Comforting the unafflicted

Former reporters turn up in the darndest places. Alan Jeffers, erstwhile ink-stained wretch for the Chronicle-Herald and Canadian Press, turned up this week on the website of Mother Jones, the “smart, fearless” left-wing American magazine once edited by Michael Moore. Jeffers was defending his current employer, the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, from claims in both MoJo and Forbes Magazine, a rather more conservative journal, that it paid no US income tax in 2009 despite earnings of *cough* US$19.3 billion. And a fine job he did.

In case you were wondering, $19.3 billion is enough to put a new Cadillac in every driveway in Nova Scotia. Taxes included this time.

Hat tip: CH