self-inflicted.

Went to the Whitecaps game this Saturday. Nearly 30k people in attendance, and the team is dominant. and might be the best in MLS. One of the more historic teams in North America. The city and province need to work with the team and figure out how to keep the Caps, it would be a tragedy to lose them. #savethecaps

🚨PRINCE REZA PAHLAVI JUST WENT FULL NUCLEAR ON THE ENTIRE EU PRESS & PARLIAMENT! 🔥🧨 I want to speak DIRECTLY to the people of Europe. In the past two weeks I held TWO MAJOR press conferences — one in Stockholm, one in Berlin. Over 150 JOURNALISTS showed up. We spent MORE THAN TWO HOURS with them… And guess what? NOT ONE SINGLE of those 150 journalists asked about the 40,000 IRANIANS SLAUGHTERED on the streets of my country on January 8th and 9th! NOT ONE asked about the 19 political prisoners EXECUTED in the last two weeks. When I told them 20 more are currently sentenced to death — CRICKETS. Not a damn question. I stood right next to a grieving mother and father who lost their sons in that massacre and begged them to listen to their stories… NOT A SINGLE ONE of those 150 journalists asked them a thing. Let that sink in. My 40,000 BRAVE INNOCENT COMPATRIOTS who were butchered fighting for liberty? They don’t give a damn. They are too busy criticizing America and Israel for taking out the dictator who’s been slaughtering our people for 47 YEARS — instead of going after the regime that’s actually doing the killing! They’d rather dig up Iran’s history than talk about what’s happening RIGHT NOW or the free democratic Iran we’re fighting for. One EU parliament member even had the nerve to say Iranians aren’t ready for democracy. To that coward and to every fake journalist in the room I say this: Iranians aren’t just “ready” for democracy… 40,000 of them just DIED for it! And I will NOT let their blood be in vain. SO HEAR ME LOUD AND CLEAR: Whether Europe stands with us or not… Whether your journalists do their damn jobs or not… Whether your politicians grow a spine or not… I WILL FIGHT FOR MY PEOPLE AND MY COUNTRY. Even if we have to do this ALONE — we are fighting until IRAN IS FREE! 🇮🇷💪 #RezaPahlavi‌ForIran @PahlaviReza

⚡️Marc Andreessen is right and the mechanism he’s describing is one of the most underappreciated forces in modern political economy. The Economist excerpt is saying the quiet part out loud. EU regulation was sold to voters as a constraint on American tech dominance. It accomplished the opposite. GDPR, the AI Act, the Digital Services Act. Every one of these was framed as standing up to Silicon Valley. Every one of them made it structurally harder for European competitors to exist because the compliance burden is a fixed cost that only giants can absorb. A three-person AI startup in Berlin cannot afford what Google can absorb as a rounding error. So the regulation designed to limit American tech dominance ended up locking it in permanently. This is the same pattern that governs every heavily regulated industry. Dodd-Frank didn’t weaken JP Morgan, it destroyed community banks and made the too-big-to-fail institutions bigger. Pharmaceutical regulation doesn’t constrain Pfizer, it makes starting a new pharmaceutical company nearly impossible. Every layer of compliance is a moat around whoever was big enough to survive its introduction. The deeper thing Andreessen is pointing at: regulation is almost never actually designed to limit the biggest players because the biggest players help write it. The revolving door between regulatory agencies and the companies they regulate is not a bug. It is the mechanism. Staff leave the FTC for Meta and back. Staff leave Goldman for Treasury and back. The regulations that emerge from this process reflect the interests of the people who wrote them, which are the interests of the incumbents they’ll return to. The public-facing narrative is consumer protection or competition. The actual function is barrier erection. The uncomfortable truth underneath all of this: the modern administrative state has evolved into an entity whose primary function is the preservation of incumbent power structures, dressed in the rhetoric of consumer protection, environmental responsibility, competition policy, or social welfare. The rhetoric isn’t always cynical. Many of the people implementing it genuinely believe they’re doing good. But the net structural effect is consistent across domains. The big get bigger. The new is prevented from emerging. The existing order is protected from disruption. Andreessen sees this clearly because he operates in a sector where new entrants are the entire value proposition of venture capital. When regulation kills new entrants, it kills his business model. So he’s financially incentivized to notice something most commentators won’t. But being incentivized to notice something doesn’t make it wrong. It makes it visible. The real conclusion: most political conflict in developed democracies is not left versus right. It’s incumbents versus entrants, dressed up in ideological language. The coalitions look different depending on what’s being protected, but the structural dynamic is the same. Watch what regulations do rather than what they claim to do. The gap between those two things is where the real signal lives.

Trudeau flew in on a private jet for a $100,000+ speaking engagement after buying a mansion in Quebec to say the wealthy need to limit their wealth intake. Fresh off drinking from a plastic cup at Coachella (USA) after banning single use plastics in Canada and telling people not to go to the USA

I’m not the biggest Ken Griffin fan from the GameStop saga days. But I’d love for him to give Zohran a big fuck you and pull his construction plans and pull the hundreds of millions he pays in taxes and charity. NYC officials are hilarious. All they do is say they hate rich peole and then beg them to stay and pay for all their useless shit. There was zero reason for Zohran to antagonize Griffin except to appease his yellow and purple haired communist base. He could have still initiated the tax without trying to be Mr Cool Guy Communist and rubbing people’s faces in it. Why would any rich person stay there? NYC wanted a communist mayor. They got a communist mayor.

The NDP spent $370,000 on luxury car leases for bureaucrats. Then redacted the makes and models when asked. Luxury cars for senior officials that already make six-figure salaries and work from home. At a time when they're cutting funding for children with autism and forcing British Columbians to tighten their belts, this government should lead by example and scrap these perks. #bcpoli

Yes, the people who call themselves 'trans' exist and they deserve exactly the same rights as everyone else, which, fortunately, they already have in the UK. It would rightly be considered discrimination if a person was refused employment, housing or the vote because they identified as trans. 'Trans women are women' is a thought-terminating cliché. Men are not women. That doesn't mean they're not allowed to present themselves however they like, call themselves whatever they like and believe whatever they like about themselves. It means they haven't changed sex. If we replace the objective, observable characteristic of sex with the unfalsifiable concept of gender identify, women and girls lose, among other things, their right to fair and safe sport and women-only spaces, including changing rooms, prison cells and rape crisis services. Women and girls are provably more vulnerable to forms of abuse including sexual assault, harassment and voyeurism in mixed-sex spaces. There is no evidence that trans-identified men don't have exactly the same rates of criminal offending as all other men. Trans people exist. I have no desire for them not to exist; indeed, I wish them safety, happiness and health. However, 'existence' does not, and should not, mean the violation of other people's right to privacy, dignity and freedom of speech, or the reconfiguration of society to indulge a fallacy.

HORRIFIC…WELCOME TO KEIR STALIN’S BRITAIN… A BRITISH GIRL screams “HELP ME! THEY’RE GOING TO RAPE ME” as two Afghan asylum seekers drag her…which she recorded on her phone. Lawyers are BLOCKING the footage because “It would cause RIOTS across Britain”