Magic Statistics

Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) is a federal government agency that offers loans and other financial support to businesses that are unwilling or unable to get credit from regular banks.  The agency is being criticised for poor business practices:  Companies that failed to repay loans have been favoured with even more public funds.  Several eventually went bankrupt, leaving taxpayers holding the bag.

Some companies that failed received ACOA funding over 15 years, returning repeatedly for loans and subsidies between 1988 and 2005.

They include:

• King Metal Fabricators of Dartmouth, N.S., which received money on 11 occasions — three loans and eight grants before bankruptcy proceedings resulted in a $317,262 loss for ACOA.
• 10824 Newfoundland (Servco Environment) Ltd., a provider of chemical and oil spill cleanup technology, received money nine times from ACOA between 1991 and 1996, before last year's writeoff of about $104,000.
• Cape Minerals Ltd. of Edwardsville, N.S., received money on eight occasions between 1992 and 1997, before a writeoff of $96,626 last year.
• Juniper Lumber of Juniper, N.B., cost ACOA $156,062, after getting money from the agency on seven occasions between 1988 and 1993.

The idea behind public funding is to improve the economy by helping businesses reach profitability.  That these firms return to the trough time after time indicates that "profitability" is beyond their grasp.

ACOA spokesman Richard Gauthier insists that the firms met agency criteria when the loans were made.  How about re-evaluating the criteria with a view to ensuring that repeat defaulters are not allowed back into the public trough?

For more examples of Chinglish (bad translations of English seen in China), click here and here.

The office of Crime Prevention Yukon was broken into recently.  When interviewed by the local press, executive director Ryn Bunicich complained about—wait for it—the lack of official Yukon crime statistics.

Correspondence recently liberated from the office of Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern reveals that the Church of Scientology got into a snit because they weren’t invited to official church-state talks last year.  The Irish PM invited Catholic, Anglican, Jewish, and Muslim leaders to an inter-faith dialogue.

According to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, its [Church of Scientology’s] Irish representative Gerard Ryan, wrote a letter of protest to Mr Ahern asking whether this had been a "pointed snub".

"Perhaps this was simply an error of omission, and if so, I apologise for any inference I may have inadvertently made.

"However, if our church was deliberately not invited I would greatly appreciate if you would tell me why," he wrote.

A spokesman for Mr Ahern wrote back in March last year to say that the letter would be brought to his attention — but there was no further communication with the church.

No word on whether Methodists or Baptists sent letters reminding Mr Ahern of their existence.

h/t: Religion News Blog

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• Scientologists to renovate Winnipeg landmark
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The surge in out-of-wedlock births during the past forty years has provided a wealth of data on which to base study of the question: Do children raised by single or cohabiting parents face the same life prospects as children raised by two biological parents married to each other?  The answer is in.

Some researchers identify out-of-wedlock births as the chief cause for the increasing stratification and inequality of American life, the first step that casts children into an ever more rigid caste system. Studies have found that children born to single mothers are vastly more likely to be poor, have behavioral and psychological problems, drop out of high school, and themselves go on to have out-of-wedlock children.
. . .
[I]t's not that harsh economic conditions lead to women having children without fathers, but that the decision to have children without fathers leads to harsh, and self-perpetuating, economic conditions.

Marriage is becoming a class-related phenomenon: Upper-income persons are more likely to marry before having children, while lower-income individuals are not.

A recent article by Sara McLanahan, the William S. Tod Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University, documents the relationship between out-of-wedlock births and self-perpetuating poverty.

Using data from a new birth cohort study, I show that unmarried parents come from much more disadvantaged populations than married parents. I further argue that non-marital childbearing reproduces class and racial disparities through its association with partnership instability and multi-partnered fertility. These processes increase in [sic] maternal stress and mental health problems, reduce the quality of mothers' parenting, reduce paternal investments, and ultimately lead to poor outcomes in children. Finally, by spreading fathers‘ contributions across multiple households, partnership instability and multi-partnered fertility undermine the importance of individual fathers‘ contributions of time and money which is likely to affect the future marriage expectations of both sons and daughters.

Here is yet more empirical evidence pointing to the conclusion that, if Western nations are serious about tackling poverty and related social pathologies, we must stop pretending that family arrangements are irrelevant to public policy.  Governments should actively encourage stable families headed by two biological parents married to each other and discourage other child-rearing situations.

Dr McLanahan’s research was undertaken through Princeton’s Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study.  See their website for more publications and data.

h/t: small dead animals

Previous related posts:

• Broken homes contribute to failure, poverty, and crime: UK teachers
• Marriage is good for you and your kids
• Family instability correlated with poor behaviour in children
• Children do best when raised by married parents
• Does marriage matter for the nurturing of children?
• The real marriage-and-social-justice issue

The collect for today, Monday in Easter Week, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

Almighty God, who through thine only-begotten Son Jesus Christ hast overcome death, and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life; We humbly beseech thee, that, as by thy special grace preventing us thou dost put into our minds good desires, so by thy continual help we may bring the same to good effect; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

For the Epistle: Acts 10:34-43
The Gospel: St Luke 24:13-35

Artwork: Pascal-Adolphe-Jean Dagnan-Bouveret, Christ and the Disciples at Emmaus, 1896-97. Oil on canvas, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.